It's the Intermission
A Creative Coffee Break

There’s an awful lot going on right now in my life. All good stuff, yet consuming. The Beloved and I are talking about moving from San Francisco. More than talking, actually. Planning. This morning, the idea seems sacrilegious…the morning sky is clear, the air crisp, the hummingbirds drinking from the backyard fountain. A perfect, calm moment in time, standing in the yard.

As I purge the house of stuff we don’t want to move, make job contacts, look at housing, blah blah blah, I try to focus on the new play, and prepare for the upcoming showcase of another. At times it helps to have something nonverbal, yet creative, to concentrate on, and so I’ve been working on my “box project” in between everything else.

One of my rituals when I begin a new play is to create a multi-dimensional representation of what I want to create on the page. I take containers in various sizes, shapes and, sometimes, practicality, and using collage, create an essence of what the play is about. I have a couple of small cartons of images of I’ve collected, and clippings of words and phrases that I use to collage with. Sometimes the finished box corresponds very well to the finished play. Often, it represents only the an earlier evolution of it. I began creating boxes about four years ago, and I’ve found it a very helpful tool.

The current play I’m writing concerns some people who run a restaurant. The box for this play, as an example, is an old “Republic of Tea” tin can, and the images are mostly of food and people cooking. Although there is very little cooking and food in the play itself, the box evokes an emotion for me that reminds me of what I’m writing about. It sits on my writing desk, and won’t be retired until well after I finish writing the play.

Working on the box gives certain parts of my brain a rest, while other parts get to play, in a relaxed way, with the themes, characters, or setting of the story. In looking forward to the upcoming reading,
I’ve been making several boxes, each one representing a character in the play. I like to give gifts to actors, and I’m thinking these might make a cool gift, providing they contain chocolate or something edible.