last nite khadijah approached me about codirecting for colored girls who have considered suicide.... she's never directed before but wants to do this for black history month. i won't be here then, i said. she still wants me to help: this semester, while i'm around. coaching the actors on lines, helping w/ characters. she'll handle the movement/dance aspect later after winter break. she seemed frazzled -- marc had just lectured her on the necessity of having a VISION before attempting to put on a play and gotten himself all worked up. he directed her in a show last year by the same author; i imagine he feels a little posessive.
i'd never read for colored girls ... so i promised that i'd think about it; told her to calm down and not let marc undermine her confidence in herself (standard advice); and went to ponder the question.
i wrote and directed a stupid little play in sixth grade that i was proud of at the time. last semester, becca and i co-directed a scene called "date w/ a stranger." we made it more complicated than it needed to be by taking the two characters and splicing them into two each -- i.e.: two men named clark, two women named paula, all sitting in a row. we played around w/ it a lot, and our actors contributed ideas and opinions, and we made it work. actually it rocked, and it was really funny, which you don't get too much of around here. (we like our drama dark and inscrutable, and usually either centuries old or so post-modern it was written five years from now.)
i also stage managed another of marc's plays, neil labute's "bash," during which process i was constantly plotting to wrest control away from him. i didn't want to be in charge of gathering chairs; i had insight. that was kindof frustrating, altho marc did listen to me sometimes and i got some interaction w/ the actors. marc warns that i will have a similarly frustrating experience doing this play b/c khadijah is as stubborn as he is.
i don't know if any of the above qualifies me. i do want to direct this semester but this certainly isn't what i had in mind: it's a seriously intense piece; if done well, i'm sure it's incredibly moving. the language is gorgeous, it's poetry, expressive without being pretentious or abstruse. but it is abstract, and expressionist, neither of which i have any experience w/, and it's about an anger i can't relate to first-hand. what the hell do i know about growing up under these circumstances? i'm fucking privileged, like almost anyone you'd run into on the internet: white, educated, upper-middle-class. never really denied anything by parents, by life.
on the other hand, this is an opportunity. i'll never be brave enuf to attempt something this ambitious on my own or even to work on something so foreign. this has the potential to make me very uncomfortable -- that can be invaluable.

in other news, after ragging on ben for the zoo that is his dorm (first ants, then a mouse) and declaring i'd never visit there again, we found a mouse ourselves in the barn. karma?
and some jackass keeps calling and asking for me, leaving his name as "jamal" or, shit, what was the other? something else that begins w/ a "j". joel, who is always the one who answers, is a credulous guy but he has his limits. i just think it's kindof dumb and counterproductive but done enuf dumb and counterproductive things in the name of humor that i can probably chalk this up to karma too.