read to the very end of this newsletter for some very exciting news. the gist? this fall, i finally get to direct a full-on production of a new play in new york city.
i’m curious about angry art. when i was in high school, i had a therapist who saved my life, and when we met, she asked me if i was angry. i said i wasn’t angry, i was sad. months later, we revisited the topic. i think you’re very angry, she said. and i think you never learned what to do with your anger and so you turned it into sadness.
she was right. and while some of the specific anger i carried at seventeen has dissipated and evolved, new anger has taken its place. i feel it curdle in my gut when someone sits next to me on the subway without a mask. when i read the news. when i think about our global failure to care for each other. even now, my body desperately tries to metabolize that sticky, corrosive feeling into something else. i make art from curiosity, not anger, i insist to myself. but what do people do with their anger? what do artists do?
i mostly work in theater, one of the slowest forms of art there is. it can take years for even the fastest moving projects — the buzzy shows with commercial backers — to land in front of the audience they seek. so anger often feels like impotence. by the time my anger reaches people through my art, we may have moved on to being angry about new things. and if we haven’t, wasn’t there something i could have done in the meantime to make a bigger impact?
but if i scratch the surface of the projects i’m currently building, if i look for where my curiosity started, there is often anger waiting there. anger that humans are selfish, that we are destroying the planet, that we are not kinder to each other, that women and queer folks are made small, that relationships are all we have and yet so often they fail, that i feel lost so much of the time. so in some way, that anger must be important to my art. it is telling me what i want to be better.
and if any of you think your anger makes your art anything — better, messier, weaker, faster — then my anger and i would love to hear about it.
reading.
andrea long chu on ottessa moshfegh.
ten days in a mad-house by nellie bly. this will move to the “making” section shortly, since my brilliant playwright sister is currently working on adapting it into a play.
the light years by elizabeth jane howard. my roommate gabby has been on a roll recommending books to me lately (the transit of venus, vladimir, etc.) and this one is keeping the streak alive.
this article about the broadway league choosing to drop the mask mandate for july. LOTS of my anger is concentrated here right now. i felt so grateful that broadway was continuing to uphold common sense safety measures after other businesses abandoned them. good thing no show on broadway is at risk of giving its performers covid (other than the multiple shows that either cancelled performances this week or performed with more understudies and swings onstage than principal cast because covid is actively spreading through the cast!!!).
this poem by raymond carver.
this profile on deirdre o’connell after her tony win.
seeing.
circle jerk at the connelly theater. when this show premiered virtually in the deep dark of october 2020, it sent shockwaves through my social circle. it was the first piece of digital theater i saw that felt like it truly lived up to both parts of that label. it managed to take the constraints of making pandemic art and turn them into a mind-boggling explosion of form and content. and for the first time in months, i was running into people i knew at the theater again — in that, while posting the highly instagrammable intermission screen, i’d see other friends posting it too, realize we were “at” the same show, DM them something along the lines of “omfg i’m losing it” / “did you catch that south pacific ref” / “is this ALLOWED??” and end up chatting with them until the next act started. then this deeply provocative, aggressively zany, and resolutely queer little show that could became a pulitzer finalist. now they’re doing it both in-person and livestreamed — and if you can go in person before it closes this saturday, i highly recommend it. go for the hype, stay for the deep-cut golden age musical theater jokes and social commentary.
new girl. boy, have parts of this show not aged well! but while it fails on a number of political levels, for me at this current moment, new girl’s heartbreak plot lines are just what the doctor ordered. i am also definitely freaked out by how many characteristics i share with jess, famously one of the most polarizing tv characters in recent memory.
these pictures of greta gerwig on set really encapsulate the directing vibes i strive for.
hearing.
“desperado” and “don’t think twice, it’s all right” on loop.
my favorite background noise for reading plays.
“rumours” simply can’t be beat for messiest heartbreak album.
making.
a salad. those of you who know me will recognize this as unusual. but after several weeks of travel and couchsurfing, i returned to brooklyn this week, craving salad. i have always firmly labeled myself a Bad Cook — and feel the need to stipulate even now that, of course, making a salad isn’t really cooking — and i feel a lot of fear and shame when it comes to feeding my body the food that it wants. often, and especially in the last few months, i awake without any appetite at all, and make myself consume the blandest pre-packaged snack i can find so that my body isn’t running on empty. i miss my hunger. i was so happy when it stopped in on sunday night, looking for fresh greens. i bought my hunger mixed greens, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, red onion, mozzarella, avocado, and a bottle of sesame dressing. i came home and chopped. i ate the salad straight from the mixing bowl and felt full. and the next day, i was hungry again.
before the flood by emily bice. well, it’s happening. barring a disaster of biblical proportions… i’ll be directing a two-week run of this beautiful new play in new york city this fall. i am beyond excited. i love this play so much and feel overwhelming gratitude towards the many people who have made this possible. i’ll share more info (dates! tickets!) when possible.
if you have discovered anything recently that quenches / transmogrifies / comforts anger or hunger, i’ll be excited to hear it.
‘til next week…
