Great post about when theater works

http://splattworks.blogspot.com/2007/10/jonesing-glow.html

Where I will be Oct 22

Hope to see you there!!

http://www.nytr.org/

another good Departures review

http://thatsoundscool.blogspot.com/2007/10/play-departures.html

Bragging or My New Career

I came up with the subtitle my friend Jodi is using for her book. How To Eat Like a Hot Chick: Eat What You Love, Love How You Feel do you need a subtitle for your book, too? Contact me and I'll write you a doozy. My rates are very reasonable. For more on the book Jodi and Cerina wrote: here and here and here

review of Departures--GO SEE IT

Both Keira Keeley and Travis York give performances of extraordinary focus and intensity, which only ups the tension for us. They're acting under a microscope, and yet they're entirely in their own world even with the "real" world pressing in so closely—in much the way lovers in a disintegrating relationship often are entirely absorbed in their own emotional states, regardless of what else is happening around them. It's a very discomfiting way to watch such an intimate play—even more voyeuristic than eavesdropping on a couple fighting in a restaurant, because these two are hashing things out in the privacy of their own room. It's a very simple story—and Palmer is wise enough to keep it that way, to make the story develop through the details we learn about Andrew and Cara, rather than through plot twists or high-stakes events. They're just two pretty messed-up, emotionally fragile people trying to keep all their worst impulses from destroying each other—and not succeeding too terribly well. The play is a series of tiny revelations, little cracks in one or the other's armor hastily papered over or shied away from. We learn as much from watching Keeley and York's faces—or from the set of their shoulders, from the tiniest physical details—as they react to each other's barbs, as we do from what they say.

Brustein on huffington

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-brustein/how-not-to-write-a-play_b_49600.html

<3

a new scene. as always, this is a first draft. 5 (In the hospital, the NURSES stand around talking. PETER is visible in a space behind them, working on an artificial heart with a screwdriver.) NURSE 1 Is he in there again? NURSE 2 Yeah. Never eats or sleep, just plays with that damn heart. NURSE 3 Does it work? NURSE 2 Not yet. NURSE 1 If he’s fiddling around with that, he doesn’t have to deal with the world outside or with real problems or with other people. NURSE 2 He’s solving a real problem. You’re not being fair. NURSE 1 I don’t want to be fair to him. He’s never been fair to me. NURSE 3 Can you say that? Can you really say that? NURSE 1 If he’d been fair to me, He would have let me kiss him under the mistletoe at the Christmas party. He would have smiled back more, he would have frowned less. He would have taken the time to notice my body instead of looking away. He’s never been fair to me, so he doesn’t know what could have happened. NURSE 2 He has a higher calling. NURSE 1 He has an escape hatch. I wish I had one. I would have liked to find it in his lips. (The NURSES sigh in unison) NURSE 3 His lips. NURSE 2 His lips. PETER Dammit! Why won’t you beat? Beat! Beat! (PETER fiddles with it some more.) NURSE 1 I’ve seen him in there, you know. With the heart. Shimmying his screwdriver between the chambers. PETER Beat, dammit. Beat. NURSE 1 He wants the heart to beat for him, but a heart will only beat for who a heart beats for. NURSE 3 Isn’t that the truth?

I had some drinks and some dinner this weekend and now I can't afford
to get my hair cut.

Why did being poor seem so much more romantic when I decided to be a
playwright 9 years ago?

or if not romantic, sustainable.