Halloween, Saturday Night, Midtown Manhattan. Need I say more?

It seems Halloween - like Carnivale - has become an opportunity to express one's repressed self in a public display called costume. This reveals a tidy sum about our culture: the young women on the streets of New York clad in the most scanty, lacy, provocative attire possible... and their escorts mostly dressed as psycho-killers. Hmmm. My favourite costume was not one of these, but a woman dressed as a jellyfish! It was a simple, brilliant, and imminently practical costume considering the light rain that was falling on the city that night.

Celebrating Halloween in a company filled with children is such a refreshing change. Weeks before the day, Kyle DesChamps, one of our enormously skillful swings, had set to decorating the backstage staircase with cobwebs and pumpkins and skeletons. Whoooooo. Last week the kids had gone to a party over with The Lion King company, and returned for the second show buzzing. And then Saturday between shows we had our own party: pizza and drinks for the kids and their families, trick or treating from one dressing room to the next, and the piece de resistance... the men's ensemble had put together a haunted house in their dressing room on the fifth floor. The screams from the children echoed throughout the building! It was fantastic. And the children's costumes were far less revealing of any inner struggle than the costumes on the street: from a lady-bird, to a Borg, to a pirate, a few hippies, and... the winner in my books... the extremely clever Tessa Netting came as the Swine Flu. I trust you can imagine.

The rest of the week has gone apace: I feel truly in the swing of things now, having plenty of voice and stamina for eight shows. We were down to two Billys this week: Trent and Tommy. What resilient and dedicated young men they are. It is awesome to work with such inspiring young artists. It sure makes my job a breeze. It is not at all difficult to look at these boys and see their outstanding capabilities. Who needs to act?

After my eighth show yesterday, I went down to Chelsea to see the SITI Company's Antigone, under the direction of Ann Bogart. It was hoping it would be brilliant, but it was only good. However, it is satisfying to see that there is a world of theatre that exists in New York City apart from the commercial ventures of Broadway. It is food for my soul to sit in a room of like minded theatre goers and listen to the timeless fables of those crazy Greeks... cuz let's face it... the story of Antigone and Kreon is basically the way the Greeks revealed their inner sex object and psycho-killer. Not much different than the streets of New York on a Halloween night. Does society ever really change?

P.S. Laugh out loud on the street moment: walking from Ripley-Grier up to the theatre, stopped at the light on 42nd Street beside a guy with headphones on, singing "Help Me Rhonda" at the top of his lungs. Indeed.