writing.performance

My director Maya Roth and I sat in a Cajun cafe in the French Quarter tonigh and ate blackened catfish, then went through the Trojan Barbie script in preparation for tomorrow’s Jane Chambers reading–great far-ranging conversation from war to aesthetics. It is hard to be in the ringing echo of disaster here. It’s also wonderful to be in a play world, working on a play, again.

Tomorrow is a big day: two readings of two different plays of mine! Both on the theme of war. (more…)

…that someone was wearing: read FEMA EVACUATION PLAN: Run, bitch, run. (more…)

there is only rain… I’m on the 41st floor of the Sheraton of New Orleans, was going to take a walking tour (very cool project by UT Austin Performance Practice students—a downloadable tour of NOLA narrated by artists from this city, speaking of their own memories and lives in certain neighborhoods). But there is just the heavy rain. In a way that evokes the flood for me… I imagine the rain just falling, and falling, and not stopping, and the trees and phone wires falling. Last night was a cabaret by local artists (including Kathy Randels who performed an awesome MC as Mama Nola) and Playback theatre and others. They are still here, still here, still here.

The message loud and clear from the folks here is, please come. (more…)

so I just arrived here in NOLA after many flight delays… and driving into the city saw the infamous Superdome.

About 100 yards in front of it there was a billboard with 3 large white faces on it and the slogan FOX CHANNEL 8. FOR SERIOUS WEATHER ADVISORIES.

Too little, too late.

It’s often struck me, as an Australian in the U.S., how often the political discourse in this country seems to take place as if from INSIDE a mirror ball–but everyone inside imagines the mirrors are windows. So, it’s always about “we” and “us”—us always meaning US(A). The “we” who should get out of Iraq always therefore sets up “them” as the incomprehensible rest-of-the-world as in “why do THEY hate us?” Very strange, for a nation of mostly immigrants who–as in my own country–have trouble coming to terms with the fact that the New World was already very old before it was invaded.

This mirror-ball life seems inventively to combine Gothic fantasy (the “bad guys” who might attack us according to the “color/fear index” as visual artist Holly Laws brilliantly puts it) with an utter failure to direct this imagination towards simple empathy or walking in another’s shoes.

Anyway— here is a wonderful and savage story from The Onion that captures exactly this mirror-ball irreality.

Study: Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die

You can tell the state of my brain because I’m taking online quizzes–arrived at via David William’s website… according to this multiple-choice test, I’m Love in the time of Cholera

You’re Love in the Time of Cholera!
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

So– I passed my dissertation defense on July 19…. I’m emotionally and mentally completely wrung out by the experience. However, I received some truly useful and excellent comments and advice, much of it “for the book”–which makes me feel excited, through the haze of exhaustion, about the book-to-come. And my advisor said very nice things about my work and presence in the program, so that is something I will treasure.

I have some small revisions to attend to and I’ll turn those in on Aug 5. After that–and once I’ve filed–I’ll feel like a “real” doctor and perhaps then will feel some sense of relief and accomplishment. Til then I feel in a strange twilight zone which only active writing will metabolize into energy and forward movement. (more…)

Director Amy Hodge has scored a “process week” at the Young Vic in London for us to work together on my play, Slow Falling Bird<em>. They have a program for young directors which sounds great. I’ll be going over in late August and will blog about the process. She has several theatres in mind for production and has assembled a team (producer, designer, composer).

I’m curious as to how this very Australian play will resonate with a London crew— Australia is almost the back-yard for the English, the dumping ground where the disreputable cousins were sent in leg-irons a couple of centuries back— and much of the country is glued to the contemporary Aussie soap (more…)

Just cycled home in the rain from the third meeting of this years’ Resident Artists at Perishable theatre meeting–a new program instigated by Perishable’s new and fabulous artistic director, Vanessa Gilbert, and roughly based on the HERE artists’ program in NYC. It’s a great group. It’s an open application process that cycles each year, for artists between “emerging” and “established”. (I’m not quite sure what those terms mean any more–or rather, where there is to emerge TO exactly–a point bemoaned by many as playwrights leave the theatre in droves for film or TV in search of a paycheck). Anyway!! It’s a program for generative artists (usually people who perform the work they make, rather than playwrights like me). (more…)

I know, it sounds a bit like Sleepless in Seattle. But it isn’t. Perishable Theatre in Providence, RI are producing the world premiere of my play Weightless in October. My long-term friend and collaborator Vanessa Gilbert (Artistic Director of Perishable) is directing.

I’m trying to think of catchy phrases to describe this play, which is kind of crazed.

My best one so far is “The Clean House on crack”. But that may not have quite the mass appeal I’m going for.