The water is wide

We had our first read through for Someone Who'll Watch Over Me last night. It's just an amazing play. What struck me in re-reading it was the humor that runs rampant through the show. I had forgotten how funny it is. We'll need to play that up so when the serious stuff hits, it hits that much harder.

The only thing I'd forgotten was how much singing is in this show. Fortunately, I don't have to be a good singer. There's only one song that needs to be sung well and Thomas, who plays Adam, handles that. I have to sing The Water is Wide, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, and... something else. I can't remember. We're doing The Water is Wide as a drinking song so that'll work okay. Chitty Chitty does not have to be sung well - it's just a fun, silly moment in the play. And I think I can handle the Christmas song well enough.

I do have to work on my Irish accent. It's not bad, but needs work. I have a dialect CD and that's helping.

I am determined to make this the best show we've ever done. Not just because I love the play, but because it's a chance for us to give a voice to the Americans, Britons, and others who have have been kidnapped and murdered in Iraq and other places. Does a little play performed in Iowa about hostages really have any effect on what's going in the world?

Yeah. It does.

Here's a partial list of murdered hostages since 2002.

Margaret Hassan
Zoran Nasovski
Dalibor Lazarevski
Kenneth Bigley
Jack Hensley
Eugene Armstrong
Fabrizio Quattrocchi
Martin Burnham
Daniel Pearl
Raja Azad
Sajad Naeem
Georgi Lazov
Ivaylo Kepov
Keith M. Maupin
Kim Sun-il
Paul Johnson
Hussein Ali Alyan
Nicholas Berg

The water separating them from me is very wide, but I get a little closer every time I talk about them and remember them. We all need to cross that water to have a chance to change things.