Derora Noo

Play reading of "Rush"

2011-05-11T16:03:00.000-04:00

Hi there. This coming Monday we're having our end-of-year play readings as part of the new playwriting MFA program at Hunter College, run by the amazing Tina Howe. My play (which is set in the Yukon in 1899, and which I'm describing as "Deadwood" meets "Memento" with women) will be read starting at 6:30pm. After a short break, "Gidion's Knot," a play by one of my classmates, Johnna Adams, will also be read.

This year, all four of us playwrights are sharing the Rita & Burton Goldberg Prize.

Monday, May 16, 6:30pm
Loewe Theatre
Hunter College
NW Corner of 68th and Lexington Avenue
Right off the 6 Train

For more info, I created a Facebook Event.

I meant to also tell you that a film version of one of my plays, "The Loaner," was directed and produced by Kate Tarker and screened in Boston in March. You can watch it here.

And I messed around on Xtranormal and made a cartoon of the opening scene of my play, "Peace." Check it out.

If you want to keep up with my news, you can always check out or RSS my news blog, where I post events you can come see or my creative work you can watch online.

Hermit Win

2010-12-30T16:49:00.011-05:00

Hello Kitty on 53rd, 12/24/10.

So we're at the close of 2010. It's Thursday, December 30, and I've been home from work since Wednesday, December 22.

I took a break from documenting my every thought and action on Twitter. So here, for myself mostly, I've written down a diary of the last nine days. Had I tweeted, below is the mundanity you would have consumed. I'm so sorry and you're welcome.

WED 12.22

Hot chocolate
Chocolate milkshake with Tarker
Final playwriting class of the semester
Taped up Christmas cards to the wall by the door

THU 12.23

Built a spreadsheet of the habits I want to strengthen like working out, eating veggies, etc.
Burger, sweet potato fries, and a milkshake
Laundry--tipped the guy an extra $20 since his wife just had their first baby on Tuesday
Bought and installed blackout/insulation curtains from Home Depot

FRI 12.24

Learned the blackout/insulation curtains can't be opened w/out yanking down the spring rod they're on and decide that's just fine
Paid bills
Balanced checkbook to penny on first try
Figured out new budget to live on 600 fewer dollars a month due to pay cut at work
Moved rugs around
Saw King Tut exhibit at Times Square, then meandered home, stopping to take a picture of the Rockefeller tree:

Each year I snap a pic from the same corner.

Colored in my mandala coloring book
Watched "Vanity Fair," realized I had seen it previously, watched it anyway
Watched a few episodes of "Weeds" no need to watch more

SAT 12.25

Called Mom
Called Dad
Organized apartment
Took down Christmas cards from wall by the door
Went to a diner with upstairs neighbor who wants to find a hot rich boyfriend. Eventually stopped stifling and openly yawned after her third mention of the private school she went to.

SUN 12.26

Learned I got straight As my first semester of grad school FUCK YEAH I WORKED HARD FOR THAT SHIT
SNOW:

Snow.

Bought a new coat at Macy's to replace the hand-me-down w/the torn lining
Watched "Passing Strange" fucking amazing
Watched "Zandy's Bride" love those '70s flicks
Bought a front row balcony ticket to see "John Gabriel Borkman" at BAM

MON 12.27

Woke up and thought Wow I have seven whole more days of rest
Saw "Pee-wee Herman Show" on Broadway and loved it

TUE 12.28

No idea

WED 12.29

Woke up and though Shit only five more days
New shelves delivered from Container Store
Assembled new shelves
Watched "Moon" (intense) while eating a big salad (less intense)

THU 12.30

Watched "Fat City" freaking awesome
Realized I can't see "In the Heights" on Friday because that's NYE
Realized I don't have the energy to go out on NYE
Ate sushi w/friend I haven't seen in probably two years
Started to rewrite play that was due 12.22

The whole point of the time off was to recover from a semester that saw increased responsibilities at work, three visits to my mom's around her knee surgery, an asstastic case of bronchitis, and a ridiculous amount of homework for my first semester of grad school. To wit:

This was the reading for just one class. The BlackBerry is for scale.

It's Day Nine and I still have bloodshot eyes. The plan for the next three days:

FRI 12.31

Visit the submarine museum on the Intrepid and make headway on my play

SAT 1.1

Playwriting

SUN 1.2

Keeping my options open

MON 1.3

Mosey on back to work here and learn when we're merging with Comcast:

30 Rock, where I am a loyal cube rat.

A Cup of Ocean

2010-11-16T04:03:00.013-05:00

This post is a branch from a blog post I'm writing for NPR that will be published later today about the Wasserstein Prize controversy. The larger issue of women playwrights is so sprawling and personal for me, that I thought it would be simpler to place this tangential chunklet over here.

I have never thought I would be able to support myself solely through my writing, and in that sense, I suppose I'm lucky because I'm less regularly disappointed. Like many theater artists, I've had my share of financial and health issues (most of my artist friends don't have health insurance, or if they do, it's through a job that takes time away from their creative work). While not every writer struggles to the same degree, I believe that many writers who've been through such struggles observe society from an outsider's perspective and then try to transmute their challenges into work that resonates with a larger audience (or at least "an" audience).

I don't look at grants or prizes as things I'm entitled to, but I know that the decision to withhold $25,000 from a young female playwright triggered such a large outcry precisely because each and every one of us who bargains away our art for security or our security for our art knows how much a prize like that would mean to a struggling young artist. It's not just the money, it's the idea that someone values your art. That's enough. That's more than enough.

Below are some thoughts that relate to last year's study on women playwrights. I had a few issues with the study at the time, but wasn't sure how to present them.

===========================

When the Primary Stages all-female season caused a hullaballoo in May 2009, I tried to stifle my gut response and blogged statistics instead. It left me feeling exposed, foolish, and just plain weirded out by the sheer impossibility of ever thoroughly addressing the issues. When the dust settled, my takeaway was that I could never write objectively about anything to do with women playwrights, and therefore I shouldn't even try, because emotion nearly always decimates even the most solid of arguments. I can only write of my own experience, which is anecdotal but feels viscerally connected to a larger, unvoiced experience.

It's been almost two years since then, and I wish every day that I could find words to cover everything I think and feel about being a woman playwright. It's overwhelming.

As I said in the NPR post, it's like trying to write an ocean.

All I can do is scoop out a cup and go.

So when the results of Emily Sands's survey of literary managers and artistic directors came out in June of that same year, I kept quiet, even though I had taken the survey, and had struggled particularly with this question in it: "On a scale of 1 to 7, what is the likelihood of Mary winning a prize/award for this script?" I noticed the question wasn't "On a scale of 1 to 7, what is the likelihood of you recommending Mary's script for a prize/award?" This question seems especially relevant today, with the Wasserstein Prize hanging in the balance.

To answer that question, I first had to acknowledge my own prejudices so that I might set them aside--the script samples weren't much to my taste, and the names on the scripts suggested white playwrights. Then, I had to ask myself what Mary's chances of winning a prize were; where the first adjustments were positive, this adjustment had to be negative, because I knew full well that a script written by a woman would be less likely to win a prize.

I was working three jobs and didn't have time to do battle with the way Sands's results were presented in the media, which was something along the lines of, "Women are holding back women in the theatre." Other people took up the fight and outlined their issues with the survey and its interpretation.

(One of the questions was "On a scale of 1 to 7, to what extent is Mary's script an example of artistic exceptionalism?" My understanding of the word "exceptionalism," which I had to look up to confirm, had to do with something not being subject to certain norms [see "American Exceptionalism"]. In retrospect, I suspect Sands meant to ask whether we thought the play was exceptionally good, not just different.)

(Also problematic was the fact that the theater I was working for at the time only produced classical plays, so I had to answer questions like, "On a scale of 1 to 7, how eager would your potential audience members be to see Mary's play?" negatively.)

Anyway, there just isn't enough room in one 500-word piece for NPR (which currently stands at 1300 words) to say everything I feel about this subject. I dream of someday having the time to be able to just write, to try to write eloquently, but at the moment, it's 4am and I have four meetings at work tomorrow, and I haven't finished my homework for class tomorrow night, and then I have fourteen more script pages to write for Wednesday night's playwriting class.

The reality of my life as a playwright, female or otherwise, is that I have to just keep going, and not be afraid to be untidy.

In my post for NPR, I mention the rippling impact that my MacDowell Fellowship had on me. The gifts from my time at MacDowell were many--the career boost, the material support, the friends I made, even the room to face my darker demons. The biggest gift was simply knowing that such an esteemed organization chose me, believed in me. I was so grateful for the opportunity that since then I've done everything I can to honor their choice through my work, and to pay it forward. I recently wrote a letter of recommendation for MacDowell on behalf of Kate Tarker, a young playwright I met three years ago and who I greatly admire. She emailed me the other day to let me know that she was accepted.

ALL-AROUND WIN.

One-Minute Play Festival in Astoria This Weekend

2010-09-23T18:03:00.001-04:00

For the third year in a row, I'm participating in the One-Minute Play Festival. About 80 one-page plays will be presented this weekend, and I've written a trilogy of plays that will be sprinkled through the first part of the evening. It's kind of insane and awesome and always a good time. The event got written up on Broadway World.

It's Saturday and Sunday night at 8pm at the Astoria Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased here.

I wrote a guest post for the festival blog.

Wow. I haven't posted in a long time. I've been busy! I redesigned my website over the summer, and I created a web series, called Seconds. You can watch a trailer for it here. I also started grad school in Tina Howe's new MFA playwriting program, and it's amazingtastic.

Tiny Theater in Brooklyn This Weekend

2010-05-11T12:37:00.000-04:00

New York continues to treat me well. I'll be going to grad school in the Fall as part of the first MFA playwriting class at Hunter College, taught by Tina Howe.

After having quite a few 1-minute plays produced at various festivals around NYC the last few years, I now have a 10-minute play going up this weekend! It's at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn, and the festival is called Tiny Theater. You can learn more here. It apparently sells out each year, so you may want to buy tickets ahead of time. (If you use code LISTDISC at the checkout, the price drops from $18 to $15.)

I'm also in pre-production for my web series. We start shooting this weekend and go into early June. I'm so lucky to have so many talented actors: Josh Barrett of HBO's Generation Kill, Jeffrey Cranor and Eevin Hartsough of the NY Neofuturists, James Meredith of Steppenwolf Theatre, and Kelley Rae O'Donnell of LAByrinth Theater. You can see the first episode on my YouTube channel.

If you've ever wanted to hear me sing a hymn...

2010-05-06T13:52:00.000-04:00

So I'm working from home today, and it's a light day, and so I'm taking some time to tidy up my iPhone, netbook, iMac, and iTunes, which have been all randomly used at various points for various things and were not very coordinated. (Actually today is the first day I've ever synced my entire music library to my iPhone.)

I came across several voice memos I used with the iTalk app last August. I found recordings of the leaks in my kitchen from my last apartment, ambient sounds in the subway, and me singing hymns when I had insomnia.

I'll Fly Away

Sexy Sandwich Song

2010-04-25T20:30:00.003-04:00

Courtney McLean of the Dirty Curls, a naughty rockabilly band in Minneapolis, wrote a sexy sandwich song just for me!!!

[NSFW]

"The Auteur of Lincoln Logs"

2010-04-07T12:23:00.001-04:00

These are the opening paragraphs for my April post for RealMental.

It’s finally happened. After nearly eight years of blogging about my experiences with and recovery from depression, I have nothing to say. Nothing that I need to say.

Over the years, I always blogged from an impulse to heal and to understand, and so there was an urgency to whatever I was sharing. But now that I’m fully immersed in what feels like a whole new life here in New York—new job, new friends, new home—it’s like I’ve touched down on the bottom of what I previously had thought was a bottomless lake. I’m no longer struggling to stay afloat.

And honestly, I’m tired of words. I’m a writer, and there are only so many words I have at any given time. I’ve kind of used up a lot of them at this point.

With the words that are left, I want to try out some new creative ways of writing.

Over Christmas, I bought myself a set of Lincoln Logs. I went to the giant F.A.O. Schwarz on Fifth Avenue, searched high and low until I found them, stood in the longest holiday line ever to buy them, and then walked 20 blocks home.

To read the rest of the post, click here.

Dear Co-Workers: This Is My Blog.

2010-03-01T20:09:00.002-05:00

It's for my personal writing.

It's not anonymous, but I don't sign my real name to it, because I want my professional writing--plays, articles--to come up first in a Google search for my name.

I don't mind sharing the personal stuff at all--it's actually very important to me--but when it comes to clients or employers checking me out, I want to provide a little context.

The reason it's important for me to share my personal writing is because I had Major Depressive Disorder for decades, and it was undiagnosed until January 2007, when I got some support and figured things out. Now that my world is right-side out, it's easier for me to write about it because I see things so much more clearly, and it's VERY important for me to share my experience with other people who might be looking online for stories that might illuminate whatever they might be struggling with.

Because that's a big part of how I figured out how to make things right for myself.

I've been so amazed by the kindness and generosity of people I've never met in real life, but who are literally some of the most important people in my life. When I was fighting my hardest, I would turn to my blog and use it to try to sort things out, and my blog readers and commenters helped me see other ways of looking at things. Sometimes they just listened or empathized. Their compassion astounded me.

And so it's important for me to give back by sharing my stories, which I hope are sometimes interesting, or maybe even helpful to people here and there.

It bugs me when I see articles that talk about how technology is "destroying" communities. There are so many people in the world who, for whatever reason, have limited access to healthy families or relationships, and who are searching for connection that could quite literally change or even save their lives.

Anyway, the irony is, it's much harder these days for me to find the time to write these personal posts, largely because I'm so much healthier. I moved to NYC at the end of 2008, and my world has opened up with so many great people and wonderful opportunities, that I'm living life more in 3-D now, than online. I've been writing monthly posts for RealMental for a while, but even that feels like it might be tapering off. The cool thing about blogging is, it's very fluid and I can pick it back up when I have something to share.

But I do tweet a lot, if you're interested.

Thanks for reading!

"Sorry, Your Princess Is In Another Castle."

2010-02-17T01:00:00.001-05:00

These are the opening paragraphs of my February post for RealMental.

I call bullshit.

I call bullshit on people saying, “You’re so brave.” Look, I know it’s a nice thought, and nicely meant, and I should be flattered and all, but the truth is, there’s no bravery involved when you have no other choices.

I simply had to find my way out of depression. Even though I was productive while I was depressed (almost freakishly so), I knew I couldn’t continue at the pace I was running at for too many more years. I’ve never had a backup plan—no parents to swoop in, no partner to stave off the hand-to-mouth scenario.

(Believe me, that’s not a complaint—you can’t buy motivation like that.)

For a not insignificant number of years, I tried to be gentle with myself. I reconciled myself with the obvious conclusion that I was doomed to be a writer-slash-artist. Rather than hide that, I tried to let it grow strong. This was when I was just beginning to get an inkling of how messed up things were; luckily, at the time, I had no inkling of the work that lay ahead. I cried to friends. I cried in therapy. I cried during massages. I cried in the car.

Oh god, all those poor ex-boyfriends.

To read the rest of the post, click here.

Some Interviews

2010-02-16T12:13:00.004-05:00

Hey there, horribly ignored blog.

I've been doing things. A lot of things. January was all lined up, and then I went from part-time to full-time in a snap, which is great, but it meant I was overbooked for a stretch there. But I have some fun things to show you. Things that I have made with my keyboard. And other things.

Did I show you my article for Wired.com? I don't think I did.

How I Unmasked @FakeAPStylebook

And I've done a few interviews recently, all theatre-related.

Interview with Callie Kimball, Bad-Ass Playwright of Sofonisba [Project Y Theatre]

People You Should Know...Callie Kimball [by Zack Calhoon]

How to Find Your Artistic Voice Through Blogging [by Dave Charest--podcast]

But the really big news is, I started creating video content! I bought two HD cameras and roped in some actors over the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day long weekend.

You can see my first two short pieces on my YouTube channel.

Happy Binary Palindrome Day--01/11/10

2010-01-11T12:49:00.008-05:00

This is the first paragraph of my January post for RealMental.

Hi everyone. A ton of great stuff is happening that I hadn’t planned on, including a job promotion that gets me back to full-time status, and shooting my first short film.

To read the rest of the post, click here.

Premature Evacuation

2009-12-10T15:01:00.001-05:00

These are the beginning paragraphs for my December post on RealMental.

I work at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. As you may know, each year around Thanksgiving, a giant evergreen tree is trucked in and trussed up in time for the televised “Lighting of the Tree.” The tree is big. It’s so big that decorating it takes weeks. And scaffolding. Lots and lots of scaffolding.

Now, this is only my second Christmas in NYC, but I’ve already got my own ritual for this event. I, along with everyone who works in the building, evacuate at 3pm before the crowds gather to watch the tree get blown up and sung to by rock stars.

Occasionally, I get irritable in New York. Sometimes when I’m walking and people (confession, I call them tourons, but I don’t mean you) stop on the sidewalk and impede the flow of foot traffic, I clench my jaw and widen my eyes in exasperation as I pause and wait for a path through to make itself known. I walk quickly, but I don’t run over people—they more or less veer into my path, like cicadas bobbling into a windshield.

As I’ve said on Twitter, if you lack the spatial awareness to step aside when exiting a door, elevator, or escalator, you’re probably really bad in bed.

Occasionally, as I walk through the city, I’m glad for the jostling, because it makes me feel connected in a sea of well-dressed anonymity. At these times, I’m filled with the spirit of kum-ba-yah, and I’ll often find that I’m smiling to myself. It’s not forced, it just happens. Who knows what brings it on—maybe I had a really good doughnut that day—but I certainly prefer being at peace with humanity rather than being a steaming bowl of annoyed.

But I digress. This post is supposed to be about managing mental illness, right? And, as I type this, it’s 8 days late according to my self-imposed monthly deadline. I’ve known I wanted to write about the holidays for at least a month, so why have I stalled?

Because I kind of hate the holidays.

And believe me, there are reasons.

This is a whole book, this here topic of me and the holidays.

It’s genetic.

No, really.

It started with my grandmother.

Okay. [Deep breath.]

My grandmother was a Jehovah’s Witness. She wasn’t born that way. She chose it. And she was one of the 144,000 who are actually going to join God in Heaven. Well, she’s there already. She died six years ago this month.

I hardly knew my grandmother. My few memories of her center around rare visits during which I watched her shove vitamins down her Siamese cat’s throat and slather enormous quantities of hand lotion on herself and anyone within arm’s reach. Once I turned age 12, these visits stopped. With a complete lack of irony, my mother said she didn’t want my grandmother to hurt me the way she had hurt her. There were a few feeble attempts at communication over the years, but that ended when I got a note from my grandmother saying how worried she was because I was going to burn in hell for going to college.

You may know that Witnesses don’t celebrate holidays. My mother grew up never celebrating her birthday or Christmas. This of course meant that the holidays assumed an importance to her that was…spectacular.

To read the rest of the post, click here.

Bean Sandwiches

2009-11-13T14:30:00.002-05:00

These are the opening paragraphs for my November post on RealMental.

The other night I got to craving a bean sandwich.

Ever had one? Spread two slices of soft white bread with some mayonnaise. Sprinkle one slice with salt. Open a can of baked beans and carefully spoon a layer of beans on the other slice. Depending on how dry you like your bean sandwich, you might want to press the spoon against the inside of the can to drain the beans a little along the way. Place the other slice of bread on top. Cold beans taste better.

A bean sandwich can be a little bendy, so the tidiest thing to do is to eat it over a plate to catch the spillage. The stress of maneuvering a sandwich that’s dropping its beany innards onto a paper towel while you shove it in your mouth can result in a wolfing down of the sandwich.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

_____________________
To read the full article, click here.

A Reading of Sofonisba in NYC

2009-10-23T12:32:00.003-04:00

Some of you DC readers may remember Michole Biancosino, Artistic Director of Project Y, back from her days in DC. She's in NYC now, and Project Y had a wonderful production last year that the NY Times reviewed.

Anyway, I've been a fan of Project Y since the beginning, because they explore dark and compelling oddities in their work.

So I'm really stoked that Michole and her company have decided to give SOFONISBA its first NYC reading! I'm still working on the play, but I feel that this script is the strongest I've ever written. It feels like all of the things I've been trying to teach myself for the last 4 years about building a play have finally come together.

So for those of you who can make it, it will be Sunday, November 15, at 7pm in Soho at Lilly O’Brien’s. As I understand it, it's a bar with some sort of performance area, and it's at 67 Murray Street @ West Broadway (close to the Chambers stop on the 1-2-3 and A-C lines; and the WTC stop on the E line).

Crumbs from the Table of Twitter

2009-10-23T11:59:00.006-04:00

Hello, dear blog.

I spend all my social media energy on The Twitter. For those of you who are not on The Twitter (all two of you), I wanted to let you know what's going on and what you can look forward to here on this blog.

I've just rounded out my first full year in NYC, and I also just moved into my third apartment in Manhattan. (Because apparently that's what you do when you move to New York, you move again. And again. And again.)

Now I'm in a two-year lease in a beautiful studio on the Upper East Side. I have a view of trees in a courtyard, and enough closet space, and hardwood floors, and a giant tub. There's no stove, but I don't cook much anyways.

My last apartment was a nightmare--the ceiling collapsed, there were 16 or so leaks in the kitchen over the course of 8 months, I could hear a child crying for hours on end (yes, I called Child Services because I had a bad feeling in my gut), I heard horrible fights in the hallways, one of my neighbors' apartments was broken into, a cop killed someone on our block, there was a serial rapist for a while (ok that was 15 blocks away, but still), and dog doo on the sidewalk.

I tried politely to get out of the last month of my lease, considering all the leaks, mold and ceiling problems, but my old landlord wouldn't budge. Until I lawyered up, that is. Then they said sure, I could break the lease and still get my deposit back, IF I signed something that I would never sue them for anything. No problem. That's all I wanted in the first place.

So I took my returned deposit and bought a Burberry handbag at a 30% off sale. It's my first purse ever that costs more than $25, and it's kind of awesome.

Anyway, for $300 more a month, now I'm in a neighborhood where the women plastinate their faces, eat styrofoam because it's calorie-free and filling, and shop for $1,500 handbags.

You might think from the above paragraphs that I'm not fitting in here in NYC, but it's actually the first time as an adult that I've felt like I'm living where I belong. See, everything's extreme here--you have the best of everything and the worst of everything all jammed up together. So I'm blending in.

Today is my last full-time day at NBC. Starting Monday, I'll be working 20 hours a week. They were kind enough to give me a 40% raise--I won't be earning as much as before, but I'm pretty sure I'll be okay, especially since all the shopgirls in the Upper East Side boutiques are so snobby that I'm not even tempted to spend my money there.

The big change will be that I will now have time to dedicate to my writing. I feel like I'm in a great position now where I'm happy in my home, I'll be earning enough to get by (and that's all you really need, is enough), and I'll have precious time to write.

I've been meeting people all along this year, but now I'm actually starting to have conversations that are more focused on finding where my writing might make sense in terms of plays and blogging and maybe this memoir idea. I also want to try fiction and start doing some short video projects. So it's really a great thing that my hours will shift and I'll be able to devote concentrated time to fleshing these projects out.

Thanks to all of you who have been reading my This Is Not a Memoir posts. It's been a few weeks since I've posted to that thread, but rest assured, more is coming! I have sort of an endless amount to write. I'm really enjoying writing the posts, and it means so much to hear that they resonate with you guys. Thanks for the support on that.

Some of you may know that I've been giving talks and interviews about the arts and social media--I think most of them are on my home page if you're interested. I did one just the other day about how to find your artistic voice through blogging, and I'll post it as soon as I have a link.

Anyway, thanks for checking in.

There's Always a Tell

2009-10-01T19:14:00.004-04:00

These are the opening paragraphs of my first post for RealMental, which will go live later tonight or early tomorrow.

I’ve always wanted to go to Montana. Remember the film Legends of the Fall? Wrecks me every time. I manage to keep it together while Native Americans are displaced, Samuel dies, and love is abandoned. I start to tip when Tristan’s wife is killed, and I lose it completely when Susannah meets Tristan’s son Samuel. By the time Susannah cuts off her hair and shoots herself, I’m inconsolable, mostly because everyone has put such a pretty, stoic face on their pain.

The only thing saving me from being seduced by all this Grade A romanticized suffering is Tristan’s “good death” at the end, by bear-fight. It’s a fitting and rugged resolution, and it centers me again, reconciling me to all things inexorable, like death, sorrow, and bad sex.

We’re all heroes of our own movies. Some of us may self-dramatize more than others, but I think it’s fair to say we all, at times, present a reductive version of ourselves. Sometimes it’s for the benefit of others.

Often it’s because the truth overwhelms us.

________________
To read the full article, click here.

Whew

2009-10-01T19:01:00.003-04:00

Since my last post, I moved to a new apartment, I fought (and apparently won, though I'll believe it when I get the check) an argument with my old landlord, and started putting steroid drops in my eyes because apparently I'm allergic to New York City.

I've also been eating a lot of cheese sandwiches and writing a long-ish blog post, my first in a series for RealMental, the beginning paragraphs of which I'll post in a few minutes here.

Thanks for all the wonderfully encouraging comments on the posts I'm tagging "This Is Not a Memoir."

"I Just Wanna Be Honest With You."

2009-09-16T12:21:00.058-04:00

Some conversations you remember.

We were in the van, moving the last of his stuff to my place. I'd never lived with anyone I'd dated before. It had been a whirlwind, which, in retrospect, means, well, absolutely nothing. When we met, I was dating a Republican who was perhaps the nicest guy I'd ever dated--we just about niced each other to death. Deep down, we both knew it wasn't going anywhere, and when I pointed this out, he was so relieved that I'd finally called Time of Death that we both laughed before parting ways.

On Valentine's Day, I was at the theatre with a group of friends, Adam included, and all of a sudden I just knew that I adored him. We'd been teaching Shakespeare in the public schools for about six months--I was Juliet, he was my dad. He was a natural with the kids, had a great sense of humor, and a fierce understanding of classical theatre. Before I knew it, I was giving him a ride home and he was asking me to move to Vermont, have kids, and start a theatre.

Sounded great.

I don't know why I believed it, but I needed it. And I loved loving someone. He let me love him! And he loved me back! He delighted me and I was filled with the joy of doing things for him and his exceedingly hairy back. He offered to wax, but I said I didn't care about the fur because he was All Mine, and also because I knew he didn't mean it. He had struggled with depression, too, so he wasn't overwhelmed by my struggles. When I told him about my parents, he told me, "I will always take your side."

This was a whole new game.

I met his family; he met my mother. He and my father spoke on the phone, but he was waiting to propose until they spoke face-to-face. An engagement party was in the works, and we had moved almost all of his belongings into my apartment. We were in a borrowed van, on the final trip from his place to mine.

"You know I'm a big believer in honesty. And I just wanna be honest with you, that there's someone else who I think is The One. Someone I knew in college who I felt an instant connection with. And even though I didn't feel that with you right away, my feelings have grown, and I have feelings now."

"Someone you dated?"

"No. She was a lesbian. The minute I laid eyes on her I felt this instant connection."

"Do you, I mean...what are you saying?"

"I just wanna be honest with you."

I didn't know how to respond, so we unloaded his stuff, and I went to cat-sit overnight for a friend. What he had said festered, so I called him from the air mattress where I was not sleeping at all.

"In the interest of being totally honest back, I have a problem with what you told me today. What'd you think that'd accomplish?"

"I'm sorry. I just thought it was important not to have any secrets. Tell you what. I can call her--I mean, I can't call her now because it's 2am, but I can call her in the morning--and if she's not interested, you and I can still move forward."

I had no idea that love could be killed in an instant.

All of a sudden, the fact that he couldn't pay his share of the rent, the fact that he wouldn't put his stuff away in the apartment, the fact that he snored, the fact that I was super organized and did things for him that he couldn't do for himself, all of a sudden that didn't feel okay anymore.

So I did what I did when I needed a sounding board. I turned to my trusted friends, the people who knew me better than anyone else, and who also cared enough to not pull any punches.

I blogged.

I didn't need my blog readers to tell me my feelings were right or wrong, but I did need their reactions in order to gauge my own. I had learned to question my emotional responses to big events, because they were modeled on some fairly histrionic behavior. At the same time, I had an opposing tendency to discount my feelings completely, so I really had no True North on my pocket compass of healthy responses.

I laid it out. The whole story. Folks had been so excited for us both up until now. I wondered if the marrieds would tell me I was overreacting. I wondered if the men would take his side.

Every single reader said some variation of "Evacuate."

This was hard to hear. I wasn't yet healthy enough to parse apart why what Adam had said was so incredibly messed up. And I loved him. It was hard not to defend him.

Now, I get the sense from people that I front pretty well. People who knew me while I was at the worst of my depression were surprised to later learn what I had been going through. One of the biggest contributing factors to my depression was the childhood isolation, so once I worked through some basic social anxiety, I discovered that when I was around people I generally had a good time. They had no idea that I was crying on the way there and on the way home, or that my nights were filled with a nameless terror, or that just breathing was often painful because it meant I was still alive, when I wished I weren't.

Countless were the nights where, after crying for hours with no end in sight, I'd finally power up the laptop--and the second I started to share what I felt on my blog, I'd calm down. I was connected. Meanwhile, I juggled multiple jobs, and I wrote and produced plays. I got up each day because the thought of not doing so was so seductive it terrified me. No one knew the extent to which I was suffering, and so no one treated me any differently, and I have to think that was actually more helpful than had people coddled me.

But I noticed that, after the break-up, everyone started treating me Very Gently. I was a shell. My mother even let me stay with her while he moved his stuff out. People called to check on me, but I had no words. What was there to say?

I was in this numb state when I went to visit my father in July. After a lifetime of estrangement, we had reconnected a few years earlier, after he became a born-again Christian. He had proposed to his third wife, but she had insisted that he make things right with me before she'd marry him. Whatever his motivation, I was happy to finally have him in my life.

But now, I felt like I was collapsing in on myself. My father didn't know what to do--we had no established language for the difficult stuff, no shared experience or common history as a touchstone to deal with something like this. So I spent the entire visit with his wife. We walked on the beach and I poured out everything to her. She'd been through her own trials--this was her third marriage as well--and while she was coming at the issue from a Christian perspective that I didn't completely share, I appreciated her frankness and patience.

The thing about being depressed is, it's like trying to live your life while a bear trap is clamped on your arm. You're bleeding and broken and can't climb a ladder, but after a while, you become somewhat inured to the pain, and can even function fairly well. How often do you climb ladders, anyway? But you can't ever really forget that you're lugging around this bear trap, and anyone who spends any amount of time with you becomes aware of it too, because every second of every day you're trying to figure out how to get rid of the damn thing. You want to fix it yourself, but you don't know how, and no one else, understandably, wants to come too close, because after all, they can't fix it either. It takes a sturdy person to befriend someone who's in constant emotional pain.

I burned through a lot of friends.

Occasionally someone would come into my life--usually a stranger--and I'd get a deeper understanding of the causes of my suffering because of something simple they'd say. Near the end of my visit, she and I were lying on the beach.

"Some people have a hard life, but I gotta say, you've really been dealt a rotten hand, Calla Lily."

"I get so confused. I don't know why it's so hard all the time when I have so much good going on."

"Yep. Both your parents were abused, neither knew their father, they had no support. You were moved around, your poor mother was struggling just to survive, she didn't have any time for you or even herself, and your father was going through his own thing far away. So where did that leave you? You didn't even have a chance."

The compassion she showed not just to me but to my parents was more than I had ever offered myself.

"I wonder...I wonder if maybe one of the reasons I keep finding myself in these relationships is partly because my father didn't have anything to do with me, and so somehow I had to make that okay in my head because I needed to believe he loved me anyway. So I learned to love without getting anything back. And that's why I'm grateful for crumbs. Over and over."

"I think you're on to something."

Back in the house, my father had decided what I needed was a little curse-breaking. The Devil had a hold of me, and he had to be banished.

Now, I had not been raised going to church. My mother's mother was a Jehovah's Witness, and that had turned her off so much that she became interested in Tarot and reincarnation. I had grown up being trotted around to psychic healers my whole life, so I had an open mind. When Dad brought out a Bible and a bottle of holy water, I thought, What harm can it do? It was clear he was trying to help me. In retrospect, I wonder if he'd known all along what I'd just figured out on the beach. Was this his way of trying to undo the damage?

As we all sat there, heads bowed, holding hands, I wished that the curse-breaking would work, that it really would be that simple to erase my depression. When it came time for me to say something, to ask for divine intervention, I muttered a few feeble words and tried to believe.

Little did I know that the worst was yet to come. That in September, I'd head to the MacDowell Colony to write, sleep, and cry for a month. That in October, I'd lose 18 pounds in 3 weeks from the depression. That finally in January I'd get help and find out that I had Major Depressive Disorder, Baseline Disthymia, Passive Suicidal Ideation, and symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. That most likely I'd been suffering from these things since childhood. Since my dad left. When I was almost four.

I had done a lot of work on myself before, but this round would take two years before I was out of the woods, re-wired and armed with new skills to manage the self-destructive habits of my brain. Two years of hard work, day by day, breath by breath. No meds, because I knew in my gut that what was needed was aggressive pruning of my belief system. Things had started off wrong, and it was up to me to unplug from everything I had known. With the help of good old-fashioned talk therapy, I came to learn how normal I really was.

Some conversations you remember. Others you deliberately forget.

What I'm Doing

2009-09-11T21:30:00.006-04:00

For years, I've wanted to thread my experiences overcoming depression, disruption, and isolation into some sort of narrative. It's not that I think my story is that special, actually, I think my experiences are probably fairly common to those of us who came from divorced families.

When I started blogging 7 years ago, I was surprised that anyone understood what I was going through. Pretty soon I was posting a dozen times a day, a far cry from my current rate of about a dozen times a month. When my audience grew to over 1,000 hits a day, and a few agents came around, I wasn't clear on what the boundaries were, and so I did things like shut down my blog, delete posts, etc. Now that I've got things squared away, I'm blogging from a stronger place with a clear identity.

So I'm taking a stab at writing some things down informally here on my blog. I'm not thinking these specific posts will comprise a book--they're really just the beginning explorations of memories and events that were significant to me. Once I've gotten some out there, I'll be better able to decide on story and structure. But I know deep in my gut that my experiences are many people's experiences, and there's a wonderful power in shaping and sharing it.

I've tagged them all "This Is Not A Memoir." I appreciate feedback--it means a lot to know that what I'm doing here might resonate with someone. Email is great, but if you are so inclined to comment on the posts, that actually might help me show an agent or an editor the kind of interest that's out there for this.

Blogging helped me find my voice, and it helped me find people who were struggling with the same issues I was. The interaction with these countless people I've never even met has done more to shape who I've become as a person, and as a playwright, than anything else in my adult life.

In January 2007, I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, Baseline Disthymia, and Passive Suicidal Ideation, after decades of not knowing there was a name to the feelings I'd fought since I was four years old. Now that I've gotten help and am out of the woods, I can approach this project in a healthy way. I've never felt the need to hide any of this, and actually, starting next month, I'll be a regular contributor to RealMental.

There's just three posts so far, all from my childhood. Because it's time for a little absurdity, I'm next going to write about when my father and his third wife took me through a curse-breaking ritual with a bottle of holy water.

TWEETABLES: 1-Minute Play Festival This Weekend

2009-09-11T12:45:00.003-04:00

If you're in NYC and looking for something fun to do this weekend, the 3rd Annual 1-Minute Play Festival is happening. I've got a different play going up each night.

Back in December 2007 I participated in the first 1-minute festie, and it was on that trip that I decided--and said out loud--that I wanted to move to New York within the next year.

It's at HERE Arts Center, 8:30pm both nights.

So How Many Pages of Apps Does Your iPhone Have?

2009-09-11T11:58:00.000-04:00

Okay, so maybe I only have five pages of apps and you have twelve, but my apps can kick your apps' ass. Check it oh-you-tee.

I Constantly Use

ExitStrategy
Twitterfon Pro
NPR News
Yelp
The Weather Channel
Google Mobile App
Flickr
UpNext 3D NYC

I Often Use

Translator
OpenTable
Twittelator
NYTimes
NYC Subway Map
Wall Street Journal
Facebook
Thomson Reuters News Pro
CrossWalk
HopStop

Just Figuring Out But Really Stoked About

iTalk
i.TV
BlogPress
Skype
textPlus
iWant
MiGhtyDocs
Foursquare

Just Glad To Have

Shakespeare
Google Earth
Wikipedia
Shazam
AIM
Amazon
Flixster
iHandy Level
Tumblr
Lose It!
wikiHow
Kindle

FYI I got a lot of these from @Palafo via The Twitter. He actually links to these apps on his blog, so go there if you want info, 'cause I gots blogging to do.

Acorns Seemed Harmless at the Time

2009-09-11T11:00:00.002-04:00

I love work. I love work so much I will make up jobs for myself if I’m not careful. When I was learning to read, I loved the flash cards that my mother had taped all over the house. I couldn't get enough. I especially loved getting the compound words right—toothbrush, bathtub. Starting early, I had an enormous ability to focus on one task and block everything out. I remember being in my high chair, making a low, steady hum while I slowly pushed peas across my plate into a pattern. I’d be terribly startled when I was interrupted.

It was with this singularity of focus that I attacked the acorns the year my father drove off in our car. I waddled around the backyard, squatting and gathering until my pink plastic wheelbarrow with the yellow handles could hold no more. I understood that the seed for a tree lived in each acorn, and also that the squirrels ate them.

I gathered them for the squirrels.

They thought I had stomach ulcers when I was four years old. I’m not sure who “they” were, or what my symptoms were, but I do remember visiting a lady once. My mother and I climbed a long, narrow flight of white stairs, past a window on the right. Once at the top, I was offered a tiny chair at a tiny table. The table had a clear plastic bear with a yellow cap on it, and I was told the bear was filled with honey. I didn’t know what honey was, but I was fascinated by the bear. My not touching it only increased my longing.

I had no idea why we were there, but my mother seemed relaxed. She sat just out of reach to my left, while the woman sat on the other side of the table and tried to start a conversation with me. I decided we must be on a visit, except…this woman was focused on me, which was unlike most visits my mother and I made. She kept trying to pull my attention from the bear. Suddenly, I understood that she and my mother wanted to know something, something only I would know. Only I didn’t know, I didn’t even understand the question. My ribcage tightened, my breath went shallow, and the place where the back of my neck joined the back of my head grew still. I didn’t know what to do, so I began nodding helpfully in response to her questions.

We didn’t stay long. No one was angry, but I sensed that I’d not been as helpful as they had hoped I’d be.

Around this time, water blisters started springing up on the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands. At night I’d scratch until I bled. The gloves and Neosporin wouldn't stay on. I treated my fingernails like the betrayals they were, tearing at their soft moons until I reached the nailbed, in the hopes that, since I couldn’t control the scratching, I could minimize their damage. Besides the water blisters, and the fingernails, there were bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia that made me cough ‘til my breath ran out; I’d sweat Vicks and Dimetapp in my great-grandmother’s quilt while my mother sweetly sang, “Rock-ity-ock-ity-ock-ity-ock.” When I grew too large to rock, and the hospital bills grew too large to pay, my mother grew impatient, and would snap at me if I sneezed.

My body was an enemy I failed to control. I lumbered around in white orthopedic boots for years to no avail. At some point it was discovered that I badly needed glasses. I couldn't swallow my green Drixoral pills, so my mother would crush them between two spoons and pour a little milk in, but still I'd sputter. When my mother started working, she began taking naps. She’d pin me with her leg to keep me safe while she slept, and I learned to smooth my breathing so I wouldn’t accidentally wake her. She’d hold me down on the floor and pinch my face with her long fingernails, telling me to stop crying, that she was cleaning my skin. Because of these lessons in not struggling, I didn’t protest when an allergist covered my back with pinpricks, only to find out I was a little bit allergic to a lot of things.

By far, my biggest failure was my inability to fall asleep. If I were happy, I’d softly sing to myself. Some nights, my mother would tiptoe in, stand over me, and then say, “I know you’re awake. Your breathing’s uneven and I can see your eyes moving around,” the flashlight making bright patterns through my eyelids. Left alone, I’d lie on my side at night and stare through the safety bars at the blurry nightlight that I knew was a witch, while Doggie protected me from whatever might sneak up on the other side. Doggie loved me, but he had no language, seeing as he was a stuffed dog, so I began to have imaginary conversations with a man I called Freud. I had no idea who Sigmund Freud was, but I’d watched cartoon characters lie on sofas and share their sorrows with a gray-bearded man named Freud who had all the answers but refused to share them. He’d listen long after my mother’s light clicked off.

Over my bed was a poster of a little girl in a field of daisies that said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” I took the poster seriously, wanting to wake up perfect each morning. I even tried to fall asleep with my hands folded in prayer under my chin, like in my picture books. I wanted to be a nun, though we weren’t Catholic, and I didn’t really know what a nun was. I only knew that I wanted to devote myself to perfection. Unfortunately, each day only brought more and more evidence that I was far from perfect. I couldn’t ever be small enough, and I fervently wished that I’d stop growing. I wanted, needed, to be invisible, and I never stopped trying.

So I began a series of negotiations and agreements with myself that lasted for over three decades. It was a methodical approach involving a series of If-Then statements, designed to improve my behavior through a logical process of elimination.

I was determined to succeed.

This Is Not a Memoir

2009-08-25T18:02:00.022-04:00

The phone is huge, as if seen through a zoom lens. It’s the color of Silly Putty, and I like the pattern the numbers make on the dialpad beneath the handset cradle. It’s unclear why there are no numbers on the 1 key. Following a familiar trail, I dial what I’m pretty sure is the same pattern I've dialed before, 4s and 6s and 8s, and sure enough a polite voice answers.

I never learned her name. She sounded lonely, but I may have been projecting. The chats weren’t long, as I really didn’t have much to offer, seeing as I was only eight. I never told my mother about these phone calls, because I knew it was an odd thing to do.

Rewind one hour.

The bus drops me off down the street from the white, three-story building where we live. I poke my tongue in the space where my tooth once was, and set off for home. No stranger approaches, and I remember not to talk to any, though I probably wouldn’t have heard one over the slisk of my purple snowsuit. I climb the stairs to the third floor and let myself in. I’m careful with the key, because if I'm locked out, I'm locked out. We don’t know our neighbors.

She’s at work. I call her at Montgomery Ward, where she’s managing two departments, to tell her I made it home safe. I lay out a paper towel and fix myself a sandwich—Wonder bread with Kraft American cheese and Hellmann’s real mayonnaise. We’ve recently graduated to name brands from the food we used to get each week from the church basement down the street. Sometimes we even have bologna, and when we do, I peel the stringy side off of it.

Post-sandwich, in the hour or so before my babysitter arrives, I pull out the bottom drawer of my dresser and organize my comics. My parents bought the dresser in a fire sale in Atlanta when they were still married, before we moved to Maine. Or maybe I sing along to the Beatles, torn between wanting Paul to be my dad and wanting him to need me when I’m 64. Or maybe I count Barbie’s shoes. Or force doll clothes on the kitten while he’s still too small to defend himself.

The random phone-calling is for special.

Before I know it, my babysitter’s there, and we watch the Beverly Hillbillies embarrass themselves while we work on her gum-wrapper and pop-top chains. She agrees Paul's the cutest Beatle, but then pulls the rug out from under me by telling me the Beatles broke up years ago. This upsets me enormously. If she has homework, she lets me brush her hair while she works. She tells me what must be impossible, that she irons her long, blonde hair on an ironing board.

My mother comes home and the babysitter leaves. We’ll eat beans and franks, or maybe American chop suey and a salad. She asks me to wash the lettuce, which I think is very strange. Halfway through the meal, I learn that because I used Ivory Liquid, I’ve wasted a lot of her hard-earned money. We’ll fold laundry during commercials for “Little House on the Prairie,” and afterwards she asks what the moral of the story was. I have no idea, and eventually I’m crying so hard over my Jell-O that I can’t even make anything up.

Lights out. I try to fall asleep to the hum of the fan in my room, but I can’t take my eyes off the orange glow leaking under my bedroom door from the living room. I’m convinced it’s a fire, a very slow fire that burns in our living room each night. I listen for tell-tale crackles and remember that, when the time comes, I should feel the wood of the door and not touch the metal handle. I know which window is best for escaping, and I know where the rope ladder is for doing so. Despite all this knowledge, I’m rigid with fear. Then the light goes out.

Now I’m in the ocean, the same ocean that’s on my mother’s paperback book, Jaws. I wonder what I'll die from, drowning or the shark. And if it’s the shark, will I be swallowed whole and live like Jonah in an air pocket? Or will I be chewed up? And if I’m chewed up, what will it feel like and how much blood will there be? Then I’ll wonder what it feels like to die of natural causes. I’ll hold my breath, then let the air seep out ‘til it hurts, then keep myself from inhaling as long as possible.

Then the ants come. I’m in the desert, and the fire ants are climbing all over me, stinging or biting or whatever it is fire ants do to people who are tied to cartoon logs, and I know three things for sure: 1) that I am sweating, 2) that I'll most certainly die this very night, and 3) that death by fire ants will surely be the longest, most painful of all my possible eight-year-old deaths. When I finally fall asleep, I’m too tired to have nightmares.

In the morning, I lie about how well I slept, put on my glasses, eat my oatmeal, brush my teeth, and dress for school. I try to sneak a few small rips into my lace anklets. I want her to notice the holes and buy me more grown-up socks, but instead she just buys more frilly ones. Some days I get to wear my Brownie outfit, my beanie on top of my fuzzed-out, week-old braids that I insist on wearing to further my waking fantasy of living in a one-room house on a Kansas prairie. Anywhere but here, in this apartment with the green shag rug, the gold curtains, and the velour floral sofa.

This was the apartment where I learned she wouldn’t be marrying her boyfriend after all because he wanted to send me to a private school and she couldn’t bear that. This was the apartment where I learned that sharing how fun it was to call my dad's new wife “Mommy” was quite possibly the worst thing I could ever say to my mother. This was the apartment where she told me where babies came from, a story she clearly had rehearsed in advance, and which left me with an inability to ever look at a hot dog the same way again.

The last time I picked up the phone and dialed my secret friend, I either pressed the wrong numbers, or she wasn’t home, because no one answered. I was calling to tell her we were moving. This apartment was the fifth or so I'd lived in so far. There would be eight more before I graduated high school, ten years later.

My Mother's Father's Wife Put a Curse on Me

2009-08-24T18:04:00.023-04:00

My mother never met her father. She has a black-and-white photograph of him, handsome in a white suit, and a few cherished details that her mother doled out grudgingly, one of which she told me when I was 13.

We were in the car on an overlit Florida afternoon, and I had just gotten my first dental fillings. My mouth was still numb and I was saying "plum" over and over, enjoying sounding like an 80-year-old stroke victim while I picked at the stitching on my pink, thin-wale corduroys.

My mother had a knack for telling me stories I wished she wouldn't, mostly about my own birth and the consequences of it. Stories from the generations before my arrival were generally mythic in scope and fatalistic in tone. Who knows what it was that afternoon--the events of her own doomed love life, the nostalgic slant of sunlight through her Marlboro smoke, or the simple fact that I'd added the word "purple" to my loud, plummy litany--but out of the blue my mother decided to tell me the Story of the Curse.

The first part of the story, I already knew. It went like this. After my grandmother, Margaret, was told she couldn't marry the French penpal she'd fallen for in high school, she married her neighbor Ralph. They had a son. Then she met an older married man, an Albanian Jehovah's Witness, who allegedly raped her. Nine months later, my mother was born in Reno. Margaret was divorced the next day, and Ralph took his son, my mother's half-brother, back to Maine to be raised by his family.

My mother was supposed to have been adopted by a wealthy, childless couple who lived north of Los Angeles. Lawyers had drawn up the papers, but when the nurse said, "It's a little girl," my grandmother said, "I'm keeping her." She had had one son, stillborn, and had lost another in the divorce.

On this particular afternoon, the story took an occult turn. Shortly after my mother's birth, something strange started happening. Each morning, when my grandmother rose and went to my mother's crib, there was a long, black hair on my mother's infant self. Each night, my grandmother inspected my mother's crib, and each morning, a new hair would appear, as if it had been carefully placed across my mother in the night.

My grandmother feared this hair business was the manifestation of a curse. When my mother's father's wife learned her husband had been unfaithful, she found and cursed my grandmother, her unborn child, and her unborn child's child, that we should never know love. My grandmother consulted an expert in such matters, who recommended she take the next morning's hair and burn it while saying assertive, curse-breaking things. She did as she was told, and, sure enough, the long, black hairs stopped appearing.

I fingered the tiny, gold-thread swan on my Gloria Vanderbilt cords as I listened. I knew it. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. There was a reason Tommy Shoemaker had not loved me back in the 4th grade. There was a reason my father never answered my letters. We were all cursed, my grandmother, my mother and I. The fact that my grandmother and mother were both alone seemed proof that the curse existed, not proof that they sabotaged relationships.

Years later, once I'd learned about self-fulfilling prophecies, I tried to pooh-pooh this whole curse idea, but my own botched attempts at love seemed only to confirm its existence. I flung myself from crush to idealizing crush, like a frantic love monkey swinging from vine to vine over quicksand. I only have my profound social awkardness to thank, not morals or good judgment, for saving me from becoming an object lesson in teenage promiscuity. Line up twelve men in a row and I will unerringly choose the one whose mother kicked his teeth in, or who is addicted to narcotics, or whose father shot the family pet to punish the children.

To finally break the curse, I had to let go of the vine.

Follow-Up to the TCG Teleconference on Using Twitter to Build Audience

2009-08-06T11:37:00.011-04:00

Some of you may know that last Thursday I gave an hour-long talk to 150 theaters on how to use Twitter to bring in new audience as part of Theatre Communications Group's Leadership Teleconference Series. The talk went great--I had a terrific time, TCG seemed pleased, and the response from participating theaters was overwhelmingly positive. LISTEN TO THE WHOLE TALK HERE. [Seems not to work in IE on Vista. I had to use Firefox.]

If you search Twitter for the hashtag #TCGCall, you can check out some of the comments people were tweeting during the call. I could have talked for another hour, easy-peasy, and there were a couple of questions that I couldn't get around to, so I thought I'd share some more info here.

Twitter is uniquely helpful to performing arts organizations because you can identify people in your ZIP Code who maybe don't even go to the theatre, but maybe they would if they felt welcomed, if they felt it would be fun or interesting or relevant to them. You can identify, reach out, and build relationships with people who can become invested in your mission. I don't have hard numbers (if you do, please share in the comments!), but I know that theaters are bringing in audience members via Twitter who are completely new to their organization.

Now, some questions.

@theatredude asked if a theatre should follow its own employees.
Every theatre has its own unique culture. I can't really see why you wouldn't follow everyone affiliated with your company. (If an employee would rather keep her tweetstream private, she can adjust her profile settings accordingly.) It's fun for followers to hear the back-and-forth when people share what they're excited about behind the scenes.

@leehenderson asked if the idea is to grow new audiences with Twitter.
Absolutely! That's one of the main differences between Twitter and Facebook. Facebook is about cultivating the audience you already have, while Twitter is about finding new people in your area who might come to your theatre for a Tweetup, see a show, and then become lifelong fans.

@htyweb offered that instead of searching for your name on Twitter to keep track of what people are saying about your theatre, you can set up automatic searches that will go right to your email. @htyweb mentions TweetBeep as one such tool.
I ran out of time on the talk, but indeed there are a slew of tools (called third-party clients, or apps) that you can use to manage your Twitter account. I'm not recommending any one of these tools over another--you should explore and make your own decisions.
For Your Desktop or Laptop
Tweetdeck is a downloadable third-party client that a lot of people use on their desktop computer. Also, I've heard a lot about Seesmic. It allows you to group your messages and the people you follow. It's helpful to use one of these if you plan on following hundreds or thousands of people. There will naturally be some people you want to make sure not to miss anything from.
HootSuite is one of many tools that allow you to track your company's Twitter account, DMs, @ replies, and even assign some of these things to specific people in your company. CoTweet is a similar product. These are useful if you want to have several people tweet on your company's behalf from one main account.
For Your SmartPhone
There are several apps you can download--Twitterfon, Twitterrific, Twittelator Pro, Tweetie, and Twitterberry to name a few.
To Track Statistics
You can use hit-counting clients like Statcounter to track how much traffic comes to your website from Twitter.
URL-shorteners
Out of all the URL-shorteners, many people favor bit.ly, because you can track how many times that URL is shared. Others are tiny.url, and tr.im.

Here's how I access Twitter:
During the work day, I'm at a desk, so I use the regular Twitter web interface. I have Twitterfon on my iPhone. (I keep meaning to upgrade to Twitterfon Pro.) Instead of using Tweetdeck to group tweets from certain people, I use Google Reader to collect RSS feeds of the Twitterers I follow who I don't want to miss a single tweet from, and then I can check out the tweets on my computer or iPhone when it suits me. I'm leery of using too many third-party apps that require sharing my Twitter password--the more you share your password, the more hackable your account is, and everyone has a different comfort zone with that.

Feel free to leave questions in the comments, or share success stories. Also, please pass around this information--the insights and ideas discussed on the recorded talk aren't limited to theater companies, but can be useful for other arts and nonprofit organizations.

One last thing. While I was flattered to be introduced as a "Social Media Expert," social media is evolving so rapidly, with so many discoveries still to be made, that I don't think anyone is an expert. Once you guys are comfortable on this new platform, you'll be able to teach me things! Let's keep sharing the information so we can make sure the performing arts get a strong foothold in this new arena.

So, the Other Day, I Got Some of This Free Money I've Been Hearing So Much About

2009-08-05T18:10:00.007-04:00

Remember this? When I had to move out of my first NY apartment because my massage table was stolen, and I rented a van and a friend to move to the new place where the ceiling is now caving in?

Remember how I had to pay my pal with an American Express check because my NBC paychecks were not coming through week after week?

Remember how AmEx lowered my limit to $2K without telling me first even though I had never had a late payment in over 15 years, so that the check was declined because it would've been $24 whole dollars over?

Well, I simply vented here and haven't used the card since, because I pick my battles and my battles at the time were bigger than the declined check.

Well.

The other night, I received an apology from American Express, and a check for $160. Apologies are so much better when they involve money. I don't know if there was some sort of class action suit pending, or what, but American Express and I are now on speaking terms again.

I thought you should know.

I also thought you should know that sometimes really good, unexpected things can happen.

There's a joke in there about a bartending marriage counselor, I just know it.

2009-07-29T19:50:00.000-04:00

Ooged out by this? Me, too.

Why.

Because:

1. As best I can tell, from the police reports and from my own common sense, both parties chose to escalate the conflict by power-tripping, a la: "You don't know who I am," "No, you don't know who I am."

2. No way Gates should have been arrested.

3. No way it would've happened were he white.

4. No way Obama should have said the police "acted stupidly."

5. The woman who called 911 wasn't calling in because Gates was black, she was calling in because she saw two men bust the front door open.

6. Now everyone's trying to justify their overreactions by turning it into a "teaching moment."

7. Gates is also turning it into an opportunity to promote his
upcoming PBS special.

It's a case of 1) indignation being triggered, 2) ego insulted at being asked for identification, and 3) a self-justifying attempt to cover a childish reaction with a transparently self-aggrandizing one. I'm sorry, but you cannot be a scholar of African American studies and be shocked that racial profiling exists (though I'm not sure this is a case of "profiling" so much as out-and-out racism at the choice to arrest him [not the choice to investigate] [See #3. Also see "disingenuous."]).

For political and philosophical reasons, it's unwise for Obama to step in as bartending marriage counselor. And I'm tired of people treating it as if, "Well, yeah, maybe it's messed up, but something good might come of it." It's too staged and self-aware for anything authentic to come out of it, though I'm sure all parties will come out BFFs afterwards, having Learned A Lot. [Cue unicorns.] Ew. Fake fake fake. How about a rigorous examination of how entrenched and internalized racism is in America? How about discussing the implications of reparations?

Looking forward to reading the reviews about Thursday's jacked-up performance art Friday morning on The Twitter. I don't know about you, but me, I'll be at the @clarencethomas tweetup tomorrow night.

File Under: Nothing Like Alcohol and Publicity to Heal All Wounds.

THURSDAY SLICE O' PIE: "The Europeans"

2009-07-28T19:16:00.001-04:00

Last weekend I saw Howard Barker's "The Europeans" at Potomac Theatre Project with the fearless leader of Red Bull Theater, where I am Literary Manager. I don't think I'd seen any of Barker's work before. I like going into a play knowing as little about what I'm seeing as possible.

I don't review the plays I see on my blog for two reasons: 1) it's tacky; and, 2) my taste is such that it's rare for me to really thrill at something. But sometimes I like to write down my response, my impressions from seeing a piece of theater, and I found myself scribbling notes on the long subway ride home afterwards.

I ate the script up with a spork--the theatricality and juxtaposition of so many terrible hungers and giant issues were ridiculously stimulating. It made me want to learn more about Barker's Theatre of Catastrophe, I think he calls it. I love it when difficult things are jammed together in a play and nothing is easy.

Parts of the play are in verse. I haven't seen the text, so I don't know if it's laid out that way on the page, but there were bits of iambic pentameter that are unforgettable. To wit:

"Revenge must be upon the innocent."

"We often choose to live with those we hate."

And this juicy one, from when a character learns his stepmother has died:

"Dead? But I wasn't finished with her yet."

Wait. Go back. Did you see that?! Instead of an iamb for the first foot, it's a spondee! A spondee, people! "Dead? But... ." Two syllables, both stressed, and with a pause of such clean heft splitting its belly that it gave me chills.

This one was in answer to the question "How do we escape history?":

"We re-create its mayhem in our lives."

It came somewhere near the end, around when a main character forces a hapless footman to tell him a story. The footman delivers, but the listener takes over, and eventually rejects the narrative. I found this turn a fascinating microcosm of the issues this play explores: questions of control over self, over country, and over history through the telling and framing of events.

Back to that first, spectacularly trenchant one. "Revenge must be upon the innocent." Once it's uttered, you know the horrible price that will be paid later.

Oh, and there was a beautiful moment where a hanging happened on stage, and it was handled in the simplest, most brilliant way. One of those moments that can make you insanely jealous you didn't think it up first.

Oh, and my boss is in love with Nikolai Erdman's comedy "The Suicide," which I can't wait to read.

TWEETABLES: New Video

2009-07-27T19:02:00.000-04:00

Some of you who follow me on The Twitter have probably already seen this, but here is another video version of my presentation at Jeff Pulver's #140 Character Conference on Twitter in June. The camera was closer in, but the ambient noise is cut, so it sounds like the audience sat in stony silence; they did laugh at my few jokes.

Justin Kahn was kind enough to record this. Check it out. [10 minutes]

TWEETABLES: Maybe If I Blog About It, It Won't Come True

2009-07-26T23:14:00.000-04:00

Everything's going beautifully in my life. This can mean one thing, and one thing only: I'm about to fall for someone who's completely wrong for me.

CLICKWORTHY: Me Talking at #140 Conference

2009-07-13T17:26:00.003-04:00

Martin Pratt was kind enough to forward a clip of me speaking at the #140 Conference. My talk was called "All the Web's a Stage: The arts as a shared experience on Twitter."

I start about two minutes in.

I Love NY but The Twitter Makes Me Hot

2009-07-06T18:00:00.014-04:00

I've been going non-stop since I got to NY at the end of last year.

Friday July 3 was that most rare and delicious of days, a Federal holiday. A chance to sleep in and get some personal things done. All I had to do was email some voice-over stuff by 3:30, and get a grant application postmarked. Easy peasy.

So.

I.

[9:00am]
Read the news on Twitter, then went to Rite Aid and bought a ream of paper, chips, and bottled tea. Came home and wrote futuristic news announcements* to be recorded in DC later in the day as voice-overs for pre-show and intermission at my DC Fringe show, "MAY 39th/40th." Also cancelled drywall guy because kitchen ceiling had started leaking again. (Long story.)

[11:30am]
Started grant application (proposal, budget, tax returns, cover letter, cover form, CV). Concurrently printed 90-page sample script and 4 pages of work-in-progress on ream of new paper.

So far so good.

[12:15pm]
Take a break and drop off laundry to be done. Ready by 5pm.

[1:30pm]
Still working on grant application. Knock at door. Super and plumber. Unexpected, but great that they are now on a mission to suss out why my kitchen ceiling is gushing like a cheerleader on prom night. I let them in and then ignore them because I'm in deadline mode.

[2:20pm]
Grant application printed, assembled, enveloped. Moved on to final script edits of "MAY 39th/40th."

[2:40pm]
Plumber and super are now AWOL, so I tell IJ** not to escape and I leave my apartment unlocked.

[2:45pm]
Catch a cab (there are never cabs where I live--This day is going SO well, I think to myself) 20 blocks to a wifi cafe so I can email the script and voiceover stuff before 3:30pm deadline.

[3:00pm]
Buy a fruit cup, open netbook, and repeatedly fail to send emails.

[3:04pm]
Learn from neighbor that wifi is turned off from 11am-4pm.

"Sh*t. I'm f*cked."

[3:04:03pm]
Contemplate finding a Starbucks and figuring out how to buy wifi access there, and decide instead to beg cafe owner to turn on wifi. "I took a cab, I bought your fruit, I have a deadline, I'm happy to pay."

[3:07pm]
Email script and voice-over goodies from wifi cafe. (Never underestimate the power of "Please.")

Now that I've got a little time (post office doesn't close 'til 5pm, right?), I answer emails, listen to a woman fight with her mom over Facebook, and eavesdrop on a middle-aged couple going down in flames during what appears to be their first date. The guy is silent, mostly. She: "Well, she sounds great! Why are you here, go be with her!" and, "My cycle is 21 days, not 28, so my eggs..."

I kid you not.

I Twitter the fruits of my eavesdropping, and restrain myself from posting a surreptitious picture. (Believe me, a picture would explain a lot.)

[4:00pm]
Pack up and walk the 10 blocks to the post office so I can get my grant application postmarked.

Have I mentioned it's a Federal holiday?

Sh*t. I'm f*cked. Again.

Now, in my defense, I thought since post offices are open on Saturdays, that meant that they'd only be closed on Saturday the 4th. As in, you know, the actual holiday? A quick scroll through Safari on my iPhone tells me that most post offices closed at noon on Friday, July 3rd.

This is when The Twitter made me want to marry it.

[4:22pm]
I put a call out on The Twitter.

"Emergency: post office is closed. Must get grant application postmarked today. Am way uptown 180th Street. Anyone know other post offices?"

[4:26pm]
Email Grant Lady, asking if it were possible for me to mail my application on Monday, saying I understand if not.

[4:32pm]
I have received no less than 20 replies, and I now know that the 34th street post office is open until 7pm. Score!

[4:45pm]
I show up at the laundromat 15 minutes early. My laundry is right there, I see it, waiting to be folded. I say I'll take it unfolded, I'm in a hurry. They do not understand English. They insist on folding it. I mean, insist. Like I ask four times, smiling and saying, no need to fold, in a hurry. (Even though I have 'til 7pm to get to 34th Street, I live a good 50 minutes away by subway, and I'm not thinking now is a good time to push my luck timing-wise.)

[4:50pm]
I give up and leave the laundromat.

[4:55pm]
I return to the laundromat when I realize they have all my cute jeans.

[4:57pm]
I am given my laundry. I tip $3 to dissuade them from thinking I'm a typical impatient gringa.

[5:10pm]
Cat still there. So is the ladder and mess in my kitchen. Try to find super so he can get his ladder, then give up. Shower. Dress. There is nothing like putting makeup on your face when you are sweating your balls off. Nothing like it. While putting on sneakers that will later give me blisters, realize the only thing I ate were chips and fruit.

[5:25pm]
Leave house, taking touch-up paint with me because you never know when you might meet one of those mythical single guys in New York City. On the way to the subway, notice silver shoes some huge guy on the street is wearing.

[5:35pm]
Guy holds elevator to train platform for me. Train comes right away. Get on, then nearly get off in the naughty sense because this is the first time I've been in air conditioning all day. Realize iPhone is out of juice.

[6:25pm]
Enter post office.

[6:35pm]
Mission accomplished!

[6:36pm]
Read email from Grant Lady saying no problem, I can mail the application on Monday.

[6:37pm]
Try to Twitter my good news and thank everyone, but 3G blows, so I buy a hot dog and give a homeless guy a dollar. Get on subway.

[7:00pm]
Arrive at fancy restaurant.

New York is great. I'm only this nuts because I'm trying to do so many things. Working 3 jobs, writing plays, and other things, so everything gets left to the last minute, and there's no room for surprises. But now all my deadlines are met, and it's just the 3 jobs for a bit. I certainly don't want to complain, because right now I know many people don't even have jobs, so I'm super lucky, having just moved to NYC, to have all the work I do.

That said, I really did feel I should have at least gotten some at the end of a day like that.

Thank you to all my Twitter friends who came to my rescue. I honestly don't know what I would have done, because I couldn't get any useful info about USPS offices on my iPhone, and I didn't even know about the 34th Street post office that has extended hours all the time. So if I get this grant, I'll take everyone who helped me out for drinks!

*E.g., "In other news, North American President Jane Hansel will travel to Japandia this week in a bid to strengthen diplomatic ties between North America and the emerging super-colony. Japandia’s newly elected Prime Minister, Matsuda Haiko, known by her colonists as 'The Iron Cherry Blossom,' said that she hopes the visit will 'repair the wounds of the past.'”

**Cat.

TWEETABLES: This is getting embarrassing.

2009-07-06T17:50:00.002-04:00

More advance press for MAY 39th/40th:

Washington Post's "Going Out Gurus" came up with their Top 10 most promising shows from last Wednesday's Fringe Preview. Guess what made the cut.

The Washington Times did their roundup of shows to catch at Fringe, and we made that, too.

Get your tickets, my sweet yatches!

TWEETABLES: More Advance Press and a Preview for MAY 39th/40th

2009-07-01T15:05:00.009-04:00

We are totes lucking out with advance press.

MAY 39th/40th got a nice mention in the Washington Post today, complete with the above picture of James Finley and Lindsay Haynes. Jane Horwitz includes a mention of our most recent development, that of switching the characters' genders in MAY 40th at rehearsal on Saturday!

Also, tonight, if you're in DC, check out the kickoff Fringe party. It'll be the official opening press conference, and many shows will give snippets of their performances, including MAY 39th/40th. I can't go because I'm up here in NYC, but it's always a ton of fun!

We are already selling some tix, so if you know you wanna check it out, you can buy yours here.

And I'll keep updating this page with all sorts of good news about MAY 39th/40th.

We've also got some ink coming out in the Washington Times on Friday.

Other Advance Press:

MAY 39th/40th, My Fabulous Sex Life, Titus X, et al. Set for Capital Fringe Festival
TheaterMania 6/22/09

Backstage: 'Fringe' Elements: Comedy and Drama
Washington Post 7/1/09

MAY 39th/40th: Where Will You Be?
DC Performing Arts Examiner, 6/14/09

Rising Director Christy Denny
DC Performing Arts Examiner, 6/14/09

Playwrights Part 16: Callie Kimball
Adam Szymkowicz Blog, 6/23/09

And here's our press release.

TWEETABLES: In which I talk about myself.

2009-06-25T10:14:00.000-04:00

Playwright Adam Szymkowicz interviewed me for his blog. You can read it here.

TWEETABLES: Advance Press for MAY 39th/40th

2009-06-24T09:58:00.000-04:00

We're getting some nice mentions for the DC Fringe production of MAY 39th/40th.

Check it Oh-You-Tee:

MAY 39th/40th, My Fabulous Sex Life, Titus X, et al. Set for Capital Fringe Festival
TheaterMania 6/22/09

MAY 39th/40th: Where Will You Be?
DC Performing Arts Examiner, 6/14/09

Rising Director Christy Denny
DC Performing Arts Examiner, 6/14/09
And here's our press release.
Now run and get your tickets!

TWEETABLES: Hot. Super hot.

2009-06-23T17:06:00.003-04:00

The New York Neo-Futurists will perform TwitterPlays written by Twitter followers this weekend. The TwitterPlays are part of PRIDE Meets the Street, Saturday, June 27 from 3pm to 7pm on 4th Street between 2nd Avenue & Bowery.

I've got at least one play in the mix. I'll be in DC at a rehearsal for my play MAY 39th/40th, so unfortunately I'll miss this! But you can go. I mean, if you live in NYC and all.

Go!

TWEETABLES: DC Fringe Tix on Sale!

2009-06-22T16:19:00.005-04:00

1,000 years from now, dating in the city will still blow chunks. And playing doctor will be way more creepy.

Tickets for MAY 39th/40th are now on sale at DC Fringe!

The show opens July 11 and runs for 3 weekends. It's a small venue with only 5 performances, and we sold out in 2006 when the first version of MAY 39th was produced, so if you know you wanna see it, go ahead and get your tix here.

It's being produced by 11:11 Productions and directed by Christy Denny, an exciting up-and-coming director who just assistant-directed "Stunning" at Lincoln Center LTC3. The play features Lindsay Haynes (she was in my play, "Jupiter Zoom," for those of you who've been with me that long) and James Finley.

I won't be at every performance, because I'm based in NYC now, but let me know if you plan on going to the show, and please tell your friends in DC about it.

About the Plays

MAY 39th takes a voyeuristic ride through the morning after a first date in the year 3009: Sam gives Louisa everything she wants, and a few things she hadn't bargained for. In MAY 40th, Roya consents to a startling procedure when she asks Jim to heal her blindness. Both plays explore the lengths people will go to in the pursuit or avoidance of pain.

TWEETABLES: Graziella TV Webisode

2009-06-18T21:51:00.003-04:00

Hey! The #140 Conference was super awesome. I gave a talk on how some performing arts organizations are using Twitter successfully. As a result, I was invited to chat on Graziella Barratta's web TV show. She's Ms. United States and she's super cool and passionate about the arts.

Check out the episode: Go to http://www.graziellatv.com/ and click on "Menu." Choose "Watch Movies," then choose the "Graziella TV 6/19/09" episode. The first part got cut off a little.

TWEETABLES: Out of the Office, Yo

2009-06-15T16:38:00.004-04:00

In a few hours, the #140 Character Conference to explore how Twitter is affecting advertising, celebrity, and the media starts with a sweet happy hour for all of us "characters."

There are 140 of us (get it?), and I cannot WAIT to meet these people in 3-D.

On Wednesday at 4:50pm, I'll be giving a 10-minute talk called "ALL THE WEB'S A STAGE: The Arts As a Shared Experience on Twitter." I'm also producing two panels: "TWITTER + TV: Producing Content on Two Screens," and "White House Correspondency in the Age of Twitter."

You can watch all the presentations here.

Peace in your crease.

THURSDAY SLICE O' PIE: Closing the Loop and Opening the Door

2009-06-11T18:50:00.015-04:00

Was it really three weeks ago that we all were parsing apart the Primary Stages issue around their all-female season of plays?

Yes, yes it was.

I loved that, everywhere I went both in NY and in DC in the following days, people were eager to talk about this issue. I loved that so many people were coming here to read about it, and appreciated that people were commenting so thoughtfully. And I wanted to share more information about the issue. (Also, I'm looking forward to attending the seminar on Gender Disparity on June 22 sponsored by 59E59 and Primary Stages.)

But...

In those three weeks since, I've worked my 3 jobs, finished a script, travelled to DC for a reading, helped to produce 2 panels for a conference, worked one fundraiser, attended another, seen 6 shows, gone to Atlantic City, attended two professional networking events, worked on a grant application, prepped for a speaking engagement next week, and built the graphics for the web, press release, banner ad, and postcard for one of my summer shows.

(And I started an online dating profile. You know, because I have so much free time on my hands.)

But the real reason I've held back on posting further, was that I wanted to sit with my own feelings on this matter.

Obviously, I have strong, personal feelings about this. And I am always suspicious of strong, personal feelings. Not in a bad way--I think passion clues us in to what matters most to us--but in a skeptical way. As in, What's really going on here?

And I realized that what's really going on here is that I can't even pretend to be objective, and that I can't make a logical argument for why it is important to produce women playwrights. I actually think logic works against this idea, that an argument for parity, for numbers, somehow misses addressing the essential nature of what's askew in the first place.

And so I've decided to write about this topic solely from my own personal viewpoint, acknowledging the whole time that it is completely subjective, and influenced by many specifically personal events in my own life.

But I'm not doing that in this post, and it will take me a little while to gather those thoughts on paper.

But I will share some interesting after-events from the time this issue was raised three weeks ago:

Primary Stages responded to a follow-up email I sent asking what sort of response they were seeing in terms of subscription numbers. They said that there indeed was an impact, but they did not list specific numbers:

Since this string was posted, we have received more than a few inquiries about purchasing subscriptions for worthy female playwrights, and I certainly hope those numbers continue to grow. It has been, and continues to be, fulfilling for Primary Stages (as an organization and as individual staff members) to connect young playwrights with a community of supporters.
We often use the term "Primary Stages family" because we know it takes much more than our little staff to make theater happen. Thank you to all who are joining that family. We look forward to entering this milestone year with you.

Then, on June 3, a friend who supports Round House Theatre forwarded me this e-blast that RHT sent to their mailing list:

Round House Supports Women Playwrights
Round House Theatre has produced five plays on its Bethesda
main stage this season. Four of those plays were written by accomplished female playwrights. And though it's already June, you still have a chance to support this kind of work by attending our final production of the season — Melanie Marnich's new comedy A Sleeping Country, running through June 21.
Theatre stages are, in general, still dominated by the work of male playwrights. A recent study by the Dramatists Guild noted that only 11% of the plays produced in New York City were female-authored. Here at Round House, we're trying to change that. Just look at who came out to play this year: Karen Zacarías, Mary Hall Surface, Sarah Ruhl and currently Melanie Marnich. These are amongst the most talented and creative voices working in the theatre today - male or female.
But sometimes, we just need a little reminder. Supporting their work matters. A lot.

I could be wrong to assume a causal connection to the conversation we all were engaging in two weeks prior, but I'd like to think that this is an example of a theatre realizing that overtly supporting women playwrights, and telling their audience why it's important, can get people to the theater, and can make subscribers a little less squeamish.

The very same hour, I kid you not, I got an email from another DC friend. She had just gotten her Studio Theatre season brochure in the mail and was dismayed it features only male playwrights.

The fact that this friend noticed this underscores what I suspect is one of the disconnects between the genders about awareness of this issue. I know that every time I look at a table of contents in a magazine, or a theatre's season listing, when it's all men, it really stands out. And believe me, it happens a lot. (And often, when women are included, they are dolled-up or admired for a saucy, cultivated foul-mouthedness.) Each week I get an email from the New Yorker telling me what's waiting for me in my mailbox at home, and so many times the entire list of writers is men.

I caught part of the Tonys while I was in Atlantic City, and I was struck by how purposefully women seemed to be included, whether it were a wife brought on stage by a male Tony winner, or another award winner making sure to say that God of Carnage succeeds because of Reza's script, that the director and translator did not fix or improve it (I'm paraphrasing, but you know what I mean).

So I believe that, as often as I have seen male colleagues roll their eyes or disengage from this conversation (oh the sting of not being listened to), there are many more male colleagues (many of them married or with daughters at home) who care deeply about this issue. And I believe that progress will be exponential. Well, I hope so anyway.

And for those men who might want to understand more viscerally why this is such a huge issue for women, I recommend a specific book to read. It's a classic piece of writing that had an enormous impact on the conversation about women's issues when it was published in the 1970s, and it had an enormous impact on me when I read it decades later. It specifically speaks to the creation of art, and to the creation of art by women. It explores, succinctly and powerfully, the many reasons women are often silent, or are silenced. It's aptly called Silences, and it was written by Tillie Olsen, who passed away a few years ago.

It's around 300 pages, but if you just read the first section (there are three), which is about 50 pages, you'll see why it is such an important piece of writing. (And you'll probably be so fascinated that you'll continue reading.)

When I went to the MacDowell Colony, I went around my studio looking at all the names written on the wall of who had been there before me. Tillie Olsen was one of the names. I re-read Silences while I was there, and an artistic director of a theatre, who knew of my admiration for Olsen, suggested I write something up inspired by her work. I spent a few days inquiring about rights and got nowhere. I wrote Olsen a letter. She died shortly after.

I never wrote my piece on her, and I don't think I ever will. It's a fool's endeavor to try to re-work something that is already in its perfect form.

TWEETABLES: The Casino Edition

2009-06-08T16:10:00.003-04:00

Spent the weekend in Atlantic City.

While my friend and his boyfriend played poker to the tune of several hundred dollars (and came out ahead, because they're smart like that), I napped, drank carrot juice, stared at the ocean, got a massage, and learned that straight men travel in packs.

Also? Some people are enormous.

Jumped into Monday with both feet. Killed myself during Pilates today. I have plans to carve out some blogging time for my playwrighty thoughts, as well as write a guest post on another blog about social media. Also, making revisions to MAY 39th/40th, which goes into rehearsal on the 21st. Also have to create the banner ad and postcard art for said play, and give feedback on the press release the producer wrote.

All I wanna do is nap, but I'm jacked up on a venti green tea lemonade, light ice, two pumps of classic.

THURSDAY SLICE O' PIE: The 8-Minute Mile

2009-05-28T14:53:00.004-04:00

I have goodness to share, including more follow-up from the Primary Stages/women playwrights discussion of last week. I also would love to share with you how I benefitted from a perfect storm of exhaustion from travelling to DC, finishing my play in the middle of the night (35 pages in 9 hours!), thinking about the PS issue, hearing my play read in DC (which is about a woman artist), and talking to a compassionate friend over the weekend. All these ingredients delivered a walloping epiphany of the first order Monday night at 2:30am.

Then I got on a bus a few hours later and slammed back into NY.

Since I am swamped with desk-jockey responsibilities today, that post will have to wait.

I do, however, have time for a quickie.

Okay.

Eight minutes.

It takes me eight minutes to get from the subway to my front door at night. And it's never boring. I don't know if it matters what I was wearing this particular night, but I will tell you it involved 3-inch high red boots and a super cool jacket. In order, I encountered:

A bug-eyed man who lurched toward me and grunted hello as he crossed my path as if he were a zombie after my brains.
Another man who asked for food.
Another man kissed me from afar and mumbled something as he walked behind me.
A pantsless man lying on the sidewalk, with people leaning over him.
Three teenage boys sitting on a stoop.

It was not until I got inside my apartment (aka my nap-cubby) that I realized I had been parading my Chipotle food bag through my Dominican neighborhood the whole time.

I seriously don't know how to blend.

COMPS available for my reading in DC on Monday

2009-05-21T17:37:00.006-04:00

Holla, DC friendlies.

Meant to do this 2 days ago, but it got set aside by the important Primary Stages discussion.

There's a special event this coming Monday in DC. It's a reading of a new play of mine that's based on the life of Italian Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola. It's part of Washington Shakespeare Company's reading series at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The reading starts at 7pm, and will last 90 minutes, for those of you not wanting to stay out too late on a school/work night. There will be a talkback afterwards.

This is the same play that got an airing at the Kennedy Center last fall in a reading of the first 40 pages. It's more fully developed now, and I can't wait to hear it out loud. I am blessed to have an AMAZING cast and director. I'm very excited about this, and would love to see as many of my DC friends in the audience as possible.

SOFONISBA
by Callie Kimball
directed by Dorothy Neumann
with Heather Haney, Barbara Klein, Joseph Thornhill, and Sunshine Cappelletti as Sofonisba Anguissola

MON 5.25 7pm
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Ave NW, Washington, DC 20005
202.783.5000 800.222.7270

$10 in advance, or pay-what-you-can at the door. Tickets may be purchased at www.boxofficetickets.com/wsc or 1.800.494.TIXS (8497).

IF YOU WOULD LIKE COMPS, please leave a comment here with the number of tickets you'd like and I will reserve them for you. Please please make sure if you reserve comps, that you make it to the reading! :-)

TO AUTOMATICALLY get notices of my events, please sign up for my mailing list. 26 emails in 2+ years, so it's not scary. :-)

Index of Posts Re: Primary Stages All-Female Season Response

2009-05-21T13:07:00.003-04:00

For everyone's convenience:

The original post that drew so much attention, outlining an activist response to the news that some subscribers were refusing to renew subscriptions to Primary Stages because their '09-'10 season is three plays written by women. (http://tinyurl.com/pkajyd)

A response from Primary Stages verifying this assertion. (http://tinyurl.com/onxkvm)

A response filled with statistics sent by the original sender of the email that brought this to my attention. (http://tinyurl.com/p5gp98)

A phenomenally varied and long list of women playwrights that Adam Szymkowicz began in response to this, and to which people are adding dozens of names. (http://tinyurl.com/oc2vg3)

Submission statistics by gender from my work as Literary Manager for Red Bull Theater. (http://tinyurl.com/qv8qhc)

And, the shortest of all:

Why this issue is important to me. (http://tinyurl.com/pava66)

Why This Issue Is Important to Me

2009-05-21T12:41:00.007-04:00

I am signed up for various news aggregates, and through them, I read about issues in the area of maternal mortality, mass rape, and fistula in developing countries.

Every.

Day.

And every day I am sickened and enraged; but above all, I feel helpless.

Every minute, a woman dies in childbirth or from complications of childbirth. That's 1,440 women each day. Dead.

An 8-year-old girl is living with fistula after being raped for two weeks by grown men.

In Liberia, Doctors Without Borders (as reported by Nicholas Kristof) states that, of 275 new sexual violence cases treated in the first four months of 2009, 61% of those sexually violent acts were committed on girls aged 12 and under. That's in four months alone. And those are just the cases that have been documented. By just one organization.

As anyone reading this blog probably knows, Lynn Nottage's play, "Ruined," produced by Manhattan Theatre Club, recently won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play, which Nottage researched in the Congo, tells the story of a group of women living in a brothel, and how they manage the effects of sexual violence as a consequence of war.

And that, dear readers, is where the intersection of art and social media grabs my attention the most: both art and social media, through artists and advocates, are tools through which we can, and must, give a voice to the voiceless.

We need to hear from women writers. In all fields. Playwriting and social media just happen to be my fields, and by finding and strengthening my voice in both, I begin to feel a little less helpless.

Statistics from My Work as Literary Manager

2009-05-21T11:57:00.004-04:00

It occurred to me late last night, that as a Literary Manager, I have my own statistics I could count and share, since I keep a spreadsheet detailing all of the submissions we receive.

Of 118 submissions I've read in the last 6 months (when I came on board), 112 were written by playwrights whose names clearly indicated gender (or whose gender I happen to know).

Of those 112 scripts, 86 were by men, and 23 were by women.

Of the 86 written by men, I recommended 21 for a second read, and 2 for a must-read.

Of the 23 written by women, I recommended 9 for a second read, and 2 for a must-read.

I am horrible at ratio-figuring, but that's roughly 1 in 4 scripts by men that are of a quality I would recommend be considered for a production or reading, and roughly 1 in 2.5 scripts by women I would judge the same.

So the issue, at Red Bull Theater at least, is not one of quality, though we have an admittedly slim mission (Jacobean plays and adaptations of the same) that certainly has an impact on the gender of most of the playwrights we select.

If I meet you and you're a playwright, I'll pretty much always ask you to send me something, in case you happen to be working on an adaptation (that's rarely the case, but you never know what people are working on). (And if I forget to ask, please just send anyways, if you have something on-mission.)

The only part of my job where I am conscious of gender is in sourcing plays. I ask women to submit plays all the time, and yet I rarely get submissions from those same women. Or I'll hear of a female playwright whose work intrigues me, but the email link on their web page (if they even have a web page) is dead. I know that, as a playwright myself, I rarely feel like a script of my own is good enough to send out, and often I hear echoes of this from other women playwrights. I try to go the extra mile in encouraging women to submit, but once I am reading submissions, I am looking for the best material within the confines of our mission.

Those are my thoughts from that perspective.

List of Women Playwrights

2009-05-21T11:49:00.003-04:00

Playwright Adam Szymkowicz began a thread on his blog in response to this issue, listing female playwrights whose work he would like to see produced more. He invited people to submit their own suggestions, and there are quite a few women on this list. Take a look.

Statistics on Women Playwrights

2009-05-21T11:20:00.005-04:00

Welcome back, people.

I appreciate so many people visiting yesterday's post (561 page loads, 376 unique visitors), engaging in discussion, taking action by buying season subscriptions (!), and sharing their responses here. I can tell by the continued jump in blog traffic that this issue interests a great many people, and that alone is very heartening for those of us who care and are directly affected by this issue.

For those of you just joining us, yesterday I posted an email that had been forwarded to me, encouraging people to take action and support Primary Stages' all-female playwright season by buying a season subscription, even if you are out of town. I posted it here and on Twitter. In the afternoon, Primary Stages responded, verifying that some subscribers had said the reason they were not renewing their subscription was because their season was plays by women.

Many people expressed a healthy skepticism yesterday, wanting more specific sources and statistics on the issue. Late last night I heard from the person who wrote the initial email suggesting that buying a season subscription to Primary Stages in response subscribers not renewing due to the all-female bill. I have pasted her information in its entirety below.

In a separate post, I am sharing my own statistics on script submissions, broken down by gender, to Red Bull Theater, where I am Literary Manager.

==========================
From the Sender of the Original Email:

A report of some negative audience responses to Primary Stages' all-female authored 2009-2010 season was mentioned on the International Centre for Women Playwrights listserve on May 8, 2009. On the listserve, there was an informal request from ICWP members for brainstorming about ways we might suggest to help garner more support for the Primary Stages season.
The "buying of a 2009-2010 season subscription and donating it to an emerging New York female playwright" campaign was a female playwright's response.

Some current facts about female playwrights in the U.S.:

From 1660-1680, women playwrights accounted for only 7% of the plays produced in London.-Donkin, Ellen. Getting Into the Act: Women Playwrights in London, 1776-1829. London: Routledge. Page 1
According to recent Dramatists Guild statistics, in 2007 & 2008, only “9-11%” of all productions in Regional, League of Resident Theatres [L.O.R.T.], and Off-Broadway theatres were written by women.- Garrison, Gary. “Numbers.” Dramatists Guild of America E-Flash. Newsletter to Members. 26 Feb. 2009.

Playwright Theresa Rebeck, in her 9 September 2008 essay for The Guardian entitled “Broadway’s Glass Ceiling” states that for the 2008/2009 New York theater season, plays penned by women constituted only 12.6% of the shows in New York venues. - Rebeck, Theresa. “Broadway’s Glass Ceiling.” 9 Sept. 2008. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2008/sep/09/broadwaysglassceiling

“One hundred years ago, in 1908-1909, according to Internet Broadway Database, nearly 13% of new straight plays on New York stages were by women.”- Jordan, Julia. “Women Playwrights: Equality in Production.” The Dramatist. Jan/Feb 2009. Vol. II, no. 3. 36-37.

Rebeck cites the 1908-1909 data specifically at “12.8%.” That means in the 2008-2009 season in New York, there were .2% less female-penned shows than in 1908, at the beginning of the 20th century.

This is even more surprising when considering other related statistics, such as in 2000, the U.S. Census reported that females comprised 51% of the U.S. population.- Spraggins, Reneé. “We the People: Women and Men in the United States.” Census 2000 Special Reports.” January 2005. http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/censr-20.pdf

And of course, it is worth noting that there are now thousands of female playwrights in the United States.

Women constitute 40% of the Dramatists Guild today; 2,230 females are members. - Garrison, Gary. “Numbers.” Dramatists Guild of America E-Flash. Newsletter to Members. 26 Feb. 2009

This 2,230 figure under-represents the actual number of female playwrights living in the United States, as many female playwrights cannot afford to be current members of the DG, and/or have not yet been “identified." So a conservative guess is there are 5,000 female playwrights or MORE in the United
States right now.

Primary Stages Response

2009-05-20T16:58:00.003-04:00

Here is the full response I received from Jessica Sadowski Comas, Director of Development for Primary Stages to this post about the news that subscribers are not renewing because their season exclusively features female playwrights. I have also pasted it in the comments section of the original post.

==============

Dear Callie,

Thank you for reaching out to me regarding Primary Stages upcoming 25th Anniversary Season. As you know, we are delighted to be celebrating this milestone anniversary with a season of new works, written by three very talented women, that we believe will be enjoyed and appreciated by audiences and participating artists. While there are several organizations that dedicate their work to female artists, we are aware that female playwrights have been under-represented in established venues and applaud efforts by any institution or individual to bring some balance to this issue.

To clarify, I can confirm that subscription renewals are progressing at a slower pace than they did last year, a trend that many American theaters are experiencing at this time. We have received comments from subscribers who have chosen not to renew for various reasons and, unfortunately, a few have indicated that our season of all-female playwrights is the reason. At the same time, we are gratified by an [sic] stronger positive response to our announcement. On behalf of Primary Stages, I apologize if there was any misunderstanding that led anyone to believe that all non-renewing subscribers were responding negatively to the gender of our playwrights.

Thank you to everyone who has rallied behind our season or who has purchased a subscription for a young, female playwright to attend our 25th Anniversary Season. If you have any more questions, feel free to write me back.

All best,
Jessica Sadowski Comas Director of Development
Primary Stages 307 West 38th Street, Suite 1510 New York, NY 10018 T: 212.840.9705 F: 12.840.9725 www.primarystages.org
25th Anniversary Season - New works by Cusi Cram, Charlayne Woodard, Lucinda Coxon

PLEASE TAKE A STAND: Subscribers Refusing to Renew for Primary Stages All-Female Season

2009-05-20T11:22:00.015-04:00

5.21.09 12:25pm UPDATES to the post below:

The response from Primary Stages. (http://tinyurl.com/onxkvm)
Statistics on women playwrights from the original email sender, as well as how the info on Primary Stages originally got out. (http://tinyurl.com/p5gp98)
Why this issue is important to me. (http://tinyurl.com/pava66)
Info on a list started by Adam Szymkowicz, and added to by others, of women playwrights needing more productions. (http://tinyurl.com/oc2vg3)
Statistics from my script submissions log as Literary Manager. (http://tinyurl.com/qv8qhc)

=====================================

Yesterday I got the email below. I was unaware of subscriber resistance to supporting the all-female season of plays that Primary Stages is producing.

Women theatre-goers are asked to support all-male seasons All. The. Time.

If you believe, as I do, that hearing what women have to say is important, and that Primary Stages shouldn't be punished for producing them, then please consider buying a season subscription. It's $128. If that's too much, please consider joining forces with friends to purchase a subscription. Primary Stages has set it up so that, if you are out of town, you can donate your subscription to a female playwright in NYC.

Massive Understatement: It will take time to undo gender bias, to show the importance of hearing and strengthening the voices of women. Women are discounted and diminished all the time in the media and popular culture, whether it's politicians being criticized for being ambitious, mothers for working (or not--they can't win), etc. Women even diminish themselves and each other.

Gender bias is hard for many people to even see, but for those of us who live with it, it is enough to push us toward rage and despair over the feeling of powerlessness. Those of us who believe this issue is important must support these playwrights, so that their work can be heard, and steps can begin to be taken towards understanding and strengthening the work of women, who have been marginalized in society far too long.

Please don't let this turn into an argument for theatres to further silencing women, as in, "Well, look what happens when you produce plays by women--no one comes! We can't afford that."

Thank you for listening. Here is a shortened link to this post for your convenience in spreading the word: http://tinyurl.com/pkajyd

======================

Dear Friends,

For the first time EVER in U.S. History, a theater in New York City is producing an entire season of all-female playwrights! This is fantastic news, right?

Especially since according to Dramatists Guild statistics, only 9-11% of the shows produced in 2008 in NYC and by professional regional theaters (Off-Broadway, Broadway, and LORT) were female-authored. That's right, only 9-11%. Note that no one even has an exact statistic! Gender bias is alive and well in the American theater.

Only, guess what? Word is out that some folks are complaining about this upcoming all-female season to Primary Stages and are not renewing their subscriptions. They say: "Why do a season of only women playwrights? And why haven't I heard of these women?"

The fact is that 100 years ago, the statistic was HIGHER in New York City for productions of the works of women playwrights than it was just last year (12.8% in 1908, 12.6% in 2008 ). You can't hear of women playwrights if they aren't getting any productions! And in 100 years, it's gotten worse, not better.

It's time to take a stand.

A subscription to the Primary Stages costs $128. I have purchased one season subscription as a political/artistic show of support for Primary Stages and in symbolic sisterhood with female playwrights; my ticket is being given to a young female playwright in New York City, so that she can enjoy their season in my stead.

I know we live in extraordinarily pressing times at every level. But if you, too, care about the voices of women being heard in the American theater, please consider donating to Primary Stages to show support for their 2009-2010 season of female playwrights. The thought is this: if we show enough theaters in the USA that people care and will pay for plays by women, then other theaters might seek to do the same--or at least bring the slate of their seasons to a more 50-50 equitable level in terms of representation of female playwrights! Women are 51% of the U.S. population, after all.I know $128 is a lot of money. Even if you can't afford $128, perhaps join in with a group of friends, and collectively sponsor a ticket for a young female playwright (or a New Yorker of your choice) to experience the Primary Stages season, too--and take a stand against gender bias in playwriting in the U.S.

You can mail donations to:
Jessica Comas, Director of Development, Primary Stages, 307 West 38th Street, Suite 1510, New York, NY 10018

You can e-mail Jessica at: jessica@primarystages.org.

You can also check out their season at primarystages.org, and don't miss their "Support" page which lists all of their programs.

Feel free to forward this information to anyone. I would appreciate you taking out my name from the e-mail header if you do forward it, so that the total focus is on the content.

Sincerely,
[name redacted at sender's request]

TWEETABLES: The Velveteen Rabbit Edition

2009-05-07T11:36:00.012-04:00

I'm almost real.

Checklist for My Transformation into a Real New Yorker

COMPLETED
Foil a mugger.
Get a cool-sounding job.
Give directions in the Village.
Have stuff stolen from my room.
Ditch self-deprecation.
Buy extravangantly priced footwear.
Do standup.
Move 3 times in 4 months.
Never cook at home.
Get impossibly lost on the subway.
Pay people to do my laundry.
Laugh at a rat climbing stairs.
Laugh at a guy puking on the subway.
Hold my own in a roommate-story contest.
Get my super to hate me.

PENDING
Be an unwitting drug mule.
Fall for someone who lives somewhere embarrassing.
Get swindled.

I'm soooo close I can taste it.

So Grateful.

2009-05-02T22:58:00.006-04:00

Rats Spotted on the Subway Today: 4 (1 big + 3 little)

I am meeting so many awesome people in NY. People are very open here and so smart and creative and interesting. It's also really pushing me to put myself out there more with my own projects that I want to do. Before (and this will sound strange to those of you who know me), I sort of sat back and let things come to me. Yes, I produced my own plays and got projects going for other people, but I didn't go knock on doors and say Hey, Here I Am And This Is What I Want To Do. It was a hellluvalot easier for me to produce my own stuff than to ask someone else to produce my work.

I've been very naughty about posting here. There is still a plan for me to get the occasional substantive post on here about the things I care more deeply about. Right now I'm scrambling to get all my work done, and it's taken a full six months to get my feet under me with all the moving around I had to do at first, learning the ropes at my new job(s), and navigating my way around a new city. But I'm getting my bearings, and I'm dreaming big. Which of course means there will be disappointments big, but I'm ready.

TWEETABLES: Here I Am!

2009-04-20T11:56:00.004-04:00

Twitter is so frickin' awesome. I love that so many of my friends are joining.

Wanted to pop in and say hello to anyone who might be rattling around here on my blog, wondering when the hell I'm going to post again.

NY is AWESOME! I sort of can't blog about every good thing that's happening, because some stuff I just don't want to jinx, but I can tell you that I am so much happier here than I was in DC, that it really is a good fit, and that there's some sweet career traction that's taking hold.

(Twitter's awesome, btw.)

I will have some announcements shortly--including casting for MAY 39th/40th and my first international production. I'll also be one of the 140 "Characters" at the Twitter Conference here in NYC in June.

(Twitter. Really.)

Spent the weekend in DC. It was such a joy to see so many friends. It will take a little while to find My People here in NY--the people who I'll really click with, who'll be good to collaborate with, and who'll be good to hang out with.

In the meantime, my boss is sort of my everything. We share a cube. He was raised by theater people. His girlfriend's amazing. His life is amazing. He is a 28-year-old wunderkind former Olympian fencer with patents from his time at Microsoft I kid you not.

(Twitter.)

TWEETABLES: Your Mom.

2009-04-02T18:00:00.003-04:00

I tweeted my furiosity over my hours of trouble logging in to the NBC interwebz portal today.

@fedward sent me here.

Below is what transpired.

===================

ME: Hello.
ELIZA: How do you do. Please state your problem.
ME: i can't log in
ELIZA: How do you think that you can't log in ?
ME: because there are raisins in my coconut bar
ELIZA: Your coconut bar ?
ME: yes. my coconut bar
ELIZA: You seem to be quite positive.
ME: you seem to be annoying
ELIZA: We were discussing you -- not me.
ME: can you help me
ELIZA: You believe I can help you don't you ?
ME: not really
ELIZA: Earlier you said your coconut bar .
ME: it's mine
ELIZA: I'm not sure I understand you fully.
ME: mine
ELIZA: Please go on.
ME: m
ELIZA: What does that suggest to you ?
ME: i
ELIZA: You say you ?
ME: n
ELIZA: Do you feel strongly about discussing such things ?
ME: e
ELIZA: I'm not sure I understand you fully.
ME: MINE
ELIZA: Please go on.
ME: who are you?
ELIZA: Why are you interested in whether I am or not ?
ME: you are passive-aggressive
ELIZA: What makes you think I am passive aggressive ?
ME: you remind me of someone
ELIZA: In what way ?
ME: someone in my family
ELIZA: Tell me more about your family.
ME: i'd rather not
ELIZA: Does that have anything to do with the fact that your family ?
ME: that my family what?
ELIZA: Who else in your family what ?
ME: you suck
ELIZA: Oh, I suck ?
ME: yes. you suck
ELIZA: You are sure.
ME: quite sure
ELIZA: Does that have anything to do with the fact that your family what ?
ME: bite me
ELIZA: What does that suggest to you ?
ME: your mom
ELIZA: Why are you concerned over my mom ?
ME: i'm done here
ELIZA: Is it because you are done here that you came to me ?
ME: okay that's kind of beautiful
ELIZA: Do you feel strongly about discussing such things ?
ME: bite me
ELIZA: I'm not sure I understand you fully.

TWEETABLES: Oh yeah, I have a blog.

2009-03-25T15:28:00.003-04:00

Sorry.

I'm not pulling a fade-away. Promise.

Twitter's just so shiny and new. Come visit!

Off to Maine and Boston Thursday. Back Sunday.

Working 40 hrs at NBC, 10 hrs corporate blogging, 10 hrs at Red Bull Theater, plus writing three plays.

This is just one of those lulls in our relationship. We'll get back on track. Promise.

BFF Gets Glowing Review in Boston Globe...

2009-03-18T18:04:00.003-04:00

...for directing Sam Shepard's Fool for Love.

I'm going to see it at the end of the month.

In other news, I saw four rats at the Columbus Circle station.

AUDITION ANNOUNCEMENT

2009-03-18T15:40:00.007-04:00

MAY 39th takes a voyeuristic ride through the morning after a first date: Sam gives Louisa everything she wants, and a few things she hadn't bargained for. In MAY 40th, Jim takes creative steps to heal Roya's blindness. 1,000 years from now, dating in the city will still blow chunks. And playing doctor will be way more creepy.

11:11 Productions announces auditions for the 2009 Capital Fringe production of MAY 39th/40th by Callie Kimball, directed by Christy Denny. MAY 39th ("the play with the orange") was a sold-out hit at the 2006 Capital Fringe Festival. The play has been rebuilt for Fringe'09, where it will be produced alongside Kimball's follow-up play, MAY 40th.

WHO
Both Equity and non-Equity Actors encouraged to attend.

WHEN
Saturday, April 18 from 9:30 am – 12:30 pm. Callbacks are the evening of Sunday, April 19 by appointment.

WHERE
Clark Street Playhouse. 601 S. Clark Street Crystal City, VA 22202
Directions: http://www.washingtonshakespeare.org/directions.html

WHAT
Actors will be reading from the script. Walk-ins are welcome, but priority given to those with an appointment. To make an appointment, please email headshot, resume, and preferred audition times to: ElevenElevenDC@yahoo.com. You will receive confirmation of your time, as well as audition sides.

REHEARSALS
Begin mid-June at Clark Street Playhouse.

PERFORMANCES
Exact dates TBA; will run 5-6 performances between July 9-26 at a Fringe venue to be announced.

COMPENSATION
Actors will receive a portion of box office profits.

ROLES AVAILABLE
Sam/Jim: 20s-30s male, any ethnicity.
Louisa/Roya: 20s-30s female, any ethnicity.
(Actors will be double cast as Sam/Jim and Louisa/Roya.)

Here is a webpage for the play that will be updated regularly.

TWEETABLES: Twitter Haiku

2009-03-16T14:50:00.004-04:00

So yesterday, in jest, I set aside my iPhone, Priscilla, to write. I left my fellow tweeple with this imperative:

Next time I tweet will be to say I've finished my play. In my absence, please compose no less than two haiku about fire and haberdashery.

Much to my surprise, several people took me seriously. Below are there poems.

@raum
springtime is here now.
oh noes, my clothes are on fire.
Haberdashery.

@dceiver (he also posted these as @huffpost)
Fire, fire, hats on fire
But no pants aflame today?
Bah, suck it liars.

One word haiku lines?
Look, just use my old standby:
Haberdashery.

@linthenerd
stuck feather in cap
called macaroni to some
red plumage flaming

spark started in snaps
ignited ribbons, zippers
buttons melt at last

And a late addition to the mix, slightly stretching the format:

@bryanhansel

haberdasher's ha-
berdashery--throwing ab-
undant twigs into
her fire

TWEETABLES: Microblogging

2009-03-13T17:15:00.003-04:00

I have now persuaded several of you to join the cult known as Twitter.

For those of you resistant to my attempts at indoctrination, you can always just read my Twitter page. You don't have to create an account or anything.

It's called a microblog.

And it lives here.

Have I mentioned vulnerability makes me hostile?

2009-03-09T15:49:00.003-04:00

So I start a workshop tonight with Electric Pear for 2 months. We're working on a play of mine that now has only 30-odd pages, and which had a reading at the Kennedy Center last fall.

I usually write plays in which people beat each other up, often literally.

This is a play with romance and art and royalty.

I am freaked out.

Screw comfort zones.

CLICKWORTHY: New Thinking on Suicide

2009-03-07T14:33:00.000-05:00

Interesting.

TWEET TALK: The Power of the Tweet, Part One

2009-03-06T19:00:00.016-05:00

NOTE: If you are not on Twitter, simply substitute "party" for "Twitter," "hanging out" for "following," and "fellow partygoer" for "follower." Also, if you are not on Twitter, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU and here's a primer: Twitter is a place to give 140-character status updates ("tweets") that are read by your followers. You in turn read tweets of people you follow.

THE TWITTER FOLLOW DILEMMA
140-character version

Uh. Follow whoever you want. Or don't. Or follow them and then stop following them after a while. Just don't be neurotic, okay? And play nice.

THE TWITTER FOLLOW DILEMMA
long-form version

No. Seriously. It's that simple.

Okay, so you're on Twitter. And maybe you were cool enough to join before all the recent publicity about it.

The first person you "followed" was the friend who bugged you for weeks to join and who kept insisting it wasn't lame. The second person you followed was Shaquille O'Neal.

Then you sat back and waited for something to happen. Maybe you figured out how to change the color of your profile background. Then you waited some more.

Maybe you found some celebrities to follow, but you quickly unfollowed them because a) they have to be "nice" and everyone knows nice equals boring, b) they're never going to talk to you, and c) half of them have their assistants doing the tweeting.

Then you found the fake celebrities: Fake Rahm Emmanuel, Fake Michael Bay, Fake Nick Nolte. Much better.

You were excited to find Malcolm Gladwell, but you immediately unfollowed him when you realize he and his hairdo never tweet.

You couldn't wait to tell all your friends that David Lynch does a daily vlog of the weather. Then you got upset when your friends didn't believe you. Now that they've joined, they're following David Lynch, and you've been twelve kinds of validated as an "early adopter."

Now you're in the thick of it.

You've found the news. You've met the Fail Whale. You're following Rachel Maddow, Senator McCaskill, Neil Gaiman, Nicholas Krystof, Pete Cashmore, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone. You know what TED is. Sort of. You're following museums, theaters, publishers, green non-profits, Mediabistro and TheMime. You're mainlining Reuters, and you think it's stingy that Stephen Colbert has a profile but never tweets. You've learned to block all those hot chicks who love to party and are giving away free laptops.

You have the epigrammatic patter of the tweet down to a science, and you're continually asking yourself, in an affectionate, self-dramatizing way, "Is this tweetable?"

You understand that Twitter is a more powerful search tool than Google. You get it that Twitter is invaluable during a real emergency. You know people can get jobs through Twitter. You're disappointed that both Brian Williams and Jon Stewart are so foolish as to diss something they clearly don't understand. Twitter has become your first source for news, and you think it should become the first source for news for all major news outlets, seeing as they're hours behind Twitter in reporting breaking news anyway.

With newspapers folding and traditional media tanking, attention must be paid to the power of the tweet.

But back to you. Prescient, smarty-pants you.

You've gained followers, you've lost followers, all the while not knowing why.

Karl Rove has DM'd you. Twice.

Now you're leaving your real friends in the twittery dust. Maybe you even unfollowed some of them because they couldn't be bothered to upload a picture, or maybe they never tweet. It's like they showed up at a party in sweats and are slouching in the corner, picking at a muffin. Why should you have to look at their mopey face?

It's called "unfollow." And it's okay.

You're not obligated to follow your followers, just as the people you follow aren't obligated to follow you back.

The party metaphor has legs here...

Twitter is a party. A party of roughly 7 million people. The point is not to try to meet (follow) everyone, nor is it to have everyone meet (follow) you. The point is to have conversations that have currency, in every sense of the word. To wit:

1) At a party, you don't talk to the same people all night; same with Twitter.
2) At a party, you listen for a bit, contribute conversationally, and move on; same with Twitter.
3) At a party, if you never speak up, people will leave you by the fruit salad; it's called "unfollow" with Twitter.
4) At a party, if you babble endlessly, people will put you IN the fruit salad; it's called "block" with Twitter. (Or just unfollow if you're too nice to block.)

The key to being a good party guest is to listen attentively, and also to contribute something interesting. It's fine to offer up brief, witty, self-oriented epiphanies, but you're better off with sharing newsy bits, or book recommendations, or solutions to a problem someone's having.

But you can stop worrying whether someone you follow is following you, or whether someone who once followed you has now unfollowed you. And stop feeling guilty that you don't follow all your followers. Or go ahead and follow them all, because really, who cares? (If you're OCD, don't follow everyone because you'll never get anything done. Or use it to self-medicate if that's what gets you through your day.) Shape Twitter to your own purposes like the wonderfully malleable tool that it is. Give yourself and others permission NOT to equate following with personal self-worth. No one needs that kind of pressure.

After all, it's just a party.

CLICKWORTHY: I guess there's such a thing as black guilt, too.

2009-03-06T10:59:00.002-05:00

In case you missed it, The NY Times wrote about Tracey Scott Wilson's experience writing "The Good Negro."

CLICKWORTHY: Lady Munny Edition

2009-03-05T13:56:00.001-05:00

In case you missed it, The New York Times wrote a short article saying women earn less than men.

Shocker.

TWEETABLES: From Detox to Retox

2009-03-04T12:34:00.002-05:00

Just bought a 2-day liquid power cleanse, despite my better judgment.

Because I cannot swallow 12 pills a day for 7 days, or 14 days, or 21 days or whatever.

I will not be leaving my apartment this weekend.

And I already have the DTs from Starfux withdrawal.

So relieved.

2009-03-03T14:36:00.002-05:00

So there's this playwright who's all hot shit, right? I had seen two productions of her plays, and was nonplussed. Literally. Like, pretty sure there was a reason she was such a big deal, and wondered each time if I had just seen productions that didn't do her work justice.

So I saw That Pretty Pretty, or The Rape Play and feel like I finally saw a production led by a director who could match the theatricality of one of her scripts. Seemed like an even pairing.

I found myself appreciating the play in different ways as it progressed:

1: enjoy stereotypes
2: click in to narrative structure
3: wonder where the hell that came from
4: admire pretty pretty monologue
5: find the rage the rage it is there
6: love the way the boys are just the way boys are
7: be sad, laugh at rape, hope

Anyway, I'd much rather enjoy a fellow playwright's work than not know what to say about it.

TWEETABLES: Darth Vader Edition

2009-03-02T16:58:00.001-05:00

There's something unnerving about Karl Rove direct-messaging you on Twitter.

Twice.

BAGEL SIGHTING: Testosterone Variety

2009-03-02T15:59:00.000-05:00

De Niro, JT, and Van Morrison are in the house for the first taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

They replaced the regular-size elevator guards with giant bald bouncers.

And there are screamy girls everywhere.

TWEETABLES: Neediness

2009-03-01T16:35:00.004-05:00

I need to do one of those 10-day nutritional deep cleanse detox spring cleany things. Any recommendations? If you're in NYC, any good health stores?

AND ANYONE KNOW HOW I CAN GET IN TO SEE OTHELLO AT TNA? They're sold out and I'm happy to stand in the back. Gonna go in person and see if'n I can wheedle my way in.

I also wanna see IN THE HEIGHTS, AUGUST OSAGE COUNTY, AVENUE Q, and RUINED in the next month-ish, if anyone is interested in joining me.

CLICKWORTHY: How do people not know this?

2009-02-27T16:17:00.004-05:00

It depresses me a little how surprised people seem that this goes on.

BAGEL SIGHTING: Dammit. I used to be so good with names.

2009-02-27T12:38:00.001-05:00

Saw one from one of my fave Law & Order SVU episodes.

Saw another who's the regular commentator on health topics for all the NBC news outlets.

I WISH THEY WORE NAMETAGS!

CLICKWORTHY: Best Halloweeen Costume Ever.

2009-02-26T16:33:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I love working with a bunch of techno-nerds who show me cool things they find on the interwebs.

Tweetables: Join the cult, already.

2009-02-24T17:18:00.002-05:00

In case you don't know, I'm on Twitter like a jackrabbit, dancin' 'round that hole.

This is a test

2009-02-22T00:56:00.002-05:00

Posting from my iPhone, Priscilla.

All I can think to say is that, often--daily, actually--I don't think
there's a point to saying much of anything at all.

There are no words for the important stuff.

I'm not lonely, but ever since I was very young, I've been very aware
of how deeply isolated we all are, of how meaningless our lives are
and how we scramble to assign meaning; and I think with each play I
write, I'm trying to find a way to be more resolved to that idea,
because I want to tell people that I think it's beautiful.

BAGEL SIGHTING: Red Alert

2009-02-20T09:33:00.003-05:00

There are bagel-wranglers everywhere, and new velvet ropes in the elevator banks. Then they shut down the commissary while we were in it for a Very Important Meeting.

Something's going down.

Tweetables

2009-02-19T16:32:00.003-05:00

If all parents were qualified, there would be no art in the world.

I am excelling at that thing that people do when they first move to New York. It's called exhaustion.

Tweetables

2009-02-18T17:13:00.000-05:00

I dreamt I won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for a 90-second part in a film. My acceptance speech: "This is ridiculous. I'm a playwright."

Then I accidentally walked into a men's latrine.

BAGEL SIGHTING: Crap, I'm not allowed to say.

2009-02-18T13:06:00.004-05:00

So working at the Peacock I see my fair share of bagels. I stopped mentioning it every single time because, well, that would be obnoxious.

I will say most bagels are much tinier in person than on TV.

So I was working late last night at 30 Rock (and by "working" what I really mean is deleting my Facebook stuff), and someone stopped by to tell me I should go down to the floor where they're rehearsing this thing that I can't tell you about if I want to keep my weird little job. So I went and stood in the back. Next to a bagel who clearly did not want to be recognized.

Once it airs I can tell you about it.

But it was cool.

CLICKWORTHY: Facebook's Fiery Death

2009-02-17T22:05:00.003-05:00

Just spent the evening rather melodramatically deleting every status update, blog import, photo from my Facebook account. Then I emailed every single of my 545 friends before deleting them as well.

Why?

It came to light over the weekend that earlier this month, Facebook changed its Terms of Service. I learned of this Sunday night from Sasha Frere Jones on Twitter, with further elucidation from Mashable.

Now it turns out, there is a formal Federal complaint being filed against Facebook this week.

Yesterday, the NY Times online chimed in.

WebTechLaw gave their opinion on the legalities.

And Amanda French crafted a detailed comparison on the various TOS agreements of the biggest social sites.

My first stand-up gig.

2009-02-17T09:10:00.002-05:00

I'm working on how to upload the video to Youtube or Blogger. (It's an avi file and I need to convert it to another type of file.) It's hard to hear me, I'm washed out, you can totally tell I wore the wrong kind of bra, and apparently I ate a hippopotamus right before going on stage.

The text of my routine:

So I just moved to New York City.
Yeah, which is awesome but it's also like entering an abusive relationship. Actually, it's more like entering an S&M relationship. And there's paperwork involved.
I moved from Washington DC and I'm so glad I got outta there before all this Obama mania happened, I mean I'm as liberal as the next intelligent person, but these people are like crazy, right? I mean, inauguration day, the ceremony, the ceremony was nice, right? They COULDA been all melodramatic and released white doves.
But they just released white guilt.
But the people? Twitter and Facebook were blowing up with these[crying] "omg he's so…I'm so…it's so…humanity."
All of a sudden all my friends became inarticulate teenage girls with a crush. But now that Barry's in office, they're acting all betrayed, like Oh He's Changed. He wasn't like this when we were dating. It's like a scene from He's Just Not That Into You.
I saw this coming. See, I've dated Barack Obama. Ok, I haven't DATED Barack Obama because that would be RIDICULOUS, but I've dated guys LIKE Barack Obama—rich, good-looking, smart, big penis, whatever—and I'm here to tell you, they're a bunch of lazy motherfuckers. Give me a nebbish guy any day. You got back hair? Bring it. 'Cause I know, YOU know, you're gonna have to WORK for it. But a guy like Barack Obama's all, Oh Baby I'm sorry I fell asleep. You just give such gooooood blow jobs!
Yeah. Takes a strong woman to regulate a Barack Obama. Michelle is a strong woman. This is how it went down, Michelle, she said: All right. Barry. I'll give up my two-hundred-seventy-five-thousand-dollar-a-year job. That I love. So you can follow your dream. That's one-point-one million dollars. Per term. But if I DO that baby, my mama's moving in with us, and YOU'RE giving ME a blow job tonight.

Sometimes on the subway...

2009-02-16T09:27:00.002-05:00

...very late at night, you see very drunk men in suits.

And sometimes, if you're really lucky, you see one vomit.

Sleep is for pussies.

2009-02-15T17:21:00.003-05:00

I have become one of those people who functions on four or five hours of sleep.

It is a very good thing that I no longer drive a car.

Took a LAByrinth two-day workshop this weekend and it was exactly what I needed. I used it to dive into a beginning for a piece that I plan on performing myself with a friend at DC Fringe '10.

Usually I know about 70% of what I'm doing when I sit down to start building a play.

This time I only knew about 20%--what she's saying and why she's saying it.

Anyway, I took a leap. I was on the verge of tears so many times during the class, because I felt so incredibly vulnerable. But I did it, and I shared my work, and I got what seemed to be a genuinely positive response, with a few people coming up to me afterwards to say how much it resonated with them. I half-expected people to be like wtf your piece is just too weird, which would have been fine, as negative opinions never really deter me from my goal, but encouragement is always a useful thing.

THURSDAY SLICE: On outsourcing.

2009-02-12T13:54:00.006-05:00

I need to hire someone to sleep for me. Should be fairly easy in this economy. They're paying people to sleep here.

Today: Regular job + corporate blogging, followed by my first stand-up gig.
Tomorrow: Meetings, then "Ruined" @ MTC.
Saturday: LAB workshop. Writing.
Sunday: LAB workshop. Juilliard reading.

But the most important thing is the 3 minutes of stand-up tonight. Not sure where I can practice beforehand--the restroom here at 30 Rock not so private.

Tweetables

2009-02-11T17:57:00.004-05:00

The janitorial engineer just spent about three minutes telling me that I should really have a better chair. I agree, but will do nothing about it.

My cat, IJ, says I'm ready for stand-up tomorrow night. I cut out the rape jokes--since my bad haircut from last week, I just don't have the confidence to pull them off.

I lost something like 6 pounds last week using my iPhone app Lose It.

I'm taking a solo performance material-generating workshop this weekend at LAByrinth.

I have a ton of friends in town this week, plus a bunch more coming to tomorrow night's gig

And I have a big conference call Friday with the retailer I'm doing corporate blogging for.

I'm stoked for all these things!

EVENT: Stand-up!

2009-02-10T16:33:00.004-05:00

WHO: Me
WHAT: A comedy show with me doing a whole minute of stand-up for the first time ever.
WHEN: This Thursday, Feb. 12, 7:30pm
WHERE: Downstairs @ Comix in Ochi's Lounge, 14th Street @ 9th Ave. NYC
DOLLAZ: No cover, 1-drink minimum
WHY: Because whether I turn out to be funny in person under bright lights with a mic in my hand, or whether I go down in flames, it's sure to be entertaining.

CLICKWORTHY: Bacon. As art.

2009-02-07T19:22:00.001-05:00

[NSFVegans.]

Tweetables

2009-02-06T11:26:00.003-05:00

OMG I just figured out why Favorites on Twitter is so great.

Can you name something grosser than half of a leftover chicken pesto sammy exploding in your messenger bag? (And yes, I ate it. The first half had been too tasty not to venture reassembly.)

I am beginning to suspect that no one in NY actually has sex.

BAGEL SIGHTING: Variety Pack

2009-02-05T11:20:00.007-05:00

I inferred the four of them were bagels from the following:

they had guest IDs
they did not know how to scan their guest IDs
they seemed self-important ("...and that's why it's good to drink gin in the morning.")
they were highly groomed and expensively thin
their posture was that of people who wish to be photographed
they had exciting briefcases
they argued about who had more meetings scheduled
they discussed where the meeting for the pilot was, and
when they got off at the 7th floor, a young blonde woman with a clipboard who was waiting for them greeted them warmly yet deferentially.

But I did not recognize them.

THURSDAY SLICE: On Coming Out.

2009-02-05T01:30:00.000-05:00

I'm outing myself.

As of yet, there is no actual mention of my real name on this blog, and I'd like to keep it that way, please, commenters (all two of you). But tonight I linked this blog to my website and Facebook page, and above is my Twitter feed.

So there.

I'm out.

I hope you like the new layout. I pruned prior entries and tags, and added a whole mess o' links on the sidebar: news outlets, blogs, etc. (I did that mostly for my own convenience, but I hope you find them useful, too.)

I'm very excited to get back in the swing of regular posts. My goal is to write one longer post each week, and that will become the new THURSDAY SLICE.

BUT FIRST,

I have six 8.5x11 sheets of to-do lists that I need to power through. It's all the accumulated detritus from when I wrote those 10 plays the last few years, remember? I'm gunning to get things like all my press archives together, show pics, fresh play sample PDFs, etc. all on my newly designed website.

Because I have two script deadlines in the coming months.

And I'm doing stand-up for the first time next Thursday.

I'm very motivated to get these items crossed off my list, so that the only things I will need to do are work, see theater, play with friends, and make things.

It's all part of my master plan.

Sometimes on the subway...

2009-01-15T10:38:00.005-05:00

You will be sitting with a giant man to your left, then a tiny space on your right.

Sometimes, another giant man will claim that tiny space on your right and squish you so bad that you pop up to standing.

Kind of like a zit. Except I didn't land on a mirror.

Tweetables

2009-01-14T10:43:00.006-05:00

My boss (who is looking very young Robert Redford today) and I (who am in my white Nanuk of the North coat) were over at Dean & Deluca and two NBC PAs came over to ask us if we wanted to be on The Today Show and maybe win $100. I was like, "Sorry, we work for the peacock."
My Nanuk-of-the-North getup seemed to act like a force field around me on the subway. No one jostled me at all.
I have taken to wearing my enormous sunglasses on the subway. Instant privacy.
There's pee leaking from the ceiling in my kitchen. What is it about me and NYC kitchens?
I have not had anything stolen from me lately.
My boss and I made a pact to not eat sweets for the next 10 days. This is huge, as we have been getting yumminess in the morning and again in the afternoon.
Last night I was the token female at a department dinner of 16 database architects. I had three beers and lots of meat on sticks.

CLICKWORTHY: Five Sentences

2009-01-10T22:44:00.004-05:00

Brilliant.

THURSDAY SLICE: It's a Race Thing

2009-01-08T16:52:00.002-05:00

Every day, several times a day, hired cars slow down and honk as I walk to or from the subway along the main drag.

It's because I'm white.

I'm the only white person in sight.

They assume that either I a) have money for a car service, or b) would rather travel by car than by foot in a neighborhood in which I am the only white person.

The other day I saw a young black man try to hail one of these cars, but the car would not stop.

Perhaps it was on a destination call.

Tweetables

2009-01-07T17:07:00.004-05:00

I am not online at home.
Because I am paying double-rent in January and February, I cannot swing double utilities. So I've only got the iPhone and blogging via iPhone is not where it's at.
I may be quiet for a bit. I'm getting super organized and re-vamping my whole online strategy. I may segue into photo-blogging, to keep the words for other energies.
Things continue GREAT and IRRITATING in equal measures, just as they should be.
I'm trying out my 60-second standup routine on friends tonight. I go on Feb. 12.
Vulnerability makes me hostile.
I hate my hair.

THURSDAY SLICE: Happy New Year, People

2009-01-01T16:38:00.001-05:00

December 31 was a bit on the suck side of things.

2009: So far, so good.

Things brightened up in the evening. I went to a small party at the home of a playwright friend and her husband and their four cats. We played Ex Libris. We all were writers, so the wit overflowed. Everyone was lovely, and very interested in how I was finding NY, seeing as I just moved here. I of course had anecdotes galore--the attempted mugging, the Pantsless Wonder.

Turns out everyone here reads The New Yorker, so whenever there was a conversational lull, someone would pipe up with a contribution from TNY and we'd all chime in with our opinion.

I kept the fact that I thought this was hilarious to myself.

At 11:38pm I got a text from a friend who, as it turns out, was exactly 10 blocks away, and they could see the ball in Times Square from the balcony. So I hightailed it over and got there literally in time to be introduced to everyone a split-second before the ball EXPLODED. It was pretty phenomenal, though seen from afar.

We then proceeded to play a decidedly less mature round of games, including Truth or Dare and Never Have I Ever. All the questions involved sex, and there was a crank call to an escort service to boot. Probably one of the best crank calls I've ever been witness to, as a matter of fact.

I'm not much of a drinker, but I had beer, champagne, and vodka as the night progressed.

Rounded out the night with a trip to a private party at the Upright Citizens Brigade, and then breakfast at a diner.

My cabbie would not take me all the way home, which I'm pretty sure is illegal. I guess he's afraid he'll get mugged. Pansy.

I slept in today until 4:21pm. Yum.

CLICKWORTHY: Teen Girl Squad

2008-12-31T14:37:00.007-05:00

A gift I have given before.

CLICKWORTHY: Chuck Norris Facts

2008-12-30T17:26:00.001-05:00

Just for you.

I'm a badass.

2008-12-26T23:06:00.005-05:00

In case you were wondering.

Some punk tried to grab my iphone on the subway but all he got was a slice of skin from my right index finger.

He ran off the train like he thought he had it.

I am so officially a New Yorker now.

In other news, the pizza guy told me his name is Pablo but I am skeptical.

Derora Noo

Play reading of "Rush"

Hermit Win

A Cup of Ocean

One-Minute Play Festival in Astoria This Weekend

Tiny Theater in Brooklyn This Weekend

If you've ever wanted to hear me sing a hymn...

Sexy Sandwich Song

"The Auteur of Lincoln Logs"

Dear Co-Workers: This Is My Blog.

"Sorry, Your Princess Is In Another Castle."

Some Interviews

Happy Binary Palindrome Day--01/11/10

Premature Evacuation

Bean Sandwiches

A Reading of Sofonisba in NYC

Crumbs from the Table of Twitter

There's Always a Tell

Whew

"I Just Wanna Be Honest With You."

What I'm Doing

TWEETABLES: 1-Minute Play Festival This Weekend

So How Many Pages of Apps Does *Your* iPhone Have?

Acorns Seemed Harmless at the Time

This Is Not a Memoir

My Mother's Father's Wife Put a Curse on Me

Follow-Up to the TCG Teleconference on Using Twitter to Build Audience

So, the Other Day, I Got Some of This Free Money I've Been Hearing So Much About

There's a joke in there about a bartending marriage counselor, I just know it.

THURSDAY SLICE O' PIE: "The Europeans"

TWEETABLES: New Video

TWEETABLES: Maybe If I Blog About It, It Won't Come True

CLICKWORTHY: Me Talking at #140 Conference

I Love NY but The Twitter Makes Me Hot

TWEETABLES: This is getting embarrassing.

TWEETABLES: More Advance Press and a Preview for MAY 39th/40th

TWEETABLES: In which I talk about myself.

TWEETABLES: Advance Press for MAY 39th/40th

TWEETABLES: Hot. Super hot.

TWEETABLES: DC Fringe Tix on Sale!

TWEETABLES: Graziella TV Webisode

TWEETABLES: Out of the Office, Yo

THURSDAY SLICE O' PIE: Closing the Loop and Opening the Door

TWEETABLES: The Casino Edition

THURSDAY SLICE O' PIE: The 8-Minute Mile

COMPS available for my reading in DC on Monday

Index of Posts Re: Primary Stages All-Female Season Response

Why This Issue Is Important to Me

Statistics from My Work as Literary Manager

List of Women Playwrights

Statistics on Women Playwrights

Primary Stages Response

PLEASE TAKE A STAND: Subscribers Refusing to Renew for Primary Stages All-Female Season

TWEETABLES: The Velveteen Rabbit Edition

So Grateful.

TWEETABLES: Here I Am!

TWEETABLES: Your Mom.

TWEETABLES: Oh yeah, I have a blog.

BFF Gets Glowing Review in Boston Globe...

AUDITION ANNOUNCEMENT

TWEETABLES: Twitter Haiku

TWEETABLES: Microblogging

Have I mentioned vulnerability makes me hostile?

CLICKWORTHY: New Thinking on Suicide

TWEET TALK: The Power of the Tweet, Part One

CLICKWORTHY: I guess there's such a thing as black guilt, too.

CLICKWORTHY: Lady Munny Edition

TWEETABLES: From Detox to Retox

So relieved.

TWEETABLES: Darth Vader Edition

BAGEL SIGHTING: Testosterone Variety

TWEETABLES: Neediness

CLICKWORTHY: How do people not know this?

BAGEL SIGHTING: Dammit. I used to be so good with names.

CLICKWORTHY: Best Halloweeen Costume Ever.

Tweetables: Join the cult, already.

This is a test

BAGEL SIGHTING: Red Alert

Tweetables

Tweetables

So How Many Pages of Apps Does Your iPhone Have?