"If I’m a grilled cheese sandwich, she’s duck confit"

At the end of 2013, in an epic meeting over sangria at the marvelous Cafe Flore, we Theater Pub bloggers stopped feeling like individual wordsmiths rushing to meet column deadlines, and started to feel like we were a Thing. A tribe. A collective. To cement our newfound camaraderie and celebrate a very successful year for the blog, we agreed that our last post of the year should highlight the best writing of 2013, both on our blog and on the Internet at large.

I had the honor of writing in praise of Will Leschber, one of the newer Theater Pub bloggers, who writes about the connections between theater and cinema. I also singled out a Howlround piece by local theater critic Lily "Lightning Rod" Janiak as my other must-read piece of theater-related writing from 2013.

And I received this lovely write-up about my own work from Allison Page. Each time I read it, I still glow a little inside and then vow to try to live up to this praise:

Marissa Skudlarek and I communicate differently, but we think about a lot of the same things. If I’m a grilled cheese sandwich, she’s duck confit. She has the ability to say things that I know I’m also feeling, but haven’t brought myself to express properly without the use of a lot of F-bombs and references to Murder, She Wrote. Generally speaking, I like to accentuate the positive rather than wallow in a pool of the negative, so when her article “You’re Doing It Wrong, You’re Doing It Wrong” (technically the second half of a two-part article. The first one is also worth reading, but the second really drove it home for me). The internet, and the world, can be a dark and dismal place. Some days it feels like there’s nothing to be happy about; nothing that’s going right. In a world that seeks to find the worst in everything, Marissa seeks out the subtle nuances of her theatrical experiences, and of the world around her. It’s refreshing and thoughtful, and a big reason I love reading her posts. Not everyone is doing it right wrong. I like to think Marissa is striving to do it right; for women in general and for herself.

Go to the Theater Pub blog to read the whole piece, including my paragraphs in praise of Will and Lily, and many other encomia. There is also a pretty great photo of me sitting on a dinosaur while wearing a '60s sheath dress and holding a parasol.

And if I may say so, the Theater Pub blog has been seriously killing it in the New Year, so if you have any interest in independent theater (whether you live in the Bay Area or not), you should bookmark it and visit it regularly. I am honored to be part of this collective of smart, thoughtful, honest, curious, and yes, positive writers.

And P.S. I think a grilled cheese sandwich with duck confit sounds like the best thing ever.