Chance = Change

How wonderful! How good! How restful and how productive! A full Sunday at home, spaghetti casserole baking in the oven, two loving in-laws settled on the living room sofa, one husband getting house chores done, and two doggies snuggled on the in-laws laps: domestic bliss!
Too rare a thing around the busy, creative and constantly buzzing Barter Theatre campus...but if there is one thing I have promised myself this time returned to our beloved Barter, it's that i would do my best to lace my happily busy schedule with copious amounts of a balanced home life! And, so far, so good....sometimes it's hard to clear a day a week for oneself, but I am intent upon doing so, no matter how busy I get once rehearsals for EVITA start. That will be harder than usual: balancing the many Outreach projects that are developing with what will be a full rehearsal scheduel starting April....EVITA, which I will be directing, and CURE FOR LOVE, in which I will be playing the delightful role of Baroness Barthelme !!

Last night, as part of what has developed to be a truly terrific Spring Rep here at Barter Theatre, we opened the tough and brilliantly written BLACKBIRD, a controversial drama by David Harrower, about a taboo relationship re-visited 15 years later....it has fallen into my hands to create panels and talkbacks for our Opening Nights, especially after the Stage II shows, which are often our more edgy and confrontational productions, and BLACKBIRD presented me with a wonderful opportunity to seek out and meet, converse with and enlist the help of a theraputic community I am proud to have gotten to know....it was a powerful evening, and a productive talk-back with an appreciative audience after the show. We have a truly devoted and smart , loyal and bright Opening night audience here, and last night was no exception: such response and comments and questions and concerns expressed. It was gratifying to be part of it, as usual. The panel after POW'R IN THE BLOOD, another superb play by T.Cat Ford, also at Stage II, was comprised of hospice and palliative care workers I was truly privileged to get to know and I am still moved by their intelligent presence on that night. So was our audience. I am meeting wonderful new people here as a result of this new Outreach initiative I've been given. I'm grateful.
Working as hard and diligently as we both have been working at our desks at Barter (Peter is learning brilliantly in his new Director of Marketing position), we are discovering the most stunning things about this miraculous theater organization; how much it accomplishes, how much ground it covers both artistically and financially, in its pursuit of community and growth. I am amazed to realize how much gets done with (relatively) few people to do it, and I will be forever in awe of the amazing Administration and Staff at 160 Cummings Street! Frankly, Rick Rose inspires confidence and devotion in all who work for him, and because he himself is a unique dynamo of energetic accomplishment, he inspires others to turn themselves into same...and that is the way miracles are made. We once were given a joke t-shirt at the opening of rehearsals for one season and the caption on each one read: Barter Theatre - Where Your Best is Just Not Good Enough!!! And though we laughed at the hyperbole, it had a ring of truth which made us laugh even harder: we all knew we would be asked to give even more than we thought we could...and so we usually do...that's the way it is around here...the Barter way.
But today, my family day at home, my family Sunday evening (tonight are the Academy Awards), while we wait for the pasta casserole to bubble and brown, I will do something really important: THE NEW YORK TIMES crossword puzzle!