Category Archives: F&F

a propos of nothing, F&F, self-blogerential

her long story

When Emilia came to the end of her long story – which in spite of its length displeased no one; on the contrary, they considered it to be briefly told with respect to the quantity and variety of events that were recounted in it – the Queen, expressing her wishes with a single nod to Loretta, gave her leave to begin, and she did so as follows:

Dear friends and readers, or enemies and followers, today is my twenty-seventh birthday, and although my life at this time feels like the longest story I have ever known, I hope that you, like the Decameronists, will find it and this blog equally briefly told with respect to the quantity and variety of events recounted in it.

This is the first birthday in years that I have not spent in previews. I am spending it, instead, job-interviewing, housecleaning, filing, and preparing for another meeting of the Jacques Lacan book club this evening. Tomorrow, some friends are coming over for dinner. Last night, I celebrated the April Seconding with a single cupcake, muttering “Happy birthday, cupcake” to myself in quiet agony. But today, I’m going to clean the bathtub.

The most important present I have given myself is the making of a decision which has been suspending me in neutral for months. In its wake, I barely know what to do with myself, but at least it has been made.

Although, unlike Lauretta, I do not know what story I am going to tell you yet, I am comforted and continued by the knowledge that I will keep telling you something. Thank you for being and for reading.

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chicago, F&F

this train only goes in one direction

On a train from Jackson to Damen, in search of tacos, with two of my friends, young women of indeterminate age, they discover that I am older than both of them. They are surprised.

“Yes,” I say, “the late twenties.”

“What’s it like?” says one of them, and I realize she’s serious.

Luckily, I had just thought of the answer to this question a few days ago, while pondering a recent screw-up and its aftermath.

“Well, the thing is, you will keep on making the same mistakes,” I say, “but you make them much faster. It takes six weeks, as opposed to several years, to recognize what you’re doing and stop.”

“Yeah?” says the other.

“But you can’t consume as much alcohol or stay up as late as you used to,” I say, “so get your drinking in now.”

(This is the first time I have written a dialogue excerpt in fiction as opposed to play format.)

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chicago, F&F

football americain

I watched Super Bowl 43 with the same assortment of folks from the Indy Convergence with whom I watched Super Bowl 42. It’s hard to believe I’ve now known Robert and Caitlin for two years.

Last year, in Indianapolis, our crew was surrounded by an group of twenty rabid fans, who screamed every time the TV reception went out (often). I had driven in driving rain with a frustrated friend and actor in my front seat, and gotten lost several times in dark, streetlightless streets. I remember thinking that the Super Bowl was out there somewhere, but I was never, ever going to find it. We arrived late, and I had to turn round & take him home about 20 minutes later. We could barely focus on the football for the many theatrical crises growing around us. I was mid-production for the first reading of 13 WAYS and was so distracted I couldn’t sit down. Honestly, I don’t even know who won that game.

This was a much less dramatic and smaller party, with only six people. We ate Costco pizza and watched James Harrison run 100 yards. I was the only one in the room rooting for the Steelers, but we all respected each other’s loyalties. Lots of jokes about holding penalties and Madden’s unfortunate, repeated “double penetration” phrase. For the first time in my life, I watched every single minute of the football being played.

Rode the Western bus home from Lawrence to Division, and made myself obnoxious to the drunk people on the bus by asking if they were Steelers fans. They weren’t, but they were nice about it.

Robert and Caitlin depart today for the second annual Indy Convergence, and the Steelers have their sixth Super Bowl title. If you keep living, stuff keeps happening.

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a propos of nothing, F&F, writing

friends from the past

An old friend comes to visit, a writer, another native Californian, an iconoclast, a fellow formalist, a devotee to the goddess of rhyme. We haven’t spoken in over a year, but he finds himself in Los Angeles, as I do. We talk politics – I tell him about my intention to work for the Democrats until the election happens, and he shares with me that he spent a week canvassing in Ohio during the primary.

We talk poetry. I show him some of the stuff I’ve written this past year – one extremely formal, one loose and semi-formal (like a winter dance), one simple and prosaic. The semi-formal one, about revenge, is one I realize I wrote for him and his sensibility even when he wasn’t present. He’s one of my ideal readers. He’s always had a good ear for my work, one of the best, but I am moved, as always, by how he feels the emotion of the writing.

I am proud of these poems. I’m moving towards something with them. And he senses, more than anyone I’ve shown the informal poetry to, the void in the heart of them when they are rhymeless. He knows what that means to me.

Being in LA right now must be the right choice, if things like this are going to happen. I vow, foolishly, to find somewhere in this city to read my poetry while I’m here.

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convergence, F&F, the chorus, writing

back in the saddle

Directing, that is, or travel – both. Spent the weekend between Red Bank and Philly, exploring the NJ Transit system. (Penn – Red Bank – Rahway – Trenton – Septa to 30th St.) Saw Aaron’s gory and wonderful MACBETH at TRTC, and met to talk SAGN choruses.

In Philadelphia, I visited Eileen and Danny, and achieved the rewrite of 13 Ways of Looking At The Chorus (which I’ve retitled “The Chorus Complex” in homage to Oedipus, for this draft, at least…) between 4 and 8 am. It felt creatively productive to see those guys again, but I also think it was just time to get it done. It’s funny how when you’re really ready to write something, you just wake up, no matter what hour of the day it is – and write it.

The new script has way more rhyme in it than I had imagined it would.

Today Susan and I saw Stoppard’s ROCK N’ ROLL (loved the second act, could have done without the first) and this evening I had design teleconferences with David (video) and Chris (piano.) I fly to Indianapolis tomorrow morning for pre-production on the Convergence and this flexibly titled chorus project. Rehearsals begin 1/31.

This has been a really wonderful stay in NYC, and unless something else comes up, I plan to be back in this city in April, May, and June – seeing lots of theater, and working on a script.

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F&F

“Culture: not helping”

It’s a great day in the universe for my friends getting blogs. Read the mind of Toby C. Siegel at Geistig: One Individual’s Reflections On Social Matters.

As usual, with Toby’s writing, the paragraphs that simply are meant to introduce more complex concepts clarify confusions I didn’t even know I was harboring. Such as:

“Prof. A.V. clarified for me this week the difference between a metaphor and a symbol. A metaphor establishes a relationship between two knowable or representable things, whereas a symbol shows you something you can see in order to point to something invisible.”

Let’s all keep pointing to as many invisible things as we can.

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F&F, moving, travel

creativefrequencies.blogspot.com

My good friend Kristel, former SLE kid, EBF roomie, fellow member of the EBF Management Team of Stars, and video artist extraordinaire, has a new blog about her experiences in moving from Estonia to Vancouver. She and MiQ will arrive on December 30th, 2007.

“A record of an Estonian video fiend and a Canadian audio contortionist moving from the eastern end of Europe to the western end of Canada, after meeting in San Francisco and getting married in the middle of the Baltic Sea.”

I think this has to do with style, too – the style in which we live these days, between and among many nations and continents. Kristel, Henrique, and other friends of mine who manage to be multinational nomads are people I admire greatly. They bring worlds together. Here’s to getting out of the States in 08.

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F&F, UpstageProject

867-5309

I took an evening to catch up on phone calls. I talked to Amina and Sari at length today. Good for the soul. And Zack. We are making progress towards the UpstageProject website. Slow but real progress, like buying the domain name. It’s totally going to be the Bookslut of theater. If such a thing is possible. Blogs, news, articles, all that and a ball of chips. I mean a bag of chips. Or a barrel of wax. Or something.

Zack also helped me make daraweinberg.com redirect here. And Amina is really being careful about making sure we don’t make things too hard for ourselves.

We almost retitled the site “The Lazy Man’s Theater Weblog.” We want to have rotating subtitles – so the subtitle can change every day – like how Google has new images appear…

I am blessed in my friends who are wise in the ways of the Internet. And of journalism, and San Antonio. And the world. In fact, I think my friends are, in general, so wise that I can go on being as blissfully wrong about everything else as I always am.

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F&F, Golda

Golda’s Balcony – Week 2, Day 1 (or Day 7 by the Babylonian Calendar)

I’m finally up to the present with these notes, except that it’s past midnight so the dating is still off. So: Golda’s notes from Tuesday, 9.11.07.

We begin with our second design conference. Aaron shares our 3 modes of existence with the team:
1978 – reflecting
1973 – reporting
other time periods – enacting
He also mentions that we are reinforcing certain motifs in certain areas.

On the subject of projection, we reinforce, again, that the play is in Golda’s head. We are using two types of shots, so far: actual memory images in her head (boys with stones in hands) and visual backgrounds for all the characters (Cyprus camp) Steve asks if Golda needs to have seen something, or to prove that Golda could have seen something, to make it a memory image projection. Chad thinks not. Aaron reminds all of us that memory is imagination.

We resume going through cues loosely on p. 14. A question comes up about having other actors record the voices of Golda’s family as a VO. It’s too expensive, but Aaron plays, here and in rehearsal, with the idea of Camille doing some more recording for the purpose.

Big discussion of whether or not to have an Israeli flag / Star of David for “Where nothing was, Israel is.”

After lunch, we run through what we’ve staged so far and then begin staging anew, from mid the Lampshade sequence with Morris. I take some notes in the run.

Discussion of repetition – of progressive vs. digressive storytelling.

Camille: Do you have an idea? A point of view?
Aaron: I don’t have any ideas or points of view, you know that by now.

Camille wonders what Golda was like when angry. If she was a leftie or a rightie. How long ago it was since she got any. I don’t know if we’ll be able to answer these questions historically – we’re entering the realm of Golda as character, not just Golda as historical person – and she’ll have to make up answers, just like you have to when working on Madame Ranevskaya. But I do send them all to the dramaturgs anyway, just in case.

The dramaturgs find me tons of YouTube footage of various missing diplomats. It’s extraordinary. Aaron was right that we didn’t need to order the stuff from Vanderbilt. Again, grateful for the existence of dramaturgs in the world. I could have sworn I had done these searches myself, but they found everything so well and completely. I’m going to look through the clips tomorrow and figure out which will be most useful for Camille.

I drive to SF and pick up Meredith, and we eat at WeBe Sushi before collapsing into her friend’s glorious Guerrero St. Apartment. I talk to Michelle about LA restaurants. And then…notes…

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