...O Hai

Lest you imagine my absence has been a matter of rest:

ITEM!  On October 16th Wife Megan and I performed aerial silks at a Halloween-themed circus show at Streb S.L.A.M.  It was my debut on the aerial silks and - now that I think of it - my return to circus performance after an absence of some years.  More on this in its own post (promise [promise]), but suffice it to say that I survived and learned a lot in the process.  And: enjoyed it!

ITEM!  On October 17th I performed in a staged reading of Margo Hammond's The New Me, playing a private detective, which is one of my favorite things in the whole world.  (Good role to love, too, since a fella' can play that general type through many different stages of his life.)  It went well I thought, and I really enjoyed exploring the guy's subtle self-interests in the midst of performing his job.

ITEM!  On October 29th I and my better 50% traveled to Chicago.  It was my first time there since 2001 when I toured through it with the partial-German-language farce I starred in (not bragging; educational theatre).  It was a great trip that really inspired me in unexpected ways, not the least of which was attending the late show at The Second City and being reminded of the value of sketch comedy in constructing commedia dell'arte.

ITEM!  November 1st brought me to only my second participation in a meeting of The Pack.  At said meeting I had a scene from Hereafter read, and received feedback on it.  It was very interesting, and ultimately encouraging for continuing work on the script.  Seems like the answer to making it cohesive may be in streamlining the number of ideas represented in it.


ITEM!  On November 8th there was a developmental reading for a small, private audience, of James B. Nicola's Closure.  In it I read several male characters, and it tested my mastery of dialects, and found it as lacking as it always has been.  Some are naturals at accents, but I need to work at it to achieve consistency, and switching rapidly (occasionally having whole scenes with myself) between them was dizzying.  It was fun to try, though, and good to notice that as the script went along, I got better.

ITEM!  On November 13th I participated in a table reading of The Widow Ranter, adapted by Adrienne Thompson and directed by the acclaimed Karen Carpenter (no, not that one).  In it I played the boisterous, large old Colonel Ranter, eschewing type left right and center amidst a table of over a dozen actors.  Interesting to see all the energy and dynamic shifts with that many friends and strangers with a performance bent in one place.


ITEM!  For the first time with the revised cast, on November 21st The Puppeteers held a developmental meeting in Scranton.  It went well, and rapidly, and of course a great deal of time and work on my part has gone into the show's development 'blog.  It's an amazing - and very much ongoing - process, creating an original comedy from scratch.  We've had two more developmental meetings since, and begin the rehearsal process in earnest on December 27th.


ITEM!  I finally participated in NaNoWriMo!  And I failed!  Well, inasmuch as I didn't fulfill the word goal of 50,000 by deadline.  I did, however, get a great deal of writing done on an actual novel, no matter how questionable its worth.  It was very much fun and very much difficult, as my update-only post for November attests.


ITEM!  For the first time since I was 23 (by which I mean last year, amirite?) I performed in a musical on December 2nd.  Sharon Fogarty's one-act comic musical, Speaking to the Dead, had me playing a game-show host who falls for his ghost-whispering costar in many more ways than one.  Actually, initially I wasn't to sing, but at one rehearsal I gave a line a sing-songy quality and BAM: a few lines of song for yours truly.  It truly was a hoot.  And such a pleasure to finally work with Ms. Fogarty after many near-misses at Manhattan Theatre Source.


So, you know: That.  It's been a busy two months, and likely to be nothing but busy through the holidays and on into January.  The Puppeteers opens January 19th, and that weekend is the only one in which I'll be guaranteed to be in town watching it.  If you have the means and desire to make your way to wintery Scranton, I commend you and recommend it --  it's going to be A LOT of fun.


Merriest and happiest, one and all.

I Can Not Stress Enough...

Found here.

There's a little voice in my head that moonlights as an escape artist.  It must be, because no gag or act of psychic bondage will shut the little son-of-ma'-brain up.  It is in essence a control valve for my ambition, and it goes a little something like this:

"Jeff.  Jeff.  Jeff.  Jeff.  Jeff.  Hey Jeff.  Jeff.  Jeff.  Hey Jeff.  Hey.  Remember that thing you have to do.  You know: the thing.  Not the one thing, but that other thing.  But do the other other thing first.  And then remember to come back to the first thing I mentioned, and then do that one thing.  If you can't remember any one of these things, well, you're probably going to screw it all up.  Actually, you will.  Screw it all up.  It's already screwed up, by merit of you being the one who has to do it.  It's all going to turn out very, very badly - even worse than using an adverb in an ambiguous context.  Which you just did.  Worse yet, the aforementioned screwing up will occur as a result of a spiral of failure starting with some small thing and eventually taking the entire endeavor known as YOUR LIFE down like the Titanic.  Because that's what happens to big, ignorant things.  Hey Jeff.  Hey Jeff.  If you don't stop sucking soon, it may already be too late..."

He's an extremely helpful little guy.  Especially when one is dealing with multiple deadlines.

Recently I added to my roster of responsibilities some work for a company that sends actors in to corporate environments to facilitate lessons in communication between managers and their team members.  I was wary of this sort of work at first, because Wife Megan worked for one such institution when she first moved to NYC, and they sounded horrible.  Very touchy-feely, metaphoric and therapeutic in their approach, which I personally find inappropriate for a work environment.  (Yes, even in theatre work - a debate best left for another post.)  Fortunately, the place I'm working for now has a more pragmatic view of communication in the work place, and it's one I thus far agree with.

So I'm trying to apply their philosophy to a conversation with my extremely helpful little guy (henceforth "EHLG").  It might go a little something like this:

Me: Hey EHLG. How are you?

EHLG: Hey Jeff. Hey Jeff.

Me: Um - hey.

EHLG: You know what?

Me: What's that?

EHLG: You suck. At living.

Me: Okay, see-

EHLG: Living is something you're very bad at.

Me: EHLG.

EHLG: Hm?

Me: Do you see what you just did there?

EHLG: You mean the way I spoke truth to power?

Me: Well from my perspective, you tried to tear down power.

EHLG: Word up.

Me: But see, EHLG, I don't have much of any power over you.

EHLG: Word up.

Me: And if you tear me down, it only hurts both of us.

EHLG: Word...huh.

Me: What is it you're hoping to get out of this?

EHLG: You know, you're not very good at this feedback stuff.

Me: Okay.

EHLG: You fake it pretty good, but that can only take you so far and pretty soon you're going to fail and suffer.

Me: I'm suffering now.

EHLG: Not as much as you will if you keep going.

Me: Is that a threat?

EHLG: You know, you're not very good at perceiving threats.

And let's take a little break here.  This is a weird post, I'll admit it, but also pretty interesting to me, I must admit as well.  The first practice session I had with the feedback-training company got confusing quickly, because we were all trainees and we ran sessions with one another.  That meant that in addition to trying to learn the techniques the company used in role-playing, we were at times role-playing being a facilitator who was role-playing being an employee of a manager/student who was, him or herself, a role-player; all the while improvising a scenario with specific given circumstances.  (WE HAVE TO GO DEEEPER [BRAAAAHHHHHMMMMM...].)

The big mistake I made in that practice session was not when I was playing the manager, but the actor/facilitator.  I got confused, and came on too strong with the obstacle that "manager" was being asked to deal with.  Ideally, one wants to adjust to his or her level of intercommunication and nudge it towards something more, and I just barreled on through with my characterization instead.  Call it my learned imperative response as an actor.  I've gotten better at it.  One key element is to insert a pause in the role-play for analysis and discussion.  It allows the manager to reflect and feel permitted to try a fresh angle.

EHLG: You suck.

Me: Thanks EHLG; I appreciate your feedback and will try to consider it in future endeavors.

EHLG: You're welcome.

Me: I wanted to talk to you today about your feedback, actually. Have you found it to be getting you the results you want?

EHLG: Mostly. I have to keep repeating myself, which is pretty irritating, but that's the way it goes when you're talking to someone sucky.

Me: Have you thought about trying a different approach?

EHLG: Oh, I'm always changing gears: you suck, you blow, you aren't good at anything ever, you are justly hated and/or despised, your failure is compounded by your ugly face and funny clothes, etc.

Me: You do spend a lot of time coming up with that feedback

EHLG: Thank you.

Me: Let me tell you, though, that what I see is that your negativity is working against you, making your job harder on yourself.

EHLG: You're not very good at perceiving reality.

Me: Thanks, EHLG, for phrasing that in that way.

EHLG: What way?

Me: "Not very good."  You did that earlier, and I really appreciate when you show that consideration for me. It makes me feel better about listening to you.

EHLG: Your feelings are unimportant and stupid.

Me: You're welcome to have that opinion, but can I just point out that by assuaging my feelings, you make your job more efficient? In addition, by ignoring them, you imperil your position in this personality.

EHLG: I do?

Me: Of course, I wouldn't want to lose you if I can help it, EHLG.  You are always working, always keeping an eye on your well-being, and I appreciate the vigilance.  It's just that your negativity threatens to bring down everything you touch, and I of course can't have that happening. By being so aggressive in your input, you're alienating essential coworkers, like passion and inspiration.  Do you understand what I mean?

EHLG: Yeah.

Me: What do you think about that?

EHLG: It's stupid.

Me: Well, let's agree to check in again next week, at which time we can review your progress and make some decisions about what will help us work together better.

EHLG: That's stupid and sucky and you're stupid and sucky and I hate you.

Sometimes, you just have to be proud of how well you can handle a situation, and hope to get better results next time.  Having a little understanding for yourself can help with stress, too.

This Is Just to Say

I have enjoyed

the actors

that came in

to callbacks

and who

were probably tense

over

its oddness.

Forgive me

I cannot cast you all

so brave

and so totally awesome.

Short post here just to touch on the callbacks for our next Zuppa del Giorno show, the which I'll be directing. They have taken place this week, and after a little more coordinating and ruminating we should have our third performer. This was effectively my first time on the other side of the table in an audition process, and I learned a lot from it (possibly at the expense of the actors involved?), both as someone conducting an audition process and as an actor in said audition. More anon on that. (I'm really racking up the promised 'blog topics here.)

This post is really just to say that everyone who came in was awesome. It was an extremely unconventional callback process, due to the developmental and improvisational nature of the show, and each actor handled it with style. See if this doesn't terrify you: We set out a table of assorted random objects, and had people in two-at-a-time. The game they played was to tell a story between them, with one person verbally telling the story and the other telling it physically. They could use any of the "props," and at any time they could switch positions, yielding their vocal or physical storytelling to the other, or swooping into the other role. And they just kept going until I said, "Scene."

Tough, no? Awful, really, for people psyched to have an opportunity. If I could have come up with any other way to find out what we needed to know, I would have done that. But I wish you could have been there, Dear Reader, because what everyone did was unique and effective and inspiring. So, thanks, Auditioners. I would like to take you all out for milk and cookies.

The ACTion COLLECTIVE: ACT V, scene ii - Personal Character - Find Your Voice

"Everything you create comes from here."

Last night The Action Collective held our second in a series of workshops focused on character building, and our first to be led by a guest artist: Raïna von Waldenburg. Raïna is a teacher of Andrew's from NYU's experimental theatre wing, and we met with her a few weeks ago to discuss the possibility of leading a workshop with us, one based on her I Am One Who program of workshops. You can read more about her and her program on the Facebook invitation for the event, but here's a snippet of a description of the approach and goals:

"In a series of improvisations that require the actor to exist in the (power of) now, he/she will be faced with judges, habits, blocks, quirks, and latent talents that he/she has pushed aside. By literally inviting these undesirable parts of him/herself into the work, the actor suddenly has access to impulses that are alive, surprisingly truthful and emotionally resonant. The actor will learn to channel these impulses into acting that is present, open and honest, not forced, pushed or fake."

So: important and intimidating stuff. I was reminded, by her description of the technique and at times in practice, of the initial work Friends Heather, Todd and I did with Grey Valenti learning red-nose clowning. It involves that kind of sheer vulnerability and sincerity -- the very sorts of things I've been working rather hard (though somewhat subconsciously) to avoid in the past year. It also, however, has some important distinctions from that Lecoq-esque clown work, as I was to discover in the course of the evening.

An important part of the process has to do with identifying personal "judges," or voices of criticism within our own hearts and minds, and understanding them as characters. Raïna led each of us from theorizing what these individual, major judgments may be, through exploring them as people and finding a dialogue with them, right on to turning our judges into very promising characters in their own rights. She was incredibly present and listening and, though the work progressed very evenly over the course of three hours, you could tell that she was constantly responding to what was happening in the room, adapting our direction based on the "conversation" between students and teacher, or seekers and guide. Moreover, she did it all in such a way that we really had to give ourselves over to the work, because that was all we had to work with. Yet it was never strict, or forced. At least, not forced by her; there was plenty of forced work going on, whenever one of us got defensive or confused in an exercise.

A personal example: After some discussion of our personal judges, we began the exercises with practicing being open and available--present--with an audience. No need to do anything in particular, just don't retreat inward as you maintain eye contact and connection. This gradually developed in our observations and discussions into an informal rating system of 5 to 1 for how open we felt, 5 being not at all, 1 being as open as possible. One exercise along these parameters that she gave us was to start at 5 with everyone, and at some point in the course of 30 seconds flip into a 1 state. I found this really, really difficult (never really did get it) and in the course of my efforts, Raïna encouraged me to give voice to whatever impulse was preventing me from doing something so simple (my words, not hers). Eventually in the course of another 30-second attempt I twisted up my right elbow and neck in some abstract expression of frustration and sneered, "F@#$ this...." And that was good. And that was what we needed to move forward. Admitting my judgment of the exercise was how I could develop further into the work.

I think it's pretty safe to say that everyone last night learned something close to the level of a personal revelation or two (or, in my case, about a half-dozen). We were all working very hard, bravely, vulnerably and sometimes even without personal constraint. By the end, we were one-by-one improvising entire scenarios comprised of just us, and all the judges and judged that battle daily within us. Here was one of the important distinctions from the clown work that I've done, and the one that very nearly made me too defensively to effectively do the work: the naming of our judges. This requires a level of discussion and reflection that I believe actors tend to resist, because we're conditioned to -- afraid, aptly enough, of being judged as narcissistic and cerebral. And we resist it because it's frankly terrifying to acknowledge, to encourage, our judgments of ourselves. Adam Laupus made a pretty concise observation about it last night when he said that by naming one's judges, you begin to take their power back from them.

Apart from all that personal benefit, however, is a benefit of pure acting technique. This is an amazingly wonderful practice that bridges that strange divide between practices that help prepare for rehearsal and ones that are actually useful in rehearsal (for example, you would not [should not {yes; I'm judging}]) pull out the Meisner repetition exercise in the middle of rehearsing the last scene of The Glass Menagerie. This I Am One Who practice gives us a way to connect better with ourselves and our audiences, but also adds a powerful tool to the character-creation toolkit. It's genuine and impulse-based, breaks us out of habit, and it literally creates powerful characters for an actor to use. It's not often these days that I feel that sense of my perception of the acting process expanding, a feeling that I came to expect regularly in my studies at college. Last night, I felt that again, and I'm grateful to Ms. von Waldenburg for that.

In this sense, last night's event was a tremendous success for one of the goals of The Action Collective -- to provide actors with a space to do the work for which there is little time (or, in some cases, too much judgment) to accomplish in a typical rehearsal process. To enrich actors, instead of merely offering support. We may soon be making changes to the way the AC works, and what kind of work it takes on, but I'm encouraged by this latest workshop to maintain that priority. It's too important and too rare to neglect.

Commedia Day

Last Thursday, I failed, and was generously rewarded for it. The manner in which I failed was by opting out of performing with other talented artists for the International Day of Commedia dell'Arte, and I was rewarded by instead sitting in the audience and getting to enjoy multiple fascinating, commedia-inspired performances. It was quite moving, actually, to see such a concentrated example of the commedia dell'arte approached as a living tradition, which is an ethos Zuppa del Giorno has long espoused but rarely heard echoed back so specifically. I should have stepped up, and regret my own rather ironic sense of un-preparedness (is SO a word) to perform an improvised form, but regret nothing about attending the evening.

A couple of acquaintences with whom I've wanted to work -- Brian Foley and Billy Schultz -- performed and were involved in pulling it all together, in association with Fiasco Grande Productions. It was an evening that seemed to aim to inform as much as it entertained, and all within a sort of informal framework of each act presenting itself with little explanation, then that performer hanging around a moment to introduce the next. I appreciated this, because it lent a feeling of inclusion, but it may have made some who were expected a more refined production feel awkward. In particular, I enjoyed a description of the commedia dell'arte given in prelude to the whole thing, by a gentleman named Stanley Allan Sherman. Mr. Sherman had that immediacy about his demeanor that is so essential to good commedia, and can be rather intimidating or unpredictable to folks unaccustomed to that sort of ride. He reminded me a bit of our friends Andrea Brugnera and Angelo Crotti, and I wanted to talk to him more. A young student was interviewing him before the show, and I was giddily elated to hear he designed the mask for a famous professional wrestler, Mankind, and that he based it upon Arlecchino's visage. Living tradition, indeed.

The evening included commedia tropes, clown routines, satire, buffon and acrobatics, and tons of just lovely silliness. There wasn't much traditional scenario work -- Brian came closest I think with a lovely solo piece reminiscent of the lazzi of perhaps Arlecchino or Pedrolino -- but I was pleasantly surprised to see transformational elements such as masks and wigs. Billy participated in a structured improvisation with a great premise: that of an international competition for paper airplane construction and flight. This was the piece that most reminded me of Zuppa's initial original work, insofar as it was essentially a use of commedia techniques and archetypes in a more contemporary context. I was later blown away by the comical mastery displayed by the Acrobuffos. They ripped it up, stitched it back together and made the whole audience more alive with laughter.

The purpose of this International Day of Commedia dell'Arte, as I understand it, is to bring a wider appreciation and understanding of the commedia dell'arte to the world in the hopes of getting it acknowledged as the major cultural influence upon western civilization that it has been. (So, you know: modest goals.) In the US, Faction of Fools seems to have taken up the bulk of the mantle of this promotion of "intangible heritage" and is doing an accountable job of mobilising troupes and players into action. It's a bit regrettable that, here on the northeast coast, the day takes place in February, given that outdoor performance would be both historically appropriate and good for advertising. Nevertheless, the day is a great idea that I hope carries ahead full steam into the coming years and toward its eventual aim. The Commedia dell'Arte is alive and well and almost no one seems to know it. I'd like to believe we can change that.

As to my failure, I paraphrase that towering Capitano Sinatra: Regrets, I've had a few. As much as it was scheduling and insufficient time to prepare (yes - to prepare my improvisation) I think it was also a feeling of being quite out of touch with my craft, not having performed in the style since last summer's trip for In Bocca al Lupo. This evening rejuvenated that sense of connection, better than I could even have imagined, and has my imagination whirling again with archetypes and acrobatic gags. Who knows what will come of it, but I know that it will be driven forward by two things: the first, to never again be caught unawares for a similar performance opportunity; and the second is this feeling that I just walked into a room and found a panoply of old friends in the form of commedia characters. Thanks for that, everyone.

The Spectacular Scrantonian Spectacular! : A Spectacular Summary

Well, we did it. It may not be topping the charts anymore, but I and some generous friends of mine, we put on a show; a variety show; a "spectacular." On a personal level, it was a really nice adventure for me. I got to produce something I want to see more of in the world, and though it was really my first time producing something completely solo, I got to experience that anxiety (comparable, frankly, only to the anxiety I felt in the week leading up to my wedding) in a familiar environment at ETC. In fact, this was sort of my Zuppa show for the year, as Zuppa del Giorno is on an indefinite hiatus from our show-making. Maybe that explains the anxiety -- I was squeezing two months' worth into about two days.

The greatest disappointment of the show was really a fairly insubstantial, and familiar, one. That is, the audience turn-out and (presumably) corresponding community awareness. I worked quite hard at getting that part of it supported and improved from the theatre's usual struggles yet, given the fact that the event was only $5 with an open bar, have to concede defeat. This short-fall is one thing when you know you're doing something experimental or otherwise unpopular, and much the same thing when the product turns out below expectations for one reason or another. Neither was the case here, though.

My performers...were...AWESOME. Seriously. You should have been there. AWESOME. I can admit to some bias, but really, I am quite cynical when it comes to productions of which I'm a part; especially when I have some creative control beyond the actor's usual lot. I'm here to tell you that unless you were one of the 30 or so members of the audience, you missed out. Fortunately, I'm here to sum it up for you a bit. I may post video in the coming weeks, too, with the performers' permission. In the meantime, some pithy-tude and photography, the latter taken largely by Ms. Alicia Grega-Pikul.

The real process began with the arrival of the performers around 2:00 the day of the show. That gave us approximately four-and-a-half hours in which to look at what we had, what we needed, and string it all together into a pleasing shape. Billy Rogan and I -- with a little very helpful directorial assistance from Heather Stuart -- spent some small time Sunday figuring out the framework that we as MCs would use, but apart from that it was done on the day. Kate Chadwick, Richard and Sheridan Grunn, Patrick Lacey, Billy and I in the room, figuring it all out. The experience was especially solitary because neither the administrator of the second-stage program nor the technical director of the theatre were in town. This made for a kind of hectic weekend of prep for yours truly, but was also truly nice when we nervous jumpers-in (of the head-first variety) got down to brass tacks. Six of us in a space, working. It would have been a mess if I had performers who were especially insecure or needy. Such was not the case. So as people showed me their pieces, other people searched for props, and still others went about experimenting with linking their performances with other folks. And by 6:30, we knew what we were about.

That's a total lie, but not knowing exactly what we were about was part of the idea in the first place. So...

There were pre- and post-show slideshows during the mingling and sipping. The pre-show one was made entirely of sketches of people's visions of the future as they imagined it between 1890 and 1920, which I loved having projected across a shredded ballroom from the 1800s. When we got underway, I said a few introductory words about Scranton and vaudeville, and then introduced Billy, who was late due to mingling with the crowd. Billy and I opened the show by establishing our relationship as guys who had different ideas of wanting the show to be good -- me uptight, he relaxed, which segued nicely into his playing one of his songs to open. We set Billy up so he could move about, but had a nice old easy chair stage left for home base. This worked really nicely, so that he belonged on stage, but didn't have to distract from the more independent performances. Billy's a very versatile and charismatic performer, as both musician and comedian, and I owe a tremendous amount of the show's function to his presence. In fact, you really should be listening to his music while you read this, just for mood's sake.

Hard on the heels of Billy's lyrical opening came Richard's Urbano's Kitchen, in which a rather mad-looking Italian chef unleashes dish after dish upon an unsuspecting restaurant. Richard has the kind of dash that can pull this kind of act off, and that's a rare quality. Essentially, the act consists of him excitedly throwing trash on the audience in the form of yarn spaghetti, paper farfalle and plastic-bag salad. Richard has a way of doing this that compromises none of the anarchic spirit, yet feels somehow inviting, and he had the perfect counterpart in his Vincenzo, a slow-moving old man played by his four-foot son Sheridan. He and Billy were really a one-two punch at the top, relaxing and then getting the audience laughing in turns.

After that it was more music, this time in the form of an a capella performance from Kate. She took the stage gently after a brief introduction from me, and explained her Irish roots before proceeding to sing a favorite Irish folk song of her grandmother's. Kate has a beautiful, strong and well-trained voice, so we can be forgiven for not immediately recognizing Beyonce's Grammy-winning Single Ladies. As this pop song rolled out in a grandly nostalgic, traditional style, the audience went to stitches. What was really funny was that it took awhile to get through this pop song in that style, which -- rather than seeming to run long -- made the song and our appreciation of it only feel funnier and funnier. And did Kate crack a single ironic smile? She did not.

After that it was Patrick's turn to take the stage, and Patrick had some very cool things up his sleeve. I set up one of his props -- a kind of glowing crystal ball -- and bantered a bit with Billy as he prepared to play the music he and Patrick had put together just hour before. As he played eerie electric wobbles and loops and...uh...sworls (technical musical term) Patrick emerged from far stage right curtains as an impossibly tall fortune-teller. This was a new mask, and a new piece, and it was thrilling to watch Patrick debut it. The audience was geared up for more comedy, which I think actually made some of them nervous as this seven-foot woman floated to the crystal ball. She looked into it briefly, then began to convulse and collapse, until she was just a heap of fabric on the floor. Then the fabric began to twitch and convulse. Billy's music ceased, and out from under the fabric emerged a transformed creature (a cat, though debate rages on). The audience loved this piece as Patrick did something he does brilliantly, and the crystal ball becomes a cat toy as the piece transforms into something utterly playful. And, for this one, there's already video.

The piece segued directly into one of Billy's songs, a playful number called Perambulate, and after that, it was up to me and Billy to clear the stage. I came out on my stilts to ham it up for a bit and remove the prop while Billy removed the abandoned costume, and then Ms. Kate Chadwick returned, sans introduction (I think; Kate, check my miserable memory) carrying her singin' stool. The stool was a ruse, though. Billy took a seat in his easy chair as she set foot on the dance floor, setting off a click from her heels. My goodness! Tap shoes! How did they get on there? Kate does a little tapping, much to the audience's delight, and then Billy mocks her a bit by thumping out rhythms on his guitar. They get into a comic duel, which gives way into Billy's Ravi Shankar, a very energetic, rhythmic song of his with thumps and ticks that accelerate throughout. They perform a duet. THEY MET THAT AFTERNOON, AND THAT NIGHT, THEY DID A TAP'N'GUITAR DUET. I, for the record, have never, ever done anything to be so lucky as to have these people performing on my program.

Patrick then performed his masked movement piece, Emro Farm, a moving sort of dance that tells the story of a woman living on a farm -- a single place -- for her entire life. It's hard to explain this piece with words, but it's easy to describe the effect it had in the context of the evening. Patrick really grounded the whole affair with his contributions, lending it a chance to be more than just a "spectacular," allowing it to have moments of meaning and reflection that I for one am enormously grateful. Emro Farm is repetitive movement set to beautiful, occasionally melancholy, music, and the final repetition ends in silence. Due entirely to my mismanagement of rehearsal time (all four hours of it), Patrick was interrupted a bit early in this final silent repetition. I think it still worked, however. I was very fond of the transition we found. Sheridan's character, Vincenzo, enters upstage at his glacial pace, stands center and opens up one of the props for the final act: a music box. This gentle interruption of the silence and gravity of Emro Farm was really quite wonderful, and allowed Patrick's character to leave the stage in character, which was essential to the mood he had created.

The last act of the evening ended us on a playful high note, as once again Rich took the stage as Urbano. This time, it was Urbano's Circus, a rollicking puppet show of sorts that mirrored the spirit and content of the whole evening's variety nicely. With his (t)rusty assistant, Urbano wheels out a grocery cart full of eccentric puppet performers who leap (are thrown) through the air, run about (remotely controlled) on the ground and generally act up in their particular routine. It involved audience participation, gleeful imagination and of course Rich's persnickety, anarchic orchestration. He had a wonderful gimmick for it, too, in which Vincenzo would at his command open different electronic greeting cards in front of a microphone for theme music. Flight of the Valkyries never sounded so apt. It wrapped up with an unwrapped "fin" sign -- perfect punctuation on which to end the show and lead us into our curtain call.

We said goodbye, I on my stilts, and I took off my hat as I bowed, unleashing a torrent of ping-pong and bouncy balls on the unsuspecting audience and performers. Billy played a new composition on which he's working, and the evening segued into chat and another slide show, this one of black-and-white photos of strange human endeavors. The balls may have been a slight misstep on my part, as a certain segment of the audience decided to begin a bit of a war with them (resulting of course in my getting absolutely BEANED in the temple by a bouncy ball) but the mood seemed entirely jovial and it was nice to have everyone lingering afterward -- a sure sign of a job well done, as far as I'm concerned.

Attendance expectations aside and owing nearly entirely to my performers, I feel it was a resounding success. I hope the participants feel the same. Probably the most resounding lesson I take away from the experience is that when producing this kind of show, the performers are all -- get good ones, and then make them as absolutely supported as possible, on stage and off. They will be amazing. Spectacular, one could say....

Punch!

The photos from which these GIFs were created were taken in the final twenty minutes or so of my last headshot session with Jimmi Kilduff, back in 2008. I've never GIFed it up before, and thought I should give it a shot. As you will see, these are from a site called GIFninja, which I found easy enough to use, if not entirely reliable. They're not terribly smooth (not the site's fault) but, then again, neither is clowning.

This was a really fun photo session, in particular this portion of it. Jimmi was really enthusiastic about my shameless clowning, and as an actor himself had some good ideas about how to perform for his camera. Someday these may make it on to the ol' homepage, but my web designer is frankly exhausted. (She has a very demanding husband, you see.) Until that time, feel free to steal them and use them as you will and make me exceptionally famous and sought-after in the process. I do hereby permit it...

gifninja.com Create custom animated gifs at gifninja.com!

Billy Rogan @ The National Underground

I totally owe the world (IN ITS FEVERED ANTICIPATION) a post about my project what went up Monday last: The Spectacular Scrantonian Spectacular! But that will take a little while of digesting and -- in the meantime -- one of my performers for that, Mr. Billy Rogan, Esq., will be appearing right here in New York. So I must shamelessly plug him. Not solely because he performed with us, and not only because he kicked butt when he did, but primarily because he is an extraordinary talent, and generally good, funny fellow. You should go, World. You should go in droves to see Billy play his git-box. Delicious (and good-for-you) details:

Billy Rogan plays @ The National Underground

NO COVER ~ $3 BEER ~ FOODS

7pm-9pm

159 E. Houston St. (between Allen and Eldridge, upstairs space)

New York City

(212) 475-0611

I met Billy as a result of needing a local musician to join Zuppa del Giorno in the development of our 2005 show, Operation Opera. He performed with us, proving himself an able improvisational actor as well as a talented and dedicated musician. Since then he has released an album and expanded his original work tremendously, performing broadly both in New York and around the greater Scranton area. He's far more qualified to talk about his music than I am, but I have to say that I love his style. He has a percussive, energetic mode of playing that gives way to incredible lyrical passages without losing any of the urgency or tempo. Beautiful stuff.

Don't take my word for it. Go and enjoy...

Zuppa: The Next Course

Traditionally, we know what our Zuppa del Giorno show is going to be at least a year in advance, if not more. That seems funny to write, especially with how much I write about the process starting from nothing at the beginning of the rehearsal process. Yet both are true. We never start out with a show, and we always end up with a show, yet at least a year in advance we know what the show is going to be "about." The first would be about updated commedia traditions, the second about the Marx brothers, the third about silent film comedians, etc. One needs to know that much in advance so one can research, and plan, and gather materials for the horrifying moment when one finds oneself in an empty space without a single indication of where to go next, surrounded by folk who have as little clue (and at least as much anxiety) as you do.

In effect, Zuppa has officially now skipped a year. Owing to the ambitious nature of our last original work, and a focus on advancing our study abroad program, In Bocca al Lupo, we took a little break. Recently, however, David Zarko asked us to pool some ideas for the next endeavor into wholly original (or at least creatively stolen) show material. Here is what I emailed him, off the top of my head and verbatim:

• Mummer's (or guiser's) Play: adaptable to public spaces, most characters performed in disguise or with mask - Wikipedia link. They usually have to do with good versus evil, and involve some element of resurrection. Prepare an original show utilizing style elements; perform in a different space every time. If at ETC, in ballroom, second stage, shop, lobby, abandoned rooms, etc. Scranton, all over, including weirdness like bowling alleys. In Italy, piazzas, but also tourist spots and museums.
• Show set in a circus. I've resisted this for some time, but we really should attempt it some time. Doesn't have to be circus intensive, but can include stilt-walking and other street-theatre conducive elements.
• The Great Zuppa Murder Mystery. Classic isolated scenario, names after Scranton locales and exit signs (Lord Dunmore Throop). Either played straight, or played a la coarse theatre -- more a play about players trying to put on a murder-mystery play, but not having their act together. OR, totally meta-: a real murder is supposed to have happened during a performance of a murder-mystery play that is being put on by coarse actors who are incapable of getting anything right.
• A play about religion. I don't know -- religion is funny. Maybe a play about mythos and superstition, as well, or instead of. Zuppa's vampire play.
• Another silent show, but based in something besides silent movies. This isn't really an idea. Sorry.
• Collaborations with mixed media: visual artists, musicians, writers, dancers. The idea being that we highlight the ways in which everyone uses improvisation by performing alongside folks, united by some storytelling commonality.
• Oh and also: A really real vaudeville show (There were some plans to incorporate a significant vaudeville presence into Prohibitive Standards, but they never crystallized. - ed.). With guest artists.

I'll probably have more ideas over time and, as is perhaps evident, I'm not especially sold on any of these in particular. Zuppa's mission statement when it comes to our original shows (in as much as we have one) is to illustrate the living traditions of the commedia dell'arte that permeate our culture, and inspire our audiences to learn more about that interconnected culture. Hence ideas that hearken to older forms, or hang on the twin cousins of homage and parody.

So what do you think, Gentle Reader? Seriously -- Which of these ideas would you like to see our merry, rotating band of "creactors" make a whole new show of? Or, better yet: What are your ideas...?

Hate the Player, Not the Game

The other day I had an especially trying one at el jobbo del day, the details of which we needn't repeat, even in my imagination. (Today is looking up; I already had to kill a mammal with nothing but my cunning and a serving spoon.*) Luckily, Friend Adam had already extended an invitation to join him for some recreational activity that evening. I dutifully tromped over to the outer limits of Queens, where many n00bz were pwn3d (read: many inexperienced players had their digital avatars removed from the game by force). Of course, by "many n00bz," I mean "me, over and over again," and by "were pwn3d," I mean "trounced, most likely by 'tween boys with a 100-word limit on their available vocabulary." It was my first time playing XBox Live, you see. In spite of my adamant liability to my fellow teammates -- something I really do feel quite bad about -- I did feel considerably happier after my little adventure.

Never mind that there are some indications video games can be helpful in alleviating depression; games that conference in other live players can have a decidedly social aspect to them, not to mention the sheer teamwork involved. In the games of Halo I played the other night, our team never could have won the rounds they did without talking through what was going on. It was better communication, in many cases, than I experience in a given day at el jobbo del day. But I write not here to draw insinuations of insults by comparing a fictional war game to a real-life office environment (not here, anyway) but rather to discuss the prejudice against games.

What prejudice? You may well wonder. People love games. They watch reality TV for the games people play, and football for the games titans play. We even have fantasy football, in order to play a game outside of the game. Gambling is a short-form game, and driving is a rather high-stakes action game. Games abound. Even video games are getting a great deal of respect these days, comparatively speaking. Gaming consoles are bleeding cool into what was once a domain of the ubergeek, and even housewives are getting excited by the Wii whilst stock brokers eagerly anticipate the next Call of Duty installment. Heck: "Gaming" and "gamer" have been appropriated into terms associated almost solely with video games, as far as the mass audience is concerned.

In spite of all this acceptance, imaginative gaming (and I'm coining a phrase here) continues to get a bad rap. Perhaps it's because of all the acceptance; I think it's an ingrained habit for we humans to define ourselves by what we reject, what we do not believe in, and if we're accepting all this other gaming, maybe we need something to point a finger at and say, "Bleargh!" I don't understand it, frankly. I never have, and that inability to understand has resulted in countless awkward social predicaments from about age five on up to now. However, it's also resulted in some of my most rewarding experiences in life. So I stick with being a little different in this sense.

What do I mean by "imaginative gaming"? I mean improvisation. I mean games that are relatively free from conventional constraints. I mean role-playing games (RPGs), but I don't mean the kind that can be played on a computer (as of now, that is) nor do I mean only RPGs. I perceive a unique category of games that spans a bunch of different categories, yet has very much earned a distinction in being rather more openly creative than the rest. I'm basically naming something here that I like, personally, but I'm inclined to believe that I'm not alone in this specific preference. Expatriate Younce outlined some categories of RPG play for me a couple of years back (gamist, narrativist and . . . and . . . LOOK, A SEAGULL!) but these are more styles of playing than descriptions of the game itself. Imaginative gaming is any game in which the players are the ultimate authority over the rules. It is a play in which the sense of play is more important than any other element -- meaning the game itself is based on how well it is played, not how well it is won. Moreover, if this scares you or sounds ridiculous, imaginative gaming is as applicable to buying groceries as it is to making up stories around a table. Movies can be written with it, and difficult negotiations can be compromised with it.

We've all been in the position of working with someone whom we don't particularly appreciate or enjoy, and in some ways playing with such people is much worse. (And I'm perfectly comfortable admitting that I have been just such an undesirable player on more than one occasion, for more than a few people.) Memories such as these make us cautious, and resistant to new experiences. We want to be able to control outcomes, or at least be supported in the belief that control is a factor at all. But the beauty of a game is that we get to be surprised by what occurs, and we get to test ourselves against adversity of all kinds, within a contained environment. Maybe learning to play well with others is one of these challenges. I personally believe that anyone can be a welcome addition to play, if only you can find a good way to play with them.

All this is just to say: Try not to hate the player but, even if you can't achieve it, find a love for the game. It's all some kind of game, after all, and the games that are most true to life are the ones in which we create our own rules.

*My cunning is less lethal than the spoon; luckily (for me) the little guy had run across the wrong side of a glue trap.

Threes . . .

{A brief note from the Aviarist: Started this back in June, prior to being consumed by In Bocca al Lupo, so do forgive the lack of timeliness. There are still some ideas here I like. Anyway...}

All my theories about the nature of humor aside, they're not just for comedy {Threes, that is.}.

This post is inspired in part, of course, by the strange coincidence (in every sense of that word) of the recent celebrity deaths. Personally, I tend to perceive a desire for meaning where others might perceive an actual meaning, or pattern. Does this biscuit resemble a face to you? Yes, it does, but I believe that's because our most necessary and long-established pattern recognition ability is related to human faces, not because your biscuit is trying to tell you something. However, even I am given pause by the phenomenon of triple demises, or even just triple serious injuries. Maybe we're looking for a pattern to something that's very frightening for us, to make it somehow more rational, and pinpoint a supposed "end" of such a cycle. I don't know. But I know I have more trouble embracing that rationale for times such as those.

For the record, I'm not torn up about any of our recently departed entertainers. I usually am not when it comes to celebrities. Jim Henson was a big blow, and I continue to mourn in my own little way Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith. But on the whole, I react to celebrity demise with a "how sad," not any profound catharsis. I did not, after all, know them, no matter how well I know their work.

In our work as Zuppa del Giorno, I and my comrades-in-comedy are always searching for and instructing others in "the comic three." We express this a number of different ways: set-up, narrative and punch-line; catch, wind-up and release; introduction, suspension and delivery. Typically, the real tricky beat for performers -- especially those unaccustomed to any stylized acting -- is the middle one. This is totally understandable in this context. It's the least concrete part, of indeterminate length, and it often functions in mysterious ways when it comes to a joke in particular. Is it exposition, important detail for later use, or is it in fact a misdirection that makes some sort of punchline or payoff possible? There's another set of basic terms we use to describe a progression of three: beginning, middle and end.

I can't say for certain what it is about threes that make them so generally comprehensive for we humans. Why is it that a three -- a beginning, middle and end -- should make sense to us on such a basic level? Why not a five, or a two? For the most part, I'm content to accept it as a fact. However, an idea occurred to me while I was mulling over for the umpteenth time this week what I find an interesting supposition. Maybe even a draft of an explanation. It has to do with how we, as individuals, perceive time. Maybe it's because we can't ever completely reconcile the past, present and future. Maybe it has to do with our relationship to reality as we understand it.

{Insert fart joke here.}

Now look: As much as my syntax and unabashed love for the layered parenthetical may argue against it, I am not a fan of pretentious theory. We can expound all day on reality, and perception, and philosophy, and phlah phlah phlah. I'll love it. Hell yeah, abstraction. Bring it. So long as it stays in the realm of discussion, and doesn't wander into realms of authority because, brothers'n'sisters, we just don't know. We don't. What we have are ideas, and ideas are exciting things. But let's keep our pants on, 'cause there's a time and a place. (And the naked philosophy party starts at my place at 9:00, Friday.) My idea, then, is something like this:

We all have distinct relationships with our pasts, or memories, and our futures, or dreams. We try to live in the present, most of us, because that's where it's at, man. Yet we're tugged, one way and another. The past seems to offer us answers, if only we can understand it well enough, the future to offer us hope for change. When you come right down to it, this paradigm makes up such an encompassing framework for our perception at large that it's extremely difficult to escape. When we speak about it in greater absolutes, it is a unifying experience for literally everyone alive today, regardless of culture or credo: we are born, we live, and we die. It's the great commonality, and so that rhythm translates across any border. It's the music of comedy. As for why students of comedy seem to have the most trouble with the middle bit, well, isn;t that the same in life, too?

Sure, yes, okay -- I acknowledge that this could be a rather backwards deduction, fitting reality to a three because threes are there. I could be seeing faces in biscuits here. But it's an intriguing idea to me, nonetheless. Plus, it makes me laugh.

Adesso.

Dunque.

In Bocca al Lupo is a non-stop program. On their three-week course, the students have only two free days. They also have two days of gita scholastici which add the time up to two full weekends, in which we go see shows and visit towns and regions they otherwise might not, but that's as much as to say that it's a required activity. They need context for their huge undertaking, and we all need that kind of time outside the rehearsal or class rooms to really develop a personal bond. After all, a sense of ensemble is critically essential to the final project.

We had a week to plan and prepare and, quite frankly, relax before they arrived. They hit the ground running, however. The very next day, after their flight got in, they began language classes at Lingua Si and master classes in commedia dell'arte with Angelo Crotti in a converted convent. I can attest to the fact that the language classes are mentally taxing, and as far as Angelo's classes go, well . . . any Crotti class you can limp away from is a good one. They did brilliantly. There were some breakdowns, but no dramas, and by the end of the week, everyone had forgotten their aching gams, bid Angelo a bitter-sweet adieu, and managed to speak enough Italian to make sense of their little world in Orvieto.

So we moved them to Aquapendente and took away their language classes.

In Aquapendente our artistic home is Teatro Boni, a beautiful little classical theatre complete with velvet seats and crystal chandelier. Boni is where the students began their master classes with Andrea Brugnera, who emphasizes a more internal approach to character creation and story-telling. It's at this time that we also introduced them to the scenario they would be learning and performing—in Italian—and began that work. The trade-off for not having Angelo's physical demands during this time is that we begin regular “conditioning,” as I've come to call it. At the end of every day, after master classes and rehearsal, for a half an hour, I get to lead the students through strength and endurance exercises. I'd be lying if I said I didn't relish this. Some part of me misses working with a circus troupe, still.

This period is a complex one in many ways. One of the objectives is to encourage the students to learn improvisation as not just a useful skill in dealing with problems, but a preferable one. So, even as we're asking them to memorize a story and do things “right,” we're also trying to encourage thinking (or perhaps more appropriately, feeling) spontaneously and in a spirit of discovery. This ripples through everything we do, including trying to locate parking on a group trip. It's frightening. Everyone reacts differently. Most people struggle to get a grip on something concrete, to get it “right.” They ask for a written copy of the scenario, which we never provide, as it's important to learn the story through one's body and connections with others. They aim for consistency in on-stage exchanges, and we do what we can to shake them out of these. They come to rely on certain routines (such as the conditioning) and we viciously disrupt them.

It's also a complex time because we are becoming an ensemble. Relationships that are akin to a family are nascent, and manifest in both helpful and unhelpful ways (when your priority is improvisation and doing, terms like "good" and "bad" prove decidedly unhelpful). Not only are the students living and working together, and in the process attempting to avoid falling into reality television cliches, but we as teachers are becoming their directors and - in my and Heather's cases - fellow actors. We all have to depend on one another and, even as we're getting past the polite or glamorous demeanor of first encounters, the idea of treating everyone you work with as an inspired poet and artist turns from a nice idea into an essential survival tool.

In the third and final week, I invariably wonder to myself, Can it really have been only two weeks? Yet the performances loom and there seems still to be a million things to decide and discover. People despair and laugh uncontrollably and have personal revelations, and none of it helps us feel any more prepared for our first audience. The students have their second brush-up Italian lesson while we teachers hasten to pay rent on theatres and generally determine what use of rehearsal time will be most useful. And then whoosh, flash, bang: It's over. Over two or three days, all our fruition and reversed expectations. And we part ways. And it seems impossible that we are indeed going to go separate ways, much less that we've known each other for only a few weeks, and not most of our lives.

The students this year were absolutely amazing, and a privilege to work with. I'll have much more write specifically about their work and the particular experience in the coming days. Until then, I simply savor the glow of it all. While working on a show, it often seems impossible, even when it's with a script, and in English. The feeling after you pull it off, especially when you pull it off well . . . well. Suffice it to say the night never feels so refreshing in the piazza, and the gelato never so sweet.

Le Provi Specifica

So. Hi. Sorry for the adamant lapses, but I am at this moment sitting in a tiny piazza in Montefiascone where we have discovered available WiFi. This is tantamount to finding gold, or an Etruscan ruin heretofore undiscovered, hence the long delays. Also, we are busy. Very, very busy, so I can't even pre-write and load an entry all that easily. I could no doubt find a few hot spots in Rome tomorrow during our little trip to see a Plautus show in the Roman ruins, but I'll be honest with you -- I care more about my shoulder hefting about Gracie here than I do about 'blogging. Mi dispiace. I'll make it up to you, I promise.

It goes well with me here. Every day is a new adventure in highs and lows, and everyone has had their little panics, but on the whole the group is amazing and the work is wonderful. We've seen no less than three theatre productions of various sorts (not including tomorrows), learned a lot of Italian, learned a classic Scala scenario, been to the hot springs and an arts festival in Spoleto, had some time at il lago di Bolsena, had master classes with two Italian actors, some great meals, and Friend Heather and I even performed our clown Romeo & Juliet for a crowd of appreciative Italians in a renovated Spanish amphitheater. It goes well with me here.

I miss you all, but I wouldn't have missed this for the world. I'll write more in detail soon. Or later. That's me being very Italian . . .

Forse . . .

Allora.

It's been about a week and a half in Italia, which means we're in our third day of classes with the students. This also means that I have finished my third day of Italian classes, which means that my grammar and syntax may come across a little...funny...at certain points of this. Mi dispiace! The good news is that this trip and its classes at Lingua Si are improving my comprehension enormously. The bad news is that it sometimes makes me say things like, “The gelato likes to me.”

I'm writing you from one of the more impressive views of mountaintop Orvieto, sitting at a park bench not fifteen feet from a sheer cliff's edge facing roughly northeast (I think). Behind me a little ways are the ruins of an Etruscan amphitheater, and my stomach is full of pizza. It's roughly three o'clock, and it's been a good day in spite of some challenges. Such as barely being able to walk down stairs for the past two days, my knees occasionally buckling unexpectedly toward the cobblestones. You might think that given my situation, nothing could be better. And that's true, in many ways. We teachers, David Zarko, Heather Stuart and myself, have had a week here to prepare before the students arrived last Sunday, and we made good use of it. We had many adventures and misadventures the which I will write about at some point when there's more time and convenient internet access – including attending la Prova in Siena, the dry-run of their famous horse race, il Palio. (You may have seen shots of that in the latest Bond movie, Quantum of Solace.) For now what's more pressing is to talk a little about the work.

It's fascinating, thus far, what's different and what remains the same when comparing this trip to 2006's. The reason I'm staggering about this year hasn't so much to do with drinking wine with my lunch; rather it's because this week we have four days' worth of commedia dell'arte master classes with Angelo Crotti. As anyone who's met Angelo knows, he is a man of great strength and energy, and he has no problem asking as much from his students. Monday he took us through an hour's worth of strengthening exercises that kicked off the pain-fest, and yesterday he continued with various exercises and added some very committed, very acrobatic animal movement. All this, of course, in addition to working on the many postures and movements of the commedia dell'arte archetypes, most all of which involve raised arms and deep stances. I love it, but next time I'll be training up to it rather more. Jogging, she is not enough.

It is an amazing experience, studying Italian all day, then working intensively on traditional commedia in the evening. Angelo's techniques, talent, and not to mention his gorgeous masks, make for a very challenging, expanding experience. Perhaps even more amazing is to watch the students – all with varying degrees of experience and context – take on these incredible tasks. Some of them have never even seen commedia dell'arte before, yet they're finding moments of great expression in approaching it. Most of them have little to know experience conversing in Italian, yet every day they manage to communicate more and more with it. (For me, for the first time, the language feels useful rather than intimidating – just as a personal sidenote.) Everyone's a little (okay – a lot) frightened of the ultimate goal: To perform an original commedia dell'arte scenario in Italian, for Italians. Yet that is just how we were in 2006 as well, and it turned out to be wonderful. I'm sure none of us expected to be able to hold a conversation in Italian on the first day of classes, either, but we all did.

The major difference between our last full program and this one is the amount and variety of training and practice we'll be making use of. In fact, we're only spending this week in Orvieto. Next week we'll be back for brush-ups in Italian, but largely we'll be in Aquapendente at Teatro Boni, our artistic host. There the students will take classes with Andrea Brugnera and we'll begin the work on the actual Scala scenario we're using, The Two Faithful Notaries. That, too, is when the major events begin. So far we've only had meal-oriented ones – and those are of course great – but starting at the end of this hard-working week we start seeing sights and shows. Hopefully I'll be able to write about those individually as they occur...or anyway, soon after when they actually occur.

I've done a lot of reflecting during all this, of course. Italy is enticing, exciting and extremely challenging to me, all at once. I've had some major (insofar as my experience extends) victories on the trip already, as well as some harrowing moments and, let me face it, outright failures. Yet the failures have been more productive, somehow, than I've allowed them to be in the past. We're trying to teach, after all, that risk and mistakes are great tools to improving communication. It seems I take that lesson more and more to heart the more I challenge myself in this way. God, is it challenging! Which is both an outburst of frustration and an exclamation of thrill.

I'll write more soon, e vero. Until then, may the gelato like to you as well, my friends.

Class Act

{You've probably been 'blogging for too long when you start to feel, with every post title, "I must have used THIS pun before...."}

I have a lot of semi-traumatic memories of school. I say semi-traumatic because, in spite of how very very real they were to me at the time, in light of some more adult tragedies it seems inapt to apply the same word. Still and all -- without that perspective and with the fiery, passionate, all-or-nothing stakes of youth -- some of these events were rather defining for me. I was thinking of one of the less traumatic (possibly even redemptive of...something...) ones this morning as I hurriedly recorded my lines for tomorrow's film gig in the hopes of absorbing them through audio osmosis. In a history class in what I recall as being my junior year of high school, I gave a presentation on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and afterward a guy who had given me a hard time in the past rather announced to the class, "Hey, you were acting. That was just like when you act." Somehow I had the presence of mind not to feel injured by this call-out (it was definitely an effort to draw negative attention to me) and I calmly responded, "Yeah, I was. I can do that." And sat down. And the class continued, my would-be persecutor left scratching his head a bit at why acting was allowed in class.

Yesterday I returned to Hunter College to teach an Intro. to Theatre class about the (living) history of commedia dell'arte. I've taught similar classes at Hunter before, though always a shorter class with more students, and to date always with my commedia partner-in-crime, Heather Stuart. This was, in other words, something of a new experience for me. Oh, and in addition to these circumstances, it was my first time really teaching solo for a class of desk-bound students -- generally non-actors who hadn't any expressed interest in getting out of the seats to try the work on for size. I was made a little nervous by it. (Ironically, I got three potential In Bocca al Lupo-ers out of them, but I couldn't have known that was a possibility ahead of time.) As far as I was concerned, I was there to lecture. In my own, inimitable style.

Said "inimitable style" involves quite a bit of amateurish waffling and tangential thinking.

The class went well, actually, I think. The teacher, Sascha Just, was complimentary afterward. Most of the people seemed to be engaged most of the time, and I certainly never ran out of things to talk about. There were gaffs, and the lesson plan needs more work for certain, but in balance I'd say it was a success. I was pleasantly surprised by some techniques I implemented that were half-planned, half-spun-out-on-the-spot; rather like working from a scenario. I asked the students periodically to imagine themselves in the shoes of a commedia dell'arte troupe of the 1500s; not in a "picture-this" way, but more actively, using modern equivalents and inviting them to draw images without requiring that they do so. This worked to wake them from note-taking stupors, and also helped us find a common ground when I got cyclical or tangential in whatever aspect I was covering at a given moment. "Where was I? Back to the piazza...." I also had the idea to tell them to interrupt me whenever they had a question or a reaction. They didn't take me up on this too much, but a little, and I was pleased with how it kept things lively and served to illustrate the level of interaction traditional commedia had with its unpretentious audiences.

I was acting. I was very much putting on a show. In another interesting parallel, though, it reminded me of the first time I used mask work in performance. This was not in a commedia context, per se, but it did involve a similar half-mask style. I was suddenly divorced from a powerful component of my acting -- my facial expressions. I had to relearn what read to an audience, which gestures and intonations would connect without facial cues, and I can assure you that it was a rocky start to demonstrating that particular skill. Hopefully I've improved since. Hopefully, too, I'll learn more and more about teaching a class in an actual classroom, as opposed to a theatre, or movement studio. I couldn't jump about too much there, and it affected everything from my method of description to changes in my overall energy pattern. I had quite a patter kept up; definitely could have afforded a bit more relaxation, but by the same token I believe my enthusiasm for the subject was welcome.

I left feeling very gratified. In a way, finding this new way of expressing the essentials of commedia dell'arte renewed my excitement for it, which will be very valuable indeed in the coming month. My enthusiasm while teaching in Italy will be genuine. I won't even have to act!

Er, wait . . .

Nerd Herding

I'm bad at it. Twice last weekend I was asked to help round up groups, and I failed in interesting ways both times, including by mis-hearing responses that were in the affirmative.

One of the aspects of Camp Nerdly that I appreciated for the first time this go, my third go (see also 5/12/08, 4/11/08, 5/8/07 and 5/7/07) were the many cultural overlaps between stereotypical nerd culture and stereotypical camping culture. Both require an enthusiasm for making life a greater challenge, amongst other specific conditions that supposedly "normal" people would fear or disdain. Both involve improvisation, moderated with a healthy dose of research and acquired knowledge. Both generally associate with high-calorie foods. Both environments typically eschew the strictures of social norms such as fashion and strict codes of hygiene. So yes, camp is an excellent place for fellow nerds to gather, and be unabashedly nerdish.

I am one such nerd. In point of fact, I don't think of myself as a nerd per se; not because I find the term derogatory, either. Rather, I think specifically of a "nerd" as someone very intelligent and good with details. I am not very intelligent, at least not in that way, so consider myself something more along the lines of a geek, or dork. Spaz, too -- which I have fortunately parlayed into a rewarding career as a physical comedian. At least, it's philosophically rewarding, when in no way else.

Despite my self-imposed sub-nerd status, I am allowed (nay: encouraged) to ally myself with other nerds on an annual basis at Camp Nerdly. I just did so last weekend, getting my yearly dose of straight-edge, pure gaming. "Gaming" in this context, by the way, refers to just about any actively challenging effort that is endeavored largely for the sake of fun and entertainment. It was a special occasion in several respects, owing to the fact that Expatriate Younce was in attendance, all the way from Leeds. (That's in England.) I have a funny sort of response to gaming. Expatriate Younce actively encourages it, as do other friends of my hometown, while Wife Megan and many of her circle, at best, do not understand its appeal. So I have some strong influences on either side of the debate as to the relative value and appeal of gaming. Then I get to the actual gaming, and have a response similar to when I've been away from a rehearsal process for over a month: "Oh crap. I have no clue what I'm doing here." Of course, I gamely (see what I did there?) fake it until I catch up again. And how do I feel about gaming? Well.

The first game I played on arrival this year was a collaborative board game called Pandemic, and I have only good things to say about it. Clinton R. Nixon was the gamer who introduced it to me and my fellow novices, and we had a great time discussing strategy in trying to clear the world of four rampaging diseases. We also got our butts handed to us by the game, which only serves to make you want to play it more. Sadly, I never found another opportunity. It's way more interesting to play a board game that is both collaborative and difficult to beat than it is to play something like Monopoly, wherein a winner is guaranteed and somebody's going to regret buying real estate.

Next that night was a session of A Taste for Murder, run by another favorite gamer of mine, Jason Morningstar (perhaps cool names are indicators of future nerdom...?). We gathered at "The Castle," de facto cabin for any games likely to involve more adult themes, and we possibly made those themes more adult than they were intended to be. A Taste for Murder seems meant to be a story-telling game with a fairly strong and regular dice element, where the "winner" of scenes is determined by competitive rolls. The setting is like an Agatha Christie novel, and you choose your characters based on family and estate relationships, trying for a broad range of class/status. In the first act of play, the relationships are built up and controversy well-established. It culminates in MURDER. In act the second, the player of the murdered character plays the detective on the scene, and the back-stabbing begins. We played it a bit grotesque, I'm afraid, for the genre. Not enough class warring. I played the rebellious son of the estate, and all audio was recorded for the game's creator. Well, some. We kept running down batteries. It was a good game. If I ever play it again, I'll focus less on winning the game, more on building my character.

Saturday morning started out with a game called Sons of Liberty, a role-playing game that used playing cards to drive the game function. Essentially, playing chosen patriotic figures both real and imagined (much of the imagination having something to do with steampunkiness), I and two others played a card game against the house ("the house" in this game represented by one Mr. Jeff Hosmer), using our hand at a given moment and the resulting win or loss to narrate how that particular struggle against the Tories went down. In most cases, it went down to the ground, and Hosmer trounced our sorry, albe-they rebellious, butts. I played a saucy cross-dressing Frenchman, hungry for rebellion (non-historical, btw). It was a fun game, and collaborative in its own way. The balance between card play and role-play landed heavily on the card side, but this created a very urgent dynamic that was also fun. Imagine playing Spit, and having to make up a whole team-written fiction, simultaneously.

The early afternoon was my most undecided slot, yet ended up being the most overall satisfying experience of the weekend in terms of gaming. Kagematsu is a unique role-playing game in many ways. The game has most of the players playing the women of a feudal Japanese village, trying to woo and/or seduce a ronin who has wandered into their town, in the hopes of finding love and saving the village from some great threat. The history of the game itself is unique; dreamed up by a male-to-female transsexual who was contemplating female identities, and since carried through a fairly extensive development by her friend -- and Nerdly attendee -- Danielle Lewon. In our game, a woman played the samurai, and I and three other women (including Danielle) played the women of the village. My character was a very young, innocent girl who loved the nearby mountains and cultivating bonsai. We conceived it all as taking place in a fishing village, one haunted by the spirits of the men lost at sea, and the story ended up being amazing. To make a long story short(er), this young ronin, out to prove himself, was variously wooed by very different women, none of whom wanted to tell him the problem of the village for fear of scaring him off. He eventually does confront the ghosts . . . and fails. Throughout this game, this growing story, we were moved. Some of us to tears. It was amazing. It was magic, nothing short of it.

My follow-up was similarly strong in narrative, although less of it was created out of thin air. Montsegur 1244 takes a very cool, tiny section of history and makes a game of it. You are given a very specific setting, choice of two characters (a primary and secondary) and play through the story of about a year within a community that now-a-days we might be inclined to call a religious cult. Your church, town, stronghold has broken off from the church and set up a rather different set of beliefs, principal among them that earth, life, is in fact a kind of testing hell. It can be transcended, and those who do are religious leaders known as "perfects," who try to guide their people out of the cycle of imperfect, passionate living, into true existence. With pre-established characters, setting and scenarios, the game really takes a lot of the burden of narrative structure away from the players (something we appreciate in Zuppa del Giorno when trying to build a play from improvisation) but there's plenty of room to play in the cracks. I played a quasi-heretical patriarch and a young orphan boy, and the highlight for me was a scene played out with Mr. Jason Morningstar, who was once again running the game. We had a negotiation scene that crackled like good theatre for me; he may have missed his calling, that one.

Finally that day, after dinner, was a Jeepform free-for-all, run by Jason (people will say we're in love), Remi Trauer and Emily Boss. I wrote a bit about Jeepform last year after my first experience with it, and it still intrigues me. Essentially, it is a very interesting hybrid of improvisatory theatre and role-playing gaming. It has its own philosophy, and makes efforts to stand apart from both forms (as any self-respecting hybrid ought). This year was a somewhat more technical exploration of the methods and tactics -- as opposed to last year's straight gaming -- and one which eventually descended into Absurdist madness. Each of the leaders led us through a different Jeepform trope, all three in the context of superhero fiction. This was, perhaps, a contributing factor to the eventual eruption of silliness, as people (read: nerds) had a ton of clever ideas about how to riff on comicbooks. They tried to tell us: The best choice is an obvious one. And we tried to listen, but by the time we got around to the fourth section -- a trial held in a strange, WH40K-inspired universe -- the gaggy gloves were decidedly off. I was as guilt as any, and it was a little too much fun to stop. Yet the surprising virtues I observed about Jeepform held true. People were taking turns, not interrupting, and a story was gradually developing on its own.

There was much discussion after that, rather late into the night (late by fresh-air standards, anyway), about gaming and improvisation and story-telling. There's something about people being excited to talk about that which is oddly fulfilling for me. I went to sleep feeling quite sated.

Sunday mornings at Camp Nerdly are often hungover affairs, but not the usual variety. People are bushed from all the thinking and playing of the day before, and many elect not to play anything at all, but there is a slot for gaming between eating and cleaning up the site. Mark Causey filled my slot (hey now) with a little game called GHOST/ECHO. It was reminiscent of my first year and Nerdly, when I discovered just how much fun it could be to create a whole fictitious world from the ground up. Of course, as an improviser and writer, I do this all the time, but I take it for granted somewhat. It's a means to an end. Putting it as the primary purpose makes for some lovely synchronicity, especially when its collaborative, and thereby synergistic. GHOST/ECHO offers nothing but variables, an idea for context ("aetherpunk," says the ad) and a device for conflict resolution and lets the players make the rest up. It would be a tricky terrain for someone unused to working without rules, but for someone like me who knows roughly what to expect, and just wants to run free imaginatively -- a lovely way to spend a Sunday morning.

And like that, it was over. Some mopping, some laughing codas, a bus ride for me and the next day Expatriate Younce was bound homeward as well. My annual alliance with 50+ smart, creative thinkers done for the year.

When I was too young to fully appreciate the sentiment, someone mentioned to me the following axiom: When you are young, you love someone because you need them; once you have lived, you find true love when you need someone because you love them. I knew I was too young at the time I heard it to fully appreciate it, but there's nothing to be done about that. We all grow in our own time, and can only listen to the advice we are ready to hear. Yet I remembered it, and whereas it concerned me, made me worry about the nature of this or that relationship, when I was younger, now it is a comfort to me in all of my loves. When I was a kid, and started gaming, I loved it, and I really needed it -- for interaction, to work out my own fears and ambitions and to feel accomplished. And now, I love it. It wakes me up, engages me, gives me ideas and allows me to make the big picture the priority. I'm made happier by having it a part of who I am and what I do. And that's a great feeling.