Retreat

I have to go to the OC for work this weekend. Well, it's work on two fronts. I'm covering a theatre festival for work. And I'm going to be meeting and socializing with a bunch of artistic directors and literary managers at theatres that I want to produce my plays.

And I've been writing a lot this year, so I have a lot to share and talk about.

I have outfits planned.

I have meals planned.

I have personalities planned. :)

I also have some quiet time planned for me to go back to my hotel room and just write and write. These things make me inspired. So I'm going to pack my car up with my computer and some adorable clothes and drive down to the OC listening to KCRW and get to work. I'm also going to work out. And run in the morning.

It's funny that my way of relaxing is to pile on a bunch of things to do. Fitting everything into my schedule.

Making it all work. Because I have a lot to do this weekend. Oy.

Falafel

I just keep eating and eating. That's not good. I think I might be gaining weight.

I was just eating Falafel wrapped in a lettuce leaf with cucumbers and hot sauce. How can that be fattening?

I ate five.

Oops.

And they weren't even that good. I make these great chickpea veggie burgers that are so much better and juicier. I need to make some of those soon. Those are delicious. With onion, micro greens, grated carrots, lemon zest, and fresh herbs fried in olive oil. Delish.

How am I going to look cute when I meet all of these artistic directors and literary managers this weekend?

A big scarf to distract. And sunglasses. And lots of friends around me hugging me.

Push It

Get up on this!

That's kind of how I'm feeling right now. Push it! I just finished one pilot and working on another and maybe trying to cram another spec in last minute because I don't know if the other material is working and meeting people and listening to pitches and coming up with fresh ideas and then there are the plays: the two I did in the Fall and need to rewrite and the one that's waiting to come out of me and the other that I did a commission proposal for. F-F-F-F!

I'm an artist. I try to remember that. Because I'm also the person who needs to pay my bills. But first and foremost, I'm the person who needs to write in order to make sense of the world and who needs it to be smarter and to be curious and to delight in fashioning a world of my own design. It's all of those things. Control in a world that sometimes feels vast and bigger than I can stand.

Today I have to remember to keep pushing it. To write those projects.

THE MEDEA EXPERIMENT
CURSE OF THE ASIAN CHILD
BOTTOMED OUT
SINGLED OUT
MODERN FAMILY
KEEP UP
EMPERORS

Do it. Remember what speaks to you, Loo.

More to come...

What's More Boring Than...

Talking about theatre?

Nothing.

And I'm what you could call a contemporary American Playwright. I'm so contemporary, that I'm not even all that well produced. I am so up-and-coming that I've barely gotten up.

I'm a theatre geek. Self-professed. I love talking about Tony Kushner and I love staying home with my Albee anthology from 1966-77. I even have stupid, for me only geek references to Albee, Caryl Churchill and Wendy Wasserstein in the new pilot I'm writing. I'm heading to the Humana Festival at the end of the month where I'm going to gush, ridiculously about dramaturgy over bourbon flights. I'm not saying I'm the BIGGEST theatre geek. I would never say that. Heavens, no.

But even I get annoyed with pointless articles that are written like:

"Playwrights Migrate to TV" (Wall Street Journal)
"The Most Important Plays Ever" (or something ridiculous like that from Denver Post)
"The Female Playwrights Taking British Theatre by Storm" (Telegraph/UK)

And there was some TCG bullshit article talking about theatre development of new plays, etc. It's bullshit because it seems like theatres are making themselves obsolete. And you can't just put a facebook reference or add a podcast to your website to make yourself relevant. It's kind of old news and who cares about who's not writing for theatre. Stop with the articles, start with the finding new exciting ways for people to see theatre.

Talking about the traditional model of regional and off-Broadway theatres is old and tired. Let's find new ways to get plays done. And that can be done on the cheap. And it's not about a You Tube video, because that's old and tired too.

Bitching about tired articles about tired ways of producing theatre is tired.

My 10 Minute Play is Being Produced

It's funny because I do love validation. But when I put on Facebook that my 10-minute play was being produced by a theatre in San Diego, I got really shy. Like, "Oh, it's no big deal. It's just a 10-minute play. Oh, whatever." What the fuck is wrong with me? If I can't enjoy my success, I'm going to have a pretty miserable life because I intend on being very successful. :)

It just reminds me to focus on removing the negative from my life. I say things that I don't think are negative because I've said them to myself my whole life. I have a 10 minute play that's being produced. Yippee! That's awesome. Period.

God, sometimes I can be such an idiot. And my friends are happy for me and have Facebooked about it. That's sweet.

So for the record, I'm excited. I think it's just the first of many great professional things to happen this year. Now back to writing and pausing "Kell on Earth" in order to write some more. I will be blogging about "Kell on Earth" soon, as well as the Modern Family panel I went to. I've got lots to blog about. I can't wait!

I need a foot rub.

Dinner and Carolyn

Then we all got together for dinner at Mio Vecino, an Italian restaurant near the campus. The thing of note: my former professors all eat way too much bread. Bread baskets, garlic bread and bruschetta as appetizers. I felt it would be too rude to say no. Great conversations with Barbara about life and writing. Great talks with Jerry about his Japanese, although he didn't get I was joking when I said I knew there was a reason he was so nice to me when I was a student. Yellow fever! I was kidding, Jerry! I swear!

Slant Eyes adores Jerry!

So then my favorite professor, Carolyn came in. And when I say favorite, that doesn't mean that I don't love everyone else. It's just that Carolyn had the greatest influence on me. She helped birth my creativity.

Carolyn Silberman was the person who let me create dances and taught me about Justice in the Arts and art as a social service. She told me that doing art and doing service were not mutually exclusive.

So Carolyn comes in with her slender, young self, jean jacket and warm face. There are so many things about that night with Carolyn that meant so much to me. First of all, the revelation that she thought I was going to pursue dance after college. What? I was the kid who danced in Adam Zotovich's shadow. Yes, I choreographed dances and was pretty good at it, but pursue dance? Wow. I guess the thing that meant the most was that she thought that I warranted giving it a shot. Please, I love writing. And I'm glad that I pursued writing. But I always wanted to be a dancer, since I was six and my mom told me my family couldn't afford jazz dance classes. It was a 12 year old dream I took with me to college. So it meant a lot to me to have her say that. Especially since I respect her so much. She said that I had just begin to come into my own when I left college. All I can say is wow. That means a lot.

We decided to go grab a drink at Fiorello's and some of my favorite quotes included:

"You can never go wrong with Kendall Jackson."
"Okay, if you can't decide on a wine, you can never go wrong with a Martini."
"I didn't have anything to eat. So sugar isn't a good choice. Let's see the wine list."

And she's not a lush, I swear. She's just amazing and a great character. She's so inspiring and artfully articulate, that I forgot how funny she is without even knowing it. I adore her and I'm proud that I'm someone she shone her light on. It was the best night.

When Carolyn dropped me off, she asked me if I keep in touch with my English professors (I was an English major, not a theatre or dance major). And I don't. I only keep in touch with my theatre and dance professors. And the only people I made it a point to see individually were my two dance professors. Because they encouraged me to be creative and make my own original art. And years later, I'm still making original art. Thank you.

I'm about music, humor, art, and service. And that describes my college education to a T.

Being Human, Chapter Two

So after having a lovely sandwich with David, I had to go do this panel. I was a LITTLE buzzed when it started, so I was nervous about what was going to come out.

Thankfully, I held it together. Some things that all of us had in common were that we were all in relationships with people who were also in our line of work, we felt that our training at Santa Clara prepared us well, and we were all happy to go back to SCU to share our experiences.

The students had good questions. Some of the guys were smoking hot. I was hoping to be more of a "mentor" to some of the jockier looking ones. Hee, hee...

But it was great. Really gratifying and really got me back in the mindset of maybe doing some teaching. It was nice to know that my experiences could be helpful. And seriously, talking to my professors really reminded me of the type of student I was: hopeful, enthusiastic and a total character.

It was also nice to know that they still thought of me all these years later. I was just a dude that really wanted to dance and write and SCU allowed me that freedom to make mistakes, which is the point that all of us panelists made to the students. Go and experiment and do and try. That's probably the best thing that my education gave me. It was a small liberal arts Catholic university. No Carnegie Mellon or Northwestern or UCLA or NYU would let you do that. Yes, maybe the training might have been more advanced, but how much do you really retain of that. And it was nice to have a broad education to help you figure out what you really want to do.

It made me the artist I am today. So thank you Barbara, Fred, Jerry, David, Carolyn, Fran, Erik, Peter and Barbara. I owe you my life.

Being Human, Chapter One

I just recently went back to my alma mater, Santa Clara University, to speak to their students in a panel conversation called "Business of the Business." The talk is designed to help students understand what their lives could possibly be like after they graduate. There were alums going all the way back to 1981 and in various fields of study: dance, acting, costumes, tech and writing (that's me).

The panel conversation was the least interesting part of my trip, although it was great to talk to students and hear about their experiences as undergrads and compare that to my own a bit. But the real entertaining and enlightening part of my trip was seeing my professors again. These people shaped my life and set me on a course that I'm still on. I would have been a writer without them, but I'm a much better, fully realized artist because of them.

I have the utmost respect and admiration for them, but I've got to say that getting to know them as human beings and not just these icons of my personal educational experience was enlightening. I realize that they're people just like me, who are trying to fulfill themselves creatively and sustain that over a period of 20, 30, 40 even 50 years. It's pretty remarkable.

I had dinner with a bunch of the faculty from the theatre department (where I was actually NOT a theatre major, but a theatre and dance double minor), but I had made it a point to reach out individually to my two dance professors: David and Carolyn. I didn't even make the connection, until Carolyn dropped me off at my hotel on Friday night, that it was important to me to connect with them. I love my theatre professors, but David and Carolyn really nurtured me in the act of creating original work, which you could only do at the time in the dance department. As a course of study that is. You could write a play whenever you wanted, but most of the theatre students were concerned with performing already created texts--dead authors and the like.

David and I sat down and had a beer together. Very manly for two guys who spent hours and hours in tights and unitards. I heard about his family and the struggle to make more time for them. I listened to him tell me about how his body had changed over time. He went back to school in the time since I graduated. He now has tenure. He's still creating dances and performing his own work as well. Our conversation had an ease and a lightness that it had always had. I always teased David because we had that sort of familarity - taking things seriously, but not so seriously that you can't laugh at yourself and the absurdity of the act of creation. In that absurdity, I believe we also always found the grace in it as well. I was once described by a friend as "irreverently reverent" and I think that applies here. It was so great to see him again and share stories about what we're creating. I didn't feel like his student anymore, but more like a peer. That was a revelation.

Saw Medea last night

Wes and I are trying to do more cultural things around town. We tired of hearing the same old mantra that there's no culture in LA. Mainly from ourselves. There is and you just might have to go to Pasadena or Echo Park or Boyle Heights or San Pedro or Laguna. Sorry, folks.

Well, we went to see MEDEA starring Annette Bening at UCLA Live last night. UCLA LIVE is kind of great because it's the LA version of BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). Experimental, provocative, theatre, dance and music. It's got a lot of shit going on. And there were a few celebs in the audience last night, which is always nice. I was sitting between my boyfriend and Zachary Quinto, the guy from Heroes and Star Trek. I met him once before he was famous and he read a few pages from a play of mine and had something very sweet to say about my writing afterwards. Wes told me I should have said something to him, but it was over four years ago and I doubt he'd remember.

Anyway back to the show. I appreciate the fact that UCLA Live produced it themselves and that it was thinking outside the box, but I think the problem was conceptual. Wes liked Annette Bening less than I did. I didn't enjoy her performance, but I think it had less to do with her and more to do with the director's conception of the character of Medea, who's a woman who is wronged and kills her own children (in a nutshell). I had the good fortune of seeing Fiona Shaw at BAM years ago and the image of blood splattering on a lucite wall as she's killing her children will never leave my mind. It was theatrical and exciting and bold. All things that this production wasn't really. They tried to make Medea sort of nice so you felt for her when you realized that she was going to kill her kids. You don't need to do that with this character. The force of her fury should be explanation enough for doing something so wrong. And it's actually not even all that wrong, it's just highly debatable in the context of the play. But that's the fun of the play--I guess if you consider deceit, murdering kids and going on a rampage fun. And I do.

This isn't the Susan Smith story. It's Medea. And when it is done right, that bitch really kicks ass.