Friday, January 9, 2015

2014 Ends, 2015 Begins @ SF Theater Pub Blog

In late December, we SF Theater Pub bloggers revived our tradition of doing some group posts to honor our favorite theater moments, posts on our blog, and posts on other blogs from the past year.

For our compilation of Top 5 lists celebrating highlights of Bay Area Theater, I contributed my Top 5 Design Elements from plays I saw in 2014. ("That's right, you're kind of like our style columnist, aren't you?" said my editor when I pitched this. I ended up covering way more than just fashion/costume design, though!)

Then, for our round-up of favorite posts from our blog and elsewhere, I wrote about Barbara Jwanouskos' busy year of breaking through barriers, physical and mental (she does kung fu); about Moss Hart's memoir Act One; and about Frank Rich's article on the backstory to Act One. Ashley Cowan, meanwhile, wrote about some of my Theater Pub blog entries, including the one from October where I decided to talk about my gallstone crisis publicly. It was one of the more emotionally vulnerable posts I wrote in the difficult year of 2014 and I am honored to be recognized for it.

Ashley praised me for "staying positive" and "searching for stars in seemingly dark skies," but honestly, that's not always easy. It's not like I can find a sense of positivity and peace and then hold onto it forever -- my equilibrium is fragile and I easily spiral into negativity. Indeed, my first Theater Pub post of 2015 has me wondering if I'm backsliding, wondering if I'm losing my mind, wondering if I have anything to say... wondering a hell of a lot of things, actually. Ever since I started this blog seven and a half years ago, it's borne the tagline "a girl with an answer for some things and a question for most things." But I don't think I've ever before publicly shown you the extent of my self-questioning the way I did in my Theater Pub post this week.

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