This Can't Be Broccoli

In most places, summer isn't usually the time of year when interesting and provocative contemporary theater gets produced. Even in that great Mecca of New York City, only one or two shows ever open between the Tony Awards and September. It just seems like the combination of heat and the temptation of hanging out at the beach for a few more hours makes it difficult to put on anything other than summer stock musicals and outdoor Shakespeare. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Put out your torches, Shakespeare lovers--but seriously, how many more productions of The Tempest am I going to have to sit through before I die?  Hundreds?  Probably hundreds.) Lucky for Rhode Islanders, summer isn't what it used to be.  Oh sure, if you're up for a fun night of musical theater you can check out Theatre by the Sea and if you want Shakespeare done by a master, go see TRIST's As You Like It directed by Bob Colonna right in downtown Providence. If you're lo...

I was addressing (addressing, already I sound pretentious) a group of actors who were going to be performing my work. I'd let them direct themselves, because I wanted to see what would happen when you remove a director from the theatrical experience. I should mention that I don't hate directors, I just wanted to use this particular show as an experiment. What would actors do if left to direct themselves? It's not like it's the first time an actor's directed themselves, but it's not often that an actor gets to direct themselves performing a brand new piece of work that was written for them while the playwright looks on and chews on his fingernails. (It all sounds sort of sideshow-ish, doesn't it?) Overall, I was very pleased with the direction most of the performers took their pieces in, and it was helpful for me as a writer to see the actors' instincts at work. The one that jumped at me more than once, however, was this sense that one of my...

A third of the way into American Reunion , the latest in the American Pie franchise coming nearly ten years after its last installment (straight-to-video movies not withstanding), I was hit with a revelation. I was morbidly depressed. First off, I had no idea it had been almost a decade since American Wedding , the third movie in the franchise.  I could have sworn it came out in 2005 or 2006.  It seems the first sign of getting older is that everything seems like it happened much more recently than it actually has.  No wonder the movie didn't tear it up at the box office.  The target audience would be young guys in their twenties, and those guys were probably eight or nine when the franchise first began. Then again, I guess they would be the major demographic for this movie.  That honor would fall to my peer group:  The "We Miss the 90's" Generation. Many people have taken advantage of my age group's love affair with nostalgia. Teen Nick recently...

There's a word that gets tossed around so often, and, subsequently, tossed off even more infrequently. "Slut." It's not as bad as calling someone a "whore," but it does indicate a certain level of trashiness, and, obviously, promiscuity. This post is going to be mainly about the word in the context of the gay community, since, you know, I'm a gay man. The worst part about being labeled a "slut" is that once that moniker is stuck on you, it'll stay there for, oh let's be conservative here and say--decades. What's odd is that we find it hysterical when women act slutty. I mean, c'mon, the Sex and the City women are practically our temple gods, and yet when we ourselves act that way, there's utter disdain. And most of the time, it has nothing to do with morality or (try saying this without scoffing) chastity. Most of the time it's one of the following reasons: 1)  We call a guy a slut because we want to d...

I'm reading Less Than Zero  by Brett Easton Ellis for the first time for a book club I'm in, and one particular thing keeps jumping out at me. Everybody in the book is rich, connected, and constantly bored. Now, I know it was the eighties and there weren't as many time-killing devices as there are now, but still-- This was Los Angeles, and these characters are ridiculously wealthy and all they do is talk about how bored they are. I'm also aware that this is fiction, but it's surprising how much it reminds me of a lot of what I hear living in Rhode Island. It's not uncommon to hear people complain that there's nothing to do in Providence. Even I used to think that until I actually started going out in the city.  Now I'm not sure how anybody can say that. I've been officially exploring the place I'm from for the past few years, and I still haven't even touched upon most of the restaurants or events that go on here. I'm not g...

I got into more than a few arguments with friends of mine when I posted a status saying "I've lost more friends to marriage than I have to drugs." Obviously that was meant to incite people, but sometimes that's just because I incite people when I really just want to converse with them. (Believe it or not, people are much more likely to get into an argument with you than they are to strike up a conversation with you.) What I was getting at was, yes, drugs are bad and you shouldn't do drugs BUT I have a particular aversion to people who get into relationships, marriages, have kids, etc, and fall off the face of the earth only to reemerge every so often to cast judgment down on the likes of people who drink or do drugs or carry on in such undomestic fashions. I'd like to know why it's okay to become an ice-cold, mini-van driving asshole but not a drug addict? To me, they're equally disappointing. One's lost their soul to addictive influenc...

I read a really great book--the latest from the Story Project. "All There Is"--a book about true love. All the stories share the same theme, two people meet and fall in love. That magic, instantaneous, "this is the one" love. You'd think there would be at least one bit of helpful advice letting us know how they knew, but alas, that's not the case. They just "knew." It got me to thinking: How are you supposed to know?  I mean, really know. We all have those friends (or have been those friends) who fall in and out of what we think is love, only to insist to the people closest to us-- "No, really, THIS time it's for real." Wouldn't it be easier to have a definite way of knowing? I've come up with a list of things that could happen that would let you know that you're definitely in love. In no particular order, they are-- ~ A trumpet ~ A chorus singing (cliche, I know) ~ A chorus singing Megadeth (th...