Something Completely Different
Dunkirk NY – October is always a stressful month for me. Usually I am directing something for the department; this year it’s the opera La Bohème. The days get shorter and shorter, which means time to think about dealing with my annual bout of seasonal affective disorder. Whatever paperwork or semester projects I have in the hopper are usually at the peak point of their time frame; this year it’s a re-designed BA degree on top of document preparation for our decennial accreditation. Last but not least, it’s playoff baseball season, which means I will be up every night until one in the morning trying to watch every inning of the playoffs live.
The New Yankee Stadium
I have absolutely no qualms about admitting I am a fan of the the New York Yankees. They are my hometown team, and I’ve been following them since I’ve been 8 years old, since 1960. So after having missed the postseason last year, the Yankees are back, facing the Minnesota Twins, a wonderfully scrappy team that plays with guts, guile, determination and heart. They are fun to watch. But not as much fun as the Yankees, who won 103 games this season and are perhaps one of the most fun Yankee teams to watch in the last 10 years.
I find a lot of similarities between theatre and baseball, and quite often in my acting classes I will make comparisons between the fundamentals of acting and the fundamentals of baseball. The thing I like most of all, though, is the human factor of both endeavors. Baseball is a game that, up until last season, was played without the assistance of much technology. But in the middle of last season, a decision was made to bring in instant replay for certain types of calls; home runs and fan interference. I watched the first game in which it was ever used, at Yankees Stadium, to call a home run. I can tell you that, even though the call went the Yankee’s way, I was very, very dismayed. I knew I was watching the beginning of the end. Continue Reading »
