Shameless Plug: "Orange Ya Glad I Didn't Say Banana?"
Although I will post a play later today I'm going to take this blog post to let you know about my one-act anthology I wrote, "Orange Ya Glad I Didn't Say Banana?" which is getting its first fully staged reading (directed by yours truly) at the Gay Activists Alliance of Morris County in Morristown (at the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship to be exact) on August 13th @ 8pm. So yes this post is kind of a shameless plug for advertising that. #sorrynotsorry
I've been working on this play for about a year or so now and I truly think it's some of my best work. It started in my Creative Writing class senior year where we were studying a scriptwriting unit and my teacher gave us an assignment to write about two people fighting over a book. I then created two characters, A + B (much like in "The Post Secret Play" a few posts below, for any who haven't read it) who were fighting over a book called "How Not To Act Suspicious In Public" and their mission to create a public bombing.
From there, we were supposed to evolve the project and it hit me: I always had this joke in high school since everything at Urban Outfitters is so fucking expensive that I wanted to just go in there one day and break everything, and I also wanted to make a play about the hypersensitivity of terrorism and fear in our nation, as well as banishing the stereotype that only fundamentalist Muslims can be terrorists (although my crusade against islamophobia is another topic for another time) and then bam, "Bombing Urban Outfitters" - a play about two asian girls bombing an urban outfitters because they thought they could get away with it due to lack of racial profiling, was born.
"Bombing Urban Outfitters" went on to win an honorable mention award at the Young Playwright's Competition at The Theater Project in Cranford, New Jersey which was cool - but I knew I wanted to do more with "Bombing". My friend Jordan had asked me the same year I wrote "Bombing" to produce a "one act he could produce at his high school" in which I produced "Schizo Date" - a play about two schizophrenics on a blind date which he didn't actually end up doing, but became another stand-alone one act. So now I was left with these two absurdist quirky one acts and I needed a way to tie them together so then somewhere I just got the idea for "Orange Ya Glad I Didn't Say Banana?" and just tied it all together (although I had to change the ending for "Orange Ya Glad" like four or five times because I felt like I wasn't getting it right - one of my bigger challenges writing this piece).
Anyway, there's still some casting happening so I don't want to jinx myself and put the cast I have now because it's still changing but I will have a full cast soon!
Hope to see you all there - Monday, August 13th at the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship at 8pm. Admission's technically free but there's a $6 suggestion donation for non-members, $4 for members. I highly encourage you to donate because GAAMC is a wonderful organization and they need funding to keep them going.
xoxo
Sean
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