The Caucasian Chalk Circle - Duncan Sheik & Bertolt Brecht

So many things, you guys. Sheik. Brecht. MARY TESTA. Doc from Back to the Future. This show has everything. New York's hottest club is Classic Stage Company on East 13th Street for the production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

For the love all holiness, someone please go see this for me before it closes!

Want To See - Sontag Reborn

There's only a few people whose endless thoughts I don't mind listening to. Once of them is Susan Sontag. That's why when I'm in NYC in June, I'm hoping to catch this at NYTW. Based on Sontag's journals and adapted by performer Moe Angelos, this sounds like the perfect way to spend an evening on my old block.

Performances run through June 30th.

Save The Byre

A St Andrews cultural hub is closing its doors today, but hopefully not for good. Though the Byre Theatre is home to St Andrews' annual poetry festival, StAnza, and many sold out theatrical performances, piano nights, and bar hang outs, it has faced financial difficulties for some time now. As of today, I'm told, the theatre will shut its doors to cut costs with a hoped-for reopening later in the year. 

I've seen so many wonderful things at the Byre. It is a beautiful space. My lone straight play was performed there in 2010 during the scary era of 10 X 10.

In the meantime, local patrons and devoted St Andreans are doing their best to spread awareness and activism on the issue. Even if you don't know the Byre and just love theatre, or the idea that there should be venues to host cultural events and dialogues, please consider signing this petition. There's also a facebook page devoted to keeping the space open, along with sustaining the jobs it provides students and locals. 

Lincoln Center Inside Out

Described as a "children's book for nerdy adults," Diller Scofidio + Renfro's new book Lincoln Center Inside Out, documents the eight year redesign our nation's premiere performing arts complex. I obsessively love Lincoln Center. It's the pinnacle. For me, and probably many performing arts folks, it's at least as good a symbol of NYC as the Chrysler Building. 

This book (I'll admit, pricey at $53 discounted on amazon. $85 on art books) is a kind of inside out pop up book and was conceived as "a cross between an art book, a scholarly record, and an architectural diary." It's comprised entirely of gatefolds or inside out centerfolds and tucked beneath those are backstory photos. I think coffee table books should be interactive. Seems like this one is the mother of all interactive coffee table books. Would make a pretty great Christmas Present for the art or architecture lover in your life, no?

This past year, Steven and I were lucky enough to have our work featured at Lincoln Center as part of the Broadway's Future Series. It was beyond an honor. When you sit down to map out some career milestones, Lincoln Center is one hell of a weighty milestone. It's one hell of a beautiful building complex too. Nice to have a little piece of that in your own home. A tangible objection for appreciation. Oh, books....

GIANT at The Public

Since I was a college student, Michael John La Chiusa has been my musical theatre hero. Not because I saw similarities in our styles, nor did I ever aspire to the kind of style he has so perfected. I only sat back in awe of what has always been its own animal-- something that was always just so very him. And he indulged me as being my pen pal for a while. And I've always been emboldened and encouraged by his taste level in material. The stories he chooses to musicalize are rich and varied and often hidden treasures. 

His latest (featuring libretto by Sybille Pearson) is more of a classic, but no less ambitious. I've mentioned before that I've never been so sad to be away from  a New York theatre season before. I want to see all of it. GIANT is no exception. Based on the Edna Ferber novel (more so than the subsequent famous film starring James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor & Rock Hudson) this new epic (truly. it's clocking 3:45 with three acts) musical is playing now at the Public. 

Oh, please, world! Let me have a chance to see this show! I want to bask in the La Chiusa. Not to mention, this lady. 

War & Peace, the Electro Pop Opera?

One can always count on Ars Nova to bring to you some truly trippy shit. This latest thing of theirs I'm dying to see is Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812-- an electro pop opera from Dave Malloy based on War & Peace. And while I think their title is about the worst I've ever heard, I'm crazy about Tolstoy, I'm utterly devoted to pop operas about Russia (!!!) and would give almost anything to experience the lit nerd acid trip that this surely is. 

I will give $5 to anyone who sees it and reports back to me.  It's extended until November 17, so you have some time. The Times called improbably wonderful, but I want your word for it. Thank you. 

Franzen's House For Sale at Transport Group

While those in NYC start bundling up for Fall and Winter, I'm still sleeping with door open and swimming in my pool. I doubt I'll miss Winter in New York, but I will miss the start of this and every theatre season. I'm impressed with Broadway's line up this season. (They snagged Paul Rudd for...anything at all... so why complain?) There's always the spot of drama with some show never making it to performances. (Rebecca. In this case due to shady, dead investors, who, it turns out never existed in the first place.)

I've also been energized, and then of course, depressed that I would miss a few great off-broadway showings. I mean, Jake Gyllenhaal's stage debut alone was enough to make me question my decision to leave. But of all my celebrity boyfriends, no one gets me more turned on (theatrically speaking) than my very own personal abusive boyfriend, Jonathan Franzen. 

This season, one of my favorite theatre groups-- Transport Group-- is presenting a theatrical adaptation of one of Franzen's essays, House For Sale. 

Adapted by Daniel Fish, a man I think might be spying on my thoughts, is the same guy who adapted the strange and trippy stage incarnation of DFW's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Fish's House For Sale seems to be along the same lines, with five actors interpreting the same essay "word for word" in different ways. I think Franzy's language stands up to repetition. I suppose I'll have to get someone to give me the recap. Theresa, I nominate you.

House For Sale starts this Sunday, October 14th at the Duke.
229 West 42nd Street

You can read the full essay House For Sale here.
Image via

House For Sale from daniel fish on Vimeo.

Wallis Annenberg Center For the Performing Arts

One thing I'm super excited about in Los Angeles is the Wallis Annenberg Center For the Performing Arts opening next year in Beverly Hills. The complex is built in the old Beverly Hills post office and will soon feature a 500 seat state of the art theatre. They're also re-imagining the old post office as a 150 seat studio theatre. Just my kind of place. History + Future. Some amazing architecture doesn't hurt either. 

I'm just going to put it out there now... I would LOVE to work here. Way to be awesome, Annenberg Foundation. I wish more of the extremely wealthy has this level commitment to the soul of America and the arts. "Advancing public well-being through improved communication." Yes, please. 

Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts from SPF:a on Vimeo.

Happy Roald Dahl Day!

Today, let's celebrate the flawed man and the weird, wild, amazing mind of Roald Dahl. I've said before that Roald Dahl is perhaps the largest influence on my writing. I wonder if it shows up to you all, but his work is always looming large in my own mind as I write. As child, his stories used to frighten me, but tickle my mind into insomnia, where I'd spend all night in the dark dreaming up and playing at my own stories. 

In my darkest moments, his stories felt like what my childhood felt like. Also in my lightest. And I suspect, most children. Because I think, fundamentally, there is something fantastical and also something spooky about what it means to be a child. 


Dahl is also the source of one of my favorite quotes about writing: "A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom." 

Amen, brother. 


I cannot pick a favorite story of his. Though James & the Giant Peach is up there. Along with Matilda. Both of which have been turned into musicals. Matilda being one of my favorite musicals I've ever seen. Man, I wish I were working on that show... I digress... 
I eagerly look forward to its arrival here in NYC, so that everyone else can experience the strange glee I felt every moment of those hours in London watching those Revolting Children. 

Finding Neverland & Be My Boyfriend, Julian Ovenden

One of the shows I'm sad to be missing now that I'm no longer in the UK is the world premiere of Finding Neverland. I think it's super right for musical adaptation and it sounds like they've got the right team (Ashford, Korie & Frankel. Woot, woot Grey Gardens: A show I have never ever been able to shake from my thoughts.) and the right cast. (Julian Ovenden is the hottest. The. hottest. Ever.) The show is having a regional tryout at Leicester's Curve prior to a West End run beginning September 22. I'm hoping it will eventually make its way over here. 

I will say, however, this video with the faux green screen backdrops didn't do much for me. Also, I'm not loving Julian's sound on this stuff. I prefer him here. Perhaps that's just because this is one of the best songs ever written. (What's with those wonky orchestrations at the end there, though, Proms?) What do you think of this trailer? And Julian? Sigh. 

Okay, so he's married (to opera star Kate Royal) and can't be my boyfriend. Still.

Houston Treasures - The Rothko Chapel

Mark Rothko (and the play Red, which I saw on Broadway several years ago and is now playing in Los Angeles) was pretty much my gateway into appreciating the more visual arts. Obviously, I've always had an artistic bent, but paintings, sculptures, installations... their ability to move me was always lacking. Until I saw this play. Perhaps because it came in the package of an artform that utterly moves me, for the first time, I was able to experience paintings like I never had before. 

No joke, one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen in on stage, was just two men prepping a canvas while an old record played. It was like a dance. 

The timing couldn't have been better. When I think about all I might have seen without appreciating living in Europe... In two years, I saw the Prado, The Louvre, The Musee D'Orsay, The Rodin, The Vatican and... well... ALL the London and Edinburgh art museums. I easily could have breezed through them... or worse, skipped them entirely.

Which is what I did the entire four years I lived in Houston. I never went to the Menil Collection. Or saw any of the other amazing art there. I'm especially sad I've yet to see the Rothko Chapel. One of the world's first truly ecumenical centers, all are welcome to practice in the space in whatever way they choose. The place itself is a piece of art. Man, I would have loved to see Houston in the 60's.  

The documentary done on the chapel has been remastered and is now available for the first time on DVD from microcinema.com. Check it out! Hope you're having a great Saturday. 

You Have Got to Be Here - Last of London

Today is my last full day in the UK. I had a lovely chat and two cappuccinos this morning with the dear Helen MacInnes, who also helped me pack. And now, I'm doing thoselast odds and ends-- or bits and bobs--  under the sun, and occasional rain, here in London. 


There's a lot I'm going to miss. There's a lot I'm not going to miss, too. But mostly, when I look back on my time in London, I'll think of it as a place of near misses--- one that almost could have been perfect, but like most amazing things in life, slipped away.  One more of the beautiful ephemera. 


If you'll forgive a bit more Frank Ocean, "My friend said it wasn't so bad/ You can't miss what you ain't had/ Well, I can."


I'll miss the way the sun reflects off Regent's Canal. I'll miss the poetry of local places. And how you can have friends who live in converted gun factories.I'll miss the squares and the way so much of London feels like a heart-- with big arteries and little veins and how turning a corner can take you to a kind of London totally different from the previous street. I'll especially miss the smell of jasmine that floats through the air all over my neighborhood. 


There's the old saying the devil is the details. And this is certainly true. Especially of my time here, when so many things were nearly mine. When so much almost-but-not-quite worked out. But, of course, the saying derives from an earlier idiom, God is in the details. And this is even more especially true. 


My former boss and dear friend, Bob Hofmann, once did a really great impression of his old drama teacher-- in that very exaggerated drama teacher kind of way-- "YOU have got to BE HERE." About committing to the scene. We used to laugh and bring it up in all kinds of situations. But I have carried it with me everywhere I've ever gone. Even when you know you're not long for a particular place, you can't go wrong being present in that place every moment you have it. That act alone is as sweet as the jasmine I will miss so very much about this beautiful-- if rainy, and lonely-- city. 

The Broadway Workshop's Production of Vote!

With all the work lately on Nicholas & Alexandra, I haven't been paying much attention to our first born. But that doesn't mean all has been quiet on the VOTE! front. This past weekend, The Broadway Workshop presented a student version of the show with local New York performing arts students. 


I was obviously in London, but Steven was there to see it and said it was delightful. I'm looking forward to the watching party we'll have when I make my return to NYC. In the meantime, I have loved scrolling through the photos and knowing the exact moment from the show the photo is capturing. I doubt I will ever get sick of listening to kids sing those tight harmonies, or getting to know the young people who participate in the show. 


Some of them are all grown up now and doing amazing things. And if I were the real Ms. Fowler, I'd be giving them all fuzzy little feathers and telling them to fly the nest. But the cherubs from Bloomington, St Andrews, Houston and now New York are always going to be my little baby birdies no matter where they go and what they do. It is enormously gratifying to work with students. Whatever else happens in my career, I'm glad that the first thing was working with young people and I hope that whatever else happens, I keep getting to work with students. 


And, bonus: speaking of harmonies, have you seen this a capella version of The Beach Boy's "Wouldn't it Be Nice"? Just another reminder that tight harmonies trump almost everything else and make life way more fun to live. 

The Self-Illuminated Links

Rain has returned to London and looks to stay for the next week or so. Meanwhile, I am trying to spend as much time with all the people who mean the most to me here in the UK before my departure. During each interaction, I think about opportunity costs a lot. I always have since the day my senior year economics professor, Mr. Swallow, introduced them onto my radar. I remember listening to him and nodding involuntarily. Yes. That was the moment I knew my enemy had a name. 


Because I sometimes have a slightly ridiculous tendency to think the rules don't apply to me, I've spent a lot of time in my life trying to circumvent these opportunity costs: rarely accepting my own limitations and ability to be in more than one place at one time. Not just in my own life, but for those I care about too. The best circumvention I've ever seen is skype. It gives me hope to keep trying to hedge these opportunity costs. I feel better when I try. 


Have a great weekend. Here are your links. 


- PS, I love that on the wiki page for Opp Costs, See Also: Have One's Cake and Eat it Too
- (And then it's equivalent in each culture/language. Excellent.)
- Here's a pre-skype way to access NYC from London. A telescope!
- American kids are spoiled. You don't say. 
- I hate quitting! Ugh! What if I pick that old phd up here?-- I mean, it's an actual job there. 


- Gordon and I are seeing Democracy tonight at the Old Vic. Is there a new Jimmy Carter of ex boyfriends in the house?


-  I will not leave Europe without going to see where Keats died in Rome. Who wants to go with me in a whirlwind like 48 hour journey? Let's stay up all night and dance, lit up, through the streets of Rome. I'll get your ticket. I got sky miles. 


- I'm gonna miss this guy. I hope wherever I land, there's lots of poetry, still. 

- When I imagine what my new life is going to be like back in the US, it sounds like this. Please, please listen to this whole album. Thank you. 

When Love Takes Over - A Cappella

You might remember amazing vocal group Pentatonix from their insanely viewed covers on youtube-- including their nearly 6 million views cover of "Somebody That I Used to Know." Now they're back and being fronted by my pal, youtube sensation in her own right, Miss Natalie Weiss. These are some searing vocals my friends. Take a listen.


Sometimes, I feel like musicals are the only definitive proof I'm still human. For quite some time, and for various reasons, I've really needed a good cry. And I've been utterly unable to. Jusssst wasn't there. To the  point when I started to think perhaps my quest to be a less heart-ruled person had made it so I didn't feel much of anything anymore. 


But it only took about 4 minutes of Tonys to slowly turn back on the water works. And by the time it got to Audra, and then Steve's performance in Once (plus his speech! UGH!) and even NPH's hilarious Michael John La Chiusa medley I was a weeping mess. When love takes over, ya'll. 

Glide into Tony Weekend Links

Once again, it's the time of year when I spend a whole weekend geeking out over Broadway's finest at the Tony Awards! I hate to miss all the excitement in Hell's Kitchen in June. But being separated from the Tony's by an Ocean has only increased my rapid love for them and this year is no exception because I have nominated friends!! 


It's been a musical-y kind of time lately, as Steven and I are working hard on our Nic & Alix album. More (slightly more fanfare-ish) info on that later. Let me just take this moment to remind you all and myself that there's a reason I love writing musicals more than any other of my humanly activities. That reason is located somewhere around the solid core center of an instrumental track slice o' bread with french horns, harps and cellos that I know is soon to buttered with vocals from my favorite performers in all the land. 


People always want to hate on musicals. I just think they aren't paying attention. Bring on the links.


- Book of Mormon is coming to London! Who wants to give me a job on this transfer??
- The virtues of daydreaming! Speak on, brother!
- Just in case you missed The Wire musical. (I love that it's at the Player's Theatre.)
- Super cool design your own shoes website, Shoes of Prey
- You're gross, Republicans. Sorry, but it's just irrefutably true. 
- Even MORE undermining of women in the workplace. Cool.
- More typographical art from Folksy. This time, GWTW.
- Changing thoughts on Klimt
- Las Vegas doesn't often make me proud, but it's hard not to be when I hear about $9.99 all you can eat tacos AND margaritas! (!!!)
- Finally, the wonderful people at Submissions Only have made this Tony Party How-To vid with the huggable, wonderful Brian D'Arcy James. We glide.

love, love, love

After a bit of stalking the Royal Court Theatre box office cancellation line, Gordon and I went to see the new play by Olivier Award winning writer, Mike Bartlett (for you New Yorkers, you can check out his play Cock at the Duke right now.) G had heard good things from his aunt, so we had high expectations. Well, I'll say this: the seats at the Royal Court are amazing. Which came in handy for a two and half hour show with two very long intervals. 


I don't want to come off as more harsh than I mean. I enjoyed much of the play-- that follows an extremely self-involved baby-boomer couple as they rationalize their behavior from the 60's to the early 90's to present day. I was truly excited about the cast (costume drama frequent Victoria Hamilton was the lead woman)-- especially the children, played by one of my faves, Claire Foy as well as George Rainsford. There were some really amazing moments and entire swatches of dialogue-- especially in the first two acts. And the show raised some really valid and interesting generational ideas, and what the responsibilities of parenthood are. 


But by Act III, the parents were so single-mindedly caught up in their own experience, so double-standard-y, so callous-- and to add insult to injury, self-congratulatory about those traits-- that the farce of their behavior was almost too much for me to take. This may be exactly what Mike Bartlett wanted, but I think he had some lose ends. Neither of the younger actors had more than one note to play after Act II and the brother relationship that dominated Act I is never brought back home in any satisfying way. 


A previous production of the show featured another costume drama fave, Daniela Denby-Ashe, and knowing that now, I keep going back and re-envisioning scenes with her in them. I'm guessing she'd be equally formidable, but a bit more sympathetic. 


I'm a very big fan of love. But to me, this show was not about love. Let alone love, love, love. Love is not anything like the selfish stuff I saw on stage last night. Or for that matter, what I see mostly walking around calling itself that these days.


In any case, I was thrilled to go &  still recommend the play to anyone lucky enough to swing some tickets. All the reviews have been favorable and there is much to appreciate. In fact, I think I enjoy the ruminating and dissecting as much as the watching. 

The Summer House at The Gate

Last night, Gordon & I saw The Summer House at The Gate. Billed as a "comedy thriller" (I was intrigued) this three man play centered around a somewhat botched stag-do in Iceland and ideas of modern male friendship & masculinity. It was a bit of a circus, really, with Norse Gods and Vikings and tiny model houses and plastic wrap and crazy repeat gags. I loved it. And I spent most of the hour and a half laughing out loud. 


To describe The Summer House, it could easily come off as sounding something like the 6th movie in The Hangover Series. The Hangover 6: AWOL in Iceland. (Not to mention, a bit of Hot Tub Time Machine... in the most ridiculous way possible.) But the nuanced relationships and patter between especially the groom-to-be and his best man lives in specificities that give the whole show an authenticity and credibility unlikely for a show that features that much plastic wrap and where the characters spend most of the time in a fake hot tub wearing one-horned viking helmets. 


All elements quickly unravel and then things really get crazy. We'll throw in some elements of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and some High Fidelity (especially with regards to music hashing/bickering and you've got the Time Out Four Star pick. 


The show was devised by the three actor/writers, all of whom were fantastic and one of whom, Will Adamsdale, is a friend of Gordon's. We hung out at the restaurant below the Gate afterwards. It's always so nice to meet other playwrights-- and one who's even interested in musicals no less! 


Will has a great on-stage quality and physicality-- his whole vibe was part young Robin Williams and part middle age Aidan Quinn. And Las Vegans, Matthew Steer, playing the fanny-pack wearing best man reminded me so much of AJ Magness I couldn't get over it. 


Anyhow, it's on in London until March 24 and you can get your tickets here. I'd love to see the show in NYC, in which case, I'll make sure you NY theatre peeps get your keisters on down to LaMama or the Daryl Roth or Cherry Lane or some such like where a such like The Summer House would end up to laugh as much as I did.