Tag: playwriting

Hurricane Baby The Play Update!

So when I signed my book contract, I made sure to keep the rights to Hurricane Baby, the play. And the Mississippi Repertory Theatre (which has gone through a lot of drama in the past few months) sent me a message yesterday that it plans to go ahead with a staged reading in Oxford, Mississippi soon, dates about to be determined!

So knowing what I know now, I said I wanted to work on it a bit and give them a clean script tomorrow. So that is my job today.

The artistic director said they were looking at doing a new plays festival in Oxford in 2025 with a full production. I told him about the book release, and he said something to the effect that he’d like to tie the play to the book’s release. So a lot of things have to happen for that to occur; so I need to see what develops in the future.

It seems that I’m going to be my own publicist, so I need to make a list of what all needs to be done between here and the book’s release. I know I want to go toa few bookstores in Mississippi and Louisiana, I hope to do the Louisiana Book Festival and the Mississippi Book Festival and the Welty Symposium, so I need to work on those avenues closer to the book’s release. Any other publicity needs to start about four months before the book’s release date.

So that is where that project is at. Can you tell I am still excited? Happy all the way through.

Hurricane Baby The Play

Well. That was a surprise. I got the news last night that the Mississippi Repertory Theatre, a professional theatre in north Mississippi, wants to put on the stage version of Hurricane Baby next May! How it came about: I saw an advertisement for this company’s production of Barefoot in the Park by Neil Simon. I read up on them and noticed that one of my fellow MFA graduates was promoting the event, so I asked her if she could get my play in front of the play selection people–and about a week or so later, they let me know they wanted it but adapted more for a stage. I said, “Great!”

So next thing I know they have a whole poster of graphics showing an entire eight-play season, and my play is scheduled for May! So that is very exciting, and I am really looking forward to a full-on production. I think it will be very powerful on stage and make a big impression on audiences. It certainly did at the other professional theatre, New Stage, when it won third place at the Eudora Welty New Plays Festival in 2010.

I am hoping to finish the last chapter of the novel today and get it ready to send off to my final reader before I edit one last time and start sending it out. I’m going to make this last chapter as good as I can beforehand and eagerly await her critique. I think I will settle back in to doing MCIR work until I get it back. I will send off the beginning of September.

I am looking forward to having accomplished this first round of edits. Yay me!