Another good (busy) week.

GREEN MINI-EXPO AT [INSIDE] THE FORD ON SUNDAY
This Sunday, Moving Arts is hosting a Green Mini-Expo from 1-7:00 pm at [Inside] the Ford -- inspired by the ecological themes of my play "Song of Extinction." I hope you'll come! Food is for sale, offered by Large Marge. Parking is FREE, in the large lot below the theater! You can hang out in beautiful Edison Plaza -- chairs, tables, running water, trees and the occasion deer -- and enjoy the natural world! Stop at the booths. Listen to the panel discussion. And see a little theater on the side.

There will be a free panel discussion with a diverse group of local, green professionals. Among the panel participants will be Ian Garrett from The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, Jessica Aldridge, Zero Waste Event Coordinator/Consultant and Natalie Freidberg of All Shades of Green.

For tickets to Song of Extinction, go to the Ford Theatres website, or call 323-461-3673. For the Green Expo, just drop on by!

VENDORS:
The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts
All Shades of Green
Jenneration Fix
Earth Resource Foundation
Large Marge Sustainables
Smart Car

GREEN MINI-EXPO SCHEDULE
1pm-7pm Expo Open to Public
3pm-4:30pm Matinee Performance of Song of Extinction
5pm Moving Green - Panel Discussion on How to Live a Greener Life (45 minutes)
7pm Song of Extinction Pay-What-You-Can-Performance

OTHER COOL STUFF GOING ON
What else? Met with the always fabulous and talented Jeremy Gabriel yesterday to talk about the screenplay for Infinite Black Suitcase that we're working on together. Afterwards, I went over to the DVD release party for my super-talented playwright/animator Terence Anthony, whose "Orlando's Joint" just came out. So funny! Such good writing!

I've been busy with preparations for our workshop readings, which are on Wednesday, December 10th. Four readings, four playwrights, four directors -- yikes! But the work is great, and so are the people, so it's a labor of love.

Also, I've been working on preparations for the final Song Sunday Talk-Back on the 14th, which I'm coordinating. It's going to be on the Cambodian Experience, and I've already booked two panelists (a survivor of the genocide and a young rapper who talks about the genocide and life in Cambodia Town/Long Beach in his work) and a moderator, Greg Mellen, who writes for the Long Beach Press Telegram. I'm excited about this one! Should be good.

Tonight, I'm off to hear some music with (and thanks to) my friend and fellow playwright Kyle T. Wilson at the Colburn School downtown. Then it's off to the theater to hang out with the Moving Arts board members, who are seeing Song of Extinction tonight. Hope they like the show! (Hope they have gin martinis for sale...) (Well, perhaps I should wait until I get home.) (Damn LA, that you have to drive everywhere.) (Which reminds me that I must purchase another bottle of Bombay Sapphire...)

Looking at my calendar, I see that I'm attending Lions at Pacific Resident Theater on Saturday with my playwright pal Ross Kendall, seeing A Mulholland Christmas Carol at Sacred Fools on Sunday (which I've wanted to see for several years now and finally am going to). I'll probably pop in at Song on Sunday, too. This is our next to last weekend. Hard to believe... time goes so fast and so slow at the same time. Impossible to hold on to the moments which are so dear. Which, I guess, is what makes them so dear.

At any rate, tomorrow I am SLEEPING IN.

Baseball is Good. A Reading of "Catch" at the Blank

On Monday, November 24th, I had a reading of my "baseball" play, Catch over at the Blank, in their Living Room Series. It went really well. Surprisingly well! I was pleased.

The reason why baseball gets quotes, above, is because the play both is and isn't about baseball. It also is and isn't about child molestation. And swallows. (The bird, I mean.)

I finished writing a draft of this play a couple years ago. On my personal timeline, it was in progress around the same time as Heads. I think of it as my odd little play. It's short (for a full-length), and blows out all sense of space and time, as we follow an accountant named John through his present and past, after a breakdown that follows his testimony, as an adult, about having been molested as a child by a stranger. It's a memory play. It's got magical elements. And the large cast is never supposed to leave the stage. I started Catch in Trey Nichols' playwriting workshop, got some good help on it in Aaron Henne's playwriting workshop, then workshopped it myself at Moving Arts with a great group of actors, trying to figure out what this story wanted to be. It's the first play that I literally cut and pasted -- trying to re-create the fragmentation of PTSD.

The folks over at the Blank have been great about letting me come and play in their playground -- which they call The Living Room Series -- a developmental staged reading series that happens every single Monday night through the school year. Heads had a stage reading there (and was subsequently produced at the Blank -- yay!). They've also done readings of Song of Extinction and Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday. It's nice to have a chance like this to not just hear the play, but also stage it out a little and see if the action of it works on a stage. See how it moves. See *if* it moves!

When the folks at the Blank said they'd like to include Catch in the LRS, they asked if I had any directors in mind. I have several "usual suspects" that I love to work with. But readings are always a good way to feel out a director who you haven't worked with before, to see how they cast, how they work, what kind of feedback they can give you, how they pull together a reading and whether or not you enjoy working with them. And, of course, they're doing the same sort of assessments on you. Is this playwright crazy or sane? Good or bad? Willing to work on her play, or not? Fun or boring?

I met Emilie Beck about a year ago, when Song of Extinction was a finalist for the Center Theater Group's Los Angeles-based Sherwood Awards. We corresponded, we met for coffee, and we've been trying to find a way to work together (or see if we'd like to try to work together). This seemed like a great opportunity to do so.

I was nervous about the play. The content is difficult in a different way than my usual fare. The structure is strange. There are magical characters and monologues.

Emilie pulled things together very, very nicely, though. She cast an incredible group of actors. She also asked Caitie Hannon to help out as her Assistant Director.

John: Matt McCray
Ann: Lanai Chapman
George: Jade Dornfeld
Pete: Tom Kiesche
Zach: Hugo Armstrong
Syd: Dinah Lenney
Ben: Jim Ortlieb
Sal: LeShay Tomlinson
Dale: Maia Danziger
Voice: Warren Davis

We had three rehearsals, and she managed to move my big cast around that small stage in a way that gave people a sense of the play without them running into each other. She was great with the actors and very helpful with the text (which she *got*).

I felt like the audience went with us. The actors certainly gave their all. I have a lot more faith in the play now than I did before the reading, and it was wonderful to get a director's eye on it. I was ready for that next step.

I hope I get to work with Emilie and these actors again some time!

(PS: The picture above is not from the reading. We had lots of actors on the stage, but no trained cats. That's Joe, with the softball and mitt that I bought when I was working on the play. Baseball is good.)

The Show is Open! The Reviews are In!

I've been too busy making theater to blog! But "Song of Extinction" is now up and running -- entering the 2nd weekend of a 6-week run at [Inside] the Ford. I went to the show last night, and was so proud of my actors. They are doing some beautiful work, and the show is finding its natural flow, I do believe! Technical elements are smoothing out, the actors are listening to each other and present with each other... I'm very pleased.

It's always scary, waiting for the reviews to come out. But we've received some lovely marks. Here are some highlights:

"After the actors had taken their bows and left the stage, the audience continued to sit in stunned silence. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. It takes a pretty powerful play to generate that kind of response. A silence so profound as to be understood as an overwhelming tribute to an extraordinary production." -- Cynthia Citron, CurtainUp

"Lewis' lyrical text explores inner psychological states with remarkable eloquence and clarity -- ably depicted by a first-rate Moving Arts cast." --Philip Brandes, LA Times

"GO! E.M. Lewis’ haunting drama unfolds on a set bracketed by shadowboxes filled with butterflies, bells, maps, plants and pictures of Cambodian refugees... [her] smart and honest script is one small push from collective transcendence.... Aided by Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’s fine set, director Heidi Helen Davis finds beauty in death, staging it as a boat ride into the jungle with showers of butterflies — a gorgeous counterpoint to Phan’s pronouncement that “extinction is a very messy business.”" -- Amy Nicholson, LA Weekly

"...Lewis has successfully folded one profound theme after another into an illuminating play on harsh, yet heartfelt, themes... great performances... exquisite new play." -- Asian Taco Chick, LATaco.com

"...the relationship built between Max and Khim over the course of [Song of Extinction] is dynamic, charming and vulnerable —truly notable.... Director Davis takes the audience on an ethereal ride through death, resentment, acceptance and, finally, some peace. Each piece of this puzzle is beautifully crafted.... Lewis’s writing has given the director so much to work with..." -- Edie Gramean, SoCal.com

"...Song Of Extinction is an exquisitely poetic and deeply moving new play.... the unforgettable work of its two leads and the visually stunning direction of Heidi Helen Davis make Lewis’ follow-up to her previous Infinite Black Suitcase and Heads a winner..... Scenic designer Stephanie Kerley Schwartz and lighting designer Ian P Garrett do striking work, as does composer Geoffrey Pope.... exquisite writing and the gut-wrenching work of Kunitomi and Faught make Moving Arts’ production of Song Of Extinction one that will haunt you long after the lights have fallen on a father and his son." -- Steven Stanley, Stage Scene LA

"Lewis weaves a mesmerizing tale that gently plucks on the universal chords of the human condition, namely grief and acceptance and the wisdom it imparts from the experience that is both personal and shared. It is the journey then, brilliantly illuminated by director Heidi Helen Davis, and not the end, that strikes a resounding note as powerful and delicate as the beating effect of a butterfly’s wing." -- MR Hunter, StageHappenings.com

"Composer Geoffrey Pope's original viola composition, rendered by Renata van der Vyver, haunts the stage.... Turning in the production's finest performance, Darrell Kunitomi is remarkable as Phan. His understated subtlety is thoughtful and caring at times while dryly sardonic at others. Kunitomi's scene with Yeghiayan... is truly heart-wrenching." -- Dink O'Neal, BackStage West

We were a pick in Flavorpill, and Greg Mellon did a lovely article about the play for the Long Beach Press Telegram. There was an article about me in this month's LA Stage Magazine, and an article about the War Plays Project (with pictures) in this month's Dramatist Magazine. The KUSC interview I did about the play with Brian Lauritzen is podcast on their website. LA City View (TV channel 35) has a new pilot series called "LA Live" that focuses on cultural events in the city, and will be coming to interview a few of us and see the show on Saturday night. Jackson Musker from KPCC's Off Ramp saw the play last night and liked it, and is going to be talking with several of us on Sunday about the play for his radio show.

A huge thank you to LUCY POLLAK, who is our publicist (thanks to the wonderful Winter Partnership with [Inside] the Ford, through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission). She has been beating all the bushes, getting the word out about our little play, and I appreciate *enormously* all of her work and dedication.

I chatted with Michael, the Ford's house manager last night, who complimented our Moving Arts producers for the wonderful job they're doing. They're organized, on time, and professional. Everything at the theater looks beautiful -- the lobby decoration, the food presentation, the programs. They have rounded up volunteers from Moving Arts company members and beyond to hand out programs and serve cookies and coffee and such.

So many people work so hard to make a play happen. Director (thank you, Heidi!), designers, producers, actors, tech folk, stage managers, publicists, volunteer assistants... And then people come. Hoping to be told a good story.

I hope people are going to come and fill our seats! I hope they'll like the story that we are telling together.

Other weekend events:

Tonight -- dinner with Emilie Beck, who is directing my upcoming reading of Catch at the Blank. Then we're seeing Will Eno's play Tragedy: A Tragedy at Son of Semele.

Tomorrow -- be at [Inside] the Ford at 6 to talk to LA Live people, then go over to WriteAct Rep for opening night of the Freeway Series, which includes my short play The Edge of Ross Island.

Sunday -- meet work folks for lunch, see Song at 3 with them and Jan from San Diego, then participate in the Talk-Back with composer Geoffrey Pope at 5. After that, talk with KPCC's Mr. Musker.

Whew! Will I do dishes this weekend? I don't think so...

More publicity stuff...

Two big pieces of publicity for Song of Extinction came out this week.

My radio interview on KUSC can be found here:

Radio Interview

Also, there's an article about me in this month's LA Stage Magazine (picture above). Big thanks to Lee Melville, the editor, for letting me talk about my plays in his magazine!

Previews for Song of Extinction begin tonight...

So -- previews for Song of Extinction begin tonight. What an emotional rollercoaster this process of producing a play is! I'm usually a somewhat emotionally stable person, but not lately.

I had lunch with my playwright/professor friend Dorinne Kondo today. She asked how I was feeling, and I told her that there were so many emotions in me about the production itself -- excitement, delight, worry, nervousness, excitement, vulnerability, responsibility, fear, delight again. And on top of that, I'm filled with all the stuff that caused me to write the play in the first place.

There's a place in Song where Khim Phan talks about teaching.

Teaching is a strange thing, though. You learn in school to teach one subject, you are hired to teach one subject, the class is called by the name of that subject -- and you find, at some point, that you are teaching your self. Your whole self to them. My whole self to them, which includes biology but also funny stories about milking cows with my host family in Wisconsin, who were very nice Baptist people. And bad, expensive addiction to cigarettes, which I hope they do not learn. And Cambodia. Maybe I also teach them Cambodia. Because... I don’t know. Self-indulgence. Maybe. No. I do not talk about it all the time. I do not talk about it ever. But in this chapter on extinction, my country and history and family come up bitterly in my throat. And maybe I teach them about Cambodia without ever saying its name.

Playwriting is kind of the same. You write about one subject. You research about that one subject. You tell people the play is about that one subject. And then you find, at some point, that you've written about yourself. Everything you are, for good and ill, is in there.

It's a little daunting.

But I'm also excited.

And nervous.

And excited.

Halloween Posting

Some bits and pieces of things. Halloween 2008.


Ian Garrett hangs lights over the stage for Song of Extinction.

The Ford Theater sign, over the 101. Song of Extinction opens one week from today! Heading out to rehearsal soon.

Joe's Halloween picture.


Found poetry today:
___________________
Barn's burnt down,
now
I can see the moon.

-masahide
___________________

Found information today about a back-country wilderness residency in Oregon for writers. If I haven't entirely missed the deadline, I'd like to apply. It's two hours away from civilization along dirt roads... a cabin in the wilderness. Get away and write, like Thoreau. Doesn't that sound cool? My mother would freak out, but it sounds amazing to me. I think I'm getting oversaturated with city.

Here's a line from the application: "You may mention a specific writing project you would like to undertake at Dutch Henry, but you're not required to do so. It is assumed that you will write. What you write is between you and the river."

Doesn't that sound nice?

A Theater Full of Magic

Oh, what a week it's been! We are finally in the theater. A set has been built. Lights have been hung. Props and costumes have been gathered. And all day Saturday and Sunday, actors took their places upon the stage, as we brought all the elements together.

Everyone was amazingly patient with one another for tech days. Tech days are very long and tedious for everyone. It's the time when the light cues and sound cues and the actors' entrances and exits, and all the props and costumes are put together and written down by the Stage Manager. Jackie Moses (yay, Jackie!) is our stage manager, and she inhabited the booth with our light designer, Ian Garrett, and our sound designer, Jason Duplissea. Our set designer went back and forth between the house and the booth. Heidi Helen Davis (the director) and I and Kim Glann and Cece Tio were out in the house, watching and participating. And the actors were directed to mark their way through the play inch by inch. Where do they enter from? And do they enter from a light cue or a sound cue or a visual cue? When does that music kick in? Who is carrying that desk off stage? Where are my hand props? Who took Michael's shoe? Is that set piece going to work, or do we need something more/different? How loud should the chopping sound be? These are the kinds of things that the audience will hopefully never think about, because we have. We are trying to make the story-telling seamless. Natural. Right.

I shall add more to this later, because it was a very full day. An actor was lost, then found. I went and ran a War Plays Project event, then came back for more tech. Butterflies were discussed thoroughly, and thrown from the rafters for test flights. I saw deer, hanging out right outside the Ford's fence. We all ate lunch together, and bonded. Everyone worked incredibly hard, and the hard work showed in the amazing things that were figured out.

Ten hours.

Ninety three pages.

One play, starting to come together.

I can't wait until Wednesday, when we go back and get to work on it some more!

(PS: Think good thoughts my way tomorrow -- I'm being interviewed for the RADIO. On Saturday morning, I had a great phone interview for the Long Beach paper -- hopefully this one will go all right as well. We need all the publicity we can get!)