The Great American Asthmatic Play
"Don't say climate" and other stories of reality v. politics
Okay, here we go! Another year. Arguably a new one. It feels more like an ominous sequel on the political front. Certainly, I feel more conscious of cyclical time and history rhyming this go around than usual. Regardless, I hope you’re doing well, nay, doing brilliantly, and I wish you and yours a very happy new year. Don’t let anyone steal your joy (but maybe also don’t run a political platform on it?) .
Forgive me, Substack, for I have sinned, it’s been untold moon cycles since I last sent a newsletter. The past four months have been a blur of teaching and research. In an absolutely stellar bit of news, The Civilians and Princeton University granted me The Next Forever commission and residency. I’m working on a play for them about an asthmatic asshole novelist and her estranged daughter. It’s also about global warming/heating/boiling/chaos. As we are still in collective denial about how serious that mess is, and this corner of reality 101 been skillfully politicized and spin doctored for seventy years now by vested business interests, I suppose it’s best not to mention that part. Unless of course I want to be punished with nude deepfakes of me on the internet. (I’m down! Just make me hot, please.)
Regarding climate, I’m sorry I mean re: growing asthma triggers, I’m cranky and furious and exasperated and a deeply concerned citizen, but I don’t believe this is the apocalypse. That’s one of our dominant narrative affects for climate stories, but it’s a faulty framing that eclipses our agency, which is vast. That’s not to say the situation isn’t deadly urgent. “Whatever you write, please communicate how urgent this is,” said a Princeton Postdoc in hydrology from Delhi, when I asked her what she wanted to see in a climate play.
Thus far, I have interviewed fourteen scientists at Princeton to deepen my storytelling. This includes experts who are influencing massive efforts at decarbonization at city-wide, state, national, and international levels. Doing this much research has been revelatory, and overall made me more optimistic, not less. I’m astonished how much of a gap there is between what experts know and what regularly gets communicated to the public. If you’re interested in the nitty-gritty of transitioning off fossil fuels and what great work is already being done, despite epic bad faith efforts to prevent it, I highly recommend the podcast Shift Key with Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins. Or, for a quick takeaway on why a healthy climate is worth fighting for and you shouldn’t just lay down and play dead, here’s a limerick by sedmundsss in
’s newsletter. On Earth, here we have all the tools
To justly transition our fuels
Protect lands of peat
Eat kelp and less meat
And live in a future that rules. Research is a weirdly under-emphasized playwriting skill. I was chatting with my writer buddy MJ Kaufman about this and they agreed. They teach at NYU Tisch and are working on integrating more research practice into the dramatic writing curriculum.
That’s all from me today, except for…
POSTSCRIPT FOR PLAYWRIGHTS
My online classes are by necessity still on pause this spring, but some brilliant colleagues are offering online teachings soon. If you’re craving writerly community I recommend checking out…
Karen Hartman’s 100 Day Reckoning: A Creative Response to Hard Change
Day One: January 26, 2025 - Day 100: May 5, 2025
More details about pricing and meeting times at the link.
A creative and spiritual reset that can transform your relationship to That Thing— a defining event – a hard change with a Before and an After that shook your reality and made you who you are. Maybe it happened a long time ago, or maybe it’s playing out now. Maybe you chose it, more likely you didn’t. You suspect That Thing could be a source of fire and strength that opens new creativity, courage, opportunity, and capacity for intimacy… if only you can wrangle it gently. That Thing might be: Loss, trauma, divorce, change in health or ability, work shock, a big move, family estrangement, pregnancy loss (abortion or miscarriage), addiction/recovery, gender transition, “empty nest…” or even major success, marriage, becoming a parent, or winning the lottery!
John J. Caswell Jr.’s Writing in the Overlaps
February 6, 13, 20, 27 from 6 - 9pm US Eastern Time
$150-$200 sliding scale
A four week workshop focused on the mining of personal biography and the exploration of liminal spaces of subconscious processing, Writing in the Overlaps is a deep-dive into your own self-mythology to generate new material that straddles the boundaries of both reality and the mystical. Great for writers interested in sourcing material from their own infinite pasts to break boundaries of genre and structure.
Email John at johnjcaswelljr at gmail dot com for more info & to sign up.
PPS You can apply to the next round of The Next Forever commissions until January 15.
love,
Kate
GREAT NEWS! Congrats! : )