Pigs flew on Saturday night in North Hollywood. Theatre Unleashed presented what had to be its best 24-hour theatre event to date. Wow. I'm absolutely gobsmacked by how awesome it all was. I knew that when we took on Pink Floyd as a theme that we were going to get some heavy plays, and we did. The company brought the drama. However, they brought a surprising amount of levity, as well. The show turned out to be a great balance of well-executed material from across the comedy-drama spectrum. I have to tell you, there were some actors I saw on Saturday night that I had always seen as comedic talent who blew me away with their dramatic chops. Heather, Lee and Joanna all stick out in my mind, in particular. Their work in their respective shows opened my eyes to just how wide their range really is. It was also great seeing so many new company members involved in the show - Aja, Mandy, Marielle, Dex, Laura, David C. & David O. all brought their "A" game and handled themselves like true pros under the unique challenges the 24-hour shows present. The other thing I love so much about these 24-hour shows is how many new folks we get to meet and work with from the greater L.A. Theatre Community. Samantha, Cindy Marie, Keith, Tracy, Vincent, Rene, Jason and Ellen - all incredibly talented people I'd love to work with again. Not to mention old friends and past company members like Ben and Vance coming over to play for the day. I love being a part of this community.

So, I actually did fulfill my goal of acting in a 24-hour show on Saturday! In an effort to plug some holes in the cast that sprung up unexpectedly, I was asked to sub in and act instead of direct. Now, I'd always been hesitant to act in one of these because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to memorize the lines in time. My biggest fear was getting a script that had a big ol' block of text that I'd have to cram in a few hours. Well, I decided to suck it up and roll the dice. Lo and behold, I did get a script with a half-page monologue to learn. Not the longest I'd seen in one of these shows, but still pretty fierce. Some of the regular actors in the 24 hour shows cackled when they saw what I had to memorize - they both had been in scripts I'd written before and had to deal with incredibly difficult monologues, so to them, this was a healthy dose of justice and/or karmic payback for me. I ever tell you how much I hate karma? To my relief, I nailed the monologue (it was a story about pirates and drug-runners, lots of fun), and our scene went really well. It was a lot of fun working with David O. and Jason - they gave me a lot to work with, considering we had a very difficult and abstract, Brechtian script. Beth was a great director. Simple and straightforward with what she wanted from us, she brought some solid film directing principles to the stage and they translated quite successfully. All-in-all, acting in this show was a lot of fun and something I'd do again without hesitation, big ol' monologues or no.

Of course, acting wasn't the only thing I did for this show. Nope. Friday night, I stayed up waaaay too late writing a script inspired by Floyd's When the Tigers Broke Free. I'm ashamed to admit that, as a pretty dedicated Floyd fan, I had only listened to this song once or twice before in my life. It's a beautiful song about the death of Roger Waters' father, Eric, as he helped defend the Anzio Bridge in Italy during World War II. Eric's entire company was killed when the German Panzers broke their defensive line (the titular Tigers breaking free). It's a rare track, not found on many Floyd albums, and it's never played live. It was cut from the album version of The Wall because the band had decided that the song was too personal for the concept album. However, it was a part of the film.

For a song that's so hard to find (until recently, it could only be found on one album), it's considered to be one of the greatest Pink Floyd songs of all time. Well, Friday night it was looped in my earbuds for about six hours. It was a tough prompt. At first, I didn't know what to do. However, I knew what I didn't want to do. After hearing the song a few times, I knew I didn't want to do anything comedic or write something that had a comedic twist at the end. It's such a personal expression of pain and loss by an artist, I almost felt it would be disrespectul to be funny or ironic. So, that left drama. War drama usually make for great stories, especially tales of self-sacrifice. I didn't want to pound people over the head with heaviness, though, so I kep the setting unrealistic - the post-apocalyptic near future, featuring three ordinary folks stuck in the extraordinay circumstance of having to stay behind and fight so that their friends, family and loved ones could escape an oncoming zombie horde. The story finds them in the middle of their final preparations, each coping with their oncoming fate in their own way. To pass the time, they start quoting the famous last words of others, and find that to be  strangely comforting. By the end, they each manage a moment of honest, profound clarity and self-expression as they come to terms with their own mortality.

Okay, yeah, that does sound like a pile of pretentious crap, doesn't it? I'm making it sound like it's lot deeper than it is. Hell, there's a joke in there about not wasting bullets, or they'll have to beat themselves to death wtih a crowbar if they get bit. Anyhow, check the script out. It's posted for free here on my website (for now). I'd love to hear what folks think about it, so please feel free to leave your thoughts below.