July 24, 2008

A perplexing direction often improves a performance. Trying to find justification for M’s comment, I found a way to do Touchstone that was livelier and more sympathetic than the path I was going down.

Our Orlando is energetic, supple, personable, very beautiful, and the subject of ceaseless tittering gossip from the young actors that I plop myself down in the midst of. The fact that he is–or that they think he is–gay does not stop the girls from being fixated upon him. I suppose the power of beauty does not diminish even when it is unavailable. The old guys sit on one side of the stage studying their lines. The kids gather in clusters and gossip. I sit with the kids sometimes, and by myself sometimes, but it is going to be a while before I sit with the old guys and study my lines.

Drowned my rehearsal blues in many drinks at the Usual. MM and I hatched some plot, but I was too drunk for much of it to have taken root. I told him about Anna Livia, and he remarked, "It's good you're getting play in regional theater too." Never thought of Chicago as "regional" theater, though I suppose from a New York perspective, it is.

Woke to find a tremendous limb had sheared off from the sweet gum. Did I hear it in the night and think it was part of a dream? It opens the patio and part of the back yard to light, not invasive light as I feared, but enough to give the shade gardens a little energy. The tip of the little spruce is free now. I imagine it will go rocketing into the air. I tried to deal with it myself, but the fallen bit was massive, and still attached to the tree thirty feet up, and everywhere I looked I saw another limb that should be trimmed away. I trusted my luck and called a name in the phone book. The name belonged to smiling Jacob, whom I liked instantly, and who cleared it all away for 1/3 the price I had steeled myself to pay. Surprisingly little damage done either by the limbs or by Jacob’s boots. Jacob said he had never seen a sweet gum like unto mine.

Kevin Mayes, my director for Anna Livia and I talked on the phone while I sat on the banks of the French Broad, watching a green heron fly low to the water. Kevin’s ideas were fascinating, but I was mostly glad that he was exerting himself on our behalf. He is writing music for the show, to be played upon a cello. I reread the play in preparation for talking to him about it. The language has a richness I want to get back to, without the excuse of Irish speakers. I am going to the opening. Toward that end, I bought tickets and got a hotel in Chicago. All flights out of Asheville change in Charlotte, so I decided to price tickets directly from Charlotte to see if there was any savings. Incredibly, it’s cheaper to fly from Asheville to Charlotte to Chicago than it is from Charlotte to Chicago. I can’t decide how this sort of thing contributes to the crisis in air travel, but it must, somehow.

Golden waterlily. It is not bothered by the drought.