ODIN'S AVIARY ~ a home for wayward thoughts & memories
My teacher, Ms. Cody Schreger, who is fairly wicked awesome.
For almost a year-and-a-half now, I've tried different ways of tying myself up, suspended from the ceiling, at least once a week. Some weeks I let go by without fulfilling this habit, others I manage to engage in it several times. But it's likely that I've tied myself to the ceiling a few hundred times now. For some, that might qualify them as something of an advanced practitioner when it comes to tethering oneself to the inner-roof; Wife Megan, for example, is quite adept after the same extent of experience. Personally, I still consider myself to be an intermediate at best as it pertains to lashing my body in suspension from architectural hoods. It's tough to pin-point the reason for this discrepancy, but I generally chalk it up to Megan having had extensive dance experience, and me being a rather shimmying, scampering, klutzy ol' dork.
(Friend Geoff still think it's hilarious/terrifying that I stilt-walk, since from his
perspective
it's a dodgy proposition for me to make it regular-walking through a doorway without comical mishap.)
Whatever the reason, this discrepancy is why Megan made her aerial silks performance debut in August, and will be showing her sophomore routine in the same show in which I will hopefully prove to the world that when I fall off of fabric, it's purely intentional. The performances will be in mid-October, as part of an all-ages Halloween show at the
studio in Williamsburg. I've been preparing for it since I got back from the Marywood work in Scranton (see
) and am just at that stage where one realizes just how much work will actually need to be done to achieve one's vision. Whenever we have an idea for a performance, we never truly have a concept of how much it will take to achieve it. It's similar to what I've read about childbirth in this way, I think: as time goes on you remember the joy better than the agony.
I posted a video the week I got back of
my very first draft of the piece
. I wouldn't have done this normally, but the curator of the show needed to see a sample and I figured the worst it would do is demonstrate how far I had come by the time I posted a performance video. Even in ten days (six hours' rehearsal) or so, the piece has evolved quite a bit, and I have a clearer sense of where I'm headed. What started out as a concept piece featuring my stock silent-film clown has evolved into something with a larger story, lightly connected to what Megan will perform and featuring a new clownish sort of character - a slightly deluded old-timey strongman. It's fun, recognizable and it works, I think. I've even found
and buffed down the choreography to a reasonable skill-level and duration.
However: This is hard work of a variety with which I am not terribly comfortable. I have been known, when a show I'm in randomly requires dance choreography, to internally combust, and not in that nice fuel-injected way. It makes me SUPER SELF CRITICAL and HULK SMASH. For some reason I don't get this way with fight choreography, nor acrobalance - love it! Give it to me more please! Aerial silks has a dancier (is SO a word) feel to it for me, though, and so there are some personal blocks there. On top of that, it's awfully specific in a way that people without training can take for granted. As an actor, it's painfully obvious to me when someone is trying their hand at acting, and doesn't have certain (eventually) instinctive specifics going on. So I'm working on that with silks.
I'm also trying to build a piece that plays to both my strengths and weaknesses. For example, I can't seem to point my toes to save my life. You might be surprised what a difference this makes. Heck: Even if I could achieve this WONDER of the classical dance world, my extension (how straight, long and pretty on is) in my legs is worse than a Virginia fence. But I have a certain amount of upper body strength. Nothing that's leading Cirque du Soleil to pound down my door but, you know. So I've devised the circus strongman character as someone who might take pride in his stiff form and right angles. Ah, but there's a trick in that, too. My feet can't just be casually flexed, they must be UBER-FLEXED at ALL TIMES.
Ah, art.
It's great fun stuff, though, in spite of all the struggles. It's still climbing, after all. I'm often at odds about the work required to go from enjoying something to being able to do it reliably well. I gave up on vocal training because I wanted singing to remain something I enjoyed for myself, rather than resented for needing to struggle through. This isn't necessarily an intelligent decision, I realize, but it's one that was and continues to be personally important to me. I don't want to do this with silks, however, which is why performing is so important. It forces me to take things from fun to reliable, and thereby take whatever little talent I have to whatever little skill I can muster. So I remind myself of that every time the move is too complicated for me to remember, or I am too weak to execute a climb for the fifth or sixth time, or the dance belt (O God, that dance belt) chafes.
And then sometimes I just scamper and shimmy to my heart's content.
The key to this success, I think, was in getting to working directly on the scenario sooner. In the past we spent more days on general training on improvisation, stylistic elements and concept, not arriving at a scenario until the Friday or sometimes even the Saturday before a Monday performance. This time I found the team problem-solving involved in working from a scenario does a lot of the training for us, creating situations and challenges that end up being far more interesting (not to mention well-motivated) than anything we can prepare them for in hypothetical exercises. It was a near-perfect balance, spending a couple of days on character and improvisation, one on physical lazzi (could have used a bit more time there, I confess) and then three-or-so hours to memorize the scenario and ten more to develop and refine it. We came out strong, with the perfect amount of fear, I think.
introduced Billy, who was late due to mingling with the crowd. Billy and I opened the show by establishing our relationship as guys who had different ideas of wanting the show to be good -- me uptight, he relaxed, which segued nicely into his playing one of his songs to open. We set Billy up so he could move about, but had a nice old easy chair stage left for home base. This worked really nicely, so that he belonged on stage, but didn't have to distract from the more independent performances. Billy's a very versatile and charismatic performer, as both musician and comedian, and I owe a tremendous amount of the show's function to his presence. In fact, you really should be listening to his music while you read this, just for mood's sake.
Urbano's Kitchen, in which a rather mad-looking Italian chef unleashes dish after dish upon an unsuspecting restaurant. Richard has the kind of dash that can pull this kind of act off, and that's a rare quality. Essentially, the act consists of him excitedly throwing trash on the audience in the form of yarn spaghetti, paper farfalle and plastic-bag salad. Richard has a way of doing this that compromises none of the anarchic spirit, yet feels somehow inviting, and he had the perfect counterpart in his Vincenzo, a slow-moving old man played by his four-foot son Sheridan. He and Billy were really a one-two punch at the top, relaxing and then getting the audience laughing in turns.
After that it was more music, this time in the form of an a capella performance from Kate. She took the stage gently after a brief introduction from me, and explained her Irish roots before proceeding to sing a favorite Irish folk song of her grandmother's. Kate has a beautiful, strong and well-trained voice, so we can be forgiven for not immediately recognizing Beyonce's Grammy-winning Single Ladies. As this pop song rolled out in a grandly nostalgic, traditional style, the audience went to stitches. What was really funny was that it took awhile to get through this pop song in that style, which -- rather than seeming to run long -- made the song and our appreciation of it only feel funnier and funnier. And did Kate crack a single ironic smile? She did not.
a heap of fabric on the floor. Then the fabric began to twitch and convulse. Billy's music ceased, and out from under the fabric emerged a transformed creature (a cat, though debate rages on). The audience loved this piece as Patrick did something he does brilliantly, and the crystal ball becomes a cat toy as the piece transforms into something utterly playful. And, for this one, there's already video.
and then Billy mocks her a bit by thumping out rhythms on his guitar. They get into a comic duel, which gives way into Billy's Ravi Shankar, a very energetic, rhythmic song of his with thumps and ticks that accelerate throughout. They perform a duet. THEY MET THAT AFTERNOON, AND THAT NIGHT, THEY DID A TAP'N'GUITAR DUET. I, for the record, have never, ever done anything to be so lucky as to have these people performing on my program.
again Rich took the stage as Urbano. This time, it was Urbano's Circus, a rollicking puppet show of sorts that mirrored the spirit and content of the whole evening's variety nicely. With his (t)rusty assistant, Urbano wheels out a grocery cart full of eccentric puppet performers who leap (are thrown) through the air, run about (remotely controlled) on the ground and generally act up in their particular routine. It involved audience participation, gleeful imagination and of course Rich's persnickety, anarchic orchestration. He had a wonderful gimmick for it, too, in which Vincenzo would at his command open different electronic greeting cards in front of a microphone for theme music. Flight of the Valkyries never sounded so apt. It wrapped up with an unwrapped "fin" sign -- perfect punctuation on which to end the show and lead us into our curtain call.