But Soft, What Paycheck Through Yonder Window is Cut...?

My very awfully busy week last week was every bit as awfully busy as I had imagined. Rewarding, but not in the material sense, as most of the payment I'll receive for said work will take its saccharine-sweet time in getting to me. This I'm afraid is standard practice for the teaching artist (largely what I was, apart from

Romeo Montague

, last week) which is all-too ironic, teaching artists being folks that generally need the money rather immediately. I don't do what I do for money's sake --

obviously

-- but there are times when one needs it more than others, and now is such a time for this guy. As I tried to impart in one of my workshops this week: Work is not a job unless it pays, and a job is not a career unless you are working. But let's assume the institutions will not fall apart completely before I get my checks, and focus on the work. The work is what this branch of my 'blogging is about, after all.

Tuesday was

a workshop

for the Electric Theatre Company's Griffin Conservatory, one in acrobalance. However, my usual teaching partner (my Juliet Capulet) sprained her calf and got a cold in one fell swoop over the weekend, and I was stuck trying to teach partner balancing without being able to demonstrate it. This turned out all right, though, as I had only two students show up and was able to modify the class to a general "physical acting" one, with some balance and tumbling instruction. So for three hours, on the padded floor of our

R&J

set, we three cavorted and grew together a bit. It was the most remedial class I'd taught in a long while, which was actually very nice. It reminded me of how much there is to appreciate in the smallest or most intuitive of movements.

Wednesday was a two-show day, our first, and due to a faulty calendar I managed to schedule my

career workshop

at Marywood right between the two. For a while I was nervous about this, as my central theme would have to be, "Do better than I have." But I learned from the students, who requested some further coverage of acrobalance (I've teased them with it here and there over the last couple of years) and that I talk about

In Bocca al Lupo

. So I called it "Finding Balance," and tried to combine physical activity with discussions about balancing a professional life with a creative one in the theatre. In essence, I was putting this here 'blog on its feet, and I ended up feeling that it went rather well. It's still a fledgling workshop, to be sure, but with a little more organization and some more concrete material I could see myself running it other places. At any rate, the students seemed to get good information out of it, and definitely enjoyed themselves. I like combining thought and action. Feels like acting!

Thursday and Friday, Heather and I

choreographed fights

for North Pocono High's production of

A Midsummer Night's Dream

, which was in itself a kind of workshop, involving as it did students who'd never done any physical theatre at all. Marywood has an up-coming

Midsummers

coming up too, and it's awfully fun to be surrounded by these shows whilst doing

R&J

; popular opinion has it that Shakespeare created them in close conjunction with one another. For North Pocono, we spent all of Thursday teaching stage combat basics, then taught them specific choreography the next day. We had just enough time to do it all, at that, and had to rely on their note-taking and diligence hereafter for any hopes of it sticking. The four actors were wonderfully focused, though, and we would have failed had they not been. Overall, I'm very happy with the work we did. We taught them funny, story- and character-based choreography, and we did it right, without skimping on technique and safety.

Which makes it rather ironic that I got PWN3D by Paris in our fight for Saturday night's performance.

The performances went fine this week, though we had considerably smaller audiences across the board compared to our preview, pay-what-you-can nights last week. I came to feel quite a bit more at home in Romeo this week, and truly, even the quiet audiences seemed to get a lot out of the show (I usually disdain that "they were quiet, but

really attentive

" excuse for bad shows -- these I do not think were those). I had a big week for visitors; my parents came Friday night, and

Wife Megan

and

Friend Patrick

saw it both Saturday, and for Sunday's matinee. This is the first Zuppa show Patrick's been able to catch, which made it an absolute thrill for me. Sunday morning the director thought that these audience members might be part of the reason my performance was the way it was. He said it was a very good show, but that I was just

this close

to playing more for myself than for Romeo; nearly showing off, to put a finer point on it. He asked me to just be careful, and relax.

So the past couple of days have had a cherry a-top my gradually built sundae of doubt about continuing as I have with Zuppa del Giorno. No conclusions as yet, but me, I am a'thinkin' . . .

But the real news! I got punched! In the eye! Yes, in our climactic battle, I accidentally got a shiner from one Conor McGuigan; and yes, I'm sorta proud. I don't think I've ever had a black eye before and, in spite of speaking in verse at the time, this one was pretty Fight Club-y. The move was a down punch to the face, where I am kneeling and he stands over me. Among his other virtues, Conor's got bony knuckles, and at least one of them connected with my brow that night. The effect is rather like my left eyelid is stuck in a Boy George video -- lovely, deep purples, but only on the lid. A little concealer does the trick for shows, and now I get to make up stories about what a tough/hilariously clumsy guy I am.

It made for good conversation in my audition today. I hadn't planned on returning to New York these days off, but got a call V-day about auditioning for a Lexis-Nexis web spot and decided to shell out for the bus ticket again. It was quite an out-of-the-blue opportunity; I was plucked from the casting files of one

Lisa Milinazzo

, but for the life of me, I can't remember what, if any, connection we share. The bad news is that the filming dates conflict with the final shows of

R&J

, and are thereby impossible for me, but the good is that the audition went great. I seem to get these opportunities to play straight-faced businessmen that are actually funny and run with them. This was another case in which they asked me to improvise around the script and loved what I came up with. (I really, really need to parlay this type into some live show that will get me noticed by agentry.) Casting people for

The Office

, please note: I am your guy in spades. I even know Scranton! Come on!

I'm looking forward to this final week of the show being rather more relaxed. Even our two-show Thursday should seem a breeze, compared to last Wednesday. My first order of business upon returning to Scranton tomorrow will be to attend a rehearsal of Marywood's

A Midwinter Night's Dream

, which I'm very much looking forward to (their actual performances conflict with ours). Then I hope to spend my days getting resumes out for the next gig, 'blogging more, and beginning the first revision process on

Hereafter

. That's not exactly relaxed, I guess. But it sounds wonderful . . .

Short Shrift

Quick one here, as we've a manatee this afternoon, and I'm busily preparing for a quick trip home afterward for my day-and-a-half off. The coming week will be jam-packed for me: Shows, teaching acrobalance to the theatre's

conservatory class

(sans my usual teaching partner), teaching a workshop on career management at

Marywood

, and choreographing fights for North Pocono's

Midsummer's

(you may recall our teaching there

back in October

). My hope, however, is to do a proper entry about some of the process behind

The Very Nearly Perfect Comedy of Romeo & Juliet

sometime tomorrow, between getting my tax paperwork straight and working the kinks out of my rather bruised body.

For today, I just want to say thanks to everyone for their thoughts and encouragement in seeing us through this process. It seems to have been a project that has inspired a lot of enthusiasm in people, and created a certain synergy in the community -- both the local community, and the larger, meta-community of our far-and-wide friends and family. I was reminded of this vast, unseen network of support in a couple of ways in the past twelve hours. Last night, after the show, I was greeted by several students from both Marywood and North Pocono who had attended. This was a big deal to me. It's a kind of community that is only created by open sharing, and a willingness to learn, and I can not value it highly enough.

And then this morning, a different kind of reminder. I woke a bit groggy from a late bedtime, and lingered in bed, checking my email on my phone (not even thinking of

casting news

, I assure you). In my inbox was not one, but two messages from friends letting me know that I showed up in their dreams last night. One is a friend whom I haven't seen in years, that worked with me on the very first show I ever acted in with David Zarko as director, and the other is a friend who lives all the way out in merry olde England. I regard it as an unequivocal good omen when I show up in others' dreams. This is the kind of thing that I'm sure I have Facebook to thank for, yet I also feel that it's owed in part to the power of this play. It's the kind of story that signifies so much to so many that it has only to be mentioned and one finds oneself making strong associations, and perhaps thinking of younger times. That alone is reason to do a funny, mad-cap version of

Romeo & Juliet

; that alone is worth the work and tears. Thanks, everyone, for keeping the star-cross'd lovers alive in your hearts.

Also, in one of their dreams: I was Han Solo. That's neither here nor there, but I had to mention it...

Classic Construction

NOTE:

This is an older entry, only being posted now, because I can haz bizyness...

So. As I have

noted

in

previous

posts

, Zuppa del Giorno has been building up for a while now to the project in which we are now embroiled in earnest --

a comic version of

Romeo & Juliet

. What may not have been entirely clear from my previous posts (largely because it was not entirely clear to me at the time of said posting) was just how ambitious and ridiculous this adventure would be. I mean: Really. We are reinterpreting the play using traditions of commedia dell'arte and clowning, verse and prose and improvised dialogue, not to mention passages spoken in Italian. The set is being built specifically to be sturdy and climbable, the floor is padded for falls and it is looking somewhat optimistic for Juliet's bed to be, in fact, a circus silk from which

Friend Heather

and I can hang and climb. We have two Italian collaborators working with us, one of whom is a maestro of the commedia dell'arte. We've been at it for little over a week now, and we're definitely finding our stride, with maybe ten days' real rehearsal left before tech rehearsals begin.

It's all very exciting. And difficult. And

cold

. Why didn't anyone tell me it would be this

cold

?

(They did; I just didn't listen.)

"So how is it going?" I hear you ask from behind the folds of the interwebs, your multitudinous voices betraying just the slightest strain of deep-seated desperation? Be calm, Dear Readers, or, as Angelo Crotti screams at Romeo when he's a little more than worked up: "

CALME TE!

" It is going well. As with any theatrical enterprise, the show is not shaping up to be exactly what I imagined, but that is probably for the best. There's a lot risk in it now, and certainly a great deal more variety. For example, I was thrown to discover just how much of the scenework would involve improvisation over the text, and for a couple of days I wanted to gouge my eyes out with icicles of my own anxiety. That sounds bad, I know, but neither is it hyperbole. I really get that worked up over the work. Hopefully you'll give me the benefit of the doubt, and see this as evidence of my passion for what I make. The fact is, I'm not making this show -- I'm helping to make it, and it needs to be what it will be. So I'm finding peace in the idea of a show with ample modern language mixed in with the Shakespeare; and anyway, I overreacted. The original text is proving just as virulent as contempo-speak. Our Mercutio, potentially the least comfortable with the original text (next to the Italians) frequently slips into the original text mid-improvisation. Billy-boy just wrote good, and it's that simple. That having been said, the man did write a whole lot, and the past few days have been much-consumed with line-memorization for yours truly.

It's rather like this thus far, all-in-all: Today was great work, yesterday was terrible, tomorrow -- who knows? And that's part of the joy. Where will it all lead? Hopefully to many laughs, and at least a couple of well-earned tears. That's all I ever ask for, really, from the theatre.

North Pocono High: Day 4

This has been an incredibly physical day for us. I'd say it stands close to our rehearsal process for

Legal Snarls

for sheer continual physical work. (Though not even close to

Silent Lives

, for which we each became demi-gods of falling down, and from great heights.) In Shakespeare we worked on character archetypes, in P.E. we moved ahead into actual acrobalance instruction, which we continued into the acting class. Most exhausting, really, was the second gym class, for which we have somewhere from sixty to seventy students, the same class we had third period Monday. I could use a good, soothing cup of tea with lemon and honey. Fortunately, my only obligation tonight is dinner with

Friend John Beck

. I'll be sore in the morning, but not for lack of rest and placid recreation.

It was a fitful night of sleep for me, I confess. We were tackling a lot of new stuff today, and I suppose I was still riding out my left-over anxiety from yesterday's interruption. Heather and I allowed ourselves a slow internal warm-up in the process of getting coffee, getting there and getting into a constructive mental space. By the time our first class started filtering in, though, we had found ourselves again, and the class went great. Our sponsor there, Geri Featherby, happened to be there to observe, and wasn't disappointed by the physical characterizations we managed to coax out of that room full of teenagers. It's a lot of fun to explain to high schoolers that, yes, it's perfectly valid to

try

different things, to add their own interpretations to an ongoing cultural conversation. As we explained to them commedia tropes like the dottoring Dottore, full of hot air, and the greedy Pantalone's money-pouch placement (directly over his codpiece), they saw how free they were to interpret a character. Eventually we had a sort of runway demonstration of their contemporary takes on the archetypes. It was very funny, very original, very gratifying.

The P. E. classes were ones we had a lot of uncertainty about. How can we teach safe acrobalance to so many? You may recall that

Friend Patrick

and I had a similar class size at the

KC/ACTF of 2007

, but that was all college-age theatre enthusiasts. Here were we dealing not only with a mixed group of high-school ages, but ones who had neither heard of our work, nor had any immediate context for what we relatively strange persons were about to subject them. In acrobalance, there are inescapable challenges regarding trust. It seemed we had unintentionally set a similar challenge for ourselves and our students simply in proposing to teach them this skill. It went . . . great. Really. It did! My voice may be a little gravelly (read: extra sexy) for a week or more, but the students were attentive and interested and -- and this is really the best part -- daring. We just taught them an angel, the most core move of the style of acrobalance I learned, but that's plenty scary enough. And everyone had a go for at least one turn of basing, flying or spotting (potentially the most important position). Some tried more than one role. We had them in groups of four, created by first having them make a pair and then match themselves to another pair, which I strongly recommend. It saved time, and got people interacting as members of a team more immediately.

As I said above, the day ended with

still more acro!

This time with our theatre kids. We taught them a thigh stand (just to mix it up a bit), and I was reminded of how effective this work can be with ensemble-building. There are all different types in this class, and I suspect all different motivations for being there. In working on thigh stand, we did it all together, one pair at a time, with everyone else spotting in a tight circle. It was a great feeling. The pair was insulated by their peers, and in this way we managed to get some people to participate who might otherwise have quickly bowed out. I would have preferred that everyone try either flying or basing (a couple opted only to spot) but we had a majority anyway, and some tried both positions. At the end, there was a very good feeling of accomplishment in the class, which is something we've been struggling for most of the week with them.

Rest. Meatloaf (the food; not the music). Tiger Balm (TM). Tomorrow we close the show.

North Pocono High: Day 3

Today was, in many ways, unexpected. We ended up teaching two-and-a-half classes today, because just as we were ready to start the second period, the school went into a lock-down. I was confused by this; I'd never heard the term before. For those of you who haven't spent a lot of time around a high school in recent history, a lock-down is a sort of policy enacted in the interests of the students' safety in a time of crisis, or investigation. On notice, everyone goes into their respective classrooms and lock the doors. Well, one of these got timed for today in such a way that we missed out on teaching second-period Phys. Ed. class. To be fair, the announcement apparently informed people that they could continue teaching (it seemed it was simply for a drug check; they brought in drug-sniffing dogs), but they don't get all the announcements in the gymnasium and so we spent over an hour sitting, silent, instead. It's a good practice, given what can happen in a school these days. I was completely unaware of it prior to today.

Before all that, though, we had a great Shakespeare class in the auditorium. Our emphasis today was on the improvisation tenet, "When in doubt, breathe out," and we worked with the students on diaphragmatic breathing, enunciation and diction, and projection. I've been using horse stance to encourage the students to have a strong base for their breath, and they kind of hate it, but in a good, collective groan kind of way. It's working; they're really learning to relax the parts of their bodies they're not using, to ground themselves and deliver powerful voice from the diaphragm. After breathing drills and vocal warm-ups, we ran them through a diction drill, using:

"To sit in solemn silence

on a dull, dark dock,

in a pestilential prison

with a life-long lock,

awaiting the sensation

of a short, sharp shock

from a cheap and chippy chopper

on a big black block."

Then we practiced as a group throwing our voices to the back corner of the auditorium and delivering dialogue with power, before taking individuals up on stage with a line from their scene work and working them through clarity and intention in delivery. Heather and I would take turns coaching the student on stage and standing at the rear of the space, checking for clarity and projection. It was continued good work from this early group. Sadly, time got away from us again and we didn't get to everyone, but we made sure the rest of the class paid attention and practiced good audience habits. Hopefully some of what we do will stick, and they'll continue a practice. Tomorrow we plan to explore the use of character archetypes in Shakespeare (which I'm very much looking forward to), and we'll be back in the auditorium Friday to pull it all together.

Our one gym class was abbreviated to just barely a half an hour, so we kept the freshmen and sophomores in their street clothes and sped them through stretching and the most basic partner balances. Everyone was fairly hyperactive after the excitement/anxiety of the lock-down, but we managed to come together by the end of the half-period, and circle push-ups are always good for a bonding experience. We've ended every class thus far with this conditioning exercise. The way it works is that you have everyone in a circle (a rather large circle in our case) and put them in the "up" position of a push-up. When you tell them they only have to do one push-up, they relax a bit. When you tell them we're doing them one-at-a-time, and everyone must stay in the "up" position until we're through, they groan, but don't quite grasp just how hard they'll be working by the end. As it progresses, the energy builds, people moan and groan, but they're enduring together, so that by the end you can give them a choice: to keep it up, or join you in a set of ten or twenty push-ups more. Maybe this seems like torture to you, Gentle Reader? I can only say that, if you're there, you feel the camaraderie afterwards.

In our last class of the day, we revisited improvisation and set some new challenges for the students. We began with more team-building games -- group counting again, and blob tag. After a quick review of the improvisation principles, we set the students to two games: What Are You Doing? and Sit, Stand, Lie. In doing these, we asked them to remember to respond with a "Yes, and" attitude, and all that good stuff. WAYD is good for getting students to react impulsively, and rely on one another for their actions, and SSL reminds the participants that they need to pay close attention to one another if they hope to build a story together. The interesting thing about game play in this context is trying to keep the emphasis more on teamwork, less on competition. The games tend to teach themselves in this regard; they work better when people are working together. However, more inexperienced improvisers need encouragement to leave their safety zones, to trust their scene partners more and more . . . and still more. It was difficult to invite this observation in such a short time, but that's just the nature of a school day. If we get one thing across in our remaining days in this class, I'd like it to be a priority for fostering trust, for creating ensemble. Tomorrow we'll tackle this by way of acrobalance work. The physical can often be a quicker teacher than the conceptual.