ramblings del quatro de mayo

My brain has been out of sorts the past week. I think the extensive travel, the flu, growing and shaving goatees, being behind on Lost and a general lack of routine has finally caught up to me. Plus, of course, the brutal sting of not winning the Pulitzer. Again. I take back every nice thing I've said about Thomas Friedman. He knows NOTHING about theater.

The neurons do seem to be coalescing back into a productive, useful place finally. Today, I worked in my one of my favorite writing spots to continue a slow, tedious rewrite of Hunter Gatherers (Today I worked on Richard's Toast). Yes, I'm doing some work on it again, hopefully making improvements and not suckifying it. A lot of the work has been incredibly detailed, changing words, cutting a sentence here and there. Plus I've done a restructure in Act II, eliminating the blackout at the end of Act II, Scene 1 and seeing what happens if the action just pushes into those two person scenes there. I'm curious how that will affect the pace and momentum. Again, my fear is rampant about breaking the play, but I think I'm making some good changes (The world premiere version of the play, by the way, will be yours for reading enjoyment in the June/July issue of Theatre Bay Area Magazine, wahoo!)

I am also sad to say I had to cut the line "They've opened a lot of doors for me, these hands." I think that was one of my favorite lines in the play but for some reason when I moved it later in the piece, it never was funny (At least not in the 40-odd performances I saw over the summer.)

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry, I'm now done talking about it.

I'm also readying boom for it's first public readings which should be fun and educational. For me, at least. It'll still be a beast when it's on its feet but I'm excited about hearing it out loud for the first time. Sometimes it's not until I'm forced to hear something that the whole of the play begins to reveal itself. Plays are weird. At some point they really do become their own creature and I feel like I am tasked with helping it find itself. As though I'm its life coach. As though I wasn't responsible for its existence in the first place. I have a furious couple of weeks ahead of me to crack it open some more before it gets the towel taken off. I'm mixing metaphors again.

I think that's one of my trademarks as a writer. Mixing metaphors. Willfully allowing my lack of intellectual prowess to stick it's head out in like a...like a...

GO WARRIORS!