I am a Prop-Making Playwright

I can barely keep up with the changes in my attitudes to the things I do.

Walking, my former passion, is no longer something I like to do — actually, I’d love to do it but my condition makes it too challenging. I used to like watching TV too, with Leon cozy on my chest but that bores the life out of me. Baking and entertaining: Nope. Not any more.

And I feel almost unable to read. Me, who once read seventeen books in fifteen days won’t even read my New Yorkers. I feel driven to activity and reading is just too passive. Even when I’m writing, every twenty minutes or so I bolt from my desk to pee, get a drink or get a snack and just look around. I am constantly taking two-minute breaks.

When I am working on my dresses, I do the reverse. Every half hour or so, I stop and sit at my desk.

Another pattern I notice is how much I absolutely love a still day of writing at my desk after a long day of working hard on a dress. So I realize that a project that involves both writing and making things like Defiant Dress does, is ideal for me. Trdueau was the same because I built the set and costumes for that as well.

So I understand my “calling” and I’ve already started thinking about my next project.

The idea that’s winning right now is to build a dinosaur.

I was raised a Tyrell. I don’t feel like one but it was the name of the people who raised me, and Don Tyrell had a relative who was an explorer who discovered the dinosaurs in Alberta. That’s why the dinosaur museum in Drumheller is called the Royal Tyrrell Museum. (Don’s great grandfather dropped one “R” from their name.)

I like the idea of building all the bones of a dinosaur to scale and writing a script that calls for the dinosaur to be assembled during each performance.

That idea may not last but another will replace it — something like it. I am a prop-making playwright like Ronnie Burkett.

Rare Abalone pearls.