Curtain Up. Light the Lights.

This city just gets better with each passing day.  Probably because I finally have started to figure out the way the city works – the streets, the avenues, the buses, the subway… it’s wonderful.  Today I met with Sybille Bruun, who has had an amazing journey to New York City.  She was born in Denmark, decided not to be a doctor after seeing a chicken killed at age 9, and decided to be an actor on a boat in Turkey when asked what she wanted to do when she grew up.  After almost flunking out of high school because she was working in a theatre, she went to England to study.  She finished college, applied to Stella Adler, and went from there.  How cool is that?  We had a lovely conversation over coffee in the East Village, and also talked to a nice Turkish man named Attila about politics.

After lunch, I headed way uptown to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and it was absolutely incredible.  The cornerstone was laid in 1892, and the building itself is only 1/3 done.  There are several chapels, and each one is dedicated to a different people who immigrated to the US.  One is dedicated to Irish immigrants, one to Spanish ones, and so on.    It’s absolutely beautiful, and my favorite part was the choir stalls.  They had statues carved into them of people who were associate with sacred music, like Bach, Saint Gregory, and King David, just to name a few.  Also, the have menorahs on either side of the altar as a visual reminder to everyone that enters that the church’s mission is to be a house of prayer for everyone.  They also stand for the fact that Christianity’s roots are in Judaism.  After that adventure, I went off to the Met, where I greatly enjoyed the landscapes.  Then after that we went to the Lincoln Center and saw South Pacific, which I’d never seen before.  Some of the music was fairly familiar, but I barely knew the story, so I really enjoyed it.

I can’t believe the week is almost over.  It doesn’t feel like we’ve been here for as long as we have.  I’ll be glad to get back, but I also don’t want to leave this incredible city.  Hopefully it won’t be too long before I come back!

    I was just thinking about our discussion of Next to Normal, when Reggie said that the show was saying that if we all got off of medication everything would be fine.  That struck a chord with me because I’m on medication for a mental disorder, and not being on it gets very, very bad.  Like, convincing myself I’m going to die bad if I don’t use the right towel.  Medication basically saved my life.  For a while last year I weaned myself off of it, but things just got bad again.  There’s a good chance that I’ll be on it forever.

Today I spent a lot of time by myself today, which was really cool.  After Grace, I was supposed to meet Jason Vail, but we had to reschedule because he got caught up in errands, so I went down to the river and walked around.  I got some really beautiful pictures of the sunset behind the skyline.  Then I managed to get all the way back uptown and to the Palace all on my own, which I was really excited about.  Bobby and I went to Canal Street earlier today where I got all kinds of fun knock off stuff.  I also had my first interview this morning, with Susan Heyward, who recently moved here to the city.  Talking with her was so fun!  She was absolutely frank with me about everything in the business, whether it was good or bad and I really appreciated it.  Tomorrow I have 3 different interviews, and I’m super excited. 

Speaking of contacts, I just heard from another person!  So far, I’ve got Christine Jones, Sybille Bruun, Tracy Hostmyer, Jason Vail, Lucy McMichael, Alexa Kelly, and Susan Heyward.  When we get to the city I’m going to call a couple of people again, just to see if they were out of town or something along those lines when I called the first time.  Is that okay?