Six month catch-up

It's funny how the mind works in relation to reality. I've been avoiding writing a blog entry because I honestly thought I wouldn't have anything to report. But as I sat down today and forced myself to start looking back through my calendar and photos from the last six months, the evidence suggested otherwise.

I'll talk about what's happened in non-Hannah-related life first, and then write a separate entry explaining where we're at with the theater tomorrow. Spoiler: despite some effort, there has been little material progress, which is one disappointing reason it feels like I've done nothing at all. Also, I haven't finished my opera. And it's the middle of winter. And I'm processing some childhood emotional garbage and familial grief which I'm not going to go into, but which is seriously harshing any buzz I might have the energy left to muster.

But enough whining. In the last six months, I:

PUCK EVERYTHING

Taking a break from jabbering about the Hannah for a while to talk about what's been taking up all of my time since The Cherry Orchard closed a couple of weeks ago: I'm treading the boards again, for a little while.

First I should mention that the last time I was on stage in a purely acting role (as opposed to playing a musician onstage, which is what I did in my Cherry Orchard cameo) was a few months ago in iHamlet, and whaaaaaa it turns out I got a really nice nod for that performance: Play Shakespeare nominated me for a Falstaff Award for Best Principal Performance, Female. I didn't win, but LOOK AT THAT POOL.

Kate Fleetwood (Goneril, King Lear, National Theater) - Winner
Lily Rabe (Beatrice, Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare in the Park/Public Theater)
Michelle Terry (Beatrice, Love's Labour's Won/Much Ado About Nothing, Royal Shakespeare Company)
Melissa Dunphy (iHamlet, Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre)
Annette Bening (Goneril, King Lear, The Public Theater)
Jessica Hecht (Regan, King Lear, The Public Theater)

OK, look, I could pretend to be all cool and professional-PR-flavored here, like this is no big deal, almost like I was expecting it, and gosh how nice it is to be nominablahblahblah. But you know what? SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HOLY CHRIST ON A BIKE.

Music in The Cherry Orchard at People's Light

In rehearsal for The Cherry Orchard with Mary McDonnell. Picture by Emma Lee/WHYY.

About eight years ago, back when we lived in our Downingtown house and I was still actively auditioning as an actor, I heard that there was a professional theater close by holding an open call. I was pretty excited by the idea of potential employment at a theater that didn't involve a 30-mile commute to Philadelphia. Unfortunately, at the time the only monologue I had under my belt that I could whip out at a moment's notice was bloody Juliet and her stupid vial speech. Unsurprisingly, I did not get a callback.

(One day I will write a whole blog about how sick I am of Juliet. Short version: very.)

Fast forward to last year, and out of the blue, thanks to a recommendation, I was finally given my first opportunity to be a part of a production at that same theater—but primarily as a composer and sound designer, though I'm also playing the violin live on stage. Of course, now I've moved to Philadelphia, so I have a wretched 30-mile commute in the other direction.

But it's worth it.

Examples gross as earth exhort me: witness this one-person Hamlet I'm doing for the Philly Fringe

In a little under a week, I'll officially be treading the boards again as a Shakespearean actor, but with a twist: I'll be performing in South African playwright Robin Malan's one-person adaptation of Hamlet, quirkily renamed iHamlet, in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

Hamlet has a habit of showing up in my life at strangely synchronicitous times.

Samuel Beckett is dead, which is good

On Sunday, Matt and I drove up to Manhattan to see Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Waiting for Godot. We paid a rather obscene amount of money to sit second row house left (I find that theater blocking tends to favor downstage right in many productions, so it was a deliberate choice) and it was worth every penny. I love those two men. I love them. I want to be their friend so badly, but I would never, because I'm not worthy.

I'd also love to be in Godot one day, a fact not lost on my many acting students, male and female, whom I have forced to read Godot with me. Frankly I don't think any of the characters require a male actor, but I especially identify with Didi, who as far as I am concerned, might as well be a woman.

Or maybe I watched too much Hunter growing up.

Of course, Godot's cast is traditionally comprised only of men. Fun fact! Beckett was totally an asshole about this. In 1988, when a Dutch theater company wanted to mount an all-female production, Beckett responded by instituting a ban on all productions of his plays in The Netherlands. Can you fucking imagine. He was especially cranky about women playing Didi, who frequently leaves the stage to urinate, because, as he puts it, "women don't have prostates."

Dear Dead Samuel Beckett: as a woman who has pissed razors every five minutes as a sufferer of countless urinary tract infections (far more common in women than men), as a woman who has seen how childbirth affects continence in so many women, including, for example, my own mother: FUCK. YOU.

If I didn't love the actual play so much, and Beckett weren't dead, I would probably be angrier about this, but as it is, I think the best revenge might be to just ignore the creator's stupidity and take his creation beyond its restricted intention.

I would hop back on the boards for Didi. Also Richard III and Mark Antony, in case anyone is wondering.

Marital bliss

(Yeah, I didn't blog for a few weeks, and now all the bloggable items in my head are stacked up in overflowing piles like the contents of a hoarder's house. I have some composition-related news stuff, but I'll save that for another day.)

Last year, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of falling in love, Matt and I went back to New Orleans and recreated a bunch of our goofy snapshots from 2002.

I have been married to my incredible, amazing husband Matt for nearly ten years. Ten yeeeeears. Good god. He ought to get a medal. Recent planning of our anniversary celebration has reminded me just how unusual our situation is among our peers, many of whom are only getting married now, a decade behind us. We, on the other hand, were more or less children; when I hear about people in their early twenties getting engaged, my first reaction is always, "That's so young!" before I realize that we were only 23 when we took the plunge. ["You Know What Turns an Unstable Relationship into a Stable One? Not a Wedding Ring."] It was different for us, though. We had to get married just to give our relationship a chance because we lived on different continents. Before I met Matt, acquiring a husband was never a priority. I was even slightly averse to marriage as an unnecessary institution. Matt and I still laugh to remember our attitude when we got engaged: Honey, I love you so much, I will even marry you if that's what it takes. But against all the odds and no doubt many expectations, our relationship, sealed by wedding vows, has been and still is the most wonderful thing ever, and the most important thing in my life; together we have gone on the coolest adventures, worked on insane projects, weathered disastrous emotional crises, grown closer and grown up (and we continue to grow), and never stopped being best friends. It sounds wretched cheesy when I type it out, but it's true.

We also haven't had kids, and neither of us are really looking to have any in the near future, which is another thing that sets us apart from most people we know. This has been on my mind lately too — ten years ago, when I similarly felt no maternal urges, I figured that if I were ever to change my mind, it would be around now. I check myself ever other week, wondering if the desire to procreate is down there somewhere, hiding under my guilt for avoiding the cat litter perhaps, but I can see no sign of it. I'm happy with my life. I'm working through an annoying depression that has hung around for a few years, but my external life is terrific. I feel no need to change it by introducing a child into it, and I don't think a child would improve it. And I like kids. I really do. What can I say? Jesus suffered the little children, and he didn't have kids either.

Mmmmmm. Cake.

Anyway, for our tin anniversary in September, we're throwing a big party and playing some live music as Up Your Cherry for our friends and family. There will be some guest stars too — Jess Lennick and I are possibly pairing up to present an Ayn-themed duo, Inverse Phase might be spinning some tracks, Jordan Smith of Tears for Agnes might be flying in from Japan, and Matt's been jamming with a few of his friends from work who may or may not be ready to play out by then. So far we've decided to hold it at PhilaMOCA, which is right down the road from our house, and we're thinking of asking our favorite neighborhood restaurant Honey's Sit 'n Eat if they'll provide catering (so local! hipsters++!). I also need to find a good cake source. Can't have an anniversary party without cake. For our wedding, we did multiple cheesecakes: plain, white chocolate, strawberry, and Snickers. It may have been the best part of the day.

I'm really excited about all this because planning fun things with Matt is, well, fun, and it gives us (me, mostly) a reason to devote a bunch of time to writing and rehearsing Up Your Cherry songs too. It's difficult right now for me to set aside time for UYC because I have the pressure and weight of an unfinished dissertation opera forcing itself downward on my mind and forming some pretty gnarly guilt diamonds.

Another handy spousal nice-time distraction from the opera is the redesign of my website(s), which I'm pushing forward from later this summer because some horrid evil scripty nonsense has somehow been injected into various pages of my current site(s), and it's easier to nuke it all from orbit now than clean it up knowing that I'd soon be changing everything anyway. I bounced some ideas off Matt this past weekend, and I'm excited about the new format I want. This week I'm going to do some freeform design brainstorming on my own (it's actually more like scrapbooking) and hopefully come up with some mockups in Photoshop for Matt to begin to implement. I'm so grateful he's not only very able, but apparently willing, even though this is technically work for him. Every time I come back to website coding after a hiatus, I am a cross-eyed idiot, and it takes forever to get my bearings. I used to make a point of relearning everything I'd forgotten and being extremely hands-on in the implementation process, but I've realized that's just me being a stupid control freak and having a chip on my shoulder about needing to know how to do everything for myself. If I never delegate, NOBODY CAN BE BETTER THAN ME AT ANYTHING EVER!!111! LETTING OTHER PEOPLE DO THINGS FOR ME IS EVIDENCE OF INCOMPETENCE!!11!!!!!11!!!! Thanks for that value, Mum, real helpful.

Last thing: a couple of weeks ago, Matt and I headed west to our old stomping region, Central PA, to attend the premiere of No Sanctuary, a fun film project I acted in back in 2005. Jake Stetler, the film's director, has been editing together the film whenever he's had the opportunity over the past eight years, and he was proud to be able to show it to an audience of friends and family at Ephrata's Main Theater. Our friend Kendall Whitehouse showed up as paparazzo:
 

No Sanctuary Premiere, a set by Kendall Whitehouse on Flickr.

Via Flickr: Cast, crew, and investors attend the premiere screening of Jake Stetler’s No Sanctuary 
at the Main Theater in Ephrata, PA on May 24, 2013.