Ernie Harwell, long time Tigers announcer, and a life-long presence to many of us, has passed away at the age of 92.

For over 4 decades, he was the voice of baseball. Radios on in my bedroom as a kid, listening to the Tigers play and Ernie calling the shots. Riding in the car with my grandfather, to and from the game, Ernie on the radio with the preshow and wrap-up. Listening to him on radio, watching the game on tv with the sound turned down, when I was in my 30’s. His great catch-phrases – homeruns were “looooooong gone!” and batters who took a third strike “stood there like the house by the side of the road”. And he always, whenever a foul ball found its way into the crowd, would pluck the name of a town near wherever they were playing out of the air and work it into the broadcast… “A fan from Dayton caught that one”, or “A fan from Battle Creek will get to take that one home!”

I met Ernie Harwell. A play I was stage managing had Tigers legend Al Kaline as a character, and the actual Al Kaline came to see it – and he brought former Tiger Jim Price, and Tigers announcer Ernie Harwell with him. The whole company was thrilled when they stuck around after the show, and we took pictures onstage with them all – they wanted to meet the actors, and the whole company wanted to meet them. The 3 of them were the absolute epitome of graciousness. In an instant where they could’ve said “Thanks” and bolted, they stayed until every hand was shook, and every autograph was given.

He began every Spring Training season with a reading from Song of Solomon. For years I would make sure to be at a radio for the start of each Spring Training, just to hear him say it:

For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

This is a beautiful article about Ernie Harwell. Whether you were a Tigers fan, a baseball fan, or just a fan of people – I think you’ll enjoy it. I may have gotten something in my eye, just for a little bit, while reading this. I wonder how many folks, tonight, are sitting back and wandering through memories of their lives – youth through adulthood – and being humbled by how much the passing of just one man you may have only met once can affect you so much?

I know at least one is.

That’s the question I’m getting from lots of folks, after we’ve announced the next season at the Williamston Theatre!

Most of them say “That’s so cool!” after that, some say “Oedipus?! REALLY?” *laughing*

Sure- it’s a classic. It’s a great story, and should be an incredibly fun challenge to stage in our space, as well as a rewarding storytelling challenge. I can’t wait!

SO, my question is:

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU THINK OF OEDIPUS?

Williamston Theatre
2010-2011 Season

BLUE DOOR
By Tanya Barfield
September 23 through October 17, 2010
Directed by Suzi Regan

A tenured professor of mathematics is jolted from the rut of his life when is wife accuses him of denying his heritage. While experiencing a disorienting insomnia he inadvertently conjures his ancestors. Three generations of men, from slavery through Black Power, challenge him to embark upon a journey combining past and present. Infused with abundant humor and woven through with original songs, Blue Door is a vivid, exuberantly theatrical play about the African-American male experience.

GREATER TUNA
By Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard
November 11 through December 19, 2010
Directed by Tony Caselli

Meet Arles Struvie, Thurston Wheelis, Aunt Pearl, Petey Fisk, Phineas Blye and Rev. Spikes, just some of the upstanding citizens of Tuna, the third smallest town in Texas. This hilarious off-Broadway hit, a love-letter to small town mores, qualities and quirks, takes you through a typical day in the life of Tuna and it’s most whimsical denizens. 

OEDIPUS
By Sophocles
January 27 through February 20, 2011
Directed by Tony Caselli

The classic Greek tragedy about fate and destiny. Oedipus journeys through life, running from the prophesy that he knows, only to find that he has pursued a prophesy foretold. Five stellar actors bring the story to life as the intimate Williamston Theatre space is theatrically expanded to hold this epic tale of the ages.

WHILE WE WERE BOWLING
By Carter W. Lewis
March 17 through April 17, 2011
Directed by John Lepard

A “typical” 1950s family struggles to hold itself together through teenage marriage, paternal death, the integration of a young black boy into their family and the pressure-filled legacy of bowling. These trials and tribulations force them to redefine what family means as they love and laugh their way through this beautiful dance of a play.

ELEEMOSYNARY
By Lee Blessing
May 12 through June 12, 2011
Directed by Lynn Lammers

Eleemosynary: adj., charitable, the giving of alms.
Sensitive and probing, this masterful play examines the subtle and often perilous relationship between three remarkable women: a young girl, her mother, and her grandmother – a unique family blessed, and cursed, with supreme intelligence and eccentricity. This bittersweet comedy is a snapshot of the powerful familial love that defines our past, present and future.

AND THE CREEK DON’T RISE
World Premiere
By Joe Zettelmaier
July 7 through August 14, 2011
Directed by Joey Albright

Rob and Maddie, longtime Michiganders and one of the many casualties of economic downsizing, find themselves experiencing a severe case of culture shock after they move to a small town in Georgia for a new job. Their friendly next-door neighbor invites Rob to join him in a Civil War reenactment. A simple, and comical, misunderstanding starts a private war between the neighbors and neither embraces the concept of surrender. Michigan playwright Joseph Zettelmaier’s comedic tale is a story of survival, acceptance and embracing a new homeland.

CONVENTIONAL
-adjective
Ordinary rather than different or original.

It’s interesting – I set out looking up “convention” – I was particularly looking for thoughts on two opposing viewpoints concerning convention: 1) the practice of hunkering down and following past conventions for purposes of maintaining the peace, and following tried and true practices because they’ve proven to be successful. 2) The practice of shunning past conventions because of the threat of staleness, repetition and stagnancy – the policy of experimenting simply because you can and should. I was thinking of posting a handful of quotes supporting both points, because it’s an interesting struggle for balance – one that I think a lot of artists in every field deal with regularly!

What I found was that I had a hard time finding quotes supporting viewpoint #1. This surprised me, I expected to find more support for maintaining conventions because, well, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it! Instead I found mostly quotes supporting the “boldness” of skirting convention. While I’m not surprised that this is a popular thing, I also think that the lack of popular quotes and references to sticking with convention is because sticking with convention isn’t as “sexy” as “boldly going where no one has gone before”…

So, since i couldn’t find any “Stick to convention” quotes to form a balanced, thoughtful, debate-inducing post… I’m just going to post some of the quotes that I found and like! 🙂

“Create a vision and never let the environment, other people’s beliefs, or the limits of what has been done in the past shape your decisions. Ignore conventional wisdom.”
-Anthony Robbins

“The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.”
-John Kenneth Galbraith

“A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.”  
-Aldous Huxley

“People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.”
-R. Buckminster Fuller

Hired a guitarist for the show, yay. Looking forward to this production!

Fundraiser for WT went well, that’s always good.

My daughter woke us up at 4:30 this morning throwing up – that’s never fun… The good news is that she felt good enough by the afternoon to do both performances of PETER PAN. (Have I mentioned my kids are in the show for Young People’s Theatre in Ann Arbor? It’s a ton of fun.) She’s feeling fine now.

The Detroit Tigers, who are going to have a tough year if they don’t improve soon, came back from 4-0 to win 8-4!

Aaand, we’re narrowing in on the final show selection for next season, which is good. Balancing seasons is one of the many fun and challenging parts of my job, and I love it! We’ve been looking for a silly comedy to balance out a season that’s got a great mix of styles and stories but was missing one broad comedy – I think we’re almost ready to announce the whole season, and I’m excited about it!

So tonight I got to see my kids in PETER PAN at Young People’s Theater in Ann Arbor. They had the kind of house I dream of having at Williamston Theatre! ( of course, it was also held at one of U of M.s beautiful theaters, where they seat 4 times as many as Williamston Theatre!).

The show is great. A ton of fun was had by all. I got to watch my kids have a wonderful time being an “Indian Chorus Girl” and a “Lost Boy”, and lots of young people were excited about live theater, which is good for everyone! 🙂

I do, though, wonder if it’s legal to buy whatever Mr. Barrie was taking when he wrote Peter Pan. I mean, seriously – this is a whacked out story. Fun, and I totally want to fly and fight bad guys, but crocodiles and pirates and and “Indians” and a tribe of kids who’d been abandoned or run away from home, and they all live on the same magical island where no one grows older and oh, by the way, there are fairies? (Or, ONE fairy anyway, since Tinkerbell is the only one we actually ever see?). Oh, and in case that’s NOT weird, you can lose your shadow and have it sewn back on, and if you clap hard enough, people recover from poisoning. I mean, classic story and everything, but yikes! *laughing*

Now, enough of that silliness. I’m going to go watch Star Trek IV, where people and aliens join together to fly through space and go back in time rescuing humpbacked whales and defending against an alien probe that’s boiling the oceans. That’s WAY more believable.

“I feel my roots digging in to the soil,
Yeah it’s feeding me.
I feel the truth is a friend of the toil,
Now it’s leading me.”
-UMBRELLA, from No More Kings

Random thoughts…

“Yum Yum” on 46th and 9th has great Thai food! (Thanks Chris and Patrick!)

I love the Drama Book Shop.

I have to face the fact that my hypothesis was incorrect: it turns out that pizza slices from storefront pizzerias DO still have too many carbs for a lo-carb diet, despite my hope that eating-them-while-walking somehow made them into carb-free health food. Dammit.

The Theatre Development Fund at http://www.tdf.org is a great way to get discount tickets and support theaters. For a yearly subscription, you are able to purchase most shows in the city for between $24 and $40 dollars. The savings on just one show make up for the yearly fee!

Miscellaneous bars that were fun: The Hourglass, The Irish Rogue (upstairs, especially) and The Mean Fiddler. When you’re in NY, go to them, you’ll like them! 🙂

Alfred Molina is amazing. I saw him in the production of “Red”, which is the story of the painter Mark Rothko, and the show was absolutely fantastic. Both actors were fabulous, the script, the staging, the direction – just a beautiful piece of theatre.

In fact, I have to say that “Red” was easily my favorite of the 4 shows that I saw this trip, followed closely by “Next To Normal”. Not that I didn’t enjoy “Hair” or “A Behanding In Spokane”, but the entire experience of “Red” was the one that will stick with me for a long time. It was the piece that spoke to me the most, and the direction and storytelling were simply inspirational – the movement of the play, of the actors, of the storytelling – fantastic.

It’s 12:20am. We’re getting a gentle thunderstorm with a little lightning that’s threatening to turn into a louder downpour. It’s been awhile since we’ve had that sound, I like it!

Maggie is coughing up a storm, as well, poor kid. She wound up catching the cough bug that’s going around, and she’s exhausted. The cough syrup helps a bit, but its hard to sleep when you keep coughing like that, and I can hear her cough, then sigh, then try to get comfortable to fall asleep, over and over again. I brought her a glass of water a while ago, I’ll try again in a few minutes, but I fear that a day home from school may be coming up for her.

Next to me, as I sit up in bed typing, Jeanne is sleeping soundly… Except for when Maggie has a big cough, then I can hear her breathing change as her motherly instincts kick in and she listens to make sure the coughing doesn’t get out of control.

Down the hall, Max is talking in his sleep tonight. I’m not sure what his dream is about, but it seems pretty adventurous: the handful of things I’ve been able to make out have been variations on “C’mon, you can make it!” and “Alright, nice one!”

And on the floor of our bedroom, Nanook is breathing gently in the corner by my dresser while Sneakers is actually snoring a tiny bit on the floor by Jeanne’s side of the bed, where she insists on sleeping every night.

Now, as I wrap this up, the rain is falling harder, loud splatters on the roof and windows, but I don’t think it’ll last. It’s just providing a nice little accompaniment to go with the tiny, gentle little soundtrack of our home.

It’s amazing how comforting the sounds of our lives can be…