Mike Mariano

Just before I drifted unconscious last night, I recalled that I had neglected to write down an idea I had that afternoon. Since my mind works like I’m like Guy Pearce in Memento, I knew I had to write the idea down now or risk losing it forever. But my computer was switched off and my notebook stuffed in my bag for tomorrow. I grabbed the closest writing implement I could find: my cell phone.

Wow, modern technology! I could use the power of text messaging to type this idea and send it off in a letter to myself! Nevermind that it took longer to navigate through the menus, “thumb” in my e-mail address and idea, and send the message than it would have taken to write it with pen and paper. That would have meant getting out of bed.

Morning came, and as expected I had no recollection of these events. I got to work, turned on the computer, and saw that I had one new e-mail message waiting for me. I opened it:

Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 1:04am

From: mikemariano@—–.com

To: mikemariano@hotmail.com

CHANEL: I shaved my pubes for this?

Hitchcock told Truffaut a story like this, in which the “brilliant idea” a man has before bed turns out to be “boy meets girl” in the morning. I had no illusions of being brilliant, and I ended up with a pornographic riff on the title of a country music album (which has already been riffed upon with a Cledus T. Judd parody).

Just one more step in the playwriting process that you probably don’t want demystified.

PS: Who’s Chanel? You’ll find out….

Fellow Playscripts author Mac Rogers posted something over a half a week ago about the definition of an “emerging playwright”. It seems that Broadway authors, veteran playwrights, and even ringless Karl “The Mailman” Malone have been eligible for consideration as an “emerging playwright”.

Mac opined that “perhaps there’s many degrees of ‘emerging.’” Very true, but how do we measure those degrees?

Fortuitously, nature has provided an answer—by plaguing New Jersey with a swarm of seventeen-year cicadas. The cicadas spend almost two decades underground, feeding on root fluids and only “emerging” (See? We’re getting somewhere….) at the end of their lifecycle to fly, feed, mate, and die.

According to the University of Michigan, cicadas “spend five juvenile stages in their underground burrows,” corresponding to the who-knows-how-many phases a playwright might go through before finding his or her niche. Even after emerging, cicadas go through a “teneral” phase of maturation before becoming a full adult. This may correspond to the Octavio Solis’s of the world; playwrights who have obviously emerged, but haven’t hit superstar status yet.

By judging playwright “emergability” according to the cidada life cycle, we can have confidence that we are taking part in a sensible, natural process of play acceptance and rejection. The cicadas have given us a great insight into our shared art form. They will now spend the rest of the summer giving me nightmares.

Some of you may know that I host a radio show at my old college. I now have a webpage dedicated to the show called Everyone Must Eurodance.

The site is located at http://mikemariano.com/eurodance/

You folks may only be here for the playwriting, but if you’re at all interested in my form of musical curation, this is the place to look.