American Theatre covers some of what about 70 of us were up to last week at the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha, NE, with a mention of the short play I wrote for the Fringe night at the conference. (Thanks for the namecheck, Beaufield Berry.)

I’ve been a guest artist to this conference since 2008. Sure hope they keep booking me.

I got home today from my fourth trip with air travel in seven weeks. Between April and today, I’ve been to Nashville, Napa, San Francisco, and Omaha, NE. There are people who fly every single week. I don’t envy them. I was supposed to have continued on to Philadelphia and then southern New Jersey today, which would have added another seven days to what was already a nine-day trip, but a week ago I rerouted all that to come back here to Los Angeles. I just needed to be back here for a while.

Today I have to note again that every TSA system in the U.S. seems to operate by rules of its own making. This morning at 5 a.m. (Omaha time) when I was sitting on my overstuffed carry-on suitcase to zip it shut and wait downstairs for the cab, I had a psychic forecast that TSA would make me open said suitcase up for no good reason. How did I know? Because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get it closed again. (One returns from the Great Plains Theatre Conference with more than one takes. Including three pounds around my waistline, courtesy of nine days of culinary-school catering.) When they ran my bag through the scanner twice, I knew I was in for it. They pointed at an x-ray revealing what they were calling a series of little spikes (or, in our world, brass collar stays). So I said, “Those are brass collar stays.” Dumbfounded looks back from the woman heading the investigation. “You know,” I went on, “the things you put into men’s shirt collars. To hold them firm.” Not good enough. So they opened the suitcase and asked me to speculate on precisely where in the suitcase they were (even though we were actively looking at them in the x-ray), while they prowled around in my bag because I wasn’t allowed to touch anything inside it. Finally, with two of them digging everything out, they lifted them out almost with a cry of eureka. Holding them aloft, the TSA woman said, “Oh! These are the things my husband puts into his collar!” “Yes,” I said, “they are… brass… collar… stays.” Her response, delivered reproachfully:  “His are plastic.”

So now I’m back, and can fully unpack. I’m not going anywhere (so far!) until July 8th for Comic-Con in San Diego. I ran to the supermarket a few hours ago and stocked up. The culinary academy in Omaha does a great job, but I’m looking forward to eating at home for a while.

Three years ago, my then-13-year-old daughter had her first play read by professional actors. (Here’s that story again.)

Recently on The Tonight Show, three even younger kids got the same experience. These plays are hilarious, and prove yet again that playwriting can’t really be all that hard. What I said three years ago holds true: Oh, for a world so lacking in subtext.

On Friday, a friend and I went to see the Arthur Miller play “The Price” downtown at the Taper. I am not by nature an Arthur Miller fan; I’d rather be burned at the stake than ever again sit through the screaming girls in “The Crucible,” and to me the dramatic problems presented in “Death of a Salesman” would be easily solved if only Willy Loman would get a job he’s better suited for. But “The Price” turned out to be a completely engaging, unexpected and well-written evaluation of the price paid for certain life decisions by two brothers fighting (or not) over what’s left behind after their father’s death. Moreover, it’s anchored by four very fine performances, especially that of 87-year-old Alan Mandell, stealing the show as a comically sly appraiser wheedling a storehouse of old furniture out of Sam Robards’ grasp in exchange for peanuts. Mandell delivers every laugh possible while bringing to life a performance that’s completely plausible and true. That he can do this at age 87 is argument itself against term limits for stage actors.

Afterward, my friend and I went for a drink and shared another sort of price: While it’s often reported how expensive it is to attend the theatre, there’s the even greater very real financial cost paid by those devoted to making theatre. The backdrop for this discussion was our own experiences (I have no doubt I’m out hundreds of thousands of dollars) as well as the ugly rumblings from Actors Equity that it may end the 99-seat plan that allows union actors to perform on LA’s small stages. Moving actors in sub-100-seat houses from token payments of $10 or $20 a performance into minimum wage won’t help them make a living; instead, it’ll shutter our small theatres and sideline thousands of actors. (But then, if you’re the union and you subsist on dues and shares of revenues, and your revenue resulting from these theatres is almost nil, why should you care?) The actors have been subsidizing small theatre, for sure — but so have been the playwrights and the directors and the board ops and everyone else involved. And God knows the producers — and I’ve been one — have spent both opportunity costs and actual hard cash on keeping small theatre alive, because it means so much to us.

Scheduling and life circumstances had cost my friend and me more than a year and a half since we’d last seen each other. I just confirmed this in my calendar. The last time we’d gone out together had been in August of 2013 to see a Woody Allen movie. Judging by the terrific time we had together on Friday night, that’s far too long. I also note that in 2011 we saw a movie called “The Debt.” I couldn’t remember anything about this movie, so I just looked it up. Now it comes back to me. It’s a thriller about old friends who shared an adventure in the past, but who question the choices they made, much as the characters in “The Price” do. And much as we all do.

My weekly playwriting workshop, Words That Speak, now in its 22nd year, resumed this morning after a one-month hiatus when the last round ended. Usually, I accept eight playwrights; this time, I took nine, based on the quality of their work, including three new people. (And could have taken more, but eight or nine is really all that can work for a weekly writing workshop where everyone’s work will be heard every time.)

Some of these playwrights have been in the workshop for five, eight, or 10 years.

During the break, I heard one of the new enrollees asking one of the veterans about his experience in the workshop. He talked about the plays he’s written and the productions he’s gotten since starting with me.

“So the workshop helps?” she asked.

“Well,” he replied, “I haven’t gotten worse.”

It’s inspiration like this that has carried me all these years.

I wish the Beckett estate would lift the embargo so the first (and only) season of this could be released on DVD or streaming.

Well, I guess ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

In order, they are: 1. be an heir; 2. marry well.

And either way, just admit it.

If you were going to name Los Angeles’ most highly regarded and famous writers, Ray Bradbury would be near or on the top of that list.

When you go to Baltimore, you can visit Edgar Allan Poe’s house. The same with the homes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman and others. (In fact, Whitman has a bridge named after him.)

But, this being LA, now that Bradbury’s dead, the new owners have torn down his house. Because, well, it was just a house. Right?

Here are the photos.

Someone who is always late (like, say, a friend of mine) comes into conflict with someone who is always on time and kept waiting (like, well, me). Hilarity doesn’t ensue.

It’s not much of an idea, I know, but it’s certainly animating me at the moment.

My daughter and I are visiting my mother in southern New Jersey through next Wednesday. And I’m on deadline for a short play I’m submitting for an event next month.

My plan has been to finish the play today and send it off. My daughter asked me where I was going to work. I told her it didn’t matter, as long as people didn’t talk to me. My mother and my daughter were sitting up in the kitchen playing Rummikub, so I sat down in the living room with my laptop.

And sure enough, they came in to sit next to me and work on a puzzle.

And for my mother to ask me the same thing several times (she’s 89, with a strong need to know things).

And for my nephew to start hammering something onto the outside of the house by a window within my view.

But none of that was stopping me. It actually reminded me that I wrote one of my best plays — widely remarked upon by friends and even judgmental relatives as one of my best plays — while smoking a cigar and drinking wine and talking to an actor at the same time. And I usually write my plays while playing music. I’m used to tuning things out.

So I was feeling unstoppable, and pulling the play into the station as it were, when my mother went downstairs and turned on the television. Loudly. And I started overhearing what sounds like one of those Tim Allen movies about Santa Claus. Sample dialogue:

Father: “I guess I just have to go back and tell her I didn’t find Santa Claus.”

Tim Allen, with a chuckle: “Oh, but you DID!”

There was no writing anything on my play after that. At least, not while being within earshot of that. So now I’m writing this instead — and relocating upstairs.