Tethered: Cell Phones and Perception

Found here.

When I leaned over the toilet to pick up my glasses from the back of it, the stupid, hipster, sideways breast pocket of my hoodie released my iPhone into the drink. Without hesitation (but not without some yelling) I plunged my hand into the toilet, pulled out my phone and plunged it into a jar of rice in the kitchen that had been sitting there almost as if it was prepared for just such an occasion. The Internet - though as-yet lacking in reliable and cohesive commedia dell'arte research material - is awfully good at keeping one informed of the restorative properties of monocot seeds vis-à-vis drowned status symbols.

I won't go into the state of the toilet's bowl when the dive and dunk took place. And you're welcome.

And so now, and in fact for the past >48 hours, my phone has sat idly in a soon-to-be-disposed-of jar of rice on my counter. Wednesday night, or perhaps Thursday morning, I will retrieve it, pick the grains from out its orifices, charge it and see what happens and what will never happen again once it is turned on. It's like an amazing game of chance that I did not wish to play, thrust upon me by eccentric fashion choices and erratic podcast-listening habits.

I'm hardly the first to write about being phone-less for a time, and my experience is not new. I've felt a phantom limb in my right trouser pocket, some wisp of a weighty wafer that occasionally buzzes against my thigh, and then is not there when I go to pat it quiet. I've felt lost, and been nearly literally lost in search of a particular coffee place on my lunch break. I've contacted my nearest and dearest in an email out of which I could not quite keep a semi-panicked tone, alerting them of how they could contact me, and of course all of my Facebook influence has gone into making sure my 600+ "friends" aren't confused by the sudden drop-off in visual media in my timestream.

I've also been reminded of something good, now thirteen years gone.

When I first moved to New York, I bought a pager. This was a half-and-half decision. Half was for want of liquid assets. The other half of my reasoning, however (bolstered as so many of my decisions at the time were by the friction of my then-girlfriend's opposite opinion), was that a cell phone would tie me down and make me a servant to its interruptions. This was, mind you, prior to email push notifications and in-plan SMS messaging, though not prior to the screening delights of caller I.D. It was just the notion of being called to which I objected.

In under three months, I closed my pager account and upgraded to a cell phone. I have never been without one since.

Those of you who have or do not live in an urban environment may not have a full appreciation of my relationship to my cell phone. I've written a little bit before (see 6/19/12) about the metamorphic effects that portable media devices have had on society. We could go on all day about the myriad ways in which these glorious, seductive machines have helped us carve out private space in an environment that would rob us of every inch of personal boundary. We'd need another day for how many ways the same tools have connected us with others regardless of differences in time, geography and even language. Just about anyone, anywhere, who has even the most basic mobile phone can at least appreciate the altered landscape of situations of emergency and plain ol' personal agency. For example, pre-info-phone I used to call my friends with desk jobs and ask them to look things up for me when I was on the go. People with flip phones still do that.

What I forgot, and that of which being phoneless has reminded me, is how it feels to be free. I know that's corny. I fully acknowledge that freedom is too abstract to properly define, much less describe as an emotion or sensation, and that anyway what I'm writing about here is little more than a personal perception. What's definitive, and what shocks me, is that I forgot.

I forgot this feeling, this sensation of being untethered, of stepping out the door - any door - and simply not knowing what might happen. Even happily (well: semi-happily) plugged into my blaring iPod shuffle, I am instinctively more alert, aware from a subconscious place that at any moment I will be called upon to be resourceful for myself. That makes it sound a bit panicked, and I admit to a mild thrill, but what the sensation is more akin to is that of arriving in a new country. Maybe even one in which you don't speak the language. All is slightly more interesting, slightly fuller with possibility.

An example: On my lunch break, I wanted to find a small side table for our nursery (finding Mud coffee was a little side-mission I tacked on to this). This table had to fit some very specific dimensions and criteria, and I wasn't sure where to look, and I didn't think of it while I was set at my computer and had Google at my fingertips. So I walked. I walked a lot, at a good clip, and past and through a variety of places, only half of them planned. I didn't find the table. Instead, I learned about options, narrowed my criteria and had new ideas about how to solve a mundane issue. Most significant - I wasn't bored. Nor was I anxious. I was engaged.

It's ironic how much discussion of engagement is involved when we discuss Internet media and marketing. Subconsciously, I've come to think of "engagement" as a kind of rapt attention, a push-button-get-pellet reflex, as whatever twitch has kept me comin' on back to build a quirky little empire in my Battle Nations app. But real engagement is something different, something more owned than possessing of us, and the ultimate irony is that real engagement has been my artistic focus for over a decade and I FORGOT what it FEELS LIKE.

My argument for the theatre as a relevant - in fact necessary - form of expression in contemporary society is: It is the most accessible one for carrying us from a virtual-experience comfort zone through to actual experience. Like it or not, we experience the majority of our entertainment (and an rapidly increasing portion of our life) through a window. We are protected, anonymous, insulated, with planned and recorded media for which we choose the time and place, brilliantly lit in a clean frame. Live theatre is uniquely designed to utilize this frame - this proscenium - to transport audiences from twitchy, push-button catharsis to actual engagement with stories, issues and communities.

I am not going to give up on-the-go Internet access. Much as I have flirted with quitting Facebook, I don't see that happening any time soon either (though really: gang: we can do all that stuff without their privacy and proprietary bullcrap: I'm just sayin'). What I may do, once this respite from personal technology has passed, is occasionally leave my cell phone at home. I may head out the door to where I do not know.

Many people I know can nurture that sense of freedom and engagement on a daily basis with full access to their technology. (These are often the same people who have no sense of shame about keeping me waiting for ten or more minutes, and who are way more fun at parties.) I can not. I'd suggest you test yourself - wherever you may think you fall on the scale - and see what being untethered teaches you.

Bang! Pow! Zwounds!: Richard III as "Graphic Novel"

Editor's Note: Once again, I'm adapting personal email into 'blog posts. I shall mutlti-task, and you shall dig it. This comes out of a discussion with a director friend of mine who was tasked with considering a production of Richard III based on a graphic-novel approach.

Found here. Grisly remains found here?

So: "a pre-1700's graphic novel story," eh? First of all: Do we mean a graphic novel written and drawn in the "pre-1700s"? A graphic novel set in the "pre-1700s"? And why the "pre-1700s"? Do we set Richard the Three in 1699, or Roman-occupied Ireland, or dare we make it 1485? {Ed.: I've since learned that the particular audience in discussion rejects any Shakespeare set later than that as being too much a departure from historical accuracy. Hilarious.}

But my greater confusion here is what on earth we mean by "graphic novel." That's a little bit like saying, "Let's produce a Richard the Third like a pre-1700s movie story." Graphic novels are a medium about as varied as cinema.

But not everyone knows that, and were I to assume (thereby making an ass out of you and ume) a thing or two, I might assume we mean a sort of highbrow comicbook approach. Somehow. Which is still about as clear as the mud from which one might need a horse in order to extricate oneself.

My assumption however is based on the following facts:

• The most commercially viable and well-known printed graphical storytelling of the prior and current centuries has been "comic books"; and
• "Graphic novels" is a popular term for comic books when you're trying to lend them prestige, or raise people's opinions of them from out of the pulp.

The term "graphic novels" also frequently refers to works that have a little more length or over-arcing story to them than some, but that usage is a little reductive as it implies all "graphic novels" were written in one go (like a novel) when in fact the majority were originally published in a serial manner. Comic books, in other words, then collected into the so-called graphic novel.

So what are we to do with a concept based on highbrow comicbooks? In short (HA HA HA) there are too many different kinds of graphic novels to know what we mean when we use that ill-defined term, and the differences traverse everything from art to layout to content. A few varietals:

• Maus - seminal in raising the reputation of comicbooks; it casts mice as Jews and cats as Nazis in a true story of one family's experience of the Holocaust
• The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen - in a fit of zeitgeist, Frank Miller and Alan Moore both eschew/satirize the bubblegum aesthetic of superhero comics; Miller by taking a classic hero and giving him hard-boiled moral ambiguity, and Moore by taking superhero archetypes and subjecting them to a dystopian environment and socio-political realities
• From Hell - Alan Moore here again, this time writing an exhaustively long "graphic novel" that delves into one possible explanation for the identity of Jack the Ripper
• Sandman - what began as a pitch by Neil Gaiman to revitalize some of DC Comics' forgotten characters evolved into an epic story with a beginning, middle and end that chronicles the king of dreams (and his family: Death, Desire, Despair, Destiny, Destruction and Delirium [formerly Delight]) whilst tying in extensive details from the world's mythology, literature and religion

Ma' humps, ma' humps...

And those are fairly conventional examples, as far as just form goes.

I suppose the thing I can't quite wrap my mind around yet is why exactly to apply this concept to this particular work of Shakespeare's. As I see it, there are other plays of his - even other Histories - that might be better fits. Henry V is a pretty good Superman/superhero analogue. Hell, the Henry VIs have those constant turn-overs that would make pretty interesting structure for exploring "serialized" storytelling on stage. Richard III may be episodic enough for serialized storytelling, if that's the angle, but I can't quite make it work without adding layers.

Recently it has been tremendously popular to adapt graphic novels into movies and, even more recently, television. The Walking Dead, for example, is an on-going serialized story that's perfect for television. But they also adapted Watchmen into a film, which tried to do too much and with so much flash that the vital humanity of the story was lost. Even Ang Lee made a superhero movie with the first Hulk Hollywood blockbuster, which in my opinion is practically a lesson in what elements NOT to take from graphic storytelling when adapting from it.

Is there a better reference? Nope.

When they go wrong, what many adaptions have done is adhered too closely either to the content or the form of graphic storytelling (or both). When a graphic-novel story is transported cross-media, it's an injustice not to re-conceive at least a little. Two Frank Miller comics have been adapted into what most consider to be quite successful movies - his Sin City and 300 - and both with a keen eye on staying loyal to the aesthetic of the source material. I would argue, however, that as graphically similar as these movies are to the artwork from which they came, they are in fact very thoroughly re-imagined into a cinematic landscape. Miller went on to direct his version of The Spirit, which copped Sin City's look and failed miserably, lacking the originality of the other two adaptations.

Graphic novels, or comicbooks, work because of the spaces between the panels and how our minds fill those in. They give you some of the interpretive freedom of books or radio, with more of the visual fireworks of TV or film. It takes a certain amount of mental coding to read them, but that can be learned intuitively, and when a good unity between the words, layout and illustrations can be achieved, the story-telling is enhanced. Simply sliding that on top of a film, the languages do not converse. Movies are all about seeing change, seeing it very closely. Just because one of the steps to creating them involves story-boarding doesn't mean that a medium that utilizes frames and composition will automatically translate. You're still filling in the white spaces. You're still animating the iconic.

When it comes to adapting a live show into a "graphic novel" context, there are a few examples from which to pull, but most of them take a fairly satirical (or lightly tongue-in-cheek) slant and have more to do with traditional superhero comics than more varied graphic storytelling. I was in a production of Stand-Up Tragedy in college for which the director brought the main character's comicbook imagination somewhat to life on stage with enormous puppet cut-outs, but that was for one sequence only and functioned rather more as a simple staging element than as anything functional. Vampire Cowboys here in New York have done many a popular show using comicbook tropes, but these are largely original productions and focus on the combat elements (not a bad notion at least by the end of Richard III). I don't know of any examples specific to only the medium itself - not the characters within them, for example.

So anyway: why Richard III in this context? Perhaps we are thinking of him as a character similar to superheroes like Marvel's X-Men mutants, who are ostracized and persecuted for being different, said difference being what makes them special and powerful? Perhaps Richard's story is episodic enough to remind of serialized story-telling - there is a strong procession of scenes of mounting ambition and stakes. Perhaps we're thinking aesthetically of something that utilizes iconography, or stained-glass windows, both of which comic books owe something to.

Yet in discussing all this, what I'm struck by is a very different idea. Richard III reminds me of nothing so much as the trend in television over the last five years or so for highly successful, critically acclaimed shows to feature a main character who is morally flawed. Don Draper of Mad Men is a philanderer, Walter White of Breaking Bad is someone we've watched become (or simply come into being) a ruthless criminal, Dexter is a fracking serial killer, and a host of other shows have followed suit - Damages, Boss, etc. In other words, tragedy makes for great television. In terms of a contemporary hook for RIII, that's where my mind goes. Those shows are incredibly effective, and we root for some of the worst characters in them the hardest. Did this begin with Tony Soprano, or Richard the III?

I have no ideas, however, about how to invite those influences on a production. That's an entirely other conversation. One we should have soon!

Five Hun Dread: The Sacred & Profane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crack-ting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One-Set Wonders

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

That was then, this is now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...O Hai

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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


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


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


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


Merriest and happiest, one and all.

The Puppeteers: Simulcra & Pareidolia

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

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

• Maybe we're more inclined to pareidolia when we're lonely, or feel great need of some kind.

• What if, instead of seeing faces because of a need, we're seeing them because we in some way recognize an object in front of us in some personal way?

• What if pareidolia leads to a relationship, the way the supposed recognition involved in "love at first sight" can?

 Read the rest here: Simulacra & Pareidolia.

The Puppeteers; or, In Spite of It All

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

Found ovah heeya.

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

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

Marywood on the Green

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ich Bin Ein Scrantonian

The view from inside my Scranton office.

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

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

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

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

The Southampton Writers Conference

I had no idea this thing existed until I was invited by The Ensemble Studio Theatre (thanks entirely to Tom Rowan) to participate as an actor this year. But that's what a lot of my acting career is like, so it's tough for me to judge whether or not I should have heard of it.

Imagine you're at a party where you don't really know anybody. You're supposed to be there, and yet no one would miss you for a moment if you slipped out the door. People are buzzing about, trying to connect with very specific intentions, and tremendous drama and change is unfolding all around you. You, meanwhile, are just sort of holding your arms out, hoping someone will pick up on your invitation to a hug. That, my friends, is an apt metaphor for my experience as a career actor, my general attitude toward parties, and frankly the beginning of my experience here at The Southampton Writers Conference.

It was cool, I don't mind telling you. I am a huge writing nerd, and love excuses to hear writers talk about their work and processes. I've been to another writers' conference twice before, the CVWC in upstate, both times as something of a tourist. I was just a shade closer to being an actual participant this time, working there as an actor for their playwrights, which means I get to attend readings and rub elbows with Emily Mann and - yes - spend a little time cloistered away in my room working on my own playwriting. Pretty sweet, and those strange party feelings always fade eventually (but must they always appear in the first place, galdurnitall?). More on that in a future post, I think.

To sum it all up (because Blogger ate a good three paragraphs that it told me it had saved yesterday [Blogger, you jerk][just kidding love you mean it never change]): social difficulties were surmounted, the quality of work was astounding, and the level of talent of my fellow actors was simply inspiring. I'm not just blowing positive-attitude smoke here. Without dropping names, the actors I got to work with were - across the board - professional, talented and fun. Most all of them were working, many you'd probably recognize, and just about all of them (with the exception of me and I think two others) had some previous association with EST. So in some small way, I checked off a personal goal in getting to work with that theatre (see 11/17/08). I hope, of course, to work with them again someday.

The work itself involved reading two plays twice - Tom's Burning Leaves and Ben Rosenthal's Neptune Kelly - in a cycle in which the first reading gave the playwrights material with which to revise, and the second came after two days' revisions and a brief rehearsal period, and was presented to whomever from the conference wished to attend. It was a good structure, and left us with time to sit in and do readings for Emily Mann's playwriting workshops, and on Saturday night her attendees presented some of their work to the rest of the conference in the form of our performing readings of about five minutes of each playwright's in-class creations. Any time I had spare from this schedule was generally spent in my room mulling over and revising my own much-neglected play-in-progress Hereafter.

(PS and also: Dear Reader, I'm certain that if the occasion arises in which I announce I'm going to once again write a bunch of interconnected scenes and see if after-the-fact they can be melded into a cohesive whole, you will of course come to my apartment, knock on my door and, when I open it, shout "NOT AGAIN," and punch me square in the nose. Hard. Because you love me. Anyway: I'd appreciate it if you could.)

It was interesting to be working on Burning Leaves again, particularly because I felt it was already a rather finished product the last time I performed it in November of 2008. Tom, fortunately, is a much smarter playwright than I, and had already made some significant cuts to the play before I read it again for the conference. In particular, he cut a monologue for my character in which he explains what traumatic series of events led to his fleeing New York. He had gotten feedback suggesting that this was one of the more irresponsible and less admirable things the guy does, sharing the burden of such personal history with his student. I missed it of course - it was a heart-breaking story to tell - but a great edit. In the course of the week Tom did more to streamline the play and adjust the balance of ethics and plot logic between characters, and I felt good about the final reading. I always want to do better, but I felt good. Again: my fellow actors were amazing; just committed and specific and true as all git-out.

Neptune Kelly is a cracker of a script. I had zero experience with this one before they sent it to me, and I have to admit that on first read I flinched a bit from it. It has a combination of earmarks of the kind of material I'm usually not too keen on: highly stylized, allegorical, verbose. Normally this makes for the sort of trying-too-hard off-off-Broadway showcase that's out there to MAKE a STATEMENT. As soon as we got in the room, though, I knew I had let prejudice in on my initial judgment, because the play rocks. It's not as allegorical as it first may seem - for one, it doesn't wrap anything up neatly - and the beauty of its verbose style is that it stems from committed, crisis-filled characters. It's funny, bold and poetic in the least pretentious way, and we had a ball with it. I had only one scene in Neptune Kelly (once again playing a teacher, somehow) but it sort of made up for my lost monologue in Burning Leaves, being an explanatory story for why my character committed and extreme and self-destructive act. I got to make this vaulting little journey from resolution to profound regret over a couple of pages, and in so doing propel another character into direct action, and that's just the kind of smarts and specificity that Ben's working with which allows him to create such a weird-but-true world.

Finally, the presentation of Ms. Mann's students' work was great fun, and surprisingly fulfilling. I've always been a fan of short-form presentations of theatrical work and the way its informality can invite more audience involvement and great spontaneity in the actors' performances, but you often have to take a certain lackluster quality into account for such undertakings. Timing may be off, words may be stumbled over, etc. Such was the quality of the writing and the acting of this little presentation that it lacked no luster. I laughed, I cried, it was better than lots and lots of the fully produced shows I've seen in my life. I was lucky to be a part of it (particularly, extremely lucky, actually, because my scene partner is an amazingly good actor). We had fully-formed, five-minute segments of passion, manipulation, Alzheimer's, shuddering regret and even loving cannibalism. Egad I love theatre.

Perhaps the most uplifting thing to come out of the whole experience for me is that I was asked to return this Friday, to participate in a staged reading of one of the attendee's plays, Wild Animals You Should Know. Thomas Higgins penned the script, and I'm a big fan of it. (Very odd: Thom had a script in The SFOOBSPF, in which I just participated.) It has a lot to do with the Boy Scouts of America, so that's a like a little visit into my childhood, and it is working with some of the same themes as Burning Leaves does. And, somehow, the reading is being directed by Joe Mantello.

So, you know, um: WOW.

Our Best Laid Plans

On Saturday evening, Josh Sohn's short play Laid Plans opened, and closed. The good judges of the The Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival (henceforth, "The SFOOBSPF") elected not to pass our little production on to the final competition performances on the following Sunday. Such crumbs fall from such baked desserts. It's difficult to know exactly what criteria were used in our elimination, particularly without seeing any of the other shows in the week-long celebration of the short play. Best not to contemplate it, then. It's like auditions: Do yer best, accept the mess, and . . . uh . . . wear a dress? But only if you're a woman. Or it's a stage adaptation of Tootsie. But I digress.

The SFOOBSPF was a good experience overall, though certainly brief, and the actual performance was not without incident. Due in part to a malfunctioning headset backstage, the booth started the show before I was all set. I had just about ordered my confusion of costume changes and props backstage when the 14 seconds (yes: 14 seconds exactly) of music that cues the start of the play began. I was supposed to be prepped behind a tormentor off stage right, and instead I was behind the backdrop, still without top hat and spectacles. But a moment of panic, a quick adjustment and all was right with the world again. It was only a slightly inauspicious start to an otherwise solid performance.

I haven't written much on the process of this one, frankly because we had very little time to contemplate. The rehearsal period was very efficient. In fact, it had a little more time built in, but we had to recast one of our cast of three after about a week, which in itself took almost a week, and so: just enough time to pull the strands together. In that time, a lot of my process was occupied by some rather straight-forward decision making. By playing five different characters, I was also the only one who exited the stage, which made me the de facto prop manager and scene changer. Lots of time was spent -- rightly so, I believe -- choosing and managing props and costumes. Yet I am very fond of the characters I got to bring to life in Laid Plans.

The first out, as you may have guessed, was not of our time. The play kicks off with a daughter explaining she was named after William "Wilkie" Collins, and shortly thereafter I entered as the gentleman to play a scene of her mother's discovery of his novel The Woman in White when she was in college. It would have been impossible for me to actually imitate ol' Wilkie in his prime, so the director Kay Long very rightly suggested we play him younger, with a certain self-assurance (let's call it) that would come easily to me. I was disappointed with the loss of a sight gag by shearing him of his beard (and to the last and for naught, I held out for a handlebar mustache) but as it turned out, flourishing my cane and doffing a waistcoat, tails and the aforementioned top hat was enough to knock the audience into some good-natured laughter. The character of WWC was a proud, strutting man of manners, whom I really enjoyed filling out.

The next character to play was the mother's lover from her post-college years in New York, who is of course her daughter's father; Thomas Devine. His costume was essentially an under-dressing of WWC's: off with the hat, spectacles, and coat, and there we has, in vest and bow tie. He had some other things in common with WWC in terms of a certain self-assurance, but I tried to give that a different, more innocent flavor. Plus his flair for the dramatic was unique -- he was an actor, day-jobbing as a waiter. The contrast, too, could be played into his more contemporary, casual demeanor. Mostly, what there was to play with him was his obsessions, particularly with the mother character. I owe Kay thanks here too, as she kept reminding me of the morose side of passionate young actors. It was really for me just revisiting, ever-so-briefly, my 23-year-old self in many ways. In NYC, in love, in way over his head. He jumped around and ran his hands through his hair a lot.

Next up was a rather quick change into Jarvis, possibly my favorite of my characters. He was the high school relationship of the daughter: an overweight, weird-n-shy creative type who started as her friend before they crossed a line. Again, it felt to me rather familiar territory. The change was a pretty quick one. Often I still had Thomas' bow tie and handkerchief in my pockets as I entered the stage having ditched my vest and button-down and tossed on a voluminous hooded sweatshirt. I wish I could have seen a tape of Jarvis. The only changes we made to indicate his weight apart from mention of it in the script were stuffing the front pocket of the hoodie a bit, and my walk. I feel like I remember that walk really well, but it would be good to verify that with a little recorded evidence. Jarvis also drew comics throughout his scene, buried in a little notebook, and I used the occasion to revisit my ill-advised forays into cartooning. He was a confused kid, and that confused kid lives on in us one way or another, I think. Nice to find a use for him.

After Jarvis came my role with the most lines and stage time: Toast. (That's what his friend call him.) Toast is a figure from the daughter's collegiate experience, a fellow she meets at a party. This costume was the most stripped down -- just an American Eagle cap, my undershirt (a band t-shirt for Artist vs. Poet) and my slacks tugged down to about mid-butt level -- but the character probably the most affected. It's maybe a tie between Toast and WWC, but Toast was certainly off-type for yours truly. He enters with a couple of those red party cups, master of the party, at least in his own mind. In a way, we was a combination of the postures of Jarvis and Thomas: chest out, but legs heavy and low to the ground, and all of it utterly relaxed. We always imagined that Toast would get a couple of good laughs, so I mostly concerned myself with playing him believably, not making the funny, or exaggerating. I don't know how well I ultimately did, but he got some gratifying laughs, especially on a couple of lines in which he spoke his inner monologue whilst hitting on the daughter (where's my entirely other actor to voice an inner monologue, huh?).

Finally, after Toast was my most frantic change into Alan Stone, the architect and would-be boyfriend of the mother, a fellow from her recent past. This was the shortest amount of time for a change, and though the change wasn't too drastic (tug up inseam, done v-neck sweater, blazer and glasses) I made it slightly difficult on myself by insisting on combing a little pomade in my hair. He needed that precision. Alan, like Thomas, had no lines. Unlike Thomas, he was very precise and actually completely silent, which reminded me a bit of the simplicity Zuppa del Giorno found working on Silent Lives all those years ago. He came to use chopsticks in his little vignette, which was a lovely way of illustrating his personality (and I managed not to drop the damn things). Upright, logical, "not effusive," Alan turned on his heel and left, and thus endeth my run of five.

After my exeunt, the play has at least a good ten minutes left on it, which I also savored. It is, after all, about the women, and I have savored that and the way the action eventually strips it down to just the two of them ever since I first read Josh's script some year or so ago. The SFOOBSPF didn't favor us, didn't pass us along to eternal salvational fame and renown, but I believe we laid out our case for Josh's script the best we could, which was pretty damn good. Sometimes when the best isn't good enough, it only means it's making way for something better.

"Commence, au festival(s)!"

It seems I can't stay away from festivals. Play festivals, that is (which, sidenote here, should really involve more traditional "festival" elements: streamers, confetti, [more] libidinous excess, etc.). Love Me and the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity have wrapped up - with some very nice houses and a good review, I might add - and I am in rehearsal for another festival with a play called Laid Plans. This one is a part of The Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival (henceforth, "The SFOOBSPF") and is a mere thirty minutes long, which is good, because it's in concert with several other short pieces in its time slot.

The best part about being a part of a festival is how much gets taken care of for you. You have venue and some basic facility provisions, likely some advertising, more appeal for reviewers to make the trip and a certain amount of additional credibility. I don't know how strictly scripts are vetted from one festival to another, but odds are that plays that have to pass any kind of screening at all are likely to be safer bets for an audience than ones produced solely by the playwright. The worst part about being a part of a festival is the following conversation:

"Hey! I'm seeing your show tonight!"

"Hey! I'm pretty sure you aren't!"

"What? Why?"

"We don't have a show tonight."

"But it's Friday."

"Yeah, I know. We have one Sunday."

"Oh; okay. A matinee?"

"Sort of. It starts at 2:00."

"I can do that!"

"A.M."

"Two o'clock in the morning?"

"Yeah. Give or take 15 minutes, of course, given that the show before us has to dismantle their lasers before we can even enter the space to set up."

"Um..."

"Hey, don't worry: You can catch my next production."

"Oh good, cool. When does it run?"

"Saturday, July 17, at 9:00. PM. And maybe the next day, depending on how well we do."

Theatre festivals invariably involve some ridiculously tight and erratic scheduling in order to take full advantage of taking over one or more theatres for a few weeks. This has a certain charm when you have the reputation of one of the Fringe festivals, and even in that case it gets pretty confusing pretty fast, and productions still end up having to oblige seats with butts for some impossibly impractical showtimes. Still, they're fun, and there's something pleasing about being a part of something larger in this way. "Larger still," I should say, since being a part of any production is being a part of something more than oneself. Layers upon layers, people...

I've never participated in The SFOOBSPF before, and am looking forward to discovering how it all works. Planet Connections I found to be rather similar to my two FringeNYC experiences (As Far As We Know and La Vigilia) in terms of practical concerns, though generally more focused in purpose and rather better organized--simply because it is less sprawling than the Fringe. The utterly strange thing is the possibility of performing the play only once. It reminds me of high school productions or, more accurately, elementary school ones. It seems an awful lot of work for one, ultimately rather static performance. On the other hand, the stakes for getting a good show off should be nice and motivating.