New friends pour through the revolving door

I'm constantly battling my feelings about theatre. It really is my marriage: but it's like a George and Martha marriage, full of codependency and cruelty, while ultimately being something I can't walk away from due to the life of delusion we've created together.

So I go back and forth about whether I should be doing it, how much I enjoy it, what the fuck am I doing being in theatre at all?!

This year has been a particularly bad period of wondering about theatre and my relationship to it, due in total part to what we shall call, 'The Unpleasantness'. I've taken a big step back from it and, for a long time, wasn't putting myself out there in the same way as I used to.

One thing that I have done recently though, and that I'm so glad about, is being an actor with Theatre Kairos' writing circle.

Six writers were brought on this year to develop their plays with Theatre Kairos. After a few months of the writers doing exercises and working on their pieces, actors are brought in so that the pieces can be read out loud. I love cold reading: I think that's a bit unusual amongst actors, but I find it frees me to be pretty outrageous, and I like to work and think and speak quickly, to see how words and phrases taste in the mouth and work on instinct. Cold reading is an opportunity for that, for me. Good thing, because that's what I did in the unit.


It is a really great group of people. We just wrapped up the last of our group sessions, and while there is still a bit of time before the public reading of these pieces, and lots of development to do, we aren't going to be meeting in our group anymore, and that made me kind of sad. Hence the cupcakes. Because sadness and baking are made for each other. I really dig this bunch of people. The work is strong, I get the feeling that everyone really cares about supporting each other, but it is still a crazy amount of fun and I would usually have at least one giggly episode every session.















This is some of them. Aren't they cute?


I made cupcakes so they would love me. It was a medium success. The cupcakes spelled out the company name.



Here, Christopher and Brian try to find other words that can be made when people take random cupcakes away.



















I hope I can keep working on one or two of the plays in the next stage of devlopement, which is were dramaturges and directors get involved. My rehearsal schedule for The Queens might be getting in the way, but hopefully things will work out. It has been such a great great experience for me. I would like to be a writer in it at some time, but, again, thinking about writing wakes up my anxiety and insanity and I really don't know if I could do it.

Man, I love play development. It is so fun. It's nice seeing things be born! Like baby moose and ideas! Plus, I get to play lots of different characters and then get to share my opinions! Those are like my favorite things. And then I dream that one day the play will be published and my name will be in a book as someone who helped it become a real play. Such as what is happening with dust later this year. Holla.






Say it with cupcake, homies.