Category Archives: Uncategorized

music, quotes, Uncategorized

i don’t like repetition. i don’t like it at all.

…when my second quartet was played here at Harvard, my old teacher Walter Piston said to me, “you know, if I knew what it sounded like, I would have put the four players in separate rooms and shut the doors.”

-composer Elliott Carter, still avant-garde at 100 years old, interviewed by the Boston Herald. Via ArtsJournal. There’s also a great anecdote about my favorite composer, Charles Ives:

I [Carter] remember vividly this Sunday afternoon. I was taken to his [Ives’s] house by some friends, and we sat down and talked about music. I told him I liked Stravinsky. He sat at the piano, and I don’t think he had ever seen the score, he started playing the “Firebird.” And he said you can not repeat the way Stravinsky does. He was very angry about it, he said that’s just wrong. He thought repetition was a danger.

He didn’t really teach me anything, because I didn’t know much about music and I was just writing lousy little pieces. But I knew I had to study and I did at Harvard and such. But I admired his music. He had given up composing before I knew him. There were all these copies of his scores in the American Music Center which I went through and they were messy, and I tried to do something that I couldn’t follow up, tried to clean them up, they were awful. Like I think it was the fourth symphony, for two measures there would be six trombones playing and that’s all. I though maybe it’s all right, but it bothered me. I wanted to clean them up while he was alive, but it was too much and I couldn’t finish it. Finally Lou Harrison and Henry Cowell took over.

And Ives was against my going to Paris and studying with Boulanger. He thought I should stay home and be American. I one time went to visit him in Redding, and he played the “Concord Sonata” for me. He had a big vein in his neck and he held it like that, and his wife said, “Charlie you better quit now.” And she gave him a glass of milk. He was not well for years when he stopped composing.

I was involved with a music festival at Columbia, and I proposed that they do “The Unanswered Question” and “Central Park After Dark,” and I wrote to Mrs. Ives asking if they had been performed before. She said yes, some men in a New Haven vaudeville show had done it, and it would be unfair to call it a first performance.

I got this in a letter I got from her, and she said he was too sick to write back. But then I found out that he had written it, and she had copied it and added stuff. I have a whole article about things that she changed.

That last bit there relates quite pointedly to the previous post about who gets to relate whose experience. Yep.

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Uncategorized

To my very great sadness,

the LA Times writes: A measure to once again ban gay marriage in California was passed by voters in Tuesday’s election, throwing into doubt the unions of an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who wed during the last 4 1/2 months.

I received a text to this effect from my friend Ellen last night, but I didn’t want to believe it in the midst of the joy at Obama’s victory. But it’s true. 52-48 – so close. We are all devastated by this. I’m trying to write a longer article on the subject.

In good news, Obama takes Indiana. Robert and I reflected last night, in Grant Park, that our experiences in Indianapolis for this year’s Convergence gave us a new view of that state, and made us feel like it was a much more complex, liberal, diverse place to live than we had imagined as West Coasters. We were both hoping that Indiana would trend nationally to the left. To see that Obama victory there, by a narrow margin but still a victory – makes both of us so proud of the state and hopeful for where it’s going. New voters in Indiana, young voters, made this possible.

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politics, Uncategorized

beyond the palin

My roommate and I woke up this morning and discussed Sarah Palin for an hour. When I returned to the Internet, I found some context in an Alaskan perspective on Palin, from the Mudflats Alaska politics blog. (A fellow WordPresser.) The full post is very informative, and goes into a lot more details on the Wooten ethics scandal, among other things. Here’s a sample:

Before her meteoric rise to political success as governor, just two short years ago Sarah Palin was the mayor of Wasilla. I had a good chuckle at MSN.com’s claim that she had been the mayor of “Wasilla City”. It is not a city. Just Wasilla. Wasilla is the heart of the Alaska “Bible belt” and Sarah was raised amongst the tribe that believes creationism should be taught in our public schools, homosexuality is a sin, and life begins at conception. She’s a gun-toting, hang ‘em high conservative. Remember…this is where her approval ratings come from. There is no doubt that McCain again is making a strategic choice to appeal to a particular demographic – fundamentalist right-wing gun-owning Christians. And Republican bloggers are already gushing about how she has ‘more executive experience’ than Obama does! Above is a picture of lovely downtown Wasilla, for those of you unfamiliar with the area. Behind the Mug-Shot Saloon (the first bar I visited when I moved to Alaska long ago) is a little strip mall. There are street signs in Wasilla with bullet holes in them. Wasilla has a population of about 5500 people, and 1979 occupied housing units. This is where your potential Vice President was two short years ago. Can you imagine her negotiating a nuclear non-proliferation treaty? Discussing foreign policy? Understanding non-Alaskan issues?

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Uncategorized

WCX day 13-14

Day 13, Weds 6/11
I stayed up all night the night before and finished the rewrite of TO DIE IN ATHENS, and spend the day dazzled with colors and sleeplessness. I start furiously casting it. This rewrite is good enough that I can tell the reading is really going to happen.

The afternoon in San Francisco: TJT, visiting Audrey’s studio (orange and rainbow-based computer-generated art) 826 Valencia, taxidermy store, GoodVibes, Dolores Park, WeBe Sushi. Home and the final Scrabble rematch. (NEATH, HOARY.) A great meeting at TJT, and hopes for future collaboration.

Day 14, Thurs 6/12
Last day in the Bay. I go to the Stanford bookstore and buy the blue notebooks I can’t live without. 2 final meetings with Stanford professors, including one with a classicist who tells me that every single Greek choral passage has a different meter. I go through the entire script of TO DIE IN ATHENS with him. He tells me about a Pindar chorus which is supposed to be so “difficult” rhythmically that classicists contend that it couldn’t possibly be performed by a chorus – that it has to be a single actor “pretending to be a chorus.” I vow to disprove this.

Tomorrow we head for the mountains, to be in Los Angeles by Tuesday.

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the chorus, theater, travel, Uncategorized, writing

WCX, days 6 – 12

Day 6, Weds 6/4 – Day 8, Fri 6/6
Ashland, Ashland, Ashland. There’s never enough time. I have nothing more to add to what I said in my previous post – only that I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to see, due to being really under the weather for most of this stop. I will definitely be coming back for CLAY CART, OTHELLO and the other shows I missed as soon as I can. It’s a great season this year. I also saw some old friends. Not enough of those, either. I have to go back. It’s so frustrating to have getting sick correspond with your most beautiful outdoor stop on the trip. Mountains and rivers and theater, all missed. Still, did get to see one very heated political Shakespearean tragedy, and that worth all the trouble.

What? Coriolanus in Corioles?

Day 9, Sat 6/7
Feeling much better. We rent a car and drive the most scenic route possible from Ashland to the San Jose airport, dropping off the car five minutes before the cutoff. Highlights of the trip: the 101, the 1, the Humboldt redwoods, Confusion Hill, Whiskey Creek Road, and a gas station in Mendocino that sells organic wine. Cisco picks us up at the airport and we talk about old friends.

Day 10, Sun 6/8
Brunch and an enormous Stanford/Mirlo reunion at Stacks in Menlo Park, complete with an RA! I get to meet Quentin (of Megan) and Ben (of Romina), two husbands of my freshman dormmates. The evening is composed of Scrabble and Laphroaig. I get to play “GYRE.”

Day 11, Mon 6/9
We drive around Sausalito and Marin County with an old friend of a friend. The evening is, again, composed of Scrabble. I begin the next pass of the rewrite of 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE CHORUS during the Scrabble game. I get to play “DIPTYCHS” off of “DIP,” the highest-scoring Scrabble play I’ve ever accomplished, 60 points. Cisco attempts to play “ANBOGUS,” which, in case you’re wondering, is not a word – although both “QAT” and “FORGAT” are. I feel the rewrite energy swamping me and I know I’m not going to be able to rest again until the play has a Draft 6. And a new title.

I don’t manage to do much rewriting, only to psych myself out about the need to do it. I do, however, discover a very confusing note in my OED. AT COLONUS edition, indicating that one of the most dramatic sections is “similar to a dirge.” I consult with a Stanford classicist. A dirge? Really?

Day 12, Tues 6/10
Morning in Mountain View. Today is a major work day, making up for all the fun over the weekend. We spend about 6 hours at 2319 working on the piano – CF transfers all the guitar music he’s written. It amazes me how much pieces of music that I thought were so attached to one instrument shift flawlessly into another. He was completely right about many of them, esp. the MEDEA sections, being better suited to piano.

We also demo techniques for integrating his music into the HW choral voice workshop. I read a variety of choruses out loud and he plays along with them. Some bumps in the road at first – I don’t know exactly what it is I’m trying to do, only what doesn’t work. After some false starts, we end up choosing a chorus section which I’ve adapted myself, which is more rhythmical than some of the other translations out there, for the first unison exercise.

Child, child, child of Oedipus,
Miserable child of unhappy Oedipus,
We pity you in your despair,
Just as we pity him for his misfortune –
But we tremble to think of what the gods may do.
We cannot risk helping you.
We will not kill him – that is enough.
But you must leave our city at once.

We’re very well prepared for the first day of the chorus workshop, I think. We will have to do some new preparation after we see where the students are at in responding to our work. But we’re ready for Day One – and I have lots of directions it can go after that.

During the day, I also meet with two old friends and Stanford professors – a computer scientist and a humanist. I talk theater with both of them. One of them tells me that I’m doing something meaningful with my life. I hope she’s right.

After a brief stop for sandwiches and a mid-rewrite crisis of confidence, we go to a Mountain View coffeehouse and I plow ahead on the rewrite. Suddenly, the play opens itself up to me again. I add new characters – a Messenger and Darius – and a mixed-up ending composed of the ending of seven different plays. I’m still working on it now.

Zeus in Olympus is the overseer
Of many doings. Many things the gods
Achieve beyond our judgment. What we thought
Is not confirmed and what we thought not, the gods
Contrive. And so it happens in this story.

The play is now tentatively titled TO DIE IN ATHENS.

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Uncategorized

saturday morning in brooklyn

Yesterday at lunch I went to sit in Madison Square Park. I ended up next to a businessman who was making a conference call. The benches were like subway trains – people grabbing seats as soon as they were vacant. And every bench was lined with people appreciating the sunlight.
The businessman was so happy to be outside. He told me that you have to think of New York as a constant adventure.

Last night I went outside in my sneakers to make sure that there was street parking on Taaffe, for A’s visit. There is. It was a hot, windy night, and I was looking up the side of a building at a fire-escape stairway, zig-zagging like ivy up the bricks. And cheesy as it was, I suddenly heard someone humming “For there’s no one for me but Maria…Every sight that I see is Maria…(Tony, Tony)” And I remembered that I have dreamed about this place for a long time.

And this morning, outside on the deck, with wireless in the open air and a square of sky above.

I worked full-time every day this week, except for the day that I missed my train then took the wrong train and ended up in Queens. It’s been five days of subway rush-hours, lunches in blazing sunlight, elevators, doormen, accounting, check requisition forms, and general dayjobbery. And the evenings – I saw a friend at a Oaxacan restaurant, went to a SSDC meeting, saw another friend at a British restaurant, drank with my Pratt Institute roommates and, last night, made phone calls to a host of people I’ve been neglecting. Did I mention I also furnished the apartment?

The SSDC meeting was amazing – it was called “Directing Your Directing Career,” and it was the first time in my life I’ve been in a room with sixty other stage directors in it. I understood what it’s like to be an actor and feel those eyes on you. Analyzing. It was wonderfully liberating to feel myself in their company.

Today, the weekend promises to be an invitation au voyage. Where to is undecided. But the cities of the East Coast present themselves like shells on the beach to be picked up.

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travel, Uncategorized

welcome to brooklyn

“It was all good. She had forgotten how good the world was.” – Phillip Pullman

I need to go to Target right now and buy all the things you don’t need in a year of freelance assistant directing, most pressingly, sheets and a towel. But I’m here (having got the taxi driver lost on the way over, and driving through neighborhoods full of Hebrew-language posters), I’ve learned that this neighborhood is Clinton Hill, I’ve met my Pratt Institute roomies, and it’s a fabulous four-bedroom apartment with an outdoor porch, a cat named Cheeseburger, college-style couches, a beautiful kitchen, and everything one could want. Including, praise the gods, wireless, and a bagel place.

It’s gray and it looks like it could start raining at any moment. To the streets!

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L'Internet, theater, Uncategorized

The Shakespeare In Performance database

is “a searchable database of performance materials from over 1000 film and stage productions related to Shakespeare’s works,” and I’m listed on it, as the AD for Romeo and Juliet this summer at OSF. It’s still pretty new. If I search for the director of R&J, for example, it lists that but not his production of Two Gents the year before. Still, a cool idea.

Like IBDB or IMDB.
Now if someone would just make an Internet theater searchable database – for all productions, historical and present – it’s so silly that IBDB is only Broadway – so I could search for Moliere, for example, and see all the productions he acted in as well as those he wrote…It would have to be a wiki, so the scholars could edit it back and forth at each other. And as long as they’re granting my wishes, maybe it could also include future productions, so I could know what my next show was going to be.

I bet that would be something that would take off. If some programmingly inclined person wants to help me and Amina hack a basic version of it onto Upstage, we might be able to get something started. Eh?

I made two wikis for the DCTC production I’m on now, by the way – both private, for production use only. It’s a very useful theater tool. I should write a post about how to make a wiki, but it’s so easy it seems silly. You just do what pbwiki.com tells you.

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