Let’s Get Awkward.

It’s funny how the themes of our one-act shows seem to establish themselves. Boys and Girls was about, well…boys and girls. Granted, it was a show for adults and all of the plays featured adult actors, but all three plays tied back in some way to childhood, or childhood memories.

One Night of Absolute Dismay turned out the same way:

We start off at 1 A.M. as a lawyer is being woken up by a series of ever more disturbing phone calls. His night gets worse as the people begging him for legal advice get more and more entangled in each other’s crimes. One night of absolute dismay.

Then we are introduced to a nice Christian couple. Only she is losing her faith. He is grasping at ways to maintain their wholesome family ideal, and so he brings home a weird homeless guy. To spend the night. See where this is going?

Finally, we have a nice southern family dinner in which a feminine caller is the guest of honor. There are high hopes she will some day marry the reclusive hypochondriac son who spends all his time playing with glass cocktail stirrers and take him off everyone’s hands. Needless to say, this evening doesn’t turn out as planned.

Peppered throughout our little evening of dismay and despair is Hot Greek Porn. Need I say more?

Once we had a theme, we needed a poster (because every show has a poster, of course). Someone blurted out “Awkward family photos!” and of course, we all went “Ohhh, yeah!”

Here’s that poster again:

Many of us have enjoyed the horrifying weirdness that is www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com. It is a celebration of ourselves in our most vulnerable, least attractive, and downright embarrassing moments. Usually with one or twelve of our most bizarre relatives.

Capitalizing on the various “families” in each of these works, we opted for staged awkward family photos as a poster theme, and let me tell you something. It is damn near impossible to stage a truly awkward family photo.

We can stage awkward – don’t get me wrong – but setting up a fake photo is just hard. It’s a fact. It’s hard to make it look natural, which is what makes AFP so beautiful. It may be ugly, but it’s honest.

So we would like to hear from you, Reader. What’s your favorite Awkward Family Photo? Do you have one of yourself? Does anyone in your family have one? Or, do you have a favorite from the AFP website?

I’m asking you, our readers and audience to post your favorite Awkward Family Photo on our Facebook page. Heck, you can post more than one if you want. Just make it awkward.

-GTB

A Night of Short Plays That Could Only Add Up To Absolute Dismay.

Dare to be dismayed.

We’ve gotten into a little tradition of winter one-acts in the last few years.  Actually, with this being the third year, I think it will officially become tradition.

In the past, we’ve done lots of Shakespeare.  We’ve even done seasons where we did nothing BUT Shakespeare.  Don’t get me wrong – we love Shakespeare.  But it’s not all we do.  We’ve also done Pinter, Stoppard, Miller…great writers.  However, the one-acts show came about because we wanted to do more than just modern playwrights’ works.

We wanted to do some stuff that no one had ever seen.  At least, no one around here had ever seen.

I think Heather originally put the idea out there.  I used to work with a company in Greensboro, American Distractions, that did nothing but original works.  They were often short plays rolled into an evening with a theme of some sort: monologues about giving something up, a collection of plays that all took place in various storage units at a storage facility.

These were always popular shows over there.  I personally think it can be really exciting as an audience member to walk into a theater and really have no idea what you are about to see.  There’s an anything-can-happen sort of vibe that can be a very interesting energy to work with.

Bare Theatre’s first venture into the world of original one-acts was in 2010, with an innocently-titled show called Boys and Girls.  The three plays that made up that program were so dark and disturbing, I remember looking around at the actors after our very first read-through and seeing the same look on everyone’s face.  It was a horrified and yet excited expression that somehow asked “Are we really going to do this?”

In three short plays, Boys and Girls covered death, loss, grief, stalking, murder, abuse, drug use, rape…and then we let the audience decide whether to kill the main character in the last play (Carmen’s “Ask Him in the Morning”).  Every other night, the audience passed judgement and decided he should die, in which case his scene partner shot him in the head with a pistol, leaving him face-down in his own blood.  No curtain call.  Sometimes the audience would clap, sometimes they would just get up and walk out in silence.  All good reactions as far as we were concerned.

Last year’s collection was decidedly lighter, so we called it Oh Sh!t, It’s Another Evening of One-Act Plays.  While there were some dark twists in the evening, most of the show was comedic.

This year, we are presenting another blend of twisted, hilarious and sad.  It could only be called One Night of Absolute Dismay.

With this trajectory, I just want to call next year’s show Aaaggghhhhhhrrhrhhr!!!!!

Our main goal in choosing plays is that we want the directors and artists involved to really be passionate about what they are doing.  We have found that trying to plug a season and hire directors to do plays they didn’t choose (and hence haven’t been thinking about) just doesn’t quite bring enough excitement to the project.  This show is a lab of sorts, and we want to let the artists try some new stuff, push some boundaries, and go for it.

So, this time around we have three original works by playwrights who have more or less of a connection to the area, and a parody from a well-known author:

“Hot Greek Porn,” by Lucius Robinson and Rajeev Rajendran, is being created for this show and will be presented in installments throughout the evening.  Drawing from material ranging from the pornographic films of Kostas Gousgouni to the dark agenda of the instigators of the European debt crisis, no one will be spared.

“Everything Seems So Plausible At 1 A.M.,” by Ben Ferber and Donnie McEwan, is a fast-paced short that, well, you really just need to see.  Larry the Lawyer is awakened in the middle of the night by Bob the Banker, Sam the Surgeon, and Emily the Ex-Wife – all of whom need immediate legal advice and protection from a killer, who happens to be one of them.

“Letter From The Editor,” by Mora Harris, is a sometimes humorous, sometimes dark look into faith and belief.  An affluent Christian married couple finds their faith in God and each other tested when the husband brings a homeless man into their house.

“For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls,” by Christopher Durang, is a demented twist on a famous play from his collection, Durang Durang.  In this parody of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, fading southern belle Amanda desperately tries to prepare her hyper-sensitive, hypochondriacal son Lawrence for “the feminine caller,” who turns out to be a hard-of-hearing dinner guest invited by Amanda’s ambiguously gay son, Tom.

Rehearsals have been a blast so far.  More details to come…

-Todd

Reflections on Much Ado

It’s been a while since Much Ado About Nothing closed – what with travel, holidays, gearing up for the next show and searching for a new job – and although it’s been busy, it has given me some time and perspective on something I worked obsessively on for almost six months.

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It’s always tough when a show closes.

You spend an insane amount of time, energy, thought and love getting the show up and running…and then it’s over.  You no longer see the people you were spending every evening with for months.  All the elements that everyone worked so hard to bring together – all the talent, all the ideas, everything that went into telling that story – it all just sort of vanishes.  And while the final performance and strike are bittersweet, there is (hopefully) a tremendous amount of pride in what you have all accomplished together.

This mashup of feelings was particularly strong with me for Much Ado.  Probably this is because this was the most directly involved I have been in a Bare show, or really any show for that matter.  Our three weeks of performances were the culmination of six months’ worth of reading, planning, preparation, shooting video, rehearsing, choreography, clown exercises, costume building, shopping, and eBaying.  So when it finally all comes to a close, it’s sort of hard to know what to do next.  It’s hard to know what to say about the whole experience.

I will miss this show and the people who made it happen (although I am already working with some of them again, and look forward to working with the rest soon, too!).  It’s sad that Much Ado had to end, like any show, but it feels good knowing that what we accomplished with this one.

There were many firsts – my first time directing a full-length play and thus my first time directing Shakespeare, and Bare Theatre’s first show at Raleigh Ensemble Players (an incredible experience!)  Also, it was REP’s first time renting the space out to someone else.  To some of our cast it was their first time doing Shakespeare.  It was our first show with video projections, which worked way beyond my expectations.

Box office-wise, this was Bare’s biggest show yet.  We sold out every show at REP for two weeks, and even added chairs and still had to turn folks away.  It was one of the more expensive shows, mainly because of the costumes, but we knew it would be when we decided to go steampunk.

More important than all of that, I believe, was what we achieved in terms making this play connect with audiences.  Running a little over 2 1/2 hours not including intermission, I had a brief moment of doubt the night before we opened that maybe I should have cut the play down a bit.

That doubt was dispelled when I watched opening night in Durham.  At that point I began watching the audiences, and when I saw them and overheard their reactions, I knew it was working.  The response was overwhelming and I really have to give the cast and crew credit because there was no way I could have done it alone.

I am also particularly proud that one local reviewer thought we might have cut some of the Benedick/Beatrice stuff.  I’m sorry, but if you watch almost three hours of uncut Shakespeare and can’t tell, that’s a compliment!

So for Much Ado, we’ll leave it there.  I have had a great experience on every show I’ve ever worked on with Bare (which now numbers more than 20), and I cannot say that for every other company I’ve worked with.  This one, however, will remain extra special to me.

As for what’s next for us…there are many exciting projects in the pipes.

Next in February is our third annual winter one-acts show, and this year it has been dubbed One Night of Absolute Dismay.  These shows are always a lot of fun and tend to be both hilarious and dark.  With a mixed bag of modern one-acts from playwrights known and unknown, this year’s show contains dysfunction, doubt and a splash of murder.  More to come on this…

I am also working on an adaption of slave narratives recorded by former slaves in North Carolina by the WPA back in the late 1930′s.  These stories are heartbreaking and very powerful, and I am looking to do a bit of “location theatre” with this one.

Then in summer we will have season auditions and Rogue Company, and there is talk of a bluegrass version of As You Like It…

Stay tuned, Villains.

Crunch Time, and Over the Falls.

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…” – Theodore Roosevelt

It’s been a while since the last post, and I really meant to write more, but Crunch Time came sooner than I expected, and getting a show on its feet is a bit like going over a waterfall (conscious nod to the Wonder of the World folks).

When you just start rehearsals, everybody feels like there is plenty of time.  No one is really concerned and things seem to be going well.  As you get closer and closer to opening, the “roar” of the falls gets louder and you start to realize that things are about to get real.  In that last week or so before the show – the noise is deafening and you really just try to keep your head above water and get the show up and running.  Then there’s Opening Night, and as the director, you have to let go and let things land as they may.

No matter what role or what show I’ve ever done, and no matter what previous experience teaches me, there are always new challenges.  Producing live theatre doesn’t really get easier, at least in my experience.  Maybe that is because I/we keep trying to push ourselves and try new elements, who knows?  Maybe it’s just that no one can learn everything, so you keep finding new things you didn’t each time.  Anyway, it doesn’t get easier.

The flip side is that if it were easy, everybody would be doing it.

I’ll go ahead and say first that, while this should have been the most difficult show I’ve ever tackled…it wasn’t.

It should have been insane trying to direct an uncut Shakespeare play (for the very first time) and managing a cast of 24 without my usual other two partners in crime to help run the company.  Being director and producer and company admin (as well as video tech, lighting designer and costume coordinator), is in general not a good idea.  I don’t recommend it.

However, it actually wasn’t too insane.  I have definitely taken part in shows that were much crazier.

Part of this was helped by my recent layoff at work – no pesky day job to go to – but I have to give most of the credit to our company.  This cast has really worked hard and given their all to doing what I asked of them.  I asked a whole lot of them, too!

First, we are doing the entire play, uncut (and I have heard feedback from many audience members and a reviewer that they could not tell, i.e. it didn’t feel long or tedious – success!).  There is a great deal of physicality in the show – ranging from dancing to stage combat to physical humor and clowning – none of which is “easy.”  Add to that cramming into tiny dressing rooms, trying to be quiet in venues that carry sound throughout the entire buildings, and switching entrances when moving into the venues (because we rehearse at a borrowed church), and this is a very tall order.

They are not only doing everything I ask, but they are really making it into a really entertaining experience.  They keep pushing themselves each night, keep finding new bits and new moments of play, and they don’t complain…all for basically no pay!

These are people I love spending my evenings with.  They’re true artists who really want to tell a good story, create believable characters, make audiences laugh and cry, and make memories.  For us and our audiences.

We are now “back home” in Raleigh, where most of us live, and where Bare Theatre first performed ten years ago.  We have six more performances and this weekend is sold out.  The show is alive with energy and humor and sadness and vitality, and in spite of the difficulties and hardship – or perhaps because of them – this experience stands out in my mind as one of tremendous achievement, for all of us.

I couldn’t be more proud.

-Todd

A Rainy Concert, The Music Industry, and Why Do There Have to Be Arts Industries, Again?

Tonight I took a night off from Much Ado rehearsal to see Fleet Foxes in concert at the Raleigh Amphitheater.  As I sat down in the new venue and took in the comfortable night air, watching a storm gather on the horizon, a feeling of unease crept over me.

It wasn’t the storm that was making me uneasy, it was  what I started thinking about as The Walkmen began the opening set.

This was a Ticketmaster/LiveNation event, as any concert of this size now is.  I had paid $22 apiece for two tickets a couple of months ago.  The surcharges amounted to $12 per ticket – over half the price of the ticket.  When my friend could not make it tonight, I then had to sell my ticket at a loss (with no surcharge), just so it wasn’t a complete loss.

Luckily, another guy was trying to sell an extra ticket because he was in the same situation – his wife got sick – but he had assigned seats whereas I had lawn seating.  So he paid $32 plus surcharges for each ticket, but was willing to sell me his extra seat for just $25 as soon as I sold my two lawn tickets.

So I got a deal, but not really.

As I sipped my $10 beer and listened to The Walkmen, I became really disgusted.  I was disgusted before, but now that I was actually there it was different.  I didn’t even pay for parking because I refuse to whenever possible, but that was another $5 for everyone else who agreed to pay it.

I don’t blame the bands – they’re trying to make a living and to make any real money, and they have to go to the monopoly to get the bookings.  The tours sell the albums.

So then it starts raining during the opening act, and it’s going pretty strong once the Foxes get on.  The audience doesn’t care – they’re here to see the band and hear the songs (which were fantastic, by the way).  We all hunker down for a wet but exciting show.  Lighting is going off like crazy behind the stage, and it almost becomes part of the show.

And then halfway through their act, the PA starts breaking up in the middle of “Ragged Wood.”  We the audience are already soaked, but defiant.  The band keeps playing as the rain comes down harder, even though only their monitors are pumping out sound, and we as a crowd join in loudly to keep it going.

We all finish the song and are ready for more.  Then someone from the amphitheater tells the band they have to stop and wait for the rain to subside.  The band clearly does not want to stop, and frontman Robin Pecknold apologizes profusely and thanks the crowd for bearing with the conditions.  He tells us they will pause just until it’s okay to play again.

And we wait.  In deluge.  Under our feet flows a good centimeter or two sheet of water, constantly.

After half an hour of downpour, stagehands and band members start covering up the instruments and equipment with tarps.  Twenty minutes later, the rain has stopped and the crowd begins to cheer loudly.  However, an amphitheater employee grabs a mic and breaks the news to the crowd that the Foxes will not be back out.  The guy gets booed like you wouldn’t believe.  As people dejectedly begin to leave, Pecknold rushes back out to again apologize and thank the fans, even closing with “Fuck Nature.”

Now, I realize there are some liability issues, should anything have happened.  But we were already through the worst of it, and most of the audience had not left yet.  This leads me to believe that the management decided  that they already had our money, so it really didn’t matter, and they didn’t want to deal with it.

This might be a harsh assessment on my part, but taking into consideration the exorbitant margins they had already made on the evening, I have to disagree with this call.

It drew a really clear contrast in my mind.  I thought about this new venue, designed to bring people downtown and help create a vibrant nightlife with nationally-touring acts, and how its tickets were being sold by a monopoly and managed without a care in the world for the paying customer.

While the artists themselves saved the experience for me, I was appalled by everything else.

I thought about our little theatre company, and how little we charge per ticket – we are one of the cheapest tickets you can buy in the Triangle – but our goal is to entertain, not to make money.  The actors in our show are so important to me as a director, making sure they feel safe and confident about their working environment.  But the audience is at the heart of what we do.  If there is no audience, there is no point.

The artists get that.  They want to do everything for their audiences and give them everything they came to see.  While there are two totally different business models and demand structures, the one thing we have in common is purity.  I’m not trying to get sanctimonious here, I’m just stating a fact.  They would do it even if they didn’t make money, and we do it knowing that we won’t.

I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, but the intersection of art and revenue has always been highly skewed.  I think what I am really getting at tonight is that this was perhaps the icing on the cake, and it makes me want to really only spend my money on art that is direct-to-end-consumer.  ESPECIALLY in this economy, where the lower income classes are really feeling squeezed – entertainment and art should be affordable.

Hasn’t the middle man made enough?

-Todd

Starting A Fire In The Rain…

SPARKcon 2011 (before the rain) - photo by Ted Buckner

It’s been a rainy week in Raleigh.

We had a good theatreSPARK on Saturday despite the weather at SPARKcon 2011, Raleigh’s annual four-day “creative explosion.”  Bare Theatre’s “Shakespeare Zone” crew got a really enthusiastic reaction from the crowd at the main stage in City Plaza (special thanks to that one guy in the front row – the ideal audience member!).  Admittedly, the crowd was small given that the rain had picked up right before they were about to go on.  And for some reason the stage crew decided it was time to lower the projection screen for filmSPARK, even though film wasn’t set to go on for another three hours (and ended up getting relocated due to rain)!  By the time they were done lowering the screen, several audience members had already moved on, but our crew are pros, and they made the best of a small crowd and a very misty, slippery stage!

Venue #2 for theatreSPARK was inside, luckily.  The wonderful guys at Raleigh Ensemble Players were very kind to open their doors for theatreSPARK and danceSPARK.  This worked out great and we managed to pack the place to standing-room, me busking outside in my steampunk finery.  Granted, the fact that people could come inside, where it was DRY, warm up, and perhaps even get some popcorn and/or wine, and see some theatre FOR FREE, probably helped.

Lady M's Dry Cleaning: They can get anything clean...except your conscience. From "The Shakespeare Zone"

Once when I mentioned the name of our show, “The Shakespeare Zone,” outside on the street to two guys walking by, one asked, “Is it REAL Shakespeare?”  ”No,” I replied, which is technically true, although there are many lines from his plays in the sketches.  I figured if they were asking that question, they probably wouldn’t recognize the “real Shakespeare” in it.  Was that wrong of me?

It wasn’t wrong, as luck would have it – because they loved it.  As did many who just came in the door to get out of the rain.  It’s a reaction we get time and time again, where people come up to us afterwards and say, in a really surprised way: “Wow!  I actually enjoyed that!” or “I understood it!”  One of my favorites from a few years ago was: “Did you guys translate that yourselves?”

When we get people who discover that they actually like theatre, Shakespeare, etc., it is priceless.  It means we’ve done what we set out to do.  It makes it worth it to go perform in the rain, or stand up in front of a small crowd and give it our all.

In 2011, people can download any entertainment – a TV show, a movie, games, and enjoy them from home.  Interaction with people is done online, on Facebook, Gmail chat, etc.  It seems like people want to go out less and less.  And that bothers the bejesus out of me.

The great thing, though, is that this can be changed.  One by one, audience by audience, show by show, Raleigh Ensemble Players, Burning Coal, Theatre in the Park, Little Green Pig, Ghost & Spice, Manbites Dog, Deep Dish, Cary Players, Bare Theatre and all the other companies in the Triangle can and do actually get people excited to go to the theatre and see live people performing live plays – a human tradition that goes back at least 2,000 years.

More rain in the next post, but again hope peers through…

-Todd

The Power of Play!

We started the masquerade scene as zombies. Then Madonna's "Vogue." Then a conga line happened.

Much Ado rehearsals began this week, and we are off to a great start.  For the next nine weeks, we will be in very close quarters (small rehearsal spaces, small dressing rooms), but this is a great group who showed themselves to be completely willing to dive into the work and commit to it.

This week was play-thru.  Rather than start with a dry read of the play, I assumed (hopefully correctly) that the cast had all already read the script, and therefore I wanted our first read of the play to be on our feet.

I learned play-thru from Carmen.  Basically, the idea is to act out the script as well as possible on a first read, but removing all reverence for the text as well as any context.  Play-thru is a chance to be silly, have fun with the script, and exercise creativity with no boundaries.

It’s an entertaining improv exercise.  As director, I get to throw genres, personalities, character ticks and behaviors at the actors and watch what they come up with on the spot.  Everyone was asked to bring in ridiculous or mundane objects that we could then use as props, which adds another element to it.  The idea is that there is too much going on, so the actors really do have to improvise in the moment as they try to juggle their scripts, some very silly props, and moving and interacting with each other.

Some examples included: Benedick’s “…yet I am well” speech about women and love as Elvis, a constipated Don Pedro, Michele Obama and the Spice Girls in the orchard scene, and The Watch turning into Transformers and combining into a giant robot in order to catch Conrade and Borachio.

Here’s an idea of what it looks like:

Strike the pose. Vogue. In the masquerade scene play-thru.

A Wizard of Oz take on Act III, Scene 1, among the ladies. Buckner made a convincing Wizard facade.

Beatrice became an Oz munchkin. She did represent.

Benedick became John Wayne. He was gunned down by Beatrice's wit.

All in all, there was a great deal of laughter, which as far as I am concerned, is a great way to start.  It gave us a chance to be silly with each other and for us to begin to get to know each other better.

Next week we begin building scenes the way they will actually be played,

-Todd

Why “Much Ado?”

Rehearsals for Bare Theatre’s production of Much Ado About Nothing began last night, and I feel like I have already travelled a long way with this play.

Planning began back in June, and we’ve had it cast for almost two months now.  We have the cast measured for costumes, and we even have several outfits in hand already!  Work has already begun on the video projections which I sincerely hope we will be able to use as scenic backdrops (more on that later), and we have tried several different tests for shooting digital video.

But before we get too hot and heavy on the show, I thought I would write a little bit about why I even chose Much Ado in the first place…

To put it simply, Much Ado About Nothing has something for everyone.

As a comedy, it works on several different levels.  There is fantastic wordplay in the barbs exchanged between Beatrice and Benedick, which tends to appeal to those who like intellectual, verbal humor.  Their story really is one of the classic love/hate relationships in literature, but unlike in The Taming of the Shrew, doesn’t contain the sticky misogynistic speeches that can be seen as sexist by a modern audience.  Benedick and Beatrice seem to be on much more even ground as they battle wits, and the audience gets to sit back and enjoy it.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is The Watch, a volunteer crew of dimwitted night watchmen.  These are actually great ensemble roles that often get overlooked because they have very few lines, and Shakespeare did not write stage directions.  However, his company likely would have played them as clowns (more in the vein of commedia dell’arte than American circus).  The lack of stage directions actually opens their scenes to all kinds of creativity – anything can happen between the lines.

There are some great jokes that the audience is in on, but certain characters are not.  In the orchard scene, Beatrice tries to eavesdrop on Hero’s conversation with Ursula, unaware that they know she is listening and in fact want her to hear them so that she will warm up to (and hopefully fall in love with) Benedick.  The men play a similar trick on Benedick, and both of these scenes offer some great opportunities for us to laugh at their expense!

Much Ado also has one of my personal favorite clowns in all of Shakespeare’s plays, one of the great buffoons in theatre -Dogberry, the constable.  Dogberry gets the full range of comedy.  He accidentally slaughters the English language by constantly misusing big words in a hopeless attempt to project a higher status when he is among the nobility, but he also gets some opportunities for some physical comedy with The Watch.

So it’s a funny play.  It also happens to be pretty accessible.  It moves at a good pace and is not too difficult for a modern audience to follow.

It has such great characters.  It amazes me how ahead of his time Shakespeare was in his character development.  Don Pedro, Benedick and Claudio are so much more than the one-dimensional heroes they sometimes get played as.  All of them fall prey to deception.  They have flaws.  Pride is a big one for Don Pedro and Benedick (and Beatrice, for that matter).  Insecurity and jealousy get the best of Claudio more than once.

There are also hints that Benedick has been something of a womanizer.  Beatrice mentions a time before the play when there was something between them, but that is now gone.  She insultingly jokes about Benedick constantly running off with a new friend or protege in the army, but this could also suggest that he was also carefree with women.

There is much jumping to conclusions in the play, and Leonato takes a leap when Claudio and Don Pedro accuse his daughter Hero of infidelity on her marriage day.  Leonato is all too quick to disown his daughter, having been shown no real evidence.  The play actually gets very dark at this point, and it this pain and anguish the characters then suffer that ultimately make the high points, the comedy and romance, stand out even more.  This contrast adds a whole new dimension to the play so that despite its title, Much Ado About Nothing is very much about real people with very real desires and flaws.

With all the different levels comedy, interwoven plotlines, highs and lows, Much Ado makes for great entertainment.  It is a well-loved play, deservedly so.

As we dig deeper into the text and the production, I will continue to share some thoughts, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, production notes, photos, etc.  Questions are welcome, and I hope that we can share some of the enjoyment we find in this show with you!

-Todd

Art Never Killed Anyone, But It Almost Did…

This is the eye of the storm.

I have a habit of taking on too many projects.  Recently I finished up a soundtrack to a short film with Altercation Pictures, “Jabberwocky,” and also did a rather extensive sound design on Wonder of the World, by David Lindsay-Abaire, with Burning Coal.  I’ve also been working on a short film with some friends and cast members of Much Ado.  Rehearsals start in two days.  Eye of the storm.

Production is already well underway – we’ve already got several costumes, props and set pieces, and we are working on video projections for scenic backgrounds.  However, before things get really hot and heavy, I wanted to share a little story that happened on Wonder of the World.

Art never actually killed anyone, to my best knowledge, but it came close with this production.

It’s a very funny, quirky play, well worth checking out if you get the chance.  If you are familiar with the story, you know that most of it takes place at Niagara Falls, and there is talk of going over the falls in a barrel.  One of the characters just happens to have brought such a barrel, and it features significantly in the play.

The barrel is a tricky prop/set piece, because it actually has to fit two people inside it and yet not be so heavy or bulky as to be unmanageable for the actors.  We were lucky with this production because we were actually able to borrow a large plastic “barrel” that had the bowed-out shape of a classic wooden barrel, and had also been painted to look as such for a production of Wonder of the World several years ago by a different company.

Skip to Load-in Day, a Sunday.  We had been rehearsing at a local high school, and all of the set pieces (tables, chairs, a bed, a refrigerator, helicopters, etc.) had to be transported to the theatre.  We had to get everything into the theatre and stored out of the way by 4:00 because a band had rented the space for a performance that night.  I had been asked by the company to borrow a pick-up truck that Bare Theatre always uses for load-ins, so I showed up at the high school with said truck.

Then the monsoon started.

Perhaps it was an omen, but we had barely got the pick-up loaded when torrential rains came in.  I was able to get a tarp over the sofa, table, chairs and barrel just before the skies unleashed their fury.  We stood helplessly watching from the school’s loading dock as the ramp down to it flooded under a good two feet of water.  We could not drive a vehicle into that, and the assembled trucks waited for us on the other side of what was now a small lake.

Needless to say, this made us late.  As with a typical Southeastern thunderstorm, it had subsided 30 minutes later, and the waters began to recede.  However, by the time we made it to the theatre, the band was already loading in, and we were unable to unload the trucks.

At this point, we were given a “break.”  We couldn’t load in until the band was done later that night, so now I had the pleasure of driving a pick-up truck full of set pieces around to go grocery shopping and get some dinner.  I wasn’t crazy about it, but it was only for a few hours so I sucked it up.  I got some groceries and phoned in for some Indian take-out.  I was on my way to pick up the food when disaster struck.

I was driving on Interstate 440, going a little under the speed limit.  What I did not realize was that a handrail that had been propping up the tarp and keeping the straps tight over the load – snapped.  The pieces had apparently come apart and the tension in the straps was now gone.  I only found this out when I glanced up in the rearview mirror to see the tarp slipping away.  I was coming up on the Hillsborough Rd. exit and I thought, I’ll just pull off, re-secure the tarp, and get my Indian food.

Then I saw the barrel fly out of the back of the truck.

The car behind me was able to swerve around it as it rolled down the highway.  I was already heading down the exit ramp and now I was in full panic.  It was Sunday evening, but that stretch of highway is only two lanes on each side, with very little shoulder, and there was enough traffic for this to be incredibly dangerous.

There was no choice – I had to go back and get the damn thing out of the road.

I couldn’t just go back up the ramp – I had to circle around as quickly as possible, pulling illegal u-turns where possible, go back to the exit before where I had lost the barrel, and then come back up that stretch of highway in order to come up behind it and get to the only place where I could possibly park the truck.  My mind was envisioning the horrific pile-up that was now taking place on the highway as I worked my way back to the scene.

As I approached, I let out a huge sigh of relief.  No pile-up, no cars scattered on the road.  The barrel was resting peacefully in the exit lane.  I pulled the truck over on the little patch of shoulder right in front of the exit and sprinted for it, wildly waving traffic around as I did so.  I grabbed the barrel and ran for the truck as the rain picked up again.  I couldn’t believe my good fortune that no one had wrecked!

And then the police car pulled up.

“Did that come out of your truck?” he shouted over traffic and rain.  ”Yes,” I meekly replied.  ”I need to see your license,” he responded.  There’s been an accident.”

My heart sank.  My worst fears were now back in full force.  Had someone been hurt?  Or worse?  I asked the cop if anyone had been injured and he said he didn’t know.  He pointed to the exit and shouted “I have to go to the other vehicle!  Meet me down there!”

I nodded and said I would secure the barrel and then follow him.  He took off.  A few minutes later, the straps and tarp now tight again, I headed down the exit ramp.  I saw two damaged hub caps lying in the road that had definitely not been there my first trip down.  I swung around the loop to the intersection…and no one was there.

No police car, no people standing on the side of the road like they had been in an accident.  There was a beat-up looking car that looked as if it had been in an accident, but no one with it.  I pulled into the tattoo parlor parking lot right beside this abandoned vehicle and realized…the cop has my license and now I don’t know where he is.  At this point, I’m thinking that someone is now on their way to the hospital and I cannot drive anywhere.

What did people do before smart phones?  I looked up the non-emergency number and begged the police operator to find the officer who had my license.  A short while later he returned and told me that only one car had been in an accident (the beat-up vehicle parked by the tattoo parlor), and the driver was not hurt.  Huge relief.

The driver was an 18 year old girl who had swerved to miss the barrel and apparently overcompensated, swinging past the left lane into the median-curb and blowing out her front tire.  She was fine, just panicked, and had apparently agreed to let some guy in a suburban give her a ride away from the scene.  She returned a while later, shaken but okay, and I apologized for what had happened.  The cops gave me a ticket for not securing the load, and insurance is taking care of the damage – only it’s the truck’s owner’s insurance (so beware when loaning your vehicle!).

Later that evening, I was all too ready to get rid of the set pieces, the truck and the barrel.  Here’s the stinger – that barrel got cut!  No kidding.  The director ended up finding a different barrel to use, so the one I had risked life and limb running into interstate traffic for was out.

I am just thankful more than anything that no one was hurt.  I feel bad enough about the scare that poor girl got and the damage to her dad’s car.  All in all, I was extremely lucky!

This is what we do for art sometimes.  At least there were no casualties.

-Todd

The Carmen Effect.

“I really do believe that if you don’t challenge yourself and risk failing, that it’s not interesting.” – Julie Taymor

During this pause in the action as we eagerly await confirmation on our second venue for Much Ado About Nothing, it seems like a good time to talk about the person that started all this.  It happens to be her birthday!

If circumstances were not as they are, I would never attempt something like what I am now attempting with Much Ado.  I am not formally trained in theatre.  I acted in some bad high school productions and then abandoned theatre for film school in college.  I got back into theatre after college, but really only as a producer and occasional writer.  I have only previously directed a handful of bad short films, and a couple of short plays.  I have never directed a full-length play before, much less Shakespeare.  So who the hell am I to do this show?  I have to admit, it feels a bit audacious.

It’s that audacity that I am going to call “The Carmen Effect.”

Unsubstantiated photo of the Boss Wench.  Note the kneepads, which indicate that this rehearsal was going to be serious.

When Carmen-maria Mandley began Bare Theatre, it was not even conceived of as a company.  She simply got it in her head to do a play and she did it.  She dreamed and then found people who could help her make those dreams reality.  It didn’t matter whether she could or could not do the things that she had in mind, she just inspired people and they all somehow made it happen.  Whether it was to drive a police car onstage, bury an actor in sand, or enclose the entire theatre space in bed sheets – these things just happened.  It didn’t matter that there was no budget.  It just happened.

Carmen and I were working together at an art gallery when I first met her.  In conversation, I told her I was an electronic musician, and I let her listen to a CD I had made.  Not too long after that, she asked me to compose the music for Titus Andronicus.  It didn’t matter that I had never composed a score before, and it didn’t matter that I only had about six weeks to write and produce the score. 

That experience changed my life.

It was immediately after Titus that Bare Theatre was producing full seasons, and Carmen asked me to be the company composer.  For a few years, I was producing two or three albums’ worth of music every year.  Not only that, but I learned a tremendous amount from her.  I learned about her process, her directing style, her choices, how she worked with actors.  I learned a ton about Shakespeare, which I had previously always thought of as “overdone” (believe me, I have been born again!).  I also learned about commedia and clowning, which has now become a real passion.

The Carmen Effect was already influencing others in the company.  We brought in guest directors, several of whom had not directed a full-length or Shakespeare before, and they did so brilliantly.  Each of them had what could be considered crazy ideas, but we as a company went with it, and it always managed to work.

It wasn’t just with directors, however.  The Carmen Effect is perhaps most striking when she takes a person, young or old, male or female, who has no real acting experience or training, and she manages to extract a performance full of honesty and intensity that they were not even aware they had in them.

It has only recently occurred to me that we all have at least in some way learned from Carmen that we could do crazy things if we believed in them.  This is a notion that is lost to much of our modern world, where issues like war or the economy tend to bring reality home in a big way.

There was a long period of time in my life where I would have said “Direct!?!  Shakespeare!?!  I’m not qualified to do that!!!”  Perhaps I am not. 

However, I now realize that even though I did not get a degree in theatre or study at a prestigious school, I have had seven years of training with a brilliant director and the talented directors, actors and crew she brought together.  I would like to think I’ve gleaned something, even a few small droplets of knowledge, from her experience with Shakespeare & Company, Cirque du Soleil, Dell’Arte, The Nickel Shakespeare Girls, and the multitude of life experiences she has had.  It is The Carmen Effect that makes me confident in what we are doing, despite the challenges.

After all, it’s the challenge and the risk of failing that somehow makes it all worthwhile.  Right, Carmen?

By the way, there is also a Heather Effect.  More on that later.

-Todd