Opera Pacific’s production of Donizetti’s Elixir of Love opened last night.

Or should I say, will open tomorrow. Last night was technically a preview, but to me the preview performance always seems like opening night since it’s the first time we run the full show in front of a live audience.

The production was looking a bit dodgy a week ago, but we’re running on all cylinders now and Elixir was very well received by the audience on Monday. I do believe this is the most interesting production we’ve done this season.

Sadly, it does not seems to be selling very well, which is a shame because the concept is fresh and accessible. Rather than being set in a rural village, the production takes place in a west Texas diner in the 1950s. Nemorino is a mechanic, Adina owns the diner, Belcore is a sergeant in the U.S. Army, and Dr. Dulcamara rides into town in a ‘56 Ford Fairlane.

Me? I’m the fry cook in Adina’s diner, doling out the greasy food and keeping the hungry masses fed.

It’s a living.

If this Elixir is half as much fun to watch as it is to perform, the notices should be excellent. Speaking of which, the Orange County Register has an interview with our director.

“It begs a question to a certain extent,” Parry says, “why do a relocation, why update, why change these things from originals? I think that it’s sort of like when you present something on the wall of the Louvre. If you present something as a museum piece, it’s beautiful and it has a lot of value, but it’s something that an audience, a spectator, can leave at arm’s length. You know, it’s on the wall, it’s something of a different time, of a different place, of somewhere other than what we know. So we as an audience become a little bit uninvolved, we’re appreciating as spectators.

“Whereas if we bring it into the 1950s, that is something that the audience has either lived through or has some cultural references about – and into America, again where an audience is familiar with a lot of the signs and signals. It becomes a piece that we can interact with, that we can involve ourselves with in a more personal way. And so we’re no longer spectators.”

The diner itself is a bit of a grungy place, as you’d expect, and features a pair of counters with stools and a cash register. The set revolves to reveal a porch with a couch, newspaper stand, a Coke machine and gas pumps around the side. Around the back another scene is set in front of a public restroom, with a payphone nearby.

“It’s not just decor,” Parry says, “… but in a sense they are things that we have a cultural resonance with.” The idea is to make the characters and situations more immediate for a modern audience.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Ah, the poor old Irvine World News.  This is the Rodney Dangerfield of newsprint, a hometown paper which is printed once a week.

It gets little respect, probably because they give it away for free.  ”You get what you pay for” and all that.  Plus, it really does confine itself to the world of Irvine.  That fact alone makes the paper worthless to most of Orange County, I’d think.  They don’t care about the happenings in Irvine any more than I care about the minutia of life in Brea.

More often than not, the World News is “delivered” to my house by a paperboy who throws it onto the ground behind — or more often, underneath — my car.  The issue typically remains hidden there until it’s crushed by the tires of my Eclipse.

Like I said, little respect.

Even so, the paper published an article about me in today’s issue.  Opera Pacific has been making an effort to better publicize our productions, and as part of this push they’re trying to highlight members of the company.  I guess they found me interesting because of the aviation angle.

Anyway, I’ve got a PDF file available if you’re interested in reading it.

Oh yeah, I have a web site.

Sort of forgot about that for the past few weeks.

It’s understandable. I’ve either been out at the airport trying to keep my students from wreaking havoc on the runway, or in rehearsals for Samson et Delilah at Opera Pacific. Typically I’m flying from 9 am to 5 pm and then in rehearsal from 7 pm to 10 pm. Thankfully, the show will be over by the end of February and I’ll be able to return to some semblance of normalcy.

The flying has been interesting. It’s been so long since I was a student pilot that I forgot how every little thing needs to be taught and explained. Over time, so much of what goes on in the cockpit becomes second nature, and like driving a car with a manual transmission, you perform relatively complex tasks without even thinking about them. The other thing that takes a lot of getting used to is the fact that I don’t really fly much. I’m up there instructing, but the student is the one on the controls. It’s one of the less appealing aspects of working as a CFI.

I’ve got about ten students right now. Some are primary students learning how to fly for the first time. A couple are “refreshers” for pilots are certificated but haven’t flown in a while. One is a commercial applicant, and another is just finishing his instrument rating.

When not occupied with students, I’ve been getting checked out to instruct in as many of Sunrise’s airplanes as possible. The fleet is pretty diverse:

• C152
• C172P
• C172R/S
• C1172RG
• Citabria
• Decathlon
• DA-20 Eclipse
• DA-40 Diamond Star
• Cirrus SR-20
• Cirrus SR-22
• Pitts S-2B
• Extra 300L

Each aircraft requires in depth study of the POH, completion of a detailed aircraft checkout form, and at least one flight with a check pilot for that model. I’m also completing the standardization process for teaching instrument, commercial, and aerobatic courses. That’s a whole other ordeal, complete with DVDs to watch, forms to fill out, questions to answer, etc.

My goal is to be able to teach anyone who comes in the door in any airplane on the line. The problem is that these checkout flights are not free — I have to pay for them, and the aircraft rental rates vary between $100 and $300 per hour. So far I’ve been working full time at Sunrise for a month and have yet to receive a dollar. The next few paychecks are probably going to be for zero dollars, too, as the money goes to reimburse Sunrise.

And you thought “pay for training” was dead. Ah, aviation…

Speaking of flight instructing, I encountered my old instrument instructor the other day. He’s now flying for West Coast Charters, and stopped in at Sunrise to say hello. I bought him lunch and we got caught up. It made me feel great to see him moving up the ladder, because he was one of the guys caught in the post-9/11 slowdown and spent a long time working a very un-glamourous job as a line guy to make ends meet. I recall going in to Sunrise one day shortly after 9/11 and seeing everyone just sitting around, doing nothing. I asked my instructor how bad things were and he said he’d earned nothing for more than a week. Lord willing, we’ll never have to go through that again.

Anyway, enough about flying. The opera scene is a bit more conventional. Samson is going to be a great show! Opera Pacific has a ballet company on site training for the opera, and the music is exhilerating, if somewhat tough to memorize. Staging rehearsals start tomorrow, by which time we’re technically supposed to have this show memorized. It ain’t gonna happen, but somehow we always squeak by in staging while scrambling to get the libretto stored in (very) short term memory.

Over the years I’ve developed a way of doing this while being able to release the information once the show is over. Some operas I’ll never forget — Carmen, Aida, Rigoletto, Hoffman, Carmina Burana — either because we had enough rehearsal, or have done them multiple times. Others, like the Mozart shows, are completely forgettable.

So that’s the a brief update on things here at the House of Rapp. Once the standardization is done at Sunrise and the opera is over, I hope to have more time to write. And ironically, maybe do a bit of flying myself. I do miss those times when I’d just head out to the airport on a lark and take my plane up for an hour or so to watch the sunset. No students to teach, no clock to watch, no practice area traffic to deal with. Just me and my plane up there in the sky for no particular reason at all.

I received an email from a fellow musician that bodes ill for the future of the performing arts. It’s bad enough that the arts have essentially been eliminated in our schools. Must professional theatres go the same way? If major arts facilities don’t understand this issue…. well, I just wonder who’s going to pay $100 (or more) for a ticket to see a show that’s not even played live.

On Tuesday December 21, 2004 the musical show “Oliver” will open at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. This show is traveling with a machine known as the Virtual Orchestra. This machine uses digital sampling to record and replace live musicians in the pit.

This is a very real threat to the future of live music. The Virtual Orchestra jeopardizes every phase of the music business. Last year the Broadway musical theatres in New York City were closed for three days as singers, dancers and stagehands joined with musicians in refusing to work with this device. As a result there is no Virtual Orchestra on Broadway.

On Tuesday December 21, 2004 Local 7 will be distributing leaflets to the opening night audience. To be noticed and taken seriously we must have a large number of people participating. You as a practitioner of the art of making music owe it to yourself, as well as to all musicians who have come before you and who are yet to come, to standup to this attack on our profession.

The Orange County Performing Arts Center by its very name proclaims to be dedicated to the performing arts. To replace musicians with this mechanical device is a betrayal of the purpose for which this magnificent structure was conceived, funded and erected. It cannot be allowed to contribute to the decline of music performance by employing the Virtual Orchestra as a cost saving device without hearing from us.

I’m in Las Vegas until the 21st, so I won’t be able to be there. But “canned” music bothers me, because when I lived in Las Vegas in the late 80’s, the hotels on the Strip decided to save money by replacing live musicians in the orchestra pit with taped music. The musician’s union went on strike at every hotel in town. They stayed on the picket lines for literally years. Eventually they just stopped picketing, the battle lost. And today, there’s not a live orchestra left anywhere on the Strip that I know of.

I updated the colophon page to read a little more like a personal narrative and a bit less like a legal brief. The only things it was missing were the double spacing and line numbers.

Hopefully it’s now more entertaining, easier to read, lower in calories, and will cause the reader to buy the world a Coke and teach them to sing in perfect harmony.

I’m all about setting reasonable expectations.

Speaking of harmonies, today is closing night for Turandot. Which is a bit of misnomer since we close with a matinee. Nevertheless, I’ve enjoyed this production. It’s been somewhat of a meat market backstage, but that’s what happens when the cast is young and nearly 100 in number. The audiences have given standing ovations every night, rare for an Orange County crowd. I have a feeling the next production (Mozart!) won’t produce the same response from the populi…

And with that, I’m off to the theatre.

Turandot has finally opened. My thirty third opera. Damn that’s a lot of singing.

In keeping with the theatrical tradition of ‘bad dress / good opening’, our preview performance started off so dismally that we re-ran half of the first act after the show was over. Apparently we’re supposed to be singing behind the conductor, not with him. First time I’ve ever heard that.

The opera goes by surprisingly fast. I guess that’s what happens when you’re on stage the whole evening rather than sitting in the green room for two hours between entrances, a la Mozart. I’m enjoying the show immensely. Liu’s death scene in Act III is one of the finest parts of the opera, not on in the way Puccini wrote it, but in the way our Liu — Zvetelina Vassileva — sings it. In general, there’s a lot of energy in this show. The cast is huge. I think I counted something like 100 people, and that doesn’t include the 70 musicians in the orchestra, the backstage banda, the stage managers, dressers, and crew.

We’ve got four more performances, then it’s back to studying for the December CFI course in Las Vegas. I’ll be sad when this show ends, because it’ll be the last one that Paul and I do together. Opera without Paul is going to suck. I come up with all these brilliantly hairbrained schemes for funny stuff, and he’s always willing to act on them. Add in some Seinfeld and Jack Daniels, and you’ve got a brilliant combination.

During tech week, I managed to get in some glider flying from the back seat and received the signoff for my commercial checkride. Flying from the rear seat is about what I expected. The control stick in the rear seat has a shorter throw than the one in the front, which is an advantage because it’s easier to put in full control deflection, and I do that fairly frequently for things like no-dive-brake landings. Being in the rear seat also makes it tough to see the instruments since they’re all in the front cockpit, but it’s not a huge deal.

I’m a little nervous about this test, because I’ve never had to fly with the FAA before. The only pilot examiner for commercial glider ratings in the area is an FAA employee. On all my previous checkrides, I’ve been tested by a Designated Pilot Examiner. DPEs are independent contractors designated by the FAA to give practical tests for ratings and certificates. There’s no reason to be apprehensive about it. Every examiner works from the same book, the Practical Test Standards, so in theory it doesn’t matter who the examiner is. In theory.

There is one positive aspect to flying with an FAA examiner: it’s free. DPEs charge for their services, usually to the tune of $350 or so.

I’m hoping to get this checkride out of the way before the end of November because the current examiner is retiring and the new guy will probably be pretty stringent and by-the-book on his first few checkrides. I’d rather not slog through a four hour oral and two hour flight for a simple commercial glider add-on rating. If nothing else, I’ve been prepared for the way the current examiner likes to run his checkrides. With a new guy, it’s a total crapshoot. No one knows his history because he won’t have one yet.

I’ve never been a big fan of Mozart operas.

Now before you recoil in horror, I’ll freely admit that people far more erudite than I find his work to be the most well-crafted in the entire operatic repertoire. But to me, the stories and music of that period just don’t measure up to the more fully developed (though less structured) work of cats like Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, Offenbach, Bizet, etc.

But perhaps Mozart can be compelling if you twist it hard enough:

BERLIN, Germany (AP) — A Mozart opera modernized to feature prostitutes, full-frontal nudity, drugs and sadistic violence has created a storm in Berlin. The premiere of The Abduction from the Seraglio at the Komische Oper last week was met with shouts of “Scandal!” and “That’s not Mozart!,” and threats by opera house sponsor DaimlerChrysler that it would pull its $24,000 annual funding.

Did anyone else notice the irony of the company name? Komische Oper = “Comic Opera”

Perhaps the real story here is actually the director, to whom I give major style points for at least being consistent:

Two years ago, Bieito’s production of Verdi’s A Masked Ball at the English National Opera was panned by British critics for its nudity, simulated gang rape and cross-dressing. Tenor Julian Gavin withdrew from the lead role before rehearsals started because of the staging.

Bieito’s 2001 production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the ENO was booed on opening night. In that staging, Don Giovanni had sex in the back of a car and behind a bar, and instead of being dragged down to hell in the closing scene, he was stabbed to death by the characters whose lives he defiled.

That sounds about right.

My ninth opera season is officially over. I’m sitting here doing a mental comparison between the 1999 production of Pagliacci & Carmina Burana and the one we just finished.

This one certainly seemed like a lot more work, which is odd because I already knew the music. I think part of it was the running around. Pushing that truck around, unloading it while singing, and so on. Paul said it best: you finish Pagliacci around 9:30 pm and physically feel like you should be going home, not starting another opera.

Part of the difference was also Enrique Diemecke’s unconventional conducting style. But no matter — audiences loved the production as much if not more than they did in ‘99. They always ‘give it up’ for the ensemble shows, but I can’t recall ever hearing such an ovation night after night. Perhaps it had the same “raw” feeling out in the house that it did on stage. Did Maestro DeMain actually make a brilliant yet misunderstood move in tapping Diemecke to conduct? I don’t know. But I can say with absolute certaintly that I’ve never been so glued to a monitor before. (side note: here’s an interesting 1998 interview with DeMain).
(continue reading…)

I have four free tickets available for a performance of “Pagliacci” and “Carmina Burana” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Anyone interested in these?

We did this production five or six years ago and it was so well received that Opera Pacific decided to bring it back. Pagliacci is a one-act opera, and Carmina Burana is a dance piece — a ballet, really. But in this production, the two are thematically linked. It’s a very accessible show, so if you’re not a big opera afficianado, don’t worry — you’ll still enjoy it.

The show this Sunday, April 18th, at 2:00 pm. They’re outstanding seats: 15th row in the orchestra. I hate seeing tickets to go waste, especially for a show like this. For what it’s worth, these seats go for $191 each on Ticketmaster.

If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll set you up. First come, first served!

Could it be that nothing has been added to the House of Rapp for eighteen days?

Yeah.

By way of explanation, I can only proclaim “Life is short. Opera is long.” Especially when it’s a Mozart opera. Nothing personal, Wolfgang…

Speaking of which, it’s a pleasure to report that Opera Pacific’s production of Cosi fan Tutte is finally over and we’re moving on to more interesting fare. I’ve got some backstage photos from Cosi if you’re interested.

Next up is Bernstein’s Candide–a show I was patently unfamiliar with until recently. It’s not exactly a perennial favorite on the operatic or musical theatre stage, which is a shame because the music really sparkles. I can’t think of another show that has an aria, waltz, tango, ballad, and mazurka all in the same score.

Candide is quite timely. Voltaire’s classic was selected by Leonard Bernstein and Lillian Hellman as a way of lampooning the the McCarthyism of the 1950s. Today we have the Patriot Act and jingoism to worry about.

My favorite number from the show is “I’m Easily Assimilated”, where an old Polish woman raves about the virtues of adopting the local culture:

You must be Spanish too / Do like the natives do
These days you have to be / In the majority

Anyway, after Candide comes a revival of the Carmina Burana/Pagliacci pairing we did a few years ago. It’s just about the only production during my nine years with the company that was loved by critics, cast, and audience alike.

So while the next few months will be busy as all get out (whatever that means), I predict they’ll be great fun, too.

The usually clean and orderly house is a disaster area. Something big, fast, and tornado-ish definitely came through here. Clothes strewn all over the place, pillows in the wrong rooms, shoes and socks scattered along a path leading from the bedroom to the front door. What the hell was it? A twister? Evidence of mad, passionate sex? Was I robbed?

Not exactly. Let me back up and explain.

It’s Thursday, mid-morning. My muse is a five year old, and it’s screaming at me.

No, it’s not a child. It is, however, a five year old black “classic” Motorola pager. You know the kind. They don’t have all the bells and whistles of modern pagers, no sir. No CNN headline news, alphanumeric, two-way messaging, friendly or melodic audio alerts on this bad boy. It has only one mode: I’m-going-to-pierce-your-freaking-eardrum loud. I have to give Motorola credit. They must have done a lot of research, because they found a pitch so grating that even the deaf can hear it. If you could synthesize the sound of running ten long fingernails across a rusted blackboard, this would be it.

When you’re tired and it’s early, the sound can seem even louder than it really is. That was the case this morning. I had already ignored a telephone call, because hey, sometimes it’s just not convenient to answer the damn phone. I thought to myself, “Watch, they’re gonna page me.” Sure enough, not 30 seconds later, the Little Black Pager That Could does its thing (it’s “thing”, by the way, is to simply tell me I have to call in to pick up the actual message). I call in and am greeted by a voice touched with concern. Stress, even.

“Ron, it’s Jean. We’re all at the school for the 10:30 a.m. performance. Where are you? I hope you’re on your way.”

Time stops. Whoa. Obviously there’s been some mistake. The other seven members of Sound-on-Site, a educational outreach octet from the Pacific Chorale that I sing with, must have gotten the day mixed up. I mean, c’mon. It’s not Friday! And it’s not possible that I wrote down the date wrong in my… awww, shit. Okay, don’t panic don’t panic DON’T PANIC!! The performance is at 10:30, how much time do I have? Look at the clock.

It’s 10:28.

Okay, now you can panic. I instantly transform into the Tasmanian Devil from the Bugs Bunny cartoons of old, complete with a look that says “ACME”–as if it were a four-letter word–written all over my face. Chuck Jones, who lives down the road from me, would have been proud.

The speed limit on Jeffrey is 45 m.p.h., but I just don’t care. Besides, my mind is preoccupied with weather or not I ran over my neighbor on the way out of my condo. I’m doing close to 90, and I realize that I left my wallet at home. Que sera sera. And yeah, that light I just blew through was technically red, but I just don’t care. Thank God for cell phones. I can just call the school and tell them that I’m on my way! Except the number I have for the school has been changed, and is it just me or do those “The number you are calling has been changed” messages get slower when you’re in desperate straits?

Finally I get the right digits and string ‘em all together, but then my cellphone decides it’s can’t get a signal. I drive with one hand while contemplating how far I can throw the phone out the window with the other. Technology sucks. But I just don’t care.

After what seems like hours, I arrive at the elementary school and manage to perform one of the worst parking jobs in the history of the horseless carriage. “Askew” doesn’t even begin to do it justice. But I just don’t care. The Tasmanian Devil whirls into the school, and though there are two hundred kids waiting to see our performance of “Around the World in Song”, the stage is still empty. I say the world’s shortest, yet somehow wildly intense prayer of thanks, and zoom backstage. Of course I try to walk in like I’ve got some semblance of control, but they just don’t care. They’re glad I made it at all. Sure, I’m hyped up as though I’ve inhaled a box of No-Doze, my clothes and hair are all disheveled, and I haven’t warmed up. Unless you count yelling obscenities at yourself warming up. But I’m there. The official Movado museum watch time is 10:34 a.m.

“Glad you could join us!”

Ahhh, the beauty of live performance. I’m not sure if Terpsichore, the muse of choral music and dance, is helping me or torturing me. But he/she sure keeps my days exciting. This particular show is a look at the world through the music of ten different cultures. It’s a satisfying and uplifting thing, singing for all those kids. Teaching them about music, and seeing their eyes light up. They don’t get much of that anymore, you know. It’s the first thing to be cut when money is tight. And when is it not?

There’s a bond between performer and audience in a live performance, a palpable exchange of energy that many adults don’t seem to be comfortable with. I think it’s because today, live performance has been replaced with staring at a television or movie screen. You owe the screen nothing, and most of America has been weaned on that. There is no obligation to give anything or be involved in what’s happening on a screen. And that’s too bad. Only the kids seem to understand that relationship, that it’s related to playing, that it requires using your imagination and even your brain on occasion. So what Sound-on-Site is doing is, in a small way, to ensure that educated and interested audiences are there in the future. To make sure the performing arts are alive to enhance the human experience for generations to come.

And about that, I really do care.

Note: This entry was also used as part of an Illumine collaborative project on the Seven Muses.

Time. It’s the fourth dimension, right? The other three I’ve got down pat–I can make an airplane loop, roll, spin, or drop any which way I want. But when it comes to time, I’m totally out of my element. Not in the sense of “being on time”, mind you–but rather in how strangely I judge it.

For example, I did some math recently. After subtracting 1994 from 1999 the magic number of five mysteriously came to me. As in, five years since I graduated from college. Wow. Where has the time gone? Obviously someone is messing with the fast-forward button of my life, and the rate at which it’s passing is only picking up speed. I really am afraid that I’m going to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and see the face of a 70 year old who has nothing but wrinkles to show for his time on earth. It’s a waking nightmare: almost a full year since Pick Up Ax, since I got back into the cockpit of a plane. How can this be?

On the other hand, there are times when life passes so slowly that it’s almost painful. Traffic school. Ground school. Freeway traffic. Essentially anything utilizing the words “traffic” or “school”. Another thing that’s going by very slowly is this opera season. Madame Butterfly is only six months past, but it seems like an eternity. Today was the opening night performance of the final production of the 1998-99 season, La Fille du Regiment (Daughter of the Regiment). In five days it’ll be over, and though it’s been very enjoyable, I can’t say I’m sorry to see it go. To quote the song writing genius of Air Supply, “everybody needs a little time away.”

The 1999-2000 season looks like another great one for the chorus, but I’m debating if I should go back next year. Life is like a puzzle, and sometimes you end up with an odd piece that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere. Perhaps even the piece’s colors are wrong for the overall picture, so that you start to wonder if that piece didn’t come from another box. A freak piece is what it is. And more and more lately I feel like that puzzle piece at Opera Pacific. Everyone has their cozy place. They fit just fine there, even if this is only their first or second show. This is my tenth production, and if I don’t fit into the puzzle by now it just ain’t gonna happen.

Speaking of the opera, I received the nicest e-mail today Jason Daniel, a baritone and all-around great guy who sings at Opera Pacific. He dropped me a line to say that he was having a tough day–taxes, kids screaming, work, etc.–but as he was going through a box of receipts he found one of my cards. It containing the URL for the House of Rapp, so he visited the site and read the journal entry about Henri. Jason wrote that he hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time. You could almost read the smile in his e-mail, and it was so contagious that it brightened my day immeasurably as well. So score one for the computer nerds.

In other (soap) opera news, my friend Paul made his debut as the peasant in Daughter. It’s a small role, but he did a great job with it, even if the wardrobe department did go the extra mile to make sure he looked like a stunt double for Juan Valdez (he looked out of place without the donkey and a cup of rich Colombian coffee). It’s always amazing to me that people who are singing next to you in the chorus one second can be center stage singing a solo line in front of three thousand people the next. I would like to think I could do that kind of thing too, but something tells me it requires what Henri often refers to as “talent”.

Two days, seven auditions, fifteen monologues, one crowded floor of nervous actors.

I’m in San Francisco to audition for MFA programs in theatre. The odds of my being accepted are quite low, as I’ve only applied to the top schools: Juilliard, Yale, American Conservatory Theatre, American Repertory, etc. I figure that if I’m going to foot the bill and put in the time needed to obtain an MFA in this discipline, I only want to consider the finest schools.

Most of these schools audition over a thousand people each year, yet have only five or six slots available. And sometimes half of those need to be female in order to maintain an acting company from which they can cast the shows. To say these programs are exclusive is an understatement. They make medical school admission look like a lock.

   

This is American Conservatory Theatre’s Geary Theatre, one of downtown San Francisco’s cultural and historical treasures. It was destroyed by the 1989 earthquake and remained closed until 1996. When it reopened, the building had received a much needed renovation that went beyond just repairing the damage done by the earthquake.

The Geary has never been one of my favorite spaces in which to see a show. The house is not terribly deep, and with four balconies, the folks on the top levels often have a hard time hearing the player’s voices. I saw an ACT production of Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal there recently and couldn’t hear a thing. The seats are narrow, the aisles likewise. Even so, it’s a beautiful space.

Anyway, back to the auditions. To the uninitiated, the scene at A.C.T. must have seemed like a Twilight Zone episode. So many actors, each with their own preparatory ritual. To oneself, it’s a perfectly natural thing, but to everyone else it’s a freak show in progress.

My first year auditioning for grad school, I got into a conversation with another auditionee about the absurdity of what we were doing. It was one of those moments of self-realization, and we both had it at the same time. You have to laugh at yourself when you realize what you do on this earth sometimes.

He said, “Yeah, this would make a good subject for a play–all about getting into grad school: the expenses, the odds, the travel, the rejection, the acceptance, the weirdoes, the whole bit.”

The name, of course, was obvious: “30 Grant Ave” It’s the address of the building in San Francisco where the major programs hold their west coast auditions. It’s also where ACT’s offices are located. Anyway, I told myself that someday I’d write 30 Grant Ave, even if no one else ever read it. They say you should write about what you know. And after four years, I know 30 Grant pretty well.

So to answer the inevitable question “how did it go?”, the straight answer is “I don’t know”. All I can say is that I delivered the work that Martha and I prepared. That’s what I went there to do. I put forth my best effort. If I get in, great. If not, I’ll have no regrets about it. The minute the audition is over I try to forget about it. Several schools did ask to see additional work (i.e. a third monologue) and a song, which I took as a good sign.

The results of these auditions are somewhat random, as I see it. All you need is to have the person you’re auditioning for wake up on the wrong side of the bed that day and you can kiss your chances of getting in goodbye. There are just too many people. If they need more diversity, or more females, or a specific look for some show they’re doing in the upcoming season, that’s what they’ll go for. Talent certainly plays a role, of course. But talent alone does not dictate who will be accepted.

After the auditions were finished for the day, I had dinner at a little Italian restaurant next to the hotel. The waitress was pretty hip–she gave me the names of a couple of swing clubs in town. So after dinner I hopped a cab over to North Beach to dance at a club called the Highball Lounge.

Can you say “out of your league”? Well I said it several times while I was there. The Highball Lounge looked more like a movie set than a club; it seemed everyone on the floor was a professional dancer. While highly entertaining and educational to watch, actually going out to join the talent pool was pretty intimidating. But I’m proud to say I did. Talk about baptism by fire. They were mixing every style from Charleston to some Latin stuff in with the swing. My favorite was watching the lesbian couples dance. They were good, although as Seinfeld once quipped, it must have been hard figuring out who would lead.

I also did a bit of shopping at an upscale leather store on Market Street. My old leather jacket was purchased in 1989 when I was about 15 lbs lighter. It still fits, but it’s not as comfortable as it was in days of yore, so I don’t wear it as often.

The coolest experience of the whole trip? I bought a hot dog from a stand on the corner of Market and Grant. I felt so urban. It may not sound like much, but remember, I’m from Irvine. The closest thing we have to an authentic hot dog stand is the cartoon swan which gets roasted during Carmina Burana.

I left Orange County at about 1:00 p.m. today. After driving for eight hours, I’m still in California. It’s almost disappointing. When you’ve put 400 miles on the odometer, you feel like you should be in some far off, exotic place.

Anyway, the trip up to San Francisco was uneventful (read: boring). There is so little of interest to look at. It’s pretty much the same way wherever you go from the Los Angeles area. Have you made the drive to Palm Springs or Las Vegas? I used to make the Irvine-to-Vegas run all the time when I was tired, and lemme tell you it ain’t no picnic. Especially on a holiday weekend. I once got stuck in traffic on I-15 during a three day weekend and it took me 21 hours to make the 300 mile trip. No shit. The road was so congested that you couldn’t even get off in Baker or Barstow to get a hotel room. I swore I would never again travel to Las Vegas on a holiday weekend, and I haven’t.

I feel kind of guilty, because I’ll be missing two days of Pagliacci/Carmina Burana rehearsal while I’m up here. I think this is my tenth show with Opera Pacific, and I’ve only missed one rehearsal since I started singing with the company in 1995. If there was ever a show where missing rehearsals was a bad idea, this is it. We’re onstage for the entire evening. The only time we’ll see our dressing rooms is… well, when we get dressed. It’s nice to feel like you’re really earning your paycheck, though.

Hmm. I’m making it sound like I dread this weekend. I don’t. Sure, my college friends are partying down in Mexico, and I’m missing it. But San Francisco is fun city. My travel agent managed to get me into the Monticello Inn which, in addition to its colonial charm, is only a couple of blocks away from American Conservatory Theatre’s offices at 30 Grant Avenue where the auditions are being held. The Monticello is in the heart of the Union Square area, a shoppers paradise and home to San Francisco’s “theatre district”. The Geary Theatre, Curan Theatre, Theatre on the Square, S.F. Actor’s Theatre, and numerous other companies are located within blocks of each other.

The more time I spend in San Fran, the more it seems to be a west coast replica of New York City. It has the high-rises, congestion, foot traffic, eclectic culture, and bank-breaking cost of NYC. It even has it’s own equivalent of New Jersey: Oakland. But one of my favorite things to do while in the Bay Area is sample the cuisine. Tonight, for example, I hit a little place on Sutter which had a live six piece jazz combo. The ordering was a bit limited because it’s Valentine’s Day weekend and they have a special menu in use, but the food was as good as I’ve come to expect from the vaunted proprietors of downtown San Francisco. After the long drive, it was great to eat a leisurely dinner and soak up the mellow acoustic sound which permeated the room.

Tomorrow is going to be an early day, with three auditions scheduled before noon, so I’m gonna pack it in.

All good things must come to an end.

Or so they say. I don’t know that my association with Vanguard was always a good one, but I would like to think it had its moments. Whatever the case, it has certainly come to an end: I resigned from the theatre last week. On my birthday, now that I think about it.

For those of you who are not involved in the non-profit arts scene, let me start off by saying that it’s a difficult one. Budgets are small, salaries non-existent, while expectations and competition are at an all time high. Things are stacked against you at every turn. Vanguard Theatre Ensemble has some other unique challenges on its plate, chief among them being the fact that the theatre is running year-round. For eight years it’s been this way. Most theatres run for nine months and are down for the remaining three. But VTE always has a show in rehearsal or running, and it takes its toll. Also, the theatre doesn’t have a traditional founder/artistic director, so decision making has proven troublesome.

Part of what I did there was to try and help fill that gap as the Managing Director. Apparently I did a piss-poor job of it. The Board of Directors took an anonymous written poll of the ensemble members, and their comments about my performance were, without exception, negative. At times, vitriolic. I found some of the allegations surprising. Weather they are true is not for me to decide. It wouldn’t matter even if it was, because as someone wise beyond their years once said, perception is nine-tenths of reality.

Things had gotten personal. They sometimes do, especially where artistic matters are concerned. Why? Because artistic expression is a personal thing. I’m willing to take a lot of heat, a lot of crap, in order to further a cause I believe in. Vanguard was that cause. But every person has a line–a personal threshold–and when that line is crossed it’s simply not possible to put aside issues such as fairness, right vs. wrong, etc. for the common good anymore. I’m a human being with feelings, and they got stepped on in a way I didn’t think was possible until it happened.

You might be interested in the sordid details. What was said. By whom. Oh, you probably wouldn’t admit it, but in some dark place we don’t talk about at high tea, the desire for it is there. It’s the Jerry Springer in all of us. But I won’t go there, because despite everything I certainly think highly of what Vanguard has achieved. As I wrote in my letter of resignation, I wish only the best for VTE and continue to encourage people to support the theatre.

And besides, the things that were written may be true. It seems to me the adult thing would be to accept responsibility for it and move on, and that’s what your friendly neighborhood Spiderman has attempted to do. The bottom line is that I believe Vanguard will be a better place without me. So this chapter of my life closes, and I move on to other and hopefully more successful partnerships.

I’m cool with it. You see, I have this philosophy about life and the way I live it: I try not to begrudge myself the mistakes I make, as long as I learn from them. Hopefully I grow and don’t repeat my errors. Only time will tell if I learn the proper lesson from The Vanguard Experience, but by the grace of God I will.

I’ve been spending all my time lately at the opera. The only days we’re not rehearsing or performing are the days AGMA (the American Guild of Musical Artists) requires us to have off–essentially every seventh day or so.

Not that I’m complaining. I’m more than happy to have all the work, and I’m learning new shows, having fun with friends, and earning a dollar or two. When I say a dollar or two, I mean literally. But that’s another story.

I can hear Henri cracking the exact same joke about his own salary and laughing melodramatically. Henri Venanzi is one of the best things about working at Opera Pacific. Sometimes I wonder why he sticks around. I’d like to think it’s because we’re such a personable, talented, and generally irresistible group of musicians. But why kid myself?

Now as I was saying, Henri always makes things fun; I’ve laughed my ass off in rehearsals more times than I can count. His voice is not exactly his greatest talent, but he always sings the principal parts in rehearsal. With all the typical scoops, cracks and misses they make. It’s like watching a 3-hour comic monologue as we rehearse. Boy is it great to be someplace where you laugh a lot.

But you don’t want to get on his bad side. Henri is the All Seeing, All Knowing Dude. That’s what I call him in my head. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people screwing around in staging rehearsals and watched Henri follow them with one eye while playing fiendishly difficult music on the piano, following the action on the stage, and watching the conductor with the other eye.

The other great thing about Opera Pacific is that all I have to do there is sing and act. There are others who are paid to costume, stage manage, sell tickets, raise money, create brochures, clean the theatre, and in general make it super easy to concentrate on the music. You can’t put a price on that. I think some singers don’t fully appreciate this. I certainly do, especially after working in small professional theatre where a) you never get paid, b) you put your own money into shows, and c) things don’t get done unless you do them yourself. I suppose that kind of performing art has it’s merits, but right now I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what any of them are. When you’ve worked hard on a show and the curtain finally goes up, would you rather play to a house of 20 people or 3,000 people?

Exactly.

So Flying Dutchman opened tonight, to a full house no less. It’s an interesting production, though I remain on uneven terms with Wagner. While the music still doesn’t send me off into seventh heaven, I think his concept of “total theatre” is exactly what opera needs. Unfortunately it was still kind of half-baked when he composed Flying Dutchman. Keith, our director, is an expert on interpreting Wagner–in fact, he studied the “total theatre” thing with Wagner’s great-granddaughter in the early 1980s.

The most interesting element of this show (and probably its most exciting moment) is when we transform from sailors to ghosts onstage. We literally tear off our costumes on the set while the stage splits in half, ghosts come up from out of the ground, and thick fog billows into the house. The idea behind it is that the ghosts are not some separate entity from the sailors. We are the ghosts. Our irrationalities, prejudices, and hatred eventually turn us into the very thing that we fear. It’s got a ring of truth to it, and I like that.

Opera with relevance. What will they think of next?

From what I’ve seen on the monitors, it’s a visually stunning show. You can do nice things when your production has a $900,000 budget. But now we’re getting to the sticky point. While Dutchman continues to run, we’re going to start rehearsal for Pagliacci and Carmina Burana (which has approximately 1.21 bazillion words). Hence the full schedule.

But again, I’m not complaining. I really do like this. In fact, I was checking out the web site for the Metropolitan Opera, the 500-pound guerilla of the opera world with a $150 million annual budget (compared with Opera Pacific’s $5-6 million). The Met has a performance of an opera every single night for five or six months. And they don’t do the same show back-to-back, but will run five or six shows in rotating repertory. Monday might be Carmen, while Die Zaberflote will perform on Tuesday and Elektra on Wednesday. And so on. Can you imagine what their chorus schedule must be like? Of course, from what I hear a member of the Met chorus will make a very sizeable six-figure income each year. They don’t have a “day job”. Singing is all they do. Must be nice.

I’m sure Opera Pacific will get there someday soon. Of course, then I’ll probably wake up. Haaaa ha ha ha. I hear Henri laughing again. Probably a subliminal message that I’m late for rehearsal. Gotta run…

You know how when life gets busy, you sometimes wait until the last minute to do some time-specific thing which is really, really important? You know you shouldn’t procrastinate, but you do, so there is very little margin for error, right? And then something screws up your well-laid plans.

My Juilliard application was ready to go, and it had to be postmarked by December 1st. No problem. I got all the stuff together and placed a call to Mail Boxes, Etc. (that should have been my first clue) to inquire about their hours. I was told they close at 7:30 p.m. Great. So I sauntered down around 6:45 p.m. and the lights were on, but the doors didn’t want to open. A cursory investigation (elementary, Mr. Watson) revealed that they were locked. Shit. The hours posted on the door said they close at 7:00 p.m. Yes, that’s right. To recap: the posted hours, the time they actually closed, and the time they said they closed are all different.

Idiots.

I instantly started calling every place I could think of that might be open at 7:00 p.m. on a weeknight to postmark a piece of mail. Mind you, I didn’t need an official U.S. Postal Service postmark, and I didn’t care when it actually got there. So I called other Mail Boxes, Etc. I tried every U.S. Post Office, even some as far away as Los Angeles and San Diego counties. I called courier services, scoured the Web, pleaded with FedEx and UPS. No dice.

By this point, I’m muttering to myself in my best Dana-Carvey-impersonating-Ross-Perot voice, “Okay fine; is that how you wanna play the game? Is that how we’re gonna do it, Cracker Boy?” Time to pull out the heavy guns. I call my good friend Bryan–after all, he has no compunction about breaking a law or three. Unfortunately, he quit his day job, and with it went my access to the Pitney Bowes box.

But I’m not dead yet. My pal Judi is the office manager of a small company in Tustin–they must have a Pitney Bowes machine. No? Crap. But she makes a few well-placed phone calls, and soon the seething Orange County underworld (I can’t even type that without laughing) is working on my behalf. She finds someone who can break us into a local Catholic high school where they have a Pitney Bowes machine, so my problem seems to be solved.

Well, not quite. They get there before I do and quickly realize that they don’t know how to turn back the date on the machine. It’s so modern that it’s actually more complex than your average PC. By the time I arrive, they’ve enlisted the help of a Catholic priest (“Bond. James Bond.”) who has no problem engaging in some minor mail fraud. But he can’t figure the thing out either. It was really very comical: six highly intelligent, resourceful, computer-savvy people versus one measly Pitney Bowes postage meter. Guess who won?

But the war wasn’t over yet. Eventually, the Catholic priest suggested weighing the Juilliard application envelope, finding a comparably sized piece of outgoing mail postmarked December 1st, and stealing the postage from it. And I think to myself, “What a wonderful world”. Five minutes later I’m walking away with a graduate school application postmarked on time and a whole new appreciation for the Catholic Church.

Have you ever had one of those perfect evenings? You know, the ones where you spend a couple of hours sharing great food with a small circle of good friends, just kicking back, talking about anything and nothing, and really relaxing? I had an evening like that the other day. You can always tell when you’re having one, because you’re sorry to see it end. Not that I don’t enjoy the company of many other great people every single day, but days like this cannot be planned. You can’t “make” them happen; there is some indefinable thing about then which cannot be prepared or planned for.

I was at Paul’s house with Kristina and Audey. We were celebrating Audey’s birthday before he left for Atlanta. It was just the right size group: four, and everyone seemed to be in the right mood. Paul made a mean chicken Caesar from scratch while we opened a bottle of merlot. Later we suprised Audey with a cake and Kristina gave him a watch with two faces on it so he could keep track of time in Atlanta and Orange County.

We talked about a million different random things, but one of them totally blew me away. A mutual friend of ours (who just a season or two ago sang with us at Opera Pacific) has hit the big time. His name is Charles Castronovo. We always knew he had a fabulous voice, good looks, and a real passion for opera. But never in my wildest dreams did I figure I’d be hearing what Paul told us: he’ll be making his Metropolitan Opera debut next season as Beppe in Pagliacci opposite Placido Domingo. Paul related how it was just a few years ago that he used to watch Charles play the guitar and sing at a local park.

If you’re not into opera, the significance might not hit you. Basically, once you’re on the roster of the Metropolitan Opera, you’ve reached the pinnacle. And who the hell lands at the Met after training at Cal State Fullerton?! You expect the big time singers to train at Juilliard Opera Center or the Curtis or AVA or something.

What makes it so freaky is that he’s my age (twenty six, for those of you who are not keeping track)! In a world where thirteen year old gymnasts win gold medals and earn millions by appearing on cereal boxes and touring around the country, you might say “so what?”. But in the opera world, people don’t usually make it so quickly, partially because it takes years of experience to master such a difficult art form and learn the repertoire, and partially because the male voice doesn’t mature until the around age 30. Still, if there is anyone worthy of and able to handle such rapid success, I think it would be Charles.

Once I managed to get my mouth closed, Paul and I decided that we were going to do everything possible to be in New York for his big opening night.

Every month or two, my ex-roommate Richard and I will spend an evening hanging out. It usually goes like this: a dinner much too high in calories and fat, then a mainstream type movie, then back to my place to make fun of Saturday Night Live or play a computer game like You Don’t Know Jack. Pretty routine. This last time, though, was a bit different.

First of all, I found out at dinner that he did indeed audition for Jeopardy, as he said he would. But he didn’t pass the test! I couldn’t believe it–you’d have to know Rich to understand just how full of useless trivia he is. I also beat him at You Don’t Know Jack that night, winning two out of three games. The world is turned upside down! With the Jeopardy audition, you have to correctly answer 35 out of 50 questions you are asked. And they are fill-in-the-blank, not multiple choice. Rich said only 2 out of the 50 or so people who auditioned passed the test.

The coolest part of the night was the movie. Instead of a typical big-release picture, we decided to see an indy film, The Last Days of Disco . Currently in “limited release” in Southern California, Disco it is a Whit Stillman film and part of his trilogy of movies which include Metropolitan and Barcelona. When we got there, I was reading a blow-up of a Los Angeles Times review of the film posted outside the theatre and saw that a friend of mine was one of the stars of the film.

Matt Keesler, who plays a assistant District Attorney and major disco aficionado in the film, played the title role in The Interrogation of Nathan Hale at SCR a few years ago. He’s a cool guy, and I’m glad to see him doing so well. I enjoyed not only the film itself, but also seeing a sextet of “unknown” but highly talented actors for a change. A person can only stomach so many Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Al Pacino, other other “A” cast movies before yearning for something truly different.

Today was the first reading of Hollow Lands. With intermission it came to about three hours. The director, David Chambers, had us break the script down into individual stapled scenes because the script was so unwieldy in size. I thought the reading went well, but I felt sorry for a few of the actors that had little to do in the show. It must have been hard to sit up there onstage and wait for three hours, especially after four hours of rehearsal this morning. What’s really weird is performing at 3 p.m. on a Friday. The next reading is at 10 a.m. on a Sunday. That’s even stranger. Theatre isn’t supposed to take place in the morning. It’s not natural.

I was watching the NBC sitcom “Working” tonight, and saw Harry Groener guest-starring on the show as the Vice-President of Upton-Webber, the fictional company the show is centered around.

I thought that was cool because I was just sitting next to Harry a couple of hours ago. He’s one of the cast members for The Hollow Lands, which is getting ready for a staged reading in two days. I’m a big fan of Harry’s. He starred in the hit Broadway musical Crazy For You for its entire run. I was fortunate enough to see his performance, and the boy can sing and dance like it ain’t nobody’s business. Of course, he was also one of stars of the original Broadway production of Cats (can’t say I ever saw that one), among other shows. The best part is that he’s a genuinely funny, likeable and down-to-earth guy. He says the funniest things in rehearsals.

Working on The Hollow Lands has been great. The script is mammoth in scope and size; it reminds me of The Kentucky Cycle, but with a bit of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales thrown in. I’m constantly amazed by Howard Korder, the playwright, and his seemingly limitless knowledge of 19th-century American history. The dramaturg on this production is Amy Freed, whose play Freedomland was produced by SCR last season and was a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. I am truly not worthy.

Anthony Clarvoe, who’s play Pick Up Ax I just produced and acted in, is also at the festival. His latest play, Walking Off the Roof, is receiving a workshop production. I met Clarvoe briefly the other day; I was in the production office at SCR, and this guy was sitting on the floor cross-legged with a printer cable in one hand and a laptop computer in the other. I think he was trying to get it to print or something like that. When I finally realized who he was, I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of his struggling with a computer. Does life imitate art? Survey says: yes.

This is the inaugural year for the Pacific Playwrights Festival. There are something like six or seven new scripts receiving readings or workshops during the week, and I’m glad to be a part of it. I’m willing to bet that a hundred years from now, when people look back at the “great American plays” of our time, more than a few will have come from South Coast Repertory.

I was dumbfounded to learn that Phil Hartman was killed today. Apparently by his wife, no less. Sheesh. Sinatra and even Chris Farley were not a shock, but this is totally unexpected.

Maybe there really is a curse on the SNL alumni.

If Hartman can go, then no one is safe. I never knew him personally, of course, but he seemed to be among the most rational and level-headed of the Saturday Night Live types. I was on my way to a Sound-on-Site performance at the Orange County Performing Arts Center when I heard about it on KFI, and even while we were onstage I couldn’t get it out of my head.

Phil Hartman was the voice-over king. If you really listen and know his voice, you’d realize it’s everywhere. Television, radio, commercials, cartoons, you name it. It seems that in today’s world of untalented “stars”, Hartman was a guy with a lot to offer. He was a trained graphics designer, a writer, a sketch comedy master, and voice-over actor. He seemed to lead a fairly normal life, too. I mean, when was the last time you heard of a Hollywood star living in Encino?

Anyway. Tonight’s performance of Pick Up Ax turned out nicely. Only three more performances to go! Some of the people I’ve been expecting to make it to the show are finally starting to show up. Tony, Steve and I decided to dedicate this performance to the memory of Springfield’s own Troy McClure.

Lately I can’t seem to keep track of all the work I’ve got going on site-wise. I made a list of all the web sites I’m working on in one capacity or another, and it comes to something like 25 projects. I’m starting to make a web-based project page so I can keep track of the status of each one. We’ll see how that works out. It’s not that I can’t get them all taken care of, it’s just a matter of efficiency and organization. Right?

The biggest project I’ve got right now is a dynamic database design/implementation and web interface for performing arts events in Orange County. It’s going to be part of the new O.C. ArtsNet site. A searchable, scalable database of all the Arts O.C. members’ events. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do it, but once it’s done it’ll be Orange County’s single greatest source of information on the performing arts around here. Relational, dynamic, sassy, and always up-to-date. I get tired just thinking about it.

It is such perfect timing for Pick Up Ax, I tell ya. This Department of Justice lawsuit against Microsoft for anti-competitive practices is fascinating. Strangely enough I’m actually on Microsoft’s side on this one, even though I love Netscape.

I was watching Burden of Proof on CNN today and they had lawyers for both sides arguing their respective cases. It’s maddening how few of these attorneys understand the technology they’re condemning. So many of the players in this case (and on today’s Burden of Proof) said, almost proudly, that they couldn’t install Netscape’s browser without the help of their nine year old kid. That essentially makes them computer illiterate. I mean, how hard can it be to point your browser to www.netscape.com? Stop me if I’m wrong, but there are “Download Netscape Now” links on almost every site on the Internet. What kind of difficult questions do you have to answer once you get there?

Let’s take a look at that, shall we?

What language do you want?
Swahili, German, or English?

What O.S. are you using?
Macintosh, Windows NT, Windows 95, or UNIX.

Which version of the software do you want?

Do you want industrial strength encryption?

What add-on software do you want to go with it?

You could literally make wrong choices for half these questions and the software would still be fine. As long as you know you’re using Win95 and want English, you could pick an older release or the wrong encryption type by mistake and it wouldn’t make a difference. You download one file and have to double-click on it once. That’s it.

Admittedly, things could get more complicated if you, for example, ran out of disk space during the installation. But for 99% of people, this should be a no-brainer.

The irony to all this is that if the DOJ suit is successful, products like Linux will gain market share. That’s good right? Maybe. But then these same attorneys who couldn’t figure out how to download a browser under Windows 95 will be faced with recompiling Linux kernels, tweaking archaic Xwindows configuration files, and figuring out why they can’t read the Windows 98 disk they were just given on their bitchin’ BeOS system.

Replace Linux, Windows and Be with Commodore 64, Apple II, and Atari and you’re back in 1985. I remember 1985, it sucked. What I dreamed of was the day when if someone said they had a computer, you didn’t have to ask “What kind?” It took a long time to get here. I, for one, don’t want to go back.

I’ve been so good about avoiding any news, articles, conversation, etc. about the Seinfeld finale for the last week. I didn’t get to watch it live, but since I taped it, I figure I’d only have to hide out for a little while. Unfortunately, yours truly picked the one bum videotape at The House of Rapp to record the long-awaited final episode. So when I went to watch it last night, the sound and video was halfway scrambled. #(^@=%!!

Fortunately I’ll be able to get a copy of it from someone so I don’t have to go Seinfeldless for too long. It’s a good thing, too, because apparently the final episode isn’t going into syndication, so if you missed it, you’re outta luck Charley.

We’re coming down to the wire with the last two weeks of Pick Up Ax. At this point I’m thinking, “Forget the damn ax! Pick up the numbers, wouldja?” Because to this point it’s been an artistic success and a financial disaster. Even the pimply 16-year old teller at the bank is laughing at me.

It hasn’t all been bad news though. We’ve had some real fun. This past Saturday night Tony threw a very cool party at his place. No puking, no smashed people making idiots of themselves, just a group of pleasant people relaxing while The Child Drunkard (complete with monogrammed apron) tended bar magnificently as always. Even I had a bit to drink, and that does not happen very often, a fact those of you who know me will attest to. It was very relaxing. And rather than drive back down to Irvine, I managed to get a good night’s sleep at his place. I think it paid off because our performance on Sunday was excellent. Probably the best to date.

It’s been so great working with everyone on this show. I truly can’t remember the last time I was in a show and wasn’t sick to death of the director or a castmate by this point. But it’s been a smooth ride personality-wise. Pity to see it end.

I’m pretty bummed about the lack of audience we’ve had for Pick Up Ax. We only had four people tonight. Even in a 99 seat house, that’s pretty bad.

Where the hell are all those people who said they’d be there back when I told them about it during the past year and a half? It’s so discouraging to play to an empty house.

I’ve sent out thousands of flyers. I’ve emailed everyone. I’ve made calls, hired the publicist, we’ve had all the Los Angeles press out to review the show. What more can a person do? As if that wasn’t frustrating enough, I finally broke down and called On the House, an organization that allows its members to attend shows for free. And we only get four people! All this work and I can’t even give the tickets away.

The root of the problem is that no one knows Pick Up Ax or the playwright, Anthony Clarvoe. My theatre company is also not a major name in Los Angeles, though we’re better known at home in Orange County.

You see, people will go to see a show they know at a theatre they don’t know. Or vice versa. But the average theatre-goer won’t take a chance on a show they don’t know being staged by a theatre company they are also not familiar with.

This is not a surprise. I’ve known this since the day we started. But I decided a long time ago that if I’m going to put the time, money, and effort into producing a show, then I’m going to produce something that is innovative, interesting, and didactic. If that means the production suffers with low attendence, then I’ll take that hit.

I’d rather see it go down that way than have a production of Oklahoma or some overdone Neil Simon play open with my name on it. No matter what, I’ve got faith in my vision, and come hell or high water I’m going to do it my way.

Anyway, I was down about it for a while. But something always comes right along to cheer me up. My old college friend Dave Ehlen (who gets married in just over a week) sent out an e-mail with some short stories about children that made me feel better. I’ll share ‘em with you. I liked the first and last ones best.

Children are often our best teachers…

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“The Golden Gift”
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Some time ago, a friend of mine punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper. Money was tight, and he became infuriated when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the tree.

Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, “This is for you, Daddy.” He was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found that the box was empty. He yelled at her, “Don’t you know that when you give someone a present, there’s supposed to be something inside of it?”

The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and said, “Oh, Daddy, it’s not empty. I blew kisses into the box. All for you, Daddy.”

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged her forgiveness. My friend told me that he kept that gold box by his bed for years. Whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there. In a very real sense, each of us as parents has been given a gold container filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children. There is no more precious possession anyone could hold.

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“The Most Caring Child”
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Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, “Nothing … I just helped him cry.”

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“Two Nickels and Five Pennies”
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When an ice cream sundae cost much less, a boy entered a coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. “How much is an ice cream sundae?” “Fifty cents,” replied the waitress. The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins in it. “How much is a dish of plain ice cream?” he inquired. Some people were now waiting for a table, and the waitress was impatient. “Thirty-five cents,” she said angrily. The little boy again counted the coins. “I’ll have the plain ice cream.”

The waitress brought the ice cream and walked away. The boy finished, paid the cashier, and departed. When the waitress came back, she swallowed hard at what she saw. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies–her tip.

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“What It Means to Be Adopted”
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Teacher Debbie Moon’s first graders were discussing a picture of a family. One little boy in the picture had a different color hair than the other family members. One child suggested that he was adopted and a little girl named Jocelynn Jay said, “I know all about adoptions because I was adopted.” “What does it mean to be adopted?” asked another child. “It means,” said Jocelynn, “that you grew in your mommy’s heart instead of her tummy.”

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“Discouraged?”
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As I was driving home from work one day, I stopped to watch a local little League baseball game that was being played in a park near my home. As I sat down behind the bench on the first-baseline, I asked one of the boys what the score was. “We’re behind 14 to nothing,” he answered with a smile. “Really,” I said. “I have to say you don’t look very discouraged.” “Discouraged?” the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face. “Why should we be discouraged? We haven’t been up to bat yet.”

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“Roles And How We Play Them”
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Whenever I’m disappointed with my spot in my life, I stop and think about little Jamie Scott. Jamie was trying out for a part in a school play. His mother told me that he’d set his heart on being in it, though she feared he would not be chosen. On the day the parts were awarded, I went with her to collect him after school. Jamie rushed up to her, eyes shining with pride and excitement. “Guess what Mum,” he shouted, and then said those words that will remain a lesson to me: “I’ve been chosen to clap and cheer!”

Well, we did it. We finally got through the whole show without blowing any dimmers, circuit breakers, or other electrical elements.

You wouldn’t believe the sigh of relief I let go after the curtain call. This has been the longest week I can remember, and most of it shouldn’t have been necessary. But I learned some valuable lessons about doing in-depth research before leasing a theatre.

I forget the exact amperages, but we found out that although the dimmers can handle about 57,600 watts, the two legs of power coming into the theatre only total 24,000 watts, meaning that you couldn’t use the full capacity of the lighting system even if you wanted to (and boy, did we want to). It’s very deceptive. When you see 24 standard 2.4k circuits, you just assume you can use them.

Without Lonnie to recompute and redistribute the load evenly across the the two wires (which, of course, required repatching and reprogramming the lighting board) we would be so dead in the water I cringe just to think about it. Even now we’re on the bleeding edge, but I guess if nothing else it’s exciting there. If there is a lot of stuff going on around the theatre during a performance, we’ll have to run the system at 80%.

It’s been so amazing to see how much and how hard everyone pitched in to make this thing come together. Bryan and Lonnie really helped me keep my sanity. Jeez, the hours they put in! And eveyone else too. But we shouldn’t have had to work that hard.

I was re-reading what I wrote yesterday, and remembering something my friend Jon Lagerquist said: “It’s only a show”. He’s right of course. I love Jon. He is the epitomy of cool. In his job, every week is tech week. Of course, he has better resources. But he has more demands placed on him as well.

Damn damn damn damn DAMN!

For the first time ever, I’ve had to halt a show in medias res, shut it down and send an audience home in the middle of a performance.

It’s a hard thing to do.

I know the phrase “the show must go on” is just that–a phrase, but it accurately reflects some inate drive toward not letting go of the momentum or “arc” of a performance once it’s started. Kind of like a baseball in flight. The law of gravity dictates the graceful arc it travels. It’s was the same tonight.

It doesn’t matter a whit that it was a preview. What matters is that it’s MY company, MY show, and MY audience and these things just don’t happen. After all the times I’ve told the team, “All we have to do is get through till April 25th. Just April 25th. That’s all. Just hang on until then” it was unnatural to just end at the halfway point.

We were going along just fine. Better than fine, the show was really cooking. Then in the last scene of Act I, the lights suddenly blinked from the daytime office look to a deep blue. I knew what it meant the instant it happened. I’ve been seeing in over and over for the past two days. Half the circuits were dead. We kept going. Of course we did. We finished the act, and despite the fact that all three of us were thinking “What happened?” over and over, the acting didn’t really suffer. There was no music either. I figured Bryan was too busy trying to salvage the lights. I could hear Lonnie tinkering away in the electrical room, trying to do what he could.

During the intermission Bryan came backstage and said that the whole complex had lost power, not just the dimmers in the theatre. Since the place had no power except what was left of the lighting system, the Powers That Be wanted us to clear the theatre. If the rest of the lights were to go, we’d be left in pitch blackness.

He said, “It’s up to you, Mr. Producer.” Well, what can you do in that situation? So I went out on stage and told the audience ‘thank you for coming’ but that we would have to shut down. I was so frustrated, angry, sad, hurt, shocked, and disappointed (not just for me, but for an audience that never got to see the best part of a brilliant script) that I was in tears for a while.

I’m so goddamn mad at the Mickey Mouse way this theatre is operated. I pay good money to rent a quality theatre in the heart of Hollywood and the equipment that comes with it. All I want is for that equipment to work. It doesn’t matter that we push it to its limits. That’s what theatre is all about. Who the hell wants to stay within the lines? We are not in third grade anymore.

I’ll tell you why this is so maddening: Steve and I started planning this show years ago. We left plenty of time, planned each step meticulously. It’s been a better organized show that anything I’ve produced in the past, except maybe Into the Woods. We’ve got better quality designers, actors, and staff than before. And for all that work, forethought, and preparation, our first public performance turns out like this?

It was made worse by the fact that we had some people like Tom Hatten from KNX 1070 on hand to preview the show.

Despite tonight’s disaster, there is a silver lining. My friends were all very supportive and understanding. My instinct was to stay at the theatre and work the problem, but Mark and Wendy insisted on taking me to Jerry’s Deli for a late night meal while the crew and designers attacked the electrical gremlins that have been the bane of our existance the past ten days or so.

Whew, I’m beat. A bunch of us working on Pick Up Ax just pulled an all-nighter at the theatre trying to get things ready for our first preview tomorrow.

The lights have been giving us problems–fuses have been blowing. We’ve managed to get some new ones, but what was supposed to be a tech rehearsal yesterday ended up being just another dry run-through of the show because the electrical system isn’t handling the load we’re putting on it. Basically everything is in place except the lighting.

The funny thing is, I know it’s not our fault. Our lighting designer is as good as they come, and he’s worked as an electrician enough to know the equipment, the instruments, and the design. There should be no problem here.

The colors on the set didn’t turn out as we expected. I’m caught in the middle between the director and the scenic designer. As if that wasn’t enough, we have no ticket sales for this coming weekend. None. Can you believe it?

But the show is going to turn out great. Acting-wise we’re in great shape, and the technical elements never seem to iron out until 30 seconds before the first performance anyway, so I guess in a lot of ways this is not unlike every other show I’ve ever done.

Are you getting sick of hearing about Pick Up Ax by now? Probably. But that’s pretty much all that’s going on in my life right now. Heck, it is my life. Maybe I’m crazy, but I’ve already got ideas about the next show, what it could be, where and why. But one thing is for sure. Between now and then I’m going to need a long break, one where my evenings are free from rehearsals.

And the saga continues. Got a lovely letter today from Yale. I know it well, on that 100% cotton fiber paper. Such high quality and so official.

“I regret that we are not able to offer you admission to the department.”

Then there’s the obligatory paragraph containing the generic justification. Gotta love that. Is it supposed to make me feel better? Somehow I think when they compose those letters, they’re just trying to take up a bit more white space on the page so it doesn’t seem quite so… stark.

I managed to get our publicist squared away today. I’ve always dreaded dealing with PR issues, so I’m delighted that someone else will be dealing with it now. And at the last LATC rehearsal (which was particularly memorable because I had a rehearsal space booked and [surprise!] they actually held the space for us!) we were introduced to Stacey, our A.S.M. I think she’s going to work out great. One more thing to cross off the list.

Everything I’ve produced has come together in the end. I don’t know why I’m still so surprised when it finally does.

It’s been a busy week, and I’m ready for a few days off. Unfortunately there’s no break in sight.

The staged reading of Uncle Sam’s Fandango at SCR went pretty well. We rehearsaed all day Saturday and Sunday. The director, Dan Kern, wasn’t there for the performance, but I think he would have been pleased with how it turned out. Before he left the afternoon rehearsal on Monday he asked for lots of energy and tight cues, which we seemed to have during the performance that evening.

I was happy to read in today’s L.A. Times that Dan won two Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards (for acting in A Winter’s Tale at A Noise Within and directing Juno at Interact Theatre Co). His wife also won one. I wonder if that’s a record for most LADCC Awards won by a single household in one year…

Then yesterday I sang four Sound-on-Site performances in Dana Point and here in Irvine. That’s the most we’ve ever done in one day. It was about four solid hours of singing, and I was tired when the day started, so by the end my voice was starting to wear.

Today was the final “reading” of Pick Up Ax before we go into full rehearsal this Sunday. I put quotes around it because even though technically it was a reading, we started blocking two sessions ago. Today went well; I was finally rested enough to be highly energetic and creative during the rehearsal. Plus, with the whole rights issue behind us, there’s one less thing hanging over our heads as we work.

By the end of this week we’ll have our Los Angeles and Orange County rehearsal spaces ready, our publicity agent will be working, stuff will be off to the printer, and we’ll be rolling, rolling, rolling!

I got another rejection letter today: the Old Globe/USD MFA program. That makes five “no”s, with seven programs yet to hear from.

You know you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel when you’re looking to a fortune cookie for advice. I mean, even the Magic 8-Ball is a step up from this thing. At least the Eight Ball is a dedicated bullshit meter. A fortune cookie is nothing but an afterthought from a cheap Chinese restaurant.

Nevertheless, I got one today that was a mini deus ex machina. I was sitting at Pick Up Stix thinking about Pick Up Ax and wondering if I was ever going to be able to get that production off the ground.

It said “A project you have in mind will soon gain momentum”.

Sure, it’s completely generic. The project could be fixing the leaky faucet or picking the loose change out of the couch cushions (hey, that reminds me….). But I’m at that point with the show where I keep thinking “this could go wrong” and “that could happen” and driving myself nuts.

On a slightly different note, I’m very excited about the CD-Recordable/ReWritable drive I just got. I’m going to create a “virtual press kitR