Going Out with a Bang

I usually prefer a quiet celebration of the New Year. You know: a few friends, some laughs, feeling self-righteous about not subjecting ourselves to the cold and hassle of watching the ball drop in person. That's just how I was raised, really. In NoVa, that seemed like all there was to do on such a holiday. Stay in.

Maybe

go over to a friend's so you can feel sociable. Drink that really cheap champagne that makes you wonder why anyone in their right mind would want to drink champagne on a regular basis. Count down with everyone until you get to pretend the words of

Auld Lang Syne

actually mean something to you. Then you wait a bit--because of course no one else out reveling will think of waiting a bit--before driving home.

This year, I will usher in the new at the

Hammerstein Ballroom

, enjoying the dulcet tones of Velvet Revolver. For those of you unacquainted with this hybrid band, I understand it to be comprised mainly of the members of Guns n' Roses (plus one guy from Suicidal Tendencies), but with Scott Weiland--of Stone Temple Pilots fame--fronting instead of Axl Rose. They are, in short, a rock band. And in a matter of ten hours or so I will be hearing them live for the first time through newly purchased earplugs.

There's no shortage of contradictions in life. Paradoxes abound. Every time I find myself at a concert that requires earplugs, I also find myself wondering, sometimes even aloud, "Why the hell am I here?" The absurdity of the situation is inherent. Some argue that they want the music to be loud enough to feel the bass in their chest cavity, and I can appreciate that, but I'm also aware that all that really requires is a decent subwoofer placed on the floor. It does not necessitate creating the decibel equivalent of a breaking subway car. But that's rock and roll for you. No one said it ought to make sense.

In many ways, this is an increasingly appropriate way of spending my New Year's. Maybe it was just turning thirty this year, but a lot of the good parts of it have been spent in reclamation of things of my past, trying to make good on promises to myself and reconsider what's truly important to me. I came into the year as uncertain and detached from myself as I've possibly ever been and I leave it with, if not certainty, a very surprising yet somehow familiar intimacy with myself. Reclaiming one's life involves a lot of confrontation: confronting perception, confronting contentment and, perhaps most strange, confronting assumption. There are many ways in which I did this, quite subconsciously, this year. I attended Camp Nerdly (see

5/7/07

), which I never would have thought I'd find myself doing, right up to my arrival there, I returned to Italy (see

6/12/07

), which was a touch-and-go promise right up to the flight, and I managed to push myself to a fairly new physical dimension for

As Far As We Know

(see

7/12/07

), an objective I'd long held and never before dared to commit to.

But the most satisfying illustration for me of reclaiming some of my favorite parts of life, chewing over where I am and where I want to be now, comes from music. You can see over on my Library Thing widget that I recently read a book that had a lot to do with mix tapes. This inspired me to try and make one again for Christmas. For a few years now I've been mailing out what I call "MiX-mas" CDs to close friends, which are compilations of new (to me) music I have on my computer that has meant a lot to me over the course of the year. Processing my music through the computer has had an interesting effect on how I listen to it. It and my iPod urge me toward new music all the time, and I come to appreciate songs over whole albums. I love the access and maneuverability of the format, and it quickly usurped my CDs as the source of my musical accompaniment. When I first became capable of MP3 audio, after importing maybe a third of my CDs, out of a concern for space I stopped. It has, ever since, been an intended "when I have the time" project of mine to crack open the CD binders again and import more music. Just the good stuff. Some day.

In deciding to make a mix tape, I had a lot to do. I actually had to purchase a CD player with a tape deck. I have been using computerized music for so long, I had found my boombox fairly neglected a while ago. If I wanted to listen specifically to a CD, it was usually a mix someone made for me and I'd simply play it over my DVD player or alarm clock. So I bought the cheapest boombox (more a toot-orb) I could find, and felt a certain sense of relief upon finding that, yes, people still sell blank audio cassettes. Then I cracked open the CDs and sort of just gave a listen to anything that I hadn't heard in a while.

I remembered some simple things, like using the "pause" button between changing CDs and keeping an eye on the amount of tape left on the left-hand reel. This is why I was so surprised to be reminded of some other aspects of mix-tapery. I mean, I had been making mix tapes for over a decade before switching to the seductions of laser-guided lyric lathing. Yet it took turning the pages of forgotten albums and the engaging mechanics of an actual tape player to bring back certain things. The main thing was how differently I listened to the music when it was relying on me to cue it. A lot has been acknowledged about the flirtation involved in passing on a mix, but few (to my knowledge) have exposed the complex back-and-forth between music and a mix maker when it comes to real-time recording. For example, does music these days tend to use a fade-out less? Or is that only my perception after making this tape of predominantly 90s music, as I would perk up at any diminution in tone or volume on the songs I was laboriously copying to cassette? I forgot how I would turn the volume all the way up at the end of song to be sure I captured the end of the diminution, and the rush to depress the button before the next song leapt into the speakers. And remember that? "Song"? Not "track," but "song"?

Anyway, I'm not calling for a return to tape format, or anything like that. What I am calling out is myself, as someone who too often takes progress for granted. I do it in two ways: assuming that as it happens, it ought to happen, and I take it for granted in the sense that progress is a given. Time proceeds, progress is made. It isn't so, but it's very easy to fall into that thinking. I had an amazing time making my first mix tape in some five years. It made me remember good music, which was difficult to take for granted in that context, and it slowed me down. I had somehow forgotten how fulfilling it could be to surrender to a song, rather than treat it as a score to my life. I had forgotten just how long 90 minutes, one song at a time, is. You can fit a lifetime of experience in there! Most of all, I was reminded of how it feels to meditate on the moment. It feels wonderful.

I'm glad I didn't know, during the 90s, how much I would miss the music in the years to come. A sense of nostalgia-to-come is akin to a sense of impending doom, and the gift of this year for me has been the opportunity to reflect on old times without nostalgia; rather to approach them as songs I still sing. Back in the day, I favored Metallica over Guns n' Roses, Pearl Jam over Stone Temple Pilots. The beauty of age, I suppose, is in being able to appreciate all of it in some way. It seemed contradictory before. Now it just seems full, and well-realized. And, after all, should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should old acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?

Transitory Art

Last evening I journeyed out to Greenpoint to complete a little cycle of destiny (see

12/7/07

for my feelings about destiny [actually, I make a fine and utterly personal distinction between "fate" and "destiny," but that's for another time]), braving freezing winds and the G Train under the strong urge to bring closure to an experiment I didn't set in motion. I'll begin from the beginning.

In late October of last year--when this here 'blog weren't even a twinkle in my typing fingers--I was riding home on the subway one night when I looked up and saw something unusual adhered to the wall across the way from me. It looked about the right proportions to be a postcard, which is of itself not unusual. Before I ever knew a soul in New York, I used to use a sort of guerrilla advertising technique for my shows, propping a postcard for said shows up on every train I rode. (As I made friends, they would tell me they had spotted my littering advertisements on different trains, which is when I knew it was time to stop and just

give

the things to my friends.) I did not originate this notion. People do it all the time, often with business cards purporting to hold the secret to incredible weight loss and/or increased income from the comfort of your own home. This particular "card," however, looked like nothing more (nor less) than an abstract painting in miniature. Intrigued, I approached it for a closer look.

I was spot-on about its essential nature. There, mounted on fibreglass (which, in turn, was mounted by Velcro to the subway wall) was a miniature oil painting in sworls of red and eggshell. Attached to it was a slip of paper that invited me to take it. With a half a moment of hesitation behind me, the Velcro made its tell-tale sound as I pocketed the painting.

The next day at work, I mentioned my find to a coworker who comes in once a week to balance my boss's books. I knew she was a visual artist, and might appreciate this little project. "That's my friend Lori!" she informed me. Indeed, on the back of the painting was

a website for one Lori Hayes, artist

, and a note encouraging whomever found the painting to visit and tell the story of their discovery. So I did, making certain to include the strange coincidence of working in the same office as a friend of this artist. Lori got back to me, thanking me and marvelling at the synchronicity. She also informed me that she was hoping to, one day, have a showing of all the found pieces, and would be in touch to ask me if I could loan out #90 (of 100), "River," for that event. I told her that I would of course be thrilled.

I love this kind of interactive creation. Maybe it's just the actor in me, but this kind of project feels to me like the kind of gentle, subtle performance art that builds community. Friend Patrick did something similar not too long ago with his Traveling Muse project. He constructed three masks, paired them with a journal and access to a

'blog

and distributed them to myself and Friends Melissa and Kate, with instructions to keep the mask for a month and then pass it along. The idea is (and Patrick will I'm sure correct me if I'm inaccurate) to create something and send it on a journey of influence over different people, with the chance to even track some of that influence, or inspiration. (Oddly enough, Patrick began his project on the Autumnal Equinox, and Lori's spanned from the Summer Solstice to the Winter.) The elements of chance and personal interaction are great inclusions in any work of art. I still occasionally make a paper frog out of whatever postcard I've been handed and leave it conspicuous on a subway seat, just out of that urge to start something with a stranger. Rainer Maria Rilke offered an interesting observation on artistic satisfaction. He said the mother is the only completely fulfilled artist, accomplishing exactly what every artist dreams of: she creates something out of her own being, which goes on to exist in the world completely apart from her.

Last night, approximately a year from the end of Lori's cycle of placing sections of one giant painting on subway cars, she gathered what pieces she may and had a showing of them, as well as the original canvas from which they'd been cut, xeroxed copies of her journal and emails from various recipients, and photographs of each piece in its subway setting before it was taken. Out of one hundred, only four pieces returned to their maker for the night, and of those, only one had its new owner accompany it. I felt pretty conspicuous there, essentially a stranger, but one everyone there suddenly knew as having been a part of the experiment.

In spite of any self-consciousness (suddenly that term doesn't sound negative to me) there were also profound feelings of completion, inclusion and awareness. It reminded me of playing some street games a little over a year ago, the way they made me look at everything without taking any of it for granted. Those can be rare feelings in life in general, in this city in particular. I take great hope from the fact that Art is one of the things that can evoke them.

You Never Bring Me Flowers Anymore . . .

No, nor sing you love songs, though that may be to your benefit given my lack of vocal training. Furthermore, I never write. Have not I feelings? Care not I about the individual attentions demanded by the sheer accessibility of all my friends and relations? Should not I, as an actor, be interested in being in constant, continual contact with every person I've ever worked/played with who returns the effort? Doesn't the sheer ease of text messages and email obligate me to at least try myself?

Probably: Yes. Nevertheless, I rebel.

Understand, please, that I'm not making a stand on some moral principle. It would be easy as all hell for me to spin it so. I could claim that the ease of communication creates an environment of a whole lot of words to very little effect, or that the millions of emails and

MySpace

comments that fly about every day have no social impact on anyone, anywhere. I could even plane that edge a bit, make it less proclamatory and just claim to be nostalgic for the days of yore, when letters were written to be saved, and people had to meet in person to catch up. I shan't, because I'd be fooling myself even more than you. No, the reason I'm rebelling lately is because (in my humble self-assessment) I am just sick of it.

I am. I'm grateful for being able to network with friends from the comfort of my day job. I thrill at the ability to communicate with business associates via text messaging when I otherwise wouldn't be able. I do sincerely dig checking out my peeps on their respective 'blogs, dipping a finger in the batter of their creativity. And, I am sick, sick, sick of writing people.

One of the wonderful, wondrous things about a stage play is that it captures, very simply, the beauty of someone entering a room. We have these hundreds of entrances and exits throughout each day of our lives, and they spin by, for the most part unnoticed. Of particular interest, as entrances go, are the moments when one person joins another in a space. You don't even need to know the first thing about the history of these imaginary two to appreciate the moment they join one another in a given area, do you? In that instant, a story is told. In that moment, a space comes alive, has meaning, and words haven't even entered into it yet. I wish I had a name for that. (The French probably do.)

I'm not saying it's irreplaceable (though I will go so far as to say that it is unique). I can't even properly express all that such a moment means to me. Except, perhaps, to say that I miss it. Sans nostalgia. The longing I have for it is very immediate, in fact. It's strange to feel a longing for something so abstract. It's not for one particular person, but people, but not in a group, and it's also for something more. For time to be still, just for half a moment. That suspension of everything. I'm not saying it needs to be dramatic, romantic, or anything specific. Think of knocking on your parents' door. Time stands still for just a tiny bit. There's no "ping," or "be-deep," or "You've got mail!" Your favorite song doesn't start playing, and nothing vibrates, and a magic window doesn't pop up in front of you, demanding attention, and I find that very, very appealing.

It's entirely hypocritical, this entry. The very medium that allows me to express this thought is what's responsible for all this chiming, thrumming, second-by-second communication I seem to deplore. And God knows, ignoring my email doesn't counteract the syndrome in any way at all. It's a little like fighting fire with fire, in fact. Email is an irrational form of personal communication, and I combat this by behaving irrationally myself? Madness. It certainly hasn't resulted in more visits with friends, or even more instances of substantial phone calls. All it does is further separate me from my homies, in particular those what expect a response to a non-business email sooner than a month later.

It could be a phase. Or, it could be an addiction. But me, I prefer an addiction that keeps me out of my seat, rather than one that ties me to it. So I hope you all understand that I love getting emails from you, keeping abreast (maybe even a thigh or a wing) on all you care to write about. My silence is not rejection, and when I bring you flowers, you'll be able to smell them.

And probably me, from all the entrances and exits I'm trying to make good on.

Ain't No Party Like A "The Office" Party . . .

Some of you have been awaiting this post for a while now. Like, about three days. Man, am I sorry it took me so long, but when you have an experience as profound as I recently have, you have to allow yourself at least a little time to let it settle in. See if you don't. When you return from a pilgrimage, you need a little "me time" padding at the end. I'm not even sure I'm ready to write about this, but, then again, maybe it's good that I try. Maybe, just maybe, it will further me in understanding the experience.

Last weekend I traveled out to Scranton for work. This is by no means an unusual experience. In fact, nearly half of my adult acting career has been spent in affiliation with

The Northeast Theatre

or their commedia dell'arte branch,

Zuppa del Giorno

. Hell, I go out to Pennsylvania all the time, too, to catch other shows in their season, visit friends and perform or teach workshops at events outside the theatre. Love Scranton. It's like that friend you had in high school about whom everyone else's response was, "You hang out with

him

?" (I probably was "that friend" more often than I had one such.) But you know what they all don't. That, in spite of appearances, this was one of the coolest friends to have, if you took the time to truly get to know him. So: Yay: Scranton!

Scranton was having its biggest event in recent memory last weekend:

The first annual "The Office" Convention

. A couple of months ago I received an email from TNT informing me of this and asking me--along with all their other previous improvisatorily trained (some of them by me, he admitted with trepidation) actors--if I would not like to contribute to a semi-improvised performance in conjunction with said convention. I deliberated a bit. It sounded like a custom-made suckfest, to be honest with you. Improvising in a mall? For an audience who was there to see celebrities? I have participated in events before that I have since blocked from my memory, lest they convince me never to mount the boards again in my whole life ever ever (perhaps a future entry will be devoted to

The Dreaded Borders Incident

from our efforts to promote

Noble Aspirations

). Ultimately I decided to go for it, however. I love the show and improvising in general and, frankly, realized it can never hurt to brush sleeves with working television actors.

Various things came to be in the intervening weeks. I spent two months night-and-day improvising to create and perform

Prohibitive Standards

. Friend Sam came to be inscripted to direct the event, and Friend Steve to craft an initial scenario. Finally, just about every cast member but the five most major was confirmed to attend, and at least one--Oscar Nunez--had promised to perform with us in our little shopping mall adventure. Last week, in my few days back in New York before heading out again, I tried to save up energy for . . . well . . . I knew not what. But I had lots of indications that, whatever it was, it was going to be surreal.

The first of these occurred around 4:00 PM Friday, when we New Yorkers were scheduled to meet our ride on the corner of 32nd Street and 8th Avenue. It was a dismal day of swelling, cold rain when we individually happened upon the realization that there

is

no

32nd and 8th. It is one of those rare idiosyncrasies of midtown New York city planning, a result of Madison Square Garden and the main branch of the post office on either side of 8th, like enormous children engaged in a game of

slot car racing

. We knew our ride was "a limo being sent out for us." There were four of us, and we promptly set about keeping our eyes open for a regular old town car, debating whether it would have Pennsylvania or New York plates.

When we found our ride at last, we found it was a white, stretch, SUV limousine. No foolin'.

Bear in mind: The actors were being paid a $50 food stipend for the weekend. They did, to their great credit, put us up in a very nice hotel.

Further surreality came upon us as we arrived in town late, due to weather and confusion. After getting checked in to the hotel, we all sqeezed into David Zarko's

Prius

(penance for our boat trip out) to be driven to the rehearsal, already in progress, in

The Steamtown Mall

. (Or: "The Mall at Steamtown," depending how posh you wish to sound.) We walked right in through the front doors to discover an informal sort of party going on. Everyone of our cast of non-Office folk, about a dozen, was there on a stage in the dead center of the mall that was decorated with huge replicas of the cast members' faces. There were also several people representing the

Scranton Chamber of Commerce

, who had brought with them a cooler full of wine and beer. I wasn't planning to partake. Then I found out we weren't working from a written scenario, and were just going to be assigned characters that we were welcome to throw out as well. For three hours we were brought drinks as we tried to choreograph a concluding brawl to our as-yet-unknown scenario. I had to concentrate to avoid imagining scenes from the film

Dawn of the Dead

. The perk for me (continuing our foray into the surreal experience) was to wish aloud for a paper shredder on stage, and actually have a maintenance man bring one down in a matter of minutes.

The next morning we were rehearsing in the theatre (there is no rest for capitalism) and had a few more actors to incorporate, so the brawl changed completely. We also did character interviews as a way to explore our burgeoning, soon-to-be-realized-whether-they're-ready-or-not characters. We also did a little

Viewpoints(TM)

work for a warm-up. What else did we do? Let me see.... Um.... It's all kind of a blur, really. Over the entire three hours there was a mounting sense of dread, born in part from the recognition that there just wasn't enough time to create something reliably good. The best we could do was plan an entrance and exit, promise to try not to interrupt one another and give the rest to God. There are, after all, no atheists in foxholes.

At 1:30 we came to the mall in pieces, and all was chaos. The stage area was already teeming with fans being warmed up by schwag give-away and a local team mascot (who, as it turns out, can do a wicked handstand IN A GIANT PENGUIN OUTFIT) and various of our cast didn't have their cell phones in their costumes, so it was nigh impossible to get together on anything. Once, miraculously, we were all in the general area of the stage, assuring eager audience members that we wouldn't be blocking their view much longer, everything held in place for a good twenty minutes. Not a one of us knew what was going on, and there was no one to tell us. We moved in our entrance groups from side to side of the stage as an emcee (likely self-appointed) berated the crowd with commands to clear the stairways, and threatened to forcefully expel them if they acted up in the presence of the celebrities. I was reminded of high school pep rallies, and contemplated the possibility that there may be no such thing as a terminal velocity when it comes to that plummeting feeling one gets in one's stomach at such times.

Then, unexpectedly, I was buoyed. A family asked me and my comrades (as we nervously awaited some sign from above for when to take the stage) if we were part of the entertainment. We informed them we were, and they were instantly excited and bashfully asked if they could take their picture with us. As we got into place to have our photograph taken, they explained to us that they were "stockholders," which meant that they had paid a good amount for a ticket to all the events this weekend. Big fans of the show, and they were just as excited to get a moment with us--we working stiffs (with occasional limo benefits)--as they were to be there at all. We had to cross to the other side of the stage for our entrance (again), and bid them a fond farewell. That's part of what's great about "The Office"; it makes heroes out of regular joes.

Well, the performance itself was chaos, utter and complete. We all entered the stage at once, rather than as a start to our story. Friend Geoff, thank goodness, and his scene partner Will had been warming up the crowd for about twenty minutes as bumbling security guards, so our entrance as relative nobodies had a strong enough precedence so as not to seem utterly random. No sooner had we sat down at the long table, when the performers from the show arrived to screams of delight.

Oscar

,

Daryl

and

Andy

(the other one) sat down with us, and we were off. No one could hear us, of course, because the acoustics were God-awful and the mikes were all set at different levels. Control of the "meeting" bounced between Friends Heather and Sam, who were just trying to keep the ball passing to the cast members. Oscar seemed most at home in the chaos, spinning off some really wonderful replies. Daryl was a crowd favorite, and eventually really got the spirit of the thing. Andy, poor guy, seemed a little confused. I can't say as I blamed him.

For my part, I quickly gave up on speaking. I wasn't near a mic, and could tell anyway that only the cast members were going to get substantial laughs for speaking, invited as they are into everyone's home once a week. So I became shameless quickly, an eager accountant who kept standing up from the table when he was referred to, and had to be asked to return to his seat.

The climax of my performance, quite clearly, came about in establishing a conflict with one actor who was playing an environmentalist and kept complaining about Dunder Mifflin's recycling policies. At one point I took the shreddings of report pages from the shredder's canister and threw them in his face. Shameless? Yes. But effective. I found three times to do it, and the third time coincided with the ending brawl, in which I made sure to cover a good portion of the audience in paper as well. If any show executives were watching, I probably dropped a nuke on any possibility of their being impressed with my performance. But, hell: the crowd loved it.

That was the note the performance ended on, and we got good applause for it. It was fascinating to watch the actors from the show get wrangled (eventually) off the stage by their respective assistants, whose job, it seems, is to be abrasive so the stars can be genial. They were just that--all of them--and I was impressed with how ready they had been to play a mall with us. Thereafter, we collectively sighed and were hosted to dinner and an open bar on the second floor of

The Banshee

. The cast broke up there for various destinations. I went with a small group to the nearby, quaint little town of Waverly to watch another amateur production: A haunted house, hosted by theatre students of Friend Michaela. As we wound our way through bloody dioramas, startled by the occasional thrust arm or sound effect, I thought about how useful fear is, and wondered how much of it I would visit upon myself just for that feeling of relief, and occasionally satisfaction, when it passes.

Making a Stand(ard)

Hi. I was wondering if I could be let back into your life. You can't see me now, so I'll just let you know that I'm standing, in a trenchcoat, outside my car, holding a boombox over my head and looking mournful. Sure, the boombox is playing "Life Is just a Bowl of Cherries" rather than something romantic that we got freaky too (like "The Thong Song"), but that's just because I'm stuck in the '30s, and can't get out. At least, not until October 21.

Some people are genuinely upset with me for being so absent.Not so much on the ‘blog—that, at most, inspires increased frustration with work-induced boredom—but more in general.I never write.I never call.The least I could do is ‘blog every now and again, just so you know I’m still alive as you sit there, reading in the dark without your glasses, two miles in the snow uphill both ways.I am sorry, truly.I have had a worry or two of my own, you know.Nothing to rival your worries, and of course the greatest worry I have is that something terrible would happen to you and I wouldn’t know about it because I have been so selfish, and unworthy of your thoughtful consideration.You have, at the least (as you lie in traction from your tragic tractor trajectory) this comfort:It has been in the name of Art.

And fart jokes.

Look here to see what has been so occupying now that I’ve not been available.Oh, I can’t trust you to links!It’s Zuppa del Giorno’s first original creation in a year-and-a-half: Prohibitive Standards. If you do take the “here” link above (and how much better it is to live in the here and now), you’ll see that a tremendous amount of work has gone in to creating this show, and the ‘blog(s) don’t hardly reveal but half of the actual salt-water work (that is: sweat and tears [thank you, Friend Kate]) what’s gone into this production.The rehearsal room, after all, is where all the material for Zuppa’s shows really springs from, and for the past three weeks we’ve been gathering in a room (or two) to make our baby.

I had previously attempted to ‘blog about the process of that, but never got very far, because I was constantly off to learn music, or watch movies, or try to master a front handspring.OR, to balance my life.Because that’s a special effort too, when you’re an actor of somewhat modest means working out of town. It’s important to acknowledge that aspect of The Third Life©. From balancing one’s checkbook, to reminding one’s parents that he or she is not, in fact, home to be visited, to maintaining some sense of home and personal identity amidst characterization and shacking up in someone’s guest room, the traveling artist has a lot to contend with.Not that it’s not without its perks, either.New experiences are fantastic fuel for creative endeavor, and it’s easier to obsess (constructively, we hope) without frequent reminders of responsibilities.

One of my previous attempts at ‘blogging on this process was entitled “A Host of Angles.”I’ve written to some extent already about the unique process of creating a show from improvisation in my experiences with UnCommon Cause Theatre and Zuppa del Giorno, but never since opening the Aviary have I been so close to the process, nor has it culminated in quite the same way.Prohibitive Standards will be performed in a structured improvisation style.It will never solidify entirely. It will always be different. This means that the same concepts applied to making the show from the ground up will be applied in making it work when the curtain goes up.That creates an intense energy in which one has to set rules for oneself in order to be ready for anything that could happen on stage.We’ve constructed a scenario—or sequence of necessary actions—as our rules, within which we can play and stretch and improvise.In this way, the energy of a performance is very much like live sports, for both the participant and the observer.Everyone’s eager to see what happens next.

But “A Host of Angles”?Well, the most impressive reminder I was receiving about this process when I came up with that title (a lifetime ago, on September 15) had to do with the abandonment of structure and the necessary mastery of the elements of a play involved in creating one by committee, from scratch.In a more standard process, there is a sequence of events and a hierarchy of authority.Typically, the play passes from playwright to producer to director to actors, with very little passing back, and each party has a sequence of gradual development that results in a finished product.In creating a show in the living tradition of commedia dell’arte, however, everyone fills each role in some fashion all the time.One moment you are discussing character arcs, the next you’re leaping around imitating a boiling tea kettle, and still the next you’re trying very hard to be open and objective as you argue for more time for acrobatic training.Rehearsals end, of course, eventually, but they never really do, because everything you see, feel and do at all times goes into the soup, and as a producing playwright directactor, you never stop thinking about and discussing the show.Rather than a sequence of creation, you are coming at an intangible goal from every angle at once, and a lot of the time it feels as though you’re completely wasting your time, spinning your wheels while nothing productive takes place.But I leave out here, as something too obvious to mention, a critical ingredient in this creative soup: Faith.

However we got here, here we are, with a complete scenario that we may even manage to remember and properly reproduce on preview night, this Thursday.It has been a tremendously ambitious project, involving collaboration with Marywood University, regular workshops and training sessions with students and a good deal of marketing.Not everything has turned out the way I had hoped: the student actors are not as involved in the story as I would have liked, there's less emphasis on vaudeville than I had imagined and our physical daring, so prominent in the last two shows, has taken a backseat (necessarily) to an intricate story.However, I am very proud of what we’ve made, and excited to add an audience.Everyone is doing something they never thought they could do before, including me.

What new am I doing?I’d like to keep it a surprise for anyone who can make it out.Let’s just say that my embouchure hasn’t been in this good a shape since I was fifteen.