Read 'Til You Drop

Today is my first day of Writing Marathon for ANY OTHER FLAME.  (For those of you unfamiliar with the practice:  When I am under tight writing deadlines, I take a week of vacation from the day job and stay home to write.  My goal is to complete (draft and edit) a minimum of 5000 words a day.  With a good Marathon pace, I can complete 5000 words and draft (or edit) another 5000.  I usually start on a Saturday and end on the Sunday a week later, generating approximately 50,000 new words.)

Alas, this is an abbreviated Marathon - we spent last weekend down in Charlottesville at the Virginia Festival of the Book.  (Good time was had by all - my panel went swimmingly, I sold some books, left tons of signed stock in the local Barnes and Noble, and attended some amazing panels on topics as varied as "23 Amendments We Should Make to the Constitution" and "Nice Jewish Boys Gone Wild.")  I have about a zillion new books on my to-be-read list.

Marathon was further abbreviated by our attending Opening Night at the Nationals new stadium here in DC.  Despite the fact that baseball should never be played when the high temperature for the day is 44 degrees (er, Fahrenheit, if there was ever any doubt :-) ), we had a wonderful time.  The game was storybook perfect (23-year-old team hero gets a walk-off home run after the game was tied up at the top of the ninth.)  I provided a lap and chatter to my five-year-old neighbor when his mother went to find hot dogs in the fourth inning - I decided to accept with non-committal uh-huhs his statements that his first baseball game was when the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the World Series, that the Blue Jays had won back to back World Series in 1921 and 1922, and that he had seen Ty Cobb hit a home run that flew as far as the Capitol.  All new meaning to Fantasy Baseball :-)

In any case - I have 5000 words under my Marathon belt, and I'm in a good place for tomorrow's writing session.  If you're a writer, how do you handle your deadlines?  Are you a tortoise or a hare?  A sneaker-of-time-from-the-day-job or a setter-of-priorities-and-that-means-writing-first?  Or something in between?

Mindy, ready to decompress with dinner and Tivo

Arena Stage is hosting an Arthur Miller festival - productions of DEATH OF A SALESMAN and VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, running in repertory (with mostly the same actors in both productions, sharing the same stage, basic set design, lighting design, etc.)  A couple of things make this festival interesting to me:  1)  Arena is in the midst of renovating its theater, so the productions are being staged in an abandoned movie theater in an area of the DC metro area known mostly for office buildings; 2)  This is my first year in the past 21 that I have not ushered at Arena (due to time constraints, rather than the Recent Unpleasantness, reported here a couple of years ago.

We saw VIEW yesterday - the first time I'd seen the play, which I had never read.  It turns out that the cinema space works OK-not-great.  The acoustics weren't wonderful (although we were sitting in a sweet spot), and the stage felt very close to our eighth row seats.  Some of the blocking was contrived (mostly, to get furniture out of the way for fight scenes, because the production had only one set.)  The second act got melodramatic and more than a bit shrieky - I would have chosen to play the penultimate scene very quiet, to set off the final scene.

What struck me most about the play was the superb use of language.  Miller is *not* subtle (is Miller ever subtle)?  Foreshadowing hit the audience with a clue-by-four, from the narrator's first speech, to a substantial exchange of dialog in the first scene that tells you what's going to happen in the last scene.  And then there's that thing about showing a weapon in the first act....

Nevertheless, I found the dialog just about perfect in defining the characters.  I knew exactly who they were and what they were, by the way they shaped their sentences.  I knew the backstory in about thirty seconds.  For a two-hour production, the lines were about as lean and spare (especially in the first scene) as any I've seen.  All in all, an excellent production (although I liked it more than Mark did), and one that makes me look forward to SALESMAN in several weeks.

Oh - and it was strange to see ushers I've known for years, as a patron and not an usher.  Several of them looked at me like they knew me but couldn't place me, which amused me.

Mindy (who also got 5000 words written, as she moves into high gear on ANY OTHER FLAME)

This past weekend, we went to see Argonautika, a version of the story about Jason and the Argonauts, at the Shakespeare Theater.  The show was something out of the ordinary for the theater - of course, it isn't Shakespeare, and it didn't have any of the regular actors for the house; rather, it was an "import" from Berkeley.  The show covers dozens of scenes of classic Greek myth, settings that range from cities to islands to ships, dozens of actors portraying gods and goddesses, imaginary creatures large and small - in short, it's ambitious.

The production owed a huge amount to Julie Taymor, and the puppetry that she created for THE LION KING.  Some of the puppets were more successful than others - I thought the best was a rather standard marionette that was used to depict an infant - the puppeteer was able to manipulate both arms, both legs, and the head, tapping them on the floor and waving them in the air to simulate a very real baby's movement.  When the child is killed, the strings are cut, and the resulting "death" is so sudden and stark that it made me catch my breath.

But what interested me the most about the story was the nature of the storytelling.  This is a classic story similar to The Odyssey: guys goes on sea journey, has a lot of adventures, comes home.  Yeah, nominally, he's after the Golden Fleece, but that goal is almost incidental to the encounters along the way.

I'm in the middle of writing a synopsis write now for the Super Secret Project.  I am trying desperately to keep it from sounding like Argonautika:  First she goes here, then she goes there, then she goes to this third place.  I'm trying to create rhythm and drive and tension.

And I'm thinking a lot about the transition in storytelling over the past three thousand years, that made us go from telling a riveting sequential story to creating one that climbs in suspense.

Mindy, flexing her English-major muscles :-)

Sorry to have dropped off the face of the blogging world...  Here's where I've been, in a bit more than a nutshell:

• Parents came to visit, resulting in comic attempts to clean house, get new furniture situated, supervise installation of new blinds, etc.  Visit was lovely, fantastic, wonderful, and needful of being repeated far more frequently.
• Trip to National Building Museum, parents in tow.  The former Pension Administration building is mostly a giant empty space, with columns that remind me of an Egyptian temple.  The ground floor is given over to play-space for kids, with giant building blocks, smaller wooden construction tools, etc.  The specific exhibit we went to see, drawings by David Macaulay, was less interesting than I'd hoped, but the museum itself was great.
• Trip to Renwick, mother in tow.  The "craft" arm of the Smithsonian, the Renwick was hosting an exihibit on quilts and community.  There were two types of quilts that I'd never seen before, both created as fundraisers, and both represented by many examples.  The first takes names of donors and embroiders them on patches (as petals of flowers or as other design elements); the patches are then pieced and minimally quilted.  The second takes name of businesses and embroiders them, often with design elements.  There were also some traditional quilts, with some of the most detailed stitching I have ever seen.
• Kirov Ballet's performance of "La Bayadere".  For years, I've carped about the endless procession of 32 dancers in the Dance of the Shades, but this production won me over.  The company was superb, and I lost myself in this classic ballet.  (Not so much, surprisingly, in the Dance of the Golden God - which was good, but not as breathtaking as I've seen it in the past.)
• MAGIC AND THE MODERN GIRL.  Final edits are in, in, in.  Yea!
• SUPER SECRET PROJECT 2.  I am researching like a fiend, and I've started drafting chapters.  My agent is leaning on me rather heavily to get him something to submit sooner, sooner, sooner.
• Writer Weekend.  I got together with three other writer friends this weekend.  One had sold her first novel (go, Nancy!), so we were ostensibly getting together to discuss book marketing and promotion.  In reality, though, we ate a lot of food, drank a lot of wine, and talked, talked, talked...  I truly enjoyed the company of Maria V. Snyder and Jeri Smith-Ready, and I look forward to future get-togethers.

And those are the highlights.  My friends-list reading has been a bit ragged - point me toward treasures I've missed, if necessary!

Last night, Mark and I went to the Aimee Mann Christmas Show.  It was lots of fun - a variety show along the lines of Carol Burnett or Sonny and Cher, but with hip musicians and funny video clips and language that you would *never* hear on TV...  Alas, Aimee was suffering from a terrible cold, and her range was rather, um, limited.  She apologized several times but kept up her end of the bargain as emcee for the evening - the audience was tremendously supportive.

And, partway through the evening, Australian singer-songwriter Ben Lee performed "Numb" off his album, Ripe.  The lyrics begin:

I'm in surgery
It's an emergency
it just occurred to me
Ironically I caught a disease
They take a piece of me
Enjoy the scenery
Counting back from ten but
I will never fall asleep

And I had a perfect story idea.  The type of story idea that completely makes a novel.  The type of story idea that was so perfect for the book I want to write, so absolutely *brilliant* (if I do say so myself!) that I actually laughed out loud, grabbed the notebook out of my purse and scribbled away in the dim light of the Birchmere.

I'm taking eleven days off at Christmas (for the cost of only three vacation days, thanks the the alignment of holidays and relatively generous employer-designated holidays!)  I had planned on making the final edits to MAGIC AND THE MODERN GIRL. 

But now I get to invest some of that time in writing up a few chapters for the New and Improved Super Secret Project.

I can't wait.

Mindy, counting the days till Christmas, more eagerly than most small children

Yesterday, Mark and I went to a Smithsonian presentation - Marisa Tomei, Mario Batali, and Lidia Bastianich, all talking about the importance of food and family in Italian life (including film.)  It was a fun afternoon - there were some great one-liners (mostly delivered by Mario), and the questions from the audience didn't suck (which they usually do.)  There weren't necessarily great insights into the human condition, but there were lots of confirmations of things that I believe (e.g., families should eat together to share their lives on a regular basis, fresh food grown near the home requires precious little in the way of preparation...)

All in all, a fun afternoon.

After which, of course, we needed to get Italian food.  Not the gourmet, ornate preparations of veal type of Italian food, but the giant bowl of pasta, served family style type of Italian food.  We ended up going to Il Radicchio (which used to be a small local chain run by one of the areas premier chefs, Roberto Donna, but only one outpost survives, and I don't know if Donna is still associated with it.)  It matched our desires exactly - we had all-you-can-eat spaghetti, with little gravy boats of bolognese sauce and pesto.  It was wonderful - and neither of us overdid the "all you can eat" part.  Yea!

Home then, and packing then, and getting life organized then for another 9 days of travel...

Mindy, about to head out for her annual physical

That is the question... for friends of ours, who were supposed to accompany us to the matinee performance of HAMLET at the Shakespeare Theater.  They ended up with a family emergency, so they postponed their tickets, but Mark and I went.

And we really can't recommend that our friends hurry back from their emergency to get in to see this production.

The concept (such as there was) was that Hamlet was a petulant teenager.  He walks around with his shirt untucked; he throws himself over the furniture.  He sulks, and he sneers, and he perpetually runs his hands through his hair.  (All of this, before he starts feigning madness.)

Aside from the fact that he was just *annoying*, he was also utterly incomprehensible.  It was like listening to Hamlet performed by Marlon Brando, imitating Bob Dylan.  Lines were rushed and swallowed, and there was no attempt at phrasing or enunciation.

We see a lot of Shakespeare; we know that viewers need to work with the plays, need to adapt to the style of the language.  There was no adapting to this production, alas.

Other minuses:  most of the other performers were too soft-spoken to be heard, the second act slowed to a snail's pace, they brought on an arras for the Polonius stabbing that otherwise had no place in the set design, and the final scene (with death after death after death) was almost comic in its staging.

There were a few high points, though:  the moment when Gertrude starts to drink the pearl-laden wine (always one of my favorites), the dissembling by Horatio as he cradled the dead Hamlet (so that you couldn't still see Hamlet breathing), and a brilliant final lighting cue that left a light on Hamlet's white-white-white fencing jacket just a moment longer than any other lighting on stage.

Oh - and the language of the play itself.  Moreso than any other Shakespeare play, this one has carried itself into the vernacular.  The quotable phrases fly fast and furious.

Made me want to get home and write more of my Shakespeare quoting heroine, Jane Madison :-)

Mindy, glad that she's seen other productions at this theater, or she might not go back...

Last night, I went to see Sarah Ruhl's new play, Dead Man's Cell Phone, which is being premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, DC.  I'd seen other Ruhl plays and enjoyed them (although - in this former stage manager's humble opinion - they've had flaws.)

I *truly* enjoyed Dead Man's Cell Phone.  The plot is simple - a woman discovers that a man has passed away while sitting next to her in a cafe.  When his cell phone rings, she takes it, and she begins to meet his family and colleagues, making up stories about her life, his life, and the world in general.

The play had an offbeat tone - it was surreal, and it was satirical, and it was ironic.  The staging, which I thought was superb, emphasized the essential inhumanity of the characters, the fact that they were not real people.  The laugh lines came fast, and they were generally very well delivered.  (And, for once, most of the audience distinguished serious lines from humorous ones, and I didn't need to squirm with discomfort as people laughed at tragedy.)

Mark and I went, along with friends from our now-former ushering days.  (Oh - did I update you all on that?  After the Grand Debacle (read tags under "culture", go back about a year) at the end of the ushering season last year, I ushered all of this year and truly enjoyed some of the plays.  I also, though, am having trouble juggling all of my schedule, so I'm Leave-of-Absence-ing for the coming year, giving my fellow ushers and me a chance to see if we miss the gig.

Other than that, this weekend has been about rest, recuperation, and laundry - about what you'd expect after a month on the road!

Mindy, enjoying being home for ten full days!

Yet another in a frustrating series of quick updates...

Halloween in June was great fun - the folks at  The Christmas Attic had some *wonderful* virgin mojitos, were great company - and we even sold a few books.  I look forward to heading back in October, when SORCERY is out.

Last night, we went to see JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, out at Wolf Trap.  The staging was interesting, and the performances were generally very good.  I was more than a bit unnerved by the applause that Tim Neely (Jesus) got when he first appeared in a halo of white light, and when he's resurrected at the end.  The audience seemed to be reacting to far more than basic star power...

Juggle, juggle, run, run - I'm off to Kansas City and Chicago; short trips to each, but a challenge for packing.

And I'll try to check in with something substantive from the road...  

Mindy, wanting to put down roots for a week or two...

While in New York for BEA, I was able to take in a few sights around New York.  Because this information is getting dated even as I type, I'll reduce it to a few snapshots:

TALK RADIO - We went to see Liev Schreiber in this incredible play about an acerbic talk radio host who is spiritually dying every single moment that he's on air.  Schreiber was *superb*, it was the sort of performance that leaves you feeling wrung out, wondering how he can possibly press the "restart button" to do another show the next night (or twice in a day, on matinee days.)  Well worth the ticket price (especially with half price tickets from TKTS!)  We were five rows back, which let us see facial expressions perfectly.

COOPER HEWITT - We went to two exhibits - the Design Triennial, which showcased design successes in a huge variety of fields (architecture, clothing, electronics, etc)  Some were interactive displays, some were simply breathtaking.  All were interesting.  The second exhibit was the perfect "compare and contrast" - it was called Design For The Other 90%, and it was about high concept design for the world's poor (things like a water carrier, shaped like a barrel with a hole through the long axis so that people can roll gallons of water rather than carry them.)  It was stunning to see cost-effective ingenuity.

NEW YORK CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY - We prowled through the building, gasping at the public reading room and playing a little with the electronic resources.  We are such geeks!

We also got to see my brother-in-law, eat at a couple of great (but not chi-chi) restaurants, and generally have a great little vacation around the business of BEA!

Mindy, really heading into the day job now!

For those in the DC area...

On April 11, at 7:30 p.m. at the Tenley Interim Branch of the DC Public Library, several SF writers are going to be conducting a rapid fire reading (each author reads for five minutes).  Alas, I won't be able to attend, but those of you who are local and available should not pass up this chance - there are some *great* writers (and great "performers") who will be reading.  The list includes:

Nan Fry
Benjamin Rosenbaum
Tom Doyle
Craig Laurence Gidney
R.R. Angell
David Louis Edelman
Cecil Washington
Constance Warner
Nancy Jane Moore
and maybe Stephanie Dray

The library is at 4200 Wisconsin Ave. N.W.  (very close to the Tenleytown Metro Station on the red line.)  The library's phone number is 202-244-3212.

I hope folks go, and then report back here!

Mindy, with too many things on her calendar...

Yesterday, I ushered Frankie and Johnny, at Arena Stage.  I'd heard about the play before, but I'd never seen it.  In fact, what I'd heard got crossed in my mind with some other story - I was expecting some brutal domination play about how men treat women like possessions (and worse) - sort of a Harold Pinter meets Sam Shepard in a Terence McNally (who really *did* write this) play.

Instead, I was treated to a wonderful dialog on the nature of intimacy - physical (as the house manager said, most plays climax in the *final* scene, not the first - and no, that's not a spoiler, because once the curtain goes up, well...) but also emotional.  Primarily emotional. 

The two main characters are "everyman" and "everywoman", except that they have very little in common with most of the people that I work and live with, day in, day out.  They are middle-aged (OK, so that's not so foreign :-) ), under-educated (Frankie never finished high school), working class (she's a waitress; he's a short-order cook), paycheck-to-paycheck people.  They're also dreamers, romantics, hope-ers, wish-ers.  The depiction of this couple was crucially, essentially honest.

Honesty isn't a trait I've been striving for in the GIRL'S GUIDE books - it's not one of they key features of the genre, after all.  But I still love seeing it portrayed, in vibrant, living color.

Mindy, who would have found the play *devastating* at other times in her life...

No, I didn't travel to Rome this past weekend.  Well, not really.  As in, I didn't get on an airplane and actually *go* anywhere.  But I attended a full day seminar at the Smithsonian, a four-lecture seminar by a friend, Nigel McGilchrist.  Nigel is a *font* of information about art and architecture, and I've enjoyed his lectures in the past (which have covered topics like classical Greek influences in contemporary architecture, and the growth of individualism in Renaissance art, and the actual techniques for tempera painting and fresco painting, etc.)  Nigel is the sort of lecturer who makes his audience feel smarter, merely by listening to him.  He lays out a series of dots and then connects them up - but that makes him sound pedantic and boring.  He is one of the most entertaining and informative lecturers I've ever heard (even when - *especially* when - technology fails him, and he needs to improvise patter while a balky slide machine, or two, or three were fixed.)

Having spent the day as students on Saturday, Mark and I spent Sunday as hosts, inviting some friends over for brunch with Nigel.  We had a wonderfully relaxed meal, catching up on writing and Italian politics and life in general.

All in all?  A perfect weekend.

If you could travel anywhere in the world for 10 days (no, you can't sneak more time from your busy schedule) where would you go?

Mindy, off to enjoy her first day of freedom between jobs, impersonating a shopping queen!

Yesterday, Mark and I went to see Richard III at the Shakespeare Theater.  This was at least the fourth production of the play I've seen (not counting the play-within-a-movie of The Goodbye Girl, which saved my butt in a college class, when I hadn't done my reading.)  As with all Shakespeare Theater shows, the production values were *incredible* - the set was grimy and dark and industrial and canted at a 30 degree angle that made my eyes question everything else that I saw onstage.  The costumes were close-to-medieval - kirtles and furs that were intended to warm people in drafty castles and leather that was pretty close to a once-living animal.

Alas, the production itself was grim - long (3.25 hours), sometimes preachy, sometimes winding and political, very physically dark so that they eye had few things to relieve it.  The actor playing Richard was an understudy (as was the actor playing Edward IV), resulting in a cascade of cast  replacements, so that a total of six roles were changed.  I was actually pretty impressed that *any* understudy could master all of the lines and all of the blocking - Richard is in the vast majority of the scenes.  This understudy did a great job - he stumbled over a couple of lines, but recovered, and in character.

Oh - and he looked like Hugh Laurie.  A *lot* like Hugh Laurie.  Enough that three out of five of our party remarked on it first thing, and the other two don't watch House.  So, even if he'd flubbed every line,  I would not have been completely discontent :-)

This morning, Mark (my home clipping service) read to me an article in the New York Times about all the outcry and hoopla that this year's Newbery Award winner has the word SCROTUM on the first page.  I was going to write a brilliant little essay about how absurd the entire discussion is, and I was going to explain that most librarians are in the business of expanding kids' minds, rather than contracting them.  But then, Naomi Kritzer wrote the essay for me.  I can't add to anything she said, so I'll just advise you to read her words.

Discontent, indeed.

Mindy, watching the sky go from flurries to sunshine, repeatedly

On Tuesday night (yes, I'm just getting around to typing about it now - so what? :-) ), Mark and I went to a lecture at the Smithsonian.  The topic was Medieval Cathedrals of France, and the lecturer was a new-to-us art historian.  The Smithsonian has played with their lecture formats over the years - more and more often, they have day-long seminars (too much of a time commitment, generally, unless we *know* they'll be spectacular), or two-hour evening sessions (which this was) instead of the old one-hour format, which both Mark and I prefer.

In any case - the lecture had some amazing nuggets in it.  The lecturer compared the doorways of the cathedrals to Roman victory arches, using photographs to make her case very effectively.  She ended by stating that the successor architecture in the "modern" world was the Brooklyn Bridge - again, with a lovely slide to illustrate the Gothic arches on that structure.  She had amazing slides of cathedral interiors, illustrating the soaring heights reached in relatively few decades, as medieval architects and engineers figured out what they were doing.

But the presentation of the entire two-hour lecture was horrific.  The lecturer could not figure out how to use the lapel mike, and she repeatedly threw her hands into the lectern mike.  She fumbled in and out of her slideshow presentation, and she was unable to locate the second half of her presentation - on her own computer - for an excruciating five minutes or so.  She read her lecture, which was written for some scholarly publication, and there was not a single fifty-cent word that she used when a five-dollar one could be put into place.  She tortured the language with -ize and -ate nouns (verbing her nouns), and she mis-pronounced many words. 

We seriously considered leaving at the break, but we didn't - because a lot of her *content* was good.  But if you're ever called upon to speak, make sure that you know how to use your tools.  And target your specific audience, both with language and with presentation style.

Where have you suffered disconnects in content and presentation?  And did you tough it out?  Or cash in your chips?

Mindy, pleased to have learned something, but frustrated, all the same

I'll return you to your regularly-scheduled posting soon.  Until then, a few more snapshots...

• Went to see THE GOOD SHEPHERD.  While it didn't require as much brain-power as, say, Syriana, I found myself a bit lost for bits of the story - mostly because every single man (except for Matt Damon and William Hurt) looked the same in the first half of the movie.  (Reminded me of a production of Richard III that I saw, which was set between the Wars.  Couldn't figure out a single one of the characters, or see who was talking when, because the theater was huuuuuge...)
• Took a day as Museum Day, to see an exhibit on Bibles From Before the Year 1000 at the Sackler (including some amazing purple-dyed parchment pages, created for early Roman emperors, using silver ink), Netherlandish Diptychs at the National Gallery (I continue to love medieval and Renaissance painting, for the symbolism, although this exhibit became a contest to see if any single artist could place Mary's breasts remotely in the correct physiological orientation), and black and white photographs of New York, also at the National Gallery.  We finished the museum trip with a double gelato (peppermint and chocolate for me, in honor of the season) and left around 1:00, as the hordes of tourists were arriving.
• Switched offices at home.  I used to use the back room on the ground floor for my writing office, but I gave it to Mark when he moved in, to accommodate one of his cats, Yaz, who did not play well with others.  (The back office has doors; the front does not.)  Alas, Yaz is no longer with us, so we decided to revert to the original office plan.  That entailed moving five desks, five computers, and hundreds of books (no, the books aren't all moved yet).  But we got a tremendous feeling of satisfaction.  :-)
• Had dinner with friends, relaxing, and eating way too much Italian food, and frosted sugar cookies.  These friends are good ones, and we truly enjoy their company.  But it was a little surprising for us subway-hounds to realize that we spent over $7.50 just traveling to their house (two gallons of gas, plus $2.50 in tolls.)  Makes the likely rise in subway fares sound a bit more reasonable...
• Went to see CASINO ROYALE.  For years, I *hated* Bond movies with a passion - mostly because I was totally and completely embarrassed by the sexist jokes in them.  I totally and completely flipped for this one, though.  I enjoyed the chase scenes, laughed out loud at the jokes, saw the ending coming from a mile away, and still loved it.  Fun.  Frolic.  Nothing wrong with that.

OK...  Off to more book-shifting...

Mindy, who's going to have a hard time shifting back to the working life

This past weekend was Usher Weekend at Arena Stage - I ushered a matinee on Saturday, and another on Sunday.  (We needed to shift one show from our usual date, because of the Thanksgiving holiday.)

The first show, SHE LOVES ME, was a little jewel of a show.  It's set in 1930's Budapest, in a parfumerie (which was created on stage with lighted glass boxes that rose up from the floor, filled with shimmering bottles and containers - a perfect complement to the show.)  The musical is based on a play, which also became a movie in the 40's (or 50's?) and in the 90's - it's YOU'VE GOT MAIL, in one of its earlier iterations.  Of course, Mark and I were Extremely Amused at the notion of a couple meeting in writing before they met in person (for newcomers:  I met my husband on Match.com).  And we were Tickled Pink by the song about finding true love in a library.  All in all, a fun afternoon.

But the second show, NOISES OFF, was one of the most successful shows I've ever seen.  Written by Michael Frayne (whose extraordinarily different work I saw in COPENHAGEN), NOISES OFF is a farce about a theater company staging a farce.  The first act of the play is a dress rehearsal for the play-within-a-play.  The second act is what goes on backstage, on opening night.  The third act is what goes on onstage, later in the run.

The writing is brilliant - it tells the audience what to expect (at the dress rehearsal) and then plays with those expectations throughout.  The characters are sharply drawn - there's no attempt to make them realistic (there's the Ingenue; there's the Leading Man, etc), but they work like expert bits in a machine. 

And the show is funny.  Hilariously funny.  Laugh-out-loud until your sides hurt, your cheeks ache, and tears are streaming down your face funny.

I've often told people that I'm a humorless bitch, and that they shouldn't look to me to be amused by movies, plays, books, etc that most people find amusing.  But everything about NOISES OFF just *worked* for me.  If you're in or around DC, check it out - the official run starts this week.

Mindy, thinking about the nature of comedy and how to make it work...

Last night, we went to see MOVIN' OUT, a dance/musical based on Billy Joel songs, with choreography by Twyla Tharp.  I wasn't really sure what to expect - they've been running stupid ads on TV - the type where they interview Real!  Live!  Audience Members!  after a show and everyone raves.  Usually, those ads mean a show has tanked, and they're trying desperately to build an audience without spending any money.

I truly enjoyed the production - despite the fact that we were in nosebleed seats.  Despite the fact that the very front of the stage was not visible from our seats.  Despite the fact that the lighting designer neglected to consider our seats when designing Brechtian-alienation light cues with banks of brilliant lights set on Stun.

The story strings along Billy Joel songs, starting with Brenda and Eddie in "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" - set in the early 60's - leading to Eddie and his friends Tony (Anthony from "Movin' Out) and the eponymous James, heading off to Vietnam to fight.  I found the Vietnam scenes, and the returning-vet scenes to be truly emotionally affecting.  The dance style was primarily Big Musical Dance Number; however, there were some beautiful, delicate ballet-ish pas de deux.  Eddie had some *incredible* jump sequences and spin sequences, all conducted (intentionally) without a single straight vertical line for balance.

All in all - a good evening, made better because my expectations weren't sky-high.

There were lots of groups at the theater - large families of adults, groups of college-age-ish friends. 

'Tis the Season!

Part of my enjoyment of the show was knowing the music backwards and forwards.  I'm not a big music person; I don't know jillions of songs, and what little music knowledge I have stopped in the mid-80's.  But I could have sung along with all-but-one of the songs in the show last night.  Which albums do you know by heart?

Mindy, humming to herself today

This weekend, we attended the Shakespeare Theatre's production of The Beaux' Strategem, by George Farquhar. And by Thornton Wilder. And by Ken Ludwig. The play is a restoration comedy that Wilder started to update several several decades ago. Wilder's updates were found after his death, and the job was completed by Ken Ludwig, a contemporary playwright.

I'm not big on Restoration comedies. I'm not big on rakes, broad physical humor, battles between the sexes that are predicated on complete and utter stereotypes, and laugh lines delivered so pointedly that the actors must stop and wink at the audience to make sure that their points have been made.

I loved The Beaux' Strategem.

The re-writing updated the language and the plot enough that the comedy was inherent in the play, rather than fighting it. The actors were uniformly good, with an excellent female lead, Lady Sullen, played by Veanne Cox. The costumes were lush, and the sets were intricate (structured on two turntables, so that scene changes took place by splitting the sets into concentric circles that interlocked into new spaces, smoothly and in surprising ways.

Ordinarily, I dread the non-Shakespeare plays of the season, but the Strategem was a thoroughly enjoyable breath of fresh air.

Anybody else have any culture they want to share? Messiah sing-alongs? Caroling parties?

Mindy, fa-la-la-la-ing her way through the holidays :-)

Oh - one more thing that we did while on the West Coast - a big enough thing that I was going to lead off my trip summary with it, but then I forgot. (Yeah, well, that's what I get for posting before caffeine!)

We saw the Dead Sea Scrolls. No. Not all of them. But a dozen or more bits of them. And an amazing exhibit at the Pacific Science Center, explaining how they were found, excavated, interpreted, and preserved (or not.) The exhibit included all sorts of information about the Essenes (the people who created the Scrolls) and daily life in Qumran (the dessicated, remote hill town where the Essenes lived.)

My mind ran on three tracks throughout the exhibit. One track concerned the actual artifacts we were viewing ("isn't it interesting that parchment, papyrus, and sandal leather can survive for more than 2000 years?") One track concerned the presentation of those artifacts ("the museum is doing wonderful things to make this exhibit interactive, for both adults and children!")

And one track concerned the fantasy novel I could write about the Essenes. Those people had a passion for physical and spiritual cleanliness, and their lives revolved around purifying rituals. They may or may not have copied out scrolls on great long tables, and they may or may not have permitted women into their compound. (If they did not, then men took on stereotypically female activities, such as weaving.)

In short, the day was superbly spent.

And now I need to learn more.

And read more.

And write more.

Mindy, wishing she could have bought a great big box of "time" in the gift shop.