Wade Bradford’s Blog

I admit it: I’m an egocentric narcissist. I love to Google myself. I also love to skulk around YouTube and see if any of my plays or monologues pop up. Here’s what I found recently:

It’s the first part of my ten minute play, “Romeo Revised.” There’s some directorial changes I might make — and its not how I envisioned the acting. But overall, I think the young performers do a great job. The audience seems to like it, at least.

Enjoy! (Oh, and if you’re interested, you can order the play at Heuer Plays)

I recently some questions about Juniper’s character from my latest play, Tomorrow’s Wish. I thought I’d post my response. But first, here’s the question/comment from up-and-coming actress, Grace Painter.

I am performing Junipers wonderful monologue for my A Level drama piece, I have already downloaded the whole play and read it through but i was wondering if there are any extra notes I may have on the character of Juniper, for example where exactly she lives in America and whether or not she has shy moments etc.

This will greatly help me in performing my monologue to the best of my ability and it would be lovely to know all the minor details in order to achieve full marks for my written work as well as practical.

Thank you very much,
Grace Painter

Well, Grace, I imagine that Juniper lives somewhere in Oregon, about 50 miles from the nearest town. I have a Great-Uncle who lives in a tiny town called Monument, Oregon. There’s no cell-phone reception. The one cafe is in someone’s trailer. His ranch — with its horses, goats, barn cats and sheep– is how I picture Juniper’s home.

Megan and Gary don’t live in a thriving metropolis. They live in a typical suburban town — maybe one that has the great outdoors nearby… A place like Klamath Falls, Oregon, perhaps.

However, I don’t mention specific locations in my play because I want students and actors to choose the setting. Some students have given Juniper a southern accent — and that’s fine by me. To me, the characters seem very American — but perhaps they could be British or Irish or who knows!

As to whether Juniper is shy — she’s sometimes around people that obviously don’t understand her. She is not very out-going around Brandi or Mrs. Dunbar, for example. She senses their rudeness and tends to shy away from them.

Although Juniper’s past is gradually revealed in “Tomorrow’s Wish”, there are still many elements about her character that remain a mystery. It’s your job as an actress to develop that character yourself — but I can give you some useful questions to steer you in the right direction.

Why does Juniper believe her mother abandoned her?

How does Juniper spend a typical day on her Grandmother’s ranch?

Has her grandmother been over-protective or appropriately cautious when it comes to raising her grand-daughter?

How does Juniper feel about her special abilities?

Why is Juniper so fond of her cousin Megan? What was their relationship like when they were younger?

Hope this is helpful! Remember, even though I am the playwright, the answers to the questions are your to imagine.

Thanks Grace! Break a leg!

NEW: As of January 25th 2010, my play Tomorrow’s Wish is now a published play! It is available in a trade paperback edition ($10), or only $3 to download. You can order the play by going to Lulu.com or Amazon.com.

And now, back to the original blog-entry (which was written before Tomorrow’s Wish was a published play.)

I have lots of unpublished manuscripts hanging around my office. But most of them are old novels or screenplays. I am very fortunate in that most of my plays have been published by either Eldridge Plays, Heuer Plays, or Playscripts or Big Dog Plays. There are a coupl plays that I wrote during my teens that are just plain horrible — so those will never see the light of day. However, there is a play of mine that I LOVE and it has yet to be published.

That play is Tomorrow’s Wish. It’s been a labor of love of mine since 2002 when I started kicking the idea around. It is currently being looked at by Eldridge Plays and Heuer Plays. But they haven’t gotten back to my yet. (Not with this current draft, anyway.) It’s about a teen named Megan (named after my niece) who dreads the idea of her eccentric cousin Juniper coming over for a visit.

In the first drafts, Juniper was a very loving, mentally handicapped 16 year old girl. And this is perhaps where the first major problem of the play arose — Juniper kept fluctuating from childlike to emotionally distraught, to surprisingly mature and well-spoken. So, trying to write a mentally disabled teen-age girl proved to be the wrong direction. But it took me a LONG time to understand that and be able to revise the work. Now Juniper is a homeschool student who lives on a secluded ranch with her grandmother. She is very bright, but not used to being around others– so she shifts from introvert to extrovert with the snap of a finger. (Oh, and she has a very special power — but that’s top secret.)

But I finally did! I’ve recently submitted the play to a couple places. So I’m hoping that Tomorrow’s Wish will someday be published and performed by talented high school students. I’ve gottena lot of terrific feedback about one of the monologues from the play (it’s available at my About.com GuideSite).

A few brave actresses have even posted performances of the monologue on YouTube.

And here’s another…

And this one is during someone’s drama class:

My girls are homeschooled — as you may or may not know. But that doesn’t mean they spend all day cooped up in the house. Once or twice a week they attend classes at the Huckleberry Learning Center. They take classes on art, geography, film making, and chess… And sometimes I help out by teaching theater and writing classes.

About a year ago, they wanted to create a play that was about artists, adventurers, and inventors from the turn of the century (late 1800s – early 1900s). So, I toyed around with a few ideas and TADA — I wrote “Impressions of Yesterday.”

The premise: two sisters discover an old trunk that is magically connected to an art studio in Paris, 1899. Out of the trunk pops Mary Cassatt, Monet, Degas, and many other iconic figures from the era.

The play is available at Playscripts Inc.

Over the last couple years, my girls have appeared in several children’s theatre shows at our beloved Canyon Theatre Guild. This gave me a chance to reconnect with young actors and children’s theater directors. Patti Finley said they were interested in doing a fairy tale story of Thumbelina, and she kindly allowed me to write the script.

Writing for children’s is a fun and challenging art form. You want the dialogue to be easy enough for the performers — but you don’t want to “talk down” to the audience or to the cast members.

As with Mermaid in Miami, I was adapting a Hans Christian Andersen story. And if you are an Andersen purists, you might not care for my adaptation. His story ends with Thumbelina marrying a fairy prince and living with the flower people — and thereby never returning to the human woman that raised and nurtured. My tale of Thumbelina focuses on a little girl (very little) who is trying to find her place in the world — and realizes that she and her mother need each other.

My good friend Fiona Perry starred as Thumbelina in the world premiere — and my two daughters had some good parts too!

Here are some photos from Mrs. Stafford’s drama class — (She also directed JT and the Pirates — thanks for your support, Mrs. Stafford!)

Learn more about Wade’s plays.

My friend Joshua and I, when were were struggling artists (unlike now — ha, ha), lived in Orange County without a car and without very much money to entertain ourselves. But we did have our roommate’s video camera. So we would often make these strange yet funny videos. One of them involved us just wandering the video store and using the produce for our prop comedy.

We made up a Headless Horseman character who used a cantaloupe instead of a pumpkin — and ever since then (even though I hate the taste) I’ve had an affinity for the fruit.

So — if you’ve ever seen my play “Conflict” and wondered why the playwright created a story about a young man who is obsessed with a cantaloupe — the source of his inner and outer conflicts — now you know why. No symbolism or anything. Just a fruit I admire.

“Conflict” was a script I wrote specifically for the Repertory East Playhouse. I entered their Page 2 Stage competition — and happily the script won! “Conflict” was produce and directed by a top-notch crew — and performed by a cast of talented actors. It was a joy to watch.

“Conflict” runs about 25 minutes, and like some of my other shorter plays, it has done quite well at drama student competitions.

Learn more about Wade’s Plays.

If you didn’t already know, I am madly in love with children’s literature. That’s why I am so thankful that I have children, so I don’t look odd when I’m reading Dr. Seuss or The Hobbit or Junie B. Jones.

I’ve always loved stories such as Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, and of course more modern kid’s books such as the Harry Potter series. But you know what I’ve never liked? CSI television shows. It started off with just one show — then they spun off with CSI Miami and CSI New York, and some CSI Navy show or something. And I thought it was a ridiculous amount of over-kill worthy of being lampooned. So, that was the seeds of CSI:Neverland.

So far this has become my most popular show — mainly because I full-on embrace silliness. And I had such a fun time creating the Peter character — this obnoxious, fun-loving man-child that has unlimited energy. I’ve had the pleasure of watching several schools perform the play — and each time, the director did a brilliant job of casting the right kid to play the lead role.

Check out this awesome commercial that some students posted on YouTube:

And here’s a breife scene which someone kindly posted:

Here’s an image from a different school production. Peter Pantaloon is talking to the “Lost Boys” — they haven’t aged as well as Peter, unfortunately.

Some of the monologues from the play have become popular too. There’s a Neverland 911 Operator speech that has been embraced by YouTube thespians.

Learn more about Wade’s plays.

Years ago, I was talking with TimBen at the Canyon Theatre Guild. He mentioned that he had wanted to do a Mummy play for Halloween, and that there weren’t any good scripts — comedy scripts — that explored the Mummy legend.

So, I undertook the project, wrote a script, gave it to the Canyon Theatre, and nobody liked it very much. But that never stops me. I took some notes, tightened it up, added some jokes, and sent it off to several play publishing companies. Eldridge liked it, however, they already have a Mummy script — “Mummy Dearest”, I believe. But, the newcomer play company Big Dog Plays scooped up the project.

I love the cover art:

The show runs about sixty minutes — and I’ve been tinkering with an extended version (although that project has been turning into something very different — but more on that later). I wish more theaters were interested in “Tuesdays with Mummy.” I’ve learned something important in the playwriting business: Halloween shows don’t sell very well!

In 2007 I had the pleasure of playing Mercutio at the Canyon Theatre Guild’s production of “Romeo and Juliet.” As a teacher, I have long since enjoyed reading the Bard’s work aloud. However, being able to actually perform it was a transcendent experience.

During the run of the show, I began to create a spoof of the play’s ending. I thought, what would happen if after Romeo drinks the poison, and Juliet supposedly kills herself, what if Romeo woke up and wasn’t really dead? From there, I concocted a ten-minute play that might be the funniest solid ten minutes I’ve ever written.

Heuer Publishing scooped up the script. They have a growing library of ten-minute plays — and so I was encouraged to create another one. So, I came up with “Hopeless Hamlet.” The premise of this ten-minute gem is that a student production of “Hamlet” goes horribly wrong when the ghost comes down with stage fright.

Both shows have been popular at regional and state-wide drama competitions. And I’m proud to say, Romeo Revised has won a handful of awards!

This is a very funky play.

It’s one of those shows where I suddenly came up with the title first, and the rest of the play wrote itself. I had written more than my share of princess stories:

Cinderella in New York

Mermaid in Miami

I started to realize that I was retelling fairy tales but setting them in a particular time and place. So why not those Disco Dancin’ 1970s?

The show is a great deal of fun. It;s not a musical, but drama teachers and performers are encouraged to include dance numbers if they wish to get down and boogie — which I highly recommend. Writing the Dwarves was the funnest challenge, because I wanted them each to have their own 70s flavor. My favorite: the “Grumpy” dwarf is named Nixon.

Learn more about Wade’s plays.