Picture Post

We survived -- er, completed -- a full-cast run-through a while back. To paraphrase the King of Hearts, we were successfully able to begin at the beginning, go on till we came to the end, then stop, which is a pretty fucking amazing achievement considering the eclectic mix of what we're doing, and the constraints that we're trying to do it in. Our stage manager, Erika Loen, also happens to be one of those transient photographers-about-town, and snapped a number of photographs.

A big part of what's so thrilling about this project for me is cramming together such a disparate group of personalities and disciplines in my apartment, and seeing what they come up with, as evidenced by the following:


Tara King, one of the dancers from Mad King Thomas, alongside Dean Hatton. Dean's the one in the shorts.


And look! Here's one of the Brothers Quetico, garbed as Bragi, the Norse god of poetry. Folk art is the new regular art, indeed.

Erika was kind enough to contribute the following notes:

When stage managing a show for Maximum Verbosity it is important to remember three things:

1) Feed the actors.
2) Never worry about being overdressed. You will be. Period.
3) Bring your camera.


Eleven days 'til opening. Gulp.

Thoughts on Collaboration

So here's a cell-phone snapshot of Monica, one of the dancers of Mad King Thomas. She's literally chopped up one of my scripts into pieces with a pair of scissors and surrounded herself with language fragments, trying to re-arrange them in some sort of dramatically dynamic way. I find this to be a pretty accurate metaphor for the whole project.

While trying to schedule and organize a cast this large (and by large I mean larger than, like, five people) has been a bit of a headache, the rewards of collaboration have been a pleasant surprise. It's confirmed what I've been suspecting for a while -- that the core group has simply become too insulated -- and working with artists who are challenging us to plow outside of our comfort zones has been a lot of fun. If I derive no other benefit from this project, it's that it's already causing me to reconsider many aspects of my existing scripts -- I'm confident that many of the gags and structural tricks introduced by our collaborators are going to work their way into further rewrites.

One interesting aspect of this project has been the conflict arising between artists of different disciplines: on one side we have a group of actors, who are very protective of the text, and on the other side a group of dancers/mimes/musicians, who regard it primarily as a means to an end. Striking that balance between textual depth and audience enjoyment is something that we've been struggling with since day one, and one thing I've been devoting a lot of thought cycles to lately.

In It's a Meaningless Life (closing this weekend, by the way!), Joe Scrimshaw opens with a story called "Christmas Carol: Year Two." It's very clever, well-constructed, with some truly inventive turns of phrase. Over the course of the past couple of weeks, he's been playing with the material, gradually introducing more scatalogical jokes here and there. Which I enjoy, but I find myself wondering: how much of the work we put into what we do is just for, well, us? All of the careful effort we put into interesting narrative and layered comedy -- are audiences just sitting through that politely until we get to the laugh lines? It's a discouraging thought.

Undressed: Liar Liar Pants on Fire

Well, I'm just as perversely pleased as a proverbial Punch and Judy show to alliteratively announce that I'll be one of the pusillanimous performers at the preliminary production of the Rockstar Storytellers. And if that dapper display of devilishly daring diction didn't dazzle you, well, tough. It's 5:30pm on a Tuesday and it's all I've got.

It's a hell of a line-up: slam master of Minneapolis Allison Broeren, who burst onto the Fringe scene this year with All the Things I Never Told My Mother; New Yorker Courtney McLean, who's recently moved to Minneapolis after touring such hits as Normal-C and Super Glossy; fellow Liberal Media Elite blogger Rik Reppe, creator of the one-man shows Staggering Towards America, Glorious Noise, and Santa Man; local storytelling heavyweight Amy Salloway, fresh off the successes Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat?, So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz!, and Circumference; and, y'know, me. All ably hosted by the extraordinary Allegra Lingo, in the greatest team-up since the Justice League of America fended off an attempt by Appellaxian invaders to turn the Earth into their own personal royal arena, equipped with deadly elemental battle-suits.

Ahem.

It's hard for me to talk about any kind of coherent "process," since we're still trying to figure out exactly who the hell we are and what we're trying to accomplish. It's a supergroup, though, and we're going to start finding out this Sunday at 7pm, at the Bryant-Lake Bowl. Be there or be mercilessly ostracized.

It's a Meaningless Life

Apologizing again for this space seeming to be reduced to little more than a platform for shameless self-promotion, but I have yet another project coming up: I'll be performing as part of the Scrimshaw Brothers' latest brooding masterpiece, a laid-back comedy showcase entitled It's a Meaningless Life. The line-up consists of Joe Scrimshaw, Josh Scrimshaw, Sarah Scimshaw, Tim Uren, Pablo, Alan Berks, and, bizarrely enough, me.

I'm a bit more starry-eyed about being involved than I should probably admit in a public space -- I'm a pretty big fan of just about everyone who's on board. Not dissimilar to how I'm feeling with Logorrhea, where I find myself in the surreal position of *directing* people I've been admiring from afar for years. Seriously, I can't stop freaking out about this. What the hell is going on in my life? I find myself holding my breath, awaiting some horrific karmic retribution. If I had a puppy, he would probably be dead now, having been brutally, senselessly slain by white supremacists in an act of random sinophobic canicide.

The murder of my hypothetical mongrel companion aside, this is one of those shows I'd be eager to see, regardless of whether or not I was involved in it. It's a solid line-up of some of the funniest folks in the Twin Cities, and it's opening this Friday. Plays at 10pm every Friday-Saturday night until December 22nd at the Minneapolis Theater Garage. Opens on the Independence Day of the Isle of Barbados, so make of that what you will.

Tellebration!

I continue to offer my profuse apologies at how sparse my online presence has become -- the warm reception of Descendant of Dragons seems to have led to a major spike in my off-season activities, so thanks to everyone who contributed to that. You'll be duly recompensed by a significant increase in Maximum Verbosity productions in the near future.

One of which is very near indeed! I'll be one of the headlining performers at Tellebration, a phenomenon that's (quite literally) sweeping the nation, and the premier storytelling festival in Minnesota. Swing by at 8pm this Saturday, and you can see me performing alongside such local talents as Loren Niemi, Howard Lieberman, and Colleen Kruse.

The piece I'll be doing is called "Exposed!", and it's one that's lived a number of lives. It first appeared as a political rant at the beginning of Libertarian Rage, and it's being reworked into a solo storytelling piece for this concert performance. It's also a preview for its new existence as a slapstick routine developed with mime Dean Hatton in Logorrhea.

I've spent the last couple of years in the tooth-gnashing frustration of many artists, over the fact that I was investing an extraordinary amount of time and energy into work that very few people were paying attention to. Now that I'm starting to get an audience, however, I'm intensely grateful for that period of time, because I have five years' worth of material under my belt. I would have been at a loss to keep up with performance opportunities -- now, I have just enough to keep up with them. If someone calls me for a showcase next week, there's a reasonable chance that I'll already have something on-topic that can be whipped into shape, be it mime or poetry, political or profane.

Incidentally, the keynote speaker at the event (beginning at 10am, oog) is none other than folklorist Jack Zipes, whose translation of the Brothers Grimm formed the basis of a number of my early plays. There's a strange synchronicity to the patterns that have been emerging in my life lately, and I'm not really sure what to make of them.

Announcing Our Newest (and Oldest) Show

Poking my head in the door here quick to announce our latest magnum opus, coming up in January, under the loquacious nomenclature Logorrhea: The Most of Maximum Verbosity. In 2008 we're starting our fifth year, and we're kicking it off by revisiting some of our old material, re-inventing it in collaboration with other Minneapolis artists. It's by far the largest project we've ever done, which is both exciting and terrifying.

In any case, one of our collaborators, the extraordinary modern dance trio Mad King Thomas, will be performing this weekend as part of Naked Stages 2007 at Intermedia Arts. Siarde and I will also be working on some new/old ("nold?") comedy sketches at a new late-night cabaret at Bedlam Theatre this coming Friday night, November 9th, at 10:30pm.

Probably lots more to say about it, but things are getting pretty crazy on this end. More later.

Back into the Woods

We've been performing at Ball's Cabaret for the past month, and...it's been good to get back to work. Sitting down at the first rehearsal, I found myself wondering, how long? How long has it been since I got to sit down with a group of actors and just work on a text?

I've been busy, sure -- busy talking to venues, drawing up contracts, putting together rehearsal schedules, figuring out budgets, talking on the phone and answering e-mails. I'm working on enough shows now that keeping them organized and running smoothly is a full-time job. But I'm still so frustrated by that old irony -- I self-produce to keep my scripts onstage and in development, but production means that I don't have time to *write* anymore. Actually working on a show is the smallest part of getting it in front of people, and that balance between business and actually having energy to be passionate about what I'm working on is a hard, hard, hard one to strike.

In any case, we're performing as part of Cheap Theatre's monthly spoken-word showcase this Saturday. Theme of the evening is "Ghost," and we'll be doing a reading from Broceliande, which comprised half of our 2005 Fringe outing, Camelot is Crumbling. It's my favorite script that I've written, and by far the most polarizing production. I really got the full gamut of responses on this one -- everything from active anger and confusion (the vast bulk), to condescending "What a cute experimental phase you're going through now" (frustratingly many), to those who hailed the production as "intensely compelling" and "inventively done" (few and far between).

The overall failure of the production was a hard blow, however, mainly because I remain such a strong believer in the text. This is the one that I pull out when people ask to see my work, if only because I feel like I need some fucking *closure* on it. Even now, I'm not sure what to do with it -- if it works better as almost entirely spoken word or if it needs to be movement-heavy -- if the staging is too surreal or not surreal enough.

The problem, ultimately, is that the script is *difficult*. It's expressionistic, it's non-linear, it's a great big ball of words and images that's hung on a structure that's almost entirely opaque. And it's as much a problem to find the right audience for it as it is to find the right way to stage it.

Whatever the case, its latest incarnation -- however brief -- will be taking place at the Banquet Hall of the Black Forest Inn, this Saturday, October 20th, at 7:30pm. Ticket price is $12.00, and that includes a beverage. Other artists on the bill include Alex Bernstein, Joe Delorme, Paula Reed Nancarrow, Sandy Thomas, and Erica Christ. Come check us out, and lemme know what you think.