[16 Dec 2009|02:45am] zje [ music | of Montreal - Rapture Rapes the Muses | Powered by Last.fm ] Best of Of Montreal by me 01. Nonpareil of favor 02. Suffer for fashion 03. Wraith pinned to the mist and other games 04. Rapture rapes the muses 05. An eluardian instance 06. Cato as a pun 07. Disconnect the dots 08. Forecast fascist future 09. Wicked wisdom 10. Faberge falls for shuggie 11. My british tour diary 12. The party's crashing us 13. Gronlandic Edit 14. Lysergic bliss 15. Requiem for O.M.M.2 16. Gallery piece 17. Bunny ain't no kind of rider 18. So begins our Alabee 19. We were born the mutants again with leafling post comment

Farewell [11 Dec 2009|03:59pm] waitsfortherain ¨ In five hours from now the final performance of 1948: O Ano da Iluminação de Samuel Beckett will begin. As usual, the whole thing is going to be very charged with emotion. Last performances always are. This one in particular means that a large part of me will be drifting into the past forever. I conceived this production, wrote the script of the first part, cast and directed the actors, selected the music, and played Vladimir in the edited version of Waiting for Godot that makes for the second part. I started preparing the show in April, rehearsals began in July, and we opened in November for the five-week run that ends today. I had never put so much of myself in anything. One of these days I'll have to think about this incredible adventure with whatever amount of objectivity I can round up and write about it. Not now. Now is the time to feel this big lump in my throat as I think about going on the stage for the last time to say the words of this great genius. Most of today's audience will consist of a drama school class whose teacher loved the show so much that she wants her students to see it and then have a questions and answers sesson with us. I couldn't think of a better way to say goodbye. Since the show opened, I got quite a few kudos as an actor. Nothing that I ever did got so much applause (not to mention the very loud "Bravo!" I got last week from a total stranger) as the monologue from Molloy with which I end the first part. I also got kudos on the script of the first part and on the soundtrack. I didn't get any as a director, having had to cry for help and be rescued from disaster by my friend Malu Cotrim, who took care of putting the show together after I realized that being on the stage with the others I wasn't capable of visualizing it with the necessary detachment. I continued my work with the actors while she took over every single aspect of staging, our names being credited jointly as director. Fortunately, the arrangement worked and people liked the final result. But I should have known better than venturing into playing one of the leads and directing such a difficult play as Godot. And I certainly didn't get any kudos as an executive producer, the truth being that there were moments when I almost mucked the whole thing up with my incapacity to dedicate myself objectively to a number of different aspects of the same project. Lots of lessons to be learned in all this. But not today. Today I will be looking again at a part of myself that I had suspected didn't exist anymore. I was wrong, and I couldn't be more grateful for that. As I say farewell to my beloved Vladimir, I can look ahead with infinitely more hope than I had before I appeared to have gone mad and embarked on this crazy, crazy journey. Thank God I did. And once again, may God bless the three actors who embarked on it with me. 1 comment|post comment

Cold Weather [07 Dec 2009|08:31am] waitsfortherain ¨ I'm in Teresópolis, where I haven't been in over three months, taking care of work matters with the publishers for whom I translate. I will be back in Rio tomorrow for the show's final week. Last week was fantastic, with "Bravos" and stuff, and everybody was very happy, except perhaps me on Wednesday, when technical problems with the light wrecked the epilogue (in spite of friends insisting it didn't happen). On the whole, the show is doing much better than I could ever expect. More about that some other time. Right now I want to write about how strange it is to wear a sweater and wake up in the middle of the night hunting for another blanket just a few hours after suffocating in Rio's unbearable heat. I've been thinking very seriously about it. As I get older, the little resistance I used to have to high temperatures seems to be leaving me. The moment I arrive to a place like Teresópolis, two hours away from Rio, just over 1,000 meters up in the mountains, where the temperature is always much lower, I feel fine. In spite of my lifelong passion for the seaside (not to mention my work making it indispensable for me to live in Rio), sometimes I think the time will come when I will no longer bear summer in my own hometown. post comment

Incoherence American Style [03 Dec 2009|12:37pm] waitsfortherain ¨ Brazilians couldn't be more perplexed at the country being the target of an unbelievably rude, irresponsible, and unjustifiable attack by an accomplished asshole named Robin Williams, who missed a golden opportunity of keeping his big mouth shut while being interviewed by David Letterman. It was an appalling thing to happen and understandably the press is giving it a lot of space. Nobody knows what got into this idiot (to say the least) to do a thing like that. I have this theory that( Read more... ) 2 comments|post comment

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