12th Night : "Forces of Nature"

Every night when I watch Audra McDonald and Anne Hathaway play together through a swarm of bugs, I remember what Lucas Papaelias told me about his time doing Romeo and Juliet 2 summers ago: “Being in the band for Shakespeare In The Park is the best job. Those actors will go through hell being outside. You get to sit and watch it."

Last night was the first night that everyone in the show felt the bells ringing. Even the bugs gave their best performance yet. Entering at the end of Act 1 Scene 5, they clearly had their choreography together, sending to the stage a fraction of the numbers that have flown around the actors on previous nights. In the moment when love overtakes Olivia, they formed a perfect dazzling thought bubble in the air around her.

Perhaps Mimi Lieber our choreographer had worked with the bugs on their moves earlier in the day or perhaps after showboating for the past week, the bugs finally decided to leave their egos backstage and be a part of the ensemble. But I suspect they finally realized they are no match for the force of nature that is Audra McDonald...

It's the final moments of the same scene on Tuesday night. Olivia gives Malvolio the ring and sends him off after Cesario. Then Audra McDonald turns strongly to give the audience the totality of Olivia's feelings in her final lines.

"I do not know what - " she starts, her eyes wide with the wonder of love. Her next inhale perfectly takes in an air born marauder.

There is a most dramatic pause. Olivia's face hardens and her eyes dart to the ground. In the instant, you can see Olivia confronting an uncontrollable wave of anguish following the love that's just bloomed in her. With yellow flower in hand and watering eyes, you can feel Olivia, terrified, asking her brother if it is okay to proceed towards the possibility of new life before her. She is stiff, still, holding herself together, and you imagine that Olivia's time of mourning has now reached it's end.

You can experience these things most completely if you do not think of the bug that presently wanders the rich interior of Audra's golden throat. Like a tourist at Notre Dame Cathederal, I imagine it tiptoeing around, appreciating the warm acoustics, taking pictures and calling home to say, "Guess where I am!"

Then Audra McDonald as Olivia swallows hard. She continues, eyes still to the ground.

"-and...fear to find...Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind"

I marvel at the display of focus and control it must take to deliver these lines while suppressing a gag reflex. The effect gives Olivia an angry truth, placing her thoughts even more within the shadow of loss.

At this instant, I become aware of the Hem score which will come up in a few seconds to transition the scene. It's a bright and uplifting melody that perfectly suggests a progression out of melancholy. So no matter what the dramatic possibilities might be for Audra to end the scene within her present painful response to love, she knows we're headed to happy land. Audra, the amazing actress and singer that she is, knows this.

"Fate, " she says, a harsh address, "Show thy force".

...Olivia, tired of mourning has grown impatient, and speaking to fate as she might a servant. But then her body relaxes. A greater, natural sense seeming to overcome her.

"Ourselves we do not owe," says Olivia roughly, but with her head now raised, her eyes returning to search the bright places in the distance before her.

"What is decreed must be -" A brilliant musical note rings within the word "Be" and cuts though the humid air. Audra and Olivia are singing again.

"And be this so!"

The music comes in, perfectly in synch with the world thanks to the timing and rhythm and tone of Olivia's last words. And Audra McDonald as Olivia exits the Delacorte stage as she does most every night...to great applause.

12th Night : "Rain Delay, Part 1"

It’s raining in Bushwick an hour before I have to leave for rehearsal. I am never sure about the weather, but from the outset, this looks to be the worst day of weather for our play since previews started last week. I don my Kentucky Colonel rain jacket and head for the train, forgetting for ½ a block to check if my backpack is open. It is unzipped, proud rain drops chilling in the firewire ports of my laptop.

So far we have had two nights when our performance has been delayed for rain. The first rain delay occurred on the night of our second show, moments after Andrew Aguecheek’s arrival in Act 1 scene 3. As he and Toby Belch spilled their drink following Maria’s exit, the voice of Stage Manager Steve Kaus came over the "God mic" to interrupt the scene.

"We are going to pause for precipitation," Kaus says, asking the audience to bear with us.

The announcement of the delay is met with discernable laughter from the audience. On my way back to our dressing rooms, a woman walking behind me says, “Pause for precipitation! That’s the funniest thing I ever heard!” I can’t tell if she is leaving or going to the wine vendor.

Once the ensemble is backstage and dry, Kaus comes over our in-house speaker, this time asking us to bear with stage management. “Once the weather clears and we clean the stage, we will return and pick up from Cup of Canary, Cup of Canary.” The protocol for returning from a rain delay is to pick up at the previous beat or from the top of the scene, whichever makes the most sense.

The rain stops. Johanna, Brian, Maggie and Buzz hit the stage with squeegees and wring the set as dry as they can while the sky continues to spit. Backstage Kaus asks us to take our places to reenter for “Cup of Canary, Cup of Canary”.

Waiting on the wheelchair ramp for our cue from Buzz, we hear Kaus over the God mic once more requesting that the people in the audience close their umbrellas. Down go the beaten colorful things to reveal faces that pucker in anticipation of the raindrops that quickly hit them.

Buzz says “Standing by” and leans into her earpiece for the message that comes over her headset. Then she nods a pleased co-conspirators smile and says, “Ah, you may go.”

The band return to the stage to deep and gracious applause befitting a baseball game or rock concert. I want to applaud back. Hell yes - we are doing this. Then Hamish and Jay come back out to even greater applause. Andrew and Toby drink their second cup of canary and things roll proudly forward.

Steve “Tally” Curtis leans over his guitar and says, “The audience looks bigger.” I look around and take a deep breath. During the delay, people moved down to take the empty seats closer to the stage, heating the area around us. I am awed feeling the will of the audience, cast, and crew to make the night happen. It cuts through any and all bullshit. This is it. The collaboration. Make the space for it to happen, and with nature's mercy it may be so.

12th Night : "Parade"

Somewhere past the turtle pond and behind the castle, the thundering rhythms of the Puerto Rican Day Parade - it's deep bass rumble soaked in the sound of yelling and cheering so steady and strong that it seems like a recording. You feel the sound emotionally whether you acknowledge it or not - a whole people are gathered close by, shaking their skin from their bones. Puerto Rico has gone for a walk today and Puerto Rico is very excited. I decide that for this year, imagining the parade through the sound it makes will be better than seeing it. Next year I will seek out Boricua weekend first hand. This year I'm sitting on the edge of stage of the Delacorte Theater rehearsing.

Onstage the ensemble members involved in the finale dance are storming through their new and improved choreography. They cook in wet sunlight and keep time with the recorded portion of Hem's song, "The Rain it Raineth", the title of which I imagine Hem might have thought twice about in a band meeting: Steve pipes up from behind his coffee “Uh, guys, what can we do with this? I just wonder if ‘raineth’ really our best option here? Anyone have a Thesaurus?” Then Gary drops his fist on the top of the piano making the meteronome fall in Dan’s lap. “Dude, these are Shakespeare’s words you’re talking about. You don’t fuck with the Shakespeare!”

The band is called onstage to add our parts. I grab my bodhran, my tipper, and my shaker and meet Steve, Leslie, Andrew and Chris at the top of the fantastic stage-crafted hill. Chris and I have monitors that we wear in one ear to make sure that the live band stays in time with Hem’s orchestrations. Except for a technical glitch on the first night where the volume of my earpiece was compromised and the audience, dancers and band played the whole finale a half beat off, we've had no problems. From our present position onstage the thunder of the parade through the trees is actually giving the recorded track a run for it's audible money.

"The Puerto Rican Day Parade is the best parade in the city," Christopher says. "Much better than the St. Patricks Day Parade." These are serious words coming from a man with bagpipes. "So boring," he continues. I tell him that by comparison to what we are hearing, I can easily imagine St.Pats Day as far less fun. No pulse to dance to, boring colors. "Plus, they don't let in gays," Chris adds. Well, there you go. 

Unreal

Tim called today to tell me that the Bill Gates Foundation came by his Salvation Army outpost on Saturday with a glistening new tractor trailer decorated and filled with computers to give away to needy foundations. Tim and I have been biting our nails trying to get internet into his kitchen for our COHR streams - I immediately identified with how cool this could be. 

"They were all set to give us computers and then they told us that they wanted to wait until Monday so they could get better press," Tim said. The SA director in charge of this matter is a young 25 year old guy who was hyperventilating all weekend preparing for today's visit and the press conference that he would have to participate in. 

But the Gates Foundation never came back. No calls, no nothing.

"They must have found someone else to give the computers to," Tim said, an audible smile in his words. The total absurdity of the whole scam. 

I have noticed that when you commit to things the way one does when working for Salvation Army, you develop a sense for savoring the ridiculous that plays out as you try, by any means made possible, to do your work with what the world can give you. People value so much the idea of charity that the government created whole new tax laws to inspire big businesses to buy big busses, load them with computers, and go around looking for all the free press and tax write-offs they can get. Maybe Bill Gates Foundation deserves a better shake than this, but prioritizing their effort based on media coverage makes them open for the shot: Douches! Every rock star has long since known the best press is NEWS! You reach more people and its free. Just ask all the new pr firms popping up that specialize in benefit operations and non-profit operations. 

Even Kind Monitor got some juice out of an idea of making a benefit cd where they decided afterwards (by asking the artists) what organizations to give money to. 

I'm gonna knock my balls around the chinashop here for a minute more ...Tim and I have had many discussions about the ideas of non-profit work. I think that soon the matter is going to have to be held in different regard. Non-profit is, or was, the 8th largest economy in the world. And it is highly unregulated. It has been a haven for people who have abuse tax laws, but it is also a choice for people looking to be creative in their business structuring, a viable means to an end. The problem is that the title "Not for profit" suggests a kind of benevolence, as if the NFP business got certified as official do-gooders and are therefore to be trusted. You're then not just playing with people's money, you are playing with their trust.

In planning Motherlodge, the theater people I spoke with took it as a foregone conclusion that I was or would soon be a non-profit. And no wonder! We would not have what meager theater there is in this world if not for people using the non-profit fundmaking to support their program. No harm in that, but I have to say I am interested in seeing what comes from the independent theater once the effects of the funding dry-up pulls the financial carpet out from under and we see who still can't stop writing, producing, and performing. 

Makes me think of Mike's lyric in "Unreal"

"It's so thoughtful when billionaires are philanthropic

our cultrual landscape might wither and die if not for their help"

I lit a candle so I can fart to the darkness, and this soap box won't be a polarized position. If non-profit big money funding can make possible something as incredible as Shakespeare in Central Park, it won't be hard to get me to kneel before the concept from time to time. I have no axe to grind, really, except with pompous bullshit. I am just curious why a benevolent for-profit business that works to break even don't get the same respect as a lazily conceived concept waiving a 501(C) banner? This is a casualty of unexamined anti-capitalist feelings and an easily abused system called Not For Profit. 

What are we saying about the value of building community when businesses labeled as "community building" are non-profit? I don't know about how it works in Peoria or Illyria, but in Bushwick, a little profit can build community just fine. I guess it just doesn't seem as trust(news)worthy.