(Un)Motivation…

I should be…

…working on the script I’m writing for this years Minnesota Fringe Festival.  Writing a play is funny business.  On one hand, it’s a medium I’ve always really enjoyed working in, because it allows me to focus on the things I’ve always enjoyed about writing, like dialogue, plot, and action, while allowing me to ignore the things I’ve never really cared writing, like long descriptions of people or things.

However, playwriting brings with it a unique challenge: everything you write actually needs to be able to happen in real life. For example, if I am writing a short story, and I want to say, “The yellow gate to the next dimension opened, and the magic gnome floated into my room…,” well, I write it, and it happened.  But if I want that to happen in a play, I can write it, but at some point, onstage somewhere, a yellow gate is going to have to open, and a magic gnome is going to have to float out of that son-of-a-bitch.  This scene could prove somewhat difficult for a director to stage, particularly since the Magic Gnome Actor’s Union is notoriously difficult to deal with.

A different sort of pressure is also compounding my work on this script.  For those of you who don’t know, the Fringe Festival is a completely non-jurored festival, which means the shows that get in are chosen completely randomly, and not based on any perceived merit.  No one in the festival has read my script, or for that matter, even know what the hell it’s going to be about, which means there is really no safety net preventing me from writing something that completely sucks balls and putting it out there for hundreds of people to criticize, mock, or otherwise just shake  their heads in sadness at.

It’s slightly stressful.

I should be…

…planning, organizing, and implementing a massive media campaign against my former employers, ISD #287.  I have, after talking with several people and doing some research, given up any hope of any sort of legal battle (for a 100% FICTIONAL account of my troubles with 287, see my previous post “SCREWED! The Movie…”).  However, I feel sick to my stomach thinking of these people getting away with what is, at the very least, a morally speaking completely fucked up move, without some sort of backlash.  I have no idea if any local papers will even care about my story, but at the very least I will write a NON-fictional account of what happened on this blog soon, and make sure I put Intermediate District #287 into the tags.  With any luck, this blog will be the second thing that comes up after the districts own website if someone searches for them.

I should be…

…working on some more blocking and finding props and set pieces for “Handle With Care,” which I was fortunate enough to get accepted into Northfield Arts Guild’s Short Play Festival, performing this May.  I’m directing the script myself, because I’m too lazy to find another director and also, why the hell not?

Actually, there is a pretty clear answer to that second question, which is that I have no fucking clue how to direct something.  I’ve taken no classes and read no books on directing.  I’ve been directed before, and that is what I am using to base all my directing decisions on.  It’s basically like trying to be a police officer based on the fact that you got pulled over one time for speeding.

Luckily, I have an amazing cast that includes Kim Hostrawser, a very talented actor I’ve been fortunate enough to be in a couple shows with; my sister April, who has stormed on to the local theater scene by managing to get cast in every single play she’s ever auditioned for; Andrew Nawrocki, who has been absent from theater for a few years now, and I am determined to single-handily reintroduce him to the scene; and lastly the ever-present Matt Damon (read: talented) to my Ben Affleck (read: not so much), Nikki Wakal.  I’ll be plugging this thing again in future blogs.

What I’m doing instead…

…is writing a pointless, mostly self serving blog and rebuilding my massive music collection that was lost when I did  a system restore on my laptop recently.  Right now Kenny Rogers is singing “Just Dropped In,” which, for some reason, seems all too appropriate for my current state of mind:

I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
I watched myself crawlin out as I was a-crawlin in
I got up so tight I couldn’t unwind
I saw so much I broke my mind
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in