Highland Center, Indiana ready for its reading

I was sitting in The Burren on Monday (right before the open mic for playwrights with STAB) with Krista D'Agostino, one of the founders and the artistic director of Holland Productions, and we were talking about Highland Center, Indiana and it suddenly hit me we were talking about my play. It was quite an out-of-body experience. We were talking about it the same way we would talk about any other play from oh, say, Sam Shepard, and it was all hanging together and I was pretty darn happy and proud all of a sudden.

Its first reading is on Tueasday at 7:00 at Boston Playwrights' Theater (unabashed self-promotion.) Along with Krista directing (an extraordinarily talented director who made me so happy when she emailed me and said she LOVED the play), the cast is like the New York Yankees of Boston actors.

Hank: Daniel Berger-Lewis
Alice Anne: Sarah Newhouse
Henry: Will Lymon
JP: Bob Pemberton

And we're still looking for a Billy.

Here's something the theater put together on the play. 

I'm pretty happy with the script. I say "pretty happy" because experience has told me that I could open it up tomorrow and see so many new things. Things to add, things to take out, changes in direction. But I'm confident that it's ready for Tuesday and, after months of anxiety, that's a really good feeling.

Another good (and scary feeling) is knowing I have two other plays in the works. It's such a good feeling to know I have things to work on, and it's scary to think that I have to get them finished. They gnaw at you, and it gets really annoying that there are these stories that are inside me and sometimes I wish I could just lie on the beach and stare at the water and let my mind just drift. They're little bastards in the sense that they demand so much work and energy from me. Why can't they just write themselves?

And frankly, as exciting as everything is right now, I know I'm ready for some downtime on the beach, not that that's going to happen. I was the T this morning (up at 5:30 after not sleeping all night; too much on my mind) out of the house at 6:20 to make sure I was on time for our 8:00 Contemporary Drama class) and I was thinking how I need to get away from schedules and people who are bound by their schedules. It was a year ago Sue and Kathryn and I were in Costa Rica, and then Sue and I just kept wandering, finding ourselves in Panama, and I realized this morning that since last summer I've been getting up every morning and the first thought in my head has been, what do I have to do today [for school?] And while I'm having a great time, I did so much "work" on the beaches and jungles and buses in Central America. I need that to get away. Even here at BU I see people who are no different than people in the corporate world (surprise, surprise.) People who cling to schedules and jargon and a way of life (here it's the academic world) and I always get so bored with convention, no matter what kind.