Living on the Fringe

This week is bound to be a full one. In addition to working the ol’ day job as much as possible (which ain’t a great deal, if consideration for my sanity is at all a factor) we’re essentially rehearsing and teching As Far As We Know all week…not necessarily in that order. You see, the tech schedule for Fringe, being as it is hosted by a variety of different theatres over a concentrated period, is a little catch-as-catch-can. In other words, we’ll tech the show (tomorrow [starting at 10:00 am {for only four hours}]) before we’ve really set it. It ain’t called “The Fringe” for nuthin’.

Perhaps it’s this unusual schedule that’s prompting my usage of slangy contractions.

So here’s the run-down of my schedule: Sunday we worked as a whole from 5 to 10. Today we work from 12 to 5. Tomorrow we tech at 10, have a midday break and reconvene in a rehearsal studio from 6 to 10. “Six to ten” is basically the schedule for the remainder of the weekdays, during which days I will be using the rest of the hours of said days to work the day job. And on Saturday we open at 9:00 pm.

So that’s:

Saturday, August 11 @ 9:00 pm.

Tuesday, August 14 @ 7:00 pm.

Saturday, August 18 @ 4:15 pm.

Wednesday, August 22 @ 9:15 pm.

&

Sunday, August 26 @ 12:00 noon.

Just in case you were wondering. Details here. ;)

I also blame the schedule for my use of emoticons.

So how’s it going, Jeff? Well, Curious Hypothetical, I would say we’re making good progress, and creating the previously desired emphasis on acting when and where ever we can. I don’t know if it will be enough to make it work. I can’t know, essentially, because this is so unlike any schedule I’ve ever experienced before. Unlike, but not entirely dissimilar. Our original Zuppa del Giorno shows tend to have a similar frenetic uncertainty just before they open. More, in fact, owing to certain factors that remain undecided in those shows that are actually quite concrete at this point of UnCommon Cause’s process. (Little things like character, and plot.) Still, with Zuppa there’s a fairly standard schedule for the tech week, and everything is about some kind of progression. With As Far As We Know, it feels much more zig-zaggy. So far as I’ve experienced it, that is. In other words: As far as I know.

(Does anyone else think of that quote from Fletch when they hear the title of our show [Daryl Boling, I’m looking in your direction…]? “Mr. Fletcher?” “As far as you know.”)

I do feel, in moments of decision-making, a surprisingly certain sense of impulse, which I hope is indicative of how prepared I actually am to open my performance to the public. I understand my character and his world clearly and strongly enough that, when there’s a decision to be made about a scene’s progress or expressionistic blocking, I seem to always have a firm, arguable opinion about how it should turn out. That’s a funny way by which to judge one’s readiness to perform as an actor, but perhaps in this unique “creactor” environment it’s a true judgment. We shall see.

I love it, you know. This kind of schedule, though it doesn’t afford me much time for leisurely meals or other entertainment, fulfills me in a way few other things can. It creates in me a feeling of priority, importance and service. Maybe it’s a little like the sense of duty a soldier has. Maybe it’s just the comfort of having deadlines, as in school. The best part, however, is inevitably the feeling of spending all this time on something I care about, personally.

That is a much more rare and significant feeling of frazzled exhaustion.

I'm Brian Dennehy, Dammit

I had a curious experience last week. My Dad has a birthday coming up, and his choice of celebration was to spend it with us seeing a show in New York. Which, you know, makes it kind of like

our

birthdays as opposed to his, but he hasn't figured that out yet and we are loathe to draw notice to it. His choice of show was

Inherit the Wind

, but sadly it closed before his actual birthday. Not one to stand on custom, dear Dad bought tickets for a performance the Friday of the show's closing weekend. It was a great show, thought I, and my parents said they enjoyed it much more than the film, which they of course rented in preparation for their theatrical experience (neither of them attempted to tackle the book). Even my sister and her fella' (Friend Adam) enjoyed it, and they had been dreading the experience for months once they researched what the show was actually about.

A couple of days later, on something of a whim, I had another entertainment experience of a somewhat different variety. Sucker that I am for cartoons of any sort, I found myself sitting in a movie theatre packed to the projector with minors, watching a story about the struggles of a young rat who eschews convention to become a connoisseur of all things edible.

Ratatouille

is the latest Pixar flick, and I have to confess that my feelings about it were about as ambivalent as my sister's and Adam's were about

Inherit the Wind

, prior to the experience. I was, in part, coaxed into it by a review I read that heaped praises upon the animators for their close study of the movement of classic physical comedians. Which is to say, I was drawn by the strange mix of excitement for new possibilities and dread that they are gradually rendering me obsolete.

And just what in the holy hinterlands do these two things have to do with one another? Well, Google it out a bit, and I'm sure you'll put it together.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

Hint: The clue is in the title. Of this post. That underlined thing at the top.

You got it! It's Teh

Dennehy

. He's the voice of a fatherly rat, Django, in the aforementioned Pixar flick, and in

Inherit the Wind

he played the side of creationism in the form of "

Matthew Harrison Brady

". The essence of my experience was in watching

Ratatouille

and thinking, over and over, "Where have I heard that voice recently...?" (It appears as though my inability to recognize celebrities on the street extends to recognizing their voices out of context.) Eventually I put it together, and spent a lot of the rest of the movie marvelling at the eccentricities my and Teh Dennehy's (barely comparable) careers share. Odds are that when he was working on the rat thing, he probably hadn't even been offered

Inherit the Wind

yet, and yet they neatly overlapped in execution, allowing me as audience member to indelibly associate them. And perhaps they were more related than was at first apparent. The Disney money Dennehy made from playing a disapproving father (rat) may have allowed him to take what we have to assume was a lower-paying gig on stage.

The tradition of stacking "prestige" projects with crowd-pleasers is ages old, and not limited to film actors. It's an interesting aspect of a career that includes a degree of choice. Which is to say, a career with enough success that others

offer you

roles, instead of you constantly offering yourself like a dessert menu during the post-dinner lull at a restaurant. I believe, however, that the variation in choice of roles is based on a common ethic, regardless of degree of success or intention for calculated results. Said ethic:

Ya' never know.

(I am reminded here of an imitation of a random woman Todd, Heather and I met whilst working on

Silent Lives

. The show was performed in [and, in part, based on] the

Hotel Jermyn

in Scranton, a building that had been converted mostly to housing for senior citizens and one that now serves as home to The Northeast Theatre. In various silent-film-era costumes we'd bounce from the abandoned ballroom on the second floor to the common area on the first for the bathroom, and there would always be a circle of octogenarians there blithely minding their groceries and gossip until we'd suddenly show up, a flash from their youths. Anyway, the snatches of conversation we'd pick up from them [once they accepted we weren't there to mock their youth {well, not exactly, anyway}] have stayed with us still. The woman we quote most had two gems I remember. The first: "Always cook with

fennel

. I get real bad gas, and fennel clears that right up. Ya' gotta cook with fennel." This with a strange, nasal sort of dialect blend that I associate with 1940s Poconos somehow--midway between a Jersey and a Pittsburgh. And the other jewel, chanted at least three times without pauses: )

Ya' never know.

It ain't exactly hope. It's a more cynical admission of just how unpredictable the business is, and how mysterious the forces of fortune can intervene in an actor's life. It's a mantra supported as much by great missed chances as it is by ones somehow caught. To mine a previous example, imagine kicking yourself for scoffing at that show you were cast in for which they wanted you to sing and dance with a Muppet-style puppet, said kicking because the show moved to Broadway and won a Tony. Or, imagine yourself as Nikki Blonsky, the brand-spanking new starlet of the brand-spanking new Hairspray movie practically plucked from the halls of her high school.

Those who subscribe to the "Ya' never know" school of thought do know one thing, however. That is, whatever you are giving a chance, when you walk into the first audition, the first rehearsal, the first performance, you give the "never know" chant a rest long enough to give yourself this little chirp:

I'm [

insert name here

], dammit.

Live Free or Die Hard or Make Something People Will Love

Yeah, okay. I caved yesterday and saw it. Sometimes the lowest common denominator appeals to me, I confess. At present I'm reading about the creation of

A Streetcar Named Desire

, from the debut production through the

Kazan

film, and I'm blown away by how viscerally

Brando

lived during his twenties. I feel as though I've positively wasted the last decade of my life (though perhaps retained a bit more cleanliness in general), and last night I wasted two more hours of it. If Brando had had action movies, would they have helped slake some of his youthful lust and mischief? Probably not. And, while on the subject, would I have felt more fulfilled by two hours of casual sex, a la Marlon? Probably not.

Then again, an acting class might not have been a complete waste of my time.

It's a strange stew I prepare for you today, seasoned with

Desire

,

Die Hard

and day-job interruptions. (Best part about being back: Time for 'bloggage. [Ability to pay for groceries also ranks high on the list.]) I was greeted when I sat to email today by an unaccustomed missive (stop it, jerk) by an unusual email from

Friend Anna

. She writes:

"I'm writing my paper on creativity, and was fielding thoughts with some people on the matter. ... What is creativity? What does it mean to be creative? (Are there certain characteristics you think of?) [And, is it a matter of inborn characteristics or influenced by upbringing and social environment? Is it innate talent or something that can be learned? Some scholars propose it is simply a matter of skills learned through hard work, a matter of motivation and discipline, not that anyone is innately more creative (genius) than anyone else. That is, it's conscious effort, they don't believe in it coming from unconscious.]"

I know so many people in school right now. It really does make them smarter. Is that an effect of age? Because, God knows, school didn't seem to make anyone smarter the last time I was in it. The most reasonable thing to do before responding to such questions would be to define my terms, terms such as "creativity," "genius" and "it." But as

John McClane

teaches us, it isn't reason that makes America so great; it's a willingness to do viciously risky and self-aggrandizing stunts involving the maximum amount of property damage. In that spirit, I dive right in.

First of all, let's release the concept of "artistry" from this discussion. Great artistry is its own creature, a thing born from arduous study, disciplined work and having a craft or technique. It's great, I love it, and maybe no great work can be great without it. Fine. But in our interests today we're exploring the nature of creativity, not artistry.

I would separate "creativity" from "genius." To my mind, creativity is a quality all possess. In a spiritual context, I believe it is our awareness of having been created (and not necessarily by an omnipotent deity--an awareness that we begin and end suffices) that compels us to emulate the process with our own actions, be this via child birth, entreprenurism or performance art. In a pragmatic context, I see a sense of creativity as one of the later stages of the evolution of intelligence. After one learns to perceive tools out of the objects around them, one may eventually come to refine such tools and create their own. In short, creativity to me is simply abstract thought, which some people take to greater extremes than others.

One interesting feature of abstract thought is the ability to conceive of concepts. (Is that redundant? John McClane wouldn't care. I don't care.) The real brain-twister is contemplating whether concepts are of themselves spontaneous creations on our part, similar to ancient peoples creating gods to explain the bits of the world they couldn't better understand, or master. In other words, have we created the concept of, say, love, in order to explain (or at least name) what seemingly illogical and irrational forces make us act like absolute idiots. Me, I tend to discount the notion of spontaneous creation. I am a fan of the law of

conservation of energy

, and believe that kind of balance applies to a great deal of reality. Similarly, for example, I agree that there are a finite number of stories in the world, and we just seem to create new ones by recombining, deconstructing and re-conceiving these few. To put it still another way, we are all inspired in our "creations" by everything that already

is

, around and within us. To this end, I don't really believe in genius, per se. There is no great, mysterious inborn gift that is only bestowed upon a few.

Then again, when I was faced with Michaelangelo's

David

(and listen: photographs will never express this work), not a force in the world could have convinced me it wasn't the result of genius.

Not even John McClane killing a helicopter with a car.

So my overall opinion is this: The magic of the original

Die Hard

had a lot to do with where the star was at that point in his career (spunky with something to prove, because he was an acknowledged television star but not by any means celebrated) and where the director was coming from (

John McTeirnan

tells us on the commentary that he wanted to find the joy in this otherwise harrowing tale). There's a synergy to it that came from taking risks and improvising, something that could never hope to be duplicated in a sequel. When

A Streetcar Named Desire

was brought to film, it brought together the Stanley from the Broadway cast and the Blanche from the London cast, and it should have exploded. Brash, method Brando set off against Lady Olivier (

Vivien Leigh

) seems a formula for an insane working environment. Yet it worked beautifully, and it never would have happened if the rules had been followed or sense had prevailed.

Whether it really exists or not, the creative person needs to believe in genius. Maybe, in looking back on a creation, we can readily name its sources and the whole thing seems like a masterminded manipulation of common elements. Yet the feeling of creating something good, of being in a creative spirit, isn't like that. It's a chartless territory, a blank page or a silent room. People often ask authors where they get their ideas from, and it's easy to say, "Oh, I was a closeted homosexual who grew up in the south, so . . . you know . . . ." I believe that it's belief that ideas come from. Creativity springs from a confrontation of nothingness with faith in that intangible genius that we can never prove, but that always intervenes.

. . . Eventually. Yippie-kiy-yay . . .

ITALIA: June 25, 2007

Here’s how it works in Italy. You get up early. (Don’t worry, that gets justified later in the working plan.) For breakfast, you have very little. (Again: Bear with me.) Then you get right straight to work, usually before it even strikes 9:00. This is part of why coffee is such a valued invention in the boot-shaped nation. Around 1:00 or 2:00, you’re pretty famished, and it is coming on HOT. I mean: HOT. It’s not there yet, but the promise is extant, and you won’t be able to work much longer without food or shelter. So, owing to your tiny breakfast, you have a huge lunch, preferably three courses with water and wine. Now it really is really HOT, and the only thing that makes sense is to go to sleep. Only mad dogs and Englishmen would be about their business after such a meal and in such sun, so you go take a nap in order to digest and allow the sun to burn off a little. Two hours later, say around 5:00 or 6:00, you get up feeling rejuvenated and get back to whatever work you were up to earlier in the morning. You only have a few hours in which to do it, so it goes quickly, and by 8:00 or 9:00 you’re out to walk around and enjoy the cooling night. Maybe you have a little dinner then; it’s the best time for something like pizza. You’ll be up until at least midnight, and maybe later, meeting and greeting and getting up to whatever you generally do with your free time. Then you go to sleep again, but you won’t need to for too long (given your midday siesta) before you’re up to do it all again.

Today we woke early to finish as much of our food as we could manage, pile our towels and sheets and sweep out our home of the last two weeks. Heather bid adieu to il Gatto—the cat who adopted us during our stay (I kept trying to get them to name it something other than “the Cat”)—and we drove into Orvieto for some last goodbyes and to drop off our recycling. Before too long we were back in the car headed for Rome, sans bottle and cans and with a gagillion LinguaSi brochures and a few new gifts for loved ones.

Finding the hotel we were to stay in for the next twenty-four hours was a challenge. It’s quite close to centro, but Rome is laid out according to thousands of years of cart trails and paths. It’s even more confusing than Washington D.C. With David as navigator, we eventually made our way to the place, compromising our morals a bit with oncoming-traffic-challenging U-turns and desperate spins around traffic circles. The room was tiny, but air-conditioned, which we haven’t really had in the two weeks of our stay. We dropped our stuff and marched off to find a restaurant for lunch. The waiter was a real charmer, speaking a mélange of Italian, French and English, and he gave Heather the hardest time. It was marvelous (sorry Heather—it really was), and we left smiling and probably remained that way until we collapsed into our air-conditioned beds for a couple of hours. This was the hottest weather we had yet known on the visit.

A couple of hours and a new shirt later, we were up to do what-you-will about the streets of Roma. Eventually we decided upon visiting the Villa Borghese, a huge park with lots of areas and interesting features. After a few wrong turns, and allowing time for David’s enthusiasm for architecture (there are some beautiful buildings here, but I inevitably find the challenge of navigation distracting) we approached the Museum of Modern Art, which lies across the street from the main entrance to the villa. We climbed a huge set of stairs to discover fascinating spaces of trees and neoclassical sculpture and monuments. People were all over, enjoying the shade or resting from tourism. From a few signs, after walking about a bit, we discovered the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre we had heard about was nearby. Sebastiano had worked on building it, and we had wanted to see it the last time we were in Borghese. So we set out to.

Eventually we found it across the way from a huge track that looked to be for racing horses. It looked fairly authentic from the outside, and we walked all the way around it before we could find a space over the fence to peek through an open door, drawn as we were by the sound of some rustic music being played. Our limited view revealed the stage, covered in dust but being danced on by a large group of people. Huh, thought we. Perhaps a rehearsal. Heather and I postulated, based on the men wearing boots that covered their knees and the nature of the dance, perhaps for Much Ado About Nothing. This happens to be my favorite Shakespeare play. Hey gang, we suggested, let’s check the front to see what their season is.

Molto Rumore per Nulla opened their season…the next night. The night we were supposed to be flying back to America. We raged (raged, I tell you) at the injustice of it all. We went away to fume and admire gorgeous garden features, and of course aimed our way back by the theatre to see what we could see of what was going on there later. This was around 8:30, and the attori seemed to be outside chatting on their phones, lounging. Some were playing badminton, of all things (a favorite show-time activity of Heather and I). We hemmed, and we hawed, and I did everything I could to encourage David to go make introductions through the fence, short of actually suggesting that. We lamented Todd’s absence; this is what he’s made to do, to make instant friends and get us in to the party…even when he isn’t the only one who speaks the language with gusto. David wished aloud for him. I continued to say things like, “Hm…if a bunch of foreign actors asked to see our dress rehearsal…how would I respond?” Heather grew increasingly ironic in her commentary on how we had been sighted, ergo clearly stalking the company.

And then, dear goodness from above, David approached the fence and, after a while of hanging there, got the attention of a slender blonde man (one who had been involved with the badminton). I could barely make out what was being exchanged, but I picked up on the shift in tone as David introduced the fact that we were actors. It was touch-and-go, but the actor he spoke to was on our side and asked us to wait while he consulted his director (also playing Beatrice in the show). We anxiously awaited his return: “Ritornorette alla nove.”

And so, after fifteen minutes to find one food cart in one huge park, we returned at 9:00 and were let into the theatre for their final dress rehearsal. It’s a great reproduction, as far as I could tell. Anyway, it felt great to be in there. That’s rather underplaying it. I was thrilled. From where we sat, in the first floor of the benches, we watched the moon crown over and through the open roof, lighting up the sheets stretched across the stage in preparation for the start of the show.

It was magnificent. Didn’t get a word of it, of course (not entirely true, because I’ve got bits memorized), but it was definitely the best production of it I’d ever seen. As I sat there, savoring the play, I thought about a lot of things. They mostly had to do with the strange paths a life can take, how it can seem like what we want is never exactly what we get, yet what we get can—at just such moments—suddenly seem better than what we could have imagined. It’s a romantic place, Italy, in every sense of the word, and doubtless the last day of our visit was having its effect on me, but it also felt like a tiny, apt miracle to be in that theatre, watching a play we essentially had to ourselves. When the play finished, we wanted to stay but understood what comes after such an effort and how tiring such work can be, so we left. But we made sure to exit across the pit while the cast was gathered on stage, and we waved goodbye and wished “buon spectaculo” to our benefactor.

He waved back and called out, and the entire company joined him, “Grazie ragazzi! Ciao ragazzi!”

We walked late into the Roman night, eventually finding and enjoying Fontana di Trevi for a while. Maybe the clown version of Romeo & Juliet is just a dream, but we had one last Italian-inspired thought on it while there: to make the poster an homage to La Dolce Vita with Heather and I (or Todd, or whomever) wearing clown noses in the fountain. And, of course, before leaving to walk the silent Monday night streets of Rome, we cast coins over our left shoulders and into the fountain without looking back.

It’s a tradition. It guarantees your return.

ITALIA: June 24, 2007

Sunday, and the last day of official business for Zuppa del Giorno’s Italia Feste 2007!. We begin by rising early to discover we haven’t the necessary supplies for a proper Italian breakfast. Which is to say, we’d run out of bread. So for the morning we played “Starving Russian Peasant Family,” making a game out of our desperate situation so the boy (read: David) wouldn’t panic. I went out in search of pane afterward, so we wouldn’t go without for lunch, which turned out to be quite the adventure. I had forgotten that most of Italy shuts down on a Sunday morning, and so ended up driving about all over in search of an open store. I ended up in Orvieto centro and buying the most expensive groceries of the whole trip, but also having one of the best communication experiences in Italian so far. So I made it back victorious, light of heart and light of wallet.

Lunch was huge, breaking our Russian Peasant fast and keeping in mind that we had a lot of business today and a late dinner planned with Lucianna. For once on this trip I partook of all the courses. It was not difficult, particularly with the bottle of Orvietan white we had saved for our last full day in town. After cleaning up our leisurely lunch we made good time into Orvieto and the piazza of LinguaSi to meet with Piero in follow-up to our initial meeting concerning next year’s program.

We might’ve planned to be more Italian, as Piero came with Sebastiano in tow around a half an hour after the agreed meeting time. Ah, Italia! Accompanying them was India, the most important woman in Sebastiano’s life, I think. His Roman Mastiff dog. Have you seen Cujo? How about Turner and Hooch? Combine those looks and make it bigger. The breed comes from ancient Roman battlefields, but this beast was sweet as a muffin.

Our meeting with Piero went just fine. His responses to our ideas about and changes to his proposal were entirely positive, to the extent that I was fairly embarrassed by my anxiety about it. There was definitely something there for me to learn about the art of negotiation, as it were. His attitude seemed to be that as long as we were still working together, as long as something was happening between us, he was getting what he wanted. Perhaps this isn’t always a good approach to take in instances when what you want is very specific, but I’m certain it creates an atmosphere of positive collaboration and continued possibility.

From there, in common Italian style, we went to coffee instead of Andrea’s as planned. Actually, that’s manipulating the circumstances a bit. We had some questions at that point about whether or not India would be welcome in Andrea and Natsuko’s apartment, especially given her advanced pregnancy, and couldn’t get a hold of Andrea to ask, so stopped to refresh ourselves. By the time we got to their place—to discover the dog would not be a problem so long as we were all on their terrace—it was close to 5:30. Andrea had invited over Hanna, one of the administrative staff of Teatro Boni we met the prior week, and in spite of how tired he was from having returned from work away, the meeting progressed.

This was an interesting movement forward, as it was the first time Andrea and Sebastiano would meet, and they seemed to me very different sorts of people. Andrea is very much a country mouse, wildly enthusiastic about working creatively in a broad range of comic areas and who enjoys being silly and fun, whereas Sebastinao is what you might imagine from an urban, more “method” actor, seemingly serious about his craft and constantly concerned by his career. We were hoping they could work together, simply because they are actors and we know them both. This was the primary point of the meeting, and if we could get well along with that we could move on to the specifics of our vision for next year.

It took me a while to figure out, owing to the two speaking so fast in Italian, but they found at least some common ground. I still suspect one is not necessarily the other’s ideal partner, but David is confident that getting to the point of actually working together is the main thing, and that both are sincerely interested in working. Should differences arise, they’ll be ironed out or shaved off in collaboration, simple as that. And we began the collaboration almost immediately (once we got past the obvious—there’s no money for this on either end, there’s no precedence for this in any of our gathered experiences, there’s no money to be made by this [that’s not quite true {LinguaSi offers a lot of opportunities for us to teach even when we’re working on our own show}]) swapping ideas about what was exciting about working together. Before too long, we had to escape to let Andrea finally sleep, and all parties left it seemed in a spirit of hopefulness about the future.

During the meeting Lucianna called to inform us that her train had literally broken down outside of Rome, and she thought she’d have to stay there overnight. This was crushing, as she’s one of our best friends here in Italy, but there was little we could do about it so we agreed to keep our 9:00 reservations for the terrace of Antica Rupe without her. It was a great place to have our last dinner in Orvieto, sentimental and fine. While there we excitedly babbled about the meeting, and got on the subject of one of the ideas for our collaboration: a clown version of Rome & Juliet. This may sound simple, but we had a great time talking out the possibilities and I would not be surprising to find it’s what we agree to by October, our decision due date.

Midway through our dinner we got a welcome call at the restaurant informing us that Lucianna would indeed be joining. She caught something like three different trains to make it after all, and not too long after she phoned in her order, she was there. It was marvelous to see here again, as flustered and tired as she must have been. We established that we still wanted to do business with her, and had no idea what that now meant (we’ll be between Orvieto and other cities like Bolsena and Pitigliano most of the time), and she was fine with that. So the remainder of the evening was spent just enjoying each other’s company. The waiter ended up hitting on Heather pretty hardcore, too. We were glowing. Lucianna has that effect on us.

Late late late we headed to bed, to rise the next day for Rome. We’re spending the night there before heading to the airport for our flight back to the States. Feels like we’ve been gone a month. Could stand a month more.