February 17, 2012


Did a reading for HART’s Look Homeward Angel last night, then had the rest of the evening to chat with Steve and Casey, largely about Casey’s trip to Chicago to audition for the schools he wants for his MFA. But what a lot of local theater gossip to catch up on! NC Stage is about the only one for which they do not foresee either spiritual or material dissolution. Theaters do tend to give up their spirits, especially when they see that doing crap brings in easier money than doing masterpieces. A certain kind of mind associates success with ease and superfluity, and when those minds get control of an arts organization, the game is over. C’s mind is quick and makes cogent summaries. Of one local company he sneered, “They do TV,” and I realized he is exactly right, putting his finger on a quality I was myself unable to define. Theater grad school is a different world from what I know, competitive and potentially soul-destroying at every level; yet people love it enough to go through it, and we playwrights are grateful for all that energy and dedication. Our students are less well served by their training than others, so must rely on their innate qualities. Casey has those qualities, but even that does not predict his immediate road. Steve and Casey are far more specific about their ambitions than I ever was. They want this role; they want to produce that play. I wanted to surge forward in whatever way seemed opened to me. All my life was poetry, and then when another door opened, I entered that room as well, thinking to give destiny as many opportunities as possible to do right by me. I never thought it was betrayal, but rather enlargement, but who knows what the Muses thought? I’m not sure which choice was the right one. Steve seems to be doing exactly what he wants to do. Casey is on the brink of doing what he wants. If I look back with an objective eye, I make the astonishing deduction that I too have done pretty much what I wanted to do. . . though admitting a certain dissatisfaction with the outcome. If only I could get that non-attachment thing right. . . .

The production of King Lear by which I was shafted has collapsed. I was hoping it would go all the way and waste everybody’s time and be horrible, but this is the next best thing.

Cats eating out of the same bowl again, Titus apparently having been forgiven his mortality. He’s managing to go the bathroom, after a fashion, but one wishes these efforts were more localized.

The guy who’s fixing my Prius is a ski racer.