NIGHT OF THE IGUANA

It was opening night.  I was all of twenty years old, and just getting seriously involved in theatre.  I was an undeclared major at San Jose State University, and working on tons of shows- student productions, main stage productions for the theatre department, even some shows outside of school (most notably, a very "experimental" show called A Marowitz Hamlet at City Lights).  I was having the time of my life.

The show that was opening was Tennessee William's Night of the Iguana.  I had a small role as one of the German tourists.  My older brother Jerry was playing the bus driver.  I had dyed my hair platinum blond to look more Teutonic.  The play itself was beautiful, this really sad tale of a defrocked, drunken priest named Shannon trying to come to terms with reality while leading tours for little old ladies and their daughters and grand-daughters around Central America.  The action of the play takes place while Shannon and his latest group of touristas are staying at a cheap little hotel in Mexico run by a randy woman named Maxine.  At the start of the play, Shannon has just been accused of sleeping with one of the tourists, a 16 year old named Charlotte.  This makes the rest of the group rather angry.  Also staying at the hotel is a spinster named Hannah and her poet father, Nonno- who is very old and clearly about to shuffle off this mortal coil but hoping to finish one last poem before he goes.  It's a really beautiful play, and the production was fantastic.   I was very proud to be a part of it, albeit in a very small part.

Anyway, on opening night, I was extremely excited- running around backstage, watching as much of the show from the wings as I could, savoring every reaction from the audience.  Jerry was strangely quiet.  I found him in the wings, watching the show quietly, with this funny look on his face.  I told him I thought the show was going great.  He noticed me, put on this big smile, and said "Yeah, it is!  You're doing great."  Then he turned back to watch the action.  There is something really magic about watching a show from the wings of a theatre- something sacred and rare that makes you feel like a god, or someone possessed of magic.  At the end of the play, Nonno finally finishes his poem, and recites it. Jerry and I watched the scene from back stage right, if I remember right.  Here's the poem.

How calmly does the orange branch 

observe the sky begin to blanch 

Without a cry, without a prayer, 

with no expression of despair! 

Sometime while night obscures the tree 

the zenith of her life will be 

Gone past forever, and from thence 

a second history will commence, 

A chronicle no longer gold, 

a bargaining with mist and mold, 

And finally the broken stem, 

the plummeting to earth, and then 

An intercourse not well-designed 

for creatures of the golden kind 

Whose native green mists arch above 

the earth’s obscure, corrupting love 

And still the lemon on the branch 

observes the sky begin to blanch 

Without a cry, without a prayer, 

with no expression of despair. 

O courage will you not as well 

select a second place to dwell, 

Not only in the orange  tree 

but in the frightened heart of me?

Nonno finishes the poem, and dies on stage.  

After the show and the curtain call and the running around hugging everyone, I ran to Jerry's dressing room.  He was sitting in front of his mirror.  I started babbling about the show, the audience, the impending cast party which was going to be amazing.  Jerry said he wasn't going to the party.  I asked him why.  He said "Brock went to sleep today".  Brock was his room mate, a really cool guy who went to high school with Jerry and my sister Heather.  He was Heather's first boyfriend, actually- and always very tolerant of me, the annoying younger brother who always begged to be taken to whatever thing he and Heather were doing- movies, the beach, whatever.  He had joined the army after high school- but after carrying some hazardous waste for the good old USA, he developed cancer in his hip.  He came home, went through a lot of treatment, and lived with my brother.  He never complained about it.  Ever.  He would come to parties, tell stories, and be the cool guy he always was.  I remember one party where he introduced me to the music of Tom Waits.  He played me and some of my buddies the song "Tom Traubert's Blues", and I thought it was the coolest song in the history of the world.

"Brock went to sleep, and he didn't wake up." Jerry said this, and I had no idea what he was talking about.  Brock took a nap?  Great, he's so tired these days.

Jerry looked at me funny.  And I got it.  Oh.  That sleep.  The one you don't wake up from.  I walked out of the dressing room, and got about fifty feet down the hall before I started to cry.  I don't remember how, but I did end up getting to the opening night party at Dr. Todd's place.  Hal J. Todd directed the show, and had this amazing house up in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains.  Jon Selover, who played Shannon, talked with me for a long time- letting me cry and rage and freak out.  I remember screaming "It's not fair."  Jon looked me in the eyes, and said "No, it's not."  Harsh, but true.   There are moments in time when someone becomes a friend for life.

For the rest of the run, I'd watch the poem scene from backstage.

And for years, at parties or out with friends, if I had enough drinks in me, I'd put Tom Waits on the juke box or stereo, and weep.

So.

BACKWARDS AND WRONG

Love is evil, spelled backwards and wrong.

So says Earth, neo-hippie and seeker of truth in my third play, BURNING THE OLD MAN.  It's a great line.  People quote it often, and I've seen it used by others on blogs, aritcles, etc.

I stole it.

There's a saying that I first heard from Richard Parks, one of my teachers at San Jose State University.  Richard was a mad man, a genius, and one of the most memorable people I ever met- one of those teachers who would say something in such a way as to make it funny, revelatory, and pertinent all at the same time.  He also had a wicked temper, which would show up now and then, usually during rehearsal for something he was directing and which wasn't going well.  One memorable night during dress rehearsal for Lysistrata he shouted out "Change your majors!" and marched out of the building.  At the time, it was both hilarious and embarrassing.  But he also was brilliant, and knew how to get the best out of us.    Once, I think it was during rehearsal for A Midsummer Night's Dream,  somebody mentioned how Shakespeare had taken a lot of his plot lines from other sources, and somebody else opined that that meant Shakespeare was just a copy cat.  Doctor Parks raised he eyebrows dramatically, and pronounced to us all that "great artists don't copy, they steal", meaning that if you aren't that good at what you do, then you will often imitate other peoples work- but if you're a true artist, you can take that idea and make it your own- improved, or at least different, and unique.

And that's why I feel okay about stealing Earth's line, and indeed, the character of Earth himself.

Let me explain.  Long ago, and far away, my brother Jerry and I worked for a children's theatre company in Pleasanton, California.  The money was good, and that job was fun- but we had a lot of extra time on our hands, and needed an extra outlet for ourselves.  Somehow, we convinced the local cable company to give us a cable access show- and not only that, but to provide us with cameras and editing room time- all for free.   We named the show Pleasantonland, and basically just shot hours and hours of ourselves goofing around, drinking beer, and talking with other theatre people about life, art, and whatever else came to mind.   It was self-indulgent in the extreme- and we had a blast.  During one of our shoots, we decided that the show should have a guest poet- a sort of fake, over the top, new age gone bad kind of poet- and my buddy Brian Faraone volunteered for the job.  But he didn't want to be called Brian- he wanted to be called Earth.  We thought that sounded perfect- so, while filming, I looked at the camera "And now it's time for a poem from our guest today, Earth!"  Brian walked up, wearing a beret and lots of attitude, looked at the camera and said in perfect deadpan, "Love is evil, spelled backwards, and wrong", and walked off.  It was friggin' brilliant.  We laughed our asses off.

Cut to ten years later.  I'm writing a play for Boomerang Theatre Company about two brothers on their way to the Burning Man festival who get stuck in the desert and run into, among other things, a couple of neo-hippies.  Somewhere in my brain, I remember Brian as Earth, and write him into the show- and it's a perfect fit.  

And that's how I stole Earth from Brian for my show.  Not that I feel too bad- Brian had stolen the idea of Earth from an actual neo-hippie he met in Santa Cruz who would say ridiculous things like "I don't wear shoes- they're a rule of society I find silly".  So fair's fair.

To Be Continued...

Burning the Old Man is available in print in the anthology Plays and Playwrights 2006 and will soon be featured on Indie Theater Now.
http://www.nytesmallpress.com/pp06.php
www.indietheaternow.com

MUSE OF FIRE ASCENDS

So the letter of from the Fringe comes, and I take a deep breath, then open it.  It starts with "Congratulations".  I'm in.  Muse of Fire has been accepted into the 2003 New York International Fringe Festival.  Holy Shit.

I am one of those people who doesn't really know how to take success, on any level.  It never seems quite real, or what I thought it would feel like.  Never.  In my mind, there should be music playing, fist pumping, slow motion leaps in the air, and a sudden, clear understanding of the Universe, and my place in it.  But still, it does feel pretty damn good.  What am I saying?  It feels friggin' fabulous!  Time to call friends, family, acquaintances, and tell them that I have been chosen from over one thousand entrants to be in this summer's festival.

Now I really have to get to work on the script.  The story is going nicely- I have my two muses, Dion and Polly, going down to Earth, to the Theatre Dept. at San Jose State University, and they come upon the girl they need to turn into a great writer.  Everyone ends up in a production of "As You Like It", and valuable lessons area learned by one and all.  I've changed the girl's name to Emily (middle name of my college sweetheart), and the boy she's supposed to fall in love with to Mick (one of many nicknames I had in college).  I realize, as I plot along, that the world of the play is the world of live theatre, and all the insane, funny, noble, and magic things that come with it.  Things start coming fast and furious- characters materialize, full blown, with specific voices- references to pop culture, mythology, and the Dumbarton Bridge all seem to flow and make sense.  Script feeling strong, it's time to get the production itself going.  I have several things I know I want, certain actors for certain parts- but there are other parts I haven't a clue about- and on top of that, it is always a good thing to have an open audition- you never know who you might meet, and what might come from that meeting.   So we have auditions.  Lots of folks show up. I have it all clear in my head, except for the part of Emily.  It gets down to two actresses, both really awesome in different ways.  So I have them read with Brett Christensen, who is cast as Mick.  And Jackie Kamm kicks the part of Emily in the ass, lights up the stage, and I think makes Brett's brain explode.  It is one of the great, rare joys of theatre, to witness an audition that catches fire, that makes it clear to everyone in the room that these people, and no others, must play these parts.   The entire cast is as follows- Dion: Jack Halpin, Polly: Sara Thigpen, Carlos/Hal: R. Paul Hamilton, Emily: Jackie Kamm, Cassandra: Heather McAllister, Phil:  Jerry McAllister, Mick: Brett Christensen, Lenny: Vinnie Penna, Jessie:  Christine Goodman, and the show is stage managed by Matthew Rankin.  They are all super geniuses, and amazing artists, and if you even come across them in this life, hang on to them and figure out a way to work with them.

So the show is cast, and we start rehearsing.  My company, hope theatre inc., is producing the show.  We'd formed a few years before, to present the American premiere of Shakespeare's Edward III, once part of the apocrypha but now recognized by some in that strange realm known as Academia as at least partially written by old Will.  We stayed together to produced Last Call, and now here we are, with show number three.  I am directing my own play.  I think this will be fun- and it is, but also a great pain in the ass.   I keep adding stuff to the show- interpretive dances at a cast party, love affairs, and a new way to end the show.  Instead of having Emily just fall in love with Mick, she has to lose him- and I don't mean they break up.  I mean Mick has to die- that his death is what is supposed to spark Emily's greatness as an artist.  And when Dion and Polly learn this, they have to figure out what to do- make a great artist, or save a young man's life.  I add a scene where Mick and Dion drive to the beach.  Dion knows Mick is supposed to die, but can't say anything.  They talk about Billy the Kid and the song "Dead or Alive" by Bon Jovi.  It's one of my favorite scenes in the play.

Anyway.  The cast is good, the script is good, and then we find out we are going to be presenting our show at the Cherry Lane Theatre.  If you've never seen this place, let me tell you- it's beautiful, historic, and exactly what you think a theatre in Greenwich Village should look like, right down to the cobble-stone street in front.   This is a theatre that had O'Neill, Albee, and Shephard in it.  I mean the playwrights themselves.  This place is a dream come true.  And I get to premiere my play in it.  This is a dream come true.  This is one of the great moments of my life.

Opening night arrives.  It's a full house.  The play begins.  As usual, I feel like throwing up for most of the performance.  But people are laughing in the audience.  A lot.  And then they're crying.  And at the end of the show, there's a lot of applause.  I have to stay after the show, to clear all our stuff out so that the next  play from the Fringe can load in for their opening, which happens one hour later.  Jack Halpin, who plays Dion, and I haul ass, get everything put in its proper place, and walk outside.  The street seems to be completely full of people- and they all cheer for us.  I come up to an actress I know, Aida Lembo, and she's crying and laughing, and she she's me and says "you're beautiful".

The show sells out its run, even with the great blackout of 2003 happening in the middle of the festival.   Nytheatre.com gives is a rave review- God bless them. On the last night, my mom flies out from California to see the show, and ends up sitting next to a critic from The New Yorker magazine, who is there not to right a review, but to check up on a new writer.  Somehow, I am on their radar.  Not sure how I got there, but I like it.  And now, the script is available online as part of Indie Theater Now, the new digital library of plays that is like the iTunes for plays.

So, like I said, I don't take success well.  But I think I can get used to it.

MUSE OF FIRE

So it's almost Valentine's, 2003, and I need to submit something to the Fringe.  The deadline is the 14th.   I had a pretty good go at the New York International Fringe Festival last summer with Last Call (added performance, Excellence in Playwriting Award, Publication in Plays and Playwrights 2003, etc.), and lots of people think I should do another one.  I  agree with them.  I really like being called a playwright, and having people read my stuff, and think I've found my life's calling.  I take Errant Muses, my unfinished play from a play writing class I took at SJSU, and dust it off.  Could I make a new play out of this old thing?  Should I?


A lot of it is pretty bad- lots of obvious exposition, two dimensional characters, and cliches.  But there is the germ of a good idea in it, so I start to tinker with it a bit.  I take the idea of two muses who are stuck working with each other but have diametrically opposed ideas of what art is about and keep the first scene, scrap most of the rest.  I make one of the muses female, and change their names from Tom and Dave to Dion (after Dionysos) and Polly (after Apollo).  And the reason I do that is because of the song Hemispheres by Rush, which I listened to a lot when I was about 13.  No lie.  In that song, Dionysos is the God of Chaos, and Apollo is the God of Order.  In the play, Dion is chaotic and loves how art makes him feel alive, while Polly is angry, and wants art to have meaning and purpose and be used to make the world a better place.

I also decide to change the title.  Errant muses just sounded clunky to me.  At the top of the show, Dion is alone in the muses apartment, reciting the prologue from Shakespeare's Henry V, the one that starts with "O, for a muse of fire...".    It hits me clear as a bell- name the play "Muse of Fire".  And so I do.

One of the great satisfactions for me is taking a play and twisting it and turning it and trying to find the magic inside- the stuff that seems to have been written by someone else, or better yet, seems to have not been written at all, but dictated by...what ever it is out there in the void, the infinite waters of mysticism.

The plot of Errant Muses was as follows- the muses are given a job, namely to help a young girl named Anne become a great writer.  She is a drama major at San Jose State University.  The muses have lost the report given to them by their superiors, which has all the details, including exactly what it is they are supposed to do- but fearing retribution, they don't tell anyone they've lost the report, head down to earth, meet the girl, figure out that she needs to fall in love with Will, another drama major.  Hilarity follows, and of course it all ends happily (and yes, I named them Anne and Will after Anne Hathaway and William Shakespeare).

Also, I had just read The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell.  Very cool book, and one I had wanted to read ever since I was a kid and heard that it had influenced George Lucas when he made Star Wars (or as the Philistines call it, Episode 4: A New Hope).  In the book, Cambell outlines the basic hero story found in all cultures.  First, there is the young hero.  He or she gets a call to action, sometimes from a frog who comes out of the infinite waters, then there is a series of trials, then the final battle, where the hero has to sacrifice herself/himself in order to further the greater good.

I decide to incorporate the mono-myth into Muse of Fire.  The hero will have two faces, Dion's and Polly's.  The frog becomes Carlos, a god like being who calls himself the Toad of Infinite Waters.   And I start to get into it.   Writing is funny- you write and write and write some more, and it feels like drudgery, like punishment for wanting to be creative or something.  And then, all of a sudden, and usually un-noticed, you slip into the world of the story, and lose all sense of time and place and just go to that other place- then you look up sometime later, and there's page after page of story, and it's later, and you have no idea what happened and no memory of actually typing anything.

So I'm cruising along with the play, finding new characters and situations almost daily.  My mind is in the world of the play pretty much every waking moment.  I'd be a working a lunch shift at Bryant Park Grill, and in my mind I'm thinking "yes, the director will be named Cassandra- but in reverse, because she's crazy and spouts lunacy but everyone believes her!"  I ride the subway home and watch young lovers, eavesdropping and fishing for dialogue.  I read somewhere that there were nine muses in Greek mythology- so I decide there will be nine actors in the show.   I pretty much throw anything and everything I am experiencing and have experienced into the script.   I get as much done as I can, and send off the application to the Fringe.

And wait for May and notification.

To be continued...

ERRANT MUSES

So I'm posting about all my shows that are on Indie Theater Now- how they came about, their first production, and all that jazz.  My last two blogs were about Last Call, which is part of the 9/11 collection, and was my first full length play.  On the docket, Muse of Fire, which had a long, winding road from initial concept to first production spanning over ten years.  Here goes.

Muse of Fire came about because of a touchy feely exercise I did as part of a play writing class at San Jose State University long ago and far away in the Kingdom of My Youth. For those who weren't theatre majors, let me explain.  In the world of drama, there are many, many exercises you are forced to participate in as part of a class, or play you are cast in- usually it involves laying down, closing your eyes, and listening to some teacher, director, or actor lead you through a sort of meditation, picturing your favorite place, a lover's embrace, butterflies- something like that.  These experiments can take ten, twenty, even thirty minutes.  They are all about getting in touch with the inner-self.  Yummy.   So in this class I was taking, which was taught by the great David Kahn, we had a guest artist for a few weeks, the playwright Sheldon Rosen.  Sheldon is a really cool guy, but he did have a penchant for taking us through some routines that could be described as "new age", "spiritual", or "weird".  Being twenty something at the time, I of course thought of them as weird.   I did them anyway.  Why not?  Maybe, just maybe, something would come of it.  So there I was in class, relaxing, listening to my inner voice, when all of a sudden, I saw as clear as day, two guys having a conversation.  One guy was really angry, they other guy was really kind.  The kind one was talking about how he met Van Gogh one day.  How he had been looking at a self portrait that old Vincent had done, and the painting started talking to him.  The mean one said that was a bunch of crap.

I thought that was kind of cool, so I took the initial scenario found in my head, and started making a scene out of it.  Quickly, the scene became about two muses, arguing about the meaning and purpose of art.  I read it out loud in class, and the response was immediate and quite positive, so I kept on trucking.  One of our final assignments for the class was to write at least one act of a play- so I gave the scene the title "Errant Muses", and tried to make up a full length play.  It took a lot of work, and I wrote a good chunk of that first act the night before it was due.   In hindsight, I was an idiot for most of my college career.  But such is life.  At least I got it done.  Also, at the end of the semester, the play writing class teamed up with a directing class and an acting class, and did presentations of new scenes written, directed, and performed by students.  Two different groups wanted to present my scene with the muses.  I said sure.  Why the Hell not?  On the day of the presentation, something extraordinary happened.  People laughed.  A lot.  They really liked the scene.  It felt pretty friggin' sweet, believe me.

Then I graduated, moved to New York City, and had many adventures being an idiot.  It was something I did quite well. (note photo:  I'm the one with the funky glasses)   At the end of my first foray to the big city, I was broke, lonely, and hadn't gotten one paying acting job- so I came home to California to regroup and try and figure out what to do with my life.

A few years later, I was working at the Western Stage in Salinas, CA, when I got a message from the girl who had directed one of the scenes from my play for the final presentation.   Her husband, an actor, was graduating from CalArts, and wanted to do some scenes from Errant Muses for their showcase.    A showcase is a review of scenes, usually put on by a graduating class for people in the theatre/film industry (agents, casting directors, etc.), done with the hopes that said industry people will like what they see and offer everyone big contracts to come to Hollywood or Broadway or wherever.  Ed Harris was going to emcee the show, and the whole thing sounded pretty cool to me, so of course I said yes.  I tinkered with the scenes a bit, went down to help out during rehearsal, and felt pretty good about where everything was.

Then, I left town before the actual show.   Remember, at this point in my life I was still busy being an idiot.  I mean, why stay and be present at a show where tons of people who could help me find work in my chosen field were going to see something I had written?  That made too much sense.  So I headed back to Salinas.  I put Errant Muses into a binder, and didn't really think about it for almost ten years.

Then, as noted in the previous two posts, I got my act together, wrote Last Call, and realized that what made me more happy than anything else was writing plays.  It was the fall of 2002.  Last Call was being published by NYTE, and then featured in a Best Stage Scenes of 2002, published by Smith & Kraus, and being shopped around to some theatres in Germany by a someone who saw the play and really liked it.  On top of that, I had just been named Graduate of the Last Decade for the School of Humanities by San Jose State University.  I'm fairly certain the success of Last Call had a lot to do with that.

I decided to write a new play, and enter it for FringeNYC 2003.  And the source material would be Errant Muses.

To be continued...