I am avoiding the media today.
It is early and I have to get ready for classes, but September 11th always bites me in the ass.
For me it will always be the day that George W. Bush decided to start channeling a learning disabled version of Cato.
I will write more tonight after class, but I hate what this has become.
Since this is your most recent entry, and I was informed that if I read the blog, I had to comment on it, I will put my thoughts here. I haven’t read everything, but I can’t tell you how honored I am that you have shared this with me. I promise to respect your wishes about sharing it; although, I think it is beautifully written and SHOULD be shared.
It brought to mind this episode in my own life.
While you were building opera houses in your sandbox, I was similarly producing plays it the basement theatre on Orchard Lane. It was a ragtag affair, and I was usually reduced to playing all the parts, designing the sets, making the costumes and running the box office; which, considering most of our audience was comprised of mute stuffed animals with no money, was hardly that much of a strain.
We had a rather wide repertory at the Basement Playhouse, but most of the plays involved a sick, or dying heroine, and her sudden redemption at the last moment. There were almost always supernatural characters involved. Ghosts, fairies, goblins, and witches made regular appearances and were often the focus of minor and major sub-plots. Entrances made by flying were a favorite!
Opera was not unknown to us, and we made several attempts at presenting it, but we felt somewhat stymied by the fact that we had heard that all good Opera was in a foreign language (at least the ones we saw on PBS) and our language skills, though certainly precocious, hadn’t reached that level. The fact that no one could write music never seemed to be important however! Our most successful production was of Humperdink’s HANSEL AND GRETEL which was made possible by the aqusition of an English language recording for ‘young people’ that we lipsynced to while it played on a winnie the pooh record player. I played the witch, while two of my dolls, Abigail and Joey, handled the title roles.
It was a rousing success with our somewhat rareified audience and we quickly made plans to mount a production of a similar, albeit original, work in the more mainstream venue of the the detatched garage. This was a HUGE step for us as it would require a number of additional actors, sets that relied somewhat less on the power of imagination, sewn costumes, and the involvement of high level producers, i.e. my parents.
We had recently seen a production of “The Wizard of Oz” in a neighboring garage, so we fully understood the challenge. A real script would have to be written, with stage directions and scenes so that the newly engaged members of the company could actually do what they were supposed to do at the right time. There could be no stopping to say “ok, now you say this when I say this”. That was only acceptable for “downstairs” theatre which was usually attended by Teddy bears, rag dolls, and stuffed blue camels; this would be the “big time”!
I started to work on the script, an epic affair entitled THE ENCHANTED CASTLE, which included a love story involving the King of England and the Queen of France. There were also elves, goblins, a Unicorn (named Eunice), and a scene that evoked my favorite moment in the humperdink work; a chorus of fairies descended from above to protect and care for two of my characters. This would prove my undoing….
More to come