EXTRA CRITICUM

The Show Must Go On (Hawaii style)

[Ed note: This post was co-written by Chuck Babbitt]

We stay up too late Saturday night and Lisa awakens too early and can't  get back to sleep.  That afternoon she has the final showing of the play The House of Blue Leaves.  Her head is as noisy as the chattering early birds outside the window, wondering how she can spend a day on the boat and still get back, prepare and do the play on so little sleep.  We are planning to take our old friends Rick and Debbie Reynolds out for a day of cruising and dolphin watching  on the other side of Oahu.  When I wake up I can feel that Lisa has been awake for a while.  It's really best that she stay home and relax, rest her voice, exercise a bit, run her lines, and prepare to become the loud and energetic New Yorker Bunny Flingus for the last time.  I head off to meet the Reynolds and Lisa, with the pressure off, falls back asleep.

When Lisa wakes I am at the helm of the Willa Mae III off of Kahe Point with Rick and Debbie watching the playful Nai'a, Hawaiian spinner dolphins, put on a spectacular show.  Planning to take a jog, she put on shorts, a sports-bra and t-shirt and heads upstairs. She pours a cup of coffee and sees the flowers are dry.  She puts fresh water in the vases and hydrates our little Christmas tree.  Stepping out on the lanai the spatial arrangement of the flower pots catches her eye. " It would look better if I swap these two plants and put the tall one down there" she thinks.  As she moves the pot from the railing it catches the string of Christmas lights and the next pot over drops, falls, and crashes onto her left foot, the terra cotta pot shattering into jagged pieces. 

Pulled from the Archives: Yearley, Altenburg, Licata, Garrison & Barnes

Every few weeks or so, the editors at E.C. take a stroll through our archives and pull a group of interesting posts that are loosely related in theme to offer up to our readership for a second read. If you have a favorite post you'd like us to "pull from the archives," just email us and we'll try to locate it for you.

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East Village Theatre Festival - Alphabet City VI

Three Weeks of New Plays, Solo Performances, and Art Exhibitions Celebrating the Life and Lore of an Ever-Changing Neighborhood

August 3-23, 2009

Part of the fabulous East Village Theatre Festival at the Metropolitan Playhouse is the series "Alphabet City VI" directed by Derek Jamison. Six actor/writers are hired by the Metropolitan Playhouse on East 4th Street, to delve into the jungles of the 'hood and find a subject to interview. Then put together a 20 minute piece on their lives. 

The Way In: Lisa Barnes

The fun revival of Hair on Broadway reminds me daily of the moment I drank the Kool-Aid. 1972 - Los Angeles, the mecca of divorce, drugs and too much sun highlighting my grand teen angst. I snuck into The Aquarius Theatre in Los Angeles with three other under-agers and found my purpose in life. They got my despair and gave me hope - and I knew I had to do for others what that experience did for me.
 
I sat on the steps of the theatre afterwards, sobbing. Deeply shy at the time, I found the courage to run up to the cast members as they left the theatre, hugging and thanking them all. Then the courage to get in front of up to 2,000 strangers and emote in hopes that someone out there might feel "gotten".
 
[Picture above: from a production of Well at Vermont Stage with member of the original Broadway cast of Hair, Dale Soules.]

Remembering Gerald Schoenfeld: With love, from Lisa Greenberger…

(pictured at right: Schoenfeld and another actress friend of his)

It’s been seven months now - a bit late for an elegy or eulogy - and a bit late for me to come out of my shell to bid Gerald Schoenfeld adieu. But he was my Auntie Mame so here goes…

We met after a first rehearsal when I was doing a backers audition for “Awake & Sing” in 2003. He had generously championed a reading by my company from Los Angeles, offering the Shubert conference room as rehearsal space. He had such a presence - a very serious, intimidating gaze.  Ed Asner was playing “Jacob” and was rushing off to lambaste Bush on Fox News and the two of them got into how messed up the world was since the 2000 election and how it can never happen again. That's when he found out I was a Lefty.

Re-Entry Into the Apple Largo

It took about two weeks to wrap my brain around being back in our lovely village of Manhattan after spending a 6 glorious weeks (preferred vocation employed) in gorgeous Vermont.

To be a leading woman over 40 was so grand. I did radio interviews, was recognized hiking up Mt. Philo, was asked to speak to theatre students at St. Michael's College. It was so wonderful to not worry about the actron/job searching day-to-day schmooze of New York. For six weeks I was reaping benefits of the 30 year career schlep. No bouts of depression, angst, questioning every decision I've made since birth... No worries about reading great works, adopting a child, taking up kitesailing, joining the Peace Corps, learning a language or doing more so that my life would have some great worth.

Bonjour from Burlington

Today was closing day of "Well" by Lisa Kron at Vermont Stage in Burlington. The day I kind of dreaded because it's been such a great ride - and now it's back to NY madness and readings and auditions and blah blah blah... 

This play was performed by an amazaing group of people from New York, Baltimore, California, New Jersey and Missouri - who came together to make this complicated but so deeply evocative play, no wait, "exploration," happen in Vermont.

Meta Theatre Comes to Burlington!

We opened Well on Wednesday night—to an audience of approximately 130. The average age was 58 I'd say. I see every person and that's what I gathered. They laughed and seemed engaged. When the play was over I heard the Artistic Director ask some patrons what they thought of the play and they scratched their heads, literally, and said, it was fine but confusing.

Moonlighting in Vermont...

One of the cool things about working in Burlington is that you get to work with local folks. Like the state representative for Burlington! He's one of the 4 other actors in my show from Burlington. They are all so funny and just so grounded and all have these other lives that are so interesting! It's a very different experience. It's reminiscent of high school sometimes, when you had the lead and everyone in the cast wanted to be your friend. Not only that, but there is a gleeful joy reminding me of that time when theatre was fun and about playing and not about focusing on how it will get you your next gig. [ed. note: for related post see: The Big Break Syndrome]

We do a preview on Tuesday and I'm still not off book, nor is "Mom", and we're just a tad nervous about grey matter retention. I don't stop talking. The good thing is... there's a bar, and folks can bring their cocktails to their seats. Tech tomorrow!

I Heart Vermont - journal entry #1

You know the mayhem involved the week before opening a show, but imagine only a 3 week rehearsal schedule to play Lisa Kron in Well which happens to be during the PEAK of leaves turning in Burlington!

Such choice... so I've missed the change of seasons for the 20th year in a row—even though I'm hunkered down in autumnal ground zero.