What I’m building this week: I got a boat for an upcoming performance of “A Tempest.” The actors and I are going to build it into a vessel which will introduce the story and show. There is also a good chance that I will be directing a number of shows that have a boat or water in them: Pirates of Penzance, Peter Pan, Fisherman and His Wife, O’Niel’s Plays of the Sea…
What I bought this week: I bought the rights to a private city garden. My “dzailka” is very close to my flat. I have been spending most of my holiday outside trying to get it ready for planting. Soon I’ll be getting a grill and relaxing there in the summer time.
New medical fact: I had surgery on a tooth which had developed an infection 8 years after my root canal. A little bacteria was sitting at the root of the tooth for 8 years until it made itself known with a little pimple on my gum. It amazed me that a bacteria could stay alive for that long and win. Patient little bacteria. I won’t describe the surgical procedure. Let’s just say I look like a lopsided chipmunk.
Book I’m reading this week: “Sideways Stories from Wayside School” by Louis Sachar. This could quite possibly be future source material for Character Studies. Each chapter is a different character from this sideways school. It was supposed to be a school with one floor and thirty rooms. But the builders were holding the blueprints sideways and so there are thirty floors with one room each floor.
What I’m listening to: Lin Manuel Miranda demos. Recently a friend (that I recommended Hamilton to) just discovered how great it is. So I went back to watch the original video of the Poetry and Spoken word event at the White House, and I cried. One of the first people to tell me about Hamilton then sent me the Soundcloud demos. Now I have spiraled and back on the habit of nonstop listening. Check the demos out. Hamilton will definitely be a part of any future unit I teach on musical theater.