Mike Mariano

Seriously, folks; I have started at least three weblog entries this year and abandoned them. Here is the process:

1. I attend a play.
2. I think of a funny anecdote to say about it.
3. I write it down in this weblog.
4. I leave it as a draft for a week. In the meantime I tell my anecdote to everyone I know.

By the time I’m ready to post, I’m sick of the story!

So let’s post something quickly: playwriting notes! New notes for a play written over a year ago!

I need more rap in It Takes A Nation of Norwegians to Hold Us Back!

Obviously, the title comes from Public Enemy.

But I was jazzed up on Dead Prez and KRS-1 when writing the play. I wanted to get in the following lines and have them spoken by Stockmann:

“You would rather have a Lexus or justice? Some cash or some substance?”
– Dead Prez “Hip Hop”

“I tell my kids to watch the education they give ‘em. Because it’s really all about street wisdom.”
– KRS-1 “Get Yourself Up”

And now tonight I heard Mos Def rapping in Black Star’s “Children’s Story.”

“Why you sellin’ lies to our wives and children?”
– Black Star “Children’s Story”

All three of those lines could conceivably be spoken by Stockmann, with maybe some minor alteration.

Notable is that all three of these songs are hip-hop self-analysis.

Up on the site: It Takes A Nation Of Norwegians To Hold Us Back!, in glorious HTML and PDF flavors.

I began the year with a list of plays I would fail to write. How surprising is it that one play made it to the site, while two others are well underway? I’m surprised.

What’s in store for 2007? The Egypt Play (again). The Aladdin Play (again). And how about I start sending these plays out? And how about I write something that isn’t a play? We’ll see. Happy New Year!

I have completed a second draft of the long-awaited Ibsen sequel It Takes A Nation of Norwegians To Hold Us Back! It is a twenty-minute one-act for two women and one man (An Enemy of the People’s Dr. Thomas Stockmann).

It’s all over but the formatting! I must remember my stew of regular expressions, search-and-replacements, and old-fashioned hand-markup that will result in HTML and PDF versions of my work. With luck, I’ll have a readable draft by the end of the year.

Also complete? A first draft of Act I of The Aladdin Play AKA As You Wish. Sure, the play will spend the better part of the decade in draft form only, but knowing I’m halfway there makes me feel falsely prolific.