Time Changes

I am working on getting a lot of submissions out for the rest of the year due to www.naplwrimo.org starting up strong next month for me. It's funny to think a month long project starts the month before, but hey, that's how it works. I have lost count of how many packages I have put together at this point, but I think I got about 7 going out tomorrow, thanks to the fiance going to the post office. It's telling when the postal workers are starting to get to know me by first name.

One of the plays I am submitting now is called 'Time Changes'. I don't think I've talked much about this play on here. It's been in a 'finished' state for a while now, since before I started the blog. But I've been thinking about this play a lot recently because I am submitting it, and I'm realizing it's a problem play. The synopsis is as follows:

There is no 'Peace in the Valley' for DEBBIE WALKER, the organist and music director for New Faith Church. Her family is growing apart as her husband, HOLLIS, becomes more and more obsessed with saving his father’s--and now his--church, and as her 16 year old daughter, ELLIOT becomes more sullen, angry and rebellious as Hollis forbids her from seeing her boyfriend, TRAVIS, and his ‘devil’s music and ways’.

A difficult and painful choice from her past comes back to haunt her as she discovers she and HOLLIS have one week to turn things around for the church before it might be closed down.

When an opportunity to save New Faith rises out of the crisis of her secrets being revealed, DEBBIE must decide what to do. She thought that time would bury the past, but she's come to realize that time changes everything--hearts, memories and lives.

Funny enough, this play started out inspired by '1985' by A Simple Plan. Then my experiences growing up in a Fundamentalist Christian household where my love for hair metal was discouraged in varied and sundry ways by my mother as 'devil music' wrapped up in it, and then I had this play.

I think this play is going to have a hard time finding a world premiere because it's too religious possibly for mainstream theatres, but it contains too much swearing and bad stuff for churches. It straddled this line that I think is going to be a hard one for theatres and churches to deal with. Frankly, I don't think I wrote a 'Christian' play. I just wrote the play I was given. It has Christian themes to it, but I don't think it's mutually exclusive.

Someone remind me of this when I keep getting rejections.

The possibility of the 'it's too Christian/it's too secular' argument is one that has been bothering me for a while. It hasn't come up directly yet, and maybe I'm borrowing trouble and the reason the play hasn't been produced yet is because it actually sucks, but it's something to be thought of. I just continue to think about it, and wonder if this is really something I should be concerned with.

Any other playwrights out there have similar issues? Chris Leyva, I'm looking at you!