CollisionWorks

Now that the three shows are over, for those who didn't bother to click over and read the seven pieces I wrote about them, Berit, and myself at The Brick's blog, B(rick)log, to promote the shows through that outlet, I might as well reprint the whole series here for your dining and dancing pleasure..

Some of them are pretty long, so I'll put them each behind their own cut, and you can look at them as you please and at your leisure.

Here's the first four - an intro to the company, and pieces about Everything Must Go and Spell:

( Part 1: INTRODUCTION )

( Part 2: On EVERYTHING MUST GO )

( Part 3: On EVERYTHING MUST GO and SPELL )

( Part 4: On SPELL )

The penultimate installment of my posts at The Brick's blog, B(rick)log is up, HERE. It's listed as being the last, but I'll have a postscript entry up later today - just some influential videos to wrap it all up - maybe late for any kind of promotional purposes, but what the hell, it'll feel more structurally sound to me.

Here's the final promo email which I just sent out to the GCW list.

Anyone out there want to be on the mailing list and isn't getting these? Let me know - some of you may be getting them bounced because a) they're sent by BCC; b) they're sent from AOL; c) both of the above.

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You're getting this because you are on the GEMINI COLLISIONWORKS/Ian W. Hill/Berit Johnson email list - if you wish to be taken off it, please reply with REMOVE in the subject line.

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Oh, and -- if you've seen any of these plays, or plan to, please be aware that all three are registered with

THE NEW YORK INNOVATIVE THEATRE AWARDS
http://www.nyitawards.com/

and 25% of the judging for the awards is based on audience reaction. If you've seen the shows (or once you have seen them) PLEASE go to the site listed above to register and vote for our shows!

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ONE WEEKEND LEFT!
SEVEN PERFORMANCES LEFT!

THE TRIO OF GEMINI COLLISIONWORKS PRODUCTIONS AT THE BRICK ARE ALMOST GONE . . .

LAST CHANCE TO SEE . . .

Spell

a play by Ian W. Hill

" . . . like a wall-sized Brueghel painting, a sight to contemplate."
- Ellen Wernecke, EDGE

ONLY THREE PERFORMANCES LEFT!

Wednesday, August 20 at 8.00 pm
Saturday, August 23 at 4.00 pm
Sunday, August 24 at 8.00 pm

The story of a woman in trouble. Locked inside a cell (which might, or might as well, be her mind), an American woman who has committed a horrible, murderous act for what she considers patriotic reasons, but which she can only vaguely remember, is interrogated by military and medical figures as the voices in her head try to defend or attack her. A meditation on - among other things - whether violence can ever be justified, and if so, what limits are there?

with Olivia Baseman *, Fred Backus, Gavin Starr Kendall, Samantha Mason, Iracel Rivero, Alyssa Simon*, Moira Stone*, Liz Toft, Jeanie Tse, Rasmus Max Wirth, and Rasha Zamamiri.



Everything Must Go (Invisible Republic #2)

a play in dance and speeches by Ian W. Hill

ONLY TWO PERFORMANCES LEFT!

Thursday, August 21 at 8.00 pm
Saturday, August 23 at 8.00 pm

A play in dance and fragmented businesspeak. A day in the life of 11 people working in an advertising agency as they toil on a major new automobile account, interspersed with backbiting, backstabbing, coffee breaks, office romances, motivational lectures, afternoon slumps, and a Mephistophelian boss who has his eye on a beautiful female Faust of an intern. The day is comprised of endless awful business jargon interspersed with outbreaks of the musical-theatre inner life of the characters to a bizarre mix of musical styles and artists from the 1920s to the present

performed and choreographed by Gyda Arber, David Arthur Bachrach*, Becky Byers, Patrick Cann, Maggie Cino, Tory Dube, Sarah Malinda Engelke*, Ian W. Hill, Dina Rose*, Ariana Seigel, and Julia Sun.



Harry in Love
A Manic Vaudeville

a comedy by Richard Foreman
"In terms of skill and command, Hill and his company are in peak form here. I'm not sure that you'll ever see a Foreman play so successfully and accessibly mounted outside the Ontological Theatre."
- Martin Denton, nytheatre.com

ONLY TWO PERFORMANCES LEFT!

Friday, August 22 at 7.30 pm
Sunday, August 24 at 4.00 pm

Harry Rosenfeld is a big, neurotic, unnerved and unnerving man who believes his wife, Hild a, is planning to cheat on him (and he seems to be right). His response: drug her coffee and keep her knocked out until her paramour goes away. The plan works about as well as should be expected and, over several days, a number of people – the paramour, a doctor, Hilda’s brother, and an "innocent” bystander - are sucked into Harry's manic, snowballing energy as it becomes an eventual avalanche of (hysterically funny) psychosis. Who wrote this crazed farce? Well, before he became known as the writer-director-designer of his groundbreaking and legendary abstract stage spectacles, Richard Foreman was seen as a promising playwright in a more, shall we say, traditional mode, writing “normal” plays with standard structures, characters, settings, and events, unlike those that he was to become known for from 1968 onward.

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

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ALL SHOWS:

designed and directed by Ian W. Hill
assisted by Berit Johnson

at
The Brick
575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211
½ a block from the Lorimer stop of the L Train / Metropolitan-Grand stop of the G Train
www.bricktheater.com

All tickets $15.00

Tickets available at the door
or through www.theatermania.com
(212-352-3101 or toll-free: 1-866-811-4111)
Want to see all three shows for the price of two? Preorder them here:
https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/store/122

* Appears Courtesy of Actors Equity Association

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

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

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

https://www.fracturedatlas.org/donate/1394

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Ian W. Hill/Gemini CollisionWorks online:

blog: http://collisionwork.livejournal.com
images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geminicollisionworks/
info: http://www.myspace.com/geminicollisionworks
store: http://www.cafepress.com/collisionworks

One of those mornings of aches and bad thoughts. So it goes. I'll be fine tonight. I have a show. Hope I have an audience.

Went out putting postcards at Fringe venues yesterday, but didn't make it to all of them as planned - I had forgotten why I had decided last year to only ever do it again by car and went on foot instead. Dumb. It's not the walking all over the LES/Village/Tribeca/Lower Manhattan that wears me out, it's the carrying 15 pounds of cards while walking all that distance that does it. And I was carrying more cards over more distance than I had before (in 2005 when I first did this I had just the World Gone Wrong card; last year it was two cards, NECROPOLIS and The Hobo Got Too High; this year, it was three - that did it). I got through a third of the venues (plus just as many non-Fringe theatres in the area), and I'll get the rest by car tomorrow - too much to do today to get set for the next five days and seven performances.

Tomorrow (or tonight), I also have to write my thank-you letters for the Materials for the Arts donors. Can't forget that. And something for The Brick's blog. Oh, and send some photos to The Brooklyn Courier -- I'll do that now . .

Ah, got some breakfast, too, in that little pause . . . feeling much better now.

Still, worried about houses for the shows. But then, I always do. And I have to be reminded that on shows of mine in the past which I remember having great houses for the whole run, my memory is pretty faulty -- whenever I mention the original 2005 World Gone Wrong as always having good crowds, Fred Backus reminds me that about half the shows were actually played to pretty sparse groups - especially felt when the cast numbers 21 people. The box office figures bear Fred's memory out better than mine, for that matter - WGW wasn't an especially expensive show, and, unlike usual, we made a profit from it, but the profit was a bit under $100. Not so great, really.

So, I should expect and bear through the slow middle weeks of a 4-week run to get to the bigger last ones. As with Ambersons, where we wound up having to turn a few people away at the last show.

I was expecting a review of Harry in Time Out New York today, but it's not online yet - don't know about the print edition. Unfortunately, the blurb for all three shows has been changed to include the reviewer's opinion of the production, and it's not good (it also might be all we get, rather than a review, which is fine by me). And unlike the Backstage review which basically says we did a good production of a not-good play, this one says we - well, very specifically I - did a bad production of an okay play. Great.

Not that I care about the opinion, but I care about the potential effect on butts in the seats - not that I think this will turn people away who were planning on coming to see it, but it won't bring any new people, I think. Oh, well.

And another two people died, who I had some kind of brief sharing-of-moments with that brought back memories.

George Furth was an actor and playwright who wrote the books for the Sondheim musicals Company and Merrily We Roll Along and co-wrote the underrated mystery play Getting Away with Murder with him as well. I worked as a tech on the 1994 revival of Merrily, on which both Sondheim and Furth were quite involved and present most of the time, and both of whom were quite friendly with all of us on the cast and crew - I was working for projection designer Wendall K. Harrington, who Sondheim particularly liked, so I got a nice shock at one of my first rehearsals when Sondheim dropped in a couple of scenes into Act One, saw Wendall sitting on my left, smiled and said hi to her, then plopped down in the seat on my right (as Wendall, who knew I was a big Sondheim fan, enjoyed my nervousness for the rest of the Act).

George was even more outgoing and chummy with everyone, and I liked him a lot - a great storyteller and very very funny and cutting while also generous and warm. I wish that I had realized at the time why he seemed so familiar to me - I knew he was also an actor but didn't place him from the many things I had enjoyed him in, especially Blazing Saddles, where he gets some memorable lines as "Van Johnson" ("The fool's going to d-- . . . I mean the SHERIFF's going to DO it!"), but also The Man With Two Brains, Sleeper, Myra Breckinridge and about every damn sitcom of the 70s. I would have loved to have heard his stories about those - and I bet he would have had some good ones and been MORE than willing to share them.

He enjoyed playing with the members of the company as well who were a bit starstruck by being in the presence of *S*T*E*P*H*E*N*S*O*N*D*H*E*I*M* by throwing out examples of especially human and silly behavior by The Great Songwriter, or needling cast members about their overdone attempts to not seem starstruck.

At the opening night party for the show at Sondheim's Turtle Bay townhouse, Furth walked in on a number of us lounging around the "composing room." I was sitting with my date at the grand piano, imagining the composition of all those great songs there, Malcolm Gets was sitting at the immense wooden desk, looking around with wonder at all the boxed original scores on the shelves, and several other actors (I think including Phillip Hoffman) were sitting on the big leather couch. George walked in, sized up the fanboyishness of the room, smiled, and casually said, "Actually, when Steve and I write, he's almost never at the piano - usually I sit at the desk there, and he sits over there on the couch." And EVERYONE on the couch jumped slightly. And George smiled again and walked out, chuckling.

Sweet guy.

I never met Bernie Brillstein, of course, but I saw him speak once, at Jim Henson's funeral service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and he had one of the best lines I've ever heard at a memorial service.

Brillstein had some hard acts to follow: Frank Oz had just given a beautiful remembrance of Henson, telling an incredibly funny (and long) story about his employer (and Oz's eulogy made it clear that Henson was always his employer and collaborator, but they were never really close friends - which was interesting) - then, after he got his laugh, Oz tried to say something else, but suddenly broke down and had to be helped from the podium.

THEN, Big Bird walked out, wearing a black armband, and sang, "It's Not Easy Being Green" in a broken, crying voice.

Okay, so, not a dry eye in the packed Cathedral, right?

Big Bird finished the song by looking up and saying, "Goodbye, Kermit." Now -- people were still wondering at this point if Kermit the Frog would actually outlive Jim Henson, since they seemed inseparable. Of course, Henson had made plans for the continuation of his characters, but no one knew that yet. So, now everyone's crying harder.

Brillstein is introduced, and has to take the podium after all this. He stands there a long time, crying himself (a friend who's a son of one of the Muppet performers said to me later, "My god, you saw a high-powered Hollywood agent CRY!"). Then Brillstein says, finally, in his best "tough agent" voice, "Jim always said, 'don't follow the Bird, nobody can follow the Bird.'"

Which doesn't maybe sound so great, but damn if it wasn't exactly what was needed to release the tension, get a huge laugh, and bring the day back to being one of joyful remembrance. Nice job, Bernie.

Okay, Berit's up and demanding breakfast and laundry duties from me. Off I go . . .

I just realized I never did a proper announcement for the first two shows that have opened here or at the company MySpace . . . so here it is:




NOW PLAYING! - the first in the trio of August 2008 productions
from Gemini CollisionWorks at The Brick:

The Brick Theater, Inc.
presents
a Gemini CollisionWorks production of

Harry in Love:
A Manic Vaudeville

The return of the 1966 comedy by Richard Foreman

directed by Ian W. Hill
assisted by Berit Johnson

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

Who wrote this crazed farce? Well, before he became known as the writer-director-designer of his groundbreaking and legendary abstract stage spectacles, Richard Foreman was seen as a promising playwright in a more, shall we say, traditional mode, writing “normal” plays with standard structures, characters, settings, and events, unlike those that he was to become known for from 1968 onward.

In 1966, he wrote Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville, which came very close to having a Broadway run, but due to creative conflicts, didn't make it. This “boulevard comedy” as Foreman calls it (he also compares it, accurately, to the 1960s plays of Murray Schisgal) remained unseen for over 30 years, until Foreman gave it to director/actor Ian W. Hill in 1999, for the third of the No Strings Attached festivals of Foreman’s plays that Hill produced at the Nada spaces on Ludlow Street, where it was done to appreciative audiences and got excellent reviews during its very short run, the only run this obscure work has ever had to date.

Now, Harry in Love is back, with half of the cast of the ’99 production, for a slightly-longer run in a slightly-larger production.

While we’re probably lucky and much better-off to have the Foreman we’ve had, it’s fascinating to see this (extremely funny) play which very well might have meant a very different career for Foreman if it had made in to Broadway. It's not what you probably know from him, but it still sounds like the Richard Foreman anyone would know from his later work – almost any line from this play, out of context, would not sound at all out of place in one of his later, more abstract plays. Really.

The cast of this production is
Walter Brandes*, Josephine Cashman*, Ian W. Hill,
Tom Reid, Ken Simon*, and Darius Stone*

at
The Brick
575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211
½ a block from the Lorimer stop of the L Train
or Metropolitan-Grand stop of the G Train
www.bricktheater.com

August 8, 14, 17, and 22 at 7.30 pm
August 10, 16, 24 at 4.00 pm

approximately 2 hours and 10 minutes long (including one intermission)

All tickets $15.00

Tickets available at the door or through theatermania.com
(212-352-3101 or toll-free: 1-866-811-4111)

*appears courtesy of Actors Equity Association

One of those early mornings where nothing seems right with the world or the work.

I hate these mornings.

Just have to get up and go about things anyway as if you were happy while feeling you're expending a lot of effort on stuff that isn't what you or anyone else wants. Woke up suddenly with the feeling of "something's wrong and I have to take care of it now." then realized it was hours before I could do anything, but couldn't get back to sleep.

I'll be better when I'm working. That's when I see how it all works. It's the in-between times that get intolerable.

I only feel sane when rehearsing or performing. The rest of the time I'm a mess. I mentioned that to the cast of Everything Must Go the other day and it was commented that this was obviously why I overcommit myself to too many projects at once - I'm just trying to fill as much time with the work that makes me feel good.

So, speaking of the work that makes everything good . . . (and ain't this a fine fine superfine way to open a post on the morning after my big BIG season of three shows has just opened at The Brick last night?)

Yup, Harry in Love opened last night. Spell opens tonight (for a "preview performance" as it is now being called).

Harry was mostly good, and where it wasn't, the house wouldn't know so much. We did it, it was rockier as it went along for reasons best left unsaid here, and we saw it could play. We had but three people in the house, however, so laughs were near nonexistent (the show needs lots of laughers to build through).

Berit and I also still think leaving the air conditioner on in the space kills humor (and Berit says it definitely does from sitting in the house during rehearsals where we've been leaving it on to practice) but we're alone in the company in that regard, so it's on and acting like a piece of wet felt placed over the show. I think you need to hear your voice slap back from the walls and ceiling to time things properly - I also think some of my current vocal problems - I've lost a lot of my voice - come from not being able to judge exactly how loud I have to scream during the screaming sections of the show, and just going full out without restraint (at the same time, I like the huskiness that has developed for Harry's voice). I've gone along with it because I am on the line about whether the audience being potentially overheated is just as bad as the sound of the AC (comedy usually plays better at around 50 degrees Fahrenheit - people are cold, but the sharpness encourages laughing, supposedly).

Six-of-one, half-a-dozen of the other, I guess.

So, it played, and okay, but not nearly as well as we could do. I wasn't at my best, but I was better than I feared I might be - I had been determined to get rest before opening no matter what, and . . . I got some, but not as much as I wanted. My lines got shakier as the show went on (why, I don't know, I've studied them all the same - actually even more for the late scenes) and I lost a few that I KNOW early in the show just from opening night nerves. And I wasn't alone, accounting for the severe ricketiness in the last scene.

But I pulled off the demanding role just fine. The other actors were often in what I think of as "opening night" mode, which I've never found a way around - everything just a little TOO intense and oversold a bit. First audiences will do that. At least, when you have an opening night like this - okay, but not in the highest percentile - you don't run the risk of what ALWAYS happens (in my shows at least) when you have a GREAT opening performance - and which I've also never found a way around - the Sophomore Slump where everyone is so overconfident with one good one under their belt they are all full of unfocused, random energy spitting everywhere that the second show becomes an energetic mess. Never found a cure for that yet. Maybe some day.

Got some photos from last night, requested for press purposes. Here, Harry steams while Wasselman gloats:

Which turns bad as Harry winds up with the only liftable chair in the room:

Later, Dr. Meyers gives "medical attention" to Paul, while Harry threatens to open Hilda's eyes by force:

And eventually, Harry carries Hilda around for some time, not believing that she wants him to kiss her:

So Berit and I spent the other night building the Harry set, which was a surprising jump for us in set terms the way Ambersons was in terms of costumes (though far less expensive).

It still wasn't fully done for last night - the trim wasn't painted, and we couldn't get the - rather bad - paintings that we acquired up in time, but that will be there on Saturday. Here are some stages of our all-night construction binge (with Berit slightly visible here and there, painting):

No, not exactly big budget - a bit high-schoolly perhaps - but needed for the show, not something we generally do, and certainly not something seen too often in The Brick (or most Indie Theatre). There's something great about standing backstage behind actual flats that gives a certain kind of theatrical rush. Really nice.

And tonight, Spell, which is stressful in that, hey, it's an original two-act play. By me. My first, really (the others have been mostly collage, which is it's own art form, so this feels different). It's less stressful in that, thankfully, I'm not acting in it. So I can deal with other things right now.

So, B& I are about to go through our day and plan out what we need to do for the show tonight.

At a time like this, I need to hear some happy music, something like this . . .

But since I don't have the dulcet tones of Xmas-a-Go-Go, I'll deal with what's coming from the iPod this morning . . .

1. "WAOG Promo" - radio spot - Rock'n'Roll - The Untold Story Vol. 6: The Jivin' Novelty Party Record
2. "Traits and Traitors" - Sky Larkin
3. "Colour of Dream" - Knights of the Road - Diggin' For Gold - Vol. 9 A Collection of Demented 60's R&B/Punk & Mesmerizing 60's Pop
4. "Mr. Woman" - Electric Six - Switzerland
5. "Snake in the Grass" - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich - All The Hits
6. "Dumbness" - Art Objects - Bagpipe Music
7. "Sunny" - Dusty Springfield - Dusty volume 2
8. "To Be Happy Is The Real Thing" - Intruders - Save The Children
9. "Old Man" - Bari & The Breakaways - Oceanic Odyssey Volume 09
10. "Here Come the Martian Martians" - Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - The Best of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers

Now B & I have to run off and finish things for Spell tonight. There's not really a comparative lot of them, but they involve going all over the place and more work than such simple things should take. I'm worried about having to buy boots for castmembers - I'm not exactly "Mr. Clothes." of course (B & I, as we often mention, do EVERYTHING in theatre except costumes, makeup, and hair - we're at a loss on those almost completely). I also have to do the program and fix some sound/projection issues. And take down and put away the Harry set from last night.

At a time like this, I need the affection of my cats. Will Moni help . . ?

Hmmn, apparently not. Well, I can always count on my big boy Hooker for some affection when I need it . . .

That's better. And so am I. Took me three hours to write this in the background while I worked on other things and I'm feel a lot better now. Okay, back to work. That's what makes all of this worth it . . .

I know I'm started off with this before, but . . .

I am tired, I am weary, I could sleep for a thousand years . . .

Except, apparently, I can't. As, even with an alarm set to get me up at 8.00 am (6 1/2 hours sleep), my body decided that 6.00 am and 4.5 hours was enough. Why, I don't know. My brain does not agree. Neither does my upset stomach.

So, here I am, drinking microwaved leftover coffee from yesterday - massively over-sweetened with Splenda to make up for the lack of milk, as the carton in the fridge has turned (which accounts for the leftover coffee from yesterday, when I discovered the spoilage after two or three sips) - and wishing my body had let me have those extra two hours.

The shows proceed and take up almost every moment of our waking hours (sorry for no communication, family & friends).

We're behind in some things and on top of others. Generally ahead of where we've been on most of our shows this past two years at this point, but more behind in other ways.

I'm still writing Everything Must Go for chrissakes, which opens in two weeks (of course, I also just finished writing Spell two days ago which opens in a week and a day). Most of what is supposed to be my writing time has been taken up with jobs I wasn't supposed to have to do, like recasting difficult roles at the last minute. I had five full days of show work ruined in the casting search for someone to take over a role in Spell. After my last note on the subject, I got someone, who came in, did great, took the part, came to one rehearsal, and also (like the original actor) got another (well-paying) job, he says. This really didn't help anything.

However, we finally got someone - Rasmus Max Wirth, and thanks again Max - and he joined us last night and we did a stumble-run of Act I of Spell that made me very very happy indeed. Yes, "Act I" - what was supposed to be a one-act of 90 minutes has become two acts, about 50 and 45 minutes, respectively, with an intermission - the cast really pushed for this, over my objections, but after a really good way to end "Act I" appeared in rehearsal the other night I was sold. So this is my first original two-act play. I like it. I was unsure for a day or two there if I was happy with the play itself, but after the last couple of runs I'm happy.

The first full one on Monday showed me where I had to cut and rewrite things (big discussion with the cast afterward about what works for them and what doesn't - some of the "doesn't" being things that were wonky as a viewer and which I have changed, and some of them being things that were terrific from the house and I just have to get that across to the company).

Last night's half-run made me a lot more confident in my work - Berit and I were sneaking pleased glances through a lot of it at each other. We'll see how Act II fares tonight.

Everything Must Go need to have its "book" finished, but the musical numbers are all coming into shape nicely. Two nights ago I tackled one of the "harder" numbers and it came together much differently (and better) than I imagined. Sunday we have a long rehearsal by which time we'll have the full script (I swear) and can finish the whole damn show - then we actually have some extra time to put the thing together, comparatively.

Harry in Love hasn't been touched in days and was fine when I left it. Tomorrow we do a full runthrough. Everyone else has been pretty much off-book. I am now 90% there, so I'm taking the whole of tomorrow, daytime, to get 100%. I'd like to be writing, but that will have to wait until the evening.

Today is to be taken up with a drive out to the warehouse of Materials for the Arts in Long Island City, and Berit and I grabbing whatever we may find that will serve us for the shows, so we don't have to buy or build EVERYTHING. Of course, the weather is crappy (though better now than when I awoke), so loading and unloading lots of stuff from there and at The Brick will be FUN. Then I meet an actress from Everything Must Go to catch her up on the choreography she missed from missing a few rehearsals. Then more Spell tonight.

Update interlude over. Back to writing. More tomorrow with pictures and random iPod ten . . .

The three shows proceed.

Harry in Love is rehearsing very smoothly, which is to be expected for this already fully-written, cut, cast well, traditional comedy. The biggest hangup I've had was when I had to go over an incredibly tiny moment over and over last night - it's a gag I love and the timing needed to be ABSOLUTELY PERFECT for it to work at all.

The structure of the moment is that two people are yelling at each other heatedly and a third suddenly comes out with a pertinent but unexpected piece of information - there needs to be a brief beat of silence, and then the other three people in the room look at the person who's suddenly spoken up. So the brief beat and the look have to be timed just right, and, even more importantly, fall together with one "bump" like a period, to make the laugh work. It was getting the bump right - if anyone's movement trailed off rather than just fell into place, the moment didn't work, and it took a while to get everyone on the same page with the movement - if Ken Simon (the person I'm yelling with in the scene) made a double gesture (arm, then head) it didn't work (arm and head together worked); if Tom Reid, the person interrupting us, moved his head around, looking at us, during the beat and look to him, it didn't work.

So about 10 or 12 minutes were spent on this tiny moment, which seems like a lot, but then 10 minutes of play can go by in rehearsal without me needing to fix anything, so it all works out - there's a very specific rhythm to the play, a comic give and take that resembles, at various points, the timing of Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy, Edgar Kennedy with Harpo & Chico Marx in Duck Soup, and Zero Mostel & Gene Wilder in the second scene of The Producers. So when we all get the groove going and get that rhythm, the play really takes care of itself. But we have to get that groove, which gets easier and easier the more we do it.

Spell and Everything Must Go are okay except I need to finish the scripts, dammit, which is proving much harder than expected. I keep saying that, and then I have a day where everything just COMES to me on one script or the other, for one scene or another, and I think, "Now I'm on a ROLL!" And then I finish that bit and the next one . . . doesn't happen. I have a schedule of pages set for myself now which, if I can stick to it, will have Spell done before this coming Sunday's rehearsal and EMG before next Tuesday's. I have some new pieces of Spell for tonight, luckily, but not as much as I'd like.

I also had to recast a role in each show (besides the recent addition of Tory to EMG), so Samantha Mason is now in Spell and Sarah Engelke is now in EMG, which are good additions to the groups.

Spell looks good and I feel good about it, as long as I can keep the writing at the same quality I've had. Still, it's a bigger work than I imagined - I guess wider is the more appropriate term; it's about more than I thought, and as comments/thoughts come in from this very smart and thoughtful cast, I have to deal with the issues that are raised, which is daunting and the writing problem at this point. And I've been putting off the six hardest scenes for last (out of 32 scenes in the play), hoping I can get a better intellectual grip on the material I have to deal with before setting them down (in brief, Cuba, Palestine, the Peoples' Republic of China).

I think there's a good reason I've never dealt with serious political material in my work before except on the very metaphoric level. In the past I've always said of political art that generally that I wasn't fond of it because generally it meant that either the politics or the art suffered from being combined with the other. And I'd rather see great art with shallow politics than the other way around (there is SO much lousy art whose politics I agree with, but that is SO annoying - I hate hearing something like my own point-of-view being espoused by Bad Art). It has been this current Administration of the USA that has made me feel I had to say SOMETHING about this country in my work (leading to World Gone Wrong, That's What We're Here For, and the staging of my versions of Hamlet and Foreman's Symphony of Rats).

So . . . {sigh} . . . maybe the trick is to just let go of the idea of dealing with some of this in Spell at the level I've been getting to in my head. Just letting the Art go where it needs to and use the material within it, not force the play to take in more than it wants to.

Everything Must Go doesn't worry me as much as it did briefly. I had a momentary loss-of-faith in my abilities for this one, but got over it. Great rehearsal the other night, in which two dance sequences came together - one to "Slug" by Passengers, the other to "Handsome Man" by Barbara Pittman. Really nice, and I'm VERY happy with them. I think I got to the point of figuring out how to work with the dancers of the company and choreograph in collaboration with them, and use their varied abilities and styles.

Unfortunately, during the rehearsal at Champions Studios, big clumsy me, working with my shoes off, kicked a radiator nice and hard, resulting in my right little toe turning several rather spectacular shades of purple - which has continued for two days now, with pain that comes and goes in odd ways (sometimes just the toe hurts if I put pressure on it, sometimes that's fine but it hurts if I curl it, sometimes there's no specific pain in the toe but the whole front of the foot aches).

In this cut, a picture of my toe as it was last night - I'd generally not hide this, but maybe some people don't want to see my injured, mottled toe . . .

( Maybe I'll Do a Photo a Day and Show the Progress . . . )

In the other world, the great film collagist and eccentric Bruce Conner has died at the age of 74. I was going to link to a whole bunch of videos of his work, but the fine fine superfine folks at Movie City Indie have already handled that better than I could, doing two wonderful posts about Conner HERE and HERE.

Excellent postings, those, and the first contains eight of Conner's films embedded in it, including his landmark A Movie (1958) and his videos for Byrne & Eno's "America Is Waiting" and Devo's "Mongoloid" - and a surprising collaboration with Toni Basil (or "Antonia Christina Basilotta" as she's credited here), "Breakaway," which features original footage of Basil dancing (most of Conner's work is made up of found footage) that gets into some NSFW territory (oh, just saw it's from 1966! so this was immediately post-Village of the Giants and pre-Head for Basil . . .).

Worth watching, all those films - though I can't say I've gotten through all of them yet myself. And here's A Movie inside a cut, as I'd like to have this handy and give you a taste of Conner's work, right here and now . . .

( A MOVIE by Bruce Conner )

Now I have to get back to not only my writing of the shows, but getting out the next section of press releases for them, which takes time as well. I also have to deal today with finishing up some business with The Costume Collection and separate matters with Fractured Atlas. And Berit and I need to have a proper sit-down about the postcard designs for the three shows and making up prop/set/costume/sound/special lights/projection lists of what we will need for each show.

Just a couple of weeks of GETTING STUFF DONE every waking moment, and it'll all be fine . . .

This just went out to the GCW email list - figured it belonged here, too:

*****

Friends of Gemini CollisionWorks,

2008 continues GCWs' happy residency at The Brick in Williamsburg, where we act as the theatre's technical directors, as well as assisting in the management of the many festivals at the space, and, of course, producing our own work.

Coming up for us this year at The Brick, a show in The Film Festival: A Theater Festival in June - The Magnificent Ambersons - and three shows in August - two originals: Spell and Everything Must Go, as well as Richard Foreman's hysterical and barely-known 1966 comedy Harry in Love.

So we've been able to keep up a pretty hectic pace of creating numerous shows each year, but it's been harder and harder as resources have been getting far more expensive rather quickly (especially rehearsal space) and while we've been known to work wonders on a low (or nearly non-existent) budget, as our work gets more ambitious, it gets harder to do this at the out-of-our-own-pocket level we've been working at for 11 years, especially as - with small theatres and low ticket prices on top of high expenses - we lose money on every show we do. As we have had no way to offer our supporters anything in return for donations, we haven't asked for them.

Until now. Gemini CollisionWorks is now a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts organization, and donations to GCW (made payable to Fractured Atlas) are now tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. For more information on contributing through Fractured Atlas, see https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/contribute/ or the directions below for how to donate specifically to us.

We hope you'll consider helping us out - our shows this year could use it (coming up soon in June, a show involving 20 actors with multiple 1880s-1910s costumes each! we need two overhead projectors!). We can't offer much in return, but it'll feel good, be worthwhile, the money'll all be there on the stage, and you get listed in our programs for the whole season (categories below). And it's tax-deductible.

Here is some more info on how to donate, and on this year's shows:


DONATIONS

1. If you wish to donate by check, they MUST be made out to "Fractured Atlas," with "Gemini CollisionWorks" in the memo line (and nowhere else), and should be given to us personally or sent to us for processing at:

Gemini CollisionWorks
c/o Hill-Johnson
367 Avenue S #1B
Brooklyn, NY 11223




2. You can also donate directly online securely by credit card at

https://www.fracturedatlas.org/donate/1394

or by clicking this handy link:



(please double-check to be sure you're at the "Gemini CollisionWorks" donation page)

All donors will be listed in all our programs for the 2008 season under the following categories:

$0-25 - BONDO
$26-50 - RAT RODS
$51-75 - CHROME
$76-100 - LOW RIDERS
$101-250 - CANDY FLAKE
$251-500 - FLAME JOBS
$501-1000 - T-BUCKETS
$1001-2500 - SUPERCHARGERS
$2501-5000 - KUSTOMIZERS
over $5000 - BIG DADDIES


SHOWS

The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage


adapted, designed, directed and narrated by Ian W. Hill
June 1, 6, 10, 12 at 8.00 pm - $15.00

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

As she is interrogated, her mind reinterprets her surroundings into a chorus of voices - witches, revolutionaries, doctors, generals, bossmen, old boyfriends, fragments of herself - arguing over the validity of her violent actions while at the same time trying to deny that the monstrous act has ever occurred, or that she could be capable of such a thing. A meditation on - among other things - whether violence can ever be truly justified, and if so, what limits are there and where does it end?

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


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

A play in dance and fragmented businesspeak. A day in the life of an advertising agency as they work on a major new account, interspersed with backbiting, backstabbing, coffee breaks, office romances, motivational lectures, afternoon slumps, and a Mephistophelian boss who has his eye on a beautiful female Faust of an intern.

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

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

All shows will be at

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

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

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

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


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

Still casting the shows. Glad I'm working this far in advance, as it's taking a while.

As mentioned previously, the August production of Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville (by Richard Foreman) has been fully cast.

Spell (original play to be created in collaboration with the company, also to go up in August) is mostly cast. Currently in: Moira Stone, Fred Backus, Alyssa Simon, Iracel Rivero, Rasha Zamamiri, Jorge Cordova, Olivia Baseman, Sammy Tunis, Jeanie Tse, and Liz Toft. I still need another woman who speaks a non-English language fluently - and it has to be a language that comes from a country with some kind of revolutionary movement in its past (I've gone through actresses that spoke Russian and German). Also waiting for a man I've asked to say yes or no. I may want another woman in it as well.

Most recent description of the show sent out to the last people I was asking to do the show:

It's about an American woman (Moira) who has apparently done some kind of horrible, murderous terrorist action in the USA, and is being interrogated, or maybe examined by doctors, to find out why she did it, and we watch her attempt at justifying her action in light of other "revolutionary" movements of the past. We're seeing it all inside her fragmented mind, however, so things are changing and sliding around all the time. She keeps changing the "Military Interrogator" back and forth to a "Doctor" in her head, and also keeps changing the sex of this person (Fred & Alyssa). She also keeps imagining herself as a man, a romantic, handsome young revolutionary, who comes out to defend her actions (Jorge). She is also haunted by three witches who seem to be out of Macbeth, but also maybe are the Three Fates, and also represent revolutionary activity of the past as they speak mainly in non-English languages - the witches are Cuban (Iracel), Palestinian (Rasha), and To-Be-Decided (actress-to-be-cast). She also has "flashbacks" to her life before terror, where she's always tormented by men in control of her life (all played by the same man to be cast), and sees herself as a number of different women of different kinds (Olivia, Sammy, Liz, Jeannie, and maybe another).

I've watched a few movies recently that have had some kind of inspiration for where this is going: Godard's Tout Va Bien, Ken Russell's The Devils, some Greenaway, and I'll get to INLAND EMPIRE again sometime soon.

This image seems inspirational for this show as well - John Heartfield's Hurrah, the Butter Is Finished! from 1935:

(quote at bottom) Goering: "Iron has always made a nation strong, butter and lard have only made the people fat."

Songs that are in the playlist for Spell right now: "Children Go Where I Send Thee" - traditional, performed by Ralph Stanley; "Monkey Gone to Heaven" by Pixies; "Highway 61 Revisited" performed by PJ Harvey; "The Red Telephone" by Love; "Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray" - traditional, unknown performer; and "Just Another Day" by Brian Eno. And somewhat tangentially, "Folk Song" by Bongwater and "High Water" by Bob Dylan.

The other original August show is now being called Everything Must Go - previously the working title was Invisible Republic, but I always figured that would be a subtitle. It's now become apparent that Invisible Republic has become a "series title" for me like NECROPOLIS, with That's What We're Here For as the first part of the series.

Now in Everything Must Go are: Jai Catalano, Dina Rose Rivera, Gyda Arber, Maggie Cino, Jay Liebman, Amy Liszka, Patrick Cann, Julia C. Sun, Brandi Robinson, and Doua Moua. I'd like another two men in the company - I've asked one, and I'm going to audition another.

Most recent description sent out to cast about this one:

It's about the USA, capitalism, and advertising/selling. It takes place in an advertising agency, over the course of a day . . . and that's most of what I know about it. Jai plays The Big Boss, and everyone else works under him, from VPs down to clerks. I'm going to create the dialogue and movement around the actors I get - I'm asking certain people I want who feels right for the world of the show, who I think can move well - there will be a mix of actual dancers of various kinds and people who just move well, or who I know can move "right" - and we'll see how it goes. And that's probably all I can say about it right now. I have music in mind, and dances and movement, and a bit of structure, but I can't do anything else until I have the performers.

Songs to probably be used in the show: "Jimmy Carter" by Electric Six; "Slug" by Passengers; "Down at McDonnellz" by Electric Six; "Dry Bones" performed by The Four Lads; "Transylvanian Concubine" by Rasputina; "Laughing" by Pere Ubu; "Not Yet Remembered" by Harold Budd & Brian Eno; "The Coo Coo Bird" performed by Clarence "Tom" Ashley; "Episode of Blonde" by Elvis Costello; "Theme One" by George Martin; and "Back of a Truck" by Regina Spector.

I've watched a couple of inspirational movies here, too -- Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, All That Jazz, and in some strange way Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 all had something to give.

Oh, and this show also has a particularly inspirational collage image, Richard Hamilton's work from 1956 (though the authorship is disputed), Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?:

And that's the August shows. Now as to the June show, The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage . . . this is a casting pain!

I've got nine people set (besides myself) for this one, and still need another 11. I'll be auditioning four people I know of now, and I've asked another person who hasn't answered, but that leaves a lot more to look for. Hard to get people for this it seems.

Currently in: Timothy McCown Reynolds, Stephen Heskett, Shelley Ray, Walter Brandes, Ivanna Cullinan, Rebecca Collins, Amy Liszka, Linda Blackstock, and Aaron Baker.

In the morning, I'll send an email out to the people already cast in all shows asking for suggestions of people they know, like, and trust I should meet for the remaining parts - I usually wind up getting good people that way.

And that's it for the shows for today. Tomorrow, a little work on them in the morning, then over to The Brick to prepare for Penny Dreadful and the opening night party for Notes from Underground. Another day.