Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Twenty-Twenty

"About a Ghoul"
(Talespinner Children's Theatre, 2019)
Where did twenty years go? How did we sail blithely from marriage and plans for a productive and beautiful future to find ourselves gray and so very, very troubled?

Certainly, I blame the children. The child we lost, and those we have, those bright, living children who engage and surprise us every day.

This weekend we’re seeing Damn Yankees at the high school, and both kids are in the pit orchestra, that’s a first. I performed that show at my own high school, thirty-four years ago. The show was dated then, but today the D.C.team is actually in the World Series. How odd.

The past year has had its professional achievements,  including the “world premiere” of The Way I Danced With You, a West Coast production of Rosalynde & The Falcon that was a delightful success, as was the opening of About a Ghoul at Talespinner Children's Theatre, and the publication of Red Onion White Garlic.

Looking to the New Year, however, there are great and challenging plans “afoot” (as the man says) including the new children’s touring play Sherlock Holmes Meets the Bully of Baker Street, to be directed by Lisa Ortenzi for Great Lakes Theater, and for which we now have a cast, a tremendous company of artists.

Also, my new play The Witches will have a workshop production in April, part of the Test Flight series at Cleveland Public Theatre. The text is still in pieces-parts, but we’re having a private reading in November and I am very excited to hear what we have aloud.

Finally, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but announcing something can make it true, I have applied for graduate school, which I have forestalled for over twenty years.

The truth is, though I have always assumed I would eventually seek a Masters degree, it never fit into whatever lifestyle I was pursuing at the time, but that of producer, director, actor, playwright, and also actor-teacher, education arts administrator, father of two.

And it won’t fit now. It will never fit. Because nothing fits. You just keep shoving more pieces in there.

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