tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58946397679559180502024-03-05T02:39:01.587-05:00A Strange InterludeBarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.comBlogger370125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-12626550494129218742014-03-10T20:36:00.000-04:002014-03-10T21:07:27.268-04:00Writing the Rails<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7saQ0Nlh-Ff-rWS-Rhkt91tw8EH8HaF3ZeOJw7WbsewwFMDGGsOIlbgUHQJX_4sTEv4T5P_PUGOnuD87uFVVeIrLwti-goCJsacrR2fgV79m2dxIUno9dd0RUG5-siGP8ZJCXQpPQX2c/s1600/AmtrakLogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7saQ0Nlh-Ff-rWS-Rhkt91tw8EH8HaF3ZeOJw7WbsewwFMDGGsOIlbgUHQJX_4sTEv4T5P_PUGOnuD87uFVVeIrLwti-goCJsacrR2fgV79m2dxIUno9dd0RUG5-siGP8ZJCXQpPQX2c/s1600/AmtrakLogo.jpg" height="119" width="200" /></a>
My little corner of the Internet has been abuzz all day with the news of the <a href="http://goo.gl/pbdpGm" target="_blank">Amtrak Writers' Residency</a>. The company will be giving 24 writers a round-trip ticket on one of their long distance routes to write ("room" only—you'll have to come up with the "board..." and I'm okay with that). The competition is going to be fierce—almost every writer I know has already filled out <a href="http://blog.amtrak.com/amtrakresidency/" target="_blank">the online application</a> (and it was only announced two days ago). It's open to all disciplines—although a composer friend of mine wondered if he could be a viable candidate... in looking at <a href="http://blog.amtrak.com/officialterms/" target="_blank">the guidelines</a>,* it would probably be difficult to provide the work sample (maybe a 10-page PDF from a score?).<br />
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As I've said before <a href="http://astrangeinterlude.blogspot.com/search/label/Trains" target="_blank">before in this blog</a>, I'm a huge fan of train travel and this residency has given me the idea of creating a site specific piece for a train. I have no idea how it would work for the audience... or the actors, for that matter... or how to rehearse it... but I've never let that stop me in the past!<br />
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*It's important to point out that there is a lot of concern—and it is justified—about Amtrak's Official Terms and this point in particular:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>6. Grant of Rights:
In submitting an Application, Applicant hereby grants Sponsor the absolute,
worldwide, and irrevocable right to use, modify, publish, publicly display,
distribute, and copy Applicant’s Application, in whole or in part, for any
purpose...</i> </blockquote>
I decided to go ahead and agree to this point—although I'm sure the <a href="http://www.dramatistsguild.com/" target="_blank">Dramatists Guild</a> would slap me upside the head for it—and submit anyway. Legally, it's not very smart of me but since almost nothing I've written is very commercial, I weighed the experience I would gain with the potential "loss of income" and the experience won; I know that others will not agree with me on this point but it's how I feel. I hope that Amtrak will reconsider this point and make their rights request a little more reasonable.Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-52568181901572844692012-09-14T13:26:00.000-04:002012-09-14T13:42:13.228-04:00Live Arts Festival: What We Saw and Did in PhiladelphiaWe had a great weekend in Philadelphia, as we always do. The work was uniformly strong and we were able to rearrange our schedule for the hellish Saturday so that it was pretty easy (thanks to my having accidentally bought tickets for <i>both</i> the matinee and evening performances of <a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/wamb/" target="_blank">WAMB</a> that day and Sarah Muehlbauer for generously offering us a refund for the evening show that was going to cause all our problems). A quick bullet list of the shows we saw and our impressions:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Nicole Canuso Dance: </b>a lovely, nicely-crafted duet in the park at the American Philosophical Society—the perfect beginning to our weekend!</li>
<li><b>Charlotte Ford, <i>Bang:</i></b> by far our favorite show of the festival—it's very funny, smart and beautifully performed by Ford and her collaborators, Lee Etzold and Sarah Sanford. </li>
<li><b>SnakeEatTail, <i>WAMB:</i> </b>Visually, the aerial work is great, the space is fantastic and the performers are engaging. This is Muehlbauer's first production and it shows a bit—the recorded text is very poetic and there's not much variety in the way it is delivered so that it blends in with the music, which is also rather sonorous. I'd be interested to see another project by the artist, though, and encourage her to use less pre-recorded material, if she can: everything that involves a live performer here works pretty well.</li>
<li><b>New Paradise Laboratories, <i>27:</i></b> Another visually successful production presented by exceptionally talented performers. I only wish I could have enjoyed the show more: there's so much fodder in the idea of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club" target="_blank">the 27 Club</a> and how the path to stardom for so many young artists is so incredibly self-destructive. But that's not the focus of the work here. Too bad. </li>
<li><b>Bruce Walsh, <i>Chomsky vs. Buckley, </i></b><i style="font-weight: bold;">1969:</i> It's funny, it's well-acted and directed, it's short and they give you snacks and drinks! This is a very close second in terms of our favorite shows—it's definitely our favorite living room production.</li>
<li><b>Applied Mechanics, <i>Some Other Mettle:</i></b> To be fair, it was the end of a very long day... The performances are all strong—both physically and artistically—and the director's use of the environment and incorporating of the art installation into the work is visceral and compelling. But I never really connected to the primal text and subterranean context for the piece. Another company that I will certainly go to see again, though.</li>
<li><b>Pig Iron Theater Company, <i>Zero Cost House:</i></b> Another strong production by director Dan Rotherberg with fantastic performances by Dito van Reigersberg and James Sugg (I could watch these guys do just about anything), and excellent work by Alex Torra, Mary McCool and Shavon Norris. And I also enjoyed Tohsiki Okada's clever script—even though I disagreed with some of the points he makes in it. It was the production that Catherine and I probably spent the most time discussing afterward.</li>
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Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-14249702893033845762012-08-26T13:33:00.000-04:002012-09-04T16:08:40.380-04:00Saturday Night OOPS at the Live Arts FestivalWe usually plan a little better than this. Because the <a href="http://www.livearts-fringe.org/" target="_blank">Live Arts Festival</a> has grown so dramatically over the years, the venues are less within walking distance of each other than they were when we first started going, and some aren't especially near to mass transit. We know this, but it's not as much a deciding factor in what we see as perhaps it ought to be. Add to that the fact that we like to see as many productions as we can possibly cram into a weekend and there are bound to be some short travel times. Up to now, we've managed to keep it to where a brisk walk and some pre-planning will get us where we need to be on time (thank you, Google maps).<br />
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However, we screwed up this year: we have 15 minutes to get from <i><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/wamb/" target="_blank">WAMB</a></i> to <i><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/chomsky-vs-buckley-1969/" target="_blank">Chomsky vs. Buckley, 1969</a>,</i> assuming that the first production starts on time.<i> </i>And here are the two locations on the map.<br />
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<a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/2012_FringeMap.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 2em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/2012_FringeMap.png" width="312" /></a></div>
This route will take us 41 minutes walking, 28 minutes by mass transit and 10 minutes by car. But we don't have a car. We do have a <a href="http://www.zipcar.com/" target="_blank">Zipcar</a> membership and there is a parking lot not far from the second venue: we can rent a car there at 6:30, drive to the <i>WAMB</i> venue and then back to <i>Chomsky</i> and then park the car until after the show (around 10pm).... and that will run us about $50. We could try a cab or car service but given the absurdly short amount of time we have, I'm skeptical that this would be successful (not to mention that I'm not sure it would be less than $50).<br />
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So, Philadelphians: any suggestions? We'd be grateful for any help you can offer.<br />
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<b>UPDATE:</b> We rented the Zipcar: I found one for a little less than $9/hour so it'll come out to less than $40. But we've got a lot of driving/subway riding that night:<br />
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Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-72760000169688177122012-08-25T19:46:00.002-04:002012-08-26T13:00:16.884-04:00Live Arts Festival: 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/LAFPF_2012logo_150.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 2em;"><img alt="Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe" border="0" height="150" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/LAFPF_2012logo_150.png" title="" width="150" /></a></div>
Time for our annual pilgrimage to the Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe. We'd planned to go over the Labor Day weekend but that's not an option this year — the festival opens on the 7th. So we'll spend Catherine's birthday seeing shows this year—one of them, right as birthday begins!<br />
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<b>Friday, September 7</b><br />
<b><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/nichole-canuso-dance-company-at-the-aps-museum/" target="_blank">Nicole Canuso Dance</a></b>—we saw her company perform in collaboration with a musical group at <a href="http://here.org/archive/show/371/" target="_blank">HERE</a> a few years ago and really enjoyed her inventive choreography. This piece performs at the American Philosophical Society and was commissioned by them. A great way to kick off the weekend.
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<a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/bang.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Charlotte Ford: BANG" border="0" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/bang.jpg" title="" /></a></div>
<b><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/bang/#view=calendar" target="_blank">Charlotte Ford: <i>Bang</i></a></b>—From the description, this will be a series of monologues and vignettes about gender and sexuality in which the actors play multiple characters: one of them will recite from "<i>The Canterbury Tales</i> in the original Old English, yet has mad tap skills." How can this miss? This collaboration with Lee Etzold and Sarah Sanford sounds fantastic; I'm really looking forward to it.<br />
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<b>Saturday, September 8</b><br />
<b><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/27/" target="_blank">New Paradise Laboratories: <i>27</i></a></b>—I admire the abilities of Whit MacLaughlin and the actors he brings to his projects: New Paradise Laboratories work is always intelligent, engaging, disciplined physical performances that I don't see often enough. Apparently, this one is about immature slacker zombies: you don't see that often enough, either. I'm there.<br />
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<b><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/wamb/" target="_blank">SnakeEatTail: <i>WAMB</i></a></b>—Sometimes, a description in the festival guide just grabs you. "<i>WAMB</i> is an interdisciplinary performance and art installation that combines aerial acrobatics with live narration and original music." I don't see how it can miss.<br />
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<b><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/chomsky-vs-buckley-1969/" target="_blank">Bruce Walsh: <i>Chomsky vs. Buckley, 1969</i></a></b>—Catherine and I caught his show, <i>Northern Liberty,</i> in 2005 and were impressed: we didn't think it was 100% successful, but the stuff that worked for us was truly excellent. This time, we're going to his apartment for the Noam Chomsky/William F. Buckley debate; intellectual, to be sure but before you start rolling your eyes, bear in mind: they're serving hors d'oeuvres....<br />
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<b><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/some-other-mettle/#view=calendar" target="_blank">Applied Mechanics: <i>Some Other Mettle</i></a></b>—We've never seen this company before, the show starts at midnight and the description in the festival guide is intriguing but a little vague. However, when we went to<a href="http://www.appliedmechanics.us/" target="_blank"> their website</a>, we really liked what we saw there. Okay, sure: why not?<br />
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<b>Sunday, September 9</b><br />
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<a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/zerocosthouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Pig Iron Theater Company: Zero Cost House" border="0" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/zerocosthouse.jpg" title="" /></a></div>
<b><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/zero-cost-house/" target="_blank">Pig Iron Theater Company: <i>Zero Cost House</i></a></b>—It's almost not a Live Arts Festival for us without a Pig Iron show: they're one of our favorite companies working today. And I saw Toshiki Okada’s <i><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/hot-pepper-air-conditioner-and-the-farewell-speech/#view=list" target="_blank">Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech</a></i> in the <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/" target="_blank">Under the Radar</a> festival this past January: a strange little triptych of playlets that was oddly engaging (unfortunately, even though Catherine didn't get to see that show, it's not playing in the Live Arts Festival when we're there—I think she'd like it even more than I did). I can't even imagine the production these very different groups will create.... but I'm looking forward to seeing it!<br />
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<b><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/le-grand-continental/" target="_blank">Sylvain Émard Danse: <i>Le Grand Continental</i></a></b>—Catherine got to see our friend, Katy, in <a href="http://www.sylvainemard.com/en/creations/le-grand-continental-/" target="_blank">a version of this</a> at the Seaport this summer but I missed it. I won't get to see Katy, but it's free and I think it will fun to see here.<br />
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Shows that we'll miss but wish we could see: <i><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/untitled-feminist-show/" target="_blank">Untitled Feminist Show</a></i> by Young Jean Lee (Catherine saw it this spring <a href="http://www.youngjeanlee.org/feminist" target="_blank">here in NYC</a> and really liked it); <i><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/red-eye-to-havre-de-grace/" target="_blank">Red-Eye to Havre de Grace</a></i> (we saw Geoff Sobelle in the original production in 2005 and it was fantastic); <i><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/this-town-is-a-mystery/#view=calendar" target="_blank">This Town is a Mystery</a></i> by Headlong Dance (we always enjoy their productions and this one sounds especially intriguing but it seemed to us that we'd really need a car to make it work.... and the ability to make a covered dish) and Elevator Repair Service's <i><a href="http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/arguendo/" target="_blank">Arguendo</a></i> (I'm sure we'll see it in NYC but it would have been fun to see it here, too). I'm sure there are others, too, but those are the big stand outs.
Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-53470286680158688582012-04-06T20:33:00.001-04:002012-04-06T20:33:30.780-04:00More Deleted Scenes from Manna-Hata: Minetta LaneInitially, 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 href="http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/55421/" target="_blank">a newspaper essay</a> written by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Crane" target="_blank">Stephen Crane</a>. 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. <br />
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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 <i>Manna-Hata.</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/PDFs/MINETTALANE_Deleted.pdf" target="_blank">Minetta Lane</a><br />
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</div>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-59511291565418811452012-03-21T09:51:00.003-04:002012-03-21T10:06:37.268-04:00Manna-Hata: What You Probably WON'T SeeBecause of the episodic nature of my new piece, <i>Manna-Hata,</i> 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 <i>Interlude</i> to show a little of my process as a playwright on the piece.<br />
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The link at the bottom is a flight of fancy I had based on a few paragraphs from E.B. White's incredible treatise, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Here-New-York-B-White/dp/1892145022" target="_blank">Here is New York</a>.</i> As far as I'm concerned, any New Yorker who hasn't read this essay is <b>not</b> 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.<br />
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<a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/PDFs/Manna-Hata_ThreeNYs.pdf" target="_blank">The Three New Yorks</a></div>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-59710743422492746132011-09-16T10:51:00.002-04:002011-09-16T14:29:27.437-04:00Manna-Hata: How It May Begin....I'm writing the script for our next large-scale promenade performance, <i>Manna-Hata,</i> 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....<br />
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<blockquote>
<i>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.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>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.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>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.<br /> <br />During their scene, the Street Ballet continues with various members of the ensemble occasionally tossing interjections into the dialogue.</i></blockquote>
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.<br />
---<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">(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
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Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-50790352626423012422011-09-10T13:45:00.000-04:002011-09-10T14:03:17.893-04:00Our Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe Weekend<div>
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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, <i><a href="http://archives.citypaper.net/articles/090700/ae.fringe.night.shtml" target="_blank">Across</a>.</i> 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.<br />
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<a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/MethodGun_KathiKacinski.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/MethodGun_KathiKacinski.jpg" /></a></div>
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: <i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18227">Method Gun</a>, <a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18235" target="_blank">Twelfth Night</a>, <a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18225" target="_blank">Elephant Room</a></i> and <i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18236" target="_blank">WHaLE OPTICS</a>.</i> 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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_projector" target="_blank">overhead projector</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_system" target="_blank">fly system</a> of a theater, traditional sleight of hand, repurposing fabric to create the continent of Antarctica (complete with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transantarctic_Mountains" target="_blank">Transantarctic</a> 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' <i>Method Gun</i> (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.<br />
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Other highlights this year:<br />
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• Mary Tuomanen and Genevieve Perrier, who give delightful (and vocally strong) performances in <i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=19107" target="_blank">A Paper Garden</a>.</i> 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.<br />
• James Sugg in <i>Twelfth Night</i> (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.<br />
• Rosie Langabeer's music for <i>Twelfth Night:</i> 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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatheatre" target="_blank">metatheatrical</a> success of the production.<br />
• David Disbrown and Christina Zani in Headlong Dance Theater's <i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18231" target="_blank">Red Rovers</a>.</i> 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.<br />
<a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/Zon-Mai_AwatefChengal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/Zon-Mai_AwatefChengal.jpg" /></a>• The pumping station space where <i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18237" target="_blank">Zon-Mai</a></i> (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.<br />
• Brian Osborne's channeling of Carl Sagan in <i>WHaLE OPTICS. </i>Not an impersonation, really: just the distilling of the essence of him into his own character. Most memorable.<br />
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• Trey Lyford's carefully-crafted performance in <i>Elephant Room.</i> 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.<br />
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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 <i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18232" target="_blank">The Devil and Mister Punch</a>,</i> New Paradise Laboratory's <i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=19037" target="_blank">Extremely Public Displays of Privacy</a></i> (although we have been seeing the preliminary parts of it on their website) and John Jasperse's <i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18224" target="_blank">Canyon</a></i> (we have the option to <a href="http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=3062" target="_blank">see it at BAM</a>, fortunately) and <i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18230" target="_blank">Play</a></i> 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.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Photos (top to bottom): Kathi Kacinski (<i>Method Gun</i>), Jason Frank Rothenberg (<i>Twelfth Night</i>), Awatef Chengal (<i>Zon-Mai</i>).</span>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-31443646941830511902011-09-04T11:09:00.000-04:002011-09-04T11:09:21.645-04:00Philadelphia Live Arts Festival: Day 3<div>
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.<br />
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<b>Sunday, September 4</b><br />
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<i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18236" target="_blank">WHaLE OPTICS</a>:</i> 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.<br />
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<i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18225" target="_blank">Elephant Room</a>:</i> Dennis Diamond, Louie Magic and Daryl Hannah, 6pm. We saw a workshop of this show at <a href="http://www.here.org/" target="_blank">HERE</a> 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!<br />
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Hope to get down all of my thoughts on everything we saw on the train back home tonight.... assuming <a href="http://www.septa.org/alert/tre.html" target="_blank">SEPTA has the tracks cleared outside of Trenton</a> 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.</div>
Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-63686681490666808332011-09-03T10:58:00.001-04:002011-09-04T10:48:05.471-04:00Philadelphia Live Arts Festival: Day 2<div>
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.</div>
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<b>Saturday, September 3: </b><br />
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<i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=19107" target="_blank">A Paper Garden</a>: </i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px;">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.</span><br />
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<i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18237" target="_blank">Zon-Mai</a>:</i> 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 <a href="http://www.delawareriverwaterfrontcorp.com/index.php?pageID=59&image=59a" target="_blank">Race Street Pier park</a> (which is also the space <a href="http://www.livearts-fringe.org/new-home.cfm" target="_blank">that will be the future home of the Live Arts Festival</a>).<br />
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<i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18231" target="_blank">Red Rovers</a>:</i> 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!<br />
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<i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=20187" target="_blank">Max Frisch’s The Arsonist (The Firebugs)</a>: </i>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….<br />
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<b>And then: we have 35 minutes to cover 14 blocks. </b>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…<br />
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<i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=19636" target="_blank">The Speed of Surprise</a>: </i>The Groundswell Players, 9:30pm. The main attraction of this play for us is that it is directed by Charlotte Ford—an artist <a href="http://www.brynmawr.edu/arts/pas/ford.html" target="_blank">whose work</a> 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.
Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-8003496355154426432011-09-02T17:11:00.001-04:002011-09-03T10:15:21.713-04:00Philadelphia Live Arts Festival 2011<div>
We're back in Philadelphia for the <a href="http://www.livearts-fringe.org/index.cfm">Live Arts Festival</a>. This year, we're here for the first weekend of the festival: today through Sunday, September 4. <a href="http://astrangeinterlude.blogspot.com/2009/08/labor-day-weekend-in-philly.html" target="_blank">As we did in 2009</a>, 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 <a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18966" target="_blank">has since been canceled</a> 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.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">TONIGHT: Friday, September 2:</span></div>
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<i><a href="http://ticketing.theatrealliance.org/sites/livearts/details.aspx?id=18235" target="_blank">Twelfth Night</a>:</i> 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 <a href="http://www.pigiron.org/productions/isabella">their take on <i>Measure for Measure</i></a> in 2007, I have high expectations for this show... and, frankly, only Pig Iron could get me to break my moratorium on productions of <i>Twelfth Night!</i> </div>
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<i>The Method Gun: </i>Rude Mechanicals, 10pm. Another company whose work we've enjoyed many times in the past—their <i><a href="http://www.rudemechs.com/shows/history/lipstick.htm" target="_blank">Lipstick Traces</a></i> 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! </div>
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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....).</div>
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Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-5778356187081768202011-04-21T22:51:00.011-04:002011-04-21T23:52:18.349-04:00Was it Worth It?<a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/SleepNoMore_Detective.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 315px; height: 177px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/SleepNoMore_Detective.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><div></div>I received a comment on my previous post that <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.sleepnomorenyc.com/index.htm" target="_blank">Sleep No More</a></span> is worth every penny and I have to agree—it was every bit as excellent as the show in Boston. It's well-performed and beautifully designed and directed. As I'd hoped I would, I even managed to find some scenes I'd missed the first time.<br /><br />While Catherine and I were able to stay together throughout the Boston event, we were immediately separated here: we were split up into different groups by playing cards that we drew at the beginning of the evening and my group entered before hers. As in Boston, we were given masks that we had to wear throughout the event. By accident, the elevator dropped me off very near to the Ball Room—a central location for the big scenes in the production—so I was able to associate the other spaces on that floor in relation to it; as anyone who has seen the show will tell you, that information is incredibly useful. The first scene that I saw was Duncan in his chamber, preparing for bed—a scene I'd thoroughly enjoyed in Boston. I didn't experience the incredible tension in the scene that I had before—and not just because I knew what was coming: I'd known that then, of course. More likely, I think it took me a little while to stop comparing this production to the previous one and allow myself to be immersed in what was happening around me.<br /><br />The installations on the upper floors of the space (there are five) are amazingly well-designed and the more labyrinthine space in Chelsea makes the exploration of the rooms more complicated which actually makes it more enjoyable (the architecture of the Boston school building defined that event as each floor was, essentially, a series of rooms off a central hallway). The audience on the night we attended were incredibly bold—I saw many more people rummaging through drawers and closests and leafing through the documents left on desktops. The performers all do an excellent job—I was especially glad I got to be in the room with the witches as they prophesied to Macbeth his coming triumphs and his ultimate fate: it was a frenzy of strobe lighting, athletic dancing and terrifyingly erotic imagery. I'm pretty sure it was in this place that I got hit with the drop of blood I found on my mask at the end of the evening.<br /><br />We had gone to see the show with a group of our theater friends, none of whom had the seen the show before. The discussions in the restaurant afterward were among the more enthusiastic and excited that I've had in a long time. We'd all seen the same show and yet so many of our descriptions were interrupted by a disappointed cry of, "Oh, I missed that!" from one of the others.<br /><br />The show has been <a href="https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/795845/1306983235682/prm/" target="_blank">extended through June 25</a> so if you have the opportunity (and the scratch), I'd definitely recommend seeing it.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" >Photo: Yaniv Schulman</span>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-44817202153841722782011-03-26T16:52:00.017-04:002011-03-30T20:05:00.524-04:00Sleep No More NYC: April 8 at 7pm<a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/sleepnomore4.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/sleepnomore4.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>I was flattered to see that the press page for <i>Sleep No More</i> has <a href="http://www.sleepnomorenyc.com/news.htm">a link to the </a><i><a href="http://www.sleepnomorenyc.com/news.htm" target="_blank">Interlude</a>.</i> I don't think they're going to link to this post, however, because I'm going to complain a little bit: I had a hard time biting the bullet and spending $75 each for our tickets. Obviously, Catherine and I decided that it's ultimately worth the price because we ponied up to see a show that, in essence, we've already seen. Now, this is a commercial production—unlike <a href="http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/sleep-no-more" target="_blank">the one in Boston</a>, presented by American Repertory Theater—and I recognize that the producers, Emursive Productions, are not in business to <b>lose</b> money. They clearly believe this to be a reasonable price because, unlike many Broadway and commercial Off Broadway shows, I have yet to see any offer for discounted tickets; and based on the number of <a href="https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/795845" target="_blank">sold out shows</a> on their ticketing page, they aren't wrong.<div><br /></div><div>To be fair, I have no idea what the costs for the show are—I know they're enormous because it's a huge production and nothing comes cheap in Manhattan. Even with donated materials for some of the installation, the producers said in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/theater/sleep-no-more-from-punchdrunk-transforms-chelsea-warehouses.html" target="_blank">this <i>New York Times</i> article</a> that their expenses are "in the millions of dollars." However, a lot of my friends in the theater and performance community, who would gladly have paid $30-$50 for tickets, ultimately decided that $75 was just too rich for them. That's a shame because a company as innovative and adventurous as <a href="http://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/" target="_blank">Punchdrunk</a> shouldn't be financially inaccessible to New York's artists. I hope that success with this production will entice one of the larger non-profits to bring the company back with something a little more affordable to more people.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >Photo by Thom Kaine</span></div>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-81612496856567099922011-01-24T10:24:00.018-05:002011-01-24T11:00:56.074-05:00Puttin' on a Show in Philly<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/PhillyFringeCall.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 173px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/PhillyFringeCall.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><div>If you're a self-starting producer (or a director or writer or actor who can get yourself hooked up with a unique individual like that) and can spend some time in Philadelphia this September, you're in luck: the <a href="http://www.livearts-fringe.org/how-to-participate.cfm" target="_blank">Philadelphia Fringe</a> is taking applications. This is the non-adjudicated part of my favorite arts festival:<br /><blockquote><i>In the tradition of the <a href="http://www.livearts-fringe.org/history.cfm" target="_blank">Edinburgh Festival Fringe</a>, we ask that you challenge yourself to be an artistic pioneer by taking your work to new levels of artistic innovation and presentation.</i></blockquote></div><div>If you want into the Live Arts Festival, you <a href="http://www.livearts-fringe.org/about-the-festival.cfm" target="_blank">gotta get on festival director Nick Stuccio's radar</a>... which means you've gotta have a track record. And what better way to get that record started than with a production in the Philadelphia Fringe?</div><div><br /></div><div>To apply, all you need is a $95 application fee (a modest sum, really), a venue (the Philadelphia Theatre Alliance has <a href="http://www.theatrealliance.org/members/organizations" target="_blank">a handy list here</a>, complete with contact information), and a project that you're just dying to mount (dance, theater, music, performance, visual art or any hybrid thereof). Once you're in, it's just about fund raising the money for your production costs. And your personnel expenses. And their transportation. And their room and board. And marketing your show.</div><div><br /><div>Like my dad always says: if it was easy, <i>everybody'd</i> be doing it.</div></div>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-87201484714854068262011-01-16T11:02:00.037-05:002011-01-16T13:12:21.113-05:002011 Begins in Art (3 of 3 posts)<div></div>I was intrigued when I first read the description of the <a href="http://www.ildieldi.com/" target="_blank">Collectif « Ildi ! Eldi »</a> offering in <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?c=20" target="_blank">Under the Radar</a>, <i>Vice Versa:</i><br /><blockquote><i>John Bull is a decent guy, a rugbyman, and has suddenly discovered a strange looking gash growing behind his knee. Seeking help from his doctor Alan Margoulis and his charming secretary, Bull enters an absurd and sensual journey with his strange new appendage. Freely adapted from the novel of Will Self, the enfant terrible of British literature, </i>Vice Versa<i> is a surreal and comedic look at the confusions of the sexes, its ambiguities and pitfalls.</i></blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/viceversa.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 195px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/viceversa.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>And, for the most part, it's an accurate description of the production that the three company members—Sophie Cattani, Antoine Oppenheim, François Sabourin—presented on the stage at <a href="http://www.dixonplace.org/index2.html" target="_blank">Dixon Place</a>. Surreal: definitely. An absurd journey: without question. Freely adapted: I can only imagine, not having read the novel (which is actually two stories combined into one book, <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_and_Bull" target="_blank">Cock and Bull</a></span>), but the repetition of a key scene several times, each time allowing the characters to reveal more and more of their inner monologues seems to be more a theatrical device than a novelistic one. A comedic look at the confusions of the sexes: well, mostly... it's definitely funny, it's kind of confusing and sex is definitely a big part of the confusion.<div><br /></div><div>It might be their dialects: the artists' English is perfect but still accented so there were parts of the piece where I had trouble understanding some of what was being said. My friend, Anne Jensen, who speaks fluent French, suggested that the nature of their mother tongue may be impacting their performances: she feels that French speakers don't emphasize words the same way we do in English, and that led to a more monotone performance. She may very well be right but I also think that this performance style is one often employed in avant garde work and sometimes it's very effective... and sometimes less so. The rhythm of the piece may also be a factor, as each section of the piece has a tendency to achieve a regularity of volume and cadence that's rather lulling—I found my attention occasionally wandering during the repeated scene.</div><div><br /></div><div>These might seem like significant problems for the production but they really aren't: they're more minor quibbles. I enjoyed <i>Vice Versa:</i> Collectif « Ildi ! Eldi » are all engaging performers, they made good use of their simple production design (two chairs, a table and light bulb on a bungee cord), and their adaptation of the novel has intrigued me to check out the original source material. And, as it turns out, I'll have another opportunity to sample their work next month: they're collaborating with <a href="http://www.witnessrelocation.org/" target="_blank">Witness Relocation</a> and playwright <a href="http://www.panix.com/userdirs/meejr/indexf.html" target="_blank">Charles L. Mee</a> on a new work at <a href="https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/799555" target="_blank">La MaMa</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's also possible that a trip to Lyons is in order soon....</div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/YourBrotherRemember.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 300px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/YourBrotherRemember.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><div>I must say that I was completely surprised by <span style="font-style:italic;">Your Brother. Remember?,</span> writer/performer <a href="http://www.zacharyoberzan.com/" target="_blank">Zachary Oberzan's</a> mash-up of live performance, pop music, excerpts from the films <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickboxer_(film)" target="_blank">Kickboxer</a></i> and <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faces_of_Death" target="_blank">Faces of Death</a>,</i> and the recreations of those films that he, his brother, Gator, and their kid sister, Jenny, made in 1989 and then revisited in 2009. His <i><a href="http://www.oktheater.org/rambosolo.htm" target="_blank">Rambo Solo</a></i> with Nature Theatre of Oklahoma was an extraordinary exercise in which Oberzan used ear prompters to allow him to match up his live performance with prerecorded video of himself telling the story of the novel, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Blood_(novel)" target="_blank">First Blood</a>,</i> that was being projected on the wall above him, but I found myself more intrigued by how it was created than the content of the piece. Here, however, his deep passion for his subject comes across in all aspects of the performance. It's a loving tribute to the joys and exuberance of youth and its fragile innocence. To watch these young boys playing in front of the camera, and then to contrast it with the men on the cusp of middle age struggling to revisit that experience, is both painful and inspirational: I wonder how many of us would throw ourselves so fearlessly into a project as potentially embarrassing as this one? And yet Gator, an ex-convict who is not a performer, did it with abandon and enthusiasm. In this and in video interviews from 2009, Gator's obvious love for his brother and pride Zachary's artistic accomplishments are powerful. And yet the production never stoops to sentimentality: Oberzan allows the emotions to exist almost without commentary. It's rare for experimental work to explore feelings and pathos in this manner; <i>Your Brother. Remember?</i> artfully and entertainingly offers a very personal and genuine insight into the human experience. </div>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-10366202762009422252011-01-15T12:19:00.052-05:002011-01-15T14:15:31.879-05:00Ellen Stewart: 1919 - 2011<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/ellenstewart.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 20px 20px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 266px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/ellenstewart.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><div></div>It must have been through a subscription I had to <span style="font-style:italic;">Playbill</span> magazine that I wound up receiving <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/" target="_blank">Vanity Fair</a></span> for a brief time in 1983; I certainly didn't order it. It was, however, a fortuitous mistake because one of the first issues I received (and the only one I remember) had an article about this woman who'd been running a theater in New York for over 20 years. I'd never heard of her or her theater but the article talked about all these plays she'd produced by famous playwrights like Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson and Robert Patrick... and one by some guy named <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Eyen" target="_blank">Tom Eyen</a> called <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.samuelfrench.com/store/product_info.php/products_id/3433" target="_blank">The White Whore and the Bit Player</a></span> (and I wish I could find the production photo that was in the article—it was just as provocative as its title!). Anyway, the more I read, the more I came to believe that <a href="http://lamama.org/" target="_blank">La MaMa ETC</a> sounded like an absolutely wonderful place and Ellen Stewart, the artistic director, must be an amazing and incredible person.<br /><br /><div>I did not look up La MaMa as soon as I moved to New York. I wish I had. I saw a lot of shows there over the years—some of which were truly great—and got to know many of the people who work at La MaMa. But I'd actually been in the downtown theater community for over 15 years before I finally met Ellen Stewart. When Peculiar Works was developing the East Village half of <a href="http://www.peculiarworks.org/PWP_OFF_EV.html" target="_blank">our <i>OFF Stage</i> extravaganza</a>, we knew that the focus of the event was going to be Ellen—because, really: when you're talking about the birth of Off Off Broadway in the East Village, you're talking about La MaMa. Part of our development process for the event was interviewing people who had worked in downtown theater in the '60s to get their help with ideas and material we could use for content in our tour. We'd heard over the years that Ellen could be... prickly... and we'd seen firsthand that she could be downright mean: we'd been at a panel discussion where she mercilessly berated someone for presuming to speak for La MaMa (the moderator insisted that she'd been invited to be on the panel but hadn't responded so they'd asked the other person). To say that we were intimidated by the idea of talking to her about our plan to celebrate her and the legacy of Off Off Broadway—who were <b>we</b> to presume?—was an understatement: we were all petrified.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the winter of 2006, we finally asked Chris Kapp to help us set up a meeting with Ellen (and Chris told us that Ellen had heard about our project and had wondered what was taking us so long to come see her). It will come as no surprise to any artist who has ever worked with Ellen that she was beyond generous and helpful to us. She spent about an hour with us in her apartment above the theater and told us all about how she came to start the theater and all of the trials and tribulations she faced over the years. I remember being amazed at how well she remembered the tiniest details: shows that were in each space (there were <a href="http://lamama.org/archives/year_lists/playlist.html" target="_blank">three Cafe La MaMa's</a> before the present spaces on East 4th Street), dates of particular productions and who was involved. At the end of our interview, Ellen emphasized that she wanted to help us however she could and that we should be sure to ask her when we needed something.</div><br /><div>During the production in June of 2007, La MaMa provided us with a floor of the Great Jones rehearsal studios to use for dressing rooms and storage—an amazing and unexpected gift. They also allowed us to perform the finale—a short excerpt from Megan Terry and Maryann de Pury's <i>Viet Rock—</i>in the lobby of the Annex (now the Ellen Stewart Theater) on East 4th, while Ellen's own production of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> was performing in the theater upstairs. </div><br /><div>One thing we didn't share with Ellen was our decision to make her a character in our event; frankly, we were afraid she might not let us do it and we all knew it gave the East Village tour a perfect context. The text, which we adapted into a prologue and epilogue, was taken from Ellen's reminiscences about the early days of La MaMa; it was beautifully performed by Jacq Gregg, who heroically agreed to be at the event for four hours every night in order to begin and end all four tours. One night, early in the run, I happened to be in the Annex lobby just before <i>Viet Rock</i> began when the elevator doors opened and Ellen was wheeled out. The audience was already filing in and she told everyone that she wanted to stay and watch—we were busted. The <i>Viet Rock</i> scene went exceptionally well, and then Jacq entered, ringing a handbell (Ellen had opened every show in the early days of La MaMa by ringing a cowbell) as she spoke:</div><div></div><blockquote><div><i>Art is a God-given resource for all humankind to draw upon—many times there is little else. A world without poverty or illiteracy would be wonderful, but without artistic expression it would be barren.</i></div><div> <i><br />My coffeehouse struggled to survive against a background of Kafkaesque harassment which resulted in two evictions, a union imbroglio and innumerable trips to the pawnshop. The people in the building didn’t want me there because I’m a negress. They kept lodging complaints, and then a man comes to me with a warrant for my arrest for prostitution! I'm not a prostitute, I'm running a theater! I want to do plays that a black person can play in where they don’t have a needle in their arm, or their mother was washing clothes, or their father was in jail, or their mother was a prostitute.</i></div><div><i><br />I never had self-doubt. I was always taught by my mama that I'm on an island and there's not a soul on the island but me. And so whatever gets done, I have to do it. That's the way I was brought up. So I never thought about self-doubt. But anything that I've wanted to do, I always believed that somehow—I believe in the somehow —that I could find a way to do it.<br /><br />Good night.</i></div></blockquote><div>As the audience applause was dying down, we all heard Ellen's mellifluous voice call out, "That was me!" Far from being angry, it was clear that she'd enjoyed our homage. She spent another dozen or so minutes chatting with Jacq, me and the audience and gave us all a few more stories about those early days. We were also fortunate that our most excellent press representative, Jim Baldassare, was there and captured the moment in photos (below). As she was leaving, Ellen said again to let her know if we needed anything.<br /></div><br /><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/ellen+jacq.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/ellen+jacq.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>The last time I saw Ellen was during one of Chris Kapp's <a href="http://lamama.org/programs/coffeehouse-chronicles/" target="_blank">Coffeehouse Chronicles</a> in 2007 or 2008; I think it was Robert Heide, Robert Dahdah and John Gilman talking about their work at La MaMa. At one point, they couldn't remember the name of someone who'd worked on a project; the person had had a small role in the piece and it was over 40 years before, after all. We were all surprised when that familiar voice rang out to fill in the blank for them: Ellen had quietly entered and was listening in the back. For a half hour or so, she stayed there and listened to their discussion (and corrected their mistakes) until someone with her insisted that she needed to leave. It was a remarkable display of her mental acuity; I only hope I have half that capacity in my late 80s!</div><div><br /></div><div>I know that it's going to be tough in the new few weeks and months at La MaMa; even though her abilities had been significantly diminished over the past year or so, I heard that she was still being kept updated on what was happening and participated as best she could in the operations. They are fortunate to have had so much time with their MaMa, and for those years to have been so fruitful. We all feel their loss and lament with them but I'm certain that there are only many more great things to come from La MaMa. Ellen did her best to prepare everyone for this transition and, while it may not all go smoothly, I believe that the institution she built is much bigger than the individual. But for her family, the staff and for all her many friends and the artists that she nurtured for 50 years, it will never be the same again. </div>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-71021233832065147962011-01-14T11:55:00.014-05:002011-01-14T15:18:05.630-05:00"Sleep No More" in NYC<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/punchdrunknyc.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 144px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/punchdrunknyc.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>One of the <a href="http://astrangeinterlude.blogspot.com/2009/12/sleep-no-more.html" target="_blank">best site-specific performance/installations</a> Catherine and I have ever seen is coming to New York: Punchdrunk Theatre's <span style="font-style:italic;">Sleep No More.</span> The location this time is the former <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&rlz=&q=530+W.+27th+Street,+New+York,+New+York+10001&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=530+W+27th+St,+New+York,+NY+10001&gl=us&ei=i0YmTen4L4OC8gaKy_mPAg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ8gEwAA" target="_blank">McKittrick Hotel</a> on the West Side. There are no details on the site yet but <a href="https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/795845" target="_blank">here's a link to buy tickets</a>. If you dig immersive art and you're in NYC in March, I'd encourage you to go. You better believe Catherine and I will be there: we gotta try to see at least some of the parts we missed last time (and I'll bet there'll be some brand new stuff, too!).<br /><br />If you're into funky, interactive websites, <a href="http://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/" target="_blank">check out Punchdrunk's</a>. Navigating is somewhat similar to attending <i>Sleep No More:</i> all of the clues for getting around are there but no one has spelled anything out for you (unless you find the cheat menu they've supplied, of course).Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-52891157875145210842011-01-09T18:28:00.027-05:002011-01-11T00:24:22.236-05:002011 Begins in Art (2 of 3 posts)<div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/watt.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 231px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/watt.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><i><a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=230" target="_blank">Watt by Samuel Beckett</a> </i>is actor Barry McGovern's adaptation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_(novel)" target="_blank">Beckett's second novel</a>*—a remarkably coherent distillation of the 250 page text into a taut 60-minute performance. McGovern serves as narrator—masterfully bringing the poetically repetitive language to life (<i>"And if I could begin it all over again a hundred times, knowing each time a little more than the time before, the result would always be the same, and the hundredth life as the first, and the hundred lives as one."</i>)—and populates his tale with dozens of colorful characters that the enigmatic Watt encounters in his position as manservant to his reclusive master, Mr. Knott. With the help of his director, Tom Creed, McGovern has skillfully adapted the piece for the Public's Newman Theater (it was originally created for the <a href="http://www.gate-theatre.ie/" target="_blank">Gate Theatre</a> in Dublin) and establish a variety of locations using only two chairs and a coat rack. They've also mined a great deal of humor—both physical and verbal—from the piece, as I believe there should always be with Beckett (please, God, never make me sit through another one of those overly earnest productions that miss all the jokes). It's an exceptional and exceptionally simple production</div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/freedomclub.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 210px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/freedomclub.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>I wish that I could say the same for <i>Freedom Club, </i><a href="http://www.newparadiselaboratories.org/home.asp" target="_blank">New Paradise Laboratory</a> and <a href="http://www.theriotgroup.com/" target="_blank">Riot Group</a>'s production playing at the <a href="http://www.connellycenter.org/theatre.htm" target="_blank">Connelly Theater</a>. Catherine and I have enjoyed the NPL shows we've seen before this, starting with 2003's <i>Rrose Selavy Takes a Lover in Philadelphia</i>; and playwright Adriano Shaplin's <i>Hell Meets Henry Halfway</i> is still one of our favorite <a href="http://www.pigiron.org/productions/hell-meets-henry-halfway" target="_blank">Pig Iron</a> productions. The combination of these two groups must surely yield theatrical gold, right? And yet, somehow, it just doesn't. The script is by far the weakest element in the piece: the comparison of John Wilkes Booth's journey to becoming a presidential assassin in 1865 to that of a group of left-wing radicals in 2015 doesn't yield any significant results. I agree that the lunatic fringe on either end of the political spectrum might be just one pissed-0ff incident away from violence but I don't feel that Shaplin has much to say beyond that. And the juvenile sexual content in the 1865 scenes added nothing to piece—it wasn't funny and it didn't illuminate anything about the characters or the situation. The actors all seem capable but director Whit MacLaughlin often has them standing stiffly downstage and delivering most of their lines directly to the audience instead of to one another; the intention is clearly to mimic the 19th century acting technique but it's stylization for the sake of being stylized—there's just no pay off. I certainly believe that there's great potential in a collaboration between these companies; I hope that next time they're able to realize it better.<div><br /><div>Still to come: <i>Vice Versa</i> and <i>Your Brother. Remember?</i></div><br /><div><span style="font-size:85%;">*My googling of <i>Watt</i> turned up <a href="http://watt.reclaimthesea.com/">this odd little blog</a> in which an Irish gentleman performs a serialized reading of the novel—kinda fun!</span></div></div>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-76679136510536429582011-01-09T13:05:00.022-05:002011-01-09T18:34:09.817-05:002011 Begins in Art (1 of 2 articles)<div>Just over a week into the new year and Catherine and I have already seen one video installation, three performances in the <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/" target="_blank">Under the Radar</a> festival and we're seeing another two tonight. I would love to report that it's been an auspicious beginning, heralding great things to come in 2011; sadly, I can't quite say that. But if the worst of what we saw is the worst of what we'll see, I'll consider the year a resounding success.<br /><br />We began the year with <i><a href="http://www.armoryonpark.org/index.php/programs_events/detail/last_supper_peter_greenaway/">Leonardo's Last Supper: a Vision by Peter Greenaway</a>, </i>a remarkable installation at the Park Avenue Armory.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/greenaway_installation.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:10px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 278px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/greenaway_installation.jpg" border="0" alt="The Installation" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/greenaway_supper.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:10px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 234px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/greenaway_supper.jpg" border="0" alt="The 'Last Supper' Video" /></a>The title is slightly misleading: while the centerpiece of the event is Da Vinci's famous mural, <span style="font-style: italic; ">Ultima Cena,</span> it actually begins with a spectacular video collage of Italian cities and ends with an extensive examination of Veronese's <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedding_at_Cana" target="_blank">The Wedding at Cana</a></i>. Throughout the 45 minute production, filmmaker and artist, Peter Greenaway, literally immerses the audience in thousands of projected videos and images—both long shots and extreme close-ups that offer details that are obviously impossible at the actual location. Structurally, it's an uneven piece: while the Da Vinci section is the central and longest of the event, the <i>Wedding at Cana</i> almost overshadows it—in part, because it's the only section that contains narration. Greenaway refers to the Italian cities videos as the "Prologue" and the Veronese as the "Epilogue," but that was also misleading because the visual narratives are only very subtly linked; they felt, to me, more akin to movements in a symphonic work. These are, ultimately, minor quibbles: the environment that Greenaway has created—especially in his installation and recreation of the monastery of <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/a4W_3DGMPjeAIDleFBDShQ" target="_blank">Santa Maria delle Grazie</a>'s dining hall for Da Vinci's masterpiece—and the way in which his videos highlights all of the remarkable details in the artworks are absolutely beautiful and inspiring (I've never wanted to go to Milan so much in my life!).</div><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/phobophilia2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 231px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/phobophilia2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Our first Under the Radar production was <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=234" target="_blank"><i>Phobophilia</i> at HERE</a>. The audience is led from the box office down to the basement in small groups and briefly blindfolded as they're taken into the performance space; I know the intention here is to give a sensation of being taken prisoner but the captors are so polite and so reassuring to everyone that it's more of an intellectual experience than a visceral one. Once inside, we discover a hooded character (an overt reference to the infamous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AbuGhraibAbuse-standing-on-box.jpg" target="_blank">Abu Ghraib photo</a>), in the midst of being interrogated, who then "escapes" into a dreamlike world of video images projected onto various surfaces and tiny sets hidden like a pop-up book inside a trunk. The performance is an intriguing combination of soundscape, video and object theater. The style of the filmmaking is a cross between <a href="http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/expressionism1.jsp" target="_blank">German Expressionism</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surrealist_films" target="_blank">French surrealism</a>, with minimal elements and yet visually striking. The artists, <a href="http://web.mac.com/woodsworth_pollard/2boystv/Welcome.html" target="_blank">2boys.tv</a>, have created a unique, if rather thin, theatrical experience—the ending is rather unsatisfying, considering how creatively they've manipulated the imagery up to that point—but it is, nevertheless, a visually engaging and cleverly constructed work. </div><div><br /></div><div>(In the next post: <i><a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=230" target="_blank">Watt by Samuel Beckett</a>, <a href="http://www.freedomclubtheshow.com/" target="_blank">Freedom Club</a>, <a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=232" target="_blank">Vice Versa</a></i> and <i><a href="http://www.undertheradarfestival.com/index.php?p=233" target="_blank">Your Brother. Remember?</a></i>)</div>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-72530130243427195702010-12-26T11:42:00.007-05:002010-12-26T12:02:37.775-05:00Funny Fruit<div>I've long been a fan of British humor—<span style="font-style: italic;">Monty Python,</span> in particular, but also several of the series like <span style="font-style: italic;">Yes, Minister</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">To the Manor Born</span>—but I never really got hooked on <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/thetworonnies/" target="_blank">The Two Ronnies</a>.</span> Perhaps I was just too young at the time: although the show ran in the U.K. into the 1980s, it was only on in Fort Worth for a brief time in the mid-'70s, when I was a 12 or 13. In more recent years, I have acquired a book of 20th century British sketch comedy—from bits written for the musical halls through the golden age of radio in the 1950s and, finally, into television—and it including many by Ronny Corbett and Ronny Barker and their writers that I have enjoyed reading (and rereading them) immensely. Their humor very language-based and, most often, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz2-ukrd2VQ" target="_blank">heavily-laden with puns</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Barker" target="_blank">Ronny Barker</a> died a few years ago but Ronny Corbett is still working—most recently creating this very funny sketch for a Christmas special on the BBC.<br /><br /><object width="400" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/external/player.swf"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="FlashVars" value="config_settings_showUpdatedInFooter=true&config_settings_showFullScreenButton=true&config_settings_showPopoutButton=false&config_settings_bitrateCeiling=1000&playlist=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebbc%2Eco%2Euk%2Fcomedy%2Fforge%2Dassets%2Fextra%2Fplaylist%2Fp00ctlvg%2Exml&config_settings_skin=black&config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebbc%2Eco%2Euk%2Fcomedy%2Fforge%2Dassets%2Fextra%2Femp%2Fempconfig%2Exml&config_settings_showFooter=true&"><embed src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/external/player.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="config_settings_showUpdatedInFooter=true&config_settings_showFullScreenButton=true&config_settings_showPopoutButton=false&config_settings_bitrateCeiling=1000&playlist=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebbc%2Eco%2Euk%2Fcomedy%2Fforge%2Dassets%2Fextra%2Fplaylist%2Fp00ctlvg%2Exml&config_settings_skin=black&config=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebbc%2Eco%2Euk%2Fcomedy%2Fforge%2Dassets%2Fextra%2Femp%2Fempconfig%2Exml&config_settings_showFooter=true&" width="400" height="295"></embed></object></div>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-86530357745402348482010-11-30T00:07:00.012-05:002010-11-30T00:32:34.073-05:00On Poland (By Way of Austin)<div></div>In the <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span> yesterday, there was an article about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/world/europe/28poland.html?ref=world" target="_blank">Poland and the divisive cultural environment</a> that is now thriving there. What struck me most about it was this quote:<br /><blockquote>“Poles always feel they need to have an enemy,” Urszula Slawinska, 38, said one day as she walked along a sidewalk in Warsaw, an average citizen, headed home, uninvolved in politics, yet keenly aware of what was happening around her. “Because of our history we define ourselves, to be Polish meant to protect our country. So now that we don’t have to protect ourselves, we still need to find an enemy.”</blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/brockett.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 219px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/brockett.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>In reading this, I was reminded of <a href="http://www.finearts.utexas.edu/tad/people/Faculty_and_Staff/faculty/brockett.cfm" target="_blank">Dr. Oscar Brockett</a>, my theater history and criticism professor at the University of Texas, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/theater/09brockett.html" target="_blank">who died a few weeks ago</a>. That may seem like an incredible leap of logic—how does a story about European politics relate to theater history?—but I think Dr. Brockett would have appreciated how I made that connection and why.<br /><br />In one of the lectures in his Contemporary Theater History class, Dr. Brockett told us about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Grotowski" target="_blank">Jerzy Grotowski's</a> 1962 production of <span style="font-style: italic;">Akropolis</span> by Stanisław Wyspiański. In the original play, written in 1904, figures from the stained glass windows in the Krakow Cathedral come to life on the night before Easter and reenact Biblical and mythical stories; in the end, the Christ figure (as Apollo) is resurrected and destroys the cathedral in order "to free the Polish mind from the shackles of its own culture."<sup>1</sup> The play was a source of national pride for many people (although, <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6978/is_2_29/ai_n31607995/" target="_blank">as this writer notes</a>, its nationalism can be read with an ironic perspective that may well have been intended by Wyspiański) that Grotowski twisted into a wicked commentary on Polish society. He set the action in a concentration camp barracks and had the prisoners play the different parts; the characters were ultimately "freed" by a headless Christ-figure they constructed from the detritus on the set which "led them" into the gas chambers. I see Grotowski's interpretation of the play as a corollary to the statement that Slawinska gave to the reporter: he is saying—in a very graphic and, I imagine, extremely powerful fashion*—that the Poles are, essentially, their own worst enemy.<br /><br />I've been lucky to have many great teachers—while I was a student and in the decades since—but Dr. Brockett influenced me more than any other. His <a href="http://www.amazon.com/History-Theatre-Oscar-G-Brockett/dp/0205511864/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291087992&sr=1-1" target="_blank"><span style="font-style: italic;">History of the Theatre</span></a> is, without a doubt, the definitive theater history textbook. It was so thorough that his classes could easily have been just a rehashing of its contents (as, indeed, my undergraduate theater history class had been). Instead, he brought to his lectures a wealth of stories and images (he lectured without notes, as I recall, and had the most amazing slides—as in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carousel_slide_projector" target="_blank">carousel</a>, not Powerpoint—of influential productions to illustrate his points) that made it obvious that his book could have easily been a multi-volume encyclopedia.<br /><br />What really made him unusual as a history teacher, however, is that he was just as concerned—perhaps even more concerned—with the current state of theater. Since it first appeared in 1968, Dr. Brockett made sure that the <span style="font-style: italic;">History</span> was always current: the 10th and last edition just came out in 2007. At the end of his Contemporary Theater History class, he was telling us about influential Off Broadway productions that were only a few years old or that were playing in New York at that moment—Richard Foreman's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/05/theater/stage-film-is-evil-radio-is-good.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-style: italic;">Film is Evil, Radio is Good</span></a>, Eric Bogosian's <a href="http://theater.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?_r=2&res=9B0DE7DF173FF93AA15756C0A961948260" target="_blank"><span style="font-style: italic;">Talk Radio</span></a> and The Wooster Group's <a href="http://www.thewoostergroup.org/twg/projects/lsd/index.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-style: italic;">LSD (...Just the High Points...)</span></a>. He also provided me with the adage that I still hold true (and repeat often) to this day: there is no such thing as presenting "the play as written;" the act of staging a play is the act of interpretation.†<br /><br />I think it's telling that, although I had gone to UT to get an MFA in acting, more of my graduate credits are in theater history and criticism. In my very first class with Dr. Brockett, his syllabus required us to write a number of papers by the end of the semester. Concerned that I'd be trying to write a bunch of papers in the last week of class (my M.O. as an undergraduate), I decided to get a jump on them and wrote the first one before the second week of class. Unfortunately, I hadn't read his instructions very carefully and I hadn't proofread my work before I turned it in: what was supposed to be 7-10 pages was less than 5 and riddled with typos. Dr. Brockett corrected all of my mistakes (he also believed, as I said in my previous post, that spelling counts... also punctuation and grammar) and wrote at the end that four-and-a-half pages was woefully short of the assignment but "assuming that you misunderstood: B-." Reading that, I imagined him thinking, "Well, he's an actor; what should I expect?" Whether that was in his mind or not, I made certain from that point on that it would never be a question again.<br /><br />In my last exchange with Dr. Brockett, a few days before I moved to New York in 1987, he told me how concerned he was that I might never finish my degree (he was right) and that I didn't need to write the remaining three papers I owed him for one of his courses. A few minutes later, I heard a knock on my office door and he poked his head in and sheepishly said maybe I should do them, after all (I'd already told him that I would, in spite of his earlier protests). Thousands of times over the years, I've thought about writing to tell him how much he and his classes meant to me. Most of the amazing productions I've seen since graduate school—certainly all of my favorite productions‡—and every piece that I've ever created, connect back to something I learned from him. But I never did that; I waited too long. Not that he needed to hear it from me: I could tell from the comments on his obituaries that he had plenty of students who kept in contact with him and with whom he had close relationships. It would have meant a lot to me, though; maybe just to make sure he knew I wasn't the doofus actor that I imagined he thought me.<br /><br />By way of returning this post to Poland, from whence it sprang, I leave you with this short excerpt from Peter Brook's video of Grotowski's <span style="font-style: italic;">Akropolis.</span> The video sucks but it's at least a little taste of what must have been an incredible production.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><object width="400" height="250"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bh7T10IUBuU?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bh7T10IUBuU?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="250"></embed></object><br /></div><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><sup>1</sup> <span style="font-style: italic;">Relations Between Cultures</span> by George F. McLean, John Kromkowski.<br />* For an excellent description of the production, with illustrations, check out <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=2fTPlHoMdfMC&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=Akropolis+by+Stanis%C5%82aw+Wyspia%C5%84ski.&source=bl&ots=ABvz1AlEsE&sig=e29fRJjJRzVOjMZ7wTbus60u2ko&hl=en&ei=XlD0TKHDGIT78AbBt7S5DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFEQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank"><span style="font-style: italic;">Theater: a Way of Seeing</span></a> by Milly S. Barranger.<br />† He's also responsible for my favorite smart-ass comment that, strictly following the Aristotelian belief that the purpose of drama is "to teach and to please," the lesson of <span style="font-style: italic;">Othello</span> is that women should look after their linens; for the t.v. series, <span style="font-style: italic;">Miami Vice</span> (this was 1987, after all), it was "don't get caught" because the criminals all lead incredible lives until the cops catch up with them.<br />‡Including The Wooster Group's 2005 piece, <span style="font-style: italic;">Poor Theater,</span> which incorporated <a href="http://www.thewoostergroup.org/projects/poor_theater/akropolis/pol_trans_eng_notes.html" target="_blank">Grotowski's <span style="font-style: italic;">Akropolis</span></a> into the production.<br /></span>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-85674618354031415682010-11-26T11:12:00.039-05:002010-11-26T16:02:17.429-05:00Moron Writing<div></div>More accurately, of course, the title of this post is "More on Writing." It's not a particularly good pun (is it a pun?), I'll grant you, but it was prompted by something in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/world/europe/26spanish.html?ref=europe" target="_blank">this article in today's <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span></a> about the Royal Spanish Academy's "simplifying" of the Spanish alphabet. The Academy has decided that the letters "ch" (pronounced* "che") and "ll" ("ell-yay") are superfluous and will be omitted, bringing the total number of letters in the alphabet to 27—the additional letter being "ñ" ("en-yay"). It doesn't really change all that much: the ordinary Spanish-speaker will continue to put "c" and "h" together to make the "ch" sound—as we do in English—it just won't be part of the official alphabet.<br /><br />What inspired me to write about this story is not that I have a problem with the removal of these two letters but this quote from Gabriel García Márquez:<br /><blockquote>At the first international congress of the Spanish language in Zacatecas, Mexico, in 1997... Márquez declared, “Let’s retire spelling, the terror of all beings from the cradle.” But he admitted that his pleas were little more than “bottles flung to the sea in the hope that they would one day come to the god of all words.” </blockquote>My first thought was: how beautiful—that man really is an amazing wordsmith! But his reference to spelling being "the terror of all beings" got me thinking about George Bernard Shaw's somewhat quixotic attempts to <a href="http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/spell/histsp.html" target="_blank">change English spelling</a> to match the way words are pronounced (i.e., "ruf" instead of "rough") and, ultimately, to abandon the English alphabet entirely in favor of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet" target="_blank">a purely phonetic one</a>. I say it was only somewhat quixotic because his spelling reforms were merely 50 or so years ahead of their time: today, we call that texting. The phonetic alphabet, on the hand, seems destined to remain an amusing curiosity for those few people who are even familiar with it.<br /><br />However much I admire these men, I must, respectfully, disagree with them. Perhaps, as my mother often says, it's because my first and second grade teachers in Odessa, TX, used phonics to teach us spelling—this was in 1969-70, over a decade before "Hooked on Phonics" exploded in the '80s—but I'm a pretty good speller. Of course, I have to look up words all the time—<a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/" target="_blank">dictionary.com</a> and <a href="http://thesaurus.com/" target="_blank">thesaurus.com</a> are always open when I'm writing—and the spell check corrects me much more often than I'd like, but most of my mistakes are due to my laziness as a proofreader: I'll get to typing fast and put down a homophone (most often, the ubiquitous "it's" for "its") and don't read over it again very carefully when I'm done. But one of the things I enjoy about writing is using the right word and spelling it correctly: for me, there's something intensely satisfying about knowing when to use "stationary" or "stationery," and "though" is simply more aesthetically pleasing than "tho."<br /><br />Returning to the title of this post: no, I don't think that poor spellers are morons. There are plenty of times when I will opt for a phonetic spelling, especially when writing a play—there, how a word sounds and what it conveys are paramount and I will often write phonetically because I hope that gives the actor more information about the character or my intention for a line. It's important to know when and why to break the rules (<a href="http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-3.htm" target="_blank"><span style="font-style: italic;">Finnegan's Wake</span></a> springs to mind as a good example of this and I know there are plenty of others) but that presumes that the author <span style="font-weight: bold;">knows the rules.</span> This really just reinforces my belief that spelling counts.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">*If you're really interested in these pronunciations, there's <a href="http://www.spanishspanish.com/alfabeto_ipower.html" target="_blank">a handy little website</a> that has a child pronouncing the alphabet for you. You'll notice that the website also includes "rr" ("air-ray" with a rolled "r"), which is commonly included in the alphabet, but is not recognized by the Academy.</span>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-75209836077820449412010-11-07T10:10:00.028-05:002010-11-07T12:11:14.536-05:00(Re)Writing<div>Too much has been happening since my last post in August. When I haven't been in rehearsals and performances for <a href="http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/showpage.php?t=wake11309" target="_blank"><span style="font-style: italic;">Wake,</span> an exceptional new play by Bryn Manion</a>, I've been trying to keep up with the deluge of survival work (at the moment, it pays so badly that it's actually barely-survival work) and keeping up with the absolute minimum of my PWP work (Catherine, Ralph and I have been teaching <a href="http://www.peculiarworks.org/PWP_teaching.html" target="_blank">our workshop for Trinity/LaMaMa</a> and doing photo research for our video project that we must finish soon). The <span style="font-style: italic;">Interlude</span> may have appeared fallow but I've actually created dozens of blog posts every day over the past few months... it's just that they only exist in my mind and come to me at times that I can't write them down: like when I wake up at 4am and am struggling to get back to sleep. Regardless, I hope I'll be able to be more diligent about getting something down here in the coming days, weeks and months.<br /><br />For a few weeks now, I've had an idea for a multi-tasking post. First, it would announce my return to acting for the first time in 17 years (see above)... which also just happens to be the first opportunity my lovely wife, Catherine, and I have ever had to perform together (in over 25 years as friends and almost 21 years as a couple). Second, it would get the word out about the upcoming production of <a href="http://theforgenow.com/?p=356" target="_blank"><span style="font-style: italic;">Immortal: the Gilgamesh Variations</span> by The Forge</a> in January, of which I'm very pleased to be a part. But foremost, it would provide a little snapshot into the process of writing by focusing on how I have contributed to <span style="font-style: italic;">Immortal</span> by adapting <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh#Tablet_eleven" target="_blank">Tablet 11 of the Gilgamesh epic</a>.<br /><br />A quick overview: Gabriel Shanks and Kay Mitchell asked eleven playwrights to each adapt one of the tablets into a 10-minute play, the idea being that this would reflect the surviving fragments of the story that have been discovered so far which were pretty much all written by different authors at different times. Tablet 11, in addition to being the end of the story (and so requiring me to "wrap it all up" for the audience) is also quite dense: there's a full account of the Sumerian version of The Flood, Gilgamesh is given a 7-day test by Utnapishtim (the equivalent of Noah) and another task to perform once he fails that test, and finally he travels back to his home in Uruk (retracing an outgoing journey that required the three prior tablets to accomplish).<br /><br />In 10 minutes. Right...<br /><br />So I thought I would post my various drafts of the script, along with a few short notes on the changes I made. Some of the rewrites were in response to the length of the piece (my first full draft clocked in at over 15 minutes), some were in response to work that other writers had done that I could reference in my tablet, and some were based on dramaturgical suggestions from Gabriel and Kay as the project leaders. There were a few minor drafts in between each of these but I've decided to focus on the more significant rewrites (in the interest of time and... well, interest: I don't know if it's entertaining for the layman but I think it's somewhat intriguing for those of us who write).<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/PDFs/Gilgamesh_Tablet11_020709.pdf" target="_blank">My first draft</a> was fairly faithful: I tried to cram it all in. Like I said, this one was WAY too long. Let the rewrites begin.</li><li><a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/PDFs/Gilgamesh_Tablet11_070609.pdf" target="_blank">The next version</a> was the result of several drafts that whittled away more of the details from the original and focused on the bigger picture items: the Flood, the realization by Gilgamesh that immortality is not possible and the journey home. It's significantly shorter. I had the idea to begin it with Gilgamesh having reverted almost to the state of an animal and then rebuilding himself into a human being over the course of the tablet. I've also removed the supernatural beings almost entirely: this is in part due to the fact that there were just too damned many Sumerian gods and we all decided that the audience would never be able to keep track of who they were and what they did, but also because we all felt that one aspect of Gilgamesh's journey is that he discovers that his destiny relies more on his personal actions than on divine intervention. I also added a hymn to Uruk that I thought captured the last lines of the tablet pretty well and an epilogue: at the time, I didn't know who was going to speak it but I've tried it a couple of different ways since this draft.</li><li><a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/PDFs/Gilgamesh_Tablet11_082303.pdf" target="_blank">By August</a>, several of the elements had begun to be set in the script: the beginning has changed very little but the ending is still not working. I tried splitting up the Epilogue to all of the actors and the flood story is dramatically shorter. However, <a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/PDFs/Gilgamesh_Tablet11_091909.pdf" target="_blank">by the next month</a>, the bathing ritual has been moved to later in the play (over a series of rewrites to follow, it would be removed entirely and then ultimately returned to a few different places to see if it could be salvaged). I made an attempt to bring Enkidu back into the story (he had died several tablet earlier and the rule was—essentially—that "dead is dead" and he couldn't be brought back into the story) by having Gilgamesh see his statue come to life in a vision: that didn't fly.</li><li>A new year, <a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/PDFs/Gilgamesh_Tablet11_011010.pdf" target="_blank">a new draft</a>. The changes are smaller except that I tried to merge Enkidu with the snake in the vision and make the scene a duet with the people of Uruk in which they admonish Gilgamesh to return home (an interesting idea, but it was not to be). The bathing ritual has been integrated into the homecoming at Uruk, which I really like and hope it will stay here. Ishtar has the epilogue now in an attempt to bookend the production (Juanita Rockwell's Tablet 1 begins with Ishtar addressing the audience); I didn't love it and neither did anyone else.</li><li><a href="http://www.barryrowell.us/PDFs/Gilgamesh_Tablet11_103110.pdf" target="_blank">The current draft</a>. The vision is gone entirely; now it is very much the way it is in the source material: a snake steals the last hope of immortality from Gilgamesh—period. The journey home has been dramatically truncated and the epilogue has been returned to Gilgamesh. I am, for the most part, pleased with where it is now.</li></ul></div>There will be more changes but I think they'll be more tweaks than rewrites.Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-75023598807161383942010-08-21T11:11:00.004-04:002010-08-21T11:18:50.074-04:00Interesting Headlines I Can't Really Read<div></div><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">elpais.es:</span></span> <a href="http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/gran/toro/humano/Bilbao/corridas/elpepucul/20100821elpepucul_2/Tes" target="_blank">Un gran toro humano en Bilbao contra las corridas</a><br />In this instance, a picture is worth a thousand words.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/Protestan_Bilbao.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="http://www.barryrowell.us/images/Protestan_Bilbao.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>The story is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/world/europe/21iht-spain.html?ref=europe" target="_blank">here</a> in English.<br /><span style="font-size:85%;">photo: Luis Alberto García</span>Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5894639767955918050.post-52915819651859239192010-08-16T19:52:00.006-04:002010-08-16T20:07:43.296-04:00ELO vs. The SupremesThere are a number of great mash-ups on the <a href="http://gohomeproductions.co.uk/" target="_blank">Go Home Productions website</a>. I'd already heard <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnhKPw2NXIw" target="_blank">the exceptional collision</a> of Blondie's <span style="font-style: italic;">Rapture</span> and The Doors' <span style="font-style: italic;">Riders on the Storm.</span> But Catherine stumbled across this one a little while ago and while it may be called <span style="font-style: italic;">Supreme Evil,</span> it's actually sublime (and there's even a cameo appearance from another fine artist in the middle).<br /><br /><div></div><object height="323" width="400"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/B5NuDWx2IMI?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/B5NuDWx2IMI?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="325" width="400"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNUTYHJrutw">Smells Like Rockin' Robin</a>,</span> however, is more than a little disturbing to me...Barryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17522749688836659985noreply@blogger.com0