“A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep. In dreams you will lose your heartache. Whatever you wish for, you keep. Have faith in your dreams and someday, your rainbow will come smiling through. No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true. A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re feeling small. Alone in the night you whisper, thinking no one can hear you at all. You wake with the morning sunlight, to find fortune that is smiling on you. Don’t let your heart be filled with sorrow, for all you know, tomorrow, that dream that you wish will come true.” –Cinderella

Examining the third playwright in a series of 13 featured this year for the Variations Project’s Variations on Magic, we get a look at MJ Perrin’s work An Incredible Magical Fairytale for the 21^st Century. Do you believe in magic? Do you believe in fairytale magic? Wishes really do come true? See what MJ Perrin has to say about the experience.

Name: MJ Perrin

Play Title: An Incredible Magical Fairytale for the 21^st Century

Teaser: What can I say? It’s another magical fairytale of a wooden boy who wants to be real that takes play in the gay, ole land of make-believe, somewhere far, far away— from Baltimore. Except that, it isn’t so far, far away.

Years with Variations Project: 1^st Year

WHY DO YOU WRITE PLAYS?

I like the collaborative process required to make one-dimensional words become three-dimensional on stage.

WHAT DREW YOU TO THE VARIATIONS PROJECT?

Justin (fellow playwright Justin Lawson Isett) and Max (Rapid Lemon Artistic Founder, Max Garner). I saw them in a genuine desire to support both theatre and playwrights. And I needed that to motivate my writing after years of not writing.

WHAT DOES MAGIC MEAN TO YOU?

 It’s what could be, despite our reluctance in believing that it is, what it could be.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT YOURSELF IN WORKING WITH VARIATIONS THIS YEAR?

 I don’t think I’ve learned anything truly new; I’ve only confirmed what I already know— that I love to write plays, watch theatre artists being creative and behold their magic on stage.

Variations on Magic opens August 18, 2017 and plays through August 27, 2017 with Rapid Lemon Productions at Baltimore Theatre Project— 45 W. Preston Street in Baltimore, MD. For tickets call (410) 752-8558 or purchase them or purchase them online.

To examine playwright Jeff Dunne, click here.

To examine playwright Race Brown, click here.