First off, while I think Next to Normal deserved more Tony Awards than it received, I’m infinitely pleased by Alice Ripley’s win as that mattered most to me. Nothing more exciting than seeing a performer who’s worked her buns off finally get recognized for it.
It didn’t really dawn on me how long it had been since she’d actually been on Broadway since I’ve been lucky enough to see her do so many other things in the meantime. The Baker’s Wife at Papermill (amazing) and after I’d moved out to the west coast, she did Little Fish out here which I absolutely loved. Not to mention Ripley concerts at the Red Lion in NY and, out in soCal, I think we saw her at The Mint? Can’t remember. But I feel incredibly lucky to have seen Alice perform on both coasts over the past several years. Her temporary move to California coincided with mine and I’m very grateful to her for thinking of me. ;) (I kid, I kid! Though it does help abate a girl’s homesickness when performers she associates with New York suddenly appear on the west coast!)
I made the mistake of swinging by a rather well-known Broadway message board after the Tonys to see what people had to say.
Lots of slamming of Alice’s speech… this confused and baffled me. I’d thought it was a great speech, particularly given the amount of show she’s done at the Kennedy Center (Next to Normal among them). And knowing the ridiculous (and completely unacceptable) amount of sound problems that were evident throughout the show, I did, actually, attribute her loudly spoken words to that. Heck, if we could hear stuff not working on TV and hear sound people yelling into mics before running onstage with them (ahem), I assume stuff wasn’t working at the show either. Turns out, I was correct as someone who’s friends with Ripley on Facebook reported on said message board. Well, duh.
Nevertheless, people were excessively nasty and downright cruel. About a speech! About the volume at which a speech-giver gave the speech and implying that she’s insane because of it?! Good lord, people!
What I love most about theatre is the ability to directly portray what it means to be human. For example, Next to Normal is largely about dealing with grief. How one copes, or doesn’t. And what each of the characters in Next to Normal go through is so incredibly human and real. I love that. I love that I can connect with each of the characters and feel what it’s like to experience their lives as they do.
So it’s such an odd thing, to me, to see an actress win an award for a part in a show that requires an open mind and heart… and, afterward, read about people slamming those same doors shut just to be unnecessarily mean.
I should mention these are the same message boards that caused Laura Benanti some major frustrations years ago when she was missing performances in Into the Woods due to a broken neck. Ah, but I guess that’s humanity, too. People are always more willing to judge and develop their own opinions rather than ponder that there is, perhaps, a reasoning beyond the limits of their own minds for various occurences.
Onto life as a student…
I’m greatly enjoying my necessary summer break. It’s nice to go straight home after work and not have to worry about homework, reading, or studying. Though I’m already getting antsy for next semester. Funny how that works.
I have mostly been focusing on what classes to take. I was inititally intending to mostly take theatre classes since I desperately need to be reminded what I’m doing here (missing NYC quite a lot lately).
I have recently discovered that theatre classes are mostly day classes. While this is all well and good for young students whose parents can afford to support them so they don’t have to work during the day, this is extremely unhelpful to those of us who are older, have rent and bills to pay, and need a job to do that.
I’m not sure what to do just yet. Friday is my “Saturday” and I’d like to be able to actually have a weekend, though by the looks of things, I may be squeezing several classes into one Friday. This sucks for many reasons, one being that once-a-week classes are exponentially more difficult than twice-a-week classes. For me, anyway.
Even if I could change my work schedule to allow me to take day classes during the week, if I got cast in a show (which would be really, really nice), I’d need evenings to do that.
I really bothers me that the system is designed to encourage adults not to go back to school. Everyone I know always tries to say “it’s never too late!” but what they don’t tell get is that colleges don’t really agree with that. Rules are in place to tame flighty teenagers, curriculum is designed around their just-out-of-high-school mindset, and schedules cater to their lifestyles rather than the lifestyle of the responsible adult.
It makes me sad. I’m second-guessing the whole school thing even though it’s what I moved back to California for and one of the most important parts of my life right now. Arrrgh!
Edited: June 13th, 2009
