Kevin

Why I’m Freaking Out About Upcoming Play, But in a Good Way…

There’s a reason I’m a little bit of a wreck this week. I always freak out for about a week prior to these play festivals that I get myself into! Always! It’s a healthy freak-out, though. I don’t think it would be healthy to go into these things calmly and cocky. It’s a serious thing to write, rehearse and produce a play in a day. The audience must be entertained, right. You can’t go into these things thinking, “Whatever. It’ll be great.” You have to be panicking…you have to be at the point where paper bags are needed. Hyperventilating, in this case, is a healthy reaction.

So why am I even MORE freaked-out this time?

Here’s the difference.

I wrote plays for the last two Trafalgar24 Play Creation Festivals. The 10 writers get locked into Trafalgar Castle, in Whitby, Ontario, and we each have 8 hours to write our plays. 10 playwrights in 8 hours = 10 plays. We are each given the ‘words’ or ‘prompts’ we must use in our play, along with headshots of our actors…and then we are sent into the rooms in which our plays must take place. We actually sit in/on our stages while writing.

trafalgar1 — Trafalgar Castle – Whitby, Ontario – Piano Room

trafalgar4 — The Piano Room – Where I wrote my last Trafalgar24 Play.

trafalgar3 — The Entrance to the Piano Room

I was amazed by how alive I felt being able to sit within the stage while writing. The play wrote itself. I just stared around at the room imaging the play coming to life. As freaked out as I was when I drove to the castle, it all fell away the minute I walked into that piano room and knew I had 8 hours to luxuriate within its walls while I did the thing I loved to do more than anything else. I sat back and let the play write itself.

When we walk away in the early morning hours, the actors and directors storm the castle. They rehearse for the next 8 hours…and then, the festival. The doors are opened to a barrage of eager theatre goers.

This coming Friday, I will be writing a play for the 25-Hour Masterpiece Festival in Uxbridge, Ontario. They are celebrating 25 years of their extremely vibrant Arts involvement. On Friday, I won’t be going into a castle. I won’t be sitting in my stage to write my play. The play won’t even be performed the next day inside an amazing room, inside an amazing castle. It will be performed on stage at the Uxbridge Music Hall…a regular (but I must add BEAUTIFUL) stage.

My stages have always been castle rooms. This is my first THEATRE STAGE play. This is ONE of the reasons I’m freaking out. The other reason. As I began to say, but got sidetracked in the saying, I will be getting a phone call at 6pm Friday night. I will be sitting at home. I will get my prompt over the phone. And then I will write my play AT HOME. I will not be on the stage looking out and imagining the audience. I won’t be walking around a deserted castle room acting out the play and feeling just a little bit crazy for doing so. I will be sitting at home, writing. Man…that’s going to be weird.

I’m going to LOVE this experience. I’m going to love it like crazy…because I’ll be doing something I love almost more than I love breathing. I am so blessed to be given these writing opportunities. I don’t know how I possibly deserve them…they just keep HAPPENING to me. Yes…I am so blessed! I love what I do!

I’m freaked out, though. I’m facing this new experience and I’m ready to run headfirst into it…but it’s going to be weird writing this play at home. Part of the adventure in writing the Trafalgar24 plays is in being there, locked into that castle in the middle of the night!

But I’ll make do. I’ll just pretend I’m sitting cross-legged in the middle of that vast Uxbridge Music Hall stage while I’m writing. And. I. Will. Write. My. Play!

6pm this coming Friday, I get my prompt and begin writing. 11pm this coming Friday, I send a finished play to the cast and director. 7:30pm this coming Saturday, the play is performed at the Uxbridge Music Hall in front of a full house.

I love this ride, man! This thing called writing!

(Uxbridge Celebration of the Arts 25-Hour Masterpiece Festival – click on 25 Hour Masterpiece in the left-hand menu.)

Finding Focus in Nairobi

(The following piece originally appeared in WORD WEAVER.)

FINDING FOCUS IN NAIROBI – Part II of III

Polepole (rhymes with—and means—slowly, slowly). This is the method by which Kenya moves. I first experienced this when I boarded the 12‐seater for my return to Nairobi. The pilot promised a non‐stop flight. Ten minutes in, however, he announced a change of plans. He said those three words no airsick mini‐aircraft; neophyte passenger wants to hear: “We’re going down!”

It was Independence Day in Kenya. The celebratory air show at the Nairobi airport meant “no fly zone” for us. We had to land at Siana Airstrip and stay grounded for an hour. As we touched down, I saw a herd of gazelle leaping across the runway, mere feet from the plane’s nose! It was a horrifying, heartbreakingly beautiful sight. After narrowly avoiding the herd, our pilot assured us we could have safely crash‐landed to the side, if need be.

As a peppering of Masai emerged from the surrounding trees, I forgave the air show that kept us from our destiny. We were having a moment! Every day in Kenya carries with it a magical moment. To see it, all you have to do is surrender to the beat. Pole, pole.

After an hour of sharing stories with the generous Masai, it was almost painful re-boarding the plane. But we said our goodbyes and took to the air once again.

Navigating the country on my own was wonderful, but I was excited to be back in Nairobi. It was time to meet my fellow writers and begin the SLS fiction program.

My instructor, Catherine Bush, made me realize the importance of focus in storyline, something I never contemplated while writing. She broke down the process and explained how the writer should consider the reader’s expectations. If you give them one strong thread to follow, they see that thread as your storyline…throw in too many and confusion ensues.

Catherine assured me I could do this and carry on writing in the freefall style that I love. I was afraid I would have to sacrifice my “NO OUTLINING” rule but all was good. With her guidance, specific to my own manuscript, I was able to retackle my story, find the strongest thread—the story’s essence—and run with it. Catherine equipped me with the tools to help me do this. It was as though she came into my windowless house, created windows and then helped me to fling them wide open.

Our classes were held on the outside patio of a hotel in the heart of Nairobi…with fragrant breezes swishing our pages and intoxicating our lungs. If Nirvana is a place, it’s filled with writers, acacias and yes, even shouting taxi drivers. The outdoor classroom had its limitations, but they only added to the vibrant atmosphere.

You can live concurrent lives in Kenya. We were steeped in words but we also inexplicably saw everything in and around Nairobi. We took in the Rift Valley, the Ngong Hills, the Giraffe Centre (complete with sloppy giraffe kisses), an elephant orphanage, a reading by some of Kenya’s top literati, a chaotic downtown Nairobi Masai market, museums, parties and barnyards.

I cried while our bus travelled the Uhuru Highway en route to the nearby Ngong Hills, as I watched a shanty-town blur by. Children played in the dirt, inches from our tires as we whizzed by at 100km per hour; goats bleated; vegetables collected poisons from black exhaust bursting from every vehicle; thousands of rusted tin shacks—strung with uncountable lines of miraculously pristine laundry—crowded together like rotten teeth in a mouth too small to hold them.

My sadness at seeing the crumbling shantytown was double-edged, though. Every face held a smile, every life a beat you could feel. My heart ached during the entire trip…but with what? I couldn’t quite place it. The melancholy I felt…was it for the people of Kenya or for myself and the people back home? People who have not yet surrendered to the comfort of a time no clock could hold. Polepole…slowly, slowly.

After a long week of writing craft and exploration, we were ready for the last leg of our journey…Lamu Island. I couldn’t imagine it topping Nairobi…but I was about to discover there were no limits in Kenya.

Kenya and Writing: A Perfect Fit

(Originally appeared in The Word Weaver)

Before I left for my recent trip to Kenya, my only thought was writing. I was going to AFRICA and I only allowed myself to think of one thing: WRITING. How pathetic is that? I was so anal about attending my first writing program, I allowed it to overshadow the fact I was going to the most beautiful place in the world.

Thankfully, I came to my senses the moment the plane landed in the mossy sweet heat of Nairobi.

Joseph, from Wonders of Africa, picked me up at Jomo Kenyatta. His kamikaze driving was all that stood between me and certain death. The streets and roundabouts of Nairobi are the most beautiful arteries of controlled chaos I’ve ever been thrown into.

Joseph dropped me off at the Kivi Milimani Hotel. The Summer Literary Seminars organizers were there to greet me but in my post-flight zombiehaze, I only wanted to crawl upstairs to my room and sleep.

Day 1. 6 a.m. Woke up, packed, ran downstairs and met up with Joseph. We hit Nairobi’s death-defying streets again for a trip to Wilson Airport for my flight to Masai Mara.

After four take-offs, five landings and much retching, I was ready for solid ground! Another capable Joseph, my safari guide for the next two days, greeted our 16-seater at Keekorok Airstrip.

Before the safari, however, I detoured to Keekorok’s backyard hippo pool—home to 39 hippos! I watched as they frolicked and I stared in awe at the elephants and giraffes roaming the nearby hills. I attempted to be a poet but discovered I would rather eat the dirt…jump into the hippo pool, shoot its mud into my veins. I was in Africa—the future home of my heart. It was already happening.

Safari time! But after a full day in the acacia-dotted Masai Mara savannah, it was the Masai people I first wrote about when I made it back to my Keekorok room.

A journal entry: The Masai warriors almost made me forget the safari. The most amazingly beautiful sight. Hearing their singing makes you want to burst into tears. It’s guttural and filled with haunting. Longing. Joy. Goosebumps. Their shouts seemed random, mixed in song, but each one was perfectly timed. The rhythm matches something inside you. Shatters it. Latches on. Takes you with it. Such an incredible experience! You can feel them in your chest as they lift miraculously in dance. They had my heart!

A journal entry: Elephants/1, Lions/3, Giraffes/2. There was folly in this menagerie inventory system. After these first sightings it was on to a pride of 13 lionesses and cubs. A herd of zebra, not a mile away, grazing with elands. Bones and skulls everywhere, beacons in the vast open plains. When I spotted a cheetah, Joseph yelled, “Duma! Duma!” and called the other groups on his CB radio. Their trucks soon converged on our paradise, photo lenses extending to capture a mother cheetah with her cubs as they chased a herd of gazelle. Two hundred gazelle moving in perfect unison, nature’s finely tuned miracle engine in motion. Traps your breath! This is where God is. Hundreds of buffalo, beautiful birds riding their massive haunches…ready to steal the bounty of insects their shuffling feet lift from the browned savannah grasses. A warthog. A herd of eight elephants. Giraffes can kill a lion with their hind legs…one swift kick!

But majestic beauty as they dine upon the upper leaves of trees, unconcerned with the killer beasts at their heels. Wildebeests. In the distance, Tanzania. 8km away. The Masai hills in the background—named for their similarity to a lying-down Masai warrior.

My safari was over but my adventures were just beginning. It was only day two. I had a writing program to attend in Nairobi and Lamu. Kenya had begun to enter my bloodstream. I was going to allow myself to make this about Kenya first—writing second. It was the only way to take Kenya home with me…so I could write about it later.

Back to Nairobi.