2003
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2002
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2001
DECEMBER

MARCH 23, 2003 [Sunday]
Back in Portland after two months away. Happy as can be on this cold, damp day, an entire, Alexa [my daughter]—free week stretched out in front of me. Luxurious. Must make best use of time. Concurrently preparing production of Cymbeline for Georgia Shakespeare Festival. Since I'm also designing the set, deadlines are looming.

MARCH 26, 2003 [Wednesday]
My head reels. Meeting with Rose Riordan, Portland Center Stage Artistic Producer, and Mead Hunter, PCS Literary Manager, about goals for this phase of residency, long-term planning, PSU interns. One of the PCS board members—Nelson Jones—was in the Air Force after WWII and worked with one of the German scientists who came over after the war. I hope to be able to interview him about that experience. Would be fantastic to get a first hand account of any part of the story. Quick meeting with payroll dept. [You mean I actually get a monthly check for this?!]

MARCH 27, 2003 [Thursday]
Residency in full swing. I am officially part of the PCS Artistic Staff, bestowed with all the rights and responsibilities thereof! Attended both the staff meeting and the Leadership Team meeting in the morning and found them very illuminating. How To Run a Big Regional Theater. The staff viewed a video about the history of 20th c. American theater which I thought was a great idea—to remind everyone of our links to the past and the importance of the art form and our common purpose. Also important as not everyone on staff comes from a theater background. I was asked to speak about the residency, the grant and my project, essentially to let everyone know why the hell I'm hanging around the office using their computers. Leadership meeting all about money, politics, the nitty-gritty of the day-to-day as well as the long range plans and systems. Fascinating. I'm a fly on the wall. Very exciting time as the theater is trying to build a new space which would be its very own as opposed to its current tenant relationship with the Performing Arts Center. I think a new space is absolutely essential to the vitality and future of PCS, and have advocated this view since Chris Coleman became Artistic Director.

Iraq. 24/7 television spectacular: Operation Iraqi Freedom. Forgive me if I don’t wave my flag. Certainly after all these thousands of years of "civilization" we might invent a more creative approach than blowing our way through another country. We should really try to be smarter than our bombs.

MARCH 28, 2003 [Friday]
The Civil War seems to have been like an apocalyptic cleansing that had been building for decades. But the end of the war did not end the conflict and I now understand now why some people feel like they're still fighting. Slavery: the un resolvable issue in this country. Still. Reconstruction: an impossible task, dependent on Divine intervention, at least. Still.

"The union and Confederate states were not 'one nation under God.' They were two nations, divided by politics, economy and culture—all of those differences generated by the institution of slavery."—Kenneth C. Davis

"My paramount objective is to save the union and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would do it—if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it—and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."—A. Lincoln, 1862, to Horace Greeley

MARCH 29, 2003 [Saturday]
North is just as dependent on slave labor as the South. But somehow their hands are clean because they do not, themselves, own slaves. COTTON=SLAVERY.

GUNCOTTON: Cotton can be converted into an explosive and propellant for firearms. Jules Verne imagines that guncotton can launch projectile to the Moon. On a metaphoric level, cotton has explosive potential, latent in its plant form. It is transformed into explosive substitute for gunpowder but is unstable initially—often blows up spontaneously and mysteriously. Perfect. Big idea at work.

What, exactly did Jules Verne know about the US Civil War? Where did he get his information? Did he read Uncle Tom's Cabin?

FOCUS: The piece is not about the Civil War. The Civil War functions as a backdrop, an echo. The important thing to keep in mind about this episode is that it needs to be viewed through the lens of Jules Verne and From the Earth to the Moon. And then, how do the legacy of slavery and the conditions in the South [particularly Huntsville, AL] intersect with the Germans and the U.S. Space program and WWII / Dora prisoners? Also: the easiest impulse is simply to find parallels between experiences / periods / events. But that doesn't lead anywhere. I have to discover how each illuminates the other. In particular, this is a narrative of America: How have we become the nation that we are? What are the ways we have compromised our integrity, the principles upon which the country was founded? What are the INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS? The HYPOCRACIES? The patterns of history? By connecting the eras of 1865 and 1965 perhaps I can create two points of a triangular exploration, the third of which would be our present condition/era, implied or resonating from the story? [Or something like that].