Time spent in the theater has continued apace, however. Just after the last entry, we caught the thoroughly delightful W-Salem Theatre Alliance production of "Avenue Q," which was fun from beginning to end. And the night after that, we were at the opening night of Kernersville Little Theatre's production of Joe DiPietro's amusing and touching "Over the River and Through the Woods," which had some of our favorite people doing nice jobs in their roles.
Perhaps the most challenging and thought-provoking show(s) of recent months were encompassed in Triad Stage's presentation of a trilogy of plays by Reynolds Price, under the collective name of "New Music." We saw parts one and two on March 1, then followed with part three on March 8th. In both cases, we were able to catch the Post-Script discussion of the shows afterwards. It was a thorough and engrossing couple of nights of theater.
On March 21, I was able to join chiefly students of UNCG to hear playwright Carson Kreitzer talk about and read from her plays. She wrote the powerful "Self-defense, or the death of some salesmen" that we had seen at UNCG not too long ago. As someone now at least part-time involved in play writing, it was pleasant and reassuring to hear her talk about so many aspects of the process which echoed my own experiences and thoughts.
Last weekend, then, we had a triple-header with an add-on, making for a heavy and enjoyable theatrical time. On Friday night, we saw Chad Edwards' students at Mt. Tabor High School give a completely presentable version of "Into the Woods," a very hard musical by anyone's standards. I've seen at least one very bad version of it, and we both were thrilled at how well and professionally these students approached the job and the music. Kudos to all involved!!
On Saturday night, we were at the UpStage Cabaret (third floor at Triad Stage) to see Jonathan Larson's "Tick, Tick, Boom," a very autobiographical musical he performed solo but was later, after his premature death, adjusted for three performers. Very nice indeed.
And finally, the touching and emotional musical "Violet" was how we spent our Sunday afternoon, with a very nice cast led by Heather Maggs at Theatre Alliance. For those who prefer light and joyous in their plays and musicals, I suggest you bypass this one given the opportunity to see it. But for me, it had substance and ended with a ray of light -- so I liked it, of course.
Also, though, on Saturday afternoon, I gave a workshop on the basics of playwriting for 10 folks at the Caldcleugh Center in Greensboro, at the request of Robin McGhie. I think we accomplished what she had hoped, which was to get some folks thinking about writing play scripts and expressing themselves, made hopefully a little easier by knowing some of the "work" that goes on around the actual process of visualizing and writing a script. People seemed to enjoy it, anyway, and I certainly did. We went well past the allotted two hours, but no one seemed to care. I hope it leads to some scripts for Caldcleugh, or for other purposes!
That's it for now -- keeping busy, still sending out scripts, and thinking ahead to what's next, whether novels or plays. Lots to do. Now if days were only more than 24 hours .....
