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“Laaaaa speeHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEraaaanzaaaaa!” Mom touches my hand and lets her head fall back in an exaggerated pose of pleasure, a midwestern lady’s gentle goof on the old-school flood of operatic emotion. I bathe happily in the pre-digital sound, my aural nostalgia adding sugar to one of Puccini’s sweetest lines. The old … Continue Reading →

I finished my last scene for INTERSTATE today. I’m sitting at a small cafe near where we shot that final bit of B-roll, at the end of an exhausting and exhilarating week, feeling I’m not sure what. I’m used to walking offstage with a sense of completion. A live performance … Continue Reading →

Morning in Sewanee is quieter as we move through the festival. This day, one lone horn is practicing, its now-bell-now-bleat tones echoing from some unidentifiable point across the leafy hills. I’m almost solo at the coffee shop: my only companion is one intense entrepreneur, earbuds in, talking in a rapid … Continue Reading →

Pentiti, cangia vita, e l’ultimo momento! At the end of Mozart’s DON GIOVANNI, the man murdered by the title character at the top of the show returns to settle accounts.  “Repent, change your life!” he cries. “It is the last moment!”  “No, I will never repent, get away from me!” … Continue Reading →

My mother-in-law was a schoolteacher. She taught junior high math in Pontiac, Michigan until her retirement, But one day years earlier, when she was sixteen, she was carrying a slip of paper to each of her high school instructors in Laporte, Indiana. Once it had all the necessary signatures, she … Continue Reading →