The Whitman Piece--A Chronicle

July 9, 2011.

And the work goes on.  

I’ve just finished version 4.1 of the Whitman Piece having worked on it for well over a year now.  It’s amazing, frustrating, and downright weird how a script can evolve and evolve and evolve.  Endlessly.  You just run out of time, that’s all.  That’s not entirely true.  Progress is made.  One does get to a point where things aren’t better, they’re just different, but I’m not there yet.  Tomorrow we’ll talk through the script with Christopher (the Director) and the rest of the Touchstone Ensemble—Lisa and JP—and then I get one more hack at it before rehearsals begin in a week.

I’m pretty happy with it, right now, but I expect once it’s “inflated” into three dimensions, there’ll be any number of “leaks” that have to be fixed.  We’ll see.   

Bill,

First, break a leg with this ambitious project.  I certainly hope to get a chance to see it, despite the fact that my nest show opens on the same night this one does…

My sense of how I’m working toward that national dream is by keeping up with the news of current events, and by voting, signing petitions, writing letters to congresspeople and corporations and cabinet members pleading with them to do this or not to that, all in the hope that the country will continue to provide a greater range of equality and freedom (evn when those ideals conflict…).  I also think I help this dream along when I teach students to be more aware of the world around them and to be aware of the moral choices being made around them.

Hope that’s helpful somehow.  Maybe banal, but it’s the best I can do.  

Michael Swanson

Coordinator of Theatre and Dance, theatre professor

Elizabethtown College

Mariel Iezzoni commented on your post.”I once had a cab driver in Washington DC who was from Ethiopia. He ended up telling me that when he came here was no water and no way to get work in his village. He said in America, you can work hard and get somewhere. There is opportunity here in a way that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. America as an entity represents opportunity. It was easily the most eloquent way anyone has described “America” to me.” 

Dear Friends,
As you may or may not be aware, I am writing a play to open in the first week of April about group creation of art, the United States of America, and the “Spirit of the Age”.  This play will have interesting implications for any who might see it, but certainly for those interested in “America’s Destiny” and the struggle of creating “art”.  
We’re doing two readings of it for comments from general folks before I start working on the “final” draft.  Tonight at 7 p.m. at Touchstone Theatre, and tomorrow at 8 p.m. 
You are cordially invited.  Please come out and help make the play.
Touchstone Theatre, 321 E. 4th. St., Bethlehem, PA 18015    
Bill

Spent over eight hours working on the script today, working all of Act I.  Five scenes, each scene three, four times.  The work goes on and on.  

When I was in Third Grade, I think it was, my teacher had us take a “nom de plume”.  I chose, forgive me, Winnie-the-Pooh.  I thought that that was a particularly clever, aristocratic and sophisticated name of which I was quite proud—that I was familiar with such exalted literary figures.  I remember writing my first creative piece, signing it with big letters—WINNIE THE POOH—and handing it in, confident of its brilliance.  A few days later it came back with a C, maybe it was a C+.

That one experience is something, strangely enough, I’m still trying to overcome, but at least I know I’m a bear of little brain, that the only hope for me is work, work, and more work.  

The final public reading (only public readings, really) are January 20 and 21 at Touchstone Theatre.  7 p.m. on the Thursday, 8 p.m. on the Friday.  Come on down to Pooh Corner.  

Bill,

Came by your blog. And am grateful. Writing, rambling, rumbling, through the first draft of Diabetes of Democracy, too. Great to see someone else’s process. Love the tape. :)

Best wishes.

Un abrazo,

Karimi, Robert