March 31, 2014

Great winds last night. I expected disaster, and disaster came here and there, but not to me. Driving to church I saw a great spruce uprooted and leaning against a brick house on the corner of Graclyn and Kimberly. Maybe everything was unscathed, but I don’t think so.

The officious assistant stage manager I mentioned before has one real job, making sure her actors are on stage at the right time, and at the matinee she was gossiping and neglected time calls or to call “places,” and I made my first entrance only because I happened to wander backstage while John was making his curtain speech. Otherwise- disaster. The officious are never the efficient. So far maybe 25 people have seen the play over four performances. The laughter makes me think they’ve like it, though no other word comes, whether one is doing well or ill.

Cantaria, and then a chicken breast in sauce at Avenue M which brought tears to the eyes. Feel good today. Hit the Y. Found an exercise that works my curiously and persistently stiff shoulder. I feel good about the week ahead. April is a lucky month for me. The sun rises.

March 30, 2014

Icy snow on the ground. I don’t recall any prediction of this.

Yesterday was obliterated by the fever. There was no pain and little distress, but also I don’t believe I was awake more than an hour at a stretch. Recovered thank God before the show, and I think we did well for the six or seven people in the audience. Asheville is actually a horrible place for the arts, however it accolades itself otherwise. Lots of lip-service, little real support or effort of understanding. I remember after attending that rather awful production of Cabaret trying to account for the praise it was receiving. No one had actually paid attention to what they were seeing. Cabaret was Broadway, so we loved it whether we did or not, whether there was anything to love or not. The audiences simply were not seeing what was there before them.That is sweet magic when you put up something shoddy and famous, bitter magic when you put up something hard and wonderful. Our Shaw is neither shoddy nor wonderful, but a great and famous play–never before done locally and probably never again-- deserves as many people in the audience as there are actors upon the stage.

Terrible sound of wind around me here in my attic office. The lights flicker. I tremble at the thought of the sweet gum coming down at 62, the great pine at 51. Property is a terrible thing.

A single bloom on my deciduous magnolia. Yesterday, anyway.

Amazing clarity and omnipresence of dreams. Dublin has been in many of them, such as this morning, when dream time ended with an extended effort to get to Dublin through a long cement train tunnel, the train, inexplicably, having to stop short of the station. I was traveling with Nick Morgan. I’ll be sitting or lying down running lines in my head, when I’ll cross the border into sleep, and I’ll still be running lines, but they’re from a different play, rich and strange. I fell asleep in my long wait in Act III last night, and when I woke there on an upper floor of the Masonic temple, no one in the room with me, the one sallow yellow light far away on the wall, I had no idea where I was. For a moment I thought I was dead, and my flash was, “Oh. So it’s dreary after all, like the Greeks said.”

March 29, 2014

Dream in the afternoon, my disco nap, before tonight’s performance. It was night. I was bringing a friend with me to get certification for a Boy Scout badge I wanted, earned, but never got the paperwork done for. My old scoutmaster lived on Jarvis Street (??) But in the midst of the journey I forgot the house number. We pulled over at a pay phone in the middle of a park. Two men were mowing the grass in the park, by artificial light. One big man was sitting on the mower while the other, little, one was on his back, kissing his head, clearly wanting to make love to him. I went to the phone and made my call. When I got back to the car, the larger of the two workmen was raping my friend in the car. He had his hand over her mouth so she couldn’t scream, but she made whimpering noises that horrify me even now to think of. The smaller man was standing outside the car, crying not because of the rape, but because the friend he loved had chosen the woman over him. I pushed him aside. I got into the car and tried to pull the man away, but he wouldn’t be pulled. So I wrapped my fingers around his neck and started to strangle him. He was so intent on what he was doing that he kept on with it, and didn’t try to stop me at all. And then he was dead. My friend jumped out of the car and started screaming. Before I could comfort her, I caught myself thinking about how easy it was to kill somebody.

Friday night (the actual opening night, I should think, where people actually paid to get in) was a triumph of sudden readiness and good luck.  For my own part, I had finally hit that point where the lines come pouring out of my mouth without my having to angle for them, and my energy can go into interpretation. I remembered why I am happy on stage. The crowd was better than the night before, and four seats were covered by white papers designating VIPs.

Laughed my head off at the antics of the boys in the dressing room. Sweet thought that maybe they were showing off a little for me.

Woke vaguely ill. Maybe overindulged after the performance, maybe Z released toxins into my system during my massage. Admiring his beauty while we chatted, hoping I didn’t admire it too much while I was naked and lying under his hands. He touches me in ways that are wholly innocent to him but cause me a struggle of redirected attention.

Constant need to keep cool in the face of the presumption of assistant stage managers and the like. I think this is an Asheville problem, for it happens at UNCA as well. Someone gives them a skew vision of their power and they become, or assume themselves to be, little lordlings. Little duchesses, I should say, for it’s gender specific; I’ve never know it to afflict a man. The no-nonsense approach is a kind of nonsense.

Odd chirping sound under my window this morning. It’s organic, for it stops and starts and varies, but whatever it is seems to be invisible. Maud noticed it too, and was looking in a specific place, but I could discern nothing. .

March 28, 2014

Opening night went surprisingly, fortunately well. Tanner rather bombardiered the opening scene, but Anne got her bearings, and I followed her, so we sailed into harbor. In Act IV a disaster turned into the highlight of the evening. The actor playing Young Malone stepped on Violet’s dress and interposed seamlessly into his line, “I’m sorry I stepped on your dress.” Then he was meant to return a check from his father. The prop document got stuck in his jacket, and after a long struggle he took off his jacket and handed it to his father and said, “It’s in there somewhere,” and they played the jacket as though it were the check for the rest of the scene. It was genuinely hilarious. Never have I come so close to breaking on stage. Quite lovely.

Slept later than I have in years. Must run now to get it all in. Extended, intense dreams about going to restaurants far out into the countryside, where one sits at rows of picnic tables in barns and quonsets. Very rustic. The directions to get to these places were detailed and difficult, and one was never certain one was headed in the right direction, or had arrived at the right place. The restaurants were intended for large groups, so one traveled in long caravans, and one had to worry about not only oneself but about the people in the cars behind.  The food was precise and vivid in the dream; I must have been hungry.

March 27, 2014

Crescent moon in the east, with Jupiter below the lower tip when I was on the street this morning. Beautiful. The way back from the Y was delayed because a large flock of turkeys were strutting and contesting in the middle of Kimberly Avenue, indifferent to the cars backed up waiting for them. A lot of toms strutting and fluffing.

Received the note last night that I was bending forward oddly to deliver some of my lines, and I recognized what my body does under stress, which is to sag forward as though the weight on my back were too great, or I was trying to protect my heart. Went to the Y and did a quick weight set, and felt my back straightening as I went. I could become a gnome if I left the weight room far behind. Right now I feel a new man. Dress rehearsal last night, two screw-ups on my part which were redeemed by my fellows. Home just before midnight. This is the best Montford experience I’ve had. This is the best I’ve ever handled the assorted irritations.

March 26, 2014

Thinnest blanket of snow. Rehearsal canceled last night half way through, which I think was a bit of a panic, because the roads in town were clear. We open tomorrow night. I’ve been overconfident, and though all is well when I run lines in my head, when I get on stage I don’t always recognize my cue line, or I stumble over a word, or come off thinking I had not done well. I get no notes, except from Adrian, which is that I could be “bigger.”: “You’re doing it very naturalistic. You could be bigger.” He’s right. It’s hard for me to break the habit of striving for the truth of a character. I forget that some things are just meant to be silly.

The anniversary of mother’s death. Deep snow on Ithaca that day. Borrowing money from Denny so I could take the bus in the dark of the morning . . . .

Dreams before morning which I think were about defeat. I was in Dublin–which was like the real city but stretched out over big, rambling hills. I had failed terribly at something, and I was walking the streets, sitting down at cafes to peruse the magazines on the tables, or just to sit. The light was warm and comforting. Everywhere I went there were underground stables out of which emerged, at some point, gigantic bulls, like the one on the wall at Knossos.

March 25, 2014

Light dusting of snow (wetting of snow is more accurate), a veil still falling. I left the masonic Temple at midnight last night. I expected to be pissed off, but I wasn’t. I enjoy the people I’m with, and the experience has been beneficial to me. I worry about getting enough rest, but like most worries that’s largely groundless. Here I am composing before morning, and no one wakes me, so I must have slept enough. Many of the sets (thanks to the mysterious Masonic backdrops) are quite lovely. The main characters are attractive, and –barring the occasional gap in lines– will be a pleasure to watch. Last night began the tech people’s laying down the individual, iron-clad and cherished rules– don't touch that, don’t stand there, don’t even think of doing this or that in your costumes–which are the marks of amateurism. I’m glad that I wasn’t actually there to hear them.  Arriving late from my class threw me off, and I don’t think I ever quite recovered. I slobbed around half in costume the rest of the night. My big opening act went unrehearsed (by me).

Dreamed of Man and Superman last night. I dreamed there was another act. Jack and Anne were married and they had a glowering, apparently retarded son that I–Ramsden–was hired to tutor. I did tutor the boy, whom I rather liked. He didn’t live in the house, but in a pit on stage with a wire roof over it. In the second scene of the act I returned and the boy had turned into a vicious dog. There were many lines about how to deal with a vicious dog, but I have forgotten them.