Our good friend from Pinehurst, North Carolina is back. 

One of the joys of working at a school is that you get to watch young people grow up.  Even though I’m not technically a teacher I still interact with students on a daily basis – rescuing a lost term paper, helping with a project, or hiring on student summer help. 

I met Tyler before I even worked at the school, actually.  When I was working at the Y, there was this teenage boy, about thirteen or fourteen, who was mad for lifting weights.  He would sneak in the back door and down to the free weight room – where no one under fifteen was allowed – and lift weights.  I ended up sharing all of my Muscle and Fitness magazines with him so he could actually have some organization to the process.

Later I went to work at the school, and we ran into each other.  We immediately hit it off again, talking about his lifting regime and the difference between practical strength and what body builders do.  He would come by my office and eat his protein and talk about life, the universe, and everything.  One summer he was looking for a job, so I hired him to help install the new computers.  He was over the moon – it was his first job.  He was so excited about it – to actually have his own pocket money – it was infectious and you had to be excited for him as well.  The other student workers were not happy about him working for us.  I never found out for sure if Tyler really had Asperger’s, but he sure seemed like it.  He had no ability to pick up on non-verbal cues, he had no subtlety and he was very literal in every sense.  On his first day of work he told me where he kept his seizure medication.  He said it would probably never come up, but he wanted to make sure someone knew about it.  Again, I’m not sure what the medical condition was, I didn’t want to pry.  He drove the others mad.  They claimed he had a temper and I’d just never seen it.  Perhaps I coddled him, but you know I never caught him off in a closet taking a nap during work hours, either, like I did the others.  He was excited to come to work every day and he worked hard, although he also drove my boss mad, being Asperger-ish.  He didn’t do very well with generic instructions.  But he was a good kid and I liked him. 

Often times in the summer he would walk to work – a little over two miles each way.  It’s hot in Texas but I never remember him complaining about it.  I would usually give him a lift home. 

His junior year he played football for the first time - nose tackle.  Knucklehead, he knew nothing about football, but one of the coaches wanted him to work on practical strength – lateral movements and such – and thought this might be a way for him to do it.  Plus he probably needed a nose tackle. 

The spring of his senior year he got the opportunity to pitch a film idea to professional producers during the AFI Dallas Film Festival.  I gave him a lift downtown - after I made him change clothes.  Being Asperger-ish... yeah.  He took the “Dress comfortably” literally and was wearing cargo shorts, a polo with the shirt not tucked in, and trainers.  I told him I was fine giving him a lift but he wasn’t going to pitch his film looking like that.  I explained that even if someone tells you to dress comfortably – if the event is important to you, DRESS like it’s important to you.  I watched his pitch and it was really well done. 

He went off to college - Hampshire - to study classics.  He taught himself Greek.  He took transfer courses at Amherst.  When he would come home we would talk about his plans for the future.  He knew studying classics was a dead end but he hoped to study philosophy or classics in graduate school and then become a professor.  We’d also talk about Harry Potter and he wondered how Alan was going to pull off the rather physical scenes in Deathly Hallows.  He was home this past fall and I remember being delighted to see him.  He was graduating this year after having been accepted to UC-Berkeley for graduate school. 

This morning he missed a class.  This was so unlike him his professor sent someone round to his dormitory to fetch him.  They found him there, dead.  As of yet we have no information on why this is.  His mother came to the school to pick up his younger sister.  She was hysterical.  The sister became hysterical.  There is nothing quite like hearing someone cry out with such anguish and pain and have it reverberates through your building... it’s really the most awful thing. 

I keep hoping that I’ve heard wrong, and that I’m typing this for no reason and everyone can have a laugh later at my expense.  But I saw the look on his mother’s face this afternoon, and my hopes for a good laugh later about it are slim.  I keep thinking of his sister, who before lunch was probably just wondering when she could kip off behind a locker to have a snog with her boyfriend. 

Tyler wasn’t a saint by any means.  He was most likely on the Spectrum, and people lose patience with that when they don’t understand it.  He could be exasperating and difficult and sometimes a lunkhead.  But I was always interested to see what sort of man he would grow up to be.  And now he’s gone.  And I miss him terribly already.

This work thing keeps showing up every day.  I guess something has to pay for this bliss.

So far I’m unable to find out any information on whether there will be a Minghella Film Festival this year.  Mrs. Minghella said in her New Year’s card to me that she was looking forward to seeing me soon, but the website is down and none of the siblings seem to know anything.  I could bug the crap out of Gioia but… I’m not in the mood to be that annoying.

Was named a finalist in the 2011 Seminar Writing Contest run by Gotham Writers’ Workshop.  I’m pretty jazzed about that.  Won two tickets to Seminar for my troubles, bonus.

Gah.  I am boring. 

Seminar, A Review

Finally, I have sat down to actually write a review of Seminar.  I wanted to let it roll around in my head.  I find it weird that mainstream critics can just pass judgment within an hour of having seen it.  But I guess that’s what they do for a living, and I have the luxury of seeing it thirteen times and actually thinking about it for longer than an hour.  There may or may not be spoilers in this, so if you’re one of those people who wigs out about those, avoid this post.

In the interest of saying something relevant instead of typing “Spoiler Alert” and then hitting Enter a million times, first let me talk about The Shubert Organization, the John Golden Theatre, and Telecharge.

The Shubert Organization owns eighteen theatres in New York, in addition to the National inWashington, DC, and the Forrest in Philadelphia.  They also own the ticketing company Telecharge, which tickets all Broadway shows.  Seriously.  It’s a cartel.  And I’d complain about it bitterly except I’m terrified of what would happen to theatre if they went away.  Randy Quaid vs. The Kardashians Live!  On Ice!  Now playing at the Music Box Theatre!  *shudder*  I’ll just say that I think it’s strange that they own everything involved with Broadway and not so strange that the result of this is a glass of Coke that costs $10 at the concession stand.  For this $10 you get a 16oz souvenir sippy cup that you can take inside.  That’s right, I said sippy cup.  Do you know how wrong it feels to drink Dewars out of a sippy cup?  Well, after a while I don’t feel anything, but at the beginning of the glass it feels wrong.  The wine snobs look on in horror as the bartender pours it and then suggests a straw because sometimes the lids leak.  And yes, the lids do leak - I had a drop of Dewars in my cup and threw it into my backpack not thinking about it and of course it got all over my playbill.  Not that that’s big of a deal, I have, you know, a lot of them.  You can buy a regular plastic cup that you can drink only at the bar for $5 bar but there’s no intermission so that’s a pretty quick drink.  Also, no ice is allowed because too many people were complaining about the clinking, which is a policy I can get behind.  The good news is if you remember to bring your cup back or to any other Shubert Theatre (ok, I suppose not everyone sees this play every night) you only have to pay the refill cost of $5. 

As for the John Golden Theatre itself?  It’s, well, old.  And small.  The loo situation is abysmal.  Five stalls, all downstairs (not accessible to wheelchairs, I don’t think).  With no intermission, this really is a disaster.  On more than one occasion the security guard came downstairs and said, “We’re going co-ed.  But you have to be twenty-one to go into the men’s.”  You will possibly need to see your healer of choice for an adjustment following a performance.  The angle of the “premium” house seats (row F, center aisle, in this case) is so messed up I had a crick in my neck after one ninety minute show.  But the ushers and the bar staff more than make up for it.  They are fantastic, and I can’t say enough good things about them.  On the flip side, I was fully planning a scathing commentary on the box office personnel but the last time I was in New York I spoke to them twice and they were friendly and helpful.  Then I talked to one of the Helen of Usher Awesomeness about it and she explained the horror of working in that box office.  Which brings us to the mighty power of Telecharge.

Ahhh, Telecharge.  In addition to the fact that some Broadway shows cost more than my air ticket from Dallas to Laguardia, and the fact that no one at Telecharge ever gives you the same answer twice when you call, and the extra fee you have to pay just to collect your ticket which somehow equals another $10 added regardless of whether it’s by mail, e-mail or in person?  As far as I can tell Telecharge, the box office, and TKTS don’t actually pull from one database.  Telecharge calls the box office and pulls certain tickets to be sold out of TKTS or their own offices.  Then, right before the show, they return those tickets to the box office.  This is why, I guess, when I asked the box office if they had a front row seat for that evenings performance and he shook his head without even looking, I could then go log onto my computer at my hotel and buy row BB through telecharge.com  It's also why when you have a problem with your ticket and you have to call telecharge, they ask you how you purchased your ticket – you have to go back to the source because it’s ever-so-confusing.  Gah!

Ok, is this enough spoiler space?  If not, here’s a photo of my souvenir adult-beverage sippy cups.

If you’re still worried about spoilers at this point, you need to reassess your life.

The play is called Seminar and it’s by Theresa Rebeck.  Five characters - Kate, played by Lily Rabe, Izzy, played by Hettienne Park, Martin, played by Hamish Linklater, Douglas, played by Jerry O'Connell, and Leonard, played by Alan Rickman. The four young writers sign up for a semi-private writing course with Leonard so he can help them with their writing. He's totally abusive and a real dick to them, but what they don't get is he's the only one who's telling them the truth about their writing skills instead of just pandering to their egos.  It’s a bit like Swimming with Sharks for the writing set.

The acting is excellent.  Everyone is top notch.  In fact I got a little miffed with a friend of mine who said Hettienne Park’s Izzy was “shallow” and a “nothing” character.  Maybe it’s because I’ve seen it so many times but I notice nuances in her character that are subtle and telling.  The biggest issue with this play, and I’ve said this since the 26^th of October when I crashed the Invited Dress, is, oddly enough, the writing.  It’s weak in places and there just doesn’t seem to be enough zing in the dark humour.  I was sitting in a Q&A with Ms. Rebeck who explained how she came about the story:  "I started out thinking, I'll have four writers and a guru author who will be in his mid-fifties to early sixties and he'll eat them alive.  That will be funny."  This is very different from what I’ve been taught in performance comedy:  “Never start out writing a sketch with, 'It will be funny if...’ because ultimately the harder you try to make it funny, the less funny it will be.”  Not that Seminar is suffering from a severe absence of funny, it’s just that it wants to be cutting, but ultimately it’s missing an edge.  The forward momentum of the play seems to only happen in the last scene.  The first few scenes have endless monologues and at some points I was bored.  There’s a huge leap one has to make at the end to believe that Kate has somehow decided Izzy’s onto something and ends up in bed with Leonard.  It feels lazy – like it could have been explained better, but wasn’t.  The scene itself goes for shock value – both with Martin discovering it’s Kate who Leonard has in his bedroom and Kate walking out almost naked asking where her panties are – instead of explaining how a smart, seemingly principled girl like Kate came to the conclusion that Leonard wasn’t the “disgusting letch focused only on his dick,” she was calling him earlier. Or, even if he is a disgusting letch only focused on his dick, how she became willing to sleep with him to get somewhere.

The message of the play seems confused – at times railing against the male dominated world of professional writing, but ultimately concluding that yes, sometimes you do have to sleep with horrible people to get what you want.  It’s almost a resigned cynical statement about What Is… which is really rather depressing.  And given Ms. Rebeck’s clear opinion (as noted in her blogs) about gender inequality in the theatre world and writing in general, can I really believe that it was coincidence that the one truly gifted writer of the group is a male?  What a far more interesting turn it would have been if the truly gifted artist had been female – how would that have played out with Leonard’s misogynist world view?  Would he have been able to reconcile that with his desire to help truly gifted writers?  Or perhaps there’s no message at all and Ms. Rebeck just wrote something she knew would be marketable that would star Alan Rickman.

All that said, the play is very good.  It’s worth the $131.75 for a good seat to watch some wonderfully talented people tell a thought provoking story using the words, “fuck,” “pussy,” and “dick” in an intellectually stimulating way.

I have to say I have a soft spot for Jerry O'Connell.  Everyone goes on and on about Alan, and yes, he's great, but this is Jerry's Broadway debut and he's outstanding. 

Side note:  If it’s Alan you’re there for you should go see it soon.  Ms. Rebeck said his contract was up in late March and currently Telecharge is selling tickets until the 18^th, so my guess is that’s when he’s done.  The rumour is that Alec Baldwin will take his place and I think he’ll be good, too, just in a completely different way. 

Every day, when one’s body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears, and swords.  Generally speaking, the Way of the Warrior is the resolute acceptance of death.  – Miyamoto Musashi

I’ve had several conversations lately about my retirement plan.  Which is to say I don’t have one in the traditional sense - when I turn 65 (assuming I get there) I plan to kill myself.  Most people look at me in horror when I say this, which I find vaguely amusing, I guess because it never occurs to me not to kill myself.  When I was in seventh grade, I remember my friend Wendy Shepherd talking about another classmate who was suffering from depression and was suicidal.  Shuddering, she said, “I can’t even imagine killing myself.  The thought never occurs to me.”  It was then I realized, at age 13, that most people never think about it, and yet it’s something that’s always been a part of my thought process. 

There’s another aspect of the look of horror people give me that I find troubling, and that is the arrogance of thinking one is going to live to a ripe old age of 120.  One of my friends chastised me recently about my free-wheeling ways.  She said I should be practicing financial prudence and be able to support myself until I’m at least 80, and possibly longer, since the life span of Americans is growing older.  She said she looked to the example of her father and step mother who, through frugal spending and wise investments, were travelling the country in their RV, making several big trips a year, and enjoying their golden years.  But what came into my head when she spoke of this was the example of her mother, who died of cancer several years ago.  My friend was very close to her mother and I did not point this out because even now she’s grief stricken about her mother’s passing, at a relatively young age, from a disease that we keep saying we’re going to cure, but haven’t. 

I am fortunate enough to have both my parents, who are in their mid-60s, and they both still go to work every day.  They’re slowing down, to be sure, and mother has Parkinson’s, but it hasn’t affected her too much yet except she’s had to give up soup.  My parents are civil servants, and they think the same way as my friend:  get a job with a solid retirement plan and stay with it until you retire; be able to afford a nice house and a nice car and have medical benefits.  The walls of this box cause me to chafe.  I can’t fathom working my whole life to attain some goal that’s set out at some vague point in a future that may not occur.  I’ll never forget the haunted look that one of my colleagues had about her, as I prepared to move to England for a year.  “Go.  Live.  My husband and I saved our whole lives to retire together.  Now I don’t know if he’s going to live another year.”  He didn’t.  He was dead within six months.  From cancer.

My thoughts about suicide have less to do with the chronic depression that plagues me than the fact that, at age 38, it takes me two hours in the morning to actually move.  How is it that my elbows are jacked up after eight hours of sleep?  If the pain increases proportionally for the next twenty years... I’m not particularly interested in finding out that feels like.  Too many injuries in the army, too many flights of stairs taken head first, too many rugby tackles.  A friend mentioned pain management.  What is that, exactly?  Oxycontin?  No thanks. 

See, the thing is?  Everyone dies.  Everyone.  And this life we’re experiencing?  We’re not entitled to it.  We’re not entitled to anything, and we’re certainly not entitled to live until we’re 120 or even 75.   I know my way of thinking isn’t for everyone.  Just, you know, LIVE.  Right now.  Go.  Do it now.

The Minghella Film Festival was once again a blast to attend.  This time my friend Marie joined me from Paris.  The opening night gala involved drinks at William Coppin, then a viewing of The Eagle with Duncan Kenworthy, then a party and dance back at William Coppin afterwards.  At the party afterwards, there was a live band, which was a lot of fun.  I got to hang out with Duncan Kenworthy for a while, and managed to use my worst Die Hard!BillClay accent while speaking to him.  The real treat for me was hanging out with Bruce Webb.  You don’t know who Bruce Webb is yet, but you will.  He directed a small film in 2009 called The Be All and End All, and it was a fantastic film.  It comes out on DVD in the UK in April, and will actually get some showings in the US sometime this spring or summer.  The film was made for £120,000, which is about $190,000.  It makes me wonder why so many films cost millions of dollars when this one was so well made for less than $200,000.  If you have a chance, you absolutely must see it.  Another treat was meeting Dominic Minghella in person.  Normally he and I just lob outrageous accusations at each other on Twitter, so it was nice to be able to do that to his face.

On Saturday, there were viewings of the film shorts that were entered in the competition, and then a Q&A with Ralph Fiennes.  Ralph Fiennes is known for being very shy and very quiet.  After a somewhat stilted start, though, he warmed up to both Edana and the crowd and was wonderful.  That night we had dinner with him at the Quay Arts café and then he introduced The Reader.  Michael Maloney also joined us at dinner; it’s always good to see him.

Ralph returned for brunch the next morning, and Dominic, Marie and I took turns taking silly pictures (awful, at least of me) of each other.  William Shatner karaoke was the highlight of the morning, with Dominic and Georgie doing a brilliant rendition of Elton John’s Your Song.  Considering Georgie just learned to read, it was pretty awesome for him to just jump in and do it.  After realizing how far away Freshwater is from Newport, Marie and I ditched it and headed over to my friend Shasta’s house for tea and to chat. We then went to a pub that Shasta recommended and had dinner. 

This review doesn’t do the festival justice, really.  You should really just make a point to go and experience it for yourself. 

Another day, another performance of Henrik Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman.  Ah, Ibsen.  I’ve said before I’m not a Shakespeare scholar, and I’m certainly not an Ibsen scholar.  I’m more of a William Howard Taft scholar.  I’ve now seen John Gabriel Borkman thirteen times – nine times in Dublin, and four times in Brooklyn.  I think it should be fairly obvious that if this wasn’t a interesting play, I’d not have actually seen it all those times - I would have purchased a cheap ticket and sat in the bar the way I did for Creditors, which bored me after 3 performances.  I saw Creditors four times in London, and after I’d seen it once at BAM, the very thought of sitting through it again made me want to retch.  And it was more fun hanging out in the BAM Bar anyway.

But back to John Gabriel Borkman.  I totally get the draw of the play and why it would captivate actors like Rickman, Shaw, and Duncan.  It’s hard, and deep and complicated.  While the performances got continually better every time in Dublin, I felt like the actors never really became one with their characters –  that they were still struggling with their motivations and the connections with each other. 

Arriving in Brooklyn on the front edge of an arctic front, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I knew there was a new director and the set had changed.  At first glance, I hated the new set.  There were no walls; to me it felt very… I don’t know, I felt lost in space.  This truly may be because I was sitting on the front row and the perspective is always a bit skewed from there.  But the characters were so much richer, more developed.  Even the character of Frida Foldal, a small part with only one scene, was deeper.  Amy Molloy was able to better capture her frustration about not being able “to join in.”  I spoke to John Kavanaugh the first night I was there (in relentless snow) and he explained how the set had greatly helped them with their process.  The walls had made them feel closed in, he said.  By the second performance I no longer noticed the lack of walls and was held enthrall by the changes in the characters themselves and the interactions between them. 

This play was always good.  Even on nights in Dublin when somebody tanked their lines, it was still good.  But at BAM, it’s finally coming into the true brilliance I always felt was lurking under the surface in Dublin.

"Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. The temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?" - Agent Smith

"Because I choose to." - Neo

The Matrrix