January 20, 2010

Got tickets to Houston, and a hotel to stay in. My fond memories of that city have mostly to do with sex. Let’s see if there can be a chapter 2.

Load-in was easy, as Crawford had planned everything well and pared everything to a sharp tip of necessity. Had anxiety all day lest the set be ugly or unusable. Of course, it was neither, and I sighed relief laying eyes on the finished construction. But the set is properly somber and ruinous, and the cast took that cue to make their interpretation at rehearsal Monday night solemn and tragic. I thought I was watching Riders to the Sea. It was like sitting in the dark theater in Chicago again watching Bailiwick annihilate Anna Livia. But I figured when the band arrived things would liven, and they did, and last night some of the humor and crackle was back. Enough for two nights before opening. DiAnna surprised me by stripping down to. . . well, till she was a nude actor’s model, which she had not done before. She looks spectacular, so that’s a plus. I had warned nobody of “adult content.” The characters do cuss a blue streak, so I should have provided for that before. I can hear the talk now, about how I’m incapable of writing a play without naked people in it. Not true, but as a rumor, inextinguishable. At least one real Irishman, handsome, strong hand-shaking Vince, sits in the band, and I was dying to ask him what he thought, but afraid as well. He said he liked it, in that stiff, curt, un-interpretable Irish way, that might mean “God yes, and I’m too moved to speak right now” or “Don’t ask what you don’t want to know.”

Awash in doubt watching last night. Why did I write this? Having written it, why didn’t I keep it to myself? Why did I go to the trouble and expense of getting it onto the stage? Do all these attractive young people not have something better to do with their time? They’ve learned my lines, suffered my critiques–is it bringing them joy? What if I finally get what I’ve always wanted, sizeable local houses, and it’s dull or awful or disappointing in some significant way? Sitting in the dark bleachers, realizing I could no longer make intelligent or useful judgments about my own production, I felt like giving up the theater altogether. I don’t feel unlike that now, but the edge is off, me drinking my morning diet Pepsi and listening to Palestrina.

Poetry class. What I’ve noticed these last twenty plus years is that students produce fantastical interpretations of poems because they don’t pay attention to the words on the page. They assume every poem to be a sort of allegory, that the words do not indicate themselves but rather point to an exterior reality that one is invited to guess at. Rather than a rapture or a lamentation, the poem is a sort of code. We did “Adam Lay y-bounden,” and one brave girl said it was about Eve, and how Adam was destroyed by being married to her. “Where do you see the word ‘Eve’ in this poem?” says I. She being shot down, everyone else clammed up. I will begin Thursday with a discourse on words-on-the-page.

I do not do well with three people talking at me at once. Not cut out to be a producer. Or in charge of anything. Exhaustion last night so that I could barely make a decision, barely listen to anybody.

Why, when given a note, do actors spend a full three minutes explaining why they did the wrong thing?

Bruce and Jack call to get me on board with their new plans for Leslie Jordan. It seems to me better than the old plan, but it also, inevitably, delays The Loves of Mr. Lincoln. They seem rapturous about the play, but if it is that sure-fire, why not move on it immediately?

DJ’s bathroom blasted to pieces by Matthew the Handyman. Of course, more damage was found when he got under the tile, so, of course, it will be a bigger job than anticipated. I take a deep breath and repeat the mantra-of-the-last-twelve-months, “OK, whatever’s necessary.”