Steppenwolf Theatre Company Blog – Chicago Theater, World-Class Ensemble

A couple months ago, Steppenwolf’s Associate Artistic Director David New told me about the interactive lobby display he was putting together with the Third Coast International Audio Festival for Dead Man’s Cell Phone. The lobby display would consist of a bunch of cell phones and three different voicemail plays that audience members could call and listen to before the play or during intermission. The voicemail plays would literally be just that – little two or three minute long plays that were made up only of voicemail messages. The idea being that these plays would be something you could hear if you picked up a stranger’s phone on the street (or in a café like Jean does in the play) and logged into their voicemail.

I told David it sounded like a cool project and then he asked me if I’d like to write one of them myself. I, of course, said yes and asked him, “When do I need to turn in the script?” to which he replied, “How about tomorrow?”

The phrase “no good deed goes unpunished” isn’t quite right, but it comes pretty close.

So, how do you write a voicemail play in 24 hours? First off, take a good, hard look at Aristotle’s three unities and throw them out the window. Aristotle is going to hate your voicemail play.

Then come up with three possible ideas. Realize that they’re all bastardized plots you’ve stolen from movies and plays. Burn them.

Then come up with three more ideas that are taken directly from your life and personal experience. Realize that you’re boring. Burn them too.

Then come up with three more ideas that are vaguely unique. Look at your watch. Panic. Pick the lesser of three evils and write that.

Ask your girlfriend to read it, make a few small tweaks and turn it in. For the first few minutes after that you’ll feel like instead of a play, you just turned in a drawing of a house and a stick figure family scribbled out by a five-year-old with crayons. Generic, knock-off crayons. Crayons that don’t even have that little plastic sharpener thingy in the back.

Don’t worry. That feeling is normal.

And that’s how I wrote my voicemail play, Scrape.

So, how did it turn out? I leave that up to you. If you’re coming to see Dead Man’s Cell Phone, check out the lobby display. If not, you can call and listen to it from the comfort of your own home (or at work) at 847.212.4759.

And, while you’re at it, check out the two other voicemail plays. You can listen to Baggage at 847.212.4691 and Weird Little Plan at 847.209.8628. Or, if you’re not a fan of phones, you can always listen to them online at the Third Coast International Audio Festival website.

So give them a listen and let us know what you think.

Unless you’re Aristotle…

This entry was posted by Dave Urlakis on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 11:31 am and is filed under Dead Man's Cell Phone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.