Safe and sound returneth she

Maine is a very, very beautiful state. Especially when it's being visited by people I like to sing Gilbert & Sullivan with. Linda kicked some musical butt with her Katisha. I'm going back up to Connecticut (flying again!) in three weeks to see her do the role in a fully staged production and I'm looking forward to it.

And tonight is the callbacks for two shows for which I have high hopes. (Not for me, mind you, I've already been cast in The Arlington Players' The Man Who Came to Dinner. I'm reprising Maggie, my favorite role and my pal Jeff is playing Whiteside, so I'm dead chuffed.) No, the shows in question are Henry V and The Mikado. David has a call-back for Henry (although he wasn't told for which specific roles) along with several other good folks and Ali is casting Mikado. I'm focusing on sending good karma to all the folks I know who spent the evening sitting in audition rooms thinking "please pick me!" Sure, lives don't hang in the balance and yeah, it's just theater, but we all want what we want.

Julie is auditioning at callbacks for Mikado. She probably doesn't think so, but Julie is a brave and lovely person. Auditioning isn't easy, but she gets up there and does it and hopes for the best and takes the outcome (good or bad) with such grace. Put her in your cast and she'll do anything for you. I love having her in my casts. There's a non-solo singing role she's trying for in this show and I really hope she gets it. Fingers are crossed, as are toes.

The worst thing about auditions is how few actors (or singers) can get out of their heads the idea that they personally are being judged. They will say that they know that's not true, but they say it with the same lack of genuine belief with which I say that I believe that flying is a safe way to travel. Every actor should have to cast a show and every director should have to audition. It's the only way to understand the process.

I'd much rather have to audition (which I actually really enjoy, but I'm weird) than have to cast a show because when I audition I'm only responsible for me. With every casting choice you make, you get something and you give something up and you spend a fair amount of time wondering if you made the right choice. But directors are really and truly only interested in casting their best show, in filling the slots, solving the problems, balancing the equation.

I don't know about the Henry phone calls, but the Mikado ones will probably happen tomorrow morning and early afternoon. If you listen closely, you can hear the breath being held.

Break some legs, guys!

The Auld Alliance

Another gem from Mackie's "A History of Scotland" (and largely for Paul's benefit):

"Scots literature was slow in beginning and followed much the tradition of Chaucer; but towards the end of the century, French influences revealed themselves markedly in the work of writers who made much use of French forms and French vocabulary, and whose 'approach' resembled that of Villon."

***

Between reading this history book and reading "Henry V," I've developed a strong need for a comparison table of long-dead Monarchs, so I've started one. So far I've got the rulers of England, Scotland, and France (the Irish will be added later). To keep it even slightly useful to me, I did it in Excel, making Column A years in 25-year intervals and Columns B through D the appropriate Alpha Individual. So now when I go to see "HV," I'll know that the "French King" in question is Charles VI, the Well-Beloved, who died around the same time as Chatty Hal. And exactly with whom the Scots were trying to negotiate at any given point. And it all interweaves because English Kings having French adventures were usually leaving the Scots to their own devices, much to the relief of said Scots. And, of course, there is a certain amount of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" in the Auld Alliance. I think either France or Scotland would have been happy to partner with anyone willing to be a thorn in the paw of the English lion.

I wouldn't call this chronology exactly a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, but 'twill serve.

Up, Up, and Away

I'm a nervous flier. And of all the understatements in my collection, it seems that "I'm a nervous flier" and "I don't like heights" are the two that come closest to actually leaving the area of truthfulness simply by being so far from accurately describing my feelings. Here are more accurate statements: I am a terrified flier and a complete ninny about heights.

I mention this because I'm getting on a plane today. I'm flying from Dulles to Bradley Airport in Hartford, Connecticut. My pal, Linda, will meet me in Hartford and then she, her pal, Julie, and I will drive tomorrow morning to Portland, Maine, where we will sing a lot of G&S with a larger bunch of our pals. So I'm looking forward to every moment of the weekend, except for the two hours I'll be spending in the air.

I can say with a certain amount of pride that although I am a nervous flier, if flying is how to get somewhere, I get on the plane. I've been to France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, England, California, and St. Louis in the past few years. I've flown with friends, I've flown alone. The flights to and from Australia and New Zealand, by the way, are 11 - 15 hours over open water, my least favorite.

So, in order to cope, I have a kind of routine for flying. Some people might compare all this to the first signs of OCD or maybe dementia, but it gets me through, so I do it.

1. I never wear meltable clothes on a plane or high heels. If I have to leave in a hurry, I want to able to wear my shoes and I don't want nasty, disfiguring burns to complicate the process.

2. I tell every member of the cabin staff that I encounter that I am a nervous flier. I sometimes ask for a drink of water just so I'll have something to do.

3. When I get to my seat, I count the rows to the exits, I read the entire safety card, even though I know it by heart, and I listen to the entire safety speech, even though I could recite it along with the staff. If Johnny Depp wanted my phone number, I'd shush him during the safety lecture.

4. If they are strangers, I tell my seatmates that I'm a nervous flier, so that if I grab their hands during the flight, they'll know why. (I have done this. Once I stop hyperventilating, I let go and apologize, but still....)

5. Just before and during take-off, I pray. Really and truly pray.

6. If we hit even the tiniest air pocket, I do two things - claw the upholstery of the seat in front of me in panic and then look around for a member of the cabin staff. A kindly stranger once pointed out that if we were in trouble, the cabin staff wouldn't be smiling and pouring hot coffee. Best advice I ever got. Makes much more sense than statistics to me. The cabin staff might smille through any disaster, but the coffee pouring would definitely stop. And they'd go strap themselves in. Cabin staff members leaning casually against galley walls and chatting are a very comforting sight to me. Not comforting enough, but I take what I can get.

People have suggested sleeping pills - I have real trouble sleeping on planes because going to sleep involves sitting quietly with my eyes closed, which only allows me to more accutely feel the plane jiggling - but I reject that idea because if there's a problem, I'd like to be able to get out on my own. Just hop up and leave. Not as likely if I've drugged myself into a stupor. Valium sounds like a better plan because it just takes the edge off, lowers things from terrified to afraid, but I have enough people in my family with addictive personalities that I'm not anxious to introduce anything habit forming into my life.

I bring a book and read, trying to block out any sensory input that indicates that I'm on a plane. I hum sometimes, just to make a little white noise.

When I talk about my fear of flying I lean on the more amusing aspects of how demented I get. Several folks have said they'd like to fly with me just to watch the process. And the friends who have flown with me - the ones who didn't get their arms clawed off - have funny stories to tell about me on planes. My mother and I were a source of great amusement to the cabin staff on the way to St. Louis. Mom hasn't flown for years and loves it so even though she is clear on how nervous I am - and even though the lady in the seat behind us was ***even more scared than me*** - Mom was happily yodeling things like "Here we go!!" and other comments focusing on stuff which that other lady and I were trying very hard not to think about. I think it was my through-gritted-teeth request that Mom "be joyful more quietly" that earned me the free Bloody Mary.

So wish me luck. And wave if you see an Independence Air flight go overhead. If I can pry my fingers loose from the armrests, I'll wave back.

Hastings Day

Today, October 14th, is the 938th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. On October 13th everyone in England lived in an Anglo-Saxon country with random Norse problems. By the end of the following day they lived in a largely Anglo-Saxon country with Norman overlords. Pretty much every aspect of my life comes from that one day - the language I speak (and abuse so lovingly now and then), the social structure of the country (England) that so largely shaped the country in which I live (the US), and so forth and so forth.

Interestingly enough, William became "the Conquerer" because he believed that he had been left the crown of England as a bequest. He believed that it was his, so he came and took it. Roughly 450 years later, Henry V (Henry the Vee) returned the favor and marched into France and took it because he believed that it righfully belonged to him. William's heirs hung on to their father's conquest a bit better than Henry's did, though.

Hastings Day is also my mother's birthday. She has two connections with English history because she was born on Hastings Day and both 1066 and the year in which she was born - 1936 - were years with three English kings. Coincidence? I think not. Perhaps my mother is the rightful monarch, instead of Mrs. Mountbatten-Windsor. Something to think about.

(1066 = Edward the Confessor, Harold II, and William the Conquerer;
1936 = George V, Edward VIII, and George VI)

Today in Scot Lit

The Guardian Unlimited announced that today Edinburgh, Scotland will be named by the United Nations as the "First City of Literature."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1327041,00.html

I'm late, I'm late

I think it's time for me to stop being surprised by the number of blog entries I encounter (I am still powerless to resist the "next blog" button because "next blog" is how I found most of the ones that I check on a daily basis) that have somewhere near the top of a post the statement that the author is now very late - for class, for work, for a deadline, what-have-you. This is then followed by a nice, long, chatty post. If one is already late, doesn't sitting around writing blog posts only compound the problem?

Now me, on the other hand, I never do that. I will, however, sit and write nice, long, chatty posts when I'm avoiding memorizing something. Like right now. I have half a monologue memorized for an audition. Well, more like two-thirds, really. It's just that memorizing monolouges is intensely dull. No fun at all. So I'm taking a break from this one to write about the memorization process.

I have a system that seems to work for me, which is:

1. Find a monologue that will remain interesting for the period during which I'll need it.
2. Type it out or hand-write it. The mind remembers what the hands have done.
3. Read it a few times.
4. Start the "pound it into my head" process. Read sentence A, repeat sentence A several times while not looking at the paper. Read sentence B, repeat sentence B several times while not looking at the paper. Now say sentences A & B. Lather-rinse-repeat for sentences C thorugh ZZ (or sometimes zzzzzzzzzzzz).
5. Tape myself reading the monologue, preferably with vocal choices included, saying each sentence twice, so that I can hear it and then say it along with myself. Play the tape in the car anytime I'm driving alone.
6. Read the monologue now and again, as though it were new material. This really helps to clean up mis-memorization errors.

It's a really boring process, but it gets the words into my head, so it works for me. It is interesting, too, which monologues (and dialogues) my brain accepts easily and which ones it takes forever to learn. Anything that I try to memorize near to the time when I've had to memorize something else I learn quickly because memory is a muscle. If I go from show to show to show, the dialogue gets learned pretty quickly. The first show after a long break is the hardest.

Learning lines written by someone whose syntax is either similar to mine or very, very different is easier than learning lines written by someone whose syntax is 17 degrees off from mine. My brain will struggle with competing word choices and clause arrangements. The easiest dialogue for me to memorize was probably Tennessee Williams's words for Flora in "27 Wagons Full of Cotton." Williams's characters talk the way that people talk. George S. Kaufman's characters talk the way that people haven't really talked in a while, but still kind of do. W.S. Gilbert's characters talk the way no actual human being talks. (They talk in "exposition speak."). So Williams and Gilbert are easier for me than Kaufman. And, of course, easier doesn't necessarily mean more rewarding, because I love doing Kaufman shows.

Okay, back to work.

Krakatoa - extremely East of Java

I just love NPR. I tend to stay away during major political eruptions (like elections) or post-disaster when they become all-one-story, all-the-time until my sympathy and attention span are completely burnt out. But I'll sneak back now and then, hoping for some decent signal amongst the horrible noise and I got lucky this morning.

Michael Sullivan opened his fascinating report on Anak Krakatau (Krakatoa Volcano: The Son Also Rises) with a brief description of the 1969 movie Krakatoa, East of Java (carefully pointing out that even the title is wrong, because Krakatoa is - as we all know by now - west of Java). Then we get the part that improved my commute, when Sullivan said: "The volcano blew and so did the movie."

The rest of the report reminded me how interesting I find volcanos. I didn't get to climb Mt. Etna while in Italy, but several friends did and told me how odd it is to see slow moving lava wandering down the hill a few feet away. (Jealousy, it seems, never goes away. I still envy them that experience.) I did fly near Mt. Ruapehu in New Zealand when it was active in 1996 and I did tour Pompeii, possibly the saddest place I've ever been and a great example of the triumph of real estate over experience. Mt. Vesuvius isn't dead, but there are entire housing developments on the hillside leading to Pompeii.

You don't know somebody ....

My friend Stacey is not only warm, kind, funny, smart, good-hearted, generous, and non-judgemental, she is also published. Stacey submitted a poem she wrote to Exquisite Corpse and they published it! (http://www.corpse.org/issue_14/unm_person/abbott.html). How cool is that?

And we're back!

The firewall here at the office decided that Blogspot was dangerous and wouldn't allow me to access it, which made my usual lunchtime trolling of my favorite blogs a no-go and posting from here ditto. But our IT folks have fixed the problem! Yea!

So I'm reading the Scottish history book and came across the following:

“Faith was strong and the money acquired by sees and religious houses was by no means wasted. To it we owe the beautiful buildings which, defiant alike of English destruction and reforming zeal, still witness to the achievement of generations who saw in beauty one form of holiness.” And a page or two later: "There the Flemings had their own house, the Red Hall, under whose burning timbers they all died during the brutal sack of the city by Edward I in 1296."

Mackie's prose is frequently rather dense and chewy, but in that bran muffin I keep finding cranberries - light, tart, colorful bits - like those two quotes.

Rainbows and **what**?

Okay, let's start by admitting that I'm a geezer and that I like clear, clean enunciation by singers. I might as well be able to understand what-ever-the-hell they are singing about so emotionally. Good. That's out of the way.

Tom Lehrer did sing that "it doesn't matter if you put a couple of extra syllables into line" but he was being satirical.

In "She will be loved" the singer is trying to sing about rainbows and butterflies, but having lost count of his syllables or something, he actually sings "it's not all rainbows and buttflies." I don't know about you, but I'll take the rainbows and no thanks on the "buttflies."

And in the theme song to Spiderman 2, they sing what sounds a lot like "whose eyes in my behind" or, alternatively, "who's eyein' my behind." Not a huge problem, but not what they were going for, you know? I mean, isn't some of the nobility and angst of the song dissipated by my sophmoric giggling?

Scots Wha Hae

In case you were wondering ----

Robert Burns (1759-1796)

Scots Wha Hae (1794)

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!

Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour;
See approach proud Edward's power--
Chains and slavery!

Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave!
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!

Wha for Scotland's king and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or freeman fa',
Let him follow me!

By oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!--
Let us do or die!

I've finished "The Warden"

And loved it. Only one chapter didn't hold my interest and only because he kept saying the same thing, and in largely the same way, over and over. I suspect that with sufficient application of Scotch and English Major powder, the importance of that chapter would become clear.

I know that my non-English Major friends truly believe that English Majors pull the arguments and evidence for their papers from their butts, but this is not true. We have a special powder - like the kind they use to dust for fingerprints - that we gently spray onto recalcitrant works of literature. Wait a minute or two, carefully blow the excess powder away, and all is revealed. Had I a larger supply of English Major powder, my whole life could have been different.

Unfortunately, there is no English Major Luminol to definitively reveal the presence of literary merit in a given work. Such a pity.

Anyway, I've finished The Warden and now need to acquire a lot more Trollope. But in the mean time, I'm moving on to A History of Scotland by J.D. Mackie. Expect comments on the Picts, and Duncan, and Malcolm and that crowd in upcoming posts.

Scots wha hae!

(And, apparently, misused and misspelled quotes in Scots dialect as well. Hmmmmm. If Derrick sees this, I could be in some trouble.)

My Blogosphere

Now that I have a blog, I've - not surprisingly - become much more interested in other's people's blogs. I check in with David's a couple of times a day (http://mywebpages.comcast.net/nouveau/blog/) (I know, I know, it's not a real link, yeah, I know); I check Paul's ditto (http://thesunkeepsrising.blogspot.com/); and just by mousing around I've found a lot of blogs written by 14 - 17 year olds. Some have kept my attention, most don't.

There's a young lady in Canada named Alleah (http://pintoisfun.blogspot.com/), who is smart and funny and is working on a production of Bye-Bye, Birdie so her blog is a jumble of what she did with her friends, how rehearsal is going, who said what to whom, who said what about whom. Not to mention her (new?) boyfriend. Kind of like Jane Austen without the honorifics. Sam (http://nacho-elf.blogspot.com/) is a very tired high school student in Cleveland. I thought my schedule was a bit too crowded, but Sam's totally got me beat. I am impressed.

Shauna (http://writingmyheartout.blogspot.com/) is a Buddhist and teaches creative writing to high school students. She loves to write, especially about the little things that make up her life. She loves teaching, she really likes her students, she walks to work, and is an active participant and observer in her own life.

And Cooking for Engineers (http://www.cookingforengineers.com/) is just plain fun. I work with engineers and they are bright, interesting, and - often - deeply weird people. I believe that there is a name for the sort of chart that Michael uses - and I'm convinced that David told me what it is - but I can't remember it off-hand. But ya gotta check it out.

So when I get in at night, I check my mail, I look to see if I have any comments on this blog (I've really enjoyed the ones I've gotten so far), and then I do a blog stroll. I open the "favorites" list and click away, catching up on what's going on with some folks I've never met and some old pals.

Oh, yipes. It's midnight. Time for bed.

David's dream come true

David has noted in his blog that my having a blog might inspire me to actually listen when he tells me how to do a hyperlink. Which is possible. That could happen. Entirely possible.

Rounding Third

As a former roommate of mine used to say - Oh frabjous day!

Richard Dresser's Rounding Third (a lovely, lovely, funny, and touching play that David and I saw at the Contemporary American Theater Festival this past summer) has been published. Dramatic Publishing holds it and I've ordered a copy for my very own. In among the "too many books" in my condo is a bookcase dedicated to scripts and theater-related books. It is full. Scripts are starting to pile up on the dining room table - the flat surface nearest to the theater bookcase. I want some of my local companies to do Rounding Third so that I can see it again and again. It has two good men's roles and I can think of a dozen men who would be great in it. I ordered my copy ten minutes ago, so now I am anxiously awaiting its arrival so that I can read it a couple of times and just carry it around with me for a while.

Oh boy, oh boy.

My new bud, Anthony Trollope

Reading good. Reading very good.

I've made it to Chapter V of The Warden and I am loving it. Trollope writes words the way that Haydn wrote music - there is a sense of enjoyment, of fun, that pulls me in and makes me feel like a conspirator in his story-telling. We're breathing together, Mr. Trollope and I.

Here is an excerpt that caught my eye:

"Nor is there any good reason why Eleanor Harding should not love John Bold. He has all those qualities which are likely to touch a girl's heart. He is brave, eager, and amusing; well-made and good-looking; young and enterprising; his character is in all respects good; he has sufficient income to support a wife; he is her father's friend; and, above all, he is in love with her. Then why should not Eleanor Harding be attached to John Bold?"

There have been, over the years, men who have caught my attention simply by liking me. What does the Baroness say in The Sound of Music? That there is nothing more irresistable to a man than a woman who is in love with him? Maybe Lindsay and Crouse knew their Trollope.

So I shall be buried in Trollope for a while, instead of muttering dialogue to myself. GLW and the paperwork with Satan going through, I'll resume mutter dialogue sometime in the fall.

Onwards!

Time to read

When I am not working on a show, I long for the enforced discipline of learning lines. When I am working on a show I long to read for pleasure.

With The Vagina Monologues closing tomorrow night, I'll once again have time to read for pleasure. To say that I have a stack of books waiting for me is the definition of understatement. I own many, many books - enough that there are 12 copier paper boxes of books that I cannot unpack because there would be no place to put them. David's blog a has a picture on it somewhere of someone (Catherine maybe?) who has stacks of books 3 feet high down the hallways of her house. I haven't reached that point, but there is a couple of stacks in my dining room that reach, I guess, 6 feet and every time I buy a new book, it gets added to that stack.

I also have borrowed books. Books by and about Dorothy Parker from Les, Terry Pratchett paperbacks from Deb and Amy, a bio of Broadway legend Jed Harris from Ira, some James Joyce from David. And last year I started a project for myself whereby (what a great word!) I'm reading my own books and reshelving or deaccessioning them at the end of the last page. A lot of books have gone away, but more keep coming in.

Objectively, I own too many books. Hello, my name is Leta and I own too many books...

So now that I have some time to read, I want to just read. I bought a copy of Trollope's The Warden recently and I'm going to dive into it - along with the history of Scotland that I started yesterday. I bought the Scottish history several months ago, but have been continuously distracted by scripts. I read plays as though they were books, but they aren't. I'm going to read Middlemarch and make it past page 20 this time. I really am.

I have bedtime books (the Pratchetts, the Harris bio), books I carry around, books I keep at the office for emergency reading. I read at stoplights, I read Time magazine, I read while standing in line, I read if my dinner partner goes to the bathroom, I read during commercials while watching tv. I read during minor, outpatient surgery. I love to read. I love books - love to read books. I love the way they feel in my hands, I love the way they smell. I love to re-read books I've read before as though they are old friends because they are.

Okay, I gotta go. My books are calling me.

Talk like a pirate day!!!

It's after midnight and now officially "Talk Like a Pirate Day!"

So, avast, me beauties and raise a glass or two to those who remember to talk like Pirates. And raise one to my favorite pirate, Johnny Depp.

When did Leta become an actress?

Such was the question asked of my director (Judie) by a fellow board member. Judie's answer is that I've always been an actress. My answer, about an hour ago.

The Vagina Monologues is going very well. We played to full houses last night and tonight and expect to be at about 90% for the rest of the run. Both audiences so far totally got the material and were warm, friendly, receptive folks to play to. God bless 'em.

Misty and I have a really nice moment late in the show. She finishes the moaner monologue with the "surprise triple orgasm moan," which is a hoot to watch and the audience just loves it. And then she does a little "aftershock." When the laughter and applause has crested, I shoot her a look like "and you're done now? We can go on?" and she nods like "yeah, sure, go ahead" which gets us a nice rebound laugh. Great fun. This is definitely a show that benefits from having an audience.

WATCH meeting

So what better way to spend a rainy Saturday - or at least part of one - than to attend a meeting?

I adjudicate theater for WATCH (warning - convoluted acronym coming!) - the Washington Area Theater Community Honors - which is basically a peer review organization for community theater. Every participating theater has to provide five judges, who in turn see 8 - 10 shows per year and complete ballots adjudicating what they saw. (Scores from 1 to 10 with 1 = suck and 10 = fabulous, no narrative required.)

So today's meeting will be an orientation thing for incoming companies. Because the Washington Post does a lovely job (Thank you, Michael Toscano!!!!) of demonstrating that getting nominations and awards from WATCH is a good thing, we use the orientation meeting to stress the pain-in-the-butt aspects of participation. Todd leans on "you'll see a lot of bad theater" and I lean on "and you'll drive to hell and gone to do it." In order to belong to WATCH, a company must be within 20 miles of the Washington Monument, but we have "exceptioned" in a couple of companies slightly beyond that distance. Which means that judges from La Plata, Maryland will occasionally find themselves treking through DC area traffic (3rd worst in the nation!) to Fauquier, Virginia. I guess it's 50 miles as the crow flies, but that's not how one gets places in this area. At at recent meeting, I suggested raising the dues and buying a special WATCH helicopter.

Anyway, we figure that if folks are aware of the annoying parts from the beginning, they'll be more likely to stick it out. So far, so good.

And Todd does exaggerate to a degree. In my years doing this, I've seen very few bad shows and almost no really bad shows. Most lump under "fine." Some were great. I love doing it. I really do.