Showers later tonight, with a 100% chance of Brainstorms...

I'm thinking about that

unCommon Cause

assignment today, and you lucky ducks will receive the benefits of my brainstorming fragments. Feel free to comment with . . . er . . . comments. Yeah. Just bear in mind this is essentially free-writing (unlike the rest of the 'blog, the which is meticulously planned out months in advance).

* * *

Moment:

Five men stand on stage with their backs to us. All of them wear strange, black hoods that cover their faces but leave their jawlines exposed. At the sound of a sudden gun battle, the four to the sides scatter in different directions and disappear offstage. The battle sounds fade very slowly, the central figure remaining silent and still. There is a long moment of silence, long enough to invite a certain relaxation. Suddenly, a single gunshot, loud enough to startle. The man onstage doesn't flinch, doesn't seem to move. Gradually we begin to realize, however, he is moving. Extremely slowly, smoothly [

Butoh

/

Suzuki

slow], the man is collapsing to his knees, then his face, as if shot in the back of the head. It takes a good minute before he is still, face-down on the floor, head turned to the left. After a short moment, Captain Evans enters in formal dress. Unphased by what she sees, she advances to the body and begins examining it. After some time it becomes clear she is trying to view the obscured face. She can not see it, so she rolls the body over, which responds as if lifeless. She stands over the face, still obscured by a partial hood, and still, she can determine nothing. She sighs, takes the body's right hands and helps it to its feet. Once on its feet, the body does a smart salute to her, then about-faces and marches off stage. She turns to the audience and speaks:

"Inconclusive."

She closes her eyes. Her whole body shifts downward subtly in relaxation. Suddenly she gasps, her eyes fly open and her hands reach out, as if waking suddenly.

* * *

Hypothetical scene:

EVANS: Lieutenant Colonel Ainsley.

AINSLEY: Major Evans.

E: It's good to see you again, sir.

A: And you. Major. How was your tour?

E: About as brutal as they come, sir.

A: I'm sorry to hear that.

E: Don't be. It means I'm glad to come home, sir.

. . .

A: Patricia-

E: Sir, have you maintained contact with them?

A: At ease already-

E: Have you, sir?

. . .

A: I thought you didn't want any more news from Bethel.

E: I haven't asked for any, sir.

A: I get regular updates on their status and all major military decision-making regarding the family of Specialist Larkin still has to pass over my desk. But that kind of thing comes around less and less. And no, I haven't maintained contact with them, Major. It was agreed that would be confusing given your transfer.

We

agreed on that, as I recall.

E: Yes. We did.

A: They're all right.

E: I don't want to know. Really, Bill. I just wanted to know that they're still . . . that they're still there.

A: They are. They are.

E: Fine.

A: Is that all, Major?

E: If that's all, sir.

A: (

Relenting.

) Then you're dismissed.

E: Thank you, sir.

. . .

E: We're lucky they didn't destroy themselves over it, sir. We didn't belong there, but we had to be there. I remember sifting through hate mail directed at us, at this government, arriving in their PO box, weeding out anything that might crack Carolyn further or send Ed off on a rampage. After a while, it was easy to start to listen to those letters, those emails, those strangers at the end of a phone line and understand that they weren't telling us to get out of Iraq. They were telling us to get out of that house, that town. That family. I didn't leave because I loved them. I left because I had to, because they loved me. And I shouldn't have been there. . . . Sir.

* * *

WELL. I sure do seem to be loving the Evans action with this work, don't I? Didn't really explore any connections between her and Jake, and didn't necessarily create anything usable in the play as it stands. Still, that's part of the fun of all this work. Everything goes into the group mind (which I like to think is at least somewhat different from a hive mind) and one never knows when one will meet it again down the creative road.

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.

Projecting Torture

I can't recall whether or not I've written about this previously, but I have had a disturbing tendency of late to choose movies to attend at the theatre that contain torture sequences. Surely a lot of this is owing to a certain renewed relevance torture has come to attain in contemporary American media, but part of it feels almost comically fated to me. I mean, I went to a freaking

James Bond

movie, and the torture was there, and grisly, and . . . ugh. I should have known better when it came to

Syriana

, but James Bond? Couldn't you guys

just lay a titles sequence over that jonx

so I could choose to look at the pretty silhouettes instead?

The answer is, of course, no, they couldn't. Because that movie (

Casino Royale

) ruled, being all character-driven and fantastical at the same time. Torture should not be made part of a montage, or music video. It's irresponsible representation. It makes it sexy, or conjures memories of

Ralph Macchio

doing switch kicks on harbor posts. (Oh Macchio...you truly are

The Best Around

.) Torture is the most vile of human behaviors, if it can indeed be called a behavior. The word covers so many actions, referring more to the intention than the deed, that it is probably better described as an attitude than as a behavior.

Last Thursday Joint Stock Theatre Alliance held a meeting to discuss changes to our ongoing work on

The Torture Project

. How significant are these changes? Well, significant enough to warrant the change of the name of the producing company (though I don't know if that was motivated one by the other). Goodbye, JSTA; hello Uncommon Cause. As I've mentioned previously (see

4/7/07

), one such change is that they may be dropping me from the roles as an actor, in need as they are of someone who looks the correct age (19) for my character. But there were many more changes already made, and I suspect dozens more to come.

In the first place, there was a lot of serious talk about making decisions about exactly what kind of show we are trying to make. Historical account? (Most likely not.) Dramatic re-enactment? (Closer, methinks, but perhaps too close to what

Tectonic

did with the ever-famous

Laramie Project

.) Fiction inspired by true events? (That's what it's mostly been until now, and I suspect is going to change.) The director even presented us with a brand, spanking new "organizing principle" (Thank you, Moises.), which . . . I really wish I had written down at the time. Because it was too long for me to memorize. This is all for the best, as far as I'm concerned. I've been craving a sort of ruthless focus in this process for a little while now, so it is at least dramatically apt that such a change in direction might mean the end of what I came into it for in the first place: to collaboratively create a world and perform in it. Some part of me is crushed, sure, but it is rapidly over-ridden by the excitement for the

TP

becoming its butterfly. Its war-inflicted, quasi-grieving butterfly.

But the family of our inspiration, real-life soldier

Keith "Matt" Maupin

, does not grieve. They believe. We (dare I say we [hell, I dare say it a second time]) We will get a big second-hand dose of just how everything progresses in his hometown of Batavia, Ohio when Producer/Director

Laurie Sales

and Producer/Actor

Kelly Van Zile

return from there. They have spent the weekend--and today, the third anniversary of Matt's capture--in his hometown. One has to presume such an experience would be revelatory anyway, but already we've gotten hints at just how affective and effective a dose of reality can be. A couple of days ago Kelly wrote to inform us (amongst other things) that the town they live in isn't actually Batavia. It's something else, skirting Batavia. She did not go in to detail. Presumably an explicit explanation of that will be included in whatever information they return with.

And this, as far as I know, is how the rest of us stand: poised for intensive listening upon our heroes' return. I would be surprised if any of us had any expectation less than that our worlds, theatrically and personally, are about to be rocked. Imagine imagining a world for two years. Then imagine arriving there suddenly, and not recognizing it at all. That's what I imagined, anyway. Kelly also wrote to us about some amazing sympathetic coincidences between what we created and what was really there, which only goes to show that the only thing one can count on in life is being surprised.

Amongst such surprises arising (phoenix-like) from the Indian food and conversation in

Faith Catlin

's apartment on Thursday, was one that makes my tenuous position in the company seem downright comfy. Namely, one of the characters we've spent a lot of time and interest on in our process had been cut, meaning in addition that the actress playing her was cut. I'm sure many factors contributed to this decision, but the primary cause was that the character (the "girlfriend" left at home) was decided to be tangential to the story we were trying to tell. A rough call. We all knew, I think, that things would eventually play out this way. We even signed contracts about a year ago solidifying our rights to back-pay and creation credit. Still. Good work hurts.

Many of these tough decisions were the result of a meeting held between our producers and the good people at

The Public

, following our last presentation. The feeling at our meeting (and I may not be well-tuned to this, leaving early as I had to for that night's call for

A Lie of the Mind

) was that we were collectively interested in advancing the project. Not just finishing it and getting it produced anywhere, but doing what had to be done to make it a valid bid for a place like The Public, or

New York Theatre Workshop

, etc. It's an important topic for us, and obviously very important work, and we want it seen.

For those of you who think context unimportant in comparison to good work, who believe a project of any kind will be appreciated in its turn no matter what kind of exposure it gets, I beg you to read this article I was led to by Anonymous:

Pearls Before Breakfast

. One could argue of this article that it only solidifies the value of the artistic struggle within a generally unappreciative environment. Such a one, however, would be both stupid and wrong.

What does it all mean? Nothing yet, silly. It's a work in progress. But it's all dreadfully exciting, and I mean that expression very specifically. I was reviewing my entries up until this point that addressed

The Torture Project

, for fear that in my 'blog-enhanced sense of self-righteousness I had somehow cast it in a negative light. Whether I have or not, it's clear that I've been frustrated and uncertain about where we were headed, and how much longer it might take to get there. Now there's a charge to the work that's almost threatening, and I have the experience of both being very excited for it, and dreadfully concerned about whether I will continue to be involved in it.

I want to be. It's when it gets scary, the stakes raised, that things like this get really good.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

At 9:00 tonight you'll be humming that to yourself, thinking, "What the crap? How did that song get in my head now?"

And I will laugh with wicked delight!

My college roommate of two years,

Durwood Murray

, had a spring tradition. It was this: We would walk the quad, or the Fan, and as we walked some young lady would invariably saunter past in shorts, or a tank top or both. Durwood would respectfully but noticeably appreciate this combination of factors and then say, to no one in particular, "Man, I love spring." Trust me when I say that, coming from Durwood, it was charming.

After a brutal half-week cold snap, it is warming up in the city. I doubt we're out of the lion days of March yet, but I take what I can get when I can get it. (How is it in the gutter there, mind[s]?) It enervates me, reminding me of just how much of my bouts with the doldrums lately have had to do with cabin fever and lack of light. My mood is sadly sensitive to a lack of warm light, undeniably; yet it is a response I can't help but wonder if I might not be having at this point had not someone once suggested the idea to me. Capiche? It's like you never ever see people in wheelchairs, then a book you're reading mentions them and suddenly they're

everywhere

. Sophistry at its best. Or worst. Whichever you choose to believe is right.

Yesterday was a highly productive Sunday, in part as a result of this (and in other part because I largely ignored my phone and had my roommate about, which somehow always motivates one to look busier), and one of the things I produced was to finally reduce the size of my pictures files from California (see

2/19/07

). My new camera (

Casio Exilim EX-S770

) takes poster-sized shots, and I haven't figured out how to recalibrate the camera yet, so loading up the shots onto my computer essentially obliterated what little storage space poor Grndyl had left. This simple, seemingly monotonous task turned out to be really interesting. Distance lends perspective, and I recalled that for a week I had an early spring on the west coast.

Last night

Anna Zastrow

--an amazing clown--came over and we met and discussed her full-length clown piece,

Breathe or You Can Die!

She showed me a DVD of its performance at last year's Fringe Festival, and we discussed what she liked and didn't like about it. Anna wants me to work with her on improving the piece; sadly, we both have continuously busy schedules. It will take some doing to find time. But I love her clown,

Helda

. A couple of years ago I helped direct her appearance in a show we were both performing in,

Madness & Joy!

, by Ruth Wikler's group,

Cirque Boom

. It was a great time, and it's rewarding to know that Anna apparently found my input helpful. Helda is a wonderfully sentient clown (which is probably why I identify with her so well), and Anna is a wonderfully committed and serious clowner. I hope we can work it out.

Must . . . tie . . . disparate portions of entry . . . together . . . . Can't . . . allow . . . for disjointed . . . personal narrative . . . .

Finally, last night Friend Adam and I caught a late showing of

300

, the movie based upon

Frank Miller

's amazing graphic novel of the same title. I love Miller's work (he wrote and drew my favorite comic in the whole world ever:

Batman - Year One

) and Adam and I have sort of a pact to see every comicbook adaptation together, yet I was reluctant to see the

300

. Miller's previous film adaptation,

Sin City

, was the most amazing translation of a comicbook to the screen I had ever seen (at that time), full of understanding and appreciation not just of the story and characters, but of the dramatic appeal of the aesthetic. And after I saw it, I knew I would never willingly watch it again. The grotesque acts of violence in those stories have to clobber you for the world to make sense, and Miller accomplishes this with ease in his drawings. The movie took such a literal approach to the translation of these acts, however, that when put in motion with real voices behind it, this translation created a running terror throughout the movie of wondering when the next holocaust remembrance would occur. It was terrible.

300

is a violent, violent movie. There is decapitation and evisceration galore. Yet the makers spared a thought or two to allowing the aesthetic of the film to convey the violence and stakes without necessarily conveying the horror of dirty deeds. Somehow, through the bodies piled high, the black blood flying in clumps through the air, the silhouetted limbs falling to the earth, the violence is glorified, occasionally laughed at and in some way justified. It helps to know the historical context of this movie (which isn't to say the film is at all an accurate portrayal of events). This battle was ancient Greece's Pearl Harbor, and without it and the sacrifice of Leonidas and his 300, Western civilization as we know it probably would not exist.

Make of that what you will.

Spring is sprung, the Persians are being gored gloriously on the screen and the clowns are coming out of hibernation. Lock up yer daughters, ye farmers.

"Lock it up!"

"No, you lock it up!"

Needs Must, when the Coffee Drives

I was

so

groggy for rehearsal last night.

How

groggy

was

I? I was

so groggy

that I was actually angry with myself for not being more in-the-room because I was so groggy but too groggy to even allow that anger to focus into something useful to rehearsal, on account of all my grogginess. It doesn't help, of course, that

Ripley Grier Studios

have the stuffiest little rooms on the Isle of Manhattan. It also didn't help that I opted last night--as I had the night before--to go in sans caffeination. That worked out two nights ago, when I was psyched (read: anxious) to jump back in to

The Torture Project

, but last night the magic had fled. Indeed, at this very very moment,

The Torture Project

feels a bit like an old marriage. Sunday mornings, decaf in bed, the paper. "Honey, can you pass me the Ideological Ranting section? Thanks. Oo, let's remember to get out to the Home Depot today to buy some duct tape."

Actually, it's a bit more like the marriage in

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

, what with all the torture and lies. Could do with a bit more sex. Though last night, too, we had what I believe was only our second actual on-stage kiss. It was hot; personally damaging and inappropriate (scenically, that is), but hot. One participant in this kissage was a Mr. Joe Varca, best known for his appearance in last Fringe Festival's smash hit,

I Was Tom Cruise

, and who is being utilized as a sort of

doppelganger

(Blogger, have not you an umlaut shortcut?) to my character in this show, owing to the

shocking similarity of appearance

we apparently share. For the first time, that damn

mirror bit

from the Marx Brothers would be interesting to watch. I've had to try and do that bit in at least three different shows. I'm sick of it. I'm afraid beginning to feel similarly toward this show we've all been working on for the past two years now.

It will change. When we have to present what we have again on Monday, I'll be anxious and excited and "psyched" as all get-out. But this is a development, this waning interest in open collaboration on the show, the which it's good for me to acknowledge. I'm growing impatient, which I don't believe to be a factor of time, but rather an indication that I'm beginning to feel as though we're spinning our wheels a bit. The director has talked a lot about taking more personal control and determining whose story this is, what voice(s) tells it and what kind of story it will be. I hope she makes these choices soon, right or wrong, because it influences a lot and gives (pun unintended) direction to the whole piece. Basic questions, like: Is it a memory play? Is it magical realism? Are we aiming to provide answers? Will we eventually make millions of dollars in royalties?

The work last night was also good, but with more off-the-cuff assignments divided (with all those deviser-actors) into shorter segments. One of the prepared pieces that we didn't get to two nights ago was brilliant--a series of six monologues from different residents of Bethel, Ohio (where our scene is set), including a sixty-year-old man and a twenty-three-year-old boy. And a caricature of our director. The performer was referencing

The Laramie Project

in this, but had no idea. She's never seen it. My impromptu assignments last night were to play Jake teaching his sister Nic the casualty terms that were a part of my piece last night, and to create a series of tableau of the supposed execution of my character with the actress who plays the "torturer" and our do-it-all designer. Kelly and I melded the quiz scene with a scene we already have of us in a car, quizzing her on flower meanings, as though it were a dream she's having, and ended it with, K-"Are you alive or dead?" J-"I don't know." That one worked well. The second we couldn't quite get the effect we wanted with what we had. Our idea was to show three poses from the video (Jake kneeling in front of a hole, Jake standing with his head turned slightly to the left and Jake shot on the ground) then give three progressively closer shots--as if they were expanded--of the left side of Jake's jaw, which is the only part of the supposed Maupin video that lends itself to personal identification. Tricky to do without proper lights and a soundboard.

To think: For the past five years, this time of year has always found me working hard on ecstatic comedy.

Tonight, instead of

TP

rehearsal (Laurie is off workshopping with Moises for three days [How's that for name-dropping?]) I have acrobalance at

Friend Kate

's loft. Tonight with jugglers! It will be a welcome respite. Send in the clowns, you bastards. Send in the clowns...