I spend the evening with my oldest friend and his parents, all of whom are artists or educators. They are enthusiastic about podcasting, and they want me to tell them what I’m doing next. I don’t know. Only writing.

My oldest friend, who is a Victorianist, defines the Gothic for me, and I define the chorus for him. We know our fields of specialty because we define them broadly – to him, everything is Gothic, and to me, everything is a chorus.

I go back to Pasadena and watch Mike Leigh’s film TOPSY-TURVY again (about Gilbert and Sullivan) thinking it will give me some insight into collaborating on a play with music. I notice, this time, that Gilbert is directing the whole thing, too – rewriting his lines on the fly, and staging with absolute brutality and simplicity, allowing no one’s ideas into the shape but his own. It reminds me very much of the directors I have worked with who have also been the writers of the piece in question. Their ideas are good, but their processes are less open to innovation from the actors than the processes of directors who are only directors.

I think of the rehearsal I just had last week for the short Ron Allen play, and how little he said compared to how much I said. To write and only write, you need to be prepared to give your words into someone else’s hands.

Watching TT again also makes me wonder about making sure both CF and I continue working at the highest artistic level of which we’re both capable – not compromising ideas for each other as Sullivan felt he was for Gilbert – I wince at the memory of a few times during the reading where I asked him to provide music that was essentially musical sound effects, humorous and uncomplicated. On the one hand, I think he is more open to that kind of thing than other people I’ve worked with. On the other, we’ve never really talked about it.

It’s funny – I also realize, in this watching of the film (and after reading some writing online about it), how Mike Leigh’s filming of the scenes from the G&S operettas really plays up the fakeness of theater as a medium. It’s all about seeing the humans behind the illusions.