Farewell Boleros

Yesterday I took Rachel to Boleros, the second to last performance of the run. As I write this, our beautiful cast has returned from the theater to begin packing their bags if they haven’t already packed them, and soon our temporary extended family will depart. How much the show grew since opening night: it became tighter, funnier, sexier. More confident. More beautiful. It is amazing to see a great show grow even stronger as the actors refine their performances. Is this a form of evolution? Do their choices on stage go through a kind of survival of the fittest that is dependent on audience reaction? Or are their performances gradually shaped by their own personal journeys towards Truth: oh, that felt more honest tonight; oh, this gesture opened up a whole new way of looking at how I am feeling about this moment; oh, when she yells at me like that a person would really be thinking this, not that. And through this process, these investigators of humanity begin to piece it all together.

We have signed the lease on a new apartment in Berkeley. It is a four-apartment building from the ’20s owned by the grand nephew of the man who originally built it, and it is big and bright and beautiful and ours! We start moving out on Friday, but, of course, the packing has already begun, and that question of “What to bring?” forces one to ask “Who am I?” and “What is important to me now?” It looks as though the futon I bought in college–though still remarkably comfortable–will be replaced by a couch. The furniture Rachel brought from St. Louis to Chicago and Chicago to San Francisco will not be making the shorter trip across the Bay. And I look at my collection of t-shirts and wonder if it is not time to say farewell to that time of my life as well. How long can a man of 27 pull of a shirt with a raygun on it?

We don’t have the luxury (or the burden) of reliving the same scenes over and over again like the actors onstage. Our gradual evolution is more complicated by the lack of such predominant constants. But it is still inspiring to see our actors begin to piece it all together. It gives me hope that one day I might come close as well.

In the meantime, our cats are pleased as punch their three feline roommates have already moved out and they are free to run around without fear of confrontation. And they don’t even know that their new apartment has its own very own stairwell (i.e. cat playground) and window seat i.e. cat beach. Are they in for a treat!

What to do when critics get it wrong.

(For Erica who apparently reads this blog ☺)

I grabbed the wrong book from the library yesterday. Mechanics Library—probably my favorite library (and I have been in Chicago’s Newberry and Minneapolis’s beautiful new downtown branch)—is only four blocks away from A.C.T.’s offices and school, but it still an outing, especially when we are frantically trying to put together our study guide and production program for At Home at the Zoo. For a dramaturg, returning with the wrong library book is kind of like a member of the pit crew putting a square tire on a race car in the middle of a big race. . . only not quite as dangerous.

Worse still, I didn’t have time to remedy my error. The book was a different edition of what was requested by our resident dramaturg, and he assured me the substitution was adequate, but, needless to say, I was miffed at myself all day. And there isn’t really even time for me to be miffed. It’s the last show of the season and that project we pushed back that one day back in October, and then that other one we pushed back half a day in November/December/Jan./Feb.Mar.Apr. . . . they’re all making themselves felt now: “Remember me asshole! You thought I wouldn’t be back to bite you in the ass? You sad sucker, don’t you know: I always come back. . . ”

But it’s hard to be too much of a negative nancy right now because we just opened a beautiful new José Rivera new play, Boleros for the Disenchanted, that we are all so proud of, that the audiences are absolutely adoring, and that the critics . . . well, they got it wrong (My brain begins to turn a Hulk-like shade of green). I not only appreciate what critics do to demand higher standards from theaters, to protect audiences (especially during hard financial times), and to keep the dramatic arts firmly in the consciousness of the public (even those who do not attend). But also, a fairly harsh judge myself, I usually find myself agreeing with the less sympathetic commentaries provided, or, at the very least, understanding the perspectives of someone whose job it is taste-test for the plebeian kings lest they be poisoned.

With this show, however, they got it wrong. And the great thing about being a critic is that there is no legitimate forum for rebuttal. Even directly refuting their reviews on, say, a personal blog is considered taboo. All I can do is show you this and hope you come see the show:

Hulk Smash: my tired brain.

In part because last week we had a Tuesday deadline, and those are awful business: all that pressure and anxiety constricted into the first day and a half, and then you still have to come in Wednesday and start on a new project,

in part because Rachel just finished her second semester of school as is suddenly on “summer break,” whereas I, really for the first time in my life (could that be true?) have no promise of such an off-season,

in part because our current show, the amazingly beautiful/sexy/smart Boleros for the Disenchanted by the ridiculously talented/humble/nice José Rivera, has a tight three-week run, pushing all of our deadlines for the next show, Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo, up a week,

and in part because At Home at the Zoo is the final show of an eight-show, emotional roller-coaster of a season, in which we have evaluated and re-evaluated every element of the two departments I straddle (publications and literary/artistic),

my professional brain is running on fumes.

One final contributing factor to this mental exhaustion: I’m not sure Edward Albee likes dramaturgy attached to his shows. Infamously protective of his creations–”[The text] is a suggestion, yes, and pay absolute attention to it! . . . I tell actors at the beginning of any new production, whether I’m directing or not: ‘Do whatever you want as long as you end up with exactly what I intended.’ It gives people the illusion of leeway.”–Albee also believes everything the audience needs to appreciate and understand his plays is in the text, and that the they should (as much as possible) enter his plays as if it is their first time to the theater. He’s anti-context! What’s a dramaturg to do?

Of course, there is really plenty to do: if the audience doesn’t need anything for the play, we’ll give ‘em interesting information around the play, and those topics are never difficult to find on the sidelines of Mr. Albee’s work. Now if I could only somehow resolve those pesky looming-deadlines and exhausted-brain troubles, I’ll be all set to start a Monday.