Ah, the fun of deciding to come right off one of the biggest and most tiring projects you've ever done and overload yourself again immediately.


Gemini CollisionWorks (ie; me and Berit) pretty much have August to ourselves at The Brick, so, as mentioned before, I decided to take advantage of that by putting up a whole bunch of shows, namely NECROPOLIS #1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed, NECROPOLIS #0&3: Kiss Me Succubus/At the Mountains of Slumberland, and The Hobo Got Too High.

Yeah, smart.

I figured as they were all shows I'd done before, and not technical monsters for the most part, no problem. I was also somewhat relying on having more members of the original casts back, for some reason (I only had the vague statements from some people that, yeah, they'd like to do that show again sometime). So there's been more running around to recast than I anticipated. I asked all the original cast members for World Gone Wrong and Hobo, and the ones I still thought would be interested from the other two shows, and wound up with less than half the casts for the NECROPOLIS plays, and three out of four for Hobo.

(having one of the original actors from World Gone Wrong marrying one from Slumberland with many of the other actors from those shows attending the wedding, which is in the middle of our run, or even being in the wedding party I believe, has not helped casting or scheduling either)

So, we sent out a notice on some lists of Glory Bowen's and Edward Einhorn's (thank, guys), and we had auditions these last three days.


MASSIVE SIDELINE HERE: I hate doing auditions. I hate the process, I hate everything about it. So generally I find people I like from within what Scott Walters and others are accurately calling "the tribe" and work with them over and over -- some time soon, when I have a moment (HA!) I should talk about The Tribe process of theatre, which is pretty much the model I've been working in for 11 years now, and how it works (and doesn't). One thing I've realized in seeing the posts about this idea is that the most fruitful tribes I've been a part of, as member or as boss (or, what I think is a more accurate term for this position in a tribe, "catalyst"), have all been based around a physical space - a theatre, a group of theatres, or a neighborhood. When the tribe becomes a single theatre company, it tends to turn in on itself and not work as well -- inbreeding produces defects. My old tribe was the one based around the L.E.S. theatres in general and the NADA theatres specifically (1996-2000), and when those lands grew barren, I and others wandered in the wilderness, foraging, until members of the tribe I had once been the catalyst for found themselves at The Brick, let the rest of us know it was a good home, with many trees and sweet water, and gradually we've brought much of the old tribe back together there, and stronger. Still, auditions are necessary to keep the tribe going - but in doing them, talking to the actors as people not as auditioners, and seeing if their mindset and personality fits the tribe, is as important as how well they can do the part. If so, great, more of us makes us stronger. Anyway . . .


Berit and I were amazed that for the first time in either of our experiences with a somewhat "open call," we didn't have any clunkers. Not a one. Amazing. All good actresses - and I normally have stopped using "actress" as a word distinct from "actor," but there's a point to be made there: I've only seen women thus far, and I still need men. At least three. The ratio of women to men I got from my casting announcement was 30:1. As in only one man actually responded. He wasn't able to make his audition time due to an emergency, and I'm hoping to meet him this afternoon. I have one other man to meet besides that. And, actually, I need one more man on top of that. So, I'm scrambling. What else is new?

But the women are set. I had three women have to drop out of World Gone Wrong in the last few days due to schedule conflicts, but luckily had good people from the auditions to step right in. So, I've asked six women from the auditions to come in and fill seven roles in three of the plays, and asked one man I know if he'd do another two parts. Three of the women, Jody, Olivia, and Sammy, have signed on. Three haven't yet responded. The guy is still thinking about it. I need at least another three men on top of that, and have only two to see. {sigh} Great. I'll make it work.

I haven't emailed the other women I saw to tell them "Sorry, no part for you" yet, as I may need them if one of the people I've asked says no. However, from their emails, I know that some of them have been looking at this blog . . . well, if that's you, you were great, but I asked someone else first, and if they say no, you're in.

(I can't stand saying no to actors who were perfectly good for a part, but someone else was just slightly more perfectly good than them -- oh, it drives me nuts!)


And hip hooray, one more actor, Amy, has just emailed after I typed all the above and accepted the hard-to-cast role of Little Nemo in Slumberland! Well, that makes my day, somewhat.


Amy wants to have a character meeting this afternoon, so I'll try and work that out. When working on this tight a schedule, with pretty much no rehearsals where you can actually get the whole cast together in one place at one time, and very few rehearsals in any case, it's a hugely good idea to have as many individual meetings with the performers where you mostly sit and go over the script line-by-line, moment-by-moment, in great detail.

Yesterday, I spent four hours at The Brick doing this with Jessica Savage, who, like me, is crazy enough to be acting in three of the plays. We talked a lot about Succubus, blocked her scenes in WGW and worked them each a little bit, and then worked her scenes for Hobo in more detail (we blocked that whole show on Saturday with the entire cast, thankfully). Good hard detailed work. And, to my great relief, she was cool about and calmed my anxieties regarding one of the most uncomfortable parts that sometimes comes up as actor-producer-director: saying to an actress you don't know all that well, "Okay, here's the part where we're making out, and later we'll do the part where we're pretending to have sex." Yeah, never comfortable. Having my fiancee in the room taking down blocking may decrease the discomfort however.

Then last night we sat around at Alyssa Simon's talking with her about the world of Succubus and the character of Lucille in WGW. And that was work, and worthwhile.

Today, maybe meet with Amy, definitely meet with Aaron, maybe audition another guy. Tonight, try and pin down the people I've asked who haven't answered. Next two days, get the publicity and AEA materials out, set up character meetings with the other new people and then have them, and find the last cast members.


And in the midst of this, I have to pull together and rehearse the two Suzan Lori-Parks 365 Days/Plays pieces I have going up on Saturday and Sunday. Okay. Better go do that now . . .


So, for those interested (those of The Tribe that read this), here are the casts as they stand for the four plays:


NECROPOLIS #1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed (after film noir) by Ian W. Hill

Ian W. Hill -- BILL, the Fall Guy, a Private Eye
Art Wallace -- CHARLIE, a Traveling Salesman
Gyda Arber -- DOLORES, the Good Girl, Bill's better half
pending -- RACHEL, a Gal Friday, Bill's secretary
Jessica Savage -- AURORA, a Rich Spoiled Nympho
Stacia French -- CHRISTINA, a Femme Fatale
Danny Bowes -- DOMINICK, a Beatnik Bartender
Olivia Baseman -- IDA, a Blowzy Waitress
Aaron Baker -- STEVE, the Long Arm of the Law
uncast -- ARTHUR, a Doomed Man Who Knows Too Much
Yvonne Roen -- KITTY, a Harpy
Iracel Rivero -- THERESA, a Newspaper Reporter
Alyssa Simon -- LUCILLE, a Faded Spitfire, the entertainer
Christiaan Koop -- INGRID, a Magazine Editor, in charge of information
pending -- WILBUR, a Gunsel
Bryan Enk -- JOHNNY, a Flunky
Roger Nasser -- TINY, a Goon
uncast -- LOUIS, a Torpedo
Sammy Tunis -- BRIDGET, a Moll, an angel in the wreckage
Ken Simon -- THOMAS, the Businessman, a gangster
Adam Swiderski -- NED, the Avenger, Bill's partner and dream-doppelganger, another Private Eye


NECROPOLIS #0&3: Kiss Me, Succubus (after Jess Franco, Radley Metzger, et al.)/At the Mountains of Slumberland (after Winsor McCay and H.P. Lovecraft) by Ian W. Hill

Ian W. Hill -- THE DECADENT GENTLEMAN
Alyssa Simon -- HIS WIFE
Jody Christopherson -- HIS MISTRESS
uncast -- HIS GUEST
Stacia French -- THE COUNTESS (THE SUCCUBUS)
uncast -- HER MANSERVANT
Jessica Savage -- HER PROTEGE (THE VENUS IN FURS)
uncast -- THE INCUBUS


Amy Liszka -- LITTLE NEMO
Peter Bean -- RANDOLPH CARTER
Art Wallace -- CMDR. ALFIE BESTER OF THE FLYING SQUAD and CHORUS
Bryan Enk -- CAPT. NEMO and CHORUS
pending -- PICKMAN and CHORUS
Sammy Tunis -- CHORUS
Gyda Arber -- CHORUS
pending -- CHORUS


The Hobo Got Too High by Marc Spitz


Ian W. Hill -- BUG BLOWMONKEY, a troubled young man
Jessica Savage -- SHELLY, a ghost, and NEW-SHELLY (aka MARTHA), a ray of hope
Rasheed Hinds -- MARVIN GAYE, Marvin Gaye
Roger Nasser -- EVERYONE ELSE, many unpleasant people


With any luck, more soon . . .

We've had lolcats, lolpresidents, even lolgays.


Now, on LiveJournal Communities, you can enjoy lolauthors.





How far is this damned meme to go?

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

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

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


* * * * *


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


a nightmare-collage-play by Ian W. Hill



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

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

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


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

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


The meeting will not go well for the humans involved.



1. THE FILM

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

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

NECROPOLIS 0

. . . then . . .

Kiss Me, Succubus

. . . then . . .

Europe, 1960s


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


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


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

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

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


* * * * *


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

Re: Scooter Libby.


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


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


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


No. Nothing has changed. Fucking traitors.

So we closed Ian W. Hill's Hamlet last night. It was a great show. We did really well. We had one more reviewer show up, and the show was really on, so if they don't like it, whatever. We did good, and lots of strangers from the large house came up to me after to thank me and talk to me, which was real good for the ego-boo.


And now, I'm back at The Brick, supervising the tech for Yudkowski Returns!. So I had to be here at 10 am, and also sweep and mop the space up before the company came in, I'm tired and worn out, but all is well. Unfortunately, it looks like I won't be able to get out of here to go see the space for the Suzan-Lori Parks 365 Days plays that I'm directing on July 14-15. Berit should be there, so hopefully I can have it described in detail. Wheee.


Anyway, had the iPod on in the car on the way over here this morning, and out of the now 21,121 songs in there, here's what came up:


1. "The Girl from Baltimore" - The Fleshtones - Children of Nuggets: Original ARTyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era - 1976-1996
2. "Birth3" - Racy Tune Clamp (John Oswald redoes The Beatles) - 69 Plunderphonics 96
3. "Raw Power" - Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power
4. "The Toy Trumpet (electronic version)" - Raymond Scott - Manhattan Research, Inc.
5. "Breaking Bells (Take Me to the Mardi Gras) - Crash Crew - The Sugar Hill Story: To the Beat Y'All
6. "All of Your Love" - Magic Sam - Essential Blues
7. "900 Million People Daily (All Making Love)" - The Seeds - Retrospective. . .
8. "Afternoon" - Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - The Best of Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers
9. "Broken Blossoms" - Dusty Springfield - Dusty Volume 2
10. "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" - Jackie De Shannon - The Definite Collection
11. "I Can't Stop Loving You" - Elmore James - Chicago Slide Guitar Masters from Tampa Red to Elmore James
12. "Here Come the Martian Martians - Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - The Best of Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers
13. "Spit of Love" - Bonnie Raitt - Lilith Fair: A Celebration of Women in Music
14. "Please Don't Leave Me" - Fats Domino - Back to the 50s 05
15. "Nattsteg" - Bruset - Radio Aktiv 7"
16. "Finale" - Ennio Morricone - Once Upon a Time in the West


Okay, now I'm scheduled here until 6 pm. I'd love to go home then, but the last performance of the show by Jon Stancato and Stolen Chair is up tonight here at 7 pm. And I should see it. {sigh} I'm really tired. I have tomorrow off, all day, so I can rest then, I guess. And work on the casting for the 365 Plays things and the four August shows.

No cat photos today, I think. I'm not sure I have any more good ones that I haven't posted . . .

Good performance of Ian W. Hill's Hamlet last night, despite starting even later than our opening night -- the 7.00 pm show, supposed to run to 8.00 pm before our 8.30 pm scheduled start time, ran to 8.37 pm by my watch, and they had a killer breakdown that meant we didn't get started for over a half-hour after that. Not good, but amazingly, the audience was with us, even with the wait and the horrible heat. And we gave them a good show - first time I was actually comfortable up there as Hamlet, I have to say, unfortunately. First time I left the director (and actually, more importantly, the producer) of the show completely behind me.


Or maybe the Vicodin I took for some hideous neck pain helped.


Had a nice email exchange this morning with Brick Theater Grand-Poo-Bah Robert Honeywell (whose wonderful show, Every Play Ever Written: A Distillation of the Essence of Theatre, got a great and deserved review in the Times today), regarding the performance. Here it is:


very interesting show last night, sir. you made some fascinating choices, and I don't think I've ever disliked Hamlet so much (that's a compliment). very curious about you cutting the 'To be' speech -- I was hungry for it, and maybe not getting it was exactly what you intended. and beautiful staging esp. for the Laertes departure at the dock and the 'Hamlet, where's the body?' office scene. and I liked the choice of never showing the ghost -- I got the distinct sense that Hamlet really might just be crazy, from start to finish (it's obvious that even Horatio doubts his story), which is I assume what you intended. it might be the first time I've seen a 'Hamlet' that left me doubting whether Claudius actually did kill his brother, though he certainly intended to kill young Hamlet at the end.


Thanks. Yeah, the crazy Hamlet is very definitely meant to be there, as well as the possibility that Claudius didn't kill his brother. Glad you got all that. Not everyone does, but those who do seem to be on board for the whole show - if you don't like or get either of those ideas, as well as my choice of being Bastard Hamlet, which really throws some people, you're not going to be with the show at all.

But the crazy Hamlet, who may be dressing up in his father's clothes and wandering the battlements in a fugue state, as well as the possibly innocent Claudius, were always crucial parts of the production -- though Jerry then decided that Claudius HAD killed Old Hamlet, and we went on to basically decide together that Old Hamlet NEEDED killing for the good of Denmark, that he was in no shape to hold off Norway, and may have been going a little coo-coo himself (his son's lunacy possibly being genetic, and from dad). Stacia brought in playing the bedroom scene as a woman who is not unfamiliar with being battered around by a man, which says something else about Old Hamlet (and I was pleased that at least two audience members, strangers to me, "got" this and personally pointed it out to me without being prompted).

We had also batted about the idea as to whether Claudius actually did ask England to kill Hamlet, or if Hamlet was making that up too (perhaps just out of his own paranoia) - maybe he had just asked England to keep him under guard in a nice tower somewhere and never let him get back to Denmark. But Jerry again decided that for Claudius, it would still be way too dangerous for Denmark itself to let a mad, murderous Prince roam around at all, and, with a heavy heart, indeed signed the death order.

A little surprised about your reaction to the "To be" cut -- most people thus far (also to my surprise) have been really appreciative of it's absence, or more just agreeing with me, saying, "You didn't need it for this version." And, yeah, I think it would have been out of place for Bastard Hamlet.

The cast and I had a great time filling out this very different way of looking at the play - and I'm glad that the people who "got" it did so, and seemed to dig what we did.


IWH


Onward to August, and the NECROPOLIS 0 - 3 series and The Hobo Got Too High by Marc Spitz. Beginning to get the research materials together again for World Gone Wrong. It looks like only half of the original cast will be returning, and the newcomers will need a bit of background immersion in noir, as we did the last time. I really hope that this time I can show the cast, as a group, six films in three double bills to sum up the particular aspects of the genre I'm aiming at in this piece:


Double Indemnity
Force of Evil


D.O.A.
Point Blank


Detour
Lost Highway


Damn, but then I get into all the other ones that are so important to me for the piece -- The Killers (both the '46 and '64 versions), Kiss Me Deadly, Out of the Past, Brute Force, The Seventh Victim, The Big Heat, Criss Cross . . . well, the list goes on, but those are all probably the big important ones.

I can loan out my copies, as I did last time. And I need to find which actor still has my DVD of D.O.A. from two years ago.


Busy, busy, busy. Maybe I can bother with a postmortem on Hamlet in a few days, but I have to deal with the future right now. July is gonna be a bit crazy, getting the August shows ready. Keep moving forward.

Berit mentioned this to me the other day, that there was a site that would rate your blog as with the MPAA movie ratings, and she told me what my rating was.


I figured something had to be off, cause I thought I cussed more than they seem to register. Either that, or I have a slick, major-studio backer that was able to argue my rating down, since I only get a





which, according to their records, is due to 3 uses of the word "pain," 2 uses of the word "kill," and 1 use of the word "bitch" (I'm assuming I used the latter in the context of "bitching" about something, but with these three words as the guide, it sounds like my site is the equivalent of one o'them "torture porn" movies er somethin').


Fuck, I need a stronger rating. Maybe if I add some "grizzly violence" (which is currently listed on the posters for Captivity as a reason for the R rating - really - "grizzly violence" - as has been noted, it sounds like the film consists of Elisha Cuthbert going up against some bears).

A few little somethings to not be ignored.


First, HOORAY, Astroland has been spared for another Summer at Coney Island.


Second, imomus, aka Momus, has, to my delight, embedded three sections of John Berger's TV series Ways of Seeing in his journal. You can also just find them on YouTube through a search like THIS ONE (though the last two things that come up there aren't actually the Berger, but just refer to it).

The sharp, excellent book that was produced as an adjunct of the TV series was one of the first texts I had as a film student at NYU/Tisch, and has been quite important to me ever since (as well as a fine lead-in to Berger's denser works). The book is still just an approximation of the series - Berger laid it out specifically as a TV presentation, and it works much better in that format. We saw the first (maybe the second, too?) episode also during that first term at NYU, but that's the only time I got to see the preferred form of Berger's presentation (in 16mm projection). Unfortunately at the time we saw it, my professor, Daniel Kazimierski, had been made a little sensitive by previous students' reactions to the film, and warned us that it was "very 1970s" in style and that Berger's shirt and hairstyle were now out-of-fashion and "amusing." As a result, much of my class erupted in unfounded guffaws whenever Berger appeared onscreen in the fashion of a man of his age in early 70s London.

Which, in fact, only proves several of Berger's points about context and perception.

In any case, like Momus, I also hope that more of the series, if not the whole damned thing, makes it to YouTube.


Oh, and did I ever mention Look Around You here? If not (or even if so), here's the first episode:





And HERE's a search that will let you find the rest.


Oh, and I see you can now find Posh Nosh at YouTube as well:





HERE are the other episodes of that - Berit and I saw it as a filler piece on Buffalo PBS while we were up in Canada at New Year's.


Okay, enough videos. Other business -- I've been trying to get the Gemini CollisionWorks online presence somewhat down. We still don't have our own webpage, with archives, photos, reviews and the like (it's coming . . . sometime), but we have these things:


BLOG: http://collisionwork.livejournal.com/
PHOTOSTREAM: http://flickr.com/photos/geminicollisionworks/
STORE: http://www.cafepress.com/collisionworks
(now with brand-new Ian W. Hill's Hamlet and World Gone Wrong gear!)
MYSPACE: http://www.myspace.com/geminicollisionworks
LINKEDIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/geminicollisionworks


Use as you like. Thanks.

Yesterday, my body finally gave out for a while. It was about time. Since the show on Friday, I'd still pretty much been going and going in my waking hours, so I guess I needed it. Still do. Still on the downward slide right now.

This happens with some shows I'm in/performances I give. Even 15 years ago, when I played Marlowe's Faustus, I'd spend half of the next day in bed recovering, even more than with Hamlet, though I was much younger, lighter, and in better shape (Faustus was actually a more demanding role than Hamlet). I dunno. I'm better at not knocking myself out quite so much onstage as I used to be, but I still need to keep working at being in the shape to handle this with actual strength rather than adrenalin.


Again, the show went great on Friday, and we had a great, friendly house. A couple of old friends of mine, Sean Rockoff and Julie Bennack, came to see it, and we had a good talk about the show afterward (and since then, by email) where they made it clear that they got everything I was trying to do with the show, which always feels good. Sean may even come back and see it again, which means he really dug it, so good on me.


Saturday was my birthday, so I got birthday wishes by phone from the various groups of family, then B&I were off at Daniel McKleinfeld & Maggie Cino's yearly birthday bash/cookout at Daniel's - originally a B-day party for the two of them, now expanded to all of us June babies. We were there from something like 4 pm to 1 am, and the party extended back a couple of hours from that each way. Most members of the cast of Ian W. Hill's Hamlet made appearances, as well as most other members of this little tight-knit corner of Indie Theatre, at some point in the afternoon/evening (as well as rezendi, who's a friend of Maggie's).

Maggie (who's in the show) insisted that I had to talk to another friend of ours who saw the show on Friday, Robert Ooghe, about it, and I spent quite a while happily listening to Robert tell me everything he got from the show, which was EXACTLY everything I WANTED anyone to get from the show, right down the line, without me having to say anything. Now, that's a way to make me happy - give me an audience member who knew nothing about the show going in, who enjoyed it, and "got" it, without me having to hit them over the head with anything. Happy birthday.

So, good party, good food, good drinks, good company.


Sunday, off to Ossining to see my father and stepmother and her mother and stepfather for Father's Day, Dad & Ivy's anniversary, and Berit's and my birthdays again. Another good party, good food, good drinks, good company. Home again, very tired.


Yesterday, over to The Brick to releg two of the platforms from Ian W. Hill's Hamlet for Q1: The Bad Hamlet. They wanted to use two of my three platforms, but at different heights (I have all mine at 2', they wanted one at 8" and one at 18"), so I made up different legs to put on - in return, I get to use their coffin and skull. I tried to make up the legs as interchangeable, ready to be bolted off and on easily, but it wound up being difficult to make the legs all work that way, so I'm just screwing them off and on. Actually wound up being easier than anticipated, even with having to paint the legs for them to match the platform tops (we use a fabric masking around them for our Hamlet).

Came home, meant to sleep (felt like I had to) and instead wound up watching John Boorman's Point Blank and Richard Lester's Petulia (photographed by Nicolas Roeg), which are a perfect and amazing double-bill of Brit New Wave directors working in the USA in the late '60s (even sharing a number of San Francisco locations). I was going to move on to Roeg and Donald Cammell's Performance, for a perfect stylistic trilogy, but Berit wanted to play Guitar Hero on the PS2, and I couldn't stay awake anyway.


So, today, lounging about in a dazed haze. Everything seems to take too much effort. Picking up a cup of coffee. Typing (this has taken me over four hours to get together). I thought I had to work at The Brick tonight, but no, I checked the sked and it's tomorrow I'm on from 6-11 pm, so today, lying back with relaxing film -- I've got Performance going right now, and will follow it with Roeg's Bad Timing, and then Godard's Masculin Feminin and Tout Va Bien.

Danny Bowes once had a laugh at my expense when I mentioned on here that I was having a special "relaxing-at-home" day with a Jean-Luc Godard film festival -- he said that I needed a lesson in how to actually "relax." Well, this is relaxing for me. Actually, now that I've realized I don't have to be at The Brick tonight, maybe I'll throw in The Man Who Fell To Earth, and Contempt for that all day and night, dreamy, non-linear narrative state of mind . . .


Then, things to do the next few days. I've decided that the best plan for the shows to do at The Brick in August would be to bring back the entire NECROPOLIS series to date: NECROPOLIS 1&2: World Gone Wrong/Worth Gun Willed plus NECROPOLIS 0: Kiss Me Succubus and NECROPOLIS 3: At the Mountains of Slumberland, both short pieces, as a double bill. These would alternate as the "main" shows, with late shows (and possibly matinees) of the also short The Hobo Got Too High by Marc Spitz, if Marc will let me do it. Plus I want to get a few more performances of Ian W. Hill's Hamlet in, if possible.

So, I have to check again with the cast of Ian W. Hill's Hamlet about their July availability.

Check with Actors Equity about what I'll be allowed to do, and within what time period, as far as an extension.

Check with Marc about Hobo.

Check in with the 10 members of the cast of 21 on World Gone Wrong who have said they can and want to do it again, recheck with the 7 company members who haven't responded, and recast the 4 people who definitely can't do it.

Check in with the people still around from the other NECROPOLIS shows if they're interested and available, and recast the parts where they aren't.

Fix up the apartment, which is a hellhole, as usual during production of a show. Worse now, as I now have an secondary A/V system lying around in pieces all over the place (given to me by my brother as he's got a new one), including a huge 35" Sony Trinitron in the middle of "the living room," all of which needs to be arranged somehow, especially before my mother comes next week to see the show and will be staying with us (a good excuse to be forced to clean up).


But that's tomorrow. For now, I'll sit back and enjoy The Man Who Fell to Earth and other states of mind.


Oh, and some amusement courtesy of a link from sarahlangan, my answer from The Classic Leading Man Test (and I do have more than enough ego to say . . . yeah, seems about right . . .):

Link: The Classic Leading Man Test written by gidgetgoes on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

I'll tell you this - the only performance that makes it -- that really makes it - that makes it all the way - is the one that achieves madness, right? Am I right? You with me?

From the iPod, currently at 21,132 songs, and with almost no space left in it, so I can't add anything until Hamlet is over -- I have several sound beds for scenes of the show on here, so things like 15 minutes of wind (repeated several times) are taking up space.

I hope none of those sound effects come up now . . .


1. "Truck On (Tyke)" - T.Rex - History of T.Rex—The Singles Collection

Pure pop for then people.


2. "The Wedge" - Dick Dale - Rato's Nostalgia Collection 1

Also Pure, as well as Ur, as well as Surf.


3. "Exakt Neutral" - Stereo Total - Music Automatique

Too new to be New Wave, but the next best thing.


4. "Damnation's Cellar" - Elvis Costello & The Brodsky Quartet - The Juliet Letters

Yup, I can imagine Berit's comment, if she were awake: AH! Yet another cheery song from Elvis! What person does he want dead in this one?" Um, all of them -- well, at least he wants the ones who already are to stay there.


5. "What in the World" - David Bowie - Low

iPod seems to be trying to cheer me up this morning with songs that make me feel happy-peppy. Thanks, iPod! Not really a happy song, this, but it makes me cheery.


6. "Wonder Where My Baby Is Tonight" The Kinks - Kinda Kinks

Good, but could have been generated by the Kinks Pop Song Creator 2000.


7. "Hyena Stomp" - Jelly Roll Morton - Birth Of The Hot: The Classic Chicago "Red Hot Peppers" Sessions

Okay, the iPod is seriously trying to cheer me up, not only by playing Jelly Roll Morton, but by playing a happy one where he laughs through half of it.

I know it's random, but sometimes there seems to be a theme to what comes out. toddalcott has noted that sometimes his iPod gets drunk and sad and will play nothing but Leonard Cohen for hours unless he stops it.


8. "Un Grand Bond Pour L'Humanite" - Etienne Charry - 36 Erreurs

The aural equivalent of the happy parts of a Michel Gondry movie - appropriately, as Gondry used to play drums for Charry. More cheer, more cheer.


9. "Unchained" - Johnny Cash - American II: Unchained

Again, not actually happy, but makes my heart light. I acquired a GREAT DEAL of Cash recently, more than I'll ever need, and I'm getting rid of much of the sillier dross, but there's STILL so much good stuff to keep. We keep getting ones we've never heard before on random in the car and enjoying them. Damn, he was something.


10. "I Love You Mary Jane" - Cypress Hill/Sonic Youth - Judgment Night

An interesting rock/hip-hop collaboration. Nice, actually works.


and yes I said yes I will Yes