Existential Dread

On Sunday I had a previously-taken-for-granted treat: a day hanging out with Sister Virginia. It was Pride Day, but we didn't have terribly exciting plans. Just a little browsing around SoHo, visiting old haunts and generally enjoying one another's company. It was sweltering day, humid as it gets up here in NYC, and we were deep into conversation as we got on the subway platform at my stop, Astoria Boulevard. Can't recall what we were discussing. What I can recall, is being insistently spoken to by a stranger. You know that feeling, when you've recognized somebody wants somebody else's attention, but of course it couldn't be you, because you don't just run into people, but then - oh, wait - yes. Yes, that person is talking to you. And what they're saying, is this:

"Excuse me. Excuse me. Woman in the orange? Yes, I just want you both to know that I don't appreciate you following me."

"What?"

"I don't appreciate you following me onto the subway platform."

"...Okay."

And she marches past us, down to the far end of the platform.

So: Fine. Another New York crazy person. True, she didn't exactly bear the marks of the typical NYC loon -- she was very clean, small, well-dressed (as though for yoga or the park) -- but she did have that sheen to her glare that suggested a certain intensely unkempt morale. So: All right then. Jenny and I continue our conversation, veering only momentarily into "that was odd" territory.

And then, a few minutes later, our sudden enemy crosses back the other way.

"I guess you must be Team Shawna, but I'm Team Natalie, and you better stop bothering me." (Ed. - I can't remember what she said verbatim, but I'm pretty sure the name Shawna was mentioned.)

"I'm sorry. We don't know what you're talking about."

And she was gone again, this time the other way up the platform. So now I'm keeping a bit of an eye on her, because I'm fascinated, and she's got my fight-or-flight instinct up. I'm suddenly aware - for no particular reason - that we're on a platform suspended twenty-five feet over traffic and surrounded on either side by electrified metal rails. But, this woman walks on up in the other direction, beyond the bench and entrance stairwell at the middle of the platform, to where I can no longer see her. Me: "That is so strange." Jenny: "I just figure - crazy people, New York." And we try to move on in the conversation, but I have to admit that I'm now utterly puzzled and intrigued and somewhat scared. Chalk it up to reading too much Kafka and Pirandello. But the train comes, and there's no more sign of our little tormentor, so we gratefully garnish ourselves with air conditioning and grab a seat.

From there our conversation continues into more personal, important stuff than it had been, and I get engrossed enough to let go of trying to wrap my head around what is apparently the most dire "Team _______" conflict since Twilight. The benches on the N train run along either wall, and I'm turned facing the direction in which the train is running so I can talk to Jenny on that side. It's a fairly crowded train, but not jam-packed as yet. We proceed a few stops, nearing the tunnel that swoops us underground and into Manhattan, and I happen to turn to my left for a moment.

And there she is again. Staring daggers. In our car, not five feet from us. She was not, to be perfectly clear, NOT in our car to begin with. She was not, as far as I can tell, in fact able to monitor us from where she had been positioned on the platform when the train arrived. No, the woman who was accusing us of following her had seemingly traversed moving train cars to find the one in which we sat.

All this I realized as I instantaneously swirled back into Jenny's eye contact, not wanting to give Ms. Antagonist any (further?) reason to suspect we were passive-aggressively pursuing her whereabouts. She momentarily thereafter strode past us on down the car. I'm not even sure Jenny noticed she was ever there. And I never saw her again, for the rest of the day.

But I sure as hell kept looking for her. How could I not? I was half-convinced that I would run into her again, totally randomly, thereby inadvertently providing her with the final evidence she needed in order to prove her theory of our antagonism. I even - of course, though I tried to resist it - wondered if she might not be following us. That is to say, I resisted this thought because it would essentially mean that she had successfully transmitted her disease to me, the germs of her paranoia turned airborne and plague-like. The terrible likelihood is that I will indeed see our mysterious interloper again soon. She probably lives off the same subway stop as me, and will mistake Megan for Jenny some coincidental day and presume the whole espionage has begun all over again. To be totally frank . . . she didn't look unfamiliar. Maybe it was just the openness of her naked hostility, but I thought, maybe, I knew her somehow.

Now look: I'm not peering continuously over my shoulder or anything (not continuously, anyway) and I don't think there was anything profound to this woman's mistake. Odds are that she is simply going through some tough stuff in her life about now, and that has made her paranoid and/or quasi-psychotic. In fact, I feel bad about not being able to convince her that we at least were not out to get her. HOWEVER: Holy crap. Was I about to be in a Hitchcock or Fincher movie? Was I targeted for some Improv Everywhere prank, that just had yet to get joyous and un-terrifying? Was it performance art and, if so, who would think Pride Day a good day to have such a thing noticed?

All this has given me an idea that I don't think I'll get around to any time soon, so I'm putting out there for you, The World, to do with as you please. Friend Nat is frighteningly good - pun intended - at creating a sense of dread on stage, and his efforts at such effects along with some of my more hypothetical conversations with other friends about theatrical horror have me thinking that this might be a good, simple scenario for really creeping out an audience. The trouble as I see it with most staged "horror" is that it too-easily falls into a similar trap as many stage comedies do. That is, the burden of catharsis is often placed upon effects, or gags, rather than on human behavior. This results in camp, which has its place, but often doesn't know its place. It can creep in anywhere, like the annoying neighbor finding your dinner party. Before you know it, it's arguing politics and complaining about the wine and all your guests feel cheapened, like some terrible, overwrought and distended simile.

So: my behavior-based scary stage-play scenario thing: I imagine it starting with a romantic couple (A & B) meeting somewhere public, possibly a restaurant. One of them (B) is late, and by the time he or she gets there, they find their significant other (A) rattled by something. A explains that they just had the weirdest series of "coincidences" (see above) with this stranger. B listens, tries to calm down A, and gradually A relaxes to the point of laughing at him or herself a bit. B excuses him or herself to use the restroom, and as A sits there, he or she is approached by someone (C). Though seemingly relaxed, A shouts at the introduction of C: a waiter. A apologizes, making meaningless excuses, orders something, etc., and C leaves. B returns and A doesn't share what just happened. A gets a call he or she has to take, and steps away to take it. As B sits there, he or she is approached by someone he or she knows somewhat (i.e., though work - D) and D takes a seat. Of course, on A's return he or she recognizes D as his or her antagonist, and it all goes quietly haywire.

It's a sketch of a beginning (with lots of sex-generic alphabetical confusion, for which: you're welcome) but from there I see it getting more and more tense and scary, no idea of an ending yet. It starts out as a Pirandello-esque conflict between A and D, with B as something of a helpless arbiter with some interest in reaching a resolution, and C occasionally interjecting to keep the conflict from exploding into the public space. Which is to say, A and D have completely irreconcilable stories about their relationship that they each feel a growing need to convince B of. Cell phone usage should figure prominently, so long as it doesn't start to irritate; I imagine texting under the table, faking calls, etc. Personal revelations should be used sparingly, so it doesn't become all about what the audience doesn't know about their respective and interrelated pasts. That having been said, there should certainly be one or two revelatory twists, one preferably just prior to the act break. And in Act II...well...

In Act II, all are in a private space, and some time has passed. I'm imagining that our sympathies lie largely with A in Act I, and in Act II we begin to question that emotion, possibly because A forced one or more of them into this new, private space (his/her storage space?). Even if that didn't happen, A certainly turns cruel in his or her attempts to extricate him or herself from the conflict. Possibly physically cruel. Relationships change drastically, the stakes continue to mount, until it ends in a seemingly hopeful way. Seemingly, because there's also some tag moment at the very end, some bit of information that sets the whole conclusion into a teetering sense of doubt. That's what the audience leaves with: a sense of profound uncertainty.

There you go. Write me a play, The World, as close or as far from this scenario as you are so inspired. But please, The World, one request? Whichever of you was that antagonistic yogi -- stay away from me. Thanks bunches! Hugs!!!

An Emotional Response to the Physical

Not at all sure what the questionable-quality food items are all about...

This video got me thinking about how I enjoy things like the comedy of Buster Keaton, and Rube Goldberg machines, and then not but two weeks later, OK Go! released an Internet 'asploding music video featuring an incredibly elaborate machine (and well-directed video, I may add) comprised of everyday items:

If you haven't seen the above yet, you're welcome, and you are a jerk. Yes: a jerk, for your ignorance. Mental Floss also put together a bunch o' Rube for your viewing pleasure ovah heeyah.

So what is this attraction to inanimate objects? Particularly those engaged in some unintended use? I'll break down some ideas I have as to the appeal, both personal and (perhaps [in some cases]) universal. Breaking it down 'til the break of dawn:

1. It makes us feel optimistic to think of objects as fulfilling purposes, instead of being merely lifeless tools. Purpose connotes design connotes meaning.
2. It makes us feel optimistic to see supposed purposes up-ended, and still demonstrate some sort of function. Creativity connotes a larger purpose.
3. When objects interact with forces, we ascribe behavior to them, which makes the world a bright-n-shiny adventure, filled with personality.
4. There is a sense of wonder created by acts of metamorphosis.
5. By manipulating objects, we gain a broader sense of control over ourselves and the world. Comfort in safety?
6. Objects are SO NOT controllable, in that they're animated by the same myriad physical forces that manipulate us; of which there are so many, we can never guarantee that the dang ball will go through the dang hoop (much less that we won't, say, trip on a staircase today). Objects are, therefore, spontaneous. Excitement in danger?
7. Wish-fulfillment and family-building. Our pattern-recognition is based in distinctly human forms and features. In other words, we are continually, subconsciously, "recognizing" the things around us -- we want our cars to have faces, and we need to think of that table bit as a leg, that lamp bit as an arm. Objects are, by extension (pun acknowledged and admired, I'm not ashamed to admit), our children. We made them.

Okay, whether that's all rubbish to you or gospel for some new, quasi-dystopian religious beliefs (Tom Robbins, I'm looking in your direction...) I'm sure you can name a thing or two that you feel an abnormal level of affection for. Objects, physical and inanimate, populate our world and play out scenes with us daily. It is natural to incorporate objects -- or "tools" if you prefer -- into ourselves and our passage in/through time. It's a blurrier line than we may imagine, too, the distinction between animate and inanimate. Certainly physics could make an argument that nothing in existence is or could be truly in-animate, but even on a simpler, perceptive level we have to distinguish between the life of a plant and the life of an animal, or even the life of a planet and the life of an atom. Are we objects? Sure we are, divine ones or no.

Emotions may be even more difficult to define than objects. My opinion is that emotions are by-and-large sublimated survival instincts. They evolved in response both to changing survival priorities and the development of our particular self-awareness and abstract thinking. If you accept that theory as I do, it makes emotions at once very pragmatic and rather mysterious. They can be played upon, manipulated, but they also play upon and manipulate us. They are internal, with tremendous external effects and implications. And of course, our emotions allow us to connect with one another beyond a purely mechanical way. This possibility alone may be the best distinction between ourselves and other "objects."

In other words, it seems completely natural to me that when a hat flips up to land perfectly on someone's head, I am applauding for the hat itself. Or, when I stumble over an errant bit of sidewalk, to curse the day it was born. But here I'm hitting on another reason we respond so emotionally to the physical world: Because all the world's a stage, and all of us players, and players in our own unique play, at that.

6/15/10 Update: Over at tor.com, Jason Henninger discusses similar questions as applied to robotics.

Dreamscapes & the Common Journey

A little while back, I found myself -- rather through the invention of necessity -- exploring the surreal in a clown performance I created and performed. Lately I've been wondering if that experience might have opened up a new avenue or two in my creativity, as I fantasize about more and more bizarre images on the stage of my mind. This is new-found. You could always describe me as a bit weird, but outright "surreality" has never been a thing I've been interested in creating, much less for the sake of itself. I love the absurd, the sublime, and am just as psyched for the opening of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as the next guy, but using it in theatre is a terribly delicate balance. And I have been burned, many, many times before, my friends.

And yet. Yet I find myself dreaming of some particular world that's more a dreamscape than anything specific to history or the here-and-now. It's influenced by a lot of things, and may prove easily categorical, but for now it seems to me to be unique. This is not my idiom, and so I feel a little at-sea. Delighted, too, of course; otherwise why would I be returning to it again and again? I'm challenged by it. I keep looking for a story in its midst, something on which to hang my hat. Surreal or no, I can't bring myself to stick with something creatively unless I'm somehow meeting an audience halfway. So, you know: no worries there, O my vasty Audience.

The surreal or fantastic really is just an idiom, not a goal or even a path. It's become a bit elusive in recent years, as fiction in every genre has accepted everything from "science fiction" to "magical realism" into its official ranks. Things that used to be sublime are given categories and named. And I love those domesticated notions, don't get me wrong. It just makes it a bit trickier to make something to a surreal effect.

The trick, I think to making a successful yet surreal bit of art is to aim not for the "surreality." Rather, aim for a pure connection with the audience. Maybe there are glowing eyeballs replacing your old ones (to take an example from my little piece) and maybe that is really interesting to think about in an allegorical way, but what the audience is there for is a connection that allows them to identify with you and be reminded of themselves. So it's not about how cool glowing eyes are, but how they make you feel and function, and what then you do with them. Actually, more immediately and most importantly, it's about your instinctive response to them. This I think might be my favorite part of Terry Gilliam's movies -- amidst all this strange, inexplicable stuff is a continuum of watching people respond in specific ways, emotionally, instinctively. That's the scalpel of the sublime, after all. There's little-to-nothing of a cultural commonality, so you damn well better have a human one there.

How shocking that a born-and-raised U.U. like myself would find that situation appealing.

This is part of why the silent comedians were so successful within the idiom of the surreal. (And if you disagree with me about that, shut up, you're stupid.) The formula -- if you can call it that with all the pioneering they were so busy doing -- is of a low-status, accessible character getting into big trouble and struggling to win out over it all whilst incident after incident happens to her, and she has to react. We have to react, instinctively, no matter how little sense may apply to what we perceive. Heck: How much sense could it make to be watching projected shadow and light and be having a hysterical response to it? (Just as much sense as it did to have the same reaction to performers on a stage, or Plato's cave shadows, to answer my own rhetoric.) The supposedly surreal surrounds, and it's a fool's game to try and create it from nothingness. All it takes is a little nudge of people's perspective.

I may be nudging soon. We'll see. It's what my brain wants, anyway. Come along?

The Horror, The Horror...

Do you think anyone has yet mashed up Brando's famous delivery in Apocalypse Now with shots of men in traditional Jewish garb dancing traditional Jewish dances? If they haven't, the Internet is a failed experiment.

Sunday last I participated in a staged reading of Friend Nat's latest playscript: Pierce, or, A Ghost of the Union. The story is a ghost one, surrounding the presidency of Franklin Pierce. Nat excels at creating these unlikely mash-ups of supernatural tropes and (supposedly) more lofty and academic material; he's a smart guy who loves Japanese horror films and the work of Stephen King, and his previous plays have included Any Day Now (kitchen-sink drama and zombies) and The Reckoning of Kit & Little Boots (classical tragedy and time-bending magical [sur]reality). So as unlikely as the combination may seem, it really rather works in the hands of someone who can encompass all the contributing factors, such as Nat.

It reminds me of Friend Geoff, who is lightly obsessed with the hope that a stage play can be genuinely terrifying, and not just existentially, but immediately as well. I've seen two shows that scared me rather well: one was The Pillowman, the other a smaller-scale production but awfully well done from Friend Avi's group, Creative Mechanics: Fall of the House of Usher. Pillowman served up a series of shocks, in effect, that cumulatively broke my sense of trust in the narrative, whereas Usher was all-around creepy, seeping into me throughout by way of some incredibly weird and committed performances. Pierce is fascinating to me because it seems to adhere so directly to the rhythm of a horror movie, the way such movies often function like roller-coasters, undulating and setting you up over and over again for bigger and bigger drops. This is a far more delicate feat in the theatre than on the screen, though. It takes pitch-perfect balance. It's almost like comedy in its daring: Nowhere to hide or obfuscate your intentions -- you are there, and everyone knows this, to make people laugh. Or in this case, shudder with fear.

Theatre used to do this, you know. Theatre used to do it all, even with equivalents to the glorious orangey fireballs and computer-rendered creatures. It did it all, because it had to. It was all we had, and then just as now we liked being scared, made sad, laughing, and all the good junk in between. Somewhere up the line there started to come these other vicarious, verisimilitudinous experiences, and somewhere not too far beyond that theatre started to place a priority on distinguishing itself. By and large, I think this was good for theatre; I love exploration and a pursuit of specificity, and one of my favorite admonishments I received in college was to, damn it, find what theatre can do that no other medium can. That has served me well, and I'm still making discoveries in that vein. However, it irks me somewhat when specificity leans its way into limitation, and anyway movies do not have exclusive domain over anything having to do with entertainment, with the possible exception of having made and spent astronomical figures on it.

So: Fear. It makes for some pretty powerful catharsis. That's what all the scary movies are about, after all -- inciting some kind of visceral, emotional response from us that we somehow find comfort in (or at least afterward). As with any play or movie, the catharsis needs a good story on which to hang its hat, even if it's a very simple one (such as, mildly troubled family stays in hotel, gets stranded and violently disintegrates) and Pierce achieves that with a variety of contextual details such as slavery and impending secession, government and politics, and the strange evolution of the idea of "the media." Perhaps most satisfying, absolutely every character is changed by the events that unfold. In that sense, horror could be called a curious combination of comedy and tragedy (perhaps the eleven-fingered love child). It progresses with a comic rhythm of set-ups and deliveries, yet results in a tragic change, a horrible finality.

Then again, my favorite horror movies have that coda in which it is implied that the horror, the undeniable lack of control, is inescapable and cyclical and bound to repeat itself. Human behavior, at its most horrible. Now who wouldn't cast politicians in such a story?

Puppet Mastery

Allergies continue to plague my existence, and after work yesterday I also realized I had lost -- in the very same day as buying it -- my $81 monthly metro pass. This led to a return to the office (yes; said discovery took place once I had walked the three avenue blocks to the station) for to be searching, then logging on to the MTA's website to ensure my refund. This left no time for writing, the very purpose for which I dared bring my spanking new laptop (dubbed Gracie, by the way) out into the harsh urban environment. When all was said and done, I was glad my late-night meeting had been canceled. I was even considering revising my plans with Friend Patrick so that I could surrender to countless omens, go home and do the thousand mundane tasks screaming for attention at the moment. Maybe even make up for some of that lost writing time.

I'm glad I did not.

The event of which Patrick reminded me was Slutty Puppets, a semi-regular sort of vaudeville of puppetry (and quite a bit of clowning, as it turns out) works-in-progress. The show had originally come up a couple of weeks ago when I was looking for shows we could see at Galapagos' DUMBO space, a venue by which Patrick is rather inspired. Me too, at this point. It's arranged as a kind of theatre-cum-club, and the main audience area is divided into six clusters of seating suspended by curling iron walkways over a shallow pool. With a bar at the back, a mezzanine, relatively high ceilings and a proscenium stage, it's at once intimate and rather awing -- perfect for variety or environmental stuff, in my humble opinion.

As for Slutty Puppets itself, it was not what I expected. The works were mostly excerpts, and largely seemed to be very much in progress, if you are picking up what I'm throwing down. However: Puppets! Maybe it's just my upbringing, but it's hard to be disappointed or overly critical of puppetry. I love it. I have no problems with the medium whatsoever. I was raised by puppets, in part, and the Henson child in me responds to inanimate objects given behavior and personality the way Pavlov's puppy responded to that dang ding-a-ling. It's one on a list of activities over which I kick myself every time I realize I still haven't devoted just a little time and energy to learning more about. In a way, it's a very pure, direct form of a general aim of mine in life: To bring more life into it.

Um. Interpret that as you may.

What I kept thinking about last night, as we moved through various degrees of preparation and bawdiness, were the ways in which puppets could be used effectively on stage. This is quite a preoccupation of mine, actually. Before I even knew who Julie Taymor was (she is best known in wider circles for engineering the The Lion King musical) I was imagining productions rather like hers. I always want to bring magic into my stories, and I especially like the sort of magic that is fueled by live performers (read: relatively inexpensive). Even as I found ways to do this with circus skills, I started imagining those skills applied to creating creatures -- puppets, in effect. As I watched the variety of forms of puppetry last night, slutty and non, I returned to that niche of my imagination a little.

The thing for me is, I don't want my puppets watered down. I want them terrifying and funny and weird and fascinating, and I want them a part of a story I care about. It's simple enough to use puppets to tell a story about, say, a girl who travels to a magical realm, or to tell a tale involving largely Aesop-esque animals. (It's not simple. That's stupid. It's actually very complex, no matter how you do it. Ignore me.) I want a story that incorporates puppets that are mysterious, and interactive with "regular" actors, and that I end up, against all possible odds, feeling something for. I'd like to hold a puppets performance to the same standards I would an unadorned actor's. That, my friends, would be something to 'blog about.

I wrote a little while ago (see 5/18/09) about Coraline, and that one of the few truly effective moments for me involved puppets of ghosts. They were very simple. They might've been a couple of sticks with a handkerchief draped over them, one the head, another the functioning hand. At their introduction, they surround Coraline like needy children and tell their stories. You may not notice it right away, but the ghost to her right is doing something slightly different from the others. The hand with which he's gently petting her as he speaks is shuddering. Slightly. Like a very human tremor.

Frighteningly effective.

* of course...

Unfortunate Accident w/an Intrinsic Field Subtractor

Photoshappage compliments of Dave Youmans.

Luminous Accumulation

Last night I travelled an unaccustomed route after leaving work. I took the F train from 34th Street all the way to Brooklyn, to the Carroll Street stop. I was surprised to discover that I had actually been in that neighborhood before, about a year-and-a-half ago. This happens to me fairly frequently in and around New York -- the sudden recognition of an environment when the maps and names of the area didn't necessarily ring any bells. I walked up Smith Street, enjoying the lights from dozens of nifty shops and restaurants and bars, then hung a left at Sackett and walked a long ways down that, over 278 by a short strip of bridging. When I got to Columbia Street, it took me a moment or two to identify what I had come that way for. Then I crossed the street and explored it, insofar as the chain-link fence surrounding it would allow.

It's pretty accurate to say that I am a huge fan of installation art, and an even huger fanatic about public installation art (i.e., installed in a largely uncontrolled, outdoor environment). I am lucky enough now to actually know an installation artist, and I hope she'll forgive me if that description limits her craft. Friend Natalia installed Luminous Accumulation on the corner of Columbia and Sackett a few weeks ago. I had intended to go to the opening, but it was rescheduled on account of weather to just out of my schedule's reach. Hence my solo journey to a dark corner of Kings on a Wednesday night.

I was disappointed, yet not surprised, to find the display fenced off but my mood was already pretty contemplative and buoyant due to the walk over. As is my wont, I read Natalia's description right away. As you can see, I brought my camera with me, and these two choices are related. Some appreciate art and, in particular, contemporary art, best through raw experience and an immediate moment. I envy this approach. It rarely works for me, outside of perhaps architecture and murals. No, I get the most out of these experiences when I'm working to synthesize my experience with the artist's intention. I find it similar to my impatience with classical music -- I loathe misinterpretation, even when an artist tells me such a thing is impossible. (And how much more impossible can it be to "misinterpret" than with the personal experience of music?) So I ask for answers straight off, and interpret the work through my own lens however I can thereafter.

Luminous Accumulation is interactive with the weather. There are a serious of pipes that ever-so-gradually draw precipitation and condensation into a roofed basin. The pipes, though you can;t tell it from my photos, extend their open ends out just past the borders of the chain-link fence, integrating it into their structure. They also reach back about fifteen yards to form rectangular arches of varying height that occupy the rest of the otherwise empty lot. The basin is lit around its rim and from two sources above it, and it is sheltered to ensure that the accumulation of moisture comes largely from the pipes. (Although the basin is also made of clear plastic, so I was immediately reminded of a wilderness survival contraption for gathering dew as drinkable water.) The more moisture that gathers, the more light that is reflected from it. (Rather ironic, then, that the original opening was postponed on account of rain.*) Natalia cites an Eskimo practice of holding reading material, or any object that requires scrutiny, close to the snow fall, the better to light one's discoveries.

It was frustrating not to be able to walk beneath the pipe arches, but only a little more frustrating than not being able to climb them -- they inspired that strong urge for me immediately, but never could have taken my weight, even if I could get to them. I have to imagine the ideal time at which to experience the exhibit would be a lightly rainy evening, just before dusk. You could (theoretically) walk beneath the pipes as they worked their gradual, inevitable work, toward the incrementally expanding pool, dipping your book/stone/lithograph into its light once there. It's a bit of a trip for me, but I may just do this some rainy night. I envy the people who get to experience this work on a semi-daily basis. Somebody has quietly transformed their environment for a few months, and it's an ongoing transformation. I think that's very valuable work, no matter how little monetary or pragmatic gain it results in. I want very much to be awakened to new perspectives on the every-day, and I can easily forget how much I want this. Thank goodness there are people interested in doing this for us. No one can sufficiently describe their interior experience of art. It's too personal. I hope it's enough to say that I spent some quiet moments with Luminous Accumulations, and felt pleasantly changed by the experience.

Well . . . maybe I'll just say one thing more. One of the best effects, in my humble opinion, a work of art can have is to invite us to carry its perspective with us into the world. We learn from it, in a sense, and carry it forward if not into our actions, then at least into our perceptions of everything else. This is part of the explanation for the genre of "performance art"; as with art, and unlike theatre, there is no definite end, no fallen curtain, to the experience, and it forces you to contemplate the possibility that the experience is simply continuing into the rest of your life. In this way, these things have a very far-reaching influence indeed. As I walked the good walk back to a subway station, I enjoyed immensely the details of illumination all along the way. Effects produced by headlights, streetlamps, windows, grates and foliage were all accentuated for me, and seemed somehow new. It was akin to the feeling I new best on my first trip to Italy, or my first to New York, and a feeling that I find has diminished slightly every time I add another visit and the longer I live here, like I lose it one slow drip at a time. It's a wonderful feeling.

*Perhaps it was apt, though; it must have filled the basin somewhat for the next day's appreciation.

The Rest is Finally Silence

Duun...duun...duuun...

DU-NUH!

(dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, duh...)

That's the Also Sprach Zarathustra, made popular of course by the Kubrick film, 2001. I could have gone on with my rendition, but I figured it was so obvious that your mind would naturally fill in the crescendo progression. I know mine is; over, and over, and over.

Blueprints is done! Whoopsie Daisy is done! Let there be much rejoicing! Also: I'm sad to have it be over so quickly! Aww. Some days you just can't win for losing. Are we relieved that we pulled it off? Certainly. It also felt surprisingly good, this show. We found a synchronicity, a unity, to our varied performances that we didn't necessarily deserve, given how little time we actually worked in the same room together. It felt good. It felt right. Patrick, Melissa and I discussed how natural it was to work together (especially in the West End Theatre, site of so many of our other collaborations) and personally, I feel the unity we found had as much to do with our common creative origins back in 2001 as with anything else. Even Friend Kate was on hand for Friday night's performance, so we had a full Yurtian accord for the first time in years.

We had a problem with audience, due largely to the last-minute notice we were able to give, but miraculously I had very important people to me in the audience both nights. Friends Laura & Daryl attended Friday night, which was a little like introducing a new girlfriend to her possible in-laws. I've done lots of work with these two, particularly Daryl, but it's all been relatively straight (read: not circus-y nor expressionistic), scripted theatre. Introducing them to my silent-film clown, Lloyd, and some of the work (in-progress) I create for myself was slightly harrowing. Then again, they received it well enough, and perhaps my eccentricities are not quite as latent in daily life as I'd like to perceive them to be. Sunday, Michael and Joanna from Bond Street Theatre were in attendance, which was a complete surprise. It's nice to think that they followed up on last week's collaboration in that way, especially given how busy they both are. Afterwards we talked in some detail about my work, which was also nice, having two experienced clowners and physical-theatre types from whom to receive critique.

And what was there to critique? Plenty; but as an acknowledged work-in-progress, I thought my piece went off rather well. Most of all I was struck by how delicate a thing I'm trying to build via all this throwing myself about (oh man--pun above totally unintentional, I swear to you). Eliciting laughter through a character's confusion about, suffering from, and ultimate adaptation to a new environment (or a new perception of his environment) requires a careful journey, no matter how many pratfalls happen along the way. It requires an extremely intimate responsiveness to the audience, and I rather shut myself off from that possibility by giving myself restrictive music cues. The timing, in other words, was more dictated by the music than by the moment. If I could have, I would have changed the piece to take more time between our opening and closing performances, but I backed myself into a corner there with what I had orchestrated. That's a definite lesson for next time (right up there with making sure I have more than a week in which to prepare). Some of my other lessons included techniques and bits that definitely worked, however, and I can hardly wait to try them again.

What I ended up building was essentially an exploration of a couple of things:

• The themes and tropes of silent film clowning I want to utilize in Red Signal, including transformation; and


• The use of the surreal in relationship to comedy and our recent (current) history.

Lloyd starts out as an uptight, shut-off New Yorker, going about his daily business. The beautiful and surreal come at him in a couple of ways, through some "inanimate" objects (a flower and a hat) and a woman, all of which quickly break down his ability to adhere to his routines and function in the world. As a result, he has to start over with everything, soup-to-nuts. Also as a result of this, he's suddenly aware of the audience's presence, which terrifies him. Resisting this, he tries to flee, but finds himself trapped in the theatre. Recognizing this, he tries to at least shed the trappings of this new perception, and goes into violent attempts to be rid of the "sticky" hat that suddenly appeared on him. All fails, in spite of a (hopefully) overwhelming array of physical stratagems, until he sticks his head off-stage and tries to pry the hat off that way.

And this where it starts to get surreal (yes, the prior seems completely normal to me). When his head pops back out, it has a different hat on. Instead of a black fedora, it is a grey top hat, in turn wearing welding goggles on itself. Lloyd reaches up to investigate, then heads toward the off-stage to see about where the new hat came from. He doesn't get far, quickly retreating from a small, bright light that skitters across the floor toward him from out the wing. He retreats from it, to escape through the other wing, when a second comes shooting out. He crouches upstage, away from both, then remembers the goggles on his hat and lowers them over his eyes. Thus protected, he approaches one of the lights crouched, like a cat. He bats it around a few times, then pounces on it and puts it in his mouth. Then he pounces on the other and does the same, standing to reveal two glowing cheeks. He quickly starts to retch, however, and when the lights pop out, he palms them so they face the audience side-by-side and become eyes, his fingers the eyelids/lashes. They look around the audience, blink drowsily, wink at someone, etc.

Suddenly, one of the "eyes" goes berserk, flying about erratically. The other soon follows suit. They fly into proximity to one another and flip about there for a bit, then part to explore away from one another; now they are like mating fireflies. One suddenly hovers, focused on something in the darkness upstage. His/her mate eventually notices his/her absence, and flies to join him/her. They zoom upstage and illuminate the woman, and look her up and down. Then Lloyd places the lights as lenses in his goggles. The woman smiles at him, takes his hand, and together they leave the stage, his "eyes" lighting their way.

That's the short play what I made. I don't know how much of the reasoning (the abundant reasoning) behind it was clear to the audience, but given the exploration of the surreal I was aiming for I'm content to have people make of it what they will. I learned a lot about the exploration of transformation involved in my script for Red Signal, mainly that people get and appreciate it best when they have a little distance from it. This was made awfully evident for me in the moment of recognition of the audience. It served as a very clear indicator that his world had changed, but only worked for me when it was very deliberately comic. When I did it with very precise double-take timing, it elicited a laugh, and the audience felt enough sense of perspective to appreciate Lloyd's plight without feeling responsible for it. So, I believe, they felt safer to empathize and identify with him. If I did it at all naturalistically, it created, rather than released, tension for my audience. They identified with his fear too immediately, perhaps, and felt a need to rationalize his (their) existence rather than go along with the humor. The film, if I can ever get it made, needs to steer a careful course between observation and empathy.

As for the surreal . . . well, what can you say about it, really? It was fun to do, I can say that. Certainly people enjoy having their expectations boggled a bit. My question about it was whether or not something made today in the spirit of the old silent-film comedies ought to step up the surreal aspects a bit. I mean, the silent comedians were often surreal in their creations; Buster Keaton particularly, and he was practically revered by the Surrealists who plied their philosophies after him. Yet all that surrealism came from fairly rational sources, used in supposedly irrational ways. Do we as audience experience the same lifting-out of the mundane as the audiences of Chaplin's and Lloyd's (Harold) films? With all the strange twists and turns art and culture have taken in the past century, might a contemporary silent film benefit from reinterpreting its moments of "surreality" into more abrupt or inexplicable forms? In his time, Keaton's use of a bass as a boat and a violin as a paddle were absolutely surreal, but now I wonder that it might only be perceived as "clever." When we can hardly tell what's CGI anymore, our surrealists must take a somewhat harder tack. My hypothesis for this little experiment was that a contemporary audience must be confronted with something a little more abrupt, a little less sourced, if they're to experience any real sense of surrealism.

I think it worked. I think, actually, it really worked. In a sense, all I really did was to subvert the order of transformation for the objects a bit, so that their immediate given purpose may not have been as obvious. (Frankly, I don't really understand the intended purpose of those weird little light things.) The hat and goggles contradict one another's associations -- assuming you're not a big steampunk proponent. The lights immediately behave differently than one might expect -- an idea that came to be, by the way, from reading Sophie's World. All the action was a sort of fluctuation (or flirtation) around the intended use of the objects until finally the lights become Lloyd's actual eyes. (Incidentally: They definitely weren't made for that; I owe myself a little more work to make those little sums-of-riches stick in there.) The effect, I think, was to initially baffle, but coupling it with a laugh (the surprising change of hat off-stage) made it non-threatening. Lloyd was threatened, then playful, then interactive, which allowed the audience along for the ride a bit. It's hard to say just how good the result was, but I think I'm at least on my way to something really positive, unique and satisfying.

That's what it's all about, really. I'm excited to keep the momentum going, both on my own work and on collaborating with Patrick and Melissa (and maybe even Melissa's dancers, Zoe and Madeline -- they're Tony-the-Tiger grrreat). The holidays can be a real sluggish time for me in terms of my creative work. There's just so much else to do. But somewhere, in the back of my head, I'll be revisiting this harrowing and lovely experience. If you see me with a distant look on my face, I'm probably imagining how I might do a handstand whilst blinded by my own brightly shining eyes . . .

Reading Room

I've got to learn not to resent . . . well: anything; basically. Resentment is not a helpful emotion in general and, if you are allowed a little perspective, you often have the double-pleasure of experiencing both the pleasantness of resentment and--later on--the pleasantness of realizing, "Oh God; I was such an ass to resent what I was about two weeks ago resenting."

Yesterday I worked. I worked two smallish jobs, actually: this one & this one. (It's a good day when an actor can be excused from his or her day job for paying acting work, but it's a great day when said actor be similarly gainfully employed and make more money than he or she would at his or her day job.) I had, in brief, a very lovely day indeed. It was only today, after sitting down to consider it, that I had a brief pang of realization that yesterday seems as though it were structured to point up my aforementioned fault. Well, regret is probably an even less useful emotion than resentment, so I shan't linger on it, lest I propagate it. I will, however, stop getting all Charlotte Brontë on my syntax and specify my observation in the hopes that it keeps me from getting stupider (i.e., more [ah regret!] resentful) in the future.

The first gig was a film gig, of sorts: an industrial for a company known as Lancer Insurance. This was, in a sense, a cushy gig. All I had to do was be familiar enough with the script to be able to perform it convincingly off a teleprompter. It was my first experience using a teleprompter, in fact. (Those of you familiar with Anchorman -- it's absolutely true; if it had been on there, I would have read it aloud.) It was essentially an interview, my scene, and a bona fide lawyer was off-screen asking his side of the interview off a paper, while I read my responses off the teleprompter, trying as hard as I could to make it look like I was looking a guy in the face. The screen had a couple of stationary arrows on each side, the which are supposed to be where I was reading at a given moment, though an operator was pacing the scroll specifically according to my the rate of my performance. He did a pretty good job, too, save a couple of times when I thoughtfully paused and had to tamp down terror as I noticed the scroll, in fact, didn't. The hardest part for me was avoiding left-to-right eye movement; I tried to look between the arrows and enforce peripheral perception, a little like looking at one of those hidden-picture stereographs. ("Over there?! That's just a guy in a suit!")

What struck me about the gig was that, in spite of having no lines to learn -- or perhaps, as a direct result of it -- this job ought to have been rather difficult. I mean, acting itself often requires us to accept a huge amount of ridiculous non-reality and to play for truth right along with it, but here was a complete and utter refutation of the actor's need for believable circumstances, environment, or even a scene partner with whom to make eye contact. I was sitting at a table, mic'd up, against a giant green screen, reading from a projection with a backdrop of cameras, lights, technicians and the various tools of the trade to be found in any film or photography studio. My imagination was the only recourse I had, and it served me well, but on top of all that, I was being asked to read and make it alive. Why wasn't this more difficult? Where had I been doing this, getting such good practice that I barely registered the challenges it presented?

My latter gig that day was a return to NYU for the Steinberg Lab, which is a program in which undergraduate playwrights get to workshop their writing, in part by way of casting actors to perform readings for them and a few of their closest colleagues. Most of the work I get through NYU involves some sort of staged reading, live or for film, and as I proceeded to wing it with an especially abstract script on Monday, I realized that this plethora of readings I've been doing of late is exactly what allowed me to be perfectly relaxed in the surreal environment of the teleprompter. In fact, teleprompters are easier than scripts in many respects. The key to a good staged reading is stealing as many moments away from the page as possible to make eye contact, all without losing your place (or, at least, being able to effectively fill moments spent rediscovering your place). Though you're deprived of eye contact with a teleprompter, you're also saved the logistical struggle and potential whiplash of a script-in-hand read. Either way, the unique skill of reading something as though it's just coming to you, motivated by the moments before, is like how one gets to Carnegie Hall.

I do not mean taking the N/R/Q to 57th Street.

So thank you, one and all, you workshopping playwrights, you producers looking for backing, you theatre-philes and patient givers of feedback. Thank you university teachers, new-works encouragers and experimentally inclined venue managers. Thanks everyone, for all the reading work. I knew not what a valuable skill reading could be!

"3: We are now held within un-, sub- or supernatural forces. Discuss."

The comment thread on my last post (see 9/17/08) has me seriously jonesing for a good Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead quote match. For those of you unfamiliar with the play and/or movie, it's essentially an absurdist retelling of Hamlet from the vantage point of the two minor characters made titular ("of a title," you perverts). It's a fave. It's often the fave, depending on mood, time of day, strength of coffee and relative distance of Saturn from Venus. So, some favorite quotes, checked against Wikiquote, from which even more can be found...

Rosencrantz

"Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure."

"Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect."

"We'll be all right. I suppose we just go on."

Guildenstern (clearly the part I want)

"I mean, you wouldn't bet on it. I mean, I would, but you wouldn't."

"It must be indicative of something besides the redistribution of wealth."

"What could we possibly have in common except our situation?"

"All your life you live so close to truth it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it's like being ambushed by a grotesque."

"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."

"Don't you discriminate at all?!"

"If we had a destiny, then so had he, and if this is ours, then that was his, and if there are no explanations for us, then let there be none for him."

"...now you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing that's real..."

"Pragmatism. Is that all you have to offer?"

"No, no, no…death is not. Death isn't. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not be on a boat."

The Player

"The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means."

"We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else."

"We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style."

"Hamlet…in love…with the old man's daughter…the old man…thinks."

Cobbled dialogue

"So there you are...stark, raving sane..."

"I don't believe in it anyway ... What? ... England. ... Just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean?"

The Greatest Show in Long Island City

Last night I helped set up, then attended, one of the best shows I've seen in a long time. It was the wedding of Friends Zoe Klein and Dave Paris, of Paradizo Dance fame, and it was quite an affair, both ambitious and intimate. Dave and Zoe put together a circus-themed wedding at a really cool venue in the LIC: The Foundry. Check out some pictures of the venue, then imagine that, with aerial rigging hung and a different circus-themed booth in every nook. As I said -- ambitious -- but with all the spectacle and performances, it was still a ceremony with its head on straight. One really felt that the best and most important thing happening last night was the union of two people with a special relationship. It was, in many ways, a far more successful and satisfying piece of theatre than I've seen in years.

The whole shindig didn't start until 5:30, but I sprouted up around 1:00 in promise to help Zoe pull it all together. I found there Friend Tiffany Kraus, of Kirkos association, which was a very welcome reunion indeed. I also found Friend Cody suspended from the rafters on white fabric -- she was scheduled to perform that evening, after the ceremony -- and it began to occur to me just how much of my former circus life might revisit me that evening. This is not necessarily all good, as I did more circus at a time when I was somewhat younger (read: a whole lot stupider). Nevertheless, I was excited by the prospect. I miss my days of regular ceiling-hanging and handstand-failing. Tiffany and I threw ourselves into candle placement, sunflower trimming and chuppah building, and the time flew by.

One of the splendid things that Zoe and Dave requested of their guests was that everyone dress in exuberant colors, along a specific circus theme of their choosing. Suggestions included ring master, trapeze artist, elephant, side-show denizen, etc. As things got under way, a completely various assortment of characters rolled into the place, some simply a little on the colorful side, others costumed to the nines and, of course, many genuine circus sorts didn't even have to try. Dave and Zoe themselves dressed in performance clothing for the ceremony, rather than a tux and gown. You might imagine this made the whole thing a boisterous occasion, and it was, but also very friendly, very communicative. Friends Kate Magram and Bronwyn Sims (Actor ~ Aerialist ~ Acrobat) were in attendance, too, bringing the total Kirkos number to five. It was, in brief, unexpectedly meaningful in a very personal way.

The most impressive part of Paradizo Dance's work for me is the way in which it blends Dave and Zoe's backgrounds and enthusiasms to create really flavorful performance that just about deserves its own category. Dave has been a competitive salsa dancer for years, and Zoe a more modern dancer and acrobat, and together they do inspired partner routines that are big on lyricism, lifts and lusty lunges (consonance is my big contribution). If you haven't seen any of their video, do. Even if the picture quality is poor, you'll be impressed within ten seconds. In fact, the movement and stunts are so impressive that it takes one a while to appreciate that everything is working on a higher level than that, that the grace of their movements is connected to specific emotion, choreographed with pleasing synchronicity to musical accompaniment. In other words, they've learned from each other's craft and used all of it to bring out a clear, urgent and rewarding communication with the audience. It's just lovely. That aesthetic is one they share with their friends, as was proven by the performers there last night -- dancers, aerialist and juggler. Paradizo Dance ended the evening's performances with a duet of their own. Needless to say, it brought the house down.

What was more impressive than the lifts, tricks and decor, even more than the example of a successful and happy life lived somewhere on the edges, was the way in which Zoe and Dave are so at ease, so at home with that life. It was a beautiful thing to witness, a public acknowledgement and demonstration of that agreement, that accord. Weddings are funny, in that no matter what your aesthetic or priority, they're invariably idealizations of your life. You work pretty damn hard to make them a concentrated dose of the goodness you wish for yourselves, and that others hopefully will wish for you. So, like theatre, they're not real. Oh God, how we'd hate them if they were.

As unreal as they may be, still, they are very, very important.

Under Studious Conditions

This week I expected to be writing about my experience participating in a (paying!) reading of a play adaptation by Adrienne Thompson of Aphra Behn's The Widow Ranter, but something came up that took precedence. Namely, a fellow actor whom I consider to be a friend got news of an illness in his family, and had to leave town unexpectedly. This shouldn't normally affect my life terribly directly; we're not close or constant friends. However, this same actor was appearing in a show in this year's Fringe Festival, a show based in commedia dell'arte traditions. So I was contacted to understudy the role. He left town last Friday, and the show, La Vigilia, opened yesterday.

I didn't go on. Actually, I should say I haven't gone on. My friend came back Sunday, and is going to be around for shows through Friday. Thereafter, it remains a question. He could be fine to perform in every showing throughout the Fringe's erratic scheduling, and I could get the call that I'm needed at any time between Friday and the 23rd. This is the first time I've ever understudied anything, and it's with very short notice. My only advantages have been my experience with commedia tropes, and having read the play about a year ago when the writer emailed it to me in the hopes of collaborating on it. I'm not complaining, mind: these are good advantages. Still and all, it is a new experience, and frankly pretty stressful -- like inviting an actor's nightmare upon myself. I ran through it once with the cast, without proper blocking notes, and that's about it for my practice. The rest is up to me. Perhaps it's needless to say that I'm attending every performance.

It's a unique experience in more ways than one. First there are the little ways. My (friend's) character sings a serenade betwixt acts two and three, which brings to the forefront with a slightly creepy synchronicity my recent musings on my relationship to song. There's also a strange spirit of reminiscence to all this for me, being that I'm unexpectedly reminded of my experiences participating in the Fringe last year, but in a much more detached way. Finally, on the side of smaller, there's a weird feeling of being someone the cast and crew need, but not someone they want. Not that they hold anything against me in any way! I represent the possibility of some unwelcome tidings, though, and on top of that I'm not allowed to help. I can, of course, jump in here and there to lend a hand, but there's some question as to how much I'm actually helping. Take for example the extremely quick set-up and tear-down that has to happen for the Fringe; it all has to happen in fifteen minutes to keep the space on schedule for the following shows. Therefore it would seem natural I should dig in and help, except that if I ever have to act in the show, that'll be one less hand that night and nobody wants to get used to the extra help leading up to that. So some bat me away when I lend a hand, and others wonder at why I'm just sitting there, and I can't blame either faction. It's confusing.

The larger ways in which it's unique have to do with approaching a familiar form with unfamiliar people and, well, approaches. La Vigilia is a very fine, neo-classical script, in my opinion. I like it a lot. Though clearly based in commedia dell'arte tropes, I don't perceive it to be traditional commedia dell'arte because, in my experience, the traditional sort is semi-improvised and contains rather baser character types. The characters in La Vigilia are nobler by far than the archetypes we know best from commedia dell'arte, but this serves the story well and I imagine helps to keep the sympathies of a contemporary American audience more immediate in the theatre (although the recent spate of Apatow comedies prove a lot of success with ignoble characters, at that). Perhaps because of this, the approach of the producing team seems to have been to put the emphasis on the language more than any broad physical characterization or lazzi. The zanni have their moments, of course, but even they are emblematic of this "departure." The male servant is pretty classically Arlecchino, but the zanna seems to be an interesting blend of Francescina and Colombina types, with just a dash of Isabella to smooth the flavor.

In that the script is never departed from, I find myself fascinated with the narrative complexities of the piece, though few outside of my own experience would likely describe the plot as especially complex. Had I directed the play, I would have approached it from a completely different angle, and I'm not convinced this would have been for the good of the final product. Still, I can't help but wonder how my production would have been different. Certainly it would have focused more on the physical images created, and broadened their scope. I think also I would have aimed for a certain Fellini "surreality," similar to what informed Zuppa del Giorno's first show, Noble Aspirations. (Incidentally, in my experience of Fellini and Italy thus far I find absolutely nothing surreal about what the man was portraying. That's just Italy.) This is part of why I believe it may be just as well that I didn't direct this piece. It's quite lyrical, and set in the 1950s -- though I would like to have seen those two things subjected to a bit more absurdity and raw appetite, they may be best left unmolested.

So this week has been largely spent reading (and rereading, and rereading, and rereading) the script and sitting in the audience as this cast tries to pull together the final elements of their production. I sit, in a strange state of anxious relaxation, wondering if I have anything to be worried about after all. Yesterday, the day the show premiered, I caught myself unwillingly entering a familiar state of mind and emotion. It was the same feeling I have all day before an opening that I am acting in, an unpredictable blend of trepidation and enthusiasm in which it is extremely difficult to stay focused on what's in front of me. Inside, I keep wandering toward the theatre, wondering if any time has passed since I last wondered if any time had passed.

Of course, now all I'm wondering is if I'll get off-book and, if I do, whether or not anyone will ever know it.

Industrious

Yesterday I went on my first job routed to me by Dream Weavers Management. I had some hesitation joining up with DW, due largely to my inexperience with management and agentry, but yesterday helped to strengthen my opinion of them. The people at the production studio at which I worked all had good things to say for Laura Kossoff, the president there, and I had a generally positive experience where I worked. The gig was to be part of an industrial--a sort of internal corporate commercial--for a Canon conference; specifically to highlight a technology for creating three-dimensional video and, I believe, modeling. The production studio was ADM Productions, out in Long Island (or, to some, "Long Guylind"). So at 10:30 yesterday morning, I left el day jobo and hopped on the LIRR.

The last time I did an industrial was way, way back in 1998, as a side gig while I worked my very first professional gig, at Theatre West Virginia. That industrial was for a railroad company, CSX, and was pretty loose. A group of us dressed in our jeans and hardhats and walked around the yard all day, figuring out clever poses to point up track safety. The only camera work I've been doing lately has been a part of NYU's film-school directing classes. Plus, I'm a naturally nervous character. So as I took the train, I tried to relax and be ready for whatever was to come. They had no script to send, and all I knew was that they wanted me to bring both my black suit and my brown so they could choose which looked best for their purposes. Other than what I'd be wearing, I had no idea what I'd be doing when I got there (and even what I would be wearing was a fifty-fifty [I guessed wrong on that, by the way]). Breathe, breathe.

Turns out the people at ADM are fun to work with, and very professional to boot. They fed me. They offered to iron my costume. We talked about this and that as they struggled to stay on schedule with the shoot. They didn't, of course, because they had some incredibly complex set-ups to accomplish and they seemed to care a great deal about turning out a good product. I was prepared for this, however. As one of my fellow actors there said, "We get paid to wait on this kind of job; the acting is really just a bonus." So wait we did, in the greenroom and kitchen, and I vainly tried to make interesting conversation and read or memorize line sin good balance. It's an amazingly strange phenomenon, the hurry-up-and-wait atmosphere of a job like that. You're usually hanging out with strangers for hours, ever-ready to spring into compelling action, but with nothing actually to do. I always want to practice acro' moves, but people would think I was crying for attention, and besides, one is usually worried about one's costume.

More surreal was to come, however. When I finally did get into the studio, my job was to pose as a presenter of a . . . er . . . presentation. But not just any presentation! Oh no. An invisible presentation. The projection contained merely the title ("Projected Growth" [kindly control your snickers {after all, I had to}]) and a red background, with the notion that the graphic would be superimposed in post-production, so that it could "pop out" in the same 3-D effect we were all being filmed in. I say "we," because I was giving my presentation to four people seated around a table. They were not actors (that I knew of), just employees of the company who looked professional enough in attire to sit there and have their backs filmed. The fun came when it was time to "act." I knew there would be no sound for this segment, yet the effect from my movement had to be that of someone presenting something. So I did, and my presentation went something like this:

“I suppose you're wondering why I called you all here. Well. As you can see from my display here, I'm talking about projected growth. Not my projected growth, but our projected growth, and by that I don't mean anything dirty. This is a workplace, after all, and we don't talk about dirty things here unless of course we're complaining about how someone else really needs to clean them up. As you can see from the display, our projected growth is very red. We have a lot of growth in the red sector. Actually, I just set this up because it's my color. Red makes me look good. In fact, Larry, I'm going to ask you to follow me around for the rest of the day just so I look good next to you. Next I have to show you all this cartoon of a dog, trying to catch a balloon. Pay particular attention to this, Emily, because there will be a quiz later. Just for you. We need to keep an eye on you, after all. As you can see, the dog just can't get that balloon. He tries and he tries...but...nope, he can't get it. Ah. I could watch this all day. I did watch it for the entire weekend, over and over again. There are no lines in this, of course, because that's a dog, and a balloon, but if there were, if there were lines I bet you I could recite them all back to you, in sequence. Actually, I hope you all carved out at least a couple of hours, because that's how long this is. It's great though. There, he almost...but no! He can't get it!”

So there I was, in my brown suit, exploring the surreality. Fortunately for me, they all thought it was funny, engendering comparisons to Stev(ph)ens Carell and Colbert. As I ranted in a professional tone, I thought, This couldn't be more bizarre. I left my office job to travel a half-hour by train to a studio so I could change from my black suit into a brown one and pretend to be someone like one of my bosses at the office job giving an imaginary presentation with a non-existent projection which, in a matter of days, will all be projected for viewing by a huge group of office workers in suits and 3-D glasses.

We're through the looking glass here, people.

So it was pretty great, as far as I was concerned. I even got a dramatic 3-D close-up in which I extend the remote control for the slide projector at the camera. My hand will loom large in the faces of Canon execs. If that isn't motivation to quit biting my nails, I don't know what is.

Meanwhile, back in the greenroom, I had several discussions with two other actors who were there to get 3-Ded and green-screened. They were interesting. I was very frank about my lack of experience with this sort of gig, and received some very different reactions. One of them, like me, valued stage acting and though he was very experienced with commercial work had virtually no priority for it. He had even been to Italy before, so we had a lot of interesting things to discuss. The other seemed to be devoted to commercial work, and had some trouble understanding my position in the game. She felt that I could be doing print and commercial work all the time, and wondered why I wouldn't. My answer had to do with long-term prospects and needing a steadier source of income than that, which is all perfectly valid and true, and which she accepted.

However, a much more essential answer is that I just never pursued it. Sure, when I first moved to New York I mailed my crappy headshots out every week to Backstage notices for film and commercial auditions, and thought with each student film I worked on that it would lead to more. I never pursued the work, though. I didn't (don't) understand it the way I did stage work, and just left it be. It may be time to learn more about it, though I did convince myself a bit with explaining myself to someone else yesterday. Who needs it? Sure, I made about $200 in a day and it was novel and all, but if it comes along infrequently I can't live on it. Then again, you never know until you try. Then again, it's artificial and irritating. Then again, an office job isn't?

Well, at least in ten years I may be recognized as "that guy who pointed the remote at my brain in that thing I saw." I wonder if he still bites his nails...

Running Away FROM the Circus

This is just one reason why I like my circus to be mostly people.

So Low

Last night was my solo clown debut.

Well, not precisely. I have done a number of solo clown performances in my time. Last night merely marked the first time I did so on an actual stage. Up until this event, my solo clowning was largely busked and/or filmic. In fact, I volunteered for the festival hosting clown and puppet events because I wanted to have a good deadline for adapting this particular solo routine to a stage. Plus I was desperate for work, at the time. Naturally, I completely ignored this opportunity to work on the piece, and found myself panicky all day yesterday, contemplating exactly what I was going to do up there that night.

It went okay, rife with the peaks and valleys I might have expected from a debut work in a nurturing yet unexpectedly intimate environment of strangers. I didn't, of course, expect these variances in my experience. No, I find that when contemplating performance I'm usually surprised by the comparisons between my expectations and the experience. I expect complete victory or total failure; the median is difficult to imagine, the variable completely confounding. This is possibly because the more intense the stage fright or adrenaline, the more apt I am to think in absolutes. Or, it could be that the (utterly erroneous) stereotypical mentality of a struggling actor has infected my imagination deeper than I, er, imagined. In other words, the idea that just one big hit could change everything for me may contribute to the absolutes I contemplate. Either way, the product was, in some respect, just like every other. Some things went over great. Others, not so much.

I have yet to attempt any kind of monodrama, or extended solo performance as such. Outside of a few scattered soliloquies, I'm always acting with other performers. Last night I found a popular axiom to be doubly true and especially so for live silent comedy: When you lose the audience, there's no one to turn to but yourself.

Not so backstage. The worlds of circus, clown and other "gig acts" is a small one anywhere, I'd imagine. That goes double for New York, where you're just as likely to run into your babysitter from age 5 as you are to never see current friends who live just two neighborhoods over. I happened to get ensnared in this show's clutches through an email sent out by one Ms. Jenny Lee Mitchell requesting acts. I know Jenny through Friend Dave (Berent [nee Gochfeld]), whom I know through Friend Heather (whom I know from having worked with her in Zuppa del Giorno), but I also knew Dave as the more male half of The Kourageous Kiplingers, and vaudeville act he did with Friend Rachel (Kramer). Dave and Jenny have also done shows with The Northeast Theatre (which is the home of Zuppa del Giorno). I did one of those with Dave, but not Jenny. BUT, I did do A Lie of the Mind with Jenny's mom, Emily Mitchell, long before I ever met Jenny herself. And finally, who was MCing last night, but the very same clown act, Bambouk, that was recently recommended to me by the good and fine people at Bond Street Theatre, whom I met through working with Cirque Boom (which is also where I met Rachel).

It would seem, after this assault of name-dropping and six-degrees-of-network-makin', that I had all the world backing me up as I prepared for my show. Didn't feel that way, though. Felt very, very alone. Each performers was doing his or her own thing, for the most part, and I was in an advanced state of freak-out. It reminded me of the intense stage fright I felt just before the first show of Noble Aspirations, Zuppa's first production. I stood backstage, the first to enter for that show, and suddenly realized, "I have no script. I HAVE NO SCRIPT! It's just ME out there!" I did all I could to dispel it, and I actually owe a debt of gratitude to one half of Bambouk, Brian Foley, who stood in front of me and asked, "So, could you use some distracting conversation, or are you better staying in the zone?" Thankfully I had the presence of mind to opt for conversation, and it made for smoother passage into the time spent along backstage.

The trouble in adapting the piece to the stage was in taking some of the fun of its original venue(s) -- places where people are relaxing and not necessarily expecting spontaneous fun -- and translating that into a stage setting, with an audience that had no choice but to pay attention. This is a powerfully appealing aspect: choice. It may go a long way toward explaining the historically recent success of cinema over live theatre, in fact. Theatre, in the conventional sense, is a gamble. A movie costs little (comparatively speaking) and can be voluntarily escaped in any of its forms. Walking into a theatre, you know very little about what to expect, and can get subjected to something confusing, unappealing, or just plain ill-executed. And there seems to be no escape. The space I was performing in last night had the advantage of being intimate, with very little audience/performer separation, but that was just about its only similarity to the piazzas I was used to doing the piece in.

What I did to adapt it was very much shaped by having to create an entrance. In the square, you just start acting doofy and see what grabs people, then mold your performance based on feedback and a skeleton. In the theatre, you need to put them at ease, to apply balm to their sense of disorientation at the beginning of any new piece. In public, you grab them, and they tell you where to go next. In the theatre, you have their attention, and then you have to justify it. (Speaking in generalities here, of course; much overlap between the venues.) Needing to create an entrance helped shape my given circumstances. Whereas previously the act was based on the idea of the character as a quasi-homeless, drunk reveler who interrupts a party, last night's incarnation was an awkward fellow escaping a party into the kitchen. This allowed for a less invasive characterization at first, and my hope was to put the audience a bit more at ease. Also, whereas previous incarnations took place amongst relaxed (often inebriated) party-goers, this crowd, at a relatively early show in a theatre, seemed to me more likely to be at the energy of such kitchen-clingers. It also allowed for my using a song I have longed longed to use in a show; it closed with the irascibly awkward "You'll Always Find Me In the Kitchen at Parties," by Jona Lewie.

And it worked fairly well. I would say, all factors considered, I had the audience pretty well on my side throughout. They did best with bits in which I suffered and they weren't threatened. (This would seem natural enough, save for experiences I've had in which the only way you could begin to entertain certain audiences was to mix things up with them.) Keeping things simple, singular, and taking one's time is essential in clown work. The piece suffered the most at times when I got carried away with my energy, racing the audience and only pouring on more fuel if I felt myself losing them.

The scenario is that Lloyd Schlemiel (my noseless [or silent-filmic] clown character) is trying to quietly escape a party. He backs into the kitchen, all the while munching on Cheetos(R) from an orange bowl. Once he's cleared the doorway, he closes it, and the sounds of the party fade out. He breathes a sigh of relief, and raises another Cheeto to his mouth when he suddenly notices the audience. The Cheeto snaps in his hand. He races for the door again, but is too scared to return to the party, so turns to the audience and makes due. From there it proceeds along fairly typical Lecoq lines, with dabblings of silent-film comics thrown in here and there. He adjusts his clothing, thinking the audience will better approve of him. He decides he doesn't like his hat, and trades it for the "bowl" he was snacking from, which proves to be a mistake. The rest of the sequence involves his trying to escape this hat, which just won't leave him be. He tosses it away, and it returns to him. It clings to his head, despite acrobatic endeavors to remove it, and obscures his vision. He finally frees himself from it, but it's changed him into an extrovert. He performs a striptease (only down to undies, mind), puts the hat back on and rejoins the party.

It needs work, even in verbal explanation, but the performance was a tremendous jump forward for me in making discoveries about it. My hope is to break it out in Italy a bit, and play with it there. We can only pray that they sell Cheetos there. Hell: They end in an "o." They probably are Italian.

OMG LOLcats r KILLINZ MAE

Srsly. I can has releef? Frum LOLcats nd all ther kaind?

I feel like such a freaking doof (read: doofus, only less significant). I was generally aware of the LOLcat phenomenon when it began to crystallize into what it is today, but then I forgot about it. I mean, it's pictures of cats, with blocky fonts applied. It will not affect my life. Or so I assumed...

For those of you not in the know, worry not: Wikipedia's got you covered. It includes gems of explanation for the LOLcat phenomenon like a link to the brief Time (get it?) article devoted to them, and paraphrasing their use grammar thusly -- "Common themes include jokes of the form 'Im in ur noun, verb-ing ur related noun.'" It also links me to this interesting wiki-nugget, which helps me to understand why I am so enamored of teh LOLcats. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First I must explain my love-hate relationship.

Everything about teh LOLcats seems engineered to piss me off. (For [nigh endless] examples, go here.) I mean everything.

First of all, it's pictures of cutesy animals, which reminds me utterly of those cat and/or dog and/or other-small-animal mavens one finds in any office of America. You know, she's usually a she, and she has a cubicle covered in pictures of baby ducklings or some such. It just reminds me of porn. Sick, I know, but it does. Those people covet animals like others covet wealth or sex or spiritual fulfillment.

Second, LOLcats are self-generating inside humor, which is just irritating. There's nothing quite so grotesque as when people revel in how "inside" their jokes are. Exclusivity is practically a disqualification from the category of humor, altogether! ("Exclusivity is practically...") Humor is a tool in communication, not exclusion, and though I'm not accusing the LOLcat-erz of intending to do so, they're nevertheless excludin' teh masses. But I lie: A running gag that is largely unappreciated is even more grotesque than a simple inside joke.

Thirdly, the spelling and grammar are intentionally wrong. Do you understand? THE SPELLING AND GRAMMAR ARE INTENTIONALLY WRONG. That is so messed up! I get irate over misplaced apostrophes, and I'm subjected to dialogue superimposed over cat photographs and written out in "texting" language and gobbledy-gook? Holy sack of hammers! I ought to be trying to eradicate all LOLcats and their makers, not writing a 'blog entry about them.

Yet. I love the LOLcats. It's driving me crazy that I can't get their syntax out of my head. They're responsible for a lot of time wastage of late. They are obnoxious, and not remotely cool, and they are inside and ridiculous, and I heart LOLcats.

I'm beginning to understand why, too. In the first, for reasons inexplicable by modern science, I've been wanting a cat lately. I have been an adamant dog person my entire life, and I still prefer dumb-and-loyal animals (I relate to them better), but cats are more appealing now. I don't know. Maybe it's living in the city this long. I want a pet who knows where to poop and how to get there. More significant for me, however, is this use of language in the photos.

Language is simply cool. In general. It rules. Language is fascinating and mysterious to me, and I enjoy anything that plays with it. Correction: Anything that plays with it and contains an interior logic. So people constantly confusing the uses of "take" and "bring" drive me up a wall, and a text message that says "ill talk 2 u later" (You'll talk to me later, or you're ill, and I should bring you soup?) drives me kabonkers. But LOLcats, partly through the profusion of them, have developed a rather complex psychology behind their lunatic ravings. They've even developed a mimic mythology. Stupid? Oui. Ma forse, anche genius.