Melo-Dee-Dee-Dee-Dee-Dee-Dee...

I keep listening to Merrily We Roll Along, and the more I listen, the more I like and appreciate it. The lyrics are actually rather clever, and it has a lot of really nice moments. I especially love when they meet with the producer Joe and play some of their numbers for him, and this is his (sung) response:

That's great...
That's swell...
The other stuff, as well!
It isn't every day
I hear a score this strong.
But fellas, if I may,
There's only one thing wrong:

There's not a tune you can hum.
There's not a tune you go bum-bum-bum-di-dum!
You need a tune to go bum-bum-bum--di-dum!
Gimme a melody!

Why can'tcha throw 'em a crumb?
What's wrong with lettin'em tap their toes a bit?
I'll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit.
Gimme a melody!

Oh, sure,
I know--
It's not that "kind of show".
But can'tcha have a score
That's kinda in-between?
Here, play a little more--
I'll show you what I mean.

(they play some more)

Listen, boys--
Maybe it's just me,
But that's not a humm-a-muh-mumm-a-muh-mumm-able
Melody!

Write more! Work hard!
Leave yer name with the girl.
Less avant-garde!
Leave yer name with the girl.
Just write a plain old melo-
(to the tune of "Some Enchanted Evening"...off-key)
Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee...
Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee...

Anyway, onto other things...I really buckled down this week and got most of my work done, so today it's pretty easy sailing. Now, if I can just force myself to exercise regularly...

Another round of Macbeth starting tonight! Apparently, we've got huge crowds coming, which will be great.

Now that I've finished my final re-write of Semblable (I may make minor revisions here and there, still)...time to pick up Beauty once more. I just need to keep picking away at the second act until I've got it done. So far, I'm liking the structure I've got going a lot better. The music feels less spare...which, for a second act, you usually want less music than the first, but before the music just mostly felt like transitional stuff, and everything happened too fast. There wasn't enough "meat" which was a problem when you have a second act that takes a whole different turn than the first. I've got to create enough level of development and new themes to justify having a whole new "concept" and setting in the second act, as the dreamscape.

But right now, it starts, as usual with the transition into the dreamscape: the police investigation seguing into a solo by Madame Fairfield coping with her despair by living "for a dream", and then of course Kathy and Christopher's duet together, which I like. I start the second act that way having an entirely new theme and song. I do use that theme ONCE late in the first act, but it's just a little bit, and it's incidental music, not a song.

Then, we've got the nice scene with Kathy finishing her novel and being in love with Christopher and dancing...

Empathos makes his presence and sets the mood for their dance, as he sings along with the Frank Sinatra that's playing...

The next sequence I've got is the whole "Success" sequence, and I've made it definitely feel more like a big, long musical sequence showing everything that's going great for Kathy and Chris.

Then I transition into the "Empathos and Necra" sequence showing what's become of Madame Fairfield, tormented by Empathos and Necra, and her dream of The Strange Man more or less raping her as Kathy signs the contract for the book. That, too, feels like a better, longer sequence. Empathos and Necra both have more of a presence and are better defined. They even have their own little mini-sequences where we hear them sing dissonant versions of themes previously heard (but only as incidental music, once again).

This is what the "song/musical sequence" list would look like for Beauty, I think...

Act I

Opening: The Sadist
"I Don't Know You"
"Contact"
Tension Floating (Rachel and Christopher)
1st Poem / "Very Different Lives"
The Next Chapter / "Words in the Darkness" / The Master's Warning
Tension Bursting (Rachel and Christopher II)
The Seduction
2nd Poem / "Falling Away"
The Birthday Party / Kathy's Cry
"What I Wish"
"Beauty"

Act II

Opening: The Masochist
"Close Your Eyes"
Townsend's Rave / "Success"
The Ballad of Empathos and Necra
"Malicious"
The Fate of Madame Fairfield
"Beauty" (reprise)
Finale

Yay, party at Trude's tonight! I wonder how many of the Shelterskelter people will be there - maybe Steve Krambeck will even be there. Who knows? Or as Melanie calls him, "Jesus."

The Photogenic Pain

Yeah...freaky or what??? Don't ask. Halloween/novelty stores never have costumes in my size (unless I go to an expensive actual costume shop), so I decided to buy the most ecclectic array of pieces I could find, to best hurt the eyes and please the Thantos drive. I actually had makeup in addition to this, too - like pale, ghoulish makeup...

Anyhoo...

I'm going to try and work on the RTG site this week. I'm psyched. We've got our own site, yeah!!! Does that rock or what? Did I just say "Does that rock?" I sound like Melanie. Not that that's a bad thing. Unless you're Bizarro-Melanie, Melanie's antithesis.

Today was decent. Got quite a bit at work caught up, at least. Voicemail Hell!!! Speaking of hell, Joel's friends are running all over the house right now causing a ruckus. And of course Eric's dad is just shouting unintelligably at them, like another pissed off child...so whatever...Pancakes, anyone?

By the way - try a honeycrisp apple. Seriously, they're like twice as expensive as other apples, but you'll be glad you did, trust me. It's like eating fruit of the gods. Okay, now I sound retarded......

I SOUND retarded??? Yeah, good one, Eric, cuz you know, look at that picture, there.......

Anyway, I think we need to clean up. We need to do a lot of things. Man, I have a shit-ton of people to visit and hang out with, make time for:

1) Mom and Dad
2) Paternal grandparents
3) Maternal grandmother
4) Kris Byars
5) Zach and April
6) My Lincoln friends (ex co-workers, and I miss them)

Well, one thing at a time. One thing at a time...

Here...from Merrily We Roll Along (a highly underrated musical)

"It started out like a song
It started quiet and slow, with no surprise
And then one morning I woke to realize
We had a good thing going

It's not that nothing went wrong
Some angry moments, of course, but just a few
And only moments, at that, because we knew
We had this good thing going

And if I wanted too much
Was that such
A mistake
At the time?
You never wanted enough
All right, tough!
I don't make
That a crime

And while it's going along
You take for granted some love will slip away
We took for granted a lot, but still I say
It could have kept on growing
Instead of just kept on

We had a good thing going...
Going...
Gone."

Getting Paid!?

Woohoo! I finally get to do my first paid theatre gig (at least that I can remember, I don't THINK I've gotten paid before) on Saturday.

Suzanne Withem called me up the other day and said she was doing something through The Rose for this Victorian society of old ladies. It's basically a readers-theatre event of short scenes adapted from Victorian gothic literature, such as "The Raven" or Wuthering Heights, etc. She was in desperate need of a male actor, so I said yes. It's only a couple hours of rehearsal, and the performance is only about an hour on Saturday, and I get paid $75. Hey, that's not bad for a few hours worth of work, really.

In other things...you know, I wonder if I weird people out with how analytical I am of scripts. I don't do it to make them boring or critique them - on the contrary, I enjoy analyzing theatre. In most cases, it makes me enjoy the play MORE than before. Like I see whole new layers that make me appreciate it thematically, and I see structure and the beauty of the "music" of it, I guess...the mathematical structure.

"Mathematical structure," I know that sounds boring...but I actually love things like that, b/c although most people don't realize it, there is mathematical structure in nearly everything. A lot of people think that finding structure takes something away from the "art" of things, but I completely disagree...when I see how amazingly structured things are, it only increases the amazement and beauty, for me. Just the fact that the universe is so perfectly designed, with insanely complex rhythms, harmonies and measurements...and all so precise. When I pick apart a work of art, I can see a reflection of that amazing structure, a sort of Sub-Creation...

Anyway, before I get too deep into it, all moonbeams and crystals...

For instance, there's a sort of...symphonic...structure to Angels in America that I just love. The thematic rise and flow and arc of it captivates me. Let me give a prime example:

The character of the Angel, thematically, is a reflection of many major things going on not only in Prior's heart and mind, but nationally as well. But I'm going to focus on the Prior part...he's severely sick with AIDS and his boyfriend has abandoned him in this time of need, and he's terrified not only by this abandonment but also of Time and the future and, of course, death. The Angel offers him Stasis - there is all this fear and guilt going through his mind about his life and where it has led him to, and the Angel tells him "Stop moving". The Angel fills a need, but what's very interesting about her appearance is this...

You see, Prior's boyfriend, Louis, abandons him and ends up having an affair with Joe, a married Mormon man whose wife, Harper, has a Valium addiction...well, in early in the story, before they are both abandoned, but while that fear is there...these two "victims" of the affair meet, in a way.

Prior has a dream and Harper has a Valium-induced hallucination, and they meet in the mutual dreamscape. It is in this mutual dream/hallucination that Harper realizes (from Prior) that Joe is secretly homosexual, and also Harper tells Prior that she can see, deep within him, that the innermost part of him is entirely free of disease...

After Harper vanishes from the dreamscape, leaving Prior alone, THAT is when the Angel's presence is first felt...she does not manifest yet, but Prior hears her voice for the first time, speaking to him...It is very well-placed and interesting that the Angel's voice is first heard in this scene, almost as if to suggest that the Angel is the manifestation of something filling the need created by Prior and Harper's meeting.

This comes full circle...

The Angel does not actually manifest or "appear" until the end of the first play, Millennium Approaches...her "appearance" before Prior in his bed coincides with another moment...simultaneously, that same evening, Louis (his boyfriend) and Joe (Harper's husband) finally hook up and kiss at night in the park. The Angel manifests to Prior following this moment.

It just speaks amazingly of Tony Kushner's orchestration of the details in this play, making it "symphonic" in a way, with themes that build and move and mix together. The Angel's message to Prior in his dreams about God abandoning Heaven as humanity "progressed too much" completes this circle showing Prior's pain from being abandoned.

There is a moment I really love which is only in the STAGE version...it was sadly cut from the HBO film...later in the story, Prior meets Harper in real life, and although they don't know each other, they have a strange feeling of recognition when they see each other, even though they don't know why.

The theme is further explored in the character of Harper. The Angel in Prior's dreams tells him that humanity is unraveling the fabric of the universe and that they are headed for destruction...well, Harper has a fixation about the ozone layer, hearing radio news about the hole in the ozone over Antarctica...and she has a line early in the play about how "humans are like planets, you need a thick skin..." and she feels like she is unravelled without a "skin" much like the planet and the ozone unraveling. She has all these feelings of eminent doom and worry because of how much she loves Joe and she knows something isn't right...

In the end, when she finally leaves Joe and has re-claimed her independence and herself as a human, she has a beautiful monologue about a dream she had...about the ozone being worn and threadbare, but that she saw souls of people from the earth flying into the air and joining together, becoming ozone and healing the planet...and the line I love is that she says she saw this in her dream, "...because of my unique ability to see such things..." her hallucinations, etc., and this comes back around, once more, to her mutual dream/hallucination with Prior where she looks at him and realizes that there is a part of him, deep inside, that is free of disease...free of pain and full of life.

Anyway...that's enough for now.

She has eight 'ginas...

Yessir, the Angel of America has eight vaginas and is also hermaphroditically equipped with a bouquet of phalli...

Don't look at me crazy. I didn't write it. Tony Kushner did.

If anyone is interested (all three of you who read my blog), I have posted both Semblable and Acrobat scripts on my web page now:

http://www.geocities.com/pisces26eric/plays.html

You can view a couple other short scripts there, too, although there are a couple where the links don't work b/c I still have to re-type those plays (I have hard copies, but the computer files were lost after my other computer crashed).

I suppose I could always scan...no, what am I saying, that would be one huge-ass image document.

I'm listening to the soundtrack to Angels in America. It's all very pretty. There's this track I want to use in Semblable, though, b/c I think the effect would be funny - the music is very suspenseful and dramatic, and it would counterpoint nicely with the comical battle of nonsense words between Miss Blable and Nichole. I also managed to find an mp3 of "Rich Man's Frug" to use for the Act Two opening crazy dance that they do.

Speaking of crazy dances, if you want to see that dance sequence from the movie version of Sweet Charity, go to www.youtube.com and search for "Rich Man's Frug". My friend Meg giggled when she saw it and said the first words that popped into her head as she watched the people dance were, "Hey, everyone! Let's do the Sexual Chicken!"

My schedule's gonna be crazy again...well, not AS crazy as two weeks ago, but still...Suzanne called me up and asked me if I could do a Readers' Theatre thing for the Rose...it's this Halloween thing down at some cemetery in north Omaha....yeah, cemetery in North O...that sounds foreboding.

So basically, here's my week:

Tuesday: Rehearsal for readers theater at The Rose at 6pm
Wednesday: Brush-up rehearsal for Arsenic at BSB at 7pm
Thursday: Rehearsal for readers theatre at The Rose at 6pm, and then costume shopping at Mangelsen's with Mel and Eric at 8:30pm
Friday: "Arsenic" performance
Saturday: The Rose thing down at foreboding cemetery at, I think she said, 1:30-ish, then "Arsenic" later that evening

So, there's not enough time for me to do stuff at work and at theatre and recover from it all, and just have the days I just want to veg out. When did I become so tired??? Seriously, I have all these things I want to get done - have a nice, clean place to live, lead an organized life, work out and be healthy, prepare home-cooked meals, go interesting new places like parks or historical places, etc.........but I never have the energy to DO these things. Like I come home from work every day, or the plays...and all I ever feel like doing is sitting around and just zoning out for a while.

And I have a fucking cold sore right now, which really sucks. Hurry up, Abreva, and do your job! You're not working fast enough!

On a good note, I had an avocado last night. And today, chicken soup!

Know what's good? Martha's Vineyard salad at Arby's. Seriously, go try it, it's awesome...dark lettuce, fresh apple cubes, dried cranberries, grape tomatoes, sliced almonds, and raspberry vinaigrette.

Go try it, bitch-bastards!!

All I Ask is Bullshit in Moderation...

I'm going to maim someone. I hate working at understaffed companies. I hate executives. I hate them and their too-fucking-high salaries that cause the company to be understaffed.

You know how frustrated I am right now? Do you???

I just snapped every pen at my desk in half...I have...had...about 6 of them.

And then I have one of those squishy foam stress ball things...yeah, I destroyed it...tore it first by ripping a huge piece off with my teeth and then ripping it piece by piece from the inside with my hands.

I hate how retarded afdfasfastrkljaklegnsdm,fngfad............okay, I had to do that, it just sorta came in the middle of my thoughts that I needed to release more stress by pressing a whole bunch of keys.

I'm thinking of just asking my staffing agency to find me something else. But I don't know. I hate everything.

I had a dream this morning that Eric and I accidentally drove off a bridge into a river. And something else about travelling all over the place, trying to find something and not going the right way...so finally, we take a wrong turn and drive off a bridge into the river. I woke up before we hit the water, but I did feel the free-falling part.

I want to kill the motherfucker who invented the word "fiscal".

Is it lunch time yet? All I have are fucking Chef Boy'Ar...however it's fucking spelled...Chef B.......fuck it, I'm going to Wendy's and getting me a huge ass burger.

The salt orders can wait. So can the stupid insurance certificates.

I hate a nice dinner at Red Lobster yesterday, though:

Grilled Tilapia
Baked Potato
Veggies
Cheddar biscuits (freshly made, too)
Caesar salad

Those things are good.

Right now, everything else can go to hell.