Effective today, I’m no longer artistic director of Moving Arts, the theatre I founded in 1992. And it’s a good thing.

I love my theatre company, and all of our history, and I enjoyed being artistic director from 1992 to 2002, and then again for about the past five years. But here’s what I really want to do now with Moving Arts: be the best supporter of our new artistic director and our company as possible — and be a playwright. I loved running a theatre, but it’s time (again) for new people, and I have another company I’m leading right now (this one, with my business partner, which provides another place to work with smart, talented people every day).

Here’s the announcement re our new artistic director, Darin Anthony. We picked Darin over a surprising number of other well-qualified people who applied. We did that because in addition to being awfully talented, and smart, and dedicated to new-play development, he’s the right fit for us. As he said on Sunday night when he addressed the theatre company on the eve of the announcement, he didn’t just want to be an artistic director, he wanted to be artistic director of Moving Arts (and had been quietly campaigning for the post for two years). Moreover, he has an attractive
vision for where we can go.

This is an exciting moment, for Moving Arts and for me. I’m looking forward to lots of productions and workshops and readings and developmental labs of new plays, including, I hope, my own.

This Saturday night is your last chance to see “The Size of Pike.” Here’s where to get tickets (and it’s almost sold out)  and this link will take you to the reviews (all of them good). I’m sorry to see the show close, but I’m extremely grateful for the gift of having seen it again, in my home theatre, done in an entirely different way than its original production.

What am I speaking of? This was a production of a play of mine that we first did in 1997, newly mounted now as part of our 20th anniversary season at Moving Arts. It now occurs to me that the LA Weekly did a story on our anniversary season, but I forgot to post it here. So here it is. (My wife’s response to the recent — and not-recent photos in this piece:  “Wow, your hair used to be dark!”) We’re currently running my good friend Trey Nichols’ play “Fathers at a Game” in Hollywood. (I saw it last week and was immensely impressed. It’s a terrific production of a play that I’m just as excited about now as I was 18 years ago when I picked it for production.) Next up:  our multi-part one-act festival. Stay tuned.

Yesterday, I took my kids to see “Iron Man 3.” I’m watching it and thinking that the bald bad guy is looking pretty familiar — then I see that it’s James Badge Dale, son of my friend Grover Dale, in a very large role. Grover is a distinguished Tony-winning choreographer and dancer, and someone I’ve known for almost 10 years. I met Badge once, at Grover’s house — a house that previously belonged to Gloria Swanson. Later I tell the kids that I’ve met that bald guy. They show no reaction; they don’t care about this sort of thing any more. They also don’t care when I tell them I once spent the day with War Machine, aka Don Cheadle.

Then today someone I know calls me and says, “Have you ever heard of the Odyssey Theatre?” (This is someone from the professional but non-theatre part of my life.) I assure him that I have, and have been there many times. He asks if I can possibly get him tickets to the play that Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman are doing there. As it turns out, a long time ago, I did an event with Megan Mullally, but even closer to that, I know the director of the show. (But no luck — nobody who doesn’t already have tickets is going to be getting tickets to that show.)

Then tonight I get home and decide to watch the episode of “Mad Men” I taped on Sunday night. That guy in the one scene — yes, it’s Kit Williamson, a playwright/actor friend.

Finally, I’m reading the LA Times tonight and I come across this news item:

Actor fills tenant role in Beverly Hills

Actor Chris Meloni has leased a gated compound in Beverly Hills at $20,000 a month.

The Spanish-style house, built in 1929, belongs to dancer-actor-choreographer Grover Dale.

The 6,000-square-foot home features a courtyard entry, four fireplaces, a card room, a den, an office, four bedrooms and six bathrooms. There is a guesthouse and a swimming pool.

Meloni, 52, is in this year’s films “42” and “Man of Steel.”Often associated with his cop roles on “NYPD Blue” and “Law & Order,” he will star in the upcoming TV comedy “I Suck at Girls.” Last year he played a vampire on the series “True Blood.”

Dale, 77, appeared in the musicals “Li’l Abner” and “West Side Story” and the films “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” and “The Landlord.” He choreographed the musical “Billy” and shared a Tony Award as co-director of the anthology “Jerome Robbin’s Broadway.”

Brent Watson of Coldwell Banker’s Beverly Hills North office was the listing agent. Dana Cataldi of Partners Trust in Brentwood represented Meloni.

Which led to this thought: “Even the house of someone I know is making headlines.”

The reviews are in on the new production of my play, “The Size of Pike,” at Moving Arts here in Los Angeles. And they’re terrific. Not only are these great reviews, they seem to be written by critics who understood the play. This is not always the case. (At times, I have felt this was not even occasionally the case.) Getting a good review is always good; getting one that reflects an understanding is meaningful.

That all the reviews thus far are universally good means that the play has gotten a 100% Sweet review on Bitter Lemons. (Last I checked.) We’re actually the top-rated show at the moment. Which almost makes me wish we don’t get more reviews, because it’s hard to beat 100%.

Here’s the Bitter Lemons site, where you can check out all the reviews so far of the play.

And if you’re in LA and want to see the show, here’s where to get info and tickets.

As I told a friend earlier today, now that Moving Arts has produced this play twice (once 17 years ago) and it’s gotten great reviews both times, I’m starting to think this might actually be a good play. (You never know for sure.)

I had a meeting today over drinks where the following conversation took place verbatim. The two speaking had just gotten onto the topic of music.

Woman (30’s, attractive blonde):  My husband has an organ.

Man (30’s, also good-looking):  How big is it?

Woman:  It’s pretty big. He keeps it in the garage.

Man:  Can I come see it?

Woman:  I can send a picture. He takes it out and plays with it now and then.

If I put that into a play, no one would buy it.

I was going to post all sorts of things on this blog tonight, but wound up writing 10 pages of my new play tonight instead.

Late last year, I started going to the gym regularly. Mostly to deal with chronic pain I’ve been experiencing since a car accident (not my fault) two-and-a-half years ago. It’s not something I talk about too much, and it’s not something I believe I’ve written about here before. At first, I started going to the gym just to loosen up, and to sit in the jacuzzi as often and for as long as I could. But then, sometime in February, something started to happen: I started to feel like I needed to go to the gym. Like I had things to work out. And now I’ve further turned that corner: Now I’m someone who looks forward to going to the gym.

For years, I posted on this blog every day. Every single day. Lately, it’s been more sporadic. I’ve wondered why that is, especially since I write every day. It’s not always playwriting (or, clearly, blog writing), but every single day I’m writing something, some of it for a fair amount of pay, some of it for some small amount of pay at some point (those tend to be plays), and some of it, I’m sure, for no pay whatsoever (those would be poems and short stories, which I haven’t even bothered to send out for years now). The itch I now get when I don’t go to the gym or get some other physical activity — the sense of feeling “rammy,” as the adults used to say about the overly rambunctious son of my father’s friend — is akin to the itch I get when I’m not writing.

But here’s what I think spurred an unexpected 10-page writing session on my play tonight: the miracle of seeing four compelling, enjoyable, thought-provoking plays recently, which were like finding water after being in the Mojave of bad theatre for the past two years, and the resumption of my playwriting workshop today. My workshop is stuffed with good writers writing good plays. When you’re in the room with that, you’d have to work not to be inspired by it.

The play I’m writing is a memory play. That’s not what I normally do, or, more appropriately, it isn’t what I’ve mostly done. (Or done at all?) But that’s what this play is. Tomorrow, we’re removing the seats from Moving Arts, the seats that we installed in 1993 or 1994, the seats donated to us that came from a silent movie house in the Bay Area where they were installed in 1916. We’re doing that because we’re putting in new seats. Parting ways with these seats that we’ve had for 20 years, and which have seen almost 100 years of audience derriere, will certainly spark more feelings fit for a memory play. But I’m excited to be part of taking them out for two reasons: because a number of them are going to a good new home where they’ll be cherished; and because while it’s good to appreciate the past, the future always beckons. And we’re already there, all the time.

My play “The Size of Pike” opens here in Los Angeles in April. We just finished two days of auditions, with callbacks tomorrow night. More news to follow about this when I have more news.

This is a new production of the play, by Moving Arts, which premiered it in… 1995, I think. (I could check on that, and will at some point.)

A lot has happened since 1995, and even 1994, when I wrote it. (I think. Again, I could check on that.)

One of those things is called the World Wide Web.

Another of those things is called the smartphone.

I could go on in this way.

This came to my attention, as it has in recent years with so many of my plays from the 1990’s or, gasp, the 1980’s, when someone has asked to read one or perform one or something: I look it over and suddenly see that elements of the play are now dated thanks (or “no thanks,” actually) to technology.

Witness “Happy Fun Family,” wherein editions of a newspaper are thrown in through the window at key moments. Here’s something that’s not too far off in the future: “Hey, Grampa, what’s a newspaper?” My kids don’t know what a cassette tape is. Not one of them has a wristwatch. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

While listening to actors audition to sides from “The Size of Pike,” I came to realize that an argument in the play — a central argument, one that winds through about, oh, 20 pages of the script — would be easily settled in 2013 by pulling out a smartphone. So I’m presented with two options:

Option A: Update the script, bring in the smartphone (or the threat of using it), and develop a new comic riff involving that;

Option B: Talk to the director about staging this as a period piece, i.e., set the play prior to that pesky World Wide Web / smartphone era.

Further complicating this matter: This play was selected as one of 20 plays drawn from its 20-year history that Moving Arts is revisiting. In other words, it’s a revival. Is it right to contemporize a revival? That seems somehow… wrong. Except I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen with at least one of the other 19 productions. Also, if I’m going to bring this play up to date, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me with at least 10, maybe 15 other plays too — and I have new plays I’d rather write. I don’t know which path to take, yet, with this particular situation. I do know that I’m not the person who wrote it in 1994 — how could I be? — and tampering with it will not necessarily improve it. I’m well-versed in the bad tradition of writers seeking to improve or update their past successes and making them worse. No, I didn’t want or need the prequel to “The Zoo Story,” and I didn’t want most of the 388 poems Whitman added to the original 12-poem “Leaves of Grass” over four decades. On a lower plane of art, I also don’t want all the various versions of “Star Wars” — I liked that first one, complete with crummy models and bad prosthetics. The more it got “fixed,” the further removed it was from my appreciation of it. I’d rather I didn’t wind up accidentally contributing to the weakening of my own play.

A few years ago, I dubbed our local elementary school’s annual offering “The Talentless Show,” because clearly you didn’t need any in order to get up on stage. Now I see I have company.

I’m sorry to learn of the closing of Hunger Artists Theatre in Fullerton, California, after 16 years of producing new work and brave revivals. They produced my play “Next Time” a few years ago, and many  plays by local playwrights, including scripts that came out of my workshop. I haven’t been down to Fullerton in a while (it’s 38 miles in distance from Burbank — but sometimes that translates into two hours of driving), but I liked knowing the theatre was there.

Here’s news of the announcement, and here’s a further analysis.

I get asked this sometimes. Here’s the answer:

Sometimes 46 minutes.

Sometimes a couple of weeks.

Sometimes a few months.

Sometimes four and a half years — as in the case of the play I just finished. Started it in 2008, and then oddly today I had the feeling that I could finish it. No, I don’t know why. Hadn’t even looked at it in years. But I cracked it open and looked at it and, yes, finished it.

(Which means there’s still hope for the play I started in 1990….)