no pressure then

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?

-- Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

One of my favourite books on writing. Fills me equally with delight and despair.

work the nerve

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one's most intimate sensitivity.

-- Anne Truitt, Sculptor

Makes me think, oddly enough, of stand-up comics - the bravest of performing artists. Of Margaret Cho returning from network hell to tell the story. Sia Amma, mining the laughter from her clitoridectomy. Chris Rock voicing every taboo of interracial sex.

Amanzi Ngawethu

means Water Is Ours in isiZulu.

On September 2 and 3, 2009, the Constitutional Court of South Africa will hear the final appeal in a case brought by five Soweto residents challenging Johannesburg's discriminatory prepaid water meter system. Their six-year legal battle would reaffirm the constitutional right to water for all South Africans.

Low-income communities in Johannesburg's townships do not have sufficient water resources and do not receive the same water services as residents in wealthier, often white, suburbs. Yet, the Bill of Rights of South Africa guarantees everyone's right to have access to sufficient water.

Read this incisive analysis and history of the struggle, by political economist Patrick Bond.

Zac Drake in Bwagamoyo!

I'm thrilled that Zachary Drake has agreed to read the male parts for the staged reading of Bwagamoyo in Oakland on September 12th.

Having a co-performer - especially a professional actor! - ramps up both the nerves and the excitement. Nerves because I need to step up my own game to the standards he'll bring to the work. Excitement at all I can learn from working with someone of Zac's experience and caliber. Double excitement at seeing how he'll inhabit my script and bring it to life.


Zachary Drake, born in Minneapolis, now hails from Alameda, CA. In the Bay Area he has performed with San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s school tour, Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival, Mountain Play Association, and the Asian American Theater Company. He has worked with Northwest Asian American Theater in Seattle, and in the Twin Cities area with Mixed Blood, Minnesota Festival Theater, and Great American History Theatre. In January ’04, he played the lead in Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures, co-produced by Theater Mu and Park Square Theater. He also performs a solo show, Dust Storm, about the experiences of a Japanese-American high school student from Berkeley sent to an internment camp in Utah during WWII. Recently, he narrated the “Gold Rush” episode of the History Channel’s Emmy award-winning 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America. He holds a B.A. in Computer Science and Psychology from Yale, where he appeared in numerous shows including title roles in Oedipus the King and M. Butterfly. He is also a graduate of American Conservatory Theatre’s Summer Training Congress. When not acting, Mr. Drake is an independent computer game producer, a happy husband, and a proud father.

Beauty In Wording

is what the editor at online magazine, Bravura Artist titled my interview, which just went up on the site.

Wording, as a verb, tickles my rhyming bone. My brain is tossing up Thurber-esque ditties:

wording while birding
mental limbs girding
could induce nerd-ing

is wording like herding
or shaken, not stirred-ing?

And it totally cracks me up to be on Bravura's homepage alongside Britney, Shilpa Shetty, and Miss Universe in a bikini. The word improbable comes to mind :-)

Read the interview here.