Following up from last time, things are moving forward with the planning of the next Jocular Theatre production. I have reserved not one but two different theaters for the first two weeks of June. I’m spoiled for choice! I will, of course, need to contact one and cancel the reservation. Moving theaters from one week to the next isn’t what I had in mind. No, a nice four-day weekend run will suffice.

And now that I have a better idea of our performance space, I have finally settled on a play! Yes, we will be presenting the double bill: The Nature and Purpose of the Universe // The Actor’s Nightmare by Christopher Durang. I love both of these pieces and I’m actually planning on playing the part of George in Nightmare – a dream of mine.

My next big challenge is casting the shows. I sent out an email last week to all of the usual suspects – about 50 people in total – informing them of my intentions and asking them to consider auditioning and to please pass the invitation on to anyone else who may be interested. The next day I had five people call and request an audition slot! And then nothing for the next five days.

Between the two plays (and without doubling up), I’m looking for 13 actors: 8 males and 5 females. I should tell you that the first 5 people to request an audition were 4 girls and 1 guy. That means I still needed 7 guys and 1 girl – assuming that none of the people who called are cyclops! I’d probably have to choose a completely different play. Anyway, this past weekend I thankfully heard from 3 more guys who are interested in auditioning. That’s all well and good but, if I had my druthers, I’d much prefer to have at least twice the number of actors at the audition than the number of parts I’m casting.

Auditions are this coming Saturday. So if you or anyone you know are interested in auditioning for what will undoubtedly be the funniest English-language play to hit Barcelona all year, please give me a call. You won’t regret it.

I just finished reading a very interesting article in New Scientist called Teach Your Brain To Stretch Time. The article begins by talking about how this Scottish guy claims to be able to stretch time and, thanks to this learned mental ability, he has become a better squash player.

The moment I read this, I was immediately reminded of an other-worldly experience I had just two years ago in which I had found myself playing volleyball in slow motion. I couldn’t explain it at the time, but it sounds very similar to what this article in New Scientist is talking about. They say it’s a state of mind called “the zone”.

According to the article, my personal experience could be attributed to the heightened chemical levels present in my brain as a result of the phenomenal week following our joyous announcement of Emily’s imminent arrival. But who knows. It would be a wonderful thing to be able to summon this state of mind at will and enter into the zone when desired. It all seems so Zen.

After the first couple of paragraphs, the article talks mostly about the biology, psychology, and chemistry of this phenomenon. While all very interesting, I wish it told more about this guy’s personal experience with entering the zone to play squash. Have any of you experienced anything like this?

As we all know from reading Zen Habits, the Four Laws of Simplicity are as follows:

1. Collect everything in one place.
2. Choose the essential.
3. Eliminate the rest.
4. Organize the remaining stuff neatly and nicely.

After witnessing the awesome results on a barely visible dining room table, I decided to apply this powerful recipe to the mangled post-Christmas gift explosion that had taken over our once spacious living room. I am proud to say that we are all breathing a lot easier (yes, even Emily) now that I managed to identify and subtract the following toys from our ever-increasing household katamari:

1. Phone with piercing melodies and a four inch long cord that made lengthy conversations a bit of a neck ache
2. Tupperware lid
3. Sleep mask that my dad scored on his flight over, alongside a disembodied phone receover
4. Pushchair Puffy Snake
5. WTF?
6. Teletubbies. Nuff said
7. An elephant mixed with a duck that used to hang from some sort of play mobile
8. Two halves of a plastic cucumber that would combine if both bits of velcro weren’t the same
9. Infinite-shaped teething toy
10. Möbius-shaped teething toy
11. Jingle Bunny
12. Plastic clothing hanger
13. Quadruple helix
14. Little Rattle Bear.
15. Teething ring filled with suspicious liquid
16. Hand-held steamroller
17. Bath time water pump (we’re not ready for this yet)
18. Inky Pinky Parlez Vous
19. Emily’s first computer keyboard

The Jews gave Chanukah gifts. The goyem gave Christmas gifts. The Spanish gave Reyes gifts. Yes, this holiday season was very profitable for our little girl.

Composing

A full month hasn’t passed since all the gift giving began so I figure I’m still within the statute of limitations to post adorable photos and video of the proceedings. Another big thank you to everyone for the wonderful musical instruments, building blocks, puzzles, implements of destruction, clothing, cash, supermarket checkout counters, stuffed animals of every genus and species, and all those books that come with that integrated musical side panel playing all our favorite nursery rhymes at the simple touch of a button.

It’s been two years since I’ve produced/directed a play and it’s starting to take its toll. That’s right, two years since the Beyond Therapy debacle of ’06. There is a charred black void in my heart where theater once flourished. But that is about to change. I hope.

Now that Emily is old enough for me to start neglecting her on the weekends, I am dusting off the old Jocular Theatre logo and doing my all to get this show back on the road.

There are many important steps in the process of developing a successful theatrical production. I tried to list these steps in an easy-to-read bulleted list, but my convoluted progress through this process made linear listing difficult.

First off, I am resolute in my desire to produce a show. This always helps.

Next is the selection of the play, the cast, and the location. Here’s where everything gets kinda messy. I apologize now if the rest of this entry is a bit confusing. I’m confused.

I would normally book a theater space and compile a short list of plays that I would like to direct. Then I would send out a mysterious casting invitation to the usual suspects and take out an ad in the local English language magazine looking for new actors. Only after the auditions would I decide which play would fit the group of actors with whom I’d like to work and cast it accordingly.

The short list of plays that I would love to direct this spring is as follows (in order):

• Scapino! by Frank Dunlop and Jim Dale (based on Molière)
• Beyond Therapy by Christopher Durang
• The Foreigner by Larry Shue
• The Nature and Purpose of the Universe // The Actor’s Nightmare (double bill) by Christopher Durang

And just for your information, plays that I look forward to directing but just not this season include Bat Boy, A New Brain, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, and Private Eyes. Their time will come.

Unfortunately, the theater in which I usually work is already booked right through the summer. When am I going to learn my lesson and book a space more than five months in advance? I’ve searched around town and finally found a place that has available the exact dates I am looking for: June 5-8. The price is right and the lighting rig is halfway decent. After studying the space thoroughly today with Ed (the Dutch God of set construction), the downside appears to be that the stage is too small for either Scapino! or The Foreigner and isn’t intimate enough for my vision of Beyond Therapy. I could imagine doing the Durang double bill there, but I’m not convinced that two one-acts is the way to go (I’m thinking marketing and the overall homologous audience experience I want to achieve). I’m going to make a last ditch effort and call a few more theaters this week (mostly schools with lush theaters as their auditorium), but I’m happy that I at least have something. I’m also going to call and book a theater for December so I don’t get caught with my pants down again next season.

I placed an ad in the Barcelona Metropolitan last month and have already received a few phone calls from interested parties. As soon as the location of the play is definite, I’ll start courting the actors I’ve already decided must be in the show. Each play is already pre-cast but none of the actors know this. I still hold auditions because they could say it could be that the actors are either not interested or unavailable or I could be pleasantly surprised by some new face that appears out of the woodwork – lord knows it’s happened before!

All I want is a play that I love performed in a beautiful and comfortable space by actors perfect for the part and fun to work with. Is that asking too much?

It’s wonderful watching Emily eat her Honeynut Cheerios in the morning. She has amazing manual dexterity. She holds her little metal spoon gingerly in her right hand, watches it as she lowers it into the bowl, scoops up as many Cheerios as one swoop permits (sometimes helps them onto the spoon with her left hand), and puts the whole spoon into her mouth with a sweet little slurping sound. And then she picks up her sippy cup and has a sip of water. Just a few months ago, she was snatching fistfuls of cereal in her milky claws and forcefully jamming it into her gob. We’re progressing nicely.

Happy 16 month birthday, Emily.

Emily and her parents spent most of her 16th month in the arctic tundra, aka England. A reunion with Chelsea the Cat was undoubtedly the high point for our little Dr. Dolittle, as was obvious by the replacement of ‘more’ for ‘meow’ at the number one slot on Emily’s Most Often Spoken Word list. It was great to see family and friends and get Christmas presents and eat home cooked meals (prepared by someone other than us), but it was absolutely dreadful playing the age old game of Pass The Infectious Disease with everyone in Jan’s family… but that’s a story for another blog post.

Chilly Willy

I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again: we can’t get over how fast our little girl is growing up. We see kids that are six months old and neither of us can remember Emily ever being that small / young / uncoordinated / weird looking. It’s a good thing we have this blog to remind us or we would have no option but to produce another child in order to relive those golden moments 🙂

I guess my favorite part of this past month’s development has been the newfound ability to finally answer questions. And not just with a head shake for no or a goofy laugh for yes – we’ve been there for months already. No, we’re actually getting proper grammatically correct answers. Kinda.

Me: Emily, would you like some water?
Emily: Neh (still accompanied by the appropriate head shake).
Me: What about milk?
Emily: Yeah! (still accompanied by the big smile and goofy laugh).
Me: And then it’s time for bed.
Emily: Neh.

Fantastic!

Since we are seeing more progress in Emily’s language skills than in any other area at the moment, and since we received such positive feedback after debuting this new feature in last month’s birthday blog entry, I will continue to expand upon the easy-to-read table that has come to be known as Emily’s Communication Breakdown. New additions to the table are marked in red for your reading comfort:

Buckethead

I hope everyone enjoyed their 2007 and rang in 2008 in style. I know I did. In fact, I spent this New Year’s Eve doing exactly what I had been hoping to do: attempting to take over the world!

Never being one for loud dance halls, unruly house parties, or freezing cold sloppy street celebrations, my perfect New Year’s Eve was realized when Jan and I invited Ed and Basia over to our place for a quiet evening of laughing children, creative cocktails, fine dining, and the 2008 Risk World Championship. It was heaven.

Natalie and Emily started the festivities by bouncing around the house and filling the night air with delightful laughter. They got on like a house on fire! We all thought that Natalie, thanks in part to her watching over Emily like a little sister, seemed much more like an 8 year old than the 3 year old she really is. They soon tired themselves out and were swiftly put to bed, allowing the adults to break open the liquor cabinet.

With the help of an old friend, I mixed up some killer concoctions while we all snarfed down the obligatory olive cocktail mix, Pringles, and fuet while Jan prepared her patented Seafood Ragu. In a spur of the moment decision, Jan declared rum to be her official drink for 2008 so I whipped up some wicked Bahama Mamas to set the mood. We ravenously made short work of Jan’s delicious dinner even though Basia initially balked at the standard Zamrycki portions. I swiftly moved our guests on to Mudslides (thanks, Phil), while I poured myself a Terry.

We had just enough time to set up the Risk board and review the rules for the uninitiated before midnight drew near enough that we hurriedly doled out the grapes and poured the champagne. Please don’t tell any Catalan friends that we opted out of the Cava this year. I don’t think they’d understand that I had a bottle of Piper-Heidsieck lying around and it was too good to pass up. Anyway, we downed the grapes with every stroke of the midnight hour and washed them down while watching a typical Spanish New Year’s TV celebration (sexist, vacant, and generally trying too hard). The TV went off and the soldiers occupied their territories.

This was easily the high point for me of the entire evening. I have been massively addicted to Risk recently and I was getting tired of playing by myself against the computer. I needed a worthy competitor. I was happy to see Basia doing some quality trash talking so I knew there would be some decent competition. I captured all of South America from the very beginning and quietly laughed at my pathetic opponents as my position only got better from there. A stubborn Alaska was all that stood between me and North America when, out of nowhere, Jan declared her missions completed and everyone’s jaws hit the floor. I felt utterly cheated but I shook her hand anyway and we all crowned her the 2008 Risk World Champion. Grrr.

Ed went in to our bedroom to check on Natalie and we never saw him again. Jan brought her laptop and a few episodes of Seinfeld into the guest room and crashed. Basia and I trolled YouTube for a little while, but we, too, were no match for the dopiness brought on by good food and alcohol. We all went to bed and slept soundly through the first night of the new year. Except for Emily who woke up quite often. And Jan who tended to her. And Natalie who was woken by Emily.

Here’s hoping 2008 is even more wonderful than 2007 – if that’s possible.