Well, here's news I was not expecting to announce: the Women's Theatre Festival has selected a play I wrote for its second Occupy the Stage, a 24-hour event of staged readings. Clepsydra will be part of twelve original works written by women for women, performed in two 12-hour blocks. Auditions are this Saturday (May 20).
I wrote this play a few years ago during a dry spell in my theatre work, one that gave me a lot of time on my hands to focus on my writing. I took a page from my fanfiction prompt book and used Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day section to pick words as inspiration. "Clepsydra" immediately popped up as an interesting one, referring to a water clock invented by the Greeks to tell time after the sun went down. But I never can leave words just at their meaning: I like looking at etymology too. The word literally means "water thief," containing the roots "kleptein" (as in kleptomaniac) and "hydōr" (think hydration or hydroelectric). We often talk about time being stolen, but here was a clock that had thief in its very name. What did it steal? From whom? Why?
Being a play, I needed characters to answer these questions. I'd been challenged by several authors' blogs to write more female protagonists, so I decided all the characters in this play would be women. I chose names based on other Words of the Day, using their meanings as a basis for personality.
But that choice didn't make much sense. Why would anyone have such on-the-nose and unusual names? What were these very different people doing together? What did they have to do with a clock?
I just started typing. Gradually the characters explained that they were trapped, imprisoned. They didn't know why, and they didn't even know who they were. They only knew the one rule for this prison: discover who you are, and then you're set free.
I've gradually edited and noodled on it since first writing it, my only completed play so far. It's still in desperate need of revision, but I decided there was only so much progress I could make while it languished in the back corner of my hard drive. When I saw Occupy the Stage's submission notice, I decided to send Clepsydra to them, see if anyone else was interested in such a weird, unproducible play (did I mention the characters have to swim at one point?)
Turns out someone else thought it had some merit. I'm excited to see a director and actors tackle these characters, and discover what it might take to make this script get on its feet before an audience. Occupy the Stage will take place on June 30, 2017, at the new Sonorous Road Theatre location in downtown Raleigh.
update 5/26/2017 The cast list for each show has been posted on Facebook. Clepsydra's production team includes director: Jessica Hill, with Susan Sall as Roseate, Emily Yates as Chotch, and Daphne Trevathan as Pungere.
