Three to five plays a week: that's my reading goal. I've taken a job as literary manager of a small Chicago theater company, and to effectively execute my duties I'm attempting to keep myself on a schedule. Item A is 3-5 plays, per week, from a variety of sources.
It is a daunting task, one that I fail easily at -- though not (surprisingly) too terribly often. Perhaps I only get through 3 plays -- that's still nothing to sniff at. Especially when you consider that the majority are new plays. Plays written by actors who think they can write plays, or people who dabble in playwriting. After 3-5 plays a week -- even if they're masterpieces -- you kinda' want to open a vein.
But that's life.
Life. 2012 is a chance for me to embrace life. 2011 ended whimperingly, with nothing but rejections, death, and my head in a terrible, terrible funk. 2011 rots in hell, 2012 is full of promise. That's all I can hang my hopes on right now: a positive outlook.
It's very easy to get negative right out of grad school. You spend hour upon hour reading theory, philosophy, history, plays, artists biographies -- all with the hopes that this will land you a job of some sort once you finish. Then you finish. Smarter, broker, expectant I re-entered the world anticipating a job. Why not? I have a fancy-pants degree and am in a great metropolis. Of course people want to at least interview me, right?
Wrong. Dead wrong. That death hit me harder than any other, probably because it was the death of my hope. Hope that I and my education and my dedication and my pedigree would be appreciated. Hope that was covered by years of better sense and cynicism, because the world is not about education, dedication, pedigree or appreciation. The world is about friends, connections, blah blah blah, negativity.
I can wallow in the negative, or I can accept it and move on -- perhaps worse for wear, but still going.
Today I signed with a legal temp. agency, so I can make a decent wage while I try to find opportunities for my MFA. It is might be circular, putting me in the exact situation I was in when I first moved to NYC in 2005 before I went to Haaaaavahd, but it gives me a life. Right now, I don't have one. I need to fix that, and I am. Slowly, surely, I am.
Hello 2012. Back to Basics it is, so that from there I can flourish.
It is a daunting task, one that I fail easily at -- though not (surprisingly) too terribly often. Perhaps I only get through 3 plays -- that's still nothing to sniff at. Especially when you consider that the majority are new plays. Plays written by actors who think they can write plays, or people who dabble in playwriting. After 3-5 plays a week -- even if they're masterpieces -- you kinda' want to open a vein.
But that's life.
Life. 2012 is a chance for me to embrace life. 2011 ended whimperingly, with nothing but rejections, death, and my head in a terrible, terrible funk. 2011 rots in hell, 2012 is full of promise. That's all I can hang my hopes on right now: a positive outlook.
It's very easy to get negative right out of grad school. You spend hour upon hour reading theory, philosophy, history, plays, artists biographies -- all with the hopes that this will land you a job of some sort once you finish. Then you finish. Smarter, broker, expectant I re-entered the world anticipating a job. Why not? I have a fancy-pants degree and am in a great metropolis. Of course people want to at least interview me, right?
Wrong. Dead wrong. That death hit me harder than any other, probably because it was the death of my hope. Hope that I and my education and my dedication and my pedigree would be appreciated. Hope that was covered by years of better sense and cynicism, because the world is not about education, dedication, pedigree or appreciation. The world is about friends, connections, blah blah blah, negativity.
I can wallow in the negative, or I can accept it and move on -- perhaps worse for wear, but still going.
Today I signed with a legal temp. agency, so I can make a decent wage while I try to find opportunities for my MFA. It is might be circular, putting me in the exact situation I was in when I first moved to NYC in 2005 before I went to Haaaaavahd, but it gives me a life. Right now, I don't have one. I need to fix that, and I am. Slowly, surely, I am.
Hello 2012. Back to Basics it is, so that from there I can flourish.
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