There is no use in continuing to pretend that I am, in any way, still actively revising the script of 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE CHORUS, TO DIE IN ATHENS, or whatever on earth you want to call one chorus from every Greek playwright plus a few extra mashed up into an Oedipus v. Medea plot. I’m not. Or, rather, it’s not – and we’re not. The only word for that project is “not” right now. Every time I log onto this site and see, under “Ongoing Projects,” something about revising that script, I become discouraged. So I’m taking it down. The reading we had in Los Angeles was so successful that it seems a shame to not be able to work on it any more. But, for whatever reason, it’s not happening. I am only interested in writing more poetry these days. A lot of first drafts.

A revision is, I think, like a first draft – an impetus for it has to come to you. Barring that, there ought to be some kind of incentive to revise, like public opinion, an impending rehearsal, someone’s reading of it, or, (ha!) money. Or a sense that you know where you’re going. Or a sense that there is somewhere to be gone. Direction. Without that, you’re just messing around with the parts that already work, often making them worse.

There have been flickerings of interest in the script since the reading. People check in with me about it. One of the audience members even recommended me to a literary manager at a theater. But it’s simply not where my heart is at this moment.

I listen to it often, the recording. When I first had it, I listened to it daily, sometimes twice a day. These days I only play through it when my Ipod shuffles it to the top. I’m very proud of what we did. I don’t yet know how to do more. Worse yet, I don’t know why. What more is there to do? I proved the point I wanted to prove to myself, which was that the project was Possible. Whether or not it can, or should, be Produced, is a different kettle of P’s and R’s altogether.

I have less and less interest these days in bringing theater to a full realization, to staging, and more in simply writing. If there was some other collaborator on this project, someone who wanted to see it move forward, I think I would work on it day and night until it was perfect. But for both the composer and I, we have achieved what we set out to do. In the absence of a director, or something, there is no more to be done.

That’s kind of sad.

I’m sure I will work on it again one day, though I don’t know how. This, in a way, is a goodbye letter. Almost a breakup.