Thursday, March 30, 2006
Woodlawn Cemetery
...is one of the most awesome places I have ever spent a day, and today was that day! Woodlawn Cemetery....truly a fine and private place, even though the some 400 acres are picturesquely packed with some tens of thousands of graves, even more mausoleums, and countless memorials, many of which were designed by the finest artists and architects and sculptors in the world!!! It was also built (as an alternative to Greenlawn, which was too far away from the City to enable women to attend funerals easily)...it was built at a time when the concept of Pubic Parks and Gardens had not yet taken hold, and so Woodlawn is the prime example of rural design in cemeteries: it is as much a Park, a Memorial Park, as it is a cemetery. So, we really spent the day in one of the most sumptuous parks in America!
And the day was absolutely perfect for it! Sunny, warm with the sweetest of cool breezes, totally clear skies and gorgeous air. Glenn A.'s wife came home from her hospital emergency last night, and today is totally well and recovering, so he was able to join us, which we were all so glad about. And that made for a full FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE company, and we were happy to be there for so many reasons, not the least of which was we were all ready to spend a day, a beautiful day, outside, and really ready to try what we have been rehearsing in the actual semetery itself...so that is eactly what we did, sans piano: we rehearsed the play, scene by scene, outside the Leeds Mausoleum, to which we had been given the key (mausoleum keys are large and made of brass, and if I threw one at Joe K. as we had planned to do in the show, it would hurt! So we may change that....ANYWAY: before rehearsal started , Susan, the PR lady there, gave us a fabulous tour all over the place, for what seemed like miles! But we only really covered about 1.5 miles of the some 26 miles of roads and grounds. WHEW! Even so, we saw some wonderful and awe-inspiring things:
Irving Berlin's humble grave, surrounded by three graves of his beloved family members....Irene Castle's lovely site, topped by a graceful and artistic lithe figure of a woman dancing...the Woolworth Mausoleum: wow...Victor Herbert's stately manse....Duke Ellington's unassuming grave, surrounded by many of the musicians who played with him and wh insisted on being buried near him...Miles Davis...Antoinette Perry's stone (if I ever win a Tony, I will grace her stone with flowers!)...Otoo Preminger's lush building (though he prefers that no one knows he is there..I guess he got tired of taking phone calls in life, so...)...we walked and walked...gawked and walked some more....GORGEOUS!
Then, we were served a lovely lunch at the Jerome Street Entrance Offices, and after the healthy walk, food tasted great! There was plenty of it! ANd we lunched with several gravediggers and Security Guards who were full of the most amazing storied about the spirits and ghosties they had encountered while at work, and the adventures they had with various and sundry burials, funerals,etc. Terrific story-tellers these men,one of whom has been with the WoodLawn "family" for 16 years and wears a gold medallion around his neck portraying a skeleton and grave and shovel....very beautiful and ornate, and fashioned out of gold by his jeweler wife! His name is Ray and he had the best stories of all!
The luncheon was entertaining and informative, and helped bolster the experience we were all having that cemeteries are not such dull and deadly places after all! In fact, the entire WoodLawn staff was so good to us, it felt very full of life and rather like a party! And there is such a feeling of history and of thousands of lives well lead there, it is a spirited place, if you will...that far from dull, the entire place seems far more really alive than the busiest City street! A unique experience for all of us!
After a leisurely lunch, we took the key granted us and strolled over to the Leeds Mausoleum and got to work! A perfectly sunny, clear, not too hot and not too cool day...perfect for experiencing and felling all there was to feel and eperience...lovely perfect day...surrounded by man-made and natural beauty of all sorts!
We worked on scenes for hours, roaming the cemetery for just the right locations for each moment in the play....got the feel of how it is to walk the paths to and from various points....experienced the way the place feels, smells, touches...what those astounding marble halls do to the space around you...the glorious details...we sll took tons of photos ...I am enthralled by the place itself and want to take Peter there. It's hard to describe what this huge burial ground is like...how it sits on the rolling hills in the Bronx and IS what it is...unique.Fantastically gorgeous. Almost unreal, but very very real all the same.
We worked til 4:30 or so, then traipsed back to the Offices and received out Wood Lawn Cemetery goodie bags, complete with cup and pen and map of the grounds! Also, a wonderful book of the history of Wood Lawn, which in itself will be fun to read.
The Wood Lawn folks are taking full advantage of A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE at The York, and this can only mean good publicity for us, as well as audiences supplemented by the many employees and staff of the place and their families.
They are also partnering a Lobby display of historic photos and stories of the actual cemetery, giving our audience members a chance to put what they see onstage in a real historic context and place...i think this will be a fun addition to the experience we will be giving them. New Yorkers know Wood Lawn. It is a part of the family history of so many natives, and it is filled with the joy of lives lived. Miraculous.
And the day was absolutely perfect for it! Sunny, warm with the sweetest of cool breezes, totally clear skies and gorgeous air. Glenn A.'s wife came home from her hospital emergency last night, and today is totally well and recovering, so he was able to join us, which we were all so glad about. And that made for a full FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE company, and we were happy to be there for so many reasons, not the least of which was we were all ready to spend a day, a beautiful day, outside, and really ready to try what we have been rehearsing in the actual semetery itself...so that is eactly what we did, sans piano: we rehearsed the play, scene by scene, outside the Leeds Mausoleum, to which we had been given the key (mausoleum keys are large and made of brass, and if I threw one at Joe K. as we had planned to do in the show, it would hurt! So we may change that....ANYWAY: before rehearsal started , Susan, the PR lady there, gave us a fabulous tour all over the place, for what seemed like miles! But we only really covered about 1.5 miles of the some 26 miles of roads and grounds. WHEW! Even so, we saw some wonderful and awe-inspiring things:
Irving Berlin's humble grave, surrounded by three graves of his beloved family members....Irene Castle's lovely site, topped by a graceful and artistic lithe figure of a woman dancing...the Woolworth Mausoleum: wow...Victor Herbert's stately manse....Duke Ellington's unassuming grave, surrounded by many of the musicians who played with him and wh insisted on being buried near him...Miles Davis...Antoinette Perry's stone (if I ever win a Tony, I will grace her stone with flowers!)...Otoo Preminger's lush building (though he prefers that no one knows he is there..I guess he got tired of taking phone calls in life, so...)...we walked and walked...gawked and walked some more....GORGEOUS!
Then, we were served a lovely lunch at the Jerome Street Entrance Offices, and after the healthy walk, food tasted great! There was plenty of it! ANd we lunched with several gravediggers and Security Guards who were full of the most amazing storied about the spirits and ghosties they had encountered while at work, and the adventures they had with various and sundry burials, funerals,etc. Terrific story-tellers these men,one of whom has been with the WoodLawn "family" for 16 years and wears a gold medallion around his neck portraying a skeleton and grave and shovel....very beautiful and ornate, and fashioned out of gold by his jeweler wife! His name is Ray and he had the best stories of all!
The luncheon was entertaining and informative, and helped bolster the experience we were all having that cemeteries are not such dull and deadly places after all! In fact, the entire WoodLawn staff was so good to us, it felt very full of life and rather like a party! And there is such a feeling of history and of thousands of lives well lead there, it is a spirited place, if you will...that far from dull, the entire place seems far more really alive than the busiest City street! A unique experience for all of us!
After a leisurely lunch, we took the key granted us and strolled over to the Leeds Mausoleum and got to work! A perfectly sunny, clear, not too hot and not too cool day...perfect for experiencing and felling all there was to feel and eperience...lovely perfect day...surrounded by man-made and natural beauty of all sorts!
We worked on scenes for hours, roaming the cemetery for just the right locations for each moment in the play....got the feel of how it is to walk the paths to and from various points....experienced the way the place feels, smells, touches...what those astounding marble halls do to the space around you...the glorious details...we sll took tons of photos ...I am enthralled by the place itself and want to take Peter there. It's hard to describe what this huge burial ground is like...how it sits on the rolling hills in the Bronx and IS what it is...unique.Fantastically gorgeous. Almost unreal, but very very real all the same.
We worked til 4:30 or so, then traipsed back to the Offices and received out Wood Lawn Cemetery goodie bags, complete with cup and pen and map of the grounds! Also, a wonderful book of the history of Wood Lawn, which in itself will be fun to read.
The Wood Lawn folks are taking full advantage of A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE at The York, and this can only mean good publicity for us, as well as audiences supplemented by the many employees and staff of the place and their families.
They are also partnering a Lobby display of historic photos and stories of the actual cemetery, giving our audience members a chance to put what they see onstage in a real historic context and place...i think this will be a fun addition to the experience we will be giving them. New Yorkers know Wood Lawn. It is a part of the family history of so many natives, and it is filled with the joy of lives lived. Miraculous.
Post a Comment