March is going out like a... kid

The Beef Eater

Well here it is - another month, another missed deadline for a mid-month post. I suppose I should just move the goalposts back a bit, and aim for one post per month, any day of the month, during the off-season. It's been a very, very busy March.  

But I don't want to talk about how busy I am - everyone does that, as if it's some sort of contest to see who has the most pitiful, over-stretched life in the rat race. Many of us play up on our exhaustion as a matter of routine, and we can't help ourselves, much of the time, but when we can avoid talking about how busy we are, I think we should (and if we are empirically too busy, then instead of talking about it we should be actually doing something to actively address whatever it is that's too much to handle). 

Instead, I want to talk about the great art in my life, that I'm finding time for despite the hustle, that in fact is a huge part of what I need as an antidote to the hustle, a balm on the sores of a wounded soul. 

First and foremost, The Dark Lady. We're now on the cusp of this presentation - Monday at 8 at the Fergus Grand, if you want to come and see it (admission is free, and there's food afterwards). The cast and crew have worked very hard on this, and have followed my seemingly crazy vision for a gala performance on World Theatre Day. It has been a joy to uncover the meaning in this play, layer by layer, and begin to understand, in the most rudimentary of ways, a few brief words that the second-greatest playwright in the English language (a runner-up status Shaw himself only ever grudgingly accepted) chose to put into the mouth of the first, and work out how he managed to do so with such levity and wit. (That deliberate run-on sentence is a salute to the old man, as my breathless cast members can well attest) 

Beyond the current production, I remain focused on my shows this summer at the library, though I haven't had much time to work with them. Week 1 is coming along well, at least, though I remain behind schedule with casting, as usual. Week 2 will need a significant catch-up at some point, but it has a much shorter distance to travel than the Week 1 (Week 2 being made up entirely of my own plays).

Looks like I'm heading back to the Wellington County Writer's Festival in June. I had a great time last year, and am looking forward to going back again. I'll be sure to share the poster here as soon as I receive it. I was very impressed at both the quality and quantity of works by local authors at last year's event, and I guarantee you'll find at least one author who piques your interest. 

I am continuing to write new material all the time. Currently I'm working through a self-imposed challenge - 10 short plays set on a park bench. I'm doing this because someone told me at some point to never set a play on a park bench (they didn't elaborate as to why). So because they told me never to do it, I decided to do it 10 times. So far nothing great has come out of the exercise (I'm about halfway through) but maybe there will be one or two shorts that I can develop further.  I'm also continuing to work on a play that straddles the past, present, and future, about three generations of women and the secrets that they choose to carry, or don't. I want to take my time with that one, because I feel like there's some real potential there for something unlike anything that I've ever written before. 

Finally, we are now, after the longest stretch in our farm's history without any new arrivals, thick into a new session of kidding. Here's goats 7, 8, and 9 of 10 that were born today (so far):

So while I may have been too busy to notice how March came in, I'm certainly going to notice how it's going to go out.