BIG RED SUN in Oklahoma City

OCUSTRIPPED: New Musical Festival
Oklahoma City University’s Student Theater Company
Just the Actors…a Piano…and the Show
February 7-8, 2009
Oklahoma City University • Burg Theatre

OCUStripped, a student organization on the campus of Oklahoma City University, the alma mater of Kristin Chenoweth, Kelli O' Hara, and Destan Owens, will be soon opening its New Musical Festival. OCUStripped will be hosting its fourth annual New Musical Theatre Project on February 7-8, 2009. OCUStripped is a student run Theatre Company on the campus of OCU that was started in 2005 under the faculty advisement of OCU’s Opera/Music Theatre Department head, Dr. David Herendeen, and sponsored by the Wanda L. Bass School of Music. It is unique because it is completely directed, produced, musically directed, and performed by OCU students. The show is done without lights, costumes, or set. It strips huge spectacle away leaving the performers vulnerable and forced to dive into the truth of the material. Each year OCUStripped does a full length musical in the fall, and in the spring we do a new musical showcase of shows that have been written or revised in the past five years.

This year’s OCUStripped will be presenting six different shows over the weekend. Three will be presented in a 40-minute one-act format, and three will be presented in their entirety. The festivals shows are:

37 Notebooks by Jeremy Schonfeld

Big Red Sun by John Jiler & Georgia Stitt

Edges by Pasek & Paul

Election Day by Ben Harell

Ordinary Days by Adam Gwon

Weird Romance by Alan Menken, David Spencer, & Alan Brennert

The students had the opportunity to workshop this new material, while still maintaining contact with the composers and authors when they had a problem or questions. John Jiler, David Spencer, and Georgia Stitt, authors, whose work will be performed at the festival, will be our special guests. They will be offering master classes in voice, composition, and acting. The festival will coincide with Oklahoma City University’s national audition weekend for the School of Music, and it is free to the public; however, donations will be accepted to help keep OCUStripped alive. If you have any questions, please contact ocustripped@yahoo.com.

OCUStripped: New Musical Festival

Oklahoma City University, Burg Theatre

Saturday, February 7, 2009

2pm-Performance master class and Q& A with Georgia Stitt

4pm-New Musical Showcase (3 one- acts)

6pm-Acting Master class with John Jiler

8pm-Big Red Sun

Sunday, February 8, 2009

2pm-New Musical Showcase (3 one-acts)

4pm-Edges

6pm-Master class with David Spencer

8pm-Weird Romance

In Service

I've been thinking a lot about service lately. A big part of Obama's call to America asks us to be in service to our communities. I am fully behind this idea, but as I cheer the concept I also find that it's harder than you might think to know just what it means. What is required of us? How do we participate? Since I've moved around a lot in my adult life, I am distinctly aware that the idea of a community is much different for me now than it was when I was a kid. My community in Covington, Tennessee in the 1980s was made up of three parts. There were the people I knew from school. There were the people I knew from church. And there were the people I was related to, most of whom lived out of town. Community was easy to find. Everybody knew everybody else. Like it or not, you knew what the neighbors were up to and they knew what you were up to. Honestly, that small town all-knowingness was the first thing I was happy to leave behind when I moved to New York. But the resultant privacy came with sacrifices. My first apartment in New York City was a 4th-floor walk up. I lived there for six or seven years and only knew one other tenant by name. I went to a big city church but pretty much came and went without ever getting involved in anything. My friends, mostly actors and musicians, were scattered all over the city. We kept up with each other's lives but finding actual time to connect was a rarity indeed. Several years and several cities later, that sense of scatteredness has only gotten worse.

On his last day as a private citizen, Obama declared Feb. 19th to be a "National Day of Service," and I was excited by the challenge. I scoured a few websites to find out what activities were going on in my neighborhood, and sure enough I found out that there was going to be a community-wide parade just blocks from my house. It was called the "Double Happiness Parade," celebrating Obama's Inauguration and MLK day. Following the parade, everyone was to scatter back to their own neighborhoods and clean up trash in the area. I signed up our family and, despite the fact that we all were sick that day, we went.


It was a sight to see. Not since I was a kid have I seen such an outpouring of local support for anything. People came from all corners. Kids, dogs, wagons, signs, noisemakers. There were hundreds of people there. Families. We ran into people we kind-of know in the 'hood -- moms and kids from the park, people we knew lived nearby but hadn't yet encountered. Our favorite moment was when we fell into step with an "old lefty" (as Jason called him) carrying his banjo and leading people in singing along the great folk songs from the 60s and 70s. After several verses of "This Land Is Your Land," he launched into "We Shall Overcome," and the middle-aged black couple right next to me sang, "We shall overcome... TO-DAY." It was moving, y'all.

So, I offer you this website. www.usaservice.org. Type in your zipcode and see what's going on near you. Also, take a look at www.dosomething.org. I found one organization that is gathering used magazines for literacy. How hard is it to drop off your old magazines instead of throwing them in the recycling bin? And for those of you who aren't in America, I ask: are there similar community-based, volunteer-based websites with more global objectives? Let me know.

Finally, I came across this questionnairre in a completely unrelated source, but I think the questions are great and they might lead you to think about what it is that you can be doing to be a part of something greater than yourself. I'm still figuring it out, but I can tell you that these questions sent me thinking in really surprising directions. Have fun.

1. Name the things you did as a child that brought you greatest joy.
2. What do you do now that gives you the most energy?
3. What wears you out?
4. What are your hobbies? What do you do to restore your soul?
5. Is there something you have thought about doing for a long time? Is now the time? How do you know?
6. Is there a wall or barrier that keeps you from following your call?
7. If you could do anything in your community, what would it be?

The New and the Old

It's January 21st. A big day. A new day. We have a new president and a new kind of American pride. It is an exciting time to be alive. I wrote a new choral piece yesterday called "Joyful Noise" and it just seemed fitting to finish it on a day when I was so filled with joy. I believe my colleague Jeremy Faust and the International Orange Chorale in San Francisco will premiere it, as they did with my piece De Profundis, but I will give you more details and confirmation about that in a few weeks. For now, let's bask in the way it feels to be so uniformly happy as a nation, and let's heed Obama's call to be a country of people who WORK and provide SERVICE. I am inspired.

All right, enough Obama-glowing. I have something else to be excited about. I FOUND ADAM WAGNER!!

If you've been following this blog for a while you'll remember the entry I wrote about looking for my junior high crush, Adam Wagner, who was the subject of my song "My Lifelong Love." He was a year ahead of me in school, and when I was in the fifth grade and he was in the sixth, I decided to play the clarinet in the hopes that one day I might be able to sit next to him in band. There's some truth in that song's lyric (which Lauren Kennedy recorded so BRILLIANTLY on her record HERE AND NOW), and there's some of it that I just made up, but that's the beauty of songwriting.

I really want to thank my friend Beth, who took it upon herself to find the mysterious and commonly-named Adam Wagner on the internet. I knew she was hunting him down, and one day I got a message on Facebook that said "I found Adam. He is my friend on Facebook. Look at my friends list and you will find him." So I did. And, sure enough, it was he.

Some of us abuse Facebook and post way too much information for all the world to see. Jason calls people like us "chronic over-sharers." (You know who you are.) And then there are other quiet, lurking types who post a picture and maybe an email address and little else. They sit in the background and quietly, sneakily collect friends. They do not write on people's walls. They do not post items. They do not comment. Clearly, they are not obsessed. Anyway, I am in the oversharing, obsessed category. Adam is in the lurking category. I could tell from his profile what state he lived in and that he's been at the same job for nearly 15 years. And that's about it. So, with little to go on, I wrote him.

(I am publishing these excerpts from our exchange with his permission.)

Hi, Adam --

I want to share something with you. A few years ago, as an assignment for a Valentine's Day concert, I was asked to write a song about my first love. I gave the assignment a twist and wrote about my first crush -- back in junior high -- and you must know that that was you. Back in the day. So, anyway, you were the inspiration for a song. I have to say, the truth is that I wrote a song about a girl in the 5th grade who had a crush on a boy named Adam in the 6th grade, and then I made up the rest of it. So it's not REALLY about you or about me and a lot of it is fiction. But, well, you'll see.

I hope you find this whole thing amusing. I just wanted you to know. Enjoy. Please write back if you have a minute. I sure would love to hear from you. And -- ha ha -- don't worry. I'm happily married with a beautiful 3-year old daughter.

For two days I worried that he thought I was stalking him, and then THIS lovely email showed up in my inbox.

Hi Georgia!

I love the song! You and Lauren were excellent! I can't really remember the last time I thought about the 6th grade (Wow that was 25 years ago!), but I was laughing and remembering it fondly while listening to your song. I've played it for almost everyone in my office and they all liked it. I also sent it to my parents and my sister so they could enjoy it. I remember almost everything in the song, except the clarinet lessons. Did I actually give you lessons? I was also oblivious to the fact that you had a crush on me.

OBLIVIOUS? Whew. That's a relief.

Anyway, this story has a happy ending. We're now in touch. We have reconnected about our families and what we've been doing for the last two decades. And, for the record, no, Adam, you never gave me clarinet lessons. They don't call me a lyricist for nuthin'.

Cat On The Prowl: Susan Egan and Georgia Stitt

In case you're already missing the holidays: Enjoy this reminder.

Lesbian video from AfterEllen.com

Good Eats

In keeping with the spirit of revealing too much (and why else would we maintain blogs?), I will let you know that I love to cook. I am a pretty decent cook, actually, though I am much better at following recipes than opening the pantry door and saying, "Wonder what I can make with Corn Flakes, Spanish olives, tomato paste and balsamic vinegar?" (Hey -- if you can do that and the result isn't disgusting, you get my full respect.) Apparently I am good at following directions, and I've now been doing it long enough that I'm getting pretty good at improvising as I go, too. (You could say the same thing about the way I play the piano, really.)

On New Year's Day I cooked up a feast. We had a party, and I had invited so many people that I didn't know who was coming. So I just cooked and cooked and cooked. For three days. And the results turned out pretty well. I find a lot of recipes in "Cooking Light" magazine. I like it because it's healthy food that's well-prepared. Not "diet" food. Real food, just lighter. (I made a beef stroganoff for dinner recently that you would never have known was low-fat. Okay, I realize I sound like Brie Van De Kamp Hodge right now. What can I say? I grew up in the South. That's my apology.)

So, take a look. Here's the menu:
Pumpkin chocolate chip bread
Ginger spice cake with an orange glaze
Mediterranean strata (eggs, mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, Asiago and parmesan cheese, French bread)
Cranberry and wild rice salad
Winter vegetable stew (Swiss chard, butternut squash, carrots, leeks, turnips, onions) and couscous
Caramel French toast
Oat bran muffins with raisins, dates and dried cranberries
homemade fudge and almond toffee
Williams-Sonoma peppermint bark (not homemade, sorry Becky)

The irony, of course, is that I don't cook much during the year. Jason laughs at me because I read these cookbooks and these cooking magazines and then I send him out to pick up the takeout we ordered for dinner. When days are harried and rushed, as they so often are, cooking is the first thing to go. I am usually still writing, coaching, or teaching at 5 pm when most housewives are making dinner for their families. And so, we pay $19 for salmon instead of picking it up at the store and throwing it on the grill. Yet another reason why I love the holidays. More time. More family. More cooking.

I think I'm writing about this tonight because my friend Garth just sent me a recipe chain letter. It's the kind of thing, you know, where you forward it to 20 of your friends and if they ALL PARTICIPATE you get lots and lots of recipes back. And even though I hate chain letters, I love the idea of getting new recipes. Last time I participated in this kind of thing, years ago, I forwarded the chain letter to all my friends in the South (because how many of you New Yorkers really cook? I mean, really?), and the recipes I got back were things like cheese logs and cream of mushroom pie. (I can guarantee you no one in this house will eat a cream of mushroom pie.)

So I'm going out on a limb here. I know this isn't a cooking blog, and I really don't want it to be. But if you want to play along, I'll post a recipe here every now and then, and if you've got something you like, you can post it in the comments. So we'll have our own little recipe chain letter and no one has to annoy their friends. I'll go first.

When my grandmother died, my dad and I scanned a lot of her recipes into the computer so we'd always have them. I can't say I've made too many of her dishes. (OMG the butter! The cream! The handwriting!) But there's something warm and comforting about seeing a handwritten recipe from sixty years ago that has so many stains on it that you know it must have been yummy.

This recipe -- for "Peanut Butt Drops" -- makes me laugh. Flossie was my grandmother's aunt. Which would make her my great, great aunt. Who knew they had Corn Flakes back then?

Nuts could be added, indeed.

DE PROFUNDIS at Grace Cathedral

Dear International Orange Chorale Friends and Supporters,

Please join us on Wednesday, January 7th at 7:30pm as we sing at San Francisco’s landmark Grace Cathedral with the Yale Glee Club. Under the direction of Jeffrey Douma, Yale’s 80-member ensemble will sing a wonderful concert including music recently commissioned by the Glee Club by Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning composer Ned Rorem. We have been invited to sing a set of our own and to combine forces for a few pieces including our own Georgia Stitt’s De Profundis (an IOCSF commission from 2004), Randall Thompson’s well-loved Alleluia, and Gerald Finzi’s God Is Gone Up. In the setting of Grace Cathedral, this will be a spectacular occasion.

About the Yale Glee Club: For nearly a century and a half, the Yale Glee Club has represented the best in collegiate singing-from its earliest days as a group of thirteen men from the class of 1863 to its current incarnation as an eighty-voice chorus of men and women.

It’s a privilege for us to welcome the Yale Glee Club to San Francisco!

For tickets, please click here:

(415)-392-4400
$10 General Admission
$8 Students and Seniors

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7TH, 7:30PM
GRACE CATHEDRAL
1110 CALIFORNIA STREET
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108

Visit us on the web for maps and more information.
See you on January 7th!

To a Happy New Year,
Jeremy Faust

2008: The Year I Read The Bible

Everyone has year-end resolutions. In the past, mine have always been things like losing weight, going to the gym, being a better correspondent with my friends and family, and so on. Predictably, those resolutions usually last about two months and then I slip back into my old habits. It's the American way. I do tend to be good about my commitments, but they've gotta MEAN something. I managed to lose lots of weight right before my wedding because I bought my wedding dress a size too small and was bound and determined it would fit. (It did.) I stuck to my fitness goals the year I hired a personal trainer and had to show up for the appointments or pay anyway. And, of course, Facebook completely changed the way I keep in touch with my friends. The times they are a'changin'.

In 2008, however, I made a goal and stuck with it. I read The Bible. Cover to cover. The whole thing. It took me twelve months.

You may not know about me that I am a church-going kind of girl. I have been a member of Presbyterian churches in every city I've lived in since I first joined at age 13 in my hometown of Covington, Tennessee. It's really important for me to say upfront that my relationship to church is as much about family history and heritage and community and ritual as it is about religion. I take comfort in the regularity of church. I love church people. (Especially Presbyterians, but you know, I'm biased.) I love the smell of old church buildings and they way they sing the same hymns wherever you go. I love pipe organs and choirs. When September 11th happened and I lived in New York City, I went and sat in my church and cried, because I wasn't sure where else to go.

On New Year's Day a year ago, one of my friends gave me a copy of a book called The One Year Bible. I read a lot, anyway -- usually contemporary fiction and classics -- and the idea of reading The Bible was one of those things that had always been on my radar. I remember once in junior high I tried to do it and I barely made it out of Genesis. It was certainly on my "someday before I die..." list, but there were lots of other things I figured I'd tackle first. But this gift felt to me like a challenge, and the book was structured in a way that seemed do-able. Fifteen minutes a day for 365 days. I thought I'd give it a shot, and I sent a copy to my 87-year old grandmother to see if she might take the challenge on with me. She agreed. We started reading.

I approached reading The Bible as literature. I figured I'd just read it so that I could be a person who had read The Bible. I had no idea how revelatory it would be in terms of comprehending current world events, how emotional it would be to synthesize the stories I'd heard for more than thirty years, and how accomplished it would feel to finish something that took an entire year to do. Reading the Bible in public places elicited surprising responses. On a plane, a woman struck up a conversation with me that I'm sure she wouldn't have started had she not noticed what I was reading. In a darkened theater, during tech rehearsals, I got a few looks of disbelief. In the month of October, I got about three weeks behind, and I spent the rest of the year catching up. Because I was reading double-duty, I actually finished on December 22nd-- just in time for Christmas. You can imagine how my perception of the holiday was extremely different this year.

Here's the thing. I'm not here to proselytize. My husband is Jewish. Our extended and culturally mixed family has lots of variations in what we all believe, and it's all fine with me. Believe or don't believe as your life requires. But if you're curious about what's actually in that book, I highly recommend reading it this way. I know I've got more questions about it all than I did a year ago, and I wouldn't be surprised if this year has me reading some of it again. (In the midst of all that blood and gore and hellfire and damnation I probably missed some of the nuance in the Old Testament. Man, there was a lot of killing going on for a very, very, very long time.) But as I look back on the best and the worst that 2008 had to offer, I think maybe this was the greatest thing I accomplished.

Thanksgiving

It's mid-November and I am taking advantage of yet another cross-country plane ride to send out a little update. I'd like to make a crack about how my family is single handedly keeping the airline industry in the skies, but, you know, perhaps it's not the greatest time to be making jokes about the airline industry. Or for that matter, any industry. The show biz is not immune to the woes of our economy, either. Like all of you, I'm just happy to be working.

And, politics aside (YAY OBAMA!), I'm working. This flight right now brings me home from a short teaching tour of Ohio. (Ooh, the glamour!) This week I taught master classes at Bowling Green State University (thanks to professors Marc Sherrell, Michael Ellison, Marilyn Shrude and Geoff Stehenson) and Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music (thanks to Vicki Bussert and Scott Plate). It was a fantastic whirlwind of colleges. I taught master classes in audition technique and understanding musical styles, I coached a group of students working on duets, I gave a talk about form and structure in the musical theater to a gathering of music composition majors, I led a Q & A about the realities of the musical theater business, and I sold exactly four CDs. Woo-hoo! Next week: master class at Cal State Fullerton just outside of LA, assuming the entire state does not burn to the ground.

Also coming up next week, I'm music directing a tribute to Stephen Schwartz at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles starring Jason Alexander, Michael Arden, Susan Egan, Eden Espinosa, Tyrone Giordano, Jason Graae, Debbie Gravitte, Megan Hilty, Karen Morrow, Philos, Hila Plitmann, Eric Whitacre and me at the piano. Concert is Monday the 24th at 7:30 pm. (Tickets and information: 323-933-9244 ext. 54). In addition to having written WICKED and PIPPIN and GODSPELL (maybe the key to success is having one-word show titles?), Stephen is a generous supporter of new musicals and a mentor to numerous young writers. I wouldn't mind being him when I grow up.

Other than that, I'm writing, recording new demos, starting work on my second album, and beginning a very very brand new project with playwright Jamie Pachino (my new favorite writer).

As Thanksgiving approaches, I always get kind of sentimental and nostalgic. So indulge me one more moment as I thank you for continuing to be interested in the work that I do. Unlike more disciplined artists I am certain that if you were not paying attention I would not be creating music, so thank you very much for giving me a reason to write.

**************

And if you're still reading -- here are some GIFT IDEAS for the holiday season:

• Breadwinner
Two of my sorority sisters from Vanderbilt started this yummy bread company based in Atlanta. They ship loaves of delicious bread anywhere in the world. Send some to your mom.

• Tickety Tock
New children's book to be released in December written by my husband, Jason Robert Brown and illustrated by Mary GrandPré (of the HARRY POTTER books!). If you are familiar with his musical "The Last Five Years," you will recognize the story of Schmuel, the tailor from Klimovich, which was the foundation for this story. Ages 4-8.

• Donate to your favorite charity. Mine is ASTEP (Artists Striving to End Poverty).

The Widget