The danger of hanging out with the people you create with on a regular basis is that you keep thinking of more things to do.
I spent this last weekend with Chris DeJong, Brian Schirmer and new friend, Mark Chun. We four manly men went down to San Diego for the annual orgy of geekdom: ComicCon. This is the largest comic book convention in the world, although it's moved well beyond comics. It's a haven for toy retailers, independent publishers, science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts, Costume Players, and gamers. In other words, if there is an obsessive fan base, it's here. (Not including sports or Brittany Spears fan-bases, obviously)
They had over 10,000 attendees, and yet I still managed to run into a couple of people that I knew. Love that.
For the most part, I checked out some panels, met Phil Foglio (of Girl Genius) and seeded the Freebie Table with RadioStar cards. After hours of walking the floor, watching the fans in their costumes, independent films, major film previews, and being in awe of the sheer humanity that crushed around us, we retired frequently to the YardHouse. The YardHouse boasts the largest beer menu in San Diego, and I had first been taken there by my old boss, Bill McKeever when I spent the weekend on his boat a couple of years ago. They do indeed have an impressive array of beer there, and we did drink an awful lot of it. And as we drank, we schemed.
We're already looking at a Holiday show with RadioStar: a mixture of sketch and improv. We have agents looking to secure a space for us, and are prepared to start working on the show as soon as we can confirm the location. But ComicCon inspired us to get booths at SF-based WonderCon and the independent press convention A.P.E. Our material is off-beat and smart in the way that the crowd at these conventions appreciates, and nobody else is promoting themselves that way yet. For that matter, very few people are approaching podcasting in the way that we are. By all accounts, we're as niche as you can get.
It would be a Cassandra's Call booth though, not just RadioStar. This means getting some of my plays printed via a small publisher, or doing it ourselves. This also means making CDs of our best shows and putting them up for sale. Demo CDs as well, with a single episode that can be handed out for free. In other words, work. Lots and lots of work. All of it feasible. None of it particularly difficult (except for that publishing part). Still, work, and lots of it.
Still, I weigh the possibilities against the blood pressure spikes and I think we'll go for it. The company needs to grow and to begin to position itself with a sale-able product. It's time for the next level, and I've always been about stretching things as far as they can go.
Of course, with auditions for "Get it? Got it. Good!" tonight and tomorrow, and rehearsals starting in a few weeks.... the thing feeling most stretched right now is me.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
stretch
With "Vagina Dentata" finished for the time being, and casting for "Get it? Got it. Good!" still a week away, it's an unusually calm week. It's been filled with a lot of false starts, too. I was going to get dinner with someone on Monday, and they had to cancel because of work. So Eden Tosh and I were going to get dinner and then go see Scanner Darkly, but it turned out that she had guests coming into town at the last minute so we just grabbed a quick bite. I'm seeing an acquaintance's show at the Magic Theatre tonight and was going to go with someone, but she had to add another rehearsal for her show tomorrow night, so I'm going solo instead. I'll catch her performance tomorrow at Jupiter in Berkeley, but it looks like pretty much everyone I invited to join me won't be able to make it... or won't be there until it's almost over.
This seems to be consistent for me. Whenever I actually *have* time, nobody else does, or they think they do but then have to cancel at the last minute. This seems to be the primary source of spontaneity in my life, as I'll have plans, get them cancelled and then something else will come up at the last minute.
But for now, it's more about taking the chance to stretch out in the free time. I bought a bunch of books the other day and I am currently reading about the DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin. Tomorrow, at Jupiter, I'll probably sit out on the patio with some food and a beer, and listen to Rachel Efron while reading about a woman terribly wronged by history. Maybe people will show up, maybe they won't. I've certainly learned not to rely on the schedules of others to do the things I want to do.
This seems to be consistent for me. Whenever I actually *have* time, nobody else does, or they think they do but then have to cancel at the last minute. This seems to be the primary source of spontaneity in my life, as I'll have plans, get them cancelled and then something else will come up at the last minute.
But for now, it's more about taking the chance to stretch out in the free time. I bought a bunch of books the other day and I am currently reading about the DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin. Tomorrow, at Jupiter, I'll probably sit out on the patio with some food and a beer, and listen to Rachel Efron while reading about a woman terribly wronged by history. Maybe people will show up, maybe they won't. I've certainly learned not to rely on the schedules of others to do the things I want to do.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Intuition
Another extremely tired morning. I went out to Brian Shirmer's last night for our weekly game night and hung out with Chris DeJong and Kurt DiSessa. More of the usual: Settlers of Kataan and Halo2. I went a bit lighter on stuffing myself with beer and pizza as I tend to feel like a stuffed sausage when I leave these things. A good night, and I was supposed to head over to Zeitgeist afterwards for an online gathering. I've been hanging out on ConsuMating.com a bit and they were having a party there. When the time came, though, I had a strong impulse to just head home instead, so I jumped on BART and planned for an early evening.
Halfway home I got a call from Mindy Lym, who has recently moved down the street from me. She and some friends were looking for a place to buy a corkscrew at 11pm. I had them pick me up at the station and got my corkscrew from home. That could have been it, but I'm not such a fool as to turn down the offer of a glass of wine with a bunch of lovely and talented ladies. So, I ended up talking theatre and relationships and watching Mindy to tarot readings until around 2 in the morning while draining two bottles of wine. Her friends were from the cast of Seussical, which I highly encourage folks to check out before it closes this month. I saw the show last week, and it was fun to get to know them.
I don't make the mistake of confusing the person for the role they play, but it's quite interesting to watch someone be the sweet and pining Gertrude McPhee and her One Feather Tail, and then meet the exhausted, sardonic woman playing her. The focus of the evening, however, went to the struggle of the director's small dog trying desperately to make friends with Mindy's kitten... who arched and hissed like a Halloween cat every time the pooch got anywhere near her. The little puff ball would just whine and try over and over again to make friends with the very unreceptive kitten.
God, it was like watching human relationships... the more emotionally unavailable the kitten was, the more the little dog wanted to be its friend.
Take what you will from this.
Halfway home I got a call from Mindy Lym, who has recently moved down the street from me. She and some friends were looking for a place to buy a corkscrew at 11pm. I had them pick me up at the station and got my corkscrew from home. That could have been it, but I'm not such a fool as to turn down the offer of a glass of wine with a bunch of lovely and talented ladies. So, I ended up talking theatre and relationships and watching Mindy to tarot readings until around 2 in the morning while draining two bottles of wine. Her friends were from the cast of Seussical, which I highly encourage folks to check out before it closes this month. I saw the show last week, and it was fun to get to know them.
I don't make the mistake of confusing the person for the role they play, but it's quite interesting to watch someone be the sweet and pining Gertrude McPhee and her One Feather Tail, and then meet the exhausted, sardonic woman playing her. The focus of the evening, however, went to the struggle of the director's small dog trying desperately to make friends with Mindy's kitten... who arched and hissed like a Halloween cat every time the pooch got anywhere near her. The little puff ball would just whine and try over and over again to make friends with the very unreceptive kitten.
God, it was like watching human relationships... the more emotionally unavailable the kitten was, the more the little dog wanted to be its friend.
Take what you will from this.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
So Hollywood
A fun night, tonight. After work I took care of a few things at home, including removing headshots from my stack of people who are auditioning for the Fringe show, and finding out that the cable I bought to allow me to transmit my computer signal to a television screen didn't work. Feh.
Tonight was a planning potluck for the Fringe Festival, so I had to miss a viewing for Brian Shirmer's film. I was sorry to miss the screening, but I felt a certain responsibility to my own show. Of course, when it somes to potlucks, I'm rather pathetic. I don't cook, really. So I swung by a corner donut shop on the way to the theatre and got a dozen bundles of deep fried, chocolate covered joy. Most of the other offerings weren't much better. Asking theatre producers to bring food to a potluck is an exercise in absurdity. We buy things, and the cheaper the better.
The meeting was fine, and afterwards I grabbed a cab to the Mars Bar to join the afterparty for Brian's movie. Chris DeJong was there, with the always lovely Ann, and other members of the cast and various friends and groovy people. We drank into the evening, with pizza ordered around 11. I'm currently riding home with the producer of the film and a gentleman who is interested in doing some foley work for RadioStar. Lots of cards were passed around. It was very Hollywood for this San Francisco boy. I've convinced one of the actors from the film to audition for my show, and who knows if any of these things tonight will come to fruition. But it's been fun regardless, and one hell of a Wednesday night.
Tonight was a planning potluck for the Fringe Festival, so I had to miss a viewing for Brian Shirmer's film. I was sorry to miss the screening, but I felt a certain responsibility to my own show. Of course, when it somes to potlucks, I'm rather pathetic. I don't cook, really. So I swung by a corner donut shop on the way to the theatre and got a dozen bundles of deep fried, chocolate covered joy. Most of the other offerings weren't much better. Asking theatre producers to bring food to a potluck is an exercise in absurdity. We buy things, and the cheaper the better.
The meeting was fine, and afterwards I grabbed a cab to the Mars Bar to join the afterparty for Brian's movie. Chris DeJong was there, with the always lovely Ann, and other members of the cast and various friends and groovy people. We drank into the evening, with pizza ordered around 11. I'm currently riding home with the producer of the film and a gentleman who is interested in doing some foley work for RadioStar. Lots of cards were passed around. It was very Hollywood for this San Francisco boy. I've convinced one of the actors from the film to audition for my show, and who knows if any of these things tonight will come to fruition. But it's been fun regardless, and one hell of a Wednesday night.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Big weekend
Closing
Well, this has been a rather extraordinary weekend.
I went and saw "Papa", the show playing before our show, on Thursday night. It's been virtually impossible to see their show on nights when we perform, since they don't finish until 5-10 minutes before when we're theoretically supposed to start our show. This was not part of the original plan, but we're flexible in the theatre world when we have to be. So, I wanted to be a good neighbor and check out the show when I could. It was quite good, actually. I'm not a big fan of one persons shows, generally speaking, but for what it was it was very well done. I found myself wanting to explore various assertions about Hemingway's life in more depth than the show allowed, but that's a good thing. Always leave them wanting more, you know. Afterwards, I was planning on meeting up with coworkers for a birthday celebration, but had no idea where to meet them. All I knew was that they were heading to the Marina. Chris Hayes works at the Eureka and was the person who got me in the space in the first place. He's friends with some of the guys in Los Angeles' Second City troupe, and they were in town for Shaun Landry's San Francisco Improv Festival. So, I joined him and we caught cab down to the bar they were at. Apparently, they had a fantastic show that night. I got the impression that three acts had played that night, and all of them had rocked the house like a Scorpion's set. I had a couple of beers and talked about Vagina Dentata and RadioStar. I hadn't had time to eat that night, so I got very tipsy very fast. This is never a wise choice, and I ended up slightly drunkenly inviting David Razowski to come and play with Pharmarsupial when he visited San Francisco on his next vacation.
Very smooth, I can be, when drunk and happy. There was a small voice in the back of my brain yelling at me to shut the hell up and let the man alone, but we were all in a friendly mode and my common sense wasn't paying much attention at the time.
I got the call from Rebeca Diaz, letting me know where to meet up for Marycruz Diaz's birthday gathering. So off I was in another cab up to the Matrix bar for more late night revelry. Now, the Marina is a whole different scene from most of the places I hang out, but I was feeling pretty limber. I chatted up a cute girl at the bar while I was getting a drink for the birthday girl, but wasn't able to follow up as I needed to deliver my birthday present.
Now, remember, I hadn't eaten all night, and had a Guinness, and white German beer of unknown appelation, and two screwdrivers by this point. I met another woman who came in and talked for a few seconds with her before she found her friends and vanished from my besotted and fond gaze. Throughout the evening, I would look over and check her out, hoping for another chance to talk to her. I was tipsy as hell, but quite lucid. Rebeca noticed my attention and I commented that guy she'd been talking to had been keeping his distance. In my mind, that meant that I might have a chance to swoop in shortly... and then looked back over to find her making out passionately with him.
Fuck.
It's a bad sign when you find yourself getting jealous about total strangers in a bar. It was well after hours by that point, though, and I needed to wait it out and get a ride home with the Diaz sisters. I finally got home around 2 or 2:30... I'm honestly not sure which.
It made going to work the next morning and interesting experience.
Throughout the day at work I got various calls on my cell, and checked voicemail at home, and watched the reservation list for Vagina Dentata grow and grow. By the time I got to the theatre, we have over fifty people on the reservation list. For a small theatre production, that's wonderful. For a late night (10pm) show, that's damn near mythical. I was very excited, and realized that we had run out of programs. One of my actors, Stefanie Goldstein, offered to take me to her office, which isn't that far from the theatre, and we made up about 75 programs on the copier. We got back with lots of room to spare and I fiddled about getting things ready for our show while "Papa" played on in the theatre. Time ticked further and further on, and I became more and more aware that we were missing something crucial: a box office manager. As people began to arrive at the box office, I put out a sign indicating when we'd actually be opening it and called my volunteer.
He had forgotten what day it was.
Cassidy Brown was in the crowd waiting for the box office to open, so I made him earn his comp ticket for the night and put him on duty. I gave him the quick orientation and then waited for the final notes of "Papa's" performance. Warren Jensen was there, so he could learn the light cues for our closing night as we were going to be losing our light operator. Kurt DiSessa was there as well, and I had offered him a comp if he'd help with the rapid set change. As the ovation subsided for "Papa" we swept in and began making the changeover. While I dropped the wire from the ceiling and starting hanging the wall panels, they brought the desk down the aisle and up on the stage. Then they went and got the conference table from the wings, and it broke as they tried to maneuver it onstage. Drills were grabbed and brackets refastened as I thanked whatever gods watch over the theatre that this happened on a night when we had extra hands.
Finally, the table was repaired enough to survive the show and we opened the house. We had over seventy people that night. The theatre claims to hold two hundred, but looking out at the house, I think that this number is inflated. Seventy filled the primary middle section very nicely. We started the show about 10:15pm and had a rocking old time. It was the largest single audience in Cassandra's Call's history.
Sunday was a whole different deal, as I borrowed Eden Tosh's car to go to Fairfield for my Great Uncle Mac's 90th birthday gathering. I saw people I hadn't seen since I was a wee shaver, and was amazed at how sharp, spry, fit, and feisty my uncle was. I can only hope and pray for that kind of longevity. May we all ready 90 and be cracking wise about beer and women while still moving around easily under our own power.
I picked Eden up afterwards in Pleasant Hill. She had been tooling around with Angela Mazur, so we sat for a bit, cooling our toes in the pool before jumping out for some thai food. Time got away from us, sadly and I had to whisk Eden away in order to get to the theatre by 9pm for our closing night. Eden was our box office manager for the evening, and while we only had 24 people on the reservation list, I wanted things to go smoothly. We made our final switch over, and when all was ready to go, there were over fifty people in the house. We had doubled our reservation list.
The show snapped like fresh elastic. Every one of the ladies had a good night, and everything sang. At the end, Gigi gave me roses and I gave them to the cast and thanked the audience and they roared like a village of vikings who had just been given free beer.
It was a good feeling... a VERY good feeling.
Andy and Lorelei, and Cindy Yee and Warren stayed afterwards to help us strike the set. It seemed pointless to put stuff away just to strike it the next day, so we got everything out of there that night. While making the final leg of the journey back to my rehearsal room, the desk that had sat in my apartment for years and barely survived the trip to the theatre in the first place, finally gave out. Particle board and wooden dowlings, secured by soft metal angle brackets, splintered and snapped and fell apart. It had seen it's last day. I broke it into pieces and tossed it in the room for later management. It was almost 1:30am and I was in mood to try and salvage it.
Sunday came, and I returned to the theatre to help "Papa" strike their set for a few hours before catching a bus across town to see Mindy Lym in "Seussical". The show was charming and sweet, and I marvelled at the size of the cast and the choreography and wondered how they got all that together while rehearsing in my room. After the show, lacking the change for bus fare, I walked the two miles back to the room, which took me through the tenderloin. After watching musical versions of Horton Hears a Who, with one lone elephant hearing an invisible community's cry for help... taking in the Tenderloin takes on a new poignancy.
I got to the room, though, and set things up for RadioStar. We had a smashing session, although were were few in number. David Austin-Groen is off in Eastern Europe, and Diana Brown is off doing "Dead Certain" in New York. Still, we got some damn good shows in the can and then retired to our usual watering hole to decompress. While there, Christopher DeJong proposed a RadioStar holiday show that dovetailed with some ideas I had been having about a scripted show.
To make an already way too long story a little less long, it looks like I now have a project in between "Get it? Got it. Good!" and the March revival of "Vagina Dentata." We don't have a name for it yet though.
And no, this is not what I would consider to be a slow weekend.
Well, this has been a rather extraordinary weekend.
I went and saw "Papa", the show playing before our show, on Thursday night. It's been virtually impossible to see their show on nights when we perform, since they don't finish until 5-10 minutes before when we're theoretically supposed to start our show. This was not part of the original plan, but we're flexible in the theatre world when we have to be. So, I wanted to be a good neighbor and check out the show when I could. It was quite good, actually. I'm not a big fan of one persons shows, generally speaking, but for what it was it was very well done. I found myself wanting to explore various assertions about Hemingway's life in more depth than the show allowed, but that's a good thing. Always leave them wanting more, you know. Afterwards, I was planning on meeting up with coworkers for a birthday celebration, but had no idea where to meet them. All I knew was that they were heading to the Marina. Chris Hayes works at the Eureka and was the person who got me in the space in the first place. He's friends with some of the guys in Los Angeles' Second City troupe, and they were in town for Shaun Landry's San Francisco Improv Festival. So, I joined him and we caught cab down to the bar they were at. Apparently, they had a fantastic show that night. I got the impression that three acts had played that night, and all of them had rocked the house like a Scorpion's set. I had a couple of beers and talked about Vagina Dentata and RadioStar. I hadn't had time to eat that night, so I got very tipsy very fast. This is never a wise choice, and I ended up slightly drunkenly inviting David Razowski to come and play with Pharmarsupial when he visited San Francisco on his next vacation.
Very smooth, I can be, when drunk and happy. There was a small voice in the back of my brain yelling at me to shut the hell up and let the man alone, but we were all in a friendly mode and my common sense wasn't paying much attention at the time.
I got the call from Rebeca Diaz, letting me know where to meet up for Marycruz Diaz's birthday gathering. So off I was in another cab up to the Matrix bar for more late night revelry. Now, the Marina is a whole different scene from most of the places I hang out, but I was feeling pretty limber. I chatted up a cute girl at the bar while I was getting a drink for the birthday girl, but wasn't able to follow up as I needed to deliver my birthday present.
Now, remember, I hadn't eaten all night, and had a Guinness, and white German beer of unknown appelation, and two screwdrivers by this point. I met another woman who came in and talked for a few seconds with her before she found her friends and vanished from my besotted and fond gaze. Throughout the evening, I would look over and check her out, hoping for another chance to talk to her. I was tipsy as hell, but quite lucid. Rebeca noticed my attention and I commented that guy she'd been talking to had been keeping his distance. In my mind, that meant that I might have a chance to swoop in shortly... and then looked back over to find her making out passionately with him.
Fuck.
It's a bad sign when you find yourself getting jealous about total strangers in a bar. It was well after hours by that point, though, and I needed to wait it out and get a ride home with the Diaz sisters. I finally got home around 2 or 2:30... I'm honestly not sure which.
It made going to work the next morning and interesting experience.
Throughout the day at work I got various calls on my cell, and checked voicemail at home, and watched the reservation list for Vagina Dentata grow and grow. By the time I got to the theatre, we have over fifty people on the reservation list. For a small theatre production, that's wonderful. For a late night (10pm) show, that's damn near mythical. I was very excited, and realized that we had run out of programs. One of my actors, Stefanie Goldstein, offered to take me to her office, which isn't that far from the theatre, and we made up about 75 programs on the copier. We got back with lots of room to spare and I fiddled about getting things ready for our show while "Papa" played on in the theatre. Time ticked further and further on, and I became more and more aware that we were missing something crucial: a box office manager. As people began to arrive at the box office, I put out a sign indicating when we'd actually be opening it and called my volunteer.
He had forgotten what day it was.
Cassidy Brown was in the crowd waiting for the box office to open, so I made him earn his comp ticket for the night and put him on duty. I gave him the quick orientation and then waited for the final notes of "Papa's" performance. Warren Jensen was there, so he could learn the light cues for our closing night as we were going to be losing our light operator. Kurt DiSessa was there as well, and I had offered him a comp if he'd help with the rapid set change. As the ovation subsided for "Papa" we swept in and began making the changeover. While I dropped the wire from the ceiling and starting hanging the wall panels, they brought the desk down the aisle and up on the stage. Then they went and got the conference table from the wings, and it broke as they tried to maneuver it onstage. Drills were grabbed and brackets refastened as I thanked whatever gods watch over the theatre that this happened on a night when we had extra hands.
Finally, the table was repaired enough to survive the show and we opened the house. We had over seventy people that night. The theatre claims to hold two hundred, but looking out at the house, I think that this number is inflated. Seventy filled the primary middle section very nicely. We started the show about 10:15pm and had a rocking old time. It was the largest single audience in Cassandra's Call's history.
Sunday was a whole different deal, as I borrowed Eden Tosh's car to go to Fairfield for my Great Uncle Mac's 90th birthday gathering. I saw people I hadn't seen since I was a wee shaver, and was amazed at how sharp, spry, fit, and feisty my uncle was. I can only hope and pray for that kind of longevity. May we all ready 90 and be cracking wise about beer and women while still moving around easily under our own power.
I picked Eden up afterwards in Pleasant Hill. She had been tooling around with Angela Mazur, so we sat for a bit, cooling our toes in the pool before jumping out for some thai food. Time got away from us, sadly and I had to whisk Eden away in order to get to the theatre by 9pm for our closing night. Eden was our box office manager for the evening, and while we only had 24 people on the reservation list, I wanted things to go smoothly. We made our final switch over, and when all was ready to go, there were over fifty people in the house. We had doubled our reservation list.
The show snapped like fresh elastic. Every one of the ladies had a good night, and everything sang. At the end, Gigi gave me roses and I gave them to the cast and thanked the audience and they roared like a village of vikings who had just been given free beer.
It was a good feeling... a VERY good feeling.
Andy and Lorelei, and Cindy Yee and Warren stayed afterwards to help us strike the set. It seemed pointless to put stuff away just to strike it the next day, so we got everything out of there that night. While making the final leg of the journey back to my rehearsal room, the desk that had sat in my apartment for years and barely survived the trip to the theatre in the first place, finally gave out. Particle board and wooden dowlings, secured by soft metal angle brackets, splintered and snapped and fell apart. It had seen it's last day. I broke it into pieces and tossed it in the room for later management. It was almost 1:30am and I was in mood to try and salvage it.
Sunday came, and I returned to the theatre to help "Papa" strike their set for a few hours before catching a bus across town to see Mindy Lym in "Seussical". The show was charming and sweet, and I marvelled at the size of the cast and the choreography and wondered how they got all that together while rehearsing in my room. After the show, lacking the change for bus fare, I walked the two miles back to the room, which took me through the tenderloin. After watching musical versions of Horton Hears a Who, with one lone elephant hearing an invisible community's cry for help... taking in the Tenderloin takes on a new poignancy.
I got to the room, though, and set things up for RadioStar. We had a smashing session, although were were few in number. David Austin-Groen is off in Eastern Europe, and Diana Brown is off doing "Dead Certain" in New York. Still, we got some damn good shows in the can and then retired to our usual watering hole to decompress. While there, Christopher DeJong proposed a RadioStar holiday show that dovetailed with some ideas I had been having about a scripted show.
To make an already way too long story a little less long, it looks like I now have a project in between "Get it? Got it. Good!" and the March revival of "Vagina Dentata." We don't have a name for it yet though.
And no, this is not what I would consider to be a slow weekend.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
S.E.P.
Twice in the last seven days I've gotten phone calls or emails that have been like a solid, well placed punch in the abdomen, just above the stomach but below the rib cage. I suppose that places it on the diaphragm, not that it matters.
It's funny, I've joked a bit over the last few months about how I've given up on connecting with people and decided to be a workaholic. I've only been a tiny bit kidding. It's just seemed easier to focus on what makes me feel good about myself and leave the ambiguity and continual issues around rejection aside. But that, of course, is easier said than done.
These alerts from the outside world ultimately have nothing to do with me. That's what hurts the most, I think: the fact that they have nothing to do with me. "Hello. Nothing to do with you, except that I thought you should know."
Pretending that you don't care anymore, that it doesn't hurt, that everything is smashing and who needs a heart anyway... it's not as helpful as it is on paper.
I wish it was. I wish I could hear things without immediately placing them in the context of how they hurt *me*, or how they make *me* feel. But I do. Then I feel bad about that reality, even though I know very well that there isn't a person on the planet that doesn't react the same way. I guess the real question is "how long before I stop being a selfish twit and focus on the real issue here?"
For me, it's usually only a half second or so... maybe a tiny bit longer. But then, later, it comes back. That's when I wish I was as disinterested and cold and hard as I like to pretend I've become. That's when I keep trying to push my heart back down my throat before it manages a grisly but impressive suicide dive out of my largest oriface.
No one buys my little charade of indifference, of course.
I'm not really that good an actor.
It's funny, I've joked a bit over the last few months about how I've given up on connecting with people and decided to be a workaholic. I've only been a tiny bit kidding. It's just seemed easier to focus on what makes me feel good about myself and leave the ambiguity and continual issues around rejection aside. But that, of course, is easier said than done.
These alerts from the outside world ultimately have nothing to do with me. That's what hurts the most, I think: the fact that they have nothing to do with me. "Hello. Nothing to do with you, except that I thought you should know."
Pretending that you don't care anymore, that it doesn't hurt, that everything is smashing and who needs a heart anyway... it's not as helpful as it is on paper.
I wish it was. I wish I could hear things without immediately placing them in the context of how they hurt *me*, or how they make *me* feel. But I do. Then I feel bad about that reality, even though I know very well that there isn't a person on the planet that doesn't react the same way. I guess the real question is "how long before I stop being a selfish twit and focus on the real issue here?"
For me, it's usually only a half second or so... maybe a tiny bit longer. But then, later, it comes back. That's when I wish I was as disinterested and cold and hard as I like to pretend I've become. That's when I keep trying to push my heart back down my throat before it manages a grisly but impressive suicide dive out of my largest oriface.
No one buys my little charade of indifference, of course.
I'm not really that good an actor.
Quick Breather
I've been enjoying taking it a little easy the last few days. We got a delightful review in the SF Bay Times (which you can read at the Cassandra's Call Website and had two very nice audiences this weekend. I was pretty freaked at our low numbers on opening weekend, but am greatly comforted by how this weekend went. Lots of my crew showed up, and 1am donuts were consumed, drinks consumed, and activity vaguely resembling dancing took place.
For the most part, I was fairly exhausted all weekend, although I managed to have lots of fun anyway. I had the Executive Leadership Center conference in El Segundo last week, and felt terribly un-prepared for it. Work on Vagina Dentata had kept me from really focusing any creative energies on the conference, and the spec's for what they wanted shifted a mere couple of days before it all went down. It all turned out well in the end, but by the time I got off the airplane Friday evening, I was dead tired. The fabulous Linda Kim drug me out anyway for crepes and to go dancing with some of her girlfriends. I was so tired I could barely stand up, and I've never found loud and dark clubs good places to make introductions. To make it worse, I found the band absolutely painful to listen to. I had to finally make my adieus and flee from the club after the second "song." Oy.
The holiday was an exercise in staying in my robe all day long. I got this week's RadioStar episode prepped (and did double duty on it since we missed last week), cleaned and then dirtied the kitchen and goofed off a lot. I feel like I should regret not going out and being social for the 4th, but I'm really quite over the whole fireworks thing and I think that I needed a complete day of down time and to recharge a little.
I can't do much more of that, though. I need to start casting for the Fringe show. I'm confirming my actors and need at least three more people. I've got two of the current cast ready to bolt for better paying jobs, so I may be casting more people than originally planned. Par for the course, really. I'm not paying much for the Fringe, it only has four shows, and it's not very high prestige. Still, I hope I can get things locked down soon. We start rehearsing in five weeks.
For the most part, I was fairly exhausted all weekend, although I managed to have lots of fun anyway. I had the Executive Leadership Center conference in El Segundo last week, and felt terribly un-prepared for it. Work on Vagina Dentata had kept me from really focusing any creative energies on the conference, and the spec's for what they wanted shifted a mere couple of days before it all went down. It all turned out well in the end, but by the time I got off the airplane Friday evening, I was dead tired. The fabulous Linda Kim drug me out anyway for crepes and to go dancing with some of her girlfriends. I was so tired I could barely stand up, and I've never found loud and dark clubs good places to make introductions. To make it worse, I found the band absolutely painful to listen to. I had to finally make my adieus and flee from the club after the second "song." Oy.
The holiday was an exercise in staying in my robe all day long. I got this week's RadioStar episode prepped (and did double duty on it since we missed last week), cleaned and then dirtied the kitchen and goofed off a lot. I feel like I should regret not going out and being social for the 4th, but I'm really quite over the whole fireworks thing and I think that I needed a complete day of down time and to recharge a little.
I can't do much more of that, though. I need to start casting for the Fringe show. I'm confirming my actors and need at least three more people. I've got two of the current cast ready to bolt for better paying jobs, so I may be casting more people than originally planned. Par for the course, really. I'm not paying much for the Fringe, it only has four shows, and it's not very high prestige. Still, I hope I can get things locked down soon. We start rehearsing in five weeks.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Crossed Wires
So, this weekend was a success, and a disaster... depending on your point of view.
The show opened. People seem to have enjoyed it. We successfully managed to change the set from the show before us to our set in 20 minutes, and that was with some significant problems. I was able to make various repairs to the set between shows and we found a better way to handle some of the furniture and have begun conversations on how to do this whole thing better next year. I went to a meditation workshop that Cindy Yee was running, saw Jack Rucker for the first time in a good four years, had dinner with Anais Delamour, saw Trish Tillman's show and got some great ideas for future script while talking with Gigi and Warren Jensen.
On the other hand, the Guardian reviewer got confused as to when our show started and missed our opening night, delaying our review by a week. The Bay Times reviewer needed a photograph and I managed to confuse both myself and my photographer so that we almost lost our review. Attendance was excruciatingly low, partly due to it being Pride Weekend. They physical demands of setting up and striking the show every night are about ready to do me in. My confirmation email to one of my rental clients got stuck in his spam folder so he thought he didn't have anywhere to rehearse, and I was relying on his presence in the room to allow another client into the room... so I lost rental income for both clients as the second one couldn't get into the room.
In short, it's been a busy, busy weekend and I was about ready to chuck everything this morning. Fortunately, time passed and my mood calmed and I can see both the good and the bad right now.
Still, I'm glad that I didn't have rehearsal tonight.
The show opened. People seem to have enjoyed it. We successfully managed to change the set from the show before us to our set in 20 minutes, and that was with some significant problems. I was able to make various repairs to the set between shows and we found a better way to handle some of the furniture and have begun conversations on how to do this whole thing better next year. I went to a meditation workshop that Cindy Yee was running, saw Jack Rucker for the first time in a good four years, had dinner with Anais Delamour, saw Trish Tillman's show and got some great ideas for future script while talking with Gigi and Warren Jensen.
On the other hand, the Guardian reviewer got confused as to when our show started and missed our opening night, delaying our review by a week. The Bay Times reviewer needed a photograph and I managed to confuse both myself and my photographer so that we almost lost our review. Attendance was excruciatingly low, partly due to it being Pride Weekend. They physical demands of setting up and striking the show every night are about ready to do me in. My confirmation email to one of my rental clients got stuck in his spam folder so he thought he didn't have anywhere to rehearse, and I was relying on his presence in the room to allow another client into the room... so I lost rental income for both clients as the second one couldn't get into the room.
In short, it's been a busy, busy weekend and I was about ready to chuck everything this morning. Fortunately, time passed and my mood calmed and I can see both the good and the bad right now.
Still, I'm glad that I didn't have rehearsal tonight.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Preview
We have our Preview tonight. It's odd, having only two days in the theatre, and then a preview, and then two days off before opening. But then again, theatre is odd in general.
I try and get as much done in advance as possible, because things always go wrong. Better to deal with the handful of disasters than have to deal with them AND everything that got put off until the last possible minute. There's still things that have just not gotten done before now, but it's the big nasty "what the fuck?" things that make me want to crawl in a hole and cover my head.
We've gone through a few different options of how to deal with working around, or within, the "Papa" set, which is the big budget show before ours. The current, and final option is to hang microfiliment wire from the lighting grid at appropriate places and then hook fabric panels to them and allow them to drape easily over the set. We have the fabric, the grommets, the hooks and the wire. I was going to work with the theatre rep. to do these yesterday before our dress rehearsal but he got pulled away for the day. I was going to work with him today, but he got pulled out of the city and won't be back until late night. So I'm leaving work early to go and climb ladders, measure wire, and try not to kill myself. We have our first audience tonight and it'd be awful nice to have a set.
I've been checking some of the places we're supposed to be listed, and so far so good. On the odd front, however, is our listing in SFGate.com (the SF Chronicle). The entire description of the show (and I sent them a nice short blurb on the plot) is: "Dan Wilson's new social satire".
That's it.
It borders on "Mostly Harmless", and I'm not sure if I should be offended or amused. I mean, I suppose it's nice to know that my name is the only relevant information. If it's Dan Wilson's new satire, what more need be said? And here I thought that the average theatre goer didn't have any idea who I was. Not only do they obviously all know, but my name is all the information they need to come see the show!
Ok, I think I'm actually offended. I'm not sure how to change this other than email the Weekly and the Chronicle and re-send them the description.
Criminy.
I try and get as much done in advance as possible, because things always go wrong. Better to deal with the handful of disasters than have to deal with them AND everything that got put off until the last possible minute. There's still things that have just not gotten done before now, but it's the big nasty "what the fuck?" things that make me want to crawl in a hole and cover my head.
We've gone through a few different options of how to deal with working around, or within, the "Papa" set, which is the big budget show before ours. The current, and final option is to hang microfiliment wire from the lighting grid at appropriate places and then hook fabric panels to them and allow them to drape easily over the set. We have the fabric, the grommets, the hooks and the wire. I was going to work with the theatre rep. to do these yesterday before our dress rehearsal but he got pulled away for the day. I was going to work with him today, but he got pulled out of the city and won't be back until late night. So I'm leaving work early to go and climb ladders, measure wire, and try not to kill myself. We have our first audience tonight and it'd be awful nice to have a set.
I've been checking some of the places we're supposed to be listed, and so far so good. On the odd front, however, is our listing in SFGate.com (the SF Chronicle). The entire description of the show (and I sent them a nice short blurb on the plot) is: "Dan Wilson's new social satire".
That's it.
It borders on "Mostly Harmless", and I'm not sure if I should be offended or amused. I mean, I suppose it's nice to know that my name is the only relevant information. If it's Dan Wilson's new satire, what more need be said? And here I thought that the average theatre goer didn't have any idea who I was. Not only do they obviously all know, but my name is all the information they need to come see the show!
Ok, I think I'm actually offended. I'm not sure how to change this other than email the Weekly and the Chronicle and re-send them the description.
Criminy.
Monday, June 19, 2006
lights
Well, the dry tech went pretty well. There's a handful of details to work out before the tech run tomorrow night, but all in all... we're pretty well off. I want a little more stage space, and I'm still not very happy about having to deal with the other show's set in the way that I do... but these are things that won't be an issue when we remount the show next year. These are the unique little problems that make this show special, after all.
On interesting issue was practically destroying my desk while loading it into the truck. It's this big "Dan Sized" desk that's really just fancy looking particle board. It got caught between the tailgate and the bed of the truck and whammo. Near kindling. We're able to fix it up with some L brackets, but damn it that wasn't the sight and sound to just put you off your lunch.
Again, though, nothing that wasn't fixable.
The important thing is that all of our furniture and our props are in the space. Our lights are programmed.
now we just need a few final things and to burn the CD of music and we're ready to do this thing.
On interesting issue was practically destroying my desk while loading it into the truck. It's this big "Dan Sized" desk that's really just fancy looking particle board. It got caught between the tailgate and the bed of the truck and whammo. Near kindling. We're able to fix it up with some L brackets, but damn it that wasn't the sight and sound to just put you off your lunch.
Again, though, nothing that wasn't fixable.
The important thing is that all of our furniture and our props are in the space. Our lights are programmed.
now we just need a few final things and to burn the CD of music and we're ready to do this thing.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Those final feet
Vagina Dentata opens in less than a week. The show feels 95% ready, which is phenomenal. Tonight we move the set into the theatre and figure out exactly how the hell we're doing to do this thing technically, since there's another show in the same theatre with a rather ornate and immobile set that we need to conceal and replace within 20 minutes for each of our shows.
Fun, eh?
I think we've got a good solution, which involves accordion-like beams that screw into the stage that will allow us to have a free standing backdrop with only about twelve screws. No one approaches it, so we'll see how our engineering works out.
We've got a preview on Wednesday, and our first paying audience on Saturday. My only trepidation is on the technical side of things, and even the it's mostly about the time between "Papa" and "Vagina Dentata".
-------
The lovely Sofia Ahmad sent me this fabulous bit of mad science. While I found the videos fantastic, it's the explanation of the volatile reaction of Diet Coke to Mentos that really got me. She'll be doing Shakespeare in Santa Cruz this summer, so go see her wonderfulness if you're in the area.
-------
Alexis Dinno is now Dr. Lexicat, thank you very much. I was able to make a very belated appearance at her post doctoral shindig at a Fellini's in Berkeley last night, although I spent a good chunk of that time hounding Kevin Kerrick, an actor I'm trying to recruit for the Fringe Festival show in September, who happened to be at the bar. Small town(s). Alexis is now officially a super genius with a funny hat. A thousand toasts in her honor!
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I'm still getting used to the idea of having a very part time personal assistant. I had a business brunch with Mindy yesterday before rehearsal and was delighted to find that things that had been on my to-do list for a year were finally "magically" happening!
That's pretty much it in Dan-Land right now. I'm going to go and edit this week's RadioStar Improv show while I still can. Once 5:30pm hits, my life is nothing but WestEd and Vagina Dentata until Thursday.
Fun, eh?
I think we've got a good solution, which involves accordion-like beams that screw into the stage that will allow us to have a free standing backdrop with only about twelve screws. No one approaches it, so we'll see how our engineering works out.
We've got a preview on Wednesday, and our first paying audience on Saturday. My only trepidation is on the technical side of things, and even the it's mostly about the time between "Papa" and "Vagina Dentata".
-------
The lovely Sofia Ahmad sent me this fabulous bit of mad science. While I found the videos fantastic, it's the explanation of the volatile reaction of Diet Coke to Mentos that really got me. She'll be doing Shakespeare in Santa Cruz this summer, so go see her wonderfulness if you're in the area.
-------
Alexis Dinno is now Dr. Lexicat, thank you very much. I was able to make a very belated appearance at her post doctoral shindig at a Fellini's in Berkeley last night, although I spent a good chunk of that time hounding Kevin Kerrick, an actor I'm trying to recruit for the Fringe Festival show in September, who happened to be at the bar. Small town(s). Alexis is now officially a super genius with a funny hat. A thousand toasts in her honor!
--------
I'm still getting used to the idea of having a very part time personal assistant. I had a business brunch with Mindy yesterday before rehearsal and was delighted to find that things that had been on my to-do list for a year were finally "magically" happening!
That's pretty much it in Dan-Land right now. I'm going to go and edit this week's RadioStar Improv show while I still can. Once 5:30pm hits, my life is nothing but WestEd and Vagina Dentata until Thursday.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
seeds
Vagina Dentata opens next week. We have a preview on Wednesday, and then opening night is Saturday at 10pm. The show is shaping up nicely, although I'm getting a bit stressed over the technical details surrounding it.
I was interested, however, in something I came across while removing furniture from my apartment to be used as set for the show. I found the little notebook I purchased when in Hawaii this last December. Inside were notes and thoughts and little bits of poetry that I wrote while on the beach. I was musing on the themes of my unfinished play, "Mammals in Collision", but in it, I see the seeds of what became Vagina Dentata:
"While actions may speak louder, it is through words that we best hide.
Rationales move to excuses, and in their recursive maze we lose ourselves and others, until we cannot admit, even to ourselves, what base need urged the words that first crawled from our self-deceiving lips.
The further we creep up the scale of so-called evolution, the further we move from knowing ourselves and that which drives our every thought.
We hide from that which we fear, but over time the stranger to what we hold most dear becomes ourselves,whom we have lost in a million polite excuses and enlightened precepts.
We damn and curse our hungers, decried as lusts of beasts, as though we came from different blood and flesh and knew no tears but those of aether, spirit, and air.
Yet deep behind the alphabet of ideas and masks lies bone, blood, sweat and life.
We crave, consume, desire and want so deeply that our souls quail at such passion.
It is unthinking, uncaring of lofty goals or hopes for kith, kin, and kind.
All that remains are the unenlightened drugs of taste and touch.
There is no truth here, but only sweet and savage release."
I was interested, however, in something I came across while removing furniture from my apartment to be used as set for the show. I found the little notebook I purchased when in Hawaii this last December. Inside were notes and thoughts and little bits of poetry that I wrote while on the beach. I was musing on the themes of my unfinished play, "Mammals in Collision", but in it, I see the seeds of what became Vagina Dentata:
"While actions may speak louder, it is through words that we best hide.
Rationales move to excuses, and in their recursive maze we lose ourselves and others, until we cannot admit, even to ourselves, what base need urged the words that first crawled from our self-deceiving lips.
The further we creep up the scale of so-called evolution, the further we move from knowing ourselves and that which drives our every thought.
We hide from that which we fear, but over time the stranger to what we hold most dear becomes ourselves,whom we have lost in a million polite excuses and enlightened precepts.
We damn and curse our hungers, decried as lusts of beasts, as though we came from different blood and flesh and knew no tears but those of aether, spirit, and air.
Yet deep behind the alphabet of ideas and masks lies bone, blood, sweat and life.
We crave, consume, desire and want so deeply that our souls quail at such passion.
It is unthinking, uncaring of lofty goals or hopes for kith, kin, and kind.
All that remains are the unenlightened drugs of taste and touch.
There is no truth here, but only sweet and savage release."
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Off Book and on You Tube
Just a quick post. Things continue to move along nicely with Vagina Dentata. We're two weeks out from the preview and I was called an "evil, evil bastard" by one of the actors because last night was the first night they were supposed to rehearse without their scripts in their hands. The difference between working on character and lines in a living room and getting it up on its feet without scripts is so intense, and so major, and it was like a whole new rehearsal process last night. Gabrielle Guthrie came in as well with the painting that will be featured in the show, which got shocked gapes from the cast, and took measurements for costumes. We are well and truly on our way.
In other news, a documentary about Women's Will's 24 hour playfest is up at YouTube. I'm in there, although they didn't interview me. Check it out!
In other news, a documentary about Women's Will's 24 hour playfest is up at YouTube. I'm in there, although they didn't interview me. Check it out!
Friday, May 26, 2006
I am your kryptonite
As allued to in the last post, I decided this morning to do more than pull out the clippers and I pulled out the razor.
I walked into the office this morning and a coworker took one look at me and gave me a big hug, saying "Yeah! Sometimes you gotta take life by the horns, baby!"
All I could mutter was "Um... thanks, Bob."
I walked into the office this morning and a coworker took one look at me and gave me a big hug, saying "Yeah! Sometimes you gotta take life by the horns, baby!"
All I could mutter was "Um... thanks, Bob."
straining at the bit
Each part of the creation process has its own joys and frustrations. This is the point in which I want to run before we walk. The actors are doing a fantastic job in finding the core of each scene, but it's too early to delve into truly shaping the scenes the way I'd like to. Until an actor is off book and ready to move around and think more about the moment (or not think, just do), there's only so much direction I feel I can give them. Some directors are all about spending hours doing various exercises to find new things and explore possibilities and what not. I'm not really one of those. I have a pretty good idea about what I want. The trick is to let myself be surprised into something better than what I want. How to direct, while allowing for surprise, but moving them towards the play as I see it, and yet being open to something larger than my original vision... that's something I continue to struggle with.
In the meanwhile, I watch the actors pass over the scenes, over and over, each time growing a bit more into these characters, and eagerly await the chance to throw the scripts down and start living the moments versus reading them. It's like wanting to get married when you're really just starting to date. The excitement of the vision of what is to come is just too compelling, but it needs to be resisted.
We should be off book in ten days, though, and at that point we'll move into the Cassandra's Call Rehearsal Room, with all of our set pieces and props. Gabrielle Guthrie, our costumer and artist, will join us and we'll start to get a sense of how these characters look, and that will influence how they move and feel as well.
In the meantime, I'll be starting yet another project with Diana Brown. We'll be doing short video segments for the Mondo Global Network on local comedians, and also doing longer audio interviews with them for a yet unnamed Cassandra's Call talk show podcast.
Oh, and I shaved my head today. I look like a kinder, gentler Lex Luthor.
In the meanwhile, I watch the actors pass over the scenes, over and over, each time growing a bit more into these characters, and eagerly await the chance to throw the scripts down and start living the moments versus reading them. It's like wanting to get married when you're really just starting to date. The excitement of the vision of what is to come is just too compelling, but it needs to be resisted.
We should be off book in ten days, though, and at that point we'll move into the Cassandra's Call Rehearsal Room, with all of our set pieces and props. Gabrielle Guthrie, our costumer and artist, will join us and we'll start to get a sense of how these characters look, and that will influence how they move and feel as well.
In the meantime, I'll be starting yet another project with Diana Brown. We'll be doing short video segments for the Mondo Global Network on local comedians, and also doing longer audio interviews with them for a yet unnamed Cassandra's Call talk show podcast.
Oh, and I shaved my head today. I look like a kinder, gentler Lex Luthor.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Delayed Beginnings
Rehearsals for Vagina Dentata began last week, although the real work begins tonight. We had an opening rehearsal party on Monday since most of the cast don't really know each other. We were short one actor, however, as I hadn't cast the final role yet. I wouldn't have the role of "Stephanie" cast until the middle of the week, since we had lost one actor and shifted roles for another. Here's a little peek behind the curtain of the magic and glamour of theatre. One actor is only available once a week due to a show that she's doing down in San Jose. We don't get her full time for another week or so. One actor is working nights doing drama therapy at a local prison on Tuesday nights, so she's gone. One actor hadn't been cast yet and was closing a show last weekend, so once she was cast she wasn't able to start immediately. Add to that the usual cast conflicts that come up, especially at the early part of a rehearsal run, we only had one rehearsal last week.
Normally, this would bother me, but with this cast I have no doubts that we can turn out a damn good show with only four weeks of rehearsal. It's partly the danger of casting a lot of very talented, working actors and also something that is more likely to happen when you write a show in which almost everyone gets equal stage time.
Still, I used my time to enjoy what free time I still have. I caught the new show (Roulette) at the SF Playhouse on Wednesday and quite liked it, although it felt like the author had built a really sold first act and then found that he had a fifteen minute second act and tried to fill forty minutes with it. Well acted, but I kept waiting for the story to go somewhere and it kind of danced around in circles. It was the second show I'd seen recently in which madness and insane rambling played a significant role and I am struck by how much a little can go a long way. It's a device I used myself way back in "In a Distant Country", although I was careful to keep it to a minimum. A three page scene can sustain that kind of dialogue a lot easier than a twenty page scene can.
I was able to catch the closing weekend of Dylan Russel's show "World Music" over at Theatre First on Saturday, which was a rare treat as it's one of the very few theatres based in Oakland. It's so odd to be able to walk to the theatre and not have to worry about catching BART afterwards. An excellent and emotionally gripping show about war, atrocity, conscience and personal blindness that reminded me thematically of "Small Tragedies", despite the fact that in every other way they were very different shows. The two shows are a good example of how the same themes can be treated in radically different ways and that two authors tackling the same issues will tell two very different stories.
Sunday night brought another RadioStar recording session, and our first live performance. Lila Theatre has a monthly improv showcase called Tememos and they asked us to come and open the show this month. It was our first time setting up the equipment and doing our thing in front of a live audience, although all of us have countless hours in front of audiences. The impact of the microphones on the audience and the audience on us was fascinating. They were clearly stifling their laughter, emitting titters and chocking down responses out of fear of ruining the recording, and we went a bit more for the jokes, working the audience, than we do when in the studio. Old stage habits began to creep into the show, so it'll be interesting to hear how it plays as pure audio.
I did have a bit of a shock yesterday when I got into the studio last night to find that one of my renters had smashed up against the Pharmarsupial poster and broken the frame... and not left a note or anything. I really don't want to start getting kindergarten teacher on people, but if I have to make everyone put their heads on the desk and raise their hand if they did it, I will.
Postcards for Vagina Dentata and viral cards for RadioStar are at the printers and should be in my hands this week. The PR push has begun and I need to send out the 4 week press releases today.
Normally, this would bother me, but with this cast I have no doubts that we can turn out a damn good show with only four weeks of rehearsal. It's partly the danger of casting a lot of very talented, working actors and also something that is more likely to happen when you write a show in which almost everyone gets equal stage time.
Still, I used my time to enjoy what free time I still have. I caught the new show (Roulette) at the SF Playhouse on Wednesday and quite liked it, although it felt like the author had built a really sold first act and then found that he had a fifteen minute second act and tried to fill forty minutes with it. Well acted, but I kept waiting for the story to go somewhere and it kind of danced around in circles. It was the second show I'd seen recently in which madness and insane rambling played a significant role and I am struck by how much a little can go a long way. It's a device I used myself way back in "In a Distant Country", although I was careful to keep it to a minimum. A three page scene can sustain that kind of dialogue a lot easier than a twenty page scene can.
I was able to catch the closing weekend of Dylan Russel's show "World Music" over at Theatre First on Saturday, which was a rare treat as it's one of the very few theatres based in Oakland. It's so odd to be able to walk to the theatre and not have to worry about catching BART afterwards. An excellent and emotionally gripping show about war, atrocity, conscience and personal blindness that reminded me thematically of "Small Tragedies", despite the fact that in every other way they were very different shows. The two shows are a good example of how the same themes can be treated in radically different ways and that two authors tackling the same issues will tell two very different stories.
Sunday night brought another RadioStar recording session, and our first live performance. Lila Theatre has a monthly improv showcase called Tememos and they asked us to come and open the show this month. It was our first time setting up the equipment and doing our thing in front of a live audience, although all of us have countless hours in front of audiences. The impact of the microphones on the audience and the audience on us was fascinating. They were clearly stifling their laughter, emitting titters and chocking down responses out of fear of ruining the recording, and we went a bit more for the jokes, working the audience, than we do when in the studio. Old stage habits began to creep into the show, so it'll be interesting to hear how it plays as pure audio.
I did have a bit of a shock yesterday when I got into the studio last night to find that one of my renters had smashed up against the Pharmarsupial poster and broken the frame... and not left a note or anything. I really don't want to start getting kindergarten teacher on people, but if I have to make everyone put their heads on the desk and raise their hand if they did it, I will.
Postcards for Vagina Dentata and viral cards for RadioStar are at the printers and should be in my hands this week. The PR push has begun and I need to send out the 4 week press releases today.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Yo, Semite!
This weekend was spent up in Yosemite with a bunch of yahoos. It was David Austin-Groen's birthday, so it was decided to do a guy's only camping weekend. Now, short of Burning Man, I haven't been tent camping since high school. As a child, we used to go to Little Grass Valley every summer, but even that usually involved a camper or trailer of some kind. I'm not much of an outdoors person. Allergies combined with a tendency to sunburn like an albino hairless rat under a radiation lamp have led me to pursue activities that involve shade and filtered air.
The ride up was spent talking a blue streak with Chris DeJong about Radiostar and some other projects that we've worked on. I remember the trip camping to be much longer, but we left early enough to get to the park in extremely good time. Everything about Yosemite reminded me of childhood. The continual presence of dust and pollen in the air gives everything a very particular quality. It's like everything is viewed through a camera filter and symbolizes the *past*.
A lot has changed since those halcyon days, though. For one, the tents have been vastly improved. Even with instructions that made no sense, had you put things together in the wrong order, and referenced parts that didn't exist, I had my new dome from Amazon.com up and groovy in minutes. Back in the Boy Scouts, getting a tent up was a major endeavor. If only we had modern technology back then. Of course my old "mummy bag" sleeping bag from back then still works like a charm.
The food was much better than camping in the past. Everyone was responsible for a meal, and everyone came with goodies. Eggs and bacon, fresh fruit, sausage, deli sandwiches, pasta, kebabs... we ate better than we do at home.
I certainly got more sun and exercise than I do at home. We went on what looked to be an innocuous mile hike at Vernal Falls, but failed to account for the fact that it was also a 1000 foot ascent, with one section of it dominated by ice cold spray that soaked every last one of us to the bone. The view from the top was phenomenal, but I was a bit focused at first on my own shivering, and then my fear that I had somehow gotten violently sunburned on my left hand. After a moment, I realized that the old tye dye shirt I was wearing was bleeding dye all over me. The shirt was a costume piece from a show I did years ago and it never occurred to me that it wouldn't be waterfall safe.
All in all, I learned some very important things during this weekend. First and foremost, turning Settlers of Catan into a drinking game is a very dangerous thing to attempt. Chris won, but I don't know how or when. I was constantly four steps behind everyone else. We tried it again the next night with Jack Daniels instead of good tequila and I learned that I am NOT a Jack fan. Ugh.
Not all things consumed were to my detriment, though. Zack Stern had some fancy schmancy allergy meds that he let me try that performed miracles on my beleaguered sinuses. I was breathing easy despite the constant layer of tree pollen that covered everything like a sugar donut of snot doom. Bless the man. Bless him mightily.
All in all, a good weekend and great way to spend my last weekend before Vagina Dentata consumes my life.
The ride up was spent talking a blue streak with Chris DeJong about Radiostar and some other projects that we've worked on. I remember the trip camping to be much longer, but we left early enough to get to the park in extremely good time. Everything about Yosemite reminded me of childhood. The continual presence of dust and pollen in the air gives everything a very particular quality. It's like everything is viewed through a camera filter and symbolizes the *past*.
A lot has changed since those halcyon days, though. For one, the tents have been vastly improved. Even with instructions that made no sense, had you put things together in the wrong order, and referenced parts that didn't exist, I had my new dome from Amazon.com up and groovy in minutes. Back in the Boy Scouts, getting a tent up was a major endeavor. If only we had modern technology back then. Of course my old "mummy bag" sleeping bag from back then still works like a charm.
The food was much better than camping in the past. Everyone was responsible for a meal, and everyone came with goodies. Eggs and bacon, fresh fruit, sausage, deli sandwiches, pasta, kebabs... we ate better than we do at home.
I certainly got more sun and exercise than I do at home. We went on what looked to be an innocuous mile hike at Vernal Falls, but failed to account for the fact that it was also a 1000 foot ascent, with one section of it dominated by ice cold spray that soaked every last one of us to the bone. The view from the top was phenomenal, but I was a bit focused at first on my own shivering, and then my fear that I had somehow gotten violently sunburned on my left hand. After a moment, I realized that the old tye dye shirt I was wearing was bleeding dye all over me. The shirt was a costume piece from a show I did years ago and it never occurred to me that it wouldn't be waterfall safe.
All in all, I learned some very important things during this weekend. First and foremost, turning Settlers of Catan into a drinking game is a very dangerous thing to attempt. Chris won, but I don't know how or when. I was constantly four steps behind everyone else. We tried it again the next night with Jack Daniels instead of good tequila and I learned that I am NOT a Jack fan. Ugh.
Not all things consumed were to my detriment, though. Zack Stern had some fancy schmancy allergy meds that he let me try that performed miracles on my beleaguered sinuses. I was breathing easy despite the constant layer of tree pollen that covered everything like a sugar donut of snot doom. Bless the man. Bless him mightily.
All in all, a good weekend and great way to spend my last weekend before Vagina Dentata consumes my life.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Many stories
I am more and more reminded of the incredible vibrancy of the local arts scene, and how unknown it is to much of this area's population. I saw four different shows this weekend, each wildly different from the last, and most with shocking low audience turnout.
Thursday I went to go see Cassidy Brown in Noises Off, out in Concord. A fun show, and one that I feel close to having been in a very difficult and story laden production back when I was first getting involved in theatre after my long hiatus. They were having an extension of the production, which is always difficult as you've been doing good enough business to warrant it, but it's not announced until late and so the PR is difficult to get out. Still for a Thursday night, it was all right. But then again, it was a Thursday night, and it was in the suburbs, and well known farces do very well out there. This particular company has done the show three times in the last ten years, which is highly unusual and bespeaks how financially safe it is to do what is actually a very difficult and expensive show. Afterwards we went out to what used to be the "King's X" bar in Piedmont, but was recently bought and turned into (of all things) a tiki bar. It was worth the trip, if only for the surrealness of it.
Friday night I met up with Eden Tosh and one of the best loved ladies that you will never see on stage, Peggy Powell. We met up over at Foley's Irish House before bopping over to the Exit Theatre for their annual DivaFest. I had done a few shows with the amazing "Lunatique Fantastique" years before and was eager to see their newest show, "Beauty and the Breast". For those uninitiated, Lun Fan does "found object puppetry." This mean that all the puppets and their props are items you would find around the house. The primary characters were bras. I don't mean that they had bras, they WERE bras. Ordinary bras you would find in any store that sold things like bras. Funny, truthful, and at times very sad (as a show about surviving... or not ... breast cancer should be). Again, a very small turnout for a company that routinely sells out its shows.
It turns out that Sarah Szewczyk was doing lights for the show, but I failed to return to her the stack of lighting gels that have been at my apartment since Manumission closed last October. She's been busy as hell, as talented lighting designers tend to be. I was able to join most of the Lunatique Fantastique crew for drinks at Original Joe's afterwards, prompting Eden's observation that all I do is go see plays and drink afterwards. Peggy, said that this was rather the whole point of theatre but then had to beg off the drinking part. So I traded off one set of lovely drinking partners for another and caught up with Robin Plutchok, who I hadn't really seen for more than a heartbeat since we did Fixed Boundary together two years earlier.
It turned out that there was a cabaret at Original Joe's that night, which was part of DivaFest. Having run into Amanda Ostermeyer (the power behind the throne at the Exit) and Christina Aguello, I felt it would be impolitic not to stay for the show and ended up running into a couple of strays. Kimberly Richards, who has been touring the country with her one-woman show "Late Night Catechism" showed up, as did the brilliantly deranged Thessaly Lerner who vanished Los Angeles-way a few years ago. It appeared to be a homecoming, and we all sat back for a somewhat slapdash (but surprisingly fun) cabaret celebrating San Francisco 06's, starting with the earthquake a century ago. It was one of those affairs that rode on goodwill and fun and enthusiasm more than any particular polish, rehearsal, or whatnot, and managed to succeed wildly on those credentials.
Finally, last night I caught "Money and Run, Episode 4" out at La Val's Pizzeria in Berkeley, which has a theatre downstairs. Impact Theatre is the current resident company, and I had seen the original three episodes of Money and Run two years ago. These are insane, delightful, funny as hell, and completely pointless homages to bad television of the early 80's. The original run was wildly popular and always well attended, so I was surprised to see that the theatre was barely a quarter fill, and it's a very small venue. A funny show with a great cast deserves better than that. Ãœberhot Alexandra Creighton once again is playing bad-girl "Money", and I try never to miss a show of hers if I can help it. We did Comedy of Errors a ways back and she's a rising star that we're going to be losing to So Cal fairly soon. Leon Goertzen and Hector Osario had joined the cast, which completed what Peggy has begun referring to as my requirement for seeing a show... knowing at least three people in the cast and crew.
And afterwards we all got drinks.
I may go back for closing night and the party, as the rest of the cast decided that I should be their groupie, and when a bevy of women makes such a proclamation... who am I to argue?
Thursday I went to go see Cassidy Brown in Noises Off, out in Concord. A fun show, and one that I feel close to having been in a very difficult and story laden production back when I was first getting involved in theatre after my long hiatus. They were having an extension of the production, which is always difficult as you've been doing good enough business to warrant it, but it's not announced until late and so the PR is difficult to get out. Still for a Thursday night, it was all right. But then again, it was a Thursday night, and it was in the suburbs, and well known farces do very well out there. This particular company has done the show three times in the last ten years, which is highly unusual and bespeaks how financially safe it is to do what is actually a very difficult and expensive show. Afterwards we went out to what used to be the "King's X" bar in Piedmont, but was recently bought and turned into (of all things) a tiki bar. It was worth the trip, if only for the surrealness of it.
Friday night I met up with Eden Tosh and one of the best loved ladies that you will never see on stage, Peggy Powell. We met up over at Foley's Irish House before bopping over to the Exit Theatre for their annual DivaFest. I had done a few shows with the amazing "Lunatique Fantastique" years before and was eager to see their newest show, "Beauty and the Breast". For those uninitiated, Lun Fan does "found object puppetry." This mean that all the puppets and their props are items you would find around the house. The primary characters were bras. I don't mean that they had bras, they WERE bras. Ordinary bras you would find in any store that sold things like bras. Funny, truthful, and at times very sad (as a show about surviving... or not ... breast cancer should be). Again, a very small turnout for a company that routinely sells out its shows.
It turns out that Sarah Szewczyk was doing lights for the show, but I failed to return to her the stack of lighting gels that have been at my apartment since Manumission closed last October. She's been busy as hell, as talented lighting designers tend to be. I was able to join most of the Lunatique Fantastique crew for drinks at Original Joe's afterwards, prompting Eden's observation that all I do is go see plays and drink afterwards. Peggy, said that this was rather the whole point of theatre but then had to beg off the drinking part. So I traded off one set of lovely drinking partners for another and caught up with Robin Plutchok, who I hadn't really seen for more than a heartbeat since we did Fixed Boundary together two years earlier.
It turned out that there was a cabaret at Original Joe's that night, which was part of DivaFest. Having run into Amanda Ostermeyer (the power behind the throne at the Exit) and Christina Aguello, I felt it would be impolitic not to stay for the show and ended up running into a couple of strays. Kimberly Richards, who has been touring the country with her one-woman show "Late Night Catechism" showed up, as did the brilliantly deranged Thessaly Lerner who vanished Los Angeles-way a few years ago. It appeared to be a homecoming, and we all sat back for a somewhat slapdash (but surprisingly fun) cabaret celebrating San Francisco 06's, starting with the earthquake a century ago. It was one of those affairs that rode on goodwill and fun and enthusiasm more than any particular polish, rehearsal, or whatnot, and managed to succeed wildly on those credentials.
Finally, last night I caught "Money and Run, Episode 4" out at La Val's Pizzeria in Berkeley, which has a theatre downstairs. Impact Theatre is the current resident company, and I had seen the original three episodes of Money and Run two years ago. These are insane, delightful, funny as hell, and completely pointless homages to bad television of the early 80's. The original run was wildly popular and always well attended, so I was surprised to see that the theatre was barely a quarter fill, and it's a very small venue. A funny show with a great cast deserves better than that. Ãœberhot Alexandra Creighton once again is playing bad-girl "Money", and I try never to miss a show of hers if I can help it. We did Comedy of Errors a ways back and she's a rising star that we're going to be losing to So Cal fairly soon. Leon Goertzen and Hector Osario had joined the cast, which completed what Peggy has begun referring to as my requirement for seeing a show... knowing at least three people in the cast and crew.
And afterwards we all got drinks.
I may go back for closing night and the party, as the rest of the cast decided that I should be their groupie, and when a bevy of women makes such a proclamation... who am I to argue?
Thursday, May 04, 2006
My words
I went to go see a show at one of the larger professional companies out in the East Bay tonight. A friend of mine is in the cast, and is also the casting director out there. He also lives nearby, which means that I can usually get a ride home afterwards. Huzzah! The show was quite good, but what tickled me the most was finding out that someone had recently auditioned there, using one of my monologues. He wasn't there for the audition, but the auditor afterwards mentioned that someone had done a really hilarious monologue from some new play called "Vagina Dentata." I'm assuming it's someone in the cast, although I've sent out enough copies to other actors in the area for feedback that it could have been any number of people. I think it's the nicest affirmation of my writing that I could ask for, that someone would choose a monologue from it to use as an audition piece.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
originality
The problem is originality.
When Joseph Maurer (yes, I'm dispensing with the nicknames. These are people you should know about, if you don't already) left for Canada, he left me a ton of comic books. He had exquisite taste in what he kept and it didn't make sense to just dump them. I'm talking original issues of Sandman, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run, and a slew of more obscure titles. So it was that I just finished reading Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man.
As I reached the end of his twenty six issue run, I felt a great frustration inside of me. What he had done with Animal Man was very much like what I am doing with my SF Fringe Festival show, "Get it? Got it. Good!"
Sure, the devices he employs are different, and the message he conveys is different, but the tool of deconstruction is very similar. In both this run of comics and my play, we pull the curtain aside and reveal the gods of the medium and comment on that role and on the work of artistic creation. He uses it to complain about his limitations as a writer and his own beliefs (which he had made exquisitely clear in the course of his narratives). I use it to make statements about value judgments and our own empowerment and liberation from other people's decisions about what is good (and good for us).
So, what's my problem? It's simply that I thought I was being very daring and breaking all these narrative rules... and that Grant Morrison had done it years and years earlier. I didn't know this when I wrote the play, but that doesn't make me much happier. People who see the play, if they are comics literate, may sit there and think "oh, he's doing the Grant Morrison Animal Man thing".
I had a similar situation when I created a Flash-based-choose-your-own-adventure story for Matt Quinn's nascent internet entertainment company "MuseRealm" just before the dot bomb. I had created what I felt was a clever and original story involving a psychic assassin who could only impact things within his line of sight. His trick was to be able to telekinetically squeeze a target's heart and induce a fatal heart attack. Completely untraceable and indistinguishable from a naturally occurring death. The dot bomb happened, I never finished the piece (although it's literally only a few hours work from being done), and it has sat on my hard drive ever since. Fast forward five or six years and I am persuaded by a friend to put Babylon 5 on my Netflix queue. I watch the first season and discover a lengthy discussion of how the government is trying to develop a telekinetic who could kill someone by squeezing their heart... and that psychics can only operate within line of sight.
Fuck me.
My little interactive story will never see light of day, because an idea that I had in the late 90's had already been done on national television and I had never known it. Suddenly my little project began to look like a rip off of Babylon 5. Sure, it was developed without any knowledge of the other project, but again... that doesn't change audience perception. It's all a question of what the audience sees first.
Ultimately, does it really matter? A good story is a good story, even if parts of it seem oddly familiar. But recent news stories about a young author that (possibly unintentionally) plagiarized another novel make me think otherwise. Ostensibly, a novel she had read years earlier had so firmly set itself in her subconscious that when she attempted her own novel, up to 24 different passages had an eerie similarity to the other work. Similar enough to create an international literary incident and get her novel pulled from the shelves.
Now what strikes me as particularly interesting is that narrative structure is more volatile than raw ideas. If I wrote a story with laser swords and a Buddhistic energy field that bound the universe together, I might not be sued for ripping off Star Wars... but readers might roll their eyes a bit. But if my dialog sounded similar to lines in the film, then there might be a copyright infringement lawsuit.
At what point does it cease to be a matter of similar inspiration, drawing from the same literary tradition, or tapping into related cultural mindsets... and become plagiarism? Where is the line between two people coming up with the same idea and copying an encyclopedia article, but rephrasing it for a paper? I know I did that back in Junior High, and how many college and grad school papers are simply the regurgitating of multiple sources into a newly phrased (and heavily annotated) whole?
Identical originality, plagiarism, and academic research. They are different, but how does the end audience tell the difference? This is a question for lawyers, but it vexes me all the same. Every time I commit a new idea of mine to paper, and then find out months or years later that someone else pulled the same rabbit out of a different colored hat, it makes me wonder.
Do I really have anything original to say? Or is it just a matter of me getting to an audience first?
When Joseph Maurer (yes, I'm dispensing with the nicknames. These are people you should know about, if you don't already) left for Canada, he left me a ton of comic books. He had exquisite taste in what he kept and it didn't make sense to just dump them. I'm talking original issues of Sandman, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run, and a slew of more obscure titles. So it was that I just finished reading Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man.
As I reached the end of his twenty six issue run, I felt a great frustration inside of me. What he had done with Animal Man was very much like what I am doing with my SF Fringe Festival show, "Get it? Got it. Good!"
Sure, the devices he employs are different, and the message he conveys is different, but the tool of deconstruction is very similar. In both this run of comics and my play, we pull the curtain aside and reveal the gods of the medium and comment on that role and on the work of artistic creation. He uses it to complain about his limitations as a writer and his own beliefs (which he had made exquisitely clear in the course of his narratives). I use it to make statements about value judgments and our own empowerment and liberation from other people's decisions about what is good (and good for us).
So, what's my problem? It's simply that I thought I was being very daring and breaking all these narrative rules... and that Grant Morrison had done it years and years earlier. I didn't know this when I wrote the play, but that doesn't make me much happier. People who see the play, if they are comics literate, may sit there and think "oh, he's doing the Grant Morrison Animal Man thing".
I had a similar situation when I created a Flash-based-choose-your-own-adventure story for Matt Quinn's nascent internet entertainment company "MuseRealm" just before the dot bomb. I had created what I felt was a clever and original story involving a psychic assassin who could only impact things within his line of sight. His trick was to be able to telekinetically squeeze a target's heart and induce a fatal heart attack. Completely untraceable and indistinguishable from a naturally occurring death. The dot bomb happened, I never finished the piece (although it's literally only a few hours work from being done), and it has sat on my hard drive ever since. Fast forward five or six years and I am persuaded by a friend to put Babylon 5 on my Netflix queue. I watch the first season and discover a lengthy discussion of how the government is trying to develop a telekinetic who could kill someone by squeezing their heart... and that psychics can only operate within line of sight.
Fuck me.
My little interactive story will never see light of day, because an idea that I had in the late 90's had already been done on national television and I had never known it. Suddenly my little project began to look like a rip off of Babylon 5. Sure, it was developed without any knowledge of the other project, but again... that doesn't change audience perception. It's all a question of what the audience sees first.
Ultimately, does it really matter? A good story is a good story, even if parts of it seem oddly familiar. But recent news stories about a young author that (possibly unintentionally) plagiarized another novel make me think otherwise. Ostensibly, a novel she had read years earlier had so firmly set itself in her subconscious that when she attempted her own novel, up to 24 different passages had an eerie similarity to the other work. Similar enough to create an international literary incident and get her novel pulled from the shelves.
Now what strikes me as particularly interesting is that narrative structure is more volatile than raw ideas. If I wrote a story with laser swords and a Buddhistic energy field that bound the universe together, I might not be sued for ripping off Star Wars... but readers might roll their eyes a bit. But if my dialog sounded similar to lines in the film, then there might be a copyright infringement lawsuit.
At what point does it cease to be a matter of similar inspiration, drawing from the same literary tradition, or tapping into related cultural mindsets... and become plagiarism? Where is the line between two people coming up with the same idea and copying an encyclopedia article, but rephrasing it for a paper? I know I did that back in Junior High, and how many college and grad school papers are simply the regurgitating of multiple sources into a newly phrased (and heavily annotated) whole?
Identical originality, plagiarism, and academic research. They are different, but how does the end audience tell the difference? This is a question for lawyers, but it vexes me all the same. Every time I commit a new idea of mine to paper, and then find out months or years later that someone else pulled the same rabbit out of a different colored hat, it makes me wonder.
Do I really have anything original to say? Or is it just a matter of me getting to an audience first?
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