convergence

2008 IndyCon, Day 3 – 5

Day 3: February 2
Introductory chorus workshops for the ensemble. No matter how many times I do that exercise, it always terrifies and thrills me to see the moment when the chorus starts thinking as a unit.

Music rehearsal with our composer, Chris. We couldn’t be more on the same page if it was the only page in both of our books. I have all these little jingle-type melodies in mind for the choruses, and he orchestrates them on the guitar with medieval open intervals, with blues-rock progressions, with Celtic-sounding arpeggios, with everything. I’ve never heard my bad ideas sound so good.

It’s like all those years of mindless rhyme practice are paying off, finally the form is serving the story instead of just itself.

Day 4: February 3
Very successful readthrough with full music this morning. I’m so happy about the large amount of singing in this show. Oh, and there is no better place to watch that particular Super Bowl than with a roomful of Peyton Manning / Colts fans.

Day 5: February 4
We staged the Prologue and “What Is Your Name, Old Man?”

We learned that the way we’re going to stage Oedipus’s “blindness” is that he’s going to enter with his eyes closed, and open them when he begins speaking, to be “blind.” He can make eye contact with the Antigones (who are playing a character-chorus) but not with the larger Chorus.

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convergence

2008 IndyCon, Day 1 & 2

You know you’re in the Indy Convergence when you’ve written four (FOUR) new drafts of your script in one week, been to the airport twice, hung curtains, had a music meeting, duplicated keys, loaded speaker equipment, and located the source for clear vinyl dance-floor tape. (If such a thing as clear gaff tape exists, it’s not in this town.)

As I keep saying to Robert every time I walk into a room with him in it, “Robert! Welcome to Indianapolis!”

Yesterday we picked up Ashley, a visiting choreographer from New York, and spent time configuring the space, hanging newspapers and newsprint curtains, laying Marley dance floor on the gray side.

This morning, I took Ashley to renew her license at the Indianapolis DMV. There was no line. She was seen immediately. We walked out of there with a brand-new license for her less than five minutes after we entered. There’s also no such thing as traffic in this town. Snow, yes, but no traffic.

I’m on my way to the airport to pick up Tony, who’s playing Oedipus. We have a small-group readthrough of Draft 5 of 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE CHORUS tonight, and our first open community workshop tomorrow.

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directing, quotes

“Directors, like conductors, never retire.”

Sir Peter Hall talking with Jasper Rees in the Guardian, on, among other things, the nature of the director-animal:

“[…]They’re much more difficult than writers or actors to deal with. They’re the cat who walks alone.

I’ve worked with practically all the great directors, alphabetically, from Bergman to Zeffirelli. It’s wonderful to be involved in the mystery of other directors’ work, because they’re all different.

But most will know within the first three or four days whether it’s going to work. The interesting thing is when it’s wrong they have to go on and they can’t tell anybody it’s wrong.”

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convergence, F&F, the chorus, writing

back in the saddle

Directing, that is, or travel – both. Spent the weekend between Red Bank and Philly, exploring the NJ Transit system. (Penn – Red Bank – Rahway – Trenton – Septa to 30th St.) Saw Aaron’s gory and wonderful MACBETH at TRTC, and met to talk SAGN choruses.

In Philadelphia, I visited Eileen and Danny, and achieved the rewrite of 13 Ways of Looking At The Chorus (which I’ve retitled “The Chorus Complex” in homage to Oedipus, for this draft, at least…) between 4 and 8 am. It felt creatively productive to see those guys again, but I also think it was just time to get it done. It’s funny how when you’re really ready to write something, you just wake up, no matter what hour of the day it is – and write it.

The new script has way more rhyme in it than I had imagined it would.

Today Susan and I saw Stoppard’s ROCK N’ ROLL (loved the second act, could have done without the first) and this evening I had design teleconferences with David (video) and Chris (piano.) I fly to Indianapolis tomorrow morning for pre-production on the Convergence and this flexibly titled chorus project. Rehearsals begin 1/31.

This has been a really wonderful stay in NYC, and unless something else comes up, I plan to be back in this city in April, May, and June – seeing lots of theater, and working on a script.

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a propos of nothing

patting self on back

I’ve been reading through the MOH&H program again, pulling stuff for Upstage, and I was very touched to find this in my TD’s essay, when he was discussing why he got interested in the show: “If the acting was this weird, what would the technical aspects be like?” It made me happy.

I’ll take that to the bank and smoke it – or actually, I’ll take it to Penn Station and the train to Jersey, where I’m going to see Two River/Aaron Posner’s MACBETH with Teller doing the magic.

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theater

ParaDaisey

Sumana directed me to a conversation at Parabasis, which I have excerpted below, about monologuist Mike Daisey‘s piece, “How Theater Failed America,” which discusses, among other things, the casting system which I have been part of perpetuating in NYC this week. (Although our show has about half its actors local, the other half from New York.)

“what Daisey essentially says (And I agree) is that the original regional theater model of rep companies has basically devolved into a system in which theaters import all of their artists from other places (mainly New York) and put on shows. […] No one in the communities they perform for has any real connection to the work they’re doing because the casts and crews are these anonymous interchangeable people who rarely come back and with whom you have no connection.”

Wicked Stage reaction, and thoughts on theater and community.

Theatre Ideas reaction: “I think the freelance system of doing theatre, where an artistic team is put together piecemeal for each project through auditions and interviews, is artistically and economically bankrupt. It turns the creation of art into a crap shoot, and denies the experience of every other group art form in existence which shows that artists who work together over time create better work. […] I think that the only way live theatre is viable, both economically and artistically, is in the form of semi-permanent companies or “tribes.” ”

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politics, writing

64 crayons

After a day between Astoria and the Astor St. Station, I went out to dinner with my aunt and uncle, and we discussed the 1973 Antioch College student strike. The Antioch alumni association is now trying to raise money to save the college, which has suffered more and more from low finances and low enrollment since then. (It was almost shut down in 2007.) They told me a number of stories about the actual strike.

From the Yellow Springs News Online:

” During the winter quarter of 1973, cutbacks in education spending by the Nixon administration seemed likely. Antioch allocated $300,000 for student loans, but students in the New Directions program, which was created in 1970 to increase the enrollment of minority and low-income students at the college, felt Antioch wasn’t providing sufficient guarantee that they would be supported until graduation.

On April 18, 1973, the New Directions and financial aid students said that they would strike within 48 hours if the Antioch Board of Trustees didn’t guarantee financial support to keep the students at the college.”

The campus was effectively shut down through the beginning of June, and my aunt was involved both in the strike itself and the actions to reinstate expelled students after it was over. I’m crazy, but I think there’s definitely a play in it – a big, messy, historical play about America, the 60s aftermath, education, financial aid, social class, and everything else you want a play to be about. I’m going to come back in April to interview her, and try to talk to some of the other major participants around the country. I may go to the school, too, assuming it stays open – even if it doesn’t. This feels like one of the most significant ideas I’ve ever come across. I feel the way I did when I first read LYSISTRATA. It means something. What remains to be seen, but it’s something unwieldy, large, exciting. (Adjectives.)

We also talked about governments subsidizing the arts, and they pointed out what I should have thought of before – that nonprofit status is effectively government subsidy within this country, and our tax code. The European countries that have more direct government subsidies of the arts take that tradition from a history of monarchy or theocracy, and patronage systems. Since this country doesn’t have that tradition, it doesn’t have that system.
Boy, does that shake up my brain’s opinions on the arts in the US and Europe. Color me having too many different ideas at once.

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