Tag Archives: celebrate everything

CASTLE PANIC!

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A little QFT.*

Castle Panic is a fun, silly board game that creates a surprisingly high level of… well, panic! 🙂 The players are all on a team, playing AGAINST the game, so it’s a fun collaboration to stop all of the attacking hordes before they wipe out your castle!

I love this picture, though: Maggie and Jeanne are adorable as always, and Max is adorable in his “I will never ever just smile normally for a picture” way! 😂 Plus, if you zoom in, at the top you can see our picture on the wall of the kids when they were really little, being photogenic on a playground slide! ❤️

I hope with the upcoming holidays, and snow days, that you all get a chance to relax with some *Quality Family Time, whether it’s movie and popcorn night, or battling evil monsters who are hell-bent on destroying you and your castle!

Pic Post Friday!

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I had a wonderful quick getaway with my amazing wife Jeanne earlier this week.   We stole a couple days from the schedule and visited Saugatuck, Michigan.  We stayed in the fabulous Hidden Gardens bed-and-breakfast, where I now want to live year-round.

We spent a lot of time on Lake Michigan, at Oval Beach. Just beautiful.   Here’s the only pic I took at the beach!


To get to the beach, you have to take a short walk from downtown Saugatuck, across the Kalamazoo River.  This chain ferry is the way to cross and, according to the operator, it’s one of only a handful still in operation across the country!

Here is the guy cranking us across the river. Yes, when offered the chance, I did some cranking! Life is short, try stuff, celebrate everything!  😁


Jeanne and I had a great time, it was a wonderful relaxing couple of days. Downtown Saugatuck is adorable with lots of parks and little shops and great food. (If you go, don’t miss The Southerner, or Phil’s!)

This flower shop has the best name ever.

We also enjoyed some relaxing and great wine at a cool place called Borrowed Time…

 

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With life being crazy, and politics driving everyone nuts, and work being always busy, and Jeanne and the kids going back to school in a week…. a little breathing room with the most important person in my world was just perfect.

I hope you’re all able to carve out some hammock time, whatever your version is, before long.  These are the moments all the hard stuff should lead to. Don’t forget to take them.

Today is the day

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Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most. – Buddha  

Waking up on a Sunday morning. Daylight savings gave me an extra hour of sleep, that was nice. I wake, and listen – the dogs are stirring, no one else is awake. A car goes by outside, and out my window a couple more leaves fall to the ground.  

I get up – let the dogs outside. They run, crunching through the leaves in the backyard, and the cool crisp breeze raises goose flesh on my arms. What a wonderful smell the autumn morning has. Take a second – breathe it in again. Go to the kitchen – start a pot of coffee. 

Right now is the moment I get. This is it. Make it count. 

Yesterday is a memory – cherish it, learn from it, but it’s done.  

Tomorrow is just a possibility – plan for it, but it may not come. 

NOW. Now is all that’s guaranteed. Squeeze it, savor it. Sniff the air, listen, taste, look around right now:  The things and people I’m grateful for?  Acknowledge them, embrace them, stop and breathe them in.  Take note of them: These are the things to hold onto. These are the things that, if I’m lucky enough to get tomorrow, I need to be worthy of.  

The smell of freshly brewed coffee fills the room. 


You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.   –  Henry David Thoreau

The passing moment is all that we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it…  –  W. Somerset Maugham

Change change change

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I was thinking about how much is changing, how it currently feels like I, and my family also, are in this period of transition.  It feels like a lot is happening right now: 

  • Maggie graduated high school, and is off to Finland for a year of student exchange where she’s basically taking a fifth year of high school in Finnish and living with a wonderful family, immersing herself in a foreign culture on the other side of the globe. I’m really proud of her. You can follow her exploits at her website!
  • We decided the house would be too quiet with only one kid, so we agreed to have an exchange student live with us for a year! Tommaso is from Italy, and living with us now through next summer, going to school as a senior at Chelsea high. It’s a fun transition and experience for all of us.  You can check out his blog where he chronicles his exploits here…. If you read Italian!  
  • Max is in the process of getting his driver’s license, and will be a junior this year.  We’ve begun talks about his desire to do a student exchange program of some kind, and what happens after high school!  
  • On Sunday we closed our 10th Season at Williamston Theatre.  We’e begun work on our second decade already, and rehearsals for the first show of next season start this Tuesday.

So, Jeanne and I were discussing how, in about two years, we could be officially “empty-nesters”!  That’s another chapter that came up faster than I expected!  Still, as I was thinking about how much change is currently underway, I also started thinking about how funny it is that we call it “change” or “a period of transition”, and act like it is something that only happens once in a while. 

The fact is, life IS change.  My kids were never the same people from one year to the next.  Their goals, personalities, likes and dislikes hobbies and habits – all these things are in flux all the time.  Our family schedule, our work schedules, all of those change regularly.  I mean, sure, I now have a tendency to categorize things in my life based on whether it happened before, during, or after my coma (The Before, the Dark Time, and The Now, as we jokingly call it!).  Still, I think that’s because even though life is CONSTANTLY changing, we tend to try and make sense of it by labeling the things that seem like the biggest, or most dramatic changes.  Then we can celebrate them, have a communal sense of understanding and compassion with each other about all of the shared changes that most of us go through: births, deaths, graduations, marriages, things that many of our peers share. 

I think that tendency to categorize the big things in our lives is natural, but I also wonder if it stops us from realizing that ALL of it is changing, all the time.  This feeling of “normalcy” or “a routine” that we seem to want, or pretend to want, is something that I think we’ve created to fill the gaps between the big changes we wait for (or long for), but I wonder:  

Does this idea of a “normalcy” between Big Changes cause us to minimize the importance of all of that life and change that happens in that time?  Do we lose sight of the beauty and wonder of our lives because we are waiting for Change with a capital C?  Do we forget that we owe it to ourselves, and our world, to live fully and embrace all the “stuff” that happens every day, and that EVERY DAY is when we should be shaping our lives and the world around us?   

Maybe. Maybe we just need that reminder that NOW is what we have.  The more I remind myself that THIS RIGHT NOW is what I can be sure of, the more I want to explore and experience and help and cherish the world and people around me, because the next breath may not come. That’s what I’m sure of – that I’m not sure I’ll get tomorrow.  So I don’t want to slip into trudging along, day by day, putting out the neverending onslaught of metaphorical fires and looking for the next Change somewhere on the horizon.  How we see our world shapes our world… and it’s being shaped every day, whether we pay attention or not.  

So, I think the lesson I need to stay focused on is this: Pay attention.  Beauty, wonder, magic – it exists around us every day.  Learn, grow, make a difference, marvel at the world – those opportunities exist around us every day, too.   Go out and find them! 

Celebrate!

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So many things to celebrate and be grateful for right now!

A wonderful Easter morning with my family.  A wonderful 22-Year Wedding Anniversary with my wife, the most amazing woman on the planet!  Major League Baseball is just days away from starting a new season!  

PLUS! Check out this gorgeous piece of art by Forrest Haskins!

   
 
I’m so excited to have this in our house!  It was part of the WT Gallery Showing for our last production at Williamston Theatre – our gallery was filled with work by Mr. Haskins, and I loved it. This piece was one of my favorites. It looks GREAT in our family room. 🙂

In other good news, look what you can now buy from Amazon! 

      It’s the first Volume of the Williamston Theatre Anthology! Our 2-volume anthology, collecting all 14 of the world-premiere plays we’ve produced over our first decade, is being published as part of our 10th Season celebrations. (Volume 2 will be out this Summer!)  Check it out here!   

 And, since we’re talking about cool things being created to share with others, I had a fantastic time this weekend with the Tech process for The Decade Dance at Williamston Theatre.  (One of the world premieres that will be featured in Volume 2 of our Anthology!)  The entire production team brought all the pieces together to elevate this piece to a thing of beauty! I couldn’t be prouder of the team. 

 
And the fun doesn’t stop there! Today I get to Tech Rounding Third at Tipping Point Theatre in Northville, MI.  In 3 days, I get to have 2 tech processes and work with with 2 AMAZING teams of professionals who are crushing it. That’s like Christmas in March for this Director/Producer! 

I hope you’re all finding the things in your life to celebrate and be grateful for!

Why are you here?

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I like this thought from Dan Pearce – Abstract textured background

 

What’s the point?  What’s the reason?  To help my kids have a good life?  To help my wife do the same?  To make theatre and help people laugh, or cry, or reflect on their life and feel not alone?  To enjoy life and try to be a force for positivity?  I feel like these are the things I’m supposed to be doing… but too often  I find myself NOT doing them.  Too often I get caught up in my own ego, or fears, or the negativity of someone else, or my own laziness. or distract-ability (is that a word?  Go with it.)   Lately I’ve been lucky – it’s been easy to come to work and celebrate that I get to run a regional theatre, and I’ve had some wonderful QFT (Quality Family Time!) to remind me what’s important, to keep me focused.

Still, this last month has been an interesting one – the Facebook features “Memories” and “Timehop” have brought up LOTS of the “Team Tony” photos because it was 2 years ago now that I was waking up from a coma, and a lot of people were getting their t-shirts and posting them.  Seeing all the flashback-posts is wonderful, and heart-warming, and also a little emotional because of all that went on, and all that is still going on.  They also help remind me how lucky my family is to have had all that support, and that this life is pretty fleeting, and we have just one chance to make the most of it… hence the Dan Pearce quote!    Of course, thinking back to all of that, and of how lucky I am to be here today, AND of the quote above, it makes me wonder if those things are enough… what else can I be doing? What else SHOULD I be doing?  I guess I have more questioning to do, as Dan Pearce suggests.  🙂

Oh – also, because of those Facebook features, I’m finding a bunch of photos I never saw before!  I’ve added a bunch of new pics to the Team Tony page on my site, and done a few other tweaks to the site.  Check it out, let me know what you think!

And today – take a minute to look around and count some blessings.

So lucky, so much goodness on the way!

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I’m so excited with the upcoming slate of theatre that I get to be involved in!  Not only do we have 3 more great shows coming up at Williamston Theatre for this season, but next month we hold auditions for Season Eleven, and now we can talk about the shows we have lined up for that!   And I LOVE ALL these shows coming up!

So, we’re in rehearsals right now for The Decade Dance by Joe Zettelmaier, which is a really funny, really thoughtful exploration of life, love, politics and race in 1970’s America.  We just had the first read-through earlier this week, and I’m absolutely stoked about the show.

After that we have Chapatti, by Christian O’Reilly.  This is a beautiful, charming, intelligent and theatrical love story that delves into the question of life, and love, after people have started to give up hope on either.

Wrapping up Season 10 is a hilarious and really warm comedy by Annie Martin called Summer Retreat. The show explores the relationship between a group of women from college through middle-age and how, as we grow, so does our love for our friends – even if we’re not all headed in the same direction.

THEN comes Season Eleven at Williamston Theatre!

First: Pulp, by Joseph Zettelmaier.  I’m directing this one, and I can’t wait.  It’s a noir/genre/detective/thriller/mystery comedy, and it’s a blast!  And it’s a world premiere, and part of a Rolling World Premiere with the National New Play Network (of which Williamston Theatre is a member).

Second: The Nerd, by Larry Shue.  An absolutely hilarious show, not nearly old enough to be called a chestnut… but is it old enough to be called a classic?  Either way, it’s a popular piece that is well known for a reason: It’s hysterical.  This will be our MSU collaboration show, and it’s a perfect showcase for our excellent partnership with Michigan State University’s Department of Theatre.

Third: Another world premiere, this one by Christy Hall.  A Painted Window is a beautiful exploration of sisterhood, and aging, and wanting to be appreciated and understood and connected to the world. It asks the question “When it’s all over… when all we have left are the memories… will we want a do-over?”

In our fourth slot I’m directing a show I’ve been excited about doing for a while:  1984, by George Orwell.  This adaptation, by Michael Gene Sullivan, explores some of the most prescient aspects of Orwell’s classic story, and some of the most socially relevant, in a terrifically theatrical way. What happens to people when their humanity is forcibly stripped away, when being different is a crime, and when people are afraid to think anything but what they’ve been told to think?  Can compassion and empathy exist in that world? Can love?

Fifth is a Michigan premiere, a terrific play that was at the Stratford festival a few years ago called Taking Shakespeare by John Murrell.  A charming, funny, poignant story where what seems to be a simple clash between people from different generations turns into an exploration of life, and the power of storytelling and taking chances.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand our final slot of Season Eleven is still TBA.  We’re waiting to cross the t’s and dot the i’s on the rights, but I’ll let you know when it’s announced!

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that I’ll also be directing at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre next season!  I’m excited to be working with Kitty Dubin on the world premiere of her new play Rights Of Passage!

So, when you add all that stuff together, and throw in the exciting Dark Nights in Billtown festival coming up in May (where we’re exploring several excellent Protest Theatre pieces), I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to be a part of so many great pieces of theatre.

So – what about YOU?  What upcoming things in your life are YOU looking forward to?!