INDEPENDENCE DAY

NYC empties out for the holidays
Especially this one..
so, I could ride my bike easily down to 43rd Street
to attend our full session of classes today.
Entering Cameo studios and traveling down into the earth
two floors and how many levels
I try not to think of the
fall out shelters of the my youth and
they way they were stocked with canned goods
and guns and no books.. ever...
in the displays at the State Fair anyway.

I always wondered,
what we'd do down in those shelters with no books.
Maybe card games? Our nails? Maybe Scrabble?
Anne Frank Annex fantasies?

Not to worry though. This travel down two levels
leads me to the clean, bright and
cool rehearsal studio. We are the first group to use it.
It was created by developers of a local hotel.
NYC makes developers contribute to the well being of existing communities
when they build their huge complexes.. and so the theatre district got another rehearsal studio at low cost for the use of a few companies for special events. Hence, our arrival.
We are delighted to be there.

This afternoon I had the chance to read some of my material. And be as vulnerable as the rest of the writers. Did FOREST FOR THE TREES, a stylized presentational love story and a five pages of a brand new piece about the prisons we work in, live in and choose.

We were also visited by Playwright J. Holtham who brought in some brand new work and some more seasoned scenes. J. will come back next Friday with his rewrites and the students will get a chance to see how their work, their input changes and affects a living piece of art.

Kind of the idea in this program.
How do we affect each other as we exist in the room,
in the town, on the planet together?
We do affect each other, whether we know it or not.
The energy of an event translates to the energy of an action.
The energy of an action translates to the energy of origin, that is..
where the action originates.

Our job is to get all of those actions to
generate from the heart.. not the mind, not the head,
but the wise and judicious heart
that tells the truth and
is open to its effect in the world.

Tall task... to keep that heart undefended and
yet strong enough to emanate its own love and strength from within.
Well. we're all on the road.

We're in it together.