Scott Carter Cooper’s play, One Woman’s Duty, begins with two sisters waiting at a post office for their grandmother’s wedding ring. To find out more about it, come to the 2nd Act Players’ 2017 New Playwrights’ Showcase Sept. 23-24. Scott’s play is one of seven chosen for staged readings at our showcase this year.
Buy your tickets today by clicking here or click on the ticket button on our site. And to entice you further, here are Scott’s answers to questions we asked all our winning playwrights:
1. When and why did you start writing plays?
I wrote my first play in the third grade, but didn’t settle into it seriously until after a career as an actor and a detour through corporate America. I came back to writing as a way to balance my need for a paycheck with my need for an artistic outlet.
2. What do you expect the audience to feel after hearing your play at our showcase?
This is a play that is simply for enjoyment.
3. Do you have a favorite character in your play and why or why not?
All the characters in my plays are favorites at one time or another during the process. In a play with three characters, you have to look at the story from three points of view, and its during that process that you fall in love with them.
4. What’s the one technique that helps you get past writers’ block?
There are a variety of things I do. Sometimes I change the gender of one of the characters. Sometimes pick two characters and give them completely opposite goals. Reading helps. The drier the material the better. Reading a very detailed history book will relax me and allow my mind to wander and an idea will just appear. Of course I don’t retain anything from the book I’ve been reading, but then again who cares about the Hundred Years War?
5. What’s something most people don’t know about you that you’re now ready to share with the world?
I’m saving that for my memoir.