ZACK

Started construction on the set for the play ZACK.
 

There are no walls, just the bare frames where walls would be. It might be really really good.

... or it might be really really not.

j

Saturday morning, 9:42

     It's Saturday morning. I'm sitting here watching CNN for headlines. I just finished eating a chocolate doughnut that I most certainly should not have even considered ...

     Last night I saw THE LATE CHRISTOPHER BEAN at  a theatre that had at one time been an automobile service station - intimate, but oddly enough it works. I finished writing the review (comments were positive, but not rave) at 2:55 this morning. I think fast, but I type slowly. I like to look at words on whatever passes for paper in a computer.

     At 5 this afternoon I'll drive to a smallish church to direct the rehearsal for an original Easter opera (that may prove to be not terrible after all. I'm a firm believer in miracles, and always surprised when they happen.) By 7:30 I will have driven like a madman to the theatre where I'm directing a rehearsal for the play ZACK. (And no, I don't usually schedule two different rehearsals in the same day.)

     But all that is later. Right now I'm fighting the dog for doughnut crumbs. (And I'm winning! He's faster than I am, but I'm bigger.) Nope. Sorry. His eyes just gazed over and he went to sleep. Great. My dog thinks I'm boring.

     I'm over my cold. Sorta. More or less. In a way, I regret it. When I'm well, it's much harder to get people to peel the skin off of grapes for me. Oh well, I'm accustomed to certain hardships.

     My best friend is selling most of her stuff and planning on moving into a tiny house. (Literally a tiny house - a home built on a truck bed.) I've thought about it. I've always wanted to run away and join a gypsy caravan, and live in a wagon ... with a fully functioning bathroom ... and another wagon following behind with my stuff. Maybe two wagons. Three at the most.

     So. There you have it. If I quit now, I think i can squeeze in a nap before lunch.

     I love Saturdays, don't you?


j   

Cough cough

I have a cold. Being a man, I need someone to fluff my pillow and hand me the remote.

cough hack ... 

j

Send In The Clowns

I know. We haven't talked in awhile.

My fault. It's been far too easy to sink up to my eyes into the warm dark mire of unthinking, Time goes by - days, weeks - so quickly and quietly that they escape notice. Only minutes drag on forever. Why is that, do you suppose? (Rhetorical question).

I finished writing a play I started five years ago. That was good. Oddly enough, (considering my laid-back approach to writing it), thirty seconds after typing "The play has ended," I emailed it to a producer friend of mine. She almost immediately emailed me back, saying she would read it right away. I'm sure there's some significance to all of this, but it escapes me. (Hey, I just write this stuff. What happens to it after that I try to stay away from - as much as I can - so long as the checks come in.) Anyway, if something good comes of it, I'll let you know and we'll go out and have a drink together. Sound good?

I'm on the board of a local theatre, and we decided to have a yard sale. People who have NEVER come to see a play have called and written, concerned that we were closing.  When I tell them we are simply selling things we couldn't give away, they are disappointed. In case you are interested, we still have a few boxes of something totally indescribable. I can make you a real deal ...

Two weeks ago I applied at a theatre to direct WHITE CHRISTMAS the musical. I like this group, have worked for them several times. They leave me alone, and are less than 20 miles from where I live. Nice. Yesterday they phoned me, and, instead of WHITE CHRISTMAS, I was offered OF MICE AND MEN. I accepted. Close enough.

I have two more job interviews pending. One is for a play in the spring of 2012, and the other is for a theatre I've yet to work for. (They like me. I gave them a low price on a bunch of old flats and platforms last used in the War of the Roses.)

So there you are. I know there are a few more tidbits of information to throw at you that are every bit as uninteresting as all this is, but I'll save that for another minute or two.

And how has your day been going? You've been pretty quiet out there lately.


j

For Julie, who liked the last one ...

Set Design

I'm most comfortable with the play ZACK, which I'm next scheduled to direct. It is a silly comedy in the best British tradition ... (and absolutely nobody does silly tradition on purpose better than the British.)

It bothered me somewhat that, the way the play is constructed, funny sequences are implied, occurring off stage. (Not at all uncommon for plays written in the 1930's.) 

So I have designed a set where silly can be appreciated to the fullest extent.

j

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) - Everything's Alright

Finally

I Am Sent with Broom Before, To Sweep The Dust Behind The Door.

I have been asked to edit Shakespeare's A MID SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM for production by a local theatre group. Someone from their group (apparently) saw my staging of RICHARD III and approved of the deletions I had made in that work.

"Bring  A MID SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM down to under two hours," I was asked, "and shorten the monologues."

I nodded  and agreed. Since Shakespeare's comedy is only about 75 minutes long, I knew that length would not be an issue. (When I edited RICHARD, it was to bring the running time down from five to two and a half hours.)

Editing the monologues is another matter altogether. I see two small paragraphs that appear redundant. The more I study this playwright, the more impressed I become. He approaches an issue from every angle. And, for some reason the light has been turned on, and I'm looking at Shakespeare from a fresh, rather than my normally jaded, viewpoint. My impression is that Shakespeare may be OVER analyzed, so galloping ignorance is not always a bad thing. My inclination is to simply sit back and enjoy the ride.

Aside from that, I'm starting to put together the first notes for the other play I'm contracted to direct at the theatre where dear RICHARD was staged, The play is called ZACK, written in 1920 by Harold Brighouse. I've never heard of it. Have you? The saving grace here is that I appreciate the British humor from that time, so I anticipate that ZACK and I will get along just fine.

This is my favorite time of the year. Mosr of the theatres available to me have now picked their next seasons, and will soon be looking for directors. Since I've been fortunate enough to be involved with two "hits" in a row, I'm in a good position to get the shows that are of interest to me.

And ...

Enough for now. Corners of the night sky have now streaks of dark crimson. Morning is not far away and my bed is calling.

j

The Problem, Dear Brutus

It’s one forty-one in the morning, and the topic for tonight is the obvious and monumental decline of the United States of America as a world power.

There. I’ve said it. Are you happy now? We’ve had it. Done. Bye-bye. Auf wiedersehen!

There’s only one problem here.

I don’t believe it.

It’s not that I’m super patriotic – “my country, right or wrong!” (Oh. Excuse me. I think that was Germany.) We secretly want to believe that everyone in the world would be better off if they thought like we do, and that everyone yearns for a democracy exactly just like ours.

(And perhaps that’s part of the problem. We don’t actually live in a democracy. We live in a republic. You know, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic …” Oops. My bad.)

In any case, as a country we are not always the most diplomatic. But this is not a sign of decline. We’ve always been that way. In 1958 a novel was published called “The Ugly American.” Set in a fictional Asian country, it chronicles “innate arrogance and the failure to understand the local culture.” We definitely like to impose our will on our friends. (Case in point; we talked our best friend country into joining us in some prolonged for real war games. It worked for awhile. The Prime Minister who agreed to this (at the time) is now diplomatic attaché to a community of yak herders in Outer Pango-Pango.)

Perhaps the pessimists see us in decline because of our economy. I can certainly agree that it’s a mess. “Worst since the great depression,” they say. True true. But they don’t actually listen to what they are saying. It’s not “worse THAN the great depression.”

(Consider this one fact alone. In the 1930’s we were a largely pacifist nation. I don’t think anyone would question that we now have the greatest war machine on earth. I don’t think our most serious nuclear foe would want to put that to the test.)

So – seriously – how can anyone say we are in a decline that will permanently affect our status as an influential authority on the world scene? Isn’t that for history alone to decide? Pardon me. Let’s not even go that far. Tell me, o great sayers of the sooth, what’s the political climate going to be like in two weeks? Should I wear my radioactively shielded raincoat?

“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.” We see emerging nations as our replacements, when they are what they have always been – a challenge. China is an industrial leviathan, but with a flawed government. How much farther can they go before they implode? Japan is fast on their heels and, in my opinion, much more stable. We should seriously make an effort to understand their culture … but we probably won’t.

After some thought on the matter, I can see Germany becoming the dominant force in Europe. Their influence and pressure is already growing. Because of this, I see England becoming stronger. The balance. They have risen to the occasion so many times before, I see no reason why they won’t again. But it ain’t gonna be easy. It never is.

Okay. I’ve now solved the problems of the world, looked under rocks, and heaved a few at cultures I generally like. But am I right? Could be. Or could be not. Could be next week the governor of Pango-Pango will announce that his yak butter is the cure for the common cold …

Great. It will give us a whole new direction in which to lurch.

j

MORGAN update

In February of 2010 I submitted a post regarding the (then) present disposition of a play I had written years before, but until then had never released. The play is titled MORGAN and to this day remains a passion in my life.

It’s funny how some things come into being. My young daughter and I had been watching one of the many dreary King Arthur movies on television, when she turned to me and asked, “Morgan le Fay? Who is HE?”

I answered as best I could, but in the back of my mind I was already envisioning a play that would justify that question.

Before I put a single word on paper, I spent three years reading every novel, history, and commentary I could find regarding the literary Arthur Pendragon and his estranged half-sister, Morgan. (There’s reasonable evidence to suggest that an “Arthur” actually lived, and that he was so far removed from the legend as to be almost unrecognizable.)

I made a couple of interesting discoveries.

The first – a somewhat humbling realization. In 6th century England there were both crude and sophisticated civilizations, religions, and codes of conduct. Intelligent thought was in evidence. My country has yet to HAVE a 6th century. During the time of Arthur, where I live was swamp lands – Indians hadn’t even reached here.

The other discovery was more to the point. Throughout most of the narratives, there is a recurrent theme along these lines; Morgan was evil, a schemer, a witch, jealous of her half-brother, and constantly plotting his downfall for never fully explained reasons. Eventually Arthur “wins,” but only after prolonged struggle and cost (including his life.)

I soon realized the problem started with Arthur. He was ultimately the winner, and history is almost always written by the last group standing. The truth, as I discovered, is that Morgan was the victim in every sense of the word. As a child she witnessed her lands taken away, her father killed, and her mother raped. To put it in modern terms, Morgan witnessed a terrorist attack.

So that became Act I of my play.

Act II chronicles Morgan’s rise to power. It seems reasonable (as literature) to suggest that Druids existed at that time, that Merlin was a Druid High Priest, and that they wielded real mystical power. Morgan, being a woman, realized her only opportunity to effect justice was by embracing black arts. She became second only to Merlin, and outlasted him.

Act III follows her descent into madness and the suggestion of recovery. She became an absolute power, and “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” She became Hitler at his worst. With the death of Arthur she loses her powers and there is an implication that she could eventually regain a degree of sanity.

The play ends with an irony. Without her constant prodding, Arthur would have been nothing. If left in peace, he would have been an insignificant king of a lackluster kingdom, one in a long line of dusty footnotes. Instead of destroying him, she directly and indirectly created the legend.

Now you have the picture. It’s a large and complex work. No theatre I know is capable of producing it. (Key words here are “I know.”) About a year ago I was discussing the language in the play with a friend who produces mainly Shakespeare plays. She asked to read it, and a month later asked if I would allow the work to be considered for production by them.

I agreed, made note of it in a blog, and then forgot about it.

A couple of days ago one of my favorite commentators asked for an update. Here it is.

In November the Shakespeare producer contacted me and said her company would produce the play if I would direct. Since at the time I was neck deep in the RICHARD III production, I postponed answering.

And that’s where I am now. I don’t know if I want to do this.

I just don’t know.


j

A Teapot Christmas

In our Writer's Group gift exchange, a good friend gave me this Teapot calendar for Christmas. Not an expensive gift this, but a warming one. She is well aware of my undisguised attraction to anything teapot.

Above a teapot on the opposite side of the room is another wall hanging, given to me by a loving daughter some years back. It also reminds me of constant support and encouragement.

This is a happy room.

j

Tis the season ...