CollisionWorks

More Steps

2008-05-13T16:34:16Z

Since Friday, only one rehearsal for one show, which is going well, but not as fast as I'd like. I had to cancel a rehearsal on Sunday for one show and another last night for another (which was only theoretical anyway, if I could get enough actors together to make it worth it, which I couldn't).

There's a debate going on in some blogs and comments about how to, or even whether or not to, blog about the process while you're creating a play (at Isaac Butler's Parabasis and Mac Rogers' SlowLearner). My attitude, and part of the reason for this blog, is a qualified "Yes." I started the blog as a response to theatre blogs that I felt were all head and art-talk, to talk about the day-to-day nuts and bolts of making a show.

At the same time, I rapidly discovered I couldn't talk about everything, or even as much as I wanted to, when it came to the rehearsal process. It's just instinctual - there are some things that can be shared, and some things that can't, and not just when it comes to the work of the actors, but even for myself. I wouldn't mind throwing up some of a work-in-progress, but just some bare notes? No. And that is the state some of these shows are still at.

Again, though, it's all instinctual. I usually mention to the actors on any of my projects now (though I think I forgot it with some of the current ones) that I have this blog and unless they say otherwise everything is open game for me to write about, and I've gotten polite responses making it clear where the line is (one actress was very good in her emails back and forth, as we discussed her character for a show last year, in noting "THIS IS NOT FOR THE BLOG" when she didn't want something shared outside the two of us).

So I don't write about it as much as I'd like, because when I remove what I can't write about, what's left becomes "We had a good rehearsal last night" or "last night's rehearsal was harder than I thought, and we didn't get as much done as I wanted," and that just gets boring. I'll try to find new ways to write accounts of these things that aren't just that, promise.

Saturday we worked on Spell, which I've been writing more and more as it's been coming to me. The previous day I had written a difficult little piece, where I needed to have the Three Witches of the play, in the third scene, predict where the rest of the 32 scenes of the play would go, in abstracted rhyming couplets (which, I decided, should also never repeat a rhyme and all had to mention the scene number in some way). First then, I had to figure out what all the scenes of the play were actually going to be, which still had been up in the air, and once I had that, hacked away at the scene, which took the afternoon (the couplets falling into an anapest pattern, which is what I normally fall into if I'm not trying to do something else), and may need some revising, but worked well when spoken, and will do for now:

WITCH 3
When shall we three meet again?

WITCH 2
When twice four voices speak quickly of sin.

WITCH 1
When a fifth of her head is a fountain of pride.

WITCH 3
When she hides from the doctor six others inside.

WITCH 2
When a sister of pain calls the seven to hurt.

WITCH 1
When eight times eight years are spent fighting for dirt.

WITCH 3
When she speaks of the madness that turns one to nine.

WITCH 2
When it splits her poor soul in ten fragments so fine.

WITCH 1
When she forces eleven into a small frame.

WITCH 3
When the twelfth man who loves her must give her his name.

WITCH 2
When a sister of tears has just thirteen for luck.

WITCH 1
When his fourteen decisions reduce light to muck.

WITCH 3
When fifteen fast facts force her mouth to speak true.

WITCH 2
When the girl of sixteen at her bedtime is blue.

WITCH 1
When seventeen deaths will not pleasure the queen.

WITCH 3
When murder is done by the girls of eighteen.

WITCH 2
When she shoots nineteen bullets into a false heart.

WITCH 1
When he turns twenty violent thoughts into an art.

WITCH 3
When twenty-one hours are spent in her nest.

WITCH 2
When she turns twenty-two with his hand on her breast.

WITCH 1
When a half of the race will come in twenty-third.

WITCH 3
When the twenty-four dead still cry out to be heard.

WITCH 2
When the man with the answers speaks twenty-five lies.

WITCH 1
When a sister of shadows blinds twenty-six eyes.

WITCH 3
When the twenty-seven armies have gotten their fill.

WITCH 2
When the twenty-eighth insult provokes her to kill.

WITCH 1
When the twenty-nine facts finally enter her brain.

WITCH 3
When she tries to escape on the thirtieth train.

WITCH 2
When thirty-one fragments become again one.

WITCH 1
When she turns thirty-two and the counting is done.

Sunday night I went out in the car to pick up some dinner for Berit and I, and as I was making a right-hand turn I suddenly had a big "Eureka" moment that solved how I was going to write a scene between THE MAN and FRAGMENT 1 that had been driving me nuts - literally right in the time that I had the steering wheel turned. I never get sudden ideas like this plopping right into my head, and it so stunned me I missed my next turn and had to keep circling around, still nodding to myself, "Oh my god, yeah, that's it exactly, that's exactly how that scene needs to work!" I wish I had more moments like that, like a clear white light shooting into my brain; most of the time, it's pounding away hard at the words until the right ones become clear. I still haven't written the scene, but it's there in my head, waiting and ready. It's exciting, and I'm almost nervous about setting it down - but it solves several potential expositional problems with the play, and opens it up on one more meta-level.

In other nuts-and-bolts work, I've been dealing with all the Equity forms for all the shows, writing the Ambersons press release, revising schedules as more conflicts come in, and sending out emails for info that I need or reminders to the casts. And writing lists of what still needs to be done on Ambersons before we open on June 1, which is suddenly not very far away at all. Two weeks and five days. Yeesh.

In the rest of the world, Robert Rauschenberg is dead. The Times obit HERE calls him a "Titan" in the headline, and I couldn't think of a better word. Another obit, from the Chicago Tribune is HERE. I've always had a mixed reaction to RR - either he really hits it and I just LOVE a piece, or it's just "meh." Never really disliked anything I saw, I don't think.

I once got the freelance job of mounting the slides he'd created for a Trisha Brown dance piece at White Oak. They had been doing the dance for years with just RR's original slides, and had finally decided to make copies of them to use, and put the original slides away in storage. So they were delivered to me from the lab that made the copies, but I was surprised to have the original RR slides delivered to my little office in The Piano Store theatre on the LES, as well as the roll of copies, and I had to give my dad and stepmom a kind of hysterically giggly call about how I had a box of Rauschenberg originals sitting next to my foot in my crappy little office. I kept them very safe for the week or so that I had them.

Back to work now on forms I need to fill out for the AEA Showcase. More rehearsals tonight and every night for a while. More here when I get to it.

Cat and Otherwise Photos

2008-05-09T23:14:30Z

It's Friday, so it's cat blogging day. But I've got a lot of work to do on the plays, so I've been concentrating on that.

I spent most of the day spread out on the bed looking at the fragments of Spell I have so far and trying to organize them and write new bridging material, with the help of my iPod and the inspirational mix I've made for this show . . .

Moni walked across my pages and hunkered down above me in a stack of unused stereo speakers and shoulder bags:

Hooker, meanwhile, became demonic in the living room:

And that was all I could get of the cats today.

There were a couple of good items on Modern Mechanix, though, including this ad:

And this article asking an important question:

Almost done with the work for the day. Didn't realize how much I grit my teeth when I work - my last dentists have pointed out I have some serious bone growths in my upper jaw from grinding/gritting my teeth. Now, mostly recovered from the teeth pulling, the gritting I've been doing today has caused a VERY sore lower jaw. Well, almost done anyway. Almost dinner time.

The Ish of The Ish

2008-05-09T15:51:38Z

Isaac Butler has already noted his own case of Charles Isherwood fatigue as a reason for not dealing with the latest wince and eye-roll-inducing take on NYC Theatre from our boy What-The Fuck-Chuck of the NY Times, and I was pretty much in the same boat. I felt that I had dealt with my feelings on WTFC on enough occasions HERE and HERE and especially in the video/performance piece Berit and I created for The Brick's quinquennial party - a post describing it is HERE, and I might as well take the opportunity to embed the video portion here one more time:

The new piece didn't bug me so much at first, once I got past the vomitous opening paragraphs - in the end, I just kinda felt, "Well . . . he's trying . . ." about this piece on the move to Off-Broadway of several OOB works. I had a discussion with some other Brick staff about it, and we somewhat came to that conclusion as well. He's trying, at least, even if OOB appears to be a wild, woolly, and lawless wild west zone to WTFC. There's some interesting info on ERS and Jenny Schwartz in there, and hey, I thought, if WTFC brings some audience to those shows, fine, I'll take the insults.

Maybe it's being an OOB artist who is used to having my level of theatre slapped around by the press that created that shrug and lethargic response to this piece. Garrett Eisler at The Playgoer, a critic who knows and respects his Indie Theatre, is not so sanguine about it, and got my blood properly boiling again with his take on the piece, "Ish Sets OOB Back 30 Years."

As Isaac did, I recommend Garrett's piece for a good explanation of why we should be so damned angry with WTFC for this piece. He's right.

So, as long as I'm posting video (as always now, behind cuts, for those with the browsers that crash), here's some others I ran into today and wanted to share . . .

flyswatter posted this Rudy Ray Moore trailer for a favorite BadFilm of mine (my friend Jim Baker introduced me to it, calling it "Plan 10 From Inner City"). Can you motherfuckers take the power of DOLEMITE?

(my favorite RRM film is still Petey Wheatstraw, The Devil's Son-In-Law, though)

And finally, courtesy Tom Tomorrow at This Modern World, a civics lesson as Penguin and The Batman discuss the American electorate:

Enjoy.

Friday Random Ten. On Its Lonesome.

2008-05-09T14:29:03Z

I have a few different things to post or comment on today, but I'll split them all up as they come, rather than just leaving a posting window up in the background for hours and adding more things to an ever-expanding post as they come up. I don't have any Friday Cat Photos yet anyway (I'd take them now, but it's dim in here and they're just sleeping in uninteresting positions).

Looks like a dreary and unpleasant day out there. Good day to stay in and write . . . if anything comes to me - I have rehearsals from Spell tomorrow and Everything Must Go on Sunday, and it would be great to have some more text for each before going back. If nothing comes, then nothing comes, and I need rehearsal inspiration to move forward.

So, music for a moody morning, from 25,575 on the iPod:

1. "Exhilaration" - Alan Hawkshaw - Soundsational Sampler
2. "Diamond Meadows" - T.Rex - Velvet Goldmine
3. "Lullaby to Nightmares" - They Might Be Giants - Long Tall Weekend
4. "Poison" - Generation X - Kiss Me Deadly
5. "The Door" - Bernard Herrmann - The Magnificent Ambersons: Bernard Herrmann Anthology Volume 1
6. "I Am The Walrus" - The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour
7. "Wah-Wah" - George Harrison - All Things Must Pass
8. "Instrumental #3" - PJ Harvey - A Perfect Day Elise EP
9. "Walking On A Wire" - Richard and Linda Thompson - Watching The Dark
10. "Afro (live)" - The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Controversial Negro: Live In Tucson

More later with cat photos, other amusing images, and brief thoughts on recent words from Charles "What-The-Fuck-Chuck" Isherwood.

Gemini CollisionWorks 2008 Season!

2008-05-09T12:10:34Z

This just went out to the GCW email list - figured it belonged here, too:

*****

Friends of Gemini CollisionWorks,

2008 continues GCWs' happy residency at The Brick in Williamsburg, where we act as the theatre's technical directors, as well as assisting in the management of the many festivals at the space, and, of course, producing our own work.

Coming up for us this year at The Brick, a show in The Film Festival: A Theater Festival in June - The Magnificent Ambersons - and three shows in August - two originals: Spell and Everything Must Go, as well as Richard Foreman's hysterical and barely-known 1966 comedy Harry in Love.

So we've been able to keep up a pretty hectic pace of creating numerous shows each year, but it's been harder and harder as resources have been getting far more expensive rather quickly (especially rehearsal space) and while we've been known to work wonders on a low (or nearly non-existent) budget, as our work gets more ambitious, it gets harder to do this at the out-of-our-own-pocket level we've been working at for 11 years, especially as - with small theatres and low ticket prices on top of high expenses - we lose money on every show we do. As we have had no way to offer our supporters anything in return for donations, we haven't asked for them.

Until now. Gemini CollisionWorks is now a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts organization, and donations to GCW (made payable to Fractured Atlas) are now tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. For more information on contributing through Fractured Atlas, see https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/contribute/ or the directions below for how to donate specifically to us.

We hope you'll consider helping us out - our shows this year could use it (coming up soon in June, a show involving 20 actors with multiple 1880s-1910s costumes each! we need two overhead projectors!). We can't offer much in return, but it'll feel good, be worthwhile, the money'll all be there on the stage, and you get listed in our programs for the whole season (categories below). And it's tax-deductible.

Here is some more info on how to donate, and on this year's shows:

DONATIONS

1. If you wish to donate by check, they MUST be made out to "Fractured Atlas," with "Gemini CollisionWorks" in the memo line (and nowhere else), and should be given to us personally or sent to us for processing at:

Gemini CollisionWorks
c/o Hill-Johnson
367 Avenue S #1B
Brooklyn, NY 11223

2. You can also donate directly online securely by credit card at

https://www.fracturedatlas.org/donate/1394

or by clicking this handy link:

(please double-check to be sure you're at the "Gemini CollisionWorks" donation page)

All donors will be listed in all our programs for the 2008 season under the following categories:

$0-25 - BONDO
$26-50 - RAT RODS
$51-75 - CHROME
$76-100 - LOW RIDERS
$101-250 - CANDY FLAKE
$251-500 - FLAME JOBS
$501-1000 - T-BUCKETS
$1001-2500 - SUPERCHARGERS
$2501-5000 - KUSTOMIZERS
over $5000 - BIG DADDIES

SHOWS

The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage
adapted, designed, directed and narrated by Ian W. Hill
June 1, 6, 10, 12 at 8.00 pm - $15.00

In 1942, Orson Welles' second feature film, and probable masterpiece, was mutilated by RKO Radio Pictures. 43 minutes were cut, and several scenes were reshot in an attempt to make Welles' dark, Chekhovian adaptation of Booth Tarkington's story of a family and town swallowed up in the Industrial Revolution a happier and more commercial experience. It didn't work. The film was buried by the studio, both in the marketplace and physically - all unused footage from the film was destroyed - and Welles' version is gone forever, one of the great mythologized films of Hollywood.

In this show we attempt to reconstruct, as well as we can from the documents and photos that still exist, a theatrical interpretation of Welles' cinematic take on Tarkington's novel. It's not the movie, but it's as close as you're ever likely to see.

with David Arthur Bachrach, Aaron Baker, Linda Blackstock, Walter Brandes, Rebecca Collins, Ivanna Cullinan, Sarah Malinda Engelke, Larry Floyd, Stephen Heskett, Justin R.G. Holcomb, Amy Lizska, Roger Nasser, Vince Phillip, Maire-Rose Pike, Shelley Ray, Timothy McCown Reynolds, Bill Weeden, Natalie Wilder, Scot Lee Williams

Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville
by Richard Foreman - directed by Ian W. Hill
9 performances - July 31-August 21 - $15.00

Harry Rosenfeld is a big, neurotic, unnerved and unnerving man who believes his wife is planning to cheat on him. His response: drug her and keep her knocked out until her paramour goes away. The plan works about as well as should be expected and, over several days, a number of people are sucked into Harry's manic, snowballing energy as it becomes an eventual avalanche of (hysterically funny) psychosis.

Before embarking on his great career directing his own groundbreaking avant-garde plays, Richard Foreman briefly entertained the possibility of being a commercial Broadway playwright. This 1966 boulevard comedy (which Foreman has compared accurately to the plays of Murray Schisgal) nearly made it to Broadway, which very well might have meant a very different career for Foreman. It's not what you probably know from him, but it's as funny as his best work, and any line from it, out of context, would not sound out of place in one of his later plays. Really.

with Walter Brandes, Josephine Cashman, Ian W. Hill, Tom Reid, Ken Simon, Darius Stone

Spell
written, designed, and directed by Ian W. Hill
9 performances - August 1-August 24 - $12.00

An American woman who considers herself a patriot has committed a horrible terrorist act as an act of protest and, she hopes, revolution against the government, which she believes no longer represents the law, people, and Constitution of the USA.

As she is interrogated, her mind reinterprets her surroundings into a chorus of voices - witches, revolutionaries, doctors, generals, bossmen, old boyfriends, fragments of herself - arguing over the validity of her violent actions while at the same time trying to deny that the monstrous act has ever occurred, or that she could be capable of such a thing. A meditation on - among other things - whether violence can ever be truly justified, and if so, what limits are there and where does it end?

with Fred Backus, Olivia Baseman, Jorge Cordova, Gavin Starr Kendall, Iracel Rivero, Alyssa Simon, Moira Stone, Liz Toft, Sammy Tunis, Jeanie Tse, Rasha Zamamiri

Everything Must Go (Invisible Republic 2)
text, design, direction and choreography by Ian W. Hill with the company
9 performances - August 2-August 24 - $12.00

A play in dance and fragmented businesspeak. A day in the life of an advertising agency as they work on a major new account, interspersed with backbiting, backstabbing, coffee breaks, office romances, motivational lectures, afternoon slumps, and a Mephistophelian boss who has his eye on a beautiful female Faust of an intern.

A constantly shifting dance-theatre piece in which anything that matters must have a price, anyone is corruptible, and everything must go.

with Gyda Arber, David Arthur Bachrach, Becky Byers, Patrick Cann, Maggie Cino, Ian W. Hill, Amy Lizska, Brandi Robinson, Dina Rose, Ariana Siegel, Julia C. Sun

All shows will be at

The Brick - 575 Metropolitan Avenue - Williamsburg, Brooklyn
right by the L Train stop at Lorimer - G Train stop at Metropolitan/Grand

Advance tickets for all shows will be available at Theatermania.com - there will be special discounts for seeing two or three of the August shows. More info as it happens . . .

hope to see you at our shows, and thanks for your continued support,

Ian W. Hill, arts
Berit Johnson, crafts
Gemini CollisionWorks

Gemini CollisionWorks is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Gemini CollisionWorks may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Hi-YAAAH!

2008-05-03T05:04:54Z

Just finished about six solid hours of writing/editing/conceiving work on Spell, with another hour or two spread out earlier in the day. Feels good.

Sent off the 22 pages of material I now have to the cast, to give them something to look at and think about at this point.

Here's the first page of what I sent:

SPELL
Moira Stone - ANN
Fred Backus - Doctor General Jane (aka 2 JANE)
Alyssa Simon - General Doctor Jane (aka 1 JANE)
Jorge Cordova - ANDY
Iracel Rivero - WITCH 1 (Cuba)
Rasha Zamamiri - WITCH 2 (Palestine)
Jeanie Tse - WITCH 3 (China)
Gavin Starr Kendall – The MAN
Olivia Baseman - Fragment 1 (girlfriend aka FRAG 1)
Sammy Tunis - Fragment 2 (woman of business aka FRAG 2)
Liz Toft - Fragment 3 (worker aka FRAG 3)

SEGMENTS currently conceived (not really in any order yet):

I. Opening – swinging lamp over ANN as she sings “Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray,” stopped by 2 JANE, then buzzer, siren, explosion and screams.
II. First Interview – same dialogue done four times between ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE from different perspectives.
III. Light Bulb Discussion
IV. The Bedtime Ritual (with diagnosis speech from 2 JANE) – midshow relaxation/expansion
V. The Firing Squad Dream Sequence (relates to following sequence listed – “Piggies”)
VI. The Witches or Fragments Become Manson Girls
VII. ANN as Patty Hearst as “Tania” (connect to Che Guevara’s “Tania”?)
VIII. ANDY’s revolutionary speech (with James Brown cape routine)
IX. The introduction of the FRAGMENTS and their positions
X. The MAN and FRAG 1
XI. The MAN and FRAG 2
XII. The MAN and FRAG 3 (includes stereotyped “chasing the secretary round the desk” sequence, set to “Yakety Sax” – 1 JANE makes ANN back up and tell the story “right”)
XIII. The Male Gaze lecture – ANN lines up the women downstage – the men gather upstage to be manly and laugh together
XIV. WITCH 1 spell sequence
XV. WITCH 2 spell sequence
XVI. WITCH 3 spell sequence
XVII. ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE discussion – Cuba
XVIII. ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE discussion – Palestine
XIX. ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE discussion – China
XX. ANN and ANDY on trains, travel, and getting to know the country

XXI. Finale – ANN accepts her actions – exit – “Just Another Day”

When I have some that excerpts well, I'll put it up.

So, a couple of good ass-kicking images that brightened my day . . . first, from LP Cover Lover, a man who kicks arse for the LORD!

And from Photo Basement, Batman kicks ass because he's full of PAIN!

And in video land, this young man's "Pyro System" could kick someone's ass, maybe his own . . .

Gary Cooper kicks cyborg ass!

And the Mean Kitty is just ass-kicking mean . . .

Enjoy.

Morning Flashes

2008-05-02T09:53:03Z

It's real early in the morning. Berit and I both got tired and went to bed much earlier than usual, and have both woken up much earlier than usual, even considering bedtime, both of us feeling unwell for different reasons.

So, she's sitting in a bubble bath reading Dashiell Hammett's The Continental Op and I'm given up on either trying to fall back asleep or wake up completely - neither is a go.

And as it's Friday, might as well get the weekly ritual done. Here's a random ten from the iPod this morn:

1. "Celebration on the Planet Mars" - The Raymond Scott Project - Powerhouse volume 1
2. "In Love With Love (remix)" - Debbie Harry - Freestyle's Greatest Beats - Volume 3
3. "Reagan Youth" - Reagan Youth - Youth Anthems For The New Order 12" EP
4. "Things In General" - The Prefects - Are Amateur Wankers
5. "Little Darlin'" - The Diamonds - Back to the 50s 03
6. "Upon Your Leaving" - Paul Revere & The Raiders - Rato's Nostalgia Collection 19
7. "You Cut Up The Clothes" - Mrs. Washington & Co. - MOJO: The Score
8. "The Operative: - Magazine - Scree Rarities 1978 - 1981
9. "Sparks I" - The Who - 09/29/69 Amazing Journey Live at Concertgebouw Amsterdam
10. "Only Darkness Has The Power" - The Mekons - The Mekons Rock'N'Roll

Heck of an odd, all-over-the-place mix. Nice. More good stuff coming up after these, too - The Animals, "House of the Rising Sun." Nice.

Rehearsals continue well. Ambersons is mostly blocked, and looking good. Harder work to come, but we're ahead of where we usually are at this point.

I've had to cancel a couple of rehearsals each of Everything Must Go and Spell - it's got to the point where I have to write script now to move forward with each - which was after a few rehearsals of EMG and only one Spell meeting. Had some breakthroughs in writing Spell yesterday and got quite a few pages done, which I now have to transcribe into the computer from my longhand journal. I have to get Berit to organize and type out her notes from the work we did on both shows with the actors, so I can have it handy and I can send it to them.

No work on Harry in Love since the first reading. More next week on that one.

Just took a couple of photos of Hooker and Moni - unlike usual, used a flash as the room is dim, and got some odd, interesting distortions:

Okay, time for cereal, coffee, and work on Spell . . .

Fun With Jaw Pain

2008-04-30T00:19:16Z

Back from Maine, back in rehearsal.

On the way up there, I was on a tight schedule to make the first of two appointments I had to have to get my wisdom teeth out, and just 20 miles short of my destination, Petey throws a tire tread.

Nice.

At least I was near a bridge so I could limp there and be in shade, and wasn't too far away from a few exits (they can get sparse up there), so AAA could get to me quickly.

The bridge overhead turned out to be a somehow appropriate road:

Got the tire taken care of, made the appointment, got the work done, rested a few days in Portland.

While there, I got to see the other family animals, Bappers the cat:

And Sasha the dog (known to some of us as "Shasta" from a malaprop of my grandfather's):

So, got a little rest, then drove back for an Ambersons rehearsal on Sunday and then an Everything Must Go one last night - I needed to have both, but it wasn't fun with the post-wisdom teeth pulling pain. I canceled Spell rehearsal tonight as I didn't need it, and actually need to do more work on my own for the show to make any rehearsal work productive. Plus my mouth hurts.

The handout from the dentist says that I should expect the pain to get worse on days 3-5 after the work, but I've seen that before and it wasn't true then. It is now. Days 1-2 were no problem at all, but it has gotten worse and then slowly better since. Maybe just another day or two of this. I hope.

So I'll try and laugh at a few things. Ha. Ha.

I just gotta say, that there's one smooth-talking Siamese . . .

(Berit thinks that the kitty is Harry Robinson of "The Harry Robinson String Sound," but he looks to me like a music lover who knows what to play on the hi-fi to appeal to a fine woman)

In any case, that cat is cooler than this pair of 40-year old post-grads:

Did you know that Schlitz was a health food?

Again, Berit jumps in to note that this isn't exactly an incorrect claim - the pilgrims didn't move on from Plymouth to elsewhere because they ran out of beer - in times when water wasn't always so safe, beer was a good substitute.

And as Berit also likes to remind me, it's always good to remember when thinking about all the many many personages of history, and their works good and bad . . . they were, quite a bit of the time, drunk off their asses.

Finally, two pieces of Star Trek geek fun - two videos enumerating all the times Dr. Leonard McCoy used his two classic phrases:

Enjoy. Ow.

Oh, and not only, but also, you get . . .

2008-04-25T17:57:51Z

Oh, yeah, there's stuff to share. A grab-bag. Lemme get rid of these things that are clogging up my blog reader, just sitting there, saved, mocking me, MOCKING me, I tell you . . .

(can you tell that I'm bored and nothing is coming to me as yet on the scripts I should be writing?)

First, I just saw on the TV that there's a National Geographic special coming up on the recently-unearthed scrapbooks of Karl Hoecker, adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz - an amazing look into the heart of "the banality of evil." The New Yorker had an excellent article on the subject, which isn't online but there's an abstract HERE and a gallery of images from the scrapbook HERE.

This is certainly a fine, honorable, and serious subject for a TV special. It is, in some ways, nothing new (I've spent a lot of time and much of my work on the subject of how normal people do evil things), but more examples never hurt in getting this important idea across, which so many people try to ignore or reject.

However.

They have chosen one of the most unfortunate, badly-pitched titles for such a piece that I think they possibly could. I understand why they went with this title - the sentiment is appropriate - but I don't think they quite perceived how this would sound or read - I found out about this by hearing an announcer stentoriously read it at the end of a commercial and I cracked up, mistakenly thinking I had Comedy Central on or something and it was a joke - and right as I typed that sentence, they played the spot again and I broke up again.

See, they've titled the show:

NAZI SCRAPBOOKS FROM HELL

Again, I understand the title, but the effect of the combo of the words "Nazi" and "scrapbooks" (about as sweet and Norman Rockwell a word as I can think of) and the construction "FROM HELL" (for at least two decades now an appendage used on the end of innocent phrases in a parody of exploitation film hyperbole) is just NOT what the makers of the special were going for, I would imagine.

See, just then, right as I typed that last period, they ran the commercial AGAIN on the TV next to me, and I was all taken in and abashed and moved again until the title was read so, SO seriously, and then I lost my shit again. It doesn't get old, hearing one of "those voices" use the (sensitive, serious, sad) tone you do when you are, say, doing a promo for a Holocaust documentary and winding up with a title more appropriate for a Roger Corman film.

I get two images in my head - one is a cartoony image of some kind of Jim Henson's National Socialist Babies, with 'Lil Adolf 'n' Eva and Baby Goebbels and Goering and Himmler (with their faithful dog, Blondi) playing together and fighting over the glue sticks, crayons, rubber cement and sparkles as they make their scrapbooks of unbelievable monstrosities.

The other image is of sentient monster scrapbooks, dripping blood and ichor like in some EC comic book, wearing swastika armbands and wandering a suburban landscape, wreaking horror and havoc.

Maybe it's just me.

And speaking of "those voices," here's a video created for a Vegas industry gathering that features the unfamiliar faces of several of the most familiar voices in the USA:

Some links of interest:

io9 has a nice post about the 1970s toys The Micronauts, which I had and loved (I got a giant, almost complete set for Xmas of 1976) which led me to two other Micronauts sites that brought back great memories, MicroHeritage and The Micronauts Homepage.

These toys were the BEST - great figures, vehicles, and playsets - loads of fun - with lots of moving parts, including neat plastic missiles that really fired with some power. Unfortunately, some dumb kid shot one of those cool cool supercool missiles into his throat and choked, and wound up spoiling toys for all of us for years after, which weren't allowed to have neat shooting missiles like that anymore. Actually, I think they were still able to have them, but they had to make them bigger with foam tips, and then some stupider kid choked on one of THOSE from an original Battlestar Galactica Viper toy (very cool, but I never had one), and that was IT for neat shooting stuff. Jeez, we used to throw Jarts around each other and get set on fire by Estes model rocket engines, and it was FUN!

Stupid clumsy kids . . .

From PingMag, "The Tokyo-Based Magazine About 'Design and Making Things'," an interview with and great set of photos by Frederic Chaubin of Soviet architecture of the 70s and 80s - some amazing buildings here, like sets from SF movies.

From Neatorama, "Mathematician Michael S. Schneider saw a wave form of the well-known drum sequence known as the Amen Break. It’s a drum 5.2 second sequence performed by Gregory Cylvester Coleman of The Winstons and has been sampled and used by countless artists since it was recorded in the 60s. Schneider, seeing the waveform through the eyes of a math professor, recognized a pattern, a relationship called the Golden Ratio. So he began to analyze the drum sequence and its deeper meaning."

Here's two found images I grabbed recently from other websites that collect "neat stuff," but I forgot to put down what sites those were. Oh, well.

Tyler Cannon pulled off quite a feat. Nice job, kid.

And please remember to bow down before The Lizard King:

From LP Cover Lover, a jacket that suggests that the best way to demonstrate high fidelity is by recording a deranged bikini-clad model talking to her hand puppet:

(and the sidebar . . . "Hunting thru Audioland with Gin and Chimera"? Wha?)

Dear god I WISH they would stop running that NAZI SCRAPBOOKS FROM HELL commercial every ten minutes or less on this channel - I guess the National Geographic channel (or, as they annoyingly call it in some promos, NatGeo - ugh) doesn't have a lot of sponsors, and there isn't anything else interesting on right now besides this (fascinating) show on a murderous chimpanzee.

Nice description of a movie from the onscreen channel guide for the Cable TV here, for Curse of the Fly (1965): "A mad scientist tries out a molecular disintegrator on people but cannot get the hang of it." Yeah, that can be a pain.

Here's a wonderfully classic sexist Folgers Instant Coffee ad:

Paul Anka smells like teen spirit . . .

And if you haven't seen this one, which has been making the rounds, it's quite worth it . . .

And I hope the weather is as beautiful where you are as it is here.

Enjoy.

Friday Random Ten and Cats with 24 Teeth Remaining

2008-04-25T14:07:58Z

With the morning oatmeal and coffee (and advil), the standard Friday posting, pretty much . . .

The iPod has 25,624 tracks in it, and here's what comes up on random today:

1. "I Know You Got Soul (long version)" - Bobby Byrd - James Brown's Funky People (part 2)
2. "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" - Johnny Cash & Carl Perkins - Unearthed
3. "Uprising" - The Cherokees - Jungle Exotica
4. "Jack of Diamonds" - The Daily Flash - Nuggets: Original ARTyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era
5. "Son of a Preacher Man" - Aretha Franklin - Respect: The Very Best of Aretha Franklin
6. "His Latest Flame" - The Residents - The King and Eye
7. "Right Turn" - Link Wray & The Wraymen - Walkin' with Link
8. "Razor Smile" - Go Home Productions (Mark Vidler) - Beatleg Bootles
9. "Be True To Your School" - The Beach Boys - Greatest Hits
10. "Just Like Any Other Animal (PSA)" - The National Rifle Association - A Legacy of Conservation PSAs

As always, miss the partner, miss the kitties. Got pictures, at least. Here's Moni on Berit's lap:

And Hooker on his favorite chair:

At least I have a loaner cat up here, Bappers:

Okay, work to do on the shows; back to it . . .

Exile on Maine Streets

2008-04-25T00:41:26Z

Back in Portland, ME for a few days, and the last of my dentistry work, I hope.

My bottom wisdom teeth were pulled four hours ago. One went easily and there is no real pain on that side at this point. One didn't want to go, required some unpleasant struggle ("Ooh, had a little hook there on the root, that was the problem" said the very skilled Dr. Killian D. MacCarthy), and, now that the novocaine has worn off, the empty socket on that side hurts like a sonovabitch. The lovely lovely vicodin I took earlier isn't having its normal excellent effects (or maybe it is, and without it I'd be screaming or something).

I went and had the work done - about 35 minutes in the chair, 25 minutes of which were filling out forms or waiting - got my prescription opiate and foodstuffs (soup, pudding, ice cream) at the Rite Aid and now I'm sitting back, waiting for a time when I can eat something and take more painkiller, and watching a rerun of the C.S.I. episode "Fur and Loathing" - the one about the furries . . . which has one of the single best music cues I've ever heard composed for episodic television - the only reason I'm watching this again is get to hear this cue - the rumpy-pumpy, sleazy-but-comic, circusy music that accompanies the "yiff pile" sequence is magnificent (okay, the scene just went by and the music isn't at all like I remembered . . . has it been altered in syndication from what's on the DVDs?).

So I'll be up here a couple more days recovering, watching the TV stuff I don't have at home, retweezing the rehearsal schedules for all my shows (many more conflicts have come in), and trying to write some substantial pieces of Spell and Everything Must Go, which I somewhat need to at this point to move those shows forward, though it'll be easier with EMG, as I've had three rehearsal/creation meetings for that one, and only one first meeting/inspiration session for Spell - which will also be a harder show to write, as I had thought it would originally just need a working knowledge of psychotic mental states (which I know something about) but has wound up requiring substantial research into the revolutions or conflicts of China, Cuba, Palestine, France, and pretty much any country that has gone through such an upheaval; the history of Pacifism; Kabbalah and Numerology; Feminism and The Male Gaze; and god knows what else will come up in creating this piece.

I'll post first draft pieces of the scripts as they appear.

I watched Cloverfield last night, which I expected to mostly like, and really loved it. I also watched Romance & Cigarettes, which I expected to really like, and didn't like it at all - fine actors doing excellent work in a badly-conceived and indifferently-executed . . . thing. Ugh.

Oh, and, courtesy of Bryan Enk, here's a picture of me as George Westinghouse in the season finale of Penny Dreadful:

It's now hours later from when I started this post - the painkillers are working, mostly. Time for ice cream . . .

Having a Wild Weekend

2008-04-22T16:38:00Z

Oy, what a tiring, but fun weekend. Pretty much going all the time from the last post to Sunday night.

Friday - finished that post, went to The Brick, wrote light cues for Penny Dreadful episode 6 for several hours (I hadn't seen a few scenes for the show, so I had to guess on where to light from what I'd been told).

Then make some fixes on Babylon Babylon lights before opening night. The show was looking pretty good, and I think it looks better now - a couple more images from Ken Stein here, featuring Michele Carlo and Marguerite French:

Michele is seen in the "Descent of Ishtar" ceremony.

Marguerite kicks major ass as Fred Backus looks on, confused (and, at rear, Roger Nasser tries to hold his guts in).

Then we had the opening night show and party (all great - audience was maybe a hair too friendly . . . sometime you get too many laughs, and not always in the right places). I played the aforementioned "Babylon" mix at the party, after a similar, but shorter one that Jeff Lewonczyk had made up - though his had a few songs I hadn't thought of as I only did a search on he iPod for "Babylon." He had thought to include "Mesopotamia" by The B-52s, "The Mesopotamians" by They Might Be Giants, and "River Euphrates" by Pixies, so I've now thrown them into my mix in case it ever gets used again.

I left the party earlier than I'd have liked to, as I had to be back at 9 am the next day for tech, and I wanted to shave my beard (which I've been trying to grow out for weeks) into the style as worn by George Westinghouse before going to bed.

So I got home and shaved the beard:

Which, from what I read, was slightly eccentric even when GW was wearing it (and lord I hate how my deflicted left eye looks in photos - I swear it's getting worse . . .). I got no photos from the show otherwise, so I don't have what it looked like when I whitened up the whole beard and hair - I aged several decades and became a somewhat Scandinavian-looking George Westinghouse (the pure white just brought out every bit of Swede there). I'm sure Bryan and Matt - who got photos of the show and me in costume and makeup - can share some with me sometime.

I figured I'd be taking the whole beard off Sunday night, but people have been digging the new look so much I decided to keep it a few more days. Berit said "It's a pity it's so unfashionable, it really suits you," but Roger Nasser (and others) basically said "Fuck fashion, go for it," so I'll give it a spin for a while.

Berit wanted me to go into the Kellogg Diner (which is closed right now anyway) in full Westinghouse hair and 3-piece suit period costume and walking stick, walk up to the counter, and ask for a "phosphate."

I liked Berit's other idea better (but still wouldn't do it), which was to behave like it was "Act Like a Time Traveler Day," and wander up and down Metropolitan Avenue as if I'd fallen through some time warp in the past and wound up in present-day Brooklyn. Eventually, when enough people were paying attention, I'd have to notice an airplane (since The Brick is almost right under traffic into LaGuardia, this isn't hard), scream "EEEYAH! IRON BIRD!" and run off screaming. No, I don't quite have the nerve to do that . . . though someday I'd like to pretend to be a time traveler from a dystopian future, running up to people and asking them the date - "The YEAR, man, WHAT'S THE YEAR?" - and, once getting it, mumbling "Then there's still time . . ." and handing them a small vial filled with liquid (olive oil, I think) and telling them that they'd "know what to do with this when the time came . . . thank you Mr. Preside- sorry! Thank you, sir."

So we teched the very difficult Penny Dreadful episode for much of Saturday - went home to rest a bit, then came back for the show, which was rough as hell, but I think somehow better for it in some ways. It's funny, I think I understand how some of the actors felt on the episode I directed last month - Aaron and Becky both said they felt the show was much better in the slightly rougher evening performance rather than the much more "together" matinee the next day. It's a difference between being a director and being an actor - the director wants to see the whole show work smoothly as a unit, the actor prefers the show where all the performances connect in a way that may be rougher and raw, but works for them.

Oh, Mac Rogers wrote a nice piece of common sense on actors and directors HERE that reflects my own feelings, and how I try to behave as an actor, exactly. Luckily, I pretty much never have to say anything like that to actors I direct - I seem to be good at casting people who are always willing to listen and try things they may not agree with - but I sometimes wind up acting in other shows with actors who want to question every direction from the word go, which is annoying as it usually just winds up wasting a LOT of productive time.

Anyway, pretty good show Saturday night - Sunday morning, I auditioned two good people for Ambersons who I'm going to ask to be in the show (wait, one reads this blog . . . well, maybe he'll get an email before he reads it here).

Another side note - I hadn't done very many auditions for years, but I had to for my August shows last year, and have had to since for Merry Mount and now Ambersons. And I have to say, out of the many many people I've seen, there has only been ONE clunker. It used to be with auditioners, a third would be pretty bad, a third OK, and the last third split between (mostly) really quite good and (a tiny sliver) un-fucking-believably good. All I've seen this last year are almost all in the "really quite good" category with a few "OK"s and the usual number of UFB good. Are actors getting better in general? Or have I just been lucky this last run?

So, matinee of PD and then Ambersons rehearsal all night with the "principals" - the members of the Amberson, Minifer, and Morgan clans. We've now staged over half the show. Looking good. Tonight I just work on the Lucy Morgan/George Minifer sections.

Yesterday, some actual rest during the day (and watching episodes of C.S.I. borrowed from my brother David in Maine) and rehearsal for Everything Must Go last night, which was good. The show isn't exactly moving forward, but is widening, expanding laterally, which it needs to before moving forward any more. I have to go away again for a few days, and I always (for whatever reason) write better outside of NYC, so I'm going to try and get as much as I can done on EMG and Spell while I'm gone.

So, a little more fun today before rehearsal and journey. I've got a ton of backed up video I've been wanting to share, but I'll get to that later, except this one piece right now, William Shatner, Joe Jackson, Ben Folds and friends performing Pulp's "Common People" (the album version's a bit better - The Shat is trying to "sell" it too much in this live performance):

Enjoy.

Friday List and Photos Again

2008-04-18T15:16:01Z

Well, got most of the other business out of the way in yesterday's post, so just the usual weekly bag here, pretty much.

Still, too much to do in too little time. I have to get over to The Brick early today, and maybe pick up a prop for Penny Dreadful on the way (and not really on the way). Then I have to dry-tech Penny, writing the light cues as I can today so we will just have to tweak them (I hope) during our limited tech time tomorrow morning.

And maybe Jeff will have some notes for me for light changes in Babylon Babylon from last night's preview - tonight is the opening and opening night party, so I have to get all cleaned up and ready for that before I go, too, though it's many many hours away now.

I was trying to come up with a really REALLY cool live special effect for one sequence in Penny - it isn't necessary, but MAN it would add to the sequence. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the materials I need to create the effect, and there's only a 50% chance it would work anyway. Maybe. I could keep searching for what I need to build the rig today, but I still need time to work on my lines (being able to walk around and do the scenes in The Brick will help), and the lines are definitely more important than the effect, so I guess I'll let that go.

Damn. It would have been so f-ing cool.

Ah, well, need to get moving - here's today's Random Ten from the iPod:

1. "Synth Farm" - Pere Ubu - Why I Hate Women
2. "Leaving It Up To You" - John Cale - Seducing Down The Door: A Collection 1970-1990
3. "This Little Heart" - Françoise Hardy - All Over The World
4. "Let's Drink To The People" - The Deviants - No. 3
5. "Babylon" - Conception - Psychedelic Archaeology Volume 5
6. "Johnny Was A Good Boy" - The Mystery Trend - Mystery Trend
7. "You Keep On Looking" - Gary Wilson - You Think You Really Know Me
8. "Surrender" - Black Ivory - The Doors of Perception - Psychedelic Soul and Acid Jazz From NYC 70-74
9. "Sparrows and Wires" - The Deviants - Disposable
10. "Steelband Music" - Van Dyke Parks - Discover America

Two Deviants tracks? Huh. And, appropriately, a song called "Babylon." I wonder what kind of playlist I could make up if I used "babylon" as a search term - maybe something to play at the opening night party tonight . . .

1. "Hollywood Babylon" - 13 Ghosts - 13 Crimson Ghosts

(this is The Misfits recording an album of surf-instrumental covers of their songs under another name)
2. "Babylon" - New York Dolls - in Too Much Too Soon
3. "Babylon I'm Coming" - Piero Picconi - Beat at Cinecittà Vol.2
4. "Babylon" - Conception - Psychedelic Archaeology Volume 5
5. "Babylon Sisters" - Steely Dan - Showbiz Kids: The Steely Dan Story
6. "Babylon" - O.D.'s - Back at the Ranch
7. "Fire on Babylon" - Sinéad O'Connor - Lilith Fair: A Celebration of Women in Music
8. "Die Babylon" - The Offs - Can You Hear Me? Music From The Deaf Club
9. "Babylonian Warehouses" - Pere Ubu - Why I Hate Women
10. "Babylonian Gorgon" - The Bags - Dangerhouse volume 2
11. "Hollywood Babylon" - The Misfits - Bullet 7" EP

Well, that's kinda fun, but the songs basically fall into two categories, really laid back and mellow (1,3,5,7, and 9) or REALLY loud n' punky (2,4,6,8,10, and 11). Maybe not the best party mix. I'll have it ready anyway.

Okay, and today's pictures of the cats, who were not very cooperative in being cute and all and making for interesting photos.

Here's Moni in a "thoughtful" moment (she has no brain):

Hooker in an "about-to-cause-trouble" moment:

Berit trying to hug Moni and play a computer game (and hold the cat still for the picture) at the same time:

And Hooker enjoying his favorite headrest, my extended hand:

Okay, gotta run and clean myself up and go get stuff ready at The Brick for shows and parties.

Openings (Logrolling In Our Time)

2008-04-17T21:54:34Z

Shows that are up or coming or upcoming from collaborators and friends that you should see and they will be fun and relatively cheap and then you can smile and have a good time and then have maybe some cookies or something and a nice glass of something tasty and then we can have world peace or something:

Matt Freeman's When Is a Clock? has opened. The last two pieces I saw of his at The Brick were terrific and hysterical (An Interview With The Author and Trayf) and I plan on seeing this one . . . whenever the hell I can. If, unlike me, you're not rehearsing, like, six shows right now and have some free time, see the damned thing. Runs April 15 through May 10 at Access Theater.

More info is HERE; tickets are available HERE.

James Comtois' Colorful World opens at 78th Street Theatre Lab on May 8th and runs to the 31st. I think they were rehearsing next door to us at Battle Ranch last night -- Michael Gardner asked, "Did I hear Jessi Gotta's laugh?" Apparently so, as a big mess o'cards got left there afterwards. It's a riff on superheroes in a recognizable, real world in the vein of Alan Moore's Watchmen. Again, hope I get to see it.

If you can, tickets and info are HERE.

Coming up at CSV-Milagro shortly is the new entry in Stolen Chair's "Cinetheatre Tetrology," The Accidental Patriot: The Lamentable Tragedy of the Pirate Desmond Connelly, Irish by Birth, English by Blood, and American by Inclination, created by Jon Stancato & Co., which combines Errol Flynn swashbuckling films with Greek Tragedy. Really. April 25-May 17.

Info HERE, tickets HERE.

And at the home territory of The Brick . . .

The season finale of Penny Dreadful - Episode 6: "The Earth Shook, The Sky Burned" - will play this Saturday at 10.30 pm and Sunday at 2.00 pm. I'm lighting this one with Berit, as always, and also acting in this one as George Westinghouse (a comment on my usual position as supplier of power to the show?). It's a corker of an episode to end the season with, and will have people eagerly awaiting the return in September.

Tickets are HERE.

Finally, Babylon Babylon has a final preview tonight and opens tomorrow (with big party to follow).

I've been describing this one plenty (as I've also lit this, though it still has another name on the homepage . . .), so I needn't say much more, but the show has really turned out well, and it's quite exciting to see so many good actors (31!) all working together at the same time on the same stage.

Here's a photo from production photographer Ken Stein, taken at the first preview:

I have a bunch more nice shots from the show, but I'll put them all behind a cut here for easier loading . . .

These are mostly photos I took at the final dress (where, you can see, not everyone had their final dress) with two that Ken Stein took at the first preview (as noted):

Logios (Jeff Lewonczyk) introduces the show.

Logios between the Tigris and Euphrates.

The High Priestess of Ishtar (Hope Cartelli) with her lion Labbu (Adrian Jevicki) and Acolyte.

Gemekaa, a Prophetess (Maggie Cino) upsets everyone with yet another warning.

Ishtara, a True Believer (Ali Skye Bennet) practices her worship (photo by Ken Stein).

Orev, a Jew (Gavin Starr Kendall), and Niiqquulamuusu, an Acolyte of Marduk (Robert Pinnock), debate whether one God can be better than many gods.

A number of people pay attention to the High Priestess.

Mushezibitu, a widow (Katherine Cudney), is comforted by her brother-in-law Timgiratee (Fred Backus) (photo by Ken Stein).

And some more worshippers are horrified in the violent conclusion of the show (exciting fight choreography by Qui Nguyen just out of frame right!).

This show runs from April 18 to May 10. Blog is HERE, tickets are HERE.

That's all for now. More tomorrow. See some theatre.

Reboot

2008-04-14T16:47:33Z

I am so damned tired.

I have been on the go almost constantly since last Sunday, when I was up bright and early to record a podcast, followed by about five hours of observing Babylon Babylon rehearsal to figure out the lights, followed by six hours of driving to Maine. The following day was mostly relaxing, true, with a dentist appointment in the middle of it (and I couldn't get the work I wanted done - I need an oral surgeon - but I got prescriptions and some other minor help that will handle the problem until the work proper can be done).

Tuesday, another six hour drive from Maine right to The Brick to continue observing the show.

Then, Wednesday through Sunday have all been work days at The Brick of at least 13 hours each day (and up to 16). Mostly, it's been getting the lights all set for BB, with a first rehearsal for Spell early Saturday morning, and one for Penny Dreadful yesterday from 9 am to 4 pm followed by an Ambersons rehearsal from 6.30-10.30 pm. And I wound up having to run the lights for BB at the opening preview when Lindsay, the (excellent) stage manager got seriously ill.

The good things were that the time has been tiring, but almost entirely enjoyable, surrounded by fine people doing hard worthwhile work and having a good time at it, and also I got in a new shipment of contact lenses on Friday and have been enjoying some glasses-free time again.

So, today I ain't doing much of anything. I have to arrange some rehearsal space, but apart from that, nothing much else. I will watch some movies. We should clean our home (um, it's actually getting kinda smelly, and not just from the cat box), but I'll hold out on that for another day.

But, to expand a bit more on bits of the above:

The podcast was recorded for New York Theatre Experience's nytheatrecast.com, and featured myself, Jeff Lewonczyk, and Jon Stancato in a conversation about theatre that is in some way influenced by/connected to cinema, moderated by Trav S.D. It came out well, I think (the tech is a little dicey - they're not used to dealing with four people at once, really), and can be accessed HERE.

Babylon Babylon had its first open preview performance on Saturday, and it went pretty well. There are still a few elements missing that will be in for next week, and I have a handful of little fixes and additions to make. Went well, though the first audience didn't find it nearly as funny as I did, and I don't know why (well, maybe I do - it doesn't really start funny, and there are very few "clues" to let you know it's supposed to be funny, thankfully - and, also, it gets really dark and unfunny here and there as well).

It's a good show, and worth your time and money. See it. The website with info is HERE - though, um, it still lists the original light designer instead of me . . . have to remind someone to change that . . .

The next episode of Bryan Enk & Matt Gray's Penny Dreadful plays this Saturday and Sunday at The Brick - it's the "season finale," and we'll be on hiatus with that show until September (though there might be a one-off, standalone episode sometime this Summer). This episode is "The Earth Shook, The Sky Burned" and is mostly set around the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. It features myself as George Westinghouse, Tom Reid as Thomas Edison, Bob Laine as J.P. Morgan, and Roger Nasser as William Howard Taft, with Joseph Ryan and Randall Eliot in several roles, and . . . well, you'll have to see. This one is directed by Brick co-founder Michael Gardner, and Berit and I, as always, are handling the light design and some other technical matters.

The Brick's page for the show (with ticket info) is HERE; the general Penny Dreadful site, with information about the series and synopses/videos of past episodes is HERE.

First meeting for my original show Spell, which will be going up in August, on Saturday. All but one of the 12-person cast was present, and we talked about the show and the issues that have come up in its creation. I played some of the music that was inspirational for the show. New avenues of approach were raised and discussed. Characters were slightly more defined. I laid out the set and put the cast on it in patterns that seemed "right," had movement happen, and scenes appeared from this start. The ending to the show appeared and was vaguely staged (to Brian Eno's song "Just Another Day"). Now I have a scene to work towards and have to earn.

The original intent of the show was to be a look inside the splitting mind of someone who has done a terrible, destructive, murderous thing, and then attempt to understand what makes someone do something so horrible. It has now moved, though, towards being more about The Violent Act that has been committed and a debate over whether there is ever any possible excuse for such actions. This is a continuing debate I have in myself, so I'm trying to settle it in some way through a splitting of myself into these characters.

It is now a more delicate and dangerous show than I anticipated, as there is more chance for failing in the task set out - I can't let it be shallow and pat, and yet it has to be theatrically compelling and go somewhere, and feel satisfying at the close, though there is no way of truly achieving closure with this story.

The cast is terrific - Moira Stone, Fred Backus, Alyssa Simon, Jorge Cordova, Iracel Rivero, Rasha Zamamiri, Jeanie Tse, Gavin Starr Kendall, Olivia Baseman, Sammy Tunis, and Liz Toft - and game. It'll be a joy to work with them. I hope I live up to it.

And a second blocking session for the June Ambersons production last night. I was scheduled to do just a few sections of the big "Ball" scene (and a few other little bits), but I decided to just go ahead and set the blocking for the whole damned difficult scene, at least for the principals in the sequence (as the entire rest of the cast is constantly flowing in and out during the sequence as party guests and servants, and I have to set the main line of flow before I can add in the additional eddies).

So we went ahead and damn if we didn't get through the whole sequence, which is 22 pages long - 1/5th of the entire script! So that was a nice chunk. I also blocked two simple scenes, with very little movement - Jack and George's argument in the bathroom and Eugene and Isabel sitting in the garden. I hope this keeps moving as quickly, with as much fun - this is one of the jokiest casts I've ever had, with suggestions for anachronistic behavior coming in constantly (which never gets old).

This week, more Ambersons and Penny Dreadful, but first, a day of rest. Pardon me, I must get started on that . . .

The Car The Car The Car Is On Fi-Uh!

2008-04-11T15:24:47Z

Luckily, it wasn't MY car.

I've been working 13-hour days getting the lights ready for Babylon Babylon - it's taken me a LOT longer than I expected to get them ready, as always happens when I have to do a considerable rehang on my own (I need to always multiply my estimated time x2 when a solo rehang is involved). Yesterday, I had to finish cabling, then focus all 28 lights being used in the show, which involved bringing up a light individually, running down the ladder from the booth, up the 12-foot ladder to the grid to focus (sometimes up and down several times as I adjusted my lighting "standins" - two extended mic stands with paper taped to the top) then back up the ladder to the booth. Repeat x 28. Big fun.

I probably looked pretty silly, too, as I had brought and was wearing my pyjama pants to work in, but no one else was going to be there, and it made it a lot more comfortable.

The show itself is still coming together, and is almost there. There are previews tomorrow night (which will be rough, but it needs an audience to move forward) and next Thursday (which should be fine and slick) before opening a week from tonight. I still have to go in and finish writing the cues, and make the fixes from what I saw last night. I'll try and take some pictures of the run tonight to share.

Oh, right, pictures! That's what I started the story about. So anyway, I was up on the ladder, focusing, when there was a car horn honking out in front that got more and more insistent, then just held down and wouldn't stop. I stomped down the ladder, and for some reason had the idea that it was our landlord honking - he's never done that, so I don't know why I thought this, but when I'm parked in the "free" space in front of The Brick sometimes (it's a former driveway, so there's no meter there, and you can stay there all day without paying or getting a ticket), he will come in and order me to move so he can have "his" spot for his big green Expedition - Berit always gets angry about this ("It's NOT his spot!"), and it's a pain, but well, he's the landlord. Best to stay friendly.

So I open the front door of The Brick and find myself looking at the landlord's car right in front, the alarm going off, with constant honk, lights flashing, and wipers going, and a GIANT plume of fire coming through a hole in the hood that it has obviously burned through. Impressive.

So I ran back inside and to the rear of the theatre (I know that, Hollywood notwithstanding, cars generally don't blow up, but seeing that much fire coming from one is unnerving) and called the FDNY. Someone probably got them before me, because almost immediately after, I could hear the hoses going, and thought it was safe to grab my camera . . .

Wish I'd gotten some with the actual fire, but oh well . . .

I feel bad for the landlord, but at the same time there's that evil part of me with the tiny inward grin remembering all the times I was in the middle of a good rehearsal process and was interrupted with the yell that I had to move my vehicle, NOW! I told a couple of people about the past incidents and they shrugged and said "Karma."

(Berit, with a big "comic" take, called it "car-ma." ugh.)

So, back to the theatre, but first, todays random ten and cats - from the iPod today:

1. "Weird Nightmare" - Elvis Costello et al. - Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus
2. "Where the Wolf Bane Blooms" - The Nomads - Children of Nuggets: Original ARTyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era - 1976-1996
3. "Tear It On Down" - Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Black Magic
4. "Brick Is Red" - Pixies - Surfer Rosa
5. "Life of Crime" - The Flatmates - Love and Death (The Flatmates 86-89)
6. "Ambiguity Song" - Camper Van Beethoven - Telephone Free Landslide Victory
7. "Power" - John Oswald (Deep Zen Pill with Brother Bam Shock) - 69 Plunderphonics 96
8. "Nice 'n' Easy" - Frank Sinatra - The Capitol Collectors Series
9. "Oil Gusher" - The Raymond Scott Project - Powerhouse volume 1
10. "Sexy Trash" - Electric Six - I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master

Wasn't able to take any new cat pictures with everything going on this week, but I have a couple sitting around that weren't the best from past weeks. Here's a nice pudgy Hooker-cat on a shelf, wishing I'd stop bothering him:

And with Moni on a chair, almost in their Yin-Yang Kitty pose:

Tomorrow morning, we have the first meeting/work session for Spell. Sunday, rehearsal for Penny Dreadful in the early morning and The Magnificent Ambersons in the evening.

I'm tired, but it's a GOOD tired.

Mixed Bag

2008-04-07T22:30:14Z

Various and sundry:

The video and synopsis for the episode I directed of Bryan Enk and Matt Gray's Penny Dreadful is now online at this page HERE. If you don't know the story so far, it'd be best to go back and read the detailed synopses of the previous four episodes. Better yet, take the time and watch the really great videos.

Nice to see this record - I was stuck up in the booth so I couldn't really get a good view of the show - some great acting work here that I was only able to hope was happening - Becky Byers and Bryan Enk both shine in the close-ups. Dina did as good as job as I think could be done in taping this one (there are bits from both performances we did in the video, two different camera setups), but unfortunately due to staging and audience placement, this one winds up being not as good a video as the previous episodes - much more like a standard record-of-a-performance video than the others, which came out so surprisingly well. Oh well, the show's there.

Unfortunately, I've only been able to watch it without sound as yet - the computer I'm on up here has no sound, for some arcane reason, so I don't know how that worked out. I can check it on another computer when I sign off here.

Three excellent posts on the late Charlton Heston from Glenn Kenny, The Self-Styled Siren, and Mark Evanier - I especially like this quote from the last:

Mr. Heston's politics were not mine but I see no reason to believe they were anything but earnest on his part. People do change as they get older. I think the reason he so irked some was not that he "demagogued" but that he was the kind of speaker who sounds like he's demagoguing if he's ordering a tuna melt. Even if you didn't have in mind the image of him as Moses, he had a way of sounding like everything he uttered was chiselled onto stone tablets. It's what made him compelling as an actor, at least in certain roles...and made him seem uncommonly arrogant if he voiced a worldview you found questionable.

I really don't entirely agree with the philosophy behind this, but the man asked for it -- Uwe Boll was made aware of the fact that there is an internet petition up demanding that he stop making terrible TERRIBLE movies. He laughed at the fact that there were only about 18,000 signatures on it, and said that he would only consider it if it got to a million.

The petition is HERE. It's now up to about 64,400 names. Fans of videogames, horror, and films in general may do as they see fit . . .

And finally, Patrick Stewart gives a lovely, sharp interview to someone from New York magazine and includes an apparently serious threat to kneecap her if he's quoted out of context. Don't fuck with Sejanus, lady (or Gurney Halleck, for that matter).

2000 Light Years From Home

2008-04-07T07:42:17Z

Well, here I am in Portland, Maine again, after a long day.

Sunday started with a 9.30 am meeting at Martin Denton's place to record a podcast for nytheatrecast - me, Jeff Lewonczyk, and Jon Stancato discussing our work in creating theatre that comes in some way from film with moderator Trav S.D. It wound up being a pretty cool discussion, but we only had enough time to scratch the surface of the subject - as Trav noted, the four of us could have had a fine old time talking about this for hours.

I'll note it here when it's posted.

Well, the day had actually started much earlier by dragging myself out of bed and packing and trying to make sure I didn't forget anything I needed and saying goodbye to the partner and the cats, which is hard enough to do, even for two days. Actually gets harder each time this happens, which I wouldn't have expected once upon a time.

After the podcast, Jeff and I drove over to The Brick for Babylon Babylon rehearsal (and as Jon was rehearsing at The Battle Ranch, he crammed himself in Petey Plymouth as well, among the overflow of props that fill it, as usual - not comfortable, but convenient).

I was there to see a runthru and figure out the lights - they had to start with quite a bit of work, so I only got to see about 2/3rds of a run before they had to split, but that was enough to figure out the light plot and most of the cues. Turned out, to my relief, to be a lot simpler than I expected.

On the other hand, I was surprised to discover the time I should have them ready was a little sooner than I expected, so I have to rush back to The Brick for Tuesday night's rehearsal, do the light hang after their run, then write all the cues, or do that the following day so they can run with lights on Wednesday night. Tight, but doable.

The show looks great, too - Jeff may have to cut some things for pace reasons, which made me wince, as he'll be cutting some great stuff, but for the overall rhythm and feel of the show it's the right thing to do - as well as for keeping this intermissionless show under the 2-hour mark. I'll really miss some of the deletions, though.

Out of there and on the road at 5 pm. The drive up to Maine was half-pleasant, half-not - I'd decided to listen to my chronological Rolling Stones playlist on the iPod, and got from the first 1963 recordings to halfway through Exile on Main St. in the 5.5-hour trip - sometimes I just like listening to a band or artist's work pretty much in its entirety, from start to finish, seeing how the work developed over time (though this playlist is missing, for some reason, "Sympathy for the Devil" and the Rice Krispies commercial they did in the early 60s).

The Stones' songs got pretty dark, though, just as the sky did and a heavy rain started, and wound up making the rest of the trip pretty creepy - driving on a pitch-black highway through Lowell, Massachusetts, with rain smears making everything ahead of me blurry and uncertain, as "Gimme Shelter" played (very loud) was both a beautiful and unsettling experience (the whole great Let It Bleed album was actually top-drawer "music-to-make-you-feel-deep-forboding" scoring for that part of the trip - luckily Sticky Fingers made things quite a bit lighter right as I crossed into New Hampshire).

And now I'm here, and after having drowsiness problems at the wheel once darkness fell, I'm wide awake and bored. Usually, Berit and I get our surfing-the-zeitgeist TV fix up here, since we don't have it at home, but the only things even slightly bearable on now are two films on Turner Classic Movies - Murnau's Sunrise followed by Godard's Contempt - two movies I own on DVD and have watched many many times, and (being, respectively, a silent movie and in French) not the best films to have as "background noise." Fox Movie Channel is playing Russ Meyer & Roger Ebert's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, but I'm not quite in the mood for that classic right now, I think.

Tomorrow, the joys of dental extraction.

Wait a minute . . . even though they listed it as "letterboxed," TCM is playing a very bad pan-and-scan print of Contempt, scratched and nasty-looking, with English titles . . . oh, jeez, and it's dubbed. Well, screw that, over to FMC for some Meyer/Ebert action . . .

Another Friday Afternoon

2008-04-04T18:52:33Z

And another week done gone by.

Tonight, more Ambersons work.

Tomorrow, no work on shows, but off to a gallery opening of drawings by Ivy Dachman, my stepmother, in Pound Ridge, NY.

Sunday, watch a runthru of Babylon Babylon to figure out the lights, and more work on Everything Must Go in the evening.

Monday and Tuesday are nominally "off," but there's work I have to do on the lights for Babylon Babylon, and it looks like I need to see a dentist about pulling these last two wisdom teeth, one of which is giving me some problems - and figuring out if it will actually be cheaper for me to drive up to Maine and have the dentist I see up there do it rather than go someplace local (which seems to be the case, but I don't know if I can take off for two days at this point and deal with Babylon Babylon work).

So while I variously use what I have on hand to deal with the tooth pain (advil, vicodin, etodolac, single-malt scotch), a Friday Random Ten, from the 25,630 on the iPod:

1. "Your Generation" - Generation X - D.I.Y.: Anarchy in the UK - UK Punk I (1976-77)
2. "Editions of You" - Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
3. "When Under Ether" - PJ Harvey - White Chalk
4. "It Ain't Me Babe" - Johnny Cash & June Carter - Man in Black 1963-69
5. "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" - Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde
6. "Mirror Freak" - Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - The Human Menagerie
7. "Copy" - Plastics - Welcome Plastics
8. "Enthusiastic" - David Thomas - More Places Forever
9. "Lone Soul Road" - Sainte Anthony's Fyre - Sainte Anthony's Fyre
10. "Feel the Pain" - One of Hours - Diggin' For Gold - Vol. 10: A Collection of Demented 60's R&B/Punk & Mesmerizing 60's Pop

That was a great Randomosity to get me pepped up and less-miserable (I have to try and remember that "Editions of You" can always make me happy-peppy whenever I need it)!

And here's the Friday Cat Photos -- Hooker resenting me bugging him this morning while he's trying to take a nap on one of Berit's clothes shelves:

Moni resenting Berit trying to hold her still this morning for a nice picture for the blog:

And the two of them, beyond resentment, having a nice nap together last night:

Finally, two pieces of video humor. First, a silent piece of Flash animation imagining a phone conversation between a couple of pop stars:

And this was apparently all over the net a few days ago, but it wasn't anywhere I saw it immediately, so maybe you missed it, too - a side of the Muppets I'd never seen before:

(more info on this can be found HERE, if you need it)

Favorite quote from elsewhere today -- Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith have an idea while chatting on Twitter (as reported on Ellis' site):

templesmith: I want Ray Winstone & Ian McShane in an hour long tv show where all they do is sit in a room & discuss how to kill ppl with cockney accents

warrenellis: we must write that show. Call your agents. It could be called THOSE BASTARDS.

templesmith: SOLD sir.

Back to work . . .