And then there was this from the L.A. Times on July 30th: The Pasadena Playhouse told playwright Gina Young they had problems with the title her play that was set for the Carrie Hamilton Theatre. The title? TALES OF A FOURTH GRADE LESBO (a nod to Judy Blume). Sheldon Epps, artistic director of the Playhouse, said he had concerns over the title, “the same concerns I would have if a play had the N-word or the F-word in the title.” But then he learned the term can be one of empowerment in the lesbian community, so he withdrew his objections.

Then the Playhouse offered a compromise in which TALES could rent the theatre but would have had to hire an outside ticket vendor and agree not to be represented on the Playhouse website. The offer was declined.

I went to research this further on-line and found a happy ending to this story… one that the L. A. Times didn’t follow up on and report, darn them.

Writer Sara Cardine filled in the remaining details in the Pasadena Weekly… which I encourage you to read here.
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/?id=11403

I loved the fact that people kept communicating and worked things out.

This just in…

The headline in today’s L.A. Times Calendar Section: Too Nude? Too Gay? DEATHTRAP at L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center is canceled after the author’s estate balks at staging.

According to the article, DEATHTRAP ran last spring at the Gay and Lesbian Center with 30 seconds of nudity, but author Iran Levin’s estate has revoked permission for the September run.

Hmm… What happened between last spring and now? Did the estate (Ira’s sons) not know about the nudity earlier?

This time around, the estate said cease and desist, and then upon appeal, they said the production could continue but under the condition the staging would not include any behavior indicating a physical relationship between the two men in the play.

Producer Jon Imparato’s reaction: “No director could adhere to these restrictions. They were so limiting.”

Director Ken Sawyer said the staging featured some kissing and embracing between the male protagonists and described the nudity as “innocuous. They [the estate] are making a big deal out of relatively little.”

But then there is this from a professor of theatre: “It’s a gay relationship, but it’s a tacit one.” And a Backstage review last spring described the nudity as “gratuitous” and said that it does a “disservice to the play.”

The actor who took off his clothes for the part didn’t feel it was gratuitous and felt it was appropriate for the production.

My head’s spinning. Since I haven’t seen the production, though, I’ll weigh in generally as a playwright. I’m a little peeved by Imparato’s words. “These restrictions… so limiting.” Well, the play was written in 1978, did the author intend to have physical contact and nudity in the play? And if you don’t like those parameters, then don’t do the play.

Of course there are the productions of (Mr. Public Domain) Shakespeare’s plays where the concept is updated and re-imagined. But if something’s in the public domain, does that allow directors some ”give” in their interpretation? Or not? Where is the line? I suppose somehow staying true to the intent of the play would be key in deciding. Back to my earlier question: Did Ira Levin intend for this relationship to be tacit and not overtly physical? Did the director update the play to 2012? And is that okay? I’d be a little nervous if someone inserted nudity into my play written and set in 1978… unless I saw it and thought it was fabulous. But once a play is published, you can’t check every production. And if I were dead… hmmm, really hard to check up. The sons are trying to do right by their dad, I’m guessing.

I recently received an email soliciting for plays; a networking kind of “form” email. Apparently, the producer found my name on a website. Which one, I don’t know; haven’t asked… I wrote back, curious, and turns out we know people in common. We got to chatting via email. I pitched a couple of plays. The producer expressed interest in one and requested a “package”.

Now, if only I had a play. Well I have a play but it was written in 2008 and revised in 2010 and 2011. Neither rewrite was complete or satisfactory to me. I am within days of finishing my latest rewrite and am happy. I met with my director and we are close to submitting “the package”.

This play is different than my usual, “It takes place in somebody’s mind” and it isn’t a psychological drama. It is actually a “straight” drama, or as somebody who has read my recent draft said, “It is my most accessible play.” Of course, it’s set to music in the public domain, so, really, it’s a play with music. But it’s accessible. Apparently.

I liked hearing that.

I’m trying to keep the faith.  Despite my “choose happiness” pep-rally blog yesterday, well sometimes it’s just hard.  If I have to recite a mantra to convince myself to BELIEVE, BELIEVE, BELIEVE that there will be light at the end of the tunnel then that’s what I have to do.  I look for graces everywhere; signs I’m on the right path and not insane to write a play.  I’ve never done this before.  I’ve only known bits and bytes, and talking about “processes”, “methodologies” and “testing” (in every possible flavor.)

I think this is probably the gift of suffering, though I’m not really suffering.  It’s a metamorphosis, and I’m transitioning to a different me.  I’ve been split in my mentality between the professional IT dudette.  I’ve got to commit to the dream now.

“The darkest hour of the night is just before dawn.” – Thomas Fuller

As part of keeping the faith I booked all my hard earned vacation days to do some writing.  It’s part of my commitment to finish the play.  I’m fearful that nothing will come out, or nothing worthwhile.  (See there’s the critic already raising its ugly head… “You can’t do it.  You don’t know how.”)  People at work ask, “Are you doing anything on your vacation?”, “Are you going anywhere?”, “What are you going to do?”  I answer simply with “I have something I have to finish and I’ve got to take time to do it.”

 I haven’t been writing rigorously, meaning, I don’t sit down daily and write the play.  I’ve just been doing a lot of marinating and let insights bubble up, and look for common themes that leads me to the underlying theme of the story.  Maybe marinating is okay, and part of the process.  But I’m compelled to think that I need to strike a balance between “just marinating” and actually putting down tracks. 

 I had one of the situations put up for a reading last week, and that fired me up to go further.  One step at a time, one day at a time… maybe I should look up the 12 step program and see if there’s anything there of use to me.  What is my addiction? Negative thoughts?  I took this list from aa.org website and replaced alcohol with Negative Thoughts

 THE TWELVE STEPS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

1. We admitted we were powerless over negative thoughts—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to negative thinkers, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Sure.  There are some things on this list I can use to empower me for finishing the play, and I’ll start with #11.  I believe this idea of writing a play is not random, and that I’m being led to this path, and there are people and circumstances opening up to me that will help me.  But I need to be open to these opportunities.  So go write!

 Thank you.

It’s one of those weeks when everything just built up to a point of “giving a way”.  I say “giving a way”, because I liken it to running a race, and I’m always trying to stay ahead of or in synch with something – which is usually TIME.  In a 24 hour period when we try to fit in the “work to live”, “live to work”, “working out” and “no work” I decided something’s gotta give.  That something is probably my idea of how my life should be assembled.  I have this image of a pie chart and it’s divided into my ideal of how to allocate my time, and then I compare it to the reality, the other pie chart that’s chewed out at the edges, unevenly browned and probably undercooked inside.

Time out.  I reached my “giving a way” point subconsciously, I think, around 3 weeks ago.  There was a death of someone who was very close to me, and someone who was still quite young.  He passed away with cancer at 51.  I was planning a trip to the memorial service in Canada, but some constraints prevented my good intentions.  It would’ve been a time of gathering with people I have not seen in so long (too long), and to remember the good times and how much we need to create more of them with every moment.

So I hung back in Los Angeles and took care of my dog.  My German Shepherd is aging gracefully at 14.5 years old, though she and I are struggling with her incontinence… (Let me tell you that I do her laundry 6 times as much as I do mine.)  I was really bummed out not going and then I was buried in work.  My manager quit, my work place is in a state of flux, my application for a perm visa is therefore in an unsteady state and I developed sciatica.  Me?  Not me?!  I’m the one who keeps saying I’m going to be hiking well into my 80’s. 

Wow.  This is really happening.  I felt overwhelmed and my pie chart became one whole “No fun” activity.  But something turned around somehow.  I believed I was not going to quit.  I just didn’t know how to do it.  I didn’t want to continue spinning my wheels in the same muddy puddle.  By grace I decided to tackle one thing that I can control which was my health.  It wasn’t just a matter of dealing with the sciatica, but before I can do that, I had to work on my mentality.  I needed to shift my attention from ‘poor, poor me.’

I was hunting around the internet for inspirational stories and found this on The Wellness Clinic, “Top Five Regrets before Dying By Bronnie Ware.  It was an article written on February 3rd, 2011.  Bronnie worked in palliative care for many years and gathered a list of the regrets and common themes that surfaced from people at the gates to the other side.  Here is the link to the article:  http://en-gb.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=144033175657282.

The list:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
5. I wish I had let myself be happier

That last one summed it all up for me.  Yes, there’ll be very rough times, and I can choose to get down and wallow, and even let it defeat me (for awhile.)  Or I can choose to see the bigger picture and have a deeper insight to what’s really going on.  What value can I take from this experience?  For one thing, always having the courage to go on.  Another thing is getting to know myself in the face of adversity.  And then just choose to be happy and choose to be grateful that I can experience life. 

After all these years I’m starting to get it, and that is life is not an idea.  It is what I’m actively thinking and doing, and what unfolds in the next moment is a result of what I was thinking and doing.  Those things I have control of.  So having boosted my mentality I decided to tackle how to heal my sciatica.  I came upon a book by Letha hadady,  D. Ac., called “Asian Health Secrets”.  The book is a holistic approach to healing.  To my surprise there were presciptions specific to sciatica.  I dug into the book, and my world opened up to a new attitude about herbs and Traditional Chinese Medicine.  I started the anti-phlegm cleanse which improved my condition on all planes:  mental, physical and emotional.  So far so good.

My heightened awareness from the cleanse has allowed me to slow down my breathing, rather than not breathing at all.  I’m taking the time to appreciate what I’ve got.  It’s such a good feeling.  It was a matter of choice to remind myself what really matters to me.  I catch myself still mindful of time, but with a perspective that time is relative.  (By the way, I’ve started reading Gary Zukav’s “The Dancing Wu Li Masters” which is described as “a mysticists interpretation of quantum physics”.)  It fell into my radar just after I was pondering about Einsteins Theory of Relativity.  I believe my thought created this possibility of the book coming to me.

Bronne concludes his article with this: 

Life is a choice.  It is YOUR ife.  Choose consciously, choose wisely, and choose honestly.  Choose happiness.

This is my favourite Goethe quote:

Choose well.  Your choice is brief and yet endless.

So I’ve made a commitment to a director to finish my rewrite of “Original Sin”.  I’m not going to say what date, but I did make a choice to put the play into others’ hands now.  I’m sharing the gift.  I somewhat left myself without a choice but to do it.

Thank you.

I can’t get enough of Bill Hicks.  I saw a documentary about him in 2010 at least 10 times.  When you see a movie for that many times the sentences from the situations just fall out of your mouth like braised meat falling off the bone – tender, juicy and succulent.  The content is so rich from that documentary.  It’s called “American:  The Bill Hicks Story”.

I discovered Bill Hicks from a musician.  The Tool album “Aenima” was a tribute to Bill Hicks.  There was mutual admiration between the band and the comedian.  The band also mentions the comedian/satirist as the inspiration for another album, “Undertow”.    I admire Hicks’ integrity and genius.  He spoke it as he saw it, and he didn’t just speak off the cuff without giving it thought.  There’s deep insight to what he said.  He was devoted to raising the evolution of humankind.  Yes, he had controversial ideas, opinions and he spoke them. 

That flag burning thing, god did that bring up some retarded emotions… The flag! The flag! They said we can burn the flag!!! they didn’t say that, they said if a guy burns a flag he probably doesn’t have to go to jail… For a fucking year! People going… “Hey buddy, let me tell you something… My daddy died for that flag!” Really? I bought mine, you know they sell them in K-mart, three bucks. “He died in the Korean war for that flag.” Well want a coincidence! Mine was made in Korea! He didn’t die for a fucking flag, it’s just a piece of cloth, he died for what the flag represents and that the freedom To Burn The Fucking Flag!

– Bill Hicks

For me as an artist, I look to Bill as an inspiration for honest story telling – telling it from the gut, and not being concerned about others’ opinions, especially the critic in me.  When I write like that, I find it rings truer to other people who sees my work.  Whenever I let the critic run amok I don’t write at all.  Best to gag that critic and leave him out of the creativity realm.  The only use I have for the critic is when another critic tears into a piece of my creation.  Maybe that’s the only purpose for the critic.

In February 2009, David Letterman apologized to Mary Hicks (Bill’s mother) for censoring a taped performance by Bill Hicks that was scheduled to air in the autumn of  1993.  It would’ve been his last appearance (his 12th) on the Late Night Show.  In his apology to Mary Hicks, Letterman said, “What was the matter with me?… It says more about me as guy than it says about Bill, because there was absolutely nothing wrong with that.”   I agree with that statement.  When I am critical of somebody else’s opinion or behavior then it’s a sign of a shadow in my own personality that is being reflected back upon me.  The other person’s words and actions is reflecting back to me what I don’t like about me.

A few days ago I was running one of his skits in my head.  I had just finished reading “Soul Stories” by Gary Zukav, and one of the messages from the book is we are all one.  Bill Hicks closes his shows with the same message.  He asks why the media never portrays a positive drug story.  In his fantasy he describes what could be a positive story:

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.   Here’s Tom with the Weather.”  – Bill Hicks

I needed another dose of Bill, so I replayed one his recordings over the weekend.  (If you’re curious to hear any of his work, I’d recommend “Sane Man”, “Rant E-minor”, or “Arizona Bay”.)   I wondered if there was anyone these days that can come close to being in the same league as Bill Hicks.  So I hopped on the internet to do a search found this new flash.  Actor Cameron Crowe will be directing a biopic on Bill Hicks.  The actor was originally going to play the part, but the casting for the role has been opened.  Production of the movie is scheduled for next year.  It’s hard to imagine who can touch the intelligence, compassion and talent of Bill Hicks, but I hope that whoever communes with Bill’s words can aspire to the consciousness he inspired among his fans.

Bill died of pancreatic cancer in February 1994.  He was 32 years old.

Our neighbor has a sign on his front door that says, “Something wonderful is about to happen.” That’s the feeling I have every time I send a play out into the world.

I’ve sent my romantic comedy, Sunday Dinner, to anyone who asks for it. I’ve sent it to Iran, where a student says he is translating it. I’ve sent it to a high school sophomore who was going to report back after his production. I’m waiting to hear. I’m also waiting to hear from a couple in Manitowoc, Wisconsin who were going to get back to me with comments on their informal reading. I’ve emailed it to Kenya and to the British Virgin Islands and to a playhouse in Lancaster, U.K. Did they like it? Did they read it? Did they produce it?

“Night and Silence. Who is there?”  Day and Silence, too.

However, one wonderful thing did happen and it happened because of the lafpi!

A couple of years ago, when the lafpi was first formed, I saw a post on the lafpi info list in which a company in Italy asked for ten minute plays for a festival in Rovereto, Italy. I submitted one and heard back that it was to be produced as part of the festival.

I heard nothing more and wrote back after a few months, after the festival was supposed to have been held. The A.D., Leonardo Franchini, replied that his company had been unable to stage my play. I think it was because the actors had left for another job.

He asked. “Do you have a full length play?” I did. I sent him Sunday Dinner and then I actually heard back. Leonardo, who is a terrific novelist and journalist as well as a theatrical producer, liked it and translated it.   Sunday Dinner became e cosi anche tua suocera? Compagnia dell’Attimo produced it twice, once in 2011 and once in 2012.

I have taken to saying, “Ciao,” and talking with my hands. And I am very happy that I am part of the wonderful lafpi.

For the last two decades, when I’ve not been busy crouched over a keyboard writing my plays, I’ve been working in the box office at Theatre Palisades, a community theatre in the Pacific Palisades.

I don’t know how that happened.  I’ve heard that John Lennon said that life is what happens to  you when you are making other plans.

(He didn’t say that first, of course. Allen Saunders, the cartoonist of the comic strips Steve Roper and Mary Worth did in a 1957 issue of the Reader’s Digest.  Thank you, Wikipedia.)

For over a decade, I’ve been submitting my plays to the Play Recommendation Committee at Theatre Palisades.  I’ve done workshops and specials and two night membership shows.  I’ve nagged and whined and maybe mentioned once or twice that I’ve been PRODUCED ELSEWHERE, but every year I’ve been turned down.  I would slink away and slip the wounded play into the drawer.

The policy of the theatre did not change.  It does not do new plays.

For one my workshops, quite a few years ago, I wrote a one act comedy called All About Harold, which contained a woman’s monologue about her husband, Harold, and his feeling that the Buick was a perfect car.   The woman’s sister did not share her affection for the man or the car, and had a secret about him that was revealed at the end of the play.

I worked with two wonderful actresses at the theatre, discovered new things about the characters and rewrote as we went along.

Then, I fell in love with the characters and rewrote until I had a two act play with an ending that was set in the Pacific Palisades!

I submitted All About Harold to the Play Committee and it was rejected.  Undaunted, two members of the theatre (George Lissandrello, Gail Matthius) and the amazing Spolin Players staged it at the local American Legion as a fund raiser for the Fisher House (http://fisherhouse.org/) in West Los Angeles.  We got some laughs and raised a thousand dollars!

I rewrote yet again, and the play became Four Women In Search Of A Character.  I submitted it to Play Recommendation Committee and it was rejected yet again.

Following that, I had two readings, one at The Blank and one at the Red Brick Road.  I re-rewrote and the play became Whatever Happened To Roy?.  The monologue about Harold is gone.  Harold is gone.  The perfect Buick is gone.  But the last act is still set in the Pacific Palisades.

I resubmitted it to the Play Recommendation Committee.

TO MY SURPRISE, the 2013 Season is starting off with Whatever Happened To Roy?!   I’m not quite sure how it happened and am still not quite sure that it’s going to happen but I am over the moon.

So, I wanted to say, “Thank you,” to the theater, to my husband and daughter, fellow writers and friends, all of whom have helped me to shape the play over the years.

Whoo hoo!