collisionwork | Entries tagged with wedding

Well, Berit and I are married.

Maybe only 3/4ths married in spirit, until the last of the four performances of The Wedding of Berit Johnson & Ian W. Hill: A Theatre Study by Ian W. Hill & Berit Johnson at The Brick, tomorrow at 4.30 pm (or thereabouts -- the show before us in The Too Soon Festival is running long, and we'll probably start late), but it appears that we actually signed the real piece of paper this past Sunday, in the presence of about 90 friends and family members (there had been some discussion of just randomly choosing any of the 4 performances to actually sign the legal document, and not "prefer" one show over the others, but Trav S.D., our officiant, seemed pretty set on doing the real thing in front of everyone on the 20th, so I assume we did).

So Berit looked at me, mid-day Monday, with some wonder and disbelief and giggled, "I have a HUSBAND." Yes, and I have a wife.

This is excellent. My favorite comment as yet from someone not at any of the performances, but just seeing things about it on Facebook, was from playwright Matthew Freeman: "Your life is weird in ways that are good and right."

Yes. And, while generally true, Matt was specifically referring to the wonderful review by Avi Glickstein that appeared at nytheatre.com.

Always nice to get a good review. Better still to get a good review that actually gets what you were trying to do. Even better is when that review is of your Wedding. Sweet.

We don't have any of the official photos yet from the wonderful hired photographer, Eric, but there are some candids up from friends on Facebook. I don't know if any of these are visible to the general public (they may be locked to just Friends or Friends of Friends, I can't tell), but here are links to sets by Eric C. Bailey, Stacia French, and Josephine Cashman (who is responsible for the picture above), in case you can see them and would like to.

Today, we have another rest day, with some work on the August shows, before finishing the Wedding tomorrow. We are slowly returning back to normal after this amazing week just past. The entire experience has been a mindblower -- and the reception on Sunday at Aurora was an evening we'll never forget. When I get the official shots in, I'll write about it more; I'm still trying to process the whole thing.

But for those friends and family who were there and are reading this, THANK YOU SO VERY VERY MUCH for making Sunday, June 20 such a fantastic and surprisingly moving day for us (and to all the other friends who have come to the other performances and made each one of them their own special experience, THANK YOU as well).

And meanwhile, back in the iPod, here are a Random Ten track from the 2,949 tracks in the playlist of "unheard tracks by artists I like," with associated videos:

1. "Stop & Get A Hold Of Myself" - Gladys Knight & The Pips - Soul Diva Sessions
2. "You" - R.E.M. - Monster
3. "Flame Tree" - Yma Sumac - Miracles
4. "My Mind" - Chubby Checker - Nightmares At Toby's Shop 2
5. "Another Night" - Dionne Warwick - The Windows of the World
6. "Rev. Jack & His Roamin' Cadillac Church" - Timbuk 3 - Eden Alley
7. "If and When" - The dB's/Chris Stamey - Children of Nuggets: Original ARTyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era - 1976-1996
8. "Heaven" - The Rolling Stones - Tattoo You
9. "Dance" - Suicide - Suicide (Second Album)
10. "Human Fly" - The Cramps - No Thanks! The '70s Punk Rebellion

And here's the video playlist of the songs (or related ones) above, plus an extra bonus track . . .

And since I have no other regular photos, I'll throw up a bunch of videos I've recently seen and enjoyed.

Here's the new DEVO single, "Fresh," with a classically DEVO video of cheap chroma-key and clip-art made disturbing:

John Cale performing "Paris 1919" on The Tonight Show with Sterling Morrison and strings (thanks Adam Swiderski for linking to this!):

And, finally, a whole bunch of kittens react to the tarp their cage is built on . . .

Back to bits of work and bits of rest and regrouping. I'm not sure I want to leave this amazing week behind . . .

Well, the Wedding proceeds apace. Yesterday, we got the license. Last night, we had a proper rehearsal and staged the show. Today, we drop off our clothes for some minor tailoring. Finishing up our little checklist bit by bit.

It looks to be a good show. A fun wedding as such, and an okay piece of theatre. It'll "work" as both -- I was worried it wouldn't do for either, in it's attempt to serve two masters, but it'll serve them okay. I wanted to have it feel like one of my regular shows, which means that I can't avoid having a little "creepy" stuff that isn't really normal for a wedding, but whatever, it's one of my shows, so it has to be what it should be (though I'm a HAIR worried by having to win the audience back after some oddness at the start, but as Berit says . . . well, maybe I'll leave out what Berit says).

There's one section that might offend some family members, but it's necessary for it to be in there to be honest to ourselves. There's another section that will be DEFINITELY offensive to some family members, and we . . . won't be doing that bit at the wedding our families will be attending. We don't mind going a certain distance if we have to be true to ourselves, but the latter section is crossing a line just because we find it funny. The families get a couple of extra special bits in the show they'll see, so it all evens out.

Berit asked me yesterday what "this show" was "about." Since it IS a show, and therefore should have something going on underneath it. I guess if it's about anything other than getting us wed and sharing it with family, friends, and audiences, it's an "alternate look at romance, from among the non-romantic," or to generalize more, "there ARE other ways of doing these things." My productions more and more seem to be dealing with "the person who says no" as central, often-heroic figure -- the person or people who looks the status quo in the face and says, "I won't do that" (sometimes the shows are actually about the people who DO just go with the flow and are swept away in the tide to destruction, or at least stasis). I don't think this show is about it as some kind of heroic act, as it was with Ned Daley in World Gone Wrong or Grandier in the upcoming Devils, just one more restatement of the theme, "there ARE other ways."

Meanwhile, more and more of the cast I wanted to do Devils and Spacemen from Space can't do it, and I'm going to have to hold major auditions to fill those shows. {sigh} NOT what I wanted for these productions -- they will be MUCH harder to do with people I haven't worked with before, and will take me more time to get the actors in the tone I need. Oh, well, so it goes.

And here's this week's Random Ten from the 2,981 in the "Brandnew Bag" playlist of unheard songs in the iPod (with associated video links):

1. "Laser Love" - T.Rex - History of T.Rex—The Singles Collection
2. "Smokestack Lightning (live 1964)" - The Yardbirds - Five Live
3. "Up In Her Room" - The Seeds - A Web Of Sound
4. "Rio Grande" - Brian Wilson - Brian Wilson
5. "The King & Queen Of America" - Eurythmics - Greatest Hits
6. "The End" - The Doors - The Doors
7. "Introduction" - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Cannibals-A-Go-Go!
8. "Can't Say Anything Nice" - The Ramones - Unreleased Tracks
9. "Did You See Me Coming?" - Pet Shop Boys - Yes
10. "Goldfinger" - Magazine - Maybe It's Right To Be Nervous Now: Real Life/Secondhand Daylight Era

And here's the full video playlist for the above songs (with only a substitution for the Brian Wilson track):

Don't have much in the way of good pix of the cats today, just this one of them on the couch . . .

But here's a favorite video from yesterday, of a tiny orange kitten scaring itself . . .

Yesterday, we took care of some of the bureaucracy we had to before next week's activities . . .

And we spent a few hours in downtown Brooklyn. it would have gone a lot faster, but apparently someone else named "Ian Hill" once applied for a marriage license, so they had to send a fax to another department and get one back be sure it wasn't me (does this happen to people with MUCH more common names?).

I was rather tired by the time we got back to the subway station, but it felt like a damned big step -- we have the document, now we just need to sign it with our officiant and witnesses and . . . that's it . . . we will be married.