Hic Sunt Dracones

I'm pretty sure that I've written before about one of my key revelations from my days of teaching comedy: that the students who came in with some preconceived notion of "the tragedy of the clown" almost always ended up embarrassing themselves. The more they tried to craft some sort of calculated stage persona, the more affected that persona seemed. But when they focused on problem-solving the material, on telling jokes and structuring sketches and communicating clearly, some sort of raw and interesting and compelling identity would emerge.

It made me a great believer in what I'd call an organic process. Don't think about your voice too much, just talk to the audience. Your voice will come.

I never set out to be a political comic: I wrote a bunch of sketches, set them next to each other, stepped back, and realized that I apparently was one. (I suspect that if I'd started out with the word "satire" in my mind, the results would have been pretty freaking dire.) My last book wasn't formally plotted -- I whipped together stories for holiday shows when I was asked, got bored enough to have them start sharing characters, stitched them together into a narrative, filled and chipped and smoothed until I wound up with a grotesque tale of multiversal redemption. It's not a story that I planned, or that I would have thought of if I'd sat down and brainstormed: it emerged, for lack of a better word, organically.

This is one thing that's always dazzled me about many of my colleagues: their ability to churn out catchy, marketable titles, then sit down and write a hit show that fits. This isn't a dig! Many of those scripts are superior farces. It's not drudge work, but a process that stimulates their imaginations.

I'm envious; mine has never worked that way. I typically start out with a handful of lines and images and premises that feel like they go together -- I loop them together, try to carve out a narrative that makes sense of them. Usually this falls apart. A small percentage of the time, I come out the other end with a story or a show that I really like -- a smaller percentage of the time, I find an audience that really grooves on it. (It's probably unwise for me to publicize just how much marketing is an afterthought.) Much of the past decade has been my making peace with the notion that the transformative work of genius I'm hoping to leave behind is growing less and less likely -- it's far more plausible that I'll die some weirdo tinker, churning out vulgar curiosities in his basement.

There's a great gulf between the kind of writer I would have chosen to be, and the kind of writer I ended up being. Which is a pretty rambling lead-up to the point that I never intended to be a horror writer -- but at some point, I had to step back and acknowledge that over the years, I've written a fuckton of horror.

---

I've been wearing the "horror guy" hat for a while now, not least because I'm one of only a small handful of local tellers to consistently work in the genre. There's always been something a little strange about this for me. I'm not saying that the stories aren't horror, I'm saying that they ended up in a different place than they started. In my own heart, I'm a fantasist -- but one who believes that magic should be fucking dangerous.

Magic -- by my definition, anyway -- represents some sort of violation of the natural order. For someone as compulsive as I am, that can't be anything other than horrifying. Whether we're talking faery wells or fox spirits, no one brushes against that other world without being transformed, and nobody walks away unscathed. A sip of those waters is loss and madness and terror, and transformation is a lyrical word for death.

Jonah heard a voice of power on the wind, and ran for his damn life -- I'm saying that that impulse makes complete sense to me.

---

So if my intent wasn't moralistic, what's the moral that I found? When I laid the stories out end-to-end, I discovered (and, uh, spoilers for, like, half the stories in the collection, I guess) that apparently my favorite twist is a protagonist who discovers that they are, or is revealed to be, the monster of their own story. (Hence the title.) What that says about my own psyche is probably best left to others.

In retrospect, it's not all that surprising -- while there is great peril in excessive self-analysis for the organic-process guy, from my point of view, one of the major dominating themes of, like, everything I've ever written has been the problem of sin and redemption. This is probably unsurprising from a Catholic author.

Redemption is challenging to write about -- nobody deserves it, and we can't survive without it. Vengeance is always more appealing, but its end is always despair.

Ego and appetite are both obvious and omnipresent. Redemption is, at best, a tortuous, lifelong process. Worse, it's both tedious and unromantic. Falling is more thrilling than climbing, after all, and there's a reason more people have read the Inferno than the Purgatorio. But someone resolving to try to make that climb -- someone planting their foot and taking one meaningful step upwards -- I believe that to be worthy of a story or a song.

These are the stories of those who fell.

There is an imperfection in the human mind - a crack, a flaw, a crevice - one that fascinates and repulses all those who find it. It is empty of all but impulse and appetite and the memory of hope. What if you looked over the edge? What if you fell? And after the fall, what would you see in the mirror?

Dragon shadows, bleeding statues, wolf dreams and time machines - your biological clock is ticking, and it's time to get metaphysical in this twisted cabaret of the macabre. This is the road map to your own personal inferno, fondly dedicated to everyone who is dying...especially you.

Fully illustrated by artist Tom Cassidy, and with a foreword by author Michael Merriam! 

WARNING: contains tales of horror and dark fantasy, and consequently some disturbing, violent, and sexual imagery, including descriptions of sexual assault. 

Launch party this Friday at Strike!

Holy Fooling

"Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."

When I was studying at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic High School, to the delight (okay, I mean, let's be real here, to the weary annoyance) of my friends, I was known for the composition of what came to be called "phil-poems." These generally represented brief but luridly described episodes in which a hapless Jesus would stumble across increasingly depraved scenarios. Once they had served their purpose, I would fold them up and conceal them in various books around the school library, and I'm only a little ashamed to admit that there's still some part of my lizard brain that reduces me to helpless schoolboy giggling at the thought of some future student picking up a copy of The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer and being scandalized by soaring verse describing Christ participating in a squirrel orgy.

The humor (insofar as there was any) came from the clash between the nobility of the savior, heightened language, and utter filth. I have apparently failed to outgrow this impulse. (Indeed, much of the comedy I find funny, from the Marx Brothers to Monty Python, revolves around applying an astounding level of artistry to astoundingly stupid things.)

"Finally he spoke: 'I'm really getting quite a kick out of this notion of playing God like a dirty old man in Skidoo. You wanna know why? Do you realize that irreverence and reverence are the same thing?'

'Always?'

'If they're not, then it's a misuse of your power to make people laugh.'"

I suppose it was inevitable that I'd find my way to the comedies of Aristophanes and the rituals of

Dionysos (patron of liquor and the theatre); and, as I stumbled back towards faith, that I would find its echoes in my own religious tradition -- particularly in the Middle Ages (which is probably reason #69,105 for my fascination with that period). And I did lots of reading. I read about the many uncomfortable inversions of the Feast of Fools, and the conflict it created between the Church (body of Christ) and the Church (political machine). I read about Saint Simeon the Holy Fool, and the vulgarities in which he would indulge to mock the world of the flesh. I read Dante Alighieri and looked at the paintings of Bosch, at their many descriptions of torture and deviance and insanity, and quickly developed the suspicion that, like many horror writers before and since, their position of piety allowed them to revel in some seriously impious art. And I read a fuck-ton of the aforementioned Chaucer, with his tales of Biblical tomfoolery and anal penetration and what have you.

What I experienced while reading the medieval humorists wasn't so much an expansion of consciousness as it was a sense of recognition -- a clear sense that the sacred and the grotesque are not only compatible, but that the profane and the profound can coexist, should coexist, in some crucial way *must* coexist.

This has been occasionally bewildering to my audiences. I've had reviews of my comedy shows that criticize the apparent contradiction when I leap from a sincere expression of faith to a ten-minute sex farce. (And it undoubtedly presents a marketing problem, when patrons on the left dread the former, while patrons on the right dread the latter...) But the fact is that shock is the by-product, not my goal, and the contradiction has never really been all that obvious to me. Certainly not in all the art I've ever truly loved, with their poetry and obscenity and song and flesh and breath and divine madness.

"The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!"

The dirty jokes, in a way that I've been struggling to articulate for the entirety of my adult life, represent not some deviation from my faith, but its ultimate expression. And -- as someone who spends a lot of his time doing highbrow deconstructions of Malory and Thucydides and their ilk (and don't get me wrong, I love that work, too) -- I find, perversely, a kind of innocence in reaching back to touch that giggling schoolboy. Y'know...intimately.

Which is a really long windup to my announcement that, hey, I wrote another book!

It's December 21st, 2012, and something's gone terribly wrong with the timeline. Now it's up to Saint Nicholas, a soft-boiled detective, and an unknown carpenter's son named Jesus of Nazareth to set things right in this giddily blasphemous collection of literary parodies by internationally touring storyteller phillip andrew bennett low. Fully illustrated by cartoonist Kay Kirscht, and with a foreword by comedian Joseph Scrimshaw!

WARNING: May contain mature language, as well as immature and insensitive humor regarding genitalia, flatulence, regurgitation, sex, drugs, rock and roll, lies, videotape, duct tape, tapeworms, subversion of ethnic stereotypes, fulfilment of ethnic stereotypes, hate culture, rape culture, ape culture, horticulture, and/or a general posture of deep reverence for deep irreverence. Not for the faint of heart or stomach.

Launch party November 28th at the Phoenix Theater. I don't know if my cast of drunken prophets and trickster angels will find a home with you, but I'm pretty confident that a cash bar won't hurt.

The Secret Book of Jesus

I've been buried enough under both touring and paid writing assignments to not have been able to blog this particular production -- but I've gathered enough online detritus that it's worth collating here.

THINGS TO WATCH

1:03     The Secret Book of Jesus - Kansas City Interview. Brief and fluffy interview I did at the KC opening.

1:25     The Secret Book of Jesus - Teaser Trailer. Trailer I put together for the show some months ago.

2:57     The Secret Book of Jesus - Fringe Teaser. Live promo I did of my show at the Kansas City Fringe.

THINGS TO LISTEN TO

51:29     What's So Funny? Podcast interview I did with Levi Weinhagen about writing and performing comedy.

1:01:12     Body Mind Spirit NEWS. Phone interview I did with a holistic radio program in Michigan.

1:07:43     Screw It! a podcast about wine. A rather silly podcast interview that involves evaluating sundry liquors.

THINGS TO READ

07/15/2015     Kansas City Star Promo. A nice plug from Robert Trussell in Missouri.

07/21/2015     Zenfolio Photo Album. Some photos that were taken of me at the KC Fringe.

07/23/2015     KCMetropolis Review. "A slow-moving production, this is a show to see if you have a good grasp of scripture."

07/28/2015     RedCurrent Interview. An interview I did with Laura VanZandt shortly before opening.

08/05/2015     Single White Fringe Geek Review (5 stars): "This Jesus, Mary and Joseph, all shown to have rougher edges, tempers, and senses of humor, become so human, as do those around them, that you have to remind yourself they are all central figures in a religious narrative that some people never think twice about."

08/06/2015     Minnesota Playlist Review:  "...low’s delivery is pitch-perfect for the material: equal parts prophet, bard, and snake oil salesman...his flair for showmanship serves nicely to leaven the dense language and subject matter of his material."

08/07/2015     Grail Diary Review:  "I walked out wanting to read his script.  And peruse his sources. And ask him what he thought about what he was saying."

08/01-10/2015     Minnesota Fringe Festival Audience Reviews (11 reviews, 4-star average): "Funny and fascinating apocrypha about Jesus told with phillip's trademark exhaustive research, humor, and precise wordplay, but without the esoterism that can scare some audiences off."

08/14/2015     One Girl, Two Cities Review: "...one heck of a storyteller, and he’s picked some strange stories about Jesus’ youth full of unfamiliar words that a lay person could easily trip over. phillip’s a pro, though, and I didn’t notice even a single misstep."

08/17/2015     Alpha Omega Arts Review: "...performed with lots of passion and the promise of drama...would be far better suited as a book than as a performance. It's not that the content is bad theology, although I'll leave that to clergy to decide. It's simply bad theatre..."

08/19/2015     NUVO News Review (3 stars): "...you have to be impressed...low is a very commanding storyteller."

08/20/2015     Plays with John & Wendy Review: "low’s delivery is crisp and entertaining, and contains no judgment of the texts...why balk at the infant Jesus confronting a dragon?"

MY REVIEWS

I have collated my coverage of the Minnesota Fringe Festival (46 articles in toto) at this link.

...my profound gratitude to everybody who took the time to come and see the show, and especially those who took the time to share their thoughts afterwards. I'm honored to have had the opportunity to entertain you, and hope that you'll continue to extend that opportunity to me in the future!

Morals

"'You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit.'

     'Perhaps it hasn't one,' Alice ventured to remark.

     'Tut, tut, child!' said the Duchess. 'Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it."

It probably doesn't come as a surprise that someone who founded a theatre company entitled "Maximum Verbosity" is a die-hard fan of both Lewis Carroll and his elaborate wordplay.

In any case, I read. A lot. I always have, or at least for as long as I can remember. Embarrassingly, my drug of choice for much of my adolescence was pulpy Dragonlance novels. Margaret Weis has had more influence over my prose style than I should probably admit, and I remember picking up a copy of an anthology that she edited -- Fantastic Alice -- Jesus, it must have been well over fifteen years ago.

Most of the stories were forgettable. The thing about Carroll's brand of nonsense poetry is that it lends itself to interpretation. It lends itself rather too easily. It's not pure abstraction, but it has just enough clown-logic stitching its outrageous images and phrases together that it's pretty easy to conclude that these whimsical faery-tales are all about sex. Or death. Or pedophilia. Or necrophilia. I certainly have my own ideas and conclusions about what was churning in Carroll's subconscious, but modernism's tendency to break down literature in the most facile manner has led to some pretty goddamn absurd results.

There was one story in the collection, however, that wormed its way into my subconscious: A Common Night, by Bruce Holland Rogers. The tale of an English professor tormented by images of Wonderland the night of his wife's death, it was a take on the subject that managed to be morbid without being self-indulgent; that seemed to both comprehend and respect Carroll's whimsy for its own sake.

As I've grown older, and found myself confronting death time and again, it's a story that I keep coming back to. Fifteen years is a long time remember a bit of prose, and as I've been struggling with the subject again, it occurred to me that, hey, I'm a playwright/producer. Hey, I bet I could find Mr. Rogers' contact info online. I could at least ask. All these years in show business, and I still haven't gotten used to the notion of people saying "Yes."

Announcing my withdrawal from ensemble production is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I've spent a lot of time asking myself what returning to it means. Season announcements and grant proposals? Am I a Producer again, instead of just a Storyteller? What does it mean?

And it's taken me this long to realize that I'm being too much like Carroll's Duchess, and looking for a moral in everything. It doesn't have to mean anything. This is a story that I need to work on right now, and this is how I need to do it.

It's been a mix of the new and the old. It's my first time purchasing a license from a living author -- that's new (and terrifying). On the other hand, I'm booking a venue, hiring staff, and holding auditions. That's very familiar.

Which is all a long way of announcing auditions for my first ensemble show in four years. Want on board? Know anybody who does? Check out this link. Let's figure out the next step together.

 

IamA Touring Storyteller

Just poking my head in to say that updates for the "Rage Across America" tour will continue on Libertarian Rage, but in the meantime I'm taking a swing at answering a few questions on Reddit. Linky link

Ragin' On

...a heads-up to anyone following this blog that I'm currently on tour again with a political comedy show, and posting over on Libertarian Rage. Check it, yo.

Sir Launcelot at the Chapel Perilous

Right so Sir Launcelot departed, and when he came unto the Chapel Perilous he alighted down, and tied his horse unto a little gate. And as soon as he was within the churchyard he saw on the front of the chapel many fair rich shields turned up-so-down, and many of the shields Sir Launcelot had seen knights bear beforehand. With that he saw by him there stand a thirty great knights, more by a yard than any man that ever he had seen, and all those grinned and gnashed at Sir Launcelot. And when he saw their countenance he dreaded him sore, and so put his shield afore him, and took his sword ready in his hand ready unto battle, and they were all armed in black harness ready with their shields and their swords drawn. And when Sir Launcelot would have gone throughout them, they scattered on every side of him, and gave him the way, and therewith he waxed all bold, and entered into the chapel, and then he saw no light but a dim lamp burning, and then was he ware of a corpse hilled with a cloth of silk. Then Sir Launcelot stooped down, and cut a piece away of that cloth, and then it fared under him as the earth had quaked a little; therewithal he feared. And then he saw a fair sword lie by the dead knight, and that he gat in his hand and hied him out of the chapel.

Anon as ever he was in the chapel yard all the knights spake to him with a grimly voice, and said, "Knight, Sir Launcelot, lay that sword from thee or else thou shalt die."

"Whether that I live or die," said Sir Launcelot, "With no great word get ye it again, therefore fight for it an ye list."

Then right so he passed throughout them, and beyond the chapel yard there met him a fair damosel, and said, "Sir Launcelot, leave that sword behind thee, or thou wilt die for it."

"I leave it not," said Sir Launcelot, "For no treaties."

"No," said she, "An thou didst leave that sword, Queen Guenever should thou never see."

"Then were I a fool an I would leave this sword," said Launcelot.

"Now, gentle knight," said the damosel, "I require thee to kiss me but once."

"Nay," said Sir Launcelot, "That God me forbid."

"Well, sir," said she, "An thou hadst kissed me thy life days had been done, but now, alas," she said, "I have lost all my labour, for I ordained this chapel for thy sake, and for Sir Gawaine. And once I had Sir Gawaine within me, and at that time he fought with that knight that lieth there dead in yonder chapel, Sir Gilbert the Bastard; and at that time he smote the left hand off of Sir Gilbert the Bastard. And, Sir Launcelot, now I tell thee, I have loved thee this seven year, but there may no woman have thy love but Queen Guenever. But sithen I may not rejoice thee to have thy body alive, I had kept no more joy in this world but to have thy body dead. Then would I have balmed it and served it, and so have kept it my life days, and daily I should have clipped thee, and kissed thee, in despite of Queen Guenever."

"Ye say well," said Sir Launcelot, "Jesu preserve me from your subtle crafts." And therewithal he took his horse and so departed from her. And as the book saith, when Sir Launcelot was departed she took such sorrow that she died within a fourteen night, and her name was Hellawes the sorceress, Lady of the Castle Nigramous.

...haven't had the chance to adapt this one yet, but boy I'd like to. Have a hearty Hallowmas, y'all.