collisionwork | Entries tagged with august 2011

Not much to blog about, or maybe too much. Still at work on my own new plays for August -- ObJects, Gone, Antrobus, and Invisible Republic #3 (which needs its own damn title but nothing has come up yet) -- as well as memorizing Mac Wellman's Terminal Hip. And keeping on top of things I'm needed for at The Iranian Theatre Festival at The Brick.

Berit and I have had a couple of useful dinner meetings to toss around the direction of ObJects and Invisible Republic #3. While I'm writing only fragments of these before going into rehearsal with the casts (once I have them), I need to understand the basic framework of each show, and the worlds they show and are, before creating them around the actors (also, I need to "see" these people in the world before I cast any actors for sure). So B and I have a diner meal (for some reason, sitting in a diner/coffee shop of some kind always works best for these meetings) and she helps pull out of me what I'm trying to do with each show, and then we throw ideas about the landscape of each play back and forth until it becomes more and more complete. Once I see the world, the characters, and the overall tone (and have some idea of the structural framework), I can bring the actors in and the incidents begin to show themselves properly.

The older plays Gone and Antrobus are more traditionally written -- Gone is finished as well; Antrobus needs a bunch of work and maybe some rethinking, but I pretty much know what it is. Gone, which I wrote from 1990-2005, is short and difficult, but now has a cast of two of my favorite actresses, Alyssa Simon and Ivanna Cullinan, which pleases me greatly. Alyssa agrees with me that the play is "impossible" but is equally excited to jump into this impossible work as I am. So with this and the nearly-as-impossible Terminal Hip, two of the five plays for August are cast and can proceed.

There have been a couple of Theater-blog-related items that have come up -- that is, debates, discussions and such in the other blogs -- that I thought of jumping in, but my blood boils easily, and my private responses thus far have tended to be merely unpleasant and unhelpful. Rather, Matt Freeman has dealt, as usual, far more fairly with the issues brought up in posts by playwright Mat Smart and CATT (Collective Arts Think Tank) and is able to express pretty much the same feelings as I without using phrases like "they should drown in their own vomit like the stinking dogs that they are." Thanks, Matt.

That's more than I've posted in a while -- my weekly postings have not been happening as they should. In any case, from now on I'd like to at least keep the weekly Random Ten going to make sure I always check in that often. Here's ten tracks out of 2,463 in the iPod playlist of songs not listened to yet on that device:

1. "The Remedies Of Dr. Brohnicoy" - The Act - The Rubble Collection 10
2. "Saigon Rainstorm" - Peter Ivers - Nirvana Peter
3. "On The Air" - Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel 2
4. "Theme From 'Run For Your Life'" - Al Hirt - download
5. "Art School" - The Jam - Direction, Reaction, Creation
6. "Direct Hit" - Art Brut - Its A Bit Complicated
7. "Thriller" - Michael Jackson - Thriller
8. "My Baby Done Told Me" - The Robins - I Must Be Dreamin'
9. "That Was My Girl" - Funkadelic - America Eats Its Young
10. "There Was a Time (live)" - James Brown - download

Here's the full video playlist for the above (with bonus track and a couple of substitutions where there were no YouTubes of the track I needed). On Facebook, this won't embed, so you can either see it at my original LiveJournal post or by going HERE.

Tonight, off to board op at The Brick again for the wonderful Something Something Über Alles. Tomorrow, same thing in the morning, then seeing my mother-in-law in the afternoon, then a party in the evening. Sunday, weekly improvisation work with David Finkelstein. Seems like a lot in between the times of figuring out what to do next.

Current Mood: worried
Current Location: Gravesend, Brooklyn
Current Music: The Lounge Lizards - "Bob and Nico" - No Pain for Cakes

Maine has been good to us, but it's time to come on home to NYC. Work to do now, and we miss the cats.

Ideas started coming for the August month of shows from Gemini CollisionWorks, and have been notated and discussed. At the current moment, the August show plans consist of one full 2-act play, ObJects, another dance-theater/text piece in the Invisible Republic series (the previous ones were about propaganda and advertising, this one will be about marketing/branding), two short pieces on a double bill -- Gone and Antrobus -- and a solo performance (by me, the only thing I'll be acting in this year) of Mac Wellman's Terminal Hip (if I can get the rights). Apart from the Wellman, I'm writing the rest -- Gone is complete, Antrobus is outlined with a tiny bit written (and, unfortunately, currently trapped on the hard drive of a broken computer), and the other two, like Spell and Everything Must Go from 2008, need to be written primarily around the cast in rehearsal. So I have dream casts written out, and will start contacting people to start work when I get back to NYC.

It's a lot, but ideas are now flowing -- Berit and I had a nice Valentine's Day dinner where I laid out what I had to her, and we batted some things back and forth and they became more clear and possible-sounding. I am sure that one point of dispute will continue, about whether or not to use real paint onstage in one show where I'd like to have someone actually painting a wall over the course of the show -- I want it done for real; Berit is bringing up, correctly, every single possible problem, and there are many, in doing it for real, none of which are, as yet dissuading me -- but we have the start of a plan of attack for the year.

A favorite of the many bloggers I read is The Self-Styled Siren, who primarily writes on classic film. She is currently co-sponsoring a blog-a-thon, For the Love of Film (Noir), and you can find the first collection of links to blogs participating HERE. A first interview between The Siren and the great noir scholar Eddie Muller preceded the blog-a-thon HERE.

Now, if you know me or my work, you know about the huge part noir has played in both for a few years now, so I'll be joining in the blogging fun in the next few days by pulling out and revamping some of the writing on noir I've done here (and elsewhere) in the past few years, with a few rewrites and new material.

I should also note that For the Love of Film Noir is being done to raise funds for The Film Noir Foundation towards the preservation of the classic noir The Sound of Fury. Previously, the FNF has preserved Cry Danger and Too Late for Tears, among other works. When I started studying noir, I was able to rent Cry Danger and The Sound of Fury (under the title Try and Get Me!) on VHS tape from Videoport here in Maine. Later, when researching World Gone Wrong up here, I found the store had gotten rid of both great films in a VHS purge, and neither was available anywhere. Too Late for Tears, an average noir with WAY above-average performances from Dan Duryea and Lizabeth Scott, I found in a terrible print on DVD in a Brooklyn library (under the title Killer Bait). The Film Noir Foundation is dedicated to tracking down, restoring, and distributing these and other films in new, beautiful 35mm prints, as well as creating new DVDs. You can see Cry Danger (restored) and Sound of Fury (not) on Netflix Instant now, but there's no preservation like a new fine-grain negative and film prints for these works. The Film Noir Foundation deserves all the support it can get, especially from those of us who regard noir as a major part of film (and Art) of the last century. You can follow the links on The Siren's page (or here in the days coming up) to donate to them.

And, before leaving, here's a Random Ten from the North from the 2,407 tracks in the "prime unheard" list in the iPod:

1. "I'm Not Living Here" - Sagittarius - Present Tense
2. "Caribou (2005 acoustic live)" - Pixies - 2005.08.06 - Newport, RI
3. "Crazy Little Thing" - Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Clear Spot
4. "Anywhere I Lay My Head" - Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
5. "New Electric Ride" - Captain Beefheart - Unconditionally Guaranteed
6. "Another Country's Young" - The Gun Club - In Exile
7. "Groove A Little" - T.Rex - Dandy In The Underworld
8. "(You're Gonna) Wreck My Life" - Q'65 - Nederbeat The B-Sides 3
9. "Final Solution" - Rocket From The Tombs - Rocket Redux
10. "Dust My Broom" - Ike & Tina Turner - Bold Soul Sister

And here's an embedded playlist of most of the above, or something similar (unless you're seeing this on Facebook), with an extra one to grow on . . .

And while we can't upload the pictures we took here in Maine before we go, we were sent regular photos of our cats from the Fantastic Mr. Enk, who looked after our little beloved monsters while we were up here. Though sometimes the photos made us miss them more, as when Hooker just looks so very sad . . .

Same with Moni . . .

Bryan did once catch them together waking up as he came in . . .

Okay, getting late, and I need to get sleep in before driving over 6.5 hours in the morning . . .

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Portland, ME
Current Music: Toni Basil - "Hanging Around" - Word of Mouth

Away from here too long again. As mentioned last time, it's that slow time of the year where we're researching, thinking, and fishing for ideas about our year to come. So Berit plays games and waits for me to ask questions or make statements in between long stretches of me reading books, writing bits of dialogue that come to mind, or staring into space and trying to find the central, real idea that will coalesce these disparate fragmentary notions dancing around my head into an actual show or shows. When I come out with something, Berit can respond with her take on it and send me off into a more focused realm.

Nothing much has happened yet. I have a list of shows to potentially work on for August -- a new Invisible Republic dance-theatre piece; Gone; Antrobus; Terminal Hip; and Objects (or obJECTS or ObJECTS or (ob)/JECTS or whatever silly way I could try to indicate that the stress should be on the second syllable. I was thinking of working on NECROPOLIS 4: Green River, which is actually written, as well, but it's not feeling like the right year -- I'm trying to do smaller, shorter "chamber" pieces with casts of 1 to 8 or 9 actors, tops, and Green River is a large-cast piece.

I could, and maybe should, be focusing on the shows that are further along in creation, but right now I'm still trying to find the central point of Objects, as that's most interesting to me right now, even though I'm not at all certain what "that" is. I have a giant stack of plays by Bernard Shaw from the library to read as research for this, as somehow that seems important, but I have no idea why.

We'll take all the materials away with us to our little "retreat" up in Maine (and, it appears, another, shorter one in Croton-on-Hudson) in February and walk around and study them more in depth. Ideas seem to come better away from home, for some reason.

Some things do show up here -- now that I keep a notebook by the bed, I'm catching more things I would have missed once. I woke up really early after very little sleep today, and was lying there drifting in and out of a vague dream state, when an eight-line lyric came to me that needed to be sung by a chorus in Objects (and I didn't know there'd be a "chorus" in the show until then), so I quickly wrote it down (I won't repeat it here as it would just seem repetitive, vulgar, and silly without music or staging) before forgetting it. Good. For years I didn't bother with a notebook by the bed for such ideas, thinking that anything good that came to me in the half-dream state where I get my best ideas would come back to me when awake, and I've probably lost half of the good ideas in that stubbornness. Not letting that happen again . . .

The next two days, I'm back in work with David Finkelstein, or rather, tomorrow we work -- more improvisation that he videotapes in front of a green screen so he can create his lovely video art pieces around them -- and Sunday evening, David will be screening three of his videos (one featuring me) and one by the legendary Mike Kuchar. There's info HERE.

Images here from David's Marvelous Discourse, which was created from the same text as, and used in, my production Sacrificial Offerings.

And from the 2,529 songs in the "unheard, but should be heard" playlist in the iPod, a Random Ten for the day . . .

1. "Wig-Wam Bam" - Sweet - Sweet Originals: The Best 37 Glam Rock Songs Ever
2. "New York I Love You" - LCD Soundsystem - Mix Disk - Dad
3. "Big Yellow Taxi" - Joni Mitchell - Ladies of the Canyon
4. "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" - B.B. King - King Of The Blues
5. "The Hustler" - The Sonics - Psycho-Sonic
6. "Maybe He'll Know" - Cyndi Lauper - True Colors
7. "There Is A Ghost" - Marianne Faithfull - Before The Poison
8. "Look Good In Blue" - Blondie - Blondie
9. "It's Not Fair" - The Electric Prunes - Lost Dreams
10. "(I'll Love You) Till The End Of The World" - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Until The End Of The World

Nice list, and for two weeks in a row I've been able to find a version of the song on YouTube for nine of them, so here they all are in a big embedded playlist (unless you're reading this on Facebook):

And as for new cat photos . . . here's Hooker from last night at the other end of the couch, trying to get my attention:

Here's what happens when Berit picks up Moni, and the little dummy just keeps walking, and winds up on B's back:

And here's what happens when Berit vacates her chair for just a moment to go to the kitchen to get something to drink, seeing this when she gets back:

And here's one from just a short time ago, as Hooker decided he had to sit on my shoulder for a while and help me write this entry . . .

Okay, back to some kind of dreaming . . . and wow, the snow that was covering our back patio when I started writing this has pretty much vanished already!

Current Mood: restless
Current Location: Gravesend
Current Music: The Ramones - "Carbona Not Glue" - Leave Home

The start of a new year, after a great and difficult last year.

And a while since I wrote here -- Xmas away, blizzard slowdown and hunker-down, and general lack of things to report kept me away. Xmas was great, the blizzard was lousy, the staying in from the blizzard was actually nice, and the lack of things makes me antsy.

The antsy-ness is leading to writing, a bit at least. I have a shortlist of plays I'd like to do in August, more than I could do, but I'm starting work on all to some extent, expecting some to fall away quickly so I wind up with just the shows I should be doing.

On the list now are Mac Wellman's play Terminal Hip, which I've begun memorizing (it's usually done as a monologue, as I'd do, and it will be the only thing I act in of my shows this year, if I can actually get the complicated 45-minute piece stuck in my head); my own play Gone, which I posted in two parts HERE and HERE, but I'm not sure I can get two actresses able to memorize that complicated one (David Finkelstein thinks it would be no problem, so I guess I'll give it a try); another original I've been working on for a few years called Antrobus, which isn't done (and what I have seems to be stuck on he hard drive of a currently un-boot-up-able computer), but would be on a bill with the also-short Gone; the next in the ongoing NECROPOLIS series, number 4, Green River, which is basically a long-form music video for the stage, following a couple of young fugitives in love across the country; the next Invisible Republic dance-theatre piece, which will be about Product Research and Branding (the previous two being about Propaganda and Advertising, so we're still in the same range); and a new original piece, provisionally titled Objects, which is what I'm mainly working on now.

Again, only four of these, tops, will make it to the stage this year, and, luckily, all of them are fairly small and uncomplicated, cast-wise, as well as being short -- unlike last year, where we found that producing 2 giant shows can kick our asses far more than four small-to-large shows. Each still presents its own problems for me to overcome, mostly as a director, so right now I'm concentrating on the writing of Objects, which, like Spell in 2008, I'll probably finalize writing in rehearsal around the actors. And while I have some dialogue right now, I'm waiting for characters and situations to make themselves known. All I know at this point is that somehow it feels to me like a cross between the plays of Shaw and side one of The Firesign Theatre's How Can You Be In Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All, and I'm not even sure what THAT means. But it's a start.

So that's the work for the moment. More on them soon.

And from the 2,525 songs in the special "not-heard-yet" playlist in the iPod, here's a Random Ten for the Week . . .

1. "Travelling Lady" - Manfred Mann - Chapter Three
2. "Trouser Press" - The Bonzo Dog Band - The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse
3. "All You Ever Think About Is Sex" - Sparks - The Best Of Sparks
4. "All or Nothing" - Small Faces - Iron Leg Blog
5. "I Lie Awake" - The New Colony Six - Breakthrough
6. "Down The Dolce Vita" - Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel 1
7. "Cornfed Dames" - The Cramps - A Date With Elvis
8. "Ever Present Past" - Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full
9. "Po' Boy" - Bob Dylan - "Love and Theft"
10. "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted?" - Baby Washington - Atlantic Unearthed: Soul Sisters

Aw, man! Almost reached my goal of a Random ten where I could find all of the songs on YouTube -- that last, obscure Baby Washington cover blew it. Oh, well, here's the full playlist, plus bonus track . . .

Enjoying my new digital SLR recently -- it's a bit better than the point-and-shoot we have, but the main advantage is the ease with which I can manually set f-stop/shutter speed/"film speed," as well as have it automatically bracket every shot I take. Of course, since the snow shots I took, the main focus has been, as always, the cats. Here's Moni enjoying their Christmas Box: