Tag Archives: life

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!

Quotes: Compassion

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These seem pretty relevant to our current political and social discussions… And to life in general…


I truly believe that compassion provides the basis of human survival. – Dalai Lama


Compassion:

sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.  –  Confucius

I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honourable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.  – Leo C. Rosten

The world must never again confuse compassion for weakness.  – Steve Rogers, Captain America

  

MARCH!

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March! So much good stuff this month!

Rehearsals (and soon, first preview) of The Decade Dance are happening – so far the rehearsals have been great.  Just watched the first “designer stumble-through” the other day, and was very pleased with how things are looking.  We have another run-through today that I’m seeing, excited about watching the show again.  It’s always fun to do a new play – having the writer in the room working with the actors, director and designers is a blast.  The whole team on this one is terrific, I’m looking forward to seeing the final product!

Also – I get to work on Rounding Third again!  Our co-production between Williamston Theatre and Tipping Point Theatre is coming back for the 6-week run at Tipping Point, so we’ll be doing a bit of rehearsing and re-mounting the show there later this month.  Spent some time this week re-reading the script, and watching the archival tape of the show so we could get a head-start on getting the show back on it’s feet.  Watching it, I was reminded how much audiences enjoyed it – as much as I hate watching theatre that’s been recorded for archival purposes, it IS fun to hear an audience roar with laughter!  🙂

Some of the most fun I get to have this month is in the finalization of our NEXT season at Williamston Theatre.  I love this time of year, because you’re nailing down the details of another season of theatre: What stories do you get to tell, why are you choosing them? What teams can you put together?  Which artist feels like a great fit for which project?  Who do we get to have in our building, sharing their gifts with our company and our audience?  It’s a terrific puzzle to put together every year, and I love it.

All of that great stuff for work, plus a ton of wonderful Quality Family Time, and seeing my kids do amazing work in the show choir (Company C), our 22nd wedding anniversary is coming up soon, and discovering Bob’s Burgers on Hulu and Netflix! (Seriously… this show is ridiculous, Jeanne and I could sit and watch an all day marathon and laugh non-stop.  How are we JUST discovering this now?!  The kids introduced us to it, and I’m glad they did!)

So – how’s YOUR March going?

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(I wish I knew who to credit for this cool image. I found it online.)

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.

THINK!

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Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes. -Plato

“Don’t make me think for myself! Don’t make me feel something! Tell me WHAT to think! Tell me WHAT to feel! Don’t make me ask QUESTIONS and explore the answer!”

Sad.  I get sad when this is the response to things.  Especially things I’ve made, or that other storyteller friends have made.  Sad, and frustrated.  In today’s world, the ability – or interest? – in THINKING and exploring something seems to be fading away.   So many people seem to be looking to get the easy answer:  “Tell me how to feel!”

Listen, I love a nice, simple, clear-as-day episode of Matlock as much as anybody… I’ll happily sit and laugh my way through an episode of Three’s Company… but not everything should be that simple.  Not everything CAN be that simple.  They’ll yell – the people who shun imagination and critical thinking, they’ll complain – but we can’t give in, those of us who are artists and storytellers, we can’t give in and allow everything to be dumbed down and oversimplified.  There is room for all sorts of storytelling – and we can’t allow the people who want every moment of life to be spelled out in snack-sized sound bites to take away our ability to SAVOR NOT KNOWING.  To revel in asking the question.  To go home at the end of the night NOT having everything laid out in a mindlessly digestible form, but having some things left unanswered rattling around in our brains, forcing us to analyze them using our imagination, our own sense of curiosity and wonder, our own life experience.  It’s from THIS that we understand our life, and the world around us: From the sharing of moments and ideas, and reflecting on them, discussing them.  NOT from having ideas explained and answers handed to us, but having ideas presented and the questions asked!

One way teaches us to be thinkers.  The other teaches us to be nothing but consumers.

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
-Hannah Arendt

Storytelling is ultimately a creative act of pattern recognition. Through characters, plot and setting, a writer creates places where previously invisible truths become visible. Or the storyteller posits a series of dots that the reader can connect.
— Douglas Coupland

 The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.
— Brandon Sanderson

Catching up on the good stuff

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Boy, January flew by.  I was directing a play, which is part of the reason, but also it was a month of weird anniversaries and things.  Over the last few weeks we had my birthday (yay 47!), the 2 year anniversary of me going into the hospital and going into a coma, and the 1 year anniversary of my father passing.  All of that stuff led to me being in a weird place for several weeks, but I guess that’s normal.

Of course, adding to the weirdness was the fact that the play I’m directing is about, among other things, a family dealing with the death of the father.  So, that made it a pretty emotional project.  Fortunately the show, Too Much, Too Much, Too Many, is gorgeous and I got to work with wonderful people while creating it.

Here’s a shot from the show!  TM3.jpg

I really like the composition of this moment in the play.  🙂

Oh, here’s our video, too!

I’m also pleased to report that there is a ton of wonderfulness going on in my world, both with family and work.  Got to see Maggie’s final home concert with the Chelsea House Orchestra, and next week I get to see the one-act play that my son Max on as Student Director!  And this week was the birthday of my beautiful wife, which is definitely a day to celebrate!

Now, though – I’m off to the final preview performance of Too Much, Too Much, Too Many.  It’s one of those pieces that reminds us, because sometimes we need reminding, that life is short, and putting up walls between us and our joy just doesn’t do anybody any good!  Live your lives, folks – live for yourselves, and for the people you love – all we have is what we make with each other.

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

Walt Whitman

 

Old School

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Sometimes you just need to take your kid to Pinball Pete’s and show her what a real arcade is.  Because weekends hanging out with your kids get fewer and fewer, and you need to enjoy them while you can. 

“This is what my teenage and college years were like. Pizza, and these games you had to put quarters in. A lot of quarters. And Mountain Dew. A lot of Mountain Dew.”

Her reactions were great.   

“What the?!?  WHY CAN’T I CLIMB THE LADDER WITH A HAMMER?!”

“Pinball hates me.” 

When we won the “match” at the end of the pinball game: “It gives you a free game?! That’s awesome!”

  
“Oh, I played this on my iPod!” … followed closely by “This is a LOT harder than on my iPod!”  “JUMP! Stupid frog!”

We had a great time, though. I don’t even think Maggie minded when her old man whooped her in air-hockey! Plus, she got permission to swear at Ms. Pac Man… (I mean, to be fair, Ms. Pac Man really was being kind of a bitch.)

Thanks, Pinball Pete’s, for helping me share a little chunk of my childhood with my kid! 

Merry Christmas Day!

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Christmas morning. 

I love it. 

Watching family open gifts, especially the kids pulling out all the stocking stuffers, is the best! Much hugging and love, lots of laughs, sitting on the couch, or the floor between the couch and Christmas Tree, everyone gradually donning new hats, or pajamas, or scarves or jackets, so that by the time we’re done no one looks the way they did when we started! 

Coffee being enjoyed by Jeanne and I, Maggie immediately begins brewing water for tea in her super-nifty new electric tea kettle. (“It GLOWS!!”, she yells from the kitchen.) Max is trying to decide which side of his reversible Star Wars jacket he wants to show off first, the Light or the Dark. Jeanne rises, starts preparing our traditional Christmas Day breakfast: eggs, sausage, cinnamon rolls, and pomegranates! 

Best laugh of the morning:  My wife (because she a: knows me, b: loves me and c: is awesome), got me Superman cologne. Max got Batman cologne. I sprayed some on, and declared “I smell like Truth And Justice!”  Max, in his spot-on Christian-Bale-as-Batman impression, whisper-growled “And I smell like THE NIGHT!!”  

Ah, I love these mornings together. Grateful to be here for them. 

Merry Christmas, everyone. 

  

You choose your path…

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“One of the fundamental differences between the Victim Orientation and this one [Creator] is where you put your focus of attention…For Victims, the focus is always on what they don’t want: the problems that seem constantly to multiply in their lives. They don’t want the person, condition, or circumstance they consider their Persecutor, and they don’t want the fear that leads to fight, flee or freeze reactions, either. Creators, on the other hand, place their focus on what they do want. Doing this, Creators still face and solve problems in the course of creating outcomes they want, but their focus remains fixed on their ultimate vision.”  – David Emerald

 

“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” – Henry David Thoreau

 

“Never confuse motion with action.” – Benjamin Franklin