No, really. There's nothing to see here. If you're looking me and my writing, look here or look here. Not here, not no more.
So long and thanks for all the fish!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
New Play Project: AT HOME AND ABROAD
AT HOME AND ABROAD
(MARTINSON’s non-descript office in Washington, D.C. (well, Foggy Bottom, to be precise). MARTINSON is white, serious-looking, conservatively dressed. His desk is covered with neat piles of paper. He has a file in front of him. There’s a knock on his door.)
MARTINSON:
Come.
(TERRY enters. He is black, early thirties, wearing a simple suit and tie.)
TERRY:
Is this office 304? There’s no sign. I was sent a message. Told to come here.
MARTINSON:
(indicates the chair in front of his desk, not unkindly, but not warmly)
Sit.
TERRY:
(as he sits)
Is this / Room 304?
MARTINSON:
Do you love your country, son?
(TERRY freezes, mid-sit.)
TERRY:
Is this Room 304?
MARTINSON:
Do you love your country?
TERRY:
Yes?
MARTINSON:
You sound unsure of that.
TERRY:
Of course I do. I work for the / State Department.
MARTINSON:
I’m aware of where you work.
TERRY:
Don’t you…work here, too?
(Slight beat. MARTINSON consults his file.)
MARTINSON:
Winston. Terrence M.
TERRY:
Yes?
MARTINSON:
D.C. native. Technically.
TERRY:
Well. I moved here from New York when I was about one. What’s this about, sir?
MARTINSON:
Columbia, double B.A. in poli sci and American history. Master’s from Harvard Kennedy, Public Policy. Second Master’s, Georgetown. What? Got tired of the Ivies?
(TERRY opens his mouth to say something, but isn’t sure what he can say at this point. MARTINSON barrels on.)
Joined State, public relations department. Writing press releases and blog posts. Three years now. Still in the PR department. A little overqualified, aren’t you?
TERRY:
I…just wanted to help out. Wherever I could.
MARTINSON:
I see. Can’t pass a background check. Why would that be?
TERRY:
Is there some kind of problem? If something’s come up, something wrong with my work, with my…I can answer any question you have. Anything at all.
MARTINSON:
Okay. Tell me about your father.
(A beat.)
TERRY:
Do I have to answer that question?
(MARTINSON says nothing in a way that says, “Yes. You do.”)
I didn’t know him. Ever. He died before I was born. My mother moved me here as soon as she could because she had family here.
MARTINSON:
Was his name Winston?
TERRY:
…No. It’s my stepfather’s name.
MARTINSON:
What was his name? Your father’s name.
TERRY:
…Makimba. His last name was Makimba.
MARTISON:
Which is your middle name.
TERRY:
Yes.
MARTINSON:
It’s an African name, yes?
TERRY:
Yes.
MARTINSON:
The same last name, interestingly, of William Ade Makimba.
(Behind them, MAKIMBA appears. He is in his fifties, regal, dressed in military garb, fierce and powerful. He stands proudly.)
TERRY:
Yes.
MARTINSON:
Ever thought you might be related? You two?
TERRY:
…Yes.
MARTINSON:
I thought so, too. So I checked. You are. He’s your uncle. The dictator of Okundi. The butcher of Amas Bay. One of America’s sworn enemies. Your uncle.
TERRY:
I’ve never met him. I’ve never talked to him. Jesus Christ, I’ve never set foot in Africa. In any part of Africa. My dad died and my mother cut off all ties.
MARTINSON:
Yes. Your father died. In a car accident. You were told.
TERRY:
Oh, Jesus.
MARTINSON:
It was a car accident. Don’t worry. His car crashed. When your uncle’s operatives ran it off the road.
TERRY:
Look…I don’t even know your name.
MARTINSON:
Call me Martinson.
TERRY:
Mr. Martinson. My mother was an American citizen. I’m an American citizen.
MARTINSON:
Your unborn child will be an American citizen.
(LAURA, white, 7 months pregnant, appears.)
TERRY:
Yes. You wanted to know if I love my country. I do. Absolutely. In every possible way. And, yes, I joined the State Department because I wanted to help. And you’re right. I knew about this thing with my uncle, so I set my sights low and didn’t want anyone poking around. The man is…a terror on earth. I don’t want to be associated with him.
MARTINSON:
And yet, you are.
TERRY:
Only in name. In blood. Do not fire me because of this. I should have disclosed it, I know. But…I don’t know the man.
MARTINSON:
I’m not here to fire. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. I don’t work for the State Department.
TERRY:
…What?
MARTINSON:
What do you know about the Right Honorable General Makimba?
TERRY:
Not much. To be honest. He’s not a very nice man. Or a good leader.
MARTINSON:
That’s not…strictly true. On either point.
(MAKIMBA steps forward. The sound of a crowd swells up. He gestures for quiet. They respond. He speaks with a rich, sonorous voice, with more than a hint of English education to it.)
MAKIMBA:
My people! We have come so far! So far from the dark days of colonial oppression, foreign interference and abuse, corporate raiding and guerilla attacks. A new day is dawning in our country, a new era. And we must face it with courage, conviction and a belief in justice, justice made manifest. The old ways, the too few with too much, the too many with too little, this must end. And it will. Once we have forgotten the old ways, burned them out of our memory with passion and clarity, then we can turn our face towards a new sun, a new world, a new Okundi!
(The crowd cheers. MAKIMBA holds his hands up in triumph. Freeze.)
TERRY:
I don’t really watch the news or anything.
MARTINSON:
You do press releases for the State Department.
TERRY:
We kind of make the news. I just type it up, really. It gets exhausting, following all of it. Laura, my…partner. She’s better about it. She needs to be.
(LAURA is addressing her students. A map of Africa appears. She points to it vaguely.)
LAURA:
Did you know that once upon a time, they called Africa the Dark Continent? They did. It wasn’t a very nice thing to call it, was it? No, Jordan, it wasn’t because everyone this is black. Well, not just because. You see, it’s very, very big and there are lots of kinds of people there. It was a place of mystery and secrets. Adventure. But…that was a long time ago. Things are different there now. And right now, it’s very, very poor. For a lot of reasons, Dylan. No, we can’t go into all of them today. We’re going to start with one country. Okundi.
(She points at one country. Freeze.)
MARTINSON:
Maybe I should be talking to her.
TERRY:
Maybe.
MARTINSON:
But. I’m talking to you. What do you know about Okundi?
TERRY:
Not a lot.
MARTINSON:
Do you know they just had elections there? Free elections. First time in a couple of decades.
TERRY:
That…sounds good.
MARTINSON:
Is it?
TERRY:
…Yes?
MARTINSON:
Only if the right guy wins. Then it’s good. My job is to make sure the right guy wins.
TERRY:
Can I just say…that doesn’t sound very democratic.
(MARTINSON looks at TERRY steadily.)
Aren’t we in the democracy business?
MARTINSON:
You were. When you worked at the State Department.
TERRY:
I work at the State Department.
MARTINSON:
No. You don’t.
TERRY:
I…didn’t sign up for this. I’m sorry. I work at the State Department. I like working at the State Department.
MARTINSON:
I’m sure you did.
TERRY:
You’re not listening to me, Martinson. If that’s your name. I don’t even know what you want from me.
MARTINSON:
No, you don’t. You haven’t even waited to hear what I have to say. You haven’t heard what I want from you. You don’t know. Don’t jump to conclusions.
TERRY:
…Okay.
MARTINSON:
We are. In the democracy business. We make democracy happen. Sometimes it needs a little help. Okundi hasn’t had an election in three decades. Makimba is…
(MAKIMBA speaks again.)
MAKIMBA:
And I tell you this, my people: I lead us out of the dark days of colonialism and internal strife. I lead us out of chaos. And I promise you, I promise all of you, that I will lead us into the future!
MARTINSON:
Complicated. The U.N. wants the elections monitored. We’re good at that.
TERRY:
Monitoring elections?
MARTINSON:
Democracy. With help. With your help. Your country is asking for your help.
TERRY:
My help?
MARTINSON:
We have a man on the ground there, in Okundi. But…he’s…compromised. We need some…
TERRY:
Local flavor?
MARTINSON:
That’s cute. But yes. A face that they can trust. A face that they can understand.
TERRY:
You want me to go there, to Okundi and…
MARTINSON:
Observe. Report. Monitor.
TERRY:
That’s all?
MARTINSON:
That’s all. Listen. Terry. Come on. I’m not asking you for a lot here. You take a trip. A couple of weeks, tops. A tropic country. Get away from D.C. for a while. And while you’re there…
TERRY:
Throw an election.
MARTINSON:
No one asked you to do that.
TERRY:
Yet.
MARTINSON:
Think about the upside.
TERRY:
The upside?
MARTINSON:
For you. For your country. For your brother.
TERRY:
Leave him out of this.
MARTINSON:
He’s going to need your help. Isn’t he?
(CUBBY appears. He’s in a prison jumpsuit, talking on a payphone.)
CUBBY:
I know you check this voicemail, bro. Sooner or later, you gotta get these messages. And sooner or later, you gonna have to talk to me. We got shit to settle. You know that. You can’t hide from me. You can’t hide from blood. I’m not going to be in here much longer. When I get out, we gonna have to talk.
(Freeze.)
MARTINSON:
You’re going to need help.
TERRY:
I can’t help you. I won’t.
(A beat.)
MARTINSON:
You were right.
TERRY:
Right?
MARTINSON:
To think you wouldn’t pass a background check. You wouldn’t. You didn’t.
TERRY:
What background check?
MARTINSON:
The one I ordered. This one. Ties to a foreign government. A convict brother. That doesn’t sound like the kind of person we want with access to sensitive documents.
TERRY:
I write press releases.
MARTINSON:
You make the news. You just said so. Maybe you’ve done some unauthorized editing. Changed the news a little bit. I’m sure if we look at every single scrap of paper you’ve ever touched, talked to all of your colleagues, friends, neighbors, asked enough people enough questions, we can find something. In about a year. Maybe two.
TERRY:
You don’t have to threaten me.
MARTINSON:
I didn’t want to. Your country loves you, Terry. Your country needs you. So. Again. I ask. Do you love your country?
(MAKIMBA, LAURA and CUBBY all turn and look at TERRY.
Shift. TERRY and LAURA in their bedroom. He’s packing.)
TERRY:
A couple of weeks. Tops. Maybe less.
LAURA:
A couple of weeks.
TERRY:
I’ll be doing…good. Giving back.
LAURA:
To who? Who are you giving back to?
TERRY:
I don’t know. Africa. My people.
LAURA:
People you don’t know. People you’ve never met. People you have no connection to.
TERRY:
Just because I didn’t know my father…
LAURA:
And have never been there.
TERRY:
You’ve never been to Ireland. And yet, I remember a girl who really loved her green beer on St.
Patty’s Day.
LAURA:
Yeah, but I didn’t pick up a gun to go shoot some Beefeaters, either.
TERRY:
No one’s shooting anyone.
LAURA:
It’s a war-torn country. That’s how they describe it. War-torn. Torn apart by war.
TERRY:
Laura…
LAURA:
You know nothing about the country, nothing about the people, nothing at all.
TERRY:
Thanks for reminding me. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to change.
LAURA:
Read a book. Don’t get on a plane.
TERRY:
Honey. I have to go. My country is asking me. It’ll be a couple of weeks. I’ll be on the phone with you the whole time. You can take the phone to the birthing class. I’ll bring you back something for your class.
(LAURA is still sulking.)
There’s nothing you can say, anyway. I have to go.
(LAURA gets out of bed.)
LAURA:
I have to grade homework.
TERRY:
This isn’t my fault. I didn’t ask for this. I tried to get out of it.
LAURA:
But you didn’t.
(She goes. TERRY sits, holds his head in his hands.
Shift.
TERRY is on the plane.)
(MARTINSON’s non-descript office in Washington, D.C. (well, Foggy Bottom, to be precise). MARTINSON is white, serious-looking, conservatively dressed. His desk is covered with neat piles of paper. He has a file in front of him. There’s a knock on his door.)
MARTINSON:
Come.
(TERRY enters. He is black, early thirties, wearing a simple suit and tie.)
TERRY:
Is this office 304? There’s no sign. I was sent a message. Told to come here.
MARTINSON:
(indicates the chair in front of his desk, not unkindly, but not warmly)
Sit.
TERRY:
(as he sits)
Is this / Room 304?
MARTINSON:
Do you love your country, son?
(TERRY freezes, mid-sit.)
TERRY:
Is this Room 304?
MARTINSON:
Do you love your country?
TERRY:
Yes?
MARTINSON:
You sound unsure of that.
TERRY:
Of course I do. I work for the / State Department.
MARTINSON:
I’m aware of where you work.
TERRY:
Don’t you…work here, too?
(Slight beat. MARTINSON consults his file.)
MARTINSON:
Winston. Terrence M.
TERRY:
Yes?
MARTINSON:
D.C. native. Technically.
TERRY:
Well. I moved here from New York when I was about one. What’s this about, sir?
MARTINSON:
Columbia, double B.A. in poli sci and American history. Master’s from Harvard Kennedy, Public Policy. Second Master’s, Georgetown. What? Got tired of the Ivies?
(TERRY opens his mouth to say something, but isn’t sure what he can say at this point. MARTINSON barrels on.)
Joined State, public relations department. Writing press releases and blog posts. Three years now. Still in the PR department. A little overqualified, aren’t you?
TERRY:
I…just wanted to help out. Wherever I could.
MARTINSON:
I see. Can’t pass a background check. Why would that be?
TERRY:
Is there some kind of problem? If something’s come up, something wrong with my work, with my…I can answer any question you have. Anything at all.
MARTINSON:
Okay. Tell me about your father.
(A beat.)
TERRY:
Do I have to answer that question?
(MARTINSON says nothing in a way that says, “Yes. You do.”)
I didn’t know him. Ever. He died before I was born. My mother moved me here as soon as she could because she had family here.
MARTINSON:
Was his name Winston?
TERRY:
…No. It’s my stepfather’s name.
MARTINSON:
What was his name? Your father’s name.
TERRY:
…Makimba. His last name was Makimba.
MARTISON:
Which is your middle name.
TERRY:
Yes.
MARTINSON:
It’s an African name, yes?
TERRY:
Yes.
MARTINSON:
The same last name, interestingly, of William Ade Makimba.
(Behind them, MAKIMBA appears. He is in his fifties, regal, dressed in military garb, fierce and powerful. He stands proudly.)
TERRY:
Yes.
MARTINSON:
Ever thought you might be related? You two?
TERRY:
…Yes.
MARTINSON:
I thought so, too. So I checked. You are. He’s your uncle. The dictator of Okundi. The butcher of Amas Bay. One of America’s sworn enemies. Your uncle.
TERRY:
I’ve never met him. I’ve never talked to him. Jesus Christ, I’ve never set foot in Africa. In any part of Africa. My dad died and my mother cut off all ties.
MARTINSON:
Yes. Your father died. In a car accident. You were told.
TERRY:
Oh, Jesus.
MARTINSON:
It was a car accident. Don’t worry. His car crashed. When your uncle’s operatives ran it off the road.
TERRY:
Look…I don’t even know your name.
MARTINSON:
Call me Martinson.
TERRY:
Mr. Martinson. My mother was an American citizen. I’m an American citizen.
MARTINSON:
Your unborn child will be an American citizen.
(LAURA, white, 7 months pregnant, appears.)
TERRY:
Yes. You wanted to know if I love my country. I do. Absolutely. In every possible way. And, yes, I joined the State Department because I wanted to help. And you’re right. I knew about this thing with my uncle, so I set my sights low and didn’t want anyone poking around. The man is…a terror on earth. I don’t want to be associated with him.
MARTINSON:
And yet, you are.
TERRY:
Only in name. In blood. Do not fire me because of this. I should have disclosed it, I know. But…I don’t know the man.
MARTINSON:
I’m not here to fire. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. I don’t work for the State Department.
TERRY:
…What?
MARTINSON:
What do you know about the Right Honorable General Makimba?
TERRY:
Not much. To be honest. He’s not a very nice man. Or a good leader.
MARTINSON:
That’s not…strictly true. On either point.
(MAKIMBA steps forward. The sound of a crowd swells up. He gestures for quiet. They respond. He speaks with a rich, sonorous voice, with more than a hint of English education to it.)
MAKIMBA:
My people! We have come so far! So far from the dark days of colonial oppression, foreign interference and abuse, corporate raiding and guerilla attacks. A new day is dawning in our country, a new era. And we must face it with courage, conviction and a belief in justice, justice made manifest. The old ways, the too few with too much, the too many with too little, this must end. And it will. Once we have forgotten the old ways, burned them out of our memory with passion and clarity, then we can turn our face towards a new sun, a new world, a new Okundi!
(The crowd cheers. MAKIMBA holds his hands up in triumph. Freeze.)
TERRY:
I don’t really watch the news or anything.
MARTINSON:
You do press releases for the State Department.
TERRY:
We kind of make the news. I just type it up, really. It gets exhausting, following all of it. Laura, my…partner. She’s better about it. She needs to be.
(LAURA is addressing her students. A map of Africa appears. She points to it vaguely.)
LAURA:
Did you know that once upon a time, they called Africa the Dark Continent? They did. It wasn’t a very nice thing to call it, was it? No, Jordan, it wasn’t because everyone this is black. Well, not just because. You see, it’s very, very big and there are lots of kinds of people there. It was a place of mystery and secrets. Adventure. But…that was a long time ago. Things are different there now. And right now, it’s very, very poor. For a lot of reasons, Dylan. No, we can’t go into all of them today. We’re going to start with one country. Okundi.
(She points at one country. Freeze.)
MARTINSON:
Maybe I should be talking to her.
TERRY:
Maybe.
MARTINSON:
But. I’m talking to you. What do you know about Okundi?
TERRY:
Not a lot.
MARTINSON:
Do you know they just had elections there? Free elections. First time in a couple of decades.
TERRY:
That…sounds good.
MARTINSON:
Is it?
TERRY:
…Yes?
MARTINSON:
Only if the right guy wins. Then it’s good. My job is to make sure the right guy wins.
TERRY:
Can I just say…that doesn’t sound very democratic.
(MARTINSON looks at TERRY steadily.)
Aren’t we in the democracy business?
MARTINSON:
You were. When you worked at the State Department.
TERRY:
I work at the State Department.
MARTINSON:
No. You don’t.
TERRY:
I…didn’t sign up for this. I’m sorry. I work at the State Department. I like working at the State Department.
MARTINSON:
I’m sure you did.
TERRY:
You’re not listening to me, Martinson. If that’s your name. I don’t even know what you want from me.
MARTINSON:
No, you don’t. You haven’t even waited to hear what I have to say. You haven’t heard what I want from you. You don’t know. Don’t jump to conclusions.
TERRY:
…Okay.
MARTINSON:
We are. In the democracy business. We make democracy happen. Sometimes it needs a little help. Okundi hasn’t had an election in three decades. Makimba is…
(MAKIMBA speaks again.)
MAKIMBA:
And I tell you this, my people: I lead us out of the dark days of colonialism and internal strife. I lead us out of chaos. And I promise you, I promise all of you, that I will lead us into the future!
MARTINSON:
Complicated. The U.N. wants the elections monitored. We’re good at that.
TERRY:
Monitoring elections?
MARTINSON:
Democracy. With help. With your help. Your country is asking for your help.
TERRY:
My help?
MARTINSON:
We have a man on the ground there, in Okundi. But…he’s…compromised. We need some…
TERRY:
Local flavor?
MARTINSON:
That’s cute. But yes. A face that they can trust. A face that they can understand.
TERRY:
You want me to go there, to Okundi and…
MARTINSON:
Observe. Report. Monitor.
TERRY:
That’s all?
MARTINSON:
That’s all. Listen. Terry. Come on. I’m not asking you for a lot here. You take a trip. A couple of weeks, tops. A tropic country. Get away from D.C. for a while. And while you’re there…
TERRY:
Throw an election.
MARTINSON:
No one asked you to do that.
TERRY:
Yet.
MARTINSON:
Think about the upside.
TERRY:
The upside?
MARTINSON:
For you. For your country. For your brother.
TERRY:
Leave him out of this.
MARTINSON:
He’s going to need your help. Isn’t he?
(CUBBY appears. He’s in a prison jumpsuit, talking on a payphone.)
CUBBY:
I know you check this voicemail, bro. Sooner or later, you gotta get these messages. And sooner or later, you gonna have to talk to me. We got shit to settle. You know that. You can’t hide from me. You can’t hide from blood. I’m not going to be in here much longer. When I get out, we gonna have to talk.
(Freeze.)
MARTINSON:
You’re going to need help.
TERRY:
I can’t help you. I won’t.
(A beat.)
MARTINSON:
You were right.
TERRY:
Right?
MARTINSON:
To think you wouldn’t pass a background check. You wouldn’t. You didn’t.
TERRY:
What background check?
MARTINSON:
The one I ordered. This one. Ties to a foreign government. A convict brother. That doesn’t sound like the kind of person we want with access to sensitive documents.
TERRY:
I write press releases.
MARTINSON:
You make the news. You just said so. Maybe you’ve done some unauthorized editing. Changed the news a little bit. I’m sure if we look at every single scrap of paper you’ve ever touched, talked to all of your colleagues, friends, neighbors, asked enough people enough questions, we can find something. In about a year. Maybe two.
TERRY:
You don’t have to threaten me.
MARTINSON:
I didn’t want to. Your country loves you, Terry. Your country needs you. So. Again. I ask. Do you love your country?
(MAKIMBA, LAURA and CUBBY all turn and look at TERRY.
Shift. TERRY and LAURA in their bedroom. He’s packing.)
TERRY:
A couple of weeks. Tops. Maybe less.
LAURA:
A couple of weeks.
TERRY:
I’ll be doing…good. Giving back.
LAURA:
To who? Who are you giving back to?
TERRY:
I don’t know. Africa. My people.
LAURA:
People you don’t know. People you’ve never met. People you have no connection to.
TERRY:
Just because I didn’t know my father…
LAURA:
And have never been there.
TERRY:
You’ve never been to Ireland. And yet, I remember a girl who really loved her green beer on St.
Patty’s Day.
LAURA:
Yeah, but I didn’t pick up a gun to go shoot some Beefeaters, either.
TERRY:
No one’s shooting anyone.
LAURA:
It’s a war-torn country. That’s how they describe it. War-torn. Torn apart by war.
TERRY:
Laura…
LAURA:
You know nothing about the country, nothing about the people, nothing at all.
TERRY:
Thanks for reminding me. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to change.
LAURA:
Read a book. Don’t get on a plane.
TERRY:
Honey. I have to go. My country is asking me. It’ll be a couple of weeks. I’ll be on the phone with you the whole time. You can take the phone to the birthing class. I’ll bring you back something for your class.
(LAURA is still sulking.)
There’s nothing you can say, anyway. I have to go.
(LAURA gets out of bed.)
LAURA:
I have to grade homework.
TERRY:
This isn’t my fault. I didn’t ask for this. I tried to get out of it.
LAURA:
But you didn’t.
(She goes. TERRY sits, holds his head in his hands.
Shift.
TERRY is on the plane.)
Friday, February 5, 2010
New Play Project: IVY LEAGUE
IVY LEAGUE
Scene 1:
(The library of a small boarding school in upstate New York. It’s seen better days. Shelves of books line the walls. There is a table in the center of the room. On it are several large brown boxes. In the back, we can see the Dewey Decimal System card holders. There is a desk off to one side, the information desk, with pens, pencils, various papers and office items on it. Educational posters hang around the room. There’s a set of double, glass-fronted doors leading into the hallway.
It is 1989. Spring break. Sunday night. Late. The whole place is quiet and slightly spooky. The only light on in the library is a desk lamp on the information desk.
At rise, we can see a figure, sitting on the floor in front of the information desk, talking on the phone. The phone is still on the desk and the person has pulled the receiver down, stretching the cord across the desk. The figure is hunched over and wearing many, shapeless layers, including a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up. A backpack sits on the floor, overstuffed with clothes and other things, notebooks, sketchbooks and the like are spread out on the floor. We can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl, though we can just see a shock of bright blue-dyed hair sticking out from under the hood. Lots of rings and bracelets. Fingernails painted black or dark blue. Doc Martens, covered in ratty stickers. A battered Sony Walkman on the floor, headphones snaking up under the hood. We can’t really hear a voice, just whispering.
A beat.
Through the glass doors, we see MARC walk by. A beat. He walks back and enters the library. MARC is about 16, a little chubby, bespectacled and black. He is wearing sweatpants and a beat-up Yale sweatshirt. He looks around the library. He walks over the information desk. He looks at the person on the phone.)
MARC:
…Excuse me.
(The figure turns away a bit, and stays on the phone.)
Excuse me. You shouldn’t be in here.
(The figure turns and looks at MARC. The hood comes down. We see a girl, about MARC’s age, white. This is She looks at MARC. She turns around and goes back to her conversation.)
Excuse me. The library’s closed. You can’t- You shouldn’t- Excuse me.
(RAIN whips around on him.)
RAIN:
I’M ON THE PHONE! CAN’T YOU SEE I’M ON THE PHONE!
MARC:
…Sorry. Sorry.
(He retreats out the door. RAIN goes back to her phone call. MARC stops and comes back.)
Wait. Wait.
RAIN:
What?
MARC:
You’re not supposed to be in here. You can’t just yell at me.
RAIN:
I’m on-
MARC:
You’re not supposed to be using that phone. For personal calls. Or any calls.
RAIN:
(into the phone)
Hang on.
(to MARC)
What are you, the phone monitor?
MARC:
…Yes?
RAIN:
Really?
MARC:
I work in here. I know the rules.
RAIN:
(jangling a ring of keys at him)
I work here, too. So it’s cool.
MARC:
I don’t think it is.
RAIN:
I’m just, you know, on the phone. For, like, five minutes. What do you care?
MARC:
You shouldn’t be in the library when it’s closed.
RAIN:
Scared I’m going to steal some dumb books.
MARC:
The library’s closed.
RAIN:
What’s your name? I know you.
MARC:
I’m Marc.
RAIN:
Right. Right. Look, Marc. I’m going to be five minutes, then I’ll lock up. No one’s here. No one cares. Okay?
MARC:
I’m here. I care.
(RAIN gives an angry, frustrated sigh.)
Moe will care. If I get him.
RAIN:
Why you gotta bust my balls, man?
MARC:
The library is closed.
RAIN:
If you’re going to get Moe, go get him. Go on.
(She turns back to her phone call. MARC looks at her. He turns to go. He comes back. He puts his finger on the base, disconnecting her call.)
What the fuck - ?!?
MARC:
If I went and got Moe, you’d be gone by the time we got back.
RAIN:
You hung up the phone.
MARC:
The library’s closed. You can go now.
RAIN:
This isn’t, like, your personal property. It’s a public space, dude.
MARC:
Not when it’s closed.
RAIN:
GOD. FINE. I’m going.
(She starts gathering her things.)
Not supposed to be here. You’re not supposed to be here.
MARC:
What?
RAIN:
It’s spring fucking break. Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, home? Or something.
MARC:
I’m staying here.
RAIN:
What the fuck for?
MARC:
I don’t have anywhere else to go.
RAIN:
Oh.
MARC:
What are you doing here?
RAIN:
I live here.
MARC:
No one lives at Winterbrook.
RAIN:
In town. I live in the town.
MARC:
Oh. But you go here.
RAIN:
Yeah. And?
MARC:
You’re a day student?
RAIN:
…Yeah.
MARC:
Do you have a pass?
RAIN:
Oh, my god. It’s Sunday night. Sunday night of winter break.
MARC:
You…snuck in?
RAIN:
Are you sure you go to this school? I thought they only let in smart kids.
MARC:
You have to go. You have to get out.
RAIN:
I’m trying to.
MARC:
If Moe finds you, you’ll get in trouble.
RAIN:
I. Know.
MARC:
Wait. You snuck in to use the phone?
RAIN:
You’re just full of questions. It’s a long story. Don’t ask me any more questions, okay?
MARC:
Okay.
(RAIN finishes gathering up her things.)
Why would you sneak in to use the phone?
RAIN:
It’s none of your business. And don’t tell anyone you saw me in here. I’ll break your arm.
MARC:
Okay.
RAIN:
If you see me in here again, you just keep walking, okay?
MARC:
Okay.
(RAIN glares at him. She goes to the door. We can see a flashlight in the hall.)
RAIN:
Shit. Shit.
(She comes back into the library.)
MARC:
Is it Moe?
RAIN:
No, it’s the boogeyman.
MARC:
What?
RAIN:
Of course it’s Moe.
(She slings her backpack over the desk. She jumps over the desk.)
Not. A. Fucking. Word.
MARC:
Okay.
(RAIN drops behind the desk. The door opens and MOE enters. He’s a security guard, late 40s, black, tall and imposing. He carries a flashlight.)
MOE:
What are you doing in here?
MARC:
Huh?
MOE:
Marc. What are you doing in the library?
MARC:
I…just wanted…to check on the books.
MOE:
The books?
MARC:
Yeah.
MOE:
They still on the shelves?
MARC:
Not those books. The new ones. Just came in.
MOE:
Oh.
(He walks over to the table, looks at the boxes.)
Bunch a new books?
MARC:
Yeah. I gotta catalog ‘em.
MOE:
Okay. But you should be up in your room, now.
MARC:
I know. I’m just…excited.
MOE:
About a bunch a books?
MARC:
They’re new.
MOE:
Okay.
(He heads out. Sees the Walkman on the floor.)
That yours?
MARC:
What?
MOE:
That there. Is that yours?
MARC:
Oh. Uh. Yeah?
MOE:
Then pick it up. I ain’t your maid.
MARC:
Sorry. Sorry.
(He picks it up.)
MOE:
What you listening to?
MARC:
Uh. Music.
MOE:
What kind of music?
MARC:
Uh.
(He’s trying to see the name on the tape.)
The…Replacements?
MOE:
Oh. Never heard of them. They new?
MARC:
…Yeah.
MOE:
They like the Commodores or something?
MARC:
Something like that, yeah.
MOE:
Hm. I should borrow that from you. I need some new tunes.
MARC:
Yeah. Anytime.
MOE:
Okay. You okay here?
MARC:
Yeah. I can lock up.
MOE:
You better.
(He heads for the door. He stops.)
You all right?
MARC:
Yeah.
MOE:
I…I know this place gets lonely without all them other kids around and everything. You must miss your folks a lot.
MARC:
A bit.
MOE:
Well. You know I’m here. If you wanna talk or something.
MARC:
Thanks.
MOE:
We brothers gotta stick together here, you know. Up amongst all these white devils.
MARC:
…Yeah.
MOE:
I’m kidding around. Don’t look so scared.
MARC:
Okay.
MOE:
But…we do gotta stick together. Okay?
MARC:
Okay.
MOE:
Don’t stay here, messing with them books. Well, not too late.
MARC:
I won’t.
(MOE goes. A beat. RAIN stands up.)
RAIN:
You had to have, like, a chat with him?
MARC:
We were just talking.
RAIN:
I’m crouched down there. My leg’s asleep. Give me that.
(She takes her Walkman back.)
You don’t even know who The Replacements are, do you?
MARC:
Are they like the Commodores?
RAIN:
No. You’re really staying here for the break?
MARC:
What did you think I was doing here?
RAIN:
I don’t know. Thought maybe you were leaving in the morning.
MARC:
I’m staying. I always stay for the breaks.
RAIN:
That must suck.
MARC:
It’s okay.
(A beat.)
RAIN:
I’m gonna sneak out the back.
MARC:
Okay.
RAIN:
Don’t tell anyone you saw me here.
MARC:
I won’t.
RAIN:
See ya ‘round. Ivy League.
MARC:
What?
RAIN:
Your sweatshirt. Ivy League.
(She puts on her backpack and slips out. MARC stands looking around. He turns off the light and leaves. End of scene.)
New Play Project 2010
Back here, I made a promise:
- I write the first scene of a play.
- I post that scene.
- You all chime in, as you see fit.
- The next week, I post another first scene of another new play.
- You all chime in.
- Lather, rinse, repeat, and then, based on my own energy and your feedback, I finish one of the plays. (Or more.)
Pretty simple, huh. So Fridays are going to be New Play Fridays around here. Get used to it.
Over the next week or so, I'm going to write the first scene or 5-10 pages of some plays I have kicking around in my skull, and I'll post them here, here and even here. You read 'em and let me know what you like, what you want to hear more of, what excites you. And then I write 'em.Obviously, things got a bit screwy on various fronts and I got a bit side-tracked, but I'm actually back at it. Here's the plan:
- I write the first scene of a play.
- I post that scene.
- You all chime in, as you see fit.
- The next week, I post another first scene of another new play.
- You all chime in.
- Lather, rinse, repeat, and then, based on my own energy and your feedback, I finish one of the plays. (Or more.)
Pretty simple, huh. So Fridays are going to be New Play Fridays around here. Get used to it.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Starting Gate
Last year, on my facebook profile, I wrote:
Well...not great. But not bad. I got about 50% there. I wrote two new full-length plays (one of which is being read in Chicago this weekend, plug, plug), a couple of short plays and did one major re-write on a full-length. Not to mention, between this blog and my other one, about 200 posts or so (leaving out a guest stint or two at Parabasis). But I didn't finish all of the ones I wanted to. Because, well, it was hard.
Anarchists was the hardest one. I had high hopes (and still do) and a real connection to the material, but the damn thing just didn't materialize for me. My "open source playwriting" plan had some flaws, I admit. Mainly, it's hard to get good folks together in the summer. Maybe I'll take another whack at it this spring.
So...a .500 batting average. Not shabby...actually, for a baseball player, it would be amazing. But this isn't baseball, is it? That was my 2009. What's 2010 got in store? Another whack at it, that's what.
We're nearly through January. I've got about 11 months left in the year. That's a lot of time. And I have a lot of ideas still rattling around in my brain. And I like a good challenge. So back at it. But, as always, with a twist: you get to decide which plays I work on.
Over the next week or so, I'm going to write the first scene or 5-10 pages of some plays I have kicking around in my skull, and I'll post them here, here and even here. You read 'em and let me know what you like, what you want to hear more of, what excites you. And then I write 'em. Then you come and see 'em. Pretty simple, no? Could be fun...could be a total trainwreck. Hopefully, it will be interesting either way.
Time to get climbing up that hill...
So, yeah, that’s four plays. It’s April now, which means I’ve got about eight months. A new play every two months. Plus I got a couple of one-acts brewing and one big rewrite of something else planned. It’s a bit crazy. But let’s also note that William Shakespeare wrote Titus, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labours Lost and The Taming of the Shrew in about a year. Am I Shakespeare? Hell, no. But you gotta aspire to something.Pretty ambition, no? And when I wrote that, this whole blog was still anonymous, so I didn't even include it. And 2009 turned out to be a bit of a banner year in these parts. A lot of writing planned there, a lot of work. So, how did I do?
At least I have an answer when someone asks me, “What are you up to?”
Well...not great. But not bad. I got about 50% there. I wrote two new full-length plays (one of which is being read in Chicago this weekend, plug, plug), a couple of short plays and did one major re-write on a full-length. Not to mention, between this blog and my other one, about 200 posts or so (leaving out a guest stint or two at Parabasis). But I didn't finish all of the ones I wanted to. Because, well, it was hard.
Anarchists was the hardest one. I had high hopes (and still do) and a real connection to the material, but the damn thing just didn't materialize for me. My "open source playwriting" plan had some flaws, I admit. Mainly, it's hard to get good folks together in the summer. Maybe I'll take another whack at it this spring.
So...a .500 batting average. Not shabby...actually, for a baseball player, it would be amazing. But this isn't baseball, is it? That was my 2009. What's 2010 got in store? Another whack at it, that's what.
We're nearly through January. I've got about 11 months left in the year. That's a lot of time. And I have a lot of ideas still rattling around in my brain. And I like a good challenge. So back at it. But, as always, with a twist: you get to decide which plays I work on.
Over the next week or so, I'm going to write the first scene or 5-10 pages of some plays I have kicking around in my skull, and I'll post them here, here and even here. You read 'em and let me know what you like, what you want to hear more of, what excites you. And then I write 'em. Then you come and see 'em. Pretty simple, no? Could be fun...could be a total trainwreck. Hopefully, it will be interesting either way.
Time to get climbing up that hill...
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Black Playwright Convening Responses
The first two are up. Adam Thurman, blogger for the Mission Paradox blog, is here. Mine is here. There's also a couple of great pictures of the participants here. I posted the pics to my Facebook and got it tagged, in case you're wondering who's who here.
Monday, January 4, 2010
The Next Thing
So. Yesterday, I made my big announcement. And some folks noticed and said some nice things (and made awesome comic book references) about me and my blog.
For a while now, I've led a kind of double blogging life, writing more personal stuff here and saving the theatre stuff for over there. But now the two worlds are, as they say, colliding. And I'm not sure what that means for this blog here. I know most of you read it as part of my facebook page, but the geniuses that make facebook only allow me to import one blog at a time. And I'm not saavy enough to figure out how to cross-post and keep my links (I do love my links).
So...I may be wrapping this one up and shifting over to 99 Seats full time. Or I may not. We shall see. In the meantime, feel free to swing over to my other joint from time to time and say hi.
For a while now, I've led a kind of double blogging life, writing more personal stuff here and saving the theatre stuff for over there. But now the two worlds are, as they say, colliding. And I'm not sure what that means for this blog here. I know most of you read it as part of my facebook page, but the geniuses that make facebook only allow me to import one blog at a time. And I'm not saavy enough to figure out how to cross-post and keep my links (I do love my links).
So...I may be wrapping this one up and shifting over to 99 Seats full time. Or I may not. We shall see. In the meantime, feel free to swing over to my other joint from time to time and say hi.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
A Decade of New Year's Eves
My friend Brandy once said that New Year's Eve is the one holiday for history buffs. Some would argue that the 4th of July counts, but I don't think so. The 4th is about America and patriotism (sort of) and blowing stuff up. New Year's is, okay, a bit about drinking and dancing and who's getting/giving that New Year's kiss, but it's also about the passage of time, reflecting on the year that passed, thinking about the year to come and oddly about connecting to large groups of people around the year. Honestly, New Year's means more to me than just about any holiday. I'm weird that way.
The thing is, though, like most people I know, I can't really remember a great, great New Year's Eve party. Thankfully, I haven't had some of the disasters some of my friends have had, but I also haven't had that special, knock-your-socks-off New Year's Eve, either. Maybe it's always freighted with too many expectations. Maybe it just never quite lives up to the ideal. Maybe, just maybe, there's too much booze involved and that can turn a party bad right quickly. I don't know.
Since we're coming to the end of a decade (holy f*ck!), I've been thinking about the last ten New Year's Eves and trying to think about how they all turned out. I figured I'd share with you all.
New Year's 1999 into 2000: This one was pretty memorable, not just because it was the Millennium and Y2K was going to kill us all. A friend's parents had an empty house in Florida and invited a bunch of folks down. It was a nice house, in the Panhandle. A couple of days of boozing, go karting, puzzle-making, more boozing. For New Year's, we were on a beach, watching fireworks. We celebrated twice, since, being in the Panhandle, we were just over the time zone line into Central Time. We watched the ball drop in NYC, had champagne and then went out to the beach for another one. The part, though, that sticks with me most was the long, 20 hour drive down and back. We started in Baltimore, where we got the car, at 9 in the morning, drove all day past stands for peaches and fireworks, stopped in a Wendy's for dinner, stood in the parking lot and watched the sunset and then realized that we had about 10 more hours of driving to go. That might have been a metaphor for something. I don't know.
New Year's 2000 into 2001: Yeah, this one is gone. Down the memory hole. If we were hanging out and I've forgotten, I'm sorry.
New Year's 2001 into 2002: Maine. Another friend was opening an office there and invited a bunch of folks up to hang out, ring in the new. It was post-9/11 and I'd had a hard year, so mostly I remember keeping to myself, looking out on the dark windows of a cold, strange city and trying to feel at peace.
New Year's 2002 into 2003: Yep, also gone. I might have had a party? If you were there, I hope you had a good time.
New Year's 2003 into 2004, '04 into '05, '05 into '06: All gone. Seriously, I have some concerns about my memory. One of these years, I went to a party on the first floor of the building I was living in, had a fairly bad time and right after midnight went back upstairs and watched an Entourage marathon on HBO. Good times. One of these (I think '05 into '06) was really great, though. I had a nice dinner with a small group of friends, then saw Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at Irving Plaza. The highlight of that show was the balloons. They had rigged up these balloons that were supposed to fall at midnight, but the rigging didn't work and the balloons stayed up there. We could see them, suspended right over our heads. Then, out of the crowd, one guy, one hipster-y guy, got his friends to lift him up on their shoulders so he could reach the netting holding the balloons. It became the focus of the show, watching this guy creep ever closer to the balloons, nearly slipping off his friends' shoulders, doing this obviously dangerous thing for no good reason. Except when he freed the balloons and the whole place erupted into cheers. It was awesome. I think that was my first image of '06.
New Year's '06 into '07: This was good and then it got weird. After hitting a couple of parties, I wound up at a house party on the Bowery. Good little band playing, dancing, random conversations with people. Booze a-flowing, but no ill after-effects. Well, not from the booze. I finally made it back uptown around 3 in the morning, passed out, ready to slumber well into the new year. But life had other plans. At about 4:30, I was woken up by voices. Lots of voices. In my apartment. My then-roommate, a nutty pastry chef, had just come back from the local drug bar's New Year's Eve party with a lot of new friends. New, drunk and high friends. Going to sleep wasn't really an option or a wise decision. So I stayed up. That New Year's Day, I think I got a total of 2 hours of sleep. A great way to start the year.
New Year's '07 into '08: Actually fairly mellow. A local dive bar. A good group of people. No fireworks, just good dancing, moderate boozing and no hangover the next day. Almost peaceful.
New Year's '08 into '09: Not my finest hour, to be honest. Way too much tequila, way too much in the department of expectations. Dancing at a friend's house party, which was awesome, but it was the kind of night that I wound up apologizing to friends for. Never again.
Ten years, distilled into ten nights, half of which I can't really remember. Here's to ten more, with better memories, more good friends and good times. Less living rooms full of cokeheads at 5 in the morning. Less booze and less whining. More, more, more.
Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? Not at all. Happy new year, y'all.
The thing is, though, like most people I know, I can't really remember a great, great New Year's Eve party. Thankfully, I haven't had some of the disasters some of my friends have had, but I also haven't had that special, knock-your-socks-off New Year's Eve, either. Maybe it's always freighted with too many expectations. Maybe it just never quite lives up to the ideal. Maybe, just maybe, there's too much booze involved and that can turn a party bad right quickly. I don't know.
Since we're coming to the end of a decade (holy f*ck!), I've been thinking about the last ten New Year's Eves and trying to think about how they all turned out. I figured I'd share with you all.
New Year's 1999 into 2000: This one was pretty memorable, not just because it was the Millennium and Y2K was going to kill us all. A friend's parents had an empty house in Florida and invited a bunch of folks down. It was a nice house, in the Panhandle. A couple of days of boozing, go karting, puzzle-making, more boozing. For New Year's, we were on a beach, watching fireworks. We celebrated twice, since, being in the Panhandle, we were just over the time zone line into Central Time. We watched the ball drop in NYC, had champagne and then went out to the beach for another one. The part, though, that sticks with me most was the long, 20 hour drive down and back. We started in Baltimore, where we got the car, at 9 in the morning, drove all day past stands for peaches and fireworks, stopped in a Wendy's for dinner, stood in the parking lot and watched the sunset and then realized that we had about 10 more hours of driving to go. That might have been a metaphor for something. I don't know.
New Year's 2000 into 2001: Yeah, this one is gone. Down the memory hole. If we were hanging out and I've forgotten, I'm sorry.
New Year's 2001 into 2002: Maine. Another friend was opening an office there and invited a bunch of folks up to hang out, ring in the new. It was post-9/11 and I'd had a hard year, so mostly I remember keeping to myself, looking out on the dark windows of a cold, strange city and trying to feel at peace.
New Year's 2002 into 2003: Yep, also gone. I might have had a party? If you were there, I hope you had a good time.
New Year's 2003 into 2004, '04 into '05, '05 into '06: All gone. Seriously, I have some concerns about my memory. One of these years, I went to a party on the first floor of the building I was living in, had a fairly bad time and right after midnight went back upstairs and watched an Entourage marathon on HBO. Good times. One of these (I think '05 into '06) was really great, though. I had a nice dinner with a small group of friends, then saw Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at Irving Plaza. The highlight of that show was the balloons. They had rigged up these balloons that were supposed to fall at midnight, but the rigging didn't work and the balloons stayed up there. We could see them, suspended right over our heads. Then, out of the crowd, one guy, one hipster-y guy, got his friends to lift him up on their shoulders so he could reach the netting holding the balloons. It became the focus of the show, watching this guy creep ever closer to the balloons, nearly slipping off his friends' shoulders, doing this obviously dangerous thing for no good reason. Except when he freed the balloons and the whole place erupted into cheers. It was awesome. I think that was my first image of '06.
New Year's '06 into '07: This was good and then it got weird. After hitting a couple of parties, I wound up at a house party on the Bowery. Good little band playing, dancing, random conversations with people. Booze a-flowing, but no ill after-effects. Well, not from the booze. I finally made it back uptown around 3 in the morning, passed out, ready to slumber well into the new year. But life had other plans. At about 4:30, I was woken up by voices. Lots of voices. In my apartment. My then-roommate, a nutty pastry chef, had just come back from the local drug bar's New Year's Eve party with a lot of new friends. New, drunk and high friends. Going to sleep wasn't really an option or a wise decision. So I stayed up. That New Year's Day, I think I got a total of 2 hours of sleep. A great way to start the year.
New Year's '07 into '08: Actually fairly mellow. A local dive bar. A good group of people. No fireworks, just good dancing, moderate boozing and no hangover the next day. Almost peaceful.
New Year's '08 into '09: Not my finest hour, to be honest. Way too much tequila, way too much in the department of expectations. Dancing at a friend's house party, which was awesome, but it was the kind of night that I wound up apologizing to friends for. Never again.
Ten years, distilled into ten nights, half of which I can't really remember. Here's to ten more, with better memories, more good friends and good times. Less living rooms full of cokeheads at 5 in the morning. Less booze and less whining. More, more, more.
Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? Not at all. Happy new year, y'all.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
How To Become a Misanthrope In Five Easy Steps
1. Follow the news. I've recently found myself filled with what can best be described as, well, hatred for humanity. Not to put too fine a point on it. I used to be a happy-go-lucky guy and all of a sudden, I'm Agent Smith in the first Matrix movie, wiping the sweat off of Laurence Fishburne's bald head and making him smell it. I've been trying to cart how that happened and I've narrowed i down to six simple things you can do to suck the joie de vivre right out of you and shrink that heart two sizes down. The first thing is pay attention.
I've been thinking of this past summer as the Summer of Bad Vibes. Between the long parade of celebrity deaths, mind-numbing scandals, and the free-form craziness available on Fox News, I was pretty ready to throw in the towel on the human race. I thought we'd hit rock bottom. But then, Lord love 'em, humanity found a way to kick open the basement door and keep going down. Well, no one said they weren't resourceful.
Seriously, if this is government by the people, for the people, the people are clearly vain, self-centered, small-minded bigots. I know I didn't vote Joe Lieberman to be the most important man in the world (or Ben Nelson or Olympia Snowe, for that matter), but this is our system and I vote in support of that regularly. A friend of mine paraphrased Bill Maher as saying that we've got the government we deserve because, at the end of the day, we're just not good people. I'm finding it hard to dispute that. And it's not even like America's got a monopoly on the dumb, crazy and bigoted.
2. Support the Arts. I'm an artist and a supporter of the arts (as best I can be) and this has been a pretty glum couple of months for the arts. Hell, it's been a glum year. After a couple of recent studies have broken, it appears that the arts are getting older, whiter and more privileged. Not to mention there's no funding, basically, anywhere to be had. All in all, a heck of a grand time to be a minority artist.
3. Spend too much time on Facebook. Guilty as charged. But despite what another friend says here, I'm actually finding that technology is making me like people less and less. The unending stream of babble, updates and nonsense, masquerading as connection, the half-baked, inside jokes pretending to be discourse, the whole thread of humanity. Ugh. And the worst part? I'm one of those people. I can't avoid it. Or rather, I've been avoiding it. Because there are definitely people who are my Facebook friends that I'd really rather not see in real life anymore (No, not you. Never you. Of course not, you!). Social network, my ass.
4. Internet date. If you ever want to believe in the openness of the human heart and spirit, yeah, don't date on the internet. Or really don't date at all. Very few things reveal us as simultaneously unbelievably shallow, totally untrusting and exceptionally repressed as online dating. Everyone's deal breakers are calibrated to the tiniest things, half of them totally physical. It's a Darwinian world where the strong survive and come out more alone than they went in. And again, like #3, the hardest part is when you confront all of that in yourself. When you find yourself rejecting someone for some small thing that you do yourself and you know you do it, you've found the cold heart of online dating. For those of you who have found real love in this world, a partner and friend who completes your life, treasure that. It's a miracle beyond miracles that anyone can find anyone else to actually love in this world. You're lucky. Fuck you.
5. Live in New York. The front row seat for the show that is humanity. And it is a terrible, terrible show, with an obnoxious cast, a grating soundtrack, smell-o-vision and it goes on and on. I used to believe that people were meant to live together, to connect, that, as Tony Kushner once wrote, the smallest indivisible human unit was two. Yeah, way off base there. Just watching the grim spectacle of people crowding in and out of the subway, ready to kick, punch, hell even knife each other over a cold, uncomfortable plastic seat that doesn't even fit a human ass is really enough to crush your spirit. And to do it twice a day? That's just cruel and unusual punishment.
Add it all together, let it stew for a few months and bingo! You've got a misanthrope. Just in time for the holidays. And because I'm an agnostic, I've basically turned into the World's Angriest Deist. I believe that God set up the universe with the most obnoxious possible rules, put us on a path of nearly unending misery and pain and then jumped the next train to a non-extradition country to live under an assumed name. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett have one of my favorite descriptions of life: they say it's like playing an obscure and complicated variation of poker for infinite stakes using blank cards in a dark room with a Dealer who won't explain the rules and who smiles all the time. I'd also add that He cheats. Boldly. So you know He's cheating, but can't stop him. It's a mug's game.
Honestly, right now, the only thing that keeps me from flinging all of my belongings out a window, setting them on fire and heading for the nearest bell tower, is this: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. And Zach, the ten-year old kid I'm tutoring in English. He's just started reading it and needs some help preparing an essay for secondary school admission (because ten-year olds need more pressure in their life). I asked him to write me a little essay on the first chapter, to test his reading comprehension. But I haven't read it in forever, so he lends me an extra copy and I start reading. And it's actually more wonderful than I remember it. And I start thinking about what it must be like to be reading this book about this smart, awkward girl and this crazy family and the horrors she goes through to save them and the whole world while worrying about her crazy hair and her terrible schoolmates, too, what it must be like to read this at 10 years old. And what it will be like for me to watch him discover this world, these ideas about time, family and love.
And then I remember the old story of Pandora and her big box of all the evils in the world. At the bottom of the box was this one bedraggled, battered, little thing, the only thing that Pandora could keep from being lost into the world, one small pathetic creature called Hope. Poor, beknighted bastard-child that it is.
Crap. I even suck at being a misanthrope.
I've been thinking of this past summer as the Summer of Bad Vibes. Between the long parade of celebrity deaths, mind-numbing scandals, and the free-form craziness available on Fox News, I was pretty ready to throw in the towel on the human race. I thought we'd hit rock bottom. But then, Lord love 'em, humanity found a way to kick open the basement door and keep going down. Well, no one said they weren't resourceful.
Seriously, if this is government by the people, for the people, the people are clearly vain, self-centered, small-minded bigots. I know I didn't vote Joe Lieberman to be the most important man in the world (or Ben Nelson or Olympia Snowe, for that matter), but this is our system and I vote in support of that regularly. A friend of mine paraphrased Bill Maher as saying that we've got the government we deserve because, at the end of the day, we're just not good people. I'm finding it hard to dispute that. And it's not even like America's got a monopoly on the dumb, crazy and bigoted.
2. Support the Arts. I'm an artist and a supporter of the arts (as best I can be) and this has been a pretty glum couple of months for the arts. Hell, it's been a glum year. After a couple of recent studies have broken, it appears that the arts are getting older, whiter and more privileged. Not to mention there's no funding, basically, anywhere to be had. All in all, a heck of a grand time to be a minority artist.
3. Spend too much time on Facebook. Guilty as charged. But despite what another friend says here, I'm actually finding that technology is making me like people less and less. The unending stream of babble, updates and nonsense, masquerading as connection, the half-baked, inside jokes pretending to be discourse, the whole thread of humanity. Ugh. And the worst part? I'm one of those people. I can't avoid it. Or rather, I've been avoiding it. Because there are definitely people who are my Facebook friends that I'd really rather not see in real life anymore (No, not you. Never you. Of course not, you!). Social network, my ass.
4. Internet date. If you ever want to believe in the openness of the human heart and spirit, yeah, don't date on the internet. Or really don't date at all. Very few things reveal us as simultaneously unbelievably shallow, totally untrusting and exceptionally repressed as online dating. Everyone's deal breakers are calibrated to the tiniest things, half of them totally physical. It's a Darwinian world where the strong survive and come out more alone than they went in. And again, like #3, the hardest part is when you confront all of that in yourself. When you find yourself rejecting someone for some small thing that you do yourself and you know you do it, you've found the cold heart of online dating. For those of you who have found real love in this world, a partner and friend who completes your life, treasure that. It's a miracle beyond miracles that anyone can find anyone else to actually love in this world. You're lucky. Fuck you.
5. Live in New York. The front row seat for the show that is humanity. And it is a terrible, terrible show, with an obnoxious cast, a grating soundtrack, smell-o-vision and it goes on and on. I used to believe that people were meant to live together, to connect, that, as Tony Kushner once wrote, the smallest indivisible human unit was two. Yeah, way off base there. Just watching the grim spectacle of people crowding in and out of the subway, ready to kick, punch, hell even knife each other over a cold, uncomfortable plastic seat that doesn't even fit a human ass is really enough to crush your spirit. And to do it twice a day? That's just cruel and unusual punishment.
Add it all together, let it stew for a few months and bingo! You've got a misanthrope. Just in time for the holidays. And because I'm an agnostic, I've basically turned into the World's Angriest Deist. I believe that God set up the universe with the most obnoxious possible rules, put us on a path of nearly unending misery and pain and then jumped the next train to a non-extradition country to live under an assumed name. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett have one of my favorite descriptions of life: they say it's like playing an obscure and complicated variation of poker for infinite stakes using blank cards in a dark room with a Dealer who won't explain the rules and who smiles all the time. I'd also add that He cheats. Boldly. So you know He's cheating, but can't stop him. It's a mug's game.
Honestly, right now, the only thing that keeps me from flinging all of my belongings out a window, setting them on fire and heading for the nearest bell tower, is this: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. And Zach, the ten-year old kid I'm tutoring in English. He's just started reading it and needs some help preparing an essay for secondary school admission (because ten-year olds need more pressure in their life). I asked him to write me a little essay on the first chapter, to test his reading comprehension. But I haven't read it in forever, so he lends me an extra copy and I start reading. And it's actually more wonderful than I remember it. And I start thinking about what it must be like to be reading this book about this smart, awkward girl and this crazy family and the horrors she goes through to save them and the whole world while worrying about her crazy hair and her terrible schoolmates, too, what it must be like to read this at 10 years old. And what it will be like for me to watch him discover this world, these ideas about time, family and love.
And then I remember the old story of Pandora and her big box of all the evils in the world. At the bottom of the box was this one bedraggled, battered, little thing, the only thing that Pandora could keep from being lost into the world, one small pathetic creature called Hope. Poor, beknighted bastard-child that it is.
Crap. I even suck at being a misanthrope.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Mind-Reading
I know it's Thanksgiving and a time for thoughts of family, hearth, and home, but...this just pisses me off so much. A couple of lefty blogs have linked to Peter Beinart's piece of mind-reading and anonymous sourcing as though it were the perfect key to understanding the frustrating actions of Sen. Joe Lieberman. I think it's all kind of bunk and worse, the kind of bunk that if Glenn Beck or Maureen Dowd wrote about Obama or John Kerry, they would all dog-pile on top of it. Beinart's column is a seven-paragraph pile of steaming b.s. that ignores the simplest, most basic fact: Joe Lieberman is running for office again in 2 years.
I'm not the senior political reporter of anything except my kitchen, but I read tons and tons about it, think about it, talk about it pretty regularly. So I feel completely comfortable spouting off. In the internet age, that's about as much license as you need. And this is something I want to spout off about: stop with the mind-reading of our political officials. Or, at least, do better at it. This is one of the places where I think more dramatists doing political coverage would be helpful. Because we understand a basic thing: people do things for reasons.
Joe Lieberman, as far as anyone can tell, used to be a fairly conservative Democrat, maybe less so on social issues, but never really a liberal flamethrower like a Teddy Kennedy. He also does seem to enjoy the limelight, but then again, show me a politician who doesn't and I'll show you a political science teacher at a high school. Wanting the limelight, the power and influence comes with the job.
Sure, maybe his feelings were hurt by the primary of '06. That's legitimate. It might even be key. But I just don't see it as the driving factor behind his swing to the right. Not on issues he had held fairly liberal views on in the recent past. I mean, sure, he's a bit of a Youstabee, but it wasnt' that far a trip. I've said it before: it's about 2012 and about a re-election strategy. Especially if he goes all the way and filibusters health care reform, the way he's threatening to. He's trying to reach out to Connecticut Republicans and not leaving any room for a "real" Republican to enter the race to his right. If he does like he did in 2006 and peel off enough moderate to conservative Democrats, he can win a plurality and keep his job. Not everything is Dynasty, with people motivated by pure emotion. There are calculations to be made, strategies to put in place. Joe's gotta be thinking, "How do I position myself for maximum appeal?"
Now I know that's more mind-reading. And, hell, we could all be wrong. He might have made an actual, personal swing to the right. It happens. He might be bought off by insurance money. That happens, too. In way, none of it matters. What matters is how you (and by "you," I mean the Senate Democratic leadership) deal with it. And that's where the obsession with Joe Lieberman, Egomaniac gets us (and by "us," I mean progressives) in trouble.
If we're thinking that all Joe needs is more time in the spotlight, then you wait him out. He's angry, his feelings are hurt and he's acting out. Like a petulant child. So you ignore his outburst and wait for him to come to his senses. I don't think that will work. I think if the Senate Dems try to wait him out, they'll be standing there, gobsmacked, when he votes to filibuster.
I think Harry Reid has to treat Joe not like a child, but like a conservative Democrat or a moderate Republican: make a deal. Figure out what Joe needs and wants and give it to him. And if that won't work, threaten him. Seriously. Find a charismatic, slightly to his left Republican and convince him or her to run for the Senate. Hell, find a charismatic, moderate Democrat and threaten to run him or her as a Democrat. Make sure that Joe knows the Democrats are willing to lose the seat outright. If it's a choice between being a hypocrite and keeping his seat, I think Joe will try to keep his seat. That's what he's been doing.
But, also: stop with the mind-reading. Or get better at it.
I'm not the senior political reporter of anything except my kitchen, but I read tons and tons about it, think about it, talk about it pretty regularly. So I feel completely comfortable spouting off. In the internet age, that's about as much license as you need. And this is something I want to spout off about: stop with the mind-reading of our political officials. Or, at least, do better at it. This is one of the places where I think more dramatists doing political coverage would be helpful. Because we understand a basic thing: people do things for reasons.
Joe Lieberman, as far as anyone can tell, used to be a fairly conservative Democrat, maybe less so on social issues, but never really a liberal flamethrower like a Teddy Kennedy. He also does seem to enjoy the limelight, but then again, show me a politician who doesn't and I'll show you a political science teacher at a high school. Wanting the limelight, the power and influence comes with the job.
Sure, maybe his feelings were hurt by the primary of '06. That's legitimate. It might even be key. But I just don't see it as the driving factor behind his swing to the right. Not on issues he had held fairly liberal views on in the recent past. I mean, sure, he's a bit of a Youstabee, but it wasnt' that far a trip. I've said it before: it's about 2012 and about a re-election strategy. Especially if he goes all the way and filibusters health care reform, the way he's threatening to. He's trying to reach out to Connecticut Republicans and not leaving any room for a "real" Republican to enter the race to his right. If he does like he did in 2006 and peel off enough moderate to conservative Democrats, he can win a plurality and keep his job. Not everything is Dynasty, with people motivated by pure emotion. There are calculations to be made, strategies to put in place. Joe's gotta be thinking, "How do I position myself for maximum appeal?"
Now I know that's more mind-reading. And, hell, we could all be wrong. He might have made an actual, personal swing to the right. It happens. He might be bought off by insurance money. That happens, too. In way, none of it matters. What matters is how you (and by "you," I mean the Senate Democratic leadership) deal with it. And that's where the obsession with Joe Lieberman, Egomaniac gets us (and by "us," I mean progressives) in trouble.
If we're thinking that all Joe needs is more time in the spotlight, then you wait him out. He's angry, his feelings are hurt and he's acting out. Like a petulant child. So you ignore his outburst and wait for him to come to his senses. I don't think that will work. I think if the Senate Dems try to wait him out, they'll be standing there, gobsmacked, when he votes to filibuster.
I think Harry Reid has to treat Joe not like a child, but like a conservative Democrat or a moderate Republican: make a deal. Figure out what Joe needs and wants and give it to him. And if that won't work, threaten him. Seriously. Find a charismatic, slightly to his left Republican and convince him or her to run for the Senate. Hell, find a charismatic, moderate Democrat and threaten to run him or her as a Democrat. Make sure that Joe knows the Democrats are willing to lose the seat outright. If it's a choice between being a hypocrite and keeping his seat, I think Joe will try to keep his seat. That's what he's been doing.
But, also: stop with the mind-reading. Or get better at it.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Wiped, Tuckered, and Plum Done In
I know there are, what, two months left in the year? A month and a half? But I'm throwing in the towel. I'm ready for hibernation. I'm done for, to say the least.
This year, for the first time in a couple of years, I participated in Octoberfest at E.S.T. Which was an unmitigated, top-to-bottom blast. I have no regrets about it...but I gotta say, it kind of wiped me out. I did a big rewrite on a full-length play and wrote a short play, which rehearsed for about twelve minutes. I went to a few things, danced my ass off quite a few times and generally had a grand time. At my age, grand times are starting to come with a price, though.
As the year is winding down and I think about my Grand Project, I got about half-way there. Which ain't shabby, but took a lot. I wrote two full-length plays this year, did one big rewrite on another play, wrote a short play, wrote a webisode, reconnected with a lot of theatre people and theatre companies, wrote this blog, worked my regular full-time job, and attempted to have something of a personal life. Oh, and facebooked like a champ. Eleven months into the year and I'm kind of done.
I didn't achieve a lot of the things I wanted to achieve or aimed for, but I got a bit further down the road. I think, for this year, that's enough. 2009 has been a weird one, lots of ups and downs. I might just lie back, put my feet up and cruise on auto-pilot into 2010. That's the year we make contact, right? I can handle that. I might just need a nap first.
Peace! No, really. Peace.
This year, for the first time in a couple of years, I participated in Octoberfest at E.S.T. Which was an unmitigated, top-to-bottom blast. I have no regrets about it...but I gotta say, it kind of wiped me out. I did a big rewrite on a full-length play and wrote a short play, which rehearsed for about twelve minutes. I went to a few things, danced my ass off quite a few times and generally had a grand time. At my age, grand times are starting to come with a price, though.
As the year is winding down and I think about my Grand Project, I got about half-way there. Which ain't shabby, but took a lot. I wrote two full-length plays this year, did one big rewrite on another play, wrote a short play, wrote a webisode, reconnected with a lot of theatre people and theatre companies, wrote this blog, worked my regular full-time job, and attempted to have something of a personal life. Oh, and facebooked like a champ. Eleven months into the year and I'm kind of done.
I didn't achieve a lot of the things I wanted to achieve or aimed for, but I got a bit further down the road. I think, for this year, that's enough. 2009 has been a weird one, lots of ups and downs. I might just lie back, put my feet up and cruise on auto-pilot into 2010. That's the year we make contact, right? I can handle that. I might just need a nap first.
Peace! No, really. Peace.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Lieberman Problem
Since yesterday, there's been a lot of hand-wringing, tea-leaf-reading and mindreading bouncing around the liberal blogosphere about Joe Lieberman's big announcement yesterday that he plans to join a GOP filibuster of health care reform if it includes a public option of any kind. A lot of the commentary is circling around the idea that Sen. Lieberman is in need of attention or just wants some love from the Democratic leadership. Or is just greedy. I'm not a professional political observer, but I think this misses the point and I think it's where Harry Reid got his math wrong. The point is: Joe Lieberman still wants to be the senator from Connecticut. And he's figured out the way to do that. All of this is a message to one person, really.
Jodi Rell.
Kos circles around it here, but misses it in his anger at Lieberman. If Jodi Rell enters the race for the Senate, Lieberman is toast. If there's a credible Democrat in the race, Lieberman is embarrassed toast. Either way, his career as the Senator from Connecticut is over. He's got two years to build his campaign. He can't reach out to CT Democrats because, well, they hate him. And he won't be able to go back to being a Democrat anyway. They're going to field an opponent, who'll stake out ground to Lieberman's left.
But...to his right? If the GOP fields a credible opponent, it will be Jodi Rell or someone like her, that rarest of things these days: a moderate Republican candidate. Connecticut is a moderate state. They send some far right clown out there, they'll get stomped. But if they send Jodi Rell out there, she'll lose. If Lieberman is running.
I think Joe just told the world that he's planning to run for the Senate in 2012. And that the CT GOP can have no better friend than him in the Senate. For Joe, it's all wins: as an "independent" who caucuses with the Democrats, it's pretty clear he's not going to lose anything by opposing them. But as, essentially, a solid Republican vote, he'll give the GOP everything they could want.
He's clearly thinking that 2012 will be a repeat of 2006 for him: a Democrat on the left, a no-name, unthreatening Republican on the right, Joe picks up the right-leaning Democrats, most of the Republicans and enough independents to beat out his rivals. In order to do that, he's got to establish a right flank that a Jodi Rell can't beat. Hence his position: I'm all for health care reform, and want to do it, but that public option is no good and I can't in good conscience support it. Nothing about death panels or socialism. It's all wrong about entitlements and taxes, but that doesn't matter. It sounds sensible and reasonable and, unlike some others, principled.
I'm a big believer in rational actors in this world. Maybe it's the theatre background. Ego, selfishness, self-importance are obviously big motivators. But they're also end results. We always learned in playwriting and acting classes that emotions are poor goals (I want to be happy!) but attaching it to a concrete thing (I want to be king so I can be happy!) makes it actionable. Joe does love the spotlight and the attention, but the best way for him to keep that: stay a Senator. And the best way for him to stay a Senator? Oppose the public option. It ain't pretty but it'll work.
Unless you're from Connecticut or have friends and family there who want the public option available to them. Then...you might have some phone calling or letter-writing to do. I'm just saying.
Jodi Rell.
Kos circles around it here, but misses it in his anger at Lieberman. If Jodi Rell enters the race for the Senate, Lieberman is toast. If there's a credible Democrat in the race, Lieberman is embarrassed toast. Either way, his career as the Senator from Connecticut is over. He's got two years to build his campaign. He can't reach out to CT Democrats because, well, they hate him. And he won't be able to go back to being a Democrat anyway. They're going to field an opponent, who'll stake out ground to Lieberman's left.
But...to his right? If the GOP fields a credible opponent, it will be Jodi Rell or someone like her, that rarest of things these days: a moderate Republican candidate. Connecticut is a moderate state. They send some far right clown out there, they'll get stomped. But if they send Jodi Rell out there, she'll lose. If Lieberman is running.
I think Joe just told the world that he's planning to run for the Senate in 2012. And that the CT GOP can have no better friend than him in the Senate. For Joe, it's all wins: as an "independent" who caucuses with the Democrats, it's pretty clear he's not going to lose anything by opposing them. But as, essentially, a solid Republican vote, he'll give the GOP everything they could want.
He's clearly thinking that 2012 will be a repeat of 2006 for him: a Democrat on the left, a no-name, unthreatening Republican on the right, Joe picks up the right-leaning Democrats, most of the Republicans and enough independents to beat out his rivals. In order to do that, he's got to establish a right flank that a Jodi Rell can't beat. Hence his position: I'm all for health care reform, and want to do it, but that public option is no good and I can't in good conscience support it. Nothing about death panels or socialism. It's all wrong about entitlements and taxes, but that doesn't matter. It sounds sensible and reasonable and, unlike some others, principled.
I'm a big believer in rational actors in this world. Maybe it's the theatre background. Ego, selfishness, self-importance are obviously big motivators. But they're also end results. We always learned in playwriting and acting classes that emotions are poor goals (I want to be happy!) but attaching it to a concrete thing (I want to be king so I can be happy!) makes it actionable. Joe does love the spotlight and the attention, but the best way for him to keep that: stay a Senator. And the best way for him to stay a Senator? Oppose the public option. It ain't pretty but it'll work.
Unless you're from Connecticut or have friends and family there who want the public option available to them. Then...you might have some phone calling or letter-writing to do. I'm just saying.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A Word About Politics
Now that I'm coming out of the pre-reading fog, followed by the post-reading gloat, I'm coming back around to doing some political writing and thinking. Now, I'm very, very aware that this blog publishes to my Facebook page. My Facebook friends are a mixed bunch and I like it that way. I'm a raging progressive, full of piss and vinegar about leftist causes and issues. Some of my friends are to my left, some are to my right. I love all of them, no matter what and honor their thoughts and opinions. (And I'm not just saying that because I had a couple of glasses of wine, chatting with my roomie just now...)
In the world of Facebook, my friends sometimes interact and it can get heated. I think that's a good thing. Ideas should be questioned, buttons should be pushed. An opinion you won't defend, even with bullshit, isn't an opinion worth having, I say. But I also know that feelings get hurt, words are hurled and whatnot. I want to acknowlegde that. I throw some serious flames now and then, but I wanted to make a distinction. We seem to be moving into a period of very intense conversation, discussion, decision-making by our government about a great number of things and I want to be able to talk about it, blog about it, post about it and get feedback and start discussions and back-and-forths, but without anyone getting in a huff unduly. So I want to say something.
I love my Republican friends. I do. I love my conservative friends. I even love my libertarian friends. All with the same vigor and passion that I love my progressive, leftist, hippie, socialist friends. Like Walt Whitman, I hold multitudes and you are the armies of those I love. So trust that.
I want to make a distinction between people who vote Republican and Republicans, i.e. the elected and selected (sometimes self-selected) official voices of the Republican Party. I find Republicans often unpleasant, bizarre and, more often than not, off-putting. NOT the beliefs of People Who Vote Republican (though I have my disagreements there) but the words and actions of the Official Republican Party. So I'm drawing a line: when I'm mocking, shocked, outraged, in a state of disbelief, I'll try to draw a distinction between the Official Republican Party (i.e. The GOP) and People Who Vote Republican (i.e. PWVR). PWVR are cool with me, seriously. The GOP...not so much. Okay? When I post a link to a critical or mocking story, I A) won't take it personally if you don't read it, B) don't mean it personally and C) won't get angry if you post in defense. I just ask that you, PWVR, A) don't take it personally that I posted it, B) don't get angry if I spout off about it and C) defend your position if you feel like it. Is that cool?
I think we need to have dialogue in this country, real, true bipartisanship among the people, so that People Who Vote Republican and People Who Vote Democratic (and People Who Vote Working Parties, or Socialist Party USA and Green Party) can share ideas and thoughts safely and openly. Governing is a bit different, but that's a post for another day. I guess I'm just saying, in the immortal words of Rodney King, can't we all just get along?
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
In the world of Facebook, my friends sometimes interact and it can get heated. I think that's a good thing. Ideas should be questioned, buttons should be pushed. An opinion you won't defend, even with bullshit, isn't an opinion worth having, I say. But I also know that feelings get hurt, words are hurled and whatnot. I want to acknowlegde that. I throw some serious flames now and then, but I wanted to make a distinction. We seem to be moving into a period of very intense conversation, discussion, decision-making by our government about a great number of things and I want to be able to talk about it, blog about it, post about it and get feedback and start discussions and back-and-forths, but without anyone getting in a huff unduly. So I want to say something.
I love my Republican friends. I do. I love my conservative friends. I even love my libertarian friends. All with the same vigor and passion that I love my progressive, leftist, hippie, socialist friends. Like Walt Whitman, I hold multitudes and you are the armies of those I love. So trust that.
I want to make a distinction between people who vote Republican and Republicans, i.e. the elected and selected (sometimes self-selected) official voices of the Republican Party. I find Republicans often unpleasant, bizarre and, more often than not, off-putting. NOT the beliefs of People Who Vote Republican (though I have my disagreements there) but the words and actions of the Official Republican Party. So I'm drawing a line: when I'm mocking, shocked, outraged, in a state of disbelief, I'll try to draw a distinction between the Official Republican Party (i.e. The GOP) and People Who Vote Republican (i.e. PWVR). PWVR are cool with me, seriously. The GOP...not so much. Okay? When I post a link to a critical or mocking story, I A) won't take it personally if you don't read it, B) don't mean it personally and C) won't get angry if you post in defense. I just ask that you, PWVR, A) don't take it personally that I posted it, B) don't get angry if I spout off about it and C) defend your position if you feel like it. Is that cool?
I think we need to have dialogue in this country, real, true bipartisanship among the people, so that People Who Vote Republican and People Who Vote Democratic (and People Who Vote Working Parties, or Socialist Party USA and Green Party) can share ideas and thoughts safely and openly. Governing is a bit different, but that's a post for another day. I guess I'm just saying, in the immortal words of Rodney King, can't we all just get along?
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Monday, October 19, 2009
I'm Not Dead Yet!
Honest! I swear! I've been up to my eyeballs in writing. It's October and that means Octoberfest at E.S.T. For the uninitiated, that means about a gajillion projects going on at the Ensemble Studio Theatre's two stages for the month of October (and going into November). You can check out the full schedule here. I'm sure you'll find something to your liking.
I always use O'fest as a bit of a challenge to get something up to snuff. Since I was stuck on ANARCHISTS all summer, I decided to switch gears and work on my big, old-fashioned, Philadelphia Story style comedy, HOUSEHOLD NAME. I had a reading at E.S.T. more than a year ago, but I'm adding a character and an act to the thing. It's October madness.
In addition, I signed up to write a short play, specifically for E.S.T. members, as part of a late night series of short plays. That one's coming up on Nov. 6th. But HOUSEHOLD NAME is upon us and I need to get the word out. So here's the word. It's getting out.
The Ensemble Studio Theatre presents
(as part of Octoberfest 2009)
HOUSEHOLD NAME
a new play by J. Holtham
Directed by Jordan Young
How much can you give up in order to have everything you ever wanted?
When Ruth needs cash to get her dream archeology dig off the ground, but to get it, she'll need her mother, a famous and feared home goods mogul. Unfortunately, it won't be easy: her mother's just been indicted, there's something fishy going on between her stepfather and her mother's assistant and the world's worst gossip columnist is hiding in the closet. A comedy about the past you bury, the present that catches up to you and the future you can't escape...
Sunday, October 25 at 2 p.m.
Monday, October 26 at 7 p.m.
The Ensemble Studio Theatre
549 West 52nd St.
(bet. 10th & 11th Aves.)
For reservations and information, call (212) 247-4982
So come check it out. It's a comedy, so it's always better to have a good house for it.
And I promise...once this is over, more substantive posting is coming. While my fingers have been a bit quiet, the mind is a-stir with thoughts. A-stir, I tell you!
I always use O'fest as a bit of a challenge to get something up to snuff. Since I was stuck on ANARCHISTS all summer, I decided to switch gears and work on my big, old-fashioned, Philadelphia Story style comedy, HOUSEHOLD NAME. I had a reading at E.S.T. more than a year ago, but I'm adding a character and an act to the thing. It's October madness.
In addition, I signed up to write a short play, specifically for E.S.T. members, as part of a late night series of short plays. That one's coming up on Nov. 6th. But HOUSEHOLD NAME is upon us and I need to get the word out. So here's the word. It's getting out.
The Ensemble Studio Theatre presents
(as part of Octoberfest 2009)
HOUSEHOLD NAME
a new play by J. Holtham
Directed by Jordan Young
How much can you give up in order to have everything you ever wanted?
When Ruth needs cash to get her dream archeology dig off the ground, but to get it, she'll need her mother, a famous and feared home goods mogul. Unfortunately, it won't be easy: her mother's just been indicted, there's something fishy going on between her stepfather and her mother's assistant and the world's worst gossip columnist is hiding in the closet. A comedy about the past you bury, the present that catches up to you and the future you can't escape...
Sunday, October 25 at 2 p.m.
Monday, October 26 at 7 p.m.
The Ensemble Studio Theatre
549 West 52nd St.
(bet. 10th & 11th Aves.)
For reservations and information, call (212) 247-4982
So come check it out. It's a comedy, so it's always better to have a good house for it.
And I promise...once this is over, more substantive posting is coming. While my fingers have been a bit quiet, the mind is a-stir with thoughts. A-stir, I tell you!
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