DANIEL JOHN KELLEY

Last week, myself and my friend Jenna had the first meeting for a long term project we’ve been scheming about for some time. The project is tentatively called “The Heartless Giant of Atlantic Avenue”.

When I look for projects to work on, I know I’m going to be working on them for a while, so it’s important to me that they are filled with things that I love- things I’ll love exploring and getting to know better, and things that I can be excited to show to people. This current project takes two things I love deeply and combines them in what I think is an interesting type of way: it’s going to be an epic mythological adventure about the changing face of my hometown of Brooklyn.

I grew up in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and every time I wander around there with folks, I always point out how this gleamy shiny building used to be a different, grimier slimier building. For instance, you may or may not know that the movie theatre at the UA Court St and its neighboring Barnes and Noble used to be a whole street of porn theatres when I was but  a little lad. I kind of sound like a geezer-face doing this, being all “I remember when this here electrical pharmacy was nothing but farmland as far as the eye can see”, but I do think there’s something very compelling and human about the changing face of cities, the changing nature of neighborhoods, and its something I feel connected to because, well, I’ve seen it happen.

And as far as mythology- this has always been a great passion of mine, since I was a little boy curled up under the blankets with my D’Aulaires book of Greek Myths. I have a great passion in discovering and writing about how the everyday can become mythic- because myths were all at one point based on something real- either the actions of actual people, or something that sprung from the hopes, dreams and fears of actual people. The plays I write are based on this. The idea that the everyday can become mythic, and by the same token, the mythic is based in the everyday.

So…Right now we’ve gathered together some folkses- both theatre folk and non-theatre folk, Brooklyn born folk and new Brooklynites- to do a few months of research into the topic at hand- the changing face of Brooklyn. And after that, i’ll put it all together in a play. Our first meeting was very exciting- and featured harrowing tales of walking down 5th avenue in Park Slope in 80s. Not recommended.

We’ll be meeting fairly regularly for the next few months, and I’ll be sure to post about it here. For now…onwards!