Small Steps

Playwright Briandaniel Oglesby on “Small Steps”. https://www.shrewdproductions.com/
“I love that Shrewd is doing Small Steps, and it’s a great gift to have the premiere at Hyde Park Theatre. Small Steps started as a ten-minute play at Hyde Park with ScriptWorks’ Out-of-Ink (a short play festival) about this guy waiting to go Mars because he’s sure no one will ever love him. And I wanted to spend more time with him. I wanted to see his journey to Mars. I’ve seen plenty of these ‘everyman’ ‘see you later fam, going to space’ movies, and I love them, but what if it’s about someone who’s gay and mixed, and what if it’s a comedy? Online hookup apps are so absurd, and they do make you want to flee the planet. So I wrote it summer 2016. It went down this crazy development path. The JAW Festival in Portland, Playwrights Week at the Lark in New York, local readings, B Street’s New Comedies Festival. So many wonderful people helped shape this oddball campy comedy about gay loneliness.

….

Shannon (Artistic Director of Shrewd Productions) had seen something unique in it, as had these folks at Bike City Theatre in California. Bike City joined with what’s now called Catalyst Theatre Festival (at UC Davis) so I could develop the play for distance and add actors. One more amazing workshop online, and the script was ready for Shrewd for the Fall of 2021.

A breakthrough Covid infection skidded Small Steps again, and I thought, well, what now?

Now, it’s summer 2023, and we have a brilliant young director and a fabulous cast, and I’m so excited to have this world premiere in Austin, coming to Hyde Park Theatre. It’s a play that’s coming home.