Intermission

An Open Letter to My NEOMFA Mentors and Colleagues

When I started my degree, it was August 2020. My classroom was my dining room, or living room, or bedroom. Sometimes even outside, on the porch or the deck. Classes were held via conferencing sites, or asynchronously on Facebook.

I saw your rooms, the art on your walls, but mostly I saw your faces. And we spoke in turn and our thoughts were considerate. Knowing that I would have a certain amount of time when my mic was on to share my thoughts, I took notes and strove for a clarity of expression that I was not used to. There was no cross-talk, no chance to make verbal utterance of agreement, or even to laugh. I had to get used to not knowing whether my asides were landing.

And that was significant. Communication was more important than ever those days, and I looked forward to each class, so much. I had and have so much respect for each of my colleagues and professors, and class was a celebration of togetherness in a period of great isolation.

When my friends learned that I was pursuing a degree I was often met with surprise. I didn’t already have a Masters degree? And why now? Why playwriting, for which it was assumed I was already a professional.

As a young man, I was a terrible student, and I wanted to correct that. I wanted to be a good student. And in spite of a lifetime of reading and writing, I felt my continued studies were limited. Narrow. I want to spend my future days knowing where to look, I wanted an idea of what I was missing.

The courses that were offered, and the courses I chose, helped me appreciate the current moment, where we are and where we are headed, by looking back; to Wheatley, Baldwin, Jackson, Whitman, Lorde, and Strindberg, Churchill, Gray, and the contemporaries, Abdurraqib, Beilin, Walden, also Hunter, George, Harris, Ijames, and so many more, writers all, poets, journalists, and playwrights. All the inspiring words.

What did it mean, to jumpstart my anemic education? I’ve spent over twenty years narrowly focused on Shakespeare and also Christie, not bad company but they did not lift me up, they have not provided context for society in the 21st Century. I feel as though my education has only started, and in the years to come I hope to keep up after falling so far behind.

I am grateful for all of my NEOMFA colleagues, especially Eric M. and Laura B., who have been a constant source of support and inspiration, and Gabby D., with whom I passed electronic notes during class.

I thank and honor my professors, particularly David T. and Michael O. for driving me to create new theatrical works, and especially Hilary P. and Chris B. who agreed to join my thesis committee, for attending Scenes From a Night’s Dream, for laughing in the right places and sharing such kind and supportive thoughts after.

And most significantly, many grateful thanks to Mike G., a mentor and a colleague, someone who I have known and written alongside for many years, but has been instrumental in pushing me and my work in new and meaningful directions through the NEOMFA.

369 Short Play and Monologue Festival

My wife and I passed through Asheville, North Carolina back in 2000 during a wide-ranging Southern road trip. It’s a lovely town with a well-established reputation for supporting the arts and artists. We had lunch at the Laughing Seed Café, which I am glad to learn is still in business.

This month, the Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective presents their 369 Short Play and Monologue Festival at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts in Asheville. Part of the mission of Difference Strokes PAC is to “confront issues of social diversity in a provocative way.”

As they were scouting new works to present as part of this festival, they tapped one of my short plays and one of my monologues for inclusion, and I am grateful to have my work selected for such a inspiring endeavor.

“3-6-9” represents three weekends of works, consisting of six short plays and nine monologues.

May 30, 2020
Cleveland, OH

My short play Protest, which opened last night’s performance, was written during the George Floyd Uprising of 2020, representing two sides of an argument (though there are always more than two sides) regarding the value of street protest. 

At several points in my life I have been involved in “civil disobedience” either as a participant or witness, since 2016 this has included our children though by the pandemic they were no longer children.

Protest was written before we attended the May 30 event in Cleveland, which began peacefully before the police attempted to force the crowd to disperse. We had gone shortly before things turned ugly, and I wrote another play, Should, a day later, inspired by a conversation with our kids about our feelings about what happened. You can read both plays at New Play Exchange.

My wife in Asheville (2000)
"Flat Iron" by Reed Todd

The monologue Whiteboard will be familiar to anyone who watched Savory Taṇhā during the lockdown. The 369 Festival will be the first time it has been performed in front of a live audience. 

Whiteboard is about a teacher discovering a hate word - meant for them - written on the board in their classroom at school. The word is never identified, so ideally the monologue could be delivered by anyone. Different Strokes will present this monologue twice, both tonight and again on the closing evening, and by two different actors.

In other news, I successfully defended my thesis yesterday. Next up: Commencement!

"369 Short Play and Monologue Festival" produced by Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective and presented at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts continues through April 22, 2023.

Assessment

April is the coolest month.

The come-down from a major project can be very difficult for me. All that energy and expectation and yes, anxiety – when it is gone, my body can feel it, like the after effects of an adrenaline rush. That, and all the spare time.

The closing of my thesis production, Scenes From a Night’s Dream, brought to a conclusion my graduate studies. No other classes this semester, just my thesis defense (it’s not really a defense, we’re just going to talk about it) and then I walk. Three years of aggressive reading and heavy writing, complete.

Rather than loaf or mope (see: My American Poetry Summer, 2021) I decided to be proactive and to use the month of March to change some unhealthy habits. Over the course of the pandemic I have added and maintained some twenty to thirty pounds, and also taken to drinking every single day.

Not heavy drinking, mind. But consistent drinking. And some might argue that is a lot. Certainly it must be frowned upon to drink during class, but Zoom made that not only easy but downright encouraged. I hid my beer in a coffee mug, other students just drank their wine from a glass like it was no big thing.

So, for March 2023 I decided not only to attempt to take a run every day, but also to limit the consumption of snacks, and to drink no alcohol whatsoever. The wife called it “March Mildness.”

And it was, I believe, a success. I dropped ten pounds in that month, presumably those excess calories that were constantly cycling through my system in the form of sugar and carbs from cookies and chips, beer and whiskey.

I was more productive, at work, in the home, in my writing, on the road. There was only one day I did not run last month, due to inclement weather. I documented the experience on my running blog, Daddy Runs Fast.

And speaking of productivity, the first of April marks the commencement of End of Play.

End of Play.® is an annual initiative, created by the Dramatists Guild, to incentivize the completion of new plays, scores, or songs over the period of one month.

Last year, I was working on three scripts, two of them for a class. This year, just the one. Last night I attended an online kick-off event which included some excellent writing prompts and a panel of playwrights sharing insight into their own particular process. 

My own plans for the month involve an adaptation, and not even a very long one. If I were to write two to three pages a day, my first draft would be complete well before deadline.

Anybody want a drink?

2023 NEOMFA Playwrights Festival (Week Two)

Isaiah Betts, Amaya Kiyomi
Photo: Rob Wachala

What if you stage a terrifying and absurd fever dream and no one cares?

Well, that would be awful. And that was my fear: will this, does this, this dream I wrote on paper and which is currently having its first workshop performances at convergence-continuum this weekend, will anyone have anything to say about it … or will they just be confused?

Or worse – bored.

And to my relief the answer was no, they have not been bored, they do care, they may be a little confused, but that part is fine.

Isaiah Betts, James Rankin
Photo: Neil Sudhakaran

Scenes From a Night's Dream a big, colorful fantasia full of movement and beauty and horror, where audience members claimed they weren’t sure when it was or was not appropriate to laugh, but laugh they did, and so did I.

Speaking of a “fantasia” … during intermission Thursday night, Robert Hawkes recounted attending a revival of the Walt Disney classic Fantasia some fifty years ago, and noticing a young man sitting on his own who was obviously high. The guy was giggling almost uncontrollably at the film, and when the hippos in tutus appeared he blurted out, “My God! What will happen next?!” I was pleased with the comparison.

Samantha Cocco
Photo: Neil Sudhakaran

One audience member remarked that all of the adults in the first act were “absolutely unhelpful” while another observed how the subject of the dream eventually becomes an unhelpful adult himself. This is where the conversation was most important, to me, if or how the two acts respond to and reflect each other. And certainly, they do. But people wanted more of it.

Now, there are already a couple déjà vu moments which are played for comedy. The question is whether or not the rich stew of subconscious ego in the first act can inform the second, that what seemed abstract or random can actually be helpful or instructive. After Friday night’s discussion, I had dialogue ready to go which I was aching to feed to the actors, but that would have been inappropriate. Still, I have it and I will incorporate it into the new revision.

A'Rhyan Samford, Isaiah Betts
Photo: Neil Sudhakaran

Also, folks seem to agree with my sentiment that the True Crime Industrial Complex is bad. And that I should lean into that a little more.

Driving home, my seventeen year-old son spent the entire drive picking apart the entire script, I mean that in a good way. He talks about my work like it’s important, that I am a playwright with a style, and with substance. He said, “Your grasp of nonlinear storytelling never ceases to amaze me.”

Which brings us to the ending, the phone call. Is it redemptive? Is it appropriate? It depends on how you feel about the protagonist.

Tim Keo
Photo: Neil Sudhakaran

The boy, a musician, compared the phone call to an imperfect authentic cadence, which is a resolution, though not a conclusive one. He said my plays end where they should end, but that the audience is left feeling as though the characters will continue. This is my son saying these things.

So, that was my Masters Thesis. I have never written so many stage directions into a play, and my greatest concern was that the company would be able to successfully execute them, which they absolutely did, no question. It was fast-paced and dizzying and the audience was able to follow the entire thing. It was all right there on the page, and they made it happen. I am satisfied.

2023 NEOMFA Playwrights Festival (Week One)

"We Call It Family" by Laura Barbieri
(Convergence-Continuum, 2023)

The 2023 NEOMFA Playwrights Festival at Convergence-Continuum is now open! I joined a sold-out house on Thursday night to see the first two of three shows offered this year.

Interview plays were the thing this past semester. Eric Mansfield and I both composed interview-based plays for workshop (see: After Roe) while our colleague Laura Barbieri penned one for craft and theory. We Call It Family is the result of several in-depth interviews with couples and individuals who have participated in the foster care system.

Laura, Eric and I with our advisor
Mike Geither (far left)

Playwrights in their third year are expected to workshop a full-length play, most years the first and second year students offer a ten-minute play or one act. Because there were just the three of us, they each had the opportunity to offer a one hour work for this first weekend.

At the first read-through for Family, Barbieri told me she was mortified to discover her forty-eight page play read at over two hours! She wasted no time editing the piece, providing a new draft that runs neatly under an hour by the next rehearsal. Considering the subject matter, which can be distressing at times, the piece really moves, thanks to her great work in braiding the dialogue among six performers.

So, anyway, how do you stage an interview play? Director Emileo Fernandez took material which on the page is presentational – direct address to the audience – and made it kinetic. While some told their stories, others often assumed the role of the children who otherwise would not be seen, only spoken about.

Eric’s piece, Home Movie, centers on a quartet of siblings who discover an unhappy secret about their parents while clearing out their childhood home. Eric has carved out a fascinating niche for himself, using his experiences as both a journalist and a member of the armed forces to take ideas from true stories and shape them into drama with a lot of humorous interpersonal relationships.

He says what we saw this weekend was a shorter version of a longer piece, and I am very interested in whether that means it's the same story with more details, or we have only seen the first half of a two act play.

This entire first weekend of performances are sold out, next weekend it’s my play Scenes From a Night’s Dream and that Saturday night performance has already sold out! So that’s good news. For promotion, I asked members of our cast to tell me what they thought the play was about and rock star Con-Con multimedia artist Neil Sudhakaran created this video.

 

The 2023 NEOMFA Playwrights Festival continues at Convergence-Continuum through Saturday, February 18.

Scenes From a Night's Dream (inspiration)

We were in a hotel room and she was in a box and she would not come out.

"He is Bob, eager for fun.
He wears a smile, everybody run."
(Twin Peaks)

Had the opportunity to attend a run-through of Scenes From a Night's Dream on Thursday night. The first act is a dream, and by that I mean it takes place inside a dream. There are so many entrances and exits, it's dizzying. But it's delightful. It's also horrifying.

My wife sent me to the basement to rub toothpaste on a couple of fuses. I went to the basement, the light was out, but I knew there was a fluorescent light on a cord down there, so I hurried down the stairs and found the light. I could just see the old fuse box, way across the room. I could see other things, too, and that scared me so I fled back up the stairs as fast as I could go.

The subject of my dreams has been a major part of my waking life, especially in the past couple of years. Is that true for others? Or is that incredibly self-indulgent? Musing on random imaginings which make sense only to me.

It was so big inside my parents’ house. Their bedroom was massive, with flocked wallpaper and Trompe-l'œil ceiling. But there was terrible mold and water damage. I offered that anyone who needed a place to stay the night might live there.

"Mama! Papa!"
(In the Night Kitchen)

In the past several years, between the death of my mother and the pandemic, these amorphous journeys have loomed large, featuring undocumentable trends which are difficult to trace.

With my brother and his wife in a crumbling old house. I was lecturing them about not setting the spider webs on fire.

During the lockdown, my subconscious was out there, in the world that I was visiting with much less frequency. For the past year or so, interiors have played a strong role in my dream space. And while they can be grandly spacious they are also worn and aged.

There was this rap act. They had a demo that they tried to re-record but it wasn’t as good so they made a video from the demo. For some reason, I held this particular act in contempt and used an app on my phone to change the lettering on the marquee to read “Comedians Rap Now.”

My parents stately home is often a location I return to. They may or may not be there, and the rooms are not actually the rooms as they were, but physical manifestations of the emotions those rooms represented. 

A large school many kids, flooding. High water. Lots of snacks. A beautiful schoolroom. So many kids.

Source: Cleveland Clinic Foundation

Returning to these neglected rooms, I lamented not having sold my parents' house when it was still in good order. I woke relieved because I had actually sold it. I once held a great sense of responsibility to keep the place, but that would not have made me happy. And so my dream actually reminded me that I had made a good decision, which is a useful thing for a dream to do.

Tooling down a street in my old neighborhood, noting homes that had been torn down we missed the turning and drove into the cemetery, which appeared from the opposite end to be a packed theater house.

The first act of Scenes From a Night's Dream tells a story where nothing is real but everything is true. James plays a menacing character (actually, he does that in both acts) and the other night he told me he'd unlocked the entire play in one line. I was shocked because he was absolutely correct, but I was unaware of it. You'll have to come see the show to figure out what that line is. 

Different rooms, different spaces. A big event. I was dressed as a mime, but I had to go around. Part of the performance included a shadow play in which a ballerina got stuck but was rescued by a fox with the voice of Prince.

"Scenes From a Night's Dream" by David Hansen and directed by Cory Molner, closes out the NEOMFA Playwrights Festival at Convergence-Continuum, February 16, 17 & 18, 2023

Ten Theater Projects in 2022

"Here's To You, Mrs. Robinson" at Cleveland Public Theatre's Pandemonium
Sarah Blubaugh & James Alexander Rankin
Photo by Steve Wagner

Folks have asked, David! Why a degree in playwriting? Aren’t you already an accomplished, professional playwright?

No, the answer to that is no, I am not. I am a playwright with an obnoxious social media presence which might lead one to think I am successful, if they weren’t paying close attention.

The fact is, I have done lots of plays in the past, and they are good plays, but they are not great plays. One or two may be considered very good. And I have never had a production at a professional house. Apologies to all the theaters that have supported my work in the Cleveland area, no shade, but I would very much like to have a full production at an AEA house.

This year, however, I have had a large number of original pieces, generated through my graduate workshops and elsewhere, that have been workshopped or produced. It’s been a pretty remarkable year.

Hannah Woodside & Adam Harry
"The Ocean Breathes Salty"
(Convergence-Continuum, 2022)

1. The Ocean Breathes Salty (festival)

The year began with a ten minute play, as part of the NEOMFA Playwrights Festival, about miscommunication and loss, and that fucking bunny.

2. The Witches (workshop)

I learned so much through this process. Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew, and this was one of those moments. Let’s say my heart was in the right place, but I did learn to lean back a lot through this experience, and I like to think I managed it the best I could.

I like to think that it was this experience which was greatly influential on the very next script I would complete which brings us to:

3. Scenes From a Night’s Dream (reading)

Here’s the thing. I once wrote about what was important to me, personally. And I produced comic strips and short plays and full-length plays that told people what was important to a narrowly-focused straight, white man. These plays have always been, not surprisingly, more successful with straight white men than they were with people who do not identify that way.

Then, I chose to expand my point of view, and so began to write about people who were not like me. Some attempts were not successful, and in the case of The Witches (first drafted before the pandemic) I learned a great deal about that.

However, I have produced scripts in the past two years which I feel have worked because I do more listening than I used to. But I have failed, to date, to seek into myself for that which is within me that might be universal, relevant, and possibly dangerous. And where better to find what passes uncensored and honest than in a dream?

This will be my Masters thesis production at Convergence-Continuum in February, 2023.   

Falling

4. Falling (short film)

For my graduate level class in illness narratives, I created a short film that described the sudden decline of our mother, the text taken from my daily writings at that time. It’s not something I want to be made available for public viewing, but who knows? Maybe I’ll do something with the script one day.

5. Theater Camp

This summer we used my short plays as splash scenes for the middle and high school students to concentrate on, in addition to larger and longer pieces from Shakespeare. Some parents took offense to the “political” nature of some of the scenes, but if you think moral relativism humor is political, well, there’s not much I can do about that.

6. Forget About Me: The Breakfast Club Play (reading)

One of my recent works was tapped by the folks at Purple Rose Theatre for a Zoom reading, which was very exciting. People claim to be exhausted by Zoom but there were around one hundred fifty participants, which would be very impressive for a live reading! Their theater has a devoted following, and the company specializes in new works.

The cast, the director, the entire program was supportive, productive, and I hope I have the chance to work with them again some day in the future!

7. Here’s To You, Mrs. Robinson (Pandemonium)

It was a delight to return to Pandemonium, having previously provided a scene from The Witches, a work in progress at the time. I have a bad habit of submitting unhappy scenes to this event, which is supposed to be a party. I took great pleasure in presenting something which, while still entirely me, was funny, dirty, and transgressive.

Apparently the Dawson’s Creek joke went over like gangbusters during each of the three performances.

8. I Hate This: A Play Without the Baby (film)

This was a such a big deal. It had been a year and a half since principal photography, and to finally release the work to an audience was so important. It’s now being used by University Hospitals to educate teams of nurses and doctors about the effects of child loss on the parents, and I am so grateful for that.

After Roe

9. After Roe (reading)

The man said write a play that will change the world. I don’t know if I managed that, but I can say that so far this has been a remarkable experience, interviewing fifteen subjects and then braiding (there’s that word again) their stories together into what I believe is a compelling and important narrative. I will be submitting this piece far and wide in the coming weeks.

10. Metropolis (in progress)

Still in its formative stages, this is what I am currently working on. Using both the film and the novel as source material, to create a stage adaptation of the most inspirational science fiction film in history. If it makes any difference, H.G. Wells hated the movie, which relieves a certain amount of pressure.

Process LXXIX

The week before Thanksgiving, always brief and yet fully-lacked, consisted of playing Emcee for the annual writing contest (our first writing contest matinees since 2019) and preparing for a train ride to Minnesota which unfortunately did not come to pass. Our eldest arrived in town with a terrible stomach bug, and so they and my wife remained at home while the boy and I caught an impromptu flight to the Twin Cities, to spend the holiday with my brother and his family.

I also took in-between moments an opportunity to further edit After Roe, and think a lot about my final revision for creative non-fiction. To that end, my brother and I drove to Vermillion, the birthplace and final resting place of the woman we believe is our grandmother. It was a poignant, instructive and also inspirational visit. That night I also had the opportunity to meet some new relatives, which is to say they were new to us.

We also toured Paisley Park, and later, we paid our respects at George Floyd Square. It was a full weekend, thoughtful and productive.

And it brings us to the final week of classes for the semester, and for my degree. Like, really. That’s it. Monday night my playwriting workshop professor and I met at a local joint to have wings, talk about new pages, and plans for the future.

Thursday I turned in the final draft of my creative nonfiction essay, sticking the landing this afternoon around one p.m. That’s right, with four hours to go I had finally figured out how to end.

After class we headed to Lockview on Main Street to eat a lot of cheese and to unwind a little – not that the class had been stressful. A classmate asked if it felt anticlimactic and I said quite the opposite, I was very happy with my paper, and the entire class. It feels good to go out on top.

What’s next?

Twenty Twenty-Three

I have notes.

Fifty-five was once the age of retirement and isn’t that just fucking hilarious.

The second half of this year has been one of health issues. In July my retina detached. In September I got Covid. In November I developed a bout of vertigo. At the same time I continue to run, to exercise. I try to keep moving.

Barring any last-minute surprises, in this new year I will receive my Masters Degree in Creative Writing. One of the benefits of no longer being on Twitter is that I don’t have to read snarky comments about creative writing programs. I will have a Masters degree and I like to think I earned it.

This winter my thesis production will be part of the NEOMFA Playwrights Festival held at Convergence-Continuum. The play is Scenes From a Night’s Dream, one of the deepest dives into my own subconscious that I have ever attempted to get on stage.

Apart from that, who knows? It’s all in my hands. Not only to promote existing work, but to keep creating. I will be working on a one-hour version of After Roe which absolutely deserves a stage in the new year.

We have a film adaptation of I Hate This, the fulfillment of a twenty-year wish, and I owe it to everyone involved to promote that, to get into before the eyes and ears of doctors and nurses and midwives not only across the country but around the world.

There are other opportunities in the air, and I look forward to sharing them if they come to fruition.

With age, and practice, my appreciation for my own work, and for the place it takes in the community of theater creators, is in what I believe is a very good, realistic, acceptable place. I am grateful to no longer be jealous, anxious, embittered. Did you know I felt those things? Perhaps you did. If so, I am sorry you had to see that.

Which is all to say that, in spite of the horrors of the present age (or my present age) I am determined to remain optimistic. I am further than I ever have been from being concerned about what my career as a writer will amount to. I always wanted to write. And writing is what I do.

Process LXXVIII

Actor-Teachers at Theodore Roosevelt High School

Suddenly, pages! I wrote ten pages of a new script in time for workshop on Monday. When I adapted those two Christie novels, I drew dialogue pretty much directly from the books. There is another way, of course. You can be inspired by the work and make the dialogue up entirely.

This is what Coble did with his adaptation of The Machine Stops (among several others) which we produced into a radio drama that premiered fifteen years ago this week, if you can imagine that. He created his own idea of the characters and what they might say.

True, Metropolis is a silent movie and the title cards do not offer much in the form of spoken word. But the novel does, though as it is a translation from German, it has a quality that is not quite like natural English speaking. First of all, because it’s German, it’s all verbs.

That’s a joke.

This week I also had the opportunity to make a few school visits, which was nice, traveling far afield, to Kent and also my high school alma mater. I have been so engaged with the "Christmas Carol" writing contest, I haven't seen as much of the actor-teachers as I would like.  

Always on my God damn phone.

Thursday night was our penultimate regular class for creative nonfiction – and the evening I had my essay critiqued, which was really special. The comments were generously positive, my professor called me "master of the walk-off line" for how I closed each section, and a few commented on how seamlessly I included dialogue, as though I were some kind of playwright or something. At the same time everyone provided me with so many critical observations and opportunities for revision.

Writing is rewriting, so they say. Good lord, how many times did I repeat that during the workshops I provided for the writing contest last month? The wife assures me one of my best attributes (as a writer, I am awesome in so many ways) is how I receive criticism and incorporate it into my work. 

This was not always the case, and like an actor who insists on explaining why they made the choice they are being asked to reconsider, I would also defend that what I had written the first time was absolutely correct.

It’s the most important lesson I ever learned in undergrad: “Take the note.”

Process LXXVII

This time two months ago, I was entirely at sea. Overwhelmed by my schedule, my assignments and suffering a bout of Covid. Now I am a writing machine, on top of my game, and I even had time to fold laundry and watch a movie.

Why did no one tell me Eyes Wide Shut is fucking brilliant? So 1999, though. What a time to be alive (unless you’re Kubrick.)

The first draft of my “Willows” essay has been turned in, we will workshop that next week. And we read After Roe in my backyard last week. Still need to work on that, but as far as class goes, it is complete. Focusing now on Metropolis. I have a structure, which is easier, I guess, when you know the entire plot. And yet. Anyway. Writing all day on Saturday.

Process LXXVI

So, I was feeling like I was getting seriously behind in my work and spent all of Sunday and Monday editing the new script for Oatman’s playwriting workshop and by class I had completed a first draft of what I am currently calling After Roe.

What’s crazy is that it actually works.

During my interviews I was asking everyone the same few questions and I was concerned that all the subjects would end up sounding the same. Not only did that not happen (and why was I concerned that it might) but as a result there were several places where they dovetail nicely together, creating what almost sounds like a conversation.

The man thinks I need more hard-edged voices. I’m not sure I can do that. The thing I have decided is that this is not journalism. This is advocacy. And presenting strong voices of opposition, well, first of all, fuck those people, but also, I should inevitably make them sound like assholes and I have enough integrity not to do that.

Am I preaching to the choir with this endeavor? No, I am not. If anything, I am providing an education to those who may not have a broad understanding of the subject, including those who already support the issue.

Which is to say, I spoke with a lot of very intelligent and thoughtful people. It’s their words. I just put it together into an entertaining evening.

Monday I also received certified documents from the state of Ohio which I sent right back out to Jackson County, Missouri. The question now is whether or not I get what I am requesting before the end of the semester. It’s kind of a big deal.

Process LXXV

We voted. OKAY?

I was telling someone the other day that my stress level had dropped considerably since we had last communicated a few weeks ago. Then, thinking about it, I realized that is not true.

Just because I do not feel fucking insane does not mean I am not anxious. And there is a lot to be anxious about. We voted on Wednesday, which was cool, that we can still do that. Vote early, I mean. As a white man in America my ability to vote has always been guaranteed.

See? And like that, I am in a spiral of insecurity and doubt about the state of the nation. I weighed the pros and cons of leaving Twitter and it’s not even close. I am hoping that will bring down my stress level, which is, I realize, actually high.

We are negotiating issues regarding my thesis production.

I am waiting by the mail for certified copies of vital certificates.

Yesterday was the deadline for the A Christmas Carol Writing Contest and so I had a lot of data to process and deliver.

"The Thin Place"
by Lucas Hnath
(Dobama Theatre, 2022)

I have this crazy idea that I might have a draft of my Roe/Dobbs play prepared by the end of the weekend.

(If we were still living in the aughts I would name that play Roe/Dobbs, didn’t all plays have a slash mark in their title for a while?)

Creative nonfiction workshop went well, only now that the season has turned I am driving home in the dark and I hate that. The vision in my left eye is blurry and night driving has become fraught.

Friday night I watched a play. The Thin Place at Dobama Theatre. It reminded me that the best thing I can contribute to the art of theater is my attendance.

And that's it, for the week. Okay? Okay.

Process LXXIV

Before/After

Good news! The screening was a success, and Playhouse Square and University Hospitals also have made streaming I Hate This: A Play Without the Baby available for free through the end of the month. Over four hundred viewers have seen it in just five days, and I hope to make it available to others in the future.

Interviews for workshop are winding down, which is good. I never intended the play to be just a series of individual monologues, I want to find common themes and even similar phrasing to braid them together into a chorus.

“Braided narrative.” That’s a term I learned in craft and theory last week. I Hate This is a braided narrative. It always has been.

And I need to continue plotting my adaptation. Let me rephrase that, I need to begin plotting my narrative.

This week I also enrolled for next semester, my last semester of grad school. What a remarkable feeling. Four months from now my thesis production will be in the rearview and really, that’s it. I don’t want to get too maudlin about this, but it truly has been enjoyable. How would I have survived the shutdown without it?

I have a little under three weeks to complete the first draft of my creative writing essay. I could expand that thing into a book. Or better yet, a play. Really. I like writing plays.

Process LXXIII

Read all the way to the bottom for a special video announcement.

Is transcribing an interview writing? Is editing a transcribed interview creative writing? Is it not simply reiterating what was said? To date I have conducted fifteen interviews on the subject of women’s reproductive rights, spoken to a variety of women on the subject. 

And now I, one not born with a uterus, will edit these conversations into a play for performance on a stage.

Is this writing? And do I have the right to do this? Is it appropriate for me to compose a work on the subject of abortion when it does not affect me directly.

Of course, it does affect me directly. It affects members of my family and so it affects me. But it does not affect my physical person. Me, I am not threatened by this particular violation of civil rights, the right to bodily autonomy.

However, if I put forth the words of those who are – not my words, theirs – am I not doing right by them?

Workshop met in person on Monday night at a local tavern and before class started we spent about a half-hour, the three of us shooting the shit about David Mamet and August Wilson and ill-fated adaptations and whether or not a playwright should give any consideration at all to how some future director interprets their script I realized, “Oh! This is the class!”

We did read and received comments on the monologues we have created, and it does appear that progress is being made.

Also this week, I began to dig into the attic for my creative nonfiction project, reading letters my grandparents sent to each other during the early thirties, when my grandfather was a commercial sailor on the Great Lakes. Grandmother reported the several miscarriages she suffered during that time while he waxed poetic about the lakes and the many cities where they made port: Lorain, Detroit, Chicago, Duluth.

Reading my grandmother describe in details the physical manifestations of her losses, the week I Hate This premieres at Playhouse Square, and also conducting these many interviews about pregnancy and abortion have been overwhelming.

For example, before class on Thursday I was on my way across town and decided to stop in at an abandoned cemetery, seeking the grave of a child who lived an hour. Yes, I did.

Process LXXII

Read all the way to the bottom for a special video announcement.

This past week has been pretty incredible, actually. I am stressed by the wide variety of dishes I am carrying at one time … but here I am, carrying them.

To date I have conducted eight interviews for my “interview play” but by the end of the weekend I will have four more in the bag, a grand total of twelve. And they’re good, too.

Actually, now that I think of it, I have already conducted nine interviews. The ninth one is me, telling my story to someone I was speaking to. While taking a run yesterday I realized what I had said, spontaneously, without thinking about it, might make a better framing device than anything I could have written off the top of my head.

Meanwhile, I have conducted eleven writing workshops in the past two weeks, with another six scheduled for next week. They're fun! They're exhausting.  

It is with a certain amount of relief and trepidation I can report I have completed the first major essay for my creative nonfiction class. To be frank, I was intimated by the work of my colleagues and it made bringing this home a much greater challenge than it should have been. But there it is, completed. My hands were literally shaking during my presentation.

The big work for that class is well underway, too. I’m sorry to be so vague about what the subject of these works actually are, it will all come out one way or another, eventually. I will say this; I am investigating unknown elements of my family history. The main lesson I have taken from this class is to follow the research where it leads you. And it has already led me into places I had not realized I could go.

Process LXXI

Read all the way to the bottom for a special video announcement.

So, we’re reading. We’re reading a lot. The playwriting workshop is freewheeling; there is no assigned reading, but by the end of every class, I have two or three books or plays I want or need to read. I was reading the novel Metropolis, now I’m reading a play which is contemporary to that novel, Machinal by Sadie Treadwell.

I am also plowing through small press histories of a certain maternity hospital.

Also, recording promotional videos for the premiere of the film adaptation I Hate This at Playhouse Square.

Finally (okay, not finally) providing writing workshops to Cleveland city schools.

It’s a lot.

I am scatterbrained, putting down one book to pick up another, setting that down to make a note in one notepad (or the other notepad) or to jot down thoughts that itch the back of my brain, to put them here. To remember I was feeling like this when I get to the end of the week and trying to recall what happened.

I have missed drinking during class. We’re almost done here so I can say this. Taking classes on Zoom means you can drink. I know I’m not alone in this.

Tell me I’m not alone in this.

Process LXX

“I feel stupid and contagious.”

Why didn’t anyone tell me Covid was difficult to live with? I am currently reading several books at once, which is good, I’m not usually good at that. The deadlines are coming and they will be constant, from one week to the next.

Did you know ..? The 1927 film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang, was adapted from a novel written by Thea von Harbou. It was first serialized and then collated into a book in 1925, though it was always meant to be the source material for the eventual film. This is one of the books I am currently reading.

I’ve been in love with the film since Giorgio Moroder released an abridged version with contemporary score in 1984. Some of the music is dated, very, very dated. Would not recommend someone watch this version for their first time. However, it is because of this version that I know and love this film, so I am very glad it existed, and when it did.

Moroder’s own compositions, however, are still entirely appropriate, most significantly the "Machines" theme.

  

One of the amazing things about early science fiction is that It does not, in fact, cannot rely on words or phrases we all know which act as a shortcut to our imagination. The word “spacecraft” automatically creates in the mind a picture, one of a self-contained vessel, most likely resembling in shape a nautical ship, set against a black sky festooned with stars.

So much of our modern storytelling is derivative in this way. Those who pioneered the craft of science fiction had their own images to work from, but quite often they were creating brand new images for the imagination, some of which can be quite confounding. Von Harbou’s novel for Metropolis is at times incomprehensible, at least upon first pass. I find myself going over passages a few times to make sure I am picturing what she intended.

This week has been very challenging, as I have been coping with the lingering effects of Covid, and also felt somewhat overwhelmed by all the assignments and responsibilities.

But wait – I had previously been lamenting my lack of deadlines, assignments and responsibilities. I just needed to remind myself how much I have been loving this. Grad school has given me life.

Process LXIX

“I still had all the afternoons in the world.” 

― Joan Didion, Goodbye to All That (1967)

This week I was introduced to the quote above, from Didion's legendary farewell to New York, or perhaps really to her twenties, and I have never imagined a more accurate turn of phrase to describe how one feels to be in their twenties.

After an unexpected interruption both of my classes are in progress and I no longer have any spare time, which is fine. I can just go back to saying no to everything.

Of course, it also helps if you have contracted Covid, which I have. Lucky me, it’s not as bad as I feared it might be. I cough, nights are difficult, I am achy and I wake a lot.

Monday night I was able to attend my first playwright’s workshop via speakerphone. The professor is really cool, he said he could run it all by me when I felt better, but like I said, there’s an awful lot to do and I’d rather not get behind on anything.

Without going into much detail, I am going to be able to use techniques from my creative nonfiction class on my first project in workshop. The man said I have to write a play that saves the world ― and go. I have a lot of people to talk to now to figure out how to do that.

Meanwhile, I am having a serious crisis of faith. This is compounded by my illness, and by the antihistamine I have been ingesting daily to quell my symptoms, and also the cavalcade of minor tragedies and disappointments which have befallen as a result of said illness.

I have had eye surgery, now Covid. I have been made despondent by weakness and dis-ability. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.

This morning the wife and I watched Griffin Dunne's tribute to his aunt, the Joan Didion documentary The Center Will Not Hold. Last week I only knew her by reputation, now I have read a little of her work, seen her life, and fallen in love. I also have no excuse not to move forward, still.

“I don't know what I think until I write it down.” 

― Joan Didion