Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Sweet Little Variety Show, She Sells Seashells Excerpt

Thursday Night, 5/19  8-10:30pm
Sweet Little Variety Show
The Speakeasy at Local 121
Awesome.
121 Washington St.
Providence, RI
With performances by:
Baby Oil
Dirty Durdie
The Trumans
Denise Moffat accompanied by Kerry Callery
Serendipity Galore
Bettysioux Tailor
The Adventures of Fat Nancy and Crisco
The TropiGals
The Rhode Island Ukulele Armada

6 bucks at the door. Free Valet Parking.

Forget about dieting, go see this show and you'll laugh your ass off!

The Trumans looks especially good!  And of course only in Rhode Island would you have a Ukulele Armada!  Oh Rhode Island, you're so quirky and wonderful. 


 
Here's a bit of something: An excerpt from She Sells Seashells, by yours truly.
2nd Man
Well it’s fairly simple.  We plant trees and the beach is no longer a beach.  It becomes a forest. 
Lily
That is absurd.  I happen to like this beach the way it is.  Why would you want to change this gorgeous beach?  Just look at the waves lapping on the shore. 
1st Man
Look lady, we haven’t got time for this.  We have to make this beach a forest over night.  That’s not an easy task.  So if you would please be on you way and leave us to our work, we would much appreciate it. 
Lily
Well, I’m not used to being talked to in such a manner.  George do something.
George
It’s been nice talking to you gentlemen.  We must be on our way.  Come on Lily.  Let the men with the shovel and the tree get on with their work. 
I'm ready for the summer, I don't know about you.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Cape Cod Theatre Project, Blood from a Turnip and...a little whiskey

Great Theatre on Cape Cod!  Yeah it can happen and does every Summer on the Cape.
Check out The Cape Cod Theatre Project.  They are physically located at Falmouth Academy, and online on Facebook and at CCTP.  Check out their new season of play readings and like them on Facebook.

Providence Get Ready for another amazing rendition of Blood from a Turnip, RI's longest running (and only), late night puppet salon.  Fri May 20th 10pm at Perishable Theatre www.perishable.org, downtown Prov, 95 Empire Street. Still only $5.  A hilarious and edgy night of short form puppetry in the tradition of the puppet slam.  If you didn't know there was a puppet slam tradition, then don't you think it's about time you checked it out!? Oh, and I'll be hosting this one...

Here's a short bit of something:


Whiskey cures all ills


Mary: I must have caught a bug.
Liz: The flu?
Mary: I dunno, if it is, it’s weak.  I weakened my stystem.  Monday I drank way too much whiskey and ate way too much shephards pie.
Liz: Oh, but it’s Thursday.
Mary: Right I know, hence the bug.  I should have been alright by Tue evening  But this seems to be carrying on.
Liz: Have you drank since?
Mary: No.
Liz: Well that might be the problem. Try a bit of whiskey, might sort you out.
Mary: I dunno, I might, course…
Liz: Course what?
Mary: Course if it does sort me out, then it’s probably not a bug, might be that I’m an alchaolic, right.
Liz: Right.
Mary: So if I don’t have the whiskey and I stay sick, it’s a bug. If I do have a drink and it sorts me out then I’m an alchaloic.
Liz: Yuh.
Mary: Great.  What if I have a drink and it doesn’t sort me out?
Liz: I dunno.
Mary: Right.
(Liz gets the bottle of whiskey and pours Mary a drink, she drinks.)
Liz: How you feel?
Mary: Bout the same. 
(Liz gets another glass, she pours one for each of them, they drink.)
Liz: Now?
Mary: Dunno….Better I guess.
Liz: Right then, like I always said, whiskey cures all ills, even whiskey.
Mary:  You’ve never said that.
Liz: I’m saying it now. Let’s have another, then you go have a lie down while I get things sorted here.
(She pours, they drink.)





Monday, May 16, 2011

Stuck, oh and what a place to be.

Truro, MA
Despite a quick dip in the ocean yesterday (May 15th), it is still quite obviously Spring, not Summer like I was pretending. 

Here's a little bit of something from the winter.  Perhaps too autobiographical, but what isn't in reality?  It's just a matter of how far you bury it, or let it breathe.  



Notes on a day.


I wear my hat inside.  Heat is too expensive and there are so many windows, the ocean breeze is more of a whipping chill in winter, coming in through unknown cracks and crevices. 
I find any reason to avoid doing what I’m here for.  I look for activities and friends, I even clean fairly often. 
I think about my body a lot, probably because I am so sedentary, even though I walk miles everyday. 
In the face of successful people I feel weak and unaccomplished.  On the other side of things, around old friends and family I sometimes feel too self-important.  As though I have done more than them and somehow this makes me a better person.  It does not. I am not. What is accomplishment anyhow?  Flitting about, keeping oneself busy?  I need to do what is right for me, not just compare myself to others, put myself down or rise myself up depending on what others are doing.  None of this matters.  It just plain doesn’t matter.
Yesterday was rather a waste, due to getting hopelessly drunk the night before. 
One always self-deprecates after being hungover.  I think it’s the natural state to be ashamed of oneself in this situation. 
I sleep far too much these days.  Take of this what you will.  Eight, Ten hours a night, perhaps an afternoon nap just to round things out.  
I need to stay positive or getting anything done will be an impossibility.  Of course staying positive, implies one is positive, or at least has been.  Ahh.  Yes.  
The ambition to write is what? Is what?  Is it worth it?
Is what worth it?

My neck is stuck per usual.  


Today as if to reflect back upon this fairly typical winter's, err... reflection, my neck is stuck, unmoving, filled with pain.  I've a mountain of work to do.  Things that in reality, I want to do, to get done, to feel good about having done.  
Yet- Stuck- is really the way it is.  
Un-moving...afraid of going forward of actually "accomplishing" what I've set out to do.  It's all too scary I suppose, the unknown, for each of us.  For me it's a little bit like, being crushed by my own potential.  Or at times, ignoring that potential completely and distracting myself with other less significant occurrences that are fleeting at best.   
This is not original.  This is not interesting.  Nor special.  
 

It just is.  The state of things as it were, as it is, as it hopefully will not be, although...likely will be. 

Sanibell Island, Florida
So today, on this grey, gray day.  I once again wonder, hope, that if I were to go somewhere where the days are not often gray, then perhaps my mood might not be quite so grey itself.  Yet somehow I wonder if that's true at all.  
How one feels washed out from too much sunshine, a day at the beach, tired and happy but with little thought.  Just kind of blasted from the suns rays, a satisfied body from moving through the water, gravity isn't so much a concern, more like being back in the womb cradled in embryonic fluid.  Contented, untroubled, no words, no needs, no hopes besides a burger and a beer and a laugh or two.  So easy to ignore the rest of the world...happy...blissed out.  
But somehow just a little too unreal.  On the corner of your mind, the reality that there is war, strife, hunger and depression looming over a discontented and continuously troubled world.  
The indulgence of happiness.  Sometimes just seems a little bit wrong, but perhaps that's just a lifetime of New England winters talking.  
Yeah...stuck. 
Hyannis, MA
 

 

Friday, May 6, 2011

Summer, summer, summertime.

In the throws of Spring we are these days, and what of it?
The green grass, the blooming flowers and warmer days inspire hope and restlessness all around.
Itching to be done with school, to dive into the ocean, or to just indulge one's love of literature curled up under a tree or on the sand.
What of this constant upheaval each season?  We grumble, we complain about elements of it all. 
-The winter's too cold, there's too much snow, my car door is frozen shut!
-In the spring, the allergies, oh the allergies!  And what is that?  Snow again?  I thought it was Spring?  I can't wait for summer!
-The summer, we've waited for you all this long year, and here you are again, ahhh.  It's hot! It's humid!  It's 90 degrees in the shade! There's drought, the AC broke, the lawn is brown and I'm stuck inside all day anyways! 
-But Fall, Autumn so lovely with it's many shades, ahhh but it's almost Winter.  The chill fills the air and the dreaded leaves cover the damn lawn again! 

Today, today is a lovely day.  A bit chlly mind you, still it's sunny.  The Spring flowers are in bloom, the birds are active (So active that yesterday I hit one with my car on my way to work! It was a baby bird too!  So much for new life.), but what of it?  Why must we constanly drone on and on about the weather?  Aren't there more important things to say? To discuss?  Oh, I suppose not. 

New Yorkers Check this out.  This should be good. (I mean Jeff Jones created the facebook event, so...awesome!)

Little Theatre @ Dixon Place

There are a whole bunch of cutting edge writers, directors and actors involved in this. 

Also, I've never regretted an evening out at Dixon Place and neither will you. 

Monday, May 9, 2011, at 7:30 pm at Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (btw Delancey & Rivington).

Tickets are $15.00 at the door or online, first-come first-served; reservations are not accepted, but you can buy 'em online. For more information, call (212) 219-0736 or browse www.dixonplace.org.See more