Alberty's Blah Blah Blog

Yeah, yeah, sorry for missing yesterday. We had call-backs for Six Characters in Search of an Author Tuesday night. Then we had to cast it, which took some discussion. Finally, got home and had some unexpected work to handle.

Then, Wednesday spent all my non-son time working on getting prepped for the read through tonight. So, no writing time.

But it’s now 11pm and I’m trying to get back into the groove.

I was actually pretty surprised that I got over two full weeks out before a glitch like yesterday. I’m kind of proud of that.

My problem is getting to be topics. I’m feeling a bit devoid of writing material.

There are some things — like that tonight my feet smell like Bugles, the corn chip snack from General Mills (I don’t know why) — that I could go into detail on, but I feel like I should move onto different matters. But I don’t know what those matters can be.

There are other things I’d like to write about, projects mostly, but they aren’t at a place to go public yet.

My wife — god love her — says, “You know, you’re not going to hit it out of the park every time you sit down to write something. That’s what makes it a blog.”

Well I think that sucks. Kind of like this post.

I know I’m going to miss another one, and I hate that inevitability. But I’m going to try not beat myself up about it.

Life is filled with little decisions and sometimes sleep trumps writings, kids trump writing, wife trumps writing, home trumps writing. I got to learn to be okay with it.

I guess.

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Okay, a little late today, but had second night of auditions last night so was up late cogitating.

What is todays blog about? Last night’s dinner.

Roasted Carrot Soup.

Oh, my goodness was this a tasty Oompaloompa.

I’ve discovered that one of the easiest things you can do to ramp up the flavor of veggies to give them a good roasting. It adds about 30 minutes to the prep time, but you can do it ahead of time and store them in the fridge. Also, if you are going to cut up the veggies, the only other part of the process is simply sliding them into the oven.

Here is how it works: Put a rectangular casserole dish in your oven — you can use an oven skillet too, but I’m really liking my Pyrex lasagna pan. Crank your oven to 500˚. You heard me right, we’re not playing around here. You must wait until the oven is up to heat, you can’t go early. In the mean while cut up your veg (works really well with roots and floret veg, especially brocolli, which gets crispy and mmmmmmm nummy nummmy).

When the oven is at temp, pull the pan out and drizzle some oil in the bottom. Toss in the veg — it will sizzle and pop — then drizzle the veg with oil and salt. Shake the veg around a bit to coat, then stick it back in the pan.

Give it 15 minutes, stir the veg around, and give it 10 more, then stir veg, 5 more and take it out.

You can eat it as is, toss it into a casserole or on pizza, puree it into a soup or a sauce. It is so good.

Okay, so to the Carrot Soup.

You know, we have the Dutch to thank for many things, Rembrandt, hash-bars, large windows lit with red lights, ice skating and carrots, among other things. Well, orange carrots. You should see original carrots. Crazy looking alien veg.

None-the-less, we had some carrots sitting in the fridge and had just gotten our new batch of veggies from the Grinnell CSA. I needed to clear out some room. I remembered that the real meal I ever made was a dinner with carrot soup for my parents when I was twelve or so. I thought, since I am feeling supremely old, that I would revisit my youth.

Here is the recipe. I got the base from Cooks Illustrated, one of my favorite foodporn sites. I dinked with it a bit, of course.

Ingredients

Instructions

NOTE: Now it might be too thick. If so, thin it with more chicken stock. I love it thick and velvety though. Also, you might think about topping it with fresh croutons. Just take a couple of slices of bread, cut them into ½” squares and bake them in a 450˚ oven until crispy. Keep your eye on them or you will unleash a smoky hell upon your kitchen. Top the soup with the croutons and a hand full of fresh cilantro, unless you are my lovely wife (See previous post).

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There is something almost visceral that happens to me this time of year. It starts with a temperature. I walk outside to a coolness. I can’t even tell you what temperature it is, but it is cool without breeze. Perhaps that’s the difference.

Then there is a smell. I think it might be coming from the changing leaves. Perhaps the smell of a now continually moist loam.

It is the sensation of football in the air.

I love football. I know this probably comes as a surprise to those of you who know me. But I always have. It is a game filled with aesthetic beauty — with, what D.D. Raphael would call sublime art.

There is mind-numbing complexity to it. The playbook of any serious team is a convoluted, mélange of architectural-like drawings. It’s like looking at a physicist’s chalkboard.

Yet there is an easy beauty to it. A pass over the middle, a leap, an impossible catch, a spin move. Most of which isn’t in the playbook.

Then there is the simplicity of memory. The ability to memorize over 100 plays, then translate those plays into a game script with all the permutations of possibilities in different situations. That boggles my mind.

There is the mechanical precision of eleven moving parts working together: the idea that a man can throw the football to a spot on the field knowing that one of his teammates will be there to catch it. It simply doesn’t work unless all eleven men are doing their jobs.

Finally, there is the beauty of the individual. If all the men are working together, that makes it much easier for one man to step up and do something spectacular.

Okay, now, here is the problem. I don’t really have a team I follow. There are teams that I like and teams that I don’t. I like the Baltimore Ravens. How can I not like a team whose name is a literary allusion?

I like Green Bay. Not really sure why. I guess I like the way Aaron Rogers took over from Favre. That must have sucked, and he did it with grace and talent.

And the worst part: I am a Chicago Bears fan. This is the team I have liked the longest. I admit it: I learned the Super Bowl Shuffle, I loved the Fridge, I had McMahonomania. And I was totally digging on this Kyle Orton — a home-grown Iowa boy, from Altoona, who always wanted to play for the Bears. And he was doing them proud.

And what happened? They traded him for Jay Cutler. Jay Cutler? Come on! That guy pulls himself out of game if he gets a hangnail.  Come on Bears, it’s like the Cubs rubbed off on you. Sorry, Honey. (My wife is a Cubs Fan).

Sorry. Perhaps I got a little carried away.

Anyway, there, I’ve let it out. Hi, I’m Jason (“Hello, Jason”) I love football.

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I love writing for SPT. It is as close to writing for a show like Your Show of Shows as I will ever get. We have more time to write it, and the show is the same length as theirs, but it is just as thrilling, though our audience tops out at 120 and on a good night they played to … well a few more than that. Also, our Sid Ceasar doesn’t act. He is just the genius behind the keyboard.

This is how it works: At the top of the season we get the theme and the show titles.

Tales from the Writers’ Room Season 3

Body of Work

“In Over Your Head”: Sept.10&11

“White Knuckles”: Oct.29&30

“Mistle Toe”: Dec. 3&4

“Pain in the Neck”: Feb.18&19

“Bottoms Up”: April 1&2

“Blink of an Eye”: June 3&4

Then we get a list of Special Guests, which is usually in flux, so I can’t spill it here. Although, I can say that our first special guest is Carrie Fattig Tinkham. Our musical guest is Willie Wells, who is playing this show for the first time, though he played with the band for TCR’s production of RENT.

We get six weeks to write each show. We meet once a week, and week one — or six weeks out from the show — deals with spit-balling ideas for sketches or the show wrapper, if anyone has thought that far. Sometimes someone actually has stuff on paper.

At five weeks out we come in with sketches, some finished, some not, some still in our heads. We read them, and the bloodletting begins. It is amazing the amount of discussion that occurs over a four or five minute sketch. We could/should sell tickets to the writer meetings.

The thing that makes it interesting (and I think makes the whole concept genius) is that each of has such a different take and style that sometimes makes it difficult for us to understand each other’s writing. I mean, we have people that sweat over each word and others that throw down willy-nilly, tear-jerkers, tongue-jerkers, knee-jerkers, crazy dramatic, crazy funny, easy-to-get, and nearly-unintelligible. Literary wanabees and pulp-comic writers. Psycho-babble, mytho-babble, celto-babble, urbo-babble, and micro-babble. Writers who specialize in group scenes, and others who specialize in monologue.

And there are only five of us.

So, three weeks out we come back with new sketches and rewrites. At this time, some of us might ask others to doctor up a sketch we’ve written or we might pair up and do some team writing. More bloodletting.

Two weeks out we submit our sketches to the Star Chamber: the shadowy gang of four that make up SPT. They decide our fate. The idea is to give them considerably more sketches than we need to make up a show. Sometimes that works well. Other times, not so well.

Now the key to a show is this. We have a themed title: In Over Your Head, for example. SPT has already worked up a list of music based on the theme. The sketches we write should at least be loosely based upon that theme. For this show we have literal readings, such as “Swimming Lessons,” and looser readings like “Sound Investments.” We have a wide spin on the theme in “Headgames” and the most tenuous connection to theme in “Man v. Bird” (but the sketch is so funny we had to include it). Then we have our wrapper, which runs throughout the show, in the four parts of “Feelin’ Lucky” which stretches its take on the theme throughout. Then SPT ties music thematically to each sketch.

Of course, to see it in action you’ll need to come see the show tonight or Saturday at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. Click on SPT to link to the website to buy tickets. Or you can get them at the door. The show starts at 7:30.

So, as I said, at four weeks of writing we submit our material. That weekend we get the list of chosen sketches, music, and casting.

On Thursday of one week out we have our first read thru. For this, we figure out what doesn’t work and either scrap it or work to fix it. We see how long the show is: we shoot for less than 25 minutes of sketches for each act. Between Thursday and Sunday all sketches are “fixed.” Theoretically.

That next Sunday is the formal read-thru and discussion of staging. Monday we rehearse the sketches of Act One. Tuesday is the sketches of Act Two. Wednesday is all the sketches. Thursday is the first night we rehearse with the band in the space (remember that our first show is Friday).

Thursday night is incredibly stressful. Things often don’t work well. There is discouragement, tears, anger, despondency, laughter. Sometimes there are line subtractions or additions. Sometimes whole sketches are cut. Always there is a talking down of the Special Guest from the ledge. Most of our guests have never worked this way, and it is really, really scary, especially for actors who are used to stage shows with four weeks of rehearsal. And it is supremely thrilling. I mean the juices start flowing like Niagra.

Friday we do the show. And the audience has no idea of the mayhem that occurred in that space one night before. They don’t know about the bloodletting and fretting and sweating. All they do is sit back, laugh, sing along to the fantastic music, maybe cry a little. Often times, they leave talking about something that really made them think.

And, almost always, they come back for the next production: in this case “White Knuckles” in October.

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I love my wife more than anything. And we have a pretty stable marriage. Sure there is the occasional bickering and snide comment, but things are pretty good. I think we got most of the crazy stuff out of the way during the long, dark tea-time of the courtship, which could have, admittedly, made a pretty successful MTV reality show.

None-the-less, there are a couple of things that make this union a challenge.

Side-note: I listen to Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s The Splendid Table on our local NPR station (yes, Dad, I am one of those). Now I have a couple of friends who can’t stand listening to her, my wife included. Admittedly, there is an odd disingenuousness to her — the continual laughing at the end of an interview or phone call — and she does remind me of an old colleague of mine with which I have had professional differences — that’s another post. But there is so much good about her show that I just can’t not listen.

Anyway, the other day I was listening to it and some guy called in. He loved to cook and experiment with flavors. His partner essentially liked hamburgers with no condiments and fries, dry. She was first befuddled that there could be a relationship between these two, finally asking him if he really loved his partner.

I was incredulous. Don’t get me wrong, I love food. I mean look at me. But if it was between my taste palate or my wife, Blandcity, here I come.

But there are things, two really, which make our relationship a little culinarily dicey.

I love dairy. It’s a bit of an addiction. Cheese: from fresh farmer to stinky feet, I love it. Cream, butter, whole milk. I am utterly smitten by the lacteal juice.

My wife: lactose intolerant. It’s a bad sort of doubled over kind of intolerance.

The second issue involves a handful of spices. Anise, fennel, dill, sage, and —god help me —cilantro. I love cilantro. I eat chicken soup with a heaping handful of cilantro piled right on top. Giggity!

Actually, there is a third. Salt. She loves it. She will lick potato chips just so that when she sprinkles more salt onto it, it sticks. I like salt, but I don’t luuuuuuuuuuv salt.

So, dinner around the house can get a bit tricky. Chili is a tough one. I’ve tried to add the smallest amount of cilantro. She can taste it.

Italian sausage? Too much fennel.

You get the idea.

Every once in a while I go off on a jag about how flavors meld, so just adding everything into my bowl at the table doesn’t always yada yada blah.

But, you know what? We manage. I try to cook to her tastes, she tries to eat to mine. And we each try to pack our favorite foods into our son’s baby-bird mouth, subtly hoping that he will be able to walk the line between our two culinary worlds.

Bellow is a recipe for an all goat mac and cheese that I fixed her tonight. She ate it. She added salt. And I love her for it.

Baked Macaroni and Goat Cheese

reworked from an Alton Brown recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Enjoy!

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I often times say stupid things, usually trying to be funny, but sometimes just talking without thinking clearly. And I don’t quite know how they sound until I see the reaction of those around me: usually horror or disgust, sometimes disappointment, sometimes that look that says, “See, I told you he was an asshole.”

Then I obsess about the moment. I mean I break it down, try to recreate the looks on people’s faces so I can read them to see if what I said really was stupid or thoughtless, or worse: hurtful.

I think about it for days. I anguish about it. And most of the time it was nothing. Either people forgot about it (or so they seem or they say), or that look I got was the aftermath of a belch and not an actual reaction to my thoughtless statement.

I wish I could let those moments of stupidity and thoughtlessness roll away like the tide. But I guess that metaphor works perhaps too well. Because, like the tide, waves of negativity begin lap at my mind. Sometimes I don’t sleep well on days I let a good one fly.

I’m sure other people go through the same, just like I’m sure there are other fathers who accidentally wake up their kids with knee popping noises while trying to sneak out of the sleeping child’s room. But that is cold comfort.

I like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t really care how people view me— you know, I am what I am and you either like me or don’t. But clearly this obsession with gaffes and their aftermaths shows me to be differently disposed.

I do care how people view me. And I hate that. It seems to lack control of some sort.

I’ve looked up the etymology for “putting your foot in your mouth.” I can’t really find any satisfying etymology for it. So even in my attempt to intellectualize the clear emotion of the event, I am lacking.

So the obsession usually continues until, one day, I have somehow, mercifully forgotten. I also don’t know how that happens. Perhaps I hit some magic obsession quotient that trips the obsessometer back to 0000.

And right now…I’m looking for the reset button.

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So, one of my wife’s favorite jokes is this— It’s a visual, so stay with me:

What is blind in one eye and fucks like a tiger?

(Look to the left) RAAAAAWR!

In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that this joke is the reason she married me, though if it is, I’m surprised that she hasn’t called it off for failing to provide services as advertised.

None-the-less, I had forgotten the joke until yesterday.

My fifteen month old son is a scrounger, like, I guess, many that age are. He loves nothing better than going through the recycling bin and uncycling the various things my wife and I have put there.

If we lose something, he’s usually taken it. If we find something, he’s usually the one to bring it to our attention.

So yesterday, my wife shows me this little chachki that my son has found. It is a little old plastic tiger figurine, and unfathomably, it is wearing an eye patch. (Remember, I have forgotten the joke.)

“That’s crazy,” I say.

My wife stares at me with crazy-eyed expectation.

“What?” I ask, knowing suddenly that I am missing something.

She puts her hand over her right eye and says, “Raaaaaawr.”

I say, “Arrrrgh, Matey.”

She stops staring, straightens up, and her wry smile fades. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she says.

“What?” say I.

Again, she puts her hand over her right eye and says, “Raaaaaawr.”

So I put my hand over my right eye and say, “Raaaawr.”

Again, she straightens up and looks at me as though I’ve just told her I want drop everything and move to Bangladesh.

“You have no idea, do you,” she says.

I realize that, somehow, and I don’t know how, I am in trouble.

“What?” I say trying to suck my head down between my shoulder blades.

“Raaaawr!” she says, and it sounds a bit like a command.

“Raaawr?” I respond.

“Oh, for god’s sake,” she spits. Then shaking the figurine in my face like a bad dog’s newspaper she blurts out, “What … you know,” she says making some vague gesture “… like a blinded tiger!” She really isn’t that good at telling jokes, but she tries, god-love-her — and it is part of her charm.

“Right!” I say, finally getting it. “Raaaaaaawr!’

“It’s too late.” She turns to go.

“But what’s up with the figurine?” I am again a little lost.

“Oh,” she turns on her heel and, as if the last five minutes did not bring her to the mini-crisis, I’m sure she had, she said, “He found this and was walking around in the yard with it.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. Why would I make that up?”

“No, it’s just,” I stammered. “Where did he find it?”

“I was going through some box of my old memorabilias.”

“Memorabelias?”

“Yes, that was the label on the box. I think you labeled it.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway,” she continues, “it was a bunch of stuff from high school and I set it aside to throw it out and he found it and was walking around with it, that’s all.”

“Oh, that’s cool.”

She gave me that look which I both love and fear, then turned and walked off to play with our son in the yard.

And it hit me: How did she have an eye-patched tiger in high school? How did I (possibly) win her love and affection with the one-eyed tiger joke? How is it that the first call and response communication we both had with our son was, What does the tiger say? Raaaaawr! And how is it that my son — who now says Raaaaaawr! to everything — just happened to find the eye-patched tiger and choose that, out of the tens of gewgaws that my wife had sitting on the garage floor, to take outside and show to the world like Odysseus, raising Telemachus to the sun. And how is it that this year, 2010 is the year of the tiger? How? I ask.

Is it simply Kismet? Is my son somehow going to be magically endowed with a gift that a father can only dream of — hopefully to discover it at least eighteen, twenty, or — dare I wish — twenty-two years from now?

Oh! The universe is a strange and wonderous thing, to leave oddities like this upon our cognitive doorsteps. I just hope, if the universe is listening, that it will help me remember the tale of the confidently majestic one-eyed striped beast, so that, when I give the solemn toast at my son’s wedding dinner, I will remember to keep it brief and say only…

You go get ‘em, Tiger!

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What is it I like so much about the phrase “turgid gherkin”?

It was first brought to my attention by a friend of mine: Richard. It happens to be a phrase he actually uses from time to time. He is a theatrical director, and he likes to say that if an actor forgets his lines, he can always just say, “Turgid gherkin.”

While at the time of his first revelation on this point I found it mildly humorous, I believe that I now wish to damn him for it. Possibly even in the Old Testament sense of godlike damnation. The fiery tongues of daemons forever licking his nether regions while he squats in eternity over the cesspool of hell. That sort of thing. That virulent response to an otherwise dear friend only comes because of my now near compulsion with spouting out the phrase at random intervals while cooking naked in the privacy of my own squalid kitchen, which, as I am sure you can understand, has brought me some concern.

Why does it have such a linguistic hold on me? Parsing out the meaning leads only to more confusion. “Swollen cucumber”? What does that mean. “Pretentious Cucumis anguria” hardly makes any sense. “Stilted prickly fruit,” while making some sense in a heated, homo-erotic fashion, still confounds me. “Solemn gooseberry gourd” and “self-important augurrion (from the Greek for watermelon)” somehow just don’t do it for me. But “tergid gherkin” . . . .

Perhaps then it is all about the sound or the way it feels as it fills up my mouth. I remember in my youth I had a three or four month spate where I would ululate while expelling the name Idi Amin Dada. I could do that for minutes at a time. I reveled in it. I bathed in its nose-tickling, vibratory, hypnotism. But there is something more visceral, more…I don’t know. . . sensual about “turgid gherkin.” Go ahead, say it out loud: “Turgid gherkin.”

My guess is you chose not to say it out loud. Are you one of “those” who can’t, for their own lives, give over to the sensual and intellectual pleasure of saying a word aloud to see how it sounds, how it feels in your mouth, like soft and downy Belgian chocolate truffle that slowly melts to fill your mouth with its unimaginable textuality.

Celebrate Labor Day by doing something silly. Say it!

Turgid Gherkin!

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For those of you who have not seen an SPT Writers Room show at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Professor Peter Pizzle is my unfortunate alter-ego. He is, in fact, what I might have become without my ego, Freudianally speaking (I know I just made up that word, sorry).

He is a pompous ass who is never wrong, even when he is horribly wrong. But he is, I hope, still loveable, even though you know you shouldn’t love him.

He is based on a couple of people. The first, easily placed, is William F. Buckley Junior. I began doing impersonations of WillB, as I like to call him, when I was in middle school. I don’t know either. Color me geek.

None-the-less, he had this wonderful pompous delivery with such a laid back confidence, he could have told me anything and I might of believed it. But I only like him for his affectation, not for his beliefs.

The second person I modeled Pizzle on is actually one of my favorite people in the world: Dr. Ken Crannell. Pizzle’s loveable parts come from him.

I had Dr. Crannell my first year of college at a little lib-arts school in Boston called Emerson College. He destroyed me! In a good way.

He taught Voice and Diction. On the first day he asked us to state our name, where we were from, and our major. I was, of course, first.

I stood up and said, “My name is Jason Alberty, I am from Iowa, and I am majoring in advertising.”

He looked at me over his reading glasses and said, “mm-Yes, of course. If I am reading it correctly, there is a ‘T’ in your last name, and I know there is a ‘D’ in the word advertising…somewhere…for I know that ‘aaaavertising’ is not a word that exists in the English language that I love and respect. You may want to pronounce them next time—sit down.”

Crushing!

I think it took me a full five seconds to sit down. Count it out. It’s a long damn time with twenty people looking at you.

He did that with everyone. I think one girl started crying before he even got to her.

After that, he asked if there was anyone in the room who had the temerity to think they did not have an accent. I’m sure that you know what to do if that question was asked of you. Well, some schmuck from Nebraska raised his hand.

“mm-Yes,” said the Doctor, “mm-of course.” His eyes swept through the class over his reading glasses. “mm-They are always from the Midwest.”

He then ran through his vita, which was pretty impressive. He ended by saying, “mm-I am going to rip out your throat and place it upon this mantle. I will then berate it, inflict punishment upon it, rip it apart, all to make it better, clearer, cleaner. Then I will place it gingerly back where it came from and you will be better for it. And anything I say will be an affront to your vocal chords, your tongue, your mouth…not to you. This is not a class for the thin of skin.”

I nearly couldn’t breathe while writing that last paragraph, the memory is so vivid. He was terrifying. And I loved him for it. I learned so much from that class.

I went in with an Oklahoma-bred twang lightly softened by the Iowa “owoo”, I believe he called it. But I came out getting pretty close to Standard American, and, even more important for my acting, understanding the production of sound and dialect.

He was a great teacher, and he lives on in Pizzle…the good parts of Pizzle.

Now if he could only give me a booster lesson for getting rid of my sizzling ssssssibilants.

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So we are now two weekends out from auditions for TCR’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. It’s a show I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. The plot is just mesmerizing and the headiness of the philosophy is breathtaking.

I’m drawn to the existential nature of the piece as a director, actor, and writer. It really hits all three pretty hard.

Think about it this way. My paternal grandfather meant a whole hell of a lot to me. He was a simple guy with simple joys, but my son will never meet him. I don’t think any of my nieces and nephews met him. But he lives in me for now. However, when I’m dead, he’s done — if I die after the rest of my generational relations. He’s gone to everyone. It will be as if he never existed.

Hamlet, who never really existed in physical form, is still alive. And he is constant even in his inconsistencies. I mean I am a different guy than I was a year ago and a hell of a lot more different than I was twenty years ago. I will be a flash in the proverbial flashpan compared to Hamlet. That is suck-thought number one.

Suck thought number two is that, as an actor, I will never — never — conceive and act a role exactly as the author intended. Now, luckily, I don’t usually care much about that type of acting restriction, but it’s a pretty heady idea.

Suck-thought number three: will there be a single moment or short run of events in my life that will become, if I may, my scarlet letter? Think Hugh Grant and the prostitute, or Nixon and Watergate, or Keanu Reeves.

Think even of Ira Hayes an American hero who raised the flag on Iwo Jima and couldn’t handle the fame. Or Buzz Aldrin, who has been working for myriad companies and causes for the last forty-some-odd years, but all anyone wants to talk to him about is being the second guy on the moon. Not even simply a human who walked on the moon, but the second. Come on people, there were only twelve! You say “second” like it’s a little sad.

So the themes within the show are pretty demanding, and most of those are all wrapped up in the role of the Father. That’s a role I would love to play someday, but alas, I am directing. The Father holds all of the philosophical themes within this show. And he has lines, lines, lines. My goodness. That actor will have a lot of highlighting to do.

The next important role is the Step-Daughter. I think this is one of the most difficult female roles of the twentieth century, at least the early twentieth century. She doesn’t necessarily embody the themes, like the Father. Her main problem is that she must be so emotionally on a razor; she needs to kiss melodrama without making out with it, if that makes any sense.

The third important character is the Mother. She is a tough role, too, because she must be continually fragile, yet most of her job is to watch this unpleasantness unfold, which, oddly, is a tough job for an actor.

The Son? He comes in, broods for two hours and gets a payoff scene at the end.

My favorite role is the Director — another role that I covet, but alas… I like that role because he’s such a dick. It’s just a fun role to play.

I think the Leading Actors are also fun roles. They are always so, “What? What? What’s happening?” and “Who do you think you are?!” and “Faw faw faw, harrumph!” They are a nice comedic relief to the heaviness of everything else.

I’m a little concerned about turn-out for auditions. There is a lot going on in the area right now, and non-musicals have a notoriously low audition turn out. I’ve got twenty roles to fill, and three or four of them need really strong actors. I also have two children’s roles, a boy of 14 and a girl (supposedly of four, but I can’t cast a four year old). I’m particularly nervous about being able to fill those roles, as they have no lines, but are intricate to the story.

Stay tuned for more blathering about my topic de deux semaines.

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