Costume Necessities

I am attempting to catch up with my real life projects this minute: blogs, bills and borrespondence (correspondence…but I needed another ‘b’ word in order to make the alliteration work).

Audience Comment about Don Juan Giovanni

The American Repertory Theatre is proud to support other non-profit organizations in its community. We do work with Barry Andelman of the AIDS Action Committee of Boston giving them tickets to performances. Barry sent along the following comment he received about Don Juan Giovanni:

We had a VERY enjoyable, sometimes side-slapping, evening. We definitely want to see Figaro as well.

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Beehive Adventures

As part of my job at A.R.T., I assist the Company/Front of House Manager. While he and most of the theater’s staff were across the pond in Scotland with our production of Orpheus X, it was my job to take his place and handle any company managerial needs. This was convenient since I was already spending every day with the company of Figaro and Don Juan Giovanni and they were the only ones around that would require my services.

Let’s celebrate…

We had our first audience tonight. A nice crowd I must say. Very smart and very aware. We got such a warm response. Whew…We’ve been alone for a few weeks so it’s nice to add the crowd. Can’t wait for the weekend – especially Sunday when we are “open” officially.

Sister and I are rewarding ourselves for a good night’s work. She is perched on the desk chair looking at D-listed. Funny site, if not a bit sardonic at times. She has moved onto Molly Good…even funnier. Her secret surfing habits have been revealed. I hope she doesn’t read this. I, myself, am knitting a few more rows on an electric pink sweater I am making. Sometimes I look at it and wonder what I was thinking…it is pi-unk. I have faith that I can carry it off.?.?Oh have faith Jenny.

Meeting Theatre de la Jeune Lune

A few weeks ago I was asked to lend a helping hand to Theatre de la Jeune Lune while they rehearsed Don Juan Giovanni and Figaro, which they would be performing at A.R.T. Although my background in theater is pretty diverse, I was unsure and slightly apprehensive about what I would be doing for them and how they would react to a new person being in the room. They did recently win a Tony Award after all! I’m not sure why but I expected to walk into a room of crazy strict people who were engrossed in “the art” and had “diva” tendencies. I learned pretty quickly that the people from Theatre de la Jeune Lune were quite the opposite.

Mustache glue.

For those of my lovely family who wonder if my lips will permanently stay that way–not to worry, it is just mustache glue. In Figaro, I play a boy, and to be even more precise, a boy with a mustache. One of the added benefits is having lips that look like Angelina Jolie’s when the glue gets particularly tacky. Ah, yes, tacky.

I am still getting used to the BLOG concept. I am sure that one can see my lack of experience with the genre by the mere fact that I feel the need to write about the genre. But the BLOG concept does raise questions of pertinence, privacy and just what the heck to write about.

It’s only Wednesday?

The fact that it is Wednesday means two things to a performer. One – it is essentially the beginning of the work week since Monday is the official day off. Two – you have a long way to go before your next Monday off! Yup, I’m a bit tired. Our schedule has been full of exciting stuff in the last few days – tech rehearsals, a fun trip to Boston’s The Beehive (a hip and swinging arts bar/cabaret) to perform some opera and promote the show, pulling out our costumes and wearing them for the first time in a few months. And yes, we did have Monday off…but the pressure is on. It is tech week.

See Christina Blog. Blog Christina Blog.

Granola is good. Cambridge is good. Hence, having granola in Cambridge is good. Jen just made some homemade ‘nola, and I ate it. It is late and we will be starting tech rehearsals later today. Boy oh boy I need to sleep.

-Christina Baldwin

Cross-posted at Not Jennifer Baldwin Peden’s Weblog

Back in Cambridge!

Here I am…or here we are rather. The cast and crew of Jeune Lune’s Figaro and Don Juan Giovanni have brought the shows to the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA. I have been living with the roles of the Countess and Elvire (I am in both shows) since January, believe it or not. We started work on the shows in January 2007, opened DJG in March, Fig in April and closed the shows in Minneapolis in June.

Minneapolis Star Tribune – ‘Figaro’ feasts on tale of disillusionment

We thought you may be interested in a review of the other opera we will be running in repertory to open the 07/08 Season, Figaro.

-Nicholas Peterson

Minneapolis Star Tribune – ‘Figaro’ feasts on tale of disillusionment;

A sense of loss permeates an accomplished but occasionally wobbly Jeune Lune production.

by Michael Anthony, Staff Writer, April 16, 2007

And they all lived happily ever after.

Didn’t they?

There’s a fun old parlor game where people imagine what happens to their favorite literary characters after the book ends. Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s current revival of its successful 2003 production, “Figaro,” evokes some of that fun, though the dominant tone of this engaging, multimedia production is a kind of wistful sadness, an aura of dashed hopes and missed opportunities.