twice in two weeks... where do we go from here?

Okay, speaking of things coming to an end....

Goodbye, Harry Potter.  I finished the final book last night, and it took until this morning for me to realize how very sad I am about it.  Okay, so it certainly hasn't consumed as much of my life as The Wheel of Time has, but it's been shared with SO MANY people and the characters make me so proud, that it still makes me tear up reading reviews of the book and even looking back on old pictures from the first MOVIE.  Which I don't like that much.

I won't write more, because I just had a full day (tech for Night of the Iguana...) and I need my sleep for tomorrow.

*Sigh.*

Salon Review (Spoilers)

Harry Potter in MY life

much-needed time off

I really wish AOL Journals would add more mood options.  Seriously.  These are the same options I had back in 2002, when I started this journal (and was working on The Fantasticks at MSMT...)

This week was long, as is every other week, really.  I think it felt longer because I had 3 performances of Misalliance this week, as opposed to the normal 2 we'd been having.  This week is another 3-show week for us.  Timon rehearsals are going well; we finished staging Act II on Sunday so it's all about run-throughs now.  If I haven't mentioned that it's the heaviest prop show of the season, well, it kinda is.  Night of the Iguana, the other second rep show, is probably at a tie with it in number of props right now, but seriously...these are BIG shows!

Timon, at least, is rather short, and will clock in at about 2 hours with a 20 min. intermission.  I like it much more than I thought I would; I think Kate's adaptation is very successful and being in rehearsals was a lot like being back in my favorite Shakespeare class, Shakespeare's London, with Andrew Tidmarsh.  Good times.

The weekend was awesome.  Ev made me take Saturday off, since it was a two-show day for Much Ado and Merchant, and she knew how many hours I'd been working (I clocked in at 60.25 hours this week...even WITH Saturday off completely).  And that doesn't include time spent at work eating.
Anyway, so Laura came up on Friday night, sat in for a little bit of Timon rehearsal and then saw my show.  We also had a nummy dinner at Culver's and went to karaoke.  Then I got to sleep til 11:30 the next day, before we went to the General Store for breakfast... where I ran into Lauren and Venessa and two other friends, who invited me to go swim in the river with them and have a cook-out at their campsite for dinner.  So I did, and it was GREAT.  I'm gonna go swim in that river every chance I get from now on!

Sunday was back to work for rehearsal and a show, Monday was a slow and sleepy day off, and today is a Daylight Day of Rest before I head in for a 7:30p show.  I better get some paperworkdone during the show, cuz I'm kinda behind...

Harry Potter has been ordered, but hasn't arrived yet.  In the meantime, I'm trying to console myself over the ending of Buffy with some Angel and some Slings & Arrows (which I found in my living room and really enjoy)... but it's not the same.  I hate that feeling!  Good things need to stop coming to an end.  Unless they're written by Robert Jordan, in which case, I very much hope we get to see an end.

I think I'm done rambling now.  Go check out See Jane Work and MicroCenter Online, because I love these sites.

that show I work on

A review of Misalliance, and a shout-out: 

Staff swap at APT

Friday night at American Players Theatre 's performance of "Misalliance, " you will find leading actress Colleen Madden waving you into your parking spot, while actors Jim DeVita and Susan Shunk hawk concessions. Driving the shuttle bus will be production manager Michael Broh. Artistic director David Frank? He 'll be taking tickets.

Actor Brian Mani came up with the idea of having a "Hill Staff Night Off " where house employees are seated to see a show from start to finish, while the acting company not on stage does front-line jobs.

"It 's not just for show, either, " says APT 's Sara Young. "The fill-ins will be required to perform all the duties that the regular staff member usually does -- including picking up trash, restocking food, making sandwiches, the works I think our other patrons will get a kick out of it as well. " - State Journal

I miss...

these days.

Those people.

My Cabaret.

Milwaukee.

clever talky-talky?

From the Journal Sentinel:

Talkin' Shaw

You have to applaud a larger-than-life playwright who can poke fun at himself. "Words, words, words. I am so sick of words," exclaims the spirited and young Hypatia Tarleton in George Bernard Shaw's "Misalliance," the third play in the first wave of APT openings this summer.

Shaw's Achilles heel is his verbosity. His work sometimes makes Chekhov's characters appear to be action figures in comparison. One wishes Shaw had done more than laugh at himself and edited his plays with greater vigor.

That being said, there is much to like in the APT's three-hour staging of "Misalliance." The relationship between parents and their almost adult children is the recurring theme, but Shaw makes delightfully pithy comments about his usual range of social concerns. Female superiority, religion, the wealthy and class distinctions are the subjects of wry observations and barbed zingers.

This production gives the younger members of APT's acting company the opportunity to show their stuff, and they make a strong case for the excellence of the next generation of performers here. Chris Klopatek and Darragh Kennan are sublimely wonderful in the respective characters of the bratty Bentley Summerhays and the strangely troubled Gunner.

Marcus Truschinski carries a major dialogue load with fluid ease, and Carrie A. Coon impressively reprises the role of Hypatia that she originally played in a Milwaukee Chamber Theatre production of "Misalliance" in 2005. John Langs directed.

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from The Chicago Tribune:

John Lang's pleasantly spunky production of "Misalliance" certainly comes with surety. A typically talky bit of Shaw penned when old GBS was at the peak of his massive ego (he even refers to himself in his own play), it's a social comedy about, well, misalliances, between parents and children, men and women, workers and aristocrats. It's a prescient piece reflecting the arrival of Darwinism, socialism, proto-feminism. Therein, people sit around and talk about pretty much about the same stuff that everybody talks about now.

APT's mature core company — Jonathan Smoots, Brian Mani and Sarah Day —offers a superbly spoken display of ensemble acting. But the star of this lively show is a young, powerhouse talent called Carrie A. Coon, who grabs her energetic, sexually free character by the scruff of her neck and turns her into a primal, brilliant young woman who knows too well that she was born about 50 years too early. She's worth the drive too.

I've long argued that American Players Theatre is a viable alternative to Stratford, Ontario, which attracts many summering Chicagoans. APT is much closer, and this summer in Spring Green, you get decent Shav with stellar Shakes and you never have to quit the fresh air.

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