Viva Italia!

Ciao, bello/a. Come stai? Buono/a. Io? Bene, bene, grazie. Ma ho stancissimo, perche sono "jetlagged." Forse. Anche forse perche molto movemente questa volta in Italia.

Believe it or not, my Italian has improved, despite the evidence to the contrary that I willfully submit above (the which is all kinds of wrong, and took me about an hour to put together). It is still woefully inadequate, though, and I'll have to do something about that in the coming months, because Zuppa del Giorno's prospects in Italy -- not to mention other work in conjunction with Italian artists -- is blossoming. We are in the springtime of our, uh . . . soup.

Sorry. Still blaming the jetlag.

Well. I really wanted to catalogue the whole trip day-by-day, as I did last June, but since I killed my laptop in the (actual) spring, and as we tend to go a bit rustic when we visit Madonna Italia, it was not to be. I could try to recreate that effect but, well, it would be pretty boring. Not because we did so little, but because we did so much of the same thing in our first week. We WORKED. As you know from my last entry, Heather and I had to throw a show together specifically for this visit and (as you know from either experience or my previous writings or both) such a process takes exactly as long as it takes. No rushing it. Which means you either give it the time, or you don't. We did, and to the greatest extent we could manage between two American cities and mired in the swamp that is jetlag.

The flight out was delayed an astonishing four hours, all told. It was just Heather and I -- David and the theatre's stage manager, Marybeth Langdon, had preceded us on the 6th. For those of you who've never flown overseas, let me tell you: There is no good time to do it. I thought we were all set, flying overnight. I would just sleep through the thing, losing hours left, right and center, and awake at about noon in sunny Italy. Instead, I slept for maybe a combined hour-and-a-half and awoke around 4:00 in a somewhat less-than-sunny Italy. In fact, it rained daily for the entire first week, and some nights we built a fire in the divinely-bequeathed fireplace our little villa provided. Altogether oddly arduous. But enough of the fluff; on to the stuff.

We've developed our own little community of artists and business folk in central Italy, and that became evident as it determined our schedule on this trip. Rehearsals for Love Is Crazy, But Good were broken up with (and, in one case, integrated into) daily meetings with various of our contacts. Normally these were meetings that coincided with meals or coffee, which is the nice thing about our particular experience of Italy. And, because the US-dollar exchange rate is horrible horrible horrible at present, this often meant inviting folks to lunch or dinner at our place out in the country. (Fortunately for us, David Zarko is a masterly amateur chef.) And that meant that Heather and I spent a lot of time on the patio, either eating or developing the act.

One of our most exciting departures from this scene was to spend time with Angelo Crotti, a new friend there whom we met through Andrea Brugnera. Angelo is an Italian actor specializing in commedia dell'arte and other forms of comic physical theatre; he's been practicing it all his life, and it shows, as he travels internationally to perform and teach. Our introduction to him was to watch him teach a class in traditional commedia dell'arte forms and lazzi to some of Andrea's students, the day after Heather and I arrived. He did some fascinating stuff, that we'll promptly steal and incorporate into our workshops. Perhaps unavoidably, we eventually got wrapped up in the action, in spite of our jet-lagged states. He showed us some incredible animal forms that demanded serious physical commitment AND conditioning, and we were generally working up quite a sweat for a while. LOVED IT. Then we made the mistake of sitting down on a break, and both Heather and I promptly engaged in a struggle against overpowering needs to sleep. That was okay, we figured, because Angelo began the next section with brief lectures on the commedia masks and their corresponding characters. As the comfortable Italian speech pranced merrily over us, he moved on to asking the students to take a mask and perform a solo bit of dialogue with the audience in it. Good, good . . . watching students . . . mustn't take their time away from them, now . . . just . . . watch . . .

Huh-uh. We sure did get called on. "No, no," I feebly protested in my pigeon Italian, "Studenti. Studenti. No occupado (was that Spanish, Jeff?) questa volta." They weren't having it and, frankly, I was a little sick of myself as I said it, too. But, damn, was I spent. It turned out the students were working with Angelo the next day as well, so there was plenty of time for everyone, and up I went to choose a mask from the edge of the beautiful Teatro Boni stage. There they all were, and I waited for one to speak to me. I'm pretty familiar with commedia masks, but have trouble distinguishing sometimes, mainly owing to a certain amount of misinformation I've processed in the years of my informal education on the subject. For example, I had learned at some time that Pantalone had a long nose, because he was "nosey" and a phallic character. Well, he often is, but it turns out that Capitano is the one more famous for having a prominent phallus on his face, and Pantalone can have a hook or squarish nose as well. So I stood there, throwing out my presumptive conclusions, and just picked a mask which appealed. It was yellow-brown-er than the rest, with no hair accents, but lots of wrinkles and a hook nose. The point of the exercise was to improvise the mask's nature based on how it looked and felt, but I felt obliged to announce I didn't know who I had gotten as I left the stage to make my entrance. Turns out I had gone right ahead and picked up Pulcinella.

Pulcinella holds a certain fascination for me, not the least of which is owing to a desire Heather and I have to someday create our own show based on the Punch & Judy puppet theatre of Victorian England ("Punch" was inspired by commedia troupes' various "Pulcinelli"). He's also a tricky one, as his overall shape seemed to evolve from a couple of different regions of Italy, and thereby his personality can be a bit more mercurial than some. Plus he rarely gets mentioned in what I've read and heard about the standard characters; he's well-known enough, but somewhat amorphous. Typically--from what I understand--he's a trickster, with a hunch back and a prominent belly. At that moment, however, I tried to wipe all that from my mind and briefly regard the mask offstage (as Friend Patrick taught me to do) for clues about who he would make me before breathing in and putting him on.

Let me just interrupt myself to say that, though it read as a certain groggy fear at the time, it was an absolute thrill to step out on a classical Italian stage and perform in mask for a couple of actors trained in commedia dell'arte.

My mask (for truly, I made no effort toward Pulcinella once I set foot on stage) worked pretty well for me, I think. Everyone performed through a sort of guided interview with Angelo, which was interesting in this case owing to his emphatic English and my god-awful Italian, but we did get along. I began as a rather obstinate fellow, with a supportive cushion of arrogance around him that held up his body in quirky ways -- a hip raised, hands bent outward from the wrists, bird-like neck, all very vain, yet through energy instead of ease. It was (I believe) as though I knew I was the greatest, yet also knew I had to convince everyone else of it as well. I thought of the Italians (to generalize grossly for a moment) and how they all seem to be great about putting what they've got out there and loving it, and so I did that as a guy who really didn't have anything to brag about, but didn't know it. Eventually Angelo quizzed him (me) on how to seduce a woman, and I claimed complete expertise, saying and demonstrating all it took was a rapidly thrust hip from me. He had me bring up a couple of students and work it on them, and I got to play with success, selling something as success, and undeniable failure which is promptly denied. It was great fun.

Angelo -- who is also simply an incredibly funny guy, with what seems like a kind word for everyone and an endless need to be active -- also helped us with our piece two days later. The beginning of that rehearsal, I can confidently say, was the lowest point of my mood and confidence in what we were planning to perform on Saturday. We demonstrated what we had first thing, and it suddenly felt woefully inadequate, trite, and a really, really bad idea altogether. It was Thursday, two days before we were set to perform in Il Teatro che Cammina, and it was grim. I was embarrassed, frankly, and frustrated with the circumstances of our constantly pulling things together at the last minute, never seeming to have the money or time to develop or explore, and all that was really a jagged veneer of emotion covering fear: maybe I'm just not cut out for this work. Ugh. So bad.

Keeping with the Tarantino/Rashomon theme here: The performances on Saturday were not an unqualified success. We had two showings of the ultimately half-hour clown show, the first at 9:00 pm, and the last at 11:00, all as a part of a festival that took over the town with predominantly physical spectacle such as dance, circus-theatre and street performance. (For once, we were probably the least physically eccentric act on the bill.) Our first show made me want to crawl under the stage and hide; David came up to us afterwards and said, "Well that wasn't that bad," thereby straining his otherwise stalwart reputation for honesty. The second show, however, hummed. It had sound failures on both ends, which should have been fatal for a predominantly choreographed show, but the audience was with us and we all had a tremendous amount of fun and at the end, I felt I had earned their kind applause.

What happened between the two shows was this: We intended to use our little break of less-than-an-hour to explore and see other shows and generally try to forget we had another to do. Instead, we were invited into a building next door by some very kind older gentlemen who had a great view of our stage from their windows. They wanted to make sure we knew we could use the bathroom there (which we needed) and while we were there I discovered that the fly on my costume had popped permanently. I tried to ask them for a paper clip or something, explaining my situation through gesture, and they set about raiding office supplies for me. One withdrew a binder clip. "I don't think that'll work." Then he pulled out a stapler, jokingly. "Ci, ci! Parfetto!" I cried, and he, hesitating somewhat, handed it to me. I promptly stapled my wool pants closed with the knowledge that within the first ten minutes of the show I'd tear them off anyway. They found that pretty amusing, and then one of them reached into a drawer and pulled out scissors, gesturing mischievously toward my crotch. Here we were, almost completely incapable of communicating with language, and the lazzi was flowing. From there they invited us all to sit with them, and Heather worked her Italian magic on them. A friend of theirs, Silvano, the oldest yet, visited, was introduced to us, then came from out of the back room with wine and water for everyone. We relaxed. We laughed. And, after all that, Silvano worked to rope audience in to our space for the second show, possibly single-handedly ensuring us that our little courtyard performance would be full for its closing.

The hours spent working with Angelo on our piece were similar to our time with the old men, and this commonality was also in the spirit Heather and I found in our second performance. Angelo took us through what we had in terms of structure, and broke it down into bits -- bits we had already, and bits we inspired him to add. Given a little time to overcome our initial shame and frustration, we found with him a familiar game of discovery, getting excited about our connections and ideas, and really building from one moment to the next. It was brilliant. It reminded me, suddenly and unexpectedly, and from the midst of a recent history of disappointing efforts on my part, of what I love about this work and what keeps me excited about it. With Angelo we returned to our sense of play, with the old men we rediscovered our love of people, of communication, and in the final shot at the show we finally figured out how to have fun with it, and with our audience. Hell: It even happened in a three, looking at it that way!

That performance wasn't the be-all-end-all by a long shot, but it was shot of life that I had certainly been looking for lately. Maybe our enthusiasm had something to do with knowing we were being relieved of a great stress after our final show, and maybe our ease with the audience had a lot to do with their greater numbers and better understanding of what to expect. Nevertheless, coincidence or hard work or that lovely synchronicity of the two, it was a beautiful thing. And it didn't take much longer for the sun to start shining in Umbria again.

Love is Crazy, but Good

It's not my kind of title, but who knows? Maybe it's appealing to Italians. I do appreciate the ambiguous meaning suggested by applying the idiosyncratic usage of the phrase, "but good." As in, "a whole lot" (at least in American slang). This, of course, is the title applied to

Zuppa del Giorno

's latest original effort, the which I began writing about

here

.

Friend Heather and I began work on this piece not too long ago, and we're done . . . as far as rehearsing in America goes. Originally, we were scheduled to perform in Italy

the day after we flew in

, but fortunately saner minds prevailed, and we'll have some three jet-lagged days to focus intensively on further development and polishing before springing this wonder on the unsuspecting Italian audiences. Few people aspire to "develop" and "polish" in the same stroke. Such is the genius of necessity. So when you imagine me sunning myself on Mediterranean shores, sipping grappa and ogling Italian supermodels engaged in their unified quest to avoid any tan lines -- revise that slightly, and picture me instead jumping around and falling down a lot with a desperation to find something,

anything

, that feels original and worthy of public acclaim.

It's not that bad, actually. We'll have to work our comedic tokheses off, but we're at least in familiar territory thematically. Here then (by which I mean: now) is the present scenario for Zuppa del Giorno's mostly-new, almost-original show:

L'Amore e' Mazzo, ma Buona

:

Introduction

Meeting G’ma & G’

p

a

: An old couple enter from back of “house,” arm-in-arm, taking seats if they are available. They can’t see, and move forward, trying various positions. G’pa is sneezy and distracted. G’ma is fussy and protected. They are carrying on an argument. “Apples!” “Pears!” They get to the front, impatient now for the show to begin. All that’s on stage is a suitcase, with two red rubber balls atop it.

Incitin

g

Accident

: G’pa accidentally loops G’ma’s handbag on his arm. He rises and tries to disentangle himself, not at all sure how this thing became attached to him, making his way blithely up onto the stage. G’ma follows him up on stage, trying to disentangle him and getting a few good whacks in the process. On stage, G’pa finally gets the thing off, and it lands on the floor downstage of the suitcase. He pokes it with his cane to make sure it’s dead, then shuffles off to greet people, leaving arthritic G’ma to bend down and pick it back up. She does so, very, very slowly, and falls backward. G’pa is oblivious to her efforts, as she rolls back and forth, not quite able to right herself. Eventually she yelps, he notices her, then comes over to point her out to the audience and laugh at her. Whilst he does so, she knocks his cane out from under him. He falls, and she uses the cane to get up. Then she gives it back to him and he gets up with it. They fall against each other and descend to sit on the suitcase, exhausted.

The “Youthenatin

g

”

Discover

y

of the Noses

: The two yelp as they sit, then extract a red rubber ball (red noses) from beneath each of their bums. The balls falls out of their hands; they’re on strings. G’ma doesn’t know what to make of it, puts it away. G’pa plays with his, swinging it by the string, accidentally hitting G’ma in the head. She swats him back, and he begins sneezing incessantly, which brings him to standing. She rummages in her purse for a tissue and either 1) Pulls out the ball/nose, unaware it’s not a tissue, or 2) can’t find a tissue and chooses to use the nose instead. G’ma puts the nose to G’pa’s face, and he stops sneezing. When she takes her hand away, however, the red nose drops off again, and he begins sneezing again. She tries again, with the same result. On the third try, she notices the string and loops it around G’pa’s head to hold the nose on. It stays; crisis averted.

Nose Conversion

: G’pa inhales through the new nose. It feels pretty new. He inhales again, and it draws him upright. He inhales a third time, and he’s young. He clicks his heels and looks around. G’ma is horrified by the transformation. G’pa tries to convert her, convince her to put on the other nose. She swats him away with her purse at each attempt. First his hand, then his head, then his unmentionables. Finally, G'pa winds up from a distance and throws the nose at her. It hits her square in the face. When she rights herself again, the red nose is stuck to her nose. G’pa tenderly wraps the cord around her head. Pause. G’ma “whoop-ee!”s with vigor. The two test out their youthenated bodies a bit, and begin to feel warm. G’pa takes off his hat, facing the audience. G-ma removes her shawl. They get into a turn-taking competition on entertaining the audience with their disrobing, the Woman at one point hiding in the audience to remove something, the Man audaciously flinging his pants off. At the bottom, they are dressed in brightly colored tank tops and shorts or skirt, and they are the Boy and the Girl. The Boy begins a game of tag with the Girl. They play for a bit, then the Boy tags an audience member, and it involves the whole audience. After this calms down (or they calm it down with a whistle) the Boy and Girl applaud the audience and sit exhausted together on the suitcase. [Music:

Tu Vuo' Fa' L'Americano

]

Rediscover

y: Sitting on the box, the Boy and Girl relax and relive moments from their recent game of tag. Some gentle nudging, some playful imitations. In the midst of this cheerfulness, they pause, and a moment of romantic tension develops between them. [SFX: Sp-kang!] The Boy quickly breaks it, then runs off. Eek! The Girl is left alone, uncertain of the cause.

Solo de la Girl

Lecoq

-clown sequence based on interaction with the audience, which incorporates the following:

a) Why did he run off?

b) Is it me?

c) Look better – dressing – bow bit.

d) Audience helps with bow.

Girl Woos Bo

y

The Boy enters in the midst of ecstatic pretend play, possibly as a pirate, perhaps as some other pertinent P-word. He stops suddenly when he sees the Girl, and disguises what he had been doing somehow. The Girl, with the audience’s help, decides to woo him.

She finds a stuffed dog in the suitcase, and offers it to him. He misinterprets it, playing roughly with it and interacting with the audience. She gets another idea, and begins writing him a love note on several pieces of paper. Meanwhile, he finds himself allergic to the dog and starts sneezing. As she hands him notes, he uses them to catch his sneezes, ruining them. On the third note, he pauses to look at it, then blows his nose in it and tosses it away. Finally, she finds a box of chocolates in the case and offers it to him. He is delighted, and begins trying them as he strolls away. She follows him. He repeatedly bites into a chocolate and, finding it unpleasant, tosses it over his shoulder, hitting her in the head. The Girl gets fed up, pummels the Boy with it all, and exits in a huff.

Solo de la Bo

y

a) The Boy is mystified by the Girl. He enlists audience’s help in understanding it, and making himself more presentable.

Bo

y

Woos Girl

The Girl re-enters, and the Boy does his best to make it up to her. He’s better dressed now, and maybe shows off a little with a cane he’s found. He’s got her interest, but now what?

Valentino Sketch

mod (this is a modified form of a sequence from

Silent Lives

for which we're hoping we can use the audience to be an advisory character, rather than our missing performer): i) Boy enlists various or single audience members to teach him how to woo the Girl.

ii) He follows their examples, badly, making a mess of it each time.

iii) Finally, the Boy simply asks the Girl to dance, which is a success. [SFX: Sp-kang!]

Dance

,

Dance

,

Dance

The Boy and Girl dance, slowly at first, then gaining momentum and doing progressively more intricate and impressive partnered movements. Incorporate dance sequence from

Death + a Maiden

(see

5/29/08

for last performance of this piece, which includes a dance segment). By the end, they have matured, and are now the Man and the Woman. They stand facing one another, holding hands, and the Woman kicks the Man in the shin. He falls immediately to one knee, still clutching her left hand. [The dance music segues directly into Pachelbel’s

Canon

(

and Gigue in D major for three Violins and Basso Continuo

)].

Determined Weddin

g

At the end of the dance, the two are in positions for the bride’s processional. Everything that can go wrong with the wedding, does, including: the bride keeps falling down in her processional, but refusing to be helped up by the groom; once she gets to the head of the church, they have trouble getting her veil lifted, leading to her wearing the Man’s top hat and he wearing her veil; the ring is missing, then the Man gets distracted swatting a fly as he’s supposed to put it on her finger, and she follows his hand with hers as he gestures; in her attempts to put the Man’s ring on him, he keeps sneezing, and they get it stuck on the wrong finger. In trying to get it off, elaborate acrobalance happens. Finally, finally, the two are married, and they sit, exhausted.

White Moment

This kind of moment was explained to Heather and I, when we were learning our clown style, as a suspension in which nothing happens, but something changes. It can be quite powerful. Friend Grey describes it as "the angel passing through."

It's also a terribly handy name for a section in which you have no idea what to do.

The

y

Are Old Anew

The noses disappear, and the final article of clothing goes on, and the two are G’ma and G’pa once again. They start to quibble again, and it’s back to the strife of their entrance. They try to regain their youthful movements, but hurt themselves. They try to run off, but can’t stand properly without one another. G’pa starts sneezing again, and G’ma is out of tissues and starts to curse the heavens. Then she notices something in her handbag. She pulls out two

roses

, and places one over G’pa’s nose. He stops sneezing. She places the other over her own nose, and they inhale simultaneously. On the exhale, they smile at one another. They exit, and music comes up. [Music:

To Vuo' Fa' L'Americano

]

il Fino

We've definitely got our work cut out for us, but when you consider that we started with nothing, it's pride-inducing to have this much. (When you consider that we started with four years' worth of collaboration in almost precisely this medium behind us, the result is somewhat less than spectacular, so I try not to consider it that way.) This scenario will definitely change as we continue to work on it across the Atlantic, but I think the general ideas of a couple growing up together and exploring love will remain the same. That's our . . . oh . . . what's that word . . . ?

Idiom, sir?

Yes, yes! Our idiom!

Rabbits from Hats

Hwaet:

Zuppa del Giorno

is returning to Italy. Some are flying out as early as the 6th, but I don't depart until the evening of the 8th. We all come flocking home the 21st. In between, we are scheduled to perform at several theatre festivals, thereby offering up our very first solicited original work abroad. It's an incredibly exciting opportunity, and one on which a lot relies. We will get more exposure than ever before, and exposure specifically to theatre artists we want to involve in

In Bocca al Lupo

, and collaborate with on other projects. People will judge us by what we do, and their opinions will dramatically affect our ability to move forward with an international program, be it educational or performing, or both.

And we have no show to perform.

You might suppose that a troupe specializing in improvisatory theatre would relish this situation but, if so, you'd be wrong. Call us nancies, but when this kind of thing is on the line, we generally like to have something pretty tight put together. Then, should circumstances flatter it, we might depart from our show to enjoy a good tangent or two. How do we find ourselves in this particularly awkward position? Well, these trips always seem to pull together at the last of all possible moments, and commitments can be tough to come by. Our intention had always been to somehow resurrect (read: restructure)

Silent Lives

for performance in Italy. Not only do we not have the time nor resources to accomplish that, but one of our numbers has a conflict and can not join the trip. That leaves me and

Friend Heather

to conceive, build and perform an hour-long, wholly original show.

Friend Heather moved to Scranton about a year ago. Which kind of makes me want to smack her right now. (But Heather's always kind of fun to smack, anyways.)

So we've met a total of three times -- repetitions of three being

inherently

funny -- for about four-hours-a-go to develop a show we can perform between the two of us; a show that is not verbally language-based, that is easily transportable and, one hopes, entertaining as all hell. No pressure. Prior to these rehearsals, we collaborated over email a bit, as we are wont to do, unless we actually set up a

blog

or

two

to coordinate multiple input sources (read: folks). I wrote out a strenuously over-involved, quasi-scenario (for three; this was when we thought we still had three with which to work), and Heather wrote back with her version of the same (including such useful responses as, "I'm not sure about the sock puppets..."). After all this, we met in New York to "rehearse," and, as though I hadn't enough to thank her for by now, Heather took the onus of the travel upon her martyred self.

I'll skip to the end a bit here, to say that what we now have is a largely silent clown piece that -- we hope -- should take about 45 minutes to play out, about a couple growing up and old together. How we got there was a good deal different from creative processes Zuppa del Giorno has heretofore engaged in, driven as we were in a unique way by necessity. Heather and I actually have a couple of ideas for independent collaborations together that we discuss whenever we're frustrated with whatever we're supposed to be working on, but none of these ideas could be squoze (is SO a word) into the framework of our festivals. Given our limited time to develop the show, we elected to mine previous material as much as possible. Which, oddly enough, is a very traditional commedia dell'arte thing to do. After four years of working together, we have several lazzi that can be dropped in to whatever we do.

Our first thought was simply to compile all the couples we had played in Zuppa shows (Heather and I are the Burns & Allen of northeastern Pennsylvania) into a kind of review. The trouble with this idea was that most of our couples spoke as part of their characterization, and it didn't provide us with a simple through-line, which is something we knew we'd need. You can pfutz about with conventional narrative, sure, but we have enough problems confronting a language barrier. Eventually, we recognized that the characters we had played could be pretty handily slotted into different stages of life, which reminded us of our conceit of three people growing up together in

Silent Lives

. So when we met, Heather and I immediately started playing with old-couple characters. It was the least-explored aspect of a life-cycle for us thus far. She had recently played an older woman in

Time, Timing, Timeless

, and I had a farcical old man in

Legal Snarls

, but never together and neither with any romantic or quibbling overtones. So a matter of days ago, we met in an aerial acrobatic rehearsal space in Williamsburg and explored.

More to come on this piece as it progresses, but David (Zarko) has already had to title it for submission:

L'amore e' mazzo, ma buona

(

Love is Crazy, But Good

).

Do Oh

Last night Friend Heather and I performed our much-performed clown duet (originally conceived and directed with

Friend Grey

),

Death + A Maiden

, as part of the same festival

I performed in the night before

. My hat is off to her. She came a long way, through difficult travels, to partner with me in all things theatrical this week, and me with virtually no free social time.

Fortunately, we had great company. There was no way I could have felt isolated this night, let me tell you. Friends

Jenny

and

Dave

were MCing as their characters in

The Maestrosities

, a clown band they developed together, and Friend

Anna (Zastrow)

was on the bill as well, playing her new clown, Hillemo (sp?). We even had friends in the well-packed audience!

Ed Chemaly

, our director for

Operation Opera

was in attendance, as well as Friend

Avi

. Friends

Kate

and

Leah

managed to make it, too, which is always great for audience reaction. Leah's laugh is in constant threat of upstaging any show -- loud and clear and uniquely hilarious.

Heather and I have done this piece many times, in a variety of environments, but there's always something to be learned from it. Without a doubt, this time through contained one of the most gratifying audience reactions to a specific moment that I've ever known. The scenario is that Death pays a visit to a Maiden preparing for a party, intending to dispatch her, but discovering that he loves her. They court, they dance, and about three-quarters of the way through the 15-minute piece, they kiss . . . which naturally immediately kills the Maiden. When we reached this point in our tale, the audience burst into my favorite kind of laughter. It seemed as though they were surprised not only by the turn of events, but at themselves for laughing. I have put forth for some time that laughter is ultimately born from self-awareness, from a fear of death, and this was a particularly poignant exemplification, if you are asking this guy. It was especially effective because it takes a while for Death to realize ("Think slow; act fast." - Buster Keaton) he's killed his new love, and when he does, he has a right heartfelt tantrum over it. The audience was right there with me when I did that scary, emotional bit, it seemed. I felt them pouring their grief in the same dish as mine. That, my friends, is a sharp contrast between the clowning we do, and the clowns most of America is aware of.

What's very interesting about the piece is that, in spite of it being a hit the first couple of times we did it, the ending hasn't satisfied audiences for quite some time. Which is rough for me, because I'm the only performer left on stage (and ostensibly conscious) by that point. When we originally set the piece, it was according to the guidelines of a particular comedy festival in Philadelphia, which specified that all performances must address love and death, and incorporate a

Wet-Nap(TM)

as a prop. This shaped our show, and naturally lent a certain distance to the story. Because the audiences were aware that 1) what they were seeing is a "comedy," and 2) it will involve death, they could take such elements as ingredients more than as profound, empathetic experiences. In processing this piece for other venues, we've used Heather's ridiculous bow in place of the Wet-Nap(TM), but neglected to revise the ending to accomodate our changed audience.

The ending consists of a five-minute sequence of Death failing to finish his job -- carrying off the body -- until he doesn't anymore and walks out with the Maiden over his shoulder, his scythe shoved down the back of his shirt and kicking his cloak along ahead of him. On its own: cute. After an audience has come to love Heather's Maiden, and empathize with my Death: not so much cute, or even awkwardly funny. So there's work to be done on the old stand-by! That's kind of cool.

If only we didn't have so much other work to do just now. But more on that later...

So Low

Last night was my solo clown debut.

Well, not precisely. I have done a number of solo clown performances in my time. Last night merely marked the first time I did so on an actual stage. Up until this event, my solo clowning was largely busked and/or filmic. In fact, I volunteered for the festival hosting clown and puppet events because I wanted to have a good deadline for adapting this particular solo routine to a stage. Plus I was desperate for work, at the time. Naturally, I completely ignored this opportunity to

work

on the piece, and found myself panicky all day yesterday, contemplating exactly what I was going to do up there that night.

It went okay, rife with the peaks and valleys I might have expected from a debut work in a nurturing yet unexpectedly intimate environment of strangers. I didn't, of course, expect these variances in my experience. No, I find that when contemplating performance I'm usually surprised by the comparisons between my expectations and the experience. I expect complete victory or total failure; the median is difficult to imagine, the variable completely confounding. This is possibly because the more intense the stage fright or adrenaline, the more apt I am to think in absolutes. Or, it could be that the (utterly erroneous) stereotypical mentality of a struggling actor has infected my imagination deeper than I, er, imagined. In other words, the idea that

just one big hit

could change everything for me may contribute to the absolutes I contemplate. Either way, the product was, in some respect, just like every other. Some things went over great. Others, not so much.

I have yet to attempt any kind of monodrama, or extended solo performance as such. Outside of a few scattered soliloquies, I'm always acting with other performers. Last night I found a popular axiom to be doubly true and especially so for live silent comedy: When you lose the audience, there's no one to turn to but yourself.

Not so backstage. The worlds of circus, clown and other "gig acts" is a small one anywhere, I'd imagine. That goes double for New York, where you're just as likely to run into your babysitter from age 5 as you are to never see current friends who live just two neighborhoods over. I happened to get ensnared in this show's clutches through an email sent out by one

Ms. Jenny Lee Mitchell

requesting acts. I know Jenny through

Friend Dave (Berent [nee Gochfeld])

, whom I know through Friend Heather (whom I know from having worked with her in

Zuppa del Giorno

), but I also knew Dave as the more male half of

The Kourageous Kiplingers

, and vaudeville act he did with

Friend Rachel (Kramer)

. Dave and Jenny have also done shows with

The Northeast Theatre

(which is the home of Zuppa del Giorno). I did one of those with Dave, but not Jenny. BUT, I did do

A Lie of the Mind

with Jenny's mom, Emily Mitchell, long before I ever met Jenny herself. And finally, who was MCing last night, but the very same clown act,

Bambouk

, that was recently recommended to me by the good and fine people at

Bond Street Theatre

, whom I met through working with

Cirque Boom

(which is also where I met Rachel).

It would seem, after this assault of name-dropping and six-degrees-of-network-makin', that I had all the world backing me up as I prepared for my show. Didn't feel that way, though. Felt very, very alone. Each performers was doing his or her own thing, for the most part, and I was in an advanced state of freak-out. It reminded me of the intense stage fright I felt just before the first show of

Noble Aspirations

, Zuppa's first production. I stood backstage, the first to enter for that show, and suddenly realized, "I have no script. I HAVE NO SCRIPT! It's just

ME

out there!" I did all I could to dispel it, and I actually owe a debt of gratitude to one half of

Bambouk

,

Brian Foley

, who stood in front of me and asked, "So, could you use some distracting conversation, or are you better staying in the zone?" Thankfully I had the presence of mind to opt for conversation, and it made for smoother passage into the time spent along backstage.

The trouble in adapting the piece to the stage was in taking some of the fun of its original venue(s) -- places where people are relaxing and not necessarily expecting spontaneous fun -- and translating that into a stage setting, with an audience that had

no choice

but to pay attention. This is a powerfully appealing aspect: choice. It may go a long way toward explaining the historically recent success of cinema over live theatre, in fact. Theatre, in the conventional sense, is a gamble. A movie costs little (comparatively speaking) and can be voluntarily escaped in any of its forms. Walking into a theatre, you know very little about what to expect, and can get subjected to something confusing, unappealing, or just plain ill-executed. And there seems to be no escape. The space I was performing in last night had the advantage of being intimate, with very little audience/performer separation, but that was just about its only similarity to the piazzas I was used to doing the piece in.

What I did to adapt it was very much shaped by having to create an entrance. In the square, you just start acting doofy and see what grabs people, then mold your performance based on feedback and a skeleton. In the theatre, you need to put them at ease, to apply balm to their sense of disorientation at the beginning of any new piece. In public, you grab them, and they tell you where to go next. In the theatre, you have their attention, and then you have to justify it. (Speaking in generalities here, of course; much overlap between the venues.) Needing to create an entrance helped shape my given circumstances. Whereas previously the act was based on the idea of the character as a quasi-homeless, drunk reveler who interrupts a party, last night's incarnation was an awkward fellow

escaping

a party into the kitchen. This allowed for a less invasive characterization at first, and my hope was to put the audience a bit more at ease. Also, whereas previous incarnations took place amongst relaxed (often inebriated) party-goers, this crowd, at a relatively early show in a theatre, seemed to me more likely to be at the energy of such kitchen-clingers. It also allowed for my using a song I have longed longed to use in a show; it closed with the irascibly awkward "

You'll Always Find Me In the Kitchen at Parties

," by

Jona Lewie

.

And it worked fairly well. I would say, all factors considered, I had the audience pretty well on my side throughout. They did best with bits in which I suffered and they weren't threatened. (This would seem natural enough, save for experiences I've had in which the only way you could begin to entertain certain audiences was to mix things up with them.) Keeping things simple, singular, and taking one's time is essential in clown work. The piece suffered the most at times when I got carried away with my energy, racing the audience and only pouring on more fuel if I felt myself losing them.

The scenario is that Lloyd Schlemiel (my noseless [or silent-filmic] clown character) is trying to quietly escape a party. He backs into the kitchen, all the while munching on Cheetos(

R

) from an orange bowl. Once he's cleared the doorway, he closes it, and the sounds of the party fade out. He breathes a sigh of relief, and raises another Cheeto to his mouth when he suddenly notices the audience. The Cheeto snaps in his hand. He races for the door again, but is too scared to return to the party, so turns to the audience and makes due. From there it proceeds along fairly typical Lecoq lines, with dabblings of silent-film comics thrown in here and there. He adjusts his clothing, thinking the audience will better approve of him. He decides he doesn't like his hat, and trades it for the "bowl" he was snacking from, which proves to be a mistake. The rest of the sequence involves his trying to escape this hat, which just won't leave him be. He tosses it away, and it returns to him. It clings to his head, despite acrobatic endeavors to remove it, and obscures his vision. He finally frees himself from it, but it's changed him into an extrovert. He performs a striptease (only down to undies, mind), puts the hat back on and rejoins the party.

It needs work, even in verbal explanation, but the performance was a tremendous jump forward for me in making discoveries about it. My hope is to break it out in Italy a bit, and play with it there. We can only pray that they sell Cheetos there. Hell: They end in an "o." They probably are Italian.