Doing nothing takes everything I've got @geminem1025 - Tumblr Blog

Half Moon Bay

What's it about?

Half Moon Bay is about a damaged man and woman, Gabe and Annie, who meet in a bar one night in California and get caught up in each other's lives in ways neither person could have predicted.

What'd I experience?

Despite the fact that I left for the theatre with more than enough time for me to commute there by train, I managed to

Ride the 1 train a few stops past Christopher Street

Which resulted in me having to

Get off the train at Franklin Street and ride the 1 train uptown back to Christopher Street

Spend 15 minutes trying to get from the Christopher Street stop to the Cherry Lane Theatre, walking the wrong direction enough times that I was five minutes late for the show

Luckily for me, the show didn't officially start until fifteen minutes after 8:00 PM, and so I heaved a sigh of relief before taking the only available seat left in the then COMPLETELY full house.

The set was a dingy bar in the back of a bowling alley with a juke box, and some tables and chairs. A woman named Annie sat alone at the bar with a beer, looking dejected. A few minutes later a man named Gabe joined her at the bar. He was awkward and looked like he hadn't spoken to a woman in a long time. Annie jokingly complemented his bowling shoes and he about had a nervous fit. I would have felt worse for the guy if he were less weird. And he was definitely weird. Practically the first thing out of his mouth after meeting this woman was an invitation to watch him and his bowling team play in a championship game that Saturday. Annie was naturally unnerved by this, and instead suggested alternatives like coffee or a movie, but Gabe really wanted her there and he wouldn't quit. His desperation added a certain charm to his character. He bought them drinks and Annie revealed that she was there with people from work, and they were all bowling. She had recently been hired at a startup thanks to her good friend and thought she had to make an effort to be social with her coworkers and bosses in order to fit in. She and Gabe flirted a bit and I thought there couldn't have been a more unlikely pairing. Annie seemed so sharp and strong while Gabe was stuttering and insecure.

Before Annie left, she agreed that she would seriously try to watch Gabe and his team bowl, despite their appallingly corny name, Pinternal Affairs.

The next scene featured a barefoot, pissed looking Gabe alone at the table in the bar. Annie stumbled through the door, clearly very intoxicated. But even seeing her did nothing to cheer up Gabe. And then I realized it: Annie hadn't come to Gabe's game.

She didn't seem very apologetic either, as she nearly fell into her seat across from him. She noticed that Gabe wasn't wearing any shoes, and when she asked him about it, he admitted that he had lost his brand new bowling shoes, along with his real shoes and socks, in a bet. He had been so sure that his team would play well and win, and wanted it so badly for her, because he was convinced she was coming to see him. Annie looked like a mess, a different person entirely from the confident woman she had been at the bar a few nights earlier. She told Gabe how sorry she was for not making the game. She had planned to, had even spent all afternoon making a shirt for him sporting the words "Department of Pinternal Affairs," with some graphics of bowling pins wearing sun glasses, but then had chickened out and gone drinking with her friend instead. She fished the shirt out of her bag and flung it at him, before turning to leave. But Gabe stopped her, shed the shirt he was wearing and donned the one Annie had made for him. When Annie asked him why he was doing what he was doing he yelled, "Because I fucking love the shirt and I fucking love you!"

WHOA.

Annie stopped in her tracks. The two talked and she mentioned that she had been fired from her new job for what she called "absolutely nothing". Then, to my and Gabe's surprise, Annie asked Gabe if he was going to take her home that night, and Gabe jumped at the opportunity.

During intermission, I sat captivated as the set transformed from a bar into the interior of Annie's incredibly messy apartment. The transformation was so involved that it took up the entire fifteen intermission, but once it was complete I never would have guessed the set had ever been a bar if I hadn't sat through the first half of the show.

Annie forced Gabe to thoroughly wash his bare feet (surely crawling with bar-floor bacteria) the moment they entered her apartment, and he was quick to comply with her wishes. The two then started to play a dare game that incorporated alcohol. Gabe was interested in getting to know Annie, and suggested that they just take turns asking each other questions. But Annie didnot want to go there, and instead dared Gabe to stick his penis out of the window. After some hesitation, he actually did it!

The two briefly made out on the couch, and Annie lightly slapped Gabe's cheek playfully, which REALLY bothered him. Annie apologized, and even though Gabe said it was okay, he definitely wasn't. I briefly wondered if he was going to get violent with her, but that never happened. Although, the irritation on his face that something was majorly off.

Over the course of the night, Annie and Gabe got very, very drunk together. They danced with beer cans on their heads à la Fiddler on the Roof, argued, laughed, snorted lines of cocaine, and disclosed a lot of information to each other. Annie used to be in a band and even played a recording of part of one of her songs on a dare. Gabe told Annie that it was actually his birthday and the reason he made the bet which lost him his shoes was because he wanted cash to take her out to a nice restaurant. He explained how a few years back he had squandered over $40,000 and had been to Gamblers Anonymous meetings. He now had an arrangement with his mother regarding his finances which involved her monitoring every check he made working at the paint store. Every purchase that exceeded groceries and rent had to be approved. For once, he wanted to be able to blow a wad a cash, and not on himself, on Annie.

Gabe had been smitten with Annie from the moment he saw her. But sitting with her on the carpet of her apartment, he decided to be blunt. He told her he wanted to take her on dates, lots of dates, and he wanted to be allowed to make her happy. Annie was scared to believe his words, but I could tell that she wanted to. In response, she challenged him to find the warmest part of her body, and the scene faded to black.

The morning after, Gabe was sleeping on the couch while Annie frantically cleaned. She was really keyed up. Finally she woke up Gabe and told him he needed to leave. It was around 7 in the morning. Gabe, shoeless and infatuated with Annie, stalled for time and tried to get Annie to open up to him. And eventually, perhaps against her better judgement, she did. Annie explained that her mother was on her way to pick her up and take her to a rehab facility, and she wanted Gabe out of her apartment before that happened.

Gabe and Annie, both addicts, both damaged, both desperately in need of love. They could heal each other, if only Annie would take the leap. I was sure Annie had been burned before, and it made her reluctant to trust. And as her mother buzzed up to be let into the building, Annie decided that she wanted Gabe to come with her on the drive to the facility. She would mention that Gabe was a friend. Gabe didn't fight this. Their eyes found each other, and after a pause she decided that she would actually mention to her mother that Gabe was somebody she had known for a long time. Gabe and Annie grasped hands, and the lights dimmed to nothingness. These two strangers who met in a bar had each other's backs, and as long as that remained true, they would be okay.

#half moon bay #cherry lane theatre

Tuck Everlasting

What's it about?

Tuck Everlasting the Musical is about the Tuck's, a family who cannot die, and their encounter with a little girl named Winnie Foster. Jesse Tuck is 17, and he's been 17 for almost 100 years. Winnie is 11. The two meet and form a friendship, but Jesse has plans for their future. He asks Winnie to join him in immortality when she turns 17, so they can live out a lifetime of adventures together.

What does Winnie decide?

What'd I experience?

I have been a fan of Tuck Everlasting, the book, since grade school. And when the 2002 movie with Alexis Bledel came out, I fell more in love with the story and I developed a huge crush on Jonathan Jackson, the actor playing Jesse.

Below are the major differences between the novel and the film:

Novel

When Jesse meets Winnie, she is 10 years old, going on 11

Jesse and Winnie have nothing more than a platonic relationship, and they only know each other for a few days before Jesse invites Winnie to make herself immortal when she turns 17

Film

When Jesse meets Winnie, she is 15

Jesse and Winnie, both teenagers in body, have a romantic relationship, and they spend months with each other before Jesse asks Winnie to make herself immortal as soon as she feels it is safe

Knowing these differences, I am curious to see what direction the musical will take.

The show opens with the Tuck family, Angus, Mae, Miles, Jesse, and their cat, taking a drink from a spring in the woods, surrounded by dancers illustrating the passage of time. The Tucks have no way of knowing that this water will make them live forever, but 87 years go by and the Tucks (plus cat) have not visibly aged a day. Their horse, however, who never drinks from the spring, passes away of old age, leaving behind his family.

Enter Winnie Foster, bored out of her mind and longing for excitement. Her mother, still distraught over the passing of her husband (Winnie's father) the year before, allows little amusement in her household, reminding her daughter that they are still a family in mourning. Winnie wants nothing more than to go to the fair, which is only in town once a year, but her mother has forbidden such frivolity. While Winnie has a reputation for being a good girl, she has grown restless, and is aching to "raise a little more than heaven."

Winnie decides to run away from home, and for the first time in her life, takes off exploring in the woods her family owns. She then stumbles upon Jesse, who has stopped by his spring for a drink. She admits to Jesse that she is lost, and Jesse offers to escort her back home. Winnie accepts this offer, but first decides to take a drink from the same spring that she had seen Jesse drinking from. Jesse (of course) stops her, telling her that little girls who drink from that spring turn into toads, gesturing to a nearby toad. Winnie is not fooled one bit, for she knows this toad. In fact, this toad is her only friend. Winnie explains to Jesse that she's never had a chance to see much of anything in her short life and Jesse, astonished, decides to give her a taste of the beauty that's all around them. He teaches Winnie how to climb a tree, to Winnie's delight.

I get a touch of the heebie jeebies at 11 year old Winnie playing with a grown man alone in the woods. Sure, he's 17 years old physically speaking, but he's lived for 104 years. And even if he were only 17, I'd still find it creepy that a 17 year old would choose a pre-pubescent girl for a friend. I am so unnerved by this that during intermission I google the actors playing Winnie and Jesse to find out that the actress playing Winnie is actually 11 years old while the actor playing Jesse is 30.

Jesse tries to introduce Winnie to his mother, Mae, father, Angus, and older brother, Miles, as his friend, but once they realize that she knows the location of the spring and that the Tucks have some kind of secret, Miles flings Winnie over his shoulder, kicking and screaming, and the family reluctantly plan to keep Winnie at their cottage against her will until they feel that they can earn her trust.

The Tucks tell Winnie their story, the story of how they are the way they are, of the spring and its remarkable properties. If Winnie is at all skeptical, Jesse accidentally shooting his father in the chest convinces her of the Tucks' truthfulness as Angus rises from the floor without so much as a scratch on him after being shot at point blank range by his son.

Mae takes Winnie under her wing, taking her upstairs to get changed for bed. Winnie dresses in little boy's clothes, which we eventually find out once belonged to Miles' son. As Winnie is falling asleep, Jesse (in probably the most disturbing moment in the musical) sneaks up to where she is sleeping, and offers to take her on an adventure, more specifically, to the fair. Winnie jumps at the opportunity and the two have a magical time at the fair. Afterwards, Jesse brings up the possibility of Winnie drinking the water from the spring when she turns 17. Winnie is so thrilled, she tells Jesse she wants to drink the water immediately. Jesse assures her that she should wait until she is older. Innocently, Winnie asks, "What's the difference?" to which Jesse replies,emphatically, "There's a difference." He tells Winnie that in 6 years she can drink the water and they can be married, and see all the wonders of the world. Winnie is undecided, but she can see the good in both drinking the water and not drinking the water.

The next day, Angus takes Winnie on a ride in a rowboat, and he warns her about the dangers of immortality, of outliving everyone you love, of constantly having to run away so as not to attract attention. It's an eternity of being stuck, and it defies nature. I have often wondered whether or not I would drink the water if I were in Winnie's situation. Immortality has its appeal, but I believe there is something to be said for a once in a lifetime experience, and never dying kind of ruins that. The knowledge that my time is limited makes the time that I do have more valuable. If all I had was time, what would it all mean? Could I really choose to stay 17 years old for the opportunity to be timeless with one man?

Winnie ponders whether or not she should drink the water from the spring:

When Winnie gets home, before she enters her house, she confidently kneels down to feed the water from the spring that Jesse has given her in a vile to her toad.

The rest of Winnie's story is told almost entirely in dance. We see 11 year old Winnie twirling around her house, and once she disappears from view a grown Winnie reemerges. The circle of her life plays out on stage, without a word spoken. Winnie lives long enough to meet a man, fall in love, marry, outlive her grandmother and mother, have a son, raise her son, watch her son meet a woman, fall in love, marry, and have a son of his own. Winnie ultimately outlives her husband, and at the end of her life, she is revisited by all of her loved ones and her younger selves, and when she ultimately passes away as a very old woman, she has lived a very full life.

The Tucks visit Winnie's gravestone and realize that Winnie has lived the life they had always wanted to live, because life is meant to be lived, truly lived, and one cannot live without death.

#tuck everlasting #tuckeverlastingthemusical

POST:’Futurity’ Make Music, Not War

What's it about?

Futurity is an original musical featuring music by The Lisps.

Check them out, they're awesome.

The show focuses on a correspondence between Julian Munro, a fictional Union soldier reluctantly fighting in the Civil War, and Ada Lovelace, mathematician and real life daughter of Lord Byron. Together, the two design an intelligent machine meant to put an end to slavery and war and establish peace.

Crazy, right?

What did I experience?

César Alvarez and Sammy Tunis, as themselves, walked on stage, and began to sing a song about an African American man named Sylvester Magee. Born a slave in 1841, Magee claimed to have fought in the Union Army during the American Civil war and to have lived to see the Space Age. Alvarez then informed us that the musical wasn't about this amazing man who had seen so much change during his lifetime, but was about Julian Munro and Ada Lovelace, who would be brought to life by César Alvarez and Sammy Tunis, respectively. Julian Munro was a totally made up Union soldier who believed in the promise of technological advancement, and Ada Lovelace, a brilliant writer and one of the first computer programmers in recorded history.

Julian, well aware of Ada's flair for mathematics, wrote to her asking for her opinion on the possibility of a thinking machine that would create a peaceful world, and thus sparked a lengthy and completely professional exchange of letters between the two.

The Union army portrayed on stage was a troop of musicians that wielded instruments far more powerful than any weapons. As a musician myself, it was hard not to be affected by the sight of them, standing at attention in their uniforms and yet clutching flutes and violins in the place of firearms, as if they could save their lives. And perhaps they could. I wondered: What kind of world would we live in if every time a person sought to harm another person, they created something instead? The words, "Make music, not war" came to mind...

I realized then that if the soldiers had in fact been holding guns, it wouldn't have touched me the way that it did.

Art will always carry more weight than violence.

The intellectual machine of Julian and Ada's design was fueled by steam and dubbed "The Steam Brain." When they revealed their invention on stage, a towering, clunky form comprised of nuts, bolts, gears, and bicycle wheels, I was stunned. After hearing about the thing in written word and song throughout the show, I hadn't expected to see it in anything but my imagination. And "The Stream Brain" exceeded all of my expectations, functioning as a non-conventional drum set in addition to being a solution to all of the world's problems.

Futurity got me thinking:

What are the limits of technological advancement? Is there such thing as an intelligent machine capable of overcoming all earthly obstacles? We already have the Internet, which, as far as I'm concerned, has no limitations...

But is the Internet enough to put a stop to senseless, harmful acts?

When Julian criticized the concept of war, Ada's initial response was, "Sometimes war is the only option." But Julian didn't accept that answer, arguing that her mindset stemmed from a lack of imagination. I couldn't help but wonder how the world would fare if war was NEVER an option, if there was no choice but to think a little deeper in order to find an appropriate course of action.

#futurity #sohorep #the lisps #cesaralvarez #sammytunis

Love in the 21st Century

My parents met at an airport. They had each been on separate vacations in Greece, but were finally headed back to their respective homes in New York City. My mother was struggling to communicate her order of a Lipton Tea with lemon to a teller that spoke only Greek, and my father, a native Greek, decided to help her out.

And then he saw her.

The moment he laid eyes on her face, he forgot how to speak English. A quick conversation revealed that they were both on the same (recently delayed) flight back to New York City. My father took my mother out for Spaghetti Bolognese at a restaurant in the airport (To this day, my parents dine at an airport to celebrate the anniversary of their first meeting). When they finally boarded the plane, my dad bribed a teenage girl with money to switch seats with him so he could sit next to my mother during the flight home. And the rest is history.

That's my parents' love story.

I've heard it told so many times over the course of my life that I have it memorized. I've always admired their story, and I’m fiercely proud of the stunned reactions it draws from everyone who hears it.

“That’s adorable!”

“That’s like a movie!”

and always,

“Nobody meets that way anymore!”

I always imagined I'd meet the love of my life in an equally charming and romantic way, and the internet somehow never factored into my fantasies.

But perhaps love is achieved differently in the 21st Century. With Facebook, smartphones, and dating sites, it seems like there are fewer love stories that begin face to face than ever before.

We can all agree that the means in which young people look for love has evolved. Dating sites have changed the game, and could be viewed as equal parts resource and obstacle. But if there's one thing I'm confident about, it's the perseverance of love in spite of heartbreak. No matter how many times we get our hearts broken, a phenomenon that has occurred and will always occur, the desire to love and be loved is transcendent of time.

#love in the 21st century #lovestory #heartbreak #love

allinowknow

Life has an endless amount of possibilities . From the flavour of Ice Cream we have for dessert to our choice of career and quite honestly, as a girl (and I stress GIRL) of merely twenty years old, the sheer plethora of choices I will inevitably have to make, makes me want to weep. Of course, baby...

geminem1025

Love!

#carrie hope fletcher #growing up #possibilities