For the last few months, I’ve had the privilege of working on a musical, The Dardy Family Home Movies, written by my friend, mad genius playwright/actress/singer/performance artist Erin Markey. One of the reasons I agreed to direct the first reading of the piece, back in January, was that I was feeling blocked and unmotivated as a writer myself – months had gone by since I’d written this column or worked on my solo play about my lifelong obsession with Patti LuPone – and I knew that being around Erin’s prolific mind and lust for life would inspire me to get cracking. So it was a no-brainer to accept Erin’s invitation to join her in a casual artists’ salon a block away from my apartment in Williamsburg this past Saturday afternoon. Erin knows that I’ve been struggling to finish the second draft of my Patti show and she thought this would be good for me, to share my work with these people of different disciplines and backgrounds, and to have the limited kind of structured feedback this group espouses.
Expecting wine and cheese and a room full of judgmental hipsters, I braced myself to perform my work as a writer for the first time ever. Getting dressed that morning, I was focusing on the fact that my audience might not even have ever heard of Patti LuPone. What would they make of my showqueen babbling?
Expecting wine and cheese and a room full of judgmental hipsters, I braced myself to perform my work as a writer for the first time ever. Getting dressed that morning, I was focusing on the fact that my audience might not even have ever heard of Patti LuPone. What would they make of my showqueen babbling?