random musings on the ephemeral nature of life, love, theatre and plants from the center of the heart, the back of the stage and the front of the porch....
was doing some research online this morning for OUR TOWN which i am directing next year (whew! or a few months from now) and i came across this AMAZING clip of paul newman playing the stage manager. even if you think you know this, i urge you to take a few minutes and watch it. one of the most deeply profound and moving things i have seen in a very long time...maybe ever
tomorrow is election day and i feel the eyes of the world upon it. such a very dark time in this country, the world, with a glimmer of life and light trying to peek through. i never thought i could be as angry as i was 8 years ago and then 4 years ago. it is the kind of red hot boiling emotion that makes you want to retreat from society. the only thing that kept so many people going was knowing that others felt just like them....that a horrible injustice had been served. i hope tomorrow that things will be different.
there is a picture in the sentinel today of a woman and her 7 year old daughter at an obama rally and they both look so full of hope. it boggles my mind to think that the only president that child has ever known is the evil that is currently in office. i hope her future is a brighter one...i truly do
and speaking of pix of people and their kids..here's me and my dad from two sundays ago
it was a strange and strangely wonderful day and expereince to be reunited with my father at a matinee of THE GLASS MENAGERIE. i felt a giant cloud rolling away for most of the day and as emily says in OUR TOWN...."it all happens so fast we don't even see each other"
so i made it to the obama headquarters yesterday and picked up my yard signs, a bumper sticker and a nice blue tee. i was impressed by the racial array of supporters that i saw there. my fave was a big belt buckled white guy and his silent sidekick of a wife holding on to their obama yard signs that i encountered in the elevator. from first glance, one would expect him to be a staunch mccainer but when i asked "so, do you think he's gonna do it?" he replied, "i hope so. i've got friends who tell me to be careful cuz he's gonna take away my guns. and i say well, i'm about to sell my guns so i can eat so what does it matter!?"
today is the keeper of loads of raw emotions for me. my dad and i will see each other for the first time in 26 years this afternoon. just a few hours from now. he and my step-brother and their wives will be joining me to see THE GLASS MENAGERIE and then we will be going to dinner at houston's on the lake. so glad it is happening but nervous as many emotions and memories are racing through my mind and heart.
wow... i guess i really am behind on DANCING WITH THE STARS!
thanks shannon
GLASS MENAGERIE opened last night and it was a dreamy damn fine time. a few snafus that the audience didn't notice i hope but very well played and received.
post show gathering featured BLUE ROSE cocktails and mac and cheese. not sure why air wasn't served. everyone knows the wingfield's eat air! it's a memory play people!!!!
seen in audience...betsey maupin pointing out some detail on the set to her husband jay....hmmm...i wish he was reviewing it. tee hee...mr. jay told me during ost gala this year that GM is one of his fave plays and that him seeing it for the first time when he was a young man moved him deeply and changed his and his brothers lives....
mom at the show sunday, then on the 26th my father after 26 years...whew...everyone asked me last night if he was there because they had evidently read my directors notes. i laughed and told them "no, a week from now! not tonight! i can't deal with the opening of a show AND a father reunion in one night!!! now, lets go get another one of those blue rosey things. i'm starting to feel like tennessee's sister rose after the lobotomy!"
auditions all this weekend for national new play network and PLAYFEST. i will be directing a new steven dietz play YANKEE TAVERN, which is all about ghosts and 9/11 conspiracies. it's amazing!
and for your saturday morning viewing pleasure....
original LAND OF THE LOST theme
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0MRU1f2SJ0
who knew there was a season where the dad got even more lost and will and holly's uncle came on the sleestack scene....??? i am at a loss for words on this one
tech week begins tomorrow for THE GLASS MENAGERIE which we have all been very very busy busy with...breaking glass is a delicate thang...
can't belive that catty chick made it into final 3 on PROJECT RUNWAY!
they should just cut the GABON and call it SURVIVOR BEEFCAKE this year! yowza!
BIG BANG REUNION party tonite to kick off GAY PRIDE weekend in orlando. should be fun and scary....BB was almost 20 years ago.....
it was a hard weekend last week...brett jarvis...may you rest in peace...my heart has been heavy and full of memories...on this planet...you were loved....
sometimes i jus wanna run away....
From the MANITOBA HERALD, Canada (a very underground paper):
The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration.
The possibility of a McCain/Palin election is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Bill O'Reilly.
Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.
I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn,' said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. 'He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?'
In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields. 'Not real effective,' he said. 'The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn't give milk.'
Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves.
'A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions,' an Ontario border patrolman said. 'I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. 'They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though.'
When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the McCain administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to shoot wolves from airplanes, deny evolution, and act out drills preparing them for the Rapture.
In recent days, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers on Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney hits to prove they were alive in the '50s. 'If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age,' an official said.
Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies. 'I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them,' an Ottawa resident said. 'How many art-history and English majors does one country need?'
A British Perspective: Flirting her way to victory
Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and US political discourse
Michelle Goldberg Friday, October 3 2008 guardian.co.uk
At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable, preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked twice at the audience. Had a male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked. Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for female candidates and American political discourse that, with her newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now deemed to have performed acceptably last night.
By any normal standard, including the ones applied to male presidential candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of actually answering the queries put to her. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also," she said.
And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own pseudo-folksy authenticity.
It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.
In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan. The criteria are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin could avoid utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether urbane commentators would believe that she had connected to a public that they see as ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor, mission accomplished.
There is indeed something mesmerizing about Palin, with her manic beaming and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her answers last night. It's worth reading the transcript of the encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said was. Here, for example, is how she responded to Biden's comments about how the middle class has been short-changed during the Bush administration, and how McCain will continue Bush's policies:
Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.
Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorized talking points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty. Asked what her Achilles heel is - a question she either didn't understand or chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her because of her "connection to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills?"
None of Palin's children, it should be noted, are heading off to college. Her son is on the way to Iraq, and her pregnant 17-year-old daughter is engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and self-described "fuckin' redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even tell the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own life, never mind about matters of major public import. In her only vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phony. What kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is? That her performance was considered anything but a farce doesn't show how high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.
fall is in the air....my fave time of year! feel like life and work have taken off again or at least in new directions...at a very fast pace. started GLASS MENAGERIE two days ago and in a good way, it feels like we have been working on it for much longer. was living with the play all summer and so have the actors, so the work is much deeper from the get go. dealing with the recent communication with my dad for the first time in 26 years and the impending reunion with him when he and his wife and my step brother come to see the show next month has really made me look at the play in a much more emotional way. the aftermath of this play is so dark and yet one that we never get to experience. tom is so hurt and isolated because of his fathers departure from the family...abandonment...and yet that is what he does to his own sister and mother at the end of the play. he leaves them sitting in the dark after not paying the light bill so he can run away and join the mercahnt marines...brutal...the underlying latent tendencies of tom are are also very resonant and what he an his mother both know or suspect about him is so secretly woven into the fabric of the play. it's a play i have always wanted to work on and i am so thrilled to have the chance to do it. the cast is amazing and the design is beautiful so i am really lookig forward to continuing to work on it and seeeing it come to life. hope people can join me on opening night october 17th. the play runs through nov 16th. make your ressies now. it is selling fast! (407) 447-1700
class is going well. the students continue to direct each other in charles mee monologues and soon they will begin to work on contemporary american plays. looking so forward to the end of the semester when they direct shakespeare outdoors on campus and we get out of the trailer and into the cool november weather.
go see TWO MEN TRAPPED IN WOMEN'S BODIES at the PARLIAMENT HOUSE! wanzies ten year old star vehicle for himself and doug is hi-larious and kenny howard has breathed some new life into this decade old drag warhorse! it's wanzies o-town answer to GREATER TUNA and truly a blast! hide your ailrine bottles! security can be tough in diners and drag bars!
went to the reading series for the new GLBT festival last sunday at mad cow and was blown away! my former student josh levine, who now works for new dramatists, has a degree in playwriting and shares my nyc agent...had written a piece and flown in especially for the occasion. his play TOYS-R-US was alot of fun and a harrowing short set on the site of an AIDS quilt exibition called SONGS MY BROTHER SANG blew me away! congrats to john didonna and the whole gang that put this together and thanks and kudos to the entire GLBT board! i really hope this fest has a future!
so many people are so thankful for ron legler and florida theatrical association pledging lost BROADWAY CARES monies this week! what an amazing gesture.
UGLY BETTY premieres tonight so i am looking forward to seeing the fruits of my friend josh shull's labors as the new nyc location manager. he is so proud of his new posh post and bff judith light! TRUE BLOOD on sundays followed by MAD MEN is my fave night on tv so far this season and i will very be sad to see don draper and big red go soon. can't wait for DAMAGES and DEXTER my two fave shows! i wanna see jimmy smitts TRY to steal scenes from cs lee....
i can't believe clay aiken is gay!!!!! who knew???
if palin was my mama my name would be QUARTER GRANITE PALIN...what's your palin name?
http://politsk.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah_13.html
and if obama has to walk into some DC troll bar and pull mccain off of some twinky G addicted go-go boy and drag his ass down to the television station that mo-fo better debate friday nite! forget the debate...let's just let em box!
today i am hopeful sleepless ghostlike changed and exhausted a cloud has dissipated the arch of this particular bow of rain has power and heights unknown godlike for now only a picture tomorrow an ending... gold
current mood....
feeling.....
ready for glass menagerie to begin on tuesday
this dream i have been living in is dark...i need some light...a fire escape...some rain...more rain...and the end of my spiritual cleansing
human being,
assistant professor at the university of central florida and associate director of new play development and PLAYFEST and resident artist at orlando shakespeare theater
