Wisdom

I've mentioned before that I'm a pianist, but not that I've worked a lot as an accompanist and, as a matter of fact, am in rehearsals as music director for a local staging of "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown."

The production staff has been prepping since May; we auditioned and set the cast a couple weeks ago. Last night was the first practice.

This is my first job as a music director, so I'm still working on my leadership style. Nervewracking, a tad. But it'll keep me out of trouble (i.e., probably not chatting with 25-y-olds on OKC) for several months.

So far, it has been a joy collaborating with Kaitlyn, the director. Her love of Peanuts characters and commentary is infectious, causing her frequently to dance around any room at any time. She gets to do this near ceaselessly, since the musical is comprised only of vignettes from Charles Schulz's imagination.

Even so, as the strip ran in daily newspapers for 50 years, there's a much greater body of work than can ever be staged. Kaitlyn's remedy to this has been to, on each day of rehearsal, produce a daily comic for cast and crew as inspiration.

This is almost like having someone take care of smiling for you every day. So far, so cool. (Joe Cool, maybe.)

Here is the one from Tuesday, which to me feels perfectly at home in the blog entry of a girl trying to sort some stuff out.