This time, when the fall drags her feet and doesn't want to show up, not fully, just waves her hand here and there, and we catch a glimpse of her hair before the summer sun fully occupies the hot tub of our frustrated hopes, there are a hundred reasons we can find for fighting with each other and with total strangers. Cool mornings dull the edges of these frustrations, sometimes just enough to keep us calm when 92 degrees knocks on the window at 2 in the afternoon. Like those religious families in suits that walk the neighborhoods, you think they're gone, but not quite gone, and then they come back and want to talk to you about why you are going to hell.
This is the setting, the surround, for the past month, not that weather is everything, but at this time of the year, in the desert, it's not a small thing. And I would have imagined that having three plays going on at once would be just like living in a candy store, where the candy being sold is validation and attention, and you would think that I would like those.
Of course, I do. However. We are rehearsing for MOTS IV (HOTEL ATHENA) in my house, performing it in the living room, den, front patio and back yard, with 7 actors and the director, and me, and often my daughter, and usually a very excited and not small dog. You can see where this is going. It's not unusual, but it is more intense than usual; more people, and more people complaining to me about how this is difficult. Art is difficult, I say, while I'm also feeling like I've eaten glass, and can't find a place to complain, and the inside of my mouth is full of bite marks.
So I get flown to Seattle, to haunt an old stomping ground, and get to remember the difference between the optic and the haptic. Those streets and the smell of the sound, they are still in my blood, in the center of my marrow, I nearly drowned in liquor here, but instead I was drowned in the writing of famous authors who haunted the bookstores where I worked. Instead of looking up my old theatre friends, I find that all of the people I miss the most were bookstore people. Writing and reading is how we all survived being twenty-somethings in the 90s at the center of grunge. This is where we learned that words constitute reality, that art was not just a reflection of it.
I am buying a pack of cigarettes at a convenience store in Bell Town, and the clerk looks at the red star on my shirt, and says, "You're a communist! How refreshing! You don't hear much about them these days!" I tell him that I got this shirt in Prague, which somehow disappoints him. He was hoping that the revolutionaries and activists were still making things, and I have the same hopes.
I came to Seattle nervous about the work, this is a play I wrote 24 years ago, a linear, episodic plot, about a revolution gone wrong in an Eastern European country, which I was hoping would be apparent as a metaphor for this country. I don't know if that will read, but I'm terribly excited about the actors working on this, and looking forward to how a 4-week run might play out (not in terms of my career, I'm not entirely hopeful about that, at least not in economic terms--I get paid for this, but even elementary math will reveal my wage is very, very low, which is not surprising to anyone who works in theatre in the U.S. or maybe anywhere). I leave with a backpack full of books (What We See When We Read is my favorite), the smell of food shared with old friends and new friends, visceral memories of a marriage that saw its best years in this city, and something in my heart that is turning green from all the rain. I can't wait to get home to my daughter, my dog, my love, and the work in Phoenix.
I get back in the morning, and that night I'm sitting in a room in the Fine Arts Complex at ASU, listening to designers talk about my play (romeo&Juliet/VOID, which was the 3rd MOTS). The director has some thoughts about the ending that I'm not entirely sure of (a suggestion that the whole thing was a coma-induced hallucination). This is where it starts to feel sticky and hot. I'm trying to keep in mind that when I gave him the script, I took out all the stage directions, and most of the notes, because it's always more interesting to me to see what someone will do with the work. The work here is tough, and the director points out that there is no traditional conflict, the scenes are disjointed, and surrounded on all sides by monologues that are poetic swaths of inner life. The script is all internal, it's all subtext and bounces back and forth between the imaginary and the real, so I am not going to complain about his ideas for the symbolic, I think it will be interesting, is what I keep telling myself. And surely this is the most accomplished director I've worked with.
It's exhilarating and nerve-wracking to hear the words read out loud with an entirely new group of actors, and it's clear that some of this is too dense to sink in for the most part, but the video designer, he is swooning, tearing up, and his face is changing colors, because he understands it. Usually I end up focusing on the one person who really gets it. Or who shows that they get it.
The next night I'm having dinner with my daughter, watching comedy sitcoms on an iPad, and all the actors for Hotel Athena start showing up early. Jake the director has been guiding them in trance when I've been away, and it's exciting to be back in this space, even though it's obvious that art is literally invading my home. The only one to blame for this is me.
There are some nights where the actors are working, and I'm half-watching rehearsals and half prepping for my class when, in the space of an hour, I'll get questions from the director, an email from the dramaturg for r&j, and an email from the stage manager in Seattle.
And I sneak away from Hotel Athena rehearsals to go to campus and sit in on r&j rehearsals, and t feels good, but so very strange that there are multiple places in the world where people are speaking my words, all written at very different times in my life. They really do become like children, children who are on the verge of growing up and making their own decisions, and somehow this is making me want to pay more attention to the time I have with my daughter.
For short bursts of time, before the attention gets pulled elsewhere, I can focus on the trance work in my living room, taking the ones who want to go in further, and making the time meditating more meaningful for the ones who are not prone to entering other worlds (there are a couple of these this time, and I like it that not everyone participating in this feels like they're entering an altered state, it makes the research more problematic, and more fruitful, ultimately, I mean, I hope).
Tomorrow we open, and my house is different. Screens hanging up, everything is very clean, and spare, and it feels like I am living in a hotel. I like it more than living in a house, because I can pretend that someone else will be responsible for making the beds. Somewhere in the past couple of days, my irritation at the invasion in my house turned me from being the writer who watches things into someone who is making this thing, and that's a good role for me. And I am reminded by all of this that the phenomenological questions I have about this work are as much about my own subjectivity as the others, and that, despite the relentless heat, this, this, this temporary space, is home.
This is the setting, the surround, for the past month, not that weather is everything, but at this time of the year, in the desert, it's not a small thing. And I would have imagined that having three plays going on at once would be just like living in a candy store, where the candy being sold is validation and attention, and you would think that I would like those.
Of course, I do. However. We are rehearsing for MOTS IV (HOTEL ATHENA) in my house, performing it in the living room, den, front patio and back yard, with 7 actors and the director, and me, and often my daughter, and usually a very excited and not small dog. You can see where this is going. It's not unusual, but it is more intense than usual; more people, and more people complaining to me about how this is difficult. Art is difficult, I say, while I'm also feeling like I've eaten glass, and can't find a place to complain, and the inside of my mouth is full of bite marks.
So I get flown to Seattle, to haunt an old stomping ground, and get to remember the difference between the optic and the haptic. Those streets and the smell of the sound, they are still in my blood, in the center of my marrow, I nearly drowned in liquor here, but instead I was drowned in the writing of famous authors who haunted the bookstores where I worked. Instead of looking up my old theatre friends, I find that all of the people I miss the most were bookstore people. Writing and reading is how we all survived being twenty-somethings in the 90s at the center of grunge. This is where we learned that words constitute reality, that art was not just a reflection of it.
I am buying a pack of cigarettes at a convenience store in Bell Town, and the clerk looks at the red star on my shirt, and says, "You're a communist! How refreshing! You don't hear much about them these days!" I tell him that I got this shirt in Prague, which somehow disappoints him. He was hoping that the revolutionaries and activists were still making things, and I have the same hopes.
I came to Seattle nervous about the work, this is a play I wrote 24 years ago, a linear, episodic plot, about a revolution gone wrong in an Eastern European country, which I was hoping would be apparent as a metaphor for this country. I don't know if that will read, but I'm terribly excited about the actors working on this, and looking forward to how a 4-week run might play out (not in terms of my career, I'm not entirely hopeful about that, at least not in economic terms--I get paid for this, but even elementary math will reveal my wage is very, very low, which is not surprising to anyone who works in theatre in the U.S. or maybe anywhere). I leave with a backpack full of books (What We See When We Read is my favorite), the smell of food shared with old friends and new friends, visceral memories of a marriage that saw its best years in this city, and something in my heart that is turning green from all the rain. I can't wait to get home to my daughter, my dog, my love, and the work in Phoenix.
I get back in the morning, and that night I'm sitting in a room in the Fine Arts Complex at ASU, listening to designers talk about my play (romeo&Juliet/VOID, which was the 3rd MOTS). The director has some thoughts about the ending that I'm not entirely sure of (a suggestion that the whole thing was a coma-induced hallucination). This is where it starts to feel sticky and hot. I'm trying to keep in mind that when I gave him the script, I took out all the stage directions, and most of the notes, because it's always more interesting to me to see what someone will do with the work. The work here is tough, and the director points out that there is no traditional conflict, the scenes are disjointed, and surrounded on all sides by monologues that are poetic swaths of inner life. The script is all internal, it's all subtext and bounces back and forth between the imaginary and the real, so I am not going to complain about his ideas for the symbolic, I think it will be interesting, is what I keep telling myself. And surely this is the most accomplished director I've worked with.
It's exhilarating and nerve-wracking to hear the words read out loud with an entirely new group of actors, and it's clear that some of this is too dense to sink in for the most part, but the video designer, he is swooning, tearing up, and his face is changing colors, because he understands it. Usually I end up focusing on the one person who really gets it. Or who shows that they get it.
The next night I'm having dinner with my daughter, watching comedy sitcoms on an iPad, and all the actors for Hotel Athena start showing up early. Jake the director has been guiding them in trance when I've been away, and it's exciting to be back in this space, even though it's obvious that art is literally invading my home. The only one to blame for this is me.
There are some nights where the actors are working, and I'm half-watching rehearsals and half prepping for my class when, in the space of an hour, I'll get questions from the director, an email from the dramaturg for r&j, and an email from the stage manager in Seattle.
And I sneak away from Hotel Athena rehearsals to go to campus and sit in on r&j rehearsals, and t feels good, but so very strange that there are multiple places in the world where people are speaking my words, all written at very different times in my life. They really do become like children, children who are on the verge of growing up and making their own decisions, and somehow this is making me want to pay more attention to the time I have with my daughter.
For short bursts of time, before the attention gets pulled elsewhere, I can focus on the trance work in my living room, taking the ones who want to go in further, and making the time meditating more meaningful for the ones who are not prone to entering other worlds (there are a couple of these this time, and I like it that not everyone participating in this feels like they're entering an altered state, it makes the research more problematic, and more fruitful, ultimately, I mean, I hope).
Tomorrow we open, and my house is different. Screens hanging up, everything is very clean, and spare, and it feels like I am living in a hotel. I like it more than living in a house, because I can pretend that someone else will be responsible for making the beds. Somewhere in the past couple of days, my irritation at the invasion in my house turned me from being the writer who watches things into someone who is making this thing, and that's a good role for me. And I am reminded by all of this that the phenomenological questions I have about this work are as much about my own subjectivity as the others, and that, despite the relentless heat, this, this, this temporary space, is home.
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