Day 234…
The dusty smell of fallen autumn leaves is truly one of my favorite smells.
By the time I catch a whiff of it, summer, invariably, has gone on much too long. The thrill of those first wonderful warm early spring days after an endless winter has long since flattened out to the endless monotony of long days that are too hot and too humid.
In my early days, of living in New York, I used to dread summers. The off-Broadway theatres that I routinely worked for in the city, closed down in May and didn’t start back up again until September. Finding work was difficult.
As New Yorkers fled to cooler places, tourists moved in to replace them. Making my way through the crowds of people from other places, made me feel like a visitor to my own city.
For two summers in those early years, I was able to escape. I got to do summer stock in upstate New York.
Cortland Repertory Theatre is a beautiful old wooden theatre sitting in the middle of a cornfield. That’s not just a flowery description, it really was surrounded by growing corn for as far as you could see. It would be about a foot tall when we started and by the end of the season it was over our heads and we were eating it. A lot of it.
A whole army of us was brought in to fill out the ranks of the people in the town who worked at the theatre every year.
We stayed in beautiful old ramshackle Victorian houses in town and rehearsed in buildings downtown. Then we would tech and open whatever show it was and once that one was up and running, we’d start right in on the next one.
Kristin Fox-Siegmund and her brother Matt were local kids who worked as production assistants. Their mom, Ingrid, would make this dessert for theatre events that was a combination of chocolate pudding, chocolate chips and heaven knows what else all in a layered crust of crumbled oreo cookies.
It was called Sex in a Pan.
And it was.
Matt now owns a great quirky clothing store in New York with his husband called Fine and Dandy and Kristin is the Deputy Director and Director of Programming at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. Ingrid still lives in Cortland and remains one of the theatre’s greatest champions. She’d better still be making Sex in a Pan.
I was hired to go up there to stage manage because I often worked at Manhattan Theatre Club in New York. Shelley Barclay was the head of props and we did a million shows together there. One year, she asked me if I would be interested in coming up and I said yes.
Shelley was the production manager in Cortland and her wife, Mona, often acted in the productions. I stage managed Mona in Company and in Steel Magnolias. I’m sure there were others, but those are the two that immediately come to mind.
Mona was as tall as I am, with beautiful short blindingly white hair. She had spectacular white teeth that were always in view because she was always smiling.
During the rest of the year, Mona taught Alexander technique. The practice, named for its creator Frederick Matthias Alexander is a way of improving posture and movement and breaking old bad habits. Many actors study it. The last thing anyone wants to see is a bunch of people in a period drama slouching their way across a stage. I studied it with her, for a while. I should have done it longer.
Mona passed away last week. It wasn’t from COVID.
Another friend of ours, Dee Cannon, passed away in London recently. She also, did not pass away from the virus. She was a friend of Michael’s who, over the years, I had come to know as well.
Like her mother before her, she was a respected acting coach. She taught at RADA - The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts - but she was also often hired to work with actors on films. She wasn’t usually hired to work with Academy Award winners, instead she was hired to work with the stars of fantasy and action films who often came from non-theatrical backgrounds like sports or modeling.
On the other hand, she also taught Cynthia Erivo who won a Tony for The Color Purple and was nominated for an Oscar for Harriet, as well as Eve Best, an Olivier award winning actor who we probably know better over here from her co-starring role with Edie Falco on Nurse Jackie.
Dee was prickly, opinionated and, by all accounts, spectacular at her job. She was also kind and lovely. We saw her several times in London and several times here in New York when she came here to work. Michael was often sent, by her, on a treasure hunt - vintage American candy for props on a play she was doing or old tin advertising signs for the fence in her back garden.
It’s hard to process the people that we are losing these days. What we want to do is draw together and keep them alive for at least a day more of remembrance. Yet, we can’t.
There was an online funeral service for Dee. The camera was in the back of the church. Unfortunately, not everyone was mic’d so they couldn’t be heard when they were speaking. I didn’t watch.
Two of Howell Binkley’s lighting design-associates put together an amazing tribute to him, after his passing a few weeks ago, that was streamed last weekend. Many people from many walks of his life, spoke. They included me as well. Clips from his work were included as well as clips from interviews that he, himself, had given. It was almost as good as actually being in a room together, mourning his loss.
Almost, but not quite.
Mona and Dee were people I loved but rarely saw. We stayed connected on Facebook. They, along with Howell, were treasured strands of the fabric of my life.
Sean Connery also passed away yesterday at the age of ninety. I didn’t know him at all, but we sat at a table next to him at an opening night party for something a few years ago. For my life, I can’t remember what it was. I do remember trying to overhear what he was saying. Not to spy on him, mind you, but just to hear the wonderful sound of his Scottish brogue.
I didn’t really want to face up to either Howell, Mona or Dee’s passing, but somehow losing Sean Connery, who I only knew from his films, made it all seem a bit more real. Maybe it is just a function of my age and the huge amount of people I have come into contact with over the course of my working life, but three friends in as many weeks seems, well, excessive.
I have many friends who have lost their close friends and parents and spouses in these past months. Certainly, the three people I’ve lost left behind friends and families who were far closer to them than I was. My heart goes out to all of them.
None of us should be reduced to saying goodbye via Facetime or Zoom and yet that is what is happening. Everything in us wants to physically connect in times like these, and yet we are separated by everything from thousands of miles to a quarter inch thick pane of glass. Separation is separation. The distance doesn’t matter.
The countdown to this election seems endless.
More than 90 million Americans have already cast their votes. That number represents 43% of all registered voters. We still have three days to go.
The news is unwatchable. It is all numbers. On one channel, somebody is arguing that polls in a particular state are leaning one way while on another channel others are saying the exact opposite. Talking heads are endlessly trying to figure out the electoral map.
We know from the 2016 election that none of the polling was correct. All of this is just anxious noise.
Turn it all off.
Today is Halloween. It is arguably the beginning of the holiday season.
From here we have a few weeks to go until Thanksgiving and then on to all of the holidays in December - Hanukkah, Kwanza, Christmas and from there it is just over a week until New Year’s Eve. All of these are days that traditionally involve us all getting together.
Yesterday, I went looking for a plastic orange trick-or-treating pumpkin and I couldn’t find one.
Every year, a friend of mine in the Jersey Boys producer’s office, would give me a large container of candy corn and salted peanuts all mixed in together. It is perhaps the most perfect combination of things we shouldn’t be eating. Ever. I can only eat it once a year, because I eat so much of it that I can’t face it after a while.
I made some for Michael this year, but I couldn’t find a pumpkin to put it in, so I ended up getting another kind of weird Halloween container from the brand-new Target store on 61st Street. After two handfuls of it this morning, I may already be done, but that taste and smell - wow.
All of these holidays are times when we should be coming together.
We can’t this year. The CDC is warning that even small family gatherings pose a sizable risk for the transmission of the virus.
Dr. Fauci just said, "You get one person who's asymptomatic and infected, and then all of a sudden, four or five people in that gathering are infected. To me, that's the exact scenario that you're going to see on Thanksgiving."
We are all going to have to spend these holidays anywhere from thousands of miles away from each other to just a pane of glass apart. It didn’t need to be this way.
There are three days until the election. Three days.
Don’t mail in your ballot. Bring it to a drop box. Vote in person. Whichever way you end up having to do it, just vote.
This holiday season, instead of getting together, we will all have to see each other online. Next year, if we choose correctly three days from now, we should be able to see each other in person. If you vote for no other reason than that, that is enough.
Rest in Power and Rest in Peace Mona Stiles, Dee Cannon, Howell Binkley and Sir Sean Connery and love to all of those that they leave behind - Especially Shelley and Joyce.
Sorry for your losses- especially tough during these days of isolation
❤️Counting the hearts we lost
shutting off the NUMB ers....
Happy Halloween, I’ll be wearing my mask
❤️💕❤️💕