I haven’t posted on here in so long that for a moment I was afraid I’d forgotten the login.

Not sure why I’ve been absent. I last posted just before leaving for the Great Plains Theatre Conference, and I guess 10 days of constant talking and writing left me talked-out or something. At the same time, I’ve been stockpiling some things I did want to post here, so expect more frequency going forward.

While in Omaha, I led two playwriting workshops; served as a panelist on I think six plays; attended evening play performances; attended rehearsals and tech for my play, as well as the performance; and participated in the requisite bouts of drinking and cigar smoking.  I also petted a friend’s pet piglet (and here’s that photo):

I know — it’s difficult to see. That’s because my friend Max Sparber decided to get arty with the photo.  I guess that with photography, arty means you can’t see what’s in the photo.

With all that walking around teaching and talking, you’re bound to say a few things over the course of 10 days. I’m pretty sure that in one of my workshops, “Starting at the Start,” I advised people to stop worrying about it and just write. I’m pretty sure I said that because I always say that, and for two reasons:  1) whining and complaining drive me crazy and I’m especially tired of hearing it from people who in the cosmic scheme of things have no problems; and 2) it’s unproductive. Whereas freeing yourself to just write, and edit later, often leads you somewhere good. Perhaps I stressed this philosophy of mine even more than usual, because here’s the quote I later saw posted on the conference whiteboard:

In case you can’t quite see that, it say, “Agony doesn’t work. Lee Wochner.” So I got quoted. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of this, but then I figured that since I evidently said it, I must agree with it. I thank the anonymous person who posted it, and wonder if it was intended as further inspiration to others, a reminder to himself, or a combination of both.  Or, since the message stayed posted for the remaining eight days of the conference, maybe no one bothered to notice.

Courtesy of the conference photographer, here’s a photo of me in my official duties as a panelist, giving post-show feedback to a playwright. Note again the arty photography that inhibits seeing what’s in the photo.

A playwright in my workshop in LA saw this on Facebook and said I looked “very Citizen Kane-y.”

And evidently I said this, which I saw on Facebook because the playwright tagged me:  “Do what you want to do. You can have all your careers. Just make sure they’re all creative. – Lee Wochner.”

Yes, I remember saying this, and I think it was on the first bottle of wine. This was probably part of my discourse that we should “plan to live to age 120,” built around a speech I attended last year given by an osteopath, the gist of which was that because we can successfully replace more and more body parts, we should all make plans to be here a lot longer. (This did indeed go into my planning: I’m trying to get rid of things at an even greater pace, now that I understand just how long they’re going to be weighing me down.) Mostly, though, I was inveighing against pigeonholing; this young woman was concerned that people were trying to fit her into a specific box. Barring that mythic bus that may strike each of us out of the blue at any moment, we’ve all got plenty of time and options.

I left the conference on Sunday, and have been in southern New Jersey staying with my mother and family since then, at a low bubble in the local heat, humidity, and troublesome flying insects. More to come about the conference and other things soon. Right now I’m hearing myself say that it’s time to go back outside.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 9th, 2011 at 9:45 am and is filed under Playwriting, Theatre, Thoughts, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.