Elucidate

I work in a place where the uninformed and out of touch try to dictate my work procedure. While they believe that my job is to sit in their driveway all night and watch over them, it is not so. My job is:

Working a fatality car crash where one of the victims is a little girl the same age as my own that is wearing the exact same outfit I dressed my child in that very morning.

Cleaning hepatitis infected blood and vomit from my uniform.

Telling a three year old child why mommy is going to the hospital and daddy is going to jail.

Letting off of my halfway pulled trigger because the sixteen year old I was aiming at finally dropped his gun.

Standing knee deep in water while I pull a drunk from his vehicle that he ran into a ditch. On my birthday. My birthday is in December.

Entering an un-air conditioned trailer in the middle of July and finding a dead body that had lain there for two weeks. (Dead bodies swell and bloat with gases until they finally rupture from the pressure. The smell of the escaping gases in unbearable. Yeah, he exploded while I was there. Not to mention that he was partially cooked due to the extreme heat.)

Should I keep going, or have you had enough?

Modified limited hang out.

(So that's how you change the damn font! Did I? Hell.) Rehearsals are interminable. Some of the roles are double-cast, so we have to do each scene twice. I have a lot of nothing to do, and a lot of standing, which causes me extreme pain. I hide it well, and no one knows my foot is broken. (Why do I hide it? This thought just occurred to me.) Also, I was told to be at the theatre at 0900 on Saturday to assist in set construction. Don't want to, since I will have just gotten off from a night's work. And there's that foot thing. Hopefully something will make it worth my time, sleep, and the fact that I'll probably have to leave my girls with their mother that night. The thought is anathema to me. Grr. Maybe I need a Saturday anyway. I'll check with the old friends to see if anything is cooking. Of course, there is always the off-off-off chance something else may come up. Boy can dream.

Varsouviana

Over three months now. On to it. At the very beginning of this blog, I alluded to changes. Done. I'm divorced. I have the girls. Enough on that. Maybe not yet. I'm not looking to see anyone, but I'm not closed off to it either. I don't suppose I'm a very good prospect. Divorced midnight cop with two small girls. I'm like Clint Eastwood in Tightrope. Now, move forward by moving back.

Been a busy actor this year. I last mentioned Streetcar, but I've done another play since then, and am just now beginning a new one. About a month after Streetcar, I did Neil Simon's "God's Favorite" with the Clinton Brick Streets players. Had a good role in that one. Scene stealer. That play experience began horribly, but not due to any human fuck-ups. Middle of summer, but they wouldn't turn on the air conditioning until the week of the performance. Exact opposite at the Black Rose Theatre, where I'm doing "Who Killed Aunt Caroline." It's freezing, and my teeth chatter. The play itself is a bit corny, but I see where good actors might could have fun with it.

Muy Fantastico!

I just watched this in my office and actually applauded at the end.

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Spectacle indeed.

A Southern Spectacle

Actor's Playhouse presents a Williams classic

By Cheree Franco

Special to Rankin Ledger

In A Streetcar Named Desire, native Mississippian Tennessee Williams crafted an ambitious drama, layered with witty symbolism, lust, lies and Southern decorum.
And Actor's Playhouse in Pearl, where Williams' play will be performed this month, is no stranger to ambition.
Photos of past productions - Les Misérables, Chicago and The Sound of Music - line the corrugated walls of this warehouse-turned-theater. The current enthusiasm onstage, as the actors wisecrack their way through a tenuous rehearsal - their first "off script" - promises a unique take on Williams' classic.
Kristi Johnson, a daytime education administrator in the surgical department at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, has spent recent evenings blocking sets and coaching actors, as the director of the Playhouse's upcoming performance of Streetcar.
"I'm really focusing on the theme of self-preservation," she explained. "Stanley is openly designated 'animal,' but every one of these characters is motivated by the basic instinct to 'kill or be killed.' They each stand to lose something that defines their existence."
Explaining the character he portrays, Clif Kirkland said, "Stanley's only thought is to remove the threat" posed by Blanche's visit and her haughty appraisal of his "vulgar" lifestyle.
After a pause, Kirkland added, "He always has to be right about everything. I'm not sure Stanley's very likable."
A police officer at Hinds Community College, Kirkland took part in the school's recent production of Much Ado About Nothing.
"I'm still riding that high, so I wanted to get back to the stage as soon as possible," he said. "That's why I auditioned for Streetcar."
"My character's likeable," Andy Achord interjected. "Mitch is a good person in a play of confused characters."
A busy dentist, Achord pursues acting as a retreat from the daily grind. He was drawn to Streetcar, his third show with Actor's Playhouse, because of its Southern setting.
"This play is an actor's play in every sense," Johnson notes. "It gives the actors a chance to challenge themselves, sink their teeth into a character and experience that may be disturbing and difficult to address."
Or, as Annie Cleveland put it, "Streetcar is a real show that means something. It's hard as a young adult to get a show like this."
The remaining key cast members, Cleveland and Kerri Courtney, playing Stella and Blanche respectively, are pursuing careers in theater.
"It's fun to be onstage, to step into someone else's skin for a purpose. To be able to influence an audience, that's the coolest thing," Courtney said.
A sophomore at Belhaven, she is already an eight-year theater veteran.
Cleveland, a high school senior, credits her dramatic education to Murrah's Academic and Performing Arts Complex program. She plans to study theater at the University of Southern Mississippi.
"At first I did not want to be in front of people, but a friend drug me to an audition in eighth grade, and I ended up liking it," she said. "Somehow, you're saying words that are not your words, but it's still so personal and powerful because you're connecting with people."
Tennessee Williams may be powerful, but he's also intimidating, Johnson said.
"The audience expects so much when they come to see this play," he said. "This is my directorial debut, so I'm learning as I go, but I've got a talented cast, and I'm fortunate to have the guidance and support of Lavonne Bruckner," Actor's Playhouse artistic director.
Courtney said Bruckner is doing great things with the Pearl theater.
"There's so much talent in Mississippi, and Actor's Playhouse is a perfect venue to showcase that," Courtney said.

Other than the fact that my quotes were badly paraphrased, pretty neat. And that pic? Awful.

From Saturday at rehearsal

The men fallen to the wayside.
Sad casualties of the stifling RED.
Everything beautiful is gone.
Broken and charred, I stumble out,
grey encroaches the white.
I am. I was. I will.

And this.

June light as the moonlight,
expanses of cotton dully glow,
cigarettes alight, laughter illuminates the night.
I take her towards the bridge,
the revelers noise and figures growing dim.
Day-Glo spraypainted messages--
(Tom '86--Utica goes down--I love C.W.)
--hardly visible in the dark.
The cold should breed unease--
but she is warm, and offers invitation I am unable to accept.

Por Segunda.

Been a bit longer than I would have liked. Well, I'm here now, ain't I? So how about it?

I've been cast as Stanley Kowalski in the Actor's Playhouse production of "A Streetcar Named Desire." He's pretty easy to find. I'm gonna try and add a little snakiness to him. Luckily, I've never seen the play performed, so no one else's reading of Stanley will color my own. I'm excited. I like play-acting. I hope someone actually comes to see me in this one. Looking back, I'm glad no one came to "Much Ado About Nothing." I had such high hopes for it, and it turned out so badly. So badly.