Author Archives: weinberg

F&F, theater

Not exactly breaking news,

but Bart Sher’s SOUTH PACIFIC was amazing–incredibly well done in almost every feature. I could only find one thing to nit-pick, instead of my usual fifty. This is very like someone being like “Wow, that John Updike! Not bad!” The production got so much acclaim when it ran, when it opened, when it got the Tony, that I’m rather late to the praise party. But for whatever it’s worth, we liked it too.

It’s still not a show I could ever want to imagine myself directing. No matter how much context you give everything, Bloody Mary’s dialect lines still rub me the wrong way. It’s uncomfortable to listen to and watch, and as much as a production tries to save her from being a stereotype (and this production really tried) she still comes off as a very limited stereotype. There are other characters in the script who are much more fully realized. She’s the one who makes the whole thing seem like a period piece.

But the music is beautiful.

I touch your hand and my arms grow strong…

Afterwards, dinner at bowling lanes in Timonium. I did not bowl, due to still being a bit sore from having fallen down the stairs on Thursday. But I watched my friends bowl. In one game–the last one–one of them made six strikes, and all three of them bowled at least one strike. It felt like a lucky day. On the way home, we sang the chorus from “Living On A Prayer” a cappella in the car, and two different versions of “Round and Round” at the same time.

This was also the weekend of the Hollywood Performance Marathon at Theatre of NOTE in Los Angeles, on Saturday. I hear it went well; I wish I could have been there. But there are reasons for me to be here, and things to be done here, too.

Standard
musicals, poetry, theater

this morning,

heading off to brunch, and then SOUTH PACIFIC at the Kennedy Center in DC. (Bart Sher’s production. I’m very glad that I haven’t entirely missed my chance to see it.)

I heard a lot about the Kennedy Center the entire time I was working at OSF, because various productions would transfer there for part of the summer. However, I’ve never seen the place. I’m as dressed up as I feel one can be for a matinee, and very excited.

Spent yesterday completing more applications, including some I’d been putting off awhile. The first one’s hard: the second and third are quicker: and by the fourth in a twenty-four-hour period, you just don’t care any more. You’re faster, less self-preoccupied, and more efficient. If I have nothing to do next year, it will not be for lack of having asked for things.

Enough about that. Something else exciting: Linebreak is putting out a straight-to-ebook poetry anthology, Two Weeks, with good formatting. Submissions close this Tuesday at 6 pm. Here’s what they have to say about it:

For years, ebooks have been ignored by most poetry publishers. Today, the few poetry ebooks available are little more than cut-and-paste versions of their print counterparts. And many fail to preserve line breaks and other basic formatting.

We’re certain we can do better. That’s why we’re creating an all-new, ebook-only anthology of contemporary poetry. Beginning on Tuesday, January 11, we’ll start accepting public submissions. We’ll compile and design a cutting-edge, multi-format ebook. We’ll publish it.

And we’ll do it all in exactly two weeks.

Sounds good, yes? Submit away…

Standard
musicals

also,

one of my students observed, yesterday, that the difference between poems and song lyrics is that poems usually develop ideas whereas song lyrics (often) merely present them, without showing any change or development in the idea by the end of the song.

Standard
Baltimore, musicals

last night,

I saw THE OTHER SHORE at Single Carrot for the second time. I’ve been away from the show for a month. Wonderful to see how it’s developed and changed–the pace has really increased.

Yesterday was also the third day of Musicals Class, and my all-Sondheim spectacular. We covered more songs from more of his oeuvre than we managed to last year, with some significant changes. Although I had planned to present Ballad of Czolgosz from ASSASSINS (my favorite Sondheim song ever, actually) I decided, instead, to tell the students about the song and the musical, and share a link with them so they could listen on their own time. Given the events of the past week, it didn’t seem appropriate to force them to listen to it en masse.

Creepy, how that assassination scenario (McKinley) was so similar to the one that’s just played out in Arizona. Walking up at a public event.

Editing physics labs this morning.

It’s really really winter here in Baltimore–I’ve fallen down iced/wet staircases twice in the last two days. (To no ill effect except some bruises.) The first time, I managed to parlay the momentum into a magical jump, and land on my feet, like Sonic the Hedgehog. The second time, I was not so lucky. I am reasonably equanimity-ous about this. As J says, “We’re writers: we’re klutzes.” Quite right. Also, it’s not winter unless you fall down some.

Standard
musicals, theater

Second day of musicals class,

PINAFORE, PIRATES…MIKADO…TOPSY-TURVY and the origins of American musical theatre in the cultural practices of the British Empire.

Tonight, I was combing through some Sondheim for tomorrow–hoping to vary it up from what I did last year–and I’ve been renting so many DVDS at Video Americain that they gave me a free one. So I ended up with both FORUM and GYPSY. I don’t know how I’ve made it thus far without watching GYPSY. It’s incredible, absolutely incredible.

“Remember, you mustn’t be discouraged by the past. You’re artists of the theater.”

The lying, the stealing, the living on a shoestring, the subverting the hopes and expectations of everyone else so that your own desires can be fulfilled. And then getting what you’ve always wanted, and finding out that “what you’ve always wanted” has no use for you at all. Your own daughter not wanting you backstage. And then having her come back to you, and invite you to the party, anyway. Take back yourTake my mink, Mama.

What good is sitting alone in your room…?!

Standard
Uncategorized

Back in Baltimore,

where there are more birds heading north on Charles Street than cars.

Taught the first day of the second year of my Intersession class on musicals today. One of my students made an interesting observation–that perhaps one of the reasons some people dislike musicals has to do with the fakeness of concealing the musicians. I had not thought of this before. I think it might be right.

Standard
Uncategorized

that in me sings no more

Here’s a sonnet I like, by the poet one of our professors called the greatest female poet of the 20th century.

Sonnet XLIII

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

– Edna St. Vincent Millay

Yeah, I like it OK–but I would like it better, I think, if it weren’t a sonnet.

Standard