Touchstone Backstage

Little Pond

My wife, Bridget, and I hang out on a small farm just West of Nazareth that we call Little Pond. First day we arrived there, our children Sam and Anisa in tow, we walked past the little spring and the name was born. It’s a lovely spot, and on its thin, narrow edge, we planted two Dawn Redwoods that now tower some thirty, forty feet in the sky above. Look into the waters, and it’s a muck, kinda primordial, where the frogs and toads do their mysterious transformations, singing and croaking in secret code, and laying infinite numbers of eggs—a living assault on the forces of annihilation. Dragonflies and a few tiny snakes. We don’t plant things, for the most part at Little Pond, and we don’t groom it much, just a few narrow paths to take us ‘round the 32 acres. We’re letting it grow back from the farmland it once was—hilly pasture sprinkled with wild cherry, mulberry and pear trees, and a few old apple trees from what was once an orchard. It’ll take a lifetime to see the wildness return fully.

Thoreau once wrote an essay called Wild Apples:

“Every wild-apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men.

Such is always the pursuit of knowledge. The celestial fruits, the golden apples of the Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-headed dragon which never sleeps, so that it is an herculean labor to pluck them.”

I noticed this morning, a Wild Iris, or as Bridget calls it a “Yellow Flag,” growing at the center of the pond. Alone it stood in the midst of all the green, a mystery. How’d it get there? Where did it come from? It stood chaste and elegant yet with a refined and aristocratic beauty that was delicate, voluptuous and (to my eyes) profoundly feminine. I yelled out loud when I saw her and then ducked my head a bit afraid that perhaps I’d been too rude, that I might have disturbed her reverie. What was she doing in the middle of our little pond? And how could anything be more profoundly magical?

The Wild Iris

To me, that tired and world-weary little Iris is a message of hope and truth; it’s what I try to make my work/my life all about. Unbidden, it peeps forth to shed its color and beauty in the world, and soon it will be gone. Because that’s what it does, that’s who it is.

I love the arts organizations on the South Side – like Godfrey Daniels, Pennsylvania Youth Theatre, The Bach Choir, The South Side Film Festival, Mock Turtle Marionette and others, that have miraculously grown up in our community like that Yellow Flag. Unbidden. Wild, really. I can never say enough how lucky we are that these arts organizations are still alive and productive. In these days of Factory Farming, Mono-Culture, Manufactured Food, Pesticides, Fracking, Casino Profiteering, Noisy Marketing, and Digital Invasions that allow those with the most money to manipulate our every choice, the call to preserve the small original voice, the independent mind, the diversity that makes a democracy truly powerful—is more important than it has ever been.

Touchstone is that Wild Iris. As Thoreau says: “It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise.” The “celestial fruit we aspire to bear”, the culture we are attempting to build, is hard to fully appreciate, as it is hard to fully appreciate any individual at a single moment in time, let alone the artists we’ve got here in Bethlehem and here at 321 E. 4th. Street.

Now, in June, winding up our 2013-14 Season which was so engrossing and exciting, I tip my hat to them—particularly to Lisa, Jp, and Emma—my dear co-creators; to Kyle, Mary, and Christopher; to Mallory, Jordan, and Catherine; to all who’ve helped carry on Touchstone’s mission of advancing this effort, “browsed on by fate”. “Only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and prevails…”

The tests are never over. It’ll take a lifetime. Stay with us; next year will be even more beautiful.

As we continue through our post-Young Playwrights’ Festival (YPF) mode, it’s nearing the end of the school year, which means another class of high school seniors graduating. And while we treasure all of our actors who participate in the Festival, we’re particularly grateful for those from the Charter Arts High School. This year’s graduating class is rife with friends of Touchstone, and it’s hard to believe we’ll be doing next year’s Festival without them in the cast!

So, let’s give a shout-out to some of our senior superstars who’ve been a particular blessing to Touchstone productions these last few years:

Carly Bayer

• As seen in – Luna the Star (YPF 2014) – The Princess (YPF 2013) – What Happens in the Club Stays in the Club (YPF 2012) – A Resting Place (2012) – The Adventurous Girl (YPF 2011)

Beautiful and brilliant. Four years in YPF, and four years in plays directed by Mr. Bill George. You could say favoritism, but they just make such wonderful plays together that it’s hard to complain.

Felicity Bell

• As seen in – The Street Fighter Story (YPF 2014) – The Science Experiment that Went Wrong (YPF 2012) – A Resting Place (2012) – Friends 4 Life (YPF 2011)

Equally effective in a leading role, a support character, or a dedicated ensemble member who is still acting her heart out – Felicity does gymnastics, speaks Japanese, and just plain rocks.

Kynnedi Benson

• As seen in – Ghost Grandma (YPF 2014) – The Princess (YPF 2013) – The Sad Story of Mrs. Donut Person (YPF 2012) – Friends 4 Life (YPF 2011)

Gifted comedienne and darling as a donut person. Kynnedi is a delight for being able to embody big, bold, ridiculous characters, while being completely sweet and genuine as a human being.

Kylin Camburn

• As seen in – The Battle (YPF 2014) – Time Travel (YPF 2013) – The Sad Story of Mrs. Donut Person (YPF 2012) – A Resting Place (2012)

Another actress unafraid to hold down the fort as a support character when she’s not in the spotlight – great presence onstage even when she doesn’t have any lines and always willing to help out.

Pierce Campion

• As seen in – The Battle (YPF 2014) – Volcano Beauty (YPF 2013) – Inseparable (YPF 2012) – A Resting Place (2012) – The Crazy Secretary and the Love of Her Dreams (YPF 2011)

We met Pierce as a lanky young teen who could do a good Rod Serling impression. Now he’s… well, a lanky older teen, who can probably still do a good Rod Serling Impression. Dry wit and extraordinarily funny.

Anelise Diaz

• As seen in – Luna the Star (YPF 2014) – The Devil Has His Ways (YPF 2013) – Man’s Best Friend (YPF 2012) – A Resting Place (2012) – Killer (YPF 2011)

I am going to miss her so, so, so much. Consummate actress, good team player, great artistic eye, a natural mover/dancer/gymnast/graceful person, and pretty much just the best ever. If I have one regret, it’s that I only got to direct her twice. Did I mention that I’m going to miss her?

James Egbert

• As seen in – Journey of Two (YPF 2014) – Time Travel (YPF 2013) – What Happens in the Club Stays in the Club (YPF 2012)

James’ first role in a Young Playwrights’ Festival was as a creepy, evil stalker. And he still came back to us. Quick thinker, swishy swordfighter, and remarkably good at both drama and comedy.

Teague Fernandez

• As seen in – The Devil Has His Ways (YPF 2013) – Ulysses Dreams (2013) – The Sad Story of Mrs. Donut Person (YPF 2012) – Baby Bobby and Alex (YPF 2011) – PLUS serving as a stage hand for Christmas City Follies

A skill for playing ridiculous characters like you wouldn’t believe. And besides his delightful onstage persona, we will be forever grateful to Teague as one of our Follies stage crew buddies.

Savannah Murphy

• As seen in – The Battle / The Street Fighter Story (YPF 2014) – Volcano Beauty (YPF 2013) – A Resting Place (2012) – Into the Dark (2011) – PLUS helping with Camp Touchstone (counselor) and YPF (stagehand), and her mother is a Gala committee member/frequent volunteer

Savannah is an absolute gem – funny, smart, dedicated, willing to play, passionate about Shakespeare, and able to think on her feet. We cast her as the creepy little girl in Into the Dark (despite her being taller than me…), and she has been a whole-hearted member of the Touchstone family since.

Aidan Newell

• As seen in – Ghost Grandma (YPF 2014) – The Princess (YPF 2013) – The Sad Story of Mrs. Donut Person (YPF 2012) – A Resting Place (2012) – Friends 4 Life (YPF 2011) – Medieval Mice (YPF 2010) – Friendship Ballon Fire (YPF 2009) – PLUS helping with Camp Touchstone (counselor), and his mother is our board president

(We would say nice things about Aidan even if his mother weren’t our board president) Aidan is drama and comedy, awkward and smooth, dedicated and ridiculous, and we’ve so enjoyed watching him grow as a performer over the years.

Megan Schadler

• As seen in – The Broken Charger (YPF 2014) – Journey: Dream of the Red Pavilion (2014) – Christmas City Follies XIV (2013) – The Genie (YPF 2013) – The Sad Story of Mrs. Donut Person (YPF 2012) – A Tricky Story (YPF 2011) – What’s the Holiday? (YPF 2009) – Awful and Gruesome Battles of Triumph and Fate (YPF 2008) – PLUS attending Camp Touchstone and then helping out as a camp counselor (and probably other things that I’m forgetting as well), and her mother is a board and Gala committee member

Megan is probably our longest running Young Playwrights’ Festival alum – not just from Charter Arts, but ever, period – which makes her near and dear to our hearts. But on top of that, she stepped it up this year to perform and hold her own in featured roles in two Touchstone mainstage productions this season. She is funny like an episode of classic SNL and clever like something clever. And she takes a lot of good-natured heckling from Kyle, Jordan, and Josh without snapping, which is no mean feat.

Please join us in wishing “our” seniors well – we’ll miss them an awful lot but can’t wait to see what amazing work they continue to do!

In college, I lived with a visual arts major and a computer programming major, and ongoing fights over the messiness vs. “clutter” of the house would fairly often ensue– the computer programmer wanting the house to be clean and orderly, and the visual artist arguing it is clean, just appropriately cluttered. As the theatre major, who was studying both the artistic and management side, I would often find myself in between the two arguments, easily able to see both sides.

I was reminded of this as I walked through the office today, seeing the leftover creative chaos that is/was Young Playwrights Festival. With ten short plays being produced over four short weeks in our relatively small space, it’s pretty much impossible not to be bursting at the seams. The back porch and parking lot became the paint studios, with the remnants of layers and layers of painted prop and set piece outlines now left. The rehearsal room (in between rehearsals, that is) became Cardboard Capital for cutting and fabricating – the coveted floral-patterned box cutter bouncing from hand to hand as former moving boxes transformed into African backdrops, leaf props, and video game signs. Even the café and upper lobby became second spaces for set, prop, and costume creation. Days after the Festival, the evidence can still be found… a scrap of cardboard or bit of fabric not caught by the broom or vacuum cleaner yet, a random paintbrush that hasn’t found its way back home.

The week after the Festival is for “wrap up” – time to make notes of what worked well or not so well, so we can improve next year; to thank the many, many people who made it all happen; and to clean up the space and get ready for the next, hopefully less space-demanding and messy project. The part of me who “sided” with my computer programmer roommate loves the resetting and reorganizing of the space, but the side of me who understood the need for a little mess when creating art loves the creative chaos that is YPF Time.

Alright, I know my last blog was about two recently departed super talents, but at the risk of making my blog contributions feel like an ongoing obituary column, I need to give a shout out to a man that, while satiating my adolescent lust for heavy metal and destruction, taught me a lot about what art was all about.

Meet Dave Brockie, or as you may know him, Oderus Urungus:

To be honest, I had never seen or heard of Dave Brockie till the news came out that the frontman of Gwar was found dead. I only knew Oderus. For those that have never seen a Gwar concert imagine… well, imagine just the craziest thing you’ve ever seen. The musicians wear giant costumes taking on the persona of millions-of-years-old space monsters who have come to rape, enslave, and pillage earth. In doing so, they encounter world political elites, religious leaders, celebrities, and arch nemesis aliens from their home world, all of whom manifest themselves on stage in equally over-the-top costume puppets and who are effortlessly dispatched and eviscerated by Oderus and the other members of Gwar. These brutal puppet killings leave the audience drenched in the bodily fluids of Gwar’s victims. Picture a Gallagher show, but instead of watermelons, it’s fake blood and guts. I remember in the early nineties, hearing about Gwar for the first time, still not being able to drive, and thinking that I would never get to see them. I went on to see them over a half dozen times and still even in my late thirties attempt to see them whenever they are in the area.

When I was young, I saw Gwar as rebelious and chaotic (and replete with potty humor), but what I was being offered was one of my life’s first satirical revealings. I got it, the world is a messed up place, and it’s good to make fun of it this way. We weren’t here to worship the devil (as my mom thought), we were here to hold up the sins of mankind– our lies, perversions, greed, misdeeds– and mock them. How to mock them best? The way that every generation has done since the beginning of time: turn it into a show, a spectacle, entertain people.

To reflect on Gwar now, I see a creative vision fully realized. Sure, Gwar is incredibly disgusting, but that’s the point. That’s what they are going for. There is such brilliance and creativity in every moment of a Gwar performance, every costume and set nuanced to such a fine level in its design and conception, a script… a backstory… a world completely created, and I haven’t even mentioned the virtuosic level of musicianship and songwriting in the band. Gwar offers a totality of vision which few ever come close to pulling together. Some write Gwar off as a disgusting goof, but if that’s the case, the goof has set the bar quite high. To me, Dave Brockie epitomizes the word “Artist” and helps set the standard of artistic inclusion I strive for everyday.

Earlier this month, about 700 folks from the not-for-profit and profit worlds got together to listen to Dan Pallotta talk about – you know – stuff. Fundraising and how not-for-profits are supposed to be productive without paying people “serious” amounts of money; how a bank president may get 14 or 45 million dollars a year, and people howl if the CEO of a Company whose mission is eliminating hunger gets 1/50th of that. It’s true. Double Standard. Go Dan! Change the world; I can see it’s your goal. You have already, you can, I think you will, and I want to help.

Dan traces this double standard (if I understood his talk clearly) back to the Protestant ethic that is at the center of American Culture. I don’t know whose fault it is – the Dutch; I like blaming materialism on the Dutch – who were influenced by the Puritans. Dan put it on the Puritans. There’s this duality, says Dan, of wanting to make money, but believing making money as an end in itself is “evil,” so we’ll tithe to a Charity (read “not-for-profit”) which kind of spiritualizes or purifies our materialism. If you happen to be in a not-for-profit, you are, by association, supposed to be part of that “sanctified” culture that puts service first, not making money. If all of a sudden you, in your not-for-profit, want to try to “compete” with profit organizations and hire people with a competitive wage or spend money on advertising that can go toe to toe with, say, Coca Cola, then you are a BAD AGENT, not right for not-for-profit priorities.

You see, Foundations will penalize you if you try to spend money in a genuinely aggressive way towards what’s called “overhead” – anything beyond 25% of your overall budget is often considered “inefficient.” Of course, it’s important to remember there is a vein of crooked “charity organizations” using fundraising as a way of really funneling money into the pockets of the “crooks up front,” simply in the name of the poor – so this is supposed to help prevent that. And, of course, there does seem to be the possibility for a significant “disconnect.” At Touchstone, we go to schools to help teach literacy through our Young Playwrights program, which is supported by many generous Banks, Corporations, and Foundations. I simply can’t see driving up to the parking lot of any of these schools – where many of the students are on the school lunch program (they’re poor) – in a BMW. Something about those priorities, those judgments, wouldn’t seem right, moral. That would be an extreme situation, of course.

Part of me says: Dan, it’s not that the not-for-profits have got it wrong. It’s not that the priorities of the not-for-profits are askew as much as it is those of the for-profits. We shouldn’t be paying 45 million dollars a year to Judge Judy to be a clown on television. We shouldn’t be giving huge bonuses to Wall Street mavens that just hammered this country to the ground with risky financial ventures. We shouldn’t be obliterating the air waves and landscape with brilliantly conceived commercials that are littering our mind space and our visual and aural peace in the name of “freedom to sell.” You’re right: not-for-profits can’t compete because we do expect to be “moral,” but the object isn’t to be released from that expectation – remember the BMW in the parking lot – it’s to make the whole country more subject to that expectation.

For me the connecting thought is service. Not-for-profits are, in principle, mission led, not bottom-line led, and I suggest that that’s the bridge that can actually connect the two opposing worlds of “for-profit” and “not-for-profit”.

Going back to the original foundation of this duality – those pesky Puritans and their conflicted values – I don’t want to undermine the importance of the “moral” in our not-for-profit life OR our profit-work life, for that matter. I want to bring both worlds into balance by focusing on the idea that service can be the point of all these activities. The key thing, then, is how we measure excellence in service. It must have dimensions of qualities that are not primarily money based.

I don’t think making money is evil, let’s get that straight. I just don’t think “making money” is a very useful overriding goal, given our complete needs as humans. There’s something about work, any activity done to the best of one’s ability as an act of service for humanity, which strikes me as sacred. That means that there’s a sacred aspect to Apple Computer’s efforts to provide communication and data technology to the world. Why not? So does helping small businesses thrive or feeding a hungry child or building a bridge to help people cross a river. Even a garbage collector, if doing their job with their whole being, as an act of service, is engaged in what can be seen as the sacred work of serving humanity. There’s something holy about it. To think of it only as a money making operation demeans it and puts a less than perfect lens on our understanding of what’s going on.

I want to bring this view into the Profit Culture – and if successful, then the way businesses work will move towards the idea of being Mission-of-Service led, and not so much profit led. Priorities would shift away from financial results being the only thing that matters towards an understanding that sincere intentions are important, quality of process counts; it’s not just a question of whether something’s legal, but of whether or not it best serves the people.

This is fundamental. It means a shift in our culture, a shift in our existential view, a shift from competition towards cooperation – we would come together as a community as never before.

This is doable.

In show business, we’re no strangers to stress.

Producing theatre of any kind is stressful. Producing original theatre is extra stressful because there are no familiar tunes or characters for audiences to latch onto before deciding to come, no famous one-liners from the script that they can quote to themselves ahead of time. On top of that, with education programs to teach, other productions to prepare, next season to plan for, and a crazy snowy winter whose effects we’re still feeling… yeah. We know that stress fella.

I have a note on my computer entitled “Make-it-better funnies and smiles.” It’s a collection of links to various YouTube videos, many of them musical, some of them beautiful, some of them ridiculous, all of them instant pick-me-ups.

Here are some. From the G-rated portion of the list. (the not-safe-for-work portion of the list is substantially longer…)

We start out with the Barenaked Ladies song “Odds Are,” as produced by the fabulous folks at RoosterTeeth. Jubilant and ridiculous – may require two viewings to catch all of the news ticker jokes at the bottom of the screen.

Off to a good start, we mosey on over to the Piano Guys. Pretty much all of their work is stellar – they love making music, and they love making it fun to watch. Check out more of their videos for piano-covered-in-ice, skydiving with a cello, Darth Vader on accordion, and more.

No list would be complete without funny cat videos. So, here is a funny cat video.

Here’s a duet that’s out of this world (pause for groans). Recorded while astronaut Chris Hadfield was doing that International Space Station thing, this is a great tribute to human ingenuity, wonder, scientific endeavor, and dear lord, we are so totally living in the future.

And pretty much anything by OK Go is smile-inducing (other music videos include awesome choreography with treadmills, a percussion-instrument-Chevy Sonic, and some very well-trained dogs), but this one in particular is my go-to in times of stress. No fancy camera tricks or effects, just a lot of careful thought, set up, good timing, and a little bit of luck. Beautiful.

I entered the professional world of theatre as a Stage Manager, then Production Manager, and now Managing Director. It was a very logical progression in the sense that the scope of my responsibilities went from a small circle to a medium circle to a very large circle. That’s how I always describe it to incoming apprentices each year – my history at Touchstone in circles – with appropriate hand motions included.

Last month, I dove headfirst after six years back into the “first circle”: Stage Management. It was an interesting feat and felt a lot like remembering how to ride a bike. I remembered what I was good at, what I wasn’t so good at and why I was drawn to stage managing to begin with – being at the center of theatre creation.

The first week of rehearsal for Journey: Dream of the Red Pavilion was at the end of January and began with development rehearsals. This is the time when the playwright and/or director and actors “play” with certain sections of the script, improvising dialogue from Point A to Point B or a movement sequence with a specific objective in mind, in order to get a sense of what might work. For Journey, the playwright and director are the same person, Mary Wright, so that can expedite development time nicely (unless the director half of the brain and playwright half don’t agree, that is!). After this development time, Mary went away for two weeks and worked the rough draft of the script into the final draft, now including discoveries made in the development rehearsals.

These two weeks were a welcome break from rehearsal for me; time to catch up on those pesky administrative duties in that larger circle.

In mid-February, the “real” rehearsals began with a “finalish” script in hand – changes always happen when rehearsing an original play, inevitably something is discovered now that there’s new life being breathed into it by the actors. We’re in our third week of rehearsal now, having worked through most of the script at least once and set the blocking (movement of actors on stage), and are preparing for a Stumble Through (the first run of the play from start to finish, appropriately named because inevitably we will “stumble” and need a reminder of an exit or placement of prop, etc.) this Monday. Monday also marks the day I hand off Stage Management duties to the Apprentices, who will Assistant Stage Manage from now on and be the ones in rehearsal instead of me.

It’s a relief and sad to be at this place now. A relief in that I am waaaay behind – in part, due to our pesky winter weather, but also, due to the time spent in the rehearsal room and away from my desk. It’s quite sad too, to get a taste of the rehearsal process again and need to give it up so quickly. I’d forgotten how much I missed it and how much I enjoyed it until now. I usually relish the time when everyone else is in rehearsal; it’s quiet in the office, and I can get work done without interruption. So with a slightly conflicted heart, I’m jumping back out of the Stage Manager circle and back into my Managing Director circle. But now I’ve been reminded of “the other side”. The struggle to juggle deskwork and rehearsal room work AND the joy of creating.

With this title, I’m betting most of you are thinking that I’m going to eulogize Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Perhaps that’s been done enough. I’m not saying that with indifference either; I just kind of feel really weird inside, sometimes, about the way we deify junkies and suicide cases and just skirt over the death of uber-talents who managed to live full lives and die of old age.

I’m certainly not qualified to tell you whether that kind of living is a disease or just plain selfishness, but what I do know is that this week two major talents passed naturally after living full lives and contributing to society more than most ever will. I’m guessing neither of them are going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Unless…

Thanks for the laughs!

Screenshot from XCOM – Enemy Within

This meditation grows out of my son, Sam, who is now 33 years old, having given me the latest version of XCOM Enemy Within, for Christmas. Ever since, I’ve been struggling with my conscience over how I spend my “spare time”. Sounds like a simple problem right, a “first world problem” as they say? But I don’t think so.

It was Thoreau who scoffed at us with the ever-abiding: “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” I wouldn’t want to injure eternity or even get it a little disgruntled if I could avoid it – especially these days when my impending disappearance from this realm is ever more on my mind. (I hit sixty-three last December.) Even if Albert-the-genius-Einstein was right when he said that “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one”, it’s the only one I’ve got. So, joy is precious, but frivolity? Maybe not so much. Wasting time? Definitely not. As Seneca assures us: “True pleasure is a serious business.” And I take it all very seriously, but where do you draw the line between a destructive Puritanical oppression and Hedonistic excess?

Case in point: when Sam was a child, we got rid of the television set because we knew that hours in front of the boob tube, for the most part, insured verifiable boobiness. There’s always the exception to the rule, but staring at a burning candle, nay, watching someone collect the garbage, strikes me as more likely to be a useful expenditure of time than an endless stream of laugh-track small-mindedness perforated by “buy-this”, “buy-that” 30-second promotional spots. Not that the information locked into the television set itself – the wires, the screens, the electricity – isn’t a natural/man-made marvel or the extraordinary intelligence that went into making all those mind-numbingly mesmerizing messages.

I remember my father used to take me to play golf. Now, that was a productive use of time I’d say – though we didn’t do it very well. After all, we spent more time agonizing over our own inability to hit the ball straight or feeling shameful over some particularly bad judgment (at least I did) than communicating with each other. But at least it was a way of pushing back the onslaught of an ever more demanding world to make a place and a time for the two of us to be together, to allow our relationship to evolve in whatever course we could manage. It was healthy exercise; and besides, there’s nothing more aesthetically pleasing than the graceful arc of a golf shot well played – though, that never seemed the main reason we played.

So, though I didn’t really approve of computer games – they being like a high tech variation of all the boobiness of television – when Sammy got into XCOM – UFO Defense (a science fiction video game franchise featuring the titular fictional organization tasked with countering alien invasions of Earth), I decided to play along with him (like golf, kinda) to set aside the time or place we could be together. That was about 1994 and we both played pretty much non-stop until he went off to college. And now, twenty years later, when MicroProse comes out with a new updated and awesome (I use that word advisedly) version, I can’t play it (and it can deliver hours and hours of excitement endlessly) without feeling like I’m wasting my time. It doesn’t pass the frivolity test if I’m not “doing it with Sam”.

What is it that makes pleasure justifiable? Must it have a utilitarian value? Or is pleasure simply its own justification?

The Golden Globes

Certainly for a theatre artist, this is a fundamental consideration. I remember looking at the Golden Globes a few weeks ago on television, and the same patient but slightly concerned voice of, “Bill, you’re wasting your time,” came over me.

It wasn’t just what I know to be the brutally demanding rigors of show business underneath the made-up, constantly self-aware performances and public parade for the cameras necessary to satisfy the industry and the very fickle popularity business, that fascinated and irritated me – all of which can be as intoxicating as Cinderella’s night at the ball and at the same time, a waste of time, maybe even worse. Who’s in the lime light now isn’t as useful a question as to where the light should really be focused in the first place. Who really is the most worthy acting talent in the land? No one’s under the opinion that these events really deal with that in any effective way are they? This is by no means to denigrate the talent that surrounds money and the focus of attention like moths a powerful light.

Show business! It’s got a lock on our eye-balls. You’ve heard that the top 1% of the people in this country own about 35% of the wealth or the top 20% own 90% of the wealth—leaving, what, 10% of the wealth of this nation to sustain the rest of us 80%. It’s not unreasonable to argue that the distribution of power around the encouragement and recognition of talent is similarly skewed. 1% of those who are talented are receiving 90% of the opportunities, attention, and financial return. I mean, really. I love him too, but is Tom Hanks all that talented? He’s a good guy and all that, but really. See, I’m struggling.

I feel a little like Little Red Riding Hood, but there’s not just a wolf in the woods, but a wolf, a couple tigers, a lion or two, and at least half a dozen snakes… and that’s before I leave the house. The “media” is hyperbolic and everywhere, aggressively working to “capture our time, our eyeballs”.

And then I wanted to go see Frozen, Walt Disney’s new animation that came out Thanksgiving, but I just couldn’t bring myself to it; I mean, it is “for kids” right? I finally gave in, and went to it by myself – this musical animation for young girls based on the Hans Christian Andersen story of the Ice Queen. Now, I am very fond of children’s literature, fables, and believe it to be fundamentally important to keep my inner child alive and healthy, but what was I up to? Wasn’t sharing the experience with anyone. And what am I learning, of what utilitarian value is seeing Frozen going to provide? Looking around the matinee audience, me being a single sixty year old man in the midst of families and little girls? “Grow up, Bill,” my voice said.

Publicity shot of Frozen

But another voice argued back, “sometimes you just need to let it go, Bill,” and when the Ice Queen runs out of the castle longing to leave her kingdom behind, free at last from having to worry about hurting others – I was so there!

That’s me. I so identify with that fierce passion, desiring freedom with all its heart and to hell with being pretty for the crowd or well-behaved for the authorities, roaring with righteousness. I’m the Ice Queen storming off into the maelstrom, making my stand in the wilds of nature, with only the wolves to hear my howls.

But I struggle, as do we all, I’m sure. To do right, live right, and not to waste my time with frivolous, mindless diversion and egotism. Justice above all, and know, our choices make a difference.

So okay, it’s past Thanksgiving, which means that we’re officially into the Christmas Muzak season.

Here at Christmas City Follies Central Station, however, we’ve been officially into that Christmas music mindset since the end of October. We’ve been caroling and carrying on in the Christmas spirit for going on six weeks now. To some degree, it’s easy to get tired of that, deliberately immersing ourselves in Christmas from end of October onward, but I don’t know. I have too many fond memories of Christmas music to hold that much against it.

On the second day of rehearsal, we all brought in our respective musical instruments and muddled through “Silent Night” on the snare drum, uke, bass, flute (please forgive its piercing loudness), trombone (or Mary singing through the trombone part), oboe, sax, and keyboard (I think). Take a listen to our fledgling first efforts as a Follies band.

We sound clunky and middle school music class-y, and I love it, as our first step into the musical world of this year’s Follies.

And I love the way it reminds me of the completely different rendition of “Silent Night” that we did last year, with lights dancing in the darkness while we sang, a little out of breath and constantly checking ourselves to make sure the choreography was right and that our lights were lit but knowing that the effort of nitpicking was worth the result.

And I love the way it reminds me of singing “Silent Night” in high school choir, simple a capella, hauntingly lovely, with the whole audience raggedly singing along, and that incredible feeling of unity granted through simply singing together.

And beyond that, I love the way that the Follies score doesn’t restrict itself to Christmas carols, reaching out to include Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand, Michael Jackson, Journey. Any song with a word or three about love and joy is rendered seasonally appropriate in the hands of the cast, because love and joy are what’s seasonally appropriate.

Tonight, we open a new Follies, rife with humor and heart, costume quick changes and ridiculous props, new characters and old. And music – lots of wonderful, beautiful, silly, delicious, epic, intimate, absurd, sweet music. We hope you’ll be there, sitting in the front row, humming along, singing and dancing all the way home.