In the fall of this year, Montana Rep selected 18 local writers to participate in this project, whereby we would receive a prompt, then have exactly one week to write a 15-minute play in response. 5 of these plays are then selected for a presentation, each play receiving two hours of rehearsal.
This process is endeavored 5 times from the fall of 2016 to the spring of 2017.
I am very interested in many aspects of this project: what kind of plays will be created? What overlap is there between the plays that are written? What information (creative, cultural, structural) can be gathered from the writing as a whole? How might the individual and collective writing evolve during the process? What prompts are most fruitful, and why? What kind of community will develop among the project's writers and contributing artists, and audience? What experiments are possible? There are a lot of fun things to discover.
For this particular iteration, our prompt was "Guns", and I very much look forward to the responses from the other participant writers.
For my own work, Big Iron Fires is a bit of an experiment that I am very excited about, partly because I don't know what will happen.
Big thank yous to Montana Repertory Theatre and Greg Johnson (who is also directing my play) for organizing this project, and for including me in the journey.
And best of luck to all the participant writers!
For additional reading about the project, check out the Broadway World press release.
Much love,
ROMERO