Random Ten - 03.25.11

Not much to blog about, or maybe too much. Still at work on my own new plays for August -- ObJects, Gone, Antrobus, and Invisible Republic #3 (which needs its own damn title but nothing has come up yet) -- as well as memorizing Mac Wellman's Terminal Hip. And keeping on top of things I'm needed for at The Iranian Theatre Festival at The Brick.

Berit and I have had a couple of useful dinner meetings to toss around the direction of ObJects and Invisible Republic #3. While I'm writing only fragments of these before going into rehearsal with the casts (once I have them), I need to understand the basic framework of each show, and the worlds they show and are, before creating them around the actors (also, I need to "see" these people in the world before I cast any actors for sure). So B and I have a diner meal (for some reason, sitting in a diner/coffee shop of some kind always works best for these meetings) and she helps pull out of me what I'm trying to do with each show, and then we throw ideas about the landscape of each play back and forth until it becomes more and more complete. Once I see the world, the characters, and the overall tone (and have some idea of the structural framework), I can bring the actors in and the incidents begin to show themselves properly.

The older plays Gone and Antrobus are more traditionally written -- Gone is finished as well; Antrobus needs a bunch of work and maybe some rethinking, but I pretty much know what it is. Gone, which I wrote from 1990-2005, is short and difficult, but now has a cast of two of my favorite actresses, Alyssa Simon and Ivanna Cullinan, which pleases me greatly. Alyssa agrees with me that the play is "impossible" but is equally excited to jump into this impossible work as I am. So with this and the nearly-as-impossible Terminal Hip, two of the five plays for August are cast and can proceed.

There have been a couple of Theater-blog-related items that have come up -- that is, debates, discussions and such in the other blogs -- that I thought of jumping in, but my blood boils easily, and my private responses thus far have tended to be merely unpleasant and unhelpful. Rather, Matt Freeman has dealt, as usual, far more fairly with the issues brought up in posts by playwright Mat Smart and CATT (Collective Arts Think Tank) and is able to express pretty much the same feelings as I without using phrases like "they should drown in their own vomit like the stinking dogs that they are." Thanks, Matt.

That's more than I've posted in a while -- my weekly postings have not been happening as they should. In any case, from now on I'd like to at least keep the weekly Random Ten going to make sure I always check in that often. Here's ten tracks out of 2,463 in the iPod playlist of songs not listened to yet on that device:

1. "The Remedies Of Dr. Brohnicoy" - The Act - The Rubble Collection 10
2. "Saigon Rainstorm" - Peter Ivers - Nirvana Peter
3. "On The Air" - Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel 2
4. "Theme From 'Run For Your Life'" - Al Hirt - download
5. "Art School" - The Jam - Direction, Reaction, Creation
6. "Direct Hit" - Art Brut - Its A Bit Complicated
7. "Thriller" - Michael Jackson - Thriller
8. "My Baby Done Told Me" - The Robins - I Must Be Dreamin'
9. "That Was My Girl" - Funkadelic - America Eats Its Young
10. "There Was a Time (live)" - James Brown - download

Here's the full video playlist for the above (with bonus track and a couple of substitutions where there were no YouTubes of the track I needed). On Facebook, this won't embed, so you can either see it at my original LiveJournal post or by going HERE.

Tonight, off to board op at The Brick again for the wonderful Something Something Über Alles. Tomorrow, same thing in the morning, then seeing my mother-in-law in the afternoon, then a party in the evening. Sunday, weekly improvisation work with David Finkelstein. Seems like a lot in between the times of figuring out what to do next.