Three Sisters Come and Go

Performance Date: 05.19.10
TheaterLab

I am writing this near out of my mind with sleeplessness and jetlag, so I beg your pardon if I am a tad incoherent. I had a really fun and restful time at home in SF for Memorial Day, but our flight was delayed coming back to NYC last night and I’m running on fumes. I used to bounce back easier than this.

I wanted to see Three Sisters Come and Go because the description on TDF sounded very similar to an idea my friends Gwynne, Leslie and I have long considered for a future collaboration; namely, to use Chekhov’s Three Sisters as a point of departure for an original piece for three actresses. In the case of TheaterLab, they also added Samuel Beckett’s Come and Go into the mix.

This in itself makes me think of the notion people sometimes have of, Hey they stole my idea, to which the proper response is usually, Nah, they didn’t. I’m a big believer, effectively if not literally, in the collective unconscious. We all share the same world with the same data in it, so it can’t be much of a stretch for the same idea to arise independently and simultaneously in multiple locations. And in this instance, conceiving an original piece for three women based on Three Sisters isn’t all that unusual an idea to begin with.

Perhaps the idea is not unusual, but that doesn’t make it unworthy. I love reimaginings, reconfigurations, and retellings. And from here my brain splits in three directions:

1)    I love reimaginings, reconfigurations, and retellings. And I especially love when several people reimagine, reconfigure, and retell the same material, much as I love when TV food competitions instruct chefs to cook a meal of their own devising out of the exact same list of ingredients. The fun is in seeing what different individuals will do with the same stuff, and the fascination is in learning who those individuals are, or wish to be, through the choices they make.

[Sound of needle scratching off the record…]

2)    I love reimaginings, reconfigurations, and retellings. And in this day and age, it seems I should add “remixes” and “mash-ups” to that list of words, but for some reason I hesitate to do so. I guess because, to my mind, remixes and mash-ups are less artful forms that rely too heavily on juxtaposition to make their new contributions. (That probably offends some great mash-up artist out there, and I welcome him/her to make a rebuttal.) Juxtaposition – even unconscious or random juxtapositions – can be brilliantly effective, but I feel they work best as a spice not as the main dish.

[Sound of needle scratching off the record…]

3)    I love reimaginings, reconfigurations, and retellings. It is a very human act. We are constantly absorbing narratives from others and emitting them anew as our own. My favorite example of this is when I tell a long, funny story from my life and then close with the sincere realization that it actually happened to my sister. Less trivially, absorbing and emitting narratives is probably how we learn to feel less alone (by connecting ourselves to something larger, or to someone else) as well as more unique (by differentiating ourselves from the existing narrative by adding our own particular spin).

And now, in an effort to find some cohesion for these splintered thoughts and my jet-lagged brain, I’ll return to Three Sisters Come and Go. I enjoyed witnessing what these particular artists contributed to the narratives of Olga, Irina, and Masha, particularly because my own brain has spent so much time considering what I would contribute myself. The juxtapositions of “theirs” and “mine” probably fed the creative process for my future collaboration much more than seeing the Chekhov again would have done. I wonder if, in this way, we are all co-authors of some bigger collaboration, to which Chekhov and TheaterLab and, someday Gwynne, Leslie, and Anna, are all contributing a draft. Perhaps that’s what collective unconscious truly is – the all-encompassing narrative of human existence.  We can all tap into it because we all absorb and emit it on a daily basis. Whoa. That got really deep just there. Brilliance or jet-lag? You decide.

City of Angels

Performance Date: 05.16.10
The Gallery Players

This is killing me.  I’ve had this blog post half-written for about a week now but had to scrap the whole thing because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to finish it.  And I had some lines in there I really liked.  Like how I’m not really a connoisseur of musical theater, and how that statement will come as a surprise to my boyfriend.  And how I love singing, in general, and singing in unison especially, and singing with FEELING molto especially, but that makes me a fan not a connoisseur. (I particularly liked the “molto especially.”)  And even though I’m cleverly getting those lines in here in this new post, it’s not the same. Context is everything.

This is not a case of me floundering for something to write because I didn’t actually like the show.  That has happened before, but not this time.  I really liked City of Angels.  It’s a smart musical about a writer in 1940’s Los Angeles who is trying to adapt his detective novel into a screenplay.  While he struggles with how much to compromise his artistic integrity on the road to fame and fortune, we also watch the plot of his film noir, narrating-gumshoe story unfold before us.  While both these narratives progress pretty much the way you think they would, the interplay between them – how his real life affects his adaptation and vice versa – creates a suspense that keeps you engaged throughout.  Add to that a pretty much flawless cast and a complex, jazz-inspired score, and I was thoroughly charmed.

No, I floundered on my earlier draft because I was trying to write about “smart writing” and I wrote myself into a corner, which wasn't very smart.  Basically, I had no choice but to define what constitutes “smart writing” and connect City of Angels to AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, and the Pulitzer Prize winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.  I’d bitten off more than I could chew.

All I really wanted to point out is that it is so satisfying to encounter good, smart writing these days.  It’s almost vindicating: Yes! Thank you! Thank you, [insert author of well-written work]. Thank you for being out there fighting the good fight.  Because there is so much bad writing out there.  Or perhaps more accurately, there is just so much writing out there period – movies, TV, news editorials, niche-cable shows, faux-reality series, magazines, webisodes, blogs, blog aggregators, tweets, vampire young adult fiction with poor female role models – and the law of averages makes the majority of it, well, average.  Dutiful consumer that I am, I absorb a ton of this mediocrity on a daily basis (the diet starts tomorrow), so when I encounter a morsel that is well-crafted and considered, or that takes risks and trusts its audience, it makes me want to dunk a basketball and hang from the rim or something.  Tackle a teammate and pound his helmet into the ground.  Rip my jersey off and let loose a primal scream in my sports bra.  That kind of thing.

City of Angels gave me a bit of that feeling.  Not at first, when we were just setting up the two worlds and alternating back and forth, but a little later, when the storylines began to twist into their double-helix.  That’s when I started sitting up in my chair, leaning forward and watching closely.  Like my dog Gabby used to when I’d hide in the pantry with the dog treats and she knew a biscuit would shortly come sliding out from under the door.  That’s when I started to marvel at a film noir musical that could satisfy every last genre expectation but still manage to keep its audience guessing.  It’s not easy to do that.  It takes effort.  And smarts.  Just as it takes effort and smarts to write a television show that has never once backed away from the dares it sets itself on a weekly basis (“Breaking Bad”), or a novel with a narrative voice so unapologetically specific it must have made some weak-hearted publishing exec quake with the fear of leaving audiences behind (Oscar Wao).

These are the folks that are fighting the good fight out there, be they battles large or small.  You know of many others who are doing the same.  Tell me about them.  And I’ll tell my friends.  And then we can all bum rush the field and pour Gatorade on each other and weep with the relief of having endured a very long season of proliferating mediocrity in popular culture.  Sigh.  Like I said, the diet starts tomorrow.

The Subject Was Roses

Performance Date: 05.08.10

Pearl Theatre Company, NY City Center, Stage 2

I hate being late.  But increasingly, I find it happening, usually when my vanity has gotten the better of me and I find myself changing clothes multiple times instead of running out the door.  But I am rarely, rarely ever late for the theater.  And yet there I am, hopping into a cab in Chelsea at 1:52, trying to make it to 55th and 6th in midday traffic for a 2pm curtain.  Wishful thinking.

After slinking into the very intimate space, where The Subject Was Roses is 15 minutes into its first act, I very smartly decide not to cross the theater to my ticketed seat.  Instead, I quickly try to make myself as small as possible on a step near the door, freezing my body into perfect stillness and training a laser-like focus of concentration upon the stage.  I am hoping this will convince those around me that I am actually a deeply respectful theater-going patron rather than an ill-mannered lout.

The usher who was kind enough to let me in, however, decides I look pathetic down there and tries to direct me to some empty seats in the middle of the back row.  Loath to attract more attention by climbing over folks to sit down, I shoo the usher away, trying to convey silently that I’m a-okay here on the floor.  He thinks maybe I don’t understand, and laughingly tries to point me to an actual seat.  I shoo him again, but now we’ve made a bit of a scene, which causes some nice people to slide over a few spots in their row so I can take a seat on the aisle – which I do, sheepishly, but with great relief.  The step it turns out was not very comfortable, and Darwin clearly did not bestow me with great powers of camouflage.

With the lateness ordeal behind me, I can finally pay attention to the play.  Within moments I notice that I feel very comforted, as if someone has just served me a good portion of a nice, homemade stew.  I realize that it has been a long while since I have seen a production this…traditional, is it?  Classic?  I’m not sure of the term.  The set is detailed and realistically appointed – a mid 1940’s kitchen and living room – but it’s a thrust stage in a small space, so my field of vision is equally divided between the stage and the audience surrounding it.  I don’t know why but this juxtaposition feels comforting to me.  Perhaps because the two realities – the fictional one on-stage and the actual one around it – are so starkly divided.  Unabashedly divided.  There is no attempt to soften the transition between the two.  It's the 1940's kitchen complete with parqueted floor on one side, and row A seats 101-115 on the other.  In the foreground, it's a World War II era mother resting her evening bag on the divan while pulling on her tailored overcoat, and behind her a tourist sitting in shorts and knee socks with an umbrella and two shopping bags at his feet.   Two realities, starkly divided.  No attempt to soften the transition between the two. 

Ah yes, that's it.  It's not postmodern, this presentation.  It's not trying to break the fourth wall in any way, in either performance or design.  There's no attempt to demonstrate that we-know-that-you-know-that-we-know that this is theater here.  No effort made to confirm or deny that we are all suspending our collective disbelief.  It just is what it is.  We’re putting on a play and you’re watching it.  No need to get clever, no need to get conceptual.  We all know what the situation is, so why monkey around?  It's a choice that makes perfect sense for this play, and yet I'm surprised how good it feels to witness.  How comforting and familiar...yet startling and unfamiliar too.  Like seeing an old school chum after a very long time.  It's strange for something so...old fashioned, is it?...to feel so...refreshing.

I guess it shouldn't be much of a surprise.  Postmodernism is kind of played out, isn’t it?  I mean, isn't it?  There's no escaping it, that's for sure.  It's everywhere.  It's the very air we breathe.  It's so deeply woven into our cultural fabric that contemporary American life would be unrecognizable without it.   But aren't we just a little bit over it?  Maybe I'm a little late to the party to be saying so, but haven't we done the deconstruction thing to death?  Aren’t we tired of hearing and using the word “meta”?  Tired of being so analytical and self-aware?  Wouldn't it be nice to take a break from irony?  A break from skepticism?  I mean, really.  It’s exhausting.

Okay, I'll be honest.   I wouldn’t want to give postmodernism up entirely, even if I knew how to.  I'm a fan of irony.  And it's fun to be smart and clever.  Plus I’d really miss “The Daily Show”.  But it was still a little shocking to realize that this not-postmodern presentation of The Subject Was Roses was such an anomaly.  Out of the 37 plays I’ve now seen in this Year of Plays, there are only 2 or 3 productions that I can even suspect of not being fundamentally postmodern in approach.  Granted, it gets confusing.  Take a look at my thought process as I go through the list (sure, I think in bullets, don't you?):

• Does a Shakespearean aside count as “postmodern” since it breaks the fourth wall? 
• Is it postmodern to use a block for a chair, or is it just low-budget?
• Am I calling something postmodern just because it’s stylized?
• Have I mistakenly identified postmodernism as the opposite of realism when  representationalism is really what I mean? 
• Are any of these actually real words?? 
• I think I've got a case of the I Don’t Think It Means What You Think It Means.

Regardless of whether I've got my Big Ideas mixed up, I don’t think it insignificant that seeing a play done in this way felt comforting to me.  I think it means something that I welcomed having a moment of pure and simple theater in my world - this world where I’m rushing into cabs, and feeling vain, and making quips, and hyperlinking Wikipedia, and making parenthetical statements about thinking in bulleted lists. I think what it means is this: sometimes it's good to slow down for a second and just swallow something whole.   Like a nice bowl of homemade stew.

Gin and It

Performance Date: 04.25.10
Performance Space 122

Geez, how did they do this?

That was the recurring thought I had while watching Gin and It unfold it’s beautiful and complicated dance last Sunday eve. And not just because so much of the set-transforming, projection-catching choreography felt like watching one magic trick after another. No, the thought spawned from my insider’s brain which couldn’t help wondering how the hell they developed and rehearsed this piece.

But let me back up.

Conceptually, Gin and It – which lives in a liminal space between theater and performance installation – finds it’s genesis in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 thriller Rope, in which the famous director creates the illusion of filming the entire movie using a single, continuous shot. To pull off the stunt, particularly at that time, required a highly choreographed behind-the-scenes ballet. Grips and prop masters had to dismantle sections of the single-room set to make way for the huge camera as it followed the action, and then reassemble the set and props (in exactly the same way) in time for the shot to swing back the other direction -- all while staying out of the camera and sound operators’ way. Not an easy feat.

Gin and It in some ways replicates this feat in live performance -- and describing exactly how will be another feat altogether, but here goes. As Hitchcock’s film is projected on stage, a cast of four “grips” conduct their own “backstage” ballet, catching the projection on various surfaces that are continuously moved and manipulated throughout the piece. Frequently, the film is caught on mesh screens that permit the audience to see both the projected actor and the live actor (who is holding the screen) simultaneously.  It's a clever and spooky effect that is amplified when the grips synchronize their movements with those of the projected actor. Other times, the film is projected onto set pieces that are transformed both physically (by the crew) and seemingly (by the effect of the projection) from box to dining table to piano to armchair. As if all this were not enough, layered onto the entire dance is a tense narrative that develops amongst the grips as they work together, a narrative expressed chiefly in gesture and attitude, but supplemented by the occasional whispered conversation or “backstage” order that is called out with particular subtext. Whew.

Hopefully I’ve described the piece well enough that you can imagine how this highly technical and subtextually nuanced show made my theater brain pretty much explode. How do you develop and rehearse something like this? And I haven’t even mentioned how the projected images were sometimes sliced up into smaller pieces to fit onto various-sized screens, or how there’s this whole thematic thing about closeted homosexuality that is being echoed about. Furthermore, the technical, textual, and subtextual pieces intertwine quite intricately, and of course the whole thing is very meta-meta-meta, very deconstructed-reconstructed. It’s like someone took a macramé dress, unraveled it, and reknit it into a portrait of a macramé dress. And then someone else videotapes it and projects it onto yarn which somebody else crochets into a hat. I mean, how do you do that? (No really, how do you do that?)

Now I have an inside track – I know the lovely Keith Justin Foster, who plays one of the grips – so I can eventually satisfy my curiosity. But I’ll tell you how I imagine it was done. I imagine it was done bit and by bit, piece by piece, a la Sondheim putting it together.

I imagine they started with the technical, with a rough idea of where the projections would go and on what surfaces. And then as they rehearsed the technical, they added the textual, i.e. the cues the grips call out to one another as they work together to hit their marks. And then I imagine in the tedium of rehearsing the technical-plus-textual to a point of precision, the subtextual was born. I imagine the actors got tense or silly with one another. They joked and grimaced and flirted, as actors in rehearsal do, and from these real-life inspirations, they found what eventually became the on-stage narrative of the piece. And I imagine it was an iterative process. I know for a fact it was a long process, an extended series of rehearsal periods and workshops, but it’s not just for this reason that I imagine it was iterative. I imagine it was iterative because that’s the only way I know to build something this intricate and layered.

This is the repeated learning of my time as an artist on this earth. Art takes time. It takes iteration. Revision. It takes doing and doing again, all the while remaining open to the variation of each attempt so that it may inspire new and unexpected directions. The hardest part of this process is that your destination remains unknown – and that in itself is enough to coax an artist off the road. But if you stick to it, you find that when you arrive, you are exactly where you are supposed to be.

So who knows, I could be wrong about how it all went down. Maybe Gin and It was actually born whole, like Athena out of Zeus’s head, fully armed and ready to rumble. I suppose it’s possible. But I’m not sure even an Olympian could imagine the totality of the Gin and It experience. There are five performances left, New Yorkers. Go see it and tell me what you think.

In the Heights

Performance Date: 04.16.10

Richard Rodgers Theatre:

I watched In the Heights from the tippy top of the rear mezzanine – literally in the heights – surrounded by a balcony full of high school students who were on some kind of class trip.  The girls predictably screamed when the guy with High School Musical in his bio made his entrance, and whenever anyone kissed on stage, the whole balcony erupted in a chorus of woooOOOoOoOOOOOoooOO!!!!  After one such kiss and woo incident, a lone male voice advised the characters to use a condom, a suggestion that was met with high-fiving chuckles from the guys and whispered what did he say? conferences from the girls.  It was distracting, but for this forever-fifteen thirty-four year old, also strangely nostalgic.

Despite the diversions of my mezzanine-mates, and despite the distance from my seat to the stage, I nevertheless left with some lasting impressions from this show, the 2008 Tony-award winning musical set in the latin-infused neighborhood of Manhattan’s Washington Heights.  Let’s go macro to micro:

1. You should write/produce your own play.  This is the inevitable suggestion made by loved ones whenever I get into a conversation about the frustrations of nurturing an acting career without representation.  Eight times out of ten (or 4 out of 5 for you math whizzes out there), I respond to this suggestion with about a half-ton stubborn resistance, a couple tablespoons self-pity, and a dash of righteous resentment.  A bad mixture of human frailty and the power of inertia.  But the other 20% of the time (I can do math too) I recognize that my loved ones are right.  Taking my career into my own hands would no doubt be an empowering and creatively fulfilling endeavor.  Reading in Lin-Manuel Miranda's bio that he wrote the first draft of In the Heights when he was a sophomore in college was another inspiring push in that direction.  Surely I can muster as much motivation as a sophomore in college, right?  Right??

   
   
2. Paciencia y Fe.  Right in line with that inspiration is the guiding wisdom offered by one denizen of Miranda’s Heights, Abuela Claudia.  Paciencia y fe.  Patience and faith are exactly the virtues required in the life of an under-employed actor.  However, there’s a cynical part of me that sometimes views the patience-and-faith mindset as anesthetic.  A“you never know” type of optimism that can numb an artist to reality and becomes the perpetual carrot that keeps an unhappy actor hoofing it around town to open calls and pay-to-audition “networking opportunities.”  The remedy to this cynism, I think, is to apply paciencia y fe to actions that are more rewarding, more fulfilling, and more personally motivated.  Oh, you mean like writing/producing your own show, Anna?  Oh, um, yeah…I guess I mean like that.
   
   
3. An authentic voice.  The performers of In the Heights were all extremely talented singers, but there was one guy whose voice stood out from the rest.  It’s not that his voice was better than the others, but whereas many of his castmates had the same (albeit impressive) belty, pop-vocal stylings that are apparently and enduringly in high-demand Broadway, his voice just seemed to be his own.  A singing voice that was simply the beautiful and natural extension of his speaking voice.  It was remarkably refreshing, and yet another reminder to me to thine own self be true.

So.  It would seem that the sum total of my In the Heights impressions leave me with no other choice that to find my own true voice, write myself a play, and have patience and faith that it will lead me where I'm meant to go.  It’s not the first time I’ve had that idea so I wouldn't hold your breath.  But one does begin to wonder how many times the universe has to hit a girl on the head before she starts to listen.  Perhaps only eight out of ten times?

666

Performance Date: 04.13.10
Minetta Lane Theatre

"Falling behind again...never wanted to...what am I to do...can't help it."

It would seem the change in seasons has not put a spring in my step.  I'm in Month 8 of my Year of Plays and it looks like I’ve lost some steam.  Three out of the past four weeks have been post-less.  Bad Anna.  Maybe I burned myself out when I overstacked with theater tickets back in March, or maybe the case of actor blues I recently contracted rubbed off a bit on my writer self.  Or maybe it’s just that travel, visitors, and a new job have disrupted more than my circadian rhythms.  Probably all of the above.  But fear not, my loyal readers.  I have not abandoned you.  All along, a very tiny Daniel Day Lewis has been in my head shouting, "STAY ALIVE!  NO MATTER WHAT OCCURS!  I WILL FIND YOU!" and it has kept me afloat.  And now at last I am seeing some shore on the horizon.

My first sight of land while adrift in that sea of blues last week was seeing 666, a dose of non-verbal, physical comedy from Spanish theater company Yllana.  While I’d like to say it was artistry that lifted me from the doldrums, in truth it just felt good to laugh.  Nothing like a little clowning to lighten my load.  You know, some slapstick, a little audience flirtation, a stage full of oversized, veins-a-bulging phalluses.  What?  Did I say a stage full of oversized veins-a-bulging phalluses?  Oh yes, this was clowning of a coarser kind.  A don’t-take-your-Grandma kind of event.  No, I take that back because I think my Grandma would have laughed herself silly whilst hiding behind her lovely arthritic little hands.  All the same, the humor in 666 is not for those easily offended, nor for those who wish to keep their clothes dry.  Thankfully I’m neither, so I had a grand ole time and left the theater feeling quite light.

Now there’s an aspect of theater I haven’t spent too much time writing about this year – theater as good old fashioned entertainment.  Theater as diversion.  Escape.  A leavening agent.  Not unlike baking soda.  Because let’s face it, sometimes what we really need is a little fizz in our lives.  And while movies and TV are where we usually turn to satisfy this craving, theater offers plenty to snack on as well.

And yet, we don’t tend to think of theater when we’re looking for a lift.  When we’re down, we want a quick fix and seeing a play requires a little more effort than following the masses to the multiplex or turning on Real Housewives of New York City.  Not that I watch that show.  Only bad people watch that show.  Only awful people who are shamelessly hooked on the disintegrating friendship between former besties Bethanny and Jill and the resulting gloat-fest from the Countess Luann and oh my god what the hell is wrong with Ramona this season??  And thus theater suffers.

Well, actually, this is a point of some contention.  Not that theater suffers due to increasing numbers of self-flagellating Housewives watchers named Anna – no point in arguing that – but that theater requires more effort than movies.  Some people say it’s just as easy to buy a theater ticket as a movie ticket, and that oftentimes it’s just as inexpensive, if you know where to look.  But that’s the problem – if you know where to look.  The average entertainment-seeker doesn’t know what plays are running (if they’re even in a theater town) let alone where to find discounted seats.  And while it takes just a few extra clicks of the mouse to figure it out, that’s all that’s needed to keep a consumer at bay.

Or at least so says consumer expert Anna Moore.

At any rate, 666 provided me with some much needed diversion, and according to Yllana’s company bio, that’s precisely what they were seeking to supply.  It wasn’t high-brow or revelatory or even truly provocative (phalluses on stage have been old news since the ancient Greeks, after all) – but thanks to them and the tiny Day-Lewis in my head, the blues have been banished and this blog shall live to see another day.  Perhaps next time with a little more spring in my step.

Red

Performance Date: 3.31.10

The John Golden Theatre

People have been asking me lately if seeing and writing about so many plays has ruined theater for me.   In other words, has all this analysis ruined my ability to experience a play simply and innocently?  Great question.

The answer, in short, is no.  My experience of theater has not been ruined.  It’s true that when I watch a play these days, I spend much more time contemplating the technical and craft-related aspects than I ever did before.  And, true, there’s always a part of my brain that stays occupied with looking for something to write about.  But while I concede these facts together may mean my experience is neither simple nor innocent, I hardly think that’s a ruinous thing.  The added analysis may leave me more detached at moments, but on the whole my appreciation for theater is much more enriched.  And when my attention does get pulled from that meta place and becomes riveted to the action on the stage, then I know that something truly special is happening.

Let’s take Red for instance.  I was up in the balcony for this show, a two-hander on Broadway (by way of London) about a late-career Mark Rothko who hires a young painter to assist him in his studio.  Thanks in part to my bird’s eye view, but also in part to my blog-related duties, I spent the first section of the play largely in that meta space:

Ah, they’re making good use of their diagonals.  Well they have to with all this open playing space.  I wonder if that’s the actors or the director?  Probably both... Oop, he’s overreaching with his voice.  He’s not talking to his scene partner.  He’s afraid we can’t hear him up here but we can.  Oh, he’s caught himself, now it’s better… You know I bet the play feels entirely different from the second row with all those red canvasses consuming your peripheral vision… I like how they’re not afraid to be still.  They’re only moving when they have to.

But rather than alienate me from my theatrical experience, my detachment actually contributed to it, because as I watched the actors move the canvasses around during a scene transition, my next thoughts were:

See I love this.  This is what we do.  We come together, we put on a play.  We make choices and mistakes.  We design, we act, we move the scenery.  It’s good.  This is the work and it’s good.

Now some might say if I’m thinking about moving scenery, then somebody’s doing something wrong.  But that attitude just privileges a certain type of experience, one of transportation and emotional investment.  I love those experiences, but I liked this one too.  I liked having those thoughts.  At the risk of being precious, those thoughts made me proud and happy.  They were valuable to me.  So why would I trade them for some other, supposedly more desirable theatrical experience?  I wouldn’t.

And lest you think this is a post that is secretly bagging on Red in disguise, let me say that this show had many riveted-to-the-stage-something-special-is-happening moments too.  Most of them involved the younger actor, Eddie Redmayne, although Alfred Molina was also terrific as Rothko.  There was something messy about Redmayne’s performance that was very appealing.  When his character, the young assistant, finally makes an impassioned stand against his giant of a mentor, Redmayne’s voice was all over the place, dancing in and out of a shrill register, and his body bounced and spasmed as if overloaded with adrenaline and disbelief.  Watching him, that busy part of my brain wondered for a second if perhaps it was too much.  But another part of me was (simply? innocently?) transported by the mess.  This is the mess and risk and adrenaline of breaking away from someone you believe in.  This is the mess of life.

Yes, I think after having spent nearly a decade at the altar of precise and well-crafted acting, I’m now in a period where messy is where it’s at.  My old acting teacher Gregory Wallace would be proud.  He used to harangue me and my classmates, “Where is the mess?  Where is the MESS?  I want messy!”  If only I could've taken that in then.  It would have saved me years of confusing “precise and well-crafted” with “polite and predictable.”  But no longer!  Because messy’s where it’s at.  And so am I.  Watch out world.  Me and Eddie Redmayne are comin’ at ya.