"Halfway In" — the performance that never was

“A married man shows up at the door of his skeptical former lover, hoping to convince her — and perhaps himself – that he’s ready for a long-term commitment. If only their cell phones would stop ringing …”

Another self-created production — yes, featuring digitally generated voices and images — as a last-ditch effort to see my first short play as something more than words on a page.

It started with an unfinished screenplay from 1989 for a romantic comedy called The Last Affair. I had written about 30 pages before I lost the thread on where it was supposed to be going and abandoned the story. Some 25 years later, I rediscovered the script and, looking for a creative challenge, began toying with somehow refashioning it into a one-act play that could maybe be staged at local theatre. 

But again the story defeated me – for all my rewriting, there was still barely a plot, just a lot of discussing and arguing and sniping with no sense of forward movement. 

So when I began reading about 10-minute play competitions, I had the thought, “Well, I can’t seem to hold the story together for even 30 minutes, but maybe, if I condense it all down to 10 minutes, I can make it work.”

I took all the best stuff from the previous version, and got it down to about ten minutes, up to the ending I never really liked … when suddenly, I knew what the ending should be. And once I knew that, I understood the characters in a way I was refusing to see them. 

Finally, after several decades and even more drafts, I I think I've gotten the story I was trying to tell about as good as it will ever be. 

But very possibly, I’m alone in that assessment. Some 50 festivals and competitions later, still no takers.

But now I’m not waiting for one.