Just had a very strong conversation with the lighting lady. She came on very strong and said all kinds of annoying things and I came on equally strong. There's three things that bother her in the script - I explained it's words on a page and also after listening to what seemed to me to be an out of proportion reaction, I suggested that a couple of the things that are making her "cringe" might be baggage she's bringing to the script, which has little to do with what I wrote. Something is pushing some button, clearly. In terms of the period monologue I think when I explained what the actual point was she could see it and I told her I probably wasn't making changes to that. The other big thing for her was basically one line and I can step back and see her point, but again, the way Sami delivers it it's funny so it isn't like reading black type on a page. She felt the line made Molly negative - I don't feel that at all - she's fourteen and her mother and her are going through a phase that all kids and moms do, at least the kids I've talked to. I may end up looking at the wording of the line, and I think she was happy that I was open to at least looking at it - but certainly the reaction at the reading and the workshop would not have told me the audience was taking it that way. Anyway, it was a bit of a knock-down drag out, in which she actually threw out the word sexist, which was the wrong word to hurl in my direction since I am about the least sexist person on earth. She felt that Molly's having these problems with her mom (which are all dealt with amusingly and she has an entire monologue where she says it's just a phase and how much she loves her), but that she never talks about her dad because he wouldn't like that, but that he's a good dad. She thought that was sexist of me as a writer. Say what?
