I just came across this interview with my friend and former student, playwright Stephanie Alison Walker. (I knew her when she was just plain Stephanie Walker. In fact, I knew her before that, when she was Stephanie Weinert. But now she’s Stephanie Alison Walker. Such are the ways of writers.)

The focus of this interview is on Stephanie’s writing environment — her desk, her setup, the inspirational collage nearby, etc. I found this very interesting. For many years, my writing was done in a separate home office. But for probably the past five years or more, my preferred writing environment has been outside.  Outside with my laptop, a glass of wine or something stronger, and a cigar. It was said that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote anywhere, even on the platforms of train stations with his wife and kids in tow as they awaited the train. I’ve done that too, writing anywhere, but whether or not I can write anywhere, editing is done best without disturbance.

The notable thing lacking, for me, in this discussion of Stephanie’s writing environment is sound. I write to music, usually the more raucous or dissonant or bizarrely twisted the better, but it depends upon the mood of the play. (And yes, the mood of the music informs the mood of the play.) You know that really harsh Nirvana album that most people didn’t like? That’s the one I wrote a play to. But I’ve also written to Glenn Gould (a favorite) and Erik Satie.

And where am I writing this now? From the desk in my office, before delving into a fully scheduled day. I’m looking forward to working on my new play the next couple of days while I’m out of town. And, maybe, outside.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve seen a number of one-man shows. And I’ve directed several. It’s a lot harder than it looks — usually for the audience. My advice for actors considering writing and performing in a one-man show:  Unless you’re the man known as Dame Edna, you probably shouldn’t try it. Read this piece from The Onion and know this:  In my experience, everything they mock is all too true.

Many people know Wallace Shawn as the little self-described genius in “The Princess Bride” who keeps exclaiming that the continuing success of his nemesis is “Inconceivable!” I hope Mr. Shawn is getting a nice royalty from that movie, because he will never outlive that line, no matter how many times he voices a CGI toy dinosaur in Pixar films.

Others among us know Wallace Shawn as America’s most brilliant living playwright.  Which is why I, and other “eggheads of a certain theatrical stripe,” to quote the LA Times’ Charles McNulty, will be going to UCLA Live tonight night to hear Mr. Shawn read from his work and share his pointed views on the state of things.

I’m a great admirer of Paula Vogel’s play “How I Learned to Drive,” which is the sort of play that playwrights keen to write:  unexpected, theatrical, beautifully written, funny, highly entertaining, and enormously empathetic. The thing is a true achievement.  She’s also a teacher of playwriting, one that I would submit her students are lucky to have. This piece shares a bit about her teaching practice, as she takes students down what some of us consider the main drag of Philadelphia — South Street, setting for many of my youthful enjoyments — to find stories in the street, waiting to become plays.

(Thanks to Paul Crist for letting me know about this.)

There are many who deserve that title, but according to Michael Feingold in the Village Voice, perhaps none moreso than Romulus Linney, who died on Saturday. Don’t know anything about Mr. Linney? Perform a Google search and you’ll find that his daughter was the actress Laura Linney, but you’ll find comparatively far less about the playwright himself, and his work.

In his piece for the Voice, Feingold notes that Linney was a practical stranger to Broadway (only one production, largely unremarked), that he didn’t write for television or film, and that his interests were catholic. The latter in particular may have been difficult to overcome — we expect our writers to represent something, in the way that the plays of David Mamet and Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco represent singular points of view and recurring themes and situations.  It sounds as though Linney’s range of interests and lines of attack were broad, making him difficult to categorize, and therefore rendering him less immediately memorable.

Why do I say “it sounds as though”? Because as relatively well-versed as I am in contemporary American playwriting, and with all the theatre I’ve attended in 30 years of playgoing, I’ve never read or seen a single play by Romulus Linney.

Even with this latest disaster, I’m rooting for that Spider-Man musical.

#1 in the list:  A Klingon Christmas Carol.

(Although I have friends I suspect will be there.)

This is Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs,” adapted (?) to video by Spike Jonze. It mines the same territory as the Wallace Shawn play “The Designated Mourner” — that our obliviousness to the freedoms we take so casually endangers them — but more believably. That’s saying something for a music video, over the work of perhaps our greatest living playwright.

On Monday night starting at 8 p.m. at the Hudson Backstage Theatre in Hollywood, we’re hearing two plays that have come out of my workshop recently, “Awake” by Michael David, and “Successor,” by Ross Tedford Kendall.

These are good plays. Trust me. Directed by talented directors with a history of getting good actors into the roles.

Afterward, there’s wine and cheese and, doubtlessly, cigars outside.  Admission is free.

Please join us.

The Hudson Backstage Theater (on Santa Monica just east of Highland).

Hudson Backstage Theater
6539 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90038

And here’s the Facebook event page.

My good friend Rich Roesberg turned me onto this story in May and I’m only now getting around to posting it. It’s still a good story. It seems that during a recent rehearsal for Waiting for Godot in Melbourne, one of the stars, Sir Ian McKellen, took a break outside on a bench. Whereupon one of the passersby, thinking him homeless, tossed him a dollar coin.

McKellen is holding onto the coin as a good luck charm but offers his benefactor something for his money, “If that man would like to identify himself, we would like to invite him to come and see Waiting For Godot. And if he insists on paying, we’ll knock a dollar off the ticket price.”

I have three further thoughts about this:

1. I have no doubt that this theatre’s publicist leapt on the opportunity to put this story out. A tip of the hat to that theatre professional for a job well-done. The story got reported widely — even down to southern New Jersey, where said good friend Roesberg lives. A good theatre publicist is always worth his keep.
2. My favorite comment to the story on this newspaper’s site:  “Round in Yarraville and Seddon we have got heaps of these types. I never give them money, just a kick in the pants and yell get a job you bum.” So the confusion that Sir Ian was a bum continues even onto the news coverage.
3. In theatre circles, Sir Ian is known as a real gentleman and a bit of a cut-up. When he did his show “A Knight out” at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in 1997, he was prone to taking over the box office and answering the phone himself in ways such as this:  “Oh, so you’d like to come see my show would you? And where would you like to sit? Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit further down where you can see me better? Now, it will cost you a little more, but I’m sure you’ll agree it will be worth it.” And so forth. He charmed everyone who called and everyone who worked there.