R.I.P Robin Williams

I could hardly let the passing of one of the great talents of recent times go unmentioned on my blog. Robin Williams was such an amazing actor, and I remember when I saw him in "Good Morning Vietnam" the contrast between his comedic and dramatic scenes was stunning. That's when I realized the full scope of his acting talent. Not many could be so good at making us laugh or making us cry.

I don't know the source of this picture. It was posted on Facebook, and I thought it conveyed something special about the man and the entertainer.

A to Z Challenge - A is for Act One

Before I share my word for today, I want to give a shout out to Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out   From what I understand, it was Arlee's bright idea to start the challenge a few years ago. This is my second time to participate, and I must admit it is a challenge, but it is also fun.

I toyed with a number of possible themes for my posts this month and nothing really energized me, until I thought of trying to find words that are associated with live theatre, acting, and plays. That seemed a natural since I have been in rehearsal for seven weeks for a production of "Our Town" at our local community theatre. I am directing and playing a role, which is especially challenging, and I may never do that again.

"Our Town" is a classic three- act play written by Thornton Wilder in 1938, and theatres across the country are celebrating the 75th anniversary with productions. Set in the fictional American small town of Grover's Corners, it could be the story of any typical small town's citizens in the early twentieth century as depicted through their everyday lives. The story is set between the years of 1901 and 1913 and convey the ordinariness of love, marriage, and death. 

Act One of "Our Town" begins with a monologue by the character of the stage manager, whose role is like that of the chorus in some of Shakespeare's  plays. The stage manager talks directly to the audience, introducing the town, the characters, and the themes of each act.

The play is performed with a minimal set, which suits our small performance space nicely, and the actors do not use props. Instead, they mime their actions, and that adds an extra layer of challenge to any performer. The character of the stage manager acts like the chorus in some of Shakespeare's  plays, talking directly to the audience with narration that moves the story along.

For those of us who like to "play" on stage, mounting a production like this is quite a thrill.

Do you enjoy live theatre? Have you ever had the urge to be on stage?

Friday's Odds and Ends

Today I am over at Venture Galleries blogging about what it means to be famous, or maybe not so famous. 
 
Last month I read an article about the delay of the Ground Zero Museum in New York. It seems that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NY Governor Andrew Cuomo can't agree on whether the state or the city should pay the operating expenses of the museum. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie also has to sign off on the agreement because the World Trade Center is in an area controlled by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Complicated, isn't it, and so disheartening because these entities have been deadlocked for over a year on this issue. This is just another example of how politics can take something meaningful and make a mess of it.

There's a new term I heard recently - Superager. It is used to describe people in their 80s and 90s, and even older, who still have sharp minds and busy lives. They have no signs of dementia and often are very involved in comunity activities. Scientists are studying hte brains of these superagers as part of their research into Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. What is different about these folks and thos who enter into that murky mental state as they age?

One thing that has been discovered is that some parts of a superager's brain - mainly the the left anterior cingulate cortex - are much thicker than thier peers, or even some middle-aged people in the study.

According to Emily Rogalski,  a professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, the anterior cingulate "is important for a lot of cognitive funtions, one of which is attention. It's possible that the superagers have particularly keen attentional abilities and that tose attentional abilities could then support memory."

Some of the superagers that were profiled in the story about this research had some common traits, primarily how they excercised their brains. Working puzzles, teaching classes, giving speeches, were all ways that they used their brains constantly. 

I hope writing and acting and directing work my brain enough. I want to be one of those superagers.

Speaking of acting, we open tonight in "War of the Worlds" a staging of the 1938 radio show starring Orson Welles. Some of you, who are also hoping to be superagers, may remember that drama that had so many people in the United States believing that Martians had landed in New Jersey and were about to take over the world.

Apparently, it was so realistic that people who had not tuned in from the beginning to know that it was the Mercury Theatre on the Air, thought all the news alerts were real. Here is a picture of one of our cast members, Mike Monk as the aviator hoping to save the world.

Photo courtesy of Michael Alford

 It has been so much fun putting this show together, and I get to have my acting fix for the year by playing one of the roles.

Photo Courtesy of Michael Alford

Come Visit me on Another Blog

Today I am over at Morgan Mandel's blog Spunky Seniors. She started this blog to celebrate men and women who are doing fun, exciting, adventurous or unusual things in their more advanced years. I visit when I can and it is always fun to see all the wonderful things writers have shared in previous posts.  

 

I hope you can stop by today where my post is up about taking the stage in my golden years. It begins:

"When I was a little girl, my mother, sister and I would often go to the movie theatre a few blocks from our house. That was an outing that we all enjoyed, and I will date myself by admitting that we could see a double-feature and have popcorn for a quarter. My mother loved movies, and she passed that love on to me."

Monday Morning Musings

The opening weekend of "Arsenic and Old Lace" ended yesterday with a matinee, and it might have been the best performance of the four. At least it was for me in many ways. I really felt connected to the other characters and "in" each scene.

Performing in a play is so much more than just saying the right lines at the right time or moving to some spot on the stage at the right time. The actor must become the character he or she is trying to convey, and the scenes have to become real.

Yesterday, the Brewster house was really my house, with my sister, Abby, and we were connecting in a special way. As the other characters came in and out of scenes, we had the same connections, and that helped make everything so real.

Thinking about that, I realized that that is what needs to happen in the scenes we write for books, too. We, as author, need to make them so real that the reader steps into a whole new world.

I am truly grateful to be working with such a terrific cast of very talented folks. Each, in his or her own way, raises the bar for the rest of us, and it has been exciting to discover those little nuances that help to make the characters and the scenes come alive.

We run again next weekend, then that will be the end of it. The Main Street Theatre is already looking ahead to auditions for the next show, and I will be moving on to the Readers's Theatre production at the Winnsboro Center for the Arts the end of this month. But even though the show is ending, and I am not sure when I will again have the pleasure of sharing the stage with these terrific actors, I will carry a bit of them with me. I am better at my craft because of this association, and for that, I say, "Thank you."

I also want to say "thank you" to all my writer friends who have offered support and guidance that has helped me become a better writer. Creativity does feed creativity, and when we are willing to share our gifts it raises the bar for all of us.

What about you? Where do you find support and guidance? Where do you share yours?

Monday Morning Musings

I came into my office earlier to write a blog entry and had to fight with my cat, John, for my desk. He has decided this is his favorite spot and does not like me disturbing him so I can use my keyboard. He is so big that he is draped with his feet hanging over the edge of the desk, blocking access to the keyboard.

When I try to move him, he decides that must be an invitation to play, so he starts batting at my hands. That can be quite dangerous as he has huge paws, all his claws, and has not learned that to play with a human's hand he must retract his claws.

My plan for the blog, however, was not to write about John.

Tonight I am going to audition for the play, Arsenic and Old Lace. I'm hoping to get to play one of the central characters and work with a director that I really respect. He gave me my first major role a few years ago, and I learned a lot working with him.

One of the things I learned was the importance of blocking a show, which basically means planning out the movement of players on stage. I knew about blocking from a director's standpoint, but not so much from a player's standpoint. You have to know when and where to move, and that is especially important when you have more than one or two people on stage. If there isn't some planning, it can be a bit of a mess with players trying to avoid upstaging each other.

On the other hand, the blocking can't be so rigid that it doesn't leave room for the actor to make it all appear natural, and it is crucial that what happens on stage looks natural. 

In thinking about all that, I realized that the same principles apply to writing. We have to have some basic plan for how our story is going to move, even though sometimes one of the characters will take it in a new direction. We can let that happen to see if that is going to work for the story, and if it doesn't, we can rein that character in.

It is also very important to block, or choreograph, scenes with a lot of people in them. The big climax scene in Open Season was very complicated with action taking place inside a house, just outside the house, and on the street in front of the house. I actually drew a diagram of the scene, like I do of a stage when I am blocking a show, and I put all my people in their various places. Then I planned out the POV switches and how they would flow one to the other and then to another.

Writers, how do you handle complicated scenes?

Monday Morning Musings

The summer drama camp for young players starts today at the Winnsboro Center for the Arts, so I will be incredibly busy for the next two weeks with the camp and for the show we will do at the end of the camp.But I'm not complaining, mind you. It's just an excuse to play for two weeks, and we will have a lot of fun.

I started doing this camp for kids about six or seven years ago, and we have had one every year since. It is always so much fun to work with young people and encourage them to explore their creativity. The purpose of the camp is to help kids be comfortable on stage and teach them elements of acting, staging, costumes, make up and more. I have worked with so many kids over the years, I have lost count of how many, but quite a few have stayed involved in productions at the center.

One young teen who started in the camp five years ago just sent me a message on Facebook, thanking me for helping him find his stage voice. I remember how hesitant he was to speak up when delivering lines, and now he is quite an accomplished actor, starring in his school's UIL one-act play last year.

This year I will be working with two young women, who both started with me as Young Players when they were in elementary school. One just finished her second year as a theatre major at Washington University in St. Louis, and the other just graduated from high school and will be going on to college to minor in theatrre. They will bring a new level of expertise to the camp, and I am so thrilled to be working with them.

The camp is very time intensive, both during the actual camp hours and preparing for the show in the evenings, so I will not have time for blogging. Thank goodness I can always borrow from my friends, Slim Randles and Tracy Farr, so I will be letting them entertain you most of the time for the next two weeks. Although I may blog from the camp if I have time, so stay tuned.

Opening Night

I got bitten by the acting bug rather late in life. Or maybe I should clarify and say I acted on the bug bite rather late in life.

I've written a couple of plays and several screenplays and directed lots of stage plays. Also worked in production on some film projects, but I never had the nerve to step on stage as an actress. And I hesitated to tell anybody that I always had a secret desire to be on stage until a friend, Mia, weaseled it out of me.

Mia is a wonderful actress and I had the pleasure of directing her in several productions in a community theatre here in East Texas, and when she was putting together a revue to direct she talked me into taking a small part. What she said was, "I really need an old lady. And there are only a few lines. You can do it."

I didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted, but she quickly covered, "I don't mean you are "old" old. I just mean you are older than the teenagers who will be in the show."

That was the beginning.

A year or so later, Mia talked me into auditioning at another community theatre for "Squabbles", a comedy by Marshall Karp. I was floored when I got the major part of Mildred, but that unleashed the monster in me. I love performing, even though the rehearsal schedule is enough to wear a person out. But making the character and the story come alive is a great thrill. And working with a talented group of players is magic.

So, now I am in another show. We are doing "Daddy's Dyin' Whose got the Will" at the Main Street Theatre in Sulphur Springs, Texas. We open tonight and run this Thurs, Fri, Sat and next Thurs, Fri, Sat. If you care to see some pictures of the cast visit The Front Porch News (My friend, Mia, is the one on the right in the first picture.)

One thing I have noticed since I have been acting is how much that has helped in terms of writing scenes in my books. I have a better sense of the choreography of how characters would move in a scene instead of being stagnant. When I am stuck on how a scene should go, I actually get up and walk myself through it.

My cat, who thinks I got up to feed him, watches for a minute, then I swear he shakes his head as if to say, "What on earth is she doing now?"