What you do at work is your life.  And what you do for most of your life probably is your work.  There’s no separating the two.  As much as anyone in the business world tries to tell you, “Don’t take it personally,” it always is.  Don’t be fooled – your business is personal.

This was well-illustrated in the play Driving Miss Daisy, as performed by the South City Theatre.  Later made into an Oscar-winning movie with Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman, the story centers on the developing relationship – starting in 1948 – between a white 72-year-old widow (Daisy) and the black driver (Hoke) hired to chauffeur her around after she can no longer drive.  Their relationship is difficult at first, but blooms over 25 years into a close friendship.

This theoretical attempt to separate “work” from “life” is a serious problem for modern America.  What would happen in this play if Hoke had already internalized the idea of a Work-Life Balance?  Well, I can imagine him going every day to Daisy’s house with a strict classification in his head that it’s just “work”.  Maybe he’d think, “This is just work – this is not my real life.  This old white woman is just my boss.  She’s not a part of my life.  We don’t socialize because I work for her.  Work has to be hard – it’s the stuff you don’t want to do.  Work is all the bad stuff; Life is all the good stuff.  And there’s a difference.  And I have to suffer whatever work can throw at me so I can get to the good stuff of life.”

What if Daisy (or her son, Boolie) had already internalized the idea of a Work-Life Balance?  There’s no way they’d become friends with these black employees.  Maybe Daisy would think, “They’re just here to work – this isn’t their real life.  I’ve got to be the boss.  They aren’t part of my life.  They don’t want to socialize with a boss.  They’re only here because they have to be here and they want to get back to life as soon as they can.  Work is all the bad stuff; Life is all the good stuff.  And there’s a difference.”

Well that’s a fairly brutal re-imagining, but that’s the way modern Americans are encouraged to think about their jobs.  Not their life, I said, their jobs.  There’s supposed to be a difference, apparently.

But this play is a complete tear-jerker (bring tissues), because both Daisy and Hoke recognize that they’re intimately involved in someone else’s life.  This isn’t New York City, where you can walk past a thousand other souls on a single block.  When you work with someone, you have a unique relationship to that person’s life.  If you make a decision that’s going to cause a person mental stress or financial hardship, it’s no defense to think: “That’s just business.”

Our avocations, callings, and professions (not just jobs) are still the best way to meet like-minded people.  Who hasn’t made a friend like that?  Or had a romance?

In much the same way, I’d find it hard to believe that theatre folks could have a “Work-Life Balance” in mind when putting together a show.  I’d like to think that Clay Boyce, Carole Armistead, Robert Hill, and Todd Ponder – the Director and his likable and skilled actors – became closer during the rehearsals and performances of Driving Miss Daisy.  Because that’s its central lesson, right?  The people you work with are the people of your life.  They’re not just there for “business” – they’re there for life.

And these are the people in your neighborhood.

Thanks to Dianne Daniels and South City Theatre for performing this excellent play.

The Most Famous First Page of Any Score in All of Opera?

A lady named Hermione Lee says that all marriages are inexplicable.  Yeah, and a guy named Harold Bloom goes on to say that Shakespeare taught us the black box theory of marriage.  We never know why we married, why marriage did or didn’t work, and, after it crashes, we can’t recover the black box.

Such is love.

There were twenty or more singers at the Opera Birmingham rehearsal for The Marriage of Figaro on Saturday.  And just about the first thing I noticed was – when the singers weren’t actually singing – how “over it” many of them seemed to be.  During this all-afternoon run-through – which is admittedly work for them – there were lots of times when singers were off to the side, “off stage”, waiting around for the moments when they got to perform, looking a little bored, typing on laptops, i-tech, and cellphones.  Or maybe just snoozing.  I thought, “Do they not like this?”

So I’m there for the whole afternoon to watch from the sidelines and – of course – I’m spellbound by the whole thing.  Even with no costumes, no sets, no orchestra, and few real props, it’s a terrific performance.  Not just the singing and dramatic details, but just the spectacle. In contrast to what I thought about the singers, I could barely take my ears off it.  And I wondered how it would be possible to sit in that room and not pay attention.

But after sitting there a while and watching the performances, I’m certain my first impression of those singers was wrong.  It’s kind-of like something I’ve occasionally called The Bob Dylan Effect: What would it be like to be married to a genius?  Someone who could be effortlessly new all the time?

For example, let’s say I somehow wrangle a date with Regina Spektor.  I’ll admit that I’d probably get a bit nervous.  In fact, I’d probably be in awe, just on general principles, and then even more amazed that she somehow liked me back.  Shoot, let’s be honest, I’m amazed when anybody likes me back.  Let’s say – just in bizarro world – that I manage to marry Miss Spektor.  (As long as I’m dreaming, I’d like a pony.)  How long could it last that I could sit around and listen to her singing and tinkering around at the piano, before I got up and needed to do something else?  Would I listen less as years went by?

Like Billy Crystal says in When Harry Met Sally, “You take someone to the airport, it’s clearly the beginning of the relationship.  That’s why I have never taken anyone to the airport at the beginning of a relationship.  Because eventually things move on and you don’t take someone to the airport and I never wanted anyone to say to me: How come you never take me to the airport anymore?”

Put another way, I’ve been lucky to date a few truly beautiful girls and found that – directly contrary to what I thought would happen when I was fourteen – after a while, I start paying attention to her as something entirely more than just beautiful.  In fact, I can almost forget the beautiful part.  Until we’re at the grocery store and she walks back an aisle to get some salad dressing or something and I get absorbed in some other thing until I happen to look up and see this beautiful girl from a hundred feet away and having just an instant to wonder “holyCOWwhoisthat?!?” before realizing that it’s my girlfriend and it makes me amazed all over again that such a beautiful girl could think it was cool to hang out with me.

Or maybe, when you date someone, you tend to stay pretty close to her when you’re out and you don’t get enough chances to appreciate her from ten feet away, or a hundred feet away, or the next table over at a restaurant, or to just stare at the back of her head like we all used to do in school.  Those perspectives are mainly for the people outside your relationship.  Those people who can still see her and be spellbound by how beautiful she is.  But you’ve traded those perspectives for a closer and more complex view.

Back to those opera singers . . . they’re inside the relationship.  At some point, they met the opera and they were spellbound because she was so beautiful.  And they asked her out.  One date became two, two became three, and the blink-of-an-eye later, they were studying and training and singing – pressed right up close and in a relationship with this beautiful thing.

When I was fourteen, I misjudged marriage too.  I read Romeo and Juliet, looked around at adults, and thought, “How is it all so routine?  Where’s the passion?”  But it’s there.  You don’t commit to a relationship – or spend your Saturday afternoons at practice – without a good bit of passion.  And love.  And a comfortable, well-worn, mutual respect after years of wrestling around with one another.  Relationships are full of nuance.

On the other hand: “Genius, and not marriage, is my subject, and the age-old advice not to marry a genius probably is sound enough.”

Thanks again to Daniel Seigel and Opera Birmingham for letting me watch another Marriage of Figaro rehearsal.

Baseball season is around the corner and I’m hoping, very soon, to go in person and see (and hear) someone hit a home run.  There’s a certain crack and feel to the flight of the ball when you absolutely know that the batter nails it.  You don’t have to know anything about baseball to understand that.

The same is true in the arts.  You don’t have to “appreciate” theater to know when they nail it.  It doesn’t take any study or education or “acquired taste” when a choreographer and dancer line up just so.  You feel it.  Everyone in the room feels it.  And it feels right.  It doesn’t matter if it’s your first performance or your thousandth.

I wish they’d teach art appreciation like that.  It only takes about four stages.  First, art is big – there’s tons and tons of stuff out there.  Second, you won’t like it all – no one likes it all and some people will like different or nichey stuff.  Third, some of it is great – most people will just know it when they see it.  Fourth, watch this, listen to this, see this – not the stuff that some old professor likes – but the stuff that everybody feels and everybody likes.  I’m essentially a populist – go get it.

If I was teaching theatre appreciation, I would’ve taken my class to see the Theatre UAB performance of Paula Vogel’s prize-winning How I Learned To Drive.  This play is essentially about a complicated and inappropriate relationship between a mostly-good middle-aged man and his underage in-law niece.  Almost like Equus, though the man does some questionable things, at the end of the play you’ve been gently led into feeling ambivalently about him.  Is he a good guy or bad?

“You should take it as a compliment that he wants to watch you jiggle.”

UAB performances are consistently as good as any other company in Birmingham and they may be the best-kept secret.  This play had the best cast of anything I’ve seen at UAB.  Jessica Walston skillfully plays ages eleven through all-grown-up and is pretty in every way.  Joshua Butler somehow stays likeable even while frequently toeing (and stepping entirely over) the sweet/creepy line.  There are lots of opportunities to mis-step and make the uncle too nice or too evil; I give a lot of credit to Butler and his director, Dustin Canez.  The three other members of the chorus were also excellent.  I’m getting used to seeing Atom Bennett in UAB performances and I hope he keeps acting and performing.  My note about Brittney Michelle is “has a huge sparkle” – and I mean it.  Her Mama Bear’s “Girl’s Guide to Drinking” is worth the effort: “A wet woman is less conspicuous than a drunk woman.”  Finally, Trista Baker has been good both times I’ve seen her and may get to deliver some of the funniest lines in the play.

Thanks again to Melissa Christian and UAB Theatre for letting me write about these performances and spread the word.

You’re being kind-of dopey.

Yes, the fine arts can be fine, but they’re very often fine – if you receive my meaning.  I’ve been wanting to write a straightforward piece on how sexy dance can be, and the latest show from the Arova Contemporary Ballet, La Vie Boheme, provides the perfect chance.

First off, the Arova team collaborated with Angela Karen for (at least) the great promotional picture featured here.  Along with her other work, Angela is responsible for creating pin-up photography at Birmingham Bombshells.  God bless her.  She also distracted me at the performance because she’s beautiful and talented and I had to sit directly behind her.  (I’ve begged at least two friends of mine with any sort of connection to try and set us up, to no avail…)

Which brings me to my point.  If you’re a single man, you really don’t have any reason to miss these dance performances.  Without even mentioning the seven pretty dancers on stage, I think I was seated within sight of something like ten attractive girls.  Most of them weren’t there with a guy.  And I think they were all in heels and dresses.  So your odds are good.  Whatever the opposite of a sausage party is, this is it.

Not only that, but I can script you an easy in: “Hi there, I don’t know anything about dance, and I’m here by myself to check it out.”  You’re immediately good-natured and humble and charming.  She’ll swoon.  Unless you smell like manure or have a swastika on your forehead.  So go from there.

What if you’re already crazy about a particular girl?  The answer to that is easy.  Purchase two tickets to a dance recital in advance.  Then tell her you’ve got two tickets and want her to come with you.  For the most part, chicks dig dance.  I’ve rarely met a girl that would turn down a dance performance.  We’re talking major points.

Not only that, but I’ll admit to ulterior motives in asking a date to this kind of performance.  Half the fun is giving her a good excuse to doll up.  No one’s ever gotten too girly for me.  If I have to put on real pants and shoes as a tradeoff, then so be it, and you won’t catch me complaining.

But I can already hear you saying, “I don’t really like dance.”  First of all, that’s not the point, is it?  The point is them, right?  If it weren’t for them, we’d probably live in little caves and play video games all day.  Second of all, I think you will like the dance.  Maybe not all of it, but that’s okay because even hard-core dance people don’t like it all.  At the Arova performance, for example, they performed eight pieces, but I mainly enjoyed the even-numbered pieces (Surrender, Chants d’Auvergne, Verite, and La Reve Rouge).  In particular, Surrender and Le Reve Rouge were downright sexy – I like a lot of interaction and contact between the dancers.  If you’re unstirred by a dancer onstage who is thoroughly out-of-breath, you may need professional help.

Even though the dances have got fancy French names, I promise that no one’s forcing us to watch ‘em with fancy eyes.  The dancers just move pretty and that’s really all you need to know.  Without understanding a darned thing about dance, I’ve been able to pick out a pair of shapely legs since I was about thirteen.  And there’s great joy in that.  Do you really need to know anything about make-up to be able to appreciate the results?  Heck no you don’t.  You don’t even have to feel guilty about it – whoever does the costuming for Arova is gifted and perceptive and knows exactly what they’re doing.

And guys, it’s not just contemporary ballet.  I just saw Don Quixote by the Alabama Ballet and there were plenty of pretty dancers there who want you to watch.  I just saw Equus by Theatre Downtown and that show is at least half about sex, plus there’s real honest-to-God nakedness in it.  That’s way better than anything pixellated, so get yourself some tickets to a show.

Ladies, feel free to pass this information along to the uninformed.

Your friend,

Daniel

I visited opera rehearsal in the context of just finishing my RPM Challenge album for 2010.  If you’re an opera fan and reading this piece, then you’ll have absolutely no business whatsoever thinking about or listening to my completely amateur musical and singing efforts.  All you really need to know is that RPM challenges musicians to write and record a whole album of music all in the short month of February.  So the time between the creative idea and the realization of that idea is extremely (and perhaps excessively) short – just 28 days.  Which allows precious little time for contemplation or technical mastery.  You just rush to get in, get it done, and get out.

I speak from experience when I can tell you, even in a rush and with simple ideas and limited time, that the original inspiration always gets altered in translation.  There are chord changes, lyrics, or ideas that just don’t fit.  So they get taken out or changed.  The finished product is at least a few left turns and veers removed from how it was envisioned that first week in February.

The flip side of the always-rushing-around coin would be something like The Marriage of Figaro.  Mr. Mozart did his part for Figaro in the 1780s.  That allows over two-hundred years between that particular genius idea and Opera Birmingham’s particular realization of that idea.  It’s a pretty short list of works of art that regularly get performed two hundred years later.

The bad news is that Figaro’s expression is complexicated because – not only is Mozart’s idea as old as our country (and my-oh-my how times have changed) – it’s written in Italian.  It also requires independent interpretation from a full cast of more than twenty singers, an orchestra, a conductor, and a director.  Inevitably, stuff gets edited, pushed, pulled, and altered.  The good news is that artsy, creative, and scholarly people have had over two hundred years to ponder those changes.  And the performers have spent a lifetime on the details of technical mastery.

When something like Shakespeare’s plays, Bach’s fugues, or The Marriage of Figaro are performed, they stagger through your door with these generations of interpretational baggage.  This contrasts with more modern entertainment.  With movies, for example, you can often walk in unprepared and they’ll make a good faith and self-contained effort to explain it all to you.  With that in mind, it’s my belief that every scrap you can learn about works like Figaro – before you go – will pay you back in spades.  But don’t feel bad if you don’t know much about opera.  Just like it was said at the rehearsal, “Remember, probably thirty to forty percent of this audience will have never seen opera before.”  (I’ve only seen one.)

It’s not like you have to do anything highfalootin’ like study.  Take this tidbit for example: Alabama native Susanna Phillips – who is cast as Countess Almaviva – wore her grandfather’s cowboy boots to practice.  Isn’t that cool?  Overheard there: “It’s not often you see a soprano in cowboy boots.”  Do you like her more?  I do.  Will you visualize her in orangey-brown, broken-in boots even when you see her all “divaed up” on stage?  I might.

Howabout this info: Apparently, The Marriage of Figaro is significantly fast for an opera.  Though some others can stretch like five sentences of content into twelve minutes of singing, Figaro apparently requires a nimble tongue, a sense of timing, and some judicious editing of the audience’s titles.  Like a a highly revved engine.  Or an Italian and musical version of the Gilmore Girls.  When you go, doesn’t that make you want to pay attention to the sheer speed?  It does me.  Will you be sensitive and listen for cast members that might miss lines or sing them over one another?  I will.

Finally, back in the 18th century there weren’t any trailers, like for movies.  So I’d imagine that an audience would find some other way of learning the general story before they went to see the show.  Why not take a look at a synopsis (like here) and get an overview even before you get there?  Let yourself concentrate on other things, like just how lovely the music can be.  Even at practice, it was.

Thanks very much to Daniel Seigel and Opera Birmingham for this cool opportunity.  My favorite random line of the day: “I’d pay real money to see Juilliard play Birmingham Southern in football.”