We opened last week. We play through Dec 18. Here’s a little teaser for you.
Category Archives: The Meaning of Art
Silence Reviewed
I was just happy about getting to sleep a full night again and having time to cook a hot meal.
This review rounding out my opening weekend is the cherry on top: GAN-e-meed’s Silence is Golden
In a sense, the highest compliment to her is that you don’t notice her work; the play just seems to happen spontaneously, surprisingly.
Plus, we got called “urban Stage-Warriors.” Nice.
Brilliant Awe Awash with Life
Yesterday.
4pm. Production meeting for Silence. I was so excited to be sitting at a table with such a brilliant design and management team that I do believe I babbled a bit. I did, at least, succeed in not dumping my bag everywhere as I dug for a pen, which is what usually happens since I tote my scattered brain around on my shoulder.
And yet, this is where I am the most at ease in my excitement. This is where I belong. I am a producer/direct above all. A discovery I made late-ish in my career. An unexpected, enlightening, and inspiring discovery. So, to sit in a tea shop faced with talent that is destined to soar is truly awe-inspiring.
I can forgive myself for the babbling when I am faced with dreams coming true.
6:15pm. Rain. Rain. Rain.
6:45pm. Boston University. Opening Reception for the Institute for Non-Profit Management and Leadership. I was late. I was wet. I was cold. I smilingly accepted my name tag and secured directions to the ladies room because the minuscule droplets of rain were quickly gathering in the folds of my face and becoming rivers. I needed a moment to collect myself. I didn’t get it since I arrived just in time to hear watch the welcome speeches in the vacuumous (yes, that is now a word if it wasn’t before) atrium. As I stood there, dripping and name-tagged, absorbing an excitement similar to that I felt just an hour earlier, I suddenly realized that the sole reason for this reception was for me to walk around, introduce myself to complete strangers, and make worthwhile conversation.
This might be where I forgot to breath for a second.
Schmoozing is completely out of my comfort zone. I’m not bad at it and I don’t dislike it, it just requires concentration and fortitude. You’d think after the awe of my previous meeting, I’d be golden, but the rain must have washed some of me away.
With the speeches over, I retreated to the ladies to powder my nose and returned with a sigh, determined to either find a single person standing and waiting for a conversation, or butt-in to a group. My one goal: not to stand around feeling idiotic.
I succeeded. I felt fine. But after several months hiatus from explaining the mission of GAN-e-meed to multiple professionals in an evening, I was definitely out of practice.
8pm. I drove home in the rain. Picked up an over-tired child. Read a little Moss Hart and snuggled up in bed.
This is the good life.
3 Count Fade to Black. Sort of.
Lucy Dreaming closes tonight at The Factory Theatre in Boston. Produced by GAN-e-meed as part of FeverFest.
We’re operating on a shoe-string for this one. Well, technically, without a shoe string.
Plus, we got involved late in the game so I didn’t bother to pull in any designers. I figured I could wing it.
And I can.
Except when it comes to lights.
Because I’ve realized that, as a director, the design element that speaks to me the loudest are the lights. Costumes run a close second. The hard part being that I know plenty about costumes and virtually nothing about lighting.
I have visions of halos and shadows, colors and dimensions. But I can’t get it to come across with my meager knowledge of how to plug in a light and not to touch the bulb or it may explode in my face.
This realization is, quite literally, an eye-opener.
So, my next task….get the lighting skills.
Just what I need, right? More to do.
In Dress Blues
I spent part of my morning in a NH National Guard uniform.
Dress Blues, to be exact. So I was told. I make no claims of knowledge about anything remotely war-like.
I joked, briefly, that I hoped my parents never saw me. They’re old hippies and such. I feel awkward when I find myself talking to someone who ever served in anything army-like. I just don’t know what to say. So I made the joke. And then I realized that the director was in the Guard (duh) and I actually had no idea who else standing in the room in a convincing costume was either.
Awkward silence while I tried to pry my foot out of my mouth.
But, it did get me thinking as I was standing out in the sun alternating between serious and smiling for the photo shoot that there is no guarantee that an actress will ever play a combatant whereas I am almost positive that every professional male actor has at some point played a military role on stage.
I have no point other than that I was thinking about it.
Sometimes I’m like that.