The Long Run - 4/17/06

Staunton, VA - So, I was walking back from yesterday's matinee and M.Litt. dinner party, and as I approached the front door if the BevHouse, a woman walking across the street in the opposite direction saw me and said, "I loved your performance, and I love your blog. Get some rest!" I told her I was on my way to do just that. Today happens to be an excellent day for blogging; rainy, fairly chilly, a day which encourages you to stay indoors and lounge around. I've now made my second cup of coffee, and so on to this entry. I do regret that I cannot seem to muster the energy to blog more than once a week. I realized in getting set to write that it's been a week since the last entry. But the week went fast, I think, and if it continues to go as fast this one went, I'll wake up one morning and bam! - someone will be telling me I have to move out.

I think I'll start this morning by thanking the Mary Baldwin M.Litt/MFA students for their wonderful Easter dinner party. They invited us to a pot-luck Easter feast, and all the food was very good. There was a wonderful leg of lamb with fruit compote, ham, chicken, pot roast, salads, veggies, baked beans, green bean salad, and a strawberry cake shaped in an Easter bunny, which was pretty much half-eaten by the time I got there. This same group of people did a nice Twelfth Night last week as their M.Litt project, and it was a very convivial atmosphere. So hats off and thanks to the M.Litt crew! You've been very supportive of our company, and we appreciate it.

The next order of business should be to give a health update. All last week a good two-thirds of the troupe was suffering from some sort of ailment. Alyssa, who gets the Super-Trouper Award for last week, fought off her broken toe and bronchitis to keep performing on the stage. We did make some alterations in the shows to take as much stress off her as possible, such as going with only two members of The Watch in Much Ado (I adopted her character and Tyler and I split the lines between us), and eliminating Mr. Spaceman and modifying Robot Man in Planet. By Saturday, thought, she was pretty much up to speed, and did Much Ado without her cane, sang all her songs in Planet, and returned as the mighty George Seacoal, leader of the Watch. The remainder of the sick list slowly but surely got back up to speed, although Andrew still has a somewhat sore back, which I assume he is resting today. Kevin's back is better, Olivia seems up to speed, Jessica is doing OK, Chris and Tyler seem fine. I think only Greg, Daniel, Sarah and myself got away with not getting sick, so knock on any wood you can find for us. The bug also found its way through the resident troupe, as Matt Sincell, Rene Thornton and others seemed to pick up the bronchitis bug to some degree. Better now than in June.

Apart from doing the shows all week, we are now beginning to work on other projects. I did my first playhouse tour on Wednesday, which went just fine. We are preparing for Shakespeare's Birthday celebration, an annual event held here on the Sunday closest to his birthday (April 23 this year, which is the day he is assumed to have been born). We also have to prepare something for Jamestown 2007, the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown VA, but as of now I have no clear idea what that means. And tomorrow we take another trip to the Veritas vineyard and Winery to do a performance of Planet once again, same as we did in September.

A couple of reviews have come in for Much Ado. You can read them here and here. They're really not much to speak of in the way of reviews. Both are positive, and will serve to attract audiences, but in terms of good theatre review writing they leave a lot to be desired. The state of theatre reviewing at most newspapers tends to be abysmal outside major cities like Chicago or New York, as often the people picked to do reviews are staffers with no particular credentials in the arts at all. But at the last podcast I did, Ralph showed is a copy of Theatre Week from Washington DC and said some people from that publication might be coming down to check us out. I'll be interested to see what shows up in there, if anything.

Apart from all this news-y stuff, there's been a lot on my mind in terms of how I'm adapting to running the shows at the Blackfriars. In some ways. I've begun to think of this whole gig in relation to a long run of a show, and interestingly enough, I am not sure I like long runs. This is by far the longest amount of time I have ever committed to a set of shows, and often I find myself during the day thinking that I should be in rehearsal or something for another production. My brother Jim, who plays in the jam band moe., always has side projects going, because he says after touring for some time and playing the same songs from venue to venue, you have to have something else to keep your creative juices flowing. I understand that now, because keeping up the commitment to a long run is difficult. Of course, the days are pretty much gone when great stars actually do perform long runs on the Broadway stage. Usually you get a name star for a limited run, and then hope the replacements can keep the thing going long enough to make a profit. And most regional theatres today have a definitive season where the shows run only a set amount of time. But it's deceiving to do a tour, because you tend to see all the various venues you get to play at, but what's a little hidden from sight is the fact that the shows remain the same for the entire year. Of course, to the Blackfriars audiences these shows are all new; it's the spring season of shows after the Renaissance Season. And that's the way you have to play it, even though you've been at these shows for nine months now.

The shows themselves have now settled into a good place at the theatre. We have gotten Planet down to a place where the sound is good in the space without being overpowering. The audience reaction to Planet I think has been off the scale; it's like nothing I've ever seen in a theatre. The mood of the show actually runs from a sort of polite and enthusiastic initial response to something more resembling a rock concert by the end. When the audience is filled with baby-boomers who recognize all the songs, it's really fun, because they groan and laugh within the first three bars or so. Encores have become commonplace, and people get up and dance and sing along and everything. It is such a wild and intense sight to see all these people sitting in a recreation of a Renaissance indoor theatre behaving like they are in a concert venue. And every time it happens I find myself surprised that it's actually happening. It's both fun and incongruous at the same time. Maybe one of these nights I will bring my camera out on stage and record some of this for you to see. The other shows do just as well. Much Ado still gets that same reaction of a fun comedy which all of a sudden turns tragic only to resolve back into a fun time at the end. And Richard III I think has benefitted the most from returning to the Blackfriars. The words seem to fit best in that space of any place we have played, and I think playing this piece in the Blackfriars gives it an authority and presence that all the other venues on the road lacked. When that magnificent language bounces around the walls of the Blackfriars, it just seems right and proper, much more so than in a transformed gymnasium.

Well, that's enough for this morning. It's still raining, so maybe this afternoon I will get on to doing some movies and uploading stuff on the movie page for you. I keep promising but I keep failing. So please forgive me, because I've been trying to get as much rest as possible to stay in shape - for the long run. -TWL