Boston Improv Festival

The second annual Boston Improv Festival is taking place September 8th-12th at Improv Boston in Cambridge.

Stay tuned in a few days as I tell you my picks for what to see at the festival.
 For now, a shameless plug for myself since I am performing in three shows over the course of the weekend:

1. Three Hole Punch - Shannon Connolly, Liz Caradonna, Stephanie Jones, Amy Koske and I have been delighting audiences with our relationship based long form improv since we met in college. (Thursday 9p)

2. Hidden Falls - Directed by Steve Gilbane, Hidden Falls is a 40 minute fully improvised musical about life in a small town. The audience provides information about our town, and we'll discover the secrets and relationships behind closed doors, while singing about it! (Friday 9pm)

3. Improv Asylum Mainstage-  Improv Asylum Mainstage actors take your suggestions and turn them into   dreams (and scenes). (Sunday 8pm)

Danny and Annie

I heard about this animated video from a friend at Improv Boston.

It is the story of a couple, married in 1978 and separated by cancer in 2006.
In 2006 they recorded their story with StoryCorps, and their interviews were combined into the video below.

Listening to Danny and Annie talk about their love and respect for one another reminds me of my grandparents, Ben and Adele, talk about one another. It reminds me of the faith and infinite patience of my friend Veronica as she waits by the bedside of Rob, her fiancé who is recovering day by day from a motorcycle induced coma. It's a testimony to how amazing the phenomenon of love really is. Human beings have a (possibly) unique capacity for experiencing and expressing enduring affection for another person. When the mutual act of giving of self becomes the driving force in every aspect of a shared life, the miracle of that is really obvious to everyone else who comes in contact with it.

Watch the video first (it's a tear-jerker, you've been warned); then for more info check out their story on NPR's website.


Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

spell sheck

Yet another good reason to double check all my notes before I sign them electronically at work.

This time I (almost) documented that a patient told me:

"I alway shave blurred bison."

Two Weeks Without My ATM/Check Card...

Money Owed*:
- Ashley (lunch last Tuesday)
- Shannon (cash money for weekend festivities)
- Juimene (lunch on Cobb Salad Day)

Expenses I Would Normally Not Charge to my Credit Card:
- Monthly Bills
- Isolated orders for single small cups of ice coffee at Dunkin Donuts
- A vial of CVS Brand eye allergy relief solution.

How I Did Laundry Last Week:
- bought TP for house and asked roommate to pay me in cash.

Saddest Thing:
A homeless man** asked me if I had any money, and I said I didn't have any cash. And he asked if I would have cash on the way out of the store and I said no, and then explained that the bank still hasn't sent my ATM card to me and they are closed every day when I get home from work. I told him I'm actually really bent out of shape about it. He nodded but I bet he didn't believe me.

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*If I missed you, do speak up please.
** Dear HR,  I am aware that given my position in the company I am not allowed to be giving out money to potential/former clients, but as this rule only really applies to homeless people in Boston and the Greater Metro Area I hope you will forgive the implication that HAD I had any money I could have given some to this man who was not in Boston when we met.

Nants inGONyama bagithi Baba!

The Lyceum Theatre in London

There's not much I can say that critics haven't already said about a show as big and spectacular as The Lion King. It's exciting and moving and vivid. The costumes and puppets are incredible. The sets are inspired. The presentation is altogether breathtaking.
So... I'll drop the pretension and pick up where a diary entry about it may have left off.

In fact, I'll begin by telling you that in a tiny note I wrote to myself* I scribbled "Just saw The Lion King. Incredible.... I feel so alive."

The opening to the show  initiated a palpable endorphin rush. As soon as Rafiki (Brown Lindiwe Mkhize) took the stage and opened her** mouth I knew I was leaving my mind behind and going into a magical place.

  I had never seen so much as a You Tube clip of the Circle of Life procession so everything about it was a surprise. The sight of so many silky birds looping through the air and the shock of a adolescent sized elephant tromping up the aisle beside me as voices joined in song and the stage morphed into Pride Rock made my ears tingle and my heart pound (in that really good way). Even as I sit here typing this, remembering how actors on four stilts each can look so much like giraffes gives me goosebumps.

 Brown Lindiwe Mkhize as Rafiki was absolutely phenomenal. That woman knows how to command a stage. She was able to take focus just by gesturing with one finger, but often would use her entire body to communicate not only Rafki's emotions and intentions, but also to transfer the energy of the whole scene from the stage out into the audience.

As the rest of the show unfolded I was impressed by A) how closely the musical was able to stick to the original Disney movie and B) how much of the original movie I remembered word for word. Seriously, if they had needed a tiny white girl to jump into any of those roles -  I was on the ready.***

Most of the places the story strayed were the addition of more songs, which was a net positive for the show overall. However, I could have done without the strange addition of Scar's attraction to/quest for Nala. It was only a small bit in Act Two, and a short song for Scar (George Asprey), but I found it disturbing, distracting and unnecessary. Especially because it was never mentioned again, never followed up on, never really resolved. Plus, in the movie I felt like it was implied that Scar takes Sarabi as his own since she was Mufasa's mate. Isn't that more in keeping with the Hamlet origins anyway?

I digress. so. much.

My favorite song in the musical was He Lives In You, which I promptly downloaded from iTunes and committed to memory. Through some terribly geeky research I found out that He Lives in You was written and performed by Lebo M in a 1995 CD called Rhythm of the Pridelands, and was used in The Lion King II  before being adapted for the staged version of The Lion King. The song They Live in You which Mufasa sings to Simba in Act One was adapted from He Lives In You which Rafiki sings to Simba in Act Two. I can NOT believe that this song has existed for years and I only now got around to hearing it.
The staging of the song was also my favorite part of the show. I can't describe it to you well enough. Like John said in his blog, you should really go see it if you can.

At the end of the show, just as in the movie,  the opening sequence is mirrored, showing that everything has come around fully in the Circle of Life. This time the kite-like birds and the graceful antelope dancers didn't surprise me, but I was still just as floored. All those voices lifting up in song, the lights creating an African sunrise, the animals swaying to the music sent me into a euphoric state.

 It's incredible to me that a musical can create such strong emotions.  "I feel so alive," I wrote to myself in my note, and just looking at that sentence right now I remember exactly how I felt. I felt hopeful, and I felt inspired. I felt like I wanted to call my Mom and tell her I loved her. I wanted to dance with strangers and make children laugh.  I wanted to hug Brown Lindiwe Mkhize. I wanted everyone I know to see the show and feel how I felt.
I want everyone to feel so alive.
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* I have a habit of dropping myself tiny notes to remind myself of feelings I am feeling when I'm feeling them.
** I thought Rafiki was just being played by a female, and was still a male character the same way Peter Pan is often cast as a female in Broadway productions. However, according to several  internet sources director Julie Taymor chose to change Rafiki's gender to female altogether to give the show another strong female character.
*** I have no idea why I can remember every single word to a Disney movie and not remember how to conjugate Spanish verbs, but so be it.

"'Tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation"

Finally sitting down to write down my opinions of In the Heights last week reminded me that I never wrote about my experiences with theater while I was in London.

When John and I arrived at Shakespeare's Globe I reverted to a fifteen year old English lit geek. I don't remember what John and I talked about in queue because I was memorizing the details of the lobby. I took dozens of photos which I deleted later because although each photo op seemed pressing in the heat of the moment, I really didn't need pictures of the door handles and floor of the (all modern) lobby.

We bought tickets to Henry IV Part One, and although I was disappointed that our plan to see Macbeth had been thwarted by box office sales I agreed with John when he said "you can't really beat seeing Henry the Fourth at the Globe Theater."

Obviously, it's not the original Globe Theater, which burnt down in 1613 and was rebuilt on the same site. The second theater was shut down in 1642 by Puritan rule. This replica is as authentic as possible,  built in 1997 (through the efforts of an American actor/director), a mere matter of meters away from the site of the first (and second) Globe Theaters. It was the first building allowed to have a thatched roof after the Great Fire  of London.

Original thatched roof or not,  to watch Shakespeare performed by some of the world's best known classical actors in a space that aims to duplicate the experiences had by Shakespeare's first audiences, is a treat.  We took our place in the Yard with the other groundlings, and I took approximately a gazillion more photos of the intricate interior of the theater as we awaited the start of the show.

My hand touching the stage. I'm in heaven.

The show opened with a flourish of dance and music. All the instruments were period, and played by actors. Mummers with grotesque and exaggerated costume pieces staged a comedic street performance on a platform smack dab in the midst of the groundlings. After a bit of bawdy banter they were interrupted by the entrance of  King Henry, sir Walter Blunt and the rest of the King's court who then proceeded to take the stage and dive into the plot.

All the characters were strong. Hotspur (Sam Crane)  and his unintentionally comical bursts of temper.  Prince Hal (Jamie Parker) with his boyish grin, and torn loyalties to street life and prince-dom.  King Henry (Oliver Cotton) with his loving but firm reproach of his son's behavior. In fact, the highly complicated relationship Cotton and Parker created between this famous father and a son very nearly brought me to tears several times. Still one man managed to steal my heart the show.

Every critic has said it in one way or another, but in the event that you're not keeping up on reviews of shows in London right now I'll say it too: Roger Allam was born to play Falstaff. He's exactly what you want in a Falstaff: a booming voice, impossibly expressive face, and dead on sense of timing. Allam's Falstaff doesn't shy away from the parts of his character that are disgusting (binge eating, drinking to excess, lying and thievery to name a few), and still comes off as the lovable, mischievous man we all would gladly share a bar counter with. If only for the stories we could tell later.

The show ends after the Battle of Shrewsbury with all out reveling and a full cast song and dance number, the nature of which made me feel as though I were actually peeking into a tavern window in the 1400s and not standing on concrete in an open air theater with hundreds of strangers.

I would absolutely love to see Part Two. Anyone want to fly to London for a matinée?

a letter

Today a letter was delivered to the nurses' station. It was addressed to "the nurses and aides" on our floor. The letter was a thank you note for the care we provided to a patient at the end of his life who passed away in the early morning. He had been sick for a long time and chose to be with us for his death, which he knew was coming. 
It sounds like typical end of life fare, maybe. The kind of letter you might expect from a family member or close friend of the deceased after a long hospital or hospice stay. But it wasn't. It was from another patient.  What is even more amazing is that the two men were randomly assigned roommates. But the second man immediately took to assisting the sicker patient and then at the end, keeping silent vigil at his bedside.

A third, younger homeless man had also been taking care of the man before he passed. The third man had met the older man when they were both patients. Once the younger man was discharged, he continued to call and visit daily until the end.

"It's not friendly anymore," the younger homeless man had once said to me. "It's hard on the streets. Mean. But you see the oldtimers and they're all family. Our generation doesn't have that."

But it seems like at least some of them do. And maybe, just maybe it's never too late to make a family.

light and sweet

As an early, early, early birthday present Colleen W. took me to see In The Heights.  ITH is the brain child of Lin-Manuel Miranda,which means I should not have doubted at all that I would love it. But still, I was nervous.

See, Collen loves the show so much that I was afraid it wouldn't live up to her praise and then  I'd be stuck looking for nice things to say about it. "Good... costumes..." I imagined I'd say before pretending to fall asleep for the 4 hour drive home.

But after seeing the show live, I simply can't get it out of my mind. It's been on my ipod nonstop, a dedicated playlist, so I thought I ought to nod to it on the blog a bit. The show is fresh, fun, moving and really catchy.

The multi-level set impressed me
with its depth and detail

Plot wise, the show has just enough principal characters to keep me actively thinking, but not so many that I wasn't invested in the arch of each person's story. Additionally, there are always other characters on stage. Neighbors in windows, strangers walking across the street, other principal characters carrying out their own plot points in street lamp lit pantomime. Watching it, I felt like the constant presence of people on the stage gave the show its own kind of life. It's like the show itself is beating and breathing.

The music, as one would expect from Miranda and Lacamoire is spectacular. Steve Gilbane took the words out of my mouth when he wrote to me that "it pulled off a convincing broadway-latin-rap mix, which I would have thought was impossible." Huge sweeping broadway numbers, heartbreaking "I Wish," and "I Am" songs, and fabulously sexy latin beats. The various musical hooks and themes weave together in sometimes surprising ways to create delightful layering of ideas and emotions (and yes, cultures).

The deliberate repetition of phrases and words throughout the show has a similar effect. Although some of the lyrics stood out as a bit heavy handed ("we're powerLESS, we are POWERless," sing the oppressed residents of Washington Heights when the electricity goes out) all can be forgiven in the far more frequent moments of word play brilliance.  A lot of it (and here I'm thinking mainly of the hip hop) comes across as almost improvised. The irregular syntax of the rapping creates a genuine rap battle feel to certain pieces. The dancing follows the dynamic sound, natch, and there's just as much popping and locking as there is salsa, as there is modern movement.

Plus, I'm a sucker for sad songs, "belters", and well-placed foreign phrases with flare. Abeula Claudia killed me every time she took the focus, and sometimes even when she didn't.

As a writer I appreciate that the story doesn't wrap up like a fairy tale. Or maybe I just appreciate that as a person.

As we were leaving, the conductor stood up to stretch and Colleen grabbed my arm. "That's Alex Lacamoire" she hissed. As it turns out, we got to hear the show as orchestrated by the Musical Director himself The music conducted just as it is intended to be played!*  

Colleen with Christopher Jackson

Then, outside the stage door Colleen and I got to met some of the cast. I got Courtney Reed's autograph. She usually plays Carla, but I got to see her as Vanessa. Colleen got her photo taken with Christopher Jackson.

Meanwhile, my awareness of Lin-Manuel Miranda and the work he's doing just sky rocketed.

This is him performing "Hamilton Mixtape" with Alex Lacamoire at the White House:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/lin-manuel-miranda-performs-white-house-poetry-jam-8-8

*Incidentally, (and here a shameless plug) the audiences at Gorefest get the very same privilege!!

an append

On Monday night I stood outside of The Barking Crab pressing my cell phone to my ear because my Mom had called. I knew if I waited until dinner was over to call back she'd be in bed.

"I just read your blog. Are you sure it was me?" she laughed as she thought about the story all over again.

"I thought it was you..."

"I didn't try to cheat. That sounds like your father."

"Come to think of it, maybe he sang it. But you told me why he was singing it quietly. You knew what he was doing."

We both laughed again, "Yeah that sounds right."

Encore! Encore!

When I was growing up my parents would often have friends over for dinner.
If the guests brought their own children it meant hours of adventures, ghost stories and pranks. But even when my friends were home with babysitters, these were special nights.

For dinner we'd eat steak tips, or prime rib or some other treat. Sometimes a few of Dad's friends would come over all on one night with their wives and they'd all buy lobsters. But often it was just Dad and Mom and Lenny and Mal, (or Chris and John, or Martha and Marcus, or Sue and George) and we'd eat until no one could eat anymore. When their friends were over there was usually a real dessert.  We'd have a pie or monkey bread as though it were Christmastime and not just another Sunday night in July.

After dinner everyone would sit and drink and tell funny stories about when Dad and his friends were younger. Sometimes they'd play poker for nickels and quarters and Mom would say to me and Brian, "Go brush your teeth and we'll be up to tuck you in." Those nights I went without much fuss because card games bored me. Mom and Dad would each slip into my room to kiss me goodnight and I would drift off to sleep to the sounds of Oldies 103.3 on the radio and the grownups laughing as they bet small change in the kitchen.

But some nights after dinner Dad would go to the den and open the closet. That's when I knew to start begging permission to stay up. They were going to play a board game.

I knew how to play every game in that closet: Jenga, Go to The Head of the Class, Battleship, Trivial Pursuit, Trivial Pursuit: Disney Edition, Trivial Pursuit: Genius Edition, Trivial Pursuit: Silver Screen Edition, Scrabble and Taboo. For years, I was never my own player, I was always someone's "helper," but I didn't mind. I'd stay, wearing my Little Mermaid pajamas, sitting on my knees for added height next to Mom or Dad as moths flew against the screen door and the stove clock logged minutes past my forgotten bedtime.
The very best game in the closet was called Encore.

In Encore, when a card is drawn and a word is read off, you need to sing songs that contain the word in the lyrics. You have to sing a seven word phrase at least, thank you very much. Then the other team does the same thing. Both teams battle back and forth until they run out of songs, or time.

For a child, I was pretty good at Encore because even then I had a memory for lyrics above all other things.  Mom was even better because she knew more songs than I did.

One night Mom and I were a team together. The word on the card was "brown"; we had already sung one song, the other team countered with a song, and it was our turn again. The other team was happy because no one could think of another song with the color brown in it. The tiny white sand grains in the chintzy hourglass were running out. Then, quietly, almost inaudibly, Mom began to sing, "the old brown mare, she ain't what she used to be..."  The other team sighed and shook their heads, now they would have to come up with yet another song to beat us. Mom had sung past seven words but I was so excited at our obvious victory that I joined in at the top of my lungs, "-AIN'T WHAT SHE USED TO BE! AIN'T WHAT SHE USED TO BE!  THE OLD BROWN MARE SHE-"

Mom grimaced. Right. Brian was sleeping after all.

"Wait a minute," Mal rejoined, "isn't it 'the old grey mare?'"

Mom smiled pointedly at me, sideways. "That's why I was trying to sing it quietly."

"Oh. I thought it really was a brown mare. It sounded good as a brown mare."

Mom and I probably won anyway. At least that's how I remember it.