Category Archives: writing

writing

Blog in me, O Muse, and…

I woke up today and decided all my poems were going to be written to the poem: and that many of them would begin with “Poem, I say,” and then going on to say something. I also decided that this was going to be the theme which would unite all the ununited work I’ve written this year, and that I would call it “The Hubris Cycle.” Bad Homeric.

I wrote several on this theme today, in between 6 hours on Creative Capital, Round 2, for the Convergence (we have made the most extensive and elaborate budget I have ever made, for anything, ever) and continued dramaturgy work for Jess in PDX – she’s making her epic ASTRAL WEEKS dance cycle now, starting workshops – and I have to say, addressing the poem directly doesn’t make it any less intimidating. In fact, it talks back. The poem takes over the poem. Which is good in terms of getting writing done, but bad in terms of getting the writing I want done.

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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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the chorus, theater, travel, writing

the end of the WCX

Day 24, Sun June 25
We wake up like we’re going to battle, and go to the theater. We barricade ourselves in Semele with water bottles and folding chairs, and prepare to rehearse. To repeat. To rejoice.

We rehearse for four and a half hours, with a crew of tried and true actors – AVW, BH, and MOH&H are all proudly represented – and two new to the Dara Experience. They jump in like champs. We learn music at breakneck speed. I have an hour left at the end of it to do the bad director’s version of talking them through the play. Enough is enough. I leave it. I go five minutes overtime, which I am still vaguely ashamed of.

We eat pizza and spinach. We put bags of ice and frozen corn on our heads. We walk over the stage to the one restroom. Chris works music in the piano nook behind the stage while I take actors outside to talk over their parts – the Messenger, Oedipus, Medea. We make strong choices. We do shortcut staging. We decide. Directing in the fast lane.

We do the reading with a small but intense audience – some old HW friends, my designer cohort of Dan and Erin, a director from my freelance AD world, actor friends, and, just like with the cast, two who have never seen my work before.

I take the actors outside and remind them, in Prof. Martin’s words, that “the chorus exists because people come in groups.” We sing a song to warm-up and for sound check – we have a real hard-core audio engineer recording us – and we launch ahead. I babble at the audience about the chorus, about larger political and social movements, vs. the heroic individual characters. I make no sense. I sit down. They begin.

The reading is lovely. Everything works, as we knew it would. The actors deliver something with all the intensity I could have desired. I am beside myself with joy with the transitions from the Wasps to the Persians to the Wasps/Persians mash-up choruses. The world is real. One chorus is bleeding into another.

The audience begins the discussion, afterwards, by saying “Have you thought about masks?” and continue to generously share staging ideas with me. I realize to what extent I’ve separated myself from directing, because I haven’t thought about it at all. An hour of feedback later, all the comments have been positive. They like the music, they like the tone, they like the poetry – they spent the reading imagining it as a live production.

They suggest, without any prompting from me, that characters go into / come out of the chorus, that the ensemble all learn all the lines, and that this production be driven by the chorus. I have managed to get this idea which is stuck in my head, and stick it in some other people’s heads. I’ve created something which can stand for itself. I know that there’s no way I could have done it without Chris. The music is what makes this special. I’ve gotten the text to a good level, but his work is what makes mine work.

It’s over. We put the chairs back, lock the space, and go home. We talk as if the words were going to expire at midnight. We’re both very proud. It couldn’t have gone better, in either of our dreams, although I’m sure Chris wishes we’d been able to secure a piano without a malignant G sharp key, or else that he had written that note into less of the music. But things like that aren’t worth even remembering, in the face of this – a triumph.

“Good show.”
“Good show.”

Day 25, Mon June 26
The day after. The meaning of fatigue. We teach three hours of chorus workshops, polishing the work the students have done for their final showcase. We drive to check out a house for Chris’s brother in Eagle Rock. Back to H-W to record Chris for the showcase (since he won’t be there).

And then, since this entire trip began with a beach, looking over the Pacific from Seattle, we defy traffic and drive from the 101, over Topanga Canyon, up PCH to Zuma. Chris runs on the beach while I sit, freezing, wrapped in a towel, and feeling the first terrible sensations of post-opening maudlinity. I miss the play already. We swim in raging waves, and the waters knock me out of feeling any kind of sorry, or anything but good.

Then, trying to give Chris as much Los Angeles as he can handle in his last hours, I take the winding, wealth-track boulevard of Sunset all the way back from the coast, through the Palisades, through the Strip, through Hollywood to Los Feliz, and we stop at Zankou Chicken. I tell him that if he were Ben Affleck, or Mark Wahlberg, or (better yet) Vin Diesel on a bad day, he would dispatch his personal assistant for half a chicken.

The moment we get into the house I crash so hard I’m still falling. No one told me that writing would be harder than directing – and feel better – and hurt more – all at once. I’ve never been this tired. It has nothing to do with how little sleep my body has gotten, and everything to do with the release of tension of this reading being over. I can’t be awake.

Day 26, Tuesday, June 27
Somehow I wake up, and drive Chris to the airport this morning. The last song that his IPod shuffled into our consciousness was Rush’s “Fly By Night.”

“Fly by night, away from here
Change my life again…”

I drove away from the airport, feeling, again, like I had beaten the universe at its own game of chess. Who gets to be me, and do the things I do? Who gets to write a new chorus play-with-music while traveling from Vancouver to Los Angeles? I sang the songs from 13 CHORUS as I drove back to H-W, for another scene study meeting. Chris texted me from the security line that he’d just realized what he wished he’d played differently in the Overture. We both have the show stuck in our heads.

The rest of this week has been full of catching up on things that were shelved for the WCX – things like family, friends, finances, work. Every time I open something I think I couldn’t possibly be more broke than the last time, but this is a record. Perhaps I should say “broken.” I feel like half a person, or a quarter. I don’t know what to do with myself.

On Wednesday I had dinner with Ethan and Veronica, two friends and audience members from Sunday, to hear more of their thoughts on the script. It overwhelms me, and makes me grateful, how strong the response has been. E&V push me on the narrative structure, on the difference between TO DIE IN ATHENS (an Oedipus-based story) and 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE CHORUS (a chorus-based story.) I realize I have work to do. I have to contact thirteen translators, or else decide I’m going to re-translate all these works myself.

But the feedback continues to be good. Even our audio engineer has emailed me to tell me that he’s loved working on the tape.

Today I had lunch with my parents (a good reminder that I do have a life outside of the theater, and people who love me no matter what) and went back to the high school to polish the chorus showcase scene. They are the best class I’ve ever had. I think the way that Chris and I got to be working on chorus scenes and the play at the same time really paid off.

I also returned Phil W’s drum to him, and managed to get a ticket coming off of the Cahuenga offramp. Thanks, LA. I’ve only been in Los Angeles a week…it reminds me why this town and I don’t really mix any more. Traffic school again, I suppose.

But for now, I’m here – house-sitting in Pasadena with two dogs, working on a grant for the Convergence, turning in job applications (I’m hoping to work for the DNC / for Obama’s campaign for the summer) and reeling from the many things that have happened, all at once. I’m making plans to see all the friends I’ve missed for this past year. I’m looking forward to working on a political campaign, and gaining, at least for some time, some life experience unrelated to the stage or the chorus. I know it won’t be long before I come back to it – in fact, I know I won’t leave it at all. It’ll be in my mind all the time.

“Change my life again,” indeed. My year of freelance assistant directing is over. My life of writing (playwriting, poetry, and others) is beginning.

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writing

don’t call it a rewrite

more like a makeover. The play formerly known as 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE CHORUS is now definitely called TO DIE IN ATHENS, and there’s an ending-chorus of all the short ending choruses I have on hand from both Euripides and Sophocles. The ending to end all endings.

That’s the solution. Take away this man.
I want to make sure that our kings are cleared
Of all responsibility in this.

I can hear the play breathing now – it’s such a relief.

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the chorus, theater, travel, Uncategorized, writing

WCX, days 6 – 12

Day 6, Weds 6/4 – Day 8, Fri 6/6
Ashland, Ashland, Ashland. There’s never enough time. I have nothing more to add to what I said in my previous post – only that I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to see, due to being really under the weather for most of this stop. I will definitely be coming back for CLAY CART, OTHELLO and the other shows I missed as soon as I can. It’s a great season this year. I also saw some old friends. Not enough of those, either. I have to go back. It’s so frustrating to have getting sick correspond with your most beautiful outdoor stop on the trip. Mountains and rivers and theater, all missed. Still, did get to see one very heated political Shakespearean tragedy, and that worth all the trouble.

What? Coriolanus in Corioles?

Day 9, Sat 6/7
Feeling much better. We rent a car and drive the most scenic route possible from Ashland to the San Jose airport, dropping off the car five minutes before the cutoff. Highlights of the trip: the 101, the 1, the Humboldt redwoods, Confusion Hill, Whiskey Creek Road, and a gas station in Mendocino that sells organic wine. Cisco picks us up at the airport and we talk about old friends.

Day 10, Sun 6/8
Brunch and an enormous Stanford/Mirlo reunion at Stacks in Menlo Park, complete with an RA! I get to meet Quentin (of Megan) and Ben (of Romina), two husbands of my freshman dormmates. The evening is composed of Scrabble and Laphroaig. I get to play “GYRE.”

Day 11, Mon 6/9
We drive around Sausalito and Marin County with an old friend of a friend. The evening is, again, composed of Scrabble. I begin the next pass of the rewrite of 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE CHORUS during the Scrabble game. I get to play “DIPTYCHS” off of “DIP,” the highest-scoring Scrabble play I’ve ever accomplished, 60 points. Cisco attempts to play “ANBOGUS,” which, in case you’re wondering, is not a word – although both “QAT” and “FORGAT” are. I feel the rewrite energy swamping me and I know I’m not going to be able to rest again until the play has a Draft 6. And a new title.

I don’t manage to do much rewriting, only to psych myself out about the need to do it. I do, however, discover a very confusing note in my OED. AT COLONUS edition, indicating that one of the most dramatic sections is “similar to a dirge.” I consult with a Stanford classicist. A dirge? Really?

Day 12, Tues 6/10
Morning in Mountain View. Today is a major work day, making up for all the fun over the weekend. We spend about 6 hours at 2319 working on the piano – CF transfers all the guitar music he’s written. It amazes me how much pieces of music that I thought were so attached to one instrument shift flawlessly into another. He was completely right about many of them, esp. the MEDEA sections, being better suited to piano.

We also demo techniques for integrating his music into the HW choral voice workshop. I read a variety of choruses out loud and he plays along with them. Some bumps in the road at first – I don’t know exactly what it is I’m trying to do, only what doesn’t work. After some false starts, we end up choosing a chorus section which I’ve adapted myself, which is more rhythmical than some of the other translations out there, for the first unison exercise.

Child, child, child of Oedipus,
Miserable child of unhappy Oedipus,
We pity you in your despair,
Just as we pity him for his misfortune –
But we tremble to think of what the gods may do.
We cannot risk helping you.
We will not kill him – that is enough.
But you must leave our city at once.

We’re very well prepared for the first day of the chorus workshop, I think. We will have to do some new preparation after we see where the students are at in responding to our work. But we’re ready for Day One – and I have lots of directions it can go after that.

During the day, I also meet with two old friends and Stanford professors – a computer scientist and a humanist. I talk theater with both of them. One of them tells me that I’m doing something meaningful with my life. I hope she’s right.

After a brief stop for sandwiches and a mid-rewrite crisis of confidence, we go to a Mountain View coffeehouse and I plow ahead on the rewrite. Suddenly, the play opens itself up to me again. I add new characters – a Messenger and Darius – and a mixed-up ending composed of the ending of seven different plays. I’m still working on it now.

Zeus in Olympus is the overseer
Of many doings. Many things the gods
Achieve beyond our judgment. What we thought
Is not confirmed and what we thought not, the gods
Contrive. And so it happens in this story.

The play is now tentatively titled TO DIE IN ATHENS.

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theater, writing

lazy sunday

Yesterday, went to the Bronx Botanical Gardens with Tony and some Deep Springs/H-Med friends. Awash in cherry blossoms. One of them (the friends, not the trees) was the second earnest young rhyming poet I’ve met since coming here. We talked about Gerard Manley Hopkins, comics, hip-hop, sound poetry, Jay-Z, Eminem… There is a lot of comfort in finding other people occupying the same narrow subtopic-landing strip of the mind. And other people who are willing to introduce themselves as poets.

And today, going to see PASSING STRANGE, the first play I’ve seen since being here, and perhaps the only one since I leave Friday. It hasn’t been the whirlwind of theatergoing I expected, perhaps because this past year has been so awash in theater.

Tony and I were talking about metaphor yesterday, and technology. Things like “memory full” and “holding pattern” – the way that, as we work more with computers (or airplanes), we think of ourselves as more like them. And them more like us.

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directing, theater, writing

theory of acting

Yesterday I met with a friend of a friend at the Olive Tree Cafe, drinking endless cups of tea, walking to the bathroom through a comedy club, and we ate for hours while groups of people – designers, directors, public health advocates – came in and out. It was like a salon, or like the way I remember the Cat and Fiddle in LA. We discussed the marriage of two of them – the bride is going to carry her wedding dress on the 7 train to the actual ceremony.

By the end of it, we had all talked about the difficulty of separating art from life, including the usual digression on Heath and Method and Batman, and I had persuaded a director and an actor to read some scenes from my work-in-not-even-progress, the two-character realistic play that is so unlike me but I don’t seem to be able to stop writing.

I would really like to collaborate with someone (perhaps this actor, or others) on a general-interest theory of acting article. I’m very unqualified to write it. I just think it needs to be written.

And I have finally learned to end hanging out early enough to take my trains early enough to be home by midnight.

Today I have a meeting with another friend-of-a-friend that is my first real New York theater meeting, at a diner near Times Square. Should be interesting.

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