Old Projects, New Projects

It's been a while since I've updated this blog, and since I have a lot to share, I figured now would be a good time to do so! Since I've moved to LA about a month ago, life has been moving pretty quickly, and the move across the East Coast alone made it very difficult to share my work with other people.

I've officially finished my play Every Room is a Pluto Room. I hate how much time it takes for me to write a new draft of a play, but at least it's done. I'm thinking of gathering a group of LA or Philly-based actors for an informal private reading of the work, but it may not happen soon since I'm about to enter my second week of grad school and I'm still trying to assess how intense the workload is going to be.

My current obsession is with the project I plan to pursue for my workshop production at UCLA, which has a new working title of [cod] ]catfish[. I mentioned in another blog post, but it's essentially a web-based theatre project based around catfishing, sockpuppets, and hidden identities on the internet. I'm currently taking a course on creative coding with Lauren McCarthy to help prepare myself for the larger work, and it's been a lot of fun so far.

I feel this immense tension between my desire to implement the project and the need to focus on my learning at grad school. I'm trying to build my entire curriculum in my first year around exploring the unexplored world of digital media artmaking, and most of my professors have been telling the class about the importance of taking things slow and not putting pressure on yourself to have a ton of output as a student.

But...I can't help it when I have an idea that's burning in my mind. Sometimes it's all I can think about when I'm on campus. Even assignments that are designed to be low-stakes feel like they "need" to be about the project, and I often find myself needing to make a compromise between my ambition and my growth as an artist.

What I've built so far isn't complete, but I'll share some screenshots of some of what has come out of my coursework.

The image above is an (incomplete) digital map that I'm trying to make using p5.js. I've had to make a few compromises in the development of this composition. The "countries" on the map don't have type of borders that I was hoping for, but trying to create them on JavaScript at my current level of skill would've been very tedious. So I've settled for having each country act as a character in the larger narrative, and to give each one its own unique flavor.

This next image is from my first playwriting assignment. Someone once told me that I have a tendency to challenge the notion of what a play can even be, and this play is definitely stretching that idea to its limit lololol. I'm so hungry to pursue this project, and I've been trying to take on a more mellow attitude about it, with mixed results.

Beyond that, I've been trying to learn as much as I can about the LA art scene to see which spaces/orgs are most likely to be friendly to my work. Recently I visited REDCAT to watch a show called Boney Manilli, and it was delightfully psychotic. I plan to apply for the NOW Festival and attend more events in the future, but there's so much more out there to learn about LA. I feel like there's so much opportunity out here, and so far I'm happy I made the decision to come here.