Ta-Da

It hath been a most manic week.

This week promises to be still more so.

Last Monday and Tuesday,

Friend Heather

came into town from luxurious Scranton and for two evenings we attempted to cobble together a show to take to festivals in Italy. Just the two of us. (Yet without using that song, in spite of it being stuck in my head for weeks now.)

Wednesday and Thursday evenings were my only times to pack for my move this week.

Friday I worked for

NYU's school of film

, acting in short scenes for their student directors as a part of a "blocking exercise." That was the first part of the day, and then I travelled to Queens to secure storage space, and then I and

Fiancee Megan

were off to Virginia for what turned out to be a seven-hour bus ride.

Virginia was a welcome break from running about arranging moving logistics and rehearsal times, but not so much a "break" entirely. (Though I

did see Friend Davey and his lovely SigOth

, which was rad.) There was much to prepare for The Big Show. I'm taking to calling the wedding "The Big Show." I rationalized to Fiancee Megan that calling it such would justify my writing off travel and such as business expenses, and she gave me one of those wry looks that says, "You're so funny I can just restrain myself from kicking you shin-wardly."

Monday's bus ride was thankfully much briefer; largely I was thankful because Friend Heather was making yet another trip into the city that evening to develop our Italian show (working title:

The Really-Awfully-Good-Show Show

[

The "RAGS" Show

]). We met up in Central Park, unable to find rehearsal space in time, and headed directly to Sheep Meadow to make public foolery in the name of Art. Whilst crossing the meadow, someone called my name and we connected with Friends Austin and Sara from

Corporate Carnival

, enjoying their holiday as well any red-blooded American should. We could not dally, however, and rehearsed acro and clown bits 'til the sun went down. While we were doing so, a gentleman by the name of

Oz Sultan

filmed us, interjecting direction, quite without our invitation. Ah, New York! (To his great credit, he did give me his card so I could get a copy.)

Heather's also in town because this week we're performing our clown duet,

Death + A Maiden

, as a part of

Emerging Artists Theatre

's comedy festival,

Laugh Out Loud

. That's Wednesday. Tuesday I'm performing in the same festival, solo, with a stage adaptation of my party piece featuring my silent-film-esque character, Lloyd Schlemiel (last featured at

Friend Melissa

's

benefit for her company

,

Kinesis Project Dance Theatre

). I've had not a moment to work on this piece, and am terrified for tonight.

Then Thursday is my only evening to move, after work. Friday brings more rehearsal.

It's crazy to love this.

Incorporation

Next week I'll be performing a show twice daily down at the World Financial Center, under the auspices of

The Women's Project

. The show is called

Corporate Carnival

, and is much as it sounds -- a sort of carnival (though more circus) celebration (though more satire) of corporate America (though more capitalist America at large). It will be performing in the

"Winter Garden" section

, May 14 - 16, showtimes at 1:00 and 7:00, and the 15th thrice, the previous times plus a 4:00. We earn our money over there at The Women's Project, fo' sho'.

The show itself is interesting to me for a return to collaborative creation and my status within it. I'm one of a sort of inconsequential chorus called "The Temps." We burst through between main acts with commercial-like interruptions, and supplement the other actors' "scenes." We're also on stage even when we're "backstage," owing to the nature of our staging the show in an open area, and we're all responsible for developing a "greenshow" act. Greenshow acts are sort of a roving warm-up before the main stage begins, especially useful in this format because they get people's attention by adhering to a busking style. So we're doing all that (see above "fo' sho'"), but our additions to the show itself are not necessarily especially skilled. I'm stilting for one commercial, but for the most part the Temps' contributions aren't particularly physically demanding. In spite of the many circumstantial similarities between this project and the work of

Cirque Boom

and

Kirkos

(particularly Cirque Boom's

Circus of Vices and Virtues

, in which I played a stilt-walking businessman), they're very different in that regard.

I've had to create a lot of self-generated output recently. So much, in fact, that today I began to worry for the first time if I wasn't just recycling and regurgitating. This is due in part to hammering out an outline for a potential performance piece (pah pah pah) for Italy, under the auspices of

Zuppa del Giorno

. I took the three archetypal clowns we portrayed in

Silent Lives

, and bits and sequences from all our shows (Zuppa-related or no), added a dash of some of my favorite stage conventions and voilà! A . . . show! Of sorts! I kind of hate it! But the idea is that we'll all get into a room together soon (somehow) and develop it, or something that doesn't resemble it in the slightest. Not sure which one I'm hoping for at this point.

Sludging through this effort reminded me of working on my clown film (see

3/27/08

), in that I was writing out actions more than words, trying to tell a story through humorous, true deeds and bits. It was also reminiscent of the film in that I was frequently stuck, trying to figure out how to go on from a given point, and I've been feeling pretty stuck on the film script as well. It seems that once Our Hero (this is what I've been calling the clown character in the script) gets out of Central Park, I have very little direction for him. And now, after a couple of weeks of contributing to generate original scenes for

Corporate Carnival

, I have to develop a greenshow act for it, and I'm drawing blank. It's a little like I've run out of gas. Cough! Cough! Sputtterrrrr . . .

Yet on Sunday (see

5/5/08

), with eager and communicative collaborators, the ideas were flowing like gasoline in the 1990s. Perhaps what I need to do is engage in dialogue with someone who is inclined to be energetic about this kind of thing. Perhaps, too, I need to just get out of my mind and into my body. That was definitely a key element in Sunday's successful creation. This block may be entirely symptomatic, in fact, of a period of relative creative isolation of late. I started writing the clown film when I was between day jobs, and there were no theatre commitments, and very little energy on my part going into find them. At the time I viewed my individual effort as reclaiming a little of my work for myself (as part of my process of dealing with letting go of

As Far As We Know

[see

1/15/08

]), and so it was. Yet it was also a retreat.

That's the nice thing about work. As long as you're doing it, you're working.

I'm Not a'Scared of You

Things are picking up.

I don't want to go into much detail, because a lot of the work opportunities that I have coming up have yet to be variously accepted, detailed and signed-on-the-dotted-line. I'm talking here, of course, about acting work. There's also nothing necessarily career-making in the bunch. I mean, you never know, and hope springs eternal, and every rose has its thorn (what?), but speaking in the immediate sense, Spielberg has yet to call. (Although I'm presently

in negotiations with Romero

.) I know this is typically applied to

bad

news, but the following expression keeps cropping up for me: When it rains, it pours. What follows is as vague a summary as I can express.

Monday I am previewing a space in which I will be stilting and/or clowning for a benefit on May 12. The very next day begins rehearsals for an environmental theatre piece I'll be doing, the which I have yet to receive a specific rehearsal schedule on, but which I also know will perform May 14 through 17. On the 30th of this month, I'll be playing a featured extra in a silent film someone's making (bizarre: I'm not the only one). At a certain point in mid-May, I've promised to do my best to get out to Wilkes-Barre, PA, to stilt in a "Fine Arts Fiesta" (ole!). I'm in negotiations to help develop a physical theatre piece starting rehearsals some time in May, and retreating to near Port Jervis in June for two weeks to work intensively. For four days at the end of May, beginning of June, I'm also rehearsing and performing a staged reading of a play I've acted for variously through its stages of development over the past couple of years, in the hopes it gets picked up for a New York run. And also in June, Zuppa del Giorno is attempting to recruit for

a commedia dell'arte workshop

to raise money to go to Italy in July, said workshop to run over the course of two weekends.

And I won't attempt to get into July. Maybe we'll be going to Italy, maybe not. There are definitely, however, 3-4 workshops in Pennsylvania to be taken and led, not to mention the further life of whatever I'm working on May-June that continues apace.

This all comes after a few months of relative inactivity on the theatre front. I kept busy with readings and development workshops, and not to underrate such work in any way (oh no; I'd never do

that

), but that sort of thing is always at least a bit limited in several ways. I have been craving work, and not just work, but work that leads to some sort of fulfilled product. So this(these) is(are) a(all) good thing(s). A(All) great thing(s)! All in all, a(all) grood thing(s). Cause for celebration. Hip, hip--!

Oh crap. What if I lose the job I just got months ago to replace the one I lost because I couldn't commit to being there from month-to-month? Oh crap. How am I going to juggle this work and keep it all, without pissing people off or seeming unreliable? Oh crap. Where is the money going to come from for all the obligatory expenses I've literally scheduled for myself in the coming year? Oh crap. Do I still remember how to act? Oh crap. What if one of these gigs is phenomenally over my head, like

A Lie of the Mind

often felt last year? Oh crap. This is a lot of physical stuff, and I'm out of shape and haven't resolved my pelvic injury. Oh crap. Come June, I can't sublease my apartment anymore. Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh--!

It's vexing, going through these stages. It seems as though success always brings anxiety with it. I'd be kidding myself to say that none of this is guilt-related. The world tries very hard to tell us that we are failures as human beings if we're having too much fun in our work and not making a lot of money, and it's continual--though not constant--work to remind myself that this is just not so. The larger part of the anxiety, however, is owing to hope. Hope

may

be constant, to varying degrees. Every time a good run of work comes my way, there is within it the hope for it to continue, and continue, and continue. In the summer of '06, for example, I had enough to spend three months straight on continuous work. It was difficult, involved a lot of bouncing around and scrounging what money I could make, but it was also blissful in its way. And it was a time when my hopes for a full-time acting career felt more realized than they ever had before.

The most accessible allegory I can think of has to do with love. Bear with me. (Or, just sign off. Hell: I'll never know.) Every time a period of work ends, with no further work in sight, it feels similar to a break-up. When a potential new love comes your way, you get scared. Frightened not just of it failing, but of the promise of the new potential succeeding as it never has before, and what that will mean. Things will change. A dream just might be realized, against impossible odds and in the most unpredictable ways, and if it does it will change your life. Maybe for the better, but who's to say? The point is, you want the possibility of it so much, you have to overcome the fear. You have to make some big mistakes, take some big hits, keep going. You have to take the chance. Again. And again.

Here we go.

Nobody Nose the Trouble I Seen

Remember way back in the day (which was

10/26/07

[in which I also first shared Zuppa del Giorno's idea for

a clown

R&J

]), when I mentioned wanting to script a clown film? Well, thanks to the gracious support of my fellow Exploding Yurts and Friend Davey, I've actually made a really strong start on it. As with most projects, I'm finding that actually working on it (as opposed to just going on and on about it as an idea I once had) is teaching me a lot and raising interesting questions. I thought I'd share some of these questions with you, Dear Reader, and solicit your opinions. Don't be shy if you're new to the Aviary. I'm an actor. The only thing I crave over approval is attention.

• Why is it so flim-flammed important to me to make something involving a red-nose clown? (This might be a bit rhetorical to start out with, but it's come up for me lately.) As I write, I see that more and more what I'm writing is something like a silent film, full of visual (physical) behavior and sight gags. And the silent film clowns pretty much proved that no nose is good nose. (Sorry, sorry. That...I really couldn't help it.) And everyone I talk to seems to respect that, from performers to non. Yet for some reason apart even from a clever plot device, I find the nose necessary.

• Is it important for me to track a specific learning curve for my character? In a conventional story, I would be inclined to quickly reply: Yes. This one, however.... In many of the silent films of yesteryear, the storytellers didn't so much worry about that, and many of such as these films are the funniest and most memorable. Buster Keaton was fond of saying that a good movie should be able to be summarized on the back of a postcard, and then extrapolated upon. That would certainly describe my conceit. It's just possible that the key is to tie it all together in the end in a satisfying way, and make the journey there as unpredictable as possible.

• Am I screwing myself by planning almost everything to be shot in public places?

• Should I start filming it as an episodic web series? I'm a little sick of these; everyone I know seems to be doing them, but few do them well (Friend Jason has a good one: Three Percent Enemies) and frankly it seems to me the market is a bit glutted. Still, I understand the appeal. Low budget, near-instant product and feedback, not to mention the ability to disguise oneself as a tourist whilst filming in public places. The outline I'm developing definitely lends itself to this format, too, divided as it is into segments comprised of short incidents of action. Still and all, I have my reservations.

I continue to write on it when I can. The trimming -- which is always the tricky part for me -- will be arduous, but perhaps made slightly easier by the constraints of time and money. Just like at the beginning of a collaborative process, I find myself relishing right now, when all is possible and the ideas fly about willy-nilly.

Update--4/2/08:Friend Davey seems to think that my movie is going to be optioned, taken over by mindless Hollywood moguls with warped priorities, and recast. At least I have to assume that's what he meant when he sent me this link. Thanks, Fuzzy.

The Courage to Collaborate

Not too long ago (though and hey: where the heck did March go already?) I was writing about my disillusionment with the collaborative work I had been doing of late (see

1/18/08

). Now I am suffused anew with the natural light of a hard-won, worthwhile collaborative experience. Am I fooling myself? Does this gratitude spring more from my frustration over the lately lack of long-term work in my life, or is it genuine and in response to reclaiming the better bits of collaboration?

I was gone last week. Did you miss me? (<--rhetorical) I was in Pennsylvania once again, working. Whilst there I taught various workshops, thanks in large part to the efforts of Friend Heather, and worked with

The Northeast Theatre

and

Zuppa del Giorno

in initial efforts and training for a new original show. Well, somewhat original, at any rate. You may notice a new link to the left under the "Hugin" heading.

Zuppa del Giorno is taking on

Romeo & Juliet

.

So last June the gang (gang this time: David Zarko, Heather Stuart, Todd d'Amour and yours truly) was sitting around the breakfast table in Italy, pondering a perfect project for collaboration with Italian artists as we sipped our espresso, munched our Nutella(R) plastered bread and peered out at the castle on the opposite peak. Thus encumbered by effort, we managed to mention

R&J

, and it tickled our fancy. (Fancy tickling being perfectly legal---nay, encouraged--in Europe.)

Romeo & Juliet

had, in a way, haunted us from our first trip to Italy, when we visited

Civita di Bagnoregio

by night and discovered that all those seemingly over-wrought

R&

J set designs, full of giant boulders and myriad irregular balconies, were in fact quite accurate. David said to me, "You're into Shakespeare, right?" I thought,

I am? Oh yeah! I am!

It had been so long for me, I had literally forgotten how much I loved studying and acting in Shakespeare's plays.

I can't recall who first suggested it be a clown show. (See

3/14/08

, paragraph 2.)

Cut to last week, and six Zuppianni,

local actor

Conor McGuigan, Italian actor

Andrea Brugnera

, and clown director

Mark McKenna

, playing at different times in the conveniently inactive space on Spruce Street. It was amazing. Sure, there were times when we couldn't communicate well, both due to linguistic differences and differences of vocabulary within the same language. There were many moments of being on stage and thinking/praying, "Dear God...send me an idea, please." There were even mornings when we arrived at the theatre and the consensus was that it was the last place we wanted to be. But every time we played, if we played long enough, we made beautiful discoveries. Commedia lazzi hundreds of years old surprised us with laughter. Clowns telling us a story we knew by heart, even while inserting punchlines, made us cry. And through all of it was a sense that we were somehow being reunited, even with those people with whom we had never played before.

I have often said that the beginning of a collaboration is my favorite part, the part when all the possibility seems most present. It's when the show still has the luxury of existing in your mind just as you want it to be, before any compromises, before anyone really knows anything, before argument, ego and expectation pressurize the palate. In the past year I've been forced--forced, because it's quite against my will--to accept the possibility that any collaboration may end in tears or, worse, sighs of resignation. But hope springs eternal, I suppose. Especially when one is so surrounded by brilliant friends.