HELA, TROY, AND THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE

So I'm taking part in this twitter based contest, sponsored by Playscripts, inc.  It's called Pitch-n-Play, and what you do is tweet a pitch for a short play than can have around 8 characters and be about 20-40 minutes long.   The play has to somehow relate to the quote "the course of true love never did run smooth."  It's actually quite fun coming up with different ideas, and a great excuse to kick some stuff around that might become my next play.

Some of my ideas, in no particular order:

Doctor trying save wife finds cure for cancer, but side effect is you lose the ability to love

Right wing undercover reporter falls for OWS protester and must hide identity

Minister trying to pray away the gay accidentally summons Cupid and falls in love with him.

For a list of all tweets in the contest, go here.  And enter yourself.  It's fun, it's free, and takes very little time.  While you're there, if you haven't already, give me a follow @rkmcallister.

I like Playscripts.  This is no doubt due to the fact that they already publish one of my plays, a one act called Hela and Troy.  I wrote it at the request of Reyna de Courcy, a fantastic young actress who played Sunny in the first production of Fenway.  Her company, Gravity & Glass Productions, was doing a festival called Bell, Book, and Candle- all about love in fantastical settings, and she asked me if I wanted to submit something.  Being the always hungry writer that I am, I immediately said yes.  And I got this image of the Norse Goddess of death, Hela, being lonely and going speed dating.  And the play sort of just popped out of my head, like Aphrodite from the brow of Zeus, if I may mix my pantheons.



Here's a snippet from the play, where Hela meets Troy- who tries to be witty be asking unusual questions.

TROY

Hi.  I’m speed date number 10- also known as Troy.  This might sound strange- what doesn’t when you’re speed dating- anyway, I’m asking everyone- all my dates of speed- the same question:  do you want to steal a car with me?

HELA

I don’t know- if I told you that my little brother was a huge Wolf named Fenris and that he once bit off the hand of Tyr in anger at being tricked by the Gods, would that disgust you?

TROY

I don’t know- I’ve never met your brother, so it isn’t really my business, is it?

HELA

Sit down.

The play got an awesome production.  It was directed by John Hurley, and had Shashanah Dattilo as Hela, Ben Ellis Fine as Troy, and Alisha Speilmann as Mandy.  It was well received, and soon I got a call from my agent saying Playscripts wanted to publish it.  I said yippee, and that was that.  So far, lots of copies have been sold, and another production came about as a direct result of those, in Canada.

Next week-end, I'm shooting my short film Strong Tea.  More on that soon.

One more thing- if you're in NYC this week-end, Robbie Gil is playing the Rockwood Music Hall at 10pm.  He's an amazing singer/songwriter, and if you haven't seen him yet, do so.  You will not regret it.