This morning, during our run, Rob said, “I can read frothing about the iPhone just about anywhere. How’s the play coming?” (Yes, I see Rob two to three times a week and he still keeps track of what I’m up to via my blog.)

The Foothill New Works Festival rehearsals are in fact under way. I go twice a week for an hour and a half and watch the director go through the script with the actors, blocking movement on stage, working out the characters and why they’re saying what they’re saying. I sit there and applaud and offer absolutely no feedback to the actors other than to say, “Wow, this is great! You’re wonderful!” Because this is now the director’s show, not mine, and for the writer to contradict or overrule the director during rehearsals is A Bad Idea. This is made much easier by the fact that I think my director’s doing a fabu job.

After rehearsal, when the actors have taken off, I compare notes with Brennan, my director. I’ve made a couple of changes to the script—for example, God and Lucifer are both being played by women (strangely enough, the Almighty is female in every single play in the festival, and this wasn’t planned in any way, shape, or form), so I changed all the pronouns and possessives to female, because using “he” and “his” was grating on me. In general, the rehearsals have been wonderful: the actors are really doing a great job bringing these characters to life. A few times (and just a few) I’ve pointed out places where I think the actors should use some different choices. What’s been awesome is that Brennan always seems to be on the same page and often has the exact same notes.

The best thing by far has been the way Brennan and the actors have found stuff in the play that I wasn’t even aware of putting in there. At one point, God says, “Don’t mess up the furniture,” and several minutes later Lucifer and St. Peter are jumping on the tables. I was completely unaware of the link there. But Brennan’s highlighted it, by having St. Peter make a show of putting the furniture back the way it was when God returns.

Actually, the best thing was when Brennan said, “We’re all about the coffee in this show.” Because, as anyone who knows me knows, coffee is pretty much the major theme in all my work. And it was nice to have someone else recognize that.

You know you want tickets. It’s going to be a fun evening of theater! Here is all the info you need.

Or for anybody, really.

Via Theater Ideas, here is Ben Cameron’s excellent advice quoting of advice from Anne Bogart, offered as he left TCG (Theater Communications Group?):

* Do not assume that you have to have some prescribed conditions to do your best work.
* Do not wait.
* Do not wait for enough time or money to accomplish what you think you have in mind.
* Work with what you have right now.
* Work with the people around you right now.
* Work with the architecture you see around you right now.
* Do not wait for what you assume is the appropriate, stress-free environment in which to generate expression.
* Do not wait for maturity or insight or wisdom.
* Do not wait till you are sure that you know what you are doing.
* Do not wait until you have enough technique.
* What you do now, what you make of your present circumstances will determine the quality and scope of your future endeavors.

When we went to see Neil Gaiman speak at SJSU, he read from his work in progress, The Graveyard Book. He told us the genesis of this work — sitting in a graveyard with his son — and how he kept putting off writing it until he had the talent and ability to do it right. Then one day he said, I’m never going to have the talent and ability, so I might as well just do it now. (This is a horrible and probably inaccurate paraphrase, but it’s in the general ballpark. I remember raising a metaphorical eyebrow at Gaiman not thinking he could do justice to the story.)