{"id":4247,"date":"2021-01-06T10:02:17","date_gmt":"2021-01-06T17:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/?p=4247"},"modified":"2021-01-06T11:26:20","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T18:26:20","slug":"coastal-drama-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/archives\/4247","title":{"rendered":"Coastal Drama Games"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1972 I was living in a commune in Santa Cruz and piecing together my minimal living by working for three bucks an hour as a landscaper and house painter while playing guitar and singing for tips in caf\u00e9s and pubs. So when a young lawyer offered me thirty bucks per meeting to attend California Coastal Commission meetings in Santa Cruz and write reports on those meetings for his law firm, I jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The California Coastal\nCommission was established along with the Coastal Protection Act in 1972\nthrough a state ballot proposition sponsored by environmentalists hoping to\nslow unchecked development of California coastal areas. The commission was a\nserious work-in-progress in those early days, and the meetings I attended at\nthe county building in Santa Cruz were, in the vernacular of those times,\ntrippy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was one of the only\npeople attending these meetings not<\/em>\nthere to try to convince the commission to approve building projects\ntheoretically verboten under the new Coastal Protection Act. Each supplicant\nmade his or her case\u2014sometimes it was a coastal city or town, sometimes a\nresort developer, sometimes the builder of a house\u2014and most of these cases were\nmade with the aid of slide shows projected on a big screen in the darkened room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Approval or disapproval\nof these projects couldn\u2019t have been based on what was revealed at these public\nmeetings. By that I mean, incredibly destructive projects that never should\nhave been approved often were, and projects that seemed benign were frequently not\napproved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1973, having by then covered several of these Coastal Commission meetings, I got a call from a man I will call Mark who said he was a good friend of my uncle Howard and had just built a new house in Aptos. Mark wanted to invite me (and a date) to dinner with him and his wife and another couple. He said Howard had told him he had<\/em> to meet me, that he and I would hit it off, and I would love to see his new house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My uncle Howard was a\nbig time entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles. We were not close, but I always\nliked him and vice-versa. Mark sounded interesting, my girlfriend Nancy and I\nwere paupers, and the idea of going for a nice meal in a snazzy new house\nappealed, so I accepted his invitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the night of the\ndinner party, we donned our best hippy garb and followed the directions Mark gave\nus to his house. And the closer we got, the more perplexed I became because we\nwere headed into what I thought<\/em> I\nknew to be coastal land that was never to be built on, land the Coastal\nProtection Act was specifically designed to protect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Mark had\nsomehow gotten approval to put in a quarter-mile asphalt road just north of a\nstate park and running right along the shore to a spectacular rocky point,\nwaves crashing below his enormous modern house cantilevered over that rocky\npoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We parked our jalopy between two dazzling new cars and walked on the beautifully lit cement walkway inlaid with ocean rocks and fossils through a gorgeous Japanese garden to the massive front door and rang the melodious doorbell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark was a short wiry\nfellow in his sixties, his wife Maureen a gorgeous blonde in her twenties\nwearing a shimmery diaphanous dress I mistook for negligee, their friends Jason\nand Lisa in their thirties. I was twenty-four, my girlfriend Nancy twenty-two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Maureen and Jason\nand Lisa had wine in the living room, Mark gave Nancy and me a tour of the\nspectacular house. On the tour Mark explained that my Uncle Howard had been his\nattorney on a number of business deals, and then he, Mark, worked for Howard\ngratis for a couple years to learn what he needed to learn to pass the bar and\nbecome his own lawyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we stepped out on\nthe massive deck overlooking the ocean, I mentioned my Coastal Commission gig\nand expressed amazement that the Coastal Commission had approved the\nconstruction of Mark\u2019s house, not to mention the road<\/em> to the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Mark said, \u201cWe found\nevidence of a former dwelling here.\u201d Then he smiled wryly. \u201cSeveral planks of\nold redwood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHere?\u201d I said\nincredulously. \u201cThere was a house here before this one? But there\u2019s no level\nground. This is jagged rock. Your house is an engineering marvel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was sufficient\nevidence of a possible former dwelling to warrant building here and on other\nfeasible locations along my access road,\u201d said Mark, sounding ultra-lawyerly. \u201cAnd\nI\u2019m on very<\/em> good terms with a\nmajority of the commissioners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWait,\u201d I said, aghast.\n\u201cYou\u2019re subdividing the land along the road?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust on the ocean\nside,\u201d he said, ushering us inside. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to overbuild and put undue\nstress on the fragile coastal environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Following the delicious meal cooked by their\nexcellent chef, Maureen asked us what we did<\/em>,\nand Nancy said she was studying jazz piano at Cabrillo College and working as a\nwaitress, and I said I was an aspiring writer working as a landscaper, and my\ntrio Kokomo was the Friday and Saturday night band at Positively Front Street,\na pub near the municipal wharf in Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Nancy added, \u201cAnd Todd\nleads Drama games.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone\u2019s eyes lit up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDrama<\/em> games?\u201d said Maureen. \u201cTell us more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had learned a bunch of\nwarm-up exercises and interactive Drama games from my friend Rico\u2019s wife Jean\nwhile living near them for a time in Ohio where Jean taught Drama at Central\nState University and gave weekend acting workshops. When I settled into commune\nlife in Santa Cruz, I orchestrated Drama game nights at our commune and a few\nother communes in town, and that landed me a gig leading Drama games for\nemotionally troubled teenagers in a local residential treatment program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan we do some Drama\ngames now<\/em>?\u201d asked Maureen, shimmying\nin her shimmering gown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was reluctant, the\ngroup insisted, we had an hour of fun, and the games ended with us standing in\na circle with our arms around each other improvising tonal melodies and\nharmonizing rapturously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the circle broke, Maureen\nsaid, \u201cThat was the most amazing thing I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lisa and Jason echoed\nMaureen, and Mark said, \u201cOh my God, Todd. You could make a fortune<\/em> from this. You can franchise<\/em>\nthis, and for a modest percentage I\u2019ll set the whole thing up for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut these aren\u2019t my\nexercises,\u201d I said, shaking my head. \u201cThey\u2019re taught in Drama classes and\nworkshops all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t matter,\u201d said\nMark, excitedly. \u201cIt\u2019s all in the packaging and the marketing. This could be\nhuge!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, I did\nnot pursue packaging and trademarking and franchising and marketing of those\nDrama games, but my friends and I had fun coming up with names for the\nhypothetical venture, including The Walton Method: Drama Games to Liberate Your\nInner Creative Child.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1972 I was living in a commune in Santa Cruz and piecing together my minimal living by working for three bucks an hour as a landscaper and house painter while playing guitar and singing for tips in caf\u00e9s and pubs. So when a young lawyer offered me thirty bucks per meeting to attend California […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[990,6390,6392,6394,6395,6393,6396,9,33],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4247"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4251,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247\/revisions\/4251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}