Last year, and the year before, and perhaps the year before that, I made resolutions. I'm not doing that this year because when I looked up last year's to see how I did I was really pretty embarrassed. In my defense, last year's list of resolutions was ambitious and included things like learning how to play piano. Well, I am not a piano player yet, although I know a little more now than I did a year ago. Not much, though. Not enough to, say, score a musical, which is a thing I really wish I could do. But I can't. I think that in order to have that level of musical knowledge I should have started many, many years ago.
A lot of last year's resolutions were projects, most of which I did start, but failed to finish. I did write an original play and submit it to a company... but it was a 10-minute radio play, which doesn't really fit the criteria I had in mind when I made the resolution. Again, in my defense, I did not have as much time to write a new play as I thought I would. I had to write my adaptation of The City & The City, and I have no less than three other projects cooking right now, all adaptations. I have not given up my dream to write original stuff, but I've got to prioritize. And I've got to get way better at, you know, actually writing stuff. I spend way too much time sitting and staring at the blinking cursor on the screen, willing something new to come out of my brain through my fingertips and onto the keyboard. Often I'll spend half an hour doing nothing but rewriting the last sentence I'd managed to come up with from the day before.
My goals this year are even simpler: Write more, work more. That's it. To that end, I have some exciting projects already lined up for this year:
1) Next Saturday, February 9th, my adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo opens at Mob Hit Productions in Calgary, Alberta. It's my international debut!
2) My second adaptation, The City & The City, opens at Lifeline Theatre in Chicago on February 25th.
3) Later this spring I'll be acting in a film being shot in the Chicago area, titled Like Father Like Daughter.
4) This summer I'll be playing Porthos in The Three Musketeers, again at Lifeline Theatre, opening June 13th.
5) A Crew of Patches will continue bringing Shakespeare to area high school students through May of this year.
6) I have two more adaptations greenlit for future productions at Lifeline, and I hope to have a third one added to the mix before long.
That should keep me out of trouble at least until July. It's a pretty heavy workload for me, at least artistically. If only I could find a way to make money off of it. (That's the real challenge of the year: Making money. I did not do very well at it last year.)
A belated Happy New Year to all of you!
