It’s my birthday tomorrow, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s, you know, worth doing. At all. Ever. In life. So, I did what I do, and I wrote about it. Prepare for my totally unedited, shockingly comprehensive 8-point list of Things Worth Doing! Continue reading
Natural Born Idea Killers: How To Edit, And What To Cut
So, okay, editing is important, and in my last post about writing I covered some tactics for “how” to edit your work, but I didn’t even touch the “what.” When you’re editing… what do you cut? How can you be sure what to cut? It’s scary, no? Okay, listen, I come bearing very comforting good news about this– we’re all natural born editors. Let’s do a quick example, based on actual real life. Warning: things are gonna get META for a second! Continue reading
Filed under how.to.write
“Zeus” Resource Page, and First Reading Tonight!
In celebration of tonight’s event at Booksmith, where the cool performance troupe “Literary Clown Foolery” will be performing a canto from my new play-in-progress Zeus (commissioned for next year’s San Francisco Olympians Festival), I thought I’d put together a quick resource page about the play, to share the process and some of the ideas behind it. Continue reading
Filed under about.me, play.in.progress, sf.olympians.festival
The No-Ego Edit: 3 Quick Hacks For Revising Your Writing
Editing is basically the undesirable step-child of writing; ugly, uncouth, a little more violent than you’d like, and rarely discussed in polite company. When you write, you have to love your ideas, but when you edit, you can’t love everything or you won’t be able to brush away the clutter to reveal a landscape of clear, strong thoughts.
I am revising my screenplay right now. To do it well, I have to be able to read a scene and say things to myself like “Nothing interesting happens in this scene. Whoever wrote this scene was a very boring person. Good thing I’m here to clean up the mess.” I couldn’t be that honest if my ego were sitting in my lap, sobbing and choking out the phrase “I THOUGHT WE WERE SPECIAL.”
Filed under how.to.write
A Great Play I Didn’t Write, And The Story Of My Only A+.
Want to watch a great play I didn’t write, right now? Check out this fabulous video of kids performing the totemic avant-garde piece “Offending The Audience” by Peter Handke.
I’ve loved this play since studying it in college, me and a friend in the-world’s-most-intense-theater-seminar. It was just the two of us (young, good haircuts, a little too cool for school) and the famous Carl Weber (old, bald, German and brilliant, Bertolt Brecht’s assistant director and right-hand man at the Berliner Ensemble), sitting on the couch in the famous Carl Weber’s office Monday and Wednesday afternoons. Continue reading
My Dumplings Interview: “Breathless,” “Shameless,” “Like I’m Screaming One Last Message Out Before Being Hit By A Truck.”
Super-happy with this interview dramaturg Marissa Skudlarek did with me about “Three Little Dumplings Go Bananas.” She asked great questions and made me sound really smart. In the Dumplings interview we talk about sequels, television, the dumpling play that came to be, and the dumpling play that almost was. Check out this exchange: Continue reading
“Disarmingly Cute,” “Blood-Curdlingly Vicious,” and “A Worthy Successor”: Dumplings in the SF Bay Guardian
Wow, the SF Bay Guardian liked the “Three Little Dumplings Go Bananas” so much in their review “This Shit Is Bananas!” Check out this rad quote:
As the banal, chart-topping strains of Taio Cruz fill the theatre, a whirlwind of pink sportswear and bared teeth commandeers the stage. This is a moment in the evening survivors of BOA X, last year’s edition of the Bay One Acts Festival, have been waiting for. Continue reading
“What truly elevates it is Cohen’s language”: Dumplings in the SF Weekly
What a fabulous review of the 2012 Bay One Acts in the SF Weekly today… especially the part about me, and about the play I wrote, “Three Little Dumplings Go Bananas.” Here’s a quote: Continue reading