Saturday, March 29, 2008
Cold, Rainy Day at Home!
...though it's cozy and fine inside...one of the last Saturdays I'll have before EVITA and CURE FOR LOVE get underway, so I am relishing every last moment, and though I must memorize loads of language for CURE and continue visualizing EVITA staging, at least I can do it in the coziness of our comfortable home, here at 216....to the left: our upstairs living room, complete with stunning Persian rug puchased at the behest and advice of the ever creative Ann Johnson...I'd never paid so much for floor coverings before, but Ann simply reminded me, during those first couple of weeks after we had moved down here, that I had worked a long time and deserved to own such a sumptuous object of beauty, and that rugs are the best investment because you take them with you everywhere you go! SO, I bought that lovely thing, and have not regretted it a moment! It really is an object of beauty, and I am happy every time I walk on or look at it....and the occasional doggie poop only enriches it for me because after all : rugs are meant , like quilts, to be lived on and with, and not to be feared! With our dark brown leather sofa and easy chair , the rug looks even richer and more beautiful. In the down left corner of the photo, where you can't see, is our shine black baby grand piano, and it really makes the room a special place, with the Warhol's hanging on the wide freshly painted walls...and the fireplace lit...downnright cozy and comfortable...come on and see us!!! It' s a good place for relaxing and conversation, as has been proven so far!
The flowering cherry tree outside my window down here in my garden level office is blooming like crazy! This garden is going to be a stunning place to experience life, day by day, as these months pass, and I vow: no matter how crunched I get in EVITA and CURE FOR LOVE rehearsals, I WILL take time to enjoy this garden! I promise this to myself more than to anyone else....I will enjoy this.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
A Garden is a Box of Chocolates...
..and in early Spring, it's an unopened box of chocolates....or think of your garden as that final Holiday gift someone left in a corner, still wrapped, forgotten about, and all of a sudden, while vacuuming or throwing out the debris of Winter, you stumble across that one forgotten gift and no one is around so it automatically belongs to you, and you alone can unwrap at leisure the wonders therein...this is how the garden in our backyard is seeming to me these days: a generous gift from the people who used to own this house...and the design is really lovely,with terraced beds and sumptuous shrubberies, tens of dozens of every kind of Spring bulb, so many of which are half-way up now, fresh green reminders that renewal is a reality, not just wishful thinking.
Our current landlords, two extremely nice people we finally met over Easter weekend, because they came to town to be with relatives and requested a meeting with us...anyway, we spent a good hour here at 216 with them, shared fresh coffees I brewed in our kitchen and discussed life in ways that helped us to know each other better before going around the place and pointing out things they could help with by fixing and giving permission to have work done on...so, the bricks on the lovely back patio will soon be replaced and made safer...various other things they willingly assumed responsibility for (bless them!) and the most important for me was sending in their gardening company to totally clean and refurbish the backyard terraced gardens...when i came home to let the pups out on Monday, there had to have been 6 gardeners cleaning and mulching and cutting away dead wood and schlepping it all to the front yard curb for the town to cart away....our gardens, always pleasant, now look well-cared for and rich...I can hardly wait to add my "2 cents" with some colorful container plantings....
When I asked the head gardener guy how to best water the gardens in the Summer, he smiled and said watering was a thing of the past with this garden because of its long-established and well-plotted maturity: the roots knew how to care for themselves, they had been in place for a couple of good decades! So,, the only watering I must do is for the plantings I initiate myself...all the rest literally live off the ecology of the neighborhood they have been living in for so long! Amazing.
When I realize the chance I have here to live in such pleasantness every day - and not just on the NYC weekends when I could get away to the Upstate House - it puts the utter busy-ness of all things Barter into a much healthier perspective for both Peter and me...Nature has a way of doing that,doesn't it? It sort of puts all else in its place: Nature is after all...well...Everything.
And it knows a lot about Life...far more than we mere humans could ever presume to know.
Out dearly welcoming neighbors on this street are too much fun! The Pillions...I can hardly wait to know them better, and their gloriously beautiful three kids...our dear LeeAnn and Rob Hitch down the way..and their gorgeous two redheaded babies! I just want to spend an evening hugging them all! Not to mention all the dear ladies who have brought up cakes and cookies and made us feel so at home right away here....I promised I would make some evenings clear so that we can all have a dinner together and really get down to the other important business in Life: becoming friends! (there is important Business besides that of Show...there is..there is...)
One day, as I keep promising, I will include some pictures of this much-touted garden of ours, ad well as some photos of the Abingdon experience in general! Soon there will also be some EVITA photos to up load and some rehearsal photos of same...we start serious work on that soon, and the more i study the show, the more i see what the big deal is: EVITA is quite something...no wonder it has become legendary in the theater world...it is an extraordinary work of art....and I grow more excited daily about directing it....it's all beginning to make a certain sort of personal sense to me now. I am beginning to feel its heartbeat and understand its nature better and better...since i had somehow missed it all these years, I truly have been getting to know it for the first time......a privilege.
More soon...thanks to you all for reading.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
When the Sun Shines
....it is a gift, indeed...and this morning, after what seems like days and days of unremitting gray skies and clouds dripping like leaky faucets, this early morning harbinger of Spring ,which is sure to come, this early morning sunshine, makes getting out of bed not such a bad idea....
When I walk in the garden in our backyard, the beautifully terraced garden designed and executed with such care, and left in ours, there are green things noodging and pushing their ways out of the moist soil, and i saw this morning a slight edge of chrome yellow peeking through the green lips of a closely clustered family of daffodils in one of the front yard beds, and it amazes me how many surprises have been left for us to discover...there are bunches of bulbs everywhere! I can hardly wait to see what they will bring us , once they open! And soon, I will contribute to this glorious and planned scene of flowery profusion, with some container gardening of my own....i hope to be able to talk at length with the landscaping people who did this yard - they did a splendid job! And maybe they can advise me how to best add to it, without upsetting their design. I can say with sincerity that the main reason I wanted to take this rental house sight unseen was because of the photos of the backyard garden included in the ad...it looked lovely, even in one of those cramped on-line photos, and the pond was the deal maker...then, when we got here, the gardens proved to be far more beautiful than the photos that had initially attracted me...so I felt incredibly lucky and relieved!
If I can ever figure out how to take photos, transfer them to my computer files and import them, I will publish scenes from our garden on these pages....so ,stay tuned.
Checks have begun to arrive to reserve spots in one of the 5 Barter SUmmer Classes we've got planned. The classes start in June, and I was able to understand the complex Barter rehearsal schedule enough (with Katy Brown's help...and Wendy Piper's help as well...thank you!) to get 3 actual Barter Acting Company members to teach! I am so grateful for that. Seth Marstrand, an adorable and gifted new member of this year's company...Wendy Piper, already the most popular Barter teacher here, thanks to her marvelous classes over the past year or two, and Mary Lucy Bivins, who I consider a Master Actor in our company has agreed to teach a class for older kids...lucky kids! I want to take that class myself! So, with checks coming in this early, i hope more will pour in over these months. If anyone reading this wants info on those June classes, let me know....
Well, even though I am staying home today to do some major EVITA work, I should get to it, and at least try to pretend this is an actual home office day...so, I'm off to my "office"..this office comes equipped with two snuggly doggies...yay!
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Shaw and Barry and Barter and Spinach!
So - the myth, the legend, the told-tale is that when Barter Theatre produced Shaw's plays, and offered to pay his royalties the traditional way(with a cured Virginia ham!), Shaw protested his vegetarianism and received his royalties in pounds of fresh spinach!!! Well, right now, he'd be eating fresh greens, if he was alive, because we are producing his Nobel Prize-winning ST.JOAN on our Barter Theatre stage right now, and it is pretty terrific! A lovely NYC -based young actress named Stephanie Fieger is playing Joan and she is wonderful, fresh, well-trained (go NYU Grad!) and resourceful...i like her so much. Rick Rose has designed a glorious set, one of the most impressive I've seen on this stage, and the Barter Acting Company does well with this tough material. To conceive of this: you can see these same actors onstage romping gleefully in our production of PETER PAN (also directed by Rick Rose), then see them shoulder the Shavian language and ideas and the gravity of his ideas and passions...well it's pretty darned impressive, i have to say. So, all who read this blog: COME ON DOWN TO BARTER! WE are rockin' and rollin' some good theater!
Another joyous thing to report: Nick Piper and I represented Barter on Bob Feagins' cable show called Chamber Zone yesterday morning and it was so much fun! It was a thoroughly rain-soaked day, but the Barter Cafe (which served as the studio for the entire 30-minute episode's shooting) was a cozy place to be, as the wet soft light poured through the wall of windows....a comfortable place to be...and Bob , and his funny, smart co-host Laura Steel (gosh, I do hope that's her name..i think she's wonderful...) are so easy to be with...Nick and I had fun...hope we did the Barter some actual good...i do know we had fun! And Bob and Laura make some terrific repartee and have such easy tvQ-chemistry...truly funny co-hosts and so easy with each other on camera...a good time. Interesting how Bob Feagins has played such a strong role in our lives - Peter's and mine - since we have been coming down to Barter...and from the very first Kingsport Chamber of Commerce Dinner we all created the entertainment for together, there's been an interesting symbiosis between Bob, Kingsport, Barter and its people. Something good afoot in all this.....always glad to see and work with that nice man!
I could write and write and write about what's going on here at Barter Theatre, in every area, every department...but suffice it to say: it is stunning how much work gets done both on and off the stages where the plays are seen by the public...and yet, i walk out of my house in the morning (one of the most brilliant houses ever rented anywhere by anybody ever!) and see the mountains looming in the near distance...i drive to work and i see those same mountains smiling at me, even on a cloudy day, and saying softly (under their stony breath) : OKAY, go to work in that office of yours, but remember: we are here waiting for you, even if you don't take alunch break...come to us soon.....!
Which is what Peter and I did Sunday,after the pre-show Director's Roundtable on Shaw and the JOAn opening curtain...we drove into the nearest mountains and simply stared at all that was around us! We simply got in our Escape (perfect ,right?) and drove and drove...it was sublime! Some valuable time with this dear man I am married to....plus time to talk about EVITA , and his upcoming role as Che...and talk, we did!
I'm just about getting excited now about directing EVITA...spent some great time with the first act of it today...it's a very passionate thing , this EVITA....and ,since I've never seen it or read it or listened to it very much (unlike most of the world, that seems on an intimate basis with this show ...everyone seems to have done at least one production of it in highschool or college...not me) anyway: I am discovering it for the first time! I feel fortunate to be doing so now. We are going to have an absolute ball doing this show: i can guarantee it!
