Big Ideas

For the last few months or so, I’ve been virtually hanging out with an almost impossibly diverse, geographically dispersed bunch of theater folk I would very much love to tell the world about… so I’m going to do just that. The first place to start getting to know them is www.2amtheatre.com.  It’s a somewhat unassuming blog, from a design perspective, but the simplicity of the presentation belies the complexity of the conversation: playwrights, directors, artistic directors, lighting designers, literary managers, stage managers, and arts marketing gurus, all of them blogging, commenting, questioning, innovating, and above all challenging each other to think more clearly and make theater more thoughtfully.  To the extent that a national conversation about innovation in theater can be said to be happening in any one place, this is that place.  If someone says something anywhere that’s worth careful analysis, it gets aggregated, talked about, picked apart,

Last night, while standing outside a theater waiting to enter, I bumped into an actor of my acquaintance—a woman with good comic timing and presence as a performer, at least from what I’ve seen of her work, which isn’t enough. I was on my way to meet the director of the show we were about to see, but I stopped to chat for a bit, and she took a moment to introduce me to two of her companions: “This is Gwydion Suilebhan,” she said, “a local playwright.” For some reason, the word “local” really landed awkwardly in my ear. I mean, I understand it—I’m a playwright, and I live in the area—and I hold no grudge against the nice woman who said it, but it bugged me nonetheless. The problem (for me) seems to be the implication that I’m “only” a local playwright: that my work is only (good? well-known?) enough to be produced in DC.  Never mind the fact that the implication is wrong—because my work has been seen in New

On Saturday at noon, my wife and son and I accompanied two dear friends (who happened to be eight months into a pregnancy) and their year-and-a-half old son to the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair.  It was a lovely afternoon, full of deep-friend Oreos and gawking at camels and memories of my days as a carny.  (Yes, I really used to be a carny.)  We were slowed somewhat by the intense heat and our friend’s late-term state… but we held out for a good four hours, then parted ways. About seven hours later, my cell phone rang… then rang again… and then rang a third time, which roused my curiosity enough to walk up a flight of stairs, find it, and see who was calling. It was the non-pregnant half of the couple we’d spent the day with.  He had been the last person I called, so I assumed he was pocket-dialing me. He wasn’t. There were sudden and unexpected problems with the pregnancy, and he needed to drop his son off with us so he could take care of

First, before we talk, please watch this — trust me, it’ll be worth it: Thanks.  Now… I have been watching that video off and on all morning, as well as several others by the same fellow, utterly entranced. Part of what’s happening is that my high school self—the me that believed, with all sincerity, that people who loved The Who were morally and in every other way superior to people who loved Madonna—is having a very cathartic moment. All the teenage girls I loathed for what looked like shallowness and smug materialism are, in this video, reconciled with the rebellion and anger-at-the-system I valued so highly. It’s a powerful feeling. What’s also happening is that I’m beginning to take more seriously an idea I’ve been joking about for some time.  A while back, a fellow playwright and I were inventing funny mash-ups of play titles, as in: Life with Father + Death of a Salesman = Death with Father Tick Tick Boom + In the Boom Boom R

I had an unexpected lunch yesterday with some friends I met in St. Louis this past June.  They’re moving to NY—the Big Apple Black Hole has sucked in two more creatives—and stopped in DC on the way to see family.  It was a lovely surprise. Amanda is a fine actor who worked with me on the workshop of REALS at the HotCity Theatre.  Her husband Cody, who I was meeting for the first time, is a filmmaker, and in time our conversation turned to the subject of whether I’d ever write for film ever again. The thing is: temperamentally, I think I’m actually very well suited to the medium.  I have a measure of flexibility with regard to my work that I’ve come to understand is at least somewhat rare among playwrights.  When a director starts changing things, and actors start taking my dialogue in new directions, and editors re-cut my story in an entirely new way, I’m fine with it — I don’t care if they make things different, as long as they make t