Every part of this article is horrifying

Snake with Foot Found in China

It just gets weirder and worse. The last sentence?? Why???

In case you live under a rock, playwrights...

Submissions for the O'Neill are happening right now and you're an idiot if you don't submit your play. It's a dream. The happiest consecutive four weeks I've had in a very long time and incredibly restorative as an artist/human-- especially if you've spent your entire life in school or in somewhere like school and have just been released into the non-school world. Which, by the way, I love.

Submit submit submit.

I'd probably just blow all my money on the ponies, anyway

The fact that the government took $240 out of last week's paycheck makes it difficult for me to imagine the day I'll have saved up enough money for these:


This:


Or anything that is a step up from my current iPod which looks like this:

Ooooohrah!

I love when I go to a play written by someone I like and directed by someone I like and then the play is written and directed as awesomely as those people.

So you should go see it!

Oohrah!
Atlantic Stage 2

And as an added bonus-- the theater is located four stories underneath the ground. You have to take an elevator down and if the apocalypse happens during the show, you'll survive! Extreme play-seeing!

This makes my heart happy

Public pianos in Bristol

New play

At the O'Neill, a question that came up a lot was "where did this play come from?" as in "why did you write this" or "what was the motivation" or, in my case, "why Carthage, Missouri?" For whatever reason, that question was tricky for me-- play origin questions have always been tricky for me.

Carthage started with two chunks of scenes that I just wrote for fun the summer before I started Juilliard when I was still in the middle of Splinters, also known as the saddest play of all time. There was this super-early opening hotel room scene, and what later became Bryan's bee monologue. I wrote those in the summer, and then I didn't touch either one until-- oh, sometime in the fall. Maybe a month or two later, which doesn't sound like a long time, but for me, that's a long time to sit on something.

Anyway.

Now, when I start new plays, I try to be much more aware of why I'm setting out to write whatever I'm setting out to write. And I think that being aware of the impetus for a play earlier on helps me write it-- both quicker (this last one was less than a month start to finish) and with a stronger sense of direction.

So: This new play came from a character in Carthage, Irwin, whose life I wanted to see a little more of. The play is a response to themes in Carthage like reconnecting to family, abandonment, and selflessness, that I wanted to explore from another angle, and, if possible, more heart-wrenchingly. Don't worry, it's still kind of funny. Some of the time.

New online crack

In the past two weeks, I have moved into a new apartment/started a new job/stopped sleeping/finished a new play/turned 24.

But today I discovered this, and now I will be drastically less productive these next two weeks. I am truly hypnotized by these animalcams.