On With the Process!

It was in May that I last gave a progress report on the play I have been writing (and rewriting) and that was an overly dense self-analysis of my writing process.

Even as I was allowing friends to read the 97 page draft, I began my own rereading process and immediately discovered that despite my belief that I had written a piece with a three-act structure, it actually had a five act structure, with the second and fourth acts contaning the catalysts that make the beginning, middle, and end of the story different from one another.

I also discovered a terrible number of typos: enough that I felt the need to apologize to the friends to whom I had entrusted sample copies. So, again, pen in hand, I went page by page, correcting errors and rewriting dialogue. By the time I had typed up my corrections, the 97 pages had become 103 pages, and I sent new copies to the friends who asked if they could give a look.

One friend wrote back and urged me to move on to staged readings. We agreed that any further rewrites require the involvement of actors and other theatre artists, that this listening process is what is needing to transform this text into a performable script. So that is my new mission.

I've submitted to a few local groups who are openly soliciting new plays, and have had some positive response from one (though not yet a commitment to a staged reading.) However, I am still learning to navigate the Boston theatrical world, and it isn't always clear what avenues are open to a new playwright who is unaffiliated with a university. How many doors are open to me of which I am unaware? Is it beneficial for me as an artist to attempt a staged reading beyond the Boston area? How many readings will I need before they cease to have value? Will any of this lead to a production?

Open Air Circus, August 1-3 in Somerville, MA

My mime and commedia dell'arte students will be performing this weekend as part of Open Air Circus' 23rd annual show.

The performances climax 6 weeks of summer classes for the youthful performers.

All shows are are in Nunziato Field in Union Square, Somerville.


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This year's theme is "The British Invasion," a tribute both to Union Square's historical role as the site where George Washington took command of the Continental Army, as well as the British rock music of the 1960s.

Showtimes:

Friday, August 1st @ 7pm
Saturday, August 2nd @ 2pm
Saturday, August 2nd @ 7pm
Sunday, August 3rd @ 2pm

Suggested donation is $3.

Ian, Capocomico!

I am spending another summer teaching mime and commedia dell'arte to the children at Open Air Circus. Slowly, over the years, my classes have been attracting more and more students as kids from previous years keep returning to me, and bring new students with them, so this summer, I'm teaching two mime classes and one commedia class. The commedia class has gone from five students last year...

...to eight this year, thus necessitating that I sculpt at least three more masks in time for or final show. In the mean time, feast your eyes upon the masks I made last summer worn by the students who inhabited these characters.

This is Arlecchino-- and this is the same mask I've come to wear this past year when I play the character with i Sebastiani. The motley on her head was made by my father as a gift and are the school colors of Boston College, which I was attending at the time.

This is Pantalone. I thought a formal brimmed hat might befit a more modern version of the character. My students often see him as the archetype for Montgomery Burns on The Simpsons.

Il Dottore is a parody of all learned professionals. The hat has been part of my collection since 1994. Once while wearing it at a coffeehouse, studying for exams, a woman called me "Il Dottore" and proceeded to introduce me to some of the characters of the commedia dell'arte. The girl playing Il Dottore is the sister of the girl playing Arlecchino.

Il Capitano is parody of every blustering, lying, narcissistic bully who ever walked the earth. He is often the villain and he is often from out of town. The pin that ties the cape was a wonderful borrowing from the player's mother since it features the faces of a number of commedia characters.

Franchescina is sometimes known as Columbina. Like most female characters, she is not traditionally masked in the commedia but I did not want anyone left out of the fun of wearing a mask so I invented something.

The story about the making of these masks can be found in this earlier post. Right now though I'm at work on three more masks: Pulcinella, Brighella, and Flaminia.

The Golem of Church Street

One story that seems to never end for me is one that began when I ended my association with Bread and Puppet Theatre over a mural-sized series entitled "Independence Paintings" by Bread and Puppet founder, Peter Schumann, that juxtaposed the images and text of the Warsaw Ghetto with conditions in the Palestinian West Bank. I perceived both a provocative from of antisemitism and what is sometimes referred to as "soft-core" Holocaust Denial ("soft-core" in that it either minimizes the suffering of the victims of the Shoah, that it grossly misrepresents another event through comparison to the Shoah.)

I revisited the story this past September when "Independence Paintings" were exhibited in Burlington, Vermont as part of that city's annual Art Hop. While I was not present for the events in Burlington, I did follow the controversy that raged in the Burlington press for several weeks.

Perhaps the most moments were on the morning of Saturday, September 8th when Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (VTJP)-- whose website I discuss elsewhere-- the organization that sponsored the Schumann exhibition, presented a lecture by Joel Kovel drew protesters. There were many varied accounts of what occurred at that lecture, however, one thing that was clear was that there had been a breakdown in civility (elsewhere, I note that any breakdown in civility originates in misrepresentations made by Schumann and VTJP.)


Perhaps the most powerful image from that day was a flyer by local artist David Sokol that portrayed parading Bread and Puppet puppets, a recent victim of vigilante justice, and the text "Puppets Lynch the Jews." Sokol has since created a book of prints entitled The Golem of Church Street: An Artist’s Reflection on the New Anti-Semitism. The prints are currently being exhibited at the Burlington art gallery, Kasini House until August 9th.

I have yet to see the prints, but the interview that Sokal gave to Margot Harrison in Seven Days has made me excited to see the work. Much of the work, based on the description, presents many icons revered by progressives (of whom Vermonters are accustomed to describe themselves) but in the context of their complicity with antisemitism-- and this part of what is the "New" in the "New Antisemitism" the way that a hatred that has long been associated with theological intolerance, racial hatred, and right-wing extremism, has co-opted the rhetoric of Enlightenment humanism (though, I would note, it really isn't that new.) Sokol eloquently describes his stance towards the phenomenon here:

“My issue is not with the left. I’ve supported the Progressive Party. I’m trying to make a distinction between the left and the fundamentalist left. My definition of fundamentalism is that you no longer see the needs of other people, because your ideology gets in the way.”

I intend to set my eyes upon the prints in the immediate future.

(* Note: it is my practice not to hyphenate "antisemitism", my reason for doing so is that there is no contrasting ideology of "Semitism"-- this is a common practice in the scholarly community. The standard practice, however, is hyphenate.)

More SomerVaudeVille Video from Geek Force Five

Chris Clark of Geek Force Five has put together an eight-minute and one-second video featuring a sampling of the acts that appeared at Theatre@First's production of SomerVaudeVille. An excerpt from my piece, "The Marmalope" starts about 4:40 into the video:

If you have seen Shelly MacAskill's video of the same piece, it is interesting to note how different camera angles create a very different effect when filming mime or dance, though as I stated in my previous entry, it is a matter of translating a three-dimensional art form (four-dimensional if one counts time as a dimension) into a two-(or three)-dimensional medium. The segment that Clark captured is certainly choreographed to be seen from the front of the stage as opposed to the side, while I think the earlier sequence when my legs, arms and torso are bent into a sculptural form for the marmalope (played by my right hand) to run about, works very nicely from the angle that MacAskill presented in her video.

Of course, this leaves me to wonder just how many people were taping the performance?

Also appearing in the video are Can Can Revolution, Uncle Shoe, Heisenberg's Mezzos, Justin Werfel, Gilana and her Hula Hips, and The Pluto Tapes.

Mime at SomerVaudeVille

Shelly MacAskill posted this video of my performance of "The Marmalope" at SomerVaudeVille to YouTube, with master of ceremonies, Rob Noyes giving introductions:


It's sometimes hard to translate the three-dimensional experience of a live performance into the two-dimensional experience of video, but it worked well. "The Marmalope" has been part of my repertoire for years but the experience of rehearsing the piece for SomerVaudeville over a couple of months allowed me to further refine it from its most basic idea. "The Marmalope" received its name sometime in the early months of 2005, when Jonathan Samson, while playing Il Dottore at the Svengali Cabaret was asked to identify my species, where upon he said "that is a marmalope." By the following week, an audience member had identified the creature played by my right hand as "a baby marmalope." My right hand has grown up since then.

One thing that made this performance special, is that I realized I had acheived a certain level of mastery in that in at a particular moment, the audience's sympathies were not projected on me personally, or on a character I was playing, but on a character played by my right hand even as the rest of my body was playing a character not particularly deserving of sympathy. No amount of technique can create that.

Ironically, the night following the performance in which I had achieved this small degree of mastery, I was in rehearsals for Chhandika's annual student concert and I was again a novice, albeit a sleep deprived novice. Though the similarities to mime are what attracted me to kathak, kathak is not mime.

Rif, a pianist with a very impressive display of facial hair, was kind enough to take these photographs of the "The Marmalope" from a somewhat different vantage point than that shown in the video.

As a bonus, Kitty Fox of Can Can Revolution and I staged a very brief skit to accompany Uncle Shoe's rendition of "Mistah Moonshine", a hit from 1912 by Charles S. Burnham and Adam Breede:

The moon was Shoe's idea-- I drew my inspiration from Jean-Louis Barrault's Jean-Gaspard "Baptiste" Deburau in Les Enfants du Paradis.

There are also photos of me hanging out backstage with the lovely Can Can Revolutionaries.

After the show, outside Johnny D's, my make-up not quite off yet:

What a Month It's Been!

Between May 1st and June 1st, I've perfomed in four different shows with four different groups, in four different idioms all while continuing the revision and development process on my play. I hope to find time to reflect on all of this activity over the next several days.

On May 1st, I played Arlecchino with i Sebastiani in our production of Il Formaggio di Amore which was my first time also playing a more hands on role as choreographer (which in this troupe is more about fascilitating the design of physical gags.) We already in rehearsal for its quasi-sequel, Il Formaggio di Terrore about which more is forthcoming.

This was followed on May 19th with the reunion of my old group, Cosmic Spelunker Theater. There's even a video on YouTube.

On May 28th, I performed mime as part of SomerVaudeVille, a show produced at Johnny D's by Theatre@First, and found it to be an artistic success, in that I had a brief feeling of mastery when I realized that I had taken my audience's sympathy and isolated it into my right hand. No amount of training I had received could have prepared me for that. I have a follow-up accunt planned very shortly.

Less than 24 hours after my feelings of mastery as a mime, I relearned humility, when after a day at work with too little sleep, I attended a rehearsal for Chhandika's annual student show. Since October of 2006, I have been studying kathak, the classical dance form of Northern India at Chhandika and June 1st was my premiere as a kathak dancer. Somehow I relished going from mastery of one art form to novicehood in another and learned something about both art forms from that experience.