Packing

"The reader, too, must be courted, and the good reader will be more demanding than the lady of the sonnets. He is ever-willing to receive a true poetic effect into his feelings, but he must resist cheapening his feelings. He cannot allow himself to be moved by lifeless imitation..."

-- John Ciardi, How Does a Poem Mean?

--

The Children's Theatre is moving in ten days. We have begun to pack up our offices while the vast items in storage sit mostly untouched in back rooms (which seems a little backwards to me). Our cubicles are down to bare essentials. In one cube, a lone phone sits atop a stack of boxes on the far corner of an empty desk. File cabinets are ready, labeled with their destinations. The corner full of old puppets disappeared yesterday. We are moving in ten days.

In the wake of busy auditions, and after having packed most of my meager office so that only the computer and telephone remain, I find myself with little to do at the office these days. So I am planning a trip up north with some friends next week. It will be a nice release. It will be a beautiful trip full of scintillating theatre in a small town in Canada. We will evade swans, discuss "Slings & Arrows," and walk along the Avon River.

That's right, friends. I'm going to Stratford.

--

I have recovered, sleepwise, from the commercial shoot Wednesday night. It took some time. Yesterday I didn't wake up until almost lunchtime, and the day before that, I fell asleep in the early afternoon and didn't wake up until almost midnight. It was like jetlag without all the itineraries, and I dawdled, sleepy, between naps like a pooch.

--

Rehearsals for Anne Frank, the first show of the new ArtReach season, begin on August 31. By then, I should have the props mostly finished and the van mostly cleaned. That day will mark the start of my term as Tour Coordinator, and I want everything to start off well. To that end, I have logged several hours already in the shop where we store the leftovers from shows past, a big scary building with random grinding noises and thick rusty chains hanging down from a gutted ceiling. Behind a padlock and plywood door lies the prop loft, a glorious and dusty array of useful useless things. It's sort of like an antique playground.

My biggest prop project will be the diary of Anne Frank itself. It has a very distinctive cover. While the kids won't be able to see the book up-close, it should still read as the actual thing from a distance. And knowing how a three-month tour can wear upon props, I'll probably need to make at least two diaries.