uh

I'm very very tired.

Yesterday was this event. It was a beautiful beautiful thing that I MUST describe to you. Afterwards was some partying - some love of the not sex kind. Today I wrote a five minute scene that goes in nothing. I'm sapped though and, um, this kind of partying is draining and weird making. Also the weather figures large.

Oh so articulate!

So yesterday was this big event - the Free Night of Theater event in Union Square. J produced it this year and it was going to be just gorgeous. All these yellow umbrellas - a great stage, flatscreens, booths, and the speakers wre out of control -the head of The Public Theater (and that's also Shakespeare in the Park - and this year Hair went from Shakespeare in the Park to Broadway) and Eric Bogosian and I'm just getting started and then performances by very very talented people. So then it poured. I mean poured. Which everyone knew was going to happen but what to do was extrememly unclear. And then J did this impossible thing of getting the Union Square Theater to host it. She did it with the best phonecall she's ever done by her own account. It was pretty amazing. She made it happen. Later she told us that while she was on the phone her walkie talking was going 'Umbrellas DOWN Umbrellas DOWN."

Then is the part where I stand in the rain with a sign about the relocation for a good while.

Then I got to the new theater - and was not needed - J and her collaborator pulled it off so amazingly and all these people still showed up - hell or high water- high water literally...

And the first speaker I saw talked about the USAs cultural budget - it's 145 million. And Iraq's - which Iraqis are dismayed is now only 85 million and wanted us to consider that the cultural budget of the country we occupied is half of that of our Empire. And then he talked about the tendency to think if only we were oppressed then we'd make amazing art and wanted to stress that artists are opressed - he is very good - he said if you're an artist and you feel like you need to make it hobby, feel like you can't breathe, feel like there's a boot on your neck that's becasue there IS a boot on your neck. Okay.

Then Maya Azucena sang Hallelujah - hers is the most beautiful ever. No words for it.

The performances were lovely and so many of the speakers addressed how this day was going on in spite of it no longer being the original intended event (it became a day sort of about the day existing - since it was no longer in any way an audience development day - it was for the sake of it happening.) Oskar Eustis spoke about Mother Courage in the rain - how it poured and they called the show but the performers, Meryl Streep was Mother Courage - insisted on doing it anyway, on doing it unmicd if electrocution was such a big deal. And how the audience stayed and how when it was all said and done everyone applauded eachother - cast applauded audience and audience cast and how only Theater is Theater basically.

It was very inspiring.

I am so tired. It was a lovely theater only theater is theater thing.

J really did the impossible. She must be so tired. For my part, I'm just weird tired. And busy and a little confused but it was a really beautiful thing I'm glad I took the day off for. And that's saying something to be glad you stood in the freezing rain on your last half personal day half vacation day combined possible for the year.

XOXO
Alexis