One flew east, one flew west

I’m rereading CUCKOO’S NEST. Well, I shouldn’t say rereading, because I realized immediately upon opening it that I’m only familiar with the play and the film. Kesey’s narrative voice (and his illustrations, which this edition has) are a third character in and of themselves.

I’m so glad our script of SAGN preserves some of the Kesey voice, through the chorus.

Nothing new under the…

Six students expelled from my former high school for cheating. Stealing a midterm and sharing it with other students, to be exact. Via Sari, via the LA Times.

What’s in a name?

CXXXVI.

If thy soul cheque thee that I come so near,
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy ‘Will,’
And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there;
Thus far for love my love-suit, sweet, fulfil.
‘Will’ will fulfil the treasure of thy love,
Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.
In things of great receipt with ease we prove
Among a number one is reckon’d none:
Then in the number let me pass untold,
Though in thy stores’ account I one must be;
For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold
That nothing me, a something sweet to thee:
Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lovest me, for my name is ‘Will.’

(This is not my favorite sonnet in terms of poetry, but it is in audacity. “For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold / that nothing me…” I also like the way he can make language justify anything. “Words mean what I want them to mean.”

Shiver Me Timbers

I walked into a church on Alder Street in Portland yesterday, to check out the architecture, and felt like I’d walked inside a beautiful, varnished, giant log, or a religious incarnation of the Colossus rollercoaster at 6 Flags. If there’s one thing this town has, it’s lots of lumber.

I also got introduced to the production folks at PCS yesterday, and am meeting with the costume designer today. Research is taking me to the public library, to the Oregon Historical Society, and, no doubt, to the trees.

Last night I went to the season announcement, too - a packed mainstage full of people heard the PCS artistic director announce his plans for 08-09. I was very happy to hear that they included Nancy Keystone’s next installment of APOLLO.

In other news, through a great effort of will, and after consulting every single member of my family who I could get on the phone, I decided not to turn in another application for a directing program which would have taken place this late spring / early summer. It was a hard decision to make, but the right one, I think, since I want to have time to work on these scripts in progress.

I’ve never before in my life had the luxury of two different composers excited to work on two different scripts, and it seems just wrong to disregard their free time by filling up every single second with directing jobs. I have to trust that working more in playwriting can only help my self and my career, and that these directing gigs will be there, to come back to, if writing doesn’t work out.

It’s hard to do, though, because I remember vividly that one year ago, I couldn’t even have been a candidate for these gigs. Now I’m in a position to turn them down, or to not consider them - to think that there are other things more important to do. My life changes so quickly.

After I had decided it, I talked to the composer for 13 WAYS, Chris F., and found out that the dates of this program were the exact ones in which both of our schedules left us free! He said to me, “If you can’t believe that you did something, it’s probably the right thing.”

Another sign came from the oracles later that evening. At the season announcement, the artistic director offhandedly joked: “The first play this season is a Greek tragedy…where everyone dies…Just kidding! No one would come!” He then announced that it was GUYS AND DOLLS.

I think that I and CF have a chance of bridging that perception gap between Greek plays as boring and full of death, and musicals.

Because the Greek plays are musicals - musical dramas with choruses in them - and if we could bring those two worlds together, maybe the Greek plays could be as popular as they once were, and as musicalized. If we can enliven the choruses, the plays will be irresistible again. It’s a huge undertaking of translation and adaptation, and of new composition, but I think that in CF I’ve found someone with as much hubris as myself. And we’re going to take it on.

Sometimes A Great Portland

After a day of travel, I’m awake and alive in beautiful downtown Portland, blogging from the cafe at Powell’s on 11th, and there is no more snow. In fact, it’s so warm I don’t have to wear a jacket. The light looks like San Francisco, especially in the afternoons, and it’s like I can tell, in my bones, that the Pacific Ocean is closer than it’s been in months.

I checked into my apartment, walked around the Pearl District, wandered into a free reading of a play being considered for next year’s season at PCS, did yoga until my head felt like it was going to fall off my spine, and am generally catching up on weeks of backlogged business since before the Convergence and Denver.

I miss Robert & Caitlin, and I had a moment of loneliness when I found myself in my artist housing, with nothing to do but unpack and start prepping for the next show. But it’s so, so great to be back on this coast. And my apartment has a blender, a luxury I’ve wanted since last April.

Talked to Ron Allen, too. He’s very excited about the EYE MOUTH opening at NOTE this Wednesday.

This show (SAGN) marks one year of freelance assistant directing. And one of the things I’ve learned, the hard way, is to always get to town much earlier than needed, so you can settle in. We don’t start rehearsals till the 4th of March. Plenty of time to read the collected works of Kesey.

What was your first Shakespeare, and how has it affected you?

I have a theory, which probably derives from Harold Bloom, that we are directed in the course of our work as theater artists in the English-speaking world by the first Shakespeare play we ever saw. (If it was Bloom’s theory, it would expand to include all people, theater artists or otherwise.)

I tested this theory on two of my Convergence colleagues. Sure enough, we all had different answers - Robert had seen HAMLET first, which is remarkable. (I’ve never seen a live production of HAMLET.) Tony saw ROMEO & JULIET.

The very first Shakespeare I saw was MIDSUMMER, at the Theatricum outdoors. I remember these things from it:

- Puck swinging in on a rope from an enormous oak tree. The element of surprise. The feeling that the stage was alive with actors, that anyone might jump out of any crevice. That the ground, the hills, the walls were exploding with language.

- “But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so.”

- the lovers running through the twisted paths of a Topanga Canyon hill.

- the fairies saying “And I. ” “And I.” “And I.” (A chorus?)

- Bottom’s mask of a donkey’s head.

- The Mechanicals. “O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall.”

- laughing so hard that my face hurt.

- “If we shadows have offended” - the fantastic power embodied in that one actor, who was carrying all the threads of the play lightly in his mouth.

- Rhyme.

MIDSUMMER is about magic and love and language games, and I think I could even argue that it’s a landscape of imitation - between people and semihuman god-things, people and animals. Imitation being, of course, the founding principle of the improvised chorus. And it’s set in Athens, too. Which takes me back to the Greeks.

So I can derive all of my influences from it. I think I derive the other half from the film of “The Little Mermaid,” especially the fish-choruses.

SOS will be hosting an informal poll in the comments of this post. Let us (er, me) know what the first Shakespeare you ever saw was. What do you remember of it? Do you think it shaped the direction of your work, or relationship to literature, or theater? If so, how? If not, Harold wants to talk to you.

Stanford announces financial aid enhancements

“Stanford University today announced the largest increase in its history for its financial aid program for undergraduates.

Under the new program, parents with incomes of less than $100,000 will no longer pay tuition. Parents with incomes of less than $60,000 will not be expected to pay tuition or contribute to the costs of room, board and other expenses.”

Who’s…a gladiator theatrical event?

STADIUM DEVILDARE, which is now open at NOTE in Los Angeles, got a nice review in the LA Weekly: “The creativity of co-directors Richard Werner and Karen Jean Martinson’s production makes for jaw-droppingly weird fun. “

I spoke to Rich briefly over the weekend, and he’s really happy with how the show turned out. I’m so proud of him. This production has been a long time coming. It. Must. Be. Seen. Like, if you’re in LA and you don’t go to see this, you’re so crazy.

“Within the limitless confines of the Stadium, contestants battle for the ultimate prize, the suit of Guts ‘N Glory, a protective armor that will enable a warrior to confront and defeat America’s greatest enemy - a cipher known only as G*dzilla X. Enter a parallel game universe where we find a reflection of our own world, where familiar situations explode with violence and the showpower of extreme events. Root for your favorite contestant and discover the terrifying secret behind STADIUM DEVILDARE!”

Fri/Sat 8 pm, Sun 7 pm. (except Feb 24th) through March 23rd.
Tickets: $22; Student/Senior $18
1517 N. Cahuenga (just north of Sunset)
Hollywood, CA 90028

Reservations By Phone: (subject to availability) :
323.856.8611

Parking Info : Arclight Cinemas (enter on Ivar, just south of Sunset) $3.00 will get you parking for the evening. Bring your ticket to the NOTE box office and we will validate.

Sitting on the picket line

After blogging a couple days ago about starting to write an opera/musical verse play with Marian about the Antioch college student strike of 1973, I got a comment from Tim at the Antioch Papers, an open-source archive of Antioch materials, who sent me to this extraordinary 22-minute video, the senior communications project of 1991 Antioch graduate Kirsten Ervin.

She documents the chronology of strike events in a heartbreaking deadpan narration. Most moving to me was the original recording of students singing a takeoff on Sitting by The Dock Of The Bay:

“Well, I left my home in Harlem,
And I came to Yellow Springs -
They called me New Directions,
And they promised me all kinds of things -

But now I’m sitting on the picket line…
Sitting on the picket line…
Sitting on the picket line,
Wasting time…”

The song cut through me. I felt like I could hear the 60s ending. It also confirmed to me how right we both are to think of this as a play with music.

A bit more research this morning also led me to Alexandra Kesman’s blog about trying to save Antioch from its current funding crisis.

Although I’m dying to dive into all of this right now, I think I have to learn from my past overcommittment mistakes and promise to not begin researching, or even looking at, this material until after SAGN opens on April 5th. I need to be in the world of Ken Kesey. I’m going to email Tim and tell him as much, too. But maybe I need to schedule a trip to Ohio in April, before going to New York.

I can’t wait to get started. It’s such an American project, with so much in it about good intentions gone wrong, and the different paths individuals and institutions take for social change.

Marian’s and my ideas also excite me from a formal point of view. Trying to write an opera / musical verse drama that uses formal elements, that has a chorus (the strikers, of course? Yes?), that has both monologues and arias, both verse and prose - with writing and music both of a high artistic level - a project with as much formal diversity in its text and score as political and ethnographic diversity in its cast.

Here’s a summary of the events of the strike and the events pulled from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article in 2007, part of the national press coverage of the projected closing of Antioch College.

“In April of that year [1973] , school President James Dixon and trustees were confronted by poor, inner-city students, known as the “New Direction” class, who worried that the school would renege on its promise to fully pay for their education. When Antioch officials couldn’t satisfactorily guarantee financial support, the students rebelled.

They chained campus buildings and picketed at the entrances. Later came vandalism and firebombs. While the school wasn’t fully closed, since some professors held classes off-campus, the student strike effectively shut down the campus for more than a month, causing an estimated $1 million in lost revenue. The number of applicants for the following school year was down by 50 percent, and enrollment, once at more than 2,000, has been dwindling since.

The school never recovered, physically or financially, from the spring of 1973, former students say.”

(As the curtain rises, someone is taking a shower in the bathroom, the door of which is half open.)

Belatedly, via Rob Kozlowski, the Onion lets you now write to an advice column where you can Ask The Stage Directions To Tennessee Williams’ CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. I like the idea of there being stage directions to direct all of us in our lives. To give a little context. To tell us what our action is, or more likely, our emotion - something we can’t play, can’t do anything with, but is there nonetheless. This is what mine would look like, nine days out of ten:

DARA
(confusedly, as if waking up out of a nightmare drawn by Roz Chast)
What just happened?

Chris Danowski’s BRANDOHEAD stage directions were so lovely that many of the people who worked on that production wanted to somehow have them read aloud or staged. And the piece he wrote as the follow-up to BRANDOHEAD was even more intensely packed with stage directions. Now if only I’d take their advice.