On Wednesday morning, I said I had no news to report. By 5 that afternoon, I did.
I will be assistant director on Spotlight Theatre's production of Sylvia (follow the link for more info). Performances are March 18-20, 25-27. Come out and see this romantic comedy about a man, a woman and their dog.
I have been trying to keep up an every-other-day posting schedule here, but some days it's a struggle. This is one of those days. Nothing new to report in my life, no cultural or political events on which to comment.
Come back on Friday.
As I noted on Saturday, my current stage production has closed....and I am now left with little to fill my free time, unless one of two (or possibly both) things happens: I am cast in the production of The Three Musketeers I auditioned for last week (hoping for Richelieu or Captain Treville) or the production I have submitted to another theater is picked up for this season or early next.
That production is The Lion in Winter by James Goldman. You're probably familiar with the film version, starring Katharine Hepburn, Peter O'Toole, and a couple of very young actors in their earliest roles--Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton. The script for the film is a virtual copy of the stage version, with the exception of "opening up" the action to outside the walls of Chinon Castle and adding a lot of extras in the background.
The play is quite simple in its staging and very "theatrical", leaving much of the setting to the imaginations of the audience. It also has only seven characters--Henry II, Eleanor of Acquitaine (his wife), his three sons (Richard, Geoffrey, and John), his mistress, Alais (princess of France and, by treaty, betrothed to Henry's successor), and King Philip of France, Alais's younger brother.
I've wanted to direct it for many years. I hope I finally get the chance.
Tonight is the final performance of A Few Good Men at Spotlight Theatre in Swarthmore. If you haven't seen it yet, I urge you to get there tonight. (Follow the link for more info.)
Following the performance, as is traditional, we will have a cast party, the first gathering of this kind and this size I have attended in nearly two years. All the participants are fully vaccinated, so I have no qualms regarding this.
Just as I came up to my desk, I heard the tail-end of what I can only call a "rant" by a "spokesperson" for veterans--and no, I didn't get his name--on MSNBC, decrying the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August.
He made several claims--without offering proof--that the Taliban are hunting down and executing Afghans who worked with the US and allied forces. He said veterans were ashamed of the way these allies were "abandoned" by our government--again, without offering any examples of this attitude being expressed, except by himself.
He concluded that "veterans are not celebrating today," because of this decision by the Biden adminstration. I would bet a lot of veterans are celebrating--celebrating that no more American lives will be lost in an unwinnable conflict, celebrating that so many of their brothers and sisters came home alive and will not have to go back, celebrating that our government at last came to its senses about the appropriate way to combat terrorism.
I got my Moderna covid booster yesterday. So far (almost 24 hours later) no ill effects other than the usual sore shoulder.
Yesterday morning, a Republican gubernatorial candidate launched his campaign from my neighborhood--unfortunately, with a rally held on the grounds of my township's municipal complex. Here's a letter I wrote to the local paper today:
To the editor:What gave gubernatorial candidate Dave White the right to hold a rally on what ought to be the politically neutral grounds of the Ridley Township Municipal complex? What allowed him to use township police to block access to those grounds for anyone except his supporters for two hours, so that tax-paying residents (of whatever political stripe) could not get to the library, for instance?If a candidate wishes to announce his candidacy, let him rent a private space in which to do so, not commandeer a public space for his partisan purposes. If this was something the Ridley commissioners agreed to (even if there was a fee involved), I have to ask if the all-GOP members of that body would have been so accommodating to a Democratic candidate. (On the other hand, I suspect no Democratic candidate would think using public space in this way was proper.)
Anyone else have thoughts on this?
Part of the power of the play is that the audience and protagonist Daniel Kaffee take the journey together. Ryan Mattox is charming and irreverent in the Tom Cruise role. Kaffee evolves over the length of the trial and Mattox is very convincing as he takes the character from casual involvement to a deeper understanding of his own responsibility to others. His counterpart, Joanne Galloway (Ally Batot) evolves in another direction, moving from nitpicky and intrusive to empowered. A takes a few good women too! Recasting the judge (Shanna Massad) as a woman was a nice touch.
“A Few Good Men” has a large cast with many interesting characters and it would be easy to point out outstanding moments from all of them. Nods to the coldly righteous Kendrick (Sean McDermott) and endearingly dim Downey (Brendon Thomas). And watching Randino Rosario present two memorable characters with hardly a breath between them was a real treat.
And a brief quote from a different review:
From the first marching roll calls that boom out from off stage, A FEW GOOD MEN drops the audience into the midst of the marines. Although they are military personnel, Kaffee and Galloway are outsiders, like us. The audience is drawn into the action through their eyes and the view is mesmerizing. Clean, well-paced staging keeps the Spotlight production running smoothly and the outcome is highly satisfying whether one is a long time fan of A FEW GOOD MEN, or a first time visitor to Guantanamo.
If you're in the area, come out and see the show: It runs this weekend, Friday and Saturday at 7 PM, matinee on Sunday at 2; and next Friday and Saturday, again at 7.
For the first time since, I think, March, there is frost on the car windows this morning. I guess the seasons have finally changed around here. Leaves have been falling for about two weeks, but without much visible color change--mostly they have gone straight to brown this year.
I wonder what this bodes for winter.
Last night, for the first time in nearly two years, I participated in the first technical rehearsal for a community theater production. For those who have never done anything like this, it means the first time the cast has rehearsed with all the lighting and sound effects. It is often chaotic, leading to the common term for this day as "tech hell".
It's a long day--we started at 1 PM and did not finish until 8 (with a 40 minute break for pizza). It begins with "cue-to-cue," as the lighting and sound operators check that they know when each effect comes in and when it's over. Then comes a run-through without the effects, to be sure the cast are full ready. Then dinner and a full dress rehearsal with lights and sounds--and more chaos, as the actors are faced with things like "No, Chuck, you can't move that far left on that line, you're moving out of your light" or "Sue, you'll have to speak a bit louder; I've got the sound as low as I can go and I can't hear you over the background noise."
Tonight, we'll do it again, hopefully with all the glitches worked out (although new ones will undoubtedly crop up; they always do). By opening Friday night, all will be well...or as well as live theater ever is.
On Facebook, a friend who lives in another town was describing how the various neighborhoods and towns in her area were regulating trick-or-treat. Some had declared it must be done on Friday night and within certain hours; others said Saturday and limited hours; still others Sunday within a specific time; and there were those who said anytime on Sunday was OK.
Now, growing up on Staten Island in the 1950s and '60s, we did trick-or-treating on Halloween--and only on Halloween--no matter what day of the week it fell on. In general, the younger kids went out in daytime, usually right after school, and stayed out until dinner time. Older kids (say, 10 and up) went out after dark and usually stopped between 9 and 10 PM. Some really little ones might be out at those hours, too, with an adult accompanying them (probably because the adult had to wait until they were home from work).
I really don't understand the municipal need to control this activity as if it were equivalent to businesses doing soliciting...or a parade taking over a thoroughfare. It's children in "fancy dress" entertaining the neighbors and being rewarded with a few little pieces of candy. It's a community acting in concert, without government oversight, to celebrate and have some harmless fun.
But apparently, we have some Grinches in this world who, not content in stealing Christmas, are now stealing Halloween as well.
I've never worked on a film set (though I have visited a few) and never been involved with a professional theater production...but I can say this: I have worked on many amateur stage productions and none of them would ever take the risks that were apparently taken on the set of Rust that resulted in the recent tragedy.
The closest thing to a "real" gun I've ever been around on stage is a starter's pistol, the gun used to signal the beginning of a race, which is designed to do nothing more than make a loud bang--no projectile, not even the wadding that is part of a standard blank round. Even then, no one would have thought to aim that weapon at anyone. The standard was always to "cheat" a bit--the gun was pointed to the left or right of the alleged target and, thanks to distance and stagecraft, the audience is none the wiser (or, if they are, they understand it is all make-believe anyway.)
Live rounds on set? Crew and actors taking "target practice" in their down time? Fingers on triggers outside of "action" being called? Somebody is responsible for some very lax standards.
I'm working as an assistant stage manager for a community theater production of A Few Good Men by Aaron Sorkin...and that has got me thinking very hard about safety, especially after the tragic events on the set of Rust this week.
Our play famously includes a suicide by gunshot. The character in question handles the gun in two different scenes. I know our firearm is a dead weapon--purely a prop without even the possibility to be loaded, let alone fire a projectile or even a blank--and we have staged the scene so that the gunshot occurs offstage, with only the sound of the shot heard.
Still, I wonder if our audiences--we open in 11 days--will have the recent tragedy on their minds when they see the gun on our stage...and be thinking of what could happen if that gun did fire?
I did something this morning I haven't done in months--I slept late. Now, to be fair, sleeping late in this house means rolling out of bed at 7 AM, since we're usually up between 5:30 and 6. Still, it's really rare for me to do that--and rarer still for Jill to do so as well.
What kept us in bed? We're not sure, but we think light might have something to do with it. In our part of the world right now, sunrise isn't until around 7:30, so "first light" is right around 7. The blame for that is, at least in part, on Daylight Saving Time, which doesn't end in the United States until the first weekend of November. And then we'll need another month to get used to that change.
This does not mean, however, that I am in favor of year-round DST--precisely because of what it means in terms of dark early mornings. I can remember waiting at the school bus stop in deep twilight with my kids in January--and that is with Standard Time in effect! With DST, we'd have been waiting in the pitch of night. There are those who would argue that the solution to that is to start school later...but that would just turn the twilight trip from morning to afternoon. (Sunset in mid-January is 5 PM. Move school hours 90 minutes later, and that afternoon school bus is arriving home just about then.) It would also make after-school activities nearly impossible.
If anything, I would actually shorten DST. It's currently nearly two-thirds of the year! I think late April to early October is about right.
The recently late Colin Powell is well-known for promulgating what he called "the Pottery Barn rule" in military and diplomatic policy--"if you break it, you bought it." (Oddly enough, Pottery Barn doesn't actually have that policy.) I would like to propose a corollary--the "Spider-Man rule"--"with great power comes great responsibility."
This rule applies not only in foreign affairs but in domestic affairs and at all levels, from the tiniest municipality to the mightiest nation. It applies to the cop on the beat as much as it does to the Commander-in-Chief. If your position gives you the power to affect others, you are obligated to use that power responsibly--with justice, with equality, with mercy.
And the rule doesn't only apply to those in government or law enforcement. It applies to medicine, for example, and to business. It applies to family relations. There is scarcely any element of human life in which position implies power where it does not apply.
If the youthful readers of Spider-Man's origin story in 1962 could absorb this lesson, I fail to understand why our leaders in all fields today cannot do the same.
As you have likely heard by now, DC Comics has announced a change in the time-honored phrase that defines Superman's "never-ending battle". It is no longer "truth, justice and the American way"; it now closes with "a better tomorrow".
The original version dates from the radio serial that began in the 1940s and, perhaps more significantly, the TV series starring George Reeves, that originally aired during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s. But even by the time I was watching that show in the early '60s, the phrase seemed out of place.
The Superman I knew, though raised as an American and instilled with the traditional values we associate with our nation, was a champion for more than one country. He defended the whole Earth and, while "American way" can be defined as democracy and equality under the law, too often it could be seen--even back then--as might makes right, racial prejudice, and a narrow conservatism. It's worth noting that DC regards other parts of that famed opening sequence--"Faster than a speeding bullet...." "Look up in the sky...."--as trademarks, it has never indicated the same for "truth, justice, etc." Perhaps by the late 1970s, when the company began putting little "TM" marks on those phrases, it realized "American way" was simply something that had lost a generally accepted meaning.
Of course, the usual suspects--including Fox News--have derided this change. Perhaps they think "the American way" does not include a hope for "a better tomorrow".
To protect and serve. It's the motto of many police departments in this country, emblazoned on their vehicles from coast to coast. But it seems protecting the public from COVID-19 is something many cops are unwilling to do.
Cities all over have mandated vaccinations for their employees, and most of those government workers have complied--often before the mandates were announced or went into effect. The largest contingent fighting vaccine mandates seems to be police officers--strange since they are perhaps the largest group, save for teachers, to regularly come in close contact with the public. You'd think they would want to protect themselves from the virus, if not everyone else.
And it's not just the rank-and-file who are taking this stance; they are being backed up by their unions. My first thought was that they were making it a contract issue--that such directives needed to be part of collective bargaining. But it seems that is not the case.
One of the most outspoken of the police union leaders is John Catanzara, the president of Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police, who is telling his members they do not have to comply with the city's mandate. "This vaccine has no studies for long-term side effects or consequences," he told the Chicago Sun Times. "None. To mandate anybody to get that vaccine, without that data as a baseline, amongst other issues, is a 'hell no' for us."
One has to wonder how the forensic scientists who work with police regularly in solving crimes react to that. "Do you have the same doubt about our findings as you do those of the CDC, NIH, and FDA," I imagine them asking these cops. If I were a police scientist, I would refuse to allow any unvaccinated cop anywhere near my lab.
A rccurring question on socisl media: Given the chance, would you go back to your high school years?
I am often amazed by the number of people who answer in the affirmative (although, given the way some people in their 40s and older still brag about what high school they went to, I probably shouldn't be). An awful lot of people seem to remember their high school days the way Kevin Arnold did on The Wonder Years...and I have to wonder if they are only remembering the best parts.
My answer is negative. While my time spent in high school was not uniformly horrible--it is the place where I discovered theater and performing, after all--it is also a time when I had few real friends, was ostracized for not being athletic, and had my heart broken by two different girls. I had teachers I liked and admired, but others who I found to be cold, aloof and completely unsuited to the profession they found themselves in.
I did not come out of high school morose and depressed (thank heavens), but neither did I come out of it elated.
By now, we've all heard William Shatner's comments upon his return from his brief flight into space. Yes, he was emotional and awed by what he experienced and saw....but I have a feeling he was, for the most part, preaching to the choir.
Those of us who care at all about Star Trek or Shatner already shared these feelings--and without having been in space. We were awed by the images sent from the moon in July 1969, by the pictures taken with the Hubble telescope, by the pictures beamed back by our Mars explorer robots.
What we need is for someone that a much larger community cares about to make that same trip and come back with similar thoughts. How about somebody like Mary J. Blige or Jay-Z? How about one of the Kardashians? Or, for a real challenge, how about Ted Cruz or Ron deSantis--imagine if either one of them came back with an epiphany about the fragility of our planet and our need to all work together?
No, Matt Amodio did not win 38 straight matches on Jeopardy! because the producers were deliberately feeding him really easy questions. And, no, he did not finally lose last night because they got tired of him and rigged the game so he would (or, in an even more unlikely scenario, that he agreed to throw last night's game).
I watched every single one of Amodio's appearances and here's what I saw: He is very fast on the buzzer, so fast that it often seemed that he was ringing in before he was sure he knew the correct response. Go back and notice how many times he has to wait a bit--clearly thinking his answer through--after being called on. When a Jeopardy! contestant knows the correct answer, he or she is eager to give it, in my experience, often not even waiting for the host to finish acknowledging them before speaking. They only pause when they are still trying to come up with a response.
That speed allowed Amodio to control the board and hence, usually, pick the clues he wanted to see--avoiding categories in which he wasn't as confident--and find the Daily Doubles far more often than his opponents did. But last night, confronted by two opponents more nearly on his level of knowledge and reflexes, he lost that edge. He never got even one of the Daily Doubles, and his challengers correctly answered all of them.
In addition, I think Amodio got desperate. He began ringing in even more often when he wasn't sure of the answer, and got far more responses wrong than usual....and that resulted in a double penalty: He lost the value of that clue and his challengers had the opportunity to give the correct answer and thus win that same amount. (It can also be said, by giving an incorrect answer, Amodio made their job easier by thus eliminating one of the possible responses.)
And now, the reason why the producers would not "rig" the game: it's illegal. After the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, Congress amended the Communications Act, in part, to make it illegal
To engage in any artifice or scheme for the purpose of prearranging or predetermining in whole or in part the outcome of a purportedly bona fide contest of intellectual knowledge, intellectual skill, or chance.
And the penalty?
Whoever violates subsection (a) shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/509
Not to mention undoubtedly losing their job, never to work in the entertainment industry again.
All it would take for such a scheme to come to light is for one contestant, one production assistant, one stage hand, aware of the conspiracy, to step forward and blow the whistle. Would you risk everything on the chance that no one of the scores of people involved in a production like Jeopardy! would spill the beans? Look how quickly Mike Richards lost his job for something that was in no way against the law.
I know "conspiracy theory" is the new on-line meme, but this one makes even less sense than all the ones about our last presidential election.
