Do I wake or sleep?

So, yeah. It has been an eventful week, month, spring. An incredible amount has happened but the last week especially has been absolutely wonderful.

The most important news, of course, has been about my beloved school, Sweet Briar College. As I mentioned in my last entry, the interim president decided along with the board to close the school, even though there was no real need to do so. (That is, we were in decent financial shape, we still had a very large endowment, etc. ) Nobody could understand how the interim president and the board had come to this decision, especially since they decided not to share any of their documentation with us. So the Alumnae Association has been waging a very fierce battle to overturn the decision. This has been a very bitter battle indeed and there are certain alums who quite frankly I no longer welcome on campus. The interim president has a very checkered past in academia, since he was actually fired from his last job as a college president, from Trinity College in Connecticut. And the fact is he only got the job as interim president of Sweet Briar because his wife was an alum--we think in fact that he was actually brought in solely to close the school, even though of course none of that was disclosed to us last fall.  One of the most infuriating aspects of this whole mess is that they were calling us to donate to the annual fund right up until the day before the announcement to close. This notwithstanding they had decided at least a month ago to close. Which means that all of the money that they had been soliciting for the month of February would be going to close the school, not to continue Sweet Briar. Of course they didn't bother to tell us that. This ended up being a key point in one of the many lawsuits that were pursued to halt the closure.

Anyway, so the interim president was married to an alum who was actually kind of disturbingly supportive of her husband throughout this whole mess. At some point in March she addressed the Atlanta alumnae association and went on this rant about how Sweet Briar was "different" than it used to be in her day, how the students weren't the same and it was better that Sweet Briar should close, and, well, she graduated in 1969 and I personally heard a lot of coded racial language in her rant. I had a difficult few weeks, because anytime someone senses something like this, as soon as you bring it up somebody shushes you, saying oh no, no, don't bring up race, you know that they didn't mean it like that. I ran my thoughts past Ryan and Tracy and after maybe six weeks or so other people were starting to say it as well.

ANYWAY. My main point is that the interim president and his wife are both absolute wretches, worthless worthless people. (At one point we were comparing Team Kill Sweet Briar people to Harry Potter characters--I said that Alum Wife was Wormtail. I still cannot get past how eager she was to close. To close SWEET BRIAR. What the fuck is WRONG with you?!) But in the end it didn't matter because after three effing lawsuits they finally agreed to mediation (after a lot of delaying) and settlement. And we, the alumni, or getting the keys to the college. We are basically getting everything we want, except of course we have to pay for the interim president's golden parachute, as well as the cowardly board who voted with him. Not happy about that but frankly it's a small price to get rid of these despicable people. 

So now we are, according to the terms of the settlement, have to convert the pledges that we made to support our efforts, to cash. Which honestly isn't that difficult--Sweet Briar alums love our college so much that we are willing to give it all the money that it needs. But we are also looking ahead to the future – – we will be open this fall, and we want to retain our faculty, we want to retain our students, we went to try to keep everything as it was as much as possible. So tonight we had a fundraiser and it was pretty cool. I met some awesome people, including the husband of an alum who has been a big big part of this effort. He too is crazy about Shakespeare, and I was talking to him about how I wanted to do a reading of a Midsummer Night's Dream as a fundraiser. I said that it is been a long term dream of mine to do an actual production of Midsummer on the campus of Sweet Briar, which would honestly be an amazing amazing realization of that text. It is an absolutely stunning campus--the idea of performing Oberon's I know a bank where the wild thyme blows or Puck's And we fairies that do run/by the triple Hecate's team/from the presence of the sun/following darkness like a dream... (at twilight no less) is breathtaking.

Anyway, so alum husband was very, very impressed by our conversation and suggested starting a Shakespeare Festival on campus during the summers. And really seems to want to pursue this and gave me his business card and his wife is one of the most important people re: Sweet Briar right now so who knows, maybe this could actually happen. I think this is a fantastic idea and would love, love, love to make this happen.

There's a lot more to talk about but this is it for right now.

So I'm doing this concert of Shakespearean songs for Donna and there's a ton of music, some of which I already know. No problem, Donna's stuff is easy enough to read. There are two other singers on the bill--one is a guy named R** who's pretty good, and the other is a girl named N**** who has a beautiful voice but has a hard time with the music. For the last two weeks Donna has been making the girl's tracks easier and easier (or giving them to me) because she just isn't getting it. She turned one duet into a solo so at this point I have FIVE soli! Wednesday night we had our "dress rehearsal" and N**** did pretty badly--worse, actually, than she's been doing in rehearsal. She was obviously very nervous. One of the biggest hurdles is this section in the "Lullaby" song (from Midsummer)--for the most part the song is in 3/4 time but in the middle part it goes crazy. 3/4 to cut time to common time to 3/4, all within one staff. It's tricky even for me--this poor girl is just at sea. Donna thinks she just needs to run it but we've done that and she's still messing up. So I asked her if I could help her, she said YES. I sat her down and talked to her about time signatures and how to read them, what cut and common times mean and then I went through the music and marked how to count, with 1, 2 etc, above the notes. I said don't be embarrassed to do this, I do it myself if the rhythms are tricky. And then I told her tonight you need to go home and sing this and clap/count. Get this passage into your mouth--let your muscle memory help you. do this 20 times tonight, and then ten times tomorrow morning. Tomorrow night, another 20 times. We made plans to get together tonight to go over the stuff and she was thrilled. I'd taped a lot of the group numbers with my iPhone so I said I'll convert these to audio files and send them to you.

Well, last night I'm trying to convert these iPhone videos to sound-only files and trying to use iMovie. It's not easy at all--iMovie is a great moviemaker but it's almost too complicated. There's actually a really easy way to do this (save the video to your desktop and then open it with Audacity, my sound editing file--Audacity only captures the sound portion of the video so then you just save it as an .mp3)--but I didn't figure out this easy way until after midnight. I'd literally been working at this for several hours, trying to convert these videos so N**** could listen to them and get the whole sound of the number into her head. Finally I'm done and ready to email the files to N****. I don't have her email address but Donna sends out SO MANY emails, I can easily get it from them, right? In fact Donna had just sent out another one at 11:30 (where she gave me MORE music that should've been N****'s so that's a last-minute change I have to incorporate--good thing I'm so reliable, right?!). The thing with Donna's emails is that she gets really weird about whether or not people have received them and always asks for confirmation. So there's this constant round of emails, followups to emails, replies to emails, confirmations and replies and it's just a LOT of emailing. It clutters up my mailbox and I get annoyed at having to reply "yes, I received your email" after EVERYTHING she sends. Anyway so she sent one at 11:30, I open it up, dutifully reply "got it," hit send and then I look at the "To" line, expecting to see Ray's and Nadya's emails.

There's nothing, only Donna's email. She emailed it to herself and bcc:ed us. I don't have Nadya's email.

I go through all of Donna's MANY emails. All of them were bcc:ed.

WTF WHYYYYYYYYY? Why does she have to make it so complicated? Why, for God's sake? Why would she hide our emails from each other? What possible reason could she have for that? I emailed her IMMEDIATELY asking for Nadya's address--remember, she'd emailed me just 30 minutes before and she (of course) asked for confirmation. I didn't hear from her so I texted her at 12:30--nothing. Finally at 2:00 am I emailed DONNA the fucking sound files and asked her to forward them to Nadya. I was super-annoyed at the whole thing. Donna, I am doing YOUR cleanup because you didn't realize this girl can't read music. I am doing this not because I need to--hey, I know my stuff--but because I want us all to sound good. It kills the vibe when someone's up there sounding terrified, and I want my friends who are coming to see a good show. Furthermore I really don't have time to do go over this with N****--my aunt is coming to visit tomorrow and staying with me and I'd really like to clean the place and just relax. Donna has talent blinders on sometimes--she just doesn't realize how BAD some of these singers are. Oh my God, some of the talentless guys she's had in her concerts--I was insulted to share the stage with them, frankly. This girl is not really bad--she does have a lovely voice--but she can't really read music at all, which means you need to work with her a lot more. And Donna should've realized this and made sound files, drilled her, whatever. It shouldn't be my job.

Having said this, since I am doing this, the least you could do is not hide our effing contact information for no reason! I just don't even get why she would do that. She sent me this rather defensive reply this morning--Donna, go ahead and get defensive because you need me a lot more than I need you! I am far and away the best musician *and* singer in this little concert (Ray isn't bad but I am better) and well she knows it or she wouldn't be throwing me MORE stuff (as a direct result of this girl's inability to learn the music) at the last minute.

It'th thnowing!!!

Thanksgiving was lovely--stayed with my youngest brother Stuart who's living on Capitol Hill right now with his wife and two adorbs kids.  I took the bus Wednesday evening to Philly and stayed with my middle brother, Erik and he, his family and I left for DC early Thursday morning.  At some point while the bird was cooking I went for a walk around Stuart's neighborhood with my nephew William--I used to know that section a bit, as my voice teacher's studio was near there.  I LOVE DC's street layout--for all of DC's faults (and they are legion), it is truly a beautiful city in which to stroll.  Wide avenues, lots of right angles, low-slung buildings, plenty of sun.  William and I were walking along East Capital toward the Capitol and we passed a white, official-looking building on the left--I asked him what it is.  He thought it was the Library of Congress but then my eyes gleamed as I saw it was actually the Folger.  My temple, o my soul!  How many shows have I seen there???  I literally grew up seeing plays there, love that place!!  William and I walked around the grounds of the Capitol for a bit--he liked tracking our progress on the Google maps app on my phone--and then we took another way home, that took us in front of the Folger.  All along 2nd Street they had these placards attached to the lamposts, with quotations from various plays, so I started asking William to read them for me and then I would explain them.  We worked through "Parting is such sweet sorrow" (I talked about the term bittersweet) and "Nothing will come of nothing" (I decided to skip the introduction to nihilism until he gets a little older ;)  Then we came across a statue:




He read the text at the base (on the front) and I asked him if he knew what a mortal was--he didn't, so I defined it for him, and then tried to explain the character of Puck, quoting some of Puck's initial monologue for him.

Thou speak'st aright
I am that merrie wanderer of the night
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile..

I slowed it down so he could get the feel of the language, even if he couldn't grasp every word.  I consider Midsummer the best kind of introduction to Shakespeare for kids (it was mine, after all! And I saw Midsummer when I wasn't too much older than William who is 7).  All in all, I was most proud of my little nephew's prowess--I will hook him on my vocation yet! ;)

Researcher finds one "Jane Shaxpere" who drowned picking flowers.

So cool!

So we've had our first few rehearsals for Macbeth, which I'm dramaturging/AD-ing for Andrew. (I frankly attach more importance to the former title than the latter--he told me I could do anything I wanted, I chose dramaturg, and later he added the AD function.) Rehearsal for this week has been all readthroughs and table work and hence at Christine's apartment down in Chelsea. I got there after 7 each time, since I get out of work after rehearsal starts so I didn't really get a chance to meet the cast per se but just sort of jumped in. Most of them are terrific--I especially like our Macbeth, Ross, Malcolm, Banquo and Porter. The first night I introduced myself after the readthrough had ended, and tallked about the various themes in the play and said "this is my favorite Shakespeare tragedy, not least because I'm related to the actual Macbeth." I looked at the guy playing him. "So don't fuck it up." (I said this humorously.)

I told them about Shakespeare's Advice to the Players and talked a little bit about the techniques discussed therein, and handed out some pages also discussing caesurae, scansion, etc. Andrew talked a little bit about my schedule--basically, very busy--mentioning that I was "going for her master's in history" and the guy playing Macbeth was asking me about that. I had to clarify--"yes, I'm going for it but I'm not actually in grad school right now, I'm in a program, at Columbia called the Post-Baccalaureate Studies Program. I'm trying to build a third major."

Last night (I can't do rehearsal on Sunday or Tuesday nights because of class) we had our second night of table work and I was on fiyuh. I really am Hermione in these situations--I have to force myself not to dominate the conversation too much. I talked about themes some more--time telescoping into itself as the plays approaches its climax (with the corollary that the witches are outside of time) was one. But I guess it was well-received--the two guys playing Malcolm and Ross were literally following me around during the breaks, and the Ross said to me "I love you--I want to squeeze every bit of knowledge out of your head!" I think I won him over when he asked me about a line in the beginning of the Lady Macduff scene--he wanted to elide two syllables to make it scan and wanted to know if that was okay. I whipped out my copy of the First Folio and said "that's the way it is First Folio so ask yourself this--why did Shakespeare add the extra syllable? Can you find an emotional reason for that? Maybe Ross is more nervous than he's letting on to Lady Macduff--he's stumbling over his words." He gave me this amazed look.

During Macbeth's Act V scene when he's struggling to put on his armor, I also talked a bit about clothing metaphors and how important clothing was as social/class signifier to the medieval/Renaissance mindset, how you could only wear certain materials/colors. There are a lot of clothing images throughout the play--I also talked about the body politic: the state of the nation is reflected in the body of the king--and this plays into the idea of Man is a micro-universe (the microcosm), which then leads to the blood imagery which saturates the play. (As I put it, "the blood in this play is like the elevator sequence in The Shining.") The complete disarray of the macrocosm, the body politic, is symbolized by the life's blood of the microcosm--the king whom Macbeth murders.

When we discussed the Act V battle, I brought up the fact that we see little of it--mostly we see Macbeth fighting one person after another. The Porter said something about a typically medieval mounted pitched battle and I said "that is actually less typically medieval than you'd think--it depends on the time period of course, and already for this production we're talking about three time periods--the mid-11th century, when the actual Macbeth lived; the early 17th century, when the play was written; and the 1930s, when this production is set. But there were a lot more sieges and raiding in certain periods than dramatically pitched battles." After rehearsal Banquo was asking me about medieval battle tactics and I launched into a discourse about the The Battle of the Golden Spurs, the ascent of the infantry in the 14th century, and how military tactics never really change or evolve, name-checking the Battle of Hoth at the end.

A couple of exciting projects coming up. First off, a few weeks ago Andrew Rothkin asked me to be a part of a production of Macbeth that he's directing. It goes up in March at the Wings Theater. He didn't specify a function, just wanted me to be involved somehow, so I said I'd love to be the dramaturg. Then as it turned out he kind of did have a function--he also wants me to be the assistant-director, which is fine as long as I don't have to come to a whole ton of rehearsals. Also, since it looks as though we're teching during spring midterms, I said that's got to be my priority and he was fine with that. The producer is a woman named Christine Seisler, and she's also playing Lady M. She seems very cool. We've had a couple of meetings so far and I like how things are going.

The other project--as most of you know, this past season has been a transitional one for TTC. Dave et al. have been trying to find a permanent space for awhile now and like a week ago I remember thinking "at this time last year they had the benefit, I wonder what's happening?" Well, last Thursday I got two emails from Dave. One was sent to about 10-15 of us, telling how TTC had signed a lease for the new space. It's located at the Monroe Center, where they did Rent last winter. So yay! Very happy that's been settled. The second email was addressed just to me, telling me the season lineup--and asking if I would be interested in directing the inaugural production, The Pirates of Penzance. I wrote back "I would love to! I love that show, it's my favorite G&S and I've done it twice already. I even have the DVD of The Pirate Movie [thank you, Chris] !!!" Am completely thrilled and can't wait to start conferencing about this. God, I love that show. My dream version would be an all-female version set in a boarding school--like, these girls in the school put on their own subversive version (and of course I'd play the Pirate King!)--but this will be more conventional :) Oooh, such a busy fall!

The Public is doing The Merchant of Venice and The Winter's Tale in rep this summer! I don't think I've ever seen Merchant on stage--yay! So excited to see me some free quality Shakespeare! I love summer in the city! As a follow up to the Lovestreet/Julie drammer--apparently Lori had also heard from Catherine a while ago that Julie wanted to fire me. She, like me, wasn't sure if Catherine had mixed me up with someone else but if that someone else wasn't Lori (who also had long blonde hair--she's the only person with whom Catherine might've confused me, there weren't that many women in the cast), I don't know who it could've been. Lori said she didn't tell me because she thought it was ludicrous but after I'd emailed her she began thinking of it again, saying "I think Julie was completely and utterly intimidated by you...While she was mucking up the role of Lady M, she was likely aware that you were aware of how badly she was mucking it up in rehearsals." Hmmm. The whole thing is literally inexplicable barring a conversation with Julie and frankly, I don't care that much. I certainly do feel as though I've dodged a bullet though! I can safely say that a good part of the cast would've walked if she'd tried to fire me for no reason. I mean--no reason! I still can't figure it out, I'd saved her ass so many times. Really, she's that insecure? What a weirdo!

Anya and I went over to Tesse's last night to watch the People's Court. Oh. Mah. Lord. Julie does NOT come off particularly well in this and actually a part of me (a small part) felt kind of bad for her, she seemed...vulnerable. She walked in, smiled (!) at the court spectators as though it were an audition or something and then as Rachel said seemed very confused about where to stand. Catherine and Michael, our stage manager, came in and Catherine just seemed more believable and authoritative from the start. Julie blamed the lack of cohesiveness in the show on Catherine, laid it all at her feet, was saying the show wasn't ready to go up, and she didn't want to be associated with a bad show. (Julie has always been very concerned about that sort of thing--you'd think someone who is so self-conscious would avoid casting themselves in roles for which they're way too old, like Hermione and Andromache.) Here's the deal--right before the plug was pulled, the show was very underblocked, and I was a little worried, I couldn't understand why we were still going so slowly. Catherine seemed to like readthroughs a lot--that's all fine and good, but when we're two weeks from opening, we need some blocking. And readthroughs are just a first step, we had done no text analysis, VERY important with the witches. (Especially since they'd cut the crap out of it--I started calling it Macb--. Why do people always want to cut Macbeth? It's the shortest of the tragedies as it is, guys! Why would you want to cut any of that spooky shit? The only thing you should cut is that stupid Hecate scene which Will didn't even write, and which adds nothing.)

However, the things that were good, were really good. David, our Macbeth, was terrific--God, was he good. During the readthroughs I would just watch him, and when he killed young Siward and sneered "Thou wast of woman born"....brrr! So good. He was so good, he made her better, and as I've said, Lady Macbeth is a character who is fundamentally, in every way, Julie's complete opposite, and she's not a good enough actress to play someone so different. But still David was pulling her along. The fights were good. Most of the rest of the cast was good (there was one weird dude who played the Porter who I couldn't stand, kept making these weird familiar remarks to me and Lori and Michelle. Naturally he's the one person who sided with Julie). As underblocked as the show was, we still had TEN DAYS left, plenty of time for a well-cast show to fall into place. So maybe Catherine wasn't quite as on top of things as she could've been--but ultimately that is Julie's responsibility as Producer. She should've kept a firm hand at the reins, especially after she'd fired the first director, her weird friend Lew. Listening to her blame Catherine for everything was frustrating--Julie, I've produced. I know what it's like. The buck stops with you. The director is there to direct, but ultimately you're what holds the show together.

So the judge ruled for Catherine--the amount was a little odd, I guess at first Catherine had filed for a smaller amount (like $150 or so), then the judge let her adjust it to a larger amount (the full amount of her negotiated director's fee, $450 or something). Catherine also sought reimbursement for the money she'd paid out for rehearsal space--you could tell the judge wanted to give her that but she didn't have any paperwork or emails to back it up, so she just got the $450.

What the hell was Julie thinking? I mean, it was tacky enough to yank the production but to stiff everyone? She claimed that everyone else had been paid, including the actors--uh, no we didn't! I just don't get why she went through all of this. Just pay the money. What you did was really, really poor form--you're just compounding it by being so cheap. Just pay the money. Afterward when they interviewed her, she said she thought it "wasn't right" that Michael, who is suing her separately, should be allowed to testify. What? Just stop it, Julie. The interviewer tried to get her to declaim some Lady Macbeth but she wouldn't. (GOD, would that have been comedy gold!) When Michael and Catherine came out, Michael made a point of saying the production had been remounted a few months later with "a lot of the same cast" (the production at the Workshop Theatre) and it was very good.

So, class. Class started last Tuesday and it has been a bu-sssssy week for me. Normally I work Mondays, Thursdays and Friday--this week Monday was a holiday, so I worked Tuesday instead--which meant my first two days of class were a little hectic, running from and to work. I have to get to work early to make up the hours. Luckily the woman for whom I work is amazing and is cool with this, very supportive.

I get to class early on Tuesday and we're in a little lecture hall. I take a seat in the third row and the room really starts filling up. The class is limited to 100 but there looked like more than that--and quite a few of them, at least 20, didn't get seats and had to sit against the wall or on the window sill. Our professor really seems to know his stuff but he has a strong Italian accent and tends to speak softly, so you have to listen intently to make sure you understand what he's saying. This wouldn't be so bad, except that of course you're also taking notes, and when you're writing, you might misunderstand a word in his accent. It can be a little grueling, you really cannot phase out during the lecture. I mean, I find the course material fascinating, I'm certainly not bored, but every now and then your mind might want to wander and you just can't.

The class was so stuffed that they ended up moving it to another building, and today's class was in a good old-fashioned huge-ass lecture hall with a balcony and an aisle down the middle, just like in Mona Lisa Smile. Although it was nice to be able to spread out--again I took a seat closeup in the fourth row--the volume was even worse, because of the slight echo and again, the accent. At one point he started a new topic and said a word like mayedeeTERRuneyan. We all sat there frozen, as he said several things about this mayedeeTERRuneyan, desperately listening to the rest of it to try to decipher the context and finally it all hit us at the same time: Mediterranean. As one, 90+ students bent over and frantically scribbled the salient points of the last five sentences he's just uttered. He was able to pump up the volume a bit for the lecture but I may try to sit in the first row, and the TA has promised to get a mike. For the most part the professor lectures but he does throw out questions to us, and of course I'm all raising my hand. Professor: "What distinctive features does the mayedeeTERRuneyan have that helped shape the cultures around it?" My hand shoots up immediately: "It's small and easily navigible, which encourages the growth of trading and the spread of technology." I might've also added: "Plus when you're doing a cruise ship contract on it, Spain has topless beaches where you can buy beers, which encourages social contact and better tans, which I think we can all agree is good for everyone!"

During the first class, they sent around a questionnaire for us to fill out, asking what our classics background was, what we wanted to get out of the class, which particular areas we wanted most to study. I put down as particular areas of interest: Roman lit, especially the plays and epic poems, and the late Empire. What I really want to explore are all the insane-ass emperors. Nero and Caligula? Yes, please. The drama, like Antony and Octavius, sparring across the seas, Titus Andronicus and Tamora, baking people into pies. Shakespeare didn't write about nice tame safe Romans--he wrote about the exciting ones who did cool shit.

Columbia has an online feature called Courseworks--it's accessible through their website, and this is where you can download all the delicious graphics in the PowerPoint lecture you just attended (during his lecture today he kept scrolling through the slides to get to the one he wanted, and they all looked SO tempting). This is awesome enough but it gets better--it also features links to online libraries, including Oxford and Cambridge, and access to approximately a bajillian scholarly journals, stuff you just can't get on your own unless you go in person to a library. Oh man, am I drooling. PLUS you can borrow books from all the other Ivy League school (except for Harvard, *sniff*). There's just SO MUCH KNOWLEDGE out there, and now *I* get to roll around in it!