It's a purging of sorts. Like, when you're all done doing your laundry and it's fresh and bright, but washing the clothes...you wouldn't want to get in while it's spinning around.
--Maynard James Keenan
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Go Out There and Be Somebody Else
My producer is concerned about the dialects.
He asked me why I think they're necessary and I told him: the two characters, from two different parts of the world, connect and share their experiences with each other via a third language; common to both, but natural to neither. Behrouz doesn't think in English, he thinks in Persian. Irina thinks in Uyghur. Mutual adaptation facilitates their communication, and the result has its idiosyncrasies. To the listener, the byproducts of those imperfections are unique richness and musicality and there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm not staging Gladiator (if that's what you're worried about), with Joaquin Phoenix agonizing his way through faux-Brit just because his character's supposed to be the king of all the other kind-of-British people in Rome.
TA hasn't expressed a problem with the motives behind my position. He's very concerned that dialect work will get in the way of the acting work.
It's heartbreaking to concede it, but there is a valid point there.
In the Chicago storefront scene at large, I see three big deficiencies which sadden me. The first is makeup, the second is movement style, and the third is actors pretending they're other people on stage.
A shortage of makeup is easy to defend: stage makeup is expensive, needs constant replenishing, and anyway the stages are too small to make it necessary. Nobody believes or wants to believe that you (the actor) actually stabbed that guy in scene 3, and at four feet from the audience, the only deep sucking chest wound we can afford on our budget would smell like Hershey's and Palmolive anyway.
Movement style is a bit trickier. "But, Adam," you say, "I keep going out to see imaginative shows in which the actors create all sorts of inventive creatures through movement." I respond "don't count the goblinprowlers and the birdwomen," and if you've seen as much of this stuff as I have, you sadly nod, try to come up with a retort, and sadly nod again. People know the goblinprowler because it's not only easy, it's also a 'level' and Anne Bogart is made happy by it. They do the birdwoman because...I don't really know. I've never worked with a movement choreographer in Chicago. Nobody can afford one, for one thing. Fight choreographers are necessary because you don't want anyone to get hurt, and if there's a dance, somebody usually comes in to stage it and leaves. More dangerous to most directors, though, is that old crime of telling the actors what to do, which is not only bad for creativity but also bruises the poor artist immeasurably. Directors don't want to hear it when you say "Yes, the characters in the Misanthrope were trained to walk and stand a certain way. They were taught that experientially if not formally through living in a society that expected different things from a person." Unfortunately, I know what it looks like when you ask actors to rest on the laurels of their training and create. All the organic creativity you can foster does not guarantee a successful stage picture.
This brings me to that third little tidbit. I had similar conservatory performance training to a lot actors out there. I went to school more recently than some, but the majority of twenty-somethings I work with consider my education positively Smithsonian. I can understand that your eight acting classes focused on "finding the truth" in the work. I only got two semesters of stage movement (and one of those was really combat) and two semesters of dialects. I know that some folks get less. That doesn't mean it's right! That doesn't mean that being able to depart from your own corporal limitations onstage can be considered an elective! That doesn't mean I teachers aren't remiss when they don't address Acting 101 thus: "The job you are pursuing is that of the make-believer. If who you are and what you feel is interesting enough to satisfy an audience, you don't need to do plays or films or voiceovers...you can become a televangelist and make more money. What an actor needs to do is go out there and be somebody else. You are learning to be a liar. A bad actor is one who the audience knows is lying, but a really bad actor is the only one who thinks s/he's telling the truth up there."
Do you know how to tell that actors don't know this? It's one simple sentence which I'm sure each of us has said at least once:
"I don't think my character would do that."
In response to this, most directors either capitulate or spend scads of man-hours helping the actor search for a justification for the action the play needs. Seldom does a director give the efficient answer: "Yes, your character certainly does that. I know this because it's in the play. The play is a history of a fiction and you are simply a re-enactor of that preexisting record."
We (directors) never say that because we (actors) are always mortified to hear it. It's because we don't trust us with our work unless we know we really care.
And vice-versa. Still with me?
Why is so much emphasis placed on making sure creativity feels good for the artist and so little on making sure it feels good for the consumer? Why can't we say "you would be better at what you do if you had a broader arsenal of dialects and movement vocabulary and you stopped trying so hard to find yourself in the text"?
I want to see a world where acting teachers can compartmentalize that old sense memory and emotional recall stuff into a big box and label it JUST PART OF THE ART (does not allow user to fly). That little utopia, though, is contingent on an agreement to shrug off the timeless myth that Creative People Are Just Touchy That Way. We need to trust the artist with the truth that s/he's a liar. S/he needs to deserve that trust be being good at lying. We can graduate to that "lie which is nearest to the truth" stuff only once the first part's been established.
So, seriously, should I expect actors to be able and willing to speak in funny voices, walk in unnatural ways and throttle a swan without trying to rationalize what would catalyze themselves to throttle a swan? Should I be able to ask them to do all this convincingly? I think I should. The fact that so many can't or won't is institutional--I recognize that. The actor who knows and trusts enough to do these things has become the exception to the rule. Until the happy day arrives, I guess, we just have to work with exceptional actors.
The cast of Fucking Parasites, by the way, are exceptional actors.
He asked me why I think they're necessary and I told him: the two characters, from two different parts of the world, connect and share their experiences with each other via a third language; common to both, but natural to neither. Behrouz doesn't think in English, he thinks in Persian. Irina thinks in Uyghur. Mutual adaptation facilitates their communication, and the result has its idiosyncrasies. To the listener, the byproducts of those imperfections are unique richness and musicality and there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm not staging Gladiator (if that's what you're worried about), with Joaquin Phoenix agonizing his way through faux-Brit just because his character's supposed to be the king of all the other kind-of-British people in Rome.
TA hasn't expressed a problem with the motives behind my position. He's very concerned that dialect work will get in the way of the acting work.
It's heartbreaking to concede it, but there is a valid point there.
In the Chicago storefront scene at large, I see three big deficiencies which sadden me. The first is makeup, the second is movement style, and the third is actors pretending they're other people on stage.
A shortage of makeup is easy to defend: stage makeup is expensive, needs constant replenishing, and anyway the stages are too small to make it necessary. Nobody believes or wants to believe that you (the actor) actually stabbed that guy in scene 3, and at four feet from the audience, the only deep sucking chest wound we can afford on our budget would smell like Hershey's and Palmolive anyway.
Movement style is a bit trickier. "But, Adam," you say, "I keep going out to see imaginative shows in which the actors create all sorts of inventive creatures through movement." I respond "don't count the goblinprowlers and the birdwomen," and if you've seen as much of this stuff as I have, you sadly nod, try to come up with a retort, and sadly nod again. People know the goblinprowler because it's not only easy, it's also a 'level' and Anne Bogart is made happy by it. They do the birdwoman because...I don't really know. I've never worked with a movement choreographer in Chicago. Nobody can afford one, for one thing. Fight choreographers are necessary because you don't want anyone to get hurt, and if there's a dance, somebody usually comes in to stage it and leaves. More dangerous to most directors, though, is that old crime of telling the actors what to do, which is not only bad for creativity but also bruises the poor artist immeasurably. Directors don't want to hear it when you say "Yes, the characters in the Misanthrope were trained to walk and stand a certain way. They were taught that experientially if not formally through living in a society that expected different things from a person." Unfortunately, I know what it looks like when you ask actors to rest on the laurels of their training and create. All the organic creativity you can foster does not guarantee a successful stage picture.
This brings me to that third little tidbit. I had similar conservatory performance training to a lot actors out there. I went to school more recently than some, but the majority of twenty-somethings I work with consider my education positively Smithsonian. I can understand that your eight acting classes focused on "finding the truth" in the work. I only got two semesters of stage movement (and one of those was really combat) and two semesters of dialects. I know that some folks get less. That doesn't mean it's right! That doesn't mean that being able to depart from your own corporal limitations onstage can be considered an elective! That doesn't mean I teachers aren't remiss when they don't address Acting 101 thus: "The job you are pursuing is that of the make-believer. If who you are and what you feel is interesting enough to satisfy an audience, you don't need to do plays or films or voiceovers...you can become a televangelist and make more money. What an actor needs to do is go out there and be somebody else. You are learning to be a liar. A bad actor is one who the audience knows is lying, but a really bad actor is the only one who thinks s/he's telling the truth up there."
Do you know how to tell that actors don't know this? It's one simple sentence which I'm sure each of us has said at least once:
"I don't think my character would do that."
In response to this, most directors either capitulate or spend scads of man-hours helping the actor search for a justification for the action the play needs. Seldom does a director give the efficient answer: "Yes, your character certainly does that. I know this because it's in the play. The play is a history of a fiction and you are simply a re-enactor of that preexisting record."
We (directors) never say that because we (actors) are always mortified to hear it. It's because we don't trust us with our work unless we know we really care.
And vice-versa. Still with me?
Why is so much emphasis placed on making sure creativity feels good for the artist and so little on making sure it feels good for the consumer? Why can't we say "you would be better at what you do if you had a broader arsenal of dialects and movement vocabulary and you stopped trying so hard to find yourself in the text"?
I want to see a world where acting teachers can compartmentalize that old sense memory and emotional recall stuff into a big box and label it JUST PART OF THE ART (does not allow user to fly). That little utopia, though, is contingent on an agreement to shrug off the timeless myth that Creative People Are Just Touchy That Way. We need to trust the artist with the truth that s/he's a liar. S/he needs to deserve that trust be being good at lying. We can graduate to that "lie which is nearest to the truth" stuff only once the first part's been established.
So, seriously, should I expect actors to be able and willing to speak in funny voices, walk in unnatural ways and throttle a swan without trying to rationalize what would catalyze themselves to throttle a swan? Should I be able to ask them to do all this convincingly? I think I should. The fact that so many can't or won't is institutional--I recognize that. The actor who knows and trusts enough to do these things has become the exception to the rule. Until the happy day arrives, I guess, we just have to work with exceptional actors.
The cast of Fucking Parasites, by the way, are exceptional actors.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Field Promotions: Anne Bogart= General Insipidity, Don Hall= Colonel of Wisdom
I'm preparing to direct, so what better than to read A Director Prepares by Anne Bogart? Specifically, I'm directing two actors a few years my junior, and I felt it appropriate to try to better understand the vocabulary of actors with more recent training. I graduated in 2002, which was to my reckoning about six minutes before educators everywhere started thumping on Viewpoints like it was the Fourth Testament. Since then, I've participated in numerous productions in which the very word "viewpoints" became a director's short-hand for "disjointed exercises you won't appreciate because I myself don't understand why we're doing them." This observation can't be taken as reflection on the book or the technique as the author presented them: I understand that as well as anyone who has ever cringed or rolled his eyes at someone's usage of the words "Stanislavski" and "system". It did, however give me a (perhaps unfair) aversion to Bogart's work sight unseen.
I still haven't read Viewpoints. I'm pretty sure there's great stuff in there, but the most thoughtful reviews I've gotten are that there's nothing new or even new to me, that Anne just presented it in a new and accessible way. This jibes with a long paragraph at the very beginning of A Director Prepares wherein Bogart adulates Charles Mee for what she considers his unique comprehension of the role of the artist in shaping societal values. She doesn't seem to notice that she, through Chuck, has simply distilled Joseph Campbell's life's work in comparative mythology into a fragment too insignificant for a back-cover blurb.
I'm trying to make my way through the book. I really am. Everyone who knows more than me says that there is wealth in there and I'm not so myopic as to deny my intelligent friends the benefit of the doubt.
So far, though, it's kind of killing me.
I need you to reinforce me. Bolster my resolve! Maybe just hint at the magic to come further into the book. Tell me that reading the first eleven pages over and over again, plumbing for some meaning, is not the way to appreciate a text--because right now I just keep wrestling with the following passage:
"A scuba diver lies first in the water and waits until the entire ocean floor below begins to teem with life. Then the swimmer begins to move. This is how I study. I listen until there is movement and then I begin to swim."
...I mean...crickets.
If this had been followed by a winky emoticon, I would have been much less disturbed. I wouldn't have momentarily glimpsed the Art World as conservatives see it: a Bacchan cesspit filled with butterflies, zebras, moonbeams and rabid stupidity.
Please, if anyone ever hears me say something like that up there, make sure I'm joking or strike me about the neck and shoulders.
And tell me that Bogart gets better.
For Contrast:
Last evening at rehearsal for Devils Don't Forget, the following was bestowed upon the fortunate cast and crew by Mr. Don Hall (AWGiC and our very own Udo):
Right! It'll give her a moment to ffffffssshht!
And him a minute to thing...
And then a...and there's, and a...
It's a tableau?!?!
And in the background you hear buh-doom
doom
doom
boom...
He's not even the director, ladies and germs. That's just what he, as collaborator, has to offer to the process. Do we need to pay to read the hippy-dippy fantasias of every boomer who ever opened an E.T.C. when true insight--experiential wisdom--like Don's is right in front of us and free of charge?
I still haven't read Viewpoints. I'm pretty sure there's great stuff in there, but the most thoughtful reviews I've gotten are that there's nothing new or even new to me, that Anne just presented it in a new and accessible way. This jibes with a long paragraph at the very beginning of A Director Prepares wherein Bogart adulates Charles Mee for what she considers his unique comprehension of the role of the artist in shaping societal values. She doesn't seem to notice that she, through Chuck, has simply distilled Joseph Campbell's life's work in comparative mythology into a fragment too insignificant for a back-cover blurb.
I'm trying to make my way through the book. I really am. Everyone who knows more than me says that there is wealth in there and I'm not so myopic as to deny my intelligent friends the benefit of the doubt.
So far, though, it's kind of killing me.
I need you to reinforce me. Bolster my resolve! Maybe just hint at the magic to come further into the book. Tell me that reading the first eleven pages over and over again, plumbing for some meaning, is not the way to appreciate a text--because right now I just keep wrestling with the following passage:
"A scuba diver lies first in the water and waits until the entire ocean floor below begins to teem with life. Then the swimmer begins to move. This is how I study. I listen until there is movement and then I begin to swim."
...I mean...crickets.
If this had been followed by a winky emoticon, I would have been much less disturbed. I wouldn't have momentarily glimpsed the Art World as conservatives see it: a Bacchan cesspit filled with butterflies, zebras, moonbeams and rabid stupidity.
Please, if anyone ever hears me say something like that up there, make sure I'm joking or strike me about the neck and shoulders.
And tell me that Bogart gets better.
For Contrast:
Last evening at rehearsal for Devils Don't Forget, the following was bestowed upon the fortunate cast and crew by Mr. Don Hall (AWGiC and our very own Udo):
Right! It'll give her a moment to ffffffssshht!
And him a minute to thing...
And then a...and there's, and a...
It's a tableau?!?!
And in the background you hear buh-doom
doom
doom
boom...
He's not even the director, ladies and germs. That's just what he, as collaborator, has to offer to the process. Do we need to pay to read the hippy-dippy fantasias of every boomer who ever opened an E.T.C. when true insight--experiential wisdom--like Don's is right in front of us and free of charge?
Monday, March 16, 2009
a Cuban sandwich and I discuss the horizon
I don't know about you, but I'd much rather spend the afternoon with a bocadillo Cubano than a cigarro Cubano. I adopted one from La Unica on Devon yesterday (look this place up...truly a hidden treasure) and we exchanged anecdotes and philosophical quips and then I ate it.
I'm not a man given to acts of spontaneous allegorical metaphor*, but I'm pretty sure that my Cuban sandwich comprised, in the very essence of its porky pickley being, well...the universe.
Here is a thing which is all around me, but which I rarely consider except in fleeting flights of whimsy. Vast temporal expanses grind by inexorably without so much as a cursory acknowledgment from me that it even exists. When it truly catches my attention, though, I yearn for it. I pursue it voraciously, unrelentingly. I achieve it. I consume it. I savor it briefly and then I no longer possess it. I am stricken with melancholy and longing until I am distracted and forget. Here is the universe: a Cuban sandwich.
See what I'm getting at?
Yesterday, my sandwich and I looked at the horizon.
The spring and summer in front of me are shaping up to be my best ever. I've got two very exciting theatre projects cooking, my day job makes me happy, and my scratch-built computer has just enough chops to play Fallout 3.
I'm sure you care deeply about the latter two and that's sweet of you, but how about the projects?!
Fucking Parasites: I'm directing this play for the Alcyone Festival. That's the name of the play, by the way, I'm not just addressing you as if I were R. Lee Ermy. Fucking Parasites is the first English-language offering by Ninna Tersman, a Swedish playwright living in New Zealand. It won the 2008 Playmarket Award for best new play in New Zealand, but as far as I know, it hasn't gotten a fully realized production anywhere in the world. It involves the relationship between two teenage asylum-seekers in a New Zealand Refugee Status Branch Detention Center. The acerbic title belies a play that I find to be quite tender and warm. I had worried a little bit about finding two actors who could portray the characters' ages and ethnicities convincingly and, at the same time, who were capable and intuitive enough that I in all my limitations would be good enough to direct them. As it turns out, I should have given the casting pool more credit. I had to choose two out of a stupendous group of unbelievable actors. In the end, I managed to whittle my callback list down to fifteen and I was heartbroken that I didn't have roles for all of them. I've got my cast, though, finally, and I feel great about that.
In other news, I just got an email from none other than Ninna Tersman assenting that, yes, she'd very much like to open a dialogue with me about the play. This has me walking about a foot off the ground. If I can talk her into letting me post some of our conversations up here, I will.
Devils Don't Forget: Bob Fisher at the Mammals invited me to work on this amazing original play a week ago. The whole thing happened for me sort of by serendipity: at the Halcyon generals, I was feeling envious of all the actors who got to get and do their monologues while I had to sit behind the table and be under so much pressure (yes, actors, Shurtleff isn't screwing with you, it's really much more stressful on the directing side). So I asked if, in the empty space between real actors, I could get up and kick around some things I'd never get a chance to do when I was actually up for a part. I did a Zelda Fitzgerald monologue from Clothes for a Summer Hotel (I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm not likely to get cast as Zelda anytime soon) and a poem that I'd written years ago that Chuy seems to like. Much to my surprise, Bob (who'd been at the Halcyon audition to cast his own Alcyone project, Blessed Child) emailed me days later and said he needed someone to fill a part and asked if I was interested.
I read the script and I was just floored. I don't want to give too much away, but the character I was offered was one of the most imaginative and bizarre roles I've ever gotten a shot at, and the play is such an unlikely twist on a familiar trope that I couldn't say no. I've been to a grand total of one rehearsal so far, and I'm loving the process and the people and I can't wait till everybody gets to see this.
My horizon is bright. I am chasing it like a kitten chases a laser pointer and I'm so a-fluster that I'm crossing similes and mixing imageries and the whole thing totally loses cohesion (but in a good way). My Cuban sandwich shared my schoolboy optimism right until I ate it, and even in my tummy it seemed to say "Go, Adam. You just go, man." Thanks, Amigo Bocadillo.
I have so much more to chatter on about, but I'll wrap up here, for now. Someone keeps telling me that I'm not at all terse, despite my lengthy and elaborate arguments to that end. Well, sir, I won't give her the satisfaction of having a protracted and meandering monograph for her to call "exhibit A". Brief and to the point is the way to go. Until next time.
*In truth, I might be a man given to acts of spontaneous allegorical metaphor.
I'm not a man given to acts of spontaneous allegorical metaphor*, but I'm pretty sure that my Cuban sandwich comprised, in the very essence of its porky pickley being, well...the universe.
Here is a thing which is all around me, but which I rarely consider except in fleeting flights of whimsy. Vast temporal expanses grind by inexorably without so much as a cursory acknowledgment from me that it even exists. When it truly catches my attention, though, I yearn for it. I pursue it voraciously, unrelentingly. I achieve it. I consume it. I savor it briefly and then I no longer possess it. I am stricken with melancholy and longing until I am distracted and forget. Here is the universe: a Cuban sandwich.
See what I'm getting at?
Yesterday, my sandwich and I looked at the horizon.
The spring and summer in front of me are shaping up to be my best ever. I've got two very exciting theatre projects cooking, my day job makes me happy, and my scratch-built computer has just enough chops to play Fallout 3.
I'm sure you care deeply about the latter two and that's sweet of you, but how about the projects?!
Fucking Parasites: I'm directing this play for the Alcyone Festival. That's the name of the play, by the way, I'm not just addressing you as if I were R. Lee Ermy. Fucking Parasites is the first English-language offering by Ninna Tersman, a Swedish playwright living in New Zealand. It won the 2008 Playmarket Award for best new play in New Zealand, but as far as I know, it hasn't gotten a fully realized production anywhere in the world. It involves the relationship between two teenage asylum-seekers in a New Zealand Refugee Status Branch Detention Center. The acerbic title belies a play that I find to be quite tender and warm. I had worried a little bit about finding two actors who could portray the characters' ages and ethnicities convincingly and, at the same time, who were capable and intuitive enough that I in all my limitations would be good enough to direct them. As it turns out, I should have given the casting pool more credit. I had to choose two out of a stupendous group of unbelievable actors. In the end, I managed to whittle my callback list down to fifteen and I was heartbroken that I didn't have roles for all of them. I've got my cast, though, finally, and I feel great about that.
In other news, I just got an email from none other than Ninna Tersman assenting that, yes, she'd very much like to open a dialogue with me about the play. This has me walking about a foot off the ground. If I can talk her into letting me post some of our conversations up here, I will.
Devils Don't Forget: Bob Fisher at the Mammals invited me to work on this amazing original play a week ago. The whole thing happened for me sort of by serendipity: at the Halcyon generals, I was feeling envious of all the actors who got to get and do their monologues while I had to sit behind the table and be under so much pressure (yes, actors, Shurtleff isn't screwing with you, it's really much more stressful on the directing side). So I asked if, in the empty space between real actors, I could get up and kick around some things I'd never get a chance to do when I was actually up for a part. I did a Zelda Fitzgerald monologue from Clothes for a Summer Hotel (I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm not likely to get cast as Zelda anytime soon) and a poem that I'd written years ago that Chuy seems to like. Much to my surprise, Bob (who'd been at the Halcyon audition to cast his own Alcyone project, Blessed Child) emailed me days later and said he needed someone to fill a part and asked if I was interested.
I read the script and I was just floored. I don't want to give too much away, but the character I was offered was one of the most imaginative and bizarre roles I've ever gotten a shot at, and the play is such an unlikely twist on a familiar trope that I couldn't say no. I've been to a grand total of one rehearsal so far, and I'm loving the process and the people and I can't wait till everybody gets to see this.
My horizon is bright. I am chasing it like a kitten chases a laser pointer and I'm so a-fluster that I'm crossing similes and mixing imageries and the whole thing totally loses cohesion (but in a good way). My Cuban sandwich shared my schoolboy optimism right until I ate it, and even in my tummy it seemed to say "Go, Adam. You just go, man." Thanks, Amigo Bocadillo.
I have so much more to chatter on about, but I'll wrap up here, for now. Someone keeps telling me that I'm not at all terse, despite my lengthy and elaborate arguments to that end. Well, sir, I won't give her the satisfaction of having a protracted and meandering monograph for her to call "exhibit A". Brief and to the point is the way to go. Until next time.
*In truth, I might be a man given to acts of spontaneous allegorical metaphor.
Friday, March 13, 2009
because Chicago needs another theatre blog
Welcome to Pheidio Eimi.
I'm Adam. I'm a Company member at Halcyon Theatre in Chicago, a sometime writer, sometime performer, sometime director, and occasional designer. I'm self-absorbed, self-important, and I don't even have the spine that these three guys have to call it like I see it. Instead, I'm usually smarmy and passive-aggressive and when people ask how my day is I say "wonderful" when what I mean is "I was up all night mopping my kitchen because a pipe burst upstairs".
My policy is "If you don't have anything nice to say, make shit up." I went to college to learn to be a liar, and if you don't think a theatre degree will pay the bills, you're myopic.
What does this mean to you, the consumer? Essentially, it means don't pay too much attention to any review I potentially write.
Yeah, I'll probably write a review or two. It's a sticky issue for a lot of theatre people who also write blogs, I know. I have tossed around the ethics of the thing and arrived at the following position: I will write reviews of only plays that I think are worth seeing. I won't necessarily write a good review (I've been known to hate productions that are worth seeing) and I can't be expected to write a review well, but, if 100% of the reviews I write can be considered tacit endorsements, there will be no outrage, right.
So, if I write something like this-
"The latest scatological offering from the pustules at Schtepenvulf was a raucous celebration reminiscent of the best college parties: it ended in shame, nausea and a cadence of 'never again'."
-what I really mean is you should absolutely go see whatever Sarah Ruhl retread they're dragging out this time...because if I don't think you should bother, the review will look like this:
Sound good? Do we have an accord?
Anyway, I'm not going to review anything for a while. I've just cast my summer Alcyone Festival production, Fucking Parasites by Ninna Tersman , and I got cast as a replacement in the next Mammals play, Devils Don't Forget. I am extremely psyched about both of these and will spend most of my blog time discussing these processes for the time being.
That's enough exposition. If this post were an audition monologue, Bob Fisher would not cast me.
Check back soon! I'm sure that eventually one of these posts will be informative and entertaining.
I'm Adam. I'm a Company member at Halcyon Theatre in Chicago, a sometime writer, sometime performer, sometime director, and occasional designer. I'm self-absorbed, self-important, and I don't even have the spine that these three guys have to call it like I see it. Instead, I'm usually smarmy and passive-aggressive and when people ask how my day is I say "wonderful" when what I mean is "I was up all night mopping my kitchen because a pipe burst upstairs".
My policy is "If you don't have anything nice to say, make shit up." I went to college to learn to be a liar, and if you don't think a theatre degree will pay the bills, you're myopic.
What does this mean to you, the consumer? Essentially, it means don't pay too much attention to any review I potentially write.
Yeah, I'll probably write a review or two. It's a sticky issue for a lot of theatre people who also write blogs, I know. I have tossed around the ethics of the thing and arrived at the following position: I will write reviews of only plays that I think are worth seeing. I won't necessarily write a good review (I've been known to hate productions that are worth seeing) and I can't be expected to write a review well, but, if 100% of the reviews I write can be considered tacit endorsements, there will be no outrage, right.
So, if I write something like this-
"The latest scatological offering from the pustules at Schtepenvulf was a raucous celebration reminiscent of the best college parties: it ended in shame, nausea and a cadence of 'never again'."
-what I really mean is you should absolutely go see whatever Sarah Ruhl retread they're dragging out this time...because if I don't think you should bother, the review will look like this:
Sound good? Do we have an accord?
Anyway, I'm not going to review anything for a while. I've just cast my summer Alcyone Festival production, Fucking Parasites by Ninna Tersman , and I got cast as a replacement in the next Mammals play, Devils Don't Forget. I am extremely psyched about both of these and will spend most of my blog time discussing these processes for the time being.
That's enough exposition. If this post were an audition monologue, Bob Fisher would not cast me.
Check back soon! I'm sure that eventually one of these posts will be informative and entertaining.
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