May 30, 2023

The woods are just trees. The trees are just wood. Would it were so simple. My life is full of woods at the moment. Artistic, spiritual, philosophical… the only thing that’s missing is an actual ramble through a woodland. Perhaps I should take a mental health day and schedule myself some time at Ruffner Mountain or Oak Mountain or Red Mountain. For those of you not of Birmingham, they are three great urban wilderness parks covering the slopes of the tail end of the Appalachians here in the metro area. The ultimate plan is to connect the three with walking paths, bike trails and greenways. When those come to fruition, there will be something truly special here.

The first woods were recreational. I took the Saturday of the long weekend off from my ‘To Do’ list and I and my long time friend Mackey Atkinson road tripped it up to Nashville. We had tickets for the evening performance of the National Tour of the new production of Into the Woods. As we arrived in Nashville some hours before show time, we decided to continue the fairytale theme and went to the immersive Disney animation exhibit. It’s another of the son et lumiere shows that have become popular in recent years, beginning with Van Gogh five or six years ago and now reaching out into all sorts of visual media. Classic Disney moments, both old and modern projected on enormous screens, animated floor coverings that responded to your movements, familiar songs, it was quite enjoyable. I am not a Disney fanatic but I do like letting my inner child out to play from time to time. And Jiminy Cricket singing ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ gets me every time.

I can’t say much for Broadway and honky-tonk country music Nashville. Rubbing elbows with drunk examples of Fraterniticus Memberus has never been my idea of a good time, even when I was that age. The other major sighting were of gaggles of Bachelorettia Celebrationes, all dressed alike, three sheets to the wind, and wearing little pink cowboy hats and boots stolen from the Ron DeSantis collection. At least a lot of them had the good sense to stay aboard their various party busses, party minivans, and party tractors so you didn’t have to dodge their stumbling on the sidewalks. Apparently a sunny Saturday afternoon in Nashville has become the new Bourbon street, just substitute country for jazz. We poked around downtown, had a surprisingly good dinner at a restaurant/coffee bar improbably named The Frothy Monkey, and headed over to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center for the show.

I have long had a soft spot for Into The Woods. Not only is it a Sondheim show, it’s also the first Broadway show that I actually got to see on Broadway (third week of the run with the original cast). It was my first trip to NYC (I was there for residency interviews) and my vivid memories of sitting in the Martin Beck theater and watching the show unfold and not really knowing anything about it other than ‘fractured fairy tales’ remain strong. The indelible performance of Joanna Gleason as the Baker’s Wife. The audience gasps at the unexpected deaths. The applause when Rapunzel’s tower appeared. Bernadette Peters’ witch transformation. I can still feel that emotional state when I think back. I was 25 years old then. Steve, Tommy, my career – they were all still in the future. I remember not being very impressed with the second act, feeling that James Lapine had bitten off far more than he could chew. Now, 35 years later, I read very different things into the show than I did then and I realize that I often have to venture off the path and into the woods for the things I require to succeed – and they’re usually not so simple as the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, the slipper as pure as gold.

A different magical forest is taking over my summer. In a fit of temporary insanity I agreed to direct A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Belltower Players. We had preliminary auditions last night and this evening and have run into the usual problem with plenty of women and a short supply of men. I can do some fudging with gender from Shakespeare’s original casting but I will still have to beat the bushes for a couple of parts. If you’re male, comfortable on stage, and owe me a favor or two, expect a call….Given budgetary constraints, full Elizabethan is out of the question but I think I have come up with some design concepts that will work and will make the show interesting and a bit more immersive than that space has usually done. There goes July and the first half of August…

The metaphorical woods are those I am hacking my way through in trying to finish up the third volume of The Accidental Plague Diaries. I feel like it should come together relatively easily over the next two months and we should be able to have it available in August. So there is light peeking through the trees there. The big question becomes, of course, and then what? Do I keep working on it by trying to raise its profile through PR? Maybe more appearances like this one… (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Nt_TASNGRY&t=132s) Do I find the money to get electronic and audio editions out? (And would anyone buy them?) Do I go back to the idea of turning it into a Spalding Gray/David Sedaris type monologue? I have this fantasy of workshopping it locally, getting quite a good piece out of it, taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it’s a sensation and it then becomes a success d’estime off Broadway. As if any of that will ever happen. Or do I just say ‘Done’ and cast about for some new project to fill that particular creative void.

And then there’s the thicket of briar which is the American health care system and all of the issues which continue to dribble down onto geriatric care – the decline in professionals with geriatric care skills, the lack of support staff. the aging of the population, the generational characteristics of the early boomers, now in their 70s who have unreasonable expectations regarding biology and human experience. There are days when I truly love what I do professionally. There are other days when I want to drop kick the computer terminal off the third floor into the atrium, and then tear off all my clothes and run screaming out of the building. There are days when a 72 hour involuntary psychiatric hold sounds like a much needed vacation.

Speaking of vacation, three more work days until I depart for my second trip to London in six months. My next long posts will likely be back to travel diary mode for a while. Given the people I will be there with, shenanigans will be had.