Mockingbird Hill Cottage

All of these coneflowers are the result of the two original plants (planted years ago) self-seeding. They’ve also spread to areas beyond this garden bed. One has sprung up down by the hose, others pop up here and there in front of the bed. The same with the coneflowers in the bed under the living room window and those in the big garden bed and the beds on the far side of the house. If you can grow them where you are, I strongly recommend them. They’re tall, sturdy, and bloom for a long time.

I also have yellow coneflowers and white coneflowers here and there in the big garden bed.

Today might be the one day where we have no rain. What?? Is that possible? I’m going to take advantage of it and do some weed whacking and a wee bit of mowing in the corral area. Then I’ll work on my painting. Oh, and wash towels, vacuum, etc.

Don and I were talking about our time at the Old Globe this morning. Don, of course, has an even longer association with it than I do, working there as an apprentice when it was part community theater and part professional theater (in the summers.) We were lucky. I was lucky. I moved out to San Diego at the height of its best years, when Jack O’Brien was the Artistic Director and Craig Noel, who founded it, was still part of what was called the Triumvirate: Jack, Craig, and Tom Hall, the Managing Director. I’ve worked at a lot of theaters in my time, but I’ve never been a place that was so magical, where there was a community of artists and employees that was a family. When I moved out there, they welcomed me with open arms. I was wrapped in their collective embrace. The work being done on all three stages was consistently excellent. Jack, who is one of the most brilliant and inspiring artists it has been my pleasure to know, had so much charisma and talent that well-known actors routinely dropped everything to come and work there. That doesn’t happen so much nowadays. Sada Thompson, Marian Ross (who was a longtime friend of Craig Noel), Marsha Mason, John Goodman, Victor Garber, Neil Patrick Harris, Cherry Jones, Seth Green, Robert Foxworth, Michael Learned, Robert Hays, Daniel J. Travanti, Harold Gould, Hal Holbrook, Peter Krause, Dakin Matthews, Mariette Hartley, Megan Follows, Richard Easton – are just a few of the people I worked with during my time there, along with so many names you might not know, but who are highly respected actors with talent that would knock your socks off. Everyone wanted to work there. Much of that was due to the Globe’s reputation, and to Jack, specifically. We felt that we were doing something noble, something important, and the reactions of the audiences confirmed that.

I guess it’s on my mind because I chatted, via email, with Jack this week. He’s busy writing a new musical, the second volume of his autobiography, he’s brilliant and funny and thriving – at the age of 82. I’ve never met someone with more energy. In the last couple of years, both Don and I have written Jack at different times thanking him for everything. I learned so much from him. So much. I had two great pleasures, besides working with actors and seeing a show take shape. They were Company Call, when all the actors, designers, and staff that were working for the summer season, specifically, though it was done throughout the year, met in the main theater to be introduced. I cite the summer season because that’s when all three theaters were up and running. I looked forward to Jack’s opening remarks, as well as those of dear Craig Noel. Jack’s words were inspiring and glorious – every person in that room was an integral part of the greater goal and we were made to feel that way by Jack’s amazing words. And every person working, whether onstage or off, was introduced.

The other was table work. Table work happens at the beginning of rehearsals. The actors and director and dramaturg and text coach (me) sit around a table and work their way through the script; clarifying, questioning, researching, offering ideas as to interpretation. The most stimulating table work sessions were for Shakespeare – and the Globe was known for its productions of Shakespeare. I learned so much. It’s one thing to study the text in an academic way – that’s valuable, of course – but it’s another to study it in an active way, in a way that will eventually help it come alive on the stage. The reason I know so much about Shakespeare is rooted in my time at the Globe, where I sat at the feet of brilliant minds who knew their stuff. And the reason I have gone on to work on so many Shakespeare productions when I thought of myself as predominately a dialect coach, is because of the unofficial training I received at the Globe. I know my stuff.

I’ve gone on and on. But I was so fortunate to have been there at what I think was the pinnacle of that theater’s long existence. I’ve seen more recent productions and they’re fine and sometimes not so fine, but they are not, unfortunately, of the caliber and brilliance that I routinely saw when I was there. Theaters change, artistic directors leave and are replaced. And so it goes.

Grateful to have been there, to have chatted with both Jack and Darko this past week, to have been in the presence of greatness.

Stay safe.

Happy Saturday.