Blog December 27, 2010; continued January 2, 2011

Hello everyone. If you are snowbound, I hope you are warm and having a nice cup of hot chocolate!! We are sending out holiday cards and already packing for the next leg of our tour!! In fact, I need to go out this Thursday and buy some new luggage as mine was much too big during the last trip and my carry on must have wheels. I think we discussed how uncomfortable it is to have to schlep a carry-on on one’s shoulders!!

Anyway, I left Tampa December 14, 2010. I was supposed to arrive in White Plains, at an airport 15 minutes from my abode. However, the airline fairies had other ideas. I landed at LaGuardia but my luggage landed in White Plains and was delivered at midnight. The nice part of all of this is that I was at home and had plenty of medicine, clothes and toothpaste.

Hello again, happy New Year!! It is now January 2, 2011! An entire decade has begun since the last time I started to write this blog. My how time flies. Speaking of flying time, my three week break has indeed flown by and I will be meeting my Anatevka family tomorrow at LaGuardia Airport to pick up our bus which will bear us all up to Proctors Theater in Schenectady, NY. We will be at this theater for an entire week, 8 shows!! Wow, I will be so happy. Sammy Dallas Bayes, our director will also be there. We will have two rehearsals with him. I am most excited about this. It is such a treat to have the director come back after the company has had a chance to grow into a show. Usually a director is with you for two weeks, if you are lucky, to rehearse and block a show. Then they leave, never to be seen again, and the cast continues with the Stage Manager taking over giving notes and comments to keep the intention of the director alive and well. We also have a Conductor in the pit every night who has a great vantage point and can inform us when we change things in the wrong direction. We were also lucky as a cast in that the Assistant Director was able to see two shows while we were out in Kansas and he gave us notes and worked on some parts of the show that were growing in a different direction from the Director’s intention.

 Actors want to grow into a part and there is a famous statement, “Living truthfully under imaginary circumstances”. The Imaginary Circumstances are usually set up by the director- characters are to head in his direction but get there on their own, with some hints and helpful advice along the way. Also, as the cast melds together and becomes more familiar with blocking and lines, the story unfolds in a different manner, with more ease and believability. Actors relax onstage and feel more as they are living in Anatevka more truthfully and more fully. Now the director will see this and hopefully be able to help us further this truth with more—more emotional truth, more directional intention and more fleshing out of the characters themselves so that they become more three dimensional- thereby making the audiences’ experience more enjoyable. I will let you know how it goes.

Well, I have to go finish packing my new luggage. Oh, That was a hoot. The salesman at Innovation Luggage was a delight. I bought luggage, took it home, packed, unpacked as it didn’t fit, took the luggage back, looked at more luggage, explained more about my needs and more about the routine, he sold me some gadgets to make my life easier and two new suitcases which hold my stuff for the trip and I am taking less this time out!!!  So a good time was had by all.

I also have been busy baking some cakes for the cast and crew. I figure we will all be in the mood for goodies as we haven’t eaten enough this holiday season….Oy! But seriously, one of the things I think most of us missed on this tour is homemade goodies, be it cooking or baking. Certainly we all went crazy at Thanksgiving when we could cook and bake. We are also looking forward to Passover, as we all really want to have a Seder to celebrate the holiday together as a village. We will plan to make that happen in Reno, Nevada if the stars line up correctly!

So enough for now. I have to get some sleep as tomorrow is the big day. It will be wonderful to once again be with my Anatevka family. Although I must say the lay off went by too quickly. Of course, there is never enough time to do all the things that need doing. Plus I had a wonderful Hello/Goodbye Party at my house a few days after I arrived. I cooked and baked for that as well. That was so much fun to see people I hadn’t seen in a year! (I don’t know if I have told you, but I have been working steadily as an actor since March 29, 2010 out of New York. So I have missed Family Get-togethers, vacations with Friends and social events that have been going on in the last 9 months. I will also miss the upcoming events for the next 5 months, so I felt a party was in order.) I thank everyone who was able to make it up my steep hill to my house. I missed those who couldn’t be there, but hopefully I will see you once the tour is over.

Start the engines folks, 18 weeks of bus and truck, here we come!!

More later…..