twenty plays and bitterness...

It has been over three years since I dropped out of college. I think I've been bitter for those three years. Someone recently asked me if I still thought about acting. My honest response was I hadn't. I said it so quickly. It had to be true.

My recent battles with work, career, and life goals have made me realize some things. I no longer want to be a victim. I no longer am one. When you're not a victim you can change the future. The past still remains never fleeting, but it doesn't have to bear any weight on the future.

In the past it has never been my fault. Nothing has been. It has been easier to just blame others. Not to say that I was always at fault, but I'm at least half to blame for everything that has happened to me. I was there too wasn't I?

Everyone learns this lesson in their own time. I won't be 28 until October, and I've got a lot of life left. At least I hope I do. No longer will I let being a victim, leave me out of the things I enjoy.

Isn't that just pathetic? That I have stopped doing the things I used to enjoy because I was burnt once or twice.

I understand now that I am flammable. If I'm going to get burnt in the future it's going to be on my own terms.

I went to the Sacramento Public Library two days ago. It had been about three years since I had been into a library. My friend asked me what I was looking for. I didn't even know. I actually had followed him into the library. But what I said so quickly and uninhibited was one word : "plays"

You should see the theatre section in this library, it puts a lot of others to shame. It was sort of bittersweet, there they all were. Shaw, Begosian, Willy Shakes, Silversteen, Checkov and others.

It had been a while, and I didn't really know what I wanted to read, or what I even liked anymore. So I picked up one of those 20 in one books. Twenty off Broadway plays from the seventies.

I've read about three of them. And I haven't forgotten how to read a play, even after all this time. Backwards then forwards. Isn't that right David Ball? And these plays are horrible. None of them are good.

I wonder if it's just me being older, or not being a victim anymore, but I'm noticing things in the plays that I didn't use to notice earlier in my life.

Scenes in plays are supposed to be about the best and worst days of life. People in those scenes do everything that we do in real life. Everything.

People in plays tell bad jokes.

And the other people in the scene make fun of them when they do.

People are racist in plays.

People play practical jokes in plays.

People are always doing something in a play. To each other, to themselves, or to nobody in particular.

A long time ago the word "playable actions" was introduced to me. And I didn't get it right away, and maybe I still don't. But I'm noticing an entire level of consciousness that I never used to notice on paper before.

There's the things people say...the script.

There's the motivation for that in the plot.

There's the playable actions beyond that.

And then there's this thing that I'm only starting to notice.

Their suspicions.

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. After all I don't have a degree in theatre or anything. But everyone in every scene, on top of their playable action, lines, and motives also have suspicions. And it's making reading; even the most horrible off Broadway plays from the 1970's bearable.

I need a one minute monologue and a cattle call.