I have not one, but two posts on SF Theater Pub's blog this week, because my production of Jean Cocteau's Orphée is happening there on Monday night, April 15!
First, Stuart conducted an email interview with me about translating and producing Orphée. I got to discuss why I decided to translate Orphée in the first place, why it's such a crazy play, my other favorite adaptations of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, and additional fun topics. I really had a good time doing the interview -- it's so much easier to write when you have someone else asking you questions or giving you prompts!
Then, in my column this week, I noted that Cocteau disowned his first two books of poetry, and used that as the jumping-off point for a discussion of whether it's healthy for artists to disown work that they made when they were younger. I also mention my recent experience directing the staged reading of The Rose of Youth, which I wrote five years ago. (I'll never disown that play, but there are certain passages that now strike me as embarrassingly bad.) The comments to this post, on the blog and on Facebook, mostly involve my friends confessing the embarrassing things they wrote or directed when they were teenagers -- and now I wish I could read these works in all of their awful, naive, teenage glory. Don't disdain your younger self! Embrace her!
2 comments:
I wonder if you have ever listened to the "Cocteau Twins", the 80´s band with tracks like Aikea-Guinea, Kookaburra, Rococo...and so on.
Congratulations for your work, do you consider yourself now as a professional playwright?
Haha, you're right, I should totally have titled this post "Cocteau Twins" instead of "Cocteau times Two." I've heard some of their music -- pretty stuff, though the lyrics are incomprehensible.
I'm still not earning much $ from all of this artistic work, so it's hard to consider myself a "professional." But I'm grateful to have these opportunities to do what I want to do.
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