The Parentheses Returneth

Y’know, I wasn’t anticipating taking any notes on this trip – but I guess that airline travel just has that effect on me; I’ve written before about how oddly inspiring I find the environment. Of course, that’s likely just bullshit romanticization – it’s an environment where I’m forced to wait around without the distractions of the internet or video games or ALL THE PORN IN THE WORLD.

(The latter is probably going to be my Lenten sacrifice, which reminds me that this flight is costing me my Ash Wednesday mass. So if this vehicle is reduced to a fiery canister of death, who knows just where I and my unbesmirched forehead might end up?)

(Heh. Right. Because *that’s* the sin that’ll do it. Not a lifetime of reckless self-indulgence.)

(Speaking of which, and rendering my original thesis less romantic still, the other factor in my sudden return to blogging may be the fact that my outgoing flight was delayed – and that my departure gate was nestled tightly against an Irish Pub. Jameson: the tenth muse.)

(Irish pubs in airports? Truly, human civilization has reached its apex.)

(I also know that I’m blogging again when I use, like, five sets of parentheses in a row. Jesus.)

(Okay, six.)

***

So here I am on a flight to New York – a city I’ve been to only briefly, though long enough to cement an enduring dislike of the place. (Among my pet peeves: the way New Yorkers characterize living in a miserable, unlivable place as some kind of shared cultural experience. Then again, I’m a fucking Minnesotan, so I probably shouldn’t talk.)

Off to visit my sister. One of the goals I set aside when I shut down my company was to reconnect with my family – a major regret of the last decade is that my focus on work has often precluded those relationships.

So I’m delighted for the opportunity to reconnect with a segment of the family I don’t get to see nearly often enough. At the same time, I find myself restless – I’m so accustomed to traveling for work that traveling without that purpose feels…decadent, somehow? I find myself more anxious, more irritable, without that underlying structure of marketing, meetings, and performances.

That said, it’s not a complete pic-a-nic; I am hoping to get out to investigate the FRIGID Festival, which stands as shameful proof that there’s a part of my brain yet that hasn’t wholly abandoned the idea of touring. There’s a couple of groups from Minneapolis this time around, and I’m curious to see how their numbers are; I’ve heard that this can be a rough town for out-of-towners.

(There’s also a few colleagues from the area that I was hoping to grab a drink with. One of the greatest payoffs for the amount of time I’ve spent touring is the fact that I’ve now got people to look up in just about every state.)

Camelot interview

I recently answered a number of questions via e-mail for Sarah Wash (who went on to write an extremely flattering reflection on the show for Minnesota Playlist). With responses for the show ranging from enthusiasm to bafflement, I thought a more detailed exegesis might be of interest. Copied below, and spoilers ahoy.

1. I saw in a couple of places that Camelot is Crumbling is part of a trilogy--one for which you did a lot of background research. What did you research? And what can you tell me about the third show in the trilogy? Has it been written yet? How does it complete the picture?

Ha -- not exactly a trilogy (though I'd be curious to know where you read that). I see it as an ongoing play cycle, something akin (in style if not necessarily in quality) to Shakespeare's history plays, insofar as each one of the stories is self-contained, but placed in sequence they detail longer character arcs. (I'm actually quite wary of advertising the fact that I visualize a sequence of plays, since I fear that that might alienate audiences from wanting to see them individually.)

"Research" also feels a bit grandiose, for an activity that I do largely for pleasure -- the plays are a by-product of a lifelong love of medieval romances, rather than choosing to read the romances solely to inform the plays. This show in particular draws heavily (word-for-word in places) on the last book of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, a fifteenth-century epic novel written by a soldier in captivity. The book's notable in particular, I think, for painting an incredibly psychologically complex portrait of Lancelot.

I visualize Camelot is Crumbling as the final play in the cycle. I think that it speaks for itself, but it may be of some interest to note that it's heavily cut down for Fringe -- in the full draft, there's a third storyline revolving around Percival, tying the action back to The Rise of General Arthur (which largely features the exploits of his father, Pellinore). Light and darkness is a major recurring theme throughout the cycle, as well, and Percival is noted for being the knight that "pierces through the middle." Again, no idea how interested anyone might be in that bit of trivia, but there it is.

2. I'm not sure whether or not I was reading into things or not, but I sensed that there was some intense personal significance for you in writing about these issues--something that came through particularly in some of the things Mordred said and did. Can you tell me anything about the life experiences or personal reflections that led you to create this show?

I'm extremely wary of attempts to draw connections between a play and the playwright's personal life -- and in many respects I think that the playwright is potentially the worst person to draw those connections -- but I've commented that I think that Camelot is my most autobiographical show (and that's including my autobiographical shows). It's the one that's most intimately concerned with the theological issues that preoccupy me. It's interesting that you saw the connection with Mordred, because I find myself identifying more closely with Lancelot -- particularly with his kind of destructive, all-or-nothing stubbornness. I have a tendency to latch onto extremes, and to struggle with the idea of compromise -- certainly not on the nation-shattering level that he does, but it's a recurring problem for me. Moderation requires discipline, and in that respect the two of us are profoundly immature, undisciplined men.

Much of Mordred's dialogue was written over a decade ago -- heavily, heavily rewritten in that time, but I see him as expressing the frustrations of a younger man, whereas Lancelot is dealing with some seriously grown-up problems. The place I still connect with Mordred is in his irrationally anti-authoritarian streak, his desire to lash out against anyone in a position of power, justly or unjustly. It's that impulse to self-destruct, and to take out everything in range. There's a line of his that I cut from the play (but included in the trailer): "Destroying Camelot is only action that could have any meaning." I've been asked why he does what he does, and I think a lot of it is simply that the destruction of Camelot is a big red button in front of him that he's not supposed to push. And, yeah, there's definitely periods of my life where I identify with that.

3. What is the significance of the symmetrical, side-by-side staging (other than the content and the symmetry between the two characters)?

I think you've largely answered your own question here, but to expand on the idea a bit: the play largely revolves around comparing and contrasting the two men, the white knight and the dark knight. Philosophically, they both form their position from the same premise -- the absence of God, or an objective moral reality (and this is probably the respect in which I've drifted the farthest from the romances -- Lancelot is traditionally quite pious, for all his failings). Mordred uses this as a rationalization to indulge his impulses, whereas Lancelot views this as necessitating an even higher moral standard (although he, ultimately, struggles with that conclusion as well). The irony is that both paths (Mordred's destructive nature, Lancelot's unbending principles) lead them to the same place -- the crumbling of Camelot.

Moderation's a major theme of the Camelot cycle. Once Lancelot swears himself to an absolute, he's to some degree abandoned his own freedom, rendering his own behavior both predictable and easy to manipulate.

4. What do you hope your audience gets out of being a part of this experience?

Oh, man -- on the most basic level, I hope they have a good time. I think the two characters are relating exciting, compelling stories, and if that's not coming across that's my failure. Beyond that, I hope that people identify with the characters and the problems they're struggling with. One thing that fascinates me is that people tend to walk away from the show picking a side -- they're either Lancelot people or Mordred people.

The most gratifying thing I hear, and I've heard it a couple of times, is that it leads people back to Malory. He's a better writer than I am, which is why so much of his writing shows up in the show.

INTERMITTENT VEGETATIVE STATE

WHAT'S UP?

On Saturday, July 16th, we're holding the fourth annual Wordstock fundraiser for Maximum Verbosity. Among other goals, this evening is intended to be the place where we announce our upcoming season.

Which renders it necessary for me to make the announcement that, for better or worse, there will be no season nine of Maximum Verbosity. We have a number of remaining projects through September; but this is, for all practical purposes, the end of MV as a year-round production company.

This is, really, the only critically important piece of information in this post. The rest, regarding my long, whiny, personal thoughts and feelings, can be encountered below.

WHY?

Really, there's dozens of reasons why this course of action is necessary. I've spent the past couple of weeks talking with friends and colleagues about what the best course of action for us is; but ultimately, this has been just to cultivate the illusion of control. The money situation is bad, and we can't continue because of that.

Much of this last season has revolved around attempting to find a way to expand our operations. I began, over a year ago, by sitting down and speaking with a number of producers who have managed to make the transition from Fringe-level theatre to profitable year-round production. (Most of whom, I note with some frustration, have been around for a substantially shorter period of time than we have.) I walked away with the sense that what is necessary for us to hit the next level is, well, press. MV is well-known within the arts community, if only by reputation -- but a production company can't be sustained by other artists. The key to hitting mainstream audiences is press, and the key to getting press is presenting yourself in such a way that press knows how to acknowledge you.

Season eight of MV revolved around presenting ourselves in such a way that press would be able to acknowledge us as a legitimate theatre company. This, frankly, failed.

(The other factor, of course, is time. We've existed for more than long enough to establish ourselves -- fuck, eight years is ripe old age for a theatre company -- but we would have to continue producing at the level we have for the past year, and we've been hemorrhaging money at a rate that makes continued production at that level impossible.)

WHA...WHY?

When I step back and examine it, it seems to me to be a classical lateral-thinking problem.

POINT: We can't go forwards. The amount of financial investment to sustain producing shows at the level we have been -- well, the money simply isn't there anymore.

POINT: We can't go backwards. At least, I can't; at least, not psychologically. I can't go back to producing one-man shows on Monday nights in obscure venues to single-digit audiences. Yes, they're profitable, insofar as they don't really cost anything -- but they don't produce anything meaningful, either.

As nearly as I can tell, there's three worthwhile reasons to produce a show:

1) It will make you money.

2) You will be able to pay it forwards to other projects.

3) It will bring you pleasure.

For the past several years, I've been producing projects that

1) Have lost money.

2) Have done nothing in terms of growing audience.

3) Have brought me far more frustration that pleasure.

...which raises the question, why make the extraordinary effort of time, money, and energy that production requires? I'm certainly not afraid of work; but I've been having to step back and ask myself, what is this working towards?

As any viewer of Dr. Who will tell you, when you have an unclimbable cliff before you, and an unbeatable monster behind you, the correct answer is to...go sideways.

FOUR EMOTIONS

So what are my feelings, regarding this course of events? I can narrow them down to four:

SHAME

...I certainly feel a great deal of shame; as much as, I would say, should be reasonably felt by the creator of a failed business.

I don't regard the failure as total. Certainly, I've managed to keep a theatrical production company afloat, almost entirely on its own profits, for eight years, during an economic recession. I've written and performed dozens of plays, hundreds of stories, and thousands of jokes. I am pleased by this feat.

By the same token, it *is* failure -- insofar as I established a goal for myself, and was unable to meet that goal. Moreover, failed to meet that goal through poor decision-making, and stubbornness. (I consider one of my great failures my struggle to accurately distinguish stubbornness from integrity. They're not the same thing.)

FRUSTRATION

Oddly, the great frustration I feel is the number of plot threads and character arcs that I've left hanging.

I love Pissing on the Great Wall as much as any show I've ever done -- but it was a fairly dark note to leave the Descendant saga on. I'm frustrated that we never got to explore Loki's final acts of co(s)mic despair. I may never forgive myself for leaving Penner in such a vile, awful place -- and, worst of all, I never managed to fully bring Percival into the presence of the Grail.

I had, in my mind, a plan to resolve many of these over the course of the next two years -- to take those characters, literally, through heaven and hell; to explore the landscapes of other worlds; to romp through time-traveling farces and, well, all kinds of wild adventures.

It may feel vaguely schizophrenic, to experience a sense of obligation to fictional constructs -- certainly, I feel intensely embarrassed even raising the idea around my colleagues -- but I'm the only creator they have, so. And I endeavor to care as much for them as, I hope, my own Creator does for me.

RELIEF

When I first began to entertain the idea of not producing a season nine, I was startled to discover a sense of relief.

I had an encounter with a member of the crew of PvtH -- who finally cornered me, and said that it was simply unreasonable for me to try to fill as many roles as I was. I don't know that I would have acknowledged the idea, if it wasn't coming from someone that I trusted -- but the fact is, I *had* been beating myself up for not keeping up with the number of responsibilities I'd assumed -- and *not* beating myself up for taking that number of responsibilities in the first place.

I sat down a few days ago, and actually figured out that I haven't been producing less than three shows at a time since June of 2009. That's not counting any of my acting or storytelling gigs, of which I've usually had a few going on at a time as well.

And, well...I've always been intensely resistant to the claim that I've been dropping balls, but how could I not have been? On the one hand, it feels like weakness to acknowledge it -- on the other hand, there simply aren't enough hours in the day to accommodate the number of responsibilities that I assume for weeks at a time as a matter of course.

I have *dozens* of sensible projects that I've been attempting to pick up, and simply ended up dropping, because production has absorbed my attention. And the great absurdity is that I never had any ambition to produce -- I'm a writer. I entered self-production because, after years of bulk mailouts, I came to the conclusion that that was the only way to get my work in front of people.

The sad irony is that now, my life has become production. I need to learn to be a writer again.

FEAR

The single greatest indication that I had that leaving production behind might be the right decision is that I was fucking terrified of it.

I've worked long and hard to establish myself as a member of the TC arts scene -- and I think I've done that. I've spent eight years doing that. The idea of pursuing other venues now -- e.g. publication -- is terrifying, insofar as it means starting over from the beginning.

So...I should probably do that. I mean, comfort is the death of creativity, right?

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

I'm hesitant to say. As I mentioned, I have dozens of projects that I've been putting on the back-burner, largely since theatre production has absorbed the bulk of my time. I'm not inclined to loudly announce them since most, if not all, will take months or years to come to fruition. I'm not afraid of the work; but I'm conscious of the short attention span in show business.

WHAT THIS DOES NOT MEAN

- I'm not done acting. I never intended to really enter the acting scene, but I'm astounded -- and flattered -- that there's a number of people that have indicated a desire to work with me in that capacity.

- I'm not done writing. If local producers are inclined to work with any of my scripts, I'd be delighted to collaborate. In fact, I've got a new show (potentially) in the works with another storyteller for (maybe) this December. I'm also debating whether or not to submit an application to the 2012 MN Fringe, since that's still both profitable and enjoyable to me.

WHAT THIS DOES MEAN

- I'm done producing outside of a Festival context. There's just no economic model I can construct that makes that make sense to me.

- I'm done touring after this summer. It's brought me an intense amount of pleasure, but there's simply no way that I can justify the expense -- profitability on the road has always been a hit-or-miss prospect for me.

- I still maintain the DBA for MV -- and will probably try to use it as an umbrella for various other projects in the future, if not plays (as such).

WHAT NOW?

We still have three remaining projects coming up.

THE RISE OF GENERAL ARTHUR

...at the MN Theatre Garage, July 10 and 17 at 7pm. Before looking at the end of the Camelot Cycle, it seems only fitting to revisit the beginning.

WORDSTOCK: THE FINAL CHAPTER

...at Kieran's Irish Pub, July 16th at 6pm. One last big blowout. Also, one last attempt to cover our outstanding payments, because good God it would be wonderful to close out with something resembling solvency. Featuring Joseph Scrimshaw, Ben San Del, John Heimbuch, Mahmoud Hakima, and Anthony Paul.

CAMELOT IS CRUMBLING: AN ARTHURIAN NIGHTMARE

...at the Kansas City, Minnesota, Indianapolis, and Chicago Fringe Festivals. A bit fortuitous -- this is, honestly, the show I would have pretty much chosen to go out on. (The only other real competitor was Lokasenna, our first show -- a musical comedy which would have been far too expensive to produce on any level that the script demanded -- although, truly -- the spirits of Thor and Loki (the soldier and the nihilist) seem, to me, in many ways to animate those of Lancelot and Mordred -- locked in their struggle to wrest meaning from the work of death.)

...YEAH?

I deeply regret the way things have gone. And I maintain my hope to provide you with many more hours of entertainment -- in one medium or another -- in the future.

Form vs. Content

So I'm frustrated.

My philosophy has generally been: I'm happy to perform; I'm honored to perform; I'll take any opportunity to perform that I can get. It's been one of embracing, as it were, the very "Power of positive thinking" that I've been so critical of in my writing.

Last season, I produced a show called "Pissing on the Great Wall." I approached it with the same degree of intensity that I usually do; months of work, writing, previewing, crafting. Found a venue, and essentially said "I'll take any open slot you have." I took Monday nights. In February. And after several shows with single-digit audiences, I had to finally say: "I can't do this anymore."

Hence: season eight. It's been a bizarre process: one that began with me sitting down with various artists who had managed to achieve success at the Fringe-level world, as well as successfully producing a year-round season. For the record? I found three. And one thing that struck me: my company is older than all three of them.

The thing is, I've always placed my faith in content: if I focus on developing an excellent script, then nothing else matters. Not the costumes. Not the presentation. If I produce enough, long enough, I'll find the audience.

One of the realizations I've been making -- one of those painfully obvious ones that I have been, for whatever reason, resistant to -- is that presentation matters. If there's threads hanging off of the costumes? If the sets were thrown together at Wal-Mart? It's completely irrelevant whether the script is excellent or terrible, because those other elements are so distracting that the audience never reaches the script.

---

I did an audition for Theatre Mu recently. Handed my resume to the director, who expressed amazement at the sheer number of shows that I've written/directed. Which neatly illustrated the divide between various theatre arenas to me. After all, nearly all of my colleagues have written/directed that many shows; that's what Fringe-level theatre artists do. But at the mid-level theatre world, it's unheard of. It's astonishing. There's a completely different measure of success.

---

So I've been spending the vast bulk of my energy, in the past couple of weeks, on presentation; on graphic design; on marketing-speak. It's frustrating to me, because I feel like it's wasted time. I know it's not -- it's critically important -- but it's hard for me to avoid the observation that I'm currently spending more time talking about the shows than I am creating them.

Moreover, my process hasn't changed. I'm working on developing material, exactly the same way I have for the past eight years. The shows aren't any different (beyond the expanding level of skill that inevitably must take place). But I'm getting press; I'm getting reservations; I'm getting a different kind of response, because the presentation is different.

These are all extremely good things. But as someone fixated on content over form; it's difficult not to have some degree of resistance to it.

some thoughts about season eight

A quick note: the following are some thoughts cobbled together for a media interview. I can't imagine that all (or even most) will make it into print.

YELLOW KINGS AND DARKER THINGS

...is, fundamentally, a double-bill of two shows; one produced by Tim Uren (The Repairer of Reputations), and one produced by myself (Quantum Suicide and Other Songs of Death).

QUANTUM SUICIDE AND OTHER SONGS OF DEATH

...is composed, primarily, from short stories composed by me from the second season of the Rockstar Storytellers (2008-2009). So the writing/directing challenge has been, for me, primarily one of taking a body of material developed for short solo performances and reconstructing them into a full-length show for multiple voices.

Upon reflection, the best description I can come up with for the show is to describe it as a kind of concept album: a collection of individual pieces that combine to elaborate upon a larger idea. The unifying theme is that of time and death; perhaps more succinctly, that of mortality. So, the first challenge was one of selection (which stories unite thematically); the second was one of arrangement. The stories have been broken down into smaller parts and re-arranged -- dropping threads to be picked up later in the performance, in an increasingly elaborate pattern of recurring storylines -- as well as having been re-written to sustain recurring images, phrases, and ideas. Perhaps particularly apropos, as one of the key themes of the show is the fragmentation of memory.

Beyond that, the challenge has been taking stories developed for a single voice and adapting them for two. In some cases that's quite literal -- simply breaking down conversations between multiple characters to create a kind of theatrical dialogue -- whereas in others, it's more expressionistic -- phrases begun by one performer are carried by another, and tossed back-and-forth in a more stream-of-consciousness style.

I've been fortunate in being able to collaborate with Elizabeth Byrd. She's the only other member of Maximum Verbosity -- other than myself -- to have been a member from its inception: she composed the music for our very first show, as well as having served as editor for every MV script. (In fact, we initially met as part of a storytelling troupe in the Minnesota Renaissance Festival well over a decade ago, so this serves as a kind of return to our earliest collaborations.) She's a classically-trained vocalist -- one who's capable of doing everything from opera to pop to jazz -- and while she doesn't *sing* in this show persay, she was absolutely my first choice as someone capable of handling some extremely heightened and stylized vocalizations.

REPAIRER OF REPUTATIONS

I can't speak nearly as eloquently on this subject -- my knowledge is limited to what I've read of the story. the script, and those few conversations that Tim and I have had about the material.

"The Repairer of Reputations" is a short story, composed in 1895, about the far-flung dystopian future of 1925. The author, Robert W. Chambers, was one whose work later inspire H.P. Lovecraft and other authors of pulp horror.

Tim was one of those authors who first persuaded me that genre fiction could work onstage -- particularly in light of the fact that the spoken-word community at the time tended to be dominated by comedy and autobiography. It was particularly striking to me to note, perusing the script, that Tim had jury-rigged many of the same solutions to adapting stories as I had -- the rapid shift between dialogue and prose, for one.

One of the major assertions within adaptation of the past several decades has been an acknowledgement of the fact that information can't be conveyed from one genre to another; critical story points have to be changed, in order to work either theatrically or cinematically. I don't necessarily disagree with this fundamental point; but I can't ignore the fact that the vast bulk of those changes seem to me to be little more than rationalization. In short, one of the reasons I love Tim is his willingness to simply ignore that convention; the assurance that authors before made their assertions for a reason, and that they're worth defending. And that those assertions maintain a surprising impact regardless.

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Almost Done It

Spent most of the day dealing with some (hopefully and probably only embarrassing) medical issues, which may necessitate my returning early. We’ll see how that pans out.

Had another show, back down to an embarrassingly small turnout. If last night was the inevitable Artist Night, then this was the equally inevitable Zombie Night – the night where the audience seems to be consistently engaged, but generates almost no appreciable vocal response. They seemed to enjoy it, but it’s always extremely frustrating to play. The temptation is to overextend yourself, but that reeks of desperation – it’s difficult to relax and let the story happen without the playful back-and-forth that usually propels it.

I dunno. One more performance left, and unless it really sells the hell out, I’m going to need to seriously re-evaluate the wisdom of returning to KC. The thought pains me – I’ve really come to love this place, and it’s only on this trip that I’ve begun to realize to what degree that’s true – but I’ve really done the best I can here, and it’s hard for me to justify continuing to throw money at it with so little return.

---

Saw two shows that evening, both by out-of-town solo performers. Saw Kurt’s show, and actually found it really engaging: it has that sort of uber-ironic anti-comedy thing going on, kind of Kids in the Hall but trippier. I was glad to catch it.

Followed it up with The Hefner Monologues, which I saw last year in Indianapolis. Was debating whether or not to see it again, and it was a wise decision: an 11pm show, populated almost entirely by other artists. The upshot of this is that he ended up performing a kind of director’s commentary – pausing and interrupting himself at various points to comment on what he was doing, which cities various jokes had gotten laughs in, et cetera.

They headed out to a bar in Westport – I offered to join them, and stumbled across the cast of SHARDS on the way to my car. Ended up sitting and talking for a while (and, hooray, we finally found YJ’s open, with the legendary late-night biscuits and gravy I’ve been craving since I was first told about them, and they were everything I was hoping for, and I could have been hit by a car immediately after consuming them and died – well, with a lot of regrets, but at least I wouldn’t have been hungry) before we decided to try to catch up with the others.

We had an under-21 in our party, however, which immediately eliminated a number of possibilities for nightlife. (Shades of the 2008 tour, when our stage manager had managed to come without a license, severely limiting our activities.) We ended up wandering around Westport for a while – which apparently comes way the hell alive on a Friday night, in the best and worst possible ways, place was crawling with cops and they all had plenty of work to do – before returning to the house of their billeter, a barber who works out of her own home.

One of those sprawling, endless conversations about work and art and all that good stuff, before I excused myself at five in the morning to try to get back to my place before my billeter woke up. Time flew right by, and I didn’t have a drop of alcohol in me. Who knew?

Wednesday-Thursday, July 28-29, 2010

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
On the Process of Aging

Ran into Curt Fitzpatrick (the title of his show is The Last Straight Man in Theatre, which makes me wonder if there’s something he needs to tell me about myself) – apparently the Westport Coffee House is where it’s at. Followed up with a visit to the Negro Leagues and American Jazz Museum. Haven’t been since 2008, and again found the experience sublime. They actually have a re-created jazz club that is still in use as a jazz club – on Monday nights. For the past three years, I have consistently recalled this fact on the Tuesday before I leave.

On Tuesday night, Cheryl invited Molly and I out to storm some urban thing. (I presume that she used more detail than that, but it was late and I was drunk.) I unquestioningly agreed. So Wednesday evening, we met at Fringe Central to…well, to figure out what the hell it was we were doing. I was handed a stack of programmes, advised to distribute them as well as postcards, and driven to the venue.

Arrived at a bar a short while later – walked into a room full of youngish, well-dressed individuals, all sipping wine and nattering away at each other. Found a woman at the desk, handed her the programmes, mentioned that I was from the Fringe, and…

HER: Oh, wonderful! Do you mind coming onstage and talking about the Fringe for a while?
ME: Huh? Uh, I’m not really prepared…
HER: Yes, please? Just a few minutes.
ME: I mean…I guess I could say a few words…
HER: Wonderful. I’ll call you up to the stage once we get started.

This, of course, prompted a half-hour panic attack. I flipped through the programme, trying to memorize numbers – first Fringe in 1947, 126 companies, 4th year, all shows under $10.00, et cetera. I also asked around (as subtly as I was able to, without blurting out “Where am I? What is this?”) – enough to figure out that I was at something called the Urban Core Group, and received a vague explanation without comprehending much of it. The guy who was explaining this to me then tried to charge me money to be present, despite my stating that I was there as a representative of the Fringe. I actually started to reach into my pocket before sanity re-asserted itself and I point-blank refused to pay, at which point he refrained from throwing me out, so.

HIM: So, are you a professional speaker?
ME: (long pause) …technically.

I suppose that it’s a great irony, considering my profession, that I have a blind and unreasoning terror of public speaking.

Eventually the woman who greeted me at the door assumed the stage, and attempted to go through a couple of announcements. The audience continued chattering away at each other. She stopped at several points, repeatedly demanding their attention, then plunged forward upon failing to receive it. She then introduced me.

I jumped out to the stage, opened with a quick joke, which was duly laughed at before the audience turned back to their conversations over their wine. I launched into a brief explanation of what Fringe is, observed that nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention to me, became irritated, mentioned that there were programmes at the back, then left the stage.

All in all, pretty lame. I glance back over what I’ve written, and wonder if I’m not being unkind – but, then, it strikes me that they were being rather more so.

---

Had another performance of Descendant, this time with about a dozen people, which is apparently a roaring success by my dramatically lowered standards. Audience was quiet but engaged, and as usual incredibly enthusiastic afterwards.

The structure of the show works. It’s my Goldilocks play, the one that does seem to hit that just-right balance of elements – you can enjoy the family drama at the most superficial level, but the more thoughtful stuff is there for anyone who wants to dig – thoughts about the concept of identity, and of the self, of individualism vs. collectivism, of determinism vs. self-determination.

Working on the sequel, Pissing on the Great Wall, was an interesting project for a couple of reasons, one of which was bringing me back to an old script and really analyzing what made it tick – a strange combination of travelogue, family drama, fish-out-of-water comedy, historical mystery, and political satire. I quickly realized, working on the new script, that it was neither possible nor desirable to re-create that strange alchemy – doing so would have made it into the worst kind of sequel. So Pissing had to become its own entity, somewhat darker, more thoughtful, certainly less wide-eyed and apparently much less likeable.

Which brings me to the other odd aspect of working on a sequel, which was a sudden consciousness of the concept of aging. My scripts are usually in development for a minimum of five years before they see the stage – I cycle through dozens of scripts I’m working on at any given time, putting one away for a few months and picking up another. But one of the results of this is having a surreal sensation of collaborating with a younger version of myself, someone with their own sets of ideas and systems that have since altered for me.

And that’s one of the bizarre things about dusting off Descendant again – I’m no longer the man who wrote that play. And in a sense, I’m no longer playing myself, either, but a younger version of myself – one who is often irritating the hell out of me. I read these lines onstage and find myself wanting to sit down with the author, tell him to, for fuck’s sake, relax – you’ll get through it. And the crap you’re worried about is going to turn out to not be a problem at all, and the stuff that is going to turn out to be a problem are things you haven’t even conceived of yet.

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Headed over to the Pearl to hit GRIND, before I got a call from Molly – her car battery was dead, and the rest of her troupe was coming in. I headed on over to help out, and stuck around long enough to greet her cast as they arrived – including yet another former student of mine, fresh from a series of performances at another Renaissance Festival. And it occurs to me that I’m finally hitting the point of seeing a whole new collection of people hitting the circuit – that I’m no longer the pwnz0rd n00b. And that a phrase like pwnz0rd n00b is, in itself, a dated reference. Jesus.

Headed on back to catch the last 15-20 minutes of the show, then stuck around to hang out with the performers. Turns out they were having a cast party at their billeter’s house, and I managed to weasel my way into an invitation.

Turns out their billeter had been in the audience for Descendant, and pulled me aside from the rest of the group to share a glass of fine scotch with me. Turned out to be another fascinating guy – an Army brat from Iowa, who’d weathered careers in politics, law, and a failed marriage – so the show is apparently continuing to still work its magic, in terms of inspiring people to share their own stories with me.

Joined the rest of the group to hang out, laughing and talking, before glancing at my cell and realizing that it was 3am. Looked around the room and realized that it was easily one of those parties that could barrel on to five or six in the morning, excused myself, and headed home.

And the thought occurred to me, walking out to my car – there’s a time in my life when I would have felt genuinely remorseful for doing that – when it was critically important to me to close out every party, to hang out sharing dirty jokes and bullshitting until I was the last one left. But now, there comes a point in the evening where having that memory is less important to me then going home to get some rest.

Is that a loss? It seems like it should be, but somehow it doesn’t feel like one.

Thursday, July 29th, 2010
On the Aging of Process

Looking back over some of the previous entries, it’s hard not to see some patterns emerging.

(That’s another one of the things I find so important about travel – there’s that old saw about how traveling outwards causes one to looks inwards, and a change of environment does cultivate a certain sense of detachment.)

Ever since I was a kid – who knows why – I had in the back of my head the age of thirty as a sort of cut-off point for a certain degree of success. (After all, most of my heroes were headliners by the time they had left their teens.) I’m nearly thirty now – hardly ripe old age, but I’m not going to be a twenty-something for much longer, and that shifting of a single digit, while arbitrary, still has a lot of symbolic weight in my mind – particularly as it’s doesn’t seem likely that I’m going to be anywhere near the goals I’ve been shooting for. I don’t feel like I’ve been squandering my opportunities – on the contrary, looking back over the last decade, I think I’ve done a good job of more often than not keeping my nose to the grindstone. Which, if anything, makes falling short of those goals even more frustrating.

That’s been manifesting itself in a variety of ways over the past year, almost universally unhealthy, and I’ve made some pretty catastrophically bad decisions that have hurt a lot of people I’ve come to care about. Every time I think I’m starting to pull myself out of it, I step back and realize that I’m mired in the same place, if not repeating the same mistakes then still responding to the same impetus.

But, yeah – it all seems to come down to alarm at my own biological clock, which is, of course, nothing more than a kind of hubris. Hence agreeing to just about every project I’m getting offered, these days. Hence spending my entire trip here struggling to recapture past experiences. Hence, perhaps, the entire love-hate relationship I’ve had with Descendant for the past three years.

They say the first step is admitting that you have a problem. Which has never been the difficult one for me. Is that what this blog is? What these shows are? Just another form of the Catholic confessional, allowing me pour out my sins, receive absolution, then be set free to sin again?

Perhaps the true theme song of this trip is Count Basie’s Dark Rapture:

…night time brings the rapture
bringing of delight, boy
while we both recapture
the thrill that fills the still of a Congo night…

…may we share the dark rapture
and every year take a flight
may we always capture
the thrill that fills the chill of a Congo night…

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Received a call from Curt in the afternoon – wanted to know if I wanted to accompany him to the Jazz Museum. Hell, I could cheerfully spend all day there, so, yes.

Got there early, and spent some time walking around the neighborhood. 18th and Vine is the historic Jazz district of Kansas City, and in a lot of respects it’s stayed pretty close to its roots: filled with all manner of bars, bands, and nightclubs.

There’s not a lot of places that I’ve been able to visualize any kind of life for myself – they’ve been limited to Minneapolis, Melbourne, and Hong Kong – and Kansas City, despite my fascination with the place, has never really been on that list. But hanging out in that neighborhood – yeah. I could cheerfully live there. Multiple choices for live jazz every evening? That’d be just some life, I tell you what. Provided, y’know, that cost of living in that area wasn’t as exorbitant as I assume it must be.

Took Curt to the Flea Market afterwards – yes, I could eat there every night, if I could possibly justify it to myself – then went to catch The Tragedy of Rumplepunchkin afterwards. I’ve always had some mixed feelings about the fact that almost none of my former teachers have ever really attended my shows – mixed, because it would certainly mean a lot to me for them to be there, but at the same time I recognize that most of them wouldn’t care for the work that I’m currently doing, and then we’d both have to decide how much we care about that – but I understand their perspective, as well. Watching performers who I spent some time training, even many years ago, and it’s hard for my brain not to snap back into that role – hard for me to shut it down enough to relax and enjoy the show, which certainly isn’t fair to them.

Then had the pleasure of seeing one my cousins for an hour. He lives in KC, but we rarely see each other when I’m here, largely because both of our schedules preclude it – he’s a surgeon, and I’m Fringing, so. Beyond that, it’s another one of those clashings of roles I find myself struggling with – I don’t know that I’m comfortable mixing the marketing whore/party lizard that I play on the circuit with the face that I try to present to my family.

Had a good time, though, this time in the Power and Light District, which I hadn’t seen before – mere blocks from the crumbling theatre areas, it’s definitely a more yuppie-ish part of town, leaving me to again marvel at just how schizophrenic this city is.

Made it in time to set up for my show, which was packed, as it turned out to be the Artist Night – when you’re touring a show, there’s always one night where all of the other artists end up deciding to come. So, you don’t make much money, but it’s definitely one of the most gratifying audiences to play – they totally get all of the more writerly jokes, as well as the high-concept stuff.

Immediately afterwards we descended, en masse, to Fringe Central again. As usual, the place was pretty much deserted except for us – I reclined with a beer and watched with amusement as various other performers leapt up to the mike for each other’s entertainment.

At one point – as there were about five people from three different companies onstage, working their way through a song with a variety of instruments and occasionally breaking down and arguing with each other – I turned to Tim and said, “Does it ever strike you just how absurd our lives are?”

He responded, without hesitation, “Yes. But you can’t ever let yourself think that way, because then you start to tell yourself that there’s no way you can possibly do it, and that’s the beginning of the end.”