Ahh....

I'm still celebrating my completion of Brothers Caramillo, enjoying the time of letting new stories and old stories fill my heart. I've been dabbling in the world of All Grace again, putting together the characters of the sculptor, Jacques Lipchitz, and the priest, M.A. Couturier, putting them in a room together, allowing them to speak freely and without worrying about concepts. What do they talk about when they sit down together with a bottle of wine between them? How do they "argue?" How do they "debate?" And that line of thinking has opened up the world of that play to make it less "stuffy" and "academic." While I was working on the play, I was taking it much too seriously. Now, it's not a crime to respect your subject matter, but plays aren't meant to be instances of "tip-toeing" around danger and darkness. Or, at least my plays aren't. My plays enjoy the darkness. It's the dancing around in that line of emotional danger, where vulnerability and intimacy collide that makes me want to write plays.

But I'm not delving into a rewrite of All Grace right now. I'm just letting things expand in my mind for now.

I'm reading Christopher Durang's The Idiots Karamazov right now to wind down. Along with reading The Librettist of Venice, a biography of Lorenzo DaPonte, the librettist of Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, and Rachael and I are also getting through A Wrinkle in Time. I'm refilling my well.