Opening Night of True

Nervous. Excited.

Shells texts me emoji ghosts. The roommates yelp down the hall, "Tonight!" My sister presents me with a book of bat pictures. My aunt e-mails Xs and Os. Everyone's on my side.

True and Faith. Dress rehearsal.

Long black night, morning frost.
I'm still here, but all is lost.
Feel the storm every night, hope it passes by.
Hallucinate a shady grove where Judas went to die.

High and Dry

Writing a play for high school girls. I have massive writer’s block, which is odd for me. But also, I’m just really grossly burnt out. I so don’t deserve to be. I just had fall break. This morning Ro stopped at home for a mid-morning cig and we sat on the back porch, her in work clothes, me in an over-sized Cosby sweater. It was like a game—“What stresses you out? This is what stresses me out.” And then we died laughing because we’re 20somethings just hanging out at 10 AM on a Thursday. How bad could it be? I mean, we recognized that, but then we paused, and all the grey stuff still hung over.

So, this writer’s block. High school girls. I plunged into some prime material: my old LiveJournal. It was just so sad. I mean, even when I was happy, it was still sad. This puddle of gloom, of “What will happen after this? This is all so fleeting.” College had umbrella’d since I was twelve. I clicked through other friends’ journals. None updated since 2006, 7. These kids stuck in cyberspace. And they were sad. So sad. Just like me! Girls I loved, girls I didn’t, girls I envied, girls who envied me. None of us were that different. But in each piddly little entry was a kind of hope. A hope that the writer was young and knew more was to come. Twinge of nostalgia for high school sure to end, but a feeling of relief that soon the confusion was over, the sad sack days were numbered.

Honestly, I liked high school, but I also grew up surrounded by TV and movies assuring me that growing up is supposed to feel like hell. At times it did, but that was apparently norms. College is more the mystery. Everyone I know went through some form of depression in college. But it wasn’t cute anymore. It's just wrong. "No one is supposed to feel this way anymore," you think. But deep down you know everybody does and this time it never ends.

Lena Dunham said in an interview last year that she created Girls to explore just what is wrong with youth culture. No one ever says they are happy when asked sincerely. For a while I took this as a challenge to be genuinely happy, and I think I was. I think I am. But it’s weird that the word “think” is in there.

Five Best Sights So Far

All the chubby Alaskan bunnies.

A playwright watching his own work read cold in a bar cabin, trying not to laugh (because it's kind of tacky to laugh at your own jokes), but beaming through a tight-lipped smile.

The tail of a humpback whale.

Playwright who wrote a one-act about a little girl obsessed with killing things performing "Kiss" by Prince at karaoke.

This photo Bisque texted me. A close up of the map that hangs in his bedroom.

You don't have to be cool to rule my world.

So Moving

post-awards Nats 2006 with Hunny
Last week inbetween panels at AWP I was re-reading Jeffrey Hatcher's play Three Viewings which includes one of my favorite monologues of all time. The section is entitled "Thirteen Things about Ed Carpolotti." It was my Dramatic Interp piece for speech and debate my senior year. It was the piece that won me my title at Nationals.

I finished reading the play right as a panel on feminist writing began and totally surprisingly began to cry. I had forgotten how near to my heart and how incredibly poignant the end of the play was. If that's not good theatre I don't know what it.


Act III, Scene I

Also last week I was in the editing suites making a cutting of Summer Brave for my actor files when I got to that terrible dramatic scene for Rosemary. I couldn't edit that scene without tears in my eyes. I'm not disgusting enough to say my performance was so good that even I cried upon viewing. I will simply forever be emotionally torn up by those lines, those situations, frankly, that scene as a whole. My brown dress, the puddles on Bradley's shirt.

These experiences are priceless to me.

Oh, and Katie, Katie be happy this world can be ugly, but isn't it beautiful?