by Karen Azenberg

If you’ve been reading my blog for the last couple of weeks, I can tell you that my desk is not any cleaner. My To-Do list is not any shorter.

However. . .I just spent a terrific week working with Ellen Simon on her play, ASS.

Yes, that is the title.

The story of how the play came to me—and how I first met Ellen—is a blog post in itself and I’ll save it for another time. Today, I just want to brag a little about this play—in the hope that you’ll join us this weekend for our Play-By-Play reading series and see it.

ASS is about a family; it’s about relationships; it’s about connecting; it’s about art and artists; it is funny and sad; it’s about life.

I would say that it’s an old-fashioned play—if that didn’t sound derogatory. It shouldn’t. It’s well written, and structured, and we’ve been able to spend our whole week fine-tuning the language and making sure the words on the page are saying to the audience what we want them to. It’s been invigorating!

At a time in our season when I spend a lot of my energies doing calendars, and paperwork, proofreading announcements, and negotiating schedules and conflicts, I was fortunate to spend a majority of this week doing what I love with some pretty special folks. Thanks, Ellen. Thanks to the cast of ASS—Bill, Zachary, Deena, Kalyn, and A.K.

Amazing, what a little art can do.

Until next week….