Beneath the Planet of the Batons

I think the baton twirling is only the half of it in Sharon Ott's past. When she got up to help us stage the "fashion show" in Act Two, I was sure that she had runway experience as a girl. I want to start an irresponsible blog rumor that she was a former Miss Teen Milwaukee who twirled during the talent segment of the pageant.

My costume fittings are almost too fantastic to blog, as I'm afraid they are a dream and if I acknowledge them in print, I will be punished and what was real will have ben but fantasy: la vida es suena, you know? When I go into the costume shop for fittings, everywhere I look are pieces of Foppington's costumes. Its like they've sent all the other characters' frocks off to Saipan. Its Novelty Fashion Heaven.

The Twirling Pisces

Sharon Ott can twirl batons! Who knew? A majorette with the same birthday as Liz Taylor. How fabulous is that? She's so smart, describing the play as living somewhere between light opera and opera buffo. But more urgently: my costume: Anna Oliver came running through the green room with some fabric that triggered a Proustian moment wherein I remembered the upholostery on an Arctic Cat snowmobile, Fargo, North Dakota, circa 1969. And then you should see the fabric for my cuffs in Act One: butterflies: in my stomach and on the sleeves. I looked up and saw Elijah Alexander who plays Loveless tied down with big thick ropes to the four posters of a bed while Ron Campbell read really flowery heterosexual porn to him. What a killer gig.

The Butt Balloon Talks

Today we read through the play and Sharon Ott talked about everything. I love her. When I was a little boy in phd school I was playing Bentley Summerhays in Misalliance directed by our costume designer Anna Oliver's dad and then Sharon came to town before bringing Berkeley Rep to the Tony Awards and cast Anna Oliver's mom in Misalliance at the Rep, so its like a big whirlpool of schoolday memories coalescing on Heinz Street. And then Amy Freed talked and she is the totallest genius working in the theater today and I shall fall in love with her presently and the other actors are GORGEOUS and FUNNY and GOOD. When I went back to Windsor that night to do the puppets Ron Campbell and I had to tell everyone how GORGEOUS the cast was and they wanted to kick us out of Windsor and throw us into Datchet Mead. But tonight I was a puppet. Some of the puppets are eating smores and drinking martinis with the wild turkeys tonight. Especially Sean Daniels who is such a stud as Associate Artistic Director while Moscone's schmoozing the Twin Cities.

I did! I did get fitted for a muslin butt-balloon!

I had a 95 minute costume fitting today. I tried on a mauve wig. The small one. The big one was in a refrigerator box in the corner. I got fitted for a codfish codpiece. They tried to get me into a corset; I held onto the filing cabinet as if it were a four-poster, but I must have had too much at the barbeque. Tonight I am a puppet.

Tomorrow I get fitted for a muslin mockup of a butt-balloon, I hope.

Today I am a Puppet

testing, sweet testing