Jenny Triptych

"Love isn't what you say it's what you do..."

Behind the Scenes: Interview with Howard Goodall

British composer (of musicals, choral music and televisual music) Howard Goodall (who also presents music-based programming for television and radio, and in May 2009 he was named "Composer of the Year" at the Classical BRIT Awards) takes us through the exciting process of creating the music for LOVE STORY, the musical, and shares his inspirations, as well as a favorite moment from the show (*which makes me very very happy*).

Also some sneaky little video clips!

Enjoy.

Love Story - Opening Night

"Say that love's a bridge to cross an ocean..."

So hono(u)red to be opening the North American premiere of Love Story tonight in Philadelphia alongside my fictional husband, the wonderful Will Reynolds. It has been the greatest artistic experience of my career thus far.

More thoughts to come...

But tonight? My dear Emma Williams, this one is for you. xx

TomAYto TomAHto...

"Pasta!" - Emma Williams and Michael Xavier in the Original London Cast, and Will Reynolds and Alexandra Silber in the North American Cast as Jenny and Oliver.


All of them such wonderful friends too. 
#LoveStoryLoveFest

75th Birthday

Today would have been my Dad's 75th birthday.

September is upon us now, and it heralds the coming of the nostalgic months, a time for reflection and thoughts of new beginnings...

Always a believer that everything happens for a reason, I can't help but sense that I have been presented with the story of Jenny Cavilleri at just the right moment-- on this, Michael Silber's 75th birthday, I am no longer focused on the grief of "being left behind,"but can rather identify with the uncanny peace and clarity of those that move onward.

Happy Birthday Papa.

"Oh the days dwindle down, to a precious few...
September... November...
And these few precious days
I'll spend with you.
These precious days
I'll spend with you..."
                   -- from "September Song"

Love Story Announcement

I am so (beyond) excited to officially announce my next theatrical adventure... 

From Playbill:

The American premiere of Love Story, the musical, based on the best-selling Erich Segal novel, will star Broadway and West End vet Alexandra Silber to play doomed co-ed Jenny Cavilleri in the American premiere of Love Story, The Musical at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre with Will Reynolds (Mamma Mia! on tour) as Oliver Barrett IV at Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia.

Direction and musical staging are by Annabel Bolton, who worked on the original English production. Performances begin Sept. 4 prior to a Sept. 12 opening for a run to Oct. 21 on the WST Mainstage.

The show — which premiered at Chichester's Minerva Theatre starring Emma Williams and Michael Xavier in June 2010 before moving to London's West End in December 2012 — features music by Howard Goodall, book by Stephen Clark and lyrics by Clark

"Inspired by Erich Segal's best-selling iconic novel of the same name, and one of the most romantic films of all time, this life-affirming musical will have audiences remembering the first time they fell in love," according to WST notes. "When Oliver Barrett IV wanders into a library in search of a book, he discovers Jenny Cavilleri. They came from different worlds. He was a Harvard man, she was Radcliffe. He was rich, she was poor. But they fell in love. This is their story."
 Musical and vocal direction are by Douglass G. Lutz. The creative team also includes set designer Peter McKintosh, lighting designer Shon Causer, costume designer Colleen Grady and sound designer Will Pickens. 


The cast includes Charles Pistone as Phil Cavilleri, Jane Labanz as Alison, Paul L. Nolan as Oliver Barrett III, plus Pierce Cravens, Lisa Marie Gargione, Sarah Gliko, Charles Hagerty, Danielle Herbert, John Jarboe and Scott Langdon.

For tickets and information, call (215) 574-3550 or (800) 982-2787. Tickets are also available by visiting WalnutStreetTheatre.org or Ticketmaster.com

Jenny-s

So... here's the thing. Emma Williams? The original Jenny Cavilleri in Chichester/London? Yeah, she is one of my very best friends. I remember listening to the demos for this musical way back in 2007. I remember weeping when I saw her play the role for the one single night I was in London at the beginning of 2011. When you love a character, it is a deeply personal thing to pass the baton to another player whom one can only hope will love and hono(u)r the creation as much as you have. Therefore it is quite a magical thing when one is given the opportunity to carry the torch for a person you admire and love beyond so many others.

This is going to be a very special one. Hope to see you there.

For the Love of Words

One thing no one ever tells you about death, is how awkward it is after the first week. Not for you—for other people. You have counted off an entire week of days one by one, and have most likely been swept into a flurry of activity surrounding memorials and relatives and been distracted by that flurry—making plans and picking people up from airports and cleaning your home so that people can see how clean your bathroom is in your darkest hour.

Then there is the tsunami of flowers, donations, pots of casserole, plus the cards and phone calls (all ranging from the shallowest to the deeply felt). There was what seemed to be a State Park forest of trees planted in Dad’s name in places we’d never heard of, and, if you can believe it, even a small, terribly special collection of sympathy emails.

Ten days after the funeral, the food and cards and letters and trees being planted in Wherever-a-stan-erica-ville all stopped coming. Fruit baskets began to rot. Homemade borsht went off in the refrigerator. The mail returned to its normal flow of bills and unsolicited advertisements. The mailbox would open and all one could hear was the crushing silence of other people moving on.


But then came the letter from Lady Chu.


*


Judy Chu to be precise, for that was her real name. Well into my senior year at Interlochen I was presented with a problem—I needed another liberal arts credit in order to graduate with highest academic honors, and as a fully fledged perfectionist I wasn’t about to let three intense acting scenes, a budding secret romance, Shakespeare’s wordiest heroine or a father with cancer stand in my way. I reported to the Admissions office to comb through my options.

The options were sparse.
    “What about Psychological Lit?” I asked the counselor, Kelly.
    “Full” she replied.
    “Political Process?”
    “You already took it” she said, narrowing her eyes at me, “last year…”
    “What is available?” I huffed, arms flinging upward.
    “British Literature” Kelly said, smiling broadly at my predicament.

The world was ending.

British literature, I winced, are you kidding me? I saw weeks of quippy Austen and dreary Brontë passages ahead of me. I couldn’t cope. I buried my head in my hands like a petulant child and realized this was not only my fate but my fault.
    “Who teaches it?” I inquired, hoping the answer would improve things—perhaps my favorite teachers taught it and I simply didn’t know it!
    “Judy Chu.”
    “...Who on earth is Judy Chu?”

Judy Chu, as it happened, was a young, energetic, year-long adjunct teacher from Southern California, brought in for a liberal arts teacher on sabbatical.

    “Apparently the students really loved her first semester,” Kelly explained, “and apparently her classes are very exciting. Enrollment is light because so many of you want to take the ‘greatest hits’ before you graduate— but you are a bit late to the party. Obviously.”
    “Obviously” I droned. 

I signed up and left the admissions office in a mood, reporting to third-period British Lit the following morning, to a class of eight other people.

Judy Chu began with a bright smile, and by asking each of us why we had enrolled in British Literature. Dear God, I thought, not wanting to admit the truth, and I think I squeezed past the issue by explaining that fate had brought me here.

But fate had brought me to Judy Chu. Her class became the most important literary experience of my life.

This thoughtful young teacher was tough but fair, with complex weekly handouts, and uncompromising standards for grammar, essay construction and literary criticism. Plus, I can honestly say she taught me everything I’ve nearly forgotten about punctuation, verb tenses and second person narrative.[1]

But nothing will ever expunge the greatest lesson and gift she gave me—Judy Chu taught me how to read, and perhaps more crucially, why. Lady Chu (which I named her myself, for she is a lady first, and a teacher second if you ask me and you are) was bibliophilic magic. She handed you a book and gave you special incantations required step inside the pages— like the children in Mary Poppins jumping inside Bert’s sidewalk chalk painting. That final semester of High School at Interlochen was just the beginning.

When she assigned Howards End, she blew my literary mind. The copy still sits proudly on my bookshelf adorned with well-thumbed pages, color-coded highlighting, and adorable teenaged margin notes (such as “Love is a ‘He’?” and “when you show your homeland to a foreigner how do you show it all?” and “Oh… more LIFE!” and, of course, “Is love the only way to connect?”). I can recall how much I loved it more with every turning page! The deeply-feeling Narrator, the poetry in the slightest of prose, the humanity, and of course, my beloved kindred spirit; Howards End’s heroine Margaret Schlegel. With every word Margaret uttered my heart leapt in recognition, for Margaret Schlegel lived in me.[2]  I didn’t dare to hope Judy Chu could see it too.

For Judy Chu, I think Interlochen must have been a marvel— a place of such artistic energy and possibility. She seemed inspired, impressed by and deeply cared about her students which was evident when I saw her in the audience of As You Like It. She met my Mom and Dad and shook their hands, exchanged smiles.


At the end of the year, Judy Chu bid Interlochen farewell, but not before leaving our tiny class with one final handout. The simple sheet of white paper quoted Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” and  T.H White’s Merlin (beckoning us to “learn”) on one side, a personalized note to every one of us on the other. I still have this piece of paper, for last on the list was my name with a very simple message:

Al:  You are Margaret Schlegel to me.

*

I stood outside in clothing I had worn for days. Beside the mailbox, in a light rain spitting down from a sheet-white sky I extricated a letter.  A small envelope about the size of my hand with  the mark of a black and red Chinese dragon traveling from back to front. I recognized the small, perfectly neat handwriting immediately.

Dear Al,

I know that you, with your strong, strong heart, shall see through pain to hope and prosper.

With love,

Judy Chu

I held the letter to my heart. It said so little, and meant so much.
I wrote back to say so. It would be the first of a lifetime of letters.
Letters to and from Judy Chu to every single address I would ever have in my adult life.


[1] I must say: I owe my love of Russian literature as well as my understanding of Objective correlative to Jean Gaede, and my love of words themselves to Howard Hintze.
[2] She still does.

ten years later at our annual "Only Connect" dinner at the address I now know by heart.

La Ronde - LA

La Ronde... ...and ronde and ronde again...

Jobs my friends have: A List

• midwife / Douala
• chef
• sexual health educator
• military intelligence
• consultant
• sommelier
• principle oboe in the Chilean Philharmonic orchestra
• lawyer
• clown (actually... a few clowns...)
• diplomat
• diagnostician
• many mums and dads! 
• journalist 
• limo driver
• opera/wedding photographer
•      wedding/food photographer
•           theatrical photographer
• stunt man
• 3rd grade teacher 
• English teachers (3)
• award-winning drag queen
• grant writer
• spinal surgeon 
• sound designer and engineer
• nutritionist 
• world-renowned cabaret diva
• college professor (4)
• literary agents
•      theatrical agents
•           opera agents
• doctor of linguistics (working in dead and dying languages, attempting to maintain and develop worldwide programs to implement [or re-implement] native languages in their communities of origin.)
• COUNTLESS actors,
• singers,
• musicians,
• dancers,
• visual artists,
• performance artists,
• composers,
• writers,
• acrobats,
• directors,
• designers,
• producers,
• production people. . . of course . . .

With your permission m'lady, I'd like to "La Ronde" again*...

About to embark on another exciting theatrical experiment! In early 2011 I participated in the Off Broadway revival of Hello Again by Michael John LaChiusa based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play, La Ronde, and I am so thrilled to announce I shall be joining one of my oldest friends and collaborators Michael Arden in his contemporary, Los Angeles-centered adaptation of the the piece as "The Actress."

Here is the info: 

* * *

Recently, Charlie Sheen indicated via Twitter that he was most definitely planning to attend a night of La Ronde, the adults-only LA theater experiment set for July 18-22. Not bad for a pilot production most people around town have yet to learn about...

THE PLAY:

Originally written by Arthur Schnitzler in 1897 and first printed in 1900 for his closest friends, Reigen, also known as La Ronde explores and scrutinizes the sexual morals and class ideology of its day through a series of encounters between pairs of characters (shown before or after a sexual encounter). Drawing from characters across all levels of society, the play offers social commentary on how sexual contact transgresses boundaries of class. In this production we take a look at these morals and ideologies as they reflect modern American culture.

THE EXPERIENCE:

One evening in July (18-22), people receive instructions to show up at a certain location in Hollywood not knowing who will be in the play, what's going to occur or where they might end up, simply knowing they must "Leave your inhibitions at home!" Only 12-14 people will watch each night’s performance, staged at at ten different locations where a cast of about a dozen actors, dancers and performers will put on the provocative live-performance pastiche.  

In this site-specific pilot workshop production of La Ronde, streets, insides of houses and places unimaginable become stages for a series of events not soon forgotten: a secret, sexy party planned just for you. A post-show soiree directly following each performance allows the audience to meet and mingle with the cast, creatives and fellow audience members. Make a friend... Take one home...

The small, invite-only, audience becomes a voyeur in the scenes, sometimes inches away from the performers. Utilizing storytelling through the mediums of music, dance, theater and even film, it is our goal to transport the audience literally and metaphorically through the private lives of the characters invented by Schnitzler and reinvented in 2012 Los Angeles.

* * *

*So, to off-quote the great Danny Kaye  from The Court Jester,

     "With your permission m'lady... I'd like to La Ronde again..."

Twenty-Nine

It has become an annual tradition (with myself, and I do suppose with all of you) to share my birthday reflections. I must say, this year, both the day itself and the reflection has snuck up on me.

Soooo.

29.

Hello there.

29:

The atomic number of copper

The number of days in a lunar month

The track from which the Chattanooga Choo Choo train departs in the Glenn Miller song.

Saturn's number of years to orbit around the Sun

 29 is a Markov,  Perrin, and Størmer number.

A beautiful prime number (technically the tenth prime number, a twin prime pair with thirty-one, the sixth Sophie Germain prime, a Lucas prime, a Pell prime, a Pillai prime, the 10th supersingular prime, and an Eisenstein prime!) Plus a tetranacci number. YO. 

The number of letters in the Turkish, Finnish, Swedish, Faroese, Danish and Norwegian alphabets.

"$29.00" - A on the album Blue Valentine by Tom Waits.

AND, the iiiiiiiiinfamous N-29 night bus that got me home so MANY a time from Central London all the way north to Wood Green. 

*

You know, every seven years we have a complete new body of cells-- our bodies are literally fully transformed, our cells completely turned over, a complete body chemistry change and a need for unfolding. Twenty-nine is the first step in external integration with the rest of the world. 
It is a cycle. 
It does not come to "get you." 
It comes to present you with an opportunity.

And every age has special things to be known, understood, and worked with. There is no time in your life that does not have validity.

This year I know I actually felt my cells turning over--every single one of them. My mind, my body, my outlook, my spirit, has been transformed. As I stand here, a new body, a new self, I also realize that for the last 20 years or so, I have been in "survival" mode: frankly, using achievement and a driving sense of life purpose to keep away pain and fear.

I am no longer surviving. This year (through particularly uncomfortably difficult inner work), I healed those wounds. I am moving into a phase of life where I can expect more than survival. I can choose to thrive. To build a positive life, throw light along the dark and unknown tunnel of the future full of the knowledge that there is nothing to fear that I have not already met, seen and conquered.

...That is the best birthday gift of all.
To look ahead with such extraordinary inner peace...
              and excitement. 

Hello Again [NOT] at Circle in the Square

The genius that comes from yet another Hello Again email chain...