A Staged Reading and the SJ Micro Theater Company

• Post By: Meghan Maugeri
• Date: April 3, 2016
• Category: Theater

Hi Gang…I’ve been wanting to blog about my writing adventures for a while now. Many of you kindly ask me how the writing is going. I never know exactly how to answer… Do I tell you about whatever I worked on yesterday? Do I give you an overview of how I’ve improved over the last year? Do I read a rejection letter to you on the last piece I submitted?

Anyhow, I thought I’d do the writerly thing and finally write about it so you could follow along. Let’s get started on a positive note, shall we? Yesterday, The Micro Theater Company, a new San-Jose based theater collective, held a staged reading of 12 short plays written by local writers and performed by local actors. (*For those of you wondering what a staged reading is, see below.) It had an open-door policy for the staged reading which I think is rad. (Yes, I just used the word rad).

The plays had to be inspired by the Twilight Zone. My short comedy, BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR, was performed by the amazing Joe Sondow(@JoeSondow) and Alex Ramadan. The play is about a Las Vegan street performer who helps a mysterious tourist on a seemingly impossible mission.

Joe and Alex killed the performance! It’s easy to tell when a comedy falls flat. I was incredibly nervous about this happening, particularly because some of the dialogue involves interruptions and other nuances that are challenging for performance (especially in a staged reading). But, that didn’t happen at all! Joe and Alex got so many laughs and I was really thrilled with the performance. It’s amazing when actors make it even better than you had imagined.

The event helped me rediscover how much I love writing for theater. There is something really amazing about the immediate gratification of sitting in a room of people who are being entertained by something you wrote. You don’t have to do months of pre-production or wait for editing in post. Turns out I love comedy writing, too. Who would’ve thought?

Overall, I think it went well. Next step is to revise the play and submit to the group to be considered for a full performance. I’ll let you know how it goes. If there’s a video of the performance, I will post it. Unfortunately, no video of the staged reading… Next time I’ll see if I can record one.

Thanks to Sinohui Hinojosa (who runs the group) as well as Joe and Alex for their stellar performance. Cheers to the other writers and performers, too. I was impressed with everyone’s work!

*A staged reading is done during the development of the play. During a reading, the actors sit and read the script versus acting it out. They had a 2 hour rehearsal beforehand, so it’s much better than a cold read. After the reading, comments are given to writers to help improve work.

Thanks for reading. ‘Til next time.