Tuesday, December 30th
Happy 6th day of Christmas everyone. Go out and check the geese and see how many eggs you have. I realize I have not updated for some weeks. This is due to all sorts of things happening throughout December that have thrown monkeywrenches into a peaceful life. The big one was the closing of the local theatrical cooperative which led to Tommy and I having to quickly sort, pack and move years of accumulated theatrical paraphenalia to new lodgings. It did not help that it had to be carried down off a third floor of a building with no working elevator. My aging joints are just starting to recover from that one.The theatrical world of the USA has been hard hit by the downturn in the economy and Birmingham is no exception. Ticket sales and donations are down, costs are rising and venerable companies across the country are starting to collapse. Seaside musical theater in Florida is gone. North Shore Musical Theatre in Boston, an institution for more than fifty years is about to collapse. Closer to home, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the only pro theatre in Alabama is cancelling productions. The local groups I work with are on the ragged edge of extinction. I have a feeling we're all going to be back to producing in peoples basements again...
The holidays were fairly successful. We did Christmas Eve dinner for Tommy's family and, this past Sunday, had our annual open house. Roughly 150 folk came through and gobbled up four gallons of chili and three of minestrone. We are still doing the dishes. We did finally get all the decorations up and they are likely to remain until late January sometime. The christmas cards are the one thing that remains and I should get those out New Years weekend. As good Unitarian-Universalists, it's perfrectly permissible to celebrate orthodox christmas this year so I have until January 6th.
The major work project has been getting everything together for my promotion packet from Associate to Full professor. I should be a shoe-in as I am not tenure track but you never know what they might be thinking in the offices of the powers that be and you have to cover all of your bases. This necessitates finding many pieces of paper that have been filed away for years.
Politically Incorrect Cabaret comes back in February. I have a bunch of stuff to write over the weekend. It looks like it'll be a good show. Somewhat simpler than some of the earlier ones, but maybe with more bite as we take on both sides of the aisle.
No other theatre on the horizon at the moment due to the financial chaos of the world. I'll stay busy with tap and with the mens choir. Some links to numbers from the mens choir christmas concert are below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzvvgThWHS4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r15MuLFwl_0
posted by Andy @ 10:31 AM
