it's a magical world

It's totally still December. Barely.

newredshoes prompted: What's a formative-as-fuck story (book, film, play, TV show, whatever) that you later realized had totally informed your storytelling tastes today?

Obviously it's on the brain because of yesterday, but really, the best answer to this is Into the Woods, the original Broadway production. Which I was probably a little too young for when I first watched it, but who cares. My mother, being a Sondheim devotee, taped the PBS broadcast of the original production, and that was what I watched over and over again as a kid. She figured that the fairy tale aspect would appeal to me, and that the darker shit would mostly go over my head, which was only partly true. But in a good way! (I've mentioned this before, but my parents didn't believe in censoring content based on my age -- if I found anything too scary/disturbing, I'd stop watching/reading on my own.)

Into the Woods was MASSIVELY influential. I mean, for starters, it was my first experience with a transformative work -- Sondheim basically wrote a musical fusion AU of a bunch of fairy tales, including a couple of OCs, and then Act II is the continuation fanfic of what might happen AFTER the "happily ever after." It's sharp and clever and often very funny, but also takes a good hard look at the dark underbelly of the stories we tell our children, and what the reality of living in that world could look like. Relationships built solely on physical attraction don't always last; people make mistakes with very real consequences; the family you make for yourself can be more important than the one you were born into. Even when everything is awful, joy can be found. The cynical realism still tempered by a spark of hope at the end -- that's definitely my favorite thing ever. And teamwork being awesome, and found families, and oh god that show makes me cry so much. Plus the music is, of course, gorgeous.

But most of all: Careful the tale you tell: that is the spell. Children will listen.

So...Jason Robert Brown sat in on my rehearsal today.

That was kind of a Big Deal.

(For people who aren't musical theater geeks -- he's a really fantastic Broadway composer/lyricist. The Last Five Years, Parade, Thirteen, Songs for a New World, Bridges of Madison County, etc. He's also married to the composer of the new musical I'm currently stage managing, which is why he was hanging out in my rehearsal today.)

I may have had a bit of a moment, there.

And hey, speaking of geeks...NYC-area fen should totally come to my geek trivia tomorrow afternoon!

Today I made a bunch of fake sandwiches and a giant salt shaker. My life is weird.

This segues nicely into one of the remaining prompts from the no-longer-December meme.

pocky_slash prompted: How you got into theatre or what it means to you or...something. Like that.

Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Fennyman: So what do we do?
Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Fennyman: How?
Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.
-Shakespeare in Love, written by Tom Stoppard (yup, the Arcadia guy)

Fucked if I know how I got into theatre. It's just one of those things that happens. I'm a little obsessed with storytelling, as you might have noticed, what with the fandom thing and all, and live theatre is my very favorite because of the intimate relationship between performers and audience. I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't in love with the theatre. My parents started taking me to plays from around when I could walk and talk -- first children's theatre, then Broadway -- and I started doing school plays in, like, first grade. I don't think I ever really expected to become an actress -- sure, I fantasized about it sometimes, but I'm way too much of a pragmatist to really believe in that. In high school, I started doing some directing, which I loved, and though I briefly clung to the notion that I would major in something useful in college -- like, y'know, English Lit -- I wound up declaring a Theater & Performance Studies major by the end of my freshman year. I just couldn't imagine doing anything else. My focus in college was on directing. I spent every summer interning at some theater or another -- all-purpose internships in small theaters, basically, doing all sorts of odd jobs and getting to know the business of running a theater beyond the productions themselves -- and got some steady work in house management on the side.

One of my first professional gigs in the year after graduation was as assistant director at a tiny theater in Chicago, and their usual stage manager had to drop out before rehearsals started, so the director asked if I could SM, too. I said yes, of course, because you ALWAYS say yes to a gig when you're just starting out, and then panicked because I'd never done any stage management in school at ALL. But I'd worked with plenty of good SMs, so I just tried to mimic what I remembered them doing, and...well, fake it 'till you make it, right? I discovered I enjoyed running shows, despite the stress. And once I moved to Washington and started working in admin at a large-ish Equity theater, I realized that no, I really needed to be in production, not administration. (I still think maybe someday I could land in the education department of a big theater and be content there, because I have very strong feelings about arts education, but it's not my true love.) While searching for production gigs around town, I discovered very quickly that no one really wants an AD, nor will they pay one much, but EVERYONE needs a good ASM and are willing to pay for one. So I fell face-first into stage management and haven't come up for air since. And now that's the only thing I do.

It's been six years this month since my first SM gig. Where I am now is not quite what I'd ever expected or planned growing up, but it suits me -- I'm a bit too pragmatic to ever be a great artist, but I derive a huge amount of satisfaction from the work I do, and I get to work in a theater every day. There have been good shows and bad shows, and some truly shitty work experiences -- I'm not too thrilled with my current situation, for example -- but I still just can't imagine doing anything else. Calling a show is like being the conductor of an orchestra, and requires just as much finesse and, yes, artistry, and I love it. ♥

And for the record: the sandwiches were cut out of mattress foam with a bit of brown paint around the edges for crust, and the giant salt shaker made out of a large styrofoam cone, clear packing tape, and aluminum foil. In case you ever need to make your own.

Still playing catch-up, but this one was actually supposed to be posted today, so!

troisroyaumes prompts: plays that everyone should see once in their lifetimes

JESUS CHRIST WHERE DO I START. See, I feel like this is a very personalized question? Like, I honestly don't think there are plays that EVERYONE should see, objectively speaking, because everyone has their own personal interests and tastes that do not align with my own, and I try to recommend theater to people on an individual basis. And also, look, theater isn't like a movie. You can't just look up that Really Important Play on Netflix and give it a watch. Theater can be expensive and hard to get to if you don't already live in an area with a thriving theater community. And also? Some plays that I think People Should See include plays that I haven't had the opportunity to see myself yet, that I've only ever read. So that feel a bit hypocritical of me.

BUT. That said, here is a totally subjective and abbreviated list of Plays To See. I should note that it is heavily US/UK-centric, which is unfortunate, but I just haven't seen or read much non-Western theater yet. And bring me your recs if you have any!

-Hamlet, William Shakespeare. I'm sorry, I really am, and it's not even close to being my favorite Shakespeare play, but it is so heavily influential in all areas of Western culture that I kind of can't handle the fact that there are people out there who have never read or seen it. This is one of those cultural touchstones that you just have to know. There are like twenty million movie versions, just pick the one with an actor you like and watch it, for the love of god, there is no excuse for not knowing this play. Other Shakespeare is also important, but I still think this is the One you can't get away with not seeing. (Runners up: Romeo & Juliet, which I'm not a big fan of, Macbeth, Othello, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.)
-And once you've done that, try to track down a production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard, for theater's best example of what a transformative work can and should be. This is one I've read about a million times but have never managed to see a live production of, because there's not been a Broadway revival in my lifetime and my university did it the year I was abroad, and I'm not a huge fan of the movie version because it really needs to inhabit the surreal world of a bare stage to be truly effective, not the hyperrealism of the screen. But god, this play. It is so brilliant. SO brilliant. And it was heavily influenced by...
-Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett. If you want to understand the evolution of the modern non-musical theater, you need to see this play. From Beckett came pretty much everything else.
-And for the equivalent of groundbreaking musical theater -- don't laugh: Oklahoma!, Rodgers & Hammerstein. Yes, it's campy and cheesy and overdone by now, but this was the first modern American musical, and everything else followed after. Before Oklahoma!, there were Vaudeville and music halls, but people who wrote musicals basically took a bunch of songs they liked and strung a loose story between them. (Unfortunately, that's become popular again in the past decade or so -- we call them Jukebox Musicals. I am not a fan.) Rodgers and Hammerstein were the first composer & lyricist team to think, hey, maybe the songs these people sing should actually progress the plot and reveal things about the characters that we wouldn't know otherwise. I kind of lack the words to describe how revolutionary that was at the time.
-I can't talk about American theater without mentioning Tennessee Williams, and how you have to see at least one play the guy wrote. Personally, I prefer Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, because Maggie the Cat is fucking amazing -- Williams is one of the few male playwrights I actually think knows how to write sensational female characters -- but A Streetcar Named Desire or The Glass Menagerie will also do.
-Blah blah blah Arthur Miller, blah blah blah Eugene O'Neill, blah blah blah Edward Albee, blah blah blah Our Town. Same as for Williams. Again, we're talking Americana here. If you're not American, I think it's less important you see these, but if you are, hello, wake up to your own cultural history. These are our cultural icons of the mid-20th century, and they're important for a reason.
-August Wilson gets his own special item on this list, though, because he's THAT important. He charts the history of African-American life in the 20th century with his Pittsburgh Cycle -- he wrote a play set in each and every decade of the 20th century, all set in a black neighborhood in Pittsburgh, with several characters appearing in multiple plays at varying ages, and it is all thematically interconnected and GLORIOUS. Fences is probably his best known; I'm a big fan of King Hedley II, though. You have to have to have to see at least one of his plays before you die.
-And hopping back over to Europe, do yourself a favor and go see The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde. I mean, anything the guy wrote was pure gold, but this one's another step above the rest, in my opinion, and the funniest of all the drawing room comedies of that era or any other.
-(Yeah, I tend to organize by Important Playwrights rather than individual plays. Deal with it.)
-Oh, christ, yes, just fucking see a production of Medea or Antigone or Electra already. The ancient Greeks knew what they were doing, alright? Also with the kickass ladies, although more heavily tilted toward the scary end of the spectrum.
-HEY LET'S TALK ABOUT LADIES. Do your sweet self a favor and see something -- anything -- written by Suzan-Lori Parks. My favorite to read is Topdog/Underdog, but I haven't yet been lucky enough to see a stage production of it. African-American female playwrights with strong voices of their own writing badass characters FTW.
-Oh so you prefer your plays dark and disturbing with a twisted sense of humor? How about some Martin McDonagh? I got The Pillowman right here, and it will give you nightmares for fucking weeks.
-Oh, so you prefer your MUSICALS on the darker side, too? Lemme introduce you to a composer/lyricist by the name of Stephen Sondheim, and point you in the direction of Into the Woods (for fairy tales waaaay closer to Grimm than Disney, and a realistic glimpse of what comes after the happily ever afters) or Sweeney Todd (for even more murder and mayhem and shepherd's pie peppered with actual shepherd on top).
-And then go see The Laramie Project (Moises Kaufman) already, because this is real and people need to know about it, and also because this is part of the power of what theater can do in the real world.
-Honorary Awesome Playwright mentions that I'm not going to go further into because there are only so many plays I can recommend at once: Yasmina Reza (Art, Gods of Carnage), David Henry Huang (M. Butterfly, holy shit why can I not find a fucking production of this to see for myself, I love the script so much), Sam Shepard (True West), Frank McGuinness (Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Toward the Somme), Moliere (just...everything), Neil Labute (likewise), and, yes, fucking Les Miserables 'cause you oughta know what everyone else is talking about.
-AREN'T YOU PROUD OF ME FOR WAITING THIS LONG BEFORE TELLING YOU TO SEE ARCADIA? BECAUSE YOU REALLY NEED TO SEE ARCADIA, IF ONLY SO THAT I CAN HAVE MORE PEOPLE TO TALK ABOUT IT WITH.

urb_banal prompted: any character from any fandom, or not: A line drawn away from yourself towards...

I'm not quite taking this in the direction she intended, but the prompt has lingered in my head all day, and this is where I wound up. I can't insert myself into a scene with a fictional character -- I mean, I have done, when I was much younger, and that's called a Mary Sue and it's all right, I feel like it's an important stage of development for any writer. But honestly, I wouldn't want to stick myself in a room with a fictional character -- or a famous person -- or any of those sorts of scenarios, because that's just not who I am. I wouldn't know what to say. I'd feel very small and quiet and dull. And I don't tend to strongly identify with the fictional characters I love, or the ones I write. That's part of the joy of writing, for me -- trying on someone else's personality for a change, seeing through someone else's eyes, not dragging them into my head.

I just sat at my laptop for a good long while and tried to think of any character from any medium, just one, that I feel a genuine personal connection to. Just one.

A line drawn away from myself towards --

It's all trivial -- your grouse, my hermit, Bernard's Byron. Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.

Hannah Jarvis, from Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia, is quite possibly the only fictional character I have ever truly seen myself in, and oh god, I can't even begin to describe it. Fair warning: given the current prompts, I'm going to be talking about Arcadia a LOT this month. So I'm not going to go into detail about the play itself right now, but oh, HANNAH.

She's a no-nonsense, sharp-tongued, fierce feminist who criticizes the Romantic era as celebrating "the decline from thinking to feeling"; she comes to this manor house in search of the perfect symbol to tie her book together and instead finds herself deeply emotionally invested in the lives of a young mathematics genius and her tutor who lived and died centuries earlier. I'm not an historian nor an academic, but I'm frequently accused of either being too logical and unfeeling (in terms of romantic relationships) or getting too worked up over trivialities (fandom, social issues), and I identify HARD with Hannah's emotional transference from her own personal life to the cares and concerns of people long dead. (On a lighter note, Hannah ships Thomasina/Septimus pretty hardcore, as well she should.) She is very much a flawed heroine -- if she can be considered the heroine of the play at all; most would probably argue that Thomasina is, but my vote's for Hannah -- and she's a bit odd and lonely and abrasive. And I see way too much of myself in her. Way, way too much.

BERNARD: You should let yourself go a bit. You might have written a better book. Or at any rate the right book.
HANNAH: Sex and literature. Literature and sex. Your conversation, left to itself, doesn't have many places to go. Like two marbles rolling around a pudding basin. One of them is always sex.
BERNARD: Ah well, yes. Men all over.
HANNAH: No doubt. Einstein -- relativity and sex. Chippendale -- sex and furniture. Galileo -- "Did the earth move?" What the hell is it with you people? Chaps sometimes wanted to marry me, and I don't know a worse bargain. Available sex against not being allowed to fart in bed. What do you mean the right book?
BERNARD: It takes a romantic to make a heroine of Caroline Lamb. You were cut out for Byron.

(There are plenty of days in December I don't have filled -- prompt me! Please?)

I AM UNEXPECTEDLY GOING TO SEE WAITING FOR GODOT NEXT WEDNESDAY

SIRS IAN MCKELLAN AND PATRICK STEWART LIVE ONSTAGE IN ONE OF MY FAVORITE PLAYS

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

Why I work in theater: THIS.



Theater: it's not just for gays anymore! Oh, Neil Patrick Harris, how are you real?


And then he did a snarky song-and-dance number with Hugh Jackman, and my heart exploded.



Seriously, my sole ambition in life is to someday, many years from now, be stage managing a show with this man in the cast. HEARTS IN MY EYES FOREVER.

I'm taking a directing class with the artistic director of the theater I now work at, and our first assignment was to create a proper, thorough scene breakdown of any play of our choosing. After discovering how bloody difficult and time-consuming this process actually is, I gave up on the play I'd originally planned on dissecting in favor of one I already know backwards and forwards: the play I directed for my BA in college a year and a half ago.

Oh, my heart, Carthaginians. I haven't revisited you in so long because you were all finished and stuff, but OH MY HOW I LOVE YOU SO. I think my greatest regret from college will be not having made a video recording of that show. It was so good. I mean, horribly flawed and amateur and stuff, of course, but so fucking good all the same. It's amazing how much I still miss working on that play. And, rereading it tonight, how many new ideas I have for it. Like! I completely mis-blocked that scene with Seph breaking up the Hark and Dido fight, and oh my goodness I now totally get the final monologue in ways that never occurred to me before, and and and and...

Okay, I don't generally feel a pressing need to go back and re-direct shows -- Gross Indecency is not a play I'm likely to revisit, and while I wish I'd done a better job with Art, I don't care enough about the text to try that one again -- but oh my goodness Carthaginians, let me have another go at you someday. And I have a feeling that it'll resonate with me a lot more in, say, twenty years or so, when I've been through a bit more of life and come out on the other side like the characters have.

Anyway. I realize that none of you have the slightest idea what I'm talking about -- well, except for jptiger, for obvious reasons -- but just indulge my random burst of nostalgia here. Also, for the love of all that is holy, read some plays by Frank McGuinness, he is a criminally overlooked playwright outside of Ireland, it's a real shame. And I'm totally going to be using scenes from a couple of his other plays for my class, if only because I can be sure that no one else in the class will.

Thanks to Tropical Storm Hanna, who is currently swinging past the the DC area, my roof is now leaking. In three places. All of which are directly over my bed. Waking up on Saturday morning with wet feet: so not fun.

Stupid weather.

In unrelated news, the benefit of having a job in a theater? Many, many opportunities to see shows in other theaters for free or cheap. Like Thursday night, for example, when I got to see the dress rehearsal for Carrie Fisher's one-woman show "Wishful Drinking" at Arena Stage for free. Princess Leia! On stage! She was actually very, very funny, and had some fantastically bitter and witty stories about George Lucas and being haunted by Leia action figures for the rest of her life. I know she's been traveling this show around, so if it makes its way to your area, it's definitely worth seeing. Or if you're around DC in the next month, check it out.

...okay, seriously, NO NEW LEAK POINTS, please! I'm running out of large bowls.

I mean, West Wing DOES bring all my favorite theater actors at some point. Joanna Gleason, Lee Wilkoff, Oliver Platt, Anna Deveare Smith...yeah.

So "20 Hours In America" brings us not only Amy Adams, but JOHN GALLAGHER JR as the teenage kid who drives Donna/Josh/Toby part of the way.

For those of you who aren't total theater geeks, John Gallagher Jr (see icon) won a Tony award for best supporting actor in a musical last year as Moritz in "Spring Awakening".

Fandom collision of great personal glee!

I am an elitist theater snob, especially when it comes to musical theater. I worship at the shrine of Stephen Sondheim and do my best to pretend that shows like "Starlight Express" and "Legally Blonde: the Musical" don't actually exist. I'm not an ABBA fan, and I try to turn a blind eye to the continued presence of "Mamma Mia!" on Broadway. The fact that there is a movie of said "Mamma Mia!" coming out makes me wrinkle my nose in vague distaste. The fact that it will have Colin Firth, Meryl Streep, and Pierce Brosnan in it, unfortunately, made me curious enough to watch the trailer, with the sort of fascination one might have observing a train wreck.

And that's where I screwed up, because people? This movie also has Dominic Cooper in it, a.k.a. The History Boys' Dakin.

Shirtless, wet, tanned Dakin.

I have to see this movie now.

Goddamnit. Only for you, Dakin, will I subject myself to two hours of bubblegum sentiments and ABBA.

Spring Awakening for the win! *bops* And 8 out of 11 overall, not too shabby.

Also, how much do I love that they had to censor their Tony performance? Because that was kind of hilarious.