Mod 12

Twenty years ago I am playing in my best friend's basement. Probably my first best friend. I can almost make out what we're playing - like a word on the tip of my tongue I can almost verbalize - but I know if I attempt to look straight at it, the memory will dodge and weave. Evade.

So I can't make it out before the phone rings.

Mom wants me home for supper in ten minutes.

I tell Jeff, "My mom wants me home for supper in ten minutes." And I start to leave. I live down the block. About a minute away if I walk at a moderate pace on my six-year-old legs. When I was six I ran a mile in 6 minutes and 52 seconds during the memorial day fun run. I can't run a mile at all right now. I could jog it. Slowly.

You said ten minutes.

I know but I'm going to go.

Ten minutes is a long time.

I go up the steps and out the front door before Jeff can stop me and run down the block. I sprint like I am running away from something. Running away from Jeff like he is chasing me with something. Twenty seconds later I am home.

For one of the shows I am working on, the sound designer (a company member) wants me to conduct a series of interviews with actors, designers, the director, etc. The play is about a girl reliving the final days of her childhood before her mother abandons her. During these interviews I could ask: "What do you think about this play?" "How do you relate to your character?" Blah blah blah. But what would that accomplish? So what I am going to ask them is this: "When do you think your childhood started to end?"

I am 3 years, 11 months, and 23.5 days old and I am on the playground of my preschool and a teacher (babysitter?) is telling me I have a phone call and then my dad is telling me I have a sister. I am in kindergarten and I propose to Alexis right before naptime; Sam A. teaches me how to draw a horse (he would die of some pre-existing condition when we are all in seventh grade during a sleepover; I would learn about this from Lauren - a blonde i had a crush on in second grade - at lunch while Liz is sucking on a bouillon cube and I'll shrug it off and say I didn't really know the guy so why would I go to his funeral; when I am taking classes at the art school during undergrad I will run into Sam's mom on a regular basis. Her smile's still sad.). It's first grade and I pee on John for making fun of me in the bathroom; I don't understand why I have to sit out in the hall, why I always have to sit out in the hall. Second grade: have a crush on a blonde who doesn't choose me as a square dance partner; she chooses a guy with the last name Valentine (who would later apparently do some weird f-ed up shit); I have to play Little Bear in a fucked up rendition of Goldilocks and I swear I will have nothing to do with the theatre ever again...in seventh grade I am Will Parker in Oklahoma! and Liz is coaching me on how to sing in front of people: "If you can't sing in front of me," she tells me in my living room, "how are you going to sing in front of a whole audience."

The memories unfold like a personalized yearbook. Does our childhood end with every memory we carry into our adulthood? Does it end as we accumulate the ghosts that will haunt us for the rest of our life? Ghosts that always seem to resurface at the end of the year when we are taking stock. Looking back.

New Year's Eve is my favorite holiday because of its inevitability. Nothing drives it but time itself. A year ends. And you wake up the next morning and all your calendars are invalid (burn them!). And whatever you were is now optional. A suggestion. I am going to quit smoking. I am going to stop eating poorly. I am going to make more of an effort at maintaining my relationships with people other than Rachel (yeah that was mine for 2007)...I am going to stop masturbating in the middle of Walgreens...you saw the news right?...oh you didn't...oh well then this is kind of awkward...

The resolutions aren't inevitable and are, in fact, completely arbitrary. You could decide to change your ways any day of the year just like you don't have to wait until Lent to give up chocolate. But the holiday is inevitable. The temporal renewal is inevitable. And maybe that's what encourages us.

It's January again. Mod 12. Right math guys? 313 mod 12 is 1 right? And we all want to go back to 1 again. Pass go again. Collect $200 again.

Jeff moved away about a year and ten minutes after we were playing in his basement, and I never saw/spoke to him again. I often wonder...no that's a lie...on New Year's Eve I wonder what we could have done in those ten minutes. I wonder if our friendship would have solidified enough that when he moved we would have stayed in touch...okay, I don't wonder that...retroactive nostalgic editing.

But I am wondering it now...

Resolution 2008: Don't sprint home.

From "The Year of Magical Thinking" which I am reading tonight in lieu of "getting anything done" (a big step for me)

"I never actually learned the rules of grammar, relying instead only on what sounded right."

--Joan Didion

If I ever teach an introductory writing course again, this quote will be the centerpiece of the first day.

razorbutterflyapple

Here is that wild play -- wild in the sense of whattheFwerewethinking rather than in the sense of actual wild things happening in the script -- I was telling you about a while back that is a collaboration between me and EJC Calvert (whom I miss terribly: move to Chicago you NYC jerkface!) and Kristin Idaszak (who should add another i to her last name so it is more like Naomi Iizuka). Liz wrote razor, Kristin wrote butterfly, and I tackled apple. Other than the initial rules, we did not discuss what we were writing until we had each finished the first drafts. Then we kind of rotated the play around and revised to make it somewhat cohesive. But it is still fairly wacky. And by fairly I mean TOTALLY wacky.

razorbutterflyapple
act i: razor

TREE
razorbutterflyapple: Act I: razor.
It begins, as it always begins, in a field.

(CAROL enters, MAE dragging behind. She sets up at the base of the tree.)

TREE
Everything doesn’t always begin in a field. But all the stories that happen to me do. I don’t… move. Generally.

(CAROL begins shaving her face.)

TREE
Usually, I’m so sad, I’m the saddest tree in the world. A sad, sad, sad, sad, lonely tree.

MAE
Carol… Carol… come on… Carol… the bus…

CAROL
We got time and you know it.

TREE
Though, to be perfectly frank, these beginnings always make me nervous. The beginning began, it has already begun, and now all we can do is dread the end, when the story will be over and I will be lonely again.

MAE
If we miss the bus again—

CAROL
Shut up, Mae. I can’t talk and shave at the same time.

TREE
Usually, my only visitors are birds. Always flapping, flapping, pecking, flapping. Today I have children! O, joy!

MAE
You won’t grow hairs that way. You’re being stupid.

CAROL
I’ll grow hairs if a goddamn well want to!

MAE
You can’t! You’re a girl, and you can’t grow hairs on your face!

CAROL
Try having faith, Mae. “If you shave there, hairs will grow…”

TREE
I want hairs! I want hairs, too! Shave me! Shave me! Shave all over my bark, and we’ll be haired together!

MAE
Your mom only told you that because she didn’t want you shaving your legs and turning into a whore.

CAROL
You shave. Don’t you?

MAE
None of your business! Come on. Let’s go. Seriously. Come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on come on

TREE (simultaneous with MAE’s “come on”s)
No! Take your time. Stay forever. Lounge, read, climb if you want, I don’t mind! Just stay!

CAROL
You can go on by yourself! Why don’t you just go on and pretend like you don’t even know me, if you think I’m such a freak and an idiot, why don’t you do that.

MAE
If you didn’t think this was wrong you wouldn’t do it hiding.

TREE
She’s not hiding, she’s with me!

CAROL
Mae, there is only one thing I want in the whole entire world. I don’t give a shit about trust funds or celebrity or my virginity, all I want is a thick, full beard.

TREE
All I want is YOU! I want US!

CAROL
Please, Mae.

MAE
Just hurry.

CAROL
Thank you.

TREE
If you slip with that razor and die, promise you’ll be buried among my roots?

act ii: butterfly

MAE
Act ii: butterfly.

TREE
Thank god we’re onto the second act. I mean, beginnings and endings are all the same. Middles, though. Middles are fun.

CAROL
What?

MAE
Mae and Carol die.

CAROL
That’s fucked up, Mae.

MAE
I don’t say it.

CAROL
I just heard you. Listen, I know you’re mad about the beard thing, but—

MAE
I know it came out of my mouth, but I wasn’t doing the saying. It just came out.

CAROL
That’s fucked up.

MAE
Mae and Carol die, Mae and Carol die, Mae and Carol die.

CAROL
Stop it. You’re freaking me out.

MAE
That’s how the story ends.

CAROL
What story? No it doesn’t. Mae, I’ll kill you.

TREE
Telling the middle of a story’s like detonating a bomb. You’ve already done all the hard science-fiction lab construction bullshit, and you don’t have to worry about cleaning up the bodies. You just press the little red button and watch the fireworks.

CAROL
So what do we do?

MAE
I don’t know. Something middling. Say something about a butterfly?

CAROL
My pussy looks like a butterfly.

MAE
That’s it?

CAROL
Uh-uh. Passive aggressive. Like you.

MAE
I’m not—

CAROL
Sit there in a shadow box looking beautiful and dead.

TREE
Stop!

Carol and Mae acknowledge the tree for the first time.

CAROL
What?

TREE
Know what’s hard about being a tree?

CAROL
You can’t have sex?

MAE
You’re such a nympho.

TREE
There’s no pathos or bitter longing or sweet affection in this play. There’s no sense of scale, no grandeur.

MAE
Trees have grandeur. Or at least scale. Right?

TREE
You’re missing the point. There’s no high tragedy. The stakes aren’t life-and-death.

CAROL
Life’s not life-or-death.

TREE
Fuck it. Let’s just move on to apple.

act iii: apple
TREE
apple has nothing to do with the fruit. There are no apples in this scene. I'm not an apple tree. No apples are going to be eaten, and no apples were harmed in the writing of what you are about to see.

Apple attempts to extrapolate from one's understanding of an apple and create an end to this strange tale. The friendship you've seen begins with a conflict between Mae's need for punctuality and Carol's need for a beard and progresses into a conversation about coming of age with the brief acknowledgment that a pussy resembles a butterfly.

Many years have passed since the razor and the butterfly, and we are looking for an end like an apple: clean, crisp, hard, sweet, juicy. Refreshing. Simple. Many years have passed because sometimes time passes. We trees know this.

MAE
Can I say I'm sorry.

CAROL
You can say whatever you want.

MAE
I'm/

CAROL
Shut up.

MAE
Okay.

CAROL
Just shut up. Just shut up. Shut up shut up shut up.

MAE begins to cry softly. CAROL goes over and hits her and continues to hit her until MAE is curled up in a ball and then CAROL kicks MAE and CAROL is crying and they are both sobbing and then CAROL collapses on top of MAE and they hold each other and rock back and forth.

MAE
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I am so so sorry.

CAROL
Shhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhhh. Oh god. Shhh shhh shhh.

MAE
I didn't know. I honestly had no idea. I didn't I wouldn't have, there's no way.

CAROL
Shhhhhhh. I know. I know. Shhhhhhhhhh.

More crying and hugging that eventually turns into laughing.

MAE
You hit me really hard.

CAROL
I'm sorry. You can hit me back if you want.

MAE
I'm not going to hit you.

CAROL
You can if you want.

MAE
I miss you.

CAROL
I miss you too.

Hug into blackout.

TREE
This is the moment I dreaded. Everything doesn't always end in a field, but all the stories that happen to me do. Mae and Carol die. Yes, it is my line. Mae and Carol die. Not now, but eventually. And they won't be buried amongst my roots.

There is no one here to hear me as I fall apart. Not even you. I'm alone waiting for visitors. The saddest tree in the world because I'm the most awake.

END OF PLAY

clownaround

i think this is how Iago felt
justified

tossing things
from
a
ten-story window
hoping to hit

and hurt

i think of the blonde alto
and how
one smothers

but
smothered pride
reminiscing wasted time
concocts plots

then
sits
in a corner
wearing the dunce cap

(brewing)

moral: never trust men in corners
you don't know where they've been

TOWERS (TOWER version the second)

TOWERS is the first revision of TOWER in an attempt to make it less of a complete downer and to incorporate the two other rules set down for the project: 1) use of a mandolin and 2) "future building as a theme." Rule 3 was to use a character who was silent but present, but I nailed that the first time. I love rules!

TOWERS

Scene 1
Lights up. SAMMY, alone on the stage, is looking straight up. He is carrying a sack lunch. There is a distant yelling that gets closer and closer as the lights fade. And then, in darkness, the sound a body makes when it hits the pavement after falling a few miles.

Scene 2
Lights up. Mandolin music starts quietly. There is a broken body face up almost exactly where SAMMY had been standing. The body reaches his hand up to SAMMY. SAMMY is looking down at the body. The mandolin music gets louder and louder. SAMMY bends down to the man and tries to hear what the man is saying but the mandolin music is too loud. Lights fade but music does not.

Scene 3
Lights up. SAMMY is facing the audience as far away from the body as the stage will allow. The mandolin music quiets slowly until it is a soft hum.

MAN 1 enters with a briefcase that he
immediately drops and goes to the body.

MAN 1
Oh my god Oh my god. Hey man. Hey are you alright. Oh god you're not alright. You're not alright. Alright what do I do? Ummmm...hey you you there hey! Call 911. Hey you! Oh shit oh shit.

MAN 1 approaches SAMMY. Mandolin music gets louder.

MAN 1
Hey. Hey! Somebody call someone! Where's that music coming from!

The body reaches his hand up to MAN 1. And MAN 1 leans down to listen to the body.

MAN 1
What? I can barely, what? No I can't...what? Turn that damn music off!

SAMMY closes his eyes and concentrates really hard. The music dims.

SAMMY
In the middle of the street there is a man.

MAN 1
Shhhhhh. He's saying something! Somebody help!

SAMMY
And that man's my father. Who I haven't spoken a word to in thirty-three years.

MAN 1
He's trying to say something. You're his son? Get over here!

SAMMY
And he wants to tell me all that he didn't tell me when he was alive.

MAN 1
He's not dead yet!

SAMMY
But he can't.

MAN 1
Help!

WOMAN 1 enters with a purse from which she has pulled a cellphone.

WOMAN 1
Omigod what happened?

MAN 1
He just fell. He fell from the sky.

WOMAN 1
What?

MAN 1
Just call someone.

WOMAN 1
I'm calling, I'm calling. Jesus Christ Jesus Christ.

SAMMY
He didn't fall from the sky. He fell from his tower.

MAN 1
What? What? I can barely hear you. Sammy. Are you Sammy? Sammy's here. Sammy's here. What? I know. He won't come. Should I make him come?

SAMMY
He fell from his tower.

MAN 1 goes to SAMMY

MAN 1
Hey man, you gotta get over there your dad he's/

MAN 1 grabs SAMMY and the mandolin music bursts so that MAN 1 is blown over. SAMMY tries to help catch him.

SAMMY (shouting over the music)
I'm sorry. When I was seven I swallowed a mandolin. My dad's mandolin.

WOMAN 1
Hello? 911? Yes there is man in the middle of the road.

Mandolin music begins to quiet.

SAMMY
I swallowed it because I thought he loved it more than he loved me.

WOMAN 2 enters with a grocery bag leading CHILD by the hand.

CHILD
Mommy look.

WOMAN 2
Don't look sweety.

CHILD
He's all flat. Did he fall.

WOMAN 2
Sweety I said don't look.

SAMMY
He asked, Sammy where's my mandolin and I lied and said that it had run off with mom. But then mom came home and then the mandolin started to play in my stomach. So he knew I was lying.

WOMAN 1
Yes. In the middle of the road. Where? Where? I don't know where? Where are we?

MAN 1
Corner of 5th and 2nd.

WOMAN 1
At the corner 5th and 2nd. No I'm not hurt. No, nobody is hurt except the guy lying in the middle of the road. No he's not drunk he's dying!

SAMMY
But he wasn't mad. He smiled. But it was a sad smile and that's when I realized that I had eaten my dad's best friend because my dad talked very little because he hated talking. Or he was bad at talking my mom said. He got uncomfortable talking because he was a brick-layer and that was solitary work.

WOMAN 2
He's asking for a Sammy.

MAN 1
That's that guy over there.

WOMAN 2
We should go get him.

MAN 1
No. No.

SAMMY
And after I ate his mandolin, he didn't have anything to do so he started building his tower. He would leave at sunrise and come back late into the night. Mom blamed me. She hated me for a long time. But dad was happy.

WOMAN 1
The ambulance we be here in 3 minutes.

MAN 1
I don't know that he has 3 minutes.

WOMAN 2
He's asking for him.

MAN 1
That Sammy guy won't come over.

WOMAN 2
Well, how do you know if you don't ask him.

MAN 1
I asked him.

WOMAN 2
Well, I'm going to ask him.

SAMMY
He'd say hi to me and pat me on the head on his way up to the bedroom. He would walk straight into the shower leaving a trail of his dirty work clothes. I'd watch him sometimes and sneak out when he was toweling off.

WOMAN 2
Hey your dad's over there and/

SAMMY is taken by surprise and the mandolin music bursts from him. The groceries spill every where. He rushes to help her pick them up apologetically.

SAMMY
I'm sorry. I can't control it. Whenever I'm startled or nervous or sad or...well anything.

CHILD
Mommy? Mommy? Hey mommy.

MAN 1
Hey man cut that out!

WOMAN 1
Hello? Hello are you still there? Yes can you send the police too? Oh they're already coming great. Great. There's a man here...yelling music at people. I don't know...yelling music. I don't know if he is drunk or not? He might be.

SAMMY
And every day I would come here and bring him lunch. My mom would make it and I would carry it down and he would come down and pat my head and grab this sack and go back up again. I would get so nervous I couldn't say anything to him. Just, music.

CHILD
I think he's dying.

WOMAN 2
Get away from him.

WOMAN 1
He is dying.

CHILD
Do something.

WOMAN 2
We have to wait for the ambulance.

CHILD
Why?

MAN 1
Because we don't know the right thing to do.

CHILD
We could ask him.

WOMAN 2
Sweety leave him alone.

SAMMY
Every day for 30 years.

CHILD
Hey mister. What can I do? Huh? Sammy? Oh is that your son? He's real mean. He's yelling at everyone.

SAMMY
I’d meet him at this spot.

CHILD
What? You have to tell him something. Well can you tell me? I don't think he's coming over. I don't know, were you mean to him?

SAMMY
It’s about 3 miles high by this point. He’s a local hero.

CHILD
I’ll write it down if you want.

CHILD writes.

SAMMY
My dad.

CHILD goes to SAMMY and hands him paper. SAMMY reads. He looks down at CHILD and then he concentrates as hard as he has ever concentrated in his life. If the actor can make his nose bleed, that seems to be the current visual cue to indicate concentration. The mandolin music becomes more manageable and then it is just a hum and SAMMY goes to his father and leans down.

END OF PLAY

Birth of a New Blog!

Blogger, you have been so good to me. You helped me see that I could secure my own little corner of the Internet. But sometimes, Blogger, a man has to branch out:

http://darkknightdramaturgy.wordpress.com/

Coffee Detox Day 2

For the last week or so I have become hyperaware of my heartbeat. It felt like it was beating harder than it should be. Even when I was sitting still and had been sitting still for a good long while at my desk researching Wharton, TX -- hometown to Horton Foote, 91-year old playwright extraordinaire (who liked me according to his agent according Tanya, he having made this assessment during our half-hour interview in which I said about two sentences and was otherwise dumbly starstruck [which has never happened before: not with Sarah Ruhl. Not with Naomi Iizuka. I wonder if it is because I never had a grandfather figure in my life...]) -- it would punch my ribs. Not quickly. My pulse was normal. Just with gusto. It is probably nothing, unless you consider early onset hypochondria to not be nothing, but it has made me reevaluate my little addiction to coffee.

I have, like many of you, been battling this addiction for years. I attempted to give it up last semester. My students playfully mocked me. And with Meshuggah right down the street from my apartment and working at a restaurant with its own special blend -- Khaldi's Blueberry Hill Blend -- which I could drink for free, giving up the sauce was inevitably doomed. For those of you who do not know about Meshuggah's coffee: they brew each cup individually with their espresso machine. It is dark, and rich, and is like liquid electricity speeding through your veins. You can get a free refill, but I don't recommend it unless you want to be wired for four hours and then crash. I, of course, usually opted for the refill, except on days when I felt like my heart couldn't take the pressure...
I had the refill when I was home for Thanksgiving. I had to: you know. I think it is what set off the chest pains. And the longing. The other problem with Meshuggah coffee is that you will NEVER find a cup of coffee as delicious and fulfilling. I tried. I usually get an Americano -- just espresso and water -- at my usual haunts, but you get exactly what you should get: watered down espresso. Which Meshuggah coffee is not. It is not watered down at all. It is the opposite of watered down...

I like coffee. I like it for more than just "what it does" for me. Yesternight, after detox day 1, I was reminded of the physiological dependency as I went to bed at 9:15 with an all-consuming headache that had not gone away when my cats decided to play tag on my face at midnight. I will not exaggerate and say I had the shakes and the sweats all day, but you can certainly tell -- in your soul -- when you go without. But I went into work yesterday with a mission of not drinking coffee: I knew what to expect from the previous semester -- oh, I lasted about a week before I caved and found myself in Meshuggah's upper loft area celebrating my week-long sabbatical with a breaking of the fast -- and I welcomed it. No pain no gain. The throbbing in my head was me beating the crap out of my addicted cells, telling them to fall in line and shape up. My weariness (it should be said that I had woken up early to get Rachel to her crit on time) was the exhaustion of my victorious soul who had fought valiantly on the Trojan fields two-to-two with Mighty Ajax and his Shield all the long day.

But I like coffee because I like coffee shops. They are good places to work. They provide a mock-society that makes one feel like they are not completely closing themselves off from the outside world when they work, even if one does feel little tremors of rage whenever a couple starts talking too loud (or at all). One has to remind oneself that it is not a library and if one had wanted silence one should not have left one's damn apartment...In addition to the frustration of the distraction, this couple reminds the coffeehouse scholar that he in fact isn't participating in the world at all: rather he has brought a 3x4x10 foot cube of solitude with him into the public sphere and he sits sipping Americanos within its woefully un-soundproofed walls.

I don't know what I will order now. I cannot in good conscience buy tea. That's like paying for water. Maybe I will order coffee and not drink it. I'll just look at it. To test my soul.

I think my cat has the hiccups. Either that or he is about to barf all over my keyboard.