6-Month Recap

Whew. It's been a while, huh?

JANUARY

"Logorrhea: The Most of Maximum Verbosity" was modestly successful -- certainly the most successful show that we've done outside of "Descendant of Dragons," most likely because

A) we were coming off of the success of that;
B) we had some extraordinary talent on board;
C) some nice press coverage (we were A-listed in the City Pages, thanks to the new storyteller-friendly journalist Ward Rubrecht); and
D) our association with the supergroup Rockstar Storytellers.

It was also our most *expensive* show to date (largely due to paying a large cast), and we still managed to break even. So respectable, even if nothing to write home about.

Artistically I'm pleased with it: I think it emerged looking like what I wanted it to look like, a lunatic carnival of folktales, dirty jokes, multidisciplinary art, slapstick, and poetry. Laying out all of those pieces next to each other really reinforced me the sense that, even in light of what a wide variety of styles we've worked in, MV has still managed to produce a coherent sensibility, an aesthetic, a world.

Psychologically, it also did what I needed it to, in that it marked the transition from an old style of working to a new one. The cast consisted of a combination of old friends that I trained alongside and have been working with for years, as well as new artists who I've come to admire in that time. Doing that show really helped me purge a lot of the baggage I've been too nervous to let go of, and, I think, set out in some new directions -- while still keeping clearly in my head exactly what MV is all about.

That's the upside. The downside is that it was also one of the most stressful productions I've worked on in a long time. Having grown accustomed to solo work, or work in small groups -- this was significantly larger than any project that we've ever done, and the *organizational* aspects of it were a daily nightmare. Simply navigating that many schedules was a full-time job. Finding that balance between playful collaboration and the need to create a coherent production was also a challenging tightrope to walk. If I didn't *already* know the material so well, I can't imagine how I could have handled so many different aspects of the performance.

That month, I also had the pleasure of featuring at a slam poetry evening. I divided my performance into two halves. The first was short slam pieces, between which I bantered with the audience. This was glowingly received. The second was a long-form spoken-word piece, which tanked. I suspect that I was speaking too rapidly, and that that was the wrong crowd for that piece; though I will confess to a slight annoyance. The double-edged sword of slam audiences is that, yes, they're incredibly demanding and keep you alert. The flip side of that is that I often suspect that they lack the patience for more layered, long-form work, the work that's truly closest to my heart. But overall, a positive experience.

I also had the pleasure of performing in a fundraiser for Paulino Brener, to help raise money for his green card. I elected to trot out some of my lighter material from "Descendant of Dragons," with its themes of travel and immigration. I almost resent how solid this stuff is -- it never fails to capture an audience's attention.

At the performance, I ran into Paul Herwig of Off-Leash Area, a dance company that I adore beyond all measure. I was invited to perform as part of their next show. Unfortunately, that didn't end up working out, although I did get to sit in on a few rehearsals and write about the experience.

This the only month in which I did not perform with the Rockstar Storytellers.

FEBRUARY

I performed in "Stories of Heartbreak" with the Rockstars, doing a "lost chapter" from "Descendant of Dragons," paralleling a personal love story with some of Pu Song-Ling's faery-tales, as well as old jazz standards. Solid, well-received.

I also was invited to perform in a similarly-themed evening with Vilification Tennis, the old Renaissance Festival group that's trying to re-invent themselves on the Minneapolis stage. I got to be a lot more stupid, juvenile, and dirty than I usually can be, regaling them with stories of old girlfriends and sexual escapades gone wrong.

This was also the month of the Chekhov Festival, for which I bought a pass and wrote reviews of seven shows.

Maximum Verbosity's brand-spankin'-new website finally went live, after that "HTML-for-Dummies" embarrassment that we've had for the past five years.

MARCH

Slow month. Hosted a Rockstar show, "Stories of Religion." This is one of the worst performance I've given in my life. I multitask dozens of projects, but I think I'm fairly good at keeping them isolated from each other: this is one of the few cases in which the sheer amount of work that I was doing compromised a performance. When I hit the stage, I hadn't slept in two days, and I was practically asleep on my feet. I was nervous, and had prepared a vast amount of jokes to draw on -- and I wielded them indiscriminately, causing the evening to run much longer than it should have. I offer a heartfelt apology to anyone who witnessed this.

We also held the very first MV auditions, ever. Was taken aback at both the high turnout, and the high *caliber* of the turnout. Thing is, for the past five years, I've been writing extremely complicated text and handing it to specialty acts: mimes, dancers, comedians. This is one of the first times that I've handed that text to *actors*, and, whoa. Holy shit. Not to dismiss the older work -- which always came off as sounding like broad, over-the-top comedy sketches, which was perfect about fifty percent of the time -- but for the first time, this text actually sounds like a *play*. And this is a whole new world to me.

Also sat in on, and wrote about, an Off-Leash Area rehearsal.

APRIL

Performed my single favorite Rockstar piece yet, a sick little horror story about a recluse who crawls through his computer cables and finds another world, in which he can enact all of his vile fantasies upon his next-door neighbor without consequence. Pretty atypical for a Rockstar show, but definitely in that style that's closest to my heart: fantastic, expressionistic, bizarre. Audiences seemed to eat it up, too. I'll probably perform it for our "best-of" evening in July.

Also performed a new twenty-minute solo show, "The Hunting of the Snark," the first Maximum Verbosity piece that I have neither written nor directed; the text is by Lewis Carroll, the choreography by the extraordinary Anthony Paul, who really swept in and saved me from a number of horrifically bad decisions. "The Hunting of the Snark" is the first show that I ever directed, nearly a decade ago, so it feels appropriate that it would be the first MV show after our five-year anniversary.

Numbers were terrible, I suspect since it was performed as part of such an odd mix; good material, but with no real unifying theme or marketing scheme. If "Logorrhea" was frustrating because I was organizing so much, "Alice in Biffyland" was frustrating because the was no real organizing head; four people creating under a skeletal umbrella. It was extremely difficult to talk up or to sell to people in that respect, and the press wafted right by.

We did get to do one show as a fundraiser for Mikael Rudolph, which was loads of fun.

MAY

This was one of the most insane months of my life.

My Rockstar story was weak, I thought: a political rant about Barack Obama that was more of a meandering, jokey essay than a real story. I wasn't at all happy this one.

The Rockstar Storytellers were also invited to perform as part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival's "Five-Fifths" event, in which they chop a classic script up into five pieces, give them to five different companies, and mash them back together. Courtney McLean and I adapted Act III of Romeo and Juliet, with her playing Romeo and me playing Juliet.

This was one of the most ridiculously responsive audiences I've ever played, devouring every joke and eagerly anticipating the next one. We basically just dipped the scenes into our snarky, sarcastic style, rewrote roles around our various stage personas, and a good time was had by all. There's a clip of some of that nonsense online, if anybody's interested.

I also remounted "Descendant of Dragons" on a double-bill with Allegra Lingo's "I Hate Kenny G." Numbers were poor, I suspect because we did it on a holiday (Mother's Day) and the weekend of the fishing opener. Both scripts were sturdy as ever, however.

I worked on three shows as part of the Spirit in the House Festival. I produced and ran tech for Holly Davis' "The All-You-Can-Eat Spiritual Buffet," and did a storytelling set as part of Kay Kirscht's "Quest" showcase. The latter was a particular pleasure, since Grail literature is the central obsession of my life. I told two short unicorn stories, which number among my favorite stories that I've ever written, also in a more fantastic, expressionistic style.

MV's entry in the festival, however, was called "Jesus: The Lost Years" (which I've recently re-titled "The Secret Book of Jesus"). Numbers for all three shows -- and for most of the Festival -- were, unfortunately, terrible; partly due to the challenges of a spiritually-themed theatre festival, partly due to the fact that it opened on Memorial Day weekend, partly due to the fact that I bombed just about every preview I did, and partly due to the fact that, well, I just plain wasn't aggressive about advertising this one. I have plenty of good excuses, but I suppose the real one is that I just didn't have a lot of confidence about this piece going in. It's so odd, so unusual, so atypical.

Well, Festival's over, and I'm prepared to say that this is one of my favorite shows that I've ever written -- certainly my favorite solo show (yes, I like it better than "Descendant"). I love its oddness: it's archaic. It's obscure. It's dirty and poetic and confusing. It is, unquestionably and purely, a Maximum Verbosity Production.

JUNE

Did a story about a night I spent in jail in May. Was fun, because I know that some gossip's been floating around our little circle about it, and I appreciated the opportunity to step up and reclaim the story a bit. Audience enjoyed it, too, but it was very much a one-time thing; not a story I'm likely to repeat. Was largely successful because it was the right place and the right time.

Started rehearsals for "All Rights Reserved: A Libertarian Rage," which I'll no doubt be talking about in detail in this space.

Saturday I'll be attending a Flag Day picnic and speaking to a Libertarian group about the First Amendment and our current grant system.

Sunday (Father's Day) Allegra and I will be doing our double-bill again. For those of you who haven't seen "Descendant", this could well be your last chance, since I don't really have any intention of remounting it again.

I will try to update more frequently in future, so as to never have to write an exhausting post like this again.