This Is Just to Say

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.

Spectacular Excerpt

So, I'm super lame, and still haven't edited the footage of The Spectacular Scrantonian Spectacular (see 2/16/10 for details) together and posted it on the interwebs and made us all famous. I guess, on some level, I fear fame and the changes it may portend. Fortunately for the world, Alicia Grega-Pikul and Kate Chadwick have no such trepidations. And so, one of my favorites from the Spectacular:

A Little Inside

Last night was the first on-our-feet rehearsal for the debut comedy I'm performing in: Love Me. It's written by Jason Grossman, directed by Daryl Boling, and features two actors with whom I've worked before as well: Laura Boling (nee Schwenninger) and Ridley Parson. So in many ways, the show is a fairly epic reunion. And in others, I'm not acting with these people at all.

It's a unique role.

The play concerns itself with a struggling young actor-turned-playwright living in the city, looking for love, and the various misadventures this engenders amongst his friends and love interests. This fellow, Charlie, has an inner monologue that's realized aloud on stage. I play Charlie's inner monologue. Now, the play as it was originally written simply used a voice-over for the inner monologue (henceforth, "I.M."), but Daryl thought it would be interesting to have a physical personification, and presto: me. Jason's done some rewrites to accommodate this notion, but by-and-large we're in a process of discovery about how the concept might play out.

Last night was a very interesting, probably evenly-matched mix of exciting revelation and humbling reality check. On the one hand, this role allows for some tremendous and unconstrained acting choices; on the other, it practically demands such choices. My expressions can be delightfully hyperbolic when it works, since they're the instinctive responses of someone's private thoughts, but it's also a bit like acting in a vacuum. More than a bit. I was surprised to find, last night, just how tough that would be. We had a moment here or there at which someone would accidentally acknowledge me on stage, and it was always funny, but by the end of the evening I found myself wishing it happened more. It is tough to act alone.

It's also good practice, and particularly good practice for some of my clown training. Since much of what I.M. does is judge his analogue self, I'm also reminded of The Action Collective's recent workshop (see 4/29/10) with Raïna von Waldenburg. In other words, this role is an interesting convergence of my past experiences and my current perspectives on acting. It's also an uncompromising position for one who has been avoiding the bare-faced vulnerability of clown work for some time to be in, but sometimes that's exactly the sort of situation one needs to see past something. I hope that's the case here but, either way, there's nothing to do now but commit like crazy.

Perhaps the most interesting part of it all is learning what works and what doesn't in terms of working with my alter ego, played by Aaron Rossini. Last night we worked on the first two scenes, and the final one, so I was introduced and had a good scene of just me and ... uh ... me, then found out how it would be to play with others in the room, then how it all wraps up. Pretty good overview for a first rehearsal. I'm positively more at ease in the scene Aaron and I share alone, at this point, and even in that there were of course spectacular failures last night. I had imagined before we started that I would mostly be playing off of what Aaron chose for the character, but quickly discovered that it was going to be more of a tennis game than that.

Generally speaking, it was working great when I was like an amplified echo of his current moment, or a representation of his creeping, intrusive self-judgment as he moved in one direction or the other. Facing him is tremendous, and we have a really nice moment over a phone on a podium that I understand and helps me contextualize what we're aiming for in the rest of our scenes together.

There is a lot that challenges, too. For example, I am assumed to have an inherent connection to myself (of course) yet when Aaron and I are looking in the same direction . . . I can't look at him for cues as to how he's feeling. Also, in addition to being a bit energetically isolated from the cast, there's a strange Icarusian (is SO a word) polar danger of either hyperbolically stealing the scenes, or being painfully extraneous to them. All this, and I should be funny, too. YAY, CHALLENGES!!!1!

But seriously: Yay, challenges! These are good challenges, and I'm happy to have them, as well as the opportunity to try and be funny for strangers again. I'm working on a show that reunites me with old friends, tackles themes and conventions that are very personal to me and on top of all that, there's the free reign to be just as physical as I please. This is a good time for that. Let's live aloud, and let out our angels and demons.

Even if just a little, inside.

The ACTion COLLECTIVE: ACT V, scene ii - Personal Character - Find Your Voice

"Everything you create comes from here."

Last night The Action Collective held our second in a series of workshops focused on character building, and our first to be led by a guest artist: Raïna von Waldenburg. Raïna is a teacher of Andrew's from NYU's experimental theatre wing, and we met with her a few weeks ago to discuss the possibility of leading a workshop with us, one based on her I Am One Who program of workshops. You can read more about her and her program on the Facebook invitation for the event, but here's a snippet of a description of the approach and goals:

"In a series of improvisations that require the actor to exist in the (power of) now, he/she will be faced with judges, habits, blocks, quirks, and latent talents that he/she has pushed aside. By literally inviting these undesirable parts of him/herself into the work, the actor suddenly has access to impulses that are alive, surprisingly truthful and emotionally resonant. The actor will learn to channel these impulses into acting that is present, open and honest, not forced, pushed or fake."

So: important and intimidating stuff. I was reminded, by her description of the technique and at times in practice, of the initial work Friends Heather, Todd and I did with Grey Valenti learning red-nose clowning. It involves that kind of sheer vulnerability and sincerity -- the very sorts of things I've been working rather hard (though somewhat subconsciously) to avoid in the past year. It also, however, has some important distinctions from that Lecoq-esque clown work, as I was to discover in the course of the evening.

An important part of the process has to do with identifying personal "judges," or voices of criticism within our own hearts and minds, and understanding them as characters. Raïna led each of us from theorizing what these individual, major judgments may be, through exploring them as people and finding a dialogue with them, right on to turning our judges into very promising characters in their own rights. She was incredibly present and listening and, though the work progressed very evenly over the course of three hours, you could tell that she was constantly responding to what was happening in the room, adapting our direction based on the "conversation" between students and teacher, or seekers and guide. Moreover, she did it all in such a way that we really had to give ourselves over to the work, because that was all we had to work with. Yet it was never strict, or forced. At least, not forced by her; there was plenty of forced work going on, whenever one of us got defensive or confused in an exercise.

A personal example: After some discussion of our personal judges, we began the exercises with practicing being open and available--present--with an audience. No need to do anything in particular, just don't retreat inward as you maintain eye contact and connection. This gradually developed in our observations and discussions into an informal rating system of 5 to 1 for how open we felt, 5 being not at all, 1 being as open as possible. One exercise along these parameters that she gave us was to start at 5 with everyone, and at some point in the course of 30 seconds flip into a 1 state. I found this really, really difficult (never really did get it) and in the course of my efforts, Raïna encouraged me to give voice to whatever impulse was preventing me from doing something so simple (my words, not hers). Eventually in the course of another 30-second attempt I twisted up my right elbow and neck in some abstract expression of frustration and sneered, "F@#$ this...." And that was good. And that was what we needed to move forward. Admitting my judgment of the exercise was how I could develop further into the work.

I think it's pretty safe to say that everyone last night learned something close to the level of a personal revelation or two (or, in my case, about a half-dozen). We were all working very hard, bravely, vulnerably and sometimes even without personal constraint. By the end, we were one-by-one improvising entire scenarios comprised of just us, and all the judges and judged that battle daily within us. Here was one of the important distinctions from the clown work that I've done, and the one that very nearly made me too defensively to effectively do the work: the naming of our judges. This requires a level of discussion and reflection that I believe actors tend to resist, because we're conditioned to -- afraid, aptly enough, of being judged as narcissistic and cerebral. And we resist it because it's frankly terrifying to acknowledge, to encourage, our judgments of ourselves. Adam Laupus made a pretty concise observation about it last night when he said that by naming one's judges, you begin to take their power back from them.

Apart from all that personal benefit, however, is a benefit of pure acting technique. This is an amazingly wonderful practice that bridges that strange divide between practices that help prepare for rehearsal and ones that are actually useful in rehearsal (for example, you would not [should not {yes; I'm judging}]) pull out the Meisner repetition exercise in the middle of rehearsing the last scene of The Glass Menagerie. This I Am One Who practice gives us a way to connect better with ourselves and our audiences, but also adds a powerful tool to the character-creation toolkit. It's genuine and impulse-based, breaks us out of habit, and it literally creates powerful characters for an actor to use. It's not often these days that I feel that sense of my perception of the acting process expanding, a feeling that I came to expect regularly in my studies at college. Last night, I felt that again, and I'm grateful to Ms. von Waldenburg for that.

In this sense, last night's event was a tremendous success for one of the goals of The Action Collective -- to provide actors with a space to do the work for which there is little time (or, in some cases, too much judgment) to accomplish in a typical rehearsal process. To enrich actors, instead of merely offering support. We may soon be making changes to the way the AC works, and what kind of work it takes on, but I'm encouraged by this latest workshop to maintain that priority. It's too important and too rare to neglect.

Commedia Day

Last Thursday, I failed, and was generously rewarded for it. The manner in which I failed was by opting out of performing with other talented artists for the International Day of Commedia dell'Arte, and I was rewarded by instead sitting in the audience and getting to enjoy multiple fascinating, commedia-inspired performances. It was quite moving, actually, to see such a concentrated example of the commedia dell'arte approached as a living tradition, which is an ethos Zuppa del Giorno has long espoused but rarely heard echoed back so specifically. I should have stepped up, and regret my own rather ironic sense of un-preparedness (is SO a word) to perform an improvised form, but regret nothing about attending the evening.

A couple of acquaintences with whom I've wanted to work -- Brian Foley and Billy Schultz -- performed and were involved in pulling it all together, in association with Fiasco Grande Productions. It was an evening that seemed to aim to inform as much as it entertained, and all within a sort of informal framework of each act presenting itself with little explanation, then that performer hanging around a moment to introduce the next. I appreciated this, because it lent a feeling of inclusion, but it may have made some who were expected a more refined production feel awkward. In particular, I enjoyed a description of the commedia dell'arte given in prelude to the whole thing, by a gentleman named Stanley Allan Sherman. Mr. Sherman had that immediacy about his demeanor that is so essential to good commedia, and can be rather intimidating or unpredictable to folks unaccustomed to that sort of ride. He reminded me a bit of our friends Andrea Brugnera and Angelo Crotti, and I wanted to talk to him more. A young student was interviewing him before the show, and I was giddily elated to hear he designed the mask for a famous professional wrestler, Mankind, and that he based it upon Arlecchino's visage. Living tradition, indeed.

The evening included commedia tropes, clown routines, satire, buffon and acrobatics, and tons of just lovely silliness. There wasn't much traditional scenario work -- Brian came closest I think with a lovely solo piece reminiscent of the lazzi of perhaps Arlecchino or Pedrolino -- but I was pleasantly surprised to see transformational elements such as masks and wigs. Billy participated in a structured improvisation with a great premise: that of an international competition for paper airplane construction and flight. This was the piece that most reminded me of Zuppa's initial original work, insofar as it was essentially a use of commedia techniques and archetypes in a more contemporary context. I was later blown away by the comical mastery displayed by the Acrobuffos. They ripped it up, stitched it back together and made the whole audience more alive with laughter.

The purpose of this International Day of Commedia dell'Arte, as I understand it, is to bring a wider appreciation and understanding of the commedia dell'arte to the world in the hopes of getting it acknowledged as the major cultural influence upon western civilization that it has been. (So, you know: modest goals.) In the US, Faction of Fools seems to have taken up the bulk of the mantle of this promotion of "intangible heritage" and is doing an accountable job of mobilising troupes and players into action. It's a bit regrettable that, here on the northeast coast, the day takes place in February, given that outdoor performance would be both historically appropriate and good for advertising. Nevertheless, the day is a great idea that I hope carries ahead full steam into the coming years and toward its eventual aim. The Commedia dell'Arte is alive and well and almost no one seems to know it. I'd like to believe we can change that.

As to my failure, I paraphrase that towering Capitano Sinatra: Regrets, I've had a few. As much as it was scheduling and insufficient time to prepare (yes - to prepare my improvisation) I think it was also a feeling of being quite out of touch with my craft, not having performed in the style since last summer's trip for In Bocca al Lupo. This evening rejuvenated that sense of connection, better than I could even have imagined, and has my imagination whirling again with archetypes and acrobatic gags. Who knows what will come of it, but I know that it will be driven forward by two things: the first, to never again be caught unawares for a similar performance opportunity; and the second is this feeling that I just walked into a room and found a panoply of old friends in the form of commedia characters. Thanks for that, everyone.

The ACTion COLLECTIVE: ACT IV - It's All About You

On Thursday last, The Action Collective fired up its first event of the new year. (January we devoted our energies instead to internal structuring and producing our very first newsletter, which we hope to make a regular, monthly occurrence.) I wasn't sure what to expect from this one. It was different in that we were asking for a great deal more preparation from our actors than we have to date: we asked them to write a scene. The scenes were then cast in the room, and performed after only a quick read-through "rehearsal" with some notes from the writer. Andrew and I committed ourselves to the same assignment, in keeping with our ethos that we are members of the Collective along with being the ones who make it run. We were mercifully (for us, and all involved, I think) saved by the bell from having our pieces performed. It is in part because of this that I can say with absolute confidence that all the scenes that night were really, really good.

(Actually, for all I know, I would have been the only writing liability of the evening. Andrew's good at, like, everything, so he's probably good at playwriting too. [Jerkface.])

I was eager to have another event after such a break, but also uniquely nervous, given that exposing my writing makes me way more anxious than exposing, say, myself on stage. It's entirely debatable which of these is actually more revealing about a person, but I tend to feel more in control of the latter, I suppose. That's part of what was amazing about the whole thing -- people brought it. It got broughten. And by "it," I mean risk-taking, specific choices and strong results. Andrew and I have talked about producing a show through The AC for as long as we've talked about the organization itself, and last Thursday showed me that member-generated work would not only function in this, it could be relied upon entirely.

Here we had actors working with other actors' scripts, and it created what I found to be a unique synergy of like-mindedness. We could quickly grasp what our fellow artist had intended, because we spoke similar languages, and this resulted in the actors being pleasantly surprised by what accessible material they had to work with, and the playwrights (some of the same people, in their turns) being surprised by what could be brought to their words. It was win-win, in other words, and as the evening progressed it seemed we all grew quite proud of one another. Feedback flowed more easily, and people started to feel truly at home in the process. Just when I think The AC has achieved the sense of community I was aiming for, the next event shows me a new and promising way to allow that sense to grow.

Friend Nat (who was in attendance) coined a term some three years ago on this here 'blog: "creactors." The Chimeric nature of that word is really grotesque, which made me laugh, and so it has since been a tag on many a post here ever since. It refers to actors who also create their own work with skills outside of those traditionally associated with acting. In other words, actors who write, choreograph, direct and produce, paint and draw, etc. It covers most people, actually, but only ever refers to those who take the risk of creating their own work. And ACT IV brought it home for me that The Action Collective is a group that is perfect for "creators," and already has many talented ones actively involved in shaping it. Which couldn't please me more.

Except that it will; it holds great promise, and opens up the possibilities for what our fledgling community can hope to achieve. Andrew and I are excitedly gathering resources for the next event and newsletter, as well as for long-range plans for the year. Watch this space (or, you know, the AC 'blog, Facebook and/or Twitter pages). It's all about you, after all...

The Spectacular Scrantonian Spectacular! : A Spectacular Summary

Well, we did it. It may not be topping the charts anymore, but I and some generous friends of mine, we put on a show; a variety show; a "spectacular." On a personal level, it was a really nice adventure for me. I got to produce something I want to see more of in the world, and though it was really my first time producing something completely solo, I got to experience that anxiety (comparable, frankly, only to the anxiety I felt in the week leading up to my wedding) in a familiar environment at ETC. In fact, this was sort of my Zuppa show for the year, as Zuppa del Giorno is on an indefinite hiatus from our show-making. Maybe that explains the anxiety -- I was squeezing two months' worth into about two days.

The greatest disappointment of the show was really a fairly insubstantial, and familiar, one. That is, the audience turn-out and (presumably) corresponding community awareness. I worked quite hard at getting that part of it supported and improved from the theatre's usual struggles yet, given the fact that the event was only $5 with an open bar, have to concede defeat. This short-fall is one thing when you know you're doing something experimental or otherwise unpopular, and much the same thing when the product turns out below expectations for one reason or another. Neither was the case here, though.

My performers...were...AWESOME. Seriously. You should have been there. AWESOME. I can admit to some bias, but really, I am quite cynical when it comes to productions of which I'm a part; especially when I have some creative control beyond the actor's usual lot. I'm here to tell you that unless you were one of the 30 or so members of the audience, you missed out. Fortunately, I'm here to sum it up for you a bit. I may post video in the coming weeks, too, with the performers' permission. In the meantime, some pithy-tude and photography, the latter taken largely by Ms. Alicia Grega-Pikul.

The real process began with the arrival of the performers around 2:00 the day of the show. That gave us approximately four-and-a-half hours in which to look at what we had, what we needed, and string it all together into a pleasing shape. Billy Rogan and I -- with a little very helpful directorial assistance from Heather Stuart -- spent some small time Sunday figuring out the framework that we as MCs would use, but apart from that it was done on the day. Kate Chadwick, Richard and Sheridan Grunn, Patrick Lacey, Billy and I in the room, figuring it all out. The experience was especially solitary because neither the administrator of the second-stage program nor the technical director of the theatre were in town. This made for a kind of hectic weekend of prep for yours truly, but was also truly nice when we nervous jumpers-in (of the head-first variety) got down to brass tacks. Six of us in a space, working. It would have been a mess if I had performers who were especially insecure or needy. Such was not the case. So as people showed me their pieces, other people searched for props, and still others went about experimenting with linking their performances with other folks. And by 6:30, we knew what we were about.

That's a total lie, but not knowing exactly what we were about was part of the idea in the first place. So...

There were pre- and post-show slideshows during the mingling and sipping. The pre-show one was made entirely of sketches of people's visions of the future as they imagined it between 1890 and 1920, which I loved having projected across a shredded ballroom from the 1800s. When we got underway, I said a few introductory words about Scranton and vaudeville, and then introduced Billy, who was late due to mingling with the crowd. Billy and I opened the show by establishing our relationship as guys who had different ideas of wanting the show to be good -- me uptight, he relaxed, which segued nicely into his playing one of his songs to open. We set Billy up so he could move about, but had a nice old easy chair stage left for home base. This worked really nicely, so that he belonged on stage, but didn't have to distract from the more independent performances. Billy's a very versatile and charismatic performer, as both musician and comedian, and I owe a tremendous amount of the show's function to his presence. In fact, you really should be listening to his music while you read this, just for mood's sake.

Hard on the heels of Billy's lyrical opening came Richard's Urbano's Kitchen, in which a rather mad-looking Italian chef unleashes dish after dish upon an unsuspecting restaurant. Richard has the kind of dash that can pull this kind of act off, and that's a rare quality. Essentially, the act consists of him excitedly throwing trash on the audience in the form of yarn spaghetti, paper farfalle and plastic-bag salad. Richard has a way of doing this that compromises none of the anarchic spirit, yet feels somehow inviting, and he had the perfect counterpart in his Vincenzo, a slow-moving old man played by his four-foot son Sheridan. He and Billy were really a one-two punch at the top, relaxing and then getting the audience laughing in turns.

After that it was more music, this time in the form of an a capella performance from Kate. She took the stage gently after a brief introduction from me, and explained her Irish roots before proceeding to sing a favorite Irish folk song of her grandmother's. Kate has a beautiful, strong and well-trained voice, so we can be forgiven for not immediately recognizing Beyonce's Grammy-winning Single Ladies. As this pop song rolled out in a grandly nostalgic, traditional style, the audience went to stitches. What was really funny was that it took awhile to get through this pop song in that style, which -- rather than seeming to run long -- made the song and our appreciation of it only feel funnier and funnier. And did Kate crack a single ironic smile? She did not.

After that it was Patrick's turn to take the stage, and Patrick had some very cool things up his sleeve. I set up one of his props -- a kind of glowing crystal ball -- and bantered a bit with Billy as he prepared to play the music he and Patrick had put together just hour before. As he played eerie electric wobbles and loops and...uh...sworls (technical musical term) Patrick emerged from far stage right curtains as an impossibly tall fortune-teller. This was a new mask, and a new piece, and it was thrilling to watch Patrick debut it. The audience was geared up for more comedy, which I think actually made some of them nervous as this seven-foot woman floated to the crystal ball. She looked into it briefly, then began to convulse and collapse, until she was just a heap of fabric on the floor. Then the fabric began to twitch and convulse. Billy's music ceased, and out from under the fabric emerged a transformed creature (a cat, though debate rages on). The audience loved this piece as Patrick did something he does brilliantly, and the crystal ball becomes a cat toy as the piece transforms into something utterly playful. And, for this one, there's already video.

The piece segued directly into one of Billy's songs, a playful number called Perambulate, and after that, it was up to me and Billy to clear the stage. I came out on my stilts to ham it up for a bit and remove the prop while Billy removed the abandoned costume, and then Ms. Kate Chadwick returned, sans introduction (I think; Kate, check my miserable memory) carrying her singin' stool. The stool was a ruse, though. Billy took a seat in his easy chair as she set foot on the dance floor, setting off a click from her heels. My goodness! Tap shoes! How did they get on there? Kate does a little tapping, much to the audience's delight, and then Billy mocks her a bit by thumping out rhythms on his guitar. They get into a comic duel, which gives way into Billy's Ravi Shankar, a very energetic, rhythmic song of his with thumps and ticks that accelerate throughout. They perform a duet. THEY MET THAT AFTERNOON, AND THAT NIGHT, THEY DID A TAP'N'GUITAR DUET. I, for the record, have never, ever done anything to be so lucky as to have these people performing on my program.

Patrick then performed his masked movement piece, Emro Farm, a moving sort of dance that tells the story of a woman living on a farm -- a single place -- for her entire life. It's hard to explain this piece with words, but it's easy to describe the effect it had in the context of the evening. Patrick really grounded the whole affair with his contributions, lending it a chance to be more than just a "spectacular," allowing it to have moments of meaning and reflection that I for one am enormously grateful. Emro Farm is repetitive movement set to beautiful, occasionally melancholy, music, and the final repetition ends in silence. Due entirely to my mismanagement of rehearsal time (all four hours of it), Patrick was interrupted a bit early in this final silent repetition. I think it still worked, however. I was very fond of the transition we found. Sheridan's character, Vincenzo, enters upstage at his glacial pace, stands center and opens up one of the props for the final act: a music box. This gentle interruption of the silence and gravity of Emro Farm was really quite wonderful, and allowed Patrick's character to leave the stage in character, which was essential to the mood he had created.

The last act of the evening ended us on a playful high note, as once again Rich took the stage as Urbano. This time, it was Urbano's Circus, a rollicking puppet show of sorts that mirrored the spirit and content of the whole evening's variety nicely. With his (t)rusty assistant, Urbano wheels out a grocery cart full of eccentric puppet performers who leap (are thrown) through the air, run about (remotely controlled) on the ground and generally act up in their particular routine. It involved audience participation, gleeful imagination and of course Rich's persnickety, anarchic orchestration. He had a wonderful gimmick for it, too, in which Vincenzo would at his command open different electronic greeting cards in front of a microphone for theme music. Flight of the Valkyries never sounded so apt. It wrapped up with an unwrapped "fin" sign -- perfect punctuation on which to end the show and lead us into our curtain call.

We said goodbye, I on my stilts, and I took off my hat as I bowed, unleashing a torrent of ping-pong and bouncy balls on the unsuspecting audience and performers. Billy played a new composition on which he's working, and the evening segued into chat and another slide show, this one of black-and-white photos of strange human endeavors. The balls may have been a slight misstep on my part, as a certain segment of the audience decided to begin a bit of a war with them (resulting of course in my getting absolutely BEANED in the temple by a bouncy ball) but the mood seemed entirely jovial and it was nice to have everyone lingering afterward -- a sure sign of a job well done, as far as I'm concerned.

Attendance expectations aside and owing nearly entirely to my performers, I feel it was a resounding success. I hope the participants feel the same. Probably the most resounding lesson I take away from the experience is that when producing this kind of show, the performers are all -- get good ones, and then make them as absolutely supported as possible, on stage and off. They will be amazing. Spectacular, one could say....

Zuppa: The Next Course

Traditionally, we know what our Zuppa del Giorno show is going to be at least a year in advance, if not more. That seems funny to write, especially with how much I write about the process starting from nothing at the beginning of the rehearsal process. Yet both are true. We never start out with a show, and we always end up with a show, yet at least a year in advance we know what the show is going to be "about." The first would be about updated commedia traditions, the second about the Marx brothers, the third about silent film comedians, etc. One needs to know that much in advance so one can research, and plan, and gather materials for the horrifying moment when one finds oneself in an empty space without a single indication of where to go next, surrounded by folk who have as little clue (and at least as much anxiety) as you do.

In effect, Zuppa has officially now skipped a year. Owing to the ambitious nature of our last original work, and a focus on advancing our study abroad program, In Bocca al Lupo, we took a little break. Recently, however, David Zarko asked us to pool some ideas for the next endeavor into wholly original (or at least creatively stolen) show material. Here is what I emailed him, off the top of my head and verbatim:

• Mummer's (or guiser's) Play: adaptable to public spaces, most characters performed in disguise or with mask - Wikipedia link. They usually have to do with good versus evil, and involve some element of resurrection. Prepare an original show utilizing style elements; perform in a different space every time. If at ETC, in ballroom, second stage, shop, lobby, abandoned rooms, etc. Scranton, all over, including weirdness like bowling alleys. In Italy, piazzas, but also tourist spots and museums.
• Show set in a circus. I've resisted this for some time, but we really should attempt it some time. Doesn't have to be circus intensive, but can include stilt-walking and other street-theatre conducive elements.
• The Great Zuppa Murder Mystery. Classic isolated scenario, names after Scranton locales and exit signs (Lord Dunmore Throop). Either played straight, or played a la coarse theatre -- more a play about players trying to put on a murder-mystery play, but not having their act together. OR, totally meta-: a real murder is supposed to have happened during a performance of a murder-mystery play that is being put on by coarse actors who are incapable of getting anything right.
• A play about religion. I don't know -- religion is funny. Maybe a play about mythos and superstition, as well, or instead of. Zuppa's vampire play.
• Another silent show, but based in something besides silent movies. This isn't really an idea. Sorry.
• Collaborations with mixed media: visual artists, musicians, writers, dancers. The idea being that we highlight the ways in which everyone uses improvisation by performing alongside folks, united by some storytelling commonality.
• Oh and also: A really real vaudeville show (There were some plans to incorporate a significant vaudeville presence into Prohibitive Standards, but they never crystallized. - ed.). With guest artists.

I'll probably have more ideas over time and, as is perhaps evident, I'm not especially sold on any of these in particular. Zuppa's mission statement when it comes to our original shows (in as much as we have one) is to illustrate the living traditions of the commedia dell'arte that permeate our culture, and inspire our audiences to learn more about that interconnected culture. Hence ideas that hearken to older forms, or hang on the twin cousins of homage and parody.

So what do you think, Gentle Reader? Seriously -- Which of these ideas would you like to see our merry, rotating band of "creactors" make a whole new show of? Or, better yet: What are your ideas...?

Two Influences

I was 24 years old when it happened. It was a gorgeous day -- I mean really, really beautiful. The kind of advanced autumn day that is both bright and slightly cool and, once I thought I was relatively safe and had let someone know that, I sat in Central Park and watched the people go by. It was a fairly surreal thing to do but, then again, even the most common of things felt strange that day. I sat on a park bench just east of Sheep Meadow and watched as dozens of people in suits and carrying briefcases walked north through the park, no one particularly rushing, most people seeming slightly dazed, or even simply surprised, like me, that it should be such a beautiful day. This was before the twin towers actually fell down, you understand. That hadn't even occurred to me as a remote possibility.

Of course I can't say for certain, but I'd wager that any artist living in and around New York City on September 11, 2001, has lingering effects in his or her work thereafter. You wouldn't have to actively explore the issues or circumstances, or even the relevant emotions, to exhibit this influence. No, I see it coming out in myriad little ways too, without our even trying. Of course, many do try. Friend Kate often did in her work with Kirkos, but particularly in the last full-length piece she created with them/us, Requiem. Directly or indirectly, we all had a profound personal experience, and we all keep returning to it in the hopes of making a little more sense of it . . . or at least of ourselves, afterward.

I have never quite tackled it head-on in my work. I did some agit-prop theatre that referenced the following war in Iraq, and I wrote a bit on it, even going so far as to start a play all about three people's personal lives leading up to the big day. (I still plan to return to that someday; feel it was a bit too big for me at the time.) I even fantasized a little choreography for a dance about it, and I am in no way a choreographer of dance. In fact, it's interesting to me that I took my creativity over the tragedy into dance, if but in my mind. I think there's a reason for that. I'm not sure, but it may say something about how abstract it felt at the time, unknowable -- just a series of visceral experiences that couldn't be ordered into anything particularly narrative or thematic. It felt, and I suppose it still feels rather, like an experience not meant to be understood.

It's curious to me, also, how profoundly I felt this year's anniversary. In previous years certainly I paused to reflect and (especially in the few anniversaries immediately after) even took some private time to remember and process and grieve. Yet this year, I was rather emotionally floored for a few days. I didn't know anyone personally who died in the attacks that day. Not that it's necessary to justify my response, but in seeking explanation there's no light to be shed in that direction, and what particular significance could the eighth year after hold? It was terrible, of course, and they say all New Yorkers have some kind of collective response around this time, our stress levels instinctively rocketing up. Still, this year seemed different, somehow.

I have an opportunity that's up-and-coming to make a show of my own. Actually, it's a commitment to provide a show for ETC's side stage program, Out On a Limb. When I submitted my proposal, I wrote about presenting something that explored a more intentional incorporation of circus and physical skill acts into scene work. That's something I've always wanted to see, and it seems the perfect time to explore it. It remains a very unformed idea, without even a story to back it up yet, and I find myself wondering if this could be an opportunity, too, to explore my responses to the events of 9/11. If it proves to be, it still won't be my focus or specific goal. Primarily, I want to fuse reasonably naturalistic acting with ecstatic and impressive movement.

An interesting personal coincidence related to 2001 is that it was the year that I met David Zarko -- now artistic director of ETC (not to mention the guy responsible for most of my professional acting opportunities) -- and in the same year was my introduction to circus skills. In many ways, it was the year-of-birth for who I am now as a creative artist, so it's bound to hold quite a bit of sway over anything I make. When it comes to that infamous day, I'm glad that in addition to all the horror and confusion, I especially remember what a beautiful day it was. There's something in this that comforts me.

Laughter Builds

I've been doing a bit of work lately that has required me to articulate some work I'm accustomed to doing instinctively. Specifically, building comic structure.

[Big, protracted, pet-peevy sidenote: I do not understand the need for the word "comedic." It's very existence irritates me. There's probably some very specific, distinct reasoning behind its use, and I'd love for somebody to explain it to me, but even given a reasoned explanation I'll probably continue to literally cringe every time I hear it. Do we hear "tragedic"? No; we hear "tragic." Comic. Comic comic COMIC!]

So -- building comic structure. At some later date I'll address what's gotten me started so specifically on this subject, but it also looks to be useful work in preparation for our new curriculum for In Bocca al Lupo. Friend Heather and I have had to modify our lesson plans owing to two factors: 1) having students enrolled who have taken our workshops previously, and 2) having master classes with Italian actors who can certainly offer more insightful training in commedia dell'arte than we can. When we took a look at what we could offer that was new, relevant and supportive of the lessons others would be teaching, techniques for building comic (COMIC!) structures and sequencing came out at the top of the list.

It's funny (See what I did there?): This is the sort of thing that's generally considered to be a talent or instinct, similar to singing, or mathematics. We tend to equate the ability to construct comedy to one's sense of humor -- an intangible mix of givens and environmental influences that somehow result in one person "being funny," and another, not so much. AND we tend to equate "having a sense of humor" with being funny, which is right off. After all, you can be completely incapable of telling a joke or pulling off a fall, yet still enjoy a fine appreciation of others' comedy. In other words, we are adrift in a mire of assumptions and generality when it comes to the larger subject of humor. Sure, there are comic prodigies, just as there are mathematical ones. The fact is, however, that building comic structure is an ability, a skill, and it can be learned and honed.

But how do you teach that?

I've put together a lot of theories, and some are more tested than others. Certainly the bulk of the work we've done in Zuppa del Giorno has given me experience to draw from, both in the form of what's helpful to building a comic story, and what's more of a "what not to do" lesson. We have developed many exercises and guiding principles in our work that apply to this more-general challenge, and we are lacking in some areas due to the specificity of our work. We're never focused solely on "making something funny"; rather the emphasis is on "making a contemporary commedia dell'arte story," or "making a new story in the style of silent film." This is an interesting point to notice in and of itself -- that once the techniques are ingrained, you need a specific focus in order to use them effectively. Breaking down the techniques themselves, however, takes some new, encompassing thoughts and actions. The danger here is in over-generalizing.

To my mind, the ultimate goal is to offer to the students as many useful ways as possible to get them in a mode in which they are excited to build the story. When that enthusiasm sets in("enthusiasm" is a better word for it), creating a comedy becomes more about communication and the collaboration than it is about fear or getting it "right." This can be said of any collaborative effort, but I find it particularly essential to comic storytelling. For all my perceived poo-pooing of the role of instinct in developing comedy, there is a very distinctive feeling that overcomes us when we really hook into a fruitful collaboration, and the better taste of that we can offer the students the better they'll understand what to aim for and how to guide themselves in future efforts. Teaching that is the way to teach them to fish for themselves, rather than simply slapping a fish down on the table.

Of course, there's more to it than that, especially if you're aiming for (as we are) teaching how to build good comedy. There's the rhythm, and the notion of threes, and contrast, and reversal of expectation, and separation of beats, and the logical absurdity (thank you, Gary C. Hopper) . . . and a bunch more, I'm sure. There is, in other words, no shortage of theory and technique to be instructed and applied, which is very good for us. But the thing to focus on in on, it seems to me, is the build. Find the build, and the comedy follows.

A Myth Gone Public

Last night I attended the public The Public reading of Christina Gorman's play, American Myth. You may recall I attended a reading of her "work-in-progress" back in November, and this was that. I feel more at ease to address the play by name, in spite of it still bearing the WiP nomenclature, because this was a seriously serious reading, my friends. The Emerging Writers Group advertised, and filled the center section of the Anspacher Theatre (dear God, what a wonderful space!), and I don't want to name-drop here. I really don't. But suffice it to say that there were some very respectable names attached to the acting and directing of the thing. So, Christina, I'm outing you, whatever other work remains to be done on your script.

American Myth deals with a fictional set of characters, but ones plucked out of the headlines like a Law & Order episode (only more insightful, of course). It deals in questions, which is probably my favorite thing about Christina's writing. All plays tend toward argument; conflict, after all, is drama, and vice versa. But there's nothing like a play that encourages one to ask questions rather than deliver a personal judgment, and American Myth does this for me. It asks what history is, both personal and national, and what we want or need it to be. It questions the motivations of the supposedly moral, and the supposedly immoral. Maybe it's simply the Unitarian Universalist in me, but I love pondering these questions because I can never be absolute in my judgments of others in my daily life. A play that impartially (hyper-partially, perhaps?) explores all the angles of a moral conflict resonates very personally with me. Plus, the script has all of Christina's usual wit and incisive display of human behavior that I've come to expect from her work.

Actually attending the reading was a sort of strange experience for me. I went by myself, with which I'm normally fine but this time, somehow, felt conspicuous about. Christina was wonderfully and specifically grateful for my attendance, and that went a long way to comforting me; in fact, for the brief moments I was in her presence I felt totally at ease. Yet apart from that, even as I was simply sitting and reading, waiting for the performance to start, I was uneasy and downright riled up. It's taken me a while to put together what could be the source of this, but this morning I realized that it was being so close to so much of what I want . . . and not having it. Of course I couldn't figure that out last night -- I was fully invested in the play and its development. This morning however, as I packed my chattel for today's workshop in Philadelphia, I put it together.

As much as I parlayed my feelings of rejection regarding the AFAWK changes into moral outrage and philosophical questioning, the fact is that I had allowed myself to become too dependent on the whole effort for the wrong reasons. I very genuinely cared about the story we were trying to tell, of course, and felt committed to our work and intentions. All that was not compromised. However, I had in a way come to rely on the show as a ticket to somewhere, and I have to admit to myself that part of my response (or lack thereof) to the casting changes was petulant and careerist. We had a reading at The Public scheduled, and then I felt it yanked out from under me. Yes, I care about that show; yes, I put good, hard work into its creation; yes, it is deserving of a life beyond our Fringe Festival performances and sacrifices ought to be made to ensure that. But I also want very badly to be valued more than I yet have as an actor, and that very visceral urge pushed on me hard when all of that went down. I had another opportunity to rejoin the process shortly thereafter, which I ignored. Maybe it was because of all the reasons I said, to distance myself from the story we created before, etc. But also, I was hurt by my own sense of slighted ambition.

Believe it or not, I do not want to dwell on that episode, apart from coming clean a bit on the whole thing. As Far As We Know continues in its development, and I'm very happy to hear that it lives on. It is wholly deserving of whatever success and attention it can create, as are its current creators. In fact, Friend Nat is one of those "creactors," which I find oddly comforting -- he's like a God-father for me. I mention it not just to come clean, but also because what allowed me to realize the source of my anxiety last night was that it felt just like an emotion I used to have in high school and college all the time.

I would sit down in the auditorium, or little theatre, and wait for the lights to dim. I was usually by myself, for whatever reason. (Often, that reason was because it was my third time seeing the show and I had run out of folks who wanted to see it.) I would sit and sit, a mounting sense of anticipation and dread occupying my heart and head. Then the show would begin, and I would get wrapped up in its machinations, but one part of me would always be on the outside of that. That part would feel wrapped up tight, strong, full of urge and impulse. And it would only feel more so after the bows were had, and the applause faded from memory. That urge sits there in every performance and whispers to me,

"I want to do that.

"I want to do that . . ."

Wrapping Up Romeo

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!

[The actor is silent, twitching his fingers as if to draw something out, then upping the gesture until it is a furious, full-arm coaxing.]

Arise, fair sun! And, and and...

[The actor looks around himself frantically, finally spotting something in the distant horizon.]

KILL the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid art far more fair than she!

[The actor gives a take to the audience as if to say, "Wow, did you hear me come up with that?" The actor is never sure if this take is going to land as he intends it {that is, as a gleeful sharing of enthusiasm rather than giving the sense that he's impressed with himself} and so, sometimes, he skips it. Sometimes.]

I'll miss my clown Romeo. Though potentially not for long, as the Italians are very encouraging about getting some part (if not all) of the production to Italy to perform, either this summer or next. Still, the curtain has fallen on this particular outing, and it's unlikely that another will be quite the same. So. To review:

The key to my take on Romeo lay in a late note from our clown director, Mark McKenna. He compared Romeo to a puppy -- all loyalty and enthusiasm, no strategy or subtext. This worked great, though I'm sure another performer could have done it better. One of the greater challenges for me in this exploration was to let go of my calculation and crispness in favor of an instinctive openness. I've never done so well at this before, yet I'm certain I didn't take it as far as it could have successfully gone. (So I'll be thankful for another chance, or two.) Romeo had big, ungainly paws and an ear-flapping energy. Part of the beauty of this puppy imagery was that it gave permission to be angry as well as cuddly, which helped me figure out how a clown Romeo could slay a commedia dell'arte Tybalt. It's funny: I used to attribute an animal to every character I played, a technique I've gotten away from in my adult career. Of course playing such a young lover would end up being nested in that work!

Prior to that image, there was a lot of struggle on my part to succeed as a clown in the role and, as I said, my success was mitigated by me just being me. I remember in college my TV/film acting teacher told the class that I shouldn't be going after non-brainy roles, that my "look" or "type" was too focused for that. I thought, thank goodness I'll be doing theatre, where I can more easily transform, but the personality traits she was picking up on were perfectly valid. I'm a thinker. That's not to say I'm especially intelligent, just that I work from my head first whenever I can. Bad habit for an actor, generally speaking, which is part of what I like about trying to do this amazing craft. I like the work involved in getting instinctive, getting into my heart. That didn't save me from some fury-inducing frustration during this rehearsal process (natch'), but even that was reminiscent of my teenage years, and so wasn't entirely an obstacle.

I have come to a new appreciation of the axiom that "there is no subtext in Shakespeare." This is a saying so often said that it is starting to lose letters, holes appearing like new constellations in the firmament of phraseology. (And yes, I do miss the language already.) In the little roles I've previously filled, it was apparent to me that every character says what is on his or her mind, and nothing less, but it wasn't until trying to fill out a role like Romeo that I felt how essential that no-subtext rule is. You don't just say everything as you feel it, you express it, wholly, and the whole thing is in motion the whole time. There is no stop to your internal life, there is no censorship or, ultimately, room for grand interpretation. Take, for example, the following:

"This gentleman, the Prince's near ally, my very friend, hath got this mortal hurt in my behalf. My reputation stain'd with Tybalt's slander -- Tybalt, that an hour hath been my kinsman! Ah Juliet; thy beauty hath made me effeminate, and in my temper softened valor's steel."

This ended up being the text I most had to mess with, interpretation-wise. Somehow in the clown world and with our vasty cutting of the text, it needed to be an upbeat bit, in order to more dramatically drop in the moment when Benvolio came back with Mercutio's mask in hand to tell of his demise. It's right there: mortal hurt. Romeo's upset and knows that Mercutio's at death's door, yet I felt I had to play it lightly, as though Romeo were oblivious right up to the last second. It never felt right, and it never would, because there's only so much room for interpretation. The conditions are all right there in the text, and honesty lives in living them out in their time and measure.

Apart from a few other little alterations, I feel strongly that our show was very true to the story and the characters. There was some doubt of this to begin -- we didn't know if a clown & commedia world would work at all, much less whether it could be convincingly applied to R&J. (Note: Next time, Jeff, read through the play a couple of times before you get super excited about your concept....) We were lucky in discovering, in my opinion, that this concept was in fact well-suited to the material. Romeo and Juliet are just as innocent and moment-to-moment as clowns, and they are surrounded by a world of connivers, and scarred fighters, and hypocrites. And all these people are lovable, even the worst of them, which makes the tragedy truly, uh, tragic. You feel bad for everyone. It will be a while before I'll be able to see the play as anything other than how we conceived it. Indeed, watching film versions of it I'm compelled to laugh, especially during the back-to-back "banished" scenes. You can't expect me to believe that he wrote those without some sense of the comic irrationality of teenagers.

One criticism of the show lingers for me: That it was too manic, that the tragedy was ultimately undermined by all the broad comedy preceding it, and came off as too abrupt. This sticks with me because I feel quite the opposite. To me, life is like that. Tragedy is abrupt, and I meant every emotion prior to our characters' deaths, regardless of how comic the effect was, so I feel that there was plenty of room there to believe that something truly sad was happening. This critique is also interesting to me because, technically speaking, Romeo & Juliet is not exactly a tragedy. The deaths are quite accidental and unnecessary, rather than inevitable. There is no return to the status quo, true (the hallmark of classical comedy), but neither are the main characters of especially high status. Furthermore, it seems to me that Shakespeare knew this, and spent some effort to counteract it. Of all the lines we cut, a great many were (I believe coincidentally) of a foreboding nature. Hardly a scene goes by without Romeo and/or Juliet saying something about a bad dream or sudden image of death. Methinks the playwright doth protest too much, in other words.

What we made, ultimately, was a very broad, structured comedy that aspired to inspire tragic catharsis at the end. I know we reached this aspiration for some, and not for others. Such is theatre, such is life. I feel very fulfilled, now all is said and done. It was not as I imagined it, but that's collaboration, and the show was probably better for it. I learned much, and kept learning, which I take as a sign that we were doing something right in terms of story and character. The audiences enjoyed themselves, and we achieved some measure of delight, surprise, and grief. It was funny, and it was beautiful, and if I never get to play another leading Shakespeare role again, I can happily hang my hat on this.

That's not my plan, though. I've got a taste for it now.

Juliet'n'Romeo Photo Retro

R&J: The Set Up

"Arise, fair sun...!"

The Very Nearly Perfect Comedy of Romeo & Juliet has opened its three-week run, and I am on our first sincere day off (during the rehearsal/development process, no day off is truly spent "off"). I write to you now, Dear Reader, from my super-secret Astorian lair, where I will spend the next twenty-four hours in blissful avoidance of hemp rope and hard lumber. I love our set, but she is a harsh mistress.

How shall I begin to tell you of our process? Well, I'll start with the product by saying that this is the happiest I've been with a Zuppa del Giorno show in years. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's as effective as Silent Lives, nor as consistently funny as Legal Snarls, but it is a good, funny, heartfelt show that audiences seem to enjoy. I've grown accustomed to Zuppa shows being very reliant upon audience -- they're all broad comedy, and if we don't grab you, then we don't have you. TVNPCoR&J is no exception, but this time we have the benefit of a script and we're working with a story everyone knows to one extent or another, so it's easier to keep the audience even when a couple of jokes don't land. And we've had great audiences so far! Sunday was by far our smallest (and toughest) house so far, with only twenty or so, spaced out both is seating and in energy, it seemed. The rest were great; big audiences with lots of energy to contribute to the party. May the trend continue!

As it so often happens with the Zuppa shows, our process was varied and anti-linear. So many people contribute so many things, and everything has such equitable value that we can sometimes dissolve into a bit of confusion. David calls this "committing to the chaos," and it sometimes makes me want to tear his ears off, but he has a point. To a point. Whether it's order or chaos, Zuppa's process is inclusive and positive, and I appreciate it for that. This time around was particularly zesty. We were working with three directors and a fight choreographer, essentially. One director can't hear so well, one can't communicate in English so well, the third was only there for short periods and was trained in a different style of theatre altogether, so really it's kind of an accomplishment that we got a cohesive show of any shape to its feet, much less one that runs as well as this. There were many other scary/insensible moments and factors, but this is all just to say that I didn't come here to complain -- as with any show, there were points at which I thought, "Hang it up, all of it. I'm going to be a goat farmer in the east Andes."

The script went through various revisions. David did an initial cutting that he decided was just too long for the comedy we were trying to build. He suggested we choose lines that were especially important to us and feel free to improvise around those . . . which is a cool idea, but a little complex in practice. We were already improvising scenes based on the scenario set forth in the text, and reading the scenes straight, but to do the two together in the moment takes a particular genius, the first step of which would be (in my opinion) to know the text inside and out. We didn't yet. So eventually, David did another cutting, and we modified that through petition. (I want to keep, "Then I defy you, stars"; we can lose, "The fee simple? O simple!") For a while there, I found myself feeling heretical, slicing into the scansion as such, but eventually it became clear that what we were creating was going to be mongrel Shakespeare. After all, some of the text would be improvised, and some would even be spoken in Italian. Our priorities were sense first, then humor -- the music would have to be found in the spaces between.

An early rule we set, however, plays to our advantage: Romeo and Juliet's scenes together are whole, and wholly the original text. For a stretch it seemed we might have to make cuts to the balcony scene. It is, under the most formal conditions, like a mini-play inserted into the larger (making yet another case for Midsummer's being a parody companion piece to R&J), and Shakespeare had good reasons for giving everyone an act break and a chance to buy a few walnuts just before it. We did not have such a luxury -- our one intermission was resolutely set between Tybalt's death and Juliet's "gallop apace, ye fiery steeds" -- so for a time the scene was set on the carving block. Fortunately, we gained a sense of our style just in time to save the playlet. We chose early on to have Juliet and her Romeo speak the original text, as an indicator of their love and to distinguish them from what we assumed every other character would be doing at the time (that is, improvising dialogue left and right). Though we eventually decided it was best to have everyone speak mostly from the script, this early rule was somewhat prescient. By making the lovers clowns in a world of commedia dell'arte characters, we automatically made them a different pace and energy altogether. Commedia characters address the audience, but aren't ruled by them, whereas clowns have needs to ask permission, and must take even more sensitive cues from their audiences than intuiting what will make them laugh. It's as though the commedia characters are adults, enthusiastically sharing their argument with the audience, whereas the clowns are children, checking in with their parents to make sure they are pleased and eager to share with them each new discovery.

This has been the hardest work for me: Being, as a clown. I've done clown work for a few years now, but silently, and I wouldn't say it's my forte. Heather's much, much more natural with it than I. She has only to look at the audience, and they know everything she's feeling and thinking. I'm more calculating, less open, and am easily sucked into the rampant, frenetic energy of my fellow performers -- it's what I'm used to, I'm good at it and it gets laughs. But it isn't nearly as honest, vulnerable or interesting, frankly. I can hit the rhythms precisely, and get a laugh, but there's nothing precise about the clown. He is too present, too young to be precise, and that is part of his appeal. It works beautifully for this story, but it has been throughout an effort for me to make it work. (In some ways, of course, this is appropriate -- Romeo gets sucked into his environment and its violence, and spends a lot of his time trying to "make it work.") The most helpful note to me in this regard, a rather eleventh-hour one at that, was to think of Romeo as a dog, innocent, loyal and incapable of seeing past the next moment. Since I sometimes feel like a reincarnated dog, in both helpful and less-helpful ways, this resonates for me.

As if this work to "relax" in my work (oh yes -- many's the time that "relax" was my note for a scene, and not one but three directors almost got their respective ears torn off) weren't enough, hey: IT'S SHAKESPEARE. It is, to be perfectly honest, in spite of my abiding love of it, and four Shakespeare plays on my resume, my very first lead Shakespeare role ever. In fact, prior to this, my career in Shakespeare was particularly notable for playing roles that would just barely qualify as speaking ones: Philostrate in Midsummer's, Ned Poins in Henry IV 1 and Much Ado, the ONE messenger who speaks. So this was both great and terrible, and I've done it with no resident Shakespeare director, really. Some may be horrified by my interpretations, but I think I've done all right. I read up, and reviewed notes, and generally made the text a particular priority even at times when it seemed not to be one to others. It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and I hope I'm doing it some small justice.

So through much trial-and-error, "finding the game" of the scene, improvisation, a little text analysis, collaborative gag making and general mayhem, we have made what I would describe as a very lively, very youthful cross-pollination of commedia dell'arte, clown, screwball and even a bit of Shakespeare. It's good fun and, I believe, loyal to the spirit of the original, for all we can know about it. When I read the play now, I can hardly believe it hasn't been played more comically more often. Even after the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt, the keening is so young, so naive in its way, I can easily imagine the rabble of Shakespeare's time eating it up with spoons as they chuckled in melancholic empathy. Friend John feels that the pallet is too heavily laid with comedy to prepare the audience for any of the tragedy, but I affectionately disagree. This is how life feels to me more often than not. We're all trying to live out a joyful comedy, especially in the face of tragedy, and innocence makes us weep just as passion makes us laugh. My feelings turn on a dime as our play's do.

I'm glad to have it up at last, and I'm proud of our work for what it hoped to be, and what it became. And who knows what it will yet become?