Poetry & Blindfolds

Rehearsals for ‘The Woman In Black’ continue at a breakneck pace – four to five rehearsals a week, not counting the hours I read, re-read and act out my scenes on my deck in the middle of the night.  Unfortunately, this has pushed my work on ‘Today Is Stupid’ from the front burner to the back burner, off the stove completely and then back into the cabinet.  However, with respect to TIS, I have gone through all the footage and now just need a simple, stupid day to start in on some cobbling.

 

Many rehearsals for ‘The Woman In Black’ have taken place in a church.  Until recently, I have been able to count on one hand the times I have feasted my eyes on God’s House, complete with proud pictures of his son – albeit ones in which his son is being tortured.  I’m sure parents of the prisoners at Aru Ghraib have pictures of their kids naked, simulating sex acts and being threatened with a dog inches away from their face.  But this is Christianity, so all I have is the one guy with nails and thorns stuck in him.   Our director works at this particular church, and I can only assume we have rehearsed there because the company is young and is too short on funds to rent a proper place.

 

Several of these church rehearsals have taken place in the main church bit – you know, the bits with the pews, choir seating, stage and the signs indicating which hymm the patrons (?) are to sing for the next service.  As a heathen atheist, it is somewhat like … well, I can’t think of an analogy, but suffice to say that it’s WEIRD.  Standing on that stage, I am reminded of how theater and religion were once, thousands of years ago, one entity.  It doesn’t make me feel too comfortable being there, mind you, but it gives me a enough solace to do my lines.

 

However, the oddest moment came when the director brought in a dialect coach to work with my acting partner and me (we play English folks and I play eight others from the same general region, but different).  He was very English himself, and slightly older than me, so we got along very well at the start.  We were able to discuss various accents and cite numerous actors (Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Terry-Thomas, David Tennant, etc.) as good source material, but I feared that many of the names and works we chatted about were slightly lost on my director and acting partner – not because of any lack in their character, but only in their years on the planet.  I think most of the theater company was born in the year I embarked on my first year of college.

 

But that was not the oddest moment.  Our dialect fellow, in discussing some Cockney traits, asked a question I have not heard in years: “Have you ever heard Derek and Clive?”  Now, Derek and Clive were actually Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, recording for a lark as two extremely foul-mouthed characters.  And the dialect fellow and I recounted their first sketch together, which was constructed from a single line of Peter’s: “I’ll tell you the worst job I ever ‘ad.  It was removing lobsters from Jayne Mansfield’s bum.  Jayne was a sweet girl, nice, innocent, but it was my job to take these fuckin’ lobsters out of ‘er arsehole.’

 

And we’re in a church. 

 

As I said, very odd.

 

The rest of rehearsals have been going well.  My biggest struggle, aside from being an atheist at a pulpit, is submerging my seventeen years of independent theater against their six months or so.  After all, in this production, I’m only talent.  For anyone who has wished to go back in time, knowing what they know now and applying it to then, I wouldn’t advise it.  For serious.  You get some funny looks. 

 

Still, I am very pleased to be involved and it is challenging me in ways I haven’t been challenged in years.  That’s actually pretty exciting.  The adventure continues…

 

 

 

 

It seems there is no good time for me to blog.  When there’s little happening, I feel bad about potentially boring any reader that may stumble about my blog with my ramblings.  When there is a lot happening, I just don’t have time for blogging.  Like a child looking for a fortune teller in a carnival full of depressed employees, I may never find that happy medium.

 

At present, there is quite a lot going on.  First, there is the ‘Today Is Stupid’ project.  TIS came about as a way to finally work with my dear friend, Ricky March.  We have known each other for three years, but like the families in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, it seemed our backgrounds nearly forbade us working together.  After all, I am a sketch comedian and playwright and Ricky is a stand-up comic.  Comedy is indeed the thing that links us together – but it is not unlike saying the world is the thing that links me and some guy in Bosnia.  It’s been rough going trying to come up with a project in which we both could excel.

 

TIS, in short, is the story of two brothers who both happen to be life coaches.  My character, Stan Lowell (my ‘alter ego’ for two full-length plays I’ve written to date), is miserable: he’s been married several times, his kids are out for his money, he’s failed at about everything he’s done.  Ricky’s character, Lowell Lowell, hasn’t had any failures really, but nor has he been successful at cultivating any real relationship.  These two damaged-good guys, together and unified in spirit, form one really bad advice-giving idiot.

 

We recorded a series of shorts together, which I have termed our ‘first dates’.  You can find them all here: http://www.youtube.com/user/todayisstupid.  The first few were tentative and polite, but the ones recorded in subsequent weeks have been pretty wild, active, energetic and surreal.  I was quite pleased with them.  From there, we decided to film a pilot.  After a few creative pitches back and forth, we opted to improvise a 22-minute pilot.

 

Smashing over the bow of the SS Today Is Stupid with a massive wave of time and stress came “The Woman In Black,”  a theatrical show being mounted by the Wishbone Theater Collective, which, as you can see, has adopted the unfortunate initials of WTC.  I was invited to audition initially, but could not do it due to a film for a Columbia College student I was in.  They cast a guy but he had to bail, so I was invited to audition a second time.  I did and, despite my performance, I was cast.

 

Now this is one monster of a play.  90 minutes.  Two actors.  And my character happens to have to play eight roles (it’s a play in a play).  Considering the last time I worked on a play that I had nothing to do with (producing, directing, writing) was around the time that Duran Duran was still making hits, I found and find myself attempting to revive acting chops that either have been sleeping or never existed except in my memory. 

 

Melissa Malan, who I’d work with forever if I could, directed the pilot of ‘Today Is Stupid’, in which we invited 25 actors (and regular people) to come with psychological problems in which the brothers could offer assistance.  I feel Ricky didn’t quite feel at ease in that situation, as we bounced more against each other than with each other.  He stepped on my jokes; I ignored his.  I’d try and build a beginning/middle/end to an actor’s issue; he’d jump for the end.  I played to the camera too much; Ricky didn’t play to the camera much.  It wasn’t our best moment, but it clearly illustrated the differences between a sketch comedian and a stand-up comic.  All in all, despite some wonderful performances from folks, I ultimately think the pilot will have to be written out in full, with three acts and two plots.  Relying on The Magic Of Improv just didn’t do it!

 

Now my days are something like this: 900am: work; 6pm: rehearsal; 11pm: review and make notes on the four videotapes from the pilot.  1:00am: sleep.  Repeat.  My new skill is that, if I were to lay down anywhere, anytime, I could probably be asleep in a matter of minutes.

 

‘The Woman In Black’s rehearsals have been quite challenging (have you noticed, by the way, that I am bounding back and forth between these projects?  it’s not being done randomly…it’s to illustrate the state of me brainstuff).  The director, Laurie Jones, is jus’ about the nicest person y’all might care to meet.  In fact, the whole WTC group is very nice.  It’s a relief to be in a production that isn’t plagued with bad-tempered folks, as most of my shows have been, from the grumpy emails from actors I got when I started Suspicious Clowns to the grumpy emails from actors I got when I did ‘The Tearful Assassin’ last year. 

 

Reminder to actors: if you’re grumpy and you know it, clap your hands.  Do not memorialize your petty bitchiness by putting it in email.  We all have petty, bitchy moments; it’s always best to let them go.  It’s always worst to let your behavior be so remembered as to be turned into a warning to other producers.   

 

‘Today Is Stupid’ will probably be turned into a some sort of something down the road, but until then, I’ll be working, rehearsing, reviewing and sleeping…