theater, travel

Destination Theater

I met a woman from Maryland in the lobby of P&P last night, who had flown in from out of town just for a few vacation days to see shows at the DCTC. I shared this with some of the house staff and they were pleasantly surprised. But Denver has enough shows going on in rep right now that, like Ashland, it can be a real destination.

You can’t see eight plays in four days, and they don’t go to OSF’s extent of changing over shows on different stages – here, one play plays on one stage till it closes – but you can still make quite a weekend of it. Denver also has the attractions of natural outdoor activities. If they can maintain an audience from out of town as well as their local community, they’re in great shape.

“I love this town,” the woman said. “I come back all the time.”

I think that’s pretty impressive for a regional theater with the weather and transportation problems this airport must have, especially now.

Come to think of it, I remember Stephen flying to see 1001 here, from LA. But that was when he was looking at it for NOTE. This woman wasn’t a theater person – she was just a working professional on vacation. That’s even better.

Standard
a propos of nothing

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
(Wallace Stevens, 13 Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird)

Snow is falling. I’m in Leela’s, working, and outside the streets are turning white.

Last night when I came out of P&P it was a partial snow, like soft icing on the cake of the park benches, like every lamppost and car and newspaper stand was a muffin that had had its top iced. Today it was like cigarette ash, dandelion fluff, dust on the streets of the world. Tonight it’ll turn hard as varnish.

I see it with so much surprise, having never, ever lived in a snowy place before this. And there may not be any new metaphors left for it. A blanket. A sheet. Sleep. I walk through it like an alien experiencing texture for the first time, and it’s so beautiful I don’t expect it to be cold on my hands.

There is nothing at all to be done about snow except to get cold and to stare until your eyes and skin are burned.
And the women of Denver are still going to the theater in high heels and open-toed shoes.

Standard
Lydia, theater, travel

Colorado Dreamin’

I don’t know what to say first about Denver, Colorado. It’s been almost exactly 24 hours.
Keywords:

What do you mean “The mile-high city?” – Isn’t that just an expression? – does that mean you join the mile-high club just by…in the environs? – altitude sickness: being so light-headed I couldn’t stand up – going to St. Mark’s and The Thin Man with Sarah Rose and not needing to drink a thing to act weird because I was so dizzy – having a hot chocolate miraculously cure all my symptoms – meeting a Moroccan businessman who assured me he had stayed in all the cities of the US and Europe and preferred Denver to all of them “because you can live a relaxed life-” heatedly discussing civic policy and smoking bans – talking about Judaism and Islam and what it means to be religious – faith, doubt – I can’t go anywhere in this country without bringing up Israel – sleeping on S.R’s red loveseat in her apartment on St. Paul Street –

And today: riding heated buses down Colfax Avenue, which Sarah Rose says used to be the old road all the way to the coast, yes, my coast, passing bars and clubs and coffeehouses, all independent – downtown and the 16th Street Mall – tea and nervousness – walking through the archway of glass of the performing arts complex and realizing I was getting closer to the “theater” end when I saw a folding table propped up against a wall – there’s never anywhere to store all those folding tables! – S.R. dropping me off like my first day of kindergarten –

-and the whirlwind tour of the actual DCTC, in two levels, from administrative offices to scene shops, paint rooms and costume props – meeting new people in every shop, in every department, all so friendly and welcoming, all shaking my hand. And the ROOMS. The Rooms of Rehearsal.

Beautiful, naturally lit rehearsal rooms, color-coded by door (we’ll be staying in the Yellow Room) enormous, unfathomably large, clean, white and brick loft-rooms like eyries, like artists’ studios, like chapels, like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter, the walls banked with pianos. I said to the stage manager, “I think I’m going to have a heart attack.”

I’m one of the few assistant directors this company has ever hired and I really want to do a good job so that they’ll feel interested in bringing future ADs back for outside directors. I know how lucky I am to be here.

Really lucky.

Getting my picture put on a badge. Memorizing codes and numbers. Getting keys cut. (The director and I have our own office that we share with the other visiting directors.) Being warned by an ex-cop about the dangers of walking down Colfax Avenue at night – being told Wild Denver stories about a beggar punching a car at an intersection and a gun being pulled – walking a mile in the cold to find a BofA ATM only to find it doesn’t take deposits – walking a mile back to Leela’s on 15th and waiting here, writing, to see Pride and Prejudice, if I can get walked in tonight.

High school students are drinking enormous mugs of hot chocolate. One says to another, “Just because it makes your teeth bleed to look at me doesn’t mean you can’t give me a hug.”

I love this town.

Standard
a propos of nothing, travel

Dispatches from the San Antonio Airport

(being delayedly posted from Denver, CO)

At Gervin’s Sports Bar at the San Antonio Airport, which has the soutitre “The Iceman Cometh,” you can Have Your Cake And Drink It Too, with a chocolate Tennessee/Jack Daniels Torte. This has to be my most favorite thing in all the airports of all this country.

The woman behind me is on a conference call. “How are you?” she asks, in a British accent.

“I’m fine,” I answer.

And it’s true. I feel great. I’m sad to leave Sari and Monica (who plays tonight at Luna, by the way) – sad to leave this great local music scene – but I got really excited strapping on my enormous Dakine backpack again.
I love to be going somewhere. And the uncertainty which used to terrify me is now part of the excitement. I’ve never seen or met the woman I’ll be staying with.

Sarah Rose asked me how to identify me at the Denver airport. I couldn’t think of what distinguishes me from the rest of the other girls wearing all black, but it’s definitely the backpack.

I walked into the Frontier terminal with a smile on my face like I’d just been handed the keys to the country. And now I’m eavesdropping on a conversation about international waste management. Or I think I am.

“I don’t understand,” the British woman says, ignoring me. “All the tasks are completed, the status is updated – what’s the holdup?”

She needs to start drinking some cake.

A family walks by, four football-fan kids and a dad, the two oldest boys wearing sweatshirts with flashing red lights on them.

A woman walks by, shrouded in a sweatshirt like she’s covering the severed head of her enemy beneath it.

A man walks by. He looks damn pleased with himself. I couldn’t say why, but he looks…pleased.

“Waste Management Process, page 2,” the woman says. “At the top you have headers for the different environments, right?”

I need a header for all my different environments. Modified from Zeppelin: Going to Colorado with an aching in my heart.

I write poetry furiously until it’s time to board.

Standard
a propos of nothing, travel

“My bags are packed, I’m ready to go…”

As James Taylor says, “I don’t know when I’ll be back again.”

Some thoughts on wandering:

Packing is too easy now. I just zip up the backpack, put my computer away, and leave.

Sari and I were looking at ceramic pots in a shop in Austin and I was wondering if I would ever again be in a place to own ceramics. Jewelry boxes made out of cinnamon bark. Helicopters carved out of soda cans. And big green ceramic pots with matched lids. Moroccan leather wallets. Blue and white flowered tiles. I have to look at those things, take their beauty in, and just remember them. I don’t get to own them.

I don’t feel like I own anything any more. Even the possessions I thought I treasured don’t matter. I thought I had lost my watch in Los Angeles. This is a watch I bought with the first money I ever made from directing, in Germany, to remind myself that I could make a living at this job. It was expensive, a big black Fossil with an enormous leather strap.

Anyway, I didn’t care one way or the other about it being gone. Before I started all this traveling, before I had to leave behind all my books, and friends and family, I would have been really upset to lose it. But now, the fact that I am traveling around like this is proof of being a working theater artist – and with or without the watch, that can’t be lost.

I found it a few days later, at the bottom of my backpack, in San Antonio.

“Oh,” I said, “there’s my watch.”

I like feeling this way. I like knowing that I can’t really lose anything, or be lost. I like not having any keys on my keyring – just a red Cornell University bottle opener.

LaCona felt bad that I hadn’t unpacked my clothes into drawers the whole time I was there. But if you unpack, you have to pack. If you never unpack, you’re always ready to go.

As I was writing this, Kersti just called me, from her OSF educational tour with Todd – they’re wandering the San Juan islands of the coast of Victoria and Washington State, doing a two-person version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Another wanderer.

Standard
convergence, Lydia, travel

Goodye, Texas. Hello, Denver.

This is my last day in San Antonio. I fly to Denver tonight, to begin rehearsals for LYDIA. I’ll be working as Juliette Carrillo’s assistant director. I’m staying with Kersti’s friend Sarah Rose. Kersti is an actress I know from OSF, and she connected me with her. I live 3 miles by bus from the theater. I go in tomorrow to fill out paperwork and to see the Denver Center for the first time. Very excited.

Here’s the DTC’s blurb on LYDIA:
“A Mexican immigrant family is mired in grief, rage and guilt over a daughter tragically disabled on the eve of her quinceanera (15th birthday). When the undocumented Lydia arrives in El Paso from Mexico to work as a maid for the Flores family, her nearly miraculous bond with the brain-damaged girl elates, then angers and finally destroys the troubled family – and Lydia herself.”

I also had another Convergence teleconference yesterday. We’re going to be going after some grants for space rental, and we came to an exciting realization about how to best involve the local community. The Indy Convergence involves 4 types of workshops:
– Explorations (for all artists in and out of the Convergence)
– Open Studio/ Side Projects (smaller, more directed work on specific projects)
– Umbrella Project (for all Converging artists)
– Public Workshops (for community members)
and we’ve decided to make all the Explorations open to local artists. It’ll be a great way to meet people from the community and find out what kinds of artists are in Indianapolis.

We’re also going to offer, space permitting, the ability for local artists to teach their own Explorations.

Standard
recipes, travel

Banana-carrot muffins

Yesterday I baked the Ultimate Carrot Muffins, which I modified slightly, from Stephanie Jaworski’s recipe. I eliminated the coconut, apple, and vanilla, and replaced it with banana – and I used olive oil, because that’s all I ever use. I also didn’t ice them. But the proportions of liquid & solid ingredients are hers.

It produced a very liquid dough which I had to pour into the muffin cups. The muffins spilled out over the tops, making perfect, restaurantesque, soft, sweet muffins.

I wish I had used paper liners, though, because it was really hard to get them out of the pan. I had to cool them for a long time and then pry around the edge of the tops with a knife, and slide the knife into the cup to ease the muffin out. They were very soft.

Ultimate Carrot-Banana Muffins (modified from Stephanie Jaworski)
1/2 cup toasted pecans or walnuts (if desired – I burned mine, so I didn’t put them in.)
2 cups grated raw carrot (I used store-grated carrots, which are too big, and chopped them up into small bits – saved time and grating. Hate grating.)
2 bananas, mashed
2 cups flour
1 1/4 cups white sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt (I really put it in this time, and I do think it made a difference)
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 large eggs (yes, 3!)
3/4 cup olive oil

Preheat oven to 350.
Combine everything in a bowl. Should be a very liquid, sweet dough. If it doesn’t look liquid, add a splash of milk, or more oil.
Grease or line the muffin cups.
Pour batter into a pan with 12 muffin cups. (This is enough batter for 18 small ones, but you want 12 enormous ones with tops!)
Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees or until you can stick a fork in and it comes out clean.
Cool until completely cool, and ease out gently with a knife.
EAT!

And then fly to Denver with said muffins. Interesting to see what this whole baking at altitude thing will be like, I suppose.

Standard
music, theater

Things theater can learn from live music

1) Audience participation.
Last night at Atomix in San Antonio, watching Sari’s roommate Monica and her friend Chris King play live. Monica finished her spontaneous set with a cover of Amy Winehouse’s REHAB, and Chris and I clapped along to it. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, because I felt essential to the performance.
She started out by saying “I’m going to need you guys to clap like this -” and demonstrated the rhythm – and we started, and she helped, and only once our beat was established did she begin playing.
I’ve seen shows before where people were supposed to join in by clapping, but never one where there actually was no rhythm section – so that the musicians, or performers, were relying on the audience to be part of it. That was great. I’m going to have to steal it.

2) Bar participation.
After they both played, more of Monica’s friends showed up – Kelley and his girlfriend Alyssa – and they were talking about the dynamics of which bars wanted open mics on which nights, and how to plan the event, both in location and in timing in the week, so as to maximize the bar’s profits from the event. It was very eye-opening to me. The musicians play for free, but the bars get money from it – and the musicians get promotion and space.

When was the last time you heard of a theatrical event bringing money to a bar, instead of begging for donations from it? This is a financially vibrant interchange. I’ve thought before that any event that takes place at a bar is performatively successful.

I’ve also thought that I wanted to create an open mic night at a theater. When I saw the way Chris Covics at Unknown was having musical acts come into the space each night after the plays, to bring the theater money, that gave me ideas for one approach.

But the problem with that is the hassle of the liquor license. You get folks in the space, which is great, but a theatrical open mic at a bar would be even more dynamic. What I really want is a stage space with an integrated full bar. Which is what Atomix appeared to be. If I ever do start a company, it’ll be in a location like that, and we’ll only do shows that can be integrated with drinking.

And something we both need to work on:

3) Audience expectations.
Kelley told a story about an open mic he knew where the people running the show had alternated live artists with DJs. The problem was that the regulars in the bar started booing the live acts because they just wanted the DJ to play more dance music.

Standard
music, travel

Guitar straps with “Howdy” buttons, and other Texanica

Last night we went to the Limelight, a San Antonio bar and space for live music with a Sunday night open mic. Sari’s roommate Monica played, along with a bunch of other singer/songwriters. The standard guitars were acoustic, and the singers, even the boys who looked like indie rockers, had a really earnest tone of voice that touched on country even if it didn’t stay there. And you can buy three gin-and-tonics, one amaretto sour, and a can of beer for $14.

Maybe it was because we were with Monica, but all the artists who played were so much friendlier than anyone I would have met in LA. They played their sets, came and sat at our table, said hello at the bar. And they all knew each other, too – “I liked your new song,” and so forth. It’s a great environment. I think the Austin/Nashville scene spills over into all the smaller cities. If I were a singer/songwriter starting out, I wouldn’t go to LA or New York – I’d go somewhere more supportive first. Like this.

It’s basically the same lesson I’ve been learning about theater, that being the smallest fish in the biggest pond first isn’t always the wisest step – that you can get more experience more quickly in the regional scene.

Standard