Chance = Change

Wow ...wow...and wow some more!!! I returned to the South, for only a few days, and I am RE-BORN!!! Well, actually, I am a bit exhausted and really need to get some sleep, (which will not happen for a few days yet) but touching down on the warm Southern soil of Alabama felt so good, and the SOUTHERN WRITERS CONFERENCE I was part of was really refreshing, exciting and fun.

So much to write about it. Where to begin?

Well, let's start with my sad and dis-spiriting fear of getting onto airplanes: hell, I even hate going to air ports! I accepted the position of dramaturg for
Elyzabeth Wilder's new play GEE'S BEND, and didn't bother to think I really had to get onto airplanes to get there to do my dramaturging! In fact, one does not simply get onto an airplane and fly to Montgomery,Alabama...one gets on an airplane and goes to Memphis, sits for a little while and gets onto ANOTHER airplane and then gets to Montgomery, so there I was up and down and up and down, last Wednesday, February 1st....travelling all by myself in two hideous and nauseating airplanes...true, I did get a rather strong pill from a friend and after taking it, the world was pretty pleasantly fuzzy around the edges, which did help....but nonetheless....there I was...ridiculously 35,000 feet UP IN THE AIR, along with all the other fools who filled the plane...and well....really, isn't there something really really really stupid about that? I mean: look at it...humans, in sitting positions, fully clothed...floating in mid-air and being propelled through space at ridiculous speeds...what is "right" about that?

OKAY...okay...okay...i know...enough already.

The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, located on gorgeous acreage in Montgomery, land donated by the Blount Family, along with tons of cash to build one of the prettiest and most usable theater buildings I have ever worked in, hosts The Southern Writers Project....this Festival of new works has been going on now for about 6 or 7 years. Writers are chosen and commissioned, in some cases, to write plays proposed by those writers to the ASF powers that be...once the topic and writer are chosen, they have a year to come to fruition with something good enough to at least put into rehearsal for the week given them by the SWP...and in that week, the writer is given a director, a cast, and a dramaturg, a stage manager,designers for simply presentational things like lights and music and movement if there is any to be dealt with...and in one week's time, though it is not a full production, the writer has a good chance to hear and see his or her script come to some sort of life. The week is for the writer to cut, change ,write, re-write, add,delete,shape and massage the written thing. At the end of the week, Festival patrons arrive and they attend a series of readings showing off what has been worked on all week...it is festive and fun, and the theater buzzes with excitement. Also, the Festival Stage (the large theater, gloriously designed to hold some 600 audience) has a full production running, and so does the second space, The Octagon...so Festival patrons are treated to new works as well as stagings of a couple of more tried pieces, fully produced.

This year, on the Festival Stage was The Bird Sanctuary (a new Irish play by Frank McGuinness) and a wonderful thing called Pure Confidence, by Carlyle Brown... Elizabeth Franz and Hayley Mills starred in The Bird Sancturay, surrounded by company members of long standing...and Pure Confidence had wonderful ASF company members in it as well...people I had been hearing about but had never seen...genuinely terrifc actors.

And there were 4 new play readings,with Elyzabeth's Gee's Bend being the Saturday afternoon one....in the morning of that same day, a new comedy called Love and Other Phenomena , by Peter Hicks...and the afternoon before, an odd and long thing based on a novel of the same name: Four Spirits...again, names to follow soon...
There was also a musical piece called Sanctified, which was read on Sunday morning, but I was already on my first plane home by then...so I did not get to see it. But in the time I was there...

Well, it's important to note: Elyzabeth's play was the best received of the whole lot, given a hearty and enthusiastic standing ovation by an audience that was tremendously moved by what they saw. And a few of the dear old women from Gee's Bend were actually there to see it! Such a moving experience to see it all come together. Elyzabeth has developed into a genuinely strong and well-trained writer, with a keen sense of the dramatic, and a blessed ability to "cut to the chase", as they say...she knows the technicalities of writing a good theatrical play, and so this idea about Gee's Bend, its women and their quilts all came together into a pleasing whole at this Festival. I felt honored to help in any way I could. And Janet Cleveland, the director from Michigan, and the actors, all wonderful (names later), all collaborated in such a good way: it was fine.

And the audience got the results of that.

More to come on the Festival and my plane rides home!