And we're back, 2013-style

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And we’re back…in Ireland…2013 style!

The blog that comes to life, like Brigadoon (except in Ireland) when EAT goes to the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, returns with its latest iteration: a production of my play “That’s Her Way,” opening tonight, May 6, at The Teachers Club, at 8:30. Or 20:30, as they say around here.

If you’ve been following the fitful blog, you may remember that we started out at The Teachers Club back in 2008, with a production of my play “Some Are People.” (The link to that post is here: http://eatinireland.blogspot.ie/2008/05/another-openinganother-show.html).

This is my fourth time at the festival; of Team “That’s Her Way,” it’s the second time for our leading lady, Danielle Quisenberry, and for our leading man, J.Stephen Brantley, whose play “Break” was presented at the IDGTF with my “The Adventures of…” in the Shorts in 2009.

Then the world economy crashed and no one had any money. (Short version.)

We managed to scrape up enough dough & good will and an extremely talented cast to come back last year with “Outlook,” and once again renew my love affair with the city on the Liffey.

This year, Brian Merriman, who founded the festival, announced that 10 was a good round number, and he’d like to make the 10^th year of the fest his last, and hand it over to the next generation. Well I wasn’t going to miss that.

The thought of going over as just a spectator seemed not-right; but I didn’t have a play. Except I did have a play…

I did a blog post for the Frigid Festival about how that play came about: http://horsetrade.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/i-did-it-thats-my-way/

As my sister said: “Wait…you wrote a straight play?” Well, yes. I’m a playwright, and my characters tell me who and what they are. These two arrived straight (and star-crossed). We did it at Frigid, and as we were in rehearsal, I sent the play to Brian, and said: what do you think? Some back and forth about how to present it and he said: go ahead. Bring it.

So we did. Stayed in production, got into fundraising/plane ticket buying/apartment renting/revising the play mode. It’s been six months of this. I’m. So. Tired.

We did an invited dress rehearsal a week ago Monday, to hear the new version at least once before we left, and then BOOM, it was Friday, and we were at JFK (at least ¾ of us), and surprisingly, there was no one else in my row in the middle aisle of the plane, and I could stretch out across all the seats and, well, not really sleep.

I wondered if the not-full plane had to do with the continuing downward spiral of the world economy or it was just earlier in the season than we usually travel.

I used to wonder these things professionally. Every other time I’ve been to the festival, it’s been as someone whose day job was in publishing. Last year, I didn’t know if I’d come home to a job at all: our imprint was up for sale, and each day, those of us who were left tried to parse the rumors that had us going to new buyers…or worse. I can’t partition my life in a way that the pieces don’t touch. So I was always in Ireland as a travel editor, representing my brand, all my brands.

I brought all of our Ireland books with me on our trips, and gave them as gifts, and marked them up to pass along information to the authors, even when it wasn’t a book I was editing.

The other shoe finally dropped last September and I stopped working in publishing and started working on the Internets. I don’t edit travel guides any more. And ever since, I’ve been realizing what a huge part of my identity that is/was. How it shaped the way I think and present myself, and the end of which became another occasion of reinvention of self in a life that’s been full of them.

I am now the Unlikely Googler, with some of the old cohort coming over as well, thank goodness, so we didn’t venture into the brave new world solo, and the new gig and the new company have provided an amazing shot of energy and possibility, like sticking your finger in an electric socket (in a good way). There has been no throughline, no logic, in an adult working career that began in journalism, veered into off-Broadway theater, typesetting, non-profit literary arts, publishing, and now…content. I’m in content.

Fortunately, there is a throughline in writing. So that’s the constant. I’m still a playwright here in Dublin, but I’m something else as well.

Someone I know well asked me why I was coming again this year, saying: “you’ve done this before, why do you need to go again?” The implication seemed to be: is this a vanity project? Do you do this for yourself? Shouldn’t you be doing something different, something new?

It’s always different…but putting yourself, your own money, your drive, into presenting your own work really does walk a tightrope between being independent, being self-motivated, and being…convinced that the world is interested in what you have to say.

But unless you are doing your work only for yourself, and sharing it isn’t part of what makes you happy about the process of creation, I think all artists have to have that. At its base, it’s ALL a vanity project. What makes us artists is developing a craft, along with a worldview, and hopefully having some talent to go along with it.

I’m here, I’m queer, I’m an egotist, playwright & Googler.

…and a producer. Because there’s always some problem to sort before you actually get there.

View from Spencer Dock apartment.

When we arrived in Dublin, I’d arranged for a driver & taxi to take us to the apartment I’d rented for our stay: a 2-bedroom with a kitchen & washer/dryer around the corner from our venue in a neighborhood we know. The driver pulled into an apartment complex well away from where we were supposed to be headed and I said: this isn’t Parnell St. and the driver said: well, he wants to speak to you (meaning the agent). And I went: uh-oh. And upstairs in spacious, furnished apartment, a very nervous man explained that well, even though I’d booked the apartment on Parnell St. over a month before, and put down a deposit and had a confirmation from them for every night of our stay…the apartment wasn’t actually available. And they didn’t have anything else in the area.

He said he’d gladly refund our money…which was like: and then where do we stay for the next 9 nights? I asked if he knew anyone at the other agencies around town, could he make a call. Not really. He showed me his spreadsheet, which was filled with the green boxes indicating an apartment was rented. There was nothing for us…though maybe he could get us into Parnell Square on Sunday through Thursday, but after that, we were on our own. Or, we could stay in this apartment that was about a half hour’s walk from the venue, in a neighborhood we didn’t know.

J., Danielle and I were too tired & hungry to sort it out just then, so we said we’d call later, and set out to see just how doable the apartment might be. We walked toward the center, and saw stores and bought a coffee, and stopped for breakfast, and wolfed it down and kept walking and got to the theatre, and looked at the building where we were SUPPOSED to be staying, then over to the festival box office and said hello to the gang, and finally decided that well, it was better to stay a bit further out in one place and concentrate on doing the show than move at least twice and not know where we were going to end up. I’m sure that’s symbolic or meta for something.

We retreated back to the apartment, and I bought groceries and cooked dinner while the actors jogged and exercised and explored the new neighborhood, the Docklands. It’s mostly new construction…overlaid on what was once a busy port. On the Liffey…next stop, the ocean. There are canals cut in from the river, and locks, and docks and cranes. That part is rather striking visually. The buildings are tall and glass and sterile. The apartments are meant for people who work for corporations, international types who fly in and do business and then on to the next multi-national assignment. We retired early, because the most valuable thing I’ve learned in 4 trips to the festival is that if you arrive on Saturday, you have the whole day to get settled in and nap.

Locks & docks (and bridge).

The apartment is very light-filled (and the sun is out ‘til 9 pm or later), which is nice, and there are fountains in the courtyard so there’s the sound of running water, and the LUAS (tram) is right outside the front door. So I asked the rental agent to comp us a night (they did), and bought us tram passes.

And the last piece of the puzzle fell into place Sunday morning with the arrival of our stage manager, David BIshop, who’d been working in Japan the whole previous week. His round-the-world journey was worthy of The Amazing Race: he left Tokyo Saturday afternoon, and arrived in New York a day later, that is Saturday afternoon, and then stayed at JFK until it was time to leave for Dublin Saturday night. Between emails and texts, we’d let him know we weren’t going to be at Parnell St., and sure enough, he turned up at our door in plenty of time for tech. Hallucinatory, but well what can you do?

So we walked over to the theatre, and it was good to be in the Teacher’s Club again, meeting the other companies and tech staff. Our venue TD proved to be completely on top of things, and the volunteer tech staff were ready to help. Everything we’d asked for was there: chairs, bench, table, cubes, hat racks. (I purposely wrote a play that can be staged with scrounged set pieces and very few props).

The first show is an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince” and as they worked through their tech, I realized again how beautiful the story is, and what a great writer Wilde was. The ending choked me up a bit. And that was just tech.

Let us entertain you...

Our tech went like gangbusters because we rock. Actually, because David knows what he’s doing, and Danielle & J. are unflappable onstage. We didn’t have time for me not to be a director/lighting designer, so I pretended I was, and said: that’s a good level, bring that up, do we have something more for stage left, etc. We powered through it, arranged to have a runthrough on the stage today and got out of there to scatter our respective ways (and David to go facedown in the apartment).

Then I had to hustle to a part of town I hadn’t been in before with another of the participants, Peter Scott-Presland, who wrote/directed “Strip Search,” which is definitely on my list to see. We appeared on a radio show, Pride Time, and talked about the festival, and our plays, and I tried to communicate just how much the festival means to me, and what it’s done for Dublin, and the queer theatre scene. There’s a recording of it here: http://www.mixcloud.com/pridetime/pride-time-playback-dublin-gay-theatre-festival-may-5th/ with some other great features. We start about 30 minutes in.

And back again in a taxi downtown where I dropped Peter at Pantibar and went in to leave postcards and pay homage to Panti, whom I adore.

Took the LUAS back to the apartment, and realized that the distance might actually work out in my favor in a mature adult sort of way, because I’m less inclined to stay out late and head in for a drink or three after I’m back in the apt. And ate another home-cooked, well, home heated-up dinner, and planned and thought and made lists and notes, and was just pretty happy doing all of that, and Danielle got back (with a bottle of wine) and David woke up and we all touched base a little.

And tonight we open…it feels different, but then they all feel different, they have their own particular energy and anxiety and joyfulness that is peculiar to each one.

I’m here as a playwright and producer and many other things, and I have work to do this week; some of it for the show, some of it for my other tributaries, and maybe I’ll even get to be a little touristy this time. But I realize that part of being back is feeling less like a visitor and more like someone who lives here for a week at a time, with a bed and a kitchen and a routine shaped by the connections left at home, and ideas for the future, and a way of working that is always changing, evolving and rarely, if ever, predictable.