August 21, 2009

Revising The Ghost of All Saints, re-titling it Showings. It’s a good play which I let languish, typically, because I sensed antipathy or resistence. From whom? I don’t even remember. The tendency to throw up my hands in bitter despair is a great flaw in my program. I’m thinking of Ben Lynch, who originated Simon when Ellen played Julian in 1996. He is dead long ago, of an overdose. Sweet, skinny kid. David, who originated the Man in Black is dead too. Suicide, in despair over HIV. Jenifer Paterson is dead. Len Whitaker is dead, stabbed to death on Montford Ave. Maybe that isn’t an especially high mortality count for one playwright, but it seems so. I miss them both. I miss Ellen. The stages were filled with people I never see.

When you open the front door you see a cloud of mosquitos hovering against the white siding. They’re probably everywhere, but visible mostly against the white.

A kid who wants to stage manage for The Beautiful Johanna also wants $500 for doing so. I’m inquiring as to whether that’s a reasonable figure, but even if it is, it’s indicative of the state of affairs wherein technicians in the arts are compensated far more (and consider themselves worthy to be compensated far more) than actual artists. Whatever those thieves and incompetents at Bailiwick paid themselves, they paid me nothing. Despite a contract. In this I am somewhat to blame, being too disgusted with them even to e-mail But, should I have to? I remember being asked in Atlanta to help cover the expenses of the actors who were doing The Faith Healer. Whatever I end up paying my personnel in Johanna, the idea that something will be left over for the playwright, for the father of the whole event, is probably far-fetched. Crown of Shadows made, officially, a profit, but part of that profit was $1000 from me, expenses borne and never compensated. That I might have received compensation for the scripts surely never crossed anybody’s mind. Our light technician, who slept through an entire show, was paid a quarter of the outlay and howled for more. How did writers and artists let it all become such a buyers’ market?

MB has a play in the Turtle Shell summer festival, the one Werewolves of London was dropped from. He sends out notices of it, and every time I see them, I cringe. I have prayed for the failure of the festival. Of course I worried that might be a nasty and unworthy prayer, but maybe it’s a just prayer. Who knows? I figure if it’s unjust, God won’t listen and no harm will be done.

Tonight I sit, apparently, on the chair of justice. It’s not all that comfortable.