Thursday, December 11, 2003
in which famous people spill coffee on their pants.
last night, the monkey and i were invited to a workshop of new plays, at the same theatre where we experienced the disastrous stank the night before. it's an ongoing series of work, featuring a handful of mentored playwrights and a few famous, established ones doing the mentoring. there were some actors reading and a lot of folks observing, like we were. it's not open to the public; you have to get invited by someone at the theatre. we felt so slick.
i don't know if you get off on being around famous playwrights, but i almost wet my pants. it was fabulous. david henry hwang put his coat on my my coat in the coat pile. even better, the four mentored playwrights who had their work read were each great. we haven't seen a lot of good work here, and so it was refreshing, and a large relief. also, the actors were very good. also, the artistic director beetled around introducing us to everyone as "extremely talented actors." well.
i think most importantly, though, i had the good new york feeling i haven't had in so long. you know, about how this is an incredibly specific, miraculous place where things happen that don't happen anywhere else. this playlab does NOT happen anywhere else, couldn't. you could have all the funding and the best intentions in seattle and it would never, ever happen. it's nice to live where the playwrights are.
then we got shitfaced in the mexican restaurant downstairs and watched a tubby middle aged playwright with food in his beard and a show currently on broadway get sort of low-level, lifestyle drunk and work to fascinate pretty twenty-something girls. then he got out a bottle of ritalin and passed out pills. as we left, he was trying very hard (you remember this from your sophomore year of college) to explain something very important about the magic of theatre to a playwright who only spoke french.
i don't know if you get off on being around famous playwrights, but i almost wet my pants. it was fabulous. david henry hwang put his coat on my my coat in the coat pile. even better, the four mentored playwrights who had their work read were each great. we haven't seen a lot of good work here, and so it was refreshing, and a large relief. also, the actors were very good. also, the artistic director beetled around introducing us to everyone as "extremely talented actors." well.
i think most importantly, though, i had the good new york feeling i haven't had in so long. you know, about how this is an incredibly specific, miraculous place where things happen that don't happen anywhere else. this playlab does NOT happen anywhere else, couldn't. you could have all the funding and the best intentions in seattle and it would never, ever happen. it's nice to live where the playwrights are.
then we got shitfaced in the mexican restaurant downstairs and watched a tubby middle aged playwright with food in his beard and a show currently on broadway get sort of low-level, lifestyle drunk and work to fascinate pretty twenty-something girls. then he got out a bottle of ritalin and passed out pills. as we left, he was trying very hard (you remember this from your sophomore year of college) to explain something very important about the magic of theatre to a playwright who only spoke french.
