Songs for the Struggling Artist

Because I get my Feldenkrais liability insurance through a massage therapy umbrella, they send me Massage Therapy Journal, which I read, even though I am not a massage therapist. I figure I might learn something. What the heck?

In the issue I just finished, they talked a lot about how to avoid burnout and take care of one’s self at work. Much of the content involved identifying one’s top strengths and leaning into them.

Now, about ...

The other night, I found myself watching an interview with a theatre practitioner I admire a great deal. He’s an amazing performer, director, teacher and thoughtful analyst of his craft. I found myself taking notes – adding them to previous documents I’d created, filled with his tips and tricks.

But as I was taking notes, full of enthusiasm and excitement, I felt an undercurrent of “Why?” Why was I furiously writing down his clown ...

Despite my appreciation for Yorgos Lanthimos’ earlier work, I was not planning on seeing Poor Things. A lot of my feminist friends were not fans and I figured I could skip it. But then I learned that Kathryn Hunter was in it, playing a madam, and I got curious. (I worked with Kathryn on a show in London a while ago so she’s very dear to me.) So I watched it.

Apparently there was a whole conversation around whether or not this was a...

The other day, I was feeling so much despair about how things are and where we were headed as a culture. I thought, “If someone showed up with a time machine and asked me if I wanted to go back to the 70s or 80s to live, I’d absolutely say yes.”

I told my friend about this feeling and she said, “I’m coming with you.” We figured we should bring her kids and her husband (she was pretty sure they’d want to go, too), and my partner and...

Despite my swearing off Wrongfully Convicted podcasts, I found myself watching a similarly themed docu-series recently. I was maybe halfway into the first episode before I realized it was a doozy of a wrongful conviction case. Were it not for the theatre element, I might have quit watching right then. I’m glad I stuck around.

Mind Over Murder is about the impact a murder had on a small town in Nebraska called Beatrice (Bay-AA-trice...

The venue told us to tag them on social media so they could share our posts. I said, “We’ve tagged you multiple times on Twitter, TikTok and Facebook. Are you not seeing them?” “Oh,” they said, “We’re not active there. I guess it’s really just Instagram.”

For some people (mostly Millennials, I guess), “Social media” just means Instagram. I happen to loathe Instagram the most. So for me, I lean toward Twitter and Facebook – but it’s...

A friend of mine has developed a show to be performed on Zoom. It’s an innovative concept and she’s doing that innovating in a form where people don’t necessarily expect to see innovation. She asked someone to attend this show and they said, “I don’t do Zoom,” which understandably got under my friend’s skin a little bit. It’s a little like someone saying they don’t go to the theatre when you give them a postcard for your show in a ...

There are probably some artists that aren’t utterly flummoxed by the question “What’s next?” but I am not one of them. It’s usually an inner cascade of “Oh dear god, I don’t know! How will I go on with no real plan! This person just wants a simple answer. I have nothing. No plans. Nothing is next! I’m doomed!” This is not because I don’t have any possibilities on the horizon. I’m just not ready to look at the horizon, particularly ...

Since I have several podcasts that are now hosted by Spotify, I receive their newsletter (four copies, one for each podcast) which offers podcasting tips. I mostly ignore them, as I have read MANY tips previously and there’s rarely anything new. I clicked on the most recent one though, since it was about how to grow your audience. I’m in the middle of putting out a new podcast so I figured I could use some reminders of that kind of...

The podcast I was listening to was about the crisis in journalism – about how so many news sites were disappearing, how so many journalists are losing their jobs and about how the landscape was changing so dramatically and not for the better. (This country has lost one third of its newspapers and two thirds of its journalists since 2005 and it is accelerating.) I was only half listening – truth be told. I was still pretty wiped out...

On Monday, March 4th, I tested positive for COVID. I tested negative on March 1st when I woke up with a swollen throat and subsequently slept for the later part of the weekend. By Monday, the fever had gone and I was feeling a bit better. But I tested anyway because I had a rehearsal to go to and I wanted to be able to go in clear. Surprise!

The thing is – I have been very careful. I’ve rarely eaten indoors at a restaurant. I don’t...

Close observers of my work might notice some commonalities between my most recent audio drama, The Defense, and my previous audio drama, The Dragoning. They both feature nice women who develop magical defensive and destructive abilities. They both hinge on fear and power. They are structured very differently and the contexts are not the same, but at the center of both are nice and dangerous women. You might say I’m trying to work s...

A while back, I wrote about how they started locking up the toothpaste at my chain pharmacy/drugstore. Since then the drugstore has only expanded their lock-up program. Now, they lock up soap and deodorant and vitamins and eye drops and much more. There were a lot of news stories about this; These big drug stores (CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, etc) were claiming that there was a massive theft problem at their stores and they needed hel...

There’s not nearly as much criticism as I expected in this artist’s life. When I got started, I really thought people would be lining up to tell me what was wrong with my work all the time. I think it’s what a lot of people are afraid of when it comes to sharing their creations. What are people going to say? I know now that the thing people are most likely going to say is nothing.

I want to be clear that I’m not asking for criticis...

We decided to watch the second season of The Wheel of Time (A fantasy adventure show on Amazon) and by the middle of the show, we were laughing our faces off. This was not because the show is funny. It is not. It takes itself very seriously. But we were cracking ourselves up due to the near universal use of Whisper Acting. The Wheel of Time is hardly the first show to go all in on Whisper Acting but they go hard and it happened to ...

In the past few years, when I’ve made theatre or audio drama, I’ve mostly drawn on people who were already in my circle or in the circle of my circle. This is generally my preferred way of doing things, as it allows me to avoid the more businessy side of the business. (I know it’s show business but for me, it’s art.)

But this time, neither my circle nor my circles’ circles were big enough to do the job of casting my show. I had to ...

This surprise re-broadcast is brought to you by COVID 19! Almost four years after COVID came into our lives, I have, for the first time, tested positive. I have literally no idea where I could have picked it up but here we are. So, in honor of my positive test and the upcoming four year anniversary of this business, I give to you this encore episode. It was 195.

If you'd like to read it instead, visit the Songs for the Struggl...

You might think I’d be the target audience for Six. I am, after all, obsessed with reframing old stories so as to give women some power they otherwise might not have in their narratives.

But while Six seems to think it’s doing that, it almost feels like the opposite.

The premise is paper thin. The six wives of Henry VIII gather together to put on a show and have a contest to see who had it worse. (Spoiler alert?) That’s really all ...

This is a taste of my new audio drama. You can help us out by subscribing to The Defense, giving it five stars and writing a review!

If you've listened to The Dragoning, you'll hear some familiar names and some new ones!

A live recording of an audio drama podcast about a group of women grappling with their defense, a seemingly magical power that protects them from harm.  Get a glimpse behind the curtain of live podcast dr...