REVIEW: Roustabout

ROUSTABOUT
The Great Circus Train Wreck
Written by Jay Torrence
Co-directed by Kristie Koehler and Jay Torrence
Presented by the Neofuturists

I have always been just a little bit in love with the circus folks of the early part of the twentieth century. I love sideshows and the freaks, the clowns (especially the sort of creepy ones), the hyperbole, the smells of popcorn and elephant urine, the tents, the travelling, the short and long con games, the shyster fortune tellers and the hard life of the circus. Perhaps it is the fact that my mother had a genuine wanderlust and as she went from bad husband to bad husband, we travelled, just my mom, sister and I, all over the country - I went to a different school every year until high school and was the perpetual new kid. It is what I loved about being the impresario of WNEP until we had a home and then the luster was tarnished; I'm just now getting some of that back.

But enough of me.

Roustabout is a flawed but ultimately beautiful piece of theater. There are moments in this show that were absolutely translucent and wonderful. I expect to be impressed with a Neofuturist show - I saw Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind as my third show in Chicago, way back in 1989 and haven't been disappointed since. The bar is thus fairly high.

First, let's talk about the flaws so I can end this on a high note and you will be motivated to get off your asses and see it before it closes on October 14.

The framing device of Roustabout is sort of a tongue-in-cheek primer for folks who are experiencing the concepts of Neofuturism for the first time. The best Neofuturists shows employ the meta-theater ideals without banging the drum to loudly. Roustabout bangs the drum so loud, it nearly drowns out the play it is framing. It should be noted that three members of the ensemble and the co-director are all members of Barrel of Monkeys, a blisteringly smart and successful children's theater company in Chicago. This style of over-the-top, winky-winky, screamingly cute and clever performance (the framing device is a plotline that includes the Neofuturists losing their 'cool' in a soccer goal accident and the spirit of Sade (represented by a picture of Kenny Rogers) helping them get it back feels like a really smart fifth grader wrote and directed it) leaves me cold as ice. This style works exceptionally well for the Off Loop hit That's Weird, Grandma, but feels like an unnecessary punch in the throat here.

I expect the cloying feeling of being force fed a pound of sugar from a House Theater show, not a Neofuturist show.

Once past this interminable opening (I'll note that while Rebecca and I sat stone-faced during the first ten minutes, the rest of the audience were cackling like loons), Torrence gets to the meat of his piece - the Circus folks and the tragedy of the train accident and the (sometimes hamfisted) connections between WWI and our current situation in Iraq. It is here where Torrence's voice is uncluttered and he proves to be a storyteller of unique power. The staging is sometimes remarkable (the use of flashlights during the descriptions of the actual accident) and sometimes hysterical (the Avenue Q send up). The multiple messages are potent and, even when spoonfed to the crowd, are both timely and timeless.

Strongest among a very capable and enthusiastic cast is, without peer, Lauren Sharpe - her turn as Didi, the hulahoop girl who wishes herself deformed so that she can be in the sideshow as a freak is nuanced and absolutely heartbreaking. She is the soul of the piece and paves the road to an ending that is as wonderful as it is tragic.

Artists tell lies to expose the truth, create fiction to remind us of our humanity and our potential. I cried my eyes out at the conclusion of Roustabout because Torrence and his cast allowed me to remember how special those freaks, those noble clowns, are.

Absolutely go catch this if you haven't. You're the worse off for missing it.

Friday Roundup - I've Got Blisters on My Fingers

They're Not Even Bashful About Their Intolerance and Stupidity Anymore

“It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people,” he said. “Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israeli’s and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me." -- Sen. Trent Lott

* * *
CORNWALLIS

If you're a frequent reader, you already know that I coach an improv group called Cornwallis.

Just a quick update: these kids are developing skills in a big way. When I started working with them, they were a bit green and their improvisational skills were a bit underutilized. We've been working off and on for the past couple of years (with some other highly qualified coaches in the interim) and, let me tell ya - they're really beginning to rock! They blew it out at the Toronto Improv Festival and rehearsals are fun and productive. I generally find myself laughing hard during sets in Tom's living room and I'm a pretty grim audience.

* * *
The Liberal Media Bias in America?

It's interesting because sometimes the Right Wing whining that the media is bias toward the Left almost convinces me - and then I see shit like this and remember who owns all of the media: multibillionaires.

Duh. Of course these jackasses prefer Republicans to Democrats (not that there's a whole lotta difference) - Dems will at least make these fuckers pay taxes.

So relax, America. Annie Leibowitz has pictures of Angelina Jolie. No one cares about the Taliban in Afghani...

BIAS MEDIA GNOMES SLOWLY CREEP IN:

They're asleep. Now let's see if we can create some more legislation that rolls back the civil rights movement and then we can feel them up in their sleep...



* * *
Come to the Party! Stay for...the Party!

Come Party with us at Ts
To Benefit the production of "No Exit"
Wednesday, October 4 - Starts at 7pm
and continues throughout the night
Pool Tournament, 50/50 Raffle
& Special LiveWire Chicago Shots from the Bar!

* * *
Speaking of The Inability to Leave...

After the rough waters of last week in No Exit rehearsals, things got fucking awesome this week. The work we did over Wednesday and Thursday nights feels really top notch and I'm becoming increasingly proud of the show.

Big kudos to Rebekah Johnson, our spectacular Stage Manager - super professional, highly organized and in complete control but in a relaxed way. She just rocks.

* * *
He Should Fucking Know from Faulty Intelligence

Donald Rumsfeld said today “there was no way to measure if more Islamic extremists were being created than killed in American-led operations in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Reuters reports. “Asked about a U.S. intelligence report that concluded the Iraq war had spread Islamic radicalism, Rumsfeld said intelligence could be faulty and sometimes ‘flat wrong.’“

* * *
DADADabo in LALA Land

My wife, Jen, will be in Santa Monica this weekend, performing as DADA Dabo in MS Garvey's Letters to the President at Bergamot Station.

Garvey has consistently been writing letters to President George W. Bush for six years, expressing his thoughts and concerns on democracy and freedom. These letters serve as the backdrop for this performance art piece. Of the hundreds of letters written, only one letter has received a response...

"Dear Mr. President, Great job. Was wondering if I could have a signed picture of yourself. Sincerely M.S. Garvey." In just a few days after sending off this letter, Garvey's request was granted. In the mail came his very own autographed photo of our president, George W. Bush. Date of post? March 20, 2003 - the very day the U.S. and its allies launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Garvey has Jen come out in full DADA regalia (white face, slicked back hair, and a man's vaudeville style suit) and interact with him and the band as well as perform a series of DADA poems. She's done this a number of times and always blows the LA audience away. My woman is something else, y' know?

* * *
The Weekend

Checking the Neofuturist's Roustabout this weekend with Rebar.

I often feel smarter after one of their shows.

Also, Rebar and I may go see Jackass Number Two which should effectively undo any good we garner from the Neofuturist show.

What the Hell was Sartre Thinking?

Hell is Other People or Not?

Jean Paul Sartre's existentialist play No Exit is a real bitch of a piece. Complex to a maddening degree, the play nonetheless has a great insight on inter-personal politics and is thus not just for the neighborhood philosophy or theater geek. As we have rehearsed the piece, I've continued to read about it as well, working on a personal understanding of what Sartre was driving at with the whole thing.

For the uninitiated, the quick synopsis of the play is as follows:

Three damned souls, Cradeau (originally Garcin), Inez, and Estelle are brought to the same room in hell by a mysterious bellboy. They had all expected medieval torture devices to punish them for eternity, but instead find a plain room. None of them will admit the reason for their damnation: Cradeau says that he was executed for being a pacifist newspaper man, while Estelle insists that a mistake has been made.

Inez however, demands that they all stop lying to themselves and confess to their crimes. She refuses to believe that they all ended up in the room by accident and soon realizes that they have been placed together to become each others' torturers. Ultimately, through a dance of political maneuvering, shifting the seat of power and control from character to character, Cradeau finally loses his shit declaring the famous line "Hell is other people." The three resign themselves to an eternity of self-inflicted torture and the piece ends.

The truly fascinating thing about the piece is the "dance of political maneuvering." Cradeau's realization (Hell is other people) is often interpreted as ironic - Hell is within oneself, the punishment is self inflicted. The infliction comes about, however, through the interaction of other people and the triangular power struggle throughout the play is what is most interesting.

When you get right down to things, power is all about getting what we want, when we want it. Robert Greene wrote a book entitled The 48 Laws of Power that breaks down 48 laws that have been employed by the most powerful men throughout history - I'm working on a long form improvisation using the book as a source of inspiration - and it has been instructional reading it while going through No Exit section by section and discovering the ways each character can shift the control to themselves.

An interesting aspect of Sartre's characters is that, with the exception of Inez, the active pursuit of power is less conscious and more instinctive - both Cradeau and Estelle seem to believe the bullshit they spew to justify their punishments up until the very end, and Cradeau, having fooled himself the longest, is destroyed by Inez' slow stripping away of his artifices.

I think the play is timely as well. In a current state of affairs that includes the transparent quest for power and control by people large and small and a place in history where being American is nearly synonymous with "lying, cheating scumbag," a play that serves up the conclusion "What are you if not your life?" is a nice reminder that, in the end, we all have to live with our choices, so choose wisely. Inez represents the sexual predator that invades MySpace and turns children into objects of lust, Estelle is Susan Smith, murdering her children to avoid responsibility for them, and Cradeau is every reporter in Washington who knows that the Bush administration is corrupt and still prints the GOP Talking Points instead of standing up to the likes of Karl Rove.

There is some comfort in the thought that there is a Hell for these people, but the very concept of a physical place that one's soul is taken to be judged and punished is just a bit too medieval for my tastes. Sartre's Hell is an allegory, and what he seems to say with No Exit fits well with my personal philosophy - you are what you do and Hell is having to live with that fact.

I just would like to believe that some people get exactly what they deserve.

Clinton on FOX

With all the noise about Clinton's FOX appearance on Sunday, I think Stewart sums it up best.

Also, here's the full transcript of the interview.

Bottom line - I love me some Bubba. The man is my Elvis.

Up Shit Creek Without a Paddle

Or Substituting for a Second Grade Class Without a Lesson Plan

I substitute teach as my "day job." More often than not, I teach classes filled with kids ranging from grades 5 through 12. When I was a full time music teacher, I taught 7th and 8th grade (11-13 years old). I like teaching and, believe it or not, I actually like substitute teaching - no papers to grade, flexible days of work, sometimes you even get to teach them something.

Subbing for the younger grades is always more exhausting - you need to be on the ball, hyper-aware of everything going on for six straight hours, the little ones need constant supervision and activity, and the questions of everything from "Can I use the washroom?" to "Why do I have to sit at my desk?" to "He poked my eye - can I hit him back?" are quite literally uninterrupted.

Monday, I subbed for the first class under grade 5 in freakin' years and when I was done for the day, I was absolutely exhausted. The goddamned teacher left no lesson plans and the room was in chaos before a single child entered the fray. The three schedules that I found had conflicting times (was lunch at 10:45AM or 11:15AM? was Art at 11:55AM or did they get Recess at 12:10PM?) and no one in the building had any answers for me. I knew that we had to do Language Arts before lunch and Math after, but as for what the kids had been working on the week before, your guess is as good as mine was.

I culled together some worksheets from some of the random books I found, grabbed a fifth grade kid to go run them off. Of course, she wanted to get out of class to "help me" for the day which I decided against. The kids were, well, they were second graders. Loud, full of energy, constantly at odds with someone who was sitting in the wrong chair or was using the wrong pencil. I'd say that 50% of the morning was spent resolving conflicts that were often forgotten ten seconds after they occurred - toward the end, the sound of me saying "Malik, no one cares if you're the line leader for the washroom, just get in line somewhere or you don't get to pee!" became more common that any empathetic caregiving.

In all honesty, I like working with the little ones once in a while. In the strictest anthropological sense, it is like watching little unfiltered human beings. Young humans have all of the same wants and needs as adults without the ability or experience to either hide them in more respectable cloth or use them to manipulative advantage. Each kid exhibits the need for a sense of order and structure, a need for recognition and praise, a sense of inclusion with the rest of the community, and a deep-seated almost pathological need for fair play and justice.

SECOND GRADER SAYS: "No. We always have a washroom break after lunch! My teacher always does it that way."
THE ADULT SAYS: "Sorry - I'm just stressed out because I might lose my job and I'm in the process of moving."

SECOND GRADER SAYS: "Hey! Mr. Hall! Mr. Hall! (waving hand frantically) MR. HALL! Do you see me!"
THE ADULT SAYS: "Yeah. I relate. One time it happened to me but it was a lot worse! When it happened to me..."

SECOND GRADER SAYS: "They won't let me paint!"
THE ADULT SAYS: "No. I really couldn't have gone the wedding even if I had been invited."

SECOND GRADER SAYS: "That's not fair! You didn't make Tyjuan clean up his mess!"
THE ADULT SAYS: "That's not fair! You didn't make George W. Bush clean up his mess!"

The Slow Death of American Culture

A Brief Timeline

In 1964 the National Endowment for the Arts was conceived as part of President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society." Along with a war on poverty, new education programs, and increased care for the elderly, the Great Society would, Johnson proclaimed, provide money and expertise to "encourage the development and growth of the arts throughout the nation." In 1965, Congress created the National Endowment for the Arts. Its mission was to "foster the excellence, diversity, and vitality of the arts in the United States."

In April of 1989, the National Endowment for the Arts got hit with a nuclear missile.

A letter from the American Family Foundation of Tupelo, Mississippi, complaining to the members of the National Council on the Arts about a grant, in support of a gross offense to the Christian religion. The offense? Andres Serrano's Piss Christ. For his work, Serrano had received $20,000.00 and the letter set off a series of controversies that lead to the eventual castration of federal funding for the arts in the United States.

The 1990 exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe's The Perfect Moment show (which included seven sadomasochistic portraits) in Cincinnati resulted in the unsuccessful prosecution of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and its director Dennis Barrie on charges of "pandering obscenity".

In 1992, the NEA Four (Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes) were denied grants for performance art, on the basis that the proposed work (including Finley's proclivity to smear chocolate over her naked body) was considered profane and sacrilegious. They sued and were awarded the grants in 1993 which ultimately resulted in the NEA, under pressure from Congress, ceasing to fund individual artists.

As we sit here, smack dab in the beginnings of the 21st century, the ripple effect of these actions is still apparent. As a character in the recent premiere of Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip declares, "The war between art and commerce has always been there, but frankly art is getting its ass kicked."

In February of 2004, Janet Jackson flashed her right breast on national television during the Superbowl. Through early October, 99.9 percent of indecency complaints were brought by the Parents Television Council, according to the FCC analysis. The PTC was founded by L. Brent Bozell III, who, in addition to being the chief fundraiser for Pat Buchanan's unsuccessful presidential campaign, is the nephew of William F. Buckley, and since 1996 has been instrumental in the fight to eradicate the Public Broadcasting System.

In March of 2004, National Public Radio was fined $6 million for repeated mentions of Democratic candidate John Kerry. In a "Morning Edition" broadcast on March 19, NPR news anchor Bob Edwards used the name twelve times in the course of a half-hour. A complaint was filed with the FCC alleging that "John Kerry is an obscenity and an offense to America." Apparently, the FCC agreed.

In October of 2004, federal regulators proposed a record indecency fine of nearly $1.2 million Tuesday against Fox Broadcasting Co. for an episode of its reality series "Married by America" that included graphic scenes from bachelor and bachelorette parties.

Thus is the environment that artists are encouraged to create.

Experimental - What Does That Mean?

Much like the Masscult co-opting of terms like "alternative," "independent,' and even "innovative," the term "experimental" in regards to theater has become muddied by marketing gurus both large and small. For most Americans visions of bullwhips protruding from asses, crucifixes in urine, and pretentious Germans in unitards spring to mind when approached with the term. Given the state of most live theater, who can blame them - the term is so ill-defined by the artists and arts journalists that the most lauded or vilified definition is bound to stick.

In speaking with theater artists, "experimental" can mean everything from setting Hamlet in the 1980's business world to the use of improvised, interactive environments to merely saying "fuck" a lot. Many assume that absurdist and surrealist techniques equate experimental until it is considered that these techniques were begun in the first half of the last century. In many ways, the "experimental" theater scene in Chicago has become the very definition of Peter Brook's Deadly Theatre, that is it uses "old formulae, old methods, old jokes, old effects; stock beginnings to scenes, stock ends..." and appeals primarily to an audience who come to the show to feel that they are in the elite, cultured part of society simply for showing up.

In the scientific method, the experiment is a cornerstone in the empirical approach to acquiring deeper knowledge about the physical world. For the theater, we can then surmise, the experiment is a cornerstone in the empirical approach to acquiring deeper knowledge about the theatrical world and that, without experimentation, we are doomed to be stuck in the stagnant swamp of the archaic. True theatrical experimentation must therefore strip away convention and attempt to ascertain new results, must therefore seek deeper knowledge, must therefore attempt to create a fresh and unique experience for both artist and audience.

It's a difficult concept to accept, the stripping away of all convention and building a piece from the ground up, so it isn't a huge surprise that so few do it. There isn't any money in experimenting, so what's the fucking point, eh?

It Boils Down to Commerce and Fear

When I was in high school, Ronald Reagan equated those not winning in business with universal losers. Thus began my generation's obsession with winning the commercial wars fought on a daily basis with little regard for the consequences. We, seemingly without irony, view those theaters that are commercially successful as somehow being winners and those less so as being losers. This view, combined with the culture of outrage with those things that challenge and rebel against tradition, has created an institutionalized timidity in the theater artists of today.

The culture of the nonprofit theater gently suggests conformity over diversity - if Victory Goodwolf Theatre gets $500,000 per year in grants, then it follows that if artists copy the styles and artistic choices of Victory Goodwolf Theatre, the free money will begin to flow downhill. The culture of most arts journalism likewise suggests artistic safety over risks - if a major publication features Looking Lane Theatre in article after article, then it follows that if artists copy the styles and artistic choices of Looking Lane Theatre, the free ink will begin to flow downhill, as well. This sad trend continues until the only diversity in the artistic choices available are narrowed down to the intimacy of the space and the size of the budget. Simply put, the current state of affairs leads artists to live in fear of being left out of the game if they don't "wise up" and do some Neil Simon or Henrik Ibsen.

This isn't a new thing, though. The fearmongering didn't start with the regime of George W. Bush - traditionalists of all stripes have used fear to quash new ideas and free thinking for all of recorded history. The traveling troupes of actors in the Middle Ages were required to perform only morality plays derived from the Bible or be branded as heretics and burned alive. The fear having no health insurance, of having no sense of financial security, of being sued or shut down or arrested has slowly transformed our artistic community into a group of sheep, cautiously toeing the line of established conventions and popular expectations, waiting to be rewarded for mediocre work disguised as "cutting edge."

In truth, the vast majority of live American theater is no different than when Lincoln saw (most of) Our American Cousin in 1865. It looks the same, sounds the same, and creates the same dull, braindead effect on its audience. There are exceptions, of course. Groups like the Wooster Group, Neofuturists, Curious Theatre Branch, 500 Clown, Akropolis Performance Lab, and Theatre of the Two Headed Calf (as just a few examples) consistently break the rules in order to expose the flaws in conventional theater and are regularly doing our research and development for us. Even with these groups the theater basically remains an anachronistic experience and collectively draws less than a season of Fear Factor.

Without experimentation, and constant experimentation at that, live theater is destined to rest on the same unchanging plateau as dirigibles, rotary telephones, and feather quills - antiques of a simpler time to be admired for their quaint reminders of the past.

What to Do?

Well, simple.

Experiment.

Certainly spend time reading published plays - you need to know the conventions before you break them. The reason so many in the theatrical community myopically believe that Beckett and Brecht are 'experimental/edgy/cutting edge' stems from a lack of self education which is caused by a basic lack of curiosity. Read new plays as well - there are thousands of playwrights who have remained unpublished and unproduced. Weed through them and find the ones that challenge the form, the content, and the structure of your inherent expectations of what theater should be.

Go see those genuinely experimenting. Instead of spending $180 to see three megahits at the big theaters because there are stars in them or the production design is overwhelming, see one of those shows and six shows that are couched in the dark corners of your city.

When producing, directing, or acting in something off the beaten track, commit to its excellence. Focus your time and energy into the projects you participate in. I understand the lust for more, the need for right now but in order for any experiment to fully realize its potential, it needs the full attention of those experimenting.

Be inspired by other mediums. Live theater has taken it as a given that inspiration from television, film, and literature is the way to go. Look for inspiration in music, in sculpture, in architecture, in poetry, in graphic design, in graphic novels, in the manufacturing of plastic goods, in police transcripts, in black light posters, in gardening, in the people on the bus, in the 213 business cards tacked on the wall in a bar. Expand the horizon of what inspires your art.

Look for alternative methods of presentation. Be creative about staging outside of the norm.

Break the law. Challenge those who desperately want the status quo to continue, unabated.

Simply open up your narrow view of what can be by seeing what isn't being done and doing it.

Ignore those who say, "That's been done before and it wasn't good." Make it good. Make it great. Make it inspiring.

I often tell folks in my producing class that if you are going to open a store on a corner where there are three coffee shops on the other three corners - don't open a fucking coffee shop! Open a hat store, or a store that sells paper products, or a reading room. Anything but a coffee shop. I mean, there's nothing wrong with a coffee shop - I love coffee - but if the only option on the corners are coffee shops, it's a guarantee most folks will patronize the one with the flashiest sign, the most advertising, and the cleanest restrooms.

Two Shows in One Night

DOUBLE REVIEW
The Vietnamization of New Jersey presented by Chemically Imbalanced Comedy
and
Drag it Up presented by Rogue Theater

I'm not sure if it was the fact that I was so overwhelmingly pissed off last night or if my day was simply that good or what, but I saw two shows last night that I had mixed expectations for and was pleasantly surprised in both cases. I mean, who put the fucking feel good juice in my coffee?

* * *
The Vietnamization of New Jersey

Couple of things to know:

A. I'm not particularly the greatest fan of Christopher Durang's work. Most of it feels like an extended SNL skit (but one from the original cast, so there is that). I'm constantly surprised that the 'Land Shark' or Fred Garvin - Male Prostitute don't just pop up in his plays. His characters are often two dimensional (some even one dimensional) and his style of satirical farce is like eating an all garlic and onion pizza.

B. Farce. I fucking hate farce. Hate it.

C. The Vietnamization of New Jersey was written in 1976. It's a nostalgia piece that hasn't particularly aged well - spoofing the nuclear family of the fifties is tired schtick, racial stereotypes are so much more brutally and effectively skewered by Dave Chappelle (remember the Nigger Family and the blind black Klan member?) than Durang, and Nixon jokes went out of vogue with Rich Little.

That said, Dave Whalley's production was well directed and enthusiastically performed. The first few minutes, I was feeling annoyed for all of the above reasons and soon after it started, I found myself engaged and, with a few exceptions, enjoying the piece thoroughly. The cast was completely committed to the broad caricatures they were playing (both Angie McMahon and Matt Hendricks, as Ozzie Ann/Harry, were standouts) and the sound design was perfect. Whalley's direction was pitch-perfect and he managed what could've been an awful evening of "MUG Theater" well. Aside from Woody Allen's God (which I can't be objective about because I directed it), this was the best thing I've seen from CiC.

Most importantly, this play is about something. It's about something important. There isn't nearly enough of that going on.

* * *
Drag it Up

OK.

A. Late night improv almost always sucks. I'd rather sit through several hours of farce than bad improv.

B. Improv with gimmicks attached (Wig Prov, Disabled Prov, Disco Prov) is the lowest form of the improv evolutionary chain - they are usually employed to dazzle the audience from realizing how shitty the actual improv is.

C. I 'm not a big fan of drag shows. Most are just ugly men dressed up and that ain't talent or skill. I can dress in drag but it ain't pretty. As I've said about some of the burlesque shows in town, just because you can dance naked in front of people, doesn't mean you should.

That said, damned if I didn't enjoy Drag it Up. First is the excellent little space that is the Rogue Theater. Cozy, classy, clean - the lobby is bigger than the stage and resembles an artsy reading room. Great venue - kudos to the folks at Rogue - their hard work pays off in spades. Second, in spite of the fact that only two of the performers in the cast of five had anything resembling actual improvisational skill ( Meredith Melville, who directs and performs and my man, Henri Dugas, filling in this weekend were both quite good- that's Henri pictured, btw), the 45 minutes flew by. Most of the scenework was abysmal and the singing even worse, but for some reason, the damned thing was entertaining.

They've saddled themselves with two gimmicks - everyone in drag, including the very competent bass player, and they periodically break into song. Combined with the suggestions (secrets that the audience writes on paper ahead of time), the less than stellar scenework is nearly forgotten.

* * *
Talk About a Great Cap to the Evening

I got home and got to watch Keith Olberman's interview of President Bill Clinton. Fucking A.

Friday Roundup of Bits and Pieces

The Concept of YesAnd *

In improvisation, we have at the core of its teaching the concept of "Yes and." This core lesson indicates that to be successful onstage, one must accept the choices of your partner without judgment and 'heighten' the choices of your partner with choices that add to your partner's choices. I find that this technique not only works for improvisation but for all theatrical work in general.

I believe the most difficult aspect of "Yes and..." is the elimination of judging the choices of other actors.

I have worked with actors who, in an effort to control the scene, will insist that any choice that doesn't fit within his/her conceptions of the scene is a poor choice rather than rely on honest reaction to whatever choices are presented. In those situations, my response as an actor is most often to 'roll with the punches' and work within the ensemble - it is, after all, about the show rather than about me, about the overall performance rather than my own performance. I am the type of actor that worries very little about 'motivation' or whether or not my character would or would not do something - the director says "Try playing it this way" and it's my job to, as Tim Gunn on Project Runway suggests, 'make it work.'

The line is crossed, however, when another actor takes it upon him or herself to attempt to 'school' or direct me from within the scene. The arrogance required to make such a move is surprising and, at least for me, unacceptable. In fact, such a move often provokes the exact opposite of the desired response - it simply pisses me off. As an actor, I take my direction from...the director, what do you know?

This happened last night in rehearsal for No Exit and it brought to my mind (after the blind fury subsided to merely a really pissed off state) the differences between how actors approach working together on a play. As artists, we all bring our baggage with us and included in that baggage is a sense of insecurity about our own performance and a determination to 'make good' on the contract given to perform at the top of our intelligence - in a nutshell, we all want to do a good job and learn from each other to ensure that those dropping their hard earned money walk away pleased with their purchase.

Over the years, I've developed a flexible but fairly specific set of rules that I operate by when working the scene:

• The director is in charge.
• Take care of your own performance.
• Show up on time, learn your lines and blocking and be open to changes of interpretation throughout.

I doubt that any actor would find fault with these simple premises. The difficulty is that theater is a collaborative artform and when you put together an ensemble of actors who have incompatible styles the potential for friction becomes an inclusive factor. It's really not that different from a 'regular' work environment - there are some who make the office a place you look forward to and some who make it a complete pain in the ass.

Over at the GreyZelda blog, Rebecca posted The 14 Artistic Networking Skills:

5. Who died and made you king?
Nobody likes to hear a scolding "shhhh!" from another actor. Let adminishing the parties involved be handled by the stage manager or director. If they aren't present, remember that you catch more flies with honey, and be diplomatic.

6. Who died and made you Elia Kazan?
Never, ever, ever, ever, ever direct another actor in your show.

I have, as far as I can tell, four levels of anger: defensive, condescending, yelling and screaming, and 'don't touch me or you're losing that hand." If you want me at DEFCON 1, try to direct me from within the scene. I'll respond "Yes, and...I'll sucker punch you in the throat if you pull that again."

I suppose I'm not a very high class corpse, huh? What are you gonna do - that's the Chicago way.

* the above has been left intentionally vague and is simply an angry white guy venting some spleen...

* * *
Does the End Really Justify the Means?

We invaded Iraq to defuse Saddam's stockpile of WNDs. Oops. That was bullshit. We invaded to head off and eliminate terrorists. More bullshit. Uh...how about because Saddam was a monster and we want to liberate the Iraqi people and improve their lives? Nope.

Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein, with militias, terrorist groups and government forces disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Thursday.

Chavez might be batshit crazy but in the Good vs. Evil perspective, the US has become the fucking Death Star.

Make sure you are registered to vote.

* * *
A Party to Die For

Come Party with us at Ts
To Benefit the production of "No Exit"
Wednesday, October 4 - Starts at 7pm
and continues throughout the night
Pool Tournament, 50/50 Raffle
& Special LiveWire Chicago Shots from the Bar!

* * *
Does Advertising Work?

In Slate (props to Butts in The Seats for the heads up) a review of yet another new book on marketing is posted:

...an advertising message heard three different times in a single medium (for example, a television commercial you see three times) will be far less effective than a message experienced one time apiece in three different media (for example, as a TV commercial, then as a print ad, and then as an online banner ad). The numbers prove beyond doubt that this "surround-sound" approach is a winner.

* * *
Shows

Tonight I'll be attending performances of CiC's prodiction of THE VIETNAMIZATION OF NEW JERSEY by Christopher Durang followed by Rogue Theater's Drag it Up (an improvised drag rock show) - Henri is dressing up and sitting in tonight and I wouldn't miss it for the world.

* * *
...by the way, a quick Happy Birthday to Bilal today!

Like Winning the Lotto

A Bunch of Crybabies?

Garrett over at The Playgoer, recently posted and article concerning the trend of playwrights giving up live theater to write for television. I found this (anonymous) comment interesting:

Wanna know how much you get for a first novel, unless you're super duper lucky?

Wanna know how much contemporary composers get?

Poets?

Thousands and thousands and thousands of fiction writers, composers, painters, poets, etc, create work throughout their lives and find a way to live decently by either teaching or having another job.

They do not abandon their art form because their art forms cannot inherently provide them with enough money to live.

They do not whine, complain, cry, and lament this fact.

They do good work. Consistently.

Not everyone needs to make $400,000 a year by pleasing corporate advertisers and attracting lucrative 18-34 demographic. Let the pro-TV people now allow their voices to blaze through cyberspace, claiming how brilliant TV is and how bad the theatre is etc etc.

I'm tired of this. Artists care about art more than wealth. Sometimes you can't have both. The world is burning. Make your choice about how much you need but don't go denigrating what you left behind for not providing you with it.

What a bunch of crybabies.

I think anyone who actually makes a full-time living creating art of any stripe qualifies as "super duper lucky." In discussing it last night with the folks from No Exit (which is going very nicely - thanks for asking) one conclusion was that theater people require a more disciplined and professional approach to succeed, even on the no-pay level, than the poet, painter, or writer. This is due in large part that, even in it's most stripped down form, theater is a collaborative art and the collective creation requires more focus than the individual one. But does that mean we have some right to be paid a living wage - or simply more than other artists?

The fact is that theater (or any of the 'higher' arts) do not appeal to the masscult like television or film do. When one considers that more people in one sitting see an episode of a shitty sitcom like Two and a Half Men than will see every show in Chicago for a month combined then it is flat out ludicrous to assert that there be some equity in pay for the actors, writers and directors.

On the other hand, most theater folk I involve myself with don't spend a whole lot of time whining or complaining about this - it is a reality and an acknowledged fact that none of us is actually going to make a lot of money working in live theater. Most Chicago actors I know provide bread on the table by working a day job, teaching, or working in television via commercial work.

Every actor, director, writer, and designer harbors the dream of one day making a living in live theater, but in the same way that most regular lotto players dream of winning the big jackpot. To paraphrase a line from A League of Their Own, "What're you - crying? There's no crying. There's no crying in theater!"

Jesus Camp

Where's Our Banksy?

More Fun with Banksy

Painting an elephant to represent world poverty? I'm not sure I get it, but that's OK.

An exhibition by headline-grabbing UK artist Banksy has been criticised for including a live painted elephant.

The animal, called Tai, was covered in pink and gold paint and placed in a mocked-up house to represent how world poverty is widely ignored.

Officials from the Los Angeles Animal Services Department told the Associated Press they would never again issue permits for such a "frivolous" purpose.

* * *

After publishing the column on experimental theater, I've found myself in a number of conversations with actors, directors and playwrights locally about the subject. What is most interesting is how little curiosity folks in the Chicago theater scene have for theater outside of their own conventional experience.

"I prefer the classical repertoire. Things like what you're talking about aren't really my thing."
"I remember in college, we had to do this thing in the aisles, interacting with the audience..."
"You mean like Brecht or something?"

Often, a disinterested glaze goes up into the eyes as we cross out of the boundary of what they're used to talking about and into a truly experimental concept and I find out what they're really interested in - their next gig, their next opportunity.

And I begin to see the problem.

In the circle that I most often hang with, the discussions are like old school political debates, artists bandying words like swords and constantly upping the ante in the conversation. There is a sense of excitement in the room when we talk about a piece that involves DADAists in front of Daley Plaza with a sign saying "When 50 people Have Gathered - Something will Happen." Sitting in my apartment with my wife can come off as a seminar if we're in the mood to discuss art. As I continue to spread myself out to other groups, other organizations, other message boards even, I find that even bringing out the topic of experimental theater is met with an almost apathetic lack of interest.

This is not to say that this is always the case. As I've been involved in other areas in the past months, there have been folks who seem to have something to contribute, at least to the dialogue, and some who are simply young and excited about being included in the dialogue at all.

But to the problem. It is the same problem inflicting film and TV - there is no money in the experimental.

I look at experimental theater as the R&D department of a pharmaceutical company. Merck has to have some proprietary ownership of new drugs they develop in order to recoup some of the cost it took to create them - there is an entire budget strand dedicated to the gamble of some pharmaceutical genius "coming up" with the new drug designed to replace more of your natural coping skills or give you a seven hour erection. In theater, there is no subsidy for the experimental and those with the money in hand to be able to afford to experiment, don't. The gamble isn't even attempted.

Simply put, and in keeping with the above analogy, the latest drug on the theater market is aspirin. Our R&D isn't doing either research or development. We laud Steppenwolf for recently doing a whole season of new works. Wow! A whole fucking season of new plays!? Unheard of! Never mind that the new plays look and sound exactly like the old plays and cover essentially the same artistic ground - they were new motherfucking plays! Break out the champagne, boys!

Instead of applauding ourselves as 'the new center of the theater world,' how about we Chicagoans take advantage of the fertile theatrical atmosphere we have and push the envelope a bit?

Where is our Chicago based theatrical Banksy?

Heads Up!

Indoctrinating Zealotry

Wonder how the end of the world is going to come about? Check this.

An in-your-face documentary out this weekend is raising eyebrows, raising hackles and raising questions about evangelizing to young people.

Speaking in tongues, weeping for salvation, praying for an end to abortion and worshipping a picture of President Bush — these are some of the activities at Pastor Becky Fischer's Bible camp in North Dakota, "Kids on Fire," subject of the provocative new documentary, "Jesus Camp."

"I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Palestine, Pakistan and all those different places," Fisher said. "Because, excuse me, we have the truth."

"A lot of people die for God," one camper said, "and they're not afraid."

For AWG readers who sit in their living rooms, shaking their heads when they hear of Muslim terrorists blowing themselves up to become martyrs and receive virgins in Allah's version of a McDonald's Playland, here's your answer: they get them young, when kids will fucking believe anything.

Now, I have no criticism for the film and I have no doubt that I will see it before commenting on it. That written, let's chat a bit about the concepts behind the camp.

Hitler did it in the schools of Germany. Mao Zedong used comic books to spread the word of the beauties of his particular communist dictatorship. David Koresh and Charles Manson worked this sort of magic as well. White Supremacists indoctrinate their children all the time (anyone remember Prussian Blue?).

So there isn't anything new here. This type of brainwashing is as common as kids believing in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and Reaganomics. No reason to become 'outraged' or 'offended.' The thing is, with all the Bush-screed going on about the 'Islamofascists' and their hatred of our way of life, their religious intolerance and need to control their population with fear and violence, it strikes me that these kids are being taught to be just as filled with hate and intolerance as their Middle Eastern brethren.

On the other hand, perhaps this is an opportunity to 'thin the herd' of our most gullible citizens, yes? Perhaps, if we are so hellbent on destroying anyone whose religion isn't the Christian-type, then raising the children of the inbred and superstitious to be 'warriors' is exactly what we should be doing. Let them get to be a bit older and ship them overseas to "praise the Lord and pass the hand grenades." At least that would mean that the poor blacks would get a break in the cannon fodder queue.

I'm not on the attack on Christianity, here. There are plenty of people who believe in the saving grace of the blood Christ that aren't insane or stupid, as there are plenty of people who believe the teachings of Muhammad, Buddha, and Joseph Smith who aren't sinister or batshit crazy. It's one of the basic tenets of the country, this thing called freedom of religion.

It's too bad that Pastor Becky Fischer has decided to take the teachings of a kind and gentle carpenter and turn the little children he blessed into psychos for God. It is likewise a bit scary to envision that these kids might grow up and become the guaranteed doom of all mankind, the equivalent of the crazy religious society with all the money and nuclear weapons. An Arab kid with a strap-on bomb and a bike is one thing; a guy from North Dakota who has access to a missile silo is another.

* * *

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Aaron Sorkin won my heart with A Few Good Men (I saw the play first, then the movie). After getting a bittersweet taste of the Hollywood machine, he churned out the excellent but under-rated Sports Night, a smart, acerbic look at sports broadcasting with a stomach full of bile in regards to television in general.

Then came The West Wing, the holy motherlode of liberal wet dreams, the idealistic, intelligent, playing to the top of its intelligence, filled with eccentric but unflaggingly loyal characters, network television drama set in the White House of a President that was just too good to be true. When I watched The West Wing, I wanted, I needed Scott McClellan to be like C. J. Craig in spite of his obvious boobery. Jen & I own the first five seasons of TWW on DVD and I still get a thrill hearing the opening theme.

And last night came the NBC debut of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Sorkin is back to his love/hate relationship with television, complete with a Judd Hirsch send up of Howard Beale in Network who is as "mad as hell" that the network's flagship sketch comedy show, along with all of TV, has become dumbed down by the Religious Right and those most in need of a satiric drubbing. Make no mistake, the creators can distance themselves from the show within the show being just like SNL, but there is no doubt from the opening 'sketch' of a Bush impersonator to the subbing in of an unfunny character sketch (Peripheral Man) that this is a smack in the face to Lorne Michaels.

Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry are the Sorkin surrogates, dumped from the show when the Republicans came to power and asked to 'save the show' in its demise, and both Sarah Paulson (who plays an Evangelical Christian cast member of the fictional late night satire) and Amanda Peet (as the young, pretty network head honcho) play two of the strongest, smartest, and most complicated women characters in TV, which is par for the coursee for Sorkin.

TiVo it, catch it on Mondays, whatever. Do yourself the favor, watch it.

Experimentation in Theater

Are You Creating as if Your Life Depended On It?

Years ago, I remember seeing an older Irish actor/director sitting in at the bar of the old TurnAround Theater (which became ComedySportz, WNEP, and is now The Playground) using the phone, cold calling potential audience members. He was in the United States doing a series of Brian Friel plays, including Faith Healer which was what was running at the time. I imposed myself on him, interrupting him in the middle of his task and asked what he was doing.

"Drumming up business."
"Do you really think calling random strangers is going to get them to come see the show?" I asked.
"I spent the last week passing out postcards for - I dunno - seven or so hours a day. Ran out of postcards."
"But do you really think calling people will work?"
"It has to. Or I starve, eh?" And he laughed.

I was, and am, impressed by that sense of purpose. "It has to. Or I starve." People must come or my survival is in question. How many of us as artists bother to approach our work with that sort of dedication? With that kind of focus?

Without that sense of urgency, it makes sense that so much of our theater is merely recreation of the same - the rehashing of classics that have proved over time their ability to draw an audience. After all, you don't have to be doing even a competent production of"Hamlet" or "The Music Man" to almost be guaranteed an audience, so why try anything new? Why push out of the cocoon and actively create theater when you can get your narcissistic jones off by performing yet another production of The Odd Couple?

I suggest that, while other forms of art have evolved, American theater still looks and sounds almost exactly as it did almost 200 years ago, with exceptions for heightened sexuality and language, of course. The experience of the playgoer is old fashioned and dull; the look and feel of live theater in America is antique. There are too few risks being taken and too few theatrical scientists expanding the artistic boundaries and because of that lack of the 'new', American theater is becoming one with opera and ballet, an esoteric expression for enthusiasts only.

From Sam Shepard's introduction to The Unseen Hand And Other Plays:

There was never a sense, in all of this, of evolving a style or moving on to a bigger, longer, "more important" form. Each play had a distinct life of its own and seemed totally self-contained within its one-act structure. Partly, this had to do with the immediacy of the off-off-Broadway situation. Anybody could get his or her piece performed, almost any time. If there wasn't a slot open at one of the cafe theaters or in the churches, you could at least pool together some actors and have a reading.

You could go into full-scale rehearsals with nothing more than an idea or half a page of written text. It was a playwright's heaven. Experimentation was the lifeblood not only of the playwright but also of actors, directors, and even of producers and critics. The concept of "audience" was diametrically opposed to the commercial marketplace. The only impulse was to make living, vital theater which spoke to the moment. And the moment, back then in the mid-sixties, was seething with a radical shift of the American psyche.

In Chicago, we have what Shepard recollects - a nearly unlimited ability to put up new work. In New York, it costs thousands just rent a hall - here we have a broader range of options, from the expensive and opulent to the cheap and easy.

"You could go into full-scale rehearsals with nothing more than an idea or half a page of written text." Yeah. That's Chicago.

We are also in a radical shift of the American psyche - the struggle between the theocrats and the progressives isn't as heated as those of the Viet Nam war, but the rhetoric is as hostile. Redefining our country's mission and place on the globe has become a national obsession.

"Experimentation was the lifeblood not only of the playwright but also of actors, directors, and even of producers and critics."

Ah. That's what is missing in a 'then and now' sort of comparison. That and the lack of urgency in the creation (it has to work or I starve).

Where is the experimental theater - that which pushes the boundaries of the art form and spits in the face of convention?

Isaac writes:

So what does it actually mean to be experimental? Perhaps we need to stop defining this term as a genre (much like how we need to stop defining "political theater" as a genre) and start using it to more accurately describe work where a company is experimenting, either with the form, or within the context of their own body of work. So, for example, Zomboid actually is, within the confines of discussion of Foreman's work, experimental. Within larger theater practice, it's not. Similarly, the most experimental thing the SITI Company could do right now (for them) would probably be naturalism, but it wouldn't be experimental in terms of broadening the form.

His newly realized definition of experimental - that if it is new for a specific artist, it is experimental at least to the artist - is a copout. The very definition of experimental is that the outcome is uncertain and without experiments in theater, pushing the boundaries of what we know to be true and have adopted as convention, the artform becomes irrelevant in a modern context. The celebration of new and experimental music, painting, sculpture, digital arts, and dance have pushed those media into new ground - Duchamp's urinal, signed R. Mutt, was both comment and experiment. The result of the experiment was the birth of the 'found art' movement. John Cage experimented with symphonic musical conventions, Ornette Coleman with conventions in jazz improvisation. These experiments lead to profoundly new ideas within their fields.

Most theater looks and sounds exactly the same as it did in Shakespeare's day and that which is deemed experimental is less experiment than commentary on the stagnant waters of theatrical innovation.

Blogger John Clancy writes:

Every generation recognizes the same problem. Every generation comes to the same wall.

Most generations divide into two camps. One camp recognizes the wall, measures it, and begins to climb it. Some may actually get over to the other side, who knows? Most of the first camp, however, settle on finding a position somewhere on the wall and begin to jealously guard it.

The other camp, standing at the wall, not climbing, divides as well. Half spend their lives standing at the foot of the wall, shaking their fists and shouting. The other half grows bored and walks away.

That's what most generations do, upon finding themselves at the wall.

The exceptional generations, the historical generations, tear down the fucking wall.

As I've been thinking in the same vein, I understand that even attempting to tear down the wall of conventionality in theater requires great effort, very specific focus and a capacity for both change and open derision. I'm thinking about flash mobs, Augusto Boal, Neofuturism, Improv Everywhere, Waiting for Godot at random locations within the city. I'm fascinated by the concept of selling tickets to a show that challenges the audience, in a direct and confrontational way, to create on their own.

I'm not talking about Brooksian "happenings" of the sixties but I'm thinking that those are great models of behavior and structure.

I'm thinking DADA. DADA. DADA.

I'm thinking the traveling show wagon with snake oil. The one man band concept toward performing a seven-act play to be performed in random order in a suburban mall. Performing a play that an audience member can only see it by staring through a glory hole.

I'm talking about experimental theater.

In the theatre, the tendency for centuries has been to put the actor at a remote distance, on a platform, framed, decorated, lit, painted, in high shoes—so as to help to persuade the ignorant that he is holy, that his art is sacred. Did this express reverence? Or was there behind it a fear that some thing would be exposed if the light were too bright, the meeting too near? Today, we have exposed the sham. But we are rediscovering that a holy theatre is still what we need. So where should we look for it? In the clouds or on the ground? -- Peter Brook, excerpted from The Empty Space

Speak It and I'll Make My Answer!

The Scarlet Letter
presented by the GreyZelda Theatre Group

I never read "The Scarlet Letter" - in fact, the only Hawthorne I've ever read was "The House of the Seven Gables" which I found to be a fucking snooze. I never saw the 1995 Demi Moore film, either. For an adaptation of a work written by a cat so morose and dry, the adapter must genuinely feel something deeply moving about the source material and be able to communicate that passionate response to the stage.

Rebecca Zellar's adaptation has more good things going on than bad, but as with anything as ambitious as the GreyZelda's production is, the bad is pretty obvious.

Without question, the worst thing in this production is Toby Minor. Minor, as Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale (the father of Pearl, daughter of Hester Prynne who wears the letter), begins his prolonged and agonizing death scene about 14 minutes into the first act and by the 4th minute of the second, one is almost desperate for Dimmesdale to simply shove off his mortal coil if only to speed things up a bit. A graduate of the "Double Take, Mug, and Smell a Fart" school of acting, Minor plays Dimmesdale like Nathan Lane as an upset and constipated prairie dog. It certainly doesn't help that he is a good foot shorter than Hester, which makes her stoic love for him all the more improbable.

On the other hand, both Elizabeth Styles (Hester Prynne) and Ron Kuzava (Roger Chillingworth) almost make up for it. Every scene between the two of them crackles - great for Act I because Minor is sort of in the background; not so good in Act II, when Kuzava takes the back seat. Styles is controlled and solid as Prynne, never over emoting and speaking the clunky, right-out-of-the-book dialogue with complete clarity. Kuzava gives humanity to his Chillingworth and, while not Ron's most restrained performance, manages to shine as always.

The production itself is really lovely to watch, with some nicely choreographed movement and shadow work that I enjoyed so much I wish it had been more integrated with the dense and sometimes repetitive text. The ensemble is uneven in ability but worked pretty well together, especially in the movement pieces, and the music Zellar utilizes is pitch perfect in setting tone and mood.

The one thing missing from this fast moving adaptation (Act I flew by; Act II crawled a bit as we watched Minor get sicker and sicker and slower and slower) is an understanding of what moved Zellar to adapt this novel. In her director's note, her rationale for choosing this story to adapt was her friend's hair, pulled back to resemble Prynne. She then describes the process of creating the movement pieces ("...reading Hawthorne's text, extracting feeling and images, and then painting it on the stage..."). What she found beautiful or moving about the story of Prynne and her daughter is somewhat a mystery to me because the tale is a real downer in general. I know Rebecca found something exciting about this story - she failed to communicate the specifics of that to me, though.

All in all, not bad. I'm a tough sell, especially when you're throwing in "Thee's" and "Thou's" and the characters say "Speak it and I'll make my answer!" instead of "What?" but I can say that with one exception*, I enjoyed the evening.

* The one exception was a blind guy and his horny girlfriend sitting right in front of me pawing at each other like they were just itching to just get down with it in the theater - through the entire show. I seriously thought about smacking them on top of the head, but the guy was blind and that'd be kind of douchey to smack the disabled at a show he can't even see.

The Roast of Adam Witt

Last night Schadenfruede, at their monthly Rent Party, roasted Adam Witt who is leaving at the end of the month to pursue a career in film in LA. They asked me to open the roasting part because A) I know Adam, and B) I'm such a nasty sunofabitch that I'd set the tone of the evening off right.

I got some of my material from Fred (thanks, Fremo) and the rest just came naturally.

It was an absolute gas - these cats are some kind of fuckin' FUNNY, let me tell you.



Thanks Schadenfags. Do well, Adam - and in the words of Winston Churchill, "Never, never, never quit."

Thinking Out Loud

Some Quotes for the Day

"Someone made a comment at the club, going, 'We don't come to comedy to think.' Gee, where do you go to think? I'll meet you there! We don't have to do this here!" – comedian Bill Hicks

---

TV is a sales pitch. Film is a brilliant, flickering dream. Theatre is living alchemy, and you are one of the ingredients. - columnist Katherine Catmull

---

Theatre gets to create a topic of conversation for a very small audience for a very small window of time. I think we should each use that window to talk about what is dearest to us. If that doesn't include politics at least part of the time, then I probably don't want to hear that conversation. – Austin playwright Kirk Lynn

Fearful, Laughing, Cranked Up, and Disturbed

This Scares Me

Remember when the Bush wiretapping with no oversight and no warrants was declared Unconstitutional? Well, thanks to the waning GOP Majority and balless Democrat minority, it looks like an erstwhile president has an out when one of his programs is declared illegal - simply continue doing it and get the Congress to retroactively make it legal.

Bush & Co. insist on a GOP Pass that legalizes the illegal wiretapping - and the GOP goes for it!

Senate Republicans blocked Democratic attempts to rein in President Bush's domestic wiretapping program Wednesday, endorsing a White House-supported bill that would give the controversial surveillance legal status.
***
Republicans defeated several Democratic amendments, including measures to insert a one-year expiration date into the bill and require the National Security Agency to report more often to Congress on the standards for its domestic surveillance program.

''We just don't want to see Americans' rights abused for the next 50 or 60 years because of an oversight on our part,'' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who joined some Republicans in opposing some amendments offered by her Democratic colleagues.

But Republicans countered that the bill represented the best deal on the matter and should not be amended.

How about we try to avoid having Americans' rights abused for even a coupla days, guys?

* * *

This Makes Me Laugh

From The Playgoer:

The Guardian's Michael Billington, describes "one of the most bizarre nights of my theatregoing life"--and that's saying something from this lion of a critic who you'd think has seen it all. But apparently no production in recent British history has been booed and jeered as much as a certain Three Sisters at the Edinburgh Festival this summer.

It began when, during an obviously sotto voce prelude, a loud voice from the stalls trumpeted "We can't hear you." Even when the volume was turned up, people sidled out, ostentatiously snored or muttered darkly during an admittedly interminable first half.

But it was during Chekhov's wonderful last act that disaster struck. Almost every line became a potential minefield. Masha only had to say "Isn't it awful?" or "I'm going out of my mind" for a torrent of jeering, derisive, mocking laughter to issue from the stalls.

Billington concludes that waiting until the play is over and booing is the best option, in his opinion. As an actor, I understand that. As a director, I concur with that. As a theatergoer, gimme a break. If a production is so bad that the audience is jeering at it within the first moments, that production deserves to be derailed and derailed with a pickaxe.

As an actor, if I'm in a show that I know is shit, it is my responsibility to address the problem, accept the consequences of serving up warm dog poo, or get the hell out of there. If a production simply blows from start to finish, everyone knows it stinks. Directors sometimes get like those folks with six cats and lose any sense of the stench, but that's what producers and stage managers are for.

Wait until the play is over and then boo? That's like eating an undercooked chicken potpie - the chicken obviously dangerous and rubbery, the carrots still far too crunchy, the peas still slightly frozen in spots - and waiting until you've finished the pie before acknowledging your severe dissatisfaction. As soon as money has exchanged hands, all bets are off concerning courtesy. If I pay you to repair my car or babysit my kids, I'm not all that concerned with your self esteem or emotional health - do your job. If theater companies want a pass from an audience response like the one discussed, don't charge money.

As for me, I enjoy a healthy exchange between player and playgoer - it's a dialogue, not a sermon. Sometimes the dialogue gets contentious -

---

QUICK ANECDOTE DESIGNED TO ILLUSTRATE AND OPPOSITE SITUATION INTENTIONALLY PROVOKED BY A PRODUCTION:

During the run of Soiree DADA: Neue Weltaffen, we had intentional created a very aggressive posture with our audiences, assuming a degree of passivity. Most of the time the audience just sat back and enjoyed the ride. Other times the dialogue became a bit messy.

On May 17, we had a cat that came in ready to play. He was asked questions and he asked questions back. He didn't play along so much as take the DADA invitation to perform. It was both exhilarating and frustrating for the DADAs - the dude was completely fucking up the show, but they had essentially asked him to. Eventually, unspoken concessions were made by both the heckler and the performers and the show continued, albeit a bit shaken up.

END OF ANECDOTE

---

- and, if it gets contentious, that's OK. I do reserve the right, however, of being the cook who, having baked your potpie, proceeds to chase you from the restaurant with a cleaver shouting French curses at you. In other words, if you come to see No Exit and decide to heckle the performance, I may leap from the stage and punch you in the face until you limp away. Hey - it would certainly be a memorable night at the theater.

And, yes, I'd refund your money.

* * *

This Cranks Me Up



This is the poster image for No Exit. It looks a little bit like a promo for Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but it has the weird, despairing look of an existential play about Hell, so this is good.

Last night Chris had me amp up the Don Knots aspect of my character in the opening scene. He brought in Glenn Proud, Livewire's Artistic Director, to "bring some funny" to the direction. Glenn's very good, but I think Chris gives himself too little credit for finding the funny - he had Jeremiah and I use extreme drug use as a reference point (I'm on crack; J. is stoned) and it really made the top of the show pop.

Reconciling this more eccentric character choice with the dark dramatics of the rest of the play becomes the new challenge - both Saren and Danielle are doing some great work (Danielle's baby killing debutante is both repellent and alluring; Saren's man-hating lesbian is a study in smoldering rage) and "funny" isn't really in the mix for them. In addition to No Exit being a smart, multi-layered mindfuck, the added hurdle of confounding audience expectations with some comedy inserted is actually a pretty cool risk.

My favorite exchanges last night involved quick dialogues between Chris and Glenn. Glenn is also a Stage Combat dude and Chris wanted some help with the girl-on-girl violence (yeah, they're fighting over me).

CHRIS:
So, Glenn. What is a way to have her pushing Saren through the door in this struggle in a more safe way?

GLENN:
Well, she shouldn't actually push her.

Now, that's some genuine stage combat advice. Kind of on the level of a coach advising a batter to, you know, swing and hit the ball. Duh. Glenn did choreograph the moment, but the initial exchange just cracked me up.

The other interesting exchange involved Glenn giving an acting note using Pepi la Pue as an reference point. Saren laughed and commented that 'that is such a male thing to do - referencing movies and pop culture in direction'. She may have a point - when I'm directing I often use references to film and TV to underscore a point, sort of a quick verbal shorthand. I wonder if this is a more 'male' thing or just a more "Chicago' thing?

* * *

And This Is Just Fucked Up...

Closer (Fan Video)

Battered by Good and Rotten Chance

When the Battery is Recharged

I read the following excerpt on Superfluities and it has earwormed it's way into my head.

Passionate simplicity is at the heart of great art, whether you are playing, painting or writing about it, and the amateur's enthusiasm is a type of simple passion, lovely and to be highly prized. But in fact, the professionals have everything the amateur has: devotion (we adored once too), frustration, and the combination of the two that is also called love. Both groups tread the same path towards perfection or mastery, but the professional is further along it, and as any travel story will tell you, a journey is harder in the middle, or at the end, than at the beginning. You are more tired. Hopefully you are buoyed up by what you have seen along the way, but that depends on how lucky you are.

Love begins simply; you fall in it. What happens to it after that is moulded by time, experience, battered by good and rotten chance. Couples get divorced; professionals give up; amateurs give up too, all the time, even though they love music. It is too hard. Other loves endure, grow along the path, human, alive; and like humanity itself are at once and always astoundingly powerful, and heartbreakingly vulnerable. That is the argument for sticking with it all: at the end is a great love. Or great art.

The full text is here.

As I babystep my way into my fifth decade on the planet, I see myself and more of my contemporaries realize - either through open acknowledgement or with a slightly deranged glint to the eye - that, as Ms. Radice says, it is too hard. It is easy to relax. It is comfortable to settle. And what, after all, is the reward for sticking with it, the compensation for creating great art?

After my fourteen years of founding, nurturing, financing, and fending off the wolves with WNEP Theater, I hit that wall. I ran headlong into a tar pit of burnout and cracked dreams. My legs were stuck in the molasses of frustration, unrealized potential, and a hint of damaged confidence and I couldn't get unstuck. As Jen put it, it was like watching a joyous dancer lose all hope that the dance would end and simply dances because that was the only task he is built for. In the past, whenever I got stuck in the cul de sac of procrastination and the overwhelming weariness that accompanies expended passion, I could, quite literally, give myself a verbal ass-kicking, an Angry White Drill Sergeant telling me to get up offa my ass and MOVE!

This time around, even the Drill Sergeant was asleep. It took me crawling out of my self-imposed sanctuary and engaging other artists to restart the engine. Talking at length with my wife (still the smartest person I know) and Bob Fisher and Joe Janes about art and theater; coaching the enthusiastic and, as of yet, uncynical improvisers in both CornWallis and in the W.I.P; advising, upon request, those in charge of their own little theatrical fiefdoms; reading the blogs of George Hunka, Matt Freeman, Isaac Butler, Rob Kozlowski, et al (see the blogroll, for crissakes).

The recharging of my diehard battery took a bit longer to do, this time around but I can actually feel it in my skin, the itch to create and to be a part of others' creations. This indicates that I can no longer carelessly expend the energy it provides on theatrical endeavors that do not crank my shit up. The experience also indicates that, like Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh books, there is a limit to my abilities - I can get a lot of things accomplished on sheer force of will, but the sheer force is finite.

As a result of this, I'm starting to get that "why the fuck not?" attitude and finding some genuinely exciting theatrical experiments I want to perform (I'll address the lack of genuine experimentation in theater soon). I've realized two things recently - I've known them for some time, but knowing and knowing are different and crucial - first that I'll likely never actually make a living creating the kind of theater that excites and inspires me and second, who fucking cares?

Concerning WNEP, Jen looked at me yesterday and said, "It's a marathon now - not a sprint." Funny thing - I think it was always a marathon and I just needed a second wind.

* * *

Something My Wife Never Imagined She'd Ever Say in Her Whole Life

"Don't put your actual balls on the table, OK?"

Subbing and the Guerrilla

Substitute TEACHING

Yesterday, I was called in to substitute teach at a high school. I was filling in for the librarian who was at a teacher in-service (sort of like a half-day professional development meeting). Subbing for the librarian is like a free day with pay. Especially at a high school. This is not to say that high school librarians have nothing to do, but to simply point out that subbing for one is an extremely low maintenance gig.

I spent most of the morning alternating between working on my lines for No Exit and reading John Irving's Until I Find You. Kids would filter in, sit at tables, read the newspapers, fill out little journal books, and split.

Finally, at around 11AM, Michael, a senior, asks about my crazy spring-coil shoes. We start talking and I ask him what the hell is the deal with the newspapers and the journal books? He explains that that is what they do for the first couple of weeks of school in the library - current events. He sounds put off by the concept.

We talked about expanding the boundaries of our worlds - looking beyond the four walls and past the horse blinders put there to keep us focused on the task at hand (he really liked the metaphor of the horse blinders - until I showed him what they were - we were in a library, after all - he didn't really believe they were real) is a part of becoming a citizen of the world. As we talked, some of his friends came over and we talked about Iraq, and GWB, and immigration, and National Health Care.

It was a day well-spent.

* * *

Artistic Espionage

I love this cat. Banksy simply rocks me with his Fight Club approach to artistic expression/vandalism. His latest stunt was to stage a Guantanamo Bay detainee at Disneyland.

The hooded figure was placed inside the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at the California theme park last weekend.

It is understood to have remained in place for 90 minutes before the ride was closed down and the figure removed.

A spokeswoman for Banksy said the stunt was intended to highlight the plight of terror suspects at the controversial detention centre in Cuba.

Banksy is notorious for his secretive and subversive stunts - such as sneaking doctored versions of classic paintings into major art galleries.

Essentially a modern Dadaist, Banksy uses both shock value and humor (his Monet reproduction that includes trash and a shopping cart, among other 'subverted' classics that he managed to hang in some of New York's most prestigious art galleries) to espouse his distinct point of view. On his website, the phrase "If you want an audience - start a fight." smacks of a Chuck Palahniuk mentality combined with a Duchamp technique.

So, aside from Augusto Boal, how do we create "guerrilla theater"? What does it look like? Is this it?

The Gospel Truth

The Real Lesson

I frequent a number of theater and improviser message boards. Today I read something on Yesand.com about the lesson(s) of September 11, 2001 that made me sit up and cheer.

It was penned by a cat with the handle LAY. From Kentucky. It is reprinted without permission because I'm too fucking lazy to ask.

This just nails it, in my opinion.

Prior to 9/11, people who highjacked airplanes did it to take the hostages and then barter with them -- meaning that the people on board those planes were fairly likely to live through the experience (with some exceptions).

The highjackers on 9/11 used the planes as weapons and killed not nonly everyone inside the plane, but also thousands of other people.

The true lesson of 9/11 is that if someone tries to highjack an airplane with a boxcutter, every able-bodied person on that plane should fight that person with every ounce of strength in their bodies, because everyone on the plane is probably dead anyway.

That's the only lesson that can matter. So many people have tried to give larger and braoder meanings to that day, that all of them have merged into a cloud of confusion and rhetoric:

"The President needs more power"
"Our agencies don't communicate enough"
"We shouldn't be supporting Israel"
"We should have made an exammple out of Saddam Hussein"
"America is weak"
"There's not enough democracy in the Middle East"
"Muslims are evil and must die"
"We must all come together in time of crisis -- now come together and do exactly as our side says"
"We all have to drive around with our headlights on because that shows patriotism"

None of these are the lesson. The lesson is: those highjackers who used to take hostages to barter with, have stopped taking hostages. Kill them because they're going to kill you.

So far as partisan grand-standing goes, neither side can afford to back down. Why? Because this type of evocation is just as much of a bluff as those terrorists that day -- a boxcutter against a hundred able-bodied people. An assurance that if we just obey and go with the flow that "it will all be over soon".

If given the false choice of maybe death by boxcutter vs. probably living through a hostage situation? The people on the first 3 planes took trying to live through the hostage situation. The people on the fourth plane had wised up.

"Just put down your partisan attitude, we have to all come together" is, so far as I'm concerned, another boxcutter. Another false choice. Because the partisan rancor was set aside for over a year after 9/11. We came together as a nation and started writing blank checks to our leaders, trusting that they would make the horrible feeling go away.

And has the rhetoric subsided? Has there been a sense of unity at all? Has this situation been a short-term inconvenience (such as a hostage situation) or has our collective flight been diverted on a suicide course which will result in the permanent end of our democracy?

The moment anyone from the left (or right) tries to say anything outside his or her party line, he/she is attacked viciously and relentlessly. It's all well and good to say it shouldn't be that way, but it is in essence a bizarro John-Woo style stand off. Put down my gun? Sure thing... you first. Because time and time again when either side has let up on the rhetoric, BLAM! the other side has fired.

The lesson is that a dozen unarmed people can kick the living shit out of one or two people with boxcutters. And that to do so, and die in the attempt, is preferable to allowing the bad men with boxcutters to divert the plane and kill thousands more. We -- not the politicians, but the people -- need to stand up to the boogeymen -- ALL of the boogeymen: IslamoBadGuys, Republicans, Democrats, and our hysterically Not-impartial Media -- and just kick the shit out of them. Because we're all probably dead anyway -- and if we do, maybe we can prevent them from killing too many other people in the process. And there's always the chance that We The People might regain control of this plane.

A-freakin-men.

Remembering 9/11

September 11, 2001

My girlfriend (now wife) woke me up after the first plane hit. I was groggy, got up, got some coffee, lit up a Marlboro Light, and watched as the second plane hit, standing in my boxer shorts in my living room. I didn't move from that spot for about 45 minutes as the live coverage played itself out on CBS.

After some phone calls to a few folks (some in NYC), Jen and I got showered and dressed. I think she cried some, but I can't really recall. We went to a place on Broadway called Toyscape, a small independently owned toy store. The owner had agreed to sponsor The Emily Show and we had scheduled to come in a pick out show props on 9/11/01. Jen and I had to decide whether or not WNEP would perform our Wednesday night Soiree DADA and whether we would open Lives of the Monster Dogs which was scheduled to open that Thursday night.

The street seemed either deserted or filled with slow moving zombies. Everyone looked slightly stunned and almost embarrassed to be seen in public.

We decided that, in spite of the fact that Monster Dogs featured a character that later on was compared to Osama bin Laden and ended with a race of walking/talking dogs setting fire to a huge castle in the middle of Central Park, we would open the show on schedule. We likewise decided to cancel the September 12 DADA performance and continue the run the following week.

On Wednesday, September 19, during a nearly sold out Soiree DADA, DADA Dondi did a piece called "Entertainment," the text taken from the end of The Armageddon Radio Hour.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say something about the Armageddon, now that it looks like the final curtain call is here. There's been a lot of talk about America and what Uncle Sam does in times of trouble. How fear of having our way of life taken away has turned us into rats on a sinking ship. How everybody's trying to get their piece of the falling sky.

Well, I would like to pray that if love and understanding can't bring us together, perhaps mass death will. And when the whole world is crumbling all around you, and your neighbor would kill you for the food on your shelves, we should focus on what's really important: entertainment. Entertainment is what brings us hope in times of despair. If Nero's fiddling amid the flames was so terrible, do you think the Romans would have rather died with no music at all? Would you?

The air was thick with relevance and electricity. It was one of the most jarring performances I've ever seen.

I'd like to say that the attack on September 11, 2001 left an indelible mark on me, that the shock and outrage generated by the event was life changing. Unfortunately, I was neither shocked nor particularly outraged. Those who were were likely oblivious to the United States presence globally and were completely blindsided by this attack - an easy, American point of view, indeed. I wept a couple of times for seemingly no reason, saddened by who knows what, but ultimately, I was never genuinely fearful of an attack in Chicago, despite the widespread fearmongering that went on here for weeks after.

Kerry Reid wrote (in a private correspondence), "...you may be able to discern that the odds of your death being the result of "terrorism" are pretty much nil." Those shocked and outraged by an attack that would seem almost commonplace in many of the countries in the Middle East were easily manipulated - out of fear, out of anger, out of the stunned, zombie-like shock that settled over the country. Two years later, our country invaded a non-enemy without fear of genuine retaliation, because we wanted to get some payback and, now, five years later, we are faced with the increasing realization that our lust for revenge and our need for retribution has changed our country for the worse.

After five years, what have we learned as a nation? The man who financed and conceived of the plane attacks is still "at large." The President at the time has squandered most of the goodwill generated worldwide by the attack and allowed it to transform into global hatred and mistrust. Roughly 3,000 families in the US have had to justify the deaths of their enlisted but killed sons and daughters and over 30,000 Iraqi families have to focus their fear, outrage, and lust for revenge somewhere - the easy and obvious target is us.

"Well, I would like to pray that if love and understanding can't bring us together, perhaps mass death will."

It hasn't brought us together yet. So, what's it gonna take?

* * *

Strange but True

I read this this morning and realized that I had met this guy.

Long story short:
I was part of a Christian mission group known as the Continental Singers (I played trumpet in the traveling orchestra). We were on tour to Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, and the Samoan Islands the summer of my sophomore year in high school. In Fiji, I got my first taste of braised dog. In New Zealand, I got to climb a coconut tree, pull a couple of coconuts, and eat them with thick cut bread and vegemite. And in Tonga, I got to meet the King - he was freaking huge - the story we were told was that instead of tax collecting, each family paid tribute to the king by feeding him. The result was a 462 lb. dude with the biggest hands I ever saw - literally a happy, grinning Jabba the Hut.

The King is Dead. Long Live the King.

Dancing on Graves for Political Gain

I Got the 9/11 FEVER!

At the CVS (sort of like a Walgreen's or Duane Reade), you can purchase, for only $5.99, a commemorative 9/11 golden coin, stamped with the image of the Twin Towers on one side and GWB standing with a fireman on the other!

On most major television channels (including cable) there are documentaries galore, celebrating the tragedy of 9/11 in HDTV - including, according to it's European advertising, the "Official True Story" of 9/11 that puts the blame for us sitting on the toilet while Osama planned and ultimately had some Saudi nationals ramrod a couple of planes up our asses firmly where it should belong - on Bill Clinton.

You know - Bill Clinton - the President who was so busy getting his johnson mouthed that he couldn't focus on the WEEKLY meetings in the Oval Office on Osama bin Laden, the administration that repeatedly warned the incoming Bush group about bin Laden, the President so horney tht he consistently requested and was repeatedly denied increased funding on counter-terrorist protocols.


Hey.

I have a new idea - how about we steal all the flags from Arlington cemetary and sell them at Ground Zero?

Oh. Already done.

OK, Plan B.

I'm baking special Commemorative 9/11 brownies. Come over and we can celebrate both the attack AND the horribly botched attempt to capture bin Laden in it's aftermath (Clinton's fault, too). We can toast the successful toppling of Saddam Hussein by repeatedly burning tiny little Clinton effegies! All the while, ignoring the Orwellian nightmare that Clinton lead us in to - after all, if he hadn't gotten a hummer from an overweight intern, Al Gore would be President right now.

Pssst...You in that 43%...Listen Up...

Not to Belabor the Point

Saddam Rebuked al-Qaida

The 150-page report said the administration's claims were untrue. "Postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaida to provide material or operational support," the report said.

The report was released along with a second one that said false information from the exile group Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmad Chalabi, was widely distributed in prewar intelligence reports and used to support intelligence assessments about Iraq's weapons and links to terrorism. Intelligence officials repeatedly warned that the INC was unreliable, but White House and Pentagon officials ignored the warnings.

The reports are part of a five-report study that the Senate Intelligence Committee has undertaken into the Bush administration's use of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq.

The study has left the committee badly divided. Three reports remain classified, including one comparing prewar statements by Bush administration officials to intelligence available at the time. Democrats have accused Republicans of delaying the reports until after the November congressional elections.

Wow.

Whaddya know? Even more direct confirmation that Bush & Co. manipulated the intelligence OR were completely incompetent but, regardless, lead us by the nose into a pre-emptive invasion of a country that was of absolutely NO THREAT WHATSOEVER to the US.

November 7 is just around the corner...

A Friday Potpourri of Political Rants

Teach Them That the World is a Rainbow Colored Candyland

Schwarzenegger vetoes bill on gay protections in textbooks

Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that the state's education laws already prevent discrimination, and the bill "would not strengthen this important area of legal protection from bias based on sexual orientation."

The bill, which won final passage last week, would have expanded current anti-discrimination laws by prohibiting any negative portrayal of homosexuals in textbooks and other instructional material.

Gimme a break. The Governator might have his head up his ass about half the time, but he is right to veto this. Prohibit any negative portrayal? Are we so 'outraged', 'offended' and thin-skinned that we want to completely whitewash what is being taught (and ultimately ignored) in our public schools? This is not to say that textbooks should have exclusively negative portrayals of homosexuals - in fact, now that I think about it, I can't recall a single portrayal of a homosexual individual as a homosexual in a textbook I've ever read.

I think Arnie saw this for what it was - an election issue to stir up some shit.

Speaking of...

* * *

ABC and all the Actors Ought to be Ashamed

There's been a bit of brouhaha about the 'docudrama' The Path to 9/11 airing this weekend (the fifth anniversary of the attacks on New York City) and it's assertion that the attacks were more the fault of Pres. Bill Clinton and his weak-willed staff than the cowboys rallied up by King George.

A) Are you kidding me? During Bill's tenure, he was saddled with a Republican Congress! A Republican Congress who wasted $80 million and four years to investigate the Clintons for any hint of impropriety and came up with a blow job - AND IMPEACHED HIM for lying about GETTING A BLOW JOB! A Republican Congress who blocked Clinton's anti-terrorism requests.

B) Who cares at this point? Cowboy George and his Ranchers haven't really done much to protect the country from another such attack - the ports are still ridiculously unguarded, the borders still easily jumped, and the office of Homeland Security has proven itself to be an extremely expensive joke. So, ultimately, it doesn't matter whose fault it is, it matters what we're doing about it now. Bushie-boy has not captured the mastermind behind 9/11 - 9/11 has merely become a campaign year slogan.

C) While knowing that actors need money and work is work, I think the folks involved in this obvious election year piece of agitprop aimed at those who only have three channels on their 13" TVs should be ashamed of the thirty pieces of silver they got for being in this thing.

* * *

Politics - Just Like High School

He's Old. She's Fat

"It's turned into a name-calling contest," Schaefer, 84, told reporters following him into Lexington Market at lunchtime. Then he proceeded to call the Anne Arundel County executive a few more, after explaining why he wouldn't apologize for personal remarks he made about her last week.

Yesterday he called Owens' hair "old-fashioned," criticized her clothes and likened the woman 20-some years his junior to a "great-great-grandmother."

"An apology? An apology for what?" he said when someone asked whether one was in order. "I can't help it how she looks."

Thank God our national politicians don't resort to this backwater sort of nonsense - next the old fart will be calling the fat broad a "flip flopper" and the fattie will accuse Grandpa of fathering a black child.

* * *

What A Crazy Jackass

Evil Reverend Fred Phelps Diatribe Against Stewart/Colbert



Seriously - if there is a God, can we do like an email petition to fucking smite this sonofabitch?

* * *

In the "Are We Really This Stupid?" Department

New Poll: 43% Still Believe Saddam Had Something To Do With 9/11

Even my dad, the hardcore conservative Republican, laughs at this one.

* * *

And Finally...

Mark Fiore's 'Remember Again'

The Other 40%

An Arranged Marriage

The anticipation is going to drive me nuts. After just five rehearsals, I'm pretty jazzed for you to see No Exit this October.

After fourteen years of running my own show, it is easy to forget the arranged marriage feeling of working with new people. This is not to say that in WNEP we haven't encouraged new folks to come in, it is simply that there is a difference between meeting new people in your own house and meeting them in someone else's house. The first impressions are always about 60% true, but it's that other 40% that becomes either a great surprise or a dismal reality, depending on the 40%.

We've been rehearsing in a church sanctuary (nice for a play about Hell) and this, in and of itself, lends an austere air to the proceedings. The warmups that Chris has us do are a bit less playful than I prefer, but seem perfectly appropriate to the slow blending of spices that comprise the cast. There is a sense of 'theater school' procedure to the rehearsals, and given that I'm the only person in the cast or crew without a theater degree of some stripe, I tend to be the Bluto Blutarsky in the room, ready to burst a precious moment with a shit analogy or a hearty "Fuckin' A!"

That said, the 40% is tending to be pretty cool - Saren is a truly gifted actor and she is anything but passive about her opinion (this seems abrupt at first but is super helpful during the meat of the work); Danielle is great and, in spite of her being very young (22 years old) has a maturity to her work that surprises; Jeremiah reminds me of Patrick Jacobi if he ate lots of granola (which, if you know Jacobi, is a huge compliment). Chris is very patient and methodical and I'm happy to say that I am still able to learn technique from a younger director, despite the barnacles on my crusty ass.

Bottom line - I look forward to every rehearsal and dig the work while I'm there. It doesn't get any better than that.

* * *

One Month Away...

"Did you tell her I intend to kick his sorry mother fucking ass all over the Mideast?" -- George W. Bush, when told in May 2002 that Helen Thomas was questioning the need to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

The quote comes from "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," whose authors note that it reveals Bush's plan for Iraq nearly a year before he invaded and even as he was saying publicly that he hoped to avoid war.

Aren't We Supposed to Be Wearing the White Hat?

Something to Chew On...

I turn on the news. It doesn't matter what time of day it is (or night, for that matter). The clarion call is that the world has turned to shit.

I'm old enough to know that the immediacy of the worst in humanity is balanced by the best, but it seems that lately, the worst is beginning to tip the scale.

In Chicago, an Amtrak passenger traveling with her ailing father waited nearly 23 hours and about 1,000 miles to tell authorities he had died so she could avoid the cost of shipping the body home.

In Newry, Maine, officials were confronted with a four-day rampage over the Labor Day weekend described as the largest multiple homicide in Maine since an arson fire killed four in Portland 14 years ago.

And in Marshville, North Carolina, over the national Labor Day weekend, an act of mindless violence acts as violent metaphor for the US role in the world. The Rude Pundit sums it up pretty succinctly here.

The mob believed they had the right intelligence. They had pieced it together from the few clues they had and decided to act before someone else was hurt. You can bet, though, that there was a man in the group who perhaps thought that maybe they were wrong, especially since chances are they beat Blakeney for a while to get information, which he could not give since he didn't, you know, have any. And you can also bet that any man who thought they were wrong didn't say a word for fear of being labeled a traitor and just let the beat down continue.

This mob violence happens more often than any of us would believe. There isn't, in my opinion, a cleaner and more apt example of the microcosm reflecting the macrocosm - if it's OK for the country to invade and destroy a country based on false and manufactured evidence, then it follows naturally that her citizens should be motivated to do exactly the same. Fear is an extremely powerful emotion - one that fuels paranoia, an almost criminal carelessness, and unreasoning rage.

Who are the heroes in a culture that sits back and watches this behavior?

I believe the heroes are not just those who clean up the mess (the soldiers, the firefighters, the police) but also those few willing to stand up to the mob and bring reason to the unreasonable.

Assume that you live in Marshville. Would you feel safe living in a township that dealt with the mob that brutally beat Blakeney to death lightly? Would you feel hopeful about your community knowing that this same mob could at any time turn on you and yours? Would it be right to allow them to continue to justify the arrogance and ignorance it took to gang up on a weaker man and break him into pieces because they could?

I will not vote in the coming election for any person who justifies his or her vote for the War in Iraq. I will vote for any person seeking to prosecute Bush and his cronies for leading the mob, for inciting the riot. The beating has to stop.

...remember...

November 7 is coming...

The Geek Shall Not Inherit the Earth

The Search for Intelligent Life Equals Perversity

Search through this blog and you are likely to find a limitless supply of bitching about the decrease in basic substance and intellectual curiosity in American entertainment options. You'll also find a crowing about entertainments that are in direct contrast to that harping. My love for the dark and experimental in theater is balanced on the knife's edge of my love for the banal.

Yesterday, New York times critic Charles Isherwood sent out another salvo in favor of the latter while disparaging the former - his message is a bit convoluted, but boils down to this:

For most of us — virtually all of us — theaters are, above all, places of entertainment. It would be a perverse person indeed who would trip with glee into a theater presenting a play with the word “Guantánamo” in the title, overjoyed at an opportunity to relish the spectacle of human suffering and reckon with troubling questions of injustice.

As would be expected, the theater bloggers of note have something of a beef with Isherwood's premise.

The Playgoer responds.
Isaac Butler responds.
George Hunka responds.

Isherwood begins his article with the following:

THE world is in a fractious state. News reports grimly tally the daily death tolls in Iraq. Polls reveal a pronounced lack of confidence in the American powers that be. The clatter of chatter about potential terrorist attacks floods the airwaves.

Can art save the day? More specifically, can theater rouse the populace from a sense of numbed anxiety? Can a stage play change minds, or help channel passive beliefs into active commitment?

Short-term answer: a resounding 'Nope.' Long-term answer: a less resounding if hardly less dispiriting '“Probably not, alas.'

Many in the theatrical community have all but adopted that grim concept so thoroughly that their cry is simply that art shouldn't even try to affect change, that art exists solely for distraction rather than edification, and that, because if it's ultimate ineffectiveness to foment revolt, the attempt is pretentious and self congratulatory.

George points out that this is the New York Times, hardly a paragon of progressive thinking, and argues that:

It's not as if film and theatre audiences spend all their days and evenings reading newspapers, watching Frontline documentaries and downloading podcasts of Democracy Now!, then sneaking over to Bravo to indulge in an hour of bitchiness among wanna-be fashion designers.

I have to disagree with both writers (Isherwood and Hunka) in that I do not believe I am perverse to be gleeful in anticipation of a well-crafted piece of agitprop theater and that, indeed, I am a film and theatergoer who reads the news, watches Frontline documentaries and also loves Project Runway.

The fact is that this argument is old and tired and will remain unresolved throughout history. Also remaining as fact is that the banal, the purile, the soft, and the stupid will always be more popular than the intelligent and the challenging. Despite the messages in the most popular story in America, the underdog usually loses and the smart, geeky dude almost never gets the girl. The geek shall not inherit the earth.

So, like John Galt, do we start our own commune of the intelligent, a haven from the tiresome productions of Mamma Mia, The Wedding Singer, and The Producers? Do we cave in and become hermits, unable to enjoy the simple pleasures of mindless pop culture, and squat around our virtual fire bitching about how unappreciated we are?

I submit that the problem isn't the lack of challenging art - there are tons of it out there, bleating against the wind, fruitlessly hoping against hope that their small 1/32 page ad and capsule review will somehow compete with the million dollar publicity blitzkriegs levelled by the producers of sugary, watered down eye candy. It's out there and I don't think watching Hell's Kitchen somehow invalidates it. The problem, like that in American partisan politics, is the strident postures we take, damning the 'other' while self righteously proclaming our own victimhood.

THE HACK ARTIST:
Who wants to go see shows about death and despair? Who wants to be told how crappy their heritage us? People come to the theater to be entertained and because I try to simply give them a diversion from their shitty day, you call me a hack? Fine - hope you can spit out the word hack through your thin, starving artist grimaces - I have a sold out house to attend to.

THE PRETENTIOUS ARTISTE:
The audience needs to be confronted by an intelligent questioning perspective. If there were no pop culture spectacles to distract them from my work, they would come in droves. Unfortunately my play dealing with the exploration of ancient Myan sex religions done with organic movement technique and spoken in iambic petameter set to a drum band is opening opposite Fart! The Musical. Those fucking hacks should be ashamed of themselves and the abortions they foist upon us all.

Do I want there to be a more concentrated effort on the part of theater folk to create more challenging work? You betcha. Do I think bashing those more successful but ultimately mediocre shows will somehow make playwrights, actors and directors "see the light" and shun the money offered to dance the dance for the mass audience? Not a chance. Can art save the day? Probably not, but to refuse to try is to give up on living and the hope for a better humanity in the process.

I have a motivational plaque on my wall - no kittens 'hanging in there' - it says:

Excellence can be attained if you...
• Care more than others think is wise
• Risk more than others think is safe
• Dream more than others think is practical
• Expect more than others think is possible

Sappy? Yes, just like a Rocky movie.

Likely used to comfort those stuck in cubicles like soma? Possibly, but I imagine a little escapist pop psychological is good for the soul.

True? I like to think so and even if, like the myth of the plucky but unfunded group that somehow triumphs over the mega-corporation, it's a lot of horseshit, it makes me feel better to read it.

Acorn SKALD

Once Again...

Once again, the SKALD (at the Acorn Theatre) rocked. Once again, the Maelstrom rocked (although to a smaller crowd). Once again, my storytelling workshop was a hit with the folks who participated. And once again, the weekend at the Acorn was an excellent experience.

Friday, we arrived, set up the stage and hung out before the show. There were only six reservations, so I was concerned about that, but we would get paid whether there was audience or not, so mostly I was worried for Kim and David. Speaking of, Kim was an excellent host, in spite of being overwhelmingly busy running for Congress and David was unfortunately out of town for the weekend - his absence being the one major disappointment during our stay. Mary Jo, Flatley, Rosolio, and Jason went out before to get calzones and brought back these huge baked, inverted pizzas that, for $5.00, could feed five people.

The audience grew to roughly twenty and the game was on. The Maelstrom is the improvised contest and the suggestions from the audience were particularly good - "Dick Cheney's Last Day in the Office," "Robot Love," and "German Milkmaid, Out of Work," etc. - and the audience voted Flatley (aka Michael Brownlee) the winner for the evening.

The deal at the Acorn is that Kim and David have pimped out their "old factory turned theater" to include a number of guest bedrooms and, if you perform there, you are invited to stay the night. We did. We also, having the entire theater to ourselves for the night, bought beer and played poker until 2AM. Mary Jo, claiming ignorance of the rules and the order of the winning hands in poker at the outset of course took all of our money.

Saturday was lovely - breakfast at Bailey's, some folks going out and experiencing Three Oaks, Michigan, a township filled with art galleries and antique shops and artists. I prepped and taught my workshop and, once again, benefitted the most for the hearing of unique stories of bamboo fishing poles and funerals with Kirk Douglas (seriously...). That evening the audience swelled to about 50 (a good size for the room) and the four judges (including the Chicago Sun-Times Andrew Greeley and a former Washington Post columnist living in Three Oaks) awarded Flatley the prize, who is now the Paul Bunyon of Storytelling in Three Oaks, having cleaned up in both contests.

It was a great weekend and I think everyone involved had a nice time. A trip to Three Oaks alway leaves me wanting more, and I always vow to myself to come back more frequently.

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This Really Isn't a Big Surprise, Is It?

"Crocodile Hunter" killed by Stingray

"He came on top of the stingray and the stingray's barb went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart," said Stainton, who was on board Irwin's boat at the time.

While I think dying from a hole in your heart created by a stingray you have absolutely no business being near is kind of stupid, I'm also a bit inspired. The cat was obviously doing what he loved and living his life fully, and that is poetry, yes?

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Final Word on Hedley

Make sure you catch Jeffrey Sweet's comments about his history with the Vampire Queen of Poorly Written and Conceived Theatrical Criticism. Good stuff.

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Happy Labor Day!

Friday Stewpot: Warhawks, Sartre, and a Voodoo Knife Set

The Blame Game Redux

"Is it bad in Iraq? No question about it. Could it be worse - you bet it could. We need to stop with all the namecalling and blame and work together on this."

This seems to be the common song of the warhawks these days. King George intimated the "we're all in this together" sentiment and after the days of yore when the Republican majority thumbed their noses at the paltry Democratic opposition (remember the 'nuclear option'?), the whole pose strikes me as a bit sad, a lot frustrating, and a whole bunch of bullshit.

I'm all for working together as Americans under the same flag - I just want someone else in charge of the operation, see? I want Rumsfeld and Bush tried for war crimes (or at least fined for gross incompetence). I want a concentrated effort to catch and prosecute Osama bin Laden to be the highest priority in our "War on Terror" and I want those who dance to the multi-billionaire corporations' tune to dance it in prison.

I'm all about unity - I'm just not interested in the least in unifying under a corrupt, untrustworthy, fascist regime that has taken the cause of democracy and made it an oppressive weapon.

* * *

A Week of Existentialism

I just finished my first week of rehearsals for No Exit. It's a heady piece and a more difficult one (from an acting perspective) than I thought at first glance.

Coupla observations:

• Livewire Chicago Theater has their collective shit together. They seem focused and on top of things - and I'm particularly picky about that kind of stuff given that I'm spoiled by being a part of WNEP for so long.

• An actor's method is a really big deal. Again, having been a bit spoiled by the simple meat and potatoes style of most WNEP actors (a group who collectively look at theater school warm ups like someone speaking in fluent Klingon), I'm finding that the differences in approach to getting a script, breaking it down, and putting together a character is very different when my 'method' is the least common in a cast of four.

• That said, the cast is very, very good. I'm also finding that I'm no longer one of those "Hey - let's go get a drink and hang out" guys anymore. It might be the intensity of the play itself or that I'm simply an antisocial shithead, but there isn't a lot of the bonding that I've had with, say, a LOSERS BRACKET or a Wise Blood. It is only the first week, though.

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SKALD Redux

This weekend, a number of us are packing up in Rebecca's car and a rented Ford Taurus and heading out to the Acorn Theatre in Three Oaks, Michigan to do a little SKALDing.

Tonight is a down and dirty MAELSTROM competition. Tomorrow afternoon I'm teaching a three-hour class on storytelling. Tomorrow night, we perform a SKALD.

Therefore, no AWG updates until Monday, which you won't read until Tuesday, when life resumes after Labor Day. Have a relaxed, booze-soaked holiday.

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Unca Don?

My sister-in-law popped her second bun out of the oven last night - her second boy. Congrats to her and Brendan.

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I Really Want one of These

A friend sent me a link to this:



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KEEP REPEATING IT

Reporter: "What does Iraq have to do with 9/11"”

Bush: "Nothing."