Tangents.
For the second night in a row I find myself pulled into conversations that I can’t believe are conversations in the first place; can feel the vampire’s fangs in my neck again; my brain slowly going nova.
I want to talk to you about so much else.
I want to tell you to go see Empty Threats at The Neo-Futurists and Neverwhere at Lifeline because they are both compelling and wondrous works of theatre in their own unique ways, and I’m proud and humbled that either ensemble ever asked me to be one of their number.
I want to tell you how well the workshop reading of 45 Plays for America’s First Ladies was received after its week of development at Berkeley Rep’s annual Ground Floor residency, and everything we learned about what needed to change and what could stay in the form we’d crafted for it.
I want to tell you about the recent evening I got to play for a few minutes in The Infinite Wrench again and how seductive it was; or the other evening that I helped a host of talented Chicago actors tell a newly written story of India’s fight against colonialism for TimeLine Theatre.
I want to tell you that the fourth season of Pleasuretown and the first season of Unwell, audio dramas that I’ve helped script over the past 18 months, are both recording right now to be released into your podcast platforms soon, and that the first seedlings have been planted for their respective fifth and second seasons.
I want to tell you about a handful of other projects that I can’t actually tell you about yet.
I want to tell you the ways that my son continues to stun and impress me as he grows and absorbs his interests, and how my wife continues to seek new journeys and adventures for herself while shepherding him as patiently as she can.
I want to tell you that I seem to have survived the first six months of the new day job and might even be getting the hang of it, by Jove.
I want to tell you that my best friend is getting married this weekend to somebody who makes him happier than I’ve ever seen him happy and I’m ecstatic for him and his bride-to-be to go through their preferred version of this ritual.
I want to talk about the countless things that humanity is capable of besides manufacturing new forms of misery.
And I can’t, not really, because the misery is so particularly heinous and being produced in such quantities that at the moments when I’m most exhausted, moments like right now, it comes across as dissonant that I might have anything to celebrate.
I’m fine; truly I am. I’d consider taking a break but I learned the last time I took a break of that kind it caused different and no less taxing forms of tension. As is my usual mode, this is me getting the text out of my head into an external medium so it can stop its ricochet from one curve of my skull to another. This is a howl but not a herald, and a few hours of sleep followed by a bike ride along the lakefront at sunrise will do wonders for me.
Good night. I’m sure we’ll see each other in the morning.
Creative Control 