Well, dear readers, our little staged reading went beautifully. Doug Haverty wanted to prove a point, which is why he asked me to direct the first two – to show that you can do a quality, simply-staged and thought out reading of a play with three rehearsals, or nine hours. I’ve done a lot of these and I learned early on what you can and cannot do. What had been happening at the theater was that people would rehearse these things for three or four weeks. Well, you can’t do that, that’s not the purpose or the point to try and do some half-baked thing that sits in some netherworld between staged reading and production – that never works and isn’t the intention for these readings. You can still be clever and creative, which we certainly were with this one. The flow of the play was served well, it never stopped, no stage directions were read (one comment after by some person I’d never want to actually know said that the stage directions were missed because they would have told this person what the character was feeling on her “journey” – use that word with me and I’m done – well, no, the stage direction would say “she crosses to stage right.”) I don’t need to read that and I don’t need to read what the set will be like because until there’s a designer no one knows what it will look like. There’s no reason you can’t set up the play before it begins and then just do the play. And if location is an issue for clarity reasons, I’ve always had the actors just say where we are. Who wants to sit and listen to thirty minutes of stage directions anyway? Certainly not the likes of me. I was happiest that the play got all its laughs and the handful of stage business I added also got laughs. But none of it works if you don’t have the actors who can pull it off and actually give performances. Once I’d staged it, the rest of the time was just taking the shortcuts to get reasonable performances, and we were blessed with a really good cast. Most of the comments after were very nice and positive. A few people said this criticism or that and I didn’t actually agree with any of it. I had a few issues with the play when I read it, but Doug was really good about listening to my suggestions and the reasons for them and did a terrific rewrite. Not all that huge a thing, but he got rid of one really negative scene and then fixed a sequence that could have derailed the play, since it involved a character giving thought to something she shouldn’t give thought to – once that was gone, everything around it played wonderfully. So, it was a very nice evening, and afterwards Doug and I went to the Coral Café for a meal. I had a patty melt, which was pretty good, and some fries which were better than pretty good. And now, I’m home and writing these here notes.
Yesterday was a pretty okay day as pretty okay days go. I got eight-and-a-half hours of sleep, got up at ten, and then moseyed on over to the first bank to cash the pension check – was in and out of there in three minutes – and then my bank to deposit. Of course, my bank took twenty minutes because that’s what they do there. With that out of the way, I stopped at Gelson’s on the way home and got a chicken Caesar salad to tide me over until after the reading. I came home and ate it and it was okay, not great.
Then I caught up with e-mails, did some work on the computer, did a little prep work on the second play, and then shaved and showered and moseyed on over to the theater. We ran all the transitions, and then ran a few scenes. The rest you now know and you know now, not necessarily in that order.
Oh, and I was contacted by a nice fellow who uses one of those ancestry websites because someone in his family was related to my grandfather on my mother’s side – Dave Gross – yes, he of the infamous, “What is it, fish?” He asked if Dave and Gussie were indeed my grandparents and I confirmed that they did live in Ocean Park and gave him all kinds of good information about that area, where they lived, and what he did there. I knew he’d probably love to put a picture with the names, so I found one – I think was taken at my brother’s Bar Mitzvah, or at least somewhere around that time – it may have been something else. I know it’s not MY Bar Mitzvah because I have photos of that and my mother isn’t wearing the dress in this photo. But, it’s a great photo, and if you’ve read the Kritzer books, every one of these people are in them. They are, from left to right standing: My Aunt Lillie, her husband Charlie, grandma Gross, grandpa Gross, cousin Dodo (Aunt Lillie’s daughter), cousin Alan behind her, my father, my mother, li’l ol’ me (I think I look ten here, so it must be my brother’s Bar Mitzvah), my Aunt Minnie (my father’s sister – her husband Rube Rapkin isn’t here, don’t know why), my Aunt Bella (another of my father’s sisters, her husband Larry (Alan’s father) my Aunt Ellie and Uncle Saul – Saul being my father’s brother. Kneeling down front, Donnie, Dodo’s brother, and Michael, Alan’s brother. Amazing, huh?
Today, I’ll be up by ten or thereabouts, and then I’m picking up our very own Donald Feltham and off we’ll go to the storage place to hopefully find what we need to find in the storage locker that has my personal stuff. I’m praying we find it without having to pull every single thing out of there. Then I’ll drop Donald at his place, come home, catch up on stuff, and then I’ll mosey on over to the theater to begin rehearsals for the second play reading.
Tomorrow, I think I have to do a podcast of some sort, then I’m having my booster shot in the later part of the evening. Thursday and Friday will be lighter, I hope, but will do a Zoom with David Wechter on one of those days. Then we have rehearsals on Saturday and Sunday, then do the reading on Monday. And I’ll be planning the December Kritzerland show – we’re cast now, save for one person.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by ten or thereabouts, pick up Donald Feltham, go to storage, hopefully find what we’re looking for, drop Donald off, catch up on stuff, have a rehearsal, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: Did you ever find out anything that was a complete surprise about your family – something you were never told and never knew until later? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy the play reading went very well.