Obviously, my living room is ill-suited to be a performance space. Yet, last night we squeezed into this room with half as many chairs as people and had the weekly Ready Or Not. No, this is definitely not a stage. After a warm, summer day, my apartment radiates all of its heat inwards, turning my home into an oven. As well, the absence of any practical lighting made it hard to see the performance. The lava lamp in the corner, apparently, didn't help much, but did get more than one comment that it looks a bit like a... thingy.

So by the warm glow of the thingy lamp, we got all artsy and wacky. Singing, reading, monologuing.

When it came to my turn, my cohorts kindly agreed to read a script that I've had on the back burner since '96. That, I have to say, was frightening. Their performances were excellent, despite reading cold -- thank you Steve (Ahmed), Jim, Leanne, Elaine, and Christine. The frightening part was hearing these words coming alive from the past -- hearing them in painful clarity as if for the first time. Now I know why I couldn't finish the damn thing. The script is the stinkiest piece of stilted, meaningless crap I have ever heard.

Ah, well, I suppose I should keep it in perspective. The whole point of Ready Or Not is to try new things and get feedback. For me, it's just for fun -- really, I have no pretensions about being a writer. What I enjoy the most is just playing with words (as I'm doing now) and bouncing them off whoever will read or listen, in order to see how people react.

In the cold light of morning, I located the sides from last night's reading and disposed of them in an appropriate manner. Their shreds will appear at the recycling plant to be processed and reborn to a better life as another document. Maybe as somebody's user manual.

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