[ home ]

     

Julia Edwards' play FAMILY PLANNING won the 2009 Los Angeles Ovation Award for BEST PRODUCTION (in an intimate theatre). Produced site-specifically in Los Angeles living rooms by Chalk Repertory Theatre, director Larissa Kokernot also won the BEST DIRECTOR award.

"Planning' is a voyeuristic glimpse into one couple’s meltdown that is as funny as it is ultimately wrenching."
--F. Kathleen Foley, LA Times
    

See a tantrum through the eyes of a toddler in MAD MAX’S MELTDOWN AND OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS. Now available on Blurb.

I am a writer momma. Which is to say, I’ve been a writer since I was a kid and now I have kids of my own. (Max is 4 and Sadie is 2.) When I was in grad school (MFA Playwriting, UCSD), I hated sitting down to write unless I had at least four hours to write. Ha! Now I write in the shreds of time between naps and diapers and sweeping. Why am I always sweeping?

Long before I knew the term “DIY,” my cousin Claudia and I put on our own plays. We hung a sheet as a curtain, hand-wrote our programs, and put on skits for our families. My first performance was A.A. Milne’s poem “When I Was Six” when I was six. And long before I heard the term “site-specific theatre,” I staged an original mystery play in our house—including a pivotal monologue on the toilet.
Fast-forward almost three decades and I’m back at the do-it-yourself brand of site-specific theatre that I knew as a kid. In summer 2008, I self-produced my play FAMILY PLANNING with director Larissa Kokernot in Los Angeles-area homes and it was the most fulfilling artistic experience I’ve ever had and sparked an artistic epiphany. The epiphany? DO IT YOURSELF!

I had done countless readings and workshops of the play and was debating the next step. When Larissa suggested performing the play in actual living rooms, I jumped at the idea. But how?

I hadn’t produced anything in years. And never in Los Angeles. The task sounded daunting. Especially with two babies in tow. But we did it. We did it all. From designing a logo to launching a website to writing fundraising letters to picking up the actors’ dry cleaning. We made the play happen.

The play was a strange hybrid of theatre (for the live aspect) and film (for the proximity and real quotient). It was less like watching theatre and more like being stuck at a friends’ house when they start arguing. The result was electrifying and emotionally overwhelming fly-on-the-wall experience. One homeowner who hosted the play in Pasadena said she got so emotionally involved, she forgot she was in her own house. The newness of the experience allowed all us all to see something with new eyes.

This new vision reinvigorated my love for theatre—and dreaming of new possibilities of what it can be, i.e. it doesn’t have to be boring! And it allowed me to see that I don’t need to wait for someone to help me find an audience. I can find my own audience. And we can create our own vital and exciting dialogue.

FAMILY PLANNING was remounted in summer 2009 by Chalk Repertory Theatre in more Los Angeles-area living rooms and I’m happy to report that we just won the 2009 Los Angeles Ovation Award for BEST PRODUCTION (in an intimate theatre). So don’t let your plays gather dust on your shelves or languish on a literary manager’s desk, find your audience and do it. Next for FAMILY PLANNING, who knows? Perhaps the play will surface in living rooms everywhere. And now, I’m off to sweep.