Process LXVIII

GooGoo Cluster (w/dirty fingernail)

At first thought, it is easy to say, “Wow, I can’t believe I am on my final year of grad school!” As if no time has passed at all. Of course, that is ridiculous. Things have changed so much. Fall 2020 we were in the middle of a quarantine.

I did not see some friends in person for a year or more. All interaction was online. That included work and school. And school for my children, both of whom still lived here; the eldest now commencing their second year at university.

All classes were online. My family was very accommodating to my new homework schedule, which involved reading and writing pretty much every night and all weekend. These work hours are still necessary, only complicated by rehearsals downtown, classes an hour’s drive away, and family-related engagements that did not exist two years ago.

We have, all of us, been through so much. We’re still going through it, too.

Last night was a wake up call to me, a sign of what is at stake in this final class I may ever take in a university setting, my final class in craft and theory. And C&T has always been my Achilles’ heel, as it is about the craft, not the subject. I hope I can stay focused on craft (i.e., how it is done) rather than focusing so narrowly on the subject, though the argument that the craft serves is also relevant.

But I so easily digress.

Prom 2021

Daughter (left) & Prom Date

Last year, as everything was shutting down, the first person to truly understand how long this all might take was our eldest. Class of 2021, they  saw all the events of their senior year vanish from their imagination, even last spring. No concerts, no plays, all celebrations, canceled. They saw all this first.

The other night an audience gathered on the lawn in front of Cleveland Heights High School to watch the first live, public performance of the school year. Middle school and high school orchestras, Including both of our children. It was a beautiful evening, for so many reasons.

Last year I wrote a short play for the class of 2020, the year of the Lost Prom. Maria Guardino Schreiner made this great recording from it. Last night, my child got their Prom, a scrap of senior year, saved.

Play a Day: A Godawful Small Affair

Hayley St. James

For Thursday, I read A Godawful Small Affair by Hayley St. James and posted at New Play Exchange.

Any play that uses a lyric from “Life On Mars” as a title must be read.

David Bowie left the earth, and everything went to shit. I’m not the first person to say that, it was a meme during the year 2016. What most do not know is that Bowie died - then my father died - then Prince died, then everything went to shit. In that order, over the course of three months. That's how things so swiftly fell apart for me.

St. James script is a pandemic play, and between their pandemic play, and my pandemic play, and surely the countless more pandemic plays out there, pandemic plays are going to be a thing, and several of them will actually be very good, and important, and even timeless artifacts, documenting a world we never thought we would need to endure.

Or to someday soon endure again. Sorry. 

St. James’ story is one of loss and longing, and the walls both real and imagined that separate us from our loved ones. I have been fortunate enough to be quarantined with a family, and one a supportive one. We respect each other, we respect each other’s walls, but also (not to crack the wind of a poor phrase running it thus) leave our doors open.

What of the new lovers who have been trapped together? And those who have been quarantined alone? It’s a non-binary love triangle that celebrates the joy of coupling, but also the ennui of sameness. Google the phrase “time passes so strangely these days.” It is a refrain in this script, but also the subconscious mantra for our time.

Who should I read tomorrow?