Here I go again

The first night was a brilliant success! And now I’ve drawn lucky #7 again! And again with the five characters, this time one male and four female.

The theme is “Under pressure”.

I can relate.

Only nine hours left till my deadline...no sweat.

They're blogging over there!

Check out the 1448 blog and see pics of all the virgins from Thursday night's meeting, including yours truly.

(I especially like that the lineup shows my post-holiday paunch....)

One play written, one more to go!

If this festival is like a relay race, then I have just passed the baton.

After three or four fitful starts of other ten-minute plays, I finally started writing something resembling characters on stage with actual dialogue at about 11:30. After much sweat and anguish, I finished a draft, rewrote, rewrote again, trimmed, cut and polished and finally threw in the towel sometime after 2 am. There comes a point when you just can’t think things through anymore. Not that this play is all that thought out.

I woke up at 7:00 am (getting probably just about 4 ½ hours of sleep) and looked at it again. Okay. Not brilliant, but not horrible. There’s some potential for laughter and possibly some actual real sentiment.

At 8:06 am I emailed the “finished” play RESURRECTING THE KING. And then I took a shower and had some coffee before getting in the car to head to CHAC for the 9 am meeting.

If you think writing a ten-minute play is hard, you should try to drive at rush hour from Northgate to Capitol Hill and find parking in 45 minutes.

I arrived at the meeting just as it had gotten started and they were announcing what directors had what plays. My director is Jose Amador. He’s also an actor and I’ve seen in the Quickes Short Play Festival at LiveGirls! Theater. We both grabbed some coffee and he went outside to smoke and read the play. I ate a bagel and drank my coffee and chatted with two of the actors, Trick and Megan. Megan is a virgin, like me and was very excited and nervous. The casting had yet to begun.

And by casting, I mean that the directors randomly draw names out of a hat. I think the coolest thing about the 14/48 festival is the egalitarian (and my PhD wife would say Marxist) nature of the process. No one competes. No is favored. All are equals. It’s all random. Your choice of play, lineup in the evening, what you write about, your director, your actors, all that. This creates this really positive vibe. I gotta give credit to Shawn and the steering committee and everyone working on it—they all are pretty cool.

Most importantly, a keg is tapped. All day. And it’s free for us artists. I love getting paid in beer.

Now, if I were really smart, I would’ve planned to take the day off work and sleep and/or be drinking that beer. But I didn’t. Color me stupid.

Anywho—Jose drew names and we got Megan as one of our cast members, who I was so merrily chatting with earlier. We also got Bret Fetzer, John Bartley, Amy Fleetwood, and John Q. Public (is that seriously his real name?). We went to the rehearsal room and I sat and watched everyone read. One of them chuckled (thank you!). I was feeling a little anxious and like I’ve given them total crap to work with, but after the first and second reading, I thought, “these folks are gonna be brilliant!”

Then I went off to work…I hope they doing all right. I can’t wait to see what happens tonight.

But also, looming in the back of my brain is the fact that at 9:30 pm, after the first show, they’ll draw another theme, and I have to go off and write another play. I just pray I got a smaller cast—like three would be good…

Virgin! Get me a beer!

That's what she said!

Seriously, the virgins have to serve the veterans...actually, its not that bad and I really don't mind getting people brewskis anyway...takes my mind off the fact I have to write a play in less than 12 hours.

"Reunions"

That's the theme that has been drawn out of the ice cream cone.

It’s now 9:54 pm and I’m frantically working through some ideas of what to start writing. The obvious is “high school reunion” but for some reason, I don’t want to go there. Maybe its because I didn’t ever go to my high school reunion.

Second thought is family reunion. Hmnnn, could be good...

Other thoughts concern…brothels, superheroes, or aliens…

The mantra for 14/48 is “go big or go home”. I want to give my actors and directors some fun and juicy stuff to do. But I have to do it all in less than ten minutes.

Let’s see what I come up with.

Only ten more hours till deadline.

Gearing up for 14/48

Not to boast, but I can type about 80 wpm.

Okay, so there are some errors when I type that fast, but still, that’s not too shabby.

(The speed is actually not too surprising for any of you who also play guitar or piano.)

I’m not trying to get too psyched out by the prospects of trying to write my ten-minute play in less then 12 hours. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been reading the 14/48 blog. Because it reminds me that this weekend I’ll need to do more than just fast typing.

(While I’m on that subject, one of my pet peeves in movies is when I see a character who is supposed to be a professional writer/journalist/novelist or what-have-you and the actor is typing in the scene with the hunt-and-peck method…seriously, folks…that’s just insulting. Cut away to a shot of hands that can type. Okay, here endeth the rant.)

This whole 14/48 thing is getting me pumped and I know that the timeframe really is intimidating, but only like having a water hazard on a simple par 3. The shot is really easy, but the margin for error is narrow. At least with 14/48, I get two shots.

Oh, and because I promised, I’ve narrowed the choice of headshots to these two—one b&w and one color.

(Photos by Susan Doupe and copywright 2007.)

We just don't want to work for free...is that wrong?

I haven't posted anything about the WGA strike in awhile, but guess what, it's still going strong.

By the way, I even went down to Rockefeller center a few days after Xmas to see if the WGA strike line was happening, but they were on break for the holidays...bummer!

This is a great little video from Tony Gilroy (writer/director of Michael Clayton and writer of Bourne Ultimatum and Bourne Supremacy).



And for you triva nerds, he is also the son of acclaimed playwright Frank Gilroy, writer of The Subject Was Roses.

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!