The Cutler Initiative
Playwrights Joy Cutler and Nicholas Wardigo.
I probably should have done this last week, but I had a fun time at Joy Cutler’s reading last Monday at the Drake’s reading series. I already pointed out all the players in my last post, so I won’t bother here, but the short of it is that they were all really good. Also, I made a new friend, Jenna Kuerzi, who looked really familiar, and to whom I looked familiar, but we decided to mutually ignore any possible past crossings-of-paths and agree that we just met that evening over my flask of bourbon. Probably for the best.
Anyway, Joy’s play, Reaching Beatrice, was downright queer (in an Alice-in-Wonderland way, not a gay way). Based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, it was about a guy taking a horrific elevator ride through a hospital, trying to find Beatrice, who may or may not be one of the patients. There was a freaky twist at the end which caught me off-guard (not such an easy thing to do), and like a handful of other readings I’ve attended, I desperately hope that some theater somewhere picks this thing up, if for no other reason than I want to see how they deal with some of the problematic aspects of the script. That’s right, I made it all about me.
Shifting gears a little, I’m going to attend the launch of a novella tonight at Main Point Books. I met novelist Fran Wilde last fall, and I’m interested in reading more of her stuff, particularly since her book, Updraft, was recently nominated for a Nebula Award. Go Fran!