{"id":5344,"date":"2016-02-29T07:07:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T12:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5344"},"modified":"2016-03-11T07:53:19","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T12:53:19","slug":"still-dreaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5344","title":{"rendered":"Still Dreaming"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bottom,

Harold Cherry as Bottom in \u201cStill Dreaming\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

In the documentary film Still Dreaming, <\/em>a dozen residents of an assisted living residence take on a very challenging six-week task\u2014to learn and perform Shakespeare\u2019s A<\/em> Midsummer Night\u2019s<\/em> Dream<\/em>. Most are Broadway stage veterans\u2014actors, dancers and musicians\u2014who reside at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey. Despite frailties such as decreased vision, dementia, and depression, they eagerly take on demanding roles.<\/p>\n

Filmmakers Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller say they \u201cdiscovered a group of people who have spent their whole lives following their dreams, some wildly successful, and some hardly at all. And here they are, retired, supposedly having given it all up. What we witnessed was an awakening, and it was truly profound and most certainly inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several of the performers are particularly engaging. Charlotte Fairchild, who plays Puck, had leading roles in Damn Yankees<\/em> and 42nd<\/sup> Street<\/em> and was the understudy to Angela Lansbury in Mame<\/em>. She has Alzheimer\u2019s disease and cannot retain much, but she still has a strong, clear soprano voice and finds joy in her portrayal. Dimo Condos, who plays Theseus\/Oberon, is an eccentric, solitary man who studied with Uta Hagen, Elia Kazan, and Harold Klurman at the renowned Actors Studio. He is a bully, impatient with cast members who don\u2019t remember their lines or lose their place. But he retains the ability to immerse himself in character and involve the audience.<\/p>\n

Joan Stein, the production\u2019s pianist, is literally bent over the piano stool, but adds punch and panache to the show. She was a pianist on Sid Caesar\u2019s Your Show of Shows<\/em>, among other credits. Her playing becomes more vigorous and emphatic as the rehearsals progress. Aideen O\u2019Kelly bows out of the production because she cannot see the script well enough to learn her lines. During her Broadway career, she appeared in Othello <\/em>with James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer (a production your website host Vicki Weisfeld saw in Washington, D.C.). Now she must watch from the sidelines.<\/p>\n

In Midsummer<\/em>, as in real life, \u201cpeople live in colliding worlds of reality, illusion, and delusion\u201d and they also may \u201cage into some degree of dementia in which memories blur and the present becomes a slippery slope,\u201d suggested Eric Minton<\/a> in a review of the film on Shakespeareances.com<\/a>. This turn of mind is why the setting for Still Dreaming,<\/em> which at first seems so odd, turns out to be so right.<\/p>\n

The full-length feature film is currently doing well on the festival circuit, most recently screening at the Sedona Independent Film Festival. The filmmakers hope that this exposure brings opportunity for wider distribution. Learn more at the Still Dreaming website<\/a>. Reportedly, it will become available on DVD in April.<\/p>\n

This review is by Tucson-based guest reviewer Jodi Goalstone, who writes the highly entertaining blog <\/em>Going Yard, Offbeat Baseball Musings<\/em><\/a> and is gearing up for a new baseball season!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the documentary film Still Dreaming, a dozen residents of an assisted living residence take on a very challenging six-week task\u2014to learn and perform Shakespeare\u2019s A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream. Most are Broadway stage veterans\u2014actors, dancers and musicians\u2014who reside at the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Still Dreaming - No Age Limit on Creativity","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[269,58,56,104],"tags":[416,197],"class_list":["post-5344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-documentaries","category-film","category-the-morgue","tag-real-life","tag-shakespeare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1oc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5344"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5382,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5344\/revisions\/5382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}