365 Days : 365 Plays

Suzan-Lori Parks is all I can seem to talk about these days. But her project is a topic perfectly fitted to the mission of this blog, in that each week here in LA, a different theatre company stages the plays, which means that each week I am introduced to a new theatre, a new batch of plays, and a new wind of inspiration. A weekly dose of sustenance.

Week One was staged downtown. It struck me how doing theatre in a public place, for free, for the public, somehow seems like an act of subversion. I feel that we have been conditioned to understand "public" as a dirty word, something shameful and impoverished, and through such conditioning, we have allowed public spaces, public gatherings, and public sentiments to be degraded. So it was nice to revel in the publicness of these plays, and the huge group of people there watching them. And it was great to meet the woman who envisioned the event, and even better to see that she was more excited to watch the plays than any of her fans - her enthusiasm and energy were contagious. She is the coolest person ever. And as Dave says, she's the nicest smelling Pulitzer Prize winner I've ever hugged.

I missed Week Two here - we were in Minnesota for Thanksgiving.

Week Three was staged in a small Lutheran church just down the road from the Mormon Temple. The plays were phenomenal, and although treated like a staged reading (no costumes, only the barest of props, scripts in hand), it was a really great staging with simple, inventive moments that perfectly complemented the text. My favorite was Dragon Song because I love any play that features an ordinary Jane whose only unique talent is looking down at the ground as the herione.

Recent Celebrity Sightings, Ranked by Coolness

1. Suzan-Lori Parks

2. Don Cheadle

3. Suzan-Lori Parks' husband

4. That guy who played Jerry on ER

5. Andrew McCarthy

Three Things That Make Me Incredibly Happy

1. Meeting Suzan-Lori Parks at the opening of her 365 Days: 365 Plays in Los Angeles.

2. Cameron Lee and his banjo.

3. Travelling with Percy when he was drugged up on Children's Liquid Benadryl.

Inspector Parker, I Shake My Fist At You!

Good Lord am I addicted to Inspector Parker. Or I'm addicted to not working on my dissertation. Or both. What I am trying to say is that I haven't been too productive lately.

Yesterday, however, I sat on Venice Beach and read Sandoval while also watching pelicans, or what I believe were pelicans, dive bomb into the Pacific in search of fish.

Tomorrow Dave and I are headed to San Diego to meet with some friends and to do a little work on the upcoming ATHE New Orleans project. I've decided that the following weekend I will buy the Inspector Parker game and play it to its completion, hopefully breaking the addictive procrastination spiral I am stuck in.

Monday is oral surgery day for Dave, so I will spend the rest of next week ministering my sweetie through his swollen gums convalescence, stuffing him full of drugs and mushy foods, and looking forward to Inspector Parker. And working on my diss, of course.

I'm Back!

I'm finally back in LA with my grey baby, now aptly dubbed Sir Pukes A Lot, and my toothachy boyfriend. Despite the piles of vomit to clean and the constant pain to Dave's mouth that breaks my heart, I'm so happy to be home! Even better, I'm not scheduled to take any planes for the rest of the month.

I had a whirlwind trip to Minnesota, where I saw just about everyone and finally settled the ongoing legal situation which you understand I still shouldn't talk about.

After a few days of recovery, it's time to get back to work, which is an especial bummer because work entails writing the introductory chapter to my diss - the chapter I dread - in which I lay out and contextualize the theories I am using and articulate my methodology while situating myself in the field. These are all things I hate to do, but must do because it will make the rest of the diss make sense and really help with the revisions. Suffice it to say that I have a long haul ahead of me on this chapter, but you know, I'd really like to one day finish this thing and call myself doctor and all, so I'll just suck it up and spit it out.

In other news, I am addicted to the yahoo game Inspector Parker, meaning my procrastination level is at an all time high because I would much rather mindlessly solve some murder mysteries online than sit down and get to work. But work I must, so I'm off to read.