Today
is our tech day for THE 27 CLUB at the Kraine Theatre in NYC. We have three hours to figure out how to
transfer our lighting and sound plot over to a largely unfamiliar board, do a
quick cue-to-cue, and then run the show so that the Fringe Festival organizers
can time our show and make sure it’s right at 90 minutes. It promises to be a fantastic mess, but it’ll
also be the first time the whole cast is back together up here.
Speaking
of the cast, Amanda and Daniel and I carpooled it up here yesterday. The long day of driving from Greensboro to
Brooklyn was broken up by a stop in Baltimore, MD for crabs. The stop took us almost three hours. Extravagant?
Maybe. A senseless waste of
time? I don’t like your tone. Delicious?
Absolutely. I have had a love
affair with steamed blue crabs for the entirety of my life. My parents met when they were in secondary
school in Maryland, and I was born in Ellicott City, right outside of
Baltimore. Most of my mother’s side of
the family spent all of their lives in MD, and I always relished the trips up
because of the promise of crab. My
grandfather in particular was a master crab steamer. To date, my idea of a perfect afternoon
involves a newspaper-covered table, several wooden mallets, a little corn and
sausage, and bushel after bushel of steamed blue crabs. I even don’t mind the paper-cut-sized wounds
the little buggers give me in my haste, or the sting of Old Bay seasoning
worming its way into the aforementioned wounds.
Over the course of conversation, it was pointed out to me by Daniel and
Amanda, both of whom have worked with me on productions in the past, that crabs
manage to scuttle their way into several of my plays. (Notably WAKE-WALKING, which prominently features
terrifying gigantic web-spinning crabs in Act 2. You would think I was a man of infinite
financial resources, but no – just a dumbass.)
In
any case, we met Amanda’s lovely sister Katie and had a prolonged al fresco
crab pickin’.
The
rest of the drive was light and easy. We
got into Brooklyn around eight and met our liaison for the apartment we rented
through airbnb.com (fantastic service that I had never heard of until
recently), and relaxed for a bit. The
apartment is nice – it belongs to a married couple who are out of town for a
month. She’s a scientist and he’s a
visual artist. The entire apartment is
covered with his artwork, which is beautiful, and his metal works, which are stunning
(and which we have been informed that we cannot under any circumstances get
wet.) Then we took a walk down to the
Bushwick Food Co-Op, which was a miserable failure, and then an open air
grocery, which was a culinary triumph. I
bought ingredients for a lovely dinner and some staples for the next few
days. We hoofed it back home, and I made
a nice farfalle pasta with sautéed eggplant, squash, onion, and zucchini,
chicken sausage, diced tomato, and parmesan reggiano. I was too hungry to take a picture.
Finally,
after a failed trivia night meet up with my pal Eve Campbell, we decided to pop
into a little place nearby called MILES and have – yes – another bite to
eat. We were semi-surprised to find our
airbnb liaison in there as well. Small
borough. We noshed on chorizo secco,
some great slices of crusty bread, a beautiful mustard, and some gherkins – all
for $5. It might be worth mentioning
that I am almost more excited about the food up here than the play itself – but
ask me again in a few hours when we hit the stage.
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