child found

The child I put out a missing persons post for yesterday has been found at a women's shelter and is on her way home.

Keep a lookout

I got this email from my friend Cynthia (Producer of Chinese Angle and set genius for Sweetie Tanya) last night.

"My family is suffering a crisis and I need your help!

My niece Lisa Gregory( you may have heard my stories about her) has gone missing from the Antioch CA area on May 14, 2008 with her 2 year old little girl Katie.

My sister has legal custody of Katie as well as Lisa's older daughter. Lisa is drinking heavily and endangering Katie. The police have the missing persons' case. There are existing warrants for Lisa's arrest for other drinking related issues.

The report is also in the state-wide data base.

We need your help. Please forward the attached to people in Northern California where Lisa was last seen and claims to be going into a live-in rehab with her daughter.(We think that is unlikely as most rehab won't take children.) She may have traveled into Nevada or even Oregon, we really have in way to know. Her funds are limited and she may be staying in a cheap motel.

If you see her call the police immediately. Please don't confront her as she will likely flee in a risky manner that could cause greater harm to Katie.

THANK YOU for your support. If any of you have ideas on other ways to find her please let me know."


I don't know a lot of people in the area mentioned, but I'm putting this out there in case someone knows something or sees something.

Tabs

Things are looking up.
I loved this article about Senator Joe Biden calling Bush on his bullshit.
article here
Bush used the anniversary of the foundation of Israel to slam anyone who wants to try to negotiate with Iran.
Bush's comments

Biden's response?

"This is bullshit."

and it really, really is.

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A girl who was raped went on YouTube to out her attacker and find some support.

article here

I read this and just hurt. It hurt because so many of "Tanya"'s lines in the show mirror the comments of victims about there not being any justice in the system for rape victims. We state in the show that one in three women are assaulted in the course of their lives, and the article lists one in four women under 25. A small difference, and when you got 25 and up I have no doubt that the 33% figure still holds true. It makes me want to vomit...

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Invisible Forest updates

It appears that The Invisible Forest was reviewed by a Swiss Jungian Analyst. Given that the movie is essentially a tour through a dreamscape, that seems extremely appropriate.
An excerpt:
In filmmaking, Antero Alli, playwright, poet, actor and director, is a Pied Piper of the imagistic, imaginal world, enchanting, enticing, with the mercurial, quicksilver flute of his instinctive, intuitive style. Perhaps this is especially true in The Invisible Forest.
The review is here.

Antero was also interviewed up in Oregon, where he's been showing the film.

Here's the June schedule for showings:

Thursday June 5, 9pm: DIVA Center, Eugene OR. $5.
Friday June 6, 9:30pm: Hollywood Theatre, Portland OR. $6.
Sunday June 15, 2pm: NW Film Forum, Seattle WA. $8
Wed. June 18, 8:30pm: Pickford Cinema, Bellingham WA $7.50
Friday June 27, 7pm: Shiny Object, West Sacramento. $5.
Filmmaker in person at all screenings.

Four for Four!

The SF Bay Guardian came out today and had this to say:
The return of "Sweetie" Tanya (after its debut run at the Darkroom in January) feels like an off-Broadway-bound show that's generously consented to remain off–Union Square for now. Dan Wilson's inspired take on Sweeney Todd — re-imagined as a tale of sexual and class exploitation at the economic fringes of the white yuppie-hipster makeover of the Mission, narrated by a schizophrenic homeless man (sharply played by Bryce Byerley) — is more than mere spoof. Just as the original Sweeney had a real beef that made his monstrous deeds explicable if not necessarily forgivable, "Sweetie" Tanya (a terrific Kate Austin-Gröen) derives her campaign of vengeance from a situation as much personal as political, aggravated by the harassment she receives behind and over the counter at a Mission coffee house. Beneath its delightful foam of frothy comedy, "Sweetie" Tanya hides a depth charge of caffeinated cruelty and outrage. Among the show's many qualities are some very good songs (from various contributors), sung especially well by Austin-Gröen and costar Alexis Wong, and backed by composer and musical director Steve Kahn's fine five-piece band. There could be more in way of plot development, the staging is occasionally too static, and the supporting performances are uneven. But none of these weaknesses much impinge on Sweetie's remarkable success. (Avila)


That's four reviews, all of them positive. All acknowledge that the show is flawed, but so much fun that the flaws are easily (and happily) overlooked. I'm giddy as a schoolgirl.

Are schoolgirls really giddy? I honestly don't know, but if they are, I'm as giddy as one.

Press

Opening night for Tanya was tough. Six people, two of which were critics. One of them, the critic for the San Jose Mercury News, left like a shot after the show (which hadn't forced a single audible laugh out of the crowd). I was convinced that we were going to get reamed.

I was wrong.

Let's hope it gets some butts in seats this Thursday.

images

Since my job focus has switched to developing multimedia pieces, I've become disconcertingly aware of people's appearances. I don't mean in person, but as I shuffle through the hundreds of photos I have, trying to find one that fits the content I need to express.

I find myself asking myself questions like, "why aren't there more kids of color in this classroom? I can't show the same kid three times. Oh, this teacher is kind of wall-eyed, can I use this shot? What the hell is that device on that kid's head?" (I still don't know the answer to the last one)

It kind of makes me uncomfortable, because I like to see the beauty in every face, but some people are photogenic and some aren't. I don't like feeling like I need to exclude representing someone because they have funny eyes, or bad teeth, or any other feature that marks them as being "different". At the same time, if I want people to look at the project that is being described, I don't want them wondering what that thing is on that kid's head.

Like with film and theatre, it's about drawing the eye to what you want to communicate. I deal with this all the time, but for some reason, it's bothering me more in this context.

Hope gained

Today went... surprisingly well.

I needed to be in the city for a video conference at noon, and also to meet with the new project manager at work. I got a call at 9am from Kinkos, saying that the Sweetie Tanya glossy posters were ready two hours early.

Nice.

I leave early for SF, pick up the posters and do my supervisor meeting early. The video conference also ends an hour early and was actually quite productive. I am supposed to be at the Exit by 3:30 to move our flats, because another group needs the dressing room our flat are stored in. I get a call at the end of my meeting saying that the rehearsal was cancelled and I don't need to make an early trip.

Nice.

I pick up the truck at 5th and Mission. I love City Car Share, I really do. I get to Hal and Cynthia's about 4:15pm and we load everything into the truck and their car. We tie it all down and drive very slowly back to the Exit, arriving at 5:02pm. We're exactly on schedule.

Nice.

We unload, then Hal and I go to the rehearsal room to get props, table, chair and bar. We get everything loaded, unloaded at the Exit and get the car back to City Car share a full hour and a half before it was due.

Nice.

Steve shows up and starts to figure out the band setup after the Exit manager gives Peggy and Rhiannon the lowdown on the space, the lights and the sound board. We've all worked here before, so this is mostly review. I've been terribly worried about how to plug the band into the sound board, but Steve has a perfect low-tech solution: we'll use the band's monitor amps and point them towards the back wall. The sound will then bounce to the audience and not overwhelm the singers. Brilliant, and eliminates the host of tech problems I was expecting to deal with.

Nice.

The group before us, Medea Knows Best, had a light plot that fulfilled 85% of our needs, so they just left it up for us. We only have to refocus three or four lights and re-gel four or five others. The lighting plot isn't much more complex that what we did at the Darkroom, but the difference between the light on our lovely cream colored set walls versus the black curtains of the darkroom is night and day. It looks infinitely better.

Nice.

Cynthia and Hal put up all the flats, adjust the bar size to something that looks better and gives the performers more space. The Odwalla cabinet looks awesome. We still need to tape and paint scenes, add the door and do more general dressing, but it already looks like a coffee shop. Tomorrow we'll do most of that work before 7pm. Wednesday will bring minor additions. We'll easily be done before the preview on Thursday.

Nice.

We finish load in at 10pm and go home. We didn't have to stay late at all. I made a list of props we need, and things I seem to have left back at the rehearsal space. I'll get most of those resolved between 5-6 tomorrow. Our tech will involve starting and stopping for light cue building, but since all but one song is being done live, sound shouldn't be much of an issue.

It's all been a little too smooth. A lot of work, to be sure, but no fiascos, no huge setbacks, no problems we weren't expecting. Quite the opposite. Problems I expected to happen never materialized.

Niiiiiceee

Richer for Poorer

"Riches" closed last night. As I think I've mentioned here, it was an artistically successful show, but a horrible failure in terms of audience draw. It's just hard to get folks to want to come see a play about divorce. I even had one acquaintance do box office for us, but left before the show started because she wasn't in an emotional place where she could handle the subject matter.

Discouraging.

We are using all the flats for Sweetie Tanya, so the Riches set guy left them all lined up for us in the Phoenix Theatre. We got them in Bahati's truck and drove them the five blocks to the Exit. I'm really pleased that these are all wood flats, using thin, thin wood for the surfaces as opposed to canvas. Canvas flats tend to wobble and sag in unconvincing ways. These babies felt sturdy, and were still extremely light. I haven't actually used flats for a show in quite some time, so I'm really glad that we had access to them.

I've been obsessively worrying about the set, and the lights and the sound system. Most of the reason for my worry is that I wouldn't get to really see or work with any of them until Monday night. To be a few days away from opening and to be pretty in the dark about how things actually look is normal for theatre, but it doesn't get less stressful for me. More and more, I have excellent people handing these parts of the productions, so I'm not as hands on as I once was. That is a great boon for me and I'll probably live longer, but it's still a bit unsettling to not be exercising direct control.

But, today a large portion of our set got moved into the theatre. We had to store it in the "Stage Left" dressing area, because "Medea Knows Best" was in the midst of an enormous strike. I was just glad we didn't have to move it to the rehearsal room and then move it again tomorrow. Having those flats moved over has eased my nerves quite a bit. I know how many we have, I know how heavy they are, and therefore how hard it will be to assemble them as needed. I saw Cynthia and Hal the other night, and Hal said that the cabinets are looking great, which is the first real feedback I've gotten on them, and that calmed me a great deal as well.

It's all going to work out.

I closed a show last night. I open a show in four days (five, if you don't count the preview).

Sparta? This is madness!

an unexpected break

I'm sitting in Union Square, working on the fourth hospital show (end of the mini-series), but my battery is waning so I'll be forced to relocate to the rehearsal studio soon.

No show today, as we only had two people show up for the matinee. Frustrating, to say the least, but it is sadly something I consider to be a normal part of small theatre life. It no longer even has the power to throw me into despair. It's happened too many times. Good shows that for one reason or another don't get the buzz they deserve. I've had a few people say that it's my best work yet as a performer, but very few people will see it, it seems.

A shame.

Emotionally, I've been feeling too washed out lately to get riled about it, though. The typical highs and lows of Tanya eat up what little energy I have left after increasingly grueling days at work.

More and more I just look forward to May, and especially to June.

Still, today I sit in the square, enjoying the gorgeous weather, and it's just too nice to feel emo, even if I can't help but feel numb.

A refuge

Dave sent this out, but for all his malice... it's good to know that there's a place I can go.

psychic

years ago, when I deeply feel for someone and we had been going out for almost a year, she began corresponding with someone on the east coast. It was someone she had admired professionally who had also become aware of her work. I knew almost immediately that it was going to be the end for us. She didn't really know it for another month, interestingly enough.

It's a trick I've managed a few times, always involving people I've dropped my walls with. I know who they are going to fall for before they do.

It's not a terribly useful psychic gift.

Sunday morning recap

Sunday morning. I'm chilling out and loving it.

"Riches" went well this weekend. I'm not word perfect, but that's to be expected with this much text. Every now and then a tiny line that doesn't actually impact anything gets dropped, but the audience is none the wiser. This isn't shakespeare, after all, and no one is following along with their own text on their lap. The important thing is that people are laughing at all the right spots, and some of them are leaving with tears in their eyes. It's a powerful bit of theatre, and I hope more people make it.

Audiences so far have been small, but pleased.

As for me, I'm doing well. I was able to go to Brian's birthday gathering yesterday, and that was lovely. I did the afternoon early-bird set (basically, me and the Austin-Groens) and then came back for an hour after the show closed. I got to see Zack and a bunch of animators from the SF Academy of Art.

I'm not feeling too freaked out at the moment. We start rehearsing again for Tanya on Thursday, but many of the technical details are pretty much worked out, or are being worked out by people who are more than qualified to handle them. I am again reminded what a blessing it is to be working with a qualified and committed TEAM. I do far too much myself, and I'm glad to be a little more balanced nowadays.

That said, that last few weeks have been particularly hairy. I missed Radiostar updates for TWO WEEKS. The reason was a good one, however. Between TBA, Tanya, and Riches, I've had no time in the evenings, and I've also been editing our first pass at a Radiostar serial format. I.e. a storyline/persistent universe that lasts for a full four episodes. That's over two hours of raw audio, broken down into 25 scenes. I think it'll be well over an hour of audio when it's all done. The first week is now done and ready for posting on Wednesday. The next two episodes will be cake, since I've already done a lot of the hard lifting over the last two weeks.

I hope to get one of them done today, actually.

but for now? Sunday morning, I'm going to goof off on the X-Box for an hour or two before tackling more Radiostar goodness.

Lion's mouth

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Fun

I was never a Speed Racer fan as a kid. That was more of my brother's domain. But I have to say that this looks like it may be the most fun you'll ever have watching a movie.

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....