LONELYPOND PRESENTS

Haven’t talked Shakespeare in a bit, but the calls about Merchant of Venice (#merven) auditions are already starting so it’s moving back into the mull over space in my brain. And my holdover obsession from my last reading is RINGS. Three of them: Portia’s, Nerissa’s and Shylock’s.

Shylock has a ring, you say, I missed that. If you did, go back, because I can’t get the thought out of my head that it is THE pivotal moment for his character. As Shylock is having a meltdown over his daughter’s disappearance with his goods, having only just paused that to finish his meltdown over the unfair treatment of Jews and moneylenders, his fellow moneylender Tubal reports he saw a ring Jessica traded for a monkey. Shylock’s wife had given him that particular turquoise ring before their bethrothal. Tubal’s revelation comes at the end of a scene mixing Shylock’s rage and thirst for revenge over his daughter’s betrayal with Antonio’s ill fortune and the opportunity it affords Shylock to settle a lifetime of grievances (III i) This scene changes the whole tone of the play and Shylock’s interaction with the world around him. And Shakespeare tosses in this moment of sentiment/personal history/real emotion(?) after Shylock’s totally over the top, playing to the balcony seats, possibly staged and well rehearsed rant*. So we come to the make or break scene, but while most seem to focus on the big dramatic “Hath a Jew not eyes” speech, I find myself focusing on what Shylock says after, when left alone with his only peer in the play and discussing the trigger of his raging sorrow (Jessica’s betrayal). Taming of The Shrew (#tamingshakespeare) taught me to only pay as much attention to the “BIG” speeches as the play actually requires so what I find myself wondering is not does Shylock bleed but does he shed a turquoise tear over wife’s loss and daughter’s treason.

And now to the shredding. Well, it’s going to take an exceptional actress to convince me that Portia’s not just a bubbling fountain of egocentric, self important, smart ass cruelty. What she does to Shylock could be justified as over protectiveness of Bassiano but then I stumble over the cruel trick she and Nerissa play on their newlywed husbands. First, they give Bassiano and Graziano rings and make them swear never to take them off, give them away, etc. Then, Portia and Nerissa, disguised as learned doctor of laws and his clerk, demand the men give them the rings as payment. Later in the final act, Portia and Nerissa claim to have lain with the doctor and the clerk by virtue of their possession of said rings. Oy. I must say the men show remarkable forbearance. Almost (only almost) more than finding a Portia, I worry about finding a Bassiano who can make Portia seem lovable. And Portia never bothers to explain that it might be a response to some of Bassiano’s protests of his loyalty to Antonio during the trial. Shakespeare often leaves a kick in the teeth for directors in Act V (if he hasn’t earlier aka Act I, sc ii of The Tempest, which should just be a prequel titled The Duke Of Milan).

So while many people focus on the three caskets, gold, silver and lead, that challenge Portia’s suitors, I find myself obsessed with three rings.

*I admit to pre prepping the occasional rant while pacing in my office/backyard/empty theatre; haven’t you?

Greetings, o most loyal and amazing blog visitors. Happy 2010. I’m going to give you a fairly thorough round up as I would really like to be taking a couple of weeks for some R + R while it’s cold and all my baser instincts are saying, “Stay under the covers, it’s warm.” I am not particularly good at the R + R things so I may be forced to resort to things like read all the Harry Potter books, read all the Sarah Caudwell books, read all the Terry Pratchett Watch themed books, read my MFK Fisher + Elizabeth David, dig out my Raymond Chandler and Peter Cheyney, read through the pile of newspapers, watch all the movies I’ve borrowed from friends (Tristram Shandy, Bubba Ho-Tep, Steam Boy), watch the movies I watch every year and skipped in ‘09 (the original 3 American Pies, Tomb Raider, Bring It On, The Bandwagon, Strictly Ballroom, etc.)

So to tide you over, there’s the new Blink Kitty Love, all the old Blink Kitty Love, the band website and this:

Lunch With Tristram Stuart who feeds people from discarded food to highlight wastage.

Article about really cool jazz pianists CD collections I can’t afford.

The FT’s this year in culture quiz…

Stefan Stern’s suggestions for movies to watch and pick up business tips from this season (for the rest of you who don’t do R + R).

Very cool story about a native Gypsy theatre experiment/troupe in Spain. I am always amazed by the effect theatre can have on both audience and performers.

Umberto Eco’s latest looks to land on a list of fun reads.

Hoping to catch Nine at the local cinema…doesn’t look like Orson Welles and Me or The Station will make an appearance here; bumped Moon to the top of the Netflix queue and may soon give in to the buy Star Trek and/or Wizards of Waverly Place The Movie DVD urge…also on that list, the Cary Grant double feature — The Bachelor and The Bobby Soxer and Walk, Don’t Run, which I just saw on TCM and laughed at the frequently priceless moments.

TV: Zeke and Luther’s I, Skatebot episode looks cool, a bit worried about Wizards vs. Werewolves (Wizards of Waverly Place) — perhaps too soon after Wizards vs. Vampires and what will be left for Max, Wizards vs. really grumpy mythological creatures left out of the Twilight series — not really watching much on Nick at the moment except for late night What I Like About You, Top Gear kicks off a new season soon (Gayle very excited), I still miss Warehouse 13 and I really need to spend more time reading.

Merchant of Venice (#merven) planning not kicking into gear — but it’s early yet. Trying to get an artist for the logo, Gayle’s scheduling shows, I’ve decided to have people audition with their cool electronic gear (cell phones, laptops, etc.) Need to read through the play again; concerned about the Bassiano/Antonio axis –and no, I don’t mean in the gay way, just in the everybody’s always so concerned about Portia and Shylock, but hey without these two, I’ve got two right side wheels on a vehicle that needs two on the left as well.

The Lonely Pond Productions, Inc. annual meeting went in unexpected directions. But Google Wave worked well when the snow prevented travel. I need to put together scripts for a short live action adaptation and a few animations. And mull over movie related issues some more.

And Sarah Hemming’s “Twelfth Night” review left me grumping about people who weight down comedies with misery so I have been considering exactly how tragic the characters of Malvolvio, Sir Andrew, Wile E. Coyote, Elmer Fudd, et al are. And her Rope review makes the show sound like an excellent experience to have in a theatre.

Speaking of Hitchcock, there was a Vanity Fair photospread (thanks @njtam, a fellow Hitchcock fan) of modern stars in classic Hitchcock scenes…the women do better than the men, who seem to suffer from not being Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart.

My current favorite breakfast is oatmeal with hot apple cider for a drink, my current most likely to be worn shirt is this one (it amuses Gayle) and I heard this amazingly goofy song at one of our favorite restaurants that Google has been no help with finding the title of…the lyrics as we can remember go something like this: “you’re good cause you don’t do things like (or that) you should…you’re cool cause (cuz?) you don’t do things by the book.” Sounded like a guy singing, it was a Spanish-Peruvian restaurant where music usually has spanish lyrics, it was chanty, and if you drop the title/artist in the comments, there will be a reward.

And I think that gets you up to date — and should tide you over for awhile. Wishing you the best of 2010’s. Stay warm.

P.S. Cool toasters…I need one.

Go see Bandslam and then take a date to (500) Days of Summer…Bandslam (marketing controversy) is not selling a lot of tickets and that’s too bad because it really is very well done, excellently acted and has great soundtrack. Some problems but worth the price of admission. Go. Now.

(500) Days of Summer was just really excellent and more like a great conversation/third date than a movie. Go. Now (now plus the 120 odd minutes you need to see Bandslam — which you can also take a date to).

And then come back after the weekend + check out the latest FT links, a long rambling post about movies, commitment, writing, walking, rocking + a few other things that meander by.

But I want to see your ticket stubs first.

And what, you wonder, is tech rehearsal for Theatre Under the Trees like…well, we borrow someone’s backyard, unload three carloads worth of stuff, put up the set, put on costumes, run the show, take off costumes, eat things you cook on a grill, put costumes back on, run the show again, break everything down, and reload it into three cars. Then I come home, notice I don’t have anything fun and semi-healthy to eat that can be dipped in milk, watch Flash friendly TV, and then Gayle goes to bed, I put on last.fm’s Radio FlashCatFlash and transfer pictures from my camera so I can e-mail them as promised to the York Dispatch’s Entertainment Editor. For the finish, I write a tersely worded costume notes e-mail to my costumer, who was the most disappointing part of the day.

It’s sad when the professional lets you down…no costumer at tech (and I asked politely aka begged) and thousands of questions. Gayle has been so busy coping with set, prop and spillover costume questions when I’m dealing with other questions that there really hasn’t been time for music. So we have two more rehearsals to see if we can work incidental music in, we’re ditching the keyboard and Gayle’s going to see if she can get enough up to speed on her clarinet that audiences will be able to hear “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate.”

Grump…but it was mostly a fun day in beautiful weather and lines flowed better the second time through. Costumes that were present and fit looked great. The 8-9 yr old troublemakers actually policed their own behavior after a glitch caused by overexcitement due to beach ball. I think that bodes well for the future (the self policing).

And I really need a producer + a stage manager + a full sized truck, but I have from the beginning. We will manage. It’s what you do when you tour. And Friday, we open and I find myself thinking I might start looking forward to it.

Oh, and wonder of wonders, I have cracked the big horrible awful Kate speech. You see, the thing is, it’s not a polemic about marriage or a declaration about the rights of womenkind. It’s notoriously tempermental Katherina ticking off her annoying little sister and Hortensio’s smug, witchy new wife. And with Bianca and the Widow’s reactions, you just get drawn into the scene instead of hurrying off your small children or thinking, gee philosophy of life is happening. And I am very happy about that.

And here’s a picture to commemorate the day — Petruchio, Kate and Grumio, after the wedding:

After the Wedding

Well, the Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays so let’s talk about comics I’ve picked up recently + some of my favorite characters, both of which categories include Captain America.

Picked up Captain America #600, my interest piqued by rumors that they were going to bring him back. Killing Cap upset me — although, it’s comic books; it’s what happens. If you want a character with a storyline that never aggravates or annoys you, write your own comic/novel/cartoon. But that might not be a guarantee either.

Cap is all about triumph of human spirit and #600, which he doesn’t appear in is chock full of it in the good tear up a little and feel better about humanity sort of way. It’s a journey through how people feel about Cap’s legacy and Steve Rogers while Sharon Carter tracks down a rumor he might not be totally gone.

I’ve signed on for the Captain America trip, adding the book and the Reborn miniseries to my pull list. The comic book guy spent five minutes raving about Ed Brubaker’s writing and totally blanked when I mentioned my favorite Cap story arc, “Man Without A Country” drawn by Ron Garney. Garney’s Cap was iconic, a little cartoony (which I like) but solid and real — exactly like Cap should be. And Mark Waid’s strong stories gave Garney and Cap a springboard for excellent comics.

What else did I pick up? Jersey Gods, which is up to Issue #5 and fizzled somewhere in the middle of #3. Keeping your two main characters worlds and galaxies apart is not a ticket to keeping me interested. It turned from a potentially sharp love story to a plodding New Gods riff…Boo. New Jersey deserves better.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold is leaving my pull list soon. It’s become a dusty visit to some little known corner of the DC heroverse each issue without any wit or humor.

Batwoman, aka Detective Comics #854 with the Question II back of the book story rocked. Rucka’s a good writer (see Whiteout comments) — speaking of Whiteout artist Steve Lieber was robbed and doesn’t have the resources to promote his latest book, Underground. But back to Detective, whose artist is J.H. Williams III, whose fight scenes are kick ass wonders — he makes the Kate Kane in the Batwoman costume pages have a different, more stylized feel than the out of costume pages. Don’t like the tan background motif to the non action pages, but it’s a small quibble. Looking forward to the next issue. The Renee Montoya/Question II story is just the kick off without enough time to develop anything. I am trying to track down (actually I’ve sicced my brother on it — he’s the comic shopping expert in the family) the Gotham Central issues (6-10) where Montoya was outed and kidnapped by Two Face.

Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers — yes, Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers…I always liked Lockjaw’s appearances with the Inhumans and there’s a frog in a Thor costume (let’s see Branagh work that into the movie). Pet Avengers was fun, is only four issues and I’ll keep reading it. I seem to be on a Marvel kick.

But then there’s Phonogram, which is beautiful. Jamie McKelvie amazes me. Characters and colors make up for lack of background in the mostly nightclub interiors. The Singles Club is an interesting collection of characters — the first one pulled me in, the second one I couldn’t find (Joe’s on it, I hope) and the third was still beautiful and cryptic…I need to put all the music the creators list in a last.fm station.

Almost forgot Kansas, which is a Smallville reference. Now, Superman and Captain America are two heroes I think of as counterparts of each other — even though Superman adds yellow to the red and blue motif. Read MTV Splashpage interview excerpt with Justin Hartley and was somewhat disheartened at the news that he thinks the series could continue onto infinity when I think it lost it long ago.

What would get me back; humor, Lois, The Legion, Maggie Sawyer, moving Clark off stall, not having killed James Olsen, the Justice League rocking out, MUSIC — I hear songs from episodes of Smallville on last.fm and lament the loss of so many music style and wit points.

My favorite episodes;

The Season 4 openers, Crusade and Gone, where Lois shows up…excellent introduction of a great character. Actually, you can easily include the third and fourth episode — Facade and Devoted; the Lois and Clark interaction promises a sparking relationship to follow. Season 4, Episode 13, with Lois at Metropolis U is one of our favorites, with Clark demonstrating how essential Lois is becoming to him. Tom Welling does an excellent job of looking at Lois differently than any other woman — it’s a fascinating mix of exasperation, interest and concern.

Season 5, Episode 6, Exposed, is my favorite episode and not just because of the Lois pole dance (but oh, the lovely irony of Lois twirling to “Don’t Cha (Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot like Me).” Maggie Sawyer makes an appearance and I had hopes that this would be the first step on the path of Lois and Clark saving the universe together.

The Season 6 Lois/Green Arrow story line held my interest, but the show doesn’t want to commit to Lois and Clark and they seem to have lost their grip on her character and any hope that she and Clark would actually make a compelling couple, whether romantic or colleagues.

Now, I think Tom Welling does an excellent job, as does Erica Durance, Alison Mack, et al…but their talents are WASTED on the emotional, ill plotted morass Smallville has turned itself into — VOLUNTARILY!

And yet, no second season of The Middleman. Bah.

Happy Fourth of July. Exercise your first amendments rights and actually comment, darn it. And don’t blow yourselves up.

Ok, Shakespeare (#tamingshakespeare) takes up a lot of time + mental energy. Traffic control with 7, 8 and 9 year olds takes up even more, so blog posting may be a bit erratic for awhile. But tonight at rehearsal, I was so IN THE ZONE…it was a great feeling, solving problems, dodging poetry + meter jams, hearing things right for the first time, moving actors and words and motion like everything was a painting, a symphony, a play, a whole entity that was clicking into its moment.

Personal notes: instrumental jazz drives me crazy after a bit, I prefer lyrics mixed in with my melodies; the little brother acquired a Hewlett Packard tower of some sort so we’re back to low level World of Warcrafting again while we work off the rust, and I really want to go on vacation. But first, I want to turn a kick ass Taming of The Shrew out into the world. We’ll see if the buzz/zone/focus survives Thursday and the return of the 12 and under crowd.

Twitter’s been fun(and yes, there is some irony underlying there); there’s all the #iranelection stuff and that somehow led to the gay activism #lgbt stuff and sparks occasionally fly off my twitterfeed these days, but they are directed at the political workings of the universe and not causing glitches in my internal mental circuits (NOTE: I need to subscribe to last.fm so I don’t get the have you been eaten by a bear graphic so often as I listen to Radio FlashCatFlash in the background. Flash is an ardent consumer of media — listener of last.fm, chewer of Entertainment Weekly.) Although, I did try follow an agent for awhile — I occasionally try to find new + interesting Twitter peeps, but it seems like the people on the inside of the “I’ve been published/I know the system/I’m not a Visigoth” wall shrink away from and patronize the strivers/hopers/schemers who think writing leads to JK Rowlings levels of success and billions and who believe that there’s an easy solution and that someone would actually tell them if there was. And that’s just tiring — the patronization: there is no easy solution; there’s only your own tolerance level for continuing to try. I suppose, to sympathize with the gatekeepers, smug or otherwise, that it’s also tiring getting harassed by people who want to be published. But I just don’t like the industries built up to take money/hope/energy from people with writing/moviemaking/painting/crafting/creating dreams. And who make little hoops for people to jump through rather than respecting honest effort. And the people who control access to the gates with assured superiority really tick me off - and no, I’m not sure that this agent was one of that breed, but it did trigger some memories. And yes, somewhere back in the day, my ancestors painted themselves blue and did things like tear down the towers of Rome. But then we learned to read the books and saved the civilization we once helped burn. And now we’re writing the blogs and drawing the webcomics and digitizing the viral videos.

Oh well, apparently, Twitter related mental glitches/rants still occur. But on a personal note, two of my WORST auditionees ever, who had the most trouble with the language, had turned into two of the MOST amazing and dedicated Shakespeareans by the time they stopped having time to spend their summers touring Shakespeare. Because they worked their asses off, they learned, they tried and I gave them opportunities and challenges. I am so thankful I took them up on their enthusiasm and bravery instead of dismissing their stumbling over the language. And I am so grateful it is a lesson I learned the FIRST time I directed Shakespeare. I remind myself of it before every audition.

Have been having a tweetversation about Henry James — someone’s reading “Turn of The Screw” and I suggested “Beast in The Jungle.” So I went looking for it to make sure that was the story I was talking about and found excerpts and suddenly thought, OMG, that’s what influenced Jane and Sally’s relationship in In The Bleak December. Wow. Amazing how what you’ve read and only remember the experience of gets threaded into what you write. And here I thought it was mainly Persuasion and Bellwether and Topsy Turvy mixed. Maybe the sequel could stand to be influenced by Taming of The Shrew. I can just see Jane grumbling “To me she’s married, not unto my clothes.” Now, there’s a place to start.

Speaking of married, we went to see The Proposal and were not impressed. No one seems to do dialogue anymore — or even put the stars in the same shot. you have faces, you have names, why worry about chemistry, communication, plot, script, the fast pace of banter…why not just linger on movie star faces. Oy. I watched Kissing Jessica Stein to recover my love of movies — now there’s a movie with some great conversations.

Now, so as not to be responsible for a total rant fest, I have hopes of (500) Days of Summer, which is apparently non linear. And I am still enjoying piecing together the upcoming Scott Pilgrim movies from Edgar Wright’s daily photos. And there’s the hope that Bandslam will actually rock. Must see Hot Fuzz sometime; NetFlix is becoming a must fit into the budget.

Anyway, thanks for listening; keep cool, get some sleep and some sun. And brush up your Shakespeare; it’s fun, darn it.

The thing that cheered me up today, from @chandlerisms: “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”

I was skipping through the entirety of my withoutabox blog, which I had e-mailed to myself(long story for a not so late night), and realized that I often mentioned the mark of a true lonelypond blog entry is a mention of insomnia, Shakespeare and/or Lois Lane. And I never mention Ms. Lane anymore (this is the brunette part of B + B, in case you haven’t figured that out yet).

Although the part of the still very small smallville season finale I did watch had her and Tess rolling around on a desk (oh, come on, just put them in jello and don’t pretend you write plots that are any good anymore — note that I am not advocating jello wrestling(yes, I really need to sleep; that might cut down on these tangents) or watching actresses on the still very smallville wrestle in said jello(that would only make it tinyville) — where was I –oh, Lois rolling into the future with a ring and The Legion…maybe Erica Durance and the LSH will come back next year with some writers who have a sense of humor, a sense of style and want to once again have the best music on TV since Buffy. Besides, “what kind of TV show kills off Jimmy Olsen” — I’m quoting Gayle. Sigh. smallstill.

Oh, right, and still not sleeping and thinking I should go down and pull a Peter Cheyney book off the shelf; he’s a British writer of the hard boiled detective school. I discovered his works, oddly enough, in a bookstore in O’Hare Airport and have treasured them ever since. You can probably guess why from the titles: Dangerous Curves, It Couldn’t Matter Less, Sorry You’ve Been Troubled, You Can’t Keep The Change, and Dames Don’t Care (don’t have that one and no, you can’t borrow the rest.)

I have been reading Nicola Griffith’s blog with some frequency recently, partly in gratitude for her getting me back to reading and the library and partly because we seem to dislike the same books. A recent answer about where she gets her characters’ names reminded me of interviewing Tamora Pierce. How to come up with names and characters is one of the things Pierce gets asked most often in Q + A sessions.

So this got me thinking about creativity and characters and how they take over whatever you’re working on and everything you’re thinking about…even when I’m directing a play as it seems exposure to weeks of The Miser aka L’Avare (and the impending interruption of my Financial Times subscription — newspaper vs. car payment, car wins) is making me grumpy about money and cynical about marriage (and I’m almost sentimental usually) — nearly every character is suggesting writing widowhood/widower status after three months or so into the wedding contract. So there’s the draft of a post titled “WHY THE ECONOMY HAS ALWAYS SUCKED FOR ARTISTS” sitting in a folder, but I really do prefer not to dwell on that sort of thing as I am happy with the active choices I’ve made to direct the plays I choose, film the movies I want and follow the characters that come to me (as well as have time for tea with Gayle when her insane work and sleep schedule allows). So instead of that rant, I’m channelling my energy into other posts (this and the previous and the haiku).

Back to characters, the flow of creativity and naming after that much briefer rant:

Jane and Sally at one point just took over In The Bleak December…I remember a couple of frustrating nights where Sally just insisted on behaving like herself and it was nothing at all like I had planned. That was extremely educational. Sally was inspired by an actual person so I kept her first name; Jane just seemed to go along with it. And Jane’s last name is lifted from a cool science fiction adventurer type I used to try to fit into something — Mycroft Holloway (first name after Sherlock Holmes smarter brother but the character was a girl). I find the naming process very exciting as I take time with the names and discovering the personalities that they connect to…

In the mystery I was recently working on — before the Muse that is comedy took over again — I have a completed first draft with a cool collection of four different narrators. Rereading it led me to the conclusion that the narrator I started with had to be excised and a character who only popped in a couple of times but brought so much energy with him needed to take over a third of the book and drive the sequel. Before the draft really took off, I had to sit down and connect a bunch of family and sibling dots.

I do family trees as a tool…I remember one of the grand fantasy narratives I wrote as a teenager involved complicated and intense family trees for both the human and horse characters.

For LONELY POND MONSTER (looking for love)…the process started with me being a preparation fiend and wanting to shoot a short before the big Shakespeare tangented project we were all excited about…so one friend said, “well, the place I’m staying at has a pond and we can film there” which turned into me ripping out a story about a Lonely Pond Monster who wanted to make friends by joining in activities and a Spinning Girl who was trying to fit in by changing her wardrobe…and there would be no dialogue because as it was my first movie and much as I love our sound and sound effects guru, he often has the same effect on me that tequila used to (there’s the book Jill Shaffer and I were going to write where each chapter started with “and then I took another shot of tequila” complete with the real time authors’ experience of the same — my poetry phases are always interesting) so I decided silent film with music, let’s emphasize my skill with directing physical comedy. And then LONELY POND MONSTER (looking for love) turned into two of my favorite weekends, a really cool story and a love for the process of movie making. And the Shakespeare tangent movie– well, that’s a story for daylight hours.

So basically, imagining characters, naming them and following them where they lead is one the best and craziest adventures there can be so enjoy it. They’ll thank you for it.

And now, I’m going to read part of a novel for at least six minutes. Good night all; dream well.

Aniboom won’t play these full quality either — I don’t know what player myToons used, but I have not found a site that can handle FlipBoom yet so download the current + full quality set o’ Blink Kitty Love episodes (enjoy and good night).

NB: Vimeo drops out a few frames as well…the Bold Cool Coiffed sequence in “I, Jobot” doesn’t register there either.

Well, let’s just say I’m grumpy…and be glad you don’t have to put up with me in the morning…or the afternoon or…

If by chance, you don’t want to read a rant theatrical, here is a cartoon about the perils of translation.

See, what I always say about theatre is that one of the things I like about it is that it happens in the evening, at the earliest a once a week afternoon matinee. But now, thanks to the homeschooling schedules (and the theatre sharing schedules) and massive cast conflicts with my original schedule, I have four hour Monday afternoon rehearsals of The Miser, starting at 1 p.m., which is usually when I’m having my green tea after sun and chi gung. But no, I have to go inside the theatre, away from the sun and fresh air; be personable, upbeat and entertaining; rehearse; do my own darn breathing exercises (Gayle leads them with the Theatre Under The Trees Cast in the summer where one of our goals is to rehearse outdoors whenever the weather permits; Gayle leads them because I speed through them and am occasionally — you may be surprised here — not a calm, soothing vibration); and figure out a way to use four hours effectively to rehearse half of a play that’s clocking five acts in ninety minutes. Tomorrow, at least we’re rehearsing the whole thing so if I throw in improv games, breathing exercises, a brief history of French theatre and a comedy matters pep talk, we should be done at 3. That leaves two hours. And I don’t want to run the entire play twice — I’m worried my Miser is going to blow out her voice…although there are performance dates where we do two shows: one at 9:30 AM and one at 12:30 p.m. So we need to build stamina for them. And yes, I knew about the morning shows when I took the job(they said I didn’t have to be on the premises, but as a director, you can’t let yourself off that easy). But it was a very funny script and I’m a sucker for comedy.

So I don’t plan on sleeping the week we have performances…make sure you check back then, if you find this sort of thing entertaining (or know a good joke that will cheer me up). And to start this whole Miser process off, I got one mother who didn’t want her daughter to play a guy and was willing to do costumes instead until some point at the readthrough when they both slunk off quietly and an 18 year old who lectured me for 15 minutes on the language and inappropriateness of the translation before quitting. There is a licking below the earlobe reference — I checked; it’s not in the French. As far as I can tell from my limited high school/college French, all the English translations put in racier things than the original French contains. Footnotes to French English bilingual edition say things like (and I’m paraphrasing because all my theatre paraphernalia is in the car) “spectacles and telescopes both contain lunette and that’s why he refers to her as the brightest thing in the firmament” and “in French, daughter and cashbox are both feminine nouns so they would be referred to as she so that this part would actually make sense to the audience” and “there was a tapestry series of Macom and ?????? popular at the time. The English translation of that last bit in this version? (and here, I am not paraphrasing nearly enough):” “Anthony and Cleopatra, he with spear, she naked, surrounded by various serpents; Napoleon and Josephine, he with hat, she naked, surrounded by various pastries; Venus and Adonis, he with tree, she naked, surrounded by clam and other molluscs”…and no, the lines I’m making up do not contain the words “surrounded by clams and other molluscs.” That one’s in the play. Trust me, it’s memorable.

Right so where was I? Cutting Monday rehearsals down to three hours, short a costumer and a lighting designer, going up in mid May and then auditioning for The Taming of The Shrew ten days after. I think that’s “Here there be Dragons” on the map.

And did I mention how much I miss Shakespeare? I always tell my TUTT casts everything they need is in the script and it’s one of the truer things I ever say. Shakespeare’s language leads you everywhere you need to be. It’s amazing. It’s even more amazing when you’re trying to direct a play by someone else and there are no rhetorical devices to help you and the translator/author decided to make every other word start with a p in the Miser’s last couple of speeches after she’s already talked through 85% of the play…that’s good planning.

Oh yes, and I’ve been so insanely overscheduled, I had to cancel a Gullible and Twitchy session, haven’t pulled out my Wacom tablet to FlipBoom and haven’t even been to the alternate office to just have some tea and look at magazines with shiny Apple technology. Maybe Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or…

And that leaves us with, “Mellow Greetings, Ukey Dukey”…have you ever watched The Bachelor and The Bobby Soxer? It’s fun. How about Tuesday around 8ish; I might actually be free. Good night, folks.