Gawker
This is a column by one of the authors of The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life, who is (still) tweedling away his days up at Yaddo right now, by the way. Are you?
Hello we have seats D12-18, center?
Oh, I'm sorry I think you have me confused with—
Oh! Ha ha! It's you! I apologize I didn't recognize you in your costume. How cute that they are making the ushers dress up in period garb. Are you actually appearing in this production? You are?
Oh. You are a part of the apprentice program. Don't you have to pay for that here? I can't remember.
Well no of course it's worth the experience... what part are you playing? You may remember I directed a version of the play for with Ethan and Marisa and the rest of the Naked Angels crew back in '99.
Oh. Well changing the set between acts can be a very gratifying role, too! You are learning about transitions!
Cynthia, Cynthia, I'll be there in a second. Just save me a seat.
I'm just here on a whim! Seriously I was just in the WestBeth building, talking to Merce, when Tony Kushner called my cell and says "Road Trip!" and not twenty minutes later he pulls up with Cindy Nixon, Joe Mantello and the doubly gorgeous Matt Cavanaugh and Cheyenne Jackson who were in such a hurry they forgot to wear shirts, and we sped up here to see our good good good friend Kate Burton in The Corn is Green.
Oh I'm just up here for the night to see Kate, OWNING her role as an idealistic teacher in a small Welsh mining town, enchanting audiences as she has done so many times before, and as her father had done, and as her son is doing on stage with her tonight. She is like acting in its most protean, magma-like state isn't she? You must feel so blessed to be on stage with her, even if it is to just strike her shoes.
See that's the good thing about Williamstown. They really give you apprentices a real 360 degree perspective of the theater arts so that you can see what being a professional actor is really like. Or, um, like, what being a professional usher is like, maybe. It's just good for all sortsa people to be involved in the theater!
My neighbor upstate in Rhinebeck enrolled her... special... son last summer and it really brought a smile to the boy's sweet, special, wide, emotionally disturbed face. And now he's got an agent and is being considered the "next John Heder." It's crazy it's crazy.
Yes the Williamstown Theatre Festival's training programs have inspired dreams and launched careers. But you know, that's not what it's about really what it's about. I mean if this doesn't end up jumpstarting a career in acting for you, then maybe, finally, you will know you did all you could. I don't mean YOU-you, I mean a general "you."
Speaking of launching, I have to hurry back to New York tonight because five separate theater pieces of mine are opening at the Fringe Festival. I know! I don't know how it happened, but it has been just a really productive year for me. It's just weird how they coincided: Bikram: The Musical, Barnes & Noble: The Musical, Baghdad 2016, American Firecrotch, and (:-P: an Emoticon Love Story in Three Acts.
Oh you have something on your face. Oh it's a whitehead.
Well I can't wait to see you up there, moving furniture around! Don't get nervous now! Ha ha.
Previously: "No, I'm Not Laughing At You. I Just Got A Really Funny Video Email On My iPhone!"
Comments
Ohh! Theatre!
"You know, Mamie was just divine in 'The Autumn Garden.' She's just like her mother, only not so... laissez-faire. Do you know what I'm saying? And what about that Asian fellow. What a performance! And all in English to boot. Oh tonight? No, can't. Going down to Lenox for Tanglewood. Oh yeah, we're eating at Firefly. It's just lovely. I saw Sarah and Lily there a few Mondays ago. Just wonderful. Okay, ta."
You better register www.bikramthemusical.com pronto.
"Will they let you go to the cast party and everything?"
This is so funny! Every year I wonder why I don't have five pieces in the Fringe!
All I have seen this year are adaptations (all you do is Ctrl C and Ctrl V for crying out loud?!?!) and Improv.
Doesn't anyone write plays anymore?! Guess not. Too busy blogging, eh?
"You may remember I directed a version of the play for with Ethan and Marisa and the rest of the Naked Angels crew back in '99."
Laughing quite loudly.
!
"You may remember I directed a version of the play for with Ethan and Marisa and the rest of the Naked Angels crew back in '99."
Laughing quite loudly.
!
"No! NO NO NO! ARE YOU KIDDING? Joe and what's-his-name broke-up! Well, I guess you wouldn't have known that, would you? Anyway, I heard it all went down during those trainwreck out of town tryouts in San Fran with "Wicked"... Oh, I dunno... Something about a bottle of Petron and a well-hung flying Chistery who just got his equity card."
"You are learning about transitions!" I was unable to breathe. The whole "special...next Jon Heder" put me into convulsions. And who hasn't heard this: "I know! I don't know how it happened, but it has been just a really productive year for me" and thought that it should be considered reasonable cause for manslaughter.
But "learning about transitions." Oh christ that's good. No one does condescension like theater people.
Mike Albo is brilliant author who can gracefully TRANSITION from "Talking to Merce" to "Barnes & Nobles: The Musical" to "It's a whitehead." Bravo.
Catie Lazarus
That's so weird. It's like when I was the dresser for Charles Busch during Auntie Mame's run in Ogunquit...and the dresser for the Magical Mr. Mistopheles which was embarrassing but sexually satisfying. Oh, I love summer stock.
@LolCait: it's the costume for the modern revolutionary. S-T-A-U-N-C-H.
Reminds me of summer '05; all those lazy days playing tennis with Liev Schrieber and Ping Chong backstage at the Delacorte. We didn't have a net, so Mark Morris Company improvised one.
All was well until Spalding Gray and the Wooster Group Summer Softball League showed up. In true Sharks v. Jets style, the turf war rages to this day.
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