Getting the old gang back together again

1. So we're beginning the planning process for Element '11, which is tremendously exciting. The novelty will have worn off by about October, when I am terrified about money and whether we will only get submissions that are Mamet ripoffs and oh god oh god I am such a fool to sleep six hours a night when there's all this stuff that needs writing...but for now, awesome. If you would like to help or contribute, even if you don't live in Chicago, send me an email (on the sidebar there).

2. I was away for a while there because there was some personal stuff, and then a death in the family, and then laziness, but here I am again. Still hammering away. I got a second job, so now I won't starve to death while I do my third and fourth unpaid jobs (Element and Theoretically Writing My Own Stuff in My Theoretical Spare Time). I would like to wedge a playwriting class into my schedule now that I can sort of afford it, but I dunno how exactly.

3. One thing I want to say in this entry, before the feeling wears off, is about a play I recently went to see, which was well-acted and well-designed and put on by a new company that obviously has some serious fundraising ability, but which should never have been put on. It was pointless to do and it was pointless for me to go see it, and that's because it has nothing to say.

The play was written in the eighties, and it became obvious about ten minutes in, because all the references were super eighties. But it was also obvious because it was trying to evoke emotions in me with really dated, overused tropes and topics that have not worked since the eighties. Shocking Thing X is now so widespread it was absolutely not shocking. As a result, I couldn't care about the characters or the plot, and once that happens, there is a system failure.

I'm not sure why this obviously talented company didn't realize that they were putting on an emotionally redundant, dated-ass slice of boring, or what they thought it expressed well enough that they absolutely needed to put it up. But there is a solution to this problem, and the solution is: put up new plays. One of the things we discovered with Element is that you can put an ad up almost anywhere that says "We want new plays" and people will send you new plays until you shout at them to stop, and sometimes not even then. And some of them will be awesome. If theater is in such trouble as a medium, maybe we should try to promote work that, I dunno, is relevant.

4. They're making another TV series for Avatar: The Last Airbender! The same people who made the original cartoon! You know, the one that doesn't have all the fucking white people! I'm so excited.