The Great Alexander: 1. think bout it
2. fail at coming up with a name
3. settle for something you thought was shitty
4. get a great idea after its already too late
5. fire everyone in your band, change the name
Friday, December 24, 2010
FROM THE DESK OF SAMUEL Z.
Sz: Alex, how do you come up with a name for a band?
The Great Alexander: 1. think bout it
The Great Alexander: 1. think bout it
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
From West: "Love Everything"
He got undressed immediately and took a cigarette and a copy of The Brothers Karamozov to bed. The marker was in a chapter devoted to Father Zossima.
"Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."
It was excellent advice. If he followed it, he would be a big success. His column would be syndicated and the whole world would learn to love. The Kingdom of Heaven would arrive. He would sit on the right hand of the Lamb.
Miss Lonelyhearts
Monday, December 13, 2010
FROM THE DESK OF SAMUEL Z: "A Confession"
A confession:
I have always wanted to be a stand-up comedian. Watching Patton Oswalt and Louis CK and all those other guys makes me just want to do it more. But I've tried open mic nights and have had little success making people laugh. My sense of humor may be too weird for normal audiences, I reckon.
Thanks for letting me confess this to you. (This is where you say, "You're welcome.")
I have always wanted to be a stand-up comedian. Watching Patton Oswalt and Louis CK and all those other guys makes me just want to do it more. But I've tried open mic nights and have had little success making people laugh. My sense of humor may be too weird for normal audiences, I reckon.
Thanks for letting me confess this to you. (This is where you say, "You're welcome.")
From the Greater World: "Unconstitutional"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/health/policy/14health.html
Now is the winter of our discontent. Unconstitutional, as a word, interested me enough to look it up. And what I found was, despite context, who's to say whose constitution you mean when you use it? It could either be the U.S.'s or your very own.
Now is the winter of our discontent. Unconstitutional, as a word, interested me enough to look it up. And what I found was, despite context, who's to say whose constitution you mean when you use it? It could either be the U.S.'s or your very own.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
FROM THE DESK OF SAMUEL Z.
Yes. This is it. I know what I need to do now. In order to destroy this movie, I need to go back to the creation of this movie.
You'll see.
You'll ALL see!!
You'll see.
You'll ALL see!!
From Charles Ives: "Postface to 114 Songs"
(The text within quotation marks is taken from James Montgomery Bailey, owner of and longtime contributor to the newspaper in Danbury, Conn., the town of Ives' birth. The text outside of quotation marks is Ives' own wording.)
"Some have written a book for money; I have not. Some for fame; I have not. Some for love; I have not. Some for kindlings; I have not. I have not written a book for any of these reasons or for all of them together. In fact, gentle borrower, I have not written a book at all" -- I have merely cleaned a house. All that is left is out on the clothes line; but it's good for a man's vanity to have the neighbors see him -- on the clothes line.
Friday, December 10, 2010
FROM THE DESK OF SAMUEL Z.
I wish I knew the formula for a good performance. The only formula I know is Isaac Newton's: once you start, you can never stop.
That's the scariest part.
That's the scariest part.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
FROM THE DESK OF SAMUEL Z.
I told Matt H. the other day that I was on the verge of giving up. I had just met with Krillion and for the first time had seen the breadth of what it is I hope to do. Ah yes. I have come to this place before. It is the moment in any creative outing when I start to bet against myself.
Every time I complete something (and there aren't many things I have completed when you consider the number of things I think about completing) it comes as a complete surprise.
Every time I complete something (and there aren't many things I have completed when you consider the number of things I think about completing) it comes as a complete surprise.
From Dostoevsky: "Notes from Underground"
Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble -- that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.
(as translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky)
GWAR Posters and Toxic Avengers
These posters inspire me in terms of an aesthetic for Disney Holocaust. I don't claim to know that much about Gwar, or comic books from the 80s, but I like their grit, I like their grossness, their general "fuck-uped-ness" and in the event we ever do a program, I would like the Disney art and this art to have a baby.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
FROM THE DESK OF SAMUEL Z.
Today I am a bad writer. That's what it says right here: "I'm a bad writer." I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget.
I could just as well say, "Maybe I'm a bad writer," or "I feel like I'm a bad writer," but either way the truth will show. I am a bad writer today and that's all there is to it. No Feels or Maybes about it.
I could just as well say, "Maybe I'm a bad writer," or "I feel like I'm a bad writer," but either way the truth will show. I am a bad writer today and that's all there is to it. No Feels or Maybes about it.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Meeting with Krillion
I met with Krillion today. As usual, we disagreed violently about everything we talked about, up until we were forced to agree again. Her point about audience stuck with me. Ask myself who I am doing this for, she suggested, and that will be my audience. Even if it's just me.
A few thoughts on irony
These are some brief thoughts I had a few months ago about irony and it's impact on pop-culture. The meta-narrative of this post is that I'm actually a little hesitant to post these psuedo-philosophy arm-chair intellectual musings, for the simple reason that it's what I actually believe, and I'll seem like a kid trying to "act-smart-but-has-no-first-hand-experience-with-what-the-shit-he's-talking-about". After realizing it's these kinds of fears that hold us back, I submit this for your consideration, Internet, with sincerity and a gentle "fuck off" to the part of me that actually worries about this stuff.
Sincerely yours
DISCLAIMER: I KNOW I'M NOT USING IRONY IN IT'S STRICTEST SENSE, BUT I HOPE THE READER CAN STILL UNDERSTAND IT DEMONSTRABLY
It has been said that we live in an age of irony, and I think I’ve come to understand. America has stayed the same size geographically since Hawaii’s addition in 1959 (and Arizona was the last contiguous state added in 1912), but has increased vastly in population and complexity—think of the transition from farmland, to Jack Kerouac’s sprawling Beat America, to a service economy in the 70s and 80s, to the technological infrastructure of today. I’ve come to think that America today (right at this instant, even) is the singly most complex concept that has ever existed in the world. It’s the largest country with the most mobile population, and thus the number of possible “connections” (people to meet, places to go, things to do) that could be formed is the highest in the world. In science, entropy describes the number of internal micro-states that would still yield the same macro-state-- similarly, I think America has the greatest number of micro-states, the greatest number of possibilities, the greatest entropy, of any nation that has ever existed. There’s a sense that without enough money and time, you could do whatever you want.
Yet as the number of possible connections we could make with others increases, the amount of connections that we actually do make drops off rapidly. In a country where anything is possible, what’s the worth of a stranger that you will never see or notice again in your life? The same mobility that lets us talk to anyone in the country or move anywhere, also prevents us from staying anywhere for too long, makes us wary of investing our hearts in other people who could just as easily move in a month, or other things that could be just as transient. I think it’s a longing for connection that makes irony so appealing.
Living as we do in a “post-x” age, where what we experience is only measured by what came before (x = modernism, industrial, WW2, 9/11, etc.), we can no longer claim innocence or inexperience. It’s implicit that we know what has come before us—we remember the Beatles, the Reagan administration, the first Iraq war, Woodstock, NY, the camps at Auschwitz and Daschau— and have the burden to refer to it. We cannot talk about certain things without immediately calling to mind the past, and therefore cannot claim originality; instead, we refer (sometimes silently, implicitly) to the past. This is no longer the 80s, so you can’t say tubular, radical, or cowabunga without tacitly referring to that time in our past, although some try. More often you hear the speaker exaggerate their voice, to mimic a long-haired stoner California skate-boarder’s, “Radical, man…”— we use irony to separate ourselves from the past, show that we remember and we refer to the innocent past, the dumb past. It is this language of referral that marks the voracious cultural-consumption syndrome of our people I've met, needing to know every reference in order to communicate themselves, and then as their references are co-opted by the mainstream, seek more pure, more obscure, more "indie" objects to refer to for a more pure language. It is this act of distancing through irony that makes the kids so lonely today, as much as I can claim any knowledge about "kids these days".
In a world of brief connections, we eschew innocence in favor of a façade, a “Won’t-get-fooled-again” attitude— we show what is distant from us, what is not us, and never risk rejection or losing the connections we never make. Simultaneously as we parade around, holding the past up for ridicule (Did they really wear wolf t-shirts and zebra stripped pants? They grew their facial hair like this?) we reveal a longing for it’s dumbness, it’s innocence, it’s lack of knowledge. We think we could be as happy as they were if only we could forget, pretend that we don’t remember what comes next; and yet, we do and we can’t forget. Obama is a fundamentally unironic president, and so he is slaughtered at the bully pulpit; Lady Gaga is a fundamentally ironic pop-star, tragic in that she cannot pretend to be unaware of what the public does to it’s pop-stars. It’s the flip-side of the adage that the past was a simpler time, so the present must be more and more complex. We envy the innocent connections that our past selves could have made that we cannot.
Theater is the ultimate medium for connection, because it’s real people right in front of you, which makes it perfect for exploring our addiction to irony. Improv or monologues are even better than Shakespeare for this, because it is real people exposing their thoughts and hearts, working right in front of you and talking about right now. We can’t connect with Shakespeare (and that's okay!) in the way we can connect with a person we can touch, talk to after the show, visit every week, think of while driving, ask how they feel, become friends with, picture falling in love with, remember years later, simply be with in a singular moment together, performer and audience in a theater. As performers, it is our job to connect, so we should encourage the audience to connect by talking about our real lives, explaining our real selves, perhaps even telling our real secrets. This honesty is fundamental to any type of work I want to do, or at least partial honesty, or portions where honesty is apparent. In the simplest sense: I value letting shit get real.
Sincerely yours
DISCLAIMER: I KNOW I'M NOT USING IRONY IN IT'S STRICTEST SENSE, BUT I HOPE THE READER CAN STILL UNDERSTAND IT DEMONSTRABLY
It has been said that we live in an age of irony, and I think I’ve come to understand. America has stayed the same size geographically since Hawaii’s addition in 1959 (and Arizona was the last contiguous state added in 1912), but has increased vastly in population and complexity—think of the transition from farmland, to Jack Kerouac’s sprawling Beat America, to a service economy in the 70s and 80s, to the technological infrastructure of today. I’ve come to think that America today (right at this instant, even) is the singly most complex concept that has ever existed in the world. It’s the largest country with the most mobile population, and thus the number of possible “connections” (people to meet, places to go, things to do) that could be formed is the highest in the world. In science, entropy describes the number of internal micro-states that would still yield the same macro-state-- similarly, I think America has the greatest number of micro-states, the greatest number of possibilities, the greatest entropy, of any nation that has ever existed. There’s a sense that without enough money and time, you could do whatever you want.
Yet as the number of possible connections we could make with others increases, the amount of connections that we actually do make drops off rapidly. In a country where anything is possible, what’s the worth of a stranger that you will never see or notice again in your life? The same mobility that lets us talk to anyone in the country or move anywhere, also prevents us from staying anywhere for too long, makes us wary of investing our hearts in other people who could just as easily move in a month, or other things that could be just as transient. I think it’s a longing for connection that makes irony so appealing.
Living as we do in a “post-x” age, where what we experience is only measured by what came before (x = modernism, industrial, WW2, 9/11, etc.), we can no longer claim innocence or inexperience. It’s implicit that we know what has come before us—we remember the Beatles, the Reagan administration, the first Iraq war, Woodstock, NY, the camps at Auschwitz and Daschau— and have the burden to refer to it. We cannot talk about certain things without immediately calling to mind the past, and therefore cannot claim originality; instead, we refer (sometimes silently, implicitly) to the past. This is no longer the 80s, so you can’t say tubular, radical, or cowabunga without tacitly referring to that time in our past, although some try. More often you hear the speaker exaggerate their voice, to mimic a long-haired stoner California skate-boarder’s, “Radical, man…”— we use irony to separate ourselves from the past, show that we remember and we refer to the innocent past, the dumb past. It is this language of referral that marks the voracious cultural-consumption syndrome of our people I've met, needing to know every reference in order to communicate themselves, and then as their references are co-opted by the mainstream, seek more pure, more obscure, more "indie" objects to refer to for a more pure language. It is this act of distancing through irony that makes the kids so lonely today, as much as I can claim any knowledge about "kids these days".
In a world of brief connections, we eschew innocence in favor of a façade, a “Won’t-get-fooled-again” attitude— we show what is distant from us, what is not us, and never risk rejection or losing the connections we never make. Simultaneously as we parade around, holding the past up for ridicule (Did they really wear wolf t-shirts and zebra stripped pants? They grew their facial hair like this?) we reveal a longing for it’s dumbness, it’s innocence, it’s lack of knowledge. We think we could be as happy as they were if only we could forget, pretend that we don’t remember what comes next; and yet, we do and we can’t forget. Obama is a fundamentally unironic president, and so he is slaughtered at the bully pulpit; Lady Gaga is a fundamentally ironic pop-star, tragic in that she cannot pretend to be unaware of what the public does to it’s pop-stars. It’s the flip-side of the adage that the past was a simpler time, so the present must be more and more complex. We envy the innocent connections that our past selves could have made that we cannot.
Theater is the ultimate medium for connection, because it’s real people right in front of you, which makes it perfect for exploring our addiction to irony. Improv or monologues are even better than Shakespeare for this, because it is real people exposing their thoughts and hearts, working right in front of you and talking about right now. We can’t connect with Shakespeare (and that's okay!) in the way we can connect with a person we can touch, talk to after the show, visit every week, think of while driving, ask how they feel, become friends with, picture falling in love with, remember years later, simply be with in a singular moment together, performer and audience in a theater. As performers, it is our job to connect, so we should encourage the audience to connect by talking about our real lives, explaining our real selves, perhaps even telling our real secrets. This honesty is fundamental to any type of work I want to do, or at least partial honesty, or portions where honesty is apparent. In the simplest sense: I value letting shit get real.
FROM THE DESK OF SAMUEL Z.
The easy thing is to create. The hard thing is to remember.
An average day brings 78 thousand ideas. The difficulty lies remembering them all. An idea book cannot help with this. There is no Moleskine that can fit person's ideas, and it is not merely a matter of page count. Ideas do not fit onto a page, at least in any form that may be useful later. Ideas exist only in the mind and it is there they fester and change, and it is directly from there they are germ cells that spring forth into fully formed (and self-sufficient) adults. Like that Greek godess who was born from Zeus's head, or something.
I can write to myself, "MAKE A NOVEL ABOUT BLOOD CELLS ARGUING WITH THEIR PARENTS" but by then it is too late. By then either the novel has been written or the idea has died completely, or changed completely its guise.
Irving Berlin once said (speaking specifically of music and lyrics) that ideas should not be conceived on paper. The best ideas come on elevator rides and trips in and out of taxicabs. Brad Bird has said it is impossible force inspiration to come. One can only recreate an environment which invites inspiration.
And harder than inspiration is recollection. What has worked before? There have been billions upon zillions upon googelplexes of ideas. Most of these, sadly, have never made it out of the mind. Many have made it from mind to Moleskine at least, but as gravesites, not as ideas. Looking through the gravesites of a fantastic mind, one invevitably compares them to the ideas which happened to make it out. Maybe the fantastic mind was Dostoevsky, and Crime and Punishment was the survivor that left behind a short story entitled "Save the Last Dance for Maurice." Maybe the fantastic mind was nobody at all, but somebody who hoped there would at least be something he could be proud of. To keep an idea book is strictly a habit for the neurotic.
Here is a picture of my idea book:
An average day brings 78 thousand ideas. The difficulty lies remembering them all. An idea book cannot help with this. There is no Moleskine that can fit person's ideas, and it is not merely a matter of page count. Ideas do not fit onto a page, at least in any form that may be useful later. Ideas exist only in the mind and it is there they fester and change, and it is directly from there they are germ cells that spring forth into fully formed (and self-sufficient) adults. Like that Greek godess who was born from Zeus's head, or something.
I can write to myself, "MAKE A NOVEL ABOUT BLOOD CELLS ARGUING WITH THEIR PARENTS" but by then it is too late. By then either the novel has been written or the idea has died completely, or changed completely its guise.
Irving Berlin once said (speaking specifically of music and lyrics) that ideas should not be conceived on paper. The best ideas come on elevator rides and trips in and out of taxicabs. Brad Bird has said it is impossible force inspiration to come. One can only recreate an environment which invites inspiration.
And harder than inspiration is recollection. What has worked before? There have been billions upon zillions upon googelplexes of ideas. Most of these, sadly, have never made it out of the mind. Many have made it from mind to Moleskine at least, but as gravesites, not as ideas. Looking through the gravesites of a fantastic mind, one invevitably compares them to the ideas which happened to make it out. Maybe the fantastic mind was Dostoevsky, and Crime and Punishment was the survivor that left behind a short story entitled "Save the Last Dance for Maurice." Maybe the fantastic mind was nobody at all, but somebody who hoped there would at least be something he could be proud of. To keep an idea book is strictly a habit for the neurotic.
Here is a picture of my idea book:
Sunday, December 5, 2010
From IMDB Quotes: "Aladdin"
Jafar: You're speechless I see. A fine quality in a wife.
Jafar: You've heard of the golden rule, haven't you? Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Cave: Who distrubs my slumber?
Cave: Infidels! You have touched the forbidden treasure! now you will never again see the light of day!
Aladdin: Someday Abu, things are gonna change. We'll be rich, live in a palace, and never have any problems at all.
Jasmine:I've never done anything on my own. I've never had any real friends. (growl) Except you, Rajah. I've never been outside the palace walls. Then maybe I don't want to be a princess anymore.
Sultan: Allah forbid you have any daughthers!
Jafar: You've heard of the golden rule, haven't you? Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Cave: Who distrubs my slumber?
Cave: Infidels! You have touched the forbidden treasure! now you will never again see the light of day!
Aladdin: Someday Abu, things are gonna change. We'll be rich, live in a palace, and never have any problems at all.
Jasmine:I've never done anything on my own. I've never had any real friends. (growl) Except you, Rajah. I've never been outside the palace walls. Then maybe I don't want to be a princess anymore.
Sultan: Allah forbid you have any daughthers!
From MetroMix: "Nightcrawlers"
 |
What are you drinking and why? I’m drinking Stella Artois, honestly, because when I looked at the bar, it was lit up. |
From Kingdom Hearts Wiki: "Agrabah"
The world of Agrabah is basically divided into two parts. The first part is Agrabah itself, where the Sultan's Palace is located. Sora and his party arrive in the Agrabah: Plaza here, where they are confronted by their first enemies in the world. Connecting through a door is Agrabah: Storage, with no enemies and a save point, as well as a few other goodies. Heading north from the Plaza heads to the Agrabah: Main Street; shimmying up the nearby pole will take Sora's group to Aladdin's House and another save point. Continuing north takes them to the Palace Gates, where the massive Pot Centipede battle begins. Heading west from Main Street sends them into the Agrabah: Alley, while entering the high entrance to the east goes into the Agrabah: Bazaar. These areas interconnect on many levels, both high and low.
From Wikipedia: "Agrabah"
Agrabah is a fictional kingdom at the end of the desert where Princess Jasmine, Aladdin and Jafar live. In this town there are also genies, magic carpets, parrots, wizards and thieves. The country is constantly attacked by many events.
The streets and the country are mysterious and dangerous. The market includes many stores, houses, and mosques, with many gardens. But, the nicest place in Agrabah is the palace. The palace has golden vaults, tall white towers, and beautiful gardens. The throne room is the main room of the palace: it is painted blue, with columns and an elephant throne where the Sultan governs his kingdom. The throne room is also used as a hall. The dark room is originally Jafar's secret laboratory, but then Mozenrath use it to enter the palace. Despite being situated in the middle of the desert, the Sultan's palace has every kind of luxury and comfort. One such luxury is having enough water to grow plants. The extensive gardens of the Sultan's palace include all kinds of plants and flowers, and pools with nenúfares and flamingos.
The original story spoke about the conditions that were prevalent during the reign of the Abbassiyyah civilization (after the Rise of Islam), which had Baghdad as its capital. And these “united states” stretched from north western India to Morocco, which borrowed elements from all the corners and produced this rich story.
From Fo: "To Swim Like a Violin"
The actor who has the audience eating out of the palm of his hands is like the virtuoso violinist who no longer has to watch his fingers as he plays, nor even keep an eye on the bow. He feels the notes as they leave the violin, and listens to them as they float back. You will never see a great maestro of violin or piano with his eyes fixed on the keyboard or on the instrument: the instrument has become part of him. In the same way, a skilled mime has no need to watch his own hands or to check their movment. The same should be true of a great actor and his voice or his body.
It is also important to bear in mind the need to keep the level of spray to a minimum. By spray I am not referring to anything produced by the excess of salivation or by pronouncing with excessive emphasis the letters P and B, because in me, for example, that level can be extraordinary. I was really referring to producing spray as in the art of swimming or rowing. In Italian theatre slang, the verbs "to spray" or "to splash" are used to describe actors who declaim and roar on stage. The expression derives from an analogy with bad swimmers, splashing as a small motor boat. The real swimmer can push himself forward in the water without producing needless commotion. He appears to do everything effortlessly; he glides lightly and rapidly, without making a single splash. His power comes from co-ordination and economy of gesture: on the other hand, the unfortunate amateur waves his arms as though they were windmill sails, and beats about wildly, as though whipping several bowls of mayonnaise at the same time. And does not move forward one inch; indeed, he is more likely to drown. The same is true in theatre.
This is not the same as giving less than your best, or performing lazily. I have seen an actor, who shall be nameless, but who had an uncanny resemblance to Vittorio Gassman, walk off stage after a performance and collapse into the nearest chair, completely exhausted, and yet had you seen him on stage at any point during the evening, you would have sworn that he'd had no problem in the world. That is what talent and a command of craft mean.
So, to sum up: to get on top of this business, with dignity, to become a worthwhile man or woman of the theatre, the key is to work hard to acquire those elements of knowledge we have been discussing, and these come from study, from direct observation and from practice. In short, shun prejudice, avoid following fashion if you are keen not to end up on your backside. Be involved with your own times even when dealing with stories from other times. Reject definitions and classifications which purport to give lists of importance -- in other words categories of the Aristotelian type, which would set up a scale of values with tragedy at the top, followed by drama, then comedy and so on down, down down to puppet theatre, acrobats and clowns.
Dario Fo, The Tricks of the Trade
Saturday, December 4, 2010
FROM THE DESK OF SAMUEL Z.
This is a simple question to ask, so I might as well as it: what is the difference between the words play and work? In the English language both words could go to stand for the content of what we produce on a stage, depending on who is in the audience that night and how much say they have in whether or not we do it all again the following night. Really, it could go either way.
But -- really -- which is it?
I want to think that it's work because that validates what I do somewhat. It gives me an answer to the person who asks, "What do you do for work?" Also, if it isn't work, then what reason exists that I should allow it to take up so much of my time and energy? A person should not occupy him or herself primarily with anything but work. And why would anyone come to watch me play?
But then who would come to watch me work? Unless I was some great ice sculptor with some great, bulging arm muscles. More and more I wish I could have studied ice sculpting in grade school, and here I will resist the cliché about ice sculpture programming in our nation's schools.
A month ago, at a house show where I had followed my roommate Leor, I think I may have figured it out. Taking note of the small audience's reaction, it seemed all very clear that work and play have a very close relationship when referring to music. The audience may have been small, but their reaction was large and positive. That is, to my mind, a willingness to sit on the floor without chairs or cushions and listen quietly to someone's guitar songs is a hugely positive reaction. It made me gleeful to see such patience practiced by members of the generation that invented On Demand Cable Television. It made me wonder if such patience could be mined y an artist working in the theater (meaning, of course, myself). Additionally, it made me wonder how many of these On Demand Generationers use semi-colons on a regular basis. That is not pertinent to my point, but it's true I did wonder it.
Most music shows I've been to, comfort has taken second fiddle to the watching of art, under the assumption (at least I assume that someone has assumed this) that the audience members like the music enough and/or are young enough that they will forget about their discomfort entirely. Oppositely, play theaters assume an older audience that will not stand for discomfort. They require cushiony chairs with cup holders (I have seen this) and armrests. So there is not much work that goes into viewing a piece of theater -- by this I only mean to say that an audience will not put up with much in order to view a playgroup they want to see. There is no production of the Bacchae good enough that I would stand through three hours to see.
But meanwhile, how is it fair that jam bands garner audiences willing to endure crowding, suffocating heat, bad weather (if outdoors), etc. if only to see them play?
But -- really -- which is it?
I want to think that it's work because that validates what I do somewhat. It gives me an answer to the person who asks, "What do you do for work?" Also, if it isn't work, then what reason exists that I should allow it to take up so much of my time and energy? A person should not occupy him or herself primarily with anything but work. And why would anyone come to watch me play?
But then who would come to watch me work? Unless I was some great ice sculptor with some great, bulging arm muscles. More and more I wish I could have studied ice sculpting in grade school, and here I will resist the cliché about ice sculpture programming in our nation's schools.
A month ago, at a house show where I had followed my roommate Leor, I think I may have figured it out. Taking note of the small audience's reaction, it seemed all very clear that work and play have a very close relationship when referring to music. The audience may have been small, but their reaction was large and positive. That is, to my mind, a willingness to sit on the floor without chairs or cushions and listen quietly to someone's guitar songs is a hugely positive reaction. It made me gleeful to see such patience practiced by members of the generation that invented On Demand Cable Television. It made me wonder if such patience could be mined y an artist working in the theater (meaning, of course, myself). Additionally, it made me wonder how many of these On Demand Generationers use semi-colons on a regular basis. That is not pertinent to my point, but it's true I did wonder it.
Most music shows I've been to, comfort has taken second fiddle to the watching of art, under the assumption (at least I assume that someone has assumed this) that the audience members like the music enough and/or are young enough that they will forget about their discomfort entirely. Oppositely, play theaters assume an older audience that will not stand for discomfort. They require cushiony chairs with cup holders (I have seen this) and armrests. So there is not much work that goes into viewing a piece of theater -- by this I only mean to say that an audience will not put up with much in order to view a playgroup they want to see. There is no production of the Bacchae good enough that I would stand through three hours to see.
But meanwhile, how is it fair that jam bands garner audiences willing to endure crowding, suffocating heat, bad weather (if outdoors), etc. if only to see them play?
Friday, December 3, 2010
FROM THE DESK OF SAMUEL Z.
There is a kind of new play that develops out of the mind of crazy people. I don’t mean crazy people like you and me are crazy, in our every day lives when something goes wrong, and I don’t even mean crazy like the girl in Girl Interrupted. Crazy people in the theater are another kind of people altogether. That being so, what they share in common with you, me, and the girl from Girl Interrupted is that they obsess over taking risks. They do not stop talking about taking risks. Ever. Even if you ask them nicely. Their daily banter becomes, “What risks have I taken today?” and the answer returns in unison: ”Not enough! Enough is never enough!” They theorize, “It won’t be interesting to watch if you aren’t taking any risks,” and, “You must realize that there are different kinds of risks — there are physical, emtional, METAPHYSICAL risks!!”
Please do not misinterpret what I write here so as to mean that the only people who take risks in the theater are those crazy people I have mentioned. I only mean to say that those crazy people distinguish themselves because they never shut up about it.
One paradox I have found upon reading up on the contemporary theory of live performance lies square between this idea of risk-taking as a centrifugal force and the privilege to perform. What is a risk in this case? I cannot focus my mind long enough to figure that one out. These crazy people, it seems, have bred an entire generation of actors, dancers, singers, performance artists and etc. who idealize the mental state of, say, the tight-rope walker, balancing along the thinnest of lines with certain death awaiting on either side. But, the truth is, I have never heard of a tight-rope walker who has died while tight-rope walking. Surely they have existed, but I imagine there has not existed a great number. The tight-rope walker does not view what she does as a risk, otherwise how stupid would she have to be to try it? And how sick would the circus manager have to be to force her to do it in front of an audience? And how crazy would her tight-rope instructor have to be to let her out into the world looking for tight-rope walking jobs before her pupil was ready? The answer for all three of these questions is: verifiably insane.
For the moment, I am only interested in theater of the sane.
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