October 30, 2011

Two days of low-grade headache.

Lunch downtown yesterday with Donna Cowan and her husband Jeff, down from DC. Donna had been mentored by TG at V Tech, and has just come out with her first book of poetry, for which she’d asked me to write a blurb. It is an excellent book, lively and individual, so the writing of a blurb was a pleasure. TG had given her a copy of A Sense of the Morning long ago, and she says she had adopted it as a kind of bible-- the sort of flattery which abashes and justifies in the same moment. They were good to be with, and the bitterly cold afternoon lifted the unpromising day completely. TG had confided in her about our friendship. I smiled hearing about it from a third party.

Our Town ended last night with a moderate bang. It was our biggest house– the theater approached half full–and most of the actors were “on.” B delivered his lines as George with the enthusiasm he should have, and could have, from the start, had he and all of us not been held back by one of the “concepts” governing the production. Directors and costumers and the like adore concepts by which they put their mark on a production, but when a production fails, it is often due to those concepts. Few are the “concepts” which are not burden which must, somehow, be borne up by extra energy from the text and the cast, by a conspiracy of acceptance on the part of an audience. I’m going to found a troupe called, “Just Say the Words Theater Company.” The house was lit for Our Town, and the actors warned not to make too strong a character, lest the audience fail to identify with the figures on stage The lit audience had the unexpected effect of confusing new audiences–of which we had an unusual number–by making what was incidental and what was theater hard to distinguish. Our audiences were sometimes badly behaved, but I think we set them up to be. Our presentation was sometimes bland, in the service of a not-quite-thought-through concept. Distancing and alienation were ideas that had their moment, only, and were bad ideas even then. Did I have a good time? Yes. I enjoyed being with the cast and grieve already at the inevitable diminishment of contact when the show is closed. Jake and I will probably work together. I’m churning the waters even now to allow that to happen.

“The Future of the Theater” getting good reviews from people who saw it. Seeing it myself of Thursday. What a difficult audience I can be . . . .

Overtures from L. I’d turned them down before I asked myself what I really wanted.