Providence

Spent the last couple days in Providence revisiting old haunts. On Monday, I chatted with an old co-worker about things I hadn't done in Providence yet, and she mentioned the Athenaeum. I'd never been there, only knew that it somehow had ties to HP Lovecraft and Poe and what not, but it always seemed so imposing. But wow, am I glad I stopped by. I wandered around and somehow ended up in a giant comfy chair with a copy of Sarah Ruhl's collected plays, Clean House. Her name has always popped up since she studied with Paual Vogel at Brown and was friends with Mac Wellman, both MacDowell fellows, and I'd been looking forward to seeing her stuff some day.

I only had a chance to get through the title play before I had to hit the road, but I dunno, maybe it was a combination of the hushed voices and the antiquities on display, but when I finished the piece, I felt like I'd read something classic. Exhausted and satisfied at the same time. Something about the uniqueness of playwriting...how it doesn't really translate to other mediums, the wonderfully stilted rhythm of the dialogue, the fantasy elements which would be ridiculous in any other context, but with playwriting, it's so easy to just accept it as is... a beautiful play and I can't wait to see a production of it some time. And I'm def not some theater buff.

So yeah, though I definitely didn't plan it this way, I guess spent the past couple weeks reading works by three different contemporary female writers in three different disciplines in three different cities. Strange how it turned out that way...