i'm doing laundry today!

I've reached the stage in the rehearsal process where new pages are no longer welcome, and I am happy to oblige. It's been a furiously intense first week. Of the initial draft I came in with on Saturday, only 37 pages have remained unscathed and unreplaced. I'm still making cut and tweaks, but it's time to let the thing settle in for a while. The cast, director, and crew here are dreamy. Dreamy, I tell you! I'm very excited.

The Vartan Gregorian Suite is pleasant and comfortable, except for the morning jackhammering which has become a 7:30 AM tradition. My suitemates/fellow playwrights/composers are a swell bunch (Yeah Andy, Jen, Steven!). Soon we'll be sharing our darkest secrets with each other.

I have eaten more sandwiches in the past week than I ever imagined possible. I think I'm losing a little weight even, what with trader joe's snacks not beckoning me from the kitchen. Oo, I am a little hungry now.

We almost had thunderstorms yesterday but they never passed overhead in Providence. I'm hoping we get a little wild deluge at some point during the summer. It would be especially great if it hit at a metaphorically appropriate time.

What's going in my brain while I rewrite

Me in my new temporary home

I have arrived in Providence.



This is me in my dorm room next to my torchiere and twin long. Ah memories. The torchiere lights are actually equipped with fluorescent lights these days, as opposed to the halogen versions that were popular when I was a boy. Apparently at that time, it was also popular to put tapestries over the burning hot bulbs for mood reasons.

Walking briefly around the College Hill area is a nostalgic and surreal. I can't tell if the kids walking around are high schoolers or college students. They look very small and I'm beginning to question my perception of age.

Spike's junkyard dog is still around, which is good because I'm in a hot dog mood. Please do not make inferences from that. I miss my boyfriend.

I'll try to use the blog for the next weeks (in providence and on the cape) as a little travelogue playwritealogue for my own benefit and hopefully for your entertainment. I also have a lot of work to do but this will become my main procrastination device I'm sure.

en route to Providence

Going to be in Providence, Rhode Island starting TODAY to perform transformative magic on a piece of theater.

I'll be in Vartan Gregorian Quad if you need me.

more soon, i promise

NY Times article about the theater Hunter Gatherers is in

Sweet!.

sorry

getting ready for an east coast adventure and haven't had much of a chance for too much sharing. hopefully something in the next day or two.

Why didn't they finish the research?!?!

The Pentagon could have made something really incredible and useful for the world but, well, I guess they opted for something less sexy instead.

Happy Queens!

The neighborhood, that is, for having funds for a new theatre library in one of their middle schools.

thanks, donators

Help a School in Queens Stock a Theater Library!

Fellow playwright Marisela has uncovered a nice worthy cause. Please consider sending some love to this school!

Here's what she's sayin:

I and four other playwright bloggers (thank you Enrique, Peter, Prince and Tim) are blogging to help fundraise for a theatre library for a middle school in Queens NY.

The Who:
Last week I discovered a great philanthropy web site called Donors Choose. It's a site dedicated entirely to raising funds for public education. Teachers propose projects (i.e. field trips, text books or money for a library) and Donors Choose reviews the proposals and posts the ones that pass the initial screening. I was on the site last week and did a search for theatre, that's when I found this proposal. A Queens middle school has just added theatre to their curriculum, but they have no theatre books.

How Much:
The proposal we're supporting is asking for $511 total. That's it. So if 50 people give $10 each we'll make our goal.

The Why:
This project really struck a chord with me. Perhaps it's because I come from a family of educators and I know how frustrating it is to try and teach without adequate supplies. Or because I came from a small town and know what it's like to be a student with outdated equipment.

But most importantly it's because I love theatre. We love theatre and we want to support theatre and the future of theatre.

So dear readers, if you can, drop by the site and help us give that middle school in Queens a theatre library. And please spread the word.

Thanks,
M


Click Here To Read The Proposal and Donate

ok so i'm watching the tony's

yes, snarky comment aside from before, I forgot how much the show kind of makes me feel dorky and good.

a nice little writeup on boom

Check out KQED's Arts & Culture Blog for a recap of one of boom's first public readings. Fun!

what a weekend of entertainment

• Is Paris Hilton our Marie Antoinette? She seems to have said "let them eat cake" in her own way. She is someone who flaunts her privilege and wealth in a blissfully ignorant way. (And for this, she has fans who are so admiring of her ability to, um, have a good time.) CW Nevius in the Chron has it right, this is comeuppance. Well now, we relish her modern gentle beheading, albeit one with less finality (4 weeks, sheesh it'll be over in a flash). Is this is as close as we get to class warfare in America, enjoying celebrity pain?
  
• It's Tony Week! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Kidding kidding. It's hard to get too terribly excited about an awards ceremony that by its rules excludes the vast majority of theater being produced. But there are people working on Broadway that certainly deserve some network televised accolades. Still, I think the stats broken down by The Playgoer pretty much say it all. But then again, what awards ceremony out there actually does get it right? The Grammy's? The Academy Awards? Look how wishy washy I am. Someone produce Hunter Gatherers on Broadway, please! It doesn't have a chorus of 40, but I think it could still be appealing..
  
• On a related note, Salon is "looking back over the year on Broadway" this week. Which is interesting because I don't think I'd ever seen them print a theater article ever before. So that's exciting, I think. They're starting off on a positive note by printing an LA actor's frustration with theater in general. It's an interesting and frustrating read, where I found myself sort of agreeing and then being a little mystified by his assertions (his article states that writers have more creative freedom in TV than in the theater. Um, what? Is that why every episode of Law and Order is so crazy and different? Is the constructive feedback provided by 14 layers of Network execs optional? I would argue that writers go to TV because it's the one of the few mediums where they can be paid what they are worth) The article successfully captures the cliche stereotype of theater, asks for theater to be more culturally relevant (amen) and then pines for the days of Mary Martin. ?? I wish it was a more thoughtful read because keeping theater as a "popular art form" is something that interests me greatly. The letters in response are fun, especially the periodic snide insults from "anonymous," who strangely enough is the only person defending the author. Hmmmmm.
• To continue on that note, I think the more interesting question is how does theater adjust to the new cultural vocabulary that is being defined by TV and Film. How does that change how audience members are processing stories and information? Not to make theater like TV and Film at all, they are equipped to tell certain stories extremely well, But i think there are advances being made in that field in how information is served. (I loved that article in NY Times about how new TV shows like Sopranos or the Wire force an audience to be following 10-15 story lines at once. )
• I'm excited for the Sopranos finale. What a great great series.
  
• I'm still loving LCD Soundsytem. The new Tegan and Sara tracks on myspace sound damn good. The Bjork album's growing on me.
• OK Gotta poop n playwright now.
  

Will I put my foot in my mouth on public radio?

Find out tomorrow when I appear on KQED's Forum!

10 AM Wednesday 88.5 FM
Or stream it then or anytime thereafter at their website

The show:

Wed, Jun 6, 2007 -- 10:00 AM

Local Theatre Making it Big
The show discusses the journeys of theatre productions that begin locally and gain greater recognition nationally and internationally.
Host: Michael Krasny
Guests:

Carol Shorenstein Hays, producer and founder of Shorenstein Hays Nederlander

Eisa Davis, singer-songwriter, playwright and actor

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, playwright and author of "Hunter Gatherers," a play that won the 2006 Will Glickman Award for the best new play in the Bay Area in 2006 and the Steinberg New Play Award from the American Theatre Critics Association

Robert Hurwitt, theater critic with the San Francisco Chronicle

Tony Taccone, artistic director for the Berkeley Repertory Theatre

My writing process

Deep in the "hard part" of the rewrite, i am battling procrastination (winning for the most part). Some examples of when I lost over the weekend:

• I chewed through two packs of Orbit in about two days. I know I said good things about the Bubblemint, and I stand by it, but the Orbit gum as a gum tends to stiffen and become less enjoyable after about 15-20 minutes of chewing.
• I watched a portion of the MTV Movie Awards. Firstly, is Sarah Silverman actually funny? Or just mean? That was some awful awful television. I'm still mad at MTV for cancelling Taquita and Kauai.
• I watched Knocked Up. Which I liked a bunch. Very funny. Strangely enough, though, all the previews were for other comedies about twentysomethings getting married, dating and being all young and gen x and y but still conforming. Somewhere between Porky's and Ralph Reed. Actually this NY Times Article gets eloquent about the trend. My play is sort of about babies. Or the importance of sex, specifically.
  
• I will be upfront and admit that every time a male kiss (or suggested male intimacy) takes place in a movie preview of a new comedy, and the majority of the audience goes "ew," that makes me hate straight people.
• Don't worry, straight people! It's just for a little while.
• I bought the new stamps.
  
• I went to Trader Joes.
• I read an article about procrastination that was not quite as interesting as I hoped it would be.
  
• I checked my various balances.
• I actually did some writing even.
• I wrote a blog post.
  

June yawns open with possibilities and....

I have nothing really to say and have to get to rewriting STAT.