a poor player

There was a lot of stuff to catch up on and read/absorb! A lot! I’m nowhere near trying to sort it all out. And it’s hard not to feel the pressure a bit. Once you get into this blogging game it has demands which can be hard to meet at time. I mean, there are only so many hours in a day. But I won’t whine. Instead, let me catch you up on my goings-on before I try to tackle anything else.

First of all, the first week of Funny Thing‘s run has been completed, so I will be getting Mon-Wed evenings free for a few weeks until Carmen kicks in full-bore in October. The opening night crowd was very responsive, but while the rest of the week’s crowds were small and elderly, they still laughed and had a good time. As a show, Forum is what it is – a collection of vaudeville routines and modernized Plautine plot lines set to Stephen Sondheim music and lyrics. It’s fluff, it’s light, it’s airy, and you get exactly what the opening number states: “Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight.” ‘Nuf said.

For me, it’s a challenge of sorts. I am not by nature a musical comedy actor, although as a young kid I loved musicals. My father, a gym teacher most of his career, enjoyed musical comedy and opera, and he had an extensive collection of Original Broadway recordings of shows on vinyl, which I now own. I learned about other forms of theatre, most notably Shakespeare, in college, and for a time spurned musicals. They are still not my favorite form of theatre, but every now and then I try to rise to the challenge of acting in one. I am, of course, surrounded by more musical theatre people in this show, people who can sing and dance, but my role of Senex does not really require singing (2 numbers) or dancing (a small soft-shoe routine). It was interesting that, at the opening night reception attended by a number of the Buffalo theatrical community, I got many comments on the order of “I didn’t know you could sing and dance.” So I like doing musicals now and again if only to keep the chops up, and to get a chance to meet the other side of the theatrical house. As a theatre town, Buffalo has a fairly large number of theatres which focus on musical theatre, and there is a large MT community that is somewhat seperate from the “straight play” community. It’s not that we don’t know each other, but people do build reps as musical theatre or straight actors. Our Pseudolus, in fact, was commenting to me the other day how he wishes he could get more work in straight dramatic roles, as he finds himself doing mostly musicals. So it’s nice for me to be able to cross over.

I wanted to write a bit more about the rehearsals and all, but I found that time became short and I could only pack so much in a day. A typical day for the last four weeks consisted of getting up about 9AM, getting to school and classes, leaving campus around 4PM, trying to get dinner, hopping into the car at 5PM for a 6PM call at the theatre, getting out of rehearsal at 11PM, and arriving home at midnight, trying to relax for 30-45 minutes, and getting to bed around 1AM. Weekends had a little more time, but I invariably used it for either sleeping or running errands such as shopping or tending to the homestead.

The whole process, though, has been a personal homecoming for me of sorts. As I’ve mentioned many times, this is my first show back in Buffalo after my year of touring with the American Shakespeare Center on my sabbatical, and I have been sort of settling in. Some old hands are in the show: Norm Sham (Pseudolus), Sheila McCarthy (Domina, my wife), Tim Newell (Marcus Lycus), Joe Demerly (Hero). I’m meeting some new talent, such as Lou Coliacovo (Hysterium), and some of the recent graduates from the local colleges, such as Jeff Coyle (Miles Gloriosus) from UB. I’m also working with two Fredonia grads whom I did not have the opportunity to teach during my 7-year absence from the theatre dept.: Rosy Mattia (Philia), who is taking her stab in NYC, and Charmagne (Hale) Leigh (Vibrata), who is making Buffalo her home for the moment. And of course there’s Steve Cooper, the managing director of the Kavinoky Theatre, whom I’ve know for maybe 18 years now. I’ve not really been out socializing much because there is, as far as I can tell, no real “theatre” bar in town anymore where you can rely on running into actors. The closest seems to be Q, a predominantly gay bar in Allentown run by a former Buffalo actor. I am sure I’ll make my way down there before long.

For now, that’s the news. I think in the next post I will dedicate myself to writing about my re-adjustment to life in theatrical academia, and perhaps following that be in some better shape to offer my two cents on some of the ideas I’ve seen floating around the blogosphere. Some interesting stuff, to be sure. -twl