March may go in like a lion and out like a lamb, but as we enter April, I feel more like I'm putting my head in the lion's mouth.
Riches opens on Friday. This is tech week. Whee! The show is feeling good, but there's still a LOT to do.
We're continuing to find the enhanced and groovy sound of Sweetie Tanya. Dealing with personnel fluctuations there, but everything looks doable. The team was have is pretty kick ass, and that goes a long, long way.
WestEd work is kicking my ass, and just bought a new pair of shoes, so that means less flex time to address other concerns.
I won't even go into my inability to get caught up with Radiostar right now.
This is the month of crazy, plain and simple.
If you don't hear from me here, it's because I have nothing useful to say and don't feel like whining.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Miracles and prognostications
Yesterday afternoon, as I emerged into the San Francisco sunshine, the path of my day suddenly struck me as something extraordinary.
I had breakfasted in Santa Barbara, been driven to Burbank, flew to Oakland, and taken an underground train under the Bay to San Francisco... all in the number of hours I could count on my fingers.
This would have seemed miraculous a mere century ago. Any of these actions in 1906 would have been the stuff of pure fantasy, the most outrageous science fiction. (Ok, maybe not having breakfast in Santa Barbara, but otherwise....) The radical shifts in human experience over the last few generations is profound, and it is so easy to forget about them, so easy to forget that the way we live today has very little resemblance to how humans have lived throughout history.
And, of course, it continues to change at a lightning pace.
My attention was drawn to this article from Newsweek in 1995, decrying all the optimism about the internet.
A short quote: "Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.
Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense?"
And yet, today I am working from home, use Wikipedia regularly for basic fact checking, and help people use online classrooms for training seminars that include participants from all over the country. Most of my dating life comes from people I meet online, and many professional and personal relationships started and are maintained online. MoveOn.org uses the online world to push hard politically on a regular basis.
Some of the critiques of the 12 year old article still remain, but the vast majority of his comments reveal someone who can only see the state of the world as it is, not how it will continue to change. This particular pundit saw the state of the internet at 1995 and mocked those who were envisioning the miracles of tomorrow, the logical extensions of what they saw in the present.
I am not a technological visionary. I don't know what the next twelve years will bring us. I don't know what the world will look like in my dotage (although I am hoping for something other than a smoking ruin). But I was suddenly reminded that we are indeed in an age of miracles.
I had breakfasted in Santa Barbara, been driven to Burbank, flew to Oakland, and taken an underground train under the Bay to San Francisco... all in the number of hours I could count on my fingers.
This would have seemed miraculous a mere century ago. Any of these actions in 1906 would have been the stuff of pure fantasy, the most outrageous science fiction. (Ok, maybe not having breakfast in Santa Barbara, but otherwise....) The radical shifts in human experience over the last few generations is profound, and it is so easy to forget about them, so easy to forget that the way we live today has very little resemblance to how humans have lived throughout history.
And, of course, it continues to change at a lightning pace.
My attention was drawn to this article from Newsweek in 1995, decrying all the optimism about the internet.
A short quote: "Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.
Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense?"
And yet, today I am working from home, use Wikipedia regularly for basic fact checking, and help people use online classrooms for training seminars that include participants from all over the country. Most of my dating life comes from people I meet online, and many professional and personal relationships started and are maintained online. MoveOn.org uses the online world to push hard politically on a regular basis.
Some of the critiques of the 12 year old article still remain, but the vast majority of his comments reveal someone who can only see the state of the world as it is, not how it will continue to change. This particular pundit saw the state of the internet at 1995 and mocked those who were envisioning the miracles of tomorrow, the logical extensions of what they saw in the present.
I am not a technological visionary. I don't know what the next twelve years will bring us. I don't know what the world will look like in my dotage (although I am hoping for something other than a smoking ruin). But I was suddenly reminded that we are indeed in an age of miracles.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Paradise Lost
I've come to some interesting realizations about myself and my relationship to the city of Santa Barbara. I lived in Santa Barbara as a student at Westmont College from September of 1988 to May of 1990. Freshman and Sophomore years only, with my education there cut short by the economics of my misguided decision to get married on May 27th, 1990.
It would be irrational to describe my time at Westmont, and in Santa Barbara, as an idyllic Eden, but in my mind it has taken on that flavor. I've not spent too much time wondering about this, but my recent (I just got off the plane) visit has led to reflection. Things in college were as real as anywhere else, and hardship and pain were by no means banished from the campus. Students died on a mission trip to Mexico. A star soccer player fled the country under sexual assault charges. The lone vocal Democrat on a campus of Republicans endured a great deal during the election.
Personally, I experienced loneliness, heartache, stress, and sorrow.
So, why is Santa Barbara my Eden, other than the fact that it is the most heart breakingly beautiful city in America that isn't located on a tropical island?
Two things, primarily, stand out. First, it was the end of my adolescence. I went straight from Santa Barbara into my wedding, and then to Chicago. The day I stepped away from that city, I became a man in the truest sense. I shouldered a man's burdens, responsibilities, and struggles. I entered a marriage that would send me into three years of depression before it finally ended in February of 1996. While bad things happened, while there were hurts and struggles and pain, it was still the pain of someone who was in many ways an innocent. Jeff Maurer said to me one day, "there are those who are innocent and those who are not. Dan, at this point, you are still an innocent."
An innocent in Eden. But once I left that place, my innocence was not to last.
The innocence I lost has little to do with sexuality, and more to do with responsibility, deepening awareness of my own capacity for hypocrisy, weakness, and inadequacy. As I traded Santa Barbara for Chicago, I also lost my conviction in certain right and wrong. My blacks and whites began, more and more, to bleed into shades of grey. This was a slower process, certainly, than the time it takes to drive from California to Illinois, but nevertheless, these two cities represent for me a time and place of innocence and potential, and a time and place of struggle and loss.
That's one thing. The second is that it was in Santa Barbara that I found what has become my life work. To be sure, I started acting in High School. I did shows at College Park and with my church, Hope Center. But it was in Santa Barbara that theatre went from something fun to something transformative. It went from a hobby to a passion.
Looking back, it would not be unfair to say that two men outside my family deeply impacted my life before I turned twenty. One would be my pastor, Roger Dill. The other would be my director and teacher, John Blondell. I've said before on these pages that everything I do with theatre, on some level, is my trying to get back to the experiences I had on that campus, the belief that with art we are doing something that can truly impact people. I may have been the only person who felt that way at the time, but again, as I look back, the word "transformative" is emblazoned across the sky.
Thus, when my hostess tossed off a casual question over breakfast, I about fell off my chair. "Do you know John Blondell?"
Oh, the man who irrevocably shaped my idea of what theatre is? The man who provided the educational and philosophical foundation for my life's work? The man who inspired and excited my mind and soul more than any other teacher before or since? Yes, actually. I do.
Although, in truth, I don't. The John Blondell I knew has, like the city and the school, become a figure of legend in my personal history. The real John is no more the mentor I knew than I am the student he had in his first years at the school. He's a man with a long history, two kids, and who knows what else. All of us have changed immeasurably since 1990, let alone people who have in the imagination taken on almost iconic importance.
So, as fun as it would have been, it is probably best that he did not attend the wine tasting we went to that afternoon, although he had been on the guest list. I would most likely have embarrassed myself more than I did.
This is a digression, however, from the question of Santa Barbara as Eden. I did six shows while in Santa Barbara: Peter Pan, Mother Courage and Her Children, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare on Location: Just the High Points, An Evening with Williams and Mamet, and The Dining Room. Of these six shows, five of them are points of frequent recollection, fondness and inspiration. (The Dining Room simply taught me that I don't much care for A.R. Gurney's writing.)
All of this history, this mythology, this baggage, I carried with me this weekend. I'd visited Santa Barbara before, on single-day work trips that had just enough time for me to drive up to the campus and walk around for five minutes, find the memorial for the students who died in Mexico, and then leave in order to return to the airport. This was the first time, however, that I'd spent time wandering the city with someone who lived there. The first time I had accidentally turned down a street I had known, walked past a building full of memories, or really taken the time to feel the passage of years.
It was very, very hard to leave.
It would be irrational to describe my time at Westmont, and in Santa Barbara, as an idyllic Eden, but in my mind it has taken on that flavor. I've not spent too much time wondering about this, but my recent (I just got off the plane) visit has led to reflection. Things in college were as real as anywhere else, and hardship and pain were by no means banished from the campus. Students died on a mission trip to Mexico. A star soccer player fled the country under sexual assault charges. The lone vocal Democrat on a campus of Republicans endured a great deal during the election.
Personally, I experienced loneliness, heartache, stress, and sorrow.
So, why is Santa Barbara my Eden, other than the fact that it is the most heart breakingly beautiful city in America that isn't located on a tropical island?
Two things, primarily, stand out. First, it was the end of my adolescence. I went straight from Santa Barbara into my wedding, and then to Chicago. The day I stepped away from that city, I became a man in the truest sense. I shouldered a man's burdens, responsibilities, and struggles. I entered a marriage that would send me into three years of depression before it finally ended in February of 1996. While bad things happened, while there were hurts and struggles and pain, it was still the pain of someone who was in many ways an innocent. Jeff Maurer said to me one day, "there are those who are innocent and those who are not. Dan, at this point, you are still an innocent."
An innocent in Eden. But once I left that place, my innocence was not to last.
The innocence I lost has little to do with sexuality, and more to do with responsibility, deepening awareness of my own capacity for hypocrisy, weakness, and inadequacy. As I traded Santa Barbara for Chicago, I also lost my conviction in certain right and wrong. My blacks and whites began, more and more, to bleed into shades of grey. This was a slower process, certainly, than the time it takes to drive from California to Illinois, but nevertheless, these two cities represent for me a time and place of innocence and potential, and a time and place of struggle and loss.
That's one thing. The second is that it was in Santa Barbara that I found what has become my life work. To be sure, I started acting in High School. I did shows at College Park and with my church, Hope Center. But it was in Santa Barbara that theatre went from something fun to something transformative. It went from a hobby to a passion.
Looking back, it would not be unfair to say that two men outside my family deeply impacted my life before I turned twenty. One would be my pastor, Roger Dill. The other would be my director and teacher, John Blondell. I've said before on these pages that everything I do with theatre, on some level, is my trying to get back to the experiences I had on that campus, the belief that with art we are doing something that can truly impact people. I may have been the only person who felt that way at the time, but again, as I look back, the word "transformative" is emblazoned across the sky.
Thus, when my hostess tossed off a casual question over breakfast, I about fell off my chair. "Do you know John Blondell?"
Oh, the man who irrevocably shaped my idea of what theatre is? The man who provided the educational and philosophical foundation for my life's work? The man who inspired and excited my mind and soul more than any other teacher before or since? Yes, actually. I do.
Although, in truth, I don't. The John Blondell I knew has, like the city and the school, become a figure of legend in my personal history. The real John is no more the mentor I knew than I am the student he had in his first years at the school. He's a man with a long history, two kids, and who knows what else. All of us have changed immeasurably since 1990, let alone people who have in the imagination taken on almost iconic importance.
So, as fun as it would have been, it is probably best that he did not attend the wine tasting we went to that afternoon, although he had been on the guest list. I would most likely have embarrassed myself more than I did.
This is a digression, however, from the question of Santa Barbara as Eden. I did six shows while in Santa Barbara: Peter Pan, Mother Courage and Her Children, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare on Location: Just the High Points, An Evening with Williams and Mamet, and The Dining Room. Of these six shows, five of them are points of frequent recollection, fondness and inspiration. (The Dining Room simply taught me that I don't much care for A.R. Gurney's writing.)
All of this history, this mythology, this baggage, I carried with me this weekend. I'd visited Santa Barbara before, on single-day work trips that had just enough time for me to drive up to the campus and walk around for five minutes, find the memorial for the students who died in Mexico, and then leave in order to return to the airport. This was the first time, however, that I'd spent time wandering the city with someone who lived there. The first time I had accidentally turned down a street I had known, walked past a building full of memories, or really taken the time to feel the passage of years.
It was very, very hard to leave.
Double Agent
Bahati loaned me her copy of Casino Royale at rehearsal the other day. I haven't watched it yet.
On a plane, off on an adventure, the airline magazine has a large photo of Don Adams as Maxwell Smart on the cover, shoe phone clamped to his ear.
Secret Agents. Super Spies.
Sometimes I feel like Bond. Not the Bond of the novels, thuggish and misogynistic, but the Bond of the films. In control, smooth, and blessed by luck. I have just the right words, my timing is flawless, and every setback proves to be a launching point to move me forward. Everything clicks.
More often, however, I feel like Maxwell Smart, or Inspector Clouseau. Bumbling, fumbling, walking into walls, making a general ass out of myself. Sure, Smart and Clouseau bumble into saving the day, but that's the way it is with comedy and fiction. But in the real world, bumbling is bumbling and rarely do you step into a two foot hole at a full run without breaking your leg in the process.
The scary thing, though, the truly frightening thing, is when everything feels like Bond, but when all is done and you take stock of where you are, and you realize that it's *your* home base that you blew up, *your* colleague mistaken for an opposing agent that you shot, *your* little world reduced to ashes.
Every Clouseau thinks he is MacGyver. Every Smart thinks he's Bond. Every Charlie Brown steps up to the pitcher's mound, ready to be the hero but knowing in his heart that he's more likely to be the goat.
But I'm mixing my pop-culture metaphors. Let's move back from the round headed kid in the jagged stripe shirt.
I've been flipped inside out, back to front all weekend. Visiting someone I have known for years, and yet know very little about. Rediscovering a city I once called home, but that oftentimes asserted itself as a sequence of powerful memories so insistent that they pulled me out of the present. Encountering people I did not know, who greeted me as warmly as my own tribe, while I stood awkwardly aware of my outsider status. I have been amused, amazed, inspired, illuminated, revealed, intrigued, ashamed, astounded, aloof, intoxicated, aroused, apprehensive, nostalgic, gastronomically pampered, and existentially befuddled.
Within the space of 48 hours, I have been all over my emotional map. I haven't been driving a supercharged BMW that can fly, swim, shoot rockets, and convert itself into an irresistible boudoir. I've been bumbling, stumbling my way around, colliding, ricocheting, and tumbling from point to point... and horribly aware of it most of the time.
I am Maxwell Smart with self-awareness.
I can't even pretend to be Bond.
On a plane, off on an adventure, the airline magazine has a large photo of Don Adams as Maxwell Smart on the cover, shoe phone clamped to his ear.
Secret Agents. Super Spies.
Sometimes I feel like Bond. Not the Bond of the novels, thuggish and misogynistic, but the Bond of the films. In control, smooth, and blessed by luck. I have just the right words, my timing is flawless, and every setback proves to be a launching point to move me forward. Everything clicks.
More often, however, I feel like Maxwell Smart, or Inspector Clouseau. Bumbling, fumbling, walking into walls, making a general ass out of myself. Sure, Smart and Clouseau bumble into saving the day, but that's the way it is with comedy and fiction. But in the real world, bumbling is bumbling and rarely do you step into a two foot hole at a full run without breaking your leg in the process.
The scary thing, though, the truly frightening thing, is when everything feels like Bond, but when all is done and you take stock of where you are, and you realize that it's *your* home base that you blew up, *your* colleague mistaken for an opposing agent that you shot, *your* little world reduced to ashes.
Every Clouseau thinks he is MacGyver. Every Smart thinks he's Bond. Every Charlie Brown steps up to the pitcher's mound, ready to be the hero but knowing in his heart that he's more likely to be the goat.
But I'm mixing my pop-culture metaphors. Let's move back from the round headed kid in the jagged stripe shirt.
I've been flipped inside out, back to front all weekend. Visiting someone I have known for years, and yet know very little about. Rediscovering a city I once called home, but that oftentimes asserted itself as a sequence of powerful memories so insistent that they pulled me out of the present. Encountering people I did not know, who greeted me as warmly as my own tribe, while I stood awkwardly aware of my outsider status. I have been amused, amazed, inspired, illuminated, revealed, intrigued, ashamed, astounded, aloof, intoxicated, aroused, apprehensive, nostalgic, gastronomically pampered, and existentially befuddled.
Within the space of 48 hours, I have been all over my emotional map. I haven't been driving a supercharged BMW that can fly, swim, shoot rockets, and convert itself into an irresistible boudoir. I've been bumbling, stumbling my way around, colliding, ricocheting, and tumbling from point to point... and horribly aware of it most of the time.
I am Maxwell Smart with self-awareness.
I can't even pretend to be Bond.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Obama's speech on Race
It took me a couple of days to get around to watching it, but it really is something remarkable. Frank, honest, and unapologetic. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out
Monday, March 17, 2008
Well, I got my tech troubles all worked out finally, and I think I'm pretty much back on track. Of course, now I can't find my script for "Riches". It's probably at our rehearsal space. This would be a bigger deal if I had actually had time tonight to work on my lines, but as it is, I spent most of tonight doing the work I didn't get done this afternoon.
Feh.
On the plus side, I had a meeting with our light designer for Tanya, and on the BART ride back I wrote down all my thoughts from a meeting with Steve Kahn yesterday. A short film got sparked in my head while sitting in his back yard, checking out his little fish pond. I have a cast in mind, and a pretty extensive breakdown of what happens in the film. It would be a short film, maybe 20 minutes, tops, and with no dialogue whatsoever.
It would be fun to do, and a good practice run for a feature length project that is looking like something to do in 2009....
Feh.
On the plus side, I had a meeting with our light designer for Tanya, and on the BART ride back I wrote down all my thoughts from a meeting with Steve Kahn yesterday. A short film got sparked in my head while sitting in his back yard, checking out his little fish pond. I have a cast in mind, and a pretty extensive breakdown of what happens in the film. It would be a short film, maybe 20 minutes, tops, and with no dialogue whatsoever.
It would be fun to do, and a good practice run for a feature length project that is looking like something to do in 2009....
Friday, March 07, 2008
fiddle, fit as
At 6'3" and 195 lbs, I'm a big guy. I'm not a big guy though. My dad was closer to 300 than 200, but while I managed to inherit his kidney stones, I haven't inherited his obesity. That said, my eating habits have always been heavily influenced by my roots, which go back to Missouri on both sides of my family before they meander their way back to Ireland and Scotland and other pasty nations. So, lots of starches, complex carbs, sugar and grease. I don't much care for sushi and I didn't consider it a tragedy when my urologist told me that I shouldn't eat a lot of spinach, kale, or other dark leafy greens because they were dangerous for my brand of kidney stone.
My lack of dietary purity has been a point of concern for some, and annoyance for others. This is the San Francisco Bay Area, after all, and people take their carnal temples pretty seriously. Still, I walk a lot, and am in decent shape for a 37 year old thespian, computer tech, and playwright.
When I was approached to play David Rich in Triple Shot's production of "Riches", I was pleased. When I read the lines in the script where David talks about all the time he spends at the club running around the track, playing racquetball, swimming and weight lifting, I didn't flinch. After all, it's not like I'm taking off my shirt.
Or am I?
Two nights ago, Bahati Bonner, my esteemed director, said "Oh, didn't I tell you? You need to work out. Towards the end of the show, we're going to have you in a wife-beater. It's easier than dealing with distressed clothes."
So, I'm suddenly cutting out as many starches as is reasonable (I should cut them all out, but we'll see how long I can maintain that discipline), focusing on a more vegetarian diet, and doing push-ups and sit-ups three times a day. My chest has begun to feel very sore, and a few minutes ago when I tried my second set up push-ups for the day I found I couldn't do even my paltry minimum. I'll be tackling it again in a few moments, but it was a rude awakening.
I have three weekends to fight against a lifetime of less than optimal habits so that I don't look ridiculous on stage.
My lack of dietary purity has been a point of concern for some, and annoyance for others. This is the San Francisco Bay Area, after all, and people take their carnal temples pretty seriously. Still, I walk a lot, and am in decent shape for a 37 year old thespian, computer tech, and playwright.
When I was approached to play David Rich in Triple Shot's production of "Riches", I was pleased. When I read the lines in the script where David talks about all the time he spends at the club running around the track, playing racquetball, swimming and weight lifting, I didn't flinch. After all, it's not like I'm taking off my shirt.
Or am I?
Two nights ago, Bahati Bonner, my esteemed director, said "Oh, didn't I tell you? You need to work out. Towards the end of the show, we're going to have you in a wife-beater. It's easier than dealing with distressed clothes."
So, I'm suddenly cutting out as many starches as is reasonable (I should cut them all out, but we'll see how long I can maintain that discipline), focusing on a more vegetarian diet, and doing push-ups and sit-ups three times a day. My chest has begun to feel very sore, and a few minutes ago when I tried my second set up push-ups for the day I found I couldn't do even my paltry minimum. I'll be tackling it again in a few moments, but it was a rude awakening.
I have three weekends to fight against a lifetime of less than optimal habits so that I don't look ridiculous on stage.
Monday, March 03, 2008
inching back to me
I'm in a weird state. I'm pretty much back to health, except for the cough that I'm sure I'll live with for a bit. I'm back to work, although work is still pretty quiet at the moment. Rehearsals are in full swing, Radiostar is exploring more extended narratives which is causing a few growing pains. New arrangements are coming in daily for Sweetie Tanya....
and I feel directionless.
This is probably just the after effects of a week of illness. I was unable to do much of anything, so I feel disconnected from everything.
Every day is an improvement. I trust I'll have my spirit back by tomorrow... or maybe the day after.
and I feel directionless.
This is probably just the after effects of a week of illness. I was unable to do much of anything, so I feel disconnected from everything.
Every day is an improvement. I trust I'll have my spirit back by tomorrow... or maybe the day after.
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