Industrious

Yesterday I went on my first job routed to me by

Dream Weavers Management

. I had some hesitation joining up with DW, due largely to my inexperience with management and agentry, but yesterday helped to strengthen my opinion of them. The people at the production studio at which I worked all had good things to say for Laura Kossoff, the president there, and I had a generally positive experience where I worked. The gig was to be part of an industrial--a sort of internal corporate commercial--for a

Canon

conference; specifically to highlight a technology for creating three-dimensional video and, I believe, modeling. The production studio was

ADM Productions

, out in Long Island (or, to some, "Long Guylind"). So at 10:30 yesterday morning, I left el day jobo and hopped on the LIRR.

The last time I did an industrial was way, way back in 1998, as a side gig while I worked my very first professional gig, at

Theatre West Virginia

. That industrial was for a railroad company,

CSX

, and was pretty loose. A group of us dressed in our jeans and hardhats and walked around the yard all day, figuring out clever poses to point up track safety. The only camera work I've been doing lately has been a part of NYU's film-school directing classes. Plus, I'm a naturally nervous character. So as I took the train, I tried to relax and be ready for whatever was to come. They had no script to send, and all I knew was that they wanted me to bring both my black suit and my brown so they could choose which looked best for their purposes. Other than what I'd be wearing, I had no idea what I'd be doing when I got there (and even what I would be wearing was a fifty-fifty [I guessed wrong on that, by the way]). Breathe, breathe.

Turns out the people at ADM are fun to work with, and very professional to boot. They fed me. They offered to iron my costume. We talked about this and that as they struggled to stay on schedule with the shoot. They didn't, of course, because they had some incredibly complex set-ups to accomplish and they seemed to care a great deal about turning out a good product. I was prepared for this, however. As one of my fellow actors there said, "We get paid to wait on this kind of job; the acting is really just a bonus." So wait we did, in the greenroom and kitchen, and I vainly tried to make interesting conversation and read or memorize line sin good balance. It's an amazingly strange phenomenon, the hurry-up-and-wait atmosphere of a job like that. You're usually hanging out with strangers for hours, ever-ready to spring into compelling action, but with nothing actually to do. I always want to practice acro' moves, but people would think I was crying for attention, and besides, one is usually worried about one's costume.

More surreal was to come, however. When I finally did get into the studio, my job was to pose as a presenter of a . . . er . . . presentation. But not just any presentation! Oh no. An

invisible

presentation. The projection contained merely the title ("Projected Growth" [kindly control your snickers {after all, I had to}]) and a red background, with the notion that the graphic would be superimposed in post-production, so that it could "pop out" in the same 3-D effect we were all being filmed in. I say "we," because I was giving my presentation to four people seated around a table. They were not actors (that I knew of), just employees of the company who looked professional enough in attire to sit there and have their backs filmed. The fun came when it was time to "act." I knew there would be no sound for this segment, yet the effect from my movement had to be that of someone presenting something. So I did, and my presentation went something like this:

“I suppose you're wondering why I called you all here. Well. As you can see from my display here, I'm talking about projected growth. Not my projected growth, but our projected growth, and by that I don't mean anything dirty. This is a workplace, after all, and we don't talk about dirty things here unless of course we're complaining about how someone else really needs to clean them up. As you can see from the display, our projected growth is very red. We have a lot of growth in the red sector. Actually, I just set this up because it's my color. Red makes me look good. In fact, Larry, I'm going to ask you to follow me around for the rest of the day just so I look good next to you. Next I have to show you all this cartoon of a dog, trying to catch a balloon. Pay particular attention to this, Emily, because there will be a quiz later. Just for you. We need to keep an eye on you, after all. As you can see, the dog just can't get that balloon. He tries and he tries...but...nope, he can't get it. Ah. I could watch this all day. I did watch it for the entire weekend, over and over again. There are no lines in this, of course, because that's a dog, and a balloon, but if there were, if there were lines I bet you I could recite them all back to you, in sequence. Actually, I hope you all carved out at least a couple of hours, because that's how long this is. It's great though. There, he almost...but no! He can't get it!”

So there I was, in my brown suit, exploring the surreality. Fortunately for me, they all thought it was funny, engendering comparisons to Stev(ph)ens Carell and Colbert. As I ranted in a professional tone, I thought,

This couldn't be more bizarre. I left my office job to travel a half-hour by train to a studio so I could change from my black suit into a brown one and pretend to be someone like one of my bosses at the office job giving an imaginary presentation with a non-existent projection which, in a matter of days, will all be projected for viewing by a huge group of office workers in suits and 3-D glasses.

We're through the looking glass here, people.

So it was pretty great, as far as I was concerned. I even got a dramatic 3-D close-up in which I extend the remote control for the slide projector at the camera. My hand will loom large in the faces of Canon execs. If that isn't motivation to quit biting my nails, I don't know what is.

Meanwhile, back in the greenroom, I had several discussions with two other actors who were there to get 3-Ded and green-screened. They were interesting. I was very frank about my lack of experience with this sort of gig, and received some very different reactions. One of them, like me, valued stage acting and though he was very experienced with commercial work had virtually no priority for it. He had even been to Italy before, so we had a lot of interesting things to discuss. The other seemed to be devoted to commercial work, and had some trouble understanding my position in the game. She felt that I could be doing print and commercial work all the time, and wondered why I wouldn't. My answer had to do with long-term prospects and needing a steadier source of income than that, which is all perfectly valid and true, and which she accepted.

However, a much more essential answer is that I just never pursued it. Sure, when I first moved to New York I mailed my crappy headshots out every week to

Backstage

notices for film and commercial auditions, and thought with each student film I worked on that it would lead to more. I never pursued the work, though. I didn't (don't) understand it the way I did stage work, and just left it be. It may be time to learn more about it, though I did convince myself a bit with explaining myself to someone else yesterday. Who needs it? Sure, I made about $200 in a day and it was novel and all, but if it comes along infrequently I can't live on it. Then again, you never know until you try. Then again, it's artificial and irritating. Then again, an office job isn't?

Well, at least in ten years I may be recognized as "that guy who pointed the remote at my brain in that thing I saw." I wonder if he still bites his nails...

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!

God Bless the US

Last night, after a weekend's worth of rehearsals, I was involved in another staged reading of

Justin Warner

's play,

American Whupass

. (You may recall

my last encounter with this play

[and with the dude from

Clerks

]

over a year ago.) When last we left

American Whupass

, it was slotted to be performed in New Jersey in the fall of this year. Since I hadn't heard anything more about this production since, I thought to myself, "Aw. They found someone else. Aw. Poop." Exactly like that. I enjoy the play very much, and continually find new things to pursue in portraying "my" character in it, Terry Bowen, campaign-manager savant extraordinaire. To my pleasant surprise--and, I'm sure, Justin's extreme frustration--the play was dropped from production, which is why I hadn't heard hide nor hair since, until Justin emailed me asking me to audition for a new group producing a reading of it.

Theatre Resources Unlimited

is producing staged readings in the next month for a panel of producers to provide feedback, and

AW

was put up in this series last night.

The venue is an interesting one. By and large, the intention of

the reading series

is to give feedback on

producing

a given play; that is, getting it up in a venue, marketing it, etc. This means that for the first time we were performing the play without the intention of getting feedback for improving the script itself. We were hoping to present the best product possible, in order to win over producers interested in doing just that. It remains to be seen where the play will get next as a result, but Justin is a brilliant worker, and there's little doubt that he'll pursue its production to the last. Incidentally,

Friend Todd

is appearing in the third installment in this series, which is the conflict that prevents him from joining

Zuppa del Giorno

in Italy this month. Small enough, world?

I had a hell of a good time working on this play again. I always do, but this time was different in many ways. We've never had so much time to work on the play itself in prelude to performing it, and we had a very insightful and professional director in

Nancy Robillard

, who saw me personally through a lot of discoveries about my role. (To top it all off, we were rehearsing in a penthouse in Tribeca, which ain't half bad.

Bill Fairbairn

was amongst our cast, and his apartment ain't half bad, lemme tell you.)

American Whupass

is a play that deals in logical absurdities, yet it's all grounded in real-life examples and motivations. I've written about its unique quality before, so I won't go on at length, but I will take a moment to observe that it's strange that such a quality should be so unique. People love this brand of comedy, at once ridiculous, yet perfectly believable. It goes back to ancient Greece. Why should it be so rare these days?

It all went down at

The Players Theatre

, a cool space with a narrow seating area that was very evocative of a sense of depth. (Of course, no backstage space to speak of because we are, after all, talking about New York real estate.) I think the reading went well. We had some good audience reactions, and

Friend Kira

was in attendance to provide some complimentary words afterwards. It's just possible, though, that I played my role a little too close to the cuff.

Bowen is a duplicitous dude who starts out seeming very Johnny America, only to reveal more and more his win-at-any-cost perspective. I've played him variously over a span of nearly three years now (That's nearly like a quasi-successful sitcom [if said sitcom just featured the same episode with minor variations over and over again]!), and what appealed to me at first is still my favorite aspect: He believes in what he's doing, and that the results make him "the good guy." An actor can get down with that, man! It's also great to play him completely straight in the beginning, when he seems pure, with an awareness of his orchestrations behind the scenes.

However, the play has a kind of "avalanche of absurdity" effect, integrated not only into the writing but also into the dramatic action, and I think I missed the boat on riding that this time around. My affection for playing Bowen straight should have relented a bit more, and I should have let myself get a bit more wrapped up in the action. A classic example: When the daughter of the senator Bowen is trying to keep in the Senate enters the race against him, Bowen tells the senator, "You've got to stop her before it's too late, Wayne. There is no template for this. No template!" I understand this moment implicitly. It's best when "No template!" comes screeching out almost involuntarily. The man's career hangs in the balance, not to mention the public safety of hundreds of the senator's constituents. On Monday, I played the line very sincerely, but failed to allow my voice to crack, which is something that has happened in every other reading of the scene I've ever done. A small thing, to be sure. The devil is in the details.

To what do I attribute this change? I'm so glad I asked. I've been mulling it over for a little while, and have a few possible explanations. The first, and simplest, is just as I've said above: I'm enamored of playing the character straight. He functions well in this way and, oddly enough, feels more loathsome to me by the end (which I relish). The second is that I may be making this change in my performance in general these days; as I grow older, I'm looking for subtler cues and effects, ways of accomplishing the same things without as much noisy energy as I might have opted for in earlier years. This venerable-sounding choice should also be viewed in the light of fairly regular feedback I've received over the years that my choices as an actor need to be "toned down," or that I need to be "calmed down" for a straight play. In other words, the choice may not be all chosen. So we'll call that point of possible explanation "second-point-five." Third and lastly, it may just be my body feeling different. I can't deny that the sensations from my body are a huge part of my acting, and in recent years (be it a result of age or injury or what-have-you) I've needed to work more to generate that more-manic energy that drives screwball comedy.

I'd like to find a way in to that energy again for myself. Recently I've responded better to the clown work in part, I think, because it contains built-in silences and a sensitive response. Sure, it can be back-breaking and impulsive, too, but it feels essentially sensitive to me. Screwball is different, and it's something I can do very well. I don't ever want to lose that. In reading

Dan Rice: The Most Famous Man You've Never Heard Of

, I gained a new perspective on how our supposed definitions of high- and low-brow culture came about. As a young nation, we screwed that up pretty good, in my opinion, and have stuck to it. Redeem screwball, friends. Go a little crazy now and then.

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...