Author: David Gorsline

What you don’t want to hear at adjudication

  • “that Star Trek moment”
  • “it seemed to get in your way”
  • “baffled”
  • “would urge you to reconsider”
  • your own voice, explaining

after the showFortunately, Leta and her team didn’t hear anything like these after their lovely presentation of Clean, by Audrey Cefaly, at ESTA in Newark, Del., but rather a few constructive suggestions (“maybe a puddle of water at the opening”) and lots of compliments like “detailed,” “believable,” and “specific.”


Perhaps to Crawford?

“…and his land cleared and planted with the seed Grandfather loaned him and him getting rich good and steady now——”

“Yes,” Shreve said; “Mr Coldfield: what was that?”

“I dont know,” Quentin said. “Nobody ever did know for certain. It was something about a bill of lading, some way he persuaded Mr Coldfield to use his credit: one of those things that when they work you were smart and when they dont you change your name and move to Texas…”

—William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!, ch. VII

The first order meme


Via Apt. 11D, the first order that I can find in my history at Amazon.com was placed on 8 March 1997: Pogue and Schorr, Macworld Macintosh Secrets, 4/e; Sterrit, The Films of Alfred Hitchcock; and Steinbach, The Birth of the World as We Know It: Or Teiresias. The Steinbach has gone to the great library sale in the sky, and the Mac book is buried in a box somewhere with old COBOL manuals, but the Sterritt is still around.

I think that I placed an online order or two with CDnow before I bought anything from Amazon.com, but those records are long gone.

Okay, here’s something silly: the order history page for those 13-year-old purchases offers a Return Items button. (But if you click through the next page says that the items are not eligible for return.)

Are you dark?

Patrick Healy reports on the traffic jam around Times Square: despite shows closing early, there are few slots available for new productions seeking a Broadway-sized venue (500+ seats). An accompanying infographic plots the locations and capacities of the 40 houses, although the bubbles that represent foot traffic on the various streets don’t really tell the story they were meant to. (The print edition of the graphic uses bubbles to represent the theaters as well: online, the building footprint graphics work better, perhaps because of finer resolution.)

Upcoming: 25

A local nonprofit company works to bring together two (seemingly incompatible) interests of mine: theater and nature. Toby Mulford introduced me by e-mail to the Traveling Players Ensemble, a summer theatre camp for middle and high schoolers based in Great Falls:

Our mission is to bring great theatre into the great outdoors. In achieving this mission, TPE is guided by several beliefs:

  • an appreciation of nature. TPE strives to link theatrical work to nature by rehearsing and performing outdoors and by producing plays in which nature is a dominant theme;
  • an ensemble is an ideal structure in which to foster creativity and a sense of community. TPE’s educational programs work intensively with small ensembles, thereby ensuring personalized attention and significant growth as an artist;
  • artistic creation is fundamental to forming one’s identity, especially for teens in their unique and complex transition between childhood and adulthood.

American Theatre magazine, in its back page interview, usually puts the question, “It’s not theater unless…” And I just realized that my answer to the question is “… you can make it work outside.” (This is why I love what Hard Bargain Players does.)

Mulford’s note to me says that the company has these festivals scheduled for the summer:

  • 16 July at Madeira School: The Miser, The Learned Ladies, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • 6 August at Riverbend Park: Love’s Labour’s Lost
  • 13 August at Madeira School: The Miser, The Learned Ladies, and The Fake Madwoman

I think I might have to collect Leta and check them out.

As You Like It: an update: 2

Co-crew chief Sara called an extra rehearsal this afternoon just to practice scene shifting, and it was worth it. Someone described shuffling the tree units, two triangular units, the double parallelogram, and the 18-foot ramp as playing Tetris. Steven and I are mainly on the tree units, and the one with the big tree maneuvers like a sailboat (even with the newly-added wheels). The confetti-spray of spike marks on the deck looks like a setup for a multi-show one-act festival.

green room doorIn addition to the usual sign-in sheet and other duty sheets that are posted on the green room door, we have two columns’ worth of scene shifting plans.

We resimplified the music for the closing dance, dropping the harmony lines. Too bad.

All that said, we had a good tech run this evening. From my side of the proscenium, I think we are where we need to be for a Friday opening.

At the park: 36

looking upstreamLizardtail (Saururus cernuus) is emerging from the wet streamsides.

eggs in the boxActivity along the north side of the main pond continues briskly, with all four boxes occupied. Box #6 is still a-building, with eight Wood Duck eggs not yet under incubation.

the view from the towerAt the downstream end of Barnyard Run, beyond the beaver dam near the observation tower (at right in this image), box #61 has hatched out 17 of 18 Hooded Merganser eggs. Several more boxes are due to hatch late this month.

crayfish chimneyA few weeks ago I posted about crayfish chimneys, but that post lacked an image. Here’s one to rectify the situation.

Two species of vireos (Vireo griseus and V. olivaceus) were heard but not seen. At least one Green Heron (Butorides virescens) was spotted over the wetland, as well as (suprisingly exposed in the open) a Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus). A birder at the tower pointed out an American Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus) to me. Chickadees have taken over one of Melina’s boxes intended for Prothonotary Warblers. Virgina Rails (Rallus limicola) were reported in the past week, but we didn’t detect them today.