MEANWHILE

So I'm waiting on things. Contests, projects, the proverbial ship to come in and all that. And while I do, the wheels of the world keep turning at great speed, as if all motion is perpetual, all moments continual, all threads connected somehow, in a way that I always understand in my dreams but can't quite remember when I wake up.

Guess Lennon was right- Life is what happens while you're making plans.

I got a reading of Riddle Lost coming up out in Salinas, California at the Western Stage- one of the many incubators of my artistic soul. I spent many summers there as an actor, working on some pretty amazing projects, including a nine hour, three part adaptation of East of Eden which was one of the seminal experiences of my life. It's run by Jon Selover, who I went to college and who taught me a lot about theatre.

Salinas is also where my first play, Last Call takes places.

The reading is part of 2x4 Bash, a project run by another old friend and fellow lunatic Mark Englehorn that also includes a reading of the play 8 by Dustin Lance Black- the guy who won the Oscar for writing Milk, and who was in a production of Peter Pan with me at Western Stage. So that's pretty friggin' sweet.

Riddle Lost is about a real life guy from the Old West named Jeff Riddle who's mother was a Modoc Indian and father was a settler and who lived through a really nasty war. It takes place in the after-life, and has a cast of characters that includes Norse death god Hel, a cigar store Indian named Ziggy, and Raven- the trickster god of the Pacific-Northwest. It's weird and funny and sad and I like to think kicks it in the ass. If you're near on Salinas on August 24, go check it out.

I'm also doing a lot of children's theatre this summer. A lot. Tomorrow I audition 52 kids for a musical I'm directing up in Boulder in July, and on Monday I start a production of Lightning Thief here in Denver. And while it may be tiring as all hell, it's also really invigorating to do theatre with young folks. They still understand the power of the imagination, and there isn't much they can't do.

On top of that, I am super close to finishing my first flick, Strong Tea. Like probably a week. Then I leap into the land of submitting to film festivals- where I will live for the next year.

And on top of all that, I have two other screenplays I'm figuring out.

I think I need to take the wife and drive up to the mountains and watch a river splash along for a few hours, sing to the trees, and search for Bigfoot.