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.

June 1st: Solo by Sixty: Chhandika's Sixth Annual Student Kathak Concert

It has been a while since I last blogged about my kathak studies under Gretchen Hayden but I've not ceased my studies. In fact, I am performing kathak for the first time as one of the beginning students in Chhandika's Sixth Annual Student Show, Sunday, June 1st. Hopefully, over the next several days, I'll post additional reflections on my training.

Solo by Sixty:
A voyage through the phases of a classical kathak dance concert

Sunday, June 1, 2008
4:30pm - 7:00pm
Peabody School Auditorium
70 Rindge Ave.
Cambridge, MA

General: $15
Children 12 and under: $5
Tickets available at the door.

Cosmic Spelunker Bootleg

Chad Parenteau, host of Stone Soup Poetry posted the following video of Cosmic Spelunker Theater's May 19th reunion show to YouTube:

The video was shot without a tripod using the video function of Chad's digital camera-- and covers nine minutes and thirty-three seconds close to the beginning of our show (some of our "Zanni stage management" is cut off.) Astute students of the history of mime will notice that James and I perform Étienne Decroux's figures of Drinking in Twenty-Six Moves and prisé et posé ("To Take and To Give") as Bill recites his poem, "Frail Dog."

Performing together as a trio for the first time in over five years was certainly and interesting experience, and it was interesting to see how well we gel as a troupe the moment we are confronted with an audience, even when performing in the cramped conditions of a venue that typically presents poetry. Indeed, the actual stage area that Out of the Blue afforded us was far less space than we rehearsed in. The entire second half of our show was barely rehearsed, and had a largely improvised feel, though it was based on segments from Waltzing to War a show that James and I had last performed together in 2005. Will there be more Cosmic Spelunker Theater in the future? Unknown as of yet. We will see.

It is interesting that I have yet to sit down and learn how to make active use of services like YouTube when such technology is an ideal distribution system for a performing artist such as myself. In 2001 and 2002 when Cosmic Spelunker was first taking form in a rehearsal space, I had been reading such histories of punk-rock as Steven Blush's American Hardcore: A Tribal History and Mark Andersen's and Mark Jenkins' Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk Rock in the Nation's Capital which had inspired me to think of Cosmic Spelunker as a punk rock band: If I didn't know how to talk to theatres, then I relentlessly found alternative venues for our performances, designed all of our posters, and posted them myself. Of course, given those tactics, rather than thinking of CST as a "power-trio" along the lines of Cream, I should have thought in terms of The Minutemen.

Dialogue

A few weeks back, I completed typing up the changes to my play due to the restructuring process I had mentioned some months ago, reformatted the script as a pdf and passed it along to some friends for critique. I used what seems like a never-ending schedule of rehearsals and performances to give myself a break from thinking about it, and when I could no longer avoid it, I printed up my own hard copy and began reading.

Working with a text on paper is radically different from with the same text inside of a word processor. The tactile experience of flipping pages and writing corrections in ink is more intimate than key strokes or mouse clicks and that greater intimacy causes me to more closely address the actual words of the 97-page script.

What strikes me about reading the current draft is how much a set of revisions I made out of economic necessity of eliminating several characters (it is simply unfeasible for a company to stage a play with so many characters) was also the artistically correct decision to make: the narrative came into greater focus and the underlying motivations of the characters became simultaneously more complex and more clear: making their relationships with one another more layered, and making more explicit the ideas that inform their actions . A character created through the compositing of two characters from the earlier drafts became very much the dramatic equal of the protagonist of the preceding drafts.

Interestingly enough: I also discovered that while I had previously conceived of the play as having three acts, that it makes more logical sense as a five act play-- and no adjustment of was needed beyond the renumbering of the scenes.

That said, as I await comments and dialogue from aforementioned friends, I am reading slowly, word for word, editing dialogue. I am seeing that process that seeks out a structure that best tells the story is not the same process that determines if characters is saying what they need to say in manner they need to say it at the precise moment they ought to speak. Dialogue that is merely functional, on second glance, could be poetic. Some dialogue suffers from having been edited far too many times. Some of these problems can only be solved by crossing several lines and writing something new in the margins or on the back of the preceding page.

[NOTE: reedited for style on August 16, 2008]

Update to "When Wikipedia Renders One an Un-Person"

My recent post about the politically motivated revisions to the Peter Schumann article on Wikipedia seems to have have an impact on the latest set of revisions.

As I had mentioned before, anonymous contributors had dismissed allegations that some of Schumann's recent work could be legitimately interpreted as either anti-Semitic or "soft-core" Holocaust denial, one from 76.19.64.64 falsely claimed that Schumann "and his family fled Nazi Germany when he was 10" while a contributor from 68.56.17.70 claimed that "the general reception to the work was quite positive."

Since I was ethically bound not to contribute to the article myself (especially because I was mentioned in an earlier revision) I had to find a way for someone to correct the factual distortions, so I posted to the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons Noticeboard, and received a quick response from an editor using the handle of Moonriddengirl.

Moonriddengirl's revision, while not a full biographic essay, removed the ideologically motivated misinformation and added links to some of the resources I suggested. So while it was the inclusion of my name in the article that caught my attention and it was the deletion of my name that inspired the title of my earlier blog entry, whether or not a wikipedia editor considers me notable for the current revision is not the issue: the important matter is that no longer is Schumann falsely said to be a refugee from Nazi tyranny and that reports that his artistic rendition of the Holocaust was divisive in communities where it was shown are now acknowledged.

May 28th: SomerVaudeVille @ Johnny D's

As well as everything else for which I am rehearsing (this being but one example) I'm currently preparing for SomerVaudeVille, presented by Theatre @ First, a Somerville based group with whom I haven't worked before. Most of the folk are new to me, but it has been a chance to renew acquaintances with fellow mime, Justin Werfel, whom I first met back in 2004 when I sat in with MIMEtype the MIT mime troupe, as well as with Matt Samolis (AKA Uncle Shoe.)

As Uncle Shoe, Matt is a banjo playing conservator of the American Tin Pan Alley repertoire. As Matt Samolis, he is a rather eclectic multi-instrumentalist. He and I have known each other for years and this time, decided to use the opportunity to collaborate. While one piece we rehearsed together had to be dropped due to time constraints (we will find a way to perform it elsewhere and elsewhen) we have something in mind for this show.

The other acts show include: Jessica Almeida, Ari Herbstman, Erica Schultz, The Pluto Tapes (Andy Hicks), Can-Can Revolution, Heisenberg's Mezzos (Andrea Humez, Erica Schultz, Jessica Raine, and Gilly Rosenthol), and Gilana and her Hula Hips (Gilly Rosenthol).

See SomerVaudeVille on May 28th, at Johnny D's Uptown at 17 Holland Street, Davis Square, Somerville. Show begins at 8:30pm.

May 19th: Stone Soup Poetry presents Cosmic Spelunker Theater

As reported earlier, my old troupe, Cosmic Spelunker Theater has reunited at the urging of Chad Parenteau to perform as part of Stone Soup Poetry's series at theOut of the Blue Art Gallery. The show is on Monday, May 19th at 8pm.

Out of the Blue Art Gallery
106 Prospect Street
Central Square
Cambridge, MA

P.S. An interview I gave with Bill Rodriguez of the Providence Phoenix, during the Van Looy/Thal duo incarnation of Cosmic Spelunker Theater is back online.

P.P.S. The photographs are by Elizabeth Schweber Doles. I designed the poster.