Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Sick and Dress

I was sooo pleased that I'd gotten past the current cold season without illness. So much for that. I tried going into work today, and it was a big mistake. I got through my first help desk shift, but then had to come home. I was light headed, headachey, and barely able to function.

Tonight should be fun.

I'll be hopped up on Afrin, getting through dress rehearsal. We're the last ones up, and tech was kind of a challenge last night. Our poor light designer was stressed to a tragic level and it made things a bit tense. I had written out all the cues, which she had originally understood, but then missed a crucial detail on the script and that kind of threw everything into confusion. It only takes one thing, folks. Still, in the end we got it all taken care of and tonight should go smoothly... I hope.

My goal is to be out of there by 10:30, get a ride home with Mayuko, who is seeing Hedda Gabler without me *sniffle*, and actually get a full night's sleep. I afrin'ed myself last night so I could breathe, but between the heart racing of the afrin and the mild fever I was dealing with, it took me forever to sleep. I'd like to make it back into the office tomorrow, but I had a few of the staff comment on how awful I looked, so I may at least take tomorrow off and do Help Desk from home again. I think that if i can take naps throughout the day, and keep all the windows shut (blessed dark), I'll be able to get through this week.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Submergency: Questionable Behavior

The third Submergency video is up!

Monday, February 26, 2007

Advancements

I just spoke with a "fiddle player" who is happy to provide the live music I've needed for "Nothing in the Dark". I'm terribly pleased, as he's worked with other theatre companies, so even though I'm going into this fairly blind, I believe that we can put something appropriate together. We go into rehearsals a week from tomorrow, so I'm not in a position to pick and choose. This is the benefit, as well as the frustration of directing for tiny, no budget shows. On the down side, if I could pay a musician, I'd have had someone long before now. But since I'm not, and since it's only three performances in a 45 seat house, I can take the risk without it costing me several thousand dollars. If this works out well, I'm sure there will be more collaborations down the line as well.

RadioStar has launched a blog, allowing the performers to reflect on the improv and podcasting process. It's available at the new RadioStar Network web site. It's not technically "live" yet (the site, not the blog) as the only content we currently have is the improv stream and now the blog. But we should have the first of our staged reading up shortly, and hopefully we can get the first interview up there shortly afterwards.

Vial opens on Thursday. Come check it out if you can, it's looking like a great show.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Random notes

A neat trick was pointed out to me from T.M. Camp about Firefox. If you use Firefox (and if you don't... why not?) type "wiki" and then a search term in your address bar, then hit return. Firefox will bring up the closest relevant wikipedia entry. Very, very cool.

The second Submergency video is up on YouTube. Check it out!

Adrienne Miller and Tom Neely have had their second child! Congratulations guys!

there's an insightful analysis of our failure in Iraq and suggested directions at the Washington Post that is worth checking out. Thanks to Jon Brooks for that.

Matthew Rossi is an actor I met at the 2005 Fringe Festival in San Francisco, and he's got a sad and fascinating tale of innocence lost and warnings about trust and identity that is worth a read.

stage and film

Last night we moved rehearsal from the Off Market Theatre back to my apartment. I had rented out the space in advance, and we were short an actor anyway, so I decided it would be a good opportunity to work some of the key 2 and 3 person moments. We got a LOT of stuff cleaned up and polished, which will really allow us to leap forward tonight and tomorrow as we shape the rest of the play around these pivotal points.

As a director, I don't know that I'm the most brilliant visual artist in the world. Perhaps that's partly because I'm so used to working on a shoestring budget. I'm not accustomed to making visual extravaganzas ("Pinch" being the obvious exception). I do have a good sense of how to put a scene together though. I actually surprise myself, watching the actors and suddenly seeing how to communicate what is going on to the audience clearly, and being able to explain exactly why an actor should angle themselves in this way, or what they need to convey emotionally to the audience, or why some choices obscure the intent and some clarify them. After decades of acting, directing, and observing, I've built a very clear vocabulary of movement and performance in my mind and I'm having a great deal of fun bringing all of that to this process.

Vial will be a nifty bit of theatre.

I'm starting to get nervous about my lack of musician for "Nothing in the Dark" however. We've still got time, but I am getting edgy. I found a bed headboard with a "free" sign on it in my apartment building lobby and quickly grabbed it for the show, but soon realized that it was entirely too wide for my needs and had to return it where I found it. As low budget as "Vial" is, "Nothing in the Dark" is even more extreme. The stage is literally the size of my living room, and I need to have three actors and a "bed" in that space. I'm sharing the space with another "Twilight Zone" episode that night, so whatever set I have needs to be able to go up and come down within moments. Interesting challenges. For now though, most of my attention is on "Vial", and I hope that my musician presents him or herself soon.

On totally unrelated notes, I caught "Pan's Labrynth" with Mayu on Monday and was both compelled and repulsed by it. It's a fantastically done film, but one that I found deeply and profoundly disturbing. It's strange to have such a high quality film be one that I can't recommend universally, but this is a "Fantasy" film that children should not be taken to. I couldn't bear to watch some parts of it, because there are certain images I just don't want in my head ... and they had nothing to do with fauns, fairies, or inhuman monsters. As scary as these images are in the film, they are nothing to the human monster that dominates the narrative.

One thing that movie did, aside from give me the screaming meemies, was take my mind off the abomination that the Ghost Rider film has turned out to be. This is a character that I have a lot of emotional investment in, and from the second I heard that Nick Cage was cast as Johnny Blaze I began to worry. Then I heard that there were two scripts being considered. One of them was a dark, gritty horror script and the other was a "superhero" script. They went with the latter and I worried a bit more. Then the trailer came out, and I thought that some of the visuals looked great, but everything else about the film took me from worry to a sense of forboding doom. Well, now it's out. The reviews are in, and it's craptastically bad. Bad script, bad acting, unfinished special effects, and all the sensibilities of a bad video game.

Everything thinks "I could have done it better", but the truth is... most of us could have done it better. I wanted a film with a young Johnny Blaze. I wanted to see him obsess over his black magic books, obvilivious that he was toying with the real deal. I want to see his anguish over the impending loss of the man who is like a father to him. I want to see his girlfriend save his ass at the last minute. But most of all, I want to see him turn into a demon from hell... and to struggle with his own desires for vengeance. I want to see Johnny Blaze let the Ghost Rider exact the vengeance that Johnny's own anger and frustration and pain demand... and then see what happens when the demon goes too far. A film where the "hero" who is no hero without a human conscience goes out of control and then see how Johnny confronts his own heart, and desperately tries to regain the control he has sacrificed.

That would have been an amazing movie. But instead we get Nick Cage, the plastic Eva Mendez (who didn't even look like she could act in the trailer... which is always a bad sign), and some bullshit about water, air, and earth monsters and a protaganist who is about as conflicted as a man choosing paper versus plastic. I would have preferred that the film had died in pre-production, or gone straight to video because now it will be 20 years before anyone even considers trying to make a good Ghost Rider movie... at best.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

ass kicking

The last 24 hours have pretty firmly kicked my ass, but it's going to get better from this point forward, I think.

The first of the Submergency videos has been posted on YouTube. We'll be posting the entire show in chunks over the next few months. Some of these are fantastically funny, and others are just cute, but I'm pleased with the general quality of all of them and am looking forward to further improving the video quality for future shows.

Vial had its first rehearsal last night, and it went ... ok. We were missing an actor and another was an hour late, and two others were about a half hour late. Not an auspicious beginning, to say the very least. On the plus side, everyone had given good consideration to their characters, histories, secrets and relationships and people were largely off book for the read through. We only have two weeks, so I needed people as ready as possible for this start. With one of our actors gone for a third of the rehearsals, keeping things tight and working on the characters (instead of just learning the lines) is crucial.

I'm a bit freaked about still needing set pieces, but Mayu has already promised to help me get some stuff on Saturday. I just need to breathe. People will show up on time. We'll have time to do this script justice, and we'll get through it.

really, we will.

Monday, February 12, 2007

On the edge of the rehearsal abyss.

A couple of links first off.

Kim Richards made me aware of this speech by Ross Anderson, Mayor of Salt Lake City, which I thought was worthy of note.

One of our employees here sent me a link to this case of early tech support that is probably one of the best takes on the HelpDesk experience I've ever seen.

Another good RadioStar recording session last night. We were able to record several short plays by local writer/performer Deborah Wade, and we should be able to begin podcasting them shortly.

Mayu and I were able to catch Eleanor Reinholdt and Candice Milan in "Come back to the five and dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" at the California Conservatory Theatre this weekend. Eleanor and Candice were some of the standouts of the cast, and the show as a whole was fairly good. Definitely worth your time if you're in the area, and they have one weekend left.

Rehearsals start tomorrow for "Vial", and I'm still in need of some chairs. I have two weeks, so it isn't dire yet, but it would be nice to not have to worry about it. I'm still trying to nail down a musician for "Nothing in the Dark" as well. Feel free to refer people to me!

I got confirmation that we do NOT have the rights for the hoped for July show at the Exit, but I'm not too discouraged as that may open up time and energy and resources to convert "Pinch" into a short film. I've been getting a ton of ideas of how to film it, and floating it by people seems to be getting a positive reaction. Granted, I've also had people express a desire to shake me and yell "slow down! For god's sake, just slow down!'.

I'm not sure what they mean by that, though.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

bleh

Well, last night was kind of a wash. I got the current RadioStar show up in the afternoon, but I had hoped to get a jump start on next week's show and get some writing done. I just couldn't pull it together, though. I played with Second Life a bit, creating an account and avatar. I wanted to see what this thing was like and if it was worth creating a space there that could be a virtual RadioStar Listening Room. After an hour and a half of tooling around and only seeing three other users outside the welcome kiosk, I'm not sure it would be worth the time or effort. I'll play around a little more and see if I can find if ANYWHERE is better populated, but I'm not terribly hopeful right now.

I went to my last tango class for the next several weeks, but didn't do much dancing. In an odd turn of events, there were 9 men and only 7 women, so I opted out of most of the practice time since I don't actually pay for lessons. (I've done web work for the instructors for over 7 years, most of it unpaid, so I get free lessons). It was a bit frustrating, especially as I had to walk home in the rain afterwards.

I got home and finished dorking around on Second Life for a bit, and generally completely failed to get any writing or significant editing done. Everything I tried to work on turned to dust and I found myself drifting off energetically. I hate nights like this, when I just can't focus to save my life and there are too many bright and sparkley things around to distract me.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Stuff and Nonsense

Not a lot new on the personal front. I'm a week out from beginning rehearsals for "Vial", with a full cast and most of the tech stuff all lined up. Angela, Mayuko and I went and saw Kodo Taiko at U.C. Berkeley on Saturday, which was awesome and reminded me that I really need to keep abreast of what is going on at Berkeley. Much thanks to Eric Katz for sacrificing his ticket so that Mayu could attend. Also, Jeffrey Bihr has fired up Suzuki classes again, which I drug Mayu (willingly) to. I'm thrilled to be resuming this work, even if it is on Sunday mornings.

A few random thoughts on the news:

A man wanted internationally for bombings, espionage, attempted murder, and hijacking was elected to Iraq's parliament fourteen months ago. We just realized it. I wonder if his career of violent opposition to Kuwait and America was part of his election campaign process. If not, obviously his opponents didn't do their job in exposing his past very well. What ever happened to modeling their election process on ours?

The big news today is about the astronaut who went all Jerry Springer on a perceived romantic rival. It's about time that the sciences began to compete with professional sports in the area of scandal and lame ass behavior. I'm just glad that astronauts have to go through all that psychological testing before they get sent into space so that they don't go bug fuck crazy up there . ... wait a minute....

Tony Blair accused Iran of "a strategy to create maximum trouble" in the Middle East. Interesting comments from the largest supporter of America's violent invasion of an Arabic nation. Seriously, what grounds do America or England have in claiming that Middle East nations are trying to create maximum trouble in the Middle East while we're invading, stationing military bases in foreign lands (whether they want us there or not), detaining foreign citizens in countries that don't belong to us, and generally poking the hornet's nest with a big stick while chuckling imbecilely? What amazes me even more is that this kind of comment after one of Iran's diplomats was kidnapped by what appear to be US backed Iraqi special forces. Is Blair suggesting that Iran kidnapped it's own people in an attempt to justify a war with the U.S.?

I have to wonder, in the case of the friendly fire incident, where American pilots opened file on a British convoy, if Iraqi families whose families are killed "accidentally" get the same rights of inquest as British families. Or are the Iraqi people not our allies? This is not to say that it's not horrible that we killed our own allies, because it is. But I suspect that we kill a lot of people who are not trying to kill us and I'm asking more and more what makes "news" newsworthy, and why this death is more sensitive than the deaths of the people that we are supposedly there to protect.

and now, an atrocious picture of a young Neil Gaiman. I hope I never get so famous that people take pleasure in pointing out how bad my hair used to be

.Finally, it looks like you'll be able to download movies and television to your car in the next few years. I remember as a kid, we had a van for trips that had a little television in the back. The reception was absolutely terrible, but we watched it. It had shag carpeting, and two fancy seats with cup holders, a little kitchen sink and a fridge. The back seats folded down into a bed. Ahhh, the 70's.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

something random

Don't mind this. It's for a practical joke that Neil Gaiman is playing on Penn Teller.

New Year Dawning

I meant to write earlier, but Blogger was down. So it's not my fault.

A few quick updates on things:

"Vial" for the Bay Area One Acts is two weeks out from rehearsals. I've met with the set, light, and sound designers and things are looking good. I was short an actor for a while, but I think I've got the role recast finally. This one aspect of the production has generated the most stress for me, as I had several actors who would have worked well in the role and would have loved to do it, but were already cast elsewhere. This is the problem with these tiny unpaid festivals. Since you can't pay the actors (casts for 10 distinct one-acts, plus directors, playwrights, crew, etc. etc. etc. would cause the budget to skyrocket, and the venue is expensive enough as it is), it's not unexpected to lose high quality people to paying gigs. Unfortunate, but understandable. Still, we've got a great cast and I think it's going to be a really good piece.

"Nothing in the Dark" is cast, and I'm waiting for confirmation on my violinist. There's not a whole lot I can do about this late March show just yet, so I'm just trying not to fret about the music side of things.

RadioStar continues to go well. We had over 600 downloads of shows last month, and I'm hoping that our audience will just keep growing. Our most popular show has had over 150 downloads since it was first created (we have over 55 shows online now), so I don't know that our actual audience is more than 200 people or so. If you listen to us, please feel free to leave a review on iTunes, or send us an email.

The first meeting of the League of Professional Small Theatre Companies was last night, and while it's way too early to make any predictions as to it's effectiveness, the potential there is impressive. I set up a discussion board for us to use, so hopefully the hundreds of small theatre professionals in the area will be able to more effectively share resources and solutions.

I edited the first of the Submergency videos last night as well. Once I have a few more of them done I'll start posting them online. At this point I think I'll post them on the CCP server as a podcast for iTunes and also on YouTube. That will be 15 videos when all is said and done, and by that point we'll hopefully have another show lined up, so it might behoove us to make Submergency a semi-regular video podcast.

I've started seeing someone, which is a big change over the last two years. I'm taking things week by week, but it's very nice and I'm certainly feeling grounded. She lives in Sacramento, which is actually working out well. She's out here most weekends anyway, so my guilt at the dating commute isn't as great as it might be, and since she's heavily interested in the arts we've got lots to keep ourselves occupied (like that's ever been a problem for me).

Speaking of keeping occupied, I've been taking tango lessons from Gigi and Warren Jensen again and greatly enjoying it, and will begin taking Suzuki acting lessons from Jeffrey Bihr again starting this Sunday. Tango is going by the sideboard for a month or two while I'm in rehearsal for "Vial" and "Nothing in the Dark", but the Suzuki class is on Sunday mornings so it doesn't conflict with anything other than my laziness. A class I will not be taking, but that is of interest, is Paul Jenning's Shakespeare classes. Paul is gearing up to teach Elizabethan theatre technique and is looking for students. If you're interested in this, let me know and I'll forward your information to Paul.

Other good, if somewhat surprising news, is that novelist, playwright, and scholar Mandy Keifetz got married a couple of weeks ago! After a brief and whirlwind romance, Mandy got married while on a visit here in San Francisco. She's staying in New York but will be out here frequently until her new hubby can complete his own move out to the Big Apple. Cheers Keif!

On the dark side, my Aunt has been fighting a mystery infection that is so bad that she's been put into a controlled coma. She's been under for a few weeks now, and they still can't seem to find where the infection is concentrated. It's extremely scary, but every time I talk to my mom there has been no news. It all happened so fast, and now weeks of nothing. No change, no progress, no new information. It's a strange kind of limbo. And stuff like this goes beyond the inevitabilities of old age. It's something darker and stranger and unpredictable and all I know to do is to hope for recovery.

I want to end on something a bit more hopeful, so I'll mention that I've made bit more progress on the novel. Chapter six is finished and I have the outline for what I think will happen in chapter seven all worked out. With everything else going on, though, I'm not sure when I'll be able to announce the next chapter's completion.

New Year Dawning

I meant to write earlier, but Blogger was down. So it's not my fault.

A few quick updates on things:

"Vial" for the Bay Area One Acts is two weeks out from rehearsals. I've met with the set, light, and sound designers and things are looking good. I was short an actor for a while, but I think I've got the role recast finally. This one aspect of the production has generated the most stress for me, as I had several actors who would have worked well in the role and would have loved to do it, but were already cast elsewhere. This is the problem with these tiny unpaid festivals. Since you can't pay the actors (casts for 10 distinct one-acts, plus directors, playwrights, crew, etc. etc. etc. would cause the budget to skyrocket, and the venue is expensive enough as it is), it's not unexpected to lose high quality people to paying gigs. Unfortunate, but understandable. Still, we've got a great cast and I think it's going to be a really good piece.

"Nothing in the Dark" is cast, and I'm waiting for confirmation on my violinist. There's not a whole lot I can do about this late March show just yet, so I'm just trying not to fret about the music side of things.

RadioStar continues to go well. We had over 600 downloads of shows last month, and I'm hoping that our audience will just keep growing. Our most popular show has had over 150 downloads since it was first created (we have over 55 shows online now), so I don't know that our actual audience is more than 200 people or so. If you listen to us, please feel free to leave a review on iTunes, or send us an email.

The first meeting of the League of Professional Small Theatre Companies was last night, and while it's way too early to make any predictions as to it's effectiveness, the potential there is impressive. I set up a discussion board for us to use, so hopefully the hundreds of small theatre professionals in the area will be able to more effectively share resources and solutions.

I edited the first of the Submergency videos last night as well. Once I have a few more of them done I'll start posting them online. At this point I think I'll post them on the CCP server as a podcast for iTunes and also on YouTube. That will be 15 videos when all is said and done, and by that point we'll hopefully have another show lined up, so it might behoove us to make Submergency a semi-regular video podcast.

I've started seeing someone, which is a big change over the last two years. I'm taking things week by week, but it's very nice and I'm certainly feeling grounded. She lives in Sacramento, which is actually working out well. She's out here most weekends anyway, so my guilt at the dating commute isn't as great as it might be, and since she's heavily interested in the arts we've got lots to keep ourselves occupied (like that's ever been a problem for me).

Speaking of keeping occupied, I've been taking tango lessons from Gigi and Warren Jensen again and greatly enjoying it, and will begin taking Suzuki acting lessons from Jeffrey Bihr again starting this Sunday. Tango is going by the sideboard for a month or two while I'm in rehearsal for "Vial" and "Nothing in the Dark", but the Suzuki class is on Sunday mornings so it doesn't conflict with anything other than my laziness. A class I will not be taking, but that is of interest, is Paul Jenning's Shakespeare classes. Paul is gearing up to teach Elizabethan theatre technique and is looking for students. If you're interested in this, let me know and I'll forward your information to Paul.

Other good, if somewhat surprising news, is that novelist, playwright, and scholar Mandy Keifetz got married a couple of weeks ago! After a brief and whirlwind romance, Mandy got married while on a visit here in San Francisco. She's staying in New York but will be out here frequently until her new hubby can complete his own move out to the Big Apple. Cheers Keif!

On the dark side, my Aunt has been fighting a mystery infection that is so bad that she's been put into a controlled coma. She's been under for a few weeks now, and they still can't seem to find where the infection is concentrated. It's extremely scary, but every time I talk to my mom there has been no news. It all happened so fast, and now weeks of nothing. No change, no progress, no new information. It's a strange kind of limbo. And stuff like this goes beyond the inevitabilities of old age. It's something darker and stranger and unpredictable and all I know to do is to hope for recovery.

I want to end on something a bit more hopeful, so I'll mention that I've made bit more progress on the novel. Chapter six is finished and I have the outline for what I think will happen in chapter seven all worked out. With everything else going on, though, I'm not sure when I'll be able to announce the next chapter's completion.