January 23, 2010

My niece Beka found a gap in her schedule and drove up from Athens yesterday afternoon. The trip has to be a whirlwind, but it’s great to have one of the family in my house again, as hasn’t happened since there were but two of them camping out on the living room floor amid a fortress of pillows. We wandered Asheville by night, at which time it can’t be that much different from any particular section of Atlanta, except the streets are happier. She kept remarking on the beauty of the encircling mountains. One forgets how beautiful they are until a stranger arrives.

Morning coffee with Tom, then late morning coffee and chit-chat about the play with two of my students, then noon coffee and a long conversation with John S behind his radiant gray eyes. He was talking about his little brother being the golden boy of the family, and I was trying to imagine someone more golden than he. John and Ben ushered last night, so I got another glimpse. Took occasion to thank the Powers for having been surrounded so much of the day by the energy of the young.

D said in the dressing room that last night’s performance was “bound to be down” after the success of opening night. I thought it was, though I seemed to be alone in thinking so. It was my mood. I felt darkened a little, hounded by too many things at once either to deal with adequately or to sweep aside. It was one of those nights when the playwright should not have been in the audience.

On nights when the playwright should not be in the audience he notices every missed line, every line bobbled so that it cannot recover, every laugh an actors gives at the end of a laugh-line that insures that the audience will not laugh, every random cross and fumble with a prop, every sing-song that indicates that the actor is not really present, engaged by memory but not by love or imagination.

On nights when the playwright should be in the audience he notices the brave, surprising choices that clearly entered the actor’s mind the instant they became manifest; the sudden tremolo in the voice that marks the complete inhabitation of the moment and the character; the bend of joy at the lips which, even in tragedy, shows that the actor is having a good time; the presence, the mass like a mountain shrunk to the shape of a man or a woman, which will not allow the eyes to turn away.

The house was sparse. A drunk women fell getting to her seat, late, and then had to be escorted loudly out by a man who then had to retrieve, loudly, his coat and take her home. The night before it was a man and woman kissing strenuously and lengthily in the stage right seats, inches from me. The night before it was K’s collapse. We’re taking bets on what it will be tonight. All was healed when we went out afterward and partied together at the Usual. I wondered what Beka thought, trapped amid loud and raucous strangers whom I loved.

Our first review appeared, Steve Samuels’ in The Mountain Xpress. It was well-reasoned, finely observed, and, though not uniformly, overwhelmingly positive. The relief I felt reading it indicated to me that I was more anxious about reviews than I expected to be. John S said at the café, “You must be flying,”and I admitted I wasn’t actually flying, regardless of the success of the first two nights. I didn’t know why. It was anxiety about reaction to all the effort. This morning I am flying.

Link to the review:
http://www.mountainx.com/theatre/article/review_of_the_beautiful_johanna

Beka jogs around the lake. When she comes back, breakfast, and as much of them town as we can take in, in a few hours.