Writing “A Most Auspicious Day”

Featured at PlayFest, opening Friday, April 24 at the Grange

— from Kristen Wilson —

I just wrote my first play. It’s for the 10th Annual PlayFest which opens at the Grange on April 24. Though I studied theater in college, I never studied playwriting. So let me say, right off the bat, I’m in no position to offer advice. I can just tell you that for me, as a first-time playwright, it was a lot of fun.

Unlike some other creative endeavors I’ve been involved in, I did not feel limited in any way. On the contrary, I felt a wonderful creative freedom.

Here’s what is fun about writing a play: you get to make so many decisions and you get to make all of them by yourself. What story do you want to tell? It’s up to you.  How many characters? How will they express themselves? What are they like? How do they sound? What do they say? And what do they show?

With a glide of my mouse and a click of my finger, I can alter that line, and eliminate or add a character. I can decide. What parts of the story do I tell? What do I leave out? How will I set it? What kind of world do I want to create?

As you start to write, it’s not just words on a page. You’re thinking about lines that will be spoken out loud, not silently read. You think about the sounds those words make, the rhythms they create, and how real people will move while they’re saying them. Using your imagination, you begin to shape a living, moving, visual and auditory creative work.

I first got the idea to write a play when I was sitting in the audience at last year’s Playfest. I was directing one of the plays, so I was at the Grange for every performance and inspired by the plays I saw. One night it just occurred to me, “I’m going to write a play and submit it for next year’s festival and it’s going to be about our adoption of our daughter, Paris.”

Because I was writing a very personal story, I had to decide how much I wanted to reveal, and check with my family to see that they felt comfortable with the details I was including. And did I want to put myself in the position of having people ask, “Was that part really true?” Fortunately, we’re pretty much a “let-it-all-hang-out” kind of family . . . so that was an easier decision for us than it might be for some.

Eventually, of course, a playwright turns his or her play over to a director and actors – and they bring their own creative gifts to it. Many talented people have volunteered their directing, acting, technical and backstage skills to the Playfest this year.  The team that is bringing A Most Auspicious Day to life is just one of seven groups of people readying seven different plays. Director Tom Fiscus had a vision of my play from the beginning and he has done an amazing job of communicating it to the actors and helping them deliver strong and honest portrayals. As a first-time director, he has been assisted by mentor director Melinda Milligan, who has an exceptional talent for bringing a script to life on stage.

My play is really the story of Mr. Yi, the Chinese foster father, and I thank my lucky stars we got Zach Knight to play this role. Zach is a superb and sensitive actor who embodies the noble, resigned and hopeful Mr. Yi.  Bailey Sande, in a mature performance, pulls more heart out of her portrayal of the adopting mother Catherine than I thought was possible. Brand-new actress Ella Conrad is the commanding and elegant narrator who ties the whole play together. And, finally, our daughter Paris Wilson, whose adoption is the subject of the play, composed and recorded a piano piece titled “Auspicious Day” that is the soundtrack at the end of the play.

Playfest producer Cara Russell brings her own enormous creative and organizational skills to this event. When Russell asked the playwrights a few weeks ago to describe the inspirations for our plays, I told her about a quote I’d read recently, “Unforeseen encounters can subtly pile up and determine the course of a person’s life.” This kind of sums up what was in my mind when I wrote my play. We think we choose our paths in life, but so much of what happens to us is influenced by other people’s decisions. Thirty years ago someone decided to hire me for a new job in Kansas City and I met my future husband the second day on the job. Fourteen years ago a Chinese man and his wife decided to foster a baby girl in Guilin, China. Unforeseen encounters in my life have piled up in an auspicious way.

Maybe you have a story to tell, too.  Write a play. It’s fun!