31 Plays in 31 Days

Hello July. If you follow along on this blog, you know that I love challenges, and you can read about some of them here. 

My One Little Word for 2016 is STRETCH, and I've been doing that in various way this year. As we start the second half of the year, I thought it might be fun to add another challenge that stretches me out of my comfort zone. 

My challenge? 31 plays in 31 days. I love watching plays, but don't often get around to either reading or listening to them, so this is a way to change that. To make this doable, I decided that rather than find plays to read, I'm going to leverage the Playing On Air podcast. From their home page:

"Short plays + radio = theater for the ears, available to audiences anywhere, anytime. It’s the best seat in the house, no matter where you’re tuning in.

That’s the simple idea behind Playing on Air. We’re a public radio show and podcast distributing the work of great contemporary playwrights for today’s digital audience. Our episodes feature short plays followed by conversations with their writers, performers, and directors, moderated by Playing on Air’s artistic producer, Claudia Catania. "

This works for me in a couple of ways:

1. The plays are digitally available, so I don't need to go find source material, and lug anything around.

2. It's portable. I simply download plays onto my phone using my favorite podcast app.

3. The plays are short, so they won't take up a lot of time.

4. I'll get exposed to a large sample of new and contemporary plays.

I've sketched out a monthly tracker in my newly started 2016 Volume 2 composition journal, and I've downloaded the first week of plays. I'm all set to go!

I'll post regular updates on my progress during the month of July, and will report back as to what I learn along the way. So excited about this one.

Do you have a challenge you are working on? If you love plays, I'd love to hear about ones you'd recommend.