Just got home from seeing the one-man show “Loveswell” in Hollywood, where I sat directly behind Michael Emerson, who plays Ben on “Lost.” It seems he got off that island after all. (In 2009, anyway.)

“Loveswell” was wonderfully funny, and at times unsettling in its honesty — unsettling in a dramatically good way, and honest in a dramaturgically complicated way because we’re seeing the husband’s perspective of a courtship and marriage. I wondered what the wife, who seems completely unreasonable in the play, makes of this portrayal of her, which led me to wonder how she might portray him if she chose to do so. From not doing dishes, to send mixed signals about whether to leave the bathroom door open or to close it but leave the light on, to obsessing about toilet paper and his daring to breathe in bed, she seems like a handful. It reminded me of what a well-known poet once told me when I asked how his wife feels about her many unflattering appearances in his work:  “She knows how much I fictionalize.”

Given that my own new play, which runs the last weekend of this month here in Los Angeles, features a wife that I hope no one would confuse for my own, it’s incumbent upon me to dismiss all wifely portraits as straight up fiction.

I’m in Omaha, Nebraska having a fine time serving as a lecturer and panelist at the Great Plains Theatre Conference ’til June 1.

Here’s what theatre conferences are good for:

• expanding your network of good actors and directors. This week I’ve been collecting a big pile of paper scraps with names and email addresses scribbled on them.
• reminding yourself what makes for a good play and makes for a not-good play. In most cases, the not-good play could use more conflict and more subtext. In all cases, the good play leaves you wishing there were more.
• getting spurred on to do more of your own writing. I’ve written two plays in the past three days — that feels great. I got to hear the one right away, and I’m hoping there’s going to be time for me to corral some actors to hear the other one as well.
• eating and drinking on the host’s tab.
• seeing lots of other theatre on the host’s tab.
• staying up most of the night talking theatre and drinking and smoking cigars.

So while I’m sorry the posts have been few and far between, now you know why. And now I have to go shower off the aftereffects of two cigars and half a bottle of wine so I can make it to the dinner reception and tonight’s performances.

At the moment I feel very indebted to the fine people running this conference.

Back here I wrote about the countless parodies people are making of the now-famous scene in “Downfall” where Hitler chews out his senior staff for their incompetence.

Here’s the latest version, and it’s one of the best. For all you theatre people out there who’ve ever been upset they didn’t win an award, here’s Hitler’s reaction when he learns he isn’t eligible for a Tony. I’ve seen this very reaction in many a dressing room.

Picking up on something I saw on Mark Evanier’s blog about Dom DeLuise:

In 2002, I was executive producer of the Ovation Awards here in Los Angeles. The director of the show suggested we invite Dom DeLuise to be one of the presenters. I loved Dom DeLuise’s work, but I had concerns. As delicately as I could ask (and I’m sure I could have been more tactful), I wanted to know how he was going to be able to get on and off the stage. The man was massive. He could barely walk. How was his health? And how was the audience going to feel about this? These were real concerns, no matter how harshly the director looked at me. He promised he’d figure it out, and he did — in the best manner of stage misdirection, he drew our attention elsewhere while Mr. DeLuise was helped into his position in the dark. The light came onto him and he was absolutely wonderful. He got huge laughs, and I was glad we all had him for the event.

This was the second time I met Dom DeLuise.

The first time had been seven years prior, when  I went to Buster Keaton’s 100th birthday at The Silent Movie theatre in Hollywood. Buster wasn’t there, having died almost 30 years prior, but Eleanor Keaton was (I sat next to her and spent much of the time talking to her), and so were Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft and their good friend… Dom DeLuise.  The three of them were big Keaton fans, and at that time, I was well-versed in every aspect of Buster Keaton minutia, so they kept calling on me for answers to various questions about Buster. (Now much of that information has been replaced in my head by, well, certainly nothing as important.) When everyone went to sit, Mr. DeLuise was so large that he couldn’t fit into any of the theatre seats. The proprietor of the movie  house found an extra wide stacking chair, the sort one sees in conference centers in Wisconsin or at garden parties populated by immense people wearing muu-muus, and plopped it against the wall in the left aisle. He then took the stage with microphone in hand and acknowledged the celebrities in the house, landing finally on Dom DeLuise poured into this chair on the aisle, and paid what was intended as a warm tribute, ending it by saying with a glow, “The last person we had sitting in that special chair in the aisle was John Candy.” John Candy had died the previous year from a heart attack at age 43. A connection that every one of us made when we looked over at Dom DeLuise sitting in that chair.

Charles McNulty reminds us where Bea Arthur developed the killer comic delivery we loved so much on television:  in the theatre.

My kids have good teachers. One of the best is my son’s high-school English teacher from last year, Sam Kuglen. Mr. Kuglen, as he’s known in these parts, is very smart and passionate, and a man with a discerning eye for talent (even though he had me in to guest lecture on playwriting a couple of times last year). He’s also a credible singer on “Rock Band.”

Sam’s background is in theatre, which as regular readers of this blog know, I feel prepares you for anything. In addition to doing things like writing, directing, acting, singing, and dancing, theatre people hire and fire, do bookkeeping, set up complicated online systems, build sets, paint, sew, fight (mock or real), cater, and on and on. What person do you really want if you’re stuck on a desert island? A theatre technician. They can fashion a raft out of conch shells and seaweed. Trust me on this. Day in, day out, they put up multimedia extravaganzas with chewing gum and clamp lamps.

In typical fashion, Sam has talents even I didn’t know. I knew he was smart. What I didn’t know was that in the 90’s he was actually a big dummy.

As your Friend, I thought I’d take the time to tell you why solicitations like this aren’t good:

Hey There,
Hope you’re doing wonderfully.  Only a week left before [insert name of show here]. I haven’t heard from you yet and I’d love to see you at the show. There’s a half price preview on [date].

Here’s the thing. I don’t know you. I know we’re Friends, but I don’t know how we became Friends. I just checked my Address Book, and you’re not in it. I looked at your Facebook photo and I don’t recognize you. So it’s little surprise that you haven’t heard from me yet — you aren’t going to. I don’t know you. And I don’t owe you. Deep down, I think you know that, because you addressed me as “Hey There.”

Sending me a message through Facebook? That’s okay. No harm, no foul. We’re Friends, but not every Friend knows everyone else. I’m not on Facebook often, but I’ve got 624 Friends, probably a good 10% of whom elicit a “Who?” from me when I see their picture. You’re one of them. “Who?” But the other “Who?” Friends aren’t berating me for not responding to an invitation I don’t remember getting, to an event I’m being asked to buy a ticket for (even at half price). That’s kinda rude. I know you’d “love to see me at the show” — with my twenty bucks or so — but not everything’s about you. I know it didn’t occur to you, but maybe I wouldn’t love to see the show. You’re just presumptuous.

No, I haven’t heard of you, or your show, and even though we’re Friends we aren’t friends (my real friends don’t need the “f” capitalized; those to whom this applies know who they are). You don’t know it, but your tone is demanding and insincere and insulting.

As a Friend, I thought you should know.

Your Friend

p.s. I am doing wonderfully. Thank you.

I’ve been talking here about my friends losing their newspaper jobs, and all of us losing newspapers. It now occurs to me that I should also note the theatres we’re losing and, more importantly, the theatre people:  the people who really are the theatre (not, to paraphrase Mike Daisey, the buildings in which they work). Because we just lost one of the best. Having been laid off by his theatre, he’s now leaving “the theatre.” When we had him here in L.A., the impact was immeasurable. This isn’t just Portland Center Stage’s loss, this is a loss for everyone who cares about new plays.