Roller Derby? I Haven't Even MET Her Derby!

Friday last I had myself a bit of an adventure, in the lovely Garden State of New Jersey. (Oh, how I can't say enough good things about New Jersey, and all its loveliness! My God! The state's beauty is only out won by its inherent and seemingly effortless virtue! Hail unto thee, New Jersey!

Hail unto thee!

)

Friend Kira

has taken up a new pastime, and Friday night was her first official bout. That's right. Friend Kira is gone and joined the army of awesomeness that is the

Garden State Rollergirls

.

Seriously: Awesome. Roller derby combines many of my greatest loves--dual identities, loud music, theatre, humor, violence and women. Tough chicks, to be more specific. Ever since joining the circus, I have had a pointed appreciation for tough chicks, and these were some of the toughest I have ever seen. And their skate names rule:

Skarzipan

(Kira),

Jenna von Fury

,

Slam-n-Legs

,

Layla Smackdown

and, my personal favorite,

Belle N. Somebashin'

. Roller derby comes with my highest recommendation.

Kira's team is dubbed The Northern Nightmares, and last Friday they went skate-to-skate with Jersey City Bridge & Pummel, and therein did they prove themselves worthy of the gods' acclaim. (Sorry--I've been reading a lot of

Mary Renault

, and it has me thanking Zeus and fearing Poseidon.) Which is to say, the NNs wiped the floor with Bridge & Pummel. You may read Kira's somewhat inebriated account of the bout

here

. I agree with her perspective on the thing: B&P were playing at a distinct disadvantage, but playing hard nonetheless. I hope Kira feels further motivated by her contributions to the victory.

It's been very interesting hearing about Kira's progress through this experience. It's been quite physically arduous for her, and she makes no effort to avoid admitting that she's the slowest of the team, yet she has stuck with it and has a kind of passion for it that surprised me at first. I don't credit myself with an appreciation for activities that I'm not naturally talented in. (Hell of a sentence, that. Shall we try again?) THAT IS TO SAY, when I don't show any kind of aptitude for a thing, I generally cease to work at it. It's hard for me to keep up an initial enthusiasm in such cases, and this has come to haunt me in the past year. I was not allowed to quit at learning Italian, because I simply needed to speak and understand it better. I suppose I could have quit trying in my performance of

A Lie of the Mind

and saved myself a lot of heartache, but the alternative of phoning it in was simply not an alternative for me. I would have had a much better time of it if I could have quickly gotten past the kind of automatic self-loathing that such occasions give rise to. It's something to work on.

Kira's experience also reminds me of a kung fu class I enrolled in with Friend Mark back in 2000. I eventually quit the class, out of frustration with the structure of the school and the time demands of trying to attend it and support my acting career, and those energies quickly found some outlet in my circus studies. But the reminiscence I particularly remember from

Alan Lee's Kung Fu/Wu Shu Academy

was the trial class Mark and I took together. Mark is a multi-degree blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do, and I think while he was staying in the city he just wanted to keep in shape and encourage me toward martial arts. So I found the school and he joined me in testing it out. In the trial class, we were sequestered into our own group of two and a teacher took us through our paces. One of the training methods employed by that school is to incorporate conditioning at the beginning and end of the class, which helps both to make the simply workout more efficient and keep the muscles trim--the ideal of this lithe and quick style of fighting. So one of the first things our private teacher that day asked of us was thirty push-ups.

When I look back on it, I wonder if he wasn't being a bit soft with us. At the time, however, I remember thinking, "Did he say thirty 'push-ups'? That can't be right." I don't believe I had ever done over ten push-ups in a row before in my life up to that point. When I was young and chubby, I simply couldn't. When I got older and slim, I didn't see the point. The only physical activity I had really been interested in at that point was the common pratfall, the which really only requires a willingness to take your lumps. In college I was cast in a production of

The Three Musketeers

that taught me a thing or two about stamina and flexibility, but nothing of the benefits of strength. The instructor did say "push-ups," and I did end up doing them, and more.

The next day, I couldn't raise my arms from the elbow to anything sharper than 90 degrees. I looked mighty funny, I assure you, trying to eat and brush the hair from my eyes. I was borderline injured from the exertion, yet I wanted nothing more than to do it again. I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that my incapacitation was a sign that I had done something seemingly impossible. I had transcended. I had broken past a barrier, and it hurt like hell, and it felt amazing and wonderful.

It's not every day we are presented with an opportunity to become more. Or is it? Maybe the opportunity is always there, but we only recognize it when circumstances align a certain way. Whichever the case may be, it is a cause for celebration, that effort to transcend. So I celebrate you, Skarzipan. Thanks for the inspiration. As soon as I find a new apartment, I'm going to install my pull-up bar and sign up for the

Ultimate Fighting Championship

.

"Do You Believe in Unlikelihoods?"

So I'm moving. Again. Since I first arrived in New York, I have moved six times. Which really isn't that bad for a struggling New York actor. Combine that with the constant travel associated with doing regional theatre on a regular basis, however, and it comes to seem a bit pointless, investing oneself in any particular place. The place I'm leaving, for example, I never really spent much time on making my own. It always seemed transitional to me. I've come to decide it's important, however, to have a home base that I care about. So this cycle around, I'm playing for keeps, and looking for a place of my own.

So the 'blogination may be somewhat lacking in days to come, in order to afford me more time to peruse the craigslist.

Much has been written already regarding the importance of an artist having his or her own space, from Virginia Woolf to Julia Cameron, but it can be easy to give such a notion lip service without actually appreciating the value of such a thing. Personally, I feel much more capable of good work when my work area is clean and clear (which creates an endless internal battle akin to that between Ra and Apep as my stacking impulse vies for dominance). It's not surprising then that occupying one's own space and taking control of it would help one feel in more control of his or her life. This is my hope, at any rate. A friend of mine in

As Far As We Know

signs off her emails with a quote from Flaubert: "Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you may be fierce and original in your work."

"Il faut écrire des choses très folles en ayant une vie très rangée."

I don't speak French, so if the above is wrong: Bite me.

The first challenge is, of course, finding such a place. I don't know how it compares to other mejor metropolitan areas, but New York is certainly the worst of my experience when it comes to this process. It's akin to trying to get hired for an acting gig, actually. The supply of gigs/digs is so small, and the demand for them so large, the whole process is rendered ridiculous to the point of seeming pre-civilized. There is no point in looking ahead of time if you're looking to rent, because the day--

the very day

--that a good apartment is posted, it is taken. This creates a rather bloodsport, kill-or-be-killed environment, in which otherwise harmless-looking people will leave work unexpectedly and lurk around decrepit buildings with blank money orders clutched in their starving grasp. I carry a blackjack myself, just in case I see someone who looks wealthier than me approaching an available apartment.

The second challenge--which deserves just as much anxiety, really--is to, upon finding said place, make it both

mine

, and

helpful to my work

. These would seem to go hand-in-hand, but in my experience they do not. For example: I love movies. That's pretty natural for a young actor, methinks. I also have a lot of compulsive behaviors. Pretty natural, that, for a somewhat introverted thinker such as myself. Now, making the place my own in an immediate sense means setting up a nice, comfortable couch with the television prominently placed, surround-sound speakers installed about, and room for friends. HOWEVER, such a comfortable set-up, taking up so much space, makes it way too easy for me to get all habitual, then compulsive, about my movie-watching.

So it's a delicate balance, as with everything else.

Except moving, in which delicacy will get your ass killed.

Let the Games Begin

So I'm still thinking muchly about

Camp Nerdly

and with what I came away from it. The connections between it and some of my other work--in a theatrical milieu--are striking. Here are some of my thoughts on this . . .

As Far As We Know

: A show developed through the combination of elements from

actual events

and improvisational explorations of the ramifications of those events on the people involved. I was reminded of this show whilst playing

Dogs in the Vineyard

, what with the cultural fact/fiction overlap and the issues of faith and violence that are predominant to that particular game. I played a character taken from Mormon history, who believed in blood-letting being good for the purification of the soul. (This is based in biblical quotation, believe it or not. Mormons do not believe this now.) It was hard to find a way to play this character with sincerity, since his beliefs were so different from my own, and I feel very strongly about issues such as missionary work, the concept of sin and the pursuit of violent means for a peaceful end. Playing a soldier in

As Far As We Know

has helped me explore some of these issues, and so playing

Dogs in the Vineyard

was made more difficult for me given my inability to disassociate from the implications of its story. This difficulty made for a good game, because it's a game that thrives on conflict, internal and external. Rather like theatre.

In Bocca al Lupo

: This isn't a show, but an entire program involving traveling to Italy, taking Italian classes and teaching commedia dell'arte to American students, all of it culminating in a show in that style performed in Italian, for Italians. The Camp Nerdly experience was reminiscent of last year's first contact with Italy, in that at first I felt incapable of contributing anything due to the language barrier, but eventually I learned to express myself to good effect. Moreover, I had two experiences directly relevant to the work I do in

In Bocca al Lupo

: I was constantly trying to pick up the rules as I went along, and I got to participate in an improvisation class as a student (whereas lately I have invariably been the teacher). There is much to apply from these experiences to my teaching. (Is there no word, in any language, to encapsulate the phenomenon between student and teacher in which both are constantly learning from one another?) Mistakes can be learned from in terms of improving one's craft, but still others can serve to simply blow the doors off conventional wisdom, and thereby make new rules. Game-playing generates desire in addition to goals, which in turn can fuel a performance. And what of the element of chance? We in theatre talk a good game when we spout off about audience interaction and ad lib dialogue, but most of our efforts at creating theatre are concerned with removing elements of chance. How many of us would be willing to trust a plot change to a chaotic mechanic element?

Zuppa del Giorno

: This is the connection that felt most fruitful for me. In fact, it may merit an entire entry of its own some time this month, but for now a few observations. For our first show as

Zuppa del Giorno

(the mad-cap contemporary commedia dell'arte troupe) each actor was asked to build four characters from scratch, based on an appetite or desire and with certain details fleshed in. These characters were applied to a scenario we had already begun to conceive of, and there was a back-and-forth between the two as we tried to work out the entire show. It was a rather painstaking process, particularly because we were doing it for the first time, but eventually we developed a show called

Noble Aspirations

. Playing

Inuma

with Clinton R. Nixon while at Camp Nerdly, I and my fellow journeypersons created an entire world in under two hours, and somehow without once screaming at somebody for holding up the process. Now, that hardly compares--in terms of priorities--to the work of

Zuppa

. We have many additional pressures upon us, not the least of which is to create something accessible to a wide community of audience members. Yet there was something in the

Inuma

system that was highly effective, and which must be applicable. Our

Zuppa

shows are almost always created from very specific given circumstances (see the development sites for

Operation Opera

and the burgeoning

Prohibitive Standards

), just as the

Inuma

system works. Even putting

Inuma

aside for a moment, most role-playing games have something interesting to add to the method of creating a character, either from scratch or from the given circumstances of a script.

One interesting thing to note when comparing role-playing with theatre is a term used in the former's circles: conflict resolution mechanism. This term refers to the dice rolls, or the card draws, or what-have-you device used in determining things otherwise undetermined, such as whether or not you can succeed in leaping from a moving car and survive. In theatre,

very

generally speaking, there is no conflict resolution per se, apart perhaps from the comedies that supposedly end happily when everyone gets married off. Conflicts can transform, but the moment they become resolved is the end of the show, because the audience came to see a fight. "The show must go on" is not simply an axiom expressing an actor's work ethic, but the spirit of theatre in general. Is it any wonder that so much of our entertainment (including role-playing games) is motivated by battle or violence? It's a tireless metaphor for individual struggle.

If a "conflict resolution mechanism" existed in real life, we'd have nothing to tell stories about.

Serving One's Country

Worry not. I am not about to chime in on the political a la

Friend Nat

(although if naughty words were permissible there, Nat would already be employed by The Nation). Rather I write to update the confused and huddled masses (Readership of Odin's Aviary now in the double digits! What what!) on the status of that collaborative project celebrating its second birthday some time soon. That one that I occasionally travel to Vermont/New Hampshire for, and what deals in large part with the war/conflict/mess-o'-potamia in Iraq. That

Project

, if you get my meaning, mentored by Moises Kaufman and occasionally exhibited in workshops around the Isle of Manhattan.

Why am I being so coy about the name? Because, dear friends, we have a new working title. Yay! I am so pleased. Telling people about

The Torture Project

had gotten old long ago. It reminded me of the conversations I have with strangers when I'm wearing my stilts. "How's the weather up there?" "You really drank your milk, didn't you?" Except it was usually something like "And is the project torture?" (Answer: No. Except when I have to hold the Shabaq position for five minutes.) Plus, the name just wasn't appropriate after about the first year of development. We got stuck on the word as a guide instead of a label. So the

TP

's new moniker...?

As Far As We Know

I like it. It sums up a lot about the show as far as we've developed it, and is less obscure than a previous consideration for a title:

DUSTWUN - Duty Status: Whereabouts Unknown

. But that's not all, folks! To add to the total anonymity of the project, the producing company has also changed its name.

Joint Stock Theatre Alliance

is dead; long live--

UnCommon Cause

I also like this name, but I'm uncertain as to why they changed this aspect. It may have been because the project itself is taking a dramatic new turn. It may also be that there is, in fact, already a

Joint Stock

theatre company out there. The only thing I miss from the old name is the word "alliance." Good word. UnCommon word, if you will, and it pretty accurately describes what the producing directors aspire to in their working style.

So what, besides nomenclature, has changed? Well, it remains to be seen. What has definitively happened is that our directors have received an almost unheard-of amount of input from the real hometown of Keith "Matt" Maupin. Last Saturday we met for about four hours, just to cover a fraction of the photographs and interviews they returned with. It was exciting and humbling, and made me wish I could have been along for the ride. There's promises that the entire company will make a trip out there soon, but that seems a pretty grand undertaking to me, and may take time. In the meantime, the next step is a series of biweekly (Wait...wait.... That means twice a week, not every two weeks, right? I'm almost positive...) rehearsals through June to explore new avenues in the--frankly--new show. Our first assignment being to take the transcriptions of interviews with assigned people from the community and present a short piece illustrating that person (or those people).

And I've been chosen to do two of Matt's commanding officers. This was the assignment I hoped for, though I have no idea what I will do with it creatively yet. I've spent so much time trying to imagine a military head-space that I'm eager to have actual examples. Also, these guys know Mat. They just do. It's insane to imagine. One anecdote sticks out from the Saturday session. They said Matt would carry around a rubber ball (I wasn't clear if it was like a bouncy-ball, or racket ball, or what) to play with to combat the urge to smoke. I don't know if I'll ultimately be playing the soldier character in our story--there's some concern that I look too old--but I carry a liberty dollar coin with me to combat smoking/nail biting, and it meant something to me that there's at least one, small commonality between I and my character's real-life counterpart.

There's something else, too. Patriotism. I fret sometimes over the distinction between patriotism and nationalism, but there's no use denying that I feel like a patriot--at least in the sense that I believe in my country in ways it doesn't always live up to. Now, if someone had asked me at age nineteen to serve my country by going to war, I probably would have turned them down. I fear bodily harm when it comes to flying metal, and would have felt ill-equipped for the challenges. Nevertheless, I believe hard in this idea called America. I grew up in the Boy Scouts, for f%$k's sakes. This is something I'm eager to explore in my work on

As Far As We Know.

What is it that takes people a step farther into patriotism, to the extent that they feel justified in killing and dying for it?

Of course, fanaticism and fear are powerful imitators of just about any conviction, and that can lead to really irrational decisions. (For example:

Break me a freaking give.

) People need belief as much as they need food and water. I just hope, personally, that belief is something that saves lives without taking them.

I Kicked a Boy

And I may do it again!

Many of you who are regular perusers of my 'blogination also occasionally jaunt over to my friends' (yes--I have more than one) journals, just to mix things up a bit, or see if I only hang out with people who use equally pretentious vocabulary. In case you don't generally do this, I refer you to Friend Nat's latest 'blog entry for a little context. Nat, take it away:

Everybody do the Wilhelm Scream

.

Didja read it? Huh? Didja didja didja? 'Cause if you didn't, the rest of this will make less sense to you.

I have to own up to the fact that I get excited when I hang out with people with whom I feel I can really be myself. This excitement, more often than not, comes out in physical expression. (Minds: There's a ladder out of this gutter, I swear.) Now. I'm accustomed these days to channeling that particular enthusiasm into circus work. That's just what I get up to, physically speaking, most often, and it turns out I feel very free amongst circus freaks (by which I mean people freakishly into circus, not so much flipper babies and Siamese twins). It has also become increasingly apparent that I am losing some distinction between

circus folk

and ordinary Joes. Oftentimes in rehearsal for one thing or another, I'll just stop myself from leaping onto someone's back, hearing that voice in my head

just

in the nick of tick that chimes reasonably in to say, "Hey there, Sparky . . . that 90-pound girl might not necessarily be capable of sustaining your weight. She might, in fact, be a little surprised by having her ribcage summarily flattened for no apparent reason. And anyway, you're rehearsing

A Doll's House

. 'Smatter whitchoo?"

Similarly, I really didn't get enough time hanging with males when I was growing up. Somewhere around age eight or nine I kind of gave up on it as a lost cause, not understanding the priorities of sports and derision, and being as I was (am?)--admittedly--an insecure little bugger. I've been making up for lost time in that regard, and that translates to violence. Well, it

does!

I can't help it! All guys do this, to some extent. Here's your movie quote: "Why is it that when men play, they always play at killing each other?"

Fight Club

(not the source of that quote) was actually quite vindicating for me, expressing this need in a very sincere, albeit ultimately sociopathic, manner. Hell, Friend Mark and I spent a couple of seasons prescribing to the

Fight Club

ethos a bit, because we appreciated it so much. Sometimes to this day, one of us will spontaneously punch the other--

really, really hard

--and say matter-of-fact-ly: "Conditioning."

Add to that a little greasing by

America's oldest brewery

, and, uh, well . . .

So the moral of the story is, nobody male should hang out with me without wearing

protective gear

. And if you have to rehearse with me, do some push-ups, for God's sake, because I might decide Masha really ought to carry Dmitri to Moscow herself. And I'm not saying I kick ass here, at all. It's not anything to do with pride in my skills, rather with shame over my irrepressible urge to kill everyone. That's nothing to celebrate.

Still and all. I

did

kick a six-foot-something guy in the head.

I'm just saying.