Well, dear readers, we had our first rehearsal for the second play. The cast size is the same as Doug’s play, but the play itself is more unwieldy. Luckily, there are only four locations in the play and two of them don’t return after act one. So, we’ll just have three onstage for act one – by three I mean chairs to represent where we are, and then only one of the three stays and we’ll set up the fourth during intermission. It feels a big long to me, but I think we’ll just leave it alone for this reading. The big issue is no stage directions, because there are a LOT of them, a lot of props, off-stage action. But I think I got it all covered so we don’t have to read anything. There are blackouts at the end of scenes, but the play begins with a narrator and so I’ve given him all the “lights up” and “blackouts” and it works perfectly. There are only a few times where we are isn’t indicated in dialogue, so he sets that up, too. But on top of all that, there are six or seven little songs – set to public domain music, so we had all that to do, too. Happily, I got it all staged in two hours and forty minutes and that included some bookography and stepography for the numbers. Now, they’ll have three days to go over all that and the dialogue and hopefully come in on Saturday pretty solid. Unfortunately, we don’t have one of our lead actors on Saturday so we’ll have to just get through that somehow, with someone reading her lines. We do have our full company on Sunday, so that’s going to be our key day and I may try for two runs or maybe just one and then working problem areas. There are lots of laughs in this one – rather like an absurdist play of the early 1960s, which I was always quite partial to. Anyway, we came up with some funny bits and I think the cast had a really good time. And now, I am sitting here like so much fish, blissfully listening to the music of Arthur Bliss, one of my favorite composers. I came to him quite late and I think the first piece I heard was the Things to Come suite courtesy of Bernard Herrmann. While I enjoyed that performance, the album that really made a difference, Bliss-wise, came out shortly after that on EMI – Sir Charles Groves conducting A Colour Symphony and the Things to Come suite. I was totally in love with that LP and played it to death. It’s on CD as part of a Charles Groves set and it sounds as fresh and wonderful as it did back when it came out. I then bought all the Bliss one could buy – including the Bliss Conducts Bliss albums on Lyrita. Those are marvelous performances, but there were also some mono Bliss Conducts Bliss in the early 1950s and I love those recordings. While I love Groves’ A Colour Symphony in its stereo splendor, the Bliss mono performance is pretty definitive.
Yesterday had some good news and some not so good, but I felt the good outweighed the bad. I only got six hours of sleep – would have been eight if I hadn’t awakened after two hours and I couldn’t fall back asleep for a bit. Once up, I answered e-mails, then I picked up our very own Donald Feltham and off we went to the storage place. It was a daunting task trying to look for what we were looking for and we ended up going through every single box – it’s amazing how much crap I have in that storage locker, including a ton of 16mm film and five 16mm film projectors. We didn’t find what we needed to find but DID find something probably even better, so I’m hoping that will do the trick. I can’t really tell you more or be less enigmatic until I know what’s what, which will hopefully be sometime in the next day or so. And I suppose there’s still a chance that it’s in some box here, although I doubt it – I may have simply trashed it when we were moving all that stuff out of there – hard to know, but I’ll spend some time today looking for it. That all took a few hours, then I dropped Donald off at his place and I stopped at McDonald’s for some quick food – a filet-o-fish sandwich and their new crispy Chicken sandwich (mild version). The former was pretty good, the latter was just okay but I have to say I liked it better than the Popeye’s crispy chicken sandwich.
I did some work on the computer, then showered and then moseyed on over to the theater. And you know that tale. I stopped and got a donut at Yum Yum Donuts on the way home – don’t know why, really. Then I came home, caught up on e-mails, ate the donut and made a fried egg sandwich, which was light but good. And that was that.
Today, I’ll be up by eleven and then I do a podcast of some sort (via telephone) at noon o’clock. Then I’ll try to go through some garage boxes, then I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, I’ll have a Zoom thing with David Wechter, and then I really need to just watch, listen, and relax until it’s time for my booster shot at ten-thirty in the evening. Then I’ll come home and write some notes and I’m hoping I don’t have any problems from the shot – I was very lucky with the first two.
Tomorrow can be a ME day of rest, which I really need, then Friday we do another Zoom thing, David and I, Saturday we rehearse with seven of our eight actors, and Sunday we rehearse with the full company. Happily, on Monday the full company can be there two hours prior to the show, so we’ll be able to run a lot of stuff before we do it. And then it’s on to the December Kritzerland, after which I’m basically on my own for the rest of the year, although we may do a workshop or two in December at the Group Rep. And then January starts off the way it always does, at least that’s the hope – with a new book, casting L.A. Now and Then, and, of course, Kritzerland shows and a whole new Kritzerland series starting early in the year.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eleven, do a podcast at noon-thirty, go through boxes, hopefully pick up some packages, Zoom, eat, have a booster shot, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to be blissing out on Bliss.