Category Archives: theater

directing, film, style, theater, writing

Noun Modifiers

In the course of the Convergence teleconferences, I mentioned to a friend of mine, who’s a filmmaker, that I make a distinction in my mind between directing and writing – directing is about allowing more freedom to other people in the process, being open to new possibilities, and writing is about total control over a limited sphere. They are very different. I didn’t use to feel this way, but I certainly do now, since I’ve stopped being such a controlling director.

Coming from the POV of film, however, he said that “everything is writing – directing is writing, editing is writing.” Because he does still have total control over every sphere. Because you can select the take, and you can get exactly – EXACTLY – what you want.

This is probably why film stresses me out as a medium. I can no longer imagine wanting that many things that specifically. I tried it, and it was exhausting. There’s so much freedom in being able to share those wants with others – to let them want things, and let that inform the process and the result.

And I think I’ll look to writing for control, and to directing for the absence of it. This came to my mind again as I was working on/with an actress with/on a monologue from Measure For Measure this afternoon. If I had gone into the session knowing what I wanted to see from her, I never would have been able to see what she had to bring to it.

The only way I would make a film again would be either an animated one (which is all writing) or else something like Chris Guest, with improv-based writing – where the film captures the final result of a process which is more theatrical.

Maybe writing isn’t even “writing” in that controlled way. Maybe the best writing is when you surrender control, as well, to the characters, the words, the sounds. Maybe everything is directing.

I am so unlike the artist and person I was at seventeen that I can barely recognize myself. At least I still use too many adjectives and adverbs. It’s still a problem, but at least it’s a problem that’s familiar. I can say, “Oh yeah, that’s me – I use too many adjectives.”

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a propos of nothing, family, film, Lydia, theater

Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be…

It’s been a busy week – not only did I see Sweeney Todd again, (just as bloody, just as good), watch an open dress of Theresa Rebeck’s OUR HOUSE (vitriolic sendup of reality TV, pools of blood, writer-strike humor), have teleconferences with almost all the confirmed Convergence participants, and just finish 3 days of LYDIA tech, but I managed to overhear this conversation in the elevator, not five minutes ago:

Woman: My mother always wanted me to marry a cowboy, and I said, hell no.
Man: I’m not a cowboy?
Woman: Well, you do fix the fence sometimes. You’re sort of a cowboy.
Man: I could be a cowboy.
Woman: You do have those outfits. (To her companion) He has some cowboy outfits.

But back to what’s really important, which is the Sweeney Todd movie – I went to see it again on Tuesday despite the impending tech and my unfinished rewrite. I had Phil’s observation in mind that it was too clean of a London for him, and it certainly is a very clean propscape. Every object that’s introduced is used. Every reference is followed up on. It’s a spare staging.

It’s like a play in that way, and I think it’s Burton’s homage both to the material’s theatrical origins and to the single-minded focus of Sweeney’s mind. There may be other things in his world, but he doesn’t see them. And Sondheim approves – ArtsJournal led me to a piece in the Lebrecht Weekly where the composer said “This (ST) is the first musical that has ever transferred successfully to the screen.”

In conclusion, January 12 is my mother’s birthday. Happy birthday, Mom.

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L'Internet, theater, Uncategorized

The Shakespeare In Performance database

is “a searchable database of performance materials from over 1000 film and stage productions related to Shakespeare’s works,” and I’m listed on it, as the AD for Romeo and Juliet this summer at OSF. It’s still pretty new. If I search for the director of R&J, for example, it lists that but not his production of Two Gents the year before. Still, a cool idea.

Like IBDB or IMDB.
Now if someone would just make an Internet theater searchable database – for all productions, historical and present – it’s so silly that IBDB is only Broadway – so I could search for Moliere, for example, and see all the productions he acted in as well as those he wrote…It would have to be a wiki, so the scholars could edit it back and forth at each other. And as long as they’re granting my wishes, maybe it could also include future productions, so I could know what my next show was going to be.

I bet that would be something that would take off. If some programmingly inclined person wants to help me and Amina hack a basic version of it onto Upstage, we might be able to get something started. Eh?

I made two wikis for the DCTC production I’m on now, by the way – both private, for production use only. It’s a very useful theater tool. I should write a post about how to make a wiki, but it’s so easy it seems silly. You just do what pbwiki.com tells you.

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theater, travel

Destination Theater

I met a woman from Maryland in the lobby of P&P last night, who had flown in from out of town just for a few vacation days to see shows at the DCTC. I shared this with some of the house staff and they were pleasantly surprised. But Denver has enough shows going on in rep right now that, like Ashland, it can be a real destination.

You can’t see eight plays in four days, and they don’t go to OSF’s extent of changing over shows on different stages – here, one play plays on one stage till it closes – but you can still make quite a weekend of it. Denver also has the attractions of natural outdoor activities. If they can maintain an audience from out of town as well as their local community, they’re in great shape.

“I love this town,” the woman said. “I come back all the time.”

I think that’s pretty impressive for a regional theater with the weather and transportation problems this airport must have, especially now.

Come to think of it, I remember Stephen flying to see 1001 here, from LA. But that was when he was looking at it for NOTE. This woman wasn’t a theater person – she was just a working professional on vacation. That’s even better.

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Lydia, theater, travel

Colorado Dreamin’

I don’t know what to say first about Denver, Colorado. It’s been almost exactly 24 hours.
Keywords:

What do you mean “The mile-high city?” – Isn’t that just an expression? – does that mean you join the mile-high club just by…in the environs? – altitude sickness: being so light-headed I couldn’t stand up – going to St. Mark’s and The Thin Man with Sarah Rose and not needing to drink a thing to act weird because I was so dizzy – having a hot chocolate miraculously cure all my symptoms – meeting a Moroccan businessman who assured me he had stayed in all the cities of the US and Europe and preferred Denver to all of them “because you can live a relaxed life-” heatedly discussing civic policy and smoking bans – talking about Judaism and Islam and what it means to be religious – faith, doubt – I can’t go anywhere in this country without bringing up Israel – sleeping on S.R’s red loveseat in her apartment on St. Paul Street –

And today: riding heated buses down Colfax Avenue, which Sarah Rose says used to be the old road all the way to the coast, yes, my coast, passing bars and clubs and coffeehouses, all independent – downtown and the 16th Street Mall – tea and nervousness – walking through the archway of glass of the performing arts complex and realizing I was getting closer to the “theater” end when I saw a folding table propped up against a wall – there’s never anywhere to store all those folding tables! – S.R. dropping me off like my first day of kindergarten –

-and the whirlwind tour of the actual DCTC, in two levels, from administrative offices to scene shops, paint rooms and costume props – meeting new people in every shop, in every department, all so friendly and welcoming, all shaking my hand. And the ROOMS. The Rooms of Rehearsal.

Beautiful, naturally lit rehearsal rooms, color-coded by door (we’ll be staying in the Yellow Room) enormous, unfathomably large, clean, white and brick loft-rooms like eyries, like artists’ studios, like chapels, like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter, the walls banked with pianos. I said to the stage manager, “I think I’m going to have a heart attack.”

I’m one of the few assistant directors this company has ever hired and I really want to do a good job so that they’ll feel interested in bringing future ADs back for outside directors. I know how lucky I am to be here.

Really lucky.

Getting my picture put on a badge. Memorizing codes and numbers. Getting keys cut. (The director and I have our own office that we share with the other visiting directors.) Being warned by an ex-cop about the dangers of walking down Colfax Avenue at night – being told Wild Denver stories about a beggar punching a car at an intersection and a gun being pulled – walking a mile in the cold to find a BofA ATM only to find it doesn’t take deposits – walking a mile back to Leela’s on 15th and waiting here, writing, to see Pride and Prejudice, if I can get walked in tonight.

High school students are drinking enormous mugs of hot chocolate. One says to another, “Just because it makes your teeth bleed to look at me doesn’t mean you can’t give me a hug.”

I love this town.

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music, theater

Things theater can learn from live music

1) Audience participation.
Last night at Atomix in San Antonio, watching Sari’s roommate Monica and her friend Chris King play live. Monica finished her spontaneous set with a cover of Amy Winehouse’s REHAB, and Chris and I clapped along to it. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, because I felt essential to the performance.
She started out by saying “I’m going to need you guys to clap like this -” and demonstrated the rhythm – and we started, and she helped, and only once our beat was established did she begin playing.
I’ve seen shows before where people were supposed to join in by clapping, but never one where there actually was no rhythm section – so that the musicians, or performers, were relying on the audience to be part of it. That was great. I’m going to have to steal it.

2) Bar participation.
After they both played, more of Monica’s friends showed up – Kelley and his girlfriend Alyssa – and they were talking about the dynamics of which bars wanted open mics on which nights, and how to plan the event, both in location and in timing in the week, so as to maximize the bar’s profits from the event. It was very eye-opening to me. The musicians play for free, but the bars get money from it – and the musicians get promotion and space.

When was the last time you heard of a theatrical event bringing money to a bar, instead of begging for donations from it? This is a financially vibrant interchange. I’ve thought before that any event that takes place at a bar is performatively successful.

I’ve also thought that I wanted to create an open mic night at a theater. When I saw the way Chris Covics at Unknown was having musical acts come into the space each night after the plays, to bring the theater money, that gave me ideas for one approach.

But the problem with that is the hassle of the liquor license. You get folks in the space, which is great, but a theatrical open mic at a bar would be even more dynamic. What I really want is a stage space with an integrated full bar. Which is what Atomix appeared to be. If I ever do start a company, it’ll be in a location like that, and we’ll only do shows that can be integrated with drinking.

And something we both need to work on:

3) Audience expectations.
Kelley told a story about an open mic he knew where the people running the show had alternated live artists with DJs. The problem was that the regulars in the bar started booing the live acts because they just wanted the DJ to play more dance music.

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directing, LA theater, style, the chorus, theater

“The stones would explain the smile”

I saw a great show with Phil C last night – the Evidence Room/Unknown Theater co-production of Martin Crimp’s* ATTEMPTS ON HER LIFE. Seventeen scenes in different styles, textures, and voices, all about one woman – Anne. Brilliant. And there were quite a number of choral elements in it, too. The two companies’ ADs co-directed it, alternating and switching off scenes, which is what I had wanted to try with a different show. So glad to see it working.

AOHL doesn’t have stage directions or divisions of text. I heard someone mention a production where all the actors learned all the lines, which is what I still want to do with choruses.

Every time I see one of Bart’s productions it makes me want to direct the play one day. Which I mean as a compliment to him. Often I see theater and it leaves me sick of the play, tired of it, never wanting to think of it again. Bart’s work makes the play seem like the most wonderful thing ever. Like there could be so many new discoveries in it.

Phil & I went to Cosmic Pizza after and discussed. I’m still spinning from the thoughts of the show. I wish I could see it again, but I leave Thursday.

Then, later, at the Silver Spoon with Ezra, this came up: has the presence of directors in theater actually removed some of the actors’ natural ability to self-direct? And who “needs” directors more – actors who naturally hold back, or who are naturally over the top?

Would it be a good thing for all actors to be in a production without a director? To try that? What would that mean?

*The very first show I worked on it LA was Martin Crimp’s DEALING WITH CLAIR, at the Matrix. I ran box office. Funny how these things come together – this Crimp will be one of the last shows I see in LA, for quite some time.

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the chorus, theater, travel

Dispatches from the Las Vegas airport

As if anticipating the excitement, over the Grand Canyon, a passenger went into medical distress. The flight attendants asked for doctors on the plane, and they clustered around him and lowered the cabin temperature. A woman in her thirties and a man over seventy confer over the patient. They lay him down in the aisle. We land and paramedics rush onboard.

We wait, and stare out at the skyline, and think about death. From the window of the plane: an enormous black pyramid wearing an Absolut logo over its triangular hips like a pair of designer jeans.

The first thing I see when I get off the plane is a bank of slot machines like docks in a harbor, with people anchored at almost every terminal – and an equally large wall of candy in plastic barrels, and children docked at those.

The sound of slot machines rings and arpeggiates through the air like crows mating. The sound of winning sounds like someone sliding the back of their hand up the keys of a reverby electric piano. It sounds like a smile. A big, fake smile.

A bottle of water costs $3.25, and an Odwalla $5.00. We’re not in Ithaca any more.

But, God, it’s a theater town! A spectacle town. I think about Dan and his year on the Blue Man show here. Posters for theatrical experiences plaster the sides of the moving sidewalks. I don’t see a single ad for anything but a show. Zumanity – Penn &Teller – Phantom – Chippendales – Mamma Mia – Spamalot – The Producers. The walls are bustling with the snarling, laughing faces of actors and dancers. And they look like they know they’re the only game in town. It’s sexy. I’m enthralled. All thoughts of email blasts begging for donations so that theater companies can survive are blissfully wiped from my mind. I’m in Athens – or perhaps in the antiAthens – and Dionysos is ruling the terminals.

I start staring at an ad for UNLV that says “Do you have what it takes to make it in performance art?” and almost trip over the woman in front of me. Do I what? In PERFORMANCE ART?

I feel like I’ve gone tripping back in time to a sleazy Broadway, like I’m walking down some numbered avenue in pinstriped trousers, humming “They say the neon lights are bright…” People come to this place to have physical experiences. To see things live. They come for the damn plays.

Despite myself, I start wondering what it would take to work here. The Red Death / The Story Of O / LOST GIRLS / Pompeii Prohibited : The Vegas Experience? “The show that’ll make you wish you’d never come to Vegas?” Would Alan Moore license his work to a theater company? Or Battlestar Galactica: The Vegas Experience? Or, really, it ought to be MAHAGONNY, or Titus, or Aristophanes. An updated Thesmophoriazusae.* +

Or the Bacchae. They’re building a performance culture here and it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to transfer a serious play, isn’t it? Am I out of my mind? Is there such a thing as off-off-Vegas? **

Next time I’m going to have to go through more than the airport.

* From Wikipedia: “Thesmophoriazusae (Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria) is a comedy written by the Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was first produced in 411 BC, probably at the City Dionysia. How it fared in the competition is unknown. In the fantasy, the character of Euripides learns that the women of Athens are secretly holding a trial of sorts to decide his fate. The female population is up in arms over the playwright’s continual portrayal of women as mad, murderous, erotomaniac, and suicidal (even as his most sympathetic protagonists). They are using the festival of Thesmophoria, an annual fertility celebration dedicated to Demeter, as a cover for their plot to hold Euripides accountable for his slanderous words.”

+ Comic choruses on the brain. Aren’t they more active than the tragic? Can’t you say that they affect the course of the plot, sometimes?
Last night Lauren and I were talking Nietzsche and choruses, and I think I need to do a bit more work on how the comic choruses fit into that – whether they fall into the same spectator dynamics.

** You say obsessive. I say persistent.

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convergence, directing, theater, workstyle

Open Ithaca

In Ithaca, staying with Amina and David. It’s so beautiful here. We had brunch, then walked up the path from the gorges to Collegetown and were overwhelmed by the color yellow. I’m going to do that walk again today, I think, up to the Cornell library to get some chorus information for the Convergence.

I observed part of a Meisner-based acting class yesterday, with all sorts of exercises – the repetition one and the open scene in particular. I was pretty happy to hear beginning actors ask questions like “How ARE you supposed to make your lines sound natural?” and “What’s blocking?”

(In an open scene, you use the lines of a scene to just respond to your partner, and you aren’t supposed to worry about playing the action of the scene or the meaning of the lines. The one I saw reminded me of the technique where you ask actors to burlesque a scene – to play it at a much faster and funnier pace.) I saw Peter do a burlesque run of one of the seduction scenes in Tartuffe, and I’ve seen Ted do it in his acting class, too, but an open scene is a more extreme version of that.

Amina and I discussed, afterwards, what the uses of the “open scene” would be in working on a process with professional actors. We thought of three:
– at the beginning of a process
– at a blocked place in a process
– at an exhausted place (like you’ve been rehearsing a very sad scene for weeks)
All three to help relax the actors, get them listening again, and perhaps discover new areas of blocking.

Amina is considering Converging in February, as is David (her roommate, a filmmaker and actor).

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Germany, L'Internet, theater

Blogging in Broadripple

I drove Caitlin to work at DK this morning, and am writing from the kitchen in Broadripple, a suburb of Indianapolis. It’s gorgeous outside – enormous trees covering all the streets with fall leaves, and tall houses that look like bricks and gingerbread and Little Midwestern Riding Hood.

I’m working on a personal statement for Middlebury about why I want to learn German this summer. When I was twenty-one, a group of German actors asked me to direct a play in Berlin, and I didn’t know the language. I was scrambling to finish a major I’d switched to late in my career, and decided (stupidly) that I didn’t have room to add the language classes. It’s time to learn it now, and to go back, as soon as I can.

I also just made a “Get Involved” page for the Convergence’s new PBwiki. (It’s under construction, but let me know what you think – indyconvergence.pbwiki.com)

I hate it when theaters, or other arts organizations, don’t have an obvious “Get Involved” link right there on their front page, telling you who to contact if you want to be part of their work. It may be that a lot of organizations in this country don’t actually want a flood of college students emailing them. But how are you supposed to get the next generation to come find you? What’s the continuity of the things you believe in?

Even the ones that do have “Get Involved” often just have a link for volunteers, and nothing about what actors and designers are supposed to do. I suppose they think if you can’t figure it out, can’t get your foot in the door, you don’t deserve to be part of the in-crowd. But speaking as someone who has “figured it out,” or part of it – I don’t think we gain anything by keeping the doors to our theatres more closed than they already are.

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