Out of one, many

Although I've been to New Zealand twice, I didn't go to church while I was there.  The first time wasn't over a weekend (I think) and the second time ... I just didn't.  Which is rather too bad because if I had spent a morning with a congregation of the Anglican Church in Aetearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia* I could have been part of the communal responses in  the liturgy.  However, this past Sunday I got the chance to make up for that.  

This is from our church bulletin:  "The revelation of Jesus as Lord and Savior was first made known to the wise men, but from there, spread to all corners of the word.  To mark this, our liturgy during the season of Epiphany will come from a different corner of the world:  New Zealand. At our 10:30 service, the confession, absolution, Eucharistic prayer and post-communion prayer come from our sister Anglican Church in Aetearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia."  

I've missed church for the past few weeks for one reason or another and I'll be out again this weekend for a family funeral, but I greatly enjoyed the chance to recite the familiar ideas in a  new way.  A kind of foreign exchange.  And I'll be happy to return to the familiar phrasing as well.**

The confession:  Merciful God, we have sinned in what we have thought and said, in the wrong we have done and in the good we have not done. We have sinned in ignorance; we have sinned in weakness; we have sinned through our own deliberate fault.  We are truly sorry.  We repent and turn to you.  Forgive us, for our Savior Christ's sake, and renew our lives to the glory of your name. Amen.

The absolution: Through the cross of Christ, God have mercy on you, pardon and set you free.  Know that you are forgiven and be at peace.  God strengthen you in all goodness and keep you in life eternal.  Amen. 

The Eucharistic prayer:  
God of past and present,
We your people remember your Son.
We thank you for his cross and rising again,
We take courage from his ascension;
We look for his coming in glory
and in him we give ourselves to you.

The post communion prayer: Father of all, we give you thanks and praise, that when we were far off you met us in your Son and brought us home. Dying and living, he declared your love, gave us grace and opened the gate of glory.  May we who share Christ's body live his risen life; we who drink his cup bring life to others; we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world.  Amen.

I'm rather glad that the Lord's Prayer is consistent across the Anglican Communion.  I'd really miss my mondegreen.



*Aetearoa is the most widely known and accepted Māori name for New Zealand.  It is used by both Māori and non-Māori, and is becoming increasingly widespread in the bilingual names of national organisations.  (per Wikipedia) The full title of the collected Anglican churches in New Zealand is "The Anglican Church in Aetearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia." (per the Church)

**After all, "wherever you wander, wherever you roam, be happy, and healthy, and glad to come home."

Don't Throw the Past Away

I have an audition for another Irish play, Brian Friel's* Dancing at Lughnasa.  If I am cast, I will need an Irish accent for the weeks of rehearsals as well as the weekends of performance.  The chances of it not leaking into my every day conversation I leave as an exercise for the reader.


*If I say I have an audition for an Irish play, one can assume that I mean one by Brian Friel.  I am one of the few theater geeks I know who finds Martin McDonagh hard to take.  I'd much rather watch the crew do the clean up and reset all the blood squibs than actually watch The Lieutenant of Inishmore.

Rhyme of Rhymes

Savoynet has been discussing poetic rhymes lately, especially how the word "wind" is to be pronounced in a given phrase and one of our members posted this poem.  




Andrew Lang (Scots poet 1844–1912), in Longman's Magazine:

RHYME OF RHYMES.

Wild on the mountain peak the wind
Repeats its old refrain,
Like ghosts of mortals who have sinned,
And fain would sin again.

For "wind" I do not rhyme to "mind,"
Like many mortal men.
Again" (when one reflects) 'twere kind
To rhyme as if "agen."

I never met a single soul
Who spoke of "wind" as "wined," And yet we use it, on the whole.
To rhyme to " find" and "blind."

We say, "Now don't do that agen,"
When people give us pain;
In poetry, nine times in ten,
In rhymes to "Spain" or "Dane."

Oh, which is wrong or which is right?
Oh, which is right or wrong!
The sounds in prose familiar, quite,
Or those we meet in song?

To hold that "love" can rhyme to "prove"
Requires some force of will,
Yet in the ancient lyric groove
We meet them rhyming still.

This was our learned fathers' wont
In prehistoric times.
We follow it, or if we don't,
We oft run short of rhymes.

Passover haiku

It is - in my mind - Andy's haiku because I learned it from him.

Left the door open

So Elijah could come in

Now the cat is gone.

From Haikus for Jews

Byron, Bryon

Byron* has been popping up in my line of sight again lately. Sara Joy is rehearsing Arcadia and her Facebook status updates are peppered with Hannah's dialogue; John Malkovich appears in the film version of J.M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace and has this comment about his character, a professor of Romantic poetry: "Probably if you spend your whole life reading Byron and Keats and Shelley, partaking of their worldview, then you might have a different moral compass than those who don't."

So the lame brat is on my mind again.

A couple of nights ago I was reading a Time magazine from a few weeks back and came across a book review. The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes** describes "an era when science was both glamorous and dangerous" and the review by Lev Grossman notes that at that time "Poetry and science weren't wholly separate yet: they were seen as complementary ways of piercing the veil of everyday phonomena. William Wordsworth, Lord Byron and the Shelleys (Percy Bysshe and Mary) followed scientific breakthroughs like sports scores."

And the single hardest part of Arcadia for me to memorize is back in my head:

I had a dream which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air... ***

In rehearsals, before those words were secure (which nearly required a nail gun) I would get to that point in the script, look intelligently**** at Patrick and say "Bryon, Bryon, end of Byron" and we'd go on with the scene. I think the director was a little afraid that I would do that in performance, too, but I did not.

Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something. Perhaps while I am between scripts, I'll read some Romantic poetry and see what - if anything - it does to my moral compass.

Assuming I have one, that is.


* George Gordon, Lord Byron

** I don't think it's the same Richard Holmes as the baritone who sings for NYGASP, but that would also be a nice piece of serendipity, wouldn't it.

*** Darkness

**** Or so I like to think.

Rejoinder

My Boss wanted to give me a to-do list yesterday while I was sitting at the front desk. And, of course, the only thing I could find to write on was a 1 1/2" by 2" Post-It note pad.

He started to tell me what he wanted and then looked down and said, "I want you to know that that is a completely inadequate platoon leader's notebook."

"Oh, I know," I replied, "it's like a fountain pen-and-pocketknife tracheotomy kit."

I think, or maybe just hope, that it's quick similes-in-kind that help keep me employed here.

With an "e"

The child hesitated for a moment.

"Will you please call me Cordelia?" she said eagerly.

"Call you Cordelia! Is that your name?"

"No-o-o-o, it's not exactly my name, but I would love to be called Cordelia. It's such a perfectly elegant name."

I don't know what on earth you mean. If Cordelia isn't you name, what is?"

"Anne Shirley," reluctantly faltered forth the owner of that name, "but oh, please do call me Cordelia. It can't matter much to you what you call me if I'm only going to be here a little while, can it? And Anne is such an unromatic name."

"Unromantic fiddlesticks!" said the unsympathetic Marilla. "Anne is a good plain sensible name. You've no need to be ashamed of it."

"Oh, I'm not ashamed of it," explained Anne, "only I like Cordelia better. I've always imagined that my name was Cordelia -- at least, I always have of late years. When I was young I used to imagine it was Geraldine, but I like Cordelia better now. But if you call me Anne, please call me Anne splled with an e."

"What difference does it make how it's spelled?" asked Marilla with another rusty smile as she picked up the teapot.

"Oh, it makes such a difference. It looks so much nicer. When you hear a name pronounced can't you always see it in your mind, just as if it was printed out? I can; and A-n-n looks dreadful, but A-n-n-e looks somuch more distinguished. If you'll only call me Anne spelled with an e I shall try to reconcile myself to not being called Cordelia."

From - but of course - Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Miss Lydia Thompson's Farewell

From page 6 of The Pall Mall Gazette, for May 3, 1899, of a “farewell address” in verse that Gilbert wrote for the actress Lydia Thompson. Sent to Savoynet by Arthur, the Reference Librarian. Good folks to know, librarians...


MISS LYDIA THOMPSON’S FAREWELL.

The following address, written by Mr. W.S. Gilbert, was spoken by Miss Lydia Thompson at the conclusion of the proceedings yesterday: --

The other day, when sitting all alone,
Thinking of pleasant times long past and gone,
“Why, bless my precious heart and soul,” said I,
“I’ve left the stage, and haven’t said “Good bye!””
That sounds ungrateful—-but, to be quite plain,
I hoped I might be coming back again,
And would not speak the word one can’t recall,
Till “Good-bye” meant “Good-bye” for good and all.

“Good-bye”—-an easy word for you to say—-
“Sorry you’re going, but you’ve had your day.
Next please!”—-And the obedient profession
Supplies new-comers in prolonged succession—
A thousand fair ones for your smiles contesting
(A hundred acting and nine hundred “resting”);
But when I say “Good-bye” in faltering tone
To you--the truest friends I’ve ever known--
The friends whose warmth expressed in gladdening chime
Supplied the sunshine of my summer-time--
The case is somewhat different. You see,
I’m losing you—-you’re only losing me!

But this won’t do at all—-I’m off the scent,
My line’s light comedy, not sentiment.
My future tense seems cheeriness to lack,
And so, I won’t look forward—-I’ll look back.

What changes have I seem since that dim age,
When little Goldenhair tripped on the stage!
The Drama, struggling then in lodgings shady,
Has made her fortune and is quite the lady,
With endless hosts of highly cultured friends.
Think how she dresses now, and what she spends
On vast dramatic shrines—-in sumptuous salaries—-
In real Venetian-leathered pits and galleries—-
In plays that run a year to houses packed,
And cost, to stage, a thousand pounds an act!

Stage-management—-that has advanced a bit
Since poor Tom Robertson invented it—-
Tom Robertson, whose histrionic chickens
We sneer at now—-but then we sneer at Dickens!

Knighthoods for actors of pronounced ability
Earls, countesses, engaged to play “utility”;
Ibsen—-a zest for jaded appetite;
No fees-—half-guinea stalls—-electric light
Matinées twice a week, and, sad to say,
Matinée hats—-I see one here to-day;
Stock-companies completely out of date,
Burlesque quite dead—-(it never risked that fate
When Talfourd, Planché, Brough, and Byron made it,
And Rogers, Clarke, and Marie Wilton played it—-
Then, strangest chance, of playhouses vast crops!
Playhouses plentiful as grocers’ shops!

Ten in twelve months! Well, I don’t want to prate,
But if new theatres crop up at that rate,
Where will you find your pieces, if you please,
And where your actors and your actresses!
Ten months will build a playhouse, per contractor—-
It takes at least ten years to build an actor,
And, as our best authorities insist,
Ten times ten years to build a dramatist!

Well, if too long I’ve babbled of my youth,
I’m rather loath to go, and that’s the truth.
Still we must part-—it’s idle to delay it:
I’ve come to say “Good-bye!”—-so let me say it.
The link that binds me to you must be broken—-
Come now, come then, the last word must be spoken!
In no light mood the farewell phrases fall—-
God bless you! God bless me! God bless us all!

Words of Power

Ever wonder how I end up going from show to show to show? I finally figured it out. Using the phrase "I'm not doing anything right now, so my time is wide open" brings any "theater break" to an end within 48 hours. I might as well be lighting black candles and sprinkling chicken's blood around me in a circle.

Reconciliation

After Serge, in an act of pure madness, had demonstrated to Marc that he cared more about him than he did about this painting, we went and had dinner, chez Emile. Over dinner, Serge and Marc made the decision to try to reconstruct a relationship destroyed by word and deed.

At one point, one of them used the expression "trial period" and I burst into tears.

This expression, "trial period" applied to our friendship, set off in me an uncontrollable and ridiculous convulsion.

In fact, I can no longer stand any kid of rational argument, nothing formative in this world, nothing great or beautiful in this world has ever been born of rational argument.

from "Art" by Yasmina Reza

On accuracy

Among the FSS (Frequently Said Stuff) at rehearsals is the reminder that the author chose those words for a reason and that we're not working from the first draft.*

We all try for accuracy, some more successfully than others. When I was Production Minion for the Stage's production of "Art," I rode book for the guys at rehearsals, took line notes, and would e-mail them the corrections. One e-mail, entitled "Towards Zero," contained exactly six corrections, and all of them were happy/glad-level** paraphrases.

Not every show is that close. Not by a long shot. And I know some actors who are so famous for their paraphrasing that I joke that the program should credit them as co-authors. And that they have masters degrees in MSU (Making Stuff Up).***

So I was interested to run across this interview with Ayre Gross as part of a critique of Donald Margulies' Brooklyn Boy. After all, the most recent show in which I tried to deliver the dialogue with any kind of accuracy was Margulies' Dinner with Friends. Nice to know that he would have appreciated our (not always 100% effective, but sincere) efforts to present the script as written.

“How interested was he in the actors being faithful to his dialogue?”

“Oh, it's not even a question. I think everyone in the room understands that the language the playwright uses is not just the broad ideas. That there can be as much meaning in the syntax, or in the rhythms the playwright has written, as in the broader meanings of the theme. There was never any kind of 'we’ll improvise something here.'”

On rare occasions Margulies would solicit advice from the actors.

“Did he accept your suggestions?”

“He definitely responded to, but it was not like anyone ever went in and said, 'Listen, Donald, this is what I want to say here.'”

*I'm pretty sure that the latter truism is mine. Just one of my many contributions to the American theater.

**When happy is substituted for glad, a word with roughly the same meaning. A very small change, in other words.

***I have a pretty wit. A pretty, pretty wit.

For Lori

A friend passed away on Saturday, much too young.


Borrowed Time by David Moreau

I will not die tonight
I will lie in bed with
my wife beside me,
curled on the right
like an animal burrowing.
I will fit myself against her
and we will keep each other warm.

I will not die tonight.
My son who is seven
will not slide beneath the ice
like the boy on the news.
The divers will not have to look
for him in cold water.
He will call, "Daddy, can I get up now?"
in the morning.

I will not die tonight.
I will balance the checkbook,
wash up the dishes
and sit in front of the TV
drinking one beer.

For the moment I hold a winning ticket.
It's my turn to buy cold cuts
at the grocery store.
I fill my basket carefully.

For like the rain that comes now
to the roof and slides down the gutter
I am headed to the earth.
And like the others, all the lost
and all the lovers, I will follow
an old path not marked on any map.

Hiatus

"On a break" is community theater for "spend more time with my family" which is politics for "unemployed."

Feel free to suggest dinner dates and movie nights...

FAQ

Along with "Where is your coat?"* and "So what show are you working on now?"


Where Are Your Shoes by Charlotte Erickson

There's a rusty water pump
And a bright black snake
Along this dusty road
Child, where are your shoes?

There are fallen coconuts
And huge heaps of garbage
Under this blazing sun
Child, where are your shoes?

There are elephants strolling
And baby goats roaming
Through this tiny village
Child, where are your shoes?

There's a dirty face
And one small, outstretched hand
On a beautiful girl
But child, where are your shoes?


*From November-ish to April-ish, in the back of the car.

Shakespeare put it best

"See what a grace was seated on this brow...."

"Like a mildew'd ear"*

Even if Richard had not been piteously slain and murdered, he'd still be long dead, I agree. Either way, yesterday was his 556th birthday.

(Hamlet, of course, not Richard III. Act III, scene iv)

*By far, my favorite comparison in all of His Bardness's work. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Nope, much better to compare a king to a mildew'd ear. Good one, Will!

Appetite grows by what it feeds on?

Desire has no object, only a singular cause: desire desires its own cause in order ever to perpetuate itself. The ego experiences desire in the form of psychological contents (”wishes”). The subject of the unconscious does not have desire - it is desire.

From Journal of Thieves

Happy Birthday, Mr. Mencken

"When things get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody."

H.L. Mencken, The American Language

Both parties would say this proves their point

"America demonstrates invincibly one thing that I had doubted up to now: that the middle classes can govern a State. ... Despite their small passions, their incomplete education, their vulgar habits, they can obviously provide a practical sort of intelligence and that turns out to be enough."

Alexis de Toqueville

This is what comes of allowing poets to write plays

Doug lent me his copy of Under Milk Wood, a play he talks about the way that I talk about Betrayal (except that he has actually directed both of them and knows them better than I ever will). I picked it up to read yesterday in order to clear my "library card" with him (which is written on the front of his script for Dinner with Friends so I remain very aware of it).*

So there I am, sitting in the Starbucks before rehearsal, and I open this thing. As I do so, Laurie swung by on her way to her rehearsal, saw it in my hands and asked "Who's doing that?!" "Nobody. I'm just reading it." "Oh." And off she went.

I read the little essay at the beginning and I read the little guide to Dylan Thomas's Anglo-Welsh pronounciation at the back. And then I needed to head to the theater, so I left the Starbucks and began to read the text as I walked.

Page 1.

To begin at the beginning:
It is Spring, moonless, night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

OMG. I coundn't just read it. No way. I had to hear the words and so, in my walking rhythm, I started to read it a bit aloud.

Page 2.

Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nanny-goats, sucking mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night in Donkey Stret, trotting silent with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercoulers done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy.** It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.

By now I was at the theater and tracked Laurie down just to tell her that "Oh, my God, I love this play. I'm on page 2 and I love it." "I know!"

During Andy & Andrea's scene, I curled up with in the back of the room, whispering the words like some kind of postulant with her breviary, stoppping only to poke at Doug and point out the amazingness (which he already knew) of bits like --

Mrs Rose Cottage's eldest, Mae, peals off her pink-and-white skin in a furnace in a tower in a cave in a waterfall in a wood and waits there raw as an onion for Mister Right to leap up the burning tall hollow splashes of leaves like a brilliantined trout.

Why he didn't just swat me away remains a mystery.

As I am reading his copy, I get to see all of his edits, directions, and the occasional thought which is the best part of borrowing someone else's script. Mind you, some of his edits make me sad; for good and sufficient reason, for instance, "sloeblack" is gone from the first paragraph. (Would you like to know the good and sufficient reasons? Ask Doug. It is not for me to reproduce them here because what happens in his reheasal hall, etc.) So no "sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack," alas. I may have to just start saying that randomly to myself to replace in the multiverse the number of times that phrase was not said in its entirety in his production. As always, the multiverse can thank me later.

Another nice thing about borrowing someone else's copy is that - unless that person is all German about her script's and book's spinal integrity the way I am - working copies of scripts tend to lie flat on the desk as one is typing out particularly good bits into one's blog.

He pointed out a few characters that he thought I'd play well. I am immensely flattered.

I'm on page 32 right now. There are only 95 pages, alas. I will probably re-read it before I return it. Maybe more than once.

*David is the only other person who refers to my "library card" in casual conversation about borrowed books.

** The next time that I need a screenname for something, I'm thinking that rosytinteacaddy is the way to go, except that a band in New Zealand thought of it first.

Parting

Parting
by Emily Dickinson

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.