the show is open!

No reviews yet apart from audience raves (the most important kind, really).

I'm in LA through Wednesday. We played wobbly tennis in the sweaty heat and in a few hours we'll have a romp around Japantown to have dinner and buy new tabi. Then we'll see What To Wear, the Richard Foreman/Michael Gordon rock opera:

http://redcat.org/season/0607/the/whattowear.php

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an audience member speaks

My fabulous friend Steve Pawley saw the first Big Love preview this evening and had this to say:

I went to the first preview of Fools Fury's Big Love last night and it's definitely worth your time and hard-earned money! Fools Fury is one of the best 'next generation' theatre company's in town (check them out at www.foolsfury.org) and Davina has been a company member for some time. I've been lucky enough to work with their artistic director, Ben Yalom, in the past and have always been impressed with the work he and his company have produced. The work is very physical, informed by Suzuki and Viewpoints training.

Big Love is a slightly different look at love, sex, marriage and relationships (and many, many other things like tomatoes, suitcases and wedding cake) by Charles Mee. He summarizes it on his web site:

Big Love
Fifty brides flee their fifty grooms and seek refuge in a villa on the coast of Italy in this modern re-making of one of the western world's oldest plays, The Danaids by Aeschylus. And, in this villa on the Italian coast, the fifty grooms catch up with the brides, and mayhem ensues: the grooms arriving by helicopter in their flight suits, women throwing themselves over and over again to the ground, pop songs and romantic dances, and, finally, unable to escape their forced marriages, 49 of the brides murder 49 of the grooms—and one bride falls in love. About the same odds as today.

As you can see, it's got a little something for everyone! Plus it has the ever so wonderful Davina in a wedding gown slamming herself to the ground. What more could you want from an evening at the theatre!

I hope you can make it....

Big Love opens this week!

Featuring: Linda Ayres-Frederick, Davina Cohen, Teana David, Silvia Girardi, Brian Livingston, Rebecca Martin, Norman Munoz, Ryan O'Donnell, Baruch Porras-Hernandez, Josiah Polhemus

Director: Laley Lippard
Stage Manager: Amanda Melton

Lighting: David Slazsa
Sound: Patrick Kaliski
Costumes: Ambra Sulzbaugh
Set: Sean Riley

Go to www.foolsfury.org/now.html to buy tickets and for more information

welcome home

This









is what greeted me in the basement of my building when I returned from rehearsal this evening.

Now accepting captions.

LA hit 'n run

No, no, it's not what you think... I'm talking about my own wee jaunt to Los Angeles this weekend.

I left Oakland at 8:30 on Sunday morning, arrived in Burbank at 9:35 and then departed Burbank at 9:30 today. When I patted myself on the back for finding the $80 RT fare I failed to consider the fact that BART doesn't run early enough to get me to Oakland airport for an 8:30 flight on a Sunday morning, so I had to take stupid Super Shuttle ($25 plus tip) and leave at the appalling hour of 5:45 am. Naturally, I arrived at Oakland airport early enough to board the flight departing one hour before the one for which I was scheduled, but because I had a promotional fare Southwest wouldn't let me fly standby without paying some $100 more. So I sat in the chilly airport, hopped up on cold medicine, bundled in two sweatshirts and my fuzzy hat. I ate something made to resemble eggs and potatoes. I was in a stupor when I arrived in LA, but I think all the pressure changes actually helped move things around in my congested head.

Tony and I had a lovely day. We wandered around downtown LA looking for a much acclaimed (though ultimately barely adequate pizza place called Pitfire Pizza) before seeing Water and Power at the Mark Taper Forum. I believe this week is the final week and if you're in LA I definitely recommend it. It's different from the other work I've seen by Culture Clash (Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, the only other piece I've seen, was predominantly satire with multiple characters and lots of goofy comedy) - a serious drama with an expected dose of sentimentality and comedy; but it's much more traditionally structured as a narrative play concerning with the battles over resources, politics, cultural conflict, and crime in East LA at its core. The little boy who plays the deer dancer is superb. We had planned to follow it up, appropriately, with Quinceanera at a movie theater in Los Feliz, but we had trouble finding a parking spot and missed the start of the movie.

I love being in LA with Tony. Echo Park is great, the city is big enough that there's always fun stuff to do if stuff wants to be done, I'm excited to check out the dance classes and the Anusara kula and I know some great people in LA; but what I feel most profoundly right now is that I love being there with him. Tony's not a native Californian and more or less wound up in Southern California through a series of circumstantial accidents; but he's made a lovely, hospitable nest for himself (and has opened that home to me) while excitedly exploring the vast expanse of the desertbeachhillpolis that is the greater Los Angeles area. He's so fantastically engaged with his environment. I'm looking forward to an adventure in Orange County (of all places) where there's a cove with a great facade for cliff diving. And mountain biking in Topanga. And neighbors who have pet chickens. And falling asleep in a new place where the sounds at night are so different from the rattling, hooting, honking, bellowing, and shrieking of the Tenderloin. And falling asleep with Tony next to me. Or at least in the other room, instead of in another city.

fighting the good fight

I'm at home, fending off a rather persistent, but fortunately mild, cold; so there may be a lot of blogging today.

I don't have rehearsal until 4 so I had planned a big day including a jazz turns class with the fantastic Ann Barrett (www.annbarrett.com) and a trip to the SF Zinefest at Cellspace (www.cellspace.org), but the show opens in 2 weeks and I'm supposed to be on a plane to LA tomorrow so I've enslaved all my desires for physical activity and fun to good sense. I should receive two DVDs (Tsotsi and the first season of Queer As Folk) from Netflix this afternoon and until then there's plenty of prep I can do for rehearsal.

In other exciting news, I cooked chicken for the first time ever yesterday. For those readers who don't know I became a vegetarian in 1993 and in May of this year I started eating fish and I have since also had chicken and duck a few times, turkey once, and an accidental nibble of bacon in a quiche (I think I may have also had a bite of Tony's beef out of curiosity, but, strangely, I can't remember). My diet is still largely vegetarian, though I eat fish at least once a week. I am not a fan of duck and turkey and, at the moment, I seem to be into chicken (I had chicken soup on Thursday, chicken breast yesterday, and I have the stirrings of desire for chicken soup again today). Yesterday I ate a salmon bowl at Samovar for lunch and later in the day I bought a free range breast from this market in the Mission.

The market is a huge, cavernous space below ground with two long rows of glass-encased meats, fish, and poultry. I found the whole place mesmerizing and surreal and the chicken feet particularly fascinating - they were surprisingly human in their appearance, like pale, slender, long-nailed fingers. The rabbits, which I've never seen before, was skinned and decapitated with a kind of bloody orifice at the top of the neck. The squids and octopi were small with a sleek glaze and the Vietnamese prawns flecked with mysterious blue spots that looked like stains or little pebbles trapped inside their bodies.

I sauteed the chicken breast in olive oil with rosemary, pepper, and a little bit of oregano and made a side salad of arugula and gorgeous orange and yellow heirloom tomatoes. I also had some delicious white corn on the cob from the farmer's market.

I just decided I'd do some good, old fashioned googling about transitioning from a vegetarian to pescatarian or more omniviorous diet. I'm interested in what might be happening with my physiologically to inspire these dietary alterations and, of course, I'm always interested in the ethical considerations since they were the motivating force behind my vegetarianism in the fist place. I came across this gem:

"Fortunately science might solve this one too. Scientists have already grown small amounts of edible meat in a lab (also see New Harvest). Someday we may have the ability to grow meat in abundance without having to kill an animal to get it. Imagine eating the most succulent steak, genetically altered to produce Omega-3 fat instead of high cholesterol fat? Vegetables grown as meat!"

(www.nobeliefs.com)

I also discovered that there is a vegetarian food festival, Kin Jay, in Thailand every October (the first nine days of the ninth lunar moth). It is a festival of purification and presence (and, interestingly, more or less coincides with Yom Kippur). Perhaps I will have my own Kin Jay and try a new vegetarian or vegan creation every day during that period. It would be fun to do with people - I wonder if I can convince Tony, especially as I will be in LA during part of that time.

What else?

Yesterday I went to Osento, the wonderful women's bathhouse/sanctuary in the Mission, with Silvia (one of the Big Love cast members) and then we stopped at a delightful store run by an idiosyncratic Japanese woman who talked loudly and ehthusiastically on the phone the entire time we were there. She had gorgeous hats and scarves and I bought one of each.

Here are some pictures of me in my new, fuzzy, hand-knit hat.



Then I saw Eating Skeletons, a play in the Fringe Festival (www.sffringe.org) and went to Original Joe's where I reunited with assorted people I hadn't seen in ages and met some wonderful new LA-based folks.

Okay, that's quite enough rambling for now. I'm off to buy some Ricola and make something of this house-bound day.

good news

the colposcopy results are in and my cervix is in good nick!

Yay!