Good-bye to 2013

What do I call it? Maybe “the year of the bladder cancer.” But, it’s funny. I can’t remember when I found out that I had it. I think it was like in June of 2012. So I spent the last half of 2012 and the first half of 2013 going through bladder cancer treatments. During the last scoping, I was OK. I’m supposed to get scoped again this coming January.

I think the story of the year is the “do nothing Congress.” The Republicans spent so much time trying to derail Obama, that nothing really got done. Bitching. Backbiting. Stonewalling. Name calling. Pretty sad. Throw the bums out.

In February, Pope Benedict XVI announced he was going to retire. In March, the Cardinals selected Jorge Mario Bergogilio of Argentina. He chose the name Francis and has been making waves big time ever since.

April brought the Boston Marathon bombing story. Sad. The bombers were a pair of Muslim immigrants from Chechen. The youngest was very promising. Not any more.

May brought scandals to the White House. Benghazi, Lybia, the Justice Department spying on journalist’s phone records, and the IRS giving intensive scrutiny to right-wing groups.

In June Edward Snowden, a former employee of the NSA, blew the whistle on that Agency revealing that they spy on just about everybody.

In July, the Duke and Dutchess of Cambridge welcome a son, George. Also in July, the Sparrows defended on Westport Island. We missed going in 2012 because of my cancer. It was great to be back.

In August, the unrest and Civil War dominated much of the news. The Tigers lead their division and look like a real World Series threat.

In September, the world wiggles out of an out and out confrontation with Syria as Assad agrees to give up his chemical weapons.

In October, the government shuts down because the parties can’t agree on anything. The Tigers win their division, but lose to Boston in the first round of the playoffs. The Affordable Healthcare launch is terrible and the Republicans escape the wrath of the public.

November saw Obama’s approval rating sink to an all-time low of something like 37 percent. Iran strikes a deal regarding uranium enrichment in exchange for easing of sanctions.

In December, 95 year-old Nelson Mandela dies. He was one of history’s great people. The Lions lose six of their last seven games and miss the playoffs. I've been waiting for them to win the championship since 1957. The Lions fire Jim Schwartz and are searching for a new head coach to lead them to the promised land. Lottsa luck with that.

The Day After

We just sort of hung out at Jenny's. Julie and Jenny went to Home Goods looking for “after Christmas specials.” I think Jenny buy some. Christmas plates, bowls, and napkins. Julie bought nothing.

Rick and Addie arrived from Vermont about 1500 hours. Rick said they drove through a lot of snow squalls. It was great seeing them. Addie is becoming beautiful.

After dinner, well, actually before and during dinner, Addie and Sophie practiced their two character version of Wicked. Pretty cute. Addie has a really nice voice and seems to have very good pitch. They both need to learn to “cheat out.”

Home Again. Home Again.

On Friday Jenny drove us to LaGuardia. Rick rode shotgun. We made really good time going and got there in about 45 minutes. We checked our bags and got through security easily. The plane boarded on time, left on time, and got to Detroit about half an hour early.

A selfie in the airplane.

Jenny rumming the Christmas Cake.

A selfie in the Ambassador Theatre waiting for Chicagoto begin.

Rosie came to airport and picked us up. It was good to get home. Dixie was very happy to see us.

Merry Christmas

Last night we agreed to be up and ready for Christmas morning action by 0800. I woke up about 0715. Jenny was up next. Then Julie. Then Bob. Then Sophie. Then the unwrapping began. Sophie got a. New Kindle, a new iPhone, and a lot of other stuff. 

Tom sent the usual strange collection of stuff. He sent Jenny a Titanic snow globe with a bedroom scene, the boat, and the main staircase. The music box plays Nearer My God to Thee.

He sent Julie and I martini glasses with silhouettes of the Paris skyline. As they were glass, we have no way of getting them home ... and we aren't going to ship them. 

After all the packages were opened we ate Jenny's Christmas breakfast. It was wuh-wuh-wonderful. 

After breakfast, Bob worked on activating Sophie's new phone. That took a lot of the afternoon.

We exchanged some photos and texts with Tom and Meg. We also checked in on FaceBook. 

Julie's present from Sophie. Julie loves it.  Below is Bob in his RMS Titanic beanie that Tom sent him.

Chicago and Ice

Yesterday we hung out with Bob, Jenny, and Sophie. Julie and Jenny went to the gym. Sophie slept until about noon. I guess the basketball tired her out.

In the evening Jenny drove us into the city. We made great time until we got to 48th Street. It was a two lane road with parking on both sides, however, big problems at both ends: construction which eliminated a lane. It must have taken us forty minutes to get to 8th Avenue. Eventually we made it.

Dinner at Joe Allen. I like that restaurant. The walls are lined with show posters of shows that didn't make it. The food is great. They make great martinis, too.

Then we saw a tremendous production of Chicago. The leads, especially Roxie, were wonderful. The choreography was fantastic. It was just a super show.

More pictures from Tom of the ice storm that hit much of lower Michigan in the early morning hours of the day we flew out. 

Holiday Trip to Jenny's

Well, I guess I will start writing again on a daily basis and enter the stuff in my blog. I stopped writing in my DayOne log when I lost about half of a year's worth of entries in a computer glitch. I did continue to write in my Papa Leroux Blog and post on both PATCH and the Guild website. 

Yesterday, Julie and I flew to Laguardia Airport in New York on Delta flight 1948.  I didn't think we were going to get out of Detroit as the weather forecast was dire. To our west and north there were bad ice storms. Bill's family lost power in East Lansing. Tom had trees down in his yard. (See the picture below.) Lots of people in Michigan were powerless. 

We went straight to DTW in a MetroCar. The plane loaded on time, left on time, and arrived at LGA ahead of schedule. A car picked us up and we were at Jenny's by about 1500. 

Scientists don't really seem to have and answer to questions about why we have this wild weather. They blame it on the jet stream or on global warming. I personally think the warming has something to do with it, but I view the changes on a lot larger piece of time. We know there have been several glacial and intra-glacial periods in the earth's history. We just haven't been around long enough to really understand it. 

It is nice being with Jenny, Bob, and Sophie. Sophie and Bob were at one of Sophie's basketball games when we arrived. They came home announcing that Sophie's team won, 28-24. They are now 4-2 on the season. Bob seems to be really into the coaching and parent involvement in the team. Ah, CYO. 

The Lions lost to the Giants and I think that eliminates them from the playoffs. The last time they won the championship was 1957. I was in the Army and stationed at Herzo base in Germany. Fifty-six years and waiting. 

After dinner we watched It's a Wonderful Life. I say "we," but mean "they." I fell asleep as I had been up since about 0430 and had a bit too much vodka. 

A Little Night Music - III

At the Players Guild of Dearborn, casting falls to, what else, the Casting Committee led by Bob Jones, the Casting Governor. About a month before the audition dates, an audition notice for the show is distributed by email to more than 800 theatre people in southeast Michigan. The audition notice provides information about dates of auditions, performance dates, and, more importantly, information about the characters in the show. The notice is designed to give people interested in auditioning some insight into what the director and the casting committee might be hoping to find.

For A Little Night Music the audition notice also included information about the music the characters would be required to sing and the vocal ranges for the songs. The audition information was also posted on the guild’s web site: playersguildofdearborn.org.

There are usually two nights of auditions and they usually take place on the Monday and Tuesday after the opening weekend of the previous show. This means that, for much of the season, the Guild has a show running and a show in rehearsal. Auditionees are only required to attend one night of auditions, but many come for both nights.

Auditions are open and non-members may try out. When non-members are cast they must agree to become dues-paying members. People who auditioned for A Little Night Music were required to sing a little, act a little, and dance a little. The casting committee and Harold Jurkiewicz, the Director, paired-up auditionees so they could see how people would look in various roles. This helps the committee answer questions such as, “Will this fellow look good as Fredrik playing opposite this gal playing Anne,” or “How will these two sound singing together?”

We had 40 talented people audition for A Little Night Music. The level of talent is always amazing and makes casting decisions difficult. After the last night of casting for A Little Night Music, the discussions and process of making the final choices ran into the early morning hours of the next day.

Here is the cast list for the show.

The Liebeslieder Singers are Shardai Davis of Dearborn, Brian Townsend of Dearborn, Jillian Drapala of Dearborn Heights, Julie Ballantyne Brown of Dearborn, and Mark Byars of Garden City.

Chorus Members are Tim Carney of Livonia, Dana Welsh of Dearborn, Diane Cliff of Dearborn, Deborah Lavely of Grosse Ile, Mark Ripper of Northville, Inez Hernandez of Ecorse, and Takesha Walker of Detroit

Fredrika Armfeldt – Jade Reynolds of Oxford

Madame Armfeldt – Diana Reynolds of Taylor

Frid – Kerry Plague of Canton

Henrik Egerman – Mike Suchyta of Dearborn

Anne Egerman – Lindsey MacDonald of Canton

Fredrik Egerman – Tom Murphy of Allen Park

Petra – Chelsea Burke of Plymouth

Desiree Armfeldt – Sally Goodman of Dearborn

Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm –  Brett Reynolds of Pontiac

Countess Charlotte Malcolm – Valerie Haas of Inkster

Osa – Corinne Fine of Canton

The Guild is an all-volunteer organization and everyone in the cast is an amateur in the finest sense of the word in that they participate in theatre for the love of it.

This is the second post about A Little Night Music. It was posted on March 26, 2013.

The decision to do Stephen Sondheim’s musical, A Little Night Music, was made by the Players Guild of Dearborn’s Board of Governors following a recommendation of the Script Committee.

Sally Goodman is the Guild’s script governor. Her seven-member committee spent the better part of a year reading, discussing, and evaluating hundreds of plays for the 2012-2013 season.

In considering shows, the committee looks at things such as costume costs, set peculiarities, and cast size. They discuss how the show will fit on the Guild stage. They talk about it’s appropriateness for guild audiences. They consider how well the show will draw. They literally consider hundreds of questions and concerns before making their selections.

For the 2012-2013 season, the committee selected to follow a “travel” theme and selected the five shows that made up the season.

Dracula, which is set in England, has a decidedly “European feel” given that the main character comes from Transylvania.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat is set in the Biblical lands of the Middle East.

First Things First returned audiences to England and to the London home of Pete, who suddenly discovered he had two wives.

And, finally, A Little Night Music, is set in Sweden where, in winter, the sun never rises, and, in summer, the sun never sets.

The script committee then made a presentation to the 14-member Board of Governors who, as noted above, gave final approval to the committee’s recommendation.

At the board level, there was a lot of discussion about A Little Night Music, ranging from the difficulty costuming the show, to the challenge of Sondheim’s music, to the problem of finding the right singers, etc. In the end, the committee’s recommendation prevailed and the season line-up was selected.

That didn’t end the work of the script committee. They almost immediately turned their attention to the 2013-2014 season and those shows have already been selected and approved by the Board of Governors. But, that’s a story for another day

I haven't blogged here is quite a while ... actually something like maybe four or five years. I've been keeping a diary, but I lost a bunch of the latest one in a computer glitch. Then I started posting on Dearborn PATCH and the homepage of The Players Guild of Dearborn writing about activities at the Guild.

I'll repost some of those here starting with some about the Guild production of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music.

This first one was written on March 25, 2013.

The Players Guild of Dearborn, one of Dearborn’s best kept secrets, is currently preparing Stephen Sondheim’s musical, A Little Night Music, for presentation to Dearborn audiences the last weekend in April and the first three weekends in May.

A Little Night Music is a fanciful tale set in Sweden at the turn of the 20th century. Middle-aged lawyer Fredrik Egerman brings his new 18-year-old bride Anne to a play starring his former mistress, Desirée Armfeldt.

Before long, Desirée subtly weaves her way back into Fredrik’s life and they rekindle their romance, incurring the wrath of her current lover, the pompous and jealous Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm. To complicate matters, Carl-Magnus’ wife Charlotte warns Anne of both their husbands’ infidelities, and the two make plans to “shame Desirée back behind her wrinkles.”

But Desirée has plans of her own, and before long all the mismatched couples — including Fredrik’s son Henrik (who is hopelessly in love with Anne), the Egerman’s lusty maid Petra, and Desirée’s daughter Fredrika — find themselves at the country estate of Desirée’s mother, the worldly Madame Armfeldt.

As the weekend in the country unfolds, secret desires are exposed, tension runs high, and the sun won’t set until all the lovers find their true partners.

The musical is being produced in cooperation with Music Theater International.

Followers of this blog will get a back-stage view of the casting, rehearsals, and performances of A Little Night Music. Welcome to the theatre.