Devilish

Goodness, Breaders, where did a whole week go since last we spake? A week that led to today, the first day of tech rehearsals out here at the stunningly beautiful Bruns...but more of that later.

The last week in the rehearsal studio was a combination of detailed work on individual scenes along with runs of acts, and then the last two days, entire run-thrus. Fits and starts and leaps and bounds, much good work went on. There are long sections of this play that I'm not a part of, so it was great fun for me to watch scenes for the first time. I will say that the play has never been clearer or more illuminating. It's always amazing to me how you can think you know a play but each time you see or work on it as you advance in years, yes, get older, they just get better and mean SO MUCH MORE! How could I possibly have understood that moment, this situation, that political commentary, whatever, before now? I found myself scrambling for my script to underline certain highly apt and brilliant passages. I was particularly loving what the Devil had to say about "civilized" humans' hyprocrisy and war mongering. Never more apt than now. Sadly I think, each decade or so in the over 100 years since this was written, could say the same.

THE DEVIL: "And is Man any the less destroying himself for all this boasted brain of his? Have you walked up and down upon the earth lately? I have; and I have examined Man's wonderful inventions. And I tell you that in the art of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine."

"...This marvellous force of Life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness. What is his religion? An excuse for hating me. What is his law? An excuse for hanging you. What is his morality? Gentility! an excuse for consuming without producing. What is his art? An excuse for gloating over pictures of slaughter. What are his politics? Either the worship of a despot becuse a despot can kill, or parliamentary cock-fighting."

"...Over such battles the people run about the streets yelling with delight, and egg their Governments on to spend hundreds of millions of money in the slaughter, whilst the strongest Ministers dare not spend an extra penny in the pound against the poverty and pestilence through which they themselves daily walk."

Then DON JUAN (Jack Tanner) retorts: ""Pshaw! all this is old. Your weak side, my diabolic friend, is that you have always been a gull: you take Man at his own valuation. Nothing would flatter him more than your opinion of him. He loves to think of himself as bold and bad. He is neither one nor the other: he is only a coward. Call him a tyrant, murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger about with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth..."

"...Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero. He may be abject as a citizen; but his is dangerous as a fanatic."

OK, enough of the quotes.

It's a beautiful night out here as we begin to go through lights and sound cues and grow accustomed to the space. The set is looking quite beautiful. I can't wait for you to see!

Til we meet again...