Process XXXV

"Greater Clements"
(Lincoln Center, 2019)

Things are different this year. I am working full-time, back in rehearsal for the residency program. At the end of the day I am exhausted, and then I need to either go to class, or prepare dinner. I need to turn in earlier if I hope to get any exercise in (Septembers are traditionally the months I run little) but I also need to get my homework accomplished.

Also, too: writing. When is that gonna happen?

This week we are covering ancient Greek tragedy in one class, including Medea. In that play, a person who feels betrayed and bereft murders her own children rather than let them live as second-class citizens to those her ex-husband hopes to have with his new wife.

In the other class we read Samuel D. Hunter’s 2019 drama Greater Clements, a Trump-era work in which the citizens of a former mining town in Idaho choose to un-incorporate rather than pay taxes for basic community services now that the place is being “Californicated.”

See the similarity? Destroy what you love to cause to harm to those you hate. That’s where we are in America today. Just, you know. Fuck everybody. The difference is, the gods sent Medea an escape chariot, we’re all stuck here with each other.

We have a three-day weekend. It will be spent doing homework. Also, too: writing.