I sold another play! Actually, I sold the same play. Again. Kind of.

The Love of One Orange (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have some exciting news! For as much as I yammer on about my various works in progress, I’ve had a secret project going on in the background all this time and I’m so excited to finally be able to tell you about it.

I sold another play! Actually, I sold the same play. Again. Kind of.

Let me explain.

Ever since Playscripts picked up my play, The Love of Three Oranges, it’s consistently been on their bestseller lists for both full length high school plays AND adaptations which is incredibly exciting. It’s kind of popular, is what I’m saying. It’s great seeing so many people studying, performing, and enjoying the show and I’m so flattered people enjoy this silly little thing I wrote so very long ago.

Even before Playscripts picked it up, I’d been getting requests for a one act version, particularly from schools that had just finished the show and wanted to take it on the road to competitions. I had my usual recommendations but, no, most replied, they didn’t want to do part if it… they wanted to do the whole show… just shorter.

I never knew what to say. Could you actually trim a play with a run time of anywhere from 2 to 3 hours depending on the production and down to under 40 minutes and still keep the parts people liked about it in the first place? I never seriously considered the question as it seemed impossible.

But, in late 2013, Playscripts, who’d been fielding these same requests for a shorter version asked me if I could do it because, if so, they wanted it for their catalog. I’d recently seen a couple of productions in person so it was fresh in my minds which parts could be trimmed or even cut. By golly, maybe I could do it after all! I told them it’d have to wait until after the holiday but I’d see what I could do.

After an intense journey back into the good old imaginary fairy tale kingdom of the family Hearts, I finished it. We had one false start in which I thought I had it and held a reading for it only to discover it was still about 20 minutes too long and had to go back and work on it some more, but I finally finished the project I affectionately nicknamed The Love of One Orange (because it was 1/3 the length, you see) by the end of January.

And now that everything is all official I can finally announce that The Love of Three Oranges [One Act Version] is coming to Playscripts this fall!

I’m really excited for you to read it. It was a lot of work but I’m very proud of it. I think fans of the original will find that almost all of their favorite parts are still in there in some form (though, RIP “fairy tale on crack” line as there was just nowhere to shoehorn it back in) and a few parts have been totally re-imagined. While I love the full length, the One Act is leaner and, dare I say it, better in some places because I’m a better writer now than I was in 2002. Once the show is available, I’ll do a post outlining exactly what changed between the two versions for the benefit of directors and educators, don’t worry.

I’ll also post as soon as I have any info either about the release date or anything else but I wanted to take this moment to thank you all for your support for this silly little (now even littler!) show over the years and for sticking with me as I figure this whole writing career thing out by trial and error! 🙂 No one is as surprised as me to see how far these little oranges have managed once they got to rolling and I’m just so eager to see where they go next.