My ten-minute play HERO DAD will premiere in the 2012 Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Sarah Rasmussen will direct a cast that includes Hadi Tabbal, Alex Moggridge, William Connell, and Kate Arrington.

I had an amazing time working on the play with the apprentice/intern company (who also produced the play in their annual evening of ten-minute plays) in early January, and I can’t wait to go back to ATL to work on the big stage, however briefly. The first time I went to Humana (as a first-year grad student who knew NOBODY), I shared a hotel room with two of my fellow grad students and spent most of the weekend feeling out of place and too young (I was 22: a wee babby!). I’m looking forward to embracing the bourbon-y milieu with all the wisdom and poise that age brings. (Right?)

You must, must, must listen to Act III at the very least. Seriously.

Bring tissues.

…I learned from Matt Damon, Tom Cruise, and Daniel Craig.

1. Thou must run flat-out, always. Who KNOWS who’s after you, right?

2. Thou must always wear running attire that shows off your muscle tone. All of it. Everywhere.

3. Thou must always run with a look of fierce concentration on one’s face, as if to say, “I’m thinking pretty hard about this, but it isn’t taxing. The thinking, OR the running. Because this is just how I roll, ladies. THIS IS JUST HOW I ROLL.”

Sorry, boys: running is the living worst. I’m just gonna watch you do it.

Keep up the good work! And remember, pump those arms!

You have a problem, and you need to admit it. You’re addicted to…

To…

Hideously generic stock photos.

Wanna guess what this one is for? Find it pretty incomprehensible, as a white woman in a bikini making a Taylor Swift hand-heart over her lower abdomen is pretty, um, unclear? I’m gonna go with colon cleanse. Judges?

Whoops! It’s for “i-lipo.” How is this different from regular lipo, you might ask? I don’t care.

On to the next!

If there’s anything I DON’T want to do, it’s pay money so I can fall asleep while someone touches my face. What’s this Groupon actually for?

Oh. Face-touching. Okay.

And finally:

A class for teaching women to love their legs? Or maybe a drawing class where the models swan around in their matching underwear sets? Or maybe in a hot second, she’s going to start laughing while eating salad alone!

Hmm. I guess she’s about to get her spider veins blasted with cold air by a “doctor” at a “medical spa” (SO 19th century, amirite!!!).

Maybe I’m blaming the wrong people. Maybe all these companies (and the medical spas/massage joints/hippie-dippie body-care places) are to blame for filling their own websites with stock images of generic, smiley, incredibly white women doing things only vaguely illustrative of the actual thing they’re supposed to be advertising. But given how many other stock photos are on Groupon’s website (restaurants: is it really so hard to take your own picture of your own food that’s served at your actual restaurant?) I’m blaming them.

Get it together, kids. Stock photos are the worst. And consumers, if you’re seriously buying Groupons for liposuction, we can’t be friends. Don’t trust the stock-photo ladies! They know not of what they pose!

In February, my play Two Lakes, Two Rivers will be read in Roundabout Underground’s first ever spring reading series. Longtime pal and collaborator Laura Savia is directing. It’s gonna be great.

Actors Theatre of Louisville, here I come!

From the New York Times:

Delia Baseman would like to show you how big your couch is. In the New York friggin’ Times!

In addition to playing a beautiful mistress to a murderous chemist, a dental hygienist and, um, mistress, and a girl who fools people at seances into thinking she’s a ghost, Delia is tops at sitting in things looking small. Yay!