Hey, theater folks: My bladder needs guidance!

I don't know what made me ask an usher at "I Love Lucy Live on Stage" last week if it had a break in the middle, but I was glad I did. "Nope," she said, tearing my ticket. "It's 110 minutes without an inter-" Before she could get to "mission," I was bolting for the bathroom.

Now, I realize 110 minutes isn't a long time to sit. Virtually every movie for adults runs at least that long, and almost all of us can watch those without getting up, sometimes after drinking a cup of soda the size of a Hyundai.

But most of us attending plays have been trained to expect an interval. Theater can often be a special event, preceded by a big meal with a couple of glasses of wine or tea. (One glass of wine, if I'm reviewing. Or none.) Psychologically, we're going to be ready to stretch our legs after 60 or 70 minutes.

Some plays lose their impact when they stop in the middle. (Not "Lucy," which had a natural place for a break but didn't use one.) When feelings run high, a playwright may not want to pull us up short, then build that emotional arc again from scratch in the second act.

If that's the case, producers should have a crier walk through the lobby beforehand yelling, "Hear ye, hear ye! There is no intermission in tonight's show!" (A big sign by the front entrance would also do.) But an announcement from the stage just before the lights go down isn't good enough: There's too little time for people to come and go in a mass exodus.

I'd think most producers would want an intermission every time, in hopes of selling snacks and drinks in the lobby. But if there's not a break, they should let us know well before we settle into our seats. Even the most youthful theatergoers would appreciate a word to the wise.

The Belmont Drive-In is back!

I cheered when a reader sent me the news that the Belmont Drive-In, the closest ozoner (as they used to be called) to Charlotte, is re-opening today. Sure enough, the website (http://belmontdrivein.20megsfree.com/) says that the fabled drive-in established by the late Bill and Peggy Lawing will be showing "Elysium" and "Grown-Ups 2."

I haven't been to a drive-in since Bill Clinton was president: I have no kids, I don't like the heat, and I see most movies before they open anyway, because I'm writing reviews. But I get a nostalgic buzz when I think of the glory days of the 1970s, when I parked under the stars at a drive-in at the wheel of a friend's borrowed convertible.

The $10 per carload price makes drive-ins economically competitive, too. My wife and I can see a matinee for $5 each, but I'd be heading for the drive-in if I were bringing a bunch of children. (I can still remember when admission was charged by the head, and we stuck a guy in the trunk because we didn't have the cash to get him in legitimately. The per-carload price prevents the need to shove a pal next to the spare tire.)

Of course, snack bar sales keep a place like this open, as the site acknowledges, and I smiled as I perused the menu. It includes State Fair corndogs, 130-ounce buckets of popcorn, whole kosher dill pickles and pickled eggs. Clearly, this place can feed a carload of people, too.

It may be late in the season to open a drive-in with little fanfare, though we've got a couple of months of warm weather left. I hope nostalgia freaks, young people and big families will keep this place in business, even if old fogeys like me rely on air conditioning and a roof over our heads that doesn't belong to a sedan.

Farewell, N.C. Shakespeare Festival?

Or N.C. Shakes, as it recently redubbed itself in an effort to appeal to audiences with short attention spans in the digital era. Its board of directors suspended operations last week and won't produce any plays this year, though they hope to provide in-school Shakespeare to Go shows in 2014.

I saw my first live "Macbeth" there in 1980, a few months after I came to work in Charlotte, but I didn't see a whole summer season until 1985, during my first stint as theater critic. I've gone sporadically up to High Point since then: The Observer stopped covering culture in the Triad five years ago, but I always liked to see at least one play a year there. Actors came from around the region to perform, often developing long acquaintances with the company, so I felt a kind of reunion spirit when I went. Many were directed by Steve Umberger, who founded Actor's Contemporary Ensemble (which became Charlotte Repertory Theatre).

I wondered even 25 years ago how the company could survive in High Point, where the auditorium was seldom half-full on weekends. Yet it managed to produce two Shakespeare plays every year plus two or three others, including the ubiquitous "A Christmas Carol." By 2009, it was down to two plays; by 2011, it squeezed out only "A Christmas Carol."

The recession dealt all cultural groups a harsh blow, and theater companies (like all endeavors) have a natural life span; maybe 35 years was enough. Perhaps there's even a small silver lining: Charlotte Shakespeare continues to do pay-what-you-choose productions of the Bard in the summer -- "Macbeth" opens Aug. 15 at Booth Playhouse -- so perhaps folks close to the Triad will come down here to get their Shakespeare fix.

But I'll miss the 80-mile drive up and back. Sometimes I'd stay over at the hotel across the street, seeing an evening show one night and a matinee the next. Theater became something special -- not just a casual outing, but an event that required some preparation and lingered long in the mind. I guess too few people felt that way.

Jews write the best cowboy music

In the cinema, anyway. As proof, check this out:



For my money, that's one of the five greatest movie themes ever. I thought of Jerome Moross today, because Thursday was his 100th birthday, and his score for that 1958 western epic justly earned an Oscar nomination. This is a big year for musical anniversaries: Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi were born 200 years ago, Benjamin Britten 100 years ago. (Britten also wrote film scores in the 1930s.) But Moross, who died at 69 and spent his life alternating between soundtracks and classical compositions, has been overlooked.

Listening to "The Big Country" got me thinking about my all-time favorite film theme:




That one comes from Elmer Bernstein, who was nominated for 14 Oscars. Bernstein, like Moross, was Jewish. So was Dimitri Tiomkin, who wrote the immortal theme and score for "High Noon." So was Victor Young, who earned an amazing 24 Oscar nominations before he died at 57 and made a name for himself with the Joel McCrea western "Wells Fargo."

And Aaron Copland, the quintessential New York-based Jewish composer of the 20th century, was nominated for an Oscar for his score for "Of Mice and Men" (set among migrant workers in California) and wrote a plaintive score for "The Red Pony," another adaptation of a western novella by John Steinbeck.

Why should this be? Did these urban composers, settled among the canyons of steel in New York or Los Angeles, long for the sprawl of open country? Did these descendants of a long-migratory people sympathize with characters who were trying to make a living in an untamed land where they weren't always welcome?

That's a question I can't answer. But it popped into my head today.

Moondog: The Viking of Sixth Avenue

More than 40 years later, I remember him: A guy in a salt-and-pepper beard down to his chest, holding a six-foot spear and dressed in a homemade Viking costume, with leather footwear and some kind of tight-fitting cloth or leather cap with two horns inserted. A blind guy. Sort of begging, sort of selling recordings of music he had written or made.

I was a college freshman too shy to say anything to him, so I stood at a little distance down Manhattan's Sixth Avenue and watched him talk to passers-by. Some of them ragged him, some showed respect, some bought a tape. Most just gawked, as I did.

By chance, I came across two LPs with his picture on the cover a couple of years later: "Moondog" and "Moondog 2," which have been reissued on one CD. Here's a sampling from the latter:




After I did some research via the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature (a lot more trouble in the pre-Internet era, I assure you), I dug up magazine articles that told me about Louis Hardin, a Midwesterner who had rubbed shoulders with everyone in New York from jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker to minimalist classical composer Philip Glass. He'd become a composer and poet as the self-dubbed Moondog, living on the street all day and crashing in a small apartment at night. By the time I learned who he was, he had emigrated to Europe forever.

I thought about my non-encounter while reading "Moondog: The Viking of 6th Avenue," the freshly reissued biography by Robert Scotto. The softcover version doesn't include the CD that came with the hardcover edition of 2007, but it links you to downloads of all the music. Glass, a multiple Oscar nominee who served as Moondog's reluctant landlord for one year, wrote the preface. (It's $22.95 from Process Books. See http://processmediainc.com/.)

That preface reveals an unsavory guy who threw fast-food trash around his room and expressed anti-Semitic attitudes while accepting the hospitality of his Jewish host. But Glass acknowledges Moondog's remarkable skill and daring as a musician, which comes out more clearly in Scotto's book. (It also includes his philosophic poetry, whose point I couldn't always untangle.)

We Americans have rarely understood what to do with odd members of our culture. If their voices don't seem immediately accessible, if they look or dress oddly (even as a form of self-definition, in Moondog's case), we write them off as loonies and close our ears. That's our loss: Though Moondog lived mostly on the street and dwelt always on the musical fringe, he had something to say.

You, too, can be a Medici (and cheaply, at the ASC)

Commissioning a symphony or a three-act play may not be on your bucket list, but don't let that stop you from being an old-fashioned patron of the arts. For a mere $400, you can have an artist create something personally for you -- in fact, nine artists.

Here's how the deal works: You buy a "share" in a new Arts & Science Council program called Community Supported Art. Shares go on sale Tuesday at 10 a.m. on the ASC website, and only 50 shares will be sold. (Get full details here: http://www.artsandscience.org/news-a-media/330-arts-a-science-council-announces-inaugural-season-of-community-supported-art-program.)

Nine local artists have been given grants of $1750 each to create 50 works apiece; those will be distributed to shareholders at pick-up events in September, October and November. So if you spend the $400, you're guaranteed nine works of art. They could be Japanese tea cups, small original paintings, archival photographic prints, wire sculptures, fused glass -- who knows?

Most patrons, of course, have some idea what to expect when they pay for art in advance. A millionaire industrialist who commissions a self-portrait may end up looking like a tycoon or a toad, but he's not going to be handed a landscape or a still-life painting of fruit.

Yet the uncertainty factor makes this idea even more appealing to me. If I got even three winners out of the nine, I'd have my money's worth. And if I didn't immediately like one of these pieces, I could donate it to an auction for charity, give it to someone who admired it or just leave it around long enough to see if it would grow on me. (Works of art can do that.)

And there's always something cool about contributing to an artist's livelihood. Most of us can't buy a piano concerto or a mural, but many of us can commit enough dough to send each of these artists to the grocery store for one week. Patrons come in all sizes.

The Pillow where nobody sleeps

I rarely review a piece of a movie, but I was so touched by the abbreviated version of "Never Stand Still" that I'm going to make an exception.

When it reached a few theaters last spring, the documentary ran 78 minutes. The version I saw, which premieres on PBS Friday, has been trimmed to fit into a one-hour time slot. (It'll start on the South Carolina ETV network at 9 p.m. and UNC-TV's network at 9:30 p.m., though both will show encores.) Truncated as it is, it's essential viewing if you love dance. Here's an extended trailer:


The new title gives a clue to what it's about: "Dancing at Jacob's Pillow: Never Stand Still." It's set in the Massachusetts retreat opened in 1931 by modern dancers Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, where the first U.S. theater built specifically for dance inspired a tradition that survives today. (The Royal Danish Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theatre, among other companies, made their U.S. debut there.)

The movie includes brief (too brief) archival footage, including bits of Shawn's groundbreaking all-male company of the 1940s. But my favorite segment showed current bad-boy choreographer Rasta Thomas twitching and flitting for a minute or so to Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee."

Narrator Bill T. Jones fills in the historical gaps, but most of the sound bites come from interviews with great dancers or choreographers linked to the Pillow: Paul Taylor, Mark Morris, Suzanne Farrell. ("We would dance even if no one came," says Farrell. "We want to give: That's our purpose.")

The film conveys especially well how hard it is to make or perform dance: As Morris observes, "Dancing is a job, not a phase to get through." All that lyricism and emotion and excitement comes from hours of sweat and falls and headaches the viewer never sees.