“When can we do it again?”

The inaugural “Pitch Pit” instant screenwriting competition held in Kent Tuesday night, Feb. 13, was a big hit.

Every writer wants to do a screenplay.

On Tuesday, local Kent businesses Topside ProMedia, Create!, and iLoveKent.net brought a new monthly event to the Kent Arts District.

Several aspiring and anonymous screenwriters were given a movie title they had never seen before and given 15 minutes to prepare a one-page script treatment to be presented to the “judges”, consisting of all the audience members, who then divided their twenty votes among to the various pitches. The winner, David Erik Finn, generated a creative idea for a story in which a man who loses it all is able to thereby save New York.

In the second round, the writers physically at the event, plus another contestant joining remotely from Idaho, presented their take on an idea, assigned to them all exactly one week prior, to move the “Romeo and Juliet” story to the present, and to a trailer park. Most of the script ideas, despite such flourishes as a mysterious character named “Deep Dish”, followed Shakespeare’s plot. More or less. But not William Schlepp. He took TNT to the plotline and reassembled the pieces into an operatic hall of plot mirrors that pulled the votes from a dazed and laughing audience.

Every audience member told the organizers that they intend to return for next month’s event, to be held March 13, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Create!, 216 Gowe St., in downtown Kent.

“The after-party was brief but loud. Good crowd,” Organizer Stephen Hanson said.

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Scott Schaefer

Founder/Publisher/Editor. Three-time National Emmy Award winning Writer (“Bill Nye the Science Guy”), Director, Producer, Journalist and more...