Truffles and Mermaids

This is going to be an awesome week.

Not only do I get to see The Average-Sized Mermaid and several other cool shows in the New York Fringe Festival ...

(awesome mermaid photo by Joe Wehry, by the way)

.... but I ALSO get to see one of MY OWN shows at the first annual Truffle Hunt New Play Festival. I am tremendously excited. I've had some great emails with the director, the other playwrights look awesome, and the readings are taking place at a super-delicious looking gastro-pubby place called 61 Local. Microbrews, new plays, and fun young artists who call themselves "Piglets" - I am so in.

They've been doing a series of blog posts profiling playwrights in the festival, and I've finally made it on!

A Few Highlights:

What are you most proud of in terms of your work as an author?

I'm most proud of the fact that I'm still working. I've written at least a play a year since I was 15. Not all of them are super awesome, but I learn something new with every story I take on. I think there are a lot of people who have wonderful, beautiful ideas, but they don't always follow through with them. I do not want to be one of those people, so I try to keep something on the back burner of my brain all the time. I think a little part is terrified that if I stop working, I won't be able to start again, so I try and keep that little part busy so it doesn't scare itself. And because of this fear-driven, shark-like impulse for motion, I've written politically charged sex farces, violent short plays, semi-autobiographical storytelling pieces, children's plays, romantic comedies, post apocalyptic speculative fiction, and this delightful piece about a misfit mastodon. I can't wait to see what I get to do next and the great people I'm going to work with.

If you could've written any play (instead of the shmoe who did write it) what play would it be (i.e. Glengarry GlenRoss)?

I would love to take on some Chekov, because nothing is as beautifully absurd as Russian misery.

If you couldn't write, what would you most like to do?

I would like to knit a working tank from steel wool and marshal amazing parades around the world. It would probably shoot bubbles.

Yeah. I like to think I walk that fine line between pretentious and crazy. Maybe?

Check out the whole thing here. And if you're in Brooklyn next week, like a wonderfully unexpectedly large number of my friends, come and see the Truffle Hunt at the 61 Local! AND the Average Sized Mermaid, which closes tomorrow!

More pictures forthcoming, I assure you!