Incorporation

Next week I'll be performing a show twice daily down at the World Financial Center, under the auspices of

The Women's Project

. The show is called

Corporate Carnival

, and is much as it sounds -- a sort of carnival (though more circus) celebration (though more satire) of corporate America (though more capitalist America at large). It will be performing in the

"Winter Garden" section

, May 14 - 16, showtimes at 1:00 and 7:00, and the 15th thrice, the previous times plus a 4:00. We earn our money over there at The Women's Project, fo' sho'.

The show itself is interesting to me for a return to collaborative creation and my status within it. I'm one of a sort of inconsequential chorus called "The Temps." We burst through between main acts with commercial-like interruptions, and supplement the other actors' "scenes." We're also on stage even when we're "backstage," owing to the nature of our staging the show in an open area, and we're all responsible for developing a "greenshow" act. Greenshow acts are sort of a roving warm-up before the main stage begins, especially useful in this format because they get people's attention by adhering to a busking style. So we're doing all that (see above "fo' sho'"), but our additions to the show itself are not necessarily especially skilled. I'm stilting for one commercial, but for the most part the Temps' contributions aren't particularly physically demanding. In spite of the many circumstantial similarities between this project and the work of

Cirque Boom

and

Kirkos

(particularly Cirque Boom's

Circus of Vices and Virtues

, in which I played a stilt-walking businessman), they're very different in that regard.

I've had to create a lot of self-generated output recently. So much, in fact, that today I began to worry for the first time if I wasn't just recycling and regurgitating. This is due in part to hammering out an outline for a potential performance piece (pah pah pah) for Italy, under the auspices of

Zuppa del Giorno

. I took the three archetypal clowns we portrayed in

Silent Lives

, and bits and sequences from all our shows (Zuppa-related or no), added a dash of some of my favorite stage conventions and voilà! A . . . show! Of sorts! I kind of hate it! But the idea is that we'll all get into a room together soon (somehow) and develop it, or something that doesn't resemble it in the slightest. Not sure which one I'm hoping for at this point.

Sludging through this effort reminded me of working on my clown film (see

3/27/08

), in that I was writing out actions more than words, trying to tell a story through humorous, true deeds and bits. It was also reminiscent of the film in that I was frequently stuck, trying to figure out how to go on from a given point, and I've been feeling pretty stuck on the film script as well. It seems that once Our Hero (this is what I've been calling the clown character in the script) gets out of Central Park, I have very little direction for him. And now, after a couple of weeks of contributing to generate original scenes for

Corporate Carnival

, I have to develop a greenshow act for it, and I'm drawing blank. It's a little like I've run out of gas. Cough! Cough! Sputtterrrrr . . .

Yet on Sunday (see

5/5/08

), with eager and communicative collaborators, the ideas were flowing like gasoline in the 1990s. Perhaps what I need to do is engage in dialogue with someone who is inclined to be energetic about this kind of thing. Perhaps, too, I need to just get out of my mind and into my body. That was definitely a key element in Sunday's successful creation. This block may be entirely symptomatic, in fact, of a period of relative creative isolation of late. I started writing the clown film when I was between day jobs, and there were no theatre commitments, and very little energy on my part going into find them. At the time I viewed my individual effort as reclaiming a little of my work for myself (as part of my process of dealing with letting go of

As Far As We Know

[see

1/15/08

]), and so it was. Yet it was also a retreat.

That's the nice thing about work. As long as you're doing it, you're working.

To-Day Is Wednesday, the 11th

The above is a phrase I'd like to coin, but one which will never come into common parlance. It's altogether too obscure. You, however, dear reader, will comprehend me when I speak it. You, and you alone, will have any clue what I'm trying to say. Bask in the glow of privilege.

In

One Week

(which, if my search criteria hasn't changed by now, you can see in its entirety in the video bar to the left), Buster Keaton uses inter cuts of a daily calendar to establish time in his movie, the central action of which is the construction -- and eventual destruction -- of a house. It's a DIY, build-by-numbers house, and a malevolent suitor switches some numbers on ol' Buster. The result is a great reveal, midway through the week, of a completed house that contains all the elements of "house," but is just awfully wrong. The roof is on the wrong way. one whole side seems pulled a la Dali out of its natural frame. And it spins.

The calendar page revealed just before this image appears informs us "To-Day Is / Wednesday / 11".

Sometimes you work on a show (or "project," for those of you less exhibitionist in nature), and you give it your all, and you're very excited to see it put together, because you know it's going to be some of your most impressive work, and the curtain goes up, and . . . it doesn't quite look like you thought it would. And it feels sort of false, especially for something you've put so much of yourself into. And you're not sure -- it could just be you -- but it seems as though the audience isn't being much more than overtly polite.

This, to me, is a "Wednesday the 11th." You can't figure where exactly you went wrong. You did everything you were supposed to, and, hell: you're a generally capable guy and/or girl. It's "Wednesday the 11ths" that bring us to those silent moments of questioning things like fate and the existence of God. You're not overwhelmed with grief, or shaking your rhetorical fist in the general direction of the allegorical heavens, but you are quietly talking to yourself in your mind. "Man, where did I go wrong? Am I being punished? How serious is this? Is this a sign? If it's mysterious in cause, it's got to be mysterious in significance, right? Man..."

It's really taxing to perform a show that didn't turn out even close to what you had hoped for, but the real long-term effect is in the questioning that can so easily result from it. Nine times out of ten, I'd say, you just missed something. It could happen to anyone. It doesn't mean we're less concerned with the virtues of our work if we accept this concept, and move on. Some days are simply Wednesdays, the 11th.

I'm Not a'Scared of You

Things are picking up.

I don't want to go into much detail, because a lot of the work opportunities that I have coming up have yet to be variously accepted, detailed and signed-on-the-dotted-line. I'm talking here, of course, about acting work. There's also nothing necessarily career-making in the bunch. I mean, you never know, and hope springs eternal, and every rose has its thorn (what?), but speaking in the immediate sense, Spielberg has yet to call. (Although I'm presently

in negotiations with Romero

.) I know this is typically applied to

bad

news, but the following expression keeps cropping up for me: When it rains, it pours. What follows is as vague a summary as I can express.

Monday I am previewing a space in which I will be stilting and/or clowning for a benefit on May 12. The very next day begins rehearsals for an environmental theatre piece I'll be doing, the which I have yet to receive a specific rehearsal schedule on, but which I also know will perform May 14 through 17. On the 30th of this month, I'll be playing a featured extra in a silent film someone's making (bizarre: I'm not the only one). At a certain point in mid-May, I've promised to do my best to get out to Wilkes-Barre, PA, to stilt in a "Fine Arts Fiesta" (ole!). I'm in negotiations to help develop a physical theatre piece starting rehearsals some time in May, and retreating to near Port Jervis in June for two weeks to work intensively. For four days at the end of May, beginning of June, I'm also rehearsing and performing a staged reading of a play I've acted for variously through its stages of development over the past couple of years, in the hopes it gets picked up for a New York run. And also in June, Zuppa del Giorno is attempting to recruit for

a commedia dell'arte workshop

to raise money to go to Italy in July, said workshop to run over the course of two weekends.

And I won't attempt to get into July. Maybe we'll be going to Italy, maybe not. There are definitely, however, 3-4 workshops in Pennsylvania to be taken and led, not to mention the further life of whatever I'm working on May-June that continues apace.

This all comes after a few months of relative inactivity on the theatre front. I kept busy with readings and development workshops, and not to underrate such work in any way (oh no; I'd never do

that

), but that sort of thing is always at least a bit limited in several ways. I have been craving work, and not just work, but work that leads to some sort of fulfilled product. So this(these) is(are) a(all) good thing(s). A(All) great thing(s)! All in all, a(all) grood thing(s). Cause for celebration. Hip, hip--!

Oh crap. What if I lose the job I just got months ago to replace the one I lost because I couldn't commit to being there from month-to-month? Oh crap. How am I going to juggle this work and keep it all, without pissing people off or seeming unreliable? Oh crap. Where is the money going to come from for all the obligatory expenses I've literally scheduled for myself in the coming year? Oh crap. Do I still remember how to act? Oh crap. What if one of these gigs is phenomenally over my head, like

A Lie of the Mind

often felt last year? Oh crap. This is a lot of physical stuff, and I'm out of shape and haven't resolved my pelvic injury. Oh crap. Come June, I can't sublease my apartment anymore. Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh--!

It's vexing, going through these stages. It seems as though success always brings anxiety with it. I'd be kidding myself to say that none of this is guilt-related. The world tries very hard to tell us that we are failures as human beings if we're having too much fun in our work and not making a lot of money, and it's continual--though not constant--work to remind myself that this is just not so. The larger part of the anxiety, however, is owing to hope. Hope

may

be constant, to varying degrees. Every time a good run of work comes my way, there is within it the hope for it to continue, and continue, and continue. In the summer of '06, for example, I had enough to spend three months straight on continuous work. It was difficult, involved a lot of bouncing around and scrounging what money I could make, but it was also blissful in its way. And it was a time when my hopes for a full-time acting career felt more realized than they ever had before.

The most accessible allegory I can think of has to do with love. Bear with me. (Or, just sign off. Hell: I'll never know.) Every time a period of work ends, with no further work in sight, it feels similar to a break-up. When a potential new love comes your way, you get scared. Frightened not just of it failing, but of the promise of the new potential succeeding as it never has before, and what that will mean. Things will change. A dream just might be realized, against impossible odds and in the most unpredictable ways, and if it does it will change your life. Maybe for the better, but who's to say? The point is, you want the possibility of it so much, you have to overcome the fear. You have to make some big mistakes, take some big hits, keep going. You have to take the chance. Again. And again.

Here we go.

Inherited Knowledge

Yesterday, at il day jobo, my boss asked me to add up some numbers and attach them to their respective back-up. So I fired up the computer calculator (this in spite of playing

Brain Age

for the Nintendo DS of late), added the numbers and wrote them on post-it notes to afix. When I turned them in to my boss (Me:

Well, she should be impressed with

that

speed-of-return...

) she informed me 'twould not do. She needed to see the calculations. Oh. Okay. I'll do it in Excel. No no, says she, we don't want to attach whole sheets to the papers, just a little slip. Use my

adding machine

. Oh. Okay. That shouldn't be a problem.

My dad's an accountant, and I associate these machines with him. You've seen them, even if you've never had cause to use one. They're like over-sized calculators with a spool of receipt tape atop, that prints out what yer' computin'. They make a very distinctive noise that usually indicates someone who is deep in concentration. When you enter a figure into yer' computin', it prints it with a brief gear-y, scratchy sound, and when you want to pound out the final total, it makes these sounds for considerably longer (having as it generally does more to print at the end) as though to say, "Congratulations! You're one major step closer to whatever you're doing!" Interestingly enough, these machines also have the addition and equation symbols on the same, over-sized button.

Cut to me, twenty minutes after my boss' request, pounding my head in frustration as I try to figure out how to get the adding machine to PRINT the G.D. TOTAL. Every number I enter automatically prints to the paper as I press the big addition/equation button, but when I get to the end of the line . . . what am I supposed to do? When I press the big a/e button again, it simply adds the previous number to the line again, thereby ruining that particular slice of tape. It seemed so convenient and obvious to me before, combining those functions. Every time you hit it, your running total appears on the screen. Now, though, it is my enemy. They should be separate buttons! Does the manufacturer get a deal on

buttons

if he makes one over-sized? WHAT the HELL?! After many minutes of flicking mysterious switches experimentally, trying to interpret all these "M-" buttons and generally doing what I do to figure something out with Microsoft programs, I notice something. In the column of function keys, there is one labeled "x" and one labeled "*". Huh. In my (computerized) mind, those are both symbols for multiplication, so I didn't find either out-of-the-ordinary when regarded individually. When I noticed both were there, I tried pressing "*".

Success! All praise "*"! It even printed a sub-line that illustrated

how many

figures were added together to make the total! I could make-out with my adding machine!

It would not be a lasting relationship, however, infused as it is with such opposing passions, so I relented in my desire.

It reminded me of something I had been reminded of earlier in the weekend as well. I was watching

Elizabeth

for the first time, with

Fiancee

Megan

, a movie I had long intended to see. There's quite a good amount of classical dance in that film, and Megan said she thought it must have been strange, knowing all the same dances. This reminded me of something

Friend David

(Zarko) often laments -- that we don't all know the same dances anymore. Dances. Adding machines. What does it all mean?

Nothing in particular to the nouns, or even all the words of my little meandering story. It's in between those words.

There is something rich and important in passing knowledge from person to person, with no intermediaries or tools involved, and something richer still in passing knowledge between people who have a relationship. That's not to say that the world is going to Hell in a handbasket because you can Google or Wiki world history as you need it (...and why, I ask myself, did I not simply Google adding-machine instructions...); I think the ability to access information instantly and specifically is an amazing boon to human culture. Plus it makes moving easier, what with needing to haul about fewer reference books. The only problem is, when we take a break from correspondence courses and search engines, and even encyclopedias, and engage in someone from whom we learn, something different happens. Something good, and difficult to put into words. I wrote that I probably wouldn't have learned acrobalance as I have if it hadn't been taught to me by

Friend Kate

(see

3/14/08

). Perhaps I'd know more dances --

care

to know more dances -- if I had a community that regularly met in order to share them.

I'm sure a lot of men have had the experience of coming upon a challenge and thinking, "Huh. I'll bet if I paid more attention to my dad when I was young, I'd have this licked." I've also had plenty of experiences which I've come through and thought, "Whoa; glad dad taught me that." (This perhaps most notably the several times I had to save my old computer by fixing things through DOS; also every time I get a compliment on knowing how to tie a full Windsor.)

Friend Todd

is excellent about striking up educational conversations with everyone he meets, a trait I most admire and try to cultivate in myself. In many ways, this is part of what's so important about live theatre. I don't know who's teacher and who's student in that scenario, but I do know we're all there with a little time to get to know each other, and learn to push each others' buttons.

Back Ward

You may have noticed my absence from the Aviary for the last week. I continued writing, but wanted to leave my entry addressing Staff Sgt. Keith "Matt" Maupin (see

3/31/08

) up and prominent for a week. The remainder of last week's entries have now been published, in which you can find plenty of evidence that I'm back to my usual inanity.

The last week was actually a pretty busy one with theatrical activities, each of them under the guise of a "staged reading" (and y'all know where I stand on those [see

2/27/08

{but also

3/11/08

, for a semi-retraction}]). These were paying readings, however, and at least one of them was a play I might actually stand a chance of playing the character for in a full-scale production. Allow me to procede in reverse chronological order. Or, if you won't allow it, read backwards.

.yllautnevE .ti fo gnah eht teg uoy ,em tsurT.

Last night I participated in a reading for an aspiring playwright, one who simply wanted to hear her words aloud in order to move on to the next stage of revision.

Kate Chadwick

is an actress, primarily, but I've never seen her work. I met her whilst working at the law office that used to employ me full-time. She is also a dancer, and the subject of her one-act that we were set to read,

Swan Song

, was the inner world of a classically trained dancer coming to realize she needs to break free of some of that world. I played the central character's brother (rather the comic relief, along with their sister) and we read in the living room of an apartment in Queens. I've usually enjoyed this kind of pizza-and-soda reading, but this one was particularly fun. Kate has a particularly lively sense of humor that, it seemed, everyone there shared. Interesting, too, how she incorporated that sense of humor into her writing of a largely serious play; I reaped a lot of the benefit of that, playing a kind of clown type. Kate's piece was also interesting to me for being a kind of dance/theatre hybrid, akin in some ways to the circus/theatre work I do. One can never adequetely describe those movement aspects in writing, so the play can not exist solely as literature. Frustrating in development, but ultimately a worthwhile effort, I find.

Saturday was occupied with the rehearsal for and performance of a staged reading of one of the NYU BFA program's playwright's plays. (That sentence? Totally why I haven't applied to said program.) Juliana Avery wrote

The Biographer

, and last Saturday I and a group of about six worked to represent it on stage. It was something of a gruelling day, actually. We rehearsed from 2:00 to 6:15, then took the stage at 6:30, and with a five-minute intermission the play ran until 9:00ish. Juliana, to her great credit, is entirely aware that cuts are necessary to make the play function. We received some of those cuts at 5:00, and they were certainly good ones, so I trust she'll procede along those lines. Juliana developed this play under the auspices of NYU's Steinberg lab, a subsection of their BFA program that I have been lucky enough to be involved with, in-class (I often wish I could make a sustaining day job solely out of the work I do for that class, actually).

The Biographer

reminds me of the novel

Starting Out in the Evening

, in that the inciting action has to do with a somewhat successful writer in his twilight years allowing a young female writer to interview him for a biography, but thereafter it takes a very different series of turns. I played the writer in flashbacks to his thirties (it really is an extremely castable decade of my life I'm in), when he met his (lasting) wife. By and large, a supporting character. The scenes were brief by comparison, and the character emotionally young, for all his life experience to that point. Yet he was delightfully fleshed out. Juliana has a real talent for throwing no opportunity for character development away and, as an actor, I value that extremely.

Finally, straddling Thursday and Friday was

The Things We Did and Did Not Do

, by Theresa Parsell Giacopasi. I read scenes from this play twice in class with Theresa, and she was kind enough to cast me in the reading. I do mean kind, because the character I played afforded me the opportunity to play to the hilt one of my favorite types, and one I rarely have an opportunity to play, at that. Jackson is a would-be private eye, and I modeled him largely after Bogart's Marlowe, naturally. I realized in working on

TTWDaDND

(for those too-brief hours) a big aspect of that type that makes it particularly appealing to me, especially in the context of Theresa's play. I am a straight man (read: stage type, not sexual orientation [though, read that too, if it suits you]) and there's no getting away from it. That's not to say I don't have a sense of humor; it's just that my type is the straight guy. Playing a PI trapped in 21st century upstate New York allowed me to play it straight, and still be the one to deliver punchlines. Best of all, the key to the character is that he's a guy who's frustrated at how unaccomidating his world is to the kind of man he's most fulfilled being -- something of a familiar position for a struggling actor (not to mention a geek who wishes Batman were real and he were him). The play is a comedy with a healthy dose of melancholy conflict. Theresa even gave Jackson a saucy moll to bounce off of at the climax (Gentlemen: Kindly remove from the brains from the gutters.), perfectly portrayed by fellow First Look actor, Michele Vazquez. In short: Too much fun.

These drams of theatre can often serve only to whet one's appetite for more, if the material is interesting enough, and such is the case here. Assuming I am still headed for Italy some time this summer (which, at this point, is its usual dubious sort of assumption) I've got a limited amount of time in which to be cast in something that won't conflict with that trip. Which means I need to jump on the audition train. Poste haste. Which I hate.

So somebody hire me based on my unique writing style. Hire me as an actor, mind you. Ready . . . GO!