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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for October 23, 2017

Tick…tick…

October 23, 2017 by Terry Teachout

Two weeks from today, I fly down to West Palm Beach with my bags packed for a six-week stay. I’ll report for duty the next morning at Palm Beach Dramaworks’ rehearsal hall, where Bill Hayes and the cast of Billy and Me, my second play, will be going to work. I spent a near-ecstatic month in that same room a year and a half ago, directing Satchmo at the Waldorf. My job is very different this time around: Bill is directing the show, and I’ll be there to sit, watch, answer questions, and revise and polish the script as needed. Still, I’ll be surprised if I don’t feel pretty much the same way.

A couple of months before Satchmo went into rehearsal, Bill said to me, “Tell me, do you think there’s a play to be written about Tennessee Williams and William Inge?” Sure enough, there was, and the first draft of Billy and Me was finished two weeks later. I’ve been chipping away at it ever since. I finished the final pre-rehearsal draft last month and e-mailed it to Bill, who sent it out to the cast and production team. Since then, I’ve been doing my best not to think about Billy and Me, and I’ve successfully resisted the temptation to keep on tinkering. It’s time to take it into the shop and get down to business.

I wrote in this space five years ago about the experience of rehearsing and revising Satchmo at the Waldorf for its Shakespeare & Company production. I’ve never learned more about anything in a shorter stretch of time than I did that summer about what Alan Ayckbourn calls the crafty art of playmaking. One of the things I learned is that what Moss Hart wrote about revising a play on the fly in Act One, his autobiography, is literally true. It really is possible to write a new scene overnight, or to write a new speech on the spot. That’s what the rehearsal period does to you: it heightens your creative powers to a breathtaking degree.

13173625_10154219783907193_2005067985405356684_nUntil I went through the refiner’s fire of rehearsing a new play for the first time, I didn’t know what the phrase “in the moment” really meant. No sooner do you walk into the rehearsal room than all else recedes from your consciousness, and nothing exists but the day’s work. You have no choice but to take time out from the rest of your life and immerse yourself in the imaginary world of the play and its production—and once you let go of everything else, you become strangely happy. If, like me, you lead a complicated life, it feels almost like a vacation to set aside your cares and think about one thing all day, every day.

I’ve been looking forward to this particular vacation more than I can say. I love my life, but I’m ready to get away from it for a few weeks and set sail on the ship that will take my collaborators and me to opening night. The seas will likely get rough between now and then, but I don’t care. I’m counting the hours until it’s time to go to work again.

* * *

Preview performances of Billy and Me begin in West Palm Beach on December 6 and the show opens on December 8. For more information, go here.

The “teaser trailer” for Billy and Me:

Just because: Donald E. Westlake talks about the creation of “Parker”

October 23, 2017 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERADonald E. Westlake, who also wrote under the pseudonym of “Richard Stark,” talks about how he created Parker, the anti-hero of “Stark”’s crime novels:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: Nero Wolfe on time

October 23, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Come, sir, is time really so precious? Mine isn’t. If yours is, all the more tempting to steal a little.”

Rex Stout, A Right to Die

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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