The Final Chapter - a short story - in which the 13-year-old me imagines what it will be like to be the 17-year-old me.
I found my junior high diary.
This is what's in it:
3.17.96
The dim porch light seems to dare me as
it flickers in the moonlight. I look at your legs, then to your side, removing
the hair from my eyes. I glance at your eyes, looking back at me, and then at
your red lips. Your bottom lip presses against your top lip. Just then you grab
my left hand gently, holding it firmly. I advance, gently touching your lower
back, as I kiss you slowly.
The porch light goes out but I don’t
notice, and you don’t either. I know you don’t. For that moment, that kiss, you
become a part of me.
Just then your brother pulls up in his
red 1978 Chevy Convertible. We both pull away as he slams his keys down on the
dash. You whisper, “goodnight,” with a smile as I walk away. I tip my
derby-style hat at your brother. He naturally flips me off. I can distinctly
smell a mixture of strong perfume and liquor on him. I make no response. I
don’t know why he despises me so much; maybe it’s because he’s 18 and I’m 17 or
maybe it’s just because I’m in love with his younger sister. I don’t really
know; nor do I care.
I look forward trying to seem cool as I
walk down the long driveway to my car. I step into a foot deep puddle of mud,
water and probably used motor oil.
“Dammit, my good black loafers,” I think
to myself. “Oh my God, my khakis are soaked to my knee.”
I step into my car pretending not to
notice.
The author attempts to attract girls in his best outfit:
I have been to playwriting utopia and it is The Kennedy Center! The things I was given include train rides (a business class seat), a hotel suite with two TVs and a writing desk overlooking a quaint street, free delicious lunch in a beautiful cafeteria, per diem, an incredible cast to develop, workshop and present my play GOOD DANCER, a dedicated and giving director, a dramaturg, artistic support, and my name was spelled correctly wherever it appeared! I was given all these things thanks to the genius and brave leadership of Gregg Mozgala and the company he started, The Apothetae - a new theatre company devoted to the disabled experience http://www.theapothetae.org/. Gregg commissioned me and three other talented and kind playwrights and bothered to have us all develop our work at The Kennedy Center over Labor Day Weekend. But I will not use this entire blog to brag and say how great everything was. Instead I will mention something outside The Kennedy Center that should be mentioned this week in particular.
On the first day there, after hearing another playwright have his play read, I felt a little like my play stunk and that I stunk and that I would always stink. So I took a walk. I exited through the back of The Kennedy Center and found a fountain. And there were some nice trees. And then I noticed some tourists walking behind me and then I looked up and saw that there were quotes carved into the stone walls of the building. These were all quotes from JFK and they were all about the necessity of the arts to our nation.
I was surprised to find that a President was campaigning for art as an enrichment of our civilization. I don't know where on JFK's priority list the arts fell, but the fact that he said this, it was etched in stone, and the building supports artists of all types in various stages of their work seems like his words had some impact. It is difficult to tell a politician why new plays should matter, but as JFK says, it is"easy to feel." New plays should not be funded instead of Medicare nor should peaceful relations with other countries be put second to bringing plays to the world. But I would like to hope that while we still have a great man in office and God willing will have him for four more years, that the arts will re-emerge as a priority because they make us all as people feel richer. And while I'm mentioning specific areas of the country, since one building in Washington D.C. can make playwrights feel worthwhile, hopefully one Mayor of New York City can fund a city's worth of art because it not only feels like a good idea, but because the city and its people would be as JFK said "spiritually poor" without it. Thanks for your good work JFK, and Ted Kennedy. Looking forward to more progress for and through new plays.
Summer is Youngblood's off-season, the time where we prepare mentally and physically for the season ahead. As a dedicated athlete will wake early during the off-season to run and train, so to will a dedicated playwright rise at dawn to start each new day with a play to read over breakfast.
So what should we be reading this summer? Here's my quick list of 10 plays that I've wanted to read or see but for some reason haven't yet.
1. Buddy Cop 2 by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen. I will buy it and read it.
10. Landscape of the Body by John Guare. John Guare! John Guare! Man, if I saw that guy on the subway and I was getting in an uptown train and he was going downtown....well, I'd have to go downtown too, just to be in his presence. I mean this only hypothetically of course. Not like I've actually done this.
That's my ten. Are there other plays worth reading? Not really. These are my ten.
Last night Nora Ephron passed away. I don't know about other female comedic writers out there, but I have felt really sad about this. I cried. I dreamed of death.
Nora Ephron has written tons of excellent movies such as "When Harry Met Sally," "Sleepless in Seattle," "Julie & Julia" and a personal favorite of mine, "Mixed Nuts." She was also a film director, a novelist, a journalist, an essayist and a playwright. You can read all about her credits all over the internet. But as an emerging playwright/screenwriter, I wanted to write about my experience as a puny fan of this great woman.
My friend who was in Love, Loss and What I Wore invited me to the opening night party because she knew I was a huge Nora Ephron fan. I got dressed that night thinking, "Be cool. You may not get to talk to her or if you do, she may not care you exist or give you a fake bitchy smile." I got to the party, greeted my friend, and spotted Nora Ephron. But I chose not to make a move until later or maybe not make a move at all. So I headed to the cocktail table. There were red drinks and purple drinks and I took a good look at all of them, wondering which would taste least like cough medicine. "What do you think these are?" I heard over my shoulder. I turned around and there was Nora Ephron asking me what the hell these cocktails were! I said something like, "I think some sort of cosmopolitan maybe." Then I told her I was there because of my friend. Then I told her I was a huge fan and grew up on her movie, "This is My Life" and Heartburn was one of my favorite books. I could see in her eyes she knew I was more than just a "When Harry Met Sally" fan. I was the real thing. Then, even better than being at a party with her and having her come up to talk to me, and having her even listen to what a gigantic fan I was, she said, "So what do you do?" And I told her about my plays and movies and the next thing she said was not "okay, bye" or "great meeting you" or "gotta go talk to other people now" but she actually said, "Let me know if I can help you." And I blushed, peed in my pants, did a cartwheel, flew for a few minutes, and then said, "Oh that's very nice. I'm sure you're very busy." And she said not "You're right. Bye." Or "Yeah but I don't want you writing anything nasty about me on the internet" but instead, "No, really."
And I got her email address and I actually sent her my screenplay Helping Yourself and she read it within a few days, and told me that I was funny and should keep writing. And I have been fulfilled in life ever since.
Many people know her as a fantastic funny writer and a strong woman. But I had the pleasure of seeing that she was also a generous woman. And though she inspired me with her writing since I was 8 years old or so, having her bother to talk to me and encourage me meant the most. And I hope to write as much wonderful, produced, high-grossing work as she did, but I also hope to make future ladies feel like they should keep on keeping on. Thank you Nora, for creating funny and moving entertainment and for making the punier of us feel like we deserve to be celebrated, too.
Can you hear that? It's not the sound of thunder. It's the clamoring sound of the regret you will feel if you miss the FINAL NIGHT OF BLOODWORKS 2012.
We've got deft Clare Barron at 7 PM, and the incomparable Angela Hanks at 9 PM. And this is your last chance to see an Angela Hanks play at Youngblood.
You know what that means folks? That means you get out your galoshes & you head right on over to EST. 549 W. 52nd Street. We'll be waiting for you with ice cold beers and vodka tonics.
Did I mention there may even be a glamorous late Monday night foot-stomping, theater-shaking dance party? Oh. Well there is that. And according to theater guru, Todd London, American theater could use a few more dance parties.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13 7pm 2nd Fl of The Ensemble Studio Theatre
My Bloodworks Reading:
GOOD DANCER is the story of a wealthy disabled white guy, his black Republican girlfriend, and the meeting of their parents. The play was commissioned by THE APOTHETAE, a new theatre group created by Gregg Mozgala. THE APOTHETAE aims to change cultural perceptions about people with disabilities using thetransformative power of theatre. It literally translates to "place of exposure."
This time last year, GOOD DANCER was about to become a ten-minute play performed as part of Theatre Breaking Through Barriers' "Some of Our Parts" at The Clurman Theater on Theatre Row.
Here's a bit of press:
“Emily Chadick Weiss' Good Dancer is nicely done…the
tone of the piece is wisely kept light,”
– Dan Bacalzo, Theatermania.com
“
And then Gregg Mozgala started his new company The Apothetae and asked me to expand it. I added two aggressive moms, a dad who's high, a dad who loves the mechanics of everything, a temptress, and a trip to Taiwan.
I lucked into a fantastic director and cast and look forward to revising it for this summer's Page to Stage Series at The Kennedy Center.
Good Dancer
by Emily Chadick Weiss
directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel
starring
Kristin Griffith
Mike Hodge
Geany Masai
Gregg Mozgala
Melle Powers
Scott Sowers
Ali Stroker
7pm Wednesday June 13
The Ensemble Studio Theatre
2nd Fl Theater
I’ve only taken out one personal ad in my life.
It happened before I was old enough to drink.
“SWM (19) seeking Anne Frank type (18-30) who has
slept on the airport floor. Must be willing to talk about Ralph Nader. Corduroy
a plus.”
I had left the BFA Acting Program at Ole Miss to
work at a McDonalds in Iowa and couldn’t afford to pay the fee to use the phone
system the newspaper had set up to track personal ad responses.
The ad was terribly earnest but posing as
tongue-in-cheek. I was coming out of a summer of deep, pathetic Anne Frank
affection spent reading the diary and the Miep Gies book among others and I
used to lie awake sure that we would have been soul mates, the way I guess some
15-year-old girls probably do.
As far as the note about sleeping on the airport
floor – I was in love with the 20-somethings I would see sleeping on the
airport floor in between flights to this or that romantic foreign country. I
realize now that having given up a scholarship to work at a McDonalds, I
probably would have hated these people who were actually probably like the only
character from GIRLS that I can’t stand. The newspaper actually misprinted this
part. The published ad requested someone who had “slipped” on the
airport floor.
Anyway, it was the discovery of this hilarious old artifact
in a box nearly a decade after the newspaper had printed it that inspired this
play.
When I was 12 Pete Jenesen power bombed me through a table. It was terrifying and exhilarating. That's not as gay as it sounds.
Couches, mattresses, and trampolines became arenas where we would suplex, piledrive, and clothesline each other. We used to have these wrestling parties for the monthly Pay Per Views on Sunday Nights. The first one I went to was for the 1999 Royal Rumble, an event the WWE (then the WWF) throws every January where 30 wrestlers (or superstars, as they call them) come in and out of the ring, eliminating each other by tossing each other over the top rope. At Quinn Jason's mom's house that night we had our own Royal Rumble on his what then seemed like enormous living room floor. We clanked Arizona Ice Teas pretending we were Stone Cold Steve Austin chugging beers. It was some of the most fun I've had in my life.
Finding out who was into wrestling growing up is always a total surprise, never who you'd expect. There was something magical about it, the drama, the humor, the real stakes (it's hard to fake falling off a steel cage). Pro-wrestling is a total fantasy world unlike anything else. At the same time we were throwing each other through tables we were also having our first games of spin the bottle, walking from the bus to school by ourselves for the first time and seeing the high schoolers who seemed like all the cool people you saw on TV. These are the years where children are introduced to very adult things for the first time, and the results come in waves of anxiety and terror. Looking back there was no perspective on how things would change, no safety in the knowledge you'd become a different person. Things would get better, if only a little.
My play Barn Burner (tonight at 9:00 on the second floor of EST) is very much about all these things and is one of the more personal things I've ever written. Those were years friendships I have to this day were formed, and interests I have now were cultivated (wrestling has maybe taken a backseat to somethings.) In the play, Jesse Heller is a 13 year old girl who's inspired by a WWF writer who's renting her family's cottage to start her own pro-wrestling league for the kids in her school and try to get it on TV. While I usually try to avoid incorporating specific details from my life into my writing, this play has many, from the Burger King in my town where the kids hung out to the long stretches of black dirt fields where onions grew. It's a play that means a lot to me and it would mean a lot to me to see you there.
Barn Burner
by Christopher Sullivan
Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel
With Clare Barron, Jon Bass, Dave Gelles, Scott Sowers, Tommy Lyons, and Patrick Fleury
9:00 PM at Ensemble Studio Theatre
549 W52nd St, Second Floor
Part of EST/Youngblood's Bloodworks Reading Series
As a freelance tutor, babysitter, etc, most of the advice I receive - and the codes I tend to live by - involve distancing myself from children and teenagers who I become incredibly close with. Who share their secrets and tantrums and fears and hopes. Some problems are simply too hard to fix. It's not my job to fix them, it's none of my business to tell a family how to be; my observations are often unwelcome and my advice most certainly is. For the most part, that is fine. Sometimes it just kills me.
Living 3,000 miles away from home means I think a lot about the families we create from community. The friends, coworkers, classmates and clients who become emergency contacts, who dish dinner out for you into tupperware as you dash off to another appointment, who invite you to their Bar Mitzvah and Christmas Dinners, or find you a place to stay when the shit hits the fan. In the 3 years I have lived in New York, I have experienced incredible loneliness and unimaginable kindness. A big city full of anonymous, professional strangers; it is also a village.
A Responsible Adult is a play about a village.
(It's also a very new play. Like, shh, this new play has been crying all day and I just got it to sleep. Come, please come, but be kind.)
Here are the details:
A RESPONSIBLE ADULT by Lucy Gillespie Directed by Colleen Sullivan
Featuring Clare Barron, Parker Leventer, Chris Thorn, Nitya Vidyasagar, Helen Coxe
Monday June 4th, 7pm 549 West 52nd Street, 2nd Floor (between 10th & 11th Aves)
15-year-old Anya spends her days dragging a cello and a parakeet back and forth between her warring parents' apartments; her nights she spends practicing. Caught skipping school and falling behind, Anya's exasperated mother hires a tutor for a quick fix. But newly-wed Kylie, distracted by her own quarter-life crisis, may not be the best role model. When Kylie and Anya both become involved with the same older man, all three must learn from each other how to be a responsible adult.
It’s Diversity Awareness Week at Buffalo and Rhody, a telemarketing office located on the campus of Johnson-Brown University, a small liberal arts college somewhere in America. As six employees ponder which color of the rainbow they might be and attempt to speak candidly with each other, uncomfortable tensions, anger and true love arises.
THE READING WILL FOLLOW LUCY GILLESPIE’S READING AT 7 PM. COME FOR BOTH!
I’ve made a
list of all the wonderful moments I'll never forget from Youngblood: the laughter that comes
from reading someone's new play out loud; the discussions in which a playwright snaps to verbalize what their play is about; RJ and Graeme's wise observations of
what's core in a scene, in a character, in a play.
But workshopping
our work was just a fraction of what we did. Every Wednesday, we met to talk
about the shows we’ve seen, breaking down what’s working and not working in new
plays, and during the breaks, we talked about our own challenges living and
writing in New York. Fascinating were the moments in which these struggles were
revealed in our work, or discussed 'till late-night over drinks at McCoy's.
If being a
new playwright in the city is not difficult enough, being a foreign, young
playwright in the city is rough. There's an incredible amount of barriers to
face when you’re trying to cross borders, cross cultures, to become part of a
new community. So I have to take this moment to thank Youngblood for giving me
a home.
The popular
story is that I’m the most MIA playwright in Youngblood because I was deported,
and in truth, I was absent for 4 years of my membership. However, before I left
the States, I asked RJ whether I could remain a member and while I was gone, I kept Youngblood in my heart.
Abroad, it was hard for me to identify myself as a playwright, so I held on to my membership to not
lose sight of my creative needs. During those years, I'd manage to return to the city once a year and bring pages to the group. Once, there was a two-hour long melodrama, where I poured my heart out to describe all my frustrations with love, in often subversive or coded relationship
dramas.
I was
dealing with a sexual identity crisis, worsened by a tri-lingual cultural
clash, and playwriting was what held me together. It was through my writing
that I could identify my problems and deal with them, mostly in solitude, and if I
didn't have the support of Youngblood, that period in my life would have been
unbearable.
I traveled a
lot, and a lot of that was a means to escape. Escape my problems. Escape my
frustrations. Avoidance was necessary, because I was too afraid to be who I
was. But then I'd come to Youngblood and say to myself: well, one of the big
problems I have is a sexual-identity crisis, so I emailed RJ and
Graeme telling them that Youngblood needed to make a firm stance in favor of gay rights. So
before the Marriage Equality law was passed in New York, Graeme got in a wedding dress and
RJ married him in one of my brunch plays. That's one of the moments that I
personally, will never forget.
Around that
time, I was working on a play called "disOriented," which was
directed by Carlos Armesto and produced by his company, Theatre C. Carlos and I
met through Youngblood on my first year in the group, back in the days when
Carlos was Associate Artistic Director of EST. Looking back at where Carlos and
I started and where we ended, I am so thankful to Youngblood for introducing
us, and planting the seed of one of my best collaborations so far.
Meanwhile, I had the privilege to learn the singular beauty of each playwright's voice, their unique personalities, and over the past eight years, it's been incredible to watch playwrights achieve incredible accomplishments. I'll never forget what I've learned from fellow Youngblooders: Qui Nguyen, Liz Meriwether, Zakiyyah Alexander, Edith Freni, Sharyn Rothstein, Amy Herzog, Annie Baker, Jon Kern, Mike Lew, Josh Conkel, Lucy Alibar, Rob Askins--but they're just a fraction of the talent Youngblood has nurtured, and it's just a matter of time before each Youngblood playwright will make me see something new about the theater and literally make me say: "whoa."
But the
greatest lesson I've learned comes from looking back at the first play I
brought to the group. After college, I was obsessed with the tragic form and I
was working on a trilogy of tragedies called THE HOUSING PROJECT. The first
play, HOUSE OF SOL, dealt with a young gay man, full of revenge and anger, that
severed ties with his family. The play was read as part of UNFILTERED, and
performed by seven men playing both men and women. The show was a drag show
that never got produced, because I kept on self-censoring myself while writing
it. On a retreat to the Catskills, I remember Graeme advising me to avoid
self-sabotage. And after reading the play, I remember RJ acknowledging how hard
it was to sever ties with your family.
This year,
I’m finally facing the music, as I take the necessary steps to make New York
City my permanent home. In my last brunch play for Youngblood's "Fellowship of the Brunch," I wrote about what’s going
on to explore the personal challenges
I’ve been too embarrassed to talk about in person. Sitting in rehearsals with
Kel Haney (our director) and our cast, we talked about how my situation happens
and how sad it is that it's true. Yet, at the same time, there’s something
completely liberating about unveiling your personal wounds, and edifying to have a place to talk about them while being empowered.
Caryl
Churchill once described playwriting as exposing your mind on stage, to then
have it chopped up to pieces by the press. But in the art of making theater,
I've been able to bring in these complicated, personal situations to learn how
to deal with them empathically, and that has made me personally, and I believe
artistically, a much stronger and braver human being. For this, there aren't enough words to express my gratitude to Youngblood.
For those that
know my work, they know that I like writing political theater, because I believe
that theater is a rehearsal room for social change. In that sense, Youngblood also gave me the home I needed until I could find the tools to build a home for
myself. And for that, I’ll never forget how Youngblood taught me to stay true
to my voice, to listen to it and use it to change my life. Many thanks
Youngblood. These lessons, I'll always remember.
Bloodworks! The shining spring-scented end at the long tunnel of winter! The culmination of a year of toil! The sweet icing of victory on the also-sweet-but-definitely-not-AS-sweet cake of rewrites! Yes, Bloodworks is mighty and wonderful. If you want to be really cool at cocktail parties of the future, you should go to Bloodworks now, because at those future parties you'll be able to saunter up to groups of people and say "Oh are you guys talking about 'Hot Hit Play'? At Fancy NYC Theater? By Youngblood Playwright? Yeah, I saw the first public reading of that like years ago at Bloodworks." I've already reaped the benefits of this prophecy by attending past Bloodworks readings and being smug at cocktail parties of the present. Smug and cool.
Unfortunately, this year I am missing every single Bloodworks reading because I'm biking across the country with improv genius Molly Gaebe. The endeavor requires just a little less stamina than attending every single Bloodworks reading does, as Patrick Link can verify. You can read about it here, during intermission at Bloodworks.
And please. Even though I'm missing this year's offerings, come talk to me at the cocktail parties of the future, when I'm the sad dope drinking in the corner who doesn't know anything about the first draft of "Hot Hit Play."
It's not very hard to come up with an idea for a play.
1. You need to be a person of about my age who spent a lot of time in front of the television while this commercial was airing.
Who was this Awan Buhh, you must wonder, idly, while licking marshmallow fluff off of gummy fruit snacks. Will I ever learn about him, in school? (No.)
2. You need to be a person whose family goes on vacation to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Roughly once a year for most of your childhood. For many of these years you will stay in a house that has a framed map labeled GRAVEYARD OF THE ATLANTIC. Right next to the television, that map. You should probably also visit The Lost Colony. And love it.
3. You need to be a person who decides, one day, that she has a crush on Alexander Hamilton. You don't even need to know anything about the guy, just, in roughly the year 2000, when the $10 bill is finally switched to the large-portrait format, you need to notice that this Hamilton guy was kind of a fox.
5. You need to be a person whose friend alerts her to the fact that Aaron Burr had a daughter named Theodosia, who died mysteriously in a shipwreck. Your friend will email you about this and you will respond with ALL CAPS ENTHUSIASM. Within hours (hours; I have receipts) you will have purchased two books about Theodosia.
It is at this point that you will start to suspect that you have an idea for a play. But what. Is it. What...IS IT. Is it a play about Aaron Burr, or Theodosia Burr, Alexander Hamilton, or shipwrecks, or duels, or milk? Is it seriously maybe a play about milk? (Okay, it is not a play about milk.)
I knew for years that I wanted to write about Theodosia but I did not know exactly how. Maybe I could connect it to this thing, or this other thing, or this other thing, or...! Last summer I read two books at the same time, one of them was a biography of Aaron Burr and the other one was Moby-Dick. And if I learned anything from the first one it was that eventually everyone gets a sympathetic biographer and if I learned anything from the second one it was that you must be patient with your white whale. Chase at your peril. Eventually the damn thing will surface and then, oh then, you had better be ready.
This is a play about a woman who disappeared at sea. It's about making a new home for yourself, about what it means to live a great life, about what family requires, about love. There is some history in it, and some magic. It's been tough to write but I like that. I like a hard-fought. The play is still very much in progress and this reading is part of the writing. If you come on Wednesday, you are also a part of the writing.
Ashore
by Meghan Deans
Directed by Colette Robert
With Tina Benko, Megan Tusing, and Jonathan Silver
Plus Darcy Fowler on stage directions
Wednesday, May 30
9:00pm Ensemble Studio Theatre
549 W. 52nd Street (btw. 10/11), 2nd Floor
$free
This morning I was on the phone with my mom and she asked me if I had written a blog post about my bloodworks. "Shit" I said. "I totally forgot. I'll do that today." Sigh. "Except I don't know what to write. Everything I want to say feels like a spoiler."
And then she offered to write it for me.
I laughed it off. Which was probably a mistake.
I probably should have taken her up on it because here I am trying to say something about this play that I wrote and not knowing what to say or where to start.
I'm also very interested in what she would say having not read the play. Probably she would say something very sweet about me, her daughter, about how proud she is of me and how she can't wait to hear this play. Which. Oh gosh. I hope she still feels that way after hearing it.
I am very proud of this play. It's a play I've wanted to write for a long time. It's a play about women and feminism and relationships and language and basically everything I care about.
It's also a first draft. It's also a work in progress. It's also a play that I'm not sure I totally have a hold of yet. It also might be the kind of play that worries the mother of the playwright a little.
We'll see. Maybe I'll have my mom guest write a post letting us all know how she feels.
Anyway. It happens tomorrow night: Wednesday, June 30. 7:00 PM
It's directed by Tamara Fisch and has a killer cast: Aimee Cucchiaro, Bjorn DuPaty, Christine Farrell, Diana Ruppe, and Chris Thorn
It's followed at 9:00 by Meghan Deans's fantastic play "Ashore", which you would be doing yourself a disservice not to stick around for.
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