Long time, no see! (Multi-part entry warning--part 2 of 2--a long entry in and of itself!)
Yeah, like I said, it's easier to put the stuff about my NYC/Broadway trip into a second entry because it's a little tangled and it at least confuses me when I try to combine it with the Seattle stuff.
So here goes. And look out, it's *long*
About a week before my flight left for Seattle, my stepmom brought home the New York Times Weekend Arts section and gave it to me. She thought I'd be amused to see the two-page Pirates of the Caribbean ad with Johnny Depp all over it...and I was, but I didn't leave it at that. Being the theater/film geek I am, I read the entire thing, page by page. And suddenly got launched on a Quest. Uh oh. I think my brain gets bored in the summer and finds new things to obsess about, lol. So anyway, what caught my eye was this: an ad for a Broadway play called Faith Healer, witten by Brian Friel and performed by Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones, and Ian McDiarmid.
What exactly attracted me was mainly that the play was written by Brian Friel, who has a real way with words, and who also wrote Dancing at Lughnasa, my favorite play ever (which I performed in during my junior year of high school). I was also drawn to the actor Ralph Fiennes, whose acting I have had a deep respect for since I saw Schindler's List my junior year--he's scary as heck, but brilliant. He's also known for being Voldemort in the fourth Harry Potter movie. So yeah. I just got really, really excited about the play and its starred blurb thingy in the paper.
The next step was to get online and see what was what in terms of seating for the play. I had a shock: on the website, prices for the "cheap" seats in the upper mezzanine (the balcony thing in the back of the theater) were about $80. Obviously, I wasn't about to pay that much...at least not without reading the play first to see if I'd like it. Next stop: Amazon. Something I've never seen before, there: they don't have the play (something about rights, I think), but offer two used links to dealers who are happy to sell you the play for as little as $250, or as much as $2100. Wow. Of course, I'm not buying that. So I sniff around online a little bit, and find a compilation of Brian Friel's plays, including Faith Healer that costs about $17, I think.
Before I could buy it, though, I got caught up in the insanity of packing for my trip, and didn't realize I'd forgotten about it until I was sitting on the plane. OOps. So while I was in Seattle, inevitably, the story of my quest was told to my aunt, who suggested we go to the Washington State University book store--they might have it. So we go, and I check out the drama section. They have Dancing at Lughnasa in stock, and I can't resist opening it to read the first pages. Big mistake--I got caught up in it and decided it was a shame that I'd lost my copy of the script. So I bought the play--it was only $7, which isn't too bad. And that's the first of the two plays I bought in Seattle.
I was still down about my inability to find Faith Healer, so my aunt suggested this little old used bookstore she knew of, and I went along with it, though I didn't think there was much chance they'd have it for anything approaching my price range. I found my way to the theater section (second row, all the way down at the back), and I got really excited because I could see something bright pink--the compilation! and it was only $8.50, compared to the $17 I'd have to pay for it new on Amazon. I'm all set to buy it, when my aunt pulls out this thin, little blue book that I'd missed before and asks if this was what I was looking for. And, of course, it was. I was really afraid it would be too expensive, but I opened the cover and in beautiful, pure pencil marks was written $1.50. I was, of course, really excited! (a bored brain plus jet lag makes me a little loopy and excitable, I guess). But hang on, I think. Isn't it the more the better, when plays are concerned? So I go back to the compilation, flip through it, and though the forward has a few pen and highlighter marks, the plays are all clean...All except Faith Healer, of course, which is covered in pen and highlighter, and notes in an over-analytical tone that suggest that some student had used the book to write an essay. So the $1.50 copy is mine. The bookstore guy looks bemused, but genuinely happy when I skip up to the counter with the play and tell him how he's made my day.
Of course, when I get back, I call my dad and stepmom with the wonderful news that I'd found it for only $1.50! And my stepmom who had previously told me she'd love to go to the city with me needed some time to "think it over" all of a sudden, now that the trip was an actual possibility and not just something Azaelia was rambling about. So I don't bother either of them for the rest of my time in Seattle. I also don't read the play, not more than the opening stage directions--enough to notice that it was true to form--beautifully written by Brian Friel...and enough to know that I don't want to ruin the surprise for myself.
When I get home, the first thing I do is seek out my stepmom, who surprises me by saying that *if* I can get a ticket (she thinks it's doubtful, with all the acclaim the play got, and how close it was to the end of its engagement), she'll go to the city (but not the play) with me, but only to an afternoon show, and only on one of three days.
So I get online again, holding my breath, and I go to the official site. When I click on showtimes, all the days that my stepmom specified had tickets available! August 2nd is the one I pick, and they have an amazing seat still free--10 rows from the stage, and it's "only" 10 dollars more than what I'd expected to pay for mezzanine seats (of course, I don't take into account the extra fees). After debating internally about it, I decided to just go for it because for me, anything over $70 (roughly, two weeks' pay) just becomes "a lot", and $10 didn't make much difference to me. About that point, I gave my trip to the play special importance and justified it by saying that it was a graduation present to myself. That way, I didn't feel bad about taking a rediculously long bus ride into the city, paying "a lot" for a play ticket (and probably for lunch too), just to sit in a theater for three hours and then take a rediculously long bus ride back home. LOL.
So I shelled out the money for the ticket, and one week later, on August 2nd, I'm up at 5 in the morning to get a bus at 7 which will bring us into the city sometime around noon. The play starts at 2.
It was a good thing there were two hours of extra time there...because when we got into Port Authority, the first thing we did was get lost. As in, lost in the building. We were trying to find a bathroom but it turned out that there was none on the level our bus dropped us off, and when we took the escalator up, we found ourselves on a half-floor that had no bathroom either. Yeah, we were confused. Eventually, though, we found the right escalator, which took us to a level with a bathroom, and we found our way out of Port Authority with no incident...but as soon as we got out on the street, we took a wrong turn. Smooth. Forutnately, my stepmom knows the city surprisingly well, and she realized that we were going the wrong way very quickly.
Once we finally found the Booth Theater (not hard, once you get on 45th St), the next order of business became Lunch. And fortunately, right across Shubert Alley (which looks more like a cheerful, small street than the dark, sketchy place you'd think of as an alley) from the theater is a restaraunt called Junior's, where, in spite of the long line, we got seated quickly, and right in front of a large window, looking out across the "alley" to the theater. The prices there were very reasonable, at least compared to what I was expecting--I got a GIANT salad for about $8...and the highlight of that dining experience was realizing that the actors in the play had just walked by the window, while I watched...Oh, and the italian dressing was delicious, too.
We finished our lunch at about 1:15, and we poked around Shubert Alley's Broadway store for a little while longer...but it was the hottest day of the year (the east-coast heat wave had reached its peak), and it wasn't like I was focusing on anything particularly well, either. So at 1:30, my stepmom said goodbye to me at the door of the theater, and I was shown to my seat. I was shocked--Booth Theater is a perfect space. I'd been to a broadway show on a field trip two years before, and it had been in an overwhelmingly big theater...but Booth is small and intimate, and my 10th-row orchestra seat offered a perfect view. I couldn't believe it! I spent the half-hour or so before the play started conversing with the two ladies who were seated behind me. They were surprised to hear that I was there alone (I was easily the youngest member of the audience, though I look younger than my 18 years).
The play itself was amazing--the best theater all-around that I've ever seen. It's made up of four (very long and very difficult) monologues, told by three characters, so it's not an easy play to pull off. It's atypical, and certainly not what you'd think of when someone says "Broadway"--no song and dance numbers, no showboating, just straight-out acting. But it was brilliant. All three actors (Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones, and Ian McDiarmid) delivered flawless, nuanced performances. The play was a beautiful, elegaic work of art, and well worth every cent I paid for the ticket. I would go again in a heartbeat.
I'll cut here to details about the performance--I'm not sure everyone wants to be bored by my descriptions any longer, since this entry is probably breaking my previous records for "Longest LJ Entry Of Ever"...but I still feel like writing them so :-p
Ralph Fiennes delivered the first monologue, and several things strike me immediately: a. This is the BEST acting I've ever seen in my life and b. he looks completely different from everything else I've seen him do!
He inhabited his character completely, right down to the posture, the facial expressions, the idyosynchrasies (sp?!), the look in the eyes. He had the audience captivated. Not one movement could be heard in the entire theater. I'm not sure I blinked at all. He wasn't entirely comical, but we got several good laughs anyway.
Cherry Jones performed next. She had a particularly difficult role, though no role in this play was easy by any stretch of the imagination. She had to walk, carefully, a balance between a little drunk and very depressed, and if she put one toe over either side, she would lose credibility...but she held it up, perfectly.
Ian McDiarmid was third, and the reviews I'd seen didn't exaggerate--he was hilarious. Lots of laughs all around. He, too, kept the audience captivated, and the walls rang with laughter...but it's a mark of how wonderful an actor he is that he kept us with him, the whole time, from laughing uproariously to actually being deeply moved, as the performance took a darker turn.
Ralph Fiennes was back again, in the final monolouge to round out the play. It's an enigmatic, elegaic finale that brings the scattered threads of the first three monologues and ties them together. The combination of his performance with the eloquent words of Brian Friel brought tears to my eyes, as I realized that the out-of-context threads the others mentioned led inevitably to his death, one that he walked into knowing full well what would happen.
The final bows were greeted with a standing ovation and scattered cheering. On all three of their faces, I could see the rush that comes with that round of applause, the wild, almost reckless joy that live performance brings. I know how it feels, so I could recognize it in the three actors onstage, and that was almost as powerful as anything I'd seen while they were in character.
It isn't easy to hold an audience for such a long length of time onstage by yourself. I've performed a monologue before (though nothing on this scale), and it's scary to be up there alone with no other actor there to save your butt if you forget something or drop a line. It's scary, and almost intoxicating to feel the eyes of so many people on you and you alone.
I actually got to briefly meet all three of the actors at the stage door after the performance, too, which was just amazing, the icing on the cake, as it were. I was immediately struck by how human all three of them were. Ian McDiarmid was just a funny old guy in sunglasses and a floppy hat like the ones my grandfather wears. During the brief couple minutes I spoke with Cherry Jones, I got two immediate impressions: that I was talking, as an actress, on level ground with another actress, instead of as a fan...and that she was someone that I would get along with very well if we were to sit down and actually have a conversation. Meeting Ralph Fiennes was a little overwhelming for a couple reasons: a.because he's the best actor I've ever seen and oh how I wish I could do what he can and b. because he's a very attractive man, in spite of the fact that he's in his 40s. :D When he came up to me my brain froze and all I could tell him was "you're an amazing actor" so of course I got all embarrassed, blushed bright red, and couldn't look at him for the longest time...but when I did look up, he was looking into my eyes with the sweetest expression on his face...as though what I'd said was very important and meant a lot to him. aww.
So I think I had a fantastic day over all. I saw what real acting looks like, and fell even farther head over heels in love with acting. Call me greedy, but I want that. I want to hold an audience captive. I want to make people cry and laugh and feel and change. I want to stand on the Booth stage and own it all the way each of them did. I want to be a part of something as beautiful as what I saw onstage that Wednesday that I will never forget.
Whew, that was long. I'll be surprised if anyone makes their way all the way through it!
So here goes. And look out, it's *long*
About a week before my flight left for Seattle, my stepmom brought home the New York Times Weekend Arts section and gave it to me. She thought I'd be amused to see the two-page Pirates of the Caribbean ad with Johnny Depp all over it...and I was, but I didn't leave it at that. Being the theater/film geek I am, I read the entire thing, page by page. And suddenly got launched on a Quest. Uh oh. I think my brain gets bored in the summer and finds new things to obsess about, lol. So anyway, what caught my eye was this: an ad for a Broadway play called Faith Healer, witten by Brian Friel and performed by Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones, and Ian McDiarmid.
What exactly attracted me was mainly that the play was written by Brian Friel, who has a real way with words, and who also wrote Dancing at Lughnasa, my favorite play ever (which I performed in during my junior year of high school). I was also drawn to the actor Ralph Fiennes, whose acting I have had a deep respect for since I saw Schindler's List my junior year--he's scary as heck, but brilliant. He's also known for being Voldemort in the fourth Harry Potter movie. So yeah. I just got really, really excited about the play and its starred blurb thingy in the paper.
The next step was to get online and see what was what in terms of seating for the play. I had a shock: on the website, prices for the "cheap" seats in the upper mezzanine (the balcony thing in the back of the theater) were about $80. Obviously, I wasn't about to pay that much...at least not without reading the play first to see if I'd like it. Next stop: Amazon. Something I've never seen before, there: they don't have the play (something about rights, I think), but offer two used links to dealers who are happy to sell you the play for as little as $250, or as much as $2100. Wow. Of course, I'm not buying that. So I sniff around online a little bit, and find a compilation of Brian Friel's plays, including Faith Healer that costs about $17, I think.
Before I could buy it, though, I got caught up in the insanity of packing for my trip, and didn't realize I'd forgotten about it until I was sitting on the plane. OOps. So while I was in Seattle, inevitably, the story of my quest was told to my aunt, who suggested we go to the Washington State University book store--they might have it. So we go, and I check out the drama section. They have Dancing at Lughnasa in stock, and I can't resist opening it to read the first pages. Big mistake--I got caught up in it and decided it was a shame that I'd lost my copy of the script. So I bought the play--it was only $7, which isn't too bad. And that's the first of the two plays I bought in Seattle.
I was still down about my inability to find Faith Healer, so my aunt suggested this little old used bookstore she knew of, and I went along with it, though I didn't think there was much chance they'd have it for anything approaching my price range. I found my way to the theater section (second row, all the way down at the back), and I got really excited because I could see something bright pink--the compilation! and it was only $8.50, compared to the $17 I'd have to pay for it new on Amazon. I'm all set to buy it, when my aunt pulls out this thin, little blue book that I'd missed before and asks if this was what I was looking for. And, of course, it was. I was really afraid it would be too expensive, but I opened the cover and in beautiful, pure pencil marks was written $1.50. I was, of course, really excited! (a bored brain plus jet lag makes me a little loopy and excitable, I guess). But hang on, I think. Isn't it the more the better, when plays are concerned? So I go back to the compilation, flip through it, and though the forward has a few pen and highlighter marks, the plays are all clean...All except Faith Healer, of course, which is covered in pen and highlighter, and notes in an over-analytical tone that suggest that some student had used the book to write an essay. So the $1.50 copy is mine. The bookstore guy looks bemused, but genuinely happy when I skip up to the counter with the play and tell him how he's made my day.
Of course, when I get back, I call my dad and stepmom with the wonderful news that I'd found it for only $1.50! And my stepmom who had previously told me she'd love to go to the city with me needed some time to "think it over" all of a sudden, now that the trip was an actual possibility and not just something Azaelia was rambling about. So I don't bother either of them for the rest of my time in Seattle. I also don't read the play, not more than the opening stage directions--enough to notice that it was true to form--beautifully written by Brian Friel...and enough to know that I don't want to ruin the surprise for myself.
When I get home, the first thing I do is seek out my stepmom, who surprises me by saying that *if* I can get a ticket (she thinks it's doubtful, with all the acclaim the play got, and how close it was to the end of its engagement), she'll go to the city (but not the play) with me, but only to an afternoon show, and only on one of three days.
So I get online again, holding my breath, and I go to the official site. When I click on showtimes, all the days that my stepmom specified had tickets available! August 2nd is the one I pick, and they have an amazing seat still free--10 rows from the stage, and it's "only" 10 dollars more than what I'd expected to pay for mezzanine seats (of course, I don't take into account the extra fees). After debating internally about it, I decided to just go for it because for me, anything over $70 (roughly, two weeks' pay) just becomes "a lot", and $10 didn't make much difference to me. About that point, I gave my trip to the play special importance and justified it by saying that it was a graduation present to myself. That way, I didn't feel bad about taking a rediculously long bus ride into the city, paying "a lot" for a play ticket (and probably for lunch too), just to sit in a theater for three hours and then take a rediculously long bus ride back home. LOL.
So I shelled out the money for the ticket, and one week later, on August 2nd, I'm up at 5 in the morning to get a bus at 7 which will bring us into the city sometime around noon. The play starts at 2.
It was a good thing there were two hours of extra time there...because when we got into Port Authority, the first thing we did was get lost. As in, lost in the building. We were trying to find a bathroom but it turned out that there was none on the level our bus dropped us off, and when we took the escalator up, we found ourselves on a half-floor that had no bathroom either. Yeah, we were confused. Eventually, though, we found the right escalator, which took us to a level with a bathroom, and we found our way out of Port Authority with no incident...but as soon as we got out on the street, we took a wrong turn. Smooth. Forutnately, my stepmom knows the city surprisingly well, and she realized that we were going the wrong way very quickly.
Once we finally found the Booth Theater (not hard, once you get on 45th St), the next order of business became Lunch. And fortunately, right across Shubert Alley (which looks more like a cheerful, small street than the dark, sketchy place you'd think of as an alley) from the theater is a restaraunt called Junior's, where, in spite of the long line, we got seated quickly, and right in front of a large window, looking out across the "alley" to the theater. The prices there were very reasonable, at least compared to what I was expecting--I got a GIANT salad for about $8...and the highlight of that dining experience was realizing that the actors in the play had just walked by the window, while I watched...Oh, and the italian dressing was delicious, too.
We finished our lunch at about 1:15, and we poked around Shubert Alley's Broadway store for a little while longer...but it was the hottest day of the year (the east-coast heat wave had reached its peak), and it wasn't like I was focusing on anything particularly well, either. So at 1:30, my stepmom said goodbye to me at the door of the theater, and I was shown to my seat. I was shocked--Booth Theater is a perfect space. I'd been to a broadway show on a field trip two years before, and it had been in an overwhelmingly big theater...but Booth is small and intimate, and my 10th-row orchestra seat offered a perfect view. I couldn't believe it! I spent the half-hour or so before the play started conversing with the two ladies who were seated behind me. They were surprised to hear that I was there alone (I was easily the youngest member of the audience, though I look younger than my 18 years).
The play itself was amazing--the best theater all-around that I've ever seen. It's made up of four (very long and very difficult) monologues, told by three characters, so it's not an easy play to pull off. It's atypical, and certainly not what you'd think of when someone says "Broadway"--no song and dance numbers, no showboating, just straight-out acting. But it was brilliant. All three actors (Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones, and Ian McDiarmid) delivered flawless, nuanced performances. The play was a beautiful, elegaic work of art, and well worth every cent I paid for the ticket. I would go again in a heartbeat.
I'll cut here to details about the performance--I'm not sure everyone wants to be bored by my descriptions any longer, since this entry is probably breaking my previous records for "Longest LJ Entry Of Ever"...but I still feel like writing them so :-p
Ralph Fiennes delivered the first monologue, and several things strike me immediately: a. This is the BEST acting I've ever seen in my life and b. he looks completely different from everything else I've seen him do!
He inhabited his character completely, right down to the posture, the facial expressions, the idyosynchrasies (sp?!), the look in the eyes. He had the audience captivated. Not one movement could be heard in the entire theater. I'm not sure I blinked at all. He wasn't entirely comical, but we got several good laughs anyway.
Cherry Jones performed next. She had a particularly difficult role, though no role in this play was easy by any stretch of the imagination. She had to walk, carefully, a balance between a little drunk and very depressed, and if she put one toe over either side, she would lose credibility...but she held it up, perfectly.
Ian McDiarmid was third, and the reviews I'd seen didn't exaggerate--he was hilarious. Lots of laughs all around. He, too, kept the audience captivated, and the walls rang with laughter...but it's a mark of how wonderful an actor he is that he kept us with him, the whole time, from laughing uproariously to actually being deeply moved, as the performance took a darker turn.
Ralph Fiennes was back again, in the final monolouge to round out the play. It's an enigmatic, elegaic finale that brings the scattered threads of the first three monologues and ties them together. The combination of his performance with the eloquent words of Brian Friel brought tears to my eyes, as I realized that the out-of-context threads the others mentioned led inevitably to his death, one that he walked into knowing full well what would happen.
The final bows were greeted with a standing ovation and scattered cheering. On all three of their faces, I could see the rush that comes with that round of applause, the wild, almost reckless joy that live performance brings. I know how it feels, so I could recognize it in the three actors onstage, and that was almost as powerful as anything I'd seen while they were in character.
It isn't easy to hold an audience for such a long length of time onstage by yourself. I've performed a monologue before (though nothing on this scale), and it's scary to be up there alone with no other actor there to save your butt if you forget something or drop a line. It's scary, and almost intoxicating to feel the eyes of so many people on you and you alone.
I actually got to briefly meet all three of the actors at the stage door after the performance, too, which was just amazing, the icing on the cake, as it were. I was immediately struck by how human all three of them were. Ian McDiarmid was just a funny old guy in sunglasses and a floppy hat like the ones my grandfather wears. During the brief couple minutes I spoke with Cherry Jones, I got two immediate impressions: that I was talking, as an actress, on level ground with another actress, instead of as a fan...and that she was someone that I would get along with very well if we were to sit down and actually have a conversation. Meeting Ralph Fiennes was a little overwhelming for a couple reasons: a.because he's the best actor I've ever seen and oh how I wish I could do what he can and b. because he's a very attractive man, in spite of the fact that he's in his 40s. :D When he came up to me my brain froze and all I could tell him was "you're an amazing actor" so of course I got all embarrassed, blushed bright red, and couldn't look at him for the longest time...but when I did look up, he was looking into my eyes with the sweetest expression on his face...as though what I'd said was very important and meant a lot to him. aww.
So I think I had a fantastic day over all. I saw what real acting looks like, and fell even farther head over heels in love with acting. Call me greedy, but I want that. I want to hold an audience captive. I want to make people cry and laugh and feel and change. I want to stand on the Booth stage and own it all the way each of them did. I want to be a part of something as beautiful as what I saw onstage that Wednesday that I will never forget.
Whew, that was long. I'll be surprised if anyone makes their way all the way through it!