A New Play Called Home (and other writing updates…)
Last time I wrote, I updated you on health (because that’s what we do now – we are all good here and I hope the same for you,) and I told you about starting up my coaching and teaching in the area of arts integration.
It’s been going as expected for a first year. Good and slow. It has been an eye widening learning curve mostly about where I seem to be consistently called.
Which is “back to one” (seriously, constantly) – to any and all areas of storytelling. writing, theatre, performing, and guidance – are you at all surprised?
Mid life is full of u-turns. (One day you’ll quote me.)
Here’s what has been happening behind the scenes on the storyteller front this year:
Hushabye – the never ending full length sung through musical is actually in a kind of m o v e m e n t. Like a sloth. But sloths do move. So we count this as good news.
Home is a new full length play (two acts) I finished in February. It’s about experiencing the final six months with my family in the Alzheimer’s journey before Mom died.
So it’s a comedy!
Well it IS funny in many places because – messy family plays need to be. I had a first reading of it via Zoom in March. The actors were incredible. What an experience to see the people you love played by people you love.
So now I’m doing some tweaking and plan to do another reading (in house) in the fall. (Great roles – if you happen to play Texan well – remind me of you. Some of these roles are tricky to cast. And Zoom means you can be anywhere.)
“Kyle” – Also, I have rounded third on a short story about a little boy who dies and goes on an adventure. I don’t have the perfect title so we’ll just call it “Kyle” for now. It’s lovely and I hope it makes you cry. Actually that’s what most my stuff does but no one seems to complain. I guess I’m a heart opener.
I may put a sample on the blog in a few weeks. I’ll let you know if I do.
And if you got this far – wherever you are – I wish you filled with hope. Do not despair. Do not spiral amidst, well, the obvious. Do something creative with all that stuff welling up inside you. Stand in the living room and sing, write a monologue, go “live” on some social media outlet, put on the tap shoes, paint. Get the juices flowing.
You’re gonna be better than ok. You’re gonna thrive, Honey!
The opening of the Kyle story:
“They surrounded the bed. The air was still though not stuffy. At his request the windows had been open and the full moonlight was gleaming onto the wall behind him in halo-like fashion where he lay. Soft pieces of fuzz disguised as miniature glints of light floated downward, luminous; dancing past the brave faces of his family, then disappearing into the unknown. Moonlight, full of hope, the cousin to doubt, softly illuminated a room that had been weighed down for too long with the sorrow of knowing what is to come.”
