Sleep

I’m at MacDowell, such a beautiful artists’ colony. So far, I’ve slept the most incredible amount. Combination of fresh air, quiet (REALLY quiet), no internet in my studio, did I mention quiet…. and arriving after a busy and tiring visit to London and a summer cold. I am amazed that I can sleep 9 hours a night AND nap during the day… hopefully soon I’ll bounce into gear and actually write something.

 

Writing again

I’m drunk and in love. (Well, in a lateral way…) Just spend 48 hours or a little less at the NACL (National American Cultural Laboratory) writing in Erik Ehn’s workshop... a cross between a playwriting bootcamp and a monk’s retreat wherein we all prayed for a play! I was so happy that it was a silent retreat. Being in the company of other writers but not having to engage the chatter-schmooze-who’s whooo’s brain was wonderful. As is the place, a lovely old house in the Catskills with a theater/ rehearsal space next door. The workshop was a great mix of silence and time with intervals of group focus where Erik would offer new prompts and exercises.

I have a new term for my writing battles: the “noontime devil”.

 

If angels were scientists

I went with my partner (also a playwright & musician) to MASSMoCA in North Adams, Massachussetts for a couple days last week. There was still snow on the ground. North Adams is a hard-scrabble, beautiful old mill town in Western Mass. It hasn’t had the B&B makeover of the Berkshire pretty towns but it has MASSMoCA, an art gallery/ museum housed in an astonishingly huge old mill, originally a textile mill then an electronics factory and now an art gallery.

We saw Spencer Finch’s exhibition and also Anselm Kiefer’s. Such different work and so inspiring. Finch’s work was light, joyful and in close dialogue with the natural world and scientific processes. Much of it recreated certain light conditions– a huge blue cellophane folded cloud, hung before a painstakingly constructed panel of fluorescent lights of different shades, re-created the light in Emily Dickinson’s garden one summer afternoon. It made me look at the room and the light in it differently—to feel light as a palpable, passing entity. If angels were scientists, I picture them doing this kind of work.

 

Postcard from LAX

I’m en route to Australia, via a 24 hour forced stay in LA. United Air bungled the flight connection so I’m in an unbelievably shabby motel (Motel 6, don’t go there people!) in a small wasteland of freeway overpasses, roaming cars, shuttle buses, Golden Arches and many much nicer hotels. There is no coffee, tea or food in this hotel, can you imagine? It looks like the kind of place prostitutes bring their clients, and I felt a little out of place in the check-in line at 1 in the morning amongst some of the more amorous clientele.  I think I’m the only person here with a full set of teeth.

Wandering up the freeway in search of sustenance this morning, I felt adrift in a Raymond Chandler short story. Yet my skin and spirit love the softer air, the light–the West Coast is just that many hours closer to Australia than North-eastern USA. One day I’ll live in San Francisco, when the money angel magically comes up with the rent and a job there.

 

Two play-readings tomorrow

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.

 

A t-shirt

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

 

from the window

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.

 

new orleans

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.

 

Bricolage in Pittsburgh

I just had the best time in Pittsburgh, working with Bricolage’s theatre. IT ended up at about 2.30am in a gay bar, in a passionate conversation about art and cosmetic surgery.

 

The big frrrreezzee

I took this pic in Vancouver but it pretty much describes Providence right now.