January 22, 2018

Two night without the shivers. Excellent. Ate two bowls of chili. Excellent.

My friend Donna Barnes has died in New York. She chose me to help her to the bathroom during our meetings after her stroke. She was both kindly and intellectual, a less usual combination than one would hope. I will miss her. Certain vistas in New York will always make me think of her.

The heat of mutiny had pretty much inflamed Night Music, the gentlest play on earth. I both understood it and did not. The actors were right that it was, ultimately, a misinterpretation by the director vehemently enforced  causing the problem. . . but, you would have thought she was selling children into slavery for the rhetoric flying on email. I did float the idea that I could take over, but that notion grew more horrible as the hours went on: I don’t feel well; I have two night classes, and two other nights previously committed to rehearsals; I hadn’t prepared for direction. . ..  Well, we rehearsed in my studio yesterday afternoon, and I believe all thing turned out well. C backed off from her absolutism– I did my “this is a playwrights’ theater, where the playwright can expect to have his way, right or wrong”–and the actors put in their best efforts I had yet seen. Even Q the Vehement seemed to be satisfied. Is it solved? Is it resolved? It seemed to be, and with a solution ten million times better than the firing that seemed our next nearest alternative. I think it’s hard for a director such as Q to work under another director. The flaw of people who are nearly always right is that they nearly always think they’re right. My own cherished gift of shutting parts of myself off to suit the occasion does not seem to be general. Very pleased with N in the role of Jesse, lyrical and spontaneous and sweet and. . . he knows his lines.