The theater

Saw the theater I'm going to be performing in last night. Nice space. Big. But nice. It's way bigger than we need, but ain't that a nice problem to have. I've been to a lot of festival type things where the audience is crammed in and the playing space is barely as big a a decent sized picnic table . . . but this is huge by comparison with lots of lighting equipment . . . very professional. And exciting! The theater is a children's theater company so we have to deal with the set as it is, which means the floor is alternating stripes of different shades of green, and there is an entrance door that we can either use or ignore but other than that it's just fine. Oh, the table available to us is pretty tiny, maybe two feet by two feet, but they didn't throw anything at us we can't handle.

And everyone was so damn nice!

In my previous posting I mentioned that I had put together an insert for the program to show Wallace; well I showed him last night. He said he might like to include Woodstock Fringe's logo and put something in about the play being done at the festival this year! That was great to hear. I told him that I had thought of that but just put in what I did figuring if I totally screwed up he might not want it in the festival. His response? 'Well we can always cancel'. I love his wit . . . he is a quick one.

They showed us the programs for the festival. They have one program for all the festivals (there are four very nearly simultaneous) and there is a blurb about each show. We put our inserts with specific info about us in their shell. It is a very professional piece, and features Laurette's photo and a bit about me and the blurb I gave them for the show.

I also discovered the music for the play. Well Bette did actually. She put on a disc of old blues guys who have been covered by Ry Cooder (if you don't know who he is look it up). I went to walk the dog and when I got back she called my attention to a track called 'Dark Was the Night' by Blind Willie Johnson. Wow. The blues at its best is always deep, but this song is existential. It is some killer guitar playing and then he starts this moan that sounds like the earth has opened and spit this guy out, or maybe he's playing on his porch on a sunny day and then clouds roll in and this fellow with a sythe comes walking up to him. As the guy walks toward him he keeps playing . . . but his music changes. At any rate, I digress. The song is beautiful and stark and really sets the scene. And it sounds Appalachian as well. I hope Wallace agrees.

But the most amazing thing, is: one of the characters in OH is called Catfish. The label is CD is on is: Catfish Records. AHHHHHHH.

I took the train in yesterday to give myself a break (and because I was tired, I ran a half marathon yesterday, two hours and six minutes since you asked) and read the script, which I hadn't done for a while. There were very few places that I saw where I may have been paraphrasing a bit, so I marked them with a highlighter so I can focus on them later.

So momentum is rolling. We're ten days away from production. And I feel real good about things. We're going to rehearse three times this week, then Mon/Tues next week and Wed. is tech. This train is rolling and it ain't about to slow down.