Animal Kingdom

So it's Friday afternoon, and just came in from killing a creature in cold blood. The cold blood of pity, but still...

I heard Spencer yelling at Spike outside a few minutes ago "Leave it! Spike! Give! Leave it". Spencer came in the house. "Spike has a bird in his mouth," He said. "Is it dead?" I asked. "Not sure, I think it's twitching."

I went out into the garden. Sure enough, there was our sweet, shaggy dog, sitting in the garden with a wing and a foot sticking out of mouth. I put on a glove, grabbed his collar and wrested the bird from his unwilling mouth. He's a very good boy - he wasn't excited about it, but he didn't make trouble.

The bird was a mess. I don't know if Spike had caused it, or if he had found it that way. But it was alive. Much of its feathers has been torn off its belly, which was red and bleeding. Its head was lolling back and forth, I think its neck was broken. It had its eyes tightly close when I pulled it out of Spike's mouth, as it were just waiting for it all to be over. But it opened them when I pulled it into the air. It looked at me. Usually, I find bird's eyes to be so strange, so alien, they hardly seem like they come from the same planet. This bird's eyes were so full of such familiar things: pain, weariness, confusion, hope. It was heartbreaking.

I could hardly bear it. There was clearly no way it was going to survive - it was a shattered wreck. Should I give it back to the dog? I thought, rather incoherently. Should I put it somewhere safe where it can eke out its last breaths? That seemed cruel, it must be in a lot of pain. So I put it down on the flagstones of our patio, and I picked up a big stone - a piece of white marble that decorates the flowerbed - three times the size of the poor creature. Its head was facing the ground so it couldn't see. I held the rock over the bird's head at a height of about two and half feet, and let it fall. It was over instantly.

Then I put the bird's body in the trash, so that Spike, or some other animal wouldn't get at it. It seemed, ironically, the most respectful thing I could do.

Don't Vote - yeah, that's American Values...

I stumbled across this this morning and I just couldn't believe it. It's aimed at Hispanic people in the Nevada election, and is the most blatant example of voter suppression I think I have ever seen. How can people who claim to believe in the United States and in democratic values possibly condone this? It is so fucking hypocritical. The ad ran in Spanish, which I've put first, and then the English translation, which didn't run on the air, but for those of us who don't speak Spanish is useful - there's also a story in the Huffington Post:

seeing red

I have never been a fan of abstract expressionism. I never really got it. Big canvases with paint on them - that's what it looked like to me.

I don't know if it's the part I'm playing - Danny in Cherry Docs - but for some reason, this article, in the New Yorker, really got me. You probably can't read it without a subscription:

“Abstract Expressionist New York,” at MOMA, review: newyorker.com

But there it is, anyway. I found the descriptions of the art suddenly deeply sensuous, gripping, and emotional. I mean, look at this picture:

Granted, it's kind of hard to see when it looks so small and, well, red - but there's a fever to it that suddenly I find deeply compelling. It probably is Danny who is doing this to me. He is the kind of guy who sees red, a lot, and the kind of guy who is constantly pulling intense spiritual significance out of the most insignificant details. His desperate need for some kind of spiritual grounding, for something to mean SOMETHING, is making me see import in the simplest of things. "There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow." Suddenly I get the frenzied passion behind these strange painters who were looking for something so deeply essential that the paint, the canvas, the deepest colors and simple lines, somehow took them to a =more essential, primitive space than any form or figure could do.

I kinda get it now...

Cry

So I had this dream last night. People telling you their dreams is usually lame, but this one I felt was strangely beautiful, and so I'm going to subject you to reading about it.

First off, we were wandering through an old city looking for the vegetable market. Don't know what that means. But we wound up at this old house which was inhabited by a small group of artists. One of them had a friend, a young woman, who had recently been killed by a stalker - she was a beautiful, clear, simple girl with straight blond hair, and she had been cut down. He was grieving, and we all joined him in his grief. We took ordinary towels that we had folded up, and we played them - we twisted and squeezed them - and the most beautiful, complicated music came out - intricate, sad, but sweet and so lovely.

The artist who was grieving was a muralist, and on the wall were two of his murals. They were side by side. One was called "Cry #1" and the other "Cry #2". They were simple. They were both images of a staircase - that's all - that rose up, and plummeted straight down. The first one was simple, four steps going up and then over; but the second was high, high, high - it reached around the corner and fell from a great height. Somehow, they encapsulated for me so perfectly the idea of what it means to cry. You must climb your grief, step by step, to the summit, and then you can fall, free - a descent that is at once a release and a loss.

I woke, at 4:30 a.m., feeling so lucky that I had had this dream. I mused on it, trying to remember the details, until I drifted off again about an hour later. Good night....

Skinheadcase

Danny is starting to get under my skin. That's the part I'm playing in Cherry Docs. This happens to me with most characters, for good or ill. When I played Hamlet, I famously couldn't decided anything, but moped around my life in a state of withdrawn indecision. When I played Coriolanus I became intrepid, uncompromising, and impulsive. When I played Dorian in Opus I became obsessed with good skin care.

I guess it's a good thing that he's getting in there. It's not the kind of play you can get away with skimming along on the surface. As he says in the script, "you've got to get to sinew." Trouble is, he's kind of a morose, thin-skinned little bastard. I've found myself surprisingly cranky these days. I thought it was the troubles with my neck, money troubles, and my anxiety about how difficult it has been to learn the lines to this play - the first and last of which lead me to worried thoughts about losing my capacity as an actor. If there was one place I always felt like I was in command of myself and what I did, it was in the rehearsal room. Not so right now. I'm struggling, irritable and fighting a vague sense of inadequacy.

Of course it didn't occur to me until I was lying in bed at 5:30 this morning, unable to sleep and gloomily examining the state of my life, that I realized it was the damn character who was working this insidious mojo on me. Not only is he cantankerous, edgy, laconic, he is also deeply vexed by profound existential questions about his own place in life. There I was, lying in my bed. I sleep on my side, facing the edge of my bed, and I often wake up in the early hours because I've somehow pushed off the covers, and I am lying there exposed and freezing. This morning, and I'm lying there and noticing how close I am to edge, like I'm on the edge of a cliff ready to plummet into some sort of abyss. Cheery. Then, it hits me. That's Danny thinking. I feel a little better, but, of course, I can't sleep because I suddenly start writing this post in my head and I know I won't be able to get back to sleep until I get it out. Obsessiveness, another Danny trait. So here I am, at 6 in morning, when I should be sleeping because I have another tough rehearsal day ahead of me doing another thing that the annoying bastard I'm playing does incessantly. Soliloquizing.

High diddly dee...

It's going to be a great show, though.

Kindness

We went to see In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) last night at Speakeasy. It was a good production with strong work by the women in the cast, especially Lindsey McWhorter and my friend Anne Gottlieb.

I was thinking about what it was that I found so appealing about Sarah Ruhl's writing, and it occurred to me that she refuses to recognize the existence of evil in people. Stupidity, stolidness, selfishness and myopia, yes, but not evil, and not hatred. Her empathy is so great that she really is able to see and express every single character's point of view and to make us appreciate their need to be understood and listened to.

This is quite interesting to me, at the moment, as I delve into the world of Cherry Docs - which is full of evil. Reading Frank Meeink's book Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead, the amount of evil and hatred perpetrated by almost everybody is stunning, and very discouraging. It is indisputable that there is way too much senseless cruelty and brutality in the world, which people inflict on one another for no good reason. But Sarah Ruhl has the ability to see and explore areas of the human experience that are just as urgent, compelling and universal, but are concerned with need, love, and - and to me this is the actually the most salient - just plain confusion about what the heck is going on in our lives and what we should do about it.

I often like to say, and I'm hardly original here, that drama takes place at the fringes of life - you need a good crisis to make a good drama. But Ruhl manages to make compelling drama that exists more in the middle - where people are mostly okay, but still profoundly lost in the daily effort to live. It touches me just as deeply as the most extreme tale of human suffering and redemption. Almost more so, because it's more like my own life. Not that I've had much experience with the electronic stimulation of the quelque chose...

It's a Vision thing

We had the first readthrough of Cherry Docs last night. I'm excited and a little scared. David Gammons brought his usual mystical brew of understated genius. I've never seen any other director who uses imagery and design to access the deepest truths at the center of the play. Most other directors, myself included, talk around the play: themes, characters, effects. David somehow manages, through the images he brings, the designs he makes or draws from others, and a few well chosen words, to go right to the soul of the play. He creates a world, with a few well-chosen strokes, that has deep textures, subtle nuances, and a rightness that makes you, as an actor, feel absolutely confident that you are stepping down the correct road.

It's inspiring. And, as I said a little scary.

This one is a beast.

Spring Standards

A friend of Kelli's posted this on her Facebook page. And I must say it is one of the most beautiful things I have seen in a long, long time...

Head games

So tonight, I went to the Boston Psychoanalytic Society - Bipsy, to her friends - to talk about Shakespeare and acting. It was strange, and interesting. I was approached by a very genial and generous therapist names Walker Shields, who had seen some ASP stuff and had won this prize for writing a paper called, "Imaginative Literature and Bion’s Intersubjective Theory of Thinking".

Now Bion, it turns out, is neither and ancient Greek nor an alien from "Ben 10", but british psychoanalyst from the early 20th century. My friend Walker has developed a group model whereby you use a piece of imaginative literature - a poem by Emily Dickinson and the "To be or not to be" speech in this case - as the springboard for an active exploration of the soul of a group. He was interested in the relationship between this practice and the theater, and asked me to join him in a discussion as part of his giving his paper and collecting his prize.

We've had a bunch of "My Dinner With Andre" kind of lunches at a thai place in Belmont, which I wish everyone who is interested in the personal and spiritual practices of making theater had been at - they were really cool. The main points, I guess, to summarize:

1. Theater and psychoanalysis are really similar.

2. The chance to enter into a kind of reverie in which imaginative literature causes impulsive and unexpected associations, thoughts, memories and reflections, is essential to both fields, and really cool.

3. Human beings are naturally drawn to make stories and create connections, and the feedback loop created by a storyteller and an audience is essential to get deep into the human psyche

4. To actually get deep into the human psyche, it is necessary to nudge people out of their comfort zones, and create an environment where they are dealing with their sensory input in an immediate and improvisatory way.

Now, none of that is all that strange, I guess. But it was pretty cool. Most of the time I hate talking about acting and making theater because it's mostly such self-congratulatory bullshit, but in this context, it was pretty cool. And I thought theater was pretty cool, too.

magic waves

So today I joined the ranks of the amazed. Kelli had told me about Magic Marcus the Avatar of Acupuncture, but until I experienced for myself, I couldn't really appreciate it.

I have had this impingement in my neck for almost 6 months - chiropractic, physical therapy - it hasn't really done anything. So I sit down with Marcus, he asks me a few questions, then he asks me to put my arm over my head. I do, but it hurts. So he puts these two little magnets on my wrist, and asks me to do it again. Low and behold, it's so much easier - like noticeably so. He moves them, it's even better. He moves them again - it gets worse! So #2 was better than #3. Huh?

He works on me for a while, and sends me home with more magnets - and, okay, it's only been about 8 hours. But my neck, shoulder and hand feel better than they have for almost three months! My chi, getting aligned. Who'd a thunk it? Obviously, it's not cured, I will have to wait and see. but wow. I guess it's science, medicine, fact. But it seems like magic to me...

In the few moments before I fall asleep these days - I'm sleeping rather blissfully well these days - partly because we're all waking up before 7 a.m. It's also because I have less to worry about these days - finances are still really tricky, but I do find a great weight has lifted since the end has truly come in my relationship with ASP. Of course, I shouldn't be sleeping so much. The impingement in my neck seems to like nothing so little as sleep. The longer I sleep, the more screwed the nerves in my arm are the next day - and the longer it takes for the tingling and numbness to return to its base state - just in my forefinger and thumb and not all up my arm. Still, sleep is fun these days. So rarely in my life have I be able to regularly enjoy the sensation of drifting easily and quickly off into the land of nod. I'm also dreaming more, and the dreams are often quite entertaining. I should start to write them down.

But I digress. I was going to say, before the above paragraph got hijacked by sleep, that in the short moments before I fall asleep, I have been reading a really neat book. It's called The Lost Books of the Odyssey, by Zachary Mason. It's a bunch of short stories - some really short - all variants of sections of the Odyssey. What if Odysseus had come home to find Penelope remarried, that sort of thing.

There's a good review of it in Slate, here.

It's pretty contemplative, and the individual chapters are all elegantly brief, and very thought provoking. The one in which Odysseus is a shaman who creates Achilles as a golem is one of my favorites, and really does connect to some very thought-provoking resonances with the myth. That's its real attraction - by looking at these well-known adventures from a slightly different angle, it reveals some of the timeless images, themes and questions of that amazing journey.

Check it out.

Awkward Family Pet Photos: The Book

I was whiling away the time looking through the wonders of the Awkward Family Photos website - a marvelous time waster if ever there was one. This had to be my favorite, though. The delicious blasphemy of it must be savored.

It's a funny site. Check it out.

Awkward Family Pet Photos: The Book

Big Love

Kelli and I watched What's Eating Gilbert Grape last night. Kelli had to watch it for Class Day at Milton - I guess they were talking about it at some Class Thing. Anyhow, I'd never seen it before. It was pretty good. I've always liked Johnny Depp (someday I must tell you the story of how we met him and his wife in the Park in Rome), and Mary Steenbergen. And Leonardo Di Caprio does pull off a very convincing kid with mental deficiencies. When it came out, I remember I as at the age (29) where I was starting to feel that young people were trying to be cooler than me, and so I pooh-poohed their pretense of deep experience and wouldn't go near the movie. Now that I am old, old old I have more respect for the work of people younger than me - since so many people are younger, now.

Now I really was surprised and impressed by Darlene Cates as Mamma. Like so many people, I'm sure, we wondered what had happened to her, and how and whether she was making out, given her extraordinary girth.

Happily, she still seems to be with us. I was really struck by a quote of hers on IMBD:

"I wish everyone that's kind of hiding away at home still could understand or could have the same experience that I did. Once I did the Sally show, all of a sudden I realized that if I went out and people stared at me, I wouldn't know if they were staring at me because I was fat or because they recognized me from being on TV. That empowered me.

I had to make a choice, I could stay where I was and be miserable, or I could take a risk and do something exciting. I talked with the author, Peter Hedges. There were some things in the book that I didn't like. We talked about those extensively and I trusted him because the character was based on somebody that meant something to him in his life. So I knew that it wouldn't be anything horrible. As we went along I was so proud of the way that the character was portrayed and so proud of the way that the children came around to see that this woman had these good qualities, and how much she really did care about her family."

With America's horrible problem with obesity - which we see all over, especially when we travel out to Missouri to visit Kelli's relatives - it's important to remember the human being that is stuck in there...

Groove for the Ages

Last night we drove out to see my brother perform at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, MA - ahead of such celebs as Betty Buckley and John Oliver - with his one of a kind a capella group the GrooveBarbers. For those of you who don't know, Charlie was one of the founding members of the modern a capella sensation, Rockapella. Sadly, having to decide between going full time with group or earning a living for his children, he had to choose the latter, and left the group before their breakout hit Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? Luckily, the other founders eventually left the group as well, and re-formed in a more relaxed, goofy and hip form as the GrooveBarbers.

They sing several time a year, around the country, and they are tight, tight tight!

Here is there typically tongue-in-cheek promo video - which they put together after they landed a national spot for an allergy medicine called Astelin:

The thing that made this event in Pittsfield really special was this. They do a version of "Concrete and Clay" by Unit 4 + 2, and they traditionally bring up some sweet young thing and make her play the triangle while Kevin, the baritone, sings mock-romantically to her. This time, thanks to my brother, they brought my Mom and Dad up on stage in honor of their 50th wedding anniversary, which is coming up next month. The whole place was cheering and laughing, and utterly transported, and I was a happy wreck. My folks were funny and sweet and great and the big hit of the evening. And my brother, he's got a heart the size of Alaska, and he sings about it, too.

Ovo O boy

So somehow I got on this nice woman named Kathy's list. She works at Rochefort Associates, a publicity firm, and they handle Cirque du Soleil here in Boston. So suddenly, out of the blue, she sends me two fifth row center seats to the new show, Ovo. She'd done the same about three years ago, with Kooza, and I'd taken Spencer. He was seven at the time, and kinda liked it, but ran out of gas in the second half so we went home early.

I asked Dash if he wanted to go, and he didn't, so I brought Spencer again. This time, we were both totally blown away. It's a fantastic show.

Every time I see a great circus I wonder what the hell we think we are doing in the theatre. The circus is so much more amazing, breathtaking, moving, exciting, involving, immediate, visceral, and, in spite of the superhuman abilities of the people performing, human.

These performers have spent their lives perfecting boundary-defying abilities - really putting us lazy-ass actors to shame. And they are so in the moment, so real, pushing up against the limits of human possibility - it's just incredibly powerful.

Some of my favorite things (click on the link to see the performers):

Little chinese girls whirling drums on their feet so fast it looked like they were running in to some new dimension.

Chinese yoyo guy spinning three of those yoyos on his string in a tiny circle an inch from the floor.

Slack wire guy standing on his hands on a unicycle on a loosely swinging wire that was being pulled up into the air while he balanced.

Spider woman crawling head first down the vertical climbing wall at the back of the stage.

The whole thing is a play on the world of insects, and the strange abilities of these performers fit so well into the crazy world of superstrong, superflexible, wild and mysterious bugs. It was lively, entertaining, full of joy, and utter captivating.

Check it out.

Moan

For the last 15 years I have pretty refused to accept that was getting further and further from the age of 30. It is still pretty much impossible for me to comprehend how the words "46 years old" and myself could both be descriptors of my personhood. So this summer I've been really irritated with the way my body is refusing to go along with my determination not to get actually older.

First, after a fall during Opus, I developed an impingement of a nerve in my neck which is causing numbness in my left thumb, and when I over-exert myself it sends shockwaves up my arm. It's not really getting any better, and every time I do anything really physical it seems to get bad again. So basically, it seems like I'm just no supposed to anything physical.

Of course, I do anyway, because I am staunchly refusing to accept that I can't do everything I want to do. So I was playing tennis with Spencer yesterday - he's really into it, and since I am, too, I'm incredibly excited about the possibility of playing real games with him - and pull a groin muscle running for a shot. I've never had a pull like this before - it really hurt, and now I can barely walk. It just gave out - spectacularly, in the middle of doing something I've done a million times.

My big concern is that I'm starting to slide down the slippery slope. My neck injury means I can't exercise as much as I should, which makes my body weaker and more susceptible to injury, which means I get hurt more, which means I can't exercise as much as I should, which means... pretty soon I'll be driving around the mall on a little red SpinLife Scooter.

I'm not ready!

Holy Outrage

I had a very interesting meeting with a student I've been working with. Her name is Colleen Hughes. She's a graduate student in the BU playwriting program. I directed a stage reading of her play "The Prayer Bargain" which is a really fine piece of work, if I do say so myself. It's a semi-autobiographical piece about a deeply human and messed but Boston Irish family in Somerville. It's funny, awkward and difficult. She's preparing it to send around and I'm helping her with the final revision before it goes out.

While we were talking, I asked her if she was thinking about any new subjects for plays. She mentioned this story. It's really unbelievable, the appalling double standards that the Church seems to have no trouble living with - priestly pederasty must be managed and covered up, but a nun who chooses to save the life of the mother rather than let both mother and fetus die - BOOM! - excommunicated. And my understanding is that excommunication means not only that she can't be a nun anymore, but that, in her world view, she's damned for eternity. How the Church decides what is black and white and what is a grey area is really stunning. And I think it will make a terrific play.

Here is the Story

OW!

Well, I was all set to post something fabulous today because my dear friend Bridget complained that I never did - when I burned the shit out of my hand cooking dinner. I was grilling little beef satay - I grabbed the charcoal chimney with my new hot pad from Target - and it burned right through the damn thing and melted the webbing between my thumb and forefinger.

OWWWWWWWWW!

But here I am, pecking out this post, because I AM THAT SORT OF GUY!

For those interested in how to care for minor (you call this MINOR!?!) read this...

Lena Horne

Lena Horne died today at 92. I read this great piece about her in the Chicago Tribune. I didn't know much about her life, but she was one remarkable lady.

Game World - dystopia or what?

As I've said before, I love to go to Ted.com to see what crazy things people are thinking up. I stumbled upon this lecture yesterday, and it completely blew my mind.

It's a half hour long, but you should take the time to watch it all because the ending is dizzying. It's hard to know if it's the most dystopic thing I ever seen, or kinda cool. But I think he's kinda right - it's coming.

Wii Games - E3 2010 -

Best Scam Letter I Have Ever Received

I just love this. It has everything! Enjoy!

INEW NASSAGE FROM MAMY BELLO

Dearest One ,

PLEASE HELP YOUR SISTER

I am Mamy Bello,a Sudan lady who was married 14 years ago to a British National Sailor,Eng OUSMAN BELLO.I and my husband ever lived happily until his death early this year which has turned me into pieces.He died in a deadly ship wreck in the Bermuda triangle,a mysterious triangle.

Since he died,I have not rested from his brothers who are high MAFIANS. They want everything my late husband left behind and threaten me everyday to hand them over to them seeing that I had no child for my late husband.I have escaped so many assassinations/killings from them because Allah is on my side knowing that I am not evil.

Presently,I am hiding in a village in West Africa (SENEGAL)as a refuge. from where I send this email to you. I ran away with all the details of the money my dead husband left for me which his brothers want to take away from me forcefully.

This money is huge to the tune of 5 Million Pounds,Which I want to transfer or send this money out of Britain immediately and purchase my air ticket back to Home at the end of this Month or 1st week of Next Months.Truthfully,I left all my belongings and ran away including my laptop which these evil brothers of my late husband took away from me suspecting that I will be in constant communication with some people or police who can help me. You may not understand what I mean but I am telling you the truth.

Sincerely,in sudan I have no son or daughter and I left sudan many years ago,now I am 29 years old. I seriously need your help. I have no other help and I had so many sleepless nights thinking about what to do and how to get This Money out of Europe,I would have aboundon the money for them,But i don't have any other means of survival because I and My Husband operate a joint account.I managed to sell some of our properties AUCTION and made up this money to 5 Million Pounds.

I want to send it out of Britain All I need is your sincerity if you can help me in receiving this money in your account or any way because I must send it out within one week.Can you help me please ? I don't want to loose this Money.If you can assist me,these are what I need from you :

1.Your real names

2.Phone number

3.Location

When I get your consent ,I will call you and speak with you on the phone so that you will confirm my voice as your sister and friend. I know you will be confused how I got your email. I searched in Google But i was touch in My spirit when I came across your email but I don't know much about yoI will be very very glad if you can tell me somethings about you and promise me that you

will not cheat me or run away with the money if I send it to you to keep for me. In return,I

will give you 35 % of the money if you prove yourself sincere and helpful.

Thanks as I wait for your fast response.

N/B: Now I don't have phone number now because these evil men tapped into my number and

every conversation I make,they listen to it. So If I get your number,I will call you from a

phone boot,it is safer for me this way.But reply to me :mamybelloousman@yahoo.com

Yours sincerely,

Mamy Bello.

I'm a sucker for it, what can I say?

I just love Olympic women's figure skating. Like a lot of people, I know. But it just opens those floodgates. Those earnest, devoted people making this strange and difficult thing so beautiful. This was just a great competition. I totally bought into the drama around Kim Yu Na and all the pressure on her from South Korea. And I haven't seen a more captivating performer on the ice in a long, long time. And the former queen of the sport, Mao Asada, fighting - really fighting, you can see it in her skate, with a powerful intensity, against the gentle, elegant force of Kim.

And then Joannie Rochette, again. I mean, to channel that pain into something so beautiful, and share it with the world. It's a special thing.

I sat there on my couch, gushing like a fire hydrant. And I'm doing it again now, as I write this.

You can't embed the NBC Sports videos, so here's the link if you didn't watch it.

This is something though

Okay, I admit that my last few posts have been a little, shall we say, dark? I've found myself back in that indignant place because a few things that have happened recently.

However, I'm not going to dwell on that. Instead, I watched the women's short program tonight - it was actually on last night but I recorded it, and must say that this lady - Joannie Rochette - had me just weeping and full of spirit. You probably know the story - her mom died of a heart attack just a few days ago. And she skated anyway - of course she did, and she should have - you know her mom would have wanted her to - and she skated so beautifully. You could see how much was inside her - she was grey with pain, but composed - and her father in audience - that poor man out there trying to make something of this horrible situation - his eyes were novels. And she finished and broke down. It was truly brave, and generous, and what performing should be about. It was just something special.

So I'm back on the getting-through because 1)somebody always got it much worse; and 2)You just gotta keep putting it out there.

Collaborators

In France after 1940, when the Nazis rolled through and captured Paris, they set up a puppet government, the Vichy regime, which was ostensibly independent but actually an arm of the Nazi government. Some of the people in France joined the Resistance, to fight for Free France and subvert the puppet government any way they could, to keep fighting the wrong that was Nazism. I think we can all agree these were the heroes, but they were also the people who stood up for their principles. Most of the people just went along. The worst of them, the ones who turned people in, were called Collaborators, but how different were they from the ones who did nothing? Of course, it was almost impossible to justifying sticking your neck out to support Free France - people's livelihoods and sometime their lives could be seriously damage. But I would say the it was mostly fear of personal hardship, rather than death, that drove people.

Life is hard, and most people don't feel like they have the luxury to stand on principle, even if it is for something really important. Especially if that something important has to do with the suffering of others. If we are safe, and comfortable, and okay, it is so much the easiest path to just go along with whatever injustices we happen to observe. We can feel pity, and a little guilt, for those who are suffering, but it is easy to feel those things. They don't take up much of our time, and are mostly forgotten, only occasionally seeping into our consciousness for a few moments, soon to be dislodged by our own selfish concerns and interests.

The French example is a big one, with huge consequences for the Resistance, the Jews, the gays, and others. But those relatively small injustices - against a small group, or just one person - are so prevalent in our lives. We walk by them every day, they happen to our friends and colleagues, and we see them, and we feel guilty, but it really is too much trouble to stick one's neck out, and besides, it's ultimately somebody else's problem.

We're all Collaborators. Every day.

Time

So I just closed Indulgences. It was a lot of fun, mostly (see last post). And now. For the first time since, gosh, 2003? I have nothing to do until March 9th. I mean, not literally nothing. I'm trying to scare up a directing job, I'm working my new idea (stay tuned), I'm trying to figure out how I'll put food on the table next year. But suddenly, I have all kinds of time. It's very weird.

Yesterday, I got the kids to school, messed around on the computer, went to the store, went to another store, picked up the kids, hung out with the kids, made Jalapeno margaritas (I marinated the jalapenos a little too long and the tequila was very spicy), made dinner, cleaned the kitchen, watched Caprica with my wife, and went to bed.

Today, I puttered around, went to the gym, went to the store again, picked up the kids, took Spencer to ballet, took Dashiell to swimming, and then I'll pick him up, take him to a friends house, make dinner, put the kids to bed, muck about on the computer, and go to bed.

So, yeah, I'm basically a house husband. It's so weird. But kinda good. I'm surprised that I'm not glummer and more bitter, but I'm trying to go with the flow. We shall see.

But I've spent the last god knows how many years rushing about, way behind on everything. Only on vacation, out in Missouri, did I ever feel like I had time. Now I have time, in the middle of life. It's kinda good, notwithstanding the horrible years that brought me this. Funny.

Comedy is Hard

We really felt like we were getting somewhere. Indulgences is a tricky play - definitely funny, but its balance of nutty randomness, standard oneliners and philosophical invention is hard to manage. But the last 5 or so shows we really started to chug along. Audience response was starting to get a least relatively reliable, and we'd had 2 or 3 really solid houses - thank heavens one of these included Wednesday night when playwright Chris Craddock came to see the show. This was, in fact, one of our best houses, and we left that night feeling like we had found the rhythm of this show.

Then Thursday came along. One of our biggest houses. And they sat there like stones. Like stones. And it wasn't like we were pushing, or playing for laughs. We were just doing our thing. And nothing was coming back. Even the ending, which in the early shows was the one place we could rely on getting everybody involved and laughing, they was chuckling and some grinning, but it felt like a house half the size.

And then Friday came. A fairly small house, which was surprising for a Friday night at the end of a run, but you never can tell. And they sat there. Like dead stones. Not only did they laugh at nothing, except in embarrassed pairs here and there. But they gave nothing back. The old joke, "is this an audience or an oil painting" was never truer. And again. No rhyme or reason to it. We weren't pushing. We were moving it along because we were getting nothing, I say nothing, back, but it wasn't rushed. We were talking to each other, playing the story. It's a good show. So where were they?

It makes me wonder if people know how to be audiences anymore. I'm not sure they understand that they owe something more to the experience than the money they put into the ticket. They are there to share. The event only happens when we make it together. And, yes, it's the performers' job to make it easy for them to enter the story, but it takes an act of will to say, I get it, this is the story we are making, let me get in on this. Sitting there, admiring the skill of the actors, or mentally critiquing the play, or waiting to be entertained, just doesn't cut it. When you go see a play, you need to hold up your end of the bargain.

Pretty Cool

We've been waiting for something to really grab us since Battlestar finished. Dollhouse was disappointing. Castle was a dud. Flash Forward had possibilities but hasn't really lived up to the mind-bending coolness of BSG.

So Caprica came along. Looking questionable, to say the least. The Pilot ran like two weeks ago, but we haven't had time to watch it until this weekend.

Well, it is very promising. VERY. It's all origins-of-the-cylons, and virtual reality and bringing the dead back to life, and promises, like BSG, to get into the "nitty gritty", as my current character likes to say, about existence, God, and the meaning of it all. Performances are strong. Eric Stoltz has aged very well, still pretty sexy. Looking forward to the next installment.

Check it out:

Chip off the old block

We went to see Spencer in All My Sons on Tuesday. Talk about proud parents. He really did a great job. He has some of the only laughs in that very serious show, and his timing and delivery were spot on. Gosh I was proud!

The show was terrific. Very strong acting all around. It's an interesting part for Will Lyman, who has such an innate sophistication that at first he seems a funny choice for rough old Joe, but he is such a fine actor that it really didn't matter. I found him delightful and moving and utterly convincing.

And Karen MacDonald? Off the charts! She has this one moment, when she suddenly assails Joe saying something like "Don't you say a word" that is one of the most powerfully filled moments I've ever seen on stage. Her character's whole life is in the line, and I almost felt it physically knock me back in my seat. I was stunned. Such awful depth and power. It reminded me of her extraordinary Mother Courage, another landmark in her magnificent career. Yep, she good.

So, when it sweeps the Nortons, I will for once say "well deserved". It's really a special evening. I only wish it had been in a smaller space - I did sometimes feel the intimacy of the stage life, and the immediacy of what was happening, blunted by size and distance. I could see how good it was, but I couldn't feel it as powerfully as I knew I could if I were right in there with them. But there's nothing they can do about that. And the set was beautiful. I loved the huge cyc, and the use of film, and the presence of the indoor space that you couldn't see but could really feel.

All in all, very worthwhile. The whole show was almost as good as my son :)

War

So I've been trying for the last few months to understand why there is so much incivility and craziness in our civil discourse recently. Two people in the cast confirmed that Brown supporters had set fire to neighbor's Coakley signs and replaced them with Brown signs. I mean, what is that? Why so much hysteria, so much hate and fear mongering, so little actual conversation.

A day or so ago, somebody made reference to the familiar parallels between the U.S. and Rome in it's final days. It's an old song, but a very accurate one, and it suddenly occurred to me that this was what is was all about. Rome was a war state - perpetually at war for more than a two centuries. And now we are pure and simple a war state, too. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the so called war on terror. And this war-mentality has permeated every piece of civic life. Nothing can be a conversation, a dialogue, a process. Nope, everything is a war and the people on the other side are the enemy, even if they are fellow Americans. In fact, that's worse because they are traitors to whatever the true principles of America we decide are important.

I have to say that I think part of the problem with what the Democrats have been doing is that they are not good at war. The left-centrists have been trying to work with the right in the old-fashioned art of compromise, and the right is not interested. Nor is the left who want Obama to be a warrior for liberal policies. Now maybe that is what he should have done - said "Mandate! full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes!" The whole compromise thing is certainly not working because nobody wants to compromise - they want to destroy the enemy.

But do we really have to be at war with everything? Is that really the American way?

People Suck

If I have learned one thing over the last two years, it is that people suck. I spent my whole life believing that they are essentially good, and bigger than their tiny lives, but the fact of the matter is that people are small, petty, fearful, easily swayed, impatient, intolerant, unimaginative and generally undeserving of this beautiful planet.

Sigh...

Another Opening another show

Tonight's opening night of Indulgences at New Rep. It's been a good process - great cast, great people over at New Rep - such a different vibe over there from what I've been used to.

I was pretty nervous about how people would take the play - especially the New Rep audiences. It's a strange play, no doubt about it, and I wasn't sure at all if people would go on the ride. It's got some really great stuff in it, though. I particularly love the character Joel Colodner plays (brilliantly) - he has these really fascinating ruminations on identity that are magical, funny and really thought provoking.

So far, people seem to be going along for the ride. The old ladies at the Sunday show were surprisingly into it, and if they like it, things look good.

Tonight should be fun - and then we're off.

Furthermore

Here's the thing. First of all, I really do mean it when I saw that I don't mind Garvey's endless criticism of me and my work. He is allowed to hate it. But here's what bothers me about it. It's the unspoken assumption that the people who are making this "tripe" are somehow some kind of fat cats who are just interested in selling pap to the masses and have neither integrity nor understanding. Garvey's cynicism is projected onto the objects of his criticism. It never seems to occur to him that dozens and dozens of people are working incredibly hard for weeks, many hours a day, for very little pay, not to be praised and extolled - because, let's face it, even the great reviews in a town like this don't really add up to much - but to make something that expresses their relationship to a story, in the hopes that people will be moved, entertained, and provoked by it. And if people are moved, entertained and excited, maybe that's actually a good thing, even if it doesn't fit into a certain reviewers presumptions about what a play is supposed to be about.

Rather than constantly saying, "this work is a transcendent work, and look how vile these people are to expect us to be excited by their trivial, trashy, trendy tripe - and yes, see, people are fooled, but isn't that just the worst? - maybe say, "people are moved, entertained and seem to enjoy this stuff, maybe they've tapped into a useful piece of this story." Because no production is going to encapsulate all the glory that exists in our minds when we imagine a play we love. But it's actually going to be in the world, and we're actually going to share it together, which is what the damn things were written for in the first place.

DeWitt he ain't

Can I just say that I love Tom Garvey? He is the ultimate example of the old adage, "Those who can't do, teach, and those who can't that either, become critics." He just makes me giggle. He clearly aspires to be Boston's answer to Addison DeWitt, the devilishly powerful critic from the Brilliant All About Eve but has neither the style nor grace nor "Witt" to achieve it. What you do get is as reliable as an old fart complaining about his Depends. He hates everything, ESPECIALLY the Actors' Shakespeare Project. It doesn't matter what they do. This is clearly what he believes the critics job to be. He goes to such lengths to let us know how much he knows about Shakespeare, going on and on and on expounding his narrowly dogmatic view of the "bard's greatness," and how ASP fails to achieve it.

And this, of course, is the problem. He is so enamored of his own deep understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare (and, it appears, drama in general), that he is completely unable to do the critic's job, which is to openmindedly examine the efforts of theaters to achieve their goals in putting on a particular play in a particular way. No doubt a good critic views a project through the prism of his own point of view - and Mr. Garvey certainly has a point of view - but if your only response to what other people are trying to do is to condemn it for not fitting within your point of view, then you are, as Mr. Garvey has so effectively done to himself, marginalizing yourself.

Here's his latest:

I must say, I kinda feel for the guy. How long has it been since he actually enjoyed a performance in a theatre, especially of the stuff he supposedly loves, that is, Shakespeare? And that's another thing, he is constantly ascribing the kind of cynicism that he is obviously burdened with to others. He can't imagine that anybody is actually looking for a dynamic and meaningful entrance into the physical experience of these plays (which, I must emphasize, is dramatically different from what we imagine them to be in our scholarly classes, which my friend seems to have taken a few too many of), but attributes everything to a cynical desire to be hip and trendy.

And then, there's the whining. That's where I begin to lose sympathy. "Well, Don Aucoin really liked it, but SIGH I just don't get it - once again I'm the prophet crying in the wilderness where everybody seems to be enjoying themselves, but I see that they have all drunk the Koolaid so let me just say that at least somebody has noticed that western civilization has gone down the toilet." If the people who are coming to the shows, including the hundreds of students and seniors, and just plain folk who have been scared and bored by Shakespeare their whole lives, are actually finding that they are excited and engaged by these EXPLORATIONS of the plays - and I write that in caps because that is all that any one production of any play can be - then maybe it's not they who are missing something. I'm just saying...

His Majesty

In case you can't make it out, that's Eddie Izzard on the jumbotrons, and that's me taking a picture of it while he is performing because we were there! Oh yeah! I got Kelli tickets for Christmas, and we went and howled and laughed, and wheezed and hyperventilated with 10000 other people. I haven't laughed so hard in I can't remember when. It was marvelous.

I mean, who else can do 15 minutes on the invasion of Italy by Hannibal, and how ridiculous the latin language is? How is that funny? In Mr. Izzard's hands, however, it is magic. That and the Raptor tipping his hat to everybody and growling (you had to be there) were a couple of my favorite moments.

He is such a genius at making the whole thing seem like a total improvisation. It's like you're at a really fun cocktail party with him, and he's just going off on this that and the other, except there's 10000 other people howling along with you. That's a sound I hadn't heard before.

Of course, given my current state of black cynicism, it did make me wonder about this whole theatre thing again. What it is, why we bother, when this is so much more satisfying in so many ways. However, we soldier on...

In my dreams

Hello again. Been a while.

So, I don't know if it's because I've just finished directing A Midsummer Night's Dream, but over the past few nights, my dreams have been incredibly interesting and vivid. I almost wrote down the one I had the night before last, and I wish I had, because it was cool, but now I can't remember it at all.

But I do remember some of the one I had last night, and it was both beautiful and profound.

The protagonist was a rather mousy, twenty-ish girl with short hair - never seen her before - who was my alter-ego in the dream, I guess - and a genius. She was also something of a paranoic, and had this incredibly complicated system whereby she would unlock various things of hers with a kind of a machine into which she would insert a certain number of one dollar bills - like a handheld atm in reverse. What she was actually doing I don't remember.

The significant event in the dream was that the sky - a beautiful, foggy, cloudy grey, was slowly descending on the earth. It got lower and lower during the course of the dream, until all the people were lying facedown on the ground, waiting for the sky to crush them flat. This was the conviction of all the people in this world: that space was being flattened, so that when the sky touched the earth there would be no more room for anybody, and we would all be squashed into oblivion.

But my mousy avatar didn't believe this - she did some strange thing with her dollar bills, and somehow, as the sky finally touched the earth she stood up into this strange new world - which was a foggy nothingness. All the other people were not annihilated either, but were transformed into strange arachnid creatures that scuttled away into the mist.

The strangest thing about this new place was that, in spite of the fact that it was formless, featureless, and completely grey and obscured, it was full of the hope of new possibility and life. It was so wonderful not to have been destroyed by the flattening of the universe, that this non-place was beautiful, magical, and full of promise. Gee, I wonder what that means?