4/13/14, Day 13,858: The Unexpected Angels of Flux Sunday and Speakeasy
This day is so named because it almost went terribly and then turned out all sorts of all right. After a morning of shopping, composting and building a new element towards a baby-ready home, I left to prep for Flux Sunday. I was on the fence about scheduling one at all, because we’re in rehearsal, but we’ve had to cancel a few recently and we had access to a great space, so we thought, why not? Due to some moving parts, didn’t get the invite out until Saturday, and we ended up with a small enough group that I considered cancelling.
Then an issue with the space last-minute had us scrambling for a home, and again, cancellation seemed like the best option. But cancellation with these sorts of things is a slippery slope; it devalues the people who have cleared their schedules and shown up, and makes future events uncertain. So it has always been our policy to forge ahead with whoever is there whenever we can.
Thankfully, we found a space last minute, and we read through all of my new play Angel Juice. It went far better than I expected; there are some challenges in the middle, but nothing major, and both the comedy and the heart seemed to land. A huge thanks to Sarah, Heather, Christine, Adriana and Ken for their generous reads.
Then, Flux held our SpeakEasy, which was also almost cancelled several, and which, just like Flux Sunday, ended up being quite fun and meaningful.
So much of this life is just showing up when you say you will, and being as present as you can.
4/14/14, Day 13,859: Bring Me a Goblet of June’s Juice
This day is so named because I brought the first, now lightly revised, scene from Angel Juice to the Lark Play Development Center’s Playwrights’ Workshop. With the amazing Colleen Werthmann as the possessed Gela, it played beautifully, and I received some useful feedback from the Workshop team. I’m going to miss this group something fierce.
We also heard a gorgeous new monologue tall-tale from Lynn, the super-exciting climax of Rogelio’s Berlin Wall play, and a juicy chunk of Christopher’s family drama, all led by stand-in co-hosts Sam Hunter and Doug Wright, who presided with a spirit of generous insight. Watching Lynn’s play, I was struck by two fascinating moral choices made by the tall-tale-teller, and realized what a profound gift she has for these suspended moments of vexed moral choice; in this way, she reminds me of Arthur Miller at his best, but I think she has even greater tonal range as a writer, with a tremendous capacity for humor that Miller lacked. What a gift to be in a room with such talented artists, and with the loving hearts of the Lark staff…
Technique never stands still: it only advances or retreats…
Writing: 91 out of 105 days (Word(s), Angel Juice)
Spanish: 87 out of 105 days
Music: 6 out of 10 days
What small things did I do the past two days to help build the Honeycomb?
(And what does it mean to “Help build the honeycomb?”)
- For Flux, hosted a Flux Sunday and SpeakEasy;
- Signed a petition in support of Ollie Koppell for state Senate;
- Signed a petition to Gina McCarthy against the Keystone Pipeline;
- Asked Governor Cuomo to bring offshore wind power to New York;
- Composted our food waste and shopped organic and local at the Sunday farmer’s market;
- Cooked and ate all vegetarian meals (mostly organic, some local) and added no direct food waste (plastics bags, plastic water bottles, etc.).
- As a hard core coffee drinker who doesn’t have money to burn, I was super-bummed by the news that the Keurig cups used by my office are among the most wasteful things on the planet. This marks a week of me bringing an extra coffee travel mug with me to work, which I reheat and drink in the afternoon, to avoid using any K cups.
Corinna Schulenburg 