Give me a si-i-i-ign!

I can never hear the Hit Me Baby One More Time song without thinking of our alternate lyrics. I always think people are singing it wrong when they sing the original lyrics. Huh...rather like how songs I've choreographed take a good year before I can hear the music without thinking of the choreography. Anywho, some random thoughts:

Saw Wizard of Oz tonight at Nashoba. Still not a fan of the plot, but the show was admirably done. Great effects and the melting was beautiful. Very impressed with the lights, costumes, sound, fog/glitter/etc. Good casting all round. One of the actors I had seen in the fall show and although he was well cast in both productions, I'm sad that he isn't cast in something that will stretch him more as an actor. It always bothers me when we as high school directors (or any directors, for that matter) PUSH people into a "type." We do this as a society: box people in, refuse to make them see that they themselves are more than their self-affixed label. Poot. Couldn't help thinking the entire time of my version of Oz - it's an unfortunate side-effect of having done a show and then see same (or similar) show. Oxytosin-esque? Anywho.... A night well spent. And it was good to go with Peter as well.

Last night saw West Side Story over at Marlborough. Alas, I had heard very mean and spiteful things about it and so I went to it with sub-zero expectations. Ergo I was pleasantly surprised at more than anticipated in the show. The chorus of the Jets were...FWAH (Marlborough always has good chorus), and some of the dancing was very nice. Anita was supurb, as was Anyways (man, someday must do West Side just so that I can play up Anyways even more...Baby John and Chino as well...), and "Officer Krumpke" (sp?) was the smash number. Unfortunately Tony was miscast - I felt more badly for the actor however. He was trying his hardest and I think had he been pushed he could have pulled off Tony well, but he wasn't instructed to do much more than stand still. Maria is a talented actress but also wasn't pushed - "sweet young things" are always more difficult to play than any other role and this actress is used to the character parts and so wasn't really prepped for the main role - again, she had the voice and chops for it but not the direction, it seems. Some day M. Pacific should get a great part. He's always being shunted into extraneous not-quite-supporting-roles but there's so much in him just waiting to shine out. *sigh* Some day some director will see his value and let him just go full out.

When casting, it is as important to consider what good, solid and/or even great actors are hankering to play, as well as what they would "normally" be cast as. I'm thinking Pirates here when we "cross-cast" a few of the roles in part because the actors made it supremely apparent that they'd been dying to do such and such a role. Enthusiasm and a true love for the character will, in the performance of the part, usually if not always outweigh "type." Passion is the key, not mere repetition. The actors must be made to expand, experiment, learn, and grow, as much as anyone involved in the theatre. The director who ruts himself into this or that genre is signing his own creative death-warrant. Just as in anything, for theatre to be living her denizens must live.

This evening I ran into The Body Politick. Quite unexpected meeting. Not a little flattering in a backhanded sort of way. Not a little daunting, as well - not necessarily with this particular Body Politick - but rather with the thought of one's entire career. I had forgotten that such dealings may be part of what is coming with where I seem to be led. However, God is good, and it is wonderful to have done so many "independent" thingummies because I have been given the grace - and a real grace it is! - to know that I may be autonomous with my directorial choices. I am not beholden to any production company unless I so desire to work with them. Which is not to say that I desire to be without a production company all the time, nor that I look upon production companies with distaste, but rather it alleviates the internal anguish that seems to be the normal state for most so-called "artistic types." See the musical summary at the top of A Chorus Line: "God I hope I get it, I've got to get it!" In all our "business" of the theatre, we forget the point of the theatre which is to tell stories that change lives: our own and others. It's for joy and beauty and goodness and if you're in it for the prestige or the money or the reassurance you've forgotten the simple pleasure of backyard make-believe. I often joke that I've received a degree in dress-up, but the fact is that there is no better - for me - degree than to keep playing pretend and sharing my dreams with others. Jules and I were talking about it today on the first leg of our fabulously long walk (we went through the cemetary and then over to Concord Road Park and took the long paved way round and must go back there more frequently - what? Actual natural beauty available in this city? Quick, rush back to it! Look a patch of blue! Let us chase it!). Mom and Dad have always encouraged us to do what we love, rather than forcing us to go for grades, money, acclaim, etc. That is to say, they have encouraged us to do what we love with an eye to being practical and moral at the same time - which prevents us from doing stupid things like growing mushrooms in the cellar or running off to Bangladesh in order to become film stars a la Gonzo (in reverse respectiveness).

I apparently am being talked about. Weird. Of greater concern is that Les Mis may not go through. Of more immediate consideration is the reason why certain events have happened - phone numbers must be secured and maybe coffee had and backstory gotten in order to know with what I will be dealing. The sadness of losing autonomy - but that's alright. It's just good to do homework before rushing off to the test. So, should Les Mis fall through, I'm thinking maybe Man of La Mancha (with lots of gender changes - Innkeeper, Barber, etc.?), or maybe seeing if I could get Thrushbeard together in time (ha - although it was fun singing the songs on the way home. Peter loves the "You, Wonderful You" song, esp. the second verse wherein we have such temporary lyrics as: "You, incredible you/Inedible you/Who I just/Want to run away from and darn she caught my leg....") Hmmm, other potential plays? Must do Guys and Dolls sometime, but I think that's a no since it was done at MHS just a few years ago, ditto for Fiddler, wonder what Jeckyll and Hyde is like and if is any good.... But wait, just checked out the restrictions and I don't see anything immediately difficult about it...so we don't have the three college students in this particular production. They can help out on costumes or backstage or something. Lord, Thy will be done, amen. (Besides, I'm dying to do my "Little Kiss of Rain" and "Stars." Hrumph.) Ragtime might not be bad, (Moby Dick the Musical...? Oh gag...), maybe Godspell, even though that was done three years ago at Hudson High, Music Man would be awesome and I think we could pull off the barbershop quartet.... King and I? Carousel? The Sound of Music? And what is Pirates doing on MTI?!??!?!?! (Oooh, over on Tams-Witmark they've got the Scarlet Pimpernel...ooooh! And Titanic, huh....) Wait, they've got G&S and SHAKESPEARE??!?!??!?! They're royalty-free! Gah. Which brings me to....

Royalties etc. Did I mention this already? I hate royalties. Or rather, I hate all these restrictions put onto plays by their "estates." Look, theatre is an organic thing, right? And no playwright from Sophocles on down is infallible. Every production needs to be tailored to who is playing the role, to who the play is being performed for, to the state of the world and the universality AND particularity of the message. The movie versions of Chicago, West Side Story and The Sound of Music are WORLDS better than their original stage productions. The recent Trevor Nunn production of Oklahoma! makes the play finally worthwhile. There is nothing wrong with playing with the text. But these random companies have decided that they own these pieces and will put restrictions on them (in conjunction with the creators or their heirs, of course) and the result it a lack of interest in artistry, a stale interest in profit (with interest...heh, couldn't contain myself), and intellectual hubris on the behalf of the creators/owners/heirs and resulting promulgation of intellectual atrophy on the side of the local directors. Gah gah gah. WHAT IS THEATRE FOR IF WE CONSISTENTLY DENY ITS ORGANIC NATURE??!?!?!??!!? Is there death of theatre? Yes - it's called turning it into business. It's rather like all this nonsense with so-called "gay marriage" (or as Peter would point out: "happy marriage? Yes, I'm all for that!" I love my brother!). Let's change what is to what it is not and then wonder why what is is impotent. Blaugh blaugh blaugh.

The "Lavender Mafia" bothers me. It goes back to the self-defining restricting of type. As well as the business aspect of everything. It saddens me to see people huddling together towards the LM for unconscious dread of being ousted from the theatrical circuit. Julie is fabulous and points out that in theatre we keep returning in order to regain some semblance of life (by we, I mean we who create theatre in particular or at least in this particular case). Unfortunately - although unsurprisingly given that in theatre we work very hard to batter down all our personal inhibitions but forget that this lowering of all defenses is meant for the stage and not for the house (heh, sorry, the puns keep coming! ;P) - many of those who are working in the "upper eschelons" (sp?) of the theatre (the big theatre - oy am I abusing my parenthetical remarks or what? %}) are part of the LM. And unless one either a) is part of the LM by dint of what one does or b) is not rejected by the LM by dint of what one professes, one may be assured a part in the theatre. It's all part and parcel of the Body Politick. And let me clarify that the LM isn't really about preference, but rather about the complete secularization - no, not secularization, but rather neo-paganization (not wiccanism, but rather the return to paganism, although even that denigrates the noble pagans, but I can think of no better term, since it is not completely aetheism although it may be a return to the mouth of Moloch or Baal) - of the last secular sacred space.

I shall try to clarify my remarks: the theatre has been associated with religion since the beginning. Bacchus was the god of the theatre, but Apollo also - chaos and order, rhyme and reason, joviality and grandeur, the low and the high. And so should it be. For in theatre we open a world to that which might have been which feels more real than what is that is a mirror of what is or a window to that which should have been. Theatre is like a communal experience of the divine, and God Himself is the master of all mirth and He became all sorrow. Theatre is tactile, as is mass, as are we. Theatre is fleeting and yet promises eternity - for although the time passes wherein the performance occurs, yet we the audience and yes even we the actors of our small drama feel that the show continues in its own time and space - hence we are given another glimpse of Heaven which is outside of time and space. Theatre is that place wherein we examine ourselves rather as though in a confessional: we expose our shadows to purge them from our bodies, we reach for the infinite the ineffible for truth through song and dance and inadequte words in metre and rhyme. We clothe ourselves in garments that more truly reveal who we are, in ritualistic fashion. We create for ourselves faces more like our inner selves or more like our transfigured selves. And in this transformation of ourselves into an individual we cease to worry about ourselves but concern ourselves solely with the good of others and with the greater purpose of the show itself. Our part cannot be repeated by another actor, no matter how much he studies our every tick and gesture. Our play is for that time, for ourselves and for others. When done rightly, it is utterly selfless - it is freely given and freely received. When done rightly we all leave the space without having abandoned it ever.

But there is the temptation to make ourselves into gods. There is the temptation to presume the magic is our own doing and not the result of a God far higher than the machine. There is the temptation to grow small and mean and petty and caught up with self-glorification, with playing one actor against the other, with the fear and envy of our fellow thespians - and as a consequence we become a group of self-absorbed pleasure-seekers, willing to sell ourselves for a conjugal embrace as readily as milk the fleeting standing-O. When we do not seek to transport what we learned in the theatre to real life but rather seek to reenact our performances, we fail as dramatists, yes - but even more as men. Art is not life, nor life art, nor will wishing make it so - but the two although not synonymous are not therefore aliens but rather neighbours and best when old married lovers, equally yoked.

There is no gain but through loss. There is nothing gained if one becomes an artistic miser, a Silas Marner of the footlights - but there is everything gained if one goes and learns and is humble enough to hear where one has misstepped and is gracious enough to encourage with love and correct with gentleness. I have not yet mastered these - I hope to someday.

And now to finish my report for tomorrow's debriefing. How shall I manage it? I am quite at a loss - unfortunately we are many times Pan when thinking back to the productions we have completed. Had I done that play? What was it like? Did I live in that time? I learned and took and enjoyed, but in order to live again outside the Lekolights I have somewhat forgotten. I find that I sometimes need a good half-year before I can take out a play and look at it again and think with criticism and with love, and not find myself reaching morbidly for the tissue-box. Oh! I want to put beauty on the stage! I want to create loveliness! I want to do a drama, I want to make people go "Ah! I had not known before. Ah! I want to LIVE!" Lord, keep me worthy. Amen.

Mood: Rapturous
Music: Was Billy Boyd's "Hit Me Baby One More Time" for something like 45 minutes (yay for auto-repeat!) is now Playlist "Mellow Me" - le sigh.
Thought: Soooooooooooooo good to hear Fr. Mike Mac's sermon this morning on Mejugore (sp? IS there a d? Regardless it's from the Cyrillic so it's somewhat phonetic anyway). I only wish he'd gone on longer! How hateful is it that when I'm finally back on a diet all I can think about is food when conversely when I'm not dieting I think about lots and lots of other things (although most recently play play play. Gah)? Oy, the Murphy Lawyerism of the human brain! But I seem to be losing again, which is wonderful - alleluia! Now, let's hope I can KEEP this up! Amen!