January 13, 2010

Yesterday a bundle of mini-disasters which, related later, seem merely petty. Petty is bad enough.

Wordsmyth Theater in Houston wants to do a reading of Bronzino’s Gaze. I love that play and want them to do it, but the one date I can go there without missing class is the one date already claimed by someone else. We’re negotiating.

Rehearsal last night: gruesome. The director is heading the right direction and actors are excellent, but they have not learned the parts, and it’s difficult to know how to explain that. I’ll try to push explanations away and make no judgment until the curtain opens. An actor thinks the correct “feel” of a scene is a good start; a playwright thinks the words must be right or all is lost. I have been both, but, strangely, that not much comfort. This is another proof that the playwright should remain far away from the production until opening night. And then come in only in time for the applause.

Wednesday, normally a day of re-grouping, dissolves in errands. I’m doing exactly those theater jobs which are least to my taste, securing props, fussing over details, dealing with personalities at the host theater, trying to guess what will tempt various media into a notice or a review, wondering if a reception is necessary or too much bother. I’m not a detail person. When details become my provenance, I enter a phase of dark energy that I wouldn’t like to be around, if I were someone else.

Not enough time to spend with J, and him under my roof. Rented him a U-haul to move his studio from his lost home to his studio in Tennessee. Odd and surprsing realization than one person can do very little, really, to help another, other than blindly to fire the battery of love and hope it hits the mark. Lousy image, but--

Haiti shaken to pieces in an earthquake. If anywhere has a right to complain about bad treatment from the universe--