It is time for the Winter 2022 edition of THE WESTCHESTER REVIEW! I’m so thrilled to announce that my play, THE HISTORY OF US, is featured in this issue!
First, a little background on the play. This was born in the library at Trafalgar Castle in Whitby, Ontario, Canada.
Every year (during March break while the school is closed), Driftwood Theatre has a 24-hour play creation festival within the castle. Here’s a rundown of the creation:
- Playwrights enter the building
- Each playwright is assigned pictures of their actor(s) and a room in which the play is to be performed
- Each playwright spends the next 8 hours inside their rooms writing plays (They are to use only what is in the rooms…no additional props are allowed. They are also given a line they must insert somewhere in their individual plays)
- In the morning, the playwrights go home (they write overnight for 8 hours) and the actors and directors arrive at the castle
- Actors and directors rehearse the plays throughout the day
- Evening – all plays are performed in their individual rooms to rotating audiences who each watch a performance of each play
I believe I was a playwright for this festival 7 times. I can’t even remember if that number is accurate. I wrote THE HISTORY OF US for Trafalgar24 2014. I was given the school library both to write and to set my play in. I was given pictures of the following two actors. So I was locked into the library with two pictures and I had 8 hours to create a play that would be performed 6 times the following evening to 6 full houses!
Knowing the works of these actors, I was IMMEDIATELY intimidated. I sat down and I got to work! I had to write SOMETHING worthy of these incredible actors!
THE HISTORY OF US is what came out. A ten minute play written in about an hour and then worried over for the next seven hours. I enacted it myself right there in the library…performing both roles over and over and over and over. Changing a word here, adding a word there, deleting a word there…until I was ready to let it go. From 10pm to 6am it was mine. After that, I had nothing more to do with it and I could only hope it was good enough to pass as a 10-minute play.
That’s the history of The History of Us. Now, it appears in the WINTER ISSUE of THE WESTCHESTER REVIEW and I could not be happier about its coming into print! Here’s links where you can read the play. Click the image to go directly to THE WESTCHESTER REVIEW homepage:
Click the link below to go to the play itself:
DIRECT LINK TO MY PLAY – THE HISTORY OF US
(“Founded in 2007, The Westchester Review is dedicated to publishing the work of established and emerging writers.”)
KEVIN CRAIG 