January 30, 2010
The great snow that finally came upon us was solemn and beautiful. I decided to walk in the midst of it, and found myself at the Usual, sitting with John and Blake, and later a woman who is living with Blake. It was exactly the right happenstance, for I was inclined to be gloomy because of the play, and because of my fear of winter, but their talk was lively and different from the talk I normally hear. All three were outdoorsmen with stories to tell of the wide spaces of the West. All three loved the snow, and planned to use today “to play.” Blake had never taken his daughter sledding, and that was the center of his plans. They made me feel better about it all, and when I took a moment to complain about the cancellation, it seemed irrelevant. Called DJ when the party at the Usual broke up, and spent the rest of the night admiring his new bathroom, watching an atrocious vampire flick, and then the winter X games, where long-haired boys on abbreviated surf boards fly way up into the air and turn and flip, Concentrated on the lingo of the commentators, who affirmed that one lad must “up it up” and remarked on everyone’s “amplitude” and enumerated who had “platformed.” Laughed myself sick over something. Did not have the night I wanted, but had, finally, one plenty good enough.
We did not lose, or have not yet lost, power, and that has made the difference. One does not have to curl in the dark and silence and cold like an animal in its cage.
Evening. Used the day to prepare manuscripts. Have not stepped outside the house except to refill the bird feeder. Can stand one or two such days a year. I’m actually happy and quiet in my heart for a while. Renaissance music from the computer. A stack of submissions to be mailed Monday morning. Cats lazier than I. Barely thought of Johanna more than eight or ten times.
A strange sound brought me into the kitchen, then to the washer, where Maud stood nose to nose with a handsome mouse, who was standing tip-toe on top of the agitator. They were well on their way to becoming friends. The great days of mousing ended with Jocasta, and now the Peaceable Kingdom spreads beneath my roof.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
January 29, 2010
Just e-mailed the agonizing & frustrating consent to cancel tonight’s show, in the face of a “massive storm” whose first flake has not yet fallen. All the schools closed early and the groceries are flooded by panicked buyers, so I suppose the night would have been ruined in any case. Sweet that we went out on a full house. Best guess is that we’ll lose Saturday as well. We added a Sunday matinee. Who knows? I think this train is derailed. I’m glad everyone was having fun in the hours before–.
Cathy Smith Bowers has been named NC Poet Laureate. The news report says she works at UNCA, but I’ve never heard of her. That was probably a major point in her favor.
Just e-mailed the agonizing & frustrating consent to cancel tonight’s show, in the face of a “massive storm” whose first flake has not yet fallen. All the schools closed early and the groceries are flooded by panicked buyers, so I suppose the night would have been ruined in any case. Sweet that we went out on a full house. Best guess is that we’ll lose Saturday as well. We added a Sunday matinee. Who knows? I think this train is derailed. I’m glad everyone was having fun in the hours before–.
Cathy Smith Bowers has been named NC Poet Laureate. The news report says she works at UNCA, but I’ve never heard of her. That was probably a major point in her favor.
Friday, January 29, 2010
January 28, 2010
Thursday night Johanna the best one yet, in terms of performance and of audience. Full house. Adam and Casey still trying new things. It is a matter of pride to watch my five actors strengthen their muscles in my gym. . . well, that image sounded better before I typed it out. I was waiting with phone in pocket to see if there is a party tonight, but they didn’t call me. Probably had enough of me with my words in their mouths and ears night after night. Moon rose full in a pale blue sky, softened and blurred by clouds now. Sad because they didn’t call me. . . too tired to go if they did. . . one side of me perpetually making excuses for the other.
Casey said tonight will be closing night because tomorrow the snows will come. Whatever betides, I have a community to thank for this success. The seats have been full; the comments (in my earshot, anyway) laudatory. The internet sniper has been on top of it, of course, he who calls himself Minnehaha and “Theater Fan” and the like, who has something snippy and denigrating to say in those little comment boxes online media provide. Some enemy I don’t remember making. Envy and cowardice about balance in him, hiding behind anonymity and just clever enough to make malice look like a kind of judgment. One must put up with this, even as there are ticks and chiggers in the best tilled garden.
Thursday night Johanna the best one yet, in terms of performance and of audience. Full house. Adam and Casey still trying new things. It is a matter of pride to watch my five actors strengthen their muscles in my gym. . . well, that image sounded better before I typed it out. I was waiting with phone in pocket to see if there is a party tonight, but they didn’t call me. Probably had enough of me with my words in their mouths and ears night after night. Moon rose full in a pale blue sky, softened and blurred by clouds now. Sad because they didn’t call me. . . too tired to go if they did. . . one side of me perpetually making excuses for the other.
Casey said tonight will be closing night because tomorrow the snows will come. Whatever betides, I have a community to thank for this success. The seats have been full; the comments (in my earshot, anyway) laudatory. The internet sniper has been on top of it, of course, he who calls himself Minnehaha and “Theater Fan” and the like, who has something snippy and denigrating to say in those little comment boxes online media provide. Some enemy I don’t remember making. Envy and cowardice about balance in him, hiding behind anonymity and just clever enough to make malice look like a kind of judgment. One must put up with this, even as there are ticks and chiggers in the best tilled garden.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
January 27, 2010
Got to the studio and painted seriously, which has given the day a feel of accomplishment. Cold in the studio, the breath coming visibly between the lips and the canvas, but one forgets the cold after a few moments of immersion.
Dick Blick Art Supplies sends 31 tubes of greenish umber. I ordered one. I phone to complain and the lady says, “Well, that’s what it says here on your order, 31 tubes.” She puts up a brief resistence, but my theory of a mistyping prevailed in the face of the idiocy of 31 tubes of greenish umber.
Probed around in my journals to discover when it was I started painting. It was November, 1991. I had just been jilted by Carol J, I was broke and duns called six times an hour. Then one night I stayed up and pained three views of a planet I called Celemene, and her three moons. I lined the paintings up on the mantel and looked at them for two solid hours. I am still, sort of, painting Celemene and her three moons.
Sometimes I am lured into looking at old journals. It is always a mistake. I back away whispering, My God, I have never been at home.
Got to the studio and painted seriously, which has given the day a feel of accomplishment. Cold in the studio, the breath coming visibly between the lips and the canvas, but one forgets the cold after a few moments of immersion.
Dick Blick Art Supplies sends 31 tubes of greenish umber. I ordered one. I phone to complain and the lady says, “Well, that’s what it says here on your order, 31 tubes.” She puts up a brief resistence, but my theory of a mistyping prevailed in the face of the idiocy of 31 tubes of greenish umber.
Probed around in my journals to discover when it was I started painting. It was November, 1991. I had just been jilted by Carol J, I was broke and duns called six times an hour. Then one night I stayed up and pained three views of a planet I called Celemene, and her three moons. I lined the paintings up on the mantel and looked at them for two solid hours. I am still, sort of, painting Celemene and her three moons.
Sometimes I am lured into looking at old journals. It is always a mistake. I back away whispering, My God, I have never been at home.
January 24, 2010
Wake unrested, ready, nevertheless, to arch my fingers over the keys.
Largest audience yet last night, and at points the best performance. Adam and Casey get freer, and the experiments dazzle. It is unnatural for me to sit and watch it every time. I would have started leaving after my curtain speech if I didn’t fear it would be read as some kind of judgment. Besides, bathed by the intimacy of the stage, I miss them before the next day is over, before I can drive downtown in the sleet and fight for parking and see them again.
Late-coming, well-dressed, distracted-by-each-other, kissy-faced, intermission-leaving lovers inhabited the stage right bleachers again. Must be a sort of tradition. It occurred to someone that Johanna’s standing there naked for half an hour might bring such things on.
Depressed by the continuing labors of Matt the Handyman. DJ must be wild.
This has been the longest month in the history of the world.
Wake unrested, ready, nevertheless, to arch my fingers over the keys.
Largest audience yet last night, and at points the best performance. Adam and Casey get freer, and the experiments dazzle. It is unnatural for me to sit and watch it every time. I would have started leaving after my curtain speech if I didn’t fear it would be read as some kind of judgment. Besides, bathed by the intimacy of the stage, I miss them before the next day is over, before I can drive downtown in the sleet and fight for parking and see them again.
Late-coming, well-dressed, distracted-by-each-other, kissy-faced, intermission-leaving lovers inhabited the stage right bleachers again. Must be a sort of tradition. It occurred to someone that Johanna’s standing there naked for half an hour might bring such things on.
Depressed by the continuing labors of Matt the Handyman. DJ must be wild.
This has been the longest month in the history of the world.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
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.
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.
January 22, 2010
Dark of the morning. Opening last night was disappointing in terms of numbers in the audience, but joyful in every other way. The actors still polish, still discover; it’s a revelation to watch them. Many of my university colleagues were in the audience, something that had not happened before. Sweet, anyway. Maybe brought on by L’s active sense of collegiality. I found a spectacular flower arrangement, sort of Zen-like and sentimental at once, awaiting me. At least three reviewers were in attendance. This is simultaneously gratifying and nervous-making, as you perch in the dark scanning their faces for signs of disgust, ennui, jubilation. As a playwright I do spend my time swiveling from stage to audience, absorbing the actors’ skills, while trying to fathom what is going on in the audience members’ heads. What I saw was concentration, what I heard was laughter, now and then, and that was most well. Seven times to see The Beautiful Johanna through with an audience will be plenty. You get exhausted looking for perfection that will never quite come, which you perhaps have not written into the platform of possibilities. You become humbled by the debt you owe people who have worked so hard and so well to realize a dream that you cannot yourself fully define. People ask “Where did this come from” and I, honestly, have no answer. I don’t know. I sat down to write, and that is what came out, in a flood, swift and, to me, necessary.
One theater volunteer approached me earnestly and said, “You have a naked woman on stage. Why no naked men?” Her companion said, “Because he wrote it and not his wife.” Oh, yes.
I wore a shirt to the theater which, I noted from the dry cleaning tag, I had not worn in 11 years. That meant something. Don’t ask what.
We cannot possibly, I’m beginning to see, make our investment back. The numbers aren’t going to be there. I care a whole lot less than I would have expected. Everything but that is bonfires and golden bells.
Dark of the morning. Opening last night was disappointing in terms of numbers in the audience, but joyful in every other way. The actors still polish, still discover; it’s a revelation to watch them. Many of my university colleagues were in the audience, something that had not happened before. Sweet, anyway. Maybe brought on by L’s active sense of collegiality. I found a spectacular flower arrangement, sort of Zen-like and sentimental at once, awaiting me. At least three reviewers were in attendance. This is simultaneously gratifying and nervous-making, as you perch in the dark scanning their faces for signs of disgust, ennui, jubilation. As a playwright I do spend my time swiveling from stage to audience, absorbing the actors’ skills, while trying to fathom what is going on in the audience members’ heads. What I saw was concentration, what I heard was laughter, now and then, and that was most well. Seven times to see The Beautiful Johanna through with an audience will be plenty. You get exhausted looking for perfection that will never quite come, which you perhaps have not written into the platform of possibilities. You become humbled by the debt you owe people who have worked so hard and so well to realize a dream that you cannot yourself fully define. People ask “Where did this come from” and I, honestly, have no answer. I don’t know. I sat down to write, and that is what came out, in a flood, swift and, to me, necessary.
One theater volunteer approached me earnestly and said, “You have a naked woman on stage. Why no naked men?” Her companion said, “Because he wrote it and not his wife.” Oh, yes.
I wore a shirt to the theater which, I noted from the dry cleaning tag, I had not worn in 11 years. That meant something. Don’t ask what.
We cannot possibly, I’m beginning to see, make our investment back. The numbers aren’t going to be there. I care a whole lot less than I would have expected. Everything but that is bonfires and golden bells.
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