Uncomfortably Numb

Guys & Dolls is in rehearsal. On paper it's going well. That is to say we're covering ground. By the beginning of next week we should have the whole thing staged and all the musical numbers worked. That gives us just under two weeks to put things together and polish them. That should be doable.

The big mess is costumes. Hell, all of production feels like it's falling apart or, more accurately, not coalescing. There are good people working at Play On! who want to do a good show but they have the problem that everyone else in this town doing Volunteer Theater does -- People Power. It's getting hard enough to find actors for your shows in town. It's doubly hard to find people who want to paint sets, build sets, assemble props, do anything with costumes, etc.

We don't have a costume designer yet. We've been beating bushes, shaking trees, and begging branches (that's not even a phrase, is it?) all to no avail. Right now, costumes are piece-meal. We've found someone to handle this group of costumes and someone to handle that group of costumes. Now if we can find people to handle this, this, and this group of costumes we'd be all set.

Am I Black Enough Yet? opened in DC last week. I've heard nothing from the theater. "I'm only the playwright" is the mantra that I've used to get me through the particularities of this role. My friend, Boomie says her co-artistic director, Peter went up to see it last week and that it's selling to sold out houses. Apparently they want me to do a Saturday Talk-back. Looks like I'm traveling to DC this coming weekend.

"Sold out houses." Why am I not more excited about that? Why have I not been more excited about anything involving AIBEY? When it was going through Roanoke and Charlottesville people kept saying to me, "You must be excited," and I wasn't, though I didn't tell them that. I was thinking about the late night/early morning re-writes I was squeezing in as In the Blood was going up. That wasn't exciting. That was frustrating, resent-making, a pain in the ass.

As the song says, "Maybe it was just that the time was wrong." Maybe my work load has been so maddening that I haven't had the emotional room to get excited. Or is it that the play I'm directing feels more immediate than the play I've written? You know ... there's a teeny part of me that sees it start up in performance and thinks in a whispered voice, in the back of my head, "Oh this? I wrote this years ago. Are people still listening to this?"

Maybe it's been so long coming that I've lost the attachment that I would have to a more immediate piece. Maybe the process of work-shopping and editing and cutting and tweaking and re-adding and taking everyone's opinions into account has made the piece feel less like "mine" and more like this thing apart from me that I've had to put together ... for other people -- so many interests other than mine in the mix. The Roanoke people need it to work so it reflects well on their programs. The DC and C'Ville people need it to work so that it brings people to their theaters. I don't know.

Maybe it's my defense mechanism ... "I'm only the playwright" ... When you direct, you're in the position of greatest control when it comes to realizing your artistic vision. You're collaborating, yes, and there's the script, yes, so it's never (or at least it should be never) all you, but you've got the best chance of seeing what you want come out on stage. As the playwright, you're giving over your baby to someone else ... a director ... and there's a one-in-a-hundred chance that they're thinking of your vision. Maybe I'm just preparing for the potential disappointment from that -- like when I wrote a 20 minute tense, psychological Science Fiction thriller piece for the last Mill Mountain Theatre fundraiser, shooting for a mix between The Thing and Shayamalan's Signs. I was so proud of myself -- first time in that style, and it seemed tight ... written all in one night as per the strictures of the fundraiser, but good, I thougt. I was so psyched to see how/if it would work ... and the director thought it was supposed to be a comedy and directed it as such. My dysfunctional, inner demon ridden, xenophobic farm family walked onto the stage as redneck stereotypes. I don't write in stereotypes. At least I try not to ... fault in the director's vision? Fault in my writing? I don't know. People laughed. They enjoyed it ... so that was good, I guess. Pretty painful for me though. Right? I wrote that "years ago" (one or two) and I'm writing about it here.

Or maybe it's a deeper defense mechanism. Maybe regardless of the dynamics of theatrical manifestation I'm going to take anything this important to me and shove it down so low, so low that I won't feel any disappointment when it doesn't come off (... of course I meant to say "if it doesn't come off" ...) And thus I won't feel any joy when it does come off well, as these productions seem to have. I don't know.

I don't know which reason is the reason. Maybe all. Maybe none. What's the starting point on a sphere? (I wish you'd all seen Doug Grissom's So Careless at UVA this season. It speaks to this situation.)

I know what I am excited about. I'm excited about Guys & Dolls being done in May. I'm excited about the Directapalooza being over. I'm excited about there being a time when I don't have to be in charge of anything, when no one is looking to me to make something work or get something together, when some big project isn't on my shoulders, when I can have a day that doesn't start with me making a mental list of what I'm supposed to get done. That's what I'm excited about.

Speaking of mental lists, this blog entry has placed me an hour behind schedule. Thanks for listening.

See ya later.