Color Me Green

Once I was a green puppet. By day I bait the circumsized from variable social strata. But tonight my green eyeshadow is perfection. I have tried to wear green eyeshadow in several plays. Once I nearly came to blows with a cantonese directorix named Pang Yuan Yuan in a production of Lysistrata; she had a nine-and-a-half-foot spandex vagina onstage and yet I was forbidden from sporting green eyeshadow. But, victory is mine: thank you, Lord, for amy, sharon, anna, sage, moss, and spring garden.

Casket Cattle Call

I was tickled to see shoeboxes being used for the gold, silver, and lead caskets in rehearsal two days ago. This morning they were cake boxes. This afternoon they resembled an installation from The International Museum of Occidental Briefcases.

There are only two people in the world who are to be trusted with directing The Merchant of Venice, and one of them is Daniel Fish. The Other? NOYB.

Fun Fact: Susannah Schulman, last season's Kate Nickleby and Rosalind later this summer in Moscone's As You Like It, once played a Human Gold Casket in Merchant of Venice twelve summers ago in another Shakespeare festival far far away. She wore a laundry basket and sang a la mode of Dame Julie Andrews (circa pre-op).

I honestly believe the recipe for World Peace is more productions of The Merchant of Venice.

The quality of today's blog is brought to you courtesy of Sean "Nag Nicely" Daniels.

Twenty One Inch Salute

I love Daniel Fish. He is brave. I think he's a genius. I wonder if he has the same waist size as Marcia Pizzo.

Aloha Means Wig

Restoration Comedy opened and its too glorious to blog about. Now I'm in Merchant of Venice with Daniel Fish directing. He's horrifyingly smart and right-on with that play, which I have to say, is one of my top five favorites ever, the oevure of Amy Freed naturally excepted. Andy Murray (Graziano) called me a "poof" within fifteen seconds of the first rehearsal, emblemizing the whirligig of tolerance found within the world of the piece itself. Delia Mac Dougall (Nerissa) tromped on my favorite line of the play during the read-through. I had neither the heart nor the nerve to tell her that this play was called The Merchant, and not the Merry Wives, of Venice. The Oxford Shakespeare footnoted "bosom lover" as "close friend," overlaying the problems of the play by continuing five centuries of tight-bunned scholarship (as in "Gosh, that librarian's bun of hair must hurt" rather than "Work those glutes, girl!"). The cast is awesome. David Chandler and Jenny Bacon who play Shylock and Portia are so good the Simon Wiesenthal Center'll send 'em a plaque before its over; I'd bet on it, if Lutherans were any good at betting.