Juggle

This has been a busy week, and it doesn't stop. In the next couple weeks, I have to get my stuff together so I can make this mini-tour happen. I need to make the dollars! Barbara and I have been working non-stop on the Griot dates. Our game plan is to make school dates at Theatre Jax. Right now Nov. 22nd and 23rd. Bus kids in and have a good show. Hopefully, we'll make good money for those two dates. Then we're trying to work it out with the Ritz. I'd like to do the nighttime performances, we won't make a lot of money there, but honestly, I could careless. I'd just like to see the play on that stage.

Sept. is already starting to book up solidly. I'll be in the B-more area working for a bit, and also taking part of the Single File Solo performance festival in Chicago. That will be interesting. There is so much going on I have to figure out a way to maximize all of it. When I look at how many projects I have working, it's scary that I can easily loose sight of the days, and allow dates to sneak up on me.

Money seems like it's going to even out in the next month or so. That will be a relief as I'm sure everyone in the house is sick of eating P&J sandwiches for dinner. Today I took $100 of my rent money and fulled the refigerator. I'll be a little late on the rent because of it, but at this point I don't care. We have to eat.

On the creative front. I have a new idea for a screenplay. I actually started off writing scripts as screenplays before I figured out that the stage was where I wanted to work for. But recently, as more of an exercise then anything else, I made Essential Personnel into a screenplay. I love the way I don't have to adhere to the limitations of the stage, it's wide open and there are so many ways you can play with it. The cost of that, is the fact that most of the screenplays that are written will never get produced. This is a problem for me. I'm use to writing a play, and putting it up, and honing it. Not with film, too much is needed from too many people to think that creating film will happen as easy as a play.

Living in Florida has a way of making me feel disconnected from the rest of the artistic world. Especially the work I do. There isn't a foundation for it anywhere. If I was a tradition playwright, finding a group to commiserate with would be easy. I'm not slamming anymore, so talking to slam poets and trying to build with them would be silly because they aren't so much interested in building as they are winning the next slam. On one side of the equation, I have the best reel of any poet in the nation, three plays being produced this year, and a lot of drive, but ultimately because I'm here in no man's land, no one really knows. Therefore I get passed over for a lot of stuff that could help me. On the flip side if I was in NY I'm sure I wouldn't have as many products as I do. I know because most of my friends in NY are equally as talented, and driven. The difference, they have to worry about living where for me, I can live like a pleblian, and still do my work, and not kill myself. Still it's frustrating.