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Hurry Up and Sit Around
Jun. 2nd, 2006 10:29 amNo full cast meetings for That's What We're Here For (an american pageant) until June 13. Show opens June 17. Not a problem. Well, a problem, but one I've been aware of since the start and ready with the solution, such as it is. I don't like working this way, but I'm used to it by now. You do what you have to, to have the people you want. So, individual meetings with cast members until then, and small group rehearsals of the musical numbers, until we're back in a big room together.
Great meeting with Yvonne last night -- went over character stuff for the show, some physicality, some intentions. Clear and clear. An advantage, I suppose to writing a show around the exact actors who are going to be in it as you're working on it, they get it and are perfect for it right away, just have to fix little things. Of course, working with many of the same actors over and over again who "get it" is an advantage. Sometimes I feel I'm not giving them enough emotionally, that I should be more touchy-feely with them (no, not literally, jesus!), but when I try to do that sometimes I get laughed at -- "What, you think I'm some kind of method actor or something?"
I guess I've got the right people for the right jobs. I just get paranoid. I'm always aware of the fact that while I'd like everybody to be happy working on the show, it's not really important to me as long as they do the job properly. The show comes before anybody's happiness, including my own. Still, some people can't work well if they're miserable, so I try.
So I have blasts of lots of work right now mixed with periods of sitting around with nothing to do because of current lack of money or space or inspiration -- money will be here soon, so we can build the sets/props, but not until early next week; inspiration needed for script-writing sessions -- it's not done yet and I need to finish it by Monday, but the words are only coming in short, violent blasts here and there; I have to be ready for them when they arrive.
So more meetings. Then I'm gone to my 20th year reunion at Northfield Mount Hermon School from Thursday the 8th to Sunday the 11th. Again, knew this was coming, but now it seems in the way as much as I'm looking forward to it. Expensive too, damn it, but 20th high school reunions don't come every day.
Well, Yvonne showed me so many great dresses/costume pieces for the show last night, too, so I'm happy about how things will look that way. She's saved my butt on this bit as she did on World Gone Wrong last year. So I feel I can leave off worrying on that part. It's all gonna come together, just a lot of the standard unpleasantness to come between Berit and I as we fight over the best ways to do the nuts-and-bolts work. Never good, but I'm used to it by now.
Idea for the next big show on the way to Yvonne's last night. Assembly. I was reading a book about the making of the film of The Wizard of Oz on the subway, very detailed about the assembly line procedure of making films under the studio system, and the strangeness of the creation of artwork through committee struck me, and then by extension, the strangeness of the assembly line in general. So, forms of assembly -- grouping, collage, the creation of art, tools, consumer goods . . . as opposed to the singular idea at the start of it all. Person in landscape. Landscape of industry. Industry of many hands. Metal. Paint. Clay. Celluloid. Tom Reid maybe as a Louis B. Mayer figure, with Ken Simon as a Benny Thau/Mervyn LeRoy sidekick/toady. Someone as a "Henry Ford?" Cass Gilbert and Woolworth building the Woolworth Building?
"Assembly." Kids in a school auditorium, bored, called together to watch a presentation of how groups work together. Now, children, it's time for assembly. Please rise for the flag salute. Mr. Schwitters is going to assemble something for you now. It's a painting, and he's going to nail it together.
I'd forgotten Herman J. Mankiewicz was the first writer on Oz. Of many. Some of his ideas still in the final film, most importantly, that Kansas=black-and-white, Oz=Technicolor. Use that somehow?
Okay, let that bubble. I've got at least two other shows to take care of first. Thinking about other future ones helps steady one about the current ones though. Keep it back there somewhere, working, while you get this one properly together. There's always another, and there's always the current one. Now what, until tonight's meetings?
Great meeting with Yvonne last night -- went over character stuff for the show, some physicality, some intentions. Clear and clear. An advantage, I suppose to writing a show around the exact actors who are going to be in it as you're working on it, they get it and are perfect for it right away, just have to fix little things. Of course, working with many of the same actors over and over again who "get it" is an advantage. Sometimes I feel I'm not giving them enough emotionally, that I should be more touchy-feely with them (no, not literally, jesus!), but when I try to do that sometimes I get laughed at -- "What, you think I'm some kind of method actor or something?"
I guess I've got the right people for the right jobs. I just get paranoid. I'm always aware of the fact that while I'd like everybody to be happy working on the show, it's not really important to me as long as they do the job properly. The show comes before anybody's happiness, including my own. Still, some people can't work well if they're miserable, so I try.
So I have blasts of lots of work right now mixed with periods of sitting around with nothing to do because of current lack of money or space or inspiration -- money will be here soon, so we can build the sets/props, but not until early next week; inspiration needed for script-writing sessions -- it's not done yet and I need to finish it by Monday, but the words are only coming in short, violent blasts here and there; I have to be ready for them when they arrive.
So more meetings. Then I'm gone to my 20th year reunion at Northfield Mount Hermon School from Thursday the 8th to Sunday the 11th. Again, knew this was coming, but now it seems in the way as much as I'm looking forward to it. Expensive too, damn it, but 20th high school reunions don't come every day.
Well, Yvonne showed me so many great dresses/costume pieces for the show last night, too, so I'm happy about how things will look that way. She's saved my butt on this bit as she did on World Gone Wrong last year. So I feel I can leave off worrying on that part. It's all gonna come together, just a lot of the standard unpleasantness to come between Berit and I as we fight over the best ways to do the nuts-and-bolts work. Never good, but I'm used to it by now.
Idea for the next big show on the way to Yvonne's last night. Assembly. I was reading a book about the making of the film of The Wizard of Oz on the subway, very detailed about the assembly line procedure of making films under the studio system, and the strangeness of the creation of artwork through committee struck me, and then by extension, the strangeness of the assembly line in general. So, forms of assembly -- grouping, collage, the creation of art, tools, consumer goods . . . as opposed to the singular idea at the start of it all. Person in landscape. Landscape of industry. Industry of many hands. Metal. Paint. Clay. Celluloid. Tom Reid maybe as a Louis B. Mayer figure, with Ken Simon as a Benny Thau/Mervyn LeRoy sidekick/toady. Someone as a "Henry Ford?" Cass Gilbert and Woolworth building the Woolworth Building?
"Assembly." Kids in a school auditorium, bored, called together to watch a presentation of how groups work together. Now, children, it's time for assembly. Please rise for the flag salute. Mr. Schwitters is going to assemble something for you now. It's a painting, and he's going to nail it together.
I'd forgotten Herman J. Mankiewicz was the first writer on Oz. Of many. Some of his ideas still in the final film, most importantly, that Kansas=black-and-white, Oz=Technicolor. Use that somehow?
Okay, let that bubble. I've got at least two other shows to take care of first. Thinking about other future ones helps steady one about the current ones though. Keep it back there somewhere, working, while you get this one properly together. There's always another, and there's always the current one. Now what, until tonight's meetings?
