The Sound of Music

My director's notes for the program.

Come see The Sound of Music 

on 23-24 March at North Shore High School, Glen Head, NY.

Life is a movie too…Starring you,

your whole family is the cast and crew...that's a little secret between God and you

        - Stew, from the musical Passing Strange

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song.

        - Lou Holtz, professional football coach

...there ain't no other way, baby: I was born this way

        - Lady Gaga

No one gets to pick where she is born, to what family, how tall or talented or unlucky he will be. What each of us does with this becomes the drama of our lives. It’s a long series of trials, adventures, risks, and dangers as we try to figure out who we are.

Your life is the story of what you were born to do.

When we meet Maria, our beloved heroine in The Sound of Music, she's totally lost. She's preparing to be a nun, but it feels like a bad fit. She loves the nuns and the convent, but she feels incomplete and alone.  Only when she sings on the mountain does she feel like she belongs. “I go to the hills when my heart feels lonely... [and they] fill my heart with the sound of music...” Maria uses her beloved music to turn away from confronting her fears.

Maria, fortunately, isn't allowed to hide. Her mentor, Mother Abbess, pushes Maria from the stability of the convent and into the world. Maria needs to find her place in the world.  Mother Abbess knows that the most powerful enemy in the world is not the Nazis. It's the unwillingness to take important risks. She knows that we must be willing to face the fear of failure with the unending hope of finding ourselves.

Our production of The Sound of Music has a cast and crew filled with searchers. Not all of them are great test takers. They don't all do well sitting in desks all day. Some of them will probably not finish college. But these young people have a lot to give. Some are great musicians. Others can operate a professional lighting board. They can anticipate safety hazards in the dark and look out for each other. They can build a dress. They can use their voices to transport you from your long week to the mountains of Austria, take a text and turn it into something inspiring and beautiful.

Just as it takes a brave mentor like Mother Abbess to imagine what a lost child needs, it takes a brave community to imagine what a generation of children needs. North Shore is facing some tough challenges these days. In business, government, and our homes, the mountains look pretty daunting.  Can we afford to hide?

We dedicate this show to the many kids in our schools who are listening to the sound of their own music:  musicians, dancers, actors, builders, stagehands, seam rippers, runners, point guards, trainers, fullbacks, short stops, painters, chefs, mechanics, designers, electricians, pitchers, goalies, robot builders, poets... all of them. Because these kids were born this way.

Welcome to the third and final piece of 2011-2012, our Season of Change.

Outlawing Tragedy

My director's notes for two Irish one acts, both from 1904:  the darkly brilliant "Riders to the Sea" and the spritely hilarious "Spreading the News."


Actor Sir Ben Kingsley spoke to an audience at the National Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. earlier this year. Kingsley, who won the Oscar for his the lead role in Gandhi, is admired and known the world over for his work portraying characters in films about the Holocaust. Paraphrasing playwright David Mamet, Kingsley took a moment to speak about tragedy during his talk:

“David Mamet in his book, Writings in Restaurants, defined, let me slightly paraphrase and say western civilization, western civilization is a civilization determined to outlaw tragedy. If you remove the presentation of tragedy from the shaman that's sitting by the bonfire, you're telling the tribe nothing of real life. And it doesn't prepare us as adults. It infantilizes us and it dodges an enormous responsibility. And all great mythology that we love and respect has included loss and tragedy as well as great moments of salvation. It's braided in.”

Stories are the human race's greatest treasure. We are constantly telling stories, listening to them, watching them, and making them. Anthropologists tell us that we encode these stories with lessons and wisdom, passing them from one generation to the next. Stories that get told and retold become a sort of cultural genome, a DNA of our values and worries. Think of your favorite fairy tale or TV show. The characters from our stories are like members of our families: they inspire us, scold us, entertain us, and comfort us.

When Mamet tells us that we are outlawing tragedy, he is issuing us a warning of a storyteller. He tells us: don't forget the tales of woe. Don't forget the stories of loss. We need these stories.

In our schools and homes, however, we don't like these ugly stories. We loathe loss; we cringe from risk. We are baffled by tragedy and, often, we push it to the corners of our lives. We need to clean it up; put things into boxes. When we hide our eyes, we often lose the wisdom than can only be won through loss.

Kingsley ended his talk with a story:
“After a performance I gave of Hamlet I was walking across a field near Stafford-upon-Avon and I saw a young woman on the other side of the field walking towards me... She was determined [to get to me] and she faced me in the middle of this field. And she said (because I played Hamlet on stage the night before), 'I saw Hamlet last night. How did you know about me?' That's [a theatre-maker's] job. I know you. I'm trying to know you. And through knowing each other and holding onto that tribal bonfire, it will be okay.”

Drama remains the most vital storytelling we have. I invite you to see how special it is to see young people tell our oldest stories. When we see our kids act, sing, and dance, we are reminded just how tribal we are. Listen to them. There is old wisdom here.

Here's to our human tribe's great stories. May we never stop telling them.

Thanks to NPR and Ben Kingsley for the story.

The Irish Plays, at North Shore High School, Glen Head, NY.
An evening of Irish drama, poetry, music, and dance.
Friday, 25 March, at 7:30pm
Saturday, 26 March, at 2:00pm and 7:30pm
Sunday, 27 March, at 2:00pm

Monsters Singing You To Sleep

A music review.


The music scene is riddled with average singers, couched in polished production and sugared with Autotune. Everybody sounds the same, it seems.

Scott Peterson, of Pittsburgh's feisty band The Wreckids, is no average singer. And he's no average songwriter, either. Accompanied by his brilliant actress/musician wife, Sarah Siplak, Peterson has made a record for our time, putting his toy boat of hope in a sloshing tub of fears.

The Wreckids' 2010 EP release Singing You To Sleep But Giving You Nightmares finds a place between worlds of sweetness and bitterness, often stealing into both. The Wreckids tell wry stories of loss and heartbreak, layering thrilling harmonies with old school acoustic guitar playing. They're not afraid to make you laugh or make you cry; Peterson's authenticity simply demands a response from you.

"What'R We Gonna Do?" drops you into the Wreckids' cockeyed world of jokes wrapped in dark but plain observations. We're trapped in our boring lives, Peterson reminds us before advising us to "eat" and "sleep" in order to deal with it. "Somebody's Heart" cuts you with its scalpel lyrics only to sew you back up with its soaring vocals and harmonies. And you'll sing along without meaning to; this is a real folk album.

But don't expect a 70's throwback: Peterson isn't James Taylor or Joni Mitchell. The Wreckids are clearly not trying to replicate a sound. If you need a comparison, Peterson might be closer to earnestness of Ani DiFranco with the tenderness of Rufus Wainwright. He's playful, too, like Regina Spektor, but kind of nerdy, like Ben Folds.

The point is: The Wreckids have a whole sound, a new voice on the scene. And Peterson and Siplak put on an undeniably riveting live show that grabs and builds audiences immediately. There is something special here, and audiences in Pittsburgh and New York City know it.

In a music world of hipsters, rockers, ingenues, and models, The Wreckids bring you something different. They bring you the real thing: music for music's sake. Get this record. It'll soon be one of your favorites.

Singing You To Sleep But Giving You Nightmares is available on itunes.

Full disclosure: The Wreckids' Peterson and Siplak have been known to personally serve food, jokes, and whiskey to the author of this review. Among other things.