Even Better With a Creaky Bed

There is something slightly surreal about the staging of a sex scene.

"Okay, move your left hand there, and put the other under there to cushion a bit, now put your right foot over there"

Sort of like twister.

As the Skids said, "It makes you feel like a porn director". Or Mr. Skull Hana, "Like having sex for the first time but with ten people watching and all of them giving you tips on how to do it better."

We have a design run tonight which in the best of all worlds will send us off into the weekend jazzed, but with a clear sense of where we need to go.

On another note--does anyone have a definite answer on what size travel bottles of contact solution or other liquids I can take in a carry-on for a domestic flight?

Che Lives

I hit a wall yesterday. In every respect. I feel much better today.

Did you feel the ground shake around 2pm? That was because I entered a Sprint store to have my phone THAT HASN'T WORKED RIGHT FOR EIGHT MONTHS looked at so that I could have it fixed or replaced since I PAY FOR INSURANCE ON IT.

Eight. Months.

I do not like the Sprint store. I don't, I don't. But the one in Silver Spring was much better than the one near Dupont.

And I am going to Kentucky this weekend to see shows and hopefully recharge a bit. And to see Jen and Josh and to drink bourbon with Jeremy and all sorts of good stuff. Then back into the thick of Dali and Rivera and the emotional shrapnel of war and the loneliness of a missing lover and the beautiful, intense, unexpected worlds we create in a desperate attempt to cope with the pain of life.

In other news, I watched The Motorcycle Diaries last night.

Gael Garcia Bernal is a beautiful man.

Yes. I've heard it before. So many many times.

A moment of great revelation while reading the Reliable Source section on the WaPo yesterday.

Good God! Leslie Nielsen must hear it even more often than I do!

And yet people just can't seem to help themselves.

Funny Pages

This American Life got me again.

Maybe I should make the whole This American Life thing a regular weekly feature. It's going to happen--I'm going to write about it, so expect it. Like people who blog their reactions to TV shows. I don't get to watch TV, so bear with my podcast obsessions.

Anyway, the episode is called "Kid Logic" about the way things work in the minds of children. It is mostly funny, but also moving (aren't they all?). Two moments of tears--the first misty eyed, the second, and I am literally sobbing.

It was the last story about a four-year-old whose father is diagnosed with a rare brain disease that literally shrinks his brain, such that his facilities degenrerate over the course of several years until he has the capabilities of an infant. He reached that final state at the age of forty-five. The story is narrated by his wife, the four-year-old's mother.

At one point the child speaks.

Little boy voice: "I don't have a dad to read the comics to me". Such a simple loss. Such a major loss.

It sounds maudlin the way that I am telling it. But really, it's not sentimental at all. It is honest and real, and in its own way, kind of brutal. Wherin lies my obsession with This American Life. They have captured the art of story-telling in a way that we should strive for in the theater. Honest, real and brutal.

I don't exactly remember if my dad readthe funnies to me or if I read them to him. Or maybe it was mom who read the funnies. One way or the other, those brightly colored Sunday paper funnies were a major part of the weekend, as dad was making scrambled eggs, with cheese for my brother, no cheese for me.

The wife/mother tells her story artfully, eloquently. She loved this man. She loves this little boy.

This is why my heart breaks just a little bit more. In my experience, finding someone to spend a life with is a daunting task. It slays me to hear of someone that finds this, and then loses it much too early. It's just not fair. My fifth grade teacher told me that life wasn't fair. That doesn't make it any better. They deserved more time.

"Someday we'll shuffle off to the grave together, wrinkled and slow, two old companions still pinching each other's butts."
-Jose Rivera
References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot

Too Many Links

Life seems to have smashed itself all up into a jumble yet again. Not much time to breathe but I promise you I am not complaining.

The long of title and complex of structure References To Salvador Dali Make Me Hot is off and running. It's not an easy play. It is a beautiful play. It's a fun group of actors and others -- a great mix-up of people I've worked with before (only one, actually), people I've known and always wanted to work with (several), and several newbie's who I am very much enjoying getting to know.

The Rorschach blog has fun facts, updates, and behind the scenes photos of the whole down-and-dirty process. Check it out. (There's even a mention of you guys, mom and dad!)

My parents were in town again this weekend. They got to see the opening of DARWIN and the first read of DALI. The weekend was a blur but enjoyable (I hope?) and we had an extremely satisfying meal at Dukem after a long a frustrating wait with a hostess who had seemed to have invented her own system of taking names for a seating order.

Today I'm catching up on "Story-of-the-Day's".

Did you know that the electric slide is copyrighted? The man who invented it had made it his life mission to preserve the integrity of his dance. And come on, I mean--who could blame him?

There is a new edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin coming out, annotated by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Hollis Robbins of Harvard University. NPR hosted an interesting discussion about the book and about how the derogatory implications of "Uncle Tom" came to be. They keep coming back to this question of who has actually read Uncle Tom's Cabin. Have you read it?

Oddly enough, I have. It was on the curriculum for a not-very-good Women's Studies class I took at Michigan. We read a variety of female writers, including a slave narrative, Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Jewelle Gomez book... maybe we were examining race as well. I don't remember. There was one male in the class and I ended up dating him briefly. Joel. He was the poet who brought me free frozen yogurt from Mrs. Field's Cookies. Anyway, my recollection of the book was that it read as schmaltzy and sentimental, but at the same time was unquestionably progressive considering the time.

In other news:
Ira Glass is totally cute. No one ever told me that. He is also married and lives in Chicago, but cute nonetheless.

We're reading Jeanette Winterson's WEIGHT for book club. It is blessedly short and much less dense than some of her other books. It's good for me right now.

In my down time, I've made it my mission to memorize the words to Regina Spektor's Radio Song. That way if someone ever turns to me and says, "This life thing--I just don't get it!?" I can turn to them and without missing a beat respond, "This is how it works. You're young until you're not. You love until you don't. You try until you can't. You laugh until you cry. You cry until you laugh. And everyone must breathe until their dying breath."

And they'll be all like, "Citymouse! You are so wise! And smart and astute! But what happens when I am just feeling so down on myself and my life and thinking I just can't go on anymore?"

And then I'll say--firmly but kindly--"No, this is how it works. You peer inside yourself. You take the things you like and try to love the things you took. And then you take that love you made and stick it into someone else's heart, pumping someone else's blood, and walking arm in arm you hope it don't get harmed, but even if it does you'll just do it all again.

And maybe, eventually, I will listen to that advice myself. I know, right?

I was jazzed to find Hannah's blog. Gwen and Deb also have kick-ass blogs. I need to update my links. All in due time.

I am also a little bit addicted to the blog that the interns at Humana are keeping. Last year they had an actor and a playwright blogging for the festival, but this is much more fun. And while reading that I happened upon this interview with Blue Man Wes Day. Wes was a classmate of mine. There are now three Blue Men (four?) from his year at school. He is a megastar, indeed.

Also, this is super cool, from the folks over at the Voice.

Another Review

DCist weighs in as well.

The comment that has already appeared is interesting. I guess if you aren't familiar with Timberlake Wertenbaker one might think this could be some kind of creationist piece.

For the record, it's totally not.

If you know me, if you know Grady, you could probably guess that we wouldn't be involved in something that carried any kind of a right leaning agenda. My biology teacher father would disown me if I put anything out into the world that didn't "teach good science".

And when it comes right down to it--while the intelligent design issue makes the play more immediately current--it really has very little to do with our contemporary version of that debate. It examines, in the historical scenes, what it meant to put information out there that would completely and irreversibly change the way we as humans perceived the world. It's an interesting idea to try to wrap your brain around. What kind of information would achieve that effect today? The existence of life forms elsewhere in the universe, maybe?

"Finally"

I have a longer post ready to go. I'll put it up a bit later.

But bear with me for a moment of navel grazing.

AFTER DARWIN is getting quite good feedback. Here, here and here. I actually kind of love Weldon's description of the show as "something rounder, messier, and more human." It's a great description of what I like about the theater I like.

We are still slow to get some of the bigger guns in--press-wise--but hopefully that's just a matter of time. I'm so glad that the actors are getting their due. And press is spot-on to recognize the marvels that Ms. Sivigny and Mr. Cissna have achieved. They deserve it.

Okay, here's the "bear with me" part. Point of over-obsession for the day yesterday? Take a gander at this line from Mr. Anthony's review.

"[Citymouse] finally comes through with superb direction..."

I immediately called MB, who has a slight obsession with Mr. Anthony (maybe we all do, a little bit).

(P.S. Some liberties have been taken with this conversation.)

Me: Read the review. What do you think he means by that? Like he's been having to sit through show after show of total dreck, and now finally, finally he thinks something is okay?

[pause]

MB: Has he ever given you a bad review?

Me: No! That's a thing! Not that I can remember. And like, now he took the archives down, so I'd have to email him to get my past reviews. And if I do that it will look like I'm obsessing over this one word.

MB: You are obsessing over this one word.

Me: ....

MB: Read it again. Maybe he meant "finely".

Me: No. No. No, no, no, no, no. It definitely says "finally".

MB: Or maybe. Maybe he was thinking you were someone else.

Me: ....

MB: ....

And so. FINALLY:

AFTER DARWIN features Grady Weatherford, Elizabeth Richards, Eric Messner, and Dallas Miller.

Timberlake Wertenbaker's brain-teasing play addresses the ruling metaphor of our times: the survival of the fittest. Set in two distinct periods, AFTER DARWIN follows Charles Darwin traveling aboard the 'Beagle' with Robert FitzRoy into uncharted waters off the coast of South America and then, hundreds of years later, Millie, Ian and Tom as they recreate a stage version of Darwin's travels. During their staging, they uncover the polarities both in and between their own lives.

Journeymen's production of AFTER DARWIN was featured in The Washington Post's Sunday Source section onMarch 4, 2007 as an "On Stage Pick." Don’t miss out. Tickets are on sale now via the Journeymen Theater website at www.journeymentheater.org or by calling 1-800-494-8497.

It’s a crash course on Darwin and survival of the fittest at Church Street Theater: 1742 Church Street, NW, Washington, DC. Get your seat now!

AFTER DARWIN

By Timberlake Wertenbaker
March 7 – 31, 2007

Wednesdays @ 7:30pm (ALL - PWYC)

Thursdays @ 7:30pm

Fridays @ 8:00pm

Saturdays @ 2:00pm and 8:00pm

If We Did The Play in the Backyard with Ten-year-olds

Youtube is a scary thing.

Is that little girl playing the moon?

I'm so confused.

Comment Tangents

As I wrote in the comments below, anonymous comments put me in an uncomfortable position for discussion. You know who I am but I don't know who you are. It is fine that it works that way, but I am not able to engage in a debate because you may be a family member posting anonymously, you may be a colleague, or you may be a stranger, each of which would merit a different response.

And with those variables the possibility that I think I am "somehow superior because you know better and are too smart for them and they don't quite reach your reading level" can mean many different things. If you have read only this entry then yes, it makes sense that you would interpret my rant that way. Actually, I didn't even rant about self-help. It was a passing comment. A really minor, off the cuff, not particularly well thought out observation that came from a podcast. But that's neither here nor there.

If you know me, and think I really feel that way, well then that's a discussion you should be having with me to my face.

Ooooh. I don't like that! I'll be honest, the opportunity for someone to anonymously say the things that they want to say to my face makes me so very uncomfortable.

But there are a lot of good points in that last comment, so I'll leave it be.

The accessibility to therapy issue is huge. I have had many frustrating experiences with insurance companies and their dealings with mental health care. That could be a pages-long rant in and of itself.

But in the interest of doing something good for the world I will mention the couple of resources that I am aware of in the District where one can find a therapist on a sliding scale.

The Women's Center
(http://www.thewomenscenter.org) -- (sorry, I can't do links right now)
As you would guess, their resources are solely for women, but the staff is kind, the offices are welcoming, and they do offer therapy on a sliding scale.

George Washington University
(http://www.gwu.edu/~psycdept/view.cfm?page=services)
They offer mental health services on a sliding scale through their Department of Psychology.

I am sure there are others out there. Anyone? Know of another resource? Post it below if you do.

Their Lives, I Listen

My ipod has been fickle lately. It will suddenly shut off, show the little ipod sad face, I schedule an appointment to go to the genius bar, and literally on my way to the Apple Store it turns back on and behaves as if everything was totally normal.

My ipod is a tease.

It's in a good spell right now so I've been catching up with podcasts.

I think I've written here before of my love for This American Life. But it bears repeating. I love the show. It gives me faith in humanity and life and the power of story-telling and words.

I just listened to the Valentine's Day episode. While it's not the most moving episode ever (for me, the McCreary's story from the Babysitting Episode) or the funniest, laugh-out-loud (perhaps the weight-lifting snowman?)--it is a good one. There's a gutsy story told by a high school student about her first lesbian crush that actually pulls off the use of Evanescence underscoring. And David Sedaris' Squirrel and Chipmunk forbidden love story is funny and poignant in a Sedaris sort of way. The game show episode with the winner from the Irish Who Wants to be a Millionaire is also pretty wonderful. Yeah, they're all good. Just listen to it, okay?

Also All Songs Considered. John Waters guest dj'd the V-Day show and it is great fun.

They played Tina Turner singing the shit out of an Etta James song: "All I Could Do Was Cry".

You can almost hear her vocal chords threatening to call a strike. It is wonderfully pitiful and self-hating, as are several of the songs they featured (these are not "happy" love songs). It made me appreciate the days before self-help and Doctor Phil when there was an opportunity to wallow in one's misery without feeling guilty or self-indulgent for doing so.

Wallow and then wail about it.

Don't Be a Doody-Eared Dipshit

By missing your last three chances to see HAND's.

Tonight at 7:30, tomorrow at 2pm and tomorrow night at 7:30pm.

I talk about about the show here.

Yet again I make the brilliant observation that this is really "a love story". I think I said the exact same thing to Wee Jane about Two Rooms last year. Apparently I have a one track mind. But aren't all the stories we tell love stories when all is said and done?