A couple years ago a friend of mine who helps run a community theatre down in Texas suggested I try writing a play. I had at that point finished a pretty large prose series and was sort of floating as far as writing projects went, so I thought, Why not? I'd done some acting, had helped out around theatres, so I was familiar with the form and knew what a small stage could likely manage to pull off. And I'd had a scene kicking around in my head for a while that I thought might be a good starting point.
The result was my short play "Warm Bodies." Surprisingly (or maybe it was beginner's luck), this play went on to be featured in the annual Lab Works in Connecticut and then as part of the Source Festival in Washington D.C. It also got picked up for publication in an anthology . . . Though no one has seen this book (yet).
I'm delighted now to be able to say that "Warm Bodies" has also been chosen to become a short film. Of course, since there's already a movie called Warm Bodies, I'm guessing they'll change the title. It feels weird releasing my work into someone else's hands . . . Stranger, that is, giving it to a film director rather than a theatre director. Maybe because of the permanence of film as a medium. After all, when someone puts on a play, it's an interpretation of the written work. It can change from production to production, or even from night to night in the same production. But when they make it into a movie . . . It becomes the interpretation, at least unless or until someone else remakes it.
But after talking to the producer and director, I'm relatively confident that they "get" the script and will do right by it. And I'm damn curious to see how it all turns out.
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