More Deleted Scenes from Manna-Hata: Minetta Lane

Initially, I had mixed feelings about cutting this scene: I think it's a nice character study and an interesting slice of life from the late nineteenth century but I also think it just doesn't offer anything more than that. It's adapted from a newspaper essay written by Stephen Crane. In my first draft of the scene, I pulled back from the dialects that Crane had "transcribed" for his article... but sadly, not nearly enough: I was absolutely embarrassed when the poor actors read it out loud for me last summer. Even though I suspected at the time that the scene would not ultimately be in the final production, I went ahead and finished shaping and editing it.

Now, more than a year later, I see virtually no chance that it will be used, and so it takes its place among the outtakes of Manna-Hata.

Minetta Lane

Manna-Hata: What You Probably WON'T See

Because of the episodic nature of my new piece, Manna-Hata, I've written a number of scenes that most likely—and in some cases, most definitely—will not be in the finished work. Some are ideas that I had early in the writing process that might have worked if I'd gone a different direction with the piece: compelling stories I found that just don't add anything to narrative I'm trying to create.* I may eventually cannibalize some of the material in them for other scenes—I've already done that in a few instances—but, as written, they're essentially detritus. I've had the idea for a while to post these to the Interlude to show a little of my process as a playwright on the piece.

The link at the bottom is a flight of fancy I had based on a few paragraphs from E.B. White's incredible treatise, Here is New York. As far as I'm concerned, any New Yorker who hasn't read this essay is not a New Yorker. At one point, this scene was going to be the beginning of the piece. At the end of the dialogue, you'll find the excerpt from White's essay that inspired the scene.

The Three New Yorks

Manna-Hata: How It May Begin....

I'm writing the script for our next large-scale promenade performance, Manna-Hata, and it's been very slow-going: 400 years of NYC history in one event that (I hope) will be less than 2 hours long ain't easy. I have lots of material written but nothing that's been jazzing me in terms of how to approach the story.... until now. I think I've got something that may work. There's a dialogue scene that follows this stage direction but I'm still working on that. I'm interested to hear what others think: intriguing, confusing, something else? Let me know....

As the audience enters, THE BAND is playing: perhaps something fast and percussive in a classic NY jazz style. As the music ends, the lights fade slowly out. Silence. 

Lights up suddenly on a street corner in Manhattan. The ensemble are all frozen in place, as though they have been captured mid-stride by a photograph; in the middle of it all stands the SETTLER. At the same time, a musical cue suddenly sets the scene into motion and the ensemble begins to perform the Pedestrian Street Ballet (1): they travel along a grid pattern as though they are navigating sidewalks in an intricate, fast-paced dance. As they do, the SETTLER stands still in the middle of them while the Ballet takes place around her. Occasionally, she will watch an individual or an encounter between people but, for the most part, she is merely looking all around, blissfully trying to absorb the entire scene. 

After the ballet has been going for a while, the NATIVE enters. She expertly navigates the Street Ballet until she reaches the spot where the SETTLER is standing. At this moment, however, the SETTLER decides to leave her spot and interrupts the flow of the Ballet directly in front of the NATIVE. She attempts to sidestep but moves in exactly the same direction as the NATIVE; she tries again and they continue to block each other. After a few back-and-forths, their movement modifies into a partner dance/movement. The SETTLER is awkward with the dance but the NATIVE is patient and guides her through the steps.

During their scene, the Street Ballet continues with various members of the ensemble occasionally tossing interjections into the dialogue.

The Street Ballet is a recurring theme I hope to use in the piece—something that can be modified to indicate time/place, if needed.
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(1) "Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations." —Jane Jacobs

Our Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe Weekend

At some point during our Labor Day weekend in Philadelphia, Catherine and I tried to remember when we first came to the Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe. As best we can remember, it was in 2000 when the performance that blew us away was Mark Lord’s promenade performance through the Old City, Across. For me, that piece is indicative of all of our best experiences with this festival: it was epic, imaginative and remarkably daring. I haven’t loved everything I’ve ever seen here but I’ve never been completely disappointed, either, especially with the curated Live Arts events. And almost every festival has at least one production that particularly has inspired and invigorated me, artistically.

This year, all nine of the shows we saw are remarkably strong and several of them are absolutely fantastic. Four in particular are among the best work I’ve seen this year: Method Gun, Twelfth Night, Elephant Room and WHaLE OPTICS. All four productions feature outstanding performances and are imaginatively directed and designed. They are all challenging works: physically demanding of the actors and intellectually stimulating for the audience. With the exception of the Pig Iron show, they all employed modern technology to some degree but their most effective elements are actually fairly low- or old-tech: an overhead projector, the fly system of a theater, traditional sleight of hand, repurposing fabric to create the continent of Antarctica (complete with the Transantarctic mountain range). These productions that remind you of what live performance offers that television and film can't: the incredible energy and emotional impact of being present in the moment with artists at work. Of these, no piece embodies it better than the Rude Mechs' Method Gun (pictured, right): what might easily have been a simple satire about a theatrical guru transforms in the end into an astonishing illustration of the power of actors onstage and the potential danger into which they continually put themselves.

Other highlights this year:

• Mary Tuomanen and Genevieve Perrier, who give delightful (and vocally strong) performances in A Paper Garden. It's a charming, cleverly-constructed little production in a lovely garden. I especially admired their cross-gender casting choice—it's a tricky thing to make work and Ms. Tuomanen and director Aaron Cromie succeeded very well.
• James Sugg in Twelfth Night (pictured, left). Fantastic: I don't need to see anyone else play Sir Toby Belch for a long time. As far as I'm concerned, we can put this play on a shelf and leave it there a while.
• Rosie Langabeer's music for Twelfth Night: it creates the  perfect mood for Pig Iron's show. Plus, since she and her musicians perform it all live and take on several roles, they are a big part of the metatheatrical success of the production.
• David Disbrown and Christina Zani in Headlong Dance Theater's Red Rovers. It's a clever piece but uneven structurally: it works because both performers are engaging and do a great job with the occasionally unusual choreography.
• The pumping station space where Zon-Mai (pictured, right) is presented. The installation, videos and choreography in the piece are all excellent but it was hard to walk into that space and not imagine how it will look once it becomes the new festival headquarters.
• Brian Osborne's channeling of Carl Sagan in WHaLE OPTICS. Not an impersonation, really: just the distilling of the essence of him into his own character. Most memorable.

• Trey Lyford's carefully-crafted performance in Elephant Room. The whole piece is over the top from the beginning but it also has several exceptional moments where the three magicians demonstrate their skills as actors (and all three are very skilled). We're a little prejudiced, of course, but Catherine and I thought Trey's revelatory speech was absolutely beautiful.

By going the first weekend, there are shows that weren't playing yet that we would have liked to see. In particular, Improbable Theatre's The Devil and Mister Punch, New Paradise Laboratory's Extremely Public Displays of Privacy (although we have been seeing the preliminary parts of it on their website) and John Jasperse's Canyon (we have the option to see it at BAM, fortunately) and Play by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Shantala Shivalingappa. But that's always the problem with having only one weekend for this festival—you kind of have to be a resident of Philadelphia to really get everything it has to offer.

Photos (top to bottom): Kathi Kacinski (Method Gun), Jason Frank Rothenberg (Twelfth Night), Awatef Chengal (Zon-Mai).

Philadelphia Live Arts Festival: Day 3

A full day yesterday and not a bad show in the bunch—I'm almost afraid that the other shoe might drop today. That seems highly unlikely, however, given the two productions we've saved for our last day.

Sunday, September 4

WHaLE OPTICS: Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, 1pm. An enormous production (and long—almost 3 hours) but when your set is the ocean and your piece is about a composer collecting whale songs from around the world, it would be a lot harder to create in a little black box (but if he wanted to do it that way, I think director Thaddeus Phillips is just the guy to make that tiny production work). I expect magic and I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.

Elephant Room: Dennis Diamond, Louie Magic and Daryl Hannah, 6pm. We saw a workshop of this show at HERE arts center a few years ago—at that point, it was little more than sketches of the characters and their magic tricks, really. Now it’s finished and I can't wait to see where they've gone—it should be the perfect way for us to end the festival this year!

Hope to get down all of my thoughts on everything we saw on the train back home tonight.... assuming SEPTA has the tracks cleared outside of Trenton from the post-Irene flooding. If they haven't, we're taking Amtrak and that's only a 90-minute ride: not enough time to finish before we hit Penn Station.

Philadelphia Live Arts Festival: Day 2

I'm looking forward to writing about the shows we saw last night but there's no time: we have four to see today. I'll just say for now that they were both every bit as excellent as I expected.

Saturday, September 3: 

A Paper Garden: Aaron Cromie, Mary Tuomanen, and Genevieve Perrier, 1pm. It appears to be a site-specific performance in a garden. And it's only 33 minutes long. We're there.

Zon-Mai: A performed installation, 2pm. This is an enormous multimedia installation by choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkauoi and filmmaker Gilles Delmas in which they have recorded dancers from around the world performing in their own homes. It’s being presented in a former pumping station near the new Race Street Pier park (which is also the space that will be the future home of the Live Arts Festival).

Red Rovers: Headlong Dance Theater and Chris Doyle, 4pm. Another artistic hybrid of dance and installation, this one was inspired by the Mars rovers, silent films and vintage Donkey Kong. Wouldn’t miss it for this or any other world!

Max Frisch’s The Arsonist (The Firebugs): The Idopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, 7:30pm. If I’m reading this right, it’s a play performed as a silent movie based on a 1958 animated film. It might be brilliant, it might just be a good idea… Only one way to find out….

And then: we have 35 minutes to cover 14 blocks. We should be able to walk it… assuming that the 7:30 show starts on time and is 80 minutes long, as it is advertised. Otherwise, we’re taking a cab…

The Speed of Surprise: The Groundswell Players, 9:30pm. The main attraction of this play for us is that it is directed by Charlotte Ford—an artist whose work we’ve long been interested in seeing but always seem to miss (the problem with having to do the entire festival in one weekend—not everything we want to see is playing). The description of this piece begins, "Four intergalactic assassins zoom through the void." If the rest of the evening lives up to that sentence, I think we'll have a good time.

Philadelphia Live Arts Festival 2011

We're back in Philadelphia for the Live Arts Festival. This year, we're here for the first weekend of the festival: today through Sunday, September 4. As we did in 2009, we've crammed as many shows as we possibly can into our three days; we originally bought tickets for 10 shows but the last one we were planning to see on Sunday has since been canceled and we haven't decided if we're going to try to replace it or just head back to NYC a little earlier. I think we've chosen a pretty nice mix of theater, performance, dance and installation and I'm really looking forward to the weekend.

TONIGHT: Friday, September 2:

Twelfth Night: Pig Iron Theatre, 7pm. I don't think we've ever missed Pig Iron in the Live Arts Festival—the performances are always amazing and the production is usually one of our favorites. While I wasn't wild about their take on Measure for Measure in 2007, I have high expectations for this show... and, frankly, only Pig Iron could get me to break my moratorium on productions of Twelfth Night!

The Method Gun: Rude Mechanicals, 10pm. Another company whose work we've enjoyed many times in the past—their Lipstick Traces is still among the best shows I've seen. This purports to be another "non-fiction" work based on the disappearance of a 1960s era acting guru and her dangerous Approach method of acting. I don't care whether a word of it is true or not—I missed it when it was here in NYC and I get to see it now!

I had intended to put forward our entire agenda but after a miserable trip down on the train (the first less than stellar time in over a dozen years of taking the regional rails down here—and all Hurricane Irene-related), I ran out of time. Will post the rest of the weekend tomorrow or later tonight and my impressions of the shows when I get back to NYC (unless I get a wild hair....).