Wednesday, May 28, 2008

The Little Mermaid- or, absolutely hilarious puns.


Drama!
Originally uploaded by chlorinebeach.
Today! I woke early, + dressed myself for the day: Pink spotty skirt, paint shoes, blue double-u-neck American Apparel dress, boat sweater, fish earrings, Mrs. Lovett hair (I woke up with A Little Priest in my head). I really don't think I went overboard- I could have worn my mermaid skirt from Halloween (speaking of which, I must begin planning my costume immediamente).

On the train in, I read Fuddy Meers, which was vaguely confusing, but an entertaining read. Not really any (female) characters that I'm attracted to, but I won't be in the United States (hopefully) when we do that, so no loss. I can see, however, why Lindsay-Abbare is Matt Koenig's favorite writer. As I tittered over the script, the man across the aisle from me tapped me on the arm, and asked
"Are you an actress?"
"I'm in school for it, yes. Why?"
"Oh, well it's just that you really don't see too many people carrying around scripts these days."
"I guess that's so. Are you involved in theatre?"
"Well, I went to Carnegie Mellon for design, but..."
Ha! We had a nice little chat after that. He's apparently a web designer and photographer now, but that was cool.

I met up with Mary at the Lundt-Fontaine, + we got our Little Mermaid tickets- right in the front row. Then it was skipping off to MoMA where we were total badasses and walked straight past the line (after one of the guards was very rude to me) to the information desk for our free SUNY tickets. HA! I was looking for the Dada exhibit, but couldn't find it. However, we did see some stuff by Olafur Eliasson, who "concieves immersive environments- from model room featuring visionary sculptural maquettes to fluid light projections and multipart photographic series ... Probing the cognitive aspects of what it means to see, Eliasson creates complex optical phenomena using simple, makeshift technical devices." (-Museum Guide) It was quite neat- yellow lighting turned everybody black + white (although, when I tried to take a picture, everything just looked yellow), there were some neat mirror/spotlight tricks, and some things which I think were created just so the artist could laugh at his audience. Mostly though, we walked about being pretentious and playing name-that-ism. I also got to yell at The Absolutely Naked Fragrance, although not quite as much as I wanted to.

Hungry, we got some Italian food, which was good, but unimpressive, and then went to the theatre, where I dropped off a note for Merwin.

WELL! Disney certainly does have enough money. It's been a while since I've been to a real out-and-out splashy Braodway musical, so it was good, but at some points I felt like I was watching a Vegas show- I concluded that Ariel actually only wanted to go to the surface because all of the mermen were homosexuals: she needed somebody who could actually love her (and how's THAT for vigorous misuse of hyphenation?). They really took the Ursula-as-vamp thing + ran with it, which was delightful. The boy playing flounder was really cute, and overall, it was quite well done. I mostly spent the whole time drooling over all of the costumes.

During curtain call, I waved madly at Merwin, + he waved back I made a come-to-the-stage-door motion, which I did. He explained how the guy fell from the rafters, showed us the special 3M floor, the tracks, the costumes, all the bits. It was quite interesting, + quite a bit smaller (duh) than the last backstage of his I saw, at the Mariott Marquis, because it is supposed to be a straight play theatre, not a musical theatre (with 1400+ seats...?). There is therefore less storage space, and the flies were used rigorously. I will also never, ever complain about having to do things for a show- he had to learn all kinds of new forms of locomotion for the Merboots, does at least six different costume/makeup changes and climbs about 100 flights of stairs per show. There are also well over 500 light cues alone.

On the train, I read The House of Yes, which was unabashedly glamorous. I am extremely attracted to that show, I would love to be either Jackie-O or the mother. I guess I'll start thinking about my monologue soon- hopefully something from August: Osage County. Driving home, we stopped to let a turkey and her 14 chicks (turk-lets? turkey-tots? turkins?) cross the road. They were SO cute!

Now, a casa, it is time for some relaxing, and perhaps some more work on the skirt I started yesterday. I love my friends and all, but it is so damn convenient to be able to be a complete hermit for a month- I get to really get lots of me-things done.

1 comment:

Kate @ Tres Lola said...

That is rather impressive that you managed to meet a decent conversation on the train! Ha, most commute stories are dramas <3