so sorry Rolo. What an awful loss.

I love being name checked here! I don't remember saying it but believe it deeply. Some writers are actually mad at words. They have this idea of the perfect story or play in their head and the fact that they can't build it with the words at their disposal makes them feel frustrated and helpless. This leads to laziness, defensiveness, bad writing. I know your feeling about individual coaching. It's hard to find the line, what to mention what not. I go big general impressions, smaller unclarities (I made up a word!). Know when to back off. The work will succeed or fail on their work, not ours. So good to see EC back! I've had an essay inmy head for the longest time...

It's taken me years to figure that out. It wasn't just impatience when I was younger (though that was part of it). It was understanding the implications of what I was writing and accepting not knowing what to do right away.

I had some of that playwright snobbery in the past, but no longer. For me all that condescension about McKee and his ilk was self-protective. It came from the feel of, "I don't want to look too rigorously at my script, because I'm afraid what I'll find!" Put another way, I'm fine with veering from McKee prescriptions IF I'M DOING IT INTENTIONALLY. What made me afraid was that I was doing it unintentionally. That he was right and I didn't know how to fix it. Enter condescension and claims about the artistic purity of playwriting.

I am grateful that I had a ringside seat to this first meeting. And your portrait of him is beautiful and moving. I heard a a snippet of a Terry Gross interview with Albee that played after he died. She asked how he liked the movie version of Virginia Woolf. He said he was disappointed because he had been promised James Mason and Bette Davis. Terry Gross said, "Is that true?" Albee responded, "Of course it's true. I said it. " Who among us could say that with a straight face?

That story is so wonderful, Rolo. Teachers are the great shapers of the world, totally unsung. Rest in peace, Christine Robinson.

Lovely piece, Bruce. Something Rolo wrote reminded me of Mary Oliver talking about the relationship of discipline to creativity. She said that writing every day helped her muse learn to trust her. The muse knew she would be at her desk whenever she was ready to come out.

Good luck with your production, Mike. Maybe producing your own version will make you more sympathetic to the difficulties of the 2011 revival. There are so many plates spinning in Blue Leaves, the range of emotion is so great, there are so many wonderful and difficult parts to cast - part of what makes it so great is what makes it so difficult to do well!

Worse than that, all those previews of musicals where there is no singing (Into the Woods, Sweeny Todd). Do they think they'll fool people? Do they think people who don't like musicals are going to like a movie they've been tricked into seeing?

One of the most beautiful places in the world. Can't wait to see this! Thank you!

This is such a smart piece, with so much in it. So much of a story is what it reveals about the teller of the tale, why they are telling it. And I couldn't agree more about telling a story. As soon as you are finding the laugh lines, maybe you are obscuring the telling detail? Fixing a funnier but somewhat less interesting story in place?

That is a powerful piece. Really glad to have read it. Thank you, Rolo.

A thrilling piece of writing about something that thrilled you. How apropos. When we love fervently we should shout it from the rooftops. Well done, Rolo! I so hope I get to see it.

So happy to provide inspiration, Amy, as I have received so much from you!

Thank you, David! You are like an uncredited co-author here, so much did our conversations influence it.

The Executioner's Song is, to me, the greatest example of this balancing act. A "nonfiction novel", Mailer called it. It is truly an astonishing book, one of the best I've ever read. Some gigantic truths are dredged up in that book. I believe the veracity of the characters and the story (maybe because they are verifiable to a degree? maybe that's the difference?) so much that issues of whether a particular conversation is made up, or a particular image is a writer's embellishment, seems irrelevant to me.

I'll totally be your date next time, Rolo. I think all of the above play a part, but I'd go strongest with C. Who has any bad feelings about MacDowell? They give to you and honor you and expect nothing in return. I would walk over coals for those people. The mere mention of the word MacDowell gets me smiling and misty-eyed. How could you not have fun?

And yet you are reading a performing arts blog. One assumes that if you are reading a performing arts blog you are interested in the work of performing artists. All the piece was saying was that the work of actors deserves to be treated with as much respect as that of other artists. You disagree? Unless you have acted yourself, and acted very well, you might not know how difficult it is. True, it is not difficult like coal mining is difficult. But what is easy for one person can be almost impossible for another. I am playwright, and I once had a conversation with a woman who ran a children's hospital in Kabul. When I told her how I sent my work out into the world she said, with no irony at all, "You are SO BRAVE." To me the idea that a woman who runs a hospital in Kabul would think me brave is ludicrous. But she wasn't kidding.

Fantastic piece, Rolo. You conjure that room so vividly. The fragility of it, the violation when it is trampled on. People like that are pure poison, working out their own dramas while smashing through life oblivious to(or maybe just uninterested in) the harm they cause.

Thanks, David. I had never used the Miller quote in that direct a way before. It was a way of recognizing a feeling I couldn't put my finger on. Feeling like, "Everybody is happy, it is clearly a good play...so why do I feel so blah about it?"

There was a similar story in 80s academia. A professor, fed up with utter incomprehensibility of most papers published academic journals, composed an essay that was just jibbersih littered with buzzwords. It was submitted to a prominent journal, and promptly published.

I don't think it's an either/or. I think craft augments and jumpstarts inspiration. I don't think there's any reason to take a class, or get a different camera, because you think in some abstract way you will do better, or become a "real photographer". (See my own post about being a "real writer" to know how well I understand this phenomena). I think you reach out when you start straining against your own limits. When you want to do things you don't know how to do, or create something that is somehow out of your wheelhouse, then you seek new equipment, new mentors. Your photography now is lovely. It is an expression of the same sensibility as your writing: cool, sensitive to beauty and difference, inquisitive. There's no need to change it unless YOU feel a need to change it.

I'm guilty of this, too. There's a certain arrogance about it at some point - "I shouldn't have to submit anymore!" But like most arrogance, it just masks insecurity ("I don't want to be rejected anymore!"). The point about good things happening even if you don't win is 100% true, however, and not just cheer-you-up bromide. The path of my play being done at Cincy Playhouse in 2005 was: submit to NY contest, become a finalist for that contest but not win, successful reading of said play at that theatre, become writer-in-residence at that theatre, have workshop production of that play, director of that workshop production hand my latest play to Cincy Playhouse, latest play wins contest, Cincy Playhouse produces latest play. They never even would have read me through the normal path, as I was agentless at the time.

It makes me happy this spurred memories for all of you. I am a dad with no time and no energy so I watch many movies at home. But nothing will replace the group experience of cinema for me. Dreaming in the dark.

I think artists spend so much time feeling like beggars at the door that they internalize this feeling. It's really destructive. I was recently discussing a project with some people who were not writers and were, in conventional terms, much more successful than I. When they turned to ask me a question about something a thought occurred - "Oh, right. They NEED me. None of them can do what I do. So why am I sitting here feeling like I'm lucky to be here?"