This Weekend: OpenAir Circus Goes to the Beach

That's just the theme of the show. OpenAir Circus is performing at Nunziatio Field in Somerville as always.

My mime and commedia students will be performing as part of the annual Somerville-based youth circus. I've even made new masks!

Come see over 170 children of all ages (and a few adults) perform what they have learned this summer! The show is approximately 2 hours long with one intermission. Refreshments, souvenirs and circus equipment will be available near the entrance to Nunziato Field.

Showtimes:
Friday, July 30st at 7pm
Saturday, July 31st at 2pm and 7pm
Sunday, August 1st at 2pm

Suggested Donation: $3.00

If you like RSVPing on Facebook, you can do so here.

For Independence Day Weekend: A Repost from 2004

For Independence Day Weekend, a repost from my old authorsden blog from 2004 about the first performance of a piece that would later be incorporated into Cosmic Spelunker Theater's Waltzing to War:

Our National Anthem/Back in the USA
1/30/2004 4:24:55 PM

Tuesday, January 20th:

Once again, I am at my monthly regular gig at Whimsy, a free form performance art cabaret at the Zeitgeist Gallery in Cambridge. It was started by Warren Lynch when he was still going by the moniker of Thistle Kachunk and before he decided to devote his time to making low budget fantasy films. Whimsy bounced around from place to place for about a year before Warren got tired of it. More recently Markus Nechay decided to try his hand hosting the series.

Markus is one of Cambridge's eccentrics, a scruffy blonde fellow who immigrated from Communist Poland as a child and has a penchant for dressing in historical costume at every opportunity. Every opportunity includes Whimsy, where he chooses a historical era or theme and along with his cohost, Nick, free associates on one era or another in between featured performers. One evening the theme was pirates, another it was western pioneers, another was his childhood escape from the workers' utopia on the back of the American bald eagle (played by yours truly -- this took some rehearsal as I needed figure out how to flap my arms like wings while carrying an average sized adult male on my back.) Tonight's theme was "Dead Presidents" as we were competing with the State of the Union Address for the Cambridge audience. Markus had assembled a cast that included Abraham Lincoln, Chester B. Arthur, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.

Given that "dead presidents" is slang for money, the most obvious performance piece I had in my repertoire was "Open Letter to the Treasury Department" in which I petition the creation of a "thirteen dollar bill" dedicated to Thelonious Sphere Monk-- it's a comic piece I wrote back in 2000 and was influenced by the monologues of Lenny Bruce and Lord Buckley whom at the time I listened to a great deal. While my poetry has since taken another direction, I had continued to perform the piece with Cosmic Spelunker Theater as part of "Give and Take."

In its latest incarnation, I open the piece with one my signature routines: I mime playing various musical instruments, either mimicking their sounds or scat singing. In this case I open with a bass solo. My intention had been to play "Epistrophe" but for some reason I find myself playing "Straight, No Chaser”. I have always, and now more so than ever, been fascinated by the physicality of musicians-- especially jazz musicians: When they play, their hands, and everything else that comes in contact with the instrument is disciplined, precise, and focused while every other part of their body expresses their individuality: differing postures, how they react to the crowd and the music around them. As such, I have not only had to learn the isolations and fixees that make the illusion of trumpets or double basses, but I have to create the musician personae-- these characters have slowly become larger and larger...

Just a couple of days before the performance, I feel some tug to do something more than the comic-- to once again do something on stage that my audience would not expect. I have made the demand upon myself as an artist to not allow anyone who has not seen my act in over a year to have an accurate measurement of my current work and so it is time to experiment again.

While visiting my parents in Washington, we chanced upon a radio interview with cellist Matt Haimowitz during which he performed his acoustic cello rearrangement of Jimi Hendrix' electric guitar arrangement of "The Star Spangled Banner." I was particularly awed by Haimowitz performance. It was Hendrix’s performance of this song in the film “Woodstock” that inspired me as a teenager to strap on a guitar, and while I have changed media since then, I still have a portrait of Hendrix in sight of my computer.

My parents had never had my interest in rocknroll and through Haimowitz were hearing Hendrix for the first time and it seemed to capture both their imaginations. It was a good antidote for me as I had just spent the afternoon listening to the Marylander who referred to the Confederacy in the first person plural and his romanticization of the Southern cause had left me with some degree of queasiness-- but now I was listening to the anthem of an America that I shared with both Haimowitz and Hendrix, and suddenly I could share something that I loved with my parents.

When it was over I offered an explanation. "Hendrix," I began, "served in the US Army as paratrooper about the same time as Dad was in Korea. He was of African American and Cherokee ancestry and was with the 60s counter culture. He was saying that this is his country too."

The next day, some letter by a listener who had also heard the broadcast was read on the radio. It was some angry letter claiming that Hendrix hated America.

I decided that for Whimsy, I was going to do my own anthem. I was going to sing the Star Spangled Banner while dancing, interspacing it with sound effects and mimed instruments. I began by miming a hip hop DJ at the turn tables.

with the right hand I spun one invisible disc as I said "Our national... Our national... Our national" and began to spin the other invisible disc with my left hand "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner." I had made a cut up of Francis Scott Keyes' lyrics with Randall Jarell's brilliant poem.

"Our national [...] Death of the Ball Turret Gunner [...] Gunner [...] Gunner [...] Ball Turret Gunner."

And then I sang "O, say can you see..." interrupting myself with

"From my mother's sleep I fell into the state... by the dawn's early light..."

"And the rockets' red glare [...] I awoke to black flack and the nightmare fighters [...] the bombs bursting in mid air [...] I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters"

Somewhere, I mimed the guitar in a little nod to Hendrix with some words of my own: "Chime singing, like bell ring, like voice sing, like plucked string, singing string" to the tune of that famous bugle dirge based on the second inversion major triad.

I slowly began the collapse to the floor as the young airman was shredded by German bullets, "O, say does that star spangled banner yet wave, o'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave [...] and when I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose."

I balanced on my coccyx like I had been taught in butoh class, raising my torso and limbs upwards and increasing the tension in my body as I looked silently upwards as I let the audience know that I was done. They applauded and I rose to my feet, bowed and slipped to the back.

It was the first time I had done anything of this sort and as always, I wished for more rehearsals or at least an ability to perform it every night like when I was with Bread & Puppet, but several people told me they were moved by it, even several nights later at a party in Somerville. There is clearly some potential with the piece and I decide to mention it to James for project we've been discussing for Cosmic Spelunker Theater.

As far as what the piece is about: If I want to make a political statement, I make my argument. This was art, it is meant to make the audience feel and think and come to their own conclusions. As for me: It's my country too.

The piece later came known as "Wartime Mash-Up" and I would perform it both with Cosmic Spelunker Theater and as a solo artist. There must be some video of it that can be pulled out and posted.

Running Back to the Circus

Photo by Erik Jacobs for The Boston Globe click here for full size.

Starting another summer teaching mime and commedia dell'art at the Somerville-based, Open Air Circus. This will be my sixth summer with the community-based youth circus and in addition to teaching, I am learning stilt-walking (and finding it surprisingly easy.)

There's still time to register for classes! Contact Peter Jehlen at peter_jehlen@openaircircus.org

Copley Square Farmers' Market, 2003

This is an excerpt from Spaces/Places: Voiced Reflections a program presented by Somerville Community Access Television in 2003 to coincide with The Windows Art Project. Lisa Smith produced and Doug Holder was the host.

My piece, Copley Square Farmers' Market, which was originally published in Poesy Magazine, comes in at about 1:30. Because there was a long line of presenters who were mostly reading from the page, the studio was set up in such a manner that I had to modify what was then my performance style to be done from a seated position (yes, that's a green screen in the background.)

Thanks to Chad Parenteau for uploading this. Chad gives a strong reading in this clip.

Not Only Do I Use Facebook...

Not only do I use Facebook, but I am in the Facebook movie.

Earlier this week I was in a scene in the upcoming film about the creation of Facebook, The Social Network directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. I was hired to play a mime performing in Harvard Square in 2003. Interestingly enough, I did perform mime in Harvard Square in 2003 and since I was using my own costume, it could be argued that I was playing myself.

It was an interesting experience and very different from working in theatre. I signed a confidentiality agreement so don't ask me for plot details (note: I am only confirming that I was employed to play a particular role in a particular film) and I didn't take photographs while on the set (part of the contract) so don't expect me to show you any either.

First rule of the confidentiality agreement: Don't talk about the confidentiality agreement.

One thing I will note is that while standing around the square with the crew and cast while the shot was being set up, passers by, and indeed some actors, asked to have their photos (I guess the main cast are allowed to take photographs) taken with me. Out of the whole evening, I saw only one genuine instance of coulrophobia when a woman had a panicked reaction upon seeing me, which tells me that it's not as widespread as one would think by reading the internet.

Aggravation of Prometheus

Have you heard the story about the event promoter who advertises a reluctant artist with the full expectation that it will force the artist to perform at an event, even after the artist says, "no?" No? With the internet and just a little bit of insanity, anything is possible! Read on, gentle readers and learn why "to defriend" is such a useful neologism...

I have never hidden that my entrance into theatre has been by a circuitous route. Though a long time fan of theatre, my career as a performer really began as a spoken-word artist at a long list of defunct alternative art-spaces-- eventually leading me to Cambridge's open-mic poetry scene, which gave me a weekly, and sometimes twice-or-thrice-weekly opportunity to hone my chops in front of a small audience.

Eventually, though, I discovered that what I really wanted to do as a writer and performer could not be accommodated by the conventions of the open-mic or the poetry slam. Still, despite my ambivalence, I've maintained a relationship with the scene, which sometimes finds ways to accommodate me.

On the evening of August 13th, I visited Squawk Coffeehouse, where The Fire of Prometheus was performing. FoP is a performance poetry troupe that had been based in Cambridge during the 1980s, some members moved away and some stayed in the area. Though I had known William Barnum for years, I only met the rest of the troupe after I was drafted from the open-mic of Stone Soup Poetry into the Barnum and Buddah [sic] Poetry Circus in December of 2000, where FoP comprised a separate "ring." While I got along quite well with a number of the performers, the group itself was so aggravating that I quit within six-months, soon afterwards begin my study of mime, and co-founded Cosmic Spelunker Theater with both Barnum and James Van Looy.

I hadn't seen Bill in a number of months (unlike me, he has no ambivalence towards the open-mic) and had not seen either RU Outavit or Kasara since I quit the Poetry Circus some eight years prior. At the end of the evening I was invited to take the stage and performed my mime piece, "The Argument," and then after calls for an encore, "The Marmalope." RU seemed especially taken by my mime work.

And then the insanity of the Canatbridgean poetry scene came to reclaim me from my liberty

A couple of days later I receive an instant message from Danzr Von Thai, the brother of RU, who, while no longer performing with Fire of Prometheus, seems to have styled himself as their manager.

He asked me about performance venues in the area that would be suitable for the Fire of Prometheus, and having heard that I had "stolen the show" (he apparently repeated this on a number of blog comment threads no matter how irrelevent it was to the topic at hand) invited me to join the Fire. I was willing to share a bill or two, but when on September 24th he named October 5th as a date, I emailed him via Facebook:

I have to check in with my time commitments-- I have a reading of my play on the 11th and so I am going to be swamped much of that week with read-throughs and other logistics.

In addition, I was very unsure if the other members of FoP had even agreed to include me since I heard nothing from them about it. This should have been the end of the story but instead Danzr kept texting me that they had already advertised that I was either now part of the group or sharing the bill. So on October 1st I sent this email:

I've also since seen the poster for the gig since we spoke this afternoon, and since I'm not on it; it's pretty clear that, as I suspected, the group never voted to include me, let alone invite me.

So I don't think it's right to be telling me that I'm supposed to be in the group when the others haven't agreed to it.

Though I repeatedly told him that I was unavailable for the October 5th performance, and questioned his claims that he was speaking for the other members Fire of Prometheus, he kept announcing that I would be there on a number ofblogs, and claimed that he had made a YouTube video (which I never saw) about my appearance, and was reposting every announcement wherever he reasoned it would do any good. It was on October 4th that I received the following strangely phrased reply:

Like I said, you can generally trust the locals to phuk thing to shineola; I gave Mic Billy Hell about that phuk up... of course you're in like flint as I've been saying all along... that was a rushed job my Mic recycling an old poster.

Eventually I came upon his announcement in the comments section of Chad Parenteau's blog. For reasons that become clear, Chad decided to delete most of the following exchange from his comments section, so I have recreated the exchange from both my personal email and from Danzr's reposting on the R U Outavit blog.

Danzr Von Thai said...

This promises to be one spectacular event... a milestone
in Stone Soups illustrious history and definately a "Do NOT Miss & bring your cameras and video gear" ! Also, the "Fire" will be introducing Mater Mime: Ian Thal !!

ps... please note: this is also a benefit gala for: "Poets for Human Rights" ... #Poet_R_U's Causes http://bit.ly/1lw4Ly http://bit.ly/OsHkK Please Help #Poets_for_Human_Rights #Stop_Child_Abuse

c):-)

10/04/2009 9:35 AM
Chad Parenteau said...

I heard that Ian will not be there, unfortunately.

10/04/2009 4:54 PM
Ian Thal said...

Also, the "Fire" will be introducing Mater Mime: Ian Thal !!

Actually, I won't because I am in pre-production for a staged reading of my play, Total War. This should have been made clear as we've already discussed the matter privately, Danzr.

Also, out of respect to my teacher, James Van Looy, I am not so comfortable being called "master mime."

10/05/2009 6:06 AM
Danzr Von Thai said...

Dearest fans of Mime Ian Thal:

Please note Ian has tragically succumbed to a rampamt flare up of a boiling emergence of latent Primadonnaitis possibly linked to a typo in the spelling of his last name ( Thall instead of Thal ) in an uncirculated press release intended for the "Underground Surrealist Magazine".

This horrific malady, sadly but apparently accurately first diagnosed by legendary shaman "The Buddha", is progressively invasive and, as Mic Cusimano - Professor of Surrealism has woefully declaimed : "Has no known cure" !

We all need to join forces and petition for divine intervention to enact a miraculous recovery or, if in the presumed ghastly baseline clinical scenario, a speedy and peaceful ascension...

May all hail Sekhmet and if any local Shemshemet practioners receive this baleful news before the predicted debasement please, at any and all cost, disregarding your own potential peril as this affliction, at this advanced stage can be infectious, and hasten to this beloved Mime's aid ! (sic)

Yours in grief...

Danzr Von Thai

(c) c);-(

10/05/2009 10:03 AM
Ian Thal said...

Danzr:

I attempted to deal with you through private channels but I have been forced to say something because you kept making inaccurate public statements about when and where I would be performing.

You were well informed of my schedule conflicts before you made any public announcement, either here, on Chad's blog, or elsewhere.

I already stated a willingness to share the bill with Fire of Prometheus on a date that would not constitute a schedule conflict for myself, but your response has been to go from insulting me in private to insulting me in public, which reflects more on your character than on mine.

Good day, sir.

Finally, Danzr posted to my Facebook wall, demonstrating a lack of understanding my time commitments:

Yo Ian... I see where your play isn't to be presented until NEXT week ! Good luck, brake a leg and smoke the joint ... c);-)

This was clearly a situation where "to defriend" is a handy verb to know, as in the sentence "I defriended Danzr."

Needless to say, I did not perform on October 5th.

Open Air Circus in the Boston Globe

The Boston Globe sent photographer Erik Jacobs to cover this past weekend's performances of the Open Air Circus, the Somerville, MA based youth circus where I have been teaching mime and commedia dell'arte for the last four-and-a-half years. Somehow, the The Globe chose to feature two photographs of me in the gallery:


Photo by Erik Jacobs for The Boston Globe click here for full size.

Jacobs caught me back in clown alley before the show, warming up while also making sure my commedia players were in costume and mask. As this year's theme at the circus was "Broadway musicals," we seized upon the standard plot of "let's put on a show" for the scenario. Circumstances allowed me to try my hand at playing Il Capitano for the first time which amounted to barging in about halfway through the skit, bullying my way into being the star of the show. My guitar chops were rusty, but by the final show of the weekend, I had developed a lazzo of singing the bloody Captain's lines from Macbeth to the tune of "La Bamba" as well as swinging the Capitano's sword around erratically and warning audience and fellow troupe members to be "careful of Capitano's sword, it is very dangerous." The kids did a good job of making up their own lazzi or creating their own variants based on my suggestions. I shall be experimenting more with this character in the future.


Photo by Erik Jacobs for The Boston Globe click here for full size.

Jacobs later caught another one of my personae during the intermission, palm spinning out in Nunziato field. This year's mime piece was based on "Seventy-Six Trombones" from Meredith Wilson's The Music Man so again the theme was "let's put on a show." The choreography mostly involved teaching the kids how to mime the musical instruments from the song along with whatever I could remember about marching from when I was in Safety Patrol in elementary school. I am not sure if the choreography we performed on stage was what I taught in rehearsals though!

Motionary Contest

Agata Stadnik, a graduate student at Mass College of Art and Design, and MIT, initiated the Motionary project as part of her work. She had come to my recent performance at Stone Soup and invited me to participate. Part of that participation was a contest in which I was asked to improvise a definition of four words using only movement.

These are all first passes, unrehearsed, and should not be taken to be completed pieces. The YouTube audience is invited to vote on the pieces as part of the contest. There's a whopping $50 at stake!

Sensors:
(My personal favorite of the bunch)



Vote or comment here.

Narrative:



Vote or comment here.


Visualization:



Vote or comment here

Gesture:



Vote or comment here.

Going Viral

Somehow, last week's post, Arlecchino at the Gulu-Gulu Cafe received a one-day spike in readership. Intially, I attributed this to this post by my friend, local playwright and actor, Art Hennessey (mentioned previously when I did a presentation for his students at Emerson), on his Mirror up to Nature blog, as I always find it interesting to read, and generally find it worthwhile to follow the links he provides to other sites, so understandably, I thought that this would be the source of traffic considering how well he praised it.

Instead, I found that the visitors were coming primarily from two sources.

The first was Wicked Local's Somerville Blog, in which Kathleen Powers referred to me as "well known Somerville mime" with some hint of surprise that mimes might also write blogs. I suppose I must be well-known now, if other people say I am!

The second was Universal Hub, where founder, Adam Gaffin referenced my blog not once, but twice (make that thrice and it would have qualified as a running gag for the day.) First, he expressed surprise that mimes might recite poetry and then suggested in a second post that actress Alecia Batson could use some pointers in mime technique before her next audition.

Arlecchino at the Gulu-Gulu Café

Sunday, February 15, 2009:

I arrived in Salem via commuter rail with my costume bag slung over my should and my make-up case in hand, walking the few blocks from the station to the Gulu-Gulu Café. The sun was beginning to approach the horizon and the bricks of the Odd Fellows' Hall on Washington street were taking a warm golden-pink hue. I spied a large carving of Mister Punch (the name Pulcinella took when he moved to England) in one of the shops as I made my way to my destination, I took this as a good omen.

After coming through the front door, I introduced myself to the first staff member I met, explained that I was the evening's feature performer, and ordered an espresso and a glass of water. It was explained to me that Ryan, the host did not normally show up for at least an hour, which was well enough as I needed a time and place to prepare before my set.

After stretching out down in the basement, changing into my costume and make-up, and practicing a few bits, I came up at the appointed time only to discover that the café was much the same as it was when I first went down the steps, except for the fact that a mime in greasepaint and spandex was standing in the middle of the dining room with no idea what was going on. Ryan had not yet arrived. I had no idea who had come for dinner and who had come for the show and no one was approaching the mime to explain the situation to him.


I was soon met by a friendly couple, one of whom had come to read poetry, the other of whom was curious about my masks, but they, too, were uncertain of the evening's agenda. Soon after, a friend of mine, Lynne Sticklor, a poet and performer also known for her stage persona of "The Prize Lady" (not to be confused with the thoroughbred racehorse of the same name) arrived. Lynne had come to see the show but had no clue about Ryan.

Eventually as we checked the grapevine, we discovered that Ryan had been called away due to an emergency, and so as the featured artist of the evening, I took charge by delegating. Knowing Lynne's ability to engage and charm an audience, I persuaded her to take up the role of the evening's hostess. She signed people up for the open mic segment of the evening and started the evening's festivities with all the grace and confidence one would have expected if it had been her regular gig.

Lynne read a few of her own poems as well as works by other poets, including Walt Whitman. Some other poets read. There was a short feature by Rachel Clancy, a stand-up comic. In between the various acts, Lynne made me write a quick bio with which should could introduce me.

I opened with a trio of pieces from my poetry/mime repertoire, though I decided for the evening not to speak the titles, but to present them on cards that would unfold in various ways on string hinges I had made the night before. This repertoire is out of the ordinary so it is often hard to determine whether the audience is receptive at times, though I noticed the audience which had chattered through the other performers had become silent for me. After "Nemo of the Rails", I put on my Arlecchino mask and unfurled the string of cards that announced Arlecchino Am Ravenous.

As mentioned previously, the rehearsals had given me an opportunity to fine-tune the script of this short play, even as I am submitting it to theatre festivals. At the same time, I seem to have created a script that continues to challenge me as a performer to continue inventing new bits of stage business.

[That said, the aspect of me that writes had one bone to pick with the aspect that performs. While the performer is pleased as punch to engage in acts of simulated auto-cannibalism, and satirical acts of blasphemy, I caught myself engaged in a brief act of self-censorship when he cut short a reference to one of the more blatant anti-Semitic epithets from the The Merchant of Venice. However, since it is the writer who is blogging, and not the actor, he can't stop me:

Who the diavolo you think you are?

[Smiles in recognition, and bows.]

Oh! Buon Giorno! Signor Diavolo Lucifero dell’Inferno! Everyone say you look like Shylock, but no…

[To audience:]

…Shylock more handsome…

[Back to Lucifer. Mimes putting arm over Lucifer’s shoulder.]

…Signor Diavolo no look like Jew! More like goat.

The last line was dropped, perhaps out of the actor's fear that the audience would not understand, or that he would be "making trouble." The problem is that the writer likes making trouble.]

I ended with an enraged Arlecchino stepping out into the audience and confronting a haiku poet who had read during the open mic. I returned to the stage, removed my mask and prepared for the finale, during which I overheard a woman explaining to her friends that "It's like Dante's Inferno as told by James Joyce!"

I ended with "A Child's Trip Through the Underworld," bowed, took my props from the stage and ordered a salad of fresh mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, portabella mushrooms and greens, ate, cleaned off most of my make-up, changed out of my costume, paid my bill and caught the last train out of Salem, making my way back to Somerville within an hour.

Photos by Lynne Sticklor AKA The Prize Lady, except for facsimile of the title page of the First Quarto edition of The Merchant of Venice courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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.


View Larger Map

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.

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.

February 9th: An evening of mime, poetry and masks at Willoughby and Baltic

On February 9th at 8pm I'll be performing an evening's worth of original work at Willoughby and Baltic in Davis Square.

The show will include mime, mime and poetry compositions, and a one man commedia dell'arte scenario inspired by Dario Fo's performance of the classic lazzo "the starving zanni."

Willoughby and Baltic
195g Elm Street
Somerville, MA
617-501-0197

$7

Willoughby and Baltic is in the alley between Benjapon's and Subway Sandwich Shop on Elm Street, just follow the dots!



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Belated Follow-Up to Sarod & Kathak Concert

Happy New Year!

I have not updated my blog in a few weeks as I have been rather occupied with some other creative projects. I will write about the status of those projects shortly.

But first, a belated follow-up to the Sarod & Kathak concert I mentioned previously. Firstly, two corrections: 1.) Pandit Ramesh Misra had to cancel his appearance, 2.) I was mistaken in the identity of the tabla player: Nitin Mitta played tabla that evening.

As I have come to a greater understanding of the rhythms of kathak dance (even at my status as a beginner) I found that I could listen to George Ruckert's playing ragas on sarod and better grasp the structure of the melodies of Hindustani music which before I probably only appreciated for its timbral qualities and emotional content. Perhaps someday I will be able to hear it with the same understanding I have when I listen to jazz or rock.

Of course, I had come to see Gretchen Hayden, my teacher, dance. One highlight was a piece from the story-telling repertoire that is taught to kathak students at Chhandika: the tale of how Krishna, as a child, conquered the water-snake demon, Kalia Naag, while fetching his ball after it fell into the Yamuna river. When we practice the story in class or in workshops, the game is one of keep-away, but that evening Gretchenji improvised a game of baseball, miming the pitches, the swings, the spitting on the ground, and the arguing with the umpire. Georgeji began to improvise a melody based on "Take Me Out To the Ball Game".


The effect was such I had to watch The Cameraman when I got home and compare it with the scene in which Buster Keaton playing a news reel cameraman, discovers that the New York Yankees are playing out of town, so he mimes a game for the camera:



My expectation that Gretchenji would be so energized from the concert that she would push us extra hard in class the next day did not come to pass however, as class was canceled due to the nor'easter that came through our region that next day.

Meredith Garniss Interview

I do so digg an interview where I am the answer to the question. The interviewer was Pagan Kennedy and the interviewee was Meredith Garniss, painter, puppeteer, engineer and head honcho of Willoughby & Baltic, an automata and art gallery and marionette theatre where I performed this past July and where the ill-fated production of Macbeth rehearsed.

In the Ideas Section of The Boston Sunday Globe, Kennedy asks Garniss:

I hear you also became the home to one of the world's only "talking mimes."

To which Garniss responds:

The talking mime [who] performed in the gallery this summer was Ian Thal. He's multitalented and does mime, dance, poetry, and puppetry. I think it's OK if the mime talks as long as he leaves the audience speechless.

Garniss has a lot to say about running an art space, combining engineering with art, and working with artists of many media.

I already covered the issue of "talking mimes" with my students in Gloucester but I take issue with the idea that I am "one of the world's only"-- there are plenty of mimes whose work is against the stereotype-- and most of us are chatterboxes off-stage.

Willoughby & Baltic is hosting the Dorkbot Haunted Parlor this Halloween week at 195g Elm Street, Somerville, MA in Davis Square.

Mime Workshop in Gloucester

A couple of weeks ago, I went up to Gloucester to teach a mime workshop for the local high school's drama club. They were rehearsing Jonathan Rand's play Check, Please. I was unfamiliar with the play but have since discovered that it is one of the most popular contemporary plays performed by high school theatre troupes in the United States. The play included mime-character in one of the scenes who engages in a number of the cliché moves often associated with mime, such as "being trapped in an invisible box" and "pulling on a rope." However, the company, which is very much guided by the students' interests, also wanted some grounding in basic mime technique for the sake of developing some choreographed stage business.

Arriving at the Gloucester train station at about 11:20, I did what I always do when my artistic career takes me to another town, which is to play tourist. I had last been to Gloucester the summer before to perform at the now defunct Fishtown Artspace and so knew my way around.


Artifacts of a counter culture: Signs on telephone poles marking outside the original location of the now defunct Fishtown Artspace.

Ever a bibliophile, I took advantage of the sale on used books at Mystery Train Records, and came out with perhaps as many theatre books as I wanted to lug around that day at a cost that I would normally expect to pay for a single book at a used store in Boston, Cambridge or Somerville. A walk on the beach was particularly interesting when I noticed that due to the low tide, the wet sand would sink two or three inches under my boot-steps.

After my lunch, I strolled maybe a mile-and-a-half and arrived at the school shortly before the dismissal bell and squared away the business issues with the drama teacher before being led to the auditorium where the drama club was beginning to gather. I took off my shoes, introduced myself, and briefly explained my view of mime's relationship to everyday body language as poetry's relationship to everyday verbal language-- reciting Shakespeare's 28th sonnet as an example. I then invited the student actors onto the proscenium stage.

The student techies and production staff alternated between attending to their own business and observing as I introduced the actors to the corporeal mime scale, in all three dimensions (lateral, depth, and rotation.) Mime is a difficult form to learn, and even a two-hour workshop is only sufficient to give the most skeletal of introductions, but the students were enthusiastic and willing to learn. They also had the advantage of being a bit older than my students at Open Air Circus, and so have more developed nervous systems and were better able to imitate my isolation work, as well as articulate their interpretations of the meaning of some of the isolations and sequences (the way a lateral translation of the head might represent listening, while a forward translation of the head is more representative of looking.)

After our isolation exercises, I was ready to teach them their first illusion: "the wall." The methodology I have developed is to have the students place their hands on a genuine wall, so that they can experience the flatness and verticality of the wall's plane, and then experience each isolation (including relevés and pliés) of the body with their hands fixed on the wall, asking them to make observations about the focus of their eyes and the compensations they need to make in order to keep their hands fixed to the wall. I also asked them to observe how their hand automatically relaxes when pulled away from the wall. I noted that as with Aristotle's note that the "soul (psuche) is analogous to the hand; for as the hand is a tool of tools, so thought is the form of forms" (On The Soul, III 8 432a1) the hand in it's ability to grasp forms" that in mime theatre, the hand is analogous to the mind, in that it takes the form of the character's thoughts. I then had them experience taking steps along the wall so they could feel just how far they could go before needing to release their grasp of the wall. After several minutes of these experiments, meant to demonstrate that a mime's craft relies heavily on naturalistic observation, I invited them back to the stage, both to demonstrate that with this new found knowledge of walls and an ability to move the whole body in an articulate matter, one sells the reality of the imaginary wall far more than one would with a simple hand gesture, and gave them several minutes to experiment on their own, as I walked amongst them making minor corrections.

Being inquisitive students, they asked me questions in between exercises:

Q: What is the relationship between mime and European clown traditions?

A: In the European context, mime and clown are close cousins, with a common ancestor in commedia dell'arte.

Q: Is there a rule that mimes have to perform silently?

A: No. Many perform silently in observance of mime's independent standing as an art form much as painting and sculpture are independent of one another, but there is no reason why one cannot speak and mime simultaneously. I performed some of my first mime pieces with poetic recitation.

Q: Do mimes always perform with white makeup?

A: No. If a mime chooses to wear makeup, it can be any color, or alternately, the mime can perform without makeup, or with masks. All such things are acceptable.

All this allowed for digressions on the history of mime, allowing me to discuss Charlie Chaplin, Étienne Decroux, Jean Louis-Barrault and Marcel Marceau.

Our next set of exercises were in rope pulling (both horizontally and vertically) and a tug 'o war exercise (a favorite with younger kids, who seem to find walls too abstract) to emphasize ensemble work, as well as to demonstrate the principles of oppositional and sequential movement. After a brief break (due to the techies noting that I had kept the actors working for an hour and a half straight through) explored the extremes of rhythmic dynamics: shock, fondue, and immobility and spent the last few minutes creating tableaux with some of the skills we covered over the previous two hours.

Marcel Marceau, 1923-2007

This morning I received word that one of world's great theatrical artists, and a personal hero of mine, Marcel Marceau, had died at the age of 84. In memory I am reposting a blog entry I wrote some three years ago shortly after I saw him for what would be the first and only time outside his film and television appearances. Marceau was a giant in the field of mime, so much so, that anyone working in the form had to define their work in relation to him. The following entry is slightly modified from its previous appearance.

Meeting Marcel Marceau

Friday, September 17th 2004:

Earlier this year I had the time to participate in a mime workshop given at MIT as part of their January session. It was mostly for newbies, but I learned a few new illusions, offered some fruits of my own knowledge and experience, and had some fun. I stayed in touch with a number of the participants and so when the opportunity came to go as a group to see Marcel Marceau and La Nouvelle Compagnie de Mimodrame at the American Repertory Theatre, I joined them again.

I had never seen Marceau live before this. I had seen brief film clips of performances and many photographs-- mostly from Ben Martin's Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime taken from the late 1960s and early 1970s. These had allowed me to study his form very intently-- even the photographs allowed me to closely observe his immobilities, isolations, and use of fixed points.

After what sounded like a heavy wooden staff being banged upon the stage from behind the curtain, the curtain rose to one of Marceau's students in a fanciful costume and a banner announcing the first act: "The Creation of the World." The lights lowered and she disappeared. When the lights rose again, the 81 year old Marceau was in plié, his hands crossed, his mouth held open like a mask from ancient Greek drama, frozen and eternal like the face of God as his hands enacted the seven days of creation as described in chapter one of Genesis. Then he told the tale of Adam, Eve, the Serpent and their expulsion from Eden in the second chapter. I had seen parts of it reinterpreted by Axel Jodorowsky in Alejandro Jodorowsky's film Santa Sangre (both Jodorowskys had worked with Marceau.) Seated in the second row, I could see every subtlety of Marceau's technique. I could also see that his movements, while graceful and controlled were also that of an old man. However, his age gave this piece even more power. I had seen a similar intense focus and power in the movements of an aged body when working with Bill Barnum, only two years Marceau's junior, the seeming contradiction seemed fitting.

Marceau performed nearly an hour's worth of solo material with just short breaks as the members of his company unfurled banners announcing each piece. The Bip pieces were, of course, very influenced by Charlie Chaplin's Tramp character-- but there is a huge different between a mime on film, interacting with props, a set, and other actors and a mime on stage who creates the illusion of all these things.

After an intermission, La Nouvelle Compagnie de Mimodrame took the stage for three ensemble pieces. The first, "The Wandering Monk", is based on a Japanese ghost story, and the story telling conventions were a little obscure to me but the movements were wonderful and evoked both the corporeal work of Étienne Decroux as well as karate kata. "The Masquerade Ball" was pretty straight forward plot-wise and contained some balletic and acrobatic moments, but my favorite was "The Tiger" which was based on a Chinese tale-- it has comic and dramatic elements represented in mime and Chinese martial arts-- perhaps less corporeal in the sense of Decroux-- but wonderful none the less. The evening's show ended with perhaps five curtain calls and the audience emptied out.

Thanks to one of my MIMEtype friends (what else would mime troupe at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology call itself?) we had arrangements to meet Marceau after the show. Since there were too many of us to visit his dressing room so we were reseated in the first two rows of the theater as Marceau emerged from behind the curtain, still dressed as Bip. After thanking us, he told us how glad he was that we saw the Compagnie, as he wished people to know that the world of mime is something far more than white face, Marcel Marceau, and Bip. He spoke of his debt to his "Master", Étienne Decroux, as well as to his own gifts. He then outlined the eclectic training of his students at his school in mime, acting, dance, and fencing. After taking another bow, he returned to the dressing room. We slipped to one of the side lobbies to talk about the show we just saw, the technique, etc. After an hour or so, Marceau emerged, dressed in tweed and argyle, his once dark curly hair turned blond with age (I had noticed that he was wearing a stylized wig, meant to affect the locks of his younger years.) Though he asked that we take no photographs he was happy to spend a few minutes with us, shaking hands with us one by one, as he asked us our names and signed our programs or anything else we had with us-- always with a short note-- sometimes asking for the spelling. When he reached me, I pulled out my copy of the Ben Martin book. Marceau smiled and flipped through it, asking if it is still in print. I told him that I didn't know as I had found mine at a used bookstore-- I have built up a small library on mime by scouring the used stores. I mentioned that my teachers had been students of Decroux as well. He smiled again, asked me my name and signed with a little illustration of a flower on the title page:

to Ian
in Heartful
remembrance
yours,
Bip
Marcel
Marceau
2004

Teaching Mime at Open Air Circus

In my previous post I described the commedia dell'arte class I taught this summer at Open Air Circus. In this one, I will describe the mime class. Though I do not have any photographs to share of this particular class, The Somerville Journal did post a slide show that include some photographs of my mime class in session as well as some narration that came from an interview I gave.

This was my third summer teaching mime at Open Air, and I've come to have many of the same children signing up for my class year after year.

Given the very short teaching schedule (cut short by a week due to peculiarities of the calendar and another week due to rain), I was left with very little opportunity to do more than teach the concept of isolations, Decroux' corporeal mime scale, and rhythmic dynamism and get a skit together for the final show

Isolations are an essential part of any mime technique, and even when taught systemically, they are difficult for many children to learn due to the fact that their nervous systems are just not fully developed, but into my third summer, I have a group of students who are very eager to please, and at a youth circus, being known as "the weird teacher" really isn't a problem.

The nice thing about any of the traditional repertoire of mime illusions is that they can all be used as lessons in technique, but even more so, they can be used as lessons in teamwork and working with your partner.

This year I decided to work on the rope-pulling illusion and revive "The Spaghetti Sketch" that I had created for the circus two years prior. The "Spaghetti Sketch" has two acts: The first being a tug-o-war competition, the second a spaghetti dinner between the two teams who are even more competitive at dinner than during the competition, where I play both referee and head waiter. The first night (given this year's theme of "Rock'n'Roll") we use Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" for the spaghetti dinner. By the first matinée the music has changed to "Union Jack" by Big Audio Dynamite for the tug-o-war segment and an excerpt from "The Barber of Seville" for the dinner sequence. I have the kids develop their own individual spaghetti related lazzi while I improvise different bits of business each show. One that seems to work is substituting my top hat for a saucepan. The kids are particularlly excited that we've revived this piece as while a few had been in the first iteration from two years prior, many of them had seen it from the audience.

Peter Jehlen, the circus' artistic director, recruits me into incorporating my mimes students into the unicycling segment. He's chosen the music "Grease Lighting" from Grease and I borrow a couple of unicycles and build up some choreography based on various object manipulations (some of our experiments are seen in the slide show). Peter has another idea, which involves having four mimes playing air guitar to "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" during the opening sequence of the show, so I end up spending the beginning of the show acting as a conductor-- showing my "guitarists" how to play strict 4/4.

(I discover during the finale of the last show of the weekend that as we play the "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heats Club Band (Reprise)" that the tatkar I have been learning in my kathak classes fits perfectly.)