Streamer, Confetti, Champagne!

A toast to 2007! And another to 2008!

Ringing in the new year with two friends, we ordered in pizza, and has been a wonderful night. Just what I needed.
Off now, midnight is less than 4 minutes away where I am.

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

just wrote this...

Just wrote the following, it's for my 3 Hander (which is currently titled: "The Three Hander (a working title)"...quite meta-theatrical I find). Not sure where it's going to go yet, but I know it's the Actresses'.

ACTRESS:

Words of the moment
Words of mistakes
Words of mis-steps

Words can promise the world, then turn to dust in the shake of a head.

Words are an actor's pushing mechanism.
They can drown your opponent. Embrace your lover. Spit in the unwanted one's face.

They have laced the poison in the tip of Laertes's rapier.
Lauched George Bailey's desire to lasso the moon.
Sent Eliza Dolittle dancing all night.

But sometimes words become cowardly, shirk their responsibility, head off to the tropics for a beach vacation somewhere sunny. Sometimes words fail.

I love it

I love being like this...where everything sparks lines, ideas, thoughts, moments, words. Where possibilities stem from shadows. Where I'm always thinking when I'm not creating and writing. Where the blank page is not terrifying, but a chance for exploration.

inspiration does often strike in the most unlikely of places

You know the creative & eccentric juices are flowing when you write the following at work
(and when work right now is a mall at christmastime, won't be for long though):

Something about the red balloon, resting the crown of its round head against the mall ceiling, is contemplative and quiet. In the midst of endless holiday shopping hordes it balances.

p.s. Hours later and the balloon is still there. And so it will remain for the rest of time (or at least for the rest of holiday shopping)

p.p.s. Also need to look at changing time zone on here

Some of these days

Some days you're up and others you're down...not sure exactly how I'm feeling about this particular holiday season considering how much I'm working: give or take about three jobs, two of them seasonal retail; hence A LOT of time on my feet. One of them is front of house at a theatre, which I thoroughly enjoy heading to for my 6:45pm call no matter how exhausted or not exhausted I may be. The third show of the season closes this Saturday, so after that I will just have two jobs to deal with till around mid-January.

Some point in the new year I'm jetting off to work as a stage hand with Royal Caribbean Cruises. Getting back into working the twisting, dark corridors of a theatre; albeit on a ship. These theatres on the cruise ships, they're fully fledged members of the profession, let me tell you, the equipment, the lights, the rigging, the works.

Writing, and writing, and more writing away. But it's hard to concentrate on that when I'm practically working nonstop and on my day's off I only have energy to read, nap, and watch tv. I can do this, I have to take one day at a time, one shift at a time. No day but today.

Missing Montreal, and all the crazy and beautiful gang there. It's a constant. I will return there and work and create and produce.

Missing the backstage ghosts and headset conversations.

A little bit of everything in tonight's post. That's all for now folks.

Good News!

I have some glorious fantastic good news [now it's only a possibility but a pretty darn good one]. A friend of mine who's now living and doing theatre in St John's Nfld has asked about producing my play "Josephine (a love story)." Just talked about it a couple of days ago, still very fresh and prancing around in my head. "Josephine" is a play I originally wrote in my first year at Concordia for a playwriting class. It's about Josephine and Napoleon and their relationship. It's a play that crosses boundaries and times and places, mixes memory with the present moment, and an intimate look into the beginnings of a legendary relationship. It has been produced once before, at the 2004 Youth Infringement Festival (a theatre festival entirely run by youth) and can be done with a female and male actor, and a female voice.

So superduper excited about that!!!

Off to bed, I go. I'm so tired, working too much over the holidays (I'm too nice and say yes to things I shouldn't, let there be a lesson in that) and have a shift tommorrow at noon. And I just got home, oh about, 25 minutes ago.

A meditation on scenarios

"The art of the dramatist is very like the art of the architect. A plot has to be built up just as a house is built--story after story; and no edifice has any chance of standing unless it has a broad foundation and a solid frame." BRANDER MATTHEWS, The Principles of Playmaking

I have both a love & hate relationship with scenarios and charting out the story of a play before and/or while writing it. I have found them useful, especially in regards to writing what was essentially my big final project/thesis of my BFA in Playwriting (Little Dancer) but right now we're not doing so well.

I know they're not the absolute of all, I know I can stray from a scenario completely or even by a little idea or too, and they can be VERY useful. But still sometimes...writing one seems like such a chore and something I'm forcing out just to have a scenario. And tell myself I have one. I always jot down notes and ideas, things about characters and the like, but more often than not lately I want and do get into the writing of it.

Beware the fifth of march...or something like that

Just wrote this speech/monologue, it's from my new play which is still without a title. I like it a lot, and am posting without essentially editing it. As always, all work on here is copywrighted to myself. And without further ado, here it is...

UNDERSTUDY: The soothsayer in 'Julius Ceaser', personably descript and with the right amount of gumption;comes right up to Ceaser, newly crowned emperor of the Roman Empire (by his own hands of course) and says "Beware the ides of March."

Now in layman's terms, the ides is the fifth of any month. If this soothsayer had said simply: Beware the FIFTH of March. It wouldn't have had the same effect. That Bill Shakespeare certainly knew what he was doing. In a nutshell Ceaser brushes him off, and then on the ides of March is stabbed by many blades inthe Senate chamber by a group of men hellbent on bloody assassination, including his best friend Brutus.

Then one day a modern day soothsayer had stumbled up to me on the corner of Broadway and 46th Street and said "Beware the ides of March", I'm not sure what I said to him. He undoubtedly afterwards tried to ask me for money. Geez, why was he panhanlding in the theatre district, but at least he has the dramatic flair.

In the back of my mind, as that day approached, I did wonder. Then came the fated date and it was almost over when... I met the Producer, and oftentimes Agent for Evelyn. Mr Jonathon Myers. Perhaps mythics do still exist.