Oh hell, my picture seems to have made it into the LA Times and nobody bothered to mention it to me, probably because the review kicks the shit out of the show. Most scenes in this show need rewrites. I did what I could with what I got.
From all those good and crazy people, my friends
One of my favorite possessions is a scrawled note: “To John Byrd: You were the best one in the show. Love, George Furth.” An extremely funny and friendly fellow all around. Thank you, sir, for the many kindnesses.
And you’re making me feel like I’ve never been born
Oh fuck a pig! My play, The Death of Ayn Rand, will be performed as part of the impressively sponsored San Francisco Theater Festival. It will be produced at the terrifyingly corporate Metreon in San Francisco on Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 1:00 p.m. The play will be performed in the Action Theater on the second floor. Sorry for the late notice, but I just found out.
That was drowning time, but old friends helped me through
Love to my friends. I was surprised to find out how many I had on my side.
Every day, I am a little more like me. It comes and goes. Your support means more than you know.
I’m doing one of the Seven Deadly Sins shows at Rude Guerrilla from July 25 through August 3. The material is pretty wacky… I’m the World’s Most Eligible Bachelor, and a couple dark hooded figures show up and beat the shit out of me with whips. It’s a comedy. In any case, it’s good to get some of this negative energy out in an artistically positive way. The table read of The Hermit Bird at Long Beach went well. It’s locked for a production in 2009. Also, The Death of Ayn Rand is apparently getting a production in San Francisco sometime this month. I’ll let you know when I know more.
But listen closely, not for very much longer
You’re way too beautiful girl, that’s why it’ll never work
[Redacted.]
Chapter one, the man who died
Las Vegas International, slot machines hollering at us from between the gates. Manchester, New Hampshire. The car-rental guard inspected my driver’s license for half a minute. He had not seen a California license before. To Mandy’s parents house. Her mother Mudd is here, tired, alternating between crying and relating how kind her relatives have been.
Emerson Hospital. Mandy’s father Nurn is here. There is a white band of skin where his wedding ring was. He is tired but coherent and emotionally stable. They removed some of the cancer but by definition it could not all be removed. An oncologist hasn’t seen him yet.
[Section redacted.]
To stay alive, I’ve been writing. I can’t tell if the play’s any good, but at the very least, regardless of what happens with the play or anything else, I can say: I meant it.
What’s down in the dark will be brought to the light
Depression, dark and pointless, over these past few weeks. Haven’t felt like moving, thinking, or breathing much. I cry a lot. Travelled to San Francisco last weekend, met some good friends who did their decent best to cheer me and remind me of my humanity.
Mandy got the call yesterday from her mother. Her father went into the hospital with stomach pain. They sent in a camera and found what they think is a lot of colon cancer. We’re on a plane tomorrow morning to Boston.
It comes in waves, sometimes.
The vines are good, the fruit is sweet this year
“The Hermit Bird” is a short play, less than one act, that I wrote in an all-night marathon at school. It won a writing contest and convinced me to write more. Eighteen years later, I’m working with Virago Theater to expand the piece into a full-length play.
Such a length of time for the development of a play is not unheard of. Tennessee Williams’s greatly underappreciated “Orpheus Descending” cooked for seventeen years from the original version to the final. And Peter Shaffer has hacked away on “Amadeus” for more than two decades running. Thornton Wilder compulsively rewrote “Our Town,” rarely letting be staged without tweaking something. And don’t get me started about Star Wars. Ultimately, I feel that if a story lives in the heart of the teller, then it has an indefinite shelf life.
So every time I sit down and try to type this thing out, I am quite sure that the story has vanished from me and I’m simply a poseur pretending to be a writer, and then I start and then the story is there and I’m quite sure it’s not me doing the telling anymore, and I’m simply a reporter telling the facts I’ve witnessed.
Anyway, whatever happens, you’ll be able to watch it at Virago in the spring of 2009.