Update on What's Going On

Hi, everyone!  I hope you're all staying safe and well during these increasingly crazy times.  Sometimes, it's like living in Bizarro World or Upside Down Land, where up is down, wrong is right, and the orange monstrosity is still living in the White House.  I don't know about you, but being away from home is increasingly detaching me from my real life.  All I do is work and watch tv.  Seriously.  Well, every week I go to see a vestibular therapist to help me with my dizziness and inner ear troubles.  That's an hour away from the laptop.  And now and again, I get outside for a walk.  But not too often since the weather isn't really cooperating.  I have to admit I miss my life.  I miss walking around the block to the natural food store.  Or meeting my friends for drinks.  Or having Indian food delivered to my door.  Or having the local Italian market bring me imported prosciutto.  Or taking my clothes to the local laundromat.  Or being alone for a bit.  Sigh.

Moving on.  When I look at photos from last year at this time, I remember the grand time I had in Edinburgh with longing.  Will I ever be able to travel again with ease?  Between the virus and worry about vertigo coming back, I wonder.  Double sigh.  Usually at this time of year, though, I'm sitting in the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, NY, watching the US Open qualies.  It's been a bit of normal to be able to watch some live tennis right about now - it's so interesting that the USTA decided to host both the Cincinnati and US Open tournaments back to back.  I guess it makes sense for the athletes to be in the 'bubble' to practice safety/health precautions to be able to play.  It seems that everything is going well so far...fingers crossed that everyone stays healthy and there's some good tennis to watch in the coming days.  UPDATE:  One of the tennis players planned to boycott her semifinal match because of what's happening in the world today.  Is it truly so hard for police officers to remember to stop shooting Black people??  I just don't understand.  Anyway, I admire her courage a great deal.  Apparently, so does the tennis powers-that-be.  They actually are "taking a pause" and not playing any matches in solidarity.  That is admirable.  Will it open people's eyes?  I don't know.  Tennis is such a white sport, it needs its eyes open.  I will watch and wait with anticipation and hope.

As for what I've been watching (to get back to the truly trivial, sorry)...it's a hodgepodge.  I got Apple TV so my dad could watch the movie Greyhound (he loved it, I haven't watched it yet).  When I was playing around on the home page, I was reminded that The Morning Show aired here.  Since it was nominated for so many awards, my mom and I decided to watch it (she still doesn't understand the whole 'on demand' aspect of the streaming channels, but we live with it).  It was well-acted, well-written, timely, disturbing, and extremely well-done.  Mom and I would watch two episodes on the weekend and she would say a couple of times during the week "I wonder what will happen next!", which is not a usual reaction for her.  After watching episode eight, I was extremely triggered, couldn't sleep, and had to take a couple of weeks off, but we finally finished it.  I'm glad we watched it, but I can't imagine what the next ten episodes will even be...

We watch a lot of Game Show Network - it's easy to watch and we don't have to think very hard.  I have to admit, I never realized how misogynistic Family Feud can be.  I think we can lay that at the feet of the current host, but it does give me pause.  Since The Amazing Race isn't running yet, Mom and I got hooked on Phil Keoghan's new show, Tough as Nails.  We ran through a bunch of cooking shows and eagerly await the new season of Great British Bake Off.  The Olympic Channel is a good source of interesting material. And I keep making my mom watch documentaries and she is a good sport to let me; we were both incredibly moved by Howard, the film on the great Howard Ashman.  We also enjoyed watching the docuseries on the making of Frozen 2.  We got a kick out of Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much, about the time a contestant got an exact bid on the Price is Right showcase and caused a scandal; Too Funny to Fail: The Life and Death of The Dana Carvey Show was also really enjoyable - it even helped my mom forgive Steve Carell for his Morning Show misbehavior.

As for movies, we've watched and enjoyed (off the top of my head) Hustlers, Red Joan, Bottle Shock, Booksmart, The Bookshop, Best in Show, and And So It Goes (a harmless, though rather lazy, film by Rob Reiner starring Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton).  And TCM's Summer Under the Stars is always a treat, introducing us to new movies starring actor we like from the Golden Age of moviemaking.  

I think you can see now why I said all I do is work and watch tv.  Often, I'm doing both at the same time, though I still feel pretty good about the work I've been able to produce lately.  My current goal is to get back home in October, so I can be settled in before the election.  Most of the money I've managed to save this summer has been going to flip the Senate and evict the current tenant of the White House.  It has been rather dismal to see all the current regime signs in people's yards around my parents' house, so when I saw this sign the other day, I felt some hope.  And that's important now more than ever.

Discoveries During Quarantine

I don't know about you, but this situation is maybe starting to get to me.  The feeling that the quarantine will never end and the feeling that we'll be trapped forever is making me exhausted.  I've only left my parents' house three times in the nearly-two months I've been here.  Tired rage or raging tired is pretty much all there is.  The days all run together and there's no end in sight.  Adding to the unsettledness is the fear that the horrible vertigo will come back.  I'm still having issues reading - my eyes get wobbly when I try to read too much and then I feel dizzy, which scares me.  I do laugh a lot with my family, and I love being here (how else would I ever spend this much time with my parents?!), but that doesn't take away the tired or the nerves.  I don't know.  I guess if I could feel like this would be over any time soon, I could reasonably reset.

Since all I do is pretty much work (ish) and watch tv, I've made a few discoveries since I've been home:

• RuPaul's Drag Race is as awesome as everyone has been telling me, my mom even likes watching it with me;
• I allow myself to be painted as the bad guy in certain situations much too quickly;
• I miss Seamless;
• I'm going to need to have my cholesterol checked after this, since we eat a lot of fast food and I generally don't in NY;
• I always thought my mom was just tired of cooking after all these years, but no, she doesn't even like to cook;
• It's hard to read recipes when my eyes are vibrating;
• My dad is a really picky eater;
• Menu planning for picky eaters gets old really fast;
• I hope they make another season of Britain's Best Home Cook;
• My mom just doesn't get how Roku works;
• Hamilton is all that AND a bag of chips.

Speaking of Hamilton, let's see if I can still craft a review (my brain still isn't firing on all synapses).  I've been wanting to see Hamilton ever since it was at the Public; it's my own fault I didn't see it before it became a phenomenon.  I almost got to see it with co-workers in 2018, but that didn't work out.  I played the lottery almost every day for five years and never won.  When Disney+ announced they would be showing it, my heart was so glad.  I called Disney+ to make sure I could use my subscription on my parent's tv.  I counted down the days and drove my mom nuts reminding her that we wouldn't be doing anything on July 3 other than watching Hamilton.  I was afraid I would be let down after finally seeing it, but I truly was not.

a Venetian tribute. work.

There are so many layers to this show, I hardly know where to begin.  I'm not a devotee of rap or hip hop, but using these language-forward musical methodologies was simply brilliant.  The beat and the hooks make you listen and listen very closely to every word sung/rapped.  And nearly every word or rhyme tells you something important.  I laughed with delight several times at the triple and quadruple internal rhymes.  There is so much text that I know I didn't catch a lot of it on first viewing/hearing, but each time I watch a sequence again (I've probably watched the opening and closing numbers five or six times over the last week; I'm working up to watching the whole thing in sequence again this weekend), I catch more and more that I missed the first time.

The show is stupid entertaining, expertly acted, sung, danced, directed, and designed, plus it's ever so thought-provoking.  After watching it, I found so much to make me cry.  You know I'm a huge fan of huge-hearted Lin-Manuel Miranda and just watching/hearing the wonderful work he created for his talented friends made me weep.  It's smart, it's inclusive (yes, I acknowledge that he left out some details that are important but hey, it's a musical, not a documentary), it's instructive, it's entertaining.  The story made me weep, the backstory did, the idea of it did...everything.  It takes me back to the possibilities imagined by the Obama administration and god knows I need to remember those times right now.  I also think back to an event I did in Evanston where a person sought me out to complain that "George Washington was not Black."  I knew exactly what that man was saying, and he (and others like him) are why we need shows like Hamilton.

All of the performers are incredible, I can't even single anyone out.  Well, maybe Daveed Diggs.  He is singularly talented with charm to spare and you know how I love charm.  But truly, everyone was brilliant (and charming).  And I want to be Renee Elise Goldsberry when I grow up.  I'm ever so grateful I get to see the phenomenon that is Hamilton up close and personal (and more than once!) to send me back to my theater happy place.  Of course, I also cried when I heard the applause and saw the long shots of the stage - I long to be back in a theater again.   I've been going back and reading old reviews on my blog to try to relive those experiences.  If only everyone would wear a frigging mask...but that's another story/post.

(sorry for any weird formatting - my blogging platform has made some changes and I can't quite figure them out.  maybe next post.)

Medical Nonsense in the time of COVID

NOTE: I started this post nearly a month ago, before the protests over the senseless deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and countless other people of color. I am still trying to figure out what I can say, or what I should even say, in the wake of the horror that my fellow Americans are currently experiencing. Other than just repeating Black Lives Matter as loudly and as often as I can.  Even though it seems ridiculous, I'm going to finish this post and share.  It will then be out of my brain and into the air.  I hope it won't seem too insensitive...

I hope you are all safe and well during this nonsensical time.  Sorry to be so off the grid; it's taken me a while to get the energy to do a post - like everyone else, being sequestered for so long has drained me of most of my energy.  But I recently had a medical experience I would rather have missed, thank you very much, that I wanted to report.  This is likely going to be a long post.  There will likely also be some TMI that you may not want to read...

A few weeks ago, I dreamed I was really dizzy.  When I woke up, I was really dizzy.  Not run-of-the-mill dizzy, but the earth was violently spinning and it was making me throw up dizzy.  I staggered to my bathroom, where I thought I was in the midst of food poisoning (I had cooked chicken in my new crock pot the night before).  Clutching a bucket, I sat there for a long time.  Not only was I clutching a bucket, but I was also clutching the door, so I wouldn't fall off the toilet.  That's how hard the world was spinning for me.  After a few hours of this, I realized I needed to call my doctor to get some help.  After a bout of sick, I crawled into the living room to get my phone (I generally don't take it into the bathroom, have you ever read about the germs?!), then crawled back to the bathroom.  It was too early for my doctor's office to be open, so I got sent to an on-call doctor.  She called me back, listened to me describe my symptoms, then be sick again, and she said it sounded like vertigo.  She suggested I find a place to be safe; since it probably wasn't food poisoning, she suggested I take my bucket to bed or sofa, then call my GP.  I waited to be sick again, then went to the couch.

I tried to find a position where nothing would move.  I kept my eyes closed.  The room kept spinning violently.  When I asked the Alexa in my apartment about vertigo, she described the Hitchcock film in detail.  While interesting (and certainly Hitcockian), it was not useful.  I then asked for details on disease vertigo.  I didn't really learn anything new, so I called and left a message for my GP.   After a few hours (?!), she video called me.  I couldn't keep my eyes open, so I just held the phone up and told her my symptoms.  She requested I do a few things, to rule out a stroke, I guess, then she said she would call in some prescriptions to my pharmacy.  I told her I didn't see how I could go to my front door, let alone go to the pharmacy, wait outside, then go in with the other ten people allowed inside at one time.  While we were chatting, I had to put the phone down to be sick again.  When it was done, I noticed my head felt a little clearer, so my doctor suggested I use the time to get dressed, unlock my door, and call 911.  She said if I went to the ER, they could give me medication via IV and it would work faster.  I took her advice.

It took a while for me to careen through my apartment to get dressed and get ready for the ambulance.  They finally arrived and seemed nice (throughout most of this adventure, I had to have my eyes closed, to try to keep from throwing up from the spinning).  They put me on a little chair and thankfully safety-belted me in to get me downstairs.  That was extremely disorienting, though I did make sure to ask one of them to lock my apartment door before leaving.  I heard the lock work, so that was a bit of a relief (who wants to worry about their apartment when headed to the ER??).  We got into the ambulance and they safety-belted me again for the short trip to the ER at the nearby Mt. Sinai.

Obviously, going to a hospital in the middle of a pandemic was not at the top of my to-do list.  I have to commend everyone at Mt. Sinai for taking extreme precautions at every step.  Before I could get into the ER, they took me out of the ambulance and had me in a waiting area, where my temperature was taken and my insurance information was taken.  Once that was done, I was wheeled to a bed in the ER.  A pleasant nurse tried to help me get into a hospital gown; I had another episode of being sick to my stomach, so I was fortunate enough to keep my yoga pants for most of my stay in the ER.  It definitely made it easier to thrash around, knowing I was nearly fully-clothed.  Another nurse got an IV into me and I was immediately given an anti-nausea drug and then someone came to give me anti-vert tablets, which helps vertigo.  They didn't really help with the spinning (though the nausea drug helped), so a nice young doctor (at least he sounded nice, I still was having issues with keeping my eyes open) told me he wanted me to have a CT scan to make sure I wasn't having brain issues.  It took a bit for my insurance to approve the scan - once they did, I was wheeled to the line outside the CT room.  When it was finally my turn, the technician was very nice to let me carry my barf bag as a security blanket, since I could keep it outside the testing area of my head and neck.  He promised the scan would last about three minutes, so I counted to 180 in my head and was pleasantly surprised that he was right.  He said he has told people to count before, but he didn't know anyone who actually had.  

I was rolled back to my ER bed and lay there, listening to what was going on around me.  Alarms kept going off, because there was a patient who kept trying to roam the ER and punched people who wouldn't let him.  They had to sedate him, then we could hear him snoring LOUDLY.  Sitting in an ER is an interesting character study, I must say.  Should I ever decide to write more than a monologue, there were lots of people to base interesting characteristics on.  I was taken to get another CT scan, this time with contrast.  The tech remembered me and got me in and out without much fuss.  Both scans turned out to be clear, but the dizziness hadn't stopped, so one of the nice young doctors told me I was going to be admitted.  They were assuming I had a certain type of vertigo, but wanted to do an MRI to be sure there wasn't a tumor or something in my head or ears.  Before I could be admitted, or taken to a room, I had to have a COVID test.  My, people aren't exaggerating when they relay how uncomfortable the test is.  Yikes.  

They told me my COVID results had to come in before I could be taken to a room, so I resigned myself to spending the night in the ER.  One of my very nice nurses brought me a pillow so I could stay sitting up, but relax my neck a bit.  Another pleasant-sounded masked doctor came to tell me they wanted me to have an MRI, to get more detailed pictures of my head and ears.  He also did a test with me where he had me turn my head and drop quickly back onto the bed and back up again.  That was not a fun test.  I also had a walk with a nurse to make sure I wasn't steady enough to be sent home yet.  Thankfully, I wasn't (I was so not ready to leave).  After that, I had a fitful sleep/doze through the night.

My insurance didn't approve my MRI until the next morning.  When I got wheeled to the MRI room, I was still wearing a hospital gown and my yoga pants.  One of the nice techs told me that some people have complained that their yoga pants melted inside the MRI machine.  Wait, what??  The younger tech even told me which brand was most likely to melt.  Well, they didn't have to tell me twice.  Those yoga pants came right off.  An MRI is much longer than a CT scan.  I've had them before on my breasts and my pelvic area, but never on my head.  It is loud, disorienting, and extremely unpleasant in the extreme, especially when you're dizzy.  It lasted about 20 minutes in the machine, but I was having some bad side effects when it was over.  They took me back to my ER bed and I felt very agitated and dizzy.  During this time I had a video chat with a neurologist.  My eyes were going crazy and it was hard to do the exercises she was giving me - she said normally, eyes vibrate up and down during vertigo, but mine were going round and round.  I actually couldn't finish the video visit because my eyes were bothering me, so they gave me a little something to calm me down and I dozed a little more.  Later in the afternoon, they told me they wanted me to have another MRI, this time with contrast.  I started crying and said I didn't think I could handle another one.  Not much after that, I was told I tested negative for COVID and was whisked to a room.

I was in a room with three ladies, none of whom spoke English, and since there were no visitors allowed, I worried they didn't understand what was happening.  The hospital uses a translation service where they get a translator on the phone who then is the go-between between the doctors/nurses/patients.  They didn't seem to work very well with these poor ladies.  I just felt really badly for them.  No one really talked to me the rest of the day, except for the very kind nurses taking my vitals every few hours.  I didn't see a doctor at all that second day (at least I don't remember seeing one). 

A physical therapist came in to test me and saw that my balance was still bad. She said I did have to have another MRI, which upset me because of how unwell it made me feel the night before.  A drug technician came in to talk to me and decided to give me a little valium to take the edge off.  I also decided that I would sing to myself this time instead of count and maybe I would be more distracted.  The very kind MRI tech was there again and was very nice again.  And I have to say that a head MRI under the influence of valium and singing the first part of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in my head did help a lot.  I was much less disturbed by the second MRI, thankfully.

Geez, this post is much too long.  I'm going to try to condense and finish up, hopefully I won't leave out any fun or important detail.  I finally talked to a doctor that night who said the CT scans and the MRIs showed no abnormalities in my head, brain, blood vessels, or ears, so that's good, I guess.  They didn't really help figure out what's wrong, because the dizziness is still there.  There was no inciting incident, so they're also unsure what exactly caused it.  I'm grateful that they didn't release me from the hospital until my sister and mother arrived to pick me up - I was worried about being in my apartment alone.  I ended up being in the hospital for four long days.  It was interesting to me that I saw more doctors in the ER than I did in my room, my interactions there were mainly with the excellent nurses.  I wish I could've seen an ENT before I left, since so many doctors said the problem was probably inside my ears.  Hmmm.

I did snap at one nurse, though (and I shouldn't have) the second time a meal tray contained the one food to which I'm allergic (I was even wearing an allergy bracelet, for pete's sake).  I apologized to her later and she laughed, thank heavens.  Other nurses teased me because I had my own Purell to use.  I tried to make myself useful by helping fill in some of the language gaps for the night doctor who did rounds (after hearing the translations all day, I got pretty informed on what was going on with each of my roommates).  She was a little snarky about it, though, so I stopped trying to help.  One of the physical therapists that I saw ensured that I took a walker with me, just in case.  I ended up using it for about ten days after I got to my parents' house.  The drive there was not easy, but not too bad, either.  Thankfully, in the little cleanliness pack they gave me was an eye mask, so I wore that all the way back and reclined in the back seat.  I think it helped.

I'm glad to be with my family now - I'm sure I could manage on my own, but it's nice to have some help.  I'm working every day, but I have to take more breaks along the way.  I'm still dizzy; I described it to the neurologist like if my dizziness is on a scale from 0-10, with 10 being having to call 911 to go to the hospital, I probably exist at a 2 all the time, occasionally up to a 4.  I want to be at 0 again.  I tried some sinus stuff that my GP recommended to hopefully clean out my ears, but they didn't work.  I had another video chat with the neurologist and she gave me an exercise to do three times a day for a week and we'll chat again next week.  I will say that after doing it once today, I almost fell down in the bathroom, so I'll have to be careful, I guess.  It's really stressful to always be worried that the extreme vertigo will come back.  And it's depressing to think the small amount of dizziness is my new normal.  Oh, I'm also terrified of the bills I'll be receiving.  I'll just have to keep taking deep breaths and keep my fingers crossed that it eventually goes away and things return to normal. In every sense.

It's Not Exactly 100 Years of Solitude, but...

...I wonder how many more of the books I read in college freshman honors English I can reference right about now.  I must say I can't figure out a way to use Gravity's Rainbow. I should see if I can find the syllabus in my trunk of random historical papers.  I sure hope that professor is safe and well during these crazy times.  I hope all of you reading are safe and well, too.

photo credit: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

These really are certainly crazy times, right?  It seems as if we're living a weird sci-fi dystopian film.  Every day lasts forever, but the weeks go awfully quickly.  Working from home always had a romantic sound to it - entering week five has definitely ended the romance.  It's hard to concentrate, it's hard to schedule myself, it's hard to stay motivated.  There's always fear and dread around the corner; the longer this goes on, the more paranoid I feel.  When it first started, I did have a pretty good schedule: I meditated before lunch, walked some laps at a local playground after lunch, fell asleep pretty early and slept pretty well.  I haven't meditated for a while, they closed my playground, and sleeping is coming less easily.  I'm grateful to have a job and food (and toilet paper), and I'm generally fine with my own company, but the allure of Zoom meetings has definitely lessened.  In real life, I rarely watch tv at night during the week - my life is so noisy, I like the quiet when I'm at home.  But during this isolation, I pretty much have my tv on all day, so I can have voices and companionship in my apartment.

As usual, though, I'm turning to theater to get me through.  The last thing I did before heading home for the duration was see a special filmed performance of a show I had tickets for after the closure (the theater practiced social distancing, thankfully).  I'm hoping to start a book club, only with plays, at work, so I'm reading (or trying to read; remember, it's hard to concentrate) lots of plays.  I've bought tickets to some of the streaming events and I've enjoyed them, though it's not the same as being in the room with everyone, of course.  I've especially enjoyed the live play readings the Actors Fund has been presenting on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

I guess I don't really have all that much to report - I just kind of wanted to check in.  My life feels as if I'm floating on a raft with no known destination.  I don't know where I'll end up and what I'll find when I get there.  It's tremendously disconcerting, but I know I'm still pretty fortunate.  So I'll make it through, I'm sure.  Everything will be different - how will I respond?  I have no idea.  But finally:  randomly, I just noticed that today is the ninth anniversary of the blog!  Happy blogiversary to me!  I know ordinarily I do a big number-centric post, but since I'm not in my office at the moment, it's hard to get all that data.  I'll just say that I can't believe it's been nine years.  Once all this quarantine craziness is over, maybe I'll do a stats-y post.  And a nine-years-out sort of post - when I had my replacement surgery, I was told the implants have a shelf life of ten to twenty years.  What if the magic number is ten?  Could I make myself go through another surgery for new implants?  I'm not sure.  So...I guess the uncertainly can represent more than this current pandemic.  I think I need to watch another episode of Little House on the Prairie (which is way more problematic than I remember) to clear my brain...

It's Not Exactly Love in the Time of Cholera, but...

UPDATE:  I was in the middle of writing this when our offices decided to close for the time being, now that most theaters are closed for a month.  I was supposed to see four new plays in NY and five in KY this month; I'm sad I probably won't get to see any of them (we don't have official word from KY yet).  This is definitely the right move, but I really feel for our industry.  So many theater people live day-to-day (I almost do; not quite, but almost) and so many shows either won't open or won't succeed because of outside forces.  I saw a friend's amazing play the other night that has to close early - it's heartbreaking.  There are many things to rail about (especially how that horrible orange person has been mishandling this national crisis), but I guess I'll just stay quiet for now and finish the below post.  After a week or so of no-new-theater, I may change my mind and start posting rants.  I guess we'll just have to see.  Stay safe and healthy, my friends; I hope to be back soon.



...I did travel to Minneapolis for work during the early stages of the US dealings with COVID-19.  It was a little surreal - the plane smelled like Purell (probably because I was wiping everything around me), it wasn't that full, and everything seemed to happen the way it was supposed to happen.  Maybe it was because Minnesota hadn't announced any cases until we had arrived, I don't know.  But it was a pretty uneventful travel scenario, thankfully.  Just way more Purell.

I went to Minneapolis mainly to attend a new musical written by dear friends and I was fortunate enough to be able to build a work event around the trip.  We did a class for area writers that went extremely well and I hosted a talkback conversation after the performance, which also went extremely well.  It was a grand weekend, filled with wonderful work friends, delightful theater, and terrific cocktails.  Oh, and I tried Ethiopian food for the first time - whee!

My work chum and I arrived in town last Friday night, checked into a very nice hotel, then walked about a half a block to Town Hall Brewery, which is a very nice pub/local spot with a pretty big menu and an even bigger list of alcoholic beverages.  Beer is their claim to fame, but since I haven't acquired the taste for beer yet, I went with their Towncar, which was bourbon, lemon juice, and something else I can't quite put my finger on.  It was super-delicious.  As was the Friday night special, fish and chips.  The fish was beautifully battered and fried and the chips were crispy and yummy.  It was a delicious meal to start our weekend.

Saturday was our class, which, as I said, went extremely well.  After the class was over, we walked to the corner and ate lunch at Black Dog Cafe, a very cute pub-type spot that had live music.  They had very tasty iced tea and a delicious (enormous) turkey club sandwich.  It was a very nice break and a very nice, relaxing meal.  After lunch, I took an Uber over to the Guthrie Theater, just so I could walk around and see what it looked like (I didn't have time to see a show there).  It certainly is something to see!  I was grateful that you can walk around in the building without having a ticket to see one of the shows, though there was an older volunteer at the information desk who kept asking if he could help me.  But the beautiful building, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, is wonderfully striking.  The Endless Bridge was open because it was a gloriously sunny day, so that was cool to take in.  The views are stunning and there's something to look at all around the building.  Even the gift shop is gorgeous!  Of course, I did treat myself to a couple of souvenirs - I love them already.  I'll put some photos below.

After walking back to the hotel and having a little liedown, my work chum and I went out to the Gremlin Theatre to see the Frank Theatre's production of Danai Gurira's The Convert.  This play was originally produced in 2012, though it was a new title to me.  When looking through the listings of all the offerings in Minneapolis, I immediately chose The Convert, because I loved Eclipsed and Familiar, and because I want to remind Danai Gurira to write more plays, please.  Never one to shy away from big bold subjects, this play takes on British colonialism in southern Africa, notably the use of Christianity as a tool of religious, cultural, and social disruption.  It's quite evenly balanced in its excoriation of the patriarchal traditions of the past and the horrors that could be conjured by supposed progress through religion.  I was moved and shaken several times throughout the evening.

photo credit: Tony Nelson

The acting in this production of The Convert is first-rate, though at times I did feel as if the dialect work got in the way of character development.  But that's a quibble.  Also, during some of the beautifully-written long scenes, there was very little, or very static movement, so I did feel that on occasion the direction could've been more incisive.  I realize it was a very small theater space, but the stage could've been used a little more creatively here and there.  In my opinion.  But this story is a strong and necessary one, about ancestry and belonging and appropriation and brutality.  I enjoyed seeing The Convert and hope to read it soon, so I can revel in the gorgeous language, specific characters, and exquisite construction by Danai Gurira.  I look forward to seeing more of her plays soon, please.

photo credit: Rama (on Wikipedia) - not my plate but similar

After the play, my work chum and I went back to Town Hall Brewery for another delicious cocktail and, since it was so late, I just had the pizza rolls appetizer.  WHICH WERE DELICIOUS.  Geno's pizza rolls will never do after the ones I had in Minneapolis.  Sunday, my work chum and I met with my amazing writer chums at Dilla's, an Ethiopian restaurant near our hotel.  I've never had Ethiopian food before, so I was looking forward to giving it a try.  The restaurant seems to be a popular local spot, it was full of young people enjoying a sunny Sunday afternoon.  They were offering a vegetarian buffet, so we all got that.  I placed some injera on my plate (the spongy Ethiopian bread made with sourdough and teff flour), then put a spoonful of each dish on my plate.  Except the beets.  I didn't need to experience the beets.  But the lentils, split peas, and other delicious things I had on my plate were delightful.  Everything was deeply spiced, but not muddy-tasting, and rich yet light.  I really loved our meal, though I didn't eat a lot because of my 'don't eat a lot before a show' edict.  My work chum and I have decided to try an Ethiopian restaurant around the office so that we can get more of a sense of the cuisine.

photo credit: from Mixed Blood website

After lunch, we walked over to Mixed Blood Theatre to catch the matinee performance of Interstate, basically the entire reason for the trip.  Interstate is a beautiful musical about so much, I can hardly talk about it.  It's about love, intersectionality, acceptance, community, the power of art, and so much more.  I love the show (and its creators) so much it's probably pointless to go on; please, if you're in the Minneapolis area, go see Interstate.  This cast is off-the-charts brilliant!  I had seen bits and pieces of the show in earlier stages, but seeing an entire production was a glorious experience.  As was leading a talkback discussion afterwards; the audience loved the show and hearing young people ask questions and comment on how they loved seeing people like themselves reflected on stage felt so extraordinary.  Interstate has joy and pain, laughter and tears, and incredible words and music.  But mainly joy, which I need so much right now.  I hope I can see it somewhere else again soon.

The rest of the trip was pretty quiet; Sunday night was spent in my hotel room with room service and script-reading, and the flight back on Monday was uneventful.  On the plane, I watched the documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? and it was a powerful experience.  We may never see that type of selfless influence and humanity again and I was lost in thought afterwards, wondering how I could try to effect that same sort of change.  I couldn't come up with anything, but I'm glad Fred Rogers did.  What a humanitarian; I'm so glad I finally got the chance to catch the film.  It was a grand trip, filled with lots of Purell and beautiful life-affirming theater.  I'm so glad I could go.

OH, I should also mention that when I got back, I was fortunate enough to attend Women's Day on Broadway.  It was a moving and empowering day, which ended with a closing keynote from Hillary Rodham Clinton.  I may have cried when I saw her.  There were so many takeaways from the amazing day, but I think my favorite may be a quote from one of the panelists.  She said (something like), "If they think you're too much, clearly they're too little."  Whee!  As someone who has been told my entire life that I'm too much or too loud or too...something, this was a powerful phrase to hear.  I'm going to repeat it to myself frequently, as should you.

souvenir

pizza rolls

post-Interstate talkback with authors

Review - Grand Horizons

I am so tired and running in place trying to catch up that I almost let this season's only new play on Broadway written by a woman get by me.  Thankfully, I found the energy to see the next-to-last performance of Grand Horizons.  I got a discounted ticket at almost the last minute and happily I was seated in the orchestra.  However, it is FREEZING in the back of the orchestra at the Helen Hayes Theatre (which I had forgotten).  But I just wrapped my scarf around my neck and settled in.  For the most part, I enjoyed myself, though I admit to feeling that I wished for something more (and that is entirely on me and no one else)...


I saw one of the playwright's previous Off-Broadway efforts, Small Mouth Sounds, a few years ago and simply loved it.  I thought it was bold and audacious, so I was expecting something that bold and audacious in Grand Horizons.  What I got instead was a pretty old-fashioned boulevard comedy, played at high energy and high speed for big laughs.  That's ok, but it wasn't what I expected (which, again, is totally on me) and so I was vaguely dissatisfied.  The play WAS funny and terrifically acted, I just didn't see the compelling reason for putting this play on Broadway.  Though, I guess if making it a Broadway play meant we got to see Jane Alexander and James Cromwell, then maybe it was probably worth it.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Alexander and Cromwell play Nancy and Bill, a long-married couple living in an upper middle class retirement community; at the start, we see a silent ritual we know is played out every night, where she is preparing dinner and he is helping get the table ready.  They finally sit down, after the perfectly choreographed ritual, and then Nancy, very politely, states that she wants a divorce.  After a pause, Bill says, "All right."  It's all very polite and sedate and the audience cracks up at the juxtaposition.  End of first scene.

The rest of the play is Bill and Nancy justifying their reasons for divorce to their adult sons, one of whom is married and expecting the first grandchild, the other of whom is a high school theater teacher.  Neither son can comprehend why their parents would want to split up at this stage of their lives and they're having high comic difficulty processing the news.  They also have high comic difficulty when their parents start to talk about their sexual needs.  I have to admit I vacillated over wondering if it was cliche writing to have Jane Alexander talk so graphically about sex, knowing it would make the audience laugh to see such a patrician older woman talk about naughty things.  Would it have been just as funny with a different actress?  I don't know.  There was quite a bit of that kind of vacillating happening in my mind throughout the play.  And I think there were maybe two scenes that I didn't really need, though having Priscilla Lopez on stage is always a treat (her character reminded me a bit of Anita Gillette's character in the film Moonstruck, which isn't necessarily a bad thing).

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

So, I guess now would be the place where I say that my parents' names are Nancy and Bill, so that freaked me out/cracked me up just a little, to be honest.  I'd like to think that were my parents to announce they were getting a divorce, I wouldn't lose my shit like the two kids in the play did.  I say kids - both of these gents are in their mid- to late-30s, I think.  Maybe the playwright is making a comment on how men never grow up...hmmmm, I just thought of that.  But after a while, I didn't think the guys were funny, I just thought they were annoying, immature, selfish jerks.  So there's that.

There was one plot point that made everyone in the audience laugh, except me, and it really only needed one little tweak to make it work for me, too.  Michael Urie played the high school theater teacher son and part of his shtick is that he doesn't want to disappoint any of his students, so there are 200 kids in the school production of The Crucible that he is currently directing.  I was having dinner with a playwright friend last week and she mentioned this plot point had made her see red as well, so a tip of the hat to her for giving me advance warning.  No, actually, it is not sweet to want to cast 200 kids in The Crucible, it's technically not even legal.  Arthur Miller didn't write that.  If only one other character had said, "wait, that's not legal, is it?", or "you can't do that, can you?", then I could've laughed along.  If one audience member decides to now do that because it sounded so funny, then we might have a problem.  And when I say 'we,' I mean 'me.'  Which I totally know is a complete silly overreaction.  Oh, and I had a little bit of a squeamish thought that the non-wacky people in the play who kept telling the family that they were wacky were the actors of color.  I appreciate that the cast was diverse, but the weirdo white family learning something from the characters who happened to be played by actors of color stood out for me, in a vaguely negative way.  Perhaps I'm just overthinking things (yet again).

I did laugh throughout Grand Horizons and I did appreciate the actors very much, so seeing the production was mainly an enjoyable experience.  I know the fact that my expectations were for something rather different is completely my fault, though I can't help but wonder if I either missed something or if this play exists merely to be funny.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  I can see this play having a huge life in the regions and in community theaters around the country, which is great.  But when every now and then something else, something deeper, was hinted at, like the inevitable process of women becoming invisible as they age (and the daughter-in-law's realization of it), or adult children realizing they're missing something in their life because of what they saw growing up, I felt a little twinge of sadness that I wasn't really seeing a deeper exploration of that kind of narrative thread.  Which, again, I know makes it my play and my problem and not the playwright's.

Seat neighbor story that shows what a dope I am:  I frequently confuse actors Darren Criss and Michael Urie.  Please don't ask me why.  So the fact that Darren Criss was in the audience of the show that Michael Urie was in sort made my head spin.  My head also spun a bit at the sound design of the show - at one point, characters make reference to the loud tv playing in the neighbor's apartment, but a lot of the time I couldn't tell if the sound was coming from the stage or my seat neighbors' cell phones.  I guess it didn't really matter either way, but it was a little disorienting.  All in all, I'm grateful to have seen Jane Alexander on stage again, she has long been a favorite of mine (I thought she was amazing in Albee's The Lady from Dubuque) and I always enjoy James Cromwell.  I guess I just need to recalibrate my brain and relearn to watch what I'm watching and not make things try to fit in the box I've created for them.  Clearly, it's a long process for me...

Immersing Myself

Hello, friends!  I've been lax in my theater-going lately, work has been very busy.  Well, that's not exactly true.  I went to a very early preview of a new play and a concert of a musical I've already posted about, so I didn't think a new report was necessary about either of them.  I have some shows coming up and a trip to Minneapolis that includes two productions that I'm very excited about, so keep your eyes open for more posts in the next few weeks.  Fingers crossed, of course.

I did want to do a little post about Jerry Herman - he passed away while I was home for the holidays, so I didn't do a post at the time.  After seeing Mack and Mabel last week, I've rather been on a Jerry Herman playlist listening binge.  Which has put a smile on my face.  His musicals' subject matters were disparate, though most dealt with plucky individualists overcoming obstacles to succeed.  But all of them feature toe-tapping music that just puts a big old smile on my face and I notice that "...somehow the ceiling seems a little higher...", to loosely quote one of his songs.  

When I'm in a bad mood, I either put on Barber's "Adagio for Strings" (if I want to weep), or Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill" (if I want to dive into feeling pissed off), or Herman's La Cage aux Folles (if I want to start smiling).  But, really, all of his musicals make me smile, then cry, then smile some more.  It's sort of a visceral response.  If you want to read an interesting interview about Jerry Herman's process, you should check out this piece from the archives of The Dramatist magazine (I mean, you really should subscribe; there are amazing articles like this every month!): In Conversation with Jerry Herman.  I love when writers interview other writers - they just know how to guide the conversation to get the most interesting, revealing answers.

I'll just link to some of my past thoughts on musicals by Jerry Herman (some of those links are above, if you're interested).  I mentioned in my review of the recent Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly that it was one of the first musicals I can remember seeing.  One of the first professional productions I ever saw was Mame at a local dinner theater.  I remember adoring it and over the years, I've listened to the cast album probably thousands of times.  Ever since my nephew was born, I've had even more affection for it, especially the song "If He Walked Into My Life," which makes me cry every time I try to sing along.  I'm a basket case, I admit it.  And, hello, who doesn't have "We Need a Little Christmas" on their holiday playlist?!  "Bosom Buddies" is also a classic in musical theater songwriting - have you ever seen the clip of Betty White and Carol Channing sing it on an episode of Love Boat?  Get to YouTube and check it out.  But I digress.  Anyway, Mame is another show that I'd love to see in revival, though I admit a bit of it is problematic in this day and age.  Maybe it's best for an Encores! retelling...

I admit I don't know Dear World as well as I should - when the York did a brief run of it, I jumped at the chance to see it.  I also admit that I seriously considered buying a ticket to London when Betty Buckley was performing it there.  Cooler heads (and empty wallets) prevailed there.  Again, I hope to see it have another life sometime soon.  I know that Jerry Herman was hopeful that this show would get another look, so maybe there's an intrepid producer out there who wants to commemorate the loss of a man who loved the theater and what he did.  I know he brought a lot of joy to my life and I'm grateful.  He'll be missed.