The New Year

A new president, a new year, a new party, a new commitment, a new morning, a new coffee cup.

I am looking forward to the new this year. I am looking forward to looking forward. I am looking forward to the fact that forward is the only direction we should go in. I am looking forward.

My dog's name is Future. He is staring at me from the futon in front of my desk right now. The Future waits to be taken out for a walk around the block; there is so much to sniff and piss on. Maybe, if he's lucky, a squirrel will come out of hiding and run past his jaw and he can pretend that he has a chance to catch it and show what he's made of.

I love how everything is a metaphor if you just raise your eyebrows right when you say it.

My father died unexpectedly on Sunday, Nov. 30. I think it was Sunday, Nov. 30. We had lost track of time over the course of two days in the hospital. I find it more painful to write those words than I thought it would be. I miss him very much. He was a very good man and an excellent father. Actually, I would say that he was a really good father though he had his flaws but as a man, he was probably one of the best in the world -- ethical, honest, dignified, funny, smart, clear, grounded, strong. He knew what he believed, and he always acted on his beliefs of right and wrong. I know other people who are either confused about right and wrong or too cowardly or craven to act on what they know to be write and wrong. My father was neither confused nor craven, nor didactic or difficult. I can't believe he's gone, and don't believe its right. . . Though I'm dealing as best I can.

VP Picks

I enjoy this part of the game. Here are my picks. Anyone want to bet me?

McCain picks Pawlenty as his VP, and Obama picks. . . Wesley Clark.

I pretty confident about the Pawlenty one. And somehow it hit me that I think Wesley Clark is the best pick. So I'm banking on the Obama campaign being as smart as I think I am.

I like the chess game of it. Seriously -- 5 or 10 bucks? Anyone wanna bet? Maybe we can start a pool.

Religion and Art

I wonder whether you can be an artist and an atheist?

If you're an atheist, how do you understand the transcendent, altered state you feel when you create something? The feeling that probably made you want to be an artist in the first place?

Unless, narcissism made you want to be an artist. Then, you'd have to an atheist.

Life is Good

When I initiated this blog, back some months ago in the middle of winter, I think, I was desperately tossing about for some place to expunge the trivial but insidious thoughts that race around my head sometimes. I was also, in the middle winter, a bit at a loss in a lot of ways. A blog out there in the ether seemed like some kind of way to scream. In theory people read it but in reality who really cares? So, here I'll put these things I wish I didn't care about but do and maybe get them off my chest for a while. I figured that anyone I knew who stumbled upon it would recognize it like the rants I would sometimes do in a bar -- and maybe get a nostalgic pain.

But, I kind of think I was right to look at these ideas as less than important thoughts. I like talking about politics -- it's dramatic and important -- but I don't think its always worth getting red-faced and crazy about. At the very least, getting red-faced and crazy isn't helpful. . . I think that certain observations about the theater world are somewhat accurate, if phrased in an overheated way, but -- again -- overheating is not helpful.

Something about the semi-public nature of the blog made it seem somehow more theraputic to shout these thoughts here rather than to a private journal. The impulse, I guess, when you're lost is to shout and try to follow the sound of the echo toward something solid. . .

But, now, I also think that the constant noise of the internet, the fire hose that won't stop, the drip, drip, drip, pour, and the general desire to be heard that results in a race to shout louder rather than consider and speak clearly -- now I think that isn't a very healthy thing either.

I'm amazed suddenly at the way in which adulthood involves so much editing. Shay, the farmer I worked for, used to say that you have to prune the roses in order to keep the rose bush alive. I liked that. When I was kid, when we're all kids right?, we think that we can do whatever we want when we're adults. And we can. Yet, when we become adults, it becomes more obvious that there are many different ways to want things -- instant gratification vs. thoughtful consideration, instinct vs. you-get-it, what we actually want vs. what is easiest to get -- and adulthood requires that you often keep yourself away from some things simply because you know its bad for you. . . Please forgive me for articulating this as a 35 year old. My understandings ebb and flow over time.

Anyway, the point is that I'm no longer interested in continuing a blog full of complaints about the theater and political worlds (hey, are they even different?). Just cause. It's not helpful. To those worlds or myself.

Plus, I now know that a few people who actually do know me actually do read this blog -- and that changes the dynamic entirely. After, my last two angry angry rants, I finally realized that people who know me who are reading this blog might think I'm going nuts. . . I'm not.

Life is good. It really is. I just finished acting in a great part (or parts) in a fantastic play called 3 days of rain. It was summer stock theater, so after I finally memorized this very wordy play (good words all), I got to spend my afternoons on the lake beach before performing for reasonably good audiences every night. It really is good work if you can get it.

I've finally started writing real writing again.

My wife and I are starting a small business together. That's pretty exciting.

My wife is wonderful. She loves me and I love her. The weather is great. our new apartment is great. Our dog is great.

From what I know, my family is in reasonably good shape. As good as you can get anyway.

I have beautiful nieces and nephews, and I basically like people. Am interested in people.

Also, somehow, I've rediscovered the joys of reading fiction -- which I lost somewhere and didn't realize how much I missed. Anyone have any good recommendations for books? Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" blew my mind. really. That is some real good writing. Good writing. Anyone?

So -- just so the couple people I know who read this don't think I'm completely nuts now -- everything is great. Honestly. So great in fact that, I hope, I'll leave the angry ranting on a blog to other people from now on.

Thanks. Much love.

OK. I'll Play.

Everyone else does this, so what the hell --

Here's what the Obama campaign should do. . . or. . . whatever. Thoughts that race through my mind because I have, unfortunately, been checking political websites the last few days.

The press will continue to play the Britney/Paris thing over and over and over again BECAUSE it has Britney and Paris in it. They are the most overexposed people in our culture for a reason and the press will keep playing it. It's brilliant.

And the Obama campaign should fucking embrace it. They should run the same commercial and then add a tag to it.

"If its true that Barack Obama is a bigger celebrity than Paris Hilton or Britney Spears, isn't that great? He doesn't sing or dance like Britney. He doesn't do whatever Paris does. . . he talks about Iraq and the price of gasoline and the economy and he gets all these people to pay attention. Does it finally mean that we're done with all the shallow nonsense? Millions and millions of people are now FANS of a serious man from a serious party with real ideas to help put things on the right track. If John McCain is right, and a polician, a community organizer from Chicago, can become a huge celebrity. Bigger than Britney, then isn't it possible that each of those individuals can come together to bring about the change we need? if you're sick and tired of shallow nonsense, vote Barack Obama. It's a vote against John McCain and, Britney Spears and Paris HIlton."

O, and in answer to the question about whose ready to lead. Barack Obama is talking about serious issues and exploring real solutions. The McCain campaign apparently is applying for the job of publisher of US Weekly. Is that the kind of leadership they mean?

Because, the great thing about McCain's ad -- besides the brilliant name drop of people the press loves to name drop -- is that its true. Barack Obama is a huge celebrity. Embrace what it means that a man who wants to be president with a message of hope and change is a becomes a celebrity by talking about issues. You can't deny a truth.

And speaking of which, by the way, Barack Obama is black. This seems to surprise the press every week. Do they think he plays the race card every time he walks in to a room? When he said that he doesn't look like the people on the dollar bill of course he was in part talking about his color. he doesn't look like anyone else on the dollar bill. It's fact (nevermind the fact that they're green on a dollar bill). . .. That's not the same as the race card. Whateverthefuck those two fucking word means. . . But I guess I shouldn't expect intellectual rigor and, you know, even recognizing the obvious from the freakin' press anymore.

I real have to stay off the internet. I think it's driving me insane.

Acting, however, is keeping me sane. . . If there were more better plays out there, I think I would have stayed an actor. Everyone should do it occasionally. It's very healthy.

Someone Stop the Press Before They Kill Us

So, now, I read that this entirely fictional idea that Obama is somehow "coolly arrogant" is taking hold . . . somewhere. . . Karl Rove makes something up. It has a nice open-ended story arc to it. The media picks it up. Then because the media picks it up they pick it up more. Karl Rove isn't a Machiavellian genius; he's the best theater artist ever. He knows how to invent a 3-dimensional fiction with just a few well-chosen words on a page.

Enough about Karl Rove. The guy doesn't deserve anymore attention. Hell, he's just exercising his evil talents.

It's the press -- all of them including the bloggers who never get out of their goddamned house and speak to people -- Everyone is sucking on the same oxygen tube and the air is stale.

Here's why I'm so pissed right now - Didn't we have the "Who do you want to have a beer with" test in the 2000 election? And look where that got us! Why, o why, o why, would the press return to that ridiculous concept. 1. I'm sure some people liked Gore and some people liked Bush. Hell, I know it for a fact. I would want to have a beer with the guy who would be fun conversation. So however they judge the contest is utter and complete and total and utter and complete and total -- have I made my point? -- crap! 2. This isn't high school! It's like some whisper campaign in the halls. The new guy is coolly arrogant when really you just haven't talked to him yet. After you have gym class with him or something you tell all your friends that "He really is kind of cool, you know." 3. It's fictional! What has he done that's coolly arrogant. He's definitely cool in the calm manner of the word. And he definitely has a lot of fans. But the fact that he might be arrogant doesn't make him arrogant. To the extent that being cool (calm) and having tons of fans can have any affect on a person, I've simply heard him make jokes about it. Of course some people don't understand irony. . . And then I read some story in the Post where the reporter actually quoted from his prayer at the western wall, the bit about guarding against pride and despair. first of all, that thing absolutely never should have been published. That's just undefendable and second praying to guard against pride doesn't make him prideful. It makes you fucking humble! What- you think really humble people ask to be guarded against being too humble? Wouldn't that make them arrogant? or they don't ask for any help at all. Praying to guard against despair and pride seems to indicate a pretty good sense of what the freaking world and being human in it is actually like! . . . I'm constantly guarding against pride and despair and often failing! So are a lot of people I know!

Ahhhh

The thing that really pisses me off is that this type of coverage helped elect Bush, and that did actual real fucking damage to how people live their lives and very fabric of this country. You can see it everywhere. It's not a secret. Policy effects how people live. Policy effects how people live. These programs have an affect on individual people around the country and the country as a whole. Not whether Obama is coollly arrogant but what he actually would want to do as President. McCain too. Not whether he's personally old but his policies are old! These things are real and they are important. And the shallow crap that the media spews helped get us in to this mess. It's a real mess not a theoretical mess!

You'd think that any reporter worth anything could actually write some good stories related to real world effects on real world people of real world policies. Or you think any reporter with at least a brain or a heart would try to cover policies more than personalities simply because the other way gets people killed -- literally killed! But no, they just keep playing their little stupid little stupid little high school games. . . I was going to say that maybe they're too insulated by their middle class lives but I know that newspapers are feeling the pressure of job cuts and layoffs just like everyone else. . .Do they think that is an accident? 1. Bush's stupid policies effected you too! 2. Your stupid reporting, stupid assumptions, stupid and easy to manipulate credulity, stupid stupidity means no one actually likes you. You provide no service. You deserve to be destroyed. As far as I'm concerned, they can't kill the newspaper fast enough!

Before you destroy the rest of us.

Argh!

Conclusions based on no evidence, stated boldly

The internet makes us feel lonely. Good books, theater, music, make us less lonely. Television makes us dumb.

I don't know why, though I have cockeyed theories. Regardless, I'm keeping myself off the internet except once a day and only checking my email twice a day -- and rarely after 5 p.m. -- and I feel much much better.

Political reporters do not report on the issues because they don't understand the issues. Some of them are dumb. Dumb and smart people exist in all professions in the same percentage as your high school math class. At the same time, in their defense, they have to write a lot of articles for their publications. The reporters who are taking the time to understand the issues don't have the politics beat. Political reporters have no time to get smarter. Also, in truth, their beat isn't the issues. Their beat is explicitly the horse race. That's what they're told to report. Someone else is supposed to cover the issues.

Which would be fine with me if editors would just be more clear about the difference and help us find the issues coverage better and more often.

The Good is the enemy of artistic expression. When you want to make something Good, you are creating external criteria to fulfill rather than expressing what you need to express in its most ideal form. Also, when you think you have made something Good, then you stop learning how to improve. Artistic expression must be characterized by constant failure or you'd just stop doing it at a certain point. . . I've heard people call artists narcissists but perhaps it would be more accurate to call them sado-masochists. The sadism comes from their willingness to perform failure in front of others.

Neuroscience can and should be used to show why live theater is more satisfying than movies. . . I'm sure someone wants to waste some money on that, right? Because studies about neurological diseases can just get boring after a while. I bet that brain scans would show some very interesting things about how the same script when seen on a screen has a different, and less active, affect on the brain than it does when its experienced with live performers in the same room as the audience.

No more. Moving this weekend. Time to pack up my office.

Stuck in my head like a itchy thing

Is there a congressman or woman from Ohio, Florida, or Virginia who is between 50-60 years old, who served in the military but wasn't a lifer, who left as a captain or a major at most, who has run or did run his own business, and who has been in in the house for at least ten-twelve years? Someone who works hard, who everyone respects, but who basically was never going to go any higher because he or she didn't feel like aiming for that brass ring. They'd rather serve their constituents, try to pass a few things, work hard, make serious contributions to the debate, fight some battles, be a good, humble public service without a huge amount of star power -- or at least an inability to leverage their image.

I suppose not but what do I know.

Because, let's say, Obama wants to excite Ohio. Does it matter whether its the Governor, or might be people get even more excited if its a real local favorite son (kind of like Obama was in the State Senate). Does it really matter if the person he chooses for vice president is famous by media standards since by the rest of the world's standards, they aren't famous. I can name the governor of Pennsylvania but can most people? I couldn't name the governor of Ohio until recently and the name keeps slipping out of my mind.

Pick a legislator like himself - someone who just did the work well until circumstances conspired and were conspired -- and by surprising everyone with an unknown (who is of course well-vetted) excite the bejesus out of everyone.

Thought of this a couple days ago and it kept coming back. recognizing its unimportance, I'm trying to exercise it here.

Also, I have to admit that I'm playing a little game with myself to see whether I can predict the vp choic ecorrectly. It's like how some people do crossword puzzles.

At the moment, I think McCain is going to pick Pawlenty.

And Obama I'm still confused about. But I think it would be cool if it was an obscure but highly-regarded man or woman from an important large state -- with a military and business background.

yup. ok. I'm going to bed now.

Good night.

A

A Thought or Questions on Art v. Commerce

Is there a difference between asking an artists "what works" and asking them "what is art"?

Do we strive in the performing arts too often to make something that "works" -- though with the best of intentions. What is your purpose? we ask. What are you trying to say? What do you want the audience to feel? etc., etc., a series of supposedly helpful questions. And then we collaborate to make something "work"

But is that different than making something that is art? OR is art really defined by what works. As in, if you want the audience to cry, to see the injustice of homeless, or contemplate the confusion of the world, then you make art by making that "work," by effecting the audience in the way that you stated?

Does the visual arts concern themselves in the same way with the same audience considerations or is the fact that theater requires a ticket purchase -- does it change the nature of success?

Or have we just lost track of what we're doing. Cause I will go see something if it may be "art" regardless of whether it or not it works -- but I do that because I like the effect of confusion or contemplation or analysis on my mind. So many its just "working" differently on me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can make whatever rational thoughts you want; fuck, anyone who knows me know that I can argue every side of every argument I need to argue. There's always a good argument.

So, in this case, and maybe too going forward, I'm just going to do with this feeling -- We're losing something when we measure success by effect on the audience. Too much concern with product. Not enough concern with intention. or experience. or something that is impossible to define that is labeled by the term art. . . I know the pendulum can swing too far in the other direction too and become insulting and tedious and worthless because no concern is paid for the audience. . . But, at this moment in our culture, we have lost the proper vocabulary for the real creation of art. . . I suspect.

Yeah yeah yeah

It is a pretty cool night. A community organizer and law professor from the south side of chicago, who is black and white, just won the nomination for the presidency -- and he's got a good chance to win. OK, no one needs to read about that here, but I've been searching the web reading shit all night and, well, it's not important but its just kind of nice to think that the future president might also have a little poet in him. From the end of a NYTimes article:

"Mr. Obama nods. That’s intriguing. But he prefers his own riff, which not incidentally trains the eye not on him but on his crowds. “I love when I’m shaking hands on a rope line and”— he mimes the motion, hand over hand — “I see little old white ladies and big burly black guys and Latino girls and all their hands are entwining. They’re feeding on each other as much as on me."

He shrugs; it’s that distancing eye of the author.

“It’s like I’m just the excuse.”

- nice imagery.

This Stuff Pains Me

Responding to something from McCain the Obama people say, "“…it seems odd that Senator McCain, who bought the flawed rationale for war so readily, would be lecturing others on their depth of understanding about Iraq.”

There are so many things to hate about politics but at the moment what I hate is this formulation of thoughts that the Clinton's do like crazy, the Repubs do a lot but I can't remember the Obama folks doing until this week. . .The "I'm not really saying what I'm saying but. . ." The "It seems curious, isn't it curious, hmmm, what does it mean do you think that, I mean, I'm not trying to make a point but. . ."

What the fuck is this rhetoric? Where the hell does it come from? And why the fuck has it suddenly creeped into the Obama rhetoric? I remember the Clinton's constantly doing it at the beginning whenever Obama opened his mouth they'd say something like "It seems odd that the unity candidate isn't pulling as all together in a hug." And I remember last month with the Repubs, every time he opened his mouth, saying "It seems odd that someone with so little experience" -- You know, it didn't work for them so why would Obama adopt it now? Seriously, what is the point?

If you've got a point to make, goddamned it make it. Say "Senator McCain showed he didn't understand Iraq when he voted and supported the war and when he stated two years ago that it was perfectly safe. We don't intend to take him seriously now since he lost his credibility on it at that point." Make the goddamned point! Don't say, isn't it curious? like, I don't mean say anything but here goes. O, fuck, it just pains me.

Stop it. Just stop it! Make your points or don't make your points. Don't hint at your points. Don't try to lead th epress to your points. They're morons. We already know that! say what you mean. mean what you say. stop hurting us.

Thank you, Sleep

My god - Sleep! I had no idea.

Leah bought me some herbal sleep enhancing pill thingies, so I've actually been sleeping deeply for at least a few hours a night for the first time in like three years. Seriously, for three years, I've been sleeping incredibly lightly or not sleeping at all. For the last week, while I've gotten up a few times in the night still, when the dog starts pacing, I've also slept some hours that felt more deep than I've felt in a long time.

And the difference in my outlook is incredible. It's not like I'm a different person or anything, or all my troubles and woes disappear, or something. It's just that everything seems a little lighter and easier. Ah, thank you, to be a light-hearted again. The weight, the weight, the weight lessens. O, thank you, thank you, for sleep. All you people who sleep well - you don't know how lucky and happy you are.

I hope this continues.

Feeling Better

I do believe in the power of writing even when I lose faith in the justice of the written world.

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and I regret that anyone who reads this blog had to read that diatribe. However, I feel better. It's nice to vent. Sometimes, its nice to vent thinking that someone, who may not even want to read what you've written, has to listen to you.

Why do I feel better this evening than I did this morning? Because I feel like I'm starting again to ask the right questions. I have some big ones staring me in the face right now.

What I do know - I want to change. To the extent that desire effects writing - Pleasing the audience isn't bad. Also, musical theater is pretty great, or can be.

However, I was standing in a book store this evening, gazing at all the different books a person can buy, wondering what the authors of each book were thinking when they wrote. Did they think they would be Hemingway? Or the next Fitzgerald? or T.S. Elliott? Or did they just want to sell some books, make a nice living as an author, feed their kids, have a good story for the high school reunion, not go crazy, be a writer, be a good enough writer, write. I'm not disparaging any of these things, please understand. i was just wondering what they were thinking. . . And it occurred to me that if I'm not thinking that I'm writing something pure and truthful and unique and surprising and ambitious and brave and, quite possibly, the most original best play that a person like me could ever write on this planet -- whether or not anyone understands it as long as I recognize what I was trying to do and maybe succeed -- if I don't think these things then it isn't worth it to me to write. There are much more useful and hopeful and practical and pragmatic and also valueablethings to do in the world.

And maybe I should to them. Because I suspect that no one cares about the type of plays I want to write these days. Maybe in a different era. Maybe they aren't special. Maybe. The circumstances of all occurrences are so fraught with chance and timing and age and moment that who knows what something work or not work. I doubt plays are going to make an important comeback as cultural weather vanes. They will continue to be important but their importance will be largely in the intellectual rather than the emotional or experimental areas. I don't even know that much. . .

What I know is that I can only write the plays I'm interested in writing -- what the theaters themselves want or think they want be damned -- Again, I like the musical, and I want the audience to have an emotional hallelujah when they see my work but I can't really or I won't really please anyone but myself when I conceive of a play. I could conceivably. i could even see the value in it conceivably. Maybe I could write for a really good television show. maybe I could write a good television show. . . Yet as an ambition on its own -- just to write a television show - isn't valuable enough to justify a life. Art justifies in its way but commerce or simple entertainment doesn't. Not for me.

That's what I know tonight. I'm sure I have more to explain tomorrow.

Theater and Politics and self-pity.

And not because they are connected. In fact, in the stream or river or rain of consciousness writing that I feel like doing right now, I'd have to say that theater would have to matter to a larger percentage of the population in order to be connected to politics. Don't get me wrong - I think theater is incredibly relevant and "matters" to the personal emotional expansion and imaginative thinking and creative potential that it nurtures in the individual people who come see it. I just don't think it is directly politically relevant. I don't think movies are directly politically relevant either and more people watch them. Music can be political. . . I wonder why? Because it literally can move large masses of people -- like politics. Movies, theater, t.v., books, these are much more personally effective endeavors. They may effect someone's ultimate political views but they aren't political in the sense that people literally move as a result of them. Which is not a failing. Music, short and sweet and effective, hits us differently.

I'm thinking today however that all I ever get motivated to write on this blog are theater or politics. And generally unhappily. O the infinite self-pity I can acheive when thinking about the contemporary theater community and my place in it. Here's one that amuses me: Every year I apply for core membership at the Playwrights Center and every year I am rejected. OK, fine, whatever. You can't win them all. I think I've earned it. Five professional productions in the last year, real playwright leadership locally, I started a theater company that actually paid 60 local playwrights including many PWC core members. I've gotten phenomenal reviews, good audiences. I've experimented with style, writing for actors, working with physical theater, creating realistic dialogue or abstract symbolic movement. Played with time. Played with media. Played with stagecraft. Hey - I've done a little bit. I've actually done a little bit more than most. OK. They can do whatever they want with their membership structure. Except - People WHO ACTUALLY WORK AT THE PLAYWRIGHTS CENTER keep thinking that I'm a Core Member. More than once in the last two years someone associated with the PWCenter has asked my opinion about something over there with the preface "As a core member" or "You're a core member so" Yikes! I mean, fucking yikes! OK. OK. Fine. . . I mean I guess fine.

Somehow this seems wrong to me - if the people who actually work in the Twin CIties, if the people who know the community, think of me, look at my work, and just assume of course I'm a core member - well, I guess it doesn't matter. They don't make the decisions. Their panels are nationally constituted with people you've never heard of who are vaguely famous in the theater. Good for them. One day I'd like to be one of them. Though I will probably decline to be on panels because who in the theater has that kind of time? Here's my best guess at the moment, and I've rifled through lots of them, including the guess that regardless of audience response, critical response, and actor and director response to my work, I must truly deeply suck as a writer because the playwrights center says so. Thankfully, I've gotten over that one.

So, here's my latest theory. Most of my productions lately have been at small but professional theaters in the twin Cities, so the national panel hasn't heard of them. If however, I had a ten-minute play at the perishable theater in rhode island -- which happens to be smaller, less talented and pay less than Gremlin Theater in St. Paul -- then I'd be in better shape because the people on the panel who still look to new york for their guide have heard of perishable theater. It's you know, off-broadway in a way. Lots of people in the Twin Cities know what an adventurous and amazing company Burning House Group is but no one outside the twin cities does. I'd have to, I guess, collaborate with the Wooster group in order to get people's attention -- to belong to an playwright service organization that is based in the Twin Cities, mind you. O well.

Though the Playwrights center is the reason I came to the Twin Cities and in some ways the catalyst for me meeting my wife who I love, every since that first couple months, I've really had some pretty bad luck with them. I must have offended someone. Or I have a nasty mouth. i really do. Especially about theater. What's a poor passionate playwright who isn't shy to do. . . O! Now I understand why its best for playwrights to be quiet and shy. We all have opinions. We have tons and tons of opinions that we're confident we're correct about. All playwrights do. Jesus, half the time I can't stand to hang out with other playwrights because they're so quietly smug and secretly judgmental and arrogant. But if they're not shy, then they'd be doomed. They'd say their opinions loudly and firmly and whenever and wherever those opinions happened to spill forth because-- well, how are artists always to control their passion?!? -- and then they'd be fucked. Like me. How's that for a theory? Probably too self-centered.

I'm sure none of it has anything to do with me - except that while I rack up productions and audience and critical praise, and invent new ways to bring more theater to more people and then actually DO THEM! my friends rack up fellowship money and national notice and those things entirely pass me by. Entirely. For the last five years. At a certain point, it stops being coincidence. It stops being random. Simple probabilities would suggest that SOMETHING would go my way. O, that's nonsense. forget I typed it. . . I still think its funny that playwrights center staff think I'm a core member even though I keep getting rejected. But, hey, what do they know? I guess its not that strange either.

Thank god for blogs to vent on.

Here's the problem. One break of a certain kind leads to other breaks of a certain kind. Even though Gremlin Theatre or Burning House Group is better than some slightly-more notable small theater in some other location - and pay better -- a small production, even a ten minute play there, may be just the snowball I need to make a snowman. Core membership in the playwrights center might be the snowball. National notice. Some kind of notice. Some kind of success that makes other people say -- hey, he was noticed somewhere that I recognize. I should pay attention. As opposed to -- I've never heard of those theaters. Are they even theaters? Are there really real theaters in the Twin Cities besides Theatre de la Jeune Lune and the Guthrie?

OK. Now that I've vented. All of this is just self-pity, isn't it? There are plenty of core members of the playwrights center who can't get noticed either. How many playwrights actually make money at this? I'm pretty happy to get good productions honestly that people seem to engage with and enjoy. . . I just sometimes dream that if I was given a little support, I could really do some stuff. Actually, in the one year of the Jerome Fellowship, I was able to begin the process of taking my style of experimentation and writing to a level that sustained me for 3 years of really prolific work. I took the time of the fellowship to really examine what I was doing and what I wanted to be doing and stepping out on the edge and doing that.

I need to change again. I'd like to go toward "more bold" rather than "more commercial" but, well, who knows. I just can't help but think . . . wish. . . o, get over yourself, my friend. yes.

As for politics, more later.

Audience

When I was younger, I didn't care what the audience wanted because I thought I was good at giving them what they needed instead. I don't mean that I had deep philosophical ideas that I thought they should hear. I mean that I thought I could construct, through knowledge of craft and awareness and respect for audience, an unexpected experience that they would prize, in part, because it was so unique.

Now, I care more about what they want because I understand that if you want them to have an experience they prize, you have to acknowledge and value and consider and believe in what the audience already values, what they already want. I think I knew this before also but I thought that surprise was something they wanted. It may be but it isn't high on the priority list.

Is it selling out to give the audience more of what they want? At this point, it seems like the only way to be effective. And effective is something I've always wanted to be. . . So, is that a rationalization for selling out or not?

Spring Arrives. We're Still Standing

Finally, spring. Spring -- finally! I think its really here. I though it would never come. No, really, I thought it would never come. . . I've lived in Minnesota for five years now, and I've laughed when people from outside Minnesota have asked how I could live here -- "it's so cold!" I've found the winters to be generally one month too long but pleasant and kind of pretty. . . but . . this. . . was ridiculous. . . ridiculous. I don't know how more of it I could take.

Plus, both of the critics who saw opening night have come out with their reviews and both are relatively positive. Star Tribune and City Pages. Go check yourself. I don't feel like linking. Oddly they seemed to be in conflict with each other. One guy says it was heady play but didn't hit the heart. The other guy says that the key to the play is its heart. . . I think that's kind of fun. Wish Quinton had more space since he's one who can talk for a while if you let him, and I'd love to hear more details of what he was thinking. . . But I can't complain. i thought we were going to get shredded. I really did.

A credit to the actors and director I'd say. To pull that script through. Yippee. I feel like I survived something.

Tomorrow, we have the critic who I figured from the start wouldn't like the play cause its nonlinear. We'll see if I am proven wrong yet again. That would make me happy.

Nagging Annoyances

We all know that a large portion of the media is full of shit. We call them the punditocracy. Who coined the term? The punditocracy themselves. Here's a cute little quality of the punditocracy - the people in it generally don't acknowledge that they're members of it. The person speaking is a journalist who is aware of the existence of the pundits - somewhere else.

And what do these pundit/journalists do for a living? I have no idea. They inform us that 90% of the black vote has gone to Barack Obama or Hillary was up 20% in Pennsylvania but is not up 5% or something. They tell us that older people like HIllary and younger people like Barack. Who is the audience for this information and what do they do with it? Does that fact that older people like Hillary and younger people like Barack effect my thoughts about my vote at all. I don't think it does, or it should, so who are they speaking to and why.

I suppose, in a gentle world, their job is to look at the available evidence and make broad generalizations about what is happening in this political contest in such a way that illuminates the truth of it. Except they aren't trained scientists, so they're not careful or good with evidence. They aren't trained psychologists, so they aren't careful with thoughts about motivation and effect. They aren't really expert on anything really except reporting the events of a specific day. Unfortunately, most of what happens on any given day without a primary isn't news, they make it up. Period. They make it up. They ascribe motivations to people based entirely on their own experience of the world. They generalize based on incorrect information. They read data incorrectly. They label things with shapes and numbers ("The primary in Penns depends on white male vote!" as though they are the only people who need to show up) that don't really describe anything.

And, when you point all this out to them, they rationalize, justify, and explain as though somehow you missed their brilliant point. As though somehow their job wasn't to be relevant, useful, and factually conservative. As though somehow its your fault for wanting some more reality-based information from them because they've got this wide, wide audience that love love loves what they do. Somewhere. There is an audience of intellectual kindred spirits to these narcissistic pundits somewhere. . .

What I just wrote is pretty commonly accepted as fact. Everyone with an opinion already has that opinion, including the pundits. But then, because there are people in the world who have time to be informed and like the attempt, we read some of this stuff, accidentally. How do you know whether you're reading actual journalism or nonsense until you've read it? We read some of this stuff and forget to discount it. I hate to hear regular people quoting back the accepted wisdom of the pundit class -- even though they have disdain for the pundits -- when the accepted wisdom fits in with their world view. For example, I have no idea whether Mike Huckabee is a right wing conservative whack job or not. Since I wasn't voting in the GOP primary, I figured I didn't need to know it until the general election, if it came to that, but I certainly wouldn't accept the word of the pundit class on the subject. The fact that I can't replace their conclusion with one of my own, i.e., "No he's not a right wing religious whack job. He's really a liberal in religious clothing," makes it hard to resist the allure of a definite conclusion. Nonetheless, I'd rather sit in accurate ignorance than allow nonsense that I know is nonsense to seep in to my head. I get so sad when I hear otherwise intelligent people quoting back some pundit or other who said some this thing or that when I know they know that pundits are cockroaches on the body politic -- even the ones they agree with.

Here's another angle on this media landscape where annoyance lies. The general explanation for this barren and useless landscape of crapola is that 24 hour media needs to fill time, and this is the easiest way to fill it. I buy that. That seems true. However, I also think that the people who think about this stuff publically make a fundamental miscalculation about the nature of the human creature. They think that people are motivated by entirely shallow arguments, images, and ideas because entirely shallow arguments, images, and ideas get better ratings and more click-thrus. I think/suspect/believe that this is false. I think, yes, people do enjoy watching the next train wreck that is Britney Spears life because its easy to watch and fascinating like an accident is and it doesn't really ask anything of the viewer. This doesn't mean however that people don't know it has no actual value in their life. They do know what's important and what's not important. Time spent watching or reading about something, when measured in minutes or seconds is indicative of nothing about the psychology of a person.

For example, I read the article about Barack Obama's bowling because it was cute and it was quick and it was everywhere. I probably read it as soon as I saw the headline because I had a couple minutes I was looking to waste online between other tasks. The article about his tax policy in comparison to Hillary's tax policy, which was an incredible and wonderful example of excellent journalism that everyone I mention it to remembers, I may not have read as soon as I saw it. I knew it was going to take me longer to read. I knew it was going to involve some thought. So I saved it until I had the time. This resistance to the more difficult articles doesn't convey some shallowness on my part nor does it convey that I thought Obama's bowling score was more important than his tax policy because I read about it quicker. It simply conveys the obvious fact that shallow is shallow and deep is deep. Shallow is easier, yes, by its own nature -- not because the audience for it needs, wants, demands easy. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that we all do kind of know the difference between important and unimportant. And we value that different. It doesn't mean that we can't enjoy unimportant at the same time.

Another kind of example, pundits attributed Hillary Clinton's success in New Hampshire to the fact that she teared up. Isn't it entirely possible that her success in New Hampshire was attributed to the fact that the people who voted for her liked her policy, her person, and her approach more than they liked Obama? Perhaps they're responses to interview questions aren't as illuminating as reporters want them to be but "regular voters" aren't reporters. They're under no obligation to be articulate about their responses to things.

Why do I keep typing this morning? I believe that people do enjoy both shallow and deep thoughts. And salty and sweet foods. I think the fact that people press the shallow button more than they press the deep button isn't a reflection of their needs and desires but instead a simple reflection that shallow is an easier button to press than deep. I wish we could acknowledge this. I think there is money to be made in this. People actually want deep and important with their shallow and stupid. Won't someone give them both? Please.

It annoys me, I guess, that I'd like a little importance in my culture and can't find it anywhere.

Second Night

Saturday night was good, I think.

Friday was like a preview, I guess, with critics in attendance.

Theater is weird.

Wow

Our opening night happened last night.

Wow. We had a checklist in our head of all the things that could go wrong, and they did and more. The third sound cue was off. Then, in the first two pages of dialogue, one of the actors skipped two pages. The pace was sluggish. By the third scene, the cue for the video didn't work (the stage manager accidentally hit eject instead of play on the dvd). One of the props broke. One of the actors got really quiet. in the middle of the second act, the live camera went off. The lines kept getting confused. The sound board operator didn't know where the actors were in the script. Wow.

I've actually never seen anything like it. No - that's not true. In grad school, I wrote a ten minute play in which the main actor went up on his lines after the very first sentence and the rest of the performance was a mash of people tossing out lines frantically trying to find the end. That was pretty bad. That was probably worse - though shorter.

Regardless, the actors and technicians muddled through. They picked up the pace at times. Some moments were quite nice. Everything was a surprise for the audience, so they seemed to be intrigued. It's good to get this performance out of the way. Tonight, I expect will be far better. I hope.

I don't know whether the actual production was an enjoyable experience for the audience. It went as well as possible under the circumstances.

I don't know why we do live theater except to teach ourselves that life is chaos and unpredictable and learn how to deal with that fact.

I'm not whining or complaining. I know no one except Emily Gunyou and someone in connectticut reads this blog but its still important for me to say that I'm not complaining. We do what we do. I think the actors succeeded in certain ways. It's just very hard to see the play when you're tracking all the mistakes.

I don't mean to sound like I'm publicly casting aspersions or blame. I don't really feel angry or upset. Too bad there were critics there because they could have seen a better show, but . . . Well, this is what live theater is like. I just can't recall such a nerve-wracking experience in the theater with so many people watching.

I thought I might have been due for a real mind-blowing experience. And I think we'll get one tonight. or we might. We can keep striving for it. Theater is like life that way. Put the mistakes behind you and go forward but wow. All I can say is wow. What an experience that was.

It's very hard play to do. Perfection is impossible. Even though it isn't really a respected endeavor in our culture, I take some comfort in knowing how hard we're working and how hard what we're attempting to do actually is. Create people and stories on stage, three-dimensional truthful things full of passion and hope and drama. And do it right every time. I suppose, right now, now that I've written word here, I kind of get a kick out of how crazy our opening night was. It's funny in its way. Wow. For a relatively small number of people, we put our heart and soul on the line and let the imperfection of life smack us around a little. It's kind of gorgeous in its uselessness. The passionate belief in something that will always fall short of perfection, the desperate attempt to create perfection where you know you will fail, somehow this excites my imagination actually.

Now that I'm typing it, I think this opening night is one I will always remember fondly. Huh. Yeah. Fondly. It's an incredible thing to muddle through while circumstances work against you. It really is. . . Now that I think about it, I couldn't be more proud of the technicians and the actors.

A few nights ago, in reference to something else, I said to Leah "It's not the mistakes you make, it's how you deal with those mistakes that matter." Is that fatalistic? I don't know. i like the line. I like learning it and watching it.

Of course, I'd prefer it if tonight was a much smoother performance but I'm starting to think there is something ennobling about failure. Is that crazy? Fatalistic? Depressive? Maybe I should see a therapist and start enjoying the bright side of life.

Anyway, it was one hell of an opening night.

Show Nerves

"Everywhere Signs Fall" has the final rehearsal tonight. The actors asked to cancel the preview, so they could take one more crack at finding the right rhythm.

They aren't where they are supposed to be yet, but I believe they'll get it. They're smart actors. All of them have incredible stage presence. They like the play. They tell the story. They have all brought unique intelligent interpretations to the role. My biggest fear right now is that Friday night, they'll still be worrying about keeping track of all the complicated threads of the play, and they won't be able to lost themselves in the rolls. These are roles that will only work if they just run with them. Run is the operative word.

Last night, I was almost overwhelmed with anxiety. They did a second dress run-thru and it was far more clear and interesting than the Tuesday night run-thru, but with all the strange elements in the play, if it doesn't feel urgent, if the characters don't feel like they're running (without the actors indicating franticness or something) then it may just feel wordy, long, and melodramatic. Interesting in places. Nice moments in places but uneven and strange and unsatisfying.

On the other hand, I've got to believe that if they get the right rhythm and that rhythm just takes over, then people will have an enjoyable -- if somewhat confusing ride.

I don't know that there is middle ground with this play. Total commitment or not.

Oddly, with this play, I can get myself to relax a little because so many people working on it, all of whom I genuinely respect, seem to have genuine affection for it. They can't all be crazy or dumb, right? When I get worried about my talent or lack thereof as a writer, I try to take comfort in this fact.

Also, a part of my anxiety is this undeniable feeling that if the audience doesn't enjoy the play then its like I'm a liar somehow. All the talking I do about there. All the press I finagled for this small theater show. All the philosophizing about small theater. . . All the self-worth I store in the place where I am a writer. Even more than being wrong, I probably hate people thinking that I was wrong or dumb or pretentious or melodramatic.

But that is not a real worthwhile emotional response. I'm trying to control.

Also odd, with this play, is that its my fourth or fifth production in the last two years. I'd actually have to think it through to get the number right -- which amazes me. And in each of those productions, what happened on opening night and what happened even the night before in rehearsal were two almost entirely different plays. It's just the nature of theater I guess. It's always a leap of faith that it's going to work out in the end. And leaps of faith are always leaps of faith. You don't make them based on evidence. But lack of evidence is always frightening. . . I guess this is why religion is called the practice of faith. The more you do it, successfully, the easier it becomes.

I do have faith.

I am always, however, wondering whether all people do plays that aren't so difficult and nervewracking? Probably they do. Does this mean I'm a good playwright or a bad playwright? on the bad playwright line of thought is the idea that the actors are saving my ass with an incomplete script simply by seducing the audience when they come. On the good playwright line of thought -- my plays have built in to them the sense of the audience's energy.

I suppose it doesn't matter whether I'm a good or bad playwright or not. Either way, a/ they're opening a play of mine tomorrow night and people will see it and b/ there's no money in the profession whether I'm good or bad, so i might as well do it for other reasons than the financial or moral approval of the masses.

What the fuck am I writing about?

Showing my nerves I guess. I guess I'd be worried if I wasn't a little anxious. Superstitiously, I want to feel the same horrible feelings I've felt before the opening of other shows that have turned out wonderfully, in a same way that a gambler recreates what he did before his luck turned around. Maybe that's it. I'm just superstitious.

Does it matter?

Yesterday felt as though spring had finally arrived. The sky was completely blue and the weather was gentler than it has been in a long time here in the frozen tundra of Minnesota. This winter has been brutal. If I see another snow flake, I'm not sure what I will do. Nothing good.

But yesterday, possibility came back a little.

Then, I went to rehearsal for my play. Playwrights should never go to any rehearsals where things are tech heavy. I know this, so I imagine that I'm a pretty patient playwright person. I don't really get upset during a cue-to-cue because the scene doesn't look as good as it should. I get upset because I realize how powerless I am. Hell, how powerless we all are. The director can be perfect but the stage manager can't get the cues. Or the stage manager is perfect but the director doesn't have all the details. Or the director and stage manager are perfect but the light board shorts for no apparent reason. The actors forget where their light is. . . It is amazing that we get another up at all. . .

And so I find myself reminding myself that "it doesn't matter. It's just a play." Spring is coming anyway. My wedding anniversary. Life is about more than just some play that a few people will see and their opinion isn't the core of my life. Enjoy the beauty. Relax in to the universe. A play doesn't matter.

That makes sense, right?

It actually makes me more upset. . . If you spend enough time telling yourself that everything that upsets you doesn't matter than one day you wake up and nothing matters and you're a junk food eating zombie who enjoys daytime morning talk shows and Republican talking points.

The trick, perhaps, making sure you do the things that matter in the way that you think they should be done. . . So how to justify the chaos of live theater -- where we're lucky that the light board doesn't cut out on us?

I guess I could try to learn to enjoy the chaos. . . If I didn't have an ego, if my name wasn't attached to this play, if I didn't genuinely imagine the low esteem people would hold me in if this play sucks, if that didn't matter to me, then I could enjoy the chaos.

But, even though I'd like to say that I don't care what people think of me or my work, I'd be lying. I wrote a play for people to see. How can I not care about what they think? If I didn't care, then I wouldn't write plays. . . I suppose I could get lost in process, but those people eventually come to disrespect their audience.

How do you respect your audience, care for them, entertainment them, communicate with them, but not let them ruin your own experience of what theater really is?

Argh! Tech week. I must sound like an idiot.

Natural Dialogue

I'm back.

Rehearsals are going well. The actors, in their core, seem to have these characters in their gut. Now they just have to get off book. I was running lines with Tracey the other day and realized what a pain in the ass my dialogue must be -- over the course of three lines she says, "What?" "Who?" and then I think "Jeremy" or maybe "What?" again. Yes, that is hard to remember precisely. Yikes!

Every time they finish running a scene that they don't completely have down, they have this deer in the headlights look in their face. . . I hope that's just part of the process because there really does seem to be a lot of great things happening. They are such smart and professional actors. It's a real pleasure. And when they are off book, things take off. Connecting to each other is so important in this play.

They'll get it. They'll probably get it pretty soon. I just hope they know that.

I should retract what I said in my first blog for rakemag.com. I don't know if the actors are having fun. I hope they are. It's really none of my business. They seem to ricochet back and forth between quiet happiness and confidence and utter terror. I suspect that's good but I feel bad that I am the torturer. Ah, but, we're not making pinwheels here. We're trying to do something more, something else. This play asks the actors to go deep. The characters refuse to deal with the big pile of shit they're dragging around which means that the actors have to understand that pile of shit then pretend to ignore it then get buried under it unexpectedly. That's a lot of layers of stuff underneath the way people normally behave. It requires a lot emotionally from an actor I think. and the complex rhythm of the dialogue probably doesn't help until they know it.

In fact, I think once they get all the pieces down, all the pieces will come together in a way that will make the play easier for them. The rhythm of the dialogue will help them. The structure, etc., etc. But until they see and feel all of that in place, it must be hellish to climb over that mountain.

I'm confident they'll start getting there in the next couple days. And anyway they don't really have to get there until Thursday or Friday of next week.

It's just their stunned faces in rehearsal freak me out. I'm worried about their health. I'm thinking of bringing in chicken soup or something.

I was going to write about how I believe that what we all think is naturalistic dialogue isn't and why. I have theories. of course I have theories. But I guess what I really wanted to do was confess. I have some anxiety. not about the strength of the actors or, surprisingly, the play, only about the energy with which it comes together. That is probably exactly where most people are at this point in a rehearsal process. In fact, not being anxious about the actors is a wonderful feeling (that sometimes I haven't always felt to be honest) and not being anxious about the play itself -- well, that just freaks me out. . . Maybe I'm mellowing in my old age. the play I wrote is the play they're doing. Whether or not it's good doesn't actually matter much (good as in people like it). This play, as written, will be done. And we'll see what that means when we do it. . . huh. . . I've been reading the Tao Te Ching again lately. Maybe that's the influence.

Enough. Video trailer of show at http://www.gremlin-theatre.org/video/signs.mp4

Marketing Whore

How do you spell whore? Is it hore or whore? How about prostitute?

I'm blogging at rakemag.com about the first week of rehearsal for my new play "Everywhere Signs Fall," April 18-May 11. At the Loading Dock Theatre in St. Paul. produced by gremlin.

It's in the "Just passing through" section.

A Philosophical Meditation on Process v. People

I keep thinking about how systems can or should change in order to create better results. This is why my head hurts a little. Some people believe in people – you find the right people, fuck the purpose, and you can move mountains. Other people think in terms of systems, as in, we need to create systems in which people’s best instincts thrive. In some ways, if you wanted, a person could argue that “systems” people have more sympathy and empathy with people than “people” people. Systems people – some of us anyway – recognize that the human creature is varied. As Hamlet said, In form, reason, and faculty. . . how like a god (bad paraphrase) but also petty and horrible. Creating systems for people to maximum their divine instincts and minimize their darker instincts is a people-focused endeavor. “People” people are the first ones to be disappointed by failure and move on to other, better people fast. Of course, other “systems” people simply want to create a system in which people can’t fuck it up but I think those people have psychological issues they need to work through so I’m discounting them.

I’m talking about two equally valid perspectives – rather than whether these perspectives are more or less motivated by a adherents’ childhood experience. Assuming you don’t cross in to crazy, I don’t think it matters in many circumstances what made you who are. It only matters who you are. And what you do therefore.

Other people might say – in that incredible cop-out way that seems to be the refuge of everyone who doesn’t believe in the power of thought – that “of course the truth lies somewhere in the middle” Which means so much of everything that it means nothing. Yes, of course the truth lies somewhere in the middle if for no other reason than that the infamous “middle” occupies so much real estate that simple odds suggest that the truth has at least vacationed there at some point or another.

I would argue that both “people” people and “systems” people are arguing over the middle. The sane ones at least. Yes, you need to have both the right system and the right people. All sane people know that. But “people” people think that, with the right people, you will naturally, organically, find the system that works best. And “systems” people believe that the correct system creates an environment where people can be at their best.

If the truth lies somewhere in the middle of that, then it doesn’t really matter since I’m talking about the way people involuntarily think rather than what specifically they do.

I must be a “systems” person, yet I’ve traveled and seen enough of the world to know that its really people that do matter. “Systems” are too seductive though. They can be explained. They can be applied broadly. They can effect more people. They are utopian. Dissecting and reinventing systems is noisy and attention-grabbing and, for some us, fun. But the reality of the world as I’ve experienced it is that people effect other people, on a much smaller scale, in a way that is hard to describe and quantify. Yet it’s the only real effect that actually exists.

Maybe. . . I live for doubt and questions. . . I think its because I’m a “systems” person.

I am moved to consider this stuff – and enlightened about why my head hurts – because I had a conversation with a charming young guy who runs a theater company in town. I kept talking about mission statements and vision – in large part to help him understand what the foundations who might fund his work want – and he not only resisted the talk but clearly didn’t understand what I was talking about. He understood. He’s a very smart guy. He didn’t understand WHY I was talking about it. Why I would want to talk about it.

When I told my lovely wife about this later, she said, “He’s the entrepreneurial type. He believes in “Trust me. Trust the team I put together. What else is there?”

Because I do trust him, it made me see more clearly an entirely alternative way of thinking.

Then last night, Leah and I were flipping television stations just looking for something to eat up our mind and time after a long and hard week. The only actual narrative show on Friday night was something called “Numbers” starring that guy who used to be in “Northern Exposure” and a bunch of other vaguely familiar actors including an incredible actor from “The Wire.” With that kind of cast, and a crime drama formula that can be somewhat successful in certain circumstances, you really can’t blame anyone for the total and complete execrableness of the show but the writers.

How could this show be this bad? Seriously. These writers should have stayed on strike, gone in to a different career, anything, something. Even with our entirely lowered standards at that moment, neither of us could stand to watch the entire thing. Even though there was some kind of desperate and supposed suspense and mystery to the whole proceeding, neither of us where motivated by even the slightest curiosity to see how it resolved.

And I know very many great writers in this country. Lots of them. People who can do exceptional plots or amazing dialogue or whatever. How can this show – and so many other television shows – be so unbelievably bad?

Of course I start to think of the system. I know the people are good. Or I assume the people are good. Follow me: I know great writers. I assume that great writers are easy to hire because I know they want to be hired. Therefore there must be some other explanation for the horribleness of most television writing besides a lack of ability to write well.

Maybe the concept of a “writing room” is dangerous? Maybe the structure of television writing – where someone has a concept and others try to write characters for the concept someone else created – is the problem. Maybe the peculiarities of the Hollywood system are to blame - where I have heard that 12 different executives who have no writing skill but think they know what to write give notes – is the problem?

I expect all of these theories have some truth to them. And so I think, what would a workable system look like and, I think, if someone could articulate it, wouldn’t other people want to adopt it?

Here’s where reality hits me in the face and my headhurtsalittle. 1. I assume the goal of television shows is to write good television. Or at least, I assume that writing good television doesn’t adversely effect some additional, more salient purpose, like filling time between commercials. You can fill time between commercials with better television, can’t you? All the most successful television shows in television history have done it with panache. . . Of course, my assumptions – the assumptions you need to make if you’re a “systems” person – are nonsense. For all I know – and I know nothing about Hollywood regardless of how many celebrity stories exist on the internet – every person who works there has sixty different goals and the most salient one at any given moment may simply be to have a business card that will get you fucked later that evening. Who the hell knows? Just because one goal sounds better, more noble, more desirable, than another goal doesn’t give it any more credence in the universe.

And 2. – and here is where things get even more confusing. . . I mean, I’ve been following my own train of thought, at least, up to this point but then. . . There is a reason why a system exists the way that it exists and for a systems person that reason is systemic. So, the writing of television occurs in a way that doesn’t create good television, therefore we need to change the system that supports the typical writing for television. Yet, the system for writing for television exists within a larger system of creating television shows. That system is what creates the smaller system. So if you want to improve the way television is written you have to change the way television is created. If you want to change the way television is created, you have to change the society in which television-making is important. This can go on forever and explains why education reform efforts can get so confusing. If you want to change the way kids learn about math, you have to change the way they think about math. If you want to change the way they think about math, you have to change the way they think. If you want to change the way they think, you have to change the way they live. That's why poverty is an education issue, and why improving education feels at times so much more undoable than perhaps it should.

Either everything truly is connected and some really brilliant philosopher who we should then call God can figure out where to start in order to have the appropriate domino effect on all systems.

Or, the young artistic director who I talked to a few nights ago is correct. And we should just find the right people to work with and hope for the best.

I think he’s right.

Yet “systemic” thinking is too seductive to resist. And the weird thing is that no amount of experience can entirely change the way your brain is wired to think. . .

Unless. . . I knew we’d find our way back to therapy. Wait a second – changing the way we think? Isn’t that just “systems” thinking again. . . It goes on forever. My head hurts.

Or this is entirely wrong-headed. . . Also, why my head hurts. I wish I had a laboratory to test my theories so I could rule them out or in one way or another rather than simply contemplate them. But the things I want to test are so broadly-defined that I wouldn’t know what subject area at a university, for example, my laboratory would be housed in. . . Ah, delusions. . .

One more thought now that I'm a-thinkin': My wife is a systems person who isn’t interested in theory. She creates environments in which people can work at their best simply by being very active when she is the person at the top of the food chain. Yet, she slavishly adheres to concepts like vision and mission in the way in which she works. She’s a systems person with a “people” persons approach. I think its what makes her so good at what she does.

How does her mind or my mind or anyone's mind wind up working in this way? I’ve read the basic psychology books, but they don’t address the specifics of day to day accomplishment. . . At least not what I read. Perspective has always fascinated me. . . I wrote a play entirely about it. I think its brilliant. No one else seemed to care about the main idea. They enjoyed the play, but the kernal for writing it appears to escape most people. . . The thing about day-to-day perspective and how that effects the larger world in ways we can't even imagine. . . The truth of that idea. . . No one cared. . . o well. . . They enjoyed the play anyway. That's something.

Enough. Good morning.

More Stupid Press Commentary

Does anyone actually know anyone who voted for or will vote for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama because of "liberal guilt"? "Liberal guilt" in this instance is, I guess, the idea that someone went in to a voting a booth or caucus and somehow got a rush out of making an entirely symbolic vote that somehow stands in for reparations for years of oppression?

Do you know anyone who you even think will this? Like, "I don't really think he or she is qualified, AND I may not even like him or her on an emotional level, BUT I am going to vote for [fill in the blank] because I" well, it's hard for me to even imagine the logic "because I feel that I must. Or I should. Or I get an adrenaline rush from it. Or - " O, please, come on. . . What the Fuck?

Wait - I'll try to be fair. Maybe its subconscious. Maybe I subconsciously like Barack Obama because I feel as though I have to atone for the sins of America. . . Of course, while I recognize that America has committed sins, and I don't feel good about them, I have never even come close to an inclining of a thought of doing something blatantly symbolic and wasteful in order to atone for those sins. What the fuck?

Hey, whatever, maybe it is subconscious. . . But even if it is - unless the press starts showing me their ph'd in psychologym then they should shut up about it too.

Not that it pains me that much -- unless you believe that any stupidity makes us all stupider even when we ignore it -- it's just I'm procrastinating from other work.

I'm really enjoying the steam blowing-offness of this blog. Cool.

My apologies to the strange but affectionate folk who actually read this. I'm sort of still pretending that you only exist in the abstract.

Random Morning Thoughts

Up early this morning, looking at budget numbers. Argh! Thought I'd write some things:

1. Another Reason Why the Political Press is Dumb, Dumb, Dumb: So, Hillary has attacked Obama, and the press is wondering whether Obama can survive the attacks. At some point, they start to take their metaphors literally. So, now the attack involves whether or not Obama has a "glass jaw" and "can survive the attacks." They write things like "whether he can stand up to these attacks remains to be seen."

The thing is -- he hasn't literally been attacked. No one is shooting arrows at him or punching him in the face with anything. She's throwing words at him, and he's going to "stand up to them" simply by, well, continuing to stand up. Great! What an easy bar for him to jump over. A few days from the now, the press will be amazed that he has "withstood her attacks." What did they expect him to do? Start crying? Short of him throwing up his hands and saying, "That's it. I can't take it. She's a meany. I don't want to play." which even the biggest panzy ass wimp wouldn't do, he's going to look like he survived "her attacks."

Now whether her attacks "land" with voters, that's something he can't control. He can respond as best he can, and then time moves forward.

Also - I'm enamored of the Obama campaigns sense of timing. Do they do this on purpose? Wait a few days for the conventional wisdom to harden in to "Hillary's campaign is in attack mode" before hitting back hard. If you hit back immediately, it looks like tit-for-tat and everyone looks bad, but if you give it a couple days -- if you let everyone talk about HIllary's attacks -- then when you hit back you look like you have no choice and you're blameless.

Also -- Does the Hillary campaign think the media is biased because the garbage they throw against the wall isn't working like they expect it to?

2. Every time I start to think I'm too hard on American theater - Hey, the Guthrie does support local professional actors. Real hard they do. they've made it possible for an incredible talent pool to remain in the Twin Cities. Everyone is trying to do good work, aren't they? Why do I get so critical and worked up? I'm young and immature. What do I know. I have a lot to learn from the experienced hands in the business.

Then I go see a show -- any show, big show, little show, medium-sized show -- and I simply don't think its very good. And not very good in an "I don't like theater" way. Very good in a -- well, that was a lame, pandering, cowardly, stilted, and/or purposefully unimaginative choices.

If the generation above me constantly whines about how theater is dying AND I go see their shows and think, "well, this particular way of doing theater can't die fast enough," is it really youthful and immature of me to criticize their work in the extreme? Do I have to defer to my elders when they both complain about the work they do and do insufficient work at the same time?

3. What are they teaching in actor training program? Very crafty. No truth. Saw a play last night of recent Guthrie BFA grads. Great play that I'd seen twice before, both in exceptional productions. Thought the play couldn't be screwed up.

These kids were fine. But boy was there a lot of blocking - and acting -- and speaking -- and character-playing. And accents. Walk three steps, make sure all three sides of the theater can see someone at all times, speak your lines with appropriate intention and meaning, and walk three steps, rinse and repeat. . . Apparently, according to actor training programs, you can't really move and speak at once. You can't really touch another actor unless its an incredbly meaningful moment. O, and when a character says that he or she feels something, you have to show us that he or she really feels it.

With all your technique and craft classes and textual analysis classes, could you just add a "Let's go observe real life" class. Take everyone to bars and restaurants all around the city and make them come back to the classroom and recreate that sense of spontenous freedom and unexpected moment-to-moment detail. . . OK, I'll work on that curriculum but something like that.

Building Theaters

I just read the latest New York Times article on the "edifice" complex of regional theaters across the country. It's a good article, accurate and due. A worthwhile subject to explore. . . But -- of course but -- is it a journalistic principle never really to get in to the heart of the matter? Is it a journalistic principle, in an article that clearly has a perspective no less, only to skim the surface of what can be seen and quoted?

This is probably galling in all forms but especially galling when it comes to art. . . The author briefly touches on the sense that art and culture are not precisely the same thing. He calls art the "subtext" of culture in a way. This is a fascinating point since it highlights that building temples to culture like the new Guthrie building and others is not the same thing as building art for the community.

But I want to know more. The article makes an interesting economic case for growth and highlights some of the difficulties. But could someone please include in this discussion, what they all think they're doing artistically? Why don't they put the money in to companies instead of buildings? (That's a serious question not a rhetorical question.) What do they see as their place in the community? From reading these articles, you'd think that these theaters are simply and completely about the most comfortable experience for the audience and being an economic driver for the city. At the same time, however, there is this sense, this subtext, that those are simply the arguments that people are making in order to justify and build these buildings. There is something more ephemeral and"artistic" underlying the motivations as well. but what is it? Will someone, out loud, please explain to me what these buildings are supposed to add to the work in such a way that the work will be better, the community will be stronger and the imagination of the American life will grow? i know these people who work at these theaters. They didn't build the Guthrie JUST to have more bars and JUST to make more older patrons comfortable or JUST to make art look really shiney and cool for the city to have a national profile. They BELIEVE in something larger than the building. I'm saying -- what the fuck is it? And what does the building exactly have to do with it? And why don't they do a capital campaign to build a resident company? And why don't they do more new original work? Why aren't they throwing the great new voices of america right up there on their main stage where people are filling the seats just for the experience anyway? Or why aren't they doing bold, unheard-of interpretations of obscure polish plays?

Where people spend their money in this culture is a good indication of what they value. While its nice that so many cities are valuing art enough to build such nice homes for it, does it also mean that the cities value the appearance of art more than the value the art itself? how does this not trickle in the art itself?

if I remember correctly -- Joe Dowling has a great speech about theaters as secular churches. A principle which I basically agree with but, I'm starting to fear, for different reasons. I think the effect of art of the personality and soul is probably akin to the religious experience in that it lifts up and expands the consciousness and the soul, making us all feel more connected yet more humbled, and ultimately more alive, more capable, and more engaged. . . I think that's also what Mr. Dowling believes. . . Except somehow his analogy has been taken quite literally it seems. The state and city leaders heard the beautiful persuasive speech and said -- you know, theataer is like a secular church. "Let's actually build a church." So they built one. On the river. It's a bit awe-inspiring. Like a cathedral. . . But theater isn't like a secular church because it looks like one. It's the effect of the art that is on the stage. Could someone alter their perspective a little and focus a little attention on the stage. Yes, the money goes in the productions. But clearly purpose matters. Thoreau said that Americans have proven that they often hit what they aim for so why not aim higher than simply profit. . . Theater, in many ways, is doing quite well across america today. I really believe it is. . . in all ways except artistic. Alter the aim from comfort, entertainment, and full evenings worth of experience -- like a baseball game -- to blowing the audiences socks off their feet and tickling them mericilessly until they cry out in pleasurable beaten exhaustion. . . What if these moneyed theaters tried to do that? Do you think they could if they tried?

or, are they trying and just haven't told me yet? I mean, I do know these people. If they're keeping it a secret, they're doing an awfully good job of it.

Did I make any sense?

I Wish I Didn't Care

Argh. Just when I think I'm curing my addiction to useless political punditry, something happens that creeps into my head and won't get out.

Boy, do the Clinton's know about winning ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Certainly, I'm not the only one who supports Obama in part because of a prayer to just be done with that kind of shit. Of course I think that the world is full of that shit. The Clinton's didn't invent it or control it, but, boy, have they internalized it. Maybe it does have to be that way. Maybe this is how the world works. . . Yet I can't help but think that the world works the way we say it does. If we reject that kind of politics than it is rejected. Of course people on the outliers will always play that way, or whatever way they see fit, but the majority can move on to something else. . . That's not the only reason I support Obama but, in truth, the Clinton's just kind of making me feel icky isn't such a bad one in my opinion.

Now- just to keep getting this trivial nonsense out of my head -- Certainly, Obama is going to have to come up with a good answer to the national security question in order to face McCain, so in that way its not horrible that this thing goes on longer while they prepare one. They need to be able to answer in a way that persuades the undecided to go with them, and maybe the attack from Clinton is a good warmup.

However, I can't see how this whole "Who's ready at 3 a.m.?" question helps Clinton -- why it would help Clinton -- and its partially the ludicrousness of some of this stuff that makes me sick.

First of all, what does that question mean? Like, he may be prepared to answer the emergency call at 5 p.m. but anyone can answer a phone in the middle of the afternoon. It's 3 a.m., when the lights are off, that we should be really worried about because, well, he won't be able to find the phone on the nightstand? Or, probably more likely, he's, well, I guess he's asleep so, you know, being asleep he might accidentally order a nuclear strike on Canada? I mean - what's the 3 a.m. deal? he's not going to actually wake up and think before he does anything? I mean, why is 3 a.m. the key time? I don't get it.

More importantly, I don't get how Hillary is somehow more qualified to answer that phone because, well, was she the one answering the 3 a.m. phone call in the Bill Clinton White House? Is she suggesting that she was? "I've answered that phone call before." She can't possibly be arguing that because, well, it would be kind of unconstitutional, wouldn't it? Since as First Lady, she was elected to do that. . . On the other hand, is she arguing that she is qualified now for that phone call because she can always pass the phone to Bill and he's experienced with those kinds of calls? I mean, I'm not seeing the point she's making. . .

This to me is the definition of a scare tactic -- some vague claim whose actual substance is so obscured that there is almost no way to argue with it. All it does is send chemical emotional fear signals to the brain: the dark night, the sleeping children, the unnamed emergency.

I mean, if the argument is that Hillary knows how to handle an international crisis because she's spent so much time in Washington isn't Obama's counter-argument that this whole Washington arrogance is absurd. Look what a wonderful job they've been doing lately. So she doesn't say that. She says something vague about a 3 a.m. phone call that, when analyzed, makes no sense from almost any direction.

Yup. Don't feel better. Maybe if I just work on something totally different I'll wash off this nagging disgust feeling.

Vantage Point

While on vacation this weekend, we saw the movie "vantage point." Not a good movie but it explodes well. I mean, when you're on vacation, it's loud enough to keep the thinking at the minimum amount. It's really not a good movie, but neither of us really minded while we watching it.

There were a couple rows of people in the back of the movie theater though who appeared to be "shocked! shocked! I tell you" that the movie kept rewinding and telling the same story from a different, well, vantage point, again and again. Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they didn't know what the gimmick of the movie was -- hadn't seen any advertisments, didn't really think about the title, etc. -- you'd think they would have gotten the hang of it after the second or third scene. . . You know, I mean, I'm not one to make jokes at the expense of others but, come on, even my dog gets trained faster than that. These people just kept getting more and more shocked by the structure of the movie as the movie continued. Now, I find it hard to believe that they hadn't heard something about the movie before they came, but then, while they're there -- learn, you motherfuckers, learn! Adjust! Will you please? Get the point? The movie is going to go backwards a few more times and show you the same action from a different point of view. That's what's going to happen. . . How did I figure that out? By watching the fucking movie! . . . And they wouldn't leave either. they seemed really pissed off. Then they stayed and were shocked anew with each new VANTAGE POINT! . . .

Not to sound like I'm defending what is largely a technically impressive and horrible movie, I couldn't help but also think as I watched -- "Would it have really been that hard to write better dialogue? I just don't think it would be that hard." Yes, I understand you don't want long Quinton Tarantino style banter. You want information conveyed quickly. Etc. etc. I still don't think it would be that hard. . . I was doing it in my head as the movie went along. I'd give examples but I've blocked the horrible dialogue out of my head now.

Or is the reason that the dialogue sucks is because it would be hard for them to do it better?

oy.

Is this a joke?

I click on a New York Times link about Stephen King and John Mellencamp collaborating on a musical that they will try out in at Atlanta's Alliance Theater -- First thought, "Well, I guess musical theater is exactly where formerly great artists go when they're totally over the hill." Second thought, "What? Once you pass a certain age, you actually enjoy theater more than other entertainment? Again - why do we worry about the blue hairs in the audience. They may die but someone will come and replace them. It's environmental. It's the senior citizen food." Third thought: "Another nonprofit theater supports the creation of a big time money making musical. Just like the Guthrie's little house on the prairie. This is what we've come to -- the minor leagues. Not leading the theater movement but begging for scraps from the table of commerce. Well, I hope they get perpetual revenue from it at least -- I'm sure that's how they're justifying it to themselves."

Final thought when I see the video advertisement for a new musical called "In the Heights" in a corner box on the same page: "Is this is joke? Haven't I seen a satire of the musical that looked exactly like this? Seriously -- is this a joke? And if its not a joke - What the hell did I actually think theater was supposed to be?"

P.S. I always make fun of the plays where I think the artists seem to have just discovered that the world exists. "Look, Honey! People suffer. Aren't they dignified?' or "Look, Honey! Those wacky others." I'm also going to have to start to make fun of the art where the artists think their world is the world. "In the Heights, Baby! If you're not here, you're nowhere. You don't even know! . . . Hey, I stubbed my toe. Is that, like, a whole wide world that I stepped on? Naaah."

Maybe It Will Help me Get Grants

My conscious influences; Shakespeare, Chekhov, J.M. Synge, Bertolt Brecht, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, Luigi Pirandello. Also, probably, Naomi Wallace and Carol Churchill.

People I doubt are influences: Ibsen, Strindberg, Eugene O'Neil (maybe), Tennessee Williams (even though "Streetcar" is one of the best plays ever).

People I really like who may be subconscious influences: Arthur Miller (compassion, character, craftsmanship, issues), David Mamet (spare musical muscular language full of raw emotion and subtext), Lanford Wilson (lyrical music, wide-ranging eye for real subjects), George Walker ("nothing sacred" I saw when I was 14. I was so stunned I forgot to give a standing ovation. So was the rest of the audience).

Who I'd like to be influenced by: Dario Fo. I should read more.

Other important influences: Classical music. Jazz music. Live clubs full of young people and rock n'roll. Visual art -- especially the cubists. Also dutch masters and early 20th century American artist like Edward Hopper. And WPA art. Antonin Artuad who I probably read at a too young, too easily influenced age, what can you do?

More detail about who I emulate:
Shakespeare -- everything, of course, the language, the plots, the beauty, the power but consciously, I want to capture the wide-ranging, varied nature of all his plays. They bring in a world. They change up in style and tone constantly. They are not minimal. They are raucous and ambitious and free.
Chekhov -- life on stage precisely without somehow being as tedious and undramatic as life actually is. How does he do that? One thing is that he fits in to no category. He plays by no rules. His work is the most original of all playwrights because it is neither conventional nor avant-garde. It is entirely its own thing. . . I wish I could.
J.M. Synge: Story and language and delight and melancholy. An obsession with death counterbalanced by an obsession with the funny moment. And the language. And the sense of straight ahead, here we go, story telling. The ear. He writes like people talk but obviously don't talk. Careful listening.
Brecht; i think our entire culture has internalized the "alienation effect' without even realizing it. I was doing brecht stuff in my plays before I ever read brecht. But what I learned when I read him is that his plays are incredibly emotionally engaging. (I saw the last performance of the Berliner Ensemble which was the first America. It was so entirely carried away by this incredibly dynamic performer.) We are alienated enough, sure, to use our intellectual to analyze what we're seeing but we're not distanced. The effect comes from the way in which we are emotionally engaged moment to moment at the same time that we are thinking. I love that! Who else does that?
Edward Albee: first playwright I read. Thought I'd written the "Zoo Story" in my head when I read it at the age of 15. Said in an interview that he didn't write stage directions but wrote language like a musical score on the page. Have been doing that ever since and its totally fucked me up. Readers don't give me the benefit of the doubt that they give Albee when they're reading a confusing stage directionless script.
Sam Shepard: Freedom. Anything happens. Raw. Emotional. unintellectual. Feels the closest to music, jazz or classical or rock n' roll, in the theater that I've ever experience. The American mythology shoved in there.
Luigi Pirandello: So much fun. So smart. So intelligent and so compassionate about people and character. i have never ever seen a bad production of 6 characters in search of an author. How is that possible? because with all the tricks its the most true of anything. He's able to be theatrical and philosophical while also being real and alive and compassionate to people and their struggles. He brings the theater off the stage. It needs to come off the stage.

Naomi Wallace and Carol Churchill: They are living examples of exciting, emotional, complex work that combines fascinating stories, beautiful language, unique structure. They write music for the stage. I've actually modeled plays of mine off of specific plays of theirs. (Cloud 9 and In the Heart of America).

Ideas Again

Art is the process of creating worlds of perception, through music or sculpture or theater, that by virtue of originality, delight, and surprise somehow make us feel as though an unexpected truth about life has been revealed in the experience. Or at least that we have gained a new experience that enriches the truth in our life.

Art, like God, is a three letter word that attempts to define the indefinable.

Still, just like we talk enough about God to not confuse it with Dog, its worthwhile talking about Art so we don't confuse it with Shit.

Playwrighting is the only art form where the product is judged in a completely insufficient state. When you hear or see other works-in-progress, a song, a painting, a sculpture, you can see or hear some version of them that utilizes the elements which will eventually result in the final product.

Plays are read first. But plays aren't meant to be read. At all. They're meant to be performed by actors on a set. . . I've got think of a better way to present my plays to theaters. I'm thinking of creating demo tapes, recorded cds with pictures. . . I like that idea. If you were a literary manager or artistic director, would you accept a cd recording of the script with pencil sketches of the look of the play and images of select scenes?

Look at Plays Like Music and Visual Art

I want to ask a question and make a statement at the same time. Whatever it takes to get people to consider the topic.

Is theater art or entertainment? in general, television is entertainment. Are the performing arts just live entertainment? Years ago, when I lived in New York, any big budget plays I saw struck me very much like television for people who are too snobby to watch television.

Most of the discourse on theater that I read and hear assumes that -- while not exactly entertaining -- theater is entertainment.

Funny that. People don't expect the performing arts to be entertaining yet they use the same linear vocabulary to discuss theater as they would for television and film.

I believe that while art is always entertaining and entertainment is sometimes art, as categories of work and human experience, art and entertainment are extremely, importantly different. Good entertainment confirms for you your beliefs, comforts you with a view of the world that you already accept. Good entertainment hits only your pleasure buttons. Don't get me wrong - these are worthwhile buttons to hit. Good entertainment however is only surprising in entirely unchallenging ways. Good art challenges your assumptions about your world in a way that is also, often, pleasurable. Surprising. Delightful. And also thrilling because the boundaries of your mind are being pushed hence the limits of your life are being blown away. Excellent art makes you feel as though anything were possible and the human creature is divine, transcendent, something. This is a difficult state to achieve but also a state so much more pleasurable and rewarding than simple entertainment that its worth, once felt, is self-evident. Pure entertainment is also quite nice. Life is hard. Challenges can be challenging. Sometimes we just want to settle in and laugh or let our sentiment be manipulated so we cry. Absolutely. However, the expectations we bring to entertainment v. art can and should be different than they are now -- especially as it relates to the performing arts.

A few days ago, I sat down for a coffee with a wonderful, older, sort of well known former dramaturg. He mostly directs now but he made his name in the theater world as a big time dramaturg. I had asked him to read one of my latest plays because I wanted to know how readers around the country were perceiving it when I sent it out. I explicitly asked him not to "dramaturg" the thing but to simply respond to it and articulate that response.

First of all, in case he ever finds this blog, he was incredibly articulate about issues that others only were able to describe vaguely. My conversation with him was incredibly helpful. While I may rail against dramaturgs from time to time, good, intelligent conversations about scripts are all too rare actually. It's the formalized role of dramaturg that bothers me -- not the concept of feedback and collaboration. With that disclaiming out of the way --

Two topics of our discussion have nagged me since we met and relate to the ideas I was exploring above:

1. As soon as he sat down, he gave me a broad overview of his generally positive response to the play but then ended with conclusion that, paraphrasing, "with the ending as it is, it seems to suggest that 'anything is possible'. . . which can't possibly be what you mean. . ."

Except, 'anything is possible' was, in some ways, very much what I meant for a person to conclude at the end of the play. At least in regard to plot. I don't need to explain the entire play here but I should say that I was trying, in part, to focus attention away from the drama of plot to see/explore the universality in certain characters. So, the idea that a person might turn away from the plot at the end because 'anything is possible' was entirely accurate. Yet, this reader rejected that conclusion because, in large part, because its simply not a conclusion he was willing to accept.

Yes, I could conceivably do an even better job of driving that concept home yet I also wonder: We say we want our theater to challenge us yet ideas that are challenging enough to be outside the acceptable definition of challenging ("you can't possibly mean that.") are rejected.

At another time, he pointed out that the character were very "self-focused," chasing after their own needs and desires in a way that didn't always take in to account the "others" around them. He said this as though that were a weakness on my part. Yet, I have to say that in my experience of everyday life -- and I was trying to write about everyday people swept up in big big turns of events -- self-focused is an understatement. . if somewhat unpleasant to acknowledge.

Perhaps more skill on my part would have made him see and accept the very conclusions he came to with more confidence rather than assume I didn't mean for him to come to those conclusions (when I did). However, I also think that no amount of talent can overcome everything. If we look to theater to really be art (previously defined), then perhaps we can recognizable some of the most challenging stuff better.

Two points -- right now, most of the stuff we call challenging isn't really. It's reactionary. It makes a relatively obvious point in contrast to a point already made in the theater we already expect to see. That isn't challenging. It's comforting rebellion, not real conflict.

And, critics and consumers of music and visual art already have a better vocabulary and more ingrained tendency to search for the completely unexpected in their art form. You can easily look at Jackson Pollack's work and say "You can't possible mean that. You're kidding." or "You're failing at whatever you're attempting." On the other hand, you can look at it and say, "What if he actually does mean that? What does that suggest about everything?" Some with, in its day, cubism, abstract expressionism, everything interesting requires that someone take its challenge seriously. Imagine if someone looked at impressionism and said, "I thinkk maybe you need to sharpen these details." It's funny in visual arts yet I can almost hear someone saying the analogous thing in the theater.

2. Which leads to the second nagging part of the conversation. Mr. Smart and Helpful Guy asked me what I was trying to say with this play. I had the presence of mind to reply that I don't ever think that a play can or should be summarized in to some kind of message or simplistic interpretation. It's an experience, I said, that I hope raises questions or ideas or something in the audiences mind. "What kind of questions then?" Well. . . I'm starting to be less firm now. . . I think the questions that the play explores are already out there, I tried to say. The play assumes a certain zeitgeist, I guess. How different or how similar are we as people around the world? How can we live such different lives in different places? How can we be so different? Are we so different? . . . The play assumes these questions at the beginning and then. . . well, explores them?

Here's where I stopped being able to answer the questions he was asking me. Perhaps I need to understand my work better or -- perhaps -- the premise of these types of questions is false. What statement was Picasso's Guernica make? Chekhov's Three Sisters? Beethoven's Fifth Symphony? Or what questions do these works of art challenge you to ask? You may interpret them some way or ask certain questions while you're there but clearly the artist is not trying to literally make you ask a question or a statement. These works of art are broad creative RESPONSES to the world that we occupy which CHALLENGE us by EXPOSING a TRUTH about the world that we EXPERIENCE in the work. Truth is a loaded word. Truth implies a statement in words. Why? Forget that definition. When you stand in front of Guernica, you know that you are experiencing something deeply truthful. The aesthetic unexpectedness and craftsmanship and passion all combine to make you see something a new way, to experience a new truth or feel a new idea in your bones. To say, however, that Guernica is an anti-war painting is to actually say almost nothing about what Guernica is. There are a lot of anti-war statements in the world of art and entertainment. While Guernica may contain that idea it is entirely something more.

By creating entirely original worlds, art exposes truths about the world that we live in in ways that challenge our expectations or contentment or assumptions. To me, this is a thrilling and entertaining experience. But we have to be looking for that in our art in order to produce art that does it. We look for it in music and visual arts but when it comes to theater, we still look for a plot that always makes sense and characters that are consistent. I realize that plot and characters have baggage that is hard to shake the audience from but still . . . in order to make the true art that many performing artists strive for -- within an art form that needs a wider audience than perhaps visual art at least -- maybe we should start asking ourselves different questions.

Oy. I thought I'd be clear but i find myself confusing myself the more I write. I'll probably have to redraft this one.

Alan