October 19, 2011

Boys kiss backstage. Things are not yet so advanced that they can admit it’s because they want to rather than pretending it’s on a dare. But things are far enough advanced that they do.

The hummingbirds are gone. One feeder was emptied by them before they left, but one hangs still, half full. I’ll keep it there for a while, remembering a solitary hummer at it in a snowstorm on Thanksgiving day.

Saw JF’s moment on One Tree Hill. It lasts about five seconds, but, sure enough, there he is, in momentary glory. I think I started watching the DVDs to see him, imagining something a little more substantial.

We are to have in our minds, on stage, the conceit that we are only partially our characters, partially actors playing those characters, so that if we have a band-aid or a cough we must decide if that band-aid or the cough belongs to the actor or to the character. Most of the cast has realized by now that this is unplayable. So far during production week I have received one note: that I was carrying the imaginary casket wrong. I don’t contest this. If you didn’t have context to guide you, but only our appearance on stage, you’d probably think we were wrestling not with a casket but a giant Slinky.

Quite late. Final dress was before an audience of urban kids, very young and predominantly black, and very much different from our usual crowd. They had no idea of the conventions of the theater, and laughed not at what they were meant to laugh at, but at what they really thought was funny. It was instructive and refreshing.