2010 thusfar seems to be my playwright-year to try and give voice to the dead….which definitely gives me a great sense of purpose but is honestly a bit depressing. Most recently, I’ve been working on Rotten, which is loosely based on the suicide of the lovely Phoebe Prince (above) who I of course never knew, but whose story I became obsessed with. Phoebe sadly killed herself last fall after being tormented by her high school classmates,  verbally and on facebook. I wrote it in true Bekah form, sort of frantically, for a reading of it at the women’s project, TODAY. We shall see how it goes. It was hard to dredge through the murky and powerful impulses behind taking one’s own life, as well as those behind cruelty. To lighten things up a bit, there are of course odd recreations of the single ladies dance, some beach boys, and some skittles. I went back through some of my EVEN MORE DEPRESSING poetry journals from high school, to sort of take myself back to that place. People, it was not fun. But: everything you feel then is that feeling, times 10. Joy, rejection, wantiness. But what truly brings a person to suicide? I may not have figured this out, but I am absolutely going to try.