Romeo & Juliet Gets The Treatment

It's 11:30 AM, and I'm in my office listening to a student audience scream with joy at the production of Romeo & Juliet they're watching above my head. As happy as I am that they like the show, one aspect of the production gnaws at me.
I don't always have a problem setting Shakespeare in a non-Elizabethan period. I've worked on some great shows that skipped men in tights for another look. A Victorian Love's Labors Lost and a Third World Banana Republic Julius Caesar are two that pop up in my mind as solid, well-executed pieces of theatre.
This time we've set R&J in a Verona that mimics modern day Miami. Bright colored buildings with palms and Spanish tiled roofs and cellphones and blackberries, and here's the rub, gentle reader. Cellphones and blackberries are my problem.
The story of Romeo & Juliet is fairly dependent on that old chestnut of a plot devise, the lost message. Romeo never gets the note telling him that Juliet is faking her suicide and it all falls apart from there. So in this production, do all the cell towers go down at once? Did Romeo forget to take a charger with him into exile, and there's not one Radio Shack in Mantua? I can't stop imagining Romeo walking around with his cellphone to his ear, repeating "canst thou hear me now" over and over (Verona Wireless - Its The Network.)
All in all, its still a well-acted, solidly staged production. The costumes, sets, props and lighting are all first rate, if I do say so myself. And later this season we're producing West Side Story. Maybe we'll set it in the future. I'm thinking Predator Tony falls for Alien Maria, and boy do the sparks fly.

Tis the Season

Thanksgiving turned out better than I thought it would. I hung out with some nice people and had an absolute belt-busting dinner. I hadn't eaten that well in a couple of years. I usually drift to melancholy during the holidays. What with my family on the other side of the continent, a busier than normal work schedule and long standing financial woes, I tend to scroogeness at this time of the year. It doesn't help that the Christmas season now starts around the first of October. I feel sorry for Halloween and T-day. They're both getting screwed. I think Arbor Day is starting to laugh behind their backs. I've always liked New Year's Day the best, because it means the whole mess is done, for a couple of months, anyway.

Bad Carma

My misspelling of Karma was intended. A couple of hours ago I picked my car up from the garage after a radiator leak and drove roughly 100 yards before it spasmed roughly and died in afternoon traffic. You're never so popular with your fellow humans as when you're broken down in the left turn lane. So I wait by the phone and wonder if this latest malfunction will be the one that's just not worth the cost for a 14 year old Cavalier convertible.
I've often wondered if my life-long bad luck with automobiles was a higher power's attempt to convince me to move to a city with great public transportation. There was the 1967 Ford Country Squire station wagon that caught fire and burned up in the parking lot of a Winn-Dixie one afternoon in 1998. I really can't complain about that car, since I bought it from a friend for one dollar and drove it almost 16 months. The 1979 VW Type 2 bus that blew up ONE DAY after the warranty on its rebuilt engine expired is a more common example of my experiences as a car owner.
Actually, one of the most enjoyable car-related events of my life was an afternoon with some friends, a sabre saw and a blowtorch cutting up my 1987 Cavalier (I've owned two) for scrap after it threw a rod and its timing chain shredded. One of the guys filmed everything and we thought about sending it to MTV as Gimp My Ride. The car's remains netted $87.00, which of course I spent on beer for my aforementioned friends. Ah, good times. Maybe I'll get to chop up this car too. There's always hope.

post one

In the office listening to the first scene of the first preview of Peter Pan. After weeks of hard work rigging and re-rigging and re-re-rigging, the oohs and aahs of an audience almost make me forget how tired I am.
I'm not sure what this blog thing is going to become. I have no plan. We'll just write and see where it all goes.
Later, clay