Sunday, January 22, 2006

Well this has been a bust, eh? I'd like to say this could be a beacon from the Northwest, informing everyone else out there about theatre 'round these parts. That was the initial intention. But I can't. I realized something talking with one of the able bodied critics who already gives an indication of the fare in Seattle: I'm interested in producing this stuff, not reviewing it. I'd be committing artistic suicide, not to mention executing any opportunities to work with local companies if I spent time critiquing their shows publically. And I wouldn't be writing plays much, would I?

I had a notion that maybe I'd use this blog to document the pitfalls of trying to become a playwright, but Mac Rogers in NY is already doing that notably (slowlearner.typepad.com). Then again I have so far to go that my story might be interesting to the general public in its own right. What is my story? If Mac is a slowlearner, I'm an imbicile when it comes to the craft. I sit in front of my keyboard and wait as if a script is going to jump out at me from between the letters. I have monologues and scenes that are so inert I roll my cursor over them to see if I can set them moving. I've got no start.

They say that young playwright's lack experience to draw from. A classic example of "young" success is Michael Weller writing Moon Children at 26. And that was an anomaly. What am I supposed to do at 24? Amidst ground-breaking elections, suicide bombings, threats of pandemics and questions of torture and privacy I'm expected to write about college life or highschool perspectives. Of course I have a derth of wisdom. Of course cynicism has not set in. If I am going to break the empty face of the page with dialogue, though, I've got to be able to write about something important.

But I don't know if I have experience. All this shit exploding into my consciousness will seem commonplace when it's been cylcing repeatedly for ten years. Maybe then I'll see the trends and be able to pull thematic structures from them. Right now it's so visceral and immediate I have a hard time even keeping my hands from jittering. And that's not the coffee. I think the necessary difficutly for anyone trying to write a play now is that you can't simply, without some sort of denial and insularity, exclude the pressing matters that globalization has brought down upon us. The daylight on the American family drama is slowly setting, making way for something much more sinister--but with room for hope.

I guess there is potential for this blog. I'm going to dig my way out and write something. If it means that every day I sit with a blank page and scratch my head, so be it. All this noise and catastrophe brewing in my psyche has to produce something, eventually. I've never been a slow learner. Things just hit me when they're ready like the unpredictable onset of several glasses of whiskey. The plays will come. On the rocks.

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