Philadephia, Here I Came.

This has been quite the week. I arrived in Philadelphia at around 7 p.m. last Monday, and after waiting a while for my bags to clear through the ol' Amtrak baggage claim (they're a lot slower than the airlines, I can tell you - and that's saying something!), I finally made it to actor housing around 8 p.m. The train trip had worn me out pretty thoroughly, so I ended up making an early evening of it and staying in.

Rehearsal started at 2 p.m. the next day... it was a reunion with Aaron Posner, the director (who also directed Picasso at the Lapin Agile), and Grace Gonglewski, who I'd not worked with before, but with whom I'd stayed for the first week of my first visit to Philadelphia. And I got to meet David Ingram, who's also doing the show. I snapped a number of pictures during the week. On the right there, you see stage manager Kathy Koenig, who's great. We worked together earlier this year on Picasso... it seems like ages ago, but it's really been less than six months. And what a six months it's been, huh?

Which, of course, makes it really easy to be happy to be back in Philadelphia. I've been being reminded daily just how much I like this city - my walks to and from the theater are chock full of beautiful historic sights (I walk through the Independence Hall area). And the people here - at least the people from the theater community that I've met - are really friendly. For instance, the other day I was trooping down Market Street on the way to the theater, and who did I see in the window of the Griffon Cafe but Matt Pfieffer, whom I'd met on my last stay in Philly (he's in the picture on the right - taken at one of the Picasso parties). I got a much heartier greeting than you'd normally expect from someone you've only met on about three occasions, and we sat and talked for a while. He's friend of both Grace's and Aaron's, and mentioned that he'd known I was coming back, and was looking forward to seeing the show.

Truth be told, I'd like to see this show, too! Since we're still at the beginning of the rehearsal process, I still haven't gotten to that "I'm saturated with this show" stage where I lose all objectivity and can't tell anymore whether it's gonna work or flop, so there's still a lot of excitement about the show. And the work is hard - Aaron is pushing me 'cuz I think he knows he can; that I'm willing to dig into the material to see what we can make out of it.

This picture is one of Aaron and Grace talking over the scene we'd just been working on. That's the finished set they're sitting on. The fact that the set's finished and we're able to rehearse on it is a very unusual thing... quite a luxury.

The rehearsal schedule has been hard - we're rehearsing from 2:00 to 10:30 each weekday, and doing concentrated six hour stretches on the weekends, so it hasn't left me a lot of time for getting out and exploring... plus I've got some work to finish for Gordon Rosenthal, which I need to get to. The schedule has been pretty hard on David Ingram, who's got a sick son at home (and consequently while not getting much sleep himself, is also suffering through the cold that Adam - his little boy - has)... I probably don't know David well enough to get away with posting this picture of him, but I'll try - adding the caveat that this is a picture of a sleep-deprived, cold-ridden father, who's just rehearsed a pretty grueling scene. Here's hoping I didn't just kill a new friendship! :o) I frankly don't think the picture does him any sort of justice... when you see him in person, and from just the right angle, he reminds me a LOT of Peter Scolari. For those of you who don't know, he was in "Newhart," and was Tom Hanks' buddy in "Bosom Buddies."

One last shot of Grace and Aaron, once again confabbing over the deepest meaning of the play. And now I need to sign off and get a little sleep... I'm writing this painfully early on Sunday morning, and I have to get up early for rehearsal.

I'll try to write more tomorrow - which is my day off. 'Til then: Ciao!