Here's what I read this year. The first list is books (a variety of non-fiction and fiction) and then plays I've read. Finally, I've added a list of theatre performances I saw this year (which is rather slim).
Books
1. Thinking Shakespeare by Barry Edelstein
2. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
3. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
5. Wild at Heart by John Eldridge
6. The Graveyard book by Neil Gaiman
7. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
8. Kiss Me Like a Stranger by Gene Wilder
9. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
10. Renee Fleming’s Vocal Autobiography
11. Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler
12. Close Calls with Nonsense by Stephen Burt
13. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
14. Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
15. The World According to Garp by John Irving
16. Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
17. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
18. Sanford Meisner On Acting by Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell
19. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
20. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
21. Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller
22. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
23. A Thousand Miles in a Million Years by Donald Miller
24. Coaching the Artist Within by Eric Maisel
25. Straight Man by Richard Russo
26. The Shack by William P Young
27. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
28. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
29. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Plays
1. Mrs Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw
2. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
3. The Road to Damascus (part 1) by August Strindberg
4. Miss Julie by August Strindberg
5. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmund Rostand
6. Picnic by William Inge
7. Buried Child by Sam Shepard
8. Waiting for Godot by Beckett
9. Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht
10. Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco
11. The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter
12. The Importance of Being Earnest by Wilde
13. Long Day’s Journey Into Night by O’Neill
14. Angels in America by Tony Kushner
15. Fences by August Wilson
16. The Rainmaker by N. Richard Nash
17. Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin
18. John Gabriel Borkman by Ibsen
19. Death and the Plowman by Johannes von Saaz
20. Three Days of Rain Richard Greenberg
21. Enchanted April by Matthew Barber
22. Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl
23. Biloxi Blues by Neil Simon
24. Late: a cowboy song by Sarah Ruhl
25. To Fool the Eye by Jeffrey Hatcher
Plays I’ve Attended
1. Happy Days
2. Eleutheria
3. Bernstein’s Mass (not a play, but it’s a very theatrical piece)
4. A Delicate Balance
5. Endgame
6. Private Eyes
7. Buried Child
8. Grey Gardens
9. The Odd Couple
10. The Tempest
11. A Midnight Dreary
What's been most disappointing is the number of plays I've attended. But it was my final semester of college and then the acting apprenticeship that hampered any chances of catching attending theatre. I hope to catch more stuff in Minneapolis and St. Paul this year, but that can prove challenging.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
One more show this year...
I've got the final performance of 2009 tonight.
I think I've been in over 100 live performances this year:
--8 or so Cabaret shows of Miscast 2: Once More with Feeling
--4 of Dames at Sea
--around 70 of The Rainmaker
--7 of The Odd Couple (for understudying)
--close to 30 of The 1940's Radio Hour
It's been a very good year. What a blessing!
Thanks to all family and friends who have caught a show.
Who knows what 2010 will bring (I've got some ideas)?
I'm excited though.
I think I've been in over 100 live performances this year:
--8 or so Cabaret shows of Miscast 2: Once More with Feeling
--4 of Dames at Sea
--around 70 of The Rainmaker
--7 of The Odd Couple (for understudying)
--close to 30 of The 1940's Radio Hour
It's been a very good year. What a blessing!
Thanks to all family and friends who have caught a show.
Who knows what 2010 will bring (I've got some ideas)?
I'm excited though.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Snow Daze
We've were dumped with snow. And I have proof.
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This is just outside the theatre. I attempted to show how deep the snow got in some places, but that failed.
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The bluff nearby. I'm not sure if this photo can give the proper justice it deserves. Earlier this morning, the sun hit the bluff and made it all shiny with this haunting pinkish tint. You'll just have to take my word for it.
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Obligatory here's-my-car-underneath-a-ton-of-snow picture. Take a look at the front left part of the hood.
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Because of all the snow, I've been cooped up in the house, working on monologues. Here's the initials of every word to a Romeo monologue. It's a handy way to check memorization without having all the words in front of you:
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WE HAD A PERFORMANCE OF 1940'S RADIO HOUR last night. It was so great to be back on stage after three days of sitting around and watching movies. I did a bit of cleaning, but it was a ton of nothing. Last night, I finally had to walk to the gas station and get some milk (it's about a mile walk, round trip). My eyelashes felt particularly frosty after that trip.
BUT I DIGRESS.
The show was a lot of fun. It felt great to have a renewed sense of energy and purpose. The crowd was rather...inebriated... They were responsive to us, but it got to be a bit annoying and distracting.
I have a tiny speech where I talk about being in flight training and going off to war.
I said: "I got a call last night from my folks in Greenwood, Indiana..." I paused, trying to find the best way to say "and they said the best Christmas present I could give them next year would be my being home." Well, before going into that weighty bit, a couple people started cheering, applauding:
"WOO! Indiana!!!"
I stopped, hoping the silence would shut them up. It worked, but it put me completely out of the rest of the speech.
The audience acts as the actual audience of the radio show that is broadcast live throughout New York. So we interact with them and appreciate some verbal nods here and there. This time though...it was unwelcome.
A baby was also in the audience. It wasn't too distracting. While I was changing into my tap shoes and Ann is singing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," I heard the baby coo. The mics picked that up into the dressing room feed. That was pretty adorable.
AND THEN TODAY we had 200 middle/high school students catching the show. They just didn't seem to appreciate the 40's. It's funny how one night the entire audience knows ALL the music, and the next it goes right over their heads. I think they ended up enjoying the show (or getting out of classes for a morning).
--------------------------------------------------------------
This is just outside the theatre. I attempted to show how deep the snow got in some places, but that failed.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The bluff nearby. I'm not sure if this photo can give the proper justice it deserves. Earlier this morning, the sun hit the bluff and made it all shiny with this haunting pinkish tint. You'll just have to take my word for it.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Obligatory here's-my-car-underneath-a-ton-of-snow picture. Take a look at the front left part of the hood.
--------------------------------------------------
Because of all the snow, I've been cooped up in the house, working on monologues. Here's the initials of every word to a Romeo monologue. It's a handy way to check memorization without having all the words in front of you:
----------------------------------------------
WE HAD A PERFORMANCE OF 1940'S RADIO HOUR last night. It was so great to be back on stage after three days of sitting around and watching movies. I did a bit of cleaning, but it was a ton of nothing. Last night, I finally had to walk to the gas station and get some milk (it's about a mile walk, round trip). My eyelashes felt particularly frosty after that trip.
BUT I DIGRESS.
The show was a lot of fun. It felt great to have a renewed sense of energy and purpose. The crowd was rather...inebriated... They were responsive to us, but it got to be a bit annoying and distracting.
I have a tiny speech where I talk about being in flight training and going off to war.
I said: "I got a call last night from my folks in Greenwood, Indiana..." I paused, trying to find the best way to say "and they said the best Christmas present I could give them next year would be my being home." Well, before going into that weighty bit, a couple people started cheering, applauding:
"WOO! Indiana!!!"
I stopped, hoping the silence would shut them up. It worked, but it put me completely out of the rest of the speech.
The audience acts as the actual audience of the radio show that is broadcast live throughout New York. So we interact with them and appreciate some verbal nods here and there. This time though...it was unwelcome.
A baby was also in the audience. It wasn't too distracting. While I was changing into my tap shoes and Ann is singing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," I heard the baby coo. The mics picked that up into the dressing room feed. That was pretty adorable.
AND THEN TODAY we had 200 middle/high school students catching the show. They just didn't seem to appreciate the 40's. It's funny how one night the entire audience knows ALL the music, and the next it goes right over their heads. I think they ended up enjoying the show (or getting out of classes for a morning).
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Movin' Right Along
I need more creative titles.
We do six shows in four days: 1 Thursday night, 2 on Friday, 2 on Saturday, and 1 on Sunday afternoon. It's quite a feat! The audiences really seemed to enjoy our performances this weekend. It's great.
Today, we had a special event called "Sunday Salon," in which an invited guest comes to discuss some topic that deals with the show. Today we heard some WWII stories. One couple was invited to explain how they used song titles as a code system. If "White Christmas" was mentioned in a letter, the wife knew her husband was in Hawaii. "I'll Be Seeing" you meant he was in Japan and so forth. It was very clever and never censored! Other people chimed in from the audience, sharing their stories from the war and using the radio as a means for entertainment and news.
It's great to hear these accounts. There were lots of tears in the room during the salon. This medium has a powerful impact on people. I think this show takes many by surprise.
Yesterday, we had a rehearsal look-back. The cast gathered with the artistic director and discussed how the rehearsal process went. We expressed what we loved, what was frustrating, how we grew as artists, etc. It was interesting to hear what people had to say. I won't go into details, but it's great that we had an honest conversation about what worked and what didn't. Hopefully what didn't work out so well can be remedied for future shows of this nature and others. We're constantly learning in this company, which I appreciate. We'll also have a production look-back or post-mortem to examine similar elements (outside of rehearsals, obviously).
---------------------
GRAD SCHOOL COUNTDOWN
I'll be auditioning for grad schools in less than two months.
Tonight, I'll be lookin' over Shakespeare stuff. I've got a bit of anxiety about choosing the right Shakespeare monologues. I'm looking at the ingenues, which just seem to be so cliche, but with my age and looks, that's my options (it's just weird to me to think I may end up working on Romeo's lines). There's a lot of Shakespeare that I haven't read. So I'm trying to find a good balance of working with what I know and stretching beyond that a bit. As much as I enjoy Shakespeare, I can't just sit and read it for long periods of time. I need to speak it and hear it. The problem is that time is ticking and I've got some finalized decisions that need to be made sooner rather than later. I aim to have a list picked out by Tuesday (probably of five or so monologues).
I do have my contemporary monologues. One is Alan from Picnic and the other is Pip from Three Days of Rain (which may be a bit too old for me, but it's got such a great amount of energy and humor, and I genuinely love the piece)
We do six shows in four days: 1 Thursday night, 2 on Friday, 2 on Saturday, and 1 on Sunday afternoon. It's quite a feat! The audiences really seemed to enjoy our performances this weekend. It's great.
Today, we had a special event called "Sunday Salon," in which an invited guest comes to discuss some topic that deals with the show. Today we heard some WWII stories. One couple was invited to explain how they used song titles as a code system. If "White Christmas" was mentioned in a letter, the wife knew her husband was in Hawaii. "I'll Be Seeing" you meant he was in Japan and so forth. It was very clever and never censored! Other people chimed in from the audience, sharing their stories from the war and using the radio as a means for entertainment and news.
It's great to hear these accounts. There were lots of tears in the room during the salon. This medium has a powerful impact on people. I think this show takes many by surprise.
Yesterday, we had a rehearsal look-back. The cast gathered with the artistic director and discussed how the rehearsal process went. We expressed what we loved, what was frustrating, how we grew as artists, etc. It was interesting to hear what people had to say. I won't go into details, but it's great that we had an honest conversation about what worked and what didn't. Hopefully what didn't work out so well can be remedied for future shows of this nature and others. We're constantly learning in this company, which I appreciate. We'll also have a production look-back or post-mortem to examine similar elements (outside of rehearsals, obviously).
---------------------
GRAD SCHOOL COUNTDOWN
I'll be auditioning for grad schools in less than two months.
Tonight, I'll be lookin' over Shakespeare stuff. I've got a bit of anxiety about choosing the right Shakespeare monologues. I'm looking at the ingenues, which just seem to be so cliche, but with my age and looks, that's my options (it's just weird to me to think I may end up working on Romeo's lines). There's a lot of Shakespeare that I haven't read. So I'm trying to find a good balance of working with what I know and stretching beyond that a bit. As much as I enjoy Shakespeare, I can't just sit and read it for long periods of time. I need to speak it and hear it. The problem is that time is ticking and I've got some finalized decisions that need to be made sooner rather than later. I aim to have a list picked out by Tuesday (probably of five or so monologues).
I do have my contemporary monologues. One is Alan from Picnic and the other is Pip from Three Days of Rain (which may be a bit too old for me, but it's got such a great amount of energy and humor, and I genuinely love the piece)
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