Poetry & Blindfolds

 

I confess I was looking forward to 2010, if only so I could write a piece about how much I disliked 2009. Three weeks into the new year, I have had to euthanize my cat, say goodbye to one of my closest friends who is transplanting herself to California, and help another friend say goodbye to his mother, who passed away last week. I almost miss the soul-draining debacle of 2009.

 

Nowadays, I feel hollowed out like an old tree. In the elevator at work, I used to enjoy hearing the conversations of friends and colleagues on our way up or down. Now I hear not their words but my imagined intentions behind the words.

 

“I’m acknowledging I know you,” I hear one person say.

 

“I acknowledge I know you, too,” says another.

 

“I am asking how you are, with the least amount of interest,” says the first.

 

“I reply with the shortest answer possible,” comes the reply.

 

“Here’s a platitude,” says the first with a chuckle.

 

“I acknowledge I heard you, with a slight chuckle myself,” says the second. “Well…”

 

The doors open and one exits.

 

As an extension of this imagining, I also feel equally uninteresting and dormant. My regular 9-to-5 is increasingly brutal, with my duties becoming increasingly mundane and those I work with increasingly incompetent. Even a task of order 2 packs of legal pads comes with a tug-of-war.  “How about if I send you one and we’ll see how long that lasts?” my contact in Purchasing states.  I’m not sure if they have a shortage of paper, or they think I’m merely trying to horde legal pads, but I cannot for the life of me understand why any tug-of-war has to exist at all.

 

And I think of my colleague, who noted, ‘you’re quiet lately.’  When I respond that she, too, has been quiet, she says, ‘I’m busy.’

 

And I think of another colleague, with whom I had a good rapport.  I suggested grabbing coffee during the afternoon sometime; she said she didn’t drink coffee.  I suggested lunch.  She said, ‘maybe’, and never talked to me again.

 

And I think of a former colleague.  Lorraine and I were great friends back in the late 1990s and early 2000s; she did marketing and I made jokes.  We lunched often.  Talked deep about everything.  Advice and martinis.  After years, I ran into her recently.  “Lorraine!  OMGz!  How are you?”  She looked at me, screwed up her face, and said, “Wait a minute… …. … … Steve?”

 

And I think of theater.  My 5-to-9, if you will.  My fifteen years of producing, directing, writing and acting have seemed to earned zero dividends. I never have been able to gather a team, or at least a dedicated team – I know quite a few artists who are on numerous teams, which isn’t unlike a guy with ten wives. For me, I am just as much of a solo artist as I ever have been. I suppose I could be completely in it for myself, but that defeats the purpose of any theater work, at least for me.

And I think of a guy I worked with for years in theater.  We had a good relationship; he used to make me uneasy and I used to squirm.  It worked quite well - until I make a joke about him which, once related to him by someone else (in great high-school drama-club style), and he disappeared.

 

When I head out for lunch, I find myself disappointed and depressed as well.  After I order what I want, which I do because I know what I want, I am ambushed with a series of questions, asking what other product I want.  These dialogues, all ending with me saying ‘no’, have gone from surprising to amusing to irritating to unavoidable and trivial.  I sometimes speculate how more often I would go in __________ Restaurant if only I didn’t have to justify my choice in food.

 

And I think of the distraught woman and her son who accosted me while I was taking an infrequent cigarette break.  She just needed $8 to get her and her boy home.  I gave her $10.  And then watched her accost person after person, asking the same thing.

 

And I think of a friend of mine, who contacted me two weeks ago suggesting we have a beer.  Just what I needed, I remember thinking.  He just had to check with his missus to find a good day.  Never heard back.

 

And I think of the US.  Madness.  The conservatives constantly belittle the liberals, as if that was more important than anything else.  And the liberals fight back.  And these people are the leaders of the country.  Again, it’s gone from surprising to amusing to irritating to unavoidable.  And I find that very sad.

 

Even my personal attempts to expand and enrich haven’t met with much success. I recently found my 14-year-old niece on Facebook and sent her what I thought to be a kind note. I made the point of saying I had followed her progress for years and was happy there was someone else in the family who liked performing. She never responded, but her mother – my sister – did, shooting me with the same passive-aggressive tomfoolery that made no sense, the kind our father was known for (“curious you were not interested in her for the last 14 years” she wrote to me). I don’t get it.

 

It seems like life is winning a battle that I didn’t sign up for. It would almost be worth it if some incredible inspiration was borne from all of this. I reach out to my muse, who sends me a note:

 

“I acknowledge I know you, too.”

 

 

 

 

 

It was 7:30 on opening night.  Throughout the day, I had experienced minor flashes of nervousness, the kind of which I hadn’t experienced since the last time I attempted to be a real actor – in 1988.  Now, those nerves were beginning to re-surface, as, from the dressing room, I heard the slow, growing rumble of the arriving audience, sounding like a far-away yet fast-approaching storm.  At this moment, John Mark cranked up his iPod. 

 

I never recognized the blaring music John Mark, with whom I shared the stage for two hours a night, played pre-show and during intermission, but if I could describe it, I would say it would be somewhere between the soundtrack to ‘Glee’, elevator music, more ‘Glee’, a Queen tribute band, and an unnamed group from Deliverance, Alabama, the members of which are very gay but they formed a band so the tougher guys in town wouldn’t beat them up. The music was up-tempo and the lyrics were all very positive, ala “We’re gonna show ‘em / we’re gonna blow ‘em away / do it / do it / yeh come on now / let’s tip the cow / do it  / do it.”  John Mark would then jump around and make big, actor-like “whoooooooooooosh” sounds.  These pre-show moments were perfect snapshots of my experience in “The Woman in Black.”

 

The company that produced the play is just starting out, not only as a theater group but also in Chicago (the members are transplants from below the Mason-Dixon line).  I did forget this upon occasion and was less than magnanimous about it, stomping out of the theater at one point over “artistic differences.”  However, once I remembered what it was like to be ‘starting out’, I was able to enjoy myself and the company a great deal more.  Indeed, as my irritating conscience reminded me, when I was their age, I was doing average improvisational comedy and screwing my cast mates and cute audience members nightly, so these folks are definitely ahead of me on the timeline.  By the time I got to the ‘Glee’/Queen/elevator music moments, I was perfectly at peace to let them be them.

 

I strongly suspect that their experience with me can be described in similar terms.  The circumstances of me getting the role involved another bozo getting the role and then quitting on them one week into rehearsal.  And, although they could move forward with the show after casting me, they were stuck with a sketch comedian / producer / writer / director attempting to play it straight.  That could not have been easy for them!  Most certainly, they have discovered one of the key rules about theater: in every production, there is a Problem Child, and I was probably that Problem Child for them.  However, after a few bumps, I think they came to accept me like I accepted them, and what we did together was quite good – even above and beyond the reaffirmation we received from the critics – and we can all be pleased and proud with the result.

 

Now that the show is over, and I’ve been instrumental in giving the group some money (through my friends’ wallets) and happy press, I pause to wonder if I should pursue this acting thing.  And a moment after I wonder that, I think: no fucking way.  A Jennifer I knew before I married one (Jennifers are very smart; go ahead, ask one) once said that, if something can persuade you to avoid acting, let it.  Because I am a 40something and haven’t been a proper actor in 20something years, starting now sounds like a mad idea.  And I have no inclination to pay additional dues with companies with members who remember going home from middle school one autumn day because two planes hit two towers in New York.

 

Despite this, I have built for myself a caveat.  I’d audition again if I was asked to, and if I were to land a role, I’d not accept immediately.  Rather, I’d say, “sounds good; let’s meet and talk about it.”  That should sufficiently limit the parts that come my way, while leaving the door open for other unique opportunities.

 

Since the show, my mind has been racing with what to do in 2010.  I’d certainly like to get back into some theatre shows, either writing or directing or producing.  I’m thinking a lot about some good friends – Melissa, Angela, Kyle – with whom I’d love to collaborate.  And then there’s ‘Today Is Stupid’, my project with Ricky March, that had to be put on hold – sorry, Ricky! – because of ‘The Woman in Black.’ 

 

I guess there’s only one way to find out.  Stay alive.

 

 

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…