I'm acting in a play right now, Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter. It's a challenge, but a great opportunity to go "back to the well" -- acting's where I started, and always has plenty to teach me.
This particular acting project has a lot of challenges. We're a group with plenty of history between us, doing a play that asks us to go to some tough places, very close to home. And we're being asked to stage some very intimate moments. I had a long talk with my roommate last night about theater as a sacred space, and sex/lovemaking as a sacred space...they're both sacred, but different kinds of sacred (by about five degrees)...so what does it mean when we're asked to bring those spaces together? How do you fully invest in one without somehow blaspheming the other? I don't know, yet. But I talk a lot about how theater exists on the bodies and in the breath of the actors, audience...this time I'm really putting my money, body, breath where my mouth is. It's a reminder of how hard that is, what I really ask of actors in some of the plays I write or want to write.
Nutshell: I maintain that it is very, very important for playwrights to step out from behind their laptops on occasion and put their bodies and hearts at the middle of the playmaking process.
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