Open Wardrobes

Thanks in large part to the long MLK weekend I was able to finish up draft 2 of Schrödinger's Cat Must Die! last week. I can tell the script is still going to need a couple more drafts, but I feel that I made good progress in the right direction. I did a lot of restructuring of the physics bits with the Professor, rearranging things to put them in a more logical order and clarifying the science to help make it as straightforward as possible. I also started adding in some more character elements to the Professor, although I don't feel that I've gotten enough depth there yet. But sometimes the best thing to do is just play around with ideas, take a step back, and see what works and what doesn't. For some plays the structure and characterizations come out right away and the rewrite process is mostly trimming and polishing, but for other plays (like this one) it's a slow process of chipping away and improving things little by little, draft by draft. Writing Illinois Jane 2 was like that, and it took 6 months of pounding on it to finally hit that breakthrough moment when I figured out how the story needed to work. I'm definitely hoping for that kind of "Aha!" moment here as well! So, for the moment I'm taking a step back, trying to get a few new people to take a look at the script and offer feedback, and I'll go from there. I'm ahead of my goal of finishing draft 2 by the end of January, so a third draft by the end of February may be a realistic goal. I've also started the process of figuring out set and costume pieces, as some may be a little tricky. I've found a hat for one character and over the weekend I transformed my basement into a mini-scene workshop and started building one of the set pieces.


184 days until Fringe.

Yes, it's already week 3 (and this week I am more ahead of the game in writing about it). Last night Kelly and I caught the ICOF concert at Temple Israel featuring the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) and the SPCO. As with last weekend's concert, this concert also featured each orchestra as half the concert. The OAE, an orchestra which only performs on period instruments (i.e. gut string on the violins, no valves on the trumpets, etc), kicked things off with several Baroque pieces: a divertimento by Mozart, a sinfonia by C.P.E Bach, and a Haydn violin concerto. All three pieces were led by the OAE's Rachel Podger who directed from the violin. (Like the SPCO the OAE does not have a single music director.) First, I have to say that these musicians were great fun to watch (it's always a pleasure to watch performers who are clearly enjoying themselves), especially Ms. Podger. The Mozart, for example, was a lively little piece (you can always count on Mozart to be good fun) and the C.P.E. Bach piece was filled with musical twists and turns. All in all the OAE put on a very nice performance and I enjoyed all 3 pieces, but while it felt solid it did not feel like anything spectacular. It was all good, but not great.


The second half, on the other hand, was given over entirely to the SPCO and Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony in F and was a truly remarkable piece (here I must once again admit my bias towards the SPCO). This is an incredibly intriguing and dynamic piece, always changing, and filled with "darker" notes. Unlike the Baroque pieces of the first half, the Shostakovich had the feel of a deep story lurking behind the notes. It was dramatic, such as the sudden end of the third movement, and the more subtle end of the fifth, in which the lead violin plucked the final notes along with the harp, underscored by sustained notes from the rest of the strings. Ruggero Allifranchini, the SPCO's associate concertmaster, led this piece from the violin, and if you have ever seen him in performance you know he is a treat to watch. He is very intense and clearly relished the piece. The rest of the orchestra as well excuted this piece marvelously, and what a piece. At the end I turned to Kelly and said, "Holy crap, that was COOL!" It really was one of the most amazing pieces I've every heard (and after the Vaughan Williams two weeks ago, that is saying something) and I will definitely be tuning into MPR this Saturday night to catch the live broadcast of that concert. One of the pieces I heard the SPCO play back when I first joined the staff was another Shostakovich piece (a piano concerto, I think) which was also amazing, and so Kelly and I have come to the conclusion that we really like Shostakovich. (It makes me regret the fact that I missed the ICOF concert back in Week 1 where the Chamber Orchestra of Europe played multiple Shostakovich works, including another chamber symphony.)


With just one week left I am thankful that I've had the opportunity to catch so much of the festival so far, as I have been treated to one amazing performance after another by the world's top chamber orchestras. This festival is the first of its kind, and from what I've seen I hope it will not be the last.

This is a little belated, but this past Saturday night I was able to make The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's concert which also featured the London Sinfonietta in Week 2 of the International Chamber Orchestra Festival (or ICOF as it is affectionately known). This concert was split up with the SPCO playing the first half, and the London Sinfonietta playing the second. For the SPCO's piece they played Beethoven's Emperor piano concerto featuring Pierre-Laurant Aimard on piano and as director. Aimard is my favorite of our current Artistic Partners, as he is so animated and so much fun to watch when he plays. Sadly, he wraps up his term as Artistic Partner in mid-February with Beethoven's 1st and 2nd piano concertos, so just one last chance to catch him here at the SPCO.


The Emperor was amazing and Aimard and the SPCO had me enraptured the whole time. The piece itself is lovely and flowing, going from soft quiet bits back into full-blown orchestral splendor in very Beethoven fashion. There was a very nice horn bit at one point that had a delicate feel to it (wonderfully done by Bernhard Scully and Paul Straka); moments like these gave such a beautiful texture to the whole piece. I'm not very familiar with Beethoven's piano concertos and hadn't heard this one before, and clearly I've been missing out. An absolutely flawless performance.


The second half of the program was given over to the London Sinfonietta (with members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the guest orchestra for week 3) and Goebbels Songs of Wars I Have Seen, set to text by Gertrude Stein. It was, to be sure, an interesting piece, though not always to my own particular taste. Working at the SPCO I have certainly become more adventurous when it comes to trying contemporary music (this piece was composed in 2007), but I am not a huge fan of atonal, or "crunchy," music. This piece certainly fit the "crunchy" designation, with much of it possessing a very random feel to the music, punctuated by more traditional, Baroque-sounding bits. By the second half of the piece, however, I was warming to it, especially the end where many musicians played not their regular instruments, but Tibetan prayer bowls which create a specific resonant note. This went on for some time towards, building in intensity, under the playing of other instruments and the effect was quite nice. The piece also calls for the female musicians to read the Stein text (selections from her journals) in addition to playing. These also came across to me as somewhat random, I didn't always see their connection with the music, and I felt like the readers were a little stilted in their delivery. To be fair they are orchestra musicians, not actors, and being an actor myself I am perhaps more critical of that aspect.


All in all the Goebbels was a unique experience and I'm glad I saw it, though I think I could have come in halfway through this 55-minute epic and not missed anything of note.

I found out the other day that my 10-minute play The Last Anniversary has been selected as a semi-finalist for Lakeshore Player's 10-minute play festival in June. There are about 40 such lucky plays in all, 20 of which will become finalists, and 10 of which will be performed as part of the festival. So I'm excited that the play has made it this far, and will continue to hope that it makes the final cut.

I was able to catch a few different performances this weekend, the first of which was the opening night of "The Murder Room" at Lakeshore Players. The cast included Will Vincent, who was also in The Hanging of the Greens, and so we had quite a large contingent from that cast there to cheer him on. The play is a farcical murder mystery set in England which has more in common with Abbott and Costello than Sherlock Holmes and includes mistaken identities, secret doors, gunshots and of course, a murder.


The script is well-written, but challenging from an acting standpoint as much of it is made up of snappy dialogue that requires the actors to keep things moving at a quick pace. Fortunately the cast was up to the task, including Will as Barry, the hapless American, and Barry's flighty fiancee Susan. There were points were the pacing could have been picked up a little, but based on what I saw having a few performances under their belt will tighten everything up. Joe Hendren also gave a fine performance as the somewhat clueless Constable Howard who was always a treat to watch.


The script ran a little long for the concept (no fault of the actors, of course), but the play made for a great evening of entertainment, complete with several twists and turns to keep you guessing. It runs through February 8th and I recommend it for all lovers of the mystery genre, especially if you love a show that doesn't take itself too seriously (and having written a few of those I do).

It just goes to show you never know what might happen. This morning, while working the SPCO's morning coffee concert at the Ordway, my co-worker Jackie and I were wondering what was going on in Rice Park right outside, as there were tents set up and all sorts of people about. Before long a woman came in and let us know that they were going to be shooting a commercial for Kashi Foods today... and they needed extras around 11 AM. So at that time, during the first half of the concert, Jackie and I popped over, but no luck, they were still setting everything up. So just before noon we tried again, along with another co-worker, Mary Kay, but no one seemed to know where we should go. Jackie and Mary Kay decided to head back to the office, but I hung around a little while longer and found the woman who had told us about the commercial and at last figured out where I was supposed to go and filled out my release form. They weren't ready to start shooting yet, so I grabbed a quick lunch back in the office and did some work, then went back over at 12:30 when they were supposed to start. (Fortunately they had a heated tent set up for all of us "people pulled off the street" to wait in.) After awhile someone took us back over to the back to get ready and we spent about a half hour walking back and forth in front of cameras as passerbys who were wondering why there were green, red, and yellow peppers stuck in the snow (for such there were). But 1:30 it was all over and I went back to work. And if I'm lucky I will actually appear in a TV commercial (a first for me). So, you just never know.

After taking some time to think through ideas and character relationships (yes, there are relationships even in a one-man show!) I have started in on the second draft of Schrödinger's Cat Must Die! I am focusing in this draft on the character of the Professor, who needs the most work. The other character (at least that I play), his Assistant, I feel pretty good about so far. The Professor's text in draft 1, however, was mostly focused on laying out the physics concepts that I wanted to address. Now I am working on making the Professor more of a character than simply a lecturer. I am almost halfway through this in draft 2, and with a three-day weekend coming up hope to make it through the rest of this draft in the near future. My goal has been to get through a second draft by the end of January, so I'm well on track for that. I have also started the process of trying to track down some costume and set pieces that will be required, as a few are a bit unusual. For example, I need a trunk that is large enough for me to fit inside, but small enough to fit in my compact car. Good thing I have awhile before such things are needed...


The trick with this play is to keep it interesting as a piece of theater, with story, character, conflict and so on, for even the non-science people, while at the same time including some real science for those that are interested and do it in a way that is accessible. As a physicist, an actor, and a playwright, this is a piece I am uniquely suited for and so am both excited and daunted by the idea of performing it. Still, I am way ahead of the game (many Fringe applicants don't even know what their show is about this far out). The Fringe lottery is on Monday, February 16th and I most definitely will be there waiting for my ping pong ball to be drawn.


196 days until Fringe.

This week is the first week of the International Chamber Orchestra Festival (ICO Festival), hosted by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra as part of its 50th anniversary season (which means that, as an SPCO employee, life has been a little crazy!). Each of the 4 weeks of the festival features a different guest orchestra. In week 1 this is the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE), which of all the guest orchestras is most like the SPCO in that they too perform a wide range of repertoire (as opposed to only playing music from one period). Each weekend also features a variety of different concert programs with different combinations of the orchestras playing together or alone.


I attended last night's concert at the Ordway which featured the SPCO and the COE playing several pieces together, all under the baton of Douglas Boyd. Douglas Boyd is one of the Artistic Partners of the SPCO, plus he was a founding member of the COE (who he played with for many years as an oboeist), and so this made him the perfect conductor to bring the two orchestras together. And he did so seamlessly, they played for all purposes as one unified orchestra. The concert opened with a piece by Tippitt (20th century) composed specifically for two groups of string players (as, indeed, all of the night's pieces were). It was a lovely piece, lush and beautiful, quite the opposite of the usual stereotype of modern music as being atonal and dissonant. The concluding Bartok piece also shunned this stereotype. I found the first movement a little slow, but the lively 4th movement with its dramatic finish made up for that. But the highlight of the concert was the Vaughan Williams piece, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. It was, without exaggeration, the most beautiful thing I have ever heard, a beauty only accentuated by hearing it live. It was simply amazing.


All in all a fantastic concert and one of the best I've heard from the SPCO (which is saying something). There are still three weeks left of the ICO Festival and my hope is to catch at least one performance with each of the visiting orchestras.

I've taken a bit of a pause from the blog as I enjoyed a well-deserved break from work for the holidays (the SPCO's version of a Christmas bonus). But this morning I return to work and so I think it is time to return to the blog as well. Christmas for us had its ups and downs this year. We had a death in the family on Christmas Eve which was tough, but the rest of the family all got together on Christmas and we had a very nice time, exactly what I think we all needed. I tried to stick to my promise of not trying to do too much while on break and taking time to rest, and I think I mostly succeeded. Besides all the family gatherings Kelly and I went to see a couple of movies (Valkyrie and The Tale of Despereaux), read some books, and hung out at the Tea Source. I did start in on the second draft of the one-man show (I'd like to have that complete by mid-February when the Fringe lottery takes place), edited vacation video from last spring (yes, it takes me awhile to get around to these things sometimes), studied a little Chinese, and also worked on some home improvement project projects. But most importantly Kelly and I did get time to rest, which is what we most needed.


Now a new year is ahead with fresh challenges and adventures. I don't usually do New Year's resolutions, per se, but I do have goals for the upcoming year. Artistically I hope to 1) finish and perform the one-man show, 2) start another play, and 3) start a new novel. I will continue also to try and get The Princess and the Moon out there. Outside of theater and writing I also want to finish off part of our basement (part of my work over break was to demolish our old basement bathroom) and will be finishing up the Chinese courses at Inver Hills.


Beyond that... who knows? It is a new year and I hope it will have some unexpected surprises in store.