Oh man, it's been waaaay too long since I last posted. It's been a CRAZY few weeks. And here's the litany:

I spent a week up a Vassar workshopping my new play Crossing America with the New York Theater Workshop. Which was intense and wonderful and challenging and rewarding. And now I have a stronger play that still needs some more work, but it's in a very good place. I also was able to hang with my good friend Alex Thomas who was there at Vassar as artist-in-residence. Alex, who now lives in London, presented a new piece he's writing about Blacks in Germany during the Nazi regime. His play is about a black German who befriends a African-American jazz musician living abroad in Berlin. And how their lives unfold during a horrific time in our world history. Amazing piece and I am so thrilled to have heard it read. I also saw some great excerpts from the Mitu Theater Group... these folks are the real thing. The kind of stuff I like: dark, poetic, haunting, fresh, sexual, probing into religion and gender and God, and very very quirky. A brother is thrilled about Mitu.

Onward to the Hip Hop Theater Festival. Which was a lot of fun. Jimmie and Regan, the actors in my play Hollis Mugley's Only Wish, were great. And I believe the audience enjoyed the play. Those actors worked hard and Obie-Winner Robert O'Hara even stepped in and helped shape the staging so that shit would pop! And I believe it did.

Onward to my Brooklyn apartment: It's beautiful, it's quiet, it's damp, there's not enough room for my furntiture, the staircase is so old that when my landlord comes and goes it sounds like the ceiling's crashng down on my head. And that's some uncool stuff. Oh, and there's a mosquito infestation in the entrance of my apartment so I've had to buy a UNMOSQUITO machine because, yes, those babies have found a way into the damp apartment... OH, whenever it rains, and it has been raining A LOT [FOLKS, PLEASE GO AND SEE INCONVENIENT TRUTH. THE FILM ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING. IT'S A MUST]... and so whenever it rains, which is a lot, the back terrace floods and it's only a matter of time before we get one of those 7 inchers like D.C. got yesterday within 24 hours and the water comes rolling into my kitchen. Needless to say, I'm moving by August 1.

Onward to the Allliance Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm here now. Workshopping my newer brand new play with the lovely folks down here. I'm being treated SO well. Celise Kalke, my good friend and amazing dramaturg/Director of Play Development at the Alliance, told me the Alliance was my home. And I tell you, it's what makes a playwright feel good.

Well.. I'll have more time to fill in the details of my journeys once I'm finished here in Altanta. I'll be back in Brooklyn on Saturday.

Until next time,

Keith