125. IT'S GOING WELL THANK YOU
i am working an ungodly number of hours
i’m exhausted. the real updates are down in the “making” section. onwards.
reading.
10 rules for loving and being loved well from roxane gay.
will swenson’s beautiful tribute to gavin creel.
this old interview with stephen sondheim.
i can’t believe someone is hosting a hirschfeld tarot seance and it’s not me.
if you’re in need of a compliment, click here.
i type pretty fast and am therefore a little addicted to this.
this interview with sammy dallas bayes, who remounted the original robbins staging of fiddler for various revivals. (scroll down to page 8.)
and one more interview about his work.
also for fiddler, i did some research on jewish opposition to interfaith marriages. (yes, it’s about the kids, but there’s interesting talmudic debate!)
seeing.
i’ll be honest, you guys — i really wish i were seeing more of california, but this gig is just not set up to let me sightsee. the best i could do was an hour in santa ana on monday between meetings. despite the pictures above, the vibes were… a little bleak. came across zero other pedestrians who weren’t actively in need of food and shelter, most establishments were closed (either on mondays or permanently), and the prettiest building in the area was named after ronald reagan. oy. i did see some beautiful street art in a couple parking lots and a gorgeous sunset outside trader joe’s. i also got my nails done and had the longest and loveliest conversation with virginia, who painted them. most of santa ana was so empty that it felt extra nice to chat with someone new. i wish i had the time to make it to los angeles proper, but it doesn’t look like it’s in the cards.
andrew garfield finally went on chicken shop date with amelia dimoldenberg. yes, it lives up the hype. yes, this is parasocial of me. yes, i think they should get married in real life.
also, if you weren’t sure if andrew garfield has taste… he’s a huge fan of the d.a. pennebaker company documentary. (i referenced the “bubbe” moment in that doc this week in rehearsal when trying to get our motel to say “yussel” correctly.)
this fleshy looking stone sculpture work.
these portraits are totally going to become design inspiration for a future show.
these paintings by diana brambila.
more love is blind. what a mess.
hearing.
making.
day 4. i really couldn’t believe this was only day 4. i thought day 3 was a lot — and then this day happened. in the morning, we spent 4 hours on the rehearsal turntable. let me back up, i guess: there’s a turntable in this show, as i may or may not have mentioned. circles are at the heart of the original jerome robbins staging for fiddler on the roof, and we’re recreating his work as much as we can. when we get into the theater, we’ll have a fairly fancy turntable, but while we’re in the rehearsal studio, we have something a bit more… rustic. look, i am grateful that we have any turntable to rehearse on at all — but this machine and i have a very unsteady truce right now. it does not move at a consistent pace, it makes a loud grinding noise when it rotates, it keeps coming unplugged. add to that that i keep needing to be in three places at once: on the side of the room, operating the turntable; on the turntable, demonstrating the staging; and at the front of the room, watching the stage pictures. i am just one associate director! after lunch, we cleaned the end of “matchmaker” and then i corralled the guys into position for act 1, scene 4. lots of tables and seating to manage in the inn scene…
day 5. another huge day. we staged the huge house scene going into “sabbath prayer,” as well as the song itself. so. many. props. so many people entering and exiting. if you tried to do a proper french scene breakdown for this show, the scenes would be two lines long. ran out of time and will definitely want to go back over this one. then staged the scene after “to life” and tried to explain how the turntable would be moving despite not being in the space with the turntable. after lunch, we staged almost all of the wedding sequence: “sunrise, sunset” and a whole bunch of dancing. the wedding dance is so long — but it’s so gorgeous.
day 6. mr. alexander made the very menschy move of bringing us all bagels for the last day of our rehearsal week. we were really all feeling the need for a day off. we started the day with act 1, scene 2 (also known as “reb tevye, my cheese”), and by the end of the session, we realized we were going to need to reblock the whole thing. then we moved into act 1, scene 6, which we didn’t even get close to finishing in the hour and a half we had allotted. we decided to shift around our afternoon plans so we could finish the work we had started and push act 1, scene 8 to the next day. (i freaked out internally about the scheduling ramifications, which were annoyingly severe.) we also started to stage more of the wedding sequence but ran out of time to figure out how all the furniture gets on and offstage (or at least ran out of time for me to relay what i’d figured out in my elaborate post-it / google sheet matrix system to the cast). after rehearsal finally ended, i got a much needed drink with our lovely associate choreographer.
day 7. after a day off, we all came back to rehearsal feeling refreshed. lonny and i had some time to go over our prep while the cast was recorded reviewing “tradition” for media purposes. then we restaged “reb tevye, my cheese” with much success, and staged the first tailor shop scene of the show in consultation with our fight director, erik gratton. after lunch, we stumbled through act 1! it was honestly way less stumbly than i anticipated! lonny whispered pages worth of notes into my ear until we got to the wedding sequence, where we paused, since we had some bits and bobs to put together. the day’s highlight was certainly the moment i got room-wide applause for staging a difficult transition. (it was pretty surreal to hear lonny price say, “i’m handing things over to the fabulous nina goodheart,” and have the whole cast start applauding. i panicked and curtsied.)
day 8. we staged the pogrom at the end of act 1. erik’s work remains so excellent and thoughtful, and he’s so nimble on his feet in taking adjustments. i did unexpectedly have to watch some actual pogrom footage for research during rehearsal, and it threw me off pretty badly. i still managed to get through some good prep work with lonny and then we staged the act 2 tailor shop scene. felt like i put my foot in my mouth and kept interrupting at the wrong moments in the afternoon, but we got through the scenes we needed to hit. lonny had to head out early, so jason came and sat next to me at the director’s table for a while and we gabbed and laughed for a while. (we were rehearsing the chava ballet, and i had been thinking all day how the opening measures sound just like the intro to “johanna” from sweeney todd — and then jason starting singing, “i feel you, johanna,” and i said, “THANK you! EXACTLY!”) went home feeling truly spent. i’m still yearning for that second day off.
day 9. worked on the top of act 2 and took notes on lonny’s blocking as he worked with the actors. we made it from “now i have everything” through “do you love me?” what a stunning show this is. i spent my lunch on the phone with our scenic designer clearing up some questions, and then spent the afternoon prepping staging with lonny and putting it on actors. then, one of our actors was stuck in traffic, so i played the constable opposite jason alexander for one read of act 2, scene 8. (talk about a role i never imagined i would play!) we barely got to touch “anatevka,” but we’ll see it when we stumble through act 2 later this week. spent a while on the phone after rehearsal checking in with various parties and starting to prepare for tech rehearsals, which are somehow… coming up soon. hard to believe the hours are only going to get longer!
