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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 . . .
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 . . .
