Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
My Name is Say and I'm Here to -- Wait, No
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2004 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Joe and I saw Mike Daisey's show Wasting Your Breath last night. I loved it. I also got to hang out with Mike and Jean-Michele Gregory for an hour after the show. Fun! We swapped tales of stage-management disaster, and it tickled me that he'd read my article about outsourcing.
I also got to meet Johnny Steele, a quite funny and intelligent comedian (thanks for the hookup, Joe!). We talked a tiny bit about how to do non-autobiographical one-person shows. How do you frame a solo performance that is not "I was such a dope in college" nor just 90 minutes of jokes? In Continental Divide, characters mention that, in politics, people judge you on your worst mistake. I'm not ready to share my deepest regrets with an audience. What else do I have to share? I love the power of being onstage, but I don't burn with a message to share. Perhaps anecdotes.
I may go to the Gilroy Garlic Festival this weekend. Bah that Caltrain, which has a station in Gilroy, doesn't run trains there on the weekend.
