This Kind Of Hit Me In The Feels.

Al Hirschfeld drawings of the Broadway productions of Sondheim's Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Passion (1994)

this is still so funny to me

“I was the product of an affair.  My father had sex with my mother once, and she hadn’t even told him about the pregnancy.  So he never knew I existed.  I was an only child.  I was desperate to connect with my identity.  But I had no way of finding him because my mother remembered his name incorrectly.  It wasn’t until I became an adult that I was finally able to track him down.  The first time we met, he sat in a chair, pulled out a cigar, and said: ‘I was expecting you to be a boy.’  It turns out that he’d had a son while he was in college, and he’d given that child up for adoption.  Somewhere out there, I had a brother.  I grabbed a napkin and wrote down all the information my father could remember.  But it wasn’t enough.  I couldn’t locate my brother.  Soon I got busy with my family and my mind moved on to other things.  Then two years ago I was on Ancestry.com, and I got a ping.  It wasn’t like: ‘Oh, here’s your brother.’  But it was a match of some sort.  And I’m really good at investigating that stuff, so I found him on Facebook and sent him a message.  After we confirmed things with a DNA test, Eric and I hit the ground running.  We call each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’  We’ve visited each other’s families.  We look alike.  We think alike.  I’ve shared my poetry with him.  He shares his music with me.  We’re both divorced, and middle-aged, and experiencing similar things.  So there’s so much to talk about.  We have these text conversations that last all morning.  I’m not that same teenage girl anymore—desperate for connection.  I don’t have a void that I’m trying to fill.  But he’s just been such a nice addition to my life.  I love having a brother.” #quarantinestories

“My mom said: ‘Val has something to say to you.’ I was sitting on the stairwell, crying. And he knew right away that I was pregnant. He didn’t yell. He didn’t say anything. He just started pacing. But I knew what he was thinking: I was eighteen years old, I was his only daughter, and he thought that having a child would ruin my life. When he finally stopped pacing, he told me: you can either get an abortion or leave the house. I knew then that I’d be entirely on my own. I started saving money from each paycheck to spend on clothing and supplies. But I had no idea what I was going to do when the baby came. My father wasn’t speaking to me. There was no eye contact. No nothing. Not that he’d ever been good at expressing his emotions. His mother had died when he was a baby. He’d had a tough life. From the outside like he didn’t care, but my mother told me that he was crying himself to sleep every night. After a few weeks he began to soften. He asked to see the sonogram. It wasn’t exactly a celebration, but at least he asked to see it. On the day of my C-section, dad spent that day drinking alone, which he rarely did. He was pretty drunk by the time I left for the hospital. He didn’t say a thing. My mom just looked at him and shook her head. But I was in the hospital for five days after my son was born, and every day my dad would visit. He’d bring us food. He’d hold my son for hours at a time. And when I came back home, there was a letter waiting for me on my bed. I’ve only read it twice in my life. Because it makes me cry too much. But he apologized for his behavior. And he said that we were going to be fine. My son is eight years old now. And whenever it’s Father’s Day at school, he brings home art for Papa. The two of them are inseparable. They’re always playing something. My son is always giving him hugs, and kisses, and saying ‘I love you.’ And Papa says it back. It’s the only time he ever says it to anyone. With my son he has no choice. It’s not in Papa’s nature to be affectionate. But it’s my son’s nature. He’s so open and natural with his emotions. He’ll give love for no reason at all, and his Papa has no choice but to accept it.”

Marlon Brando in ON THE WATERFRONT (‘54)

Holy shit.

Don’t I Get a Dream for Myself ? – Bernadette Peters and the 'Gypsy' Saga

Gypsy. It’s perhaps the most daunting of all of the projects related to Bernadette Peters to try to grapple with and discuss. It’s also perhaps the most significant.

For someone notoriously guarded of her privacy and personal life, careful with her words, and selective of the questions she answers, the narrative around this show provides some of the most meaningful insights it is possible to derive in relation to Bernadette herself. The show’s ability to do this is unique, through the way it eerily parallels her own life and spans a large range in time from both Bernadette Peters the Broadway Legend, right back to where it all began with Bernadette Lazzara, the young Italian girl put into showbusiness by her mother.

The most logical place to start is at the very beginning – it is a very good place to start, after all.

(Though no one tell Gypsy this, if the fierce two-way battle with The Sound of Music at the 1960 Tony Awards is anything to be remembered. Anyway, I digress…)

Gypsy: A Musical Fable with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and book by Arthur Laurents, burst into the world and onto the New York stage in May of 1959. After closing on Broadway in March 1961, Ethel Merman as the world’s original Mama Rose herself led the first national tour off almost immediately around the country. Just a few months later, a second national touring company was formed, starring Mitzi Green and then Mary McCarty as Rose, to cover more cities than the original. It is here that Bernadette comes in.

A 13-year-old Bernadette Peters found herself part of this show in her “first professional” on-the-road production, travelling across the country with her older sister, “Donna (who was also in the show), and their mother (who wasn’t)”.

The tour played through cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, New Haven, Baltimore and Las Vegas before closing in Ohio in 1962. Somewhat uncannily, its September 1961 opening night in Detroit’s Schubert Theatre even returns matters full circle to the 2003 revival and New York’s own Schubert Theatre.

Indeed this bus-and-truck tour was somewhat of a turning point for Bernadette. She’d later remember, “I mostly thought of performing as a hobby until I went on the road with Gypsy”.

But while this production seminally marked a notable moment for the young actress as well as the point where her long and consequential involvement with Gypsy begins, it’s important to recognise she was very much not yet the star of the show and then only a small part of a larger whole.

Bernadette was with the troupe as a member of the ensemble. She took on different positions in the company through the period of nearly a year that the show ran for, including billing as ‘Thelma’ (one of the Hollywood Blondes), ‘Hawaiian Girl’, and additional understudy credits for Agnes and Dainty June.

The above photo shows Bernadette (left) with another member of the ensemble (Sharon McCartin) backstage at the Chicago Opera House as one of the stops along the tour. Her comment on the stage of the Chicago theatre – “I’d never seen anything so big in my life!” – undeniably conveys how her experiences were new and appreciably daunting.

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Untitled, 2024 - by David Galstyan (1986), Armenian

QUICK RANDOM BREAKDOWN

MARS PC PLUTO CONJ. ASC SAGITTARIUS

Ego has been boosted today

SAGITTARIUS RISING

- by first glance people might find your legs/thighs/butt sexy

- exuberant and sunny disposition that people find attractive (girl next door type)

- big dazzling smile/playful smirk

- playful and teasing when first meeting people (especially people your attracted to)

PLUTO CONJ. ASC

- sexy, deep, alluring stare

- when first meeting people you have an noticeable intense presence (especially to people who are attracted to you)

- rbf

- dominating or you just simply demand respect in your glance and how you present yourself

- bratty

PLUTO 12H

- being private about your sexual experiences/sexuality

- people might be curious as to what you’re like in bed

- dark secret sexual fantasies

- very passionate behind closed doors

- potential imposters syndrome when it comes to how you preform and how you appear sexually

And yes this is my placement in my chart 💋

- ⚜️💫⚜️

Bisan's recent post. I think it's important for you to read it. Tonight 03.12.23, journalists in gaza share their last messages. There are no words to describe the horrors unfolding in gaza right now.

I no longer have any hope of survival like I had at the beginning of this genocide, and I am certain that I will die in the next few weeks or maybe days. I have been sick with severe viral infection for days and cannot move from the mattress!

I suffer from nightmares that are so closely resemble reality that I no longer differentiate between reality and dream.

I live in a world other than the one I claimed to be building! I am a community activist who lived on the fantasy that the world was free and just, and I sought to bring rights not only to my people, but to many men and women in third world countries!

I was shocked that I was not from the third world! Indeed, we are the most humane and moral! Yes, because the world approves, supports, and finances the genocide we are being subjected to, legislates it, and gives reasons for for 58 days! While we are a people who have been living on occupied land for 75 years and are still searching for our rights and communicating our voice to the world!

My message to the world: You are not innocent of what is happening to us, you as governments or peoples that support Israel’s annihilation of my people. We will not forgive you, we will not forgive you, humanity will not forgive you, we will not forget, even if we die, the history will never forget .

A Message to friends: Thank you and the supporters around the world. You have been compassionate and very strong. We ask you not to lose hope, even if the world seems completely unfair and your efforts have not yet resulted in a ceasefire.