I forgot where I saw it or what the number was, but the number of Web pages being generated daily, or by the second, is some astronomical Eisteinian figure. Not that that means anything, except companies like EMC or whoever the "leading worldwide provider of enterprise-wide storage devices" is nowadays are hopping up and down. Hoarders of the digital ones and zeros.
I had to make a new blog. It's over on my new Web site, which I also had to make. The site is my digital presence as a playwright, and everyone, I'm told, has to have one. So the little nerd in me found a cheap (Weebly--it's free!) development platform (only a nerd would use that term with a straight face) and in less than two days I had me a brand-spanking new Web site. Pretty darn proud of myself, yes I am. Who said all those years in high tech were wasted years? Just for some gravy I also threw together this little puppy. Aren't I a hot shit? Oh, when you check out the puppy, vote for me. I might get my card up in Times Square and wouldn't that be awesome for An Emerging Playwright?
But now I have the problem of having to keep two blogs going. It's like two stoves in the wintertime, they have to generate some heat or else the analytics will drop. That's right, I added my own analytics to the site, so I could track visitors. Plus I have to keep my site current with new content or else people will stop coming. Oh shoot, and I started another blog at BU for my creative writing class to post, so I'm going to have to watch that one, too. And let's not forget my Facebook page. I post a lot there, there, reposting and commenting.
All this digital presence stuff sure is lot of work. When am I going to have time to write plays?
Showing posts with label boston university playwriting program. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boston university playwriting program. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
Why Housework and Playwriting Work Together
Classes are over. Done. Terminee. Yesterday I dropped off a stack of books at the library that lined the floor of our office. These were books I lugged home from the Mugar Library for papers and my own personal interest. No more papers, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks. Thursday I take a French translation test, and if I pass that my graduate studies are done. It's hard to believe it will be over. I'm going to miss school. I've always loved school, even high school, which most people hated.
But today is a wonderful day. Turtles, a full-length play I started at BU, is up on the laptop, and I've been writing. Well, not writing. Writing is writing--actually typing or making marks on paper that are words. Don't ever confuse writing with the writing process. But everything I did today is definitely part of the writing process. What were those things? Today, they took the form of cooking a pot of spaghetti sauce, baking bread, making a big bowl of salad, doing the laundry, taking care of the plants on the deck, and an assorted other things. These are the things that get left behind when your brain is revving at 5,000 rpm in a literature class. But I've learned I need to "trick" my brain about writing. I can't just sit down and stare and say, okay, I'm going to write now, though sometimes I certainly do that and at times it does work, but I've learned it works only for so long. I have to let my creative part work alone, and at some point I know when it's time for that creative side and the practical side--the side that knows the touch system of typing--to get together and write.
And I like doing these things I've been doing today. I do. They feed the soul. I like being the "lady of the house"--a reference to Highland Center, Indiana in case you're a knee-jerk liberal and rile at anything remotely anti PC. I've always had a paternal side, and I like taking care of things and people. Left to my natural rhythm, this is the sort of things I would be doing in the morning--and blogging and reading the news and checking out all the social media sites and connecting to the world out there. And all the while my writing brain would be churning. Sometime around 3:00 I'll sit down and write. Actually write, make words and write dialogue and stage directions.
But today is a wonderful day. Turtles, a full-length play I started at BU, is up on the laptop, and I've been writing. Well, not writing. Writing is writing--actually typing or making marks on paper that are words. Don't ever confuse writing with the writing process. But everything I did today is definitely part of the writing process. What were those things? Today, they took the form of cooking a pot of spaghetti sauce, baking bread, making a big bowl of salad, doing the laundry, taking care of the plants on the deck, and an assorted other things. These are the things that get left behind when your brain is revving at 5,000 rpm in a literature class. But I've learned I need to "trick" my brain about writing. I can't just sit down and stare and say, okay, I'm going to write now, though sometimes I certainly do that and at times it does work, but I've learned it works only for so long. I have to let my creative part work alone, and at some point I know when it's time for that creative side and the practical side--the side that knows the touch system of typing--to get together and write.
And I like doing these things I've been doing today. I do. They feed the soul. I like being the "lady of the house"--a reference to Highland Center, Indiana in case you're a knee-jerk liberal and rile at anything remotely anti PC. I've always had a paternal side, and I like taking care of things and people. Left to my natural rhythm, this is the sort of things I would be doing in the morning--and blogging and reading the news and checking out all the social media sites and connecting to the world out there. And all the while my writing brain would be churning. Sometime around 3:00 I'll sit down and write. Actually write, make words and write dialogue and stage directions.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Mill 6 T Plays. Holy Crap! What Did I Get Myself Into?
I don't think there hasn't been a single theatrical endeavor I've been involved in that at some point I didn't ask myself, What the hell did I get myself into and how is all this going to work out? I've come to resign myself that that is one reason I love the theater so much. It is live. It is real. And there are no guarantees when the lights go down and the curtain goes up what the heck is going to happen.
So I agreed to write a ten-minute play for The Mill 6 Collaborative's T Plays. The assignment: Tomorrow ride one of the lines on Boston's subway system, then write a ten-minute play by 6:00 tomorrow evening that will be performed in front of a paying audience next week. This is a whole 'nother kind of weird. A whole 'nother kind of pressure than even the kind you get in grad school where you're given a week to write a ten-minute play about three characters standing on the edge of a cliff.
I mean, I was honored John O'Brien, Mill 6's artistic director asked me to do it. (I didn't even know he knew me.) And I love the T. Yes, yes I do. I live three minutes from the Red Line and its sound is part of my world (it rumbled past just now) and I think the $59 monthly pass is the best deal in Boston. I used to love to drive, but now the thought of dealing with the parking lot we call the Southeast Expressway or negotiating Boston's maze of streets clogged with tourists and their Freedom Trail maps leaves me with a sense of doom, like knowing you have to spend a beautiful Saturday afternoon with that aunt of yours who smells like a laundry hamper. I love sitting on the T with a book, or just watching, as I did just the other day, keeping my eye on two junkies on the Red Line, a young man and woman, wondering about their lives, how pretty and sad they looked.
But to write a freakin' play, from scratch, in a day?? Holy Crap! What did I get myself into? Talk about the blank page staring back at you? Rick Park, who I've never met but whose name I know for all his involvement in Boston's theater world has blogged about his experience with the T Plays. (Holy shit, Rick Park?? I have to write a play that's going to be in a show with Rick Park? Doesn't he work with the Gold Dust Orphans? Isn't he a Very Funny Guy? Oh shit, is it too early to start drinking? Should I fake something?--a nosebleed? a rare illness? the birth of a child?) He wrote about his first experience writing for the T Plays and how nervous he was. Ok, that's good. Rick Park was nervous. Rick Park puts his pants on every morning the same way I do. (Wait, how do I really know how he puts on his pants? Does he even wear pants? Oh, I'm doomed.)
Tonight everyone--playwrights, directors, actors--will be meeting and John will match us all up. Tonight I'll meet the director and actors I'll be writing for. Deep breath.
So I agreed to write a ten-minute play for The Mill 6 Collaborative's T Plays. The assignment: Tomorrow ride one of the lines on Boston's subway system, then write a ten-minute play by 6:00 tomorrow evening that will be performed in front of a paying audience next week. This is a whole 'nother kind of weird. A whole 'nother kind of pressure than even the kind you get in grad school where you're given a week to write a ten-minute play about three characters standing on the edge of a cliff.
I mean, I was honored John O'Brien, Mill 6's artistic director asked me to do it. (I didn't even know he knew me.) And I love the T. Yes, yes I do. I live three minutes from the Red Line and its sound is part of my world (it rumbled past just now) and I think the $59 monthly pass is the best deal in Boston. I used to love to drive, but now the thought of dealing with the parking lot we call the Southeast Expressway or negotiating Boston's maze of streets clogged with tourists and their Freedom Trail maps leaves me with a sense of doom, like knowing you have to spend a beautiful Saturday afternoon with that aunt of yours who smells like a laundry hamper. I love sitting on the T with a book, or just watching, as I did just the other day, keeping my eye on two junkies on the Red Line, a young man and woman, wondering about their lives, how pretty and sad they looked.
But to write a freakin' play, from scratch, in a day?? Holy Crap! What did I get myself into? Talk about the blank page staring back at you? Rick Park, who I've never met but whose name I know for all his involvement in Boston's theater world has blogged about his experience with the T Plays. (Holy shit, Rick Park?? I have to write a play that's going to be in a show with Rick Park? Doesn't he work with the Gold Dust Orphans? Isn't he a Very Funny Guy? Oh shit, is it too early to start drinking? Should I fake something?--a nosebleed? a rare illness? the birth of a child?) He wrote about his first experience writing for the T Plays and how nervous he was. Ok, that's good. Rick Park was nervous. Rick Park puts his pants on every morning the same way I do. (Wait, how do I really know how he puts on his pants? Does he even wear pants? Oh, I'm doomed.)
Tonight everyone--playwrights, directors, actors--will be meeting and John will match us all up. Tonight I'll meet the director and actors I'll be writing for. Deep breath.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
myentertainmentworld-theatre Has Some Nice Things to Say About Me and My Friends
When you have invested as much time and energy as I have into a new career in the theater, I can't tell you what it's like to get up, pour yourself a cup of coffee thinking to yourself, Lordy, what's today going to bring, and see this: Playwrights to Watch.
First of all, congratulations to both Heather Houston and Peter Floyd, who are classmates of mine (well, Heather just graduated.) They both wrote terrific plays and it was a huge part of my education so far to watch the plays' development.
And it's nice that the blogger had good things to say about my play, Highland Center, Indiana:
"...one of the most moving nights I’ve spent at the theatre in a long time."
"Highland Center, Indiana speaks to the greatest strengths of the human spirit and the worst failings of human beings, a story more honest than any I’ve seen."
As I near graduation--hopefully in August if I can just get through two more lit classes taught by two extraordinary professors and somehow hurdle my language requirement--the realization that I'm going to have to cobble a living in the theater becomes this looming, scary problem. After the thrill of being accepted to the Boston Playwrights' Theater program, then experiencing the roller coaster ride of the curicculum, you reach the point where the reality of the real world starts to come into play. Was I nuts to pursue something that I love so much?
And then here's the answer. Here's why we all do it. To touch someone with our art. You can't do it any other way and some of us reach the point that we have to do it. There is no choice. It literally is do our art, or die, at least metaphorically.
First of all, congratulations to both Heather Houston and Peter Floyd, who are classmates of mine (well, Heather just graduated.) They both wrote terrific plays and it was a huge part of my education so far to watch the plays' development.
And it's nice that the blogger had good things to say about my play, Highland Center, Indiana:
"...one of the most moving nights I’ve spent at the theatre in a long time."
"Highland Center, Indiana speaks to the greatest strengths of the human spirit and the worst failings of human beings, a story more honest than any I’ve seen."
As I near graduation--hopefully in August if I can just get through two more lit classes taught by two extraordinary professors and somehow hurdle my language requirement--the realization that I'm going to have to cobble a living in the theater becomes this looming, scary problem. After the thrill of being accepted to the Boston Playwrights' Theater program, then experiencing the roller coaster ride of the curicculum, you reach the point where the reality of the real world starts to come into play. Was I nuts to pursue something that I love so much?
And then here's the answer. Here's why we all do it. To touch someone with our art. You can't do it any other way and some of us reach the point that we have to do it. There is no choice. It literally is do our art, or die, at least metaphorically.
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