Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

January: Art Pays
February: Art Questions
March: The Urge to Create
April: Prayer of Gratitude
May: Creative Stream
June: We’re Always Creating
July: On Not Taking Credit
August: Art Is
September: Keep the Change
October: An Act of Joy
November: A Trio of Voices
December: It Starts With A Joke

Closing Thoughts

December 21 marked our last meditation in our little one-minute focusing experiment. A year ago, confronted by the sorrowful downward trend in the economy, I wanted to find a way to move through 2009 with as much uplift in my Spirit as possible. I approached a couple of playwright pals about creating a meditation series—not a spiritual inner seeking kind of Zen or transcendental meditation—but the old-fashioned kind in the form of mini discourses on art, on what inspires us, nurtures and feeds us as artists.

Closing Thoughts: listen here

We agreed upon a monthly teleconference and that we would rotate through as primary “meditaters.” No meditation would be pre-approved by me or by anyone. If we failed or succeeded each month it came out of a trust and love for each other.

It was an opportunity for us to work in a simple and remote fashion and to be part of a small collective effort.

In 2009 we saw theatres struggling to stay alive, some cutting back programs, some closing their doors, and playwrights not receiving promised productions or prize money.

Whether or not you have enjoyed, been baffled or provoked or even uplifted at all by any of our twelve meditations, we feel at least for ourselves we have succeeded in providing a line and an anchor to keep us moored during these rough economic seas. We showed up for each other and ourselves, and personally I feel very honored and pleased my pals made this commitment for the last 12 months. We will not be repeating this meditation series for 2010, but we hope everyone will carry the spirit of it forward. We ask that of ourselves and invite you to keep only the highest thoughts for your own art and entertainment.

We challenge all of us to embrace this idea: Artists must learn to thrive.

As someone has said “the significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” (This quote continually gets attributed to Einstein yet I cannot find a source for it.)

During a recent discussion about the economy an artist said to me, “What’s so different about this downward cycle for theatre people? We have always had little money to work with and we have always been able to find a way to do our work. My response to that is, yes we know almost too well how to survive and to get by. Instead, I believe, we must learn to do more than that. We must let go of the starving artist, the idea that no one can make a living, the scrambling over the crumb of opportunities thrown our way. We must stop letting others tell us who can play and who cannot. We must not be frightened. We must stand up for our work and create the forms anew and transform the stages for it.

We must learn to instead thrive.

The world does not ask us to be artists.

The world does not owe its artists anything.

The world may not even want us.

But we know,

We know

The world needs us.

We must transform ourselves into an independent tribe that thrives.

Look it up in the dictionary if you don’t know what the word means.

And then embrace it.

Learn it.

And then thrive.

Thank you.

Happy New Year.

My tiny band of playwright friends & I

wish you as we always do…

An extraordinarily creative life.

Happy New Year!

• Ossie Davis
  December 18, 1917
  Cogdell, Georgia, USA
• Christopher Fry
  December 18, 1907
  Bristol, England, UK
• Jean Racine
  December 22, 1639
  La Ferté-Milon, France

La douleur qui se tait n’en est que plus funeste.

Andromaque (III, 3)
by Jean Racine

The 12th and final in our One-Minute Creative Coffee Break Meditation series for 2009:

Listen to the Dec 21 OMCCB Meditation: It Starts with a Joke

We wish you an extraordinarily creative day!

P.S. My closing remarks will be uploaded and posted later this week.

Noel Coward
December 16, 1899
Teddington, London, United Kingdom

I was trained when I was very young as a show-off, and I’ve continued triumphantly until this moment.

Noel Coward talks to Patrick Garland, BBC1, December 7, 1969.

Due to a medical emergency – non-Life threatening but urgent – there
will be no meditation tonight.

It’s the Intermission’s OMCCB Meditatation Team

John Osborne
December 12, 1929
London, United Kingdom

You know, I hadn’t realized—it just hadn’t occurred to me that you could love somebody, that you could want them, and want them twenty-four hours of the day and then suddenly find that you’re neither of you even living in the same world.

Jean, The Entertainer, p.27
by John Osborne

What: Our final meditation for 2009! Our original invitation is here.

When: Mon., Dec 14, 2009 at 7:30 PST / 10:30 EST

Where: Teleconference – Sign-up here.

Cost: It’s free except maybe the cost of your phone call.

Come join us for our last meditation!

In the Spirit of the coming abundant Thanksgiving holiday we opted to provide three meditations instead of one. The file is larger than normal and may take longer to load.

Listen to the November 9 meditation: Harvesting: A Trio of Different Voices

Want to know more about our OMCCB meditation? Read here.

Keep on creating your Art and Entertainment!

Ronald Harwood
November 9, 1934
Cape Town, South Africa

…writing is like an actor improvising. It is where my voice comes from. One time a psychologist wanted to interview me about my creative process. But I was scared that if I looked too closely, I will jinx it. How can you assure yourself that is you write something that someone will want to read it? You can’t.

Interview with Ronald Harwood (Wendy J. Williams, November 13, 2007)

Mo Gaffney
Nov. 5, 1958
San Diego, CA USA

I am just so goddamn tired. It gets so’s I dread takin’ a shower. I don’t know why…Worse thing, though, is I get this feeling like if I don’t get something I just won’t be whole, and I don’t think I can get it ’cause I don’t know what the hell it is, but it just keeps on suckin’ at me ’til I gotta have a drink or do a crossword puzzle or something to make that feeling go away.

Karen Sue, Parallel Lives, based on the Kathy and Mo Show, p.100
by Mo Gaffney
and
Kathy Najimy

Sam Shepard
Fort Sheridan, Illinois, USA
November 5, 1943

Something’s been coming to me lately about this whole question of being lost. It only makes sense to me in relation to an idea of one’s identity being shattered under severe personal circumstances—in a state of crisis where everthing that I’ve previously identified with in myself suddenly falls away. A state of shock, I guess you might call it.

Letter to Joe Chaiken, October 29, 1983
written by Sam Shepard
Joseph Chaiken & Sam Shepard: Letter’s and Texts, 1972-1984, p.128