Press Check! Our first play, Vicinity/Memoryall!

I knew that we’d likely be able to bring back from the Midwest industrial printers this book for local printing. It’s a simple “saddle stich”, that is stapled booklet, meant to reference (and celebrate) the Dramatist Guild playbooks. I’ve got great memories of these functional playbooks from drama club in high school and so it was with great happiness that the writers, Christine Deavel and J.W. Marshall, also were intrigued to put the play in this format.

It’s the same size, the same tight gutters, and really designed to be used by actors, with page breaks made thinking through how actors might memorize their lines. I’ll be curious to chat with them on it as this play moves into production. Printing in this format also helps keep our cost down so I am hopeful we can print another play soon by Northwest playwrights or poets turning toward play writing.

I am very happy to be printing with Girlie Press, a woman-owned small business that I can walk to. How wonderful to not have to pay shipping as well as reducing the carbon from that. I’ve only done a few press checks and feel quite silly at them, though it’s exciting to see if how you imagine it printing is going to be the way it actually works in the real world.

I’ll be mostly curious to put this book next to the Dramatist Guild books and see how it feels. Will it feel ready to use for work?