Dear Denise (Dirty Barbie)

Dear Denise (Denise Laughlin Stewart),

I saw Dirty Barbie last night and loved it!

To invite an audience to see you perform your own life on stage is remarkable.

Your talent, as a performer and writer, makes for an engaging, entertaining evening.

Denise Laughlin Stewart

Your energy and generosity with your audience is awesome!

As you continue to share this show and allow the performance to evolve, I have a suggestion.

Make it more extraordinary by adding more internal biography to the external.  Subtext is great, but perhaps we could have another layer.

We know what happens with you, and your mother.  We get the facts.  Let us inside a little more.  The details are vivid, but keep peeling back the onion!

Some of this has to do with tone. For example, the new room/suicide scenario is really about a child encountering death.  Rather than playing this for laughs, could it be played straight and make for a poignant moment?  What was your inner experience, as a displaced child, moving into that room?

Just my two cents…

Sam

(P.S.  I also enjoyed seeing you and meeting your old friends at the party afterward.)

a hint of dogwood

dogwood blossom
a hint of dogwood blossom

A rainy Sunday morning — March 27 — and seeing the first of the dogwood blossoms in my front yard.

When we first moved into this house, 24 years ago, the dogwoods gave us quite a show each year as March gave way to April.

Now, they’re old and gnarly and losing steam.  Some of the largest in the bunch have died.

Dogwoods have a short lifespan.  They live about as long as a human being.

I don’t have any grandchildren (yet), so I’m thinking about planting a few new dogwood trees, taking care of my body, and trying to live long enough to see the show again.

In the meantime, I’ll appreciate the fullness up and down the street — and continue to love and enjoy these old trees in my yard.  They’re doing the best they can.