A day in court. A dress rehearsal

8/11

Come to  church after spending all morning with Andre in court.  The judge signed the papers. It’s official. He gets to stay in his apartment.  If we do nothing else, we did that. We, togteher, did that. 

Still wrestling with getting the plumbing issues taken care of.  After a break, I return and find Lynnea Benson of Frog & Peach Theatre Company, the company that excavated, as they put it,  the theatre back in 1995, bringing it to life gain. Their free performances gave a generation of Upper Westsiders an intimate introduction to Shakespeare. Since we left, they’ve peformed at a number of places, finally finding a home at SPSA, ironically where we lived for three years. She’ talking to Danielle about rehearsal time and space. She liked the Woodshed article in the Times. That’s going to get you a lot of requests for space, she says. Yeah, mainly from theatre companies with no money, I respond.  And we laugh.

RL comes by to check out the sump pump basement situation. But also has sad news. The P&G Cafe closed a week early. No last show for RL. No last open mike night. (I’d promised mysef to go.) No final night’s party. Strange how sad it made me feel. Spent a lot of time there last summer. Right across the street from where Amanda was staying. Heard her gigs there, as well as Piano Dan and RL and others.  Thought it would make a great reality tv show, the community of musicians that came together there. I’ve felt a special pastoral concern for that community ever since so many of them performed in our balcony music  festival last December and helped with our Bridge series this June. 

We check out the work Clifford has done on the bathrooms. New sheet rock hung. We make our way through the crawl space back to the mini yard. Where the flooding water was cascading. Sure enough, there are huge gaping holes in the pipes where they have rusted through. We sit in the backyard, swappingstories mainy. Until Clifford comes along to evluate what needs to be done. 

Woodshed has offcially cancelled tonight’s preview. But Stephen has welcomed us to dress rehearsal. Andrea and Ellen have come and Berik and Leila and her brother David here as well. Running from space to space, having to decide which character to follow, it’s all a bit ADDesque for me. But slowly, ducking into other peoples’ lives, an overall stroy begings to emerge. And of course, often life is like that. W dduck in,have to make assessments, judgements. 

As I turn to walk up Amsteam with Andrea, I see Edward asleep on the sidewalk south of the steps and the first two doorways are filled with two sleepers.