Welcome to my blog detailing my venture grant! I suppose my 9-hour layover at the Miami Airport is a convenient time to write a first post. A quick introduction on me, where I’m going, and what I’m doing: I am a senior political science major with a focus on international relations. Last spring I studied abroad …
Hit the Wall
We read an incredible play today called Hit the Wall, by Ike Holter. It was a heavily dialogue-driven, witty, sad, razor-sharp, rhythmic play that I think will stick with me for a very long time. Hit the Wall is about the Stonewall Riot, an event in 1969 that many historians seem to agree was the catalyst for …
11 Pages
It's not good. It's not terrible either. It's just alright, but it's also the longest play I've ever written, so I've got that going for me, which is nice. I have not written a lot of fiction in my life. This play, while definitely angsty and almost definitely shitty, is still dialogue-driven, still meets the …
7-Page Regret
I'm 7 pages into my 10-pager, and I've fallen into every trap I promised myself I would avoid: I'm angsty, I'm not making jokes, I'm writing about things I haven't researched fully, and I don't know how I'm going to end it in the next 3 to 8 pages. Dialogue is really not my forte. …
The Weekend
I have a fifteen-page play due on Monday. I'm really not sure why I'm writing this blog entry right now, honestly--every waking moment should be spent on this play. I have a semi-story in my head, and about a page on paper. Right now my main concern is making it work without a lot of …
Medical Plot
That was trying to be a pun on "medical pot," but that's not important right now. We're in class right now discussing a student play about a writer who loses his wife to his incompetence in husbandhood in 1939, and we've spent an hour discussing reasons why it's so great and saying "I don't want …
I Said A Hip-Hop Hippie to the Hippie
Today was hip-hop aesthetics day in Idris's class, and it was kee-razy. We spent a lot of time discussing the categories we use to judge hip-hop music, the history behind it, the future of hip-hop, and, of course, hip-hop as a form of theatre. That's right, hip-hop theatre. We read an essay by a performer …
Framework Narrative
We read a play today called The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow by Rolin Jones. It was near-perfect: a tasteful mix of awkward Mormon comedy and painful identity-crisis drama. One of the most interesting aspects of the play, though, wasn't the fact that the title character is a robot, or that the protagonist has OCD. …
It’s done!
And all it took was putting my nose to the grindstone. You know what came out of it? Definitely not anything I expected. But I think it's something worth being proud of. And that is exactly what I wanted. The Attic Play. It's about a raccoon breaking up a marriage. And it's totally worth it. …
Albee Fine
When I started writing what I'm now affectionately referring to as "The Attic Play," I was worried I was just reproducing Edward Albee's bizarre, hilarious masterpiece "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?" The danger in this was that Idris is way more well-read than I am, so if I was thinking it, he definitely would …
