xtcian

6/4/02 Even though I didn't

6/4/02

Even though I didn't bother mentioning it last night (I was way too caught up in singing the virtues of Afrin Nasal Spray) we went to see the 24-hour plays and while the plays weren't entirely up to snuff, the night was again a fun one. I live in constant fear of being stuck in one of the endless, treacherously unfunny 20-minute train wrecks that occasionally plague these evenings, but last night, even the bad playlets had the courtesy to be short.

Lindsay is pretty funny when he gets into Producer Mode, storming around the Atlantic Theater with the officious "on message" look that newly-appointed school prefects have in schoolboy London, but he runs a great show. He's proof that the world is desperate for competent people to lead; he never tires of telling people about the plays, and his radar for new talent is unabating.

Onstage, my sister Michelle played a spurned woman out for revenge on some guy who broke the hearts of too many chicks - again, sort of poorly-constructed, but the guy playing the Lothario - and Michelle - were mindful of how little they had to work with, and played it up for the crowd. That's the thing about the 24-hour plays: there is simply no better audience. They'll laugh at anything, and always pull for the actors to succeed. Our friend Duncan actually walked offstage, in the middle of a scene, to look at the script - and he nearly got a standing ovation.

Michelle explains to her captee (Beresford Bennett) why he is being doused with lighter fluid

The last play was written by our friend Dan Kois, and Dan clearly understood the most important thing about writing a 10-minute play with no rehearsal: set up your joke, escalate it, implement a nice reversal, and do it quickly. His not-so-subtle jab at the current hot baseball rumor about the "gay player in the majors" starred Sean and Tessa's friend Garrett, and it was really funny. Sean actually looked like a baseball player up there, sort of beefy like Mark McGwire with the insouciant, staccato delivery of the ballplayers interviewed on ESPN (which, no doubt, he is watching right now - 2:27am).

Lindsay keeps saying they're going to do a "Best of..." night and hints that my play from August 2000 may make the cut. Writing that play - and seeing it performed with flawless brilliance by Sean, Seth, Sarah Clarke and Randy Quaid's daughter - marked the end of the cycle of despair I'd clung to since the day I set foot in California in 1997. Having that kind of experience the third week I was living in New York was a huge metaphorical victory, and it convinced me that I could still write, and that I was not, as LA had whispered in my ear, a worthless sack of shit.