Pleased to Meet Me Breakthrough

Since June 2005, I've been working on this play, 'Pleased to Meet Me'. It's about a 30 year old woman, Eugenie, who is going absolutely nowhere--she's in a dead end job, has a jerk boyfriend and a mother who is forcing her to go to therapy. She's angry and unhappy. After she bursts out in a therapy session about her desire to go back to where everything changed so she could change it, she meets a 17 year old girl, Mae, who is eerily familiar.

This play was inspired partially by a philosophical theory I learned when I was in Professor Desmond's class, possible world semantics, which is roughly an idea that the actual world is just one of many possible worlds. When we make a decision, like do I eat and apple or an orange, and we choose, both possibilities actually happen, but only one happens in the real world. From there the real world sort of splits from the possible world, and this continues on and on with every choice we make.

*Abooooooooooossh!*

That was my brain asploding. I loved philosophy.

That's a very elementary way to understand it, but I think that's the best bare bones I could think of.

The only problem for a writer using possible world semantics is that there is 'no trans world airlines', according to Prof. Desmond's words. Things that happen in the actual world can't cross into a possible world or vice versa.

But that's when I jump onto magical realism. YAY!

So thinking about my own situation a couple years ago where I was angry and unhappy, but nowhere near as angry and unhappy as Eugenie, I came up with this play.

And I've worked on the damn thing for nearly three years. That's a long time to be working on a play. I could list here all the problems I have had with the play, but I will just talk about one particular problem.

The therapist, Dr. Morrow, who Eugenie goes to, in the first scene, his language wasn't proper for his profession. Now, I've been to two different therapists in my life (I'm sure that won't be the last two I will see) and the language he used didn't work for me. However, his intent was definitely right. I just needed to work out different language for him. And the funny part was, I was NEVER comfortable with that scene. I didn't like what he said to her, not because it wasn't what she or I wanted to hear, but because it didn't seem believable for a therapist to say what he was saying. So understanding the intent behind his words helps because now I can fix the language and suddenly the first scene will be solid.

It only took me three years.

There's a couple of different scenes that need some work and I need to do some character work, but I think it might be ready to be read. This makes me happy indeed.