My home internet is down for a few days. According to Cox cable, "internet is down in your area". No idea what exactly happened and they do not explain, but they are certainly taking their time to fix it.
Thanks to the internet outage, I came back to DVD (!) and pile of books that I had not been attending to.
One of the books was "Directing in musical theater" by Joe Deer. Bought it on Dec 2017, read it halfway, and left it in the pile. Certainly I am taking my time.
But the book turned out to be quite good. I did a few dances on stage, and took interested in the bigger picture of how these stage shows are created and organized in theater by professionals. This book did a great job to fill me in on the works of stage preparation from stage director's side.
Like anything, if we know something more, we'd appreciate it better, in a more faceted way.
One way to know something more is by going through numbers and references. Another is to view the subject from different side. "Director's side" view is a nice viewpoint to know.
The contents are through and easy to follow. Just by reading, the book gave me good picture of what are done in the process of stage creation and how they allocate functions and tasks on people (director, producer, choreographer, stage manager, prop/stage engineer, clothes/costume designer, light technician, sound technician, and other support staff) in order to enable works by performers on stage (dancers, actors, singers, musicians).
It is not like reading Harry Potter or other fictions. As a technical, non-fiction book, it has a purpose of teaching information, and told me exactly what I wanted to know with added details, and many that I did not know. Knowing that the information would give me better appreciation on stage shows, I am quite satisfied.
If I was doing a "research", I'd read at least 3-5 books on the same subject. But for now, this book alone did a great job.
I want the internet to be fixed soon. But if not, it may help me to go through a few more books in the pile. It may not be all bad.
PS After lengthy texting and attempts to reboot modem remotely, and attempts to sell "panoramic internet only $12 more/month" and "upgraded service only $5 more for the first 3 months" (I know they are following sales manuals, but don't you hate it?), they are going to send cable technician.
The modem/router is offline, they said. Must be a case of downed line or other disconnection.
Incident like this reminds me of fragility of infrastructure. It does not have to be large scale ice storm or tornado-bearing hailstorm. Anyhow, it will be fixed soon.
