Cutting plays down to Fit On Stage

A playwright list member asks for suggestions about revising a sprawling play....
I say:
What can you do but cut 'em or double 'em? Or restructure so that
you attack and end at points that leave some stuff offstage. Do you
really need scenes 1, 3, & 5? Can you end with X's death and either
skip the funeral or just show Y's eulogy in a spotlight?

He replies: "You reminded me of my mentor Larry Menkin;"Tell only one story at a time"....I used to'hate'... that."

I continue:
In truth I'm arguing against my own preferences. All the plays I love
best have big casts, multiple protagonists, comic subplots and
interlocking themes. "One story at a time?" Boring! Unworthy of
the stage's unique capacity to embody more than one POV or to shift
empathy in an instant. I just saw my umpteenth production of
"Winter's Tale", this one by The Actors' Shakespeare Project in
Boston-- Now there's a mess of a script! I was talking with a critic
who was expatiating on how Shakespeare could have done it better if
only he had known what the movies have taught us about the use of
flashback. "Pooh!" quoth I. I love that play Just As It Is, and
feel sorry for anyone who has not seen a production that makes it
work in all its miraculous messiness. I laughed, I cried; and if
not perfect the production was miles above the 3-5 character essays
that our theaters can afford to premiere today.

But I've talked with fellow writers about fixing messes often enough
that I have the fixing tools sharpened and ready, even though many
times I'd rather consign my overly ambitious play to the drawer
rather than cut it to a tamed size and shape.

To Much To Do, Hamster on a Wheel

I am really down, mostly exhaustion.
I feel that I SHOULD go to the NYC Woman Playwrights event at Merrymont, but my vitality is at a low ebb. Sunday was busy, choir in the O My Goodness 8am, Playwrights Platform till 10 pm; today I slept till almost 11 am and am now behind on today's to-do's. Wednesday is a Big Event: my successful old friend from Playwrights Platform, Teresa Rebeck, has a new play opening at the Huntington, and there's a pre-show dinner next door at Uno's and possibly a reception after. I have a comp ticket, and am expected to attend.
Thursday I'm rehearsing and Saturday performing "Awake and Sing" -- that played to 7 or fewer people each night of its massively depressing two weekend run, will be at temple Beth El in Quincy, MA, where there is presumably a captive if not necessarily uncritical audience.
There was just a NYTimes article about the young Emerson College actress's murder's conviction-- That's the young woman for whom this "Awake" was supposedly a "benefit"-- she played my daughter in the production 7 years ago. Suppose they gave a "benefit" and nobody came.....????
I promised a 10 min opera libretto to a composer. It's half-done and time's running out. Tonight, tomorrow, or forget it and spoil a promising partnership....

At this point I just wish somebody would go and take notes. Any ideas about how to make women's voices heard in this hell-in-a-handbasket era would go immediately onto my to-do list. Except "give money". That seems to be the only idea my Good Causes have, judging from my mail and email.