Archives for 2012

The first preview of Satchmo at the Waldorf was extremely successful. We’ll soon see whether subsequent audiences are as enthusiastic. That said, the first-nighters showed every sign of loving it, and then some.
Standing ovations are nice–and yes, we got one–but Satchmo at the Waldorf still has a long way to go before crossing the finish line, and all of us know it. While John Douglas Thompson, Gordon Edelstein, and I permitted ourselves to revel briefly in the applause, we were already discussing possible nips and tucks in the script ten minutes after the auditorium had emptied out. (What a pleasure it is to work with people who don’t know the meaning of the words “good enough”!) I even wrote a couple of new lines for tonight’s performance before hitting the hay. By the time most of you read these words, we’ll be back in rehearsal. We’re determined to make this show as good as it can possibly be.
To all of you who sent good wishes yesterday, my heartfelt thanks. You buoyed me up.
Now, back to work!

Louis Armstrong and the All Stars perform “The Bare Necessities” on the BBC in 1968:

“When you come into the theater, you have to be willing to say, ‘We’re all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world.’ If you’re not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that.”
David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

I don’t often have work-related anxiety dreams, but I had a doozy of one after staggering home last night from a twelve-hour-long tech rehearsal for Satchmo at the Waldorf.
I dreamed that a second production of the show was opening next week in Syracuse, and that everyone at Shakespeare & Company, myself included, had been so busy getting ready for our opening night in Massachusetts that we’d completely forgotten to send the latest version of the script to New York so that the other actor who was playing the double role of Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser could learn all his new lines. The funny part of the dream is that the “actor” in question was–wait for it–Little Walter. (I also dreamed that a woman was playing Armstrong and Glaser in a third production of the show, but I can’t remember any details of that part of the dream.)
The dream was so vivid that I woke up dead certain that I needed to get up at once, throw on my clothes, drive to the company office in Lenox, print out the revised script, and ship it off to Syracuse via Federal Express. Then I looked at the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was three-thirty in the morning. I laughed, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
I’m still wondering who the woman in the other production was, though….
* * *
Little Walter plays “Little Walter’s Jump” live in 1967:

In honor of the first preview performance of Shakespeare & Company’s production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, I’d like to share with you a little tune from my childhood that I always post on such occasions:

See you tonight!

Louis Armstrong and Dean Martin perform a medley of “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,” “Sleepy Time Down South,” “Mississippi Mud,” “Down by the Riverside,” “Swanee,” “Bill Bailey,” “Gotta Travel On,” “A Hot Time in the Old Town,” and “When the Saints Go Marching In” on The Dean Martin Show in 1966, accompanied by Les Brown and His Band of Renown:

“I like to think of them out there in the dark, watching us. Sometimes we’ll do something and they’ll laugh. Sometimes we’ll do something and they’ll cry. And maybe, one day we’ll do something so magnificent, the whole universe will get goosebumps.”
Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

From 2009:

A minute or two before the house lights went down and the world premiere of The Letter got underway, Paul Moravec tapped me on the shoulder. “Turn around and look,” he said. I was sitting in an aisle seat toward the front of the left side of the theater. I turned around and saw that all two thousand of the seats in the Santa Fe Opera’s Crosby Theatre were full. Paul grinned. “Did you ever think you’d see anything like that?” he said. Mrs. T snapped a picture of the two uf us. Then we sat back down to watch the show.

Read the whole thing here.