...

How many posts in the last month have I left abandoned by my own little good intentions-paved garden path? I don't rightly know, but it's more than two, I'll tell you that much.

It's summer and I'm smack dab in the midst of rehearsals (as the infamous 'Crazy' Merlie Ryan) for The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe with Signal; it also happens to be my first production as an offical ensemble member over at Signal(!). So, y'know, busy times have struck. Appy-polly-logies, darlings.

But stay tuned for a shortly forthcoming annoucement about The Nine -- and by announcement I mean dates, location, and audition/collaborator call for Part One: SubUrbia. Here's a hint: at this time six months from now, we will be rehearsing this bad boy. Rawk.

And hey, maybe I'll write about the few things I'm managing to still see as well. Wouldn't that be novel?

P.Rekk
2009

Art Brut x3

Excuse me while I beat this dead horse:

Why is live music so regularly more engaging and more honest than live theatre? I understand that there's a level of pretend in theatre that doesn't exist to the same degree in most other performance arts, but we're supposed to be able to pretend better than everybody else. We're supposed to be able to pretend at a level that makes people want to pay to watch us do it.

Can you phsyically move someone with your theatre? Can you engage someone so fully that they instinctually mimic your onstage actions? Can you make people cheer while they applaud? Can you make people wish they could do what you are doing, trade places with you, be in your shoes for just one hour, despite the fact that the only true benefit is the release of the thing? Can you make people forget themselves?

Will you please do it, then?

P.Rekk
2009

Xenakis

Regarding last week's one night only ICE performance of Iannis Xenakis' work at the MCA:

"Well, hello there! I would like to, on behalf of the neighborhood association, welcome you to the World of Sound, subdivision The Farther Reaches. Here, have a complimentary map. Oops, that one is now outdated. Here, have the latest version. Oh crap, now THAT one is outdated. Here, have the... you know, it actually might be best to skip the map all together. You'll find your way around alright. Besides, there's nothing here you haven't seen before and nothing the likes of which you'll find anywhere else. What's that? It's looks a little like Wonderland? Well, yes, but without the pesky metaphors, of course. Wackyland? A little bit, but even the dodos don't stay dodos for long here. No, we're talking about some real Norman McLaren shit in this stretch. You see, this here is Sound. Every structure here is built upon waves. Every surface here is mutable. We here at the neighborhood association recommend standing still for as long as possible. Allow us to explore around you -- that's where the real tour is. Here, you see the big black 'X' on the ground? That's for you. You are here. We promise. Everything else? Well, that's the real question, isn't it? Hang on, here we go! And don't worry, you'll be here when we get back. We promise."

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Best performance of the year thus far. Fucking A, ICE. Fucking A, Xenakis. Fucking A. MCA for the win yet again. That's the season announcement I'm waiting for. And, as a side note, we need more people to start marketing with free/cheap pins. Not only will I back that whole heartedly, but there's a startling overlap in shows I love and shows which I leave with pins in hand. And, following that line, shows which I end up losing the pins for in a few months. Speaking of which, anybody got a Pavement Group Lipstick Traces pin they wouldn't mind parting with? I used to wear the shit outta that thing!

P.Rekk
2009

Hedwig And The Angry Inch, pt. 1

There's a post about Rock 'N' Roll brewin' and a brewin', but while I try and sort those thoughts out, a quick sidetrack on ATC's Hedwig And The Angry Inch (more thoughts on which will join Rock 'N' Roll).

ATC's production of Hedwig ends with Nick Garrison, who has been slowly self-destructing in the lead role all evening, stage-cutting his chest with a broken bottle. The effect isn't achieved terribly well, but even so, I couldn't help thinking how unusually distracting it was. Unless it plays a vital part in the show, poorly done stage violence usually gets little more than a shrug from me, but this couple of seconds continued to stand out long after the show was over.

It got to rolling around in my head and I came to realize that one difference between this and typical stage violence is that this is an act that is familiar purely because it is performative -- because other artists, musicians in this case, actually have mutilated their bodies on stage. Rather than a stage fight, in which performers attempt to provide a realistic representation of an act uncreatable on stage, what we have here is a performer, on stage, attempting to provide a realistic representation of an act that dozens of performers have actually created on stage.

And it's not that I want to say I felt cheated, or that I think the only way this moment could work is with actual self-mutilation, or that actual violence on stage is at any point in time necessary. And yet, those of you who know me quite well know that I firmly believe that actual violence on stage can be used to great effect, that it's not a taboo, that there is at certain times and in certain performers a level of necessity so driven that the corporeal bounds are no more off limit than any others. And that I am fascinated by these performers, from the theatrics of Marilyn Manson and the disregard of G.G. Allin to the more intellectually and spiritually driven work of the Vienna Aktionists and Marina Abramovic.

It's half a fascination in what drives these artists and how far they can be driven, but it's also half a recognition that there are certain synapses that I share with them. Anyone who has had a chance to meet DADA [g]nimbus has seen those synapses firing on a very innocent level. I was discussing acting technique with a friend the other day, very intently discussing actually, and every point I made either came back to instinct and physicality or saw me contorting my body in an attempt to get the proper words out. I'm an actor that is familiar with that fucked up state of performance where character and performer are indiscernable from the inside as well as the out. And so, to a degree, I do understand what drives these artists. Would I cut myself with a broken bottle on stage? Well, umm.... no. (After all, my mom reads this blog, and she has a hard enough time seeing me on the receiving end of stage violence.) But the knowledge that certain artists would and not think twice about it makes me cringe horrendously at an obviously false portrayal. You can argue art imitating life and life imitating art all you want, but I'll tell you one thing: when art imitates art, all you get is a second-hand copy.

P.Rekk
2009

Lots of things of less importance

The best laid plans tonight was a post on how much fun Red Noses was and why, and how Enemy Of The People reconfigures the idea of audience participation in both a positive and a negative way, and how Star Trek was amazing (even for a non-Trekkie), Terminator was passable (at best), and Wolverine was disappointing (especially for a man jonesing for some Gambit). Mice and men, y'all.

A few hours ago while at a Memorial Day party, I learned of Chicago character actor extraordinaire -- and I don't use that phrase lightly -- Will Schutz's death at the hands of pancreatic cancer. There was a long moment of silence, primarily because fuck, how else do you respond to news like that, and a cheers in Will's honor. There was sadness. Lots of sadness. There was also laughter. Laughter and memory.

As I'm getting ready to go to bed, I'm browsing Facebook and seeing update after update mourning the tremendous loss that hit the Chicago theatre community today. There is sadness. Lots of sadness. But I know the laughter and memory will follow. That was the side that Will brought out of people.

I never had the pleasure of working on a show with Will, but I did have the pleasure of befriending him, both through my work with the side project and his work with Signal. The loss of talent alone is reason enough for the city to mourn, but it is the loss of personality and humor and, above all, humanity that makes the theatre community bow its head en masse tonight. The man embodied kindness unparalleled. We miss him, and we know we will never meet another like him.

Yeah, Red Noses was fun. Yeah, Enemy Of The People is doing some interesting things. Yeah, I saw a bunch of fucking movies. That's all superfluous tonight. Tonight the core was shaken. Tonight we lost a friend.

Will Schutz is dead. Long live Will Schutz.

P.Rekk
2009

The Lieutenant Of Inishmore, ya feck.

Sure, I'll admit that I know very little about the logistics of blood effects. So tell me this: is it possible that the blood splatter that drenches Mairead after she shoots Padraic in Northlight's The Lieutenant Of Inishmore looking vaguely like a heart could be intentional? If so, special effect artist Steve Tolin is a freaking genius and I bow to him.

Alright, anyone familiar with the production (or even the play): is the grounding X factor I'm still looking for something that's missing from this particular production or is it a missing element in McDonagh's work? I quite enjoyed the entire show, but had one of those didn't know you what you had been missing moments towards the end. The ridiculousness of the IRA/INLA mentality and drive came through loud and clear, but there's a part of me that's picking apart the front end of the script in hindsight trying to find a humanizing factor, a glimpse of an idea that there is a very sensical entry point for us as to why these groups form and continue as well. But I can't quite figure if it's lurking uncovered in there or not. The moment it hit me was Mairead sorrowfully singing the rebel songs after shooting Padraic, creating a perfect balance on stage between the romanticism of The Cause (maintained in the nostalgia of the old songs and so strong that Mairead's list of victims -- starting with those who carelessly brain cats -- takes priority over even her future husband) and the stunning absurdity of the carnage that results in practice. This leads me to believe that the prior uses of the rebel songs may contain more layered discoveries than director BJ Jones and Kelly O'Sullivan as Mairead were able to bring out. What seems at Northlight to be a minor character nuance might just hold the key to our, as an audience, understanding of the appeal behind the violence in these characters. The happier medium of interplay between farcical and bloody short-sightedness and aching necessity in the IRA/INLA portrayal. Or might I be looking for something that McDonagh simply didn't write? Thoughts?

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I just finished reading Living by Henry Green. It's a good read, and though it takes a chapter or three to get used to the style and voice, it's worth the effort come the end. It also got me thinking about my taste in the narrative arts. Such is my brain. And as a disclaimer for my brain, I feel the need to point out that I have no formal training in any sort of literary criticism or theory and that when I go off into pontifications about movements and trends in art history, as I am wont and about to do, it is a combination of snippets of info that my sponge of a mind picked up on some random street corner and heretofore crackpot ideas that sprang from my headpan. So grab a couple of grains of salt.

Green is touted as one of the early modernist masters in literature, and while Living is all about class difference, one of the most successful aspects of the book for me is the lack of a proper (i.e. traditional) narrative. A precursor to the jigsaw films so often crashing (pun partially intended) ashore these days, this is the type of modernist tale that springs unpredictably between a bookload of characters, each living their own day to day life in an environment that binds them all. Additionally in Green's novel, characters come and go as he pleases. There are naturally some that maintain prevalence, a semi-familial lower class quartet, for instance, but also some that are set up to be major players only to disappear rather suddenly (the young heir to the foundry setting) and some that simply pop in on and off for a couple of chapters mid-novel and that's it (the heir's love interest). The result is a world of depth and variety and primarily reality; we get to know certain people closely and dearly and only learn snippets -- sometimes only a passing glance -- of others.

The jigsaw film is a touch and go genre for me. I find Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia to be a magnum opus, one of my favorite films of all time, and yet have something more akin to disdain for Paul Haggis' Crash or Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel (his work in general for that matter). I believe it has something to do with the purpose towards which the device is put. Because that's merely what it is: a device. The idea that, Hey, we're all connected! is not a revelation. In splintering a narrative and exploring the pieces, an artist can certainly put them back together again, but if that's the only goal, something has been lost. What point is there in the splintering if the main focus is not the individual pieces, but the overall picture? If that's the case, leave the picture the fuck alone and explore it as a whole. If you're going to create slices of individuality, make those slices of individuality the focus (or, if you are putting them back in the process, the places that those slices meet). And woe be to you if, as in Crash, the focus is putting the picture back together again to show us the magical lesson that was there the whole time before you, the artist, obfuscated it for us. Congratulations, convolution wasn't enough, you had to go for condescension as well!

No, I think it is a structure that works best when used entirely without comment, as in Living, or to bring another contemporary film example, Harmony Korine's Gummo. Gummo is not about the interconnectedness of the residents of Xenia, Ohio, and while they are interwined and interactive, they aren't so in a happy wrapping and bow manner. There is incidental and coincidental meeting and there is continuation beyond the meeting and sometimes there is no meeting at all. And the result is a simple snapshot of a lump of people. Observation without moral. For some reason, that outcome has always appealed to me. It's the sort of art that I have always referred to as 'humanistic', not because it reveals any particular human truths, but because it revels in a lack thereof. We watch humans for a while and then, at some perhaps not particularly important point, we are done watching humans. Korine is one of the best at this technique -- this celebration of life.

Any suggestions on playwrights that might fit this bill -- the side of the Venn diagram that includes realists but not moralists? I haven't put much thought in it since writing the above and I'm sure I'm blanking on a ton because my mind instantly wants to weave towards the absurdists. Franz Xaver Kroetz comes to mind, though his work is less a celebration than a meditation and without the splintering, I suppose. Anybody got anything else?

Edit: I just realized this morning that I completely neglected to mention Robert Altman, the master of the modernist film and the missing link in my comparison of Henry Green to the contemporary jigsaw film. PT Anderson gets a lot of flak for cribbing Altman, and the comparison is more than fair, but I think that Korine has more of Altman's spirit, if less of his technique; a traditionalist approach to the style, in which the interconnectedness of the characters functions as a frame more than a character itself.

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Hey New Yorkers! I can't be a good friend and go see my once upon a roommate's show because I'm one of those halfway across the country types, but you can! Here's a quick plug for Wide Eyed Productions' One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, playing until May 24th at the Richmond Shepard Theater in NYC. I can't speak for the production, 'cause I haven't seen it, but I can tell you that the amount of talent in the roles of McMurphy and Cheswick is pretty extreme. So check it out and report back to me, 'cause I can't, boohiss.

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The latest addition to the "I might have to cross it off the To Use Artistically list, because there's no way I can top this" file: The American Dollar's Anything You Synthesize. The video already wins. Over everything. Check it, and make it full screen:



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Ohmigod, a five parter!

This weekend is all Brodie all the time. You know why? We're closing on Saturday! You know what that means? All you slackers better get your tickets now, because you've only got three more chances to see it before we tear this mother down! Go here. Get tickets. See the show. I'm working box on Thursday and will be there on Saturday, but I see that as no reason to discriminate against Friday, ya punks. See you there!

P.Rekk
2009

I made this.

Nuts and bolts first: It was Dog & Pony's God's Ear and The Factory's Mop Top Festival plus watching/working box at Brodie. This Thursday is Profiles' The Wonderful World Of Dissocia and Friday is New Leaf's The Long Count. Saturday morning I'm flying out to Iowa to hang out for a week and then play Co-Best Man for my little brother's wedding on May 9.

My. Little. Brother's. Wedding. I've been utterly single for over 2 1/2 of my 3 1/2 years in Chicago -- handing over the rings to my 21 year old brother is gonna be one of the weirdest feelings of my life. But I'm proud and very happy for him and excited to spend time at home -- so don't be surprised if this place is dead until I get back on May 11.

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Jenny Schwartz's God's Ear is one of those plays that is written so well, so insightfully and incisively, so precise that it just makes you want to go home and write yourself. I've been neglecting those creative muscles recently in favor of the acting and directing sort, and while I will continue to flex the acting (I will be playing Merlie Ryan in Signal's The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe opening in August) and the directing (I hope to announce official dates in early 2010 for Part One of The Nine before the end of May -- as soon as the ink is dry on a space), I think it may be time to pick the writing back up.

I don't really write in draft form. While I may go back and change a few sentences or word order for the flow of the piece at any given time, once I write something down, the structure is pretty much set. There is the rare exception, but for the most part my first drafts are near indistinguishable from my final drafts. (I believe Jen wrote something long ago about having a similar technique.) This of course means I have a bajillion half finished projects sitting around at any given time. It also means I can easily pick up those projects at any given time if I remain pleased with them. And remaining pleased with your work months, even years, after you've written it is a great feeling.

I've been going over old projects the last couple days and have found a number that I need to decide between in terms of buckling down and plugging away. There's BlueGrass, an experiment in Boolean Theatre that will be a later part of The Nine; Quiet Ground, my entry for last year's NaPlWriMo that didn't get far within the given timeframe; Terron: A Protagonist, a 26-part semi-Oulipian novella; and Rapture, an I don't know what that lives within my obsession with, well, The Rapture. And I'm going see if I can't finish at least one of these by the time Ballad opens. Yay, goals!

In the meantime, here's a little something I wrote almost three years ago for a one-night ten minute play festival. I still think it holds water. It's called The Mystique.

1: There hasn't been a moon like this in ages.

2: You're crazy; the moon's always been there.

pause

3: They say that it's even there during the day.

pause

3: We just can't see it.

pause

3: Because of the sun.

pause

1: But it's never this bright. That's what I meant: The moon hasn't been this bright in ages.

3: Also because of the sun.

1: Has the sun changed?

2: No, the sun's always been there, too.

3: It is changing

2: (to 1) You're crazy.

3: But not quickly enough to notice.

1: Well I notice that the moon is brighter than it's ever been before. Why is that?

long pause

2: I like it.

1: Oh, I do, too.

2: Why ruin the--

3: Are you sure it's brighter?

2: --the mystique of it?

3: Because it looks very similar to me.

1: I do enjoy the mystique.

2: Yes, it's definitely brighter

long pause

2: The mystique is half the fun.

3: It's really not brighter at all.

1: But it is.

3: Because the moon doesn't actually shine

2: The mystique is half the fun.

3: In that no light emanates from the body that is the moon.

2: The mystique--

1: But--

3: The illusion of a glowing moon that we are currently viewing--

1: Is the mystique--

2: I don't really think we--

3: Is nothing more than the reflection of the sun's rays.

1 and 2: Ahhh....

1: The sun's rays.

2: That makes sense.

1: Because the moon is not in fact giving off light

3: You see?

2: I do.

pause

1: Mmhmm.

long pause

4 (off-stage): Fuck!

pause, 4 enters

4: That is one gorgeous moon, my friends, one gorgeous god damn moon

pause

4: I don't think I've ever seen the moon quite this bright before.

1: It's the sun.

pause

4: No... that's the moon.

2: It's the reflection of the sun's rays. You aren't actually seeing the moon, because the moon is not luminary.

3: What you are seeing is the reflection of the sun's rays off of the surface of the moon.

2: So, in essence, what you are seeing is the sun.

pause

1: Indirectly.

long pause

4: Ah.

pause

4: But there is a moon.

3: Oh yes.

2: No doubt.

1: Can we be sure?

2: (to 1) You're crazy.

4: Yes, there is a moon. And because there is a moon, rays from the sun are able to hit the surface and reflect off, making their way to the Earth, including the very spot that I am standing, the very inches that my eyes are occupying. And because the rays are reflected from the surface of the moon to these very inches, I am able to see all else the rays are illuminating. As well as the interlocking shadows -- I am able to see where the rays cannot reach and the battles waging at the line that separates the two. And the shimmering lake -- the needle-glint of a rising wave that is quickly swallowed onto itself by the following needle-glint, each more fleeting than the last, each a mere reflection of a reflection of a ray but piercing just the same. And the stars -- I am able to pick from a million tiny specks, joining together to litter the sky in the short hours before the sun returns in it's arrogance, outshining all, oppressing the stars and the moon and the earth -- burning, simply burning. Because the moon does not shine, because the moon merely reflects, because the moon is merciful, I can see the stars. And the sliver of a passing glint as the lake breaks. And the shadows, the belligerent shadows, driven back by the sun, but free to play, to have their long-awaited reign. Because of the moon. And it's fucking beautiful. It's a fucking beautiful moon.

long pause

4 exits

long pause

1: Fuck.

Curtain.

This was one of my first exercises in cutting back. I initially had a bunch of stage directions in this piece as well, a whole lot of nature-driven quasi-absurdist action. It seemed really cool when I was writing it and read horribly afterwards; symbolism for the sake of symbolism. So I sliced it all out and left just the words, making it inadvertently one of my first exercises in encouraging directorial interpretation as well. This would soon become a running theme.

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Since it's past midnight I suppose I can officially give some thoughts on the Jeff Nominations. May as well do so before I'm offline for a week. Intial reactions:

- What the hell happened to The Hypocrites' Our Town? No ensemble nod? No individual acting nods for Cromer and Grace? Was the committee watching the same show as me and everyone else that sold that fucker out and moved it to New York? It deserves the production and director awards, but it also deserves so much more than that.

- On the reverse, the fact that Boho's Jekyll And Hyde: The Musical was nominated for anything other than Waste Of Paul Rekk's Money is discouraging. Other nominated shows that would have made that category: Circle's Hay Fever and Steep's Greensboro: A Requiem.

- Things I see'd and liked a lot: Ryan Jarosch in Hubris' Torch Song Trilogy, Brenda Barrie in Lifeline's Mariette In Ecstasy -- except for the last five minutes; an exceptional group of Supporting Actors in a Play -- I only missed Nathaniel Swift, but the rest were all fantastic; Blindfaith's Woody Guthrie's American Song snagging an under the radar 5 nods.

- Stiffest competition: Sound Design. Nick Keenan for New Leaf's Touch and Stephen Ptacek for Dog & Pony's God's Ear are awesome, awesome, awesome but are just a notch below Tim Hill's subtly unsettling design for Lifeline's Mariette In Ecstasy. But any (or all) of the three would make my day.

But at the end of the day, congratulations to all and to all a good night!

P.Rekk
2009