Ladies and Gentlemen, That's the End of the Story . . .

[collisionwork]

Oh, and I'm "gloomy" currently (as defined in LiveJournal emotions) because The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage closes tonight, and I would have liked to do it some more.

There was originally the hope that we'd maybe get some more shows in - a small extension in July or something - which I thought was probably unlikely, but at least possible, given the difficulty in getting together all 20 members of the cast at one time. Unfortunately, the expense of renting the costumes has made it impossible - there's no way we could spend the money for them again right now.

Ambersons has wound up the most expensive show I've ever done - close to double the nearest ones in the history of GCW (Ian W. Hill's Hamlet and Temptation). There the expenses were mainly for rehearsal space, here it was for the costumes. I keep feeling odd about spending the money, but the show needed those costumes, and we had the money, and (as both Berit and Timothy Reynolds have reminded me) the money is GCW money - from our new credit line and donations - and can't be spent on anything other than our shows, so it's not like it used to be, where it was B & I's funds, and spending too much on a show meant having our phone shut off, or almost no money for food, or not having necessary dental work or car repair (which has almost always been the case anyway, even on that cheaper level - if we had any cash, it went into the show). As it is, GCW owes B & I money now that we put into the project from our own pockets rather than the company's.

Wish we got to do it more . . . Tuesday night was beautiful, just beautiful. The show was good to start with, just gets better. Maybe in another year and a half when AEA Showcase Code regs allow me to bring it back, I will. I'd like to do it more now, but this was a kinda long-standing dream project of mine, a folly that The Film Festival "allowed" me to indulge, and once this run ends, I wonder if I'll ever have the same passion and drive to get it done as I did now. I'll have other, newer shows on my plate then, I'm sure . . .

Ah well, yes, next shows. Three in August to get back to full-time now. Though I still have to wait a bit as I pick up the pieces of Ambersons - I have to return the costumes and do the books on the show (more immediately, formally, and properly than I once would) - and deal with whatever I have to do this upcoming birthday weekend (I have to take the car in for some minor repair, go to an audition for a special "movie trivia" week on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? - yes, really - and figure out whether I'm going to have to drive up to Maine or not for a few days to deal with getting my driver's license renewed and re-registering the car).

And now it's time to get going on the Ambersons part of the day - programs to print, disposable props to buy - fixes to make (even now) . . .

Back tomorrow.

Comments

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I wish I coulda seen it.

the last walk home

[adam-mcgovern.livejournal.com]

That was worth waiting 70 years for, bro. (I said that to Ivanna and she told me to repeat it.)

Loved the accurate costumes and ephemeral surroundings -- accentuated the feeling of full-blooded ghosts amid transient spaces, even though the reverse usually proves true -- haunting those great, groaning Victorian households, so much sturdier than the lives they were built for, is one of the GF’s and my favorite day trips.

The real-time draw-out of what life the characters do have seems, at this remove, as radical and influential as Citizen Kane’s media-fishbowl form of faux verite -- must have been one of the things the cut-to-the-chase-minded studio thought they were saving us from.

Funny that the happiest ending this comes to is a fulfillment of Jack’s prophecy that everything will live again, to be destroyed again -- I wonder if the ever-prescient Welles could foresee that his own destruction was so close at hand.

It was strange having the two most recent consecutive Ian Hill productions I’ve seen be Hamlet and this; a trans-millennial Oedipal double bill. The tyranny of George, the preyed-on saintliness of Isabel and the sanguine cynicism of Uncle Jack hit home in a life that’s taken some critical wounds from my mom’s unqualified worship of my criminal nephew. Anyway, good job by everyone with Mr. Welles’ dream -- as the play died out, I could swear there was someone else in the room.

Re: the last walk home

[collisionwork]

Thanks so much for the lovely words, Adam.