All The Odd Hours

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Hey! Theatre People! Stop HURTING THEATER!

On Saturday my wife and I went to see a site specific piece about the environment. We went because my sister in law in the video installation had a short movie. Now, until we got there I didn't realize it was going to be one of those site specific pieces which drags the audience from site to site. Generally, I hate that kind of work. Rarely does it work, does moving the audience from place to place actually ADD to the story. I feel more like a child being ushered around a museum where I am talked down to by the guide.

And much to my surprise...I wasn't surprised. It was EXACTLY as I expected.

A piece about the environment where they dragged us around and told us how polluting is bad...

WOW. Shocked! Shocked I am. Polluting bad?! Really!? Holy CRAP, we should do something about that. Really. We should get on that, right now. With the polluting stuff...we should, like, you know...start recycling and using less...

It was bad theater. It talked down to the audience (it was a New York theater going audience, I have a feeling they know pollution is bad and recycling is a good idea), wasn't funny when it needed to be, and was awfully, awfully singular in it's dimension.

Why is it when we're doing outdoor theater we suddenly have to simplify? Why do we have to make it like a political rally organized by 8th graders? Why do we need the silly dance with garbage? Why do we need the conceit that an actor is "late" so the other actors have to "improvise?"

What about this? Let's talk about the real world challenges about moving from a nation that consumes a treMENDOUS amount of oil to one that uses less? If you're going to tell me to eat organic food because it's good for the environment, can we talk about how EXPENSIVE it is?

Let's stop preaching to our audience. Let's actually talk about how complicated things can be.

Oversimplifying and preaching to the choir isn't going to get us anywhere. We need theater to be dynamic, challenging in both substance and style. We need to defy the expectations of our audience, we need to excite their imaginations--not meet them.

Because if we don't...why do we need theater when we have so many other things that surprise us, engage us, and challenge us?

And, oh, and one final thing: can we ban the phrase "it's a complicated time" from our work? Like things weren't complicated previously... Yes, they were. It's a sort of temporal selfishness to assume NOW is more complicated than THEN... Get over it.

So.

The performance went well.

It would have been even better if the audience hadn't gotten slowly more and more impatient with the host all night.

She couldn't remember what was next, she interfered with the acts, and worst of all: she wasn't funny.

Friday, June 5, 2009

waiting...

as a part of the clown show i'm in, which be perfoming at a festival in booklyn, we're doing a cabaret...bits and pieces of the shows...

i'm waiting right now to go on...well the whole show is waiting...rain and fires down in the subway.

i'm suppose to come the audience...but I can't sit in the audience...I would be to nevous, but backsage or where the ticket booth is, I can at least move and stretch.

a wee nervous, let's see how it goes!

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

in a lunch line...

...at chipole...

how about that for a self indulgent blog post?

wurd.

now, I suppose, I should go back to work.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

It's happening again...but isn't that a good thing in this economy?

It looks like I will be writing another Pakistani TV serial. I know you are all fans of my TV work in Pakistan and follow it closely...er, um, yeah.

I just met with someone yesterday and he wants me to do another one. 10 to 15 episodes and based on some English language novel. Something before copyright laws. Something that has romance, a good story, wholesome--did they write unwholesome stories in the 19th Century? Probably, but they don't teach those in English class.

I have to admit though, I'm a little nervous taking on such a project. I have a few other things that I'm working on AND a full time job. I have two spec scripts I'm working on, a show, and a play I'm hoping to return to.

That's the thing with the TV serial job...it's a LOT of work in a very short amount of time, basically 4 months to write a 700 page script by myself. And it's not just sitting down and going, it does require a wee bit of planning.

And it's hard to turn down the job...I would be paid to write. And that's a hell of a lot of fun. It's more fun when it's ALL that I'm doing, but I currently have a day job I like doing to, so I'm not willing to throw it over board yet.

The first thing to do: what story do we look at. And it's funny, the other day I was saying I wanted to read all of Charles Dickens...

...I shouldn't complain...and I AM going to take it...but holy crap I'm going to be busy...how am I going to find the time to watch TV?

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Finally.

I have cracked the egg. well, proverbial egg.

I finaly figured out how to blog with my phone. This website isn't as compatable with my phone as I would like.

Now keep in mind...i'm doing this on my phone so typos WILL abound.

It's been a while, hasn't it? yep.

the show went we'll, but it certainly made me reaize how hard this business is. it is tremendously difficult. harder than one would think. and it's all so intangible...there's no clear path other than keep doing it. keep running into the wal over and over agin.

and while I'm not old, it gets harder to do this as I'm getting older.

But still, I'm not sure what else to do.

so what else? I got a new show coming up...a clown show! I'll be in it. two nights only!

more details to come!

now, i'm gonna go buy some pens.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Opening Night....

Just a friendly reminder:
It’s OPENING NIGHT for On the Night of Anthony’s 30^th Birthday Party…Again…and I hope you have tickets for tonight or some future date.

I wrote the first draft of this play two years ago. A particular moment in my life. And it’s curious and strange feeling to see this play coming to life, it’s a little bit like looking back on my own history—it’s like a diary entry from its moment of first creation.

And because it takes a time to bring a play to the stage (through the rewrites, the readings, the development, the rehearsals, etc.) that moment of first creation gets further and further away, until…I don’t know….well, it feels curious and strange to see a play that WAS you that maybe NO LONGER you.

The author’s relation to material is always different than an audiences. An audience is experiencing it for the first time, but the author has experienced it so many times, in so many different ways.

Last year, I had a show called Umbrella produced. The piece is very critical about what urban life does to the human soul…not the comedy my mom was hoping for…and the piece was first started in a dark period of my life. An audience member came up to me and told me how much they were moved by the play, which was great, and I knew that intellectually, but, in a weird twist, I was surprised. I think it was because I had moved on. I wasn’t…invested…emotionally in this play anymore. I wanted it to succeed, I still do, I think it’s a good piece of work, as is On the Night of Anthony’s 30^th Birthday Party…Again (buy your tickets now: https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/643085) but the work seems outside of me now—something I did, not something I’m doing.

What am I doing? I’m working on a new play: New Horizons Through the Interplanetary Medium. I just had a reading at Potluck Plays, thanks to Heidi Handelsman. And it was great to hear and to find myself in this spot now. Whatever spot that is...

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