Reversal

So today wound up not being the day to go see bunches and bunches of Art. Today wound up being the day to stay home and wait for a delivery and do a phone interview and try to get some text/sound work done on That's What We're Here For. Tomorrow will be Art day, dammit, I hope.

Berit's new iMac should be showing up today, so one of us needs to be here and conscious during delivery hours. Currently, that's me. I would have woken Berit and gone in to the Modern, the Whitney, and Film Forum today anyway, but something else came up.

At noon I'm being called by a reporter from New York magazine to talk about the $ellout Festival and my show. Well, that's what I'm hoping the interview will mostly stick to, but I've been informed that it appears they may be looking for anti-New York Fringe Festival material. As in, they're talking to people from The Brick and myself as a $ellout participant on the subject of how this festival is different from (and, I believe we are meant to imply or state, better than) the Fringe. I've encountered this before in interviews, a "let's you and him fight" attitude that makes good copy in magazines and bad relations in theatre, and I've wound up on the record in print saying things I wish I hadn't (things I believed and had felt comfortable saying to friends and colleagues, but needlessly hurtful to others and unnecessary for the public to know). But . . . this is something good for The Brick, The $ellout Festival, and my show, hopefully, and I can just try to spin it towards the "differences" angle.

My feelings on the Fringe are complex, detailed, and mostly negative. I'm aware though, that in copy, the "complex," "detailed," and "mostly," will probably vanish unless I'm very careful. I seem to have been picked for this interview because some of these feelings have made it to our publicist or the interviewer, and because I was around right at the start of the Fringe -- I was really honored when John Clancy said on his blog, "Ian, besides being a fine director, is one of the unsung heroes of the New York Fringe. We broke on him and Art Wallace like a tidal wave that summer of 97 and they held fast, the Warriors of Todo con Nada, Defenders of Ludlow Street." But that's not entirely true. Art Wallace deserves a lot more credit -- he stuck around. I was there from the morning after the Fringe was conceived, and helped set some things up (and build a theatre from scratch), but I was also busy producing the first Foreman Fest at NADA that same Summer, and once my festival was over, I got the hell out of Dodge pretty quickly to avoid being sucked into the Fringe any more than I had been. It looked like a car wreck about to happen at that point, and I didn't want to be caught in the middle of it.

Well, it was and it wasn't really, but a lot has happened in the years since, and not all of it good, between the Fringe and the New York Off-Off-Broadway world that I am devoted to. So again, feelings, complex, detailed, mostly negative. I am to be wary today . . .

Tomorrow, Art. Maybe. If things go well, I might get in to see the films noir at Film Forum today (two I haven't seen, not on video I think, by a director unknown to me, John Berry) -- if I go tomorrow, I'll have to decide between the museums and the films (triple Lawrence Tierney bill tomorrow!) and then RUSH to Caveman Robot in the evening from the last film. Maybe all worth it. I'm jonesing for some noir as yet unknown to me.

Friday, recording for Martin Denton's new podcast at nytheatre.com and working with Maggie Cino on her big song/dance/acrobatic number for the show, so I can find out just what I can do with her and how much I can throw her around. Lots to arrange.

A Sizable Descriptive Email

I had to prepare some material for a recorded interview on Friday about That's What We're Here For (an american pageant), and after writing about it at length, I realized I should put it here, too, as it's a better overview of the show than anything else I've posted. Here ya go:

Jo Ann,

First, my standard (longform) bio, cut down a bit:

Ian W. Hill has acted in over 75 Off-Off-Broadway shows in the past 15 years. As a stage director/designer with his company Gemini CollisionWorks, he has created almost 50 productions since 1997, including works by Richard Foreman (Film Is Evil: Radio Is Good, Egyptology, and the world premiere of Harry in Love, among others), T.S. Eliot (The Rock), Clive Barker (Frankenstein in Love), Mac Wellman (Harm’s Way), Ronald Tavel (The Life of Juanita Castro and Shower), Jeff Goode (Larry and the Werewolf), Mark Spitz (The Hobo Got Too High), and Edward D. Wood, Jr. (The Violent Years and Glen or Glenda?), as well as original works (Kiss Me, Succubus, At the Mountains of Slumberland, Even the Jungle (slight return), and the acclaimed World Gone Wrong at The Brick in 2005). In 2001, he directed/designed the world premiere of Eugène Ionesco's The Viscount (also in its first-ever English translation, by Hill and Berit Johnson). As a designer (light, sound, projections, sets) and technical/artistic consultant he has worked with many other stage artists. He is a former artistic director of the Nada Classic theatre and co-produced acclaimed festivals of the works of Richard Foreman and Edward D. Wood, Jr. there. He received a BFA in Film Production from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, and his films as director include the short "How Did You Manage to Steal a Car from a Rolling Train?" and the featurette Deep Night. He is a member of AEA. He lives happily in Gravesend, Brooklyn with Ms. Berit Johnson and the Two Best Cats in the World.

As for other questions brought up in the first email, here's a longer description of the show:

A revue/pageant focusing on the history of America from 1945 to the present. A celebration of freedom. A swing choir performance. A collision of art, industry, irony, and sincere patriotism. Two days (weekday and weekend) in the life of an American family as it goes about its business, related through a series of musical numbers, tableaux, slides, puppetry, and video. In two parts -- Act I: Money and Work; Act II: Religion and Leisure. Robert Wilson and Richard Foreman meet Up With People and trade shows. A must for all who wish to be better citizens, and better salesmen! Inoffensive, and a strengthener of one’s moral character!

You mention: "It would help if you told me something about the play (I saw the summary online), its origins, the tone it takes, and anything else that we might focus on to make the exchange intriguing to the listeners. Let me know what you really want to focus on."

So . . . The play began primarily because of a personal interest (bordering on obsession) with films and audio recordings primarily made for limited audiences for specific business, educational, or religious purposes. Films and recordings designed to teach businessmen how to be better salesmen, children how to respect authority, and all Americans how to worship, often with the idea expressed that learning these things will make them Better Americans (but with the undercurrent that really they're trying to make better customers). I have been collecting these pieces of fascinating Americana for years, but this past November, on finding a huge online cache of them, and downloading them, burning them to CD, and listening to them repeatedly, it suddenly struck me that there was a theatre piece here. I wasn't sure what, but there was SOMETHING there. It has taken me all the time since then to find what that show was. I am still finding out in every rehearsal.

It's the work of a rather serious-minded theatre artist who is trying to use American Kitsch to express his patriotic feelings, through a presentation of the disparity between high ideals and actual implemented action.

I just got the second email with the questions, so here's some quick text answers on these questions, which I can state differently, but briefly, I believe, in the recording:

1. In what kind of pageant do you see the American family?

A patriotic revue. Somewhere between Up With People, an industry trade show, a 70s TV variety show, and a high school swing choir.

3. The play spans V-J Day to the Present – practically an epoch. Do the recordings and lip-synching reflect the decade as the play travels through time?

Actually, after beginning with V-J Day, the bombing of Hiroshima, and a brief look at post-war Japan, we slide into a day in the life of a family that in and of itself is a collision of all of the "eras" since WWII -- 50s suburbia, 60s rebellion, 70s mellowness, 80s Yuppiedom, and 90s confusion, all stirred together and overseen by two classic campy "Angel" and "Devil" figures, building towards a spiritually uplifting conclusion.

There are audio and video snippets used throughout that mix these eras. The lip-sync sections are musical numbers that frame and comment upon the larger scenes -- songs that come from in-house records by Exxon and AT&T to make their employees happy about their work.

5. We’re following a family through their daily activities. Can you give me a hint of the collision that takes place in the play?

The family bounces off, around, and through various iconic settings from the history of the America being portrayed. The collision is between the family, the various periods, the American Ideals that the family tries to hold to, and the near impossibility of living up to those Ideals in the real world.

7. You describe this as [what genre?]. What can your audience expect?

A revue. The audience can expect big gestures, pretty pictures, snappy musical numbers, funny voices, and the reinforcement of the status quo. Look deeper at your own risk, it's dark down there.

I think that's enough backstory for the recording. Looking forward to it. See you Friday,

IWH

And in other news, I did the New York magazine interview, and talked about things I didn't want to, and didn't talk about things I wanted to. Still, I thought it went well. I hope it comes off as well in print.