So, I’m back in Ashland for my first trip of the year to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Yay! But it’s been terribly cold and rainy and gray. Boo! But as my guy says, “That’s the universe telling you you should write.” Wise, wise man. Got a lot of noveling work done the last couple of days and more to do today. But just as a warm-up, wanted to pass along some thoughts about the trip so far.

Ruined is one of those plays that you may not want to see, but kind of feel like you have to in the way of Schindler’s List or Hurt Locker. It’s about women surviving the war in the Congo. Many of them are “ruined” through sexual violence by soldiers on any one of the many sides battling over territory. We’re reminded that this war isn’t that far removed from us because much of the land being fought over is rich in minerals we use everyday in our cell phones. The women have taken refuge in a brothel run by Mama Nadi, who protects herself by being a hard-edged business woman. Even though she professes to see the girls as commodities, she takes care of them and protects them, sometimes by not being all that kind to them.

I liked the play a lot. I think the dialog was great. I had a few minor complaints that I won’t bore you with. My biggest issue was that the ending did not at all seem to match the rest of the story. It’s a lovely hopeful ending that seems to have nothing at all to do with what happens in the play. But, I was still grateful to see hope at the end. It’s a really tough play. The atrocities that happen are horrific. So take a deep breath and hang on.

Well is about what it means to be, well, well. Lisa Kron is not only the playwright but a character in the play. The play itself is very meta in that it’s her working on the play with her sick, elderly mother (who is also a character) about the real events in her life dealing with her own wellness, her mother’s chronic illness, and her crazy childhood in integrated Lansing, MI. There were a lot of things I liked about the play, and a lot of things I didn’t. I enjoyed the meta parts with the actors coming out of character and bonding with the mother. And I liked Kron’s take on herself as an overly analytical artist who can’t quite get her arms wrapped around her past enough to make it interesting to anyone but herself. But the play drags in parts. And by the end I was more than ready to be be well rid of it.

This is not your parent’s Hamlet. Heck, it’s not even my generation’s Hamlet. It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s beautiful. It’s Hamlet almost as a very dark comedy. Dan Donahue, one of my favorite actors here, was fantastic. His Hamlet starts off a little crazy to begin with. You get the questioning, philosophical Hamlet, but dashed with a bit of “Yeah, I’m crazy, but I’m not sure by how much. It could be more than I thought.” The casting in this production was inspired. Jeff King, who has been so amazing in small parts the last few seasons, finally gets a showcase as Claudius. He’s not sniveling weasel. He’s a big, strong, striking king that is tailor made for the job. He makes you think that it wasn’t jealousy or envy that drove him to murder his brother, but a genuine belief that he is the better man. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are played by women!  So there’s this whole menage a trio vibe between them and Hammie (come on, don’t you wish someone would call him that?) Armondo Duran is great as an older, hippie, perpetual student kind of Horatio. The really striking thing about his play for me was the Ophelia/Polonius/Laertes family. I usually see this trio as a dysfunctional trio of eye-rolling children and over-bearing father. But in this play, they are a loving  and tender with each other. In Richard Elmore’s hands, I really loved Polonius and was terribly saddened by his murder. And Susannah Flood broke my heart as Ophelia. The best thing about the performance I saw was that half the theater was filled with high school students. When we came back for the second act, they screamed and clapped like they were at a rock concert. Seriously, they sat through nearly four hours of Shakespeare and loved it. Big buckets of awesomeness. OK, three plays down, three to go. I’ll be back with more later. Cheers!

We also stopped at Julia Pfieffer Burns state park and saw the gorgeous overlook to the Pacific. There used to be a house there. Unbelievable! How amazing to wake up to a scene like that every morning.

We also found elephant seals at Piedra Blancas. My guy found out that in 1990, there were 12 seals. Today, there’s 15,000! Go elephant seals!

But maybe that’s OK. I really don’t know anyone who does fighting well. So maybe my characters’ reactions to fighting is pretty normal. Maybe it’s not what they do during the fight but what they do as a result of the fight. Or am I just rationalizing. Yeah, I’m rationalizing.

OK, back to the book. And that arguing couple? They’re still going at it. I just so happen to be working on a scene that takes place in a coffee house. I just wrote them into it.

When it comes to character names, no one does it better than Dickens. Harold Skimpole, Polly Toodle, Wackford Squeers, Grandfather Smallweed. They’re all so delicious! What a wonder to be able to picture a character perfectly the minute you read their name.

I put a lot of thought into my character names, at least as much as I put into naming my cat. Sometimes I give them a name in hopes they will live up to it. Sometimes I let them live for a while to see what name comes to them. And then there’s the times when I see a name and create a character for it.

Plummy Tucker was one of those names. I won’t tell you where I found it, but I hope the real world Plummy Tucker doesn’t mind.

My fictional Plummy Tucker will be making her debut in the GW Review’s Spring 2010 edition in a short story called “Sugar in My Bowl.”

I will tell you my favorite places to find names: movie credits and the donor lists in playbills. Check them out. Real life brings writers many, many precious gems.

Well, let’s start with the juicy stuff. If you haven’t heard yet, two roles for the 2010 season have already been cast. The title role of Hamlet, running all season in the Angus Bowmer Theatre, will be played by Dan Donohue. And the role of the overbearing but somehow endearing mother in Lisa Kron’s Well will be played by Dee Maaske. Well will run in the New Theatre from late February – mid-June 2010.

Thank goodness! I can finally talk about this and the first thing I have to say is…OMG! Dan Donohue as Hamlet! I’m all a-flutter with joy. What awesome casting news! And Dee is amazing, too. It’s going to be good.

I hadn’t known Laurence long. He and I were in a writing group together that meets every two weeks. He had been a member of the group for ten years. I just joined a year ago. I didn’t always like hearing what he had to say about what I wrote. But that’s because he was the best kind of friend a writer can have, one who is not afraid of the uncomfortable truths we writers don’t want to tell each other. What we don’t want to hear is what we need to know. And Laurence never backed away from that.

We meet at this sad little Chinese restaurant in the city because it’s a good location, cheap, and they don’t run us out for staying way past when the dishes are cleared. None of us particularly like the food, but we all have our regular orders. Chicken fried until you almost can’t taste the chicken, dishes with sauces the colors usually found in neon signs. I could always tell how Laurence was feeling by what he ordered. Spicy and heavy, he was doing fine. Bland and light or nothing at all, he was having a rough time of it. Many times he had to leave early because the evening dragged on past his endurance.

Once, last fall, we thought he was going to be OK. To celebrate, we splurged for dinner at upscale sushi place around the corner where they have names for food that sound like items in a Victoria Secret catalog. I got to sit across from Laurence and we made jokes about the names. He ate well that night. He was happy. And that’s how I will remember him.

A few weeks ago, our little writing group took a road trip up to the magical place in Sonoma County where Laurence was living his last days. It was a glorious day as we sat out on the deck, enjoyed each other’s company, drank wine, ate, talked of writing. Laurence gave us all a copy of his last novel. I was privileged to be among the others in the group that he thanked in the acknowledgements even though I’d hadn’t been in the group long enough to contribute nearly as much as others had. It didn’t matter. He was very gentlemanly that way.

I haven’t talked to the others yet about Laurence’s passing other than saying we will have to have a special toast to him at our next meeting. Everyone is quiet in their grief. Perhaps we’re all writing about it. Maybe we’ll share what we write with each other. And if we do, I’m sure we will all be passionately honest with other, sparing no punches, just like Laurence would want us to.

Years ago, I used to love this little restaurant in Noe Valley called The Flying Saucer. At the end of the meal, they brought you the lightest cloud of pink cotton candy you’ve ever seen, piled high in a martini glass. It was supposed to cleanse your palette as you perused the desert menu. This was not your carnival cotton candy. It dissolved on your tongue so quickly, you hardly knew it was there.

The Servant of Two Masters is much like that cotton candy. It’s a fun, light, lovely bit of commedia dell’arte that’s what you would call a crowd pleaser. It cleansed my palette for weightier things. There’s lots of fun bits that are improvised and keeps the actors cracking up at themselves and getting the audience involved. It’s not really my cup of tea, but I had a good time. I just need a little bit more weight, even in my comedies.

But the biggest surprise for me this season was The Scottish Play…dare I say it…MACBETH. After this production, I walked out of the theater with a bounce in my step, grinning from ear to ear, thinking “that was fun!” How many times can you say that about the scowly Scot and his wife? Think Macbeth as Tim Burton might imagine it. They embraced the horror full on and I’m here to tell you, it’s freaky frightening. It was so awesome! Gone is the metaphysical-what-does-it-all-mean interpretation from their last production and in comes the scary witches, creepy setting, and betrayed friends dripping in blood. It was fab.

OK, so that’s it for the May trip. OSF 2009, Part Deux is the last week of September. Those of you planning to join in for the fun, let me know. Up on my agenda for the September trip:

• Much Ado About Nothing
• Henry VIII (Seriously, when do you ever get a chance to see this one?)
• All’s Well That Ends Well
• Paradise Lost
• Don Quixote (Come on, ladies. It’s Armando Duran!)

If you’re coming on the big trip in September, it’s the same gig as usual. You find your own place to stay and buy your own tix. We’ll meet up there for plays and great food and drinks and shopping and fun. I may have room for two people or more in the suite at Arden Forest Inn, so let me know if you’re interested. Don’t miss out on this season. It’s been awesome so far.

Wars are easy, budgets are hard: I love theater. I see a lot of good stuff. And every once in a while, I see something extraordinary that makes all the electricity in my body rush to surface and my skin tingles. Equivocation was that kind of play. It’s a world premiere of Bill Cain’s new play here at OSF and it’s a masterpiece. Robert Cecil summons Shakespeare to his office to commission a play based on the Powder Plot. It’s meant to be a propaganda piece to inform the masses of what “really happened.” Shakespeare goes all Columbo and tries to figure out what really did happen. At least you think that’s what the play is about and so do the characters. It’s not until the end when it all comes together in a beautiful perfect moment that you really see that the real question is not “What happened” but …well…I’m not going to tell you. It’s real, contemporary world stuff that’s told to use through the reflection of history.

The language is extraordinary, witty, and poignant. (When Shakespeare congratulates Cecil on his victories, he replies, “Wars are easy. But I also balanced the budget. You never get credit for that.” The production and acting is off the charts good. I’m going to see it again when I come back in September. I’ve not seen anything like it since Arcadia.

So, fluffy fun this afternoon with The Servant of  Two Masters and the Macbeth for the big finale tomorrow night. It’s a great season this year. Get here if you can.

Where the boys are: With my beloved Arden Forest Inn booked until Friday, I’m spending my first two nights at The Palms, a old-fashioned motor court converted into Ashland style. I have to say, quite lovely with beautiful flowers and gardens and lovely rooms. I recommend it, especially if you’re on a budget. But my favorite innkeepers, Bill and Corbett, met me for dinner last night at Standing Stone (which now serves sweet potato fries!). I can’t wait to join “the boys” at Arden Forest on Friday! Bill said to come over as quickly as I can on Friday to start enjoying the pool. The best part about the evening was a juicy bit of casting gossip for next year. But I’m sworn to secrecy! Those who know me well know how much this is killing me.

The Think Method: And now the stuff people really care about…the plays! OK, so I did go see The Music Man last night despite my pouty protesting at the idea of musicals at OSF. OK, OK, fine. It was good. OK, actually it was more than good. It was quite good and lovely and charming. I have to admit that I really liked it. But not because it was the big technicolor Music Man, but because it was understated and depended on the music to carry it through. I don’t think I care for musicals much because they’ve become carnival rides with crashing chandeliers and helicopters. But I love the music from so many musicals. It’s the music that makes the show for me. So by trusting the music, the show worked for me.

Also, I think casting Gwendolyn Mulamba as Marian was a brilliant idea. Her Marian is earthy and womanly. We know from the first minute we lay eyes on her that she doesn’t belong in a corset. She’s a woman who has forgotten what it’s like to feel like a woman, and her blossoming is wondrous.

Eternal ringing: I was also a bit skeptical about seeing Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone. I haven’t liked any of the other plays I’ve seen by her, but everyone’s been raving about this one. And for good reason. It’s great. Just brilliant. I get her now or at least this play. A young woman, Jean, is annoyed by a man’s cell phone constantly going off in a cafe. When she goes to his table to ask him to turn it off, she finds him dead…and then answers his phone. Jean is pulled into Gordon’s life, going to his mother’s for dinner (“Meat, we have lots and lots of meat”), becoming his wife’s confidant, and falling in love with his brother. Even as she learns Gordon was not the nice man she wanted him to be, she continues to create lies in an attempt to soothe the wounds he left building to a chaotic, absurd, existential bundle of fun. I’m not kidding. It’s hysterical, in that crazy Fuddy Meers sort of way.

It’s Death Day: I’m off to see Death and the King’s Horseman tonight. Having seen Dead Man’s Cell Phone this afternoon, it seems I’ve got theme going.

I’m trying something new and going by myself this year. I need some time to write and read and think and renew myself a bit. And what better place! I’ll see my favorite innkeepers, Corbett and Bill, at the Arden Forest Inn and go to my favorite restaurants and lay by the pool and walk in Lithia park and shop and many, many other things. And here’s the play line-up:

• Death and the King’s Horseman
• Equivocation
• Servant of Two Masters
• The Scottish play (come on, don’t make me say it….argh…OK, Macbeth)

I may try to squeeze in Dead Man’s Cell Phone (even though I’ve not like the two other Sarah Ruhl plays I’ve seen) and, dare I say it, The Music Man, just because it’s the only thing playing my first night. Sigh…musicals.

A shout out to my friends planning to go on the September trip, will post here soon what I’m going to see then, but I think Henry VIII (because when do you get a chance to see that!) and Don Quixote are shoe-ins. Check back soon because I’ll be posting about the plays I’m seeing this time around.

More about OSF Part Un soon!