The final weekend

It's Thursday morning. This evening is the first performance of our final weekend at Byrdcliffe. There isn't a person among us (us being Bette, Wallace and I) that wouldn't like more life for this production, but for now we will kill it four more times and then move on.

It may be redundant to express what a thrill ride this has been. Two weeks in Woodstock rehearsing leading up to the opening . . . the feedback we got referring our production to the top of the heap (and comparing Bette's performance to Billie Whitelaw!) . . . then the night the lights went out and we persevered anyway . . . amazing stuff.

As Winnie would say: 'And now?'

So here we go. There will be much to cherish forever with this production. Much that will linger on. A new frame of reference for what theater can be and how it can communicate. It's what we all strive for. As another Beckett heroine says: 'More!'

Opening night of Happy Days

We have one performance under our belts now. It went very well indeed. I thought Willie would get more in the way of laughs, and there were some, but a) I didn't push for them and b)the audience was into it and very moved by the entire thing. So it accomplished what we hoped to. I had one small line glitch, but no one noticed it I think . . . I'll have to on my toes, not enough lines to screw one up, but having said that the glitch involved adding to, not taking away.

There is so much love and commitment in the air, it's just an amazing event for all concerned . . . and when we can pass that along to the audience it's magic.

Building the mound

Well I thought that building the mound for Happy Days was gonna be a long drawn out process . . . but the wizard Bob McBroom is amazing. He had the entire thing figured out so he could just put the pieces together when he got to the theater. It was like building an erector set. From getting to the theater to leaving with a fully assembled mound was about two hours (and that involved some ooh and ahh time as well). So today we will start rehearing on the set and after rehearsal McB will come in with Chester, his helper and start to shape it and paint it . . . this is going to really be something else!

The home stretch for Happy Days!

We had our last rehearsal at Wallace's studio today and on Monday we move into the theater! Pretty f'n exciting! We've been in Woodstock for the last week rehearsing every day and it has paid off in spades. This is going to be a pretty amazing event and I can't wait to get it up and running. Which of course is bitter sweet because we have been working on this for over a year now, and seriously rehearsing since October, so it has been a most intense ride . . . but I wouldn't trade it for anything. This has been a profound experience and, while it will be an intense next few days, this production should kinda blow people's minds.

This is the third time I've worked with Wallace in Woodstock and I'd say the third time is the charm, but they have ALL been charmed experiences. This collaboration is something that you can't just create, it happens through a series of events that lead one to another and then . . . magic happens . . . I could write a book . . . maybe some day I will!!!