Day: February 1, 2015

After the last performance of this version of “Last Day At Maple View” – we did five staged readings this week, Maria took this photo of four people critically involved in the creative process. Ed and Carol Gulley, they are both dairy farmers who run a small farm called Bejosh in White Creek, N.Y., helped me with the script and the language and feeling of a small farm. David Snider, the executive director of Hubbard Hall, saw the possibilities in the play and told me to go ahead with it, he is a brilliant director and editor and it was a joy to work together with him.

We all want to go to the next level, I am excited and somewhat anxious,  this is a big new challenge for me. I’ve written parts of plays before that have been performed, but this one has a strong shot of going somewhere. I want to do it right.  The next chapter starts this week, David will commission music and I will bring some pizza to the Gulley’s and we’ll think about some kitchen scenes.

“The Last Day At Maple View” farm closed today after five staged readings at Hubbard Hall, the work is over, the work is just beginning. The play is about a farmer whose dairy farm is facing it’s last days, battered by corporate competition and a world that seems to no longer know or care what people are for.

Here, Ralph Tunney is confronted by his wife, (Christine Decker) and son Tyler (Eric Rose), who are telling him an awful truth: the farm is over, it can’t continue any longer. The feed company has cut him off, the bank is circling, the big farms are chewing him up. An emotional play for me, I think for the audience.

But this is just the beginning. Playwrighting suits me, but it is hard and arduous work, and I have a lot more work to do if I want to see this play produced in full on a stage. It needs to be sharpened, focused, fleshed out. I want to add scenes in the farm kitchen, from the Farmer’s Prayer Group, from Tyler’s house.

Ralph Tunney’s wife Sarah is a strong a force in the play as Ralph, she is a strong and intelligent woman who is determined that her husband not fall apart and give up on life. I wanted the farmer’s wife to be a strong figure, not a pliant one. Decker was amazing in that role. In the next few weeks I’ll meet with David Snider – he wants to commission an original musical score for the play – and see what he thinks about my continuing to work on this play.

In the talk back section after the performance, I told the audience that “Death Of A Salesman” was one of the first plays I ever saw, and one of the most powerful. At the time, the discarded human was still a shocking idea, it was before we became a Corporate Nation, where people began to be discarded by the millions, and almost always go quietly and sheepishly. They are wantonly and cruelly treated, yet it is the workers (like the farmers) who always seem to feel ashamed and embarrassed.

Now, people are so routinely discarded that is becoming a universal experience. I didn’t want Willie Loman’s fate for Ralph Tunney, my characters are not going ultimately to quit on themselves.

I think David is interested in seeing this play completed, but we both have to think about it and talk about it, it is a major commitment of time and energy. Playwrighting is comfortable for me, I love writing dialogue and also plotting short and vivid scenes. I love the collegiality of working with a smart director and good actors. So many friends and people I know in town showed up to see the play this week – that was a moving thing for me. I thank them.

I am not a football fan, the Super Bowl is not for me or Maria, so a quiet chance to bask in this week, there are few things i love more than a creative challenge and a creative opportunity. I have a big one (both ways) in front of me now.

Most people see my former girlfriend as a sweet, quiet, creative, animal-loving spirit who patiently puts up with her deranged husband, taking photos of her all the time and putting them up on the blog. Sometimes Maria is willing to have her photo taken, sometimes she doesn’t like it.

Maria is not a public person, and although she loves writing on her blog, there are times when she wants to crawl into her studio and vanish.

She does not like a lot of attention, and this week, all kinds of people have been wishing her a happy birthday and asking her if she is feeling well. This is causing her introverted strain to rear up and wish to be left alone. When she is in such a mood, which is often, she lets me know by sticking her tongue out at my camera. I have a vast gallery of such photographs, I call them “The Two Sides Of Maria,” and this time, she gave me permission (mostly to put this one up. Let’s call it a portrait. Might make a nice book one day.

Flo lived in the woodshed in secret before revealing herself to Maria and I during a snowstorm. She is my cat, really, she sleeps in my lap when she can, sits by me when she can. She reminds me to reveal myself, to learn who I am, to accept it and to be proud of it. Like many good people, I spent most of my life trying to figure out how to get inside of the tent, I am spending the rest of it celebrating the idea that I am where I belong. Flo’s winters are warmer now.

“Every day, with each photo, the messages

trickle in for me, sometimes pour like a stream.

“Poor thing, he looks so cold..”

“Poor thing, he looks so sad…”

“Poor thing, he wants to be inside..”

How grateful then, I am,

that I cannot speak human,

for I might speak words I would regret,

might say something angry and cruel,

like people do,

and that is not the way of the dog,

or of my brothers and sister, the horses

and the elephants and the cows.”

Why do they put their human things,

their weaknesses and frailties,

into my cup, project their

human sorrows onto me?,

sitting at their screens,

in their big houses in barren cities,

I am no poor thing, I would say,

this is what my God meant for me to do,

from the beginning of recorded time,

this is how he made me, filling my soul

with the love of work, the love of life.

If I had words, I might say,

How awful it would be for me,

to be locked inside, warm and dry,

empty, growing fat and dumb so

you can feel good about yourselves,

while the work of the world went unattended,

just outside of my door,

If you had your way,

my spirit would wither and die,

while my beloved and helpless human

stumbled so slowly and awkwardly around,

in the cold and the dark.

I am no one’s poor thing, working alongside of people

is my joy and my sacrament,

for me, for the horses,

it is the sacred place.

We helped make the world possible,

we do it still,

every day.

Do not ever dare to pity me,

or feel sorry for me,

I am not you,

your weak and helpless thing,

or your child, your cheap way

to feel good.

There is no greater happiness or

purpose for me, that is what I would say,

if I could speak.

Happy thing, I am living my life.”