Poetry & Blindfolds

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…