I have my own private little sweat lodge in which try sometimes to write plays. Usually I wind up turning the sweat lodge into an outhouse and that’s that. My block has a lot to do with very severe expectations I place upon my efforts (which I think is a sign, ultimately, of shallowness–it doesn’t hurt so much after I accuse myself of it). Samuel Beckett didn’t start writing plays and cause everyone else to give up, obviously. There are a lot of occupied sweat lodges out there. But I am preoccupied with Beckett’s work as a kind of terminus in the drama. Through a meticulous scoring, through both restraining and exercising a facile bardic tongue, he crafted acts which choked the theatre into speaking about what lies at our limits (got to go beyond Godot folks, as great as it is; read the later shorter stuff where the voice begins to leave the body). In my shallowness and awe, I cannot find a way forward. My current idea for a play is a terrifying construction of the nothing that’s not happening and won’t happen any time soon. If you seek release from the pain of life through psychiatric institutionalization, ask me to describe what I want to write about. I won’t be able to tell you, but I’ll drive you nuts with the ways I can not talk about it. Continue reading Scripting the Unscriptable →