Playing catch up

And there is a lot to catch up on:

First the Poe readings. The event couldn't have gone better. Nicely attended, and the work was fun. Bette and I killed at it and Sam Waymon (you may recall he is Nina Simone's brother and set three poems to music) was great as well. The people were all nice and I was very very happy with my work. Reading The Raven is like doing a solo piece. It is theatrical in the extreme and I was discovering new things right up to the last performance. Nice feedback from audience members as well.

The really big news is on the Old Hickory front: I mentioned in a previous post that part of the reason for doing the Poe stuff was to see what the possibilities are with the current mgt of the theater. Well we hit it off big time! Richard and his significant other, Carolyn, are very nice folks and Richard has a great promotional sense and is very astute with the tech end of things as well.

So I reached out to him to see if we could talk and went to his office yesterday afternoon, just generally to see if he had any interest in maybe doing something along the lines of my solo work or something . . . I figured I'd put it out there and he would take some time to think it over . . . to my surprise I left with a booking! We brain stormed some and he asked about a Valentine's hook . . . and a light sure went off in my head. Granted . . . it's a bit of a twisted Valentine's hook but hey, that's the best kind. It's a story about love and such anyway, kind of, and if we can get people in there it'll be awesome!

And it's a block from my house!

On to other topics (but more on OH as it develops of course . . . that is why I created the blog in the first place!) I mentioned that I had an older piece that I never could really crack . . . and I have been thinking a lot about it lately . . . I also have some partially written solo stuff waiting for divine inspiration . . . or whatever inspiration I can come by . . . I woke up yesterday morning with an idea for something for the play and jumped out of bed to write it down . . . and then realized . . . it might just be what the doctor ordered for this other solo piece I wrote and set aside . . . it's the one about the nebbishy guy who owns the employment agency and originally it had some characters coming in and out of the story, without a real through line . . . well . . . what I wrote yesterday casts the piece in a whole new light . . . and one that definitely qualifies in the 'hillbilly gothic' mode that I aspire to. So we shall see . . . it's funny how this solo stuff takes over . . . I can't seem to focus on long form multi-character right now . . . everything seems to revolve around solo performance . . . two things: I have plenty of full length plays in my pipeline to submit places ... and writing/performing is really the ultimate expression when you get right down to it (as I have said before).

So now what? 2012 looks to be shaping up to be an exciting year!!