(Why am I naming days?) (And what does it mean to “Help build the honeycomb?).
Hoo boy, I have fallen behind on this! Between Flux’s Have Another, the Lark’s Playwrights’ Week, TCG’s impending Fall Forum and my sister’s wedding (hooray, #teammarnzack!), I simply did not have a spare moment to keep this going.
I stayed home today after waking with a sore throat and fever, perhaps no surprise after such an intensely busy month. I slept most of the day, and am just beginning to feel moderately better.
Rather then try to chronicle all the days I missed, I’ll start with the past two days, which were their own kind of beautiful crazy.
9/29/13, Day 13, 661: Playwrights’ Week Ends, Food:Soul Begins
A somewhat less creative name than usual for this day, but sometimes extraordinary days are best served by simple titles. This day began with the Lark Playwrights’ Week Assessment Brunch, where the seven playwrights (and one beautiful director) and Lark staff meet to talk about the goals met and next steps for each of the plays.
I thought this was a very strong Playwrights’ Week, both in my capacity to use it wisely and in the overall strength of the scripts. Having learned from the past, Heather and I focused on 4 goals and achieved 3.5 of them. That missing .5 has to do with the overall length of the play and whether or not to take an intermission. After the reading of Perse, my feeling was I could either cut some of the less plot-heavy scenes between Melinda and Voice, OR, take an intermission; but without doing one or the other the momentum of the second half doesn’t quite achieve lift off.
Now, this could also be due to the nature of a reading, which privileges easy scenes and can make you write down to the reading rather than up towards a production. So for the moment, I’m cautious about making any additional changes outside of a longer workshop or rehearsal process. Indeed, I think the ideal would be a production where we could experiment with an intermission during previews, but I don’t see such a production in the near future, so for the time being. Perse will rest. I am so grateful to the Lark and to my amazing cast and creative team: Heather Cohn, Matt Van Slyke, Katherine Banos, Becky Byers, Kelli Holsopple, Kate Levy, Evan Maltby and Lauren Ferbee. You have all tied me up in your braids…
Immediately after the assessment brunch, I ran to host Flux Sunday, which I’ll post about in the next day or two on FluxBlog. After that, I helped facilitate a meeting about Flux’s next Food:Soul which will feature a diverse body of work created in response to Trayvon Martin’s murder, the subsequent judicial response, and the cultural reactions that surrounded both. It was a deeply inspiring meeting, and I am so grateful to our committee and the artists involved. More on this soon, too!
9/30/13, Day 13, 662: Play a Month Club Fail (and Win)
This day is so named because I did NOT successfully finish a full length play in the month of September. On this day, I rose at 5am to take one last ditch effort, but I fell short, and by the end of the day was already nosediving into my currently sick state.
However, there is no way that I would’ve written as much as I did–I’m about 60% through Lightning Walks– without the absurd and delightful pressure of Play a Month (now conveniently a Facebook page). In that regard, my progress is very much a win, especially considering how much rewriting time was spent on Perse. I think it’s possible that I might finish the play by early-to-mid-October, which means that I could conceivably catch up this month.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to hear those pages read at the Lark’s Playwright’s Workshop, where I am one of 5 Fellows along with Kimber Lee, Rogelio Martinez, Lynn Nottage and Christopher Oscar Peña. The Workshop is led by Arthur Kopit, facilitated by Lloyd Suh, and features guest-moderators like last nights’ Doug Wright. In short, it is an absolutely pinch-me-I’m-dreaming opportunity, and by the end of the night, I almost fully accepted that it was real. More on all this very soon.
Having made it that far, my will power gave and my body collapsed into sore throat sickness. But wow, what a beautiful, amazing month. What you got, October?
What small things did I do the past two days to help build the Honeycomb?
- I organized Flux Sunday, providing creative communal opportunities for 20+ artists.
- I helped facilitate a planning session on the Travyon Martin Foo:Soul described above.
- Oh, and while I was so busy, it appears our government broke. I contacted my elected official to ask for immediate action to keep the parks open to the public — and closed to polluters. Obviously, there is a lot more work to do here to not only get our government running again, but to change the binary political dynamic that has led to such damaging, unnecessary outcome.
- I ate vegetarian, including veggies from our local, organic CSA, and composted, creating no additional direct food waste from plastic bags, plastic bottles, or any other wasteful packaging.
Technique never stands still: it only advances or retreats…
Writing: 23 out of the last 32 days (Perse rewrite complete; 60% done on Lightning Walks)
Yoga: 8 out of the last 32 days (clearly, a new strategy is needed here)
Spanish: 23 out of the last 32 days
Corinna Schulenburg 