One of the greatest raw delights of writing is getting to name things: characters, imaginary places, titles for the work itself. I can’t remember how long it took for me to come up with the name of the main character for my play Tuesday—, a few days, weeks, half a year maybe?—but I’m so pleased with the baldly Joycean result, “Audie McCall,” that I still use it sometimes as an alias. I think my favorite coining is “Waldric Rasutabula”, the name of an utterly absurd fellow from my utterly unproduced farce, Gossamer Grudges. Here he is being introduced to another strangely-christened character.
‘RATIO: Waldric, this is Quince from Rubicon Consultants. She has agreed to an initial tour to determine whether her firm might assist ours in the coming transition.
WALDRIC (bowing egregiously): Waldric Rasatabula. (heel click) Majordomo of the Pneumotubes.
QUINCE (tilting her head like a curious terrier): Quince.
WALDRIC: Just Quince?
QUINCE: That’s right.
WALDRIC How mysteriously titillating.
QUINCE: Not remotely.
‘RATIO: Please show Quince every hospitality.
WALDRIC: (suddenly and alarmingly lecherous): Every hospitality?
‘RATIO: Every hospitality she requires.
WALDRIC: Requires?
‘RATIO: Requests.
QUINCE (Offering a hand): Pleasure, I’m sure.
WALDRIC (molesting it): All pleasure is mine.
I often begin a piece— script, poem or essay— with just a title. A lot of the essays I’ve presented here at Just Wrought over the last few years started as nothing but a few scribbled words. I keep a slush fund of them on my computer, and with me stepping away from the fray, I have a surplus I can’t hope to ever flesh out. So I present them to you here and now, gentle reader: your dubious inheritance, reward for years of reading, to do with what you will: surplus titles for a free, fresh theatre.
Why Craft Won’t Save Us
Change the Culture
Go After the Boards
Is it Really the Audiences’ Fault?
It’s not about Money, it’s about Power
Live Girls Quickies Makes me Wish I Were a Woman
When Expansiveness Equals Retreat
Preferably Dead: The Lives of Playwrights in America
Is Actual Human Speech Impossible to Stage?
How do We Hold the Boards Accountable?
Since When are Directors Indespensible?
Museum Theatre: The Whiff and Grip of Necrophilia
Reasons to Be a Playwright
It is Our Job to Be Foolish
You have Spinach in Your Teeth
Why Trolls Troll
I like Intermissions
Things are Important
I am Not a National Playwright
On Guts and Assholes
Experimental Lip Service
An Open Letter to the Minority of Journalists We Managed to Piss Off
(This one is from the Newswrights United days, when we covered the demise of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer in It’s not in the P-I: A Living Newspaper.)
Keep the Dark Night Sacred
Plays are Finicky Fragile Seeds
The MFA Virus
Quit Bingeing Fear
Pay us Shakespeare’s Royalties
Food for the Minotaur
Live by the ____; Die by the ____
Upping our Numbers
Buddhism versus Theatre
Bergson Essay
Seattle, Theatre Town of Many Hats
Glen Gary Glen Wrong
The “Let’s-do-that-Play-I-didn’t-get-Cast-in-Back-in-College” Syndrome
Stop Trying to be Respectable