EXTRA CRITICUM

A reading of my new play tomorrow in NYC!

So I disappear for two months and come back in time to make a Shameless Self-Promo? Classic, Warnock...

However, I am back from the first round of editing Best Lesbian Erotica, and the Absolut International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and the Lammies and all kinds of other things that I do instead of writing, to mention something that I do that has to do with writing:

Just because you've had sex, doesn't mean you know how to write about it.

In one of my many lives, I am taking over as editor of Best Lesbian Erotica (Cleis), starting with the 2010 edition. Having published in the volume (under my pen name) several times, I come at it (so to speak) from both a writer's and an editor's POV. My dayjob also involves editing books, though on a completely different subject.

Here's an interview with me in Lambda Literary's "Book Buzz" column by John Morgan Wilson, which we conducted by email, which gave me time to spellcheck AND attempt to be witty.

Vanda is like a River...(even though I liked the original title better)

I've been stuck at home all week with that sinus thingie...you know what I'm snifflin' about, and one of the most frustrating things about it is that I haven't had a chance to get out to the EATfest.

I'm a proud member of Emerging Artists Theatre, and a fan of a lot of the individual playwrights. The play I'm FINALLY getting to see this weekend is Vanda's Memory River. Vanda's work in the last several years has focused mostly on period pieces in which unexplored/secret lesbian histories are dramatized, or look at a particular part of history through lesbian eyes.

Come to Provincetown in January! Really!

I will be driving my cast up there on Thursday (presumably with the driver's side window that won't go up and down fixed by then...) to take part in the second annual Universal Theatre Festival.

That's...

Drunken! Careening! Writers! "Now We Are Six" Jan 15, KGB Bar, FREE!

Who knew? Because I went to one-too-many readings in which there were too many readers, reading for too long, I said to the guy who owns KGB: "give me my own night (please)." And he did, and I began to put together a reading series dedicated to the proposition that readings should be excellent, well-read pieces that have at least one thing in them that makes people laugh (nervous laughter counts), and don't run more than 15 minutes each.

I stole (with permission) the series name from a writer friend who, in describing the photography on one of our favorite shows, called it "Drunken! Careening! Cameramen!"

Monologues! Monologues! Monologues! This Thurs, 1/8 in NYC

I do get out a little bit in the city of New York…

And this Thursday night is no exception (and the following Thursday, which I’ll also post about).

So if you are around, and fancy a drink, and some good actors performing monologues from many wonderful playwrights, then you should seriously consider heading downtown to the Cornelia St. Café for an event that’s hosted/produced by my dear friend & fellow playwright Bob Shuman, who also does the Stage Voices blog.

I'm far more interested in Coney Island than the Phantom

Double dipping AGAIN, I'm here to share a Frommers.com post I did about Lord Webber's (or, "Andy" as I call him...) next Broadway outing, The Phantom of the Opera Goes to Coney Island (actually that's my title for it, which I think is much better than Love Never Dies, which you must admit, is a little generic in a "romance novel with shirtless Fabio on the cover" kind of way).

However, who am I to argue with the creator of a show that's run 23 years in London and 22 in NYC?

We're all in the hospitality industry

In my other blogging identity, I just wrote about how the tourists (God bless all 47 million of 'em) made NYC the number one destination in the US (surpassing Disney World and Vegas). While the financial meltdown has led to the loss of thousands of jobs, the blow is slightly cushioned by the people who work in service jobs in the hospitality industry (estimates are as many as 1 in 9 jobs in the city fall into that category).

To quote myself:

The "hospitality industry" is more than waiters and hotel staff: the people who work in the theaters and at museums and other attractions are included in that number. The guy who plays Pig #3 in Shrek...hospitality worker. (His name is Ryan Duncan).

"That’s a very difficult question. If I keep going, I’ll get angry with God.”

Opened the email this morning to find a link to this interview with Eugene Ionesco! The master of the absurd reveals that he wanted to be a chestnut seller at age 3, and at 3-1/2 not just any doctor, but his family doctor, complete with beard.

Mais oui!

Enjoy. (And thanks to TH for forwarding).

Our Christmas Eve

We were having an evening-long conversation last night, as I finished wrapping the gifts for the kids.

It had been a quiet, nice day: our office gave us early dismissal, and all morning I actually Got Some Work Done, and emailed back and forth with colleagues in our Indy office about maps and pagecounts and things like that. I had a nice long talk with a dear friend. I had a steak.

No sleep til Soho!

I have long since ceased trying to separate the different parts of my life, or the many different roles I've played. One of my favorite roles, was rock geek/zine writer. I was actually at the ROCKRGRL conference in Seattle in 2000, staying at a hostel when I got the call to come in for an interview for my current job (travel editor). (I also got a full-length play out of my wanderings.) So now they're letting me and a bunch of other editors blog for our company website, and I got a chance to combine old & new stuff with this post about a pre-opening tour of the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex in New York City. Checkitout.

To quote myself:

"All in all, there's a great deal of history and memorabilia well-proportioned in a compact space. There is not nearly enough Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, but then I feel that way about most of life."

You've got to be carefully taught...

I got a call this morning from a playwright friend who lives in another state. She called to talk about a listserv we are both on, specifically about how to respond to a post and some backchanneling that had upset her.

She told me about a call for submissions she'd received for an anthology of monologues with "language and theme sensitive for high school/college classroom discussion" (which I'd also received and posted on my En Avant playwrights opps board). She'd corresponded with the editor of the anthology and come away with the impression that monologues on gender and identity would not make it in.

Lucky 13 at the election booth

We vote at the Boys & Girls Club in Astoria. The last time I was in the rec room/gym/theater there was for the Democratic Primary, and the time before that to see Astoria Performing Arts Center's production of "Proof." In presidential years, we go early; in 2004, the confused ladies who sit at the tables were already very confused, and the Eisenhower-era voting machine did not work properly, and we voted with paper ballots, but we voted. We bitched about it to everyone we could think of, and when I Google myself, I sometimes find a quote of mine in Newsday, and another in a Spanish language newspaper.

Oh come on, Astoria's not EUROPE!

...though I like to think of it as the Right Bank of the East River; it's been my home for more than a decade and I am happy that I finally have a reading going up in a venue that's walking distance from my house (and that's really the important thing).

Off-off is alive and well across the Queensborough Bridge, and I've enjoyed performances at the various venues of the Astoria Performing Arts Center (which have been nominated for, and won a few IT Awards). Fellow Astorian (and awesome director) Tom Wojtunik was recently appointed Artistic Director, and has put together a lineup of staged readings of new plays, including one of mine.

Houses of the Holy

Ten years ago this week, Matthew Shephard died. That night, Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi opened at Manhattan Theater Club, with police dogs and metal detectors, and ugly violent threats. The profound show of the worst side of human nature surrounding those two events shared a common cause: hate.

While the odious Fred Phelps still pickets funerals (of soldiers killed in Iraq these days), Corpus Christi's reception has undergone a sea change; last May, when we were in Dublin for the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, I had a chance to see Los Angeles's 108 Theatre's production of the McNally play. In an ancient building, first a theatre in the 1600s, then a Roman Catholic church, now once again a theatre, I got to see an achingly beautiful work that moved me in many ways: the part of me that's a theater artist; the part that's a lesbian; and the part that's still very much a Christian (and who is NOT "intrisincally disordered" thank you very much).