Fire Fire FIRE EVERYWHERE 🔥
what TF was Aries SZN 2026? 🔥🔥🔥
To tell you about Mar 21- Apr 19, 2026, I need to first walk us back to early March. As you might recall, I dusted off ye old produceress hat(s) to put up a reading of a play of mine that I LOVED but never got much traction on in the submissions game1. Was it only funny to me? Could it just be a shit script? What’s the appropriate amount of rejection and failure one needs to experience before it becomes medically necessary to abandon a creative project?
End of the Day, Ep 1 is the first “episode” or full-length play in a durational existentialist clown show or 8-play cycle that explores love and loss in the “coronial age.” My research is steeeeeped in Love Island UK (and right now: only the UK franchise),2 guided by an itchy, eerie feeling that underneath its superficial, glossy, fast-fashioned surface, there was actually an opportunity to say something smart about our pandemic-era collective loss and grief. All our stupid rituals of recovery. How we’ve built a violent world where love can’t survive . . .
When I thought of projects I could feasibly self-produce in NYC, this play stuck out because it has all the annoying things they tell you to write when you’re sobbing to your mentors about how fucking impossible it is to get new plays produced:
the play has a unit set (one location)
the play has a smaller cast (4 total, 2M, 2F)3
aside from fight and intimacy choreography, a food fight, and British accents: there’s not a lot of special stuff required to produce the play (no child actors, no projection, no difficult music to learn, multiple instruments to play, specific language required, etc)
Love Island is BIG, HUGE - there’s admittedly a lot of plays about reality dating shows already, but the appetite feels insatiable. So . . . yeah I know FULLY WELL that this isn’t new territory, but coming off a bunch of projects where no one had ANY FUCKING REFERENCE FOR WTF I WAS TALKING ABOUT (nor the desire to learn/look things up), it has felt ruh-freshing to lean on something everyone already knows too much about.
So I did it. I put up a 2-night reading of my play in process on a shoestring budget (invite-only bc I hired an Equity actor friend), doing all the jobs (except acting). My goals were to:
GET THE WORK OFF THE HARD DRIVE, let the draft touch grass
WORK WITH (COOL) ACTORS - all of my favorite 20-something actors are now 30-40s, so out the gate I knew an open call was in order. I paid for a posting in Playbill (about $40) because auditions are essentially (imho) an open house for your work. You are advertising to future collaborators: “Heyyy, does this look like any fun? Am I cool (enough)? Would it be fun to hang (in a rehearsal room for very little pay)? Or not?” Also, the little spike in views to your script and website can’t be bad things. People find you and find your work, and sometimes they’re really excited about it4!
MAKE THE WORK BETTER WITH AN AUDIENCE - I like to think of the audience as the additional actor who never attended a single rehearsal yet must IMMEDIATELY GET UP TO SPEED so they can perform a walk-on role TONIGHT. I learn so much by watching the audience do their most important, sacred work: listening, not listening, laughing, not laughing, reacting, not reacting, clapping, not clapping, wild eyes mouthing WTF, groaning, squirming, pretending to check their phone for “emergency messages” but really sifting through the wreckage that is their Instagram hidden messages (I’m right over your shoulder dude, I saw that).
This bare bones recipe continues to be (!!!) a delicious, nutritious mix of script + good actors + some kind of audience = instant joy. Connection. Community. Yes, also some falling on face, footing in mouthing, GRUNT WORK, and no, absolutely no money was made (& I did not pay myself)5. But yes, I have to keep reminding myself - this is what feels good. This helps the work get better. And this is all stuff I can do for myself (after a few months of savings), no gatekeeper or institution or dog & pony competition show required6!
I can’t completely rid myself of the institutions. Trust believe: I’m still applying to all the things. I still work with an agent and TV manager. I’m still hopeful someday SOMETHING OR SOMEONE BIG says yes7. But the experience of making my own work again reminded me: I’m a good producer. I’m probably the BEST producer of my own work. I love building a room. I have a good eye and strong curatorial instincts. I’ve done all the “right things” in my career. I have good, solid work that hasn’t really seen the light of day. I have an INCREDIBLE community and network of artists on speed dial. ACTORS HAVE ALWAYS FUCKED WITH MY WORK // I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED WRITING FOR ACTORS.
So this has been a major perception shift about my work and career: let me lean into what is already working for me. Moping around, wondering why the fuck some awkward general meeting went nowhere8 does nothing for me. But feeling like I can direct my own path, I can stay rooted in what feels good to me, and keep connecting to people I enjoy helps me & my work continue to grow. The point is growth, dummy! Yes, consistency is really hard right now - maintaining any semblance of a normal routine or pattern feels crazy in this attention economy. But it’s worth it to try. Try, try, fail again, try.
The response to both readings9 gave me such a HUGE boost of confidence. People actually laughed? They actually enjoyed this play? Actually - had really smart things to say?! I was about to abandon this entire project because some anonymous script reader-volunteers didn’t read past page 10? Because the script reads better on its feet than on the page? But maybe I don’t let myself feel too badly about that? BECAUSE WE ARE A LIVE, TIME-BASED MEDIUM (& all my scripts work this way)??! I left this experience with new collaborators, old baddies returning (LOL thank you for your service), renewed fire for rewrites & finishing Ep 2 (I plan to have a full draft of by Summer 2027, hold me to this), a growing interest in beefing up my directing skills10, and I’m still very pumped to share another round publicly this summer as soon as I’ve rebuilt my savings. Save these dates: July 26 & 29 (there should be a livestream)!
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Now lemme tell you now (behind the cut) about the “crazy” shit I did in Aries Season.
