10pg. Stage Play: GARBED IN FLESH by Arthur Holden

Watch the Winning 10pg Stage Play (in verse) by Arthur Holden:

CAST LIST:

NARRATOR – Maya Woloszyn
DETECTIVE – Holly Sarchfield
HERA – Danielle Nicole
MAN – Jason J. Thomas

Get to know writer Arthur Holden:

1. What is your stage play about?

My play is a meditation, in iambic verse, on the acceptance in ancient myths of sexual violence as a prerogative of the gods (for which one might read: “the powerful”) and the ways in which that ethos is finally starting to be broken in contemporary culture.

2. Why does this play need to be performed at the theatre?

I’m not sure this (or any) play needs to be performed. But I think its formal classicism and contemporary theme make for an interesting blend that might just please audiences.

3. How long have you been writing stories?

I’ve been writing fiction for some time now. Over the last two decades, I’ve had screenplays, script adaptations and stage plays picked up for professional production.

4. What play have you seen in person the most in your life?

Good question. Apart from being a writer, I am also an actor. So, having been in the stage comedy Shear Madness for a period of several months, I guess that’s the play I’ve seen most often: over a hundred times. I’ve also attended multiple performances of the plays I’ve written.

5. What artists would you love to work with?

I think South African-born J. M. Coetzee is quite possibly the greatest writer alive. Adapting one of his works – specifically The Master of Petersburg – for stage or screen would be an immense, and immensely challenging, honor.

6. How many stories/plays have you written?

Including all the ones that never saw the light of day: dozens.

7. What motivated you to write this stage play?

I wrote it in response to a challenge from the Red Bull Theater in New York, a company which specializes in classically-themed plays and works that rely on heightened language.

8. Describe your process; do you have a set routine, method for writing?

I don’t have any hard-and-fast routine. But I do try to find time to write every day.

9. Apart from writing, what else are you passionate about?

My wife, acclaimed novelist Claire Holden Rothman, and my sons Jacob and Samuel are the three shining lights of my life.

10. What influenced you to enter the WILDsound Festival?

WILDsound offers a unique process of ongoing constructive feedback to actual recorded readings of texts submitted to the program. I wanted to experience this process myself.

11. Any advice or tips you’d like to pass on to other writers?

Don’t quit. And never be afraid to fail. Failure is a far better teacher than success.

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Deadline for 10 Page Stage Play Festival. Submit your short play and get it performed at festival:
http://www.wildsound.ca/10_page_stageplay_contest.html