changes

Lots of evolutions and changes, large and small, going on around here lately.

I got a bit more of Sweetie Tanya written this weekend, and sent off the script thus far to Rachel Efron, along with a song farther down the storyline called "Cat and Mouse", but she actually wanted to "I'm So Much Younger Than You" instead. I had originally intended for the role of the other barista to be one of a series of roles played by a single actor, but the more I write the more pivotal she has become to the plot. I don't write small casts, it seems. At this point, this is going to be a cast of seven, although that might grow a bit. I hope not, however, as the larger a cast grows the less likely it is to be produced by small companies.

Indeed, as cool as the model is that I'm developing for this piece, I am beginning to see how it's going to complicate the future life of this show. Having multiple composers is going to make it very exciting, but should any other company seek to do it, negotiating fair payment for all the writers is going to be a challenge. Very soon I am going to need to write out contracts for the composers, and I will not only need to specify copyright ownership and rights of use (the composers retain copyright but I retain distribution rights in as far as they are attached to the project, and they get distribution rights in any other format) but also how they are to be recompensed for this and any future production. To do that I am going to need to do some "pie in the sky" wish making, in the event that his show is as successful as I could possibly dream of it being.

Jeffrey Bihr has received his song, "I Know I Shouldn't", and will be working on it over the next few weeks. Steve Kahn will be composing the theme. I'll be announcing more composers as I get confirmations.

Some of my earlier assumptions about the script are already beginning to fall away. The one-off joke about the lovers subplot in Sweeny is out the window, I think. There's just too much going on in Tanya's story to waste time on it. I may change my mind again, but I doubt it. The plot is getting more and more simplified, as the strength of the songs becomes mroe apparant. I'm used to relying heavily on dialogue and surprise plot twists, but that isn't really what this piece is about. It's a comedy, but a black comedy, blacker than I originally thought. Some horrible things happen, and sometimes to people who don't deserve it.

Sweetie Tanya changes aren't the only ones in the works. I had hoped to produce a show for Cassandra's Call Productions, with Dylan Russell directing, this fall. We haven't found the right script, however. Actually, we have found the right script but can't get the rights released to us yet. Maybe in 2008. In the meanwhile, we've relaxed our timeline to "when we find what we want, plus six months". This actually works out well for me, as I've just been tapped to direct "The Chinese Angle" by Hal Savage at the SF Playhouse, Stage 2. Hal played Gino the priest in "Get it? Got it. Good!" and I'm very excited to dig into the script. It's a noir musical and promises to be a good deal of fun.

I don't think I've mentioned that I'll be performing in Antero Alli's new film project, The Forest War, filming in late July and early August. I'm playing an actor playing Prospero in a series of exercises in the forests of California. Check out the website for full details, but here's the synopsis: "An obsessed theatre director brings his troupe out to a forest to ritualize his version of French Surrealist Antonin Artaud's vision of a mythic theatre of gods, ghosts and spirits. They stay at a privately owned campground that includes its own cook, a deaf
mute woman whose secret spirituality engages the hallucinagenic mushrooms that grow wild in the woods. Unbeknownst to the group are her good intentions of spiking their final night's meal with these mushrooms so they may enter and engage the spirit realm, that she believes, they are truly looking for."

Due to this project, I'm growing my hair and beard out, which is a bit of change in and of itself. I've had my hair long before, longer than it will be for this project, but my beard has already reached the longest it's ever been. I can only imagine how it will look by the end of July. Mayu, thank goodness, has no complaints about it.

Still, I am a shaggy mountain man.