Remembering

Today made me think about my friends for a lot of reasons.  We miss you, David.

Erin is a Nerd: Dirty Dancing Edition

So, I’ve already admitted here that I *heart* Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. I know it’s not everyone’s favorite, or considered, you know, a good movie.  But I can’t help my love for it.  You can not believe my delight when this week I was told on This American Life that Peter Sagal (host of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me) has story credit for the movie.  It was from a movie (his only one) that he was commissioned to right about intersecting stories of Cuban Revolutionaries and the girl that love one of them.  He got the note to make the story more “like Dirty Dancing.“  The movie never got made.  Until someone had an idea to make a Dirty Dancing sequel and they remembered his script.

It’s kind of like discovering that my two friends already know each other.

Anyway… Erin is a nerd, with dubious taste in movies.

You can listen to the episode here. And I do take offense to calling it “one of the worst movie sequels ever made.”

It’s Today!!!

Happy one year anniversary WordPress blog!  In honor of the occasion, I’ve started an “About me” page… it’s about time. Check it out.

…but if you don’t like it

I don’t like ‘night Mother because it’s long and capital D depressing. And for me it put the proof to that fact that I was never going to be a genuine good actress, performer sure, but not an actress.  So besides the ideal circumstances of the venue, the scale, and my job, I got over my dislike for the show because unless you are a high school teacher, directors don’t get to pick their shows.  So that’s that.  You have to take the opportunities that come. If you wait around for the board to pick just the right thing you may be waiting forever.

Another proposal

I think that I’m a glutton for punishment, because I put in an application to direct at TLT again this year. I really didn’t do much on the getting experience front because, you know I was feeling that generous to them, and they never followed through on, well, anything. And I’m here to report that that trend has not come to an end. I requested access to the scripts for the season and somehow they were all gone, so then I was going to have them emailed to me. Well today, one month after proposals were due, I still haven’t any scripts besides the one that I decided to go and get from the library myself.

Enough whining.

So I decided to do a proposal for (shhhh don’t tell the committee) one of my least favorite shows, ‘night Mother. But the confluence of circumstances made this show one that I was actually likely to get a shot at. First it’s being produced in the “Coffee House” i.e. lobby. That means smaller scale and smaller budget. The show itself has very few technical elements, a unit set, a semi-modern setting and a cast of two. I think that means that they will be less nervous to have a novice at the helm. And besides that I have performed in a scene from the show, and I work in mental health. So that seemed to work because I had an interview on Wednesday, one step further than last year when I just got a no thank you call. The interview went well, I felt very prepared. And it was pretty fun to just talk about my plans, my understanding of the show, the challenges that I saw. I was little surprised that they didn’t ask me more esoteric questions, like “how do you view your role as a director”, or my favorite from district talk backs for student directed scenes, when two years in a row I got asked “what were you going for in this scene?” Instead they talked specifics of my draft scenic design and what I would look for in auditions, and how I would get a stage manager, mainly very practical things. At the end they asked if there was anything else that I’d like to share. I’m still a bit conflicted about if this was the right thing to say, and I felt nervous and looked at the ground a bit too much I think. But I told them that I hoped that my lack of experience would not be the final deciding factor, I of course elaborated a bit about how I was prepared and I think that this was the right next step. I just hope I didn’t come off desperate. I took up my whole 30 minutes allotted, and hey I would pick me. We’ll see, I’m supposed to be getting an email any day now.

40 Days of Prayer: Day 28

To do works of justice, Lord grant us courage.

To see hurt in the world and respond from love and disappointment, Lord grant us open eyes and soft hearts.

To accomplish small tasks that seem unnoticed and large tasks that earn acclaim, Lord grant us patience.

To earn the trust and respect of our communities, Lord grant us wisdom.

To recognize the vision of youth and the experience of age, Lord grant us humility.

To hear your voice of guidance, Lord grant us quiet.

And in the quiet we will gather strength for the work to come.

We will know that you have equipped us to serve your world, to love your people.

Father , you have given us big dreams; help us rise to meet them…

To lead passionately, to challenge boldly, to give deeply, to work tirelessly, and to love unconditionally

Love like you, Jesus.

Amen.

Erin’s ode to NPH’s ode to the 2009 Tonys

I Tivoed the Tonys and watched them live at a house party with a bunch of my community theatre friends.  This was definitely the right thing to do, I laughed so much.  And I got to completely geek out on my useless theatre trivia. Who else would appreciate it? 

Highlights:

1. Is that Bret Micheals on the Tony Awards? Then him getting taken out by the flys.
2. The best supporting actor in a play bringing his wife on stage with him and her almost  falling out of her dress.
3. Frank Langella is seriously bitter.
4. Alice Ripley’s dramatic reading of the Kennedy Center sign.
5. The Billy Elliot performance that was about the only time when the room got quiet.
6. Counting the number of crew that got caught in a shot, and the number of people who will be loosing there jobs due to the horrendous sound issues.
7. Picking your favorite Frankie Vallie.
8. The three Billy’s acceptance speech. So cute.
9. The guy standing behind the producer accepting for Hair, who’s every thought came flying across his face.
10. And finally… best moment of the show had to be Neil’s 11:03 number. Brilliant.

I hear you do an impression of a goat

Check out my friend Tyler on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Love the Lion King T-shirt.  I think that this was his senior trip.  Not bad, huh?

Series of Sundays, Part 3

April 24- May 3 Sound of Music

The rest of the run of the show went off with relatively little incident. Thankfully. Things got in a grove and were able to anticipate the problems that would come up. One of our Gretls had the urge to wave at her friends in the crowd, one Kurt decided he needed to ham it up and would add different line readings, longer exasperated sighs, and bigger facial expressions every time he was on stage, and the other Kurt would get a wild hair and do things like kicking the Nazis and grabbing people’s hats. Oh, kids.

The only other thing of note was the night when the computer running the light board froze. That cause the lighting for one scene to stay up through the scene change that was supposed to be in black out, and caused a black out in the middle of another scene. Our Marta was already doing a potty dance, so when that happened I told her she could go to take care of it, and she almost missed her entrance when the lights came up again, three minutes later. And for our last weekend I had to donate my black socks to the cause, when “wild hair” Kurt lost his. He offered to give them back to me, but I said no thanks.

Nights, we’d go out with the grownups, and talk about the kid’s antics and the crushes our middle school nuns had on the college boys. I love theatre because it takes all kinds.

The day we closed was strike, of course. I think that I had the most fun tearing down the mountains, and the least fun making the sixth and final pass through the boy’s dressing room. I think 15 people took a pass at it and it was still a wreck when we were closing up to go to the cast party.

Our stage manager (loosely termed…nice guy, little short on the organization and leadership skills) hosted the cast party, which was a stand up thing to do, but made him miss strike, a primary stage manager duty. I gave all my kids a few others “cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels, door bells and sleigh bells” for a little present (a paintable plaster pony, an apple with a strudel recipe and a jingle bell.) We took advantage of our double casting and had a red verses blue field day. I abstained (how could I choose?) and instead got to hold Jessica’s (our Maria) baby during the events. Tommy was 10 weeks old at auditions… that is one brave woman. He’s such a button and only wanted to be held against your shoulder for maximum shirt drooling and earring pulling.

Read Part 2: Confirmation Sunday

Series of Sundays, Part 2

So I had this great idea that I’d blog about all the cool/ interesting things that happen to me on Sundays. But I didn’t really follow through and now things are a bit fuzzy as they tend to get over time. I’m going to catch us all up in the next few days and see where we go from there.

The week after Easter was Confirmation Sunday. Did I tell you what I great trip the Confirmation Retreat was? We did the labyrinth and we got to hang out with the girls from Gray Memorial UMC that we car pooled with. And I got to pray for Lydia. Maybe I did tell you. I didn’t go back to look. This was a great class. I did my standard cards for confirmation Sunday and I got to announce their names and to walk them up the aisle after the service. We did not have the regular reception; we had the fundraising lunch for the Nicaragua mission trip. I was not going to go because I was feeling poor and fundraisers are expensive and they were having roasted chicken with bell peppers, yellow rice and coconut cake. But I got an invite from one of the families of the confirmands. So I took them up on the free lunch and a chance to hang out.

After the service we all took pictures in the sanctuary and then we went to over to lunch. By the time we got there, being last, nearly the whole place was filled up and they had not saved enough seats in the reserved section. Joyce found a spare chair all the families sat together but one who had to be moved to some opens spots at a far table. Just because it’s my kind of luck they ended up with one whole empty table and the rest full. They offered me a place there. This was a bit (well a lot) upsetting to me because it just throw me into seventh grade flash backs and feeling stupid because I didn’t even want their pepper chicken anyway. So I went over to find Joyce and see if there was going to be any programming and stay for that then hit the road to Quincy for Tech Week of Sound of Music.

She of course said, “Aren’t you going to eat something? Oh there’s no place to sit.” Well that was it. There, in front of God and my whole church family, I lost it. I’m so private with my feelings, maybe even to an unhealthy level, in fact it’s bugging me a little to write this. But there I was bawling right in the middle of the fellowship hall. Jill (our children’s ministry director) grabbed my hand and we walked over to her office where I could gain some control. I think it was just a wave of overwhelmed-ness and stress and happiness and loneliness and a stupid circumstance. They ended up fitting me in at a table and the chicken was not all that bad. And Joyce told me not to feel bad because she was crying during the benediction and when we where all walking out.

Read Part 1: Easter Sunday