Today…

I solved some scheduling things, figured out a couple of payroll things, filed some things and answered a slew of emails… then I put my feet up and I read a couple of plays that are in consideration for next season.  I love that part of my job, and need to stop letting the everyday fires of the job get in the way of doing it!  

Our SM Erin for the next show is in the building prepping for the rehearsals to start next week, so lots of work is being done there, including the rearranging of the green room and dressing rooms and the prep for the actors to arrive.  Fun.

Downstairs onstage the actors, writer and director are in the middle of the final day of the workshop for Home: Voices From Families Of The Midwest.  It’s been a very productive workshop, and we just agreed to add one more day of it, to be held in about 8 weeks. 

Our apprentice (also named Erin) was working on tracking down scripts, helping the SM, and is now downstairs in the workshop.

Press photos were taken for the marketing campaign that’ll start next week for our next show.

And right now there’s a meeting of the Williamston Theatre Signature Society in our greenroom.  Those folks are fabulous, and help us stay open by donating their time, money, energy and ideas.

I love it when the building is humming with energy like this! 

There is a wonderful article by John McWhorter on the TCG website right now, and it’s in the January American Theatre magazine.

His premise is that the world would be better served if we started translating Shakespeare, from the centuries-dead language that happens to sound like ours, into modern English.

A snippet:
I submit that here as we enter the Shakespearean canon’s sixth century in existence, Shakespeare begin to be performed in translations into modern English readily comprehensible to the modern spectator. Make no mistake—I do not mean the utilitarian running translations which younger students are (blissfully) often provided in textbooks. The translations ought to be richly considered, executed by artists of the highest caliber well-steeped in the language of Shakespeare’s era, thus equipped to channel the Bard to the modern listener with the passion, respect and care which is his due.

It’s a great article, with some solid points, and I think I could be swayed into agreeing with him.

What does anyone else think?

“The industry is very ambitious, and success has become such an opium, people start from the wrong place; they forget sometimes that the core of what we do is storytelling.
It serves a need, a purpose for the individual and society to pull us together in shared experience and help us realize we’re not alone in that experience.”
Joe Wright

“You need three things in the theater – the play, the actors and the audience, – and each must give something”
Kenneth Haigh

“It’s about the play. Where does it need to be really spare? Basically, it’s how to keep the storytelling clear, how to support it and, ideally, enhance it.”
Douglas Levine

You’re invited: The Critics Speak – and the audience talks back!

ANN ARBOR – They’re loved and they’re reviled – often by the same individuals who read them faithfully in many of Southeast and Mid Michigan’s most important newspapers. They’re theater critics, and readers, theatergoers and theater insiders alike will have a rare opportunity to talk shop with them on Monday, January 11, 2010 at 7 p.m. when the state’s leading scribes come together at Ann Arbor’s Performance Network Theatre for The Critics Speak.

The event will be moderated by Barton Bund (artistic director of the Blackbird Theatre) and Tony Caselli (artistic director of the Williamston Theatre) and recorded for a future episode of Encore LIVE!, a semi-monthly podcast series produced for EncoreMichigan.com.

We’re all looking forward to this quite a bit! Read more about it at Encore Michigan!

Reason 11,203 that my son makes me laugh:

My 9-year old invited a friend to come over and hang out after school today.
They played, as 9-year old boys do, by running around and being loud, playing video games and being loud, and just by being loud.
His friend was just picked up by his mom to go home, and just before he left, after “see ya at school”, the two boys at the same time announced “AWKWARD MAN HUG!!” , then shared a giant hug.

Hee-larious.

This has been me all weekend:

Thank God for my awesome, caring, patient wife!! 🙂

Some things I read or saw this year and liked, as well as a couple things I’m looking forward to enjoying shortly!

Amazon.com Widgets

Christmas Eve Dinner is a big event in our family.

On my side of the family a tradition has existed for, oh, 25 years at least, that makes it an exciting dinner:
We take turns hosting dinner at one of our houses – (in the last 12 years or so that’s included Jeanne and I, my Mom and Dad, my brother Dominic and his wife Alesha, and my Sister Gina and her husband Bill). In addition, we often wind up with extra friends or family being invited, which is always a nice addition! Whoever hosts is responsible for making dinner – and the fun part is that dinner is always from a different culture, or country, or ethnicity, or part of the world – some kind of cuisine/family of recipes/foods that we wouldn’t normally eat. Also fun: no one attending can know what it is beforehand – it’s a surprise to everyone who shows up. (So usually for weeks ahead of time, the rest of the family will be trying to find out what it’s going to be!) Some recent favorites have been Moroccan, Senegalese, Arabic, Ukrainian, and Native American.

This tradition is a ton of fun, and is always followed up by a big gift exchange where the kids all get presents, and the adults give a present to the one other adult in the group who they’re buying for that year. The dinner usually winds up having a few dishes that people just LOVE, and a couple that we don’t! (We still tell horror stories about the Tortilla Torte, or the Rutebaga Casserole from years past!) It’s a fun experiment every year, and one that we’ve all grown to anticipate nearly as much as Christmas Day itself.

Last night we hosted the dinner at our house, and we made a big homemade Chinese dinner. Chicken in Plum Sauce, Pork Roast with Triple Vegetable Stir Fry, Fried Sesame Balls with Red Bean Filling, Chicken Wings In Parsley, lots of rice and noodles. Yum! (We also, for the heck of it, added Hot and Sour Soup and Egg Rolls/Spring Rolls from the local restaurant “Chinese Tonight”, because we love them from there!) Plus we had Green Tea, Chinese wine and Chinese beer, and for dessert we bought Mochi green tea ice cream and Mochi red bean ice cream, which are little ice cream balls wrapped in a rice dough coating. (Opinions were VERY mixed on these: some folks loved them, some hated them, some liked the ice cream but NOT the wrapping!) And we also had a nice assortment of yummy pastries! The kids decorated the house with all sorts of Chinese lanterns and decorations, and had fun learning to pronounce “Happy New Year” in Chinese (because that’s the phrase they found translated, so they posted it on the wall!)

Overall, it was a very very fun night, and the best part of it is that we, once again, got the whole family together – plus some friends – to have a wonderful time telling stories, laughing, playing with all the kids, and continuing a tradition that I hope goes on for many more generations.

Merry Christmas everyone!