Deadline is a one-act play I wrote and co-directed in the 1989 Vancouver Fringe Festival. It was the second (and last) time I worked on the Fringe, having acted in a friend’s play, The Peanut Shell, a year earlier. You can find Deadline in 1980s fiction.
This is the third and final draft that was used in production. Below is the playbill a graphic designer friend made for the show. I think we made the tiniest profit after expenses. I recall a 10 day stretch during rehearsals where I developed a mystery cough. It came out of nowhere and was so maddeningly persistent that I often had to excuse myself so the actors could actually speak their lines. Just as I was about to go to a doctor, the coughing abruptly vanished, never to return.
The actors were all decent enough that we didn’t have any calamities, though one actor backed up a little more than he should have one night, nearly falling off the stage. Breaking the fourth wall, as it were. Reaction to the play was mixed at best (the written text got eviscerated when the director submitted it to another writer for assessment). It’s a nice concept and while it has its moments, the final result was less than satisfying to me. Love the playbill, though!
