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.

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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.”