Tag: New York

Life upon the Wicked Stage–or not

In a NYT article about the lack of strong leading women roles on Broadway this year, producer Arielle Tepper Madover said she worried that the dearth of great female-centered work remains partly due to family responsibilities for women, who are reluctant to sacrifice nights and weekends to rehearsals or leave their children behind to produce or direct shows out of town or on the theater touring circuit.  She was referring to the kinds of directors, women, who are attracted to plays with strong female roles and have the means to shepherd the play through developmental process and the producers who get behind the show and gather the millions of dollars required for a Broadway production.

“Going to the theater every night, standing in the back to watch how your show is coming together, and staying late to give feedback — let alone going to Chicago for a pre-Broadway try-out — is not something a lot of us can do,” said Ms. Madover, who has three young children.

I can relate.  My Kid turned one shortly after we moved to New York.  I didn’t audition for anything because when I did the math the equation I came up with was that paying a babysitter market rate to stay with my kid for the hours it took to ride the train into Manhattan, wait to be seen and ride the train home was a cash up front and do it again for a callback meant that for each audition I needed to be prepared to pay about one hundred dollars.  I just couldn’t justify it even though I had finally made it to New York.  It was frustrating, but I made peace with it.  Our  life as a family has been more fulfilling spending evenings and weekends together.  The Husband and I are probably still married because I didn’t met him each evening, when he came home from the office, by standing at the door with my coat already on, ready to hand over the baby and dash off to rehearsal or performance only to return after they had both gone to sleep.

I was in one play when My Kid was three years old.  It was the result of a developmental process of more than a year, that produced a fascinating original piece of theatre called SIX.  The diverse cast of six women, three Black and three white, ranging from new mother to retired grandmother.  The production was spearheaded by the mother of a toddler who had been a professional director.  We rehearsed once a week late evening after the toddlers were in bed and performed in a church.  Few saw it.  It was never remounted.

I didn’t look for another opportunity to perform on stage until My Kid was in kindergarten.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/theater/theaterspecial/16women.html

Prep for Blog

So while My Kid is otherwise engaged with her piano teacher and lesson, I am looking at the blogs of the other moms who will be attending the brand/blogger event tomorrow and I am intimidated.  That’s nothing new.  I’m easily intimidated like by people from New York–and I live in New York–so it’s just something I live with.  Anyway, a lot of these moms have blogs that are a lot cooler than mine and have a lot more links than mine.  In the lead up to this event they are writing about how they have been to many of these events before.  This will be my first one!

So, now I am having some angst about having a blog at all.

I didn’t set it up to review products in order to get free swag, but now that that is a possibility I don’t object.  I love me some free stuff.

However, that’s not why I started this blog.  I started it as a writing practice.  It’s working.  If I haven’t posted in more than a week I know that something is out of balance in my life and I probably ought to say something.  Sometimes I just write whatever.  But, more often than not, I become cautious and don’t want to post something until I’m sure I’ve not said anything snarky (which for some is the whole point of having a blog) because I come from the Midwest where “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”!  That philosophy is the complete opposite of a lot of the really fun to read blogs that I can think of off hand.

So, anyway…

With that in mind,  I will commence anxiety about what to wear so I won’t look too old and frumpy.  How should I do my hair?  If I wear heals and perfume can will avoid arriving all sweaty and smelly instead of  “Red Carpet Casual”  ready to the event in Tribeca that I am going to straight from a clown jam at a studio in Midtown.  I’ll also need a red-nose clown ensemble that doesn’t take up very much room in the bag I be carrying around for the rest of the day.

Oh well, time to move on with the day, the piano lesson is over.

Listening to Carol Burnett on WNYC talking about her New York years

Carol Burnett was on the Leonard Lopate show today.  She talked about coming to New York and living at The Rehearsal Club, the real life role model for the boarding house in the movie “Stage Door”.  Of course it no longer existed by the time I was an aspiring actress.  I didn’t come to New York in the 1980’s even though it was a dream of mine, like Carol Burnett, to be on Broadway.  I was discouraged from the prospect as the reality seemed to be more “Taxi Driver” than “42nd Street” and I became pretty convinced I would be raped in a stairwell if I couldn’t afford to live in a good neighborhood.   So I stayed in Montana.  My friend came.  She did fine.  Maybe I shouldn’t have been such a chicken.  (But that worst nightmare did happen to Kelly McGillis in while she was an acting student at Julliard.)

Unwinding the Jet Lag and Almost Volunteering

My jaw is sore and I don’t know why.  Perhaps I am tense.  We flew the red-eye between Seattle and New York between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

There was an e-mail from AYSO saying there were more kids than coaches and unless some parents stepped up and volunteered and registered for coach or referee training our kids wouldn’t get to play soccer this spring.  I had talked myself into the idea that learning the rules of soccer and becoming a referee would be good for me.  Who doesn’t want to have official certification.  I even considered law school at one point just for the real job certification.  That reminds me, my CPR and Water Safety certifications have expired…

I’ve never played soccer, so I don’t know the rules at all and although I already go to most of my daughters games because I like to visit with the other parents.  Being a referee would mean that I would have to go to all of the games and I wouldn’t get to chat with the other moms.

If I were a referee I would have to make calls about the ball in play and other parents would inevitably yell at me that I was wrong.  The very thought makes my stomach turn, and yet, I was willing to do it.  Thank goodness The Husband got a e-mail from the coach so we know My Kid is on a team.  Hooray!  Now I don’t have to volunteer!

…Now, I feel guilty because I’m a slacker!

Wednesday Matinee

So I took myself to see a matinee on Broadway, something I think I can do just any old time because I live in New York, but of course I can’t because I do my day to day living in New York.

So, since this was likely to be my last free Wednesday afternoon, because now that the Citywide FIRST Lego League Championship is over, that particular after school program will go down to once a week and that once a week is most likely to be Thursday.  This was my daughters 3rd year on her elementary school’s FLL team.  Every year I tell myself; after tourist season I will take myself on up to Times Square of a Wednesday afternoon and get myself a half-price ticket to a Broadway show.  Every year I put it off week after week until I realize that this may be my very last Wednesday chance and then I do it, just the once.  Even at half price the tickets are expensive and even if it’s just one afternoon there are lots of other things I could or should do with my Wednesday afternoons.

Last year, on my last “free” Wednesday afternoon, after meeting my husband for lunch in mid-town I took myself the two blocks to Times Square and got a ticket to the play Angela Lansbury was in at a theatre so close it could be seen from TKTS booth which was an important consideration, since it was already 1:55 pm.  This year I did essentially the same thing, again choosing the show with Angela Lansbury in it;  A Little Night Music also starring Catherine Zeta-Jones.  Leigh Ann Larkin (who played “Dainty June” in Gypsy) was also in it.  She go to sing “The Miller’s Son”.  Her “Petra” was a continuation of the same story of the young woman she played in Gypsy, who must acquiesce like a child in her day to day work, as a Vaudeville  performer or as a ladies maid, when she is in reality a woman of passion and substance.  That could be an interesting piece…

Several of the singers had colds.  So does everyone else in New York City.  I still enjoyed their performances.

But, what I really left the theatre with was Stephen Sondheim’s music and the story.  I don’t know how much of what I saw and continue to think about was Sondheim and how much was the original inspiration for the musical, Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night.  (I’ll put it into my Netflix queue and find out.)

So…

Cirque du Soleil’s Banana Shpeel has again delayed its first performance at New York’s Beacon Theatre. The new vaudeville show, which had already postponed its start date from February 25 to March 17, will now begin performances on April 29.  In the bar after the New York Downtown Clown Revue on Monday night, I was talking to another clown who was saying there had been a big audition for the show recently.  The new opening night is six weeks away, that’s a whole rehearsal process.  I wonder if they are starting over from scratch.  I wonder if (as opposed to Bergman and Sondheim) they put the cart before the horse and tried to put up a show before they had a story.

Awaiting the arrival of a big expensive clown show

We were talking about  Broadway shows we’d like to see.  I think My Kid should see The Miracle Worker or Billy Elliot. In the family evening vs couples date equation where we may as well bring My Kid since a babysitter costs more than a ticket, I could stand to see the old classics; South Pacific or West Side Story.

However,

I was talking with another clown recently and we were thinking that when Banana Shpeel opens this month we might do well to try to see it early in the run because it didn’t get good reviews in Chicago.  (But, maybe, hopefully, changes will have been made and it will be a great show!)

So anyway,

I looked up online a review of the Chicago production and found one by Chris Jones who wrote, of the Chicago production, on December 3, 2009

“There is a great deal to fix before this show opens in New York early next year. But here’s a modest proposal: Hire a female clown. Or two.”

Just sayin’…


No Snow Day Yes

Thursday evening

NEW YORK, NY February 25, 2010 —Because of the snowstorm, the city has decided to postpone parent teacher conferences for junior high and intermediate schools, but Mayor Bloomberg says otherwise, it’s business as usual in the classroom.

“Our main objective is to keep our kids in school,” Bloomberg says. “That’s why we have an education system. And right now we expect that snowfall tomorrow will be manageable enough that we can keep all schools open.”

The mayor says the city will let parents know if they decide to close schools as soon as possible, but no decision has been made.

The mayor says the sanitation department also has 365 salt spreaders that can disperse 170,000 tons of salt and 1,600 snow plows can begin clearing city streets once 2 inches of snow accumulate on the ground.

But, because temperatures are in the mid-30s, the mayor says much of the snow that has fallen is melting on city streets.

Friday Morning

NEW YORK (AP) – Mayor Michael Bloomberg says safety was the reason for the rare decision to close New York City’s public schools.

In Albany, the sun was shining Friday and schools were open. But hundreds of schools – from Rochester to the lower Hudson Valley and Long Island – were closed. It was the week’s second snow day for many upstate districts.

New York City officials originally had hoped that the snowfall would be manageable. But Bloomberg says his top advisers spoke on Thursday night and decided keeping schools open “may not be safe.”

There are 1.1 million pupils in the nation’s largest school system. During a Feb. 10 storm, they enjoyed their third snow day in only six years.

Said Schools Chancellor Joel Klein: “Everybody better do their homework this weekend.”

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