A Poor Player

I have the luxury of being sick enough today that I cannot practically function (no voice and deep cough), but not so sick that I cannot spend moments in-between answering the door for young trick-or-treaters to survey the theatrical blogosphere and see what’s going on. Many things caught my attention, but the two which caused me to do a bit of thinking were the issues surrounding the Michael Feingold article in the Village Voice, and the decision by the New York Times not to run a review written by Rob Kendt of George Hunka’s play In Public. Both these gentlemen are bloggers, and both happen to have written freelance reviews for the NYT in the past. If you know the various bloggers you can take a quick tour around to see what they’ve all written in the past few days on these issues. [Read more →]

Tags: by Tom Loughlin
No Comments »

One thing that strikes me about Bizet’s work is that Carmen is really the one thing he’s noted for. Judged a failure when it first opened, it became perhaps the western world’s best-known opera. There are so many identifiable numbers in it, from the Habañera to Torreador, that just about everyone who attends the opera knows or will recognize one of the numbers. Just getting that one thing to succeed; sometimes that’s all it takes.

The project I have lined up following Carmen is playing Robert in David Auburn’s Proof. There you have the same issue - a brillant mathematician who did his best work by 25 and spend the rest of his life slowly going insane. Einstein spent the rest of his life after relativity searching for the elusive unified theory. Just one thing.

It’s hard sometimes not to feel that way, that you’ve already done your best work, and the rest of your life is going to be spent sitting about still looking for that elusive one thing. And clearly, many people never find that one thing that catapults them from unknown to well-known. Bizet was dead by 35, but he got out that one thing. I’m pretty sure mine hasn’t come around yet, and it’s a question as to how long it may be before it shows up or I create it. An interesting question, at that.  -twl

Tags: by Tom Loughlin
3 Comments »

The Irish Classical Theatre Company’s co-founders, Vincent O’Neill and Josephine Hogan, have a large feature article in today’s Buffalo News. You can read it here. I’ve been lucky to have worked with both of them at ICTC over the years, appearing in the production of Three Sisters which opened the Andrews Theatre in 1999 (an absolutely frigid night where the temperature was 10 degrees, and the heat from the lights was melting snow on the roof and dripping onto the stage floor), in which I played Josephine’s ineffective husband Kulygin. I also played Estragon in the 2000 iteration of Waiting for Godot opposite Vince as Vladimir - an extraordinary opportunity for me. The piece is flattering, with a nod towards Josephine’s reputation as a headstrong actress. This is a story of a success everyone in theatre would like to have: from a hotel conference room in Cheektowaga across from the Buffalo International Airport, to a beautiful 200-seat black box and an 1800-strong subscriber base, these people made Irish and classical theatre a hit in a struggling blue-collar city. That’s something not only to admire but to envy. -twl

Tags: by Tom Loughlin
No Comments »

It’s a very nice night for writing - my first Saturday night home in a long time. The weather is absolutely nasty, I have no evening rehearsal, I’ve put aside the papers I have to grade, I’ve pretty much caught up on all the leftover theatre blogs, and have some time to write on this, the absolutely worst day of the year. Tonight the clocks go back, plunging us into the darkness of standard time. The baseball season ended with St. Louis defeating Detroit in the World Series, a sure sign that whatever hope there was that summer was still around is now gone. I went up to my cabin after a morning rehearsal for Carmen with the Chautauqua Children’s Chorale, and locked down everything in preparation for the 6 or so inches of snow expected in the hills this evening. Most of the trees have lost their leaves, so yet again another fall missed (although I should be grateful for all the fall colors I did see last year in New England while on tour). Funny Thing has finally closed, and the audiences for the make-up weekend were probably a bit thinner than they would have been had there been no cancellation, but they made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in numbers. Come November 12, Carmen will be completed, and I can finally settle in for the upcoming winter. [Read more →]

Tags: by Tom Loughlin
1 Comment »

(Update - Slate.com has a piece on Studio 60 here which I think completely misses the point. The issue of whether the comedy in Studio 60 should be funny or not is, in my opinion, irrelevant. I cannot recall a single moment in the show where a sketch actually was performed in full. Selected comedic moments appear merely to give the show a flavor of what it’s supposed to be about. Parabasis’ Isaac Butler disagrees in this regard. I find the “comedy” itself more a comment on the current state of comedy rather than something actually trying to be funny. The episode noted below has another subplot in which D.L. Hughley’s and Matthew Perry’s characters go searching for a new black staff writer for “the room.” Follow that subplot if you want to get a bit deeper into Sorkin’s thinking about the state of comedy. Criticizing a show for “not being funny” when it’s not trying to BE funny is a bit like criticizing an apple for not being an orange. -twl)

Watching my recorded episode of Studio 60 last night, I was struck with how much Aaron Sorkin was actually talking about theatre rather than anything else. The episode itself was such a homage to the past in theatre and television that I found myself dumbfounded by the end of it. Eli Wallach guest-stars and he is terrific. When was the last time you heard Clifford Odet’s name dropped on TV? Or the Hollywood Ten? Or an incredible description of the early years of radio and television (Playhouse 90?) Odets and Abbott and Costello in one episode? It was very moving and nostalgic for me.

I wonder if my students have any sense of this tradition or history at all? Do we ever think about whose footsteps we are walking in? The sight of Eli Wallach as a beaten-down old war hero and blacklisted comedy writer was moving and thought-provoking. Rarely does TV do that for me. And I was also taken by the fact that Sorkin claims credit for the “teleplay.” Apt, in faith; very apt. -twl

Tags: by Tom Loughlin
No Comments »

That’s the number of commments I just deleted which were spam. All of a sudden I am getting more spam than I know what to do with. I had intended to write an in-between-shows post, but all I got to do was delete spam. The site I think will now require you to register to comment, but I don’t know what that means actually for Wordpress. I may have to close comments as well until I can figure this out.

In the meantime, doing the make-up weekend of Forum and trying to get Carmen going as well. Not too much time to blog. In the meantime, there is much of interest on other blogs, especially on Light Cue 23 and Angry White Guy on improvisation. And Playgoer was up in my neck of the woods looking at the Shaw Festival (links for these blogs on my blogroll page, no time to do them here). So check them out until I can get this more together. Half-hour to places….   -twl

Tags: by Tom Loughlin
No Comments »

The October 13th snowstorm in Buffalo wiped out the entire final weekend of Forum. We did the show Thursday night while the storm began, but by Friday the theatre had lost power and it has yet to be restored. The theatre is trying to get it together to do the show this coming weekend, even though our contracts ran out yesterday. This is not the kind of extension anyone anticipated.

Over 200,000 people still have no power, schools are cancelled today, and some school districts in the suburbs have decided to cancel school for the entire week. Travel bans remain in effect in some areas. A boil water advisory is in effect for Erie county, and free dry ice and bottled water is available. One of my colleagues at Fredonia has his parents with him because they have no power in West Seneca.

I had been working on the computer of a fellow cast member, and had intended to return it during Friday’s show. By Sunday, I had to drive up to Buffalo to return it to him because he couldn’t do without it over an entire week.  I got to witness some of the damage first-hand, and it is intense. Pictures really don’t do it justice, because it’s hard to see the scope of all the damage unless you are there. The storm is responsible for only three deaths, so in human terms this storm did not cause that much damage. But the trees - utter devastation. Buffalo has three Olmstead parks and Olmstead parkways, and the destruction in terms of tree damage is truly unreal. Beautiful trees simply shorn at the top or torn in half. The Olmstead area around Delaware Park looks more like a hurricane came through than a snowstorm. News reports say that maybe up to 90% of the trees in the park received some damage. I took a quick look around Shakespeare Hill in the park, and the hill’s signature tree had lost a few limbs but otherwise seemed OK. A large limb came down in the “backstage” area. While driving home I saw two separate caravans of power trucks at least ten trucks in length heading up to the city.
The fact that so few lives were lost, and that there has been no significant looting of any sort despite the loss of electricity, means the story will have more of a regional flavor rather than national. Snow storms in Buffalo generally are not news, but this one was unique in the sense that in 137 years of record-keeping there is nothing even remotely like this at this time of year. But there still are people out there without heat and electricity, and it may take the entire week to get them all back online. Buffalo touts itself as “The City of Good Neighbors,” and it’s good to know people are out there pitching in to recover. We can pretty much replace everything - but the trees. -twl

Tags: by Tom Loughlin
1 Comment »

This is more or less the practical side of “what it took.” Having recounted a sort of inner journey last time, this is the outer journey.

If I were to take every single show I have ever been in and count them all up regardless of their quality or where they were done, I am probably somewhere near the neighborhood of having been involved in 200 shows. I cannot remember a time in my life where I was not involved with being in a show. [Read more →]

Tags: by Tom Loughlin
1 Comment »

Wow - a little adventure last night coming home from the show! I got caught on the road just as a bolt of lightning came from the sky and knocked out the power as far as I could see. Made it to a Red Roof Inn and spent the night. Came home this morning with little problem, where there is not a flake of snow on the ground. I have no idea right now if there will be a show tonight or not. Western New York - definitely not for weather wimps!

Carmen and Forum have kept me very busy, with little writing time available. I doubt I’ll get Part III written before early next week. You’ll just have to wait until then! -twl

Tags: by Tom Loughlin
No Comments »

…to bring you this. Apart from all the politics of the war in Iraq, Garry Trudeau in yesterday’s Doonesbury offered this link called “The Sandbox.” It’s described as a “command-wide milblog, featuring comments, anecdotes, and observations from service members currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.” I think it will prove interesting reading, and if any playwrights out there have any interest, eventually there will be enough interesting human stories on this site to create a remarkable piece of theatre which focuses on the human struggles of soldiers in battle apart from the politics. -twl

Tags: by Tom Loughlin
No Comments »