Tied Up in the Air

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

STREB

studio in Williamsburg.  I've been preparing for it since I got back from the Marywood work in Scranton (see

9/12/10

) 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

a song

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.

Marywood on the Green

My first introduction to the concept of a "greenshow" was through my second professional theatre job, at the Porthouse summer theatre.  I haven't been back in a while, so I don't know if they still do this, but in my time there a great mass of the more minor players would be expected to learn songs and devise routines to entertain the audience who came early to enjoy a picnic dinner on the green between the parking lot and the stage.  This in many ways was my first introduction to variety performance, and at the time I had absolutely no idea that variety would play such a significant role in my creative development as an adult.  Just about all of my busking, clowning, circus and self-generated work stems in some way from that first experience - a connection I only recognized just now, while writing.  So naturally I was thrilled when Heather suggested that for this year's Portal Project initiative with the theatre students of Marywood University we divide the group of nearly 30 into some working on the commedia dell'arte scenario, and others devising a greenshow.

I've written in the past (see 9/2/08 & 8/28/07) about my experiences teaching this week-long commedia dell'arte intensive.  Last year, regrettably, it followed too hard and fast on our time in Italy and I had to give it a pass in favor of maintaining my day job (yes - irony is ironic).  I was eager to return this year, and the whole thing felt fresh to me once again, particularly in regard to all the new faces I would be meeting.  I confess I was a little apprehensive about the loss of many graduates who started out with us back in 2007, but that anxiety proved entirely unfounded - somewhere between my and Heather's greater experience and deeper understanding, and the students' willingness to focus and commit to the work we found the experience to be one of our most efficient and successful.  Safe to say, too, that everyone had a lot of fun.

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.

In a sense, the real challenge we set for ourselves this year was the greenshow, rather than the scenario.  Heather was responsible for both the challenge and the success of that portion of the endeavor.  She has an impressive talent for not just randomly applying a routine to performers, but recognizing in them a possibility for a routine already lying in wait within their personalities or styles.  This is part of what makes her such a brilliant clown, her ability to read people (including herself) and comprehend unspoken personae.  Our greenshow ended up consisting of a couple of clownish acts, a group of acrobats, a group of musicians, a tie-in relationship with the conclusion of the scenario (Heather's brilliance again) and all of it encircled by an MC character who also provided a prologue to the scenario.  The greenshow established the space, warmed up the crowd and was integrated into the scenario by way of concept and a couple of character references.

All the performers were amazing, and I believe everyone grew a little through the process.  They had two shows, at noon and 2:00 respectively.  The first was pretty sparsely attended and had some of the earmarks of the struggle to discover that last scene member: the audience.  They did well enough, though, and by the end of the first show they had definitely learned a lot about what was going to work.  They won the audience they had over, in spite of the dialogue being nigh inaudible over some terribly insistent generic "Italian music" blaring from the nearby clocktower, and after some lunch we regrouped at the theatre for our second run.  We gave them some advice for the second show, but I don't think they needed it.  In the second show, the audience was far more substantial, the greenshow-ers took bigger risks and the scenario-ists (is SO a word) made fuller, clearer physical choices.  We all still had to contend with blaring, generic music, but they compensated beautifully and really knocked it out of the park.

I had a tremendous time working with this group again, and it fortifies my desire to teach more often.  These were, to be frank, practically ideal circumstances (apart from the lateness of the hours).  It's exceptional when one gets the chance to work with a fellow ensemble member as a co-teacher, and have as students a group so focused on strengthening their sense of ensemble and overall improvement.  Two incidents in particular however stood out for me toward the end of this week, neither of which had anything directly to do with these circumstances.  They had to do with something larger.

The first of these was introducing the students to an idea we at Zuppa have used from our very first show: the musical run. In this style of run, we play an ever-changing mix of music during a run of the scenario involving no speaking.  The players thereby run through a very complex sequence of action using only their bodies to communicate that progress, plus they must continually listen to whatever music happens to be playing as they enter and synchronize their tempo, mood and choices to it.  It's inordinately helpful, but exhausting and can be a difficult concept to grasp.  Frustration is easy to find here.  Yet, just before their first showing, the players took to quite naturally, and seemed to really enjoy it.  This seeming was later proven for me when we were between the two shows, all rather full of food and feeling the week behind us, and I gave them the option of resting or doing another musical run.  They enthusiastically leaped into that second musical run, and came out of it grinning like mad.

The second was a more abstract result, and the result of another brilliant idea from Heather.  That is, a way to warm both the scenario people and the greenshow folks up together.  Eccolo:

Ich Bin Ein Scrantonian

The view from inside my Scranton office.

Editor's note: The following is an entry that I wrote last Thursday.  Normally I would update it and post it as written today, but I can't seem to make any time for 'blog posts lately, so I'm breaking with convention, leaving it as it is and posting it to yesterday's date.  (I am no longer in Scranton; my caffeine intake has since subsided, somewhat.)  This is in the hopes that I can write today about what I really want to write about, but we'll just see how that goes, shall we?  Without further ado:

Today I've spent five straight hours sitting in a coffee shop off of the Scranton town square, plugging away at this and that on my laptop.  In that time, I've had various meetings with people, both planned and unplanned, in person and over the internet.  I've occasionally engaged in some of my usual time-wasting computer activities - a little Facebook, a bit of tearing through Google Reader items - but by-and-large I have been at work.  My work, not anybody else's, and that's delightful.  I think my rear end is going to give up and walk out soon, with or without me, but there'll be plenty of time for movement and making up for that tonight when I return to the reason I'm here in the first place: to once again teach commedia dell'arte to and stage a scenario with the good theatre students of Marywood University.

I've been here since Monday, and in that time have been preoccupied with adjusting my body clock to our teaching schedule.  The students have classes until the evening, so our "extra-curricular" mandatory activity takes place between the hours of 8:30 and 11:00 at night.  Poor Heather has to be up early in the morning as well, to work her day job and attend her newly acquired graduate studies, but I have the luxury of simply sleeping until 10:00 am.  And frankly, if I did not, this bird would not fly.  I am not a night person.  Even with my adjusted sleep schedule it's a trial.  I make bad decisions past about 9:00 pm, and under normal circumstances they're confined to junk food and succumbing to my onychophagia, but this week these poor decisions extend to dramaturgy and personal safety.  Fortunately for me, la commedia dell'arte tends to thrive on regrettable choices.

There's something really lovely about the people I work with here in Northeastern Pennsylvania (or "NEPA," a nice analogue to my accustomed "NoVa").  It's as though everyone understands that what we're doing is what we're doing, and not that thing we're doing now that will hopefully result in something later that will contribute to that big break or that huge pay-off down the road.  Plus there are no subways.  But I digress.  All I'm trying to say is that focusing on work is a lovely, lovely thing that I very badly needed, in spite of all the work I've gotten to do in NYC lately.  I'm exercised and inspired and healthy, and generally happy in a way that can be easy to forget as I stride my way down the Avenue of the Americas to this, that or the other.

The Southampton Writers Conference

I had no idea this thing existed until I was invited by

The Ensemble Studio Theatre

(thanks entirely to

Tom Rowan

) to participate as an actor this year. But that's what a lot of my acting career is like, so it's tough for me to judge whether or not I

should

have heard of it.

Imagine you're at a party where you don't really know anybody. You're supposed to be there, and yet no one would miss you for a moment if you slipped out the door. People are buzzing about, trying to connect with very specific intentions, and tremendous drama and change is unfolding all around you. You, meanwhile, are just sort of holding your arms out, hoping someone will pick up on your invitation to a hug. That, my friends, is an apt metaphor for my experience as a career actor, my general attitude toward parties, and frankly the beginning of my experience here at

The Southampton Writers Conference

.

It was cool, I don't mind telling you. I am a huge writing nerd, and love excuses to hear writers talk about their work and processes. I've been to another writers' conference twice before, the

CVWC

in upstate, both times as something of a tourist. I was just a shade closer to being an actual participant this time, working there as an actor for their playwrights, which means I get to attend readings and rub elbows with Emily Mann and - yes - spend a little time cloistered away in my room working on my own playwriting. Pretty sweet, and those strange party feelings always fade eventually (but must they always appear in the first place, galdurnitall?). More on that in a future post, I think.

To sum it all up (because Blogger ate a good three paragraphs that it told me it had saved yesterday [Blogger, you jerk][just kidding love you mean it never change]): social difficulties were surmounted, the quality of work was astounding, and the level of talent of my fellow actors was simply inspiring. I'm not just blowing positive-attitude smoke here. Without dropping names, the actors I got to work with were - across the board - professional, talented and fun. Most all of them were working, many you'd probably recognize, and just about all of them (with the exception of me and I think two others) had some previous association with EST. So in some small way, I checked off a personal goal in getting to work with that theatre (see

11/17/08

). I hope, of course, to work with them again someday.

The work itself involved reading two plays twice - Tom's

Burning

Leaves

and

Ben Rosenthal

's

Neptune Kelly

- in a cycle in which the first reading gave the playwrights material with which to revise, and the second came after two days' revisions and a brief rehearsal period, and was presented to whomever from the conference wished to attend. It was a good structure, and left us with time to sit in and do readings for Emily Mann's playwriting workshops, and on Saturday night her attendees presented some of their work to the rest of the conference in the form of our performing readings of about five minutes of each playwright's in-class creations. Any time I had spare from this schedule was generally spent in my room mulling over and revising my own much-neglected play-in-progress

Hereafter

.

(PS and also: Dear Reader, I'm certain that if the occasion arises in which I announce I'm going to once again write a bunch of interconnected scenes and see if after-the-fact they can be melded into a cohesive whole, you will of course come to my apartment, knock on my door and, when I open it, shout "NOT AGAIN," and punch me square in the nose. Hard. Because you love me. Anyway: I'd appreciate it if you could.)

It was interesting to be working on

Burning Leaves

again, particularly because I felt it was already a rather finished product the last time I performed it in

November of 2008

. Tom, fortunately, is a much smarter playwright than I, and had already made some significant cuts to the play before I read it again for the conference. In particular, he cut a monologue for my character in which he explains what traumatic series of events led to his fleeing New York. He had gotten feedback suggesting that this was one of the more irresponsible and less admirable things the guy does, sharing the burden of such personal history with his student. I missed it of course - it was a heart-breaking story to tell - but a great edit. In the course of the week Tom did more to streamline the play and adjust the balance of ethics and plot logic between characters, and I felt good about the final reading. I always want to do better, but I felt good. Again: my fellow actors were

amazing

; just committed and specific and true as all git-out.

Neptune Kelly

is a cracker of a script. I had zero experience with this one before they sent it to me, and I have to admit that on first read I flinched a bit from it. It has a combination of earmarks of the kind of material I'm usually not too keen on: highly stylized, allegorical, verbose. Normally this makes for the sort of trying-too-hard off-off-Broadway showcase that's out there to MAKE a STATEMENT. As soon as we got in the room, though, I knew I had let prejudice in on my initial judgment, because the play

rocks

. It's not as allegorical as it first may seem - for one, it doesn't wrap anything up neatly - and the beauty of its verbose style is that it stems from committed, crisis-filled characters. It's funny, bold and poetic in the least pretentious way, and we had a ball with it. I had only one scene in

Neptune Kelly

(once again playing a teacher, somehow) but it sort of made up for my lost monologue in

Burning Leaves

, being an explanatory story for why my character committed and extreme and self-destructive act. I got to make this vaulting little journey from resolution to profound regret over a couple of pages, and in so doing propel another character into direct action, and that's just the kind of smarts and specificity that Ben's working with which allows him to create such a weird-but-true world.

Finally, the presentation of Ms. Mann's students' work was great fun, and surprisingly fulfilling. I've always been a fan of short-form presentations of theatrical work and the way its informality can invite more audience involvement and great spontaneity in the actors' performances, but you often have to take a certain lackluster quality into account for such undertakings. Timing may be off, words may be stumbled over, etc. Such was the quality of the writing and the acting of this little presentation that it lacked no luster. I laughed, I cried, it was better than lots and lots of the fully produced shows I've seen in my life. I was lucky to be a part of it (particularly, extremely lucky, actually, because my scene partner is an amazingly good actor). We had fully-formed, five-minute segments of passion, manipulation, Alzheimer's, shuddering regret and even loving cannibalism. Egad I love theatre.

Perhaps the most uplifting thing to come out of the whole experience for me is that I was asked to return this Friday, to participate in a staged reading of one of the attendee's plays,

Wild Animals You Should Know

. Thomas Higgins penned the script, and I'm a big fan of it. (Very odd: Thom had

a script in The SFOOBSPF

, in which

I just participated

.) It has a lot to do with the Boy Scouts of America, so that's a like a little visit into my childhood, and it is working with some of the same themes as

Burning Leaves

does. And, somehow, the reading is being directed by

Joe Mantello

.

So, you know, um: WOW.

A Walk to Memorize

The other day I took a walk through my general area of Queens, seeking out nice light and places I hadn't seen. The peppered photos are from this little journey (as inspired by some of Friend Patrick's recent posts). I didn't start on my walk with the specific purpose of taking photos -- just thought of it as I was headed out the door. Rather, I wanted to grab a little leg stretching while there was still light out on a beautiful day that I had otherwise spent largely indoors and seated.

I don't know why I don't take walks more often, but I'm going to try from now on. I was recently reminded while listening to the Totally Laime podcast that it used to be a habit of mine. I would take walks with my mom or friends or love interests along the twisting asphalt paths that twined through the forests of my hometown neighborhoods, and these walks invariably made for interesting conversation and at least a little bit of relaxation. They were nice, so of course I took them for granted. Maybe when I moved to the city I convinced myself that there was nothing to see like the flora and fauna of Burke, or maybe I was too concerned with my safety initially, or found my days too full or time returning home too late to contemplate walking as recreation. Heck-n-shoot: We walk everywhere in New York. Maybe I've missed the distinction between that kind of walking and the leisure activity.

Whatever the reason for the pause, I'm returning to it. This walk through Queens was tremendous and refreshing (refreshendous?) and really set me in a state of mind I could definitely do with more of. Somehow the decision to "go for a walk" freed me up to sort of declare that I was going to have an experience and not aim to get anything done for a little while. I was active, and continuously so, but also receptive and generally contemplative. Instead of going somewhere or being somewhere, I was neither.

The next day I saw a talk that resonated with me. Linda Stone was stating observations that I have been making for years now, and putting them into a context I could understand and appreciate. She was turning information into knowledge, perhaps. Whatever it was, it reminded me of the state of being I returned to on my little walk. Some steps from her walk:

• Noise becomes data when it has a cognitive pattern.
• Data becomes information when assembled into a coherent whole which can be related to other information.
• Information becomes knowledge when integrated with other information in a form useful for making decisions and determining actions.
• Knowledge becomes understanding when related to other knowledge in a manner useful in anticipating, judging and acting.
• Understanding becomes wisdom when informed by purpose, ethics, principles, memory and projection.