In the mid-70's, along about the time that help wanted: women was giving way to what part of no don't you understand followed bysexual harassment class action suit, I took part in a sociological experiment. We didn't know that's was it was at the time, although some of us were more hip than others. Our group was small—10 at most—and I think we were doomed before we started. Of course that would depend both on what our long term goals really were and on the definition of doom. Personally, I eventually went on over to the local library to check out Marilyn French's The Women's Room and ended up researching divorce. A locale such as this little annex east of San Jose, California, did not afford much in the way of intellectual or political stimulus, but it did have lots of those genteel modes of communication such as bulletin boards at supermarkets. That's how I hooked up with this group. Now, I didn't have access to a vehicle on a regular basis & it would have been a logistical nightmare for me to get on down into the Valley to go to a meeting, so this local thing seemed like it was dropped in my lap. It was going to meet at a location five minutes from my house on weekends when, ostensibly, I could more easily get away from domestic duties for awhile if my husband would keep his eye on the kids, (which he did, but to what extent, I'll never know). I had to go, especially since I was surrounded by men at home. Even an infant girl would have made the difference, but that was not to be. So what the heck was this thing? Only the newly created & yet-to-be formalized Milpitas Chapter of the National Organization for Women—a quick Google search reveals that the San Jose/South Bay Chapter of NOW is at this moment celebrating '30 uppity years'. That places its genesis just about smack dab when I'm talking about. These meetings were a revelation; I met my first real-live uncloseted Lesbian, heard first hand testimony of domestic violence, bucked up my courage to take on the office of Treasurer and soon helped organize the first ever six-week Consciousness Raising Seminar in Milpitas history. This course was going to take place at a member's home on an agreed-upon weekday evening. Becoming increasingly uppity myself by leaps & bounds, I booked the car for that time & implied strongly that his Nibs shouldn't wait up for me. I still have lots of impressions from those six weeks; trying to shake off my persistent fear of being isolated as the too-conventional, straight-mom-married-with-two-kids; being shocked when somebody said that Katharine Hepburn was gay; being really shocked when our hostess casually mentioned walking in on her 90 year old blind & bed-ridden mom masturbating (I didn't know elders still did that); relishing the wicked freedom of naming out loud certain body parts, male & female... One bit particularly sticks out, though. Probably about the third week or so, we were going around the circle sharing our stories as part of the process of exploration. I think I had loosened up enough even to try a shot of something & the question was "Why did you get married? Quick, don't think, just answer!" And I laughed & said: "So I could have a party & get presents!" (To be continued...) Central Works, a company which supports contemporary theater with productions of original pieces has most recently produced a lean & mean Lionheart , the Last Great Crusade, using local talent, performed in a demonstrably most appropriate & effective space at the Berkeley City Club. The program states that Lionheart is the product of its Collaborative Method, and thus had been workshopped for 10 weeks by members of the collective who wrote, directed & performed it. Robert Weinapple heads the cast as Richard, with Rica Anderson as his sister Joanna, Armen DiLanchian as Kalil, brother of the Sultan, and Jodi Feder as Rachel. Over the span of two acts, we come to know something of the histories of these people, their foibles, their desperation, their cruelties. The high ceiling & stone walls reverberate with passion & biting humor. The anachronistic intrusion of electricity can almost be dismissed with the room's dim lighting. We're asked to bring our modern sensibilities into synchronization with centuries-old strife in the name of our common ancestors. Now I must admit that I can get past the cockney accents, odd choice as that is; however, with such lofty ideals as one is led to expect are guiding this project, it is possible to lose perspective in the pursuit of greatness. Why then does not that 'collaboration' forstall such an eventuality; somebody could go 'hang on! the big guy's got no duds on!' & then the rest would go 'true, man' & proceed to try again with another approach, (or another tailor). By round about way of saying, I gotta be the one to stand up, if no one else would, and say that it makes no sense to me to put this much effort into the 'wardobes' of Richard, Joanna and Kalil, and to invest them with some truly mesmerizing colors, textures and flow, only to have the pivotal character of Rachel come out—sorry—buck-naked. Continental Divide: Mothers Against/Daughters of the Revolution, yet another super-sized, if not in scope, at least in length, workshopped epic. An afternoon & evening affair, presented at the Roda Theatre as a Berkeley Rep/Oregon Shakespeare Festival Production, CD:MA lurches & staggers about trying to gather in all the bits of information needed to give us audience members a clue as to what the heck is going on, but by the middle of the first act it's a job just to stay awake. Once in a while someone will say something pithy—usually Robynn Rodriguez as Connie Vine or sometimes Susannah Schulman as Lorianne (although she is continually upstaged by her Manolo Blahniks). And every time the attention is drawn to Derrick Lee Weeden as Vincent it's like a cool breeze: wakes me right up. CD:DOTR indulges in Baby Boomer retro hippie angst until I want to go slap somebody, but then along comes Lorri Holt as Blair and I'm back on solid ground. Nothing like somebody just up there being—never fails. As true a treat as it is to see some rarely performed Athol Fugard, Sizwe Bansi Is Dead makes for a full evening. At the intimate Next Stage in SF, Fred Pitts as Buntu opens the piece with assurance; in such a small space it can be treacherous to be so close to the audience, but he not only betrays no nerves, he does something rare: he invites us to watch him closely. Strange feeling! (I expect Fugard has something to do with that, too). David Stewart as Siswe reads a bit young for somebody with four kids, but develops an endearing quality which holds up. No apologies needed. Unfortunately, the night we attended, the performances lost probably two thirds of the audience at the intermission leaving The Island to float away by itself with an embarrassed seven or eight people as witnesses. That is bad news for a struggling theater, especially since SBID went so well. Okay, now I'm going to talk some serious sardines. If you've never seen Noises Off and you're not a stage performer yourself, there is a bit missing from your world. But that's all right, the rest of us are in the Club, we know what it's all about: Sardines & doors, doors & sardines. Getting on & getting off. It's...the Theatre! I myself have had the honor of being anointed by the Sardines in Act II. During my second stint as the Wicked Witch, a production of NO came up, so I went right over to the auditions and grabbed myself a form to fill out. When I saw the rehearsal schedule, however, my heart sank. Impossible. And yet, I thought, one never knows...so I dutifully put down all my conflicts & crossed my fingers they'd want me enough not to worry about me finishing up a few flights over that Oz across town. Not too many days after, there I was happily at home, script in hand, fully intending to have Dotty off-book before NO started rehearsing—after all, the Witch has a lot of down time; her part consists of approximately 11 minutes of stage/film time, no lie. Anyway, this was before I had actually broken down the script. I had seen NO, but I hadn't absorbed its complexity. It was clear that just chipping away backstage at Oz was not going to work, so I took a hard look at the shape of the finished work Michael Frayn is not a demon per se; however, this task has got to be marked in the annals of scriptdom as one of the toppers. Set Front, Act I: Dialogue = rehearsal of 'Nothing On' w/Dotty as Mrs. Clackett
Set Back, Act II Dialogue segues into 'Nothing On' w/backstage pantomime
Set Front, Act III 'Nothing On' Self-Destructs Only by repeated side-by-side comparisons of where things go wrong could I eventually figure out what was right. Accordingly, each Act went into its own separate binder, each piece of the dialogue in 'Nothing On' catalogued for each detail of 'spontaneous' change taking place in subsequent Acts; all information color-coded for ease of differentiation; each plate of Sardines accounted for & cheat-sheet devised to allow for a number of Glued-on Sardines vs. Slippery Sardines, and whether said Sardines were On or Off. Set aside for contemplation & study was a separate narrative sheet, derived from the Act II pantomime which consists only of stage directions and which also must be timed with the performance of 'Nothing On' that is taking place simultaneously. I was eventually able to pick up any binder at any given moment, flip it open and tell you exactly where in the heck we were in the play & walk through the pantomime. In the process of mounting this production we managed to: Drive one actor quite mad (he was muttering to himself and had to be let go.)
Replace him with an actor on the East Coast to whom we fedexed script & blocking; was off book when he arrived, but until that point I rehearsed with empty space.
Go from set changes taking 1½ hours to under 10 minutes.
Lose another actor from injury, who was replaced by another cast member, who was in turn replaced by our stage manager, who ended up playing Poppy...the stage manager. It was with great pleasure I looked forward to seeing Director Richard Seyd's version of Noises Off, (of late playing at SF's Marines Memorial Theatre after a successful run at San Jose Rep), not only because of my familiarity with the play, but because I have seen his work & taken classes in Triggering, a method he has developed over the years to help actors stay 'in the moment'. I like this tool alot myself & wanted especially to see how it would apply here. Frayn has adapted his own play to run now with only one intermission (fine), a few more lines for Tim and I'm not sure quite what else, but who cares? It still works. So apart from these small additions, the set's classic, all the bits are there, flowers, bottles, cactus, newspaper. LOVE Dan Hiatt's Freddie/Philip. In fact, there's a case in point: this character can be played as a 10 to 20 watt bulb—anywhere in that range. I think Dan's guy is a little on the low side of that & less power to him, I say. My impression of Jane Carr's Dotty, on the other hand, is that Richard prepped her to set a tone for the show, an easy, soft pace with a touch of despair & nostalgia for the good old days, maybe. When this was established, the play then proceeded to build a bit more gently than I would have thought or expected. This seems entirely in tune with Richard's style of direction—to allow some room for real people to emerge before the farce really gets going. That's an absorbing way to approach the frenetic activity: lose a bit on the speed, but pick up considerably on the connection with the poor beknighted fools onstage. I had not thought that I could feel a sense of sorrow at their predicaments, but I did & not to the detriment of the comedy. Au contraire, it is to the credit of everyone involved that this Noise has some depth to it. MysticRiver
Not long after I saw this film I heard Sean Penn interviewed on NPR & sure enough he was asked about his character—guess what he said. He politely declined to discuss it as he felt that this would affect someone's experience of the movie who had not yet seen it. Furthermore, he thought previews served only to ruin your chances of having an uninfluenced viewing of a film. I laughed out loud! A guy who's out promoting his film by saying it's good work, go see it. It is good work. Go see it. The Station Agent
Finbar McBride should get some more work after this. (If you've been keeping up with HBO's Carnivale you've also seen Michael J. Anderson in a major dramatic role. 'Bout time. Now if they can just get some decent writing to go with). Could eat Bobby Cannavale with a spoon or anything that's handy, and Patricia Clarkson is obviously on a roll. Pieces of April
See Patricia Clarkson in a largely improvised roll—sorry, role—which takes great advantage of her ability to play multiple sides of human nature. Love, Actually
Sticks to the roof of your mouth. The Human Stain
Read the book instead. Master & Commander
I actually liked the look of this epic, but the script is pretty awful, thus making it way hard for the otherwise decent actors to catch the tide & really do some sailin'. Sylvia
Gwynnie in the buff, not altogether unpleasant & not, as Joe-Bob Briggs used to say, gratuitous. Info to be dug up in the aftermath of these domestic travails proves to be more interesting than the film. Rather like the attempt to bring Frida to the screen. Maybe these women be too big for celluloid! Shattered Glass
Not the only one, I'm sure, to remark that Hayden Christensen did a fine job on this go round. Got all prickly watching him lie and all that. And I love that I know Hank Azaria's face as well as his voice, so I can close my eyes & have just as much fun (or go watch Simpsons). Bad Santa
True, but what does it mean? | 
