Number One with a Bullet

June 15th, 2008Blog0 comments

My current favorite item for bribing myself: Snickers ice cream bars. Whoever invented these deserves the Nobel Prize for snackology. I could eat Snickers ice cream bars for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I could eat an entire box of them. They are the new bacon.

Next weekend is the last weekend of the Thumping Claw show. It’s been a good run — an interesting run to say the least — and I’ve learned a lot about my piece that will help me going forward.

It’s pretty great working with actors. Our piece was all about women — the cast was all female, our wonderful director is a woman, so I was the only man in the room during rehearsals. However, I always left my penis out in the hall, so that worked out pretty well. Except for the night somebody stole it. But we located it in the lost and found, so it’s all good.

(Although that is somewhat of a blow to your ego: When someone steals your penis, then decides they don’t really want it anymore and drops it in the lost and found bin.)

Anyway, working with actors and a director is great. Working on a piece is like being on an archaeological dig. When you have other people there helping you, the treasures are unearthed sooner and more easily.

Writing is predominantly a solitary process, so it’s a joy to get it out there in a roomful of other people and work the material. That’s where I have a great deal of the fun that occurs in my life. As I go into the rest of the summer and the other two theater projects on my plate, that’s what I’m looking forward to the most.

I think if I only wrote for film, the solitude would drive me insane. That’s one of the wonders of theater — it’s a collaborative process with the writer at its center. And it teaches you a lot about writing — even writing for film. Kind of like how sculpture will teach you things about painting, and vice-versa.

But working with people is the best part. It makes the material social, and that’s something that you don’t get anywhere else.