In conjunction with their staging of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame,” Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre recently sponsored a contest asking for creative responses to the play.
I wrote a 35-page one act play and which was selected as one of 10 finalists in the contest.
Read it (or glance at it) here >>
Since the winner was selected via Facebook (something the National Book Award and the Nobel Prize should definitely look into) and I’m no longer in high school and my play relies on the written word, I knew I didn’t stand a chance of actually winning the contest, but I achieved my goal, actually 2 goals – 1) write a play and 2) be one of the 10 finalists as selected by the Arden staff.
In retrospect, the only thing I’d change – other than proofing the doc for typos (which are pretty ridiculous) – is the title. I called it “The Moan Grenade” thinking “I’ll be clever and use an anagram for ‘Another Endgame’” and I ended up with a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE title for this particular play. There may very well be plays out there waiting to be written for which “The Moan Grenade” is a perfectly acceptable title, but not for this one.
The play should have been simply called “Another Endgame”, as if you call it that, you manage to reference the original “Endgame” and by throwing the modifier “another” in there, you get some torque going with the connotation of multiplicity.
