Note From Melbourne

Tonight, I showed up at my venue to find a sign out front claiming that all shows had been canceled due to illness -- our venue manager was in the hospital, and unable to let anybody into the space. Because I have the most awesome tech ever, she immediately made a series of phone calls and secured us a performance space above a nearby coffee shop. Since all of my props, costume, and (perhaps most importantly) script were locked inside, the show would have to go forth without any of those things. My tech spent several minutes frantically scribbling all of her cues onto a sheet of paper so that I could use her tech script (in ten-point Times New Roman, squint) as my reference material. All of this happened in the space of approximately half an hour.

As the audience shuffled in, I tried to say the following to them. (I would love to say that this is exactly what I said, but I'm rarely anything resembling eloquent without the opportunity to write my material beforehand.)

Six years ago, I formed a company called Maximum Verbosity, out of the belief that words could do damn near anything. Tonight, we're going to put that hypothesis to the test.

Normally, this is a show punctuated by visual cues: by costume, props, and carefully-rehearsed changes in lighting and mood. I believe that this story is strong enough to survive without any of those things. It should be: it's already survived for over fifteen hundred years.

But for tonight, we're all going to be part of a little Brechtian experiment. Here's hoping I can entertain you.

July 27-28: Iowa

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Relieved to be on the road again.

Listening, this time, to a bunch of Tolkien short stories that I picked up in Kansas City. Slightly dramatized but mostly quite faithful: "Farmer Giles of Ham" was in particular quite entertaining. (Y'know, Tolkien never gets props for his comic chops. The books are full of rustic comedy, but that never seems to make it into the various adaptations of his stuff.) I also found "Leaf by Niggle" to be extraordinarily moving, and hearing a superbly-done, and superbly-performed fantasy story about stuff that, y'know, really matters, was a nice reminder of why I try to do the stuff that I do.

I stopped in Des Moines to visit an old friend. We dined that evening at the Hessenhaus, a German pub/restaurant whose back wall featured the Iowa Polka Music Hall of Fame. I am prepared to declare this is as my cultural achievement in Iowa.

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Thatcher Williams invited me to see a rehearsal for Spermalot, which is performing at the Minnesota Fringe: my thoughts can be found at my Fringe blog on the Twin Cities Daily Planet.

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Afternoon tea in Des Moines.

ME: Y'know, I'm really interested in Fallout 3 now that I've been to DC.

LIZ: Why?

ME: Well, because the whole thing is set in a replica of the city.

LIZ: That's cool.

ME: Yeah, it's supposed to really accurate. Only, y'know, with mutants and robbers crawling through the ruins.

(pause)

ME: Okay, maybe not all that different.

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My friend took me out to a tea shop in Des Moines. She sat herself down across from me, and said, "Okay. Want some unsolicited marketing advice?"

Sure.

So she pulls out a sketch pad, and begins doodling. And here's something that struck me -- there's a lot of people who have been very aggressively giving me marketing advice, but none of their suggestions have anything to do with the work that I'm doing. This is the first time I really sat down with someone who, I think, actually gets the concept of the show -- and from only a few brief conversations, at that. (Well, excluding the many years we spent discussing this stuff when we were teenagers. Which, come to think of it, may be more to the point.)

But she's always had a flair for visual designs, and was effectively able to produce some really iconic images. And while I know that current Fringe wisdom suggests human face and human body for publicity -- this show is all about icons. And about smashing icons together.

The key image of the show, I think, is that of Pellinore and the Questing Beast -- the noble knight, pursuing the chimerical monster across the desert. "What does it mean?" she asks -- and, well, it's not ever exactly explained in the original texts. Some scholars think that the sound of beasts that emerge from its belly indicates the corruption and civil strife that will tear Camelot apart from the inside. And Pellinore's assertion that it will continue to be pursued by his children is either hopeful or ominous, depending on how you choose to read that. But there's something compelling in that unquestioning, self-destructive pursuit of an unattainable goal. There's a parallel to art, to the act of creation, that a number of audience members of picked up on, though nobody seems to have yet grabbed hold of what it may evoke politically.

Or maybe it doesn't mean anything at all. Maybe there is no meaning, and this simply happens because this is what happens in Arthur's realm.

Some have asked me to be more specific -- to be honest, I'm worried about being obnoxiously heavy-handed. I'm not really interested in allegory -- that childish, simple-minded form of storytelling in which each image has a clear one-to-one parallel will something else. Rather, I'm interested in what Tolkien described as applicability -- the development of a richly detailed, internally consistent world, within which many parallels can be found.

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EVERYONE ELSE: Don't worry. You've got a following in Minneapolis! You're sure to a get a crowd there.

ME: Awesome! Thanks! So when are you coming to the show?

EVERYONE ELSE: ...

Hopped in my car. Can't express enough how gratifying it was to be able to reach up and plug "home" into my GPS.

I'm reassured by everyone that I'll have a strong audience showing in Minnesota. And I certainly have for the past two years. But that's not something I ever take for granted: I've learned the hard way that an audience won't necessarily follow you from one project to the next. Particularly when you genre-hop as heavily as I do.

In any case, since I'll be back in my hometown, posts here will be on the back-burner until I hit the road again. If you're interested in my adventures at the Minnesota Fringe, I advise you all to check out the blog I write for the Twin Cities Daily Planet at this link.

July 23-26: Missouri

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

In true Fringe fashion - a random photograph of myself and this rather fetching creature, presented with no explanation.

Went out to get some work done at a nearby internet café. I was wearing my campaign shirt for Doug Stanhope’s 2008 Presidential run, when the dude sitting behind me noticed – claimed that he had been a stand-up comic on the circuit for a while, and had known Doug back when they were first starting out. We started chatting about various venues in Minneapolis which we’d both performed at.

There’s an anecdote about the aging Groucho Marx – he was hired to entertain in a hospital – but when he arrived, he realized that the people there didn’t want to be told jokes, they wanted somebody to talk to. So he went from bedside to bedside, and proceeded to chat up each person he met. He would initiate every conversation by asking where the patient was from – and then proceed to talk about local gossip, places to eat, places to hang out. And the staff was astonished to realize that he’d been to nearly every town, from his years of traveling on the vaudeville circuit.

I wouldn’t mind being like that someday.

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I ended up, at the last minute and with no rehearsal, being the stage manager for Kirsten and Dean’s show. (One of the great pleasures of this stretch of the tour – I’m here with some of my favorite artists, well, ever.)

It was all routines I’d seen before, usually dozens of times (I’ve probably seen their material more than anyone other than, say, them). Since I was backstage, though, I was seeing them perform from the side. They have a series of sketches they do moving back-and-forth behind flats, and it’s startling to see just how hard they work.

(They did have one of those rare, bizarrely unresponsive crowds – not hostile, seemed to be enjoying it, but dead silent through the entirety of the show. I mean, who doesn’t laugh at the Star Wars parody? When Dean ignites that lightsaber, and makes that “come-get-some” gesture? I get that comedy is subjective, but Jesus.)

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Also saw The Miniature Housewife – review available at Womb with a View.

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My audience tonight was almost entirely made up of other artists. So the downside is, I didn’t really make any money; the upside is that it was one of the more fun performances.

Talked to Dean and Kirsten afterwards. Kirsten offered a few helpful suggestions – including the observation that Pellinore would not refer to a superior officer in such a familiar manner, even in casual company. (Rewrites ahoy.) Dean enjoyed it, with the caveat of being a bit overwhelmed by the wordstorming (new word? New word. Gonna start using it all the time now). Being the sweet guy that he is, he attempted to couch this is in friendly language: “I mean, we’re mimes, so we want less language. But I bet there’s a lot of people saying that they want more language,” at which point I burst out laughing. I have never, in the period of time I’ve been doing this, had an audience walk away from one of my scripts claiming that they want more language. I see no danger of this occurring.

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Went out with Mike Shaeffer afterwards, ending up in, of all places, the Lava Room – the same dive we ended up in at the end of last year’s tour. That makes this our official hangout, since we’ve been there exactly twice in two years. (Although it apparently turns weird on a Friday night, since we spent much of the evening being harassed by what appears to be Ron Kovic’s identical twin.)

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Spent most of the day being completely zapped – just staring into space for big chunks of it, not getting work done. Mentally, in addition to fatigue and my other physical issues. I’m a classic introvert, and often find that I need periods of isolation to recharge – the kind of hyperactive extroversion that touring requires is incredibly draining to me.

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I think I’m going to give a rest to talking about specific information regarding my shows in this space for now, and just let this be a tour diary – at least, until I have something positive to say.

I would like to say – I recall a quote by Federico Fellini, in which he claims that every artist tells the story that they love – and that therefore Steven Spielberg is the luckiest artist in the world, because so many people love the thing that he loves. I’ve always been very resistant to this – I find it hard to accept – I can’t be this unique, surely? Can there really be so few that love the things that I love? Trying to woo an audience often feels like being an unrequited suitor – and the less they respond, the more I start to feel like a stalker.

One of the revolutionary aspects of chivalry is the fact that it’s a system of courtship that revolves, at least nominally, around self-perfection – around making oneself sufficiently worthy to achieve the object of one’s desire. (This simultaneously elevates the object of your affection – since you need to be prepared to affect a kind of transformation to obtain them – and denigrates them, since it reduces them to a kind of object to be won solely through your own action.) Pellinore even cites this as one of his reasons for joining the military in the play – “If I’m lucky, I’ll meet a good woman, and if I do, I want to be worthy of her, God willing.” But what this ultimately means is that, if your love is not returned, it’s not simply bad luck – but a personal failure, an imperfection of character.

Whether or not any of that’s true – unrequited love sucks. Regardless of whether the “romance” in question is referring to courtship or heroic narrative.

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

I arrived before the volunteers did for my show today, and so ended up guiding audience to the show that was taking place above mine. Not that I minded doing it, but it's kind of a kick in the nuts to be directing audience to somebody else's play.

In the case of one family, there was a little girl whose eyes widened as soon as she saw the sword. "What show are you doing?" I told her, and she replied, "Cool!" It's a shame she won't be able to come see it.

But I've been thinking about the excitement on her face at the prospect of knights and heroes and war and all that stuff. There's got to be a way to tap into that. Maybe it's time for me to do another kid's show -- I haven't done one for a while. I have a great love for the adventure/fantasy genre -- perhaps I've just been targeting the wrong demographic.

In my audience tonight was a mother who had been dragged by her teenage son. Both loved it. I assume he was drawn by either the knights or the soldiers -- I wish I'd had the presence of mind to ask which it was.

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I stage-managed Dean's show again. My favorite piece of his is called Jackass the Mime -- a dark little routine that opens with him playing a street mime who nobody laughs at. It becomes, ah, unpleasantly ironic without audience response. And ends up feeling a bit reminiscent of the whole trip.

Since this is a show that's also going to the Minnesota Fringe Festival, I've posted a few more thoughts at my blog at the Twin Cities Daily Planet.

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Sunday, July 26^th, 2009

Spent my morning working, running off of a sudden burst of inspiration -- pinning down outlines and notes for three potential, and potentially marketable, Fringe shows. Bursts like this for me are rare but intensely gratifying. (The point at which I note that most amateur writers fall down when making the leap to professional is that they assume that writing is a constant burst of inspiration, and become discouraged when it isn't.)

The word inspiration comes from the Latin spirare, meaning, "to breathe." In many of the early texts, Merlin is described as physically inhaling a kind of foreign entity before prophesying. I can see the parallel to the act of creation: when it works, you really feel like you're riding, not guiding, the process.

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Hit up the after-party, where I ended up spending a good chunk of it talking to Kirsten and Dean. She recently lent me a copy of C.S. Lewis' Reflections on the Psalms. In his introduction, he simply states that he's not going to be attempting to convince anyone of anything: his readers either need to already buy into the basic premise of what he's saying or need to be able to suspend their disbelief.

There's something gratifying about being able to chew over ideas with people with at least a somewhat shared ideology. Otherwise, everything becomes apologetics: if I want to talk about faith or conservatism, I have to spend a huge chunk of time onstage convincing the audience that these ideas have some value worth considering. It's a real struggle to achieve any kind of depth of thought while still arguing over the initial principles.

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I closed out the closing night party. Score.

July 21-22: Missouri

Tuesday, July 21^st, 2009

Woke up this morning to a deluge of well-wishing and birthday messages on my Facebook. What the fuck has happened to my life? Since when do I have so many cool people in it?

Had a nice, low-key day for the most part – stayed in for the morning and got some work done, treated myself to a Chinese meal in the afternoon. Actually got to meet my billeter for the first time – he’s been out of town – shortly before taking off for my opening night.

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…annnd we’re not going to be discussing how my opening night went.

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Went to Fringe Central afterwards, where I ended up talking with a Vietnam medic turned salesman turned voice actor. One more for the menagerie that is Fringe.

(Incidentally – one of the great, surprising pleasures of storytelling for me has been the fact that when you stand onstage discussing a topic, I’ve found that there’s a huge number of people who are eager to return the favor. When I did Descendant, I heard similar tales of angst recounted from people of every ethnicity. So one of the cool things about this show is that I’ve been getting talked to by veterans lately – who feel compelled to give me war stories, boot camp stories, et cetera.)

(And not intending any disrespect to those many who enjoyed Descendant – but it’s grown hard, over the past two years, for me not to resent its success. (There’s a reason my last short story was titled “In the Shadow of the Dragon.”) I always assumed that once I had a really successful show, it would finally give me the credibility to work on those projects I was truly enthusiastic about. This…hasn’t proven to be the case. In many respects, it’s turned out to be quite the opposite.)

(Which leads me to remark on the vast amounts of unsolicited marketing advice that a struggling show draws:

THEM: Maybe the problem is…

ME: Yes, I know. People tune out as soon as they hear “King Arthur.” Nobody goes to see drama at the Fringe. The language is too dense for live performance.

THEM: But if you knew all those things going in, then you don’t get to complain when ow ow god and jesus you just rammed a fork into my eye socket)

I mainly swung by the central area to pimp my show at their open-mic night, which they run every evening. Things were late getting started – when I asked why, they indicated it was because their host for the evening hadn’t shown up. I jokingly said, “Hey, I’ll do it. I’ve hosted stuff.”

There was much muttering back-and-forth, and then I found myself onstage with a mic in my hand. Which is how I ended up being the master of ceremonies for the evening.

Turned out to be a lot of fun – small crowd, but very responsive. It struck me, hitting the ground running, that I’ve come a long way in my hosting from my first attempt – a religious storytelling cabaret, for which I wrote massive amounts of material, panicked, tried to perform all of it, and ended up dragging the evening onwards into oblivion. (I once again heartily apologize to anyone who had to witness this.)

But the opportunities I’ve had like this – the previews, the open-mics, et cetera – have reinforced for me something that I’ve badly, badly needed on this trip – that, yes. I do know how to have fun with an audience. I do know how to work a crowd. So it would really be nice to, y’know, have one occasionally.

Wednesday, July 22^nd, 2009

Got up, stayed in, worked. My billeter proceeded to cook an amazing meal for me.

Was then picked up by Kirsten and Dean to check out the Narnia exhibit at Union Station. Kirsten and I are both huge C.S. Lewis fans, so that giant banner out front wasn’t something we could pass up.

So the exhibit is mostly a tribute to the Disney movies, although in the foyer they have a small room dedicated to Lewis himself – including his writing desk and several of his books. I pointed at a picture of the Inklings – “Those dudes are the reason that I’m a writer,” I said to Dean.

We were then ushered into a darkened room, where we waited for several minutes while the music swelled and the wardrobe opened. I found this irritatingly cute. (Although I was amused by the over-enthusiastic volunteers – “It sure is amazing that guy could have had such a good imagination so long ago, huh?” Actual quote.)

Exhibit was definitely geared toward kids (it boasts of teaching “The Science of Narnia.” Science? Seriously? That’s the tack we’re going to be taking with this?) – with clumsy lead-ins like “When the White Witch takes hold of Narnia, she causes the climate to change. Here’s an essay on climate change!”

I was sort of fascinated with all the behind-the-scenes movie stuff, though (I had issues with the movies, but they’re almost entirely, and entirely unsurprisingly, text-based) – the costumes, props, and set pieces – and realizing that, damn. In order to build the world, they really had to, y’know, build the world. The attention to detail – such as the carvings around the edge of Miraz’ shield – is astonishing; minute aspects of this production were labored over, aspects that the audience would never see on film.

It’s bizarre to see these images come to life, and I wonder what Lewis would have made of it. It’s strange to see something that you’ve imagined realized in three dimensions. Even in my own small case – I’ve had two comedians perform parodies of my writing style now, and two visual artists create their interpretations of my work, not to mention those few times I’ve been fortunate enough to hand over my scripts to directors who aren’t, y’know, me – and it’s always surreal to see that filtered through somebody else’s intellect. Tolkien was openly hostile to many of the attempts to adapt his work in his lifetime, and I’m quite confident that he’d hate the latest film trilogy. But there’s still an undeniable thrill to seeing their creations up and moving about.

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I spent most of the evening seeing plays: for anyone who’s interested in my thoughts on those, they are, of course, archived over at Womb with a View.