Apr 16, 2007
Apr 15, 2007
Matt Wells
new RAT/national indie theatre collective.
Apr 14, 2007
Apr 13, 2007
the list
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/10/treasury_depts_250pa.html
"The list is 250 pages long. If you do business with a
person on the list, you can pay $10 million in fines
and go to jail for 30 years. "Doing business" can be
as simple as selling one of those people a sandwich.
Not an anthrax sandwich -- like a roast beef on rye. "
Apr 12, 2007
Class
agreement the union and university made (I'm an office
worker at a university). I haven't had an increase in
pay since October 2005. I will be getting an increase
finally and it will be retroactive to Feb of this
year. But it's 3 percent. Looking at the schedule
for the next five years according to the agreement,
there is no way we will ever get ahead of inflation.
I mean part of the reason I have this job is to pay
off student loans. It's not a job I have because I
love my work--it's a job for the money. And as jobs
for the money, it sucks, quite frankly.
I am able to pay the monthly installment on my huge
loans and buy food and see occasional plays but I have
nothing left over. I am breaking even. The only
money I have been able to save was the small amount
I'm making from royalties.
So that's my life right now. How are you?
Apr 11, 2007
ny times article
"It is a misconception that the differences between
men's and women's brains are small or erratic or found
only in a few extreme cases, Dr. Larry Cahill of the
University of California, Irvine, wrote last year in
Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Widespread regions of the
cortex, the brain's outer layer that performs much of
its higher-level processing, are thicker in women. The
hippocampus, where initial memories are formed,
occupies a larger fraction of the female brain."
and this:
Such experiments do not show the same clear divide
with women. Whether women describe themselves as
straight or lesbian, "Their sexual arousal seems to be
relatively indiscriminate — they get aroused by both
male and female images," Dr. Bailey said. "I'm not
even sure females have a sexual orientation. But they
have sexual preferences. Women are very picky, and
most choose to have sex with men."
Apr 10, 2007
these times
http://lucaskrech.livejournal.com/
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/04/another-enemy-of-people.html
"I confess to having been furious that any American
citizen would be singled out for governmental
harassment because he or she criticized any elected
official, Democrat or Republican. That harassment is,
in and of itself, a flagrant violation not only of the
First Amendment but also of our entire scheme of
constitutional government. This effort to punish a
critic states my lecture's argument far more
eloquently and forcefully than I ever could."
Apr 9, 2007
Please mark your calendar
April 30th at 7pm. Kip Fagan will direct. Hope to
see you there!
2007 nytr
piece in it. Check it out. It's a very cool book!
plugs for other people
tomorrow
http://matthewfreeman.blogspot.com/2007/04/dream-of-ridiculous-man-tonight.html
Second, see James Comtois dance around without a shirt
on. Really.
http://jamespeak.blogspot.com/2007/04/opening-tonight.html
Third the soho rep writer director lab.
http://jasongrote.blogspot.com/2007/04/soho-rep-writerdirector-lab-reading.html
class
http://parabasis.typepad.com/blog/2007/04/whatever_happen.html
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. As a
playwright, I am writing from a certain point of view
which is MY point of view. It comes from where I grew
up and how I grew up and the people I know and how I
see all those factors. I was raised Catholic. My
father's family was Polish Catholic. My mother's
family was all sorts of English, Dutch, Scottish but
basically the culture she came from was a Protestant
American culture, though she herself was not praticing
Protestant.
Both my parent were teachers who taught in public
schools, my mother high school math and my father 5th
and 7th grade--specializing in science. My father
also started a series of businesses while teaching
full time. He built picnic tables then he opened a
video store in the mid eighties, then he started
buying houses. Basically he's a workaholic. Both my
parents are now retired but he is still buying houses
and working on them and then trying to resell them.
And so through lots of hard work and smart investment
he is doing quite well financially right now, or at
least much better than a teacher is expected to be
doing.
So basically my point is that I grew up in a house
that was a hard working house and also not exactly
working class and not exactly not working class.
(I've spent many hours roofing). I went to a public
school and a public university. I grew up in a small
town in Connecticut, which is something that is hard
to explain unless you too grew up in a small town in
Connecticut. And I think a lot of my small town view
of the world remains as well as the idea that I have
to have a day job (not to mention the grad school debt
that I'm currently saddled with, which makes my day
job necessary.)
Based on the way my parents worked and worked, I am
likewise working a day job and doing my best to write
plays as my other job. It's what I'm expecting myself
to do and it's also incredibly tiring. And while I
know that I do tend to write more when I have a full
time job, I also have a lot less time to write.
I know I would be more focused on my playwriting if I
didn't have a 9-5 job. And I know that it would have
been helpful if I had gone to undergrad at Princeton
or Yale or somewhere that had had a theatre major--
course when I was applying to school I didn't know I
wanted to be a playwright. But if I had gone to an
Ivy league school I think I would have a clearer
picture of the wealthy people that make up New York
audiences. Six Degrees of Seperation is a fantastic
play but it's not a play I am equipped to write
because I am not of that world.
And so sometimes I wonder if the wealthy theatregoers
are interested in what I have to say. Is my point of
view something that would interest them? I am not
Jewish. I'm not writing about people living on the
Upper West side. I have a certain unique point of
view and some of that has to do with growing up where
and when and how I did.
Considering the price of theatre tickets, the off
broadway and broadway audiences are and have to be
wealthy these days.
At the same time, I want my plays to be produced in
small theatres throughout the country. I want my
plays to mean something to the actors in Michigan who
are holding down day jobs and then come to rehearse at
night.
And I want to find a way to make a living writing.
Because I'm so very tired. Especially on a Monday.