Today, I put out the call: I seek those who are in my tribe, who recognize me as one of their own. Specifically, I seek those people who are interested in making My Littleton Play a reality.
For years, I struggled with “my family play.” Most playwrights have one, where they take that soup of dramatic tension called “The Upbringing” and put it under the lens. Some of the most famous plays of the Modern period (think O’Neill, Albee, Miller, Williams, Durang, M. Norman, etc.) explore the personal terrain of one’s familial background.
I am no different, but “my family play” came into focus when a certain event took place in my hometown: The Columbine massacre of April 20, 1999.
I realized that there was another essential character in the proceedings, and that “my family play” was not really the way to look at it. Instead, it is My Littleton Play, and it depicts aspects of my family’s existence rather pitilessly. Yet compassionately as well, because I’m not saying I’m better than anyone else as pity sort of makes one think. Instead it is about how caught up we all were.
Today, I’m quite happy to report, my family’s members are all in different places, and while I can’t say we’re completely sane, we are much healthier individuals than who we pretended to be while there. This is a play of you-and-I caught in the masks of pretense, of trying to be something we are not that so does not suit ourselves or anyone else for that matter.
I seek to make this play happen in October of 2011, all things going well. However, that is a lot to assume. I have been sensing, as I suspect many other people have, that we are about to enter into quite the most difficult period of humanity’s current iteration.
Today, in meditation, Persephone seemed a little downcast. The Queen of the Underworld said she was preparing for an influx of above-grounds. She intimated that she did hope I chose not to be among them, though she knew how tempting it might be to join the streams of the mortal coil off-shuffling dance crew. I did have the sense that a goodly chunk of these soon-to-be departeds would emerge from 5 digit zipcodes with one or the other 50 states as part of their addresses.
Regardless of how and when, I put out the call. And I shall assume the role of Max Bialystock of The Producers fame, and wear my producer hat and sell my nourishing balm to all ye who want it.
Who’s gonna join me?
