First things first

I have the Tonys on DVR but haven’t watched them yet. I was at a swim meet until 10-something o’clock on Sunday night and hanging out in Charlottesville last night so I haven’t had the chance. I’ve read about the bazillion “Billy Elliot” wins, which is great, though I was pulling for “Next to Normal” (perhaps I’m a little weary of young boys and their dreams at this particular time…) I was glad for Alice Shipley, though, and it sounds like there are many other reasons for me to watch the awards still (obnoxious rockers beaned by scenery? Awesome!) Feel free to chime in with your thoughts on the Tonys until I can formulate some.

I also expect there will soon be many other things for me to ramble about, with an announcement expected momentarily from the local theater company I mentioned last week, plus a summer preview coming out in Style this week, and hopefully my review of “Mississippi Delta” as well.

But first, I wanted to mention that I spent a chunk of this past Sunday at a wedding, a lovely ceremony with a beautiful bride, a charming groom and scads of theater people in attendance. The newlyweds were so happy and the event was touching, funny, and all the things you hope a wedding will be. I can only hope that the happy couple shares as many good times and fulfilling years together as I’ve been lucky to experience with my wonderful wife.

It’s a cliché that big ceremonies make you take stock of your life but its also fairly inescapable. There is something a little shocking to be talking to people about their grown children and thinking back to when you first met them before they were even married. The new beginning that a wedding represents can’t help but make you remember other beginnings in your life, the people that were there then, and the changes that time has wraught since.

With all of that going through my head, I left the wedding thinking about the friends and acquaintances I have in the theater world. When my wife was pregnant with our first child so many years ago, our theater friends threw us one of the sweetest and heart-warming baby showers ever. I was a total hanger-on in the theater world back then and I was still pretty wary of some of the big personalities that theater professionals wield. That shower was one of the first times that I truly appreciated the generous, genuine, devoted, sometimes insecure, usually very smart people that lie underneath those big personalities.

As with people I’ve meet who aren’t actors, I’ve discovered that some of them are jerks or troubled or more self-involved then the average human. But over the years, the bright shiny gems of the scene just get more dazzling and many of those precious people were in attendance Sunday. I feel lucky every time I get to spend time with them.