When it rains...

...it pours down the back wall of theatre! During rehearsal. Or, earlier this season, during a performance, at which a loyal audience member simply put his rain poncho back on and kept watching the show. Yes, we had a downpour last night, a leak onstage (bucket!), and a leak backstage, in a storage area for the town, drenching a scary-looking electrical device. A guy came and rigged up a tarp. Maybe he could rig up a similar tarp over the audience before we open on September 11!

And/or maybe it won't rain between September 11 and September 28, except on the dark nights. Sigh... I'd be happy to send our rain to California! But, as we say around my house, "it'll all work out."

Up today at Escape Into Life is Scott Klavan's public talk, delivered in July to Heartland Theatre patrons and interested playwrights, as part of the Mike Dobbins Memorial New Plays from the Heartland. The art by Adrian Samson matches the inspirational aspect and the humor of Scott's speech.

Not to mention the fish! The Heartland poster, on the theme of Escape, featured a goldfish leaping from its bowl!

In Samson's Garden Fish, the fish swim like birds in the garden!

Curable Romantic

It's been a week of doctors. My annual physical rolls around in August, and I've already done the follow-up mammogram and bone density scan, thanks to the Gale Keeran Center for Women. I had an eye exam and have ordered glasses online, which means my Facebook feed is inundated with snazzy frames. And I'm reading A Curable Romantic, by Joseph Skibell, a fun way of doing more research on Doktoro Esperanto, or L.L. Zamenhof, for the play I'm directing, The Language Archive. The narrator of the book, here wearing opera glasses, is also an eye doctor, Dr. Jakob Sammelsohn, whose name resonates wonderfully, we learn at the end of part one, in a way I will not spoil for you now.

Sadly, Gale Keeran was not curable; hence, the center in her name. Thank you, Jim Keeran. I have always been delighted that Jim's first date with Gale was watching The Fantasticks at my high school. She was the choreographer, and I was Luisa. I guess she got me to dance!

Here's a book that sounds interesting: Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life, by Abigail Thomas, reviewed at Escape Into Life by Julie C. Graham, who describes the book as a nonlinear memoir. Thomas, too, was married to someone incurable, though it sounds like she was nursing him when he was her ex.

And in a poignant full circle, Dr. Basel Al-Aswad tells us, four years later, about mentoring young doctors on the night he lost his son, Chris, who founded Escape Into Life.

It's possible I'm a curable romantic. Life has surely taught me much, softened and mellowed me, yes, and also toughened me, opened my myopic, operatic eyes, and left me laughing.

Atmospheric Shift

All around me, people are hurting. And surviving. Coping and healing. Grieving. It's happening in the world and in my town. My son visited this weekend, and we went to hear Grandma read poems at a McLean County Barn Quilt Heritage Trail event. Wonderful. But I didn't realize there'd be a barn quilt and a poem for Michael Collins, and that his family would be there, too. So I wept through that poem. (MC Strong) The weather turned hot and humid, just in time for the start of school, making it really August and somehow stirring the air thick with woe. Troubles poured down like the sudden rain that cleared the air last night. And now here's this magnolia in an enamel cup in case you need a cup of beauty. (Jonathan Koch)

Turtle Dancing

Today, during the pouring rain, my mom and I went mall walking--a nice way to catch up and get a little exercise; she's practicing for being a tour guide in the annual cemetery walk this October, and I'll be an actor in the same walk, so I should practice 1) my lines 2) standing up for hours outside, mist* or shine 3) not peeing.**

We are synchronized in another way, too. She's been reading a biography of Somerset Maugham and re-reading some of his stories. And I've been reading a biography of Anton Chekhov and re-reading a couple of his stories, "The Bet" and "Ward Six."

In that magical way that various things align when one is so attuned, I find Chekhov's view aligning with that of Julia Cho in The Language Archive. Introducing "Ward No. 6," the anthologists say, about Chekhov's work, "the tragedy and pathos of life is caused by human beings themselves, not by society but by their failure to respond to or even communicate with one another." That happens in Cho's play, at times, just as it does in Chekhov's plays and stories. Likewise, "No other writer except Gogol possesses so fully the genius for arousing laughter mixed with tears." Such a mix is crucial to Cho's play, as well as Chekhov's, which he so often considered comedies, even if his audiences (and the Moscow Art Theater) didn't. Tee hee, sigh...

Speaking of Russian writer-doctors, I've seen a couple episodes of A Young Doctor's Notebook, starring John Hamm, based on the works of Mikhail Bulgakov, who also wrote The Master and Margarita, one of my favorite books of all time. It's a mix of comedy and tragedy, too. (Read this.)

OK, students are after me tonight. I just bought Christmas wrapping paper to finance a junior high field trip. And a DePaul student called to thank me for my annual contribution and solicit a new one. We discussed turtle dancing, oddly enough.***

*When it's pouring rain, we perform in a mausoleum or a garage.
**The mall has bathrooms. The cemetery has a porta-potty.
***In the context of dressage and fashion design. Which makes it a Random Coinciday in the blog.

Chekhovian

I'm reading a Chekhov biography, a gift from Scott Klavan after his New Plays from the Heartland visit. It hits the spot, as my favorite stage direction--(through tears)--is Chekhovian. The Moscow Art Theater is about to do The Seagull. Chekhov is coughing his lungs out.

Meanwhile, in real time, I'm enjoying my directing gig at Heartland Theatre and continuing my editing gig at Escape Into Life. Up today: the Kristin Berkey-Abbott poetry feature with art by Lara Scarr. A sort of mixed-media, textile-collage, Russian doll-cocoon-papoose thing going on there (and here). Last week, a little compare-contrast essay on the poetry of roof repair.

God, I love my job(s).

I've also begun another session as an instructor with Young at Heartland, a senior acting troupe, and a joyful and energetic bunch. And Sunday I got to meet a great bunch of young people from Israel, here in town with the Friends Forever program. Getting to know each other in the USA in ways they can't back home.

(through tears) It's good to be around all this good energy.