Prayer for the Intercession of Charles Ludlam on the Occasion of a Table Reading

Most sublime and irreverent Charles Ludlam, avatar of the ridiculous, mistress of theatrical mastery, thy kind and beneficent intercession with those who have the say-so up there, we most humbly beseech, on the occasion of our table reading for the Best of PlayGround Festival – for all of the plays, of course, but in particular for The Boy Who Did Not Listen To His Mother. Please arrange it, if at all possible, so that in the process of crafting a small slew of most modest revisions to the text, I did not end up puncturing the vulnerable inflation of that most fragile soufflé — the script. I know I waited until too close to deadline to work the revision, and it’s true that I spent perhaps a teeny bit more time in the thrall of Project Runway, Top Chef, American Idol, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and X-Tube than would generally be considered prudent, and certainly too-too many hours trapped in that time-devouring house of mirrors that is CraigsList Personals, but it should be noted that penance in this regard could be considered paid-in-full, given the ratio of energy expended to pleasure derived. (Note to self: write treatment for play about parasitic sub-sub-sub-culture of pic collectors). Please, also try to make the actors and director at least act as if they like me, even if they don’t mean it. Thy merciful assistance in these ultimately-inconsequential-except-to-me matters, and in anticipation of thy favorable intercession, we — thy most unworthy, yet persistently intrepid, acolyte — most humbly and gratefully beseech. Amen.
Photo: © Fred W. McDarrah www.greatmodernpictures.com

Festivities

PlayGround held its Annual Benefit tonight at ACT, at which the official announcement was made of the line-up for this year’s Best of PlayGround festival (the 12th annual). My play The Boy Who Did Not Listen To His Mother which was inspired by January’s topic “A Cautionary Tale” made the cut. It will share the stage at Thick House in the excellent company of works by some amazing playwrights: Crish Barth, Garret Jon Groenveld, Daniel Heath, Aaron Loeb, Geetha Reddy, and Lauren Yee. Nancy Carlin will direct, and the cast includes Ken Sonkin, B.W. Gonzalez, Carla Pantoja, and Joseph O’Malley. The Festival is always a terrific evening of theater, so come out and support the world’s oldest emerging playwright.

Festival Details:
The 12th Annual Best of PlayGround Festival
May 8-25, 2008
Thu-Sat at 8pm / Sun at 7pm
Thick House
1695 18th Street (off Arkansas Street)
San Francisco

To purchase tickets, call (415) 401-8081 or visit the PlayGround site.

East Coast Missives

My pal Garret Groenveld’s haunting, chilling, epistolary play Missives opens in New York this weekend and runs until April 6th at the 59E59 Theater. (I know I had the address around here somewhere.) This is a co-production with PlayGround. The play had a really successful run at Theatre Rhino in SF last year. One of the current cast members, Richard Gallagher, appeared in the first reading of my play I’d Like To Buy A Vowel way back when. Now he’s on the east coast. Sigh. More info at www.59e59.org.

The Thinker

What a super night last night. First, I scored a ticket to the heart-grabbing Sonny’s Blues at Lorraine Hansbury Theatre (end of the last row in the house, last seat, against the wall — thanks to my own ticket-buying dither). Word For Word knows how to fill a theatre! What was I waiting for, instead of getting to the theatre? Trepidation, I guess. Two of my favorite companies performing work by a favorite writer (the only one with a quote on my bedroom wall — sometime, you should find out what it says!).

Then, dash home for another action-packed episode of Make Me A Supermodel. The sumptuous androgyne Casey often has trouble if a photo shoot involves “acting”. At the end of the evening when models face the inquisition, he’s asked “What happened?” “I don’t know,” he says. “I was, like, thinking in my head.” Hostess/judge (and model model) Niki Taylor comes right at him. “That THINKING, again!”

Listening

I have been involved in an ongoing writing workshop with John O’Keefe, who’s very cautious on the subject of “feedback” on writers’ work. He’s very passionate in encouraging writers to cultivate their individual unique voices, and resistant to any attempt to squelch or constrain their development. Here is what he recently provided as a guideline for feedback:

“I want folks to be ready to listen and comment about the work in a way that is as creative as a lover listening to a love letter, or a detective reading a suicide note, or a slave hearing a story about the overthrow of her/his master. I have been careful not to have the ‘feedback’ loop because of the facile and lackluster crap I’ve heard people say in writing and acting classes. People really have caused deep wounds in the naked soul and as a result have created works that have a wariness and a phony voice that is tailored to protect themselves from attack.

“The listener must be able to be as creative as the writer. Critiques create bad writers as much as anything. They create callouses, scabs, and scars. Colleges create a product-oriented writing that is full of paranoia and self-consciousness. They become merely a social act of appeasement or an act of retaliation and thus avoid the deeper possibilities of the writer’s evolution.

“Writers are not necessarily social people, they may not even be nice people. Who the hell cares when you’re curled up with a book or watching a play whether they went to college, were really nice folks or were nasty fucks like Bert Brecht?”

Motto

Overheard a guy on Market Street talking into his cell phone:
“Fucked up? That’s my motto!”
Must be a drama queen.

Speaking of Sad

“It ain’t all that sad when someone dies who’s 75. That ain’t abnormal.”
“Abnormal ain’t the only sad. Normal is sad.”

Tears

Channel surfing yesterday afternoon, I stumbled upon the last half hour of Brokeback Mountain. The wrenching scenes of Ennis and his daughter, the phone call with Jack’s wife, the visit to Jack’s childhood bedroom. I didn’t think it was possible the end of that film could get any sadder. But it did.

O’Keefe Workshop on Writing Your Voice

A small group of writers who took the Playwrights Foundation workshop with John O’Keefe in December are continuing to meet with him weekly. What we’re doing is not a workshop exactly, it’s more of a seminar on finding your voice as a writer. John is not particularly focussed on writing for theatre in this group, but in facilitating a process by which we can cultivate our individual unique writing style, without placing limits imposed by performance-based writing.

Last Saturday, John gave us an assignment to write with a focus to FLOW, in generating the whispering voice. Using the question “who are you?” channelling the gall/the sentimental, speaking the testament of our own personal way of writing, baring the finger print of our own voices, working from truth to discover the largeness of our scopes. In this we are seeking the base material from which to create our work.

The format is fluid and may include: talks by John about aspects of writing, discussion of writing and/or theatre, in-session writing exercises, reading our own work, neighborhood field trips.

John is a legendary writer/performer with an amazing resume which includes acting, monologues, playwriting, solo performance, etc. He was a founder of the influential Blake Street Hawkeyes. Check out his web site if you want more information. http://www.johnokeefe.org/

Our group is informal. We meet Saturdays 10am to 1pm at John’s studio in Project Artaud. Fee is $20/session. Send me an email (sfcass@aol.com) if you want more info and the address.

The Queen of Shawl

Last night, outside the Baghdad Cafe on Market, this tipsy queen was telling her friends, “For years… years… I always sang ‘And when my shawl was in the lost and found’. I swear, I thought the girl was singing about getting back her lost shawl.” Glad she finally got that figured out.