Oh, Man! Why didn’t we do this at MY wedding?! SO fun!

Back when he was funky…

Transplanting your Flist into a Comic Book…… LiveJournal Username Age Sex MaleFemaleIn betweenYes, please.With whom? Favorite Beverage Right now, I’m feeling….. happy!tired.cheerful.bitter.upset.snarky.even-keeled.snapish.silly.stupid.brilliant. Your superpower is….. vast telekinesis. Your telepathic second-in-command is…. beth0319 The obligatory superbuxom powerhouse is…. vivoencoche The resident magician/shaman/witch is…. theatredivachu The hypersonic traveler among you is….. rather_reticent The master fighter and weapons expert is…. mary919 The technology-enhanced genius on your side…. davidsmom76 Chances your team will fall apart within a year… 11% This Fun Quiz created by Mike at BlogQuiz.Net

Capricorn Horoscope at DailyHoroscopes.Biz

Hey! Not bad…let’s kick some bad-guy butt!

We Start Previews This Week!

Click here for more!

Pictures to come soon!

The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.
Julia Cameron

What a wonderful birthday this year! The things about it that were awesome:

Yesterday, Chris and Emily took John and I out to lunch (his birthday is Friday). We just closed the theatre for a couple of hours and all 4 of us founding members went to the Red Cedar Grill and had a feast! Awesome.

A great day at work today, where I rehearsed a very fun, challenging play with a great actor.

This evening, we had some family come over, and had dinner, cake, and great fun. I got some neat presents, including a great shirt, a Detroit Tigers Monopoly game (So cool!), the DVD/Board game “Scene It”, and a gift card. Also, I have to share the hilarious card I got from my sister, which said: Happy Birthday to my big brother Tony…the next best thing to having a pet monkey. Ahhh, she’s funny!

My wife and kids honored me with a wonderful performance of “Happy Birthday To You” by Dr. Seuss! Beautifully staged, it included some very fun performances by Jeanne as narrator, and my kids as a variety of characters, and was just amazingly sweet!

Also, today, Williamston Theatre got a big fat gift. Our amazing Patron/Angel/Saint/Sponsor Steve Zynda completed the purchase of our building. Steve had been paying the rent for us for all of 2006. Now, instead of renting the building for us, he’s renting it to us. For $1 a year. Yep – he purchased the building, and now we’re able to do some renovations that we need/want to do, but were unable to do while renting from another owner. An amazing thing, this gift, and you’ll be hearing more about the changes in this journal soon.

Plus, I got a whole bunch of nice phone calls from friends and family.

So – a great way to start another year!

I loathe bad theater and most theatre is very bad because it’s repetitious, unexciting and, dangerously, it is sometimes praised for those things.
Fiona Shaw

Thing is, whether you agree with her or not (and I’m not saying I don’t), this quote is a great reminder of some of the things we need to do!

When I teach, I teach a Big Fat Golden Rule. When I produce and direct, I try to live by it.
That rule is this:

Cardinal Sin #1 in the theatre is Being Boring.

We’ve got to compete with DVD’s, MTV, Wi-Fi, Xbox, Netflix, Gameboy, iPods, and Movies on My freakin’ Phone.
Being boring will be the death of the whole artform.
So. Keeping it exciting. Non-repetitious. NOT BORING. This is our challenge.
Keeping it relevant.
In an artform where, as it’s been pointed out by people smarter than I, the last major innovation was the introduction of ELECTRICITY.
So.
This is the challenge when picking a season.
This is the challenge when directing a play.
This is the challenge when running a theatre.

Do. Not. Be. BORING.

I was having an interesting discussion about directing the other day, which led me to Wikipedia.

I found the definition interesting, and thought I’d share:
Here’s the first bit of what the wikipedia had to say about theatre directing, under the link.

A theatre director is a principal in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a play by unifying various endeavors and aspects of production.

“In the information society, nobody thinks. We expect to banish paper, but we actually banish thought.”
Michael Crichton

Pointed out by dianora2, this video is very funny! Check out NOOOOOO!

Another video, this one is a hilarious moment in the life of a panda family. Gesundheit!!

I love dumb people: This is the story of 3 geniuses who stole a whole mess of GPS devices, but got caught because…you got it: They left the things on, and police just followed the signal to their house! Dumb!

And finally, in the “That’s pretty darned cool” category, these are some really amazing murals! I want a couple of these in MY house! Or maybe my office…

Gotta go! Early rehearsal tomorrow.