Home Again, Home Again Lickety-Split

Finally, I am in the sunny clutches of Southern California. I get three whole weeks here to bask in the loving gazes of my sweet John, pet my cats (who haven't missed me in the least), at long last take in some dance class, and generally hang around getting mundane things accomplished.

"Fille du Regiment" actually closed well. We moved up to the far superior theater in Broward County and had a grand old time with our final two shows. The attached photo shows the rush before curtain in the wig and makeup room on closing night. On the last night I watched the sticky sequences from the wings. I never sit in the house on closing night. I don't think there's anything that can be done at that point. Weird things happen during a closing performance and I, personally, don't want to know about them. I can't fix anything about the show once it closes.

I tortured myself for this show, however, by planting myself next to the stage manager's console to watch the overture and the marching sequences. This was partly due to the fact that one of our super soldier's was lying in bed with the flu that night and I spent the final half an hour before curtain rearranging several of the entrances and exits for the difficult overture sequence. I had one soldier coming in earlier than usual and another jumping on a different count so that we could cover the fact that we were missing one of our men. Had a different super been sick (one with more intricate movements) I may very well have put on his costume, asked wigs to slap a moustache on my face, and gone out there myself, but this guy's part was small enough that a little rearranging rendered an overture that nearly measured up to what was normally performed.

Despite, I still stood backstage with my arms crossed and watched the action. They did fine, and each successful change was accompanied by a miniscule pump of my fists and a nearly inaudible, "yes!" The one snafu of the evening, actually, involved this poor errant mug that Marie tosses behind her during the song of the regiment. It's been a problem from the get go. The action is supposed to be that she sings her high note then blindly tosses the mug (to a predetermined mark) and a chorus member standing in the cart catches it quite spontaneously. It never happened that way, with the mug sometimes flying over everyone's head and landing in the back drop, many times it simply missing its mark and landing in the hands of another chorus gentleman standing by, and once flying up beautifully and landing in between a bevy of chorus boys who just didn't have the energy or gumption to reach out and catch it. It's most definitely a head-in-my-hands moment and the final night I walked into the men's dressing room and beseeched them to catch the mug at all costs. On watching, the mug flew up a little too high, I see all of the chorus men look at its trajectory and move across the stage accordingly, then I watch in a bit of horror and a lot of amusement as it gleans itself off of the cabin roof and ricochets back into the crowd of soldier boys. One of them reaches up to grab it, and falls into a spontaneous Mary Katherine Gallagher pose as it lands safely in his palm. Disaster averted.

So, the show closed well and with great admiration from the audience. I received many well wishes and gave back an equal amount, then retired to my little home to pack with relief playing across my face.

I actually really like watching a show from the wings. I find the backstage action fascinating, especially when it involves quick changes and handing off of props left and right. I love watching singers and actors in their final moment of repose before jumping into character and propelling themselves on stage. I love seeing the final adjustment of hats, baldrics, shoe laces, a wig person running to someone as they exit to adjust a moustache, a side burn. There's something magical about the energy that sits in the wings that one never gets from the audience. It's a totally different energy that is projected past the orchestra pit. I forget how much I miss the adrenalin of back stage until I spend an evening amongst it.

And now I'm back home, and a whole new energy of calm and family surrounds me. I went with John to the Meet-and-Greet for "Lucia di Lammermoor," which begins rehearsals today at San Diego Opera. It was nice to see old friends and be in the SDO space again. It was nice to be at a company function without having to "turn it on." I just stood at John's side and chit-chatted with people I hadn't seen in months. These three weeks will be healing for me before I run back to Miami to put together a "Rigoletto" that is already proving to be a challenge to my sanity.

More on that later...

Holding Pattern

In two days I will be whisking my way home across the country towards three beautiful weeks in San Diego. Right now I'm in what seems to be an inevitable holding pattern. I've discovered that boredom (and it takes a lot to get me bored) makes me exhausted and throws off my sleep pattern.

My life has consisted of, let's see . . .

The other day I went to the beach and walked up and down the boardwalk for exactly twenty minutes only to realize that I had very little interest in looking at the leathery sun-worshippers and seaweed laden beaches.

Yesterday I got out of the house to have lunch at a bagel deli and do a little reading al fresco. I spent 45 minutes eating there, then walked next door to Starbucks and spent another 45 minutes reading while nursing my latte.

I've spent a lot of time catching up on all of the "Sex and the Cities," "Everybody Loves Raymonds" and "Ellens" that I never saw when they originally played.

I've checked my oil, washed my car, washed my windows, wiped down my seats, mopped by apartment floors, cleaned the toilet, done umpteen loads of laundry, dusted and dusted and dusted.

I've spent a lot of time at the mall looking at things I can't afford, and once I bought some things I couldn't afford too.

I've slept more than I've ever slept in my entire life and played more Mah Jong solitaire than I can shake a stick at.

Today, however, I'm at the Broward County Center for the Performing Arts. We blew through level settings for the show and went to Tarpon Bend to have a leisurely lunch. I will be so happy to wrap this show.

So happy.

A Young Girl's View of Our Nation's Capitol

So I've been thinking a lot about the origins of my wanderlust. Here I am in Miami, 3000 miles from my home in San Diego (which is 2000 miles from my original home in Missouri). I'm in a job that forces me to travel in order to stay employed in my profession year round, and I still want to travel outside of it. I am a walking dichotomy; on the one hand I yearn for roots and other hand I am more than happy to be living out of a suitcase.

I started looking back at all of the trips I've taken in my life, and there are some that stand out more than others. I think I'm going to start writing about them on Sundays. Sort of a neurotic, odd travel guide for someone who wants to get into my head... The first one is my first remembered vacation. This was when I was 11, back in the day of long family road trips that lasted the entire summer (or seemed like it). Fights in the back of the minivan with my two brothers over who got the seat to themselves and who had to set up a seatbelt barricade. This particular summer we piled into the Aerostar and my father headed due East to the birthplace of our nation.

I have vague, childlike memories of this trip. I remember driving through Belle, West Virginia and thinking that was awesome because we had a puppy named Belle. I remember stopping at Cathedral Falls nearby Belle, a waterfall that sprung up out of nowhere and invited my mother to take off her shoes and run into the spray. More childlike behavior abounded from my parents when we finally arrived in Jamestown, no longer an actual town but a town reenactment for the pleasure of tons of Midwestern tourists like ourselves. My mother had mock sword fights with my brother in Pocahantas' cabin, and sat in the stocks posing forlornly for a photograph with my other brother. There was a glassblowing establishment in that area that made these rough-hewn glasses that caught the eye of my parents. They bought a set as an anniversary present to each other and I remember drinking out of them through my adolesence. I looked for them the last time I went home and I have no idea where they've run off to. My memory of the glass blowing is a man in traditional costume rolling a glowing green stick in a fire. Molten dripping green and blue incandesence and sweat dripping from the man's forehead into his long beard (like my daddy's).

Virginia also has a bevy of Presidential homes. We saw two of them (only a mountain apart): Monticello and Ash Lawn. Everyone always goes on about Monticello, saying how grand it is and how beautiful the gardens are. When I think back to the tour there, I remember a kitchen below the house that, to me, seemed sad in that it would have been full of slaves during Jefferson's life. I remember an alcove bed in Jefferson's room that I would beg for until I moved away from home, a winding staircase that led to a wing of the house that was forbidden to the tourists of the day, and a monument to Jefferson in the garden that was surrounded by elderly people resting along the garden wall after the official tour ended.


The house that really got me was Ash Lawn. Monroe's house was much more modest than Jefferson's. They were great friends and, if I remember right, Jefferson had Monroe's house built for him on the opposite mountain so they could always see if the other was home. Sure enough, when you stood on the lawn of Ash Lawn, you could look across and see the dome of Jefferson's home winking back. As beautiful as that was, Ash Lawn seemed more like where I wanted to live. It reminded me of my parent's house with a bit more clutter, more inclined to knick-knacks and flourishes on the curtains and sofa. There were sheep and flower boxes and so many little things to look at that I didn't know where to turn. My knick-knack phase now ended, it's hard for me to imagine choosing Ash Lawn over Monticello, but everything seemed more welcoming there at the time.

There was one little decorative plate that I took to. It sat on a small occasional table in the drawing room. Clear glass, it was etched with the profiles of a man and woman with huge grins on their faces and the words, "On their wedding day." Amusingly, when you turned the plate over, the smiles turned to frowns and the words read, "And Three Years After." I thought the plate was so funny . . . amusing to me now since I look back and see that my parents were in such a happy marriage. Did I think it was funny because it wasn't true? Did the idea of marital strife make me laugh because I wasn't exposed to it? Whatever the reason, I have said plate in my house. In my child's mind, I remember taking it off that drawing room table and bringing it with me, but my mother assures me that we purchased the cheaper replica in the museum store.


Idyllic....I remember the rolling hills of that area. I feel like we drove for days through that part of the country, going from house to house and seeing all of the treasures that each had to offer. We ended our Presidential journey with dinner at Michie Tavern, seemingly at the bottom of the hills that housed Monroe and Jefferson, this little restaurant/museum had been around since those gentlemen (and more) frequented the place to take a draught and talk politics. I remember clinking silverware, women dressed up in Colonial dress, and a huge grist mill outside.

Washington, D.C. came soon enough. We stayed in Manassas, Virginia, and walked around Bull Run. My brother's were blown away by the old house with cannonballs nestled comfortably into the brick. We spent hours running through the grass searching the dirt for musket balls to take home.

D.C. is a sweaty memory. All city, dirty, smoggy and hot. I can feel my tired feet in my Keds tennis shoes. I think we walked twenty miles through that city. It's hard to discern my actual memories of being there with photos that I see of the city and its monuments. I remember standing in the rotunda of the capitol building and looking up at the artwork on the walls, walking through a hall of statues from each state in the same building and wondering at the Hawaiian King, the only statue not made of cold, white stone, but of a chocolate brown with gold gilt on the crown and scepter. We spent time in the archives there, one of my grandfather's being Thomas Ustick Walter, who was the architect of the dome on said capitol. Our lineage got us past tourist lines, which was great fun for my mother and for me and the brothers, a long trip down into an office that looked like any other.


I have memories of standing in a line that seemingly reached around the block to see the Constitution in its case. We had just studied the Constitution in school and I was looking for the names of the signers at the bottom that I had written and read about. My mother stayed as long as possible, trying to read the whole thing, but the guard told her she couldn't linger. We had to "move along." We can read the whole thing in a book.

I wish I had memories of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial and the White House but I don't. Everytime I try to pull them out, I feel like I'm pulling at straws to get something beyond the photos I see in books. Those weren't the things that stuck.


The Smithsonian didn't stick either, though we spent several days there. I have four memories from inside those hallowed halls: A flag from the Civil War, hanging behind glass, huge, in a dark room with holes and rips and frays along the edges, the Hope Diamond shining out at me from a small viewing window, like a glass eye gleaming from inside it's cell, Dorothy's ruby slippers, and Archie Bunker's chair, green and sunken in a mock up of the original set.

So, Keturah goes to Washington and she remembers a chair with an imprint of Carol O'Conner's butt. Funny what nearly twenty years will filter out and keep in.

I remember feeling history on that trip though. I remember climbing lots of stone steps and thinking about all of the other footsteps that have fallen in those places. I remember feeling lost in the years that have passed since those buildings were first put to use. I remember thinking that I would have to go back when I grew up.

I will.

A Man's World? (More News from the Raunch Front)

A quote from Ariel Levy:

"Women who've wanted to be perceived as powerful have long found it more efficient to identify with men than to try and elevate the entire female sex to their level. The writers Mary McCarthy and Elizabeth Hardwick were famously contemptuous of 'women's libbers,' for example, and were untroubled about striving to 'write like a man.' Some of the most glamourous and intriguing women in our history have been compared to men, either by admirers or detractors. One of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay's many lovers, the young editor John Bishop, wrote to her in a letter, 'I think really that your desire works strangely like a man's.' In an August 2001 article for Vanity Fair, Hillary Clinton's biographer Gail Sheehy commented that 'from behind, the silhouette of the freshman senator from New York looks like that of a man.' A high school classmate of Susan Sontag's told her biographers Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock that young 'Sue' maintained a masculine kind of independence.' Judith Regan, the most feared and famous executive in publishing - and the woman who brought us Jenna Jameson's best-selling memoir - is fond of bragging, 'I have the biggest cock in the building!' at editorial meetings (and referring to her detractors as 'pussies.'). There is a certain kind of woman - talented, powerful, unrepentant - whom we've always found difficult to describe without some version of the phrase 'like a man,' and plenty of those women have never had a problem with that. Not everyone cares that this doesn't do much for the sisterhood."

This is me. How many times have I heard someone in the business tell me that I have a lot of balls, bosses tell me that I "think like a man," significant others claim to find my "wanton masculine side" sexy? I embraced it because I thought it made me stronger - perhaps to them, but to me as well.

Am I part of the problem?

Family Pride (Shameless Plugs)

I've got talented people in my family. I get my love of writing from my father's side, and just read this short story on The Square Table by my cousin (my dad's brother's son). Lovely work . . . check it out for yourself.

Incidentally, my father is also a great writer. He published a book a couple of years ago, "Glory Be To The Father, The Son...," that's also worth checking out.

Both men write beautiful works steeped in the human experience.

Homeward Bound (I wish I was..)

I sat in the balcony last time we had a show. Having the same seat every night for the last couple of shows has been hard on me. I like to sit all over the place, get a handle on the sight lines in different parts of the theater, hear how it sounds from different areas, shake it up a little. So, when I walked out into the house on Sunday and saw my seat surrounded by people when I'm usually isolated, I walked right past the row and climbed the winding staircase up to the balcony. House right had a whole section that was empty and I settled down and watched the show from a new vantage point. It's a totally different experience when you're looking at the show from so far up.

Whenever I worked at DePaul, Harry and I always watched the final dress rehearsal from the balcony. It answered a lot of questions about spacing and patterns that are hard to discern from the front of the tech table. I miss that - will always view it from there when I'm doing my own work. Now the only place I haven't seen "Fille" from is house left. That's probably where I'll sit at Broward - I hope there aren't any sight line issues that I never noticed.

I stopped into the offices today to pick up a Rigoletto score and thought I might feel sad about not having the opportunity to work on "Barber." Didn't feel it in the least. That's how ecstatic I am to spend some time at home. Right now it's just the waiting game that's getting me. I hate waiting around for things to happen - I'm a proactive sort of girl.

Oh, the Horror!

John has alerted me to an article in the London Times about the anger felt by Christian and Right-Wing groups about the results of last night's Golden Globes. Apparently they feel that awarding the likes of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Transamerica" is corrupting our country and saying that America accepts (horrors!!!) homosexuality.

My vote for possibly the stupidest comment of the year (yes, surpassing many Bushisms) comes from Janice Crouse of the group, Concerned Women for America. She says,

“Once again, the media elites are proving that their pet projects are more important than profit. None of the three movies — Capote, Transamerica or Brokeback Mountain — is a box office hit. Brokeback Mountain has barely topped $25 million (£14.2 million) in ticket sales. If America isn’t watching these films, why are they winning the awards?”

I am absolutely struck by her inability to seperate artistic merit with profit. Sometimes a well-made, artistically brilliant film makes it big in the mainstream box office and sometimes it doesn't. From what Ms. Crouse says, "Wedding Crashers" should actually be our big winner at the award shows this year. Or maybe "40-Year-Old Virgin." I'm also struck by her insinuation that a movie should only be award-worthy if its subject matter is wholesome and not controversial.

Finally . . . isn't there something in the bible about money being evil? I know not exactly those words, but isn't there something about the poor, hardworking man ascending to heaven faster than the man who gives all of his excess money to the church? Shouldn't we be happy that Hollywood is spending more time on projects it cares about (pet projects) than profit? Since when did good Christian values and heavy profit work well together in the same sentence?

I'm highly amused, extremely confused, and a little bit scared...

The Boy King in Florida

Today I drove up to Ft. Lauderdale to view the Tutankhamen exibit at the Museum of Art. One of the few reasons I'm glad to be in this area is that I have the chance to see this as it passes through. According to the Egyptian government, it will be the last time that any of the treasures of King Tut's tomb will pass through the United States. I think the exhibit is going through three other cities.

The exhibit was great in that I got to see many of the jewels adorning Tut in his tomb as well as many of the furniture pieces, bit of jars, games, and statues of dieties found in the tomb when it was first opened in 1922. Most engaging, to me, was Tut's childhood throne, made of wood and obsidian with a little foot stool, it was so tiny as to look like something a doll might be displayed upon. The note next to it explained that it was what he would have sat on during rituals when he first ascended to the throne. I think, for me, an incredible reminder of how very young Tutankhamen was when he first became pharaoh.

I have a great interest in Egyptian history. This comes from an incredible experience I had (twice over) putting Philip Glass' somewhat biographical opera up, "Akhnaten." The opera loosely tells the story of King Tut's heretic father and his wife, Nefertiti. Most of the text is taken directly from letters and documents found in jars buried during Akhnaten's reign. I started reading about the Amarna period and Tut's rise (and untimely death) afterwards, and have never lost interest. "Akhnaten" was one of those artistic experiences that changes your life forever. It was my very first opera and not only prompted a major career shift, but also opened up a world of creation and storytelling for me that had never been explored.


That being said, this exhibit was most interesting to me for the back story rooms before actually moving into the Tutankhamen treasures. They briefly told the story of Akhnaten and his attempt to turn Egypt into a monotheistic society. They had pieces from the Amarna period that I had never seen before. One struck me as I turned a corner, a huge stone sculpture of Akhnaten's head looming over the entire room, with its long features and sad eyes. I was completely entranced. Everyone else sort of walked past, rushing to get to Tut, but I stood for minutes upon minutes, taking in every cut in the stone, every scrape along the surface of the sculpture. Beautiful.

Overall, I didn't learn anything new from the exhibit. The most interesting thing to me was the modern sculpture, based on Tut's skull, of what he - in all probability - would have actually looked like. They put this among a ton of photographs of different sculptures of the pharaoh so you could see how differently he was portrayed in various times and for various ritualistic reasons. That was interesting to me because it showed a turn back to some of the non-realistic artistic ideas that came before Akhnaten came to power. Every sculpture of Akhnaten looks exactly the same, as do sculptures of Nefertiti and of his daughters (of which there was one on display that embodied such dignity and beauty that I wanted to stare at it all day).

In logistical speak, I didn't like the way the entrance to the exhibit was set up. I didn't pay for an audio tour, but I had to stand in line for 40 minutes behind everyone getting an audio tour before I could go in. There wasn't any ante room or waiting period except for the 90 second introductory video, and so the exhibit itself was so crowded that you had to literally push through people to see any of the pieces. Not managed well, but then I should be used to that in Southern Florida. Seems to be the norm around here.

When to Speak out Vs. When to Stay Quiet

Two articles in the news today about Democrats speaking out . . . or not.

Hilary Clinton compared our current administration to a plantation on MLK Jr. day. I don't wholly disagree with her, but not sure if it was the time and place for the speech.

Democratic senators are claiming that they don't see a filibuster in the future for the confirmation of Alito. I know that it would probably fail, and I know that Alito will, in all likelihood, be confirmed, but the whole article had a sort of "giving up" feeling to it that made me really sad.

There's such a fine line between when railing against the system will fly back in your face and when railing against the system is the only way to maintain your beliefs and force change.

I want to believe that what Hilary Clinton says is correct, that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst, but I can't bring myself to believe that the country has seen enough of the light yet.

. . .And While I'm Still On the Subject . . .

This is exactly what I'm talking about. . .

Miss America talking about empowering women. Here's a competition that touts itself as being about scholarship for worthy young women. About advancing women forward and giving them confidence, but who the winner is really comes down to looks - to sex appeal.

So this article from Yahoo says that Miss America doesn't have ENOUGH sex appeal for today's society, so they're trying to switch things up, move to Vegas . . .

Isn't all of this "empowerment" really objectification cloaked in good intentions? What does it say to young women that the winner of the college money is the contestent who exhibits the most perfect measurements in a bathing suit?

"Priostitots" and Raunch Culture

Yesterday, as I was sitting in the makeshift Production Office at the Dade County Auditorium, one of the singers walked in, half made up, waiting around for the moment when they finally deem it necessary to go all the way and put on their costume. I remember those times. Those extra half hours before the downbeat even happens where your wig is already itching and your face has begun to rebel against the facepaint, when you just can't bear to put on whatever cumbersome outfit you must, at that time, wear for your art. You wander around in your bathrobe for as long as you can before you retire back to your dressing room to continue the final transformation. My cut off point was always the fifteen minute call. Anything longer would be torturous, anything shorter would be cutting it really close...

...Anyway, said singer wandered in and handed me a book she'd bought, read, and was now passing on, a tradition I wholly agree with. I love the idea of packaged ideas floating from person to person, sometimes inciting discussion. She asked me to pass it on when I was done and I immediately began thinking about who might find the read interesting. The book was "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture," by Ariel Levy. I started it tonight and it's already brought up issues with me.


The book is about this shift in our society apparent through shows like "Girls Gone Wild," print ads using scantily clad women to sell soda, and lacy, skimpy thong underwear and low-rider jeans marketed to preteen girls. Ms. Levy questions whether the sexualization of nearly everything in a woman's existence today is a mark of female empowerment (we women can be as raunchy as men . . . this is how to play equally with the boys!) or a giant leap backwards for the feminist movement of the previous generation/s.

I'm intrigued. Have been intrigued by sexuality and feminism (and whether the two can ever appropriately meet without ado) since I was a teenager. In college I did an entire research paper for my Humanities class on women in the porn industry. I wanted to know why women went into the business, whether they felt objectified. Whether they really cared. I wanted to know how many women were in the industry who were actually calling their own (and other people's) shots. I wanted to know what made Christy Hefner tick. It was at this time that I was also rabidly reading Camille Paglia and playing around with how much I really wanted to present myself as a sexual object.

I'm bisexual. Women excite me as much as men do in pure sexual terms. I've spent a lot of time trying to reconcile my being titillated by sexy outfits/pictures/people (of both genders) and my inherent feminist side that finds the fact that women seem to need to show themselves off as a sexually exciting being in order to get anywhere in this society (corporate women too...) appalling in every way.

I guess what the first twelve pages of this book brought up is this: I don't buy into the raunch culture for myself. I don't dress trashy in any way, I rarely wear makeup, and when I do it's usually only powder and lipstick, I don't walk in the door expecting men to look at me and I'm not particularly happy about the fact that my boobs have gotten bigger as I've gotten older. However, is it okay for others to indulge? Where's the harm? When does it become too much? When does it become detrimental to women's advancement in society (if it hasn't already)? Who cares if a college freshman feels better about herself if she shows a little jeweled thong on her way to her philosophy class or if a 22-year-old spring breaker gets a rise out of flashing a little tit for some video cameras? Where does all of this skin-showing lead for the future of women in our society? I don't know, but it's certainly got me thinking.

There'll be more to this later I'm sure...

In The Dark

The following was written in the pitch blackness of a theater during the third performance of "Fille Du Regiment" at Florida Grand Opera:

"Here I am at one more performance of "La Fille Du Regiment." It's at this point where I start to wonder if I can really make it through 4 more of these. I'm listening to Bob Heuer's curtain speech (the general director) about the new (much-needed) opera house. I get so tired of hearing the same thing over and over . . . somebody shoot me.

"We had our cover staging today. I was actually nervous. I didn't think I would be because it is so informal, but I saw people walking in and Joyce Castle walked in and sat right behind me (which I knew unnerved Fenna since she was playing Joyce's role), and then Maestro Leonard walked in and I thought, "stop it Keturah. This is no big deal." And it wasn't. My singers did very well and made some beautiful choices that garnered great laughter. Everyone was very complimentary to me afterwards as well. It was a boost of which I was in desperate need.

"I've been in quite a funk lately. Missing home and all that but I think also a fear of impending career. There's something about sitting in the back of a dark theater, listening to the first strains of an overture I've heard a thousand times, thinking of all my singers - like young charges - in the wings waiting for that first entrance, that makes me think of my career. I miss the adrenalin of being on stage each night. It's lost on me when I'm in the audience going through the motions of watching and hoping that nobody does anything that warrants a note.

"Am I done performing? I don't think so . . .

"I love looking out over a crowd when the lights are up on stage. Like moonlight on the ocean's surface, the light casts across their faces looking up at the action on stage. That back corner of the theater is comforting to me. I can close my eyes and hear the music fill the hall and imagine every movement as it happens on stage. Opera, unlike theater, cannot change it's rhythm drastically every night. The same gestures happen at the same time every night, the same cross happens on the same bar of music, with the same intention. I can open my eyes at any time and the stage is configured exactly how I saw it in my head. Opera staging, when done well and executed well, is the missing link between dance and theater."

I Was Blonde Once . . . I'm Entitled

Having spent over a year as a blonde from filming "Love and Murder" with my fiance and my old dance company, I feel totally justified in passing this on.

I must thank technology, lest I may never have found this very funny blonde joke.

Enjoy!

Unplugged

Watching tonight, of all things, "Nanny 911, on Fox. I usually find this show amusing for several reasons: one, I generally find the whole nanny coat/hat, British, high heels bit of schtick a little preposterous, I think most of the parents on the show are completely clueless, and, if I were doing that bad a job of taking care of my kids, I don't think I would ever be able to swallow my pride enough to let all of my shortcomings be shown on television.

That being said, tonight's show struck a chord. The biggest problem with the family tonight was that all of the kids spent the entire day sitting in front of video games. Video games had become such an important part of their life, that the idea of turning them off for any amount of time forced all of the kids to erupt into terrible violence. The images they were seeing on a regular basis were inciting terrible role-playing incidents and the parents had become so blase about the brotherly violence that they ignored the source because it allowed them free-time. Insta-babysitting.

I guess I'm starting to act/feel a bit old, but I think the whole video game phenomenon is heinous. I think that video games are the cause of increased youth violence in our society, a lack of manners among the youth of this country, and are part of the cause of our supposed "obesity epidemic." I see my youngest brother, still only 13, fight tooth and nail with my mother about having one more hour of Gameboy . . . to the point where he's screaming near obscenities and locking himself in his room.

My parents used to be hugely strict about video games with my brothers and I. When we were kids though, we only had basic Nintendo. Mario Brothers and Tetris were the only two games in existence at the time. Previous to that it was Atari, and the graphics on those were such that playing kickball in the cul-de-sac or looking for crawdads in the creek seemed much more entertaining when the sun was shining.

My parents are less strict with my youngest brother. They are older, have more on their plate, and are more willing to let him retire to his Playstation when they need time to themselves. In their defense, they do restrict the time he's allowed to play, but I still see how he's grown up differently with so much technology in his life. I gave him a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble for his birthday this year with specific instructions that he was not to buy anything that could be used in a video/computer machine or a book about any such piece of equipment. I wanted him to buy a book because I wanted him to find the joy in reading and imagination the way that his brothers and I did when we were kids.

I know I can't fix the whole world, but I hope I can at least influence him a little, and someday influence my own children by showing them every day that there's more to life than what you can watch on a television screen/video screen/computer screen.

And yes, perhaps I'm a bit hypacritical as I sit here on my Blogger. I realize how addictive all of this new technology is - I must continue to keep it in perspective with real life. Moderation . . .

Old Boney...

No, not a euphamism...somewhat derogitory term for Napoleon by the British at the beginning of the 19th Century.

I was realizing, while continuing to slog my way through Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," that I've been somewhat stuck in Napoleon's campaign, both at home and at work. And by "slog," I don't mean that I'm not enjoying it. I find the book to be quite witty and really insightful since I'm working on a show that takes place at the same time, but his writing is very dense and full of allusions and vernacular that doesn't exist commonly in today's society.

So, I read "Vanity Fair" at home and, while delighting in the nastiness of Becky Crawley (nee Sharp) and the stupidity of her many admirers, I find myself learning a good deal about both the Napoleonic wars and the British attitudes towards them. The last few chapters, in fact, included a fairly detailed account of the battles of Quatre-Bras and Waterloo - not from the point of view of a soldier, but from the points of view of the many British citizens holed up in Belgium, waiting for news from the regiments. It's fascinated me.

Fascinated me more, I think, because I am in the middle of working on a show that takes place during Napoleon's earlier campaigns (before his fall and rise again) in 1805/1806. The difference being that "Fille Du Regiment" is taken completely from the French point of view save a few moments at the beginning when we see the German peasants shrieking and trembling as the French army approaches.

By sheer coincidence I picked out a book that was written by a contemporary of Donizetti and have become suddenly fascinated by this period of time. Both men are writing about the same war from opposing viewpoints. I realize that both pieces of work are meant to be comedies, but I think that comedies truly reveal the attitudes and prejudices of the day, and I think this is certainly true for "Vanity Fair," and "Fille Du Regiment." I'm not fully convinced that Donizetti wasn't making fun of France's attitudes and nationalism right in front of their face . . .

I love self-taught moments. I think the last time I thought about Napoleon was in my high school French class, where we were all obliged to sing, "Napoleon avait cinq-cent soldats!" at the top of our lungs with Mme. Wetzel, and I wondered briefly about the idolotry of such hostile figures by various countries (including ours) around the world . . . and then here I am thrust into the middle of this history fourteen years later.

Thank heavens we never stop learning.

Nepotism

How many Brownies are there in this administration? Good question . . .

Behold the following from the Center for American Progress.

The Day I Realized I'm Going to Miss Cafe Con Leche..

Today I was back at the OGB, Florida Grand's fairly sub par rehearsal studio.

We haven't opened yet. That's tomorrow, but I started cover stagings with the young artists, and so peeled myself out of bed this morning in order to go in and work with the two young study covers for Sulpice and Marie. Thank god for cafe con leche at Karlo Bakery or I might never have been able to keep my eyes open long enough. As it were, I took a huge nap right after I got home. Cover stagings are common in a young artist program. Generally, each major role in the mainstage opera has a "study cover" in the program. What that means here is that they learn a few of the arias/duets/trios and attend some of the rehearsals to become familiar with the staging. Then, after the opera opens, the assistant director comes into staging rehearsals with the covers and puts together a little showing of these various sections. We have no costumes, very few props, and no set since the whole thing is done in the empty rehearsal hall. Ultimately, the whole thing is an exercise to let the administration and other guests see the singer's ability to play scene. For me, it's an opportunity to work on the scene from a director's point of view, though not quite since I'm actually working off of Dottie's blocking.

It's a difficult thing actually. This is especially so since the scenes that were chosen for the staging are extremely hard to do in Dottie's staging without set pieces, a harpsichord, and, in the scene I was doing today, nine extra soldiers off of whom Marie and Sulpice continually play. I was actually pretty nervous to get started. I took a lot of time thinking about how to use this huge blank (and, frankly, unattractive) space creatively to give these kids the feeling that they are actually performing something worthwhile and fun. I turned the front around from where it normally is so that the audience is facing the small stage in the back (which is actually used for storage), then had Marie enter from behind the curtain and Sulpice come running in from the hallway. I put the rolling ladder against the back to give some levels for the periods when the two are saluting the flag, and placed some various benches around.

By the time we started I was feeling pretty confident, and the rehearsal went quite smoothly. We finished in under two hours and had half an hour to run the piece a couple of times. I was pleased with the chemistry between the two singers and loved their openness to my ideas (and their ability to make choices on their own - something that not all singers . . .even the most seasoned . . .are able to do).

In actual "Fille Du Regiment" land, we had our final dress rehearsal last night. Final dresses here (as in many companies) have an invited audience, many of them students. Dottie was really nervous about how everything would come off, but I think we were all pleasantly surprised. First of all, my chorus nailed it! They definitely still have somewhere to go, but they finally got the drill team numbers and got all but one of their prop moves. As for the audience, they were in heaven! They laughed so hard and whistled and screamed at the curtain call. I felt like everything finally came together, and I've gotta say . . . I was a bit worried there for a while.

We open tomorrow. I'm still nervous, as I always am on opening night, but feeling like a huge weight has fallen pell mell off my shoulders. After this it's easy. Three more sections for the cover staging and finalizing my paperwork...that's nothing.

I can't wait to suddenly have time for myself.

Happy New Year Indeed!

New Years Eve was a blast. I mean it.

Several days prior to the 31st my toilet began bubbling. Bubbling as if there was a person in the drain releasing air so that it popped through the surface of the water. If you happened to be sitting on the toilet when a large air bubble was released, you'd get heartily sprayed. My landlords and I were stumped. They, in fact, were quite disbelieving until the toilet started making its "bloop bloop" noises the afternoon of the 31st and I dragged them in to take a look. We weren't sure what to do with it on new year's eve and so they opted to look into it immediately after the weekend.

Ah, hindsight.

New Year's Eve was a big party at the little house in Miami Springs. Latin music was vibrating through the walls and floors, people were screaming and laughing, I was being a total misanthrope and talking to my fiance in my bedroom. At one point shortly after midnight I see the door to my bathroom rattling and hear some strange creaking noises coming from underneath the house. My cat is going crazy.

Standing up revealed water throughout my bedroom floor and all of the drains in my bathroom erupting with water, clogged, yellowed, sandy, flowing unending from the shower drain and filling up the shallow area, spilling over into my room. I slosh around cursing wildly, picking my shoes up off the ground, cords, bags, anything I'd dropped on the floor, then running out to tell my landlord that there was a HUGE problem

He already knew.

The exact same thing happened to their bathroom and so we were all (60 or so of us) left without plumbing in the first hours of new year's day. One witty guest informed us that this was very good luck because we really had no place to go but up for the rest of 2006. I just wanted to crawl into a hole. I was exhausted, pissed off and wishing that I could be anywhere but in that sopping wet house. My landlord eventually drove me to a Holiday Inn Express to pass the night with working plumbing.

So it seems, we find out the next day, that the city was at fault. They've been doing work on the storm sewers on our street (as I've mentioned before) and these yahoos can't put together a pipe system correctly and so backed up all of the major pipes in the area immediately surrounding our house. It's fixed now, but I'm still beside myself. Beside myself that the idiots working on this huge project care more about getting their Cuban cigars wet than they do about actually fixing the problem. Beside myself that my new years was completely truncated by an exploding toilet and shower, and beside myself because my landlord called the city's emergency line over and over and nobody ever picked up the phone (Hello!! Emergencies NEVER happen when it's convenient..)

The good thing is that this story will most likely turn into one of those anecdotes that get a big laugh every time it is regaled. I look forward to that. Right now I'm still mopping up the mess.