The Reading

Sunday was the trek up to Poughkeepsie for Best Friend Cate's play reading.

The Event was called Bertha's Funeral, named for a sculpture in a sculpture park off of Main St. The town of Poughkeepsie has recently decided to remove the sculptures, which have fallen into disrepair. Some of them are covered in poison oak, all the benches have most of their wooden slats missing, and there's a mural that's become covered in ivy. The grass is long and uncut, and it looks very much like a forgotten space.

Cate, along with Sovereign Nation and the Dutchess County Arts Council put together a farewell event, to honor the sculptures, to show the city that the park is a great, versatile space that can be used for more than just cutting across to get to the ice cream store faster, and to help establish the strong artistic presence in the town.

When Best Friend Cate first moved to Poughkeepsie (just across the river from our college town of New Paltz- weird in a never-thought-this-would-happen sort of way) she told me that while she was there she wanted to be instrumental in making P-Town more of an arts town. I'm super proud of her for kicking so much ass already.

We headed up Road-Trip style in my mother's car on Sunday morning and emerged starving (there are no rest stops on the Taconic State Parkway, I know that now) into the waiting arms of Cate and her partner Aaron who thankfully always have fresh fruit in their apartment. We ate, filled up some water bottles and then headed to the park to rehearse.

At high noon.

Cate earns my eternal gratitude for bringing sunscreen, and lending me a shirt to change into after rehearsal while mine dried out. Holy balls it was hot.

We figured out some blocking for the two short plays, identified all the poison oak, ran through a few times, and then Best Friend Cate, Best Friend Jen, The Boyfriend and I headed back to Cate and Aaron's apartment where Jen's Fiance Jared was working on a set design, had lunch, and promptly fell asleep wherever we fell.

We awoke just before 5 and headed down to practice transitions with the other performers who would be reading fiction and poetry. Cate's pieces were the only plays, and were the first and last performances of the evening. Each performance took place at a different sculpture in the park, so at the end of each piece, the audience had to pick up their chairs and go to the next space. Since we knew where that would be, it was our job to kind of lead the way. It helped that we had Aaron and Jared in the audience as plants.

The turnout was fantastic, better than Cate had expected. When we were setting up the folding chairs for the audience, we walked past an apartment where two young men sat on the stoop drinking beers, and one asked us what we were doing. Cate struck up a conversation with him (an amateur filmmaker) and invited him to come. He showed up about halfway through with a camera. Cate was over the moon.

Cate's pieces were so beautiful, and it was great to act with Best Friend Jen again, though we didn't really interact much. In Cate's first play, Jen and I played the same girl at different ages.

The second play was an emotional roller-coaster alongside The Boyfriend, which ended in a kiss that we got a few compliments on until people realized we were an actual couple. I fully intend to use a monologue from it as my new contemporary dramatic audition piece.

After the performance, as the sun was going down, we headed back to Cate's apartment building, which had a pop-up gallery exhibit set up throughout the hallways. We drank wine and ate veggies and dip and looked at some great local art (including some Best Friend Cate originals, in the same style as the mural she'd done for me at my old apartment:)

All in all, it was an amazing day and everyone involved should be very proud of themselves!