No More Waiting and Waiting No More...

I was sad to learn this week that the Seattle Rep had cancelled the upcoming production of Bill Irwin in Waiting for Godot. The show was to be directed by legendary Irishwoman Gerry Hynes (of whose Broadway version of Beauty Queen of Lenane was so riveting--and one of the first Broadway shows I had seen after recently moving to NYC).

Instead they are doing The Road to Mecca.

No offense to Mr. Fugard, but...really?!

But my disappointed feelings were rejunevated when Playbill.com announced that Mr. Irwin was going to get his chance to do Beckett's most infamous play, after all...on Broadway. And with a co-star none other than Nathan Lane.

I must say I have slightly mixed feelings about that...In the article they even compared Lane to a modern-day Bert Lahr, who played Estragon in the original production on Broadway fifty years ago.



(As if you don't know this, but Bert Lahr was also the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.)

Bert Lahr hated the play, hated Beckett, and I think the feeling was mutual.

Of course, this was fifty years ago, before anyone knew who Beckett really was or what his play was all about. People weren't used to this post-modern comedy, this laughing and crying at the same time thing. Let's hope Nathan Lane approaches the role slightly different.

It could be quite interesting. And Anthony Page is a good director.

And plus, it's Beckett on Broadway.

Evidently, that's something you see only twice in a century.

Hope I can get out to NY next year to see it.

Accommodating the Mess

The title of this post comes from the thoughts of Samuel Beckett who was musing about a form of drama that “accommodates the mess”.

The mess being post-modernity. The mess being how we process things so differently. The mess being a post- World War II and atomic age.

My mess right now is 7 Minutes to Midnight.

I’m not saying the show is bad or in trouble. What I’m saying is that like many of my ambitious projects, there are far too many things going on in it right now. It’s time to clean it up. Less is more, in art as well as architecture.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve worked with the small ensemble of five actors to create and shape material. Some of it is movement work, some of it is text. Now I’m going to add some more to the ensemble and I really need to start answering some of those really tough questions like “what is this story about and what is the best way to tell it?”

Mostly I’m thinking about structure. One brilliant playwright, maybe it was Octavio Solis I can’t rember, doesn’t like the word structure and would rather use the word “organization”. As he says, “you organize your closet, you should organize your play”.

I’m trying to think about how to organize this play, which means what scenes go where. Should we follow events historically in a linear fashion? Should we jump around? Do I want to have some cohesive way of tying things together? There are many, many options. The characters and most of the story is pretty clear, at least to me, but I need to figure out the order. What I love about theater is that there are so many ways of telling the same story. Which will we choose?

I don’t know.

So that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend, by myself and in my rehearsal on Saturday.

I can’t go on, I must go on, I’ll go on

Outside the weather is crappy yet again.

I have to continually remind myself that there are regions in this world where summer is not over in mid-August…That the sun shines more than ten times a year…

It’s just not here in Seattle.

I’m feeling glum today for many reasons. Maybe one reason is that I'm still reading that biography on Samuel Beckett, The Last Modernist by Anthony Cronin. As biographies go, it's not bad, certainly not as exhaustive as Damned to Fame.

Beckett's outlook on life is quintessentially Irish. It is hope amidst suffering, optimistic but cynical…Beckett is a man who, when a friend said about a sunny day, “Isn’t it a beautiful day? Makes one glad to be alive…”, Beckett replied with...

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that…”

But the real reason is I just found out that someone at work has been diagnosed with cancer.

But as Erin (maybe now going as Eloise), one of my students at BCC so elegantly said…

“F**k cancer!”


Life is suffering, as the buddhists say, but life is worth living.

We can't go on, we must go on, we go on.

Puppet Séance, Magic Tricks, Dead Horses & Silent Women in Lingerie wearing Cowboy Hats…

Okay, so many friends have been intrigued by the experimental show we saw in NYC a few weeks ago. I will comment briefly on it, as it is still a work-in-progress by Active Eye Theater and I don't want to give any spoilers.

And its a little hard to explain fully, anyway.

 

But first, my mini-review of Sam Shepard's new play KICKING A DEAD HORSE which we saw at The Public Theater, starring Stephen Rea.

The more I think about this new work from the cowboy poet who brought us BURIED CHILD and TRUE WEST (truly two of the greatest American plays ever written), the more I love it. For the past decade, Shepard has been making a good living popping up acting in movies and occasionally writing stuff like THE LATE HENRY MOSS    and GOD OF HELL (not altogether brilliant and mostly recycled motifs from earlier works). But in KICKING A DEAD HORSE, it feels like Shepard has turned a corner, has taken the idea of the existentialist cowboy to the extreme and brought us a clown/vaudeville show in the desert, a one-act that Beckett would grin and nod approvingly at.

The plot is fairly straightforward. Hobart is a successful art dealer who was able to make a fortune by scouring the west and buying old Remington paintings from saloons, selling them to Manhattan- ites. He's originally from the badlands, but has spent decades in NYC and has lost his grasp on "authenticity" and pines for his youth, and his old horse. When the lights come up, we find Hobart in the middle of the prairie, digging a large grave, his old horse lying sideways nearby. As he talks to us, and himself, he tries to get the horse into the grave because he can't "just leave him". But the horse is stubborn and doesn't want to go (or maybe doesn't want to go in by himself). Night falls. It rains. Hobart tries to put up a tent which never stays up. The sun comes up again and finally, Hobart manages to get that horse in the grave, but the consequences of that are pretty grim.

And yes, as the title suggest, he really does kick the dead horse.

More than once.

It's actually pretty cool--I've never seen that on stage before...

No conversation about the play can begin without commenting on Rea's performance. It's basically a one-man show (with the exception of a young woman in a nightgown briefly appearing out of the grave with his cowboy hat on while he sings "I'm a rambler"…who is this woman? Is she a lost love? The hat? His wife at a young age? We never really know…). There is a circus hall style to the play and to his performance, and he shifts from that style to naturalism with ease and grace. And he's really funny without losing the gravity of the situation.

What I love about the play is its simplicity (I'm a big fan of simplicity, if you couldn't tell by my endless rants about it in these here blogs). It feels like Shepard's grown aware of the fact he's getting old and is staring down at a beckoning grave, much like Hobarth. And beyond just this personal reflections on the past and present, this search for authenticity in one's soul and actions, there is also the political ideals of the "western world" and how we relate to others.

To sum up, its one of those plays that haunts you for a while, one that can't be tightly wrapped up like a birthday present. Truths that linger…

 

On the other end of the spectrum of simplicity was the puppet play we saw in a small rehearsal room at the Women's Project, directed Jyana Brown and presented by the company members of Active Eye Theater.

 

Like I said, this is still in workshop stages, so I don't want to divulge too much other than the fact that what they're doing is totally brilliant.

No, really. And those that know me know I don't toss that around lightly…
 

Okay, but the fun thing, before I say anything about the show, is that one of the theater members, Andrew Grusetskie, was in my early Off-off-Broadway production of LOVE'S LABORS WON OR BENVOLIO IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN THE BAHAMAS at Vital Theater. I remember saying goodbye to him at a friend's apartment when he left for school in London and hadn't seen him since. Which, I mean, good for him, but I really liked his work in my play and would've used him in many, many other things if I could've…And then there he was in this show…!
 

Anyway, without giving too much away, they adapted an ancient puppet play from Japan (was it 15^th century?). It's set during a time when many love-suicides were happening. The show is set up as a play within a play and as we watch them "rehearse" very strange things start to happen. Props fall off the desk, off the walls; actors do strange things completely unawares. There are some magic tricks and illusions and eventually the actors become "possessed" by the spirits of these characters (or are they spirits of real love-suicides?) and end being manipulated as if they were puppets. And then at the end there is a séance.
 

So, um, like I said, it's a little hard to describe. But very, very cool. And quite inspiring, especially for the show I'm working on in the fall.
 

That's what I love about going to see theater—when its brilliant, that is—it completely inspires you and reminds you, "That's the kind of stuff I want to see on stage! That's what I want to write/direct/produce!"
 

Pitch 'n' Putt with Joyce 'n' Beckett

I love this video. I have rediscovered it and must share...for all its glorious Irishness and literary-ness. And for lines like, "I love those little pencils, small, like the first pencils..."

WARNING: Some harsh language and literary allusions.

Happy New Year!

Pictured: Mikhail Baryshnikov in a scene from Beckett Shorts (photo © Joan Marcus)


At some point, I will write the essay, “How I Spent My Christmas Vacation” and detail my recent trip to Little Valley, NY (Just outside Buffalo) and the four fabulous days in NYC. But since most people might equate the idea of reading that essay as similar to watching a slide show of someone’s family vacation pictures, I’ll spare the details and focus on the highlights.

The trip was a wonderful and welcome break, other than the hellish nightmare of getting from Seattle to Little Valley (a 21 hour trek that ended up costing us $400 more than previously planned…thank you so much, Delta, and can you use Vaseline the next time you F**K us up the @#s! By the way, if you’re reading this and you work for Delta you are either a) the devil or b) his minion and you should either a) quit and join the Peace Corps as penance or b) kill yourself now and do us all a favor…do I sound a little angry?)

But I digress...Here are a few of my favorite memories...

The wood stove at my in-laws…it was like Xmas in the Bahamas…
Hot cocoa by the tree (which also included tequila and kahlua, yummy!)
Gram’s pancakes (the best in the world)
Opening presents with the in-laws
NY Bagels…god, I missed them…
NY Pizza in Queens…not once, but twice!
Walking through Central Park and seeing the ice skaters at Wollman Rink
Quickly walking through the Met Museum and seeing the Ghiberti panels
Having a pint at The White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village
Seeing Julianne Moore and her family outside the White Horse Tavern
Dinner at Pontevecchio, this great Italian place in the village
Browsing through The Strand bookstore
Sharing dinner and drinks with friends…too many to mention

And, of course, the three brilliant shows we saw.

I’m not one of those people who throw that word around willy-nilly. (I don’t actually bandy about the word “willy-nilly” either, but for some reason, I just did…curious.)

But the three shows I saw were brilliant!

Brilliant scripts. Brilliant directing. Brilliant actors.

And they should keep me satisfied for a long, long time. They’ll have to because they are three shows that no one would be ambitious enough or brave enough to stage here.

(Pinter. Beckett. Marlow. Puh-lease…I wish…)

First up, we saw THE HOMECOMING by Harold Pinter, starring Ian McShane (from Deadwood fame), Michael McKean (Laverne & Shirley, SNL, Spinal Tap and more), Raul Esparza and Eve Best. Knockout performances by all, especially Ms. Best, and tight, well-paced directing.

The show was memorable that evening, not just for the brilliant and disturbing script, but also in that in the first act a woman almost choked to death and they had to stop the show. It was during a slow, quiet time when Raul was lighting a cigarette and the sound of a woman gasping for air filled the huge auditorium. Someone in the audience cried, “There’s an emergency!” and the house lights went up and ushers and whatnot rushed to help. As the audience waiting to find out the outcome, Raul asked, “Any questions so far?”

Once we found it the lady was fine and didn’t need any other medical attention, the house lights dimmed and Raul asked, “Where were we?”.

To which the SM over the PA said, “You were lighting a cigarette.”

He looked up and said, “Mom?”

I guess you had to be there.

The next phenomenal show we saw was Joanne Akalaitis directing four short Samuel Beckett pieces, all starring Mikhail Baryshnikov. Plays on the bill included ACT WITHOUT WORDS I, ACT WITHOUT WORDS II, ROUGH FOR THEATRE, and EH JOE. I was familiar with all of them, but had never actually seen them staged. What’s really fantastic is that Akalaitis is getting this other chance at Beckett after being so wrongfully scorned for the ENDGAME fiasco at A.R.T. many years ago. Here she directs with a solid simplicity, using the language of the body and the voice to illuminate the painful and comic existence that creeps in and without all of Beckett’s work.

Baryshnikov’s performance in the first play is amazing--it's a mime play set amongst a stage of sand and surrounded by Venetian blinds, where he at first tries to escape, then reaches for a pitcher of water which can never be grasped. Having never seen him perform live before, I was hypnotized by the grace and charisma of his minimalist physicalization. He only speaks in one of them, ROUGH FOR THEATRE, and he is slightly overshadowed by the other actor, a well-skilled Beckett veteran (who plays with language and vocal patterns magnificently...and had us saying, "Eh, Billy!" over and over...) And everything in all four plays was so exact, so rife with meaning, that after we left the theater that evening (running time of only 70 minutes with no intermission) our minds and souls were full.

On Saturday of our visit we went to the matinee performance of EDWARD II by Christopher Marlowe, as staged by the Red Bull Theater.

We saw their last production of THE REVENGERS TRAGEDY years ago and loved the audacity and electricity of the production. I have to say that EDWARD II was even better. Needless to say, the actors and directing were all top-notch, and the production was low-budget but didn’t feel low-budget. It was an exciting show and it made me wish I could see more Elizabethan theatre staged with that kind of energy. And the great thing was our tickets only cost $10. (You can’t get that kind of deal here for theatre half as good…)

Most memorable image from that show was the final one, where the young prince now king, holds up an AK-47, with the hanging bodies of his mother and her lover behind him. (Also, the young boy happened to be Raum Aron, the actor in my show BURNING BOTTICELLI in the NY Fringe years ago, talk about a small world...)

Needless to say, we had a renewed sense of vigor and were slightly inspired. That's what good theater can do. Sometimes you forget the power of theater until you see someone who knows how to use that power. For a curmudgeon like me, it made me realize that yes, there are people out there doing brilliant work...its just few and far between...

The next show I’ll see will be one that I’m helping to write, so I do have that to look forward to. That'll be the 14/48 festival.

More on that to come in the next few days.

So, since it’s the new year, I’ve decided on a few things—not necessarily resolutions, but more like general guidelines and things to work on...

1) I will dress better (and wear black more often, just like Bono or Johnny Cash).
2) I will be more positive about the weather in Seattle.
3) I will spend more time writing (not merely concerned with quantity but with quality).
4) I will work out at least four days a week.
5) I will read more plays (last night I read SPINNING INTO BUTTER by Rebecca Gilman and LANDSCAPE WITH WEAPON by Joe Penhall. Last week I read THE OVERWHELMING by J.T. Rogers—all very good plays which renew me hope in theater)
6) I will be funnier, and less sarcastic…ah, who am I kidding?
7) I will not feel guilty if I don’t honor any of these silly resolutions

In other news…I got my new headshots back…they look good! I’ve narrowed it down to a few choices. Perhaps tomorrow I shall post the winner.

Stay tuned!

A Thousand Words

Pictures do so much more than words.

While I’ll always support “le mot juste”, I do love a good visual.

There’s that old maxim, “Show, don’t tell” and that’s tied into the same idea. Telling us the main character is tired is not as effective as describing red eyes with bags under them, ruffled hair, pallid skin and a body moving slowly, as if about to fall asleep.

Also visual gags are more funny sometimes than wordy gags.

Shorter is better.

This is actually very important in plays, and even more important in screenplays. Even though plays do have more words and dialogue, so much can and should be conveyed through stage pictures and the gestures of the actors. Also, audiences receive a lot of information via the set, costumes and lighting design. For instance, in Beckett’s Happy Days, we have a woman buried in a pile up to her waist and chatting merrily as can be with her husband, sitting in a chair nearby. Not much more needs to be said there to add to that picture, even though Beckett continues to pile on more and more meaning (no pun intended…okay a little…).

I’m learning this lesson as I work on the office Holiday Play. As some know, I work in a major non-profit with a lot of smart people. MDs. PhD.s. Scientists. Doctors. All kinds of intelligence in the room, usually. Smart people are not necessarily good at writing jokes. Also, references to science articles and organizations are not necessarily the stuff of comedy.

So there are some challenges there.

Basically I’d really like to insert some fart jokes. Or some blue humor. Anything.

But I can’t.

I work around it by inserting jokes with gags that set up the punchline delivered in the form of a picture (projected via PowerPoint). Our show is modeled after The Daily Show and they do this quite effectively. I won’t go into the tedious details of analyzing why it’s funny, but needless to say we’re able to cut a joke down from a paragraph to one line because the picture tells the whole story.

Something to remember when writing your scripts. If I can show this in some visual way, how do I do that? How can I cut the words down?

Because…LESS IS MORE.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I only have till tomorrow to make some props…like a fake ransom note and some sock puppets.

What the… ?!?

It’s been cloudy and/or rainy for over two weeks.

Two days ago it hailed.

Today its 70 degrees and sunny.

But don’t worry.

Forecast for tomorrow

Is rain.

And then rain the next day, etc., etc…

Days like this just make me think that any sunny day in Seattle outta be a forced holiday. Businesses should close. Schools should shut down. Everyone should be forced to picnic in the park or go boating or hiking or have a cocktail on the front porch.

Something.

(By the way, any academics or Lit majors want to guess why this particular monkey photo?)