the american college theatre festival: a critique

1) Too much writing reviews; too little theme parties. What kind of theatre kid am I?

2) Fell mildly in love with boys for their punctuation. Bad idea, Claire. Usually, if their punctuation is that good, they've never heard of Chuck Taylors, the Beatles... or they like boys.

3) You write plays? You need a dramaturg. Here's my facebook. You're a dramaturg? You need a dramaturg. Here's my facebook. You're a random professor from a school I've never heard of? Hi, I'm Claire, and I'm a dramaturg.

4) Apparently, at other schools, Alpha Psi Omega members come to a consensus and agree on t-shirts. I know, weird.

(This said, I may never agree to a long-sleeved t-shirt. Suckas.)

5) My own personal paradise will include a Tate Street Coffee. That accepts debit cards. It will have forty-seven paintings on the wall and a barista with impeccable eyebrows.

6) So a professor here was trying to defend someone else's script because she knew him or whatever. I said that it had potential but was undeveloped. "Well, that's the point." Um, no. Ambiguity can sometimes be the goal but some scripts just seem sloppy and unfinished. I know this because every single play I've ever written has been both ambiguous AND sloppy/unfinished and they are different entities.

7) My professional, ambitious heart was broken when someone who is not me mislaid my dramaturgy packet. Arguably, this needed to happen. I didn't like my professional, ambitious heart and wanted to return to my apathetic one.

Still, it left me emotionally drained and exhausted on many levels. I will consume comfort food for an entire week, gaining about nineteen pounds of fat: Brach's gummi bears, cheap-o gas station cappuccinos, Pillsbury crescent rolls--and I will look for Vaughn every day, because I need a long-arm hug. I also bought eyeshadow.

8) I realized that I write criticism like a dramaturg: basically, "OohprettylightsIguessIlikedititwasgood... but the script needs ______." This is why I never win Critics and will never compete as one again. I just do it because I like to see plays and critique my own writing.

9) I like college kids. I hope when I graduate, I'll find out that twentysomethings are cool, too.