Platonov by Anton Chekhov

Yesterday, Rachel and I and a few hundred other folks had the fortune of seeing PLATONOV up at Melissa Kievman and Brian Mertes house. What a terrific event! It was just a beautiful day - and a wonderful cast. It was one of those great lucky things to be part of...

The Kievman-Mertes live near New City which is about 45 minutes from Lincoln Center (or about 2 hours away if you miss the exit, have to turn around, get gas, and get stuck in GW Bridge traffic)...The house is on lake lucille...and it's just lovely.

There was something just so suitably idyllic about the setting.

PLATONOV is such an oddball play and this production was so much fun. It is actually one of my favorite plays - I've always wanted to do a production of it. In it, you see the antecedents of all of Chekhov's great characters. And there's just something about Platonov, played with lovable-rogueness by Reg Rogers...that just slays you. Here is a guy with so much potential - who ends up being a fucked up school teacher, broken, and in a constant mess love-wise. An Ordinary Life. Fantastic

Highlights included terrific performances from all the folks below...fireworks, people jumping in the lake, cool choreography reminiscent of ERS, a piano being chopped at with an axe, Marin Ireland playing a boy, a piano being thrown in the lake, Guy Boyd in drag, watching scenes from across a lake, being surrounded by swell theater folks and members of the Lake Lucille community. A terrific night. And man, just four or five days of rehearsing it!

The Cast!
Betsy Aidem, J.Ed Araiza, Guy Boyd, Jason Butler Harner, Jim Calder, Rob Campbell, Matthew Cowles, Robert Eli, Dana Eskelson, Marin Ireland, Bill Irwin, Fiona Lane, Didi O'Connell, Lucas Papaelias, Phil Roebuck, Reg Rogers, Ted Schneider, Jess Weixler ----and Daniel Baker, Hazel June Baker, Jenni Bowman, Miklos Buk, Kenny Cahall, Sam Fichtner, Stephanie Fleischmann, Olivera Gajic, Alex Harvey, Daniel Kluger, Alicia Lewis, Farrol Mertes, Johnny Moreno, Margot Newkirk, Deb O, Jesse J. Perez, Simone Perrin, Kaz Phillips, Jon Pratt, Dan Safer, Mauricio Salgado, Cindy Salgado, Chris Studley, Katya Vetrov, Carlo Vogel.

Reborning, end of week two.

A lot of great progress made this week. The actors seem to be really getting up to speed and zayd has made some changes to the script.

Highlight of the week goes to baby Light who joinged us on wednesday. She is nine months old and riveting. She managed to skirt the no eating rule, and ate some cheerios fed to her by her adoring grandpa.

Christina and Leah and John all took turns holding her, playing with. I think it will be a good overall lesson for the students - just getting deeper into the world of the play.

We've been focusing a lot on the reborning doll community and christina brought in a great posting from a message board. Apparentlyt "memory dolls" are a subset of the reborning doll community. Additionally, she found some dolls on ebay that go for as much as 16k. Yow.