Odin's Aviary

German Wheel

2012-01-27T12:29:00.001-05:00

Last night I did this:

Okay, well, not exactly that. (Fewer strobe lights, though I did work bare-chested and in tasseled leggings.) But I attended my first class in German wheel, with Chris Delgado, who is a very good teacher. He's also, as it turns out, a clown whose sentiments aren't too dissimilar from my own:

If that seemed slightly reminiscent of this (2/10/11) to you, well, we agree. If it didn't, you're paying attention to the wrong stuffs and you're wrong, and I hate you.

I've been interested in German wheel (OR wheel gymnastics OR Rhönrad; not to be confused with the Cyr wheel) for some time now, and fortuitous it was that classes began being offered at Streb Lab, where Wife Megan and I attend aerial silks classes. My interest stems from pure physical curiosity to aesthetic sensibilities. I love contraptions, and circus skills that make use of them - hence my affection for stilt-walking - love climbing, and the German wheel turns climbing into perambulating, and makes surprises out of seemingly predictable movement. In that sense, it's pure physical comedy: Using an apparent and predictable mechanic to create moments of elation. Plus the thing just conjures up useful imagery - from the Vitruvian Man to Prometheus bound to Lloyd's clock or the steam engine of Melodrama or anything round of which you can think.

The experience of trying it out was at once affirming and surprising, which leads me to think I'll be back for a class or two. It's a bit frustrating to imagine making a commitment to the skill, simply because it's inconceivable to imagine storing the equipment it requires. (My stilts alone are far less obtrusive, and still a blight on efficient apartment living.) Still, that's a reasoning in favor of giving it a few more gos. Who knows when I'll have another opportunity?

Every circus skill, I've found thus far, features some incredible physical torment that you might not have guessed from watching it. In silks it's friction burns, in my opinion. Stilt-walking, it begins as quadriceps torture, then settles into chafing and occasional calf/ankle stiffness. For German wheel, though it's intensely physical in many unexpected ways, the hidden torment is in the feet. We were asked to wear :"thin" shoes, like classic Converse, and the reason for this is that you need to be able to fit them snugly under straps and then point your toes around the edge of the foot platforms.

Now, maybe I'm different than you (perish the thought), but the first time one of these rigs takes you upside-down I'm willing to bet your instinct will not be to point your feet. Rather, I imagine, you'll be kind-of sort-of interested in flexing your basal digits. There're straps, right? That's what they're there for, right? Nope. All wrong. The straps are there for tension, tension created by pushing hard against them as you essentially fight to shove your toes off the edge of wood and around the other side.

So: My feet hurt. Also, my butt, but I expect that lessens the better one gets at this skill set.

It's very very cool. I mean: Very cool. I expected it to have a lot in common with stilt-walking in terms of momentum-based tricks and using one's center-of-gravity. What I didn't anticipate is how fully it feels as though the wheel breaks free that balance awareness as though going from two-dimensional to three. Ironically, I think German wheel accomplishes this in part by its rigidity, which gives us limitations that help us develop a very precise vocabulary of movement. A jungle-gym on which to play, if you will (if you won't, see note above regarding wrong stuffs and hate).

That is definitely not to say one can just jump on the thing and have at it. The German wheel courts danger as much as any circus feat. See, for example, Chris' video at 3:12. He does a little look-through that - if followed through - could easily result on a broken neck or cracked skull via being run over by a metal bar plus your own body weight. I took to a trick last night that I observed, but hadn't yet been taught, and about midway through had this thought: "Ah. I see. At minimum five reasons I should've sought advice on this one." Plus I could never get the notion of crushing my fingers out of my brain completely . . . but then again not an ice rink goes by without me wondering if they'll be severed there, so that might be a personal fixation.

The entire device has to do with weight distribution - specifically one's pelvis - and leverage. Many of the moves I learned last night had something in common with momentum-based partner acrobatics, in that straightening and bending limbs and torso were used to create that precious leverage and overcome inertia. The entire experience is surreal in all the most circus-y, delighting ways. You roll and flip and are lifted and set down again, all while moving yourself around a defined center, a sweet-spot of a solar system of yourself. Great, great fun.

Found here.

Clown; Expired via Neglect

2012-01-27T12:22:00.000-05:00

Vik Muniz

Friggatriskaidekaphobia

2012-01-13T12:45:00.000-05:00

Found at cereal dragon.

"A word with a long pedigree in English is 'triskaidekaphobia,' which comes from the Greek phrase meaning 'fear of the number three and ten.' A fear of Friday the thirteenth adds the name of the Norse goddess Frigga, who was the wife of Odin and the mysterious, sometimes scary queen of all the gods."

~The Word Origin Calendar, Friday, January 13, 2012

I'll explain carefully to Wife Megan that her new nickname of "Frigga" is an honorific, but I can't promise I won't occasionally use it as a quasi-homonym in times of frustration.

Submission: The Indoor Kids

2011-12-02T08:30:00.000-05:00

Found on Gearspedia.

Update, 12/12/11: Great googily-moogily, I was awarded something for my efforts. The Indoor Kids just emailed me to let me know they'd selected me for one of their prizes - The Art and Design of Gears of War. It's a book, which is probably better for my brain than an Xbox.

To find out how I acquired this prize, read on...

Recently, one of my favorite podcasts - The Indoor Kids - announced a contest, the prizes for which include an Xbox 360. The theme of this contest is Gears of War, a third-person shooter game with which I have limited experience at best. Still, since I had played the game a bit and I'm on something of a gaming kick again (see 3/23/09 & 1/31/07) I thought I'd give it a go with that most powerful and not-at-all-cliché medium: The Personal Narrative. Enjoy.

Dry Spell

I don't own a console system, for a few different reasons. I haven't had one since I was about eight or so, when our dad brought home a knock-off Colecovision bought from some shop on one of our trips to one of the many membership campsites we attended along the East Coast. The thing had an integrated keyboard - though for what exactly I never discovered - the kind that had the keys just printed on overlaid, pebbled plastic so you had to jam your knuckles again and again to even get it to acknowledge a keystroke or two.

I remember the display was various shades of orange, and that we had to change the dial on our old TV with a clenched fist to access its feed. We played a knock-off Pole Position (my personal favorite, though I kept wishing the cars could shoot, like a knock-off Spy Hunter), a knock-off Pac-Man, a knock-off Asteroids, and the television barked those electronic grinding noises that passed for sound simulation at the time. It was magic, even if I knew it wasn't the genuine article. That machine cast a spell that kept me coming back to it and trying again, in spite of whatever serial programming or Technicolor cartoon might be on.

The main reason that I don't own a console system is a similar one to why I don't buy Chewy Chips Ahoy! at the grocery store (unless I'm drunk). If it's in the apartment, I will wring it dry, 'til I'm dehydrated and there are rings around my eyes. My awareness of my own lack of self-control saves me from many things (unless I'm drunk). Video games are among these, kept company by puppets and baked goods.

A few years ago, however, I rediscovered an antidote to this approach. When the Knock-Off Console kicked it, which couldn't have been too long after we first exposed it to actual electricity, my dad resolved never to buy another. He'd seen the mountaintop, and was satisfied there'd be no greater heights; particularly if it was going to continue plumbing the depths of his wallet. In desperation, I left the house, and found my friends. Here an actual Colecovision, there a Nintendo. This guy had a VGA monitor, that girl could afford Super Mario 3. But piecemeal gaming was bound to make me fall behind, and by the time I went away to school the trickle had dribbled out completely.

Still found money for Chewy Chips Ahoy! somehow, though.

Anyway, a few years ago my sister moved in with her boyfriend, a nascent stand-up with a love for comicbooks and video games. Once I got over the idea of him being some kind of stealthy, geek Lothario, I started hanging out. I fell into that familiar pattern, but with a new twist: co-op play. The game of choice for this was, of course, Gears of War.

I'd never played anything like it, even when sampling the latest fare at one of those kiosks at Virgin stores, edging my way around familiarly eager eight-year-olds. In terms of co-op, GoW has a dynamic that's particularly rewarding, and Dom is a great character to play when you're kind of fresh to the whole thing. I still think sometimes of that duck-and-cover motion out of nowhere, like I used to see Tetris shapes in every building and street sign. We would play with those tremendous senses of frustration and accomplishment that let you know when you're really in a game. I hadn't felt that compelled to "try again" when we bombed on a mission since Commander Keen; and that, my friends, is saying something.

All good things end, and eventually my sister and her boyfriend broke up. I'd be lying if I said I considered any part of that break-up more tragic than the sudden clamping off of my GoW supply. I can't complain - I got a good year of GoW and the first few scenes of GoW2 out of it. That probably seems like scraps to live on, but they were some tasty scraps. It's probably for the best, but I can't help wondering if I'll get to experience how GoW2 ends someday. If I'll get to try again.

Dream Log: Church of Improv

2011-12-01T06:02:00.001-05:00

Found here.

It's rare that I remember my dreams.

I woke up this morning in the midst of a very vivid one. I was taking an improv class from Amy Poehler and Matt Walsh, founding members of the Upright Citizens Brigade. It was taking place in an elementary school in my old town. In fact, I believe in my mind it was supposed to be the same elementary school in which my church used to convene, before they raised the funds for their own building. Though in retrospect, it looked more like a cross between a smaller school (right up the hill, in fact) that my mom once substituted in and the ConEd educational facility in Long Island at which I occasionally work.

I got there early; so early that I had no one to guide me to the right room. But soon enough Amy and Matt came along and I was nervous to be there, and didn't know anyone at first. Matt asked me to help him set up, and suddenly started giving commands with urgency, moving desks and opening blinds, etc. Somehow I knew I was helping him with an object lesson, which he soon revealed to the class. Something about energy and agreement. I was happy to have provided a good example.

After not too long in that class, someone pulled me aside. It was a 50-60 year-old woman from my mom's current church, in fact. She and I stepped outside the building, and she started giving me keys - two sets of keys. I was given to understand that they were the keys to everything she needed keys for: her house, her car, everything personal. She was giving them to me because she couldn't go back home, and wanted me to keep them safe for her.

While she was doing this, my actor friend strolled up, blithely unaware of the seriousness of the situation. He was there for the class. I shooed him away with a look, and the woman never really knew he was there. I assured her that I'd take care of her keys, but that she'd be taking them back soon enough. We parted, and I set off to look for my friend, who had wandered off around the side of the building. I had been really surprised to see him there, and really wanted him to join the class.

After not too long I found him inside, in a different part of the building. It didn't take any convincing for him to join - he seemed just to not know where it was. As I walked him back to class - now a bit concerned that too much time had lapsed for me to return to it - we came upon two more of my friends who were there for the class (Friends Patrick and Melissa, in point of fact) and we all went in together.

It was fine to just jump back in, and class continued apace.

And then my alarm went off, the cat jumped off the bed and I think I elbowed Wife Megan before awkwardly knocking myself out of bed like my limbs were on fire.

Tiny Black Specks

2011-11-11T11:23:00.000-05:00

Ed.: This was supposed to post on Halloween this year as a companion piece to Pavarti's post of the same story from another perspective. Alas, I was too occupied with more important writing-related work (I'll get no arguments from Pavarti) to finish it, so I'm clocking it in late. Sorry, super-fans!

Photo by "Murfomurf."

Even as the seeds of our relationship's destruction were being sown, my first love saved my life.

Let me back up a bit.

I got sick a lot as a kid. I have to some extent been a method actor all my life, which is to say that I've felt that believing the circumstances wholly is the best way to a convincing performance. A healthy dose of masochism doesn't hurt either. Odds are that about half the sick days I took in high school were more like anxiety days, or self-flagellation days. Still, I believed them, even without that important DefCon 1 of childhood illness: the antibiotic.

You knew if you actually went to the doctor, and the doctor actually prescribed something, then you were sick, real and true. In the autumn of my senior year of high school there was a lot going on, and I really did get sick. I was put on just such an antibiotic, and deemed therefore fit for society once more. I was glad for that, since the day was a holiday, and my favorite one at that. On Halloween Day, 1994 - a Monday, as it is this year - I returned to school, fortified and ready for all the excitement once more.

The thing I will always remember are the tiny black specks.

It could have been caused by anything. My mom always gave us a double-dose of whatever antibiotic we were prescribed right away, to jump-start the blood levels. I could, in fact, be allergic to this particular cocktail of micro-organic missile, as my every doctor's form has reflected ever since. Or maybe, just possibly, I rushed through my regular breakfast routine that morning without stopping to consider that the semi-viscous substance suspending my Rice Chex in that bowl was, in fact, milk. And maybe, yes, there was a certain bovine injunction on the side of the orangey, childproof bottle. I may never know.

I may never know because the day itself is an astonishing blur. Not the kind of blur one associates with tremendous speed or urgency, either. Rather, the sort of blur that happens when something is smeared across, or great heat melts something, or some synthetic psychoactive drug chooses to make a mess of your internal relativity. Or, as was the case with me that Halloween Day so long ago, all three, concurrent and consecutive (see note about internal relativity).

Sometime not too far into the school day, maybe after first period, I started to feel nauseous and following fast on the heels of that sensation I vomited into a garbage can. I had the nurse call my mom. Luckily for me, she worked at an elementary school just down the road and had the time to swing by to take me home. I remember lying on my left side in the back of our maroon minivan, trying not to be sick even as I contemplated whether I was making the right choice. I was feeling better. Maybe I could make it through the day, and on into the night's festivities. This thing could still be saved.

It's difficult to remember these events, but not solely because of my altered state. No, as with many other times in my life that proved to be turning points, I've blocked out a lot of details of sequence and experience in my memory. Although I recognize I have a tendency to get mired in my past, I also have a great deal of trouble letting go of my own volition, and so I frequently and by default "forget." That is, "wall memories off where they are forced to live in confinement forever and/or until some silly, silly suggestion that I give them some air is made." It's a bit of an effort to dredge some of this up.

At the time, in the fall semester of my senior year, we were rehearsing a show called Stage Door, in which I played the closest thing to an antagonist the story had. Senior year represented a sea change in my high school experience, having gone far too quickly from chubby band nerd to skinny, upperclassman, leading-man-somewhat-by-default drama nerd. My dearest, passionate, first true love was a junior, but making more headway in choosing a college for the next year than I was. I had also - extremely unexpectedly and as a result of an acting exercise brought to us from a summer intensive our stage manager attended at Northwestern University - recently fallen for my co-star.

A memory doesn't have to be painful for me to quietly wall it away in the intervening years, just embarrassing. This one happens to be both.

I think I went straight to bed when I got home that morning. I think I might've tried water and toast at some or several points, in the hopes of hanging on to the idea of healing. I think I heard the phone ring once or twice. But I know that by the time the phone started ringing I had already vomited at least three more times, and resigned myself to staying in the bathroom. Eventually, the floor of the bathroom became the best place I could imagine and so I laid there, years before I would ever experience the divine punishment of alcohol. By the time I heard the front door opening and my girlfriend's voice calling my name, I was pretty certain it was a hallucination.

The door to the bathroom was closed at first. Was the bathroom door closed at first? At this point it's all a mess of fingerpaints in my mind. She was always lightly on the goth/punk side - Doc Martens strapped on over fishnets, but a girlish giggle as easily and likely as a throaty guffaw. I'm not sure, but I think my guardian angel was even more punk that particular day, in a nod to the holiday. Regardless of when I let her see me, I somehow remember bright sunlight coming in from the open door downstairs, that same door that still displayed the knuckle-dents from when I punched it in frustration the previous May and broke my metacarpals. The pain of that was fresh in my mind, and it had nothing on what my abdominal muscles were going through as I spasmed and vomited yet again.

"Jeff, I'm calling your mom."

That's a bold sentence when you're a teenager, for any occasion, but especially when you've just skipped school to check on your sick sweetheart. I didn't try to stop her. I stared at the results of my latest heaving in the bowl, and was baffled. Nothing but a little clear fluid, but swimming with tiny, black specks. It was almost funny.

Later, in the emergency room, they would tell me that those black specks were the scrapings of the bottom, the digestive granules produced by the...bile duct? Something. By that time I had been on an IV for dehydration for hours, so I really should be able to remember. Strange that I would let that particular detail go. Maybe it takes days for dehydration to kill you, even when it's accelerated by an allergic response (or whatever) but I certainly wouldn't have made it to the emergency room until late into that night if it hadn't been for my girlfriend knowing it was time to break the rules.

She's always had that kind of unconventional clarity. That's the quality, I think (though also to a lesser degree the fishnets) that made my initial attraction to her so strong. I think of her as one of those kids who never knew they weren't an adult, and now that she is an adult she's got all that assumed authority the years bring to back up her keen perception and audacity. I'm proud we're still friends after all these years, after long stretches of no contact, after I shoved the self-destruct button quietly down on our relationship, after all kinds of personal emergencies and my inauspicious and unrelenting crush on her that started it all.

Having now lived twice the number of years I had then, I'm not sure I can claim any greater wisdom. Nowadays, a lot of the gusto of that time of my life seems smarter than where I am. Certainly not all of it, but much of it. Teenagers have an emotional sincerity from which we can always learn a little something. While age may not have increased my wisdom, distance has bettered my perspective.

I can see now that it was all a little funny and a little horrible, and even that those two aspects are usually paired up to some degree. I see past the imagined drama and the true consequences that it's a story about people who love each other. In fact, struggling through the melting, smeared mess of my memory of this event has helped me see myself a little clearer, even as the teenager I was, the woman who loved me, the girl who surprised me, our teachers and parents and friends of that time fall farther and farther away, into the distance, into tiny black specks.

Lunch Break: Tree

2011-11-10T14:00:00.001-05:00

See the guy? I want to be the guy.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-29T12:20:00.001-04:00

Occupy All the Things

2011-10-25T16:05:00.001-04:00

Love This City

2011-10-13T14:51:00.001-04:00

Subterranean Design: Qanat Irrigation & Adventure

2011-10-11T14:00:00.000-04:00

Hello, nerds!

Those Mexican qanats are
a bit out of controlsville.

All right, you're not all nerds. But if you have any interest at all in the subject to which I am about to link, you may be on the nerdlier side of the coin. I've finally gotten around to a writing assignment Friend Younce handed me back in the spring, and it's up at our joint venture, Subterranean Design. Qanat Irrigation & Adventure explores some of the more exciting design aspects of desert gravity-irrigation techniques.

Okay, I'm going to have to ask you to CALM. DOWN. Get ahold of yourself! It's actually far more interesting than I thought. On a related note: Hey, who's got two thumbs and is a raging nerd...?

Rom Com

2011-09-30T16:32:00.000-04:00

Found here, and I heartily recommend.

It might surprise some people to learn that I really like romantic comedies, but I do. I like the genre, and I like a format in which we laugh at what's really a huge concern for most all of us, and then - when it's done well - really feel the emotional tug of the narrative at its climax. As I've said before, high and believable stakes make for the best comedy.

The trouble is, most "romantic comedy" by conventional Hollywood standards misses the mark for me, and there may not be much worse than a bad "romcom" that's neither funny nor emotionally effective. Such misses just end up making us feel trivial, having wasted two hours of our time on something superficial that purports to represent us.

Now, this is not a Harold & Maude argument, or anything like that. I love that movie, but it tends to get plucked as an example of an unconventional genre movie, one that proves its case by being the exception from it. I like far more conventional fare, like My Best Friend's Wedding. Of course, that one defies convention in certain ways, but the mechanics are true to the genre. Others I appreciate include Charade, When Harry Met Sally, and Punch Drunk Love.

I'd like to do a romantic comedy of some kind, possibly even a web series. I think it's a format that's perfect for that kind of story, especially if you're looking to build a longer episodic story. Mine would have two people who really need one another (not just pretty faces that you want to be) with intention, less misunderstanding and more genuine conflict, and it would probably use New York City for its backdrop. (Just to ratchet up the difficulty of filming, I suppose.) I'm going to do some thinking on this.

And you? What would your romcom consist of?

Everything Under the Sun 3: Favorite Productions

2011-09-22T22:51:00.002-04:00

Everything Under the Sun is a short series of posts we'll be doing here at the Aviary, motivated by a potential collaboration on a project that might end up being sort-of/kind-of personal. I have what amount to assignments of exploration of my own interests in particular areas, so I thought I'd put them out there to provoke any responses that you may find irresistible.

Favorite Productions

(With, it must be said, some apologies. Loving certain shows more than others does not decrease my love for said others. I love you both, all, in part and sum, uniquely, whoever you may be. If my choices here enrage you, you may want to evaluate the weight you give to my opinion, rather than my opinion itself.)

HIGH SCHOOL

Ten Little Indians

As my first show approaching any kind of production value, it's hard not to choose this one. However, I believe it ranks for more than just the thrill of beginning. With all the tumult and confusion of becoming a teenager, I still manage to understand that I found something thrilling and fulfilling about theatre with this show. Maybe the first hints at how a show and a role can be believed, rather than just enacted.

The Dining Room

Great play, to begin with. The production I was in was an abbreviated version and student-directed. I had given up theatre for a couple of years in high school (apart from an almost stunt-trick audition for Midsummer Night's Dream) and this production of Dining Room was something of a return. Because it was student-directed, I could engage in a real dialogue with the director about ideas and process. I remember it as a wonderful experience of how simple effective theatre can be (mar it as I'm sure I did with over-performing).

Illustration cropped from a work by Ted Michalowski.

COLLEGE

The Three Musketeers

This was only my second main-stage role in college, and I played d'Artagnon. If you'd asked me at the time, I never would have guessed this would be among my favorites. The production seemed to me to be plagued with indecision, uninspired writing and unbalanced trickery, plus I was naturally insecure about playing someone supposedly dashing and a fencer to boot when I hadn't even touched a foil before. Yet it set a lot in motion for me and introduced me to conventions I love to use to this day: live music, transforming set pieces and 3/4 staging. If it weren't for this production, I might not have ever gotten involved with physical theatre.

The Bacchae

Another student-directed production, this one was a graduate student assignment, and for about a month in our program just about every grad student was directing some undergrads in a Greek tragedy. Fun month, let me tell you. I played Pentheus, and had some good incentive at the time to explore unrepentant rage. The production was a relatively colloquial translation economized into a fluid one-act, and featured the gods Apollo and Dionysus seated on either side of the stage at the start. My destruction at the Bacchanalia was portrayed in a dance in which I was stripped just shy of naked and the women smeared stage blood all over my body. Later, when my mother awakes from her trance to realize she isn't holding a lion's head, but her sons, I walked slowly up behind her, stopping just at the point she sees that she's killed her son. It was an abstract, visceral and I think very effective production.

Hotel Paradiso

And now for something completely different. Hotel Paradiso was something of an adaptation of a translation of a French farce, directed by my favorite acting teacher. I'd previously played a lead role in a contemporary tragedy under his direction, but Hotel Paradiso's Maxime turned out to be a better fit for me. Essentially, I learned from this production that my sense of comedy had roots in traditional farce, and that the physical comedy I started with as a little kid could carry me into a great adult work. I simply had a blast feeling the symphony of a well-coordinated comic play.

Cropped from a photo by Jimmi Kilduff.

PROFESSIONAL

The Hatfields and the McCoys

Ridiculous. So ridiculous. Theatre West Virginia was my first professional contract, and it is a classic, outdoor, summer-stock theatre. They produce two standard shows every summer, and one change-up. The historically obligated show is Honey in the Rock, the story of West Virginia's secession from Virginia, and the real crowd-pleaser is The Hatfields and the McCoys. It's violent and sprawling and sad and funny by turns. In addition to running around a huge space, firing guns and wielding knives, I got to play dual roles as a McCoy in act one and a Hatfield in two and make them as physically broad as I liked. It was ridiculous fun.

The Glass Menagerie

For a little while, David Zarko wasn't sure if he hadn't miscast between myself and the actor playing Tom. In fact, I remember the common response I got when I mentioned I'd be appearing in The Glass Menagerie was, "Oh, you're perfect for Tom." It wasn't too long before David realized it was the best way to go, however, and I definitively agree. "The gentleman caller" surprised me with his depth, and his earnest insecurity. This show began my long collaboration with David and Electric Theatre Company (née The Northeast Theatre ["TNT/ETC"]), and was a beautifully simple and sensitive production.

Circus of Vices and Virtues

A raw space in a former bathhouse in Brooklyn. Self-generated work. Allegory and agit-prop. Clown and monsters, and lots of aerial acts. Pieter Bruegel the Elder and the second Bush era in government. I was young and passionately committed to any work, and the dark imagery and new, dance-like world of this most abstract show impressed me so much that I worked on it off and on over a course of two years.

Summertree

A Vietnam-War-era drama that plays loose with time, I got to play a young man at various stages in his life in Summertree until he ultimately dies, in the war and on stage. I loved the way this play had a clearer emotional through-line and cause-and-effect than a chronological approach, and though I know that ultimately I could've turned in a better performance I'm still proud of where I and the rest of the cast got with the material.

Plus they built a climbable tree with a swinging rope and an actual swing on stage, so you know I had some fun with all that.

One Perfect Rose

Pictured, clockwise: Melissa Riker, Leah
Abel, Bronwyn Sims, Jen Colasuonno &
yours truly.

Ah, One Perfect Rose! This was ostensibly a children's show, created by Kirkos - the circus-theatre troupe of which I was a founding member - and performed at the old Chashama home of The Bindlestiff Family Circus, on 42nd Street. It was a "fractured fairy-tales" story, with a different act/routine for each tale, hung on a somewhat chaotic framework that involved Snow White and Rose Red, Mother Goose and my character, a rather anal fellow named Phineas Grimm. I got to use direct address, do a bit of circus in a severe-yet-clownish sort of way, and even fell in love in the end (an ending I actually wrote myself). Bliss.

Silent Lives

Photo by Sally Wiener Grotta.

Some common themes here: self-generated work in a raw space, highly physical, and more than a little melancholy in-between moments of manic hilarity. This was also undeniably one of the most successful original shows created by my commedia dell'arte troupe, Zuppa del Giorno. The silent-film informed show was performed to live music and entirely without dialogue, and introduced me to two very influential mediums: clown work and the great silent comedy tradition.

Over the River and Through the Woods...

Compared with the rest of these productions, this probably wasn't as formative to my aesthetic, but it couldn't be more dear to me. An crowd-pleaser, we performed it every year for three years at TNT/ETC, and it was in the third year that I reached the exact age of the character. It got to be hard not to think of my fellow actors as my grandparents. It's strange to think I almost turned down this role - it had been suggested to the theatre by my Laura from Glass Menagerie for she and I, and they subsequently didn't cast her, plus I initially saw my character as a frustrating exercise in playing the frustrated straight man again. I was, of course, wrong. The show is hilarious, and there are moments I only have to think of playing that bring me to tears. And I'm still considering the final thoughts Nick shares with the audience.

The Very Nearly Perfect Comedy of Romeo and Juliet

Heather Stuart as
Juliet Capulet.

At some point, actors have to begin letting go of famous roles they didn't get to play before aging, and I had begrudgingly released Romeo before Zuppa del Giorno came up with this concept for tackling Shakespeare. In a world full of commedia-masked and grotesque characters, Romeo and Juliet are two red-nosed clowns who find one another. Somewhat amazingly, our concept worked quite well, I thought. It was a far-from-flawless production, but every piece of it found something profoundly good. And for me, there was something magical about playing young lovers once again with my long-time collaborator Heather Stuart, both of us older with the youthful permission of the clown nose.

The Spectacular Scrantonian Spectacular

Well, gosh. This wasn't even theatre, and I hardly performed in it. Somewhere between cabaret and vaudeville, TSSS was a little second-stage pet project of mine wherein I gathered some of my favorite performers from New York and Scranton to create a weird evening of variety in the same smaller ballroom in which Silent Lives was performed. It was all brought together over about 48 hours from start to finish, and was fun, pretty, and pretty funny.

I feel like I've gotten a lot of clarity about my tastes and influences by going through my resume like this. Please keep in mind both that there are shows I've participated and loved that didn't make it on to this list, and that this list is by no means about which ones have been influential. If either were qualifications, I'd have included shows such as As Far As We Know and Noble Aspirations. No, these are just favorites, and in spite of how much importance we place on that word growing up, it implies some malleability and prejudice. Perspective, in other words.

Injurious Harm

2011-09-19T11:05:00.002-04:00

Found here.

Wife Megan and I have been preparing for a couple of aerial silks performances this weekend at The Gowanus Ballroom (henceforward, "TGB"). TGB is a very cool space - a former factory that now serves double-duty as a metal shop and an art gallery, and it would seem they're eager to have as much aerial performance in it as they can get as well. I've been looking forward to this opportunity in particular, as it would be my first professional aerial gig, and I really love the space itself.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I've hurt myself a little too badly to carry on.

I'm fine. I mean, I'M FINE. I feel a little silly, in fact, since our teacher very recently had a serious injury that's keeping her off the silks. (Hers had almost nothing to do with the inherent dangers we tend to think of for climbing arts - while she was standing on the ground, a rigging hook fell from the ceiling onto her hand, which is miraculously unbroken but very swollen.) By comparison, my ailments are exceedingly minor. I have a strained right shoulder, and a tweaked left. Were I in Cirque du Soleil (henceforth, "CdS") or some such company, these would indubitably be suck-it-up injuries.

Well, I'm not in CdS. ("What?" I know: right?) Giving it twelve hours after the second tweaking, in which time I napped, took some pain medication and got a decent rub-down, I made the decision I have the luxury to make. In my experience, the reason these sorts of things happen in threes is not because of some cosmic predestiny or communique, nor because it's funny (though, Dudes: it totally is). No, they come in threes because some moron decides he doesn't have to listen to the world around him. I'll not be that moron.

Today, anyway.

That's not to say I feel good about the decision. Why write about it if I feel smashing? No; even past the call, I'm struggling with it. I don't question it in any rational sense. Hauling myself up and catching myself down a thirty-foot ribbon is not what the doctor ordered for a couple of twinged shoulders, and a bad or even hesitant performance doesn't add to my fellow conspirators' performances in any way. Our fearless leader even made sure we knew going in that the commitment was negotiable for this kind of concern.

What is difficult about this is the lost work that went into rehearsal. What is difficult about this is that this is the second time in a row that a silks performance of mine was compromised by health concerns (see 5/25/11). What's difficult is taking the long view, and returning to the dual considerations that: 1) I might need to give silks a rest for awhile, find something else in the physical arts to study; and 2) I am older than I once was, and that's all I'll ever be, because that's how life works.

Stupid life.

I try not to think about things this way, that I'm getting too old for anything. It makes far more sense to me to think that as I age, I need to keep improving my approach to physical arts so I can work smarter and be prepared and more attuned to my body. Of course, part of the beauty of physical expression is that it can be so pure and independent from analysis. This sets us up for a classic showdown: Body versus Mind. Will Mind's rationale wither under the indomitable impulse-control-problem of Body, or will Body be left baffled, staring into an empty corner at its own mortal shadow whilst Mind proves irrefutably that it is the very construct of reality?! Sunday, SUNDAY, Sunday! Two enter the octagon, only one may leave! Except that, oh, well, they kind of need one another after all so let's all sing kumbaya, ma' lord, oh lord, kumbaya...

Anyway. It's not a complete write-off. When I was last in Scranton I finally retrieved my first pair of stilts, which had taken up residence there for almost two years now. My plan is to perform a sort of metalworker character, a tall guy from a different time dropped into the art space and trying to find his way to Gowanus, unable to recognize that he's already there. It's a theatrically satisfying idea, regardless of how physically simple the act ultimately is.

It's funny. I've been practicing my stilt-walking after work on the odd afternoon since I got the pair back, just taking a walk around the block to reacquaint myself with the sensation. It's difficult to avoid the cliché about bike riding, but there are things I forgot about stilt-walking. Primarily, how taken with it people are. Just carrying the stilts around invites folks to ask questions, and actually walking on them (the stilts; less-so the people) inspires an incredible repetition of jokes and questions. ("How's the weather up there?" has become to me a challenge to make my response as original as possible in contrast.) I engage in this repetition too. My line is, "It's easy. I could teach you in an hour." And it's true. It took me five years to learn to ride a bicycle, and fifty minutes to walk on my own on stilts.

People very rarely take me up on the offer, however. I think I've taught only two folks in nine years. Most people have talked themselves out of it before they've even considered the possibility, which I think is a shame. Sure - you could fall, you could get hurt. Worse, you might even have to give up. The catch is that the best opportunities available are within that risk. It's those painless injuries of never trying that really tear me up.

The Third Place

2011-09-16T13:35:00.001-04:00

Compliments of Friend Davey: check out this slideshow of "third places" (though I like "great, good" places even better). Davey also points out how this ties in to my writings on The Third Life(TM). If I remember correctly, I cribbed the idea for TTL(TM) off of a series of short plays a friend of mine from college produced, all set in a coffee shop, that third place for so many of us. Perhaps she had read Oldenburg's treatise on the subject.

Everything Under the Sun 2: Fictional Figures & Archetypes

2011-09-16T06:46:00.002-04:00

It should be pretty clear by now that comicbooks experienced a kind of new golden age of interest in the 80s, prompted in no small part by Superman: The Movie's release in 1978. I was Superman for Halloween from a ridiculously low age for a few years. Once I was also Batman, and happened to get my picture in a local paper in that costume. My burgeoning teenage years were ushered in by the nearly-maudlin interpretation of Batman in 1989, and that locked me on a perfect course of obsession for the character. Frankly I think a significant cause of our current superhero movie boom has to do with all those kids like me growing up on them and now being in positions of power - decision-making and simply spending power.

The analogy of these two "World's Finest" and the Greek gods is not perfect. It is, in fact, pretty weak. It's just that there's a personal connection there for me. I played Pentheus in a college production of The Bacchae, which was the introduction to me of the idea that there was an essential opposition between Dionysus' chaos and Apollo's order. Batman is really all about order, but when viewed through a certain lens (e.g., Miller's Dark Knight Returns) he's a rule-breaker as opposed to Kal-El and his strictures of right and wrong. So personally, I see these two characters as representing different sides of me.

Superman is the ideal, an exceedingly humble person who has enormous power that he wields with faith. Not the religious overtones so many interpretations lay on him; rather, faith in goodness and human spirit. (Incidentally: really bugs me when he's portrayed as the Second Coming; seeing as he was created by two Jewish guys, if anything he's the First.) Miller calls him the Big Blue Boyscout, and I don't always see that as an insult. I was a boyscout.

It's only natural that I connected with Batman with such intensity when I was turning 13. The glasses I started wearing in 4th grade - that thrilled me at the time for the Clark Kent parallelism - had contributed to a wealth of factors making me a less-than-desirable layer of the social strata. Real adult problems were just starting to come through the bright-colored camouflage of childhood, so someone who turned adversity to their advantage, who had to grapple with seemingly uncontrollable emotion and impossible odds ... well. He's pretty badass, that Batman.

James Bond

I am no James Bond, nor would I want to be. But: I was raised on the movies by my dad, and they have indubitably influenced me. Plus there's a lot Wayne and Bond have in common.

Winnie the Pooh (NOT. DISNEY.)

This would be among my earliest, if not the earliest, influence on my imagination and understanding. My mother read me these stories with all the voices, just as hers had done, and I still can't help but use the characters as archetypes when analyzing group dynamics. I think something about my mom's reverence for the character of Pooh also influenced my thinking about philosophy. The Tao of Pooh is by now something of a cliché, but I certainly do find a lot of truth in Taoism.

Taran
Friend Davey is responsible for introducing me to the fantasy genre back in sixth grade with the Taran series, the Myth series and Narnia. In case it wasn't already growing obvious, I'm a sucker for the hero's journey when it comes to my fiction, and few have told that story as comprehensively as Lloyd Alexander when he takes Taran from young scamp to embattled leader.

Hamlet

I know. I KNOW. He's another one who caught me early but, even now as well-aware as I am of his many foibles, I less-than-three Hamlet. I have an alarming affection for righteous murderers with daddy issues.

John MacClane
Case in point. (Don't try to tell me he doesn't have daddy issues.) Die Hard is another of those movies I affectionately share with my dad. And it's incredibly over-revered, to the point of being another cliché. But I love it so. I can't get enough of a guy as absolute underdog, in a finite space, just getting the job done any which way he can. A hero flawed as hell, and in the end he's rewarded for his suffering with love. I mean: damn.

Perseus/Theseus/King Arthur

Speaking of flawed heroes. They don't all belong together - this is another personal lumping going on. In fact, Arthur really has a different brand of hubris than the other two. But they are each in their own way a crusading hero who meets with tragic just desserts. I like quests. I used to operate from them more, but they still appeal to me a great deal. Life is exciting to me when it's a puzzle, or a maze, or a dance with destiny.

Romeo/Mercutio
I had the good fortune to play Romeo - albeit a comic one - well past my prime for the role. He's a good archetype for me and the protagonists I've played in my youth. Hopeful to a fault, believers all. So I've always identified with Romeo and his longing. But I've also always wanted to play Mercutio, and always tried to give it up. I'm not born to be the wild one, but I'm drawn to them. A little of the old order/chaos dichotomy at play here. (Though once again it's nuts to associate Romeo with anything approaching "order" on his own.)

Morpheus

Speaking of tragic lovers. The nice thing about the dream king's blighted love life is that it's a consistent background action to his stories, until it isn't anymore and it destroys him (or he allows it to, depending on your view). In high school Friend Dave recruited me to pose as Neil Gaiman's Morpheus for a photo project, and gave me access to the whole run of the Sandman comics to boot. Still enjoy reading through them all to this day. He values duty and responsibility in a darker way than the Big Blue Boyscout. I wouldn't say I identify with Morpheus exactly, but I definitely had a touch of his brooding style in my teendom. I still want a pet raven.

Odin

Where are you? You're here! In his aviary! I took that name for the 'blog because of his ravens - Huggin and Muninn, thought and memory - but I like this old God with his one eye. There's something about Norse mythological figures that's satisfying from an iconic perspective, and I like this feeling that Odin has the wisdom of an old father, and a lot of the fallibility you expect from Greek gods. And let's not even get into how many of the characters on this list are Christ analogues at this point. Of course, my view of him is rather colored by how Mr. Gaiman has portrayed him in a couple of different mediums.

Martin Blank

From Grosse Pointe Blank, the John Cusack semi-satire film about a mercenary hitman returning to town for his ten-year high school reunion. This movie really resonated with my sense of humor, with its swift dialogue and plenty of deadpan, and Martin Blank is interesting as someone capable (all too capable in some regards) who's trying really hard to work some things out with very little success.

____________, P.I. (The Noir Protagonist)

If you scramble a lot of these together with a dash of my nostalgia for a time when men wore hats when they were outside, it's not hard to come up with the prototypical anti-hero. He's beaten down, he's got a job to do, he can't help but give you a peek past his gruff exterior to see that he might've really loved that dame ... once. It's not original. Men just love this shtick.

Well, this is quite a little list of heroes and anti-heroes. I could blame the media, but the fact is that from my beginning that's what's connected with me. Interestingly enough:

I haven't played too many outright heroes.
I haven't included here many of the archetypes I commonly portray on stage (reactionary straight man, fish-out-of-water, young idealist, etc.) nor much along the lines of commedia dell'arte archetypes.

I'll let the jury decide the why and wherefore of all that, though.

Decades

2011-09-11T14:30:00.000-04:00

Fourteen is a dangerous age for boys. Things get a bit incongruous, just when you start to think you've got a few things figured out about how life and other people work. In my case, I also switched schools and had some new health complications that left me feeling pretty unstable, even hormones aside. So it may not exactly come as a surprise that I soon began spending my unsupervised afternoons after school at a large storm-drain tunnel with friends, learning how to blow things up.

Amateur arson is of interest to most boys, and I and my friend were boy scouts anyway, so we were well acquainted with some of the more expressive properties of fire. Burning plastic action figures was a popular form of this expression. One day while we were messing around with an open flame in his backyard, his brother pitched a small aerosol can onto the fire. We ran for cover, but after some uneventful time, his brother went to investigate. Lucky for him (and us) the bottle was nearly empty of whatever it had once sprayed, because it blew apart with a loud pop but only a small hiccup of flame. Giddy laughter ensued, and so did our afternoon sojourns to the tunnel.

It ran under Burke Center Parkway, and always had a little bit of a stream running through it connecting one of the many creeks that ran through the woods of our hometown. The walls were adorned with hasty graffiti at either end, and you could stand in the center and still have almost a foot from your head to the ceiling. We'd lay out a few wet logs for a baseboard to suspend our fire over the rivulet that ran through the tunnel, then set to burning a few disposable artifacts from my friend's vast collection of forgotten toys. We quickly realized that, though the smell wasn't exactly what you would call rewarding, burning plastic could make a very hot, very long-lasting flame.

I can't recall if it was our first trip there or not, but one day I brought a few spray paint cans harvested from my mother's craft collection in our basement. We set a few of our boyhood toys burning into a significant little inferno, and laid a large, full can of red spray paint in it. Then we ran for cover. I remember in particular that I and another of the hangers-on who were drawn to pyrotechnics ran a little too far to see, so we cautiously marched back a bit to see my friend's brother once again being the first to approach the as-yet uneventful inferno.

The tunnel amplified and directed the sound of the explosion, firing sound waves northeast and southwest and a jolt through our chest cavities. A belch of heat followed. A bright orange ball of flame worthy of Hollywood expanded from the fire, and a host of boys shouted in sudden, unabashed surprise. It would inspire us with its terror, and our experiments in delinquency from there on out would grow more and more bold and irresponsible. We thought we understood what a miraculous bit of grace it was that my friend's brother came away completely unscathed, but we didn't really. I don't think there was a single one of us who could have conceived of the reality of that kind of crisis.

Some ten years later, I returned to rehearsal on the debut of an original comedy entitled The Center of Gravity. It was a broad-strokes comedy with existential underpinnings, set in small-town Texas. Nevertheless, it was obvious to us now that we would need to change several references to "ground zero," a term that had less personal implication to us just a few days prior. What wasn't immediately obvious was how bad the air quality in lower Manhattan - where we were rehearsing in a free, abandoned office space in the West Village - would be. I was the one to call it quits first. We were losing precious days of rehearsal, and there was a certain shared ethic at the time of "getting back to it," but I could feel the particulates in my throat and the smell was everywhere.

After about an hour of watching the news and the Science Channel's series on rebuilding on the World Trade Center site, I stepped out of my apartment building in Queens today to buy a coffee from the Italian bakery down 30th Avenue. It was gray out, but cool and not humid, and I took a moment to look up and down the avenue. I smelled something familiar - synthetic materials burning, definitely some plastic. It seemed to be strongest up the avenue, away from Manhattan, which was both comforting and confusing. The first thing I looked for was panicked people. I have an instinct for this now, whether it's in person or on Twitter, as I did a couple of weeks ago when the office building I work in started swaying with the aftershocks of an earthquake.

A family was out on their stoop, chatting away. A woman in a red t-shirt looked at me as she walked by. No one was panicked. No one was coming out of their buildings to look around like me, no one was crying, holding one another or hunched over the open window of a parked car, listening to the radio. No one was walking determinedly away from somewhere, or even in a daze, wandering as though searching. After a few seconds, I decided that either it was a minor burning somewhere or I had simply imagined it. I'm not normally given to that kind of suggestion, but it wasn't inconceivable. I left my stoop to get my coffee.

Coffee's all done now, and instead of starting the dozen things I intend to do today, I've written this. While writing, my sister called to see if she could spend the night tonight on her way from Cape Cod down to her home in Baltimore. I'm grateful for that. I've missed her since she moved away from the city a couple of years ago, and I think the personal impact of today's anniversary is something I'm having some trouble articulating for myself. Sisters are good for clarity, whether anything ever really gets figured out or not.

I'm seeing a lot of people sharing their thoughts and feelings today, and I'd just as soon have kept mine private. Particularly because I can't really tell you what they are, exactly. I'm very lucky, and very grateful, to have made it this far in life intact, with so many of my friends and family still with me. I think gratitude is a thing we can always use more of, especially in the face of tragedy or inexplicable circumstances. It's a good emotion from which to make decisions and judgments.

Thank you.

Everything Under the Sun 1: Historical Figures

2011-09-07T20:53:00.000-04:00

Historical Figures of Interest

I'm a littleashamed to admit that I am more influenced by fictional characters -or even character archetypes - than I am by real human beings. That'snot too surprising when you consider that I generally prefer DCComics to Marvel. I like icons better than actual people.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Discovered Edward Snow's translationsof his poetry while in high-teenage mode, full of romance and angst myself.(Snow I found first, and all other translations since seem to me tobe lacking something. Hate when they slavishly follow the rhymescheme.) It was like discovering poetry for the first time. Mygirlfriend of the time (my first real one; first love, truly) was asort of inadvertent historian about a few people she was enthusiasticabout (Artaud, Nin) and inspired me to poke around and learn moreabout the man behind the poetry. I learned about his connections toLou-Andreas Salome and, by extension, Nietzsche, which seemed just amarvelous excuse to continue exploring angsty and existential teenagewonderings. Also learned of his connection to Rodin, which in thatteenage way seemed fated, as my next true love introduced me to artmuseums and The Burgers of Calais facsimilein the sculpture garden in D.C.

Rainerhad something of a confusing and tormented childhood, particularlywith regards to his sexual identity, and he turned out to besomething of a dick husband/father. I was surprised to see howsimilar our facial features were. I continue to think of him as anexample of a great artist who sacrificed all moral considerations forartistic aspirations, which troubles me. I adore his art, and despisehis personal life. Maybe I envy it, too, for its potential sense offreedom. Ironically, I wasn't aware of his Letters to aYoung Poet – one of the moreapt treatises for young, aspiring anythings – until long afterdiscovering his poetry.

Anton Chekhov

Aplaywright I acted for on a couple of shows was fond of how similarhe and I appear when I have my hair short and a goatee (no longer afavorite look of mine). I found this somewhat ironic, as I have neverloved his work. At least at the time, I found TheSeagullenjoyable, and that was about it. Not too long after I was introducedto his one-act plays by one of my mentors, and found them to beblissfully funny. This, plus the aspect of “required reading,”makes me question my initial reaction to his playwriting, but todate I haven't been able to bring myself to really sit down andtackle CherryOrchardor Three Sistersagain.

Buster Keaton

I'll never feel like I deserve Buster. My commedia dell'arte troupedecided a year in advance that our next show would tackle the themeof silent comedies, and we began research. This would become one ofour (if not the) defining creative experiences, and the entireprocess had a profound impact on me as an individual artist. However,when the idea was hatched the creative forces that were guidingthings - for whatever reason – attributed me to Chaplin, and theother male actor to Keaton. So for over half a year I didcomprehensive research on Chaplin. It turned out that one of ourfellow actors ended up directing the show, and her opinion was that Ishould be working on portraying Keaton, and the other fellow, Chaplin.So, after we had both done extensive research and developed prettyprofound appreciations for one auteur, we switched. The effect ofthis was compounded for me by how much I respected/envied(loved?)this other actor – switching off at that point seemed...somehowterrible.

Itwas the right call. He was much better suited to understandingChaplin's amazing pathos, that stays just the right side of maudlin,to absolutely devastatingcathartic effect. Asfor me, I have a face that lends itself to a certain stoicism but,more importantly, I've spent some time studying acrobatics and am anaspiring thinker who appreciates the mechanics of things. Still andall, I feel blessed to have been “given” Keaton. He was anunequivocal genius, hysterical and inspired (and tormented, in atriumphantly private way) who continues to pretty much hold deitystatus in my heart.

WilliamShakespeare

Because: Come on. How about that sentence structure?

Edgar Allean Poe

Some of the first legitimate literature I was exposed to, and he wasGOTH as FROCK. Don't forget he write some of the seminal detectivefiction.

Nikola Tesla

Freaking lunatic. Also an impressive intellect. I love that we keepwondering if he was right about some of his more, shall we say,eccentric notions.

Leonardo DaVinci

Similar to Tesla, just an irresponsibly multi-talented genius. I loveguys who have the heart of a poet and the intellectual curiosity andcapacity of an engineer. So, for that matter, see Buster Keaton too.

I'm sort of ashamed there's no American history figures here. I likeBen Franklin's renaissance spirit and flamboyant sense of humor. TossSam Clemens on there, too. Jefferson could write, and was anarchitectural mechanic, and Adams was an admirablystubborn-yet-romantic S.O.B.

But now we're just getting into commonUnited States idols here. Let's wrap it up!

H&M

2011-08-16T20:05:00.000-04:00

Found here. Compliments Friend Davey.

Joker

2011-08-11T17:40:00.001-04:00

Court's still out on whether or not he is a midnight toker...

Five Hun Dread: The Sacred & Profane

2011-06-30T09:00:00.034-04:00

In the waning days of 2006 I started this here 'blog in the interests of exerting a bit more control over my online presence. It probably speaks volumes to my misconceptions about the Internet that I imagined I could "control" my online presence, but at the time I had just had a website put up for me, and simply wanted to contribute to that effort in a more personal way. After a short time, I found a guiding principle for the 'blog, which I decided would be used to explore and expound upon my efforts to live what I called "The Third Life." That is, a life lived outside of conventional norms and perspectives, one that aspires to be about more than just home and work, that incorporates something else (see 12/19/06, but also, and perhaps more interestingly, 2/21/08).

In the five years since I started the Aviary, one or two things have changed. I've been involved in myriad productions of great variety, including one low-budget sci-fi film and several original collaborations, traveled to and performed in Italy four times, and performed an extended-run NYC Fringe show that I helped develop. I got to play Romeo, well past my freshness date for that particular role. I moved three times, once between Brooklyn and Queens, and I took up aerial silks. Friend Andrew and I dared to experiment with a performance collective. I've acted, written, choreographed, directed, curated and devised. In that time I also changed day jobs and taught in various capacities, including joining a UK-based corporate training company. Most significantly, my sister moved out of the city, and I married a woman I've known and loved since I was seventeen.

For a little over a month now, my evenings and a significant part of my weekends have been devoted to rehearsals for and performances of a play called Sacred Ground. It was written by my fellow As Far As We Know collaborator, Christina Gorman, and is the first time I've worked with her since we departed that show. Sacred Ground also represents the first naturalistic drama in which I've acted in the city since Lie of the Mind - which, as some may recall, did not garner me the most magnificent of notices. Well, it's only taken me about four years to get over that, and so I've been dutifully applying my craft to a rather down-to-earth, straight-forward drama. And I've enjoyed it. And I'd say I've even done a fairly respectable job.

It was very interesting, returning to a conventional off-off-Broadway rehearsal schedule in NYC. Rehearsals went rather late, and something about that - combined with working with all-new people (other than Christina), and tackling something by which I was more than a little intimidated - came to remind me very poignantly of how I generally existed in my 20s. There was almost literally no stopping, from day job, to rehearsal, to wherever life took me next. I'm just not as resilient now, and the hours came to take their toll on me toward opening. There were dark circles under my eyes and dark thoughts crowding my spare moments. I really felt the personal sacrifices I was making to be a part of this play, and that was another difference between the 80-hour weeks of my 20s and now.

I have loved the part. My character, Father William, is one with whom I can uniquely identify. There was even a time when I contemplated going to seminary (though never have I contemplated converting to Catholicism) and his sensitivity and passionate need to help were another reminder to me of my earlier decade. I can't, of course, speak to how successful I've been overall with my portrayal of him, but he has felt to me like a good match for my particular personality and skills (in spite of the lack of opportunity for self-effacing pratfallery). The experience of the show, trials and rewards and all, has felt redemptive of a few lingering personal regrets in a lot of ways - fulfilling exactly what I wondered about its potential when I auditioned for it.

It's also got me thinking about acting in a different way. It's strange how the process tosses us around, a profanity of effort for one sacred experience. It's incredible how hard actors have to work, yet for ultimately so very little ownership of what they create. At best, actors co-own a collection of moments. For stage actors in particular, those moments are as temporal as anything in life. Theatre actors have to sweat through constant insecurity and uncertainty, stand up for their perspective and submit to others' needs in rapid turns, and the immaterial reward is to stand in front of a large group for a time and accept the possibility that they are "with" him or her in a given moment. God in heaven, why would anyone do this for less than big money, or at the very least a livable wage?

This perspective on acting has been developing with me for some time now, but my experiences on Sacred Ground have helped me put it into more cohesive language and context. In part, I can understand this view because of some of the challenges I experienced directing The Puppeteers. During that process, I continually found myself vacillating between the perspectives of a new director doing his best to make something a little daring and different, and that of myself as an actor in a Zuppa del Giorno show. It's often said that the best quality an actor can have is the ability to access a child-like self or state. I have to wonder if actors are given any choice in the matter, really. Every scrap of their work is entering an unknown world head-first. They are effectively forced to make mistake after mistake after mistake, and surrender themselves to forces they've no hope of fully comprehending.

Nearly five years on from my first post - and on this, my five-hundredth - the landscapes of many things have changed. Not the least of which is the landscape of the Internet itself. I've succumbed somewhat to the more-visual and less-verbal style of the "tumblelog" here and there, posting tiny entries that do nothing so much as capture (and attempt to render somewhat less temporal) brief moments of contemplation. I thought, however, that I'd return to a bit of my former style for this post. At least the length and varied direction is a return. My tone, however, has undeniably altered. Well, it's still pretentious and overwrought - don't get me wrong. It's also less immediately gratifying, I think, and looks a little farther into the horizon.

When I examine my life now, I've got no true regrets. That was one of my goals as a college student, about to venture into adult life and trying to make sense of what I wanted from it - to have no regrets. At the time, that meant pursuing a life as a professional actor, heedless of anything else. Now, my personal "Third Life" has more in it than that, and some potential for a greater richness of experience. It's taking a certain amount of courage to embrace that, to embrace everything I want. But I've done it before. I'll do it again.

The Light in NYC

2011-06-27T18:11:00.001-04:00

Sometimes it's incomparable.

Wonder Woman, Christina Hendricks and the Womanly Body

2011-06-22T18:00:00.001-04:00

Or: A Blatant and Frankly Uninspired Excuse to Post Photos of Christina Hendricks

Maybe it's just my recent stint on Pavarti K. Tyler's (nee Devi) 'blog, but lately I've been mulling over some of my opinions on more risque subjects. (Well, more risque than normally occupy this particular space, anyway.) Today I found a couple of items that reminded me of one of these long-held opinions. The first such item had to do with Christina Hendricks' long-held desire (longevity at least in Internet scale) to play Wonder Woman, and her Drive director Nicolas Refn's claim that not only was he interested in bringing that particular character to the big screen, but that Hendricks would be his...er...woman. The second had to do with Refn's particular take on the character and her world, insofar as he's dreamed it up.

These public discussions about Hollywood casting rarely yield results, even when they're held after the movie deal has already been picked up, much less so when every single person involved in the conversation is speaking hypothetically. Now, too, studios are banking way too many dollars on their superhero franchises to leave decisions about casting to people standing so far from the board room. Case in point: Donald Glover for Spider-Man. An amazing groundswell of support (though, too, controversy) responded to the suggestion he play Spidey for the reboot, and that sure didn't work out. So I'm not banking on a Hendricks/Refn Hellenic team-up any time soon.

What the possibility does raise is a couple of issues I'd like to address.

The first is the as-yet-unspoken gimmick of one of the few lauded curvy celebrities playing a superhero who is also - let's face it - a sex symbol. (And feminist symbol; and if you don't believe me, do a web search for "William Moulton Marston" and "wonder+woman+bondage." [With safe-search activated {Of course.}.]) Christina Hendricks has somehow tread a brilliantly slender line in her career, being both of ample figure and widely regarded as sexy (and in some [these] circles, to "sexy," please append "as all hell"). And lest we forget, a damn fine actor, regardless. So we can say Ms. Hendricks would be an unconventional choice for the Woman, yet a potentially popular one. Sex sells in Hollywood.

Detractors would complain that she isn't hot enough, or that she's fat. Neither is the case, by a long shot. Would-be supporters might argue that of course she's sexy - just look at that bust. To whom I must respond, of course that doesn't hurt (not in a bad way, anyway) but if you think that's why she's beautiful, you're missing it by a-mile-and-a-half. And finally, some really, truly, well-intentioned fanboys might cry that she has the nerd pedigree for her Firefly connection, and that with a dye job and some sit-ups they will welcome her with loving arms. Add to that a few of us who might even feel a little earned self-righteousness from endorsing a full-figured super-heroine. I am no better than these hypothetical people, but all of these miss the point when it comes to Hendricks as a good choice for Wonder Woman's boots.

Christina Hendricks would be a brilliant Wonder Woman (particularly if paired with a director with real ingenuity, like Refn) because she understands all the complexity involved in and strength needed for navigating life as a determined woman with a powerful - not to mention inescapable - sexual identity. Not only has she had to see past the limitations of others' assumptions, but she's succeeded in being associated with good work that she presumably has a personal appreciation for. In some ways, this is a scenario in which any woman finds herself, in some way and on a daily basis. I just happen to think Hendricks is well-qualified to portray that fight with unique grace and sensitivity.

Issue the second that this brings up for me is perhaps a less socially significant one; yet more important personally (I'm somewhat ashamed to admit). It also brings up a criteria that might put my dear Ms. Hendricks to the test, in a way.

Women who work wear muscle.

Look, I'm not a body-building fetishist, any more than girls who lust after brawny Hollywood hunks are. Taken to extremes, muscle mass is often freakish and Geiger-esque. The trouble is, ideas of contemporary beauty seem to limit us from finding any developed musculature on women appetizing. What is that? And why must it be used as an excuse for me to suffer through another fight scene such as this:

I mean: really.

The bad examples are too numerous to relate, and I can only think of a few positive ones; among them, Terminator 2 and G.I. Jane. T2 is of course well known for how impressive a transformation Linda Hamilton made. In particular, she went from making an especially soft impression in 1984 to a very lean and angular one. I don't mean to detract from that at all - it was impressive - but I also have images of Ms. Hamilton spending quite a bit more time on aerobics than anyone in her character's situation likely would. To wit: still an emphasis on weight loss. G.I. Jane's Demi Moore did quite a shade better, daring to wear biceps and actually demonstrating her strength on film.

These examples remain in the minority, however. Most Hollywood images of powerful heroines still favor slinky dresses and long legs over developed shoulders. Sometimes this leaner physical type is handled better than others. Smart fight choreographers put such nimble minxes in fights in which they get to move fast and use lots of kicks and lower-body advantage (real advantage, rather than the fetishistic "leg lock" depicted in the video above), and intelligent directors offer plot-related explanations for ballet-bodied ladies putting the smack down on crews of mercenaries.

But please to be noting, if you will, the distinction between the way the admittedly wonderful Summer Glau looks, and the way a woman (Bridget Riley) who spends her days actually working on fighting does:

(To her enormous credit, Glau does manage that scorpion kick much better than Riley.)

I know movies are not reality, and that men don't always rise to similar challenges, either (it would seem the Internet hasn't favored us with a capture of Kilmer's shirtless scene in Batman Forever). In recent years, however, Hollywood has held to a truer physical standard for their male superheroes, and I'd like to see a little courage in applying those standards to Wonder Woman, whenever she finally appears. Some may argue that women don't put on mass in the same way most men do, and this is the where the topic really does get a little personal for me.

They do. They so do. It may not always read the same on women, but hard work = muscles. I have had the pleasure of working with female circus performers off and on during my acting career, and in particular in the past two years as I've studied aerial silks I've gotten to see women physically transform over the course of time. I can say with absolute confidence that when a women practices pulling herself up a few yards of fabric once a week for a month or two, not only do her arms get more defined, they grow larger muscles. Girls have guns, gang. Respect.

That's it. In sum: Christina Hendricks, with some push-ups, as Wonder Woman: Yes. The larger issue is that I believe the predominant opinion of feminine beauty pretty much sucks. My two little opinions above don't even begin to cover it, of course. Plus they address my personal preferences just as much as Hollywood's bias, I suppose. That's all completely subjective, but I know female fighters have real arms, and nobody in this lifetime's going to convince me Christina Hendricks is less than beautiful or talented. But I pretty much expect the accusations of personal taste to start rolling in, so...hang on...lemme just get my latest issue of Guns & Curves in hand so I can read it (for the articles) at my leisure as the flame-war commences (I should be so lucky, to have such readership)...

Don't Know What Exactly They've Got Against Shaw...

2011-06-10T14:08:00.001-04:00

... but with coffee this good, I don't exactly care, either. Taking myself out to a belated birthday lunch at Queens Kickshaw feels like a very mature, 34-year-old decision. And look how pretty!

Sacred Ground

2011-06-08T20:30:00.001-04:00

I've been spending so much time at Stella Adler Studio lately I'm starting to mistake it for home.

Student Silks Show

2011-05-25T08:53:00.018-04:00

On May 15, our silks teacher Cody Schreger had her first student showcase: Coming Attractions. It was a great experience all around - a first time performing for many of her students, and a show of which we all felt a sincere ownership. I was, unfortunately, getting over the flu at the time. I couldn't do my whole piece (a loving tribute to Die Hard) but Cody still let me do a little of what we had planned. Below are some of my favorite photos from my portion of the show. All photography by James Glader.

The rest of the class is women, you see. I just wanted to fit in!

I could've done it in the dress.

Adorable argument.

Definitively the shot that shows my post-flu state best.

A couple of real silks performers come out to let me know
I should quit while I'm only so much of a disappointment.

"Well anyway, can you help me down?"
"We don't do that."

Guest Post @ Devi Pavarti

2011-05-24T13:13:00.000-04:00

I have a dear friend with a 'blog all her own who has been accepting guest submissions lately, and I'm honored to have had mine published there today. Please go send her traffic, whether you read my article or not. And Fair Warning: in my article there resides a terrible, shameless pun.

Somewhat in deference to her interests, the piece I wrote is a musing on the definition of erotica as it applies to literature. Pavarti has been a tremendous supporter of my fiction writing (tough love though it may be, as you'll see from her introduction) and I wanted to contribute something I was not only interested in, but something to which her readers might have some response. Perhaps Unfair Warning: Pavarti doesn't censor the eroticism from her 'blog so, though my article is itself harmless, don't go browsin' unless you're ready to be a little titillated...

Spring Flu = Movie Time

2011-05-17T14:46:00.000-04:00

Postcard design by Megan Heflin.

This, ma' dudes, will be a long and largely pointless one.

I am a man of many talents, not the least of which is sudden, debilitating illness at irregular yet strangely predictable intervals. I never imagined I would have a show crash (sudden collapse of health and mental faculty following a production's close; not to be confused with Snow Crash) after filming Android Insurrection, yet that seems to be exactly what has happened to me over the past four days or so. How else can I explain a sudden flu in the middle of spring? It even began during a lull in the almost-constant rain we're having. It began, in fact, while I was enjoying an impromptu trip out Thursday night to see Thor.

I don't know, man. It's enjoyable? It's enjoyable. They did a nice job capturing some of that easy humor that made the first Iron Man so palatable, without skimping on serious stakes for the characters. Branagh was in familiar territory in many respects, including regally set father-son relationships. I also found it largely forgettable, though. Probably the most interesting aspect of it was how finely honed Loki's character seemed to be - never being outright evil, never being altogether good. I actually found myself wondering how much he himself was aware of his motivations, at times. Unexpected complexity for this kind of movie.

It's also, unsurprisingly, a movie that cluster-flocks your eyeballs with elaborate CGI. They seemed aware enough of this to make the Earth setting very plain and grounded, but that doesn't help me view Asgard as any less of a carnival of RoyG.Biv-brought pain, a little vacation in a rainbow-decked uncanny valley, a . . . really computer-generated picture-thing. And I really do wish someone would get a memo out to Marvel that this rubber-ized "armor" material they use doesn't read as magi-science metal. It reads as cheese, a la '90's The Flash television series. At one point in the movie, Thor drops one of their shields, and the pick-up of it hitting the ground uses an actual metal shield. It was so jarring to the continuity to me I laughed. Why did no one else? The prop had clearly been made of plastic up until that point! HA HA!

But to some extent, I have to admit, I was probably just disappointed in a similar way to how I was over Batman Begins. It's not that they did an especially bad job, it's just not the movie I would've liked to see. I know it would have made some problems for integrating Thor into the Avengers movie, but I think when life hands you a superhero who is a god, nested in ancient history, you have the potential to do something really different with the idiom. Make him more of a question mark. Dress him in rusty metal, or dare to give him religious overtones. Just a little grit and ambiguity is what makes me more interested in Captain America and X-Men: First Class than Thor. But I may be alone in this, and gods know it wasn't my $150 million, so what do I know?

The rest of my weekend enjoyed the remainder of our "three months free" Showtime (the WORST pay channel?), The Movie Channel and Netflix Instant. (Wife Megan can rejoice that at least a couple of the decidedly unromantic Korean films have been wiped from our queue.) I started out inauspiciously, which may or may not have had something to do with how sick I was compared to how sick I thought I was - by midday my fever of which I had previously been unaware had spiked to 102. I wrapped up Valkyrie On Demand (oh Bryan, what pretty, inconsequential movies you make) and started on Adventureland. I only got about fifteen minutes in to that before giving up. Still can't decide if that was because I found the movie improbably uninteresting (it is) or because my frustration trying to understand Jesse Eisenberg's meteoric movie career hit a bursting point (it did).

But THEN. Oh, THEN. Cruising through channels for something short-term, I found that Big Fan was just starting. This is a little movie I've had some curiosity about. I enjoy it - succeed or fail - when comedians (Patton Oswalt, in this case) tackle serious fare, and I thought the movie sounded like it had potential for interesting conflict when I heard about it a couple of years ago. But I pretty much hate spectator sports (subject for another post) and, frankly, at the time I was a little mixed on Patton. Since then I've had time to learn more about him, and he's grown on me. So I gave Big Fan a shot.

OH MY GOSH YOU GUYS. Oh my gosh. So good. So GOOD. Man. This movie was surprising in all the best ways, primarily because it is deftly handled with incredible honesty. It's ugly - New York and Jersey look like they really do most of the time, and the people are presented in all their fat and crinkles. It's beautiful - so believable, and the most despicable of characters are played with real heart. And what everyone said about Oswalt's performance is true. It's unequivocally wonderful. I think it's entered my canon of great NYC movies, in spite of being contemporary, largely in New Jersey and about football fans. Go to see (er, at home, from whichever delivery service).

After Big Fan, I shuffled back to bed with my peaking fever, and brought the laptop to consume one that I've been hanging on to for far too long. I balked at Let the Right One In; don't know why, but I just keep putting that one off. Instead, I finally hunkered down for Oldboy. Which, I've decided, was a mistake. 1) I waited too long and it got built up quite a bit in my mind 2) Big Fan left me high, not in the mood for hard-boiled noir 3) I've since learned the dubbing on Old Boy is atrocious, and I should've gotten the DVD and watched with subtitles. It's a good film. It's based on manga, and is a revenge story, so . . . BRING THE KIDS! (But don't, at all.) Ugh. That was my overall response. It's difficult to imagine a Spielberg/Smith remake.

But it was awfully well done! With both (dark) humor and good performances! Yay, noir, as well! And one thing, which I can't believe I never heard specifically about: corridor fight scene. Oh my God. Shot over three days with no cuts or CGI edits (barring some small CGI to deal with a stabbing and a few punch connections). All time - it's in my top ten fight scenes, indubitably. Warning: This is violent: No, really:

I didn't feel like leaving Korea just yet (in spite of having a bit of a gorge in my throat [possibly a live octopus]) and ventured thereafter into The Host. This is a movie I can recommend without hesitation. Unless you dislike monster and/or dysfunctional-family movies. It's billed as a horror movie, but I think that's a little reductive. What gives the movie wings (gills?) is its success in portraying a lovable yet serious dysfunction in family, society - really in humanity at large. The struggle against the monster becomes the struggle against our own nature, and its outcome is satisfyingly bleak. That being said, the movie is still very funny and ends on a hopeful note. Great sick viewing. Wish I could have seen it with a NYC audience when it was in theatres.

I tried to move on to Daybreakers which - I've been led to believe - is a largely underrated movie, but alas the weight of sleep was too much. The good Wife and I did finally consume I Love You, Phillip Morris over the course of Saturday into Sunday, which had been laying listless on our sidetable for almost a week. ILYPM is really REALLY good. I think. I was a little fever-hazy, feeling helpless for much of it, so I might have been especially emotionally pliable. But I think it was really REALLY good. A pretty impressive blend of humor, style, and genuine emotion. Great performances from two actors who are, admittedly, favorites of mine (though certainly far from do-no-wrong status). I wanted to stand up and clap for them at the end, but that may speak to my physical state as much as to their work.

There's also a lot of outright male homosexual sexuality. Men, having sex with each other, and enjoying that. So it may not be everyone's thing. I, for one, found its approach to that aspect refreshing. It pulled no punches, while also having a freeing sense of humor about it. Frankly, I expected to experience more of a challenge with it, given how much seeming controversy surrounded the movie's release here in the US. I wonder if that controversy was more constructed to try to market the film post-Brokeback, or if anti-homosexual contingents are more offended by enjoying homosexuality than by glorifying or being coy with it? Whatever. Movie's not about that - surprise, surprise.

Aptly enough, the weekend ended with both the Wife and I performing in our cinema-themed, student silks show: Coming Attractions. Each act was inspired by a different popular movie, Wifey's being an amazing (and impressively long) solo inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I made it in by the skin of my constitution (and the grace of some OD'ing on Alka-Seltzer Cold'n'Flu) and managed to perform a little less than half of my Die Hard-inspired solo. I wasn't sure if I had recovered enough by Sunday evening to manage the opening move (an all-arm climb) much less anything else, but adrenaline is the best medicine, and in a way I had been studying movie magic my entire accidental three-day weekend. As I got close to my improvised stopping point, hanging from the ceiling by my knees and grappling with sweaty hands to tie a knot below me, I thought:

This is apt, too. John McClane would totally have the flu while having to do something both stupid and awesome. Yippee-ki-yay...

Isolations

2011-05-12T12:42:00.000-04:00

In my warm-up routine for teaching commedia dell'arte characters and physical characterization, we spend most of our focus on two things: warming up the spine and isolating parts of the body for specificity. This guy's video may have to become a part of the multimedia model for the class:

I PROMISED FART JOKES; I GIVE YOU FART JOKES.

IN A WORLD...

2011-05-11T11:07:00.000-04:00

Found here.

I know I couldn't act my way out of an unlocked locker in junior high. I didn't know at the time - that's one of the blessed ignorances of youth that allows us to learn, I think. No, at the time, I was just excited to be there. Excited to get that outlet for all my confused emotional and physical energy, excited by all the trappings that were new to me.

Prior to junior high (and the inimitable Mr. John Newman) what I knew about performing was that my peers responded more when I made a performance more physical - especially when I inflicted some kind of damage on myself - and my teachers responded better when I recited lines clearly, from memory. What more could there be to it? It would take me many more years to learn even the most basic of acting skills and concepts, but in junior high I was suddenly and thrillingly dropped into a semi-professional environment.

We had published scripts. We spent time on dialects. We had auditions as well as performances for people other than our parents. We had a vast theatre - hell, we had TWO theatres at Lake Braddock, both the classroom proscenium (which dwarfed most off-off-Broadway spaces) and an auditorium space (co-designed by a former theatre teacher, so it was built as much for plays as for more official events)

Probably the biggest thrill of all this, though I can't explain quite why, was "tech day." Tech day was when we moved from the classroom stage to the auditorium for the first time. I don't remember if it was a formal thing every show, but it felt like it to me. It felt like getting real. We would open the doors to the curving, dark hallway that led around to the auditorium, and immediately we'd hear power tools and smell sawdust. That smell, in the cool dark, just before stepping into a vast room of seats leading down to a three-quarters-thrust stage . . . well. Memories.

I've had my last day filming on Android Insurrection out in Metuchen. In terms of a career as an actor, this work probably won't hold a lot of significance. I mean, it could be huge, just as anything might, but it's not a job I need to sing from the mountaintops about. (Getting on IMDB finally is a little mountain-toppy for me, though; perhaps I'll sing it from a monadnock.) It was more significant to me, though, than just a bit of fun. Working on this movie was a bit like revisiting that initial thrill I felt as a pre-teen, invited to walk down a dark corridor into a little living through fiction.

And now, too, there's a teaser for the movie. It expresses quite well, I think, the level of fun and excitement involved in making a genre movie of this sort. These movies, they seek to thrill and titillate us. Maybe we find them appealing because we feel a little younger watching them, a little less prepared, a little more thrilled. Our teaser starts with "In the 23rd century..." rather than with "In a world...", but danged if that isn't close enough to titillate me, just a little:

Android Insurrection Teaser from Andrew Bellware on Vimeo.

Ladies & gentlemen...

2011-05-06T18:39:00.001-04:00

The Odinmobile.

Row Butts

2011-04-27T09:00:00.001-04:00

Photos by Andrew Bellware.

A couple of weekends ago was my first experience on a real film set.

Now, some will argue that what I was experiencing was not by any stretch a real film set. Craft services consisted of Chinese take-out and a stunning abundance of snack foods and sodas. We were filming in the warehouse space of a railing-design workshop (right next to the bundled set of the recent tragically short-run Les Miserables). And, believe it or not, I worked without a trailer. That's as may be, but it's the closest I have yet to come to a real film set, and I think all the major elements were there. For example: A crew of really smart and funny people (myself excluded, naturally) got together, played pretend, and someone recorded the whole experience.

Mercs + android.

It's one I rather stumbled into myself. One night I went to see Friend Nat's one-man Lovecraft show at Manhattan Theatre Source, the which the charming Ms. Laura Schlachtmeyer happened to be stage managing. We sat for a bit after the show, she asked me if I was SAG, I said no-with-sad-face, she cheered me up by offering to send me a script. It looked like it wasn't going to work out schedule-wise for a while. And then it did, just like that. So I'm playing the ambitious, arrogant ex-space-mercenary Rathbone. I have two more weekends of filming after Easter weekend in which to live some of my favorite tropes.

Said android.

The movie is probably best described in the current parlance as a mock-buster, but I don't like thinking of it that way. Sure: It is Predator meets Aliens (with more than a dash or two of Whedon-istic glee/feminism) and yes: we have no money. I resist the term, though, because everyone knows what they're doing, and everyone takes it just seriously enough. That is to say, we have a ball and laugh as much as possible at ourselves, but on-camera everyone's in the same high-stakes movie. If this were ever to get picked up by, let's say, Syfy (ARE YOU LISTENING, SYFY?!), you would turn to it in the early-morning hours and most likely think, Huh. This looks like it would go nicely with this pint of Americone Dream I have here. I wonder if there will be much gore...

To be a bit more succinct: It's good fun, done well, and I can't complain at all about getting to play around in a genre and process that I've enjoyed since I was about eleven years old.

It's made even easier by enjoying all the folks whom I've thus far met. In no particular order, there's:

Nat Cassidy, as a medic a bit out of his depth.
Virginia Logan, as the hard-scrabble, near-invincible leader of the merc crew.
Juanita Arias, as a scrappy merc.
Sarah-Doe Osborne, as an elite prototype android.
Tom Rowen, as a cocky, quasi-rock-a-billy merc.
Joe Chapman, as the heavily-armed, bulldog merc - also the set designer.
Libby Csulik, amazing do-it-all-er.
David Ian Lee, as the maniacally handsome Colonel (David also co-wrote the first draft of the script with Mr. Cassidy).
And Mr. Andrew Bellware, as a maniacally maniacal director who occasionally seems to be having even more fun than I am (and the aforementioned Ms. Laura Schlachtmeyer, keeping him in check).

LENS FLARE!

In our little tale, we venture into a suddenly radio-silent robot factory to extract a special new prototype of android from what appears to be a situation wherein the artificial intelligence has taken over and slaughtered all the human faculty. I essentially play the dubious jerk of the crew - think Predator's Carl Weathers meets Aliens' Paul Reiser (by which I of course mean Weathers' muscle tone and Reiser's razor wit). It's delightful, made all the more fun by the implication of a storied past with Virginia's character and some blatant animosity with Joe's. So far I've mostly gotten to trade what are hopefully telling looks with folks, and say a few lines; but I've also been kicked over by a giant robot.

HOW FUN. IS THAT? (Answer: VERY FUN.)

"It's quiet...TOO quiet..."

I'm back this weekend for what are likely to be much longer shoot days, and I'm very much looking forward to it. It's difficult for me to imagine enjoying the product nearly as much as the process, but it might be pretty cool to finally see some actual robots incorporated. For now I'm more than content to let the enormous gnashing things be played out in my imagination.

Subterranean Design Post: Underground as Unintentional Archive

2011-04-26T11:56:00.000-04:00

Yet another new post at Subterranean Design! This one is just as link-heavy as the last, but explores some of the ways in which underground areas tend to preserve our history - intentionally or no. Accidental records are the best kind...

Subterranean Design Post: Tunnels = Choices

2011-04-25T12:11:00.000-04:00

I've got a new post up at Subterranean Design! In which I wax until your interest may wane on the allegory inherent in Door #1 and Door #2.

Why Study Theatre (follow up narrative on "The Younce Meme" [from the Facebook])

2011-04-20T12:02:00.001-04:00

Found here.

It's entirely possible to pursue acting "on the side," and you don't have to be James freakin' Franco to make it work, either. In fact, when it comes to acting, plenty of people will tell you that classes - much less higher education - are bunk. Personally, I have mixed emotions about my college education. I'll never regret it, but in hindsight I believe I could have made more honest (and thereby daring) choices.

But what made me do it? That inspired idiocy of our teenage years that makes our choices just a little more instinctual than is conventionally wise, I think.

I was not, to put it mildly, a good student in high school. I was largely distracted by the usual things, and maybe one or two more-unique ones. So my freshman and sophomore years were a relative wash, academically speaking. I played in band and did one play - Midsummer's - finally, in my sophomore year, and I loved it and was utterly terrified and pretty much spent the entire time I wasn't on stage reading gay-themed sword-and-sorcery novels crouched in a corner next to the door of the dressing room. And then I quit band, and then Kara Schiffner cast me in her play, and then I fell ridonkulously head-over-heels for her, and I suddenly lost 40 pounds, and . . . well, life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you might suddenly find yourself being asked to choose a college.

At least my work went way up in quality for those last two years of high school, and I discovered for the first time just how much I enjoyed being hopelessly busy, so long as it was with projects to which I could make a unique contribution. When I started visiting schools, I figured the most memorable and significant aspects I could market (already I was concerned with advertising myself) were things I had done at the theatre conferences we attended. So I called myself an actor, and visited the theatre departments. At the same time, I was geeking out like nobody's business over writing of all sorts, and kept an eye on a double major. It is totally possible that I never gave a practical thought to my future. Money? Psh. Security? What is that, exactly?

My driving principle was that I didn't want to live with any major regrets. I didn't want to take the easy way, follow a set path. I had to at least try to make a life out of the things I loved to do. If I failed, I should at least be able to look back and say I failed honestly and had my answers.

So VCU it was for a BFA with nominal minor in creative writing (nominal because the theatre department at the time wouldn't recognize a minor in anything). It was urban, relatively speaking, which would prepare me for my culturally adventurous future. It had an English department (Shenandoah did not) and it didn't intimidate me the way Virginia Tech did with its vast Jeffersonian persona. (I didn't get into William & Mary, presumably because of my wastrel years.) And, yes, okay - there was a certain person I was seeing at the time on her way to the same school. Instinct over convention.

I was a person who needed that experience, so I'll always treasure it. Some actors can excel without technique or training, but I'm way too analytical for that and I quickly discovered in college that I had never known how to act, to be an actor. Personally, I don't think I would have figured that out if I had simply tried out for plays while pursuing a major in business, or skipped college altogether to live in Chicago. Maybe - who knows - but I doubt it. So it became a mission, to learn as much as I could about my "chosen" major, and my obsessiveness had a good excuse to flourish.

I've always been a little tunnel-visioned. It's interesting to realize that my dearest friends have all at one time or another had to decide to just trust and/or forgive me for that, and the way it makes me socially awkward or altogether absent. Even the woman who ended up marrying my silly ass was someone I knew in high school who was still interested in knowing me after I essentially vanished into my first professional theatre jobs for a year. The mixed emotions about my college education stem from looking back - free from tunnel-vision - and realizing I should have left after two years. I had learned everything I was going to by then. Maybe it was just an allegiance to the path I had set, but I stayed, and got a degree in the fine arts (as they say).

Going to school for those wacky liberal arts was the right choice for me; staying may not have been the best. But one more thing: There is value in committing oneself whole-heartedly to just about anything for a time. It can be a period of great discovery, as mine was, and we don't always have that luxury as we grow older and more encumbered with (in many cases welcome) duties. Does one have to pay tuition to do that? I think that all depends on one's personality in terms of a need for structure. I need structure, but in part as something to be a contrarian against. Let's not even try to analyze what freakin' Franko needs...

Weddings

2011-04-17T17:31:00.001-04:00

Will wear a wife out!

Vamoose

2011-04-15T14:36:00.001-04:00

Why do I have trouble imagining French people riding the bus? I'm sure it happens all the time. Still and all...

April Showers

2011-04-13T16:50:00.001-04:00

Oh, United States Postal Service! Shall we begin our usual annual tryst? And just how is it that I am talked into visiting you every mid-April?

Nat Cassidy, ladies and gentlemen...

2011-04-10T14:42:00.001-04:00

#Robowar

Testy, Testy

2011-04-06T15:30:00.001-04:00

This right here is a test, is what this is. This is only a test. If it were more than a test, it would contain my inimitable style of rambling, excess verbiage.

So, uh... maybe this is a LITTLE more than a test...

I'm moving back to Virginia.

2011-04-01T17:20:00.000-04:00

Sorry. Late in the day, but had to be done.

Found here.

Crack-ting

2011-03-08T12:50:00.000-05:00

Last night I participated in a unique sort of developmental reading of a couple of handfuls-worth of short plays by Friend Nat. I say unique because Nat interspersed original songs amidst the short scenes, all of which scenes had to do with love, or some variation thereon. I mentioned it reminded me of a mix tape, which I think is a pretty accurate description of the evening. Do you have a friend who's as romantic as the most romantic Beatles covers, but also heavy into The Beautiful South and Nick Cave in terms of his comic sensibilities? That mix tape. (With maybe a few sound bites from a couple of horror movies tossed in for flavor.)

The evening surprised me. Lately, I've not been feeling all too fired up about acting opportunities. (That's a little frightening to confess, but these appetites come and go, sometimes regardless of the bigger picture.) We held the reading at the distinguished Players Club - only my second time there - and in the library, which is just a fascinating room. Actually, the whole place is fascinating. It was founded in 1888 by the esteemed Edwin Booth and others of historical import as a "gentleman's club" for the dramatic arts. It's just chock full of portraits and books and busts and photographs of people who don't necessarily get a lot of recognition outside of theatre history courses. For me, it's sort of a giddy conglomeration of things I geek out about: old New York, well-loved opulence, history and little-recalled theatre artists and variety performers.

The surprise in the evening for me, however, had to do with the reading itself. There was a small group of fellow writers for an audience, and we sat through the whole reading. Really a rather casual affair, and all of the pieces were comic in some respect or other. Nat's an adept craftsman (and irritatingly broadly skilled, not to mention) so the scenes were all interesting and highly functional. I had my favorite, and luckily I was reading in it, so I looked forward to that and relaxed and enjoyed the musical interludes. I had no reason to expect anything profound to happen to me. It did, though.

Profound, but not uncommon. It's just that it's been a while for me. I got absorbed in the character and the situation, seemingly effortlessly, and had the good fortune to be paired with an actor with whom (though I had never met her before) I clicked. I could feel the scene in such a way that, really, any and every moment on stage should feel like. Regardless of that standard, it has been a while since I felt it, and it leaves me also feeling enormously grateful; and full of craving.

The past year or so has seen a lot of backstage work for me. I put more energy into producing and directing, The Action Collective and writing, not to mention all the areas of my life outside of the theatre. There was intention to these choices, and a fair amount of gut instinct as well. As I get older, I find my relationship to acting changing by subtle but surprising degrees. There's a sense as an actor - or at least a New York actor of my background - that every job at least represents an opportunity for more, and that the exceptions are the jobs you don't take. That was a great policy in my twenties, but even in my latter twenties I was getting a little worn on the idea of swallowing everything I was served, and now it doesn't work for me at all. A certain amount of choice and creative control are essential; hence the backstage exploration.

However: Nothing really matches the magic that happens when you can give yourself over completely to an acting opportunity. If I could muster that for every opportunity, I would still be saying yes to every one that came my way, because it's utterly addicting. That feeling of living in the moment, of something unplanned yet true and apt, it defies comparison to drugs or love or other extremes. It's some strangely selfless sense of self, and outward-reaching passion that is as structured and improvisational as music. I love it.

So perhaps having a more limited (or selective?) access to that sensation is a helpful thing in my life at this time. Addictions, no matter how healthful to begin with, are not exactly aids to a fulfilled life, and I would rather have a handful of rare experiences than a gluttony of empty ones. Maybe there'll be a little more board-treading in the coming months as a result of last night's taste. I just hope I can find the opportunities that feed me as much as I feed them.

One-Set Wonders

2011-02-18T14:37:00.001-05:00

The wife and I have become fans of the sitcom Community. We weren't from the start. In fact, we very specifically gave its premiere and first few episodes a shot because we liked so many of the people involved, and were very specifically disappointed. I believe I said something along the lines of, "It's what I was afraid of - unsympathetic protagonist and trite set-ups." These are my least favorite aspects, after all, of Joel McHale's version of The Soup (formerly Talk Soup). There's very little TV Wife Megan and I can agree on, but The Soup combines stuff she likes (the [ahem] best of talk shows and reality TV) with stuff I like (some smart writing and unabashed silliness) at a time when we're both groggy and couch-bound. So we tried Community, didn't like it, stopped watching.

That was then, this is now.

There are several things about the show that have since won me over (not the least of which was a couple of friends forcing me to watch the Halloween episode in which the character Abed impersonates Christian Bale's Batman) but one is especially unique. That is, the use of a single set.

I'm stirring controversy here (my DOZEN of readers will revolt in the comments) because, of course, the original formula for a sitcom is a single set. That's how they started, for practical and budgetary reasons, and by-and-large that's how the sitcom has stayed. In fact, looking at the overall picture, Community has a much broader canvas than most sitcoms. It gets to take its characters all over, and sometimes off of, a college campus. In a sense, their setting has more in common with a science fiction one (not the only link to that genre - see this article by Chris Greenland) in that it takes place in this huge idea of a building (or ship) with recyclable corridors and archetypal rooms. Compared to The Honeymooners' apartment, this is an elaborate structure.

But I'm not just talking about constructed sets here. One of the things I've come to love about live theatre is the way in which shows that use only a single set put a particular emphasis on character. Take that even further - again, often as a result of budget issues - into the realm of minimalistic sets, and you're really putting emphasis on the people who occupy the space. The last show I performed in, Speaking to the Dead, was set up in this way and performed in a completely white room.

It came about as a result of a combination of factors, but I found it strangely apt for a somewhat absurd comedy dealing with the afterlife. It reminded me of a quiz I learned when I was a kid in which one of the questions was, "You find yourself in a completely white room with no doors or windows, and the only other thing in the room is an enormous white armadillo. How do you feel?" Your answer, it would later be revealed to you, was meant to be indicative about how you felt about death and/or heaven.

Community has had a few episodes - and one especially so - that have hinged on what I think of as the Twelve Angry Men scenario. That is, for one reason or another, a scenario in which people in deep conflict have to stay in a single room together and work something out. Normally, the single set in Community is a study room on campus where their particular clique has a habit of gathering. The especially singular episode is #8 in season 2, entitled "Cooperative Calligraphy." In it, one of the character's pens goes missing and the group is forced to stay in the study room until the mystery is solved.

That of course is a device, albeit one that few television comedies would attempt (apart from set-up for a flashback episode). But throughout the series, much time is spent in the group's homebase, and several other episodes strand most of the group into a single setting together. (More recently, they had an episode about the group playing a tabletop roleplaying game, and though they of course cut away to in-game imagery, the fact remains that it was an episode about people sitting around being themselves [and other people...?].) In particular, the study room and its ubiquitous rectangular table highlight the single-set choice for the series. Each character has their place at the table, and a standard shot presents them as having a sort of stage made from the table surface leading up to a 3/4 bust. It's simple, theatrical, and puts emphasis on what the actor is doing.

In general, film and television are mediums in which the viewer's attention is rigorously directed, sometimes to better effect than others. One of the things I love about theatre is that free will has a bigger role in it in almost every respect, making it more unpredictable and frankly dangerous. In my opinion, be it ever so humble, film and television actually have an obligation to direct our attention. Without that direction, I can't help but feel abandoned, as I do when I see sloppily directed play. I don't begrudge them that control at all but, God, do I love it when that control is practiced with moderation, and shared with the performers.

I heard recently that our spatial understanding, particularly as it applies to travel and personal orientation, can be described as a symphony of coded signals in our brains. Codes like: me walking corridor, me walking corridor, me walking corridor, me turned left, me arrival at doorway, me in new place - room. Wherever you go, there you are. Many better writers before me have written about the "empty space" of the theatre, and the significance of theatre being a shared act or storytelling in the same room, but it makes especial sense to me when I think of it in terms of those "me" orientation codes. I am in the story room. We are going places together. In fact, part of what theatre allows us to do is orient ourselves, just for a little while, in tandem with others. Perhaps it's that the simpler the setting, the more inner-orientation there is potential for. I don't know.

(Shameless tangent: How much better is a fight scene when the director has done just a little bit of work setting up the space in which it takes place? Makes it more like an arena, and lends more unity to the whole thing. [My favorite example of this is the stairway to the roof in Die Hard. We go up and down it and through the room several times before McClane gets into his final hand-to-hand brawl in there.])

Now, I'm not saying that Community pretends to this kind of ambition. (How about that title though, eh?) What I am saying, though, is that this is something the show gets right. It's a situation comedy that's more about the characters than the situation. Just about every dramatic presentation is aiming to have its audience identify with one or more of its characters, but not all of them do a good job of inviting the audience to join them in the room.

Tying Up the Air

2011-02-10T11:28:00.078-05:00

(Wonky title, eh what? Refer to 9/24/10 for context.)

I'm revisiting my first aerial silks piece because this weekend Wife Megan and I will be participating in Streb's Valentine's Day benefit, 2Good 2B Bad. The above is the video I had to submit to get into the Halloween show, the below is the final product. For the next show, I'm raising the stakes a little bit by trying for a more serious piece. Humor's great, but it makes excuses for lack of form, too.

Not that it was the only reason I had for this piece, and choosing to make it clown-like. I thought of the choice more as playing to my strengths, and it rather does. Although I must admit that maintaining a sense of your audience's response from thirty feet up (and upside down) is something of a skill that requires experience. Nevertheless, I ended up feeling pretty good about this product. It wasn't as frenetic - or flashy really - as the initial draft, but it couldn't be - one of the trickiest bits of circus is pulling it off with control, making it look easy such that it puts the audience's mind at ease. That is, until you want to startle or amaze them.

It's interesting to me that I'm not aiming to startle or amaze my audiences with the act I've devised for this weekend. Maybe it's just all the effort I've put into making it more formal, less frenetic, but I'm content to let it be what it is. What it is, is, I hope, a more lyrical piece that hints at a character's story rather than basing it in his immediate struggle for a concrete goal. This too is a departure for me. Even in the circus-theatre shows I've developed and performed in, I've always been the one pushing for an accessible story, something that meets the audience halfway in their task of interpreting the presentation.

I suppose it's my study of silks these past couple of years that has changed my perspective on this somewhat, and made me see the personal possibilities in creating a performance for which the audience fills in their own meaning(s). Audiences do this to some degree anyway, but often with plays and the like it's not as invited as in more "abstract" mediums such as music or dance. These usually don't make a lot of effort to spell out plot details, much less provide them in a chronological or otherwise linear-structured format, even when they are based on a story of some kind.

I'm not exactly comfortable with that. Just like I'm not exactly comfortable with trying to perform a piece that's purely skill-based physical without aiming for laughs. Undertaking this personal challenge is probably a most telling moment about me, and the fact that I am in at least some small part just a frustrated dancer. So I have no training in that field, I get apocalyptically frustrated with dance choreography, and I can't point my toes worth a damn, but . . . here we go, any dang way.

Bizy Backson

2011-01-09T19:48:00.000-05:00

Prof. Jenn & friend.

I'm still hard at work on The Puppeteers, which you can (and should!) follow here. That job is 36/8, and extra time in between the hours, and includes doing interviews with various publications local to Scranton. Getting interviewed over and over about the same show can be . . . well . . . slightly repetitive. So it was a refreshing change to be interviewed this past week about physical theatre by someone I admire: Jenn Zuko Boughn. Professor Jenn runs an entertaining and thoughtful 'blog called Bonzuko, which I highly recommend for anyone interested in theatre and/or the physical arts. Or, if you enjoy your reading with fiber(s), get her book!

The interview: Five Questions with Jeff Wills.

...O Hai

2010-12-20T16:40:00.011-05:00

Lest you imagine my absence has been a matter of rest:

ITEM! On October 16th Wife Megan and I performed aerial silks at a Halloween-themed circus show at Streb S.L.A.M. It was my debut on the aerial silks and - now that I think of it - my return to circus performance after an absence of some years. More on this in its own post (promise [promise]), but suffice it to say that I survived and learned a lot in the process. And: enjoyed it!

ITEM! On October 17th I performed in a staged reading of Margo Hammond's The New Me, playing a private detective, which is one of my favorite things in the whole world. (Good role to love, too, since a fella' can play that general type through many different stages of his life.) It went well I thought, and I really enjoyed exploring the guy's subtle self-interests in the midst of performing his job.

ITEM! On October 29th I and my better 50% traveled to Chicago. It was my first time there since 2001 when I toured through it with the partial-German-language farce I starred in (not bragging; educational theatre). It was a great trip that really inspired me in unexpected ways, not the least of which was attending the late show at The Second City and being reminded of the value of sketch comedy in constructing commedia dell'arte.

ITEM! November 1st brought me to only my second participation in a meeting of The Pack. At said meeting I had a scene from Hereafter read, and received feedback on it. It was very interesting, and ultimately encouraging for continuing work on the script. Seems like the answer to making it cohesive may be in streamlining the number of ideas represented in it.

ITEM! On November 8th there was a developmental reading for a small, private audience, of James B. Nicola's Closure. In it I read several male characters, and it tested my mastery of dialects, and found it as lacking as it always has been. Some are naturals at accents, but I need to work at it to achieve consistency, and switching rapidly (occasionally having whole scenes with myself) between them was dizzying. It was fun to try, though, and good to notice that as the script went along, I got better.

ITEM! On November 13th I participated in a table reading of The Widow Ranter, adapted by Adrienne Thompson and directed by the acclaimed Karen Carpenter (no, not that one). In it I played the boisterous, large old Colonel Ranter, eschewing type left right and center amidst a table of over a dozen actors. Interesting to see all the energy and dynamic shifts with that many friends and strangers with a performance bent in one place.

ITEM! For the first time with the revised cast, on November 21st The Puppeteers held a developmental meeting in Scranton. It went well, and rapidly, and of course a great deal of time and work on my part has gone into the show's development 'blog. It's an amazing - and very much ongoing - process, creating an original comedy from scratch. We've had two more developmental meetings since, and begin the rehearsal process in earnest on December 27th.

ITEM! I finally participated in NaNoWriMo! And I failed! Well, inasmuch as I didn't fulfill the word goal of 50,000 by deadline. I did, however, get a great deal of writing done on an actual novel, no matter how questionable its worth. It was very much fun and very much difficult, as my update-only post for November attests.

ITEM! For the first time since I was 23 (by which I mean last year, amirite?) I performed in a musical on December 2nd. Sharon Fogarty's one-act comic musical, Speaking to the Dead, had me playing a game-show host who falls for his ghost-whispering costar in many more ways than one. Actually, initially I wasn't to sing, but at one rehearsal I gave a line a sing-songy quality and BAM: a few lines of song for yours truly. It truly was a hoot. And such a pleasure to finally work with Ms. Fogarty after many near-misses at Manhattan Theatre Source.

So, you know: That. It's been a busy two months, and likely to be nothing but busy through the holidays and on into January. The Puppeteers opens January 19th, and that weekend is the only one in which I'll be guaranteed to be in town watching it. If you have the means and desire to make your way to wintery Scranton, I commend you and recommend it -- it's going to be A LOT of fun.

Merriest and happiest, one and all.

NaNoWriMo

2010-11-01T12:05:00.025-04:00

11/4/10: HOW IS IT THAT I USED TO ENJOY BEING PROLIFIC?

11/5/10: It seems I've forgotten how to spell. Just the interesting words, though. It's like forgetting long division.

11/8/10: WAIT. Wait: So it's actually going to be harder to make time to write during the weekends. Aw, man...

11/9/10: I find it strange that the good folks at NaNoWriMo offer SO MANY DISTRACTIONS when you sign up to be an "official" participant. When my email pings me, I STOP WRITING. SURELY YOU KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN.

11/10/10: Making money is such a drag.

11/11/10: To write fiction is also to do varied and unpredictable research. I'd be so much better informed as a person if I had tried to write a novel before now...

11/12/10: I hate being behind the curve. I hope to correct that this weekend. I hope to hold myself to that by writing this here...

11/16/10: Cannot...make...enough time...for to be...writing...

11/17/10: The worst part of NaNoWriMo is definitively the way in which it makes you a failure on so many days. This week I've organized rehearsals out of town, accomplished work at my job that I'm eminently unqualified for, and gotten off-book for a show. But my word count HOVERS behind the curve. Still, if I were to quit tomorrow (I won't) I wouldn't regret a moment of the time invested.

11/18/10: I have all my narrators in the same room! Yay! ...Now what?

11/19/10: It's necessary that I research military technology for this story. It's not that I enjoy it. Oh no. No. Not at all.

11/22/10: It's interesting how this is teaching me to work from all sides. An outline informs writing narrative, but also vice versa, back and forth. Also, what ends up being told and what shown - fascinatingly ambiguous.

11/23/10: Thanksgiving is looking like a LOT of hours spent puzzling over a keyboard...

11/29/10: All is pretty much lost. I'd have to get some 13,000 words done in the next 24 hours, and I'm not even sure I could do that with a sick day. Still, I'm compelled to get as much more as I can - which is a pretty cool feeling.

11/30/10 9:36am: So here is the point in the writing process when one imitates Admiral Farragut and says, "DAMN THE OUTLINE!"

11/30/10 10:37am: What in the great wide earth possessed me to make this thing such a plot-twisty mess? I am freaking lost, and I'm supposed to know what's going on...

11/30/10 11:57am: If I've fallen back in love with my story, can I get an extension? Like, maybe three months more? NaNoWriMos.?

11/30/10 12:42pm: Aaaaaand here we lag. Thinking after eating lunch really is the worst.

11/30/10 12:52pm: I'm totally being verbose on purpose. Definitely a drawback to the NaNoWriMo route.

11/30/10 2:01pm: Compositionus Interruptus. To change light bulbs. Oh yeah - being a professional author would be just terrible...

11/30/10 3:31pm: They couldn't choose a month with 31 days? No? Anyone...?

11/30/10 4:52pm: Pretty much time to get to rehearsal. Tonight I'll post, but I didn't clear the 50,000 mark, and I confess some disappointment. I think part of what makes this challenge so appealing is the seeming impossibility of it, and the sense of hope one gets to maintain in the face of it. I have had that in spades, and enjoyed it right up until the end.

11/30/10 11:03pm: The grand total - 41,222. Nothing to sneeze at, as failures go.

HOWEVER, some of those words were words I wrote years ago when I started the project, and I haven't added in all of those I plan to use. If I add it all together, even though it doesn't represent writing done this month, the total comes out to...

...47,723.

Damn it.

Well anyway, nice playing with you all (those of you who were playing). I hope now that all that writing continues a little longer, and then gets revised into something I'm not completely ashamed of. Somewhere between here and there, I will feel like I can say, "I wrote a book."

Which kicks major ass.

The Puppeteers: Simulcra & Pareidolia

2010-10-08T09:00:00.001-04:00

As I mentioned back in September (see 9/20/10), I'm writing more and more on the development 'blog for the next Zuppa show. If you want to follow along, feel free! Right now the ideas are big and broad. They will narrow from discussions of theme to tiny details of fart gags, just you wait and see. My latest entry discusses ideas of creation and recognition. A snippet to whet:

Many [human] instincts apply to our tendency toward seeing faces in things with whose creation we had little or nothing to do - pareidolia. We see faces in woodgrain, water stains, toast. You name it. Of course we're inclined toward this for a variety of reasons, but what interests me about it are a few possibilities outside the realm of anything logical:

Maybe we're more inclined to pareidolia when we're lonely, or feel great need of some kind.
What if, instead of seeing faces because of a need, we're seeing them because we in some way recognize an object in front of us in some personal way?
What if pareidolia leads to a relationship, the way the supposed recognition involved in "love at first sight" can?

Read the rest here: Simulacra & Pareidolia.

BatFan Fiction Submission: The Bat of Bahrain

2010-10-07T11:13:00.001-04:00

Found here.

As promised, here it is: our second Middle Eastern Batman story! And possibly our last. Oh dear - you're worrying now, aren't you? Here you were with this amazingly excellent idea, and the submissions will be closed? Is there no justice, in the night, wrathful, righteous justice? (Maybe you have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT, in which sad case, look here: 9/21/10.) Well, fellow crime fighters, leave the ranks of the superstitious and cowardly, and submit away, either in the comments on the original post, or by emailing me an idea. We like ideas here. I'll even give you an absolutely and utterly consequence-free deadline: the polls will close on October 15th.

This second interpretation, The Bat of Bahrain, is submitted by loyal devotee of the Aviary (and, completely coincidentally I'm sure, life-long friend) Davey Cruz. He's got a gem of a 'blog himself: Peter, Puck & Mxy. Check out the cut of his jib. You shan't be disappointed.

The Bat of Bahrain by Davey Cruz.
Based on ideas by Davey Cruz and Mark Hubbard.
Based on characters created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger.

This is my city, the one I choose. Al-Manama, jewel of the Arabian Gulf; capital of Bahrain: first to submit to the will of Allah, and follow his prophet Mohamed. Bahrain was ruled by his envoy Al-Ala'a Al-Hadrami since the seventh year of the hijra. Al Manama has grown since that time, constantly adapting to the outside world. There is the Bahrain World Trade Center, and the newer Bahrain Financial Harbor buildings. On the other side of the city, Abraj Al Lulu sits, newly opened and ready for residents. From my position on The Dark Tower I can see the international airport, the naval port, the brightly lit neighborhoods of Hoora and Adliya. In the distance, on a clear night, I can see the old capital of Muharraq. But all that concerns me is the rape about to happen on the 40th floor.

I slip back down the stairs until I reach the 40th floor, home of R.B. Alwayn and Associates, one of the largest business groups in the region. Not wanting to leave a trace of my passing, I duck in a rarely locked janitor's closet, up into the ceiling and weave my way though the ducts. I check my watch. 2:45 in the morning. Perfect. I can hear the voices of two men 5.2 meters down and to my left. That would be the rapists.

Yesterday I overheard them saying that they wanted to take the new girl down a peg; and luring her here at this time, claiming a phone meeting with a client in Sydney was the way to do it. They didn’t even have to say how they were going to take her down. I just knew. Crime against women outnumbers crime against men by five to one in my home. And yet it is almost never reported. Women can vote, hold office, own companies, and still they will not report crime for fear of the backlash against them and their families. Sound of an elevator slowing and stopping on this floor; she is early. I have less than three minutes for her to get all the way though the secure doors and into the conference room. Time to move.

As I drop into the room behind the two of them, I notice that they have not even bothered to set up the video phone, or bring in a smart board or even laptops to set the scene. What they did have were two lengths of rope on a chair, a pair of handcuffs, a bottle of some clear liquid, and a open container of what claimed to be “Extra Strength Horny Goat Weed.” I flung my arms wide, spreading my cloak like wings and stage whispered “Justice, like the bat who catches a bird in flight, shall be swift and unseen.”

I dropped a miniature flash bang in front of them as I closed my eyes behind my mask. I knew where the men were, and had time to let my eyes adjust after the small charge went off. They were both stronger than me, and full of adrenaline, the thought of what they were planning had emboldened them. Were they common criminals, my presence might have given them pause; I am beginning to get a reputation, but these educated men had no time for superstition. Fortunately for me, they were as stupid as they were educated.

Both charged at once, nearly tripping each other for me. I blocked the clumsy and blind first strike of the larger, and guided the second’s attack around my body and into the large conference table. A kick to the chest as he went down and I could hear him crying in the dark. The first had wound up for a second blow, but seeing the inner door open and their target enter the main room of the office, I didn’t have time to dance with him further. I chopped his throat, and while he gasped for air, put the handcuffs he had so thoughtfully provided on his elbows, pulling them behind his back. I placed a pre-typed message on the conference room table and, kicking both of them for luck, slipped back up into the ceiling as the young woman entered the room. She had the good sense to run and scream and call for security. I had the good sense to make sure that one of the security on site that night was a decent man, and not likely to take a bribe.

Back on the roof I slipped into my helicopter, throwing off the niqāb and signaled my servant al Fraheed to take us back to my home on Nabih Saleh Island. I had to hurry back and change. I was due back though those doors in a few hours as Ms. Alwayn herself.

17 August 2011 UPDATE: Check this madness out...

BatFan Fiction Submission: Shadow On the Wall

2010-10-01T13:07:00.000-04:00

Found here.

And we have our first Middle Eastern Batman story (see 9/21/10 for context)! We have another in the queue as well, which we'll hopefully submit to you, Dear Reader, sometime next week. So get on your submission already! Remember, it can be a bare-bones, two sentence concept left in the comments of the original post, or can be emailed and more elaborate.

Here we've got a fascinating and rather researched take on the idea, replete with a linguistic pun or two. Pavarti posted this over at her 'blog before I had a chance to here. Please read and enjoy, and heap praise upon her. Without further ado...

Shadow on the Wall by Pavarti

Recai Osman awoke slowly, consciousness flickering in and out. The unforgiving sun beat down on his bruised and exhausted body.

Where am I? His mind struggled to remember the last twenty four hours.

Gritty particles of sand moved sympathetically as he slowly rolled onto his side, pain shooting through his head as the light hit his closed lids...the sun greeting him with cruel intensity. Sand clung to his long lashes and hair, and as soon as the disorientation passed Recai brushed it off roughly with his sand-infested hands; particles so fine they had filled his shoes around the spaces his foot filled and ground into his scalp between each follicle of hair.

Finally Recai was able to sit up and look around. The night before was still a blur. He remembered the bar at Bozooğulları Hotel and drinking with a Kurdish woman who had reminded him of his mother. Her eyes were deep set and so dark they might have genuinely been black, but it was the mischievous glint and the sound of the language his mother spoke when they were alone that drew him in. Her veil had been tight around her hairline but pulled back away from her shoulders so that he could see the neckline of her dress clearly.

Pinching his brows together he sat, his head spinning with a hangover and dehydration. How had he gotten out here, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sand and grit? He could only hope that the dunes around him were the ones that resided to the south of the city and not some further, larger wasteland.

He didn't remember leaving the bar, or traveling at all. There were rumors of nomads kidnapping, robbing and deserting bodies in the desert, but he would remember if he'd been kidnapped. Instead all he remembered was drinking bourbon while admiring the curve of the mysterious woman's collar bone, which showed seductively above her blouse.

The Dunes just outside of Elih, Turkey were not large, but it was easy to get disoriented and lost in amongst the shifting terrain. If he was lucky he'd have awoken when it was still dark and could have followed the light of the city toward home, but now, with the blazing sun above him, luck was something he just didn't have.

Man didn't last long in the dunes without water and supplies. If he had a canteen and some salt tablets Recai was resourceful enough he would have been able to survive without food or shelter for a few days, but like this.... He shook his head, sending streams of sand onto the ground around him; those kinds of thoughts weren't going to help him get home.

Recai blinked back his confusion, finding it difficult to clear his mind. The sun and lack of water was starting to affect him already and the temperature was still rising. Recai took off his shoes and socks, knowing that despite the burning sand, this terrain was best traveled the way his ancestors had; he needed to feel the earth below him, listen to the sand as it fell away from his steps.

He undid his belt and jacket making a satchel to carry anything he needed. His pockets had been emptied and he was as penniless as a wandering Roma come to find their next fortune. Soon he had his designer button-up shirt tied up on his head like a Jain turban and his worldly possessions hanging from his belt over his shoulder.

The scruff of his unshaven face protected him slightly from the sun and the turban kept him somewhat shaded. Recai took in his surroundings and the placement of the sun and set off in the direction he hoped was north.

Recai walked for what seemed like miles, resisting the instinct to second-guess his direction. The sand moved between his toes but soon he found his footing and his body responded to the landscape like it was a genetic memory. He remembered his father's words from a trip to the Oman desert when he was a child: never take your shoes off; the sand will eat away at your feet. But Recai had done it anyway then and now, feeling more in control with that connection to the ground, its movements speaking to his flesh directly.

He was in the middle, every direction would lead out. Either to Elih or one of the smaller villages that were scattered around the city. But who out here would take in a stranger? A stranger with a Hugo Boss turban and a bruised and bloodied face. Insha'Allah, he would be delivered to safety.

The sun was high overhead, beating down so that no living thing dared venture out into the desert. If Recai had a tarp or blanket or...anything, he would have dug himself a hole and conserved his strength until night. But instead at the crest of the next dune he sat on his bundle, keeping his body away from the sand so that it didn't suck the remaining moisture from his system, and looked out before him.

From his vantage point he could see the crescent shape the wind had carved in the sand below him. Recai's face was wind burned and his shoulders were screaming from the assault of the sun's rays, but still, the city was out of range, all human life well past the line of the horizon.

Standing up the ground shifted softly again, making Recai think of the last time he had been on his family's Yacht. He used to love going out there as a child, taking the helm from his father when far enough out there wasn't risk of him accidental steering them into a shallow section of the River. Elih was landlocked. This city where his father had made his fortune and helped build a sophisticated Arab beacon for the rest of the Middle East, a place where Turks and Kurds co-existed peacefully. A private jet would fly him and his parents out to Iskandarūn where the boat was stored.

He hadn't been to Iskandarūn in years. Not since his parents had died. Not since they'd been murdered. Not since Elih had fallen into the hands of Mayor Mahmet Yılmaz and his PKK henchmen. Terrorists hiding behind the thin veil of faith. It made Recai sick to his stomach the way the city was falling apart; devolving into crime and ignorance, but there was nothing he could do. He simply was not his father.

Walking along the crest of the dune, hoping to find a way down that didn't involve sliding down the great sand wall, likely creating an avalanche that could bury him alive, Recai felt a rumble in his chest, like a vibration that was surrounding him, calling to him from the air itself. The pitch rose as the noise intensified, now a screaming growl like the Jinn's song. The dunes were collapsing.

Recai began running, hoping to keep ahead of the avalanche he had caused, which was forcing the sand to move against itself with such strength it was singing in protest. The physics of the phenomenon were the last thing on Recai's mind though, because in this moment, the most important thing was to not be caught beneath the cascades of sand that were reshaping the landscape of the dune.

Dropping the satchel that held the last remnants of his modern life Recai scrambled across the crest, unable to get completely away from the avalanche. The dune song crescendoed and he could feel the sand pulling him down, drifting out from beneath his feet as he tried to push off against it in flight. With a scream Recai lost his balance and fell to his hands and knees just as the top of the dune fell out from beneath him, sending him rolling with the sand. He was now not just the instigator of the disaster but part of it, swimming within the sea of sand that carried him away.

* * *

A hand twitched in the sand before Hasad Sofaer. He looked down at it from his perch atop his camel without much concern. Unfortunately it wasn't unusual to find body parts out here in the dead lands of the dunes. What was curious was that this one had garnered the interest of the great beast of burden he was riding upon. No one survived long out here alone and the PKK had taken to leaving living, and dead, people to disappear into the sand.

The PKK, Hasad spat at the ground, wasting precious moisture to solidify his curse. Once again the beauty of the desert had been defiled by those bastards. Hasad's camel twitched and lowered its nose to the severed hand, but instead of pushing it over in the sand to reveal the rotting stump the camel felt the hand close around it; startling the animal and Hasad.

The old man jumped down from his perch and stared at the wiggling hand, wondering what kind of devil had animated a dead thing. Was this how the world would end? Was this the day the Golems come to avenge their wrongs? Hasad was not a superstitious man but he had been raised in a tight community of Baghdadi Jews and when the impossible appeared before him, the stories of his youth had more credibility than ever before.

The hand began clawing at the sand, trying to push it away. The sight pulled Hasad out of his thoughts and inspired him to action. Kneeling down next to the hand he began digging in the sand, his camel snorting and spitting behind him, as if sensing an evil rising. This could be a man, a man left to die; Hasad could not sit back and allow such a thing to happen if he had the power to stop it. His God and his soul demanded it. Too many had died out here already.

Still digging, following along the hand's arm he found another hand which grasped on to his forearm. Leaning back against his heels he pulled against the hole which was quickly filling back in. Pulling hard enough that he could feel his old joints protest, his feet slipped out from under him as a head came free.

The face looking up at him from the sand was sun-burnt and bruised. It looked like there was blood matted in his hair but it was hard to tell with the sand clinging to him. Hasad lay on his stomach and reached out his hand to the man who was taking ragged shallow breaths, having literally just fought for his life.

"Beyefendi?" Hasad called, sliding toward him, trying to disturb as little sand as possible, while getting an upsetting amount of it down the front of his own shirt.

"Yarmetî," the man whispered before his head slumped against the sand, his neck going limp. The beginnings of a red beard and the language Hasad didn't understand but recognized sent off warning signs. The old man knew that for a Kurd to end up out here alone, he was either very dangerous or very stupid.

Cursing quietly under his breath the old Jew slid away from the man and retrieved a rope from his camel, tying one end of it to the harness the beast wore. The smell of the creature had long ago stopped bothering him, but he still had no affection for it. The other end of the rope he tied into a noose and hooked around the man's arms, as low as he could get it, and tightened the noose so that the arms were brought together at an angry angle behind the stranger's head.

Hasad sighed and shook his head. Better a dislocated shoulder or two than dying out here alone. With that he slapped the camel on the backside and set to pulling Recai Osman out of the sand.

I Can Not Stress Enough...

2010-09-28T16:14:00.000-04:00

Found here.

There's a little voice in my head that moonlights as an escape artist. It must be, because no gag or act of psychic bondage will shut the little son-of-ma'-brain up. It is in essence a control valve for my ambition, and it goes a little something like this:

"Jeff. Jeff. Jeff. Jeff. Jeff. Hey Jeff. Jeff. Jeff. Hey Jeff. Hey. Remember that thing you have to do. You know: the thing. Not the one thing, but that other thing. But do the other other thing first. And then remember to come back to the first thing I mentioned, and then do that one thing. If you can't remember any one of these things, well, you're probably going to screw it all up. Actually, you will. Screw it all up. It's already screwed up, by merit of you being the one who has to do it. It's all going to turn out very, very badly - even worse than using an adverb in an ambiguous context. Which you just did. Worse yet, the aforementioned screwing up will occur as a result of a spiral of failure starting with some small thing and eventually taking the entire endeavor known as YOUR LIFE down like the Titanic. Because that's what happens to big, ignorant things. Hey Jeff. Hey Jeff. If you don't stop sucking soon, it may already be too late..."

He's an extremely helpful little guy. Especially when one is dealing with multiple deadlines.

Recently I added to my roster of responsibilities some work for a company that sends actors in to corporate environments to facilitate lessons in communication between managers and their team members. I was wary of this sort of work at first, because Wife Megan worked for one such institution when she first moved to NYC, and they sounded horrible. Very touchy-feely, metaphoric and therapeutic in their approach, which I personally find inappropriate for a work environment. (Yes, even in theatre work - a debate best left for another post.) Fortunately, the place I'm working for now has a more pragmatic view of communication in the work place, and it's one I thus far agree with.

So I'm trying to apply their philosophy to a conversation with my extremely helpful little guy (henceforth "EHLG"). It might go a little something like this:

Me: Hey EHLG. How are you?

EHLG: Hey Jeff. Hey Jeff.

Me: Um - hey.

EHLG: You know what?

Me: What's that?

EHLG: You suck. At living.

Me: Okay, see-

EHLG: Living is something you're very bad at.

Me: EHLG.

EHLG: Hm?

Me: Do you see what you just did there?

EHLG: You mean the way I spoke truth to power?

Me: Well from my perspective, you tried to tear down power.

EHLG: Word up.

Me: But see, EHLG, I don't have much of any power over you.

EHLG: Word up.

Me: And if you tear me down, it only hurts both of us.

EHLG: Word...huh.

Me: What is it you're hoping to get out of this?

EHLG: You know, you're not very good at this feedback stuff.

Me: Okay.

EHLG: You fake it pretty good, but that can only take you so far and pretty soon you're going to fail and suffer.

Me: I'm suffering now.

EHLG: Not as much as you will if you keep going.

Me: Is that a threat?

EHLG: You know, you're not very good at perceiving threats.

And let's take a little break here. This is a weird post, I'll admit it, but also pretty interesting to me, I must admit as well. The first practice session I had with the feedback-training company got confusing quickly, because we were all trainees and we ran sessions with one another. That meant that in addition to trying to learn the techniques the company used in role-playing, we were at times role-playing being a facilitator who was role-playing being an employee of a manager/student who was, him or herself, a role-player; all the while improvising a scenario with specific given circumstances. (WE HAVE TO GO DEEEPER [BRAAAAHHHHHMMMMM...].)

The big mistake I made in that practice session was not when I was playing the manager, but the actor/facilitator. I got confused, and came on too strong with the obstacle that "manager" was being asked to deal with. Ideally, one wants to adjust to his or her level of intercommunication and nudge it towards something more, and I just barreled on through with my characterization instead. Call it my learned imperative response as an actor. I've gotten better at it. One key element is to insert a pause in the role-play for analysis and discussion. It allows the manager to reflect and feel permitted to try a fresh angle.

EHLG: You suck.

Me: Thanks EHLG; I appreciate your feedback and will try to consider it in future endeavors.

EHLG: You're welcome.

Me: I wanted to talk to you today about your feedback, actually. Have you found it to be getting you the results you want?

EHLG: Mostly. I have to keep repeating myself, which is pretty irritating, but that's the way it goes when you're talking to someone sucky.

Me: Have you thought about trying a different approach?

EHLG: Oh, I'm always changing gears: you suck, you blow, you aren't good at anything ever, you are justly hated and/or despised, your failure is compounded by your ugly face and funny clothes, etc.

Me: You do spend a lot of time coming up with that feedback

EHLG: Thank you.

Me: Let me tell you, though, that what I see is that your negativity is working against you, making your job harder on yourself.

EHLG: You're not very good at perceiving reality.

Me: Thanks, EHLG, for phrasing that in that way.

EHLG: What way?

Me: "Not very good." You did that earlier, and I really appreciate when you show that consideration for me. It makes me feel better about listening to you.

EHLG: Your feelings are unimportant and stupid.

Me: You're welcome to have that opinion, but can I just point out that by assuaging my feelings, you make your job more efficient? In addition, by ignoring them, you imperil your position in this personality.

EHLG: I do?

Me: Of course, I wouldn't want to lose you if I can help it, EHLG. You are always working, always keeping an eye on your well-being, and I appreciate the vigilance. It's just that your negativity threatens to bring down everything you touch, and I of course can't have that happening. By being so aggressive in your input, you're alienating essential coworkers, like passion and inspiration. Do you understand what I mean?

EHLG: Yeah.

Me: What do you think about that?

EHLG: It's stupid.

Me: Well, let's agree to check in again next week, at which time we can review your progress and make some decisions about what will help us work together better.

EHLG: That's stupid and sucky and you're stupid and sucky and I hate you.

Sometimes, you just have to be proud of how well you can handle a situation, and hope to get better results next time. Having a little understanding for yourself can help with stress, too.

Tied Up in the Air

2010-09-24T14:15:00.001-04:00

My teacher, Ms. Cody Schreger, who is fairly wicked awesome.

For almost a year-and-a-half now, I've tried different ways of tying myself up, suspended from the ceiling, at least once a week. Some weeks I let go by without fulfilling this habit, others I manage to engage in it several times. But it's likely that I've tied myself to the ceiling a few hundred times now. For some, that might qualify them as something of an advanced practitioner when it comes to tethering oneself to the inner-roof; Wife Megan, for example, is quite adept after the same extent of experience. Personally, I still consider myself to be an intermediate at best as it pertains to lashing my body in suspension from architectural hoods. It's tough to pin-point the reason for this discrepancy, but I generally chalk it up to Megan having had extensive dance experience, and me being a rather shimmying, scampering, klutzy ol' dork.

(Friend Geoff still think it's hilarious/terrifying that I stilt-walk, since from his perspective it's a dodgy proposition for me to make it regular-walking through a doorway without comical mishap.)

Whatever the reason, this discrepancy is why Megan made her aerial silks performance debut in August, and will be showing her sophomore routine in the same show in which I will hopefully prove to the world that when I fall off of fabric, it's purely intentional. The performances will be in mid-October, as part of an all-ages Halloween show at the STREB studio in Williamsburg. I've been preparing for it since I got back from the Marywood work in Scranton (see 9/12/10) and am just at that stage where one realizes just how much work will actually need to be done to achieve one's vision. Whenever we have an idea for a performance, we never truly have a concept of how much it will take to achieve it. It's similar to what I've read about childbirth in this way, I think: as time goes on you remember the joy better than the agony.

I posted a video the week I got back of my very first draft of the piece. I wouldn't have done this normally, but the curator of the show needed to see a sample and I figured the worst it would do is demonstrate how far I had come by the time I posted a performance video. Even in ten days (six hours' rehearsal) or so, the piece has evolved quite a bit, and I have a clearer sense of where I'm headed. What started out as a concept piece featuring my stock silent-film clown has evolved into something with a larger story, lightly connected to what Megan will perform and featuring a new clownish sort of character - a slightly deluded old-timey strongman. It's fun, recognizable and it works, I think. I've even found a song and buffed down the choreography to a reasonable skill-level and duration.

However: This is hard work of a variety with which I am not terribly comfortable. I have been known, when a show I'm in randomly requires dance choreography, to internally combust, and not in that nice fuel-injected way. It makes me SUPER SELF CRITICAL and HULK SMASH. For some reason I don't get this way with fight choreography, nor acrobalance - love it! Give it to me more please! Aerial silks has a dancier (is SO a word) feel to it for me, though, and so there are some personal blocks there. On top of that, it's awfully specific in a way that people without training can take for granted. As an actor, it's painfully obvious to me when someone is trying their hand at acting, and doesn't have certain (eventually) instinctive specifics going on. So I'm working on that with silks.

I'm also trying to build a piece that plays to both my strengths and weaknesses. For example, I can't seem to point my toes to save my life. You might be surprised what a difference this makes. Heck: Even if I could achieve this WONDER of the classical dance world, my extension (how straight, long and pretty on is) in my legs is worse than a Virginia fence. But I have a certain amount of upper body strength. Nothing that's leading Cirque du Soleil to pound down my door but, you know. So I've devised the circus strongman character as someone who might take pride in his stiff form and right angles. Ah, but there's a trick in that, too. My feet can't just be casually flexed, they must be UBER-FLEXED at ALL TIMES.

Ah, art.

It's great fun stuff, though, in spite of all the struggles. It's still climbing, after all. I'm often at odds about the work required to go from enjoying something to being able to do it reliably well. I gave up on vocal training because I wanted singing to remain something I enjoyed for myself, rather than resented for needing to struggle through. This isn't necessarily an intelligent decision, I realize, but it's one that was and continues to be personally important to me. I don't want to do this with silks, however, which is why performing is so important. It forces me to take things from fun to reliable, and thereby take whatever little talent I have to whatever little skill I can muster. So I remind myself of that every time the move is too complicated for me to remember, or I am too weak to execute a climb for the fifth or sixth time, or the dance belt (O God, that dance belt) chafes.

And then sometimes I just scamper and shimmy to my heart's content.

The First Step is in Recognizing you Have a Problem

2010-09-22T15:39:00.003-04:00

A collaboration with Pavarti over on The Node, submitted sans comment:

Loch Ness Monster - Chronic Insecurity

Far from his reputation for being "elusive," the Loch Ness monster is all up in e'rybody's grills, all the time. "I'm told I'm the best at hiding," he'll let you know at any available opportunity, all while preening for some unwitting tourist's camera. Then the photographer will try to leave, and Nessy will be all, "Oh, you have to go, huh? Right now? What've you got planned? Who are you meeting? It's not Duncan, is it? Well can I come?" If you say yes, you'll have to discretely text Duncan and anyone else to give them fair warning while Nessy stumps along behind, talking incessantly about being the best at walking on fins. And if you say no, well...have you ever had such huge, wet, black eyes stare at you while a prehistoric amphibian mumbles something about guessing he understands, what with how close you and Duncan are and all? Actually, it's not so much that no one can capture Nessy - it's that they quickly discover there's too high a price to pay for that particular accomplishment.

Vampire with Seasonal Effective Disorder

Nosferatu's attitude is just turning south. We JUST turned the clocks back, isn't his depression supposed to hold off at least until December? I don't know if I can take another winter in this cave with him. The rest of us are partying, thrilled to be able to have so much time out in the world, but whiny pants just can't stop muttering about needing a UV lamp. Seriously? He can't have that thing in here, if he wants to burst into flames that's fine but other people live here too and personally I'm perfectly happy without the tan.

Yeti - Body Dismorphia

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE! You are not supposed to BE here! Oh, GOD! I don't have nettles in my fur, my claws aren't christened with fresh ram's blood, and...OH! Well, the timing couldn't be worse. I mean, I've only consumed five whole rams per day for the past three months. Of course I look WAY too skinny. If I had known you were coming, I could've plumped up a bit and been properly Neanderthal, or closer, anyway. If I had known...but it's too late now, isn't it? You've seen. You're already judging my fur. IT'S TOO SILKEN, YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW THAT?! Some of us just have finer hair, and that's all there is to it. You know, we just, like, get the wrong impressions from the media. Ever since that damn WAMPA movie came out - you know the one - we're all supposed to be 500 pounds and have HUGE tusks. Forget it. I'm going to go eat a truckload of vegetables and then get a bikini wax. That'll show you. THAT'LL SHOW YOU ALL!"

Chupacabra - Trichotillomania

Hi. Uh, hi! Down here! Yes, hi. I, uh...I don't go to parties very often. I don't know why, I guess I just don't think of it. How are the pigs-in-a-blanket? No, no, I haven't tried them. Too cooked, you know how it is. Plus I'm kind of full. Um, so.... What? Oh yeah, I'm fine. Why? Oh, the mange, you mean? No, it is, it's mange. Um, well.... I don't really think it's a problem, but I kind of maybe over-groom. A bit. A little bit. I'm going to stop. Totally. I mean, I know it's a little off-putting, what with the scabs and all, but hey, look: you try combing with these fangs some time and see where you get. So anyway, how about that Middle Eastern sit -ACK! Oh, excuse me. ACK-ACH! ACGGGGGGHHHHCHOHKK! Oh wow. Sorry. Hairball. I...hey, where are you going? Okay. Can you maybe grab me a bit of the goat tartare, if there's some left?

Wolfman with Classic Narcissism

I find it difficult to go out. You know, there's always that feeling of living up to what people expect of you. I mean, really, I just want to be a guy. I know that I intimidate a lot of folks but, it's just hair. It's luscious and soft and stays perfectly in place but in the end it's really just hair. Always having to be the beautiful one really takes its toll on me. One day I'd love to just be the fat friend or the ugly friend, you know, stay out of the limelight, but it seems like no matter what I do, everyone's eyes are trained on me. I guess that's the price you pay for beauty...

Jersey Devil - Performance Anxiety

Guys, I'm starting to worry about Jersey, for reals now. Ever since we did that tour through Connecticut, he's been missing practices and spending lots of money on new gear. He says he's working on new stuff, but he won't let me hear any of it. Just mumbles something about "progressive alt-anti-folk with a dub-step beat" and how "it's not ready yet." I mean, he's got the perfect metal look and all, but even on tour, didja notice his bass just kept getting quieter...and quieter? And, I mean, I'm not even that close to him or anything, but even Delaware Succubus thinks something's up. She said something about "gone soft," or "completely impotent," or whatever...

The Boogey Man with Generalize Anxiety Disorder

Sometimes I just feel so overwhelmed. Like I just want to crawl under a rock and die. There's so much to do, so many kids to traumatize and so much pressure to really get it right. You know there are movies about me? And books and songs!? But whenever I'm out with the guys I just feel so disconnected, they have jobs and families they can talk about and I just feel the panic rising in my chest whenever the conversation turns my directions. Lately I don't go out at all. I feel safest in my room. This Saturday there's a bachelor party for The Blob and I don't want to go. Just the idea of all those people, god, I feel like I'm going to throw up just talking about it. F%*#...I can't catch my breath...I need to just go lie down for a while...

Medusa - Battered Person Syndrome

This fall, check out the new romantic comedy from the people who brought you Over Her Dead Body and Mannequin: On the Move! In spite of her seductive good looks, nothing has worked for Medusa - bars, speed and online dating, even her shadchen can't help this brash beauty out. Men seem to just freeze up around her. Her so-called friend Athena even switches her conditioner with ammonium thioglycolate. Some girls just can't catch a break! And just when she was starting to get comfy with the idea of eating in every night for the rest of her life, along comes an intrusive neighbor: Perseus. He's ripped, he's rude, and he's got a bad attitude - and Medusa just can't get enough of him! Watch her try to circumnavigate his gruff exterior, and find the loving man she knows he can be, if he'll just stop hysterically screaming and weilding blades!

BatFan Fiction

2010-09-21T11:52:00.002-04:00

Kids, hit the above button for translation.

I have of late, and wherefore I know not, recently acquired several followers on my Google Reader shared items who live in the Middle East. I'm sure these things tend to spread from friend to friend, etc., and it's largely coincidence, but Friend Andrew and I got to discussing it, and theorizing why things might trend that way for me. We decided it had nothing to do with theatre, or comedy, or philosophy, or collaboration, or my geopolitical proficiency. No, to us it was clear: Middle Easterners love The Batman.

Image found here.

I mean, who doesn't, right? Of course right. But just think: What if there is an untapped creative trove of fan fiction depicting a Bruce Wayne/Batman of middle eastern descent? If we could somehow harness said trove, what sorts of stories would it produce? That is the challenge presented herein. Write a Batman story in which he originates in the Middle East. Refresher: The "Middle East" as we know it consists of about eighteen countries, but for the purposes of the assignment you can also use countries classified as part of the so-called Greater Middle East.

Some guidelines:

For short summaries, feel free to use the comment section on the Aviary itself, not Facebook. For longer versions, please email.
I reserve the right not to publish anything I dang well please. Some rules to help you get published:

Nothing hateful, unless it's hateful of superstitious, cowardly criminals (and there's room for interpretation there).
Nothing overtly political - that is, politics can of course be used as a story element, but this 'blog will not be made a platform for political arguments.
Dark and brooding is good. So is a sense of humor.
If the Internet can't translate it, I can't read it. It probably won't be allowed to stay on the island.
Try to avoid Survivor references wherever possible.

And that's about it! Okay, folks: submit to me your concepts. I would be THRILLED to hear from some of my international buddies on this one, of course, but you in these states united, don't be shy either. Just promise they'll be good.

SWEAR TO ME!

From that movie. You know the one.

Update, 12/31/10: Friend Kate sent along this little nugget about emerging Muslim superheroes: Irtiqa 12/21/10.

The Puppeteers; or, In Spite of It All

2010-09-20T10:34:00.000-04:00

The development 'blog for the next Zuppa del Giorno show went live today, and here is where you can see it all go down: http://thepuppeteersproduction.blogspot.com/. Watch, enjoy, and comment as you see fit (comments will be moderated, however). I'm excited to make this show a little more "open source" to its audience and our friends who for one reason or another may not be able to make it out to Scranton in the dead of winter.

Found ovah heeya.

We have also finally scheduled our first official development rehearsal: October 2-3, to be held in New York City. It was my ambition to have our first this weekend, but with actors in three (count 'em) different states of this great country of ours (well: two states and a commonwealth) it just was not mean to be. So we'll get as good a start as we may at the beginning of October, and see where we all end up at the end of that.

I've avoided writing too much about this process in the Aviary thus far in the interests of keeping it private until we had a little more sense of direction - but just a little more. The evolution of this show will be intricate and slow, and I'm excited by the prospects of both our invited collaborators, and anyone else who decides to poke their noses in. As a result of my excitement, you may be seeing a bit less of me here at the Aviary, for which I do apologize. But if you need me, you'll know where to look.

Marywood on the Green

2010-09-12T22:50:00.000-04:00

My first introduction to the concept of a "greenshow" was through my second professional theatre job, at the Porthouse summer theatre. I haven't been back in a while, so I don't know if they still do this, but in my time there a great mass of the more minor players would be expected to learn songs and devise routines to entertain the audience who came early to enjoy a picnic dinner on the green between the parking lot and the stage. This in many ways was my first introduction to variety performance, and at the time I had absolutely no idea that variety would play such a significant role in my creative development as an adult. Just about all of my busking, clowning, circus and self-generated work stems in some way from that first experience - a connection I only recognized just now, while writing. So naturally I was thrilled when Heather suggested that for this year's Portal Project initiative with the theatre students of Marywood University we divide the group of nearly 30 into some working on the commedia dell'arte scenario, and others devising a greenshow.

I've written in the past (see 9/2/08 & 8/28/07) about my experiences teaching this week-long commedia dell'arte intensive. Last year, regrettably, it followed too hard and fast on our time in Italy and I had to give it a pass in favor of maintaining my day job (yes - irony is ironic). I was eager to return this year, and the whole thing felt fresh to me once again, particularly in regard to all the new faces I would be meeting. I confess I was a little apprehensive about the loss of many graduates who started out with us back in 2007, but that anxiety proved entirely unfounded - somewhere between my and Heather's greater experience and deeper understanding, and the students' willingness to focus and commit to the work we found the experience to be one of our most efficient and successful. Safe to say, too, that everyone had a lot of fun.

The key to this success, I think, was in getting to working directly on the scenario sooner. In the past we spent more days on general training on improvisation, stylistic elements and concept, not arriving at a scenario until the Friday or sometimes even the Saturday before a Monday performance. This time I found the team problem-solving involved in working from a scenario does a lot of the training for us, creating situations and challenges that end up being far more interesting (not to mention well-motivated) than anything we can prepare them for in hypothetical exercises. It was a near-perfect balance, spending a couple of days on character and improvisation, one on physical lazzi (could have used a bit more time there, I confess) and then three-or-so hours to memorize the scenario and ten more to develop and refine it. We came out strong, with the perfect amount of fear, I think.

In a sense, the real challenge we set for ourselves this year was the greenshow, rather than the scenario. Heather was responsible for both the challenge and the success of that portion of the endeavor. She has an impressive talent for not just randomly applying a routine to performers, but recognizing in them a possibility for a routine already lying in wait within their personalities or styles. This is part of what makes her such a brilliant clown, her ability to read people (including herself) and comprehend unspoken personae. Our greenshow ended up consisting of a couple of clownish acts, a group of acrobats, a group of musicians, a tie-in relationship with the conclusion of the scenario (Heather's brilliance again) and all of it encircled by an MC character who also provided a prologue to the scenario. The greenshow established the space, warmed up the crowd and was integrated into the scenario by way of concept and a couple of character references.

All the performers were amazing, and I believe everyone grew a little through the process. They had two shows, at noon and 2:00 respectively. The first was pretty sparsely attended and had some of the earmarks of the struggle to discover that last scene member: the audience. They did well enough, though, and by the end of the first show they had definitely learned a lot about what was going to work. They won the audience they had over, in spite of the dialogue being nigh inaudible over some terribly insistent generic "Italian music" blaring from the nearby clocktower, and after some lunch we regrouped at the theatre for our second run. We gave them some advice for the second show, but I don't think they needed it. In the second show, the audience was far more substantial, the greenshow-ers took bigger risks and the scenario-ists (is SO a word) made fuller, clearer physical choices. We all still had to contend with blaring, generic music, but they compensated beautifully and really knocked it out of the park.

I had a tremendous time working with this group again, and it fortifies my desire to teach more often. These were, to be frank, practically ideal circumstances (apart from the lateness of the hours). It's exceptional when one gets the chance to work with a fellow ensemble member as a co-teacher, and have as students a group so focused on strengthening their sense of ensemble and overall improvement. Two incidents in particular however stood out for me toward the end of this week, neither of which had anything directly to do with these circumstances. They had to do with something larger.

The first of these was introducing the students to an idea we at Zuppa have used from our very first show: the musical run. In this style of run, we play an ever-changing mix of music during a run of the scenario involving no speaking. The players thereby run through a very complex sequence of action using only their bodies to communicate that progress, plus they must continually listen to whatever music happens to be playing as they enter and synchronize their tempo, mood and choices to it. It's inordinately helpful, but exhausting and can be a difficult concept to grasp. Frustration is easy to find here. Yet, just before their first showing, the players took to quite naturally, and seemed to really enjoy it. This seeming was later proven for me when we were between the two shows, all rather full of food and feeling the week behind us, and I gave them the option of resting or doing another musical run. They enthusiastically leaped into that second musical run, and came out of it grinning like mad.

The second was a more abstract result, and the result of another brilliant idea from Heather. That is, a way to warm both the scenario people and the greenshow folks up together. Eccolo:

Ich Bin Ein Scrantonian

2010-09-08T18:42:00.002-04:00

The view from inside my Scranton office.

Editor's note: The following is an entry that I wrote last Thursday. Normally I would update it and post it as written today, but I can't seem to make any time for 'blog posts lately, so I'm breaking with convention, leaving it as it is and posting it to yesterday's date. (I am no longer in Scranton; my caffeine intake has since subsided, somewhat.) This is in the hopes that I can write today about what I really want to write about, but we'll just see how that goes, shall we? Without further ado:

Today I've spent five straight hours sitting in a coffee shop off of the Scranton town square, plugging away at this and that on my laptop. In that time, I've had various meetings with people, both planned and unplanned, in person and over the internet. I've occasionally engaged in some of my usual time-wasting computer activities - a little Facebook, a bit of tearing through Google Reader items - but by-and-large I have been at work. My work, not anybody else's, and that's delightful. I think my rear end is going to give up and walk out soon, with or without me, but there'll be plenty of time for movement and making up for that tonight when I return to the reason I'm here in the first place: to once again teach commedia dell'arte to and stage a scenario with the good theatre students of Marywood University.

I've been here since Monday, and in that time have been preoccupied with adjusting my body clock to our teaching schedule. The students have classes until the evening, so our "extra-curricular" mandatory activity takes place between the hours of 8:30 and 11:00 at night. Poor Heather has to be up early in the morning as well, to work her day job and attend her newly acquired graduate studies, but I have the luxury of simply sleeping until 10:00 am. And frankly, if I did not, this bird would not fly. I am not a night person. Even with my adjusted sleep schedule it's a trial. I make bad decisions past about 9:00 pm, and under normal circumstances they're confined to junk food and succumbing to my onychophagia, but this week these poor decisions extend to dramaturgy and personal safety. Fortunately for me, la commedia dell'arte tends to thrive on regrettable choices.

There's something really lovely about the people I work with here in Northeastern Pennsylvania (or "NEPA," a nice analogue to my accustomed "NoVa"). It's as though everyone understands that what we're doing is what we're doing, and not that thing we're doing now that will hopefully result in something later that will contribute to that big break or that huge pay-off down the road. Plus there are no subways. But I digress. All I'm trying to say is that focusing on work is a lovely, lovely thing that I very badly needed, in spite of all the work I've gotten to do in NYC lately. I'm exercised and inspired and healthy, and generally happy in a way that can be easy to forget as I stride my way down the Avenue of the Americas to this, that or the other.

Villainy

2010-08-18T17:43:00.002-04:00

Image from Outlaw Hat Co.

Today I had myself a callback for a truly despicable character. That is to say, despicable in terms of his behavior in the story (and, sadly, in history). Yes, folks, I can now count on TWO hands the number of times I have been considered for the role of a murderous fiend. It's just not an archetype many seem quick to apply to me, which is a shame, because I think I'm pretty durn good at it. And I know I enjoy it, when I can do it right. But I understand, Rest Of The Casting World -- I am not huge, nor oddly shaped or scarred, I have a relatively bright natural speaking voice and when you meet me, I definitely give off a more Horatio vibe than, say, a Richard III. This may change as I age. My nose may grow ever crookederer, my face more deeply lined, and coming soon to a theatre near you: Gryndl!

I won't write too much about the project itself, as: ew, tacky, and also: don't have the job (yet?). It's a short film about a famous atheist activist, and I came to it through working on Laid Plans last month (in an utterly round-about fashion). The audition was an on-camera read with the lead actress, and today they asked me to be off-book for the one big scene that will ultimately by interspersed into the rest of the narrative. I got to work with the actress again, and take some adjustment from the director as well, and all-in-all I walked out feeling good. I can't be sure I summoned the menace that they were looking for, but it was fun and the people very easy to work with. Sometimes that's the best you can ask for.

As a result of my preparation, I have for the past twenty-four hours been contemplating villainy. Not villainous acts (though I did eat a lot of chocolate yesterday...) but the motivations and mindset of a villain. The conventional wisdom states that an actor must never play a character as someone who knows he or she is "bad," because everyone is the hero of their own story, and judgments are dangerous trade for an actor. I understand this advice, but wonder if it always applies. David Waters, for example, seemed to understand whilst kidnapping, murdering and dismembering O'Hair that what he was doing wasn't strictly moral. It was a means to an end, but also one with seeming emotional complications. I don't know. Maybe he didn't even think about it too much. The point is, this acting advice doesn't help anyone find the villainous (or, in the judgment-free zone: alternate morality) mind-space.

I also heard an interesting interview with a criminal profiler recently on Fresh Air that had me thinking about the emotional dynamic of some murders. One of the behaviors he mentions is that murderers who kill for emotional reasons actually tend to feel elated after the deed, as though they had accomplished something intensely satisfying. Now, I have to imagine that such emotions then become increasingly complex, generally speaking, but it's fascinating to me that someone would feel that kind of emotion even as their hands are still red. Maybe one does feel utterly justified in the moment of killing. He goes on to say that one way to ensnare criminals in interrogation is by making them relive the sense of anger that drove them to kill. Suppose that's the only way to inspire remorse, too -- to make the killer experience that emotion anew.

So there I am at the kitchen table at 6:00 this morning, contemplating my lines and what sort of truth they're trying to pull out of me. Anton (the Cat) lolls drunkenly on the floor beside me, stuffed for the time being with a fresh wad or two of pulverized meat, and I'm frustratedly whispering my way through threats and incriminations for fear of waking the wife. It's hard not to just edit myself to death with doubts -- no way you can pull off this kind of dialogue, look at you you're a puppy dog, just give up on memorizing and try to find a threatening sub-vocal noise to use -- but I really want to make myself into a murderer. What's the hook? Maybe I can bring a hook...?

As the callback time approaches, I find myself remembering great film villains. Walken's crazy rhythm, utilized in its insane best in the Bond film A View to a Kill. Heck: several Bond villain actors. Ledger's Joker. Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. Nicholson in The Shining. The closest I could think of to my guy today was DeNiro in Cape Fear. (Sadly, I had not a few months to pack on the muscle and get really comfortable with having my fingers sucked.) Can I channel one or more of these? Is there a key to this little puzzle? Will the people I'm auditioning for at least let me prowl around a little, get in my body?

The answer to all these questions was of course: No. No, once in the room, once faced with delivering the lines to another human being, it became all-too clear that the only way to do it was to do it. To be Jeff as he might be if he would do something so terrible as the man he's playing did. And, when you look at it that way, it takes a lot of the pressure off and allows us to just, you know: act. Let them figure out if I'm believable. I'll be too busy believing to care.

(But dang: DeNiro in Cape Fear was incredimazing.)

Punch

2010-08-17T19:54:00.000-04:00

Create avatar

On Chris Hardwick, Nerds in General & Collaboration

2010-08-12T14:33:00.000-04:00

I can't quite remember how it started. I got awfully into podcasts several months ago, and I think I heard that Chris Hardwick (at the time, to me: that guy who sometimes reviews gadgets on Attack of the Show) had one, and so I gave it a try. I liked it, and subscribed to his 'blog, The Nerdist. Not too long ago, Signor Hardwick started casting about for 'blog contributors and, having something of an idea at the time, I submitted a proposal. It was not accepted (but not NOT accepted [but we actors understand what that means]) and I thought, oh well: Can't fault a guy for trying. (I've since had a much better idea for a pitch. Still mulling it over, though. [Spicily.][I'm kind of hoping you actually didn't see what I did there....])

So this cult of Chris: I'm in it. There's a lot that appeals about the dude; he's funny (helpful quality in a comedian), intelligent and kind. He's self-professed nerd, which means my likes match his likes pretty durn good. The thing that really grabbed me about him, though, is what he chooses to talk about and how he talks about it in his interviews with various celebrities on the podcast. Hardwick has a lot of fun, makes (occasionally crass) jokes, is well-supported by fellow podcasters Jonah Ray and Matt Mira, but the key for me is that he seems to love most of all to talk about people's ideas. Not just their work, mind you, but the work they'd love to do. To my mind, there's nothing more telling about a person in the moment than that, and frankly nothing more interesting to me.

About a week ago, I acquired an invitation to join the alpha stage of a new little project by Chris and collaborators Rachel Masters and Athena von Oech (of Red Magnet Media) called "The Node." The Node is an idea that Hardwick had been hinting at on his podcasts for some little while, realized. Essentially it's an online social network specifically for nerds (or whatever description you'll apply). Now, I flinch immediately at the idea of another social network. Thank you Friendster for reminding me of birthdays, MySpace for making me feel I could manipulate my own web presence, LiveJournal for...uh...being there when I just didn't get it at all, and Facebook for at least initially making me feel safe to come out and play again. Thank you, and done. Great. No more.

EXCEPT: The Node has a proclaimed purpose. It's an exciting idea. Something Chris calls "nerdsourcing," referencing the term crowd-sourcing, or utilizing a group of folks of varying (including no) acquaintance to accomplish something concrete. The purpose of The Node is to facilitate this kind of collaboration between nerds or, as Hardwick puts it, people who are unabashedly obsessive and creative. In other words, we're hoping here to create a little online community of folks who will make cool stuff and happenings together, not just post pictures of their pets (yes, I posted a picture of my cat). Will it happen? I hope so, but we'll have to see. And I use the word "we" because I think I'm in, dogs.

When I look back over the work I've done over the past several years, the strongest and most consistent component has been creative collaboration. Now, I always pretty much chalked this up to my being deeply entrenched in theatre projects, and theatre being sort of the ultimate collaborative art form. On considering it lately, however, I've realized it all has more to do with collaboration being a huge personal priority. Not necessarily for any logical or pragmatic reason, I value collaboration a great deal. It's like having a built-in audience at every stage of creation, and means that whatever you made is something greater than yourself just by the nature of its making.

There's a lot going on for me right now that shares this theme, from directing the next Zuppa del Giorno show, to revamping The Action Collective with Friend Andrew, to an untold-of project or two. So far, The Node seems to be facilitating mostly a lot of excited nerdly chatter, and one or two ideas for real-world nerdsourced projects. I'm trying to dream one good one up myself, though my first contribution to the pitch pile might simply be from a necessity that arises out of my current work instead of some nifty new thing. I can't, in other words, give as much time to The Node as I might otherwise (though I'm stealing time left, right n' center). If it sounds like something in which you might be interested: Hit me up, dawgs. I can invite you in. Such is the power of an alpha nerd. *barks quietly, pushes glasses back up snout*

This Is Just to Say

2010-07-29T13:48:00.004-04:00

I have enjoyed

the actors

that came in

to callbacks

and who

were probably tense

over

its oddness.

Forgive me

I cannot cast you all

so brave

and so totally awesome.

Short post here just to touch on the callbacks for our next Zuppa del Giorno show, the which I'll be directing. They have taken place this week, and after a little more coordinating and ruminating we should have our third performer. This was effectively my first time on the other side of the table in an audition process, and I learned a lot from it (possibly at the expense of the actors involved?), both as someone conducting an audition process and as an actor in said audition. More anon on that. (I'm really racking up the promised 'blog topics here.)

This post is really just to say that everyone who came in was awesome. It was an extremely unconventional callback process, due to the developmental and improvisational nature of the show, and each actor handled it with style. See if this doesn't terrify you: We set out a table of assorted random objects, and had people in two-at-a-time. The game they played was to tell a story between them, with one person verbally telling the story and the other telling it physically. They could use any of the "props," and at any time they could switch positions, yielding their vocal or physical storytelling to the other, or swooping into the other role. And they just kept going until I said, "Scene."

Tough, no? Awful, really, for people psyched to have an opportunity. If I could have come up with any other way to find out what we needed to know, I would have done that. But I wish you could have been there, Dear Reader, because what everyone did was unique and effective and inspiring. So, thanks, Auditioners. I would like to take you all out for milk and cookies.