Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Shaw Awe!
Last night, yet again, David Staller and his magnificent PROJECT SHAW !!!
The play read was GETTING MARRIED , and it was a peach! Paxton Whitehead, Penny Fuller, Charlotte Rae (amazing casting! as "Mrs. George"), Alison Fraser, and my own darling Peter as "Cecil"....plus other wonderful actors! It was a great fun read, and Peter was especially impressive...everyone was talking about him afterwards...it's just that he is so goodlooking and then he opens his mouth and his training is so good, his experience so right there...people are amazed to see such a young man who can do Shaw so well....he was very good last night. I was proud of him. He is so damned talented!
Letitia, our blessed cleaning lady, is here today, making sense out of our dear, lived-in home...every two weeks, we are forced to clear away debris and make it all liveable again, and we owe that to dear Letitia...YAY!
Tonight, I keep a committment I made to Ruth and Jerry Selman, dear old friends of Pat Yonka, who I have become very fond of.....they are two amazing people in their 80's and they live at 4610 Village, on Tenth Avenue at 46th Street here in Manhattan.
Ruth is a pioneer in Montessori Peace Education and Jerry, her husband of many many years, is one of the most interesting creative men I have ever met. They are both writers, idealists and what i would call" Old Reds" and I adore them! So, naturally, Ruth has started a Drama Club at their old folks home, and I promised I would come have dinner with them tonight and attend their meeting! And so I shall. I am going to them armed with a bunch of Shakespeare mohologues, just in case they want to work on something.
And tomorrow, I return to my duties at The New School Summer Musical Theatre Immersion: I have a two hour acting class. And it will be fun to see where they all are, after my having been away from them for a couple of days. They are being inundated with so much information and experience. It will be fun to see what sticks!
And to see how each of these lovely young actors is being shaped by the two week experience, generally.
Getting back to the Shaw Project last evening: I had a really good time sitting in that audience.....my ears were happy to be so well engaged with good language...and my mind leapt at the chance to think along with Shaw! It was a treat to hear Simon Jones simply talk, and easily inhabit his character, as it was with Paxton Whitehead...these are technically gifted actors of a certain age, who have done more roles in more good plays than almost anyone...they are Masters of their craft...and I bathed in the luxury of their ease with the material...wonderfully, Charlotte Rae, who cannot be younger than 75, can she? ayway, vocally , she was deeply present and connected to every word on the page, and she imbued "Mrs.George" with a sort of impish quality that made the entire thing work...she was gorgeous...and she is such a character woman, short and odd looking always...but last night, she showed me just what a truly fine actress she is and always has been, no doubt. It was a pleasure to see her do Shaw...and brilliant of Staller, I might add, to think of her for the role....truly an inspirational stroke, since most of us are simply used to her doing silly characters on dumb tv shows! I was so so glad. By the way, Celeste Holmes was in the audience last night. So we had the original "Ado Annie" and the original
"Mammy Yokum" under the same roof...I tell ya: only in New York!
This is such an intersting time for us.
Peter, wondering if he even wants to continue being in the theaer at all...me, tired of an 8 show a week schedule, feeling as if I have acted my last role but loving to teach, nonetheless.........both of us happy as happy can be, because we are together and going through these separate growth times together...knowing nothing can really harm us...ejoying our Buddhist studies...wondering what comes next.
It is so good to see Peter come to terms with where he honestly is...he loves acting, is so good...but,(like me), so tired of all the nonsense necessary to even try to get jobs....it's all so dumb. So infuriating. So, to sit back and examine who one really is in relation to all of that...well, I can't help but feel its a good good thing to do. Life is too short to waste on things one considers not worthy of one's soul and gift. I did not have these sensibilities when I was younger, and as a result, I did grow the way I was supposed to grow..but Peter has them now...so he is growing his own way. And I admire his courage. I love him so very much, and that love grows deeper all the time.
The play read was GETTING MARRIED , and it was a peach! Paxton Whitehead, Penny Fuller, Charlotte Rae (amazing casting! as "Mrs. George"), Alison Fraser, and my own darling Peter as "Cecil"....plus other wonderful actors! It was a great fun read, and Peter was especially impressive...everyone was talking about him afterwards...it's just that he is so goodlooking and then he opens his mouth and his training is so good, his experience so right there...people are amazed to see such a young man who can do Shaw so well....he was very good last night. I was proud of him. He is so damned talented!
Letitia, our blessed cleaning lady, is here today, making sense out of our dear, lived-in home...every two weeks, we are forced to clear away debris and make it all liveable again, and we owe that to dear Letitia...YAY!
Tonight, I keep a committment I made to Ruth and Jerry Selman, dear old friends of Pat Yonka, who I have become very fond of.....they are two amazing people in their 80's and they live at 4610 Village, on Tenth Avenue at 46th Street here in Manhattan.
Ruth is a pioneer in Montessori Peace Education and Jerry, her husband of many many years, is one of the most interesting creative men I have ever met. They are both writers, idealists and what i would call" Old Reds" and I adore them! So, naturally, Ruth has started a Drama Club at their old folks home, and I promised I would come have dinner with them tonight and attend their meeting! And so I shall. I am going to them armed with a bunch of Shakespeare mohologues, just in case they want to work on something.
And tomorrow, I return to my duties at The New School Summer Musical Theatre Immersion: I have a two hour acting class. And it will be fun to see where they all are, after my having been away from them for a couple of days. They are being inundated with so much information and experience. It will be fun to see what sticks!
And to see how each of these lovely young actors is being shaped by the two week experience, generally.
Getting back to the Shaw Project last evening: I had a really good time sitting in that audience.....my ears were happy to be so well engaged with good language...and my mind leapt at the chance to think along with Shaw! It was a treat to hear Simon Jones simply talk, and easily inhabit his character, as it was with Paxton Whitehead...these are technically gifted actors of a certain age, who have done more roles in more good plays than almost anyone...they are Masters of their craft...and I bathed in the luxury of their ease with the material...wonderfully, Charlotte Rae, who cannot be younger than 75, can she? ayway, vocally , she was deeply present and connected to every word on the page, and she imbued "Mrs.George" with a sort of impish quality that made the entire thing work...she was gorgeous...and she is such a character woman, short and odd looking always...but last night, she showed me just what a truly fine actress she is and always has been, no doubt. It was a pleasure to see her do Shaw...and brilliant of Staller, I might add, to think of her for the role....truly an inspirational stroke, since most of us are simply used to her doing silly characters on dumb tv shows! I was so so glad. By the way, Celeste Holmes was in the audience last night. So we had the original "Ado Annie" and the original
"Mammy Yokum" under the same roof...I tell ya: only in New York!
This is such an intersting time for us.
Peter, wondering if he even wants to continue being in the theaer at all...me, tired of an 8 show a week schedule, feeling as if I have acted my last role but loving to teach, nonetheless.........both of us happy as happy can be, because we are together and going through these separate growth times together...knowing nothing can really harm us...ejoying our Buddhist studies...wondering what comes next.
It is so good to see Peter come to terms with where he honestly is...he loves acting, is so good...but,(like me), so tired of all the nonsense necessary to even try to get jobs....it's all so dumb. So infuriating. So, to sit back and examine who one really is in relation to all of that...well, I can't help but feel its a good good thing to do. Life is too short to waste on things one considers not worthy of one's soul and gift. I did not have these sensibilities when I was younger, and as a result, I did grow the way I was supposed to grow..but Peter has them now...so he is growing his own way. And I admire his courage. I love him so very much, and that love grows deeper all the time.
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