CollisionWorks

So I've been gone for many months from here, but intending to return. Just haven't felt like I had much to say, or rather, what I had to say fit better on Facebook. But some people might actually venture here from Zack Calhoun's blog Visible Soul, where I was just cyber-interviewed, and if so, here's the deal about this link and where it's going . . .

I'll try and get back to making this blog interesting again by discussing the process for my August season as it's going on. This year, I'll be doing three plays, Removal, a new one that seems to be becoming some kind of farce; Blvd de Paris, a classic play by Richard Foreman I've been wanting to get to; and Invincible City, a text created through improvisation by myself and David Finkelstein of Lake Ivan Performance Group, which David has already transformed into a piece of video art. The last two pieces will play on a double-bill.

So . . . as I work on these shows, I'll keep some of my process journal going here as I used to. I always seemed to work as both a place for dialogue and as a kind of promotion for the shows, so I should get back to it. The last few years, the shows have been big and I've been tired (and/or lazy), but I'd like to get back to an account of what goes into making one of these shows.

I also have some longer pieces I've been working on that might finally get done and wind up here. I've been working on something called "So Big It Can Never Be Catalogued or Appraised: Thoughts on Pieces of Citizen Kane" (which is exactly what it sounds like), and I put in a proposal that was (just today) sadly rejected for a book in the great 33 1/3rd series of monographs from Continuum/Bloomsbury Academic. My proposal was for the Mothers of Invention album We're Only In It For The Money, and I did enough research, thinking, and writing about that work (and related ones) just for the proposal that I should probably just write the book anyway and post in in pieces here.

At the current moment, I'm in the dressing room of The Brick supervising a tech for the Democracy festival that opens tonight. When not writing this I'm going through David's video of Invincible City and transcribing it, so I should be getting back to that. By the end of the weekend, I'm hoping to have all these shows cast, but that seems . . . unlikely. I'll let you know when I do. So more on the current projects soon.

Amazingly, when I went to open a new posting window here for this blog, I got a "Restore from saved draft?" window from LiveJournal. Yup, there was an old "Friday Random Ten" that I had typed up but not finished, long enough ago that the playlist of unheard songs I was working through had 9,456 songs in it (it now has 8,655). So from sometime in the past, and as a welcome back to this blog, here's a Friday Random Ten from January 6 of this year . . .

1. "Noisy Summer" - The Raveonettes - Chain Gang of Love
2. "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" - David Llywelyn - Schwabing Affairs-Delicate Tunes From Swinging Munich Movies Of The 60's & 70's
3. "Kissin' Boogie" - Beverly Wright with Preston Love's Orchestra - Fine Gals, Fast Women & Wailin' Daddies
4. "Dinosaurs" - King Missile - The Way to Salvation
5. "Jeannie (I Dream of Jeannie)" - Hugo Montenegro, His Orchestra and Chorus - Seldom-Heard TV Theme Lyrics
6. "Insane Asylum" - Kathi McDonald - Insane Asylum
7. "Rip This Joint" - The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St.
8. "Walkin' the Dog" - Rufus Thomas - Atlantic Rhythm & Blues vol 5 1961-1965
9. "She's Fallen In Love With The Monster Man" - Screamin' Lord Sutch & The Savages - Cameo Parkway 1957-1967
10. "Y.D.M.S." - UK Subs - Occupied

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

Tonight we have a year-end party at the theatre for our community, and the installation of some more of the super-secret Master Masons of The Brick (so secret, it cannot be talked about, merely written about on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and in program bios). As Master Tyler of The Brick, it will be my duty, as always, to cleanse the sacred brick. Berit, as Sister Bailiff, will ensure order in the sacred ceremonies. But now, I've said too much...

So here's the weekly Random Ten again (with associated videos), from the 8,439 as-yet-unplayed songs in my iPod . . .

1. "You're Under Arrest" - Serge Gainsbourg - de Serge Gainsbourg a gainsbarre
2. "The Body" - Sister Charmaine - 500% Dynamite!
3. "A Song for Europe" - Roxy Music - Stranded
4. "Can't Escape from You" - Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series, vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs
5. "Fuck Christmas, I Got the Blues" - The Legendary Tiger Man - Fuck Christmas, I Got the Blues
6. "Barnabas Theme from 'Dark Shadows'" - The First Theremin Era - Dark Shadows - The 30th Anniversary Soundtrack
7. "Swinging A-Go-Go" - Stiv Bators - Disconnected
8. "Adult Books" - X - Wild Gift
9. "Farewell to Today and Tomorrow" - The Fewdle Lords - Psychedelic States: Florida in the 60s
10. "Bucket Rider" - Polyrock - Polyrock

A mixed bag today -- classic, loved tracks from Roxy Music, X, and Polyrock, some pleasant ones I didn't know from known and unknown artists, a really great local garage track I didn't know (The Fewdle Lords one), and a truly horrific Serge Gainsbourg piece including some rap parts. Ugh. Here's the playlist:

Now to quickly make a party playlist for tonight (someone on staff already has one made, but it harms none to have a second ready) and get ready for the "sacred ceremony."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Same with Moni . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More days of hurry-up-and-wait; big spaces between things that suddenly have to happen. And then several things that were supposed to happen went away, leaving me with gaps where even more waiting needed to occur. Now I'm waiting for the car to be serviced (nothing specific or bad, just the regular three-month-checkup) so I can then use it on a bunch of needed errands.

Last night, I went out to judge an evening of short plays for the NYIT Awards. I hope to write about this in the next few days, if there's time -- I'm supposed to keep it a secret about what I'm judging, and I'll do my best, though I'm sure anyone with google-fu would be able to figure out what I saw, but I'm not so much interested in writing about the specific plays I saw in this evening, but what aspects of Theatre, good and bad, I saw in them, and what I learned from the whole experience.

While zoning out occasionally from what I was viewing onstage, or trying to turn it in my mind into a more interesting piece than it was, I had images for an August show to be created. All I know was it involved screen projections of still images of the actors onstage, which in my head were Samantha Mason and Olivia Baseman, with simultaneous shadow plays behind the screens, in an office setting (yet again, always ALWAYS offices or jails, no idea why). Have to (literally) meditate on this further, but something in my head was whispering something about "all women" and Caryl Churchill, so who knows . . .

I'm also back into working on improvisation with David Finkelstein (Lake Ivan Theater Company) -- we met on Sunday and will meet again tomorrow. This past week we didn't do any videotaping (David having moved from primarily doing theatre pieces to creating improvisation on video in front of a green screen, then creating a dense world of audio and video around and based on the improv), as David just wanted to work on the improv technique we call the "Landscape" form with me and Cassie Terman. David led Cassie and I through a number of solo exercises that led to us doing an improvised duet, and one that seemed to be one of the most successful we'd all achieved in the form.

After spending 2009 working in the form David now calls "Lake Ivan Classic" -- what he's been doing for over 20 years now -- we spent all but one of our early 2010 work sessions exploring this new form that David has been finding for some years now. Our videotaping sessions in 2009 have led thus far to the creation of two video pieces by David, Marvelous Discourse - which was also featured in, and formed the text of, my play Sacrificial Offerings - and a newer one, Epistolary Fusillades.

He has completed the soundtrack to a third piece, Invincible City, which he played for me on Sunday, and I was blown away by just the audio of that one (when David finds an improv of ours he wants to turn into a video piece, the first thing he does is get the raw audio track of the improv edited - in the case of this new one, he apparently did NO editing to the original improv, it worked so well - and then create the music score, THEN the dense video overlays, so I get to hear the audio for them many months before the video is completed).

The 2010 Landscape sessions, while fruitful in exploration, were not so much so for the creation of new video pieces, and while David and I and Cassie will continue exploring that form in the next few months (and, judging from Sunday, probably quite well), David and I will be going back to Lake Ivan Classic more often, including tomorrow. So I've been reading up the old notes on that form to get myself back into that headspace after almost a year away from it.

Also, I'll send out invites closer to the date, but here's a first mention -- David will be premiering several video works by himself, including Epistolary Fusillades, and one by Mike Kuchar at a screening in January. Information is HERE

I'll probably finally have something to write on the improv work soon as well. I've begun keeping notebooks again of everything going on, as I once did. Frankly, I was completely grabbed by the concept and form of the Field Notes brand of notebooks -- they got me right in the center of my combo utilitarian/design fetishist hipster soul, with reminders of the print shop I worked in at my grade school, and I bought several packs to use. Their slogan, "I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it down to remember it now," has wound up making a lot of sense to me, as I'm finding that the action of jotting down all my notes is making them all clearer and constantly more present in my head, as they once more often were. It may be, *sigh*, age, but it's definitely true that I'm not keeping as many things juggled in my head & memory as I once did without losing some, and thinking back on the period where I kept notebooks, I don't think I lost as many ideas then.

And keeping notes in the books has made me desire more (and have the ability) to share those notes here. So there'll be more of that soon -- often as just the raw data. Back to what this blog was created for - the presentation of the nuts-and-bolts work of making Art-stuff.

Meanwhile, back in the iPod, here a Random Ten from the 2,522 tracks in the "Brandnew Bag" playlist of songs not yet played on the device:

1. "Sleep Of The Just" - Elvis Costello - King Of America
2. "Rome And Bored" - Martin Mull - Normal
3. "Real Good Time Together" - Lou Reed - Street Hassle
4. "Boiling" - Minutemen - The Punch Line
5. "Eat to the Beat" - Blondie - Eat to the Beat
6. "Hooty Sapperticker" - Barbara & The Boys - Las Vegas Grind! - Volume 2 'Louie's Limbo Lounge'
7. "David Watts" - The Jam - Direction, Reaction, Creation
8. "Funky But Chic" - David Johansen - David Johansen
9. "Sticks and Stones" - Manfred Mann - The Best of the EMI Years
10. "Here Comes The Nice" - Small Faces - Immediate Singles

And here's the playlist of most of the above (or as near as I could get):

Okay, got the call from the garage -- Petey Plymouth is all ready to go. Now on to the busyness of the day . . . at 4.30 pm, with the sun fading . . .

Which of course is also nice when you're consistently selling out a house of close to 100 seats. That makes for a good laugh from the crowd.

I was planning to take lots of behind the scenes shots at the show, but it wound up not quite being so photogenic backstage as I'd thought -- or when it was, there wasn't enough light or time to get a shot. Here's Moira watching Alex and Yvonne during tech:

And our fearless production crew (Berit in foreground) hacking their way through the difficult tech:

Moira appears to be sticking her tongue out at me as she and Trav S.D. wait and wait and wait (patiently) for the chroma-key to be worked out for their "Buster Friendly Show" segment:

And a blurry shot that still suggests how crazy the tech table/crew situation was out in the house as the show was put together, with lights, sound, live music, and projections all trying to be worked out together (as the set continued to be built, up until - and past - show opening).

The other night was the benefit party, and VJ Fuzzy Bastard did some slick video mixing on one of the screens for us:

And just the screens and set:

Only three more shows, Wednesday-Friday, and they're just about sold out. Nice.

Apart from the show, we've been variously watching a circling playlist of about 15-20 old TV shows on Netflix Instant -- Soap, Archer, old SNLs, NewsRadio, Black Adder, the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes episodes, etc.; definite TV comfort food -- while also making our way through the BBS Story box set (last night was Five Easy Pieces, which I'd never seen before, and WOW), and also gradually through a Netflix disk/instant chronological playlist of 130 western pictures from 1939 to 1976.

I don't know what the Western-watching is for yet, though I've started making notes of interest and taking down interesting lines of dialogue. A theatre piece might emerge from this. I was just aware that my knowledge of the Modern American Western Movie was less than it should be, and wanted to get to know the genre better. It was INCREDIBLY important for several decades, more than the regard it's held in now would indicate, and I think that understanding certain aspects of America itself, let alone Movies, isn't possible without a knowledge of the genre that most of us born post-its-heyday haven't got.

So we're up to 1947 or so, and about 8 movies in, I think. Actually, the WWII period wasn't all that great for Westerns (as film noir, on the other hand, was being created and thriving) and post-Stagecoach it took a few years for filmmakers to figure out how one actually made a "serious" film in the genre (it seems to have taken Ford's return with My Darling Clementine to get it really started). So we've been sitting through a bunch of "major" films that aren't all that good, but are still valuable to know. Who knows where this will go, if anywhere, but it's an enjoyable study.

And here's a Random Ten for the week from the playlist of 2,519 tracks on the iPod that haven't gotten a spin there yet (actually, there's 10,994 tracks on there that haven't been played yet, but these are the ones I'd actually most like to hear), with links to videos for the songs, or as close as I could get by the artists (same album or period, whatever):

1. "Fish Eyes " - Shonen Knife - Happy Hour
2. "Around The Fire" - Pere Ubu - Worlds In Collision
3. "Red Rain" - Peter Gabriel - So
4. "Big Bands" - Sparks - Halfnelson
5. "Golden Brown" - The Stranglers - La Folie
6. "Moisture" - The Residents - The Commercial Album
7. "Hold Me, Hug Me, Rock Me" - Shocking Blue - Beat With Us
8. "What Is The Secret of Your Success?" - The Coasters - Fifty Coastin' Classics
9. "Hot Rock Theme" - Quincy Jones - The Hot Rock
10. "Shorty Falls In Love" - Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks - Original Recordings

And here's the video playlist of the above (or as close as I could get - and, as always, if you're reading this on Facebook you'll have to click through to the Livejournal to see the embedded videos), with bonus Linton Kwesi Johnson:

And, finally, I do have one new cat picture to share -- Hooker on a pillow that was new at the time (or at least, had newly appeared out of an old prop box -- I think we got it for Hamlet in 2007), but now already has an immense tear from end to end:

Tonight, I schlep on over to The Battle Ranch to watch a runthru of Bethlehem or Bust so I know what I'm doing when I come in Saturday morning to light it for the FightFest right before it opens. This should be fun.

Can't believe this year is almost over -- it's been a long one. Did B and I actually get married only a few months ago, and then do the two biggest shows we've ever produced? Seems like years now . . .

Today I had a good time over at 3 Legged Dog, where Androids is going up, helping out by setting up the sound system -- the show uses 7 wireless mics, so I had to get the mix board, the receivers, and the mics all in order and arranged. Certainly a pleasure to work with the VERY nice equipment at 3LD.

Androids unfortunately does appear to be keeping me away from seeing, at least this week, work from one of my favorite theatre companies FINALLY happening at my home base, The Brick, as Target Margin brings their lab series -- which I got to help make happen at NADA a couple of years in the late '90s -- to the space. This week, it's a play by Kandinsky, next week Mozart, the week after that, Clyde Fitch. Maybe I'll get to the Fitch . . .

And today, a Random Ten from the as-yet-unplayed playlist in the iPod -- now down to only being 6.1 days long!

1. "69 Année Erotique" - Serge Gainsbourg - De Serge Gainsbourg A Gainsbarre
2. "I Can't Wait Until I See My Baby's Face" - Dusty Springfield - One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found
3. "Bongo City" - Slim Gaillard - Laughing In Rhythm, #4 - Opera in Vout
4. "Our Drab Ways" - Jonathan Richman - Because Her Beauty Is Raw And Wild
5. "Coca-Cola Commercial 1969 #2" - Ray Charles & Aretha Franklin - Coca-Cola Commercials
6. "Below The Belt" - Minutemen - Post-Mersh, Vol. 3
7. "Shall We Take Ourselves Seriously?" - Frank Zappa - Buffalo
8. "Time Will Show The Wiser" - Fairport Convention - (Guitar, Vocal)
9. "Did You See His Name?" - The Kinks - Club Au-Go-Go 10
10. "Street In The City" - Pete Townshend & Ronnie Lane - Rough Mix

And here's the full video playlist of the songs above, or as close as I could get to them . . . (as always, if on Facebook, check the original post on LiveJournal to see the video):

And now back to catching up on a suddenly full inbox of email (I'm beginning to have to work with companies for the December FightFest at The Brick).

More and more there may be less cause for this blog, especially during the downtime from our own season. When I started it, it seemed needed because all the theatre blogs were very theoretical and high-minded, and I wanted a journal of the practical day-to-day aspects of making theatre, including accounts/thoughts on the things in my life that feed me and make me able to do the work. Now, those theatre blogs that are still around are pretty much just as informal and informational, so I have less to say.

Of course, what I'd like to say most of the time now is more theoretical and high-minded. Ha ha.

But I will keep it all going, as I like the weekly checkin, the Random Ten, the place to post cat pictures, and a place to set some of my thoughts on what I do in public.

I still have thoughts to process on my work this year and put out, both regarding my three pieces, and how they worked and didn't, and my continuing improvisation work with David Finkelstein, which wound up, as I hoped and expected, affecting my acting in my own pieces, and for the better (when I remembered to use the process, and didn't get distracted into my worst actorial habits). I still have to find the right way to put these thoughts in order before I share them. But I will share them.

We also started work on the UTC#61 production of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? last night, which Berit's stage managing/prop designing and I'm acting in. Just a first reading and some text work on two of my scenes -- I'm not in it much, but the part is good, and the show looks to be good too. It will be great to work at 3LD, with all their advanced video projection technology (which is a major part of this show).

In the meantime, here's a Random Ten for this week, from among the 2,688 tracks in the iPod from favorite artists that haven't been played yet . . .

1. "I Just Want To Have Something To Do" - The Ramones - Road To Ruin
2. "Hey Now" - Talking Heads - True Stories
3. "Cannon Song" - Raul Julia & David Sabin - The Threepenny Opera
4. "You Tripped At Every Step" - Elvis Costello - Brutal Youth
5. "Betrayal Takes Two (1977 demo)" - Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Time
6. "Reaching into In" - Ken Nordine - The Best of Word Jazz Vol.1
7. "My Kind of Woman" - Edwin Starr - Northern Soul: The Cream of 60's Soul
8. "Greenwood, Mississippi" - Little Richard - Get Back Up Again 5
9. "He's the One" - Ike & Tina Turner - MOJO: Raw Soul
10. "Making Flippy Floppy" - Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues [Remastered]

And while we have no new cat pictures as yet, I have some shots from Maine of me with Sasha the Dog:

It was hard to get her to hold still long enough to not just be a blur, but we got a couple . . .

And here she is with Christopher Lee in The Devil Rides Out behind her . . .

And okay, I have no pictures of my own cats, but here's two kittens playing a special Halloween organ duet . . .

So the time off and at home has involved research into the history of marketing and branding for Invisible Republic #3, reading The Complete Peanuts, and watching old Thriller episodes for relaxation. Unfortunately, the more I watch Thriller, the less it becomes relaxation fodder and the more I want to do something like that, so I'm getting more ideas that may just be taking me down a dead end that I shouldn't bother following.

I kinda love the idea of trying to put together a modern version of one of those black-and-white 1960s horror anthology shows that I'm such a fan of -- besides Thriller, I think happily of One Step Beyond, The Outer Limits, and of course The Twilight Zone and in a slightly-different but connected way, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. A web series that could be done cheap, in DV, with a gothic air yet modern setting. All in Brooklyn (don't know why, but I like the idea of limiting it to the borough). Maybe call it Avenue X or something like that . . . suggestive of mystery and location but not TOO specific (Gravesend would be too on-the-nose). I'd want to kind of be the "John Newland" of the series, as story editor/showrunner, on-camera-host, occasional actor, and general supervisor (though instead of directing all of them, as Newland did with One Step Beyond, I'd rather DP/edit all of them, to keep them visually and tonally consistent). I've been raiding online archives of PD horror stories, to see if there's anything there that could be usefully adapted to such a project.

The problem with this good idea for a project (and why it may be a dead end) is that a great deal of what interests and fascinates me in the style of these inspirational programs is dependent on the conditions under which they were created, that is, in 35mm black-and-white film on Hollywood backlots, with the kind of control and support that comes from backlot shooting -- as well as original music scores composed by the likes of Jerry Goldsmith and Bernard Herrmann and performed by talented studio orchestra players. Shooting under more documentary-like conditions on Brooklyn streets and locations, no matter how well-controlled, wouldn't have the same "otherness" that was a big part of the effectiveness of these shows.

On the other hand, I could experiment a little and see if I could find a style that works. After all, I was most inspired towards a project like this by watching Thriller, rather than Zone or Limits, which I've watched over and over for years without any desire to do anything similar. The noirishness of Thriller was the inspirational part.

Zone, despite its frequent darkness, still takes place in an Ordered Universe, where things are basically right and good and the Dark Things are definite aberrations -- very much a part of turn-of-the-60s New Frontier thinking. Limits is basically a neutral, scientific landscape, where things just happen because that's how it works - things just happen. Thriller is a TV extension of the noir world -- a dark, chaotic place where Fate puts its thumb down on the good and bad equally, and violence, fear, and despair are the real state of humanity, bubbling below the surface, and any sense of order is a temporary illusion. This appeals to me as a tone for a modern version of one of these shows. Perhaps it would work in the combo artifice/realistic tone of something like Touch of Evil. I'll have to see what looks right.

Outside of that, I'm also compiling a playlist of songs that suggest dance pieces to me, for potential use in Invisible Republic #3.

Meanwhile, here's the weekly Random Ten from the tracks sitting in the iPod that haven't been played yet (after I remove these 10, and the bonus track, now down to only 2,699 tracks and 6.2 days of listening!):

1. "Definitive Gaze" - Magazine - Real Life
2. "Death Of A Nation" - Phluph - Phluph
3. "One More Try" - The Rolling Stones - Out Of Our Heads
4. "Dead Man's Party" - Oingo Boingo - Best O' Boingo
5. "Soul Kitchen" - The Doors - The Doors
6. "Roll Over Beethoven" - Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode: His Complete '50s Chess Recordings
7. "Water Over the Dam" - National Rifle Association - A Legacy of Conservation
8. "She Has Funny Cars" - Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow
9. "Try To Understand" - The Seeds - The Seeds
10. "Hypnovista Trailer" - Movie Sample - The Wild Wild World Of Mondo Movies Music

And here's the video playlist of the above (and for those on Facebook, as always, you have to click through to the original LiveJournal blog to see the videos here):

And here's a playlist of songs that are being considered for Invisible Republic #3. Unfortunately, I could only find live versions of the Yardbirds and Zappa tracks that aren't all that similar to the recordings I'd use (and I couldn't find the Richard Thompson track at all), and I used a live version of the Who track because I like the visuals too much, but here are some possibilities for the show as it stands:

And I'm really really pleased that after being discussed and planned for quite some time, The Brick is finally able to announce The Iranian Theater Festival, next March. This is a Good Thing.

Back to Thriller . . .