collisionwork: (prisoner)
I am close to being able to actually start rehearsals for Spacemen from Space and Devils -- the first should be starting on Sunday and the second on Tuesday. It's been taking forever to get these going, mainly in the casting. Also with the Wedding, we got a late start, and the time I was expecting to be spending on finishing the script for Spacemen keeps being grabbed for casting/scheduling purposes.

So I'm trying to finish that script, and writing this entry in another window during those bits when I get blocked (while in a third window, I have the DVD included in Laurie Anderson's new album Homeland playing -- I'm not sure about the album yet, only heard it once, but it's very sad, beautiful, and depressing . . . mournful . . . and I need to hear it more. I do know I like it better than her last, Life on a String, which was elegantly produced and performed and very very boring).

So, I'm just doing a Random Ten when the DVD ends, as background so I can keep writing lines for Spacemen like "Come on, Chickie, I been workin’ with you for years, and if there was a Pulitzer for 'being tied up in various stages of undress by heathen agents of an unscrupulous foreign government,' you’da been the unchallenged winner six years running!" With my luck, I'll just get into a rhythm in the scriptwriting just as I have to leave for The Brick today (I'm supervising a tech and then the Game Play cabaret this evening). Tomorrow, I don't have anything except some auditions in the late afternoon, so maybe I'll be left alone to work for most of the day.

Oh, right, I was supposed to do the press releases today, too. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

In any case, now a Random Ten for the week (with links to YouTubes of the track or something closely related). Once again, rather than break an iPod playlist I'm in the middle of enjoying, I'll grab stuff from the "Recently Acquired" playlist in the iTunes . . .

1. "Little Geisha Girl" - Hank Locklin - Trashcan 1: Exotica Special

(actually, a YouTube check shows that the song I'm hearing ISN'T Hank Locklin, who did a completely different song called "Geisha Girl," which I'm linking to - no idea who this is)
2. "Gold of the Proud Ones" - Luis Enrique Bacalov - Spaghetti Westerns, Volume 3
3. "You Got Me Dizzy" - Jimmy Reed - The Real Blues Brothers
4. "Tradimento" - Ennio Morricone - Allonsanfan
5. "Never Tear Us Apart" - Beck & Friends - Record Club 4: Kick
6. "Once I Loved (O Amor En Paz)" - Frank Sinatra & Jobim - Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim
7. "Wake Up" - XTC - The Big Express
8. "All About You" - The Bangles - All Over The Place
9. "Her Loving Way" - Gaylon Ladd - Die Today: 60's Garage USA
10. "Hush Hush" - Jimmy Reed - The Real Blues Brothers

And the full video playlist of the above (for those looking at this on LiveJournal):



Okay, I'm refreshed. Back to work . . .

collisionwork: (red room)
So a short, late weekly notice, as Berit and I have been entrenched in casting, or pretty much REcasting the two August shows.

As usual, we started work on the shows with a dream cast of people we knew in our heads. Usually, we only wind up getting 2/3rds to 3/4th of our dream cast, but that's fine, we cast others and move on. We're often in touch with our ideal group early on, but no one can ever commit until the couple of months before the shows. That's when we suddenly discover who we DON'T have for the shows.

Well, this year was one of those times (like with World Gone Wrong in 2007) where we discover, after getting the June show out of the way and moving on, that we are, in fact, short of the vast majority of the actors we need - which with two shows that have casts of 21 (Spacemen from Space) and 26 or 27 (Devils, depending on how I double the actors) means a LOT of seriously fast casting.

So word went out, and a general casting notice went up, and we've been doing auditions to an extent we normally don't, and which I'm not that fond of. Luckily, it's working out okay - mostly good people we'd love to use (with the usual frustrations of also seeing really good actors who are completely wrong for anything in the shows). We still haven't seen anyone for a few of the parts, but by the end of tomorrow, I think we'll be fine.

But I'm tired and need to get some sleep before the 8 solid hours of auditioning tomorrow, so I'll leave it at that.

Except of course for the Random Ten. But since I don't want to disturb the iPod playlist I've been using in the car on the way to and from the theatre, I'll do a Random Ten today from the "Recently Acquired" playlist in the iTunes on the computer. This is the playlist made up of all the music I've been gathering, much of which I've never listened to, that I'm trying to catch up on, bit by bit. Currently, this playlist consists of 9,936 tracks and lasts almost 22 days. I sometimes get to listen to up to 6 hours of it while working of an evening, but I've never seen it descend past 15 days long. Well, at least I'm trying to catch up with it. Here's what I get tonight . . .

1. "Put It Where You Want It" - The Crusaders - All Day Thumbsucker Revisited: The History Of Blue Thumb Records
2. "Town by the River" - The Units - History of The Units
3. "Holiday Ring Mold" - Katie's Kitchen - Holiday Freakout
4. "Floyd The Barber [KAOS 87]" - Nirvana - The Chosen Rejects: Broadcasts
5. "random pop" - Various Artists - The Conet Numbers Project
6. "Been Teen" - Dolly Mixture - A Reference Of Female Fronted Punk Rock 1977-89
7. "Step Lightly" - Ringo Starr - Ringo
8. "The Female Smuggler" - Rasputina - Ancient Cross-Dressing Songs
9. "I Think I'll Just Go And Find Me A Flower" - Moorpark Intersection - Soft Sounds For Gentle People: Vol. 1
10. "Telephoning Home" - Wreckless Eric - Wreckless Eric

And here's a playlist of nine of the tracks above (or something as close as I could find):



Now to go off to bed, after looking over the scripts of Spacemen from Space and Devils to remind myself of how much I love them and why I go through the hassle of making this stuff.

collisionwork: (kwizatz hadarach)
Busy and satisfying week, for the most part.

Between Sunday and yesterday, Berit and I auditioned 17 actresses for the 7 female roles we had to refill in the four August shows (and we saw one man for one of the 5 male roles in one of them, Sacrificial Offerings, and he was good for one of the parts, so, great).

We saw a lot of good people, and have wound up with a list of people to ask, though I'm waiting a bit on informing them as Berit is still asleep, and I want to have one last discussion with her before I send out the "we want you for the part, do you want it?" emails.

For two of the parts, in two different plays, there were four different women who were all REALLY good for the part, in wildly different ways. I think B & I decided on who we most wanted for Lyuba Kovalevskaya in Little Piece of the Sun, but there was a time yesterday when we were weighing three different actresses and Berit was saying, "I wish we could have a combo of bits of the qualities of all three." But (I think) we went for a way that was VERY different from the way we originally cast the role, as well as the way it was originally cast and played back in 2001.

And I also have to wait until B is up to hash out who we want for "The Mistress" in Blood on the Cat's Neck. Again, a wealth of choices for that part, of vastly different types.

I may just email the two women we want for The Brundi Twins in George Bataille's Bathrobe right now -- we know who they are . . . okay (he typed a half-hour later), they've been emailed.

Now I'm in a holding pattern on emailing people, as the next steps are dependent on the first answers I get -- as in, if the first people I ask to play one of the Brundis from George Bataille's Bathrobe and Lyuba in Little Piece say no, then I have to move around the people playing The Model and The Mistress in Blood on the Cat's Neck to other shows/parts to get the mix right. Let's hope for all the first choices being on board . . .

Wow, everything seems to be going fine and full-bore ahead on the shows . . . B & I are just waiting for the other shoe . . . ANY other shoe . . . to drop.

Yesterday was a nice big 14-hour day at The Brick for B & I, but work was done and shows were seen, and the two sellout/near sellout house we had were good and easy to get in and deal with. Berit's on duty again tonight, and I'm hoping she'll be okay with me staying home.

And as for this week's Random Ten from the 25,596 tracks in the iPod (nothing has changed there for a while, no time to keep clearing the thing out and refilling it, though I have an iTunes playlist of 322 to put on there once I clear out some dross), here it is . . .

1. "Tacoma Trailer" - Leonard Cohen - The Future
2. "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" - Esquivel - Four Corners Of The World
3. "I Need You" - Eurythmics - Savage
4. "I've Been Crying" - Tommy Louis - Lost Deep Soul Treasures 3
5. "Mucha Muchacha" - Esquivel - Space Age Bachelor Pad Music
6. "Met a Girl on the Corner" - The Orchids - A Taste of Doo Wop Vol.1
7. "53 Miles West Of Venus" - The B-52's - Wild Planet
8. "Yeh-Yeh!" - Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames - Mod & Beyond
9. "Ain't Gonna Worry About You" - George Tinley & The Modern Redcaps - Club Au-Go-Go 6
10. "Reject" - Green Day - Nimrod

Well, that was an odd collection of pop songs that for some reason could all sound kinda mournful and elegiac on a cloudy Friday morn, following a long week and a whole bunch of surprising deaths that probably shouldn't have been (surprising, that is), which now lead to me dumping a TON of video on y'all.

Well, Michael Jackson is gone.

I can't pretend immense fandom of his work, but I can damn well support the more-than-a-handful of brilliant, timeless pop singles he created and co-created, which (I hope) will long outlast what anyone knows or claims to know about his life.

I was only going to post two videos of him that are the way I'd prefer to remember him, but some Facebook comments came up on the man that I wanted to mention.

Scott Williams noted, summing up my feelings quite well, that he was "getting sick, both of the bathetic sentiment slobbering wetly across the media and facebook over the recent death of certain talented (but increasingly irrelevant) people, and over the mean-spirited (but mostly humorless) haters who think that acting like they don't care shows their "rebellious" side. If you're gonna be a hater, you gotta learn to be witty, too, or you just look like an asshole." (Scott notes later he was also referring to Farrah and Ed McMahon with this).

And an old friend of mine, who I won't name, comes close to being in the latter category, but JUST not quite, when she notes that she "understands the 'MJ as life soundtrack' thing for some folks but she was listening to P- Funk, The Who and the Clash. And the pedophile thing was a turn off. Sorry, but there it is."

So I wrote a response to her and then didn't have the balls to post it directly to her on Facebook (I'm too Scandinavian at heart to deal with conflict I don't have to), though I surprised myself with being so red with anger:

You seem to be on the edge of a false dichotomy here, XXXXX. Some of us were listing to MJ, and all of the above you named, and a lot more, and whatever else, and a lot more whatever else. One does not preclude the other. And I sure as hell don't see his hideousness (which goes beyond "issues") being ignored anywhere, we're all well aware of it (though, hey, anyone remember the anti-semitic lyrics he wrote and got in trouble for at one point? "so-called chosen, frozen?" yeah, that seems to have vanished down the memory hole . . .)
UPDATE: D'OH! Speaking of memory holes . . . Daniel McKleinfeld points out on Facebook that I am misremembering my anti-semitic remark controversies -- it was PUBLIC ENEMY that had the "so-called chosen, frozen" lyric . . . MJ had the "jew me, sue me" lyric . . . ick . . . that's what I get for not listening to the little voice in my head that was saying I was making a mistake here . . .

And lots of personal things (about even some of the artists you name) were as big turn-offs -- look into the life of Keith Moon, which sure as hell isn't all good-natured fun as often presented, for a long list of unforgivable, immoral and criminal behavior. Or how about Mr. Peter Townshend's collection of child pornography?

Or the actually-convicted-of-crime geniuses that are Ike Turner, James Brown, Arthur Lee, and Chuck Berry, to name a few (where are the white folks? do they get off with a slap on the wrist and "boys will be boys" when they do hideous things? like Keith Moon did?).

But I will listen to "I'll Be There" and "Billie Jean" with as much pleasure as I do "Rocket 88" or "I Can See for Miles" or "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" or "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks" or "Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing" (or for that matter "Song for Michael Jackson to $ell"). Sorry, but there it is.

His main criminal act for me personally was becoming artistically irrelevant the older he got, but then so do a LOT of artists.

Two other comments sum up much of my feelings on this, a balanced view from Matt Zoller Seitz and a fairly negative one from music critic Chris Morris which discusses the basic coldness and hollowness of even Jackson's better work (h/t Jim Emerson). In this, I agree with Morris' observations, but not necessarily his conclusions (I believe that "warmth" and "fullness" are nice things to have in art, but by no means automatic virtues, nor the absence of them automatic debits). And Crooks and Liars posts two amazing comparison videos of The Jackson 5 doing "I Want You Back" on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1970 and (unfortunately, a brief fragment) at Madison Square Garden in 2001.

And of course, The Onion has its own last word.

And - spending more time on the man than I would have ever thought myself caring to, and probably more than I've ever spent before all put together - here's three videos of MJ in ways I'd like to remember him, from Free To Be... You and Me (with Roberta Flack), the famous (and yes, COLD) performance from the Motown 25th Anniversary show, and a fan-made video that puts together the vocal tracks on "I'll Be There" with a TV lipsync of the song . . .





As for Farrah . . . I actually missed a lot of her cultural impact. For some reason, though I watched endless hours of bad 70s TV, Charlie's Angels never actually made it in there (at least while FF was on the show; I think I watched it in later seasons). I remember her instead, and happily so, from The Burning Bed, Extremities and Myra Breckinridge, the latter of which is one of those "bad" films I will defend tooth & nail, in which FF plays an apparently dumb blonde, who winds up with more layers than the title character figures on, and whose humanity and kindness winds up shaming Myra into realizing how cruel she has been . . .




Also gone, a man whose music is quite a bit closer to me than MJ's was, and who had his own odd and famous (to his cult audience) problems, Mr. Sky Saxon, lead singer of the great band The Seeds:



And as for Ed McMahon, let's end on a laugh . . . a piece of video that makes me crack up every single time I see it . . .



collisionwork: (boring)
Well, here it is, later June, and the August shows are under way, and I'm back to casting bits of them, as always.

Besides the two dancers for George Bataille's Bathrobe that I've been trying to cast for a while (or rather, HAVE cast twice and then had to recast), I now have three other parts in two plays where actors have had to leave for more lucrative jobs that have come up. So here I am, trying to write this entry in between sending out emails setting up audition times to around 30 actresses that have been recommended to me by trusted friends and collaborators (and a few that came from a public posting of my email to friends that got out by accident, but it's okay).

I understand, of course, people having to leave my shows for better-paying gigs . . . I can't pay more than transportation for rehearsals and performances, plus promise a split of profits, if any (there are NEVER any - only three of my sixty shows have shown even around $100 profit at most - I ALWAYS lose money on them). And sometimes I'm slow on paying back the transportation (I still owe over half the performers from 2008's shows their money -- the unexpected huge costume expenditure on Ambersons ate up over half the year's planned budget).

Still, it's frustrating to feel like a "safety school," that my work is the work you do until something bigger comes along. It is, after all, my work, and it IS what I do first and foremost. I can't begrudge people who leave for a job with a salary, or an Equity Card, or more exposure, but I can feel hurt anyway.

And, of course, it's hard to cast this year's shows in any case -- the Foreman is fairly abstract and hard to make out on the page what the hell it is, the Fassbinder is all wonky and doesn't read well either, no one's seen David's & my script (now called Sacrificial Offerings), but I'm sure that will simply confuse people as well, and Little Piece has such graphic descriptions of serial killings and deaths by radiation that some people are just too disgusted by it to want to do it. Great.

Well, 30 women and a man have got notices from me about the 4 shows, I have two auditions set up already, and time put aside all next week. Hope I get what I'm looking for. Well, I always do, or close to it . . .

Anyway, back in the iPod, here's today's Friday Random Ten tracks from out of the 25,596 on there (with more actual links to YouTube versions of the songs than usual!):

1. "Saturday Night, Stay At Home" - Suburban Reptiles - Saturday Night, Stay At Home 7"
2. "Glad I've Got Nobody" - David Bowie - Early On (1964-1966)
3. "Sole Spento" - Caterina Casselli - Rato's Nostalgia Collection 9
4. "You Better Get a Better" - The Beatstalkers - Decca Originals: The Freakbeat Scene (1964-1968)
5. "Do You Love Me?" - The Sonics - !!!Here Are The Sonics!!!
6. "Bible School" - Delinquents - The Master Tape
7. "What If?" - Bongwater - The Power Of Pussy
8. "Single Girl, Married Girl" - The Carter Family - Anthology Of American Folk Music, Vol. 3A: Songs
9. "Stranded In Time" - The United States Of America - The American Metaphysical Circus
10. "Ocean" - Sebadoh - Single (remix)

And now it's 35 people who've gotten the notices, and 5 auditions are arranged for Sunday/Monday. Back to more emails out . . .

collisionwork: (star trek)
Today, B & I have pretty much nothing to do. This is her first day off in weeks and weeks, and she's spending most of it passed out and recovering from illness. I am spending it awake, and in the middle of illness. And sending out lots and lots of casting emails. 30 so far. Waiting to hear back from the "first wave" before I move on to the second, if I need to.

Yesterday, I ran lights for 3800 Elizabeth. Here's what I needed by the light board to get me through it:
Light Board & Supplies

(that's tea in the cup)

So, made it through that, feeling only a bit feverish and uncomfortable by the end. As long as I keep up with the Advil and Robitussin, I seem to hold the worst of the symptoms at bay.

Maybe I can find some good and inspirational movies to watch. In the meantime, here's a couple of Star Wars-geeky videos that have come up by chance today in various surfs around.

Now behind a cut for easier loading . . . )



Enjoy.

collisionwork: (Default)
Supposed to be the last night of shooting on Daniel's DV short last night, but it took longer than anticipated, it was very cold, and I got worn out -- or whatever you call it when you do enough takes in the cold that you can't think straight anymore and begin to forget where you are entirely when "Action" is called ("wait, what? why am I standing on this stoop? why am I holding a scarf in this hand? why is there bright light on me?").

So we're coming back tonight to do the one-shots of me in the kitchen scene, which are all that remain, but which will probably require many many takes of me slowly going crazy, at varied levels of incremental looniness.

Not many pictures from last night - my camera battery died early on (maybe from the cold), and I was in most of the shots, but I got a couple. Here's the reverse angle in the basement scene, after the Director of the slasher movie calls cut and we see the ultra low-rent production (as Sally McKleinfeld and Jenny Tavis get onscreen cameos as boom and camera operators, joining Michele Schlossberg as Production Manager):
Fake Crew In The Basement

And here's Daniel and Sally getting Michele's entrance onto the stoop, right before my camera battery went out:
On The Stoop

Came home to more and more casting worries. I can cast just about all of the roles in my own four shows except for one major one in Ambersons that I may have no one for (I thought I'd have someone, but it looks to not be working out). This is really good and I should be happier, but that one part frustrates me. I saw plenty of good people at my auditions, and more good women than I have parts for, but NO ONE at all right for this part. I've got some time, but I'm a month behind where I want to be (if still a month ahead of where I usually am).

And Penny Dreadful, which of course is what's coming up immediately, is having bigger casting worries. As Berit says, I need to just calm down and keep working, it'll work out fine (a lie, really, it works out fine maybe 87% of the time. maybe.). Yeah, I just want to get it right. The idea this year was to get everything done much MUCH more in advance than I'd ever done before, and it's getting to be just much more.

Which reminds me - I've been so worried about the rest of the casting that I've been neglecting getting Harry in Love, which is fully cast, in motion. Two of the cast members are still busy on other projects, I think, and can't do anything right now, but I should be checking in with all of them . . .


Meanwhile, back in the iPod (25,154 songs), here's what comes up as I write:

1. "A Man and a Woman" - Sir Julian - Ultra-Lounge 11: Organs in Orbit
2. "That's Why They Call 'Em Moms" - Peer Pressure - S/T 7" EP
3. "I'm Free" - The Who - 09/29/69 Amazing Journey Live at Concertgebouw Amsterdam
4. "Take Me Just As I Am" - Lynn Collins - James Brown's Funky People (Part 1)
5. "Anna (live)" - Arthur Alexander - In Their Own Words - at The Bottom Line
6. "Butsi" - Las Comadrejas - We Are Ugly But... We Have The Music
7. "Suzie-Q" - The Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones No. 2
8. "Monsieur Dupont" - Sandie Shaw - Those Classic Golden Years 04
9. "Good Gin Blues" - Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band - mix disk from my Dad
10. "Shortnin' Bread" - The Fabulous Playboys - Lost Legends of Surf Guitar

A pretty laid-back, relaxing mix. Nice.

The cats have been little darlings recently, especially Hooker, who won't leave me alone and just wants hugs and affection all the time. Usually when I'm trying to type on here, or make notes in a show notebook, or read some research material. Not a good combo. Finally got some new shots of them, though.

Hooker on the windowsill, for once not interested in my attention:
Hooker on Sill

And Moni on the couch, wanting a bellyrub from Berit:
Moni Wants Bellyrub

And both of them, curled up on the bed, almost under the pile of scripts and show notebooks I was coming in to get:
Nap with Scripts

Finally, ladies and germs, please welcome Mr. Trav S.D. to the blogosphere with his new home in the orthicon tube, Travalanche!

collisionwork: (music listening)
Out most of the day helping out on Cat's Cradle, which opened tonight, though I really wanted to be at home dealing with my own shows, which still need casting attention that I've been behind on as I've been helping out on other peoples' things. Sent out a bulk email quickly to 17 people who had expressed interest in the shows before I left, came home after running box for the show to 11 responses in my inbox, and have been making appointments. Now have 4 confirmed for times tomorrow, Sunday, and Tuesday.

No kitty pictures again this week. Need to spend time and get some good ones. Snow pictures and videos of the day coming up in a separate post. Tired . . . just want to list the songs playing and put up the photos.

Here's what's coming up out of 24,354 in the iPod today . . .

1. "Cherry & Raquel" - Igo Kanter & William Loose - Cherry, Harry & Raquel
2. "Break Time" - Dick Dale - Surfer's Guitar
3. "English Civil War" - The Clash - Give 'Em Enough Rope
4. "Bloodstains" - Agent Orange - Bloodstains 7" EP
5. "Dead Spot" - John Zorn & Naked City - Grand Guignol
6. "A Mellow Mood" - Floyd Morris - Soulin' vol. 1
7. "Listen to the Lyrics of This Song" - The Shoes - Nederbeat The B-Sides 1
8. "A Horse With No Name" - America -Those Classic Golden Years 08
9. "Elevator Man" - Kaleidoscope - Side Trips
10. "Let Her Go Into the Darkness" - Jonathan Richman - You Must Ask the Heart

Next, an annoyingly image-intense photo and video entry to make those with slow computers curse . . .

collisionwork: (Ambersons microphone)
Berit got on one of her up-all-night schedules, and has rehearsal early tomorrow, so she stayed up as long as she could (29 hours or so straight) until crashing - now I have the nice computer so I can do this, while at the same time fixing up some cat photos in Photoshop, printing out out a copy of the cut-down Harry in Love script, and punching holes in the just-printed-out Magnificent Ambersons script.

Yeah, we made a start-of-several-projects run to Staples today for paper, inkjet cartridges, binders, pens, sharpies, notebooks, mechanical pencils and the other supplies we need at this point in great volume. Also got the car's tires rotated and wheels aligned. Good productive stuff.

Oh, and listening to the random ten for Friday on the iPod (22,680 songs):

1. "Be True To Your School" - The Beach Boys - Greatest Hits
2. "Universal" - Blur - The Great Escape
3. "Mrs. Gillespie's Refrigerator" - Sands - Listen to the Sky: The Complete Recordings 1964-1969
4. "Honest With Me" - Bob Dylan - Love & Theft
5. "Once I Had You" - The Carrie Nations - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
6. "Are You Happy" - Primitive Radio Gods - Rocket
7. "Pleasant Valley Sunday" - Johnny Dresden - New, Clear Music
8. "Danny Boy" - Johnny Cash - Man In Black 1963-69
9. "Suspiria (Main Title)" - Goblin - The Goblin Collection 1975-1989
10. "A Change Is Gonna Come" - Sam Cooke - Portrait Of A Legend 1951-1964

So two other people have joined in (besides Timothy Reynolds) on Ambersons - Walter Brandes as Uncle Jack and Shelley Ray as Lucy, and I'm reading someone for George on Sunday - I have a good feeling about that, too. Still waiting to hear from the Isabel and Aunt Fanny I've asked. Waiting on asking more people as the rest of the group depends on the casting of these first roles. Have to get the rest of the people on Harry In Love, too - currently have Josephine Cashman, Ken Simon, and Walter Brandes (again), need two others. Have good ideas for one person, nothing at all for the other . . .

Last Merry Mount on Sunday - have the understudy for that, which is great. Seeing Bitch Macbeth tomorrow night (finally!). Then things are pretty open for me to get my shows together.

Though I will be directing the Penny Dreadful episode for March. And Berit will be dealing with Aaron Baker's live sitcom at The Battle Ranch, 3800 Elizabeth, and house managing the several weeks of UTC#61 shows at Walkerspace as well as making props for Edward Einhorn's adaptation of Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle playing in those weeks.

So we'll be busy, no question.

Oh, right, almost forgot . . . cat pictures . . . Hooker ponders (on Berit's foot) . . .
Hooker Ponders

Moni ponders (on the couch) . . .
Moni Ponders

Moni continues to ponder (about the window) while Hooker has come to a decision in his pondering: He wants a belly rub . . .
H&M Relax

collisionwork: (comic)
I'm in an odd mood. Kinda up, kinda depressed.


It's looking like it will be impossible to extend Ian W. Hill's Hamlet at all (actor schedules), so these 4 performances may be it until sometime far off in the distant future. At least 2008, maybe more if I want to bring back the Equity actors, as I think I have to wait 18 months before I can use them again in this under a Showcase code again. Damn. The most expensive show I've ever done, some of the most stress and hard work, and that's it. Four shows. Damn. Maybe I can work it out. But almost certainly not. Damn.


August is shaping up, though. It looks to indeed be parts 1-4 of the NECROPOLIS series and Marc Spitz's The Hobo Got Too High. I got some nice emails from Marc today about doing his play, which were very encouraging and full of praise for my original production in 2000, so I feel good about that. That's good.

But I still need to recast a whole fistful of people from World Gone Wrong - not so much a problem, but some people who were both originally in that and in one or more of the other shows going up have said they only have time to do one of the shows, and so I'll have to recast even more of the other shows than anticipated. So it goes, but it gets me down a bit.


So, to cheer up, more movie watching tonight. I got through the Nic Roeg films yesterday as planned, but didn't get to the Godard films. Maybe I will a bit later. I needed something else first, something that will always put me in a good mood.

So I've put on one of my favorite guilty pleasure films, Patrick Swayze in Road House.

However, to attempt to make it less of a "guilty" pleasure, and as I'm replacing the planned Godard films, I am watching it with the French dub track turned on and English subtitles. Wow, it's an Art Film!


Maybe after this, I'll move on to Contempt, but for now, I'm enjoying the antics of Swayze, Ben Gazzara, and Sam Elliott en francais.

collisionwork: (GCW Seal)
I have got my full cast for Ian W. Hill's Hamlet. I've been very busy with that, planning the lights for Rachel Cohen's upcoming piece at The Brick, and other Brick work, just keeping the theatre in shape.


I am very, very happy. This cast is a great company of actors I've worked with over the last ten years:


Gyda Arber -- Elsinore Attendant/Norwegian Captain/English Ambassador
Aaron Baker -- Francisco/Player/Sailor/Priest
Peter Bean -- Reynaldo/First Player
Danny Bowes -- Elsinore Attendant/Gravedigger/Fortinbras Soldier
Maggie Cino -- Elsinore Attendant/Woman with Gravedigger/Fortinbras Soldier
Edward Einhorn -- Guildenstern/Fortinbras Soldier
Bryan Enk -- Polonius/Fortinbras
Stacia French -- Gertrude
Jessi Gotta -- Ophelia/Fortinbras Soldier
Ian W. Hill -- Hamlet
Rasheed Hinds -- Horatio
Carrie Johnson -- Marcella
Christiaan Koop -- Voltimand
Jerry Marsini -- Claudius
Daniel McKleinfeld -- Rosencrantz/Fortinbras Soldier
Roger Nasser -- Elsinore Attendant/Osric
Ken Simon -- Bernardo/Player/First Sailor
Adam Swiderski -- Laertes/Player


These are people I've worked with anywhere from once before to long-standing collaborators.

I'm really happy to have Peter Brown (now "Peter Bean" thanks to Equity) here -- he was in my first full NYC production ten years ago to the month from when we open -- Richard Foreman's Egyptology (my head was a sledgehammer). This will be the 17th production I've directed him in. Not the record, though -- it's #18 for both Bryan Enk and Christiaan Koop.

And my first-ever NYC production at all (also June, 1997, as part of the first ForemanFest I produced at NADA) was a staged-reading of Foreman's Lava featuring myself with Edward Einhorn and Daniel Kleinfeld (now "Daniel McKleinfeld" thanks to marriage), so I also have the first two people I directed professionally back with me in this.

While having to wait around The Brick to meet people recently, I've had a chance to spend time blocking things out and working on my performance, which I was a hair unsteady on. I don't feel unsteady anymore. Thus far I've rewatched a number of other Hamlets -- Laurence Olivier, Maximillian Schell, Innokenti Smoktunovsky, Derek Jacobi, Kevin Kline -- and thus far I haven't at all been cowed or made to feel not-up-to-it. Quite the opposite, in fact. I've got my own bag, my own take on this, I know what I'm doing, it's consistent and it works.

Now, back to the horror of scheduling these 18 actors . . . thank goodness for Excel spreadsheets! That's really the only way I'm going to keep this organized this time around.

collisionwork: (GCW Seal)
Questions, I get questions. So many questions, troubling the minds of the modern-day-a-go-go American Youth, what with their rock-n-rolls and their grand-theft-autos and their baggy pants and their interest in Elizabethan dramas.

I now have 22 actors who have expressed their interest to me regarding Ian W. Hill's Hamlet, 9 who have said they definitely can't do it, 3 (including myself) who are definitely in, 2 who are in pending final check on schedule conflicts, and 19 people who haven't responded. Not bad.

And I get questions. Here's one from the probable Guildenstern (pending, as always, schedule conflicts), on reading my draft of the script, from an email he titled "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Jews," and my answer:

Just a quick question, out of curiosity -- how's your conception of R & G affected by your choice to make them Jewish? Do you see them as very Jewish -- slight Yiddish lilt?

Yes, VERY slight - more noticeable on one than the other (haven't decided which yet, depends on which actor it sounds better on). They are definitely out for assimilation - I don't think they're "observant," but they may keep some trappings of "Jewishness" about them because it's expected of them.

And from another actor:

I've been so hung up on my obsession with playing Laertes that I forgot to ask the obvious question, that being what you're looking for in Laertes as a character. I noticed you wrote up a little something for someone who asked about Claudius (I'm a faithful reader of the blog), so I was hoping you might be able to do the same for me and Laertes.

Sure. Laertes is probably everything Hamlet would like to be. Talented, quick, decisive, non-neurotic, able to enjoy life, smart, handsome. They probably grew up around each other at Elsinore, Laertes getting all the advantages of living in a royal environment with a respected father in a high position without the disadvantage of actually being royal and having to live up to your responsibilities (not always a disadvantage, to be sure, but for someone as insecure as Hamlet, disastrous). Hamlet has always probably felt somewhere that Laertes would make a better king than he. If they played together as kids, Hamlet would conceive the fantasy game they would play, and Laertes would star in it as the hero. The negative side to Laertes is that the world of privilege has left him with a certain sense of entitlement, and he has a nasty temper when he feels he (or his family) is not being given the proper respect - a kind of nouveaux-riche insecurity (he's a bit of a self-righteous, priggish hypocrite, too - he's very serious about keeping his sister's honor pure, but he feels he has every right to whore around). His temper has probably gotten him into more than a few scraps (Hamlet's probably helped him out of some of them). While he has these problems, he's probably one of the most mentally healthy of all the main characters of the play -- almost everyone else in this version wants to be something other than what they are. He's perfectly happy being what he is, he just wants more respect for that.

I've had an extended dialogue with another actor, through email and a bit in person a couple of nights ago, mainly regarding Claudius, his guilt (or lack thereof), his competence (or lack thereof), and audience sympathy for Hamlet (or lack thereof). It's a bit long to excerpt here, perhaps, and unlike other people I've quoted here, I'm not sure of his feelings about it, so I won't include it -- but I will post a poem by Cavafy, from 1899, that I sent in my last email to him, which is not exactly in line with my take on the play, but it comes close in some ways, and has the feel of some of what I want:

KING CLAUDIUS

My mind moves to distant places.
I'm walking the streets of Elsinore,
through its squares, and I recall
the very sad story—
that unfortunate king
killed by his nephew
because of some fanciful suspicions.

In all the homes of the poor people
secretly (because they were afraid of Fortinbras)
he was mourned. A quiet, gentle man;
a man who loved peace
(his country had suffered much
from the wars of his predecessor).
He behaved graciously toward everyone,
the humble and the great alike.
Never high-handed, he always sought advice
in the kingdom's affairs
from serious and experienced persons.

Just why his nephew killed him
was never satisfactorily explained.
The prince suspected him of murder;
and the basis of his suspicion was this:

walking one night along an ancient battlement
he thought he saw a ghost
and with this ghost had a talk;
what he heard from the ghost supposedly
were certain accusations made against the king.

It must have been a fit of fancy
and an optical illusion
(the prince was nervous in the extreme:
while studying at Wittenberg
many of his fellow students thought him a maniac).

A few days later he went
to his mother's chambers to discuss
some family matters. And suddenly,
while he was talking, he lost his self-control
and started shouting, screaming,
that the ghost was there in front of him.
But his mother saw nothing at all.

And that same day, for no apparent reason,
he killed an old gentleman of the court.
Since the prince was due to sail for England
in a day or two,
the king hustled him off posthaste
in order to save him.
But the people were so outraged
by the monstrous murder
that rebels rose up
and tried to storm the palace gates,
led by the dead man's son
the noble lord Laertes
(a brave young man, and also ambitious;
in the confusion, some of his friends called out:
"Long live King Laertes").

Some time later, once the kingdom had calmed down
and the king lay resting in his grave,
killed by his nephew
(the prince never went to England;
he escaped from the ship on his way there),
a certain Horatio came forward
and tried to exonerate the prince
by telling some stories of his own.
He said that the voyage to England
had been a secret plot, and orders
has been given to kill the prince there
(but this was never clearly ascertained).
He also spoke of poisoned wine-
wine poisoned by the king.
It's true that Laertes spoke of this too,
But couldn't he have been lying?
Couldn't he have been mistaken?
And when did he speak of this?
While dying of his wounds, his mind reeling.
and seeming to talk deliriously.
As for the poisoned weapons,
it was shown later that the poisoning
had not been done by the king at all:
Laertes had done it himself.
But Horatio, whenever pressed,
would produce even the ghost as a witness:
the ghost said this and that,
the ghost did this and that!

Because of all this, though hearing him out,
most people in their hearts
pitied the poor king,
who, with all these ghosts and fairy tales,
was unjustly killed and disposed of.

Yet Fortinbras, who profited from it all
and so easily won the throne,
gave full attention and weight
to every word Horatio said.


Today I email the 22 actors who have expressed interest and start setting up meetings/readings, then I email the 19 who haven't answered yet and double-check that they got the email, then I email the ones who are probably in and update them on being in a holding pattern. These emails are no longer bulk, but individual (with some cut-n-paste to save time), so it'll take a little while.

And I have to go get cat food before the little monsters eat me alive -- we ran out last night and gave them a can of soft food to tide them over until we got more crunchy bits, and, as always, that just makes them food-simple, following me and yowling every time I go to the kitchen for more coffee. Which looks to be a good idea now too . . .

The Watchcats
"C'n it B tym fer gushyfood, plz?"

collisionwork: (GCW Seal)
1. EGO


I finished my production draft of Hamlet (for the production I'll be designing/directing in June) on Sunday. It's 92 pages long in the standard script format that I like working in, which isn't bad (I am hoping, HOPING, for a 2-hour 15-minute show, but I'll live if it's up to 2:45 with intermission). I have to send an email out to all the actors I want to keep working with, saying "Who wants to do this, and what part(s) are you interested in?" and see what response I get.

I have Bryan Enk cast as Polonius/Fortinbras, Daniel Kleinfeld as Rosencrantz (and possibly others), me as Hamlet, and that's all that's set right now. There are specific people I have in mind for Osric, Voltimand, and Guildenstern, but the rest is wide open, and I want to read as many people as I can for everything else. As usual, I would rather work with the Gemini CollisionWorks regulars, but I may have to venture outside the group for some of the parts. I don't care all that much about casting "age-appropriate," necessarily -- probably as a result of always being cast myself as "the older person" in every damned show I've done since I was eleven (result of a deep voice and serious demeanor) -- but I'm not sure if any of the group will necessarily want to play my mother and stepfather (hell, Glenn Close was only nine years older than Mel Gibson when they did the parts). I'm trying to play about 15 years younger than I am, so maybe it'll work out with people from the GCW pool.

Ian W. Hill's Hamlet - french scenes excerpt
I'm in the middle of breaking down the script into french scenes now -- taking an internet break from this -- and I'm going to need at least 18 actors for this show. There appear to be two ways to break this down -- either I have 18 actors, all of who have at least one speaking role (many of them not very large) with most having a lot more non-speaking stage time, or 10-11 actors with all the speaking roles, lots of doubling, everyone getting lots of "speaking" stage time, and another 7-8 non-speaking "extras" who I can rotate out performance to performance, if necessary. I'd rather the first plan, of course, but I still have some paranoid worries that I won't be able to get the actors I want for some fo these parts if they "only" have their one or two short scenes (of course, this was how World Gone Wrong worked, though I didn't realize it at all at the time). Well, I'll get the people. I have to finish the breakdown(s) first so I know exactly what doubles I'm trying to cast . . .

I also need to check in with the others at The Brick to be sure everyone's aware that this is happening and that I'm really set with this for the Pretentious Festival in June. It's come up in conversation with Jeff, Hope, and Robert, I think, so I just have to check with Michael, I guess, to be sure we're all a go on this.

The show is also now officially titled Ian W. Hill's Hamlet.

I had considered this some time ago, and discarded the idea, but then Berit had the idea on her own and brought it up, and convinced me to go ahead with it (she's gonna read this and complain, "Oh, sure, blame me!" - no blame, she's right, I just needed a push). This production is, after all, for the Pretentious Festival, and the production is not in fact going to be very pretentious at all (quite the opposite in some ways, though certain kinds of pretension are critiqued in it). The pretension is in me as actor/manager taking on this role and directing it as well, of course. A role nobody else would probably ever cast me in. I'm only able to get up the nerve to do it because of the cover of "The Pretentious Festival" and by thinking of the fine writing Steven Berkoff did in his book I Am Hamlet about directing and playing the role himself -- his point being that ANY actor can play Hamlet, the role is so vast, containing multitudes, that as long as the actor correctly finds and plays THEIR Hamlet, they can't go wrong. This comforts me sometimes.

That said, I'm still planning on losing as much weight as I can for the part (I'm at about 250 lbs. right now, I want to get rid of around 70 lbs. of that or so - probably not going to happen, but I can try), getting rid of the beard and much of my bushy eyebrows, and going blond. I have no idea if this will really matter to the audience one way or another, but it'll matter to me.

Berit has also reminded me that any time I'm asked about what I'm doing next by anyone in the Indie/Off-Off community and I say, "Hamlet," they immediately get that I'll be directing and playing the role and seem honestly excited to see what I'm going to do with it. So within a small community, it's a selling point. Ian W. Hill's Hamlet (by William Shakespeare)

I had also decided anyway that 2007 was to be "The Year of Ego and Self-Promotion" for myself anyway, figuring that if I was to really try to accomplish anything in my art (as in possibly move towards making an actual living with it), I was going to have to unleash my monstrous ego, sell myself, and huckster the work as much as possible and not be ashamed of it. I'm not very good at this -- I have the ego, oh dear, DO I have the ego, but I've worked very hard for years (not always so successfully) to keep it under wraps, as the display of ego in others (even people I respect and admire who deserve to have large egos) nauseates me. Well, this year, I'm going to make myself sick.

(. . . oh god I'm gonna get KILLED for this . . .)


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