We’ve started the brief and probably wonderous rehearsal process for Roberta Laughs, a little accordion play I wrote about my Grandma for David Chapman, a director friend from UNC who has a Drama League fellowship, and involving other things that will only make this sentence even more long.

Longer.

Anyways, David asked me to write something for him to direct – and being that he was friends with my Grandma – and we both have weird connections to the accordion (he can actually play his, while I lie on couches flippantly holding mine) – I decided to pen a late-in-life love story, narrated by an awkward, angry teenage grandson learning how to play the accordion.

You are welcome, for another long sentence.

Two of the actors are going to learn the pretty beast within the next 10 days. It’s a fascinating instrument which I know nearly nothing about – but David has all sorts of stories and insights about the way the accordian breathes as you breathe; where they are made, the hands it has been passed between.

It’s nice to think of my Grandma, her independence, her spirit. Hopefully she will show up opening night, were God to take a raincheck on their game of chess.