This just in

As you may have noticed, there wasn’t room in this week’s Style for a review of Stage 1’s “tick, tick…Boom!” To be honest, this wasn’t a totally bad thing because it allowed my thoughts about the production to simmer for a couple of days. In the meantime, Susan H and Joan T have weighed in, doing a fine job recapping this exciting production.

However, I just heard from my lovely editor at Style who is going to run my review online since it won’t show up in print until the Wed. before the last weekend of the run. I’ll be sure and post a link as soon as there is one.

I’ll write out some additional thoughts about the production soon but for now I will say this: I had a great time at the post-show reception. I’m not usually very comfortable at those kinds of things. But the intimate space of Stage1/Shuffles – plus the warm and welcoming presence of Joe Thibodeau behind the bar – made it feel homey. Oh, and I’ll say something else: Chase and Peggy have done an incredible job getting their company off to a great start. I was amazed at the performance space, particularly given that it was just a big room a few months ago. Seats on risers! Rotating lighting instruments! Wow!

So just as I’m starting to catch up a little with what’s going on in town, a whole bevy of plays opens and I’m way behind again. Tomorrow, there’s “Widow’s Blind Date” at Firehouse and then the Mill’s “Tuna Christmas” this weekend. Oy – there are simply not enough days in the week!

I went to Frank Rich’s talk on Monday and it was OK. He had many insightful perspectives but much of the material he covered in his talk didn’t necessarily seem new. The one thing I thought was most interesting was his tracing of the blurring between news and entertainment back to the miniseries “Roots,” which was fictionalized history that many people took for straight fact. I guess I was spoiled too because I had already interviewed him about his talk so I had heard a lot of the material directly from him already. (I’ve got a post rumbling around in my head regarding my interview with him – maybe later this week.)

I think he’s an awesome writer but not necessarily the most scintillating speaker. It made me wonder what people who consider me a decent writer would think of me as a public speaker. Hmmm… One thing I’d do is bring in more media – one older white guy alone on a stage just isn’t a striking visual. I wouldn’t go the PowerPoint route but still some slides woulda been nice. I don’t think I have to worry too much about this though as U of R isn’t beating down my door to get me to speak to 100s of people.

Oh, and I almost forgot: be sure and check out Mary B’s piece on the “Byrd Park Football League” that did make it into print today.