Open Wardrobes

On Saturday night Kelly and I had the opportunity to see Souvenir at the Jungle Theater. It was part of a holiday party for work hosted by Erwin and Miriam Kelen (Erwin is the Board Chair of the SPCO, and they are both also big fans of the Jungle). The play tells the story of Florence Foster Jenkins who was a hit soprano in New York City in the 30s and 40s, not because she was good but because she was terrible. But as terrible a singer as was, she was convinced she was exceptional and all indications are that she died never knowing how awful she truly was. The two characters in Souvenir are Florence Foster Jenkins and Cosmé McMoon, her accompanist of many years (who was fully aware of her complete lack of talent). Claudia Wilkens, who plays Jenkins, was absolutely remarkable. As Kelly pointed out, the bad singing could quickly get old, but she kept it fresh by continually finding new ways to sound terrible. But what the play really focuses on is the friendship between Jenkins and McMoon. She exhibits a genuine gratitude for all McMoon does for her, and he in turn truly cares about her and seeks to protect her from the truth of her own lack of talent. One must be careful, of course, to assume that a theatrical portrayal is indeed how things really were (how many of us, for example, get our "history" of Mozart from the movie Amadeus?), but it is a touching picture of how far we will go to protect the feelings of those we love. The play is moved along by McMoon's direct conversations with the audience. While it would be easy for such a device to get old, the well-written script and Peter Vitale's charming performance as McMoon easily clear this hurdle. All in all it was a delightful performance which Kelly and I both enjoyed immensely.

The show is over, Chinese is finished for the semester, and just a few working days left until Christmas break (yes, I actually get a Christmas break!). Last night the Christmas tree went up (it has lights but no ornaments as of yet) and Kelly and I made gingerbread mooses (meese?) for the holiday party at work. OK, OK, so Kelly made them and I just chipped in on the decorations (thanks to me some of the mooses have eyebrows). At any rate, the iPod is playing Christmas tunes, the presents are (mostly) bought and waiting to be wrapped, and we will spend much of next week journeying from family gathering to family gathering (all here in the Cities which makes it easy). And there will be time to rest.


For me Christmas has real meaning beyond the decorations and gifts, and even the time with family and friends. It is a time of Joy, of Peace, of Love, a time to celebrate the birth of our Savior. With great family and friends the Love and Joy have certainly not been lacking, but the Peace... It has been a busy year, between work, taking some classes, doing 3 shows (more than I've done in one year for awhile), putting the finishing touches on one play, revising another, and starting a new one from scratch. Oh yes, and prepping the novel for Lulu, not to mention all the projects around the house and just generally living life.


Don't get me wrong, it's been a great year and Kelly and I have had wonderful times (for the younger set, here's a tip: marry someone who is your best friend and makes you laugh, you'll never be bored again). But at times the year has been lacking in Peace. It's my own fault, really, I'm one of those people who must always be doing something. But sometimes the more you try and do, the less you actually get done. We all need time to rest and recharge, which often means saying "No" to something you'd really like to do, remembering you just can't do it all.


So while I have things I'd like to get done over the next two weeks I will try and remember that not all of it needs to be done, at least right now. Instead, time with family and friends, curling up with a good book, and remembering a peaceful night 2000 years ago which heralded the birth of the Prince of Peace, these are the sorts of things that are truly important right now. The rest can wait.

We closed The Hanging of the Greens this past weekend after our final two performances on Sunday. With the ending of any show comes a sadness that this wonderful thing we have created is finished, never to exist again. In a show like this, with such wonderful, talented people who put all their hearts into their work, it is a sadness beyond measure. I always have difficulty in the final performance of disconnecting myself from the finality of it all - this is the last time I shall do this, the last time I shall share this moment onstage with this person, and so on. With a show like Greens, where so much of it revolves around the families, it is for me even more difficult to say goodbye. I rather enjoyed being the "papa" for these seven amazing kids these past six weeks. Though most of us started as strangers, we did become the family to had to portray on stage. The family moments were genuine because they came out of the real bonds that we had formed with each other. I will miss everyone in the cast, to be sure, but yes, I will admit, I will miss my "family" all the more.


So it is no surprise that Sunday night was an emotional one. We ended up not striking the set due to the bad weather (the producers wanted everyone to get home safely and as early as possible). While in some ways I missed the closure that that can help bring (and of course it gives you those few last hours together as a cast), I am glad that I did not have to see my family's little house torn to pieces and put away. The next time I am at Lakeshore, it will simply be gone and perhaps that is best. I lingered as long as I could on Sunday night to say goodbye to everyone, wishing each of my children well. We had to opportunity this weekend to write notes of encouragement to each other, and I waited until home to take those out... which brought tears to my eyes once more.


This is the point where I must remind myself that there will be other shows, the change to reconnect with old friends and again make new ones, as was the case with Greens. Kate, Ali and I had the fun of reuniting after last year's Hansel and Gretel and the many moments of "Remember last year when...?" Us Greenies (as Claudia affectionately calls us) now have new stories to tell, wherever we end up.


So now I must start looking forward again, which is hard to do, and to the next project which for me is Fringe and my one-man show. Perhaps in part this is difficult because the show will by its nature be very much a solitary endeavor. It will be a great challenge for me as both an actor and writer and I feel deep down that it is important for me to attempt, but after coming from a big cast show I am conscious of all it will lack. Yesterday, at work, it happened that Leah Cooper, the past executive director of the Fringe, came in to share some of her experiences with Fringe and grassroots marketing efforts. And part of me because excited to start on the Fringe journey again, to take the risk it implies, and see if my show will stand or fall. And as I write this it hits me: having done the Fringe before I know it is not a solitary journey. There is a community around it and the sense that we're all in it together, it itself becomes a sort of family (with more strange uncles and crazy cousins than you can shake a stick at). And hopefully more than a few folks from Greens, Hansel and Gretel, and so forth will come out for it. There's nothing better than having your family there to cheer you on.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Yesterday we started into our second week of shows with our matinee for schools, the most kids we've had in a single audience. You could tell they were really enjoying it. It's too bad that was the only school matinee we have, there's a whole different energy performing for mostly kids that's a lot of fun. We had another performance tonight (went well with a small yet responsive crowd) and are in the final stretch, ending Sunday. I feel like one more week of shows would be just about right, but we still have five performances left. The final performance of a show is for me always bittersweet, as it's hard to escape the knowledge that it is the last time we will all be putting that particular show on together. And then strike and then... we are all just ourselves again, and it will be time to say goodbye to our characters as well. Then a rest and time to move on to other endeavors. I am fortunate to have a break from work over Christmas and New Year's and so I will turn my attention back to the one-man show and perhaps think about new ideas as well. As much as part of me is tempted to jump back into things and into another show (I was very tempted to audition for Lakeshore's next show, The Murder Room) I know I will need a bit of a rest. Resting is sometimes difficult for me, I am one of those people who always feels they must be doing something, but I have learned the importance of it, of needing to refresh myself before launching into something new. We filmed yesterday's performance, and took photos, so there will always be something to look back on and remember the fun we had.

So the last couple of days have been our off days for Greens, in-between our two weekends of shows. While I miss my fellow castmates it is nice to have just a little rest. Last week, from Sunday to Sunday, we did the show 10 times when you include all the tech/dress rehearsals. By Sunday night I was also feeling a little under the weather, so a break was much-needed. Our school matinees for today were canceled, but I took the day off work anyway, a good choice I think. Despite our break in performances I have not entirely lost touch with the cast, as it has given us all a chance to upload our behind-the-scenes photos to Facebook. :-) Yes, I'm on Facebook, after vowing not that long ago that I wasn't going to cross that line. But under peer pressure from my wife I succumbed. So my photos, Will's photos, Ali's photos, Jan's photos... there they all are in a myriad of Hanging of the Greens-labeled photo albums up on Facebook. Ali always seems to be behind a camera, Justin is always trying to get in the shot, Alycia is always texting (for which we have kidded her mercilessly), and everyone has at least one photo they think they look terrible in.


Does it get better than this? To be a part of a cast who has become such a family and has such fun together? I do not have kids (in real life, that is), but I get a warm fuzzy feeling each time one of my stage children calls me "papa." They are good, wonderful, talented kids and I continue to be impressed with both their dedication and maturity. The other adults are, of course, also amazing to work with, though we are perhaps a quieter, more mellow bunch (on the weekend, in our break between shows, it got a little rowdy!) who tend to save most of our energy for the actual performances. :-) I wouldn't trade this experience for this world, and I cannot help but be sad it will soon end. I was tempted to jump right back into things and audition for Lakeshore's next show, but deep down I know that I will need a bit of a rest (there's that energy thing again, and I am slowly learning to be more focused about where I spend mine). I still have a one-man show to revise and prepare for (Fringe is 7 1/2 months away, but that is surprisingly little time when you are responsible for the production side of things).


So tomorrow we jump back into it for our final 7 performances. It is theater, it is all in the now. That makes it fleeting, and I have always hated reaching the end of such a good thing, but its now-ness is part of what makes it special. Each performance is different, as each show and each cast is different. If we stayed with this one forever, there would be no next show to come, no chance to join some of these people in a new adventure, and meet yet more new faces.

"It is only in the Present that the Eternal can be met." - C. S. Lewis

We had our opening of The Hanging of the Greens Thursday night to a good crowd (which included my wife Kelly. Everyone did great and was spot on. It was exciting to finally have an audience to perform for, we definitely were ready. Last night we had a mostly full house, despite the snow which had been coming down steadily all day. Both audiences really seemed to enjoy the show (and wonderful to hear some laughter!) and no real mistakes from anyone, it's going about as smoothly as it could. And what a joy to be able to do! I have learned that one of the ways to identify your passions in life is to figure out what energizes you. Acting is work, and frankly a lot of work. The more "effortless" an actor's performance looks, you can bet he's worked all the harder. But for me the work is entirely worth it, because it is what energizes me. Yesterday I arrived at the theater feeling drained from a long day at work... but by the end of the show I had more energy than when I arrived and the stress of the day was forgotten. It is my passion.


I have been re-reading The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers which is a wonderful discussion of the creative process, paralleling it to the creative process of God. I have mentioned before how in Genesis the first action we see from God is to create, and that the first thing God asks of Adam is to be creative. From this we can infer that at least part of the image of God in which we are made is that we are intended to be creative beings. Sayers takes this as her starting point and describes, based on the idea of a perfect God, what then a perfect artist should look like. It is rare that a writer relates art so closely to theology, and does it so well. She argues that the doctrine of the Trinity, however mysterious (and indeed it is), we cannot say it is removed from our human experience, for we see the process of the artist reflected in it, with first the Idea of the work, the Form into which the work is cast, and the Response it elicits from those who experience it. All three are necessary, each is in its way distinct, and yet all are part of the same work of art. With all this being true, how can we not but see the work of the artist as a truly holy calling?


Towards the end of the book she expands the idea of living creativity to all walks of life. Not everyone is called to be a writer, or an actor, or so on, but that does not mean we cannot live creatively. Sayers writes how modern society sees most things in terms of "problems" and "solutions" (and certainly this has not changed since her day), but in reality not everything is a problem to be solved, at least not in the sense of a math problem or a detective story. For example, she talks of the "problem of unemployment": it is not as simple as finding the one right "solution" which provides everyone with a job. Surely, she continues, should we not also ask whether the work is worth doing? If everyone has a job, but everyone is engaged in work that is dull, making things no one needs, has unemployment really been "solved"? Rather, perhaps the correct direction lies in thinking creatively, to apply our passions, whatever they are, and create jobs that no one has thought yet to do, but are immensely worthwhile. A society of people each engaged in working out their passions, freely living the life for which they were made... well, it certainly would be a better society than the one in which we currently find ourselves. It is a perfect ideal, and in that sense impossible on this earth, but one well worth the striving for.


So, getting back to the show: here is a group of people that know their passion and are working to live it our creatively. Certainly the fact that we are artists makes that a little easier. :-) It is a joy to watch people engaged in what they love, for their hearts and souls have been poured into the service of the work to make something beautiful and true. It is humbling to be a part of such a group, and here's to the rest of the run!

Today I sent off my application for the 2009 Minnesota Fringe Festival! If the ping pong balls are kind to me, this means that next August I will be performing my new (and still in progress) one-man show Schrödinger's Cat Must Die! As an actor, playwright and trained physicist, this is a perfect synthesis all of my interests, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. For those unfamiliar with the Fringe, the MN Fringe selects shows through a random lottery: they put a bunch of ping pong balls in a bingo cage and randomly draw them one by one (each has a number corresponding to a different show). It's actually quite entertaining to see (I went back in 2006, the last time I had entered a show). That doesn't happen until early February, so until then I must wait and continue to work on the show.

The opening night of The Hanging of the Greens is almost upon us. We have a final dress rehearsal tonight, a preview tomorrow, and then the official opening on Thursday. The last month and a half has just sped by, it's hard to believe we've almost reached performances already. Last night Claudia said that she thinks we're at the point where we're not only ready for an audience, but need one. I agree. It always amazes me how when a show reaches the final rehearsals, adds the costumes, lights, the set is finished, and so on, how that naturally brings the show to the next level. The last couple of rehearsals have felt really good. Bits that I wasn't quite sure about as an actor have finally come together, the relationships onstage are there, and perhaps most importantly we're all having fun. Last year during Hansel and Gretel I deeply enjoyed the intimacy of the small cast experience, how you come to know and depend so much on each person. This year I am reveling in the big cast experience, the loud raucous nature of it, and the joy of being at home in a big crowd. I have, not surprisingly, become closest to my onstage "family." They are amazing to work with and just the sweetest kids.


So as we prepare to enter into the performance phase of the show, a final thought: I had acting teacher in college, Kurt Schweickhardt, who emphasized the importance during rehearsals of understanding your character, what you're trying to accomplish, why you're saying what you're saying, the physicality, and so on. But when you get to performances, he said, let it all go. If you have done your work it will be there behind you and you can just be the character. We have all done our work and the time has come to let it all go and just be in the moment.