meg o’connor

I write this in the third day of my neighbor’s 60’s-70’s hits marathon. I have heard my share of BeeGee’s, Gloria Gaynor, and luckily The Four Tops. Not the soundtrack I would pick for writing up a Chekov show, but perhaps some revelations will come out of this…(as Wild Cherry comes on…)

I had the pleasure of seeing the highly acclaimed CalShakes’ Uncle Vanya. I had read the play while in school, and remember reading it with the doom and gloom I associated with Chekov, thanks to Stanislavski. I didn’t know I was supposed to laugh at the jokes- this performance taught me how to read and enjoy Chekov.

It is not to say that all Chekov is an episode of Friends. Even Uncle Vanya has a tragic end, but it had so many levels that when you arrived at the sad ending for the family in the country, it was poetic.

Uncle Vanya is about a family that has been turned upside down by the presence of the Professor and his stunning wife, throwing the men in a frenzy over the wife, and the family in a frenzy with constant worry for the Professor’s comfort. Vanya is fed up with his unrequited feelings for the beauty, and the Professor’s demands, that he can’t take it anymore, and attempts to kill the Professor. The play ends as the Professor and his wife leave, and the family gets back to their life before ‘the occupation’, and they find they are very, very unhappy.

It was my first show at CalShakes. Their lovely outdoor theater, with the rolling hills as the back drop was already charming, but for this show, they released cows to graze on the hills. It was funny, and helped put us in the environment of Russian country-side. And the set was a clever, ever-changing, labrynth house, perfectly suiting each scene. Even the costumes were done in perfect taste.

And the acting was superb. The title character was played with such humanity, even when he is attempting to kill the professor, you are still sympathetic towards him. And poor Sonya, played so innocently, yet strong, I’m sure every woman, if not every person in the audience, felt they had been Sonya at some point in their life. Even the sad schmuck who never gets paid attention to was played so child-like, desperately seeking approval and acceptance, you just wanted to rush the stage and hug him.

The only strange acting or directing choice was that of the country Doctor, Astroff. Everyone else had a straight American accent, and the doctor had an English accent. It was not very distracting, and it added to his charm, but in the end, it was the one choice I did not follow completely.

The adaptation by Emily Mann was beautiful and funny, and I look forward to reading her other adaptations of Chekov works, as well as hoping to see more of Chekov plays being performed with his original intentions in mind: to laugh, to cry, to get angry. To have the audience inspect themselves as they left the theater, finding similarities with characters, and discovering what that means.

I also look forward to see CalShakes’  next show, Twelfth Night…disco style.

In the immortal works of Kool and the Gang- “get down on it!”

This was the weekend that I needed to be over for over a month now. As posted earlier, I was performing with San Francisco Renaissance Voices in the chant opera, Ordo Virtutum, and it was exhausting. I was also managing the Cutting Ball Theater’s general auditions, which meant I was receiving about five emails a day requesting or cancelling an audition time. The auditions were this weekend, and it feels great to have them be over. And I was also constantly emailing theaters about renting spaces for The Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco (my most recent employer). And with running around from SF to Palo Alto, to SF to Berkeley, to SF…I haven’t had much me time. No time to soak in a warm bath, or sip a glass of wine, or curl up to a good book. Well that is about to change!!!!

My birthday is this Saturday, and I intend to RELAX. I have a new book picked out, I have a location in mind (though I would be happy to stay in the city), and I have a certain someone I would like to join me (my boyfriend), though I hear the quality of escorts is getting better every year.

Cutting Ball’s upcoming season looks to be really exciting. It looks like this:
Victims of Duty by Eugene Ionesco
Mud by Maria Irene Fornes
ThomPain by Will Eno
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

We also have a Hidden Classics Reading Series, which we host at a bookstore in the city, and the line up for the year is:
The Pelican by August Strindberg
Magnetism of the Heart by Aleksander Fredro
Helen by Euripides

And we we are hosting workshops that are open to the public, featuring a new translation of Pelleas and Melisande and …and Jesus Moonwalks th Mississippi. It is going to be a very busy, hectic, amazing season, and its coming right on up!

The Playwrights’ Center of SF also has a lot going on. September through January, we will have a staged reading once every month- I’m not sure what who or what we’re reading, but it is bound to be exciting.

I am off to a production meeting with PCSF, and then home to the Roomie, to catch up and eat some chocolate, and maybe watch some bad forensic science show.

I am sure I will run out of awful puns soon.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from someone I didn’t know, asking me to audition for a film I’ve never heard of. I went, of course. (Prepared to storm out if they asked me to take off any clothes.)

I go to the audition, a little wary, not sure what to expect, but have a lot of fun. I leave thinking I actually have a shot at being in a movie. And lo-and-behold, I get an email a couple weeks later, asking me in for a second audition! Let me tell you about this movie:

The premise: Ron, the son of shoe farmers (they grow plants that grow shoes…) is tired of his lowly farming life. He wants to be rich and famous. His family’s crops aren’t what they used to be. The shoes used to grow sparkly and beautiful, but now they’re just ole’ brown boots. Ron is tired of it. So, his family allows him one week to find his fortune, and he hops on a bus to New Citysville. There, he meets Lupita, an aspiring fashion designer who immediately falls in love with Ron, though Ron shows very little sign of recipricating. Ron finds a poster for a…wait for it…Fetish Competition. Ron and Lupita get together four ‘co-workers’ to help them win this competition. And their biggest competition in the competition? A character named…Bitch. Bitch Big Stuff.

And not only is the plot completely bizarre, but there is music. It is a full length musical comedy. The directors and producers are aiming to make it the next cult classic, and who knows. Maybe it will be. It is definitely in the same boat as Rocky Horror and any John Waters movie- strange, campy, and oddly cast.

I say oddly cast because…they cast me. I play Lupita, the quirky, love sick fashion designer. I help Ron in his struggle to get rich. It is going to be a blast. We start filming in September, and I anticipate that I will blog about this quite often. This will be my first real experience working on a film, so- wow!

Back to work.