Oh hell, my picture seems to have made it into the LA Times and nobody bothered to mention it to me, probably because the review kicks the shit out of the show. Most scenes in this show need rewrites. I did what I could with what I got.

One of my favorite possessions is a scrawled note: "To John Byrd: You were the best one in the show. Love, George Furth." An extremely funny and friendly fellow all around. Thank you, sir, for the many kindnesses.

Oh fuck a pig! My play, The Death of Ayn Rand, will be performed as part of the impressively sponsored San Francisco Theater Festival. It will be produced at the terrifyingly corporate Metreon in San Francisco on Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 1:00 p.m. The play will be performed in the Action Theater on the second floor. Sorry for the late notice, but I just found out.

So I’ve written at length elsewhere about my thoughts on organized religion. Ultimately, I’m a deist, but I never begrudge people their personal understandings of divinity and the infinite.

However. If you actively try to sell me your philosophy, I consider it my responsibility to question your philosophy, and perhaps I’ll even find a way to sell you one instead. Fair warning, proselytizers.

So this morning I’m getting ready for work. We live in a conservative section of a conservative county. I’m dressing for work. I put on a tight wifebeater T-shirt, and skimpy black briefs.

Without warning our doorbell rings. We know who it is, without even looking. They come every couple weeks or so.

I look at Amanda and she says, “No, you’re really not going to.”

“Watch me,” I say.

I go to the door, fling it open, strike a pose and smile. I’ve been working out a lot over the past few weeks, and I’m buffer than normal.

I see two girls; twenties, long skirts. The white girl has a dog-eared Bible with a red ribbon for a bookmark. Her shy smile rapidly fades. An Asian girl in sensible shoes fiddles with another Bible. She’s wearing a digital watch.

“Hello, we’re just visiting people,” says Red Ribbon, “Across the neighborhood and sharing some scripture with them. May I read you this bit of scripture here?”

I beam at her and snuggle against the doorway. “Go ahead,” I purr.

“Today we’re looking at Proverbs,” says Red. She has clear polish on her fingernails. “Um. Chapter three, verse five. Trust the Lord your God with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.”

“Mmm,” I smile, lean, and run a hand through my hair lazily. “You know my favorite book of the Bible? Song of Songs.”

“Which book did you say?” Digital Watch senses trouble.

“Song of Songs,” I breathe. “Can you look it up for me?”

Red Ribbon riffs through the book. “I don’t think that my bible contains that book. We’re not Gideons –“

“Song of Solomon,” I coo, and laugh. I hook one thumb into my shirt at the neck, tugging it subtly, slightly, exposing my pecs a little. Digital Watch shifts nervously on one foot. “There. Chapter one. How does it go again?”

Digital Watch checks the time.

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” says Red Ribbon, paling. “For your love is more delightful than wine.”

“Mmmm,” I moan. “I love reading the Bible. I’m an ordained minister, did you know that?”

Red Ribbon blinks three times and swallows hard. “Well we’re just here to share Bible quotes with people and get their opinions and we really appreciate you talking in the spirit of Jesus with us and have a really great day.”

And they both scatter like field mice.

For them that have been following my progress, I apparently seem to be returning to my normal level of assholery. God love and bless you all for all your support and love over the past few weeks. You've helped bring me back.

Love to my friends. I was surprised to find out how many I had on my side.

Every day, I am a little more like me. It comes and goes. Your support means more than you know.

I'm doing one of the Seven Deadly Sins shows at Rude Guerrilla from July 25 through August 3. The material is pretty wacky... I'm the World's Most Eligible Bachelor, and a couple dark hooded figures show up and beat the shit out of me with whips. It's a comedy. In any case, it's good to get some of this negative energy out in an artistically positive way. The table read of The Hermit Bird at Long Beach went well. It's locked for a production in 2009. Also, The Death of Ayn Rand is apparently getting a production in San Francisco sometime this month. I'll let you know when I know more.

[Redacted.]

Las Vegas International, slot machines hollering at us from between the gates. Manchester, New Hampshire. The car-rental guard inspected my driver's license for half a minute. He had not seen a California license before. To Mandy's parents house. Her mother Mudd is here, tired, alternating between crying and relating how kind her relatives have been.

Emerson Hospital. Mandy's father Nurn is here. There is a white band of skin where his wedding ring was. He is tired but coherent and emotionally stable. They removed some of the cancer but by definition it could not all be removed. An oncologist hasn't seen him yet.

[Section redacted.]

To stay alive, I've been writing. I can't tell if the play's any good, but at the very least, regardless of what happens with the play or anything else, I can say: I meant it.

Depression, dark and pointless, over these past few weeks. Haven't felt like moving, thinking, or breathing much. I cry a lot. Travelled to San Francisco last weekend, met some good friends who did their decent best to cheer me and remind me of my humanity.

Mandy got the call yesterday from her mother. Her father went into the hospital with stomach pain. They sent in a camera and found what they think is a lot of colon cancer. We're on a plane tomorrow morning to Boston.

It comes in waves, sometimes.

"The Hermit Bird" is a short play, less than one act, that I wrote in an all-night marathon at school. It won a writing contest and convinced me to write more. Eighteen years later, I'm working with Virago Theater to expand the piece into a full-length play.

Such a length of time for the development of a play is not unheard of. Tennessee Williams's greatly underappreciated "Orpheus Descending" cooked for seventeen years from the original version to the final. And Peter Shaffer has hacked away on "Amadeus" for more than two decades running. Thornton Wilder compulsively rewrote "Our Town," rarely letting be staged without tweaking something. And don't get me started about Star Wars. Ultimately, I feel that if a story lives in the heart of the teller, then it has an indefinite shelf life.

So every time I sit down and try to type this thing out, I am quite sure that the story has vanished from me and I'm simply a poseur pretending to be a writer, and then I start and then the story is there and I'm quite sure it's not me doing the telling anymore, and I'm simply a reporter telling the facts I've witnessed.

Anyway, whatever happens, you'll be able to watch it at Virago in the spring of 2009. If you're a San Francisco based actor, I strongly encourage you to attend Virago's general auditions:

Virago Theatre Company - 2008-2009 Season Auditions. Saturday, June 7, 2008 from 10am-2pm by appt only at 451 Haight Avenue, Alameda. Virago is holding auditions for “Dream of a Common Language” by Heather McDonald, directed by Rachel LePell (slated for Fall ’08) and “The Hermit Bird” by John Byrd directed by Robert Lundy-Paine (slated for Spring ’09). 1 M – 50’s-60’s; 2 M – 30’s-40’s; 1 M – 20’s; 1 boy – under 11; 1 F – 40’s-50’s; 1 F – 30’s; 1 F - 20’s. Prep two contrasting monologues – total two minutes. Non-AEA. Visit www.viragotheatre.org after June 1 for play synopses & character descriptions. Callbacks – June 9. Call 510-865-6237 or email angela@viragotheatre.org to set your appt.

Decent all-women plays are scarce. I wrote "The Knitting Circle" as a short bravura piece for six talented actresses. My intention was to let women conduct stage combat and operatic violence, which is, even in our supposedly enlightened age, reserved almost entirely for male actors. Additionally, I hoped that the characters and their conflicts would be more rounded than the agonizingly common slut/virgin female stereotypes.

The only really good all-female drama I have ever read is "The House of Bernarda Alba" by Federico García Lorca. (The play is readable in the original, even for us polyglot dummies who studied Spanish for only a few years.) Thus I have lifted Lorca's structure of a tragic matriarch, torn by anti-male sentiment, grasping for control of her rebellious brood.

Here's a lithograph of the original picture, "Une Affaire d'honneur," by Emile Bayard, that inspired the script:



And here's the opening tableau from the staged read:

My new short play, "The Knitting Circle," will receive a staged read at STAGES Theatre on March 22, 2008 at 3:00 p.m. Four other short plays will be presented as well. Admission is $5.

The staged read of "The Knitting Circle" is being directed by Jenni Dillon, and it will include the following talented actresses:

Claire - Jill Cary Martin
Roxane - Jami McCoy
Eugenie - Jen Bridge
Hortense - Melanie Gable
Berthe - Jessica Lynch
Georgette - Valerie Curry

Occasionally people ask how I "see" music. I do tend to perceive music visually, as a set of continually changing spatial relationships: with distance along axes representing pitch, time and tonal relativity. This technology gives some idea... though I would like there to be a third dimension of visual representation (toward you the viewer) which represents tension and release, i.e. gravity, through distance from the tonic... at the D minor the notes are at the default screen distance from you, and as they move around the circle of fifths they move closer or farther from you.