Walk in the Glow of Each Other's Majestic Presence

How did you celebrate your 30th birthday?

I had a wonderful, wonderful birthday that year.

I was living in Berkeley, working for Katie Hall at Laurel Management in San Francisco. Jason and I had been dating for over a year, but he was still living in Sunnyvale. My actual birthday was on Friday, but the celebration was spread over several days.

On Wednesday night Jason and a couple of friends from the Foothill Conservatory theatre program joined me to see Berkeley Rep’s production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. It was marvelous. One of the best Shakespearean productions I’ve ever seen. It was very stylized, but in a way that suggested “stripped down to the text” rather than a superimposed vision. There were only seven people in the cast and they did an amazing job of switching between characters. Both voice and movement were incredibly polished and beautiful and the lighting, in particular, was stunning. More than twenty years later I still remember the bare stage defined by a giant hawser of rope that the cast hauled about the stage to evoke different settings.

On Thursday night Jason and I went to the Oakland Arena for Stars on Ice, the professional skating show featuring Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, Tara Lipinski and Ilia Kulik. It was lots of fun and had a number of very original performances, playing with black light and blade mics, mixing and matching the pairs and singles skaters in interesting ways.

On Friday at work, Katie decided that since it was my birthday that day and Lycia Carmody’s the next, the company should buy lunch for everyone. So we had yummy Chinese food and they brought out a cake for each of us: carrot with cream cheese frosting for me and angel food with whipped cream and berries—both of which I happen to love. Then I went home to clean and cook and Tom Wethern—in town from Boston on a business trip—came over to hang out with me for a few hours.

On Saturday I got a package from Beckie with a videotape of Impromptu, one of my favorite movies, and a letter from my parents that was so sweet and supportive that I called to thank them and chat for a while. Anne and George were travelling in India at the time.

That evening was my birthday party. Jason was the first to arrive, followed by Rob Harris and Susan Lippincott. We played a couple of hands of four-way cribbage and then Bob Kindall &
Jessie Stickgold-Sarah arrived and that was critical mass, so we moved into the living room as people continued to arrive. About thirty more people showed up over the course of the evening. We drank wine and ate cheese and fruit and salami and veggies and artichoke dip and brownies.

I got some wonderful presents:

• Eric Rescorla brought me _A Beautiful Mind_, the biography of John Nash.

• Robert replaced the recording walkman that got stolen last year, so I could go back to recording books onto tape for
him.

• Jason gave me a cordless hand mixer and brought me a lovely little shell-shaped box from his mother.

• Lindasusan Ulrich and Alicia Bell gave me an IOU for the new cook book by the editor of Cooks Illustrated and a beautiful blue bottle of almond oil and Linda’s housemate, Laura, brought me vegetable soap.

• My housemate, Beth Dart, gave me a funky paint-your-own china kit.

• Linda Branagan, John Sweet & WesCarroll gave me a box with a Year of the Rooster pendant, a mango spice candle and stationery. Wes said later he thought of giving me invitations, but decided that would be too blatant. He also gave me possibly the nicest card I have ever received. The front had an Emerson quote: “What is success? To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch Or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!” and inside Wes wrote “Yup, that’d be my friend Elizabeth.”

Steve Gisselbrecht called around nine and let Linda Marie Sauter, Jonathan Root, Jeff Fabijanic, and Tom (now back home in Boston) say Happy Birthday to me. That was really cool. Generally, the whole event made me feel very aware of how many people there really are out here who care enough
to come to a party and to think of me fondly, even from far away.

The last hour of the party involved a huge game of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, which was very close, but Jason and I won. Dave La Macchia was peeved that I wouldn’t let them open the ten Episode One cards included with the deck, for fear of spoilers, since the movie wouldn’t open until May. The last guest left

around 3:30am, after which Jason and I lay in bed and laughed at each other for an hour before falling asleep.

We had a quiet Sunday together, making grilled cheese sandwiches with Scottish cheddar and watching Impromptu. And then he headed home and I cleaned up and that was how I celebrated turning 30.

As a belated birthday surprise, Jason took me on a mystery adventure this weekend. We left early on Saturday morning and drove down to New York City!

( Hotel, Theatre, Dinner, and Friends )

What a wonderful birthday treat!

When we first put together a schedule for the summer, it didn't look as though we'd be able to make our usual pilgrimage to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but as the plans got rearranged and put back together it turned out there was a narrow window when Jason and I could get down to Ashland just to see Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of The Odyssey, which she was reviving herself for the festival.

For those of you keeping track at home, Mary Zimmerman is probably my favorite stage director. She created Metamorphoses, one of the most perfect theatrical experiences of my life, and I loved her White Snake, as well. I am really enamored by her talent for taking ancient, epic stories and making them personal for modern audiences. I have read her version of The Odyssey in the past and been completely mystified how it might be staged, so I was very excited to see this production.

We flew down from Seattle on Sunday afternoon and checked into the Ashland Springs Hotel, which is a lovely, classic hotel just a block from the festival theatres. After a pleasant walk through Lithia Park, complete with a wade in the stream there, we had dinner at Amuse, our favorite restaurant in town, where the standout this time was a dessert of cherries soaked in balsamic vinegar and served over vanilla ice cream and a brown sugar cracker for a marvelous combination of contrasting flavors and textures. Then we headed over to the Elizabethan Theatre, an outdoor amphitheatre built to echo Shakespeare's Globe.

( Detailed reflections on The Odyssey )

Overall I liked this show, rather than loving it. I think that if I ever decided to take on this story myself I would investigate other adaptations, or simply begin with the source text and carve my own show from it, rather than working from this script. I am very glad to have seen it, but would rank it below the three other shows I've seen her direct.

We went back to the hotel and watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones before bed. In the morning we had breakfast there and then I was able to squeeze in a massage across the street at Waterstone Spa. I always enjoy my experiences there, but this was definitely the best massage I've gotten there, and especially helped my thighs, which were still painfully tight from all the gardening on Friday.

When that was done, we piled quickly into the car and after a much-anticipated lunch at Jack-in-the-Box, hopped on our flight back to Seattle. Reunited with Alice, Steve, and Eric, we met Jason's best friend, Todd, for excellent sushi at Chiso in Fremont, and then I got to read Alice bedtime stories for the last time in a week before Jason took me back to Sea-Tac for my redeye to Boston. The flight was easy and quick--we made it in under four and a half hours, one of the fastest transcontinental flights I've ever flown--and I hadn't checked a bag, so I was able to walk out to a cab and be home just about the time we'd been scheduled to land. Jason and Alice are staying for another week, planning to go camping north of Boise over the weekend and catch the total eclipse before heading home.

It was strange to be doing all this travel and engaging in rituals of personal grief and delightful sensory experiences while violence in Charlottesville and its aftermath were taking over the news. I'm very glad to be home and able to engage more fully in the resistance to those awful events. Thanks to all those who kept me informed and in touch over the weekend.

This year Alice requested that we not undertake a major trip for her Spring Break. She's been very busy and feeling the lack of downtime, so despite my regretting not getting a real vacation, we agreed we would stay home. But then I suggested that perhaps we could pop down to New York for a couple of days, which we haven't done with Alice in a couple of years and she thought that might be ok.

( Trip, trap, trot. )

On the way home I asked Alice how she thought Spring Break is going and she said "Mama, it's amazing," so I'm counting this trip as a win.

• Mike Doughty
• Robyn Hitchcock
• Tartuffe
• Precious Little
• Lines in the Sand
• Edward II
• The Witch of Edmonton
• Parable of the Sower
• Springtime for Haman (x2)
• Silent Sky

I am hoping to come back and write more about each of these, but decided it was better to make a list than forget them entirely.

Before I've totally forgotten, I want to reflect on the production of Othello that we saw over my birthday weekend in New York. Starring David Oyelowo and Daniel Craig, it is a phenomenally muscular production and one of the best directed pieces of theatre I have ever seen.

The surroundings are very spare: an unpainted plywood box makes up the performance space--walls, ceiling, floor, with tiers of benches for the audience built along three sides of the long, narrow stage. There is no other set, just mattresses strewn on the floor. The lighting is provided by worklights and practicals--at one point a cellphone--and one panel of LEDs to provide occasional washes of color, but several scenes are played in the dark. Rather than shutting us out, the darkness draws us in, forcing us to listen in a box that reflects every breath, every whisper. When we can see the cast, they can see us, and they can never be more than ten feet from some part of the audience. We are in the scene, we are helpless witnesses to Iago's perfidy, we are complicit in Desdemona's murder.

While the two stars shine darkly, the whole ensemble of twelve is beautifully woven together. The men who play the minor roles are soldiers--hanging out in a room inspired by forward operating bases used in Afghanistan and Iraq, carrying modern weapons, playing Guitar Hero in their downtime. One of the actors has a prosthetic leg. We are constantly reminded that Othello is a story of wartime.

The characters are very specific. Desdemona, often treated more like a plot device, is a real character here, with her own motivation and arc. Jason found Roderigo oddly effeminate--on reflection I think that was intended as a contrast with the soliders. Emilia is a toned military wife, able to give as good as she gets. Her race is one of the most interesting choices of this show--if Iago is married to a black woman, what spin does that give his slurs of Othello's skin color, and his fears of being cuckolded by his commander. Bianca, who is very sketchily drawn in the script, is played as a Turkish woman--a local woman accepting flirtation and gifts from the soldiers occupying her home and with the simple detail of a headscarf becomes suddenly very real.

But this is Othello and Iago's show. They are like wrestlers, constantly vying with each other, the one always testing the strength of the better man, looking to turn his own virtues against him. Both completely at home within the language and able to make it feel spontaneous, immediate, vital. The one odd inconsistency was both actors' accents--while I could almost justify Craig's slippage as wily code-switching, Oyelowo's intermittent Nigerian accent was harder to rationalize, but the rolling tones of it were beautiful and underscored his story of an outsider and former slave. Both actors have enough charisma to fill a much larger space and the constant challenge of each other's presence kept the energy driving throughout the three hour show.

Sam Gold's cut of the script was phenomenal. He pared it down to the point that we could feel Iago's barbs stabbing one by one into Othello's mind, cut away the unnecessary, and kept the whole thing moving from start to inevitable finish. I do not love Othello as I do some of Shakespeare's work--it is too tragic, too evil for me to truly enjoy--but this production was glorious. The tension was powerful, rather than torturous, and I was riveted throughout. Every moment was thought out and directed with a singular vision, without ever feeling over-controlled. An amazing feat of directorial skill, this easily leapt into the top five shows I have ever seen, and vies for the best production of Shakespeare's work I have ever witnessed. What a privilege.

I had a conversation yesterday with a group of local theatre folk, a couple of whom I was meeting for the first time. While I've written in the past about the many different considerations that go into casting, something new emerged that I hadn't realized explicitly.

When I'm casting (a process that takes into account each actor's performance in auditions, other work I've seen them do, whether they're good cast-members, whether they're new, whether they will increase our diversity, whether they are a good fit in the cast I'm putting together, etc.) I am usually asking on some level, "What will the actor learn in this role?"

When I said this, one of the other people said "But you wouldn't want a whole cast of people working outside their comfort zone," and I'm not sure of that. I think that in general I always want my actors to be working, to be reaching. I rarely cast people entirely against type--while I tend to find type-casting insipid, casting against type is tricky--but I do try to cast actors where they will be doing something at least a little new. This is harder with smaller, background roles, because there is less scope to many of them. I've made casting offers that basically say "I know this role would be easy for you, and therefore you may not want to take it, but I could really use your skills in it." But I've also not cast the obvious choice in roles because I thought that would be too easy and therefore not fun for the actor, and therefore not exciting for the audience.

And I wonder--do other directors recognize this? Do you do it explicitly, or not at all?

One of the many reasons I'm looking forward to Metamorphoses is that I think the nature of the script will require stretching from every member of the cast--and there are no small parts.

NB: I realize I'm posting here less. I would like to be writing more and I need to think more about why I'm not doing that and what changes I might make to re-focus.

I have the honor of being cast in two shows this fall!

First up is the staged reading of Vivat Regina, the sequel to Mrs. Hawking, in which I played the title role last spring. It's a lot of fun claiming to be able to peform feats of derring-do and hiding in punchbowls with a straight face.

( More details )

Hope you'll come see the performance (ONE NIGHT ONLY!) on Thursday, October 2, 2014 at 8pm
at Unity Somerville, 6 William Street, Somerville, MA 02144
Suggested Donation $5 - General Admission - No reservations required
For more details, visit our website: http://www.theatreatfirst.org/index.shtml

Also--distant early warning, mark your calendars now--I will be playing Hecuba, the Queen of Troy, in Trojan Women on November 14-22. That's going to be really exciting--it's a meaty role with huge emotions. Not gonna lie, this is not light, happy theatre. But it's going to be glorious in its scope and power and I am hoping to step up my game and knock your socks off.

I want to start this by stating that in regards to auditions for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead I am definitely considering cross-casting (casting women in male roles and vice versa). I'm not asking a "what should I do" question here, but rather exploring the ethics and considerations around the issue of cross-gender casting.

That said, I'm interested in people's thoughts on the subject.

Traditionally, community theatres do a lot of cross-casting because their demographic tends to be female-heavy, while many plays have few roles for women and the ones they do have tend to be subsidiary.

At Theatre@First I (as well as other directors) have frequently cross-cast roles, usually women-as-male-characters, only once that I can recall a man-as-female-character. I have also campaigned for, been cast, and played to acclaim a major male role (Dysart in Equus). We have done two shows scripted for all-male casts, Twelve Angry Men and Bent; in the former case the director decided to go with Twelve Angry Jurors and cast several women, while in the latter case the director stuck with an all-male cast. We have also done one all-female show, The Vagina Monologues, and are currently in production with a second, Top Girls. We have frequently made other decisions (e.g. having a large chorus in Murder in the Cathedral) to create more female roles.

I don't have the numbers on hand, but for a typical show I'd estimate our audition pool averages 30-40% male. Only once in our history have we had trouble recruiting enough men to play the male roles in a show and we usually do not cast all the men who audition, sometimes choosing women over men for some male roles despite the availability of men.

Now we've got Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead auditions approaching. The other show in production right now is all-female, with a cast of nine. R&G has 16 roles, of which two are written to be female. They each have very few lines, but several of the male roles have none at all. The four lead roles are scripted as male. At the moment, our audition pool is 60% male.

Does it still make sense to cast female-heavy, regardless of the scripted gender of the roles? Is this fair to the men trying out for this show? Is compensating for the historical disparity of roles still an operative principle? I'm curious how people feel about this.

By now I hope that everyone local on my f-list knows that Twelfth Night is now open and running this weekend and next. If not, details are behind the cut.

What you don't know--unless you were at opening night last night--is that this is a really great production of one of Shakespeare's very best plays. I have seen many versions of this show and never seen a "downstairs" team (Maria, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Fabian) to equal this one. I usually sit with teeth gritted through those parts, waiting to get back to the "upstairs" scenes, but in this case they were spectactular--creative, inventive, and hysterically funny. Mike Glicksman's Feste was also amazing--he composed all the music and plays it on the accordion to great comic effect, making particularly the "drunken revels" scene completely new for me. And Malvolio--this is a completely different take on the character than you have ever seen, I promise you. Brad Smith is brilliant in the role and without undermining the self-important, annoying aspects of it, manages to make Malvolio human and sympathetic. For the first time I understood why he's usually played more vilely--the conclusion of his plotline makes it hard to hold onto the funny--but T@F doesn't shy away from the complexities of the moment and finds a way to walk the line, respecting the truth of his moment without letting it derail the happy ending.

I could say good things about every member of the cast, although the other characters are played more traditionally, but seriously--if you like this show, you want to see this version. If you've never liked this show, this is the time to try it again. And if you love this show, you're in luck!

( Twelfth Night Details )