Classic Construction

NOTE:

This is an older entry, only being posted now, because I can haz bizyness...

So. As I have

noted

in

previous

posts

, Zuppa del Giorno has been building up for a while now to the project in which we are now embroiled in earnest --

a comic version of

Romeo & Juliet

. What may not have been entirely clear from my previous posts (largely because it was not entirely clear to me at the time of said posting) was just how ambitious and ridiculous this adventure would be. I mean: Really. We are reinterpreting the play using traditions of commedia dell'arte and clowning, verse and prose and improvised dialogue, not to mention passages spoken in Italian. The set is being built specifically to be sturdy and climbable, the floor is padded for falls and it is looking somewhat optimistic for Juliet's bed to be, in fact, a circus silk from which

Friend Heather

and I can hang and climb. We have two Italian collaborators working with us, one of whom is a maestro of the commedia dell'arte. We've been at it for little over a week now, and we're definitely finding our stride, with maybe ten days' real rehearsal left before tech rehearsals begin.

It's all very exciting. And difficult. And

cold

. Why didn't anyone tell me it would be this

cold

?

(They did; I just didn't listen.)

"So how is it going?" I hear you ask from behind the folds of the interwebs, your multitudinous voices betraying just the slightest strain of deep-seated desperation? Be calm, Dear Readers, or, as Angelo Crotti screams at Romeo when he's a little more than worked up: "

CALME TE!

" It is going well. As with any theatrical enterprise, the show is not shaping up to be exactly what I imagined, but that is probably for the best. There's a lot risk in it now, and certainly a great deal more variety. For example, I was thrown to discover just how much of the scenework would involve improvisation over the text, and for a couple of days I wanted to gouge my eyes out with icicles of my own anxiety. That sounds bad, I know, but neither is it hyperbole. I really get that worked up over the work. Hopefully you'll give me the benefit of the doubt, and see this as evidence of my passion for what I make. The fact is, I'm not making this show -- I'm helping to make it, and it needs to be what it will be. So I'm finding peace in the idea of a show with ample modern language mixed in with the Shakespeare; and anyway, I overreacted. The original text is proving just as virulent as contempo-speak. Our Mercutio, potentially the least comfortable with the original text (next to the Italians) frequently slips into the original text mid-improvisation. Billy-boy just wrote good, and it's that simple. That having been said, the man did write a whole lot, and the past few days have been much-consumed with line-memorization for yours truly.

It's rather like this thus far, all-in-all: Today was great work, yesterday was terrible, tomorrow -- who knows? And that's part of the joy. Where will it all lead? Hopefully to many laughs, and at least a couple of well-earned tears. That's all I ever ask for, really, from the theatre.

Tropic of Gemini

I unintentionally read the anti-

Romeo&Juliet

a little while ago: Henry Miller's

Tropic of Cancer

[link N

quite

SFW]. It is putting it rather on the glass-half-full side of things to say that the book served as a cleansing of my cynical palette before I embark on one of the more profound studies of innocence. When I finished

Tropic of Cancer

, I put it down with a victorious sigh, relieved that I would never have to read it again. Friend Patrick is flummoxed by this behavior in me, my determination to finish any book I've started, no matter how awful the experience. (I did give up on

this book

last Spring, though, because it is just freaking shite.) I can hardly explain it myself, except to say that it is perhaps a deeply ingrained habit. Whatever the cause, I generally read only one book at a time, and when I start a book, I finish it, or it finishes me.

Tropic of Cancer

very nearly finished me.

It's a little troubling to have so loathed a book that has come to be widely regarded a classic. It's supposed to be a work of considerable genius, and has been praised unequivocally by folks like Orwell, Mailer and Vonnegut -- all writers I greatly enjoy and admire. This isn't the first time I've not enjoyed a classic. I've often not enjoyed Dickens and Joyce. And by often, I mean just about every time I've curled up to give them another read. I do believe, however, that this is the first time in my adult life that I've taken such an active distaste for an accredited author's work. That is to say, it is unique in my experience to feel revulsion for something I've read, and perhaps this speaks more to Miller's genius as might any actual critical response I could make. It's not prudery, per se -- I love vicarious sex and violence, whether that's a good or bad thing. Love Anais Nin, so far loathe Miller. So what is it?

It is, I believe, the cynicism. The sheer, unrelenting, unapologetic cynicism. To hear Miller tell of it, I would not have made it out of 1930s Paris alive; there are suicides in this book, and they are all-too understandable to me. It seemed as though every character maintained his or her existence merely to progress to the next selfish experience, and after not too long I was utterly bogged down in the sense of hopeless, purposeless puppetry. I read

Of Human Bondage

not too long ago, and it was almost as if Miller had taken Carey's latter (also frustrating) selflessness and turned it on its ear so hard it went into coma. Miller's narrator (or voice, depending on the ratio of memoir to narrative at a given moment) is given to short sentences of profound and usually brutal imagery and metaphor that definitely would have appealed to me when I was sixteen. Now, they strike me as naive and self-centered and, as far as I was able to tell, the narrator undergoes no lasting change in the course of the story. Was there even joy in this story, really? Miller is famous for philosophically sucking the marrow from life, but this seemed more to me like continually jumping off a building for the three seconds of the sensation of flying.

What this is really about then, for me, is a struggle to process my experience in reading the book. How did, or will, the book change me? You could make the case that it won't . . . but that I feel it already has, and what remains is to understand that effect. It hasn't sapped my hope, at least. If anything, it makes me rail against its perspective, which seems so short-sighted and inconsequential that I want to grab the narrator by the neck and just shake him until he snaps out of it (or something else snaps). Why do none of these people believe in anything? What drives them to write, or do anything lasting, if it is all about survival and gratification? Maybe these are the questions Miller wanted us to ask, or maybe I'm just to narrow in my perspective on the era. If I had to say what effect the book has had on me, I'd guess at this point that it has strengthened my resolve to help and inspire others through my work. And I have to confess that I hope Henry Miller would've hated that.

Lest this read as some offended rant against a slice of literature history, I will say that at times I felt the raw power of Henry Miller's control of the language, and his willingness to savor words without making them self-important or inaccessible. Some of his ideas rang out, too, despite my prejudice against the perspective of his narrator. I wrote earlier in the month about the

supposed virtue of beauty

in art, and a strong argument could be made for there being a unique and important beauty in Miller's work. For me, however, I'm thrilled to go work on

a love story

very soon (and possibly even more thrilled to finally be on to reading it on the subway).

The

love story, for some people, and I'm going to do my damnedest to make it a guilty pleasure to begin, and full of consequence and beauty at the end. And maybe that's what Miller meant.

But I really have no idea.

Fair Winds

Last night I attended what was a first for me: A staged reading of a musical. Tom Diggs, of NYU's First Look fame from some time ago, wrote the book and lyrics, and invited me out for it by replying to

my

email about

Blueprints

. This could be the most direct evidence of the importance of simply being present in the New York theatre community as it relates to contacts and casting: People call on the people they've heard from recently. More evidence of this was to be found in my own efforts to assemble a cast for my upcoming reading -- I had a couple of people respond as unavailable, and when I searched my files for replacements, I realized I had neglected a whole throng of good possible actors for the roles. Why? Because I hadn't spoken to them in a while. But I digress.

Once Upon a Wind

is a musical that concerns itself with the story of two children coming of age in WWI England. Jay d'Amico wrote the music, and Jeremy Dobrish directs, which was an unusual coincidence -- Friend Todd is now appearing in

Spain

, a play he directed for the MCC in 2007. I was impressed as all hell with the cast. I find readings to be difficult to act, given the restraints of physical movement and all the conventions involved (such as music stands). These people gave a very effective reading

with full song

. A small feat for musical-theatre types perhaps, but I was impressed as hell with them: Molly Ephraim, Alex Brightman, Laura Fois, Kavin Pariseau, Marcus Stevens and Ken Triwush. Oran Eldor gets a lot of credit for that, I'm sure, as the musical director and (I assume) pianist. The reading was a part of the

TRU Voices series

at The Players Theatre, exactly the same venue at which

I performed in

American Whup-Ass

last spring

. It's a showcase for plays seeking production, and specifically focuses on getting feedback and advice from accomplished producers.

The play also concerns itself with an interesting phenomenon in England at the time --

the Cottingley fairies

. It takes some inspiration from the story, I should say, and it's a story I have some familiarity with. When I was very young, I went through a period of some obsession with "paranormal" occurrences and sightings. I wasn't so much interested in ghosts, rather with mythological or prehistoric beasts that might, in fact, exist. So I had read a little something about Elsie and Frances and their faux photographs, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the reading I was watching would be using that kind of source material. As you might imagine a musical doing,

Once Upon a Wind

explores the world of believers versus pragmatists, but it does it with a surprising balance. It never goes Disney on you (one could just about wait for the Tinkerbell meta-joke), yet keeps a sense of humor in the face of serious subjects like the loss of a loved one and our dueling needs to grow up, and to remain innocent. I hope Tom continues with it, and that it develops into a full production.

Personally, I don't feel that the will to believe is necessarily childish, or delusional. I think it's creative, and creativity is a strength, not a weakness. During the turn of the century, and the world wars, a lot of people turned to spiritualism and its cousins in search of something. We tend to view such searching as naive and, in a sense, this is as true as can be. It begins with accepting the possibility that we don't know something. And that's the beginning of any good discovery.

You want a reading? I got'cher reading right here!

To top off a year in which I performed in more readings than I perhaps have in my entire career to date (at least 13, by my count) what could be more apt than asking a bunch of my actor friends to participate in a private reading for me? Or perhaps it's entirely inappropriate, given some of my angst over the profusion of readings in my life of late. Either way, I've done it, and not a moment too soon. Though perhaps a moment (or two) too late: December is a nutso month for everyone everywhere, and I just sent out an email yesterday inquiring about availability/interest. I should have started this in November, but I was uncertain about my-completion-slash-the-worth of the playwriting I've been up to. Now I'm up against the far more foreboding deadline of leaving town for seven weeks come January. If I don't get this read before Christmas, much time and motivation may be lost.

The motivation may be lost anyway, if the reading were to go more poorly than I imagine. The danger for me in my writing is nearly always about losing steam or enthusiasm, particularly as it applies to the revision process. Yet this is the first time in years that I've actually

completed a first draft

, and I feel a strong need to honor that lil' milestone with continued effort. I won't go so far as to say that I think this script has a future, but I think this script has a future.

Wait.... Oh shoot.

Well, there it is. Hopefully said reading will not take every last gust of wind from my sails. I'm buoyed by the fact that the "play" is at this point merely a collection of largely stand-alone scenes that may be salvaged from the wreckage should our course go astray. (Had enough maritime imagery yet?) The sense of wonder and possibility with which I work on first drafts is very intoxicating for me, which is part of why it's difficult for me to complete anything, much less revise it. Perhaps part of what's kept me writing on this project was the structure of independent scenes. Each one to some degree was initially imagined as its own short play. Some are rather more bridging material between others than they ought to be perhaps, which is part of my interest in having the reading. I have, save one, all the scenes I intend to write completed, so I've written about 9.25 scenes. I'm at work on the final (or second-to-last -- see

12/2/08

) scene in the sequence now, and if I can get the reading together it will be powerful motivation for me not to linger too much in the doldrums on it.

Yes; I had to do that.

So this will be a private reading, with just myself and the actors. It's for revision purposes, which is the safer way of saying that its for the purpose of reality checking my own rampant enthusiasm. It's a difficult balance, between love and objective criticism. The easy thing to do is allow oneself to be utterly bohemian, and let love rule the day. There's nothing wrong with that if you're inherently brilliant or content to live like a bohemian. I am neither. I am, however, quite addicted to attention, and so considered inviting a small boatload (Still? Yes, 'fraid so.) of friends to observe and respond to this initial reading. One might assume that the more feedback I could get, the better, but actually at this point I doubt I'll have even a discussion with the actors if-slash-when I get this reading off the ground. It's important that I have some quiet reflection on my own work while it's still this close to me. Producing shows from a writer's vantage could be seen as a gradual handing-over of creative control, a transition throughout collaboration from being the one who knows to being the one who experiences. You've got to be ready to set that kid sailing before you unmoor and haul anchor.

I'm stopping now, for reals.

Plus -- and here's the most bloggy bit of blogging for this particular entry -- the last time I put a complete play out there it was ripped to pieces in an astounding variety of ways. Don't get me wrong: It deserved it.

Tangled Up In You

was not especially good, I can say with some confidence now. It was more of an experiment I really wanted to conduct than a fully formed play, all 80-some pages of it, and what I should have done was just workshop it with actors I trusted and used some improvisation to develop it. Instead, I sent it to everyone I knew (which at age 23-or-so was not all that great a number) and had a reading . . . in New Jersey. I actually had people go out to New Jersey. I have no idea what I was thinking. Anyway, the feedback I got was a bit overwhelming and, subconsciously at least, deterred me from ever trying that again ever. I've written plenty since then, and even had a short piece produced, but really haven't put my cards on the table otherwise, insofar as said cards apply to writing. But here we are again, returning to . . . someplace other than the sea.

And I'm eager to be here. I hope I can pull this together -- the reading, the script itself, the whole thing -- because I don't get many opportunities to create something that goes on to have a life of its own, apart from me. Acting is total joy, and I'd never give it up as a form of expression, but its immediacy is a trade-off. If I'm not there, it's not there (or at least my part of it). Rilke wrote that the mother is the only completely fulfilled artist, because the appetite of an artist is to create something of herself and have it live in the world, independent of her. This is a very appealing idea for me, and I'd hate to live my life without at least some works of this nature. So I set my course by the stars and hope for helpful winds.

And hope to cease the flood of maritime metaphors.

Wait...

"Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized..."

"Okay, 'butt-love'."

This is an exchange stolen from the script (such as it is) for

The Reduced Shakespeare Company

's first big hit,

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [Abridged]

, and I quote it here to make a point. Oh yes, I'm venturing into new territory today -- an actual point. Here it is:

Lotsa people already made fun of

Romeo & Juliet

.

I mean: LOTS. If you just search for "romeo and juliet parody" on these here internets, you get a lot of results, in a full range from amateur to well-produced and well-known. Still more people have made fun of, made light of, and made all-comic of Shakespeare's entire canon, so that if you stacked the pages up from everything you'd have LOTSA pages. Probably they'd reach the moon and back. Maybe. Perhaps. I've no idea, really.

So

Zuppa del Giorno

is hardly venturing into undiscovered territory with its upcoming "wholly original" production,

The Very Nearly Perfect Comedy of Romeo & Juliet

. Heck: Stack Shakespeare in there as someone who made light of the story. Although the play is pirated from other adaptations of a couple of (very specifically) similar commedia dell'arte scenarios, and the biggest change he made was to make a few of the characters somewhat noble, and the story heavily tragic, he also had his fun. To put it succinctly: Shakespeare crammed just about every genitalia joke in there that he possibly could. Hamlet's "country matters" and lap-talk is minuscule in comparison. If you're reading the play, and you

think

he just made a reference to a particular bit of the male anatomy, odds are that he did. Even Juliet gets a swing at bat, if you will. Which is funny in more ways than one. It begs the question of whether or not ol' Will felt that a significant part of the story he was telling was simply two kids who were eager to shed trou' and bump uglies (answer: he did). I declared a theme of Odin's Aviary to be fart jokes, but I was being politic. "Richard" jokes are much more fun. (And I'm not talking "the Third," here.)

So, in a way, we're not doing something terribly original. I swear (though not by the inconstant moon) though that I'm smitten with

David Zarko

's concept of the story. As he's expressed it to me,

TVNPCoR&J

will be about people who are trying very hard indeed to keep life a comedy. In this way, we're not making fun of the play, but of people -- surely a good base for pleasing, accessible comedy, Shakespeare or no. I like this idea, the conflict, and the potential I see for this interpretation to inform the progress of the story. It's both funny and tragic, and could help us tap into a certain unpredictability that might make for a fresh experience for our audiences. It won't be a parody, or farce, or anything so self-conscious; rather, it will be a story of a community with something in common, in spite of all their violent or erotic differences. It feels, at the risk of gross generalization, very Italian to me. There's some talk of making it about a troupe of actors telling the story, but I'm not so in love with that. I'd rather represent people really living through it, trying to make their lives comedies that end well for each. But, yet again, heck:

Nothin

g

about these shows we make stays the same from start to finish. Best not to get too attached to any one idea yet.

So I'll fantasize a bit. Just to get it out of my system, you understand.

"Things get out of hand." This sums up pretty nicely for me what I'm imagining as a central action of our play. Much of the action of the basic story reminds me of children at play (and I refer to every character here, except possibly the prince) who get a little out of control with their fussing and fighting. Before you know it, someone's heart's broken, someone's eye's poked out, and everyone's pointing fingers in order to avoid more hurt. This meshes well with clown theory as I understand it, because clowns are very much like babies, or alien visitors, experiencing everything for the first time. They still have to learn concepts like "hot," much less "love." As it stands, our version will have only Romeo and Juliet as clowns, and the rest of the world populated by masked commedia dell'arte characters. This stands to drive the action right along, as commedia characters are largely appetite-driven and selfish. It's exciting to think of our first -- in five+ years of making dell'arte-inspired theatre, mind you -- masked show in general. I hope we can help our audiences see the masks as they were intended; more caricature than disguise, more revealing than deceitful.

Regardless of style choices, it will I hope retain the sense of contemporary fun that has been in every Zuppa show through the years. In our workshops, as we explored the seeming despair over Rosaline that Romeo exhibits on his introduction, we thought of having him accidentally pulling out moves borrowed from Hamlet, dressed in black, contemplating a skull wearing a red nose. I'd love to have movie posters up for other Shakespeare plays, borrowing from

Silent Lives

the notion of characters who learn their behavior from popular culture. The humor should come from the moment and character, not necessarily the indications of a joke in the script. Heather and I are already discussing the possible humor of feigned (or frustrated) exits, a running joke about people trying to leave stage and continually being called back. The balcony scene is a great one for this and comes to mind immediately, but also on the way to the party Romeo keeps trying to leave. The topper is the "morning after" scene, probably. Great place for a fart joke there, too, I can't help but notice. (Hopefully someone will shoot me down on this; "that may be a great idea for

next

year's show...") "It is the lark that sings so out of tune..."

It's at once thrilling and frightening to be so excited for another Zuppa show. After some five years' experience creating these shows in a variety of ways, I've come to learn that they can be the ultimate positive experience, or can be somewhat like Mercutio's famous monologue. Full of enthusiasm and wit to begin, but suddenly arduous and painful, too. Even

Silent Lives

, my favorite thus far, was something of a baptism by fire. You just never know how it's all going to turn out, and stand to save yourself a lot of pain by caring a little less. But of course, the whole point is in getting people to care a little bit more, to invest themselves in good laughter, and good tears. So there is no choice; not really. Like a good tragedy, caring this much about what I make is an inevitable progress through Heaven and Hell. Besides, the laughter is so much sweeter with a little suffering to weight it against.

It may not be an original idea, but it is a true one.