The freelancing issue

I swear - there are HOURS several days a week where I am looking for the perfect place to sit, read, work throughout new york. It sort of reminds me of that old seinfeld episode, where costanza can name the best public toilets in each neighborhood.

Yesterday, I went to new dramatists after meeting with a playwright at the westside. The westside used to be the kinda place you could sit undisturbed for hours. Not so these days. So off to ND. They've got an open door policy for playwrights and directors if you just want to read their playwrights' plays in their very warm library. Its also a great place to meet their playwrights. Still, I find it hard to get work done there and not be sociable.

So off to the performing arts library. Now granted, I am a bit sound sensitive wherever I go, but there there is a persistent beeping on the second floor reading area. Not sure its source. So, bring the ipod and decent headphones.

I guess that's the overall rule anywhere in nyc. Bring decent music, reading material, etc and you can make yourself comfortable anywhere.

I just had to leave BORDERS because of the crying kid, the horrendous music and the overall din.

Please: let's put a list together of decent quiet spots to work (or kill time) in nyc.

Thwarted

Attempted to see county of kings today at public's under the radar, but hey: I snoozed, I lost.

Was talking to a scientist today about the trials and tribulations of setting up a lab with the funding all drying up at once. Not unlike what I fear is happening with arts funding.

Have attempted to get twitter up and running. I have a friend who is a twitter zealot - and perhaps there is a way to convince me of its potential in stimulating theater ideas. I don't want to be a nay-sayer as I assume people felt similarly about the rationale for blogging (and probably still do).

Finished sun also rises: Yes. I said. Isn't it pretty to think so.

Finally, met with sound designers ryan and daniel. They designed back back back at mtc - so it'll be interesting to see where we end up. I've avoided seeing either production (or even reading reviews or seeing production stills). And I have no plans of hearing the mtc cues. Daniel piqued my appetite for dallas, too.

Read: 30 pp of angler
Read: 30 pp of sun also rises
Read: last 1/2 of script from wma

But the biggest surprise came from 87 year old cousin rose who went to a reading of a play written by her personal trainor on sunday - (she can bench press 100 lbs). I spoke to frank earlier and expect his play sometime in the next few weeks.

The flu is almost all gone. I think.

That Good Night

I had a nice post-mortem with playwright andrew dolan about the reading last month for the rude mechanicals. Andrew and I go way back, he got me my gig at encore theater way back in 1994-95. I ad'd on substance of fire at the magic which he was in, in 93 and that's when we became friends...

I think the play has a lot of promise. And what's also great is that there is a lot in it that andrew is not sure what it means - in other words, he's written the thing from his subconscious. He's not sure why he's put that moment in - and he's willing to figure it out.

I told him I'd be happy to submit it to a couple of places and he seems thrilled.
I had some thoughts about the ending: the play deals so much with magic so we talked about the final "trick".

Good to get out of the house even briefly. This flu has slayed me.

Love and Yearning

Attended a table read of ari roth's play, love and yearning today at new dramatists. Excellent cast featured elizabeth rich, david simonds, josh alexander and aya cash.

It was an opportunity to finally hear the play out loud and focus on the areas in which ari's expanded it.

Table read was also a good way for ari and me to put our heads together in the same space. Literally.

Very glad to have started the new year at new dramatists this way.

South Pacific: as promised

Yes, that boy is me. Only 28 years have passed, but that is me as Emile de Becque and Stacey London as Nellie Forbush. (please note the gold chain...)

I saw South Pacific last week at Lincoln Center. I am writing a bit feverishly literally - so I'll tell you what comes to mind most profoundly, rather than focusing too much on the LCT production: I grew nostalgic and then found myself musing on the hilarity of the Middle School musical.



South Pacific, Elkins Park Middle School, circa March 1980:
I have no recollection that we had a discussion about anything that the play deals with - the war, the politics, the history, the racism. No - we just staged the thing and performed it, i guess. I suppose there's nothing wrong with choosing a play which requires casting a 13 year old bar mitzvah boy as a 45 year old french plantation owner (and baritone).

Of course, this was 1980 in the suburbs of philly. The most controversial thing I can remember was kissing Stacey London, since I believe we both had braces...

Other memories: I remember doing this hoakey thing with my voice. You know, trying to really sound like a baritone (or is that bass? I forget...). I guess it was not too dissimilar to what Dylan does on nashville skyline. But I was thirteen. And i had to pretend to be forty five or something. Ah, acting...

Ok back to LCT production. Kellie O'Hara (Nellie Forbush)'s voice was wonderful - so pure. And i dug how Bartlett Sher directed her to really be "non-stagey". We might call that naturalistic. Very nice. And very funny.

Interesting that none of the big musical numbers were done "hugely" - they were all very simplified. You got the feeling, hey, maybe this is what a bunch of folks on a south pacific island bored out of their mind might do to have fun.

The two quotes projected onto a screen at the beginning and the end were fairly provocative and emotive too. I am certain they are direct quotes from the novel. The image of the cast - walking slowly to their destiny (their deaths?) near the end was very haunting...It seemed to me that Sher deliberately segregated the cast - blacks, whites, women...which seems like an indictment of the times as much as it honors those Americans, too.

What also struck me was how long the darn evening was. Some Enchanted Really Long Evening. The first act must be about 90 minutes. Which is a long time these days. And I think must have made for a fairly trying evening back in 1980 at Elkins Park. I only think we cut one song - a duet between Cable and Nellie which I don't remember - though I was no doubt back stage preening or flirting.

Chris Bartlett as the guy who wears the coconuts

The big controversy of You've Got To Be Carefully Taught seems ages ago. The racist-ness of Nellie Forbush - and how at the end of the musical (SPOILER ALERT) - she puts aside her racism and embraces Emile's Polynesian children does seem a bit dated...This seems to be the major plot point - can Nellie accept the man she loves even if he has mixed race babies from another woman, his deceased wife? This dilemma outweighs the fact that Emile killed someone. That's ok with Nellie - but those kids... There is something very dated about that - and it seems hard to imagine that a musical could be sustained with that as such a huge factor nowadays.

David Pittsinger who plays Emile (and is cast aged appropriately) has a brilliant voice. The audience really responded more to This Nearly Was Mine than to Some Enchanted Evening, which was surprising. But Some Enchanted Evening is a pop hit, and This Nearly Was Mine is way more emotional.

What also struck me - is how strange the human brain works. I could recite whole songs word for word, and passages of dialogue, as if I had performed them yesterday. Why?

All in all, it made me a bit nostalgic for those old friends. And I hope to one day revive the show at EP middle school one of these days....

Marcia Charen as Bloody Mary and Ray Cullom Lt. Cable who I forget was from Philadelphia and went to Princeton (Cable, not Cullom). But how weird to have a woman pimp out her daughter so egregiously?