Are you volunteering to do that?

I spent today revising the Bylaws and Practices pages for UpstageProject, in preparation for another collaboration session with Amina tonight. I was surprised in doing it to find myself more interested in being editor of the Reviews & Interviews section than of the Articles. Part of this is probably from having had such a good experience doing the Crossover Interviews earlier this year, but I realized that I just have way too many opinions about what constitutes good or self-indulgent reviewing and interviewing in theater.

I remember a woman who I had some meetings with at Stanford who said that her standard response to people who suggested doing new things was:

“Are you volunteering to do that?”

She took a lot of pleasure in saying it in a really nasty tone of voice, to shoot them down, but I think it is a good principle – sometimes when you care about it that much, you should do it yourself.

Or else stay as far away from it as possible. I sometimes think I get in my own way. Excessive passion for something can be the enemy of getting it done. I spent too much time before this retreat with Amina agonizing about HOW to make the bylaws perfect, and not enough on actual revision.

Amina has suggested that it might be better to have me floating as an editor-at-large, to fill in gaps and/or be able to take over for people if needed. She’s probably right. I will remain open to any permutation on this.

We are using GoogleGroups, for the moment, to maintain our documents in progress. I still find PBWiki easier to use, and it loads faster, but in their respective free versions, GoogleGroups is a more powerful tool.

interviews

When You Have Eliminated The Impossible

I just finished interviewing the playwright Cheryl West. She had the interesting suggestion that these Crossover interviews should be a book. I have yet to even secure confirmed publication for the article version, but boy, is that a great dream to have.

I could see it, too – theater professionals and their first jobs. It’s totally a book I would have bought, and still would buy.

directing, interviews

The Accidental Director

I did my last scheduled Crossover Interview today, with Ben Cameron. It was one of the best. He, like Tony Taccone, only became a director when it was thrust upon him. He drove across the country for a stage management job and showed up to find out he was directing – and writing – the show in question, a Cole Porter cabaret revue. I’ve heard of last-minute, but this is ridiculous. This is not a profession for people who need stability in their lives.

Here’s a great quote from it:
“Early on, I didn’t perceive that intellectual fulfillment and a true connection to your values are not the same thing.”

interviews

Lisa Loomer

I just interviewed the playwright Lisa Loomer for the Crossover Project. It was great, as I imagined. I didn’t know that she’d started out as an actress and comedian in New York. Another artist who began in acting. The ones who haven’t have been the exceptions. I guess, strictly speaking, I began in acting too – but I am amazed by how many of these playwrights and directors didn’t just start out, but worked professionally as actors for years first.

We had a nice side discussion about playwrights’ methods of structuring their work days. I told her that Octavio Solis had said he could only work on one play at a time, optimally.

Lisa said she was the same way – but apparently she was doing some interviews herself in LA at one point, and she talked to Jose Rivera, and he told her that he wrote film on Mondays and Fridays and theater on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

Lisa is the last but one of this round. Ben Cameron is Friday.

Here’s an interview with Lisa from the Living Out era.

interviews, quotes, writing

Give Room and Foote It, Girls

The NY Times has a great long article on the prolific writer Horton Foote, still getting plays and screenplays produced at the age of 91.
(Via ArtsJournal.)

I still think the best naturalistic directing I’ve ever done was of that scene from his play Courtship, with student actors, for the Summer Workshop at Harvard-Westlake. With the lovely Lauren Schaffel, who was in the Mr. Show episode “Sad Songs are Nature’s Onions!”

Foote on the writing life(style) and the lack of proper habillements:

“I’m so glad that Hallie and Devon don’t mind when I write all night. When I’m working, I’m not lonely. I was always this way. When we first went to New Hampshire, I’d start writing right out of bed, in my pajamas, and then I’d get so excited I’d never get dressed. Daisy would bring friends home after school, and I’d be in my pajamas, and she’d say to her mother: ‘Daddy’s got to get dressed. They think he’s an alcoholic.’ ”

And on the untimeliness of death:

Foote spent two years developing a script of his 1979 play “The Widow Claire” with Robert Altman. Just as the money was raised, the director died. “I was so impressed with Altman,” he said. “I feel a little cheated.”

CurtainUp also has an overview of Foote’s career here.

directing, interviews, theater

The Rohd to Community-Based Theater

Just finished with Michael Rohd. Great interview. Having started as an actor/director and taken more and more responsibility for his own life and artmaking as his career went on, his story should be particularly significant to young actors. One of his stories was about not going to a commercial callback as a turning point in his life.

We discussed the possibility of doing a workshop later this year, which is exciting. And he may be devising work at OSF.

Michael also had a great list of possible dream collaborators for the Stage 2 5th Wall Interviews: Liz LeCompte, Ping Chong (who he’s working with on a project about Buffalo Bill) Robert Lepage, Peter Brook.

He’d looked at this blog before and mentioned that the actual interviews weren’t up yet – I need to learn more about publication details before I can do that – but I do hope I’m able to put them online and archive them, either here or at Upstage.

books, directing, interviews

Oedipus? Next!

I picked up Shiyan at SFO this morning, and we discussed the methods of getting hired in our very different fields. (Er: venture capitalism meets freelance directing…) Came back and dove right into more interviews. Just talked to Jason Loewith. Calling Michael Rohd in 5 minutes.

OEDIPUS is not for NEXT (thereby destroying my dream of OEDIPUS NEXT, a beautiful but short-lived paradise) but the projects he might be interested in include, but are not limited to:

Antigone
The Persons (I meant to type “The Persians.” But that’s a great title. I need to start a titles page.)
Imaginary Invalid
Volpone
The Alchemist
Aphra Benn’s The Rover

It was so great to talk with Jason about directing theory. He’s one of the most conversant people in the field today, after all those interviews for THE DIRECTOR’S VOICE. One of his anecdotes, about actors who won’t stop screaming, went directly to one of my (directly, Dara? You have to never use that adverb again. NEVER! ) greatest fears as a director. Screaming people.
It was nice to hear that it plagues others as well.

The boundary between the technical note and the psychological note. I remember talking with Jonathan Haugen about this.

Also read FUNNY IN FARSI, after years of watching it. I found it to be sad, but I’m finding every damn thing to be sad these days.

a propos of nothing, employment, F&F, film, interviews

Sffffffff

Back in Menlo from a whirlwind, exhausting SF trip: saw Ellen, Gabe, Morgan, Mary, Nelle & Mia, and Mere all up here. PHEW. Plus interviewed with Octavio Solis and Aaron Davidman: two of the best I’ve had so far. And James Still on the phone. Such great stories. It must mean something, perhaps about my self-satisfaction, that the more theater people I meet the more I love theater. But there are amazing folks in this business, in this basket-weaving, early-music-making, hybrid of the extreme past and the unrealized future. Nothing “present” about it. Dreamers.

The last time I was on Florida Street, where I met Aaron at the TJT offices, was years ago when I took the CASSANDRA SPEAKS crew up to a show there, and thought it would be a good idea to get off at the 22nd Street caltrain station and WALK from there to Florida Street. We arrived, halfway through the second act of a dance performance at Theater Artaud, absolutely exhausted, having trudged lost through the streets of SF for nearly two hours. I thought this would be a good “bonding experience” for the cast. This is, without question, the worst thing I have ever done to a group of actors.

So I must have grown some since then – at least now I’d know to get off at 4th & King…Perhaps if the Millbrae BART connection had been up then, I wouldn’t have so completely traumatized all of us. Blame your bad directing on the public transporation system. What would Darin Nichols do?

And it seems like there’s always more of SF to find. Ellen and I got totally windblown in this park at 19th and Yukon. Mary and I walked all around Union Square looking for something that wasn’t a glorified sandwich. North Point and the Marina with Gabe. (Again, more wind.) Mere and I went to the Ferry Building and the Embarcadero. Lots of good solid tourist stuff. And I explored Oakland with Morgan a bit – saw her house, and Mike’s enormous fish triptych. But my heart still belongs to 16th & Valencia. To the Mission district. Morgan and I hit Club Baobab and I watched people who know how to salsa.

I’ve been driving Shiyan’s hybrid Toyota Camry for a day now. Delightful. Pushes a button to turn on. She had to drive from Syracuse to NYC after trouble with a Chicago connection dropping her brother off at Cornell…and then a big-rig overturned on the freeway south from Syracuse, and she had to sit in traffic for hours on end.

Mere has been helping me set up my bookcase encampment too. And we watched the end of Sabrina 2 and most of Avenue Montaigne. Is it just me, or do French directors find naivete more attractive than anyone else does? Americans like our ingenues jaded.

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.”

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.

Dara Weinberg

writer // teacher // director // los angeles

Category Archives: interviews