Tag Archives: life

Catching Up On The Work Stuff 

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This past weekend was pretty great. After an incredibly busy couple of months I’m in a slower period, for which I’m grateful, but this weekend was the fun culmination of all that work. We closed the world premiere of Pulp by Jospeh Zettelmaier that I directed at Williamston Theatre…

…and opened the world premiere of Rights Of Passage by Kitty Dubin at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre. 

Getting to do two new plays at two different theatres (with a one week overlap!) was a wonderful opportunity, and a great challenge. I got super lucky, and was able to work with some really fabulous artists. Very happy with how both productions turned out, and grateful for the chance to spend so much time laughing and enjoying doing the work with quality people.  The older I get, the more I realize what a gift it is to be able to enjoy the people in the work as much as the work itself.  Sometimes that’s not always possible but, when it is, it’s a thing to be cherished.

I’m excited to spend the next couple of months producing The Nerd (here’s the set being installed TODAY!)……and producing A Painted Window, and I’ll be prepping to direct one of the shows I’ve been wanting to do for years, 1984.


In the meantime, though, I’m looking forward to having a bit more time to spend with my family.

And now – to sleep! G’night everybody!

Monday Monday

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Every day is filled with things to be grateful for. 

Is the world perfect?  Nope. The rampant racism, divisiveness and hate-speech happening is a clear sign of that. Still – we have to embrace the good things in our lives, and not allow ourselves, our loved ones and our world to be swallowed up in negativity. 

Today is a day I’m really grateful for.  This beautiful Autumn weather, and I’m working on a new play. 2 plays, in fact! Not only did we have a great first weekend of previews at Williamston Theatre, where I’m directing Pulp, but tonight I start rehearsals for Rights Of Passage at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre.  2 new plays, back to back (overlapping!), makes for a happy, tired director, grateful to be alive and working in the American Theatre. And when you add in the wonderful caliber of the casts and production staffs I get to work with? Truly, I’m a lucky man. 

Plus, today the care package that my wife and I mailed to our exchange-student daughter made it to Helsinki and she got some treats from home. The only damper on the day is that Jeanne is fighting a miserable cold, but she’s feeling a little bit better today than yesterday, so even that is in a positive trajectory! 

So, I sit here drinking an iced coffee (cream only, no sugar, since my wife and daughter and I made a “no sugar for a week” pact), and I make notes in a script, and the sun shines in.  I know Max and Tommaso are about to finish their day of school, and Max will go straight to rehearsal for 42nd Street, and Tommaso will go to his tennis match. Maggie prepares for bed 1/2 a planet away, surrounded by some love from home, and Jeanne rests in a warm blanket with a cup of tea. 

I wish so much that the negativity in the world could be fixed by simply reminding people to embrace the Joy around them, to spread that, and help others do the same. Such a simple idea…. if only it would work.  Still – today, I will be grateful for the things in my life that make today beautiful. And I will share that gratefulness, and hope that it inspires others to do the same. 

Happy Monday everyone – take a moment to find your happiness today. 

A Tuesday Autumnal Pic Post Celebration

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Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon?

– Hal Borland

Autumn is almost upon us. I love this time of year. After a weekend where I got to rehearse a brand new play with an amazing team of people, and I got to have a 30 minute phone call with my daughter in Finland, I thought I’d celebrate with some pictures. 


Maggie got to go on a cruise from Finland to Sweden! I sure miss having her around, but it fills my heart to see her enjoying herself. 

My son Max, and our new son Tommaso (our exchange student from Italy), had a great time this weekend. I stayed home to work, but Jeanne and the boys went north to the lake where my in-laws live and had a great time visiting and swimming!

A couple shots from rehearsal of Pulp by Joseph Zettelmaier:

Here, John Lepard and Joe Bailey have a little standoff.  (Well, their characters do. The actors get along great! 😜)
And here are Michelle, Sarah and Anna -some of the amazing people making the show happen!

Recently I made my first foray EVER into an IKEA. We and our pals the Woodards went in a big group. My ratings:

Store: Fun.  

Coffee:  Good. 

Meatballs: Meh. 

And so – today starts a new year for our house. The start of a new busy cycle. I’m deep in rehearsals for our new season of plays. Maggie may be off in Finland, but Max Tommaso and Jeanne all began a new school year this morning, which will include classes, tennis, choir, theatre guild and lots more. It’s easy to look at that and think “Oh geez, back to the grind” – but it’s also an exciting time. So much good stuff is on the way, so many new exciting projects. I know many of you are going through your versions of this transition too – and I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am!

The season for enjoying the fullness of life — partaking of the harvest, sharing the harvest with others, and reinvesting and saving portions of the harvest for yet another season of growth.
 -Denis Waitley

Sunday Quotes: What Comes Next Is Up To Us. 

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Princes & Kings
Isn’t it strange how princes and kings, 

and clowns that caper in sawdust rings,

and common people, like you and me,

are builders for eternity?

Each is given a list of rules;

a shapeless mass; a bag of tools.

And each must fashion, ere life is flown,

A stumbling block, or a Stepping-Stone.

-R. Lee Sharpe

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. 

-Dwight D. Eisenhower


We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community. 

-Haile Selassie

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! 

So much good stuff coming up at work

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Some weeks are pretty darned great, y’know?   This week I got to have an amazing 1st Production Meeting with the team for Pulp.  Rehearsals start in about 5 weeks, and I can’t wait!  I LOVE the beginning of a project when you’re working with a great production staff – the excitement, the ideas bouncing around, the energy – such a good time for digging into the work.

Not only did I have that meeting, but I had a great playwright meeting for Rights Of Passage, the other show I’m directing this fall, and I’m feeling super enthusiastic and energized about the project, and the direction it’s headed in.  I’ll be directing this show at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, and can’t wait to work with the great cast.

Heard from the amazing David Blixt at Sordelet Ink, and very shortly we will get the proofreading copies of our Williamston Theatre Anthology Of New Plays: VOLUME II, so in another few weeks we’ll have copies of both volumes available for sale!  PS – To buy VOLUME I, click here!

And today (a little later than normal because of REASONS) we finally were able to nail down the last cast member of our 2016-2017 season, so not only is the whole season cast and staffed, but we just finalized our brochure and it’s off to the printer.

So – for your viewing pleasure – here are some screenshots I took of some of the brochure pages.  Here’s what we’ve got coming up!

Screen Shot 2016-07-28 at 3.18.10 PMScreen Shot 2016-07-28 at 3.05.37 PMNerdAPW1984TSMF2

SO MUCH great stuff happening – lots to be grateful for.  I hope you’re finding all the things in YOUR day to celebrate and enjoy.  🙂

The Little Things

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The hugs my kids come in and give me, because they know I’ll want them to, when they’re leaving early in the morning and I’m still sleeping. 

As I stand at the kitchen sink, in the cool morning air coming in through the window, the steam that curls up off of my coffee spoon after I’ve stirred my first cup. 

Sitting in the screened in back porch, listening to the rain fall outside in the dark, with the Tigers on quietly in the radio next to me. 

That moment right before a play, when the house lights dim and you know things are about to begin. 

The way our dog FlipFlop will walk around the house carrying as many socks in his mouth as he can find. 

That moment of excitement, despite the fact that I own all of them and could play them at any time, when one of Prince’s songs comes on the radio when I’m driving. 

Watching and listening to patrons file out after a play, hearing them excitedly share their favorite moments from the show, and knowing that we got them. 

The little conversations my wife has, in her sleep, to the people in her dreams. 

The text-message thread between my brother and sister and I that keeps me laughing every day. 

The little things, almost every day, that carry my thoughts back to the many, many alternate-reality-like dreams I had while in my coma. 

Late at night, the gentle susurrus, the murmuring of the wind through all of the trees in our yard. 

So many little things, every day, that it’s easy to forget about. So much time listening to the negative, or looking for the big event, when everyday is filled with things to be grateful for. 

The desire to recognize more of these moments each day. 

June 2nd?!

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Okay, I know.  June 2nd. Last update was in April.  April 21st.  I know that without even looking it up.  Why?  Because a thing happened.  Well, a couple things happened.

I was having arm surgery.  My second arm surgery in as many weeks.
Arm Surgery 2: The Reckoning.

The Reckoning?  I dunno, sometimes I just type stuff.  I RECKON that damned surgery then led to a thing called DVT.  That’s what the medical types call it.  Deep Vein Thrombosis.  Us non medical types who are dealing with it call it Big Freaking Blood Clots Deep In My Arm And Shoulder That Hurt Like A Son-Of-A-Bitch.™

So, yeah.  Blood clots.  Sweet.  That’s new.  Too close to my lungs and heart and stuff, so the doctors didn’t like the whole thing.  That leads to injections of stuff and blood thinner pills and people going “Wow that’s a lotta bruising!” and me using profanity.  Oh, who are we kidding, it doesn’t take much for me to use profanity.

All of that is solvable.  And is being solved.  Over the next several months with an amazing blood-thinning drug called Coumadin.  SCIENCE!!  Just don’t cut me, because there will be NO COAGULATING IN THIS HOUSE.  I’m like a wild mountain stream, running free.  YOU CAN’T STAUNCH ME!

The other thing that happened, though.  Man oh man.  After I woke up from Arm Surgery 2: ReArmed And Dangerous, on the drive home, my wonderful wife Jeanne broke the news to me that while I was in surgery, Prince had died.

Well.  If you know me, or read this blog, you know I’m a big Prince fan.  I mean, I’m only 5’3″, but inside I’m a GIANT Prince fan.  I have every studio album he’s released (I think it’s 39, at last count?), plus a lot of B-sides, extended singles, remixes, collaborations, a few bootlegs, some vinyl interview discs… I had the immense privilege of seeing him in concert 7 times – mostly in Michigan, but once in Chicago and once in London.  Earlier this year I had one of those little moments of pure unadulterated giddy pace-around-the-house-for-30-minutes saying “Holy Shit” over and over kind of moments when Prince himself, on Twitter, re-tweeted my tweet about how much I loved one of the songs from his newest album and he added “I love Tony Caselli”.

I’m just so sad that he’s passed.  I spent weeks after that day dealing with arm stuff and medications and feeling lousy from that AND processing the loss of this inspiring force in my life… it was a weird few weeks.  And today, unfortunately, the reports confirmed that it was from an overdose of pain medication that he’d become addicted to because of the pain from his hip injuries.  Dammit.  It feels silly to say that every time I went to write a blog post, I knew I had to say something about Prince, and for weeks I just couldn’t say it, but it’s true.  I didn’t know him, I never met him.  He retweeted me once.  Once, in the second row of the Musicology concert tour, his sweat flew the 10 feet from the stage and landed on my sister and I.  That or someone dancing nearby spilled their drink, but I’m going with the sweat, because it happened just as he was spinning like a purple dervish right in front of us.  Musicology.

So much music.  So much talent.  A short guy, like me, who just did his own thing and inspired all the rest of us 5 foot 3 guys.  I mean, his music has been in my life since I was an early teenager.  His amazing music, and his stuff that made me go “Okay, cool.  I’m with ya.  Not my favorite, but I’ll be back for what’s next”.  It spoke to me.  It made me dance, and think, and groove, and it’s been that way for decades.  I just assumed that in my retirement home, the ones my kids will put me into in 25 or 30 years because I’m just too damned annoying, that I’d be enjoying a nice 4pm dinner of soup and listening to the newest Prince album over and over.  Year after year.

Who is going to write the soundtrack to my life now?

So, I don’t know.  Life.  Aging.  My dad died at 68.  Prince died at 57.  Blood clots coming 2 years after a stupid coma that nearly killed me at 45.  Somewhere in there is a whole deep well of thinking and processing about life, and living it to the fullest, and fear of leaving my wife and kids behind, and gratefulness for the amazing life I’ve lived so far.  It’s all there, and articulating it is something that may happen later.  Right now, though, I just want to listen to my whole Prince collection, on shuffle.

“Don’t stop.  Nothing ever comes from fear.” – Prince, Rock-n-Roll Love Affair

 

Thursday Things: Try, try again…

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So last week I had Arm Surgery version 1.0.   Turns out that didn’t do what it was supposed to do, so today we’re on our way to the update: Arm Surgery 2.0. 

Should be straight-forward. The first attempt was in hopes that the easy way would solve the challenge… Alas, the slightly more complicated method is required, so here we go. 

It’s okay, though! I’m grateful for the smart, skilled people who know how to do these things, and my awesome wife who is spending the day with me!

If this surgery doesn’t work, I’ve been lobbying for a sci-fi robotic arm. I want lasers, scanners, and a grappling hook. I think the med team thinks I’m joking, but most of my friends are like “Yep. Like Cyborg, from the Justice League. Sure.”  It’s nice to have friends who get me! 🙂

Speaking of friends,  my pal Mike McCafferty has a new podcast that’s a ton of fun. Mike is, he says, going through a Star Trek Mid-Life Crisis ™ and his new podcast, I Just Want To Tak About Star Trek is a blast. A fun, ridiculous, soul-searching quest to find meaning in life and explore our relevancy, his podcast often features my friends Jason, Kim and Matt along with other frequent surprise guests. It’s a great listen – you should check it out. In fact, I guest-starred with Mike on episode 7.  Check it out, then subscribe and listen from the beginning, you won’t regret it! 

Check out Episode 7 right here!  

In the meantime, enjoy your day, laugh a lot, and celebrate everything!

Wednesday gratitude

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A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting the hospitals that saved my life! It was, on April 1st, the 2-year anniversary of me getting out of the hospital after my long bacterial meningitis/ARDS/coma adventure. Jeanne and I took gift baskets and thank you cards to the ICU of St. Joe’s in Chelsea and all 3 floors I was on at the St. Joe’s of Ann Arbor. It’s nice going back to say thank you!  

And today, I’m back! Just for part of the day. Having some vein surgery done on my arm – one of the many little after effects of that whole hospital stay – should be back on my feet in a day. Glad to get it done, my arm has been swollen and sore, it’ll be a relief to have that taken care of!

The whole thing, though, has me marveling again at how fortunate I’ve been during this last few years. Modern medicine amazes me. Today, they’ll go in and fix a tiny collapsing vein in my arm with super cool science and technology!  

So – here we go! More things to be grateful for. Doctors and nurses who are good at their jobs, people who care, my wife and kids and friends and family.  Scientists and engineers who invent tiny little microscopic cameras that travel through blood veins! Oh, and Netflix – which has every season of Deep Space Nine for me to watch while I have to be in bed for a day! 🙂

Thanks for reading – Happy Wednesday! I hope you get the chance to reflect on some things to be grateful for today.