So on Tuesday night, May 7, justom and I went to see Talley's Folly, featuring Danny Burstein and Sarah Paulson.

As many or most of you know, I was in theatreatfirst's 2005 production of this play back in Boston, so it's very close to my heart.

( not really a review, just some personal commentary )

Note: This has been cross-posted on the Margaret Ghost Producer's Blog, where there are a lot of new entries and you should go browse them if you take an interest in this production.

Note the second: The play opens THIS THURSDAY! Through Sunday only -- four shows! You should come! Belmont is pretty easily accessible even by public transit, and odds are I can give (or arrange) you a ride back to the Red Line afterwards :-)

So ( I'm playing Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, wife of Nathaniel. )

J and I auditioned together this week for theatreatfirst's fall show Never After, a concert-style production of an original musical. Casting was announced today -- and we're both in! The first time we'll be in an actual full-length show together! It'll go up roughly 6 weeks from now -- two shows only, Sept. 25-26 -- on the main stage of the historic Somerville Theatre in Davis Sq.

And of course, Spike Heels goes up a week from tonight. (Gah! -- I mean, uh. We're totally on track. Yes.) It can be loosely described as a romantic comedy -- but one exploring heavy issues of feminism, sexual harassment, betrayal, class struggle, political philosophy, agency and objectification, and the nature of the teacher-student relationship. Also, shoes, cigarettes, tea, slow dancing, Pride & Prejudice, vampires, Jehovah's Witnesses, and scotch. Lots and lots of scotch.

Be warned that it's rated R for profanity (largely mine) and PG-13 for "adult situations" and partial nudity undress (also mine). But for those who don't find that too off-putting, it's smart and clever and sharp-witted and really funny, and it's going to be awesome. If you can make it, I hope you'll check it out. Even my in-laws are coming up to see it. :-) Reserve your tickets now! You can even prepay your tickets online for your Shabbat-friendly convenience. (I can't help you with the tznius issues, though.)

... And now, back to work, 'cause OMG.

Yeah, okay. I'm not driving out to Concord. Maybe if it eases up this afternoon, I'll go for a while. (This would also mean I can take to the Post Office all the stuff that I need to mail.)

Meanwhile, I'm staying in my bathrobe and making buttons. :-)

In other news, I didn't get cast in theatreatfirst's Much Ado About Nothing, which is a bit disappointing, but does free me up to do other things. Visit family between now and April, for instance, but also -- maybe possibly think about doing Ruddigore with mitgsp starting in February. So I've got that on the CD player.

It seems I have time for a public/general update about once a month. I suppose that's sensible enough.

Shul: Talk Like A Pirate Day was observed with a kosher bARRRRRR!beque on Sept. 19, although I forgot to wear my pirate hat for the occasion. I have finally updated the exciting Tremont St. 20s&30s fall calendar of events. There is much rejoicing. I have not yet laid out the holiday edition of the shul newsletter. Woe. Maybe we can mail it in time for Yom Kippur?

This weekend is Rosh Hashanah. Dinner chez ablock on Saturday night. I'm doing my backup-choir gig in Swampscott that I've done every year since 1997. (That makes this the TENTH, people. How is that even possible?) I've gotten a couple of very nice Rosh Hashanah cards (from vettecat and sdavido and from redknight, thanks!), which makes me want to send some myself for a change. Until I realize that there's absolutely no way this is going to happen. At least by tomorrow. Oh well. :-} While the choir thing is fun (and relatively lucrative), every year I think more and more that I miss the opportunity to direct my High Holiday energies inward. Maybe next year.

Honorable Menschen performed for Havurah on the Hill at the Vilna Shul last Friday night. Somehow, I also got recruited on the spot to lead the service (the regularly scheduled person never showed up). It was fun; slightly terrifying, amazing, and a great privilege, but mostly fun. Oh yeah, and Mayor Menino was there and we got our picture taken with him. Perfect for our upcoming CD (tentatively scheduled for a Chanukah 2007 release date!)....

In other performance news, The Margaret Ghost is less than a month away, and getting sharper all the time. I am tremendously excited about it. I'll also be performing in a Theatre@First-based Cabaret Night at First Church, Dec. 1 and 2.

In theater-watching news, we're going tonight to see New Rep's The Pillowman at the Arsenal Center for the Arts. (What kind of stupid organization provides a PDF as the target for their main Directions link?? Geez. Even if they are right on Arsenal Street.) We're also going to the Three Apples Storytelling Festival on Sept. 30, and Corteo on Oct. 5 (erev my birthday). (My actual birthday dinner will be held in the shul sukkah.)

Columbus Day weekend, we're going down to Princeton for a mutual friend's wedding reception. And I still have no idea what I'm doing for Thanksgiving. But hey.

... Oh yeah, and work is frantic (but productive) and home is mostly unpacked (though I spend very little time there awake, it's generally joyful) and the car is running fine (gas is suddenly down from $3 to $2.37 a gallon!), and life is good. L'shanah tovah tikatevu.

Sunday morning: Crawled home at 4:45am -- well, got a ride home, thank you ablock -- from the theatreatfirst cast party, at the gracious abode of heliopsis, Armigero. The latest I've stayed out in many months... and totally worth it. Got up at 9am to finish packing; left for the airport at 9:50am (the Red-Line-to-Silver-Line route works pretty well), and flew to Sacramento. Am ensconced in the guest room at my mom's as I write this. Will be back on the redeye next Sunday morning.

The other fun thing we did after I got here last night (besides go out for Italian on the way here from the airport) was watch the DVD of Talley's Folly, which I still hadn't seen! Despite some rather quirky editing in places and the way the sound nearly cut out for my big scene at the end, it was fun to watch. I did have much the same reaction I always have in watching videos long after a performance, which is: "I wish I could have seen a recording of this *before* we took it onstage, I would have done this and that and that completely differently...!" Still, it was actually rather intense to watch and relive. In a good way. And my mom was absolutely tickled.

I'll have e-mail access once or twice a day, here, so keep in touch. In fact, I may have slightly more time than usual to read up on LJ. :-)

EDIT: Just got through the past few days of entries; enjoying reading all the Firsties' raves about the show experience (in general) and the awesome cast party (in particular). Yeah, baby.
Also, I may try to get Mom up to speed on Harry Potter movies 2 and 3 so we can go see 4 this week. But we'll see.

Twice already this week, I'd zonked out around 10pm.

As of yesterday afternoon, I could feel a sore throat coming on. Not good with our concert [obligatory plug] coming up tomorrow.

After a quiet dinner with kalessin, I went to bed last night at 10:15. And slept (mostly) until 8am. And went to shul. And was still so wiped that I lay down in my pew after the Torah service (no, I really shouldn't have agreed to stand as gabbai for the longest parshah of the year, after doing my own reading) and proceeded to sleep through Musaf. And after kiddush, came home and took a 2-hour nap.

Throat is a little better, but I still feel weird.

Maybe I'll take my temperature again. Yesterday evening it was only just over 99, though.

I was planning to go to the theatreatfirst '80s Dance [obligatory plug] tonight, but if I'm still feeling so out of it, I think some quieter pursuit will be in order for this evening. :-(

Update, 8:45pm: Temp = 100.4. Uh... yeah.
Sorry, everyone whose festivities I am missing tonight. :-/
(My stitches don't look infected or anything -- now that I've removed the bandage -- so at least that's not the problem.)

On the plus side, I decided to reread The Curse of Chalion before starting Paladin of Souls. And oh... I forgot how much I enjoyed it last time, but now I'm experiencing a delightful tension between racing ahead to soak up the story and reading slowly to savor every passage. Very little makes me as happy as good writing.

I did some writing yesterday to flesh out my character work for Talley's Folly.

Technically, it's the closest thing to a short story I've written in years. (In fact, it felt a lot like writing fanfic; but I suppose it's in a way very much the same thing.)

I posted it (both for feedback and because it had a pretty LJ-esque quality to begin with), but heavily filtered: only to lillibet and dpolicar for starters. But it occurs to me that other people might also find it interesting/amusing, so comment and I'll add you to my temporary "talleys" filter. :-) I don't strictly care whether you're involved in the production, but there are definite spoilers for the play, so unless you've seen/read it before -- because you're ALL going to come see it now, right? -- please wait until after. (It really won't make much sense unless you do already know the play, anyway.) I'll open the entry more generally after the run ends.

"Now, back to work!"

So a couple weeks ago, lillibet wrote and invited me to try out for this production of Lanford Wilson's one-act play Talley's Folly that theatreatfirst would be putting on in February (before they do You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown in the spring). It's 97 minutes, only two characters, a Jewish man and a Missouri woman, it's a love story, really charming. Okay, sure, I said, that sounds cool. And I read the script and I thought, yeah, this could be fun.

So, we had the audition/read-through last night, four men reading for Matt and four women reading for Sally. And I thought, this is pretty neat material -- but, well, all things considered I'll be happy either way.

But today they offered me the part and I am totally ecstatic. :-)
We're to learn lines over the coming month, start rehearsals January 18, and open February 11. (Hey, gang, how many performances might there be?)

The top two questions I've gotten so far are:
(a) "How the hell do you have time to do this?" (Answer: I didn't really have much on the schedule for that 4-week period... yet... anyway...)
(b) (on hearing me summarize the basic premise of the play) "Uh, was this part written for you?" ;-)

Well, we'll see.

And I'm playing opposite dpolicar, who is going to be just about as perfect in this role as navrins was for Henry.

And really I'm just so pleased to be assimilating signing on with the Firsties -- so many of whom I already know and love, and whom I've seen develop into this incredible mutual admiration society (which I mean in the nicest, most supportive, most enviable way possible).

More on all this later, for now I am long overdue for bed (and reek of frying latkes. Thus endeth the chag).