going to the movies. . .

you know, with where the wild things are, bright star and soon a bunch of other things, i realize i just don’t go that often.  i need to catch up.  but when and how?  all my money goes to theater tickets.  i may need to take a theater break for a couple weeks.

edmund white interview in salon

the interview’s a pretty ho-hum publicity piece for city boy, but the comments on the site are absolutely appalling.  i have no opinion on gore vidal beyond myra breckenridge (i liked it), but i suppose if someone you were friends with and signed off on your play that was inspired by him turns around and trashes you to the press, it’s understandable that you’d be upset.

i was also surprised at the trashing of white’s books in the comments.  i haven’t loved them all.  the married man and fanny in particular were tough going for me.  but skinned alive, my lives, the farewell symphony, genet, the flaneur and forgetting elena were all pretty beautiful.  i just ordered nocturnes for the king of naples off the internet.

i was also struck by accusations of “bug chasing” and “gift giving” since white is so sex positive . . . and attacks on his looks . . . white being a hefty sized, but handsome, older man who is still sexual is a nice thing for me to see especially after being told on fire island this summer that men lose their libido after 30.  and i am happy that he has always been very sexually forthright and open.  i think sexuality isn’t so cookie cutter and i appreciate seeing people following their sexual bliss in various ways.  besides, he’s so self-effacing in his books that his promiscuity never struck me as pathological or obnoxious  . . . or even cynical which sometimes happens when some people who tout the “men are whores” axiom spout off.  there’s something sweet and humanistic about his take on sex and i for one applaud him.

edmund white’s city boy

i’m almost through edmund white’s newest memoir city boy.

it’s interesting because reading white’s autobiographical writings, both fiction and non-fiction, you tend to touch on the same events and themes . . . but i never seem to get tired of them. a large part of that is white’s writing has the same effect on me as chatting with a good friend over coffee.  i really don’t care if i’ve heard the same story several times or they’re talking about their mother or annoying boss again.  it’s not what they say, it’s how they say it.  the how makes me want to spend time with this person.

i am beginning to realize there is another reason.  i first read the beautiful room is empty and a boy’s own story when i was a teenager just out of the closet.  i need to reread them soon because i feel i may appreciate them more now, but i remember they stuck with me.  there was a feeling of longing in both novels that resonated with me greatly.  edmund white is someone who knows how to long, to yearn in writing.  there is something hopelessly romantic about him even when his longings and yearnings are pitted up against harsh realities such as aids, romantic rejection . . . and for much of city boy, artistic rejection.

there is something about his writing that speaks to my longing.  i feel i empathize with his romantic ambitions, the overly critical eye he trains on himself… and his love-hate relationship with society and aristocracy… i might be over my head here, but i do sense there is a sense of what the hell am i–a perectly average midwesterner–doing hanging out with all the rich, fabulous types in white’s writing.  i feel the same way at times except replace the “midwesterner” with “south floridian latino.” reading city boy, i am reminded that white has been a presence on my bookshelves for 20 years.  when i came out at 15, i did what i always do when i am faced with the prospect of something new . . . i read about it.  i learned to be gay from writers writing about a generation or two ahead of mine (so that i often feel i have less in common with men my age than older men sometimes) . . . i also learned about literature.  white lead me to genet and proust.  this book’s led me to james merrill and i just ordered a collection of his poems online.  he is the type of person i imagined i would be surrounded by in new york–literate, talented, erudite and gay.   i’ve met the talented and the gay, but truth be told my life in new york is more about scrambling about to make trains, juggle schedules, get to the gym, clean the house, etc. and less about discussing poetry and listening to a symphony with a friend over wine (which was my teenage vision of life in the big city).

sometimes i wonder if i hadn’t had so many expectations of new york if i could have had more fun in my youth?  i was always upset it was all a lot more vulgar, a lot less serious than i had hoped.  gay guys wanted to go dancing, drink, hook up . . . not go to the opera.

reading this book, however, makes me remember that part of me with a sincere wish for a particular kind of life here.  there’s a paragraph that moved me to tears:

“yes, i wanted to reach readers but i also worried for professional reasons–i wanted to live by my pen.  i wanted to be among those five hundred people in america who earn a living, even a meager one, by writing serious literature.  if, as schiller said, literature shows us what humanity would be like if it existed in a state of freedom (the author, not the characters), then i wanted to belong to that tiny minority that is genuinely free.  each time i give a reason, nevertheless, it ends up sounding too exalted; i wasn’t interested so much in making money or enjoying freedom, i wanted to survive.  for me writing was essential to survival.  again, not because i had such beautiful or intense sentiments or because my ideas were so pressing and elevated … but because it was the label, writer, that mattered to me in some primitive essential way. “

i wanted to be somewhere that valued me and what i did.  i wanted to matter.  writing was how i figured out to best be myself.  i think ever since i put pen to paper (which was incidentally 20 years ago . . . i started thinking about writing plays shortly after i came out), my writing has been a continual process of learning to experience a pure, unfiltered vision of myself and what i desired, what i longed for.  and if my writing were to succeed, it meant i was accepted in the world.  i belonged.  i mattered.

reading white and connecting with his experiences helps me understand there is another component to this desire to write.  not only do i wish to matter, but i wish the people who come to my plays to experience than and connect with something inside themselves so they too feel as if they matter.  they feel valuable.  i feel less naive and idealistic and foolish reading that paragraph.  i hope that i learn to do the same thing for others in my work.

marea (take 1,000)

i just wrapped up a set of rewrites on marea for the upcoming workshop.

i am stunned, scared, thrilled.  for the first time ever i feel very proud of this play.  i have always felt distant and disconnected from it.  it didn’t come from me, but someplace else.  someplace scary.  she was like the scary girl from the ring clutching at my leg.  i thought she wanted to kill me, but rather she wanted me to understand her.

funny that i never talk about the ring when i talk about this play.  it was very much influenced by how terrified the ring made me.  i didn’t sleep for months and was a giant nervous wreck.  i didn’t know at the time it was my sanity beginning to slip away, which would culminate in a depression kicking in on my 30th birthday. perhaps there was a part of me that was like this long haired video villain crawling out her well demanding to be seen and heard.

best of 2009 playlist (take one)

i expect to be revising this over the next couple months, but i think this is a pretty solid approximation. my album rankings save for no. 1 and no. 2 are all up in the air . . . so those aren’t ready at all.

the theme of this playlist is inspired by a big astrological event of 2009 which pretty much colored my year. saturn vs. uranus or structure and restriction vs. freedom and change

notice a certain redhead is missing. first time ever. and she released two albums this year. 2009: the year i broke up with la fori. sniff.

disc one: saturn

ramona falls: “melectric”
patrick wolf: “the bachelor (balalaika mix)”
neko case: “this tornado loves you”
sunset rubdown: “idiot heart”
deer tick: “easy”
bon iver and st. vincent: “rosyln”
dm stith: “thanksgiving moon”
blue roses: “i am leaving”
st. vincent: “black rainbow”
grizzly bear: “while you wait for the others”
brendan benson: “you make a fool out of me”
the hidden cameras: “kingdom come”
feist and ben gibbard: “train song”
antony and the johnsons: “aeon”
andrew bird: “oh no”
the antlers: “two”
editors: “no sound but the wind”
radiohead: “harry patch (in memory of)”

disc two: uranus

au revoir simone: “another likely story”
jj: “things will never be the same again”
delorean: “seasun”
the xx: “islands”
bat for lashes: “daniel”
desire: “don’t call”
little boots (feat. philip oakley): “symmetry”
little dragon: “runabout”
jenny wilson: “clattering hooves”
la roux: “fascination”
miike snow: “a horse is not a home”
the dirty projectors: “stillness is the move”
amanda blank: “something bigger, something better”
peter, bjorn & john: “nothing to worry about”
music go music: “i walk alone”
telefon tel aviv: “helen of troy”
sally shapiro: “dying in africa”
sufjan stevens: “you are the blood”
the yeah yeah yeahs: “hysteric”

free will astrology: aquarius

rob brezny has been really off with me lately (as have many of my other favorite astrologers.  i’ve been beginning to wonder if my parents lied to me and i’m actually a libra or a pisces!). but boy, he hit the nail on the head this week:

writing in the new yorker, adam gopnik named two characters from literature that well-educated people tend to identify with. “men choose hamlet because every man sees himself as a disinherited monarch,” he said, while “women choose alice [in wonderland] because every woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who think that they are disinherited monarchs.” that’s a funny thought in light of your current omens, aquarius, which suggest that you’re a reasonable creature who clearly sees how much you’re like a disinherited monarch. the omens go on to say that there’s a good chance you will have excellent intuition about what to do in order to at least partially restore yourself to power.

charles isherwood: clueless once more

from his review of the mark taper forum review of parade in today’s ny times:

still, just as i did when watching “parade” for the first time a little over a decade ago, i found myself wondering if anti-semitism, corruption and venality are subjects profitably illuminated by being dramatized as musical theater. music enhances our emotional responses to theater, but our reaction to the events depicted in “parade” is mostly revulsion, which doesn’t need much help from an orchestra.

what the hell does this mean?  it’s attitudes like this that keep the musical theater from providing us with musically and dramatically ambitious works on the broadway stage.  once in a blue moon we get a piazza, a parade, a next to normal. maybe it’s the sondheimist in me, but who dictates what is appropriate material for the musical theater?  who?  i suppose it’s one reason i’ve been enjoying opera again recently.  in opera you can have political intrigue, murder, deception, lust, madness, agony, infatuation, acts of supernatural grace or violence . . . there is no limit to the palatte of subjects and tonalities expressed in the standard operatic repertoire.  but for some reason the musical theater continues to operate as if sondheim were an anomaly.  it’s as if everything he did was for naught and we’re still stuck with bloated craptaculars (and we all know the obvious candidates here) stinking up the great white way.

again, isherwood seems to be clueless as to his influence as 2nd string critic at the times.  i really wish the theater had a stronger indie voice to define tastes and movements (the way pitchfork and stereogum do in music).

i worry because it is still a great dream of mine to write a musical (or possibly an opera) but it seems that the subject matter i would naturally be drawn to are taboo subjects for the critics at the new york times.  it’s probably a good thing they didn’t have isherwood review next to normal. cause god knows, bipolar disorders should never be set to music!  god forbid!  what would he have thought of sweeney todd (cannibalism!), west side story (gangs!), cabaret (nazis!), and fiddler on the roof (o hai, your entire way of life is gone forever!).

new interview

adam szymkowicz interviewed me for his blog as part of his “i interview playwrights” series.

check it out!

rereading terrence mcnally

i’ve been revisiting terrence mcnally’s plays in the last couple weeks.  even though i was very dismissive of what i called “manhattan theater club” theater (and even though i sold subscriptions for manhattan theater club for three seasons) in my pretentious 20s, i cannot deny that the lisbon traviata and master class made huge impressions on me–so huge that even when i was eyerolling mr. mcnally’s work i would always insert the caveat “but then there’s master class!”

because scott worked for robert whitehead, i ended up being his de facto temp whenever he was away on vacation.  working for the producer of master class on occasion made me feel connected in very big way to the play . . . and of course, i saw all three broadway maria callases–caldwell, lupone and carter.  i also credit mcnally for getting me into maria callas when i read the lisbon traviata in high school.  i’ve revisited both plays thanks to my current opera revival and i’ve been pleasantly surprised by both.  they take these hairpin tonality shifts throughout . . . and i think i finally figured out where the hell i got that from in my work.  mcnally will set up an incredibly funny moment and follow it up with something deadly serious or poignant and do it rather unapologetically and with panache.  i’m in the middle of lips together, teeth apart at the moment and i see the same sort of dynamic at play.  i am also very happy the golden vanity is nothing like lips together . . . which i worried about given they are both set on fire island and have four characters.

speaking of lips together . . .   i want to know what house these folks were in where they had schubert, joan sutherland and billie holiday blasting at them from the neighboring houses.  my experience of the pines consisted of a lady gaga/katy perry/kelly rowland (please brain bleach that song from my memory)/black eyed peas melange.  when i heard the renters in our neighboring house play glass candy one weekend i almost ran over there screaming “i love you!  save me!”  when we had the smaller house two doors down, i would often have alone time in the house which would result in my blasting sigur ros, cocteau twins and caribou from the sound system during the evenings and staring up at the stars.  i’m sure the neighbors were like “wtf?  i don’t hear melisma!  nooooo!”

la povera karita (or va, tosca!)

oh, god.  i don’t know where to start.  but, yeah, this tosca was pretty terrible.

1.  the design was uninspired.  the sets and costumes just didn’t serve anyone.  the singers looked terrible (and poor karita mattila who looks so damn glam and sexy in the met ads looks like some matronly vampire . . . not good) and the set design really added nothing thematically or dramatically to the opera.  in fact, i felt they often ruined what are surefire dramatic moments in the opera–the te deum, all of act 2 and of course tosca’s death.

2.  there were clueless moments where luc bondy just made some arbitrary choices that ended up being silly–tosca stabbing mario’s painting, scarpia humping the virgin mary and then the crowd behind him gasping in unison, the hookers, tosca grabbing the knife twice (once during “vissi d’arte” . . . what?) and letting it drop back on to the table loudly before she grabs it the third and final time, scarpia’s ridiculous death, tosca’s wtf? comedown after killing scarpia, and the infamous mannequin at the end which looked like something out of the pirates of the caribbean ride at disney.

3.  for all of peter gelb’s wanting to make the met a more dramatically and theatrically viable institution, this production failed on dramaturgy 101 straight through . . . and these poor singers had no basic direction.  they seemed lost on stage, often pacing back and forth and resorting to stock melodramatic operatic gestures.  as “old fashioned” as zeffirelli is, when he directed maria callas and tito gobbi, both of them acted the hell out of tosca and scarpia.   i would have settled for a plain production as long as the drama in the story was unearthed . . . because tosca is all about drama.  if you don’t get the drama, you lose the opera.

4.  mattila was my favorite of the bunch.  i can see what people say about her voice not being italianate enough.  sometimes it seemed a little too wagnerian.  but she sang the role very well especially when she went into her chest or up into the higher more shrieking notes (highlighting tosca’s volatility).  she seemed to be doing what she could acting wise, but i think bondy left her high and dry.  i would catch flashes of the fire she displayed in fidelio and salome, but often i would wonder why is she struggling with train of her dress or trying not to trip over a bloody sheet or wearing a jherri curl?

there really isn’t anything cutting edge or experimental about this tosca. it’s just badly executed from a production standpoint and i am surprised no one sat down with bondy at some point and said “um, why?”   these are basic things any standard issue dramaturg could point out.  i even think comparing this with the zimmerman sonnambula is a disservice to zimmerman.  whatever you want to say about that production, it had a point of view, a cohesiveness, and a clarity with the staging and stage pictures that this production is lacking.

so, i’m joining the boos here.

i’m back next month for le page’s production of berlioz’s la damnation de faust.  i’m tempted to try to get a ticket for the janacek as well.