Capricorn 27° (January 17)

I am absolutely not sleeping. It’s at an alarming juncture. The days are all blending together. We have chat with Tim today which will go well but I’m surely losing my noodle

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1455-1460. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

The summer plans are starting to firm up. And we found out we’ll be traveling mid to late July for our overseas jaunt. Looks like we will be sailing from Sicily which is kind of amazing. It won’t be the usual crew this summer which is a bummer but one should always remain open to new experiences and people and at least we will know a few of the folks. It is pretty great to have these milestones because you can see how much things have changed. For years it felt like not much ever did, but as we move forward, I see an acceleration in my accomplishments. In the meantime I have some major axes to grind. Here is a missive I just sent off.

As you can see from some correspondence below, the Afterglow Festival had several talks over the years about creating a Playwright’s Residency at the FAWC and to fundraise $30K to that end as directed by M. Actually the conversation dated back to a meeting I had with MM before M even took over. I met with M twice in person and he had suggested we raise this $30K and then, when I began to follow up, he changed the story on me (it was in fact like he forgot our whole conversations or at least that was his stance to avoid, I guess, following through on what was a solid plan.

Since D has taken over the Provincetown Theater, he has created a solo-play festival (which is the main thrust of our Afterglow Festival) and has even booked upwards of four artists (some performing the same works we premier) in effect poaching these artists from Afterglow which is a thing one learns to avoid in Tiny Town. Now I see that he is creating a Playwrights Residency with you along the very same lines as what Afterglow and FAWC discussed doing over the last five years. Our Playwrights Initiative already had bothDW and TK on board as advisors to the would be programming (and residency) we sought to collaborate with the FAWC on.

When I tried to get back on track with M and get an understanding of how it is our plans could be “forgotten” or go by the wayside, he became very defensive, and (the symptom becoming the cause) seemed to blame me for my reaction to his sudden reversal of our plans. Anyway, I wanted to go on record with these emails. And you can check any past log books to see the actual four times I visited the FAWC to discuss this. Once with MM, once with S.V., and twice with M, who finally green-lighted the endeavor and then conveniently back-tracked.

I know there is nothing you can do about it. And that you will continue to do this thing I proposed to FAWC, now, with the Provincetown Theater. But I thought you should know of all the hard work and planning I had already put into this and the Pulitzer Prize winning professionals I already on board as the Advisory Board of this Playwright’s Initiative. I will add that over the years I have cast D as a reader in Afterglow shows and even allowed him to direct a solo play that we premiered. I have involved him in what were our Theater Forums (which did in fact result in the positive overturn of the PTC Board and ultimately led to his being appointed Artistic Director. D has been well aware of our programming as well as our future plans. He surely knows our roster of artists. And mention of our plans for a Playwrights Initiative with the FAWC was announced in past outreach to our own board and sponsors, which is something I ran by Michael Roberts in 2015. It was ONLY when I ASKED Robert by email (again see below) if I could specifically say to possible donors that we were raising a separate $30K for this residency he said we should model on the Ohio group that he seemed to forget the entire two in-person conversations and back-tracked, proposing a watered down September event (which was impossible since it was the EXACT same time as our annual Afterglow Festival which happens each September.

You will hear years-old frustration in my note here today. And I must say that seeing a notice of your collaboration with D and Provincetown Theater has certainly stirred my passion. Because I have passion about this and I’ve worked hard on this idea over the years and engaged top people to help me and, as you know in non-profit world, so much of ones free time and energy goes into upwards of eighty hours a week at certain points in the year just to pull of the miracles we do with fundraising and programming and all the rest of it. As we have no brick and mortar, I was so happy that the FAWC had been interested in working together. And it was one thing to have those promises dashed by Michael four years ago, it’s quite another to see my idea now emerge between you and another entity.

I’m feeling my inner Penny Arcade today which means I’m a bit sickened by sycophancy and the loss of true artistry to the cult of worship and venal reward. Continuing the good fight to help truly progressive, emerging and veteran performing artists find more and more audience in a sea of gentrification. Translation: Time to crank up the fudraising machinery for our non-profit festival, series, and overall presentation work. To that end I will be working on this as a starter, editing it, massaging it into place. Something like:

Happy Spring 2019! I hope this finds you well and thriving. As the daffodilsclose out their seasonal performance here on Cape Cod, I too am in a spirit of renewal and thus reaching out to you and other hopefully returning Sponsors of the Afterglow Festival. This will be our ninth year; and there  has always been something magical about that number for me. So much so that, back in 2010 when I started this endeavor, I named the parent non-profit company of theAfterglow Festival, 333 Inc., nine being the number of the muses. And in our first year (though we comped many sponsors, colleagues, students and seniors) we ended up selling exactly 333 full price tickets! This was more than a fun fact for me—it still feels like something of a sign. And here we are, nine years later, hoping to continue to make some real magic.

In the ensuing years, the Afterglow Festival has preserved Provincetown’s birthright as the birth place of modern American theater and performance. The festival has premiered and developed scores of solo plays and pieces that have moved off-Broadway and to famed stages around the world—musical, comedy, dance, opera, hip-hop, cabaret and uncategorical genres—by artists who make headlines for their art and social narratives.

We have presented over seventy artists since 2011, many of whom have gone on to stellar career success on the stage, in film and on television. It was at Afterglow that much of our resident and visiting audiences first heard of artists like Bridget Everett, Cole Escola, Our Lady J, if not members of our own advisory board like Taylor Mac, Penny Arcade, Justin Vivian Bond, John Cameron Mitchell and other now more renowned performers. Afterglow has created a home in Provincetown for these vital artists who feel a spiritual bond to the town, to its theatrical heritage, and to our local audiences who embrace them.

Over the years, Provincetown has increasingly attracted big-name acts in season that garner desired revenue for the town’s for-profit venues. Then, suddenly late summer, the Afterglow Festival takes stage. And for the past eight years, Afterglow has won audience trust for its curation of superb live programming by performing artists they’ve probably never heard of, as evidenced by the steady growth in the festival’s annual attendance. Likewise, over the years, the costs of producing a festival like ours (including venue rental, travel and lodging for artists) have also increased, but with your help we may continue to bring tomorrow’s headline performers to Provincetown every September.

Afterglow is supported by Joe’s Pub @ the Public in NYC, where we have presented, for the benefit of our non-profit, group performances by the Afterglow “family” of artists. And in collaboration with the American Repertory Theater, whose directorship was impressed with our reputation and achievement, we launched our Afterglow@Oberon (formerly Glowberon) series, now entering its fifth year, bringing our artists to Boston-Cambridge audiences as well. The series has contributed to Afterglow’s overall outreach and praise by the media, from the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, PBS-WGBH and others.

Under a new 333auspice—Glow, “A Moveable Festival”—funded through separate grants and support, we began creating ancillary performances and small tours throughout New England for our arists who aim to entertain audiences with their works and seek to expand and evolve social consciousness more ubiquitously with their message. All of our artists, as it turns out, are activists of sorts who proliferate positive change in our communities, from local enclaves like Provincetown, to the global one at large.

As we champion the Afterglow performers whose careers have begun to soar since first appearing with us in festival, we continue to introduce and incubate new crops of gifted artists, giving them the opportunity to create, present, premier and develop new theater and performance works here in Provincetown; making for them an artistic home; and providing them sacred stage space to experiment, express and explore their art and craft.

I sincerely hope that you will return this year as a valued sponsor of Afterglow; and that we might welcome you to our shows, introduce you to our artists, and otherwise share in the joy that your valued patronage provides for our hardworking, devoted and talented performers, be they emerging or established, whom we are humbly privileged to present in festival. Afterglow 2019 takes stage September 10-14 at the Art House Provincetown, with special opening night festivities, on September 9, for artists and sponsors alike.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.


It’s about 3PM in the afternoon and I hope to get enough of an interesting Blague hammered, here, with some speed and accuracy as I have myriad to-dos on my list today. What I’m most interested in doing is communicating to myself what marks I must hit on a daily basis, from May to September, as this is the time of year where I add a huge chunk (producing my non-profit theater and performance festival) to my quotidien grind, which by rights, should be anything but. I must admit I don’t feel particularly unshaky as my inner ears continue to have a mind and life of their own. But it does come down to more than that. There is a certain level of sobriety that I feel needs to be achieved; not in the traditional sense (although certain abstainance is always a good idea at intervals during the year) but moreso in light of my interpersonal relationships. I’ve pretty much spoken up where and when it has been necessary; and I’ve surely given both B. and D. (oh, and Sven, too) a snootful to suck on (and up); but beyond that I really don’t feel as if I am at war with anyone, or need be. I mean I never want to be at war with anyone, but that has not been my fate overall. When you are working in any kind of public arena you will brush, bounce, bump up against others who will (try to) use or exploit you in some way. I have had artists come to festival for instance and purposefully tell their friends and other would-be audience to stay away because they are “working in progress” and otherwise collecting the same stipend I fundraise for them, disallowing us from recuperating any monies that we do put out. I find that sort of thing reprehensible. Just as I find people at other venues poaching artists to be a sleaze move.

And then 3pm becomes 4:30 and you find you strayed away to make beds and vacuum the whole house and get the chicken stock going and shoveled the ashes out of the fireplace and flossed your teeth and put a sweater you need for New York into a delicate cycle and called Barneys New York in Boston to see if they can recommend a place to mend cashmere. And in that time you’ve also tried to further hammer some performing artists into slots for the coming festival and series seasons. A kingsized mattress was delivered. Did you know they come in boxes now? And so I’m having someone come and take the exiting one away. Also I think I found a service in New York City where I can ship my moth eaten cashmere to be fixed and they will ship it back. Something called AlterKnit. I have to ready the festival website for givers. I need to work through a casting list and get these shows booked. May is going to be a combination of reading through old Blague entries, writing a new one, working on rejigging the proposal, getting brain around sample material and format for all of the signs. Only on weekends and in the evenings can I work on the festival I think. There are only so many hours in a day. By June the rejigging and the sample content should be complete. And there should be notes on what might make a good show. And then June will be piecing that show together into some kind of script for myself and then I have all of July and August and a third of September to get the rest into works. I should be able to finish the HA books completely in July as my daily work on the boat which could be a lot of fun. August will be all about rehearsing and hopefully getting some musical accompaniment going. Maybe I can have Drew or someone come up and visit. But probably better to get a player here that can handle it or see if Matt would like to do it. The point is that we have a number of possibilities for pulling this all off.

I won’t even be thinking about the new circuit, either, until May or June. And that can be in the course of any given day. I will reach out to Becca at Endicott and see if she would like a repeat performance by one of our artists. I need to also put a letter out to the artists to tell them what I’m on about. September would be a great time to start talking to the corporate folks about fundraising for my “circuit.” I need to build allies systematically. And it’s all about units of time. One of the secrets of success. The difference between multitasking and seamlessly juggling is a very fine line that much is certain. Anyway thanks for letting me vent the disparate thoughts in my head today. (And spewing some resentments I’ve felt over the last couple of days) It’s been most helpful, dear reader, and I promise I’ll get back to more cosmic things soon. But some days I need to just be a human being.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.