We are show people. We can claim to be anything we want to be. The more outrageous and untenable, the better, so long as we ultimately back it up through sheer creative brilliance. We are not obliged to subscribe to any preordained corporatized benchmark. The audience is our only arbiter. So long as we give them what they want, or better-- what they did not even realize they wanted until we made them want it in the first place-- we are doing our jobs superbly. We should stake our claim, without irony or arrogance, to becoming a world class theatre community, and when, and only when, we convince our audiences, then world class is what we will be. Because we say so.Rumble, young man, rumble.
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.
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