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Gemini CollisionWorks 2008 Season!
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/cont 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/13 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. 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. 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? 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.
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What Are You Looking At? OR:
Finally got this uploaded . . . At The Brick's 5th Anniversary party, back in December, Berit and I did a little live performance piece accompanied by a video playing behind us. The stage was covered with sixteen chairs, evenly spaced in three rows facing the audience (5/6/5). As each of our pre-recorded voices alternated on the video, we would take turns slowly walking around the stage -- each of us ending our little segment by knocking over a chair, one-by-one, until at last the stage was covered with overturned chairs (some had been carefully tipped, some knocked, a couple thrown, and one smashed over and over into the ground and destroyed) and the two of us wound up facing each other over the last chair, which was not overturned, as the lights faded (we had created the light cues in the computer board so that Berit could start the DVD of the video and hit the go button on the light board 5 seconds later - then run down the ladder from the booth and to the stage to perform the piece - and the lights and video would sync up). It was designed and intended completely as a live video/performance combo, so the video doesn't exactly work on its own (it's basically a slideshow of text with voiceovers), but I'm happy enough with it to share it with you. It was much liked by a number of people there (who might not want me to say so in public), and got a little heckling afterward as well ("More facile statements!"). I created the soundtrack and designed the overall piece. Berit created the text slides (from my design suggestion of copying Godard/Gorin's titles in Tout Va Bien) and put the whole thing together as a movie. Here it is behind the cut. It's close to 11 minutes long. Enjoy.
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That's a Secret I'll Tell Nobody Never!
I am in the midst of trying to work out a schedule for my four shows -- The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage (June and maybe July), Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville by Richard Foreman (August), Spell (August), and Everything Must Go (Invisible Republic #2) (August). There are currently 18 people cast (out of 21 I think I'll need) on Ambersons, a full cast of 13 on Everything (though I'm seeing if someone else can join us), a full cast of 12 on Spell, and a full cast of 6 (the easy one) on Harry in Love. 43 total actors currently (there are a few cast overlaps). Trying to arrange a rehearsal schedule where I can get enough actors from any one show together to make having a rehearsal at all useful is mindbending -- Berit was a bit worried for me last night I think, as I would just sit for long periods of time looking at the Excel spreadsheets where I have potential rehearsal dates matched with conflicts and softly giggling to myself. When I'm faced with day after day of anywhere from one to sixteen actors unavailable, never leaving me with a good rehearsal group, I get a bit crazy. That said, I worked a schedule out. I'm still "in the midst" of it all as I now have to type it out and send it to the casts and double-check to see that it works. And if I get enough new conflicts back the whole thing collapses like a furshlugginer house of cards and I have to start from scratch. I need a break before embarking on the next stage of collating and typing and emailing the schedule info. So to relax, I watch a Three Stooges short. And not just any Stooges short, but the one that's generally regarded in Stoogedom as the worst one they ever made. But I enjoy it, for a few reasons of my own: 1. It features Shemp Howard, not Curly Howard. I don't like Curly all that much (or any of the other third Stooges that joined Moe and Larry apart from Shemp, especially Joe DeRita, who lacked subtlety). I'll watch Shemp in anything. 2. It features a drunk Shemp hallucinating and seeing an immense cheesy pantomime bird. 3. It features the great Larry Fine in a rare central role, and not only that, he appears to be trying to parody (for no good reason) Marlon Brando. His lack of success in this impersonation instead creates a strange Brando/Fine collision unlike anything I've ever seen. Interestingly, this short was released only a few months after the film of Streetcar, so one wonders if Larry and/or the others saw Brando on stage, or were they just really churning these shorts out that fast (I suspect the latter). 4. My Junior-year film at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts - created in Reynold Weidenaar's excellent Experimental Workshop class - was titled "How Did You Manage To Steal a Car from a Rolling Train?" after a line of Moe's from this film (my film was written, co-produced, sound designed, and titled by my friend Sean Rockoff, a Stoogeaholic). The director Christopher Carter Sanderson, when I told him where the title came from, and the response to the question from Larry, thereafter always seemed to regard the question and answer as some bizarre zen-ish "key" to my own psyche and personality. Make of that what you will. I dedicated my film to Moe Howard and Andrei Tarkovsky. That's probably much more of a key to my inner life. So here's the whole short behind the cut . . . And in other "humor," I greatly enjoyed this account of the 12-hour deposition of Mr. Aron Wider, CEO of HTFC, an independent mortgage investor whose company is being sued by GMAC Bank for allegedly selling loans that weren't properly underwritten. The fine behavior of Mr. Wider, as seen in excerpts from the transcript, is a fine reflection of the upright and honorable behavior that has made the financial structure of this country so strong and unassailable. There is a drier account (that does feature a few more fine fine superfine quotes) in a law journal HERE. In non-humor, Paul Scofield died. I loved his work, but I never feel I saw him in anything as good as he was (even Brook's film of Lear, which seems hobbled by its stage origins) - from all accounts his real greatness was on the stage, and I regret never seeing him there. Back to work. Excelsior!
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Four or Five Crazee Shows
Merry Mount is down and over and now I'm on to the rest of the year's shows: My four for June and August, and directing Bryan Enk and Matt Gray's Penny Dreadful episode for March, which I can't do anything on just yet, until I get the script from the guys. I will also be the main point-person for The Brick, most likely, in the management/running of the Tiny Theatre Festival in May and the Clown Theatre Festival, which I guess will be in October again. And Berit and I will have plenty to do in our duties as co-TDs of the space for The Film Festival: A Theater Festival in May/June. I don't know if the Baby Jesus Festival will now continue as a yearly thing or remain Biennial, but if it's up this year, that's December taken. Berit is busy with props and other things for Cat's Cradle and Hiroshima for UTC#61, as well as stage managing Aaron Baker's 3800 Elizabeth. I will be coming in to set up the video system for the UTC shows, and as Berit will be house managing those, I'll be taking over for her on the management of Aaron's show (and the running of Penny Dreadful) when those conflict. But the primary concerns in the home of Gemini CollisionWorks are our shows for the year. An update on current status, since that's what the blog is supposed to be about: (performing June, in The Film Festival at The Brick, with, I hope, a few more performances in July - because of one performer's schedule, we can't do any shows in June after the 15th, which is fine by me, but better if we get a July extension) The script is all together, and we're currently casting and discussing design. We need an actual costume designer on this besides Berit & I. I'll ask the two I know, like, and trust. Apart from that, B & I are in a good starting place. Needs a cast of at least 16, though the more I look at the script, the more I worry I need a couple more to fill out the stage at one point, which is a pain, because then it gives everyone in the "chorus" parts less to do in the double-casting. I need to really look at the ballroom scene and plan it out on paper to see if I can stage it workably with the 16-person plan. A lot to be done with shadow puppets. Must start playing with that. I have to do some sound editing on the music cues - I have the complete Herrmann score now, but many of the cues on the CD are linked together as mini-"suites" and I need to cut them up into discrete cues. We're going to have to rehearse with the music behind us, so I should have it ready. Powerpoint projections, too. Whee. Must set up a first reading ASAP as soon as I have a cast. Currently cast: Timothy McCown Reynolds as Eugene Morgan, Stephen Heskett as George Amberson Minifer, Shelley Ray as Lucy Morgan, Walter Brandes as Jack Amberson (and myself as narrator). I've offered the roles of Fanny Minifer and Isabel Amberson Minifer to two actresses, but haven't heard back from them yet. Must email them today. Stephen introduced me to an older actor he takes class with who would seem perfect for Major Amberson, and who found the concept interesting, so I'll email him as well to see about meeting and reading. I have to get the nine "primary" roles set before filling out the rest of the cast, but I have a list of the actors I'd like to round out the cast, if I can get them. Also, while I think I can do it with these people, I need to go over the script and figure out the double-casting exactly to be sure. At the same time, there are issues of the casting kind that are exactly the ones I have a completely unreasonable discomfort in dealing with: First, there are a couple of actors I know who are great, and would be great in certain roles in this show, but the roles are really good ones that are also really REALLY small, and I'm always unhappy with asking actors I don't know all that well personally, and who generally are cast in big, showy parts (and deservedly), to come in for one or two scenes in a show where they'll be sitting around a lot of the time (or moving scenery). Second, there are two "small boys" needed for one scene in the show, and the best way to deal with this is to cast two diminutive actresses I've worked with before who could play both small boys and older women quite well. Again, in my unreasonable but quite real shyness, I'm having trouble emailing them to ask about their interest, as though there's something insulting about me asking them to play the boys, though both of them have played a small boy for me before. Finally, the Ambersons, in an accurate-enough piece of period detail, have a black butler, Sam, who is a presence throughout much of the play, though he's not a huge part either. But he's important, and I can't imagine doing the play without him. At the same time, I am uncomfortable with putting out a casting notice looking for a black man to come in and be a rich white family's butler (over the years 1885-1910), who also can't really double in any other parts in the show (except in a crowd scene at the end), let alone asking the black actors I know to take it on. There is, of course, probably no good reason for my discomfort (as Berit noted, and I paraphrase, "Why are you uncomfortable? He's not written as some shambling offensive stereotype. He's a black servant to a family that in that time and place would have accurately had one."). And in terms of asking the actors I know, it comes more under the heading of a regular problem I have that I touched on above -- once I've cast an actor in some big showy role in a show, I have trouble casting them in a smaller, supporting role, even if they're perfect for it, as I feel like I'm insulting them or something. I also get uncomfortable with certain actors I keep casting in smaller roles in show after show after show, who I know could give an amazing lead performance if I had the show with the role, but I never do. So I wind up feeling bad about continuing to ask them to come in and be, yet again, another great utility infielder of a performer. Berit tries to help get me over this by asking me if I feel at all bad about how, having played a number of grand, wonderful, major roles on stage, I still get asked to come in and do a little supporting role here and there for someone (often non-speaking). And, no, I don't. I go and do the work where I'm needed if it's not interfering with my own. So if I'm fine with it, why should I assume it's an insult to other actors? I mean, yes, I've had 2 or 3 actors tell me, "I don't do small roles anymore," but with a simple informative politeness. {sigh} I'm just paranoid. What else is new? This is why I always used to do real full ensemble productions most of the time, where there weren't any obvious "bigger" or "smaller" roles and it was all about everybody on stage all the time working together. Which, happily, is what two of my August shows will be like. And . . . hmmn . . . after a little more thought, I've realized that I do know and have worked with an actor who could actually play Sam and multiple other characters in the show, I think . . . oh, yeah, that'd work. Okay, problem solved. (performing August at The Brick) I have fragments of script to start with on this one, but I'm building it around the specific actors I'm casting in it, and will create it through rehearsal, then go and write it and bring it back. Then repeat. Create all the design at the same time, so light, text, sound, costumes, set, props are all one integrated system from the start. Moira Stone is cast in the "central" role, Ann, which is not so much a "lead" as the nucleus of an atom that everything else is spinning madly around. I know there are three witches who each speak a different, non-English language (I have actresses in mind for these who can do this, who've all expressed interest, but I have to confirm with them); a doctor who keeps switching from male to female (two actors in mind there, too); Ann's male alter-ego, Andy, who keeps switching places with her (several possibilities); and a chorus of figures you could think of either as revolutionaries or terrorists, and their bloodied casualties or victims. It seems to be breaking down naturally into 7 men and 7 women, which seems right for the piece. So Moira is set - I have to contact the six others who have specifically expressed an interest in this show (and I've begun crafting parts around them). Another two people I'd like in this have expressed a general desire to be in one of this year's shows. And then there's another five I'd like in this I have to ask. This one's getting more and more alive for me, and it's really exciting. This one is about terrorism, and my ongoing argument with myself about whether or not the use of terrible violence can be a potentially positive weapon for social change (if you're wondering who always wins that argument, well, I'm making theatre and not bombs, so it should be obvious, though I still sometimes wonder . . .). (possibly still a working title, but it'll do for now - performing in August at The Brick) This one is both exciting and scary. I have a theme, a visual concept, some songs, an idea of mood, and a desired cast in mind, and nothing else. And it has to wind up being an actual play. With dances. This will be interesting, and I hope it won't frustrate the cast too much as we work to get there. I know it's about business and selling. Gyda Arber (who I imagine tap dancing on a table to "Dry Bones") and Dina Rose Rivera (who, wonderfully, can dance en pointe as I was hoping - this will be an interesting new step in choreography for me) seem to be in on this one. I think this one will have four men and four women, and I have the others in mind already. I'm a little worried about eight people not being enough to displace enough air in the stage space for what I want, but any larger or smaller number seems really wrong. So, emails to go out here, too. (performing August at The Brick) Richard Foreman's script is cut and ready. Mostly cast, 4 out of 6 at least - Josephine Cashman and I are playing Hilda and Harry Rosenfeld, Ken Simon is Karl Wasselman, and Walter Brandes is Paul Toothstein (aka "Hilda's-Brother"). Still to be cast are Doctor Meyers and Max Gelb - I've had an actor in mind for years to play the Doctor, and I just emailed him to see if he might be interested. I was stuck on anyone to play Max, but an actor I like that I didn't have any idea was interested in working with me emailed today out of the blue to say that he indeed was, and he's perfect for Max, so I sent him the script. So we'll see if I get these last two people, and if so, then we'll set up a reading and begin. And that's it for now. And maybe for a few days until more actual things come up. I am strangely optimistic, an odd feeling for me . . .
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Stimulus/Response
Two commenters dropped by recently with a pleasant word or two and I wanted to mention them here rather than just responding in the original comments, where it might get lost - especially as I have quite a bit to say about where these comments led me. "Richard S.," who posts as "RockRichard" at VetVoice.com thanked me for the plug for his "Open Letter to Bill O'Reilly." I was surprised to get even the very brief thanks from him, as he's serving in Afghanistan now, and I think that between that and creating his excellent posts for VetVoice, he's busy enough without typing a few words to a NYC theatre-related (supposedly) blogger. But I'm honored. I read several military-related blogs created and written by soldiers and veterans - I feel some kind of duty to do so at this point in time. These are voices not heard from nearly enough right now. My brother returned from Iraq a few months ago - injured, not badly - and I haven't talked with him about his service much, and I'm not sure he wants to. Luckily, he seems to be in fine shape all around and is building a good life for himself here at home now. Since he was first over there, I've kept AntiWar.com in my blog reader - it's not at all the best site, frankly - most of the info there can be found in better form elsewhere - but it's the only place I found that gives a day-by-day running tally of casualties - injuries and deaths - broken down, soldiers and civilians, U.S.A. and Iraq. A headline with the count comes up in my blogreader every morning, and I make sure to look at it and consider my place in the world, and what I am doing, in the light of those numbers (Yesterday - one U.S. soldier dead and another injured in a vehicular accident/32 Iraqis killed/42 Iraqis wounded). Then, yes, I move on. Because you have to. Right? VetVoice is a good central place for lots of links to other military blogs and sites. I found it through reading one of my favorites, Army of Dude by Alex Horton, an account of his life in Iraq, and since. So, I read, and I move on and try to make Art-Things. For while the job of these soldiers is unfortunately sometimes necessary, I like to believe that my job is, too - that even the smallest drop in the bucket of creation is a Good Thing for the species, that the accumulation of these unnecessary things called Artworks actually does Make Us Better. Yes, unnecessary, but ultimately for the good, as sometimes for the good, the soldiers are sometimes necessary. Sometimes necessary. And if used (and wasted) when not necessary, it is, of course, a fucking crime. Which reminds me. I've seen plenty written yesterday and today about the 935 "false statements" (where I'm from, we call those "lies") told by members of the current Administration to get us into war. And it should be noted that this only counts the lies told from 2001-2003 - from 9/11 to Iraq invasion - and none of the others that have come up since then. Again, a fighting man's opinion of this is worth checking out, and HERE is RockRichard's. Meanwhile, on the Art-Thing front, Alyssa Simon commented with a pointer to a review of Martin Denton's from nytheatre.com, of the current Broadway production of The 39 Steps, that contains this ego-boosting final paragraph: For me, there's nothing particularly funny about throwing stones at a work of art, even an admittedly pulpy, pop one such as this film by Hitchcock. There's certainly nothing worth $96.25 (the top ticket price) happening on stage at the American Airlines Theatre. If you'd like to watch too few actors create the illusion of a lot going on, ironically or in all seriousness, check out any number of indie theater offerings available around NYC (works by Ian W. Hill and Frank Cwiklik come immediately to mind). And if you'd like to see The 39 Steps, rent it from Netflix. And Martin's description of the show does indeed sound like everything wrong with a certain kind of theatre, which matters to me because - as the review alludes - I somewhat specialize at times in that kind of theatre. What is the point of imitating film on stage? Or if not precisely imitating, in recreating, deconstructing, collaging, ironicizing, etc. films in a theatrical context? I've done this myself, what, four or five times? Something like that. Maybe more. Which is maybe odd for someone who works in various media and who usually expresses the belief that the best work in most art forms is that work that can be only expressed in that form - theatre should do things that only theatre can do, painting should do things that only painting can do, prose should do things that only prose can do, film should do things that only film can do, etc., etc., ad nauseum. And as someone working on translating Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons to the stage right now, this could cause some concern. If I hadn't worked most of it out already by this point. First off, The 39 Steps is a terrible choice for a movie to stage, most immediately for one good reason: It's a good movie (I'll return to my concerns on Ambersons in a bit). What's the point? Nothing is added to it by staging it. Much is reduced. If a film is really good. it's almost certainly cinematic enough that the medium itself is unremovably entwined with its greatness. On the other hand, just staging bad movies, ironically, deconstructed, musicalized or whatever, is not necessarily a better thing. From all accounts, Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical had nothing going for it besides the concept of the title. When I was doing my original production of the temperance play Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, I was interested in certain qualities of "bad" acting. The company of my play was supposed to be playing an acting company in a post-civilization future, attempting to recreate What Had Been through the few dramatic texts they had. Unfortunately, they don't have good texts, and they're not good actors. But they're committed. So I showed my cast Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda? as an example of the kind of "bad" acting I was looking for. Tim Cusack put it best when he noted that the actors were giving their all to their roles, as much as any talented actor would, but that they didn't have the actual craft to express themselves properly - "Commitment without talent" is what he called it, and he also noted thoughtfully that Glen or Glenda? was a "rich text." Yes. And that's the point. Glen or Glenda? is probably a bad movie by most standards (I'm too in love with it to tell anymore), but it is a Rich Text. Debbie Does Dallas is not only a bad movie, it's an uninteresting one, not even a very good porno, with a catchy title that sold it, and it is very definitely Not A Rich Text. I staged Glen or Glenda? eventually as part of the EdFest that Frank Cwiklik, Michele Schlossberg and I put together in 2000, and dammit if the film wasn't somehow illuminated in a new light by being put into three dimensions in a tiny theatre. As did all of the Ed Wood scripts we adapted for that festival. I always wanted to stage the Patrick Swayze film Road House for fun - another Rich Text - but got beaten to it by Tim Haskell. From many accounts, it worked. Other cheesy films, Not Rich Texts, have fared less well. You see them come and go in the OOB listings. Most of the time, my filmic explorations in theatre have taken the form of a kind of collage, or as I prefer, collision (hence the name of my company) of two or more seemingly unrelated works. David LM Mcintyre says he wants a nickel every time I use the word "collision" since he first defined us, jokingly, as the leaders of the movement "New Collisionism" back in '91 or so - after a dinner at the Cedar Tavern and a lot of Guinness, it wasn't a joke anymore. It started when David and I collided Disney's The Jungle Book with Coppola's Apocalypse Now and made Even the Jungle. Since then, I've gone back to the form many times, with variations (collide dialogue from 165 films noir with quotes from the Bush Administration, you get World Gone Wrong). Leaving film out of it, collide H.P. Lovecraft with Winsor McCay you get At the Mountains of Slumberland. Done right, the collision, like a car accident, twists and turns the original and opens up new surfaces, new textures, that were there all the time but that you couldn't see until they were violently wrenched into new forms. So, what to do with staging Ambersons which is 1) not only a good movie, even in studio-mangled form, but a great one; 2) a rich text; 3) intensely cinematic in a way that seems inseparable from its greatness? Why do this, and what do I hope to do? Well . . . okay. It's a problem. The main reason for doing it, really, is because I want to see the story in the way that Welles intended to tell it, with the dialogue, scenes, and music that were supposed to be there (and I want others to see it, too). That I can do. What I can't do is recreate his shots, compositions, and editing - all crucial to Welles. So, I'm just reconstructing the story the way Welles wanted it, not the film itself. So I'm immediately pulling back from the cinematic aspects and finding the elements that will not only work, but may be illuminated through staging. Next, I can't recreate anything like the opulence of Welles' settings, and even token gestures that way would be, at most, a halfway measure. So do what theatre does well - abstract it all. Instead of matte paintings, we have shadow puppets. Instead of period automobiles, we have a pile of boxes. Pull it further back from film, and into what not only works but is best in a small black box theatre. And gradually, it all comes clear. I'm seeing it more and more, and I think this will be a damned fine piece of theatre. It still might be "doing well what ought not to be done at all," as a lot of film and theatre seems to me, but, well, we'll never have the Welles film the way he wanted, and I want to see this. I wrote out a list of 14 actors I'd like in the cast last night (with two others - I'm going to have to look for a Major Amberson and pick another from the pool of the actors I love). I think I'll be finishing my playscript of it by this evening, and then I'll send it out to the people I'd like in it and see what they think. Enough. Sorry to prattle on, but that's how it goes on here. Either I have too much to say or nothing. or both at the same time, perhaps. Finally, for pure WTF? enjoyment stimulus, a couple videos. The first showed up on the WFMU blog this morning, headlined "Lou Reed vs. Pavarotti." It's an excerpt from one of the Pavarotti and Friends charity concerts that I missed posting when the big man died. Want an odd mix of voices? Try this (I'm disappointed that Luciano doesn't join in on the second song here, "Walk on the Wild Side" - that may have made my head explode - in a good way): And since when did "Perfect Day" become, like, the top Lou Reed song? I mean, it's nice and all, but why this one? (was it used in Trainspotting and some other movie or something?) It's like going to a Bowie concert in the last few years and realizing that his most popular song is going to wind up being "Changes." I mean, yeah, sure, fine song, but the one DB's going to be remembered for? (the other top Bowie songs, judging from crowd response, are "Ziggy Stardust" and "Fame") In any case, the BBC did an all-star version of this Reed song that winds up being charming through some of the unlikely faces/voices that show up in it: Enjoy.
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The Year in Theatre Begins
Okay, so it's a new year, and there's work to do for Gemini CollisionWorks. So, an email went out last night to about 60 actors I know (edited slightly here): Dear Many-of-GCW's-Actorial-Friends, First, Happy New Year from Berit and myself! This is going out to many of the actors that I've either directed in shows, or acted with, or seen in shows, or auditioned but had nothing for, or always wanted to work with but it didn't happen. Or whatever. Just a list of people I think would work for one or more of the shows we're doing this year, even if a few of you don't act all that much anymore (nothing ventured . . .). Sorry about the length, as always. I have 6 or 7 productions (some big, some small) happening this year, and, as opposed to recent years, where I have wound up doing far too much at the last minute and been horribly rushed at the end, I am attempting to make this year's shows a much longer and deep process, with leisurely time to explore the work without cramming it all together. So I'm trying to cast and start the work this month for productions in June and August (as well as smaller ones going up sooner). I hope you are interested in one or more of the shows. The idea is to work on them from January to May, with a bit more focus on the June show (which might have a small July extension), and to have them pretty much together and ready (including sets, props, costumes, tech) by the end of May, with July as final brush-up time for the August shows. I know this is a hard, full commitment to make, and I fully expect to lose and have to replace some people between casting and opening to paying gigs or other sudden commitments, but I'd rather start with full casts and have to deal with a few replacements in parts that are already formed than wait to know if everyone will make it the whole way. So, if you're interested in at least starting the process, please come along. I'll try and make this as brief as I can (too late). First, I need a chorus of actors for Merry Mount, an adaptation by Trav S.D. of Hawthorne's "The May-Pole of Merry-Mount" which will go up in Metropolitan Playhouse's Hawthornicopia for four performances later this month (schedule at their website). This takes place in Puritan Boston, 1628, and I need several non-speaking performers for this short work (12 minutes or so, maybe) with very little rehearsal requirements - 3 male PURITANS, and 6 PAGAN REVELLERS, 2 male, 4 female, preferably - one woman has a line as the LADY OF THE MAY. Interested? Let me know ASAP. I will be directing an episode of Brian Enk/Matt Gray's serial melodrama Penny Dreadful in March at The Brick - no idea yet what the casting requirements will be for that. In June, I'm doing The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for The Film Festival: A Theater Festival at The Brick. This will require a cast of 16 (8 principals, 8 others in many multiple roles) in a stage adaptation of the original version of Welles' mangled-by-the-studio second film, which version exists only now as a transcript and photos. This has very specific casting requirements, and while I have some of you in mind for some parts (and will be in touch), will need auditioning for the rest, preferably from this group. It will have 4 performances in June, and maybe another 6-10 in July. Maybe. Big big maybe. August shows at The Brick, which will get 10-12 performances each: Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville by Richard Foreman - a restaging of my 1999 production - is mostly cast, and I'll be with contact some of you specifically about the roles that aren't. Spell - is an original play, some of it written, some of it to be created in collaboration with the company - about perception, sanity, identity, language, and terror - quiet, meditative, semi-abstract, inside the head of a woman (who may really be a man) who has done something terrible. Probably 110-115 minutes long. This has no set cast breakdown apart from needing 4 women and 2 men, at least, and will be created specifically around the actors who want to be in it. I have one or two people in mind specifically for this, but apart from that it's open to anyone on this list who's interested. Invisible Republic (working title) - is another original, to be created entirely with and around the company from scratch, that needs primarily people with strong dance/movement skills. It's about business, specifically selling things that probably aren't needed, the worth or lack of it of anything in the USA today, violence as a capitalist tool, and the military-industrial-entertainment-religi Also, a number of members of the cast of That's What We're Here For have expressed a desire to get back together and redo that, which I would also very much like to do, with some serious cuts, restructures, and fixes, but only if I get at least 2/3rds of the original cast. So, since the whole original cast is on this list, let me know if you want to work on it (and if it won't work by August, I'd like to start now on it for 2009). So, if you're interested in any or all of Merry Mount, Ambersons, Spell, Invisible Republic, or That's What We're Here For, please let me know ASAP and I can start pulling together the casts and rehearsal schedules. If you want more info, let me know. hope to hear from you soon, and best to you and all in your world, IWH [NOTE: If you're an actor friend who didn't get this and probably should have, let me know - either I missed your email or have a wrong one or your spam filter ate it. Well . . . or I thought you wouldn't be interested in the first place. Or I don't think you're right for any of these shows. But probably I just screwed up. So let me know!] So far I've had responses from 16 actors - 4 to say "I'm in for anything you want me for that I can do," 9 to say "I'd really be up for this show (or shows)," 2 to say "I'd like to be in, but can I have some more information about these shows," and 2 to say "let me know when you have something more specific you want me to read for." A good start. So, with the responses of interest thus far, the potentials I have right now are 1 more person for Merry Mount (with four already cast, five more needed), 2 for Penny Dreadful, 11, maybe 12, for Ambersons, 12 for Spell, 7 for Invisible Republic, and 3, maybe 4, people returning for That's What We're Here For (an american pageant revisited). Yes indeed, a good start.
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NECROPOLIS 1 - photos
I'm still going through all the photos I have from the August shows and fixing them up in Photoshop, but I have the first batch done. These cover the first part of the two-part NECROPOLIS 1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed. I still think I'm missing some that I should have . . . I'm positive we set up and shot scenes that I don't seem to have any pictures of -- such as the backlit shadow band from the club scene. The closest I have to that are a couple of behind-the-scenes shots, like this one of Art Wallace blowing his two-dimensional cardboard trumpet: So, inside the cut (which I hate, but I keep being reminded that cuts are "polite"), the first part of the show. Ah, yes . . . and here's Mateo, Art, and Alyssa (hidden behind Mateo) doing their number behind the scrim.
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Photos - August, 2007 Shows
We did photo calls for three of the four plays we put up last month, the three NECROPOLIS plays, on the days they closed. I'm in the process of collating all of them from all sources, fixing them up in Photoshop, and posting them at my Flickr page -- I'll start posting them here once I've fixed the whole damned lot. Berit and I don't currently have a functioning camera, so we relied on the kindness of our actors, asking any of them who had a handy digital camera to bring it to the calls, as I've had good luck in the past with a whole bunch of cameras each taking a whole lot of photos producing some really damned nice ones. So at the WGW/WGW call, there was a lot of this: Above photo by, I think, Iracel Rivero -- the problem is that as people were being photographed, camera were being handed back and forth, so I have no idea at times who took which shot. I'll have actual show pictures in the coming days, and some more of these behind-the-scenes ones, too.
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For Our Poems, Not Our Corpses
Jim Emerson, over at his wonderful Scanners blog, felt the need to defend Stanley Kubrick from the charge that he "hated humans," leveled by a writer for the Seattle weekly The Stranger in response to an SK film series playing there. Though no one seems to have taken the original piece, or its writer, very seriously, Jim seems tired of yet one more portrayal of Kubrick as filmic misanthrope, viewing his characters with disdain and/or disgust, godlike, detached. I am personally tired of this easy cliche myself, which seems to attach itself at one time or another to most of my favorite filmmakers (Godard, the Coen Brothers, Cronenberg, even Lynch sometimes, and - oh, god - Greenaway, quite a bit), but mainly Kubrick. If you present the horrors of the world and of humanity in a distanced way, believing that they speak for themselves and that the best way to look at the worst things is to really LOOK at them, without flinching, and do this without editorializing ("THIS IS BAD! THIS IS BAD! THIS IS BAD!"), you are cold and unfeeling, apparently. JE, in looking to refute the original charge, has found a document of great interest to Kubrick fans, that (as one of those fans VERY well-read about the man and his work) I've NEVER seen quoted or mentioned anywhere, and which is as good a statement of intent from SK about his work as he ever made. It's a letter he wrote to the New York Times in 1972 in response to an editorial referring to A Clockwork Orange as being "the essence of fascism." Kubrick, an EXTREME anti-fascist, felt the need to respond. The full letter is behind the Times Select wall, but Emerson quotes it liberally. Interested in Kubrick at all? The full post is HERE, and is REALLY worth it. One quote from SK's letter that bounces around my head in particular:
Berit and I are in Portland, ME for a spell, relaxing, recouping, regrouping. I am starting to think about next year's shows for Gemini CollisionWorks. I would like to create one new original one for the June Summer festival at The Brick, and if I have August for my own shows again (or whatever month), have another three or four shows ready for that. I am planning on making one of the shows a restaging of my 1999 production of Richard Foreman's 1966 farce Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville. I would also like to restage That's What We're Here For as one of the others, if I can get the majority of the cast back. I'll see if the play I'm working on, Spell, will be ready to go by the end of the year. Then, I'm planning on starting work on two other projects in January and seeing where they go. I want to have two groups of actors to work on two different shows, and just start rehearsals with no plans, no script. Maybe some visual ideas, thematic links, a handful of sound cues, and perhaps a title (see above). Meet two or three times a month at first, then more and more as the year goes on. Try to have the full shows completely ready to go, with all props, lights, costumes, etc. by mid-May. One show for June, one for August. But for a couple of days, I'm going to enjoy watching things on my brother's GIGANTIC HDTV and home theatre system. Yesterday, he had me calibrate it for him to get the audio and video just right (he trusts and prefers me to do this for him), and I tested it with DVDs of INLAND EMPIRE, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West, and then an HD broadcast of Full Metal Jacket. Nice. I'm going to veg for a bit, I think . . .
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Last Call
Five days and six performances left in this crazy Summer. Here's the promo sent out to my list and posted on my MySpace page:
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Recovery
Weirdly over-tired since Saturday's marathon. I should be tired, sure, but not like this. I have too much to do the rest of the week. I'm going through the standard post-show depression on World Gone Wrong, but unlike most times, I have other shows running as this one closes, so I can't just lie back and recover, I have to keep working for another week -- especially as I have to put an understudy in for the lead part in At the Mountains of Slumberland on Thursday. Got some great shots from the photo call on WGW/WGW. Have them up once they're all in and reprocessed. This gave me some cheer this morning, however -- an early (1968) animated film by Terry Gilliam, pre-Python, which has more than a few ideas plundered for the series and Holy Grail:
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World Gone Wrong Be Going Away
Tonight at 8.00 pm and tomorrow at 4.00 pm will probably be your last chances to ever see my play NECROPOLIS 1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed. I've done it twice, two years apart. It's had it's run. Unless someone wants to pay me to bring it back somewhere, someplace (unlikely), it goes into the storage cage, indefinitely.
Tickets are $10 and available at the door (cash) or in advance (credit card) HERE. Scroll down for more info on location, etc.
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Better Late Than Never
Well, now that I sent out the email blast and all the mid-run publicity stuff, we get the rave review of Succubus/Slumberland I've been hoping and waiting for, for pull quotes and the like.
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How To Spend a Day Off
Today, I have nothing I HAVE to do for the shows. So after some needed Art intake, I'm going to be walking all over the West, Center, and East Villages, Lower East Side, and Tribeca putting cards for the shows at as many Indie Theatres (and rep movie houses, given the noir appeal of WGW/WGW) as I can. I've made up a list of 23 venues to card - some of them will wind up not being open, or not permitting cards from outside venues right now, and I'll find other places to hit along the way, so maybe 25 places total. So, first I have to go over to Duane Reade and buy a bag of strong rubber bands. Then, I go get the boxes of cards for The Necropolis Series and Hobo out of the van, sit down, and make up 25 packets of 20 cards each for each show, and band them (NB: As someone who has run a few theatres, it is POINTLESS and ANNOYING to leave any more than 20 cards at a time at any venue -- they will get knocked to the floor, spread all over the place, mostly not get picked up, and ultimately will wind up in the trash -- put out 20, check back a week later, if some have been taken, fill out the pile to 20 again, no more - for spaces with large display racks - eg; The Kraine - you can maybe spring for 2 piles of 20). Then I bag the packets up (and this is going to be a damned heavy carry, unfortunately . . . 1,000 cards? half of them oversized 8.5x5.5" ones? . . .oy . . .). Go shower, shave, and get clean -- I have a need to feel nice today. Blue contacts and fake teeth in, too. Maybe if it's nice enough, I'll even wear my straw boater in my perambulations (Berit's still out cold, or she might dissuade me from walking out the door with that hat on by calling me a "fop"). Subway to MoMA, check the heavy bag, spend as much goddamn time as I like and need in there to feel right again. See every damn thing in there that I can until I can't see anything right anymore. Then, subway to the Village, start on Vandam. And then, a couple hours of walking -- from Bank, Commerce, Christopher and whatever to Ave. A, Suffolk and whatever to Church and Franklin, and then subway home. So this is the day off. It's a nice one.
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All Over But the Shows
Woke up this morning, went into my normal panic about "What do I have to do on the shows to get them ready RIGHT NOW," and realized that all the shows are now up and running and there's nothing else I have to do for any of them (except replenish programs and the disposable props). I am now quite happy and am sitting back and just enjoying some music by myself for the first time in weeks. Last night, we gave damned good performances of WGW/WGW (for a quiet, good-sized house) and Hobo Got Too High (for a small, wonderfully-reactive house). Today, I have all three programs of four plays to get through -- Succubus/Slumberland at 4.00 pm, WGW/WGW at 8.00 pm, and Hobo at 10.30 pm. Ah, just like the old NADA days. At least I'm not actually in the second half of each of the first two programs.
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Friday Rainy Day Fun Random Ten
Okay performance of WGW/WGW last night. In the house was playwright Jeff Jones, whose 70 Scenes of Halloween I once directed at NADA -- well, kind of, we had to cancel the production because we were being evicted, so we did a weekend of free performances of it as a staged reading (though the actors surprised me by learning almost all their lines anyway and not using scripts except for a scene here and there). Bryan, who was in that production as The Beast, was working box office and had a nice chat with him about it. I hope to restage that production someday. Though I don't think Mr. Jones liked last night's show very much. Oh, well. I don't know if I could get Frank Cwiklik and Michele Schlossberg back to play Jeff and Joan, but I could get Bryan and Christiaan back as The Beast and The Witch -- I don't know why, but its always been important to me that the two couples in that play be played by real-life couples. Jeff Lewonczyk and Hope Cartelli would be great as Jeff and Joan, too, though the image of an onstage young married couple sniping at each other being played by a real-life young married couple might be a bit more uncomfortable when the actor shares the same name as the character. And why just "okay" last night . . ? Well, I've never been able to cure second-show-slump. There's always that big DIP in energy after the cast has gotten one show under their belt and feels like they know what they're doing. A bit low-energy last night. And a little low-attentive. I had fixed the sound a bit, mainly to eliminate the giant pauses I had on the soundtrack between scenes, during the transitions. But I seem to have gone too far, because almost none of the transitions got done on time last night, and people were always still out on stage changing things when a new scene would begin. At the same time, it wasn't only the shorter time, but that people were being a bit slower about it, too. On opening night, everyone was still so jumpy and nervous about getting the transitions right (we didn't rehearse them nearly enough, of course) that they just WENT FOR IT. Last night, I could see the cue line for the transitions happen, which people are supposed to GO on, but there would be a beat and a breath and then they would tentatively start for the stage (not everyone, but enough to make a difference). It got better as the show went on, and the cast realized they had a lot less time to move things, but it was still wonky to the end. So I'm lengthening the transitions a bit, where needed, but I also have to get people to go faster and with more purpose and focus. Berit and I will fix the light cues a bit too, as they should go down faster at the end of every scene (it doesn't encourage people to start moving on a transition when it looks like they'll be walking into a fully-lit scene, though the lights will be changing right along with their move). The transitions are a little harder to deal with on this production, as compared to the 2005 original, because we've replaced the rolling trunk on a dolly with an actual desk, which needs two people to move it (carefully) as opposed to just quickly rolling it into position, and the power cords for the light stands now trail upstage rather than out a downstage aisle, and they tend to get caught on things more (unfortunately, now that they are being controlled from the board, that's where they NEED to go . . .). The show between the transitions, however, was good, if not so sharp as opening night. Tonight I'll take a closer look at whether I should tighten up some of the scenes in dialogue editing or not. My plan for today was to finish the transition-lengthening, drive to The Brick and drop off the new disks, pick up lots of cards for both shows, L Train it into Manhattan and schlep around from theatre to theatre (and a couple of rep movie houses) dropping off packets of cards, hitting as many Fringe NYC venues as I could. But the weather is not so great for this . . . Still, has to get done. Then I'm meeting a friend at The Brick at 3.00 to just hang out for a bit. And around this I want to work on my performance and lines for The Hobo Got Too High, which we'll be actually doing for an audience for the first time tonight. So, maybe I'll just work on my lines and other Brick things, and do the theatre runaround tomorrow. The weather's gotten worse as I've been typing.
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Blessed Relief, or: Baby's First Times Review
Okay, so first, we opened NECROPOLIS 0 and 3: Kiss Me Succubus and At the Mountains of Slumberland last night, and they went quite well. Few little missteps here and there, but not bad. Not bad at all. So we've now "opened" all four of the Gemini CollisionWorks shows at The Brick in August (including the opening night run-thru of Hobo), and we have seven performances left of each of them.
"Hmmmn. Okay, okay. Good. Great! Neat. This will be good for the show. Well, that was . . . wait a minute, he didn't like it very much, did he?" "Oh. Oooh. Oh, dear. Shit. Oh, this isn't good. Dammit. She didn't get it did she? Oh, well, maybe next ti-- wait a minute, did she just spend half the column space saying the show was brilliant?"
Hmmmn. Well, I'm a little unhappy with some of Kalb's criticisms, but not much. I've heard it before about WGW/WGW and other pieces of mine, especially the two-part ones, which, to me, are usually about theme (part one) and variations (part two), with the variants sometimes being a bit minor and subtle. I think of the original pieces that way, musically -- WGW/WGW is a big sprawling symphony for a Wagnerian-sized orchestra; Succubus is a string quartet; Slumberland is a piece for small chamber orchestra. And just as often, scupturally -- you look at the work in space from one side, you think you "get" it, then it is turned 45 degrees and you suddenly get a whole new understanding of the materials, the structure, the way it moves and displaces air, how light falls on it differently, what it means . . . but only if you look closely enough to see the subtle change the different perspective has made.
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Two Openings & A Random Ten Makeup
Last night was opening night of NECROPOLIS 1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed and The Hobo Got Too High. It was preceded by my staying up for 44 straight hours finishing some of the important tech elements for the show, and then dealing with some huge problems that cropped up with them. Fun. That's the longest I've ever stayed awake by far. I've got 6 hours sleep since, so I'm better now. Yesterday was a day of much stress and tension that wound up okay. It was a huge question all day as to whether both or either show would actually be able to open. As it was, we were able to get WGW/WGW going, albeit with reduced tech, and as only three people showed up for Hobo, we begged off doing the show to them (and they were cool about it) and did a runthru for ourselves to get it down better before next time. So we did good, and it will be more beautiful next time.
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accomplished
giddy
restless
cranky
