Available light [theatre]

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We now have a CafePress store, and there are many nice t-shirts. I particularly recommend the fitted t-shirts. They're made by American Apparel and are therefore sweatshop-free.

Wearing an Avilable light t-shirt is a great way to look good, help get the word out, and let the world know that you stand for progress.

Here's picture of the cool black t with the Al[t] logo.

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And, PS, thanks for your support.

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We did our un-official Columbus preview performance tonight. It went really rather well. Going into it, I wasn't even sure if I would do the last 3 scenes, because I haven't memorized my lines yet. But, when I got there, I was having a good time, so I just kept going.

We had 4 people in attendance, which isn't great, but they were the 4 perfect people. Thank you very much to them. Very, very much. I was very gratful to have someone to talk to. Dave's great, but he's usually looking at his computer.

A strange thing was that I forgot an entire poem. It's in the middle of the rap. (Yes, if you didn't know before, you do know. I rap in this show.) Anyway ... it's in the middle of the rap, but somehow I got off and skipped to the end and didn't even realize I'd skipped one of my favorite parts of the show. I don't know how it happened. Wow.

But, all in all, it was really fun, and I do think those 4 people got their money's worth.

And ... Dan Welsh came by with his super-spiffy camera and shot some crystal clear footage of the show. So, we've reduced it's quality to nil so we could post it here on the web for you.
Enjoy!

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Great rehearsals the past couple of days. Tonight really kicked ass for me. It was the first time we actually ran through the entire show. I wasn't really nervous about the ending, because I've been working on some of it for longer than anything else in the show. But, it's important, and the show felt incomplete in my mind without a sense of how we were going to do it, how it was going to feel and sound.

So, we rocked all the way until the end. It was fun. The show ran 50 minutes and it actually feels worthwhile, like it has value. I knew I wouldn't be caught dead doing something I didn't believe in, but there was some question of if I would ever be convinced that someone might enjoy watching this show. So, I'm saying it here for the whole world to read - "I think this show has value. I think it's worth seeing. Some of you may even enjoy it." So ... there.

Seriously, it's a good feeling. I've had a weird sort of tension on my left side the past week and I wondered if my heart was having problems or if it was the manifestation of some larger issue. Well, I'm pretty convinced now that it was the manifestation of a smaller issue, that issue being the show. I've got very, very little tension right now, and I think it's because I'm feeling so good about the show. Tomorrow of course, when I face trying to remember all those words in front of people, it'll be a different story, I'm sure I'll be tense as hell (in fact, I'm getting pretty tense right now just thinking about it). Anyway ... onward.

I wonder if anyone's coming tomorrow.

Oh, I know more people read the whole thing if there are pictures at the end. So, here are a couple of crappy cell phone pictures of Dave's (AKA sound designer extraordinaire AKA DJ Easy D) rehearsal set-up. Enjoy!

We've been hard at work the past week or so. Sorry about the lack of blogging, but it's been a difficult week for various personal and professional reasons.

Jennifer left town on Monday and I spent the first couple days of the week rehearsing on my own, just running through what I had done so far. Working on the lines, which I hate doing. I'm much, much happier after I get my lines down.

Anyway ... Dave came back last night, Wednesday and we had a great night, ran through everything twice. Same thing tonight, until the storms hit and the lights went out at the church. Still, we're making real progress.

We're feeling the heat of our Sunday deadline. We're going to present whatever we can to a small, invited audience in Columbus. The purpose is to learn what we can from the audience reactions and to scare the crap out of us enough to make sure we get everything done before the last possible second. It's not that we like to procrastinate, but sometimes even the most dedicated people like to nap and browse the internet.

Anyway. Here's a picture of the church where we've been rehearsing. I actually took it a couple of weeks ago. Our room is the one alllll the way at the top.

And here's one of Dave checking out the weather tonight. This was about 30 minutes before the world went black and the lighning was scaring the crap out of us.

Anyway. The Fringe kick-off party is tomorrow night. Much to my regrets, I don't think I'm going to make it. Too bad, it's always a good time, but I think I need to rehearse, and maybe go see my fiance's show, and maybe go get pissed off at X3 too.

I can tell you that at this point I have 2 full pages yet to memorize and one scene yet to block. So, that's probably a little more work than I'd like to have with the Columbus preview staring me in the face, but just fine considering I have another week till we open in Cincy.

See you all there!

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A couple of days ago we found out that the performance space at Kaldi's in Cincinnati will be significantly smaller than we anticipated. This initially presented a pretty serious difficulties based on the movement that we'd set for the show thus far. Throwing a chair behind me when the wall is only 5 feet away is just plain a bad idea. So, Dave and I had a couple days of feeling very frustrated.

But, once I got some rest and got a lot of tedious things done (a good way to open your brain up) I started thinking about ways to use the situation to our advantage. This led to an almost complete re-conceptualization of the show on my part. A little crazy at this point, perhaps, but totally necessary as I see it. I re-wrote the opening of the play, too.

The plan at this point involves packing as much stuff as humanly possible into our tiny 8'x5' performance space and using the obstacles to re-enforce the themes of the show. After all, it's all about the absurdity of trying to make art. So, we're going to make that absurdity a little more concrete and present through the physical life of the play. I'm excited and looking forward to a good rehearsal.

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So I took pictures of myself today, attempting to capture one image decent enough to send to the Fringe Festival as a press photo. I borrowed John's digital camera (Thanks, John!) last night and picked up an old typewriter from Actors Theatre of Columbus (Thanks, other John!) and today I cleared some space in my living room to take the shots.

Here are some of the pics that didn't make the cut, in chronological order.

That one's not too bad, but it was just the test shot.

It's not an act, I'm really in pain. That thing was heavy and had lots of sharp edges.

And there were about 20 more that were so bad I won't even put them up here.

FYI, I hung that piece of paper in the corner to make sure I knew where to stand.

None of these were sent in. As for what was my final choice, you'll just have to wait and see.

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I hope those of you watching this appreciate my willingness to humiliate myself. Seriously. When you see me flopping around on the floor in this video, remember, I'm doin it for the art.

Dave returned to rehearsal with a vengeance tonight. He even got me rapping by the end. (Yes, there's some of that on the video as well. Good grief.) I was pretty tired though, and we cut out early.

John Dranschak shot the video and gave some useful advice. Thanks dude.

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The word of the day is tedium. Sometimes you spend 5 mintues of a rehearsal trying to figure out one little detail. Sometimes you spend most of a rehearsal feeling frustrated because you don't know all your lines yet. Sometimes you look back on a rehearsal and feel slightly embarrassed. And then, if you're me, you put it on display for the whole world wide web.
Enjoy the movie.

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I want to send a lot of love and many thanx to those of you who responded to our first Al[t] email announcement with such enthusiasm and caring and support. You know who you are.

I was extrememly nervous about sending that email, and it meant the world to me to get that kind of response. Thank you so much. We couldn't do this without you.

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Back to work and it feels so good. I failed to mention on Monday that I moved out of my apartment and into another work space at the King Ave. Methodist Church here in Bustown. They've always been good to us and this time is no exception. We have a favorite room on the third (or 4th, depending on how you look at it) floor, way up high. It's the only room on the floor, very isolated, nice and big, lots of windows, and a nice view. We can be pretty loud up there without anyone complaining. It's great to have a place with no distractions, I've really been much, much more productive.

Tonight I had help from both John Dranschak and Ian Short. Hooray! They both manned the camera at times, and they both helped direct me through a scene on which I had done no work whatsoever. It was the only scene in the show with which I really had no idea what I was going to do. Ian even did some ViewPointing with me, which was GREAT. That's the part in the video where we're running and falling over each other.

So, yes, there's some video. It's long, too, since we've been doing without for a while. I also tried to trace the process a little more clearly, since we used it so well this evening.

Warning: I got a little cross-fade crazy on this one. Sorry, but it's 2:33am, I'm getting on a bus for the Chicago Hip Hop Theatre Fest in less than 7 hours, so I'm not re-editting the video. But, I hope you enjoy it.

See you next week.

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How do people rehearse alone? Seriously, I know some of you out there do it, but I just can't get used to it. Lucky for me, herr direktor extraordinaire, John Dranschak, stopped by for the last 45 minutes of my rehearsal to save me from certain disaster. I'd spent the first 90 minutes running around in circles, struggling through my lines, and shouting off that list of names. I'm getting pretty good with most of the lines and movement I've rehearsed so far, but I'm ready to move on to some new material.

John is very insightful, and he and I work well together, since our collaboration goes back almost 20 years now. (JD & Slay, Est. 1988) Okay, I need to take a minute to deal with my age.

Okay, that's done.

JD was most complimentary about the part I'm most nervous about, so that was very comforting. It was great to get concrete notes and have someone with an objective eye tell me that it doesn't look like a total mess. Another month of work and it might just be worth seeing.

Next rehearsal is Wednesday. I promise some video, over hell or high water.

Oh, and if you're reading this - thanx.

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From Scrappy Jack's World-Wide Theatricals and Dime Museum ...

1. Did you choose the stage for vanity?
2. Did you think it was a place to hide?
3. What makes you think people have time to sit and quietly admire your beautiful work of art?
4. What makes you think you have time to sit and carefully craft your beautiful work of art?
5. When Artaud called for no more masterpieces, did you see some sort of exception that applied to you?
6. Why spend your time saying dead men's words, whispering bedtime stories to a bored and sullen elite, when you can speak your own words, shouting terror, joy and revolution in front of enemies and friends?
7. If you're not entertaining an audience, what exactly are you doing out there?

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I'd like to start with this quotation from Ian W. Hill's Collisionworks blog. It comes from the midst of a discussion about the director's role in realtion to the playwright and the text.

In the end, the text, to me, is a chair. I've been given a drawing of a chair and told to make it real. The rules in making this chair real are:

A. The chair must function (people should be able to sit in it without it falling apart)
B. The chair should be comfortable (it should not be unpleasant to sit in)
C. It would be nice if the chair looked good and was well designed aethestically.

The most beautifully designed chair in the world is still a BAD CHAIR if you can't sit in it without it falling apart.

Okay, here's what we're onto now. We go back into rehearsal tonight for Poetry. We've also been busy putting together a smallish workshop of Jenn Fawcett's still-untitled play (which used to be called The Hurricane Project and needs a new title for obvious reasons). Hopefully, we'll end up with two small, public readings of the play, with time for extensive talkbacks afterwards. The next step after that will be to schedule our production of the piece. (Well, not the NEXT step, but one of the next few.)

We're getting together a great group of actors for the readings. If you're reading this, you'll probably be invivted to see these "performances" and discuss the play with us, so watch this space for more info.

I've been thinking a lot about the immigration issues that have, for the moment, captured the nation's attention. Today is "A Day Without Immigrants." I was really excited, and it sounds like there are probably some great things going on in Chicago, NYC, L.A., Miami, and other bigger cities. I know that a couple of big events in Columbus were cancelled, and that's disappointing. Anyway ... it's an issue I've had on my mind for awhile, and I've spent a lot of time reading, and thinking about how to deal with it in a theatrical context. It'd be hard and scary and would require a lot of new skills. So, it's probably a really good idea. But, I haven't quite figured it out yet. I'm going to keep trying, though. Hopefully you'll be hearing more about this in the future.