Not so Emma

I got on my blog to post again without really knowing what I was going to write about, but I saw the title of my most recent post (May? I gotta get better at this!) and figured I should address this Emma phenomenon with an update: to wit: I didn't make the finals of the free speech competition. Oh well. Who knew there were so many plays laying around in people's drawers about free speech! They got fifty one submissions and narrowed it down to a handful of finalists (six I think) and I wasn't one of them . . . on to the next thing.

One thing about having a pipeline of unproduced plays at my disposal: I have something for nearly any occasion!

On the topic of new plays yet to be written: nothing boiling inside that makes me want to drop everything and start writing. I was playing around with a series of vignettes about blind dates . . .and wrote several, but it hasn't really caught fire just yet.

Of course there is always Self Inflicted Wounds, my most recent. It needs some work and I should go back to it to smooth out some rough edges . . . this weekend is a nice long weekend, maybe I can get to it then. We'll see.

Bette and I took part in a farewell event at Shades Rep. They are moving to a new space. It was fun. First off I love Sam Harps, so when he asks 'Do you want to' I figure 'why not?'. I just read a couple of monologues from my plays, the Buffalo Creek story from Where the Rain Never Falls and the Kerouac scene from Dead Authors. It went over very well. I really connected emotionally in the Rain monologue, always nice when that happens; and the Kerouac monologue was a hit as well. Bette read a new solo piece of hers, nice reaction from the audience. It's a challenging piece, but she pulled it off beautifully.

We're holding off on theater excursions right now because of Edinburg. We'll be seeing some nice stuff there so we're hoarding our shekels for now. Too bad. Would have liked to have seen Sweat and Indecent. Oslo and Dolls House part 2 as well, for that matter . . . but timing is everything.

We did see the controversial Julius Ceasar. Loved John Douglas Thompson (as always) and the guy who plays JC was great as well . . . the direction and technical aspects were good as well, a lot of nice touches. When we left I predicted they'd get some push back for the depiction of JC as Trump . . . and they did . . . but since JC's team wins in the end, everyone should just chill out . . . of course with Trumpy as president things are pretty f'n chilly as it is.

Onward.