"Life can only be understood backwards,
but it must be lived forwards."
--Kierkegaard

Saturday, February 14, 2015

1987, 1991

1987, 1991. In my wilder, younger days of serial monogamy, two relationships were sabotaged early on by daughters unhappy with mom's decision to be with me. I owe each of these worried daughters thanks.

The women I was with were very different, as were our circumstances. In those days I generally was too busy writing and partying to chase women. But sometimes they chased me, each of these on a fool's errand.

The first was an actrrss in several of my hyperdramas. She thought I was a genius, which was nice; that I drank too much, which was true; and that she would save me, which was delusional. But before we got together, I had to referee a comic hassle: an actor playing opposite her in my hyperdrama, which I also was directing, had fallen in love with her and had begun hassling her. I spent a lot of time with them individually and together, trying to keep their on stage romance alive but cooling down the one-sided one off stage.

It was during individual meetings with her in this context that she confessed her feelings for me. Soon we were living together in her house.

Daughter thought she was nuts. By appearances, she was supporting me since I was home while she was at work. In fact, I had grant money in the bank. Daughter invented a reason to crash with us for a while, and we didn't get along. Mom was put in the position of choosing between us and of course chose daughter. Thank the gods!

One afternoon I came home from something or other to find my belongings in boxes on the porch. I phoned a buddy and that was that.

The other separation was uglier. This woman was a drinker, a regular at one of my bars. She also loved theater, seeing most of my plays during my decade of fame. She was going to our local chef school. When she graduated, she decided to take me home with her to Seattle, where she owned a home in Kirkland. It was time for me to be a star in Seattle.

None of this came out until later. From my point of view, a foxy woman was inviting me to live with her in Seattle, where I could continue work on my Chekhov hyperdrama and stretch my bank funds farther. I had abandoned traditional theater and had no interest in traditional theater in Seattle.

None of this was known to her yet. We partied together without sharing these details. In the meantime, daughter was bugging mom that this all looked crazy to her. Why wasn't I making the rounds of Seattle theaters, pitching my work? Daughter thought I was using mom.

The first Gulf war started. Watching bombing on live TV, I was outraged. I was bad-mouthing the President. She was shocked. What was I, a communist? She was a red, white and blue conservative Republican, which had never come up during drinking and fucking. Ha ha ha!

Once again, I phoned a buddy and was out if there.

Dear daughters, thank you for making these diasters short and manageable.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

1971

1971. My real education as a playwright began on a Sunday afternoon in the early 1970s. I met with the playwright/professor, Dean Regenos, I would study under. He'd asked me to drop by my most risky play at his apartment.

He already knew about me. I'd switched programs from fiction to playwriting. I was already publishing stories in literary magazines and reviews in national publications. My first one act play had placed third in a national competition.

He said he wasn't sure he had anything to teach me. He wanted to find out. Give me something that takes chances, he said.

I expected to drop off the play, maybe chat a while and leave. I gave him MY TOWN, YOUR TOWN, in which the Black Panthers overthrow the Wilder classic and give the actors new sctipts, a device used a decade later in another play. A colleague of Joe Papp loved it but couldn't get the boss interested.

Regenos took the script, gave me a beer, told me to wait and went upstairs.

I was a nervous wreck when he returned an hour later. He said he was still shaking, it was so powerful. But yes, he did have something to teach me. I made the play almost impossible to produce. I had much to learn about stagecraft, writing for actors, and the practical limitations of theater.

And so my education began.

Dean kept trying to get me to act. I resisted. But at my next stop, Salisbury State College on Maryland's Eastern Shore, a semi-retired former Yale Drama School professor, Leeland Starnes, shamed me into acting under his direction. I had major roles in Our Town, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, A View From The Bridge.

And so my education continued.

By the time I landed in Portland in the late 1970s, ready to bring my small town Northwest characters out of my short stories and onto the stage, I was in the right place at the right time and ready to boogie.

And so the 1980s became my most "visible" decade as a traditional playwright.

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