Lorca

“The theatre is one of the most useful and expressive instruments for a country’s edification, the barometer which registers its greatness or its decline.  A theatre which in every branch, from tragedy to vaudeville, is sensitive and well oriented, can in a few years change the sensibility of a people, and a broken-down theatre, where wings have given way to cloven hoofs, can coarsen and benumb a whole nation. . .

A nation which does not help and does not encourage its theatre is, if not dead, dying; just as the theatre which does not feel the social pulse, the historical pulse, the drama of its people, and catch the genuine color of its landscape and of its spirit, with laughter or with tears, has no right to call itself a theatre, but an amusement hall, or a place for doing that dreadful thing known as ‘killing time'...

Dignity must be maintained, in the conviction that such dignity will be amply repaid.  To do otherwise is to tremble behind the flies, and kill the fantasies, imagination, and charm of the theatre, which is always, always an art, and will always be a lofty art, even though there may have been a time when everything which pleased was labeled art, so that the tone was lowered, poetry destroyed, and the stage itself a refuge for thieves.”

-Federico Garcia Lorca, The Authority of the Theatre (1934)

Pastime

Last Friday I received my copy of the new monologue anthology, Best Men's Stage Monologues of 2012 from Smith & Kraus.  Included is a monologue by the Mighty Casey from my ten-minute play Pastime, which is included in the U.S. Blues collection published last year by Broadway Play Publishing.  If you're looking for an extreme take on sports violence, with lots of blood, this is the audition piece for you.

RIP Richie Havens

"Washington's groovy.  For Romans."
-Richie Havens

Launch

The new play is called:  Obscene Lawless Hideous Dangerous Dirty Violent and Young.

If you want to read it, send a message to gregowenstheplaywright@gmail.com.

Thanks

Good reading of the new play last Friday.  Lila Michael as Sylvia (and also le hostess avec le plus most); Colter Langan as Stage Directions; Jessica Manning as Tulsa Lovechild; Will Dickerson as Carnegie; Susan Dickerson as Special Agent Houston Dallas; and a promising newcomer, Greg Owens, as Stockton.

Thanks also to Kathy Manning and Tom Manning, for providing insights on mother-daughter relationships and laughing at the Procol Harum joke, respectively.

Special thanks: Kid Wrangler - Kathleen de Onis!

Reading

Tonight.  First read-through of the new play, Obscene Lawless Hideous Dangerous Dirty Violent and Young (Tulsa Trilogy, Part 1).

Capote

"I made us both a drink and, settling in a chair opposite, began to read to her, my voice a little shaky with a comibnation of stage fright and enthusiasm:  it was a new story, I'd finished it the day before, and that inevitable sense of shortcoming had not had time to develop."

-Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

Writing Explained



Here's how it works, best as I can tell: 

Saturday, you blow off writing to go out to the river.  You catch no fish at all, but you breathe some fresh air and dig some scenery like this above. 

Then, Sunday, once the kids crash out from mainlining Easter candy, you sit down and calmly finish the first draft of your new play.

You'll never sell a book peddling this method but, in the words of Max Capacity, "she's good as gold when she works out for ya."

Onion/Winona

I'm working on a draft of the long-conceived "prequel" to The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild.  It's set in 1986 and drops in on the title character at a critical juncture as high school graduation is imminent.  In addition to being an excuse to revisit some favorite tunes from that era as a writing soundtrack, I occasionally come across things like the following from The Onion:

Winona Ryder Finally Agrees To Sleep With Generation X
http://www.theonion.com/articles/winona-ryder-finally-agrees-to-sleep-with-generati,18860/

I still love you, Winona.  But just as friends, okay?

Arthur C. Clarke

"The world's now placid, featureless, and culturally dead... The reason's obvious.  There's nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainments.  Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels?  If you went without sleep and did nothing else, you could follow less than a twentieth of the entertainment that's available at the turn of a switch!  No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges - absorbing but never creating.  Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day?  Soon people won't be living their own lives anymore." -Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke, 1953.