I really should go to sleep.  But there’s just one more article I could squeeze in….  And instead I’m writing a blog post.  In my defense I’m tired as hell and that makes me a bit loopy and prone to dumb jokes (on myself).  I am aware this is not the best time to write anything respectable.  But…

I don’t quite know how this week got quite so out of whack.  It just sort of happened.  At first I just had one voice class on Wednesday and another two on Sunday.  For my own purposes I was going to refresh my memory on the Japanese I studied last semester since 204 starts next week.  But then along came the workshop on Jean Genet’s The Screens that my company, Son of Semele Ensemble will be starting this coming weekend and, as I’m a member in the capacity of dramaturg, I need to find out absolutely everything I can about the play, its themes, its artistic style, its history, the history of its playwright, the facts that inspired it, the culture it came out of… and on and on.  And this is in addition to reading it, of course.  The Screens is nearly 200 pages long.

It’s work I love doing, don’t get me wrong.  It just kind of showed up and instantly became my top priority.  I could grouse about not knowing I’d have to do this earlier, but now I’ve spent the week neck deep in research about Algerian culture, the French-Algerian war, Berber mysticism and Islamic rituals.  And in my breaks I go and read lighter material on Theatre of Cruelty, absurdism, surrealism, Derrida, Artaud, Sartre, and of course any detail I can find on Genet’s life and his own thoughts and theories.

Fuck, I love this stuff.

I love feeding my brain.  I love filling in the gaps of my knowledge.  And I love working it all into a performance.  It’s the only reason I could give for still being awake at five AM nearly every day in a week.