Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Lovely monsters
Excited as I am to be going home today, I have to admit it was sad leaving the theater for the final time last night. Walking along the banks of the Iowa River, watching the black water flowing languidly by, stopping on the bridge to look at where the river curves out of sight, looking back to the theater lobby still mobbed with thrilled attendees – I’m going to miss all that.
Since I last wrote, I saw Lisa Leaverton’s new piece, One Plum. (Lisa’s play Why Love Doesn’t Recognize Its Name appeared in PCS’s Now Hear This series a couple of years ago.) Plum transformed one of the university’s several theaters into an amazing environment representing – well, the environment. The actors of One Plum created a visual and aural landscape in and around the audience that took us rapidly through season after season, reflecting issues along the way such as climate change and pollution. Nature’s hurly-burly (and humankind’s part in altering it) was treated comically but pointedly, the main spines being a human’s couples attempts to reproduce themselves and the struggles of a colossal plum tree to bear fruit. Incredibly inventive and ever-morphing, the experiential nature of the piece was a delight.
As if in response to One Plum, the next day’s reading of a new Andrew Saito play, The Patron Saint of Monsters, also looked at some of nature’s side trips as manifested in human beings. Its first part chronicled the making of an actual medieval saint; part 2 explored her elevation to cult status. And in the final section we see how she became associated with healing and/or comforting misfits of all stripes – while simultaneously displacing the more pagan “monsters” already around. The photo above shows you a gaggle of schiachpercht, the indigenous folk who don't cotton to the Christian incursions.
Following Andrew was a new play by Tali Ariav, Bloodlines, a harrowing duologue between a hospitalized girl and a soldier who may or may not spring from her fevered imagination. I was so shattered by this play that I left the theater even as the applause was in progress to go outside in the dark and just be with the experience of the play. (And nearly missed that night’s adventure of hanging out at The Sanctuary, a theater speakeasy that was popular back when James was a student at U of I – something reassuring about that.)
Friday night was Joe Luis Cedillo’s new play, Columpio. If you can envision Arthur Miller’s family dramas translocated to a Chicano family living near Newhall in the 1990s, you’ll get a sense of how Joe’s play works. Spanning three generations of increasing assimilation, with all the credits and debits that implies, this was a deeply felt portrait of a family in crisis. I hope this play gets produced soon in Los Angeles, where it could be a watershed piece of theater.
Saturday we were treated to brunch at one of the playwrights’ home – a 14-acre farm with sheep, goats (we got to feed goatlings less than a week old), and disturbingly large hens. Plus bovines. The place sported a gargantuan barn and a gorgeous farmhouse that date back to the mid-19th century. This playwright, Janet Schlapkohl, scrambled eggs for me at one point that she had just taken from the henhouse. Let me tell you: fresh eggs are light year apart from what you get in the supermarket. These eggs were so flavorful that they needed no seasonings. And yellow…
We returned to see Janet’s play Tro Musikk, a warm, big-hearted piece about upper-Midwesterners suffused with Scandinavian culture and inflected with those charming accents and quaint expressions (“you betcha!”) that we associate with cheese country. Not that the play mocked those people or that part of the world; on the contrary, I wanted to move in, to love among them from now on. I loved every minute of this play. Laughed like a macaw throughout, only to be surprised and touched – frequently! – by the sheer humanity of the characterizations. Even though the play is framed by the supernatural (troll-like figures lurk in the moods and grin at human foibles), ultimately the play was about forgiveness and redemption. Yes, the big themes. Powerful stuff. Which is easier to get your arms around when you’re accompanied by an accordion.
The Festival crescendoed last night with the premiere of Achilles, Scourge of Man, an outrageously rock and roll spectacle about the famous warrior that seem to happen now and back then and throughout time. As with One Plum, the theater was transformed for the occasion. Powerful lights beamed down from the top of the theater, filling the cavernous space; searchlights continually scanned cut the audience; the sound of helicopters approached and receded. So once again, to enter the theater was to enter the play. Tricked out with video screens, supertitles and a rock score that shook the risers, this was a balls-out production effort that grabbed me by the throat and demanded (and got) my attention every minute of the story.
As outstanding as the production effort was, however, it would not have mattered had Kevin Artigue’s script been any less provocative. This writer knows how to assault his audience with language, but also how to drop it down to a whisper, and when to provide the palate cleansers that let you savor new sensations. Indeed, “sensation” is the perfect word for this work, which had lots to express about men who treat war like an epic video game. (Kevin has worked with the brilliant Ken Roht, by the way, whose seemingly reckless extravagance informed this play.)
Like I said: a terrific year for the Playwright’s Workshop’s New Play Festival. I got a great glimpse into where theater may be headed. And I’m encouraged.
Since I last wrote, I saw Lisa Leaverton’s new piece, One Plum. (Lisa’s play Why Love Doesn’t Recognize Its Name appeared in PCS’s Now Hear This series a couple of years ago.) Plum transformed one of the university’s several theaters into an amazing environment representing – well, the environment. The actors of One Plum created a visual and aural landscape in and around the audience that took us rapidly through season after season, reflecting issues along the way such as climate change and pollution. Nature’s hurly-burly (and humankind’s part in altering it) was treated comically but pointedly, the main spines being a human’s couples attempts to reproduce themselves and the struggles of a colossal plum tree to bear fruit. Incredibly inventive and ever-morphing, the experiential nature of the piece was a delight.
As if in response to One Plum, the next day’s reading of a new Andrew Saito play, The Patron Saint of Monsters, also looked at some of nature’s side trips as manifested in human beings. Its first part chronicled the making of an actual medieval saint; part 2 explored her elevation to cult status. And in the final section we see how she became associated with healing and/or comforting misfits of all stripes – while simultaneously displacing the more pagan “monsters” already around. The photo above shows you a gaggle of schiachpercht, the indigenous folk who don't cotton to the Christian incursions.Following Andrew was a new play by Tali Ariav, Bloodlines, a harrowing duologue between a hospitalized girl and a soldier who may or may not spring from her fevered imagination. I was so shattered by this play that I left the theater even as the applause was in progress to go outside in the dark and just be with the experience of the play. (And nearly missed that night’s adventure of hanging out at The Sanctuary, a theater speakeasy that was popular back when James was a student at U of I – something reassuring about that.)
Friday night was Joe Luis Cedillo’s new play, Columpio. If you can envision Arthur Miller’s family dramas translocated to a Chicano family living near Newhall in the 1990s, you’ll get a sense of how Joe’s play works. Spanning three generations of increasing assimilation, with all the credits and debits that implies, this was a deeply felt portrait of a family in crisis. I hope this play gets produced soon in Los Angeles, where it could be a watershed piece of theater.
Saturday we were treated to brunch at one of the playwrights’ home – a 14-acre farm with sheep, goats (we got to feed goatlings less than a week old), and disturbingly large hens. Plus bovines. The place sported a gargantuan barn and a gorgeous farmhouse that date back to the mid-19th century. This playwright, Janet Schlapkohl, scrambled eggs for me at one point that she had just taken from the henhouse. Let me tell you: fresh eggs are light year apart from what you get in the supermarket. These eggs were so flavorful that they needed no seasonings. And yellow…
We returned to see Janet’s play Tro Musikk, a warm, big-hearted piece about upper-Midwesterners suffused with Scandinavian culture and inflected with those charming accents and quaint expressions (“you betcha!”) that we associate with cheese country. Not that the play mocked those people or that part of the world; on the contrary, I wanted to move in, to love among them from now on. I loved every minute of this play. Laughed like a macaw throughout, only to be surprised and touched – frequently! – by the sheer humanity of the characterizations. Even though the play is framed by the supernatural (troll-like figures lurk in the moods and grin at human foibles), ultimately the play was about forgiveness and redemption. Yes, the big themes. Powerful stuff. Which is easier to get your arms around when you’re accompanied by an accordion.
The Festival crescendoed last night with the premiere of Achilles, Scourge of Man, an outrageously rock and roll spectacle about the famous warrior that seem to happen now and back then and throughout time. As with One Plum, the theater was transformed for the occasion. Powerful lights beamed down from the top of the theater, filling the cavernous space; searchlights continually scanned cut the audience; the sound of helicopters approached and receded. So once again, to enter the theater was to enter the play. Tricked out with video screens, supertitles and a rock score that shook the risers, this was a balls-out production effort that grabbed me by the throat and demanded (and got) my attention every minute of the story.
As outstanding as the production effort was, however, it would not have mattered had Kevin Artigue’s script been any less provocative. This writer knows how to assault his audience with language, but also how to drop it down to a whisper, and when to provide the palate cleansers that let you savor new sensations. Indeed, “sensation” is the perfect word for this work, which had lots to express about men who treat war like an epic video game. (Kevin has worked with the brilliant Ken Roht, by the way, whose seemingly reckless extravagance informed this play.)
Like I said: a terrific year for the Playwright’s Workshop’s New Play Festival. I got a great glimpse into where theater may be headed. And I’m encouraged.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Hermanas, Piranhas and AutoErotica
Yep – the above-captioned items are only part of what’s going, right here in Iowa City. At this writing, I’m midway through the Playwrights’ Workshop’s New Play Festival at the University of Iowa. It’s an amazingly broad spectrum of content, style and form, just as you’d expect – and hope.
Festivities kicked off with a reading of a new play by Louisa Hill, called Child’s Pose, that uses competitive track, yoga and ballet as indices of generational difference. And a full production of a new play by Tony Meneses entitled Las Hermanas Padilla. Tony’s play was a rare treat, with a cast of 10 (all female), two directors, and a kaleidoscopic story that was almost always in motion, which of course threw the few quiet moments into sharp relief. Focusing on an extended family made up entirely of sisters-in-law, its repeating premise about the war-time deaths of their husbands – deaths whose advents are delivered one by one through carrier pigeons, who drop death on the sisters like inverse paracletes – was poignant without ever being sentimental. The play was suffused with a magic that seemed native to this (unnamed) land: a pregnancy that goes on indefinitely, a stigmata-like wound that provides the sisters with ink.
Sheela Kangal, whom many of you will remember her from TCG days, debuted a remarkable monologue she calls Norm, which explores one character’s identities past and present and yet to come. And Jen Silverman – a writer already making a name for herself at noted developmental from New Georges to Seven Devils -- premiered a disturbing new piece titled Gilgamesh’s Game, about a death cult whose apotheosis is to achieve “terminus.” In this endgame, players started by facing smaller fears (scorpions, leeches, piranhas) and progress until … well, until game over. But what happens when the cult’s originator becomes its first heretic? This stylish, darkly droll play devolves around three characters who each having very different reasons for playing.
And Jess Foster’s Hard and Fast brings a very special fetish into sweetly comic perspective. Subtitled “a love story,” let’s just say I’ll never look at an Austin-Healy 3000 quite the same way again. Or a Chevrolet Fleetline.
By the way, I share the privilege of seeing all this fun new theater with three other “Festival Guests,” as we’re called: the pulchritudinous Carson Kreitzer (whose indelible play Enchantment will be remembered by JAW devotees); the classy and breathtakingly insightful Megan Monaghan; and the absolutely fabulous Beth Blickers, who is America’s answer to Peggy Ramsay. (And I’m the only man, ya.) Stay tuned.
Festivities kicked off with a reading of a new play by Louisa Hill, called Child’s Pose, that uses competitive track, yoga and ballet as indices of generational difference. And a full production of a new play by Tony Meneses entitled Las Hermanas Padilla. Tony’s play was a rare treat, with a cast of 10 (all female), two directors, and a kaleidoscopic story that was almost always in motion, which of course threw the few quiet moments into sharp relief. Focusing on an extended family made up entirely of sisters-in-law, its repeating premise about the war-time deaths of their husbands – deaths whose advents are delivered one by one through carrier pigeons, who drop death on the sisters like inverse paracletes – was poignant without ever being sentimental. The play was suffused with a magic that seemed native to this (unnamed) land: a pregnancy that goes on indefinitely, a stigmata-like wound that provides the sisters with ink. Sheela Kangal, whom many of you will remember her from TCG days, debuted a remarkable monologue she calls Norm, which explores one character’s identities past and present and yet to come. And Jen Silverman – a writer already making a name for herself at noted developmental from New Georges to Seven Devils -- premiered a disturbing new piece titled Gilgamesh’s Game, about a death cult whose apotheosis is to achieve “terminus.” In this endgame, players started by facing smaller fears (scorpions, leeches, piranhas) and progress until … well, until game over. But what happens when the cult’s originator becomes its first heretic? This stylish, darkly droll play devolves around three characters who each having very different reasons for playing.
And Jess Foster’s Hard and Fast brings a very special fetish into sweetly comic perspective. Subtitled “a love story,” let’s just say I’ll never look at an Austin-Healy 3000 quite the same way again. Or a Chevrolet Fleetline.
By the way, I share the privilege of seeing all this fun new theater with three other “Festival Guests,” as we’re called: the pulchritudinous Carson Kreitzer (whose indelible play Enchantment will be remembered by JAW devotees); the classy and breathtakingly insightful Megan Monaghan; and the absolutely fabulous Beth Blickers, who is America’s answer to Peggy Ramsay. (And I’m the only man, ya.) Stay tuned.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
In my tribe
Go to most any writers’ conference and a peculiar strain of war stories often surfaces: viz., tales of the writing group from hell. So plentiful and outrageous are these stories (the curmudgeon who never met a phrase he liked, the woman who wrote solely about elves, etcetcetc) that I actually ducked invitations to writing groups for years.
But I began rethinking my anthrophobia this past fall. At Wordstock I got to meet most of the Seattle 7, a group of amazing writers who met for years and wound up all getting published at the same time. And I organized a panel that was ostensibly about playwriting, but which wound up getting populated by several members of Portland’s Big Brain Trust, including Marc Acito, Storm Large and Cynthia Whitcomb. All these writers clearly had tremendous admiration and respect and bonhomie for each other. You could tell from the way they badgered each other mercilessly in public. I knewI wanted that.
Well. Put an idea out there, Madame Blavatsky sez, and a clarion call ripples through the universe. Post-Wordstock, in a chance conversation with a playwright I know, it came out that we have both been writing novels — for years. We knew we needed the support of a group, but my friend was equally leery of them; she had not had great experiences joining extant meetings. So we started collecting people. We discovered a local director whose first book comes out this fall and who was well into her second manuscript; and then another playwright, who had recently realized her latest script was crying out for a long-form treatment.
Voilà — a gang of four. We’ve been meeting weekly for months now. And while this blog may have languished as a consequence, hey! The novel’s coming along great. The simple fact that I’m committed to providing my gangsters with 10 pages a week whether those pages are gibberish or gold, has been near-miraculous for this scribbler. What I was missing from my writing regimen all along is now embodied in these weekly sessions: an audience. A respondent audience, not a vague abstraction.
What’s fun, too, is that we’re all refugees from the theater. Not that any of us have abandoned the form — quite the contrary. But our theater backgrounds inform our writing in surprising ways. The compression of dialogue, for one. And perhaps even more importantly, our instincts for what constitutes a “scene” in a narrative is, well … theatrical. Aristotelian. Beginnings/middles/ends. We understand how images — and not just words — can give a story tremendous unity.
I love my small tribe and our as-yet unnamed cabal. (Suggestions?) Stay tuned for more dispatches from the trenches.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Just drop in to see what condition your condition is in
How cool is this? TCG is hosting a series of national town hall meetings to take stock of theater and our place in it. Here’s your chance to kvetch with the best of them and contribute to the ongoing national debate about what to do with this glorious anachronism we call the American theater.
Alas, since you need to register the Thursday before each forum, it’s already too late to participate in the actors’ dialogue. But that leaves four more, and fortunately, you wear many, many hats in the theater anyway, right?
Ironically enough, I’ll be missing the dramaturgs’ klatch; I’ll be steeping myself in new playwriting at the Iowa New Plays Festival. Twelve plays in six days! I do love a good marathon.
Anyhow, here are the deets:
.................................
TCG Independent Artists' Forum
Moderated by Board Members of TCG
We want feedback from independent theater artists: How can we strengthen the relationship between individual artists and institutions? What would strengthen the artistic vitality of theatre?
TCG is hosting a series of five teleconferences for independent theatre artists. These focus groups aim to engage individual theatre artists in a far-ranging dialogue to discuss how individual artists are doing in the American theatre field today.
Five teleconferences are scheduled, each for a specific discipline in the theatre: actors, directors, dramaturgs, playwrights and designers. We recognize that many artists play multiple and varied roles within the theatre, and that for some artists, these categories do not fully capture what they do in the field. If you are a multi-disciplinary artist, or you do not see your discipline represented in the calls below, please self select one category that you feel is closest to your area of expertise.
The teleconferences will take place for one hour on the following days:
• April 19, 4pm EDT: Actors
• April 26, 4pm EDT: Directors
• May 3, 3pm EDT: Dramaturgs
• May 3, 4:30pm EDT: Playwrights
• May 10, 4pm EDT: Designers
Artists interested in participating must register below by 5pm EST on the Thursday prior to the teleconference. Our intent is to have as geographically and culturally diverse a group as possible represented on the call. As such, 30 participants will be selected from the registrant pool by lottery. Participants will be notified either way by the end of the day on the Friday prior to the call. For maximum efficiency, a series of questions will be circulated to participants prior to the call. Registrants who are not selected for the call will be given the opportunity to voice their points of view via electronic survey.
Follow the link above to register. And let me know what happens.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Malcolm McLaren's next gig: shaking up Valhalla
Saddened today to hear of the passing of Malcolm McLaren, a supernova of a music producer who helped changed music forever during the Punk and New Wave movements back in the day. His clients included The Sex Pistols and Bow Wow Wow, among others. The po-mo mash-ups we take for granted nowadays have their roots in some of his visionary efforts.
This oh-so-80s video may give you pause, but give yourself a treat and just close your eyes, allowing yourself to be enshrouded by Mr. McLaren’s lush re-envisioning of a classic staple. This is from his 1984 album, FANS:
This oh-so-80s video may give you pause, but give yourself a treat and just close your eyes, allowing yourself to be enshrouded by Mr. McLaren’s lush re-envisioning of a classic staple. This is from his 1984 album, FANS:
Monday, April 5, 2010
Roomba cat, O roomba cat, where are you going to
That’s right, I’m breaking a 9-day silence to bring you funny videos from the Internets. But it’s in honor of an event of massive impact. Namely: last week the James came home with a Roomba! We welcomed it into the family immediately and life hasn’t been the same since.
While the Roomba may be a far cry from the Jetson’s beloved Rosie, it doesn’t sass you back when you push its CLEAN button. It sallies forth from its berth at once, with encouraging alacrity, looking for lint, grit, dust bunnies, what have you.
What makes its search oddly lifelike is that it doesn’t go in a straight line, but rather meanders all over the place. It halts in mid-stride and goes off in another direction; it circles around madly as if in doubt of where it’s needed most; it clambers over low barriers such as rugs in a way that’s reminiscent of the Robinson’s old Chariot. Whenever it bangs into insurmountable barriers, it just wheels around goes another way (as we say in casting, using whisker-like feelers that jut out from the undercarriage.
You can place small electronic posts around the house to ward the Roomba away from places you want it to avoid -- like your office, when you’re working in it -- and the thing somehow senses areas where the floor drops away, which saves it from falling down the stairs. Brilliant! You just turn it on and it industriously wanders around; its white noise because an unobtrusive soundtrack to your day.
Best of all, when the Roomba gets tired, it finds its way back to its berth; it backs in, settles down, and as it recharges, it’s “clean” button pulses like beating red heart. Scary!
Admittedly, I had hoped for a video-worthy response to the Roomba from Mac the Kerry Blue. I expected outrage from him at this manic interloper, or at least for his terrier instincts to kick in. But he just looked at the thing, shrugged, and went back to sleep. Hence I’m hoping you’ll be satisfied with this YouTube office fave instead.
Oh: I hope you recognized the important cultural referent in this post’s caption. I know Prince did. Here it is, for your convenience, just in case:
You're welcome!
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