The Lonely Sock in Manhattan.

The crowning artistic achievement of my life? Possibly.

RIP Kenny Rivera.

I lost my cousin yesterday. I miss him.

The Pulitzer.

We’re 18 minutes away from, by all accounts, Ruined winning the Pulitzer. In The Heights seems to be the closest contender. Lydia would be right up there, based on everything I’ve heard, but without a New York production, it’s an uphill battle.

UPDATE: Yep. It’s Lynn. Congratulations. Heights was a runner-up, along with Becky Shaw.

UPDATE: Here’s an article on why this all matters (from the perspective of women writers — people of color aren’t mentioned, but the same all applies):

This season, according to American Theatre magazine, the most-produced play at regional theaters (barring “A Christmas Carol” and Shakespeare) is John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt,” which won the Pulitzer in 2005 and has since been made into a movie. At number 3, trailing Joe Mantello’s David Sedaris adaptation, “The Santaland Diaries,” is the 2007 Pulitzer winner, David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Rabbit Hole.” Also on the list are non-shortlisted plays by former Pulitzer winners (August Wilson, Tennessee Williams) and finalists (Sarah Ruhl, Theresa Rebeck). Ruhl and Rebeck are the only women in the top 10 aside from Harper Lee, whose Pulitzer-winning novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” was adapted, not by her, into a play.

It’s a bit of a rout, really, and the reasons for it remain fuzzy. Women make up half the population; surely they have half the stories to tell, don’t they? Surely they’ve been writing plays all along, haven’t they? The first woman to win a Pulitzer for drama was the long-forgotten Zona Gale, whose “Miss Lulu Bett” was the third play to win the prize, in 1921, a year after Eugene O’Neill was honored for “Beyond the Horizon.” Granted, women in the past encountered greater obstacles to education and professional success than they do these days, thus clearing the way for their male contemporaries to crowd the repertory and become today’s classic American playwrights. But one would have thought we’d be further along by now.

The Public Keeps Trying to Make Me Watch Shakespeare.

Look at the cast for Twelfth Night this summer.  I swear, I’m sick of Shakespeare, but stuff like this keeps pulling me back in.

Lily Allen.

It takes me a while to catch up to pop music these days.  This past week, I’ve become obsessed with this:

From My Google Alerts.

Here are some articles and other good stuff about , well, me.

My little show in Texas. The description of my piece is a little misleading: it’s actually a young girl playing me telling a personal story about becoming a man.

I’m doing a panel in Chicago…via Skype. It’s a true miracle of technology — the hosts of the panel read one of my posts here on this very blog, tracked me down on Facebook, and will patch me in via Skype.

And here’s a report from Humana. Seems they loved Brink!.

Notes From the 24 Hour Musicals.

1. $50 isn’t that much when you drink five vodka tonics.

2. Someone needs to get Nellie McKay into a Broadway musical ASAP.

3. Cheyenne Jackson, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Roger Bart, and the woman whose name I didn’t catch kind of stole the show, thanks in large part to Rinne Groff.

4. Rachel Dratch is inherently funny.

5. I talk a lot about Karen Olivo, but Mandy Gonzalez is just as much of a star. And just as beautiful. And took the subway home right after the show.

Congrats to Ari and everyone involved with the 24 Hour Musicals and the Orchard Project.

African-American Audiences.

I got a great bunch of articles in my inbox today as part of Thomas Cott’s You’ve Cott Mail newsletter. If you’re interested in the business side of show business, and you like news story aggregation, you should absolutely sign up. I’m going to make a post for each of these articles, and I’ll spread them out throughout the week.

First up: why aren’t black audiences supporting black theater artists?  That’s the question posed by this Minneapolis Star Tribune article.  The first of two really important ideas that jump out at me (emphasis mine):

“I get uncomfortable counting black faces, because we are not a monolith,” said Penumbra founder Lou Bellamy, who staged “Raisin” at the Guthrie, the first time since its 1959 Broadway debut that the show has been staged at the theater. “I wonder if affluent blacks [who are most likely to go to nonprofit theater] don’t have more in common with affluent whites than they do with the majority of blacks. We are a tricky people. You have to do work that honors that.”

We’re not quite post-racial, as many folks like to say in the After Obama era, but Mr. Bellamy has a great and important point.  Class is the real dividing line here.  We see this deeply in art, where the question of high vs. low culture is, I believe, at the heart of what most theater companies are struggling to solve, even if they don’t frame the argument in those terms.  The best illustration of this schism, I think, is this:

In at least one type of theater, blacks here and elsewhere are voting with their feet. The touring morality musicals and plays, popularized by actor/impresario Tyler Perry, consistently sell out runs at the State or Orpheum theaters, and do so without relying on traditional advertising.

I’ve talked about this before, but probably never blogged about it: when I worked in Cleveland, I’d go to public grade schools and high schools just about once a week.  I’d ask “who here has ever gone to the theater before?” In predominantly African-American classrooms, the situation was always the same: I’d get about 25% of the hands going up immediately.  I’d ask what plays those children had seen.  Some would mention Shakespeare, some mentioned musicals — and then someone would mention Madea (Tyler Perry’s famous alter ego). Instantly — INSTANTLY — virtually every hand in the room would go up.  Students would start shouting, sharing their memories of seeing the Madea plays — they were universally loved.  There was a disconnect though, even for the kids — somehow, this didn’t register as theater.  It didn’t register as the same kind of art form as Shakespeare — the latter was something stuffy and formal, while the former was fun and communal.  Low art vs. high art had a hold, even on fifth-graders.

Definitely check out the article.  Lots of great stuff there, and a good groundwork for everything I’ll be talking about this week.

Every Night This Week.

Monday: 24 Hour Musicals
Tuesday: Waiting for Godot
Wednesday: Ars Nova Play Group (work-in-progress by Tasha Gordon-Solomon…aww yeah)
Thursday: The Philanthropist
Friday: Knives and Other Sharp Objects
Saturday: Grace (work-in-progress reading that I’m dramaturging)
Sunday: rehearsal for Sex.Scotch. Snakes
Monday: Sex. Scotch. Snakes. (Hibernating Rattlesnakes…aww yeah — new play by me!)
Tuesday: school school school
Wednesday: Florida Thespian Festival (the largest high school theater competition in the country. I’m judging/teaching playwriting.)

So the question is…when will I do my laundry?

Train Station + Do Re Mi = Tears.

Man, I’m a sucker for stuff like this.