Completely Unnecessary

I swore at my mother yesterday.

We went to see House’s great new production of The Nutcracker. As young Clara peeked her head around the corner, I was so surprised that I turned to my mother and said, “That’s fucking Laura Gray!”

And indeed it was. Laura and I grew up together and I’m ever so happy to see her make good (though she’s been doing successful work with her comedy group Triplette as well) at my favorite Chicago theatre.

The show was completely re-envisioned as is House’s wont (and strength). It’s the same team that did The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz, and they delivered again with similarly creative and imaginative touches. (I am staring to think, however, that Jake Minton is a tad obsessed with snapping the necks of his characters).

The show is great and really good fun (might be a bit scary for any super little kids). Heaps of imaginative characters (especially the lithe and limber Monkey) make the show seem far too short.

House is running the show at Steppenwolf Upstairs. I’m pretty bummed that House seems to have left Viaduct for good. I’ve always really liked the huge rambling space and their ability to completely alter it for each new show. That being said, they do good things with the proscenium at Steppenwolf, too.

Tickets are a bit pricer as well ($29, $20 for students and industry) in the new space, but they’re available at HotTix, too. They’ve opened another block of tickets for the week after Christmas- which means the cast is going to be doing, I think, nine shows the final week.

If you need family-bondy Christmas ideas, I highly recommend it.

Tickets at Steppenwolf or 312.335.1650, or at Hot Tix.

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• Damn
• Wind (and a little bit of media studies!)

I’m not supposed to double post from my the Melbourne Metblog, but I’m too excited - loosely-based internet rules be damned!

John Cage is one of my favorite 20th century composers. His most famous piece is ‘4:33′, in which no actual notes are played. That’s interesting and all, but I’m in love with his prepared piano stuff. His technique included shoving (very carefully) a bunch of stuff (frequently everyday, junk objects) into pianos and composing around that. Some of it’s really amazing.

Well, I’ve just spent 15 minutes failing to make the audio player work, so that’s thrilling. I’m sure I’ll think about this time when I’m whining over my 12,000 words due in about three weeks. Here’s a youtube clip instead (there’s a bunch of lead up, so I’d start watching from 5:00, the piece starts just before 6:00):

Here’s another. This is actually from the Prepared Piano set I wanted to play, though not the one I wanted. It’s pretty neat:

Anyway, this Friday the Melbourne Arts Festival is running John Cage’s Musicircus. It goes from dusk (5:48pm) to dawn the next morning. There’s all sorts of music, art, dance, theatre, etc. The lineup looks amazing, though there are literally so many acts I didn’t even get to look at them all properly.

So excited for this. It’s going to be 25 degrees as well, but, being Melbourne, the low is going to be 9. Sigh.

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I got free tickets, so I went to see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical tonight.

Now, I’m a bit of a hag, so I’ve seen me some gay, but, without equivocation, I can say that was the gayest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life. They could have brought Cher up on that stage and made her perform Scissor Sisters songs while wearing Judy Garland as a hat, and it still would not have made the show one ounce more homosexual.

The final number was also a bizarre display of Australiana, with the entire cast dressed as bottlebrushes (a native flower), emus, koalas, Bob and Benji as kangaroos, cockatoos, Jesus lizards and the Sydney Opera House. This is a callback to the original film, but still, I felt really bad for the three women in the furry koala suits; they did not bring the sexy, despite their skimpy bustiers.

I can only imagine the American equivalent, which would have had far more eagles and flags… and possibly a Kodiak bear costume.

The show was fun, but I’m getting a little sick of musicals that just rehash dated pop songs. I technically haven’t seen any others, but this one was enough. I will say that a seven year old boy singing I Will Survive is pretty cute. Also, Guy Pearce is still a better drag queen than many drag queens.

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Last night I went to an event for Porchlight Theater, a celebration of their new space. I’m not sure what I expected, but I was definitely anticipating enough people that a girl who auditioned for them only once would be allowed to grab some free food and wine relatively unnoticed. Instead, there were about 15-20 people, most of them dressed up for the ribbon cutting and clearly close friends with the theatre. No record skipped when my unfamiliar, jeans and bright yellow leg warmers-wearing self turned up, but I was definitely observed heading to the wine table. (As a side note, finding merlot as the only red wine selection is always disappointing.)

After visiting the food table, I sat and sipped my merlot, staring repetitively at the various show posters to avoid conversation with the other obvious free-wine vagabonds like myself. Over the top of my plastic cup, I noticed an unshaven, sweatshirt-clad stranger heading my way. There is a certain type of middle-aged man that wears glasses that scream, “I am poorly socialized!” My new friend wore a pair of exactly this sort of glasses.

“Is that Brie like the cheese?” he said as a greeting, referring to my nametag and the most overused query in response to my name.

“It is indeed,” I replied.

Unbidden, he took a seat and began to chatter. I learned that he was on the Porchlight email list because,

“I do thea-ate-er walking tours around downtown.”

I learned also that there is a professional guild of some nature for people who lead walking tours. So, between the guild and the email lists of various “thea-ate-ers,” my friend was well connected.

Halfway through the bolting of my second glass of wine, the promised musical selections from their new show finally appeared. Luckily, as they ended and my friend began his monologue anew, I remembered that I had forgotten to put a quarter in my meter. This was an actual life event, as opposed to merely an excuse, but it was so effective that I plan on using it in the future. I took my leave of my new friend, threw on my jacket, and quietly praised the Dept. of Revenue as I arrived at my unticketed car.

In a much more pleasant activity last night, I watched Bringing Up Baby for the first time – well at least the first hour. Hilarious! My favorite line when a fluffy robe-wearing Cary Grant bellows, “Because I went gay all of a sudden!” into an old woman’s face. I also love the way Katherine Hepburn says, “Leopard.” I never knew that word had so many syllables.

In less romantic news, it is often the plight of women to find their hair in annoying locations. The worst of these is stuck in one’s bra, resulting in a great deal of itching and looking and then reaching down one’s shirt in public. Sometimes hair even winds up in underwear. I shed like a banshee; it happens.

Occasionally, you will also find friend’s hair somewhere on or in your clothes. My most frequent friend-hair-finding is from Elissa, whose long, dark locks differ so much from my own and identify her as the culprit. Elissa, however, is a close friend, and finding her hair isn’t such a big deal.

As I said, I shed a lot (Ana J once found my hair in our fridge), so I’m pretty blasé about loose hairs. But I will say this, finding a hair in your underwear that isn’t yours and isn’t identifiable as that of a close friend is really, really disturbing.

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Dowdy mom-types and aging lesbians flocked to the opera tonight. In truth, they may always be there, but usually they’re interspersed in the crowd and not all in line ahead of me for the bathroom. Tonight, October the 4th, there were more unfortunate haircuts in the Balcony women’s bathroom than have ever existed together in one place. There was also a woman who deemed herself worthy of an entire mumu of paisley - it was oceanic in size.

Fashion and hair victims aside, the production of Turandot I saw tonight was amazing. It’s the 1991 David Hockney design, and it’s incredible. What little Hockney art I’ve managed to come across in my life (read: during my two years on Academic Decathlon - don’t tell) has been met with the blandest form of interest. But apparently his opera sets are stellar! At the very end, there were all these red cutouts that emerged from a scene change that I can’t even figure out how they did it. And as the music swelled, the red lights just kept going up and up. The set looked like it was either going to expode or bleed; it was breathtaking.

But enough about that. My dog is currently attempting to attract my attention by placing her nose on the keyboard and licking my fingers as I type. Perhaps she knows how pretentious I must sound.

Here is a picture of said dog, whom we have rechristened Juniper/Junebug:

She’s adorable, but, as you can see from the photo, her vagina is the size of Delaware. She just got spayed yesterday while she was in heat, so excessive vag is understandable. But she’s obsessed with it. We were told she wasn’t allowed to lick her stitches, but as far as we can ascertain, licking the gaping maw at the base of her tail is fine.

Except she’s doing it all the time. It’s annoying.

As most mothers do these days, I checked the internet for solutions to “excessive licking vagina dog.” Um, maybe she has a UTI. Searching for more solutions, I got rid of the “excessive.”

Let me tell you that my naive “licking vagina dog” search brought up a host of links that aren’t family-friendly enough even for a blog entitled, “Turandot and Dog Gina.” Oh my.

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Oh lord Jesus in Heaven, deliver us from atrocious scene partners.

My current affliction, man there’s just no nice way to say it, is stupid as shit. In the scene we’re doing from “Waiting for Godot,” they want to hang themselves, but they don’t have a rope. Gogo says, “What about my belt?” and then they test the strength of [something] to see if it will hold them. Miss Scenepartner says, “Okay, so we’re going to need a rope and a belt.” I stare at her for a moment, hoping that she’s putting me on, and as she stares blankly back, I realize that she doesn’t understand that they’re planning on using Gogo’s belt in place of a rope for the hanging. After I explain this, she still keeps acting like the belt isn’t on her person – indicating its presence somewhere a few feet from her every time she talks about it. My mother said, “Well maybe she’s just never read the play before; it can be difficult.” True, though I don’t think this particular moment is much of a intellectual leap, BUT Miss Scenepartner has actually done this scene before! She’s taking Adv. Scene Study for a second time!!! She also kept trying to bring chairs on stage, though the script clearly says there is only a tree and a mound. She’s also telling me how she hunched when she played Didi, my character – I think the implication was that I should hunch in a similar fashion (may I also mention that the actual statement was, “But I didn’t feel comfortable really hunching, so I just lowered my head.”) And doing things like coming up directly behind me to talk to me, meaning that I either have to completely turn my back on the audience to converse or I have to scamper away to deliver my lines; I chose the latter.

Holy Christ. How is she in this class? Not to mention, and it’s about to get even uglier, I totally saw this one coming. She is a total gamer, similar to those that populated my college, but viciously unwashed, unlike Mac gamers that looked as if they’d had a shower at least recently. I realize that it’s totally wrong to look at someone and make snap judgments, but everything about her appearance said, “I am really weird and have poor social skills.” She lived up to both statements just magnificently today. I was reminded quite forcefully of a moment in a Shakespeare class from college – Some people know the moment of which I speak. Sadly, my roommate does not remember Emily, and thus my recreation of, “And maybe it’s all stormy and Lady Macbeth is like a vampire, like a bat hovering at his window saying, “Let me in! Let me in!” and he doesn’t want to, but he has to because she’s his wife,” was lost on him.

I’m really hoping John dumped Miss Scenepartner on me now so that I won’t have to do a longer scene with her later. I really can’t hack it. I’m not amazing, not expecting an Academy Award in my lifetime, but some people just need to be told that spending $300 on an acting class is just not a good use of their hard-earned money. Anyone judging me right now: I know we’re all supposed to be nice, but in real life you wouldn’t want her either.

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I went and saw Too Much Light last night. Highlights included a girl saying to another audience member “You jackass, this tastes like cat litter,” whilst trying to eat a bowl of “Disney’s Princess” cereal. The best play, however, was “Star Crossed Sweepers,” wherein two of those new little robot vacuums tried to find each other across a crowded stage. I nearly hyperventilated.

I bought a two track cd of the musical “Wicked.” I’ve learned from this disc that buying the entire thing would have been a giant mistake. Yet, I’ve also become strangely obsessed with one of the tracks. I kind of have to fast forward thru part of the track because it makes me want to put my fist through the stereo, but Idina Menzel’s voice just keeps drawing me in. The notes this woman can belt are in the upper ranges of my falsetto. And every single tone is a bell - it’s just stunning. The rest of the bits though sound like some early 90s horrible light rock crapola. Turns out, it’s by the same guy that wrote Pocahontas. Aside from the positive choice of casting Idina instead of Vanessa Williams, not much has changed or improved.

I’m currently slogging thru this Bill Bryson book about the history of the English language in America. It’s funny and has really interesting little factoids, but I think this is seriously the longest I’ve ever spent on a book in my life. I’ve had to renew it from the library twice. But I’m bloody well determined now. Also about 100 pages of the book randomly fell out of it one day. Hope that’s not a sign.

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