Back to work at the workshop! Dale, Marc, Laura, Carol Lee, and Melissa in attendance.

Dale and Carol Lee shared their autographed copies of A Visit to William Blake’s Inn, plus other fun stuff from New York. Dale talked about the meeting of the Cultural Arts Commission tomorrow and some of the ins and outs of getting ready for the backers auditions.

Our schedule called for us to work with members of the octet on their role for the May 3 performance. None showed up. Ginny did, but she was still dressed for work, and since Denise will be dropping by tomorrow night, we sent her home.

We decided instead to choreograph Man in the Marmalade Hat from start to finish. We worked on movement for the ToastHeads, and choreographed their movement onto the stage. We coordinated that with the ice sprites and left space for the MMH. (Galen will be in tomorrow night.)

We then switched to the Gang and their role in the piece, their close order drill. We had choreographed it before, but basically we had to reconstruct it.

Now it’s all written down, on our wall-size chart of the lyrics of the piece.

Before we left, Dale read through the prospectus he’s prepared for the Arts Commission. We discussed some kind of ideas for budget. We are having some phenomenal ideas, and it would be a shame to see them fall short because of a lack of funding. But all the indicators are that forces are lining up that will make it all possible.

Before I went to workshop, I pulled up Make Way and took a different tack with it. I had forced myself to hear the piece in my head and listen to what I was hearing. I was hearing “lighter,” so I stripped out the flute/oboe combo for the opening melody and gave it to a solo violin. As it happens, the “Strad” violin sound is pretty whiny, but you gotta hear it under lights, so to speak. I think it will work.

Very little today, as we traveled back from Greensboro.

However, I did get the article on lunch with Nancy Willard written and submitted. That’s a little something.

And I did take a stab at listening to the orchestration for Make Way, but it’s still not working for me. I played with it for a moment, but it’s too late and I’m too tired. I’ll be back to it tomorrow, because I have to get it done.

In other news, I got home today to find several packages. One was a book I’d ordered from Amazon, the catalog for an exhibit of Alice and Martin Provensen’s illustrations for children’s books, with an intro by Nancy Willard. The others were from Nancy herself. One was her new book, The Flying Bed, and it was her usual magical storytelling. Another was a book of Erik’s photography in Florence (where The Flying Bed is set.) He makes beautiful photographs, these from an apparently crappy little camera. (I haven’t finished reading the accompanying material yet.)

But the other two were my copies of A Visit to William Blake’s Inn.

In the paperback, the one I’ve used for twenty-five years in writing this music, Nancy had painted the Sun and the Moon, and an inscription thanking me for my music.

The hardback one, the one I bought thinking it might come in handy to display if we ever performed this work, has an angel bearing a banner made of my music, also with an inscription.

She was unable to find Alice Provensen at home, but that’s all right. We’ll invite Alice down for the premiere. This makes me very happy indeed.

No, I’m not posting pictures. Come to the workshop, or come to the performance on May 3.

Last night, we went to a production of Man of La Mancha, at Guilford College. A couple of Grayson’s friends were in it, but mostly I wanted to see what kind of theatre Guilford was capable of.

The idea of the show, “The Impossible Dream” and all that, is very easy to sneer at, but the show itself sucks you in. It’s too good. Every song is a winner, and you find you cannot get “I am I, Don Quixote” out of your head. Already, you are singing “…Lord of La Mancha, my destiny calls and I go…” in your head if not out loud.

The set was good, the orchestra was good, the costumes were credible, and for the most part, the performance was not bad. The leads needed to be miked, but their voices were not unpleasant. The young man playing Cervantes/Quixote was good, as were the other leads. The only real problem, and I don’t know that it could be fixed, is the almost total lack of specificity of many of the actors in their choices. Lines were just said. Most comic opportunities were missed because they didn’t seem to understand how to play the scenes. It’s a common issue with college-age actors; the production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile I saw at VSU was almost completely devoid of life, except for Mike and Bailee and their friend who played Picasso. Those three understood characterization, they understood comic timing, they understood that lines must be delivered, not just uttered.

I got the feeling that many of the performers in La Mancha were vocal majors; they had lovely singing voices. But actors? Not so much. Wasn’t enough to ruin the show for me, after all, I have just witnessed The Pirate Queen, so it takes a lot to disgust me these days.