Second verse, same as the first...

LARAMIE PROJECT closed yesterday. What a crazy short run - it's not even a full day later and it's already like it never happened. It was a very fulfilling experience, the cast was great to work with, and it was great to return to Great Plains Theatre Festival. Working with Richard Esvang way back when was pivotal to my initial growth into whatever kind of actor I am today, so to go back and see the theatre after so long and be able to perform there... well...

The circle is now complete...

I think mentioned earlier that I hoped LP wouldn't bookend my working life, since my first "real" job was there in 1995. (This of course excludes some truly horrid "jobs" I did at various extinct summer theatres in high school and college.) Well, I'm safe from that for the moment at least. I'm headed to work (finally) with Scott Bradley at Jenny Wiley Theatre. We've been trying to work it out for some time - a couple of seasons - and I'm glad I'm finally making it out there. Scott has been a great guy and I really think we will work well together. I'm looking forward to it.

I recently had a ship offer or two come my way, and I had to turn them down for JWT and other more personal reasons. Yes, I actually chose something(s)over money. How unamerican of me. That's not some assumption of artistic nobility on my part, but all part of a grand rebuilding of self and prioritization of my life. I do intend to go back out in ships in the near future.

LARAMIE PROJECT may have, as I noted earlier, "repaid some karmic debt," but I'm still probably way overdrawn in that department. That sounds SO heavy, like I'm trying to affect depth and angst. Oh, the ennui!

So soon I'll head to Kentucky to direct a little something for JWT.

Plans within plans

So I have begun to firm up my plans here... I will detail them shortly... as well as my recent crazy roadtrip. Shortest entry ever.

In the wind

I had to leave early last Sunday morning to get here to Abilene to begin rehearsals on Monday for LARAMIE PROJECT.

It has been a crazy week. Aside from rehearsing an intense, difficult play, I have had some difficult decisions to make in the whole work department - it's not been easy, and I'll mention what the decisions wound up being in an entry soon.

This play is a great piece, and it could easily wind up being very stoic and overly serious and "Important" in the presentation of it. Luckily, I'm back at Great Plains Theatre Festival working with a very talented director, Richard Esvang. When I worked here years ago, in their first season, it was the most important grounding in professional theatre I ever had. I'm glad to be back.

I feel - I hope - that doing this play also will serve as a bit of a catharsis for me. I have a lot of karmic debt to repay, I guess I'm saying, and I want my participation in this to be pure enough that... I hope we're able to move some people, make them think maybe. To be able to do some good, here. That sounds so damnably pretensious. I don't mean it that way, I just need to do some good.

The Laramie Project Project

Based on the events of the last few months, my focus is not where it could be.

Thus in my attempts to familiarize myself with the script for THE LARAMIE PROJECT I keep going into these wild mental digressions. If you're not familiar with the play, it's built on interviews the members of a theatre company did with many, many people in and around Laramie, Wyoming who were affected by the events surrounding the killing of Matthew Shepard. It's a heavy subject, but a great piece that never gets bogged down in the awful preachiness of the extremes of either side. That said, it has a decided point of view.

Okay, now that I've said that and gotten it out of the way, the wild digressions. I mean no disrespect to anything but... it's my mind. V asked me before she left if I knew my lines and I started reciting a monologue about Laramie's obsession with the little colored sprinkles they put on ice cream. They have a name, I can't remember it.

Since then, I'll be studying the monologues and wondering "what about all the stuff they didn't use?"

Like Laramie's ice cream man. Or the janitor at the high school who's obsessed with the X-Files. Or someone's dog.

Now I want to write my own Laramie Project. I think I might tape a lot of stuff while we're working on the play and make a short film called The Laramie Project Project. It'll be interviews with a group of actors who are portraying a group of actors who conduct interviews. I just had this idea this moment but that's damned funny.

I will soon know what the hell I'm doing for the next several months.

Curse You, Jed Clampett

So here's the nail in the coffin of the idea that the technology to easily, cheaply produce alternative-fueled cars doesn't exist. Thank you, Big Oil.