CollisionWorks

And a day off . . .

Crazy last few days. Got Merry Mount up and running just fine in the Hawthornicopia at Metropolitan Playhouse. Berit made up the maypole for it on Thursday and Friday before we opened Friday evening (so we had it mostly finished for Thursday night's final rehearsal). It became far more elaborate than I had anticipated - B got into it with her usual prop-making fervor and did something quite grand with it. But it did take two afternoons to make rather than one. We spent Thursday working on it at The Brick, toted it to The Battle Ranch for rehearsal, then kept it overnight in Petey Plymouth (I tell you, I don't know if I'll ever be able to not have a vehicle that can carry something 10' long inside it - it comes in really handy). Then we schlepped it over to Metropolitan Playhouse early afternoon Friday, and B went back to work finishing it in their lobby . . .

(while wearing my 1988 Devo tour shirt - which has been through a lot by now and still holds up!)

We weren't sure if we would need more flowers for the maypole or not, so we didn't get any that morning at the 99-cent store near us that we knew had them. B figured there were places close to the theatre where we could get them if we needed them.

There weren't.

I spent 90 minutes trudging around looking for the fake flowers B needed to finish the maypole (and an hour before that getting the props I had expected to get), finally taking the L train to Williamsburg and getting them there. I was not in a good mood when I returned, and my feet were blistered up pretty good actually (my current shoes seem to be great except for long walks). I was also nervous, as I had expected to have more time to go over my lines -- I had to understudy one of the speaking parts on opening night. So I did what I could with some help supplied by one of the actors in the show, Liz Toft, who works for a certain beverage company . . .

So, fueled by nerves and Red Bull, I did an acceptable job and the show went well. Went even better last night. Two more to go.

I got home from Friday night's show, sighing, thinking "Thank god I can sleep in tomorrow!" Then I remembered - B & I had to tech the new Penny Dreadful episode the next morning at 9.00 am. Oh, great (B wasn't happy either when I reminded her).

So we got up and did that. I didn't get to see the final performance last night, unfortunately (I was still stuck cleaning up after Merry Mount, but I got to see a semi-runthru at tech, and I got a few nice pictures:

The Magical Mister E (Clive Dobbs) checks the house before performing "The Great Switcheroo" for the first-(and last-) ever time.

Co-writer Matt Gray as Pinkerton detective Leslie Caldwell, Detective of the Supernatural (as seen in Hearst newspapers!).

Jessica Savage as Penny, magician's assistant, argues with her boss and lover, The Magical Mister E.

Harry Houdini (Patrick Pizzolorusso) is consulted by The Amazing Viernik (Fred Backus) and Caldwell in their search for The Magical Mister E (and, tangentially, a vampire).

Jessica Savage as Penny.

Aaron Baker as Bob Ford, Pinkerton agent, apparent time traveler trying to get home, and vampire victim.

Penny and Mister E argue again as director Christiaan Koop takes notes at tech.

I heard it went well last night. I wish I'd been able to light it better - it was okay, but I was really happy with my lighting of the first two episodes, and for this one, as expected, I had to use the lighting plot currently up for Bitch Macbeth, which is great for that show, but not for much else in the radically rearranged Brick at the moment (the seating platforms are gone and a large acting platform is in their place, with the light/sound boards in front of it, and the audience seated in two rows facing each other against the brick walls, with playing area up the middle). I did okay.

If you haven't seen any of the episodes of Penny Dreadful, you can check out the videos and synopses at the link above. It's worth it. I'm looking forward to directing the March episode.

Bitch Macbeth seems to be doing pretty damned well, too - I think the Time Out review helped (as well as nytheatre.com). We were going to see it tonight, but, for various reasons, I think we're going to wait now until next week (hope we can get seats . . .).

I've started doing some research for the graphic design of the postcards for the Gemini CollisionWorks shows coming this year (The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles, Spell, Harry In Love, Invisible Republic) - I want the cards to look like great dust jacket designs from various eras of publishing (Harry should look very 1960s - Catch-22 or Portnoy's Complaint, maybe; Ambersons very 1900s), so I've been reading up on these designs. And as you can see here, Hooker and Moni are helping with the research . . .



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I got a call this morning from my mom to tell me that my uncle John, her brother, had died. I hadn't seen or spoken to Johnny in years, for a number of good reasons, but we were close, he, his late brother David, and I, when I was growing up, and I have many fond memories of those times, all of which are seeming to come back today. So, not a cheery day.

I was more unhappy for my grandfather, who has lost both of his sons and a stepson who was very close to him (two in the past year). I talked to him and his wife, Jennie, for a bit earlier, and they're hanging on, but it's not easy, I'm sure.

I haven't thought very well of my uncle for a long time, but, yes, all those memories are coming back today, and I'm glad that those good times seem a lot more vibrant and real to me now than anything that has happened since.

It's much better that way.

Tech for Merry Mount in a few hours. Still don't know how I'm dealing with most of the costuming issues, and we open in two days. Well, I'll have to figure it out today and tomorrow, however. I'm trying to let it go and not have a over-the-top panic attack about that, which would be my usual reaction, even though I've done all I can about it right now, and there's nothing else I can do until later today. So, I'm trying, with some success, to just sit back and relax until it's time to go to tech. Listened to The Fugs' song "Try to Be Joyful" several times, and that helped, too. If Tuli and Ed can preach it, I can try and follow it.

Rehearsal for the show went extremely well last night. No problem with any of the acting, and now no problem with the dancing. Staged the maypole dance, and it went together quick, easy, and well. Much faster than expected. Good job from the actors - mostly new people I haven't worked with before, but I hope to some more in the next year. I have to understudy a part on opening night, so I worked that scene with Michael Criscuolo, and found what I should be doing (which is very different from the actor playing the part the rest of the time - we're quite different types).

I'm less concerned about some other things as I was - we have the basic maypole materials, and the props can be acquired easily. Just the damned costumes. If worse comes to worse, I can just forgo the actual "period" style in favor of a somewhat stylized black&white for Puritans/bright colors for Pagans that will do, but I'd like to avoid that. We'll see. I will try to be joyful.

Picture of my main workspace these days, that I wanted to include with the last post (taken just after the conversation there and before making the post), but couldn't load it up just then:

And, for no reason than to make me feel better and because we have a surplus of these now, here's a photo of our cats, Still Life with Cats, Basket, Book, and Guitar:

Tech at 2 pm. Wish me luck. I'm going to go spend an hour with the headphones on listening to music that will make me happy. The next song that came up random on iTunes after The Fugs was Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers doing "Dodge Veg-a-matic." Trying to be joyful.

Whew. Kept meaning to post in the past week, but just got busy.

Directing Trav S.D.'s Hawthorne adaptation, Merry Mount, for Hawthornicopia has wound up being harder in some ways than anticipated. It's a short show - maybe 13 minutes - and I have a great cast of principals, and we're all set on the "actorial" stuff, if you get my drift (though we went down a wrong path at first - too serious - and had to go back and fix it - add some camp), but around all the acting are things that are necessary to the script that are a bit of a pain. Like period costumes (Colonial Massachusetts). A maypole that must function as a maypole, and also be breakaway (and set up and collapse in a small space without hitting anyone). A pagan song and dance (with 6-8 actors in small, non-speaking roles). Yeah, nice easy stuff.

All of this is pretty much taken care of now, but it wound up eating a lot more time than anticipated (and causing more stress). All good now, except I can never convince myself that all is good, of course, and I go around worrying about things that are either taken care of or I can't do anything about anyway. I'm a schmuck.

When not directing or worrying about Merry Mount, I'm working on things for the June/August shows, primarily the scripts for Harry in Love and The Magnificent Ambersons:

To the left is the book with the transcript of Welles' cut of Ambersons, to the right, a copy of Richard Foreman's typescript of Harry in Love. Both are long.

Since Ambersons has to be adapted to a playscript, I'm typing that in and trying to turn it into a functional "play" as I go. Harry just needs to be retyped into an electronic format that can be sent around to actors - and also edited down, as the play is just too damned long, so Berit is handling that. We did the full text in the original production of '99, and it was a boulevard comedy (Murray Schisgal/Bruce Jay Friedman-style) that ran 2 hours 50 minutes PLUS two intermissions (totaling another 15 minutes)! And we weren't poky about it, either. The first thing Richard said to me when he saw it, after thanking me for doing it in the first place and complementing my performance, was that it was too long and I should cut it if I did it again.

So I am. The original typescript is 159 pages long, and I would like to get 35 pages out of it, if I can without damaging it. Which may not be possible. The play is short on plot and long on character/funny lines, with a careful, rising-hysteria rhythm, so at a certain point it's the accumulation of insanity that makes everything work, and cutting too many of the beats to get there will eliminate any reason for the play's existence at all. I've already made my cuts in the first four scenes in my work copy - there's just one more scene in the play that B has to finish typing - and when the whole thing is in, I'll make these first cuts and see where we stand. I have some ideas for the second level of cuts that will pain me, but I can live with. Then I'll see if I can live with a third set of cuts, reaching into the "brutal" level. I want no more than 2 hrs. 15 min. plus one intermission. If possible.

Ambersons is, lengthwise, what it is. We're doing the Welles cut as we can. Probably 2 hrs. 10 min. Maybe a little less. With {sigh} no intermission - we're imitating a movie here; it just wouldn't work.

Meanwhile - back in de iPod - there are now 22,046 songs (hooray for better acceptable compression!), and this is what comes up this morning as I type:

1. "Love of My Life" - The Mothers of Invention - Crusin' with Ruben & The Jets
2. "Merry-Go-Round" - Wallace Collection - Laughing Cavalier
3. "Fiction Romance" - Buzzcocks -Operators Manual
4. "Baby Help Me" - Percy Sledge - Essential Collection
5. "Dirty Love" - Frank Zappa - Overnite Sensation
6. "Little Baby" - The Blue Rondos - Jimmy's Back Pages . . . The Early Years
7. "Whirlpool" - Steve Mancha - Northern Soul: The Cream of 60's Soul
8. "More Than a Feeling" - Boston - Greatest Hits of Boston
9. "The Lighter Side of Dating" - The Monochrome Set - Strange Boutique
10. "T.N.K. (Tomorrow Never Knows)" - 801 - Live

And as for the kitties, Berit and I continue in our attempt to get a really good photo of Moni by holding her, with mixed success:

Especially as she likes to lick Berit's nose:

But she and Hooker have been particularly sweet this week for some reason . . .

We'll see how long it lasts.

Some other excellent news has come up for Gemini CollisionWorks, but it appears I would have to check the exact language for legal reasons before I make a formal announcement. But maybe a few links would be acceptable . . ?