Angels in American: Perestroika

I saw Angels in America: Perestroika this weekend and I'm sort of torn in my reaction.

On paper I find the play totally fascinating. I thought the actors were incredibly talented, especially those playing Harper, Belize, and Roy Cohn. The play was staged in a way that was true to the playwright's intent and fairly dynamically interesting. And yet...

...I didn't love seeing it.

I was really confused about it at first. I left the theatre not understanding why I was disengaged and a little bored and feeling a little preached at, but I think I've come to a conclusion. There's so much about that text to find. There's so much text period. The show was something like 3 and a half hours long but it still felt like things were moving a little too fast for me. There were scenes that were really, really valuable to see life: a lot of stuff with Roy Cohn, the Kaddish scene, the Angel orgasm, the angel erupting onto the stage.

But a lot of stuff just became exhausting to watch. The scene with all the angels in heaven and the radio just felt like so much LESS than I was expecting and I feel like a vista one of those scenes you just want to SEE in it's full, incredible glory in a way that is not only impossible, but is also not prescribed in the text. Kushner does not want that sort of realism, but I really, really do.

I think it's hard to connect with the urgency of the end of a world without seeing a world with which to connect to begin with.

Yeah, so I'm still talking about Roundhouse

I basically can't talk about anything but theatre at this point in my actual life because I'm just so overwhelmed by it all. I copied all my rehearsal information for RHT and the opera into my calendar and then I just sat and looked at it for a little while. Basically at the end of December my life turns into afternoon/evening rehearsals at one my favorite places in the world. All that changes when I start classes in January is that I have class from 10am-12pm on Fridays before rehearsals with one of the most respected professionals in the area. Then at the end of February I switch to opera rehearsals in the afternoons and evenings. At the end of March/beginning of April, I add on some work attending meetings and rehearsals with the PM at UMD until the end of the semester in May. I mean, that's fine. That's only the most amazing semester of my life.

But I have no idea what's going to come after that... and I can prepare as much as I want but I just won't know until probably March or April. If I was getting paid to do all the things I'm doing in the next six months instead of paying, that could be my entire life. But I'm not. Getting paid, I mean. So what makes me think that my qualifications to work for free are going to be good enough to qualify me to be work for actual, living wages? Nothing, I guess, but a sense of purpose that I never had before I was 18 years old. Man, could I be more annoying with my constant review of my life's purpose and the same, unwavering conclusion that this is what I need to do?

And I'm Back

The Dead closed. I feel really good about how the show was run, about my paperwork, and about my final book. Good feeling. I start at Round House on the 15th of December. It's totally crazy to me that I'm starting a professional gig (albeit an unpaid gig) at my dream theatre in less than a month. It did not seem any less insane to me after I saw a show at my high school last night. It was Sondheim's Into the Woods and I was really proud of all parties involved. I heard about the upgrades the theatre has had since I was there, I talked to several of the teachers that really made me believe that this was what I should be doing, and I had some run-ins with parents whose names I didn't remember from when I was a "big deal" there. It's really crazy to me that it hasn't even been four years since I was the one freaking out about whether a show was actually going to happen or not because that just isn't how it works anymore. I guess I felt that way about fringe a little bit, but no where near the extent we sometimes were sure SURE that the sky was going to fall and our production of 45 Second From Broadway might. not. make it. I just don't know how the last four years have qualified me to be a professional... but a lot of people apparently think I know what I'm doing.