"I Could Go On Singing"

If only she could've...

At the suggestion of Bill Phair, who produces the wonderful podcast The Entertainment Beat with Frances Gumm, I rented I Could Go On Singing starring Judy Garland this week to study for my embodiment of her for Halloween. It turned out that the DVD came after our party, but I watched it anyway and had a mah-velous time doing so.

Judy at the height of her career in A Star is Born and on her way out in I Could Go On Singing

Between A Star is Born in 1954 and I Could Go On Singing in 1963 things had come full circle for Judy's roles in films. Going from playing the survivor wife of an alcoholic in Star, she gets to play the alcoholic survivor herself in Singing, and boy is she compelling. Knowing what Judy went through in her own personal life, struggling with addictions to pills and booze, one can't help but feel for Judy as she sings "It Never Was You" or "By Myself," songs with self-explanatory titles of longing and regret. Six years away from her death, this Judy is fierce and alive. It's both easy and difficult watching her performance to believe this was her last film role, but damn is it a good one. Sure the plot of the movie (fun and bitter incidents surrounding a custody battle set in London) verges on soap opera, but Judy is the rope that holds the soap together. And she sure doesn't drop it.

Christina Davis

So tonight I went to see Christina Davis and Tom Thompson read poems at KGB Bar. Going to these readings on Monday nights at 7:30 is becoming a tradition for me, and it's very fun, especially since I'm trying to hone my own poetic skills little by little.

Anyway, I thought Tom Thompson's poems were a little bit pretentious for my taste, but Christina Davis really impressed me. I bought her book, Forth A Raven, published by Alice James Books, after the reading. I suggest checking out excerpts from Forth A Raven here.

Next week at KGB Bar is an evening dedicated to The Oxford Book of American Poetry, edited by David Lehman, who was my Great Poems professor last year.

What a weekend, "subUrbia," "The Voyage of the Carcass."

So this was some weekend.

On Friday night I went to see subUrbia at Second Stage Theatre off-Broadway with my new friend Ryan Frisinger. The show was entertaining enough but not really "great theatre." It was the story of a group of kids who hung around a convenience store and what happens when one of their friends, who's "made it" as a rock star returns to town for a tour stop. The characters were largely unappealing, and the second act just made them even more so than I thought they were originally. Ryan and I had fun going to Starbucks afterwards and talking, and then we walked over to the Apple store in the rain, and he bought a new iPod. It was a lot of fun, and Ryan is a cool person to talk to.

Saturday was the Room 207 Halloween Party. It was fun at first but slowly deteriorated. I was proud of my costume (Judy Garland), which I worked pretty hard on, and it was good to see Christina and Richard again. We didn't get too much of any turnout though besides for Christina, Richard, and Olga.

Today, I went to see a play called The Voyage of the Carcass off-Broadway. The title itself is enough to turn me off to the play, but I went because the ticket was complimentary from Roundabout. The play was just about the most excrutiating thing I've seen in a long, long time. The action begins with an obnoxiously slapstick arctic adventure-themed play-within-a-play, and I was quite thankful to learn that that wasn't the actual point of the entire show later in the first act. Once the backstage story of the actors creating the play began, things got a little bit better. I was soooo, soooo tempted to leave at intermission (as I so rarely am), but I was ready to stick it out through the second act, which was supposed to be shorter than the first. However, due to an injury in the cast, the show was unable to proceed, and I was released back into the happy non-Carcass world guilt-free.

Alas, another week begins shortly. I'm seeing Mary Poppins and The Little Dog Laughed on Broadway this week, both of which I'm very excited for, and then I'm seeing Suddenly Last Summer again next weekend with Austin. Yay!

Venture into the vagina

As a gay man, I have such limited insight into the ways of the vagina.

I do not look at vaginas. I do not smell or taste vaginas. I do not have a vagina.

Is vagina a word that scares you? Should it be?

Vagina.

Eve Ensler made me indulge my inner vagina tonight while watching the HBO presentation of The Vagina Monologues with my vagina-loving roommate Austin.

CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNT. Hard "T."

End.

"The Daily Show," "Suddenly Last Summer"

So the past few days have been pretty busy. On Wednesday, Ashley came to visit, and we saw a taping of The Daily Show with Christina and Emma. The episode that we saw taped featured John Ashcroft, and we also got to see my favorite correspondent Samantha Bee tape her "This Week in God" segment.

Because Roundabout Theatre Company is so amazing, they invited all of the staff and a guest (in my case, Emma) to see the invited dress rehearsal of their second show of the season, Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams, which is playing at the Laura Pels Theate on West 46th Street. It was still a rehearsal, but I have to say it was quite an extraordinary production, and Blythe Danner and Carla Gugino give beautiful performances. I can't wait to see how it develops during previews. It's definitely worth checking out!

Next semester

So, first of all, I saw Lonny Price (director of Sweeney Todd concert DVD, star of Merrily We Roll Along and A Class Act on Broadway) at the office today.

I'm starting to plan for my classes for next semester. I think I'm going to take:

Intermediate German II
Major Playwrights: Caryl Churchill, David Hare, and Tom Stoppard
Con West: Antiquity and the 19th Century
and African American Drama

I'm so conflicted as to what I want to do about journalism. I'm not sure that I really want to major in it. I'm thinking maybe a minor would be a good thing though. Gahhh...the decisions!

"My Name Is Rachel Corrie," Great Read in the Park

So, today was quite a busy day.

After seeing Wrecks last night and noticing a flyer for My Name Is Rachel Corrie at the Public Theatre, I decided that today would be a good day to try and check that out. I read a little bit about the controversy surrounding the play, which chronicles, through the writings of 23-year-old Washington state native Rachel Corrie, the home life and eventual aid efforts in Palestine of an optimistic young activist who travels with a group of "internationals" seeking peace for those Palestineans she feels are unjustly targeted by the Israeli government. The end to Corrie's life is the end to the play: her being struck down by an Israeli bulldozer while struggling to save a Palestinean home from destruction. An audience will likely bring in their own preconceived judgments of her character.

Megan Dodds in the title role of My Name Is Rachel Corrie (photo by Sara Krulwich for The New York Times)

The play is comprised of the journal entries and emails of Rachel Corrie and was compiled by famed actor Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner. Alan Rickman directed the minimal staging, which is executed by Megan Dodds as Rachel Corrie. The play was originally presented by the Royal Court Theatre in London, which is famed for presenting exciting new words (like those of some of my favorites -- Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, and others), which was one of the reasons I was excited to see the play. When the production at the Royal Court originally sought to transfer to New York, the New York Theatre Workshop, which initially committed to the production, backed out due to fears of controversy over the play's subject matter and the proximity of the production to the illness of Ariel Sharon.

Finally produced at the Minetta Lane Theatre in a commercial production (NYTW is a non-profit theatre), the show deserves to be heard. Dodds gives a commanding performance, though it takes about a third of the play for her acting to really soar and for her to come into her own as the play transitions from Rachel's life at home to her time in Palestine. At many times during the play, Corrie's language is poetic and soaring. The flaws in the work, for me, were in the editing of Rickman and Viner. In using only the words of Rachel Corrie, they leave out much of the context for the events of the play. Characters referred to are only vaguely introduced, and the motivations and nuances of events are often subjugated for the purpose of flashy dialogue in search of emotional response.

And emotional response was certainly visible. The audience members next to me were audibly crying, and I saw several other theatregoers with tears streaming down their cheeks as the exited their theatre. It's obviously a production that produces strong emotion on one side of the Israeli-Palestinean conflict or the other, and it's definitely a great thing that this production stirs up a debate. However, not enough is presented in the context of the play for those less familiar with the events in question to be moved one way or the other.

As a side note, I saw Alan Rickman outside of the theatre before the show with a lot of members of the press, and I also noticed a group of individuals handing out pro-Israeli notices about the events in the play. There seems to be quite a bit of buzz about the show, and security was noticeably heightened.

Earlier in the day, I went to the New York Times-sponsered "Great Reads in the Park" event at Bryant Park. I had been thinking of going before, and I went mostly to see my friend Antonio do poetry slam with the group Urban Word NYC. He was very good, and the group was very exciting. I also saw a very interesting interview with Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues, The Good Body, and other works, who had a lot of very provocative and interesting things to say about the state of politics, security, and gender today. Hearing her made me really want to experience her work, so I'm thinking of checking out one of her plays or books.

Anyway, it was a busy and fun day. Now back to the busy week.

"Wrecks"

Ed Harris in Neil LaBute's Wrecks

So tonight I went to see Wrecks at the Public Theater with Emma. It's a monologue play written by Neil LaBute and starring Ed Harris as Edward Carr, a man addressing the audience as if in a private room at the viewing for his late wife, Mary Josephine ("Mary Jo"). It was a very thoughtful show that really made you think about a range of different issues, and the playwright was able to say things very touchingly while remaining true to the character, who is decidedly rough around the edges. There was something about his character that originally threw me off, his "Believe you me" gruff attitude that comes off as a little too haughty, but as the play went along I came to understand him as a character a lot better. Then, whoa, at the end of the play there's a huge revelation that just sends a blow to the audience and our ideas about Edward.

If you're planning on seeing the play, for your own enjoyment later on, don't read the following paragraph, which is written in white font and must be highlighted to be viewed:

(Highlight below)
Edward alluded to his wife's being 15 years older than he in the earlier scenes, but toward the end of the play, after describing his love of making love to her, he revealed that she told him a final secret while on her deathbed: she had been raped as a child and gave up her son for adoption. Edward then goes on to reveal the fact that he is her son and that he knew this all along and had pursued her knowing this. All along, she had no idea, and she was relieved to finally know that she had known her son (albeit as a lover/husband). He then goes on to say that all love that doesn't harm others is love (which is valid in most cases, but what about their children!?)
(Highlight above)

So, yeah. That pretty much took the audience off guard and opened up a whole mess of cans of worms to make us all question our perception of love, adoption, incest, and so on. And that's what good theatre is supposed to do, make you ask questions. So the play was successful.

As a side note, an interesting thing that was done to enhance the mood of the piece was to hand out prayer cards with the wife character's name on them and play crooner songs to get the audience into a funereal mood. The set helped evoke the feeling with its sterile look, a casket adorned with flowers and Edward's wife's picture out on a table.

Also, after the show, Emma and I saw Helen Mirren in the lobby of the theatre looking wonderful sporting her typical silver fox look. It was neat, because an ad for her current movie The Queen was in the Playbill. She was with her husband, Taylor Hackford (who directed Ray).

"Heartbreak House" opening, work, stuff, Broadway, off-Broadway

So, it's been a few days since I updated.

Wednesday was the opening night for Heartbreak House, the first show of Roundabout's '06-'07 season. I volunteered at the party at the Marriott Marquis, which was very classy. I saw Gale Harold ("Brian") and Scott Lowell ("Ted") from Queer As Folk, and they acknowledged me and asked me what floor the party was on. Fun! I had to call Ashley and let her know I'd seen them. I also saw Blythe Danner. It was nice, and there were some really great desserts when I was allowed to go mingle.

I've been quite busy what with work and class, so there hasn't been a whole lot else happening, besides for going to cafes with Austin and hanging out with Christian and Antonio on Thursday. Work today was really hectic, because I work in the finance department, and the auditors were around today checking up on various invoices, some of which seemed to be nowhere to be found. Tomorrow I'm seeing Wrecks by Neil LaBute at the Public Theater with Emma. It's starring Ed Harris, and I'm quite excited. Plus, we're going to get some dinner before the show!

All in all, things are fun.

Picnic, park, Lennon

So, yesterday Austin and I picnicked in Central Park with our friends Christina, Richard, and Elena. It was a beautiful day and much fun was had.

Today, I went to Central Park again for another walk after some afternoon plans fell through, and, realizing it was the ninth of October, I stopped by Strawberry Fields for a few hours to celebrate John Lennon's birthday and sing Beatles and John Lennon songs. It was much fun.

And so another busy week begins.

Lisa visits, "Shortbus"

So Friday morning, Lisa Schmidt came to town to visit me. We did a lot of fun stuff: shopping in Soho, shopping at 34th Street, eating at Cafetasia, grabbing dessert at Yaffa with Austin. It was nice having a visitor for a change. We spent a good amount of time hunting for the perfect pair of shoes for Lisa as well, which was quite an adventure.

Tonight, I saw the new John Cameron Mitchell movie, Shortbus. As a huge fan of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I'd been anticipating the film, and it'd been hyped up entirely too much because of the fact that it features a lot of sex and none of it was simulated for the cameras. Besides for being sexy and provocative, it was also a very interesting movie about relationships. It's hard to explain why, but there was something about the movie that made sex seem so much less stigmatized than it's become in today's world -- especially when compared with violence in movies. It was nice. Plus, the acting was quite good and there were quite a few standout moments.

The plot focuses around a gay couple, a couples therapist, and a dominatrix and their various loves, lives, and sexualities. I read a lot of reviews that seemed to think the characters were totally unsympathetic, but I really thought there was a good deal of character development. To begin with, capturing sex is capturing one of the most intimate facets of human behavior.

Another fun part of the movie was a really fun framing device for shifts in setting within the movie where a miniature animated version of Manhattan was created. It was really neat. Overall a worthwhile movie.

"Grey Gardens," reading

So, today was a really fun day. After class, I went to midtown and snagged me a front row ticket to the third preview of Grey Gardens, a new musical based on the documentary film.

Between getting the rush ticket and the show, I hung out in Starbucks for a pretty long time reading On Liberty by John Stuart Mill for my Foundations of Journalism class. It's a wonderful book so far, and I'll post quotes and further thoughts on it later when I've finished.

Anyway, so the show was absolutely amazing. I'd heard a lot of positive reactions last year when the show was at Playwrights Horizons off-Broadway, and I enjoyed the CD without being overly enthusiastic about it, but seeing the show just bowled me over. The entire cast was just wonderful, the score was great, and the show managed to have a nice balance between comedy and drama, which is something I always enjoy.

The show is based on the 1970s documentary Grey Gardens, which follows two aging socialites Big Edith and Little Edie Bouvier Beale in their dilapidated Hamptons mansion, Grey Gardens. The first act explains how the two women came to be recluses, and the second act mostly mirrors the movie.

The highlight in this evening full of highlights was Christine Ebersole, who took on the role of Big Edie in Act One and Little Edie in Act Two. I hugely resent the overwhelmingly common act of giving a standing ovation based on simply liking a performance rather than finding it one of the few special performances you've witnessed, but I have to say I was itching to stand at the end of the curtain call, because she gave such a stunningly nuanced peformance.

Since there wasn't much wrong with the show, I have so much less to say about it. I was just in a place today where I needed something to erase the bizarre memories of The Times They Are A-Changin', and Grey Gardens did just the trick.

"The Times They Are A-Changin' "

Boy has mean circus owner as a father. Circus owner abuses everyone in sight, including attractive young woman circus performer. Boy and young woman fall in love. Father dies. All celebrate. Boy and young woman commit to one another. Boy now owns circus. End.

Is this a story that needs to be told? Is this a story that is even very interesting? Is this a story that can be successfully propelled by the presentation of Bob Dylan songs alongside choreography by Twyla Tharp? No. No. No. Are Broadway performers energetic and talented enough to make this bizarre concept into an entertaining evening? Yes.

But it still isn't worth a trip to the theatre. Throughout this 90-minute parade of carnie freaks, acrobatics, Dylan song after Dylan song without any thought put to character development (and these are songs laced with meaning and feeling), I couldn't help but wonder what could have been if Twyla had come up with a unifying concept, inserted a well-written book, and perhaps brought in a few more collaborators to impose some checks and balances on her crazy directorial whims. The plot was scattered across the stage, leaving the audience to fit together something vaguely satisfying to take with them. Are we supposed to be so absolutely consumed by the visuals of the show and the Broadway belting acrobatics that we just forget about plot? Because I just can't do that, and I hope that that's not what we're coming to as a theatregoing population.

Michael Arden in the "Mr. Tamborine Man" scene.

At its best, there were inspired moments of staging, as in "Knocking on Heaven's Door," which was accompanied by a visually interesting flashlight dance, and "Mr. Tamborine Man," which played interestingly with the theme of death, but simply didn't fit into the show.

The cast did a good job with the material given them. The three leads, Michael Arden (Coyote, the young man), Thom Sesma (Captain Ahrab, the father), and brand new replacement Lisa Brescia (Cleo, the young woman) were wonderful. Sesma's voice was closest to Dylan's own, but the two younger cast members were electrifying in many of the songs. I understood why the audience wanted so much to like the show. Everyone was trying so damned hard and performing to their absolute fullest, but even the best performing can't fix a broken show sometimes.

At the very least, the show inspired me to listen to some Bob Dylan on my iPod on the way home, but I advise anyone else thinking of attending this scattershot show to keep their money and do just that -- turn up their iPods.

Thoughts

“We have an honorable history in the world of men and women. We seek to give expression to that thing that beats inside us, that pulsating muscle of indelible passion that informs our intellect. Theater is the spiritual fist of the culture. An intelligent, responsible fist of fierce purpose that is searching for tools to build institutions…to build palaces for our art.”

-August Wilson at the National Black Theater Festival, 1997

Lately, I've been having a dialogue with myself.

In my August Wilson class, we are constantly reading things about the importance of a distinct black culture and black theatre scene with the purpose of celebrating heritage and culture, and I think to myself, is queer culture driven by this same purpose to create a queer theatre similar in scope and purpose?

I'm a generally quiet person, ready to make it known that I'm proud of all of the facets that make up my self but at the same time humble and unassuming. It has for the most part been my opinion that if queer people lead lives that parallel those of heterosexuals (we do, in the end, have many of the same basic human needs and wants), the lines dividing our population into queer and straight would disintegrate over time. But, reading about the struggles and triumphs of black culture, I can't help but think that perhaps we need a similar push away from heteronormativity and toward a more reactionist queer theatre separate unto itself.

Of course, we do, in effect, have a queer theatre, populated by playwrights like Tony Kushner, Martin Sherman, Larry Kramer, Mark Ravenhill, and others, but do we have a unified purpose? Are there, in effect, vital, well-focused "queer theatres" out there focused around the sole purpose of producing queer works? And should there be? Do black theatres or Asian theatres or Hispanic theatres even have a unified purpose? Certainly there are artistic differences within each of these communities.

It's all so complicated, but it's certainly a question worth asking and one that I alone can't answer.

Blank page

To be a blank page is to be love
Love yet to be written
Imagined love
Faint glow in the night like a candle
Leave the rough edges
Torn from its spine
Bones and blood and life still blank
Written one by one by one
And love

"Heartbreak House," weekend, "Nixon's Nixon"

So I've been pretty busy lately, but things have been going well.

On Friday night, I went with David Bussard and his new boyfriend Cory Conley, who seems very nice, to see Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw, the first show of Roundabout's 2006-2007 theatre season. I didn't really go in expecting much, and I have to say it wasn't one of my favorite things to see lately. The first act was pretty dreadfully dull, but it picked up some in the second act. Overall, the style of acting (one-note Victorian acting choices) and writing (droll, dry humor) didn't really affect me, but I was able to appreciate it more after the second act picked up. The highlights of the cast for me were Swoosie Kurtz and Lily Rabe as Hesione Hushabye and Ellie Dunn respectively. They were the most plausible characters of the play and had a bit more nuance than some of the other flatter characters. Overall, I had very mixed feelings, but it was an interesting experience, and I'm glad to have experienced something by Shaw, whom I've been curious about lately.

Swoosie Kurtz, Lily Rabe, and Byron Jennings in Roundabout's Heartbreak House at the American Airlines Theatre.

On Saturday, Austin, Christina, Emma, Richard, his friend Jacob, and I went to Yaffa for dinner. We had originally been intending to use coupons for free jars of peanut butter at Peanut Butter & Co., but they were mysteriously out of bread(!!). We had a lot of fun hanging out, and, when Christina and Richard came back to our room, I introduced them all to In-Yer-Face Theatre (with mixed results).

Today was a beautiful day. I met up with Emma at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Christopher Street to see yet another free show, Nixon's Nixon by Russell Lees, which was put on by MCC Theater. It had been done with the same actors and directors ten years ago, and they reunited to revive the production. I didn't know what to expect going in, but it was a really interesting, funny play. The premise of the play is an imagining of the converstaion between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (played by Steve Mellor) and Richard Nixon (Gerry Bamman) on the night before his resignation. They recall triumphs and defeats and plot in vain to save his presidency, and the play manages to be both funny and poignant. It took me a while to warm to the actors, but I eventually did as the play went along and I became less interested in seeing a Nixon impersonation than seeing a captivating story. The production was much enhanced by interesting lighting and sets by Brian Aldous and Kyle Chepulis respectively, who effectively used wall lighting and projections to shift the action seamlessly between times of day and countries. The show was overall worth checking out; intimate productions like this are what I've been thriving on as a theatregoer lately.

Nixon's letter of resignation.

After the play, I went to Choux Factory on W. 8th Street and got a wonderful green tea frost, which I sat with in Washington Square Park for a while, listening to this really neat little band that was playing old-time jazz/Dixie-sounding songs by the Holley statue. They had three members, playing muted trumpet/hi-hat, banjo, and clarinet, and it was very relaxing to just sit and listen to them in the beautiful weather; I felt like I was in a Woody Allen film with no action. It was wonderful to observe the characters and colors of the park, which was very busy (another blues/funk band was playing, and the harlequin-style acting troupe I pointed out in my last post were back for another show).

And tomorrow begins the busy week.