Apparently B.B. King has a dog named Lucille, too—and she’s missing!
What I found most interesting was the reward. If someone can find the canine Lucille, they will be rewarded with one of King’s Lucille guitars!
Unlike my fictional version of the man, the real-life B.B. King has his priorities straight. Puppies come first.
I may just have news for not just one, but two of my short plays. I will keep you informed.
It’s depressing that with all the projects I started in 2002, only three things made it to the site: Urban Myth, RIP, B.B., and a slight addition to Couchophilia. Off-site, I have four finished works from my Creative Writing class that I have hesitated to polish. I have projects that have been abandoned, (There’s Only One Texas, some of the Boring Science Plays, and maybe The Marley Show revision). And not least of all I have that dang Eating Disorder, which has kept me challenged for a while now. (The original idea came to me post-Green Cheese, so we’re talking close to five years.) With all that could have been accomplished, I feel it’s time to make some resolutions for 2003:
I’m busy, and my writing comes as slow as ever, but two works isn’t such a harsh task. Write me back in 2004 to tell me either you hate my procrastination or that you hate my rushed-quality work. Or perhaps both will apply.
On Sunday night, Dean, Robyn, and I watched the tepid MacBeth makeover Scotland, PA. I found it jaw-droppingly awful. As far as revisionist Shakespeare films go, I enjoyed it less than even Julie Taymor’s Rocky Horror Titus Show.
But it came back to my mind again today during a quick lunch meeting certain McCarter staff members attended with Steven Dietz, author of our upcoming Fiction. He mentioned that after a short stint writing for television (and all the big, dumb action it entails), he was so happy to start a play and just let his characters talk again. Steven Dietz loves dialogue.
My first thought was how different that is from what I’ve been playing with recently; my most recent play on the site barely gives the onstage characters any lines at all. My second thought was how much closer I am to Scotland, PA than I am to Steven Dietz. No one in that film opens their mouth to speak any iambic pentameter; when possible, it seems like the characters try to avoid speaking altogether. This is one of the biggest drawbacks to the film. The creators removed everything from MacBeth but the most bare-boned plot summary and replaced it with seventies fringe and not much else. Dead-end Pennsylvania dialogue may help make the American “Scotland” as dreary as the fair/foul/foul/fair land in the play, but it also kills any supernatural terror or mystery we get from the witches and ghosts. Scotland doth murder suspense.
I’m still drawn to minimal, unsophisticated stage dialogue, but even when my plays consist of nothing but banal “guy-talk,” such as the previously mentioned “Fraternity”, I try to put something in all parts of my work so it doesn’t collapse like the film. Playwrights from William S. to S. Dietz have created solid structures from dialogue alone. I want to use every part of the buffalo.