Acting, Theatre-Going and Another Trip to Port Townsend

As I type this I am drying a small load of laundry. In this house there are only two proper rooms, the bedrooms, and the rest of the house is entirely open. This means that the laundry area cannot be closed off from any other part of the house and consequently one can hear the washer and the dryer from any part of the rest of the house, aside from the bedrooms. As the clothes tumble about in the super-heated air of the the dryer chamber, I realize that I did not empty my pockets properly and there is a coin of some kind rolling around and around in the dryer chamber creating a most unholy racket. I could, of course, get up, walk across the living room, through the kitchen and into the laundry area, stop the dryer and open it, rummage about for the offending coin, remove it and start the dryer back up thus restoring peace and quiet (or a semblance thereof). But, lazy beast that I am, I am not doing so, putting up with the clank and bonk of the spinning coin by telling myself that the dryer has less than ten minutes to go and that I can put up with this noise for such a short period of time.

This will be another one of those posts wherein I reconstruct a chain of days and recount the exploits that took place. As usual I will start at the farthest point in time and work my way forward to today.

Wednesday: Acting class in on Wednesday nights. The work day began in painful tedium. It was literally thick with nothing, but I know better than to be caught standing around idle. I did a lot of little things in the morning and then went off to lunch around 12.30. When I came back there was some UPS to unpack and I spent a few hours doing that before vacuuming the store, a favoured task because I can stretch that out amazingly, and then was given an early out so I headed off for Jace's house.

The previous week Devoted Readers will remember my success at overcoming my nervousness in front of an audience by delivering an outstanding performance. I was now ready to build upon this success. On this night, though, Jeremiah worked on his Marat/Sade monologue first and, not feeling particularly into things, gave a rather down tempo rendition. Curiously, this was one of his better renditions of this monologue. But his down tempo energy created a powerful presence which, being next up, I was not able to get by. While my performance of the second Pygmalion and first Iago monologues were improved from the week previous, and those had been good, my performance was stifled by Jeremiah's energy and the same happened to Rose in her monologue. This may strike you as preposterous, but later Jace said this is a very real theatre experience: another actor's energy leaves a lingering presence onstage and one person's energy can effect a performance for good or ill. So while my performance was not what I was hoping for, it was not bad and generally has shaped up considerably.

Devoted readers may also remember that Jace is having me do a comic monologue from Shakespeare. I was thinking about Dogberry from Much Ado About Nothng, but while he has some funny lines, none of them are sufficient for a monologue. I then turned to Benedick but, as Jace pointed out, that's a lead part and she wants me to try something different.

And we have now defined just what different is. Different, in this case, is as far away from me as I can get. "I don't want you to be the cool, quick witted, intellectual," Jace said. So she had me read through a comic monologue by Launce in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. It's very funny, very complicated and involves shoes, a hat and a dog. And it is as far away from me as I can get, so that's what I'm doing. It should be rather fun!

When I returned home from class, I found my chess set had arrived. I unpacked it and then my mother and I played a short game.

I'll skip Thursday since nothing especially important happened.

Friday night I went with Jace, Jeremiah and Rose to see the high school production of the musical Fiddler On the Roof. For a high school production it was really quite good, excellent in many respects. The sets were especially wonderful and the costumes were good, too. There were slight problems with vocal projection and some of the student actors were hard to hear ... I suspect the quirky auditorium accoustics were to blame ... and the second half seemed distinctly less polished than the first half. The orchestra seemed to be going off, the student actors energy at times seemed flagging and some of the dances were clearly off. But aside from these few small details it was truly a marvellous performance and everyone involved deserves high praise.

After the performance we went back to Michael's where discussed Rose's peculiar part she is to read for. This is some private production of some learning program and she is to play a dingy blonde. This is so not her and she's going to have to play this part, if she does it, very broadly. The late night Happy Hour was going along very well and I saw a few people I knew here and there.

Saturday I spent here at Mysterioso Manor playing chess, reading and, the sun being out in the afternoon, riding my bicycle. I spent this last summer and fall rather neglectful of my bicycle and this year I want to spend more time with it. With the early spring we're having, in fact: it is spring, I should be able to do much more cycling, something I want to do. One of the things I like about cycling is that one can look at things in greater detail than one can driving a car.

Today being Sunday the weather did not look promising. The sun of the day previous was veiled under a thin layer of gray overcast. Then, of a sudden, the clouds parted and the sun broke out sending gloriuos rays of light everywhere. The perfect conditions to go photographing in Port Townsend with my Diana! So I loaded up the Diana with another roll of black and white film, got in my car and drove over to PT.

It wasn't very busy there so I was able to park in front of the Rose Theatre where I discovered taht next week they're showing four silent film with live piano accompiment. I will definitely go see that!

I went over to Karen's antiquarian bookstore and talked with her for a while. She let me borrow a book on Roycroft collectibles which is quite nifty and I also purchased:

Gray's Elegy, published by the Roycrofters, 1903. This slim suede-bound volume contains gorgeous decorative illustrated borders, one different for each page. Beautiful!

This done I retraced my steps from my previous visit to photograph the Victorian brickwork, doorways and alleys as well as some Victorian homes and buildings. The sun was rather patchy but at times quite beautiful. I made sure the aperture thingy was set properly and in the case of minimal ambient light, I opened the aperture up one stop. I think this will solve the under exposure problem. I made sure to wind the film back tightly so as to avoid potential light leaks which I am certain caused the problems with the last roll of film. Anything worthwhile will be posted later.

The dryer has long stopped and peace reigns within Mysterioso Manor.