Back Story: A play about a play rehearsal

It’s just a short play – probably about eight minutes long. It’s based on short story I wrote ten years ago titled “Nothing Better To Do.” I wrote it after having seen a 10-minute play festival Holly Hudson organized a few years ago. The event was such a success I was sure it would become a regular happening. But it didn’t. So, here I was with a play in search of a venue.

Along comes the Corner Cone’s Soft Serve Playhouse 10-minute Play Festival organized by local theater person Rani Crowe and Corner Cone owner Bob Swaney (Aug. 14). So ,I pull my play (now called “Parking Spaces”) out of my back pocket, dust it off and send it in. And, lo-and-behold, it gets accepted.

This is a play about a couple older, retired guys who are out of touch and literally put out to pasture parking cars at the Greene County Fair. Finding older male actors in Yellow Springs didn’t prove to be much of a problem and, given the constraints of a 10’ x 10’ stage, finding adequate rehearsal space wouldn’t prove to be a challenge either.

For our first rehearsal we chose my 10’ x 40’ back deck. The cast of Ron Siemer, Jerry Buck and Walter Rhodes had no trouble maneuvering the space as we worked on our blocking and ran through the play twice while resident groundhog Allen Street Al listened from his burrow under the deck and the chickens looked on in wonderment from the nearby chicken run.

For our second rehearsal, yesterday, we decided on Walter’s place. His apartment on Elaine Brown’s farm on E. Enon Road is big enough so that, if it rained, we could move inside. Otherwise, the plan was to rehearse out by his pool. Well, the weather was good, but the pool was occupied, so we set up in a shady garden area and set to work.

Soon we were besieged by a number of cats, four to be precise. An old resident male that follows Walter everywhere he goes and the young mother and her two kittens that we tried unsuccessfully to put up for adoption with a piece on the Blog last week (still available - see photo).

The play involves the two main characters sitting in lawn chairs pondering their lives and rising occasionally to assist fair goers with parking their cars. The mother cat, who had taken to Jerry, jumped in his lap and made herself comfortable every time he sat down. And every time he stood up, dislodging her, she would hop back up and curl up in his vacated seat. So, he had to remove her each time he was supposed to sit back down. While all this was going on, one of her kittens climbed a tree and was now overhead mewing because she was frightened. In between, the mother would hiss at the hapless male, because she thought he was getting too close to another one of her kittens.

After awhile, we started to consider putting the cats in the play. The mother was great. She never missed a cue. But, what I would really like to do, I told the cast, is write a play about a play rehearsal – this play rehearsal.

“Good idea!” Walter said. “You could call it ‘Cats.’”