The Two Sides of Summer

Despite the current state of the sky, the Solstice has come and gone, so has Pride, and the 4th of July is just around the corner. Summer is here. I've switched from Makers Manhattans to dirty gin Martinis. I've spent a couple afternoons lying in the backyard in a sunburn temping outfit with a book. I can't find a good apple anywhere and have instead been buying stone fruit from farmers markets and roadside stands.

In my divided world, Summer means two very different things: life in the restaurant heats up, while the theater shifts in to a sort of slow motion dream scape.

Anyone in the restaurant industry knows that these hot summer months are when you make your money. Summer brings tourists, vacationers, and locals who are no longer too depressed to leave their houses, out in droves. In hotel properties, the effects of Summer on business are magnified, hotels fill up with tour groups, people who are departing or returning form cruises to Alaska, and prospective University students and their families. After the lean winter months, fueled only by the occasional holiday, or convention, Summer is a time when those in the hospitality business can once again start paying down their credit cards, or buying shoes and concert tickets, depending on your priorities.

Summer is also the time when theaters following a conventional season schedule go on break. In Seattle and its surrounding area that means the Seattle Rep, the 5th Ave, Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Seattle Shakespeare Company, Book-It, Village Theater, Renton Civic Theater, Driftwood Players, Second Story Rep, Seattle Children's Theater, Seattle Public Theater, and a whole host of others I'm forgetting, either go dark, rent their space to smaller companies, produce educational productions, or produce park shows.

Which is not to say that there isn't any theater in the Summer, there's still plenty of it out there, and lots to look forward too. Some theaters, like Annex, bring us new plays right through the hot summer months, 14/48 is coming up, and soon the park shows will open, offering four different excuses to pack a picnic and drink wine from plastic cups. But right now, on my two week break between closing Run For Your Wife in Renton, and its upcoming run at Bellevue Civic Theater, my two free weekends when I can actually go see shows, there isn't much out there.

The one notable theater in Seattle that doesn't run a traditional season is ACT. Their season starts in Spring and closes with the holiday show in early January. So last week I went to see the play they were opening Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World. There is a lot to like in Pilgrims; lovely, dedicated performances from the entire cast, design elements that made the most of the Allen theater's unique offerings, moments of poetry, and a story that stays with you, knocks around in your head for the few days following the performance. But, all in all, something seemed to be missing.

Perhaps it was the connection between its two central characters, while the chemistry cackled, we never got to see what kept them together, beyond the physical attraction, and the novelty of cultural difference. We heard them talk to other characters about how much they liked each other, how special and unexpected the relationship was, but we didn't really see this when they were together, we just felt the heat.

Perhaps it was that the play never grew into its own promises. Reading the program and directors notes before the play began, I got the impression it was going to say something new, add a fresh perspective to the debate about immigration, about cross cultural relationships, about Muslims in America. After the curtain call, I had the distinct impression that the play had fallen short of this promise, had settled for merely telling a good story.

Or perhaps it was as simple a problem as the neat little bow the story tied itself up with, or its overly long title.

None of these things should detract from the notable accomplishments of the production, nor did they seriously affect my enjoyment of it. Pilgrims is still a very good play, and I appreciate ACT making it available for me to attend on my off weekend.

Summer is an odd time, and not just because its the only time of year in Seattle where you'll see the sun more than one day in five. I suppose the balance is a good thing. That I'm not trying to fit in three plays in one weekend the same season I'm having to tell the fifteenth tourist in a row that I cannot get them hot milk for their coffee. I do wish that I had a few more options, not sure what I'll do once I make it through this work week and all little annoying requests and sudden rushes that add up to my deciding that people as a race are overrated and I don't like them anymore.

Perhaps I'll go see a movie.

Looking for Laughter

I seem to have an affinity for comedy.

Which is odd, because I'm not a funny person. I was never the class clown or the life of the party, I was always the girl in the corner, reading a book and eating her hair. I suppose I'm not unfunny. I can tell a decent joke. Not very often, but it has been known to happen. My comedy is usually a sneaking sort of thing, most times I won't realize I've made a joke until the words have left my mouth and somebody laughs.

It also affects my writing. I once set out to write a moody dramatic play, with an undertone of cruel sexual politics. By the fifth draft I had a full blown romantic comedy complete with gossipy supporting characters and a happy ending. My admiration for cleverness is partly to blame, even when my characters are in dire situations, I want them to express their anguish with a clever turns of phrase.

It affects my casting, too. Like many little girls, I went from wanting to be a ballerina, to wanting to be a leading lady. I was convinced my Juliet would someday bring audiences to tears. I now realize that if I am ever cast in that play, it will most likely be as the Nurse. I don't really mind being a character actress, not anymore, its a lot more fun to make faces and have hysterics than to smile and look pretty.

It's something I have had to come to terms with, though. When I was a Junior in high school the big play was Pride and Prejudice. I wanted to play Elizabeth, everyone did. Instead I was cast as Mrs. Bennet. I was bitterly disappointed, but in the end I think I had more fun, and got more audience attention than Linnea Eby did. I was especially gratified to hear one of the teachers say to my mother, "Isn't Caitlin normally a quiet girl?"

My Senior year they were doing The Miracle Worker, and I wanted to play Annie Sullivan, I felt I deserved her, too. When they gave the part to a Sophomore and cast me as the Aunt, I was so insulted that I quit the show and went out and got myself cast in a community production of Noel Coward's Private Lives. As Sybil, I got to do two of my favorite things to do on stage: wear period clothes, and have hysterics.

Currently I am acting in a classic farce, called Run for Your Wife.  I don't get to have hysterics, but I do get to wear some lovely period clothes. Rehearsing for this play has got me thinking a lot about how to be funny: deliberately funny, not my usual sneaks up and hits you over the head when you're looking the other way funny. Its a farce, so a lot of the humor comes from misunderstandings. Mistaken identity, and double meanings provide a lot of humor. So does physical pain. I've lost count of the number of times we fall over, fall into things and hit each other. But these things still read, apparently there is no expiration date on the humor of a pie in the face.

Like the double power of pain to make us alternately cringe or cackle, the themes of classic comedy would also be perfectly at home in high drama. Sex, Death, Cheating, Secrets and Lies, Strained Friendships, Ruined Marriages, Homosexual Activity, and Police Investigations. Where is the switch between tears and laughter? Of course much of it is the presentation, but then, the key to making something funny is to play it serious, so, there we are.

If I have made no progress in breaking down the science of humor while rehearsing this play, I have at least remembered how to illicit it. There was ample laughter during the performances opening weekend, and much of it at things we'd actually rehearsed, and not the unaccounted for happenings that make live theater so much fun. One of my biggest laugh lines is a inocent reference to produce. I'm off stage when I deliver it, so I can smile along with the audiances laughter.

I may be not understand comedy, but I do have an affinity for it.