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...

Public Enemies

About a month ago, my wife Lisa and I drove out to Wisconsin to visit family in the North Woods, which is what they call the northern section of the Badger State, an area full of lakes and trees and hundreds of charming little towns. Manitowish Waters is one such place, and we were told that a movie had just been shot up there starring Johnny Depp. The movie is called Public Enemies, and follows the exploits of several bank robbers from the early 1930's- you know, the Great Depression. Now not all of the movie was filmed up there, but one section, which revolved around a famous gunfight at the lodge Little Bohemia, does. The lodge is still there today, and the food is great. If you're ever anywhere near the area, go. But I'm not writing today on behalf of the Wisconsin Board of Tourism. No, I'm writing today because after we went up to Little Bohemia and heard all about the gangsters who hid out up north, my mother-in-law Red Miller gave me a copy of the book Public Enemies- which I am fairly certain is the main source for the movie. It's a great read, and follows the exploits of Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, the Barker Gang, Machine Gun Kelly, and Bonnie and Clyde. (on a tangent, click here for a very funny short music video about B and C that features Bridgette Bardot) As I read of these famous outlaws, whom have all been lionised to one degree or other by our collective pop culture, I began to think about what it was that made them popular with so many people. Never before, for me at any rate, has the answer been so clear, and so resonant. In general, American banks and the folks who run Wall Street are perceived as institutions that screw the American people over and over, all in the name of greed- and when someone comes along and takes money away from those avaricious bastards, it feels good.
I wonder what would happen if someone starting looting Bank of America somehow, or Morgan Stanley, or whoever- what if there was a gang who kept taking money from these giant operations and somehow got away with it for a while? Would there be people who cheered them? What if some rogue found a way to rob some of those CEO's of their "golden parachutes"? Wouldn't he or she be an instant hero? I bet you, in the current atmosphere of fear and desperation pervading the American psyche, that if some nut job walked up to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and kicked him in the balls, said nut job would be an instant hit on YouTube, and on the cover of every major news magazine, web site, etc. within a day.
Isn't that amazing? We now live in a time where it's really easy to understand the mindset of the average American during the Great Depression.
Speaking of which, the Dow dropped over 700 points today after the House failed to pass the economic Bail Out plan. Just exactly who are the public enemies these days?