Plan B.
So I attended “TMLMTBGB” yesterday, and determined a few things in regards to this coming Saturday.
1) My original audition piece, now finally titled “Henry Mancini and the Voting Habits of Eight Year-Olds,” cannot be performed as an audition piece, for a few reasons. The first is that there is no way to pull it off technically without the assistance of two to four other people (the Futurarium blackboard does not have much of a small shelf underneath it, something I was hoping for). The second is that while I can whittle “Baby Elephant Walk” down to two minutes for the audition, Mancini’s composition works so well as a whole that I think I’d rather show it to them if and when I have the opportunity to have a piece run 2:44.
2) On my last audition, there were two things I didn’t show them I could do…one was to use music, and the other was to utilize an audience member. I have decided to write a piece that highlights the second, and I’ve decided to base it in part on my reactions to the Daniel Pearl murder.
Speaking of which, the following is something I wrote, a prose poem that I will mine for inspiration when I write the new audition piece. It’s been awhile since I found writing to be quite so cathartic.
“Mother of Pearl”
Kill an American. Kill any American. Lure him out of his bedroom and blackmail his country, shower yourself in the light of your God and then archive his murder on videotape.
And I’m reading and reading, rereading the headline, and my first thought is that it’s my mother’s religion, much moreso than mine, and then I remember that it’s not her faith either that kills a reporter as an act of expression.
And it?s now so persistent it’s become an assault, it?s become an abduction, the story itself is its own breed of terror. And I know in my heart that he wasn’t the first and he won?t be the last and reporters take risks but he died far away from his wife and his child in a country my family still lives in.
And some days the story pulls stronger and drowns me, and I find myself twisting and turning at night asking why did you do it, why was it done, you all had a mother you’ve all once been children, and my fingers reach out to grab hold of a throat of a collective subconscious of hatred and murder, I’m violently shaking, I’m violently shaking, I’m violently shaking and I search for the words that could end all this madness, but all I come up with is STOP IT.
STOP IT.
STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT.
I’ve also had several ideas for two other plays to include as part of a (fingers crossed) callback writing sample–for which I would hopefully include “Henry Mancini…” So far, neither of these are written, but the titles for these pieces are:
“Too Much Lite”
“In Which It Is Determined The Number of Neo-Futurists Required To Change A Lightbulb”
I also have, on back burner (and as a “group piece” if, fingers crossed, I get called back), a piece I wrote by cannibalizing one of my older plays, titled “Literary References For Cocktail Parties, Lesson One.”
Really, I should just work on those instead of the journal. (Well, really, I should get the job-type-job work done that I need to get done first.)
Current music: John Mayer, “Room for Squares” [1]
[1] This is the first CD from a new artist I’ve bought almost entirely unheard; I liked the single, and I liked the three songs I heard snippets of. And it was on sale for $9.99. So far, it’s quite good. Mayer has a really interesting voice, and his songwriting is unconventional enough to be interesting without being pretentious. At the same time, on a whim, I also bought Aimee Mann’s “Ultimate Collection.”
Creative Control 