Saturday, January 29, 2022

Process LII

Kelsey Jones, Director (with bunny)
Fact: Americans do not like dollar coins. The dollar coin that is most memorable to me, the Eisenhower dollar, was only minted during the 1970s. It is an absurd coin, in its size, weight, and depiction of the (at that time) bizarrely shorn countenance of the 34th president.

A dollar coin plays a significant role in my ten-minute play The Ocean Breathes Salty, and one of our performers was able to find an Eisenhower dollar in their dad’s coin collection. Flipping the coin, an important stage direction, apparently does not come naturally to people under forty. Just another skill we have lost in the advent of a cashless society, alas.

The writing exercise in our workshop this week took me into a deep, subconscious space. Normally, I write plays by hand, or have done for almost a decade. Because our in-class exercises are timed, I choose typing and the words fly out faster than I can think what they mean.

I’m not saying it’s any good, just that it took me to a place I never thought I would go. These are good writing days. Mine your mind.

Actual size.
I left a notebook somewhere on Thursday. It’s just an old pad of paper I use to take notes on the actor-teachers, in rehearsal or in class. But, it also happens to include two pages of my densely-packed block lettering, notes I took on Wednesday night during a dramaturgical meeting with the team for The Witches. That aspect was particularly distressing.

Do I know what I wrote? Yes, I do. It was a wonderful meeting that night with three of my favorite people and theater artists, in the world, all of whom expressed a great deal of enthusiasm and care for my script.

They have also given it a critical eye, and I took down every comment and concern and question like they were precious gifts. They gave me so much to think about and I have been inspired by all the revisions I will be making.

These thoughts are with me, in me, I know what they are – or I think I know? Unless I could find those notes I could not truly be certain, and on Thursday nght it was driving me to distraction.

Anyway, the notepad was found and returned. Not exactly a Hadley Richardson moment. But whew.

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