Almost Gone..

I walked into the scene shop at the Landmark Theater this afternoon, and saw a bunch of our props sitting there. Sat down to snap this picture in case John's forgotten what I look like. Thought he could hang this in his office to remind him....

Sad. It seems like such a long time since I've seen him. I don't like this being away constantly from my husband. It used to be so much easier when I didn't care so deeply about someone at home.

Today was our closing performance. It was a performance of "Dropsies," with bits of the set falling, coins falling, posters falling.. Ah well, it's over and I was so happy with all of these performers, who took some difficult moments and made them into great theater. A lot of the singers had family in town which always makes for a nice nervous energy backstage.

I watched back stage this afternoon. It's so different than sitting in the house. In the house I feel like an audience member; I still get nervous for my singers but I'm somewhat removed from everything happening. When I'm backstage, I feel their energy, I am part of the performance. The show started and I was standing stage right and all of those supers were standing in the wings waiting to go on. As the first light came up and Kenny stepped onto the stage, the overture playing, the energy up and swirling, I got choked up. This is a part of the show that does nothing for me when I watch from the house but there's something about that first moment of stepping on stage that gets me every time.

The other moment that always gets me is the tune, but that chokes me up no matter where I am in the theater.

I stood further back to watch the bedroom scene so I could watch all of the guys hiding behind their panels. It's a farce so there's a bunch of popping in and out and peeking out of doors. Watching these guys fidgeting behind their various portals and panels, taking a sip of water, laughing at on stage antics, prepping to jump out and do something ridiculous. I almost preferred it to what was actually happening on stage.

I love what I do. It's so tough sometimes. I don't live in my home, I make these close, short-lived connections that make the whole experience bittersweet, I live out of a suitcase, but listening to that music every night and feeling the incredible energy of an "on" performance, a true ensemble playing off of each other to create incredible theater, is a sweet, sweet reward.

Tomorrow I start "Merry Widow." A whole new set of challenges and joys.

The Quality-Free Inn

I do not recommend the Quality Inn in Richmond, Virginia. It is an especially hard transition from the Courtyard Marriott in Fairfax, with a fireplace in the lobby and free cookies and down pillows.

My safe doesn't work, my toilet seat is chipped and I had to have my bedding replaced this evening when I pulled back the comforter and found a load of black hairs on the mattress pad. Lovely.

Be that as it may, Richmond is nice in that I get to see some friends I haven't seen in years. I had lunch with a friend I danced with San Diego who's been gone for almost three years. She took me to a lunch place and we spilled all the dirt and laughed about our lives. She looked terrific and I was ecstatic to be sitting across from her, falling into old good times so easily. Connections are connections regardless of how long you've been apart.

I had a second dose in the evening when I had dinner with a very good friend I'd been relatively out of touch with for almost nine years. We ate pasta and got giddy with each other, talking about how amazing it is the way life goes, the paths we find. Our paths have diverged but we are still the same and we still have the same ultimate goals, they're just more well thought out now.

I am amazed at the friends I have; their brilliance, their insight, their ability to lift my spirits and make me laugh even when I'm lonely and upset and in a crap hotel room on the opposite side of the country from my husband. I am so lucky to have shared passions and secrets and love and laughs with so many great, talented folks. Thank god for them, every one.

The pictures are of my lovely hotel room. It is cruel to go from such a nice place to such a skeevy place. I will be happy to start working again in the morning so I have something to think about other than what the suspicious stain is on the comforter. Fortunately we are lighting at the Landmark at 9am. I'll be there with coffee (lots of coffee).

Life is hard but good. It's the amazing people that pass through it that make it that way.

Last Night in Fairfax

The picture is sunset on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. My view as I was driving back from New York City. The sun was unbelievable as it sank. I watched it dip down, looking as if it were melting into the roadway ahead.

Doesn't look like that here now. Cold and covered in ice and windy. The ice storm really ravaged the place last night. The roads aren't actually too bad but it was scary looking last night with the light pole out my window blowing around as if it were going to snap in half, and the American flag in front of the Lone Star ripping half off of its pole so it blew straight up in the air, whipping around wildly in the driving snow.

Today was yet another day at the hotel waiting to go to Richmond. It seemed like it would never come, but I am leaving at 11 tomorrow with our SM so that I can have lunch with an old friend at 2pm. I didn't do much of anything today, sat at a desk erasing and rewriting score notes, sat on my suitcase to get it closed after packing everything away, moved the coffee table over by the window so I could do a solo can-can, hopping around on one leg and kicking the other in the air, doing a vaudeville box step in canon with several missing chorus boys and waltzing with an imaginary partner to the tunes from "Merry Widow." It will be nice to have people to work on for that project; I'm sure those walking past my window had a good show.

Had dinner and watched a movie with some friends tonight. One of them rented a car for the day so we could get away from the hotel area. We drove until we found a mall, circled around it until we found a suitable restaurant, and sat in the front for a while after we realized it was so busy because it was Valentine's day. How quickly we forget about holidays when there's no one to share in it with you. All of our significant others are across the country or down the coast, and so today was just any other day for the three of us.

It was a good night. It's a blessing to have people in the hotel that I know and like lest I would truly go stir crazy.

On the road tomorrow!

The Touring Life

Sitting in a Courtyard Marriott in Fairfax, Virginia, the first stop on our mini-tour here at Virginia Opera. We've actually closed here; I leave for Richmond in the morning. The suitcase life is not a favorite of mine and this has been tough because I don't have my own transportation and the hotel doesn't have a restaurant. The room is comfortable enough though, and I've been catching up on sleep and work and salsa dancing, but that's another story.

Fairfax is a difficult place to put in the show because it's a concert hall and has only fixed line sets for its rail. Everything that's flown in takes an age to come in and out so the SM and I had to change all of the fly cues to make things arrive or exit when they actually needed to. For all of the trouble and a brand new crew, the show went surprisingly well. I was a bit worried and still buried my head in my hands on a couple of the slower set movements, but the singers were great and the audiences loved the show. The singers tell me that they love singing in this house so that's the good part of this leg of the tour, though I can't say I'm sad we're through it.

Richmond is at the Landmark Theater. This place is huge and old-fashioned, with the dressing rooms on balconies overlooking the stage. 3500 seats I think which is pretty much a barn. I hope the houses don't seem too small. The pic is backstage. Tape lines (and big red words) help singers and supers find their avenue out of the wings when they are facing down blinding side lights and "in-the-moment" nerves.

It's been a while since I've written. Once I got back from New York and started my trip to Fairfax, my business factor was raised by thousands. The tech process when you have one day to put up a whole show is daunting, and I had some drainage going on so I was trying to lay low whenever possible. I started feeling much better on Sunday and so went out and enjoyed myself a little the past few days. It was nice to leave the hotel room and have some raucous dinners, some dancing, some laughter. The loneliness in a hotel room is astounding after a week. I can't be a hermit when I'm traveling; I'll descend into myself something horrible.

New York was a total whirlwind. I saw friends, ran around in the eyelash-freezing cold, and got a job at New York City Opera. I'll be assiting Lillian again in the fall and will get to work with some great people. It was a terrific end the quick trip and I celebrated with a happy dinner with a friend before I drove back over the frozen New England landscape to Norfolk.

That's the good part of all of this travel: I've got friends in every port. It's so nice to see friendly faces in strange cities.

Tomorrow, friends in Richmond, Virginia. Next week, friends in Chicago!

Nearly Done with Norfolk

Madly dashing around today, working on choreography for "Merry Widow," which I will begin in Chicago in two weeks, doing laundry, packing, tying up loose ends before I begin this mini tour of Richmond and Fairfax.

I'm actually taking a side trip to New York City. I'll leave after our closing matinee on Sunday, drive up, stay at the Holland Motor Lodge (right at the toll booth of the Holland Tunnel - hence the name), and take the PATH into the city for two days to see friends and colleagues. It will be a wonderful respite before I begin the hell that is sure to be putting this show into the theater at George Mason University next Thursday.

We had a fantastic show last night! The audience was great, the recits were tight, the coffee was hot and the performers were hotter. I actually (and somewhat embarrassed to admit) was reduced to tears at the end of "Purch'io di Stringa.." when Poppea and Ottone cling together in the playout and look straight out to the audience, visualizing the horror of their destiny. Thank god I was sitting by myself.

My room is covered in suitcases. I hate living out of a suitcase, so the next month is going to be pretty tough.

Monday's off For Most...

...but not me. 'Tis okay. I only officially work for two hours, doing some duet staging with my Poppea and Ottone covers. "Agrippina" opened on Friday and we had a Sunday matinee already as well. Good response all around. Check out this review from the Virginian Pilot. There was also a very favorable radio review by Edgar Loessin. My favorite quote:

One of the problems in staging a baroque opera is deciding what to do with all those musical interludes between the scenes, arias and recitatives. To the untutored ear they stop every thing until there is singing again. Not for Groag. She explores every note of them and discovers a dramatic cess pool teeming with life. She uses supernumeraries who wear white face makeup and black lip stick, pomaded hair and tuxes. They suggest decadence, like cabaret Masters of Ceremonies in pre-Hitler Germany.They are Proteans who play many little roles, and are also like a Greek Chorus or living scenery or they become phantoms who torment the principle characters.. They set the mood and place for the opera in a highly theatrical manner.

How often are the supers mentioned in an opera review? This is not to say that the principals were unmentioned. Mr. Loessin loved them as well, shouting their praises through the airwaves, but I was proud of my young supers who walked in the door expecting to hold a spear and walked out with a glorious review.

So today I am resting and doing bits and pieces here and there. I had dinner with a bunch of people last night, drank Bourbon (Virginia Gentleman to be exact), lounged on huge overstuffed couches and listened to people belt out showtunes with a great deal of irreverence. I stuffed myself with spaghetti and partook in amazing brownies (the secret was soaking the walnuts in Amaretto which gave them a sweetness and kick that was totally unexpected). Later, one of the sopranos and I did dishes and had some lazy chit-chat while the boys sang selections from Phantom, Showboat and West Side Story. It was a wonderful (if not unusual) way to wind down after a matinee, and always lovely to be around people you like when you're so far from home.

I got home at 11:00 and talked to John on the phone for a while. I always look forward to that last call of the day. It grounds me no matter if I'm flying high or wallowing.

The show on Sunday was a knock-out for the singers. Opening was a quiet, somewhat lackadaisical audience, and Lillian told everyone that they couldn't let an audience get them down. "If your tennis partner doesn't show up, play racquetball," she says. I concur. You have to play off of each other or an audience can tear you down. No problem playing tennis on Sunday! The audience was guffawing right out of the gate and the singers were at their best, romping through the funny bits and delivering devestating blows in the serious moments. I wanted to eat all of them up by curtain call.

Technically, however, we're still dealing with issues. I'm hoping that my list of notes this time will solve most of them, but it seems to be a never-ending process. I finally watched the show from far house left yesterday and it's always a shock to see how sight lines are being handled. The audience sees an entirely different show depending on where they are sitting. It was interesting to find out, for instance, that the glossy paint on the hard legs acts as a mirror for backstage activity when you're watching from the sides of the house. Had I been backstage or relegated to the middle of the house for the entire run, I don't think I would ever have noticed this phenomenon. As it is, however, we can rectify it now that we've seen it. No pacing by nervous performers pre-entrance anymore. Dancers wouldn't survive well with this type of problem. We must jump around before stepping on stage.

I walked down to a coffee shop today and worked on my score for an hour. All of the information is in there, it's just messy and I want to clean it up so it's easily readable by other people. I'm probably more obsessive about it than most, but then I remember picking up other A.D. books and not being able to decipher any of the blocking notes, and that makes me feel better about my own OCD qualities.

I'm also starting to realize what a small town this is. I'm running into the same people everywhere I go. I had an impromptu lunch with the stage manager the other day when we ran into each other at Panera, and just ran into our harpsichordist at a sandwich shop. I see people I recognize at the grocery store every time I walk in there. I will be happy to go on tour and regain a bit of anonymity.

Okay. Done for now, a little more score work and then off to two hours with the covers. I'll be happy to get the cover work over and done with.

A Few Words After a Very Long Week

This is me a couple of days ago, sitting in a quiet house during dinner break. slinging my feet over a chair, I went over the pages of notes I would give as soon as the singers arrived. I've talked about the magic of empty theaters before and it never ceases to blow me back. Such a huge cavern has the capability to be absolutely silent and that is an amazing thing. That half hour before a show goes up is so satisfying.

The show opens tomorrow. It's been a haul to say the least. This show is difficult to tech and call and we had our tech time truncated by a set that took it's time to arrive at completion. It's all in now though and we had a successful student dress rehearsal last night wherein there were several times that I wanted to fall on the floor in hysterical laughter at the antics on stage. Student audiences can be a little deceiving though. What twelve year olds find hysterically funny, an adult might find only moderately witty. The balls-to-the-wall laughter and shrieking that was enjoyed by the singers last night may not be there pump them up for the rest of the run. Though the bedroom scene in act II nearly makes me wet my pants every single time.



This is an advertising video on YouTube that Virginia Opera put up so people would get an idea about the show and its cast of characters. I'm not sure that the clips they chose were truly indicitave of the show itself and how beautiful it is in its specifity, how varied the music is for a baroque opera and how truly funny our cast of singers are, but it's nice to see it out there for people to grasp onto and, hopefully, be interested.

The Virginia Pilot did a story about the opera today and included a "mug shot" off all of the singers in full costume. Smart marketing. We'll see if it works.

Today was supposed to be my day off but I spent nearly seven hours with the director and set designer of the show I'm going to be assisting on here next year. It was great to go in and sit down and really start to hash out how this piece will come together. It's so rare to have an opportunity to be with a piece from its conception so I was particularly interested in being in on these meetings. We met with the choreographer a few days ago so I feel like I'm really starting to get a handle on the look and feel of this show. We start rehearsals in August.

Otherwise, life is moving. I'm working like a madman on this show. As soon as it opens, I'll turn large portions of my attention to "Merry Widow." I talk to John every night but it isn't enough. Most of us doing this show are married so we all have similar problems. It's a struggle but you keep going because you love what you do. John's in the middle of an opera season too, putting together an "Opera Spotlight" tonight about "Boris Gudonov" at San Diego Opera. He always does a brilliant job with these shows. I just wish I could be working on a couple of them while he's shooting.