this is the way we make the play...

rehearsal last weekend. all photos by the incomprehensibly amazing Serge Cashman.

our AC is broken

but we're still rehearsing!

cold hands, cold feet...

Last Monday was cold. Wind whipping, lips chapping, fingertips freezing, the whole deal. I took a trip downtown to pick up some keys. Then I took a trip to midtown to pick up Pat and husband. Got more keys. Then Pat and husband and I walked three avenues and ten streets in the blistering cold to the truck. The Cupcake Cafe truck, painted blue with a sloppy mural of animals all over it, is a little bigger than a UPS truck. It has no shocks. The doors don't really work. It leaks anti-freeze. I got into the driver's seat. My feet barely reach the pedals.

We spent the day moving stuff into our new chashama space, to make it more liveable. We rehearsed there once two weeks ago and it was so cold (due to space heaters being off all day and the near-zero weather outside) we decided we couldn't go back until we had curtains to close the room off and a chair or two to sit on.

So on Monday Pat and husband and I went to the chashama warehouse on 57th and 12th where we used to rehearse and loaded chairs, tables, and scrap wood into the truck. I had a major nostalgic experience in there. It's where we rehearsed Bad Girls Good Writers and the Photo Plays and did a few LA FEMME readings. We shared the space with Banana, Bag, and Bodice, one of our favorite companies. They had built their box set for The Sewers on one end of the space while we shifted around beds given to us by The Debate Society at the other end of the space. It was summer and things are always easier in the summer. We weren't saddled with the need to raise $40K to get to Edinburgh. We were going to have an easy time of it. We were creative and happy. It was hot out. I would sit in the entrance of the space, a driveway, and watch cars on the West Side Highway.

On Monday our fingers were freezing. We were sniffling. It was fucking cold. After the 57th Street stop we made our way into Harlem to pick up an air conditioner a guy from the Directors Lab list was giving away. I wanted to give it to Interart, but Josh was uptown, so we brought it to chashama instead. We unloaded everything there, at our space on 126th and Amsterdam, drove back to midtown, ate chicken fingers, went home, limbs frozen. I had a sore throat.

On Tuesday at 9am, I met the indefatigable Chris Illing inside the 145th St subway. We traveled to Long Island City together and found ourselves in Materials for the Arts. We loaded up on pieces of rug, big gray blanket-y pieces of material, and some windows that I couldn't let get away. Cabbed up to 126th and Amsterdam, dropped off these pieces, ate food, I was home drinking chamomile tea and praying for health by 2 in the afternoon.

At rehearsal that night Jen walked in sick as a dog. I kept my illness to myself, not wanting to call the rehearsal. Matt and Rachel hung the curtains, closing in the room, raising the temperature ten degrees. I popped tylenol when no one was looking. Jen sounded like a drag queen. The next night she asked to leave early and I made my displeasure clear. Matt is away for the next ten days out of a very necessary necessity and we didn't have the option of letting people go. Even if they were sick. Even if they could barely speak. Even if they were making the rest of us sick by being there.

I have never been more aware of our economic instability as a company than I am now. I feel our weakness as a structure, I feel us affected by the elements. Our space is too cold to rehearse in! But we can't go anywhere with heat because we can't afford more than this. I never understood the truth of suffering for your art (a bullshit phrase, but I can feel it a little now) until I stopped working for a paycheck in an effort to better serve the company I am building. We are getting ready to take a huge show overseas for a month. It is a great show and it will get great response. It's a show that could have a life for a long time. It's a show that audiences told us over and over that they fucking loved. We have $184 in the bank account right now. It's winter and we're looking for ways to stay warm in our rehearsal space. Will we use that scrap wood to make rehearsal furniture or will we just burn it for warmth?

The Making of the Play

We're in "the room" right now, as it were, working on this new play about immigration and cross-cultural relationships. I mean, we're in a few rooms at the moment, since we're remounting stirring AND Joey and I are starting to rework LA FEMME EST MORTE or Why I Should Not F!%@ My Son. But most pressing for the next week is the immigration play, being written by the remarkable Saviana Stanescu...so we are generating lots of work in typical hippie collaborative style, trying desparately to avoid viewpoints, to add tools to the toolbox, to take a step away from the masses. Isaac talked me through some Joint Stock excercises a few weeks ago and we've been using some of those for development, as well as some other random planes, trains, and automobiles.

We conducted interviews a few days ago, with friends, loved ones, and partners...all people who are currently or have been involved in an international relationship (real or...phony). Here are some of my favorite things that have been blurted out...

"It's hard for me to have a relationship. I'm always gone."

"It's just married life. It's not that different."

"Around Thanksgiving we called up Mom. Drove to Vegas."

"What I actually did was help a felon get his citizenship."

"Correspondence was fierce."

"I can't work here. My life has come to a screeching halt."

"I don't regret that. I belive in marriage."

"I don't care about marriage."

"If it doesn't work out we'll get divorced. No big deal."

"We are something that exists on land, not just on the water."

"Christmas was hard. I miss you guys."

"She works at Starbucks. She's got a masters. We're waiting to get her papers."

"I know why tigers eat their young."

"I'm in New York because of you."

"Am I going to father a child for the price of a greencard? Is that the cost of being with you?"

"You're saying it's worth it, but you're not the one doing it."