End of year

I'm about to jump in the shower before spending a day with Mayuko, cruising museums, getting the last of my items for the apartment from Ikea, and seeing Mindy Lym's show tonight.

Mayuko and I met on Ryze years ago and have had an on again, off again email correspondance. She came to the closing of Submergency two weeks ago and we've been spending a lot of time together since then. It's always a treat when people re-emerge from the shadows, and this is no exception!

I've continued being a complete homebody over the last week, enjoying this rare opportunity to nest. I'll be out all day today, and tomorrow night is New Year's, and 2007 promises to be a crazy year indeed. I'm happy to announce that Bryce Byerley will be appearing in my Twilight Zone adaptation in late March. I'm still in negotiations for the other two roles. I'm also going to be looking for a violinist to compose a score for the 20 minute piece and play it live. So if that's you, drop me a line, ok?

RadioStar is expanding. Starting in January, we'll be recording original one-acts by local playwrights as a second podcast stream. Beginning in February, there will be RadioStar: Improv and RadioStar: Off the Page. This means some capital outlay as we're getting a new mixer and some more microphones, but we're all very excited about the possibilities of this.

Cassandra's Call itself is going to be making some big changes in 2007. The big goal over the next several months will be to restructure CCP into a non-profit. I've actually got volunteers to help me in this endeavor and I'm very excited about expanding the CCP family into something coherent as well as prolific.

At this point, we've got the two podcast streams, the Bay Area One Acts, the Twilight Zone festival, the as yet unnamed festival that I'm co-producing with Chris Hayes and that will feature the remount of Vagina Dentata, and hopefully something for the SF Fringe Festival in September.

I sat down to write a rough draft of the Fringe Show, but it became clear around page 9 that I was just writing Vagina Dentata again. I started out wanting to tell a story about love and dating in an era of disillusionment and bitterness (i.e. someone's 30's) and ended up with Kelli from "411", Clara from "Vagina Dentata" and Tammy from the unfinished play "Wings to Fly" in a bar together being witty, raunchy and clever... just like the many sequences in Dentata. I'll put it aside and let that idea simmer for a bit. Instead, I may take a short story idea I've had about a news reporter, homelessness, fungus and alien abduction that I've had tossing in my head for the last couple of years and turn it into a one-act. With both Monday and Tuesday off work, I should be able to whip out an outline and figure out what it would take to mount it. I'm thinking of doing mask work, which is always delightful but super-expensive.

A larger priority, however, will be getting the video from the last Submergency show into the computer and edited so we can start posting it on YouTube.

And speaking of online video, I'd like to end this little update with something I saw posted over on Bex Schwartz' blog.

It's tasteless, but that's ok because it was made 10 years ago. In memory of Gerald Ford

Putting out the search

It's been an interesting mix of busy and slacking off this December.

Submergency had a great closing, which was remarkable since we actually caught it on videotape. Over the next few weeks I'll be editing together excerpts and putting them on YouTube. Stay tuned!

I just finished casting Vial, which I will be directing for the Bay Area One Act Festival. I needed to use actors who had made the audition process for the whole festival, but my choice for one role had to bow out. As sorry as I am to lose that person, I'm thrilled to have Stefanie Goldstien ("Vagina Dentata", "Get it? Got it. Good!") on board.

I found the Twilight Zone episode I'll be adapting for the TW Festival a few short weeks after the BOAs. Well, I say I'll be doing this one, but it will depend on finding an actor to play Wanda. I want to do "Nothing in the Dark", which was an episode from 1961 with Robert Redford that explored our fear of death. It'll work perfectly on the Darkroom stage. Finding a sharp, 65+ actor to play the lead role will be the challenge. I know some people, but they're equity, which could make things messy. Still, time for next steps.

RadioStar is going well, and we've got some big plans for 2007 that I can't really go into right now. I will say that RadioStar has the potential to become a network of shows.

This actually gets to something I want to put out into the universe. If you're interested in becoming part of Cassandra's Call Productions, let me know. With our great variety of offerings, all manner of skills are needed. Video editing, sound editing, lights, costuming, set design, set construction, box office, equipment operators, camera people, actors, directors, foley designers, musicians, INVESTORS, grant writers, accounts people, PR people, event coordinators, legal experts, etc, etc, etc. I need to begin to turn the company into a legitimate non-profit and I'm so busy on the creative side of things that there's no way I can handle all the business side of things. So, if you're interested in helping in any capacity... let me know.

addendum

Congratulations to Suraya Keating for completing her therapy certification today!

woot!

Whee, Wii

Damn Zack Stern. It has been a few weeks since we had a game night. Everyone's been busy, and between Dave and Kate Austin-Groen's new baby, Submergency and all the other madness, Game Night was the first to go. So a few of us gathered at Zack's tonight to play with his Wii (because that joke never gets old). I've certainly been aware of the device and heard good things about it. Graphics aren't "next gen, but it's a lot of fun, but really more for gatherings than solo play" seem to be the concensus.

Well, I'm friggin hooked on the thing now. I love the idea that playing a video game can actually get your heart rate up, and boxing against Dave certainly did that. I got my ass handed to me, but it definitely wasn't a sedentary experience. The accursed thing isn't even that expensive by console standards. My one concern was the infrared transmitter, due to the way I'm set up with my LCD projector. Zack informed me that putting some candles in front of my screen surface will work as well.

I love the fact that I can make a super groovy new high tech gadget work with candlelight.

So, guess what I'll be getting myself for Christmas?

-------

On the way home, I was sitting on BART, working on the novel. I finally began to figure out what this chapter was about and all the twists and turns these characters make. I'm working with the Queen of Thune and the head of her espionage team, so nobody can afford to make dumb choices. The question is simply how many lies and deceptions get piled up on one another before truth is achieved. But that's neither here nor there. As I'm writing, the woman next to me interrupts me to point out that when I type, my right pinkey sticks out and that could cause me ergonomic trouble over time. I had, of course, never noticed that before. Now I'm paranoid about it. I can barely type now without it feeling weird and stress inducing. I was fine, before and now I'm freaked. The even stranger this is that she's an actor. We did readings together for the Actors Reading Writers event a few months ago in Berkeley and she's working with the SF Playhouse on their current show.

I've been meaning to catch the show, and now I really want to (she's quite good)... but I don't know what I'm going to do about this damn pinky.

Entering December

first off, some updates:
New York was great. Many thanks and kudos to Megan Kilian, Mandy Kiefetz, Renee Racan, and Neil and Lex Howard for their couches, company, and general grooviness. If you're in NYC, I highly recommend Evil Dead: the Musical, Avenue Q, and Putnam County Spelling Bee. Avoid the Producers. Just rent the original movie and consider yourself $70 richer and better off.

I am madly in love with my new apartment and am finally no longer sleeping on the couch. Thanks to Joseph Maurer I was able to get mattress and bookshelves from IKEA and transport a glass bar table and some lumber from the CCP rehearsal room. The murphy bed in the apartment offered absolutely no back support and my first time attempting to sleep in it resulted in constant sleep interruption and back pain. By cannibalizing some of the Manumission set, I was able to give the mattress the firmness it needed and now I'm in heaven. I'm not sure what the neighbors made of me operating a circular saw in my living room, though.

I had a bit of a health scare, but all ended up ok in the end, although I now have another kidney stone to add to my collection. I keep them in a little plastic coffin, because I'm just weird that way.

I didn't get the multimedia producer job at WestEd, but I'm still doing some of that kind of work since there's more work than can be done by one person. I'm also being pulled off of Help Desk and placed into a more full time training position. This is almost as good as the job I was angling for as it will allow me to explore multiple avenues of training, including flash presentations, videos, and live trainings.

Submergency is having its challenges due to trying to compete with holiday parties and some PR missteps. In short, people who see the show are having a great time. Sadly, very few people are seeing it. We had to cancel a show last week since we only had to very nervous people in the audience. I went with Kalina Wilson to a comedy show once and we were the only people in the audience and it is debatable who had a worse time of it, us or the comedians. We set them free, and I hope that we don't have a repeat of that situation this weekend.

I spent most of last weekend in auditions. No, I wasn't going to auditions, I was holding them. I'm directing "Vial", a new play by Nicholas Turner for the Bay Area One Act Festival. As I write this, I'm on my way back from the callbacks. It's a curious process, since there are ten directors angling for actors from the same auditions. It isn't as simple as just picking the people best suited for the roles (as if that's ever simple). I need to select first, second, and third choices and then await the decision of the Festival directors, who take all the directors' and actors' listed preferences and then assign final casting. It's not an ideal process, but given the structure of the event, it's the best way to go about an awkward situation. On the plus side, I've seen many actors I wouldn't normally have known to call in for auditions and I'll be adding their headshots and resumes to my stack for future reference.

I also just agreed to direct for the Darkroom Theatre's Twilight Zone festival, which will take place mere weeks after the BOA's. I just got recruited this weekend, so I only have a vague idea of which episode I'll adapt for the stage. Netflix, here I come.

Radiostar continues to go well, with downloads steadily increasing. I'm particularly pleased with this week's episode, which was one of our first "La Rondes" and one of our first recording sessions with Julie Kurtz and Jennifer Jajeh.

In what amounts to my free time, I've re-taken up Argentine Tango lessons with Warren and Gigi Jensen over at the Lake Merritt Dance Studio. Remington Stone has been joining me, and Suraya Keating will be coming too which makes it all extra fun. I haven't danced tango for a good five years, so it's interesting getting my skills back up to speed.

Other than that, not much is going on.

new york

It's been quite a while, but a lot has been going on. I've moved into my new apartment, which I have fallen completely in love with, although I'm not yet completely moved out of my old place. I'm still trying to get rid of some old furniture and that's weighing on me as I'd hate to just take it to the dumps as it's really quite good furniture... I just can't store it anywhere until I find a buyer.

I'm in New York right now, currently crashing at Megan Kilian's apartment in the Lower East Side. Tomorrow I stay with an online friend who I've never met face to face, and then it's Renee Racan's and then Neil Howard's place. It's a whirlwind visit, but I'm having a blast.

Submergency is coming along, with the postcards arriving just before I left, and rehearsals starting shortly after I return from my trip. Radiostar continues its evolution, although I missed doing our update this last Wednesday due to the move and work being unusually jam packed. I have no DSL at home yet, and have barely had time to think while in the office, so no update. I should have my DSL by the time I return, though, so it shouldn't happen again.

Speaking of the office, I had my interview for the multimedia producer position this last week, so we'll see what happens. I may hear something as early as this week, so everyone keep your fingers crossed.

as for now, I just saw a sparsely attended comedy show in the lower east side and am a bit buzzed from the two drink minimum. so, I'm signing off and will talk to you all soon.

edges

It's a blur, really. I've made several major decisions lately, some of which will definitely impact my life, and some of which may not.

I've decided to move. I will stay in the area, but I want a slightly smaller space, with hardwood floors, and no roommate. I've had someone living with me for a year now, and I'm both ready to discard the financial crutch and emotionally not willing to share space with someone I'm not in love with anymore. Having a roommate was supposed to be a temporary thing, to alleviate the financial disaster that was Manumission, but it's gone on rather long, and I've never been overly excited about the architecture of where I live anyway. I love the neighborhood though, and have already found a lovely Victorian that I applied for today. If I get it, I would move on the 1st, which is rather early for my roommates convenience, and even a month earlier than is ideal for me, but I like the apartment enough to work with it.

So that's a change that will impact me, but the specifics are unclear. It could be this place, or someplace else. It could be in three weeks, or in three months. I'm not in a rush, so I'll just keep looking until the right place becomes available to me. It's always good to make change when you want to, and not when circumstances force it upon you.

I'm also applying for a lateral move at my job. There's a position that is being created for a Multimedia Producer, and the skills list matches me like an elegantly tailored suit. I would consider myself a shoe-in, but I don't know that WestEd wants to lose my in my current capacity. Still, the thought of putting away the "help desk" forever has revealed to me that I truly am ready for a change vocationally. Another organization has been making noises to me for some time, although the chance to have an actual lunch has evaded us. I was not ready to leave when the offer was first proposed (unformed and vague as it was at the time), but if I don't get this position, I am more prepared to listen now.

Again, a change that may or may not come, but I stand in readiness and (this being the surprising part) eagerness.

In preparation for the potential apartment move, I have begun to sell and discard the things in my life that I don't feel like moving. The old computer went today, and I put up ads for my old dining room table and chairs, which I have had since I first moved to Chicago (but rarely use). My friends, when they eat over, are as happy to eat at the coffee table as the dining room one, and it mostly gets used as a mail depository. I will mostly likely rid myself of the overlarge king size bed and dresser unit that my brother gave me years ago. It dwarfs any room you put it in, and is much more than I need, even on those (all too rare) occasions that I have someone to share it with.

Trim it down, trim it down. I want to arrive in my new location (with my new job??) with just the essentials. I am getting rid of my television as well, replacing it with an LCD projector, which will turn a wall into wherever I love into an enormous screen. I will get a double bed, and a small dresser (most of my clothes hang in the closet anyway) and all will be new, or at least newly refurbished.

It's an exciting concept. The next show is in pre-production, and my personal life is ripe with opportunity. I am going to New York for a week in November, and will be directing a one-act for the Bay Area One Acts Festival in February. Both of these will allow my company to keep a decent profile without taxing my pocketbook. This gives me time to gather myself properly for ... whatever is next.

I am standing on the edge of a number of tomorrows, shedding some skins worn too long, waiting to see what comes next.

Defending space

It's been a week since the end of the Fringe Festival. My Mom has moved back to Idaho, I completely failed to meet up with my online buddy Nina during her visit up here, we secured at least one musician to work on RadioStar episodes, dates for the return of Vagina Dentata have been re-established again, there was a Guy's night, I saw Cassidy and Chris H. in a show, hung with Rachel Efron, had a blind date and had a spontaneous brunch with Eden, Angela, Tristan, Oliver, and Joseph. I also backed out of a show that I had agreed to do.

I had been approached to audition for a local company that I have no real history with, and the role was a small one. I figured that it'd be good to work with them, and the role was so small that I forsaw about three to four rehearsals and the run throughs as the totality of the schedule. What I got was well over half my month consumed by the project. I just couldn't do it. I had a fight for flight reaction so strong that I could think of little else for 24 hours. I'd never backed out of a project after being cast, though... although I was no stranger to the experience from the other side of the table.

I needed to protect my time though, and my sanity. I have been more and more aware over the last few weeks of all the wonderful people in my life that I spend too little time with. I don't want to back away at all from my projects, but I want balance and the scales have been dangerously tipped for most of this year.

This doesn't necessarily mean that I'll be any less busy for the next few months. There's a project on the horizon that will be fun, but will also require minimal work to prepare (and it won't be all me). With bringing musicians on board, we need to get several shows prepped in advance so that the musicians can score them and that means a bit of a crunch now. But Chris DeJong and Brian Shirmer are coming aboard to edit shows as well, so it shouldn't be long before we have a good month's worth of shows ready for music and we can focus more on promoting the podcast rather than crunching away on editing them.

The novel still languishes, but I am hoping that once the episodes are caught up, I can spend time polishing up scripts and working on the book. I don't mind being busy, as long as I can move things around as needed and see loved ones when I want to (and when they are available). That's the positive aspect of editing and writing instead of rehearsing and performing... I'm more in control of the when and where of the process.

Which is why I'm sitting in my favorite pub, eating a good meal, using their wireless, chatting with friends on IM and getting ready to go to RadioStar.

Hope you all are having as good a Sunday!

considering rewrites

I’ve never had much fear about putting my stuff before the public. I’ve met a lot of people who write, but are quite adamant about not showing it to anyone. That’s always baffled me. Art, to me, seems a thing that is to be shared. It’s part of its very nature. I only really understood it in the sense that one’s art is so close to who they are as a person that they feared it being judged. As the art is judged, so is the person. Now, in truth, most of the people doing the judging aren’t thinking in those terms. But as an artist, it feels like someone looking into your soul and, possibly, giving it an “eh”, or even worse, unleashing their disdain upon it.

Still, I never really had that fear of judgment. Again and again, I’ve just put my stuff in front of audiences and seen what response I got. Of course, when people have issues with it, and you’re right in front of them, they tend to be rather polite and they think through their critiques before unleashing them. If they don’t like certain things, or have opinions that are less than flattering, they couch their thoughts in a way that invites dialogue and discussion.

So, the anonymous reviews on the Fringe website have been a bit of a stunner to me. I was afraid of getting blasted by the papers, and indeed the Guardian and the Weekly may still prove unkind. But the Chronicle was honest, but supportive in a way I was pretty happy with. The reviewer felt the script needed some work, but generally enjoyed the show and seemed to get what I was doing. But some of the reviews I’ve gotten from audience members, either completely anonymous or leaving only a rather generic first name, have been… well, wrathful. Absolute and utter hate and anger towards the show.

I’ve always been fine with people having issues with my stories, and I knew that I was taking some big risks with this particular piece. Hell, I wrote it with the express intent of taking chances. But I wasn’t expecting people to hate it so much.

What seems to be the point of contention, though, is that I refuse to define the “it” that “Get it?” is about. That was rather the point of the piece: the indefinable thing that we’re all striving for, but that is always eluding us. Happiness, faith, hope, joy, contentment, serenity, peace… no matter what you try to define it as, once you start looking at your definition it seems lacking. And yet, we’re all trying to fill that void, that emptiness, with something. Very few of us, if any of us, are able to articulate what exactly it is that drives our actions. It is this inability articulate, this enigmatic aspect to “what are we striving for anyway?” that the piece is about… and that seems to be the big complaint.

From a writer’s standpoint, my failure seems to have been to think that the audience would “get” that. I don’t like to come right out and say the point of a story, because I feel like it should be imparted inference and allusion whenever possible. I don’t like being hit over the head with “the moral of the story”. My third act of “411” almost had the same problem as “Get it?”, but various readers told me outright that I needed to be clearer so that the audience could follow along. I didn’t get that kind of feedback from anyone on this piece until we were in the rehearsal process, and that was from some of my actors who were having difficulty making specific internal choices. I wasn’t in a place where I could hear it, because it would have meant re-writing the piece.

People who have talked to me face to face about the script seem to think that it just needs another draft. Reducing characters perhaps, and clarifying what is going on a bit. I get feedback about the number of characters being overwhelming, as the audience is having a hard enough time sorting it all out, when someone totally new comes on stage. It’s hard though, to think of cutting any of these characters out. Doing so would mean a complete rewrite. But perhaps that would indeed be in order.

From an author’s standpoint, it creates very hard choices. Who would go? Stim and Franco? My comic relief? My Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? Hamburg, my distraught perfectionist seeker? Without him, there is no journey. If Stim and Franco make the journey, then what does that do to the play? Take out Jasmine, Bosko and Gino, and there is no journey to take. Take out Felix and Kippi, and there is no reason for the journey in the first place.

The answer, if there is one, may lay not in reducing but expanding. Take this half hour piece that moves like a freight train through the existential dilemma, and give the relationships more time to develop. Slow the pace down, and lay more clues for the audience. Above all, define the indefinable just enough so that there is a hook for the mind to hang on.

People liked “Got it” and seem to like the beginning of “Good!” although they seem split on the last half of it. It may just be that “Got it.” Is its own piece. It is laden with references to “Get it”, but that could be remedied. Simply writing a series of comedy sketches with these characters and placing “Got it.” In the midst of those would allow it to thrive in more fertile soil.

“Good!” may transform into one of those sketches. It may even split into two different bits.

In this way, I could keep what I love about all the pieces, without sacrificing anything but their initial unity. I might even be able to pare “Got it” and “good” into a smaller cast and make the show something that could travel to other festivals. (which, with an 8 person cast, the current show could never do.)

This will be a good project for me to tackle, before diving back into the novel and the rewrites on "Vagina Dentata". I’m still sorry that those two people hated the show as much as they did, but they have helped move me to something that has more potential. And after all, my own characters argue that “politeness is pointless.”

First reviews

Tonight is our second night, and reviews are starting to come in. the Chronicle seems to have largely liked it, although the review feels that (like most Fringe shows) it's under-developed. I've only gotten one audience review from someone who absolutely hated the piece. I've had a lot of verbal compliments, and people who quite liked the show and enjoyed the mental stimulant of unresolved identification... but I don't want to dismiss the critiques at all. Indeed, some of the actors had the same conerns that my unknown angry audience member did. I don't think I'd change it, as the entire point was to literalize an existential and spiritual issue.

All creative endeavors are open to varying responses, and it's good not to let responses on either end of the taste spectrum get to you. New works are even more prone to this. After all, I had never heard the play read aloud before last month. Minor tweaks and changes have taken place, but even then, by that point, I was not prepared to make any major changes to the script.

When we bring back Vagina Dentata, it will incorporate several things I learned doing it before a live audience, and things are cut and things are changed. It's still 95% the same play, but better. "Get it? Got it. Good!" was even more of an experiment, so it's fitting that it's getting even more of a varied reaction. I'll re-examine it, to be sure. But I don't know that it will ever be the kind of theatre that is for "everyone".

opened

We opened the show last night. Thanks to everyone who came out for opening. I know that Jennifer Jajeh, Suraya Keating, Christopher DeJong, Ann Spayer, Diana Brown, Stacy Marshall, Claudia Weeks, Eleanor Reinholdt, Brian Schirmer, Tom Kelly and Rob Avila where out there. Your support is greatly, greatly appreciated.

It was our first time on the actual stage, working with lights, and we were doing it in front of a very respectably sized opening night fringe audience. That's a terrifying thing. Our light operator had never seen the show before. We had never run the show with her to be sure that she'd be able to make the cues in time (she did!). I added a sound cue that afternoon, and I had assigned myself a voice over role, so in addition to calling the show, watching it like a nervous father, and running a couple of sound cues... I was performing as well.

Now, I don't get nervous before shows... at least not much. But as we approached my "appearance" I found that my hands were shaking. I am fairly certain that I rushed my lines a bit, although the bit still worked. It was almost like stage fright, which is an affliction I've been spared up until now.

Afterwards, I was amped for about 45 minutes before my heart finally slowed down and the "runner's high" faded.

We have three shows left, but now we all know that we can do it... and that the show works.

Hopefully my hands won't be shaking on Sunday night.

Time Warp

I’ve been going through my photo library lately. I got a free Flickr account, and have been going through my iPhoto, naming images, fixing erroneous dates, and uploading particular favorites.

I’ve been focusing largely on pictures taken from the 2004 Europe vacation, when I spent a month in the U.K. and France with Oliver, Elyse, Angela, Alexis, and Elizabeth. I took a lot of pictures, and Angela took enough, that I look like a slacker in comparison. She’s an excellent photographer, and has a camera that suits her skills. (I went out and bought a new camera after that trip, amazed at how we could take shots of the exact same thing, but hers look brighter and sharper by a very noticeable degree.

And so, my mind has been very much with these five people as I look at pictures and pick particular ones to share with the wider world.

I don’t dwell much on the past, but I marveled that it had been two years since the trip. Two years, in which so much had happened. And yet, we had done so little as a group in those two years. Each of us has been following our passions and checking in with each other when possible, but infrequently enough that each gathering feels like an “event” unto itself.

I went to go and see one of the RadioStar guest artists, Julie Kurtz, in “Comedy of Errors” in San Leandro on Saturday. After the show, I was approached by another member of the audience. “I think we did a show together”, she said. She didn’t initially look familiar, but then she mentioned the name of the Neil Simon show that marked my return to theatre when I came back to California. “Leslie?” I replied. I hadn’t seen her in a good six or seven years, and to say that it blew my mind would be an understatement. We talked for a bit, and I gave her a card for the upcoming show. It felt like nothing so much as a brush with my past.

Afterwards, Julie and I got a drink and some food and got into a lengthy conversation about life, art, and faith issues. Julie is a Christian, which is a lonely thing to be in the San Francsico theatre scene. I was amazed at my own mind as I pulled thoughts and observations and historical details from my mind that had no relevance to my ongoing existence, and surely bored her castmates terribly. It many ways, it felt like I was tapping into an old version of myself, something that had been largely overwritten, but still remained under the existing code.

The conversation was engaging enough that I completely missed getting to Berkeley to catch a ride with Suraya to watch her production of “Comedy of Errors”, which I will now watch on Friday. I felt terrible about it, but before Julie and her “Antipholus” were able to drag me off to watch “Merchant of Venice”, I got a phone call from Alexis, who was in the area and interested in some time together.

So a mistake on my part allowed me to spend time with someone I see entirely too infrequently. We walked the lake and talked while I noticed, and not for the first time, the inexpressible beauty of this place I live in. We walked among the feral cats and the wild geese that live around the lake. The water reflected the moon, and the strings of lights that rim the shore year-round. I don’t walk the lake enough, I thought. We so often go elsewhere, and forget to look at the beauty right in our own backyards.

I got a call from Eric Rath as well, letting me know that Angela was in the hospital. He was very good to let me know immediately that she was fine, but was wondering if I wanted to go and visit her the next day. I most definitely did, so we arranged to meet up the next morning. The time came, and Eric wasn’t ready to go, so I took my houseguest out to brunch. Since my cell phone had the ringer off, I managed to miss his return call at noon, and we didn’t actually leave until well after 2:30 to head out to Concord to see her.

Now, I generally only go to the East Bay to see Angela, and it’s always a somewhat odd experience for me. I lived in Pleasant Hill from the age of five to nineteen, and going back there always feels like playing in my childhood sandbox. Part of me has always had a discomfort around the idea of coming across someone who knew and remembered me from my highly religious period. I consider myself quite the heretic now a days, and while I no longer follow the tenets of Evangelical Christianity, I have no real desire to enter into confrontation with people who I have loved who would be deeply saddened and disappointed by my current direction in life.

But here I came with Eric, into the suburban womb that I had once dwelt so comfortably in. Angela was staying in the Concord campus of John Muir Hospital, and I didn’t put two and two together until we pulled into the parking lot. The last time I had been here, was when my Dad had suffered one of the most significant heart attacks before the one that took his life. A wash of emotion hit me, and I felt a bit shaken as we pulled in and walked up to the hospital. The waiting room seemed populated with the shades of my mother and brother, waiting nervously for news of my father’s surgery. We walked quickly through them, however, and headed up to Angela’s room.

As we visited Angela, I thought of Alexis, and all of our shared time together, and how odd it was that Jesus would have admonished us to visit the sick, as if it where a thing that needed urging. To be with those we love in times of adversity seems like something that needs not be encouraged, although I suppose the truly saintly are those who would make it their practice to visit those who lack a supportive community.

But what truly blew my mind was our exit from the hospital. As we emerged from the elevators and turned towards the exit, I saw a face I have not seen for a good fifteen years. As I turned the corner, across the waiting area, and the reception area, in almost silhouette was one of my dear high school friends… and I could not remember her last name. Even from that considerable distance, I recognized her face immediately. “God, is that Kris?” I thought. As we prepared to pass each other, I called out her name and she looked at me, blinking once or twice before the voice and face registered. “Dan?”

The last place you want to run into an old friend is in the lobby of a hospital. On a beach in Fiji, perhaps, or the party of a friend who you never knew was mutual… but in a hospital waiting room? She was there for her own crisis, and we passed a few surprised pleasantries before Eric and I exited and she and her fiancée entered.

Still, as I got in the car and Eric took us back to Oakland, I found myself drowning in memories. Two years ago with Angela and Alexis, dear friends undergoing very different trials, but who I had been allowed to spend time with. Five years ago, with my father’s surgery. Seven years ago with Leslie, who was present at the beginnings of my own artistic rebirth. And finally fifteen years ago, with someone who embodied my entire high school experience.

Eric dropped me off and I got on BART. It was time for RadioStar’s recording session. The present demanded my attention.

time off?

I've been luxuriating in the idea that after September 15th, closing night for "Get it? Got it. Good!", I have nothing other than RadioStar Improv scheduled. Ah, months of comparative relaxation. Everyone just laughs at me and says "that's not going to last."

I know it won't, but at least for a bit I won't be running around, right?

I got an email today asking if I wanted to audition for a show at the end of the month. Performances are in November.

Of course, I agreed. It's a cast I'd like to work with, so if the script is any good.. why not? It isn't like I *really* thought I'd have six months off.

Carmageddon

The astute Jon Brooks made me aware of this article about someone who went nuts and went on a driving rampage, running people down on the road.

As I read the account of the rampage, I couldn't help but be amazed that this actually hadn't happened before. Cars as weapons of mass destruction... it's hardly a new concept. Movies have used the concept to grisly effect in things like Deathrace 3000 and Highlander. Video games have explored it with Carmageddon. But this is the first time that I've heard of it actually happening. It underscores that the only thing that really allows us the illusion of safety and security is the thin veneer of social agreements that we make. We give people driver's licenses as long as they prove that they know the rules and are physically able to handle the vehicle. There's no testing for mental stability, nothing to help gauge if someone is actually fit to be operating a lethal missile in public areas.

Most of society exists on the principle that people will follow the rules. We assume that people are stable, and responsible, despite massive evidence to the contrary.

Now granted, how could we measure one's capacity for responsibility in a way that would be equitable? And by and large, haven't we found that people *do* follow the rules enough for things to function? I don't want totalitarianism, but I do want to look at the things that we take for granted in our society. Why do we have so few true restrictions on auto use, when the death toll from auto accidents/drunk driving/bum fuck crazy assholes is so much higher than thing else? Motor Vehicle Accidents are the leading cause of death in the U.S. We're in more danger from our own cars than from terrorists, but adding restrictions and regulations on airline travel at every opportunity.

And yet we're in love with our cars. They are weapons, they destroy the environment, they're massively expensive and for many people largely unnecessary. Why do we use them then? Status and convenience are the big factors. Public transportation is considered economically and socially "low". It takes longer, and public transit often is unavailable when you really want it. Service is reduced on weekends. MUNI in particular is terribly unreliable. It feels more expensive, because you pay as you go.

But how could we change this? There's got to be a way that doesn't involve whole sale environmental and economic collapse. Trains, buses, car shares, shuttles, bicycles... so many options, if we just take them.

Could I be finding a cause? Maybe. It's early to tell, but this is the first thing I've been evangelical about since I left the church a decade ago.

one week out

every show is different. This one has had it's share of challenges, to be sure. It's a good show, but it's been a challenging one. It's the shortest rehearsal process I've worked through, and although only a 45 minute play, it's one of the more difficult scripts I've written. That means that we've only had half the time to do as much comprehension and character work that we would need normally. Combine that with scheduling conflicts and last minute emergencies, and it's been a stressful ride.

Life at WestEd has been crazy as well, which makes for a very exhausted Dan at the end of the day. Weekdays and nights have been grueling, when it comes down to it, although the weekends have been utter delight.

I went out with Eden Tosh to see "Debbie Does Dallas: the Musical" last Friday, and ran into a new friend from Consumating.com on the way. This was only odd because I had invited this friend to join us, and she hadn't responded, but ended up being at the same restaurant we wandered into, totally by accident. There's that small world thing again. The show it self was ribald and absolutely hilarious. Mindy Lym had told me it was hysterical, and her assessment wasn't off by a jot.

The next day I took a train to Santa Cruz, which had numerous delays which resulted in my little 2 hour jaunt turning into a 4 hour one. Sofia Ahmad is peforming the Shakespeare Festival down there, and it was a good excuse to visit Santa Cruz and see a dear friend. Sadly, because of the delays, we didn't get much time before King Lear to chat. She picked me up and we went right to the festival grounds where I was forced to make do with the insanely overpriced salads that they had on sale there.

$13 for a caeser salad with a few strips of cold chicken. Airports dont charge that much (I think).

Lear was a solid and enjoyable production, but nothing that blew me away. The evening show, "As You Like It" was more than I could have dreamed, however. Absolutely brilliant in every capacity, it was a joy from start to finish. Making it even better, John Atwood was there, with his posse, and I got treated to a picnic dinner and some wonderful wine to go with the show. Better and better, it was. I even got a ride back to Oakland in the wee hours of the morning, saving me the potential hassle of Amtrak. (I wish I hadn't bought those tickets in advance, though.)

I was going to go to John Filgas' memorial show on Sunday but completely failed due to calendar confusion. I was convinced that it was at 7pm, and checked my email to confirm the address around 5:40, and learned that it had started at 5:30. By the time I got there, it would have been over. I do feel pretty horrible about that, but John was very much in my heart and my thoughts all that day.

As for this week, it's been work, work, work and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. We open in a week, and I think that it'll be a big hit. But for now, it's work all week, and then see shows and friends all weekend.

There are worse lives.

Preaching to the choir

I was particularly intrigued by this story about an art show in Iran.

The whole article is worth a read for what it says about art as political reaction, but what really interests me is how this gallery showing is getting international press, while being virtually ignored by the people who actually could be going to see it.

"'Look, these cartoons are the reflections of U.S. and Israelis'’ deeds, but wouldn'’t it have been better if they were put on display in the U.S. or even in Israel?' said Ali Eezadi, 70, a retired industrial engineer who visited the gallery Thursday afternoon."

To me, this is the constant struggle for the political artist: how to craft your statement in a way that is truly subversive. Creating art that advocates a particular political statement, and then placing it someplace where only people who already agree with your statement will see it, defeats the purpose. On the flip side, placing such art someplace where people don't agree with its statement will probably result in people either ignoring it as well. After all, if someone put on a play about how great white supremacy was, and staged it in the Mission District of San Francisco, I don't think it'd get a huge audience. Protesters, maybe, but not audience. People would react to the news that it existed, but not actually approach the art in a way that would allow for an actual dialogue.

As artists, how can we create art that allows all parties to come to the table and actually think about ideas in a new way, without increasing polarization... or just being irrelevant?

clean

Tonight was a rare night off, made even rarer by how I chose to spend it. I was in dire need to do my laundry, lest I be forced to walk about neither socks, nor underwear. Since my roommate was on the DSL, I decided to spend the evening off the computer entirely. I dusted. I vacuumed. I cleaned and cleaned and then cleaned some more. I still need to tackle mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, but otherwise, the apartment is cleaner and more orderly than it's been in far too long a time. It smells nice, like lemon pledge, and everything is in its place.

Something about a clean house puts my soul at ease. It makes me happy to be here.

Of course, I'll be spending very little time here for the next few weeks. Between rehearsals, going to Santa Cruz for the weekend, and various other activities, I'll only come home to sleep. Still, for tonight, this place is perfect.

Cleaning is like writing for me. It's terribly hard to start, but once I get going, there is little more satisfying.

rapid progress

The first week of rehearsal is done, and already this is looking like we've got a winner on our hands. I couldn't be happier with my cast. They're sharp, funny, and talented as hell.

We worked "Got it", and Sam Shaw and Paul Jennings are proving to be a fantastic comic team. We found a lot of bits together that turn a funny scene into a hilarious one. It only gets better from here.

I was pretty nervous about blocking the oral sex scene (no, not between Sam and Paul). I had a couple of actors express interest in the script, but who didn't feel comfortable with that particular part (which is pretty crucial), so my paranoia was pretty high as it was. There's something distinctly awkward about telling people, "ok, now put your head between her legs. Um... how far up are you comfortable with?" Again, though, the actors put each other at ease and everything looks good at this stage.

We still have ten rehearsals to go before our Fringe opening, which isn't much since we haven't even touched Catz' monologue or the last half of "Good", but people are already mostly off book, and once we start doing run throughs we should be able to run it twice a night.

If you're in the area, I highly encourage you to come on opening night. I expect a lot of buzz for this show, and it may be hard to get into later shows.

Frustration

On the plus side, rehearsals are underway, and the poster design is completed, and all the paperwork is on its way (two weeks late) to the Actor's Equity office. All we have to do now is actually rehearse and perform the play. Yay!

On the minus side, my Mom's decision to return to Idaho has set of a family firestorm. Things that probably should have been said at a reasonable volume years ago are now coming out in shouts and recriminations and I'm sitting on the sidelines trying to keep from getting pulled into the flames. I don't want to air family laundry here, but I will make a few statements about my own personal philosophy of life.

People make their own decisions, and they are responsible for them. People make mistakes, and circumstances change over time so that a decision that might have seemed necessary years ago is now no longer useful or beneficial. People ultimately live their lives for themselves... it is their life after all. They may choose to martyr themselves because of what other people want, and they may choose not to.

I don't agree with all the choices that anyone may make. I don't even agree with all the choices that I make. But fighting battles that were ended years ago does no one anyone good.

and speaking out of bitterness is a reproductive process: it begets more of the same.

Take control of your life, and let other people take control of theirs.

Supporting the Troops

A year ago, I performed with the Legal Briefs at the Coast Guard Training Center in Petaluma. Tonight, we went back.

I agreed to the show months ago, and all was well and good. It was a fun show last year, and I'm all for fun shows. But today, I was in a cranky mood about it. I was missing Nick and Leslie's baby shower, Elizabeth Creely's MFA completion festivities and Robin Plotchok's housewarming. Lots of excellent people who I wasn't going to be able to celebrate with, because I had to meet super early and go to Petaluma.

I was able to swing by and visit Allistair Larson who I hadn't seen since he made his emergence from Michelle's naughty bits. He's changed quite a bit from the old days when he looked like a squid. But not even his happy burbles could improve my attitude about taking a very long drive to go and be funny.

Still, Diana and Stacy picked me up and off we went.

Now, the Legal Briefs haven't done a show together for months. I think it's actually been six months, and I haven't seen Christina Marie since then, let alone done a show with her. It's been pretty much the same with Barry and Howard, too. We got up there, and began to reassemble the lineup for the show... which we had largely forgotten over the last year or so. Things were a bit different with the show, too. Last year, they fed the Coasties, but not this time. Last year, no one knew who we were or what we did. This year they do, and they had a picture of us from last year's show on flyers and had double the reservations. So we needed to have a longer show, and the pressure was on.

The show took off like a rocket and only faltered once. We tried to keep it clean, but the Coasties were there to have a good time and steered us rapidly into innuendo territory and beyond. The laughs were big and frequent, and by the end, all my doubts and annoyances had melted into nothingness.

One man had been a student last year and is now stationed two hours south in Alameda, and he drove up to see our show. Another couple thanked us, because with all the stress they're under right now they desperately needed to let off some steam and laugh. Another asked if we toured the country with our show. Several others made a point of shaking our hands, getting our autographs, and thanking us for coming out and providing them with such a great night.

We all left with a glow, and didn't even mind the two hour drive back home.

Getting Ahead

I don't really prowl online for fun things to watch, but fortunately I have you to do that for me. Old college chum T.M. Camp made me aware of this and it pretty much made my morning. I love anything complicated completed successfully in one take! Good tune, too.

I tackled next week's RadioStar episode last night. I'm trying to get a few weeks shows done in advance, and was able to get about half of next week's piece done. Choosing shows to air is always interesting, as we currently have over 20 shows in storage waiting for review. I pretty much listen to them until one catches my interest. Sometimes it's because it's funny, sometimes because it's just compelling. The show that went up today isn't really funny at all, but surprisingly complex thematically for an improv show. I'm pretty pleased with it. Next week's show is another one that is more wry than laugh out loud funny, but it takes some interesting twists and is a neat character study and exploration of media and assumptions and family.

We're really trying to do something more interesting than yuk yuk comedy on the show. We want to explore what it means to do improv on the radio, and to do theatre first, with comedy a distant second. In other words, we're more about the story than the laugh every 20 seconds.

Tonight is the preview for the SF Fringe Festival. I need to whip up some flyers today. I don't even have postcards yet, because we haven't had our first rehearsal, and won't until Monday. It's a short piece (about 45 minutes... I think), so we're only doing three weeks of rehearsal. Some shows have been doing Fringe tours, so they've had their show together for months. I suppose that's part of the difference between being a local company and an out of town fringe specialist. So, cheap flyers it is for tonight. Things kick into high gear next week.

Remembering John

John Filgas died last night.

I can't say that John and I were extremely close, but I did count him as a friend and as a collaborator. John was not only deeply committed to improv and theatre, but was also one of the most resilient, kind, and helpful people I've ever met. He was always there to help, doing box office or helping with concessions or anything else that he could do. He performed with Pharmarsupial once, and was a frequent artist at the SFIC Monday Night Jams back when I was on the board there.

I could talk about his long struggles with health, never complaining, and always looking for the joy in his situation.

But I think I want to remember one particular event. The Darkroom Theatre was just discovering the market for stage productions of classic geek movies. He was cast as Prince Humperdink in The Princess Bride and got to strut as swarthy, delicious evil before enthusiastic houses to great reviews. He had been off stage for a while due to health reasons, and watching him during that period was like watching a man reborn to the delight of life. John was a man who loved his art, deeply.

I'm going to miss you, John.
I wish I had spent more time with you, and not been quite so caught up in my little whirlwind.

We'll catch each other next time around.

Tolerance Levels

I feel like I'm winding down when I should be winding up. That may just be the effects of a Monday morning, grey and soft, beckoning me back to bed.

I had to go to Sacramento for my day job, which necessitated getting up at what is, for me, an obscene hour in order to make a 6:25am train. It was for the best, I suppose, as if I was still driving it would have taken me just as long to get to the office (2 hours) but I would have felt that I could dawdle more at home before leaving. Trains do tend to make one punctual. I did try to sleep on the train ride out, to limited success. At least on planes they give you pillows. I would have loved a pillow, or a seat that reclined. But beggars cannot be choosers, no matter how much we want to be.

As it was, I was able to fix lots of annoying problems they were having in Sacramento before heading back. One of my goals is to get a few weeks ahead on RadioStar shows so that I can start passing off foley work to a gentleman named Taj Moore. This is a first step towards the general goal of distributing editing duties on RadioStar to a larger team of people so that I can give other projects their due. I haven't touched the novel in months now, and I fear that entropy will devour it completely. I was able to use the time on the return train trip to tackle this week's show, which felt damn good.

This week's RadioStar is much more drama than comedy. I like to mix them up, so that we have at least three funny shows between the dramatic ones. This is based on my own suspicion that people want comedy more than they want drama in their podcasts. I have no reason for believing this outside of my own observation of human consumer patterns. Maybe someday, when people start actually posting to the Cassandra's Call Discussion Board, I'll have a better metric for this sort of thing. We're all pleased with this show, though. It has a thematic consistency and dramatic completeness to it that our shows can waver from.

That night I was looking forward to going to Rykarda Parasol's CD release party in the Mission, and did actually attempt to do so. I was so exhausted however, that I had to leave after purchasing my CD, before Rykarda took the stage. I found myself nodding off to the excellent opening band, which is just disrespectful. I fell asleep on BART, waking up in Lafayette and having to jump off the train and catch a return one in order to get back to Oakland.

I caught a colleagues show on Friday night, which was more of a final rehearsal than an opening, although I was very pleased with my friend's contribution to what was a rather mixed bag of one-acts.

Of more interest was getting brunch with Suraya on Saturday. She returned a few days earlier from a trip to Israel. She went intending to do some spiritual work, and to ground herself, and ended up in a war zone. In some ways, it reminded me of our first brunch together after our separation, when she had narrowly survived a horrific car crash the day before. She's had a few near death-experiences lately: car crash, almost drowning on a white water rafting trip, and being bombed. It's a strange thing, to hear about these things after the fact, when the danger is done and all I can do is be amazed with her that she's escaped all these things without a scratch.

That night brought another game night with the guys, and then I went to a club gathering that was organized by a new acquaintance on Consumating. It was a much larger gathering than I expected in a club that I didn't even know existed. Sadly, it wasn't really my "thing" and I left in time for the last BART train. More and more I'm finding out new things about myself, things that I've known but am growing more aware that they are things that aren't going to change. For example: Burning Man. I went for two years and found it to be a very good experience... if not always pleasant. But I've never really been able to buy into the Burning Man aesthetic or lifestyle. I appreciate it, and I encourage it for folks who find it liberating, but I don't find that it resonates with me personally. Perhaps I'll explore my theory on this in a later post, as this one's getting long enough as it is.

As it was, it was good that I got a good night's sleep, as I had a production meeting for a short film I'll be shooting in two weeks. It was mostly a costume check, and a chance to do a quick run through so that the director/writer/lead wouldn't have to explain things too much on the day of the shoot. The AP has got things on a very tight schedule and the last thing we need are actor issues the day of filming. I wasn't sure that the meeting was necessary until a ten minute conversation took place when an actor couldn't understand why he needed to stand up from his desk and walk over to where everyone else was talking.

Let me say right now, that while this kind of thing is often made fun of, it is not behavior that 99% of actors I have worked with ever engage in. It's actually so rare, that when it does happen, I rather goggle at it. When a director says, "Move from point A to point B", it's our job to create for ourselves a reason to do so that makes sense with our understanding of the character and the scene so that it looks natural. It is not our job to say "I don't think my character would stand". Now, if the character does something that seems violently out of its nature (I don't think the gentle old grandmother would throttle that baby), then yes, there's a good chance for some dialogue over a point in the script that needs work. But this "what's my motivation" stuff is a joke both inside and outside the acting world. It's a degree of hand-holding that wastes everyone's time and immediately flags the person as someone that I wouldn't hire on one of my own projects.

Harsh? Perhaps. But I'm growing more and more used to working with very talented people who aren't divas or drama queens, know their shit, and consistently push projects forward instead of holding them up.

Case in point, RadioStar. We had a phenomenal recording session on Sunday, having just welcomed Janna Sobel on as a permanent member. We recorded three shows: a satire, a drama, and a warped fairy tale. Everyone was engaged, clear, attentive, and brilliant. My standards rise with each show that I do, whether it be a film, a podcast, or a play.

This is a good thing, although it does make me a little less tolerant at times.

Dutch songbird

I haven't really seen my friend Djoke for a very, very long time. I'm talking at least six months to a year. She came and saw Vagina Dentata, but I didn't know about it until I got the email a few days later. She was performing tonight, however, for the first time. She's joined an acapella group and this evening was their debut. They only sang three songs, but it was delightful to see her up there, having such a wonderful time.

I didn't know who else would be there, if anyone, as it was such a short set. I was so happy to find Oliver and Remington and Chimene there, as well as Robin, who performed in 411 and was also (in a bizarre twist of fate) Djoke's roommate at the time. (I didn't cast the show, and had no idea of the connection until everyone was in rehearsal).

It takes such courage to get in front of a group of people and sing. I may seem like I take it for granted, since I get on stage all the time, but I know that for many people it's the most frightening thing in the world. I may have been a bit harsh in my assessment of some of the other acts that went up, but any concerns I may have had about certain people's preparation or ability were not unmitigated by my respect for the cajones/ovaries required to get up there in the first place.

I think that the more one invests in a field, the more difficult it is to focus on the heart, courage, and love that leads people to take those first tremulous steps into what can be a very frightening place. For me, if I see someone get in front of a microphone without a sense of the tune, a voice that quavers with fright, clutching the music sheets in front of them... I wonder why they thought they were ready to perform in front of an audience. I respect the courage, but as an artist myself I begin to move into a critical mode. I think of the necessity to respect the audience by preparing, and being more than ready to tackle the task at hand.

And yet, I was attending an event that was clearly geared towards supporting people who are taking those first steps. It's hard to switch gears sometimes. I paid to enter, and some of my group were chastised for talking among themselves during someone's song... when professional singers have to deal with much more loud and boisterous behavior during their sets. Are the performers here for the benefit of the audience, or is the audience there for the benefit of the performers? This is an essential question for amateur performance.

For me, the performer is first and foremost there for the audience. Some of the audience is there for the benefit of the performer, because they love him or her. But as a performer, I would hate to think that the only reason people were present is to support. I hope that they are also there to enjoy, and that they do so. To perform is to bring a gift to your audience. You give them song, or laughter, or thought, or something.

Djoke brought us song, and joy. She always brings the joy, and the song was a bonus. But the evening at large clearly raised some vital issues about art, and performance, and how I view my own avocation.

Food for thought, to say the very least.

Prom, and turning corners

The show is cast, and I'm very happy about the actors I've got. It's going to be a fantastic show, and I'm itching to get into rehearsals. I'm not so future focused, however, that I haven't been able to savor this period between projects. Saturday in particular was a day of extreme pleasures and embracing new and old friends.

Trish Tillman had a "birthday season" party at the SF Croquet Society out in the Sunset District, which is a thing that only Trish would have thought of. People came dressed nattily and had the rules of tournament croquet ("This is not lawn croquet!") explained. The day was foggy, but warm and comfortable and everyone dined on fresh fruit, bread and cheese, and pottered around being awfully civilized.

That night, however, was a flip to the other side. I've been hanging out at Consumating.com lately, and they were having a Prom at G3, a club on the corner of Geary and 3rd Ave. I was supposed to go with my friend Linda, but that didn't work out. I walked in alone, having chatted with a half dozen or so people, but no close connections at all. Normally, this kind of situation is one of those that looks great on paper but ultimately feels alienating and strange. This was aggressively not the case. Drinks were had, dancing all night, kisses from several, plans for future meet ups, after parties until 4am, wicked behavior, and over a hundred people spending the next couple of days online going "what the hell was that? more! more!"

For me, it was a turning point in my moving from "fuck it, I'm single" to "all right, let's start enjoying that I'm single". A large part of the last year and a half has been me avoiding heartbreak, accepting heartbreak, and being generally guarded. The crushes I've had have been with the unattainable, due to geographic or relational unavailability. I had a date with someone for lunch on Sunday, and am seeing someone else on Wednesday. I met up with some people last night, including a woman I met at the party who I am interested in as well.

I'm not hiding anymore. It's more a change of attitude than anything else. I'm at the top of my game right now, in pretty much every part of my life. Literature would dictate that something quite terrible happen for having the audacity to express that... but it's the truth. Life is good, and I feel like it's just getting better.

This has been the anti-emo broadcast station. Don't harsh my happy.

Off and Running

The danger of hanging out with the people you create with on a regular basis is that you keep thinking of more things to do.

I spent this last weekend with Chris DeJong, Brian Schirmer and new friend, Mark Chun. We four manly men went down to San Diego for the annual orgy of geekdom: ComicCon. This is the largest comic book convention in the world, although it's moved well beyond comics. It's a haven for toy retailers, independent publishers, science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts, Costume Players, and gamers. In other words, if there is an obsessive fan base, it's here. (Not including sports or Brittany Spears fan-bases, obviously)

They had over 10,000 attendees, and yet I still managed to run into a couple of people that I knew. Love that.

For the most part, I checked out some panels, met Phil Foglio (of Girl Genius) and seeded the Freebie Table with RadioStar cards. After hours of walking the floor, watching the fans in their costumes, independent films, major film previews, and being in awe of the sheer humanity that crushed around us, we retired frequently to the YardHouse. The YardHouse boasts the largest beer menu in San Diego, and I had first been taken there by my old boss, Bill McKeever when I spent the weekend on his boat a couple of years ago. They do indeed have an impressive array of beer there, and we did drink an awful lot of it. And as we drank, we schemed.

We're already looking at a Holiday show with RadioStar: a mixture of sketch and improv. We have agents looking to secure a space for us, and are prepared to start working on the show as soon as we can confirm the location. But ComicCon inspired us to get booths at SF-based WonderCon and the independent press convention A.P.E. Our material is off-beat and smart in the way that the crowd at these conventions appreciates, and nobody else is promoting themselves that way yet. For that matter, very few people are approaching podcasting in the way that we are. By all accounts, we're as niche as you can get.

It would be a Cassandra's Call booth though, not just RadioStar. This means getting some of my plays printed via a small publisher, or doing it ourselves. This also means making CDs of our best shows and putting them up for sale. Demo CDs as well, with a single episode that can be handed out for free. In other words, work. Lots and lots of work. All of it feasible. None of it particularly difficult (except for that publishing part). Still, work, and lots of it.

Still, I weigh the possibilities against the blood pressure spikes and I think we'll go for it. The company needs to grow and to begin to position itself with a sale-able product. It's time for the next level, and I've always been about stretching things as far as they can go.

Of course, with auditions for "Get it? Got it. Good!" tonight and tomorrow, and rehearsals starting in a few weeks.... the thing feeling most stretched right now is me.

stretch

With "Vagina Dentata" finished for the time being, and casting for "Get it? Got it. Good!" still a week away, it's an unusually calm week. It's been filled with a lot of false starts, too. I was going to get dinner with someone on Monday, and they had to cancel because of work. So Eden Tosh and I were going to get dinner and then go see Scanner Darkly, but it turned out that she had guests coming into town at the last minute so we just grabbed a quick bite. I'm seeing an acquaintance's show at the Magic Theatre tonight and was going to go with someone, but she had to add another rehearsal for her show tomorrow night, so I'm going solo instead. I'll catch her performance tomorrow at Jupiter in Berkeley, but it looks like pretty much everyone I invited to join me won't be able to make it... or won't be there until it's almost over.

This seems to be consistent for me. Whenever I actually *have* time, nobody else does, or they think they do but then have to cancel at the last minute. This seems to be the primary source of spontaneity in my life, as I'll have plans, get them cancelled and then something else will come up at the last minute.

But for now, it's more about taking the chance to stretch out in the free time. I bought a bunch of books the other day and I am currently reading about the DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin. Tomorrow, at Jupiter, I'll probably sit out on the patio with some food and a beer, and listen to Rachel Efron while reading about a woman terribly wronged by history. Maybe people will show up, maybe they won't. I've certainly learned not to rely on the schedules of others to do the things I want to do.

Intuition

Another extremely tired morning. I went out to Brian Shirmer's last night for our weekly game night and hung out with Chris DeJong and Kurt DiSessa. More of the usual: Settlers of Kataan and Halo2. I went a bit lighter on stuffing myself with beer and pizza as I tend to feel like a stuffed sausage when I leave these things. A good night, and I was supposed to head over to Zeitgeist afterwards for an online gathering. I've been hanging out on ConsuMating.com a bit and they were having a party there. When the time came, though, I had a strong impulse to just head home instead, so I jumped on BART and planned for an early evening.

Halfway home I got a call from Mindy Lym, who has recently moved down the street from me. She and some friends were looking for a place to buy a corkscrew at 11pm. I had them pick me up at the station and got my corkscrew from home. That could have been it, but I'm not such a fool as to turn down the offer of a glass of wine with a bunch of lovely and talented ladies. So, I ended up talking theatre and relationships and watching Mindy to tarot readings until around 2 in the morning while draining two bottles of wine. Her friends were from the cast of Seussical, which I highly encourage folks to check out before it closes this month. I saw the show last week, and it was fun to get to know them.

I don't make the mistake of confusing the person for the role they play, but it's quite interesting to watch someone be the sweet and pining Gertrude McPhee and her One Feather Tail, and then meet the exhausted, sardonic woman playing her. The focus of the evening, however, went to the struggle of the director's small dog trying desperately to make friends with Mindy's kitten... who arched and hissed like a Halloween cat every time the pooch got anywhere near her. The little puff ball would just whine and try over and over again to make friends with the very unreceptive kitten.

God, it was like watching human relationships... the more emotionally unavailable the kitten was, the more the little dog wanted to be its friend.

Take what you will from this.

So Hollywood

A fun night, tonight. After work I took care of a few things at home, including removing headshots from my stack of people who are auditioning for the Fringe show, and finding out that the cable I bought to allow me to transmit my computer signal to a television screen didn't work. Feh.

Tonight was a planning potluck for the Fringe Festival, so I had to miss a viewing for Brian Shirmer's film. I was sorry to miss the screening, but I felt a certain responsibility to my own show. Of course, when it somes to potlucks, I'm rather pathetic. I don't cook, really. So I swung by a corner donut shop on the way to the theatre and got a dozen bundles of deep fried, chocolate covered joy. Most of the other offerings weren't much better. Asking theatre producers to bring food to a potluck is an exercise in absurdity. We buy things, and the cheaper the better.

The meeting was fine, and afterwards I grabbed a cab to the Mars Bar to join the afterparty for Brian's movie. Chris DeJong was there, with the always lovely Ann, and other members of the cast and various friends and groovy people. We drank into the evening, with pizza ordered around 11. I'm currently riding home with the producer of the film and a gentleman who is interested in doing some foley work for RadioStar. Lots of cards were passed around. It was very Hollywood for this San Francisco boy. I've convinced one of the actors from the film to audition for my show, and who knows if any of these things tonight will come to fruition. But it's been fun regardless, and one hell of a Wednesday night.

Big weekend

Closing

Well, this has been a rather extraordinary weekend.

I went and saw "Papa", the show playing before our show, on Thursday night. It's been virtually impossible to see their show on nights when we perform, since they don't finish until 5-10 minutes before when we're theoretically supposed to start our show. This was not part of the original plan, but we're flexible in the theatre world when we have to be. So, I wanted to be a good neighbor and check out the show when I could. It was quite good, actually. I'm not a big fan of one persons shows, generally speaking, but for what it was it was very well done. I found myself wanting to explore various assertions about Hemingway's life in more depth than the show allowed, but that's a good thing. Always leave them wanting more, you know. Afterwards, I was planning on meeting up with coworkers for a birthday celebration, but had no idea where to meet them. All I knew was that they were heading to the Marina. Chris Hayes works at the Eureka and was the person who got me in the space in the first place. He's friends with some of the guys in Los Angeles' Second City troupe, and they were in town for Shaun Landry's San Francisco Improv Festival. So, I joined him and we caught cab down to the bar they were at. Apparently, they had a fantastic show that night. I got the impression that three acts had played that night, and all of them had rocked the house like a Scorpion's set. I had a couple of beers and talked about Vagina Dentata and RadioStar. I hadn't had time to eat that night, so I got very tipsy very fast. This is never a wise choice, and I ended up slightly drunkenly inviting David Razowski to come and play with Pharmarsupial when he visited San Francisco on his next vacation.

Very smooth, I can be, when drunk and happy. There was a small voice in the back of my brain yelling at me to shut the hell up and let the man alone, but we were all in a friendly mode and my common sense wasn't paying much attention at the time.

I got the call from Rebeca Diaz, letting me know where to meet up for Marycruz Diaz's birthday gathering. So off I was in another cab up to the Matrix bar for more late night revelry. Now, the Marina is a whole different scene from most of the places I hang out, but I was feeling pretty limber. I chatted up a cute girl at the bar while I was getting a drink for the birthday girl, but wasn't able to follow up as I needed to deliver my birthday present.

Now, remember, I hadn't eaten all night, and had a Guinness, and white German beer of unknown appelation, and two screwdrivers by this point. I met another woman who came in and talked for a few seconds with her before she found her friends and vanished from my besotted and fond gaze. Throughout the evening, I would look over and check her out, hoping for another chance to talk to her. I was tipsy as hell, but quite lucid. Rebeca noticed my attention and I commented that guy she'd been talking to had been keeping his distance. In my mind, that meant that I might have a chance to swoop in shortly... and then looked back over to find her making out passionately with him.

Fuck.

It's a bad sign when you find yourself getting jealous about total strangers in a bar. It was well after hours by that point, though, and I needed to wait it out and get a ride home with the Diaz sisters. I finally got home around 2 or 2:30... I'm honestly not sure which.

It made going to work the next morning and interesting experience.

Throughout the day at work I got various calls on my cell, and checked voicemail at home, and watched the reservation list for Vagina Dentata grow and grow. By the time I got to the theatre, we have over fifty people on the reservation list. For a small theatre production, that's wonderful. For a late night (10pm) show, that's damn near mythical. I was very excited, and realized that we had run out of programs. One of my actors, Stefanie Goldstein, offered to take me to her office, which isn't that far from the theatre, and we made up about 75 programs on the copier. We got back with lots of room to spare and I fiddled about getting things ready for our show while "Papa" played on in the theatre. Time ticked further and further on, and I became more and more aware that we were missing something crucial: a box office manager. As people began to arrive at the box office, I put out a sign indicating when we'd actually be opening it and called my volunteer.

He had forgotten what day it was.

Cassidy Brown was in the crowd waiting for the box office to open, so I made him earn his comp ticket for the night and put him on duty. I gave him the quick orientation and then waited for the final notes of "Papa's" performance. Warren Jensen was there, so he could learn the light cues for our closing night as we were going to be losing our light operator. Kurt DiSessa was there as well, and I had offered him a comp if he'd help with the rapid set change. As the ovation subsided for "Papa" we swept in and began making the changeover. While I dropped the wire from the ceiling and starting hanging the wall panels, they brought the desk down the aisle and up on the stage. Then they went and got the conference table from the wings, and it broke as they tried to maneuver it onstage. Drills were grabbed and brackets refastened as I thanked whatever gods watch over the theatre that this happened on a night when we had extra hands.

Finally, the table was repaired enough to survive the show and we opened the house. We had over seventy people that night. The theatre claims to hold two hundred, but looking out at the house, I think that this number is inflated. Seventy filled the primary middle section very nicely. We started the show about 10:15pm and had a rocking old time. It was the largest single audience in Cassandra's Call's history.

Sunday was a whole different deal, as I borrowed Eden Tosh's car to go to Fairfield for my Great Uncle Mac's 90th birthday gathering. I saw people I hadn't seen since I was a wee shaver, and was amazed at how sharp, spry, fit, and feisty my uncle was. I can only hope and pray for that kind of longevity. May we all ready 90 and be cracking wise about beer and women while still moving around easily under our own power.

I picked Eden up afterwards in Pleasant Hill. She had been tooling around with Angela Mazur, so we sat for a bit, cooling our toes in the pool before jumping out for some thai food. Time got away from us, sadly and I had to whisk Eden away in order to get to the theatre by 9pm for our closing night. Eden was our box office manager for the evening, and while we only had 24 people on the reservation list, I wanted things to go smoothly. We made our final switch over, and when all was ready to go, there were over fifty people in the house. We had doubled our reservation list.

The show snapped like fresh elastic. Every one of the ladies had a good night, and everything sang. At the end, Gigi gave me roses and I gave them to the cast and thanked the audience and they roared like a village of vikings who had just been given free beer.

It was a good feeling... a VERY good feeling.

Andy and Lorelei, and Cindy Yee and Warren stayed afterwards to help us strike the set. It seemed pointless to put stuff away just to strike it the next day, so we got everything out of there that night. While making the final leg of the journey back to my rehearsal room, the desk that had sat in my apartment for years and barely survived the trip to the theatre in the first place, finally gave out. Particle board and wooden dowlings, secured by soft metal angle brackets, splintered and snapped and fell apart. It had seen it's last day. I broke it into pieces and tossed it in the room for later management. It was almost 1:30am and I was in mood to try and salvage it.

Sunday came, and I returned to the theatre to help "Papa" strike their set for a few hours before catching a bus across town to see Mindy Lym in "Seussical". The show was charming and sweet, and I marvelled at the size of the cast and the choreography and wondered how they got all that together while rehearsing in my room. After the show, lacking the change for bus fare, I walked the two miles back to the room, which took me through the tenderloin. After watching musical versions of Horton Hears a Who, with one lone elephant hearing an invisible community's cry for help... taking in the Tenderloin takes on a new poignancy.

I got to the room, though, and set things up for RadioStar. We had a smashing session, although were were few in number. David Austin-Groen is off in Eastern Europe, and Diana Brown is off doing "Dead Certain" in New York. Still, we got some damn good shows in the can and then retired to our usual watering hole to decompress. While there, Christopher DeJong proposed a RadioStar holiday show that dovetailed with some ideas I had been having about a scripted show.

To make an already way too long story a little less long, it looks like I now have a project in between "Get it? Got it. Good!" and the March revival of "Vagina Dentata." We don't have a name for it yet though.

And no, this is not what I would consider to be a slow weekend.

S.E.P.

Twice in the last seven days I've gotten phone calls or emails that have been like a solid, well placed punch in the abdomen, just above the stomach but below the rib cage. I suppose that places it on the diaphragm, not that it matters.

It's funny, I've joked a bit over the last few months about how I've given up on connecting with people and decided to be a workaholic. I've only been a tiny bit kidding. It's just seemed easier to focus on what makes me feel good about myself and leave the ambiguity and continual issues around rejection aside. But that, of course, is easier said than done.

These alerts from the outside world ultimately have nothing to do with me. That's what hurts the most, I think: the fact that they have nothing to do with me. "Hello. Nothing to do with you, except that I thought you should know."

Pretending that you don't care anymore, that it doesn't hurt, that everything is smashing and who needs a heart anyway... it's not as helpful as it is on paper.

I wish it was. I wish I could hear things without immediately placing them in the context of how they hurt *me*, or how they make *me* feel. But I do. Then I feel bad about that reality, even though I know very well that there isn't a person on the planet that doesn't react the same way. I guess the real question is "how long before I stop being a selfish twit and focus on the real issue here?"

For me, it's usually only a half second or so... maybe a tiny bit longer. But then, later, it comes back. That's when I wish I was as disinterested and cold and hard as I like to pretend I've become. That's when I keep trying to push my heart back down my throat before it manages a grisly but impressive suicide dive out of my largest oriface.

No one buys my little charade of indifference, of course.

I'm not really that good an actor.

Quick Breather

I've been enjoying taking it a little easy the last few days. We got a delightful review in the SF Bay Times (which you can read at the Cassandra's Call Website and had two very nice audiences this weekend. I was pretty freaked at our low numbers on opening weekend, but am greatly comforted by how this weekend went. Lots of my crew showed up, and 1am donuts were consumed, drinks consumed, and activity vaguely resembling dancing took place.

For the most part, I was fairly exhausted all weekend, although I managed to have lots of fun anyway. I had the Executive Leadership Center conference in El Segundo last week, and felt terribly un-prepared for it. Work on Vagina Dentata had kept me from really focusing any creative energies on the conference, and the spec's for what they wanted shifted a mere couple of days before it all went down. It all turned out well in the end, but by the time I got off the airplane Friday evening, I was dead tired. The fabulous Linda Kim drug me out anyway for crepes and to go dancing with some of her girlfriends. I was so tired I could barely stand up, and I've never found loud and dark clubs good places to make introductions. To make it worse, I found the band absolutely painful to listen to. I had to finally make my adieus and flee from the club after the second "song." Oy.

The holiday was an exercise in staying in my robe all day long. I got this week's RadioStar episode prepped (and did double duty on it since we missed last week), cleaned and then dirtied the kitchen and goofed off a lot. I feel like I should regret not going out and being social for the 4th, but I'm really quite over the whole fireworks thing and I think that I needed a complete day of down time and to recharge a little.

I can't do much more of that, though. I need to start casting for the Fringe show. I'm confirming my actors and need at least three more people. I've got two of the current cast ready to bolt for better paying jobs, so I may be casting more people than originally planned. Par for the course, really. I'm not paying much for the Fringe, it only has four shows, and it's not very high prestige. Still, I hope I can get things locked down soon. We start rehearsing in five weeks.

Crossed Wires

So, this weekend was a success, and a disaster... depending on your point of view.

The show opened. People seem to have enjoyed it. We successfully managed to change the set from the show before us to our set in 20 minutes, and that was with some significant problems. I was able to make various repairs to the set between shows and we found a better way to handle some of the furniture and have begun conversations on how to do this whole thing better next year. I went to a meditation workshop that Cindy Yee was running, saw Jack Rucker for the first time in a good four years, had dinner with Anais Delamour, saw Trish Tillman's show and got some great ideas for future script while talking with Gigi and Warren Jensen.

On the other hand, the Guardian reviewer got confused as to when our show started and missed our opening night, delaying our review by a week. The Bay Times reviewer needed a photograph and I managed to confuse both myself and my photographer so that we almost lost our review. Attendance was excruciatingly low, partly due to it being Pride Weekend. They physical demands of setting up and striking the show every night are about ready to do me in. My confirmation email to one of my rental clients got stuck in his spam folder so he thought he didn't have anywhere to rehearse, and I was relying on his presence in the room to allow another client into the room... so I lost rental income for both clients as the second one couldn't get into the room.

In short, it's been a busy, busy weekend and I was about ready to chuck everything this morning. Fortunately, time passed and my mood calmed and I can see both the good and the bad right now.

Still, I'm glad that I didn't have rehearsal tonight.

Preview

We have our Preview tonight. It's odd, having only two days in the theatre, and then a preview, and then two days off before opening. But then again, theatre is odd in general.

I try and get as much done in advance as possible, because things always go wrong. Better to deal with the handful of disasters than have to deal with them AND everything that got put off until the last possible minute. There's still things that have just not gotten done before now, but it's the big nasty "what the fuck?" things that make me want to crawl in a hole and cover my head.

We've gone through a few different options of how to deal with working around, or within, the "Papa" set, which is the big budget show before ours. The current, and final option is to hang microfiliment wire from the lighting grid at appropriate places and then hook fabric panels to them and allow them to drape easily over the set. We have the fabric, the grommets, the hooks and the wire. I was going to work with the theatre rep. to do these yesterday before our dress rehearsal but he got pulled away for the day. I was going to work with him today, but he got pulled out of the city and won't be back until late night. So I'm leaving work early to go and climb ladders, measure wire, and try not to kill myself. We have our first audience tonight and it'd be awful nice to have a set.

I've been checking some of the places we're supposed to be listed, and so far so good. On the odd front, however, is our listing in SFGate.com (the SF Chronicle). The entire description of the show (and I sent them a nice short blurb on the plot) is: "Dan Wilson's new social satire".

That's it.

It borders on "Mostly Harmless", and I'm not sure if I should be offended or amused. I mean, I suppose it's nice to know that my name is the only relevant information. If it's Dan Wilson's new satire, what more need be said? And here I thought that the average theatre goer didn't have any idea who I was. Not only do they obviously all know, but my name is all the information they need to come see the show!

Ok, I think I'm actually offended. I'm not sure how to change this other than email the Weekly and the Chronicle and re-send them the description.

Criminy.

lights

Well, the dry tech went pretty well. There's a handful of details to work out before the tech run tomorrow night, but all in all... we're pretty well off. I want a little more stage space, and I'm still not very happy about having to deal with the other show's set in the way that I do... but these are things that won't be an issue when we remount the show next year. These are the unique little problems that make this show special, after all.

On interesting issue was practically destroying my desk while loading it into the truck. It's this big "Dan Sized" desk that's really just fancy looking particle board. It got caught between the tailgate and the bed of the truck and whammo. Near kindling. We're able to fix it up with some L brackets, but damn it that wasn't the sight and sound to just put you off your lunch.

Again, though, nothing that wasn't fixable.

The important thing is that all of our furniture and our props are in the space. Our lights are programmed.

now we just need a few final things and to burn the CD of music and we're ready to do this thing.

Those final feet

Vagina Dentata opens in less than a week. The show feels 95% ready, which is phenomenal. Tonight we move the set into the theatre and figure out exactly how the hell we're doing to do this thing technically, since there's another show in the same theatre with a rather ornate and immobile set that we need to conceal and replace within 20 minutes for each of our shows.

Fun, eh?

I think we've got a good solution, which involves accordion-like beams that screw into the stage that will allow us to have a free standing backdrop with only about twelve screws. No one approaches it, so we'll see how our engineering works out.

We've got a preview on Wednesday, and our first paying audience on Saturday. My only trepidation is on the technical side of things, and even the it's mostly about the time between "Papa" and "Vagina Dentata".

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The lovely Sofia Ahmad sent me this fabulous bit of mad science. While I found the videos fantastic, it's the explanation of the volatile reaction of Diet Coke to Mentos that really got me. She'll be doing Shakespeare in Santa Cruz this summer, so go see her wonderfulness if you're in the area.

-------

Alexis Dinno is now Dr. Lexicat, thank you very much. I was able to make a very belated appearance at her post doctoral shindig at a Fellini's in Berkeley last night, although I spent a good chunk of that time hounding Kevin Kerrick, an actor I'm trying to recruit for the Fringe Festival show in September, who happened to be at the bar. Small town(s). Alexis is now officially a super genius with a funny hat. A thousand toasts in her honor!

--------

I'm still getting used to the idea of having a very part time personal assistant. I had a business brunch with Mindy yesterday before rehearsal and was delighted to find that things that had been on my to-do list for a year were finally "magically" happening!

That's pretty much it in Dan-Land right now. I'm going to go and edit this week's RadioStar Improv show while I still can. Once 5:30pm hits, my life is nothing but WestEd and Vagina Dentata until Thursday.

seeds

Vagina Dentata opens next week. We have a preview on Wednesday, and then opening night is Saturday at 10pm. The show is shaping up nicely, although I'm getting a bit stressed over the technical details surrounding it.

I was interested, however, in something I came across while removing furniture from my apartment to be used as set for the show. I found the little notebook I purchased when in Hawaii this last December. Inside were notes and thoughts and little bits of poetry that I wrote while on the beach. I was musing on the themes of my unfinished play, "Mammals in Collision", but in it, I see the seeds of what became Vagina Dentata:

"While actions may speak louder, it is through words that we best hide.
Rationales move to excuses, and in their recursive maze we lose ourselves and others, until we cannot admit, even to ourselves, what base need urged the words that first crawled from our self-deceiving lips.
The further we creep up the scale of so-called evolution, the further we move from knowing ourselves and that which drives our every thought.
We hide from that which we fear, but over time the stranger to what we hold most dear becomes ourselves,whom we have lost in a million polite excuses and enlightened precepts.
We damn and curse our hungers, decried as lusts of beasts, as though we came from different blood and flesh and knew no tears but those of aether, spirit, and air.
Yet deep behind the alphabet of ideas and masks lies bone, blood, sweat and life.
We crave, consume, desire and want so deeply that our souls quail at such passion.
It is unthinking, uncaring of lofty goals or hopes for kith, kin, and kind.
All that remains are the unenlightened drugs of taste and touch.
There is no truth here, but only sweet and savage release."

Off Book and on You Tube

Just a quick post. Things continue to move along nicely with Vagina Dentata. We're two weeks out from the preview and I was called an "evil, evil bastard" by one of the actors because last night was the first night they were supposed to rehearse without their scripts in their hands. The difference between working on character and lines in a living room and getting it up on its feet without scripts is so intense, and so major, and it was like a whole new rehearsal process last night. Gabrielle Guthrie came in as well with the painting that will be featured in the show, which got shocked gapes from the cast, and took measurements for costumes. We are well and truly on our way.

In other news, a documentary about Women's Will's 24 hour playfest is up at YouTube. I'm in there, although they didn't interview me. Check it out!

I am your kryptonite

As allued to in the last post, I decided this morning to do more than pull out the clippers and I pulled out the razor.

I walked into the office this morning and a coworker took one look at me and gave me a big hug, saying "Yeah! Sometimes you gotta take life by the horns, baby!"

All I could mutter was "Um... thanks, Bob."

straining at the bit

Each part of the creation process has its own joys and frustrations. This is the point in which I want to run before we walk. The actors are doing a fantastic job in finding the core of each scene, but it's too early to delve into truly shaping the scenes the way I'd like to. Until an actor is off book and ready to move around and think more about the moment (or not think, just do), there's only so much direction I feel I can give them. Some directors are all about spending hours doing various exercises to find new things and explore possibilities and what not. I'm not really one of those. I have a pretty good idea about what I want. The trick is to let myself be surprised into something better than what I want. How to direct, while allowing for surprise, but moving them towards the play as I see it, and yet being open to something larger than my original vision... that's something I continue to struggle with.

In the meanwhile, I watch the actors pass over the scenes, over and over, each time growing a bit more into these characters, and eagerly await the chance to throw the scripts down and start living the moments versus reading them. It's like wanting to get married when you're really just starting to date. The excitement of the vision of what is to come is just too compelling, but it needs to be resisted.

We should be off book in ten days, though, and at that point we'll move into the Cassandra's Call Rehearsal Room, with all of our set pieces and props. Gabrielle Guthrie, our costumer and artist, will join us and we'll start to get a sense of how these characters look, and that will influence how they move and feel as well.

In the meantime, I'll be starting yet another project with Diana Brown. We'll be doing short video segments for the Mondo Global Network on local comedians, and also doing longer audio interviews with them for a yet unnamed Cassandra's Call talk show podcast.

Oh, and I shaved my head today. I look like a kinder, gentler Lex Luthor.