My impersonation of everyone’s New Years Eve Facebook posts for the past half-decade:
2012: “Ok, it was a rocky year, but I’m feeling pretty positive about 2013.”
2013: “2013 was rough, I’m not going to deny it, but I’m looking forward to things turning around next year.”
2014: “There were a lot of ups and downs in 2014, mostly downs, but here’s to a happy 2015!”
2015: “I can’t say it was a great year, but I’m trying to face the next year with a good attitude.”
2016: “It was a truly, terrible, awful year for me personally and the world.”
2017: “This year was really bad. I can’t even.”
Besides the gears of history moving however they may, 2017 was a good year for me, if a bit low wattage.
The #1 highlight: I had a staged reading of a piece I’m extremely passionate about, Ishtar in Syria. It’s a hulking piece that combines ancient Mesopotamian myths with the Syrian conflict, written in verse. It was a beast to research and put together, but I think it’s an artistic high point for me so far. I am hoping there is some interest moving forward — if you, reader, are interested, drop me a line and we’ll talk.
Another huge accomplishment was the production of THE COOL at the underground space at Amado’s (formerly Viracoche) in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco. The play revolved around the music of iconic jazz trumpeter Chet Baker as well as the world of 1954. Pumped full of jazz, it was musical, immersive and lots of fun. I even got to go on KQED and talk about it!
A couple other cool things that happened: I had three 1-minute plays in Playwrights Foundation’s annual Flash Plays festival, I had a short play in Arabian Shakespeare Company’s new works festival and I wrote a short opera, which was a trip. In terms of new full-lengths, I also wrote a holiday play — THE MONROE COUNTY SNOW CORPS INTRODUCTORY TRAINING MODULE.
I traveled to Iceland, Cabo, the Grand Canyon, Pike’s Peak in Colorado, Vancouver and all over California. Personally, 2017 turned out to be pretty fantastic (I didn’t even have to put a self-lacerating Facebook post up)!
COMING UP
2018 is poised to be a pretty huge year of awesome transition … I won’t jinx it by talking about it too much in a blog post. I’m in a waiting period right now, I’ll have a much better idea about how the next five to 10 years of my life (!) will go in about four months — it’s a weird feeling.
In terms of productions, CHAMPAGNE is going up in June here in San Francisco. I’m producing it along with 6NewPlays, this playwright group I helped found 6 (!) years ago. There will be a lot more news about that in the next few months, too, so stay tuned to this space!
It’s pretty funny — I write tens of thousands of words every week working as a freelance writer, but I have never been a successful blogger. Every January since Barryeitel.com went live in 2012, I’ve tried to update the site monthly, but then drop off somewhere between April and June. I’m thinking about putting up some more exciting and fresh content here. We’ll see! No pressure! I don’t owe you anything!
Just kidding. I love you. Please make Barryeitel.com your homepage. Until next time.
-B
Barry Eitel 