Harrison Has Left The Building

Or, to be more specific, the womb.

Welcome to the universe, Harrison Gray Barrett. (Belatedly.) August 30 is a day that shall be remembered.

When You Have Eliminated The Impossible

I just finished interviewing the playwright Cheryl West. She had the interesting suggestion that these Crossover interviews should be a book. I have yet to even secure confirmed publication for the article version, but boy, is that a great dream to have.

I could see it, too - theater professionals and their first jobs. It’s totally a book I would have bought, and still would buy.

And it’s a bittersweet symphony, this life

This is my “Sad Songs Are Nature’s Onions” mix. I owe many of these to other people, mostly because sadness is better when shared.

It’s a sad day for sad songs.

Try A Little Longer For Your Friends - Mokie (Fraggle Rock)
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right - Bob Dylan
Eleanor Rigby - Beatles
The Hard Way - Mary Chapin Carpenter
Father Lucifer - Tori Amos
I Hid My Love - Audra McDonald recording
I Was Hoping - Liz Phair
Jane Says - Jane’s Addiction
Under the Bridge - RHCP
Let’s Say Goodbye - Richie Kotzen (or, Don’t Wanna Lie, but that’s too on point)
At The Edge Of A Continent - Amy Raasch
Bittersweet Symphony - The Verve
Tomorrow - Sean Lennon
Let It Die - Feist
Dig - Incubus
The Room - Suzanne Vega
Misty - (Travis Miner on piano)
Graceland - Paul Simon

I think I deserve a lot of credit for not including anything from Les Miz in this mix.

Wreck of the Unfathomable Cast

I’m late in posting this but here’s the cast for the new Chris Kelley play at NOTE.

Avram (Captain) - Darrett Sanders
Bellman - Scott McKinley
Bursar - Spencer Robinson
Prior - Carl Johnson
Arla - Rebecca Larsen
Governor - Stewart Skelton
Marin - Kirsten Vangsness
Hormon - David Wilcox
Tula - Erin Flemming
Butler - Dean Lemont

Seattleite

In Seattle with the Miners, preparing for a family party this evening, to celebrate Nelle’s birthday (belatedly). Her birthday was August 28, the day before my parents’ wedding anniversary on August 29. Mia and I just made carrot cake and the Miners’ family recipe for blueberry cake.

Seattle is lovely. Blue and the light feels like it’s going to be cold, even when it’s warm. John and I walked to the overlook over the water last night.

I also managed to run this morning, the same path, about two and a half miles. I’m trying to train for the Rock n’ Roll 1/2 Marathon on Oct. 14 in San Jose. I’m starting at a place of being completely out of training, but the memory of running in New Orleans gives a small psychological boost to what otherwise would seem impossible.

Don’t Fear The Text

Great workshop yesterday. We incorporated the text of a poem into the chorus workshop. The group was very open to the work and we got to a place I’ve never seen before.

After one hour of basic chorus exercises, which we went through in just half an hour (Dara calling out leader switch, leader switching within group, more than one leader) we were taking a piece of text (Ruth Eisenberg’s poem JOCASTA) and handing out two scripts of it, which belonged to the Jocasta speaker and the Chorus speaker. Then there was a 4-7 person chorus improvising in the background.

The rhythm of the text was the “music” they responded to.

By our final improv, the characters were fluidly and naturally moving in and out of the chorus, in and out of text, and the responsibility for the storytelling was collective.

It was beautiful.

Jessica and Lava had many questions and ideas about how this method could be used - Lava wants to try it with a newspaper article. I’m still blown away that this simple integration of text, which I’ve been fighting off for so long (and avoided in MOH&H by the expedient of text without a linear sense to it) worked so well.

Credit to Jessica’s amazing calm sense of direction, and to the group of folks who were so open.

We had a very talented actress in the group, Betsey, who had a broken foot, and incorporated her sitting on a chair - that was a good development too.

It’s such a joy to me every time I get to do one of these workshops - and now I think pushing towards text is something I’m always going to do. Linear, narrative text, poems or plays, with characters and speakers. Why not? It works! And it’s the next logical step.

I’m so happy that Lava and Jessica both saw other ways this method could be used, with approaches different from my own. It means something about it must work. Lava also liked the idea of “the set being another actor.”

Jessica was concerned that with improv blocking some nights would be much worse than others, and I didn’t have a good answer to that, only to tell her that with training, that doesn’t happen. But she did wonder if you could use the improv chorus just for the chorus folks, not the characters. Which is what I did in Human Bombing, albeit without improv, so yes, you can. It’s just a method, and it works in a lot of different ways.

Abandoning the specificity of “this moment must look like this” has freed me greatly as a director, but I do understand that it’s not exactly what everyone wants to do. If I want this technique to be used I have to be open to any kind of use.

This is such a great feeling, to have shared the work with strangers and have them become friends. We went to the Tiki Bar afterwards and celebrated, but we evaporated early cause I was kind of wiped out from yesterday at Powells (I got both FLATLAND and GOLDA’S BALCONY) I also met with Melina, the MOH&H graphic designer yesterday at Staccatto Gelato. She was a former virtual collaborator from that show, and we’d never met in person.

Zack and I are off to Seattle this AM, at the end of our road trip.

Memory…all alone in the moonlight….

I remember writing a (bad) rhyming play in my youth, in which an irate member of the chorus chanted:

“We’re ignored by almost everyone, the immortals deplore us,
And no one in living memory has listened to the chorus!”

I sort of wish I could find the computer where things like that and SEVEN FACES OF EVIL are stored - but then again, sometimes the eraser of history makes me very grateful.

But It Just May Be A Lunatic You’re Looking For

Yesterday our progress to Portland was delayed by a brief visit to the Eugene ER, where we had to stop and make sure the enormous saucer-shaped bug bite on my leg, a souvenir of Crater Lake, was not deadly. But we made it.

I write from Portland, where we are staying with Jessica and Lava. Last night we got Chinese food, did karaoke with a live band at Dante’s, donuts at Voodoo Donuts, and watched a lunar eclipse at 3 AM with Annelise, the 3rd member of Many Hats Collaboration.

Today, we’re going to Powells and I’m having lunch with Melina, the graphic designer for MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL, Roz’s friend, who I’ve actually never met! Jessica and I do our workshop this evening.

Deutschland

Toby has just finished the intensive German program at Middlebury that I was going to do with her this summer, except I ended up ADing TARTUFFE at OSF. She wants to go to Germany in 08 and work together on a production - we’re thinking Von Kleist’s PENTHESILEA, with an all-transgendered cast.

And, more marvellously, she was in an all-German production, at Middlebury, of Max Frisch’s ANDORRA.

Will wonders never cease?

And that about sums it up

Caitlin says this about Graham: “She excelled at the power and beauty of simplicity backed by the presence of many.”