AND PLZ BE QUITE LITERAL ABOUT IT

Every theater company doing The Cake, in all of their marketing materials: WE ARE SO PROUD TO PRESENT THIS PLAY, WRITTEN BY THE HEAD WRITER AND CREATOR AND SOLE BRAIN BEHIND THIS IS US!

Me, frantically: IT’S NOT ME I’M JUST ONE OF THE WRITER’S I DID NOT CREATE PLZ ADJUST IMMEDIATELY

Theater Company:……?

Me: IT’S JUST THAT SERIOUSLY, I AM REALLY IN NO WAY IN CHARGE AND IF MY BOSSES SAW THIS I WOULD DIE

Theater Company: But can we tell everyone that you are?

Me: PLEASE DON’T

Theater Company: But what if we just let people BELIEVE that you are, so as to sell tickets?

Me: I FEEL ASHAMED

(NOTE: I am never quite sure exactly how to give cred, but this incredible image that perfectly captures my  at once haunting and comical indecision is by Luke Chueh. PEEP HIM NOW.)

I love to organize my time. I’m soothed by plans. Some people like to lie on beaches and listen to the waves. I LIKE TO PLAN, AND IF I HAPPEN TO BE ON A  BEACH, THAT’S ALSO FINE. But my plan making usually goes something like this:

• Consider all possible plans
• Labor over all options intensively
• Choose one plan, commit to that plan
• TORTURE MYSELF WITH THE POSSIBILITY OF THE OTHER, UNCHOSEN PLANS
• TRY AND CHANGE CHOSEN PLAN TO OTHER PLAN
• accept original plan
• engage in original plan, it usually goes fine
• Spend some time wishing I could get that time I spent laboring over other, possible plans back
• Realize I’ve wasted more time on said regret
• Move on to next plan
• Lay all options out on the floor of my mind
• Think of a lego house, and how each small brick fits together
• but if you leave a space blank, you can make a window

Yesterday afternoon, Morrison painted a miniature while I tried to rewrite a tiny part of The Cake for the 900th time. Taking a break from  (READ: PROCRASTINATING) my own task at hand, I watched him swirl tiny paints together with a tiny brush and bring the tiny brush to the tiny face of a tiny person. It felt like he and I were attempting the exact same thing. And so, if it’s a writer’s job to collect similes: trying to rewrite a play that’s already existed for years, without breaking it or changing it entirely, is EXACTLY like painting the Hair onto a fingernail sized person: you must use the tiniest of brush strokes, you must never once question what it is that you are doing.

Something insane and wonderful is happening. The Cake is being produced everywhere all of the time, or least, getting more productions of a single play than I have ever had in my career. (Also, I counted, and I’ve been working as a playwright for 12 years, so I feel like I can now make sweeping declarations and end them with, ‘in my career.’) I feel like this wonderful thing might never happen again, and so I feel like celebrating / documenting, sharing when and where the play is happening, and also sharing ALL OF THESE BEAUTIFUL PICTURES OF CAKES / HAVE FUN LICKING YOUR SCREEN.

April 8-May 20 2018 in Chicago, Rivendell Theater

June 6-24 2018 at Tantrum Theater in Dublin, Ohio

June 1-July 1 2018 at The Alley Theater in Houston, TX, with Faith Prince reprising the roll of Della! There’s no poster yet, so here’s our happy mugs:

June 21-July 15 2018  in the Berkshires, at Barrington Stage

July 6-29th 2018 at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in West Virginia

September 10-October 21st 2018 atthe Geffen in LA! Re-mount of the best OG production there ever was, staring these fine folk:

2019 DON’T BE HUNGRY GRL, YOU GET CAKE TOO.

April 5-28th 2019 at Asolo Rep in Sarasota, Florida

Feb 6-March 10th 2019 at Salt Lake Acting Company in Salt Lake City, Utah

AND THEN SOME OTHER EXCITING PLACES THAT I’M NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO SHARE YET.  This is the first play I’ve written that I’ve truly felt that people need to see.  I think I somehow managed to write something healing, which we so badly need right now. It’s not a perfect play, it will need to change as I change, as the world changes, but — I put something good out there, which is all I can try to do. And the fact that so many people are going to see it my attempt at Good makes me so happy that my insides are carrot cake, my skin is cream cheese frosting, my heart is a walnut tucked deep inside.

Sometimes (all of the time) (particularly when I’m on hiatus) there is nothing more satisfying than spending way too much time preparing and plating dinner, like even pulling out the fun plates and placemats and napkins from the wedding registry that you thought you’d never use, and then laying it all out and presenting it to your husband like a five year old who cleaned their room but really just put their pillow on their bed. I PRESENT TO YOU, almond crusted rainbow trout with sides of swiss chard and my deep need to be complimented!

Yesterday’s flight back from NC a.) had no internet or screens to speak of and b.) was TURBULENT AF and so I was forced to confront my (completely unfounded and odd) sometimes fear of TALKING TO THE PERSON NEXT TO ME. (What if you get trapped in the conversation? How does the conversation end? Neither of you can walk away. What if someone says something awkward and unfortunate and then you just had to sit their breathing each other’s air, passing each other’s trash to the flight attendant, stepping over each other and lightly grazing each other’s laptops with each others butts for the next 100 hours? WHAT IF YOU ARE BORING, OR THEY OR BORING, OR PROBABLY YOU ARE BOTH BORING?) But talk I did, and I’m glad I did.

Nice older man next to me: So, what do you do?

Me: I’m a writer.

Man: That’s cool, what kind?

Me: TV!

Man: THAT IS SO COOL!

Me: What about you?

Man: I’m an engineer, I fix programs and computer systems for Air Force planes.

Me: THAT IS SO EVEN COOLER!

Man: I think what YOU do is cool!

Me: NO, YOU!

Man: Whatever, YOU!

Me: WANNA BE INTERGENERATIONAL AND INTERDISCIPLINARY FRIENDS?

Man: I can’t right now, I’m stuck on a violently shaking plane

Me: WANNA SPEND THE NEXT FOUR HOURS PRETENDING LIKE THAT’S NOT HAPPENING?

Man: YES

We officially ended the This is Us Season 2 (and some season 3) writer’s room last night with an adorable group outing to see my dear froworkers turned SHOW RUNNERS Isaac and Elizabeth’s movie, Love, Simon:  the first major studio teen love story movie to feature a gay protagonist (OUT THIS WEEKEND / GO SEE / IT WILL MAKE YOU GLAD TO BE A HUMAN.) Work can be hard and makes my brain hurt, but dangit, I do love each and every one of these people. SEE Y’ALL IN TWO MONTHS WHICH WILL FEEL LIKE TEN MINUTES!

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Last night I was writing in my office, and I suddenly stopped and thought to myself, I am writing in my office. I actually stopped, took stock of these things:

I am a writer.

I have a house with an office in it that I can write in.

I have these things because of writing that I have written. 

HOW DID THIS EVEN COME TO BE? 

And then 35 years of ink smeared on my left hand and two dollar bills from Sunday School teachers and crying in the rain over bad reviews swept past. I took a picture with my phone and then my eyes and then my mind, so that I might never forget to fully note what’s happening right in front of me, and how every moment lived has led to it.

My co-worker Vera just shared this will all of the lady This is Us writers. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND A THOROUGH READ.

HAHA IT’S SO FUNNY AND NONE OF IT IS REAL OR TRUE BUT ALSO NEVER RIDICULE A WOMAN, IT BREAKS HER SPIRIT AND CUTS OFF HER EFFICIENCY, NO REALLY I’M SERIOUS,  DON’T DO THIS