Thank you so much for the invite - I had a great time and really enjoyed the show! It was, the coolest (and most upstanding!) venue to date - I was so impressed! Not only with the fact that you could somehow manage to create this within your extremely packed schedule, but that it was such a good story! I loved how the music was woven into the storyline and hope that you can manage to keep that. I LOVED that the musicians were a real part of the story and the performance and hope that you will keep that even if you move into a venue that allows for them to be in an orchestra pit or remote location. I would hope they continue to be on equal footing with the cast. The actors were great - and especially if they had not all worked together before that night! I do look forward to the next incarnation of the play - it must be fun going thru this process. Will it be the same place? Same actors? Are they part of the process or just hired (volunteered) for the show once you are ready? Also, very cool about the Fringe Festival - we are usually away those weeks but I hope we can catch your show. Wishing you the best of luck! Take care,
LisaMarie
Good evening Eric,
Congratulations on a strong piece and strong cast and jazz ensemble. You are my model of the multi-talented artist making a successful go in several disciplines. Your writing is so clear and affecting: Terry's speech about being on the train and deciding to get off and the music interludes were all great. Is Terry's treatment and his relationship with Avril normal/accepted or exceptional? Only the Madame and General mention his color.
Again congratulations,
Joy Jones
Dear Eric,
I just wanted to congratulate you on such an amazing achievement - I am really proud of you! I was so glad to see it, and would love a coffee to discuss it, if you would like. And just to see you and catch up - I think you are a really talented writer. Again, well done! Look what LAMDA has spawned! (I hope you let them know!).
love,
Charlie xx
Eric - just a quick note to say "thank you" for asking me to be in your reading as le Pere. I really appreciate it. It was a wonderful learning experience, and I enjoyed meeting and working with new people. Thanks again,
Jim
Eric,
Just wanted to congratulate you on a job excellently done. I think it was amazing that you did all that... truly impressive. Thea says well done too. There were so many layers ...
talk later.
gb.
mon dieu!
thanks so much for inviting us to the staged reading. we really enjoyed ourselves. i'm sorry i didn't actually get to give you a hug. ran out of time saying hi to everyone else--go figure. anyway, i found the play very entertaining, very amusing. i thought the priest was going to be a defrocked gay man. thought you were throwing us a bone there, but i guess not. so that's a huge criticism from us--no one we can relate to since there are no gay charactersJ. i recall your original description of it to me (back when you visited in Berlin) and i can see how the concept has grown since then. it's actually an extremely ambitious undertaking--far more involved than i had imagined...and this is what i thought i was going to see... a two-man drama, mostly dialogue. so you can imagine my surprise that it's a fully cast piece with a plot, a band and all. who knew?! congrats guy, i hope it went well for you with the industry people. their input really counts.
xo grit.
Eric,
Let me start by saying that the reading was wonderful in that it gave everyone a sense of project length, real world feel, and an opportunity for feed back to be used or not used at your discretion. As for the priest, make him a disembodied foil of Terry's soul, only seen by him only in the basement. So therefore the wounds inflicted to him by the priest are really his own self mutilation as he fights with himself on the issue of what he should do to make things right as opposed to doing things to prove he is clever. Again well done....Let me know when we can see it on Broadway.
Cheers
Joel E. Davidson
Why do you keep getting beaten up? Liked the comedy in the beginning, the end is quite dark. Hit us all at once w/o warning – we didn’t think you were supposed to know anything about Avril. Loved Mathieu’s “Crazy!”
Tom Caliendo
Congratulations on your success last evening with the reading of The Jazz Messenger. I was so pleased to see the large turn out and found the Q and A fascinating. I will send along my thoughts about future rewrites later, but since I didn't get a chance to tell you in person before I had to leave, wanted to send my heartiest kudos for a job well done. I adore playing Madame Parlour and learned a great deal about the character arc in playing the full journey in front of an audience. Thank you for the opportunity.
Jodie
