Some books are special. Some you find exactly when you need to find them.
I found Franny and Zooey after I graduated from high school, during the interminably long summer before I went off to college, far away in New York.
It made me realize, perhaps, that I needed to be fiercely curious, in fact I needed to be in pursuit of curiosities instead of wallowing in the uncomfortable world I had known.
Jesse Kornbluth on Franny and Zooey.
My friend and fellow playwright Kyoung Park just spent 3 months working with Agusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed organization in Brazil, researching, observing and participating in many programs.
Lucky.
He’s written an article for Korea Times that sums up some of Boal’s main contributions and a bit on exactly how far reaching his work was.
Check out his article here.
I was talking with a fellow theatermaker who just closed a show at the Ohio Theater with Clubbed Thumb about what a special space it is–it’s height, it’s depth, it’s location and it’s history of really wonderful projects that’ve run through there. I saw Sung Rno’s wAve there some time back and they carved a river with running water down the side of the stage and then simulated the landing of a helicopter. I saw Target Margin’s beautiful and strange Ten Blocks on the Camino Real there. The first play I was ever paid to write was put up there.
And there has been the talk of it closing, but it seems they’ll be able to be open for one more year. One of the last, great downtown theater spaces.
We were mourning for it before it was even gone.
Now we can love it for a little longer.
Alexis Clements interviews Robert Lyons, head of Soho Think Tank/The Ohio Theater about the organization and the stay of execution. Oh, and the tantalizing Ice Factory.
The folks over at Significant Objects are bringing a whole new meaning to the words, “found objects.”
The curators find a bunch of objects (for under $2) at garage sales, thrift stores, on the street, etc., then commission a writer to invent a story about the object–giving it a history, a life, a past, a “significance.”
Then, the objects are sold on e-bay.
I like it. I’ve sort of always loved found things. Re-appropriated, re-made, re-contextualized.
In other news, Harold and Kumar are both respectively, well, in the news.
John Cho is featured in Asian Pacific Arts and talks about how he used to be an English teacher during the day and act in plays at East West Players at night. Kal Penn quit his sweet gig on House to work as Associate Director in the Office of Public Liason for Obama’s administration.
It seems to be our imperitive as Asian Americans to be overachievers.
Or to die trying.
Me, I’m more of an underdog than an overachiever. But my nose, oh yeah, it’s to the grindstone.
At Bard with Women’s Project Playwriting Lab for Envision, a writing/development retreat put on by Voice and Vision.
It’s 10:23 and I already did yoga, showered, had breakfast and did some writing on a brand new crazy play.
What a gift to get out of the regular roll of life, to somewhere with birds and skunks and trees and stars and space.
And little things to wander upon. Like this:
carla ching 