Blast off!

This is the week of the performances and I'm pretty pumped. Lora Lee (co-artistic director of Blue Horse Rep) wrote to tell me their Irish music thing sold out this weekend . . . I hope that's a good omen. I've been working Old Hickory (ran it for Bette yesterday, which was first time on its feet with some semblance of blocking, she had some great comments and it went pretty well) have a couple of rehearsals this week so the momentum builds and then two performances and . . . that's it.

I guess there are two ways to look at it: disappointment over having only two performances; or joy of having two performances. I opt for the latter. I'm ready to rock and it'll be a gas, especially if there is a large receptive audience . . . that's when it's fun to do this stuff. When you have the audience eating out of the palm of your hand and you take them on a journey. It's an awesome feeling!

The first time I felt it was doing The Zoo Story way back when. I may have mentioned that in a previous posting, but to have packed houses laughing and with you . . . and then the turn of the screw when the play gets dangerous . . . you can feel it, it's electric. Good plays have that power, and if you nail it performance wise, wow! For the audience it's magic; for the actor . . . it's quite a heady brew.

I saw Kathy Bates work that magic in a solo show disguised as a two hander, The Rain of Terror. Saw it in Louisville in the mid-eighties. I thought so highly of it that I directed it with my good friends Micki Maley and Rick Brown. It was well received everywhere we did it, and I never asked Micki (that I can recall) if she felt that kind of audience response, where they were with you all the way . . . One thing I will never forget though is taking it to a competition and getting feedback from the academics who were judging. This is a play about an obese woman who sits there and tells a story, and it casts quite a spell. Well this putz says, 'I think you ought to find some place where she could get up and move around'. Ah, academia!

With Old Hickory I've felt it during almost every performance, though less so when the audience is eleven or twelve people. I didn't feel the performance suffer, but it sure takes some getting used to if you're accustomed to enthusiastic audience response and then get an audience that is listening . . . anyway, every audience is different and bless their hearts for being there in the first place . . .

But I digress. I have been adding more to the new piece; and I'm still having fun with it, so that's a good sign. We'll see how it comes out, but I'm beginning to get a sense of where it's going and it's surprising me all the time, which is also a very good sign.

It's been a challenging last few days. My mother's health is deteriorating, but she is hanging in there; I've talked to her almost every day just to check in . . . she seems to be getting better, but at my parents' age, that is a tad relative . . .