I don't have any from the games themselves, or in the theatre.
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| gameday dress, on my balcony |
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| theatre dress, before the show |
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| Fingers and toes before getting dressed |
Showing posts with label Orlando. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orlando. Show all posts
Thursday, March 20, 2014
A Couple of Pictures
Interestingly, I'm thinking less and less about getting photos of Meg Being Out. I'm not sure what that means.
I don't have any from the games themselves, or in the theatre.
I don't have any from the games themselves, or in the theatre.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Visiting Orlando
Parking wasn't difficult at all. In fact, none of the things I worried about needed worrying. Walking around the building in the dark in heels was the most difficult part.
It turns out that the will call opens at 6:30 but the doors don't open until 7:15. So we waited along with everybody else. There were no problems with picking up tickets or standing around with the crowd of theatregoers. If you were ever worried about being in, say, a crowded elevator while dressed.... It's not a problem, really.
Before going out that day I was a tad nervous. I don't know exactly why, but I believe it was because I felt so out-of-sorts last time I went out and it shook me a bit. I think I was more comfortable and natural that day and I was fine once I left the apartment.
As I said, going to the theatre was fine. Sitting through the play was fine. Leaving was not a problem. The biggest issue?
The snacks I had at game day were wearing off. We decided to go to our local diner for dinner.
And, as I said, the play was great!
It turns out that the will call opens at 6:30 but the doors don't open until 7:15. So we waited along with everybody else. There were no problems with picking up tickets or standing around with the crowd of theatregoers. If you were ever worried about being in, say, a crowded elevator while dressed.... It's not a problem, really.
Before going out that day I was a tad nervous. I don't know exactly why, but I believe it was because I felt so out-of-sorts last time I went out and it shook me a bit. I think I was more comfortable and natural that day and I was fine once I left the apartment.
As I said, going to the theatre was fine. Sitting through the play was fine. Leaving was not a problem. The biggest issue?
The snacks I had at game day were wearing off. We decided to go to our local diner for dinner.
And, as I said, the play was great!
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Simple Pleasure: Two Outfits
(minor cock-up yesterday and I had the wrong time for my post.... But it's there!)
One thing I don't think my male self has ever done (or would ever do) is bring a different outfit so I could change between events.
I think the average male would pick something between events (dressy/casual) or jut go with casual.
Last weekend, we started with game day and then went to a show. Normally, as Meg, I would have overdressed for the former and blended at the latter.
Instead, I wore a long, casual dress to game day and a nicer dress for evening. If I thought about it, I would have packed my pumps as well and worn lower-heel shoes for game day.
I can tell I still need to learn to think. And I think I need to study Stanislavski to learn how to immerse myself in my alias. I'm pretty sure I have a copy of An Actor's Handbook somewhere around the apartment.
One thing I don't think my male self has ever done (or would ever do) is bring a different outfit so I could change between events.
I think the average male would pick something between events (dressy/casual) or jut go with casual.
Last weekend, we started with game day and then went to a show. Normally, as Meg, I would have overdressed for the former and blended at the latter.
Instead, I wore a long, casual dress to game day and a nicer dress for evening. If I thought about it, I would have packed my pumps as well and worn lower-heel shoes for game day.
I can tell I still need to learn to think. And I think I need to study Stanislavski to learn how to immerse myself in my alias. I'm pretty sure I have a copy of An Actor's Handbook somewhere around the apartment.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Visiting Orlando
This production of Orlando was a bit more gender fluid than I expected.
I didn't know much more than what the review said: Orlando was a male who, unexpectedly, became female around age 30. Everything else about Orlando was the same, except for the physical body.
Orlando took to her new environment with the same childlike delight he expressed until then. Along with the transformation, Orlando seemed to live hundreds of years and never age.
That's the basic plot.
OK, I'm jealous. Let's leave that to a chorus of "me too's!" and move on.
The cast consisted of five people: the women who played Sasha and Orlando, and three men who were listed as "chorus." They played everyone else, male, female, and indeterminate. (One character was introduced as female but later turned out to be a man disguised as a woman, for a dubious purpose.)
So the Queen of England, Orlando's suitors and friends (both before and after his transformation) were played by the same three men.
Sasha was always Sasha, Orlando's love. Orlando was always Orlando.
I am not sure what I think of comedy drag. I've seen part of "To Wong Foo" and "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" and turned them off. I've watched "La Cage" and "Mrs Doubtfire" and "Some Like It Hot". They're not on my "watch again" list. I haven't seen "Kinky Boots" or "Transamerica" (yes, not a comedy, I know).
But I really enjoyed this production of Orlando. The gender blending of the actors was fluid and generally drove the plot. The audience shared Orlando's joie de vivre.
The theatre itself was tiny, seating perhaps 100; maybe 60 seats were filled. Sit in the front row and you might find yourself involved in the show (to a small extent).
I am glad Meg went. It just seemed appropriate.
I didn't know much more than what the review said: Orlando was a male who, unexpectedly, became female around age 30. Everything else about Orlando was the same, except for the physical body.
Orlando took to her new environment with the same childlike delight he expressed until then. Along with the transformation, Orlando seemed to live hundreds of years and never age.
That's the basic plot.
OK, I'm jealous. Let's leave that to a chorus of "me too's!" and move on.
The cast consisted of five people: the women who played Sasha and Orlando, and three men who were listed as "chorus." They played everyone else, male, female, and indeterminate. (One character was introduced as female but later turned out to be a man disguised as a woman, for a dubious purpose.)
So the Queen of England, Orlando's suitors and friends (both before and after his transformation) were played by the same three men.
Sasha was always Sasha, Orlando's love. Orlando was always Orlando.
I am not sure what I think of comedy drag. I've seen part of "To Wong Foo" and "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" and turned them off. I've watched "La Cage" and "Mrs Doubtfire" and "Some Like It Hot". They're not on my "watch again" list. I haven't seen "Kinky Boots" or "Transamerica" (yes, not a comedy, I know).
But I really enjoyed this production of Orlando. The gender blending of the actors was fluid and generally drove the plot. The audience shared Orlando's joie de vivre.
The theatre itself was tiny, seating perhaps 100; maybe 60 seats were filled. Sit in the front row and you might find yourself involved in the show (to a small extent).
I am glad Meg went. It just seemed appropriate.
My Weekend
Saturday was game day with my trans-friendly friends, and theatre night. I missed the local production of La Cage, but instead I caught Orlando. The review is from the Washington Post. The show has a gender-oriented plot and was inexpensive, two features I look for in entertainment.
Details to follow.
But it is in the show’s second half, which follows the now-female Orlando through the 18th and 19th centuries and into the 20th, that Barker really lights up: Her voice, face and body language convey the near-overload of awareness and observation that are Orlando’s burden and joy. At the same time, the actress emphasizes the character’s ambivalent feelings about socially defined gender roles.
None of the other actors in the production matches Barker’s artistry. But other elements, to some degree, compensate for this drawback. Ruhl’s script — which often filters bits of narration through the voices of a chorus (Baldessari, Andrew Ferlo and Jay Hardee) — ingeniously distills the poetry and impish humor of Woolf’s novel. And with various clever touches, director Jackson and her designers turn the lyricism and comedy into a fetching magic-lantern/music-hall kind of entertainment.
Set designer Steven Royal frames and backs the story with screens whose white fretwork pattern evokes male and female gender symbols, as well as the Tudor rose. Frequently, Joseph R. Walls’s lighting infuses these screens with color, helping to conjure various locales, including a festive Renaissance London street, the court at Constantinople and an early 20th-century department store. Barker’s Orlando also spends time beneath a mobile of paperlike scraps that dangles at the rear of the audience seating area; the mobile, which represents an oak tree and also symbolizes Orlando’s writing career, helps give the production a sense of immersiveness.
And while we are immersed in Orlando’s semi-fantastical world, we meet, among other characters, an etiquette-conscious Sea Captain (Ferlo) on the ship that ferries Orlando back to England from Constantinople. Also making a couple of appearances is a quirky Archduke (Hardee, somewhat overdoing the shtick) who dresses first as a woman and then as a man in an attempt to woo Orlando, and ends up nearly boring Orlando to tears. Among the other acting turns, Baldessari does a relatively nice job displaying both the pathos and the grotesqueness of the arrogant, aging Queen Elizabeth.
But some of the most memorable contributions to the spectacle come from objects and textiles: the bits of sandpapery wood that actors scrape together to summon the sound of Elizabethans skating down the frozen Thames; the striking black and white blouse, skirt and parasol that descend on Orlando (other actors, acting as dressers, make this possible) to signal her entry into the prim Victorian era; or, especially, a dangling semi-transparent sheet through which we can almost — but not quite — see Orlando’s momentous transformation from man to woman.
Details to follow.
Sara Barker shines in expressive and colorful ‘Orlando,’ at Theatre on the Run
The setting, for the moment, is the deck of a ship, but the turbulence you notice is not the movement of waves: It’s the roiling of feeling — shock, wonder, disquietude, pleasure — as a woman adjusts to a new experience: being a woman. You can see the conflicting emotions and sensations flicker across the face of hero-turned-heroine Orlando as she sits bemusedly in a deck chair, adjusting to the discomfort and coquetry of a gown and a string of pearls.
Thanks to the expressiveness and poise of actress Sara Barker, this shipboard tableau is one of the most resonant moments in WSC Avant Bard’s diverting and colorful “Orlando,” directed by Amber Jackson at Theatre on the Run. The scene occurs early in the second half of the play, adapted by Sarah Ruhl from Virginia Woolf’s adventurous 1928 novel about a would-be poet who changes genders and lives for centuries. In the first act, starting in the 1500s, the wide-eyed Orlando is a young man, and Barker exudes an apt coltish awkwardness while depicting the character’s dalliance with Queen Elizabeth I (Mario Baldessari), passionate love affair with an untrustworthy Russian princess (Amanda Forstrom) and sojourn in Constantinople.But it is in the show’s second half, which follows the now-female Orlando through the 18th and 19th centuries and into the 20th, that Barker really lights up: Her voice, face and body language convey the near-overload of awareness and observation that are Orlando’s burden and joy. At the same time, the actress emphasizes the character’s ambivalent feelings about socially defined gender roles.
None of the other actors in the production matches Barker’s artistry. But other elements, to some degree, compensate for this drawback. Ruhl’s script — which often filters bits of narration through the voices of a chorus (Baldessari, Andrew Ferlo and Jay Hardee) — ingeniously distills the poetry and impish humor of Woolf’s novel. And with various clever touches, director Jackson and her designers turn the lyricism and comedy into a fetching magic-lantern/music-hall kind of entertainment.
Set designer Steven Royal frames and backs the story with screens whose white fretwork pattern evokes male and female gender symbols, as well as the Tudor rose. Frequently, Joseph R. Walls’s lighting infuses these screens with color, helping to conjure various locales, including a festive Renaissance London street, the court at Constantinople and an early 20th-century department store. Barker’s Orlando also spends time beneath a mobile of paperlike scraps that dangles at the rear of the audience seating area; the mobile, which represents an oak tree and also symbolizes Orlando’s writing career, helps give the production a sense of immersiveness.
And while we are immersed in Orlando’s semi-fantastical world, we meet, among other characters, an etiquette-conscious Sea Captain (Ferlo) on the ship that ferries Orlando back to England from Constantinople. Also making a couple of appearances is a quirky Archduke (Hardee, somewhat overdoing the shtick) who dresses first as a woman and then as a man in an attempt to woo Orlando, and ends up nearly boring Orlando to tears. Among the other acting turns, Baldessari does a relatively nice job displaying both the pathos and the grotesqueness of the arrogant, aging Queen Elizabeth.
But some of the most memorable contributions to the spectacle come from objects and textiles: the bits of sandpapery wood that actors scrape together to summon the sound of Elizabethans skating down the frozen Thames; the striking black and white blouse, skirt and parasol that descend on Orlando (other actors, acting as dressers, make this possible) to signal her entry into the prim Victorian era; or, especially, a dangling semi-transparent sheet through which we can almost — but not quite — see Orlando’s momentous transformation from man to woman.
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