it begins with a quote...
"...as often as possible, find a way to remind yourself that people saved up their money, hired a sitter, and planned an evening around coming to the theatre and seeing your show. Give them the very, very best you have to give that night. Someone may be seeing his first show. Someone else may be seeing his last. It's when I lose that connection with the people in the seats that my efforts begin to feel futile. Each performance is a conversation. The audience is the silent half od that conversation. I mustn't forget that."
-Micheal Kostroff, Letters From Backstage
I've noticed that most of my previous entries have been very negative, so I'm going to try to begin each one with a positive or inspirational quote to reflect what I've been thinking about. And this quote was perfect.
So I went to New York this weekend. With NHSN. It was a good time. I saw Mark <3, Angelo, Carol, Annie, and Heather from Saigon at Planet Hollywood. It was weird, that they were all together. Hmmm..... Then we went shopping in times square. Erin convinced me to start journaling for real, so I bought a journal and clear packaging tape at Duane Reed (i'll explain later). I also got the Tarzan Piano/vocal score at Colony, along with the Full Monty OBC. And then it was time to see Beauty and the Beast. Which brings me to my quote.
I understand the show is closing. I understand the performers will be out of a job in less than 3 months. But it would be nice if they would give the audience a good show. They shouldn't be going through motions. They should be giving everything they've got, and then some. People are paying $110 to see the show, and they don't even bother to warm up or stretch before the show. They don't bother to make choices about their characters. They just didn't care. And it was bad. There was no energy on stage at all.
Then we went to the hotel in some dinky new jersey town 20 minutes out of the lincoln tunnel. There, I collected some brochures of shows and with that, packaging tape, and some scissors, decorated my journal. it's pretty good. At 2, i fell asleep. The next day, we went to chinatown and I got a knock off coach. Then we saw hairspray. And it was every bit as good as the first time i saw it, down to the back row of dancers. There was 589349076845305893608 times the energy, and all the scene work was great!!! Alexa Vega was really good, too. I'm glad we saw Ashley Parker Angel's understudy, because he was fantastic. But I wish we could've seen Darlene Love as Maybelle. She's great.
And now I'm home. And that's it. To end on a positive note....
"Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th."
Julie Andrews