Ojai

DIARY

A couple points first:
~ If the photos here seem to be better than what I usually post here, it's becaue they're not mine. I took my camera to California, but wasn't able to procure any film until the last day. Jama McMahon has agreed to let me post some pics she took throughout the week.
~ Most of what I'll write here is from my journal. That's because I'm in a hurry, and it'll probably be more interesting than what I'd come up on my own today, given that I'm tired and uncaffeinated.

* * * * *

"I saw plains, mountains, canyons and desert. I listened to Romeo + Juliet, R.E.M. Reveal and Automatic, read the Jungle, tried to sleep. Hallie picked me up. We rode to Ojai. I took a 4-hour nap and got up at 2:30 PM. Hallie, Lacey, and I watched an episode of Queer Eye then headed to the Happy Valley. My dorm room is cold as fuck! But huge and gorgeous. We look out over a hill above the soccer field, miles of oranges, and the mountains lining the northern edge of the Ojai valley."

After settling into my room, the conference converged on the Zalk theater, and we introduced each other, then went to the barbecue dinner outside. Then, down to the Yurt (which incidentally, is from Kyrgyzstan), the drinking of much Corona, and an early night.

* * * * *

"On Monday I sat in on rehearsal for For Reele by Stephen Belber. I read in the part of Opal. I blogged and worked to revise Canaryville Blues." That night was open mic night at the Yurt. Again, much Corona. I read the first chapter of Adrift of the Mainstream. The reaction was divided between affirmative and confused. Several people seemed to think it was set in Chicago and not Flint, and several seemed to think it was autobiographical. But then, I was reading very quickly, because I wanted to get through the whole first chapter.

My favorite moment was when Bast dies on, like, page 4. Someone gasped. I love that.

* * * * *

"On Tuesday, I was moved to A Map of Doubt and Rescue by Susan Miller...
The play... it's a play of power and majesty and confusion. Unable to define its subject, it attempts to circumscribe it instead. The danger is familiarity. The problem with first steps is the assurance that lapses . hesitations. No second step. All sorts of shit like that. I learned this over the course of that week."

Explanations are difficult. This play, though, was why college first-years write abstract conceptual plays that are terrible, because they are using an abstract conceptual vocabulary. Susan's play is essentially abstract. But her characters are people with jobs who lose people and talk about things. This is what college first-years are told. And rightly so.

I should explain what I was. I was the Production Assistant at the beginning of the week and the Literary Assistant at the end. Despite the difference in title, they were the same thing. I was somewhere between the student interns and the stage-managers. Unlike the interns, I was free-floating between shows, going wherever an extra brain and pair of hands might be needed. Unlike the stage managers, I had responsibities that varied from day to day. In the end, I was much less busy this year than last, which was occasionally frustrating. Still, I got to work on a very exciting play with one of my very favorite directors and acutely sensitive and experienced actors.

It's the most I could fairly hope for.

"Meanwhile, I'd been in anxiety about setting up a reading of Canaryville Blues. I wanted to hear... was initially ambitious. Hallie helped. We went for food in late night Ojai."

"It's hard for me to be politic sometimes. I try to treat everyone the same, or at least equally. Which is problematic when you're supposed to be... deferring to age and experience.
Others have different ways than me.
I was anxious.
I talked with Hallie about careers and future and... all... you know."

Before this, the symposium. I saw Luis Alfaro in three pieces and a journalist describing his experiences in Iraq. Luis drank a lot of tequila.

* * * * *

"On Wednesday... more. Drilled on Canaryville Blues. The playwright Julia Jordan went to the Oscar Wilde Center. Doug drove Scott, Claire, and I to the cast party."

Rum punch and Corona. Some people became intoxicated.

"In the end I hung arund in the library with the cast of Map until it was very late." Then we went home.

Last year, the party scene at Ojai was far more raucous. I became close with Abigail, Karen, and Kevin, and a couple others. This year was not as broad, but more deep. I felt the play "in my heart," and made true friends. My friends were the interns, and the actors and staff of my own play.

Here, I'll show them now.

The interns are mostly high school students, each working on a different play. We hung out at most events, sat together at the plays, at lunch, and after the Yurt on any given night. From left to right, Claire, Jama, Joel, Kaley, Scott, and Stephanie.

These people are awesome. One'd like to that think one "matures," that as one ages he learns to stick to people about his own age, to remain balanced, centered in life. I can't help it that I keep meeting awesome people in their teens or forties. It happens.

Incidentally, Scott is more like John Bridge from Urbantasm, behavior-wise, than anyone else I've ever met. He isn't an asshole like John. And Scott stumbles more frequently. But other than that... maybe if John were to have a younger brother.

The other group of people I most connected with were my cast.
I can't post a picture because of Equity* regulations.
But the cast was Judith, Karen, Leo, Liza, Michael, Nealla, Paul, and Zach. They were so different but became close so quickly. And they all waived their special privileges to work their asses off on that show.

I spent a lot of the week in awe of all these people I met.

*Ask me if some unions are less effective than the UAW, and I'll inform you that the answer isn't very equitable.

* * * * *

Thursday. "Frenzied revision. Symposium #2: Charlaine. Susan. Nikolle. Denai. Too much emotion. Too fast. Then, the reading of Canaryville Blues. Doug was Patrick and Lacey was Kidd. Brian from Happy Valley was Cranks and Claire was Carlotta." The other parts, Pat and Marcos, Katherine and Cassidy, and all of the others, were read by the interns. "It needs much work, but I am not worried, because I can see clearly."

"After the reading, we went down to the Yurt." And then stayed up late, talking.

* * * * *

On Friday, we saw White Bicycle by Keith Bunin and Peter Parnell and In the Continuum by Nikkole Salter and Danai Gurira.

Regarding In the Continuum: I almost cried. I could breathe. The last fifteen minutes of the play, I heard in their voices the voices of friends and family, suffering bitterly, suffering unfaily. There is a kind of art that physically afflicts you, like a punch in the stomach or a slap across the face. I mark shows to which I respond like that. Dream 2 of the 7th Dream at Flint Youth Theatre... April 1996. The end of Act I of The Iphegenia Cycle at Court Theatre... September 1997. And now this.

In the Continuum stung me like a hornet. I told Nikolle and Denai this at the Yurt.

And again, some of the interns and I stayed up late and talked.

* * * * *

On Saturday.

We saw For Reele and the Little Locksmith by Linda Hunt.

"That night I took a flashlight and walkman and walked out to the haunted hill with the red chair."

"I danced for Eventime, tracks 1-5, and marveled at DISTANCES.

On the walk back through the brush, the flashlight broke and coyotes howled."

Earlier that night, Scott and I had moved the furnature from the basement rehearsal room into the McMahons' room, but they thought it was Scott and Joel. They wrote with red lipstick on maxi pads and stuck them on the boys' door. My door remained untouched. This is what happens when you are composed and rational with people. ;)

* * * * *

"On Sunday, Scott and I met Kurt Beattie (one of the directors) at six AM, and went walking into the mountains. Crumbling mud and dry stream bed. Poison oak. Ah, me. The blue sky was so blue above. We made it hundreds of feet up."

We drove back for the tech rehearsal of Map.

"I saw Dark Yellow.

"And I've already said: "Map." Can you tell I'm exhausted and mentally raw and emotionally ragged? After Map of Doubt and Rescue we had the final party, goodbyes. Hallie and I returned to L.A."

And that will be the content of the next post.

Here are some more of Jama's pictures:

Chairs that were nightly sat in.

Below: Me looking scruffy with the interns.

Below: Me looking scruffy with Abigail, Susan, and Jama.

I didn't shave at all that week. In California, with my complexion, one arrives at a salt and pepper and chili powder face. "Ick."


WTF?!