Tonight, my romantic comedy, The Piaggi Suite, is having a staged reading at The Blank theater in Hollywood.  The reading is part of the Monday night Living Room Series of new plays the Blank has been hosting on its 2nd Stage since 1991.

The plays are free (suggested donation $10) to the public.  The actors have books in hand but give a sense of how the plays would be in full production.

I have been reading for the series for several years, turned on to it by fellow lafpier, Sara Israel.

I have been so fortunate with Piaggi, a play that is close to my heart.   It has incidental music and I looked for a long time for a composer who liked the piece and wanted both to write for it and promote it as well.  Ignoring the scoffers and the supercilious, who said, “bigcheap?”, I posted  on the big cheap list and found Andy Chukerman who wrote some lovely music and got us this gig tonight.

This is just part of his resume: Winner of the Richard Rodgers Award and the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award as composer/co-lyricist of the musical, “The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea”, Andrew Chukerman works extensively in film, television, theater, and concert work, as a composer, orchestrator, music director, and keyboardist.

He also worked with the Blank producers and found the BEST DIRECTOR AND CAST I have seen in a long time.

I’m posting the names of the cast.  If you are ever looking for first rate people, here they are:  Lisa Zane, Maura Knowles,  Megan Moran, Chris Devlin,  David Lago, J.P. Karliak, Peter Katona,  Julie Garnye  and  Mary Carrig.

David Glenn Armstrong, the director, is from New York, in town visiting his brother and putting this up for fun.  Instantly likeable, he accomplished miracles in three very short days.  Efficient, specific, encouraging and engaging, he moved nine actors around a small space and encouraged everyone to play, play, play.

David has staged over 160 productions/workshops seen in 49 states.  He has also worked extensively with Sheldon Harnick and just finished working with him on a new musical.  (Kitty!  Sheldon Harnick is 88 and still going strong.)

So, I’m looking forward to tonight but the best part has already happened.  I haven’t been happy with the ending of the play for sometime.   Voila!  David found me a new one and the rewrite is on.

Back Row:  Lisa Zane, Chris Devlin, David Glenn Armstrong, David Lago, John Paul Karliak, Maura M. Knowles

Front Row:  Mary Carrig, Andy Chukerman, Diane Grant, Julie Garnye, Megan Moran, Peter Katona

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” ― Martha Graham

I am at work turning a play of mine into a screenplay — or rather, using the play as a loose basis for a screenplay.  I’m writing about a writer having a crisis of heart and of faith.  She yearns for a larger, more “important” meaning in her life and is convinced it lies outside of herself, outside her small apartment.  She doesn’t know where, but it’s certainly not on the hard drive of her computer.  She’s tested; she has an epiphany; she’s tested some more.  Someone dies, something in her dies and she is reborn and realizes that everything she has to give the world lies within herself.

“We must cultivate our gardens.” — Voltaire, Candide.

Along the way, my heroine sheds certain habits that don’t serve her.  She stops cooking compulsively and does things that don’t necessarily feel comfortable, like spending the day with a slightly douche-y neighbor (with whom she ultimately falls in love).  As for me, there are several ways I manage to avoid writing.  In my last blog post I talked about spending the day helping some Chihuahuas fly across the country.  Easier and less gut-wrenching avoidance tactics include living out the fabulous lives of Facebook acquaintances, obsessively browsing casting breakdowns, and organizing my face products.  As my heroine is on the brink of change, I cling to these habits even more tightly.  I write a word, I check Facebook.  I eek out a sentence; I forage through the fridge.  Fear grips me — fear of moving into uncharted territory, fear of being called talentless, fear of not finding my mascara minutes before a date.

“In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again.”  — Anais Nin

Like my heroine, I know I have to move past these habits.  I have to sit down and let the story write itself.  It feels like a mythical match of wills because in some way it is: love versus fear, three-headed demons that grunt and shuffle versus incandescent fairies that fly, life versus death.  I know this.  I also know I have no choice.  If I want to tell this story, I have to sit down, move out of the way, and let it happen on its own.

“Creativity takes courage. ”  —  Henri Matisse

I force myself.  It’s one of those do-or-die moments.  Did I mention this story is slightly autobiographical?  My heroine doesn’t make a casserole.  I don’t check Facebook.  I realize there’s nowhere to go, that this is life, right here in this moment and on this page.  I realize this just as she finds peace and solace in her life.  Or maybe she came first?  It’s impossible to know.  One informs the other in a beautiful, terrifying, life-altering dance that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.  The fact is, everything that comes after — for her and for me — is gravy.  We had to do this.  We were called forth, our destinies inextricably linked.

I’m thinking next time I’ll write about a five year-old boy.

I’ve always preferred the spelling of theatre to theater.  I don’t really remember why, I think it’s because I saw English theatre spelled that way, and that meant it was more genuine than the American spelling.

I came across a fascinating article about the history of these two spellings and wanted to share it with you.

“Consider the Astor Place Riot of 1849. This was the deadliest public disturbance in the United States up to that time. The riot pitted immigrants and other working-class people against powerful upper-class New Yorkers who deployed the city’s police and state militia to enforce order. It was the first time government authorities had ever fired live ammunition into a crowd of citizens in this country. As a direct consequence of this incident, the New York City police force, only four years old at the time and armed with wooden clubs, would become the first police force in the nation to be armed with deadly weapons.

The riot grew from a rivalry between actor Edwin Forrest, the first true star of the stage to be born in this country, and Macready (Cushman’s English mentor). The press enjoyed comparing the two, and Forrest encouraged this by touring to cities where Macready was appearing in order to perform in the same Shakespearean roles.

Fans of Macready and Forrest were largely divided along class lines, with the wealthy preferring the refined and aristocratic English actor and working people enthusiastic for the powerful and emotionally explosive American. Macready openly looked down on Americans, viewing them as vulgar, uncultured, and ignorant. Forrest was frustrated by English domination of the American theater…..

The Astor Place Riot is a watershed moment in the history of American culture. The emotion that escalated into that conflict is still discernable in strong opinions about the spelling of the word “theater.” This was an event that furthered a process of class alienation and segregation. Symptomatic of this was a division of American entertainment into categories of “respectable” and “disreputable” that is parallel to attitudes toward the use of “theatre” and “theater” still today.

The militant preference for the British spelling among some theater practitioners in this country actually originates with this elitist impulse. “Disreputable” was code for immigrant or working class. Professional actors gravitated to “respectable,” “legitimate” “theatres.” This is the same impulse that made the impresarios of vaudeville feel justified in imposing racial segregation at their theaters. This is the same elitist impulse that inspired the community leaders of past eras to establish clubs that were “exclusive.”

While the design and very location of the Astor Place Opera House were intentionally chosen to draw a strict dividing line between social classes, now the owners of theaters and other public accommodations found new ways to make specific classes of people understand that they were not welcome. The decision to use the un-phonetic British spelling of “theater” is a subtle example, intended to send a message that connotes cultural superiority, refinement, and exclusivity.”

You can read the entire article here:

You Write “Theatre,” I Write “Theater” by Anthony Chase in ARTVOICE

When I was in high school, a nuclear slur was calling a girl a “feminist”.  That meant you were probably butch, mean, unattractive, frigid, angry, and humorless.

I was called a feminist on many occaisions – and called myself a feminist. I still consider myself a feminist, (I dont’ get asked if I’m a feminist anymore) but it seems to have become a historical hanger rather than a contemporary identity.

I worked with some wonderful women directors and artistic directors when I was an actor, and felt a kind of kindred spirit with them during those times. 

This article in the New York Times brought back some of the feelings from that long time ago era – when being a feminist was a stigma. 

New York Times article on: Theater Female Directors in New York

I’ve kept this article in my “saved” emails for a few months. I’ve read it several times. And it’s a bracing tonic when the fires of discontent start in.

I’m recovering from a recent bout with pnuemonia, and that changed my idea of “success” for a few days.  A successful day was when I could make it down the hall to fix a cup of tea and go back to bed.  A successful night was when I could stop coughing for a few hours to get some sleep. And the most successful was when the cat stopped trying to smother my face with a pillow to stop my coughing sounds.

Lindsay Price article on success

Late last year I remember blogging about how much I look forward to January, when I am able to start a new play. I finished one yesterday. That isn’t, in itself, remarkable, but what was eye-opening to me was the experience of writing the first fourteen pages of the third act.

To explain, I was intent on writing three stand-alone one-acts that if performed together, could be an evening. I wrote the first act, first as an exercise in regional dialect, and then got serious. I struggled through the second act… I took myself out to dinner a week or so ago and outlined it and the third act, so what I found difficult was writing toward a determined end, and not just free associating.

I wasn’t supposed to write on Friday. I was supposed to take a break and do housework. However, I sat down at lunch, transcribed the bits I’d written on the back of envelopes and scratch paper and before the evening was out, I had fourteen pages.

I’ve never experienced a fourteen page day before. I don’t know what to think about it, except, maybe, those pages needed to be written. I’d elaborate, but I would just be putting words on a feeling that don’t need explaining. It’s enough that I wrote them and I’m glad the laundry could wait.

I’ve got a piece in rehearsal. I was asked several days ago to submit another, longer piece for consideration for production, based upon my query, which I did. I’m currently working on a trio of pieces that follow the same three female characters and have a well-revised draft of acts one and two. I’m moving into the third tomorrow. I have actors scheduled to come over and read them next Thursday and a reading in front of colleagues the first Saturday of February…

I was going to concentrate my posts this week on the piece I have in rehearsal, but that was until I realized that this writing period of mine ends in exactly two weeks. It ends abruptly, willy-nilly, until the next potentially uninterrupted period of time arrives at the end of the school year in June, the fifth month from now. I would add, I’m sad, but truth is, I’m relieved. I’ve been going at a pace…

I had cancer exactly thirteen years ago. Since then, due to my adverse reaction to one of the chemotherapy drugs, I’ve experienced one or two pneumonias a year. That is, until October of 2011 when my doctors sent me to UCLA after another week-long hospital stay on massive doses of Prednisone and intravenous antibiotics. Surprisingly, even to me, I’ve been pneumonia-free for fifteen months. Even as much as I’d like to say, it’s because I eat, exercise, and sleep well, it’s really because of the legal pharmaceuticals I take to stay well. I am grateful for them.

I saw this meme appear on my Facebook News Feed yesterday. It is attributed to Buddha:

“The trouble is, you think you’ve got time.”

I don’t. Do you?