Well, Jessi’s play last night wasn’t as good as I had wanted it to be. As always, her staging was impeccable. Flawless, really. She always manages to divide up the space and use it in the most ingenious ways: a pay phone and a blackboard next to each other against a wall, hidden or in view at certain times, and a lot of the action taking place on a raised platform in the middle of the space. And the actors did their best.

But the script was flawed. It had an interesting structure of breaking the narrative into little vignettes which were arranged so that things were continually skipping back and forth in time. But this only tried to conceal the fact that, for the most part, what happened was predictable. A female teacher takes a promising student under her wings, tutors him in the blues, and then they cross over the line and begin an affair. This leads to obsession on the part of the teacher, disillusionment on the part of the boy, and condemnation by everyone else. She ends up in prison, and he ends up on the road to begin his musical career. And in between we get to hear everyone’s opinion on what happened, including some jibes at the media.

Jenny McKnight as the teacher really does her best in a difficult role … as her obsession takes her away from reality, I was at least able to maintain a bit of sympathy for her desperation. And Geoff Rice as the student played a 16-year old with all the cliches intact but believable (cliches which are all true in real life: how a teenager can both know it all while hungering for answers). What the play was missing was real blues spirit. There wasn’t really any soul. Perhaps it was the all-white cast. I guess that could have been one of the points of the script: all these white folks in small town Minnesota think they got soul when they don’t. The show excelled during the disturbing moments: the first kiss, the confrontations with the teacher’s husband, their break up, later incarceration, etc. Moments right out of the Mary Kay LeTourneau case which do raise some disturbing questions. But I just wasn’t moved.

Jessi herself chose this play and I can’t help but wonder why. I think she wanted the challenge of doing all that onstage music. I know this must have been a hard show to cast. Was she distracted with other things going on? These pyrrhic victories are a shame. If only she could get a really great play & sink her chops into it, show her stuff. A play that’s already great instead of one whose flaws need to be overcome by her directorial gifts.

She looked great in her tux last night; I almost didn’t recognize her when I first saw her because it was so slick. I’m glad that Sharon could go with me last night. It was great to finally introduce Jessi and Sharon to each other. In April I’m going to go over to Sharon’s with “Kosher Messiah” and show it to both to her and Logan. Sharon told me that Logan just got a gig as co-director of the Chicago Gay & Lesbian Film Festival! Wowee!

It’s really just great to finally have a day off again. Today is my Saturday. I’m not sure what I’m up to. I’d like to just spend a lot of time reading today. I’m still reading “Borderliners” and I want to finish that up so I can move onto something else. The book has a curiously detached feel to it, though it’s entertaining enough. It’s still slow going somehow. Damn it, these two days will go by too fast. I wonder what Andy wants to do.