breaking bread.

Hollywood has been having a field day, raping the childhoods of those who spent theirs in the mid-seventies and eighties. Remakes on the big screen have been an aspect of silver screen enjoyment since the beginning, whether it was the multitude of Wizard of Oz flicks, the infamous Gaslight scenario, or Hitchcock remaking his own The Man who Knew too Much. These days it's gotten much worse, and more notably the source material has unexpected co-ownership by the reams of kids who grew up on it. Hollywood does not own the rights to our childhoods. Yet a new Footloose, a new Karate Kid, and even a rehash of Indiana Jones exists.

Remakes in music have always had a different tone, because they come and go. Classical music became the pieces struggling pianists would learn, beat by beat, to have in their own oeuvre. Much of classic jazz and vocal music would become standards, which is code for 'remake me'. Purists have original music in their hearts and were the first to react when hip-hop reached into the vaults of their nostalgia, taking their backseat prom memories out of context, and looping them into oblivion. Musical remakes are much easier to by-pass. A huge percentage of them do little more than overlay their different voice over the same general structure, like phoned-in karaoke. Therefore, most remakes sound like Smashing Pumpkins doing 'Landslide' and not Placebo doing 'Running Up that Hill'.

Plays are designed to be performed by one company after another. Playwrights can only hope for the wide-reaches of the world to meet their characters, hear their words, and react to the depth of their thought. In a way, this is one of the things that has attracted me to doing theater. At a primitive level, it's the fourth grade all over again. We are all assigned a project, but we each approach it differently. The script is the recipe, but every cook knows that recipes are but an outline, a jumping off point, contingent about the available ingredients, mood, and out-and-out instinct.

Putting together my dinner amongst sordid friends play that I am doing right now has followed similar themes. My behind the scenes support grows by leaps and bounds every few days. My on-stage performers have been much, much harder to gather up. The preceding show has a cast of baker's dozen. The theater across town is dropping RENT on the stodgy old-timers. I knew the pick-ins would be slim. However, much like that improvised recipe, you have to be able to use what you've got. I knew last week I could not present the show with the combination of actors I had found. Much like a marriage being only as good as how the correlation between the two operates and always at the threat of combining like that murky brown-black color that happens to paint on a palette, my ensemble cast needed a certain combined verve and energy. To me, that came in the form of an actor who came out for my third night of auditions on Monday, who would add just the right color to the show.

Now I have a cast. I have confirmed with everyone involved. Everything about this process and its result has felt like combating a new video game level. Now this one is replete with its own challenges, such as a stage manager who I had to gently wheedle out of performing in the aforementioned preceding show and many an actor's scheduling conflicts, such as one who will be gone for two weeks come this Friday. I feel that my first play had its own share of duress, so I feel completely undeterred by these hurdles. I have a solid cast put together. That's something toast worthy!