The Hannah Callowhill Stage: Loan acquired! Construction begins!

Have you ever seriously said the words "I am going to spend about half a million dollars"?

Who am I. What is this life.

I had not, until I bought a theater. These are words that strike terror, and a good dose of imposter syndrome and existential anxiety, into my cheap little DIY artist heart.

Contacted by a Brisbanite with ancestral ties to 103 Callowhill Street

I have some construction news about the Hannah Callowhill Stage, and it's good! But I don't want to tell you about it until after Friday, when (hopefully, if even mentioning it doesn't jinx me) the deal will be closed.

In the meantime, for all the lovers of historical minutiae out there, let me tell you with inhumanly wide eyes about an e-mail I got from a stranger named Lyndon Garbutt a few weeks ago. I'm reprinting it with permission here:

Hi Melissa

I thought I’d reach out to you, as I stumbled across your website/facebook post on the history of the Callowhill Stage building you are renovating and thought you may be interested in some further information.

To explain this random email - ironically I am researching the history of my own property in your home town, Brisbane.  My apartment was used by Madame Lotte Lehmann as her residence during her 1939 season at Brisbane City Hall.  I had googled ‘Lotte Lehmann’ ‘Brisbane’ and due to you having won an award and coming from Brisbane you were one of the hits.  It sparked my interest as I it looked out of place and I wanted to work out why.  I then noticed you were in Philadelphia and my ancestors were some of the original Quakers who settled there with William Penn.

The Hannah Callowhill Stage: Eyes on the Prize

Eyes on the prize, Melissa. Eyes on the goddamn prize.

What's the prize? The Hannah Callowhill Stage, with two apartments on top, one to live in and one to rent out, making this whole crazy theater venture financially viable.

What's in the way? A sum of money that doesn't seem all that astronomical if you live in Sydney or San Francisco, or if you earn maybe twice as much as we do, or if you're not in the arts. But to us, it's staggering. And it's money on top of what we paid for the property already.

The Lola Ridge songs, in one convenient blog post

Three generations of women composers at the Volti Choral Institute: me (duh), high school senior Morgan Orsolini, whose choral work Awaken Again was among those performed, and the incomparable composer/pianist/conductor Sue Bohlin

A few weeks ago, I returned to frigid Philadelphia from California and immediately came down with a nasty case of the flu. My bad for procrastinating getting a flu shot this year until I forgot about it, but I'm also feeling some animosity toward the lady who open-mouth-coughed on me at the Saint Louis Airport on the trip home. I'm sure it was her. 

Then my cat Tripoli passed away last week. She was about 14 and it was her time to go, but both Matt and I are still a bit choked-up over it.

It's time to get back on the horse, though, especially since I am in happy possession of the results of my California trip: live recordings of all of my Lola Ridge songs.

My chickenshit Bohemian Grove adventure

I am writing from the Volti Choral Institute, where about 60 absolutely lovely and lovely-voiced Californian teenaged women are singing my three Lola Ridge pieces (they've already made me tear up in rehearsal). I'll post some video from the camp in due course, hopefully, but I have to document something very important first.

Shortly after I arrived, I was discussing with Barbara, the Executive Director of Volti, what I might do to occupy my time this afternoon, when the girls were taking workshops and classes unrelated to my compositions. "I guess I'll just explore the area."
"Have you heard of the Bohemian Club?"
"Is that ... you mean like Bohemian Grove?"
"Yes, Bohemian Grove is right here."

WHAT.

Sure enough, I looked at a map.

Just me, the rental car, and Big Basin Redwoods State Park

This break in your regularly scheduled updates about the Hannah and my career was brought to you by a schedule snafu which gave me a few extra days to spend in the Bay Area by myself while Matt flew back to snowy Philadelphia to attend to work matters. Although I had a few very kind offers of couches to crash on, I was surprised to find myself craving solitude, and uninterrupted greenness, and frugality. "I just want to drive into a forest," I told Matt. He raised his eyebrows and laughed. "I can't believe how much you hate people."

I mean, pretty much.

So after dropping Matt off at the airport, I picked up two days' worth of supplies at Target (sourdough bread, cream cheese, snap peas, canned coffee, bananas, beef jerky, a lighter, and a $4 pillow), and like some kind of hippy, I pointed my rented red Mazda 2 hatchback at the hills west of San Jose, without even bothering to make a reservation. Basically, a mini solo replay of our nationwide 2012 Roadtrop but without any planning or equipment or a Dodge Magnum.

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:

The Hannah Callowhill Stage: Dream Brainstorm

Tripoli inspects my proscenium doodles

One of the most common questions I'm asked about the Hannah is: "What exactly are you going to do with the space once it's finished and open?" I have a lot of ideas. I don't know how many of them will end up on the cutting room floor, but maybe you'd like to know what I'm thinking.

The Hannah Callowhill Stage: Long Overdue Update

It's been four months since we bought 103 Callowhill Street, aka the Hannah Callowhill Stage, and I haven't blogged too much about it, because so much has happened, but there's isn't a whole lot to physically show for it yet. I keep getting asked for updates on the proceedings, however, so here they are, all the boring details I can stand to type.

103 Callowhill cross-section from the west side

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.