books, film, interviews

Santa Cruz Ave

Yesterday I interviewed Michael Dixon, Juliette Carrillo, Peter Van Norden & Claire Peeps, with a piano tuner working on Shiyan’s piano in the living room all the while, and got answers back from Anne Bogart. I also talked to Jenelle a bit about a possible pitch of these interviews to BSW.

Today: James Bundy & Joann Breuer.

Yesterday Mere drove me down to Santa Cruz Ave and I bought photo boxes to organize my many, many photographs. It feels good to get them out of those dusty albums – and also to be able to say, I know exactly where the pictures are for Vast Wreck, for Lysistrata, for MOH&H, etc. I’m finally on the point of putting together a portfolio. Imagine that.

Then I went to Kepler’s and Borrone’s. I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO. It’s fantastic. Sad and moving. I started reading it right over again the moment I’d finished.

Then Mere and I watched the old SABRINA and about half of the new SABRINA before getting bored with the remake.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you could only really call this a “vacation” if you were “insane” or a “workaholic” like “me.”

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books, F&F, interviews

Millbrae

You’d think I’d remember not to get gas at the Millbrae exit from the 280. You go down miles of a windy road before you come out by the station. I once did the same thing, at school, when I was nearly out of gas, and I was just cruising down the hill without any prayer of finding a station. There are so many roads like that around here – windy and endless. I got stuck on the 84 going the wrong way last night, too.

Anyway, I did manage to get to SF, find parking (miraculous!) return the car to Kersti, and take the train back to Mountain View in time to have sushi with Cisco, Shiyan, and Meredith. I love that BART connects to the Millbrae Caltrain now. If that had been an option when I was in school…

No more car! Hooray! Kersti drives back to Ashland at some point today.

We adjourned to Cisco and Lax’s apt for bread pudding and some weird variation on British cookies called “tim-tams.” That evening, we read from THE GIFT OF NOTHING (a Matt and Earl comic book) and Derrida’s ON GRAMMATOLOGY. I’d never picked the thing up before. It repays the reader with great amusement. I’m going to have to get through it.

“Speaking of the hymen,” Stayner and I took the Taspers to see Gayatri Spivak (Derrida’s translator and cultural critic) at Cornell once, and we had trouble understanding the meaning of anything in her lecture. I found her introduction to be much more comprehensible because I could read over it again and again.

I have four interviews today:

Peter Van Norden (actor)
James Bundy (YSD)
Juliette Carrillo (director)
Claire Peeps (Durfee)

Getting busy.

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F&F, moving, travel

Bienvenue a Menlo Park

I’m writing this morning from a black papasan chair in Menlo Park, where Shiyan, Meredith, Vickie and Melissa (three venture capitalists and one production manager) have a beautiful house.

It feels like home, more so because of all the Stanford-abilia around the place. Pictures of rugby matches and of friends. A giant zucchini from Ali Reichenthal’s garden is in the kitchen. Furniture I recognize from various dorms is in each room. A television the size of a bed is in one corner.

These ladies are letting me store my belongings here while I embark upon a voyage of discovery and freelancing. It really feels like home.

Our trip yesterday was lovely but long – Kersti and I drove down from Ashland in Nancy’s car, with no hitches except a jam around Redding for bridge construction. (We didn’t make it out till 2 pm, after a Dragonfly goodbye breakfast with Jeremy, Mark, Daniel, Robert, & Caitlyn. It was lovely.)

Ashland has been such a good place to me but I feel the blood coming back into my veins being in a major metropolitan area.

We went over the Bay Bridge, straight to SF, and saw her first boyfriend Travis, who’s now out and living at the very corner of Haight and Ashbury with his boyfriend Joe. We had champagne by candlelight, with owls and unicorns watching, overlooking – yes – the corner of Haight and Ashbury.
They have the entire second floor of a building. 3 rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, a hallway, a living room. They work in the hotel industry AND the apartment is rent-controlled.

Then I drove to Menlo. I got lost several times, first on Woodside Road and then on Santa Cruz Ave, but eventually I made it. And it’s so, so, so good to be here.

The Crossover interviews continue this week, and I have an interview with TJT on Friday. It’s not exactly a vacation. But it is a great time to rest.

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directing, the chorus

The Indy Convergence

Robert and Caitlin want to meet in Indiana, taking some advantage of the DK dancers and studio space, and do a three-week workshop on physical theater. This was partially inspired by, but not exclusively, the chorus workshop that I did earlier this year. Dates are tough to work out but we really want to do it.

We also want to make it a yearly thing – like that dream I’ve mentioned to Robert before about having chorus work come back together for all the scattered participants once a year. This is it. And I didn’t even initiate the idea! I love this!

Here are some of the rejected names for the project that we came up with while at Martino’s last night.

The Grievance Committee (no one but me was into this. Someone: “Do you have to START by being negative?” I need to keep this in mind for that future “What’s Wrong With Theater” article…)
The Indianapolis Clusterfuck (Caitlin was not into it)
The Indy Convention
The Indy Gathering
Burning Man Of Indianapolis
Summer of Indianapolis
Indiana Winter
IndyCore

But we think CONVERGing, like a bunch of people converging on a place to make wacky theater together, is best.

I’m nervous but super-excited. If I was to dream of the one thing I wanted most in the world for my future, it would be this for sure. A way to reunite everyone I love working with, and a way to keep the room open for play and experimentation. The fact is that this chorus work can only grow if I remain open to all its permutations.

Everyone doing their own workshop and all those workshops feeding into Chorus-World.
YEAH, BABY!

“Have you been to the Indy Convergence?”
“Where’s the Indy Convergence happening this year?”
“I’ve been going to the Indy Convergence since 2008…”

Caitlin is going to design a logo. We’re for real. I’m creating a new category for this, superstars.

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interviews, moving, the chorus, TV

Going to California

Driving to SF / Menlo Park with Kersti today, via the 5 to the 505 to the 80 to the 680 to the 880 to the 84/Dumbarton Bridge. Bay Area!!! It’ll be very surreal to see Stanford again.

Everything I own on the planet is now down to 9 boxes.
2 books,
2 files,
1 videos/dvds
1 cds
1 photos
1 weirdly shaped objects
1 papers I need to sort through (usually this is more like three, so I’m proud of that.)

Interviews proceed well – talked to Shigeru yesterday, Rob Kendt and Jeff Hatcher the day before. Next week I have a very full slate of interviews plus trying to check in with SFMT, TJT and EMMA – so we’ll see how that goes…

I babysat Rosalee yesterday and we watched Fraggle Rock, and I felt a strong identification with Gobo’s Uncle Travelin’ Matt.

I also checked in with THE LITTLE MERMAID after she was asleep – I’ve always thought that maybe my chorus obsession came from “Under The Sea.” There may be some connection there, but upon watching the number again, I’m not really sure. The movements their choruses do are much more linear and flowy, like lines, than groups.

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directing, interviews, quotes, theater

A Moon For Daniel Sullivan

It’s not that Slate has no theater coverage, just sporadic coverage, mostly centered around New York. They’re doing better than many news sources. There’s an article every few months. They cover the Tonys. They mention Spring Awakening. Obviously I think there’s more writing to be done on the topic, and more coverage of the regional world, but at least they’ve started.

I particularly enjoyed segments of Daniel Sullivan‘s diary during MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, in 2000. The whole thing‘s worth reading, but here are a couple of good excerpts from the life of a stressed freelancer:

Daniel: 5:00 p.m.: A meeting with set designer John Lee Beatty on another play, Spinning Into Butter, by Rebecca Gilman. To be produced by Lincoln Center Theater in the summer. We sat in the theater and talked about where things should go. The play takes place in an office in a New England college. John Lee said, “What do I do so it won’t look boring?” He always gets right to the point. I was at a bit of a loss. “Windows?” I said. “Oh!” he said, surprised. But he always acts surprised by even the dullest idea. He’s very nice. “Maybe it should be a very tall room,” he said. “How tall?” “16 feet.” “That’s tall. Do they have rooms that tall in New England?” “Victorian rooms are tall.” “But Victorian doesn’t give you the typical New England school.” And so it went for an hour or so. I don’t know what initial design meetings are like for other directors, but this is par for the course for me. And at the end we agree to meet again soon since neither of us knows what the hell we’re doing.

And again:

Daniel: “The press department calls to ask where they should seat the chief theater critic of the New York Times. I suggest a local restaurant. “No, really, where?” I suggest Row J. “Why J?” “Because if he’s any closer he’ll see the side light we haven’t been able to hide.” ”

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interviews, theater, writing

The Crossover Interviews

I began my series of short interviews with a bunch of theater professionals, mostly folks from my days with Bill Rauch, today.

The first one was with Tony Taccone and it went very well. He’s had such an interesting career (here’s more about him in Ellen McLaughlin’s 2006 American Theatre interview), and so many of his projects have been explicitly political. One of the anecdotes he shared was about the Eureka getting burned down by an arsonist who objected to an anti-apartheid piece they were staging.

If the others are half as interesting as him it should be a great article. I’ve read a lot of interviews with Tony before – he’s a great communicator on behalf of the field – but I’ve never heard this stuff about him directing his very first show at Colorado Shakes before, or his transition from acting to directing. I love it.

The moment of time at which we transition from one field to another, one skill to another, from amateur to professional, defines us for the rest of our careers.

I’m hoping this can be a springboard for THE FIFTH WALL or for some other, longer series.

Here’s my warmup spiel:

As you know, I worked as Bill Rauch’s assistant for two years, during which time I observed a lot of working theater professionals, and also came into contact with many of Bill’s students and younger people in the field. Working as an assistant director at OSF, I felt that there was an interest in and need for some anecdotal research in what I’m calling “the crossover period” – moving from being a student or early-career professional to a fully professional theater artist.

So I’ve put together a couple of questions on the subject, which I’m asking to a wide variety of folks in the theater world – designers, directors, educators, administrators. I’m hoping to put this together into an article which is anecdotal and interesting, but also just reveals the wide variety of paths people take towards careers in our field. I want to dispel the idea that there is just one path or timeline towards a fixed point, and show how much change is inevitable.

My goal is to eventually have this reach publication, but I will send your answers to these questions back to you before they are shown to anyone else, so you can correct anything that doesn’t seem right to you.

These are the questions I’m asking. Kersti helped me narrow it down.

0) Where are you from (where were you born), and where do you live now?

1) What is your current job or profession, and what is a typical day for you? (Also mention what production you’re working on now, if any.)

2) What was your first professional job in theater – the point at which you were able to support yourself from your theater work? How did you get this job, and how long did it take you?

3) Talk about one interesting change or setback you encountered on the path from that first job till now – something you didn’t expect. Did you ever work in other fields, or have to take non-professional work after first crossing over to the professional world?

4) If you could give yourself one piece of advice as a young theater artist, what would it be? Is there a particular city or company you would recommend, or a strategy – or just a piece of information you wish you had?

These next are the bonus questions, which I didn’t get to with Tony and I don’t expect to have time to include with most folks.

5) Did a particular mentor or teacher play a role in your becoming a professional theater artist? Do you teach now, yourself?

6)) What is a project you would like to work on in the future, or an area of the theater world into which you would like to cross over?

I was supposed to speak to Jeff Hatcher this AM but we missed each other, and I’m going to call Cliff Faulkner in half an hour.

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books, film

Beware Of Fainting Fits (And American Girl Dolls)

I finally saw Canadian director Patricia Rozema’s MANSFIELD PARK last week. I enjoyed it – she’s a really good director – but Fanny was too pretty for my taste, looking directly at the camera doesn’t work for me – and as much as I’m usually a fan of interpolating other lost or lesser-known material from an author’s work into adaptations for performance, in this case, I thought it made Fanny far too confident too early to have her quoting Austen’s “History Of England.” It did elaborate her relationship with Susie, though.

Fanny, at least the Fanny of the novel, never struck me as being independent-minded enough to do anything like write satiric history. But this was one fly in an otherwise great ointment. I admire Rozema for adapting Austen so well – and I’m sure if I live long enough, I’ll eventually create a less than faithful adaptation of an adored novel which will drive people wild but satisfy me.

Austen.com has a fantastic list of all the times in the book that Fanny is actually crying – fourteen times.

Has Patricia really not made a full-length film since 2000? She’s way too good for that! And is her next project, as IMDB claims, honest-to-god-really “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Mystery??” Although with Abigail Breslin of Little Miss Sunshine playing Kit, I just might have to go see it.

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theater

And speaking of Eric Bentley…

He’s not dead! In fact, he’ll turn 91 on September 14. Here are some links:

Interview with director Robert Hupp in 1996
Columbia’s 90th birthday party for him
NY Times on his life and legacy. Can I just say how much I hate NYTimes Select, and how they are damaging their ability to become part of the online dialogue and conversation by making their articles cost money to access after time has passed? I hate them! They should at least let you watch a commercial like Salon to get to the article.
Wikipedia bio.

I do think Upstage needs a “dead or alive” feature.

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