Bark. Ruff. Woof. Whatever.

If I had only read the entire Sunday edition of The New York Times before I posted on Sunday, I would have promoted something. I don’t know if any of you read it, but “A Night Out With…” this week featured theater reporter Campbell Robertson hanging out with Chico. Uh, huh. The Blonde dog. It’s about a night out with a dog. And, if that isn’t enough, Cindy Adams was involved. I hope you didn’t miss it.

Today, there was (of course not as interesting) a feature about Ensemble Studio Theatre after the recent suicide of founder Curt Dempster. I have to say, the Ensemble Studio Theatre is fairly resistant. Does anyone remember when Susann Brinkley stole a big chunk of their money? I mean, checks were bouncing all over the place. I think Anna Paquin’s Roulette check bounced and I wouldn’t have wanted to be one of her people at that point. I’m just saying, the theatergoing public would have hardly known. Unlike Drama Dept. and other companies, which have slowed to a virtual stop at times of money crisis, EST pretty much stayed the course. So, you know, I have faith.

Meanwhile, to complete The Times day, I wanted to thank all of you out there who emailed me about my most recent piece for the paper. I really appreciate the feedback. Readers of this blog know I hardly ever talk about my stories—I don’t use this as a forum to promote my career—but I did want to answer a question that many people emailed me related to the last story I wrote. The question (basically) was: Is there something between a reading and a workshop?

And the answer is, no. Though, in some ways, in a non-technical sense, yes. Here is the thing—there are these things called “staged reading guidelines” and that says if you go over 15 hours for plays or 20 hours for musicals you owe the actors $100, but that is for 29 hours maximum. THEN there is a “staged reading contract,” which could sort of be thought as a reading/workshop hybrid, if in your mind you see the reading to be very bare bones. For that you have many more rehearsal hours, though a max of two weeks for the whole thing. There are stringent limitations on what you can do, so it’s no workshop, but you can at least work more than you can in 29 hours. Of course it still is called a reading and still is a reading, so, that gets me back to my original answer of "no." If I put in more details, I’m going to confuse everyone (probably including myself).

Ok, that is it. If you have news-ish questions, feel free to email me.