Harvest, NYC (contd.) and ...

Thanks to Amba, who posted her impressions of NYC's HARVEST at her blog I have an idea of what it was like, from someone unconnected to the production. I feel a mild regret, about not being there but not REALLY sorry coz I am still shuddering from the memory of The Unmentionable over on the West Coast. No doubt I'll get over it in time, but I wonder if perhaps the best way to survive being a playwright is never to see the staged results? I remember acting in a play once, and being told the playwright wouldn't attend the performance because he never sat through his own plays.

Apparently, the chances are dim that productions will appeal to their creators. I was talking to an English playwright in London this December, someone whose plays have been performed by big name actors (I mean, the type whose names even I was familiar with -- I'm not naming them for fear of libel suits) and he didn't have a single good word to say for anyone associated with stage productions. We agreed that the lot of a playwright is a SAAAAAD one. Anyway, this conversation made me feel whole lot better, since I was able to describe The West Coast HorrorShow in thrilling technicolour to him -- and HE UNDERSTOOD WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT!! That was so cool. Other people listen to these tales of woe and think that I'm exaggerating (well, not the friends who came to the west coast show with me; they thought I was exaggerating until they witnessed it for themselves), and smile in a "there, there -- it can't possibly have been THAT bad" way. Only the playwright knew from experience the total nastiness of having one's work messed about by others.

Anyway ... I am pleased to report that, according to Amba's report, it sounds like the NYC show was good. I am very grateful to her for bothering to put up that review.

Meanwhile, I am currently in Madras. Got here on Sunday. My niece D is here from Boss Town and we are in the thick of our annual season of struggles with my mom/her grandmom -- nothing we do can EVER match her expectations. So, even though I am 52 and my niece is 32, we STILL spend most of our lives here variously in the dog-house for being lazy/incompetent/poorly dressed/and much, much more besides. *sigh* It's not easy being born.

Oh -- and -- for a short while, I am hiding comments (I may turn em off altogether; haven't decided) and removing my e-address from view. I am pre-empting possible tedium in the form of unwanted mail in a week from now, because a Bombay tabloid is running a feature in which they're going to be excerpting from author-blogs and mine's going to be one of them.