Ah, where have I been? I’ve gone and put up a whole show since the last time I posted — a very fun workshop of MARRY HARRY (a new musical by Jennifer Robbins [book], Dan Martin [music] and Michael Biello [lyrics])with Amas Musical Theatre — and despite all best intentions and ideas of things I wanted to write about, here it is May with all those blog posts still only a gleam in my eye.

So I’ll hit a few highlights (and even a lowlight, for balance):

• HIGHLIGHT: THE FIRST READ THRU. One of my favorite parts of the process, and this time was particularly wonderful. No matter how lively my imagination, I have still a limited range of choices and experiences at my disposal for reading a play on my own and hearing/seeing it in my mind’s eye. There’s a reason I’m not hired to play every part, physics be damned, and I absolutely love to sit around the table and hear the play read for the first time by a group of well-cast actors. The tone, the choices, the characters leaping to life! So it was my honor and pleasure to be at the table on April 11th when we read through MARRY HARRY and were struck by its wit, charm, and all-around good looks.
• HIGHLIGHT: NEW FRIENDS TO KVETCH WITH ABOUT ‘SMASH’. I’m actually wayyyyy behind in my SMASH viewing, but I’m tickled by the way it’s getting our business out there. (Email to my godmother: “I’m doing a workshop of a new musical.” Her reply: “I know what that means, I’ve watched SMASH!”) But there are parts that are about as true to life as I’m sure CSI is to real forensic analysis. Namely: would Katharine McPhee’s character really be pissed that she didn’t get the lead in the Broadway-bound workshop (but was still cast)? Would the rest of the ensemble really be that rude to her and tell her what to wear? Not if they’re like virtually any of the performers I’ve met and worked with. But oh, the hours of inside-baseball water cooler talk it’s providing…
• LOWLIGHT: FORGETTING THE CHOREOGRAPHY AND DANCING AROUND LIKE A FOOL. Yes, in one fabulous moment of tech, not only did I forget the choreography, I didn’t think I had forgotten it. I thought everyone else had forgotten it. And so in my brilliance, waiting for them to “catch up” to where I was in the music, I decided to put on my own vogue show of improvised bizarro poses – staying in character, mind you!, all the while falling farther and farther behind where I was supposed to be. Hey, if you’re going to fail, fail big. I only wish it had been in front of an audience to complete the humiliation.
• HIGHLIGHT: WALKING IN THE FOXWOODS STAGE DOOR. There are probably many reasons why so many actors are prone to “new age” “law of attraction” “power of positivity” kinds of thinking. The somewhat old-fashioned term “sensitive” comes to mind – we “artist types” are perhaps more attuned to energy than our civilian counterparts. But there’s another, more mundane possibility, which is that this profession can be a bitch (to put it bluntly), and we need as many coping mechanisms – psychological, emotional, hopefully not chemical – as we can get. All of which is to say, no matter how sunny one’s outlook, it’s not hard to sometimes get stuck in the not-quites: this job isn’t quite as much money as I’d like, as big a role as I’d like, as glamorous and high-profile as I’d like. Hey, I’m human too: I was also grateful to be there every day. And so it was that I found myself one morning, walking down 43rd Street to the Foxwoods Theater stage door (we performed in their rehearsal studios), suddenly remembering that I was living, at that moment, a dream come true.

Today is World Theatre Day 2012, and I’m celebrating in part by participating in a Healing Arts concert with Sing For Hope. (It’s not exactly theater, but I’m singing theater songs, so it counts in my book.)

This year John Malkovich has been asked to give the International Message, sharing his “reflections on theatre and international harmony” (according to the World Theatre Day website). It’s a beautiful address, a blessing really:

I’m honored to have been asked by the International Theatre Institute ITI at UNESCO to give this greeting commemorating the 50th anniversary of World Theatre Day. I will address my brief remarks to my fellow theatre workers, peers and comrades.

May your work be compelling and original. May it be profound, touching, contemplative, and unique. May it help us to reflect on the question of what it means to be human, and may that reflection be blessed with heart, sincerity, candor, and grace. May you overcome adversity, censorship, poverty and nihilism, as many of you will most certainly be obliged to do. May you be blessed with the talent and rigor to teach us about the beating of the human heart in all its complexity, and the humility and curiosity to make it your life’s work. And may the best of you – for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments – succeed in framing that most basic of questions, “how do we live?” Godspeed.

- John Malkovich

May it be so.

For all you New Yorkers who’ve been asking when I’m going to be performing in town, it’s your lucky day! Or at least it will be on March 23rd. I’m excited to announce that I’ve joined the cast of Kingdom Come, a new musical by Matthew Osceola Webster that will be part of the Downtown Urban Theatre Festival next month.

KINGDOM COME is a musical about stories, memories and connections centered around the events of September 11, 2001. Led by interview-style vignettes, KINGDOM COME strives to take you back to “where you were,” and challenges you to move into the future.

It’s one night only, and tickets are already on sale here. See you there!

So I’m doing this world premiere production at Delaware Theatre Co (closing weekend already! how did that happen?) — a (mostly) a cappella, modern retelling of the biblical gospel stories through a reality-show lens. It’s a fast, fun, funny commentary on our technology-driven lives: my Mary has a belt of cellphones around her waist and a growing Twitter following; the Magi follow a “star” with the aid of text messages and GPS. There’s a live camera feed projected onto two huge screens onstage (as seen in the photo above), and our a cappella/beat-boxed songs are juxtaposed with projections and pre-recorded snippets. It’s rather meta.

As we explored these themes throughout the process, the cameras and the personas and screen vs. stage, the discussion (probably inevitably) came around to the business model of the theater and how it is(n’t) keeping up with the times. How we could be live streaming these performances around the world, but we’re often prevented from doing that by our own artists’ unions. How virtually every other business works on residual income, getting the product out to greater and greater numbers of people, through the most efficient means possible… and the theater is restricted to however many butts there are seats for in any given house on any given evening. And then the show closes, and if you missed it, too bad! It’s over, unless it gets re-mounted or somebody finds the money and inspiration to take it to the next level — and even then, even if all the same artists come back to do it again, it won’t be the same.

But wait. Isn’t that kind of the whole point?

Don’t we go to the theater precisely in order to get away from the screen, to get in the same room with a few dozen or few hundred other people, to share that energy and see it, hear it, feel it firsthand? To have the collective experience — not just watch someone else go through something but actually go through it together? Because we can feel it, viscerally, the human voice and human experience — and when I’m in my room and you’re in yours it’s a nice proxy, maybe, but we do still know the difference between a screen and the real thing. We can live-stream stage shows all we want, but it’s a little like looking at your friends’ vacation Mobile Uploads on facebook. They may be showing you what that Hawaiian beach looks like *right now*, but there’s no sand between your toes (or Mai Tai in your hand, for that matter).

I’m reminded of the Buddhist monks and their sand mandalas, painstakingly crafted grain by grain into exquisite works of art… and then destroyed. Not saved for posterity or put into a museum for the benefit of the estate (and the public, of course), but swept away, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, a reminder of the impermanence of all things. A reminder that the only real thing is THIS moment, and now this one… and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for residual income and I’ve got nothing against screens (I’ve been told I look great on camera). I’m going to shoot my music video early next year, and have the time of my life doing it. I’ll post it on YouTube and promote it on facebook and maybe someone will watch it on their smartphone someday while they’re hurtling through space on a high-speed train. I’m really interested to see how that song, that story, will live on the screen – how it will be differently informed by that medium. And I’ve gotten incredibly kind comments from fly woman genius listeners and those who have found my work online and been moved by my recordings.

But at heart I still feel that the real magic — at least, theater magic — happens in the room together, where the energy is palpable and the show changes every night because the audience does, because the actors are human and fallible and informed by the unique circumstances of that day and that moment. And if you want to know what happens at the show, you’ll just have to put your butt in a seat to find out.

Well, I’ll be. I’ll be flattered, I’ll be tickled, I’ll be honored: turns out I was nominated for a BroadwayWorld Florida Award (for Best Actress in a Musical) for my performance in Grey Gardens at freeFall Theatre.

Voting is open until December 31st — head on over and help me out!

On our day off Monday, wonderful Wyn Wilson (playing the Big/Little Edie role) and I took a jaunt downtown to the Dali museum to fill the well and see the town. As usual for me in an art museum, I started scribbling away in my journal halfway through the exhibit…

In retrospect (a retrospective) — how easy to put everything in order… create a through-line… as though life is actually linear, everything in perfect succession, lessons learned, packaged and tied up with strings before proceeding to The Next. But we in the middle, how can we see the forest for the trees? The artist may wrestle with those same demons, however many years later, just choosing this time a different color paint…

This morning the three of us Edies did a TV interview on Studio 10, and over the past week I’ve been all a-twitter with Opening! and family visiting! and flowers in the dressing room! Hearing that applause, catching the buzz, visiting and talking with patrons, oh my. Thank goodness for brush-up last night, to remind me there’s a show to be done.

Promoting the thing, talking about the thing, reading (gasp) reviews! of the thing – it’s all nothing, of course, without the thing itself. The telling of the story, the singing of the songs, the being the vessel for whatever comes through it.

Creating the actual thing.

Which is what, I suspect (and hope), most of us do it all for anyway. And while the perks are fun and the ego loves to be fed, just today I wonder what it would be like to create for creation’s sake. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If you do something brilliant and don’t post it on facebook, did it really happen?

Did Dali enjoy a more idyllic artistic existence, or just a more prolonged moment before the critics (and art teachers and Establishment folk) got to comment on his creative fruits? I suspect it’s the latter.

On the other hand, if people weren’t saying fabulous things about my performance, I would still be enjoying the heck out of giving it. I know this much to be true because I was enjoying the heck out of rehearsals and performances before people were saying fabulous things. But if art is holding (as ’twere) the mirror up to nature, there has to be somebody to look in it. None of us creates in a void, and the point of the theater is our shared experience. Anyway. Here I go with my cyclical arguments again.

Here’s Wyn tying a wish to the Dali Wish Tree. I can’t remember just what I wished for, but it was something about a life of wild abandon and self-expression.

Here’s to another weekend of storytelling and creating the thing…

One fabulous weekend down! Here I am backstage on opening night with Fred Ross, all set for our Little Edie / Joe Kennedy entrance.

We had a little advance press: Grey Gardens by Kathy L. Greenberg for the Tampa Tribune; and freeFall opens season with musical ‘Grey Gardens’ by John Fleming for the St. Petersburg Times…

…And one glowing review so far, from Mike Leib of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay: Grey Gardens at freeFall: Like Mother, Like Daughter.

Stay tuned for Thursday morning’s Beale women appearance on Studio 10 – with Wyn Wilson, Ann Hurst and myself. In the meantime I’ll be enjoying a few days of rest and beach time…

It’s been quite a ride over the past two weeks! Today we had our second (and last) plainclothes run, before sitzprobe tomorrow (that’s German for “sitting rehearsal” and refers to the sing-through with the band) and tech starting Tuesday.

Here I am lounging between scenes with Fred Ross, who plays Joe Kennedy in Act 1 and the infamous Jerry from the Grey Gardens documentaries in Act 2.

On Labor Day we had a little cast party and watched both Grey Gardens and The Beales of Grey Gardens (you can watch the whole thing online through IMDb/Hulu here) back-to-back. It was surprisingly hard for me to watch them this time around — with a whole group of people, laughing at the funny things they say and the crazy outfits Little Edie wears. Which is not to say that I haven’t had the same reaction before… but this time in a way it started to feel like the coliseum, watching an abusive relationship and calling it entertainment. The original reality television. I found myself wanting to be Edie’s champion, not because she’s a freak, but because she’s a human being. And she’s doing the best she can, like the rest of us.

There’s a part in the second documentary in which Edie is reading her Zolar astrology book and she gets off on a tangent while reading about Scorpios:

“If the birthday is between November 1st and November 11th, it will be necessary to handle the Scorpion pride with care.” You see, THAT’S what is so often forgotten. PRIDE. They don’t – nobody takes that into account. They think you don’t have it, or something. You know, people are very, very sensitive. No one takes into account how sensitive a person really IS. I don’t mean just a Scorpio or a Libra. Everybody is terribly sensitive. And other people don’t understand how sensitive a human being IS! They don’t understand it. So they run roughshod over EVERYBODY.

She goes on to read (Edie was a Scorpio, and so am I): “‘Their greatest battles will be with themselves.’ Correct.”

It’s easy to distance ourselves, watching the film, and get caught up in Edie’s eccentricities… her headscarves and totally unique dialect and the fact that she reads books with a magnifying glass and the scale with binoculars. But it doesn’t take too much reading between the lines to feel Edie’s vulnerability and wounded heart, to imagine her being snubbed by former friends from the Maidstone Club (as she mentions in the films), to be able to identify with her as another person learning her own lessons, on her own path.

Here’s beautiful Edie circa 1940, around the time when the imagined Act 1 of our show takes place.

To be honest, putting up this show has been rather an easier process for me than ever before. The lines have assimilated themselves without much effort; the music gotten into my ear and into my voice (except for maybe that one crazy B flat in Act 2). Which is, in large part, a testament to the writing. With so much of the dialogue coming straight out of the documentaries and the songs leaping off the page as perfectly singable monologues, it’s hard not to just get on the train and ride it. And working with a stellar cast and creative team doesn’t hurt either.

So the long and short of it is, I’m still pinching myself that I’m here, this show, this role, this time & place. And I’m excited for this next week and of course looking forward to getting in front of an audience and sharing these women’s stories with more of the world. They break my heart every time, but that’s all a part of life.

It’s hard to believe I haven’t posted since we closed Almost, Maine two months ago. And yet! here it is, nearly September, and here I am in St. Petersburg, Florida, heading off to Day 2 of rehearsals for Grey Gardens at freeFall Theatre. This beautiful show has been on my mental bucket list since I saw it on Broadway in 2006 (or ’07, can’t rightly recall) and I feel like the luckiest girl alive, getting to be a part of it. There’s so much to explore in the lives of these two women, who have captured so many imaginations… I’d say I have my work cut out for me, if I could call it work.

More to come! In the meantime, if you’re not familiar, pop “Edith Bouvier Beale” into Google and see what you find.

And that’s all she wrote, folks. It’s been a great ride. Many thanks to the good people of the Chenango River Theatre, director Chris Clavelli and of course the fantastic cast (Jen Burry, Jack Harris and Paul Kelly). Check out our production photos here.

And speaking of photos, of course the photoblog experiment has come to an end! It was harder than I thought (as expressed on Day 9) but a useful challenge… and fun to boot. What did you think?

Lotsa exciting things a-brewing, so stay tuned for what’s next! In the meantime, join me on Wednesday in Times Square for a mini concert as part of Sing For Hope’s Pop-Up Pianos 2011.