I'm sorry things are hard. That is NO fun. I hope they get better. If you need to bounce stuff off us or share your burden in any way, please let us know.

Things are a bit tough just now, but I'm up to 5 pages. Hopefully will be feeling better tomorrow.

Good to see you with us! I'm a thinker too, but at some point I always have to dump the play out onto the page and see what happens.
And your play will DEFINITELY let you know if it's NOT what it's supposed to be. I don't know about anyone else, but when things don't feel right, I just don't feel right. I am bothered, disheveled and annoyed until I fix it. I wouldn't worry so much about the size of the scenes at this point--just get it down! You can always fix that later. I have scenes that occur in the wrong part of my script as it sits right now, but I've just been keeping a running list of things I want to fix for sure. That might help you in the end as well. Write on!

It's funny because I don't write every day anymore, but when I sit down, I can usually write a significant amount in a very short time. In fact, I was so in the zone yesterday that I had looked at the clock and saw it was 3, and thought, okay, I have 45 minutes before I need to be at my neices' batting practice. I looked at the clock again, I swear, not 5 minutes later, and it was 10 til 4. ARGH! I should have more time today to work on my play, but my friend gave birth early, so I am going to try and stop in and see their daughter. I won't get to see her until next year otherwise. And her name is Stellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! so I have to meet her. It's destiny.

I might still do it. It might be good to let some time go by and see what happens with the changeover in the senate and congress that happens recently. Those hoary cats had something going on for serious when they wrote those plays. :)

I got 'Burial at Thebes' and I have a couple of nice translations of 'Antigone', which is by far my favorite, so I will have to see what I can find about the ones you mentioned. And please do email me some stuff :). I really loved my dramaturgy class in college for that reason because we got to really tear stuff apart and look at things, and that's what I love about trying to rework a classic into something else.

I discovered 'The Scarecrow' by Percy MacKaye during my senior year of college and I loved it so much, I am working on a prequel to it about the main character and would like to perform both together. If you don't know that play, you should check it out. it's a fascinating little play.

I had thought about doing a 'Trojan Women' feel to 'Mine', but resisted because I remember how hard it was when I worked on 'Highway to Hades' to do all the research and I really, this time, want to dig into the meat of the work. However, after this conversation, I really started having some great ideas so in a few days when I get more ahead, I think I am going to take a day or two and really pull some stuff out and change character names, the Spanish in the script to Latin possibly, and see where it goes from there. That also reminds me that I should write a proper description of the play now that I have a better grasp of the play itself. :)

You should still write it! I think the Antigone story could lend itself really well to that time. Our midterm project was all about adaptations of Antigone. I found out in my research that there were three or four written in Ireland in 1984, with an additional film adaptation. I thought that was really interesting. I ended up doing my project on Tom Paulin's version called The Riot Act. There's a really cool Antigone from Nigeria about colonialism, and it has a Nigerian woman named Tegonni as well as the actual historical Antigone walking into the middle of the story, so it has this whole weird meta level to it too. I loved that one. And there's this group called the Theatre of War that does special table reads of versions of Ajax and Philoctetes geared specifically for military members and their families to help them cope with PTSD. I'll email you a longer list when I can grab my notes, which are upstairs right now. There's a lot of really cool stuff out there.

Thirty pages on day 9... nice! That's a really great start. :)

What can I say? I spent a week thinking. I actually can spend months thinking. But then November would end. So, Day 9 - 5 pages of Abbya nd Maddie, Morning, Noon and Night (working title only - maybe, I think). I was thinking it was 2 twenty minute scenes but now I'm wondering if it is not 6 ten minute scenes. I suppose it will be what it is supposed to be,.

I am just under 30 pages right now. At this rate, I should be finished with my play in a week since I doubled my pages in two days. Thank the gods!

That's who I meant.

You might end up popping out a Greek inspired play at the very last minute. Wouldn't that be fun? You should either post here or email me a list of modern adaptations I should check out. I LOVE Classical plays and I find adaptations and translations to be exciting. I really wated to do a version of Antigone when George W was still in office that portrayed him and Theseus (i'm pretty sure I got the right king, but I am in the middle of a brain meltdown so forgive me), but you know, that never came to be. But it would have been fun.

Hooray for day 9, the ninth day straight in which I have not been able to work on my writing! Classwork will do that to you. I figured I'd "check in" and blab about my Dramaturgy class. We were talking about Greek translations today, and our reading was all translation theory. It was fun stuff. Our whole class has been focused on the Greek plays and modern adaptations of them. It's making me want to write a crazy out-there Greek adaptation myself someday.

My final project is going to be on Marina Carr's Ariel, which is an adaptation of the Electra myth. I'm looking forward to getting started on it because I've never read/seen any Marina Carr. That's what I keep telling myself--that even though I'm not writing much at all this semester, I'm learning a lot about theater and reading a ton of new plays.

Anyway, so this post was completely irrelevant. Good luck to everyone who is actually able to get some writing done!

EDIT: oops, forgot to add a subject line!