Laramie Project

 

By Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Project
The Laramie Project tells the story of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who was brutally beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die. Based on interviews with the residents of Laramie, Wyoming, all stunningly portrayed by an ensemble group of eleven actors, this theatrical experience will move audiences with first-hand accounts of cruelty, bigotry, compassion and love. Rated PG 14
April 24, 25, 26, May 1, 2, 3, 8 & 9
Show Times: Friday & Saturday 8 PM, Sunday 2 PM

Support the Matthew Shepard Foundation in its cause to ERASE HATE. The Albright Theatre will donate all ticket revenue from the Sunday, April 26th 2:00 matinee to the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Additionally, $1 for every ticket sold to the other seven performances will also be donated to the foundation.
To find out more about the Matthew Shepard Foundation please visit www.matthewshepard.org


Tickets are $13 for adults, $10 for students/seniors. Reservations are HIGHLY recommended and can be made by calling the theater at 630.406.8838.

I strongly encourage you to see this amazing show....

When it rains...

It's been one of those weeks.
If something could go wrong last week it did.
Monday and Tuesday were relatively uneventful. I spent a lot of time just trying to figure out what belonged where with all the crap I brought home from the store. I had a pile that covered the entire floor of the room where it was all dumped.

Wednesday was when things started getting interesting. My friend Jayne called and offered to help me finish moving things from the store on Tuesday and to help me get at least the main floor of my house back in some semblance of an orderly living space. We spent most of Tuesday getting the last of the store stuff moved and that cleaned up. Wednesday morning she came over and we headed to the furniture outlets down in Naperville to look for chairs for my living room. We were going to redesign that room to make space for Grandpa's big table that had been at the store. We needed to replace the big sofa with two smaller chairs. After shopping all day and getting some ideas we came back here to empty the room and reassess the situation before making any final decisions. The very last piece of furniture that needed to be taken out of the room was the old coffee table. As we were taking it out the front door she catches the heel of her boot on the threshold and twists her ankle. It swelled to twice its normal size in about 5 seconds so I helped her to my car and rushed her to the emergency room. We also had half our children in different places all over town so I had to go do pick up duty after leaving her for x-rays. It wasn't broken but is severely sprained with torn ligaments.

The rest of the week was spent doing my best to get things put back together as best I could. I also finally managed to get my store PC hooked up in the den. But it was quite a battle to get the internet to work. We have a wireless network here and I don't have ethernet access in the office. So I had to install a wireless card in this PC. Initially the old one from the old PC didn't work so I went to Best Buy to get a new one because I thought Vista was the problem (isn't Vista always the problem?) But they talked me into a USB wireless thing. It worked but it was buggy and kept dropping the signal. So I went back and got an internal card. I installed it and it wouldn't complete the install process and kept crashing. So for shits and giggles I tried the old one again and lo and behold it worked! But then the printer went offline and took an entire day to get to work again. I had a brief panic attack yesterday when I first started the PC up it wouldn't boot. It kept going into recovery mode. I ended up getting it to boot long enough to uninstall a program that I think was causing the problem and so far today it is fine.

I also had a ridiculous argument with a cell phone salesman that ruined my Friday evening and in the end it was pointless. I'm not going to rehash that again because it just raises my blood pressure and pisses me off all over again. I will send out a general warning to everyone though. Don't buy your cell phones from anyone other than the official store. Those places in the malls, especially the kiosks, are professional scam artists. They will tell you all kinds of stuff and it will all be a lie. When you call them on their lies and try to make them accountable they will lie again and in the end you are screwed and there isn't anything you can do about it.

The icing on my shit cake this weekend is that we now have no water. The pressure has been slowly decreasing over the past few days. I called a plumber Saturday and he came took a 5 minute look at it, charged me $70 for the service call and told me he couldn't do anything to help. I left a bunch of messages and pager calls to the well company that drilled this new well in '05 but they had no one on call over the weekend I guess. Saturday and Sunday morning we had enough pressure to flush first floor toilets and take one shower per day (yesterday was my day!) but no laundry or dishwashing. This morning we don't even have enough to fill a coffee pot. I'm waiting now for them to get here to hopefully fix it.

I've also had little annoying things like my dog Shadow keeps puking all over the place. I'm going on the assumption that spring has uncovered a whole host of yucky disgusting things for him to eat in the woods and he is now paying for it. He wakes me up at least once or twice a night to go outside. I also had an almost flat tire last night when I came out of rehearsal. Luckily I noticed it and drove directly to the gas station on the corner and put air in it (in the rain). It looks okay this morning but I'll have to take it in sometime today or tomorrow. I don't want to get stranded in Batavia late at night after a long rehearsal. Luckily I do have Steve's car in the garage if I need it, I just don't know if he left me any keys!

Last night was the first night of "tech week" for the play. We have rehearsals every night this week and the pressure is on. I'm getting nervous. I'm missing cues. I'm forgetting lines. I wake up in the middle of the night and feel like I'm going to throw up. But I know all this nervous energy will make for a fabulous show opening night (Friday!)

The well guys just arrived. I'm hoping they get it pumping again and I can just wash this week out of my hair and start fresh.

Rapp, RENT & REM

Yesterday we got to cross one more thing off our life list of things we want to do or see before we die.
 
We saw Anthony Rapp in RENT on Broadway (in Chicago). Sarah got to fulfill another on her list by getting the chance to meet him and have him autograph her copy of his autobiography With Out You.

We almost had the chance at an almost private audience with him but Sarah chickened out. We got to the theater early Sunday afternoon so we stopped in at the Tea Shop located next door. While we were sitting there enjoying our Chais, Earl Grey, and Hibiscus Teas she looks up and says that the guy at the counter looks a lot like Anthony. I casually turn to see and we all agree that it not only looks like Mark Anthony, but it is in fact him. There are two or three other guys talking to him and she doesn't want to be rude and interrupt. (I've done a good job in raising polite children at least!) I encourage her and assure her that he will probably be very nice about it. If he didn't expect to get noticed I doubt he would go to the shop right next to the theater an hour before curtain when there are certain to be fans around. But her shyness overcomes her and she doesn't do it. Within minutes of his leaving the cafe she is almost literally kicking herself for the lost opportunity to talk to one of her idols.
 
I don't remember exactly when we first discovered RENT. I don't know if it was the music or the movie that we saw/heard first. She was in 6th or 7th grade. I could ask her, she has a memory like an elephant but she is sleeping off the excitement of the weekend now. But whenever it was, it became an instant favorite. We bought the DVD and she downloaded all of the music on iTunes. We watched it over and over, memorizing all the lines. Falling impossibly in love with Mark (her) and Collins (me) and Angel (everyone!).

A few years back the touring company came to Milwaukee and Steve took her to see that production. I couldn't go for some forgotten reason. She had wanted to see it when she was in NYC on Broadway but she was on a school sponsored trip and it was deemed inappropriate for middle schoolers. I promised her that if we ever got back to NYC together and it was still playing we would see it. It closed last year so that dream was dashed. (We did see the final show at the movie theater when it came around.) But then we heard that Anthony and Adam Pasqual were reviving their original roles and going on one last tour we started watching for show dates in Chicago. We actually first bought tickets for last weekend but soon realized that Sarah would not be back from her trip to Florida in time and later Steve's work schedule changed and he would also be out of town on Palm Sunday. Luckily we were able to sell our tickets to friends and purchase new tickets for Easter Sunday.

The performance was fabulous! Everything we had imagined and hoped it would be. The casts voices were as strong as ever. The only negative I had was the tall young man in front of me with the rather large afro. But I managed. Sarah's piano teacher is also a big RENT-head and she had already seen the show in Chicago the previous week and told us the inside scoop on getting to the Stage Door and securing a good place to get autographs when the cast came out. We followed her instructions and Sarah was in good position to see her idol one more time. This time prepared and steeled with the mutual energies of fellow fans surrounding her with similar intent. She had also run into a school friend during intermission and had brought her along on their stage door expedition. At first they were told that the cast would not be coming out that day because it was the last show in Chicago and they had other commitments. But they persisted and their patience eventually paid off. Anthony came out and signed her book and thanked all the fans for coming out. She was thrilled and completely starstruck.

 
If you look really close you can see the top of his head. Sarah is one of the brunettes near the front. I stayed at the back with Emma for fear of her getting crushed and to leave room for other autograph seekers.

 
That is the face of a very happy girl.

*I didn't really say anything about REM in this post yet did I? I used it partly for the alliteration but I will try to connect it in briefly. First of all, Steve and I have been REM fans from way back in the 80s with their first few albums. When we met Steve says he was instantly impressed because I knew a lot of the older REM songs and was also a fan. Anthony Rapp also tells of his first audition for RENT with Jonathon Larson in his book. He chose to sing REM's "Losing My Religion" as his audition song because he had also always been a big fan of REM and particularly of Michael Stipe's vocals. When Sarah first became a fan she had to once again admit that her parents do have pretty good taste in music and raised her right in that regard.

You come into this life alone, and you leave it alone.

I'm feeling kind of emo today.

Steve left this morning for Vegas for a week, Sarah is in Florida on a work tour and won't be back until Sunday afternoon, so it is just Emma and I. I let her sleep in today after spending all of yesterday cleaning, purging and reorganizing her bedroom. I'm always amazed at how much crap my kids can accumulate in a short time.

This morning I headed over to the store to load up as much of my fabric as I could fit in the Volvo. (115 bolts if you are keeping score at home.) I also disassembled a shelving unit and packed up my cutting table. I'm hoping to be able to start filling Etsy orders from home sooner rather than later. Running back and forth to cut and pack orders and then take them to the post office is getting old fast! As I was pulling out of the driveway over there I realized something.

The main reason I am closing the physical store is because I'm tired of doing it all alone. There it is, that's the truth. I could not go another 6 months or a year trying to juggle it all alone. Having to do everything alone from shoveling the snow off the sidewalk to preparing the inventory and books for the accountant is just too much. I realized today just how much I've done by myself there and it overwhelmed to the point of tears. (I'm crying now while I type this.) Even the little things like not being able to go get lunch or pick up my kids from school without closing up and feeling guilty for leaving and potentially missing a customer where stressing me out. What started as a great adventure and an attempt by me to prove something to myself has ended with a big ol' reality check.

I've spent the past three days cleaning and purging my house alone. I must get the upstairs room ready for all of my inventory and make it animal proof and figure out some type of organizational system so I can keep track of everything. I now have a pile the size of Mt. Rushmore in a corner that needs to be packed up and taken to Goodwill or at the very least put in the garage until the Church Sale at the end of the month. I don't have boxes, I don't have time to go get boxes, I'm exhausted from climbing up and down those stairs 50 times with garbage and fabric. The room also still has Steve's desk in one corner because he will be working from home again once he starts this new job when he gets back from Vegas. There is still a huge TV/entertainment center on one wall and a treadmill and bike in there too, there really isn't anyplace else in the house for them so I guess I have to work around them. Maybe I'll actually get around to using one of them occasionally! The laundry area is also at one end of the room which tends to get overwhelmed with piles of clean and dirty clothes. (I did spend the first two days of "break" doing laundry, I lost count after 15 loads!) I still need to clean the carpets in there and in Emma's room before I bring much more in there. (Shadow went through a period of extreme separation anxiety when I was gone all day and started peeing up there.)

I put my Etsy store on vacation mode until I get all this sorted out. I still have about 4 or 5 orders to fill and ship and plan to get those taken care of today or tomorrow. I just know when I get distracted and stressed out like this, I make mistakes. My mistakes usually end up costing me money. Like the time I shipped a huge order to Australia, but it was the wrong order! By the time I got the right fabrics to the right people I think I lost about $100. I pride myself too strongly on good customer service and prompt shipping too take the chance of screwing up right now.

I also have play rehearsals three nights a week. It is going really well and I'm having a blast working on it and making new friends. We are supposed to be "off book" by Sunday for Act I. Of course most of my big monologues and scenes are in Act I so I'm starting to stress. I'm going to have to recruit Emma to read lines with me over the next few days. The cats and dogs can't exactly follow along in the script to tell me when I make a mistake! There are some challenging parts where I have to change characters mid-scene that I'm hoping will come along better once I have my lines down.

Funny how things work out...
I just got off the phone with my Mom. I was trying to figure out how to close this pitty party post and the phone rang. Those psychic Mom vibes don't get weaker when your kids become adults that's for sure. I feel better now. I'm still a little overwhelmed and stressed but I'll get over it. I guess I won't be needing the black nail polish and skinny black jeans after all.