Geetings Breaders!

Greetings, Breaders! (that’s a contraction for “Blog-Readers”…I just made that up…I think…maybe it’ll catch on…)

Day two of rehearsals for MAN AND SUPERMAN. Nice to be back at Cal Shakes. After seven or so consecutive summers at the Bruns, I had a different kind of summer last year, directing up at Tahoe Shakes and taking what was perhaps only the second proper family vacation ever before our daughters graduate from high school and never want to vacation with the likes of us again. Or at least not for a while yet. It was a great summer, but it’s also good to be back in the rehearsal room on Heinz.

What an awesome cast and designers. And staff! I love sitting around a table with the likes of dialect and text master (mistress?) Lynne Soffer, and dramaturg (lovely Dr. Laura Hope), interns, assistants, top-notch stage management. And of course Jonathan Moscone energetically making the case for passionate intelligence, full-bodied head-heart-groin breathing, loving, sweating, thinking three-dimensional embodiments of Shakespeare, Shaw, Chekhov, Wilde….This is my sixth production with Jonathan. Fancy that. Fun.

And such a cast (did I say that already?) Dear colleagues such as Dan Hiatt, L.Peter, T. Edward, Andy Murray, Delia, and of course Suzie, my career “daughter” Susannah – this is my third time playing her mom (fourth, if you include the mom-ish Miss Prism to Cecily Cardew) And Steve Irish, Dianne Manning (who I went to ACT grad school with WAY long ago!?) and the dear and funny Ben Livingston who you could sort of call my son-in-law as he’s the REAL husband of Susannah Livingston (formerly known as Schulman). And the one new face to me, though I did see his wonderful performance (as did you?) in RESTORATION COMEDY last summer, Elijah Alexander. And then of course the three talented non-Equity guys who will play the Brigands, Hector, Tavis, and Alan.

Design presentation today by the extremely talented Annie Smart (set) and Anna Oliver (costumes). It’s going to be beautiful. Simple but whimsical and stunning Art Nouveau set, and period appropriate (with some sassy anachronisms in Hell) and sure to be lovely costumes.

Tomorrow we begin blocking (as in: up on our feet, moving around the rehearsal hall)

There are so many incredible George Bernard Shaw words in this play and in his notes on this play that I shall endeavor to leave you with a quote each time we chat:

“Any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge of the existing social order, is not a revolutionist, is an inferior.” GBS