…but it sounded so good, and I wanted an excuse to linger at Adam & Lena’s new place. I was doing better with getting up at reasonable hours, but here it is 5:18, and I have a brunch date with Sparky at 10, and the amount of sleeping I’m getting tonight is shrinking steadily.

I tried to figure out the name of that play I saw in college that inspired me so. I think it has the word “Requiem” in the title. I saw it at the UW between 1998 and 2000. But I can’t find a list of their old seasons online, and I looked at their slideshow of production photos but there weren’t any photos from that production. It was about painters who lived in the 19th? or early 20th century. There is a monologue in that show that I want to learn. But I don’t know the title or the playwright. I saw it with Adam, and later that month we fought about money, partially because of something I said to him that was about a conversation we had had immediately after the show. Ringing any bells, people who don’t know what I’m talking about?

(Sigh) it’s my personal Lost Play. I had a great moment watching it, an epiphany about being a woman, and I’m crushed that I can’t go back and look at it again. The information doesn’t seem too impenetrable…ooh, wait! Why don’t I just search on all play titles with the word “requiem”in them? There couldn’t be that many…

Huh. The internet tells me about four plays with “requiem” in the title…for a heavyweight, for a nun, for us, and for the innkeeper. None of those is the play I’m talking about. Shoot, maybe it didn’t have requiem in the title after all. Argh, I just did a search in various play databases for plays about painters and got a little overwhelmed.

So here’s what I remember…there’s this girl painter who wants to be taken as seriously as the boy painters. She enters a (men-only? maybe) salon contest, anonymously, with her painting of light. But her painting is derided as competent but frivolous, and the monologue I remember is her recounting her understanding of why…she had chosen shiny things to paint in her still-life, in order to capture various qualities of light, and had without thinking chosen objects that are considered feminine–a hairbrush, a necklace, a mirror. So that even though the judges did not suspect that it was a woman who painted it, her painting was considered less serious because of her womanly subject matter, and some dude who painted light coming off a haystack or something won the prize. And there was another bit in the play about women not being allowed to attend the life-drawing classes in school because there were naked people and it wasn’t appropriate…except that of course women were allowed to model, nude, in those same classes they were barred from studying in.

Anyway. Anyone know this play? Help! I’m going back to bed to try to sleep some more.

sleepy hugs
Alissa

Late update: Scofie, in the comments, totally showed off his superior ability to navigate the UW’s web presence. The play I’m talking about is Dream of a Common Language. Scofie, you’re a genius. Now I have to go read it and see if it’s as good as I remember!