November

October is drawing to a close and the million things that were so important that had to be done this month have, in the main, been taken care of.  Here are some of the things I am thinking about.

Getting out to see Kate in her new apartment and seeing what we can get up to in the neighborhood.

Getting better at driving.

Finishing my reel.

Visiting at home and seeing friends.

Prepping Subterranea for a limited production next season.

I think the most dangerous place to be in November will be between me and a camera.  Got a lot of learnin' to do, and hours logged is the only way to get comfortable.  That and classes, I suppose.

Had a very fruitful past few weeks including 

readings of Lloyd Suh's Great Wall Story and Larry Kunofsky's The Myths We Need, 

workshop performances of Qui Nguyen's The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G, 

and seeing some great new work from The Vampire Cowboys Saloon artists and David Deblinger (his one-man show Beyond Measure was directed by my friend Aaron Weiner for a few nights at Nuyorican Poets Cafe).  

Oh, and almost winning an Innovative Theater Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in last season's The Brokenhearteds by Temar Underwood.  

Missed it by thiiiiiiiis much.

You know what else is interesting? Kate said something enlightening to me about my approach to Shakespeare.  My position was that the writing is poetry, the most beautifully constructed sentences in English, and the audience should be able to hear you honoring that in your delivery of it.  Not recitation or too flowery, but understanding the depth of the verse and employing it in such a way that they know you know it.  She said, playwrights do not want to hear their lines read as poetry, they want to hear them read as lines.  Like, between people with needs.  

That's horribly simplifying it, but I think she's right.  Every time I approach Shakespeare I feel this American Standard voice coming out of my mouth and not necessarily the character.  Mostly because I want to do justice to the language I love so much, but that's not even how Shakespeare would've wanted it to be done.  He'd be onstage using the language to compete with drunks, animals, political maneuvering and the talkative crowds.  There may or may not have been any poetry at all when you might get a tomato thrown at you for being boring.