Copy Cat

Of course... recently three plays that are on stage in NY and London strongly resemble three plays I've published or am currently working on. I should be happy to know I am writing relevant plays (which is one way to look at it) or I can be bitter knowing that now if anyone reads my plays they will compare them to these other shows. They'll think 'how cute she can't be original so she took a used plot and made it worse...' I'm not a name and I don't have an agent and I'm still pretty young - so how could I compare?

I was innocently eating my breakfast while watching the show On Stage where they did a review of Chasing Manet, a new comedy at Primary Stages by Tina Howe.
Synopsis:
Inside the confining walls of Mount Airy Nursing Home, a rebellious painter from a distinguished Boston family and an ebullient Jewish woman form an unlikely bond and plot an escape to Paris aboard the QE2. Can they possibly pull it off amidst the chaos of their surroundings?

GT and I saw this and he like ''hey look it's Bedpan Palace.'' Which is my comedy about the Sagging Willow Nursing Home where a rebellious elderly Jewish woman named Rose, who was forced to live there makes an unlikely bond with two other women and they plot to escape. This was the first full length play I've ever written at age 22. It's been done in Brooklyn and I published it in 2007. - But no one wants to do it. I sent a query everywhere and got responses back like 'we don't have old actors. ' I'm thinking so what? Can't you make them look and act old? That is not out of the realm of possibilities for an actor to do... to act! But after so many rejections, any no one wanting to even read it, I moved on. What did I move on too?

My thesis play which I am still writing is due next week. But the problem now is Neil LaBute has beaten me too it! His play Wrecks about "Edward Carr, a cigarette-sucking businessman with a passion for vintage automobiles and the woman he loved, are unfolded in conversational stream of consciousness as he stands by his wife’s coffin." - BEN BRANTLEY.
Okay, well the story isn't really the same but my play is S.C.R.A.P.S. about three Jewish siblings in 1948 who inherit their fathers failing scrap yard. But there is a cloud of mystery surrounding their fathers death, and his involvement with a wealthy Christan woman in town. It all takes place on the scrap yard. So it's close but not too close... just the title is similar.

Then the third play is an original rock musical I am writing with GT. It's called Jail Bait. About three under age friends who sneak into a club to catch their favorite rock band - but the lead singer, who was a child sensation, now older, is over the idea of fame and is on a path of self destruction. Now add the usual groupies, over jealous girlfriends, greedy promoter and fame driven musicians - who populate the club seen - you have what will be my rock musical. But then I was reading Playbill.com like I do every morning and I saw and add for a show called... what else? Jailbait! It's a play (not musical) by Deirdre O’Connor - who is part of the Cherry Lane mentor project (which I really want to be apart of.) Her play centers around:
"The story of two fifteen year old girls who spend a night at a Boston club posing as college students. When the girls cross paths with two thirty-something men they must decide how far they are willing to go while playing at adulthood."

It's just like... these are what I have and someone has done them first... probably better or whatever. It's so frustrating as a younger playwright because no one will really give my scripts consideration like they do with represented playwrights or ones form Brown, Julliard, NYU, Columbia. If you don't have that ivy backing you then you can't really be any good... is what it sometimes feels like... but being bitter won't get me anywhere... so I'll just keep writing. (And I plan to apply to Juilliard next year...)

I probably will see or read these three plays that resemble mine so I can learn from them. What did they do that I didn't in telling my story? How did they structure it? What characters did they introduce that I didn't or did and how did they write them differently? Playwriting should never be a competitive sport. It's a craft. All you can do is learn, make mistakes and hopefully grow. Also, something to remember - just because you may have the same title, theme or premise - what makes a play original is the authors voice. No two people will ever see anything exactly the same. So I better get back to it... because in the end I'm the only one standing in my way... (oh this is too schmaltzy... I think I need a coffee first..)