Yesterday morning I awoke to the news that someone had stormed into a gay club in Orlando, FL and killed about 50 people and wounded about another 50 and was holding some people hostage until finally the police were able to kill him.

You’ve already heard that story. I know.

You’ve heard it many times by now, with little variations.

Sometimes involving government workers as the victims, or people in an office, or shoppers, or people out for a movie, or even children.

I don’t have anything to say about this that you haven’t already heard elsewhere. I will just add that over the past day I’ve vacillated between being very sad about it and being very angry. Because it is never true that “nothing can be done,” I’m leaning heavily toward being angry.

But.

Because this particular mass murderer had gays in his crosshairs, I thought I’d share this.

Yesterday, by coincidence, mere hours after I awoke to find that a man incensed about gay people had targeted and killed dozens of them, spraying them with bullets in a place they’d gone to drink and dance and meet each other, I went to see probably the foremost musical of our lives that celebrates diversity and difference, “La Cage Aux Folles.” I didn’t particularly feel like fighting traffic downtown to see it when what I really wanted to do was be angry on the internet and in my personal writing, but a female friend and I had set this date about six weeks ago, so I went. It turned out to be exactly what I needed.

Not just because “La Cage,” which focuses on a gay couple and their farcical adventures at their drag-queen nightclub, celebrates the basic human empathy that I believe dwells in most of us.

Not just because this particular production, courtesy of East West Players, one of the nation’s premier Asian theatre companies, is glorious. (Just the sheer professionalism of it all — the singing, dancing, acting, choreography, costumes, everything — was remarkable.)

Not just because I laughed large and loud.

But also because:  The makeup of the audience told me that the haters have already lost.

It wasn’t a “gay” audience. And it wasn’t an “Asian” audience. It was just an audience, an audience made up of white, black, yellow and brown, gay and straight, male and female, old and young. A mixed-race couple in front of me (Caucasian and Asian) had brought their son, who I figure is 10. Behind me sat a Chinese man with his elderly mother. A few seats to my left and a row ahead were a white hetero couple in their 70s. I saw a young black woman in the back, and also a girl strapped into an upright wheelchair. And on and on.

All of us were there, together, for a celebratory expression of tolerance, understanding, and joy. Big, pure joy.

Do I want things done about our epidemic of mass shootings? Yes. In the meantime, whatever happens, do I think it likely that anyone can turn back the tide of history —  especially now that sentiment travels instantaneously around the world —  that ultimately will draw us all closer together? No.

So I’m going to hold onto my rage — truly nurture it — so that the deaths of the people in Florida, and Colorado, and Connecticut, and Texas, and California, and practically everywhere else in the U.S., for whatever “reasons” the various shooters gave, aren’t for nothing. I’m going to talk to my Congressman about the legislation I believe in, and I’m going to send him some money, and send some other money elsewhere against other people. And I’m going to keep telling everyone:  I’m not against guns, and I’m not against hunting or target shooting or self-protection — but I’m against gun massacres, and this has to stop.

But while I’m doing all this, I’m going to hold onto hope. Because sooner or later, we will win.

Starting today, the Hollywood Fringe Festival is upon us again, and I’m carefully marking my selections.

What’s the Hollywood Fringe Festival? It’s 2-3 weeks of new, engaging, offbeat, sometimes hilarious and wonderful but sometimes absolutely horrible theatrical events staged around greater Hollywood. To quote their website, “Each June during the Hollywood Fringe, the arts infiltrate the Hollywood neighborhood: fully equipped theaters, parks, clubs, churches, restaurants and other unexpected places host hundreds of productions by local, national, and international arts companies and independent performers. Participation in the Hollywood Fringe is completely open and uncensored.”

Which might explain how, one year, I was able to perform as a cynical crow in one show and, two years hence, a smart-alecky duck in another. (My acting abilities are clearly limited to playing one-note animals.)

The joy of the Fringe is not merely in seeing as many shows as you can — it’s also in feeling the vibe around town as you pass by theatres in Hollywood and see crowds milling around on sidewalks, even at 2 a.m., awaiting whatever the next performance is. It’s an exciting time for what is, to me, the most exciting art form.

Today, I bought tickets for my first two selections.

On Monday, June 20th, at 7 p.m. I’ll be seeing “My Alamo War,” a one-man show written by and starring my longtime friend the playwright Ernest Kearney. Ernest is a fiercely talented and principled writer-performer whose work I’ve been following (and, one time, producing) for 20 years. Last year he wrote and starred in what was perhaps the most beautiful and heartfelt show I saw all year — a slideshow documenting his year or two managing a storage facility that fronted on Hollywood Boulevard in the 1980s. During that time, Ernest took at least one photo every day, and grew to know the people who passed by his workplace window. His story — and their stories — merged into a searing, funny, and deeply moving event that, if he ever repeats it, I will invite many, many people to. His new show concerns his “war” against the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation, a nefarious group whose awful booklets and pamphlets I’ve been collecting since the 1980s in order to keep my bile duct working. Ernest, who, as well as being funny and clever and a severely talented writer, is a fearless fellow, evidently engaged in some sort of guerrilla war against them for two years — and I’m eager to find out who won. My money would be on him.

On Saturday, June 25th, I’ll be seeing “The Designated Mourner,” by Wallace Shawn at 5 p.m. at Theatre of NOTE. Close friends and long-time readers of this blog are aware of my deep interest in Mr. Shawn’s writing. (I’m currently reading his book of essays, where I find once again that I’m drawn to his writing while shaking my head at the “logic” of his arguments, or lack thereof.) I’ve read the playscript version of this play several times, and have seen the filmed version (which is very good) twice, and am looking forward to seeing it staged for the first time. In the play, we’re there for the moment when America (it seems) slides into being a banana republic and we’ve lost our cultural and moral anchors; it’s a world where no one will care any longer about John Donne. One could argue that we’re already there. But then, one could also argue that because the Internet has created access for everyone to everything, now more people than ever know about and appreciate John Donne. (And the latter, clearly, is my argument.) I don’t fully buy Shawn’s story of how the country will fall apart, but he may be having the last laugh under President Trump.

When I get the time, I’m going to do my best to squeeze in as much of the Fringe as possible. Some of it will be terrific, and some of it will be terrible, but the totality of those two or three weeks will be intoxicating.

I just got in from the staged workshop reading of a new play by an emerging playwright, at Moving Arts. It was incredibly rewarding to be in a space that a handful of us turned into a theatre in 1992 and to marvel that there it is, 24 years later, still open and operating and doing new work and doing a really, really good job with that new work. Many of the faces have changed, of course (including mine, when you think about it), but the spirit of doing adventurous new work and doing your best to make it good — that has stayed.

The playwright, who is a genuine talent and someone I’ve known for probably eight years now, said during the intermission that she’d been concerned during act one that the actors were holding back too much, so she’d just come outside from having “unleashed” them. That proved true. Because near the end of the play, the actor playing Apollo moved into a frenzy and threw himself against a back wall — a back wall that, as I knew, was actually a thin painted piece of wooden shielding hiding our electrical panels. Which promptly cracked in half, prompting laughs from the audience, as the play continued, broken skewed wall panel and all. When the play was finished, he came over sheepishly to greet me and two of his friends and I said, “Well, 24 years later, that was something new.”

But there was a lot that was new: the play, most of the talent involved,  most of the audience, and more. One thing that’s never gotten old:  doing what’s new.

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing a good documentary about great artists who did a bad film.

Or, more precisely, “Film.”

Yes, “Film,” by Samuel Beckett. I first saw it in college, 30 years ago. What I liked then I still like: many of the visuals (once one gets past Buster Keaton’s eyeball). Here’s the opening:

The other thing I like, of course, is that it brings together Samuel Beckett, Buster Keaton, at the stage director Alan Schneider, who did many Beckett and Pinter and Albee premieres, under the producing aegis of Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset, to whom we’re indebted for publishing D.H. Lawrence, Hubert Selby Jr., and Henry Miller, censors be damned. For some of us, “Film,” released in 1965, would have been like an All-Star Game.

Unfortunately, it’s not very good. Even at 22 minutes, it makes its point too soon. Worst of all, it completely misuses the talents of the primary creators:  Schneider was a stage director with no idea how to shoot a film (he blew most of the budget on the first day, shooting one scene that was later cut); Beckett’s ideas for the film are almost entirely intellectualized and impossible to translate effectively; and Keaton — a master of comedy and a justly legendary film director  — is kept away from any input and in particular ignored when trying to introduce funny bits. Each is stripped of his actual gifts, his real talents. The end result is like what you’d have if you’d asked Michelangelo to sculpt with his nose.

What really brought this into focus for me was seeing the documentary “Notfilm” last night at a screening in North Hollywood, accompanied by a talk with the director. You can learn more about “Notfilm” here. “Notfilm” is concerned with the making of “Film” — the preproduction, the artistic antecedents, the production itself, its reception and its legacy. It’s a smart and fascinating film, and also a personal one, as director Ross Lipman gives us his thoughts about the film, its underlying meaning, and the confusions that arose among its creators. In one example of a smart decision, Lipman narrates it, which places the film squarely within the realm of his personal perception (which is the theme of “Film”).

“Notfilm” gives us two further satisfactions: For the first time ever, anywhere that I know of, we get to hear the notoriously reclusive and reticent Samuel Beckett’s recorded voice. And we get to see just how one can make a two-hour documentary about a 22-minute short. There’s something ironically anti-Beckettian about that.

One of my favorite eateries, the artery-hardening Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles, has filed for bankruptcy!

This is bad news for those of us who need a lot of fat, sugar and salt after going to the theatre.

We’ve got a socialist who has emerged as a leading choice for president.

We’ve got a reality TV star as one of the front runners. The other “front runner” is a woman most people can’t stand.

We’ve got presidential candidates calling each other “liar” and measuring dick sizes during nationally televised debates.

And we’ve got a major party holding secret meetings to try to figure out how to defeat their own probable nominee.

But, in a year in which I thought I’d seen everything, I have to admit, this is surprising. Now we’ve got a presidential candidate urging — URGING — people to vote for one of the other guys.

There are only three good reasons to write plays. They are:

1. Because you have to.
2. Because of the audience.
3. Because of the actors.

For much of my life, reason #1 was it. I had to. And I still have that feeling. But it’s sometimes mitigated by other sorts of writing — essays, or reviews, or fiction, or (help me God) poetry. After four decades of writing, playwriting is still the default, but those others call to me too.

As I started to get produced, the lure of #2 was inescapable. Especially in the 1990s, I was getting produced frequently while getting published a lot, especially in literary journals, magazines and newspapers. (Y’know, those paper things of a bygone time.) What I found:  when you’re published, there’s no audience response. You’re not there when someone laughs or gasps. But with the theatre, when you’re the writer, frequently you are there. There when someone audibly *gasps* at the final revelation (as someone once did — and I still remember it); there when someone stands up and howls in protest, “Where do you find people like this? I don’t know where you find people like this!!” (as someone once did in 1989 — and I still remember it, his distraught infuriated Irish brogue and all); there when the lady literally falls out of her seat laughing at your comedy (as someone did, rest her soul). There when Fred Willard, whom you grew up watching on TV, comes to see your play.

But the thing you never expect — at least I didn’t — was that you’d love to write plays because of the actors. There is no feeling that compares with having a great actor fully embrace your role and bring it to life, adding that special stuff that permeates his or her core, that something that he has that no other has, that perfectly matches with your writing and the role you wrote, that adds surprising insight and depth, that explores every laugh you hoped for and pulls up others you had suspected but hadn’t dared count on, and finds wholly new ones that belong like an essential organ. That sort of actor it is a thrill to write for. That person becomes an odd extension of you — an extra set of talent that you’re connected to through an invisible web.

I just now found out that one of those actors, one of those actors for me, is going to be in town in May. I haven’t seen him in a few years, and he hasn’t been in a play of mine for too long (!), but just knowing he’s going to be here and that we can plot future productions together and maybe read my new pages — that seems like enough for right now.

Until I write a new role with him in mind.

And figure out how to fit all the pieces of our schedules and our lives into place so we can actually do the damn thing together next year or after.

Because life is short, but art is long.

No, that’s not an environmental staging for our latest production (or a remount of our production of “Cockroach Nation”) — that’s an actual car crash into the Moving Arts building. While our theatre was damaged, as you can see, the clothing boutique next to us in the same building was demolished.

Here’s one story about it,  and here’s some local news coverage:

Just the previous night, about 20 of us were sitting in there discussing the rest of this season, including a plan for a potential bonus show some of we playwrights might put together. Right there where the building got hit? That would’ve been the back of my friend and director Ross’s head.

Glad we weren’t there for this. But we’ll be back.

My friend Jodie Schell — a fine actress and rock and roll singer  — shared this on Facebook three years ago. I meant to post it then, but forgot, but I recently found it and it still speaks to me.

“The guy hired to fix the floors in our building has been here all week but doesn’t speak English. He never talks to anyone but when he thought he was alone he would sing these gorgeous ballads. I wish I could speak Spanish, but I can’t so I spoke up today and said, ‘Beautiful voice. Beautiful voice.’

“He tried to talk music but I couldn’t understand. So he said: ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water?’ …’Yes,’ and I laughingly started to sing it. He said ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone?’ …’Yes’ and I started singing that too. Then he slowly and painstakingly tried to explain that in Guatemala he was a professor of language and ‘tiaretra? tietra? what?…oh literature! oh wow.’ – but moved to the states because his son wants to live closer to his mother. I brought up Pedro Calderon de la Barca. He brought up Walt Whitman. And we laughed about how little and how much we understood from each other. He snagged my post-it pad and wrote Alejandra Guzman and Joan Manuel Sarret (I guess that’s my homework).

“Before he left, he explained in a lot more broken English, ‘I [studied] poems to get closer to woman. But …in the end it made me …human.’ “

Yesterday at a luncheon, a woman with a mic was asking rhetorically, “What do we call that thing where you do something again and again, expecting a different response?” I leaned over to the woman next to me and said, “Voting.”

One thing I would vote for again and again is “Candidate Confessions — a 2016 Cabaret,” a show about all the “major” 2016 presidential candidates (it’s tough to call them “major” when they’ve even included Jim Gilmore) that the folks at Second City in Hollywood were nice enough to invite me to. If you think it would be hard to make  Donald Trump and Ted Cruz look even more absurd, this show will change your mind. As a cabaret, the show is built around original songs, almost all of them funny and unexpected. I especially enjoyed Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz competing for who could be more “Latino” (with Bush trotting out his Mexican wife), Chris Christie finally getting to sing his version of “Born to Run,” and Carly Fiorina whipping up a new spell for us. Big, big highlights:  a spot-on Ben Carson (courtesy of Choni Francis) so funny it was hard for me to recover from; a closing number (also by Francis) that alone makes the entire show worth seeing; and anything that prominently featured Sarah Oliver (especially that Fiorina bit).

If you’ve got an hour or so and prefer your laughable politics to be on stage, go see this.