Saturday, December 30, 2006

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

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

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.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

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.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

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.