My mom sent me this today, which made me laugh:
http://nypost.com/2016/02/18/
It
also reminded me I forgot to post a blog post I wrote on December 26th
when I was home over Christmas..... So, umm, here is my New Year's Day
post, two months late:
------------------------------My hope for Broadway theatre in 2016
I worked with a then-80-year-old true star of stage and screen once, who, when a song's lyrics were changing regularly during preview performances, needed a little help. It came not in the form of an earpiece for the entire show but in the form of me standing in the wings for the song whose lyrics were being adjusted, watching her like a hawk and trying to anticipate if she was about to forget the next line -- in which case I would shout it out from the wings. Then one day she told me she was good and didn't need it anymore (though I continued to be in the wings for her just in case -- at the stage manager's direction, not hers). There were nights she got a bit creative with the song and didn't sing exactly what was scripted, but she did her homework, studied her lines (and made use of the script we had in the wings to look over her lines before an entrance), and if she wasn't exactly by-the-book, she used her immense talent and years of experience to make the live theatre we were creating both electric and professional. Without an earpiece. Oh, and she was going through chemo at the time. So I find the current trend of unabashed use of earpieces and teleprompters for actors far younger than she to be unsettling and disappointing, particularly when there are so many trained theatrical actors who would jump at a chance to perform the same role without any electronic assistance. Here's hoping 2016 sees a few more producers take a chance on actors who might not have the box office draw of A-list star power, but who at least have their lines down pat.
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