"That won't even get me two pickets to Tittsburgh!"

I may have seemed the ultimate absentee parent last week, my little ones, and for that I do apologize. I did it. I plopped you all down in front of my uploaded videos, cigarette dangling from my lips, then strutted my way off in my short-cut pea coat to downtown Pittsburgh to "find you a new mommy, or two." For days you've wondered: Where's my daddy? Well, daddy's back, my darlings. He'll never, ever leave you like that again.

At least not until next year's KC/ACTF conference.

You may recall (or you may not; see if I care) that about a year ago (see 1/17/07) I enlisted Friend Patrick to help me teach a workshop at ACTF to help promote Zuppa del Giorno's international training program, In Bocca al Lupo. It was that time of year again, but this time at Carnegie Mellon and with fellow Zuppiana, Heather Stuart. So last Thursday I caught a three-hour bus to Scranton, grabbed some brochures, jumped in Heather's clown car and began the five-hour drive to Steelertown. Come to think on it, it really was a bit like a clown roadshow, that whole trip. On the way we practiced our Italian to "Hide This Italian CD," a supposedly raunchy take on learning Italian, the most risky endeavor of which seemed to be asking where the gay bar is. Incidentally, it seems that in speaking Italian any subject can be designated as gay so long as the sentence ends on the word "GA-YE." I am certain that, at least in this, the language CD is not leading me astray...

The workshop went splendidly. We had a day to orient ourselves before the afternoon our workshop was scheduled for. We tried to do some other things whilst there; you know, be productive, pretend we were on a normal sort of business trip, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of experience with that approach, and so much of that time was spent floundering in our own ignorance. "How come this Wi-Fi isn't working?" "Where do we get copies made around here (bear in mind, we're on a college campus) ?" "How do you convert an AVI file into iMovie?" "What do they mean, we can't just park here for free?" Fortunately, we quickly (read: "after five hours") perceived that such was not our forte, and reverted to our usual time-wasting and exuberant enthusiasm for the unplanned life.

Which works surprisingly well for us. We get more done that way. I swear it's true. Sometimes it seems as though God has fated we Zuppiani for quasi-chaotic lives, and that he will smite us with beurocracy and stupid circumstance when we dare to defy that lot. (This is bearing in mind that I do not believe in fate.) Heather, David and I, in particular, seem to do best when we're happy-go-lucky idiots. (Friend Todd: And I mean this with tremendous love: You're in a category all your own.) It's a phenomenon beyond denial. So Heather and I stopped trying to make a demo DVD and started behaving like clowns, sometimes quite literally. We even spent some time filming brief clown bits around campus. It was a good reminder as to the spirit of what we be teaching the next day.

And the next day we slept in and then geared up for warping--er, I mean, molding the young minds of today's north-eastern American collegiate actors. It's always hard for me to concentrate much on anything else when I know I have a class to teach soon. It's a little like coming up to an audition for a part I really want. The night before the class, there were the usual festivities to attend to. We had a very entertaining dinner with Debra Otte--a long-time friend of Heather's and David's--and her friend Ingrid, then watched the "Fringe Competition," wherein students enroll the day of, receive given circumstances to incorporate and a theme and create a short entertainment for that night. Thereafter, it was free booze in the "faculty lounge." "Free" being a relative term, of course, because there's usually the trade-off of some very awkward, though generally well-intentioned, conversations to be had. And all through these myriad events, my mind wanders . . . will any of Deb's students take our workshop ? . . . is this "Fringe" work indicative of the general interests of the students ? . . . does the fun of our workshops really qualify us as "faculty" to be partaking of faculty fringe benefits, and if not, do I at this moment care an iota . . . ?

Finally the day came, and we turned no one away (in spite of the class being limited to 26 and having far more than that sign and show up) and we had a ball. Unique to this workshop was our attempt to squeeze in a little bit of everything from what we teach in Italy into the two hours allotted (we asked for four, over two days). Everyone took to it very well--including us, I believe--and after two hours of partner-stretching and balance, improvisation, physical communication and character exploration, we wearily took to the road and drove all the way back to Scranton in time to meet with David about plans for the future. Hauling my butt into bed that night was an effort, but falling asleep wasn't. I had visions of clown awkwardly dancing me to sleep . . .


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:
Adblock


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:
Adblock


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:
Adblock

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 . . .

Notions (Part 1 of ?)

  • A Punch & Judy themed show with Friend Heather, incorporating elements from the entire history of the characters, but ultimately modern and strange and funny.
  • A monodrama about my relationship with comicbooks and superheroes(TM). I started this a few years ago, creating thirty-odd pages of single-spaced, freestyle text, and ended up with a last couple of pages that were pretty effective. Also, Friend Patrick and I took some moments in a room to work on physical bits for it (though I probably never mentioned that was what I was doing, Patrick).
  • A clown version of Romeo and Juliet, in Italian and English. Zuppa's been bouncing this around since our last trip to Italy (see most of June '07) as a possible collaborative project between ourselves and our Italian counterpart(s), though now it seems a little too ambitious for a first project, not to mention whilst trying to tour Silent Lives at the same time. Still, it grabs my imagination. What I imagine is a largely silent production, with all in clown noses which are gradually stripped away as the lives of the characters become more perilous.
  • A werewolf novel that I haven't made real progress on in years ("Been working on that, what, three years now?"), but continually think about and occasionally daydream into.
  • A clown film I keep taking notes on, wherein a working stiff in New York gets magicked into a clown accidentally, which renders him completely amnesiac about how to get through a day in the city, but also grants him acrobatic ability. It would be filmed entirely on location, with strangers and actor friends playing various urban creatures, and ultimately be a sort of love poem to the city, along the lines of J. Alfred Prufrock. "If I thought my answer were to one who could return to the world, I would not reply, but as none ever did return alive from this depth, without fear of infamy I answer thee." Translation by G.B. Harrison et al., eds. Major British Writers.
  • To use Friend Patrick's Sukeu mask in performance.
  • To construct a stilt costume incorporating arm extensions with working hands or claws, possibly along the theme of a praying mantis.
  • To engineer and construct homemade stilts with jumping capability.
  • To pick up the trombone again, much to the chagrin of my neighbors.