my dad

My Dad came over for dins last night. He doesn't live nearby, but sometimes he has to be in town and he always stops by for a visit. It makes me glad that he saves this time for me. My Dad and I haven't always had the greatest of relationships, but I when he comes for a visit I feel like all that difficultness, harsh words and actions, are behind us and he can go back to being my hero, albeit on a much more human scale. (Turns out it's easier to forgive humans than heroes.)

He asked me what I'd been up to so I showed him this clip of Stephanie Dodd performing my monologue Dancer #3 last year. I wrote it specifically for Stephanie, for Jody Christopherson's Eschaton Cabaret (Bowery Poetry Club and Dixon Place, 2011-12), but here Stephanie performed it all by its lonesome at Sky Box.

I figured since I shared it with my Dad I'd go ahead and share it with you too. Some things to note: it was directed by Deborah Wolfson, original music from Anna Marquardt.

My favorite part is at the end when the audience seems really to take what she's saying to heart. I won't be a spoiler and tell you what it is, you'll just have to watch the whole 5 minutes and find out for yourself.

Things that bring me joy

1. Downloading a record onto my iPhone on the way to the subway stop so I have something new to listen to on the train. Today's lucky record is the new Ultraista. It came out in October last, so maybe I'm a touch behind, but it was either that or the playlist featuring Mala Rodriguez, Roots Manuva and Mary J that's been on eternal repeat for weeks. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

2. The reactions to my brand spankin new short play Puff Puff, which I performed with friend and long-time collaborator Ali Ayala at Sticky on Saturday night. We rocked it. The play was, well, people were offended. Actually deeply offended. But we kept them laughing the whole time, so they forgave me. The play was definitely in keeping with our theater project's mission statement: art for non fascist living, meaning that we seek at every turn to explore the foundations of our most fundamental beliefs in order that we may rule our ideas and not be ruled by them. The play was about rape, and let's just say I was not preaching to the choir. Jacquetta Szathmari said it was "ballsy," which, if you know Jacquetta... She also said "it was like you just rolled a big ol' scrotum right in here." So I feel badass, and I love that.

3. Still my coat. It's snowing, and I'm like toast. I mean I'm toasty.

4. That I still have two more projects happening in February: my monologue Karen, the result of a collaboration blind date between me and Homa Hynes by Mariah McCarthy, can be seen at Mariah's PussyFest at Joria Studios on 02/10, buy tickets; and Radio Mara Mara, starting its 3-show run on 02/18.

5. The express train arriving across the platform.

hey that's me!

This is more on the panel I mentioned for Fire This Time. I wasn't the only one who was moved to write about it, so I totes dig that.

sincerely

Sincerity is my new thing. I mean it.

secret Sticky

It's no secret that I'm co-producer of the Sticky series, and my guess is the location for this Saturday's secret location Sticky isn't a secret anymore either, but here's a secret or two about producing a 10-minute play series:

It's way harder to make a theater show without venue support. We're selling our own tickets through PayPal, and I'm gonna be working the door. Makes me miss Bowery Poetry Club, their web sales, their dedicated staff. I sure hope we weren't meant to charge sales tax.

I wrote a play for this Saturday's show that's pretty offensive, and I'm performing in it, and I don't even know my lines. It's called Puff Puff.

I hope my laundry comes back in time so I have something to wear.

www.blueboxworld.com

New Coat!

It can get cold in the life of a playwright. In the life of a playwright you might even live in New York, where it gets pretty cold. You might even lose a couple coats in the life of a playwright, perhaps by leaving one at your inlaws and not managing to go back into the sticks to get it, or perhaps by having one stolen at a bar when you were out drinking like the miserable playwright you are.

And there you are in New York, where coats are expensive. Unless you happen on a mega sale with an added 20% off and buy a coat. Then you could be happy like me.

Fire This Time

...and the next time, and the time after that.

I'm on the R heading home from The Fire This Time Festival where I got to be on a panel about producing your own stuff. I was nervous, because public speaking, but it was fun, and I feel good, I could go out all night now.

Anyway thanks Fire This Time, and Kelley Girod for inviting me, Kevin R Free moderating, and interesting other panelists.

And if you were there, I told you about Sticky* and how you should come to the show.

*Sticky
shorts and micro plays
January 26, Saturday, 8 pm, $10
Buy tickets: www.blueboxworld.com

Juice

I ran to get the train, but had no metrocard juice. Went to the machine, but someone had jammed a metrocard into the credit card spot on all the machines in the station, and none were accepting cash.

What the hell. Who does that. All I could think was that someone had jammed all those machines specifically to force people to use some specific other mta machine. When I got to a different entrance, and found another machine, I was momentarily scared to use it lest there was a trip wire or identity thieving malware or something.

Design your show

My new play has alot of props and sound cues. It takes place in a radio station so there's the DJ booth props, props in the analog archives room, sounds of what's playing on the radio: music, ads, interviews. I'm presenting act 1 in a one-acts festival during the third week of February in NYC.

If I'd been working on this play two years ago, or even last year, I would have hired designers: props designer, sound designer, someone to coordinate the origin music (I need a melodic cover of NWA's Fuck the Police, among other things). But when we started working on it, Ali Ayala directing, I realized that I did not want another set of hands or another set of ideas in my world. The world of the play is a real place to me, I know what it looks like, what it sounds like, and I want complete freedom to control the atmosphere of that world. I wrote (am writing) the script. I chose the director, I cast the roles. I want to design the props, I want to design the sound.

It feels good to have the whole world come together the way I imagine it, to not have to explain to someone, who has their own ideas, what I want. Instead I just do what I want.

A few years ago I would have said "I can't do all the props, I need to focus on the writing. Plus I bet legit props and sound designers are better at this stuff than me."

But now I realize you don't need a masters degree to design sound or props (or write or direct plays for that matter). I can be my own self-proclaimed expert in the world of my play.

Here's a props list:
Reel-to-reels and player
Hard drive
Laptop
Binoculars
Microphone
Head phones
A big fat joint
A sound console for the booth

I've started the binoculars (left), the reel-to-reel tapes (the wheels down front), the mic (center on the table), and the hard drive (far right on the table).

Karen

You can see Homa Hynes perform this at Mariah McCarthy's Pussyfest. Joria Studios. Feb. 9th or 10th, 2013

Karen
For Pussyfest. By Libby Emmons

Karen is on the stage. Talking to Sarah. Talking to the crowd.

This is my private life.
I live my private life here in public.
It’s warm here, with you here. And I feel like maybe my own identity is just as manufactured. My own identity is over-wrought. It’s all consuming to cultivate an identity that appears to be the true revealed you.
Hey Sarah?
Did you go?
You can’t just keep being mad at me.
Can I get someone else to do this?
I’ve been having trouble feeling things lately. It’s like I cut off my own personal access to actual deep feelings. When I start to get emotional I like, I like switch. I abdicate my emotional self. For the next part of my life I’m not doing that.
I’m not gonna feel things anymore.
It feels better saying it. I’m not gonna feel things anymore.
I’m not telling you this because I love you.
Horrible things happen to people all the time. Truly horrible things. All my horrible things-- I’m not a victim, I am responsible for myself, no one did things to me, anything that has happened in my life I have allowed to happen. It has been mine. I own these things. I can make up lots of reasons why the things I did were only in response to, were in fact the only options, but I know now, I know they were my choice.
Things about babies aren’t meaningful because they are things about babies, things about babies are meaningful because all life is meaningful and the opportunity for meaning begins at birth, that’s why things about babies are meaningful, they’re not just pink and soft and big smiles and bliss and everything, there’s more than that. It’s cliche to talk about babies, I’m a woman, I’m standing here talking about babies, don’t judge me for that.
What is your responsibility for that which you bring into the world?
Sarah don’t hate me. It’s a real question. I couldn’t know, don’t judge me. They said the baby wasn’t gonna make it, they just whisked it away to some sterile room, I couldn’t know. I didn’t have to see it to know it wasn’t gonna make it. I knew something was wrong even before. I knew in that way you know when the end of the month is coming up and you’re short on rent but you don’t know in your every waking minute know because then you might as well just take your wok and flee in the night. I didn’t have to see his face to know. What good would it have done to look at the little dying thing, like starving children on charity commercials, Just Change the Channel. I could get over it easier if I didn’t see his face. Avoid the pain. Doesn’t do him any good, me feeling all that, grief, he’s dead, what does he need my grief for? I couldn’t have done anything for him in the little bit of time he was alive, what use is that? He needed doctors.
Me sitting there half cut open crying over a dying thing? To show him that kind of pain for his only experience of life, why would that be better? The only difference it would have made is I would have held him, that’s all. I would have held him and maybe just loved him. Even just for a minute.

on the R train

This woman is protecting her things from my feet in the foreground. As though my feet have any interest in her stuff.

But the real question is how is her white coat so clean? Mine is filthy. And now I know why my mom said I should have bought black.

Maybe because she's old(er). And doesn't roll around in the park with her kid.

Ruby

From I Am Not an Allegory (these are people i know)
by Libby Emmons

Ruby in a hospital gown, in a hospital room.

RUBY

They did things to me that I don't remember. And a bunch of other things that I Do remember.

My ex used to say you could fill a book with the things I've blacked out.

When I think about my life sometimes it stretches out ahead of me and sometimes it stretches out behind me, but it never does both directions at once.

I don’t like to look back but when I look in front of me it stretches out so far ahead that I can't even see the life I'm living right now.

Two floors up when I was little there was a candy tray on the nurses' station. My mom would only let me have two pieces a day but I always tried to make it more. The day she died, looking so small in her bed, I thought 'today I'll have four.' And I felt guilty to feel sad.

A breeze comes through the back of this dress.

One of the geriatric patients made a pass at me. He's a big man, alot bigger than me. The next time I see him I might let him. He's always reaching out. I like how his hand looks, soft with folds of skin. I think to feel his gums on my breast would be nice. If an old man would suckle me I think I could relax for a bit.

Jess

From I Am Not an Allegory
(these are people i know)
by Libby Emmons

Jess is at her place, with a webcam, with fresh veggies.

JESS

I do a nudey webcam so I can stay home and raise my son. While he naps I stick vegetables in my vagina and pretend I'm coming just so I can stay home with him. He is my dream. He is actually my dream.

Sometimes it's not pretend. Sometimes if the viewer pays extra I give them the real experience.

I used to make artwork. Then I got pregnant and I was proud that I would be both an artist and mother. But it turns out the only thing I want to be is a mother. I don't care about art anymore and of course that makes me feel guilty, and I don't know how to explain to my son “mommy didn't want to be an artist anymore, she just wanted to be with you,” without sounding pathetic. I would have thought my mother was pathetic if she said that to me. And I know I'll want to do art again, I'm just in this like baby bliss right now and even though it feels like it will last forever I know it won't.

You see mothers who have children at their sides and it is clear that they have Got Over It. But I know that while it lasts I don't want to do anything else. So I bought a webcam. I didn't do it to be shocking. And I am not, y'know, managed by anyone. Plus it's not like I have to actually have sex with anyone. I was always better at masturbation than sex anyway. I get to this point in sex where like I just need to focus if I'm going to orgasm, and I can't focus with a dick in my mouth.

Jess felates a cucumber.

Cat on Hot Tin Roof

"Why won't you fuck me?"

"Because I hate you."

....

"Also I hate myself. And I may be gay."

first post new site

Here's the first post on the new site. Hello.