Two months ago we staged our first original piece, Waiting Room, by Joanna Bowzer. In the time since then we've had some time to reflect and take a look at our options for moving the piece forward, so we thought we'd give a little update and also a quick post-mortem on our successful experience at the Kraine in late January.
First off, we'd like to thank everyone who came out and gave us feedback. We can't tell you enough how it invaluable it has been. We held a talk back with our audience on Friday and Saturday for about twenty minutes each night. We're not really sure how you gauge the success of a talk back but we think that the fact that people wanted to continue to talk about the piece as our stage manager was dimming house lights to signal the end both nights was a pretty good sign. And the discussions continued in bars, coffee shops, and over the phone in the days that followed. We feel really thankful for our family, friends in the theater community, and friends who enjoy the theater who came out and spoke their mind. Their voices were heard. An extra special thanks for the mention from our good friends at Blue Box Productions in their write up on the New York Theater Review's blog.
So the question becomes: What now? Well, the piece is undergoing a series of re-writes, taking into consideration all we learned from our January audience and the new insights about craft Joanna has had since then. In addition the play has been entered into a few festivals for new works in the city, and once we hear back, we'll continue to shape and develop it to get it ready for production, either through the platform of an established festival, or produced independently. We're also in the midst of developing a few other works, which we'll let you know about soon.
