CollisionWorks

This week, we had the first rehearsals for Temptation, which I'm directing for the Vaclav Havel Festival.

First off, once again I find myself having the same strange feelings I've been having the past few years every day before I get to rehearsal, namely dread and frustration.  I have no idea why, but for the last few years, it's felt like more and more of a horrible chore to go to rehearsals (mainly as a director, only sometimes as an actor).

But then, when I get to rehearsal, and I'm working with the actors, it's like I've been given a massive shot of happywakeup medicine -- I feel energized and excited and like I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing, what I'm good at, and I just want to keep going and going.  Once upon a time, if I had rehearsal later in the day, I'd have that feeling all day, like a bouncy puppy, "OH BOY!  I get to REHEARSE a SHOW today!!!"  Now, most of the time, I just want the show to happen and not deal with the drudgery of rehearsal.  And then I'm at rehearsal and it's not drudgery at all, it's the best part of being alive, apart from being in the middle of a show while it's running and knowing it's going well.  I don't know how to get around this.  I know that I'll be fine when I get to rehearsal, but I can't feel it.  I just want it to go away.  It's just all DREAD.  Why has this happened to me?  Rehearsals are as fun as ever, why can't I feel that way in advance anymore?

So, Saturday we went to Central Park and read through the script with most of the cast -- Walter, Danny, Alyssa, Jessi, Christiaan, Maggie, and Roger.  Fred and Timothy couldn't make it, Berit and I took their parts and the as-yet uncast ones.  It was a beautiful day, and we found a moderately-secluded perch on some rocks.  I didn't give any direction to start -- I wanted to hear what came out naturally at a first cold reading.  It sounded good, for a beginning.  It runs shorter than I feared it might, thank god -- the final production will probably be 2 hrs. 10 min. with intermission, which is 20 min. shorter than I thought.  Maybe even less.  Great.

We had an occasional audience for bits and pieces of the reading, people walking by, as I figured would happen.  Wasn't as distracting as I feared, though I was amused and puzzled by the Asian gentleman who videotaped us for about ten minutes (I couldn't say for sure, of course, but yes, he and his friends came off as the exact stereotypes of "Japanese Tourists").  I was fairly clear in my head about what the show was "about" for me and this production before the reading, but didn't have the clear words to express it to others (does that make sense to you?  it's the truth).  During the reading words became more clear, and afterwards I talked a little bit about what this production of Temptation is trying to do.

It's all about two-facedness, masks, and lies, though ultimately Foustka's downfall isn't that he's a liar, but that he's a liar for two opposing sides -- it would be fine if he just lied in the service of one of them (well, no, but in the world of the play) -- but he won't pick a side and ultimately betrays both (and himself) by not committing, and is destroyed for it.  Of course, the heavy spectre of Communism hangs over the play, given when and where it was written, but the metaphor is wider and more universal than that -- I read that Charles Marowitz cut and rewrote the play to get rid of the "Communist country" overtones in his London production, but really that's not necessary.  Rather baby/bathwater, you ask me.

I was thinking of the documentary play by Daniel Kleinfeld that I acted in and designed (light/set), A Little Piece of the Sun, about the Chernobyl disaster and the Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo -- two stories combined, both about death caused by a country's/society's reliance on lies and deception.  Daniel lived in Russia (while it was still the Soviet Union?  don't remember . . .) and talked to me about discovering that it was a country where for years, in order to simply get by, everyone had to be a liar and a hustler.  And what does that do to the mindset of a country, of its people, when for years, merely in order to eat, to live, you have had to lie, cheat, and deceive all the time?

So I talked about this, and that EVERYONE in the play is a liar, on some level, or rather, many levels -- everyone has different false faces they are using with different characters throughout, and we have to work on making the levels clear to all of us.  Havel has been both very clear and very subtle in his language towards this end, and each nuance has to be thought about.  Many seemingly innocent lines have a hidden twist or sting in them.

There will be a "non-lie" style of acting that shows up in some brief scenes, where people are just bullshitting in the office, or two lovers, unguarded, are chatting in bed, but false faces go on all the time, and everybody knows it, knows everybody else's deceptions, but goes with it because they have their own.  I told Alyssa and Walter that in the scene where their characters are playacting with each other in a lovers' game, they should go so far in a certain direction that the audience should be wondering, just a bit, in the back of their heads, "Why are these two giving such bad performances in this scene?  They've been really good up till now" (which means not simply overacting, as the audience will "get" that this is a game between them immediately, but a specific kind of emoting without actorial skill, which can be difficult for good actors to pull off).

So, good reading Saturday.  Then, Sunday, same place (Central Park, not on rocks this time but in a sylvan glen), later in the day, same group minus Roger and Maggie but plus Timothy, another reading.  People had thought about what I said the day before and small changes, new modes of thought, were happening.  Timothy and Walter worked well in their scenes together, which are big and meaty parts of the play.  Still, good place to start, but just to start.  So much to do, to bring out.

Chance favors the prepared observer.  Right in the middle of one of Foustka's monologues -- in some ways, the most important one of the play, where he spells out most of its themes, dead center of the script -- there was the sound of fire trucks coming, louder and louder.  Walter went on with the speech, trying to talk over the sirens, but eventually the trucks passed directly by us on Central Park West, drowning out any and all sounds, blasting air horns, and Walter had to just stop and hold the speech until they went by.  They faded, and he continued, having kept his focus firmly on Timothy as Fistula the whole time.  The timing had been perfect, and I gave a little look and sly grin to Berit, who knew immediately what I was thinking, rolled her eyes and mouthed, "No!"  But it worked SO well . . . Christiaan saw that look and knows me, knew what I was thinking, and smiled and nodded (I think Danny did, too).  Yeah, Foustka should have that happen to him at that exact place in the final production.

I wish I had a window in the set I could use, cause really what should happen is that Foustka is giving the speech, softly and intently, the sirens start in the distance, he gets louder, the sirens get louder, he goes and closes the window, and goes back to taking softly, the sirens, though muffled, keep getting louder and louder, as does he, until the fire trucks are obviously passing right by Foustka's apartment, and he has to stop and wait for them to go, with his focus still on Fistula, sharp, laser focus.  A long pause for them to pass.  Then . . . onward as though nothing had happened.

Yeah, no window, but it'll be something like that.  Beautiful.  Oh, that'll be lovely.

Last night we rehearsed in a neat little affordable space on 36th Street run by John Chatterton.  Reminded me of the old Nada Piano Store rooms.  We staged the two garden scenes with Jessi, Walter, Danny, Fred, Alyssa, and Christiaan (missing Roger, Maggie, Timothy, and the uncast people).  Again, dread going in, productive fun work actually happening.  So, two scenes out of ten are now blocked -- as usual, we came in and I just ran through the first scene on my feet, no acting, no reading, just telling everybody where to go and when, line by line, and having them walk it.  Then we ran it, adjusting where necessary due to stuff not working or better actorial ideas.  Then we did the same on the second scene.  Three good hours work.  The actors are great, but then, they're people I know and like a great deal, and I know they'll walk in with 70-85% of what I want from them perfect straight out of the gate, so I'm really lucky that way.  And whenever they surprise me with bits of business, it's always good stuff.

Well, okay, not always, but mostly.  God, we have so much time, compared to most shows I've done, to work, and work, and work on the subtleties of the acting on this one.  Well, most often I don't do shows that need that much work in this way -- something I've got used to doing Off-Off-Bway, designing shows that don't need to be actorially micromanaged -- but this one does need it, and I'm glad I'll have the time for it.  I should have the whole show blocked by Sunday the 24th, then I have a month to the first full-cast run-thrus on October 24 to just focus on the acting (and, of course, my tech).

Outside our co-op I spotted some pieces of a bedroom set that someone was throwing out yesterday morning, and started debating whether to drag them inside to use on the set (in Vilma's apartment).  In particular, two pieces that were probably the sides of a vanity, with drawers below a shelf and vertical mirrors above that can be angled inward -- good for the endtables to Vilma's bed, where I can angle the mirrors to both catch the light to cover the actors sitting on the bed, and give the audience a second viewpoint on the actors.  But.  They were big, and not light, and there's very little room in the apartment.  Berit and I looked at them on the way to rehearsal last night, and thought about it some more.  Then, as we came home in the rain around 11.30, we took one more look -- they were now stacked up with the garbage to be picked up this morning.  Berit looked at them, and then at me, ruefully, "They really are great . . ."  And that was it, I brought them in, and they're jamming up our foyer now.  The rain did a number on them, but they're going to work wonderfully for the set (I kinda wish I brought in the matching headboard, but where the hell would I have put it?).

Now, I need to figure out where I can rehearse with Walter and Timothy on Sunday.  I can only afford to pay for rehearsal spaces for the larger, group rehearsals that need lots of space.  Luckily, I got a LOT more rehearsal time in the actual space than I anticipated, so that calmed my nerves a bit as far as the budget for the show went.  A bit.

I'm "seeing" the show more and more, and it's better and better than I thought it would be.  Moving more from a solid craftman's job, taken on to keep in practice, to a labor of love, as it needs to.

We'll have to see if Cat Blogging happens later . . . I seem to have run out of room for the month in my Flickr account (it's only worth it to me to have the free account) and there's only two very similar cat photos as yet unposted. Maybe I'll have room to upload one more . . .


I'll probably throw one of them up. Though once again we're having problems with the wi-fi we're leeching here at home, and it's shutting off and on constantly, so internet activity can be rather annoying.


In the meantime, random ten for this morning while I try to do a tune-up on this laptop:


1. "Russian Dance" -- Tom Waits -- The Black Rider
2. "I Can Only Give You Everything" -- Them -- Nuggets II
3. "The End" -- The Beatles -- Anthology 3
4. "Lamento Beat I Versione" -- Mario Molito -- Kaleidoscopica
5. "I've Got a Feeling" -- Laibach -- Let It Be
6. "Love > Building On Fire" -- Talking Heads -- Sand in the Vaseline
7. "Don't Start Me Talkin'" -- The New York Dolls -- in Too Much Too Soon
8. "Hodokyo" -- Kazuki Tomokawa -- Nikusei
9. "It's" -- King Missle -- The Way to Salvation
10. "Strychnine" -- The Sonics -- Nuggets

God . . . I am such a geek.

And boy is this damned funny.

I do loves my ST:TOS and my NIN . . .

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So what do all those interests on my profile page look like in a visual representation?

Thanks to mcbrennan, who pointed me to the proper link, we can see after the cut.

(I had done this once before, but after trying it, and intending to go back to it later, the site was shut down for too high traffic . . .)

( My Interests Collage! )

Cat blogging in a bit.


I got back from the grocery store a little while ago to find Berit smiling -- "Guess what we forgot?"

Oh, lord. "Your mom's birthday?" (I'd forgotten my dad's earlier this Summer and B & I have been trying to help each other stay on top of these things).

"Nope."

Then it hit me. September 4. We BOTH forgot this year.

Berit Johnson and I have been together six years (and, uh, four days). Pretty much living, working, and in love together every day the whole time.

Which is over nine times as long as any relationship I'd been in previously -- I'm not an easy person to be involved with.

But then, neither is Berit, and somehow it's our mutual "problems" that help hold us together (we have them, so we put up with them in each other, so, no problem), that and our similar outlooks on life, music, humor, cats, the universe, everything (or most things). There are things we don't have in common, but we leave those to the other, and have no problem with having "apart" time as well. We have our ups and downs, of course, and little spats -- I'm sure that some people think we're The Battling Bickersons and others think we're disgustingly lovey-dovey, but in general, we care, we're in love, we're partners, and we put up with each other's prickly eccentricities.

So, it works. And we plan on keeping it working. Someday we'll get married. When we feel like it and get around to it (something else we agree on that others might not).

We may have both forgot (usually, only SHE does), but at least on this anniversary, as opposed to our first one in 2001, Berit wasn't stuck, all hopped up on Red Bull and paint fumes, in the backyard of The Connelly Theatre, painting around 80 cardboard boxes white and then stenciling black letters on them (for my production of The New Tenant in the Ionesco Festival), or something equally depressing.


Here we are four years ago in Molde, Norway:





I love you, honey.

Yup, turned out that thirteen pages of play was just too much for an LJ post.

So here's the rest of my play.

Hope you enjoy it.

Berit and I moved in together here in Gravesend in April, 2001. We'd pretty much been living together since September the year before. After we were evicted from the NADA space on Ludlow Street (where I'd been living in the basement since '98), we'd bounced from home to home for a few months, then, when I started to work for Cooper Square Realty, through the office there, we found this affordable home.

One of the next steps we planned on, once we settled in, was getting a kitten. Before we got to it on our own, something came our way.

At work one day, I got a call from Michele Schlossberg, the friend who got me the job at Cooper Square, that she was evicting a grocery store at Houston and Eldridge, and that while doing it, she had found they had a 4-week-old kitten in the store. When she asked the store owners what they were going to do with the kitten, they shrugged and just left it there.

So she called me up to see if I wanted to come get it after work, and bring it home. I was a bit worried that Berit would be upset that I had just done this without consulting her, but it was a kitten, it needed a home, and I wasn't going to say no.

So I went to the store after work, met Michele at the store, and looked around for the little guy. When we saw each other, he mewed at me, ran over, ran up my crouched body and perched himself on my shoulder, purring. We put him in a box and I took him home.

When I got there, I came in and called out to Berit, "Hey, hon, I picked something up for you at the deli!" She came out, wondering what the hell I was talking about, and opened the box to meet a beautiful little tuxedo kitten.

I had been thinking of a name on the train home, and as John Lee Hooker had died the week before (Berit's a big JLH fan), I suggested Hooker. And Berit agreed (I had also, frankly, been thinking about Bill Shatner as T.J. Hooker).


So we had Hooker . . .



Unfortunately, we never took any photos of him as a kitten, so I can't share how cute and adorable he was then with you.

Soon after, we were rehearsing the two plays I directed in the Ionesco Festival out here at the apartment, as I couldn't afford rehearsal space, and it was still mostly empty space here. We had to keep Hooker in the bathroom most of the time, as one actor was very allergic to cats, but on breaks we'd let him out to run around and go nuts as a kitten will (he enjoyed playing with Adam Swiderski in particular, as Adam was willing to put up with a lot of biting and scratching, though his hands were quite marked up by the time we opened). Unfortunately, we probably did indulge Hooker a bit too much with the "bitey-scratchy play" at that time, as it caused a few problems when he got bigger.


Especially when he decided Berit's long hair, braided or not, constituted a fun cat toy . . .



And for the first couple of years, he did swing wildly from "napping" to "cuddly" to "crazy-bad" behavior, often very suddenly.


He'd let you know when he suddenly didn't want to be petted anymore. Watch the claws . . .



But he's always been basically good, and he's allowed his fun, and to climb on some things, if not others . . .



(he always gets up there and then is suddenly confused by the concept of "ceiling")


So for the first two years he was a bit nuts, but soon after I quit my day job, and we got our second cat, Simone (aka "Moni"), he calmed down a lot . . .



Though "calm" can be relative. He also turned out to be epileptic, as I've written about before. Not fun, sometimes scary, but in the end, not a huge problem.

Moni completely bonded with Berit, and became "her" cat, so Hooker became "mine," though Berit and I both try not to reinforce this, as we both want both cats to be "ours," but they are kinda insistant on which human belongs to which cat.

So now Hooker spends a lot of his awake time demanding love and affection from me. And when he wants attention and isn't getting it, he misbehaves. He's still adorable, but mischevious.


However, his attachment to me is not always so adorable -- sometimes he demands attention when I'm trying to do something else, and he doesn't understand why I don't always consider paying attention to him more important than, say, reading a book . . .



Especially in recent weeks, his attentions have been constant and demanding. We were gone for almost 6 weeks this Summer, and since we got home, they've been all over us, all the time. If he's not sleeping (as he is right now on the chair next to me), he's following me around, yowling, and wanting to just be picked up and held by me over my shoulder like a baby (oops, he just woke up, yowled, and took up the same position on me as in the picture above, except for shoving his head into my armpit so I can't type).

Still, as Berit says when I complain about Hooker's smothering me with attention, "You love it." And, yeah, I guess I do. He's a sweet big boy, like a heavy strong teddy bear, and we're lucky to have him.


Next Friday, Hooker sleeps in the background, and we look at Moni . . .

Today has been a particularly Dylan-oriented day in one of those Dylan-oriented periods I go through from time to time. Now that the wi-fi is back, there's no reason not to blow off a quick post with a few links.


I don't have the new album,
, yet. Found a cheap place online to order it from, it's on the way. Can't wait. (well, can wait, obviously, I'm gonna have to until it gets here) I don't think it can quite mean as much to me as the last two albums of his, which both arrived exactly at a point in my life where they connected perfectly with where and who I was at the time (Time Out of Mind while I was in a period of lonely exile in Maine, "Love and Theft" immediately post 9/11/01), so not being in any period of crisis now, I don't think the new one will take over my life quite the way those did.


We watched No Direction Home recently, and I read Greil Marcus's book about, and called, Like a Rolling Stone while up in Maine (both good - I have some quibbles with the documentary's structure, but what the hell, the new interviews were good and the archive footage was amazing!). So, I'm having another DylanFest at CollisionWorkCentral as I work out a schedule for Temptation. Made up an iTunes playlist of all the Dylan I'd entered there, in chronological order (just about 7 hours worth), and when I started this post we'd just reached the title track of Slow Train Coming -- now it's "Frankie and Albert" from Good As I Been to You.


In today's websurfs, Dylan was everywhere, so here's some of it:


Jonathan Lethem interviews Dylan in Rolling Stone (only an excerpt, and the quotes have been all over the place, but fine enough if you didn't see them, and don't want to pay for an issue of Rolling Stone)


Lethem also points out great forgotten Dylan tracks (with streaming audio)


And did you know about the Bob Dylan bio-pic being made by Todd Haynes, I'm Not There, with seven actors of various races, nationalities, and gender playing different aspects of Dylan? Here're some shots of the lovely Cate Blanchett as mid-60s Bob.


And an article by Louis Menand from the new New Yorker that's somewhat of a review of a new collection of interviews with Dylan, but becomes more of a commentary on Dylan in general (pretty good, though I'm stunned by the verse he quotes from "Ballad of a Thin Man" as an example of a "bad" Dylan lyric -- I mentioned it to Berit last night after reading the article, and she agreed, "That's the best verse in the song!").


Tomorrow, cats, ten random, and Temptation.

So a bit over a month ago, I shared my blogroll in a post, as I can't do it in the LiveJournal format I prefer otherwise for my posts.

Adam Szymkowicz wondered in a comment if it was actually possible to keep on top of all those (nearly 200) blogs.  I confidently said that with Bloglines, no problem.

Then, I guess, there got to be more news or posts or something, because it did turn out to be impossible to keep on top of all those blogs.

So I whittled them down, and still added new ones (just a lot fewer heavy news text blogs that all repeat the same info).  I'll keep sharing them once a month as I find new, interesting sites and drop old repetitive ones.  I'm keeping my roll to 150 sites, tops, and if I add one, I have to find one to drop. 

I regret that I didn't do this while the humor album site entitled Milton Berle's Cock was still up and running.  It was a great site for finding downloads of out-of-print comedy albums, but had to shut down due to troll interference (and, best of all, looked great in the middle of the blogroll).   There are now a while bunch of out-of-print music sites in here that weren't before; anyone searching for interesting obscure cues for your shows, go nuts, but be warned, it's a bottomless pit of sonic possibilities.

A couple of links to things I've seen and liked recently.


My friend Jim Baker of Weehauken, NJ, Lawrence, KS, Austin TX and points West passed on an excellent article on Critical Thinking from The Skeptical Inquirer for those who either need a refresher themselves (like me), or who know someone else who could use it.


On the lighter side, there are The Official Record Store Cats.


Meanwhile, now that Steely Dan has reached some kind of detente with Owen Wilson regarding his recent career choices, they've moved on to advising director Wes Anderson about the problems they perceive in the direction his career is going.


Also, anyone have any ideas out there why I can't get Technorati to update their listing for me? They don't have any updates to this blog for the last 30 days, and it won't update no matter how many times I ping them. I thought I might be supposed to include something in the formatting for this page (not possible, I believe, with a free LiveJournal account), but I've seen indications elsewhere this isn't the case. So, any answers?


And here's a photo I took four years ago this week in Molde, Norway:





I believe Norway is now the only country which, as you can see, still has official "Noir Detective Crossing" zones.