Silly, Savvy, Spot-On Suggestions Spill In!
It’s true. Letters readers are a clever lot. Also generous, as so many of you wrote to me over the past month to suggest titles for my new project—now officially named Aging Gracelessly: 50 Shades of Fay.
Yes, that was John Newton’s wine-fueled joking suggestion, which, as it happens works the best.
But other suggestions, very descriptive, exceedingly clever, and perhaps too long or too insider to work as an advertising graphic made opening my email a blast all month long. But in fact, some are so good I may use rotating titles for subsequent bookings! Readers, I cannot thank you enough for the effort!
There’s not enough ink or word count to list them all, but here are some of the entries by deadline time—with my apologies for just naming partial IDs, as many times all I had to go on was the email address.
Paul Fogarty, a self-described “fan from Bucks County” offered Faybles! which I love personally, although I’m not sure it would help advertise the show. I am considering mentioning it in the reading. Michael Marion of Lewes suggested Ashes from the Fray, which certainly describes this old activist, and Lori DeWald added As I Fried, Drank, Screamed, and Aged in Reho, which covers the subject more closely than I care to admit.
Irene Fick, a poet and colleague from the RB Writer’s Guild came up with From the Closet to the Coast: Four Decades with Fay and Friends, which is a damn good description, as is her wildly optimistic Fayme: She’s Gonna Live Forever, which is a scary thought. Oh what a feeling.
Barbara Brewer channeled GaGa with her suggested Baby, I was Born This Fay, which I love, and it too may just show up as an alternate title some time.
Chris the Trainer, (that’s the email handle) worked hard on this literary project and came up with some fun titles channeling school yard talk with Oh, She’s So Fay or Oh, That’s so Fay, or I imagine his coming out scenario for me, Mom, Dad, I’m Fay! It didn’t actually go down like that but oddly enough it was close.
So title suggestions are still coming in. And the reading itself is being fine-tuned and rehearsed. I did an evening in Carefree Resort in Ft. Myers—the first time before a really large crowd and I am happy to report that I survived. In fact, I had a grand time and it was reported to me that the audience did too.
I’m walking a fine line here between trying to promote the May 2 reading and not coming off as a shamelessly self-absorbed old poop. My wife reported that I got a standing ovation at Carefree. It’s odd that when you are on stage, a place I am unaccustomed to being, you don’t even notice those things. I was too busy trying to get the hell off stage without tripping down the steps.
So, the truth is, I’m getting inquiries about doing the “show” (it’s a reading, not exactly a show, but anybody got a better way to describe it?) at events from P-Town to New Orleans. So I gotta keep going, performing the reading and fine-tuning it.
And I can think of no better place to be than at CAMP, in Reho, where much of the material was mined.
So, as another Irene Fick suggested title asks, Would it Kill You to Laugh? An Evening with Fay Jacobs, will be on stage at the CAMP Rehoboth Community Center on May 2, at 4 and 8 p.m. Come see me. Tickets are $20 and will go on sale April 4 online at camprehoboth.com.
But in the interim, I’m off-stage, where I am more apt to be found, for Women’s FEST. I’m thrilled to report that a show I did in 2005 and 2008 in Rehoboth, The Vagina Monologues, will be back for Women’s FEST. We are doing the show with three of my favorite actresses, Jane Bruns, Stacey Fearheiley, and Eloise Ullman. The show will be Saturday, April 11 at CAMP at 8:30 p.m. if you didn’t see it back when, or even if you did, these gals are endearing, funny and completely outrageous. And of course, Women’s FEST is a hoot for everyone, boys, too! Check it all out at camprehoboth.com. Tickets for The Vagina Monologues are going fast, so check it out.
Fun Fact: When we did the show at the Rehoboth Convention Center in 2005, the city mothers and fathers were too appalled by the title to put it on the marquee on the avenue. The sign wound up advertising The CAMP Rehoboth Monologues. Loved it!
See you ‘round the CAMPus!
Fay Jacobs is the author of As I Lay Frying—a Rehoboth Beach Memoir; Fried & True—Tales from Rehoboth Beach, For Frying Out Loud—Rehoboth Beach Diaries, and her newest book Time Fries—Aging Gracelessly in Rehoboth Beach.