Category: Theatre

The Lehman Trilogy Diaries: Interpret or Learn?

The other night there was a moment in rehearslal for The Lehman Trilogy that caught me and stood out. The moment is in one of the more comic scenes of the play. Given what’s happening  around and to us in the world these days, the truth behind it isn’t very funny. Then again, sometimes comedy is the best mirror in which to see ourselves.

That moment goes like this:

Young Herbert Lehman is a trouble maker in school for always asking too many questions. His Rabbi asks the class to recite back to him the ten plagues God visited on Egypt. The Rabbi does everything in his power to keep from calling on the young troublemaker, choosing every boy in the class, until at last there’s only Herbert left to regurgitate the answer.

RABBI: I suppose I should hear the last plague from you Herbert Lehman.

HERBERT: HaShem let the children of Egypt die.

RABBI: That’s wrong, Lehman. HaShem did not do that.

HERBERT: Yes he did, Rabbi.

RABBI: No, he didn’t.

As usual, you want to interpret, rather than to learn.

According to the scripture: ‘At midnight HaShem slaughtered

every firstborn in the country of Egypt.’

Every Firstborn is not the same as ALL the children, Lehman.

HERBERT: Whatever it says, Rabbi.

I have a problem with HaShem’s decision.

Why massacre the children of Egypt who were innocent?

RABBI: Lehman…

HERBERT: I have a problem with all of the plagues.

RABBI: Lehman! This is intolerable!

HERBERT: In my opinion, HaShem – instead of wasting time with plagues – should have simply killed the pharaoh…

RABBI: HaShem does not take advice from Herbert Lehman!

“Interpret rather than to learn” is what caught and what catches. For much of our lives, and I daresay for much of the lives of those who’ve populated the planet since humanity wiggled out of the slime we’ve been both blessed and plagued by the margins between “interpreting” and “learning.” Witness current events and how violently we seem to disagree over interpretations of things we’ve supposedly learned.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome and check out The Lehman Trilogy Diaries here. 

The Lehman Trilogy Diaries: Expanding the Team

We’ve been hacking away at The Lehman Trilogy for a few weeks now. Three cast members, a director, and a stage manager in a rehearsal room, collectively working through an extremely fun, yet densely challenging script, beat by beat, moment by moment. I can speak for that small cadre that we feel very good about our work so far, and a bit terrified by the work ahead. Tonight we do a run-thru for the design team and the production staff and the inner circle expands.

The designers and production folks have had their brains on this for awhile now, but tonight is the first time they will be in the room where it happens, exposed to more than just my words and rehearsal notes about what is exactly is happening with the story we’re trying to tell.

I have a love and hate relationship with designer run-thrus. First, they are a necessary part of the process. Challenges become more real and collaboration becomes more possible. On the other hand, it also kicks things into another gear for the actors. All of a sudden they feel ike they’re performing instead of just advancing the work reherarsal to rehearsal. The atmosphere becomes less safe. Not in any dangerous way, but in a way that usually invovles a step or two backwards before allowing things to begin moving forward again.

We’re still in the rehearsal room, safely tucked away on the 5th floor, anxious to get to the stage. But we’re not done here yet. As inhibited as this room is compared to the actual less confining confines we’ll be inhabiting soon, it’s become home, familiar and comfortable, yet growing tired and small as the cast’s work is begging for the space the stage will provide.

As an example, a good portion of the staging features actors standing on a conference room table, and we don’t have the ceiling height to make that possible in the rehearsal room without the actors crashing their heads into the drop ceiling tiles.  We’ve come up with some interesting, occasionally humorous alternatives for those moments, yet they yearn to play in the full height and freedom of the stage.

So, embracing both the love and hate, we’ll grow the team tonight as we prepare for the next steps. Should be fun. Should be scary. Should be quite a show…er…um…rehearsal.

The Catechism of A Christmas Carol

I wrote a few words about my experiences with quite a few productions of Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol called The Catechism of A Christmas Carol. 

“What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozens of months presented dead against you?”

Those words aren’t mine. They belong to Dickens. But it gives you a taste. 

You can find all the words at the link above. Thanks to David Todd McCarty and NatashMH for letting me put those words down in the publication, Ellemeno.

 

Lehman Trilogy Diaries: First Day in the Books

Nice to feel like a plan is going to work. The first day of rehearsals for The Lehman Trilogy is in the books. I’ll call it a success because we accomplished what we set out to do and I feel good about the plan. 

Tough not to feel good though, given the cast (Kevar Maffitt, John Maness, and Michael Gravois,  pictured with Costume Designer Waverly Strickland) bringing all of their considerable skill to this challenge, married to a tremendous desire brought about by the opportunity to grab these roles and run with them. So my expectation is we’re going to have a blast in the next month. Along with a lot of work.

So many words.  

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom: Lehman Trilogy Diaires

Virtual rehearsals for The Lehman Trilogy are zooming along. We’ve gotten together via Zoom a few times to read through this mammoth text and share research, questions and more than a few fears. The three actors, John Maness, Michael Gravois and Kevar Maffit are doing sensational work. 

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We’ve got a few days more in small boxes before I head to Memphis to start working on our feet. And already I’m sensing the itch these guys have to get up and get moving out of their small boxes on the screen. That’s when the fun will really begin. 

Onward.

Sunday Morning Reading

Big week and a traveling weekend. A new granddaughter has made her entrance. Rehearsals have kicked off for The Lehman Trilogy, and as usual most things surrounding us feel unresolved and unsettling in ways that can color good news in ways that make you think. Here’s some Sunday Morning Reading to share.

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Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner seek to remind us that viewed through the wider of arc of human history moments of peril do get resolved, but at a high cost in human suffering. Check out All These Emotions.I get the context. Just not thrilled with what seems like an easy way to shrug off the moment.

Doing Less, Extraordinary Well by David Todd McCarty takes a look at how standards shouldn’t shift even when our circumstances do.

Do You Know What Time It Is? I’m not talking about the switch of the clocks between daylight and standard time that happened this weekend. Jonathan Chait looks at that question as a warning we should all be aware of in The Authoritarian Right’s Code-Phrase: ‘Do You Know What Time It Is?’Highly recommend you read and be aware of this.

Almost a companion piece to the previous entry, Mike Lofgren pens Right-Wing Fake History Is Making a Big Comeback—But It Never Went Away. Myths are always grounded in some fact and some fiction. This is a lengthy read and is perhaps as guility as it thesis. The take away is the more things change the more they remain the same.

Artificial Intelligence hasn’t been featured in awhile here on Sunday Morning Reading, but this caught my eye. Polly Thompson tells us about how an AI Bot Performed Insider Trading And Lied About It’s Actions, Study Shows. Don’t tell me you didn’t see this coming.

And speaking of the Internet and bad folks doing bad things because they can, Amanda Chicago Lewis takes a look at The People Who Runied The Internet. Same type of folks who’ve ruined most things throughout history.

And closing things out on a totally different note, one of my favorite writers of the moment, NatashaMH, penned Excuse Me, I’m Heterosexual.I’m saving this piece to share with my new granddaughter one day. Maybe the note isn’t actually all that different.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. 

Starting Rehearsals for The Lehman Trilogy

We’re starting rehearsals for The Lehman Trilogy at Playhouse on the Square tomorrow evening with a Zoom session. Big play. Big story. Big anxiety. I wrote a bit about that for the publication Ellemeno on Medium. Hope you check it out. 

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Here’s the link to I Have No Idea What’s Going to Come Out of My Mouth...

Words. Sometimes That’s Enough. And Then Again…

Sometimes all you need are the words. And sometimes the marriage of the words and a performer create a joyful coupling beyond just the meaning, but illuminating them just as brightly. 

Check out this video of Dame Judi Dench being asked to do a little Shakespeare on the Graham Norton Show. 

Word. 

Sunday Morning Reading

It’s been quite a week. Lots going on with work. Lots going on politically in the US and the world. People are dying. So is a country. A new granddaughter is about to be born. I’m deep into work as we begin rehearsals for The Lehman Trilogy at Playhouse on the Square. Virtually at first. Deep enough to be tossing and turning in my sleep searching and grasping for questions, much less answers. Regardless, discovery never stops and that means reading. At times it feels like discovery yields a collection of whatever carcasses and stuff are randomly caught in a spider’s web. Out of the randomness it seems everything is pointed towards the work I’m doing. Either way here’s a web of Sunday Morning Reading to share.

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First You Have to Row A Little Boat. It’s a piece by David Todd McCarty that cribs its title from Richard Bode’s memoir of the same name. Words resonating at the moment far beyond the original and McCarty’s riff. Happiness, perhaps should not be a life’s goal and the curiouser you are might lead to acceptance of that. Enjoy the stumbles and the mistakes as much as you enjoy the moments that seem like victories. If you can.

When historians write about the tumult and chaos of this political moment in the United States this past week’s ascension of Mike Johnson to the role of Speaker of the House will be one of, if not the key moments. Everything changed if not during that culmination. Ruth Graham and Annie Karni in the New York Times give us For Mike Johnson, Religion Is At The Forefront of Politics and Policy, sketching a sketchy biography pulled from what little is known about the man, even as some of it is quickly disappearing from the Internet. But let’s get real. We may not well know this man’s bio. We well know this man and this moment.

One of the strands that allow me to discover is the Internet. Remember when we referred to it as the World Wide Web? It’s going through a moment of chaos and re-examination. Katie Notopoulos in the MIT Technology Review offers up How to Fix The Internet. She’s pointing to what feels like a change in the air. I think we have to fix humans first. Good luck with that.

This piece from January popped up twice in my Internet surfing this week. I believe in serendipitous discoveries, but I do not believe in coincidences. Louis Menard examines When Americans Lost Faith in the News.

Fran Lebowitz. You’ve got an opinion just from the name, assuming you’re aware. Constance Grady gives us an interview with Lebowitz that contains this nugget: “Art should be useless.”  Read the interview. 

And briefly back to the Internet, Casey Newton gives us Twitter Is Dead and Threads Is Thriving. I’ll agree with the first part. I’ll say this about the second. Threads may be thriving at the moment. But we’re in the moment before Threads becomes what we all know it will be. Two words. Mark Zuckerberg. All of our kids are adorable until they’re not.

Natasha MH writes about Letting Go of Perfection and the prisions we create for ourselves. A quote: “It’s art. You can’t ruin an artwork. It just becomes something else than what you started with. That’s the whole point. That’s where the fun is. If you ask me, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m doing this because it feels great. Liberating.”

And closing out  this week, Spiders Might be Quietly Diisappearing. Betsy Mason takes a look beyond the ick. If they are disappearing, here’s hoping the webs, world wide and otherwise don’t and continue to catch things.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. 

Photo by Raldugina Oksana