Some Sorta Business Woman's Special

A look back at my year as a Play(w)riter 🧑🏾‍💻

2023 was my luckiest year as a writer. It was the first year since I wrote my first play that things started to feel like they were falling into place. It was also the first year since I started taking writing seriously (thanks to the 2020 lockdown for the encouragement) that it felt like hard work was beginning to pay off.

So, continuing the tradition of my "Here's what you missed on last week's episode of Glee!" playwriting recap¹, here are my highs and lows of being a writer with a dream. 

---

I kicked off 2023 workshopping my solo play My Dog Died; and Other Concerns with The Workshop Theater in New York City over Zoom. Which gratefully whipped that script into shape for a year of submissions! I submitted My Dog Died eight times and it actually had some great returns. It was selected for Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA's Winterfest and received a staged reading in March. My Dog Died also was a finalist for Amphibian Stage's SparkFest and got me accepted into East West Players' inaugural Solo Project writers group—where I am currently writing a new play. 

In rehearsal with my fave actor ever Kurt Sanchez Kanazawa (left) and my Teflie (right). In My Dog Died, he plays a semi-fictional version of myself. I’m very lucky to have him play “me” because he looks like a model and I don’t.

In February, I returned to the Geffen Playhouse for a staged reading of my Filipino family drama God Will Do The Rest. This is my favorite play I've written, the one I have the biggest dreams for, so I broke many rules in my master plan to bring the most attention to it. We weren't allowed to promote this private in-house reading but you can't stop Filipinos from talking their shit and being proud of what is ours. So, naturally, we got the play a feature on Inquier.net, and the actors wouldn’t stop posting about our reading on Facebook. Subsequently, the reading sold out by three times its capacity and we got a "you need to stop it now!" email from the higher-ups.²

Team God Will Do The Rest! 🇵🇭

God Will Do The Rest was a recommended play of the month on American Theatre's The Subtext Podcast, a finalist for The New Harmony Project, and was the writing sample that earned me a semi-finalist for the Dramatists Guild Foundation Virtual Playwriting Fellowship. This is the play I've submitted the most—and I am fingers-crossed waiting for more prosperous returns—and I hope 2024 has big things in store. 

In TV land, my pilot Pretty Savage was a finalist for The Orchard Project's Episodic Lab. Then in the spring, my 10-minute play if all that You take from this is courage, the I've no regrets was published in Samuel French's Off Off Broadway Festival Plays, 47th Series, and had a staged reading at American Stage in Florida. Then in the summer, I wrote and performed stand up comedy for the first time. I think people laughed? I was so overwhelmed with stage fright that I blacked out the experience—and honestly don’t remember it at all.

Here’s the opening of my Tight Five…

Tight 5? I actually consider myself more of a tight 6 out of 10, honestly. 
You know: not hot but not ugly.
But still hot enough to be considered for a third in a threesome.

Opening night applause for The Bottoming Process! My original song “Milo’s Song” plays at the end of the show and into the curtain call.

After three years of development, pandemic shelving, and waiting for the right time for a comeback, my romantic (dark?) comedy The Bottoming Process, finally made its world premiere with IAMA Theatre Company in a co-production with the Los Angeles LGBT Center. The Bottoming Process was my first play to be fully produced, and everything about it was a dream come true. From January to April, I was in dramaturgical rewriting hell; and from April to May, I was in rehearsal heaven with the most brilliant team of artists. The Bottoming Process even reignited my love for songwriting when I wrote "Milo's Song" (featuring Geroge Salazar, produced by Michael Barnum) for the show.

It was a whirlwind of a time: I got interviewed on international TV where I overheated and fogged up my glasses on air, the play was almost optioned to be a film before everything fell to shit and the deal fell through, and the play drew another production company's attention—and a great collaboration for a potential new project is in the works because of it! 

ISSUING is·sue·ing /ˈiSHo͞oiNG/ (verb) when Nicholas uncontrollably sweats due to nerves, heat, or no reason at all.

More funsies from production: we ruffled the feathers of a few white reviewers who flung their microaggressions in a very macro way. The reviews summarized: I am bratty bottom on a diatribe for my hate of white men. Now for a brief moment of vulnerability: these reviews took a huge toll on my mental health and I feel bad for the people closest to me who had to be there to pick me back up. It wasn’t even that I was bothered they didn’t like my play (like go awf, sis!), I was bothered that these reviews took space to target me, the writer, as a person in rude and racist (yes, racist!) ways. Except BroadwayWorld calling me a “black hole of self-absorption,” was kinda fierce—I use it in my bio.

The Bottoming Process ended 2023 with a staged reading at Chicago's Theater Wit in November and with a monologue from the show published in Smith and Kraus' The Best Men's Monologues 2023.

Then, I fell into a depression that birthed

My Ugly Mouth

. After the high of a dream come true and the lows from broken deals, I emotionally crashed. By the summer any inspiration and creativity I had disappeared³ and as a true bipolar baddie, I hit a bit of mania. In a manic episode, I got a body piercing and two tattoos and decided to become an essayist. Thankfully, it wasn't without reward. An essay I wrote this year called Personal Mythology will be published in 2024 by Kuwento Co. in the anthology With Love: What We Wish We Knew About Being Queer and Filipino in America (edited by Dr. Dustin Domingo), I wrote two essays on Filipino American representation featured on Fil-Am Jam, and my essay Worth a Bullet was recently published on the popular Substack 

The Books That Made Us

.

@nicholaspilapilNeed a monologue? Here’s one for young adult actors looking for a witty comedic drama. #playwright #audition #acting #diaframpton #theatrekid #theatre

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

One of my proudest moments of 2023 was when a TikTok of a monologue from my play Young Dumb Broke High School Kids (performed by Dia Frampton) found its audience on the app. Because of that, I get weekly DMs from young actors asking for the script to use for high school and college auditions. The sudden popularity of the monologue inspired me to pitch a book of monologues, and in June, I was awarded The Astringent Award by Astringent Press to publish Other Monologues.

Finished copies of Other Monologues. The publisher was like, “Let’s print them in multi-colors—cause gay.”

These were the highlights of my year. I still received dozens of rejections.⁴ Some were like, eh, and some drove me into a tailspin and broke my heart. In true Nicholas fashion, I still destructively compared myself to writers who monopolized all the playwriting opportunities and others who had what I wanted and achieved what I dreamed. But, I try to bring myself off the ledge by remembering: that the only person I need to compare myself to is me. And if I compare 2023 me to 2022 me then I really made myself suck it. I have to remember: I don't have nothing and I need to be happy and thankful for what I've earned and appreciative that anyone is giving me a chance at all. 

I have high hopes for 2024, yet even bigger fears that it won't compare to the year 2023 gifted me. But all I can do is pimp myself out even harder, hustle even more, and find some bravery to ask for what I want and demand what I deserve—cause I've come across some nasty, ruthless people this year who do that, and despite their evilness it really wields them results.⁵ 

1. Watch 2022’s Playwriting Recap on TikTok.

2. We actually did get in so much trouble. I’m sure they hate all of us passionately.

3. So dramatic, I know. But let me feel my oats!

4. I submitted plays to 56 submissions!

5. I promise to behave. I’m already kind of a diva and me actually gaining confidence might turn me into a monster.