Day Off

Day Off may be a misleading title as I have Jerome Fellowship applications to review for The Playwright's Center. The problem with not having a 9-5 like job -- one of the few problems with not having a an 9-5 like job -- is that your non-9-5 job follows you home; but I have so far done an alright job at keeping the Goodman out of my home life. Or I was doing an alright job before the New Stages Festival started two weeks ago. Six staged readings of six new plays were what the public saw; but behind the scenes was fifteen hours of rehearsal per play plus the prep work. So it wasn't that the Goodman followed me home so much as I never went home.

But New Stages is over! A fairly successful undertaking, I think. I heard an audience member (some one from the industry) comment that it is telling that the Goodman can fill their smaller Owen Theatre for a reading while some off-loop theatres are struggling to get people in for an actual show. Sad. Very sad considering that three of the six readings were not very good. Well I guess this is more accurate: two were pretty awful, two were unsuccessful but show promise (one more than the other), and two were great.

One of them I spent doodling just to keep awake:

Act I:Act II:
And one of them I just straight up skipped after sitting through the final run at rehearsal. There are so many great writers out there who are talking about new ideas in new ways, why do we pander to big names? Tanya gets up in front of the audience every night and explains that all of the plays are works that we are excited about or playwrights who we want to start or continue a relationship with. Maybe she is lying? Maybe this is a nice little PR plug? Or maybe this playwright has just not brought his/her best work to this festival? I don't know. I sit in the dark corner of the theatre, writing down the problems in my head as I sketch out my complaints in the code of a doodle. Silently diplomatic.

That is the problem with being an intern: you are there to facilitate the process but not necessarily the work so you are quiet most of the time. You write down notes that you never show anyone and quietly rejoice when the same advice is given an hour later by someone with a voice. You learn from Odysseus: slip in criticisms as compliments or asides. Undoubtedly a good lesson for one who is often too critical: of twenty thoughts you can choose half of one to share on the elevator ride up to the offices. Pick the most important. Pick the one that no one else is likely to see.

Two plays were great though. Naomi Iizuka's Ghostwritten -- a reinterpretation of the Rumpelstiltskin story and the relationship between America, Vietnam, cultural identity, and food -- was playful and poignant. And Mickle Maher's Spirits to Enforce -- in which superheroes telefundraise for a production of The Tempest, which they eventually perform for a house of supervillains -- is one of the smartest and best written plays I have seen/read in a long time.

Day Off. Right. This is why I usually do the title last. The apartment is clean and the dishes are done. I had a Blueberry Hill flashback as I was handling the cleaner: I almost put the 409 down on the floor instead of on the counter because of health code violation. I read Diana's blog to catch updates: "a successful staff party, hirings and firings, wars fought with managers from other staffs." I miss them. I miss the gossip. I wonder who was fired. I wonder what the battle was over and who won. But I guess I'll have to wait until Thanksgiving to find out.

Shit: still have to rent a car.