Respite

My acceptance in the PlayGround Writers Pool arrived yesterday from Jim Kleinmann. Yes!! I’d been checking my email all last weekend and this week, even the spam folder. Not that I was all THAT much invested in being accepted.
So now it means for the next six months, I’ll be checking my spam folder, etc. on the second or third Friday for more signs of acceptance. Acceptance of those new plays. Because the Monday night readings at Berkeley Rep are fantastic! The actors Annie Stuart gets involved and the directors really get the writer in touch with the possibility that those voices we hear inside our head, actually might be able to make it out into the world. I know it make me sound like a bag lady, but as Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner have so entertainingly demonstrated, those crazy voices — given the chance — can speak truth. And with PlayGround, writers get those chances.
Also, the other writers are great people to know. Playwrights, as a rule, generally have interesting things to say, and think about how even fairly pedestrian, uninteresting things can be said in a way that … captivates, enchants, catharticizes. So in the months when the other playwrights in the Pool aren’t sizing you up, taking your inadequate measure as a writer, wondering why the hell YOUR trite little exercise was picked over theirs, they can really great friends to have.
My elation at being included in the Pool again was tempered by the fact that a friend of mine who applied – a much better writer than I – wasn’t included. So there it was – before the season even started – the double-edged characteristic of involvement with PlayGround. The waiting for decisions to be announced, then reading of entrails to try to figure out on what basis decisions were made, and what the implications are for you and your friends. As long as you don’t get hung up on trying to figure out what might have been, and stick with what is, it’s can be a fun ride!
Last year I was shut out. Not one of my plays was selected. Oh the humiliation! But, in reality, only one of them should have been. Of course, I’m still resentful about that one, but like the theatre world in general, there’s no certainty about what’s going to fly, and what’s going to end up in a drawer somewhere. Charles Mee, when I was complaining to him about rejection, told me he has a drawer full of rejection letters. Clearly, it hasn’t stopped him from getting his work in front of audiences. It’s an iron-clad rule that, for playwrights, rejection is part of the process, but yesterday — for me and 35 others — there was a small respite from that particular law of theatre.
I’ll let you know how it goes for me this year.

Tickets please!

Today I voluntereed as an usher at New Conservatory Theatre, taking tickets for The Big Voice: God or Merman? It’s a fantastic show, and has been extended a week until August 26th. Don’t blame me if you miss it. You’ve been warned. My birthday is this week and I’m going to treat myself by seeing it again (as a paying customer this time). Last night I ushered for Greater Tuna. When I arrived at the theatre dressed head to toe in black, I sat next to another guy dressed all in black who had just finished his dinner. I asked if he was ushering too. He said no, he was performing. It turned out he was Steve Schalchlin, co-creator and star of The Big Voice. He couldn’t have been sweeter to the clueless usher, and how grateful I am that he spends his time not ushering, but otherwise engaged.
 
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Coma Pastiche: Last time I ushered, it was for Legends at NCTC.I wore a tasteful feather boa because it was about show business divas.
Dharma Lama Ding Dong: No. You wore it because you seek out the flimsiest excuse to swaddle your neck in chicken feathers.
Coma: Well, this time it wasn’t such a flimsy excuse. It felt… appropriate.
Dharma: Uh huh.
Chesty La Boom: You were the freaking usher, Coma, not one of the actors.
Coma: It added a little festivity to the proceedings. A lot of people commented on it. I got to interact with them. Isn’t that what theater’s supposed to do? Connect with people?
Chesty: The USHER, Coma! You were the USHER!
Dharma: And we know you loathe being noticed like that!
Coma: This one teenager was there with his parents and came back after they were seated and told me how cool the boa was! I felt twenty years younger!
Chesty: Down to the age of his parents’.
Coma: I’m sure that boy has bolts of shimmery spandex in his future. But then there was this other guy. And he told me, like, several times, “It’s not Halloween.” I just grinned through gritted teeth and shredded that ticket. “Enjoy the show.”
Dharma: I love tickets you can tear. Love that ritual. It feels like it demarcates the worlds. People come from one world. Then they present you with this talisman, this ticket (and don’t they feel charged?)
Chesty: They ARE charged by most people.
Dharma: And they give it to you, and you rip it in two and you keep part and give them back only part of it. You ritualize that it’s time for them to leave part of their lives behind as they enter the temple, moving between worlds.
Coma: In The Big Voice Jim Brochu talks about the first time he was in a Broadway theater, and he said it felt like being in a church, but with energy.
Dharma: It IS like entering a church. A sacred space.
Coma: If you’re a priest, you’re supposed to give out the sacrament, not rip off half of it.
Dharma: You give out a program. Anyway… It’s a ritual I never get tired of.
Coma: Now they use scanners at the big houses.
Dharma: Even there. It’s like you’re in a Star Trek transporter that’s about to take you to a new dimension.
Chesty: Right. Transported to the world of… Lestat. Better be a Hummer transporting you ’cause you’re heading off a cliff.
Dharma: I remember Justin Bond as an usher. It was at Theatre Rhino back in the day. A shy little thing who could barely get out the pre-show shpiel. Cute as a button, though.
Chesty: Now she’s back in town at ACT as Kiki in the Kiki and Herb show.
Coma: Like I always say, be nice to your usher, ’cause one day she may be your landlady.

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