the goodspeed experience. hmm...well...interesting, to say the least.

first of all, the opera house and the area is absolutely gorgeous. the house evokes the thought of a riverboat (somewhat) and is right by the road on the banks of a river. boats everywhere, small-town feel to the area...you can just fall in love with it when you arrive. which i did.

we then went to the shear library, which is a musical theater library a little down the road. we were told that it is the largest collection of musical theater research and documentation in the country--possibly the world. there's everything--playbills, photographs, recordings, scripts, documentation about productions, some props and costumes...very impressive.

what failed to impress me, however, was the lecture we were given by the executive director of the theater. it started out as a welcome and overview, but yeah, it turned into a lecture. this guy does NOT like critics, we quickly learned. he started telling us to "not be mean" (thank you captain obvious) and, when asked about what he thought the role of a critic was, said, "honestly, i have no idea." started talking about how we were consumer reports and all that, how critics tend to lack training and lack sensitivity. "you have to know that no one sets out to make a bad show." really? ohmigod, my understanding of theater has been so wrong all this time! i thought they WANTED to make bad shows! he then went on to talk about how critics can destroy people, individual people have different responses to theater, everyone works so hard, yadda yadda yadda.

ok, first of all, we all know this. we've discussed it during our sessions, we all have thought about it well before this point. it's not as if we walked off the street and said, "hey, i want to be a critic." we acknowledge that there are bad critics out there--there are a lot of them--but we're taking the steps to become good critics. hence spending two weeks in connecticut learning about it and working on it. and who is he to say anything? just because he's executive director of a company, he has the credentials to talk about theater and we don't? he doesn't know anything about us, what backgrounds we come from. and the fact that he started telling us how tired the cast is and how the lead actor's voice is shot doesn't get me geared up for a great night of theater. if you're apologizing to a group of critics before the show even starts, perhaps you need to take a step back and think about your production.

anyway, i must review the show by tomorrow at noon, so i plan on working on that this afternoon. i'm also looking forward to finding the athletic facilities here at conn. so i can do some excercising (we have access to the excercise room--yippee!). that and i want to relax for awhile. maybe take some pictures of the o'neill when i go back for dinner. yippee!