Oh, my brain- which has currently been focusing on Leviathan Singing needed this. What a headline to wake-up to!

Jellyfish Menace

American Theatre Magazine has been quite good these past two issues. First there was the Still Fresh, Less Flesh article featuring Celebration Theatre’s Michael Shepperd discussing his desire “to make sure we’re not just doing theatre for upper-middle-class, middle-aged white gay men,” and plays that feature gratuitous nudity just to appeal to hay audiences hoping to catch some cock-shots. Read it. It’s a great, inspiring article. Especially for me as a young writer frustrated by “ittle nudie-boy plays” as they’re called in the article.

This month there’s Ace Up His Sleeve: an article about writer Victor Lodato’s “kid’s eye-view dramas” and why his curiosity of the world around him can best be written from a “kid’s eye” or involving those sorts of stories. With The Dog(run) Diaries still undergoing revisions and concerns about it being “another coming of age story”, it was also really great to read this month’s inspiring article.

Also, one of my professors sent me this. Yes.

I’m thoroughly convinced that Mother Nature is pissed off at me for (finally) buying a car. Also, I don’t want to perpetuate the stereotype of BMV workers being disgruntled, vile human beings but my experience with all (three) that I’ve encounter this weekend would prove quite in step with said stereotypes. If I ever worked at a BMV office, I’d totally be extremely pleasant. Just because.

In other news, The Dog(run) Diaries has been submitted to The PW Center to conclude the Core Apprentice nomination process. My fingers have been crossed so tightly, I’m surprised I’m typing so well. Send positive energy.

Also, Tom Jacobson, a gem of a personage and co-artistic director at Ensemble Studio Theatre-LA, read the play and said some very, very nice things as well as passed it along to his co-artistic director to hear her thoughts.

NYC in two weeks to check out “Ghost Light” by Desi Moreno-Penson. I’ve read early drafts of the play and, while I’m sure it’s changed a ton through rehearsal, it’s a very fun, intriquing ride. I can’t wait. If you’re in NYC, check it out.Details here

Since the Daughters of Trinity workshop at The Playwrights’ Center this past July, I haven’t been able to really fully adjust back to life here at school. When you get a taste of the cake you want to eat from for the rest of your life, how can you go back to vegetables, right?

I’ve been nominated for the Core Apprentice program over at the Center and I really, really want the opportunity to develop The Dog(run) Diaries with them. They’re an amazing group of theatre artists, really offering something irreplaceable to young writers and I think the play is an interesting, imaginative story that can benefit from the experience.

Because of the nature of the play I’m submitting, I’ve crafted my project proposal around the theme of “Reacquainted with the Imagination” Here’s part of my project proposal:

As children, mermaids taught us to breathe underwater, dragons gave us incendiary bravery and over sized beanstalks allowed us to have dreams. In our post-modern, media-distorted world, revisiting this sort of creativity can teach us more about ourselves then we perhaps recognize. The Playwrights’ Center will foster a new sort of imaginative exercise, perhaps the best one of all: crafting a deeply moving and engaging play that will leave impressions on audiences, reacquainting them with the imagination.

Crossed fingers.

I somehow transformed
yesterday night when eight
legs crawled across my leg
during the peaceful sleep
that only greets you once
or twice a month.

The spider danced on my thigh
and I didn’t know it was there
until I rolled over to better occupy
the negative space of the mattress.

The bite was an intimate prick
like a needle
but pleasant
at the same time
like the pride and smile
that accompany a new tattoo.

I stood up and took the corpse
which had been crushed in my comfort
to the window and allowed it
vacancy on my window sill
until the morning.

I was different after that.
Somehow charged
by the small enemy(?)
in the sheets trying to find its way
home.

I was removed from the lands
of dreams, clouds, and earth
that I was enjoying inhabiting
for a while at least.
I stayed up and entertained
the thought of having eight
long
legs.

So I returned to sleep
after my face became acquainted
with the ice-cold liquid
from the bathroom sink.
Still hot.
And charged.
And somehow different.

of these things, I am fond of them all:

District 9 and lead-actor Sharlto Copley. Unlike any movie I can recall. Stellar performance from Copley (who is beautiful). A story told in the exact way I enjoy stories being told. I’m being elusive in terms of the film’s content and reviews because I don’t want to give anything away. The film needs to be experienced.

Modest Mouse.

Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie. Remarkable words. It’s too unfortunate things turned out the way they did. She could have continued to craft mountains from metaphors and forests from insight. Pick it up.

A few rather interesting finds:

South African Runner Gets Gender Test Are you serious?

Please check this man out. His poetry is quite astounding.

Here’s his poem, and one of my favorites, called Boot Theory:

A man walks into a bar and says:
Take my wife–please.
So you do.
You take her out into the rain and you fall in love with her
and she leaves you and you’re desolate.
You’re on your back in your undershirt, a broken man
on an ugly bedspread, staring at the water stains
on the ceiling.
And you can hear the man in the apartment above you
taking off his shoes.
You hear the first boot hit the floor and you’re looking up,
you’re waiting
because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be
some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together
but here we are in the weeds again,
here we are
in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn’t make sense.
And then the second boot falls.
And then a third, a fourth, a fifth.

A man walks into a bar and says:
Take my wife–please.
But you take him instead.
You take him home, and you make him a cheese sandwich,
and you try to get his shoes off, but he kicks you
and he keeps kicking you.
You swallow a bottle of sleeping pills but they don’t work.
Boots continue to fall to the floor
in the apartment above you.
You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
Your co-workers ask
if everything’s okay and you tell them
you’re just tired.
And you’re trying to smile. And they’re trying to smile.

A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says:
Make it a double.
A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says:
Walk a mile in my shoes.
A man walks into a convenience store, still you, saying:
I only wanted something simple, something generic…
But the clerk tells you to buy something or get out.
A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
but then he’s still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
but then he’s still left with his hands.

TGIF, but honestly, this week has been a surprising week of generosity and good correspondence.

As mentioned in an earlier blog, I sent out some e-mails to theatre companies that I think would make a good (eventual) home for The Dog(run) Diaries. Because I know the script is still in development, I was very open and honest about the fact that as a young writer, I’m looking for a director or company to help me develop the script so that, eventually, when the story is as clear as it can be and as compelling and interested as I know it can be, the play can find a nice home with a production.

Good news is, I’ve gotten a few responses from the companies I’ve e-mailed; all of which are being angels and offering to read the script and offer their thoughts. Along with Diversionary, the following companies have proved to be class acts.

Celebration Theatre
About Face Theatre Company

It’s be brilliant working with any of these groups.

After another completed draft of The Dog(run) Diaries, I decided to shoot out a few e-mails to some theatre companies around that may have an interest in the work.

There’s just something inside me and inside this story that is wanting to be told. It’s a piece I’m deeply personal about and I’d really love to find a director or company interested in helping me as a young writer develop the script, get it where it needs to be, and then allow it to live and breath.

With the help of some experienced theatre artists, I think it could be a really dynamic, interesting play.

That’s the frustrating thing about being a young playwright: you don’t know if you’re doing things “right”. If the story you’re telling is clear, if things are locking into place….any of that. It’s just you and your work until someone else gets involved and wants to help you out.

And I’d really love someone to help me out with Dog(run).

I got an e-mail response from the Diversionary Theatre in San Diego. They are a beautiful theatre company doing some necessary, compelling work that is really needed on the contemporary theatre scene. Artistic Director Dan Kirsch has graciously agreed to reading a copy of the script.

Here’s to hoping something beautiful can emerge from this. I’d love to work with such a socially-minded, talented group of theatre artists.
Here, have a pretty picture of the theatre:

I’ve finally come up with a quick, succinct way of answering the question, “What is it about?”, when asked about my new play Leviathan Singing. I think it works well as a hook, too:

Citizens of Eaton, Ohio are experiencing strange happenings and witnessing frightening creatures in their lake; Eaton’s only source of water. Could it have something to do with the stranger who’s just arrived and the way the townspeople are treating him?