Wait It Gets Better

When was the last time you listened to Appalachian Spring? Well, what are you waiting for? It’s perfect for writing overdue thank you notes for your five-year-old’s birthday party right after returning from the Last Frontier Conference in Valdez, Alaska.

Standing in Valdez at midnight, you can see this:

or this:

or this:

or this:

In a word, the conference is summer camp for playwrights, with massive doses of theater and creative energy in a supportive community. It lasts nine days, every region in the country represented. It’s inspiring to meet people from small Alaskan towns totally dedicated to theater. Albee started it but is long gone; I’m told things are more open and democratic now. Dawson Moore, the current conference head, is a sweetheart.

Here’s my Lincoln, the tender and passionate Frank Collison, and his lovely spouse, Laura Gardner:

Here’s some friends I made:

Sweet dream. You know, I actually drank some whiskey.

The Dog Ear production of Cuts at the Road trundles on. Reviews are in. The upshot is, like all children of Lake Woebegon, I am above average. In point of fact, I am wry, absurdist and thought-provoking. And also, worth watching. These, my adjectives, are pretty much it, but let it be writ down, I am worth watching. I will demonstrate: Above, we see the lovely Ann Noble in a fratracidal moment that is nothing if not thought-provoking.

And here above is Ann with co-conspirator Mark Doerr in a moment that is the very definition of worth watching.

Ann and Mark are joined by Mara Marini in a worth watching and thought-provoking way.

Wryly, Mara interacts with Ann.

Here’s Ann’s final moment, in which, absurdly, she shares her love of books with the audience.

There you have it. As I am only barely beginning what I hope will be a productive run with critics, I will say that, in truth, I am grateful for the attention. Call me a dreamer, I did long for just a teensy bit of elaboration, such as perhaps to say that when a young girl’s father disappears from her life, a hole opens in her psyche into which wry, absurdist and thought-provoking things pour in. But no one said that. Well, I have said it. I am my own critic. But you knew that.

What a relief to get out of the fast lane. Conversation over dinner at Bruin Woods, the UCLA conference center at Lake Arrowhead, CA. They have alumni family weeks over the summer, alumni family holiday weekends in the fall:

What is it you do?

Me: I’m a playwright.

Oh. It’s a good living?

Me: Nobody makes a living writing plays. Maybe five people. Like, can you name five living playwrights?

Arthur Miller!

Me: Rightio.

Tenessee Williams!

Me: Right again.

What’s his name. The funny guy.

Me: Adam Rapp?

Yeah. The Odd Couple, right?

The place is so popular you have to win a lottery to get in. Literally. We took Graham over New Years. The big hit was this one clump of old snow that hadn’t melted–he called it his “mountain.”

The thing is, Lake Arrowhead, Playground to the Stars, is now a city in the sky: not one inch of lakefront undeveloped, as far as I could see, much of the forest that I remember decimated by the bark beetle.

Then:

Now:

It’s a shame, as I was planning to parlay some of my playwriting millions into a cottage on the lake. Now it’s back to square one.

Rehearsals for the Dog Ear production of Cuts at the Road proceed apace. My modest contribution, a ten minute perversion entitled Biblio, features three superb actors and a very smart director who said, “This play is confused on so many levels — and I really thank the playwright for that.” It is not often one finds a director willing to give credit where credit is due, and so I accept the honor on behalf of all playwrights everywhere. May I just add that confusion is a state of mind which to my mind matters little in the long run anyway? Yes–let me just add that and be done with it. Except to say that if you are reading this before April 21, 2007 you can see the confusion yourself by ordering a ticket here.

God save the Road Theatre.

Once upon a time I studied acting with Peggy Feury at the Loft Studio on LaBrea. From the moment I climbed the stairs to the Loft she became magnetic north in my creative life, and I am still digesting lessons she taught. Years later, after her tragic death, I started writing letters to her.

Dear Peggy,

You assigned a play, a scene from the play, and a partner. I read the play and the partner and I worked on the scene. Then we ran the scene for you and you spoke to us about it. We rehearsed more, brought the scene back, and you spoke again. This took two weeks. Then another scene, same process, then another, for three years, time off for vacation. Strindberg, Shaw, Chekhov, Behrman, Genet, Pirandello, Albee, Miller, O’Neill, Wedekind, Brecht, Coward, Ibsen, Barry, Feydeau, Bergman, Pinter. Fifty scenes? A hundred? More than I remember. More Chekhov than I wanted. Not enough Albee. When you spoke, my ignorance stunned me. Not ignorance of myself; that was a given. Ignorance of the play I had read and worked on. When I thought a scene had been about A and B, it was really about C and D. Not probably C and D. Not a matter of artistic difference between you and me. A matter of seeing. Once you opened my eyes, the truth was plain and incontestable, right there in the lines: Martha hated her husband. The doctor knew he was a fraud. I read and re-read. Where had I been? Was I born so stupid? It brought me to despair. Once, thinking I saw a life raft, I asked you: Peggy, how many times do you need to read a play to get it? You told me the number, which I have never forgot, and I slunk away. Years later, thinking myself bereft of things to write about, sorry I had not made different choices, climbed other mountains, I found solace in Wallace Stegner, whose remark—any life will provide the material, if it is attended to—called back your answer: one time. That’s what you need, that’s what you have.

I’ve begun a new play. It’s political, sort of. I’ll give you a clue what it’s about: it’s not about this man. I grovel in mortification that I am wrestling with the Angel of History yet another time — it takes place in my favorite century.

But that was not what I wanted to tell you. What I wanted to tell you was to listen to this video of this man, who is most definitively of a more recent century. You will not be sorry.

Do you think I read Wikipedia too much? Just wondering.

Back to work.

Wondrous, cotton-candy clouds outside my window amid endless blue. Is it my imagination or has the smog been gone an entire month? L.A. is cold! Cold! Well, nippy. At least not warm. You can almost hear the foxes on the hills barking. Graham is off to the park with Jane and I have a precious hour. Read Mickey’s blog to discover the news from the Kansas: little dogs, newlyweds, Jacob Needleman (et Mihi res, non me rebus. Ha!)

Yesterday we took Graham to a puppet play at the Geffen (lovely puppets and a gratuitous message against pollution. Why must we send children messages? I’m with Sam Goldwyn.) We wandered into the new second stage, a lovely space, all set for an All My Sons rehearsal — Oh, do not ask, “Why All My Sons?”

Later today, with Graham to a junior version of Into the Woods at the Eclectic. Graham, three, believes in fairies. There is a colony of them living among the nasturtium in the front yard, with whom he frequently discourses. We will see what he makes of Sondheim.

I must again outside to breathe the cold, clear air. Cold! In Los Angeles!

I believe I haven’t sent a play out in six months. The last show I had was a collective Dog Ear piece for which I wrote a ten-minute segment. There was the near miss at Louisville, then that production offer for my epic, 12-character play from a certain Equity company–subsequently withdrawn owing to budget constraints–but I think these (this isn’t horseshoes) do not count. Am I suffering the lassitude of despair? No. I am thinking over my options, allowing myself to inhabit my long moment of negative capability. I note, on daily walks with my three-year-old, the little things–worms after rain, a dent in my fender with a lovely reddish hue. I sense kinship, if not with all nature, than at least with William Carlos Williams, although I search in vain for a wheelbarrow. Then: the playwright’s miracle. I report to you, gentle reader, that twice this week I have been contacted by individuals from theaters who wish to read plays of mine, and which I sent posthaste. The operative word is read, not produce. Yet I am to be read! Read! Surely the Bard himself was not indifferent to being read. Might I lay claim to a smallish piece of that joy felt by Bottom when he announced (it was Bottom, wasn’t it?) “Our play is preferred!“? I do! I do!

Went to Edna O’Brien’s Triptych tonight at the Matrix, an elegant, venerable 99 seater on Melrose with a wide, wide stage, disorienting, zig-zag sets and a sweeping, low-rise semi-circle of a house. O’Brien is a novelist. I once saw her read at Beyond Baroque in Venice. She had flaming red hair and after the reading was surrounded by a coterie of women and girls which flitted through the room like a swarm of bees moving their queen.

Her play is about three women all involved with the same man–wife, daughter, mistress. You never see the man, just the vapor trail he leaves through the women. Or maybe the knife trail, it’s that kind of play. The women writhe, grieve, rage, and in the end the man dies. No moral, no revelation, no surprise. I suppose you could say the play was about adultery or marriage, but it really wasn’t. It was just these women.

I am so dumb. I realize midway through that what O’Brien is doing is playing these women like instruments. That, I tell myself, is what playwrights do with their characters. That’s the whole trick. Play them. Fret them. Sound their notes. Explore their harmonies, their dissonances, their timbre, their vibrato, their pianissimo–it’s endless because the psyche is endless; there are no limits, and there are no answers, or, if there are, the answers aren’t the point. Silly me, looking for answers. There you go again.

At a Great Mother Conference once, Bly said to me, “Your trouble is you think art is about people.” He was talking about poetry. For a long time afterward I thought the operative word in what he said was people. Now I think maybe the operative word was about.