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.

Living My Life

 

You may have noticed my absence on here the last couple of weeks. Sorry for the disappearing act. A convergence of recent events have kept me occupied. Here’s the abridged version:

• First and foremost, I was sick. Food poisoning, stomach virus, Montezuma’s Revenge - I don’t know what it was, but it kept me down for at least a week. Yuck.
• The usual spate of 3800 Elizabeth rehearsals and performances. We’ve done two more episodes since I last checked in: the rerun of Episode 1, with the wonderful Hope Cartelli filling in for the absent Iracel; and Episode 4, featuring super-duper guest stars Gyda Arber and Bryan Enk.
• A blistering couple of weeks at the day job. Slammed with so many last-minute must-get-done-right-away projects by the higher-ups I couldn’t even consider logging on and tossing up a quick post or two (especially not after my boss had a closed-door sit-down with me about excessive time spent on the internet - damn!).
• An unusually busy social calendar. Just last week alone, The Companion and I had dinner with an old friend, went to the movies (Juno, which I liked and thought was very sweet), saw a “concert” (Henry Rollins at Warsaw - awesome!), and attended an opening (Adding Machine at the Minetta Lane, which I did not like at all - can anyone explain the appeal of this one to me?)
• I started rehearsals for yet another show, and this one promises to be unlike anything I’ve ever done before - and perhaps anything you’ve ever seen before. More details to follow soon, but for now you can find out a little something about it here. The show also has its very own blog on WordPress, which you can read right here.

In other words: I’ve just been living my life. It’s all good, for the most part, and I’m really happy about where I’m at these days, both personally and professionally.

I’d also like to weigh in with a belated welcome to the newest member of the blogosphere, none other than Mr. Entertainment himself, Trav S.D. No doubt his will be a pithy and welcome addition to Theater Blog Nation.

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.

A Pair of Current Happenings

There are a pair of shows that opened last week that I meant to mention earlier here on the blog. They both sound cool so I thought I’d give ‘em a little shout-out:

• The Main(e) Play: This is the latest from playwright Chad Beckim (‘nami, Lights Rise on Grace) and the rest of the crew at Partial Comfort Productions (Nelson, …a matter of choice), about a pair of brothers who come to blows during a Thanksgiving holiday visit. Chad is a wonderfully talented writer who specializes in what he calls “bare-knuckle theater.” If you’ve seen anything by him or Partial Comfort, you’ll know what he means. Michael Gladis (from TV’s Mad Men) and Alexander Alioto star. The play runs at Theater Row’s Lion Theatre until February 9th.
• The Ted Haggard Monologues: This is a new solo show written and performed by Michael Yates Crowley in which he portrays nine different characters in an hour-long fictionalization of the Ted Haggard gay sex scandal. Talk about topical. Talk about chutzpah! But it seems Crowley has what takes to pull this off, as evidenced by my buddy Martin Denton’s glowing review. For me, Martin’s word is golden, so I have no doubt this show is worth checking out. It runs until February 9th at Collective Unconscious.

nytheatre mike’s Favorites of 2007

My turn to weigh in on my favorite shows of 2007. I saw a lot of them - more so than I ever have in one year, I think - and the good news is that most of them were good. (I frequently tell people that I’ve finally learned what the dirty little secret of New York theater is: most of it is really good.)

This isn’t intended to be a comprehensive or representitive list, however - there were a good many shows I missed (like, say, Frost/Nixon, August: Osage County, Young Frankenstein, and Men of Steel, just to name the first four that popped into my head). No, this list is purely subjective and is meant to highlight the shows that I, personally, got the most out of - the ones I responded to most viscerally and that stayed with me the longest after the proverbial curtain came down.

Also, I saw so many good shows this year that I’ve decided to cite my favorite 15 instead of the more traditional 10. There was no way I could do fewer than 15. It just wouldn’t be right. (Incidentally: shows with highlighted titles link back to my original nytheatre.com reviews - if I reviewed them, that is.)

Okay, enough talking - on to the main event! Without any further ado, my favorite 15 shows of 2007 (in alphabetical order):

• 110 in the Shade (Roundabout Theatre Company): This glorious Broadway revival of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s musical adaptation of The Rainmaker featured stellar direction by Lonny Price and a knockout star performance by Audra McDonald. This was tug-at-the-heartstrings type stuff that Broadway does better than anyone else.
• All the Wrong Reasons (New York Theatre Workshop): Former “prompter monkey” John Fugelsang cast off the chains of his television persona and reinvented himself as a solo performer to be reckoned with in this riotous and inspirational show about coming to terms with his unusual Catholic upbringing.
• Blackbird (Manhattan Theatre Club): By far, the most haunting and spellbinding theatrical experience I had all year. Jeff Daniels and Allison Pill delivered tour-de-force performances as former lovers trying to face the fallout of their forbidden romance in David Harrower’s intense and disturbing love story.
• Every Play Ever Written (The Brick Theater’s Pretentious Festival): Actor-writer-director Robert Honeywell continued to prove what an ingenious triple threat he is with this deliriously daffy and razor sharp meta-comedy about a theater history lecture gone terribly, horribly wrong. Featuring hilarious, top-notch performances from Brick regulars Moira Stone, Audrey Crabtree, Lynn Berg, and Honeywell himself.
• Invincible Summer (The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival): The solo show of the year, hands down. Author and performer Mike Daisey brought together such seemingly disparate threads as 9/11, his own life, and the history of the MTA in a dazzling display that beat the late Spalding Gray at his own game.
• Macbeth: A Walking Shadow (Manhattan Theatre Source): Andrew Frank and Doug Silver’s smart but audacious adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy fractured the narrative in a cogent way that made this familiar tale new again. Featuring a pair of outstanding lead performances by Ato Essandoh and Celia Schaefer as the title character and his scheming wife, respectively.
• Macbeth Without Words (Piper McKenzie Productions at The Brick Theater’s Pretentious Festival): Director Jeff Lewonczyk ingeniously re-imagined the Scottish play as a silent movie and came up with one of the best and most memorable Shakespearean productions I’ve ever seen - all with nary a word spoken. The fabulous ensemble cast was led by Brick regulars Fred Backus, Hope Cartelli, Bryan Enk, and the fierce Stacia French.
• Nihils (The Brick Theater’s Pretentious Festival): Trav S.D., the man who was seemingly everywhere this year, gave audiences the funniest show of the year - a one-man demolition of beat poetry, performance art, avant-garde elitism, and all things pretentious. Featuring a brilliantly funny performance by the author himself as the title character.
• Oresteia (Blue Coyote Theater Group): David Johnston’s fantastic adaptation of Aeschylus’ classic (and bloody) tale brought Greek tragedy into the modern age with a deft mix of both old and new language. Director Stephen Speights and the rest of the Blue Coyotes gave Johnston’s script the royal treatment on every front.
• The Chronological Secrets of Tim (Impetuous Theater Group): The quarterlife crisis got the Kevin Smith treatment in Janet Zarecor’s brash, coarse, and completely riotous comedy about a slacker who decides to end it all on his 30th birthday. Full of surprising depth and warmth, and some of the rudest, crudest laughs in all of New York this year.
• The Death of Griffin Hunter (Inverse Theater): Inverse’s revival of Kirk Wood Bromley’s epic 1998 political thriller secured the author’s position as one of indie theater’s biggest thinkers and most nimble linguists. True to form, Inverse regulars Al Benditt, Timothy McCown Reynolds, Bob Laine, and Catherine McNelis all delivered outstanding performances.
• The Seafarer (Booth Theatre): Redemption and the supernatural collided in Conor McPherson’s campfire-like tale of four Irish drunks visited by the Devil on Christmas Eve. David Morse and Ciaran Hinds led one of the best ensembles Broadway saw all year long.
• Till the Break of Dawn (Culture Project at the Henry Street Settlement): One of the year’s most overtly political works also had one of the biggest hearts. Danny Hoch’s ambitious and entertaining play about a grassroots group of hip-hop activists who get a rude awakening during a visit to Cuba made politics and social relevancy cool again.
• Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen (Women’s Project): The year’s biggest and best surprise came in the form of Kathryn Walat’s exuberant comedy about a popular high school bombshell’s quest for respect and validation among the school mathletes. A crowd-pleaser forged from the same underdog pedigree as Rocky and Hoosiers.
• Wickets (HERE Arts Center’s Culturemart): Clove Galilee and Jenny Rogers re-set Fefu and Her Friends aboard a jet airliner and made it fly. Armed with a built-to-scale plane cabin set and one of the hardest working ensembles of 2007, this 4-performance-only workshop was one of the year’s most unique and enjoyable experiences.

The list wouldn’t be complete without a few honorable mentions. Here are 16 more that rocked my world in one way or another:

• 33 to Nothing (Wild Project)
• A Beautiful Child (New York International Fringe Festival)
• And (National Asian American Theatre Festival)
• Bill W. and Dr. Bob (New World Stages)
• Butterfly Suicide (SoloNOVA Festival)
• Cyrano de Bergerac (Richard Rodgers Theatre)
• Hamlet (Gorilla Rep)
• Happy Days: The Musical (Paper Mill Playhouse)
• Inherit the Wind (Lyceum Theatre)
• Scout’s Honor (Cardium Mechanicum at the New York International Fringe Festival)
• Suburban Peepshow (Nosedive Productions)
• Talk Radio (Longacre Theatre)
• The Boycott (Arclight Theatre)
• The NECROPOLIS Series (Gemini CollisionWorks)
• Washing Machine (Fist in the Pocket)
• w.m.d. (just the low points) (Sponsored By Nobody)

I could go on and on, but I’ll leave you with that. My thanks to all the wonderful artists on both of these lists - and all the other ones I saw this year - for making 2007 one of my favorite and most memorable years of theatergoing in recent memory. Happy New Year, everyone - I can’t wait to see what you’ve all got in store for 2008!

Cole Kazdin Has Amnesia

Rather, she had amnesia. Or maybe she still has it. Never mind: I’ll just let her explain everything.

But first, let me introduce who I’m referring to: none other than actress and writer, Cole Kazdin, whose new solo show, The Cole Kazdin Amnesia Project (I Don’t Remember the Name of This Show), debuts at The Brick Theater’s Pretentious Festival next month. In it, she chronicles…well, I’ll let her tell you. She may not remember the name of her show, but she sure remembers a lot of other stuff.

Having been a fan of Cole’s previous solo show, My Year of Porn, I was happy she agreed to talk with me about her latest one. Here’s what she had to say:

Q: Is The Cole Kazdin Amnesia Project (I Don’t Remember the Name of This Show) based on actual events?

A: Yes! Several years ago on the set of a low-rent, non-union television pilot - I was made to do a stunt where I was thrown into the air and then not caught. Nightmare. I had varying degrees of both short and long-term amnesia - most of which I do not recall …

Q: What made you decide to make a show out of this?

A: I’ve told the story at various storytelling venues - including The Moth and Brick-a-Brac … But it wasn’t until the folks at the Brick asked me to put up a 30 minute theatrical version for a works-in-progress series last fall that I started seriously considering it as anything more than just a story I tell. It’s great fun because the very nature of the story gives so much license to play with reality and time.

Q: Did you create the show in generally the same way you created your previous show, My Year of Porn, or did you take a different approach this time around?

A: Totally different. My Year of Porn was a circus of all these crazy characters so I really let them drive the story. I spent a lot of time just improvising in character and then writing it down and organizing it later.

With the Amnesia Project there’s a more personal story - and I don’t mean that in the autobiographical, cheesy one-person show sense, but more along the lines of - how do you know who you are if you can’t remember anything? The whole process was much less defined - trying to get back to that “amnesia” place and swimming around in it and then seeing what snaps me out - a photo, a distant memory, a Neil Diamond song.

Q: Since you’re debuting the show at the Pretentious Festival, I have to ask: what’s pretentious about amnesia?

A: Well, have YOU ever had amnesia? I thought not …

Q: What’s been your greatest challenge in putting the show together?

A: I’m seriously not making a joke here - but the most challenging thing has been remembering what actually happened to me. Which is still so much a blur. Obviously for the purposes of the play, I’ve fictionalized and dramatized quite a bit. But it has been a struggle to put myself back in that head where I had amnesia and didn’t really know anything just to be able to write about it in a real way.

Q: Will The Cole Kazdin Amnesia Project (I Don’t Remember the Name of This Show) have a life beyond the festival?

A: I hope so! I’m curious to get it up in front of an audience and then see what happens next …

As you can see, Cole is charming. She positively exudes this quality on stage, and I’m very glad that I’ll have the opportunity to see her in action again. I’m looking forward to what she has in store for us.

My review of Cole’s show will be part of our Pretentious Festival coverage here at nytheatre.com, so make sure to keep an eye out for it in the next couple of weeks.

Samantha Lally Commits Butterfly Suicide

Summer Festival Season is finally upon us, and one of the first festivals of the summer starts this coming week. I’m talking about terraNOVA Collective’s soloNOVA Arts Festival, a three-week celebration of solo performance. This is soloNOVA’s fourth year in existence, and they’ve got a roster of over 30 artists playing two East Village venues: Performance Space 122 and Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction.

Today, I thought I’d talk to one of this year’s festival participants, Samantha Lally. Samantha is an actress and comedian whose new show, Butterfly Suicide, opens at Performance Space 122 on Friday, May 18. Samantha is also a longtime friend and colleague (we went to high school together), so I’ve had the pleasure of watching her develop as an artist over many years. I saw excerpts from Butterfly Suicide during a November workshop last year, and the sneak preview she gave us was very exciting. And very funny.

Here’s what Samantha recently had to say about her show and its creation. As you will see, she doesn’t lack moxie or ambition: 

You play multiple characters in your new solo show, Butterfly Suicide. Who are they, and how did you come up with them?

I’m a New Yorker - born and bred. New York has a multitude of characters walking around every day. I’ve been writing characters for years. It’s become what I do. Now I even have a writing team. My sisters Rebecca Lally and Jeannine Jones. They are equally ridiculous and get my humor.

Usually a character is inspired by a type of person or more often a piece of clothing. Years ago when I was doing a regular live weekly sketch show, I developed a ballerina character piece called Pretty Dancer. She was inspired by a long pink dress my grandmother had. Very Martha Graham looking outfit. That, combined with the insane discipline all of my dancer friends have about their bodies and daily regimen, made Pretty Dancer.

Lately I’ve been exposed to the world of clowning. That sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. My work has always been very audience interactive, but I found clowns to be so interactive they would very often just stop completely and stare at the audience. Looking for answers it seemed…lost. Vulnerable. A clown walks across the stage and comes across an obstacle in his/her path. A feather. The clown stops and considers it. Thoughtfully. Then looks out to the audience. Then back at the father. The audience laughs. It’s so simple really. It’s letting the moment happen. Truly happen. Let the pin drop and resonate. So out of this exposure to clowns came the piece So and So. We see a woman from the 1940’s on stage, seated, with a spotlight on her. She is beautiful. She smiles. She loves her hat. She wears handcuffs. She killed a man…apparently. My goal with this was to absolutely seduce the audience into the character’s beauty. Not sexually. Just by simply considering them. Taking my time. Clowning. This woman is immediately loved by the audience. She also scares them to death, but it’s like a car wreck and they can’t look away.

My characters are eclectic, driven and lost. In Butterfly Suicide, I like to say they are beautiful on the outside and not so beautiful in the inside, but somehow you love them anyway. You understand them. I’m lucky enough to even have audience members say they identify with them! These characters are looking to be reborn. Whether it’s an Upper Eastsider trading wealth for wilderness, or a summer butterfly trading love for life, I like the work to be provocative, interactive, and absolutely ridiculous.

What came first: your ideas for the characters, or the overall theme/idea for the show?

The characters always come first. With my sister Rebecca, we developed a piece about a monarch butterfly. I had a couple of pairs of butterfly wings left over from Halloween and I thought a butterfly would be interesting. The piece is about a monarch butterfly from Vermont who falls in love with another butterfly. A real risk taker. The equivalent of the boy on a motorcycle you hope your daughter never falls in love with in high school. Anyway, he convinces her to move to New York to join the butterfly display at the Museum of Natural History. I won’t give the piece away, but lets just say someone dies. That’s where the title came from. Butterfly Suicide. I also liked the title because its beautiful and ugly. Much like the characters I portray.

This is your fourth solo show. At this point, are they getting easier to do or harder?

I would say the work is getting deeper. Much deeper. It has to. I started writing in my early 20’s. Now, in my 30’s there’s so much more to say. These characters resonate much more deeply than they did years ago. My director - Debbie Jones - also knows how to push me. She’s brillliant. She doesn’t even have to push very hard. In one rehearsal I finished a piece and she said, “Okay, that was good. Now I want you to do it one more time…like Owen Wilson. Go!” I can’t tell you how much more interesting the piece became. It’s now in the show.

You’re also a stand-up comic, so you have a lot of experience performing solo. For you, what’s the perennial attraction to solo performance?

I like to perform alone and with other people. The original attraction to solo, stand-up, whatever, was that I didn’t have to depend on anyone else to work my art. I could walk down the street to the local comedy club and simply work. On the other hand, there are no excuses when you are a solo performer. Nobody stops you but you. I think I liked that part of it too.

I think audiences are attracted to solo work and stand-up because it horrifies them. It’s so exposed. They know that it’s all up to you and it could be great or awful. Again, the car wreck.

What advice do you have for anyone who wants to develop their own solo piece?

Do it. Everyone should. There are all kinds of tips I can give people to start developing materiel. I’ve given many of my students tricks. One great one is to walk about 10 paces behind someone of the street and try to walk exactly as they are walking. Pick the opposite sex if you can. The emotions it brings up will lead you to writing. At the very least, you’ll have a heck of a story to tell people. Just remember the 10 paces…or 20.

Tell us a little bit about Dora Mae Productions, the company behind Butterfly Suicide.

Dora Mae is a company I started with my family officially in the early 90’s. We’re a house of artists and found that an easier way to get thins done artistically was to help each other out. As kids, my sisters and I ran props, handed out programs, and sold refreshments at my mother’s play readings and productions. As we got older, we started producing comedy shows - since that’s where I seem to be going. Then films - Rebecca was in film school. Then more plays as Jeannine developed into a writer. Now - years later, we’re in post for our first feature film and we are aiming for Sundance.

What does the future hold for Butterfly Suicide after the soloNOVA Arts Festival?

Our goal with this show is a full-out run in a theatre. We’d like to filter in new characters here and there, so people might even come back a second time to see new stuff. A big part of the show is the transition from character to character. We want the audience to feel the process. So very often I ask for their assistance in costume changes or use them as a mirror for putting on my lipstick. Anything to draw them in. My dream would be The Public and then maybe a smaller Broadway house. Then we want an HBO special. We’re very interested in taking it to Edinburgh next year also.

Knowing Samantha the way I do, I wouldn’t be surprised if she achieves all of these goals. She’s tenacious, a fighter, and a real go-getter, qualities which are also evident in her work.

Butterfly Suicide runs through Tuesday, May 22 at Performance Space 122.