...I'm back. Having finally rediscovered internet access. Here comes the backlog.
…is the question I am frequently asked these days, with the unspoken implication of “Why are you an idiot for doing this?” Why am I going to freakin’ Missouri? Particularly when I’m already so overcommitted? And I’ll confess, it’s a question I’ve been asking myself, in the days and hours leading up to my departure.
Why am I doing this? Am I forgetting anything? Why am I doing this? I can’t do this. Oh, God, why am I doing this? All running through my mind, packing, loading, all the way through navigating my way out through classic Twin Cities roadwork-crippled traffic.
And then I was out, and then…
silence. In my head, anyway, and only for a moment. There’s nothing quite like popping out of the TC metro area like a champagne cork and watching the freeway open up in front of you with Ennio Morricone blasting from your car stereo.
I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness, anyway, mainly because I haven’t been experiencing much of it lately. Presuming we can sidestep that whole uber-American argument (but you have so many
things! How can you be unhappy with so many
things), I
do have a remarkably blessed existence – not least, the extraordinary community of people I find myself surrounded by, and I value them more than I can express – but happiness seems to be based on a wide range of stimuli for a wide range of people. I
have been happy at various points in the past, and I’m old enough, and I’ve experienced this cycle enough times, to be confident that it’s just a question of hanging on until the wheel turns again.
But when I think about those brief periods of happiness that I’ve experienced in recent memory, the pattern is undeniably consistent – it’s been when I was on the road. There’s something about setting out with no knowledge of where you’re going to end up that evening, of being liberated from the traps you’ve built around yourself in your environment, of being able to
re-invent yourself over and over again – yeah. I still have my intense ambivalence regarding travel, but I’ve been doing little enough of it lately that the romance is pretty goddamn energizing right now.
Of course, it’s not sustainable. Or particularly profitable. And it’s incredibly draining, incredibly quickly. It’s not at all unlikely that I’ll be reduced again to my typical, quivering mass of neuroses by the end of the week. But I don’t
know that that’s what’s going to happen. And that’s the point, innit?
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The drive down was fairly uneventful – I spent most of it working on memorizing lines for my 3,012th Fringe show – doing my typical routine of stopping for gas/food/facilities in various small towns, and watching accents evolve over space.
Here’s the thing. One of the recurring arguments I get into with fellow Minnesotans is whether or not Missouri is considered part of the Midwest or part of the South. I usually argue for the former – that’s how the US Census identifies it, in any case – but if the accent is any indication, I may have to re-evaluate my opinion.
See, in Kansas City proper, there’s a wide range of speaking patterns, and most of them aren’t particularly noticeable. (I’ve written in the past about the fact that accents tend to fade as you get closer to population centers.) But in the small towns I stopped in along the way, I was consistently greeted with that nasal, twangy drawl I can only identify as Southern.
But, yeah, that observation did serve to remind me of the fact that, hey, I’m heading to a different place. Another aspect of touring that fascinates me is the fact that different crowds respond differently. Which is the case with every show I’ve done, but most notably in 2008 with
All Rights Reserved. Even sidestepping the more dramatic stuff that went down, it was a completely different set of jokes that hit. Saying “nigger” in Minneapolis might have drawn a few gasps, but for the most part people were willing to relax and trust that it was going somewhere. In a more diverse city, with its own history of racial tensions, it was a trickier slur to drop.
…and it only just now occurs to me that, hey, I’m taking my big racial-identity show this year. That should be interesting.
Provided that, y’know, anyone’s in the audience.
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Arrived in town in time to gatecrash my billeter’s birthday party, taking place at a local pub. Picked up the key, drove back to her place, got myself set up, and decided to walk back out to join the festivities.
The walk back took about a half-hour – a little longer, since someone asked me about my Stanhope T-shirt and decided to invite me into a bar to buy me a drink. (Again – this kind of thing
simply does not happen to me in my own city, but happens with absolute consistency every time I travel.)
Arrived back at the bar – a roomful of strangers that I immediately began to introduce myself to, interjecting myself into one conversation after another. (Which, again, is something that I’m utterly incapable of doing in Minneapolis.) Another thing that fascinates me about this city – this is my third time here, and I feel like I find a different city every time I come. A number of people I spoke to agreed with this observation – Kansas City, more than other places I’ve been to, seems to be a clumsily-knit collection of communities that have little to no interaction with each other.
But, yes. If they say the measure of a person is by their friends, my billeter is a very cool lady indeed. Spoke at length to a used-bookstore owner who invited me out to an open-mike, a former New Yorker who was a significant part of the creation of the Daily Show (and was kind enough to share plenty of behind-the-scenes nitty-gritty), and a representative of PBR who kept me in free beer for much of the evening.
PBR: You’re an actor, right? You’re used to having your picture taken. I’ll give you free beer if you let me take your picture holding it.
ME: …you are like the Santa Clause of liquor.
People ask me, why do I do this? Which doesn’t seem to be the relevant question to me. The real question, I think, is why don’t a pull a Tim Mooney and do this all the freakin’ time?
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(A: paragraph five, for those of you taking notes.)
Sunday, July 25th, 2010
How Can I Do It?
…becomes the more pressing question upon arrival.
Started off the day by checking in at Fringe Central, where I was once again surprised by the recognition and warm reception from the staff. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – this community of people is the thing that keeps me coming back year after year, in the face of wildly varying success.
MV did okay in ’08 – not amazing, but, y’know, serviceable. Freakin’
tanked in ’09. And in that case, the evidence suggests that I need to accept full responsibility, since several of my colleagues from out-of-town were doing gangbusters. Moreover, I was doing all of the same publicity work they were doing, in many cases more so – which suggests that it was the show itself that was presenting the marketing challenge.
Which is the main reason that I chose to bring
Descendant – it’s my most consistent money-maker. It’s growing harder and harder to justify coming here, if I can’t generate an audience, so this is something of a desperate attempt to rationalize the amount of time, energy, and money I keep investing in this place.
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Spent most of the afternoon flyering. Which wasn’t hugely successful, since, like every other city I’ve been to, theatre venues tend to not be located in the ritzier areas of town; hence, lots of empty storefronts. Also, doing this on a Sunday might not be the most brilliant idea I’ve ever had. Also – I really need to remember to create posters, flyers, and postcards; I generally create two of three and end up regretting that I don’t have the third. I have my usual bevy of postcards, and a set of 11x17 posters that look
fantastic, but there’s simply not a lot of places to put them up, and a stack of flyers sure couldn’t have hurt.
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My venue’s a bit of a hike; not as bad as, say, the Ritz or the Gremlin in MN, but still definitely off the beaten path. The fact that I had to circle the area about five times before figuring out where it was – and the fact that every local who I’ve asked about it has responded with “Huh?” – is not hugely encouraging to me. Combine the above factors with a Monday-night opening and I’m not holding my breath for the initial turnout.
Tech was a bit of a mess, since we ended up trying to tech three companies in three hours. Spent most of the time hanging out with the Journeyman (Players? Theatre? Lost their card and I don’t have internet access at the moment), who are doing a play which they described as “absurd.” (Well, actually – I asked three individual company members what their show was about, and all three responded with something like a combined sigh, a snort, and an eye-roll – couldn’t have been tighter if it was rehearsed – and then, when pressed, responded “It’s absurd.”)
My tech seems like a reasonably cool guy – he’s an R&B/Gospel musician, born and raised in KC – in fact, who claims to have been born on a Greyhound bus as it was entering the city limits. Offered him a lift to the opening night party after that, where I was delighted to hook up with a number of familiar faces – Tim Mooney, for one; the cast of GRIND: The Musical, for another – who was kind enough to mention my show on their blog, and for whom I am now returning the favor – and two of the cast of SHARDS, a group of first-time Fringers composed of a good chunk of former students of mine, in a bizarre clashing of worlds that I have yet to fully adjust to.
Opening night was a blast, as usual, but I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be smarter at this point to move the action to a larger venue – I understand the importance of establishing Fringe Central as a location in everyone’s minds, but the event has simply grown beyond the building’s capacity. Crowded, sweltering, and noisy, it was a tough room to play – you really had the option of plunging forward and nearly passing out in the press of bodies, or hanging toward the back and not being able to hear anything. Regretfully, I had to spend most of my time with the latter option.
For my three-minute preview, I opted to do my Fringe-For-All piece from 2007 – opens with a bit of clowning, I tear my clothes off to reveal the Game of Death jumpsuit, then closing out with some slam poetry. It was a huge hit in MN, but I wasn’t sure if it was just a fluke.
…and turns out, nope. Was really successful, at least for the portion of the audience I was able to see/hear/communicate with, which hovered in the neighborhood of fifty percent – one of those shows that’s super-fun to play, where you can just hold those moments and know that the audience is hanging there with you. Really validating, in that “I-can-still-do-comedy” kind of way.
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So, yeah. I definitely have the sense that I’ve done everything right this year, marketing-wise – I have the right show, I hit with my preview, been suitably aggressive with the cards and flyers – no press this time around, but dem’s the breaks. We’ll see if this pays off tomorrow night.
Monday, July 26th, 2010
Am I Doing It Yet?
So I departed in the morning (er, noonish) with a bus schedule I managed to print off of Google. The bus system’s a bit of a pain here, though – I find their website nearly impossible to use, and they generally don’t post schedules at the bus stops – so I decided to set out on foot.
Sun was hiding initially, but I forgot that KC can get deceptively humid – forgot only briefly, however, as my environment was at pains to remind me of that fact. A bit concerned, considering all of the fatigue issues I’ve been having lately, but I stopped at a CVS to pick up three bottles of Gatorade and set out.
I actually prefer walking to driving on tour – I’ve stated before that I don’t think you can really get to know a place until you’ve gotten lost in it a couple of times. Imagine my disappointment, then, to realize that I’ve reached the point that I can actually navigate my way around fairly well. This is strange, because I regularly become disoriented
in my own city. I can only conclude that I manage to be somewhat more alert to my surroundings when I’m in unfamiliar territory.
Made a few stops – one at the blissfully air-conditioned Crown Center again, to restock their supply of postcards – before I made the five-mile trek back to my car. A bit of a wince admitting that, since there was once a time in my life when that would have been nothing. Oddly, Fringe is the time of year I seem to lose weight, despite eating a disproportionately large amount of junk food – presumably because I spend most of the time on my feet.
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Hit my car, and broadened my explorations a bit, mostly trying to re-familiarize myself with areas I’d been before. Considered swinging by the Union Station – a large, museum-type area – hit it last year with Kirsten and Dean, when they had a Narnia exhibit. They had a thing about dinosaurs this time, and I like dinosaurs, but I recall it being pretty kid-oriented last year, and I really didn’t want to be the creepy guy looking at dinosaurs by himself, so I gave it a miss.
A sprawling Liberty Memorial was visible just down the street, however, with a WWI museum built into it. Walked around the grounds a bit before realizing that the museum proper was closed on Mondays. As are most museums. Which rather elegantly dismissed a big chunk of my potential plans for the day.
Rediscovered the Westport Flea Market – which serves one of the most amazingly greasy burgers I’ve ever tasted – and the nearby half-price bookstore, where I picked up a bunch of road-trip tapes last year. Picked up a copy of Humphrey Carpenter’s “Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien” – since I am apparently determined to read every syllable the man ever wrote – and a big metal thing displaying the silver-age JLA, since I am apparently a big ol’ geek.
Between flyering, walking, and driving, I’d figured out my territory pretty well again, and it was about time for me to head on out for my opening night.
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Okay, tiny audience, let’s get that out of the way right off the bat, which by no means means that I’m out of rationalizations – it was a 7pm on a Monday night, after all – but worth noting that they had chosen to come see the show with no prior knowledge, based entirely on the show title/image/description.
Descendant’s consistently done that – the only other show in my repertory that’s had that effect is
The Secret Book of Jesus. Usually, people seeing my show is contingent on them having talked to me or seen me preview it or heard about it – it’s rare for one of my shows to garner audience on its own, and one of the reasons I picked this one to bring.
But, yeah. It’s the first time I’ve performed the show in its entirety since 2008 – I’ve performed it in chunks regularly in the interim – and I was startled by how emotional a lot of points of the story were for me. I figured that I would have cultivated some kind of detachment by now, but I’ve obviously made no progress whatsoever in resolving this stuff for myself. So much for art as therapy.
In any case, both my audience and my two box officers (who were listening just outside) were extremely effusive afterwards, and eagerly offered to talk it up, so we’ll see how that pans out.
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Had the option of sticking around to see the show after mine, or of grabbing a bite to eat and heading on over to Fringe Central. Still riding the post-show buzz, and wasn’t really up to sitting through an unknown quantity – so stopped at a Thai place and headed on over to FC.
The place tends to be pretty dead on weeknights, and has been for as long as I’m doing this. It’s symptomatic, I suspect, of how the Festival is structured. It’s a week long – opens on Monday and closes on Sunday – so the only people really seeing shows through the week are die-hard Fringers. The actual Festival doesn’t take off until that closing three-day period. So through the week, people are either seeing shows (generally at 7pm, 8:30pm, or 10pm Mon-Thurs), or going home – it’s usually the out-of-towners huddled around the bar. Which is fine, since we all know each other by now, but it’s not really an effective means of networking.
I was also invited to host the open-mike again. Flattered as always, but I’m not 100% sold on the fact that it’s such a great idea – I mean, half the time there’s a half-dozen people there. The people who want to see performances are out, well, seeing performances. I’m not sure what it would take to make the place into the evening destination it needs to be. People seem to enjoy it, though, so it’s entirely possible I’m overthinking this.
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It may also account for the fact that Tim Mooney is consistently greeted with “Hey! You’re the guy who did ‘Dancing Nude’ last year!” and I’m consistently greeted with “Hey! You’re the guy who hung out at Fringe Central all the time last year!”
