Shifting Graveyards
Phyeuw, what a week.
I went to church with Alxs, Myql and John; it was the particular Sunday when the priest walks around dipping reeds in water and using them to lightly sprinkle the parishioners. The altar guy was challenged to keep a straight face as the priest rained furious baptism down on everyone with gleeful baseball swings, all to the peaceful sound of I Love You and You Are Mine. It was enthusiastic Spanish priest again. We learned, in the context of a well-designed sermon of course, that he has a large scar all the way across his stomach like a smile, which he covered with a tattoo when he was twenty-one and is now distended into an even more horrible Frankenstein grin. All that and he gives a really good blessing when you cover your mouth during communion.
Afterward Myql gave me a disc of the German a capella we had discussed on the roof of Percival-Stern-- our plans were brief, but good no less-- when suddenly I got a call from Tessa, the stage manager of Wasp, one of the four one-act plays performing this week. I knew before I answered what it would be about-- she'd called me a week and a half before to have me stand in for and possibly replace one of their actors who was always late for rehearsal and had that day missed completely. The next day, however, he showed up with a bandage over his eye from the fiberglass he'd gotten in it while working on a car. They forgave him and pressed on. Sunday, however, was second dress and he was missing again, for a good reason but nonetheless the last straw-- hence the call from Tessa. I came in, watched and memorized the part that night and the next day, which was opening night. Fortunately the lines were easy to learn and the bulk of the role was physical reactions, which I can figure out a lot faster.
At the same time, rehearsals for the staged reading of The Graveyard Shift were going on. It was moving slowly and Jim (the professor in charge) called several of the writers into his office one day and told us he was cutting the piece in half-- we'd perform five of the nine pieces this week and the rest later on. Mine was one of the ones delayed; just as well, since we only had one hour of rehearsal per night, everyone was close to burning out and Jim's in kind of a rough spot with the semi-assistant director making threats and one of his friends just recently dead.
So basically this ended up being a very performative week with very little sleep between finishing Graveyard Shift at 12:30 or later every night and Suzuki at nine every morning. Good exercise in relaxation. It culminated yesterday with my singing class performing in the morning (for an audience of two! Alexis and Helen), the one-acts in the evening and Graveyard Shift at midnight.
Singing has been a great class, with people I may or may not see much in the future-- Su-Jit the crazy wandering-attention Asian chest-voice girl, Danny the Latino rocker who only has an accent in moments of particular passion and sounds like the guy from Dead Can Dance, Sarah the quiet loud one, my-God-you're-amazing-why-are-you-in-a-beginning-singing-class Rachel . . . and me. Many songs to remember. And Dr. Raybon, who is delightfully eccentric, at least in class. As the five of us finished evaluations, Danny said we should have a moment of silence before leaving-- and there, of course, where silence means voiceless music, he played the piano for a few last seconds.
Wasp is a play by Steve Martin about a stereotypical 1950s sitcom family with an absurdist Ionesco edge. I played the button-up-sweater-wearing son who got to summon a spaceman who gave me The Vision. The script didn't impress me at first, but that was because I saw two low-energy performances due to the absence of one actor. It grew on me as we performed it for an audience and started delivering things right, particularly last night, which was by far the best. Good thing, since the one-acts all together were over three hours long. The other actors, all people I'm glad to have gotten the chance to work with, got together and gave me a big box of apples, oranges, kiwi, a papaya, cookies, Whole Foods sunflower seed bread, mixed fruit juice and nuts and trail mix and stuff. Great people, good taste. I was kind of frustrated at first about doing this, particularly when I was told to stay in the costume shop for hours before the opening show in case the actor I was replacing should try to harm me, but it was a great experience and a good step out of the Medea vibe. I met lots of people from the other three shows, too, among them Andrew Eichner, bringing the department up to four Andrews. Belcher-Eichner-Farrier-Zabko. Go team BEFZ. All four of us were in the one-acts and three of us (EFZ) danced together to Who Wrote the Book of Love after Wasp finished each night.
As a disclaimer, the guy I replaced really isn't that bad, he's just in a bad time. I'm hoping he doesn't resent me too much for this.
Wasp was the first play in act two; the second, God, by Woody Allen, ended in chaos and a big spontaneous musical number and at last our curtain call. Thence I and many of the other actors tranformed quickly into goths.
BEFORE
Not pictured: the robot belonging to the spaceman I summon, who was played by Andrew Zabko, the guy behind me. Yes, I wore very tight pants and yes, I cut my hair, though not for the show.
AFTER
Actually, the only person in both of these is me, but trust me, Ally, Helen and Jessica (the three girls besides Alexis) underwent quite a transformation, as did Amy, the Marilyn Monroe-ish figure from the first picture, and Tessa, the kneeling one.
Alxs and Myql came to see Graveyard Shift at midnight. It was crowdedissimo. This project has been quite an ordeal-- I took Jim's criticism of my first draft way more personally than I should have and he was sometimes a lot more personal than he should have been, but like I said, it's been a rough semester for him. Things have turned out well. I played three roles-- Louden, the undead supervisor of the Venus Im Pelz pleasure club, Decran, a young rich lush going after the prostitute Beatrix Belmort, and Barnabus, an art dealer selling paintings that are slightly animate due to the model's blood being mixed with the paint.
When the reading finished around one, most of the cast went to Envie coffee shop for a wine and cheese and coffee postmortem; I had to study, so I bade good night to Myql, then to Alxs and headed back with my box o' goods to study Japanese. And now that's done with. Five days until I come home and who knows what after that . . . maybe more time in New Orleans. I worried about how I'd feed myself without a meal plan or money, but then all my unused loans and scholarships from last semester came in, so I'll be getting back some four thousand dollars from Tulane . . . so that's neat.
On top of all that, it's been cool, cloudy, windy, occasionally rainy. So it's been a very good week, against all forecasts. Many chances to Be Present.
Being present is great and really useful, but I also value the memory of being a dreamer and sometimes distant as a kid. I suppose it depends on whether one is in a place to learn something or not.
Mandy gets married on the tenth! Sound the gay music of the marriage song!
I went to church with Alxs, Myql and John; it was the particular Sunday when the priest walks around dipping reeds in water and using them to lightly sprinkle the parishioners. The altar guy was challenged to keep a straight face as the priest rained furious baptism down on everyone with gleeful baseball swings, all to the peaceful sound of I Love You and You Are Mine. It was enthusiastic Spanish priest again. We learned, in the context of a well-designed sermon of course, that he has a large scar all the way across his stomach like a smile, which he covered with a tattoo when he was twenty-one and is now distended into an even more horrible Frankenstein grin. All that and he gives a really good blessing when you cover your mouth during communion.
Afterward Myql gave me a disc of the German a capella we had discussed on the roof of Percival-Stern-- our plans were brief, but good no less-- when suddenly I got a call from Tessa, the stage manager of Wasp, one of the four one-act plays performing this week. I knew before I answered what it would be about-- she'd called me a week and a half before to have me stand in for and possibly replace one of their actors who was always late for rehearsal and had that day missed completely. The next day, however, he showed up with a bandage over his eye from the fiberglass he'd gotten in it while working on a car. They forgave him and pressed on. Sunday, however, was second dress and he was missing again, for a good reason but nonetheless the last straw-- hence the call from Tessa. I came in, watched and memorized the part that night and the next day, which was opening night. Fortunately the lines were easy to learn and the bulk of the role was physical reactions, which I can figure out a lot faster.
At the same time, rehearsals for the staged reading of The Graveyard Shift were going on. It was moving slowly and Jim (the professor in charge) called several of the writers into his office one day and told us he was cutting the piece in half-- we'd perform five of the nine pieces this week and the rest later on. Mine was one of the ones delayed; just as well, since we only had one hour of rehearsal per night, everyone was close to burning out and Jim's in kind of a rough spot with the semi-assistant director making threats and one of his friends just recently dead.
So basically this ended up being a very performative week with very little sleep between finishing Graveyard Shift at 12:30 or later every night and Suzuki at nine every morning. Good exercise in relaxation. It culminated yesterday with my singing class performing in the morning (for an audience of two! Alexis and Helen), the one-acts in the evening and Graveyard Shift at midnight.
Singing has been a great class, with people I may or may not see much in the future-- Su-Jit the crazy wandering-attention Asian chest-voice girl, Danny the Latino rocker who only has an accent in moments of particular passion and sounds like the guy from Dead Can Dance, Sarah the quiet loud one, my-God-you're-amazing-why-are-you-in-a-beginning-singing-class Rachel . . . and me. Many songs to remember. And Dr. Raybon, who is delightfully eccentric, at least in class. As the five of us finished evaluations, Danny said we should have a moment of silence before leaving-- and there, of course, where silence means voiceless music, he played the piano for a few last seconds.
Wasp is a play by Steve Martin about a stereotypical 1950s sitcom family with an absurdist Ionesco edge. I played the button-up-sweater-wearing son who got to summon a spaceman who gave me The Vision. The script didn't impress me at first, but that was because I saw two low-energy performances due to the absence of one actor. It grew on me as we performed it for an audience and started delivering things right, particularly last night, which was by far the best. Good thing, since the one-acts all together were over three hours long. The other actors, all people I'm glad to have gotten the chance to work with, got together and gave me a big box of apples, oranges, kiwi, a papaya, cookies, Whole Foods sunflower seed bread, mixed fruit juice and nuts and trail mix and stuff. Great people, good taste. I was kind of frustrated at first about doing this, particularly when I was told to stay in the costume shop for hours before the opening show in case the actor I was replacing should try to harm me, but it was a great experience and a good step out of the Medea vibe. I met lots of people from the other three shows, too, among them Andrew Eichner, bringing the department up to four Andrews. Belcher-Eichner-Farrier-Zabko. Go team BEFZ. All four of us were in the one-acts and three of us (EFZ) danced together to Who Wrote the Book of Love after Wasp finished each night.
As a disclaimer, the guy I replaced really isn't that bad, he's just in a bad time. I'm hoping he doesn't resent me too much for this.
Wasp was the first play in act two; the second, God, by Woody Allen, ended in chaos and a big spontaneous musical number and at last our curtain call. Thence I and many of the other actors tranformed quickly into goths.
BEFORE
Not pictured: the robot belonging to the spaceman I summon, who was played by Andrew Zabko, the guy behind me. Yes, I wore very tight pants and yes, I cut my hair, though not for the show.
AFTER
Actually, the only person in both of these is me, but trust me, Ally, Helen and Jessica (the three girls besides Alexis) underwent quite a transformation, as did Amy, the Marilyn Monroe-ish figure from the first picture, and Tessa, the kneeling one.
Alxs and Myql came to see Graveyard Shift at midnight. It was crowdedissimo. This project has been quite an ordeal-- I took Jim's criticism of my first draft way more personally than I should have and he was sometimes a lot more personal than he should have been, but like I said, it's been a rough semester for him. Things have turned out well. I played three roles-- Louden, the undead supervisor of the Venus Im Pelz pleasure club, Decran, a young rich lush going after the prostitute Beatrix Belmort, and Barnabus, an art dealer selling paintings that are slightly animate due to the model's blood being mixed with the paint.
When the reading finished around one, most of the cast went to Envie coffee shop for a wine and cheese and coffee postmortem; I had to study, so I bade good night to Myql, then to Alxs and headed back with my box o' goods to study Japanese. And now that's done with. Five days until I come home and who knows what after that . . . maybe more time in New Orleans. I worried about how I'd feed myself without a meal plan or money, but then all my unused loans and scholarships from last semester came in, so I'll be getting back some four thousand dollars from Tulane . . . so that's neat.
On top of all that, it's been cool, cloudy, windy, occasionally rainy. So it's been a very good week, against all forecasts. Many chances to Be Present.
Being present is great and really useful, but I also value the memory of being a dreamer and sometimes distant as a kid. I suppose it depends on whether one is in a place to learn something or not.
Mandy gets married on the tenth! Sound the gay music of the marriage song!