CollisionWorks

Larry Levine, regular engineer for Phil Spector and Eddie Cochran, occasional engineer for Brian Wilson and Herb Alpert, died at the age of 80. Idolator passed me through to a good obit at All About Jazz and a nice interview with Levine at CNN from 5 years ago. Levine was one of those engineers who took their job to a level beyond being just a technician, working hard to make the improbable and difficult-to-capture-on-vinyl sounds that their genius bosses were demanding (Geoff Emerick's recent memoir about his career, primarily with The Beatles from Revolver onward, does a good job of explaining just what someone like Levine or Emerick does, and why they are so crucial to good records).

Also now gone, the great Will Elder, 86, one of the original artists on the Mad comic book, and probably the best interpreter of Harvey Kurtzman's vision for that book (and other, later work, though I'd rather like to forget Little Annie Fanny). The master of what came to be known as the "chicken-fat" school of cartooning (beloved first by the French nouvelle vague filmmakers, some of whom deliberately copied Elder's cramming of offhanded details and jokes throughout the frame in their films), a good obit is here in The Comics Reporter, and he is remembered by writer/comic book historian Mark Evanier HERE, and in two blogs with appropriate names, Edwin Hunter's Chicken Fat and Bhob Stewart's POTRZEBIE (Bhob also reproduces a classic Elder splash panel - for "Restaurant!" - in large form HERE).

Some of my favorite Elder work for Mad can be found online thanks to Gatochy's Blog, including "The Hound of the Basketballs" and "Dragged Net." I wish I could find "Starchie," or "Ping Pong!" or "Mickey Rodent!" or "Howdy Dooit!" somewhere on line to pass on to you, but here's all of "Restaurant!" as well, and you can see a nice collection of Elder pages at The Electronic Almanac of Dr. Derek Wisdom, Metaphysician.

RIP. HOO-HAH!

Rehearsals have been going very well. Good productive work. Generally I feel in a damned good mood about everything. I had a bad depressive period in the afternoon the other day, the black cloud taking over, but that's just screwed-up brain chemistry coming out as it does, and I rode it out into the evening, when I could use rehearsal to direct me away from it until it faded away, unnoticed.

Last night I didn't call the full cast of Ambersons (or, rather, as much of them as I could get, which would have been maybe 11 out of 20) as I had planned, but just called the members of the central families who were available. There was more than enough work to do with just the six I had: Stephen (George Amberson Minifer), Ivanna (Fanny Minifer), Vince (Wilbur Minifer), Bill (Major Amberson), Walter (Jack Amberson), and Shelley (Lucy Morgan) - I couldn't even get to some of the scenes I'd planned on. We did the big ball scene twice (it's 22 pages out of a 104-page script, so a lot gets done when we plunge into that), as well as the post-ball hallway scene, and onward with various configurations so I could gradually let more actors go as we went later, and wound up ending with the Lucy and George duo scenes. I have to find some time to go over the Aunt Fanny/George scenes some more . . .

Ambersons has a wide range of actors in terms of the ways I need to direct, maybe wider all around than usual, even with such a big cast. I have the actors who need to talk a lot about intention, and the ones who just want words like "faster," "slower," "more," "less." I have the ones who will keep coming up with more and more interesting options each time we do a scene, and the ones who will get it ABSOLUTELY PERFECT the first time in, who I have to hold back to doing it that way over and over from then on without getting bored and keeping it new and fresh. And there are the ones who are get a scene about 85% "right" immediately, and getting that last 15% is like adjusting a watch very delicately with very fine tools. And the ones who have absolutely nothing right the first time they do a scene, and you wonder at first why you cast this person, but with some simple directions and several runthrus (and sometimes just by getting off book), they're right on the money.

I put a lot of trust in my instincts when casting, more than what I see in a reading or monologue. I just want to know if they can speak clearly and with intention, and the rest is whether I just think the actor can handle the part. I got a big education in this when doing a show back at NADA in 1996 - at the first script reading, the lead actress, who I'd never met before, was such a bad reader you'd have thought that not only was there no way she could act, but that she could barely comprehend the English language. I know the playwright was concerned, as I certainly was since most of my scenes were two-handers with her. Turned out she was just a stultifyingly bad reader, and, once off book and on her feet, one of the most amazing, incandescent performers it's ever been my joy to work with. I directed her in a couple of shows later, and she remained a terrible, TERRIBLE reader, and amazing onstage.

So I don't trust cold readings or first script readings too much, but they can give you a good idea of what kind of actor you have and what you'll need to work on with them. This week has reached the point where it's getting more fun because you can see you show beginning to come through the work. The work is still there on top, but it's getting more and more translucent. By June 1, it has to be transparent.

Anyway, today's rainy day fun Random 10, out of 25,557 in the iPod:

1. "Missione Segreta" - Ennio Morricone & Bruno Nicolai - O.K. Connery
2. "Solomon Grundie" - Eric Morris - Intensified! Original Ska 1962-1966
3. "The People In Me" - The Music Machine - Turn On
4. "I Walk On Guilded Splinters" - Dr. John - Mos' Scocious: The Dr. John Anthology
5. "The Sheik Yerbouti Tango" - Frank Zappa - Sheik Yerbouti
6. "Something In Love" - Art Zoyd - Lost Sixties Delights Vol. 1
7. "All Men Are Liars" - Nick Lowe - Party of One

I'd never heard this song before, I think -- some lyrics that caused me to have to stifle a big laugh (Berit is sleeping), made funnier with the recent RickRolling fad:

Well, do you remember Rick Astley?

He had a big fat hit, it was ghastly

He said I’m never gonna give you up or let you down

Well, I’m here to tell ya that Dick’s a clown

Though he was just a boy when he made that vow

I’d bet it all that he knows by now

Well, on this cheery day (he said sarcastically, looking at and listening to the dreary rainfall out the window), we could all look on the bright side of life with Darth Vader and his son . . .

( Darth Vader Got The Blues So Bad )

And here are the best cat shots from this week - first a nice closeup of Moni, asleep on the couch next to Berit:

And Berit crept in while I was taking a nap the other day, and had been joined by Hooker, so she could get a shot of "her boys:"

And Michael Gardner showed me this at The Brick yesterday - one of the most impressive bits of animation I've seen in a while. It's all over the web this morning, but if you haven't seen it, here it is - seven and a half minutes of impressiveness:

( MUTO by Blu )

Enjoy. Back to work here . . .

There's a debate going on in some blogs and comments about how to, or even whether or not to, blog about the process while you're creating a play (at Isaac Butler's Parabasis and Mac Rogers' SlowLearner). My attitude, and part of the reason for this blog, is a qualified "Yes." I started the blog as a response to theatre blogs that I felt were all head and art-talk, to talk about the day-to-day nuts and bolts of making a show.

At the same time, I rapidly discovered I couldn't talk about everything, or even as much as I wanted to, when it came to the rehearsal process. It's just instinctual - there are some things that can be shared, and some things that can't, and not just when it comes to the work of the actors, but even for myself. I wouldn't mind throwing up some of a work-in-progress, but just some bare notes? No. And that is the state some of these shows are still at.

Again, though, it's all instinctual. I usually mention to the actors on any of my projects now (though I think I forgot it with some of the current ones) that I have this blog and unless they say otherwise everything is open game for me to write about, and I've gotten polite responses making it clear where the line is (one actress was very good in her emails back and forth, as we discussed her character for a show last year, in noting "THIS IS NOT FOR THE BLOG" when she didn't want something shared outside the two of us).

So I don't write about it as much as I'd like, because when I remove what I can't write about, what's left becomes "We had a good rehearsal last night" or "last night's rehearsal was harder than I thought, and we didn't get as much done as I wanted," and that just gets boring. I'll try to find new ways to write accounts of these things that aren't just that, promise.

Saturday we worked on Spell, which I've been writing more and more as it's been coming to me. The previous day I had written a difficult little piece, where I needed to have the Three Witches of the play, in the third scene, predict where the rest of the 32 scenes of the play would go, in abstracted rhyming couplets (which, I decided, should also never repeat a rhyme and all had to mention the scene number in some way). First then, I had to figure out what all the scenes of the play were actually going to be, which still had been up in the air, and once I had that, hacked away at the scene, which took the afternoon (the couplets falling into an anapest pattern, which is what I normally fall into if I'm not trying to do something else), and may need some revising, but worked well when spoken, and will do for now:

( Scene 3: The Witches Predict the Rest of the Show )

Sunday night I went out in the car to pick up some dinner for Berit and I, and as I was making a right-hand turn I suddenly had a big "Eureka" moment that solved how I was going to write a scene between THE MAN and FRAGMENT 1 that had been driving me nuts - literally right in the time that I had the steering wheel turned. I never get sudden ideas like this plopping right into my head, and it so stunned me I missed my next turn and had to keep circling around, still nodding to myself, "Oh my god, yeah, that's it exactly, that's exactly how that scene needs to work!" I wish I had more moments like that, like a clear white light shooting into my brain; most of the time, it's pounding away hard at the words until the right ones become clear. I still haven't written the scene, but it's there in my head, waiting and ready. It's exciting, and I'm almost nervous about setting it down - but it solves several potential expositional problems with the play, and opens it up on one more meta-level.

In other nuts-and-bolts work, I've been dealing with all the Equity forms for all the shows, writing the Ambersons press release, revising schedules as more conflicts come in, and sending out emails for info that I need or reminders to the casts. And writing lists of what still needs to be done on Ambersons before we open on June 1, which is suddenly not very far away at all. Two weeks and five days. Yeesh.

In the rest of the world, Robert Rauschenberg is dead. The Times obit HERE calls him a "Titan" in the headline, and I couldn't think of a better word. Another obit, from the Chicago Tribune is HERE. I've always had a mixed reaction to RR - either he really hits it and I just LOVE a piece, or it's just "meh." Never really disliked anything I saw, I don't think.

I once got the freelance job of mounting the slides he'd created for a Trisha Brown dance piece at White Oak. They had been doing the dance for years with just RR's original slides, and had finally decided to make copies of them to use, and put the original slides away in storage. So they were delivered to me from the lab that made the copies, but I was surprised to have the original RR slides delivered to my little office in The Piano Store theatre on the LES, as well as the roll of copies, and I had to give my dad and stepmom a kind of hysterically giggly call about how I had a box of Rauschenberg originals sitting next to my foot in my crappy little office. I kept them very safe for the week or so that I had them.

Back to work now on forms I need to fill out for the AEA Showcase. More rehearsals tonight and every night for a while. More here when I get to it.

The new piece didn't bug me so much at first, once I got past the vomitous opening paragraphs - in the end, I just kinda felt, "Well . . . he's trying . . ." about this piece on the move to Off-Broadway of several OOB works. I had a discussion with some other Brick staff about it, and we somewhat came to that conclusion as well. He's trying, at least, even if OOB appears to be a wild, woolly, and lawless wild west zone to WTFC. There's some interesting info on ERS and Jenny Schwartz in there, and hey, I thought, if WTFC brings some audience to those shows, fine, I'll take the insults.

Maybe it's being an OOB artist who is used to having my level of theatre slapped around by the press that created that shrug and lethargic response to this piece. Garrett Eisler at The Playgoer, a critic who knows and respects his Indie Theatre, is not so sanguine about it, and got my blood properly boiling again with his take on the piece, "Ish Sets OOB Back 30 Years."

As Isaac did, I recommend Garrett's piece for a good explanation of why we should be so damned angry with WTFC for this piece. He's right.

So, as long as I'm posting video (as always now, behind cuts, for those with the browsers that crash), here's some others I ran into today and wanted to share . . .

flyswatter posted this Rudy Ray Moore trailer for a favorite BadFilm of mine (my friend Jim Baker introduced me to it, calling it "Plan 10 From Inner City"). Can you motherfuckers take the power of DOLEMITE?

( Goddamn, Mama, This Sure Is a Spooky Joint . . . )

(my favorite RRM film is still Petey Wheatstraw, The Devil's Son-In-Law, though)

And finally, courtesy Tom Tomorrow at This Modern World, a civics lesson as Penguin and The Batman discuss the American electorate:

( Remember, NO POLITICS )

Enjoy.

In 1942, Orson Welles' second feature film, and probable masterpiece, was mutilated by RKO Radio Pictures. 43 minutes were cut, and several scenes were reshot in an attempt to make Welles' dark, Chekhovian adaptation of Booth Tarkington's story of a family and town swallowed up in the Industrial Revolution a happier and more commercial experience. It didn't work. The film was buried by the studio, both in the marketplace and physically - all unused footage from the film was destroyed - and Welles' version is gone forever, one of the great mythologized films of Hollywood.

In this show we attempt to reconstruct, as well as we can from the documents and photos that still exist, a theatrical interpretation of Welles' cinematic take on Tarkington's novel. It's not the movie, but it's as close as you're ever likely to see.

with David Arthur Bachrach, Aaron Baker, Linda Blackstock, Walter Brandes, Rebecca Collins, Ivanna Cullinan, Sarah Malinda Engelke, Larry Floyd, Stephen Heskett, Justin R.G. Holcomb, Amy Lizska, Roger Nasser, Vince Phillip, Maire-Rose Pike, Shelley Ray, Timothy McCown Reynolds, Bill Weeden, Natalie Wilder, Scot Lee Williams


Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville
by Richard Foreman - directed by Ian W. Hill
9 performances - July 31-August 21 - $15.00

Harry Rosenfeld is a big, neurotic, unnerved and unnerving man who believes his wife is planning to cheat on him. His response: drug her and keep her knocked out until her paramour goes away. The plan works about as well as should be expected and, over several days, a number of people are sucked into Harry's manic, snowballing energy as it becomes an eventual avalanche of (hysterically funny) psychosis.

Before embarking on his great career directing his own groundbreaking avant-garde plays, Richard Foreman briefly entertained the possibility of being a commercial Broadway playwright. This 1966 boulevard comedy (which Foreman has compared accurately to the plays of Murray Schisgal) nearly made it to Broadway, which very well might have meant a very different career for Foreman. It's not what you probably know from him, but it's as funny as his best work, and any line from it, out of context, would not sound out of place in one of his later plays. Really.

with Walter Brandes, Josephine Cashman, Ian W. Hill, Tom Reid, Ken Simon, Darius Stone


Spell
written, designed, and directed by Ian W. Hill
9 performances - August 1-August 24 - $12.00

An American woman who considers herself a patriot has committed a horrible terrorist act as an act of protest and, she hopes, revolution against the government, which she believes no longer represents the law, people, and Constitution of the USA.

As she is interrogated, her mind reinterprets her surroundings into a chorus of voices - witches, revolutionaries, doctors, generals, 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. A meditation on - among other things - whether violence can ever be truly justified, and if so, what limits are there and where does it end?

with Fred Backus, Olivia Baseman, Jorge Cordova, Gavin Starr Kendall, Iracel Rivero, Alyssa Simon, Moira Stone, Liz Toft, Sammy Tunis, Jeanie Tse, Rasha Zamamiri


Everything Must Go (Invisible Republic 2)
text, design, direction and choreography by Ian W. Hill with the company
9 performances - August 2-August 24 - $12.00

A play in dance and fragmented businesspeak. A day in the life of an advertising agency as they work on a major new 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.

A constantly shifting dance-theatre piece in which anything that matters must have a price, anyone is corruptible, and everything must go.

with Gyda Arber, David Arthur Bachrach, Becky Byers, Patrick Cann, Maggie Cino, Ian W. Hill, Amy Lizska, Brandi Robinson, Dina Rose, Ariana Siegel, Julia C. Sun

All shows will be at

The Brick - 575 Metropolitan Avenue - Williamsburg, Brooklyn
right by the L Train stop at Lorimer - G Train stop at Metropolitan/Grand

Advance tickets for all shows will be available at Theatermania.com - there will be special discounts for seeing two or three of the August shows. More info as it happens . . .

hope to see you at our shows, and thanks for your continued support,

Ian W. Hill, arts
Berit Johnson, crafts
Gemini CollisionWorks


Gemini CollisionWorks is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Gemini CollisionWorks may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

So, she's sitting in a bubble bath reading Dashiell Hammett's The Continental Op and I'm given up on either trying to fall back asleep or wake up completely - neither is a go.

And as it's Friday, might as well get the weekly ritual done. Here's a random ten from the iPod this morn:

1. "Celebration on the Planet Mars" - The Raymond Scott Project - Powerhouse volume 1
2. "In Love With Love (remix)" - Debbie Harry - Freestyle's Greatest Beats - Volume 3
3. "Reagan Youth" - Reagan Youth - Youth Anthems For The New Order 12" EP
4. "Things In General" - The Prefects - Are Amateur Wankers
5. "Little Darlin'" - The Diamonds - Back to the 50s 03
6. "Upon Your Leaving" - Paul Revere & The Raiders - Rato's Nostalgia Collection 19
7. "You Cut Up The Clothes" - Mrs. Washington & Co. - MOJO: The Score
8. "The Operative: - Magazine - Scree Rarities 1978 - 1981
9. "Sparks I" - The Who - 09/29/69 Amazing Journey Live at Concertgebouw Amsterdam
10. "Only Darkness Has The Power" - The Mekons - The Mekons Rock'N'Roll

Heck of an odd, all-over-the-place mix. Nice. More good stuff coming up after these, too - The Animals, "House of the Rising Sun." Nice.

Rehearsals continue well. Ambersons is mostly blocked, and looking good. Harder work to come, but we're ahead of where we usually are at this point.

I've had to cancel a couple of rehearsals each of Everything Must Go and Spell - it's got to the point where I have to write script now to move forward with each - which was after a few rehearsals of EMG and only one Spell meeting. Had some breakthroughs in writing Spell yesterday and got quite a few pages done, which I now have to transcribe into the computer from my longhand journal. I have to get Berit to organize and type out her notes from the work we did on both shows with the actors, so I can have it handy and I can send it to them.

No work on Harry in Love since the first reading. More next week on that one.

Just took a couple of photos of Hooker and Moni - unlike usual, used a flash as the room is dim, and got some odd, interesting distortions:

Okay, time for cereal, coffee, and work on Spell . . .

(can you tell that I'm bored and nothing is coming to me as yet on the scripts I should be writing?)

First, I just saw on the TV that there's a National Geographic special coming up on the recently-unearthed scrapbooks of Karl Hoecker, adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz - an amazing look into the heart of "the banality of evil." The New Yorker had an excellent article on the subject, which isn't online but there's an abstract HERE and a gallery of images from the scrapbook HERE.

This is certainly a fine, honorable, and serious subject for a TV special. It is, in some ways, nothing new (I've spent a lot of time and much of my work on the subject of how normal people do evil things), but more examples never hurt in getting this important idea across, which so many people try to ignore or reject.

However.

They have chosen one of the most unfortunate, badly-pitched titles for such a piece that I think they possibly could. I understand why they went with this title - the sentiment is appropriate - but I don't think they quite perceived how this would sound or read - I found out about this by hearing an announcer stentoriously read it at the end of a commercial and I cracked up, mistakenly thinking I had Comedy Central on or something and it was a joke - and right as I typed that sentence, they played the spot again and I broke up again.

See, they've titled the show:

Again, I understand the title, but the effect of the combo of the words "Nazi" and "scrapbooks" (about as sweet and Norman Rockwell a word as I can think of) and the construction "FROM HELL" (for at least two decades now an appendage used on the end of innocent phrases in a parody of exploitation film hyperbole) is just NOT what the makers of the special were going for, I would imagine.

See, just then, right as I typed that last period, they ran the commercial AGAIN on the TV next to me, and I was all taken in and abashed and moved again until the title was read so, SO seriously, and then I lost my shit again. It doesn't get old, hearing one of "those voices" use the (sensitive, serious, sad) tone you do when you are, say, doing a promo for a Holocaust documentary and winding up with a title more appropriate for a Roger Corman film.

I get two images in my head - one is a cartoony image of some kind of Jim Henson's National Socialist Babies, with 'Lil Adolf 'n' Eva and Baby Goebbels and Goering and Himmler (with their faithful dog, Blondi) playing together and fighting over the glue sticks, crayons, rubber cement and sparkles as they make their scrapbooks of unbelievable monstrosities.

The other image is of sentient monster scrapbooks, dripping blood and ichor like in some EC comic book, wearing swastika armbands and wandering a suburban landscape, wreaking horror and havoc.

Maybe it's just me.

And speaking of "those voices," here's a video created for a Vegas industry gathering that features the unfamiliar faces of several of the most familiar voices in the USA:

( IN A WORLD . . . )

Some links of interest:

io9 has a nice post about the 1970s toys The Micronauts, which I had and loved (I got a giant, almost complete set for Xmas of 1976) which led me to two other Micronauts sites that brought back great memories, MicroHeritage and The Micronauts Homepage.

These toys were the BEST - great figures, vehicles, and playsets - loads of fun - with lots of moving parts, including neat plastic missiles that really fired with some power. Unfortunately, some dumb kid shot one of those cool cool supercool missiles into his throat and choked, and wound up spoiling toys for all of us for years after, which weren't allowed to have neat shooting missiles like that anymore. Actually, I think they were still able to have them, but they had to make them bigger with foam tips, and then some stupider kid choked on one of THOSE from an original Battlestar Galactica Viper toy (very cool, but I never had one), and that was IT for neat shooting stuff. Jeez, we used to throw Jarts around each other and get set on fire by Estes model rocket engines, and it was FUN!

Stupid clumsy kids . . .

From PingMag, "The Tokyo-Based Magazine About 'Design and Making Things'," an interview with and great set of photos by Frederic Chaubin of Soviet architecture of the 70s and 80s - some amazing buildings here, like sets from SF movies.

From Neatorama, "Mathematician Michael S. Schneider saw a wave form of the well-known drum sequence known as the Amen Break. It’s a drum 5.2 second sequence performed by Gregory Cylvester Coleman of The Winstons and has been sampled and used by countless artists since it was recorded in the 60s. Schneider, seeing the waveform through the eyes of a math professor, recognized a pattern, a relationship called the Golden Ratio. So he began to analyze the drum sequence and its deeper meaning."

Here's two found images I grabbed recently from other websites that collect "neat stuff," but I forgot to put down what sites those were. Oh, well.

Tyler Cannon pulled off quite a feat. Nice job, kid.

And please remember to bow down before The Lizard King:

From LP Cover Lover, a jacket that suggests that the best way to demonstrate high fidelity is by recording a deranged bikini-clad model talking to her hand puppet:

(and the sidebar . . . "Hunting thru Audioland with Gin and Chimera"? Wha?)

Dear god I WISH they would stop running that NAZI SCRAPBOOKS FROM HELL commercial every ten minutes or less on this channel - I guess the National Geographic channel (or, as they annoyingly call it in some promos, NatGeo - ugh) doesn't have a lot of sponsors, and there isn't anything else interesting on right now besides this (fascinating) show on a murderous chimpanzee.

Nice description of a movie from the onscreen channel guide for the Cable TV here, for Curse of the Fly (1965): "A mad scientist tries out a molecular disintegrator on people but cannot get the hang of it." Yeah, that can be a pain.

Here's a wonderfully classic sexist Folgers Instant Coffee ad:

( Sometimes a candle ISN'T Just a Candle . . . )

Paul Anka smells like teen spirit . . .

( A mul-LAT-to! An al-BI-no! A mos-QUIT-o! My lib-I-to! )

And if you haven't seen this one, which has been making the rounds, it's quite worth it . . .

( CHARLIE ROSE by Samuel Beckett )

And I hope the weather is as beautiful where you are as it is here.

( And pretty much everywhere, it's gonna be hot! )

Enjoy.

My bottom wisdom teeth were pulled four hours ago. One went easily and there is no real pain on that side at this point. One didn't want to go, required some unpleasant struggle ("Ooh, had a little hook there on the root, that was the problem" said the very skilled Dr. Killian D. MacCarthy), and, now that the novocaine has worn off, the empty socket on that side hurts like a sonovabitch. The lovely lovely vicodin I took earlier isn't having its normal excellent effects (or maybe it is, and without it I'd be screaming or something).

I went and had the work done - about 35 minutes in the chair, 25 minutes of which were filling out forms or waiting - got my prescription opiate and foodstuffs (soup, pudding, ice cream) at the Rite Aid and now I'm sitting back, waiting for a time when I can eat something and take more painkiller, and watching a rerun of the C.S.I. episode "Fur and Loathing" - the one about the furries . . . which has one of the single best music cues I've ever heard composed for episodic television - the only reason I'm watching this again is get to hear this cue - the rumpy-pumpy, sleazy-but-comic, circusy music that accompanies the "yiff pile" sequence is magnificent (okay, the scene just went by and the music isn't at all like I remembered . . . has it been altered in syndication from what's on the DVDs?).

So I'll be up here a couple more days recovering, watching the TV stuff I don't have at home, retweezing the rehearsal schedules for all my shows (many more conflicts have come in), and trying to write some substantial pieces of Spell and Everything Must Go, which I somewhat need to at this point to move those shows forward, though it'll be easier with EMG, as I've had three rehearsal/creation meetings for that one, and only one first meeting/inspiration session for Spell - which will also be a harder show to write, as I had thought it would originally just need a working knowledge of psychotic mental states (which I know something about) but has wound up requiring substantial research into the revolutions or conflicts of China, Cuba, Palestine, France, and pretty much any country that has gone through such an upheaval; the history of Pacifism; Kabbalah and Numerology; Feminism and The Male Gaze; and god knows what else will come up in creating this piece.

I'll post first draft pieces of the scripts as they appear.

I watched Cloverfield last night, which I expected to mostly like, and really loved it. I also watched Romance & Cigarettes, which I expected to really like, and didn't like it at all - fine actors doing excellent work in a badly-conceived and indifferently-executed . . . thing. Ugh.

Oh, and, courtesy of Bryan Enk, here's a picture of me as George Westinghouse in the season finale of Penny Dreadful:

It's now hours later from when I started this post - the painkillers are working, mostly. Time for ice cream . . .

Still, too much to do in too little time. I have to get over to The Brick early today, and maybe pick up a prop for Penny Dreadful on the way (and not really on the way). Then I have to dry-tech Penny, writing the light cues as I can today so we will just have to tweak them (I hope) during our limited tech time tomorrow morning.

And maybe Jeff will have some notes for me for light changes in Babylon Babylon from last night's preview - tonight is the opening and opening night party, so I have to get all cleaned up and ready for that before I go, too, though it's many many hours away now.

I was trying to come up with a really REALLY cool live special effect for one sequence in Penny - it isn't necessary, but MAN it would add to the sequence. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the materials I need to create the effect, and there's only a 50% chance it would work anyway. Maybe. I could keep searching for what I need to build the rig today, but I still need time to work on my lines (being able to walk around and do the scenes in The Brick will help), and the lines are definitely more important than the effect, so I guess I'll let that go.

Damn. It would have been so f-ing cool.

Ah, well, need to get moving - here's today's Random Ten from the iPod:

1. "Synth Farm" - Pere Ubu - Why I Hate Women
2. "Leaving It Up To You" - John Cale - Seducing Down The Door: A Collection 1970-1990
3. "This Little Heart" - Françoise Hardy - All Over The World
4. "Let's Drink To The People" - The Deviants - No. 3
5. "Babylon" - Conception - Psychedelic Archaeology Volume 5
6. "Johnny Was A Good Boy" - The Mystery Trend - Mystery Trend
7. "You Keep On Looking" - Gary Wilson - You Think You Really Know Me
8. "Surrender" - Black Ivory - The Doors of Perception - Psychedelic Soul and Acid Jazz From NYC 70-74
9. "Sparrows and Wires" - The Deviants - Disposable
10. "Steelband Music" - Van Dyke Parks - Discover America

Two Deviants tracks? Huh. And, appropriately, a song called "Babylon." I wonder what kind of playlist I could make up if I used "babylon" as a search term - maybe something to play at the opening night party tonight . . .

1. "Hollywood Babylon" - 13 Ghosts - 13 Crimson Ghosts

(this is The Misfits recording an album of surf-instrumental covers of their songs under another name)
2. "Babylon" - New York Dolls - in Too Much Too Soon
3. "Babylon I'm Coming" - Piero Picconi - Beat at Cinecittà Vol.2
4. "Babylon" - Conception - Psychedelic Archaeology Volume 5
5. "Babylon Sisters" - Steely Dan - Showbiz Kids: The Steely Dan Story
6. "Babylon" - O.D.'s - Back at the Ranch
7. "Fire on Babylon" - Sinéad O'Connor - Lilith Fair: A Celebration of Women in Music
8. "Die Babylon" - The Offs - Can You Hear Me? Music From The Deaf Club
9. "Babylonian Warehouses" - Pere Ubu - Why I Hate Women
10. "Babylonian Gorgon" - The Bags - Dangerhouse volume 2
11. "Hollywood Babylon" - The Misfits - Bullet 7" EP

Well, that's kinda fun, but the songs basically fall into two categories, really laid back and mellow (1,3,5,7, and 9) or REALLY loud n' punky (2,4,6,8,10, and 11). Maybe not the best party mix. I'll have it ready anyway.

Okay, and today's pictures of the cats, who were not very cooperative in being cute and all and making for interesting photos.

Here's Moni in a "thoughtful" moment (she has no brain):

Hooker in an "about-to-cause-trouble" moment:

Berit trying to hug Moni and play a computer game (and hold the cat still for the picture) at the same time:

And Hooker enjoying his favorite headrest, my extended hand:

Okay, gotta run and clean myself up and go get stuff ready at The Brick for shows and parties.

Tuesday, another six hour drive from Maine right to The Brick to continue observing the show.

Then, Wednesday through Sunday have all been work days at The Brick of at least 13 hours each day (and up to 16). Mostly, it's been getting the lights all set for BB, with a first rehearsal for Spell early Saturday morning, and one for Penny Dreadful yesterday from 9 am to 4 pm followed by an Ambersons rehearsal from 6.30-10.30 pm. And I wound up having to run the lights for BB at the opening preview when Lindsay, the (excellent) stage manager got seriously ill.

The good things were that the time has been tiring, but almost entirely enjoyable, surrounded by fine people doing hard worthwhile work and having a good time at it, and also I got in a new shipment of contact lenses on Friday and have been enjoying some glasses-free time again.

So, today I ain't doing much of anything. I have to arrange some rehearsal space, but apart from that, nothing much else. I will watch some movies. We should clean our home (um, it's actually getting kinda smelly, and not just from the cat box), but I'll hold out on that for another day.

But, to expand a bit more on bits of the above:

The podcast was recorded for New York Theatre Experience's nytheatrecast.com, and featured myself, Jeff Lewonczyk, and Jon Stancato in a conversation about theatre that is in some way influenced by/connected to cinema, moderated by Trav S.D. It came out well, I think (the tech is a little dicey - they're not used to dealing with four people at once, really), and can be accessed HERE.

Babylon Babylon had its first open preview performance on Saturday, and it went pretty well. There are still a few elements missing that will be in for next week, and I have a handful of little fixes and additions to make. Went well, though the first audience didn't find it nearly as funny as I did, and I don't know why (well, maybe I do - it doesn't really start funny, and there are very few "clues" to let you know it's supposed to be funny, thankfully - and, also, it gets really dark and unfunny here and there as well).

It's a good show, and worth your time and money. See it. The website with info is HERE - though, um, it still lists the original light designer instead of me . . . have to remind someone to change that . . .

The next episode of Bryan Enk & Matt Gray's Penny Dreadful plays this Saturday and Sunday at The Brick - it's the "season finale," and we'll be on hiatus with that show until September (though there might be a one-off, standalone episode sometime this Summer). This episode is "The Earth Shook, The Sky Burned" and is mostly set around the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. It features myself as George Westinghouse, Tom Reid as Thomas Edison, Bob Laine as J.P. Morgan, and Roger Nasser as William Howard Taft, with Joseph Ryan and Randall Eliot in several roles, and . . . well, you'll have to see. This one is directed by Brick co-founder Michael Gardner, and Berit and I, as always, are handling the light design and some other technical matters.

The Brick's page for the show (with ticket info) is HERE; the general Penny Dreadful site, with information about the series and synopses/videos of past episodes is HERE.

First meeting for my original show Spell, which will be going up in August, on Saturday. All but one of the 12-person cast was present, and we talked about the show and the issues that have come up in its creation. I played some of the music that was inspirational for the show. New avenues of approach were raised and discussed. Characters were slightly more defined. I laid out the set and put the cast on it in patterns that seemed "right," had movement happen, and scenes appeared from this start. The ending to the show appeared and was vaguely staged (to Brian Eno's song "Just Another Day"). Now I have a scene to work towards and have to earn.

The original intent of the show was to be a look inside the splitting mind of someone who has done a terrible, destructive, murderous thing, and then attempt to understand what makes someone do something so horrible. It has now moved, though, towards being more about The Violent Act that has been committed and a debate over whether there is ever any possible excuse for such actions. This is a continuing debate I have in myself, so I'm trying to settle it in some way through a splitting of myself into these characters.

It is now a more delicate and dangerous show than I anticipated, as there is more chance for failing in the task set out - I can't let it be shallow and pat, and yet it has to be theatrically compelling and go somewhere, and feel satisfying at the close, though there is no way of truly achieving closure with this story.

The cast is terrific - Moira Stone, Fred Backus, Alyssa Simon, Jorge Cordova, Iracel Rivero, Rasha Zamamiri, Jeanie Tse, Gavin Starr Kendall, Olivia Baseman, Sammy Tunis, and Liz Toft - and game. It'll be a joy to work with them. I hope I live up to it.

And a second blocking session for the June Ambersons production last night. I was scheduled to do just a few sections of the big "Ball" scene (and a few other little bits), but I decided to just go ahead and set the blocking for the whole damned difficult scene, at least for the principals in the sequence (as the entire rest of the cast is constantly flowing in and out during the sequence as party guests and servants, and I have to set the main line of flow before I can add in the additional eddies).

So we went ahead and damn if we didn't get through the whole sequence, which is 22 pages long - 1/5th of the entire script! So that was a nice chunk. I also blocked two simple scenes, with very little movement - Jack and George's argument in the bathroom and Eugene and Isabel sitting in the garden. I hope this keeps moving as quickly, with as much fun - this is one of the jokiest casts I've ever had, with suggestions for anachronistic behavior coming in constantly (which never gets old).

This week, more Ambersons and Penny Dreadful, but first, a day of rest. Pardon me, I must get started on that . . .