2 Links 2 Make U Laugh

 

March 29, 2021 2 Links 2 Make U Laugh PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED.

Of course, one of the most troubling questions we face in our post- What'sHisName world has been: HOW WILL RANDY RAINBOW SURVIVE AS A GREAT ARTIST WITHOUT THE ORANGE ONE AS A TARGET FOR HIS WITTY & FINELY CRAFTED SATIRE?!? The answer, as we can see from this video is: "Quite nicely, thank you very much." He's gotten more complex musically -- and definitely more naughty. ENJOY.

And then there's Rachel Maddow. As we know, she can be like a dog with a bone. Here, she's got her teeth around a particularly juicy bone, and she's almost falling off her chair from chortling too much. ENJOY ONCE MORE. And that's all for today, dear Bloggelinis. Terry

Sunday 3/28 7pm: EVE IN THERAPY (& other treats)

 

March 23, 2021 Sunday 3/28 7pm: Eve in Therapy A Rave for livestream HICK HICK & Interview still available PREVIOUS BLOGS: TERRYBAUM.BLOGSPOT.COM PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED. IF THIS BLOG WAS FORWARDED TO YOU, YOU ARE NOT SUBSCRIBED. FOR LINKS TO EVERYTHING: LilithTheater.com EVE IN THERAPY -- FREE LIVE STREAM! Yes, BlogMistress admits she's having a bit of trouble getting back in the blogsaddle. It is so HARD to face the whole world and so much EASIER to deal with a tiny scrap of it like our scene about Eve's session with psychiatrist Dr. Lilith concerning Eve's notorious bite of a certain fruit. Not an insignificant scrap of the world, but still a scrap. (I am having difficulty with that paragraph above. I just want to send this off rather than get help.) Carolyn and I will be doing EVE IN THERAPY, our signature Crackpot Crones scene, as part of a live stream evening of seven short scenes presented by the Dramatists Guild in honor of Women's History Month. The evite describes all seven scenes, and they all intrigue me. EVE will be the third one. Please do try to see this, because I don't know if it will be available after the one performance. Carolyn and I are having so much fun working on EVE, which we've performed many times here and there around the U.S. and Mexico. We're being directed by Velina Brown, of SF Mime Troupe fame, and we love it. Of course, she's a master of comedy (her Mime Troupe background) AND Velina also takes us SERIOUSLY. She reminds us of the depth of the story we're telling -- of Eve's pain and Lilith's loving care. Quite frankly, I'd forgotten everything except the comedy. Just because you wrote something doesn't mean you ever grasped its full meaning. It's quite something to work with Velina. Velina asks questions that stop me in my tracks. When she was directing the SF Fringe production of HICK, she asked me, "Who is Hick talking to?" My first response was "What do you mean 'who is she talking to?"! She's talking to whoever paid for a seat that night!" Velina: "Are these people friends or strangers? Is she talking to one or many?" Finally I settled on one friend as my imaginary audience. It made a difference in my performance that it was specific. Recently, Carolyn came up with what I think is the perfect answer: Hick is talking to ME, Terry Baum. This makes sense to me, as I feel such love for Hick. I feel very protective of her. LIVE STREAM HICK RECEIVES A RAVE! We got a wonderful review by Charles Kruger on the website TheatreStorm: "The story is full of suspense and interest. But it is the emotional honesty of the two actresses that grips us and proves to be deeply touching." "Eleanor appears, in a graceful performance by Paula Barish. The chemistry between the two women is electric." "The two stories -- love affair and the Great Depression -- are beautifully interwoven." It's pretty nice to get a rave review where the critic really GETS what you're trying to do. Thank you, Charles! You can read the whole review by clicking TheatreStorm above. After reading the review and hearing LOTS of positive responses, I finally worked up the courage to watch HICK Live Stream myself. My own review: Paula was superb as Eleanor. The writing (both the playwright's & Eleanor's) was damn good! The directing choices really worked. That actress playing Hick has a ways to go, but she's on the road. HICK & INTERVIEW STILL AVAILABLE WATCH HICK WATCH INTERVIEW with TERRY & CAROLYN Many REALLY liked the interview. Try it. All for now, Bloggelinis. Wow, it feels so GOOD to write you. Why do I deny myself the pleasure???!? Does that happen to you, where you KNOW what you need to do, you KNOW you like doing it, and YET you feel enormous forces weighing you down. Sometimes I feel like I'm pulling against heavy heavy chains that are dragging me backwards. I wonder if perhaps it's a result of the fact that I'm really not supposed to be who I am. My parents brought me into the world to marry a (male) lawyer! Or at least a (male) CPA! They didn't do it so I could write this blog! Well, I done diddly doed it anyhow. So there! Terry

LIFE IN THE LIVE STREAM

 

March 5, 2021 The Mistress is Back! PREVIOUS BLOGS: TERRYBAUM.BLOGSPOT.COM PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED. IF THIS BLOG WAS FORWARDED TO YOU, YOU ARE NOT SUBSCRIBED. Life in the Live Stream Available through March: Watch HICK: A Love Story Watch Interview of Terry & Carolyn

So we three -- Paula (playing Eleanor), Carolyn (directing), and me -- did the dastardly deed of entering the live stream and betraying our beloved theater. Truly, I loved it. I loved performing with Paula, whose recorded voice I've been performing with since 2014. The reality of the relationship between Hick and Eleanor was so much more intense with a really strong actress reading the letters live, rather than on tape. Unfortunately, I still didn't get a chance to actually LOOK at Paula, because we were using Streamyard and not Zoom, because that's what EXIT Theatre uses. In Streamyard, you get a REVERSE mirror of what you're doing. That is, if I lift my right hand, I appear to be lifting my left hand. So in order to appear to be looking in Eleanor's direction, I had to LOOK AWAY FROM her. There was a brief moment, when we're getting excited about seeing each other for Christmas and we're both looking straight ahead. So I did catch a glimpse of her then. But even then, we're NOT supposed to be looking at each other but at the CAMERA, which is ABOVE our images on the screen. If I had looked at Paula's screen, I would have appeared to be looking down. During rehearsal, I thought I would never get used to the reverse mirror, which feels like the equivalent to driving on the left side of the road, if you've ever done that in Great Britain or South Africa. I was always having to make minute adjustments to stay in the little box of screen. I'd see my image and think, "A little to the right please" and move toward my right and discover I needed to move to my LEFT to APPEAR more to the right. Eventually I DID get used to the reverse mirror and started naturally reversing my movements. I was pretty proud of myself. Eric and I never DID get used to the left side of the road in 2013 in South Africa. We'd be trundling along and suddenly there would be a car screaming toward us in the same lane. We were incredibly stupid to even try a 3-week driving trip and incredibly lucky we survived intact. But I digress. Paula was absolutely wonderful as Eleanor -- elegant and strong and Eleanory and oh so in love with Hick. And, even though I couldn't see her, it was great to be performing live with her voice. My friend, Revital, who I believe is the premier HICKhead, having seen it countless times in workshops, readings, theaters and now live stream, says that this one is not to be missed. And I would certainly have watched the video MYSELF by now, if it was only Paula onscreen. But I'm putting it off. I was putting off the blog until I watched the live stream. And putting off the live stream because... well, nobody likes seeing themselves on video. I mean, even when I was YOUNG I didn't like seeing myself on video. So I thought I'd just do the blog first. Carolyn was directing a live stream performance for the first time. She had to make decisions in a totally new medium, not knowing what worked and what didn't. And it ALL WORKED! Everyone who saw the performance understood what was going on and the different image sizes of me and Paula seemed to make sense and seemed to flow. That's an astonishing accomplishment. Again, I haven't seen the video, but that's what everyone says. As always I benefited greatly from her direction as an actor. I love following orders. They just have to be the right orders. TECHNICAL: And how about those set changes! There are three scenes: Scene One 1968, Scene Two 1930s, and Scene Three 1968:

Guess who did the set changes! Moi! Who else is gonna be there in my flat in the middle of a pandemic? Ideally, actors should not have technical tasks other than picking up their props and changing their costumes. Their focus is simply not on arranging their environment precisely. And, as you can see, I was not precise. In the first scene, the corner of the set for the second scene is visible. Oopsie! And in the second scene, the set is supposed to fill the whole background -- no black should be visible. Oopsie again! I also had to change my costume during the same interval as the set change. The interval was as long as one of Eleanor's long letters. In live theater, one would have help with these things and one would also have a technician in the booth who could use her judgment about whether things were in place and the lights could be brought up. She might even be getting an actual go-ahead over a headset from someone backstage. However, Amanda, our wonderful technician, was in Grass Valley and had no idea when everything was ready. I lived in fear of being late getting into my seat for the third scene, because then people would see that I had very sloppily safety-pinned up the hem of my dressing gown, because in an early rehearsal I had stepped on the hem and just gone DOWN. (This was extremely amusing to Carolyn and me. We spend quite a bit of time laughing at ourselves.) Of course, I COULD have nicely hemmed the dressing gown, which would have HAD to have happened if the play was in a theater. But I decided to live in fear instead. In terms of lighting and make-up, you can see in the photo at the top that Paula looks much clearer and more like a real person than I do. I'm not sure how that happened. In terms of acting, for me it was like learning a new language. I explored what Hick feels and does in a more intimate way. By the end of the play, I felt some sense of mastery of this new language, which was exciting. For me, mastery has nothing to do with perfection. It's all about feeling comfortable enough to explore more deeply. I look forward to my next live stream performance. AND we have a very nice video of the live stream which you can watch and also forward to your friends! Okay, Bloggelinis, I'm preparing myself to enter the maelstrom that is our current world. Biden is turning out to be a mixed bag, of course. I'm furious that he's letting MBS, the Saudi Prince, get away with murder without so much as a reprimand. But I'm thrilled that he called the Texas and Mississippi governors "Neanderthals" for getting rid of the mask mandate -- although it IS very insulting to Neanderthals, who were probably very nice people. Terry

FEB. 25 @ 7pm PST: HICK: A LOVE STORY LIVE STREAMED!

 

EXIT Theatre Presents a Lilith Theater Production of A New Version of HICK Streamed Live FREE! "Eloquent" DC Metro "Fascinating" B'way World "Compelling" SF Examiner HICK: A LOVE STORY Based on Eleanor Roosevelt’s Letters to Lorena Hickok by Terry Baum & Pat Bond Thursday, February 25, 2021 7pm Pacific Standard Time Directed by Carolyn Myers Terry's HICK As You've Never Seen It Before! More condensed More Intimate More Eleanor with Paula Barish as E.R. STREAM IT LIVE! Go to theexit.org for links to Facebook & Youtube. Terry Baum's solo play, about the romance of butch journalist Lorena Hickok and patrician First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, has received rave reviews throughout the country -- from San Francisco to New York City to Washington D.C. In all these shows, Paula Barish reads E.R.'s letters on tape. Now, for this live stream, Terry and director Carolyn Myers are thrilled that Paula is joining them to transform HICK from a solo into a duo.  The performance is hosted by Christina Augello, artistic director of EXIT  Theatre. The presence of Paula has inspired Terry to add more of E.R.'s letters, while condensing the story to 35 minutes. The live performance on the small screen brings an intimacy to the two women's relationship that is different from a stage production. This amazing and true love story is an important part of lesbian history. Mrs. Roosevelt's letters are quoted verbatim. They are used with the permission of the Roosevelt estate. ALSO: Tuesday, Feb. 23 @ 7pm PST: HANGING OUT IN THE EXIT CAFÉ Host Amanda Ortmayer Interviews Terry & Carolyn Go to theexit.org for links to Facebook & Youtube. FIND MORE INFO ON HICK: A LOVE STORY, CLICK HERE.

Three Videos: Impeachment Trial

 

February 10, 2021 Three Videos: Impeachment Trial PREVIOUS BLOGS: TERRYBAUM.BLOGSPOT.COM PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED. IF THIS BLOG WAS FORWARDED TO YOU, YOU ARE NOT SUBSCRIBED. VIDEO #1: January 6, 2021 This video was shown as part of the opening statement for the prosecution of this trial, the second attempt to impeach Trump. YOU MUST WATCH THIS. We've all seen bits and pieces of what happened, but this video gives you three points of view intertwined: Trump's words and actions The words and actions of members of Congress The words and actions of the mob, both before and after it breached the Capitol. You get a very clear picture of the sequence of events. In other words... THIS VIDEO TELLS THE FULL STORY OF THE JANUARY 6 INSURRECTION I have not seen a video like this of that terrible day. It is chilling. VIDEO #2: Rep. Jamie Raskin's Speech about his personal experience of the Insurrection. This is part of his opening remarks as lead prosecutor. It is quite moving. It is preceded by all his legal and ethical arguments. It was so compelling that Trump's lawyer's first remarks were about how great it was. VIDEO #3 (extremely optional): Trump's Lead Lawyer's Speech What kind of defense attorney begins his opening remarks by saying how moved he was by the Prosecution's opening remarks? A very very bad one. But then, you get what you pay for. Trump is notorious for stiffing his lawyers -- it rises to the level of a general principle with him -- and the previous bunch quit when he refused to sign a letter of intent guaranteeing they would be paid! So Attorney Castor knows he might be working for free. Still, he has to do SOMETHING to make people forget his refusal to prosecute Bill Cosby. And I think he's right that defending Trump badly will do that. Everyone is in agreement that Castor was awful -- laughably so, from our point of view. Probably the only people who will watch the whole video are law professors who will treasure it as a living example of how to do everything wrong. I heard such a person chortling in delight on the radio. Bloggelinis: Sadly, I cannot totally devote myself to BAUMblog at this important time. I have an upcoming live stream theater performance (more on that later) and I must focus on preparing for that. I will blog briefly and sporadically, if at all, until Feb. 25. So don't count on me. Sorry. Terry

BAUMblog: My Friend is in the New York Times!

February 8, 2021 My Friend is in the New York Times! PREVIOUS BLOGS: TERRYBAUM.BLOGSPOT.COM PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED. IF THIS BLOG WAS FORWARDED TO YOU, YOU ARE NOT SUBSCRIBED. I'm not talking my friend is somewhere in the NY Times, mentioned in some article about someone/thing else or appears as an identifiable face in some photo. OH NO. My friend, Michael Goldhaber -- my OLD friend Michael Goldhaber -- has an interview/article about him running across TWO PAGES of the centerfold of the Sunday Review section, which is the most excruciatingly important weekly op/ed forum in the country. I just thought you'd want to know that about me. Oh, wait a minute, this is supposed to be about MICHAEL and his ideas. Click here to read the article by Charlie Warzel, "The Internet Rewired Our Brains. This Man Predicted It Would." That's the link to the digital NYT, where the article first appeared. I'm hoping it's easier to access. I know a lot of you cannot access the NY Times. So... The article begins: Michael Goldhaber is the internet prophet you've never heard of. Here's a short list of things he saw coming: the complete dominance of the internet, increased shamelessness in politics, terrorists co-opting social media, the rise of reality television, personal websites, oversharing, personal essay, fandoms and online influencer culture -- along with the near destruction of our ability to focus. Most of this came to him in the mid-1980s, when Mr. Goldhaber, a former theoretical physicist, had a revelation. he was obsessed at the time with what he felt was an information glut -- that there was simply more access to news, opinion and forms of entertainment than one could handle. His epiphany was this: One of the most finite resources in the world is human attention. To describe its scarcity, he latched onto what was then an obscure term, coined by psychologist Herbert A. Simon: "the attention economy." ....Most obviously, he saw Mr. Trump -- and the tweets, rallies and cable news dominace that defined his presidency -- as a near-perfect product of an attention economy, a truth that disturbed him greatly. Michael looked at the January 6 insurrection through the lens of the attention economy: "You could just see there were so many disparate factions of believers there," he said, remarking on the glut of selfies and videos from QAnon supporters, militia members, Covid-19 deniers and others. "It felt like an expression of a world in which everyone is desperately seeking their own audience and fracturing reality in the process. I only see that accelerating...." His biggest worry, though, is that we still mostly fail to acknowledge that we live in a roaring attention economy. In other words, we tend to ignore his favorite maxim, from the writer Howard Rheingold: "Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention." I find myself swamped by the attention economy -- even though I don't do social media, don't watch television, don't check the news on my phone, and don't subscribe to any streaming entertainment. There are still SO MANY WAYS I can find to distract myself. I subscribe to two print newspapers, three print newsletters, one print magazine and several online journals. I have a very active email correspondence. I feel a responsibility to keep up with what's going on politically so I can respond to important events in my blog. I also quite like to entertain myself and my email brings me so many options for that. At the moment, I'm jones-ing to read about lesbian weddings in the Style section of the NYT and then watch Marilyn Monroe's last unfinished movie on Youtube. Rosalia sent me a link. It's not that it would be BAD to read Style and watch the movie. It's that I kinda flounder through my days in a constant state of overwhelm. I need to pay attention to where I pay attention. Maybe Michael can give me some advice. We've known each other since I started graduate school in New York in 1969. He was my roommate's cousin. I was awed by him -- I mean, a theoretical physicist! I must confess I only found out he was a THEORETICAL physicist when I read the article. But I knew he was not theoretically a physicist but REALLY and that was impressive enough. When we both ended up in Berkeley, we became friends. When he talked about the attention economy decades ago, it made sense to me. He was writing a book about it and had gotten an advance from a mainstream publisher. But then his editor moved to another publisher. When your editor leaves, your book becomes what is called an orphan. No other editor wants to take it on, because it's not really THEIR project. And no other publisher is interested either. So that was the end of his book. Nowadays, he would probably publish the book himself. He has continued writing articles and also working on political issues, both local and national. Starting in 2003, we did a weekly show for a while, talking about current events, OPERATION INFINITE NEWS. Our titled mocked the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was named OPERATION INFINITE JUSTICE. That's so perfect, isn't it? The invasion was a war crime labeled as its opposite for publicity purposes. Talk about American Exceptionalism! We're so good at that -- finding glorious titles for our war crimes. We had a lot of fun at first. Michael's as obsessed with reading the newspaper as I am. But it wasn't an easy thing keep up. Yes, it's done on television -- but with a very large team of writers. We were attempting something similar just the two of us. I don't remember how long we did it -- six weeks? two, three months? It was just too hard for the two of us to comment on an entire week of news in a continually entertaining fashion. I think I was the one who wanted to stop. Maybe I had another project that called me. I wish we had some video footage of it. But those were the days when not everything was recorded. The attention economy was not yet that developed. In any case, I think we all should consider paying more attention to what we're paying attention to. We DO have control over it. And I'm thrilled that my old friend Michael's ideas are finally getting the ATTENTION they deserve. Bloggelinis, I hope you will choose to pay attention to BAUMblog as long as I write it, but I will alway understand if you choose not to. HOWEVER if you're my friend & live in the Bay Area, then you HAVE TO pay attention to my plays by attending a performance. THAT is NOT optional. Also, in my overwhelm, I went through a long period of not paying attention to your emails, even though I love to read & answer them. Why did I deny myself that pleasure? I'm back in the email saddle again and hope to catch up on everything. Terry

 

BAUMblog: "Her Wife," She said

 

February 6, 2021 "Her Wife," She said PREVIOUS BLOGS: TERRYBAUM.BLOGSPOT.COM PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED. IF THIS BLOG WAS FORWARDED TO YOU, YOU ARE NOT SUBSCRIBED.  Most weekdays, I join San Francisco Zen Center's morning meditation. Perhps "most" is pushing it. I INTEND to join it Monday through Friday. I frequently do. There is always a service of chanting and bowing after sitting. During the service, we see the Abbot in the Buddha Hall and follow along with his actions, while Kodo, a monk announces what comes next. Yesterday, Kodo announced that we would be having a memorial service that would be led by Tova, one of the senior members instead of the usual service. One of Tova's very close friends had just died. She showed a photo of her friend (I think her name was Jamie, can't remember) and described her joyful and productive life. She said, "Jamie was very devoted to her wife and children." Tova, a lesbian herself, did not emphasize the words "her wife." She didn't express pride that her friend was legally married to a woman or celebrate that fact in any way. Tova was merely DESCRIBING Jamie's life. She spoke as if two women getting married was a normal, even common, thing to do. It was wonderful. It was healing for me. I just want to acknowledge the enormous amount of suffering that has been alleviated by the victories of gay rights, culminating with the barriers to marriage falling away. I know that there is still so much to do, in the world and in this country. I don't deny that. But when Tova said those words "her wife," she healed me a little. All for now, Bloggelinis. Terry