Grovers' Corners

Sometimes I get frustrated living in a small town. I don't go to many professional shows. I'm not in any loop. It's not like there are any connections to make here in Cranbrook that will help me take my writing to the next level.

I was recently talking to a young man from Montreal who runs a Chinese Opera company. He fell in love with Chinese Opera in university and he and some like-minded individuals banded together and perform with some degree of regularity. He talked about Chinese Opera a lot. As in, I think it consumes most of his thoughts. That's not a bad thing at all. In fact, I envy him.

There are many people living in Cranbrook whom I've asked to what degree theatre is on their radar, as in do they go to plays(?). More often than not, the answer resembles "If I had to . . ." or, "My girlfriend wanted me to go to a play once, but I was like, 'No' . . ." or "No. Theatre can happen or not happen and my life would be no different." When it comes to the local theatre scene, there is a small band of folks here who will go to everything. There is a larger group who will go to all of the high school musicals. There are others who will go to plays if they know someone in the show or if they heard it's good. Many will visit the touring large-scale musicals in nearby cities. Precious few will attend the shows of local professional companies in said nearby cities (i.e. Theatre Calgary).

So, in contrast to my Chinese Opera-minded acquaintance who is surrounded by folks who may spend days just learning how to get a particular movement sequence just right, I spend most of my time around a wide cross-section of people. Pastors, stay at home moms, teachers, nurses, miners, landscapers and the like.

I often crave to get away and burrow myself into some little theatre cocoon where I'm just around theatre people all the time and I would go to plays and write plays (which everyone would just love and praise incessantly) and talk about plays and my life would just be about theatre. Nothing would be boring and everyone would just get me. I think about that a lot, actually.

But then. I go down to the Farmer's Market on Wednesday night (it took about five minutes to get there). It's pretty packed. There's a girl who I taught a couple of years ago - I really like her a lot. We hug and exchange "You look good"s. I see a whack of people I either currently teach with or have at one time. The musicians are former or current students. There's a bunch of church people - I find out that one of my good friends is going away next week, not this week like I thought. Everyone is glad to see me and I'm glad to see them. I don't know, it's charming. And irreplaceable. That's just one example of why, when to comes right down to it, I in fact do not regret my choice to live and work where I do. The other, more vital example is the shortbread chocolate cookies at Max's Place downtown (mmmmmmmmyummmAH!). They fix everything.

Yep, I'm unproduced. Yep, the biggest likelihood is that I'm going to stay that way. Really, it's true (it's okay). One of the reasons for that could be that I'm remote and don't have my finger on the pulse of our diverse, changing and urban world. But, people love stories. And who else is going to tell the ones that only I can tell? So, I'm telling them. And though yes, sometimes it does make me discontented with Grovers' Corners to go away and see (or think about seeing) other things, I know that I'm where I'm supposed to be. And mostly, I like it.

Catch-up

I was re-reading some of my earlier posts and realized that I have a few "I'll tell you how that goes" statements, and then I didn't follow through on letting you know how those things went.

Let's start with The Mimic's Riddle. About a year ago, I entered it in the 2011 Yale Drama Series Competition. There's nothing to report. It didn't go anywhere. Didn't hear back from the development programs either.

My overseas trip was totally awesome. Unfortunately, toward the end, the bunch of us got sick and the last few days were spent coughing and gasping. It was really terrific to spend significant amounts of time with friends and family. Favourite things that I had never seen before: The Musee D'Orsay and Newgrange were at the top of my list. I am a gallery/museum junkie and I went to as many as I could wherever I could. There are never too many art galleries! Oh, and I got to visit the Royal Court Theatre in London. That was super cool.

We had a big McSheaffrey hoolie one night in Edinburgh. Got as much of the family together as we could - as far as my trip was concerned, it was a highlight for me.

So, that was that trip. Also went to Florida and did the Disney World thing. Ghastly.

Rounded things off with a Stage Combat intensive in Vancouver at the end of June/beginning of July. Totally life-changing.

The clock is ticking on this sabbatical thing and, though it has been an incredible year (I encourage everyone to just take a year where you don't have to work - it really changes how you look at life), I have accomplished very little writing. I have, in the times where I haven't had activity directly in front of me, spent a lot of time reflecting and thinking. I know! Who does that? How is that productive? But, you see, that's the point. No to do, but to be.

I'm on page 36 of The School Play. It's.going.so.slowly. But again, there's a story in there somewhere - schools are breeding grounds for drama.

Take care and I'll talk to you soon.

Jacob

So, Jacob wrestled with God. You can read about it in Genesis 32 if you want.

I've been thinking about this one a lot today. It's a great story. Jacob was a great big jerk - I've never liked the guy. But, I gotta hand it to him on this one. He went after what he wanted and fought hard for it well into the night. I love the sense of urgency in this story, this sense of "I'm not going anywhere until I get what I came for and I don't care what it costs!"

I want to be like that. I want the characters in my plays to be like that.

I love that he limped the next day because he got smoked in the hip. Our struggles leave their marks, don't they?

Summer Drive

I'm surprised they held my spot here. I don't deserve it, that's for sure. I seem to get more drive in the summer, for some reason. Goes against nature, I know, but I just seem to get more pages written in the summer.

Came across this on the web today:

"Q: How important is the process of rewriting?
Robert McKee: It's absolutely critical. I quote Hemingway in my book who said, "The first draft of anything is shit." What's difficult for writers to come to terms with is to recognize that 90% of what we all do, no matter our talent, is not our best work. We are only capable of excellence maybe 10% of the time."

I know that some people roll their eyes at Robert McKee, but I think he's right about most things. Certainly this.

How can this not be debilitating? I confess I use this as an excuse in being unproductive. It's hard to start a new draft of something when you know that you've got at least 2 rewrites before it's fit to look at. It's a miracle that any of us bother. But we do, because we must. As playwrights, the thoughts of people sitting in the dark watching our stories for up to two hours outweigh the toil of countless hours of writing, rewriting, applying feedback, preparing readings, submitting and, let's face it, the internet detours we take when we're stuck. Which for me, is a lot.

Well. Back to mining for that 10%.