Of Course I Miss It, Part 1

Yes, of course I miss designing sound and working in the theater.  I did it for about 12 years and then it felt like it was time to leave.  I still believe that, but that doesn't mean I don't miss it.  I was in broadcasting for more than 35 years...writing, announcing, producing, crew work...and I don't miss it a bit.

I miss reading a script for the first time, pencil and paper beside me, taking notes on what the playwright suggests for sound cues and writing down my ideas.  I miss meeting with the director to go over the cues, to hear what s/he wants, and to propose my ideas.  I miss meeting with the whole creative team for paper tech, the meeting in which we talked through what we're doing.

I miss re-reading the script to imagine the sound.  Sound is not just dropping in a thunder clap because the script says so; sound matches and enhances what's going on.  There's a difference between thunder in a comedy and thunder in a mystery.  What would the accompanying rain sound like?  I miss deciding if a doorbell should be rung offstage by the actor or a sound effect programmed by me.  And again, what kind of doorbell fits the situation?  What should the train whistle in the distance sound like?  When the actor opens the apartment window, should there be city sounds?  And if so, what's the neighborhood sound like?

I miss the time spent in the audio production room working on realizing the sound with the sound engineer.  I've worked with three engineers and two of them I miss greatly.  The third did his job, but the other two took production to a higher level.  What I miss most from those sessions is the collaboration, and I also miss watching those artists in action.  I would tell them what I wanted and they played and worked on and finessed the sounds and tended to come up with something more than I imagined.  I would start it, then sit back and listen and marvel as they created perfection.

The engineer I worked with over the last years was the most amazing.  Fortunately, I had enough sense to let him interpret what I wanted.  I'd read some lines before the cue, tell him what the director thought it should be, tell him what I thought it should sound like.  There were times when I thought we were spending too much time on a cue, only to hear a sonic work of art.  He knew how to be perfect but not upstage the actors.  Plus, we were complete opposites in what we liked to do.  He hated doing live shows.  He was a recording engineer and loved the comfort of having a 7th take.  I loved going live, having only one time to get it right.

I miss tech week.  Everyone says they wish they could avoid it, but it's a week of watching things come together.  I liked having one night that was sound night, in which I could stop the proceedings to go over a cue again.  I liked being able to tell the disagreeable actors that they had six or eight weeks to rehearse and that I have one night.. It is sometimes difficult for actors to remember there's more to a show than her or him.  I can't say that I particularly liked having the director tell me that, despite him/her having heard the cue before, s/he didn't think it worked now that s/he heard it with actors.  Neither the engineer nor I liked having to re-do effects, but the director is in charge.  And it gave me another couple hours working with him.

I miss opening night, waiting in the green room with other members of the crew and the actors.  I always left at 15 minutes call so I could watch most of the audience come in and also (and I don't know any better way to say this) become one with the board.  Also, to keep the curious away from the board and computer.  I didn't need to be with the cast; I liked those minutes to review the script, think about things, quietly make sure the actors' mics were on (there was always a vocal warm-up at 10 minutes, so I could see if any mics were not working), and just generally prepare.  I miss that first time that everyone does everything without stopping, that first time in front of an audience, the first time everything has to happen.

I miss working on shows I knew before.  For example, I always wanted to be in Ain't Misbehavin', the Fats Waller review, but I suspected no one would ever do a white version of it.  As the sound designer, I worked every performance and loved it.  I'd heard of The Laramie Project but never saw it.  To work it was incredibly moving every performance, plus we did it during October, the month Matthew Shepherd was killed, and there were references to specific dates, which made it even more real.  My first two shows as board operator were The Music Man, in which I had maybe 3 cues, followed two weeks later by Angels in America:  Part Two:  Perestroika, which had 87 cues and all of them on audio cassettes.  And I was terrified and lived through it and it was the first of many shows I was sorry to see end.

I miss working the run of the show, finding the rhythm of it without getting into a rut, and even though we'd done 20 performances, being prepared for anything to happen.  I miss pretending that this world of pretend was where I belonged.  I miss the relationships that took place during a run, being ignored by certain actors (usually young who didn't understand the collaborative effort that goes into a performance) and not caring, being acknowledged by and having conversations with veteran actors and crew, swapping stories, sharing news and gossip.  I miss having complicated cues and pulling them off without a hitch.

I miss closing night, especially shows I liked doing.  I'd find myself thinking "this is the last time I'll do that."  While cleaning up, taking down the mics and speakers, and pulling the cable helped me cope with the end and putting the run to rest, it never worked completely and I'd be post-show depressed for a couple of days.  But then there'd be the next show to work on.

I miss the smell of the different theaters.  I miss breathing the same air as the actors and the audience and the crew.  I miss thinking sequences through or inventing bridges from one scene to the next.  I like that I went from reel tape to tape cartridge to cassette tape to floppy disc to CD to computer.  I like that the engineer loved programming the computer and kept my more limited knowledge in mind so I'd hit the cues clearly.  I miss feeling the play, feeling the mood of the moment, nearly the same every performance but not quite.  I miss the pressure of a busy, live performance.

"The theater is a temple," says Prologus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, "and we are here to worship the gods of Comedy and Tragedy."  That ran through my mind nearly every time I entered through the stage door.  I did my part in that worship and was proud to do so.  Yes, I miss it, but when it's time to exit, one exits.

Two Men: The Cautionary Tale

I've been writing some of my memories of growing up in a small town in the 1950s.  I think I've posted others (Rocky Springs comes to mind), so here's another:

Gap had two men who served as cautionary tales.  One was Stewart Fisher; the other was Jonas (no last name known).  Stewart was slow, although, happily, the public had had their fill of picking on him and pretty much tolerated him.  He was a large man who scared me a little.  During WWII, people were asked to record numbers on all railroad cars.  (I’m assuming I’m remembering this correctly.)  Stewart couldn’t serve and instead wrote down every freight car number he could.  He continued taking down numbers in tablets my father gave him.  Father hired him to do odd jobs around the mill.  Although he gave me the creeps, I was assured he was harmless and the Christian thing to do was to be nice to him.

Whereas Stewart was thought of as slow and harmless, Old Jonas was the example of everything dire that could happen to you if you masturbated.  A moment of pleasure equaled a lifetime of whatever it was Jonas was.  Jonas was our homeless person.  I often wondered if Jonas was Gap’s forgotten man, as they were called in the 1920s and ’30s.  Jonas wasn’t elderly, but I could easily see how he was barred from everything.  He was the town drunk, the village idiot, the man nobody wanted.  As far as I could tell, he was beyond Christian Love and Charity.  Mother hastened me out of the way when she saw him on the street.  Some people let him sleep in their old stables or carriage houses when the weather got really cold.  I knew he also lived beside the spring mechanism inside the Town Clock tower.

Stewart was retarded.  Jonas clearly had a history, a history for a young boy not to know.  Jonas was the result of too much masturbation.  Jonas was the result of too much alcohol.  Jonas was the result of what happens when you catch a sexual disease.  Jonas was what it was like to live under the churches’ highly-placed radars.

The first time I thought I had a handle on Jonas was when I read Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.  I recognized the choir director instantly.  Having smugly figured out the choir director, a notion came to me that maybe being a gay man in Gap would be the same thing.  By the time I’d read Our Town, I was in junior high, if not senior high, and hadn’t seen him in ages.  No one wanted to talk about him.  And, of course, the only books I could find in the Lancaster County Library were so clearly anti-gay that even I could tell I was being lied to.  No Jonas, no discussion, no questions, no answers, no nothing.  There were times I wondered if I stayed in Gap if I’d become the next Jonas.

Not Sean

Yesterday, he stood beside me at the food bank.  I was happy to see he's still around; I'm sorry his circumstances are such that has to get help from the food bank.

I think I've written about him before.  To me he is Not Sean.  Someone on the bus told me his name and it sounded like "Sean."  One day at the Chinese restaurant, I introduced him to Jack as Sean.  He later corrected me.  His voice is so quiet and his accent is one I don't recognize, I don't know what he said his name was.  More than one syllable was involved, yet it sounded like "Sean."

The first I noticed him was a few years ago.  He was going to Harrisburg Area Community College and almost consistently got to the bus stop just in time.  He was astoundingly pretty.  I think he would be hard for anyone not to notice.  Yet so shy.

Spring, 2013, he was jubilant about being accepted at the college of his choice.  He showed me the letter; that surprised me.  This past January or February, he came into a bus shelter.  I asked if his college was having a long break or if he was on independent study.  He said, "College didn't quite turn out the way I wanted."  And it was clear I was not to pursue the subject.  I later gave him my email eddress and told him to get in touch if he ever wanted to talk.

Not Sean is maybe 20.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but he really is one of the most beautiful young guys I've ever seen.  "Twink" tends to be a pejorative term implying the young man is a himbo.  Not Sean is no himbo, although his appearance might give one that impression.

I would hope that his parents didn't banish him because he's gay.  They'd have had to know that by the time he went to HACC.  Maybe he left them.  I wish he'd trust me enough to talk.  Of course, he's maybe 20 and knows about and uses the food bank, so maybe he's getting help -- seeing a therapist or case manager.  I care about they boy.  I wish I knew how to get him to talk and understand that I'm concerned about him.  He may well be suspicious of me.  Perhaps he has reason to be wary about gay old farts.

Yesterday, he made no effort to let me know he was standing beside me.  Was he embarrassed to be seen at the food bank?  Why did he think I was there?  I suspect he was truly hoping I wouldn't see him, and that if I did, I would ignore him.  How could I ignore Not Sean?  I hope he comes to understand that if I see him I will say "hello" to him because I'm glad to see him.  He needs to know that people might like him.

Three in One

Last night, I wrote this on Joe.My.God.:
"What an amazing day. That's all. Just what an amazing day. I mean, when you grow up as the queer, faggy kid in the '50s and '60s in the wilds of eastern Lancaster County, this kind of thing still just blows me away. Good for our young folks who see today's 3 events as being great and about time. To me, it's just so unbelievable. What I was given to look forward to was a short life and an eternity in hell. Things like this...I couldn't even dream about them. And now breakthroughs in weddings, music, and football. Excuse me, please. It's the vapors."

The weddings refers to the first day a southern state -- Arkansas -- legally performed same sex weddings in Eureka Springs.  The music refers to Conchita Wurst winning this year's EuroVision -- probably not the first gay winner, but certainly the first gender fuck winner.  And football refers to Michael Sam winning a spot on the St. Louis Rams -- the first openly gay man to go into a football team; gay men have come out after their careers, but Michael is the first to enter the profession not hiding his sexual orientation.

In a way, it's a good thing that gay young people see this as a "well, why not?" kind of thing.  Good for them.  I like that such achievements are practically a given.  I do wish, though, that they had a better understanding of why this is such a big fricking deal.  And that these incredible "firsts" should happen on the same day is such a big deal.

I don't recall her name, but a woman once observed that she looked forward to the time when there was no longer a need to point out "the first woman to...", that it will just happen.  I look forward to that being true for gay people, too.  Right now, however, it's so important to observe such events.

Same sex marriage in Arkansas?  I remember the first days of integration at Central High in Little Rock in 1957, three years after Brown v. Board of Education.  Not that I was in Little Rock, but I remember the photos of African American teens walking up to the school with people screaming their ignorant, hateful, racist epithets, refusing to understand that "separate but equal" is a lie.  Separate but equal is why Jack and I will not accept the stupid offer of civil union and won't marry in a state where marriage equality is the law but not honored where we live.  It has to be real, it has to be the law of the land, or it means nothing.  We committed to each other decades ago.

Conchita Wurst?  When was the last time the world saw a bearded man in a dress sing a song that may well become an equality anthem?  I have no idea if Conchita is gay, and it doesn't matter.  His courage to appear as he is, singing a song he believes, gets my absolute respect and joy.

US football has pretty much become the US religion.  Change has come slowly in our sports.  I don't care for sports, so I don't know a great deal about it.  I DO know Jackie Robinson was the first African American to appear in US sports.  I DO remember the yelling and booing he got and the fracas over allowing black men in football and basketball.  And yesterday we saw the first openly gay football prospect be drafted into an NFL team.

It's likely that not-gay people don't understand the accomplishments, the victories that took place yesterday.  Any one of these things would be remarkable; that three such important victories took place in one day completely surpasses anything I might have thought even a decade ago, let alone when I was a kid who knew he was different but didn't know what that meant.  "Our" kids are coming out at younger ages, and good for them.  Many of them know they'll get the support that, unfortunately, is still needed.  "Our" kids will take yesterday in stride...they'll know it's important, but they won't know just how important it is to "their" elders.

Equality.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

Son of Dream Center

Dream Center is what I call whatever it is that comes up with dreams that I have while asleep, not dreams as in aspirations.  It is easier for me to write about a dream in the present tense.  Because it's a dream, it does not have to make sense, nor does it have to be logical.  Therefore...

The theater is sort of a Hershey Theatre, sort of not.  I'm crew on this production.  It's a community theater production.  This is the dress rehearsal for the show which will run for one performance only.  None of us is happy about that.  We've been told that a full house in this theater is as many people as would see it in a longer run at our former venue.  I've been assigned to lights.  The control board is an old tower with lots of switches, lots of dimmers, and nothing to indicate what any of the switches and dimmers control.  The main curtain isn't quite down to the stage.  Bright lights shine through the gap.  I don't see anything on the board indicating anything is turned on.  The director angrily asks me about "the crap" against the back wall.  He's somewhat mollified when I tell him there's a backdrop that will hide it.  He tells me what he wants for lights.  I tell him no one's told me how the thing works.  He tells me to do what I can and leaves.  I snap on some switches and play with dimmers.  The orchestra tunes up.  It sounds like we have an audience.  For dress?  Were they charged admission?  Was it reduced, since this is a rehearsal?  Regardless, I'm glad people are out there -- it will make it feel like we've done two performances.  As the show progresses, I play slowly with the lights.  I notice we have a full house, not just "some" audience.  The cast is doing well.  At the end of the act, I hear shrieks of laughter and see feathers flying in from the house.  When the curtain is closed, I walk up to the balcony to look over the rail to try to figure out where the feathers came from  I see a couple of white doves flying around the ceiling and a net over the orchestra pit.  Retrieving the doves is not in my job description.  Then I hear a fight between the director and a younger person, probably the set designer.  Apparently, a lot of fake white doves and some live ones are caged somewhere and are released with some force.  The net is supposed to fly out over them, catch the live birds, drag down the fake ones (filled with helium), and drop them into the orchestra pit.  The director screams what a stupid idea it is.  The designer defends by pointing out that the audience loved it.  The director points at the flying birds.  "Who's cleaning up the shit?  And why didn't the net catch them?  And how did you think you'd get away with dropping that heavy net on the orchestra?"  "We can work on the net during the day tomorrow," the designer says.  As for dropping the net over the pit, "I asked each musician and every one of them thought it was a funny idea."  I notice the net is still over the pit, a few white feathers attached.

Good one, Dream Center.  Thank you.  But where the hell did that come from?

Go, Billy! Go!

All week, I've been celebrating the replacement of my old, broken DVD player with a new one by watching movies I have and like.  Cloudburst, Mysterious Skin, The Ritz, and scenes from others...the tornadoes and Aunt Meg scenes of Twister, the Wicked Witch of the West version of The Wizard of Oz, the first 45 minutes of Victor/Victoria, and so on.

Last night I decided on Billy Elliot, which I haven't watched in years.  I know I liked it enough to buy it, but I'd forgotten how utterly absorbing it is, even knowing the outcome.  The script is excellent, the direction is excellent, the choreography is wonderful, the cinematography is inventive, and the central ensemble are damned fine actors.  However,...

I grow tired of some words.  "Awesome" has outlived its novelty by about a decade.  "Totally" is irritating.  There are others, and one dealing with acting is "chemistry," as in, "They had great chemistry."  Yet I'm hard pressed to find a better description between Julie Walters and Jamie Bell.  The relationship between the two of them is not just convincing, because "convincing" describes the rest of the cast.  Rather, it's electric.  It's acting that I live for, when the performances leap from the stage or the screen and land in your emotions.

The progression from Billy trying to give the hall keys to Mrs. Wilkinson to their blow-up scene as she tries to prepare him for his audition is absolutely believable.  I love that during class there never isn't a shot of her without her holding a cigarette.  And anytime she reprimands one of the girls, it's always her daughter, Debbie.  The scene in which Billy lets Mrs. Wilkinson read his mother's letter sets up even more of a believable closeness between them, and that's followed by the delightful "I Love to Boogie."  She fights for him, she understands the family dynamic, but at one point she demands too much from Billy and bolts.  When she nearly whispers "Shit," it's one of the most revealing moments.  They fight in the changing room, she smacks him across the face, not unlike he'd be punished at home.  And then he cries and she holds him.  They've gone beyond forgiveness; they've reached an essential understanding.

For me, the one disappointing part of the movie is the final scene, Billy's debut in Swan Lake.  It is right that his father and brother should be there.  I love that Billy's gay childhood friend Michael is there with...his lover? his date? his boyfriend?  "I wouldn't miss this for the world," Michael tells Billy's brother.  I understand the logistics:  Billy's father and brother were comped in; Michael probably bought two tickets and they turned out to be beside the Elliots.  And yet it ticks me off that Mrs. Wilkinson wasn't there.  Maybe she died.  Maybe he will give her his house tickets for another performance.  And it's not like teachers always get their due.  However, after the intensity of that relationship, the love, the education, the care, the understanding, it felt to me that Mrs. Wilkinson was forgotten.

Still, it is one of the great movies.  If you think it's just a Broadway show, you really need to see the movie.  It is among the best.

I Loves You, Porgy

A few weeks ago I finally borrowed the cast recording of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.  I loved the voices.  I mean, Audra McDonald.  She's arguably the best singer around.  The voices on the recording were excellent.  But something kept gnawing at me.

The story goes that the Gershwin and the Heyward estates wanted to make the classic palatable for a modern audience.  It's something I don't understand, dumbing something down, the assumption that the contemporary audience can't appreciate something so "old."  I can appreciate cleaning up language.  I was quite happy, for example, when Sondheim changed a lyric in Company from "fag" to something else.  I am pleased that Porgy and Bess's racist language could be changed, although productions of the original have been changing those words all along.

But why were the arrangements changed?  Why were the original orchestrations replaced with far less interesting orchestrations?  Obviously, the producers wouldn't pay for a full orchestra, but an adaptation would work.  Instead, a "Broadway" sound was substituted for original intent.  Oh, and let's fuck with the original ending so we can get Audra onstage at curtain.

One of the first record albums I bought was the 1951 Columbia Porgy and Bess, so that's the one that's my point of reference.  After listening to the new recording, I did a search for that one.  I knew Sony released it on CD in 1998 and figured some library somewhere had to have it.  About a month later, it arrived.  Goose bumps throughout.

I read some articles on The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess and became kind of horrified.  There was no visible Catfish Row; mostly it was minimal set.  No Catfish Row establishing place.  Minimal sets are OK.  And they save money.  But the background of Catfish Row looming over most of the action is a stark reminder of time and situation.  Some of the voices of the 1951 recording are not Broadway quality; instead, they sound real, convincing.  There's something to be said for that.

But I keep coming back to the orchestration.  For almost any show, the re-imagined arrangements and orchestrations are fine.  The estates did say "go to it," make it a contemporary Broadway show.  The original opera was staged, I believe, in The Music Box, one of Broadway's smallest theaters with a fair-sized but not huge orchestra pit.  Gershwin, for the most part, did his own orchestrations knowing where it would be heard.  So why the simplifications?  Broadway musicians have not become less talented through the years.

Why is it necessary to assume an audience is incapable of appreciating a serious work?  Why did the estates feel it important to update and fuck around with a monumental, if controversial, masterpiece?  Is "opera" always an awful word.  And then there's the South Pacific revival...pretty much as it was originally done and the original score played by a full-size Broadway orchestra which got its own ovation nearly every performance..

When you play around with the orchestration, particularly if the orchestration is by the composer, you play around with the entire tenor of the show.  And it's clear the arranger and orchestrator were charged with making a classic score sound like some show down the street.  The creative team decided to make some wise clean-ups; they also decided to make it pretty antiseptic

I do believe there is a serious intent to dumb things down.  And I believe that those who do the dumbing down are those who don't understand that a symphony is three or four movements, all of which are essential to the work, not just the one with the catchy theme.  I don't have a problem with Rent being a re-imagining of La boheme.  Except for an occasional quote, the story was refashioned for the contemporary audience and the music was original.

Is anyone interested in the 1951 Columbia recording?  Probably not.  It's like an old black-and-white movie.  The production values are different, it's not in stereo, the names of the stars are no longer known, how can it be at all relevant to contemporary audiences?    As Crown sings referring to Porgy, "Ain't there no whole ones left?"

It's sad to think that few people who saw The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess bothered to find out what the original opera was like.  They are happy that it's updated and sanitized, but they don't know how the original presented itself.

Yes, Jews and white people put together an opera about the lives of African Americans, in all likelihood with little subject input and with a certain reliance on stereotype.  How long has that been going on?  (That's not so much an excuse as it is an observation.)  On the other hand, how many operas have even tried to depict African American life?  And how many have done it with such an incredibly rich and understanding score?  When the music hits home, it hits home because it's about humans, about people.  And the orchestra is there to add to the emotion.  When the orchestra has to play dumbed-down, so-so reductions of what was once an incredibly gorgeous and moving score so it can sound like any other contemporary Broadway orchestra, something is seriously wrong.