DAN'S PAPERS, September 12, 2008 Page 39 www.danshamptons.com
Twentysomething…By David Lion Rattiner I was sitting in a class of about four people at a playwriting workshop at Guild Hall with Josh Pearl, the teacher, listening in. Thanks to enormous pressure from Danielle Zahm, Guild Hall’s PR person who sends me events about Guild Hall nearly every day so that I’ll post them up on the danshamptons.com website, I signed up for the workshop. It’s a seemingly impossible effort to get my musical about lifeguards in the Hamptons up on the stage, and Danielle is always asking me how that’s going. At one point, Jayne Freedman, the amazing hair stylist and leader of The Springs Community Theatre, had set a date for a performance at East Hampton High School. We were in rehearsals, but after a date change, several of the actors cast in the show had conflicts with the date and had to bail. The debut of Main Beach The Musical would have to wait. At the workshop, we were reading over scenes of various things each of us had written. We all got pretty into it, and it was clear that a lot of what we were reading to each other had a lot to do with our own personal experiences. We’d read and then listen to each other on what we thought of what we wrote. I started reading from a play I wrote three years ago called The Fundraiser, which is a spoof on all of the fundraisers out in the Hamptons. We got to talking about how writing has a lot to do with what happens in our own lives, and then I started arguing that it was a good idea to exaggerate in your writing the parts of your life that are interesting, and we had an intellectual debate about it. I left the workshop inspired to write something interesting, and after our discussion, I figured that the best thing to write about was something from my own life. Unfortunately, however, I decided that I really wasn’t all that interesting. My roommate, T.J. Clemente, a writer here at Dan’s, just got a dog, a beagle that’s God’s gift to the planet. This beagle is just the perfect dog. In fact, right now as I’m writing this, I’m getting anxious to head back home to see “Bo” the beagle. It then hit me that the life of Bo was extremely interesting in that he struggles to get people to give him food. I came to the conclusion that a play needed to be written where all of the actors dressed up as dogs on stage. The entire show is about three dogs living in a house and desperately hoping that food will drop off of the kitchen table. I gave Bo a hot Italian sausage as I typed away, and he gobbled it up. I then worried about the horrendous flatulence that Bo was about to have. It didn’t matter, I thought — he is just so dang cute when he wants to eat. I’m not all that different from Bo when it comes to food. We relate that way. When I’m hungry I also beg, cry, run around in circles and begin barking at people. I am very anxious for Bo to meet my Dad’s dog, Moo (yes, Moo, like the cow), and see how that relationship unfolds. It would make for a good scene in the play to see what actually takes place between the two of them. If they
sniff each other, we’d have to have moments in the play where the actors sniff each other. If they bark and fight, the actors would have to bark and fight. This is theater, baby! I’m not quite sure what lesson I’m trying to learn here (dogs are wonderful?), but I have a note that I meant to tie into this column somehow before I got caught up in writing about Bo. So I’m just gonna drop it on you people with no tie-in because it is important to mention.
Brett Favre equals AWESOME. I am so freaking happy that football season has started off with Brett Favre throwing two touchdown passes against the Miami Dolphins, and that this loser Pennington is no longer quarterback for the Jets. It is just the greatest thing ever to have Favre with the Jets. What a sad day it is for Tom Brady, I’m really upset about that. NOT! Bo is happy about Brett Favre, too. There, that kind of ties it in, right?