The new year brings all sorts of work with it–which is always good news. I always feel that it’s better to focus on what needs to be done, and then get it done, than to worry about what could have been. And for me, it’s best to be busy. Coming this winter are so many exciting projects–some collaborations and some on my own. 
First up, a collaboration: A play for the GENJI REDUX project, curated by Velina Hasu Houston; it will be presented by the Shinso Ito Center and includes some very exciting writers (including colleagues Velina Hasu Houston herself plus Luis Alfaro and Oliver Mayer) taking on Lady Murasaki’s amazing text (reputed to be the first novel)–and to be directed by Nancy Keystone. Then more collaborations: getting ready for a radio version of a documentary play and after that, a site-specific work. But maybe most exciting of all, given the current state of world affairs is the upcoming MFA Rep production of ANTIGONE X, my new adaptation of Sophocles’ classic, which sets the play in a refugee camp outside a ruined city where power reigns supreme and a demagogue won’t take no for an answer–and yet the powerless decide that they will resist nonetheless. Of course the best resistance for a writer is: Keep writing. As did Murasaki Shikibu–especially in times of poltical turmoil. Here she is, taking inspiration from nature, and working working working.