A Myth Gone Public

Last night I attended the public The Public reading of

Christina Gorman

's play,

American Myth

. You may

recall

I attended a reading of her "work-in-progress" back in November, and this was that. I feel more at ease to address the play by name, in spite of it still bearing the WiP nomenclature, because this was a seriously serious reading, my friends. The Emerging Writers Group

advertised

, and filled the center section of the Anspacher Theatre (dear God, what a wonderful space!), and I don't want to name-drop here. I really don't. But suffice it to say that there were some very respectable names attached to the acting and directing of the thing. So, Christina, I'm outing you, whatever other work remains to be done on your script.

American Myth

deals with a fictional set of characters, but ones plucked out of the headlines like a

Law & Order

episode (only more insightful, of course). It deals in questions, which is probably my favorite thing about Christina's writing. All plays tend toward argument; conflict, after all, is drama, and vice versa. But there's nothing like a play that encourages one to ask questions rather than deliver a personal judgment, and

American Myth

does this for me. It asks what history is, both personal and national, and what we want or need it to be. It questions the motivations of the supposedly moral, and the supposedly immoral. Maybe it's simply the Unitarian Universalist in me, but I love pondering these questions because I can never be absolute in my judgments of others in my daily life. A play that impartially (hyper-partially, perhaps?) explores all the angles of a moral conflict resonates very personally with me. Plus, the script has all of Christina's usual wit and incisive display of human behavior that I've come to expect from her work.

Actually attending the reading was a sort of strange experience for me. I went by myself, with which I'm normally fine but this time, somehow, felt conspicuous about. Christina was wonderfully and specifically grateful for my attendance, and that went a long way to comforting me; in fact, for the brief moments I was in her presence I felt totally at ease. Yet apart from that, even as I was simply sitting and reading, waiting for the performance to start, I was uneasy and downright riled up. It's taken me a while to put together what could be the source of this, but this morning I realized that it was being so close to so much of what I want . . . and not having it. Of course I couldn't figure that out last night -- I was fully invested in the play and its development. This morning however, as I packed my chattel for

today's workshop in Philadelphia

, I put it together.

As much as I parlayed my feelings of rejection regarding

the

AFAWK

changes

into moral outrage and philosophical questioning, the fact is that I had allowed myself to become too dependent on the whole effort for the wrong reasons. I very genuinely cared about the story we were trying to tell, of course, and felt committed to our work and intentions. All that was not compromised. However, I had in a way come to rely on the show as a ticket to somewhere, and I have to admit to myself that part of my response (or lack thereof) to the casting changes was petulant and careerist. We had a reading at The Public scheduled, and then I felt it yanked out from under me. Yes, I care about that show; yes, I put good, hard work into its creation; yes, it is deserving of a life beyond our Fringe Festival performances and sacrifices ought to be made to ensure that. But I also want very badly to be valued more than I yet have as an actor, and that very visceral urge pushed on me hard when all of that went down. I had another opportunity to rejoin the process shortly thereafter, which I ignored. Maybe it was because of all the reasons I said, to distance myself from the story we created before, etc. But also, I was hurt by my own sense of slighted ambition.

Believe it or not, I do not want to dwell on that episode, apart from coming clean a bit on the whole thing.

As Far As We Know

continues in its development, and I'm very happy to hear that it lives on. It is wholly deserving of whatever success and attention it can create, as are its current creators. In fact,

Friend Nat

is one of those "creactors," which I find oddly comforting -- he's like a God-father for me. I mention it not just to come clean, but also because what allowed me to realize the source of my anxiety last night was that it felt just like an emotion I used to have in high school and college all the time.

I would sit down in the auditorium, or little theatre, and wait for the lights to dim. I was usually by myself, for whatever reason. (Often, that reason was because it was my third time seeing the show and I had run out of folks who wanted to see it.) I would sit and sit, a mounting sense of anticipation and dread occupying my heart and head. Then the show would begin, and I would get wrapped up in its machinations, but one part of me would always be on the outside of that. That part would feel wrapped up tight, strong, full of urge and impulse. And it would only feel more so after the bows were had, and the applause faded from memory. That urge sits there in every performance and whispers to me,

"I want to do that.

"I want to do that . . ."

Burlesque

Last Saturday was the day of celebration for

Wife Megan

's 30th anniversary of the day of her birth and she, being the woman I married, wanted to go see some good, wholesome burlesque. You know burlesque, right? It's that quaint throw-back to a more innocent time, when men were men, women were women, and occasionally they all agreed to meet somewhere with dim lighting to reveal their knees to one another. One of the things I love about living in New York is being somewhere that such nostalgia for the frilly sins of the past exists. Any town that's a friend of anything remotely related to vaudeville and old-timey fun, is a friend of mine, as I always say (or will, henceforth). Furthermore, I specifically love burlesque. It's theatrical, it's joyous, and it usually incorporates lots of humor and props with its boobies. What's not to love?

So we went to

The Slipper Room

.

We stayed for many acts and several hours.

We left late, and they were still going strong.

Most of us will never be the same.

So from a theatrical perspective, it was a roaring success. I mean, if I can perform in something that really evidently changes people, I consider that a pretty big success. The specificity of that change is something that's even trickier than the change itself, given that all live performance is by its nature collaborative and interpretive. So personally, if you got something out of it, I got something out of it too. This reflects my attitudes on a lot of things. Like . . . dance. Or . . . board games. Or . . . other occupations of one's quest for joyous experiences. Let's not be judgmental about anyone's pursuit of happiness, even if they spell said pursuit "happyness." Hey: Rock on. It brings you joy and, on some level, that makes me happy.

Now there were some things I witnessed Saturday last that did not, per se, make me happy. The responses I had were more along the lines of being made to feel surprised, or confused, or scared. Very, very scared. But others really enjoyed some of these things, and no one got hurt or maligned beyond repair (though of course some audience mockery is part of the idiom), and so we can all look back on it and laugh. Sure, some of us may have gone home and gone directly into the shower, do not pass "GO!", do not bother removing one's clothing. But here we all are, scarless, and with a generally broader view of our fellow man, woman, and all others.

A broader view in a smaller world, I should say. I knew one of the performers -- had performed with her before, in fact. Her stage name is

Miss Saturn

, and she is a dynamite hula-hoop artist. She is also, it turns out, somewhat uninhibited in her display of God's gifts. When I performed alongside her, it was at

a benefit

for

Friend Melissa

's company,

Kinesis Project

. She hooped it up, I clowned around, and afterward she suggested we work together again some time, but I never followed up. Now I'm left to wonder if following up would have led me to The Slipper Room. It would not have been an entirely unwelcome opportunity, assuming I would have been able to stick to my personal preferences for the content of my act. During Saturday's experience I also had the unexpected mystery of feeling I recognized another performer: one "

Harvest Moon

." As it turns out, I don't. She's not who I mistook her for, but she has nevertheless reminded me that secret identities are as common in this city as free newspapers.

Some may view my appetite for nostalgia with disdain, but what can I say? I like sentimental sweetness in my indulgences, and could have used a bit more at The Slipper Room. After each break, the acts grew progressively more risque and shocking, and I grew less and less interested. Of course, if I were to run a contemporary burlesque show in New York City, I've no doubt I'd have to make similar allowances. After all, what we saw was probably closer in overall effect to us as the burlesques of old were during their time. These shows were shocking, titillating not just in sensual ways, but in visceral ones. The atmosphere should be one of reckless abandon and in this sense there was nothing inapt about my experience Saturday night. It was just that I had walked into a circa-1930s Berlin burlesque, when I had been hoping for a circa-1889s French one, I suppose. C'est la vie! I regret nothing!

Looking back, it occurs to me that there's an awfully fine line between anticipation and dread, and that line is going to be set at different places for different folks. A friend of mine recently sent me some writing research that discusses the role of feedback loops in sexual experiences. The gist of it was that "healthy" sexuality involves a feedback loop of increasing focus on arousal, and "unhealthy" (or perhaps, unhelpful) sexuality involves a neurotic, self-evaluative loop. Both increase the focus, but one allows you to engage, and the other rather prevents it. If we accept that sexual feelings are erotic in the broader sense, this is a very interesting way of looking at what we as performers inspire in our audiences. Will we fill them with eager anticipation, loathsome dread, or something of a different ratio altogether? In my opinion, neither is bad, just a different effect. And whatever effect, it begs the question: What, if anything, will we make the payoff?

Here-Ever-After

Most of the work I've been doing on my play-in-progress,

Hereafter

, has lately been confined to my noggin. In particular, when I'm walking the few blocks from the train to the ol' office job. Then I get to the ol' office job, and most if not all of those thoughts go whizzing from out my ears, displaced by insurance rates, supply vendors and other undesirables. So I thought,

Hey,

thought I,

hey, why don't I do some of the same thinking on the Aviary? That way I'll not only better retain it, but open it up for other people to badger and criticize me about it as they may see fit.

So here we are. Badger if and as you will.

Interesting to try to communicate my thoughts for people who know what I have written, and them what don't (read: most everybody). I held

a reading

in December, from which

much was learned

. Those who participated are about the only people on earth so far who know what my play is about, and odds are it will be about things altogether different once it passes through this nascent stage of revision. The over-arching theme of the various stories has to do with what happens to our bodies after death, and how we separate sense of identity from physical evidence. It's also a comedy, largely; or anyway, it's supposed to be funny. I've got roughly six characters in ten inter-related, but not necessarily inter-connected, scenes, some of which are much stronger than others. The biggest question I had prior to the reading was whether or not this wanted to be a play, rather than a sampling of scenes. It turns out it rather would like to be a whole play, which is great, and also means way more work for me.

Some scenes just don't work, and it's that simple. I have two such set in a gastroenterologist's office (which should have been my first clue, right there) that flounder and waffle mercilessly. These, and their companions in dysfunction, I believe I will rewrite from scratch with new ideas that are influenced by an improved sense of continuity to the whole thing. More importantly, the characters they particularly address are weak. It's going to be a lot of re-imagining, which is fun, even when it's frustrating. This is what got me started on day-dreaming about it, anyway -- the possibility of that freedom to do more than revise, to rewrite.

Along those lines, too, I realize an immediate need to rearrange what scenes I do have fairly strong. As they are arranged now, my eye was more on structural symmetry, not enough on organic cause-and-effect. Which is actually pretty funny, since one of the philosophical arguments I have going in the thing is between linear and holistic perspectives. Philosophy is another little facet that needs rearranging. Just now, some of the characters have perspectives that are too similar for anything terribly interesting to happen between them. This, and the aforementioned, leads me to contemplating the cut of one (or more?) of my dears. The whole thing could really benefit from an outline of some kind, which, again: funny. I'm not very good at or about outlining. I don't like doing it, and I'm pretty crap at it, generally imposing too much logical control and not enough intuitive exploration. Then again, maybe I'm just doing it wrong, somehow.

Expatriate Younce

and I, in our recent

brainstorming phone call

, got to talking about ideas and our rather different relationships to them. To put it mildly, I have a love-hate relationship to my ideas. My ideas have burned me before and, though I try to forgive and forget, I am holding on to the odd grudge, or seventy-eight. Ideas are as malevolent as they are beneficial to me, some resulting in a well-deserved sense of accomplishment, and other resulting in a tremendous amount of wasted time and effort. Of course, as I write this, I realize that I'm a little too focused on product over process here. Younce points out that my urge to fulfill a creative idea's potential is what enables me to get creative things done, but the flip side of that coin is frustration over delayed or (in many dreadful cases) aborted projects. Take, for example, this idea I had of incorporating the three fates into my play (

in a gastroenterologist's office, for

Pete's

sakes

). Thought it was great, ended up screwing the story into places it most certainly does not belong.

So outlining, free writing and cuts. Perhaps I hate acknowledging how little I've accomplished on a first draft, and that's why I generally avoid the revision process? Whatever it may be, I'm determined to make this project the one for which I break that habit. Then I am sure I will have still more revisions, but hopefully I'll be slightly more capable of them.

Then, too, maybe Youncey can finally get his werewolf story.

Mysteries and Secrets

Neil Gaiman

.

Neil Gaiman is an incredible treasure of storytelling, whom I can appreciate largely due to the years-ago efforts of

Expatriate Dave

to make me experience as much of Mr. Gaiman's work as possible. Since that time (around age 17, this was) I have consumed every iota of his work that I could, and his work includes comics, other literature, movies, a

daily 'blog

and numerous odds and ends besides. If you don't know his work, you should, even if you don't consider yourself a fan of fantastical fiction. He has very good ideas, and he steals awfully well. By which I mean that one of the things I love about his work is the way he can tie together disparate old ideas and stories with new ones and make something appreciably unique. This could be considered a decent description of what any artist endeavors to do. Neil Gaiman is an artist.

I decided to write about him today because I have noticed many disparate ideas and stories coming together for me lately that point his way. In brief:

• I'm reading a book about him I received for Christmas.

• He was just on "The Colbert Report," which I stayed up to see (WAY past night-before-open-call bedtime).

• He just made Wife Megan's esteemed list of Famous People With Whom She Would Like to Have a Conversation.

• I've been enjoying the fiction-writing process of late, especially with Friend WHftTS.

• Expatriate Younce actually confessed some writerly desires to me the other night -- a victory for the cause of Fiction, I assure you.

• He recently experienced a personal loss that makes me wish I could do something for him, as he's done so much for me.

I had an opportunity to share a word or two with Neil Gaiman a few years back, when he was in town signing copies of his short-story collection,

Fragile Things

. He was interviewed by John Hodgman, which was hilarious and insightful, and then took a seat at the back of the room to sign hundreds upon hundreds of signatures. I waited my turn in line with my and Megan's books, and I thought about things. I had a signed copy of his novel

Stardust

that I had won in a costume contest back in my home town, and it seemed unbelievable that I was going to watch him sign a book from my very hand. I wondered what I would say, and suddenly the whole thing felt eerily familiar. Looking back, I realize the panic I felt was the exact same feeling I have waiting for an open call. Suffice it to say, I thought of a million things I could say. When I got to the table, I squeaked. Something. I don't know. I think I've since blocked it out. But I know it was squeaky, whatever it was.

The Zen Buddhists believe that the elimination of desire is a key to enlightenment. When I want something as much as to be cast off-Broadway, or to get into a discussion about mythology with Neil Gaiman, I can see their point. It can be crippling.

Mythology, as a concept, is a very interesting way of looking at our lives. Obviously I would say so -- see name o'blog -- but a few thousand years' worth of actual mythology may be said to back me up on this as well. I used to think of mythology on the whole (and prepare for more sweeping generalizations here) as a way of devising answers to difficult questions. I was taught that these stories came about because primitive peoples needed an answer to things like lightning storms, death and babies. I won't argue against that theory, but it is only one theory. The more I learn about them, the more I see the enduring mythologies as stories and beliefs that return people to essential questions, rather than direct answers. Moreover, I see mythology not as giving us guidelines or neat morals for our living, providing context, so much as it

changes our story

. Stories influence other stories, and one person's life can be said to be a (hopefully) long, largely sequential story. What I realized while standing in that line was that Gaiman's stories had profoundly affected my life, my story. In fact, just at that moment, it seemed entirely likely that his stories had had the most influence on mine, out of all of them. Thus: Squeak.

I don't know if myth and mystery have any relation, etymologically speaking, but I find them to be very closely related. Brothers, almost. In his famous

Sandman

graphic novels, Gaiman resurrected DC Comics' versions of Cain and Abel as the keepers of mysteries and secrets, respectively. According to that particular mythology, a mystery is a mystery because it was meant to be shared, a secret a secret because it ought to be forgotten . . . if it can be. Mythology, fiction, stories, they all confront unanswerable questions in one way or another, and it's by sharing them that we fulfill their functions. So I hope you'll share in some of Gaiman's, because it's no secret that they're uncommonly good.

Remember to Write . . .

F

riend WHftTS

has been writing. He/She/It is very good about doing it, and also good (though perhaps I should say "grood") about writing about when he/she/it doesn't do it. And thankfully, I have been invited into that rewarding little world of writing writers who appreciate the act of writing and writing about said act. We've made a small collaboration by writing a couple of short stories within the same world -- a world WHftTS created -- and exchanging thoughts and critiques on them. It rules.

Some of my RPG buddies wonder why I can't get thrilled about games that involve a lot of combat and strategy. I think it's because I always have some small voice at the back of my head that says, "I know this story, and it only has two possible endings." I love narrative, and I love storytelling, and I am really enjoying having someone with whom I can discuss the craft behind it all. It's still very mysterious to me, how words (not to rule out images, melodies, etc.) can be built together to create responses in us, and how the best of those creations can work over and over again, personally affecting each reader, or audience member, or writer. Storytelling, I think, is the overlap between my various appreciations for theatre, cinema, reading and writing. It often makes me wish I was a better storyteller, because while I sometimes do well with crafting such things, actually being the one to

tell a story

is not something at which I usually excel. An actor does some of this, but not alone, not directly. Storytellers, as such, are rather magical people to me.

Expatriate Younce

and I had a summer in which we shared these "assignments" with one another. They could be anything at all, really, from scavenger hunt to essay writing. It was pretty awesome. (That being said, I hope and pray none of my completed assignments

ever

appear on these here internetz [Buddy Younce, I'm looking in your direction...].) It was a way of having new frameworks with which to work in doing something creative, or interpretive. This always appeals to me, whether I complete a given assignment or not, because it keeps creativity in the realm of a dialogue. This idea of dialogue, communication, extroversion, fuels me somehow as a creative person. That's part of why this here 'blog is the best journaling I've ever accomplished, why live theatre is the work to which I've given the most of my efforts. It's rewarding but, more importantly I think, it is shared.

In the spirit of that: Please think of one of your favorite stories. Now, think of the best delivery you ever received of said story, be it a personal telling, a movie, a book, etc. Now, imagine the best

possible

delivery of that story for you -- the medium, the person or people involved, the environment, the works. Seriously: Please write your responses in "reactions" for this entry. I'm really curious. It doesn't have to be an ultimate answer; it just has to be

one

of your favorites.

Ever thine,

-Jeff