Does anybody want some cake?

After Puppy Kindergarten last night, I sat down to work on "Unethical" rewrites, but instead managed to balance our account, pay bills, check email and update Facebook. The script remained untouched. I promised Lisa (and myself) I'd have the rehearsal-ready draft by the end of November, but so far I've only been successful at procrastinating.

The rewrites shouldn't be that intense, I just have to do them. In October, I had people over to read the script in my living room and give feedback. I was shocked at how smoothly the script read, considering I wrote it in a vacuum - alone, with almost no feedback and hearing very little out loud. The changes mostly involve smoothing out a few awkward bits of dialogue and clarifying a few moments. The biggest thing I have to tackle is Tracey. Tracey is a 22-year-old, fresh-from-college new employee at The Company. I had a very good handle on how I wanted her to sound and behave when I started, but a year later, her journey is the least well-defined. I need to increase the stakes of the trouble she gets into at the beginning of the play and sharpen the reasons she changes and the way those changes manifest.

I also want to spend a little time working on Zach, too. He's great in the beginning, and then he kind of fades to the back of the story in the middle. Sometimes I feel like he's little more than Nora's (the main character) love interest. But is that so bad? How many zillions of plays are there out there in which the female characters serve no purpose other than being "the girlfriend" or "the wife." Zach may be just "the boyfriend," but at least he goes through a journey and ultimately causes the final climactic moment of the play.

My favorite character - and the most popular character at the reading - is Barry, the somewhat annoying, overly friendly, awkward outsider IT guy who obsessively offers his coworkers cake. I created him as a throw-away comic relief and to vent some issues I was having with real people at work. And now he's developed into the most crafty, amusing and oddly relatable character in the play. His scene in the break room with Nora might be the one scene I don't touch in rewrites. Barry is the lynchpin of the play now for me ... even if he is the kind of guy who picks up chicks in the hands-free cellphone accessories aisle at Radio Shack.