Austin Script Works' Time Steps: Susan McMath Platt [interview]

Welcome to the penultimate mini-interview with the eight winners of Austin Script Work's annual Out of Ink showcase, for which participating playwrights took no more than 48 hours to pen a 10-minute play and were required to use the following "ingredients": The play must go backward, from beginning to end; Include a sudden dance break that causes a shift in the action; Include three things your mother told you not to do. Susan McMath Platt—fan of footwear and all things funny—gave us the scoop on her many up-and-coming works.

Give us brief intro to you—an idea of who you are and what you're about.

I have another ten minute play, No Secrets, that is being produced by Rover Dramawerks in Dallas as part of their Best of One Day Only 2. Set in Elizabethan England, it's the story of Will Shakespeare and a former lover who has written a tell-all biography that reveals details Will would rather keep private. I’m working on a screenplay entitled BULLSHOT! A romantic comedy, it’s the story of a traveling salesman who longs to be a rodeo clown.

I am also an actress and am about to begin rehearsals for The Cemetery Club at the Contemporary Theater of Dallas. I had done some sketch comedy writing when I was with the Guava Bomblets, an improv comedy troupe in Dallas. But I wrote my first play, a musical actually, during my first winter in Chicago. After spending several weeks drinking immoderately and banging my head against the wall while moaning “Will spring never come?”, I wrote Southern Fried Christmas. It’s Scarlett O’Hara meets A Christmas Carol, complete with the Three Christmas Belles.