A big thanks to Jeff Lewonczyk for editing these things for over at that blog, and all at The Brick for their assistance in making these shows happen.
( Part 5: On HARRY IN LOVE )
( Part 6: On HARRY, Some More )
( Part 7: Postscript )
A big thanks to Jeff Lewonczyk for editing these things for over at that blog, and all at The Brick for their assistance in making these shows happen.
( Part 5: On HARRY IN LOVE )
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 )
(I was friends with a Classics teacher at Northfield Mount Hermon - I never studied Greek or Latin but I was interested in it and we had interesting "language" talks - who was VERY firm, correctly, on the proper use of "penultimate," and the word and its variants have been stuck in my head, to be used far too often, ever since)
Nice houses, in both size and reaction, mostly. Spell is a hard show to get right on both sides of the text - performers and audience - and if you imagine, as I do, the actual "work," what the play is, what we're striving to accomplish, the connection, the communication, as an abstracted straight line with arrows at either end hanging in the air between stage and house, essentially connecting work and auditors, then Wednesday's Spell was a bit more as if that line broke apart and forked off into multiple smaller lines with arrows at the ends of them shooting off at stage and house - some hitting the performers and perceivers, some shooting off around them into walls, ceiling, and everywhere else.
The more I do this, the more it all boils down into purely technical things - the internal, "emotional" stuff will take care of itself, the text will take care of itself, if the rhythm and cadences, pace, focus, diction, projection, intensity, blocking, and light are all given the proper attention.
(and, yes, there's been some snippiness recently from playwrights - appropriately - on some blogs recently about directors using the word "text" when they mean "play," but I often do use "texts" rather than "plays" - not sure what the difference is exactly, but I know it when I see it - Spell and Harry in Love are "plays," EMG and the NECROPOLIS shows are "texts")
Especially focus. Everything else is almost a subset of that. I joke about it in Everything Must Go, but it's all about focus, focus, focus. Too many distractions going on too much of the time these days. Not enough focus. I'm getting old and crotchety here.
(hell, I always was - once I was at breakfast in my boarding school dorm, and the aforementioned Classics teacher, Scot Hicks - who of course had to have been in his mid-20s or so at this time - came in to the cafeteria, saw me, sat down at the table with a big grin on his face, and announced, "Ian, I've figured out what you are! You're a CURMUDGEON!" - I was 17 and I guess it's only gotten worse . . .)
In any case, Harry tonight. I am completely at a point of looking forward to the shows themselves, but dreading everything I have to do around them. I SO don't want to go and put up the Harry set, but . . . well, you gotta do what you gotta do.
I really need to figure out a proper photo call for each show, too.
Meanwhile, this morning, what does the iPod come up with as the first Random Ten from 26,103 tracks?
1. "Come On Down Maryann" - Ohio Express - Bubblegum Classics Vol. 5
2. "When the Record Goes Around" - The Playmates - Playmates Golden Classics
3. "Little Palaces" - Elvis Costello & The Costello Show - King of America
4. "Reject" - Green Day - Nimrod
5. "Watcha Gonna Do?" - The Evil - The Montells/The Evil LP
6. "Fingertips (banjo)" - They Might Be Giants - Apollo 18
7. "It's a Monsters' Holiday" - Buck Owens - (It's a) Monsters' Holiday
8. "Heart of Gold" - Johnny Cash - Unearthed
9. "Johnny Lee's Mood" - John Lee Hooker - Alternative Boogie 1948-1952
10. "Freak Trim (Kim Outs a Big Idea) - The Mothers of Invention - the MOFO project/object
Oh, hey, I got some new cat photos, too - most just from the last half hour, though Berit took this one a few days ago . . .
I went around trying to get a good photo of Hooker this morning, but for once, he was pulling the Moni act and not holding still for a moment:
And that's the best I could get. I went looking for Moni, figuring she'd be somewhere near the sleeping Berit, which she was, but it was hard to find her . . .
Hey, there she is, on the dirty clothes pile at the end of the bed, just above Berit's foot . . .
Okay, off to finish the other blog post and get over to The Brick early so I can get the place set up and then actually relax for a while so I'm ready to do the show . . .
Part One is up now, HERE.
Part Two should be up tomorrow morning.
Though these are referred to as the last two there, I actually intend for there to be one more after these - maybe tomorrow afternoon - a final summary one with influential videoclips.
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.
**********
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 . . .
We had the AC off during Harry for the first time last night, and while I have absolutely no way of proving if the sonic reduction affected things for the better or not (we got more laughs, certainly, than ever before but it could have simply been a friendlier house), I know it made my own performance subtler, more shaded, and more responsive to the vibes I felt coming off of the audience, and I felt like I was able to "play" them better. Fun.
Spell is off for this entire weekend (I miss it), so, as I may have mentioned, we're alternating EMG and Harry, which is a strain, as they're both physically demanding shows on me.
When I planned doing these three shows, I was only going to be acting in Harry, but then someone dropped out of EMG and rather than look to strangers in recasting, which I am always far too nervous about, and having no one else I knew appropriate for the part, I took it on myself. Not smart. I'm doing it okay, but I wish I was only acting in one show. I tried to diet and exercise to be more ready for doing both, but, unlike Hamlet last year, where I got it together pretty much as I wanted, I wasn't as ready as I'd hoped for these two. I can pull it off, but I suffer more the rest of the days when I'm not doing it.
Ah, well, just have to keep myself together, at least through this weekend - the next two days I'm looking at doing BOTH shows each day, matinee and evening, plus having to deal with striking and setting up the sets. Oy. Won't be doing anything like this again.
Spell got a nice little notice from Ellen Wernecke online at Edge, which was rewarding to see. Mixed to positive, really, without much in the way of pull quotes, except for this one, which may be my favorite one I've ever got:
" . . . Spell is, like a wall-sized Brueghel painting, a sight to contemplate."
We should be getting another notice for Spell, but really late in the run. I think we've got all we're going to for Harry. No apparent interest in Everything Must Go critically, unfortunately. Damn.
This morning, as I type this, here's the first Random Ten that comes from the 26,103 tracks on the iPod:
1. "You're Everything to Me" - The Orchids - A Taste of Doo Wop Vol.1
2. "Tiny Sick Tears" - Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention - You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Volume 4
3. "Damn Good Times" - They Might Be Giants - The Spine
4. "So Come On" - Les Fleur De Lys - Jimmy's Back Pages...The Early Years
5. "She's Looking Good" - Rodger Collins - Soulin' Vol 3
6. "At Night" - The Killjoys - Raw Records - The Punk Singles Collection
7. "Homesick" - Homesick James & Johnny Shines - Chicago Slide Guitar Masters From Tampa Red To Elmore James
8. "Little Boxes" - Teenage Head - Teenage Head
9. "Is Anyone Out There?" - Altered States - Return of the Batcave volume 2
10. "California Dreamin'" - The Mamas & The Papas - Rock Archives - 60's, 70's, 80's
Sorry I have no new cat photos; I can't seem to get the camera and the cable that connects it to the computer in the same place at the same time.
Okay, more paperwork to deal with. Back to it . . .
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 . . .
To wit, this morning, at 4.11 am?
And then, just NOT want to go back to sleep?
Well, maybe, like yesterday, I'll get back to sleep for a couple of hours in a little bit.
Yesterday was supposed to be the first double-header day for us in our trio of shows running in rep at The Brick, but only two people showed up for Spell, so we called the show. I hate doing this, no matter how many people are in the audience, but it's a hard show to go through for at least one performer, and when I put it to the cast, some didn't care one way or the other, and several did, in the way of "love the show, but don't want to go through it for two people." The audience was very cool with it and agreed to come back (to the point of saying we could keep their money and they'd definitely be back) and I told them I'd comp in a guest for each of them if them wanted to bring anyone else (Robert Honeywell did this when he called two performances of Greed and it was a nice thing to do).
We had a house for the evening's Everything Must Go, performance #2 - which is going okay, but needs to be more focused and tight in the non-musical number sequences. I wondered, when staging the numbers, if any would get applause afterwards, and was self-conscious about not staging any kind of "button" moments or holds after the numbers to account for any response. We got some clapping last night after "Dry Bones," but no where else, I think. Not sure if there should be clapping encouraged after the songs or not . . . My feeling is mostly "not," but it's always odd to end a big dance number and just . . . move on to talking. Of course, it's not really a musical, it's a play with dances, but it does share some characteristics with musicals -- Gyda Arber solved a structural problem early on by noting that Becky Byers' "I Wish" dance number (as its come to be known in musicals) was placed WAY too late in the show compared to where it would be in a musical, and moving it back fixed a lot of problems (and gave us a light, comedic scene right where we needed one).
Hope people show up today. It's damned depressing calling shows . . . It happens, and probably we'll wind up filling the house repeatedly at the end of the run, but I hate this period in a month's run where you just can't seem to get anyone in. Berit says the original shows are "hard sells." Yeah, probably. Some might say going up against FringeNYC might have something to do with it, but I did as well in Augusts 2005 and 2007 at the same time as The Fringe as I've done any other time - but there I had World Gone Wrong, and noir is an easy sell . . .
So now, here I am, wishing I had more sleep so I can relax before the demanding task of playing Harry Rosenfeld in Harry in Love at 4.00 pm. Maybe in a bit.
So I'm playing around with the iTunes as I reload The Brick's iPod shuffle with songs to play in between shows at The Clown Festival instead of the ones that were on there for The Film Festival. I took a look at the "Top 25 Most Played" playlist, as I do often to see - since we usually play the iTunes on random - what the random iTunes brain likes to play the most. I had thought of posting a list of these "most played" songs last week, but at that point, the list was full of all the songs from the shows that I had to play over and over as I arranged them on CDs and/or edited them into different forms, so it was rather un-random.
Berit must be playing it a lot, as all of those songs are now gone from the list - even Regina Spektor's "Back of a Truck," which has been in the top 5 for over a year since I went through a spate of playing it over and over and over a while back.
Which is how B & I both listen to music at times - we get fixated on one song and then play it over and over and over and over again, many MANY times in a row. Here for example is the list of the 24 most played on our iTunes at the moment (from out of 53,229 tracks), and I'm POSITIVE the top 4, maybe even 5, songs are up there from B playing them on repeat . . .
1. "Candidate (1973 alternate version) - David Bowie - Diamond Dogs - 42 plays
2. "Showtime" - Electric Six - I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master - 38 plays
3. "Carlotta Valdez" - Harvey Danger - Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? - 32 plays
4. "New Killer Star" - David Bowie - Reality - 28 plays
5. "Cracked Actor" - David Bowie - Aladdin Sane - 25 plays
6. "Starman" - David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars - 25 plays
7. "All Together" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play More Little Rascals Music - On to the Show! - 22 plays
8. "Black and White" - Bellevue Cadillac - Swing This, Baby! - 22 plays
9. "Think" - The Siegel-Schwall Band - ...Where We Walked - 22 plays
10. "Bells" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play "Little Rascals" Music - 21 plays
11. "Ah! 'Tis Love" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play "Little Rascals" Music - 21 plays
12. "Dog Song" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play "Little Rascals" Music - 21 plays
13. "Intermezzo" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play More Little Rascals Music - On to the Show! - 21 plays
14. "Life on Mars?" - David Bowie - Hunky Dory - 21 plays
15. "Beloved Movie Star (Billie Wilder Mix) - Stan Ridgway - Holiday in Dirt - 21 plays
16. "Experimental Film" - They Might Be Giants - The Spine - 21 plays
17. "Rajah" - The Beau Hunks - The Beau Hunks Play More Little Rascals Music - On to the Show! - 20 plays
18. "Dial 'O' for Bigelow" - Fred Lane - Car Radio Jerome - 20 plays
19. "Hollywood Swinging" - Kool & The Gang - Wild and Peaceful - 20 plays
20. "I Just Want to Be a Movie Star" - Lester Bangs & The Delinquents - Jook Savages On The Brazos - 20 plays
21. "I'm in Love with a German Film Star" - The Passions - Thirty Thousand Feet Over China - 20 plays
22. "Dinner and a Movie" - Phish - Junta - 20 plays
23. "Hollywood Cat" - Trig Williams - Wowsville! - 20 plays
24. "Love and Death (radio spot) - Woody Allen - 20 plays
Okay, so who's the favorite artist in this household?
No, not The Beau Hunks, those are actually all random. Our Beloved Mister Bowie, as usual, is all over this list.
"Carlotta Valdez" however is the song of the moment, and usually winds up being the first song played in the car on the way home from The Brick each night. It's a musical retelling of Hitchcock's Vertigo, and I've kept meaning to put the film on when we got home for a while. Finally did last night and stayed awake for about 2/3rds of it (not the first 2/3rds either, I was up and down the whole time). Good song - I don't know where the hell I got it from, but I should look into that band some more . . .
Okay, I'm off to deal with box office worker issues and go over Harry lines again before getting some more rest.
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
This afternoon, and the following two afternoons and evenings, we get Everything Must Go ready to open on Wednesday. Then we're running, and it's just about maintenance and (hopefully) enjoying ourselves.
Learned a lot from this. Mainly about what I can't do anymore. The shows are fine, but I can't take doing this like I did back at NADA ten years ago. Especially with actually creating two of the shows I'm doing at the same time. A more coordinated plan of attack will be developed for next year. Two shows in August, probably - one extant script, one original - and also probably no Summer Festival show at The Brick. B & I will just deal with running the space for the Festival, and getting our August shows together. Maybe other director gigs here and there for others if asked, but . . . hmmn. Just two GCW productions in a year? Seems sparse.
No. Maybe it's just reasonable.
So when this is over, it's time for us to manage the tech for the 3rd Annual International Clown Theater Festival for a month, then we have to hang for a couple of weeks to deal with the October Penny Dreadful tech, then we get to go up to Maine for a few weeks and pull ourselves together, surf the zeitgeist, and consider what we should be doing for next year. Nice time to be in New England.
So, here we are. I'm about to wake B up to go off to The Brick to strike the Harry set and work EMG, but first, behind the cut, recent videos I've enjoyed . . .
( Muppets (shilling coffee and rapping), a cat & a fan, and the Electric Six )
And off we go. Enjoy.
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 . . .
In the meantime, however, the postcards are on the way here for the first two shows. We'll get them sometime Monday-Wednesday, I guess (I don't entirely know how days are counted on this with a weekend in the middle).
Here are the designs by Berit and I, accomplished by Berit (though I went and redid the Harry in Love back as Berit had done it in a way that wouldn't allow for mailing labels/stamps - I know it's probably not necessary in this day and age, most people use the cards just to hand out, emailing info to everyone else, but still, it's always good to leave the cast the option of doing an actual mailing if they like).
Harry in Love, front and reverse:
And Spell:
Back to bed. Or at least, at this hour, couch.
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 . . .
Though writing work is not as difficult as some when tired.
This weekend, rehearsing and writing, writing and rehearsing. Shows look good. We did a runthrough of Harry in Love on Saturday that was damned good. Three of the six of us in the cast are off-book and only rarely needed prompts. Another was off-book for all but one scene, and the other two (which included me) seem to know most of the lines but still need the script as a security blanket. Rhythms good. Show ran 2 hours 17 minutes including 10-minute intermission. I think 5-8 minutes will come off that (some of the company think more will, but we're actually already pretty well bookin', even with some of us still looking at scripts).
Worked two scenes from Harry again yesterday, and got them to a really great manic level. We all felt really good about them when we were finished, kinda looking around for a moment after the run of the last scene like, "Damn, we did that RIGHT." It was interesting, because we actually weren't as precise as we need to be, but we got to a level of energy and character and rhythm that was dead on. So, we now need the precision of lines (in particular) on top of that.
Spell also continues. Still behind in script (on that and Everything Must Go), but there was enough to work in rehearsal yesterday (including working in new cast member Samantha Mason). Next rehearsal for Spell is Friday and I expect to have the full script done before that (two weeks before we open, nice way to cut it close, Hill). Tomorrow, back to Everything Must Go after a bit off (with the way the casts' schedules are working this month, that's how it goes - three or four days mainly on one show and then it goes away for a week or so).
Spell looking good, but some of what I planned didn't work and I had to come up with okay solutions. I like the show, but it's definitely not the show I had in my head while writing, and writing gets harder as I try to figure out if I'm writing the show that was in my head or the show that's appearing in rehearsals now (which is better, I think, but hard to get a grip on). Also, we've lost another cast member, and one even harder to recast due to specialized abilities and qualities needed. We're workin' on it.
So, I have to get back to the writing of the shows now, but first, a bit of fun - I have a backlog of stuff to share. Here's some album covers from LP Cover Lover that I dug:
And inside the cut, NINE recent found videos of amusement for your dining and dancing pleasure:
( Read more... )
Enjoy.
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 . . .
Harry In Love: A Manic Vaudeville is staged and we did a book-in-hand (mostly, some people are nicely off-book for bits and pieces already) stumble-thru and fix-thru that went well enough to show we're in good shape. There is much work to be done, but we have the time to do that work, easily. It's going to be a serious laff-riot, really.
Spell is proceeding well, though I need to write faster on it - the text is coming, but not as I'd like (speedwise, I mean, I've wound up very happy and even surprised with what's come out for this one). The cast is good, though still incomplete - we lost an actress, as I mentioned, and the one I asked to replace her hasn't returned my contact, so I'll move on to asking another. Thank goodness the cast on this show is so cheery to work with - the show itself is pretty bleak and uncomfortable (yeah, I'm great at talking up my own shows - "Bleak and Uncomfortable!" - now that's an ad line for ya . . .).
Everything Must Go (Invisible Republic #2) has had more time off than I'd like, but there were cast conflicts with other shows, and marriages, and so forth. There is a lot to do on this one and not enough time scheduled - I need to find more time to dedicate to this show. Also, I'm behind in the writing on this one too - which is a surprise, as this is the kind of language that normally comes naturally and easily to me (as it did on what is now Invisible Republic #1, That's What We're Here For (an american pageant)). Next rehearsal for this one is tomorrow, and I have to have more text and choreography ready for that, so today is the writing day (mostly for EMG, I hope, and some for Spell), and tomorrow I'll schlep over to The Brick as early as I can and start really getting the choreography down.
I'm still getting over my shyness in choreographing dance on other peoples' bodies; That's What We're Here For was a big step for me, but there I had the one "real" dance for (and by) Maggie Cino and me, and the rest were mainly stylistic pastiches, and worked out a lot with the cast, while this one is mostly me doing actual personal, non-parodic work, with better dancers than I am. Nerve-wracking.
Last night was the end of The Brick's The Film Festival: A Theater Festival (except for some extensions of really good shows that you should all go and see), and we had the closing-night ceremonies and awards ceremonies. This is the second year of this post-fest party, which is on its way to being a tradition, as awards ranging from the semi-serious to outright ridiculous are given, with every piece in the fest winning at least one award (the Special Olympics of Indie Theatre, if you will), with a focus on in-jokes funny (maybe) only to festival participants, or more usually to about 10 regular members of The Brick crowd. Bottomless amounts of alcoholic beverages are served. Lisa Levy, lovely in a gorgeous dress, forces everyone entering the theatre to be interviewed as if on the red carpet as a camera broadcasts the uncomfortable results on the gigantic screen inside. Jeff Lewonczyk, "America's Funnyman," hosts and everyone groans at what he thinks is funny, as Lawrence Krauser tickles the ivories beautifully, giving an inappropriate air of an actual planned show to the whole evening. Private grievances are aired, friends and reputations are insulted, Audrey Crabtree presents awards as a character both disturbing and endearing (supposedly the "special" 13-year-old love child of one of the Brick artistic directors), I stumble around imitating a drunken Orson Welles, technical matters go awry. And it all ends in chaos. Then we drink some more. I blast some Motown over the PA. And some of the theatre-film geeks (me, Lewonczyk, Danny Bowes, James Comtois, and others) play trivia games for way too long. A good evening all around.
Last night, for the second year in a row, I received the award for "Most Misunderstood" show. In a vaguely-drunken, vaguely-Wellesian tone I pointed out that while Ian W. Hill's Hamlet was definitely misunderstood, especially by the critics - and I flinched a bit when I realized that one of the critics I was talking about was sitting right in front of me, oh well - there was no good reason why such a straightforward show as Ambersons should be misunderstood, but that the Backstage critic had managed to do it anyway. I promised to continue to aim to receive that same award EVERY year from now on in the Brick summer festivals (and I shall, oh yes, I SHALL).
Later, to my surprise, the "Ian W. Hill Lifetime Achievement Award for Lifetime Achievement" was given to my old Nada coeval Mr. Art Wallace. 40 years old now and I gots me a lifetime achievement award named for me . . . {sigh}
Oh, and there was another great party the evening before at the McKleinfeld's where grasshoppers were consumed (the drink, that is), many things were grilled and deep-fried (deep-fried Oreos! deep-fried Hershey bars!), and a lot of Rock Band was played. I now need a rest from this intensive relaxation schedule.
So, other things found online for your dining and dancing pleasure . . .
Three images from the always-wonderful Modern Mechanix site, the first announcing a new breakthrough in air travel:
A theme which continues with this important question:
Which leads to a sinister second question . . .
Anyone who knows me probably knows of my David Bowie fanaticism. Well, if you're like me, and I know I am, there's an article that will interest you more than it probably should in The Daily Mail online: He's made up and is releasing a comp of 12 of his own favorite songs of his - not exactly hits that would have shown up on the Changesbowie collections - and he's written liner notes about each song which the Mail has printed HERE. For those interested, the songs are "Life On Mars," "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (reprise)," "The Bewlay Brothers," "Lady Grinning Soul," "Win," "Some Are," "Teenage Wildlife," "Repetition," "Fantastic Voyage," "Loving The Alien," "Time Will Crawl," and "Hang On To Yourself (live in Santa Monica)."
Now I have to go make a playlist of those and see what it's like, though I'm both pleased and pissed to discover that Bowie, happy with the songs on the underrated Never Let Ne Down but, correctly, unhappy with the 80s-era production/arrangement, has gone in and rerecorded instruments and rearranged and remixed "Time Will Crawl." The song, a favorite of mine, deserves it. Now, of course, I have to buy the whole damned thing for the one track (unless I can just find the track online).
(huh . . . and of course I discover to my surprise that I don't even HAVE four of those tracks in my iTunes, as I was sure I would . . . damn)
We now have some waterfalls in NYC - to be precise, we have Olafur Eliasson's The New York City Waterfalls - four towers in the area of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges cycling out East River water in a continuous fall all day and some of the night (technically, as has been noted, a fountain, actually). There has been an air of disappointment from some quarters about how they turned out - they looked great in the computer renderings, but most of the time, from most angles, they look . . . pretty pathetic. And I've been a bit pissed off about the fact that traffic on a stretch of the BQE under the Brooklyn Heights (which I generally drive at least twice a day) has become completely slowed, if not even jammed, during waterfall operation due to the slow-down of people taking a gander at the damned one that's right there next to the road, which looks terrible from that angle anyway.
(side note - I nearly went back and fixed this, but what the hell - I have, as a result of reading too many "period" books about earlier centuries in NYC, taken to referring to that area with a now-dropped article, as "THE Brooklyn Heights" - such as "The British are massing on the Brooklyn Heights to attack Washington's troops," or "I have to drive under the Brooklyn Heights twice a damn day," or "Fuck, I wish I could afford a townhouse in the Brooklyn Heights" - I've decided to just go with this and not give a damn anymore; luckily my brief habit, gained the same way, of calling the center of Manhattan "the central park" didn't stick the same way)
Anyway, held up again in traffic last night on my way home from the Brick, and seeing that one lit up after nightfall (and from a bad angle), I began to change my opinion. Jerry Saltz, at New York, HERE sums up pretty well what I think of them now, with a photo of the best of the falls at the best time and angle.
And finally, behind the cut, two of the better humor videos I've seen in a long time - commercials for the ersatz power-drink, POWERTHIRST!
( GRATUITOUS AMOUNTS OF ENERGY! )
Enjoy. I'm back to writing (I hope, rather than sitting at a computer screen unhappily staring and shaking nervously).
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.
First reading last night of Richard Foreman's Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville, for my August production, with the comparatively small cast of six. Went well, and the cast is damned good and has a good time mixing outside of the work as well. Some fine single-malt scotch was poured at the intermission break (thanks, Josephine!) and we had a well-lubricated time. Amazingly, the reading lasted one hour and 47 minutes -- when we originally performed the show, it ran two hours and 50 minutes, plus two intermissions. WAY too long, but we were doing the premiere production, so I felt we should do the complete play. Foreman's first comment (besides thanking me for the production) was that if I ever did it again, I should cut it, so I did. I cut 25 pages, which was less than I had hoped to, but they must have been the right 25 pages, because I certainly didn't expect to lose an hour with that - but I'm glad I did. It'll run a bit longer in performance, with business and so forth, but not too much longer (plus one intermission). A good length.
Another image from the Modern Mechanix blog with a headline that caused some hilarity around this home:
The hilarity was actually more from the fact that the moment Berit and I saw it, we began singing the intro to "The Immigrant Song" together without a pause.
Here's the video trailer for the Piper McKenzie production Babylon Babylon, opening soon at The Brick, which I'm lighting (and I appear briefly in the first minute of this trailer):
( On The Developmental Process )
There's also a blog for the show, HERE.
Jules Dassin, one of my favorite noir directors, has died at the age of 96. I've written enough obits recently, and plenty of people are paying tribute to this great filmmaker, so I won't go on about him too much.
He has been known best for many years for his later films Rififi and Topkapi. With the increased interest in noir (and fine rereleases from The Criterion Collection) the four great noirs he made, one a year, from 1947-1950, Brute Force, The Naked City, Thieves' Highway, and Night and the City, are now regarded as the best of his works. They are all essential noirs, and if you haven't seen them, I can't recommend them enough.
Consumer news: The new Region 1 DVD of Lynch's Lost Highway is pretty crappy and inferior to recent editions from France, England, and Germany - if you have a region-free player, go for one of those (I have the German edition, which is bare-bones and quite cheap, if you can find it).
Also, I'm making my way through the Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus 16-Ton Megaset DVD box set, and, besides looking better than I've ever seen them, the episodes are turning out to be more complete than I've ever seen them before -- I've watched every episode multiple times, on PBS, cable channels, VHS tape, laserdisk, and earlier DVD editions, I practically know them all by heart, and this new set has little bits and pieces throughout that have been sliced from the episodes for years. It's kinda weird (but great!) seeing these episodes for the umpteenth time and seeing new bits (and entire sketches!) that are brand-new to me.
Sean Rockoff told me that when he saw MPFC on channel 13 back in the 70s when they first ran it, there were still some Gilliam animations in a few episodes that have always been cut since (and I've read about them elsewhere) -- I'm expecting to see them show up when those episodes come around.
UPDATE: Nope. The three edited animation segments were still edited, even though lots of other little bits and pieces I've never seen before keep showing up (fewer and fewer as the series goes on). And while I'm glad to see all these pieces restored, it turns out that there's some other cuts/replacements as well - apparently for music rights issues (though for some reason, Graham Chapman's rendition of "Girl from Ipanema" in one episode is dubbed over with "I Dream of Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair," but is left in when sung by Cleese and Chapman in another).
I DID finally find one of the cut animation segments on YouTube, and here it is:
( A Bad Connection on Line 422 )
We've wound up with a night off we didn't expect. More Python and ordering in take-out. Nice.
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.