Pitch Party? I don't think it has anything to do with putting pitch on the outside of an ark. Nothing to do with slow pitch. Pitch pipe? Nada.
A local theatre group, Company of Fools, is holding an evening where people with plays can pitch their ideas in four to six minutes using any method they so choose. This leaves much leeway and those who simply stand in front of people and mouth a few lines from their plays and beg to be produced are going to be SOL. (Canadian for shit out of luck)
I wrote a brief note on the weekend asking to be included in the line-up for the 19th and I am just a little too late. All the spots are filled. However, someone might cancel and I can then parachute myself in. Here was my initial salvo.
Dear….
I would like to be included in the Pitch Party on Wednesday at GCTC.
My play has three or four characters, is not long, and I believe the content is interesting and that it will forever change the way people see Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel.
In North America, who does not know Dr. Seuss and his rollicking trisyllabic
verse and over-the-top doodled animals? We are inculcated with his
Bartholomews and Hortons and Loraxes from birth.
But all is not perfect in Loraxland.
When I pitch, "The Unmarvellous World of Dr. Seuss", you will see.
---------------
Hmmmm, a mystery. What could be imperfect in the life that hyper-appreciated Dr. Seuss inhabited? Oh, don't get me going! The guy was a dishonest, philandering jerk.
Sounds like a downer, and I guess it is, especially for his wife of many years who helped create his success, and it is her that my play is about. But not all plays need to be sunshine and lollipops. I keep on reminding people about the blockbuster that had a man falling love with a sheep, perhaps metaphorically a la Kafka and the cockroach in Metamorphosis, and in the last scene his wife staggers on stage with the bloody head of a sheep. Did she kill the object of her husband's lust or did she kill his psychopathy? We are left wondering.
I mention this play because it was certainly not an upbeat romp in three acts.
And my play written in a voice of a dead woman is no romp, either.
I have just over a week to consider how best to pitch this play if I am successful in securing a spot on the 19th.
