Stories are our best revenge

2015-07-25T15:52:00.003-04:00

This blog has moved

Please have a look at the new location:

http://bobjudeferrante.com

Free Monkeys (with purchase) Every Thursday

2015-04-15T13:53:00.000-04:00

free the
monkeys
no cash
needed
there are
reasons

this is
like this

but we
don't get
them yet.

free the

monkeys
of all
business
of all
free press
of all
Jesuses.

freaking

freaking

free them.

free.

them.

[you are here] 001

2012-03-14T01:17:00.000-04:00

Composition work started for the [you are here] project today, and went magnificently. After 90 minutes working on creating some moments, using elements we'd established, we fed the operating question

"Are you free?"

You just know by the take on a question with a group that it's the right one. Once the question landed, there was silence for four beats.

Then we all started listing topics for research; it was clear the question was going to be the beacon, and that this is the right group to be researching this question. The topics from the 12 present showed the intense focus and sharp intelligence of this group.

silence absence

2012-01-13T00:59:00.002-05:00

repeat 100 {silence brought absence; absence brings silence.}
the noise of other people
slips to nothing.

and now it's finally quiet.

When she wrote that first, it worried her friends. They wrote her letters. No smartphones involved. In longhand. Mailed and taken to the Post Office and moved through a huge system to end up right in her mailbox, nearly lost amongst ads and bills, Shackleton hellbent for the Beaufort Sea.

They all wondered also about the braces, but then a few weeks later she informed everyone she'd got a job writing encryption algorithms for some midsize quick and dirty code factory. Nothing creative really, just cribs of Triple DES and Kerberos. So they got the joke but they didn't laugh, in that way people can not laugh.

She wrote a book of poetry with a publication run of 250 that James Franco happened to pick up and read. Within a month he had tweeted it. Right after, he Googled for her email addy, and told her in a 310 word email the book knocked him over. James fracking Franco asked if he could use it for something. She expected nothing, what's he going to do? But with typical James Franco class, he read it aloud on his vlog, saying it was the first poetry that really moved him.

Orders started pouring in. She got a call from Viking Penguin who was looking for an online poet. She made them wait, while she walked to the loft of the friend with the handpress who done the first edition of 250, and ordered 1,000 books (how many orders she had gotten from NYC and Long Island bookstores). The friend turned her down. In the meantime Viking/Penguin called her back, and they did a run of 150,000 copies and they sold out in three weeks. The second run of 150,000 sold out in two weeks.

Armed with that money she started buying things. They seemed like normal things a person would buy. Flatscreen TVs, gaming systems, tiny black set top boxes. Computers. Many of them, on every floor of her condo. A hot tub, a massage table.

To power her world she purchased a photovoltaic array for her roof, several gasoline generators for her ground floor, and a power windmill, more for its intimidatingly rotating white blades than for its ability to supplement her household's need for electric power.

She began to lay in a collection of identical sturdy charcoal grey steel anodized metal shelves, which she assembled assiduously with a rubber mallet, and lined along her walls. Into these shelves she inserted rubberized polymer trays, ostensibly to prevent messes. Alongside these dark metal shelves she installed, several freezers of the highest stainless steel quality, all made by the same European appliance company.

She then purchased many forms of foods, always with an eye toward those that could be held from consumption for long periods of time. Some by being filled with ingredients that promised to preserve the food and her, other by their merely being boxed and canned and dried and bagged.

She outfitted a room in her condo just for Yoga. At strange hours of the night one could hear chanting. But mostly these things were kept away from prying eyes.

With that entire list of planned purchases and changes accomplished, she was ready to implement her grand strategy.

She didn't stop seeing the people all all at once. No, she leveled down to it from almost an imperceptible gap. She'd fail to return one phone call, but then call back or answer the phone the very next time they called. Then it was every third and then fourth call. Then it was not send back response holiday cards. And so on.

After nearly a year of turning the knob down, she finally got to total. That's total, complete, utter. You could hear an angel trying to dance on the head of a pin but accidentally kicking it over, that tiny ringing sound. You could hear a moose fart in Canada. You could hear faraway species dying, and I'm talking at the bottom of the ocean where even marine biologists shrug about going there. I guess it's a really boring part of the bottom of the ocean, with no vastly differently-evolved species of life that can survive by engufling cigarette filters as they drift down from the pacific trash vortex.

Over that year, her consumption of all those preserved foods made the lawn over her septic leaching field as lush and verdant and filled with a sense of near eternal awe-filled natural goodness as her life lacked human contact. The lawn looked like a little New Zealand, but without all the sheep.

to be continued...

Story part: Assembler

2010-09-06T15:56:00.000-04:00

Opening

She codes. She looks only at the screen. And codes.

The code is measured in lines, each beginning with white space, each ending in a semi-colon. Her friend Felix would look at them and say, you could have saved four bytes there. Her boss would see the quote from a line of his own code, and smile. His boss would watch the check-ins and grunt with satisfaction at the LOC count and lines to defect ratio.

The screen she looks at is blue shaded in the background, and white on the page she is looking at; even though there is no real page because this code is designed to be compiled, not published. The typeface is Courier New, long popular with coders (or more likely, just a given circumstance of her editor).

later

When she backed away far enough, you could see it was a perfect clod of dirt – studded with a million contexts (a bug’s hideout here, a recess where a stand of Clostridium tetani lie in wait to be injected into some mammal there).

Story

She’s focused on coding, its art and its results; her bank account and investments; her house at the beach and her apartment in the City where she works. She’s no good at being with people; she does reading detective novels, her music (light rock of the 80s and 90s – amusement there) and quiet moments of sunset. She’s not here to get involved with anyone, or to have adventures.

But adventure comes seeking her the moment she becomes remotely interested in someone romantically. This has never happened to her before, but as they say, there’s a first time even for the most unlikely of us.

And with that romance, and the compromises it engenders, she is dragged against her will into her first real adventure since she was a kid.

She remembers when she was a kid, making up stories, taping them, until she discovered machines and their intelligence; she loves them, their orderliness, their challenges, the fun and bravado of doing it well, better than the boys.

No pertekshin

2010-08-13T20:07:00.005-04:00

'what the F. may be my name, my skill, my breath, my size, what diff is it, for some reason i'm the flavor, so why not give a taste?' he thought.

others would have gone the stretch to pick a pseudo. but frankly he hated writing so much at this point, he decided to let those others select the byline. they promised payment, or micro-payment, or haptocredits, or whatever posed as folding money those days.

took a month probably spent distilling everything, all of it, big bang to five billion whimpers per second per second, into a thousand words. black letters on white paperlike, papersameas screen. dark squiggles being the point of it, how some ever it got got.

there was a faceless editor, no meetings, this being lowbudget. then the words appeared there in the almost non pageness.

took a month, and then between the spills and double dips and racing up and crashing down, between hoping and a thousand microcuts, or pantogashes, or whatever passed for pain those days, before any reader, passing through via scrollbar, carousel, dropdown, happened upon it in that brief flassssh of attention that is all there is any more.

on this one, these particular dark squiggles they maybe stopped a moment and then did that unthinking parsing, followed by a squint, then rapt scrolling.

the name was the last thing they noticed or cared about, when they clicked the icon to pass it on. read this was what they posted on their pages, these faces composited of their own banalities (mostly, face it), plus their passing on, sometimes, the choices of others.

so the dark squiggles began to reproduce in the same pattern, from one bit structure to the next, milkiness squirted forth from their noses as they spasmed surprised. me:me, syllabically monocompressed.

and the name was the last thing any of them cared about.

until

(end of part 1)

Page on Facebook

2010-07-19T15:44:00.001-04:00

If you like the blog, and belong to Facebook, then please navigate to this new page and click "Like" there:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bob-Jude-Ferrante/107996602554296?ref=mf

It's good to be liked. Most of the time.

What would be, say, Six Tenets of theatre Perfection

2010-07-10T17:23:00.005-04:00

If one were actually going to start a theatre company that would actually handle not just the production but also the aesthetic and total artwork of theatre. What properties would such a company need? It seems to boil down to six (hence the post title) but perhaps there are more.

What do you think? Please comment, tear this up or agree or whatever you want to do. You might have already started a company with such or similar goals in mind. Or you might be afraid to do one. Or you might be mad enough to plan it and do it.

One last thing. The question mark is intentionally missing from the title. This poses as the first draft of a question. But not quite a question yet.

Ultimate Experience – A life-altering experience for the audience and the performers must be offered, every time. It’s a big thing to promise and you can never achieve it fully. An ideal is intended to be beyond reach. This is the most important tenet.

Revolutionary Design – The visual and aural aspect of every performance must push the boundaries of the known state of the art. Perfect and life-altering look and sound. These designers want to change the world through light, color, depth, tone, melody, emotion.

Physical perfection – to keep the instrument of every performer in perfectly tuned shape, permitting no limits to what can be accomplished. The maximum possible human physical state, to ground what must come from the performer and company.

Cultural breadth – Sufficient knowledge of all major branches of human knowledge that the performer can call up an immense library of knowledge in performance. Every performance calls up Joyce, Popper, quantum theory or finite automata, and intelligently, in the service of story as well as culture.

Situational Dexterity – Having studied every form of improvisation known, the performer can call any one up at will. This includes Commedia, Spolin, Bebop Poet, Jazz, Rap / Hiphop, Slam, & whatnot.

Genre Flexibility – Discovering, understanding, codifying scene, act and work structure of every known storytelling genre ever used. Then, more importantly, the ability to instantly adopt that genre for use, both overall and within a scene.

Easter greetings from Transylvania

2010-04-04T17:30:00.003-04:00

A bunny comes back to life; in the background a zombie chick pecks holes from within a moldy egg. Even the bonnet reverts to undead cotton plants.

Luckily we got out of there before it was too late.

The first government was formed this way

2010-04-04T16:57:00.005-04:00

Many times ago, a citizen dug her own grave. (Not metaphorically.) She dug a hole in the ground, in a place where people were already being buried, for people to come visit her after she died.

First digging your own grave was considered a virtue. Then custom; then unwritten law; then maktoub as Law.

It was a sign of honor and great virtue to dig your own grave. The Great dug their own graves, and all the citizenry aspired to be Great.

And each citizen was good about it. Generally. He’d set some time aside, before he died, to dig the grave. It would get dug.

Usually. Sometimes he didn't do the duty. Perhaps it became something he tended to put off until late in life (after all, if he dug his grave too soon, he’d have to go keep going back to make sure the grave stayed dug, as another person, or nature, might tamper with it).

Sometimes he managed to die before it got dug. In that case, some family friend or descendant would sneak in and dig the wayward grave before anyone found out (as digging your grave was a sign of honor/virtue, not doing so would be a source of familial embarrassment).

In general the Great were good at it too, perhaps actually better, it being a sign of Virtue and all. But sometimes the Great said, “I’m too busy. If I forget to do some Thing, you understand,” etc. So it got be done anyway, as it was Law. Maybe bought, but done, and since the Great gave life to the People, the People got it done. Reliably.

De facto there was now a government, there to get things done reliably. And perhaps economics. As if a well-dug grave inspiring government wasn’t bad enough, maybe it should also start money.

Remember, stories are our best revenge.

the critics... new philosophy... hope...

2009-04-07T09:23:00.005-04:00

We got widely varied critical response to A NEW THEORY OF VISION; the first critic gave us an unabashed rave and said, there's all this philosophical background in the play, perhaps a bit too much, but since it does reflect on the action, you have to sort of let it wash over you and then it all makes sense, even if you're not a philogeek. Another, our only pan, said, there's all this character and plot stuff but not enough of the actual philosophy these guys are talking about. Finally, there was a balanced review that complained s/he wanted to hear the philosophy too. So that's two critics who complained they wanted to have the philosophical content of Lee's books spelt out.

Well, I'm not adding these explicitly to the play. It feels talky enough in the parts where it talks about the de minima aspects of Berkeley's philosophy that directly impact the play (a total of 2 minutes of stage time, max, and even though these support the action moment to moment, some might feel even these to be part of an extra credit assignment).

So perhaps we need to prepare a companion to the play that explicates the exact philosophies about which Lee wrote in his two books? Now, it must be said the philosophy is actually at the heart of the play's action. Thus if you observe the play's action, you can deduce all the philosophy you need, right there in front of you. This is perhaps an arrogant statement. Because if the smart people who write our theatre criticism can't pick this stuff up from the action of the play, how can we simpler minded people?

(There's an implicit criticism of criticism building here, I can feel it... but I won't spoil the ending of this essay by stating it there, so let's briefly state it here. Critics often take upon themselves the "duty" to "represent" the audience, but they often use a simplified model of who the audience is, and judge a work by how "clear" it is to that simple-minded artificial audience model. But it's self-deception. Audiences are far smarter than critics think they are, and sometimes, far smarter than the critics themselves.)

So. A warning. If you proceed there will be spoilers. And thanks for sticking with this, thus far.

Lee's first book, A New Theory of Vision was essentially a simplification and popularization of the works of Berkeley and the idealists, updated for a more telepresent world such as existed in the late 1980s, when his book would have come out. The parts of the materialist/idealist philosophy that would have made the most stir in the popular mind - the book was, after all, a massive best-seller - would have been those that talked about the increasing virtualization of who we were. Extended we were, as McLuhan would have said, by our creations - the telephone, television, and the PC network - we learned to project and virtualize our identities to match their representations over the various wire protocols of these extensions.

So we would have first developed a "voice or sound-heavy" set of identity contexts to serve as representations of ourselves over the telephone (which is a two-way medium - one-to-one) and for radio (which is a broadcast medium - one to many); a visual-and-sound set of identity contexts to represent us over the airwaves. These would eventually evolve to no longer being literal attempts to represent us. They would begin that way. But identity as communicated and compressed over these media would become first shadow representations of our selves, then gradually the representations would diverge as we accommodated ourselves to the medium, until eventually we had created at least one, perhaps many separate representations of ourselves to adapt to each medium.

Shadow identities, each containing part of our own experience and the contexts made real and appropriate for each medium and tuned to the audience each medium brought. So to each person with whom you conversed on the telephone, you created a different identity. It began as a set of sounds that resembled your voice, but gradually it evolved to become a new voice. Likewise, on TV or the radio, you created new visual and audio aspects of yourself.

Note in the play how the characters identities are somewhat malleable. Not in a MAN = MAN way (cf. Brecht) but rather in a postmodern way - their decisions and actions and the "selves" we see of them are adapted to the medium in which they present these selves. These represent the world as Lee saw it in his best-selling book.

Lee's new book, also probably destined to be a best-seller, The Book of Reality, takes this much further, in fact all the way into the world Erich inhabits. On the path to writing the book based on Erich's online world, Lee is in fact creating signifiers that led him inexorably to the realizations he has at the end of the original act-break, where his mind begins to loop in on itself - when both he and we - SEE and HEAR his self-perceived crime, that he didn't prevent a suicidal person, whom he loved very much, from committing suicide. The realization he makes - and which is wrong - is that the self is actually an illusion. That there is no contiguous set of ideas upon which any person is based. That we are chaotic stews of ideas constantly attempting to summarize and interpret and re-spew endless chaotic casseroles of matter and energy that surround us, and of which we are also constructed.

This can lead to a depairing, nihilist worldview which in fact represents exactly Jane's. We would then all want to kill ourselves, since what's the point of existence if you're a temporary process that observes temporary processes, and even your observations themselves are captured in a boiling cauldron of sense information which in itself is destined to change and be corrupted by chaos?

But the other assertion The Book of Reality makes is there are constancies. That the only constants are the links between us. Two hands clasping each other. Words of comfort, and care. We are the forces, amidst the stew and spew, that wrenches the world back from chaos. We create the illusion of order, and it is in fact the illusion of order that is the fact of order. In a world where all is illusion, illusion is therefore fact. That it all is some sort of miracle worth experiencing is the main of it.

Wazzup, Baby... Playing God

2008-08-23T11:49:00.003-04:00

Got a job as God recently...

Actually, a friend was having a reading of Bruce Jay Friedman's Steambath, funny and dated play from the 70s.

Tried out for a part in it as a hoot - since I saw the play on PBS in the early 70s, always had a fantasy to play the part of God, a Puerto Rican steambath attendant. Don't audition much and don't think I looked that impressive. Weeks went by during which I didn't think much about the audition - at that point was sure I wasn't cast.

Then the director (Eric) contacted me to tell me I didn't get my coveted part, but I had a part - Bieberman, the least attractive guy in the cast. Was game to do it anyway.

Just before the first rehearsal, got an email that God had quit (and why wouldn't he) as He was moving to Burlington VT (and why wouldn't He), offering me the part. So now am playing God, unmetaphorically speaking.

Rehearsals went well... we had a surprising number for a script-in-hand reading. End result I felt like I was the biggest liability in the cast. Sure that a playwright shouldn't mix in and try to perform (example, wasn't very impressed with my work on the show we did in the Spring either).

However, when the audience was there, they laughed with us a lot and all had a splantasmic time. It all stunned me, suddenly I was playing a lead role in something that people liked. Gotta tell you, now I understand why actors stick with this business... if you can finally get a chance to reach any kind of audience, it's an amazing experience. Nothing like it.

So if you're in the Brattleboro VT/Chesterfield NH area tonight (Aug 23 2008) come see the show. Sure, it's quite sexist in its portrayal of its only female character, but it does have a raft of big laughs - with me as God.

New Works of Merit / Sade

2008-06-09T08:58:00.003-04:00

So I get, again, after asking to be removed from their email list 3 years running, yet another email about the "New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest." This is a particularly egregious example of a writer rip-off, for reasons far too numerous to list in full, but let's begin with their "$25 entrance fee." Yea, the O'Neill has been charging an entrance fee for uninvited writers (a group to which I still belong), but at least they bothered to develop a reputation before skimming lunch money off said writers.

This contest is run by 13th Street Rep, a company that certainly have "established" a "reputation" for themselves (their last produced original work of merit being the play "Line" by Israel Horovitz back in the 70s - or was it the 60s?). Which I believe is still running there??

I checked on the Web to see how many others have been warning against entering this contest... OK, perhaps they actually do offer the winner of this contest a reading at their theatre. They probably even fund that $300 check the winner receives... note that I didn't bother to fact check this by contacting those winners, but let's give them the benefit of doubt.

Then I noticed this additional note on their entry page:

TO RECEIVE EVALUATIONS OF YOUR SCRIPT: One Evaluation .... $25 + $25 submission fee Two Evaluations ... $50 + $25 submission fee

$75 for "evaluation" services. These must be highly qualifed dramaturgs, folks. And what a refreshingly original way to offer this dramaturgy service.

The best moment reading their website was the statement that the moderator, who is also the "executive producer" at 13th St. Rep, is a member of the DG.

Note she's still a member - they don't return her check. Perhaps it is funded at least in part by this contest?

After reading this blog post, playwrights, if you still feel the need to send out a check for $75 because you wrote a play, what the hell, send it to me. I'll write you a better critique, I bet, and would use the money toward a real play production, not to fund my rent, liquor bill, or membership in the DG.

Videos of Sweet Cantatas now up on YouTube

2008-05-27T14:05:00.002-04:00

These are from the Sunday 2PM matinee on the last day of performance. The performances are mostly solid (though there's some "rule-breaking" on the Mot Juste piece - an actress making extra sounds). The usual caveats about video'd live performance - though I boosted the sound, it's slightly blurry at points. And the video can get blocky or fuzzy.

But it's cool nonetheless. Have a look!

http://www.youtube.com/user/bobjudeferrante

Great night

2008-05-04T17:03:00.000-04:00

Saturday May 3 was a fantastic performance of the show (called Sweet Cantatas). We had a big turnout for Brat (almost 100 people, I know, nothing for NYC but a lot for up there). And they were enthusiastic, laughing, clapping. Great support, great turnout, great night.

Rehearsals

2008-04-20T13:58:00.000-04:00

What have I gotten into? Originally I booked the NEYT theatre space with the intention of presenting an evening of my own work. Sort of an intro to the work to my hometown. Seemed like a nice thing to do.

Between the date the show was booked and the date it was to go up, I began a project with NEYT called the Performance Writers Lab. It's similar to the labwork I've already talked about here, done in Brattleboro not NYC, that's really the only difference. Otherwise the usual drill - a chance to foment new projects, hear new work, give writers a chance to bring in fresh pages and hear them for their music; chance for performers to practice their cold reading chops and maybe, just maybe get a line on a new part in a new project. And of course, all done at no charge to anyone, and with respect for the playwright and performer always paramount.

Then figured, well, jeez, since I have this project date all set up, why not make it about the lab work, rather than just an evening of my work. So it went from doing a full-length of mine to doing shorts (again, with the shorts) of my own and the work of other writers.

Then I had trouble getting a director who'd do the project so decided to direct the pieces.

So here I am now, in typical all-hectic mode, scheduling, directing, and even performing in several short pieces. All going up May 1-4 here in Brattleboro.

Hooboy.

There are at Least 1001 Reasons to See Jason Grote's 1001

2007-11-01T00:43:00.001-04:00

Jason Grote's 1001 is flat-out the best thing I've seen so far in 2007. And I've seen a lot. You must put down that graphic novel immediately and rush out to see it.

Why am I gushing like this? For starters it's huge. The character list includes a one-eyed Arab, a Jewish/Palestinian couple, Scheherezade, Dunsiad, Shariyah and the king's Vizier, Gustave Flaubert and Jorge Luis Borges (now how many times can you say you saw a play that featured a blind Argentinian writer?). Due to the amazing Krazy Glue of Jason's eclecticism, and the whole-cloth, filled with Unity direction of Ethan McSweeny, the entire thing not only holds together but seemingly expands, giving you plenty of space in which to contemplate the generous helping of ideas, symbols, comedy and pathos. Though the play runs only 110 minutes it feels as if an entire world is contained within.

Despite a cast of only 6, its character list positively sprawls; but due to McSweeny's deft direction and the cast's terrific chops (and faster than light costume changes), it doesn't feel at all tight. The logistics of the production alone are worth watching, because the cast and technical crew pull off all the pyrotechnics - from places to moves to props - without a hitch.

One aspect of the show that's not going to get a lot of attention but in this case definitely deserves it is the music. True to Jason's 21st-century tastes, I can honestly say this is one play with a killer soundtrack. From dance-electronica to various forms of Arabic rhythms from the parodic to the sublime, suffused with subtle rock, this is an iPod of a show.

Rachel Hauck's production design is top-notch and thoughtful. A series of colored lines on the floor guide you to your section, and once you spy the mise - a bombed and blasted NYC streetscape in Arena, with two-deep audience seating, you know you're in good hands. Tyler Micoleau's lighting is comprehensive to say the least. The backstage geek in me stopped counting at a 120 cues.

Page 73 Productions has stood behind this play all through its creation, from Jason's initial drafts to the masterful concoction that's now playing in Gramercy. They are to be commended for their support and patience, as works this ambitious can take years - in this case nearly 3 - to come to fruition.

So how to sum up? The nice couple from Jersey sitting next to me asked me, "what's the play about?" I'd seen previous readings and hesitated, then blurted out - "it's about how our lives are wrapped in stories, and how our lives wrap themselves around stories. It's about the oldest story, the largest, about the tellers of stories, about their stories."

1001 closes in only two short weeks (Nov 17) though the director said they might get a 1-week extension. The house is small. So you better get off your bum, get out there and catch it. It's at the Baruch Performing Arts Center/Nagelberg Theater on E25 between Lex and Third.

PS: Variety's Mark Blankenship's given Jason's play a rave as well; have a look:
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935269.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

Being out of it

2007-03-27T23:54:00.000-04:00

Some artists never go through the periods known as "out of it." Those with the courage or the ability to go it alone can usually do it. Some are born with a silver spoon and that's how they manage. Others meet someone who's amazingly supportive. If you have none of those things, whether by choice, marrying for love or whatnot, you invariably end up spending large amounts of your time doing work that runs... let's say... counter to your bliss.
So in case you're wondering why I haven't blogged since last July, and why all that seems to come from me right now is static, that's why. There is some writing going on, but not the kind that cranks out large works quickly. No, it's been short plays when and if. That and course outlines for a school at which I've done work, etc.
Somehow it all feels like stalling. You say to yourself, it's just a matter of time before the waves of chaos recede and you can go back to it.

Houses, Openings and Closings

2006-07-20T01:16:00.000-04:00

Vocabularian Car Crash...

My house in Brooklyn has been sold and the sale is closing this coming Monday. At the same time I'm obsessed with houses and openings with Sanctuary. And of course two shows are closing in the coming weeks. It's all just conflated.

Talked to old friend - not that either of us is old mind you - Jane Scarpantoni, rock and roll and newjazz cellist. We talked about the tension between the public parts of our careers, in both cases we enable others but less so ourselves - she doing string arrangements for other musicians' albums, in mine productions of other playwrights' plays - and our inner desires to see our own work done and promulgated.

One wishes all could happen for all... but at some point one must push all others away and begin to realize the work that breathes within our own souls.

On the train I wrote, finally, a page of pretty good dialogue and realized... I can still do this.

This year I'm going to get an entry out to New Dramatists. And to see some more of my work produced both by me and by others. That's got to remain a promise and be realized as one kept. Otherwise I'm just cheating.

There's a safety in enabling others to get their work up... then I don't have to deal with the possibility of failure in my own work... of mistakes made, or proving I'm a fool making bad choices. I can work with Sanctuary and pick great plays and make them happen in front of audiences, and the Times can come out and love them, as they did with Adam's play. But if I'm not taking the chances with my own work, investing the time to write them, and the heartbreak that inevitably falls from actual productions of the work, then what sort of playwright can I call myself? Love others, yes, but love onesself too. And self-love means seeing work completed, and produced.

So what's there to complete? Well, since The New Life, and the short Flick See Gears in the Sparklight, I've laid back in the safe zone of creating snippets of work, a character drawing there, a page of dialogue here, and not completed anything of substance. This cheat must stop. I must dedicate real time in each day to completing writing and real additional time in communicating that writing to real theaters who might produce it, and to garnering support and resources around myself as a playwright. To do these things will give me the ability to once again call myself a playwright.

More good stuff

2006-07-16T00:27:00.000-04:00

NYTheatre.com gave Food for Fish a great review too...

We're very lucky here... to have this piece by wonderful Adam Szymkowicz, and the work of Alexis Poledouris and the cast, at this moment.

And crowds of folks - folks we mostly don't even know - are coming out to see it and laughing and saying great things about it and telling their friends. And putting up with the lousy AC in the theater and still keeping up good spirits and still laughing and clapping at the end.

On a personal note... the house closing is now on schedule and the buyer is a nice lady who told my son (very sad about the sale of his childhood home) that he could come visit anytime. Gabe has sworn that he will grow up and become rich and buy the house back. Heh.

There's a lot of stuff here all about love - defined as the moments between people where they wish each other well and strive to do the right thing by each other - and of course, all this amazing, beautiful luck.

Sure, working your ass off for 20 years and saving and paying bills and helping other artists and hoping it all works out in the end, all the promises you make being kept, etc... that's probably part of the basis. Having a dream of making something that helps a lot of people, and that brings some more great beauty into the world, a world crying out for some beauty, is part of it. And focusing strong and relentless energy and concentrating all your positive thoughts on the outcome and being organized and cooperative and friendly is part of it.

There are probably 3 or 4 plays in all this complexity. Funny plays and sad plays. When all this slows down, and there's time to reflect, some wisdom will trickle out of all these experiences... many painful, many almost unbearably achy, and some humiliating and embarrassing. And these will be the basis of, one hopes, some kind of art. That speaks some truth to people. That communicates the value of hard, positive, focused work and good intentions and good plans.

The time to reflect on all this is coming. That reflection will bring about those many plays. And now we have a machine that can bring those plays to people. Now we need to gather about us all the support we need to make this happen. It must happen.

The NY Times

2006-07-11T23:17:00.000-04:00

Bless you Anita Gates for your review of Food for Fish... it feels great... though... wellll... really all this stuff is really ephemeral, I mean what is the point of anything... "press..." whatever. Still a moment, to breathe and feel maybe something was accomplished... ahhh....

Still we need to sell a bunch of tickets to this thing to keep us out of the poorhouse. Oy. I can complain multi-culturally.

Though it never made the NY Times, in the Daily News the Caption read: "Save the life of my child."

Dunno whar that crap comes from... the sump of the unconscious prob.

My dad, ever the guy from the previous generation, but kind, says blow up the NY Times article and laminate it and post it in the lobby. As if there were room in the Kraine lobby for it. I think we should, make us feel like NY Theatre Workshop or whatever.

Too much-a

2006-06-15T00:04:00.000-04:00

It's-a whadda you say, you know?

A combination of multiple stimuli (stimuluses) has lately been conspiring (if stimuli can conspire) to reduce me to a bundle of over-stressed threads. Self almost completely obfuscated behind said bundle. What threads? Thread: Apartment hunting. Yech. After all the house is closing (hope) in a matter of 2 weeks. Must be done, however who EVER wants to move to a new home? Even a snakepit is better than moving. Moving out of this gorgeous Victorian, though, now that's hard. Thread: Starting the BratFlix festival. That seems to be getting off the ground well. Thread: Managing the Hooker-Dunham and keeping the bills paid. Thread: Writing the prospectus for Susan/Taj's opera. That's yet more stuff to do. Thread: Doing the dayjob dance. That's... well... it just is. Thread: Producing Adam's play (to open July 6 at the Kraine). That's going well. Think. Thread: Getting Larry's piece up to the H-D. Thread: getting workshop pieces up there for retreat work (have heard from many playwrights and each needs care and feeding to get their projects up there).

Yet all is not lost. Morgan Faust, a filmmaker from Brattleboro, has proven amazingly organized and resourceful in helping get the BratFlix festival off the group. The Wonderful Alexis Poledouris the director (bless her soul) and B. Carter Edwards (stage manager) have found us a likely assistant - after my own efforts to find one (on top of all else I hadda do) proved useless.

Yet, dealing with that, I have this messed up kneejerk reaction. It's like 25 years ago when I was doing the EST thing, and had to "sell" workshops, and did OK but was still 1 short for a goal, and a friend brought me a sale. I didn't know how to deal with that. How do you respond when someone is just being really nice to you and doing you a huge thing like that? God. What kinda person are you? Do you feel OK when someone gives you something you need... or do you have that flash like me, where you think, "why am I such a leech?" When you're not really... you're just a nice person and people want to help you.

Where does that crap come from? Having trouble accepting help from others? Inherited from weird parents, or what? Point is, it IS there. Guess the main challenge then with that is to learn to accept the favor anyway.

...Tra : Art...

2006-05-30T23:27:00.000-04:00

Gallery opening tonight for friend Susan Yankowitz's husband's poetry magazine Parnassus at Heidi Cho Gallery. Saw two photos there, wished to buy but didn't buy. Yoy... no money.

Adam Szymkowicz's play coming along the home stretch to production in surges, froths... lots of energy there. New draft came out. Still things to do... however it's coming along fantastically.

You'll be there, won't you? July 6 we open at the Kraine, 85 E 4th, we run 4 weeks mostly Th/Fr/Sat. Cheeeeap tickets... $15. This play is the fuckin funniest thing I've seen in a loooong while, friends, and I read a lot of scripts. End of self-plug.

Have a play opening in Romania about now, however communications are fuzzy. They were supposed to send a check, haven't seen the check... time to fly to Bucharest and COLLECT, man. I got a flurry of emails from them, then promises of payment. No, they didn't ask for my bank account information. Well, they did actually. But I didn't give it to them. Maybe they were really from Nigeria? Heh. My luck, prob-a-ly.

These are the times I wish I still took drugs.

It's not too late.

Actually there's info about it here and I'm listed right next to a production of Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis. Auspicious company.

Now where are those drugs?

Keeping it above water

2006-05-14T10:36:00.000-04:00

First in a series titled: The Trials and Lessons of a playwright recently become Theater Manager

Had some funny feedback today about the Vermont project. Every month all the galleries in Brattleboro get together and organize this thing called Gallery Walk... everyone comes out for it and all the galleries open up to the public. It makes for a nice evening.

The feedback was, the quality of the free food we serve at Gallery Walk is starting to disappoint folks.

In past years, many of the galleries timed their openings for new shows to this event, and many in the traditional "show opening" spirit served food, some times healthful and solid, others lavish.

But over the past year and a half, many galleries in Brattleboro, squeezed by the arid funding climate and reduced art buying by the strapped middle class, have either cut down or eliminated the free eats. In that period, the Hooker-Dunham became known as "the last remaining place" to get a good, classy, free bite. And that supposedly kept it on the itinerary of many residents, despite its lack of a good art show. So it came to pass that folks who were hungry but not particularly interested in seeing a lackluster art show showed up, ate the good eats, and left with their families, leaving only a trail of breadcrumbs in their wake.

Then the Hooker-Dunham fell. And , well, the spirit of Hansel and Gretel aside, we decided when we took over the gallery and theater that our primary responsibility when we came in there was to keep it going. And to eliminate the practices that caused it to previously go through hard times and close. We noticed that we weren't selling a lot of art, that the art shows at the gallery were not well-regarded, and that on gallery walk night most people who did show up, simply grabbed a bite and left.

So we made a judgement call. We cut down our emphasis on a good feed that night, and focused our resources on a better show in the space for Gallery Walk and the month following. We asked a curator whose work looked particularly special to give us a try. She brought much better shows in. We also went from a solid $175 a month in gallery rent to a free arrangement, with the hope that if we could build this right, and attract the right artists, we'd get more art purchases and that would offset the loss of the rent.

Well the gamble is still being tested. Little art has yet been sold, though we definitely have good art in the space and most folks love the shows.

So some residents resent we have de-emphasized the great feed we used to have. They used to show up for the food and they want to know why we're not offering it with the same aplomb.

Well, hm... I guess they're right. For now at least, we think it's more important to have a great art show for people who want to come in and see an art show. We're a gallery, not a restaurant.

And we spent some time looking at the folks that seemed to most relish the food we put out... they typically left immediately after securing victuals. Not a glance at the art. They were just hungry. If you asked them on the way out the door what the name of the space was, or whose art was being shown, or even when the next performing arts show at the theater was going to take place, they'd typically give a blank resentful stare. As if it was an imposition for them to expect anything other than, we're here for the food, lay off.

To my amazement, I was told, that's why we should have first class food, to serve the community's need for good food on gallery walk night. This when all the other galleries in town have either gone to a pay for eat model (like the Museum) or stopped it altogether.

Are we wrong? We seem to be getting good traffic for the gallery. We still do have free food, it's just more frivolous stuff, bruschetta and chips and crudite and cheeese and finger-size hot pizza bites. We're still one of the few serving anything. We would just rather be known for being a great gallery where important artists are being shown. We aren't making anything on the gallery yet, we don't yet have a sponsor to cover this, and in fact we're laying out $80 a month for what we've got, and frankly can't afford that $400 spread any more.

That's the complaint for today... next time I'll talk about the accessibility harpies.

Suddenly the Fringe (part 2)

2005-08-18T21:01:00.000-04:00

So there I was; had read the script before. It wasn't perfect, but it took a Robert Frost poem dead serious and was, well, odd. And odd was good. Most definitely.

Re-read the script and did a whole bunch of charts. I knew blocking a show, with little other directorial input, and without those critical one or two weeks taking the script apart together, would be a challenge. But it was going to get done.

Showed up the first night and spent, as I figured, a good 45 minutes on scene 1. A pretty short scene. Adam got nervous about time, but I reassured him if the first scene in this situation took less than two hours, we were in good shape. He was concerned we'd not get through half the script - in his mind beginning of act II - by end of the four-hour BlockFest I. I said, don't look at it that way, there are 75 pages in the script, 75 minutes onstage. Halfway was really page 35. And that was still in act I. He was reassured.

I had lots of nutty ideas to open the script up. We used commedia characters, we used weird positions onstage, we talked about burying treasure and finding it - to me the heart of comedy. We got to page 35.

It was a getting a play on its feet by the seat of its pants. But it was up, halfway, and it was working.