Giving my Regards to Theater in 2012!

Happy New Year! Rather than make resolutions this year, I'm planning on keeping my existing, long-standing resolution to Use a Ridiculously Large Percentage of my Salary on Theater. To help encourage me to do this, here's a round up of the 11 shows I remember seeing in 2012, in award show form!:

The Best Overall Musical Theater Experience
Merrily We Roll Along
To celebrate ten years of friendship (we met at a MLK weekend NFTY event), Matt and I decided to spend a February weekend in New York going from show to show and generally having a fantastic time. We also realized that Merrily, one of my favorite Sondheim scores (and actually probably my favorite show ever) was being done in an Encores! production in February with Lin-Manuel Miranda (!), so Arielle decided to join as well. It was fantastic to see the show done, since it's rare, and because I had the soundtrack memorized. It's a really challenging show to do well, but has some of the most poignant, heartbreaking songs of all time, and I thought the production handled the backwards-in-time thing pretty well. Afterwards, we went to the stage door and met Lin-Manuel Miranda, who recognized Arielle from their West Wing twitter interactions (amazing!). 

The Show with the Best Shock-and-Awe
Carrie the Musical
This was another one of the shows Matt and I saw during our Ten-Year-Friend-aversarry weekend. I was totally NOT into seeing this, but I'm so glad I did -- the whole show was beautiful and shocking and emotionally exhausting --  Marin Mazzie in particular was my favorite as the tortured mother. 

The Show That Gave me a new Pre-Shabbos Soundtrack
Godspell
This was the last show Matt and I saw that weekend, and it was SO MUCH FUN. I've always liked parts of Godspell, especially the song All for the Best, but generally felt like the show had such highs and lows that I couldn't get into it. The production we saw with Hunter Parrish did a fantastic job of taking into account all of the ups and downs by making the whole thing into a rock concert. There was lots of clever staging, some really fantastic voices, and the most energy I've ever seen in musical theater form. And -- I recently discovered that the soundtrack makes a really good prepping-for-shabbat soundtrack, so that's a big win for the universe.

The Show that Taught Me Something New
Red
My friend Glee and I went to see Red at Arena stage in the spring. I really knew very little to nothing about Rothko, but had heard such good things about the Molina/Redmayne production that I thought it would be worth seeing, and it certainly was. The show is a pretty intense experience, and beautifully uses the art as a part of the storytelling. I'm still hoping to get to the Phillips Collection to see the Rothko room, which apparently still has the same dimensions and setting as when it was originally set up (the setting of his paintings was a big part of the story of the play). 

The Show with the Best Staging
Music Man
In the late spring, Arielle and her friend Barbara and I went to see the Music Man at Arena Stage. It was in the Fichandler, their theater-in-the-square, which is where I saw a smashingly good production of Oklahoma the year before. Marian the librarian was played by Kate Baldwin, who I've had a theater-crush on from afar for a years -- I missed her in Finian's Rainbow on broadway, which was one of my Great Regrets of 2009. Anyway, the show itself was great (I forgot how lovely some of the music is), and 

The Show that Made My DC Years a Perfect Full Circle
First You Dream
I saw First You Dream at Signature Theatre in early 2009, right after I moved to DC. It's a fantastic Kander and Ebb revue, and the version I saw originally included Heidi Blickenstaff and the ever-fabulous Norm Lewis. First You Dream was my introduction to Signature Theatre, which was my favorite stage in the DC region, AND introduced me to a whole host of K&E songs that I didn't know before. This version included most of the original cast from Signature Theater, but also Patina Miller (recently of Sister Act: the Musical), who was cute in the show. It also kicked off a summer in which I had another Liza phase, especially the stuff from The Rink and Liza and with a Z (Ring them Bells is potentially my new favorite song of . . . all time).



My First Show in SF!
My Fair Lady
A few weeks after arriving in SF, I went to see My Fair Lady at SF Playhouse with my friend Lynda. It was a very different production in a bunch of ways -- it was a tiny cast (for such a big show), there were only two pianos instead of an orchestra, and the Henry Higgins was young so they made the Higgins-Eliza relationship into a full-fledged love story. I liked the different take, and although it wasn't my favorite way to do My Fair Lady, it was a good show and a great first show in my new city of San Francisco!

The New Sondheim Show (for me) of the Year
Assassins
As some of you know, I was a reluctant convert to the cult of Sondheim. This is, of course, because Matt S. INSISTED that I love all things Sondheim during our epic roadtrips from Boston to PA, and I really like resisting his suggestions until I realize he's  totally right. However, ever since he forced me to watch the SF Symphony Orchestra Sweeney Todd, I've been adding one or two shows to my Shows I Love list a year. I was already obsessed with the music of Assassins because of a.) Matt and b.) lots of Sondheim revues, but hadn't had the opportunity to see it until my friend Lynda assistant directed it at Shotgun Players in Ashby. 

The Show that Made Me a Over-Think Relationships
Closer
In November, I went with my friend Lynda to see a show that she directed (!), Closer at the Rabbit Hole. It's the play that the movie Closer (with Natalie Portman, etc) was based on, and it's a great story about these four characters and the complicated relationships amongst them. Kind of hard to describe, but the acting was really fantastic and some of the scenes in the play were absolutely heartbreakingly good. 


The Show that Made Me Want to Read the Book
My Name is Asher Lev
To be honest, I didn't love this play, which I saw with Mat and Jonathan during my December visit to New York. But afterwards, there was so much discussion of the book it's based on that I'm now excited to read it (I read the Chosen as a kid, but somehow missed My Name is Asher Lev), so the show wasn't a total loss. 


The Show that Made my Face Hurt from Smiling
Bring it On the Musical
Mat S. saw this musical this summer and INSISTED that I come to New York and see it with him. I was definitely a skeptic, but one weekend in early December, I came to NY for the weekend, and we made sure to get tickets. It was a cute, funny, smile-y show, and while it didn't challenge assumptions or make me think, it was one of those joyful musical theater experiences where you leave tapping your toes and giggling from the fun of it. 

On 12/12/12, and other nicely round dates

Yesterday was 12/12/12! Hooray!

Since I like fun dates, especially repeated ones like today's, and since I'm pretty sure this is the last one I will get for quite a while), I thought I'd dig through my brain and some social media archives to guesstimate what I was doing on each of the repeated-date dates of the past decade and a bit.

9/9/99
This was the first one I remember (I was a toddler on 8/8/88), and I'm pretty sure I remember it because MTV had one of their awards shows on this date. At the time (I was in the beginning of 8th grade), I didn't have MTV so I was likely actually out at Beth Or auditioning for or just starting Rehearsals for Once Upon a Mattress, the first time I was in it.

01/01/01
I was in the 9th grade. We had either just done or were about to have auditions for my first high school show, Fiddler on the Roof (this was the 2nd time I was in that show). I don't remember what I did that New Years, but I was definitely one of those odious kids intent on letting everyone know that I knew that the millennium didn't REALLY start until 2001 (while secretly feeling like all that mattered was the first number in the date changing), and that 2001 felt pretty anticlimactic.

02/02/02
I was a sophomore in high school. That year, I was in marching band for the first time, and remember being so relieved when it was musical season. That spring's show was My Fair Lady, and I distinctly remember most of my friends quitting because they were cranky about their parts. But I stuck with it ( because -- hello, My Fair Lady!), and as a result, my poor mother and sister had to endure four performances of not-the-best version of that show, with no cuts and plodding pacing (see: the time i still owe them deeply for 16 hours of bad HS musical).

03/03/03
According to my journal from the time, this was a Sunday in the spring of my junior year. I spent that morning helping run programming for the 1st graders at Beth Or. Alli and I spent the afternoon at the Philadelphia Flower Show with mom, helping her get her materials into the convention center for a talk on recyclable gardening materials, and then having a gallumph about the show. Apparently, I had also just gotten contacts for the first time and was cranky about my inability to get them into my eyes, and was nervous about the results of a trigonometry test. Ah, to be 16!

04/04/04
April 4th was a Sunday in my last semester of high school. My journal says I spent the day with Lauren G,. bouncing around Ursinus' campus (she lived on the border of it, and at the time, I thought I was going there). I wrote in vigorous superlatives about the day, but it mostly looks like we hung around her house, ran errands, and drank coffee at Horn and Hardart. I suppose that's the best kind of day, in a way.

Also amusing -- I wrote that I "walked the love of my life" that morning - clearly, I was referring to Harley, but it is a touch concerning that at 17 I thought a dog would be the love of my life. On the other hand -- he was a pretty great dog.

05/05/05
In May of 2005, I was in the middle of exams for my spring semester freshman year classes. The day before, I had my first experience with a double exam day in which one is a Kapelle class -- which is to say that on May 5th, I was likely nursing quite the hand cramp. My journal from the day also says that I had a Schutzy sandwich for dinner -- a wonderful comglomeration of tuna, hummus, spicy mustard, bagel and many other wonderful things which was Mat's speciality when he worked at Usdan. I can almost guarantee that the Octet also gathered for our then-traditional smoothie that night.

06/06/06
I spent the beginning part of the summer after my sophomore year of college working at the Abramson Center in their recreation department, so that's what I was up to on 6/6/6. (And yes, getting to play Bingo and sing songs with nice Jewish old people was a perfectly designed-for-me gig). That week, i wad also gearing up to staff a Rockwood Adventures trip with a bunch of crazy teenagers and my friend Aaron.

07/07/07
According to the social media, I spent the day visiting Jackie in NJ, where we made an epically amazing video because we missed Missy (who was in Australia at the time). A week later was Schutz's epic 21st birthday party, the last of our summers-in-between-college rendezvous in NJ, so I'm sure I was also spending the day getting ridiculously excited for that.

08/08/08
A hot summer day in Philly, working at my first job out of college at the Franklin institute. I likely spent the day dissecting sheep's hearts and cow's eyeballs, and telling people about the World's Cheapest Spacesuit. Also, the week before, Shaked and Will and I met Bradley Whitfield and Christine Baranski after their show Boeing Boeing, so I can guarantee that I was telling everyone who would listen about that adventure.

09/09/09
This was a great day -- it was when ACEEE released my first report as lead author. Oh, for the days when climate change legislation really seemed like it was going to happen . . .

10/10/10
I was home in Pennsylvania, visiting mom and attending a Rosh Chodesh training at Temple Sinai (site of many scout meetings as a child). Afterwards, we went to a bookstore to drop off many many books (Mom had me get rid of an entire floor-to-ceiling the day before, and then spent the evening having dinner with Bubbie.

11/11/11
Elizabeth was in town visiting, so Sarah and Elizabeth and I all went out to dinner together at this cute place in Logan called Veranda. I remember that the food wasn't so good, but there was a bachelor party or something going on, so we had excellent people watching time. Afterwards, we went to ACKC Cocoa Bar, which (before they closed teh 14th street location) was one of my favorite places in all of the DC.

And now we're back to the present. I assume this was interesting to absolutely no one, but it was fun for me to take a gander through my journals and the interwebs to find out what I was up to on each of the same date-dates in the past decade. 12/12/12 was a pretty fun day too -- I was in Portland, OR for work -- a totally new and exciting city/state for me!

A Goodbye Letter to DC

DC,

It's time to break up for a little bit. It's definitely not you. It's me.

As you know, we've had a pretty fantastic relationship over the past 3.5 years. You were my first City that I really felt was MINE, and for many years, I loved nothing more than declaring my love for you (often loudly, usually post-a-delicious meal). I was even happy to be called a Washingtonian, over the giggles of my much cooler NYer friends (although not Washingtonienne, because that calls to mind that terrible slutty staffer tell-all from the mid-00's).

But the time has come for new adventures, new opportunities, and a new place to explore and fall in love with. I'll probably become one of those obnoxious denizens of SF who can't imagine living anywhere else because of the food, the tech, the trees, blah blah. I'll come back to you, Washington, but I might be grudging about it this time around.

So since that might happen, I want to preserve in my flighty brain the feeling of love I have for you now. DC, what follows is a list of reasons and stories about why I love you. Some of these things dont even exist anymore, or the people who mattered have moved away, but this is an (admittedly incomplete) list of what made MY DC.

The terrible snow collection services that turned Snowmaggedon into one of the most fun weeks of friendtime imaginable. Cinnamon gelato shake and hand roll bento box at Teaism.  The view from the Kennedy Center roof. The walk from the zoo to Pica Taco, and the feeling of unbridled joy at getting a fish taco after a day in Amazonia. Being the Sloth Whisperer.

Knowing that in any social situation someone will get your West Wing reference. People caring deeply, passionately, about the issues that matter to them. 

Working three blocks away from the best sister in the world. Lost nights with Rachel, Seth, Stacey, and Suzy, even though she didn't watch Lost. ROOMS. BBQing at Rachel and Ben's. Shabbos dinner at Jason and Gavi's. Cookie day shenanigans. Free/cheap good theater around the corner because you know someone who works at the Theatre J.

Sukkot at Jonathan's parents, and the fact that Mat would come from NY just for that. The Jefferson library room at the library of Congress. scratch that -- everything about the Library of Congress. New years parties where your friends will hang out with you even if you do look like a lobster. Living in a place where you're guaranteed to be visited by your best friends.

Barbara Cooks Spotlight series at the Kennedy Center. The dance music at Saint Ex. Slushies and 70s dance music at Little Miss Whiskeys. Politics and Prose's bargain floor. Joint birthday parties. Picnics in Meridian Hill park. Eastern Market mornings, followed by Good Stuff Eatery lunches. 

Cheese platters and cocktails at Ripple in Cleveland Park. Taramosalata and fig cocktails at Agora.  Bibimbap and sojoutinis at Mandu. Swirl margaritas and the sounds of 20-somethings getting drunk all around you at Lauriol Plaza. Shrimp and grits at Eatonville brunch. THE DONUTS at Tabard Inn brunch. 

Unexpected views of the Capitol and the Washington Monument that remind you you're in DC. Cherry blossoms, before they fall into the water. Walking from the Cathedral south along Mass Ave until you hit DuPont. Realizing that finally you know your way around the intersection of New Hampshire, Q, and 18th.

Barney Frank, Susan Sher, Bobby Flay, Mark Bittman, David McCullough, at Sixth and I. Taylor Branch and Sarah Vowell at Politics and Prose. Sondheim at Signature Theatre. Classic shows made into something new and wonderful in Arena Stage's theater in the round.

Signature theatre's open house. A day of free theater? Yes please.

Bottomless Bellini brunch at Urbana, followed by an afternoon of West Wing watching. Toasty warm late September-early October evenings. The black and blue burger at Ray's Hellburger. Not needing a car. Pepperoni sauce at Graffiato. The spinach appetizer at Rasika. Trivia near the piano Truman used to play in the Press Club. The Georgetown waterfront on a pretty day.

The feeling that anything I could possibly want to do could be achieved within "the radius" of Dupont. Greek-themed Hanukkah parties, because if you defeat a country in war, you def get to eat their food. Crafternooning. Hamantashen-making while watching Sister Act. Lunchdates and chevrutas with Jason. 

Seeing Brandeisians everywhere you go. Running into everyone you know at the Whole Foods on P St. And at Soviet Safeway. The dog park at S and New Hampshire. Running into the Mayor (even if he is embattled and corrupt) at Bens Chili Bowl. Veggie chili cheese fries at a Nats game.

DC, it's been grand. It's not goodbye, it's definitely l'hitraot. 

Love,

Rachel

2011-in-Review: the MAP edition!

I am an avid consumer of social media, and am often excited to try new apps, but only after people I like start doing it first (I like to think of myself as a follow-my-friends early adopter. which probably makes me not an early adopter at all). One of my favorites if Foursquare, which, as you probably already know, allows you to “check in” to the places you go. Some think this is creepy (and I agree, in some contexts it totally could be), but you’re able to check in without sharing your location with anyone if you so prefer, and I think you can even make that your default setting.

What I really love about Foursquare is the ability to make MAPS. As you know, I’m a bit of a map nerd (read: huge map nerd). And Foursquare lets you export a KML feed on Google maps to make awesome maps of the places you’ve been. I already did this once on the blog for my trip cross-country with Miriam, but thought that in lieu of the this-is-what-I-did-this-year-post, I’d be a bit more creative and share in map form. I might still do one of those posts, since they’re funsies, but let’s wait and see.

So to start off with, here’s EVERYWHERE I went (or at least checked into) this year. You’ll notice there’s no international travel (2010 didn’t have any either, but 2009 had Costa Rica). Luckily, 2012 will be a great international travel year, with the very exciting ITALY trip in May to look forward to.

Nonetheless I did get to visit some new places, like:

Denver! (there’s not so much to see from this trip, since we spent a considerable amount of time on the couch. win. Slash, blame it on the margs):

And LA:

As usual I made quite a few trips up to NY, although perhaps not as much as in the past. Nonetheless, trips in April, July, and October (and stop-throughs in January and March) yielded a bunch of new favorite spots, chief among them the Waffle Truck, Fort Tryon Park/the Cloisters, and fantastic brunch spot Centro Vinoteca.

I also started a new job in the middle of 2011, leaving the wonderful non-profit I worked at for 2 ½ years for the equally wonderful, but very different energy efficiency software company where I now work. It’s located out in Courthouse, which means I have visited some (but not enough) new places in the Courthouse/Rosslyn/Clarendon area:

It was also a fantastic year for theater, but I cannot for the life of me isolate just Philly, New York, and DC in a way that has enough resolution to see theater locations, so that will have to be saved for another day.

Finally, and most wonderfully, I now live in an exciting part of a dynamic city -- so there's not often need to leave what some friends affectionately call "the radius." This year yielded more new favorites -- Stoney's grilled cheese and the guac at El Centro D.F., and lots of visits to old favorites Pica Taco, ACKC (which is closing the neighborhood location :( !), and Teaism.

All in all, a fantastic year for being places -- I added 5 new states (Indiana, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona), went to lots of new cities, and got to explore more of my wonderful adopted city, D.C.!

My Crush on America: the yummy, and energetic!

The final, and much-delayed post in my Why-I-Have-a-Crush-on-America-Thanks-to-My-Recent-Road-Trip Series wraps things up with two of my favorite things: food and energy! (which sort of works nicely, when you think about the fact that food is an energy source).

America is yummy!

This trip involved a lot of fantastic eating. We started off the trip right, with a stop at Vegan Treats, the DELISH vegan bakery in Bethlehem, PA. I got the peanut butter bomb, which I like to refer to as The Best Thing to Happen to Peanut Butter Since the Goober Pie. Miriam got a lovely carrot cake. I've been to Vegan Treats before, but love introducing it to new people -- I was only sad that I passed within 45 minutes of home and didn't have my Mom come meet us!

The next wonderful food stop was right outside of Indianapolis and Camp Guci at Traders Point Creamery, where Miriam’s boyfriend Beni was a staff member this summer. Miriam and I both got grilled cheese with avocado (I got mushrooms, too!) and a gouda and vegetable soup (so good-a!). We also sampled their chocolate milk (which Miriam says was wonderful, but I forgot that I don’t actually like chocolate milk) and their caramel ice cream, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

In St. Louis, we had inexpensive and yet DELISH sushi at Wasabi in Clayton. I will shut up and let the sushi boat (and Miriam's face) speak for itself:

In Denver, we had delicious tacos and even more delicious margaritas at the awesome Machete’s. Hilary and Tyler are friends with the Chef, which meant we got to try new things (ridiculously smooth tequila AND huitlacoche, a Mexican corn fungus, which is a delicacy and something I’ve wanted to try for a while thanks to Iron Chef). Silliness ensued, as one would expect from the combination of altitude and margaritas.

We also had next-morning brunch at this cute place called Snooze, which had a GLORIOUS dish of hash browns with eggs and cheese and any toppings of your choice. Basically, a bowl o' happiness. I chose avocados and tomatoes (obviously):

In LA, we had a much-anticipated meal at Fabio-from-Top-Chef’s restaurant, Firenze Osteria. We each ordered a different kind of gnocchi (look, the man is famous for his gnocchi. we couldn't resist). I won't say more, except that a. I won the Ordering Game of Life by ordering the Best Pesto of All Time, and b. you should read Mat S.'s account of The Best Pesto He's Ever Eaten.

America is energy-diverse!

America has lots of different energy sources, and they’re ALL advertised along interstate route 70! Now there are some (coughcoalcough) that I’m not a ginormous fan of, but there’s no denying that it was neat to see signs advertising all of these of different types of energy. We saw signs for coal in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, for natural gas in Pennsylvania (oy vey Marcellus Shale), and for geothermal in Ohio (ask Miriam, I got pretty excited about this one).

We also saw wind turbines throughout Illinois, Kansas, and Colorado, a solar-powered restaurant in Denver, and old-school oil wells in Los Angeles and in fields in western Kansas. We even saw signs for home insulation, so I’m going to say that we saw energy efficiency, too. Unfortunately, I didn't actually get pictures of any of this except the wind turbines in Kansas. Needless to say, my inner energy policy wonk was a happy camper throughout the trip. Miriam probably less so, since she had to listen to me talk her ear off about it . . .

So that’s it for the blog posts about our EPIC summer road trip. Moral of the story: I had a fantastic time, and can’t wait for my next adventure!