We can’t think of a better way to celebrate 20 years of marriage than spending nine days working on our play down in beautiful Fayetteville at the Arkansas New Play Festival surrounded by mountains, amazing food, and fantastic theatre people while Huck spent the week in Kansas with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  For Troy and me, it was lots of late nights and lazy mornings and the realization that writing a play is much, much harder than we thought.  We stayed with our friends Bob and Amy who started TheatreSquared, which The American Theatre Wing (otherwise known as the Tony Awards) presented with a 2011 National Theatre Company Grant as one of the nation’s ten most promising emerging professional theatres.  They gave “The Ballad of Rusty and Roy” Kevin Fox, a wonderful Chicago director who was immensely helpful in taking our play to the next step, practically holding my hand every step of the confusing way. We now have two brand new songs, one written by Dusty last week whenever he had a free hour (or five) and the other by Troy in the week leading up to the festival. And because all of us were there to bring four new plays to life, it sort of felt like a dreamy theatre boot camp.  One of my favorite days was spent at the house where I sat on the deck trying to fix the last scene, Troy paced around with his guitar trying to finish the new song, Bob (also Head of Playwriting at the University of Arkansas) sat inside talking to himself as he worked on his play and Amy (Head of Acting!) sat at the piano working on an original composition and an English accent.  The dog and three cats stood there watching us like we might be crazy.

And of course throughout the week we fell in love with Fayetteville and all its charming people, delicious restaurants, delightful shops, perfect weather, progressive politics, quiet peacefulness, natural beauty and lack of traffic.  As we got ready for our big adventure back in New York I made one of my famous CD mixes by listening to Johnny Cash Pandora Radio and downloading songs that we liked.  Without realizing it, the majority of songs that ended up on this CD had lyrics like this…

Gonna find another place, maybe one I can stand
I move on to another day
To a whole new town with a whole new way
(Modest Mouse “The World at Large”)

and this …

Far away far away, I want to go far away
To a new life on a new shore line
Where the water is blue and the people are new
To another island, in another life
(Ingrid Michaelson “Far Away”)

and our favorite …

Alabama, Arkansas, I do love my Ma & Pa
Not the way that I do love you

Ahh, Home
Let me come Home
Home is wherever I’m with you
(Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros “Home”)

Troy and I have been hatching a plan to leave the life we know next summer and Fayetteville has been on our mind.

Call these New Yorkers crazy, but it sure feels like Home to us.

On our way …

Here we are spending ten minutes with Aunt Lori, Uncle Steve and cousin Lauren before sending Huck on his way and getting to work.  (They had a graduation ceremony to attend at the University of Arkansas which just happened to coincide with the day we arrived.)  Notice our beautiful home in the background!  I mean Bob and Amy’s.

Huck got to be with my mom (and some radishes) on Mother’s Day …

… but I had his love note to keep me company.

Our director Kevin with Roy & Rusty.  I mean Troy and Dusty.

One of the things we fixed in the play was the confusion some audience members had about the relationship between Rusty (Dusty) and Jenny (Roy’s wife based on me).  We accidentally made it sound like they were having an affair, which was NEVER what we intended!  (You see?  Playwriting is tricky.)  Meanwhile, here’s Jonny and Dusty cuddling on the deck.

About seven minutes after this picture was taken we got Huck’s first homesick phone call that nearly caused me to get in the car and drive directly to Kansas.

About 20 minutes after these beautiful Lake Fayetteville pictures were taken we got another heartbreaking homesick phone call from Huck, causing us to question the wisdom of right-before-bed conversations with Mommy and Daddy.

This is the really cool sculpture that Huck made out of wood with my dad.  It is currently on its way to New York.

This is what happens to playwrights, actors and musicians who don’t do anything else all day.  They drink a lot of coffee.

May 16th!  We drove up to Bentonville, Arkansas for a lovely lunch and a visit to the beautiful Crystal Bridges art museum.  Later that day during the cast dinner I made Dusty announce to everyone that it was our 20th anniversary and I acted all surprised and embarrassed.  Thanks, Dusty!

Rehearsing can be fun.

We had limited time to officially rehearse thanks to our union actors, so sometimes we just went to bars and had rehearsals and meetings there.  Behind me is a table of very drunk college students.

Here we are in Little Rock following our first staged reading in front of an audience, which made me feel a sudden urge do more rewrites.

After eight days apart we were reunited with our boy!  I told Huck earlier in the week that when I saw him again we would hug for at least 15 minutes.  He held me to it.  Literally.  Later in the day when we broke the news that we had to split up for a couple more hours he looked at me with terrifying intensity and said the following awful sentence: “I cannot believe that after leaving me for EIGHT DAYS you are now going to leave me again.”

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: Parenting and Playwriting, Not for the Weak.

Lake Fayetteville with Aunt Tina, Jackson, Rylee  and Nana (Uncle Scott and Papa David not pictured), who were kind enough to drive five hours to bring Huck back to us and see our reading.

More sneaky rehearsals on the deck (my favorite place) before the second performance.

The staged reading in Fayetteville … much better!  Though Huck fell asleep on my lap about 30 minutes in,only waking up once when Dusty started playing the harmonica.

Huck is not an animal lover, but he has special feelings for Prego the cat.

Our magnificent hosts who do a good job talking people into moving to Fayetteville.  If you don’t like this plan of ours you should take it up with them.

We should try to write Huck into the play.

Rusty and Jenny!??!

On our last night we accidentally stumbled upon a beautiful eclipse!  A perfect ending to a perfect week.

One more year, Fayetteville …

But for now, it’s all New York …