The vase and the match striker needed to be placed elsewhere while the Christmas tree is up. They don’t look half bad on this little desk.
The pansies needed to be brought inside because I missed the fact that we’d had a very cold night and they were almost gone. To be honest, even though they’re better now, they’re still wobbly. I can’t ignore a plant in need. It must be in my DNA. Never say die until it’s truly gone. And they’ve been so valiant that I want to keep them going as long as I can.
We ended up going to another restaurant yesterday – one that’s known for serving breakfast. It’s my favorite local breakfast place but I hadn’t been there in a long time. On any given day, especially when the university is in session, there are long lines of people waiting to get a table. We went a bit later in the day yesterday and there was still a line, but we got a table pretty quickly. Oh my heavens, was breakfast tasty! We were running out of time, so we just made a flying visit to the bookstore and then headed back to the little theater. It’s a really nice black box space that’s made to be flexible according to the needs of the production. I’ve spent hundreds of hours in my teaching and coaching life in black box theaters. I know them well.
The production was interesting – a new play by a young playwright. A young director. A young, relatively new-to-the profession cast. Don tells me that the first play in the season had a couple of older, more experienced actors. But this script was about young millennials, so the actors had to be young as well.
It was okay – but just okay. Halfway through, I realized that it was like hundreds of acting projects I’d seen when I was teaching on an undergraduate level in Boston. I felt like I was back in Boston at a time when I was seeing countless projects on a weekly basis. The students at BU were very talented (many of them work professionally today and are names you would know) and they were always interesting to watch, but they were still students and it showed. That’s what this cast was like, even though they aren’t students any longer.
Since the theater is new and can’t afford to pay much to the actors, that level of actor is what they’re going to get until they can pay more and, hopefully, that will come with time. The play needs work, but it is imaginative and has promise. We’ll keep supporting what they’re doing but, having taught for so many years, I felt like I was back in the SFA building on Commonwealth Avenue watching an interesting student project, so I was a bit disappointed.
Then we came home, had dinner and finished watching Season 2 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Heavens, I love that show. The first few episodes left us worried that they were going in a strange direction, but after hanging in there, we saw what the overall arc was and it all came together. Brilliant writing, acting, direction, art direction, and costume design. The best thing since sliced bread.
Now we’re going to watch it all over again, cause that’s how we roll.
Very cold out there but sunny. Something tells me this is going to be a very cold winter and it isn’t even winter yet!
Happy Monday.
