We won!

"Mastermind", a play I directed recently and one of the absolute favorite plays I have ever directed, won best actor (Brad Wilcox) and best playwriting (Michael Patrick Sullivan) for Block One of Hurricane Season at Eclectic Company Theatre.



Hurricane Season is an annual playwriting competition/festival at ECT. This year, nine plays were chosen out of more than 100. "Mastermind" was selected as one of the top six best plays and was sent (with the other five) to an outside panel of judges. Unfortunately, it didn't make the top three chosen by the panel of judges. The nine plays were then split into three sets of weekends (Block One, Block Two, and Block Three). The audience got to vote each night on their favorite actor, actress, overall production and playwriting.

I am proud that we won the awards we did tonight. Michael wrote a play worthy of Joss Wedon that had both clever, brilliantly funny dialog as well as deep, complicated personal relationship issues. He gave us plenty to play with!

And if you've talked to me at all in the past few months, you'll know how crazy I am/was about Brad's performance.



I think this role challenged him in new and intriguing ways and I loved his commitment and the depth he brought to a comic book character that could have just simply been played on the surface. But he was willing to dig below the surface and let me explore his inner villain as well as his inner self.

That being said, I also think that Beth Ricketson deserves credit for giving Brad a great foil to play off of. She stood toe to toe with one of the best actors I have ever worked with and never backed down, no matter what he threw at her. In fact, I think she threw some of her own back at him. The two of them humbled me with their talent and their performances.

I am proud of the work we accomplished with this play. I am immensely proud of the work that I did with this play.

And I am looking forward to the afterlife that "Mastermind" is going to have with a planned short film version as well as a series of webisodes, once we work out the logistics.

So stayed tuned... bwah ha ha...