The Write Club stage.

There is almost nothing that I love quite like the weirdness of mid-sized professional theaters. This has a lot to do with childhood nostalgia–I attended theater camp from ages 10-15, and worked at one for a few years after that. Professional theater folks are weird and funny and a little bit too edgy for high schoolers (thus causing high school me to adore them), and I think that being allowed to work with and for them as a younger teen made me a lot of who I am now.

So it was with great delight that I continued the summer of Cool Atlanta Things by spending last night at Write Club Atlanta, hosted by PushPush Theater. Write Club is modeled on Fight Club, and began with a rousing round of:

“What’s the first rule of Write Club?”
“You must tell five to seven people about Write Club!”

For the show, three pairs of writers get up on stage and read their stories. Each writer has 7 minutes and the pairs cover opposing topics (clean vs. dirty, for example). The winner for each pair is selected via applause, and their share of the evening’s ticket money goes towards their chosen charity, which they reveal at the end of the match. (An additional hilaribad part is that the loser tells you who their charity is, thus allowing you to feel guilty for taking money away from the deserving.)

In addition to some great writing, the show had three dollar beer and–I swear to god–a kitten being passed around the audience.*

I don’t know that I want to stay in Atlanta forever, but things like this make the city just so much fun to be a part of while I’m here.

* He was adopted by an audience member.