Year in Review
Originally published at The Off-Center. Please leave any comments there.
As the decade draws rapidly to a close, I find myself ruminating over the soon-to-be-concluded year. And in the fashion of livejournals long since past, I decided to write a brief Year in Review for 2009. It was a profoundly tumultuous year emotionally speaking, but really quite remarkable in a lot of ways. So, lets start at the beginning, then, shall we?
January: I had the previous month concluded my first semester at Columbia; I turned 25 and had a party to celebrate it. Second semester began and I worked with Anne Bogart for the first time in Collaboration Class which I think will be one of the most important classes I ever take. I took my first screenwriting class. I had a ten-minute play produced. Mild personal crisis due to the fact that I’d had all these things I wanted to complete by the time I turned 25 - I quickly forgot about this arbitrary deadline and went on with my life.
February: The first reading of Psychomachia went up starring Ashlie Atkinson and Debra Jo Rupp with The Bridge Theatre Company - that was pretty awesome.
March: I went to Las Vegas with Mike for what was my first real adult vacation. It was freaking awesome. Then I moved in with him which was a pretty big deal to me.
April: I went to DC to visit my parents, and I put up a short play with 3 remarkable collaborators called i am the girl with the spun gold hair. It was a highly experimental piece for me, but Jess (the director) and Shelley and Dave (the two actors) really brought it to life in a way that I never could have expected. I learned a lot from that project, small as it was.
May: My first year of grad school came to an end and I got my kitten, Calamity! I began to desperately search for a second job for the summer (and I never found one that paid).
June: I had a reading of my play then-titled Rest in Peace, Jonah Dwyer with BTW productions. Still workin’ on that one… And then I started working with Lucy Thurber at MCC with their Freshplay team. So fun, really.
July: I went to the O’Neill Festival and rewrote a draft of my play Asylum in 2 days. It was amazing. I can’t wait to have the chance to go there again. Loved it so much.
August: Went home to Michigan for a few days to visit with family. And then! And then I went to ASIA! Went with one of my best friends who was relocating to Singapore to attend Tisch Asia for dramatic writing. And I went, too. And it was a phenomenal experience. I got my first passport stamps.
September brought about the beginning of my second year at Columbia with lots of great classes, most notably an adaptation class where we saw plays that I largely disliked, but whoa boy, I learned so much. Oh, and Lyric Writing - that was surprisingly challenging. Had a reading of Asylum. Met Sheila Callaghan, which was pretty rockin’, to get to work with her.
October: The Bridge had a great launch party which turned out to be so fun, and then Psychomachia was read again, with Ashlie and Debra Jo and Frank Deal and Tom Pelphrey and Jen Williams and John Kelley and it was so good. That is the most proud of my work I’ve ever been.
November: Went into the woods to work on the Kafka Project, which was so wonderful. It was such an inspiring way to work. I want to keep those people and work with them constantly. And then I went home for Thanksgiving and saw my real extended family (read: The Kuzak Family). Also, Mike did not leave for the Airforce.
December was jam-packed. The Kafka project (”Edit”) went up, and it was really exciting in a lot of ways. The semester ended, and I went home for Christmas. The trip home was delightfully relaxing. And now I’m back in New York, ready to celebrate the New Year, and still waiting for my fucking suitcase.
In total, it was a good year. A challenging year full of lots of work and lots of heartache. But looking back, I’ve gotta call this one a win - look at all the neat stuff I got to do!
Happy New Year, everyone. I hope your 2010 is rockin’.