um. sorry for the paucity of posts… its been crazy.  was up at mohonk mountain lodge for a conference…. beautiful. the strange thing was I kept having the strongest sense of deja vu and i couldn’t place it. it was so powerful it started to freak me out. and then i realized that i had in fact been there before. back in 1996 or so i was working as a production assistant and got a two-week gig on a photoshoot for the Garnet Hill catalogue. We shot at Mohonk for two days, I think. Strange – and kind of freaked me out that the memory was buried so deep. Of course, its been a pretty busy 12 years with lots o’ changes.

And somehow I feel like there are more big changes ahead. I’m not sure how much more changes I want though.

Anyhoo – I’m trying to get back into the show-seeing swing. Tonight I went with my friend amanda to go see The Truth About Santa at The Kraine. Written by and starring Greg “Urinetown”  Kotis, directed by John Clancy, the show is scrappy, home-made holiday fun. Kotis casts his actual wife – Ayun Halliday – and kids as his character (George)’s wife and kids which makes the show both endearing and amateurish.

Many, many years ago, when I was a freshman in college, I played the wily serpent in a play called Edenweed, written by Ayun Halliday, who was then a senior, I think.

More than anything, watching this fun, funky downtown musical starring Ayun and her brood, in the well-worn Kraine Theater, reminded me of a – possibly fictional – time when downtown NYC  was a multigenerational bohemian enclave, when the children of poets and artists and actors and writers and musicians(not just rich people)  actually grew up in the city and made it feel like a homeland for the wacky and wonderful.

The Truth About Santa is a fun show to see with your friends and family, to take a trip back to a simpler time where the jokes were gentle and spirit was genial and our families (biological or chosen) gathered  to share in the spirit of the season.