I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we talk to each other. Communication is a wacky thing. A friend pointed out recently that mental health is a spectrum. I suppose this is true of lots of things: success, contentment, taste, education, openness. I don’t know how it is for you but I find I go through periods where people are just barking at me. Maybe I have too much Vitamin D in my system and they have a bad reaction to that.

Putting any combination of people in close proximity is always an experiment. Things trigger other things in people and you might not be aware of it. Or you’re reacting out of nowhere about something and the other person is caught off guard. Or it’s all fine and no one’s upset about anything.

Dealing with people is a messy thing and you either embrace that or fight against it. There’s also a lot about what happens when ego gets in the middle of things. There’s a lot of craziness in theater because of the nature of the beast. Things go well out of randomness like it’s at the behest of the gods. Someone rockets into fame who has less skill or talent than someone else. A show is a smash because it touches on something at the moment that no one might care about 6 months in either direction. One style comes in or out, depending on X factors out of anyone’s control. An actress friend told me the other day about 30 years she’s spent in the business and how 1/6 of them were great years work-wise. What no one seems to get is that is doing really well in this.

People admire and then envy success if attained from hard work. We are suspicious of it achieved in other ways. We love a comeback and we want to destroy anything doing better than us for too long. I don’t know if it’s Caveman Brain or what but we can’t have someone be on top more than 6 seasons. South Park had a pretty brilliant episode in which Britney Spears was sacrificed to make the corn grow more heartily in the fields.

I think the times when I’ve caused the most trouble due to the rumbling tectonic plates inside is when I’ve felt ripped off because of my bruised ego and some out of control sense of entitlement. “What?! I can’t believe so-and-so got that part over me. I’ll show them!!” Then I act out in some weird way. It’s why I had to back off auditioning for a good while. It started becoming about something it wasn’t.

And that’s the big troublemaker when dealing with other people. Is the problem really about the situation at hand or is it about your stuff, my stuff, or the moon cycle? Once that is parsed out, you can deal with things with less hassle.

I spent years trying to practice good communication and positive assertiveness. I’ve tried to come to conclusions where both sides receive mutual benefits. People seem to take that as disingenuous. So now I make the best of something until it seems futile, I let myself feel disappointment, hurt, or anger and then I tell myself it’s time to detach.

There’s some religious teaching that uses the metaphor of eating at a table full of guests. As the food is passed around, you should pass the food to everyone else first and be thankful and happy for what you have left. If there’s nothing on the dish when it comes back you, you should be pleased that everyone else is content and nourished. Then there’s the religious teaching that says if you don’t care for yourself first, you won’t be able to care for others.

I’m very fortunate I have many good people in my life with whom I enjoy creating. I have an artistic agenda that keeps growing. I feel a small door to many new possibilities has been opened.

I went yesterday to the home of Rochelle Denton and Martin Denton to review the proofs for American Badass. Man, that was a trip. Nita Congress did a great job copy editing and it looks great on the page. I only had 3 small changes. One was in the intro, one was an addition of a character’s name for clarity and the last was to add the word “it” to a sentence. I was majorly tired from pulling 19 hours in 2 days in front of a computer for work and then putting in another 8 finishing up the latest draft of Rabbit Island.

I hope that there weren’t any other mistakes I missed. Reading pieces over look that is tough for me. The part of my brain used for performing takes over and the part for grammar and spelling quietly sits down on the bench and sips Gatorade. “What are doing? Get back in there!” My mental coach yells at the goldbricker. Then I’m kind of lost.

The Dentons are very gracious hosts offering me Mallomars and fancy cookies. It was snowing while I was there. They both were very busy with lots of work for nytheatre while I was there. I got the feeling it’s like that most of the time with so much to cover. It’s amazing how on top they are of what everyone is doing.

So I’ve been put on hold for the last week of Jan./first week of Feb. for a series of commercials. Or maybe it’s just one. I’ll know if I have it by the 15th. This is my 5th hold this year. Hooray! Zero bookings. Boooo. I’ve decided to just have more fun with them. Not worry about whether or not what I’m doing is good or using any camera technique or in any way appropriate for the copy. Just go with whatever I’m feeling. They want an improv feel to it. It’s helped so far.

Not to kill the magic before I’ve had a chance to use it all up but I’m 9 scenes into a decent stab of a first draft of a new full-length play. I’ve got a loose outline, which is rare for me. Usually I grope in the dark through most of this time. Actually, it’s not so much an outline as it is a Lonely Planet’s Guide to My Latest Play. It gives me some of the sights and the culture of the place as well as the kinds of people I will encounter there. They are telling me things now. There’s a world that is opening up. It’s very exciting.

It’s a play I’ve been meaning to write for several years now. That’s par for the course. I have an idea but don’t get around to it until much later. It percolates. Hopefully that makes it more robust rather than an oily mess with lots of grinds on the bottom.

I write best after 10 p.m. I used to be most creative between 2 and 4 a.m. Probably still am but it’s been awhile since I’ve tried. Actually, earlier this year I worked ’til dawn a few nights and they went rather well.

It’s the deadline that gets you. I decided to submit this piece, warts and all, to the Reverie Productions’ Next Generation Playwriting Contest. The submission deadline is the 15th. I know it’s 50/50 I’ll have it done and even slimmer that I’ll make it to the reading level but it’s worth a shot. I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going.

Here is an online interview with nytheatre mike 2.0. Just click on the link.

INTERVIEW

Things have been going well with the show. I felt the opening was really rocky. Today’s matinee was much smoother. Opening was like 1st tech/1st preview/press night/opening night all in one. I got a great review and my worst review ever. Actually, after one bad notice for my writing early on, it constitutes my only bad review. It felt like there was some agenda behind it. Hard to say. I guess I didn’t create the kind of show she expected. I also wasn’t 100% on my game. I’m not going to say too much because it will only sound like sour grapes. There are reviewers and there are critics and they are very different animals. This person seemed very angry and missed a lot of points in the piece. I’m trying to find the positive, which is difficult since it was all negative, and looking for how to use it to improve. Considering how quickly this project came together and how many different obstacles there were in creating it, it’s a miracle it exists at all. I’ve been told to blow it off but it is going to take some time to work through this. After looking at this person’s other writing, it seems she has a preference for more classical work. She slammed some of the monologues. One in particular she said was too far-fetched. The funny thing is that it’s all based on the truth.

I don’t know if I would ever go back to enjoying use a car to commute. I love riding in the subway. There are, of course, things I don’t like about it but for the most part it’s great. I use the F train in Brooklyn and can get to most the places I need to go rather efficiently with it. I understand the G will come out past my stop so going up to Williamsburg or Queens will be a lot easier.
Lately things have been getting a little weird on the trains. I guess you never know what will happen when those doors open. Since the beginning of the year I’ve noticed a lot more people smoking down on the subway platforms or in the cars themselves. Once, a train came up and I notices this one car was rather empty. I stepped in to find a man surrounded by newspapers and plastic bags laughing this gothic bluesman chortle and speaking incoherently as he smoked in the train! A few days later, I saw an older woman who was quite old. Like she was from another era. She had a scarf on here head like Betsy Ross and 4 big plastic bags. She obviously had been taking care of whatever was inside of them. There were a couple of younger women chatting away in sorority delight about trivialities much to the old woman’s chagrin. I noticed her ankles were swollen and blue and her feet through the holes had something gangrenous happening. When the girls left, she spit on the ground and cursed about them. She got out at her stop 2 stops later.
My day started a couple weeks ago with a large man wearing a sweat suit under a blanket with a hole cut out for his head barking in gibberish. He had a nice voice but didn’t make any articulated consonant sounds. No one gave him any money. My gut said he was a Julliard actor doing research for a role. That, I think, happens sometimes. I saw a guy claiming to have cerebral palsy from some accident and he gave this big story about how his electricity was going to be shut off if he didn’t turn in funds by 7pm that night. My BS detector was screaming at me but I gave him a buck anyway. I saw him a couple weeks later in a train station way out in Brooklyn near Coney Island talking nicely to a boy. He had no disability.
Last night, I was heading up to see my friend Robin’s play debut at the Emerging Artist Festival. The train was held by police in the East Broadway station. An undercover cop in a flannel shirt ran past my car with his badge out. “Close ALL the doors!!” Uniformed police trolled up and down for several minutes. I don’t know what it was but it was scary. What if the person was in my car? I never worried about that before. I wondered if the person was in hiding in my car passing off as a regular citizen.
Today a 20-something man kicked his soccer ball off the side doors in my car as I came back from my callback. I switched at Jay St. where weekends are going to be a mess for the foreseeable future. A man and a woman got into a shouting match. He was angry but not crazy. I don’t know if I could ever have that much public privacy. I get quiet in cab rides home. I’ve seen the hidden camera shows.
Oh, on my way home the day the gibberish guy hit me up on my ride in, he plunked down in the seat near me. He obviously put in a full day. He had the smell of several sweat cycles. I hope he gets the part.