¿Best musician evar?

My bestie just returned from a trip to Oregon, where she reported unexpectedly attending a Jacob Collier concert and hearing a random someone call him the best musician ever. I beg to differ that such a label is even possible to assign to someone. I won't go into whether Collier's music is good or not. …

Lucy in Space with Asteroids

NASA has a mission to visit the Trojan asteroids and, given that it's a long voyage, they want to fill up Lucy's MP3 player with all sorts of cool music inspired by Lucy's journey. Okay, not quite, but they do want to inspire more music to come into the world based on Lucy's theme: NASA's …

Zoom Rebroadcast: The Making of Medea’s Medea

The Making of Medea's Medea: A Mockumentary Play by Chas Belov, in a 45-minute version, will have a rebroadcast by Third Citizen Theatre Company for one week (March 8, 7 am, to March 15, 7 pm), together with three other shorts (5-15 minutes each) inspired by Greek mythology on the theme of revenge as part …

Zoom Accessibility Distractions

It would be nice if Zoom considered neurodiversity as much as it has deafness. I've complained to Zoom through the Help menu feedback feature for the past year about its unfriendliness to me, with no sign of improvement. Zoom has worked hard on deaf accessibility. An automatic transcript can be provided, and I believe they've …

October 18 Reading: Earthquake Weather

My work-in-progress comedy-fantasy Earthquake Weather will have an online staged reading on October 18, 2020, produced by Playwrights' Center of San Francisco, directed by Libby Vega and performed by Roberta Morris, Karen Offereins, Julie Sarabia, Ava Maag, and Cary Ann Rosko. San Francisco: Astronomical rents. San Andreas Fault. Elves. Shoe-making, home-wrecking elves. Four women – …

Not at War

Not declaring war on holidays or anything but I've been realizing when I look at someone I can't tell whether they celebrate any holidays around this time of year or not. For instance, Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists do have holidays, but those are not necessarily around this time. And, just as I don't want to …

It’s Not Just Pronouns

There's been a lot of talk in the last several years - longer than that, but it's been much more in the public eye lately - about gender pronouns. A polite person does their best to ensure that they refer to others using the correct pronoun, so that they are not referring to someone by …

To stream or not to stream, that is the question

I stream music. Sometimes. Not at the moment. I've been on Apple Music on and off for the last couple of years. Every so often, I take a break from it. I'm on a break right now that started perhaps two months ago when I let an annual subscription expire. This is driven by a …

Representative Tlaib is redefining for us what Muslim Women can do – and we’re freaking out

(Updated Monday, Jan. 7, approx. 10 pm PDT) I am not a fan of public cursing. Not to say that I never do it, but I think it is often overused. I do use it in my plays where I believe it illuminates the world of my characters. Some of my plays have extensive cursing, …

Recipe: Chas’s Microwaved Yam Strawberry Surprise

Made this on the fly this morning from some farmers' market items and stuff I had around, and it worked! Micromanaged instructions are aimed at me; please don't be insulted and feel free to adjust to your needs. Per serving: 1 large yam, about 1 pound (I suspect it's actually a sweet potato but the …

My Non-Gendered Pronoun Proposal

Chinese gets by just fine with no gendered pronouns; why can't English? And we can fill some holes in our pronoun system while we're at it. I've been thinking about this since I posted I am They as You are They and now I think I've got a workable solution. PersonSingularPlural not including listenerPlural including …

For the record, I loved Krista Knight’s (Un)hinged

Krista Knight is a young playwright well-known and well-loved in the new plays community. She’s well-loved both for her work (her plays have been produced all over the country) and for her personality, which is supportive, generous, and kind. If you scroll through her Instagram (@playtrixx), you’ll see her promoting the work of other […] via …

Why I Write Plays About Race

“I don’t see color! WE ALL BLEED RED.” People of color, you have almost certainly had white people say this to you, or some version of it, numerous times. It’s a lie. But you already knew that. White people, of course we “see color.” We see that people are Black, or Asian, or Latinx. So …

Finger snaps in Logic Pro X

This post is short and sweet. For anyone looking for finger snaps in Logic Pro X, they can be found in the library under Percussion > Performance Patches > Claps and Snaps Performance. Claps run C2 through A2 by half-step. Snaps run C3 through D3 by half-step. There is also a stomp at F3. To …

Recipe: Chas’s Microwaved Yam Surprise

Made this on the fly this morning from some farmers' market items and stuff I had around, and it worked! Micromanaged instructions are aimed at me; please don't be insulted and feel free to adjust to your needs. Per serving: 1 smallish yam (I suspect it's actually a sweet potato but the farmer calls it …

I am They as You are They

My use of "they" over "he" or "she" has greatly increased over these last few years. I use "they" when I don't know the gender of the person or when the gender of the person is irrelevant. Further, by "know the gender," I used to mean my perception of a person's gender and now I …

This is Not a Pipe, 2017 Version

Apologies to René Magritte. And apologies to Randall Munroe if xkcd got here first with this joke. Of course, if Magritte were in charge of this, the correct action would be to click Skip. There are no images of pipes; there are only images of drawings of pipes. Nothing would happen, of course; this is an drawing of …

Processing “Do Black Lives Matter at Your Theatre? In Your Films?” by Bitter Gertrude

Melissa Hillman's post came just in time for me to see Brownsville Song (B-Side for Tray) by Kimber Lee at Shotgun Players. It's great to know that at Shotgun, the answer is yes, both in front of and behind the stage. At Marin Theatre Company as well, where they regularly do more than one show …

Julius Caesar: Suddenly Controversial — Bitter Gertrude

*sigh* Will there be any airline left for me to fly with? The Public Theatre is staging Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as part of its annual Shakespeare in the Park, and hauling out that most overdone of concepts: Julius Caesar is POTUS! They’re all in suits! It’s AMERICA! This is exactly why I never directed Julius …

Theatre Resistance Plan, 2017 – 2020

Theatre during the next four years – read this!

Bitter Gertrude

There is no more powerful tool for changing ideas, shifting cultural zeitgeist, and resisting authoritarianism than art. While theatre is not the biggest bat artists wield, our impact on the culture is not nil, especially if you include community theatre and school plays, and we must. Resistance to the Trump regime is the most crucial political battle of our lifetimes because this regime– and the zeitgesit behind it– stands to undo progress in every area of our society. Trump, Pence, McConnell, Ryan et al are actively seeking to impoverish you to enrich themselves, roll back every civil rights and workers’ rights gain of the past 100 years,  eliminate every consumer protection, eliminate the social safety net, and pretend you begged them to do it. It’s telling that the very first appointee of the incoming administration was an amoral white nationalist, and the very first act of the new Congress was…

View original post 2,806 more words