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.

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.

Carla Criscuolo, Published Poet

This is my younger sister, Carla. She’s pretty awesome, as you will see in a moment. How’s that, you may wonder? Because, as of this past week, Carla is now a published poet. That’s right. She’s been writing as long as I can remember, and now the rest of the world is finally getting a chance to bow down before her total awesomeness. Read her terrific meaty poem, “Inheritance,” and get in on the ground floor as far as “I knew her when…” bragging rights go.

Carla: I tip my hat to you. You’re the best and I love you. Happy Friday!

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.

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.

Bryan Enk: Breasts and the Devil

If you’ve never seen actor-writer-director Bryan Enk in action it’s not for lack of opportunities. He is one of indie theater’s busiest and most ubiquitous talents, and also one of its best, having racked up an impressive array of recent acting credits in projects as diverse as Jeff Lewonczyk’s Macbeth Without Words, Ian W. Hill’s Hamlet from Gemini CollisionWorks, Michael Gardner’s environmental staging of Mountain Hotel for The Havel Festival, Robert Honeywell’s Greed: A Musical Love $tory (a very liberal musical adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses), and Frank Cwiklik’s productions of Bitch Macbeth and The Sinister Urge.

As a writer and director, Bryan also has his hands full. He and his writing partner, actor Matt Gray, are the driving forces behind Penny Dreadful, a 12-part theatrical serial inspired by pulp dime-store “penny dreadful” stories from the turn of the century. The series, which started in November, presents a new installment every month, for one night only, at The Brick Theater in Williamsburg. (Penny Dreadful is also another in a long line of film and theater projects created by Bryan’s production company, Third Lows Productions.)

Bryan (pictured above with Matt and several o f their Bitch Macbeth castmates) recently dropped by the ol’ blog to talk about Penny Dreadful, Third Lows, his partnership with Matt, and his trademarked “Bryan Enk elements.” Here’s what he had to say:

Let’s start with you telling us a little bit about Penny Dreadful and what it is exactly.

Penny Dreadful is a 12-part stage serial. It’s a horror-suspense-adventure-mystery that takes place in the early 1900s and chronicles the sprawling story of a second-rate magician, a Detective of the Supernatural, a vampire, the Sundance Kid’s ex-girlfriend, sci-fi author H.G. Wells, a beautiful escape artist, Teddy Roosevelt, a prisoner from the future, a teenage anarchist and a shadow organization called The Alliance that’s probably up to no good.

We’ll be performing Episode 4 on Saturday, February 16 at 10:30PM at The Brick.

What are the origins of this project?

I had written and directed a couple of late-night shows at The Brick in 2005 and 2006, small-scale supernatural melodramas that got really good houses and great reception. Michael Gardner and Robert Honeywell, co-artistic directors of The Brick, approached me in January 2007 about creating an ongoing late-night horror serial. The only parameters they gave me were that it should be 12 episodes – one for each month over the course of a year – and the title should be Penny Dreadful

I brought Matt Gray on board shortly thereafter, and it was his idea that, if the series was to be called Penny Dreadful, then the story should take place at the turn of the century, when the pulpy dime-novel Penny Dreadfuls themselves were at the height of their popularity. We then constructed a rough outline of the 12 episodes and launched with Episode 1: “The Amazing Viernik” in November 2007.

How important is it that the audience follow the story from the very first episode?

Extremely. We videotape each episode and have them available for download on the Third Lows website.Although I talked to someone recently who started with Episode 3 and he said he enjoyed it even without following every little nuance and plot point, so I hope there’s always some pleasures for newcomers who are coming in blind.

You and Matt are the sole authors of Penny Dreadful, but you have different directors for each episode. How come?

There are two reasons; one is practical and the other actually has a “concept” behind it. The practical reason is that, even though the episodes are usually only about 45 minutes long, we’re still mounting a brand new play every month, complete with costumes and tech and a cast of usually around eight. That’s a huge undertaking just as writers and producers, so we thought it best to leave the directing to others, at least the majority of it.

The more official reason is that I see Penny Dreadful as an opportunity to showcase a lot of different directorial styles. It’s a great format for first-time directors, like Adam Swiderski and Christiaan Koop; extremely experienced directors, like Ian W. Hill; and directors that are somewhere in-between, like Danny Bowes.

The format I envisioned when deciding that each episode of Penny would have its own director was that of the four Alien films, which had four very different directors and four very different styles, but they were each telling one part of one large story. It’s amazing to see something you’ve written interpreted and brought to life by someone else. It’s a privilege and an honor. We encourage every director to really put their personality up there on stage. It makes every episode of Penny Dreadful a unique experience.

Matt and I will be wrapping up the series as directors, though. Matt will be directing Episode 11 (September) and I’ll be directing Episode 12 (October). For no particular reason other than it seems appropriate.

Give us a brief overview of how a typical episode gets put together and mounted.

Matt and I will put together an outline of the episode; what characters are in it, how much or how little of the overall story is revealed, how it fits in with what episodes have come before it and with what is yet to come. We’ll then divide up the actual writing duties: Matt will take, say, Scenes 1, 3 and 5, and I’ll take 2, 4 and 6. We’ll then put our individual work together so we have a full first draft, and from there we’ll finalize the script.

Once the final draft is complete, the script is given to that episode’s director. The director then distributes the script to the cast and works with The Brick regarding when the episode can be rehearsed in the space. From there, it’s the director’s show and Matt and I are strictly producers (securing costumes, props, etc.) and/or actors, if our characters are appearing in that episode (Matt and I both have semi-recurring roles in Penny Dreadful).

There are usually two or three rehearsals, and then tech is the morning of the performance. Ian W. Hill and Berit Johnson of Gemini CollisionWorks work their technical wizardry on lights and sound. The episode performs that night and is videotaped from two different camera angles. A couple of weeks later, the episode is edited and posted on thirdlows.com.

Repeat.

You and Matt have been working together for a long time. What’s the connection between you two?

Matt and I actually have very different interests and styles as writers and directors. Matt likes the sweeping romantic tragedies, the women in trouble but refusing to compromise their independence. He has a great sense of romantic longing, of melancholy tone and old-world wit. He’s also extremely interested in history, almost obsessively so, and a lot of the period detail of Penny Dreadful comes from him. He’s a smarty-pants and a charmer and one of the funniest people I’ve ever known.

As for me, an old friend of mine came to see a play I wrote and directed last fall, and he said, “That had some of the familiar of Bryan Enk elements.” I asked him what “Bryan Enk elements” were, and he said, “Oh, you know. Breasts and the Devil.” He’s exaggerating, but I do go for the more pulpy stuff, but I love doing in-depth character studies in such environments, finding the human soul in over-the-top worlds.

So Matt and I meet somewhere in the middle and sometimes come up with something that we both like and that audiences like. And as different as our styles and interests are, I think we understand each other’s work better than anyone else. For me, there’s no one better than Matt to call for help when I’m suffering from writer’s block or just need to discuss a particular idea, no matter how vague.

And we’ve been close friends for 15 years. How wonderful is it that you also get to work with a friend? The answer is, “Quite.”

Tell us a little bit about your company, Third Lows Productions, and what kind of stuff you guys specialize in.

I founded Third Lows in 1992, when I was a freshman at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. I don’t know if we necessarily have a specialty – I’ve made, I think, to date, 18 films, and they’ve covered lots of different genres, as have the stage productions I’ve put on over the years. I suppose our specialization is, if anything, putting up projects with hardly any money, but I know a lot of production companies that do that, and do it more often than I do. I suppose I lean more towards the supernatural stuff: horror, sci-fi, comic-book kinds of things. I love intense character dramas. I love monologue plays. Breasts and the Devil. You know.

Any plans for more episodic shows of this nature in the future?

We’ll see if The Brick requests a Season Two after we perform the 12th and final episode in October. Penny Dreadful is still in its testing period; we’re only just performing the fourth episode this month, and there’s a lot more to discover about what works and what doesn’t in terms of this kind of serialized storytelling.

What’s up next for you and Third Lows after this?

I have something I’m working on called The Ballad of Jeliza-Rose, a beautiful and painfully frustrating piece of work that refuses to be tamed or categorized. It’s a devious and seductive beast, and something of a shape shifter: sometimes it’s a stage play, other times a feature-length film, then it’s a short film, then an art installation, then a music video, then a graphic novel, then an HBO pilot. It might be some or even all of those things, but the question is: what should it be first? For a while I thought it was a feature-length film, but it’s escaped and changed again, so now I’m back in the forest hunting for it.

How’s that as metaphors for the creative process? “Beast.” “Shape shifter.” “Forest.” “Hunting.” Ha! Ah. Hmm.

Melissa Osborne is All About the Love

 

Actor-writer Melissa Osborne can’t seem to get away from love. Her 2006 play, …categories (a simple play), which premiered at the 2006 New York International Fringe Festival, dealt with unrequited love. Her latest offering, The Date Play, a series of four shorts by both her and Lee Gundersheimer (now playing at Center Stage NY until February 10th), covers a spectrum of topics concerning dating and relationships. Melissa stopped by the ol’ blog to talk more about the production and her interest in connection and affairs of the heart. Here’s what she had to say:

The Date Play is actually made up of four different short plays. Tell us a little bit more about each of them.

The first play, “Can’t Dance,” was written by our director Lee Gundersheimer. It’s a comedy about dating set in a disco in the 80’s Hamptons. The 80’s were funny, and so is the show. “Number Twelve” is a one-man monologue about a statistician on his twelfth speed date. His parents have recently divorced, he just got out of something, and he’s trying to process how much of his relationships are controlled and learned. “The V-Card” explores emotional and sexual intimacy as an unsuspecting guy thinks he’s going to get lucky with a girl he met in a bar, only to find out she’s a 26-year old virgin. Finally “Pen Pal” asks if it’s possible to be in love wih someone you’ve never met, and whether in an age of MySpace, and Facebook, do we know more about each other or less?

What was the impetus for this project and how did it come to fruition?

I usually write because people make me. Plays seem to happen by accident. “The V-Card” was written because my friend Quincy dared me to write a play for him. I got really mad at him and did. “Pen Pal” was commissioned by a friend for a festival in Florida this summer, and was written on a train ride home from Philly. Lee is a friend and former teacher of mine. He mentioned that Tracey [Toomey, co-star of The Date Play] was producing his show “Can’t Dance” and they were looking for companion pieces on relationships. I sent him “V-Card” and “Pen Pal,” he believed in them, sent them to Tracey. We met, and it just felt right. She’s a writer in her own right, having published two books, so it was just this connection of someone getting that you’re multifaceted. Plus she understood the work, she didn’t call it “cute” or “sweet,” she saw that there was more there. Both she and Lee did. So they asked me to write a companion monologue for “Pen Pal” to balance out the evening and a weekend later we had “Number Twelve.”

Your previously play, …categories (a simple play), dealt with the unfulfilled romantic yearnings between a pair of old friends. Now you’ve written a trio of short plays about dating and relationships. Do I detect a thematic thread emerging in your writing?

It’s funny: a friend of mine said that my writing is a series of “love letters to boys I’ve never met.” Which is true. Some of it does become/has become this self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe I’m a cerebrial romantic, a product of divorce, I need to date more, I don’t know. Obviously the nature of this evening asks for pieces on love and relationships. But I’m interested in the things that keep us from connection, whether it be technology, the past, our fears, or ourselves. I think we are a medicated generation, we’ve grown up with a lot of distractions and our attempts at real communication fascinate me. In “Number Twelve,” Matt [Walter]’s character says “show me a story that’s not about love” and I think that’s pretty accurate. Whether you love money, your family, your career,your friend, your boyfriend, your dog, your blog, whatever, it all boils down to the want for something.

How is it having the director serve as one of the writers, as well?

I think having a director who is also a writer gives you an unwritten support system> He knows what I’m going through, because he’s going through it too. Lee understands what it’s like to give a piece to someone and trust them with it because he’s been there. He also was amazing letting me sit in on rehearsals whenever I wanted (which is unheard of). It was really important to him that I saw and agreed with the process. As a director I know he was really flexible with the actors in “Can’t Dance” (as am I) to question his language and fix the play together.

What are the advantages and/or challenges (if any at all) to acting in something you’ve also written?

I’m an actor first. That’s my training, so I think it definitely informs my writing because I write for them. I’m an accidental writer. I’m horrible with stage directions as a writer because I hate telling actors what to do. I write when there are stories I can’t tell as an actor. They are both parts of me, both feed my imagination. Being a writer makes me a better actor, and being an actor makes me a better writer.

I think the hardest part of acting, in general, is staying out of your head and your own way. Forgetting the piece needs to be a certain thing, or go in a certain direction. Letting go of the idea of the piece. So you just have to forget you wrote it and let the piece be whatever it wants to be, just play.

With “V-Card,” we’ve done it twice, I’ve seen an audience respsonse, so I don’t really need that. Its almost like it was written by someone else. It’s become something else. It’s funny, in “V-Card” there are moments for Jane [the character Melissa plays] I just don’t get. I hate them. I hate me for writing them. Or someone in rehearsal will ask about a certain beat, it’s meaning, and I’ll have no fucking clue. My brain’s just not there when I’m acting.

How do you go about writing a part you know you’re going to play as opposed to one you know someone else is going to do?

I don’t usually set out to write roles for myself. Obviously my voice creeps in from time to time, but it’s never like “God this one will really show them what I can do’. With Jane in “V-Card,” she was written with someone else in mind, and subsequently workshopped by two other amazing actresses (Chrisy Pusz and Mary Cavvett) in over a year and a half. So by the time this opportunity came along she was no longer mine, and far enough from me that I felt ready to play her.

I do find it helpful to write with someone else’s voice in mind, I guess eventually it becomes an amalgamation of me, and people I know, or hope to know. I steal a lot, fall in love with bits of people, take them, which my friends love. I also love tailoring to actors. Amazingly, two of the roles in The Date Play were written for the actors playing them, which strangely gives them this freedom to be something entirely different. I love that, because it becomes theirs, not mine.

What can we expect to see from you next, either as a writer or an actor?

Currently as an actor I am praying daily for the writers strike to end so I can go back to auditioning. As a writer I have no clue. Maybe I’ll try not to write about love. I have a series of monologues floating around, I guess I just have to wait till someone gives me a good reason to write.

Writing in Restaurants

So, I was sitting in My Favorite Downtown Bistro (MFDB) last night, writing in my notebook, when a four-top sat down at the table next to mine. Two men, two women, all of them lively and a little tipsy. One of the women immediately looked at me and asked, “What are you writing?”

To which I replied, “A short story.” This happens frequently at MFDB: I sit quietly in a corner, or at the secluded end of the bar, scribbling with determined purpose into my cheap spiral notebook. Someone always wants to know what I’m writing. I have no idea why, aside from the fact that most people seem to be pleasantly surprised to see someone writing the old-fashioned way - i.e. with pen and paper - instead of with a laptop.

“What’s it about?” she continued. The woman was quickly forgetting about the rest of her party.

“Um, well…it’s about two people having an affair,” I said. True enough. I mean, I just started writing this thing, so I don’t really know what it’s about yet. But, that’s what was happening in the part I was writing last night.

The woman’s eyes lit up. “Really? Can I write part of your story?”

I’d never heard that one before, so I said, “Sure.” I handed the woman my pen and notebook, and she went to work in earnest.

After about ten minutes or so - ten minutes in which she had completely ignored her friends and dropped out of their conversation, mind you - she handed back my notebook. Double-spaced across two pages, she had written the following:

“On a night in January 2008 you meet 4 people who in your heart of hearts you could never tell who was having the affair! What defines love or an affair? An affair starts because people need an outlet to vent. They look for what they don’t have in their marriage. Many think they can find it in someone else! But the truth is people are exactly who they are. The world defines who people become - not marriage - not an affair - not a child. We live for our children - they are that matters - people live and stay together to try to make the world a better place - what defines better - if you live your life and you wake up happy in life and you touch someone everybody - whether within your own world or someone else - you win! If you have lived - you have smiled and touched a soul - you are complete - most people will never touch a soul because they care too much about others.

In other words - every day - smile or say hi someone will pass it on that defines happiness and if it takes having an affair then so be it!

XXXOOO SL”

Um…wow.

And if that weren’t enough, about two minutes later one of the two men looked at me and asked, “You mind if I take a look at that?”

I certainly didn’t, but I wondered if the lady did. So I asked her: “You mind if he looks at this?”

She smiled. “Aw, that’s nice of you. No, go ahead.”

So I handed him the pages she wrote. He looked them over, then gave them back to me without so much as a “Thank you” or a glance in my direction. He sat quietly for the rest of the time - he had previously been quite talkative - and did not speak to the lady in question again.

Um, can you say, “Draw your own conclusions”?

Only in New York, people. Only in New York.

Jack Kerouac’s List of Essentials for Writing

My friend Ori recently sent me this list, apparently written by Kerouac himself. Lots of good stuff here, so I thought I would share it. Read on, Macduff…

(Editor’s note: I believe all grammatical idiosyncracies are intentional. Just FYI.)

1. Write on, cant change or go back, involuntary, revised, spontaneous, pure

2. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy

3. Submissive to everything, open, listening

4. Be in love with your life every detail of it

5. Something you feel will find its own form

6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

7. Blow as deep as you want to blow

8. Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of the mind

9. The unspeakable visions of the individual

10. No time for poetry but exactly what is

11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest

12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you

13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time

15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

16. Work from the pithy middle eye out, from the jewel center of interest, swimming in language sea

17. Accept loss forever

18. Believe in the holy contour of life

19. Write in recollection and amazement of yourself

20. Profound struggle with pencil to sketch the flow that already exists intact in the mind

21. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see the picture better

22. No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge

23. Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures

24. In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

25. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better

26. You’re a genius all the time

27. Writer-Director of Earthly Movies produced in Heaven, different forms of the same holy gold