Tag: Theatre

The Lehman Trilogy Diaries: Pure Adrenaline

Adrenaline is a funny thing. It can drive you further and faster. Call it a high. Stories are legion of an adrenaline rush giving folks superhuman-like powers in extreme circumstances. But the bill always comes due once the rush is over and the crash happens.

I’m rehearsing this beast of a play, The Lehman Trilogy, while suffering a bit with a pulled groin. Yeah, that slows you down. During the day I do my usual treatments to ease the pain and get around as best I can doing a bad Walter Brennan impression.  I’ve had this problem before so there’s a ritual and a regime. But in the moments before rehearsals begin I feel things easing up and never notice it at all once we commence and push through rehearsal.

One of the characters in the play ends a monologue with the following:

LEHMAN CORPORATION. Created by Philip Lehman.

Pure finance.

Invest money only to make money. No companies to fund.

No industries to launch. No markets to explore. Pure money.

Pure adrenaline

Well, we all know how that ended.

Sure enough, once rehearsal ends though I pay for it as the pain comes back bit by bit and so it’s back to the ritual. Unitl the next rehearsal. Probably not healthy to be doing things the way I am, but hey, we open a week from tonight.

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 Diaires here. 

The Lehman Trilogy Diaries: Jacks of All Trade

When you’re in school (which was ages ago for me) learning your craft and finding out if you have a voice worth sharing as a theatre director, no one teaches you many of the lessons you will one day need to apply in doing what you love. I’m guessing that applies to most pursuits in life. There are times though that can try your patience unless you were brought up with a father like mine who taught you how to deal with the crazy curve balls that get thrown at you from plumbing to staying warm to how to navigate unexpected weather disruptions.

As I sit here this morning in this lovely Southern town beset by the vagaries of winter, compounded with the already slower rhythms native to the region, we’re having lots of fun trying to keep The Lehman Trilogy ship sailing along. Winter weather is playing havoc with all the usual fun things that come with it: icy conditions, burst pipes, power outages, travel and delivery woes, and a pulled groin from bailing water from one of those burst pipes. I’m not blaming anyone for the choices they are making. Life sucks here for most right now and folks have to make their own choices.

Fortunately, we’re reasonably self-contained as an ensemble and have kept our work on course as we head into technical rehearsals this weekend. I’m sure (hope?) we’ll find our footing and head into next weekend’s opening in good shape. Things usually work out that way in this game.

Onward

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: A Show Finds Its Home

We spent the weekend taking the stage for the first time in rehearsals for The Lehman Trilogy here at Playhouse on the Square. What a joyful and glorious weekend of rehearsals it was.

Pictured above is me (on the right) with this astounding cast, Michael Gravois, Kevar Maffit, and John Maness. We’re all smiling because we’re really enjoying this process. These three are putting their all into this beast of a play. Their roles require as much work as if they were each doing Hamlet.. They are rising to the challenge and then some.

Let me tell you it’s not often that you feel this joyful at this point (transferring from the rehearsal room to the stage), but the work is so good, so rich, so fun, and most importantly so collaborative that there’s no other way to express it. The other day I wrote about my fears of missing the intimacy of the rehearsal room before we moved. Well that intimacy transferred right along with our props and all those bankers boxes. That’s rare. The four of us, plus our stage manager, Emma White, continue to experience the work and the story almost like we don’t want each day to end. That’s a bit silly of me to say because we push each other so hard that by the time we call it a day we’re exhausted.

The best part of our transfer from the rehearsal room to the stage is that a good 85% of our work translated intact. Often in that kind of space shift you lose quite a bit. That 85% has allowed us to continue advancing the story instead of spending time adjusting what we wanted to do to new realities.

Don’t get we wrong. We’ve still got a long way to go as we begin adding the technical artistry. Those technical elements are behind so we’re working to keep the cast focused on their part of the story telling and getting a little ahead before the inevitable begins.

Today is our final day off before opening so we’ll get a brief breather. Then onward.

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. 

Sunday Morning Reading

Winter is bearing down on big portions of the U.S. Some places are already digging out. I’m in one of the former portions (Memphis) that doesn’t handle it well. So today, Sunday Morning Reading will contain less links than usual. We’re rushing to get things accomplished before folks anticipate a rough time (or a snow day) in this old southern town. But don’t rush through these links.

As for winter, Zoë Schalnger has a good piece up about The Threshold at Which Snow Starts Irreversibly Disappearing.  Given deadlines and what’s impending here I sort of wish it never would appear, but that’s not the point of this article.

U.S. Politics may be a hot topic, but not enough to defeat Old Man Winter in Iowa where the first caucus will be held tomorrow for apparently no reason. The debate also rages on about the 14th Amendment. This piece from Jason Linkins, The Fourteenth Amendment Scolds Abetting Trump’s Return, turns up the heat on that issue and the media that keeps screwing up the coverage.

Natasha MH, talks about school reunions in The United States of Reunion. Great piece about the inner conflicts they can dredge up.

Smart is Not Always Wise. I concur. So does David Todd McCarty who penned this piece.

And for those who come here for a little tech, check out John Siracusa’s take on Artificial Intelligence entitled I Made This. Well worth your time.

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.  You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Lehamn Trilogy Diaries: Moving to the Stage

Last night was our final rehearsal for The Lehman Trilogy in the rehearsal room. Rehearsal rooms are often not sufficiently matched to the space a show will occupy on stage which means the first few rehearsals on stage turn into what is called “spacing.” Simply put that means you transfer the staging from a smaller space to a larger one and adjust a few things.

Often that requires quite a few adjustments. This show should require less than most as we gain more space, because our scenic anchors for the action, though somewhat different, have set our parameters and those parameters will be largely intact. It’s also an opportunity to actually stage some moments that just couldn’t be achieved in the confines of a rehearsal room with no ceiling height. This show has an overabundnce of those. That will be what today’s work will be about.

Things will feel different. Things will feel out of sorts. Things will get corrected to find their sorts. And some things will actually take on new meaning as the stage provides new opportunities. What I’ve been seeing in the “little theatre in my mind” that we’ve been rehearsing in the smaller rehearsal room, will now get its chance to take real and actual steps instead of imagined ones.

I’ll also get a chance to get some proper perspective on the story as I simulataneously get closer to it by stepping farther back. In the rehearsal room staff is literally on top of the actors. In the theatre we get to finally take the seats the audience will in viewing the story. Being able to see the big picture focuses things tighter as the aperture widens.

Most importantly, the story will get a chance to breathe. As we adjust, the wings will spread a bit.

Looking forward to this day. But I have to say I’ll miss the intimacy of the work this team has accomplished in that smaller space. There was indeed a palpable tinge of sadness as we wrapped last night.

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: 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.

 

Sunday Morning Reading

Some culture, some politics, some tech, and some fun to share in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading. There’s also a bit of Picasso tossed into the mix. I’m in Memphis starting rehearsals for The Lehman Trilogy at Playhouse on the Square so life’s rhythms are a bit fractured currently, but life’s slower on the Mississippi.

Kicking it off, David Todd McCarty in We Could Be Heroes asks what do we do when mystery no longer sustains us after we’ve moved past enlightenment? I’m thinking the answer is either drink more or drink less. Pick your poison. Also check out his weekday daily columns here.

Susan B. Glaser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos explain How The American Right Came to Love Putin. My $.02? It’s simple. It’s not about Left and Right in the traditional sense. It’s about take what you can because the good guys have proven they can’t really stop you.

Ray Naler in Time Magazine has an excellent piece on Artificial Intelligence called AI and The Rise of Mediocrity. We’ve been rising/sinking to that level for awhile now. The pace is quickening.

Speaking of quickening, what was Twitter continues to quickly plunge into past tense. The Verge has an excellent and fun piece called Elon Musk Killed Twitter from a team of writers.

More and more journalism these days seems to be telling us what we already suspected, already surmised, or already knew. Jodi Kantor and Adam Lipton fill in a few blanks on how the disaster that was the Roe v Wade decision came down in Behind the Scenes at the Dismantling of Roe v Wade.

Jason Snell makes a case for Apple to develop its own clipboard manger for macOS. He’s right.

NatashaMH in The Madness of Pablo takes a walk into the wildside with Pablo Picasso.

Continuing on the art beat to wrap things up this week, have you ever asked What’s With Those Hilarious Medieval Portrayals of Animals? Well Elaine Velie did and wrote all about it.

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.