Damn Them, Just Goddamn Them

Re: Scooter Libby.


I am as angry, boiling, furiously angry as almost everyone else I have seen writing about it online, so I didn't see the need to add to the screams of outrage. Berit is able to just shrug and grimace and say, "What, did you expect it to be any different?" Yes, dammit, I did this time. I did.


I was, however, bitterly amused by the headline on Tony Hendra's piece at The Huffington Post enough to want to share it with you: "War Criminal Commutes Sentence of Convicted Perjurer at Behest of Traitor." Ha. Ha. Ha fucking ha.


I had been worried that enough had changed since 2005 when I first did World Gone Wrong that this show, which I'm bringing back in August, a film noir nightmare metaphor for the current Administration (for only noir can do justice dramatically to the world of lies, deceit, violence, and betrayal for a buck and for power that we live in), was now dated, with this Administration seeming to slowly ooze off into the sunset, leaving everyone else behind to waste valuable time and effort mopping up their slime.


No. Nothing has changed. Fucking traitors.

NECROPOLIS #0-3 and The Hobo Got Too High

Day and night, night and day, work on the four plays we have going up on three bills at The Brick in August -- we being Gemini CollisionWorks, that is, me (most of the Art-stuff, some Craft-stuff) and Berit (most of the Craft-stuff, some Art-stuff). Each show will get 10 performances, I think (I'm still working out the schedule -- as actor conflicts come in I keep having to move things around like crazy).


First up will be, from August 3 to 26, in various time slots but mostly Fridays and Saturdays at 10.30 pm (it's a good late-night show) with a few 8 pm slots and 4 pm matinees, The Hobo Got Too High, which is a 50-minute (or so) play by Marc Spitz about a cokehead, Bug Blowmonkey, as he tries to clean up and get his life back together, aided (well . . . kind of . . .) by his spirit guide, Marvin Gaye, and hindered by fantasies of his former girlfriend who cleaned up and got away, Shelley -- while "New Shelley" (aka Martha), a new woman in Bug's life, might be able to better save him from himself, if he'll let her.

I did this first back at Nada Classic in 2000, but not a lot of people knew about it or saw it, and Marc would like to fix that, as would I. I'm also playing Bug again, along with original cast members Rasheed Hinds (as Marvin Gaye) and Roger Nasser (as a lot of jerks in the lives of Bug and Martha). Jessica Savage will be joining the group as Shelley/Martha, it seems -- she still hasn't read the script, as my only electronic draft is on an old, dead hard drive, so Berit's transcribing it from the one hard copy we have. Hopefully it won't appal Jessica or something when she reads it . . .

I used to classify the plays I did as director in four categories: Spiritual, Political, Sociological, and Farce. I don't see these categories as so discrete for me now, but the first three were generally the "personal" work and the Farces were always "those plays that I'm doing because I think the script is INCREDIBLY FUNNY and I have the feeling if I don't do it someone else will and massively screw it up." This category included Jeff Goode's Larry and the Werewolf, Todd Miller's Das Presley, Richard Foreman's Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville, and, especially, this play, which is a funny, touching crowd-pleaser in a way I don't often do. Fuck it, I love it. Everyone does.


Shortly after, August 4, we open the restaging of NECROPOLIS #1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed (usually just known as World Gone Wrong for short), which runs until August 19 - maybe the 23rd if I have to move things around a bit. This film noir pastiche-collage-nightmare originally played at The Brick in 2005 and was particularly popular, though plenty of people seem to have heard about it and not seen it, and still want to. So, good reason to bring it back. Martin Denton's original review of it is on THIS PAGE (you have to scroll down) if you don't know about this show and want to know more. It's about an hour and three-quarters with no intermission, playing mostly at 8.00 pm but with a couple of matinees.

Returning from the original cast of 21: myself, Gyda Arber, Bryan Enk, Stacia French, Christiaan Koop, Roger Nasser, Yvonne Roen, Ken Simon, Adam Swiderski, and possibly Maggie Cino (if she can work it around her Fringe show). Joining us this time: Aaron Baker, Jessica Savage, Alyssa Simon, Art Wallace, and maybe Hope Cartelli (again, Fringe show conflicts). This leaves six to eight parts to cast. I have emails out. I hope they all come through.


Then, August 8 to 26, we add in the double bill of NECROPOLIS #0&3: Kiss Me, Succubus/At the Mountains of Slumberland, originally done, respectively, in 2000 at Nada Classic and 2001 at Access Theatre.


Kiss Me, Succubus is the first of a series of collage-plays from other art forms that I've been doing for a few years, which have wound up being called the NECROPOLIS series (KM,S was created before the idea of the "series" came up, so it's retroactively #0). These plays are sometimes referred to as "dubbed stage dream-elegies for dead or dying Art Forms of the 20th Century," that is, all the dialogue, music, and sound effects are recorded and put together in advance and the onstage performers all mouth or mime to the backing track -- KM,S is meant to look like a European movie from around 1969, so I like the lip-sync on this one to not be too accurate, as if the actors are "actually" speaking Italian or Spanish and being dubbed into English (and not well).

This play is based on the arty softcore/horror films made by people like Jess Franco and Radley Metzger in the 60s and 70s -- filmmakers who seem to have wanted to make "art" movies but wound up making exploitation films, but as long as they had enough blood and nudity in the films, they were allowed to be as arty and pretentious as they wanted to (or, perhaps, they saw in the exploitation movie form the freedom to experiment and be subversive).

KM,S follows a group of decadent, rich people (two men, two women) who, bored with sitting around their chateau and watching bad porn movies, venture into the world, only to meet at a party the "actors" from the film they were just watching. They bring the apparent porn actors back home (also two men, two women), intending to perhaps embarrass them with what they know (or maybe seduce them, or both). The guests aren't what they seem, however, but are some kind of evil demonic spirits out to seduce and murder their hosts. Lots of sex, violence, portentous and pretentious dialogue, and lurid colors in about 45 to 50 minutes.

Returning from the original cast of 8: myself and Stacia French. Also confirmed as in: Alyssa Simon and Jessica Savage (again, though, without having read the script, which was on the same dead computer as Hobo and which I am transcribing from the one hard copy we have). Still need another woman and three men - I think I should be able to get the woman from one of the recast parts of WGW, but none of the men seem quite right. Still looking.


At the Mountains of Slumberland combines the fictional universes of Winsor McCay and H.P. Lovecraft, as Little Nemo goes to sleep and falls not into the dream-world of Slumberland that he usually goes to in his adventures, but instead into the Lovecraftian domain of Cthulhu and The Elder Gods, and is led by Randolph Carter and associates (including autogyro pilot Commander Alfie Bester of The Flying Squad and His Pale, Dry Death Machine) on an adventure that, I now realize, was rather League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-esque before I was aware that that comic book even existed (from what I can tell, it had started in 1999).

Returning from the original cast of 8: Peter Bean (aka Peter Brown) as Carter and Art Wallace as Bester. Joining the cast: Gyda Arber, Bryan Enk, Yvonne Roen, and maybe Hope Cartelli (again, possible Fringe show conflicts). So two or three left to cast, including the difficult role of Little Nemo (played, wonderfully, by Paula Ehrenberg in the original - maybe someone knows how to get ahold of her . . ?). Also 45-50 minutes long. So a nice double bill with KM,S, with an intermission. Plays at 8 pm mostly with a couple of 4 pm matinees. Again, there is no electronic copy of the script, and even worse, no hard copies apparently extant, so I'm transcribing the damned thing from off the video of the 2001 production. Big fun.


And this is why, after this long post, and another to come shortly, I'll not be around much this week, as I'm desperately trying to finalize the casts and schedule the shows before the weekend, so that I might be able to record the dialogue tracks for the NECROPOLIS shows this Saturday and Sunday and have them ready to go for rehearsal ASAP.

Thankfully, I love theatre, or I'd just start screaming and screaming and never stop . . .

Stage Directions

As mentioned, I'm having to retype in the script of Kiss Me Succubus from the one original hard copy I have from the 2000 production. I'm working on this right now. I needed a break.

The other now-annoying thing about this (besides having to do it at all) is that the original script only contained scene headings and dialogue, with the latter attributed to the actor speaking it - no character names. No stage directions at all. I had described the piece in detail to the cast members (we were already working on the piece that ran with Succubus originally, David Finkelstein's Sojourner Truth's Hatbox), so they didn't need directions.

Now, of course, I'm going to be sending it to people, asking them to be in it, so I have to add in character names and stage directions as I go, explaining the whole damned thing. So I'm doing it. Here's the first couple of pages of stage direction in the script right up to the first line of dialogue . . .


* * * * *


NECROPOLIS 0: KISS ME, SUCCUBUS
(after Jess Franco and Radley Metzger and others)


a nightmare-collage-play by Ian W. Hill



This play is performed, as the movies it is based on were, “dubbed.” All voices, music, and sound effects are pre-recorded and mimed to. For this play, it is preferable if the actors do not quite seem to be accurately lip-syncing the dialogue – as if they are all actually speaking a mix of various European languages. When the films this play is based on were made, usually in Spain or Italy, the actors, often all from different countries, knew they’d be dubbed by different actors later, and learned their script in their own languages, so you might have four actors in a scene all speaking different languages to each other, not really knowing what the others are saying except by the translation in their own script, which might in fact be written slightly differently in each language, too – so one actor might think they are making a horror movie, one a spy movie, one a comedy . . . whatever.

It was just important that the actors look good, seem to know what they are doing, and that there was plenty of vibrant, lurid, eye-catching color.

The makers of these movies were a mix of businessmen only interested in money and filmmakers who wanted to make “art” movies but instead were stuck in the exploitation genres, where they still could sneak in all the “art” they wanted as long as there was enough blood, violence, action, and nudity to please the bosses and make a quick buck. Which creates some interesting pulls in different directions – most of the films aren’t very good, but they are far more interesting to watch than “regular” movies, because they keep to no formula, and are unpredictable – anything could happen in them . . .


So here we are . . . somewhere, sometime in the past, probably 1969 or so. Somewhere in what was once a castle of some kind, now the impressive if crumbling residence of a rich, indolent couple and their friends and lovers. We meet The Decadent MAN, his bored, alcoholic, and sexually-frustrated WIFE, his MISTRESS of many years (younger than the wife, but beginning to show wear beyond her years, from her service to this amoral, empty MAN), and the MAN’s GUEST, a vulgar American businessman expecting to be shown a good time in some wild “European” way, who has been “given” the MISTRESS during his stay.

They will shortly meet the SUCCUBUS, a beautiful queen of a demon realm, her MANSERVANT, a tall, creepy, mostly-silent figure, her PROTEGE, a younger female demon, and the INCUBUS, a younger, male demon in service to the Queen.


The meeting will not go well for the humans involved.



1. THE FILM

Furniture around the stage – sparse, but potentially suggestive of several possible locations that can be completed with light. A couch, stage right. A fully-stocked bar, stage left. Chairs and tables, elsewhere. Down center, almost even with the front row of the audience, a movie projector. Upstage center, a movie screen, or sheet, or white panel onto which film can be thrown (NB: for this production, the “films” will be shot on video, mastered on DVD, and projected from the house projector for reliability – unlike the original production).

A minute before the play begins, 1960s “hip” soundtrack music begins to fade in, the house lights fade out, the movie projector turns on and images begin to appear on the screen. First, several titles appear, red on black:

NECROPOLIS 0

. . . then . . .

Kiss Me, Succubus

. . . then . . .

Europe, 1960s


As these titles go by, slowly, the voices of IAN and BERIT are heard, prerecorded, split-stereo, slow and deliberate. By the end of their speech, the music has become much louder, and the MAN, WIFE, MISTRESS, and GUEST have entered in the dim light and positioned themselves on stage.


IAN and BERIT
Hello, and welcome to The Brick, and Gemini CollisionWorks’s productions of NECROPOLIS numbers zero and three. Please turn off all cel phones before the performance. There will be one ten minute intermission after the first piece, which will last exactly XX minutes and XX seconds. Thank you for coming to The Brick. Ladies and Gentlemen, Necropolis number zero . . .


And with a musical climax, lights up onstage. The MAN is by the projector, the WIFE on a chair by the bar, the MISTRESS and GUEST on the couch. They all hold drinks, and it looks to be not the first for any of them. With this, the projection has changed . . .

We are now looking for a little while at a strange, artsy, black-and-white, almost-incompetent but somehow interesting softcore porn movie featuring two couples, who we will later see onstage as the SUCCUBUS and her MANSERVANT, and the PROTEGE and the INCUBUS. No nudity is actually shown. Everything is suggested through movement, body parts, and facial expressions. The film seems to be all jumbled up and out-of-order – a corrupt print. Foreplay is suddenly interspersed with fucking and back again. It’s impossible to tell what relationship, if any, there is between the two couples, and hard to tell if this is meant to be porno or art – it doesn’t seem to succeed as either.

The four on stage watch the film with varied levels of interest and excitement (the men) and boredom or humor (the women). Music plays. The MAN finishes his drink and gets another, then begins to chuckle . . .


* * * * *


NECROPOLIS #0&3: Kiss Me, Succubus/At the Mountains of Slumberland opens at The Brick on August 8 (most likely - schedule still being finalized . . .).