What's Next?

Grant Mudge complained today that I hadn't updated this thing in a while, so here's an update with no actual content.

Here's what next for Ange Hamm:

1) I'm thinking about changing the template on this blog. Just a different look for the hell of it. Your thoughts?

2) I'm mastering the very simply-recorded music from The Tempest, which was recorded early-20th-century style. We just set up a stationary mic and gathered around it, all playing at once, no multitracking or punching in. If an instrument was too loud, we moved it away from the mic. Pretty cool in theory, but some of the vocals are pretty rough in actuality. What do I do? Do I release it for sale, and if so, how do I secure the rights to the T-Bone Burnett, Sam Phillips, Mark Heard, Bruce Cockburn, and Tom Waits songs? If you go to my MySpace Music page, you just might hear a track...

3) I think I'm going to record a bunch of new material as a live album in a couple months. More on that as it comes.

4) I'm getting a heavy-duty poke in the brain to finish the musical I've been working on since 1995. Yes, 1995. It's a modern-day interpretation of my favorite play, Turgenev's A Month in the Country called A Week in the Suburbs. Pre-Chekhovian Russian angst meets suburban ennui. It's about half-finished. Then again, it's been about half-finished for about half a decade. What I need is a deadline. So, Grant, when are we producing it? ;-)

5) My back hurts.

6) Gearing up for Richard II. I'd give real money to learn what part I'm playing so I can get off-book. James Ricks is directing, which is really exciting. I enjoyed his work on Henry IV, Part 1 immensely.

7) Starting to work on As You Like It, which I'm directing next Spring. Getting very excited about it, actually. Five actors, lots of music. A bunch of people standing around in the woods talking.

8) The Richmond Shakespeare Training Department for 2007-2008 is looking very exciting indeed! David Sennett and Jennifer Massey will be teaching, and some other local talent with big names are in the hopper getting scheduled. I'm pretty jazzed. I really hope people come out. It's going to take a lot of word-of mouth spreading of the news, and it's really going to take some of the people who say they want to take a class actually doing it, unlike last year.

9) Staged readings? We're looking to assemble a Fall staged reading of Edward III, a play Shakespeare is now believed to have co-written. It deals with the grandfather of Richard II and is considered by an increasing number of scholars to be Shakespearean canon, bringing the total number of History plays to 11; 9 in the "Wars of the Roses" cycle. More on that as it develops.

10) I've been swayed to the Dark Side. That's right, I'm about 100 pages from finishing the fourth Harry Potter book. I totally get what all the fuss is about.

Happy now, Mudge?