Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Something About Mary

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been reading a biography of Mary Martin, Some Enchanted Evenings. I always learn a lot from actor biographies, sometimes more than I ever wanted or needed to know, but I love finding ways to connect to other human beans. Like Mary Martin, I get good ideas in the shower, and, also like her, I don't like to see myself on camera or videotape. Here, on p. 316, the two came together: "So I said to myself one day in the shower--that's where I get all my famous ideas, like washing that man right outta my hair--I never saw myself on stage, so there really is no need for me to see myself now, or I might never go back on television." She was a hit on live television, as Peter Pan, and on various taped TV specials, but people loved her dearly onstage, alive and natural, full of energy, in that ephemeral art that is theatre. I think I hate seeing myself (taped live) from my basic shyness and introversion, and I sort of don't want to know how I do what I do. I don't want to be any more self-consciousness than I already am! A great thing about live theatre is to disappear into the moment that is shared--with other actors and with the audience and in & with the world imagined and created by the playwright first and then interpreted by theatre artists. Now, back to Siri Hustvedt, whose fiction and essays I have been reading all summer. Also reading & reviewing poetry for EIL, most recently Whirlwind @ Lesbos, by Risa Denenberg.

Monday, September 25, 2017

Earnest is Over


The Importance of Being Earnest, the play I was just in at Heartland Theatre, is over, and we struck the set on Sunday, and I am still catching up with my rest and my laundry! It was fun to be Lady Bracknell, and audiences had a great time discovering or rediscovering this very witty, utterly ridiculous play by Oscar Wilde. My daughter was surprised that such an old play could be so funny!!

I have been reading a biography of Mary Martin--Peter Pan! the original Maria in The Sound of Music on Broadway, Nellie Forbush in South Pacific!--and am comforted to know that she got just as nervous as I do! It almost makes me want to do a musical again. Almost...

Meanwhile, the world and our country have been falling apart, devastated by weather, politics, violence, and idiocy. Which is why we do need musicals and ridiculous plays sometimes....