Here’s a little something from the annals of McSweeney’s: a letter from the Chair of the Marshall College Department of Anthropology explaining why Dr. Henry Jones, Jr. - better known to the world-at-large as Indiana Jones - was denied tenure. (Courtesy of my sister, Carla, who was awesome to send this to me. Thanks, Carla!)
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In the recent hoopla surrounding Babylon Babylon, I forgot to observe a momentous occasion last month: on April 10th this blog turned one year old.
Holy crap.
I honestly didn’t think I would make it that long. Considering that I was never a diligent diary keeper or journal writer, I thought that maybe I’d fire off a couple of entries and then let this thing languish in limbo for months at a time. But, for the most part, that hasn’t happened, and I’ve gotten into the spirit of blogging enough to maintain this thing on a semi-regular basis. Will wonders never cease?
As the blog’s birthday rolled around last month, I got to reminiscing about where I was a year ago when I started this whole enterprise. And, boy, lemme tell ya - I was not in a good way.
Last April I was reeling from the unexpected breakup of a relationship that left me devastated. The way I usually handle such things is to lock myself in my room and stay there for months on end. But this last time, I decided I didn’t want to do that. Sure, I was sad and depressed, but I didn’t want to turn that energy inward and eat myself alive with self-loathing (a familiar coping mechanism). No, I wanted to do something different - something that would turn my attentions outward, keep me optimistic, and maybe make me feel better.
I wanted to do something potentially unpredictable (at least, to me). And I think what I chose fit the bill perfectly.
I decided to revive my long-dormant acting career.
With one notable exception, I hadn’t really acted for the better part of the last seven years. So I didn’t know if this was going to work. Especially since all the theater people in my life knew me only as a reviewer, not as an artistic type. Reviewers are often looked upon as the enemy, so I thought I might be facing an uphill battle.
But, I had to do something. So, I got new headshots taken, spiffed up the ol’ resume, and started sending those puppies out.
And the universe responded. In spades.
I’ll spare you the play-by-play of what happened next. The short version is that I landed an audition a week after getting those headshots, landed the gig the week after that, and have thankfully been rolling pretty much ever since. Overnight, the numerous theater folks I’d met in various capacities over the past couple of years turned into an extensive network of contacts and advocates, all of whom helped me out in one way or another. The community opened its arms and embraced me wholeheartedly. I was in awe of the whole thing then, and am still in awe of it now. And massively grateful.
So, as I look at where I am now, compared to where I was this time last year, I see that I have come quite a long way.
In the past twelve months, I’ve acted in six shows (one of which was my Off-Broadway debut).
I actually got paid for one of them. Quite unexpectedly, I might add. It was the first time I’d ever been paid for acting in a play. Wow. What a feeling.
Depending on how things go, I’ve got my next four acting gigs already lined up.
On April 10th, the blog’s one-year birthday, I met with a commercial agent who agreed to take me on as a freelance client. Happy Birthday, indeed.
And, most importantly, I met The Companion. This month it’ll be six months since our first date. She is the light and the love of my life, and the greatest gift I could have possibly gotten. I cherish and treasure every day I have with her, and am so happy to have her in my life.
So, I’d like to take a moment to thank all the people who played some sort of major part (whether they knew it or not) in my personal and professional turnaround this past year. The friendship, support, and inspiration I got from all of you has meant the world to me, and I look forward to many more years of it.
(in alphabetical order…)
Gyda Arber, Melanie Armer, Aaron Baker, Pete Boisvert, Elizabeth Bunnell, Isaac Butler, Hope Cartelli, Maggie Cino, James Comtois, Stephanie Cox-Williams, the Criscuolo family (Mom, Pop, sister Carla, and brother Greg), Frank Cwiklik, Dominic D’Andrea, Amy Davidson, Martin Denton, Rochelle Denton, Kevin Doyle, Bryan Enk, Michael Gardner, Jessi Gotta, Ashlin Halfnight, Ian W. Hill, Robert Honeywell, Leonard Jacobs, Matt Johnston, Jeff Lewonczyk, Jeni Mahoney, Cathy McNelis, Debbi Morgan, Chance Muehleck, Robin Reed, Iracel Rivero, Mac Rogers, Trav S.D., Michele Schlossberg, Patrick Shearer, Gary Shrader, Christine Simpson, Alexis Sottile, Stephen Speights, Moira Stone, Melanie Sylvan, Daniel Talbott, Sara Thigpen, and Jordana Williams.
And since I owe you all a Random Friday Top 10 for both last week and today, here’s a special Random Friday Top 20 in honor of today’s post: Top 20 Songs/Cuts That Got Me Through the Year (courtesy of my iTunes library). Here we go (in alphabetical order)…
And, for shits and giggles, here are some bonus tracks…
Happy Friday, everybody. Have a great weekend. And count your blessings. You may find you have more of them than you thought.
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This is my younger sister, Carla. She’s pretty awesome, as you will see in a moment. How’s that, you may wonder? Because, as of this past week, Carla is now a published poet. That’s right. She’s been writing as long as I can remember, and now the rest of the world is finally getting a chance to bow down before her total awesomeness. Read her terrific meaty poem, “Inheritance,” and get in on the ground floor as far as “I knew her when…” bragging rights go.
Carla: I tip my hat to you. You’re the best and I love you. Happy Friday!
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Electric Pear Productions, the upstart company responsible for the FringeNYC 2006 hit, Diving Normal, as well as a recent revival of Lisa Kron’s 2.5 Minute Ride this past winter, is swinging back into action next week with its 2008 edition of Synesthesia, a multi-disciplinary performance piece inspired by the old grade school game of telephone that examines how artists influence each other. The inaugural edition in 2007 featured an eclectic lineup of contributors including writer Benjamin Percy, comedian Rebecca Drysdale, singer-songwriter Jeremy Parise, New Yorker editor Ben Greenman, and members of the theater company Performance Lab 115. This year’s roster promises just as much variety, with contributions coming from playwright Clay McLeod Chapman, dancer-choreographer Jo-anne Lee, DJ JayCeeOh, and filmmaker Gregory Stuart Edwards, among many many others.
Electric Pear’s co-executive producer, playwright Ashlin Halfnight, stopped by the ol’ blog for a chat about Synesthesia and some of the other things the company has in store for audiences this year. He is briefly joined by Electric Pear’s other co-executive producer, Melanie Sylvan, a little later on. Take a read…
This is the second installment of Synesthesia. What made you decide to do it again?
Well, we actually always envisioned Synesthesia as a yearly event – with a consistent format but different artists – so deciding to put it up again was contingent on two practical things: the success of the first show, and the ever-present budgetary concerns. As it turned out, we had a great sold-out run last year, and we managed to scrape the cash together in 2008… so here we are.
Aside from that, putting up a show like Synesthesia is incredibly gratifying on a number of levels, a factor that always enters into a discussion about re-mounting. As producers, we get to work with some incredibly talented people from a myriad of creative fields, which keeps the project fresh and exciting; each time, we get to watch these people work, hard and fast, and what they come up with is always stimulating and surprising. On a more philosophical scale, Synesthesia was also unlike anything that we’d seen before in a performance space - and the idea of letting this artistic collision drop out of existence was somehow just not an option.
What does the word “Synesthesia” mean?
Exactly? I’ll need to cheat here, with a little help from my dictionary - Synesthesia is “a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.” So, I guess, the process of our project mirrors this kind of stimulus-response set-up. There’s a reactive quality in both cases, but there’s also a creative one; a new piece of art (or poem, song, dance, etc.) is created in response to the previous one in our project, and in a synesthetic brain, a new sensation (color, in the example above) is created in response to a separate stimulus.
What was the impetus for this project? What made you decide to use the game of telephone as a means of exploring how artists influence each other?
The impetus for the project was, as always, alcohol. No, just kidding. It was actually a long and serious night of heavy drugs. Lots of heavy drugs. Which is why I don’t remember what the impetus for the project was. Who are you, again?
In all seriousness, I don’t recall when I first hatched the idea, but it definitely had to do with the overwhelming amount of information that’s out there, and how artists are influenced, either implicitly or explicitly by it. We have such extensive and easy access to all forms of media that it’s really impossible to create anything in a bubble – or even to be trained in or disposed towards any one tradition. And so I got thinking about this idea of borrowing (or stealing) from current culture as a whole, and from other artists in particular – I wrote a play that was set up and inspired by Edwardd Hopper’s “Summer Interior.” It was awful. And then I wrote one that was inspired by The Master and Margarita – and I worked with PL115, who ended up performing it… and it was much better, probably thanks to them. In any case, I find it fascinating when pieces of art are in conversation – The Grey Album, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Sunday in the Park With George – and so why not frame the conversation in a way that brings this kind of mash-up to the surface and lets the audience inside the creative process.
What made you decide to include participants from all types of artistic disciplines, not just theater?
Well, it certainly could just be a theater project, but we thought it was crucial to reflect the cross-disciplinary conversations that are going on in the world right now. Theater and other arts are guilty of a certain amount of navel-gazing – and there’s a boring and corrosive insularity that can be bred out of that kind of limited scope. Think of a cocktail party where everyone stands around talking about theater, exclusively… that’s great for the practitioners, but the person who came as a date, well, they’re going to be in the corner sticking a fork in their eye after ten minutes. Perhaps that’s a little extreme. Maybe just a toothpick. Anyway, Electric Pear is interested in projects that bring some kind of multi-tasking to the table. We’re attracted to international collaborations, mixed media, site specific stuff… anything that’s just a little different. Synesthesia fits that bill, and we want to have as much of the creative world involved in the conversation.
How do you go about picking the participants?
Some are people we’ve worked with before – PL115, for example, and Jeremy Parise, who wrote the music for a play I directed awhile back. Melanie has worked with Clay McLeod Chapman and Project: Projekt… we have the great fortune of continuing these relationships through an artistic endeavor. And then, some of the participants are people we’ve been wanting to work with – a couple of this year’s artists come as recommendations from last year’s group – and some great folks randomly fall into our laps. It’s really scattershot. There’s a haphazard beauty to that, I think… and it keeps the project from being too heavily weighted in any way.
Once you’ve got the lineup of artists, how does this whole thing work? How do you get the ball rolling on something like this?
Well, it takes about 5 months of intricate schedule coordinating… there are the artists themselves, then the producers, then the documentary filmmaker, and the sound person…not to mention the piece of art itself, which may need to be performed, projected, hung, carried in a box, a truck… and so on…
We always start with a fortune cookie. We always start at Congee Village, a restaurant on the Lower East Side. The first artist picks a cookie, unwraps it, and takes the fortune home to be the inspiration for his or her piece. Each artist is given roughly two weeks to come up with something… then they bring it back, and pass it off to the next person in line. It’s like the schoolyard game of telephone – you only know what the preceding person “gave” you…each artist is blind to the many steps that may have come before.
Each artist is interviewed about their impressions and process – this year we have the wonderful Avriel Hillman doing all the documentary work – and this is then shown in the performance, so that the audience can gain insight into what each artist was picking up from the last. The show is partly live (dancers, singers, theater artists and so on perform live) and partially pre-recorded (the interviews, films, photographs, and static arts), and then projected onto a large movie screen.
Are you still aiming to make this an annual event?
Yep. We’re really hoping that it will grow with each outing. So far, the response from the audience and from the artists has been great…and, although it’s an incredible amount of work – mostly for Melanie this year – we intend to try to make it bigger and better with each iteration. We made some procedural changes after last year, and shortened the show… and we’ll surely have some tinkering to do after 2008’s version.
You’re doing this year’s edition at Judson Memorial Church, which has a firmly entrenched place in the firmament of downtown theater history. Conscious decision on your part or divine happenstance?
Ashlin: Both.
Melanie: I have worked out of Judson a number of times over the years. I was producing a Chanukah event there in December, and I suppose you could say I had a moment of divine inspiration when I realized that this would be the perfect venue for Synesthesia. Judson is one of the most majestic spaces I have seen in the city, and it has an incredibly rich history of showcasing experimental art. I’m in awe when I think of the artists that have presented their work in this room since the 1950s: from Robert Rauschenberg to Trisha Brown, and Yoko Ono to Arcade Fire. It’s an honor to be able to bring emerging artists into this space. Synesthesia is an ideal fit with Judson’s “radical art ministry,” and it’s a great honor to now be a part of the church’s history of presenting avant-garde art to the downtown community. The church staff and community is incredibly supportive and I think this is an awesome opportunity for our company and all of the artists involved in the project.
What does Electric Pear have going on after this?
Emily Long has been spearheading our play development series, The Outlet, and has also initiated our first audio play. The company commissioned a talented young playwright named Gregory Moss to write a piece that was specifically designed for broadcast, which he did – a funny and thought-provoking play called Amanda Tears, Teenage Sleuth. Erica Gould is directing a great group of actors and we’re putting up on the Electric Pear website for free download later this spring. Check it out!
We’re also in the process of developing an acting company. It’s a great step for us right now, because we’re really looking to grow a community of like-minded artists – some will be familiar faces to Electric Pear shows, and some will be new. We wanted to avoid those terrible situations where fifty actors end up being a part of a “company” and then never get to do anything…they do development work, or they volunteer at the benefits, but when the plays go up, they’re not cast. Their affiliation is in name only, which is silly and a little insulting. We intend to commission new works by exciting playwrights that are written specifically for our actors – and that way, we can promise them each a role in a show, every season.
We also have some really exciting projects on the horizon that we’re being kind of hush-hush about until they’re truly solidified, but rest assured we’ve got an incredible season planned that will start with a site-specific show next September.
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I was not tagged on this. I’m playing anyway. This is the latest meme that’s been sweeping the blogosphere. Here are the rules:
Look up 15 of your favorite films on IMDb and take a quote from each. List them below. When someone guesses the quote correctly, I cross it off the list. NO CHEATING.
Mind you, these are not my picks for The Greatest Movies Ever Made - just a collection of random favorites I thought of while putting this together. Here we go…
1. “The theater’s too deep for me. I prefer bicycling.”
2. “A woman never goes anywhere but the hospital without packing makeup, clothes, and jewelry.”
3. “Seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the F.B.I. and a little more from the Actor’s Studio.”
4. “Do you know why the number two hundred is so vitally descriptive to both you and me? It’s your weight and my I.Q.” Nice, James!
5. “This bucket of bolts’s never gonna get us past that blockade.” James, again.
6. “Micro changes in air density, my ass.”
7. “Whenever we needed money, we’d rob the airport. To us, it was better than Citibank.”
8. “I’ll chase him ’round the moons of Nibia and ’round the Antares Maelstrom and ’round perdition’s flames before I give him up.” I’m gonna give Johnna half of this one since she got it half right. Who can finish it? UPDATE: Nice assist, Matt!
9. “What a dear face! Interesting. What a nostril. A dramatic nostril. These people are extras. Extra people. Extras are so patient. They just sit. Extras. These humans are extras. Extra humans.”
10. “If I die, I’m sorry for all the bad things I did to you. And if I live, I’m sorry for all the bad things I’m gonna do to you.”
11. “Hey, you wanna hear my philosophy of life? Do it to him before he does it to you.”
12. “If you want to give me a present, give me a good life. That’s something I can value.”
13. “Since you’re new here, I’m gonna cut you a break… today. So, why don’t you make like a tree and get out of here?” James, do you really know all these quotes…
14. “If you were to try to assassination a king, sir, the… how shall I say it? The aura of royalty would cause you to miss. But, the president…I mean, why not shoot the president?” …or are you CHEATING?!
15. “I think that, uh, little story has considerable significance; but I’ve, uh, I’ve forgotten what it is.”
Having said that, is there anyone who hasn’t done this yet? Let’s see…I tag Trav, Patrick, Pete, Qui, and Mac.
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Dear Blogosphere:
I need your help.
A friend of mine wants to organize a fundraiser for the spring, and wants to have it at an art gallery. She asked me for some recommendations, but I don’t know anything about art galleries. Do you? If you could recommend a gallery or two - or any other location, really - I’d be most grateful. And so would my friend. She’s organizing this thing on behalf of a charity she’s involved with.
Feel free to leave a comment on this post or send me an email at nytheatremike@gmail.com. Thanks in advance for your help.
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…I’m voting for Hillary today. She’s got experience, both as an elected official and as a White House resident. She knows the ins and outs of what it means to be President, having witnessed it first hand. She’s been all around the world and knows the global scene, and who the major players are (i.e. she’s met them all, so they know her already). And, she’s got the best possible not-so-secret weapon in her arsenal with Bill. I mean, what potential future President wouldn’t want a former two-term Commander-in-Chief in their corner, and at their disposal? This is an advantage that none of the other candidates have, and it’s one of the big tipping points for me. So, I’m going with Hillary.
But, regardless of who you’re voting for, just make sure you get out there and do it today. It’s your opportunity to make your voice heard so make sure you speak up.
(And don’t forget to show mad love to the Giants as well. GO BIG BLUE!!!)
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So, I was sitting in My Favorite Downtown Bistro (MFDB) last night, writing in my notebook, when a four-top sat down at the table next to mine. Two men, two women, all of them lively and a little tipsy. One of the women immediately looked at me and asked, “What are you writing?”
To which I replied, “A short story.” This happens frequently at MFDB: I sit quietly in a corner, or at the secluded end of the bar, scribbling with determined purpose into my cheap spiral notebook. Someone always wants to know what I’m writing. I have no idea why, aside from the fact that most people seem to be pleasantly surprised to see someone writing the old-fashioned way - i.e. with pen and paper - instead of with a laptop.
“What’s it about?” she continued. The woman was quickly forgetting about the rest of her party.
“Um, well…it’s about two people having an affair,” I said. True enough. I mean, I just started writing this thing, so I don’t really know what it’s about yet. But, that’s what was happening in the part I was writing last night.
The woman’s eyes lit up. “Really? Can I write part of your story?”
I’d never heard that one before, so I said, “Sure.” I handed the woman my pen and notebook, and she went to work in earnest.
After about ten minutes or so - ten minutes in which she had completely ignored her friends and dropped out of their conversation, mind you - she handed back my notebook. Double-spaced across two pages, she had written the following:
“On a night in January 2008 you meet 4 people who in your heart of hearts you could never tell who was having the affair! What defines love or an affair? An affair starts because people need an outlet to vent. They look for what they don’t have in their marriage. Many think they can find it in someone else! But the truth is people are exactly who they are. The world defines who people become - not marriage - not an affair - not a child. We live for our children - they are that matters - people live and stay together to try to make the world a better place - what defines better - if you live your life and you wake up happy in life and you touch someone everybody - whether within your own world or someone else - you win! If you have lived - you have smiled and touched a soul - you are complete - most people will never touch a soul because they care too much about others.
In other words - every day - smile or say hi someone will pass it on that defines happiness and if it takes having an affair then so be it!
XXXOOO SL”
Um…wow.
And if that weren’t enough, about two minutes later one of the two men looked at me and asked, “You mind if I take a look at that?”
I certainly didn’t, but I wondered if the lady did. So I asked her: “You mind if he looks at this?”
She smiled. “Aw, that’s nice of you. No, go ahead.”
So I handed him the pages she wrote. He looked them over, then gave them back to me without so much as a “Thank you” or a glance in my direction. He sat quietly for the rest of the time - he had previously been quite talkative - and did not speak to the lady in question again.
Um, can you say, “Draw your own conclusions”?
Only in New York, people. Only in New York.
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The temp job is keeping me busy today, so I’ll have to make this brief.
First, I’ll start with this week’s Random Friday Top 10. I have to admit I’m cheating a little bit: I can’t listen to music here at work, so the Top 10 was culled from my Pandora Quick Mix two nights ago. Here it is:
Elsewhere, there’s word out of Iceland this morning that the sports world has lost one of its most bizarre, elusive, enigmatic, and legendary figures: Bobby Fischer. If the game of chess could boast a maverick outlaw, then Fischer was that guy. A jaw-droppingly non-linear life and career that, to my mind, is ripe for some sort of dramatic or literary rendering. Until that happens, you can rent this movie. It’s a freaking classic.
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Actor, playwright, and fellow blogger Zack Calhoon surprised the hell out of me this morning (in the good way, of course) with his newest post about his Top Theatrical Experiences of 2007: right there, alongside a bunch of Broadway shows, was a show I was in - The Blood Brothers Present: Pulp! You can read his entire list here.
This is very exciting to me. Now, granted, I didn’t produce the show nor did I play a lead role in it or anything, but it’s still very gratifying to have been part of a show that someone - especially as discriminating and savvy a theatergoer as Zack - thinks so highly of that they rank it right up there with a Tony-nominated Best Play, an acknowledged classic of world drama, and a play that’s probably going to win the Pulitzer Prize in April. Wow.
The producers of The Blood Brothers, Nosedive Productions - and two of their members, in particular, co-artistic director Pete Boisvert and artistic associate Patrick Shearer - worked their asses off on this show, and it showed in the finished product. The whole show was a labor of love for all of us, but especially for Pete and Patrick (they both produced, directed, and acted in the show). My thanks to Zack for showing us all some love like this at the end of the year. A great way to bring 2007 to a close. (I remember the night he came to the show: he and his fiancee, Susan, sat in the front row and got splattered with blood. Later that night, they emailed everyone in the cast and crew and told us how much they loved getting blood on them. That’s the spirit, people!)
In other news, here’s this week’s Random Friday Top 10, once again courtesy of Pandora:
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