KNUFFLE BUNNY -- THE MUSICAL!

You heard it. Mo Willems adapted his fantabulous picture book himself and it's onstage now at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Check out the great Washington Post review.

For decades, the Kennedy Center Theatre for Young Audiences has been producing wonderful shows, including stage adaptations of many literary works, both through seasonal programming and their daring New Visions, New Voices festival which is only a week away!

As someone who writes novels set in the world of the performing arts, I delight in seeing such cross-disciplinary explorations: Creating movement with words; acting out illustrations; expanding narrative with songs; using text to reflect jazz rhythms; dramatizing a book like KNUFFLE BUNNY with its pre-verbal protagonist; and showing how stories can live in so many ways.

In my own work, I have found playwriting classes to be very useful in helping me refine dialogue in prose pieces. Reading aloud, giving the words sound and performance quality, is an essential part of my revision process.  It is also a key element for many good author appearances, drawing in kids who may have struggled to connect with the words on the page. Some authors with whom I work even provide a mini "script" for school appearances so that educators can better prepare their students and get excited for the fun they will be having, or bring puppets, instruments or other creative props to incorporate audiences into their presentations.

Something to consider for the weekend: What role does PERFORMANCE play in your writing process or in your approach to author appearances?

Reading Instead of Writing

Perhaps it’s not the oldest trick in the book but, for me, substituting reading for writing definitely feels like cheating. After spending the morning putting final touches on the dances for Bugsy Malone, I “took myself out to lunch” at Barnes & Noble. Three (expensive) writing magazines and a grande decaf mocha later, I had discovered several intriguing playwriting workshops, some neat fiction contests, and a screenwriting software bargain BUT could make use of none of these because I had created NO LITERARY PRODUCT. This brings me to the Writer-on-the-Side dilemma du jour: What is the best way to divide your time between creative writing, career development research and education, and the unlovable task of self-promotion? I find it to be a real chicken-or-egg equation. You must discover the contest/publisher/program before you can submit to it but the time and effort required to research such matters eats substantially into the time needed to create quality material to send. (And don't let's even begin to discuss the time it takes to maintain a blog!) I’ve tried daily rules, like “Write 5 pages first, then find 5 places to send work,” and weekly protocols, such as “Write on weekdays, submit on weekends.” The perfect formula continues to elude me. If you’ve found one, you should definitely right a book about it!

BECAUSE IT'S THURSDAY...

When I began this blog, I promised myself I'd post on Tuesdays & Thursdays. So, here it is: Thursday night and I am unable to sleep after opening night of THREE FOR THE ROAD. The audience was small but it didn't matter much. It was so exciting to see the actors perform my work so passionately. And the much-dreaded "after chat" with myself and the director was (almost) fun. The audience was generally supportive and offered several very helpful comments. It's going to be difficult to force myself into the editorial capacity when the feeling foremost in my mind is how excited I am to move forward--to continue work on my new play, LITTLE LEAGUERS, while holding on to the insights, the lessons learned from this staged reading experience. More on the technical side of how the staged reading informs the playwriting process later. For tonight, I think I'm going to celebrate a little!