Quasi-Quest

Blackcurrant licorice at ten in the morning. My kind of breakfast.

So, I spent a lovely and absolutely exhausting week in that most congenial spot, transplanted to Avery Fisher Hall. In my newly-conscientious (read: paranoid) state re: this blog, I think maybe I shouldn't spout specifics left and right. This is what I'll say: commercial, large-scale theatre is absolutely insane. So many people that I kept thinking "All of these people can't possibly be working. Seriously?" But oh, they were. Everyone just had one really specific, specialized job--and I mean, I was the most extreme case of that, definitely. But everyone did their one job and that's the way everything kept running. Insane. Operations that large tend to intimidate or overwhelm me and this was no exception for the first few days.

My charge was a lovely and charming gentleman, a pleasure to follow around. He told lots of funny stories and even gave me some nice advice. Delightful. And it was really fun to feel more a part of the group that accompanies this director from show to show-- a group in which my friends that got me this gig are firmly embedded. (Of course it'd be nicer if he understood that I was an actor...but all things in good time.) We had a silly closing party at the bizarre Tavern on the Green-- in my mind, that place was like the height of sophistication, somewhere where I never imagined I'd actually go. Well, maybe it was tres chic...in 1965. Oh man. Deer-shaped medallions on the wall, Chinese lanterns that were actually made out of lampshades upon closer inspection, feet upon feet upon FEET of mirrors on the walls...chandeliers of every stripe. Utterly strange. I hung out with Travis and his gent Mark (coincidentally, Mark and I know each other from R&J in the park years ago...he was Romeo to my serving girl. Bahhhh.), and of course Isaac and Matt...star players made hearfelt and hilarious speeches, impressions were done on piano benches, and come 2:30 I found myself roaming the Upper West Side with a bunch of theatre geek ne'er-do-wells. Plans to go somewhere else fell through, and it took me approximately three weeks to get back to Brooklyn, but it was a wonderfully goofy and pleasant night.

One story: In the show, Arthur, in trying to convince Guenevere to stay in Camelot, tells her all the interesting things she'd be missing if she left. It goes something like this: "We have an enchanted forest, and an invisible castle-- highly original. We have a talking owl named Archimedes-- most unusual. We have unicorns with silver horns-- the rarest kind." Our star said "unicorns" all throughout rehearsal with nary a problem. From dress rehearsal on, things were never the same-- it became, variously: boars with silver feet, little silver goats with tiny silver feet, tiny goats, tiny animals with silver feet, and on closing, little Lonnies with silver feet. So one of the assistants got a little plastic goat and painted its hooves silver and gave it to our man at the party-- it was a huge hit, to say the least. And then they gave me an even littler one. Wonderful.

So, needless to say, I'm now depressed because after a week of working my ass off, I've returned to my life of doing nothing. Oh, excuse me, not nothing-- yesterday I watched about 5 hours of Twin Peaks from a supine position in my bed. That's something. Right.

Two days ago, I met up with Nitz and Julie in the West Village after work and we went to Magnolia, something that I've never done before. It was fun to do it once, and I will say that the banana pudding was a throwback to those pudding concoctions they'd always make at camp and stuff. Delicious. We went back to their place so they could watch 27 Dresses, but I was unable to watch it even in a state of heavy irony, so I fled and watched Juno, which I liked way way way way more than I thought I would and certainly more than I wanted to. Oh man.

And last night, I saw four short riffs on MSND plus a physical piece done by a company that included Miss Katy. Then I went to the dorms at my workplace and drank beers with Shuhei, Elliot, and Valentina, who returns, sadly, to Italy today. The best and stupidest part of the evening involved Shuhei winging a pickled green tomato out the fourth-floor window, across third street, towards the Renewal on the Bowery building. We'd been playing rear window and took it too far! We went onto the roof to enjoy the beautiful view, Valentina sang songs from RENT, and we enacted many young-people-in-the-East-Village cliches. Good.

I'll leave you with this supremely disturbing link, culled from Boing Boing.