Both the dress rehearsal and opening night. . .

. . .of ARTHUR REDUX were good and rewarding and special.  I hope the rest of the weekend continues to shine, and I can't imagine how it wouldn't with the sterling cast performing at the little theatre at CrossRoads.  One thing I find interesting about ARTHUR is that I really don't know where the play came from.  THE LAUGHING MAN was pretty easy to write.  I just led the audience toward certain conclusions then took twists before they got where they thought they were going.  BLUE MOON GRILLE was fun to write because I simply opened this nice neighborhood grill, let people start to come in, and as they did, their stories developed.  But with ARTHUR, though the idea of a story with King Arthur has been with me for 30+ years, I can't quite figure how I made the story happen.  Throughout April and May, I struggled to finish ARTHUR, but I don't have quite the same sense of ease of creation as I did with the other plays. The story kind of fought me, then said, "all right, I'll come out," and finally did.  It's a little unsettling but nicely so.  And, I am finally happy with what I told, having seen it played out before an audience this week.  Maybe this feeling is with me because I spent the month of January in hospital limbo.  Sick, drugged up, and often throwing up.  I doubt this part of my blog makes much sense.  Sorry.

              As I thought, most of you who reacted to the W.C. Williams poems found them to be without much merit.  With so many really intelligent people reacting that way, I sometimes wonder why they have endured for nearly a hundred years. I sometimes wonder why I like them so much.    The poet Marianne Moore said something like, he wrote in "plain American which the dogs and cats could read" when talking about Williams simplicity in poetry.  I think if I write anymore about it, it will stop being simple.