CollisionWorks

The first piece is up, a rather long text piece (it has been suggested in future, correctly, that I break these things up with some pictures) about the origins, creations, and meaning of Everything Must Go (Invisible Republic #2).

You can find that specific post HERE.

That is all. Come see the shows if you haven't yet.

Five more performances of Everything Must Go.

Four more performances of Harry in Love.

Three more performances of Spell.

Went out putting postcards at Fringe venues yesterday, but didn't make it to all of them as planned - I had forgotten why I had decided last year to only ever do it again by car and went on foot instead. Dumb. It's not the walking all over the LES/Village/Tribeca/Lower Manhattan that wears me out, it's the carrying 15 pounds of cards while walking all that distance that does it. And I was carrying more cards over more distance than I had before (in 2005 when I first did this I had just the World Gone Wrong card; last year it was two cards, NECROPOLIS and The Hobo Got Too High; this year, it was three - that did it). I got through a third of the venues (plus just as many non-Fringe theatres in the area), and I'll get the rest by car tomorrow - too much to do today to get set for the next five days and seven performances.

Tomorrow (or tonight), I also have to write my thank-you letters for the Materials for the Arts donors. Can't forget that. And something for The Brick's blog. Oh, and send some photos to The Brooklyn Courier -- I'll do that now . .

Ah, got some breakfast, too, in that little pause . . . feeling much better now.

Still, worried about houses for the shows. But then, I always do. And I have to be reminded that on shows of mine in the past which I remember having great houses for the whole run, my memory is pretty faulty -- whenever I mention the original 2005 World Gone Wrong as always having good crowds, Fred Backus reminds me that about half the shows were actually played to pretty sparse groups - especially felt when the cast numbers 21 people. The box office figures bear Fred's memory out better than mine, for that matter - WGW wasn't an especially expensive show, and, unlike usual, we made a profit from it, but the profit was a bit under $100. Not so great, really.

So, I should expect and bear through the slow middle weeks of a 4-week run to get to the bigger last ones. As with Ambersons, where we wound up having to turn a few people away at the last show.

I was expecting a review of Harry in Time Out New York today, but it's not online yet - don't know about the print edition. Unfortunately, the blurb for all three shows has been changed to include the reviewer's opinion of the production, and it's not good (it also might be all we get, rather than a review, which is fine by me). And unlike the Backstage review which basically says we did a good production of a not-good play, this one says we - well, very specifically I - did a bad production of an okay play. Great.

Not that I care about the opinion, but I care about the potential effect on butts in the seats - not that I think this will turn people away who were planning on coming to see it, but it won't bring any new people, I think. Oh, well.

And another two people died, who I had some kind of brief sharing-of-moments with that brought back memories.

George Furth was an actor and playwright who wrote the books for the Sondheim musicals Company and Merrily We Roll Along and co-wrote the underrated mystery play Getting Away with Murder with him as well. I worked as a tech on the 1994 revival of Merrily, on which both Sondheim and Furth were quite involved and present most of the time, and both of whom were quite friendly with all of us on the cast and crew - I was working for projection designer Wendall K. Harrington, who Sondheim particularly liked, so I got a nice shock at one of my first rehearsals when Sondheim dropped in a couple of scenes into Act One, saw Wendall sitting on my left, smiled and said hi to her, then plopped down in the seat on my right (as Wendall, who knew I was a big Sondheim fan, enjoyed my nervousness for the rest of the Act).

George was even more outgoing and chummy with everyone, and I liked him a lot - a great storyteller and very very funny and cutting while also generous and warm. I wish that I had realized at the time why he seemed so familiar to me - I knew he was also an actor but didn't place him from the many things I had enjoyed him in, especially Blazing Saddles, where he gets some memorable lines as "Van Johnson" ("The fool's going to d-- . . . I mean the SHERIFF's going to DO it!"), but also The Man With Two Brains, Sleeper, Myra Breckinridge and about every damn sitcom of the 70s. I would have loved to have heard his stories about those - and I bet he would have had some good ones and been MORE than willing to share them.

He enjoyed playing with the members of the company as well who were a bit starstruck by being in the presence of *S*T*E*P*H*E*N*S*O*N*D*H*E*I*M* by throwing out examples of especially human and silly behavior by The Great Songwriter, or needling cast members about their overdone attempts to not seem starstruck.

At the opening night party for the show at Sondheim's Turtle Bay townhouse, Furth walked in on a number of us lounging around the "composing room." I was sitting with my date at the grand piano, imagining the composition of all those great songs there, Malcolm Gets was sitting at the immense wooden desk, looking around with wonder at all the boxed original scores on the shelves, and several other actors (I think including Phillip Hoffman) were sitting on the big leather couch. George walked in, sized up the fanboyishness of the room, smiled, and casually said, "Actually, when Steve and I write, he's almost never at the piano - usually I sit at the desk there, and he sits over there on the couch." And EVERYONE on the couch jumped slightly. And George smiled again and walked out, chuckling.

Sweet guy.

I never met Bernie Brillstein, of course, but I saw him speak once, at Jim Henson's funeral service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and he had one of the best lines I've ever heard at a memorial service.

Brillstein had some hard acts to follow: Frank Oz had just given a beautiful remembrance of Henson, telling an incredibly funny (and long) story about his employer (and Oz's eulogy made it clear that Henson was always his employer and collaborator, but they were never really close friends - which was interesting) - then, after he got his laugh, Oz tried to say something else, but suddenly broke down and had to be helped from the podium.

THEN, Big Bird walked out, wearing a black armband, and sang, "It's Not Easy Being Green" in a broken, crying voice.

Okay, so, not a dry eye in the packed Cathedral, right?

Big Bird finished the song by looking up and saying, "Goodbye, Kermit." Now -- people were still wondering at this point if Kermit the Frog would actually outlive Jim Henson, since they seemed inseparable. Of course, Henson had made plans for the continuation of his characters, but no one knew that yet. So, now everyone's crying harder.

Brillstein is introduced, and has to take the podium after all this. He stands there a long time, crying himself (a friend who's a son of one of the Muppet performers said to me later, "My god, you saw a high-powered Hollywood agent CRY!"). Then Brillstein says, finally, in his best "tough agent" voice, "Jim always said, 'don't follow the Bird, nobody can follow the Bird.'"

Which doesn't maybe sound so great, but damn if it wasn't exactly what was needed to release the tension, get a huge laugh, and bring the day back to being one of joyful remembrance. Nice job, Bernie.

Okay, Berit's up and demanding breakfast and laundry duties from me. Off I go . . .

To wit, this morning, at 4.11 am?

And then, just NOT want to go back to sleep?

Well, maybe, like yesterday, I'll get back to sleep for a couple of hours in a little bit.

Yesterday was supposed to be the first double-header day for us in our trio of shows running in rep at The Brick, but only two people showed up for Spell, so we called the show. I hate doing this, no matter how many people are in the audience, but it's a hard show to go through for at least one performer, and when I put it to the cast, some didn't care one way or the other, and several did, in the way of "love the show, but don't want to go through it for two people." The audience was very cool with it and agreed to come back (to the point of saying we could keep their money and they'd definitely be back) and I told them I'd comp in a guest for each of them if them wanted to bring anyone else (Robert Honeywell did this when he called two performances of Greed and it was a nice thing to do).

We had a house for the evening's Everything Must Go, performance #2 - which is going okay, but needs to be more focused and tight in the non-musical number sequences. I wondered, when staging the numbers, if any would get applause afterwards, and was self-conscious about not staging any kind of "button" moments or holds after the numbers to account for any response. We got some clapping last night after "Dry Bones," but no where else, I think. Not sure if there should be clapping encouraged after the songs or not . . . My feeling is mostly "not," but it's always odd to end a big dance number and just . . . move on to talking. Of course, it's not really a musical, it's a play with dances, but it does share some characteristics with musicals -- Gyda Arber solved a structural problem early on by noting that Becky Byers' "I Wish" dance number (as its come to be known in musicals) was placed WAY too late in the show compared to where it would be in a musical, and moving it back fixed a lot of problems (and gave us a light, comedic scene right where we needed one).

Hope people show up today. It's damned depressing calling shows . . . It happens, and probably we'll wind up filling the house repeatedly at the end of the run, but I hate this period in a month's run where you just can't seem to get anyone in. Berit says the original shows are "hard sells." Yeah, probably. Some might say going up against FringeNYC might have something to do with it, but I did as well in Augusts 2005 and 2007 at the same time as The Fringe as I've done any other time - but there I had World Gone Wrong, and noir is an easy sell . . .

So now, here I am, wishing I had more sleep so I can relax before the demanding task of playing Harry Rosenfeld in Harry in Love at 4.00 pm. Maybe in a bit.

So I'm playing around with the iTunes as I reload The Brick's iPod shuffle with songs to play in between shows at The Clown Festival instead of the ones that were on there for The Film Festival. I took a look at the "Top 25 Most Played" playlist, as I do often to see - since we usually play the iTunes on random - what the random iTunes brain likes to play the most. I had thought of posting a list of these "most played" songs last week, but at that point, the list was full of all the songs from the shows that I had to play over and over as I arranged them on CDs and/or edited them into different forms, so it was rather un-random.

Berit must be playing it a lot, as all of those songs are now gone from the list - even Regina Spektor's "Back of a Truck," which has been in the top 5 for over a year since I went through a spate of playing it over and over and over a while back.

Which is how B & I both listen to music at times - we get fixated on one song and then play it over and over and over and over again, many MANY times in a row. Here for example is the list of the 24 most played on our iTunes at the moment (from out of 53,229 tracks), and I'm POSITIVE the top 4, maybe even 5, songs are up there from B playing them on repeat . . .

1. "Candidate (1973 alternate version) - David Bowie - Diamond Dogs - 42 plays
2. "Showtime" - Electric Six - I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master - 38 plays
3. "Carlotta Valdez" - Harvey Danger - Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? - 32 plays
4. "New Killer Star" - David Bowie - Reality - 28 plays
5. "Cracked Actor" - David Bowie - Aladdin Sane - 25 plays
6. "Starman" - David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars - 25 plays
7. "All Together" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play More Little Rascals Music - On to the Show! - 22 plays
8. "Black and White" - Bellevue Cadillac - Swing This, Baby! - 22 plays
9. "Think" - The Siegel-Schwall Band - ...Where We Walked - 22 plays
10. "Bells" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play "Little Rascals" Music - 21 plays
11. "Ah! 'Tis Love" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play "Little Rascals" Music - 21 plays
12. "Dog Song" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play "Little Rascals" Music - 21 plays
13. "Intermezzo" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play More Little Rascals Music - On to the Show! - 21 plays
14. "Life on Mars?" - David Bowie - Hunky Dory - 21 plays
15. "Beloved Movie Star (Billie Wilder Mix) - Stan Ridgway - Holiday in Dirt - 21 plays
16. "Experimental Film" - They Might Be Giants - The Spine - 21 plays
17. "Rajah" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play More Little Rascals Music - On to the Show! - 20 plays
18. "Dial 'O' for Bigelow" - Fred Lane - Car Radio Jerome - 20 plays
19. "Hollywood Swinging" - Kool & The Gang - Wild and Peaceful - 20 plays
20. "I Just Want to Be a Movie Star" - Lester Bangs & The Delinquents - Jook Savages On The Brazos - 20 plays
21. "I'm in Love with a German Film Star" - The Passions - Thirty Thousand Feet Over China - 20 plays
22. "Dinner and a Movie" - Phish - Junta - 20 plays
23. "Hollywood Cat" - Trig Williams - Wowsville! - 20 plays
24. "Love and Death (radio spot) - Woody Allen - 20 plays

Okay, so who's the favorite artist in this household?

No, not The Beau Hunks, those are actually all random. Our Beloved Mister Bowie, as usual, is all over this list.

"Carlotta Valdez" however is the song of the moment, and usually winds up being the first song played in the car on the way home from The Brick each night. It's a musical retelling of Hitchcock's Vertigo, and I've kept meaning to put the film on when we got home for a while. Finally did last night and stayed awake for about 2/3rds of it (not the first 2/3rds either, I was up and down the whole time). Good song - I don't know where the hell I got it from, but I should look into that band some more . . .

Okay, I'm off to deal with box office worker issues and go over Harry lines again before getting some more rest.

Maybe next week.

The shows are going. Third show of Spell last night, third one of Harry in Love tonight. I was originally going to spend today going around to all the FringeNYC venues putting out cards for the three shows (at the venues that allow cards for non-Fringe shows; not all of them do), but after a look at the Fringe venue map, seeing how spread out all the spaces are this year, and remembering it's Harry tonight, I decided to make it an easy rest & study day instead, and go do the card run tomorrow.

Some press out there. I remember mentioning here the interviews I did for The Brooklyn Paper and PAPERmag online. Don't think I linked to the former, which came out a while back - it's HERE, and well-done, though I'm tired of that headline (this is like the third time it's shown up on something about me and/or my work - come on editors, find some other way to use "Hill" that isn't so random, wouldya?).

Tom Murrin let me know the PAPER piece is up HERE and very nice it is, too (though, oh god, I just noticed I'm called "downtown's Orson Welles" again - and no I can't explain why that bugs me - Berit says I'm silly for my distaste of the phrase - but it does bug me. It shouldn't, right? I mean, right?).

The Backstage review of Harry is up HERE. Not exactly a good one, but it's the play's fault, for this reviewer, not the production's, so I'm off the hook there. Odd tone to the review - one of the actors in the show (who might not like to be named) called it more a "book report" than a review, and I see the point, but can't define why.

We'll see what reviewers make of the other shows, if any reviewers show up for those (still waiting on two more reviews of Harry to come out) - one came to Spell last night, another is scheduled for later for that show (much later - won't have much effect on getting houses - this reviewer was going to come to opening night, but when that was changed to a "preview" I had to tell reviewers not to come that night - at least that one is coming back, another one can't, and isn't - he went to see Twelve Ophelias instead). No one has booked for Everything Must Go yet, dammit.

UPDATE: Martin Denton's nytheatre.com review of Harry is up, HERE, and it's a good one, both about the production and in his take on the play itself, I think. Nice to see.

So B & I are happy to be getting some rest, though we still have a big BIG weekend o'shows to get through. Next Monday and Tuesday are the first days in a while where we don't HAVE to do anything. B thinks we should arrange Monday so we don't have to leave the apartment at all, and just hunker down. Fine by me, though I want to get out and DO something non-show-related on Tuesday. In particular, I wanna see The Dark Knight in IMAX. I'm just gonna keep saying that and it will happen. I wanna see The Dark Knight in IMAX. I wanna see The Dark Knight in IMAX. 2.00 pm, Tuesday. Gonna happen. Just want big big movie that has nothing to do with my work. We won't be getting to our favorite drive-in in Maine this year (we're stuck in NYC until after the season), so we might as well do this.

Okay, as long as I'm up, here's a Friday Random Ten from the 26,100 on the iPod this morning:

1. "Concert/Single Promo" - The Golliwogs - Psychedelic Promos & Radio Spots, vol. 3
2. "Love Goes Down The Drain" - The Monochrome Set - Strange Boutique
3. "Up The Junction" - Squeeze - Cool for Cats
4. "Wait for the Black Out" - The Damned - The Black Album
5. "The Hands on My Clock Run Still" - Now - Psychedelic Archaeology Volume 8
6. "These Days" - Nico - Chelsea Girl
7. "Now I Have" - The Golden Ear-rings - Just Ear-rings
8. "Somebody Put Something In My Drink" - The Ramones - Loud Fast
9. "Finnish Farmers" - Laurie Anderson - United States Live part 2
10. "Black Network News" - Zero Boys - History Of

and special bonus track:
11. "Signifying Blues (extended version)" - Bo Diddley - The Chess Box

"Say lookhere . . . look like your process took a recess!"

"That's alright . . . at least I can afford to get one. You wearin' one a them do-it-yourself jobs, ain'tcha?"

No kitty pix today - I keep leaving the camera at the space to get show pix.

Off to get breakfast and maybe some more rest . . .

One of them is something that has been coming to mind here and there for months, as I realized the 20th anniversary was going to happen, which it did, just yesterday. Well, today, really. This is long, sorry, but I'm not putting it behind a cut.

There was a riot in Tompkins Square Park, August 6-7, 1988. You can read about it HERE, in what seems to me a mostly accurate recounting of the event, and the reasons behind it, which I no longer have enough interest in to deal with below (the bastards won). If you were in the middle of it for any length of time, you probably have a bias towards one side or the other, so an "accurate recounting" may really be impossible. I was there and was beaten by crazed riot police with nightsticks for no good reason, so you'd think I have a pretty serious bias, but that's actually not true. I was (and am still) pissed off at both sides for various reasons, but whatever, it was 20 years ago and no one cares anymore, really. But I might as well set down my story of what happened to me that night, for the record.

I had been sitting around my NYU dorm room on 10th Street near Broadway - I was 20 and attending Summer session - when my friend Vanessa Veselka called me up and told me there was going to be a peaceful protest against the curfew in the park and that I should come and bring my camera to document in case things went bad.

Vanessa was (and is) and activist, organizer, and musician who I was close to for many years, and am happy to still be in occasional touch with. I got to see her last year (with her adorable daughter) when she was visiting NYC after only the occasional email between us for years. We've known each other since she was 14 and I was 15 in school in Massachusetts, and have been through a lot together (though no, we were never involved, which that might imply, though it turns out we were very interested in each other at different times in our friendship, but always when the other was seeing someone - when we realized this years after there was any chance of anything happening we pleasantly cursed our stupidity), so she'll always be very special to me. She's been in Seattle and Portland for years making good music of one kind or another, first three fine albums with her rock band, Bell, then one (which I have mixed feelings about) with a power-acoustic-punk duo, The Pinkos, and most recently a terrific CD of traditional folk in a Carter Family-style with two other women as The Red Rose Girls.

At that point in the late 80s she was my connection to a world outside of NYU Film School, to music and performance and people over at The Pyramid and ABC No Rio and so on - and the fast folk scene then around the whole Village, a scene still carried on by Lach with his Antifolk hoots at Sidewalk Cafe, which I think started at The Speakeasy on MacDougal (long gone and a restaurant now) - I spent plenty of time in the audience there and wound up on stage a few times myself.

So when Vanessa called, it would be worth it and I would go. So I grabbed my 35mm camera and walked eastward, stopping briefly on the stairs of St. Marks Comics (which was upstairs then) to load the camera and check it.

So somewhere, yes, there is a roll of film with shots from that night on it, or more precisely a clear plastic sleeve with the negatives in it and a contact sheet of that sleeve. Some of the photos look really good. I never printed any of them. Make of that what you will. I was hoping to drag them out of storage and finally get them digitized and put them up with this post (which I've been thinking about for months) but it didn't happen. So no visual aids here.

I got to the park and found Vanessa (how? no cel phones then . . . did we agree on a place?), and we went into the park and walked and hung and so forth. It was pretty boring until it wasn't, suddenly. I was a little unnerved hearing some of the talk around me - and here's a reason I'm not so happy with the protesters in the long run . . . I heard more than one conversation that specifically stated (not phrased this way of course), "We're going to provoke the police into violence so that we get beat up and it looks bad for them in the news." More than once, yes. This cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face way of thinking went exactly as planned of course, and after quite some time of having rocks, bricks, and fireworks thrown at them (I was near a mounted cop when a thrown cherry bomb went off next to the horse's head - being close to a suddenly terrified rearing and whinnying horse is not pleasant) - the cops went apeshit.

Now yes, as intended by some, they were provoked, however on the other hand, they went COMPLETELY over-the-top crazy-ass batshit loco. This was in no way about "stopping the protesters who are escalating to violence" but "hit anything living that moves and isn't a cop as hard as you fucking can with big pieces of wood."

I had been separated from Vanessa (why?) and wound up near a white van on Avenue A, near 7th Street, I think. I see that van in all the footage from that night. I saw someone with a video camera on top of it, and for years I've thought that was Clayton Patterson, but in seeing recent recaps of the night it appears it was a different videographer, and Clayton, who I got to know a bit, years later, was elsewhere. I wound up on Avenue A just below 9th Street when the line of cops that stood across from 9th in front of the park suddenly started screaming and rushing at protesters. swinging. I ducked back and forth behind a bus shelter and in doorways as cops and beatees rushed past me. Somewhere in there, Vanessa found me (we had been separated) grabbed me by the shoulder (obviously deciding I was out of my depth, perhaps correctly) and rushed me down 9th Street to a bar that had barricaded itself in. She said something to the doorman who peeked out a little slit in the door (what, I don't know, Vanessa could do these kinds of things) and whatever it was made him open up and pull me in while she ran back to join the melee.

So there I stood in the bar. I don't know for how long. I had a pint of beer - did I pay for it or was it given to me for having been out there and getting in? It was amber, not a stout, which would be unusual for me, but maybe that's all they had. Music played - it must have been someone's Rolling Stones mix tape. I swear to god the two songs I remember playing, which have always since been colored by the violence of that night for me, were "Gimme Shelter" and "Memo from Turner" (okay, "Honky Tonk Woman" also played, but that doesn't exactly conjure up dark, violent memories).

I have no idea how long I was there. Long enough to finish my beer, not be able to get another, and be very very bored, except when hearing sudden bits of horror come through the door or boarded up windows.

I have no idea where exactly this bar was, or what it was. Whenever I've walked down this block in the years since, I've tried to find it, but have come up blank. What WAS that place?

Vanessa came back, took me outside to 9th Street and started walking me west, telling me about some of what she'd been through - she hadn't been hit, but chased a lot, including through an apartment building where an old Russian lady hid her and several others from the cops that chased them. She checked to make sure I was okay, sent me off on my way, and went back toward the park, where you could still hear the riot going on. I walked west, where it seemed everything was calm and okay. The fighting was confined to Avenue A and east. It seemed.

At the corner of 9th and 1st Avenue I stopped to take a picture of a helicopter that hovered over the intersection, its skids as low as the building tops. Click. Somewhere I have that, a perfect shot of the copter and the street sign at the southeast corner. I crossed to the southwest corner and looked around. Lots of confused people, wondering what was going on, maybe just in the area for a drink. I turned and looked up the Avenue - a marching group of cops in riot gear was coming south. They stopped in the street near the northeast corner. I snapped a picture of them. Click. Somewhere I have that, a perfect shot of a big group of riot cops standing in front of what I now know to be PS122.

I turned back around. I was standing next to what looked like a yuppie couple from uptown, who were trying to figure out what was going on. Someone who looked more like one of the East Village protesters walked by, shouting over and over again, "This is NOT Germany 1933! This is NOT Germany 1933!"

(the "NYC 1988=Germany 1933" statement had been yelled often that night, and was a common statement in the graffitos you'd see everywhere then by anarchist Peter Missing, who had a band called Missing Foundation, and who wrote this slogan - along with an upside-down martini-glass symbol and the words "The Party's Over" - all over the Village)

The man's tone of voice, and seeming unlikely yelling of a contradiction to the protest yells, struck me funny and I had to laugh, as did the yuppie couple, who then went into a routine that was obviously a private joke with them, but which I got, as it referenced a Monty Python sketch: "This is NOT Germany 1933. The fish is in YOUR trousers, it's YOUR laugh! This is NOT Germany 1933! The pie is in YOUR face, it's YOUR laugh!"

They did that a couple of times, and laughed, and I laughed with them. Then there was a sound - I don't remember what, except it was BAD and my stomach dropped, and we all turned around to see the cops that had been lined up in front of PS122 rushing at us, screaming, with nightsticks raised.

I started to run down 9th Street, but then thought that running would seem some kind of admission of guilt or something and why would they hit me if I just stood there, right? So I stopped and tried to look "innocent."

Three cops smashed into me, knocking me back into the pulled-down gate over the fabric store on the corner (it's a pizza place now, I've had a slice there, and reminisced). I raised my right arm to protect myself, and the clubs began hitting me on that arm and my right thigh, and occasionally my head when my arm wasn't in the right place. I cupped my camera in my left hand, protecting it.

I have no idea how long it lasted, except that they kept hitting the same places over and over, and I was knocked back into the gate several times. It can't have lasted ANYWHERE near as long as it felt it did (or I'd be dead), but it lasted long enough for me to consciously think "okay, they've been doing this a while, they're going to get tired of this any minute now and move on" several times, and then realize they weren't going to stop. There was the slightest moment of feeling that, in fact, this was never going to end and I was stuck in some kind of loop of torture, where sticks were just going to keep raining mechanically down on me for all eternity.

What came to mind then, and what I did, was to yell in the best English accent I could muster (which was not good), "I'm a TOURIST! I'm a FUCKING TOURIST, you BASTARDS!" I did this, and there was a slight backing off, like it had confused them enough to ease up long enough for me to start running west again, still yelling that I was a tourist. One of the cops who had been beating me called after me, "You picked the wrong night to come to town, buddy!"

As I ran up the sidewalk on 9th, I was briefly paced by a cop with raised stick running on the other side of the parked cars, trying to find an opening to get to me, but I did the tourist yell again, and he slowed up and started back eastward.

For twenty years I have wondered about that poor sweet couple doing their Monty Python-based routine next to me. The cops went for them, too, I know. They had to have been beaten. At least I knew there was a riot happening - I don't think they had any idea. What happened to those two? Are they okay? Are they together, still? Who were they?

And I went on, west, back to my dorm. I have a weird memory of running into someone along the way, neither a cop nor protester, who wanted to know what was happening, and filling him in. Oddly, I think I did it in my "English" accent and persona, continuing to complain that I was just a fucking tourist pulled into this by accident. I have no idea why.

Got back to the dorm, set up my video8 camera on a tripod, put a tape in, started recording, and delivered a monologue to it about what had happened that night (with the sounds of sirens and helicopters in the background). I have that tape in a box somewhere, but no ability to play video8 tapes anymore. So no visual aids there. My roommate, a sweet, great guy I knew for just that one term whose name I've completely forgot, came in while I was recording and sat down off camera, posing questions to me, and both trying to help me personally and (smartly, as he knew I'd want) trying to make it interesting for the camera.

Eventually, somehow, sleep happened, and when I woke up everything seemed clearer. The air, I mean. Lines were sharp and my vision was better. My roommate - who I want to call "Mike" for some reason - Mike put on Bowie's Hunky Dory album (still a vinyl LP then), which we'd already decided was the best weekend-morning wakeup album ever created (so it must have been a weekend), and suggested I get cleaned up and we go have brunch somewhere nice. So I did, examining my growing bruises for the first time (and both of us sharing a look and chuckle as Bowie sang about the "lawman, beating up the wrong guy").

The underside of my right forearm and a giant oval on the top of my right thigh were an deep purple. Over the next few weeks, they would go through an amazing series of colors of the spectrum on their way back to fleshtone.

And that was 20 years ago now. So I put it down. Someday, I'll get those pictures and video out and look at them again. Maybe for the 25th anniversary.

I don't know what it did for me in the long run. Make me less trustful of cops? Well, I wasn't exactly a believer in them to begin with, and I've known good cops, too, personally (a couple of years later, I got to know and hang with a Homicide detective out of the 6th Precinct, who was actually surprised that I could trust a cop again after that night, and had stronger negative feelings than I about how the cops acted that night).

Also, I wonder about my leg. For a few years, I've had a strange nerve problem in my leg - the skin itself is numb most of the time in a very specific area, and sometimes it gets strange cold sensations or pins and needles (sometimes very painful). I just thought it was some kind of pinched nerve thing or whatever - probably related to my poor posture and back problems, which I get sometimes (I haven't had any feeling down part of my right arm and into my pinky for weeks now after sitting badly at the computer one day) for a time, but which usually goes away. The leg has had this full-time for many years now.

It was Berit who noticed that the numb area corresponds almost exactly to where my bruise was from the beating (I always demonstrate the oval shape of both the same way, but hadn't caught it myself). I wouldn't have thought that a beating would have caused this, especially years later, but soon after noticing this I read, by chance, of an instance where percussive injury had caused the same kind of numbness. So this might be a little permanent reminder of that night. I dunno.

In any case, that's what happened to me 20 years ago.

A meditation on—among other things—whether violence can ever be justified, and if so, what limits are there and where does it end?

An American woman who considers herself a patriot has committed a horrible, murderous, terrorist act on US soil as an act of protest and, she hopes, revolution against the United States Government, which she believes no longer represents the law, people, and Constitution of the USA. She finds herself in a room where she is questioned for days by a man and a woman—who may, in fact be the same person and who could be either a medical doctor or a military general. As she is interrogated, her mind, which may or may not be sane, reinterprets her surroundings into a chorus of voices—witches, revolutionaries, bossmen, old boyfriends, fragments of herself—arguing over the validity of her violent actions while at the same time trying to deny that the monstrous act has ever occurred, or that she could be capable of such a thing, and trying to reveal her beliefs while at the same time keeping her true self a deep secret.

Spell. A play for this time of many frustrating questions with no good answers. A story for those who want to want peace but have violence in their hearts. A patriotic scream. An examination of a serious mental disorder. An incantation. A length of time.

The cast of this production is
Olivia Baseman*, Fred Backus, Gavin Starr Kendall,
Samantha Mason, Iracel Rivero, Alyssa Simon*, Moira Stone*,
Liz Toft, Jeanie Tse, Rasmus Max Wirth, and Rasha Zamamiri

at
The Brick
575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211
½ a block from the Lorimer stop of the L Train
or Metropolitan-Grand stop of the G Train
www.bricktheater.com

August 7, 10, 20 and 24 at 8.00 pm
August 9, 23 at 4.00 pm

(ERROR ON POSTCARD ABOVE AND ELSEWHERE:
there is NO August 17 performance of Spell at 4.00 pm,
and there IS an August 9 performance at that time)

approximately 2 hours long (including one intermission)

All tickets $15.00

Tickets available at the door or through theatermania.com
(212-352-3101 or toll-free: 1-866-811-4111)

*appears courtesy of Actors Equity Association

The postcards are on the way, and will be at The Brick late tomorrow or early the next day.

Here's the card and the promo announcement:




Opening TOMORROW, August 6 -
the third and final in the trio of August 2008 productions
from Gemini CollisionWorks at The Brick:

The Brick Theater, Inc.
presents
a Gemini CollisionWorks production of

A play in dance and fragmented businesspeak. A day in the life of 11 people working in an advertising agency as they toil on a major new automobile account, interspersed with backbiting, backstabbing, coffee breaks, office romances, motivational lectures, afternoon slumps, and a Mephistophelian boss who has his eye on a beautiful female Faust of an intern.

The day is comprised of endless awful business jargon interspersed with outbreaks of the musical-theatre inner life of the characters to a bizarre mix of musical styles and artists from the 1920s to the present.

Everything Must Go - subtitled (Invisible Republic #2) - is a constantly shifting dance-theatre piece in which anything that matters must have a price, anyone is corruptible, and everything must go.

Everything Must Go (Invisible Republic #2)
is performed and choreographed by
Gyda Arber, David Arthur Bachrach*, Becky Byers, Patrick Cann,
Maggie Cino, Tory Dube, Sarah Engelke*, Ian W. Hill,
Dina Rose*, Ariana Seigel, and Julia Sun.

at
The Brick
575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211
½ a block from the Lorimer stop of the L Train
or Metropolitan-Grand stop of the G Train
www.bricktheater.com

August 6, 9, 13, 15, 16, 21, and 23 at 8.00 pm
August 17 at 4.00 pm

approximately 95 minutes with no intermission

All tickets $15.00

Tickets available at the door or through theatermania.com
(212-352-3101 or toll-free: 1-866-811-4111)

*appears courtesy of Actors Equity Association

I hate these mornings.

Just have to get up and go about things anyway as if you were happy while feeling you're expending a lot of effort on stuff that isn't what you or anyone else wants. Woke up suddenly with the feeling of "something's wrong and I have to take care of it now." then realized it was hours before I could do anything, but couldn't get back to sleep.

I'll be better when I'm working. That's when I see how it all works. It's the in-between times that get intolerable.

I only feel sane when rehearsing or performing. The rest of the time I'm a mess. I mentioned that to the cast of Everything Must Go the other day and it was commented that this was obviously why I overcommit myself to too many projects at once - I'm just trying to fill as much time with the work that makes me feel good.

So, speaking of the work that makes everything good . . . (and ain't this a fine fine superfine way to open a post on the morning after my big BIG season of three shows has just opened at The Brick last night?)

Yup, Harry in Love opened last night. Spell opens tonight (for a "preview performance" as it is now being called).

Harry was mostly good, and where it wasn't, the house wouldn't know so much. We did it, it was rockier as it went along for reasons best left unsaid here, and we saw it could play. We had but three people in the house, however, so laughs were near nonexistent (the show needs lots of laughers to build through).

Berit and I also still think leaving the air conditioner on in the space kills humor (and Berit says it definitely does from sitting in the house during rehearsals where we've been leaving it on to practice) but we're alone in the company in that regard, so it's on and acting like a piece of wet felt placed over the show. I think you need to hear your voice slap back from the walls and ceiling to time things properly - I also think some of my current vocal problems - I've lost a lot of my voice - come from not being able to judge exactly how loud I have to scream during the screaming sections of the show, and just going full out without restraint (at the same time, I like the huskiness that has developed for Harry's voice). I've gone along with it because I am on the line about whether the audience being potentially overheated is just as bad as the sound of the AC (comedy usually plays better at around 50 degrees Fahrenheit - people are cold, but the sharpness encourages laughing, supposedly).

Six-of-one, half-a-dozen of the other, I guess.

So, it played, and okay, but not nearly as well as we could do. I wasn't at my best, but I was better than I feared I might be - I had been determined to get rest before opening no matter what, and . . . I got some, but not as much as I wanted. My lines got shakier as the show went on (why, I don't know, I've studied them all the same - actually even more for the late scenes) and I lost a few that I KNOW early in the show just from opening night nerves. And I wasn't alone, accounting for the severe ricketiness in the last scene.

But I pulled off the demanding role just fine. The other actors were often in what I think of as "opening night" mode, which I've never found a way around - everything just a little TOO intense and oversold a bit. First audiences will do that. At least, when you have an opening night like this - okay, but not in the highest percentile - you don't run the risk of what ALWAYS happens (in my shows at least) when you have a GREAT opening performance - and which I've also never found a way around - the Sophomore Slump where everyone is so overconfident with one good one under their belt they are all full of unfocused, random energy spitting everywhere that the second show becomes an energetic mess. Never found a cure for that yet. Maybe some day.

Got some photos from last night, requested for press purposes. Here, Harry steams while Wasselman gloats:

Which turns bad as Harry winds up with the only liftable chair in the room:

Later, Dr. Meyers gives "medical attention" to Paul, while Harry threatens to open Hilda's eyes by force:

And eventually, Harry carries Hilda around for some time, not believing that she wants him to kiss her:

So Berit and I spent the other night building the Harry set, which was a surprising jump for us in set terms the way Ambersons was in terms of costumes (though far less expensive).

It still wasn't fully done for last night - the trim wasn't painted, and we couldn't get the - rather bad - paintings that we acquired up in time, but that will be there on Saturday. Here are some stages of our all-night construction binge (with Berit slightly visible here and there, painting):

No, not exactly big budget - a bit high-schoolly perhaps - but needed for the show, not something we generally do, and certainly not something seen too often in The Brick (or most Indie Theatre). There's something great about standing backstage behind actual flats that gives a certain kind of theatrical rush. Really nice.

And tonight, Spell, which is stressful in that, hey, it's an original two-act play. By me. My first, really (the others have been mostly collage, which is it's own art form, so this feels different). It's less stressful in that, thankfully, I'm not acting in it. So I can deal with other things right now.

So, B& I are about to go through our day and plan out what we need to do for the show tonight.

At a time like this, I need to hear some happy music, something like this . . .

But since I don't have the dulcet tones of Xmas-a-Go-Go, I'll deal with what's coming from the iPod this morning . . .

1. "WAOG Promo" - radio spot - Rock'n'Roll - The Untold Story Vol. 6: The Jivin' Novelty Party Record
2. "Traits and Traitors" - Sky Larkin
3. "Colour of Dream" - Knights of the Road - Diggin' For Gold - Vol. 9 A Collection of Demented 60's R&B/Punk & Mesmerizing 60's Pop
4. "Mr. Woman" - Electric Six - Switzerland
5. "Snake in the Grass" - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich - All The Hits
6. "Dumbness" - Art Objects - Bagpipe Music
7. "Sunny" - Dusty Springfield - Dusty volume 2
8. "To Be Happy Is The Real Thing" - Intruders - Save The Children
9. "Old Man" - Bari & The Breakaways - Oceanic Odyssey Volume 09
10. "Here Come the Martian Martians" - Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - The Best of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers

Now B & I have to run off and finish things for Spell tonight. There's not really a comparative lot of them, but they involve going all over the place and more work than such simple things should take. I'm worried about having to buy boots for castmembers - I'm not exactly "Mr. Clothes." of course (B & I, as we often mention, do EVERYTHING in theatre except costumes, makeup, and hair - we're at a loss on those almost completely). I also have to do the program and fix some sound/projection issues. And take down and put away the Harry set from last night.

At a time like this, I need the affection of my cats. Will Moni help . . ?

Hmmn, apparently not. Well, I can always count on my big boy Hooker for some affection when I need it . . .

That's better. And so am I. Took me three hours to write this in the background while I worked on other things and I'm feel a lot better now. Okay, back to work. That's what makes all of this worth it . . .

Spell Act II looked good last night, but needs - as actress Moira Stone pointed out when I didn't think of it - another run on its own before running the whole furshlugginer thing again - we've worked it less as it was still being written later in the process.

Also, there is one bit of writing in there, a speech of Moira's, that just won't do and must be re-written. I'm happy with everything else in the play now - various levels of happiness, but happy - but this speech just makes me cringe and shrivel up inside. It's anything I ever learned from Paddy Cheyefsky at his worst, when a character just becomes the mouthpiece for the writer - or as my friend Sean always used to say, imitating Eric Idle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail whenever a piece of drama did this, "Message coming in for you, sir!"

It's a pain, because the character really does have to make the points she's making at this moment in the play - and it's not like there isn't a "message"-quality to the whole work - and the speech drives the dialogue to a good place by the end . . . but it's just TOO much. I'll figure it out. Everything Must Go will get my attention this morning, Harry in Love this afternoon and evening, and I'll rewrite the speech late tonight or early tomorrow.

(of course now, everyone's going to look at all the other times in the play that Moira is spouting her beliefs and figure one of them is the speech I must have rewritten . . .)

Okay, I have to write some more, so let's get the Friday Random Ten done with and I can get back to that . . . here's 10 out of 26,096 in the iPod this morning:

1. "Nightclubbing" - Iggy Pop - The Idiot
2. "It's Going To Happen" - The Undertones - Life in the European Theatre
3. "Promo #1—The Luminous One #1" - Hoyt Curtain with Keye Luke - Battle of the Planets soundtrack
4. "I'm Bad Like jesse James" - John Lee Hooker - The Ultimate Collection: 1948-1990
5. "We'll Bring You Flowers" - Rabble - Rabble
6. "Spider Baby Main Title" - Ronald Stein - Not Of This Earth! The Film Music Of Ronald Stein
7. "Now Who's Good Enough" - Elite UFO - Back from the Grave 8
8. "Party Sequence" - Barry Mann & Cynthia Weill - Angel, Angel, Down We Go soundtrack
9. "I Will Go (demo)" - The Beau Brummels - San Fran Sessions (1964-66)
10. "Sticks and Stones" - Manfred Mann - The Best of the EMI Years

No new cat photos today, sorry. I can assure you, the two of them are adorable.

Oh, hey - that last song reminds me -- I'm quite pleased to discover that - once all my shows are open and there's something like personal time again - a film I've been wanting to see for over 30 years is finally becoming available on DVD next week, Peter Watkins' Privilege, from 1966 (released in the USA in '67), starring Paul Jones (lead singer of Manfred Mann, a group I've wound up becoming quite fond of in the past year, to my surprise - didn't know they were so good) and one time "it"-girl Jean Shrimpton.

I first became familiar with this film when I saw stills from it in a book about science-fiction films that I had when I was pretty small, and the images were quite striking and evocative. Later, in my early teens as I really got into The Patti Smith Group, my father pointed out that she covered "Set Me Free" from the film on the Easter album, and mentioned that - I think I'm right about this, correct me if I'm wrong, dad - one of his teachers at Philadelphia College of Art had recommended it to his students for the production design.

It's about a rising youth rebellion in England that is diverted by Them-As-Has-The-Power (primarily the Church of England) into becoming a nationalist-religious movement, with the use of an immensely popular messianic pop star as "leader." The film has had no distribution since the 60s, and Universal Pictures, which has had the rights to it, has rebuffed all attempts at release. The director's own battered 35mm print has been the only one available for occasional screenings.

So now it's on video. I saw the trailer on Amazon, and it turns out that, of course, there is another trailer and several clips on YouTube. And . . . well, it looks like something to watch alright, but it also looks a bit like a lot of the art that was innovative and happening and coming from from Swinging London in, say, 1966-67 does now - um, rather dated. A particular whiff of the English documentary/kitchen sink/angry young man-style (which was already being viciously parodied by SCTV in the late 70s in "Look Back in a Bloody Rage") comes through, the whole Ken Loach/Mike Leigh thing (the Brits are my favorite filmmakers when they go all stylized and perverse - Nic Roeg, Ken Russell, Michael Powell, Peter Greenaway, Dennis Potter, Alex Cox, hell, Alfred Hitchcock for that matter - but they always wind up getting shoved aside for the ever-faithful kitchen-sink drama tradition over there).

Well, I still want to see it - it looks like a cross between the realistic and stylized English film traditions, and it's been many MANY years of dreaming about it.

Here's six related videos from YouTube, inside the cut:

( And did those feet, in ancient times, walk upon England's mountains green? )

Okay, off to solve writing issues . . .

I am tired, I am weary, I could sleep for a thousand years . . .

Except, apparently, I can't. As, even with an alarm set to get me up at 8.00 am (6 1/2 hours sleep), my body decided that 6.00 am and 4.5 hours was enough. Why, I don't know. My brain does not agree. Neither does my upset stomach.

So, here I am, drinking microwaved leftover coffee from yesterday - massively over-sweetened with Splenda to make up for the lack of milk, as the carton in the fridge has turned (which accounts for the leftover coffee from yesterday, when I discovered the spoilage after two or three sips) - and wishing my body had let me have those extra two hours.

The shows proceed and take up almost every moment of our waking hours (sorry for no communication, family & friends).

We're behind in some things and on top of others. Generally ahead of where we've been on most of our shows this past two years at this point, but more behind in other ways.

I'm still writing Everything Must Go for chrissakes, which opens in two weeks (of course, I also just finished writing Spell two days ago which opens in a week and a day). Most of what is supposed to be my writing time has been taken up with jobs I wasn't supposed to have to do, like recasting difficult roles at the last minute. I had five full days of show work ruined in the casting search for someone to take over a role in Spell. After my last note on the subject, I got someone, who came in, did great, took the part, came to one rehearsal, and also (like the original actor) got another (well-paying) job, he says. This really didn't help anything.

However, we finally got someone - Rasmus Max Wirth, and thanks again Max - and he joined us last night and we did a stumble-run of Act I of Spell that made me very very happy indeed. Yes, "Act I" - what was supposed to be a one-act of 90 minutes has become two acts, about 50 and 45 minutes, respectively, with an intermission - the cast really pushed for this, over my objections, but after a really good way to end "Act I" appeared in rehearsal the other night I was sold. So this is my first original two-act play. I like it. I was unsure for a day or two there if I was happy with the play itself, but after the last couple of runs I'm happy.

The first full one on Monday showed me where I had to cut and rewrite things (big discussion with the cast afterward about what works for them and what doesn't - some of the "doesn't" being things that were wonky as a viewer and which I have changed, and some of them being things that were terrific from the house and I just have to get that across to the company).

Last night's half-run made me a lot more confident in my work - Berit and I were sneaking pleased glances through a lot of it at each other. We'll see how Act II fares tonight.

Everything Must Go need to have its "book" finished, but the musical numbers are all coming into shape nicely. Two nights ago I tackled one of the "harder" numbers and it came together much differently (and better) than I imagined. Sunday we have a long rehearsal by which time we'll have the full script (I swear) and can finish the whole damn show - then we actually have some extra time to put the thing together, comparatively.

Harry in Love hasn't been touched in days and was fine when I left it. Tomorrow we do a full runthrough. Everyone else has been pretty much off-book. I am now 90% there, so I'm taking the whole of tomorrow, daytime, to get 100%. I'd like to be writing, but that will have to wait until the evening.

Today is to be taken up with a drive out to the warehouse of Materials for the Arts in Long Island City, and Berit and I grabbing whatever we may find that will serve us for the shows, so we don't have to buy or build EVERYTHING. Of course, the weather is crappy (though better now than when I awoke), so loading and unloading lots of stuff from there and at The Brick will be FUN. Then I meet an actress from Everything Must Go to catch her up on the choreography she missed from missing a few rehearsals. Then more Spell tonight.

Update interlude over. Back to writing. More tomorrow with pictures and random iPod ten . . .