Baby Lovin’ With Christen Clifford

First it started with an essay. Then it continued with a solo show that has played Europe and a variety of downtown venues here in New York. Now, actor-writer Christen Clifford tackles the big time with the Off-Broadway premiere of her show, BabyLove, in which she colorfully ruminates on what she calls “the eroticism of motherhood.” The show opened late last month at 45 Bleecker and runs until the first week of June. It is being presented by Hourglass Group, the producers of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles and the forthcoming Frequency Hopping.

With the show successfully up and running (and her son temporarily napping), Christen dropped by the ol’ blog to talk about the show, the Off-Broadway move, and what else she’s been up to since the last time I interviewed her. BabyLove director Julie Kramer (None of the Above, Mother Load) throws in a handy assist from time to time, as well.

When last we spoke, you were getting ready to open BabyLove at the very first FRIGID Festival. How did that run go?

The FRIGID was great for me: I got to work the show for seven performances instead of just of just one or two here and there. The other work in the festival was wild and wonderful. And it’s important to have a truly fringe festival in New York.

What have you been up to since then?
 
Well my son started PreK, only half days, but that’s been a big change since last year. Since I’m a stay at home and working mother (I just work when he’s asleep mostly!) his schedule is what dictates my schedule. Ummm..I got my MFA, won some writing awards (MFA New School Nonfiction Prize and a 2007 NYFA fellowship, woo-hoo!) I was supposed to be working on a book- if my agent is reading this I AM, I AM!!!

How has the show changed since then - or has it?
 
Christen: The show changes with my circumstances.  When I first started doing the show, I was still really caught up in many of the issues, still very confused about sex and motherhood.  Now I feel like I’ve gone over a mountain and am on the other side of it, so it has a different feel to it.  It used to be even more emotionally raw, it’s still pretty raw, but it used to be REALLY raw.  Now I have to act to access some of those emotions, when they used to just be there.
 
So that’s kind of a big difference.  After over two years, I am finally looking at the show as an actor!
 
Julie: The show has changed so much over the years that we’ve worked on it, though it’s probably changed the least between the Frigid Festival and now.  We’ve had the opportunity to do it so much out of town and it’s interesting to me how some things are pretty much exactly the same from when we first did it in Slovenia and other parts we have continued to refine.  Actually we changed some things for Frigid and this time we’ve gone back to how we did it before.  Also we brought Julie Atlas Muz back, and she expanded some of the dances, which is exciting. 
 
Mostly though, I think what’s changed has been Christen.  When we started Felix was two and everything was so raw and uncertain and frightening.  Now, he’s four.  Her marriage is strong and Felix is this really great little person.  So while the show is still unflinchingly honest and emotionally bare, I think we’re both able to achieve more clarity on what it’s about.

BabyLove originally came to life as an essay for Nerve.com. What inspired you to write it, and then turn it into a solo show?
 
I was really confused sexually after having a baby.  I had identified myself sexually, and I felt like that part of my personality was gone, or not accessible.  Like I wanted to be a mother without losing myself, but I WAS fundamentally different.  But also unchanged in my basic desires and neurosis. 
 
So as a reader I turned to books, only to not find very much out there.  As a writer, studying with two great essayists at the time, Vivian Gornick and Phillip Lopate, I wrote from my own experience.  All of my solo work has developed out of a need to express something I didn’t find out in the world, some true bit of my experience that I hope has some universal truth in it.  It started from writing personal essays, on which I then collaborated with the fabulous director Julie Kramer to turn into performance texts.  Julie and I first met when I auditioned for her for a role in something for the American Living Room festival at HERE, a funny play about Elvis and a Russian woman and a pig:  I played the Russian. Julie has devoted a lot of time to my work and I am forever indebted to her.  I was very unhappy about feeling disconnected from my sexuality, and a lot of humor can come out of unhappiness.  Julie really uncovered the humor.
 
I am so grateful and lucky, this show has been supported by so many different companies- New Georges gave us discounted rehearsal space, so did the Interart Theatre.  The first time I did the show in New York was for the terraNOVA soloNova festival in 2006, and we did a lot of rewriting and rethinking during that run.  We’ve taken it on the road. And now this run at 45 Bleecker for Hourglass Group.

Previously, you’ve said that the show is about “the eroticism of motherhood,” and that motherhood changed your ideas about sexuality and your body. How so?
 
Sex and love and intimacy overlap in romantic relationships.  My relationship with my newborn was the most intimate I’d ever had, and it was shocking to me.
 
Sexuality is so commodified these days, and motherhood is so commodified, and now there is the media-ization of the “sexy mommy” as if we have to look like Angelina Jolie when we are pregnant and be a stick six weeks afterward we give birth.
 
This doesn’t recognize the true experiences of many first time mothers: that your body is changed, often injured; that you are often completely in love with your newborns at the same that your relationship with your partners may be floundering, that your hormones are fluctuating.  So I really feel it’s important to talk about motherhood and sexuality together without it being part of a media trend that just makes most women feel badly about themselves. 
 
Principally, I’m interested in exploring the in-between moments, the grey areas between love and sex and intimacy.  Where we are all trying to connect.  And solo performance and storytelling has been a vibrant way to explore this: I love the shared experience of the theatre, to find community with an audience that might be shocked by my admissions.  Though I use sexuality as a way in, the work is always ultimately about love.
 
Maternal sexuality is actually an issue that involves us all, as children and women and men and parents. The director Julie Kramer always says it’s like the opposite of Phillip Roth romanticizing or fantasizing about his mother- now we get to see the mother’s point of view!

Let’s switch gears for a minute and talk about Hourglass Group. How’d you get hooked up with them?
 
I first met artistic director Elyse Singer at a party at our mutual friend Erica Gould’s in the early nineties. Erica had this huge Chinatown loft and always threw big parties that were lots of fun, and I met Elyse and I had seen her production of Love in the Void (alt.fan.c-love)  which was a one woman play in which Carolyn Baeumler did Courtney Love posting online just after Kurt Cobain died.  I was not a big Cobain fan but I fascinated by Courtney, and I LOVED that they had taken her posts and made them into a show.  It was so great.  And this was when the Internet was still fairly new, I remember I went to see it and I tried to get onto these message boards and couldn’t figure it out.
 
I did some readings and workshops with Hourglass.  When Felix was very young we did a two-week workshop of a very interesting play called 800 Words: the transmigration of Phillip K. Dick by Victoria Stewart and it felt so great being able to bring Felix to rehearsals with a babysitter.  Elyse had had her daughter a few months after I had my son, so there was an acknowledgement of motherhood.
 
And then in 2005 Elyse and I were taking about solo work and she had the idea for a Lab devoted to female writer /performers.  The Lab is the first of its kind, which is very cool and also just a super supportive group of creative and diverse women – together we avoid the vacuum of solo performance.
 
And Hourglass Group is all mothers now: in addition to Elyse, Nina Hellman and Carolyn Baeumler both gave birth in the last year.  And Carolyn was just in Beebo Brinker at 37 Arts, and Elyse is opening Frequency Hopping at 3LD, so I’m happy to be a part of this group of mothers making theatre.

How have you enjoyed prepping the show for Off-Broadway?
 
Christen: I loved it.  I was so happy to get back in a rehearsal room with Julie Kramer, who is just so smart and I love working with her.  We had some sessions with the amazing Julie Atlas Muz and re-did some choreography.  She asked me if I wanted to make it dirtier and I said, “YES!”  So we have even more fun with the dance sequences now.  And Elizabeth Rhodes came in to rework some sound.  Costume designer Melissa Schlachtmeyer met me at maternity stores to find the perfect pair of pants, and made me a new belly. I am so lucky to have such generous collaborators who have been helping me work and rework the show over the years; we’re all in this together.  And we brought in Graham Kindred to do our lights, and had a consultation with a great set designer, Lauren Helpern, and added a Mylar rain curtain.  I love shiny things!
 
Julie: It’s always great to be able to revisit something, to have that confidence that it works in front of all kinds of audiences, and just to be able to really hone in on those areas that we want to be perfect.  It’s the best kind of rehearsal situation really, because there are fewer variables in terms of how or whether something is going to work.  And it’s always the best to be able to move forward with a show and bring it to more and more people, especially when you really believe in what the show is about.

Part of the performance schedule includes “Mommy matinees.” What time of day is best for theatergoing mommies?
 
Well, Sunday afternoons are pretty easy to get out get out of the house, you leave the kid(s) with your partner or a friend.  It saves you from having to make a big deal of going to the theatre and getting a babysitter and coming home late and tired.  And the Wednesday matinees are early, at 1pm, so parents can get back to school for 3pm pick up, or see the show on their lunch hour. 

What are some of the challenges (and advantages) you face in balancing motherhood and performing?
 
Well, first of all, I don’t buy into the whole “opting in” and “opting out” of motherhood that makes headlines.  For me, it’s not a choice to work or not.  Personally, I don’t have the option of having a high-powered job and hiring a nanny.  I can’t not be a mother, I can’t not be a writer/performer – these are givens for me. I also just started teaching.  So it’s a challenge for me to make my way in the world and piece it together the only way I know how.
 
When I was getting my MFA I’d be up until 1am writing and still have to get up with my son.  So I stayed sleep deprived long after my son was sleeping through the night in order to do my own work.  It’s definitely a DIY business model.
 
That said, I think coming from downtown theatre makes me scrappy in a way that’s a good influence on being a mother – the whole beg, borrow, or steal mentality makes you flexible and I feel like we can always find fun wherever we are.
 
When Felix was little, he would just travel with me- well partly because I breastfed him for so long!  When Julie and I premiered the show in Ljubljana, the festival there put us all up in an apartment and even arranged childcare for me and paid for it! 
 
I like to bring him to tech rehearsals, he loves the lights and gels, he loves to come to the theatre and explore different spaces.  He loves it and I think it’s important to see me at work, since he can’t see the work.  BabyLove is for adults only; it even came with a warning label in Canada. My son is old enough to really know what theatre is now – I take him to children’s theatre – and he likes to give people the postcards for my show and tell them, “Here’s a postcard for my mommy’s show.  It’s not for children.  It’s only for grown ups.”  It’s so cute!

You’re expecting your second child later this year. Congratulations on that! Might we see BabyLove 2 sometime in the future?
 
Thank you. I’m excited and scared to bring another human being into the world.  I don’t see BabyLove 2 in the works; I’m not fond of sequels in general. But who knows: when the new baby comes everything will change again.
 
I’m actually looking at sex from the perspective of a daughter instead of a mother now.  My new solo is called (What I Know About) My Parents’ Sex Life and it explores elderly sexuality.  I’m looking at everything from my father’s Viagra prescription to my mother’s racy letters, from nursing homes to granny porn.  Daniel Fish will direct it, and it opens June 17th at P.S. 122 as part of terraNOVA’s soloNOVA festival and I got an equipment loan grant from Digital Performance Institute so we’ll be using video and I’m excited that it will be something I’m not used to.  So I have to get to work making a new show.  And it’s scary, because though it is still a solo with personal stories, I’m consciously moving away from the storytelling form that I’ve been working in for the past few years.  I’m excited to see what will happen.

James Comtois Gets Colorful

The superhero genre is about to get re-defined - that is, if James Comtois has anything to say about it. The prolific author of such indie theater hits as The Adventures of Nervous-Boy and Suburban Peepshow returns with a brand new play, Colorful World, that aims to stand the world of caped crusaders on its ear while still getting in some kick-ass fights. The play, produced by Nosedive Productions (the company James co-helms with director Pete Boisvert), opens this week at the 78th Street Theater Lab. Amidst the flurry of pre-opening activity, James generously took some time to stop by the ol’ blog and chat about the play. Here’s what the man himself had to say…

Your new play is about superheroes but doesn’t sound like it’s your average superhero story. What made you go with superheroes this time around and how does differ from (or maybe even subvert) the superhero genre?

Well, I originally wanted to do a “riff” on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal comic Watchmen (which, if you haven’t read it, is a brilliant deconstructionist take on the superhero genre that ended up radically changing the mainstream comic book industry) in the way that Sheila Callaghan wrote Dead City as a riff on James Joyce’s Ulysses.  But of course, as I wrote the script, it slowly and steadily veered onto its own path and became its own story, although fans of Watchmen will definitely see several parallels, similarities and in-jokes.

The premise behind Colorful World is that, in the late-‘80s, a man who’s bulletproof and impervious to pain is revealed to the world.  No one knows why and no one knows how he became this way.  The existence of this invincible man (dubbed “Overman”) changes the world as we know it in both subtle and drastic ways; the biggest of which being a trend of people dressing up in flashy outfits to go beat people up in back alleys.

The bulk of the story takes place about a decade after the costumed crimefighting trend has fizzled, and centers around a few retired crimefighters who look back on their careers with more bitterness and embarrassment than pride. 

So, Colorful World differs from the superhero genre in that it’s more concerned with the cultural and political landscape and the bruised psyches of the retired crimefighters than with guys in tights beating each other up (although Qui Nguyen has made sure there are many ultra kick-ass fight scenes throughout).  I also suppose it’s a little more melancholy than your average superhero story, since it speculates that discovering the existence of a Superman-like being is ultimately depressing once the novelty wears off.

I have nothing against conventional superhero stories; I just don’t think I have it in me to write one.  Once I start writing about a superhero I start wondering what psychological problems he or she has (because, let’s face it, prowling the streets in a cape and mask is a bit…off) or what physical problems he or she would acquire (wouldn’t years of crime-fighting mess up your knees pretty badly?).  I know you’re not supposed to worry about these things when you’re reading a copy of Batman (and I usually don’t), but when I’m writing a story like that on my own, I just can’t help it.

Colorful World takes place in an alternate realty where the Twin Towers are still standing and the Iraq War is ending. Those two things have figured very prominently in the public consciousness for years now. What made you decide to include such a specific take on both?

Probably because those two things have figured very prominently in the public conscious for years now.  The show bombards the audience with a great deal of information in very a short period of time, so Pete [Boisvert, the show's director] and I have been trying to find the right balance of not being too heavy-handed or overwhelming yet not being too obscure or confusing.  The best thing we came up with is to show at least one or two things from the get-go that are right on the nose — in this case, a big title card saying “2005” and an image of the World Trade Center and an advertisement for a “Welcome Home Troops” show — to help the audience find their bearings.  There are definitely other elements in the show that indicate this (and the in-tact WTC and ending of the Iraq War aren’t even the biggest changes, in my mind), but these two elements seemed to be the easiest to convey.

As for what the show’s take on these two events are, well, you’re just going to have to find out for yourself…

You’re a well-known fan of the fantasy, science fiction, and horror genres, all of which are massively popular in comic books, movies, television shows, and books. And yet you write plays which increasingly touch upon - and incorporate - all of these genres. How did first become interested in A) writing plays, and B) bringing these genres to the theater?

Yeah, I admit it.  I am very much a fan of those genres you’ve mentioned.  I grew up on Star Wars, Doctor Who, The Amazing Spider-Man, Isaac Asimov, and Stephen King.  I never outgrew them.  I know.  A real highbrow am I. 

I suppose it’s only natural that these genres have shaped my writing.  I actually started writing comic book scripts and screenplays in high school and college before moving on to playwriting.  Since I couldn’t — and can’t — draw, and couldn’t convince any of my artist friends to finish illustrating any of my scripts (mainly because I never understood how much faster and easier it was to write a 20-page comic than it was to pencil, ink, and letter one, so I’d scare away my artist friends by sending them five scripts when they were halfway through drawing the first page of issue #1), I gave up on writing comics.  The same problem went with movies, only worse (reasonably-priced high-definition digital video cameras weren’t immediately accessible in 1996).  So, I became interested in writing plays in college when I realized that writing scripts for comics or movies would never get any further than the printed page.

I guess I bring these genres to the theatre because, well, I like these genres, and I try to write plays that I would want to go see.  To be honest, very few of my creative influences are theatrical; most of them are from comics, movies, and prose fiction.  So yeah, it just makes sense that my scripts bear a closer resemblance to stories that are often found within those media than from other plays (which isn’t to say that I’m completely uninfluenced by other plays).

You and Colorful World director Pete Boisvert started Nosedive Productions in order for you to get your plays produced and for him to work as a director. Has it gotten easier over the years to be your own producers? And how has the indie theater landscape changed (if at all) since you guys started up?

In some ways, it’s become easier, since many of the nuts-and-bolts tasks and chores inherent to producing a play (finding a space, conducting rehearsals, sending out the press releases, filling out the insurance paperwork) have become second nature to us at this point.  But of course, it’s also become harder in some ways, since we always feel compelled to “step up” our game every time we produce a new show in some way or another.  You’re competing with a hell of a lot of options for how someone’s going to spend their night out, and that’s not really gotten any easier.  I don’t think it ever will. 

I have no idea how the indie theatre scene has changed; I only know how Nosedive’s involvement with the scene has changed.  We definitely feel more integrated within it, but that may be because we weren’t really integrated within it at all the first couple years we were producing (we didn’t really know anyone or interact with any other companies, aside from maybe a very small handful).  So that’s changed, but I’m not sure if that’s so much a reflection of the scene itself or Nosedive.

You and Pete have been collaborators for a long time now. What’s the connection between you two? What do you like about working together?

Yeah, it’s been about eight years now.  Good Lord! 

Oddly enough, we’re very different people with very different personalities and sensibilities, so that disparity may be a big contributing factor.  We also know each other’s styles pretty damn well (hell, after eight years, we better!), so if I give Pete a particularly oddball script, he’s not lost in the tall grass; he has a pretty decent idea of where it’s (I’m) coming from, if that makes any sense. 

He also comes up with pretty neat ideas for the stage that I could never come up with on my own.  That scene in The Adventures of Nervous-Boy where Nervous-Boy buys a bottle of rum and this giant monster paw comes from offstage to hand it to him?  Yeah, that’s all Pete.  There’s nothing in the script to indicate that the liquor store clerk is some monster/demon.  But it’s a really nice effect that worked like gangbusters with audiences.  So, stuff like that. 

Also, having Patrick Shearer on board since 2001 as actor, director, and/or sound designer (depending on what we need him to do; in the case of Colorful World, he’s acting and sound designing) has been pretty crucial in creating Nosedive’s aesthetic.  (Holy crap; did I seriously write the words “Nosedive’s aesthetic?”  I’m ashamed of me.)  For the most part, we all leave each other alone and trust each other to do our jobs. 

As for what Pete and Patrick like about working with me, you’d probably have to ask them.  I’m under the impression they’ve been politely putting up with me and my shenanigans and I’m slowly and steadily sapping them of their wills to live.

Dude, you’re a pretty prolific writer - how do you do it? And what have you got in store for us after Colorful World?

Well, heh, thank you for saying so, Michael, that’s very flattering.  I don’t think I am, since I only see all the projects I drop the ball on or complete substantially later than I was supposed to (i.e. I only see what I eff up), but that’s very nice of you to say so. 

How do I do it?  I’m not sure.  I mean…what else am I gonna do, man? There are a few possibilities for follow-ups.  We’re pretty sure there’ll be another Blood Brothers horror anthology show in October.  Then, Nosedive may either stage a full-length version of Pinkie, the serial western-noir play we staged for Vampire Cowboys’ “Saturday Night Saloon,” or I may work on this idea Qui gave me that sounds just too good to pass up (though I’m far from ready to reveal any details about that).  And although we can’t do it this summer, the ship hasn’t completely sailed on the idea of touring/remounting The Adventures of Nervous-Boy.  We shall see.

In Honor of Billy Shakes

Hey, guess what? It’s William Shakespeare’s birthday today. Damn right. In honor of Mr. Billy Shakes, my sister sent me this online quiz today, testing one’s knowledge of The Bard of Avon’s life and times. Pretty fun. She scored 5 out of 10. I scored 8 out of 10. See how well you do.

And pay tribute to The Western Canon’s greatest dramatist by saying something Shakespearean. Like this…

“Exeunt, pursued by a bear.”

(The best stage direction of all time - Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and Shaw - eat your hearts out!)

Jeff Lewonczyk Goes Babylonian

Last month, I wrote the following blog post about my current theatrical endeavor, Babylon Babylon, the latest extravaganza from Piper McKenzie Productions. Writer, director, and co-star, Jeff Lewonczyk, responded on the show’s official blog with tongue firmly in cheek. With the show’s opening weekend firmly under his belt, Jeff finally dropped by the ol’ blog to talk about his much-talked-about  opus and to refute those salacious claims he talked about.

Okay, let’s get the basics out of the way: what the hell is this show?

To state it in layman’s terms, it’s 31 actors onstage recreating events in the Babylonian Temple of Ishtar in the year 539 B. C. as the Persians prepare to invade the city. To put it in a more technical vein, it’s f%#$-ing nuts.

You’ve apparently been wanting to do this show for years. How’d you come up with the idea and what took you so long?

The original idea came from Herodotus – I was fascinated by his description of the practice of ritual prostitution in the Temple of Ishtar , and how pervasive he claimed it was. According to The Histories, every woman in Babylon had to visit there at one point in their lives and have sex with a stranger. This claim seems to be pretty well debunked (Herodotus is called both the Father of History and the Father of Lies, after all), but it set my mind in motion imagining a world in which such an activity would be seen as normal. Of course, I was reading Herodotus on the subway during the weeks leading up to 9/11, and so his description of the Persian sneak attack on the oblivious city of Babylon carried great resonance, and allowed me to sort of expand the vision into a meditation on the joys and dangers of the urban experience. As time went on, I drew from sources as diverse as The Bible, D. W. Griffith ’s Intolerance, Robert Altman’s Nashville, and the oeuvre of Kenneth Anger for inspiration and material.

You’ve used a lot of improvisation to help develop and write the script. Tell us a little bit more about that process and what it means exactly.

Well, I had always conceived of this is as a large-scale show with a sizable cast. I’ve never written a play for 30-plus characters before, and so I never actually sat down to write a script during the whole time I was thinking about it – the prospect was just too daunting. Piper McKenzie’s work in recent years on the Bizarre Science Fantasy dance-theater series helped to pave the way, because the pieces were wordless, and so it taught me a lot about how a piece can be developed in the absence of a written text with actors in the room. Of course, I’d never worked with 30-plus actors, and never used dialogue in those projects, so needless to say there was a bevy of novel challenges when we started work on Babylon Babylon. But the gist was that I had a long list of characters and incidents that I wanted to see. I wrote down character descriptions on index cards and passed them to the group – randomly at first, but with more careful selectivity as we proceeded – and then had everyone get up and do improv exercises as these characters, with a few simple rules to try to keep chaos at bay (the jury’s out on how well we succeeded at that last part). This led directly to casting, after which we did more exercises in character and made recordings, some of which became the basis for certain scenes in the script. Between and around all this work I was also building other scenes and text, and we ended up combining everything into a huge script that got whittled down throughout rehearsals to its current state.

The show is being done with a cast of 30-plus and environmental staging. What made you go with both?

Well, in the first place, I don’t think 30-plus actors would even have fit in The Brick’s proscenium setup, so it was partly practical. More than anything, though, for me the visual hook of the show had always been a grid of mats, or “stations” as we call them, on which the women in the show wait for their co-worshipers to choose them and take them out to the Holy Ground where, well, you know. To me the grid was a symbol of our own city – I’ve always been inspired by the variation and creativity that occurs within the tight geometric frame of Manhattan . And like Manhattan , you can never see the whole thing at once – you have a section, a home territory, that you call your own, and even if it changes (by the day, hour, minute, whatever) you look out at the rest of the city from that vantage. That’s the audience experience I wanted to provide – I wanted the audience to feel that they were somehow part of this world, implicated in it, rather than holding it off at arm’s length.

How did you initially go about casting such a large group?

At first, back in November, I sent out an APB to a large group of actor friends describing the project and asking who wanted to get involved. We had a preliminary rehearsal/meeting in November, and most of the people who attended are still with us. When I realized I wanted the cast to top 30 I started reaching further afield, to people I had barely met or whose work I had enjoyed in a show. I received a few personal recommendations from friends along the way, and trusted them even when I didn’t know the person’s work. In general, my rule was no auditioning – I wanted to meet and talk with people and make sure there was a personal connection at all times. Despite the various places everyone came from, a project like this would never work if everyone didn’t have some sort of common ground, no matter how tenuous.

In addition to writing and directing Babylon Babylon, you’re also in it. Are you nuts?

You’re in the show too, you tell me.

So far, so good. Now tell everyone who you’re playing.

My character is named Logios – he’s sort of the narrator/storyteller who sets the whole thing in motion.  He’s based on Herodotus, but a young Herodotus, who’s still trying to earn his chops regaling audiences with outlandish stories. The depiction is in no way autobiographical.

Your wife, Hope Cartelli, is also in the show. You two have worked together frequently for a long time now. How have you both managed to successfully balance your lives together on stage and off?

Well, if she wasn’t my partner I wouldn’t even HAVE a life on stage – she’s essential to everything that I do, and without her support, imagination, talent, and madness I’d be lurching around half empty. As for the offstage life, well, doing shows together means that we never run out of anything to talk about. Casting her as the High Priestess of Ishtar was no accident – she holds the action together much the way she holds the show and our lives together.

Do you mind telling us a little bit about the history of your theater company, Piper McKenzie Productions - for instance, where’d you get that name?

When we graduated from Bard in winter 1998 we stuck around to put together a show with some friends during the break. It was actually our first – and for many years last – attempt at creating something improvisationally with a group, and as such we were still figuring out what the hell the show was about when the producer of the space asked us to come up with a title for the press release. We sat around for fifteen minutes trying to devise the dumbest name we could come up with, which ended up being Piper McKenzie Presents the Tinklepack Kids in the Great Yo-Yo Caper. When we did a production of The Tempest in the same theatre that fall, we decided, what the hell, let’s keep the “Piper McKenzie Presents,” and after that it just stuck. We moved to the city in 1999 and have been churning out a show or two every year since then, getting ever more hubristic as time goes on.

How the hell can you possibly follow this show up?

I’m hoping to do our next show on a Russian space ship, for a select audience of thrill-seeking millionaires. It will integrate most of the major works of the Western Canon and run for forty-seven hours straight, with a full orchestra and live animals (bears, mostly, but also a shark), all performed in zero gravity.

Are you already thinking about the next show or are you going on a long vacation after this?

Oh, I’m thinking. Always thinking. If I stopped thinking my molecules would unravel. We have The Film Festival: A Theater Festival coming up at The Brick in June (for which I’ll be directing a staged reading of William Peter Blatty’s new play, Demons Five Exorcists Nothing, which is quite possibly more insane than Babylon Babylon), and in December we’re hoping to mount something called The Granduncle Cycle, a series of linked short plays that take place in a mythical Arctic society. If theatre offered benefits I would be happy to take some vacation, but Piper McKenzie is a cruel taskmaster.

Julie Shavers Bites the Silver Bullet

Actor-writer Julie Shavers has been described as an “indie theater all-star” by nytheatre.com, and her resume reflects that. Her plays have been seen at both the New York International Fringe Festival (Go Robot Go) and the American Globe Theatre (The Secret Life of Plants). On stage, she played the title role in The Flea Theater’s production of Margo Veil by Len Jenkin, and has appeared in Adam Bock’s Three Guys and a Brenda and Julia Lee Barclay’s Word to No One.

Her latest writing and acting endeavor, Silver Bullet Trailer, recently opened at The Ohio Theater to universally positive reviews (click here for an example). With the run finally winding down this weekend, Julie stopped by the ol’ blog to discuss the play, weird dreams she’s had during pregnancy, and what it’s liked to be married to the play’s director, among other things. Here’s what she had to say:

The press release for your show describes it as the story of “an expectant mother and her unborn child travel[ing] through a dreamscape of the American West meeting casualties of American ambition.” Could you expound upon that a little bit?

While Sari (the expectant mother) is trapped in nightmares her unborn child runs off into a desert dreamland of his own. This play is full of hard lucks, bar whores and imaginary things. I like to think of them as more archetypal than specifically American and I’m not sure how ambitious they ever were, but there are casualties.

Where did the idea for the play come from?

When I was pregnant with my son I had dreams that would curl your hair. What if his head fell off? Would I know how to fix that? I saw myself nursing my sister’s chihuahua. It was gnawing on me with it’s sharp little teeth.  My son was born ten days late. By the end I was convinced that he would never be born and that I would die fat. Or that he would consume me slowly and take over where I left off. I was a mess. 

I was also curious about the journey he was taking in utero. If he too had dreams. Or saw mine. I wondered if he was freaked out when I watched violent movies or went to rock shows because I’d feel him thrashing around. I was playing Cavale in Cowboy Mouth in my ninth month of pregnancy. I was wondering what Sam Shepard does to a fetus? I do think they hear things in there.

You are also acting in the show. Who do you play, and what made you decide to pull double duty as both writer and actor?

I play Sari. A pregnant ex-stripper. Because I couldn’t resist.

How does it influence the writing process for you when you know you’re going to be in the show?

I don’t usually write a show thinking that I’m going to be in it. Especially this one. I figured with a one year old in tow I’d never have time. I do tend to write southern female protagonists though. I guess that’s just the voice in my head. I blame my sisters.

I did find myself carving up the monologues once I realized it was going to be me. It’s nice to have the opportunity to live in the character, say the words and feel which ones work and which ones need to be changed.

Your husband, Dan O’Brien, is the director of the show. How do you two manage the balancing act of both living together and working together at the same time?

He sleeps in the bathtub. It works amazingly well. And I have absolutely no desire to direct my own work so I’m really grateful that he wants to do it. His ideas always surprise and delight me.

The show is being produced, in part, by The Present Company, a now legendary organization in the annals of New York indie theater history. How did you first get hooked up with them?

One of my first acting jobs in New York was with The Present Company. They were producing Julia Barclay’s Word to No One, which we performed in New York and in London. We spent nearly a year creating a piece of theatre unlike anything I’d ever done before. I was living in a flat in London with seven other actors. It was one of the best times I ever had. Since then I’ve produced one of my plays in the Fringe and become a part of The Pool, which is a sort of theatre artists collective sponsored by the Present Company. I did a most of my work on Silver Bullet Trailer in that group. Elena Holy has become a great friend and mentor. Thank God. We were pretty clueless when it came to producing so the advice has been invaluable.

How did you first get your start as both a writer and an actor?

The first play I wrote was an adaptation of It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I was eight. Then I took a break until college where I started writing again. I was working with Blue Moves Modern Dance Company as a dancer/choreographer and we needed something to go between the dances so we could change costumes. I started writing monologues and ten minute plays to fill the space and it just grew from there.

I’ve been acting in plays since high school. I’m pretty sure I did the first one to get out of class. I started dancing very young though, and my parents are musicians so we were always singing somewhere. I guess it was a natural progression.

Do you have a preference between the two?

Depends on the day. I love and hate both.

Are there any particular artists who you think influence you? Or who, at least, inspire you artistically?

I don’t know. Every time I try to make a list like this it starts to feel like a MySpace profile and I want to kill myself. I am inspired by everything. Music, books, plays, movies, conversations I hear on the train.

I think I’m most inspired theatrically when I see something really wonderful. Like a couple of years ago I saw a play called Three Dark Tales by the British troupe Theatre O. I left that show so excited and hopeful. I also think Cynthia Hopkins’s stuff is great. Au Revoir Parapluie, which was recently at BAM, made me want to go get a fork lift and 800 yards of fabric and go to town.

What have you got going on next after this?

Well. I’m about 4 months pregnant so I’ll probably go ahead and get that out of there and then who knows.

Random Friday Babylonians

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. So I’ve decided to make this week’s Random Friday post top heavy with photos for a change. Like the one above - that’s me at Babylon Babylon rehearsal a couple of weeks ago, on the day we got our first script pages. Very exciting. Our official production photographer, Ken Stein, was on hand snapping away.

Here’s another one from our rehearsal on Wednesday night, courtesy of our lighting designer, the ubiquitous Ian W. Hill…

In the foreground, from left to right, are Fred Backus, Michele Carlo (sitting on the floor), assistant director Jessica McVea (standing with her back to the camera), and writer-director-grand poobah Jeff Lewonczyk. (The image here is slightly cropped. You can see the full image - which includes yours truly and fellow cast member Toya Lillard - on Ian’s blog.)

So, if a picture does indeed speak a thousand words, what do these two say to you?

While you ponder your answer, here’s this week’s Random Friday Top 10, courtesy of my trusty iTunes music library

• “Solitaire” - Suzanne Vega (Songs in Red and Grey)
• “Two Against Nature” - Steely Dan (Two Against Nature)
• “Athena” - The Who (It’s Hard)
• “Bad Sneakers” - Steely Dan (Citizen Steely Dan 1972-1980)
• “Harbor Lights” - Bruce Hornsby (Harbor Lights)
• “Up the Junction” - Squeeze (Squeeze: Greatest Hits)
• “The Towering Inferno (Main Title)” - John Williams (Great Composers: John Williams)
• “Pure and Easy” - The Who (Who’s Next)
• “The Phone Call” - The Pretenders (Pretenders)
• “Dripping Dream” - Sonic Youth (Sonic Nurse)

Happy Friday and have a great weekend. Spring is finally upon us, and it already feels like it. Enjoy the coming warmth and renewal. In the meantime, I leave you with one final rehearsal photo from Wednesday, also courtesy of Mr. Hill.

Synesthesia’s Artistic Collision Comes Calling Again

 

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.

Babylon Babylon

 

So now that 3800 Elizabeth is over, I can focus solely on my next show, which I’ve been rehearsing for about a month now. The show in question is Babylon Babylon, and it’s the latest brainchild from Piper McKenzie Productions, the folks who brought us last summer’s outstanding production of Macbeth Without Words. Piper McKenzie co-artistic director Jeff Lewonczyk writes, directs, and co-stars in this 30-cast member extravaganza.

Well, he kind of writes it. He sort of mostly writes it. Um…we’ll get to that in a minute.

And yes: I did say 30 cast members - including some of indie theaters brightest all-stars…

• Fellow nytheatre.com scribes Gyda Arber, Fred Backus, Maggie Cino, and Robin Reed
• Piper McKenzie co-artistic director Hope Cartelli
• My 3800 Elizabeth co-star Iracel Rivero and director/co-writer Aaron Baker
• The artist formerly known as Carmen Mofungo - none other than Michele Carlo herself
• Brick Theater regulars Danny Bowes, Katie Brack, Marguerite French, Roger Nasser, Robert Pinnock, Adam Swiderski, and Rasha Zamamiri
• Kamran Khan and Elizabeth Hope Williams, co-stars of the FringeNYC 2007 hit musical, John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!
• Eric Bland, writer-director of last summer’s Pretentious Festival hit, The Children of Truffaut.

And if that weren’t enough we’ve also got video design by Jason Robert Bell, one of the masterminds behind the Caveman Robot empire, and fight direction from - who else?! - Vampire Cowboy Qui Nguyen.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks.

Now you may ask: what the hell is this show about? Well, I’ll tell you: it’s about the fall of the ancient city of Babylon, and it takes place on the day of the historic invasion by the Persians. You don’t know anything about that, you say? Never fear: you can read up on it here.

Rehearsals have been quite an adventure since we’ve been improvising most of the show thus far.

That’s right: I said improvising.

The first couple of weeks involved structured improvs centered upon a central location - Babylon’s Temple of Ishtar, which is the setting for our show - and everyone playing an assigned role. Jeff devised general backstories for each of the characters, then set us loose in the rehearsal room to interact and riff as we see fit. He’s been good about giving us free reign, but also guiding us in the directions he wants to explore (i.e. “Let’s see what happens if Character A interacts with Character B over there.”) and for the last couple of weeks he’s been writing script pages based on and inspired by the cast improvs. We’ve been incorporating those pages into rehearsals over the past week or so, and are going to have our very first rehearsal with an actual completed draft of the script tonight.

So, why work this way? Jeff told us he was inspired to do so by the loose, freewheeling work of film director Robert Altman, particularly his 1975 opus, Nashville. He was also inspired by an evocative passage in Herodotus’ The Histories about ritual prostitution in the Temple of Ishtar, and thus the idea for Babylon Babylon was born. The finished product promises to be, in the words of our trusty press release, “an unholy mix of Herodotus, Cecil B. DeMille, Kenneth Anger, Richard Schechner, the Bible, Charles Ludlam, Robert Altman, Busby Berkeley, and much more.” You can find out more in the production’s official blog, Babylblog Blogbylon.

Naturally, I’ll have more to report about the show as we move closer to the beginning of previews (April 11th) and our official opening (April 18th). In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a random shot from one of our rehearsals. Check it…

Edward Elefterion Goes Down the Rabbit Hole

 

Director Edward Elefterion has been a mainstay on the New York indie theater scene since the early 1990s, but today’s audiences may know his work from more recent productions like The Night of Nosferatu, Land of the Undead, and The Siblings.

His latest endeavor, A Rope in the Abyss (which he also wrote), is currently playing in a variety of unusual locations including a pair of housing centers, a medical center, and a microbrewery. The production will also run at The Blackbird Theatre in April, and is being produced by Rabbit Hole Ensemble, for whom Edward is the artistic director.

Edward stopped by the ol’ blog to talk about the show, his company, and their signature aesthetic, among other things. Take a read…

A Rope in the Abyss is an original play written by you. But you usually work solely as a director. What compelled you to write this one, too? 

Well, truth be told, it’s not the only play I’ve written.  There was The Siblings which I also directed and which was presented at the Midtown International Theatre Festival in 2006, and there are about a dozen more locked away in a vault.  On my hard drive.  I’ve been writing since the late 90s.  This one came about after several monthly meetings I had with some actors in an empty room playing with the idea of identity.  I’d also been reading a lot of books about neuroscience and how the brain works.  And, since I don’t believe in any sort of afterlife, the idea that one day I’m going to stop existing is pretty powerful.  So, I just sort of played with the idea of how fragile identity really is and tried to share my sense of wonder about it all through making a play.   

What does the title refer to? 

In In Search of Lost Time, Proust describes something universal: waking up.  Not a psychological sort of waking or a spiritual sort…but just waking up from a deep sleep.  There are sometimes a few seconds where you don’t know anything, not where you are or what time it is or even who you are, until something catches your senses like a curtain or a glass of water next to the bed and, effortlessly, everything comes back to you.  We all know this experience.  And it’s quite unremarkable when it happens, because it happens so often.  Proust describes the trigger that restores you to yourself as a “rope let down from heaven” that brings you up out of the abyss of non-being, where you just slumbered for a moment or two.  It’s that rope, that way out of nothing and back to your self that interests me.  Because I don’t think this only happens upon waking up.  I think it happens throughout a life.  People change every second, really.  But no one notices until there’s some event to mark the change: a new job, a birth, a break-up, an accident, a return from afar, a move away, all these big life things…they’re all markers of change.  And a person going through them is just as strange to himself as he is to everyone else.   

Luckily, we have hairstyles and clothes, a myriad of exterior cues that keep us comfortably identified.  We have consistent tastes and preferences that express who we really are, regardless of circumstantial change.  Or at least that’s how it seems.  We assume that our characteristics, preferences and behaviors express who we really are on the inside, but maybe, just as often if not more, we look outside for cues to tell us who we are inside.  For instance, maybe the kind of music you listen to is an expression not of who you are but of who you want to be?  Maybe your taste for mint chocolate chip is an instinctual way back to some otherwise lost version of yourself?  Maybe your 9 to 5 gig is what really shapes your attitude towards life and if your job were different maybe you’d be different?   

There are ropes are all around us gathering us up into a sense of self and maybe without them we’d be as utterly lost as we are those moments of waking up.  It’s fascinating to me because it throws the whole idea of “who I am” into the wind like confetti.  It scatters all the million little bits that make up who I am and rearranges them, and potentially makes me a stranger to myself.  We think we know who we are.  Maybe we need to think so because the true nature of identity is really very slippery and fragile? 

Where does your interest in neuroscience stem from? 

It stems from my interest in what makes us who we are.  Discoveries in neuroscience speak so directly to questions of identity that once I found out about it, I couldn’t read books fast enough.  I suppose that I was introduced to neuroscience by RadioLab on WNYC.  Check it out if you’ve never heard of it.  www.radiolab.org. 

You’ve partnered with the Brain Injury Association of New York State to produce this show. How did that come about? 

A friend of a friend works at a rehabilitation center in Connecticut and when he heard about the subject of this show he told me about the Brain Injury Association in Albany and recommended that I contact them.  They’ve been wonderful.  Really supportive and instrumental in connecting us to several interested venues. 

The show is being performed not only in a traditional theater space, but is also traveling to a pair of housing centers, a medical center, and a microbrewery. Why the non-traditional locales, as well? 

Throughout the month of March we’re doing the show for FREE at various locales in Brooklyn.  Why?  A few reasons. 

• 1.  The folks who live in the medical center don’t have the opportunity to go to the theatre and if they did, they wouldn’t see anything that addresses their situations and/or experiences regarding brain injury.
• 2. The folks in the housing communities don’t exactly get out much either and couldn’t afford even cheap theatre (even I can’t afford going to what’s considered affordable theatre).
• 3. The people who make their homes in these facilities (and their families, who are greatly affected too, don’t forget) know a thing or two first-hand about sudden and severe changes in circumstances and identity…so we hope to communicate with these groups directly and learn something from such an audience.
• 4. We really wanted to open these performances up to the public in the surrounding neighborhoods because, frankly, they are underserved neighborhoods and we wanted to reach out and create an opportunity for people to see some theatre. 

And for the record, we are doing a performance at an assisted living center which we do not advertise since it is intended specifically for the residents of the center and is not open to the public. 

The microbrewery stepped up and offered their space because the owner’s son suffered from a brain injury after a cycling accident that eventually killed him, so he’s got a personal interest.   

Come to think of it, the more people I talk to about the subject of this play, the more I’ve learned that brain injury and/or sudden shifts of identity are not as uncommon as they might sound.  It seems everyone knows someone with a related illness.  My own grandfather did not suffer from a brain injury.  But in the last months of his life, he often forgot what he’d just told you.  I mean entire conversations and stories.  I bet you and your readers all can relate to, if not know someone, who is suffering the effects of old age, or alcoholism (any addiction really), road rage…people change in a heartbeat.   

Tell us a little bit about the background and history of your theater company, Rabbit Hole Ensemble, which is producing A Rope in the Abyss. 

Since I graduated from NYU in 1992, I’ve been self-producing in Manhattan.  Over the years I’ve used different aliases: Lefty, Chimera, and Rabbit Hole, because I didn’t want to come out and say Edward Elefterion produces “Blah” directed by Edward Elefterion.  I was shy or afraid that people would think I was an ego-maniac or that I was a novice…or a combination of both.   

The first time I used Rabbit Hole was back in 1993 with a show called Buried Treasure by Stanton Wood, who is now a resident playwright at Rabbit Hole.  Then I went off to grad school at Indiana University, got my MFA in directing, moved to England for about 18 months where I worked with the Midlands Refugee Council and developed a pair of plays with some Bosnian, Afghan and Albanian refugees (this was during the war in Kosovo).  When I returned to NYC in 2000, I got a job at Hofstra University, and I’d resumed self-producing theatre in the city.  Finally, in 2005 I brought some of my colleagues together, namely Paul Daily (and actor whom I’d met in Indiana) and Emily Hartford (one of my very talented former students at Hofstra), to form a theatre company.  We all liked the name Rabbit Hole Ensemble, so that’s what we called it.  Of course, the name is a reference to the portal that takes Alice to Wonderland.   

Your press release refers to Rabbit Hole’s “signature minimalist aesthetic.” What is that, exactly?  And how did you go about developing it? 

Rabbit Hole’s mission is to emphasize the communal nature of theatre through a distinctly minimalist aesthetic that focuses on space, audience, and the performer (especially the basic tools of physicality and voice) to produce a uniquely direct and candid experience.   

Our basic working method is “if it’s not absolutely necessary, cut it”.  That applies to text, design, gesture, blocking, everything that is part of the performance.  I challenge the actor to do as much as possible and work to emphasize the immediacy of the performance by stripping it down to its essentials.  It’s our emphasis on ensemble-creation that really invites and stimulates audiences’ imaginations.   

People constantly tell me that they’re amazed at how much we do with so very little.  That’s the amazing thing right there: it’s not how much we do, but how much they experience.  We just use our skills to create what we need, to suggest enough to each other and the audience so that the production actually happens in the shared imagination of the actors and the audience.  That’s what I think “experience” really means. 

Also, I got into theatre because I like creating something with other people, not waiting in a blackout for the scene to change or the historical accuracy of a hat or buckle on a shoe.  There’s a place for that kind of historically-oriented, design-oriented, spectacle-engineered theatre, but it’s not what I’m interested in.  I want to go to an intimate space and take part in something playful and serious that challenges me to use my imagination and that provokes my mind and body into emotional and intellectual action.  I want something to remember not because it was visually stunning, but because I took part in it, I was involved with it and I’m going to re-experience it to varying extents in the course of time.   

To me, the success of a production cannot be judged by the performance as much as by the re-experiencing some aspect of it the next day or the next week or ten years later.  I want to be a part of people’s lives, and I feel that the more distractions you put in front of an audience, the more you’ll distract them…and why would I want to distract you while I’m trying to commune with you? 

What are your plans for Rabbit Hole after A Rope in the Abyss? 

Big Thick Rod by resident playwright Stanton Wood.  It’s a sex farce about exploitation and the cost of narcissistic capitalism.  It’s a riot and if neither FringeNYC nor the Midtown International Theatre Festival picks it up, Rabbit Hole will produce it in September.  But it’s such a hilariously poignant play I sure hope that it gets the benefit from being included in a festival.  It’d be a shame for such a potentially wide audience to miss out on it.   

After that, we’re considering an adaptation of Woyzeck by Matt Olmos and a new play by the internationally acclaimed poet Jay Wright.  There are a lot of irons in the fire.   

I’d like to add that if people would want to get in touch with us, shoot an email to ed@rabbitholeensemble.com.  We’re always looking to meet new artists and especially folks who are just interested in the mission of the company: strong stories, told simply and theatrically, without much technology.  It’s funny where you might find your next General Manager or Producing Director or Fund Raiser.  Since we’re mostly a group of artists, we sure could use that kind of management-collaboration.  Visit us at www.rabbitholeensemble.com.

Chris Harcum Goes Badass

When it comes to solo performance these days, actor-writer Chris Harcum is about as experienced as they come. In the past several years, he has written and performed ten original solo shows including the FringeNYC 2006 hit, Some Kind of Pink Breakfast, and 2007’s Anhedonia Road, which was presented by Metropolitan Playhouse as part of their Twainathon festival.

Chris debuts his newest solo work, American Badass (or 12 Characters in Search of a National Identity), at this year’s FRIGID Festival. The show runs downtown at The Kraine Theater until March 9th. Chris stopped by the ol’ blog to tell us more about it, as well as to talk about how he builds his pieces and his ongoing creative partnership with director Bricken Sparacino. Check it out:

You describe your newest solo piece, American Badass, as different from your previous ones, in that it’s more political than what you usually do. Can you elaborate on that?

My work has tended to be more centered on human stuff. There has been a focus on spirituality and I used magic realism a lot in the how the story was told. Since 9/11 I have been using my work as a way to become a better person or a more developed person. Frequently, I find I fail, fail, fail at it and it is that struggle that makes the contours of the work. My work has tended towards revealing the parts of us that we try to avoid thinking about or that we must cover up to get through most of our days. I found it very daunting because I was putting myself out there.

Sometimes my work is autobiographical but more frequently it’s universal. I always work to make my pieces equally be about what the person watching may have experienced. I never want the audience to feel punished, preached at, or sorry for me. I also tend to go to dark and scary places but we always come out the other side like going to a professional haunted house.

This piece is largely political or at least looking at where we are as a nation. The full title is American Badass (or 12 Characters in Search of a National Identity). I think the “Never Forget” signs we’ve tattooed in our brains say more about how we’re going to kick everyone’s ass until we either run so far out of money we become some other country’s bitch or we bully the crap out of everyone so they know we still hold the distinction of biggest global bully. In general, I think Americans are fine with that until it affects their bank account.

Because we are in such a weird and scary time I wanted to create a piece that looks at how that action film morality affects us personally and publicly. I only have an hour max in the Frigid Festival so I could only cover so much ground but there’s a lot. The big thing is that I think we need to be aware of our loss of civil liberties and the bastard birth of Blackwater from Momma Neo-Conservative and Poppa Capitalism. I have an old-school Republican in the play. He doesn’t say it but he’s the guy who identifies most with Ron Paul. That is very different than what we have going on with the outsourced government stuff. If Blackwater is not reigned in soon we could be in big trouble.

With this piece, I think I will be pushing different people’s buttons at different times. There may be a few people who learn a few things and there might be some who think it’s a bit elementary. My friend, Lisa Barnes, who is super-talented actress calls what I do “wake up” theatre. I kept that in the back of my mind as I created this one. I was brought up believing America was one thing but now it is something different to me. This piece is about that difference.

American Badass also differs from your previous work in that it’s a multi-character piece. Why’d you go with that format over your usual one (i.e. playing yourself)?

This is kind of a tough question in that I don’t have a usual one. Fans of my work will know that each piece is very different from the last. Most of my work has been character-based work and largely like watching one person do an entire play. Sometimes I will play myself or a version of myself as part of it but most of my work is character-based. My director, Bricken Sparacino, always points out when I write a character who is being totally nasty to Chris Harcum because it is kind of funny. My last few pieces have been structured like a multiple character play. The trick is to not come off like the guy auditioning with Taxi Driver in Waiting for Guffman. This format is similar to classic Bogosian where one character does five minutes and then goes away. I did that in Gotham Standards but in other stuff I’ve done, characters return or change. This is that kind of Bogosian character work with some multimedia things in between to keep the audience entertained while I do a quick change.

People ask, “What’s your show like?” I start to answer but it takes much longer than the usual elevator ride speech. It’s part Bogosian, Gray, Dario Fo, Bill Irwin, Mike Myers, Monty Python, Van Halen, Mamet, Pirandello, Chekhov, and Garrison Keillor. It’s not improv, clown, mime, narrative, stand-up, or non-linear performance art. “Chris Harcum” only appears in this one in a slide show and a short documentary film made by Evan Stulberger. I do have a couple of characters talking to me, although you wouldn’t necessarily know it.

How do you go about writing and constructing your pieces?

This is my 10th and it changes but some things are consistent. I’ll get a title and theme long before I set pen to paper. Usually, I do things in scribbles and bursts in longhand before getting on the computer. Sometimes there’s some improvisation thrown in but usually I write it the way I write plays. It takes longer to get it going than I normally expect. I don’t have a problem with judging myself when I write, thank God. Once I catch the wave, I can ride it pretty far. The longer I’ve written the pickier I’ve become about which wave to ride though. I’ve also become better at editing things and taking out the boring, the cringe-inducing, and (this is the hardest) good stuff that doesn’t fit in with everything else in the piece. There is usually a time when the cast argues with the playwright. Since they are all me, it’s not too fun. Working on a new piece is wacky. I develop it, write it, workshop it, rehearse it, rewrite it, re-rehearse it, get it through tech, and in front of people in the same or even less time than many use for doing a straight play. Also, there’s all the marketing, producing, and coordinating that actually take up close to 65% of your time when you are doing one of these. That’s the most difficult part of this. I’m not naturally a business man but I’ve been improving over time. It’s tough to say, “Hey come see this show I made that features just me.” Unless you have nice breasts and sex or something about a celebrity in the title. I wish I were kidding. I think people are generally lazy about seeking out new or different things. We are now used to having food and entertainment delivered to us at home, at our desks, on the device we carry on the subway (I expect Apple to create something with a feeding tube soon.) I work in an area somewhere between high art and low art and there’s less people swimming around in that pool than one would expect. I am coming to a place also where the marketing and producing doesn’t infect the writing or performing.

Is there a difference, preparation and rehearsal-wise, between American Badass and your previous works?

I had a horrible case of writer’s block getting this one started. I had my antennae up for the longest time so I had a lot of material building up but something was in the way. Of course, that’s always your own personal resistance. I finally went to using an exercise I give my solo performance students and gave my inner critic a voice. Unfortunately, lots of people give you friendly and unfriendly advice when you are writing a piece. Sometimes it’s good not to tell anyone what you are doing to keep it pure for that reason. So I came up with a character who represents the people I’ve had in my audience who look miserable while I perform and let him tell me how I should write my show and what’s wrong with what I do. This became my opening piece. I also like to give the audience cues on what will happen in the evening. No one ever sits on the front row by choice at a solo performance, except people who have a bad case of “I want to be up there but I’m too scared so I’ll just try to ruin this however I can.” Most are afraid they will somehow be singled out. I don’t usually do that. If I do, I turn the joke on myself. Once “Hipster” started telling me things I could write everything else rather easily.

Everyone’s busier. Bricken went out of the country to perform twice. I took a trip to London and am shooting a movie for Jason Cusato called Two Toms. Bricken will be back from Dublin the day we open with her suitcase, as long as the plane arrives on time. We did get some great work done in a short amount of time. I also could do 10-15% less in one hour. This was structured with the multimedia breaks to give me a chance to change costumes and to trick the audience into thinking they are not hearing me but they are because I did all the voices. I get a chance to breathe a couple of deep breaths and take a good sip of water so I’m not burnt like a tater at the finish line.

Why did you choose the FRIGID Festival as the place to debut this show? 

I killed myself doing FringeNYC in ‘06. I did a revamped version of Anhedonia Road at Metropolitan Playhouse in January of ‘07 and Alex Roe asked me to return my piece about Dr. Ores in Alphabet City. Other than that, I wanted to not do solo work. Too many people were saying things that said they only saw me as a solo performer. Ultimately, Harold Pinter’s career is my model. I’ve been writing a lot of short plays and performing with others. Finally, I gave in and started buying auditions for casting directors at a couple of places. They call them classes and a couple of them, like Maribeth Fox, actually do teach them like classes and they are useful. Others are just taking your money and spreading a sickness. To call what they do a class is to call rape flirting.

I wasn’t very happy about this and getting very caught up in the minutiae of what they coming up with to justify the cost of the experience and dying a little bit inside each time. My girlfriend suggested I submit to Frigid to finally make this piece. So I did it at 2am one night and promptly put it out of my mind. It’s a lottery festival so, lo and behold, my number was pulled from a hat and here I am. This is part of the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals and I like their vibe. I decided not to use this as a platform to get industry to see the show and focused on making a good piece.

This is your fourth collaboration with director Bricken Sparacino. How did you two meet, and what do you like about working with her?

We’re both members of New Jersey Rep. Co. and they do a festival of short plays called Theatre Brut each year. Bricken was the director of the piece I did and we hit it off. I asked her to direct me in my next solo Mahamudra. I always liked that title because it sounds like a Led Zeppelin album to me. She’s a great director for actors. She gives me space to operate and solid guidance. We don’t agree 100% but that’s good. I tried giving in more quickly to her notes about cuts and changes. She doesn’t force a vision or agenda on my work but helps me to reveal what I am trying to say the best it can be said. I actually had to fire a director once for putting too much on me and throwing me way off course. She needed to write and perform her own piece. I think it’s tough to ask somebody to get between the cast and the playwright when they are the same person. I also now know when she thinks something’s off in rehearsal while I’m running something. The energy changes so I try to fix it. In that way, the actor/director telepathy is getting stronger. I’ve worked with a few other directors. A couple have been helpful and good to work with but most really are there to let the world know they’ve been there. I think that’s great for certain pieces, especially revivals or published works, but for this it’s trouble. Bricken knows when I’m being hard on myself and lets me work it out. I can trust her and relax.

I want to give a couple other shout-outs. Carolyn Raship did a bang-up job with the graphics and producing. Debby Schwartz wrote and recorded a sweet song called “Arise” about “the sins of the father” as well as some amazing work on the voice-overs I recorded at her home studio. She also made this creepy Pink Floyd-esque soundscape for one passage where I play a guy in a black cell in Iraq. Daniel McKleinfeld put all of it together with his masterful animation. Chris Foster helped out a lot with the costumes and Maryvel Bergen made art with the rep lighting plot at the Kraine Theater. You can see a couple of the clips on my youtube channel. (http://www.youtube.com/user/virgodog)

What first drew you to doing solo work, and what keeps you coming back to it?

I saw Danny Hoch do several characters in 10 minutes when I was a freshman at North Carolina School of the Arts. We both got kicked out of there. I also saw Angus McLachlan who wrote Dead Eye Boy and Junebug perform an unproduced screenplay as a solo in Winston-Salem, NC. That’s when it clicked for me that I wanted to make something like that. It’s a bit like being a serial monogamist. You have a deep relationship and then you move on. I don’t like doing things the easy way.

You don’t just do solo work, however - you also do “regular acting,” as it were. What are the rewards of doing that versus your solo work?

Comraderie, bigger email/MySpace/Facebook list, and more laughs in the dressing room. I’m not always running around muttering an hour of text to myself without coming up for air. Someone else says lines to me. I am trying to only do projects that are rewarding for me as an artist and I know will bring joy.

Have you got any upcoming stuff in the works?

Yes. I am going to be writing a full length play based on an autobiography of an infamous persona that is yet to be published. I’m filming Two Toms and am talking with Alex Beech about working up something in the fall. This is also the time when I do a lot of teaching artist work in the Bronx and in Queens so I am helping turn out a lot of little actor/playwrights.