Parade

If you're looking for an informative post about the upcoming audition tour, go here or here. Or work backwards through last year's audition tour diary starting here. Or check back later this week for a post on the audition workshops I've done this fall.

But today's entry is a plug for my recent extra-curricular activity.

Parade had a controversially short run on Broadway, and it won 2 Tonys in 2000. I've been fortunate to be able to work on a production of it this fall at my son's high school in Falls Church, VA. If you don't know Theatre at Marshall, you probably think I'm out of my mind for spending my spare time doing a high school show. But it's a brilliant theatre program by any standard, and I thoroughly enjoy the hundreds of hours it takes to put a musical on stage there every year :) The responsibility of raising my own teenagers has filled me with humility and fear. But working with kids on theatre and music usually leaves me energized and clear-headed. Easy for me to say, because I'm not a teacher and I don't spend day in and day out with these complicated bundles of hope, despair, and hormones. But I have more tolerance for them than I do for most adults.

Back to Parade. Jason Robert Brown's fascinating score draws on all those great early 20th-century styles - ragtime, Sousa marches, parlor ballads - but it has an appealing contemporary flavor. Alfred Uhry's book has given these students a more vivid history lesson than they'll ever find in a classroom. And even though the story takes place almost a hundred years ago, it resonates more strongly with today's world than it should. It's a story about missed opportunity, mob psychology, and both the best and the worst of human nature.

I'm biased, of course, but if you live in the DC area, you should check us out. This weekend, November 2-5 - more info at www.marshalltheatre.org.

Back to Work

Off to finish the application screening for Chicago and Vienna. Then to figure out how to pack all the paperwork, the computing and electronic gear, 2 weeks worth of clothing, and the approved zip-lock-bag collection of 3-oz bottles...

This afternoon's CD screening mp3 tagging amusement (for an explanation, go here and scroll down to the bottom): Tommy the T K Cowboy sings "Memories in That Old Storage Room". (a.k.a. Vissi d'arte). Spooky.