Romantic Window

I absolutely love window treatments. Especially those created by my friend Mary at The Drapery Shop. This sheer was fabricated by Mary. Adding the glass beads made all the difference in the world. Because the client needed privacy the blinds had to stay. By adding the white sheer the blinds are softened and the sheer becomes the dominate feature at the window.

To life and to live theater

I got a cute email yesterday from Bridget Summers, who is doing PR for Paly's "Fiddler on the Roof" and had a story to tell from Friday's performance. Apparently the power went out right before Tzeitel's wedding. Pause. Then, in the dark, the cast started dancing and singing again. (Mics, shmics.) The audience cheered, the show went on, and the lights came back up in time for the Bottle Dance.

Why would a publicist want to tell a reporter about something that went wrong? Clearly, my friend, you haven't spent much time in the audience. Messes, near-misses and glitches that get overcome create some of the best moments in live theater.

If you're an actor, nothing gets the adrenaline jiggling like realizing your castmate has missed his entrance -- and you have to stand there ad-libbing and holding a duck. If the audience laughs at one of the lines you made up, you're golden.

If you're in the audience, how great is it when something breaks and you see the cast keep going? Auntie Mame drops her cocktail and the glass shatters. She immediately puts her hand out to Ito and demands, "Another." Sitting in the audience, you're thrilled for her. It's like watching a car crash that didn't happen.

I do community theater. The kind where you go on stage with your tutu held together with gaff tape. So I've seen lots of power outages, mics go out and set doors stick, and even tiny kid actors just keep belting out their songs. You kind of want to hug all those Paly students.

The best part about seeing a near-miss is that it is a near-miss. It's something that no one expected to happen, and so it's perfectly human. It's an unrehearsed exchange, the man behind the curtain, a test of the stage manager's mettle. It can't be Photoshopped away or edited out. And in that moment, you see what that scrappy little theater company's really made of.

When I was in a Sunnyvale production of "Fiddler" a few years ago, one of my favorite times was during that notorious Bottle Dance, when four men cavort with wine bottles balanced on their heads. Everything looked great, and then suddenly two of the guys dropped their bottles. It could have ruined the dance, but instead the guys looked at each other, grinned through their beards, shrugged, and kept going. The rest of us rooted for them like the close community of villagers we were supposed to be.

Later, another actor told me that an audience member had been doubtful about the dance up until that point. The bottles just looked too perfect, like they were glued on. Then the whole scene became real. The dancers, the shtetl. You could even go out on a limb and say the bottles were a metaphor for the precarious position of the Jews in Anatevka. All because a couple of guys slipped. And that's live theater.

Pictured: Alex Nee and Ryan McLeod in the foreground, with Alex Browne, Marc LeClerc and Jovan Bennett in the background, in Paly's "Fiddler" production. Photo by Carla Befera.

A billion potential readers can't be wrong

Seen at Stanford the other week... A new strategy for the Times?

Photo by Rebecca Wallace

On the beach

I didn't expect to feel serene in an exhibit about beach trash. But when you've picked up nearly two tons of discarded plastic at your favorite oceanside spot over the last decade, you might as well do something pleasant with it.

Artists Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang, who spend a lot of time at Kehoe Beach, have brought the fruits of their labor to Stanford in a pocket-sized exhibition called "Disposable Truths." Small plastic objects are the focus. They're glued on a chair, table and lamp like rainbow chicken pox. On the floor, white pieces of plastic trash -- forks, caps, general detritus -- make a clumpy shag carpet.

On the walls are photos of tidy groupings of plastic. One photo is all of toy soldiers; another is of lemon-juice containers. There are also combs, lighters, whistle mouthpieces. You'd never imagine that girls' barrettes came in so many shapes: bows, dragonflies, school buses; even a pig with the word "MONDAY." Red spreaders for snack cheese are bleached by the sun, or have coral patterns on them, or look completely unchanged by their time in the ocean floating who-knows-where.

"We have been sold the myth of disposable plastic," the authors write. "We throw it away but it stays with us for centuries and may ultimately irreparably alter the planet."

Gloomy sentiments, and certainly true, but I enjoyed the beauty and symmetry that the artists created in their patterns of objects. They took trash and created order. It reminded me of being a child and happily sorting buttons from my mother's button jar: by color, size, number of holes, levels of shininess...

Photos by Rebecca Wallace. In my top photo, you can see the neatly lined-up cheese spreaders.

An evening with Adams

It was a true pleasure to hear the composer John Adams speak last night at the Cantor Arts Center. Kronos Quartet violinist David Harrington conducted a free-flowing interview with his fellow musician and friend -- the two have known each other for 30 years. It was like eavesdropping at a particularly entertaining dinner party. You never knew what turn the conversation would take next.

Harrington confessed to being a novice interviewer, which made my ears perk up. As someone who throws out queries for a living, I was curious to hear what was on his index cards. I may have to steal his most creative question: "What's your favorite note?"

"God," Adams responded, grinning. He finally responded in part: "I'm not a linear guy. I like 'em when they're stacked up." (His 2008 "String Quartet," a piece full of deft, hectic energy that will be performed at Stanford this weekend, certainly attests to that.)

Harrington and Adams talked a lot about the need for better arts education in this country, and about the pure joy of experiencing music. More than all the other arts, Adams said, it's about simple emotion. "Music can't convey ideas; it's raw feeling." He added that after 9-11 many people sought comfort in classical music -- not pop -- because of its "depth of feeling."

(Later in the evening, the issue of classical music's depth arose again when a man asked whether our short-attention-span society is killing classical music. Adams was adamant that it's not. "People love to concentrate," he said. Bruckner's complex symphonies, he noted, are more popular than ever, perhaps a welcome exercise for our brains in these poppy times.)

In a pleasantly quirky moment, Harrington asked what Adams thought about Obama giving an iPod to the Queen of England. Adams said: "I thought it was very cool. The iPod is a representation of what's so great about this country." How so? It's beautiful, and it's optimistic, the composer said. "I only regret that Silicon Valley hasn't dedicated itself more to the arts."

The two men laughed about how the iPod was loaded with Rodgers & Hammerstein, with Harrington suggesting "The King and I" as an apropos selection for the Queen.

Adams quipped, "And probably, 'There is Nothing Like A Dame,'" earning delighted groans from the crowd.

When I had interviewed Adams about his "String Quartet," he had been candid about his concerns about the piece, saying that he had shortened the end because it was too long even for him. Last night, he also confessed to being his own worst critic about his compositions, saying, "People try to keep me away from my babies, because I'm like one of those animals who eats them." Another roar of laughter from the audience.

But Adams was anything but critical in talking about his favorite classical works and composers. At one point, he mused aloud, "I'd love to have a selective lobotomy, a regenerative lobotomy, so I could hear Beethoven's Fifth again, just like the first time I heard it."

Photo by Margaretta Mitchell, from John Adams' website at earbox.com.

In the Bedroom

There are spaces that offer little architectural detail. But I subscribe to the thought there is no problem a little fabric and lots of color can't solve. The empty bedroom below was nothing special. It's located in a stately Washington, DC mid-rise building near the National Cathedral. The occupant has a flair for color and a strong sense of style. Sheer fabric was used to drape the adjoining walls behind the bed. Bead fringe swags topped it off... now, that's special.

(click image to enlarge)

Plum and chartreuse pillows....loving it!

A large bedroom window was draped in the same sheer style as behind the bed.

If you have a piece you absolutely love don't get rid of it just because it gets a little torn or tattered.... have it reupholstered in a striking color or pattern.

Pretty in plum