Vocabularian Car Crash...
My house in Brooklyn has been sold and the sale is closing this coming Monday. At the same time I'm obsessed with houses and openings with Sanctuary. And of course two shows are closing in the coming weeks. It's all just conflated.
Talked to old friend - not that either of us is old mind you - Jane Scarpantoni, rock and roll and newjazz cellist. We talked about the tension between the public parts of our careers, in both cases we enable others but less so ourselves - she doing string arrangements for other musicians' albums, in mine productions of other playwrights' plays - and our inner desires to see our own work done and promulgated.
One wishes all could happen for all... but at some point one must push all others away and begin to realize the work that breathes within our own souls.
On the train I wrote, finally, a page of pretty good dialogue and realized... I can still do this.
This year I'm going to get an entry out to New Dramatists. And to see some more of my work produced both by me and by others. That's got to remain a promise and be realized as one kept. Otherwise I'm just cheating.
There's a safety in enabling others to get their work up... then I don't have to deal with the possibility of failure in my own work... of mistakes made, or proving I'm a fool making bad choices. I can work with Sanctuary and pick great plays and make them happen in front of audiences, and the Times can come out and love them, as they did with Adam's play. But if I'm not taking the chances with my own work, investing the time to write them, and the heartbreak that inevitably falls from actual productions of the work, then what sort of playwright can I call myself? Love others, yes, but love onesself too. And self-love means seeing work completed, and produced.
So what's there to complete? Well, since The New Life, and the short Flick See Gears in the Sparklight, I've laid back in the safe zone of creating snippets of work, a character drawing there, a page of dialogue here, and not completed anything of substance. This cheat must stop. I must dedicate real time in each day to completing writing and real additional time in communicating that writing to real theaters who might produce it, and to garnering support and resources around myself as a playwright. To do these things will give me the ability to once again call myself a playwright.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
More good stuff
NYTheatre.com gave Food for Fish a great review too...
We're very lucky here... to have this piece by wonderful Adam Szymkowicz, and the work of Alexis Poledouris and the cast, at this moment.
And crowds of folks - folks we mostly don't even know - are coming out to see it and laughing and saying great things about it and telling their friends. And putting up with the lousy AC in the theater and still keeping up good spirits and still laughing and clapping at the end.
On a personal note... the house closing is now on schedule and the buyer is a nice lady who told my son (very sad about the sale of his childhood home) that he could come visit anytime. Gabe has sworn that he will grow up and become rich and buy the house back. Heh.
There's a lot of stuff here all about love - defined as the moments between people where they wish each other well and strive to do the right thing by each other - and of course, all this amazing, beautiful luck.
Sure, working your ass off for 20 years and saving and paying bills and helping other artists and hoping it all works out in the end, all the promises you make being kept, etc... that's probably part of the basis. Having a dream of making something that helps a lot of people, and that brings some more great beauty into the world, a world crying out for some beauty, is part of it. And focusing strong and relentless energy and concentrating all your positive thoughts on the outcome and being organized and cooperative and friendly is part of it.
There are probably 3 or 4 plays in all this complexity. Funny plays and sad plays. When all this slows down, and there's time to reflect, some wisdom will trickle out of all these experiences... many painful, many almost unbearably achy, and some humiliating and embarrassing. And these will be the basis of, one hopes, some kind of art. That speaks some truth to people. That communicates the value of hard, positive, focused work and good intentions and good plans.
The time to reflect on all this is coming. That reflection will bring about those many plays. And now we have a machine that can bring those plays to people. Now we need to gather about us all the support we need to make this happen. It must happen.
We're very lucky here... to have this piece by wonderful Adam Szymkowicz, and the work of Alexis Poledouris and the cast, at this moment.
And crowds of folks - folks we mostly don't even know - are coming out to see it and laughing and saying great things about it and telling their friends. And putting up with the lousy AC in the theater and still keeping up good spirits and still laughing and clapping at the end.
On a personal note... the house closing is now on schedule and the buyer is a nice lady who told my son (very sad about the sale of his childhood home) that he could come visit anytime. Gabe has sworn that he will grow up and become rich and buy the house back. Heh.
There's a lot of stuff here all about love - defined as the moments between people where they wish each other well and strive to do the right thing by each other - and of course, all this amazing, beautiful luck.
Sure, working your ass off for 20 years and saving and paying bills and helping other artists and hoping it all works out in the end, all the promises you make being kept, etc... that's probably part of the basis. Having a dream of making something that helps a lot of people, and that brings some more great beauty into the world, a world crying out for some beauty, is part of it. And focusing strong and relentless energy and concentrating all your positive thoughts on the outcome and being organized and cooperative and friendly is part of it.
There are probably 3 or 4 plays in all this complexity. Funny plays and sad plays. When all this slows down, and there's time to reflect, some wisdom will trickle out of all these experiences... many painful, many almost unbearably achy, and some humiliating and embarrassing. And these will be the basis of, one hopes, some kind of art. That speaks some truth to people. That communicates the value of hard, positive, focused work and good intentions and good plans.
The time to reflect on all this is coming. That reflection will bring about those many plays. And now we have a machine that can bring those plays to people. Now we need to gather about us all the support we need to make this happen. It must happen.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
The NY Times
Bless you Anita Gates for your review of Food for Fish... it feels great... though... wellll... really all this stuff is really ephemeral, I mean what is the point of anything... "press..." whatever. Still a moment, to breathe and feel maybe something was accomplished... ahhh....
Still we need to sell a bunch of tickets to this thing to keep us out of the poorhouse. Oy. I can complain multi-culturally.
Though it never made the NY Times, in the Daily News the Caption read: "Save the life of my child."
Dunno whar that crap comes from... the sump of the unconscious prob.
My dad, ever the guy from the previous generation, but kind, says blow up the NY Times article and laminate it and post it in the lobby. As if there were room in the Kraine lobby for it. I think we should, make us feel like NY Theatre Workshop or whatever.
Still we need to sell a bunch of tickets to this thing to keep us out of the poorhouse. Oy. I can complain multi-culturally.
Though it never made the NY Times, in the Daily News the Caption read: "Save the life of my child."
Dunno whar that crap comes from... the sump of the unconscious prob.
My dad, ever the guy from the previous generation, but kind, says blow up the NY Times article and laminate it and post it in the lobby. As if there were room in the Kraine lobby for it. I think we should, make us feel like NY Theatre Workshop or whatever.
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