ceelove

On a sadder note of life-reallocation, this seems also to be the year of letting go the identity of “being a writer.” I adopted it when dissecting a frog at thirteen convinced me that I would not be a veterinarian, and I Needed to Know right then what I could do instead. I made up stories, I would just start writing them down - crisis solved. Three atrocious teenage novels and loads of the requisite crappy poetry didn’t dissuade me. Then I wrote a play which my theater teachers had me direct. I got a standing ovation, praise from students and faculty, roses from my cast, and two of the three genuinely good days of my high school years. Hell yes, I wanted more!

My college playwriting had even more easy success, including winning a contest with a full production and cash award. That play got the attention of a Hollywood producer, who cold-called me at the callow age of 22, interested in adapting the play as a TV movie. I took that as a sign and abandoned the time invested in learning to write for the stage, thinking I would level up in screenwriting as easily as I had in theatrical writing.

Narrator’s voice: “She would not.”

So I wasted fifteen years, gave up my traction, skills, and industry connections, and never got so much as another nibble from Hollywood. Wrote three screenplays I’m happy with, but the only thing that ever came of them was a local theater adapting my lesbian fairytale musical to the stage. That easy success drew me back to stage writing, but that’s as far as it went. I learned a lot, got a lot of feedback and engagement from my community, got some nibbles here and there from small-scale theaters, but never another production.

And while I’ve genuinely loved the writing for its own sake - while I get a uniquely satisfying thrill from living in my brain while it’s crafting a story - it is a huge amount of work to plan, write, edit, and submit to theaters a full-length play. I can only do it so many times for the love of the craft and my dedicated little fan base. Might I reconsider? Sure, if something insistently demanded of me that I write it, or if the script that I put out there last year leads to a contest win or production. But without that, this year is the end of the line.

I know it matters to a few other people, who will be disappointed alongside me. And I know, simultaneously and contradictorily, that it doesn’t matter. Both in the sense that the world does not lack for good storytelling, and in that I never relied on my writing for an income or something crucial like that. I can step away with no repercussions other than a bruised ego.

But yeah, there’s a bruised ego in there. And some discomfort around letting go of the identity of a writer. Especially now.

“Writer” since thirteen.

“Massage therapist for life” since twenty-three.

“The center of my kid’s life” since thirty-three.

All shifting, no longer part of the bedrock of my identity. I mean, “crappy romantic partner” used to be in the mix too, so it’s not like I’m opposed to change. Just, there’s an awful lot going out the window in relatively short time.

Oh well. All in service to transitioning towards being a homesteading innkeeper across the nation, I guess.

mangosteen and I pondered the origin of the wasps-becoming-figs phenomenon and decided it needed an origin story, a la Greek myth. We crafted one, and I fleshed it out. For extra challenge, I wrote it in segments of <140 characters so I could put it on Twitter. Here it is.

The lesson is probably, don’t neg a goddess. Or maybe, know your origin stories.
Either way, he’s in for it from the moment he opens his fool mouth to say, “I could do better.”
Now, Athena has some serious resting bitchface - but still, it shows when you’ve displeased She who knit-bombed Arachne into a spider.
Possibly because she’s been hearing this stuff for millennia and most of us are sick to death of it after about five minutes.
And yet, she gives him the same calm, unearned grace she bestows so freely. “You could create a better olive tree, do you mean?”
“No, olives have been done to death. I’d want to go in a fresh new direction, cleanse the palate with something fruity…”
The next thing you know, he goes and creates this flowering tree. Nice enough in its way, but then he keeps fussing with it. Like they do.
He prods the bloom until he is hopelessly entangled with it, inverts it around his finger.
And then he’s caught up in an impossible intimacy, caressing and penetrating its newfound interior.
He shudders with love and it near lifts him from the ground. He buzzes with agitation to be one with his creation.
Athena takes his measure with her cool gaze. “And what would a virgin like you know of it?” he says waspishly.
But it does not sting her. “So what must happen to consummate your union?” she queries. “I don’t give a fig!” he flies back.
Ah, but she does: it is her specialty to unravel the tangled desires of the human will, to find the thread.
And so she weaves his DNA afresh to be himself most fully.
He is a wasp, and he thrusts himself with desperate ardor into his flower, merging to become one succulent flesh.
Athena plucks a fig and nibbles it appreciatively. “I’m glad you decided to do better,” she tells it.

Catherine the Great, Robert Johnson, Joan of Arc, Niccolo Paganini, and the Devil argue over how to escape from their confines in Hell. It's I Made A Faustian Deal with the Devil and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt, my latest and strangest comedy yet.

Care to read? Yay! I have a PDF with your name on it.

Care to listen at a reading? Yay! Fill out the Doodle poll with dates you're available in the next three weeks, and I'll see if there's interest in one or two read-throughs.

Care to read aloud at a reading? YAY!! Let me know and I'll prioritize your dates for a read-through.

http://doodle.com/poll/p7y8448eh47p3trr

Hey, remember before the heat wave...I mean, "spring"...when it was really chilly? Me neither. But I have proof that it exists, in that I was doing about the only thing I could then: create characters and drag them through funny hell.

The end product is Venn Diagram, a six-character version of the idea that I tried last year with Twelve Nights: longtime monogamously-coupled friends suddenly fall in love with each other and messily figure out the new polyamorous terrain. It's kind of like I was taking a photo at too great a distance, and now I've focused in on the details in one section. I've had beta readers whom I trust telling me it's good (and much easier to follow than before). Now I'd like more opinions, before I spend my summer querying theaters about this & Pyglation and Gamalea.

I'm thinking I'd like to do a read-through sooner rather than later of this. I'll need three male-presenting and three female-presenting people (plus one for reading stage directions). Would you be up for reading or attending in a few weeks? Would you like to have a PDF script to read?

Earlier this year, I wrote a new play, Twelve Nights. This time I cleverly excluded any of those bothersome songs, hoping that would make it more stageable, but less cleverly sabotaged the play by using twelve characters. I had fun in the writing and learned from the feedback, and next year I'll write a new play with many of the same themes but half the characters.

For now, though, I'd like to have a read-through. Just for funsies. To be done properly, it will require twelve readers, six female-presenting and six male-presenting (plus one for stage directions).

But wait, Cee, what's this play about? Friendship, sex, religion, and mid-life crises. It's a comedy of manners, a modern take on what happens when a love potion a la Midsummer Night's Dream sends a group of friends into a tailspin. It's a love letter to a certain romantically adventurous subset of my community. I'm told that it's witty, interesting, and timely.

So, who will take a role? All I need is twelve other people who can commit to getting together once to read aloud, some time in the next month or two. If there's more interest in that, then yay, we'll have backup readers (which we might need, with a cast of twelve) and maybe even an audience. If there's sufficient interest, I'll reserve a library room or somesuch for the read-through.

Comment or email me at ceelove [at] speakeasy (dot) net, and I'll get you a PDF of the script.

I'm humming along on Twelve Nights, my new (non-musical) play, with four (of twelve) scenes done. It's about polyamory and community and friendship and belief systems and parenting and modern life. Warning, it has twelve principle characters (no small parts), so there's a lot to keep track of: part of what I need to know is, is it All Too Much?

I'm excited and self-congratulatory and in need of a reality check. Want to give me one? Read my 30 pages (it will take you maybe 20 minutes?) and tell me what you think.

Given an email address, I can point you at a dropbox link or send you a PDF.

So, absolutely no thanks to me, Fire and Ice is now up on YouTube. Chris Lahey (who performed as Frank) deserves all the credit for cutting it into useable pieces and putting them up.

It is as rough (especially early on) as one would expect from a piece as unrehearsed as this was, but I believe you can still get the gist.

Also understand that I know this to be a work in progress. I've already gotten plenty of useful feedback suggesting where my rewrites will lie: making Frank's character less unlikeable, making Act One less redundant in establishing the characters, stripping back the conversations with Janet and adding in a boyfriend for Madison who is stuck vacationing in Europe, rewriting "Who Can We Blame," and possibly leaving out "Buy Buy Buy." I'm open to hearing your thoughts!

A family slogs across post-apocalyptic America. Most of them die. And, perhaps the worst indignity of all, they are characters in a musical, and so they have to warble about the whole damn thing.

It's Fire and Ice, the epic tragedy that I've been crafting for the past two years. Some cohorts and I will be doing a read/sing-through, open to the public, in the conference room of the main Somerville library.

We will start promptly at 2:00 and likely go til about 5:00, with an intermission between acts. Did I mention there are 19 songs? There are 19 songs. If we're lucky, a majority will be accompanied by piano.

Yes, bring your videocamera. Yes, invite your friends, at least those whose tastes run to countercultural musicals. Yes, volunteer to read a part (in which case, I'll email you the script beforehand) and/or sing (in which case, I'll email you song files and coordinate rehearsing beforehand). But mostly, if you've ever wondered what else the writer of Never After might have to say, just show up, because, YES!, it is finally ready for your delectation.

(But no: don't worry that I will be offended if you don't show up. I get that a musical post-apocalyptic Grapes of Wrath isn't for everyone.)

So I'm still adrenaliney, hours after the fact. In other words, that worked.

Twenty people showed up to hear a cold reading and songs from the first act of Fire and Ice. Twenty! I feel all supported and heard and stuff. And then they workshopped it! Even better than when that happened piecemeal about Never After: I can incorporate changes before putting it in front of hundreds of people. (Assuming that I have the chance to put it before hundreds of people.)

Overall, I think it was quite well received, with enough positive commentary that I think this is on the right path to be a great play and enough criticism that I know people weren't blowing sunshine up my ass. I came home with a boatload of suggestions, a head percolating with ideas, and a 60-watt smile.

Thanks, y'all. Now, how the heck do I calm down enough to sleep? I know, I'll jump back into working on Act Two!

Hey, I should, like, tell people!

Leah and Catya have implemented a redesign of www.neveraftermusical.com. It better reflects where I'm trying to go with Never After and includes clips from the DVD. Hopefully it doesn't so much reflect that I know little about self-promotion or graphic design.

In other writing news, oh dear: the next musical is getting more impatient to be explored. In the last few days, two of the songs have presented themselves to me. One was an idea, while I was gardening-and-listening-to-musicals, that contained the ending of the play and told me who the main character is going to be. And one was a song snippet that appeared as I came out of savasana, that suggested the entire song in itself and themes that will permeate the script.

I am rueful that I can't turn my attention to it now, that there's still many months of writing to go on Trickster and Three Charismatics (or whatever it ends up being called). But still, it's thrilling to know that yes, I have another musical up my sleeve: that this appears to be something I do now. I know, every time I say, "Dystopian post-climate-change-apocalypse musical!", people go, ".......sounds fun." But really, I think it's going to be wonderful. And I was right about the lesbian fairytale musical thing, wasn't I? :P