Beyond Mockingbird

     TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD closed well. We played largely for sold-out performances (even selling the box seats reserved for the director and guests.), and often received standing ovations. I must admit, I have a good thing going. Because I direct successful plays, I get top actors to audition. And, because I get top actors to audition, I end up directing successful plays. It's not rocket science.

     AND, I keep telling myself that's it - I'm done directing. Finished. At least for awhile. Go away. I wanna write something. My wife has a novel coming out soon - a hundred and ten thousand words. And what have I written in the past year?

     I truly think I need to get away for awhile. Patterns are far too comfortable here. Juli and I have talked - England would be nice for a while. A little while. No big city. Somewhere peaceful. I could rent a big dog and a pipe. Or perhaps somewhere deep in Normandy. My French is a little rusty, but - since I am American - it's no worse than my English. On the other hand, and for no good reason I can understand - the Brits seem to actually LIKE us. With the French, you never know ...

     Gotta do something soon. I'm already scheduled to advise on plays in April and November.

     We had a good Easter today (and I hope you did, too.) Ate blackened chicken, potato salad, fire corn (don't ask), fresh croissants, hummus, olives, and tomatoes. Followed this with cheap Mexican beer and ridiculously expensive Starbucks coffee. We completed the afternoon by driving to the park where we were married and making sure "our" tree was still doing well. It is.

     Thanks for hanging in there with me while I rant. As always, afterwards I feel better.

j

Dear Penpal

Hi y’all …

     I thought I’d take a few minutes to bring you up to date on the direction life is taking me at the moment …

     The play I recently directed is playing quite well. The book of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is apparently required reading in some schools, so our audiences are liberally sprinkled with High School students (who sit like chess pieces among the grey heads who actually remember the times being portrayed.) In any case, we are presently playing to largely sold-out houses, and have received a more than generous share of standing ovations. (Cool. A theatre that makes money tends to invite you back. Another theatre is already in the asking questions stage of what could be negotiations … “What? We thought you retired. We are opting for this play in November, and were wondering …” Way cool.)

   

  My wife’s first novel, PAINTING THE RAIN, is scheduled to be released in a few weeks, and we are excited about that. The work is a fleshing out of a play we co-authored, so we could win on several fields right now. It has been my observation that when good things come my way, they happen in multiples. Don’t know why, but I’m certainly not complaining.

     And then there is Fred. Fred is a lopsided cactus plant I’ve had for years. We get along very well, thank you. I set him on the back porch in the Spring, and bring him back in sometime in the Fall (when I think of it.) And our lifestyles have outlived numerous relationships for both of us. However … what I’m trying to say in my own coy way, is that Fred and I are no longer alone. I have Juli and Fred has Fern (and a bazillion of Fern’s sisters.) The air smells clean in the corner of our dining room. It takes some getting used to.   

Another Openin', Another Show ...

We opened to a standing ovation.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

Auditions were last week-end, and went well, considering ...

     (... considering I was using the original version of the play, and the theatre had optioned a REVISED script without telling me. "It will be fine," they said. "Hardly any differences at all," they said ...)

And, of course, there were significant differences. Two actors dropped out because auditions were something less than professional (along the lines of Mickey Rooney saying, "Hey, gang, let's find a barn and do a play!) I stuck it out, and eventually things were smoothed out ... (A word to the pretenders - NEVER hold auditions for a play you haven't actually read.) The show will survive, in fact I suspect it will be quite good. (I love working with ensemble, and many of my "regular" performers auditioned.) On the other hand, I doubt - at the moment - that I will apply to direct at this particular theatre again.

I hate "blocking" a play, which consists of telling actors where to move on stage. Pretty boring stuff, this. Thursday was even MORE interesting. The theatre furnace died, and we rehearsed on a stage with the temperature hovering at 42 degrees. Some would say this is dedication. Some would say it's something else - my hands were shaking so badly I couldn't read my own writing on the script.

Other than that, everything was just ducky. I can hardly wait for the next rehearsal - Sunday evening - to see what new, uh, challenges occur.

They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I think I may go lift a Volkswagon just for fun.

ROUGH DRAFT closes well

     

 

   ROUGH DRAFT closed today after a limited run. I surprise myself by being more disappointed in that fact than I expected to be.

    Certainly the fact of closing doesn’t bother me. I have written many plays, they all have an opening night, a run, a close, and – hopefully – someone somewhere will pick them up and the whole process starts again. Hopefully.

    And I wasn’t expecting a great deal from the company that optioned ROUGH DRAFT. They are the “Shots In The Dark Independent Theatre Company.” … uh-huh. A young group this, figuratively and literally. To my jaded eyes they were children of the old Mickey Rooney school – “Wow, gang, let’s get a barn and do a show!” (And, I suspect, they picked my show to produce because it purposely is inexpensive to stage.)

  Further, I knew from the one rehearsal I saw, they were largely inexperienced in the comedic timing necessary to pace this thing correctly.

  But – I give them this – they had talent. On each performance night they learned something new, and the show was improving measurably by the time the run ended.

 So. Will this work be done again? I suspect it will. Audiences liked it. But I would have liked to have seen this group have a handful of more shots at it, just to see how far they could have taken it.

 

j

 

 

 

 

Ta-d-a-a-a-a-a ,,,,

Happy happy

Happy New Year to

       D.C., CJ, Kat, Cuz, Suzie, Nicki, Aynn, Malmesbury, Wade, Mark and Mark, Kim, the other Kim, Donald, Adam, Garnetta, Robert, Dom, Michelle, and the two women who directly share my life, Juli and Sam. This year the love you all have blessed me with is appreciated more than you will ever know. May God shine His grace on you in 2013.

 

 

The season

      Yeah, I know, it's silly. It's that kind of day, and I'm on my second glass of a very pleasant wine.

     Sorry I haven’t posted sooner. I’ve been busy.

     On January 13 and 14 I will be holding auditions for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, which I am directing, with performance dates in March.

      On January 17, a play I wrote, ROUGH DRAFT, will be opening at another (and competing) theatre in town.

     … oops …

    “They” expect me to be in both theatres on the same days. Amazingly, I think I can do it.

     Honestly, I don’t plan for things to work out this way, but they do, on a regular basis. Welcome to my world.

     I hope you had a blessed Christmas, and will have a most happy New Year. We had a foot of snow just in time for Christmas.

 

 

     j

Whew!

     With the Mayan apocalypse scheduled for tomorrow, I take a respectful comfort in this quote ascribed to Mark Twain. “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always twenty years behind the times.”

Yes!

Yes, Virginia, There Really Is A Pregnancy Rock ...

… and it’s located in the foothills of Southern California.

 

 

For over 200 years, any woman brave enough to climb the nine-and-a-half-foot boulder and volunteer a fresh urine sample, the rock has proven amazingly accurate in not only proving positive pregnancy, but also the sex of the unborn child. This is because the surface of this unique natural outcropping is largely composed of the beta subunit of chorionic gonadotropin (the exact same chemical used today in modern pregnancy stick testing.) According to Wikipedia history footnote L47, Hippocrates himself observed the same chemical reactions in certain rock formations in ancient Egypt. Author Mark Twain also mentioned the rock (in passing) in a short story he wrote about other events in Calaveras County California. And, although other rocks with the same chemical composition can be found in a number of other U.S. states (most notably in Southern Ohio), the Calaveras County Pregnancy Rock continued to be the most well-known.

The rock has seen little use after the early 1950’s, with the advent of modern testing procedures. (and after reports that a number of people have been marginally injured by falling off the slippery back of the rock). Still, this historical monument has been faithfully maintained by the California Parks and Recreation Department, and is a popular tourist attraction during regular business hours.

 

Wikipedia: The pregnancy rock of Calaveras County, sections 2b and 3a.
Google search: Native rock formations of California, page 14, section 3.
Mark Twain: “The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County”
AMA Journal of Medicine, June 1947: Injuries In Testing, pg 22, paragraph 3       

Sidestep - Charles Durning - The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.mp4

Isn't it amazing how art imitates life in an election year? ... and in non-election years ...

I agree

So Here's How It Is.

     I’m absolutely the best procrastinator I know. When I’m working on a play – writing serious stuff – I will do just about anything to avoid the actual work. (I’m from the Dorothy Parker school of thought. She said, “I hate writing. I love having written.”)

     Anyway, I’ve developed a practice that gives the appearance of intelligent and experienced planning. And I need it. Honestly, any distraction at all – a gnat crawling across the screen – will throw me into totally different directions. Any perceived change (should the page number be in bold or italics?) will stop me dead in my tracks … (Oscar Wilde once remarked, “I had a good day today. This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.”)

      In the past, when I used to run into creative walls, I would go out and walk around the block. Sometimes I could be mere feet outside my door when the proper thrust of eloquence would be revealed to me. (The alleged storyline, we assume, is somewhat already in place.) Other times I would walk farther. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come out of my rhetorical stupor by wondering where I was.

     But lately I’ve developed a new and by far less embarrassing procedure. I call it my “play within a play,” and here’s how it works; I’m flinging dialogue down a page as hard and fast as I can, when suddenly a character will say something that has the potential to be another work entirely. If I ignore it, I’m still focused on the job at hand. If I pause – for even a key stroke – I’m hooked. At some point (later) I take that idea germ and plant it (hopefully with fewer apologizes than for the puerile little metaphor I can’t believe I actually just put to paper.)

     In this regard, my latest “play within a play” is called ROUGH DRAFT, and deals with characters arguing with their author about what should (or should not) be included in a story. It is, my friend, a hundred pages of silly, and lacking in any redeeming qualities whatsoever. (Case in point – eventually there is such a strong disagreement between strong characters and their feckless author, that the characters decide they can do better without her – and kill her. Only later does one character muse that since they were her creation, might she have secretly had a death wish?)

     Eventually the play was completed (and I wish I could say the same about the play from which it was winnowed.) I sent the completed hard copy to a friend, suggesting that if his new puppy needs paper trained, here was grist for the mill … (and another truly horrid metaphor. Sorry. That’s what happens when I write at eleven in the morning, the sun is shining, and no libation is at hand … (Don’t blame me. It was Ernest Hemingway who said, “Write drunk, edit sober.” He also supposedly said “Wearing underwear is as formal as I get,” which admittedly has nothing to do with the business at hand, but DOES give me the excuse to avoid wearing socks for most of the year.)

     I have digressed a bit.

     Therefore, and in conclusion … (and you thought I was never gonna get there, didn’t you?) … it came as a shock when I received a formal request from a theatrical company to produce ROUGH DRAFT somewhen later this fall.

     To say the least, I was surprised. Apparently I do silly and lacking in redeeming qualities better than I thought. (And the next thought was that perhaps you already knew that and were too gentle in nature to mention it.)

     More later.

 

j