July 26, 2013
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An End To Radio Silence
Wow. The last time I blogged was at the beginning of this month. I think that’s the longest quiet spell I’ve had on this blog since I started it in 2005.
So I’m back.
Where was I?
In Texas.
For 10 great days I was visiting my family, getting rained on, baking, lounging around, playing with my sobrinos and just relaxing.
It was awesome.
But that was just ten days. What else have I been up to this month?
Well, at the beginning of the month I spend 4th of July in Dolores Park. I was there almost all day in order to get a good seat to watch the San Francisco Mime Troupe‘s first performance of their new play. This is a July 4th tradition for the Mime Troupe, you see. And a tradition for many, many San Franciscans.
We ate, we drank lots of fluids, we got a little tan. Don’t laugh when I say it was hot. It was. This Tejana has been living in mostly fog for 11 years now and she’s acclimated to the temperature range (50 to maybe 70s) so anything hotter than normal is kind of a shock to her system. And by hers I mean mine.
Anyhoo.
SF Mime Troupe offers free performances in parks. Go check them out!
Top: Velina Brown, Lisa Hori-Gracia, Bottom: Hugo Carbajal, Rotimi AgbabiakaThe second weekend of the month I attended a retreat for AlterTheater. I brought in a second draft of Wolf at the Door and got lots of good feedback and ideas to propel me into rewrites. Which I need to start doing soon.
The rest of the retreat was awesome as it gave me a chance to hear what my fellow AlterLab playwrights (Larissa, Denmo and Ann) are working on, plus connect with Jeanette at AlterTheater. And, of course I love heading over to Ann’s house. One of these days I will snap a picture of it and post it here on the blog.
Then I went on vacation. Which was great. I needed it. Seriously. And aside from family time, getting rained on and seeing animatronic dinosaurs at the Witte Museum, I got the chance to see Travis Bedard who is neither animatronic nor a dinosaur.
Travis is a theatre friend who I met online (he commented on a blog post, I think). While I wasn’t able to see him perform in a current production of The Pillowman, I did get to have dinner with him to talk theatre and catch up. Which we did.
I flew back on a Sunday morning and spent the rest of the day recovering from having to get up so early.
And this past Monday rehearsals started up in Chicago for my developmental production of Heart Shaped Nebula, which meant that I also had a nice long chat with my director to go over the script. I’m super excited about the production and cannot wait to head up to Chicago for it.
Lastly, I went to a potluck dinner with a few Latino theatre artists to have a conversation about what they want and need. We had a great time and a few really cool ideas came out of that evening. The first is that we want to connect more with other Latino theatre artists–know who’s here, what they’re doing. So we started a Facebook group for Bay Area Latino Theatre Artists. So, if you’re reading this and you’re here in the Bay Area and a Latino theatre artist, we invite you to join.
That’s pretty much a recap of my July. A theatre retreat, a vacation, a potluck, a phone call, rewrites…oh and I played Scrabble (almost broke 300) and finally got to see my dramaturg after many, many months.
And this weekend I’m going to see a reading of a new play by a friend. More on that tomorrow.
-M
