Today begins 365 Days / 365 Plays at more than 50 theaters throughout the country. In 2002 Suzan Lori-Parks started writing one play each day for a year. The results are being staged during a year-long SLP festival that runs Nov. 2006 through Nov. 2007. Details in the link. Is this exciting, or what! Here's a NYT article about it.
Technically, Parks is on the list of creators whose work I have to avoid when I'm deep in the middle of something. Not due to overlap, but because after taking in the work I'm hit with a temporary paralysis of whydoIevenBOTHERwhydon'tIjustgetajobasapersonalassistantorsomethingandbehappywiththatandgiveuptherest. It always passes, but there can be anywhere from a couple of days to a few weeks before it does, time I cannot afford to lose. If that weakness is to be broken, as I've been told it needs to be, I think it's gonna happen during this event. So this is going to be a really interesting year, let's just say.
I don't have time or money to go to a play a year, but I'm going to try and hit as many of these things as possible. Word is some of them are free.
Oo! Speaking of Lori-Parks, I went to see The America Play currently being staged at the Boston Court up in Pasadena. I hadn't seen this one and have wanted to for years. I think there are four more performances left. Dude, you should totally go.
On the downside, today is also the day R.A. Umar Shabazz Bey is speaking at Esowon Books. I'd never heard of this guy until he showed up on Esowon's events calendar. I had NO IDEA there were people walking around claiming to be the descendants of the mythical race of giants rumored to have built the mounds in southern Ohio and the Mississipppi Valley (a race that shares some cues with the Olmec society in Mexico). I've got a few newspaper articles from the 1800s, notes I've made throughout the years based on lectures attended and fragments of stories found via research. I've used this myth in various projects (and if you're familiar with one of my literary heroes it's not too hard to figure out which ones), but as obsessed as I have been since I was a kid about the stories and legends surrounding the origin of the mounds, I had never come across a claim such as the one Bey is making. This is great stuff! Bey has written a work explaining his hypothesis, and that's why he's talking at Esowon on the same day that SLP's new cycle begins.
Esowon supports mainstream, indy and what I call "deep indy" works, one of the reasons I love the place. Another thing that makes it great is James & Tom know their stuff and they'll be candid. For example, they steered me away from the widely promoted book about black victims of the Nazi regime and toward a much better book about that topic that didn't get nearly as much publicity. So you can ask them straight up if a book they're carrying or a person they have coming in is worth the effort, and they will be frank in their assessment. So I trust J&T in the same way I trust Chris and Brett, for example. If I walk up to them with $50 wondering what I should buy, they will not steer me wrong. When I went in last week to fish for more info about Bey's work (which was sold out, but more should be available tonight) what I was told about it and tonight's presenter was enough to make me think I needed to reevaluate my original plans.
But I reeeeeeeally want to see the debut of SLP's festival. This happens all the time in this town. So many things to do! One must decide. For example, Roz Chast, the woman who created The Karma Sutra of Grilled Cheese, my most fave New Yorker cartoon EVER, is also in town today. I already knew I couldn't make that due to the SLP thing, but still.
And on top of that, I'm still sick. So, whichever one of these things I go to, I'm gonna be drugged out and in fuzz brain mode. For now I'll just down more drugs, go to bed, try to get back to functional and wait until this afternoon before deciding which one of these things I'm gonna do tonight ... assuming I manage to get out of bed and through the day at the cubicle without projectile vomiting.
*** Unless you happen to be the one guy I know who actually does have a genius grant. But as I also know that he doesn't Do the internet(s), I am confident that You are not He. Thus, the title to this post stands as True.
