8.7.11

 Sao Paulo, Brazil August '11

Colorado, Summer '10  Jen

New York, March '11  I got to act in an opera at Lincoln Center over the winter. The man in the photo is the conductor, George. I marveled at how seemingly effortlessly he made sense of the (to me) impenetrable  score, conducted three sopranos and an orchestra, maintained a relaxed and positive vibe for the three months of rehearsal and still somehow found the time to impersonate a vampire. The person reflected in that thing on the right is Amanda, one of the other cast members. That thing is a mirrored cube hanging from the ceiling. For this piece there were 50 or so of these cubes hanging on the stage. They rose and fell in various patterns. Each cube was operated by one stage hand holding a string. The first few dress rehearsals were basically a game of whack-a-mole, only more avant garde. Cubes flew in and out at random times and velocities. We cast members ducked and shuffled. A soprano got bonked on the head. I kept imagining the crew back there smoking joints and looking confusedly at their cue sheets, all standing around the rigging station holding their strings in the dark like slave boat rowers just kind of winging it, pulling and releasing, shrugging at each other, unaware of the carnage just a few yards away.