Twins. I’m having twins.

No, I haven’t been posting lately, although I have been writing. To say I’ve had a lot on my mind would be an understatement.

Last night I was sitting in an armchair in a hallway at school, waiting for Screenwriting class to start. I was tired and cranky, looking over my script pages and cleaning up some formatting. I saw Bob Hedley, and I said, “Hey, Bob!” he said, “Hey, how’s your semester going?”
I said, “Great, I’m having twins!”
The look on his face was of total shock and amazement.
I realized that because I was sitting down, wearing a heavy baggy sweater, with my coat tucked around me and my laptop on my lap, I probably looked about 18 months pregnant with quadruplet quarterbacks, so I said, “With scripts. I have two scripts to write this semester.”
Relief washed over his face, and mine as well. Sheesh, you can’t kid around with that pregnancy shit.

This semester, I’m working on two scripts, and it is a lot like being pregnant. Before I get a ton of shit from all the mommy bloggers out there, let me give you some examples.

–The mind-body connection is FIERCE. Can I eat that bowl of pasta, or will it make me too sleepy to pound out more than a couple of pages?

–When I get to be able to sleep, it is Very Important. I have to organize my sleep schedule around what the work wants.

–I only want to wear the baggiest clothes I can find. More layers means less availability to others, as if I’m trying to insulate my own thoughts. I keep a pile of black sweaters and favorite jeans in a basket next to the bed, so I can grab something to wear as soon as I wake up. One day a week, I wear sweats, and wash my black sweaters and favorite jeans, and hang them on the line to dry. It looks like disembodied hipster ghosts swaying in my back yard.

–I have to plan my day based on how much walking I have to do, and how much I need to carry. If Vince needs the car on a day when I need to carry my laptop and my books in my backpack, I know I need to pack ibuprofen for the extra back and thigh aches later, and snacks.

–I carry these ideas with me like a 40-pound weight all the time. They always want a little bit more. Does the next scene want more puppets, or more cake? Or I’ll see or hear something which makes me think of something and then I have to write it down, RIGHTNOW.

–Hyper-sensitivity and mood swings. Oh God, the leaves are so beautiful! Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick, do you believe he said that? The world is ending, I can’t find my earbuds! And so on.

–Stopping what I’m doing to use the toilet feels like an invasion on my time and energy. Sure, biologically pregnant women feel like they have to pee all the time, because they do. I feel like I have to pee “all the time,” because I’M BUSY. The bladder does not conform to the schedule I’d prefer to impose.

–I have a due date, at which point, either the scripts will be finished, or from my womb untimely ripp’d. *

Of course, I don’t have the benefits of biological pregnancy that women do. Nobody’s given me a shower and brought me prezzies, no one’s told me I’m beautiful or glowing. I just hope that when these scripts are finished, plenty of people will want to play with them.

Here’s what’s going on.

I have one play about mental illness, The Wreck of The Alberta, and I’m not ready to describe it much more than that. Okay, it has puppets and cake. This makes me want to a) make puppets, b) bake cake. The cake is, specifically, a diet soda cake. I have made this before, and it’s delicious. However, I would cheat the recipe with an egg white to bind it up a bit, because it’s also a messy cake. I’m working with Ed Sobel on this, and it’s made him laugh a few times, so I can confidently say that so far the play doesn’t suck. His bar for quality is very high, however, and I can confidently say that he is not letting me get away with average work. One day he said to me, “This scene is clever, and it’s kind of funny. But it sounds like a Lindsay scene. It has all the things you usually do. I know you can do better than this. Go rewrite it.” and I limped away, grateful. and I rewrote.

When I get this work finished, I am so going to make puppets and bake cake. I am going to sew and bake like nobody’s business. I will frigging have a puppet and cake PARTY.

The other script on which I’m working is a screenplay for a Western. This breaks a lot of new ground for me, because I have never written a screenplay before, and I have never written a Western before. It’s tentatively titled The Legend of Hot Shot Annie, and it’s an origin story intended to have future episodes, about a young woman who goes from being the pampered and well-educated daughter of a Wyoming cattle baron to being an outlaw in the Johnson County War.

To prepare for this, I’ve done a lot of reading. Recommended to me by actress and muse Jennifer Summerfield (aka Trillian Stars), was the book Letters of A Woman Homesteader, by Elinor Pruitt Stewart. Her story takes place a good 15 to 20 years after the one I’m writing, but it’s rich with detail and compelling. Not only do you get a visual sense of the beauty of Wyoming, but also a diary of this woman’s daily activities. She hunted wild game, kept house, mowed fields, arranged marriages and filed homestead claims in a bureaucratic shark tank. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants an escape and a reality check. I also read The Wyoming Lynching of Cattle Kate, which has been very helpful in showing not only what women in late-19th-century Wyoming had to deal with in terms of obstacles, but also the political and social landscape of the Johnson County War.

To get a sense of language and pacing, I watched The Quick and the Dead, which I enjoyed more than I expected to, and a lot of Deadwood. The latter is vastly entertaining, but I’m learning more about how cable dramas are structured than about the Old West. It’s no wonder that the biggest response to this show has been “OMG THE PROFANITY,” because the writers use it to the point that it loses all its power and makes you stop listening. The former was also vastly entertaining, and more feminist than I would expect a Hollywood movie with big-budget stars to be. In terms of gaze theory, especially, it really works: Ellen/The Lady is constantly under the visual scrutiny of the female townspeople, and the way they squint into the camera puts the viewer on edge as much as Ellen feels responsible for their potential future.**

In all this work, I’m breaking new ground personally, because it’s making me push past my normal tolerance for writing. Normally, I love to write, but these pieces have gone to the point where I stopped caring, hated them, but had to keep going, and finally found new reasons to like them. They haven’t quite earned my love yet, but I’ll finish them. I probably won’t love them until I hear them read by actors. Rose Fox sent me the most wonderful novel writing progress chart, by Maureen McHugh, which I have saved on my phone, and I see it every morning on my way to school and work, and it keeps me sane.

That, and Lindt Chili Dark Chocolate. I read an interview with Joss Whedon about How To Be Prolific where he said, “I have a reward system. I am the monkey with the pellet and it’s so bad that I write almost everything in restaurants or cafes [so] that when I have an idea, I go and get chocolate.” I thought, okay, if it works for him. So, I keep bars of Lindt 70% Cacao or Chili Dark Chocolate around and give myself squares of them after every few pages or so. Writing goes much better with chocolate. I can write without it, but I don’t write as well and I get really grouchy. What’s a bad idea, though, is Ghiradelli Dark and Sea Salt Caramel chocolate squares. Those things are an orgasm in a snack. After one of those, I need a nap.

So, anyway, that’s where I am and what I’ve been up to. and hopefully I’ll have some results soon. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

—

*Much like Macduff, but I seem to recall that he did pretty well for himself. Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 8.

** It’s a good thing I work in a library. Librarians are awesome. They are the warrior-poet-guardians of our society.

November 23, 2013 0

The fat lady has sung.

Traveling Light closed last night, and finally I can post the photos that would contain the most devious spoilers. As always, all photos by Kyle Cassidy. Kyra Baker as W.P.C. Foster, Terence Gleeson as Officer MacDonald, Doug Greene as Joe Orton and Bob Stineman as Brian Epstein. Click on the images to view them full size.

Sad to see this opportunity go, but I’m deeply grateful for the good audiences who joined us, and the hard work, love, talent and skill of the entire cast and production team. Now, on to the next project: I’ve got two feature-length scripts to write this semester, and the writing elves are threatening a strike.

Oh, one more thing:

Not only is Liam Castellan a warrior prince and a scholar, but he’s the most casually photogenic person I know.

September 15, 2013 0

I listen for your footsteps, coming up the drive

This production of Traveling Light has a really special set. I haven’t mentioned the crunchiest part yet, but Jessica Foley does in her review for Phindie.

” I could report to you an intoxicating intimacy between Epstien and Orton built around a silk shirt and a deliberate tug at a belt buckle, or you can run up to the very top of the Adrienne and see it for yourself. To quote Joe (Orton): “Print is less effective than the spoken word because the blast is greater.”

L-R: Officer MacDonald (Terence Gleeson) drills WPC Foster (Kyra Baker) on police procedure, as Joe (Doug Greene) and Brian (Bob Stineman, not pictured) keep out of sight, but are they out of earshot? Set design by Kevin Jordan, lighting by Andrew Cowles, photo by Kyle Cassidy.

Director and producer Liam Castellan assembled a team of crack shot designers who connected deeply with this piece. Set designer Kevin Jordan spent many years in the military and in England, and knows the science of sneaking up on people. Costume designer John Hodges loves period costuming and clever details, he brought form, function, fashion and fun together for maximum effect. Lighting designer Andrew Cowles knows “too late to be night and too early to be morning,” and the subtle changes that time period has.

Come join us. You have six more chances to see this show. Click here for information about dates and times.

September 8, 2013 0

Mark Cofta’s CityPaper review

Mark Cofta followed up his CityPaper feature piece with a review that makes my heart grow three sizes.

An incisive script builds on an intriguing what-if.

“WE THINK: Friel’s incisive script builds on an intriguing what-if: not-so-closeted bad boy Orton (Doug Greene) and very closeted Epstein (Bob Stineman) certainly met when Orton wrote his never-produced Beatles movie, so were they friends, maybe even lovers? Were their tragic deaths somehow related? In Traveling Light, they clash in a moonlit cemetery (set by Kevin Jordan, lighting by Andrew Cowles), and the adversaries — Epstein had just rejected Orton’s lurid work as “unsuitable” for “my boys” — soon realize they have much in common.

Friel and director Liam Castellan turn the play’s farcical absurdities, including the intrusions by two cops (Kyra Baker, Terence Gleeson) and the boys’ trading clothes (Epstein’s tailored Italian suit for Orton’s leather jacket and jeans), into affecting moments of discovery. As in Orton’s plays, the silly events are meaningful, and vice-versa.

Baker’s sincere performance reveals the challenges of women invading the man’s world of police work, an effective parallel for the struggles of closeted gay men. The world was changing fast in 1967 for women and homosexuals, and establishment men (as represented by Gleeson’s hilarious yet brutal dictionary-quoting constable), feeling threatened, lashed out. These relationships may never have happened, but Traveling Light makes them feel real.”

You have eight more changes to see this show, so don’t let it get away.

September 8, 2013 0

almost like being in love

Kyle’s photos have so much depth and detail that I can’t put them up full size; you’ll have to click on them for a full view. There are a lot of beautiful pictures which I’m hesitant to post, because even though they’re so good, they’ll spoil the story. So, if you’re thinking about coming to see it, and you look at these pictures and you’re still on the fence (I know what it’s like), know that everything you see here is EVEN BETTER when it’s live, 3D and streaming in real time in your face. Much more than this is going to happen, so come join us.

All photos below: Bob Stineman as Brian Epstein, Doug Greene as Joe Orton, Kyra Baker as W.P.C. Foster, Terence Gleeson as Officer MacDonald.

What happened? What’s the transformation? Will Brian and Joe survive the night? Join us and find out!

September 6, 2013 2

I read the news today, oh boy.

You want to come see Traveling Light. I haven’t been writing much lately, but other people have been, and the hard work of the production team and actors is coming to fruition in a delicate and multifaceted setting. Fortunately, so far our coins in the wishing well are echoing and rippling rather nicely. Playwrights work in planned obsolescence; you write and hope that your work will be handed off to others who will include enough of themselves that the piece can live on its own. So far, this theory holds up beautifully.

City Paper’s annual Fringe roundup includes a feature piece about Traveling Light by Mark Cofta. There are a lot of shows mentioned in this article worth your attention, but trust me, the Traveling Light article is there. Keep scrolling!

The Philadelphia Daily News featured Traveling Light in their feature article by Chuck Darrow.

Liam Castellan was interviewed by Phindie, and the box office has been notified that Vladimir Putin is absolutely not permitted to attend our show. Sorry, Pooty-Poot, you’re banned.

RepRadio came to rehearsal so we could talk about things. if you like to listen to conversations about theatre, RepRadio should be on your short list of podcasts. Darnelle Radford is really good at bringing out what’s best about theatre in this area.

Last night, Kyle Cassidy came and took photos of the final dress rehearsal. Having a photographer present seemed to give the actors a strong sense of how they relate to space and each other and remind them of physicality. Kyle has an excellent ability to use light to create texture and palpability in his photos. It also felt like having Obi-Wan Kenobi with us, at the beginning and at the final dress, to bookend the creative process.

I’m going to put photos in a separate post, because they’re big and beautiful and speak for themselves, but for now, here’s a taste:

Clickenzee to Embiggen!

Tickets available here, if two is not enough dimensions for you. And it should not be.

JOIN US!

September 6, 2013 0

sometimes, having an autistic brother is funny.

It’s not often enough that you have to say this sentence, “Electric fences don’t work on my brother.” Not because my brother is Iron Man, but simply because he is who he is. By way of explanation, I wrote the following story, and it seemed good enough to share, so enjoy.

My brother, Ted, has an official diagnosis of pervasive developmental disorder with autistic-like symptoms. He’s relatively high-functioning and his behavior tends to be somewhere between Rain Man and Forrest Gump, with a fair amount of Captain Jack Sparrow and Vincent Price thrown in for good measure.

When Ted was in his 20s, he had all the same daredevil urges that most guys that age do. Fortunately, he wasn’t interested in kegstands and extreme sports (although he did like to ride around on a mountain bike, until he was run off of a road by an asshole aggressive driver and broke his collarbone). He also liked to spend a lot of time walking around in the yard in costumes or his pajamas, talking to himself.

His pajamas at the time consisted of a red V-neck giant t-shirt that (thank God) came down to his knees. I got used to it. Looking back I realize that it may have seemed odd to others. At the time, he was over six feet tall, blond, and built like your basic frat boy. but he would wander around the yard scheming about his imagined future career as a late-night horror movie host.

My father had a swimming pool built sometime around 1991 or so. We now call it Lake Mistake. Ted would spend his afternoons by the pool in his concept of a pirate costume with all of his stuffed animals and his Playmobil pirate ship set (which he acquired when he was about six or seven and in which he didn’t lose interest for another 20 years or so). His pirates would do battle and then he took a wooden plank, weighted it with bricks at one end of the pool, and made all of the stuffed animals walk the plank to meet their watery graves.

We were finding teeny tiny pirate accessories in the pool filter system for years. The stuffed animals never quite dried out.

Now that I think about it, Ted went through a period where he built a wooden raft in the barn out of whatever scrap wood he could find, and he and his teddy bear would set sail on Ridley Creek (which is about 2′ deep at the most near our house). The raft was about 3’x4′, had a mast and sail, weighed a ton and was as seaworthy as a cinderblock, but he kept dragging it down to the creek and back, along with his teddy bear, Captain Junior Foozergraph Bear, who also wore a pirate costume, and who bore many knife wounds from various steak-knife skirmishes with the other stuffed animals. Between the old rusty nails and the questionable cleanliness of Ridley Creek, the whole thing was a massive testament to hepatitis and tetanus, but somehow Ted survived. He did get really sick from playing in the creek too much, but he managed to sleep it off somehow.

as a result of the sickness he got from too much creek swimming, he tried to launch his raft in the swimming pool once. I don’t know how he got it out, but he never did it again. He and my mother managed to reach a compromise that the raft could be next to the pool and he could imagine sailing it across the ocean more enjoyably than actually trying to float it in the pool.

so, for a couple of years, we had this treacherous pallet of scrap lumber and found nails sitting next to the swimming pool, along with the chaise lounges and chairs.
“what’s that?”
“oh, that’s Ted’s pirate ship.”

I’m totally digressing away from the point.

We had a golden retriever named Chowder (my family’s never been good with pet naming), who was completely nuts, a jumping, barking, running tornado of blond hair and love. My parents installed an invisible electric fence to keep him from running up to a particular house about a mile away where there were two golden retrievers, where, of course, he would fight with the made dog and have sex with the female dog. he was a four-legged viking (There is no such thing as a story about my family that stays on one tangent for long. It just doesn’t work). Chowder managed to figure out that if he made a beeline from the front porch to the furthest downhill corner of the yard, he could build up enough speed that he could zip across the fence with little to no ill effect. Either that, or his dog brain just said, “GO! GO! GO!” and he was going so fast that he didn’t even realize he was in the danger zone until he was out of it. The invisible fence people kept telling us to crank the signal higher and higher, and we said that the electric shock was now high enough to cook a Thanksgiving turkey, but it wasn’t stopping Chowder when he put his mind to it.

So, one day, my boyfriend Dave and I were at the house wandering around the yard, as was Ted, and of course he was in his red V-neck t-shirt, covered in food and ink stains. Thank God Dave also had an autistic brother, so he understood the behaviors pretty well.

TED: Have you tried out the electric fence yet?
ME: What do you mean, ‘tried out’?
TED: Have you walked across it while wearing the dog’s collar?
ME: No. Have you?
TED: Huhhuhhuhhuh…
ME: You did, didn’t you?
TED: Maaaybe.
ME: What does it feel like?
TED: Like Frankenstein being brought to life!

Yes, my brother took a dog’s collar with an electrical box with two metal prongs sticking out of it on his neck, lined up the prongs on his neck, and walked across an electrical fence cranked up to its highest setting. For Science. you know. as you do. I’m kind of surprised it didn’t seriously hurt him, but I’m also kind of not surprised.

Anyway. A few minutes later, the dog decided to take a run from the front porch to the far downhill corner of the yard, again, and of course he made it across the fence and off to someone else’s yard. We ran after him, and back then Ted was a really fast runner, so he managed to make it across the yard, the bridge over the creek, across the street, and into a neighboring yard, where he grabbed the dog and dragged him back. We caught up with him about ten feet away from the other side of the electric fence.

Now that the dog was moving at a normal pace, he refused to cross the invisible fence. The collar makes a warning sound, a high-pitched beep, when it gets in close proximity to the fence, so the dog has some warning before it gets zapped. The collar was beeping, so we took the collar off of Chowder and hung onto his indoor collar to see if he would let us drag him across the line that way. Nothing doing. Chowder was a big dog, and he settled his full weight down and would not budge. Finally Dave picked up the dog and carried him across the line. Dave was not a big guy, and the sight of him carrying a giant yellow dog half his size was hilarious.

It was so intoxicatingly funny that I completely forgot that I was holding the collar, by the box, with the two prongs stuck between my fingers.

The image that flashed through my mind was a giant gold and silver rattlesnake biting my hand off. I screamed a high C bloody murder and threw the collar as far as my arm would flail. I also probably levitated about four feet off the ground. Dave dropped the dog, who went back to his usual routine of jumping up and down and barking and rolling in the grass. We managed to get the collar back on the dog, and the adrenaline rush made me completely useless for about the next four hours.

So, in the great scheme of things, I will never know which is the biologically superior being, my brother or me, but I’m pretty sure it’s him.

And, SCENE.

August 26, 2013 0

Murder on Choctaw Ridge

Last night, as I was getting ready to leave for rehearsal, Vince was sitting on the couch eating a big plate of poached haddock and brown rice.

VINCE: I found out something really important.

ME: What’s that?

Bobbie Gentry's haunting ballad, Ode to Billie Joe, peaked at #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. — Bobbie Gentry’s haunting ballad, Ode to Billie Joe, peaked at #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.

VINCE: The truth about Billie Joe McAllister and The Tallatchee Bridge.

ME: Really.

VINCE: Mm-hm.

ME: What’s that.

VINCE: He didn’t jump.

ME: No?

VINCE: He was pushed.

ME: …

VINCE: Think about it.

ME: I am.

VINCE: Why would the narrative voice be filled with so much guilt in the second half of the song, if not to cover a crime for which she’s nearly caught?

ME: But… she’s got an alibi. She was down in the field balin’ hay. Or her brother was balin’ hay and she was chopping cotton or something.

VINCE: But Billie Joe McAllister didn’t just jump off the bridge. Not that morning.

ME: When did he jump?

VINCE: The song doesn’t say. But he had to have jumped the day before, otherwise how would the mother know and bring it up so casually at the lunch table?

ME: Okay, but an admission of guilt doesn’t mean anything, what’s the motive?

VINCE: Well, that’s the big mystery, isn’t it?

ME: Where did you get this information?

VINCE: I just thought of it, right now.

Now that I think about it, and after double-checking with lyricsmode.com:

Billie Joe McAllister couldn’t have been pushed by the narrator, because the mom reports “Today Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchee Bridge,” and the narrator has an alibi and a witness.

But you know who doesn’t have an alibi? The mom. I think she pushed him.
Oh, sure, apparently, she was cooking, but none of the food she served is stuff that requires close supervision: the black-eyed peas could have been on a low simmer and the biscuits could have been in the oven for a long time on low heat, as could the apple pie. And there’s no proof that the food was served hot, she could have cooked it the day before. Also, the father mentions that they have forty acres; a family living on a farm or ranch that large wouldn’t have found out about a suicide investigation that quickly without first hand knowledge.
And, Mama does have a motive, because she’s trying to set the narrator up with the preacher.
And she shows absolutely no remorse. Clearly, Mama is the cold-blooded killer.

Law & Order: Sixties Popsong Unit. DUNH-DUNH.

Evidence also available at lyricsmode.com.

August 21, 2013 0

“This world is full of wondrous things it’s true/but they wouldn’t have much meaning without you…”

The First Philly One-Minute Play Festival is still running, for two more performances, tonight and tomorrow. For three nights, Interact Theater Company sponsors a wild rumpus, a conucopia, a vast buffet of concentrated nuggets of theater from over 40 Philadelphia playwrights.

Last night’s performance was sold out. Tonight and tomorrow are heavily sold but I don’t know if they’re sold out or not. But, if you can’t get to The Adrienne, or you have a problem with commitment (you might), fret not. You can still sample this veritable feast via the wonder of The Internet. At 8PM tonight, at Howlround.tv, the entire show will be streamed live.

At Howlround TV, the Center for the Theater Commons provides live webcasts of performances, seminars and readings, all for the betterment of humankind and the theater world. Grandiose? Perhaps. But, if you’re not working and not madly in love, here are your other choices for this evening:

Thanks to WPHL 17 and TBS, you can soak yourself in up to three consecutive hours of The Big Bang Theory reruns! (SPOILER ALERT: Penny’s hot, Leonard’s whipped, Raj is picked on because he’s not white, Bernadette is sweet, Howard’s a perv, Amy’s dry and hilarious and Sheldon’s a dick but you wish you were him. And, scene).

Phillies vs. the San Francisco Giants at Citizens Bank Park. Trade deadline is looming, so you know they’re going to lose.

Jell-O Shots. Put the kettle on and choose your hangover type wisely.

You know what you really want to do. Open the windows, it’s a nice night out; pour yourself a tasty beverage, put your feet up, click “Full Screen,” sit back and enjoy 80 new ideas served fresh directly to your eyes and ears. Just think how tomorrow you can tell people that you experienced more playwrights, directors and actors in one night than most people get exposed to in a year.* and know that you’ll make a lot of artists happy by your numbers.

Howlround TV: The First Philadelphia One-Minute Play Festival with Interact Theater Company

Keep your eyes peeled for Remembrance (the one about gardening) and In An Infinite Universe, Anything Is Possible (the one about the tattoo), because I WROTE ‘EM.

*knowingly. unless they are a theater critic.

July 30, 2013 0

too late to be night, too early to be morning

So, here’s some of what we were up to at Mount Moriah Cemetery. Again, Kyra Baker as WPC Foster, Doug Greene as Joe Orton, Bob Stineman as Brian Epstein, all photos by Kyle Cassidy.