Eleven o’clock at night and my 9-year-old is just now starting to do her homework.
We just got back from seeing our home schooled neighbor in the NYCHEA (New York City Home Educators Alliance) production of the musical Annie. Daddy Warbucks was played by an adult, the father of the girl playing “Annie” as it happens. He was the oldest person on stage. The next oldest cast member was 16, with the majority of actors in the 9-13 age range. “Miss Hannigan” was 13 and “President Roosevelt” was 12. I spent part of the evening watching the musical director as he conducted the orchestra of one trumpet and one drummer while banging out the tempo on the grand piano and occasionally mouthing the words. Boy he really must love musical theatre! Productions like this one drive home which elements are essential for a good book musical.
I can’t believe I’ve never seen a stage production of Annie before. I wanted so badly to play “Annie” when I was a kid.
When Andrea McArdle was on the Tonight Show I stayed up past my bedtime to watch her come out and sing “Tomorrow” and then give a gift of some kind of special Philadelphia sausage to guest host David Brenner.
“Tomorrow” was my very first audition song. I belted my heart out at my very first audition for the very first community musical produced by the Missoula Children’s Theatre. (J.K. Simmons was in it.) Unfortunately for me, they were looking for a boy soprano, the musical was Oliver!
Last night, Jef organized a workshop with Chris Lynam, a clown who is in New York for the Broadway run of Slava’s Snowshow. It’s always good to meet new clowns. After the workshop, there were three conversations at once around the table at the diner. Jef and Chris were talking about working with Slava and working on their own work. I was talking to the only other woman from the workshop about writing and the other guys were talking about guys being goofy.
Walking to the train at the end of the evening, Chris mentioned another clown, Thomas Kubenick a Czech clown who has his own show that he tours around the world. It’s good. I’ve seen it. I met Thomas for the first time at Movement Theatre International in Philadelphia in 1990. He was at that time assisting Boleck Polivka who taught a workshop. I met him again when he showed up at the workshop I was taking with Ctibor Turba at his studio in Nectiny, Czechoslovakia (right before it turned into Czech Land–that’s what the locals called the Czech Republic–and Slovakia) I’ve been around a while, but it’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve gotten a handle on what may be my particular style…
I’m pretty much the opposite of Amy G. Chris took a call from her about a gig at a club. Organizing and coordinating are so not my thing that the passing mention of a woman I know putting together an evening of acts apparently caused me to have a nightmare. I had a dream, last night, about running a theatre space–like Annex where Allison Narver, Andrea Allen and Gillian Jorgenson have all been artistic director or the Brick where Audrey Crabtree is the face of the organizers of the New York Clown Theatre Festival. In this dream which was more like a nightmare, brought on perhaps by conversation about successful theatrical clowns and the women behind them, (I was reminded of the organized women behind the careers of monologists, Spalding Grey and Mike Daisey and cartoonist Gary Larson, not to mention the countless women who work as personal assistants, executive secretaries and stage moms (The Husband, My Kid, My Sister and I all saw Gypsy this week.) These passing bits of conversation caused me to have a nightmare about being in charge of an art space like Celebration Barn, currently run by the Amanda Huotari. In my dream there 4 toilets on the second floor that were all overflowing and unusable. The Marley dance floor in the rehearsal hall had been scrubbed with Comet by someone’s helpful visiting unsupervised mother and was now ruined… It was a nightmare.
Now, disorganized person that I am, I’ve got to hurry and help My Kid, (who is alternately yanking on my body an falling on the floor to prove the point of gross parental neglect) get dressed in a manner appropriate for both ice skating with her aunt at Rockefeller Center and hooking up at the Museum of Natural History with old Seattle Annex friends and their offspring, who are visting from Chicago.
I should be doing a million things (like cleaning–yuck and writing grant proposals–yuck), but instead I am hiding from the heat in our air-conditioned bedroom next to our sleeping daughter googling randomly. It started with an on-line search for Brownie Girl Scout Try-It badges (because I have to get the requests into her leader today.) I thought I could find badges she could get for the work she did in preparation for her First Communion or as a member of her school’s FirstLEGO Robotics team (there must be a badge, we saw Girl Scout First LEGO League teams at the Javits Center in April)
Then I googled Cirque du Solelil’s KOOZA because I was still thinking about this weekend. I had hoped to see the production which was playing in Philadelphia yesterday when we were there and there were matinee tickets available. I knew this because had the concierge check for me. (KOOZA was concieved and directed by David Shiner whose workshop I was taking last fall when the seeds for the piece I did last week were planted) But, My Kid didn’t want to go see the Cirque du Soleil (Her concept of the show was probably damaged by the Simpson’s unflattering “Cirque du Puree”). She was there to swim in the hotel pool and we had already dragged her to one theatrical experience not of her choosing. The Husband wasn’t backing me up, and I wasn’t selling it well. We live on the East Coast, KOOZA will be in the region for months, it was not our only chance to see the production. Other than seeing Bill Irwin’s show we were just there for a relaxing weekend get away. My Kid has been sick, The Husband was tired and the weather was HOT. So even though we could see the trademark tent from the hotel–nobody but me thought it was a great idea to go there. Sigh.
David Shiner worked with Bill Irwin in “Fool Moon” which The Husband and I saw together in Seattle. I googled Bill Irwin because he’s, well, he’s Bill Irwin and I saw his show this weekend. I enjoyed the fact that his home page hasn’t been updated recently enough to include the current production even though it’s nearing the end of its run. Bill Irwin led to the name Bruce Hurlbut, who played the piano for “Scapin” on Broadway and also for the melodrama “The Drunkard” at the University of Montana when I, as a short thin high school student, played the child in the show. His name led to the website of a new theatre in Washington full of our old Annex friends including Andrea Allen and Allison Narver and Jack Bentz who we had hoped could marry us but who wasn’t quite finished with seminary when we looked into it at the time. I think he hooked us up with the priest from Seattle U who did marry us.
As The Husband and My Child are playing miniature air hockey (it’s really cute 6-inch table we got at the gift shop of the Please Touch Museum) on the train from Trenton, as we make our way back to Brooklyn from Philadelphia, it seems as good a time as any to write a blog entry.
Halfway through Bill Irwin’s show last night, my heart started racing as my mind wandered from his work, “The Happiness Lectures” to my work and what if anything I would do next. Thank God I can’t compare myself to him since in addition to being a MacArthur and Tony award winner he is also tall and male, two things that never come into play when I create my own work.
When I was at Clown College (Class of ’89, Bill Irwin who I’ve shaken hands with but don’t know, was Class of ’74) there came a point, when we were watching lots of black and white silent movies and learning the classic slap and fall gags. Almost everyone went to their designer and said they wanted big black shoes and baggy pants. The women in the class were told point blank that they couldn’t have big black shoes and baggy pants “…because Mr. Feld only hires girl clowns who look like girls.” We were told the number of women clowns who were hired depended on the number of show girls who were hired. Women clowns lived on the showgirl car. More showgirls meant fewer slots for women clowns and so those who were hired had better look like girls. Otherwise he may as well hire a guy and avoid the complications.
I don’t know why I thought of that, except that Bill Irwin does so much with his baggy pants and his big black shoes.