ALT: Vegeta in the Rain

Building a play is like building a ship. A ship on the ocean, a ship in the air, a ship surrounded on every side by night. Words for sails, light for wind, wood for the floor becomes the wood of the deck. It shouldn't float. It shouldn't fly. Only human will, contained for this purpose, makes it buoyant. A shape. A shape moving across the void.

We're all trapped in time, right? No dog, admit it - you are pinned DOWN in this conceptual morass. You can only pull up memories of the past (and they be dim as shit) or run some hypothetical imaginings of the future (and they be dim as shit). Now is all that you ever really see - but it's always getting away from you.

ALT: Abu's Twinkling Eyes in Aladdin

The People v. Star Trek: Voyager · Episode

when the gods are listening i take great care prayers are not demands just empty air that perhaps can be filled with their poisoned gifts so i pray for luck not skill or strength or wisdom or joy just luck the turn of the die that cannot be denied faster than death - braver than steel a tiny curse that glows and breaks walls and sings the impossible into the tapestry the unfair and the undeserved just luck i pray for luck

ALT: Ben Wyatt: Delusion Losing

they say i would love you in every lifetime find you in every world i say rookie numbers i say i'll hate you in some worlds i'll be the man who sells you coffee i'll be a stone a tree, a yapping dog again and again around the wheel and even those horrible turns where we never meet just to be sure that i'm always there…

Just over a month until auditions. Or, as any aging director will tell you, the most important 48-72 hours of the entire process. There are things you can affect as a director. Notice I did not say control. Control is an illusion and the sooner you rid yourself of any belief in its existence, the better. Much like God, it probably does exist in some sort of quantum / impossible to perceive by our feeble brains type way - but!

This summer's production marks the third time my life and this script have intersected. Today, let's talk about the first time. CAVEAT EMPTOR : I'm about to tell a story from when I was in high school, circa 1997. My memory is dogshit. If anyone else who was actually there somehow reads this and remembers it differently, they are probably right.

Several people have sent me the excellent NYT article about all the current ANTIGONE productions happening in the city. It's well worth reading, exploring the various versions/adaptations - with a passing nod to our own Anouilh's script. Let's all pause to have me admit that I never EVER spell his name correctly on the first try. He's the sitiuation of French playwrights.