7/13/14, Day, 13, 949: Oh My Sweet Angel
This day is so named because we workshopped through the end of Faust yesterday, including the denouement between Rachael and Nat’s characters. It ends as many of my plays do, with a scene that expands into more the one dimension, but it does so more simply, more quietly than I think I’ve accomplished before. As played beautifully yesterday by Nat and Rachael, the universe seems for a moment to be contained entirely by the space between them.
And I realized that one of things that this play’s about is not the heightened moments of dramatic conflict (though there are plenty of those) but the moments after, when the characters find a way to pick each other up, dust themselves off and return to the work. I’m finding that very satisfying right now; this is the play I need to be working on.
And there’s plenty of work! The play-within-the-play is written in blank verse, and it’s been some time since I’ve worked in such a sustained way in that form. I’ll be spending most of my writing time over the next week and a half trying to make the iams dance so that our very limited rehearsal time won’t be spent dealing with too many rewrites.
I spent much of the evening cleaning and cooking, and then working on Flux’s (possibly revised) mission statement and new vision statement. The challenge I’m having with both is to be honest about the size of our ambitions without becoming too general and lofty…we have a meeting this Tuesday, and hopefully we’ll come a little closer to consensus.
Technique never stands still: it only advances or retreats…
Writing: 106 out of 123 days (Faust)
Spanish: 94 out of 123 days
Music: 10 out of 28 days
What small things did I do yesterday to help build the Honeycomb?
(And what does it mean to “Help build the honeycomb?”)
- Signed a petition imploring James Madison University to treat sexual assault as a crime;
- Sent a personalized letter to FCC Chair Wheeler in support of net neutrality;
- Shared “The Children of the Drug Wars,” a great Times piece that explicates why the children from Central America are a refugee crisis, not an immigration crisis;
- Ate vegetarian;
- Asked John Boehner not to use my tax dollars to sue the President.
Corinna Schulenburg 