136. SEND THE EMAIL
entering my opera era, apparently
well, i didn’t have to wait long for things to happen! often, the way i get work is extremely nonlinear, but this week yielded an example where one thing led so neatly to another that i can’t help but share.
last year, i told a friend of mine who works in opera that i was interested in working on more opera. she introduced me to a friend of hers who directs opera and sometimes needs assistants. i had coffee with the director and we hit it off, so she added me to her email list.
a few days ago, she sent out a new year’s newsletter that i loved, so i dashed off a quick reply telling her how much i enjoyed it and letting her know i was available if she ever needed support on a project.
the literal next day, i woke up to an email asking if there was any chance i might be available to assist her on an opera. so i am!
send the email, kids. especially if the point is to tell someone you admire them. it really does help.
reading.
i devoured god of the woods by liz moore. it was just as addicting as everyone warned me i would be. a sprawling summer camp intergenerational mystery? count me in. it will obviously also make an incredible miniseries. finished reading this minutes before sending this out, but i’ll certainly be looking for reviews and interviews with the author so that i don’t have to leave the world quite yet.
i also finally finished love in the time of cholera and am reading all around it. soooooo… do we all hate florentino ariza? and what did everybody’s college professors teach them about this book? the blurbs on the cover of my copy call this a love story but it… really doesn’t feel like one. or, rather, if there is a love story, it’s between fermina daza and dr. juvenal urbino. florentino ariza has never known love and never will! he’s the worst!
^ case in point: literally everything to do with américa vicuña. big content warnings for pedophilia and suicide in both of the articles i read (second one is in spanish, so you may need google translate) about her arc and legacy. honestly shocked i haven’t come across an américa vicuña alternate perspective novel a la wide sargasso sea. (p.s. am i being a killjoy? should américa vicuña’s role as a metaphor or a symbol do anything to alter my feelings? it doesn’t, really! i enjoyed many parts of this book, but boy, was this part hard to swallow!)
this truly excellent piece from adam moss on george c. wolfe’s direction of gypsy. still haven’t seen the production, so can’t agree or disagree with moss’s opinions, but this piece does offer one of the clearest depictions of a director’s job (as i understand it) that i’ve ever read.
i’m shocked and appalled to announce that not ONE of you thought to inform me that stereophonic settled its lawsuit with ken caillat in EARLY DECEMBER. as a result, i have been in the dark for a month like a FOOL.
i posted about anya richkind’s “around the circle, filling in the blanks” prompt last week, and this week, she has generously shared the results in a kind of found poem!
this long new yorker article about a modern-day jason in medea. (content warnings for murder and suicide. i’ve really been going hard on the disturbing longreads lately, i know.)
this obituary for the towering avant-garde playwright richard foreman.
seeing.
gary gulman grandiloquent. there’s a whole section where gulman plays jesus workshopping the sermon on the mount and mia and i will be quoting it to each other until we die.
kept on watching the empress.
continued my brooklyn 99 rewatch.
hearing.
listened to the first two episodes of sold a story, an investigative podcast about how and why the american school system is failing so intensely in its attempts to teach kids to read. trust me, it’s gripping.
and as for music…
making.
following up on the intro to this installment, i’ll be assistant directing in a grove, a chamber opera by christopher cerrone and stephanie fleischmann, directed by mary birnbaum and music directed by raquel acevedo, as part of the prototype festival, with performances january 16-19! especially happy to be dipping my toes back into the opera pond before some other opera gigs coming down the pike later this year. dove into prep this week, watching the archival video and perusing the libretto and piano/vocal reduction.
also read the libretto and listened to the score for one of those aforementioned other opera gigs.
it turns out i do have a resolution for this year: be faster at reading scripts that are sent my way. i’m currently working my way through a humiliatingly large accumulation that dates farther back than i’d care to admit, so i’ll be sending some extremely apologetic emails to playwrights who deserve acknowledgment.
did the scary thing and put my tap shoes back on. my sweet and excellent friend gabrielle niederhoffer — a truly excellent tap dancer — did me the favor of a private brush-up lesson to help me figure out if i still remember how to do anything. (i remember a little bit.)
listened back to the voice memo recording i took of this summer’s private reading of naomi’s play THIS HOT TUB FITS TWO PEOPLE. it’s such a great script. thinking about next steps and possible places to submit.
making a deck for good apples collective’s next full production! once again, i need to raise just over $35,000 (!). making decks always makes me feel like this meme…
read the latest draft of road kills, gave some notes, and sophie turned around another draft in record time! new plays are so exciting!
did a lot more visual research for road kills, too. made some breakthroughs.
and then, to top it all off — good apples collective won our first ever grant! i screamed into the phone when sophie told me! can’t share the name yet, but will once it’s officially announced. feeling incredibly grateful that someone took such care with our application and decided our work was worthy of support. it’s been a good start to the year.
