Temporary

"So, tell me: What do you have to offer to our workplace?"

"Well, I'm a straight-shooter, for one. I don't waste a lot of time with people telling them what they want to hear. I get right down to business, skipping any unnecessary introduction, or exposition, and say what's on my mind. A lot of people call that "keepin' it real," but I have never felt comfortable using slang not of my particular demographic, you know? Still, it applies. No one has to ask me a question to know where I stand."

. . .

"So, um . . .. What do you have to offer our workplace?"

"Didn't I say already?"

"Just that you're a straight-shooter."

"Right."

"Okay. Well, what do you need from us? What are you looking for in a workplace?"

"Oh, man. What DON'T I need? Fo' reals. Okay: I need a place that really, really needs my skills, so that I can work for them whenever they can get me. That's because I'll leave all of a sudden. I'll get a job acting out of town, or maybe even

in

town, but all-the-time-ish, and when I go away for a month or more at a time, I need to be sure said job will still be there when I get back. Plus, it has to pay as obscenely well as possible. I mean, like, you should look at the books and go, 'He gets paid WHAT? For doing WHAT?' 'Cause when I leave town, or go away for months, I'm actually losing money. That's right. I'm leaking like a sieve. What can I say? That's love. In addition, I need a place that's ready for me not to come in every morning, even when I am in town and available. Auditions, you see, and callbacks, occur in the mornings, and you just never know when one will crop up or prove fruitful. Hell; callbacks can go most of the day under some circumstances, with absolutely no warning. And don't even get me started on film and television schedules. Ninja please!"

"Ninja? Wait, go back . . ."

"OH! And I need health insurance. Because the actor's union is practically phasing it out for all but the most successful actors. We'd go on strike about that like SOME unions I know of, but it would essentially be striking against ourselves. And no one would show up, most likely. Unless there was a catering table. Also, 'kay, I need where I work to be cool."

"Cool?"

"Yeah. Not, you know,

hella cool

, or even

wicked rad

, but just . . .

cool

. 'Cause I'm thirty now. And I just can't be intimidated into furious activity by the implied threat of the dire importance of what we're doing anymore, you know? When your boss gets you to stay late or move more frantically just by looking a little bit like he or she might cry or scream at any moment?"

"Yes, actually, I do sometimes--"

"There you go. Can't do it anymore. Need cooler than that."

"Huh. Okay. Well."

"Can I ask you a couple of questions? Just to mix it up?"

"I suppose . . . yes. Ah, sure."

"Great. How's the coffee here?"

"The coffee? In the kitchen?"

"Yeah. The last place I worked, no kidding, it was like sulfuric acid, only more bland. I swear I must have spent about $400 on morning cups alone last year, just to avoid the home-brew."

"It's nice, I think. I drink tea."

"Weird. Okay, now, is this kind of lighting in the rest of this place? Because this is nice, and I'm not spending any more of my life in a fluorescent-tube maze. School was that way, almost every job I've had since has been that way--no more. I want warmth. I want glow. And I want it now."

"I'm pretty sure the rest of our facility is roughly like this. Lamps."

"All right! I'll take it."

"Well, uh . . . don't call us, we'll call you."

"Whaddaya mean?"

"Well, Mr. Wills, you just spent your audition time pretending you were in a job interview. Which was pretty entertaining, mind, but it doesn't really inform me as to your ability to portray Peer Gynt.. So: Don't call us, we'll call you. And thank you."

"Thanks, uh, thank you. It was fun."

"Okay. Bye-bye now."

"Bye, yes. Bye. I'll, uh, I'll wait for your call?"

"You do that."

fine

Soup for a New Year

Sew: Zuppa del Giorno needs to submit a video of our work to festivals in Italy. The trouble? We don't got no good video of our shows. In an effort to share what we do have, I post here for reference the three excerpts I've managed to film and hang on to.

The first is a selection of moments from our first show, Noble Aspirations. This show was completely structured improvisation, and we were still finding our style. These clips feature myself, Todd d'Amour, Zac Campbell, Richard Grunn, David Zarko and Grey Valenti. As I understand it, only one of us was Equity at the time, and he allowed for the show to be taped and shown. Here you have it:

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Let's just hope that one day this finishes loading, because the next is an excerpt from Silent Lives that we performed on demand (and without rehearsal) for one of our potential collaborators in Italy. It was taped on my digital still camera, propped on a theatre seat. So: Not awesome quality, once again. But it was a thrill to have this excerpt on file, all the same. The clip features me, Heather and Todd again. It is a point in the show when the two ingenues want to romance one another for the first time, but are too young to know how, so the fantasy of Rudolph Valentino intervenes for some much-needed lessons in amour. Incidentally, it's my understanding on both of these next videos that there's no Equity conflict because they were filmed out of the country:

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Finally, a very, very raw representation of Death + A Maiden, Heather's and my clown piece. David Zarko gives us our introduction. This piece was directed by Grey Valenti. It's heavy with musical cues and props--none of which we had in Italy when we made a command performance. This was the first time Heather and I did the piece, ever, without the music, and we adapted a trunk of arbitrary items to represent our standard props. In this piece, a toilet brush is a mirror, a sword replaces a scythe, etc. So it may be a bit tough to interpret this. I play Death, who falls in love with the woman he's fated to dispatch of:

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James Thierrée

Don't get your fingers in a cramp from

Googling

and

Wikipediating

the name. He is Charlie Chaplin's grandson. He deserves to be regarded in his own right. He has been performing in circus since he was four years old. I have finally seen him perform with his company, in their show

Au Revoir Parapluie

(

Goodbye Umbrella

). The company performed at

BAM

's Harvey Theatre. The last time I was in this theatre was a few years ago, close to when it had just opened. I was stilting in the lobby with

Cirque Boom

as a sort of warm-up to their contribution to

The Lysistrata Project

, which was a national initiative begun to protest the war in Iraq. As I took my seat for

Au Revoir Parapluie

, along with Friends

Kate

,

Patrick

,

Dave & Zoe

, I considered how long it had been since I worked with them all, how long it had been since I performed in a circus show.

Then I watched the show, which made my lungs laugh, my heart burst and my spleen evaporate. Plus it tickled.

Oh guys, guys guys: I can't spend the whole entry raving, but I could. There was so much about the show that I found personally appealing that I actually didn't notice the lack of concrete narrative, which usually irritates me when I attend circus/theatre. It reminded me of good classical music, the way it transports me so that my free association and emotions provide me with my own story. Circus performed with seeming ease, pathos and humor allows one to relax in that just-right way, a way that makes an audience receivers more than interpreters. The older one gets, the more their critical faculty takes over their personality, because they have more and more comparisons available. Great art, in any medium, allows us to happily (gratefully) release that faculty.

So this isn't a critique of the show. I was too inspired by it to be objective, and anyway it's sold out this time around (as opposed to closed, which is what most shows are by the time I get around to my opinion of them). No, all I'm saying, party peoples, is that capital-a Art still exists, and the French probably have more of it than we do. (Stupid French [it's a

joke

, Sara].) Plus (see, you knew that wasn't

all

I was saying), I am very inspired to make my own pale, incomparable imitation-of-style piece based on the show.

There was just so much to it that I want to be doing in my own work, yet am not. I've always been a fan of direct-address that breaks the fourth wall in one way or another (though I remain ambivalent about the Brechtian convention of "breaking character" to speak with the audeince, when in fact you're still speaking lines someone else wrote).

Au Revoir Parapluie

did this with action and clown, but no actor-spoken dialogue. It was completely sincere, yet transported the audience with music and surreal imagery. The performers were all capable of circus feats, yet also strong clowns and actors, sensitive and expressive and subtle. There was nothing pretentious to the show, even when I was amazed by it. Joy without guilt, catharsis without lingering sorrow.

When I was a young man, fresh out of my first professional theatre experience, I was driving around the southern states with my girlfriend of the time (

Friend Rachel

this was, for those of you keeping score at home) and whilst we mused on our performance futures I fantasized about a company of actors trained in dance, and vice versa, who would create brilliantly sincere and physical debut shows. I was going to call it Sugarsweet Willpower, which proves, as though nothing else ever did, that there's a good reason a lot of our youthful ambitions never come to fruition. This was prior to my even contemplating the worlds of circus or commedia dell'arte, and obviously I wasn't well-versed in theatre companies already at work on similar goals. No, I felt this idea was unique and timely, as well as of course feeling fully qualified to found just such an institution.

Ah, me.

It may be a bit gauche at this point, starting my own theatre group. It's kind of what all my comrades do. "Oh, Jeff started a company now? Yeah. Neat. So . . . how 'bout them Mets?" It's not something I'm interested in doing, at least not from a practical standpoint. I've seen too much of the "Artistic Director" process to be fooled by the name, and anyway, where would I find a Producing Director I could work with? (Who are these people? What makes them sign up for all the sucky parts? It ain't the pay, I'll tell you that much.) No, no company-birthing for this persnickity mother. What I might do, given the right circumstances, is make a show.

I say "might," because of

these

three

entries

, from which not much has yet arisen. I'm chomping at the bit to express myself, but not tearing up the track, and I feel as though the gate has been open a long time now. I hope this show was the poke in the rump I apparently need. I'm keeping it alive in my mind, replaying moments and recording my own ideas. It's interesting to me that I have so many outlets for creative expression, yet feel somehow that there's something personal, important and specific I have yet to express in my work. I want

Zuppa

shows to hang from the ceiling. I want

Kirkos

to craft another comedy. I want

UnCommon Cause

to improvise in performance (more). The most direct answer to all of these wants is to just do it myself.

Just as soon as the holy daze is over . . .

Feel the Burn

Work is bad for you. It's science.

I'm on a rather eccentric work schedule these days, as far as

my day job

goes. It has to do with splitting the job with another capable worker who was training for the position in the hopes that I would suddenly become rich and famous and not need a day job (which by the way, for those of you keeping score at home, hasn't happened yet). This arrangement means I work an average of 20 hours a week, or two-and-a-half days. So I work the first part, she the second, or vice versa. It's been strange. Good, because it's the holidays, and I have a lot to occupy me in my off hours. Bad, because I'm making about half as much money as I'm accustomed to when I'm city-side . . . and I wasn't exactly living large prior to these circumstances.

But here's another good thing: I can make more time for exercise.

And here's another bad thing: When I can't make time--i.e., work days--I am acutely aware of it.

Ooo, but do I know it. When I first started working here the job was much, much easier. I knew less about the work, had less responsibility and my boss was quite frankly coasting a bit on good fortune. Plus,

Friend Melissa

referred me to the job in the first place, and was around to cavort with. We never did anything unconditionally crazy, but she worked in a tiny office and I in a cubicle, which presented us with marvelous staging opportunities for what

Friend Heather

refers to as "archway humor."

"Archway humor" is that which is generated by the story one doesn't see. Rather, one sees the effects of incidences that occur "offstage." Your imagination makes up the rest. Melissa and I being both of the circus persuasion (particularly at that time, when we were both rehearsing with

Kirkos

or

Cirque Boom

), our archway humor consisted mainly of highly physical choices that exploited her doorway and my puppet-stage-like, low cubicle wall. I'm afraid Melissa engaged me much more than I her; I was still fresh to my job, you see. Every so often, for no particular reason, Mel would walk up to my cube, look me in the eye, and wordlessly execute a cartwheel. The effect was something like, "Hi Melissa. What do you want? Oo, nice sneakers!" When her head resurfaced, she invariably gave me a look that seemed to say, "What on earth just happened to me?" The effect on my mood was stunning.

Melissa don't work here no more, having moved on to greener pastures in The Garden State. It's difficult to say whether it is her leaving, getting ever-so-older (oh, the lessons we learn about the difference between "discomfort" and "pain") or the building stress of my work, but whatever the cause I find myself frequently passing the whole day without considering crouching in my chair, cartwheeling in the hall or doing push-ups against the copier machine. And I used to make a point of that. In a day in which I'm working at the office and going to rehearsal at night, I just fail to squeeze in a good work-out at home. Sometimes I fantasize about working as, of all things, a bike messenger, just to feel a pleasant ache of hard-won work at the end of the day. If it weren't already such a perilous job, just ask some people who know me well what a bad idea this would be. Plus, I'd probably be so ineffective. I would obey traffic laws, use hand signals and spend too much time poking around the offices I delivered to.

So here I am, venting my aerobic angst on the 'blog instead. The irony is, when I'm not working, I worry about how much money I'll make that week. Henceforth, these days shall be known as my "burn days." Feeling the burn of that last set of push-ups, feeling the burn of having to save up for coffee cash. The burn days are good motivation for getting something new doin' with my theatre career. That's the only place I've ever been paid for handstands.

Officially, at any rate.

Legit Circus, Kicking A.

One doesn't hear that phrase all-too often, even when one is (at least marginally) in the circus-performing world. You hear it about theatre, I think, because everyone and their cousin has committed an act he or she would categorize as "theatre" in the course of his or her life, and those of us who have committed just a bit more time and energy to theatre want to make a distinction between our showcase of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" and the local community theatre's recent staging of "The Cherry Orchard." Circus, on the other hand, is not necessarily a common community (redundant by root?) activity, and even those of us who have taken some workshops and used the skills in performance are a little loathe to claim the status of "circus performer."

I suppose the closest thing to "legit circus" in the broad American vernacular would be something like

Cirque du Soleil

, which I (thanks to an extremely thoughtful pre-Christmas Christmas gift from Sister Virginia) saw live for the very first time last night. It was their production

Wintuk

, ongoing on the WaMu stage at Madison Square Garden. The show itself was rather geared toward children, with plenty of spectacular acts and production values, but also the through-line of a boy just wanting to see it snow, and puppet dogs with their own song. "We know these dogs, we know these dogs..." The lyrics left me wondering if the beautiful vocals of previous Soleil shows aren't simply elongated French words like, "I did my laundry, now buy me some baguette..." By the way, CdS now owes

Slava's Snowshow

royalties, big time. The level of surprise in the audience when paper "snowflakes" blew out of the vents all over us was perhaps a comment on just how far twenty street-blocks may seem to the typical tourist.

Sorry if I just ruined the ending for you.

And I digress like a nor'easter. Here's what I love about circus (as in, the following -- I'm afraid I can't make it twenty-five words or less [which should come as no surprise to anyone who's been reading this 'blog {hi mom!}]). It is live surreality. Consider that a moment. There's not much of that in the world, in the true sense (of my fictional word). "Surreal" things happen to us, like running into a long-lost friend at the DMV, or finding a hundred dollar bill in a laundromat, but generally speaking and notable exceptions aside no one we know turns into a monkey and starts hopping around in a trashcan. Further, circus creates a sense of disbelief, threat and relief all at once, and it actually happens. Right there, right then. Further still, circus is brilliantly human; admirably physical and, when its good, artistically inspired. Feeling awe about a fellow human being is an incomparable experience.

Here's what I don't like about circus: I'm not better at it and people don't make enough of the kind that tells a story.

Look: We love this stuff. We love watching other humans achieve amazing things, particularly physical feats, and especially when we can appreciate it in the context of a story. If you accept that we love this, why then, oh why, would you settle for a movie that is largely computer-generated cartoons? Or a play in which the actors never use their bodies in their acting?

My frustration comes of personal feelings, I confess. I haven't had a convenient or easy outlet for my circus tendencies for some time, and there's always so much more to worry over, but it's about time I got on that. There's just too little of it in the world. I've found two film genres that fulfill the need vicariously, somewhat. The first is the classic Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd flicks. Perhaps they were working from necessity. The beginnings of film in America was a little like the beginning of the Internet. Anyone who could afford to and was interested had a clear playing field, and these guys (not so much Lloyd; he was second generation) played it hard. Chaplin had a hard-knock life from poverty, Keaton from vaudeville. Lloyd didn't lack for toughness, though, either. He got half of his right hand blown off in a photo shoot, and still made movies. That one you always see where he's

hanging off a clock arm

? All with just nine fingers and one thumb. So those guys, they were circus performers, plain and simple.

The other, dear Reader, is kung fu movies. Yes. Kung fu movies.

Kung fu movies have a bad rep. True, in recent years folks like Jackie Chan and Ang Lee have made the genre more palatable to the common tongue (interesting image), but it's difficult to get away from the fact that kung fu movies are usually made with a budget of about $10 and are located in the most abundance in the same stores in which one finds films like

Saving Ryan's Privates

. Add to that the minor detail of the scripts for almost all "action" films seeming to have been written by a heroin-addicted five-year-old, and kung fu hardly has a fighting chance to stand as anything legitimate. And I'll admit it: Most kung fu movies, in terms of story, dialogue, and in many cases production values, demonstrate the worst of what film making has to offer as a medium of artistic expression. Hell, now-a-days you can't even trust the kung fu. Wires can be digitally removed (or not, in

some exceptional cases

) and skinny ladies are

magically endowed

with the mass index of the same amount of lead. (To be fair, it appears Kerri Hoskins did indeed work out for the role. Look at those nautilus machines...

fly?

Well, oscillate mildly, at any rate.)

Ah, but when you get a to watch a real martial

artist

at work? That's thrilling. That's inspiring. There are so many daily reminders about of the limitations of our existence, physical, mental, even spiritual. It really is a special thing to be able to demonstrate--just for an instant, in some cases--

just how wrong all our "nos" and assumptions can be

.