The Show Has Opened

What a huge relief to get this thing up and running. It looks beautiful for a show done on a dime and a nickel, and the actors are super. I'm so gratified that it's been so well-received as I feared I had a tire-biter on my hands. Was all set to slink back to Vicksy with my tail between my legs, speaking of tire-biters.

It just goes to show how you can lose perspective completely when you work on something for ages with no audience engagement to confirm your belief in whatever virtues it might possess. I suppose that's actually kind of dangerous for artists: you could throw something away on the basis of a huge case of misperception. (Is that a word?) One could do a historical survey of artists who have destroyed their work, regardless of what others thought of it.

Harry Partch was one: this may be apocryphal, but he is supposed to have held his own personal "auto-da-fé" while in New Orleans, at which time he burned all his extant scores in a pot-bellied stove. Good story; I wonder if it's true.

Anyway, I hope people show up and buy tickets to this thing. I'm not a gambler, otherwise I MIGHT have been able to find the money to run this thing for the USUAL short run, rather than this ABSURDLY short run. But I was feeling very uncertain about the piece, and very unwilling to put even more of my own money into it. Now it will close before any word-of-mouth has time to kick in and have an effect.

Oh, well: at least it got to have a life. And maybe it will go on again somehow, somewhere.