Two Noble Kinsmen with the family

 
Going home to visit the parents today. Dad is going to pick me up after I get off of work and we'll drive down to Allentown together. I'm actually pretty happy to be going; we're going to be seeing the new Harry Potter movie, and Mom got us tickets to the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival's production of The Two Noble Kinsmen. I have not read this one, but I know Shakespeare collaborated with another writer on it, and it's based off of one of Chaucer's stories from the Canterbury Tales, the Knight's Tale, a piece I know very well. Sharp-eyed readers may recognize that as the source of Palamon's name. What's interesting is that for whatever reason this play is very rarely performed, so it will be interesting to have the rare chance to see it. Heh, it's probably not performed often because it's not very good, but hey, at least I can say I've seen it!

As an experiment, it's also being performed according to the methods that it would have been in Shakespeare's own day, which I find kind of shocking. That means "Actors arrive with their lines learned, rehearse on their own, wear what they can find, and open in a matter of days." There are no directors and no designers. I wonder how that's going to work, since it sounds like how kids sometimes get together and declare "Let's put on a show!" With my sensibilities I would probably fear a hot mess, although I must say something about that process makes me think crearespero* would appreciate it. ;-)

Mom is also going to be teaching me to use the sewing machine this weekend, which I have been eagerly anticipating. I have packed some of my fabric for half-started projects to have something to work on. Then when I come back I will be bringing the machine with me, and at last I can get going on all the things I've wanted to make! So this should be a nice visit. I wish I didn't have to rush back to get to work on Monday, but got to fit these things in where you can.

Phoebe's Biweekly Theater Writing Challenge #2

This scene was written in response to a prompt from my advisor at school. The prompt was to write a scene with two people sitting at a table with a flower on it, and there is an issue between them of which they never speak of directly. I'm sure you can tell what's in my head right now that influenced what I chose to do here. I'm not in love with it, I think it's a bit generic, but this is the first unedited draft. I might work on it more later to make my point a little more sharply made.

(A young man, JOE, and a young woman, GAIL, sit at a table dressed in the clothes of the American 1940s. Between them sits a vase containing a large daisy with a ribbon around. They seem ill at ease.)

GAIL: It’s really pretty, Joe.

JOE: I thought you might like it.

GAIL: It was real thoughtful of you.

(They pause uncomfortably.)

GAIL: So… was it just to bring me the flower, or is there something else?

JOE: There’s something else.

GAIL: Yeah?

JOE: Got my papers back from the recruitment office.

GAIL: What about them?

JOE: 1A.

GAIL: What are you talking about? I thought you got your 4F already.

JOE: That was at the Frederick office.

GAIL: You went back again to another office?

JOE: Used my granddad’s address. Went downtown.

GAIL: You can’t do that, Joe!

(He shrugs.)

GAIL: And they took you there? What about your asthma?

JOE: Aw, Gail, it’s not real asthma.

GAIL: They still won’t take guys with it.

JOE: It only happens once in a while.

GAIL: You left it off, didn’t you?

JOE: Told you, it’s nothing.

GAIL: You know it’s against the law to lie on your forms. Why would you do that?

JOE: I want to serve, Gail. It's important.

GAIL: Joe, I know you think it's sure a fine thing to go soldiering, but can’t you hear God when he’s yelling at you? You were 4F! You don’t have to go! There’s plenty of boys lining up to go over and get themselves killed.

JOE: It isn't about have to. Gail, I should. I wouldn't feel right otherwise.

GAIL: You wouldn't feel right? And what about me?

JOE: What do you mean?

GAIL: Am I supposed to stay here all by myself and wait for you to come back?

JOE: You don’t have to do that.

GAIL: Or wait to get a letter in the mail that says you’ve been lost at sea or got a bullet in your back?

JOE: I know that’s not fair.

GAIL: You didn't even think about me, did you?

JOE: No, Gail. That’s why I came over here. To say goodbye.

GAIL: They aren't shipping you out already?

JOE: Gail. I’m saying you don’t have to wait for me. You don’t owe me that.

GAIL: Joe! How could you?

JOE: I got to do the right thing. By the country and by you.

GAIL: You think breaking things off is going to make me feel better? Like that's going to make me stop worrying?

JOE: I can't promise you all the things you deserve. You shouldn't have to waste your life waiting around for somebody who might, well...

GAIL: You might die, Joe! You might not come back! Doesn't that scare you?

JOE: Christ, Gail, of course it does.

GAIL: So go volunteer at an office! Get a job at a factory! Help out someplace where you aren’t going half the world overseas to die.

JOE: Somebody's got to do it.

GAIL: Let somebody else!

JOE: It’s not right, Gail! If I stayed, what would that make me? What kind of man would I be then?

GAIL: You don’t give a damn about me.

JOE: That’s not true!

GAIL: No, you got to go on and be a man. Leave me, go get killed, doesn't matter. Either way, I got to be alone, and I have to hurt for you, and there’s nothing in the world I can say to keep you from making it that way.

JOE: It's not just my choice.

GAIL: I don’t understand! You got a clean way out, I’m begging you not to go… there are guys who run to Mexico for that. Why are you doing this? Why’s it got to be you?

JOE: That’s what the whole damn country said! Let somebody else take care of it, they said. And look what happened. Half of Europe is a wreck now. And they’re just going to keep going until somebody stops them. Somebody's got to go out there and stand up, damn it.

GAIL: But I don’t want to lose you. I don't want you to leave, and I don't want you to die. I thought... I thought you wanted me too.

JOE: I do.

GAIL: We can have that. If you don't go, we can have all of that.

JOE: This is too important. It's the right thing to do.

GAIL: And that’s more important to you. That’s more important to you than me.

JOE: It's not that. It's not about what I want.

GAIL: And you'd rather do that than stay here and make a life with me.

JOE: I don’t want a man for you who wouldn’t.

(He takes the daisy out of the vase and tries to offer it to her.)

GAIL: Well. I guess you get your wish, then.

(GAIL turns and walks out.)

"I've knocked out Adolph Hitler over two hundred times."

I had the privilege of going to see Captain America: The First Avenger with a lovely group of friends this past Monday, and I was surprised to find that I enjoyed it immensely, way more than I expected to. 

I confess, I’ve never really been interested in Captain America as a character. Yes, I know I tend to penalize superheroes too much for the crime of not being Batman, but while I’m not saying they all have to be dark, gritty angst-fests bordering on psychosis, I tend to prefer my heroes with a little more inner struggle. I always found Cap slightly boring because his unerring moral compass always directs him exactly to the one true right thing to do, with the only conflicts he ever encounters being external ones brought by the bad guy. And what is to me the most interesting part of his character, the “a man out of his time” thing, never gets explored much because of course the comics would rather spend more time depicting him fighting evil or saving the world from crisis.

And yet in this film, far from finding it boring, I was oddly charmed by Steve being simply and purely a Good Guy. Like, not even in the “hero” sense, but in the sense women talk about the men they date— “He’s a Good Guy.” It actually really was, as some of the critics have said, a refreshing change from reluctant Spider-Man, dickish Iron Man, or even my beloved dark Batman. My biggest fear about this movie was that Chris Evans was going to blow it. He would not have been my choice at all, both because he already played one Marvel character (the Human Torch) and because he was pretty lousy at it. But he nailed it. He was so unaffected, so forthright, and God damn it, I really liked this genuine, honest, brave, moral, modest, uncomplicated little virgin who didn’t want to kill anybody; he just doesn’t like bullies.

I mean, seriously. When was the last time you saw a movie portray a tough, masculine hero who basically had the word “VIRGIN” stamped on his forehead? I found that extremely endearing.

Yeah, Captain America is intrinsically at least a little bit corny, something I usually have very little tolerance for. But context is everything. The movie actually addressed that by putting it in context. Captain America, both as a comic book character and as a superhero identity in-universe, was conceived in the forties, a time when people’s sensibilities were not so jaded and, perhaps more to the point, advertising was still a young medium without all the baggage and tiredness it has today. The fact that the government in this movie originally comes up with the idea of Captain America as a living propaganda piece, a cheesy stage show character Steve would play to encourage people to buy war bonds, is so fucking period that it’s perfect. That is totally something the WWII-era government would do. Steve has to desire to be something more than that in order to transcend that cheesiness become something that we can take seriously.

World War II-era America is a fascinating setting. I love the aesthetic and the attitudes. It was a war people believed in, that young men showed up in droves to enlist for, so it’s the perfect milieu for a story about a brave, goodhearted young man whose desire to serve the country and cause he finds righteous leads him to becoming the ultimate valiant soldier. The moment I saw Bucky show up in that uniform, I flashed to the framed photo we have in my parents’ house of a young man, handsome as a movie star, wearing that same uniform in a picture taken the day he enlisted at no more than nineteen years old. That was my grandfather Arthur Roberts, who served as an infantryman in Britain and Germany. He still has shrapnel in him from combat. My other grandfather Joe Leone was a little older, and was an airplane mechanic stationed in the Pacific. Both of them volunteers who went because it was the right thing to do. That resonates with me, and probably most people, which explains why World War II is such fertile ground for heroic storytelling.

Abraham Erskine was played by Stanley Tucci, who I’ve loved since I saw him in an embarrassing disaster movie that I like to this day just because of him. His Erskine was ponderous and warm, the articulator of the heart of the movie in how he saw the real goodness in Steve and gave him a chance to have it make a difference in the world. For flavor-of-the-times reasons, I wanted him to get a bit more trouble for being German in America, but as Hyde pointed out, he is supposed to be Albert Einstein. Though I knew it was coming, I was sorry when he died, as I tend to like the character who has his eye on the bigger picture when everyone else is caught up in the smaller things of the here-and-now.

I really, really liked how they portrayed the romance between Steve and Peggy. It feels both genuine to the way things worked in that period and to Steve’s character. In the forties, respectable boys and good girls dated around if they pleased, they treated each other like gentlemen and ladies, and they didn’t sleep with each other until they were quite serious, or possibly not even until they were engaged or even married. Peggy may be worldly, but Steve has always been invisible to girls and too shy to seek them out— a Nice Boy with “VIRGIN” stamped on his forward. It takes time for them to be charmed by each other, and their progress toward romance is slow and careful. A few vaguely meaningful conversations, an exchange about dancing, the newspaper-cutout picture of Peggy Steve puts in his pocket watch. It takes them the whole movie to even arrange a date. I also liked how they started building it even while Steve was still a scrawny wuss boy— it wouldn’t have reflected well on Peggy if she weren’t starting to develop esteem for him until he got the sexy sexy abs and pecs.

Which brings us to the obligatory beefcake portion of my review. What can I say, I have a weakness for cut abs. Chris Evans is pretty hot, as he is good-looking, the uniform suits him, and he really works the neat, clean-cut forties hair, but he’s too delicately pretty for my tastes, so I confine my dirty, dirty objectification of him to below the neck. When he first comes out of the chamber after treatment with the super-soldier serum, I had to put my eyes back in my head. But to be honest, I thought the handsomest guy in the movie was his sidekick Bucky. First let me say that they made the choice to make Bucky Steve’s old friend and age contemporary, who enlisted before Steve was able to. It surprised me but I found the choice really worked and made their friendship more genuine. And more to the beefcake point, Bucky was played by a pretty, pretty man with the more overtly masculine aspect I prefer who ROCKED the uniform like whoa. Though I find myself slightly weirded out by the notion of being attracted to Bucky, particularly finding him significantly more attractive than Cap. Shouldn’t be surprised, I guess, I almost never go for the blond if there’s a hot brunet.

I enjoyed Peggy Carter quite a bit, though she brought a lot of little nitpicky issues for me. For one, I think she should have been an American. It’s slightly weird to pair the All-American Hero with an Englishwoman. I liked how capable and non-squishy she was without having to be a ball-buster, and how she was practically an officer like any other, but it seemed a little whitewashed that a woman in the army in the forties should get so little flak. And I loved her styling, with her fabulous victory roles and her awesome on-period clothes with their square shoulders and nipped-in waists, but it irked me that all the skirts were knee-length when they should have been tea-length— more flattering, sure, but less accurate. Still, I think she narrowly beats out Pepper as my favorite Marvel movie love-interest, because the Iron Man movies couldn’t balance her being put-upon with her being impotent, because Betsy Ross barely registered on me, and because I thought Jane Foster was a totally unbelievable character in every conceivable way.

Now let’s just hope if fucking Sharon Carter shows up she is not Peggy’s daughter, or granddaughter, or niece, or grandniece, or any other kind of close descendent or relation, or if she is, she does not get together with Cap. I AM SORRY, but even in Cap’s weird situation, being attracted to somebody because SHE REMINDS YOU OF HER MOM OR GRANDMA is CREEPY AS SHIT. Hate, hate, hate that.

I was pleasantly surprised by how involved Howard Stark was in the plot. I thought he was basically just going to be a neat little cameo to connect Steve and Tony, but it turned out he was around a lot and served as the American army’s primary mechanical engineer. I liked the actor who played him, even with his slightly exaggerated forties speech style, and he even looked a bit like Robert Downey, Jr., but I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t get the silver fox back from the Disney-esque filmstrip in the second Iron Man. His name is actually John Slattery and he’s most recently been known for being on Mad Men, but I can never remember and always just call him the silver fox. Anyway, I look forward to seeing Steve knowing Tony’s father factors into the Avengers movie.

As a total side note, I liked the little moment where Steve was drawing. It was a nice nod to the fact that in the comics he was an art student and illustrator before he enlisted. By the way, the similarity that bears to Hitler’s pre-political career always jumped out at me. Was that intentional? If so, what in the world would they mean by drawing that parallel?

The Howling Commandoes were fun. Dum Dum Duggan was a fabulous representation of the character. I had to roll my eyes a little at their politically correct racial diversity that nobody ever commented on, which is not exactly the norm for the period. I can’t exactly remember the makeup of the team in the comics, but I was a bit sorry the black guy wasn’t Jack Fury, granddad of Nick, and I know that in some continuities Wolverine was a member, which would have been a pretty hilarious cameo (if not quite as hilarious as the one in X-Men: First Class.)

I thought Bucky’s death was well done and mostly stuck to the canon, though it came earlier in the movie than I thought it would. I believe it traditionally basically happens at the same time as Cap’s “death,” but I guess they moved it up to give Cap an emotional blow for the end of the second act of the movie. (See, I have paid attention in my screenwriting classes.) I liked the bit where Steve realized he can’t get drunk anymore because of how his super-body now works, and I loved how when Steve was blaming himself for not protecting Bucky, Peggy told him that he can only shoulder that blame if he didn’t trust and respect Bucky enough to allow him to accept the risks for himself. It’s a remarkably pointed contrast with an issue of Batman’s—Batman never allows any of his teammates to become true partners because he’s incapable of trusting them enough to let them shoulder the same burdens that he carries. It leads to them feeling disrespected and pushed away, so they all eventually leave him. Captain America does, and respected Bucky enough to share his burdens. Which is why Cap makes true friends, and Batman is forever alone.

Hugo Weaving was of course awesome as Johann Schmitt the Red Skull, THE MAN HITLER KICKED OUT OF THE NAZIS FOR BEING TOO EVIL. I’ve always particularly liked him as an actor, and I love the sound of his voice. I’ve read he based his German accent on Werner Herzog and Klaus Maria Brandauer. I was surprised to see that he spent the first half of the movie looking human, as opposed to like the Red Skull, but that way it makes for a better reveal. How about the neat little detail of the portrait artist looking extremely distasteful as he was painting Schmitt’s portrait sans human mask? The depiction of the Skull was really cool, all the way down to his awesome floor-length leather duster. As witticaster* said, his tailor must have had the most job security of any member of the organization.

Speaking of that organization, my feelings are very ambivalent in regards to HYDRA. I guess it makes sense as a “deep science,” as Peggy says, division of the regime that went off the deep end with it. The idea of obscure “Nazi occultism” is a common story trope. But I just can’t decide whether I think its inclusion is appropriate or not in regards to respectfully portraying a story in the WWII setting. Part of it feels like an excuse to just not have to talk about Nazis, which surprises me, since them and large corporations are one of the few totally acceptable real-world generic movie villains. I certainly don’t like the way the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon uses it as a wholesale replacement for the Nazis. But still, torn about it even as a Nazi-offshoot. On the one hand, I don’t know if it’s totally respectful to the REAL soldiers who did this huge thing of defeating them to include an EVEN SCARIER VERSION RAWR that we need a superdude to take down. But on the other hand, maybe it allows Cap to not take credit away from those real soldiers if he’s busy with a personal, separate but still related nemesis while everyone else tackles the main threat.

I was fine with the ending, though I can see why some people might have felt it was a bit off. I liked how you could be easily tempted into thinking the Red Skull was destroyed, but the way he disappeared looked so much like the expression of Asgardian magic that you can guess something else entirely happened. I loved the last conversation between Steve and Peggy; I was very touched, and found myself both simultaneously wishing that he’d told her he loved her and glad that even then he didn’t—because he knew something that important couldn’t be forced, that they weren’t at that point yet, and he still wasn’t without hope that they still had the chance to get to that point together. That’s why he made the date with her, because he never ever loses hope. I think many found the need to run the ship into the ground a bit abrupt. I am steeped in the comic continuity, so I got that Cap had to end up buried in that ice one way or another, but several of the others I saw it with thought that if you didn’t realize that, you might have found the fact that Cap couldn’t do anything but crash the ship out of the way kind of... weird. 

And then Cap wakes up in the present day. Unfortunately he did not body slam Nick Fury, yelling about how he knew all seven Negro agents of SHIELD and Nick sure wasn’t one of them. Heh. I love how easily it is to update the Captain America timeline—just add to the amount of time he’s been frozen since WWII! I really hope they’ll include him having to deal with some “man out of his time” stuff when they bring him back in the Avengers movie.

Ah, yes, the Avengers movie can happen now. That means Chris Evans, Robert Downey, Jr., and Chris Hemsworth. If that is the case, I have but one request, and anything else can be forgiven.

No shirts, please.

Dia de los Sobres report

We ran Resonance first in the day. It was a decent run, though I think we had the slight problem of characters not knowing entirely what to do with themselves. The scenes seemed to go well and to engage everyone, but returning to the present situation I'm not sure everyone saw a clear direction for themselves. Because of that I have somewhat mixed feelings about how well it went. I hope the players enjoyed themselves, or at least found it an interesting experience.

One player was running late, and that was the first time we got to test the modularity of the game. In theory the game was supposed to be able to handle less than a full complement of players, but we'd never actually had that happen before. My first instinct was to go through and cut out one character from each round of scenes, which when I looked through them I was fairly certain could be done smoothly. But Jared was smarter than me and said, why doesn't a GM just NPC the extra character? That worked just fine, especially since we had a large number of GMs anyway, and allowed us to run the casting mechanic for that player until he showed. It was a shame he missed that part of it, and didn't actually get to select his character for himself, but it kept the game on track. 

I also decided, after watching Bernie work to throw one together during runtime, to see if I could put together an automated casting document to speed up the process. Basically we needed something that can assemble letters that each represent a casting marker into a two separate three-letter codes, then spit out which characters correspond with those codes. It took a lot of screwing around and learning new things about Excel, but after learning how to use the Concatenate and Lookup formulas, I put together something that I think works. It's a bit kludgey, like everything technological I do, but as long as you don't examine how it's put together it seems slick enough, and, more to the point, serves the purpose.

After running Resonance I played in Stars Over Atlantis. I really enjoyed this game, and found it to be as well-written as I hoped it to be. Let me say to everyone who was confused by the blurb (like I was) and slightly weirded out hearing about the BDSM club setting and the aggressive non-normativity (like I was), the story is really deep and fascinating and not hung up on the weird stuff. I absolutely loved the inner conceit of the plot, so unraveling it in all its complexity was a blast. One of my favorite things to do in a larp in figure out what went on with the story, and where it will go from here. 

One of the things that amused me most was how radically different my portrayal of my character became as compared to what I planned. I was playing a fantasy author meddling in things she was insatiably curious about but didn't really understand, and I had thought to behave as a smug but superificially pleasant jerk who thought she knew everything and of course could handle whatever she might dig up. Instead I found myself acting as a loud, self-absorbed wag nosing into everyone's business and mockingly shooting my mouth off. It worked, I think, but wow, was that a role that got away from me.

I also must commend morethings5* and lightgamer* for being particularly awesome in the game. Matt was crosscast in a fairly plot-significant and emotionally weighty role, and I was really impressed with how he carried it off. Kindness was in a role that had a lot to do with my part, and he is always a joy to interact with; he is one of the few people I will put down on my casting questionnaires as somebody with whom I'm comfortable having just about any kind of interaction, no matter how intense. Props also to pezzonovante* for just being great to larp with as well; we had some good conversations and he was wonderful to bounce ideas off of. And of course, thanks to wired_lizard* and mllelaurel*, the authors of this fabulous game. The concept is really cool and the writing is spectacular. I'm glad a got a chance to play, especially when it probably wasn't the sort of game I'd seek out in other circumstances.

From the Department of Bad Ideas... @HipsterFeminist!

So a little while ago I got the terrible idea to start a daily joke Twitter feed called Hipster Feminist-- "She buys into the masculine hegemony ironically." But now I've actually decided to do it. Along the lines of Feminist Hulk or The Goddamn Batman, it will have a daily post of whatever joke I can come up with on the subject that fits into a hundred and forty characters.

If you care to subscribe, the name is @HipsterFeminist and I have just begun today with its very first joke tweet. Follow HF in her daily defiance of the mainstream and the patriarchy.

Let's see what nonsense I can do with this. ;-)

"Chinese peonies and a sea of sheets": my photoshoot with Haz

This past Friday I had the privilege of being the subject of a session of hazliya*'s fabulous photography. I've been admiring her work for a while now-- particularly her fantastic shoot with morethings5 in which she turned him into an ethereal antlered spirit of the woods --and was really delighted when she agreed to do a shoot with me.

Me and my vanity have a strange relationship with photography. I've never felt I photographed particularly well, and my typical response to pictures taken of me was to marvel how little they aligned with the person I see (and, honestly, so much prefer the look of) in the mirror. Plus my skin always comes out blotchy and my hair is always somehow wrong. I know the camera doesn't lie, but I think it emphasizes things that aren't necessarily as prominent, like the redness in my skin, in real life. And yet, with my Narcissus-like absorption with my own image, I really enjoy being the subject of photographs. The only times pictures work out to my satisfaction has been when the photographer has taken a little care with the lighting and everything, and frankly since I don't have the best skin I think wearing the makeup I usually eschew serves to even things out.

Haz is an awesome person to work with. She is great with every aspect of a photoshoot-- she does fabulous hair and makeup, she knows how to dress the set, she sets up gorgeous shots, and she gives great direction that really helped me figure out what to do with himself. I have done a little bit of modeling before, mostly very closely proscribed shoots involving "wear this costume and get x, y, and z shots on my list," but I really liked the way Haz experimented and gave such helpful direction.

I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised by how much the whole process felt like doing theater. Getting into hair, makeup, and costume (such as mine was, heehee), having to put together a set, and then take direction to do the piece. But the few other times I did something like this didn't have that familiarity, so it was a pleasant surprise.

All the pictures are on Facebook now, if you'd like to see them. Haz is a whiz at photo editing as well, which also blows me away. It helps downplay all those little imperfections that I fixate on. That's the mark of a truly vain person, by the way-- not that they know everything that's right about that, that they know everything that's wrong about them. Though I like all of them, here are my three favorites:

So many thanks to Haz for being so awesome. I actually like these photos, that useless pointed corner of my room actually was good for something, and I like the way I look in yellow here. All very, very amazing things.

Pepperface

My dad takes pictures of stuff he's doing and sends them to me. The other day he was picking some things that were ready to be harvested in his garden, and he sent me this.

It is, in case you can't tell, a face made out of various kinds of hot peppers laid out on the kitchen counter. He has a banana pepper nose, jalapeno eyes, and chile pepper mouth and eyebrows. His hair may be made of out slices of red onion.

My dad is fun. :-)

Merely Players script finished

At last, I have completely edited and polished up the script for Merely Players. I confess I am still not totally satisfied with it. The edit took me a long time because I was stuck on not being happy with a couple of areas and wasn't quite sure how to fix them. There's still a place or two where it doesn't feel quite right to me. But at least it's done and ready to go. I have sent it off to several trusted readers to examine and give suggestions on if any come to mind. The first reader I've heard back from has been positive, so perhaps it's better than I fear.

Now I must begin on really blocking it. There is some blocking incorporated into the stage directions, basically to convey to the reader how the blocking is supposed to support the melodramatic humor of the piece, but there needs to be a lot more stage business than just that. As I've mentioned, it's very important that this piece use space and interact with the audience differently than a typical show. I want the entire space to be utilized for the performance, not just the small auditorium stage, with all the characters being visible for most of the show, moving among the audience, unusual things like that. I know the space we're going to have and how we're going to arrange it. That's enough information to get started. I like going into a production with at least a solid idea of the blocking; it makes rehearsals go more smoothly. Of course you have to be willing to let things grow and evolve once the actors are involved, but I find everything works better when they have a jumping-off point.

Representational nature of theater

One of my favorite things about theater as a medium is the conventions that are peculiar to it. I particularly love that it is acceptable for theater to be highly representational as opposed to strictly literal in its portrayals. For example, a single tree on stage can be understood to stand in for a whole forest, a woman dressed and carrying herself like a man is understood to be playing a male character, or a puppet with the puppeteer clearly visible can be accepted as a child or a dog or a spirit. Due to that conventions, audiences will go in to see a piece of theater with the willingness to suspend certain disbelief and buy more readily into the conceits of the representation. You'd never get that in a medium like cinema a higher degree of literal realism is expected, and people constantly complain about effects that look fake. I tend to really enjoy pieces of theater that make use of this. I could see myself leaning towards writing a lot of things that require an interesting representation to depict something that is not easily exactly imitated onstage.

Dia de los Sobres approaches

Coming up this weekend is Dia de los Sobres, or Day of the Envelopes, the Saturday where natbudin* and I run Resonance and wired_lizard* and mllelaurel* run Stars Over Atlantis back-to-back. We've got an excellent player group for both games, so I'm very excited both to run my larp and play in theirs.

I must say, Stars didn't immediately jump out at me. The blurb didn't give me a very good sense of it, and given that it takes place in a BDSM club I was concerned the subject matter might not be my cup of tea. But Tory and Lily are really good writers-- I thought The Sound of Drums was excellently written --so I wanted to give it a try. I just got my casting the other night, and from the looks of my character sheet there is something very interesting going on with the plot of this game, so I feel pretty good about it. I will be playing Rhiannon Sinclair, the author whose book reading all the characters are attending. Costuming shouldn't be hard, it's chic artsy-gothy, but I don't really own the pieces I'm picturing. I really wish I had a fitted v-neck blouse with drapey sleeves, because that would be perfect. Maybe I'll wear one of my scarves as a poncho over my mesh shirt. And then maybe my long black skirt I bought for Labor Wars on the bottom, with my black leather tall boots. That might work. I'll have to mess around, maybe give the Moody Street thrift store a quick look.

Jared and Bernie are going to be our AGMs for Resonance. Jared played the game at Festival and had a really good time, which pleased me to no end. Bernie will be in charge of the casting mechanic. We are running it very simply this time around, which was the original plan, but in previous runs there was a bit more managing and handling rather than just letting the data speak for itself. I think this way will make it go a little more quickly. Other than that, the previous run proved that the concept works quite well, and I think this group of players will be suited well enough to the material to give a very cool run.

It's nice to get some larping in the summer, which is typically a real dead season. Yay for roleplaying in my life again!

Mrs. Hawking 1.1

A little late, but here is the product of my first "write apiece of theater every two weeks" cycle. It's a scene from a larger play rather than a ten-minute stand-alone. I don't know, I might go somewhere with it. 

            (NATHANIEL HAWKING, a well-dressed gentleman in his late twenties, is discovered onstage. He sits in a stylish Victorian parlor and appears to be waiting. A large portrait of a man hangs over the mantelpiece. Before long a bell rings, and he leaps up to answer the door. MARY STONE enters, a plainly dressed working-class young woman. She clasps a suitcase and is bundled against the rain.)

NATHANIEL: Ah, Miss Mary Stone, I presume?

MARY: Indeed I am, sir. And you are Mr. Hawking, then?

NATHANIEL: Call me Nathaniel, if you please. I am very pleased to meet you. I trust you have recovered from your voyage?

MARY: Well enough, though the London weather was quite the shock. I shall certainly miss the Indian climate.

NATHANIEL: I am sure. Oh, allow me.

            (He places her suitcase aside, then takes her coat and hangs it for her.)

NATHANIEL: I am certainly glad to find you here. Your turning up in London may be the solution to our problem.

MARY: I understand you advertised on behalf of a relative?

NATHANIEL: My aunt Victoria. She was the wife of my dear uncle, the late Colonel Reginald Hawking of the Afghan campaign. Remarkable woman, I’m terribly fond of her, but… she has queer ideas at times. After my uncle’s passing she dismissed all the staff, but I’ve convinced her that she’s in need of someone around the house. It isn’t right for a lady to go on alone in the world. Almost more than the help, I think she could do with the company.

            (Enter a lady in her late thirties to early forties, businesslike and stern, MRS. VICTORIA HAWKING. She regards them, then silently approaches until she is just behind NATHANIEL.)

NATHANIEL: But I must warn you, miss, she is not warm to the idea just yet. She’s stiff-necked, you see. Fiercely independent. You mustn’t take offense if she seems… brusque or standoffish to you, she only just hasn’t quite come round to the notion of needing help.

MARY: I quite understand. I know how difficult it can be to begin your life all over again.

MRS. HAWKING: Is that the girl?

            (Startled at the sound of her voice, NATHANIEL spins around and, in an effort to keep from running into her, stumbles backwards onto the ground.)

NATHANIEL: Aunt Victoria!

MRS. HAWKING: How you must suffer for me, Nathaniel.

MARY: Oh, let me help, sir.

            (MARY helps him to his feet with practiced ease.)

NATHANIEL: Thank you, miss. Auntie, I am only too glad to be of service. Miss Mary Stone, may I introduce you to my dear lady aunt, Mrs. Victoria Hawking?

MARY: A pleasure to make your acquaintance, madam.

MRS. HAWKING: I’m a fair ways off from my dotage yet, Nathaniel. Do you think me so frail that I require a nursemaid?

NATHANIEL: What are you talking about, Aunt Victoria?

MRS. HAWKING: I consented to hiring a house girl, and you’ve brought me a nurse.

NATHANIEL: Aunt, I’ve done nothing of the kind. Miss Stone isn’t a nurse. You always think you know my meaning before I say it, but truly sometimes you decide in haste! 

MARY: I am, in fact, I suppose. In a manner of speaking. I nursed my parents through the last months of their illness.

NATHANIEL: Indeed? Ah, well, see, she is an even more capable lady I’d thought. 

MARY: May I ask, ma’am, how did you know?

MRS. HAWKING: The practical way you just now lifted my nephew. You’ve done a great deal of helping bodies in and out of bed.

MARY: Oh, my. That’s it precisely.

NATHANIEL: My dear aunt has quite the keen sense of people, you see. Please, sit here and let us get to know one another, shall we?

MRS. HAWKING: At least this one can string two words together. Unlike that last girl. Wherever did you find her, the lobotomy ward at Colney Hatch?

NATHANIEL: Aunt Victoria, please!  

MRS. HAWKING: But now you’ve brought me this girl. Your given plain meek unmarried young woman, new and friendless in London, I see. I would not have left India for this dreary place, but I suppose there are circumstances that can’t be helped.

MARY: That’s the truth of it, ma’am. I see you’ve been told something of my history.

MRS. HAWKING: Only by your dress. A lady who wears Indian linen beneath her greatcoat is one who has not long had need for warm clothes. Very well then, if I must have you then I shall see that I get some use out of you. I would hope a woman who’s lived abroad a time would not be a useless fainting flower. Tell me your accomplishments.  

MARY: Accomplishments may perhaps be too strong a word, madam. But I have many years’ time keeping house for my family, hold to a budget, cook well and sew capably. I have attended some school so that I can read and write in English and French—

MRS. HAWKING: Enough of that. You are educated, that is well. Can you keep an appointment-book?

MARY: Very well, Mrs. Hawking.

MRS. HAWKING: And have you the good sense God gave you?

MARY: I very much hope so!

MRS. HAWKING: So too I. I can’t abide a woman who forgets her own head on her shoulders. Well, it gives you a leg up on the other dull-witted chits he’s dragged in front of me. Provided you can hold your tongue and keep your own business, I supposed that you shall do for me.

NATHANIEL: So you’ll have her on?

MRS. HAWKING: I suppose I can stand to.

MARY: Thank you very much, madam! I will not disappoint you.

MRS. HAWKING: I may hope.

MARY: When shall I move in my things?

MRS. HAWKING: I beg your pardon?

MARY: I shan’t need much space. And I can wait for your convenience.

MRS. HAWKING: Nathaniel, I said did not want anyone in the house.

MARY: Oh, dear. I was told that this would be a billeted situation.

NATHANIEL: Aunt Victoria, I explained to you that this would be the way of it. Such is Mary’s situation. And may I point out that you have chased all your other options off?

MRS. HAWKING: Ah, very well. Your claims shall be tested straightaway, it seems. I warn you that I am not a sociable creature, Miss Stone. Heed me well and things shall get on. Well, I suppose that settles that. Can you arrive at ten-thirty sharp tomorrow?

MARY: I will not be late.

MRS: HAWKING: Good. It is another thing I cannot abide. Now you may go. Thank you for your assistance, Nathaniel. I have done.

NATHANIEL: Of course, dear aunt. The Colonel would have wanted me to take care of you.

MRS. HAWKING: Bless him for that.

            (Stand and exit MRS. HAWKING.)

NATHANIEL: I am very glad she’ll have you, Mary.

MARY: She seems very displeased with the whole matter.

NATHANIEL: Don’t you worry. Compared to what she thought of the others, she seems quite taken with you.

MARY: Oh, my.

NATHANIEL: She’ll come round in time. My aunt has always been of odd habits, but she’s become… withdrawn of late. I worry for her should she continue on this way. I think you may be precisely what she needs.

Pathological fear of awkwardness

I have an excessive fear of awkwardness. I don't know why, but I absolutely can't stand it. It makes me uncomfortable to the point where I will go to enormous, often massively inconvenient lengths to avoid it. Generally, this just means I don't like being around constantly awkward people. But other times it means that I will not risk dealing with any situation with which I'm not totally comfortable for fear of things becoming awkward.

The thing that bothers me is that my tolerance for it is so low is that sometimes it even keeps me from seeking out my friends if there strikes me as the slightest possibility of it. There are a fair number of people I like who I am sometimes afraid to contact for fear of having an awkward interaction. Unless I am absolutely assured that they will be a person I can socialize with without having to stress over what to talk about and how to keep things going smoothly, often I can't make myself reach out at all, even if I want to. I can't even initiate an IM conversation, no matter how much I want to talk to a person just to enjoy their company, if I'm worried I won't have enough to say. Sometimes I can only see certain people in groups, not because I don't want to be with them one-on-one, but I'm afraid that without more people contributing I won't be engaging enough.

You know how more and more I hold dinner parties as my preferred form of social interaction. It's in part because I have the control in that situation to keep them working the way that makes me most comfortable. The guest list is chosen by me, the activity and setting and context is all acceptable to me, and it can be managed to minimize the potential for awkwardness.

There's other things tied into this, like how I sometimes half-expect people to find my asking for their contact a bother, like I'm nagging them for their attention. Though I do in fact actually know that my friends wouldn't be my friends if they didn't like spending time with me, it can be hard to shake the paranoia sometimes that people who don't contact me very often are only just being friendly when I am around to be polite. But it's a two-way street, maybe they're feeling the same way as I do about me. Maybe they're just as afraid of awkwardness as I am, or that they might be bothering me if they do contact me. (I couldn't say I'd blame them for that, given what a grumpy person I am.)

I think this goes back to the fact that I rely a lot on etiquette and nonverbal communication to interact with people. I was brought up to believe the height of good manners was the ability to take a hint. Do not, for example, force someone to SAY they are uncomfortable with something you're doing, but rather, be able to SEE that they are uncomfortable and then act accordingly to relieve it. It is awkward to have to say something like, "I need to be alone right now, so go away," or "I don't want to go out because I can't spend the money," so the well-mannered person tries to be sensitive to the projected feelings of others to not force them into having to articulate things that make them embarrassed. And accordingly, I would like people to be able to be just as sensitive to me. But unfortunately there are plenty of things that there is no real reason to feel uncomfortable about saying and therefore would be better to just SAY. But those things can be really hard for me because of this sensibility. Like, this situation wouldn't be awkward if I just have the savvy to keep it from becoming awkward. I was in a situation recently where just throwing out the things I was feeling verbally was the best way to handle it, but even though I was speaking to a good friend I trust, and managed it and I'm ultimately glad I did it, I really wish I could have found a less awkward way to make myself understood.

Since my depression really set in there are a handful of people who are truly important to me that I kind of slipped out of contact with. Not completely, fortunately, but spending as much time as I did shut away moping did not do anything positive for those relationships. I feel so bad about losing touch that I feel awkward about getting back into touch because it will highlight how long I've ignored them. Which just leads to staying even longer out of touch. And then I am further distanced from those important people.

What I need to do is just get over it. Trying calling, IMing, even hanging out with people I want to have in my life. And if things are awkward well... I'll just have to deal. And if I can't, nobody has more "escape in case of awkward" plans than I do. It's not going to kill me if I try. And things might just get less awkward in the future because of it.

Hemingway's manufactured masculinity



This originally started out as a casual remark on Twitter, but I think long tweet chains are silly especially when you have a blog you are devoted to. So I am doing some of my reading for school, which right now is almost entirely ten-minute plays, when I see "Hills Like White Elephants," a short story by Ernest Hemingway has been included. You know my feelings on Hemingway by now, I assume, which I sum up with the pithy criticism that he reads like a drunken telegram. His prose always leaves me cold, though I guess somebody must enjoy it, and I dislike his cardboard-cutout-cookie-cutter main characters. I can understand why he is enjoyed, I suppose, though I don't really see why he has attained classic status. The only thing I can think of is that people have decided to accept Hemingway into the canon as one of the major bards of masculinity in a way few other writers do. I think he appealed to men struggling to feel masculine who used him as an interpreter, believing he explains what they're missing, supplying them both with a notion of a manly identity as well art that reflected it. But I really don't think that Hemingway really HAD a sense of what "true manhood" was, nor do I think he failed to recognize that. His work is his attempt to reconstruct masculinity, to figure out what it really was. The manhood represented in his work is an educated guess at best. But lots of men read it and, lacking their own sense of what masculinity was and the ability to evaluate the truth of Hemingway's portrayal, allowed the work to tell them what they thought was the answer to their question. They took Hemingway's word for it, unaware that he wasn't actually an authority.

I think my opinion of Hemingway's work is deeply influenced by the fact that I don't like his postulation on the nature of masculinity. I think he got it very, if not totally, wrong. I think his construction of manhood consists of taking his own problems like drinking too much and not being able to get along with any of his wives and calling them "manly things" to make them justifiable. Men want to be masculine, it's a good thing for men, so under this model he's not dysfunctional, he's just manly, which is what he is supposed to be. And I think that spoke to all the men who wanted to be real men but had those same stupid problems. They were happy to hear those problems weren't problem after all, just signs that they were real men. That's an over-generalization, of course, but I think there's something to it.

Musing before A Dance with Dragons

I bought A Dance with Dragons for Kindle on my iPad the day it came out. I haven't had time to read much of it, but I'm very much looking forward to it. I confess I'm a little apprehensive, as most of the characters I've thus far liked less or been less interested in (Jon Snow, Arya, Daenerys) are this book's POV characters. Jon feels too cliche to me, Arya's been on a downward spiral into becoming a murder-machine non-person, and Daenerys I started liking in the first book but after that was annoyed by. At least Tyrion, my favorite character, comes back. Read no further if you want to avoid spoilers.

A quick aside on Daenerys, since she's everybody's favorite except mine. (Oh, how often it turns out that way.) I thought she started out really cool in A Game of Thrones. I liked her arc of being thrown into this totally alien world of the Dothraki but ends up finding her place in it and growing. But she is jam-packed with Mary Sue qualities and by the next book they started to get to me. She's young and gorgeous, of course with silver hair and purple eyes, and despite having no education in any kind of leadership or statecraft she is spontaneously able to lead and inspire and wage a war with a reasonable degree of progress. I also dislike that she has never once stopped to examine the notion that she takes for granted, that of course she should storm into Westeros and and take over its rule. Um... why must you do this? What do you expect to make better? Yeah, it sucks that the ruling family you came from was murdered, but your granddad the king was a MADMAN and a TERRIBLE RULER, and to a certain extent kind of brought his death on himself. You also know nothing about ruling (except what you magically develop because you're a Mary Sue.) Besides a slavish devotion to the idea of birthright, a notion my modern, meritocratic mind resists, why should thousands of people die and all those nations be plunged into war to put a pretty crown atop your uniquely-colored locks? She has no answer, because she's never bothered to think about it. Bugs me.

Anyway. It also gets me thinking about my personal pet issues that the series put into my mind. Shortly after I first started reading the idea occurred to me that Lyanna and Rhaegar might be Jon Snow's true parents, a theory that apparently many fans have had independently of each other. I have become quite attached to the idea, as I've never quite bought into the notion that siring a bastard would be in Ned Stark's character. But if this is in fact true, then it makes me very angry with Ned. I've gone off on this to some friends before. I imagine what he did would have been to promise Lyanna that he would never tell anyone the baby's true parentage, which because he's Ned he held to the letter. But him not telling Catelyn really burns me. A woman shares your life, raises your children, and loves and supports you in any way, and you don't let her be the one person in on the family secret that otherwise causes her enormous pain? Catelyn had to live every day thinking the man she loved fathered a child on another woman during their marriage, suffering a great deal for it in addition to causing Jon (through no fault of his own) a lot of pain because she couldn't manage to treat him with any love. If Eddard had been willing to just bring his wife into the secret-- "We have to pretend he's my bastard to keep him safe and because I promised Lyanna!" --I'm sure Catelyn would have completely understood and kept the secret with him. She then would have been able to love Jon and treat him properly. But no, yet again the devoted woman suffers so men can keep their manly standards. Her pain was less important than the letter of an oath made to a dead woman. Every man I've spoken to about this understands Ned's point of view. Every women I've spoken to about it is appalled.

The other thing that dug its way into my brain was the events leading up to the death of Tywin. I felt like his sleeping with Shae was really out of character. It struck me as so petty, an act that could have no meaning except to hurt Tyrion, and while Tywin has so many other negative qualities, that is not one I would have assigned to him. Because he did at least seem strong, with standards, and that seemed beneath him. I was really fascinated by his character, and had sort of framed him in my mind as a tactician of ruthless practicality, with the need to protect the image and status of his house so fiercely that it factored into everything he did. Nothing in the world mattered to him so much as that. I get that he has issues with Tyrion, most of them rooted in the fact that a crass dwarf son doesn't fit in with the shining House Lannister image he wants to build. But I didn't see him as being so small and base as to take pleasure from hurting Tyrion. And come on, there are enough whores in the world that to sleep with the one his son had developed affection for could only be as a way to hurt him. Yeah, maybe he never expected Tyrion to find out, but even so, why her in particular? He had no attachment to her, and as I said there is no shortage of whores in that world. And yes, I know he'd hurt Tyrion in other ways before this-- the Tysha incident being the huge one --but it was always in the service of protecting the Lannister image; the pain to Tyrion was incidental, it was never the point. It wasn't that he intended for his son to suffer, per se, it's just that suffering was part of the means to his much more important end. There was literally no reason to use Shae except to cause Tyrion pain. And I would have thought he was above torturing someone just for its own sake. Perhaps it's due to my personal biases, but I tend to think that truly strong people, regardless of whether they are good or evil, are not petty, or at least to do allow their feelings of pettiness to express.

This tickles me, so I share it with you

This is a Cookie Monster cupcake.

I love the fuzzy-looking detailing on the icing and the cookie in his mouth.

I hope this brightened your day.

"We did acrobatic interpretations of Russian novels. I spent 7 hours on a trapeze in a overcoat."

The Burn Notice game went well last night. I felt especially good going into this one, partially because I was so excited to get back to this game, and partially because I was feeling very well-prepared. Jared and I had hammered out a particularly well-thought-out storyline this time around. While normally I do try to be very thorough, I usually have some gaps in what I've settled on that need to be filled in on the fly, but for this plot things were about as fleshed out as they possibly could be. I have Jared's help to thank for that.

Probably the thing I love best about this game is how the players play off of each other. The original three, Bernie, Matt, and Kindness, have established these awesome relationships between their characters that they roleplay so well together. And even better, before long Michael was clicking into it too, and I had an entire table to fun, funny, dynamic players who did interesting things, had fabulous interactions, and interspersed so much humor between the more serious plot moments of the game. Seeing as getting that going was my whole purpose in starting up the game, I am ridiculously pleased.

I still sometimes think I'm the world's lamest GM, given that I forget stuff like action dice and sometimes have to say, "Okay, GM break time," then go hide in the bathroom and rock back and forth muttering "What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?" But of course, there is no scenario you can entirely plan out, because players always always do things you don't necessarily expect. Still, I think I did a good job of expanding the concepts I already had to give responses to the actions they took. The one thing I'm a little disappointed with myself over is how I handled the investigation of the red herring in the plot. They were supposed to look into it and figure out that it wasn't actually the solution to the mystery, but unfortunately I couldn't find a way to tie in any actually useful clue into that investigation. I guess that's not unrealistic, but I didn't want the players to feel as if they'd wasted all that time. Not sure they did, but I think I could have handled it a little more skillfully.

What I want to do from here is activate more of the personal and meta-plots for the characters. I planted a couple of seeds for future things here and there, but they need to start factoring in. That will require a lot more planning on my part, but it will make the story and world so much richer.

So many friends!

This has been a nice week for seeing people I have been missing. The early part of it saw lovely friends crearespero* and aurora_knight* coming to Waltham to visit, which involved playing on playgrounds and nice dinners and a trip to go swimming and a lovely long walk. I've missed both of them terribly, so this visit was really lovely. Jane could only stay for one night, but Frances only just leaves today. She is going to spend a little extra time with katiescarlett29* before the whole gang of us goes up to her place this weekend. On Friday I will get to see nennivian* when she joins Jared, Bernie, and I to drive up to Long Island together. Steph is finally back from Argentina and has invited us all to visit her and see a Shakespeare in the Park performance of Measure for Measure. And that means that not only will I be reunited with Steph, who I have been missing painfully since she shipped off for Argentina, I will get to see Plesser and thefarowl* as well! So a good chunk of all the people whom I haven't been able to spend time with in a while will all be in one place. I'm really grateful to Steph for inviting us, because it will be so wonderful for us all to get together again.

Writing productively

Well, yesterday was the first truly productive day for writing I've had in a while now. Jared helped me hammer out the final details of the new current plotline for the Burn Notice game, which makes me feel like I'm in pretty good shape for tonight. Jared and I have always been good at working together on this sort of thing, which for me is pretty rare and special since I'm usually a pain to collaborate creatively with, at least when the project is my brainchild. That's the reason I wanted to have him as my brainstorming partner and occasional NPC rather than as a player. All that really remains to do is today before the game I want to write out a rough outline of the events to consult during runtime and draw up some NPCs. I may also send out some back story info to the players for context during the session; since their characters are all pregens they don't always already know everything. Tonight's storyline will be Riker-centric, a notion I've had in my head for a while, and since this will be Michael's first session playing as Riker I thought it might make him a nice entree into the campaign.

I also made some real progress on a play. I was initially going for just a ten-minute piece (I have settled on trying to write a new one every two weeks to set an achievable goal) but my idea bloomed into what could easily be a real full-length. So, because of this, I am allowing scenes of larger works to count for the purposes of a piece-every-two-weeks. I made a lot of progress on two different scenes for this larger play, though sadly managed to finish neither of them. Still, I feel pretty good about what I have. I am hoping to complete at least one of them by the end of the week, and then post it here on LiveJournal. You are of course welcome to give whatever opinion you may have if you take the time to read.

Why can't we all write a Warhorse?

One thing that I found really frustrating during residency was the constant hammering of the notion of keeping your play as basic as possible because otherwise, nobody would want to produce it. Keep your cast tiny. Keep your sets minimal. Your milieu inexpensive. Your themes current. Make sure the audience understands it and blah blah blah. It was kind of maddening to me, as it seemed like unless you wanted to write some more fucking Beckett-style nonsense, nobody was ever going to be interested in your plays.

But today my mom told me about this new play on Broadway called Warhorse. She said that it's a meditation on wartime about a boy whose beloved horse is drafted into service in War World I, and he follows him through the war to take him home. She said that the show portrays horses with gorgeous, fully articulated puppets that move and behave so much like real horses that it's mesmerizing. She suggested I look them up on Youtube, and my God, I was amazed.

Look at this. This is magic. This is fabulous theater. I am in AWE of how much those puppet draws me in. They are huge and gorgeous and they move like real horses. They are so fucking beautiful and ingenious and perfect that I can't imagine how much more powerful my theater experience would be going to see this because of that touch.

And this play demands it. The heart of the story of Warhorse is about how the best in the human spirit is brought out through the love of horses. You don't FEEL that on a visceral level without the force and shape and awe-inspiring presence of a horse right there to drive it home to you. But how would you ever get a horse onstage? Does this story not belong onstage because that's an impractical thing to write into a show?

But the play was good enough that somebody made it happen, regardless of the difficulty. And this show is a smash hit. I think it just shows that if your play is good enough, people will make it happen the way it needs to happen. Yeah, we are certainly not all going to get lucky enough to get such a big budget, or even any attention at all. I just can't help but think why teach people to write a worse play just to handle concerns of ever getting off the ground?

New workspace

Some of you may remember me talking about setting up a little additional workspace in my office, like getting a small table to put in the corner next to the door that would give me a little more surface area to work on than my somewhat crowded computer desk. I've been trawling Craigslist for the last couple weeks, and finally found something suitable in my price range that I could bring home. It's not set up to work at just yet, but here's how it looks right now:

It's made from what I would guess to be ash wood and measures about four feet wide by two and a half feet deep. It's at a height such that I can comfortably sit in at chair at it and my mini-fridge fits underneath it. I like how sturdy it is, and the neat little drawer in the front. I'm quite pleased with it, and actually was pleasantly surprised by how much workspace I could actually get to fit in this area.

I confess, I was not as meticulous as I should have been in regards to making sure it would fit the space before I bought it. I did take measurements for how much could fit into my desired area without interfering with the low closet or opening and closing the door, but didn't have them on me when the seller for this table responded to me. So when I said I wanted to come look at it I wasn't a hundred percent sure it was going to fit. Laying eyes on it in person for the first time, I was not optimistic; I was pretty sure it was too big. But the price was low and the seller was in Roslindale, which is a bit of a drive from Waltham, and I was more affected by the desire to not come home empty-handed than was totally wise, so despite my concerns I went for it anyway. I spent most of the drive home calling myself an idiot and brainstorming what the hell else I could do with the thing. But when I actually got it into the room I lucked out! In fact, it's about exactly as big as could possibly go there without getting the the way of the doors.

So I am pleased with how the whole enterprise turned out. This will be my sewing table, and my larp packing table, and the place I do any project that doesn't require a computer. I'm looking forward to having a designated space for that stuff so it doesn't take over my whole room.

My long important project list

There are so many things I need to get working on.

I want to get started with my schoolwork. The natural starting place seems to be to do the reading, but my teacher hasn't yet sent along the packet of ten-minute plays that I must respond to for my first assignment. I guess I can read the craft book I need to review; just ordered a copy of it now.

I need to finish planning the revival session of my Burn Notice game for this coming Tuesday. We will be joined by the fabulous Mr. Michael Hyde, who has graciously agreed to take on the role of Riker, the nerdy hacker who remade himself into the ultimate cool guy (or so he thinks.) He will be coming over for dinner tonight to discuss the particulars of the campaign and how best to fit into it. Hopefully it will inspire me a little. I like the sessions to be extensively planned out so there's a lot of detail and possibility, which requires a lot of forethought. I also like to emulate the way the show incorporate personal hooks for the characters into an otherwise caper-of-the-week plot structure, but that can be tough. No wonder I can't manage to run this as a weekly campaign; I could never churn out that level of work in that short a period.

I do, however, want to get serious about writing a ten-minute play a week. I think it would be beneficial to my development as a dramatist. The problem is right now I am totally stuck for an idea. I've always had this problem. When I have an idea, I've no trouble coming up with the project to match it, but when I know the project I need to do, I really suck a coming up with a fitting idea. I might have to cut it down to a ten-minute play every two weeks if it's going to be this tough to come up with something to write about. Suggestions welcome, I suppose.

I need to finish the final edit of Merely Players. The show is so close to being finalized it's painful, I just need to buckle down and make it work. I am endeavoring to add back in the stage manager character I had to cut for a lack of lines, but now I think I can include him if I make him a pantomime character who is totally silent for comedic effect. Also, I want to have an initial blocking plan made up to go into the process with. The show is supposed to be really funny, which the blocking must support, and is also intended to work outside the conventions of traditional theater. It has a cabaret sort of atmosphere, so the fourth wall is a lot less firm, for example, and the "actor's space" is not confined to a separate area understood to be the "stage." The blocking must take full advantage of that freedom, and be sufficiently unusual to create the proper effect.

I want to find a good beginner's sewing reference. I will be FINALLY getting my sewing machine at the end of the month, as that's when I will be next visiting home and my parents discovered the thing would be exorbitantly expensive to ship. In the meantime, I would like to cut out pattern pieces and study up to be ready for the machine. There's a lot about technique and terminology I am completely in the dark about, so might as well use the time before I can actually start sewing to read up on the matter and be prepared.

Sadly, I think I should probably be putting my new larp idea on hold. The Roman Empire game, which I am thinking I'm going to call Imperium, is very exciting to me right now, but sadly I think I need to be prioritizing dramatic writing and more immediately relevant writing instead. Of course, knowing me, I'll be struck by ideas for it anyway, which of course I will be obliged to record lest I forget them even if I'm not actively working on the project. Nice as it would be to have something new to debut at next Festival, I need to balance my love for larp writing with writing I can make greater use of in a career as a writer. I hate saying that, but my current portfolio is kind of unbalanced and that needs to be corrected.

So those are my major concerns right now. Looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me. Let's see what I can do. *cracks knuckles*