Life is tough

Letter to a friend:

Life is tough for you, my friend the addict. I've been told that part of any addiction is being addicted to excitement. I've always felt something odd when I was with you, but I never could articulate it, so I never understood it. Now I realize it's the lust for excitement.

I realize that addiction is what helps you talk so glibly, sometimes fooling me, sometimes not. I knew it was part of the grandiose plans and the boasting, but I'm still pretty clueless.

Damn, I guess I should have been a social worker instead of a theatre director. You've got me in over my head.

I wonder what I can believe of all the things you've said. I do believe you're going away for a few days to get clean. And I do think there's hope for you.

I wonder if your parents and grandparents really are alcoholics and drug addicts. Or is that just one of your excuses?

And why on earth did you come to see me carrying a soda bottle of Squirt and vodka? And announce it as you came in. Was it a poke with a sharp stick? I guess there is very little that shocks me, and lots of things make me sad. You make me sad.

Good luck, buddy.

Green Eggs and Hamlet

Reed Brown, an old friend and colleague, wrote a short play that combines Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss to create a new sort of Hamlet. Very, very funny. We're performing it at a benefit party for an organization that helps women getting out of prison.

We rehearsed this afternoon for the first time. I was amazed that one of the actors from our 2000-2002 production of Hamlet couldn't finish many of the most famous quotations, "To thine own self ..." and "Frailty, they name is ..." I knew most of the famous lines before I ever read Hamlet. I was finally able to really sit down and read the play when I was thirty, and I laughed out loud at all the lines I knew. For me, Hamlet was just a series of quotations hung on a very complicated plot.