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 | | Richard Overfield |
| |  RICHARD OVERFIELD
Instead of taking the summer off, one Arizona teacher and her student wrote a play, which was published and performed. Kelly Biggs, a drama teacher at Greenfield Junior High, and I, a college freshman, may have the ideal student-teacher relationship.
I was put in Kelly’s drama class the first time accidentally, but liked it so much I took through seventh and eighth grade. The following year, she asked me to come back and student-direct her annual dinner theater play. I continued to student-direct plays for the following three years. I liked Kelly’s teaching style so much I opted out of high school drama to help her with her plays. For the past six years we have grown to be more than a teacher and student. We have become colleagues and good friends.
Over the years the two of us poured over script after script trying to find the best play to put on. Then we had a revelation of sorts. So many of the scripts were horrible to read we started joking, "as hard as these things are to put on we should write our own."
Our first written play, "Dating Predicaments," was performed in dinner theater format March 3 & 4, 2005, at Greenfield Junior High. When we started, neither of us had written a full length play. The hardest thing we did was decide on a premise. We tossed around different ideas - all the while Kelly’s mother would come home and tell her about attempts at online dating. Finally, we decided the plot was staring us right in the face, a comedy about dating. We worked on the play throughout the summer of 2004, every day for two to three hours on into the fall.
I plan to eventually make theater my career as I move on to college this year. Though I have many plans further on, I still enjoy working with Kelly at the Junior High. As of now, we are in the midst of writing our second show for performance in the spring. Who knows what is next on our agenda, but we look eagerly forward to what great things await us.
Thank you for your interest,
Richard Overfield | |
| | | Visit Richard Overfield's web page: http://www.curtaincallaz.com | | | Plays by Richard Overfield with Heuer Publishing: | | DATING PREDICAMENTS | |
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