A Labor Day Weekend for the Record Books
Wow... So, someone pinch me and tell me that this past weekend was only three days long. Because I could have sworn it lasted at least a full week. Surely no shorter period of time could have held as much loveliness and perfection as I have experienced since last Friday.
Friday started out intense, as the last day in a long and hectic week at the theatre involving lots of last-minute, complicated script revisions, some intensive Tartuffe dramaturgy, highly involved editing of the Stick Fly program and online resource guide, script logging, script reading, and a variety of other literary and dramaturgical tasks--all very fun and enlightening, fortunately, but certainly sufficient to keep me plenty busy all week long. I also had a couple of chances to babysit the darling three-year-old son of playwright Lydia Diamond. This little boy knows all the words to Annie's "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow" and belts them unashamedly if you ask him to. It's adorable. And then we went to this fountain on the other side of the campus and he spent over an hour contentedly splashing around in it, as I waded along behind him, which was pretty hilarious. The play is coming together well, and we actually start previews in a couple of days, which is kind of insane. But I'm looking forward to seeing it fully fleshed/lit/costumed out.
At the very end of the day I dashed out to deliver McCarter newsletters to local businesses, which would ideally have been done earlier in the week except for the insanity of tech week made this impossible, and so I didn't have nearly enough time to hit everywhere I was supposed to, but I did my best... And just after 6 I took off to head out to Baltimore, where Ira, a friend and fellow playwright I met this past June at the conference up in Alaska (who is also in a band, called Even So--you can check out their myspace if you want to hear their music--it's lots of fun), was having a show which I had made plans to come out and see. It's just under a three-hour drive from P-ton to B-more, and despite the fact that as far as I can tell the state of Delaware consists of little more than five straight miles of impenetrable traffic snarls, I managed to make it into town just in time to catch the band performing.
It was a really fun show, with a couple of other cool groups as well, in a funky little venue with all these hip intellectual East Coast kids, and generally just an excellent night. The next morning Ira had a ten-minute play being read at the Kennedy Center, which is this playwright development center in Washington DC, so I stuck around to check that out as well. He started this playwrights group of Baltimore a while back, and they were putting up twelve ten-minutes, each of which contained, at some point in the script, mention of both a whistle and a naked light bulb. Some interesting stuff.
We also saw a reading of an INCREDIBLE solo performance piece by this writer/performer named Josh Lefkowitz, which was hilarious and spot-on and brilliant, and all about being a playwright and trying to write in the wake of having just finished a really successful first performance piece and not really having any ideas, and also about relationships, and it was perhaps one of the most engaging pieces of theatre I've experienced in a while, which was way fun. (If you want to hear me rant about it some more (and honestly, if you're reading this you've obviously got some sort of sadomasochistic fascination with my interminable rambling) you can check out the McCarter blog (which I tend to post on once or twice a week because Adam, who is in charge of making sure it gets updated regularly, is in my department and too nice a guy to refuse when he comes in worried about how he can't find anybody to write an entry). You should check it out, especially if you're interested in finding out more about what I get up to at work. You should also look at this interview I conducted with Stick Fly director Shirley Jo Finney, because she's pretty deep and amazing and it's a really fun interview. Also the web design is quite pretty to look at. Anyway, end of lengthy McCarter-website-plug interjection...)
We also got a chance to walk around DC a bit, which was cool because I've never been out there, and it was an absolutely gorgeous day--incredible sunset over the river, the monuments lit up in the deepening dusk. Glorious. And the next morning we went out to this park in Towson down by the water, with beautiful trees and a very restful aura of natural, scenic peace, and it was just a truly lovely experience.
Then it was time for me to drive back to Princeton, so I could catch a train up to New York City, where I was scheduled to cover a show on behalf of the theatre. It was an interesting show, plus instead of regular audience chairs they had these incredibly comfy cushy sofas to sit in, so that was pretty amazing. And then afterwards I got a call from Kate Fox who was just getting settled back into her dorm apartment, so I met up with her and we caught up, which was fabulous, and I spent the night at her place.
The next morning I dashed out to catch an early train back to Princeton (which I missed by precisely one minute--darn subway delays!), and when I finally made it back into town I darted home, rapidly reorganized myself, and headed out of the apartment once more, this time setting off towards the Jersey shore in the company of five other McCarter interns. The head of the Marketing department had incredibly generously invited us to spend the day at his parents' beach house, and oh my goodness, this poor recently-ocean-deprived San Diego girl was ecstatic at the sight of white sand and rolling surf. Mmm. I could have sat on that beach forever, despite the mild but constant sting of horizontally wind-borne sand.
Alas, eventually we did have to depart and head back into Princeton so we could get to work the next day, but even the drive home was an excellent one, with some quality intern-bonding conversation in my car with my roommate Raegan and Rachel the education intern. All of this year's interns are really cool people, and we've bonded quite well thus far, and have had a couple of movie nights and fun evenings out to the ice cream shop or a local bar, which has all been quite excellent. I am really hard-pressed to imagine ways in which this whole situation could be much more ideal.
Anyway, basically it was a pretty incredible weekend, and I kind of can't believe how much happened in such a quantitatively short space of time. All very good, though. I am very happy to be out here, and I am currently kind of in a state of awe about how many things have fallen into place in my life this year in some pretty amazing and unexpected ways. Wishes of similar moments of contentedness, appreciation of life's beauty, and feelings of rightness in the lives of each of you reading this, and all those who aren't but who nevertheless hold a special place in my heart and mind. Much love to you all.
Friday started out intense, as the last day in a long and hectic week at the theatre involving lots of last-minute, complicated script revisions, some intensive Tartuffe dramaturgy, highly involved editing of the Stick Fly program and online resource guide, script logging, script reading, and a variety of other literary and dramaturgical tasks--all very fun and enlightening, fortunately, but certainly sufficient to keep me plenty busy all week long. I also had a couple of chances to babysit the darling three-year-old son of playwright Lydia Diamond. This little boy knows all the words to Annie's "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow" and belts them unashamedly if you ask him to. It's adorable. And then we went to this fountain on the other side of the campus and he spent over an hour contentedly splashing around in it, as I waded along behind him, which was pretty hilarious. The play is coming together well, and we actually start previews in a couple of days, which is kind of insane. But I'm looking forward to seeing it fully fleshed/lit/costumed out.
At the very end of the day I dashed out to deliver McCarter newsletters to local businesses, which would ideally have been done earlier in the week except for the insanity of tech week made this impossible, and so I didn't have nearly enough time to hit everywhere I was supposed to, but I did my best... And just after 6 I took off to head out to Baltimore, where Ira, a friend and fellow playwright I met this past June at the conference up in Alaska (who is also in a band, called Even So--you can check out their myspace if you want to hear their music--it's lots of fun), was having a show which I had made plans to come out and see. It's just under a three-hour drive from P-ton to B-more, and despite the fact that as far as I can tell the state of Delaware consists of little more than five straight miles of impenetrable traffic snarls, I managed to make it into town just in time to catch the band performing.
It was a really fun show, with a couple of other cool groups as well, in a funky little venue with all these hip intellectual East Coast kids, and generally just an excellent night. The next morning Ira had a ten-minute play being read at the Kennedy Center, which is this playwright development center in Washington DC, so I stuck around to check that out as well. He started this playwrights group of Baltimore a while back, and they were putting up twelve ten-minutes, each of which contained, at some point in the script, mention of both a whistle and a naked light bulb. Some interesting stuff.
We also saw a reading of an INCREDIBLE solo performance piece by this writer/performer named Josh Lefkowitz, which was hilarious and spot-on and brilliant, and all about being a playwright and trying to write in the wake of having just finished a really successful first performance piece and not really having any ideas, and also about relationships, and it was perhaps one of the most engaging pieces of theatre I've experienced in a while, which was way fun. (If you want to hear me rant about it some more (and honestly, if you're reading this you've obviously got some sort of sadomasochistic fascination with my interminable rambling) you can check out the McCarter blog (which I tend to post on once or twice a week because Adam, who is in charge of making sure it gets updated regularly, is in my department and too nice a guy to refuse when he comes in worried about how he can't find anybody to write an entry). You should check it out, especially if you're interested in finding out more about what I get up to at work. You should also look at this interview I conducted with Stick Fly director Shirley Jo Finney, because she's pretty deep and amazing and it's a really fun interview. Also the web design is quite pretty to look at. Anyway, end of lengthy McCarter-website-plug interjection...)
We also got a chance to walk around DC a bit, which was cool because I've never been out there, and it was an absolutely gorgeous day--incredible sunset over the river, the monuments lit up in the deepening dusk. Glorious. And the next morning we went out to this park in Towson down by the water, with beautiful trees and a very restful aura of natural, scenic peace, and it was just a truly lovely experience.
Then it was time for me to drive back to Princeton, so I could catch a train up to New York City, where I was scheduled to cover a show on behalf of the theatre. It was an interesting show, plus instead of regular audience chairs they had these incredibly comfy cushy sofas to sit in, so that was pretty amazing. And then afterwards I got a call from Kate Fox who was just getting settled back into her dorm apartment, so I met up with her and we caught up, which was fabulous, and I spent the night at her place.
The next morning I dashed out to catch an early train back to Princeton (which I missed by precisely one minute--darn subway delays!), and when I finally made it back into town I darted home, rapidly reorganized myself, and headed out of the apartment once more, this time setting off towards the Jersey shore in the company of five other McCarter interns. The head of the Marketing department had incredibly generously invited us to spend the day at his parents' beach house, and oh my goodness, this poor recently-ocean-deprived San Diego girl was ecstatic at the sight of white sand and rolling surf. Mmm. I could have sat on that beach forever, despite the mild but constant sting of horizontally wind-borne sand.
Alas, eventually we did have to depart and head back into Princeton so we could get to work the next day, but even the drive home was an excellent one, with some quality intern-bonding conversation in my car with my roommate Raegan and Rachel the education intern. All of this year's interns are really cool people, and we've bonded quite well thus far, and have had a couple of movie nights and fun evenings out to the ice cream shop or a local bar, which has all been quite excellent. I am really hard-pressed to imagine ways in which this whole situation could be much more ideal.
Anyway, basically it was a pretty incredible weekend, and I kind of can't believe how much happened in such a quantitatively short space of time. All very good, though. I am very happy to be out here, and I am currently kind of in a state of awe about how many things have fallen into place in my life this year in some pretty amazing and unexpected ways. Wishes of similar moments of contentedness, appreciation of life's beauty, and feelings of rightness in the lives of each of you reading this, and all those who aren't but who nevertheless hold a special place in my heart and mind. Much love to you all.
posted by the Everyday Anthropologist at 8:31 PM
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