<HTML>In a message dated 6/20/02 9:10:38 AM Central Daylight Time, Tom writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">This strikes me as typical of a community theatre production.  Where is the director when these choices are being made?  In professional theatre, where I dwelt for 25 years, you would not be given the "opportunity to interpret the script in a way which shocked" anyone unless the director had a say in it.   I was also amused by your phrase, "the guy I was playing AGAINST", as if it were some sport or competition.  If there is an analogy between theatre and sport, it would be that the acting ensemble is a TEAM, not individuals vying against one another. Don't quit your day job. Tom Sivak </BLOCKQUOTE> Well, it just so happens that this is a professional theater company and the director asked me to do whatever I could think of to enhance the role.  The show was Leonard Bernstein's On The Town.  He said that the show was about New York where there are any and all kinds of people.  When he saw my idea, he was delighted and said, "Leave it in".  I always view both acting and singing as competitive.  If I didn't, I would not get the jobs I do get. In last night's rehearsal, the kind of mocking voice and screeching I have to do when Aldonza shoves her knee in my crotch is not the kind of singing I'd rather do but when it says to do that in the script and the director also says to give it everything I've got and I did so, again, this was quite effective.  I've also been singing and acting for some 25 years. I've now been a professional piano technician for 33 years.  In another post, you wrote, "(Unfortunately, I suspect that for many of you, the last thing you may want to hear is a piano.)"  What you obviously don't realize is that most piano technicians never tire of their work.  We are not jack hammer operators who don't want to hear jack hammers at the Convention.  We go to the Convention to *hear* pianos, not to shun them. I only wish the Institute Director would realize the obvious, that your playing at the Opening Ceremony would be the perfect opportunity to present a piano in another tuning arrangement such as mine.  Instead, he begrudgingly allows Ron Koval to haul in a beat up old school piano to tune a few temperaments in the hallway.  That's pathetic.  There is no reason whatsoever that he should not allow Ron or anyone else to tune your piano in a way that Ron considers appropriate for what you are going to do. The iron fisted insistence on ET only serves to hold the profession back.  I'd register and go to the Convention for the single privilege of being able to tune your piano for you for that event and sing the Star Spangled Banner and Oh Canada in both English and French as I've done in the past. But I know what the real thinking is here:  the Institute Committee and others running PTG do not want its members to get the idea that other tuning systems are a viable alternative for one and only one reason.  If the idea gets to be to well known, someone will eventually ask *them* to do something different and that, they are afraid to do.  It will mean that they themselves will have to learn something new and a different way of thinking about tuning. Your comment, "Don't quit your day job" is highly insulting and condescending.  I'm inclined to offer you the same but will refrain from that. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A> </HTML>