On Aging, playreadings, productions, and colds

Updates: busy weeks, slowed down by a knockout cold. Briefly: busy with seminars on Theatre and Aging that a colleague and I will be doing as two-week intensives in July. Webpage now available at www.seniortheatre.com/html/osu_theatre___aging_seminars.html through Art Age Publications, Bonnie Vorenberg's site for all things senior. I'm doing theory and history and literature of the field, while colleage Joy Reilly's doing the handson how-to section. We did the first last summer, and worked pretty well--so we'll be finetuning this summer, plus a massive push to try to get enrollment from people working in the field (retirement communities and the like).

Also continuing plans for the Jewish Theatre Festival, "Beyond the Borscht Belt," that has its first event next November. Just after I should be getting back from Senior Theatre Festival in St. Louis, set for October. Also had a whirlwind trip to Chicago for a reading of Caridad Svich's new piece, The Tropic X, at Teatro Vista. As always, a solid piece--two teenagers in a sordid tourist Caribbean town trying to survive the exploitation that surrounds them, and eventually destroys them. Like all her work, the play is written in intensely lyrical and heightened language, with a savagely clear view of how exploitation works. More about Teatro Vista and their work at www.teatrovista.org/current.html Well worth the drive up and back (roughly 6 1/2 hours each way)--got to see some old students and catch up. Stopped in Lafayette, Indiana, on the way back to sleep in a motel. Getting too old for all that driving!

Back in Columbus, a good production of Tony Kushner's A Bright Room Called Day at the university, directed by colleague Mo Ryan with intensity and passion. And excellent performances from a mixture of graduate and undergraduate actors. Fascinating play, well done. So a good reading and a good production, both in the same week! Also juried work at the Denman undergraduate honors competition--several of our undergraduates did first rate work (I judged architecture projects, not ones in theatre), and two of them placed in the top five. And as the term is drawing to a close, we're all inundated with projects, theses, etc., needing examinations. So that's busy as well. And still have to get to see mother as often as possible--couldn't visit for the past week because of the cold, although was finally able to stop by today. Her laundry is on now. Also managed to test bake another loaf for the whole wheat book--a multigrain that works pretty well. Also baked some regular pumpernickel this morning, as a bit of relief from the whole wheat! Haven't tasted it yet, but it smells terrific.

And, of course, there's also politics: watching the immigration follies progress, plus the Republicans busily trying to make issues out of gay marriage, flag burning, and immigration.

(Flag burning???? This is an issue???? Who's been burning flags lately? Yet apparently the Senate, led by Dr. Frist, plans to devote a full week to flag burning shortly. Pay no attention to massive illegal phone taps and the creation of databases containing millions of American phone lines that are being monitored. Along with some reporters who might publish embarrassing things about the Adminstration. But more on that when I can focus on politics, or when I can stand to focus on politics.

These, by the way, are the images of the flag

that Senator Frist--and the rest of Congress--should be focussing on. God knows the Administration isn't. Nor are these images appearing in the major press.