Seeing what happens

So I sat down to write, not really with anything new to talk about or add; I'm running the lines a couple of times a day and that's going well; Red Hand of O'Neill is submitted to French, so it's in someone else's hands; and I'm still looking for a job. Other than that what to write about? Well I did do some more work on my new hillbilly absurdist piece, but I'm not sure that's blogworthy in and of itself.

So I thought, why not just sit down to write and see what happens. Sometimes wonderful things might happen . . . or it might not be anything but the most banal crap imaginable . . . you rolls the dice and takes your chances.

Writing plays is like that sometimes. You putter around, seeking excuses not to write, then you might sit down to read something, hoping for someone to come along and distract you even more . . . instead of sitting down and writing . . . even writing in this blog might be one of those dodges: why spend time writing in a blog when you could be spending the time writing plays? My answer to that one is: I am writing silly. It doesn't really matter what writing you're doing, at least I don't think, as long as you're using those muscles. Something may come out of this that might suggest a play or a line in a play or it might just be another way of keeping things in there mixed up, kind of like stirring up paint so it won't dry up. Anyway, when I started on the blog, I thought of it as a legitimate cousin to the other stuff I do. It's sort of complimentary. There certainly isn't any other conceivable reason for it . . . it's for me . . . so I can later come back and see what (if anything) I was thinking on any given day . . . and to track the course of Old Hickory of course.

Part of the impetus was that I have often thought I should have kept a diary for all my plays, so I could know when I started something and when I 'finished' it (quote marks around finished because as far as I'm concerned, a play isn't 'finished' until I am no longer around to make adjustments). To see what transpired in the course of readings and what not. But I didn't do any of that and thought the trail leading to the one man show might lend itself well.

It would have been great to have kept notes on Damage Control especially. It certainly has the most contentious history, with legit blowups and people trying to take control creatively and otherwise. If I hadn't put my foot down in no uncertain terms, yes, a film would have been made of the play, but it would not have been my play the way things were going. As my friend Angelo said at the time: better it should be sitting on a shelf than to be produced and to be something you aren't proud of! I could write a book about the issues and people involved, and I know plays and films are different vis a vis creative control, but part of the deal with that one was that I was one third of creative control, and my one third did the right thing and pulled the plug . . . it cost me a friend too, but I'd do it again if the same thing happened.

You do have to stand your ground sometimes ... and it might cost you a production, but there's integrity involved and that means whatever it means to each individual; the sooner you learn that the better. You just have to decide for yourself just how far you're willing to go.

Another play that would have been fun to blog about would have been Thirty Odd Years, arguably my best work; certainly my most produced. We have had some adventures with that one, road trips and what have you, and I was able to perform it for the French and at Theater Actors Workshop in CT. It would have been ripe for blogging because a lot of people were involved and there are some funny stories.

I guess when you get down to it nearly every play has a story to tell; my Emma Goldman trilogy (of which the third isn't even begun) is another one ... especially when you consider the genesis of it . . . ok, I won't tease: one of the first time my wife and I met Mara Mills at the late great Herbert Mark Newman Theater in Pleasantville, (where Mara was AD) Mara nodded toward Bette (who she knew was an actress) and said she should play Emma Goldman some day. I didn't do anything immediately, but I did eventually get her two volume autobiography and read it . . . hers is an amazing story. Then years later when I was a member of the Revolutionary Writers Workshop at the Genesius Guild, one of our assignments was to write a scene from history . . . I figured that was the time to attack the Emma Goldman idea and that's where the whole thing started. I remember when I took a scene in, or it was a monologue actually I think, and the leader of the group, Stephen Seeley, found a small bit of the monologue and said 'this much here? This is a play' . . . and he was right, Emma's story is so vast, you couldn't possibly tell it all in one play . . . as it is the first play covers from her meeting Alexander Berkman through Berkman's attempt on Henry Clay Frick's life . . . a really interesting story, but then there are many of those in her life.

Enough you're saying! Ok, I have written a lot of plays and they all do have stories, but that is enough for now.

And besides that . . . I think I may be burning oatmeal in the next room so I had better go tend to it!