hither and yon

That was the theme of yesterday. After coffee in the morning at my favorite neighborhood place -- it's a little farther away than the one right around the corner that I thought I would haunt regularly, but I like the favorite's ambience better -- I got gussied up and drove down to Laguna Beach.

First stop: an Episcopal church for a wedding. The bride is a first soprano in the Pacific Chorale, and she and the groom are both subscribers at my theatre. They are lovely, lovely people and they had a correspondingly lovely wedding with many friends and lots of family in attendance. And since there were so many Chorale members present, the congregational hymn singing wasn't bad either.

At the reception I met the young couple who had been in the pew behind me. He's a singer who recently left Chanticleer in order to enter grad school full time in choral conducting; she's a music teacher who recently played an important role in the big holiday extravanganza at an even more extravagant church. They're very nice young folks, and she's interested in opportunities to do plays for young audiences, so I gave her my card. If she follows up, I can connect her with my theatre's casting director and we'll see where things go from there.

My friend J*, an award-winning director, had a show opening at Laguna Playhouse that evening. So she and I met up for a random late-afternoon meal and a quick shopping trip to a toy store so she could get opening night mementoes for her cast and crew. The house was nearly full even though rain (sacre bleu!) was forecast later in the evening. J* had two other guests as well as me; one of them I already knew, and the other I thoroughly enjoyed meeting.

Unfortunately, after the day full of socializing, my energy level and mood crashed right around intermission. I did get to meet the playwright and the theatre's artistic director, so that was friendly/intelligent/useful. Still, as my attention span shrank and my fatigue grew, I know I didn't fully grasp the second act. I'll have to ask J* to email me a copy of the script so I can get what I missed the first time. And perhaps drop a hint that if one of her other two guests gave me a call sometime, that wouldn't be a bad thing...