Sunshine in a Jar

Archive for the ‘Plays by Jessica Outram’ Category

The adventures with the De La Roche family (from Once Upon a Rocking Chair) continue as the men travel to cottage country for manly adventures!

Amusingly manly–includes six days of hunting, a scenic wilderness location, indoor plumbing, beverages, worms, and one dead bear. The men of the De La Roche family must triumph over cowardice, failure, and death in order to bring home the greatest trophy of all. In reclaiming their inner wild man, who will be left behind?

Stage rights now available.

4 m, 1 f

This article first appeared in the May/June 2008 edition of The Word Weaver.

By Jessica Outram ©

Sweaty palms. Racing heartbeat. Expectation sits on me with the weight of an elephant. Remember to breathe. Lights up. Breathe. The terror of opening night reduces my collection of ghastly, panicky first dates to the back shelf of my anxiety.

Imagine writing a book and handing it out to a room filled with people. These are the educated, well-read people who know stuff: the knowing people. These are the people who are your friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, and former students, the people you love.  These are the people who know you like to write, but have never really read anything you’ve written: the curious people.

They open to the first page and begin the story. You watch. As the characters are introduced and relationships are revealed, you watch. As the story builds to its crescendo, you watch as they react to your words without censor.  This is what it feels like to be a playwright.

And, it is in this moment, as the lights flood the stage on opening night, that I wish I was a novelist.  I want nothing more than to bundle up my collection of dialogue into a tidy little package and send it off with the audience to do with it what they may without me; to send me a note or call me with a carefully prepared statement on how they liked or didn’t like the work because in the theatre, the only reaction is an honest, immediate reaction. And that’s what terrifies me most: the honesty that is unique to theatre.

In many ways the debut of Once Upon a Rocking Chair marked my arrival as a writer.  It marked the first time I allowed myself to wear that ominous title: writer. It marked the first time my writing ventured off the page and out into the world without apology.  Above all, it marked the first time I invited the people I love to witness my work. I have never felt more vulnerable.

So here I am, sitting in the back of the theatre on opening night, willing myself to breathe. Ken, StoneCircle’s Executive Director, leans over and whispers, “look.”  The audience is leaning forward in their seats.  The energy of the room swells toward the stage. Someone laughs. I breathe.

More laughter. It surprises me how often they laugh. When there is a plot twist, there is a collective gasp. When it moves through the heartbreaking climax a number of people lean even closer to the stage. At the end of the show, as people exit the theatre, some of their faces are red and puffy from crying.

In two hours, I have gone from feeling tortured by the anxiety of a doomed first date to feeling the euphoria and confidence of a joyful wedding day. My words affected people and I watched it happen.  I’ve become a playwright. 

I love writing for the theatre.  It is a powerful place. At its best it entertains, inspires, provokes, and transports.  At its worst it brings apathy and boredom.

As a playwright you have to be fearless! You need to reach out into the audience and grab hold of the thinking and feeling parts of people without letting go until the show is over.

This is not a place where people can see how it ends before they begin the story unless you want them to. This is not a place to sip your tea by a roaring fire, snuggling with your favourite blanket while Michael Buble gently croons in the background. This is a place for people who can cope with the unexpected, who can embrace imperfection and unpredictability.    

As a playwright, you must be able to send your work out on a burst of wind and hope the artistic vision of the production team can soar with the vision of the writing. You dispense your words to audiences like holiday gifts to children and watch as they untie the bow, peel back the wrapping, and react to the treasure before them, praying that your gift will be the best of the season.

As a playwright, you can throw away the adverbs and adjectives of prose and climb weightlessly to the apex of ideas, relationships, and questions surrounding what it means to be human.

As a playwright, your words literally come to life before you. Your characters will walk into the room and speak to you, and no one will think you are crazy.

I challenge you to become a playwright. Rework some dialogue in your fiction for the stage.  Turn one of your rants into a thought-provoking monologue. Sketch the set for one of your short stories for a debut on Broadway.  Go to the theatre.  Dare yourself to learn from its honesty.

Inspired by the playwright’s long standing family tradition of girls’ week at the cottage, Once Upon a Rocking Chair examines the complications between mother and daughter, the competition of young women, and the surprising secrets among sisters.

New playwright Jessica Outram is proud to announce the publication of her play Once Upon a Rocking Chair, which successfully premiered in February 2008 at StoneCircle Theatre (Ajax, Ontario). According to Executive Director Ken Bond, the run of the show marked the “second highest in ticket sales” in the history of StoneCircle Theatre despite three major snow storms. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for interesting and dynamic monologues for young women (20s and 30s) and middle aged women (50s and 60s)?

Check out Jessica Outram’s new play Once Upon a Rocking Chair.  It is a two act ensemble play featuring six women with one external setting. It explores motherhood, marriage, identity, and happily ever after.  Lots of wonderful opportunities for actors to develop real characters and explore a range of emotions.

ORDER IT ONLINE today.

ISBN: 978-0-9809444-0-2

If rocking chairs could speak, I bet they would have a lot to say.  When selecting a title for Once Upon a Rocking Chair, I was drawn to the idea of using a rocking chair as the play’s central image. 

As per the themes in the play, it is a symbol associated with motherhood and aging.  A simple chair witnesses the quiet time between parent and child, the thoughtful times as we grow older, the beautiful times on a summer’s day, and the wild times on a summer’s night.  All across the world rocking chairs are centrally placed on porches, in living rooms, baby’s rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, senior’s homes, and kindergarten classes.

The rocking chair is not only an important piece of furniture, it is a rich metaphor.  A rocking chair is meant to be rocked.  Our lives are meant to be lived. A rocking chair can be in perpetual motion.  We too can be the driving force rocking our lives forward.  Read the rest of this entry »

Monday, February 25, 2008

By Mike Ruta, DurhamRegion.com 

AJAX — Jessica Outram’s first full-length play is a family affair in more ways than one. Not only are the six female characters in ‘Once Upon a Rocking Chair’ related, they are drawn from real people the Whitby playwright turns into character archetypes.The play is set at a cottage in the small Ontario town of Britt, located about one hour south of Parry Sound. Three sisters and their daughters are spending a weekend at the cottage preparing a birthday bash for Aunt Flo.

“The idea for this play is actually inspired by a family tradition we have,” Outram says. “Mothers, aunts, cousins go up to the cottage for a girls’ weekend. I remember sitting there (on one of those weekends) thinking, ‘ we have a lot of these strong, wonderful women, archetypes of different types of women.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sunshine in a Jar Press announces the launch of its first print publication, Once Upon a Rocking Chair by Jessica Outram.  Books signed by the playwright will be available during the run of the show at StoneCircle Theatre in Ajax, Ontario.Books can also be purchased online for $17.50 (plus S&H)

Click here to learn more about the play! 

Once Upon a Rocking Chair by Jessica Outram

ISBN: 978-0-9809444-0-2

 January 2008

StoneCircle Theatre announces Jessica Outram as Playwright in Residence

StoneCircle Theatre, located in Ajax, Ontario, provides opportunities for emerging playwrights to have their work benefit further from a development process including dramaturgical input, script analysis and staged readings of the new play with an experienced director and actors. Read the rest of this entry »

The cast of Once Upon a Rocking Chair attended the SmartArts event, Taste of the Arts in January.  They performed two five minute clips from the play.
Follow this link to see the news story:  Taste of the Arts

 August 16, 2007 Press Release from StoneCircle Theatre

StoneCircle presents a season of all Canadian theatre plus their innovative new play development evening.

StoneCircle’s season opens November 1^st with That Summer by David French. Poignant, touching; it is a time of awakening, discovery, innocence, heartbreak. A meditation of what endures of fleeting moments over time. When it comes to playwriting, David French is perhaps… the most celebrated in English Canada. – Globe & Mail Read the rest of this entry »