The work I'm doing as we speak

A few random thoughts to share today...

The play I'm currently working on is entitled "The Most Wonderful Love." It's due for production in the early summer here in good old NYC. It's a comedy in three acts.

Now, I'm in the midst of a rewrite because the first draft had a reading that lasted just over three hours long. That's a bit of a test of any audience's patience. It also meant to me, knowing the script, that there was a great deal of fat on it.

I've been working closely with a director by the name of Kyle Ancowitz, who directed my last three act comedy "The Great Escape." That play was lean and mean. This new script has more than double the number of characters, and a wild ending, and music... you get the idea. It's a bigger play, more ambitious, but also more unruly.

By the time I've got it under control, it shouldn't seem ambitious. It should seem, well, full. Not overburdened.

Working with Kyle has been a bit of a revelation for me. Partially because I've rarely worked with a director I trusted to share my sensiblity about my work before. I've had experience with directors who have very strong opinions about my plays. But that, and the price of a cup of coffee, will buy a director... a cup of coffee. Directors should seek playwrights they trust and like to work with, just as playwrights are encouraged to guard their work closely from unwelcome influence.

One that that helps me tremendously is that this play is NOT being workshopped. I don't honestly know what the term means anymore. It sounds like a band of journeymen are approaching your precious, delicate play with a pair of pliars. It's an ugly term, and an ugly process, and yields plays that have less and less to say.

This play is being worked on precisely because Kyle will soon be directing it and his company will soon be spending money getting it on the stage. And my audience (hopefully some of you among them) will be watching it produced, not "staged" or "read." That makes a tremendous difference.

So much of this business is voodoo. What you call yourself, where you work, who is standing next to you, what sort of morning you had...how you feel and what you believe and what weird and false energies and you can bring to bear on that day to make something happen. Being on the course to production transforms the process into something that feels more like it should to me.

Anyhow, as I talk sideways about how far along I am (not as far as I tell people, but not as behind as I think I am), and work on whatever else is popping up in my head (it's usually in the midst of a rewrite I get the urge to write anything else...), I'm also trying to remember not to edit the humor out of the play, and not to assume anything about the script, and remind myself that most of what I wrote was put there by accident.

Last night I watched the first third of the Peter Brook Mahabarata on DVD Then, I put on a Windows Media playlist (Aimee Mann, Ben Folds, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Radiohead, Wilco right now), fiddled with my resume, rewrote the beginning of an entirely different script called "The Lower River" and the worked a bit more on tightening up "The Most Wonderful Love."

I wrote a little on the blog in between and looked at websites about LOST. And talked to my girlfriend, who is working on a mix tape.

Last night's most profound thought? It's hard to write comedy after watching a Sanskrit epic.

What are you all up to? And what, if anything, would you like to know about my plays?