Tired? At Cirque du Soleil? Naww.

Two high wire artists, an acrobat, a clown and a trickster between shows on our last day in New York. Next stop: Minneapolis

Coulrophobia and The Fusiform Gyrus

Twenty minutes to showtime.
I give myself ten minutes.
If it’s an eight o’clock show that means I am out in the audience at 7:40 doing clown work as the “House Manager”.
Shaking hands, getting giggles, generally letting my Id run amok.
I’m testing the waters, tiptoeing on the edge of inappropriateness.
Dipping my big toe into the pool of 2600 people. And wiggling it.

To the lady with the plunging neckline:
“Normally I look down on low cut blouses… as much as I can.”

To the gal in a miniskirt:
"Nice legs. When do they open?”

To the bachelorette out for a good time at Cirque with her bridesmaids:
“Stop undressing me with your eyes. Use your hands, like she does.”

I warn people of the glare that may come off the bald head of a man a few rows in front of them and ask kids to keep an eye out for a “balloonatic” that’s on the loose.

(Lee Thompson, also out there with me, is making balloon animals while he searches for victims for his pick pocket number coming up in the second act.)

This all happens before the show has even started. Before the audience has fully arrived. No spotlight, no microphone and it is one of the true perks of this incredible job.

I always try to thank the people in wheel chairs for coming and tell the caregivers sitting next to them how beautiful they look.

The dynamic is delicious. They’re here to have a good time and I’m wearing a ton of (painstakingly applied) make up, a kind of striped clown zoot suit and a wig that looks like two hummingbirds have fought in it for nesting rights.

There can be no doubt by my appearance. I am a clown.

And like Lear’s “all licensed fool”, there is very little that is out of bounds for me.

(Though I did have one kid ask “Are you in the show?” I wanted to say “No kid, I just wear this fright wig and gobs of makeup to help people find their seats.”)

Two masterpieces, one by Picasso.

Coulrophobia

About ninety five percent of the kids out there connect with us clowns much more readily than they may with the amazing acrobats in this show because, well, we are like them: childish.

But there are certain kids, about 5%, who clearly have some very deep form of Coulrophobia. (fear of clowns) running through their viens. One look at my smiling face and they go hysterical.
But not in a good way.

“WAAAHH!!”

And it’s not like they had some traumatic experience with clowns in their young lives, some Stephen King engram branded on their psyche that sends them on a one way ticket to conniption city. Coulrophobia can be an innate, hard wired predisposition and it is quite a thing to behold, let alone cause.

The parents look at me with a look that says “Well that beats us, we just paid a hundred and twenty five dollars so you could traumatize our kid for life. We’ll probably be paying for his therapy for the next ten years. Thanks.”

But the fact remains: a majority of the kids love the clowns in Kooza, but some kids, after one waggle of my insanely arcing eyebrows, are sent into paroxysms of unadulterated terror. Ever cause a spontaneous tantrum in a 5 year old?

I have.

The Mask of Grease and Powder

There have been studies. A hospital in London had to repaint the children’s ward because the circus theme and bright clowny colors were freaking the kids out faster than you can pop a balloon animal with a fistful of thumbtacks.

Apparently there’s something deep seated here and us clowns are depicted as evil in this day and age more often than not.
Heath Ledger’s Joker, the band Insane Clown Posse, the clown spectre from Poltergeist notwithstanding, I wonder when clowns went from empathetic sometimes elegant innocents like Jean Louis Berrault in Les Enfants du Paradis to Tim Curry's malevolent creature in It.

That layer of make up, that fraction of an inch of grease and powder can be enough to curdle the disposition of an impressionable child faster than you can say John Wayne Gacy.

A U-turn on the Mind's Superhighway

Maybe it’s related to the fusiform gyrus.

The fusiform gyrus is the superhighway of the brain along which images from the eye are transmitted by the optic nerve to the visual cortex where the images are processed for perception. It is also described as playing a crucial role in face and body recognition.

The “mask” I wear as both the “House Manager” and the “King of the Clowns” clouds the perception, jangles the fusiform gyrus, plants the seed of fear in some kids. (and adults apparently)

People innately appreciate honesty I guess and when they are confronted with the lie of a false eyebrow or an enhanced leer there is a crack in the fusiform gyrus superhighway. And Coulrotrphobia fills the gap.

“WAAAHH!!”

The word Clown and the adjective Childish have gotten a bad rap. But indeed the role of the clown in society is a sacred office, a naive soothsayer in a complicated world.
Maybe fostering a little of the quality of childishness in our lives would go a long way towards creating a world where honesty is prized over deception. Invention over cynicism and “why not” wins out over “why”.

I remember when I was playing Buckminster Fuller in a one man show and asked a child I sat next to during a performance why humanity was having such a hard time seeing themselves as crew members on “Spaceship Earth”.
The six year old calmly replied “Because the world is run by adults.”
Everyone laughed.

Long live the Clowns.

Signs of Life in NYC

Just a few signs of life as we wrap up our stay in NYC...

Best sign that you've hit the Big (Top) Time.

Welcome to the 2nd Avenue subway construction. Sink or Swim.

Apparently there is a lot of danger in New York City.

Dasha and Natasha warming up.

Dima and Irina cooling down

.
Moonrise on Manhattan.

Heroes, Habits and Making It Crackle

Shiner sings my praises or is saying "NOOO!" I can't remember which.

The Crackle

As performers we all seek it.

It’s a sharpness.
An urgency.
A crispness of delivery.
The unguarded alacrity of thought.
It says “Pay attention audience. Or we will leave you in the dust.”
It’s not about pacing though.
It’s not rushed.
It breathes.
It's a living thing.

It can live in an excruciatingly long pause just as it can live in a flurry of words and action.
And to keep an audience riveted, it is essential.
My fellow clown Jimmy Slonina here at Cirque has a great word for it.
He calls it The Crackle.
And when our bits go well he says
“That was crackly!”

David Shiner worked with us clowns on a recent visit to insure The Crackle Factor was alive here at Kooza.

Heroes

I had spent the morning in the Bronx.

Cirque du Monde, Cirque du Soleil’s outreach program had a few of us out to Hunt’s Point for a break down cruise of perhaps the most environmentally toxic funnels of real estate in the United States where we toured one of the “little victories” these intrepid social worker/activist/clowns have carved out of this ravaged urban landscape.

Sandwiched between a reeking fertilizer factory and the burning smoke stacks of a waste management smelter is a park where kids laugh and play and learn circus skills.

Amid this Industrial wasteland the kids-
(70% of which have extreme cases of asthma from the diesel trucks that they must navigate around to get anywhere)
-spend a few hours after school dodging drive by bullets and the lure of drug dealers to, well, just be kids.The heroes of this story are these young clowns, jugglers and acrobats who come here every day and face the “cooler than thou” teens and pre teens to give them a taste of circus arts and the trust and teamwork these skills entail.

.

We can be heroes, just for one day.

The darkened circles under their eyes are the tell tales of a thousand “Why should I’s” and “I don’t wanna’s”

Then it’s back by dingy subway to the light of the Artistic Tent at Le Grand Chapeteau for my rehearsal with David Shiner.

Breaking Habits

As a director David Shiner can be mean.
In all the right ways.
Mean the way you want your director to be mean.
Like California Shakespeare Theatre director Jonathon Moscone, he cares deeply about the work enough to not be concerned about your perception of him. He wants you to succeed and it might not be all hearts and flowers and nurturing. There might be some deeply entrenched habits that need breaking and David is there to break them.
And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Nowhere was this better exemplified than when we watched a DVD of a previous performance of mine.
On the screen I make a kind of clever, facile and theatrical choice that may have served me well in the theatre world and David pauses the tape-

“No! No! No! No! NO!” he cries and stamps the ground with his foot.
“Why did you do that?”
“Well, I thought-“
“NOO! You’re supposed to be an idiot! You can’t think!”

Maddening as these contradictions seem, the upshot is that my character must always come back to simply being me.
Confused, addled, distractable, excitable, dictatorial, adorable but always coming back to me.

We rework the “Transformation” section of the act-
(The boxer now takes a knock out punch and I get to do a nice rag doll fall. See My Brain Is My Enemy)
–and somehow the work magically goes from replication to actual creation and a wonderful sense of ownership starts to form.
The next night, sweaty, exhilarated, I exit from our first scene and find Shiner exulting me in the tunnel: “That’s it! You rocked it!”

Jimmy and I keeping it crackly.

My job has suddenly become both easier and harder:

Easier because as long as I breathe and have fun and stay in the moment I can always come back to myself as the base character.

Harder because doing that is a very vulnerable and naked way to work.

No artifice.
No theatrical slight of hand.
No display of technique.
No cleverness.
Just me.
Breathing.
Having fun as The King of the Clowns,
In the moment
And making it Crackle.

Nine shows a week.

Victim Work

They call it Victim Work.

It’s when you pull someone out of their comfy seat in the audience, yank them out of anonymity, disorient them with stage light and the attention of an audience and then use them as fodder for comedy.

It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.

The clowns.

Jimmy and I make nice nice with a victim.

Casting at 100 mph.

Selecting a victim is an art.
It’s basically a form of instant psychology.
Casting at 100 mph.

In Kooza I must select a victim with very little preliminary interaction. (see Clown vs. Man and the Animation Barometer) so I have to make some split second decisions that are based on very little information.
And who you select has a lot to do with what you want them to do (or not do) in the act.

For one of the victims in Kooza we need to have someone really normal, even slightly reticent. A kind of everyman.
So a quick profiling checklist goes through my mind in the instant I have to troll the audience for a suitable victim.

Who is he with?

(A dad with wife and kids is more likely to behave than a jock with a date he’s trying to impress.)

What is he wearing?

Unfamiliar footwear and he might not speak English. Is he wearing a jacket? I can use that for a bit.

Is he too enthusiastic?

I have seconds to gage this person and predict his behavior. If he’s too pumped up or too extroverted he could kill the act.
He’s no longer a victim. He’s a fellow performer. I cast him.
And I can fire him. If he’s too crazily enthusiastic as we step onstage I immediately fire him (with a joke) and go for my second choice.

Is he capable of doing what I’m going to ask of him in the act?

I pulled a victim on last Sundays matinee.
(After firing my first choice when he pumped his fist in the air.)
We were doing the duo version of the “Clown Magic” act.
At one point Jimmy Slonina and I are skipping around the perimeter of the stage with the victim between us. The audience couldn’t hear it but I distinctly heard the victim say “You’re killing me. You’re killing me.”
Apparently he had a bad back and clearly was not going to be able to lie down as is required of this particular victim. That’s lousy casting.

Like anything it’s a practice.

I had plenty practice at it at Teatro Zinzanni as Chef Cecile B. DeGrille where I would pull victims into some of the wild scenarios I developed with comedy mastermind Stefan Haves.
Sometimes, as in the Samurai sketch I used to introduce the salad, or the bullfighter bit I used for the main course, I’d have three victims working at the same time, each with their own specific casting parameters.

At both Kooza and Zinzanni you have the possibility that your victim is too drunk to follow simple orders. At Zinzanni you have the added factor that the person you plan to use has gone to the bathroom and you have to quickly go with your second choice.
(No chance of that at Kooza, the show is simply too consistently electrifying for anyone to get up and go.)

Clown prince Christian Fitzharris and master pick-pocket Lee Thompson actually keep logs on the victims to hone their craft. (and remember the crazy highlights.)

Human Sacrifice

Victim work is a form of Group Schadenfreude.
Clown Crime perpetrated in plain sight.
As I reach down and clasp his hand, my other hand imperceptibly controlling his elbow, I watch one person gulp with fear while 2,599 others giggle with relief that it’s not them.

Last Thursday I was pulling up a victim who resisted, saying “I can’t. I have asthma.” I felt like saying “I have asthma too buddy and I’m the one pulling you up here!” but I let him go. Better to move on to some other lucky victim.

So a Thank You to all my victims. I realize they may never have been onstage in front of 2600 people and it may be a bit discomfiting to be thrust into the sharp glare of the follow spot, but when you see their families greet them when they return to their seats you know you’ve given that family a memory they may never forget. They saw a loved one thrust up onto the Alter of Comedy. Sacrificed for the funny.

With me.

Clown vs. Man and the Animation Barometer

They call it Animation.

Fifteen minutes before Kooza starts several members of our company mingle, provoke, spill popcorn on, greet and gambol with the expectant audience during a segment we call Animation.

Animation is clowning at its most naked and unadorned. And a lot of it is one on one, interpersonal encounters.

Clown vs. Man.

And it’s one of my favorite parts of doing Kooza and the show hasn’t even started yet.

The word Animation comes from the Latin root animatio, which literally means “a bestowing of life.”

Animation is a lot like pushing the roller coaster up the steep part of the track so the audience can spend the next two and a half hours going “Whee!”

Animation is the time we use to infect the audience with the antic spirit. In which we preload a camaraderie of silliness one person at a time.

Animation is when we inoculate the patrons from the drudgery of their daily lives, awaken their inner child and nudge their funny bones.

And while we do this we are working.

While we mine for comic ore in plain site with no fanfare we are sussing the sensibilities and shopping.

Shopping for future victims.

(Often just touching a shoulder or shaking a hand gives you all the information you need to make a selection for later on.)

Fitzharris, me, Slonina and Gatto prepare to Animate.

There is little hoopla in Animation. We just go out there under the glare of the houselights. Well, maybe a little help from our friends up on the “masts” manning the follow spots doesn’t hurt.

We take with us a few props.
Among them,
A jack hammer,
An air blower,
Balloons,
A wig,
A bull horn,
Hair spray
And a constantly malfunctioning remote control.
These are enlisted not only to warm the audience up but to gauge their temperature as well.

Our Trickster Mike Tyus uses their reaction to my opening announcement in Animation as a barometer of what this particular audience is going to be like. And most nights how Animation goes is a good indication of the unique character of that particular audience. And every audience, like every individual out there, is different.

Next: Victim Work

Behind the Bataclan

There are plenty of ways to get distracted around here...

Caught in a calm reflective moment Behind the Bataclan.

Caution: Men On Wire. Swordfighting.

Heather Wrangles Rodents.

Julie hangs out.

Anthony Gatto checks messages in "The Fart Parlor."

My Office.

A Rare Mis-Steak

Any actor will tell you.

It’s a cardinal rule.

It’s right up there with “Know your lines” and “Don’t bump into the furniture.”

I think it’s even before “Make sure your zippers up.”

Jimmy Stewart famously added “Wear your own shoes and speak the truth."

But all actors agree one of the most fundamental rules is “Always check your props.”

I guess I was distracted.

In Kooza I use what looks like a big T-bone steak as a slapstick to keep the other two clowns in check. In the early “Clown Magic” sequence the steak is put into service to slap not only my madcap sidekicks but also is given to a Volunteer/Victim from the audience to hit me myself.

The slaps are accompanied by a fantastic sound effect that sounds like a punch from one of those early kung fu movies. Our bandleader Seth Stachowski and his near clairvoyant timing ensures each hit is supported with a resounding “Krunck!”


But if you forget the steak…

I imagine the look on my face as I reached into my “Butt Pouch” for the steak and found nothing could only be described as “Blanched.”

Talk about Pointe Fixe!

With no steak I went with what was handy: My Hand.
(It was doing nothing there on the end of my arm so I figured why not?)

This worked well enough- and Seth was right on it as usual but then it came time to hand the weapon- which was supposed to be a steak but was now my hand- to the Victim.

Houston, we have a problem.

Normally I hand the steak to the Victim and say “My turn!” and she slaps me with it. Too far in now to abort, I placed her hand around my wrist and hit myself in the face!

Have you heard the sound of 2600 people cocking their heads in confusion?

I have.

Apparently word of my gaff spread through the big top like a wildfire on speed. By the time I made it backstage I had already heard:

“Don’t worry, Ronnie. It’s a rare mis- steak!”

“Where’s the beef?”

“We’re just ribbing you!”

While waiting behind a curtain before my next entrance a technician emerged out of the darkness and asked “Are you a vegetarian?”

At lunch between shows (They were of course serving steak) Riccardo, one of the culinary geniuses who prepare our meals came over to ask if I needed any more helpings, giggling his way back to the kitchen.

Forgetting to check my props is far from a common thing with me. I must have been just too distracted by all that is going on back here behind the Bataclan. At least that’s the excuse I’m using.

Always check your props.

Take a Load Off, Your Highness

Finally on the throne.

The Double Dark

They talk about it with reverent tones here at Cirque.
The Double Dark.
At first I thought it was some snazzy gourmet chocolate bar.
(People talk about chocolate in these same hushed tones nowadays. Simple pleasures I guess)
At Cirque Double Dark is the magical code word for not one but two days off. In a row. Imagine.

With one day off all you have time for is laundry, an Epsom salt bath and a quiet evening of rest and recuperation. Two days off and you might even be able to see a little of the city you’re in.
Double Darks are rare at Cirque. But much appreciated.

I tried to squeeze the most out of my Double Dark by seeing two Broadway shows (from the rafters) and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where I spent four blissful hours of pure gawk.
(I did not do my laundry. Maybe next Monday.)

After paying five dollars to get in- (I affected my best Serbo-Croatian accent and said “Enough, this?” and offered a crumpled fiver. The bored kid at the ticket counter rolled his bespectacled eyes and said “Sure.” And I was in. He may or may not have heard me when, not three paces away, I asked a kindly docent in perfect English “Would you be so kind as to direct me to the Japanese Armaments?”

I live for Danger.

And it did say “suggested” in fine print under the ticket prices.

An Actual Twitter

Brittle Mystery

For the next four hours I floated amongst the masterworks, my body a pedestal for the squishy sculpture that is my brain

"Come back! I'll knee you to death!"

A strange dance is under way here at the Met on this quiet Tuesday afternoon. People are distractedly swirling about the art in eddies of quiet, willful confusion.
And I noticed something interesting. Not about the art. But about the way people look at art. What it does to their bodies.

Why do people cock their heads to one side like a cocker spaniel puppy hearing a harmonica for the first time?

Is it to help the sweet honey of the golden mean pour into their being?
Are they trying to angle themselves to better receive the brittle mystery of beauty as it spills off these masterpieces?

Why do I see so many people stand with their hips cocked, one toe poised and lower lips bit in consternation?

And when we look at art is the art looking back at us?

Is that why we tilt our heads just so?

Hmmm.

They say the greatest gift you can give another human being is your attention.

Is the same true of art?

The Man Who Understands by Klee

The Prison

While we ogle away, are the paintings busy envying our three dimensionality?

Do the Etruscan dancers tire of endlessly circling the urn like goldfish in a bowl?

Immortals from the Han Dynasty, partying.

Does that elegant katana long for battle with the Celtic sword crucified across the hallway, only a couple of layers of plexiglass separating them. Forever.
(Or until the exhibit changes.)

Perpetual Grin Lock

In the Oceania wing I watch NYU students lose staring contests with Whale Masks. On the second floor Caravaggios are pointing out stigmatas to a woman in a wheel chair and Modiglianis mope and look down their impossibly long noses at Dutch tourists. I swear a Burgher of Calais winked at me as I passed.

I stroll past all this drama in a state of engorged bliss, knowing each masterpiece may indeed represent the work of a lifetime. Or two. Or three.
Lifetimes distilled into an object.

Immortal.

Human hands carved this wood grain into gossamer, forged that steel into filigree.

To walk these halls is to be a witness to a kind of alchemy. The alchemy of turning marble into muscle, pigment into flesh.

Welcome to the Met.
A prison where immortals hunch on pedestals and hang on walls, where the admission price is only suggested and visiting hours are six days a week.

Tilt your head.

Picasso's The Actor
"I do so to have an ass."

The Jaw Grind Disposition and Some Accidental Masterpieces

New York, New York
I won't go back
Indelible reminder of the steel I lack
I gave you seven years
What did you give me back?
A jaw-grind disposition to a panic attack.

Mike Doughty of the band Soul Coughing wrote these lyrics and they always resonated with my relationship with the Big Apple. But Manhattan was on her best behavior Monday and I got some shots.

Accidental Motherwell

The King of fire hydrants

Accidental DeKooning

Accidental Rothko

Wanted: Very small crew.

Monkey Time, Danger and the Meaning of Applause

Performers Busy Not Talking About The Obvious.

They don’t talk about it.

It’s like that weird Uncle who lives in the attic that nobody talks to.
But He’s there.
He comes down for meals and sits at the table, silent and brooding.
But There.
I’m talking about Danger.
Risk.
The frightening possibility of serious physical damage.

You see it in the suddenly stern caste that comes over the usually smiling face of Yao Deng Bo just before he steps into the tunnel that will lead him to the stage where he will balance on one hand on a three story stack of chairs for 2,600 people.

You see it in that moment of readiness when Marina Tikhonenko signals by slapping her thighs while poised on the low end of the teeterboard, both legs strapped onto a single 8 foot stilt.

You see it in the no-nonsense demeanor of the black clad riggers who must set up the double-decker tightrope that the Dominguez Brothers must dance, jump rope and sword fight upon while we clowns cavort below, shooting confetti cannons at the distracted audience.

You see it in the way the fearless Columbian Carlos Loaiza goes through an elaborate ritual of crossing himself in the mirror before stepping into Le Grand Chapetau to perform upon The Wheel of Death.

And eventually you hear it in the applause (and screams) of the crowd. The relief they feel when the act is done and they can finally exhale and pick their tongues up off the floor.

Gifted With Guts

Watching the Wheel of Death is a lot like witnessing a car/train/plane crash all rolled into one that lasts eight minutes and nobody gets killed.

Kooza has lots of contraptions and none is more awe (and “Ooo”) inspiring than the Wheel of Death. The Wheel of Death presumably earned it’s name on the basis that it is shaped like a wheel and if you fly off it (perhaps because you’re jumping rope on the outside!) you will risk death.

All these performers are gifted in unimaginable ways. The Colombians seem to be gifted with a special Wheel of Death requirement: They are gifted with guts.

Guns and Bungee cords

In a way all this danger floating around the big top takes the pressure off me. If I drop a line or screw up a timing I risk killing the laugh. If the guys on the Wheel of Death miss a handhold or the tight-rope walkers miss a foot step they risk killing themselves.

Sure there will be pressure on me as I finally start performing in the show next week and lots of eyes will be on me (including directors Luc Trembley and Melanie LeLande’s, stage manager Vera Zuyderhoff”s and about 2,600 others) but I have close to 30 years of performing under my dance belt so my knees won’t be rattling too terribly loudly.

Because the fact remains: a lapse in concentration for me, a momentary falter in the flow of energy- (and believe me fifteen minutes of clowning takes more energy than most three act plays I’ve done) –and I risk losing the audience. The same lapse in one of these death defying acts in Kooza and they risk losing their lives.

Even master pick-pocket Lee Thompson risks more than me out there. Sunday night, (Mother’s Day no less) Lee was busy stealing the watch, wallet, cell phone and tie off a volunteer/victim he pulled from the audience and discovered the guy was an under cover cop with four- count ‘em four- guns on him.

Mike Tyus, who plays our Trickster takes risks with every amazingly acrobatic dance move. One wrong step and his hamstring could snap like a worn out bungee cord. (No Joke- it happened to original Trickster Jason Berrent in a dress rehearsal. He fortunately recovered and later returned to the show.)

Which brings us to:

Monkey Time

Apparently it used to be every night. They’ve cut it down to Sunday nights only. For a half an hour after the show.

Sunday Night. Time to Go (rilla)

Monkey time is when the entire company lets all the pent up pressure of performing these daring feats, from Anthony Gatto’s every mid-air grasp of his nine- count ‘em nine- rings to Yulia Korosteleva’s mid-air clutch of the trapeze- when all the demands of that laser like concentration is released and it's time to howl like a monkey. And these folks can really do some serious Monkey Time.

Monkey Time hits and the dressing rooms in the Artistic Tent sound like a casting call for the riot scene in Planet of the Apes, only much, much more wild.
My first Monkey Time and I was swept up in the frenzy as well.
I had yet to perform with these guys but the feeling of release was infectious.

Sunday night.
Monkey Time.
Then a day off.
Then it all begins again next Tuesday.
The Danger
The Risk.
The Applause.

Marian Taga, who can support four fully grown men. Literally.

Applause

Besides the obvious (the paycheck) these people are taking these risks for something Zen-like in its simplicity: the sound of two hands clapping.

Applause (according to Webster's)
–noun
1. hand clapping as a demonstration of approval, appreciation, acclamation, or the like.
2. any positive expression of appreciation or approval; acclamation.

It is because of these risks that Kooza is more than a show.
It is an affirmation of life.
Every person in the audience walks their own personal tight rope. We risk death every time we cross the street or step in the tub.
(perhaps an explanation of my preference for showers)
But when we applaud these skilled daredevils perhaps we are applauding ourselves.
Applauding the human penchant to face our own Wheel of Death, to live our lives fully and somehow make it to Monkey Time.

Danger lives in your attic.
Your next breath is the applause.

Bending Time

Mastering The Pointe Fixe

Georges Bigot of the Theatre du Soleil called it an arête.
The Japanese use it in Kabuki where they call it a Mie, (pronounced Mee- ay) and Phillippe Gaulier calls it a “check”.
Jessica Kubzansky, who directed me in The Thousandth Night and is the Artistic director of the Boston Court Theatre used to call it “The Oops Moment”.

Call it what you like, it is one of the most fundamental weapons in the actor’s arsenal and is de rigueur for effective clowning especially in the 2500 seat Grand Chapeteau that houses Kooza.

Simply put, the pointe fixe is a break in the action. A momentary silence in the cacophony of movement. A caesura in the flow of thoughts and movement that can be used to clarify, protract and/or frame the tsunami of funny that the Clown rides.

It is a delicate thing.
It can be as brief as a heartbeat.
It can be elongated like a tintype pose.
And the Clown/Artist must select its placement with care.

It is a present, active kind of snapshot.
It is a still inserted in the home movie of your performance.
It is a chance for the audience to receive your state without the distraction of movement.
Every actor knows movement trumps words in the game of directing the audience’s attention and pointe fixe trumps movement.

What it is not:
It is not a freeze.
It is not neutral.
It is not a hold.
It is not an “aside” though it can serve as one.

The pointe fixe lets the audience in on the human mechanism’s decision process.
For example:
I’m skipping along, happy.
I step on a tack. I’m angry.
The pointe fixe goes between the two emotions.
You see little kids do it when they fall on their face.
They take a little pointe fixe decision moment: Anybody around? No? Move on.
Mommy there? Concern etched on her face?
Cry.

It’s interesting.
The facility I have to go from one step to the other; happy to sad, angry to afraid and back again doesn’t help me here. The pointe fixe lives between these states and I must learn to honor it.

It demands unbiased sincerity. It is a chance to check in with the audience even as the audience checks in on you.

No Ideas

Georges Bigot used to emphasize entering the stage with “no ideas”.
(Again with the nakedness)
Pointe fixe is not the decision, it is the naked moment before the decision is made.

It’s almost mathematical. Action (a) happens. Action (b) is the reaction. Between (a) and (b) is the pointe fixe. And inside the pointe fixe dwell a series of questions:
What just happened? Has it ever happened to you out there in the audience? Or anything like it? What should I do next? I have no idea.

Bending Time

Time on stage is of course different from real time. (Anyone who has gone up on a line or waited for a missed entrance can attest to that.)
With the pointe fixe you can bend time to your will.

One of my fellow clowns in Kooza, Jimmy Slonina, has a brilliant moment of pointe fixe- with one of our Volunteer/Victims no less.
The audience member is enlisted to skip joyously around the stage. After a terrific fall Jimmy confronts the victim whom he blames for his tumble. He walks over, plants his feet and… pointe fixe.
The laugh that slowly mounts there to a crescendo is a result of Jimmy, the Victim and the entire audience living in a protracted pointe fixe.

The Big Gulp

Other examples of pointe fixe:
Buster Keaton’s face is in a perpetual pointe fixe.
Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver:
“You talkin’ to me? (pointe fixe)
”You talkin’ to me? (another pointe fixe)
Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon:
The evil Mr. Han slashes his chest. He tastes the blood with the tip of his finger, (pointe fixe) and assumes his fighting pose.

Buster and Bruce Utilizing the Pointe Fixe

Now I see them everywhere. Done well you might not even notice them, but they’re there.
Abused, they can sap a performance of its rhythm and flow. Used well, they are invaluable stepping stones on the path to a complete and joyful experience for the audience.

If the goal is to help your audience digest every morsel of your performance, the pointe fixes are the gulps.

The Killing Floor and the Amazing Grand Chapeteau

The Killing Floor

A break in my rehearsals for Kooza and a moment with the empty stage under Le Grand Chapeteau, the big top here on Randall’s Island, New York City. This is the killing floor I will be sharing with the 50 other amazing athlete/artists in this amazing show. Up center is the Bataclan, the three story, moving set piece that houses the band and from which all of Kooza spills and eventually returns.

Amazing

If the word amazing was not in the dictionary it would have had to be created to describe this show.

Also amazing are the two other clowns I will be working with on this glossy plateau. Christian Fitzharris, a dimpled delight and master of mirth and Jimmy Slonina, a brilliant clown/actor with more chops than a 100 Jackie Chan movies.

Christian and Jimmy put on their war paint.

Together with comic genius Gordon White, they are generously helping to incorporate me into the show and no actor on Earth could wish for a better group of guys to work with. Or a better place to clown around in. Le Grand Chapeteau indeed.

Cole Slain

I've died and gone to minced cabbage heaven.
Cross it off my Bucket List.
I have tasted The Best Cole Slaw on the Planet.
Who woulda thunk it was here waiting for me in Montreal?
(At Ste. Hubert's on Rue St. Denis around the corner from the Mont Royal metro stop.)
And how could they have overlooked this place in the annals of cole slaw lore?
A cole slaw that perfectly exemplifies the three sacred C's required of great cole slaw:
Crispy, Creamy and Cold.
My work is done here.
I leave for New York at Dawn.

My Brain Is My Enemy

They Call It A Charivari.

Kooza! has one toward the beginning that includes human pyramids, bodies flying through the air and a "crash bash" – a daring dive into a circle of fabric inspired by the "Nalukauq," the traditional Inuit game of "Blanket Toss" and the landing mats used by firefighters.
Dating back to the Middle Ages, the Charivari was a boisterous parade, a raucous coercion sometimes used by the given community to shame or mock miscreants in a noisy spectacle. Charivari comes from the Greek kerebaria or “heavy head” (as in headache.)

I had my own personal Charivari after working on my clown bits with Luc Trembley, Serge Roy and the one and only David Shiner in the bright confines of Dance Studio 2 here at Cirque du Soleil headquarters in sunny Montreal.

Having David Shiner teach you clowning is like having Micheal Jordan help you with your jump shot, Mario Andretti teach you how to drive or Barack Obama teach you how to give a speech. There’s a mastery there and in Shiner’s case the information comes out in these hilarious spurts in which he can’t contain himself and jumps up and dives in, his passion for the work and performance savvy zinging out of him. This guy knows his craft.

Naked

Among clown circles (rings?) the exacting process of “finding your clown” is given a lot of lip service. It always struck me as a little touchy-feely but I was wrong.
The clown discipline-
(yes, it is a discipline. Just as much a discipline as the trapeze artists, hand to hand balancers and tumblers that I see every day here at Cirque headquarters practice.)
–requires one to find a nakedness and a naiveté that my traditional theatre work has only rarely asked of me. It is no longer my job to create a character and put him on like a suit of clothes. Indeed I must unlearn everything I know. Shiner exhorts me to bring myself into the mix. To find my own clown by embracing the raw, vulnerable and unpretentious Ron that can play simply and naively with none of the finely wrought self-consciousness that traditional theatre requires. No showing off- just do, no display- just play.

Finding Ronolo

Nothing worse than a clown trying to be funny. The act of trying denotes effort and nothing kills humor like effort. The great clowns don’t try to walk funny. They just walk and it is funny. Because they’ve found their clown.

Shiner says he had a major breakthrough when early in his career he saw some footage of himself clowning. He hated it. He was trying to be someone else. It was then that he decided to be himself- infused with the antic spirit of the clown- but himself. And if you watch him you see an authenticity in his performances that bears this out. And that became the place he could always return to if he got in trouble: himself.

Roch (whose clown name is Rocko) says it might even help in finding my clown to give him a name. My aunt Lindy, who along with my uncle Dave Shapiro could make me laugh ‘til I ached as a kid, used to call me Ronolo. Maybe that’s my clown name.
Roch suggests I’m not playing The King or The House Manager: my clown is playing at being these people. I don’t have to find them. I have to find me.

Oh The Things I Have To Unlearn.

The role I’m playing, “The King of the Clowns” is ostensibly what they call a “white” clown, meaning he has high status, (or thinks he has) sees himself as the Top Banana and often serves as the straight man for the red or Auguste clown. But what Shiner and the brilliant Gordon White have created is a white clown with deep rooted red clown tendencies. He’s the boss, but he’s the idiot boss.

Freeze!

My character uses a remote control device throughout the show to control the madness and mayhem that flies and bounces and swings around his tent “kingdom”. In one sequence, the remote gets away from him and is picked up by one of the other clowns. He uses it on me like a kind of channel switcher only I’m the one he’s switching. It’s a lot like the old improv game of Freeze in which you must justify whatever pose you’re in at the moment the leader yells freeze and come up with a new character and situation to suit the new pose. This section is completely open to my interpretation and I’m thrilled it’s part of the show- also it’s a kind of revenge of the red clown on the white.

Play

First I thought I’d do a kind of Benjamin Button kind of thing, transforming from decrepit old man through healthy youth to gibbering baby and back (in about 15 seconds) but that’s too intellectual. Shiner pressed the point that the big top is not the theatre and it’s demands are simpler, more elemental and the images must be immediately recognizable. The circus audience should not be asked to think, only to enjoy. He reminds me that this show will eventually tour in countries where English isn’t the second language- or even the fourth or fifth. The words I was using to help comprehension are worthless in this medium.

So I thought a journey of evolution might be fun. Do a kind of Darwinian graph from amoeba to man and back but again too much thought process required. I could lose 2500 people in an instant while trying to show off in this way. Showing off my skills of transformation, something that has served me well in a career in theatre just obscures the clowns fundamental goal: to play and play simply. As Roch my clown coach concluded, as a little kid playing I wasn’t concocting clever scenarios, I was just playing at being the dog and that was enough, is enough for the clown who can find a world of possibilities in the simple act of play.

The Mastodon

The first clowns must have stood before the campfire and enacted the hunt. They played both the man and the mastodon. Why not embrace that and do some animal work?

So animals. Alright. Shiner has me improvise. He does the beep of the remote and with each beep I change. A komodo dragon appears, breathing fire. An ape throws a bone high into the air a’ la 2001. A dung beatle cleans its antennae. I’m on to something. Shiner knows I like martial arts and suggests a boxer in the middle of all this. A dash of corny Shakespearean actor arises. We borrow from Gordon’s bag of tricks and the witch from Wizard of Oz melts in a puddle and Voila!
The beginnings of something playful and naked and universal has begun to take shape.

15 Second Life Story

But something interesting has happened. This 15 second bit could be seen as my life story. I loved dinosaurs as a kid (and what kid doesn’t) so I start with the Tyrannosaurus Rex. I enjoy martial arts so the Boxer makes sense. I used to do an ape in my formative years as a street performer in Europe to gather a crowd. My dedication to Shakespeare is well documented in these pages and the melt as Dorothy’s nemesis is just me joyously borrowing from my current influences. My life distilled into 15 seconds. Now I’ve just got to stay out of my head long enough to keep it simple.

My brain is my enemy.

It's Good To Be The King

Until you put on the clothes it doesn't quite seem real. That's why my first actual costume fitting was so inspiring. After training in the morning my afternoon was spent with costume assistant Coroline Chapados and a hell of a lot of bobby pins. But here at Cirque the fitting room is equipped with theatrical lighting so Voila! (love that word.) After a lot of adjusting and tugging and tightening I finally got a gander at what I'm going to be wearing as "The King of the Clowns" & "The House Manager" in Kooza!
And I learned something too.
Apparently epaulets are like cat nip to women.

Pinch Me Hard

Pinch me.
Pinch me hard.

I want to know this is real but it feels like a fabulous dream.

After my plane was delayed at the San Francisco airport, (A Ron-delay?) sitting on the tarmac for two and a half hours while the captain occasionally gave us status reports:

“A fifteen cent bolt was replaced with the wrong one back at the hanger so we’re looking for the right one. We checked the red tray in the parts box but the paperwork didn’t match up so we went back to the hanger and we’re checking the parts locker over near the vending machine we have. There’s an outside chance we’ll find it in the gray cabinet at the bottom drawer- We’ll keep you posted.”

That is a direct quote.

Presumably they give you all this detail to put your mind at ease.
Dear American Airlines,
It doesn’t work.

“This is your captain speaking again. We’ve sent someone over to the supply room on the south side of the runway and we’re in contact with him via walkie-talkie. His name is Carl and he’s wearing a red baseball cap because it is a bit nippy out there-“

Will you shut up?!

So we finally get under way but it’s too late for me to make my connection at Ohare so I spend the night in Chicago and fly out to Montreal the next day.

Luckily getting my work permit goes off without a hitch and my luggage is waiting for me at the airport. Benoit, the fedora clad driver from Cirque du Soleil takes me to headquarters and it begins.

Apparently when you join a company like this they like to know what they’re getting.

In the past 2 days I’ve had a physical examination, a baseline brain test- (so if I have a concussion on the job they can give it to me again to see if I’ve got a hitch in my mental git-along) and I’ve had my full head cast. Through this all my heart is racing. Is this really happening? Somebody pinch me! Please!

Head in clouds, heart in throat.

I’ve had a shoe fitting. They are completely custom.

Can you say butter?

Then I have a make up test with designer Florence Cornet. We're going with a kind of Don Quixote look which I love:

Okay, maybe a little more Don Knotts than Don Quixote but you get the idea.

A wig fitting.

Can you say Plastic Man?

And a full head cast. Quite shocking to see yourself in such detail.

Two Rons don't make a right.

Finally I am introduced to my personal clown coach Roch. Great guy. He was an actor, became an acrobat and is now a clown. (I guess I’m skipping the acrobat stage.) Now he teaches clowning to “at risk” kids around Canada for Cirque. And me. Am I “at risk” too?

So they put Roch and I in a room with a bunch of props and we start hammering out the funny.
At last my training begins.
But come to think of it, I’ve been training for this all my life.
Maybe it started 40 something years ago when I stood at the end of a diving board somewhere in the San Fernando Valley and begged my dad to “Shoot me! Shoot me!” and fell into the water with legs and arms akimbo. When I got to the surface they were laughing. Hmmm.

(In those days I didn't dream of being a clown or even an actor when I grew up. I wanted to be a stunt man like my dad’s friend Hal Needham who created Stunts Unlimited.)

I heard an interview with Leonard Cohen shortly before leaving San Francisco. He quoted a Zen saying that may be apropos: "Leap and the net will appear."

Now here I am diving into another pool entirely, body akimbo, head in the clouds, heart in my throat, but instead of yelling “Shoot me! Shoot me!” I’m saying:

“Pinch me.”

“Pinch me hard.”

Squeezing the Lemon

Many years ago, while studying with Georges Bigot of the Theatre du Soliel ( a seminal workshop that had a lot to do with the formation of the Actors’ Gang) I was introduced to the concept of “Squeezing the Lemon.”

Existing somewhere between “Carpe Diem” and “Milking It”, Squeezing the Lemon was Bigot’s way of admonishing us to explore all the comic/tragic possibilities of a moment before moving on to the next. It’s become part of my own vocabulary when teaching and I’ve tried to keep the concept alive in both my art and life and I think my last week in San Francisco is a bit of a testament to that.

So here’s how I tried to "Squeeze the Lemon" before heading off to join Cirque.

The Ship

First a final sail on Valhalla. A brisk breeze, Danielle by my side, cole slaw and sushi at sea, a nip of Laphroig at port. Perfection. It almost hurt to button the boat up and say goodbye for now. Knowing she’s there, (growing a pendulous green beard of sea life) will soften my own feelings of moorlessness on the road.

The Crew

Next, had some great dinner parties with my very own Wicked Mercy Danielle Thys and Jeffrey Wiseman and Kimble Jackson, Lol Levy and Nancy Gold, (Click here to check out her book Finding Your Funny Bone) Carol Brubaker and Luc Martin.

Nancy spread her incredible collection of masks out on the floor at one point. Many designed by the late Bari Rolfe. All those personalities staring up at us filled the room with a this incredible feeling of power and expectation. These things are so packed with sheer mana. Here's just a few I shot at Nancy's book signing at Borders in San Rafael:

Jeffrey showed us some of his rare and fantastic collection of classic comedy footage. Jeffrey was giving me a crash course in clowning and I was just soaking in all that brief and flickering genius. (Lupino Lane, Charlie Chase, Martha Rae, et al) I was part laughing part crying throughout. Crying because of the sheer gravity of time separating us from these brilliant performers and laughing because, well, they’re so damn funny. I believe now I’ve watched every George Carl clip available. Click Here for him. I think there’s a quality he has that might be right for my King/House Manager character in Kooza!

The Sword

The Nishi Kaigan Iaido Dojo demonstrates a little Zanshin.

My Penultimate day in the Bay Area was spent at the Cherry Blossom Festival demonstrating Iaido with my colleagues from the Nishi Kaigan Iaido Dojo. As Nidan, I performed 5 Waza including Shinobu, (pictured) and a raucous katsu dinner with Sensei Diamantstein and the rest of the iaidoka followed.

High winds may have effected my performance somewhat.

The Show

With Gilkey and his "band", Jane.

On my final night I was a guest on The Gilkey Show, former Cirque du Soleil clown John Gilkey’s live talk show at the Climate Theatre where I did some mime, made a little funny, cut my finger onstage on a Campbell’s soup can I was using for a gag and got a grand send off with balloons, party hats, and jugglers hugging me (plus a nice bottle of wine from Jen Fong and a couple of squeezes from Robin Harvey/Trousdale) as I went off to Cirque with the strains of Alegria wailing in the background.

Joyous, but there were some tears. The next morning Danielle took me to the airport.
I guess when you Squeeze the Lemon you risk getting a little in your eye.

Next stop: Montreal

100 Words

Recently Sarah Mclellan, the Artistic Programs Affiliate at Theatre Communications Group, the fantastic organization that holds regional theatre together in this country asked me for an Artist Statement as a recipient of the Fox Fellowship for Distinguished Achievement that answered the following question:
"Describe what type of theatre you would like to create and/or support and sustain."
It was to be 100 words maximum.
That's about two paragraphs.
It was hard to distill my ideas into 100 words.
Here then are a few of my notes on the question.

Great Theatre

Not good.
Great.
There is no prearranged, pre approved market researched formula that is the absolutely sure fire way to create it.
There are no set ingredients.
No prescribed parameters.
No specific plotline.
No minimum budgets.
No maximum budgets.
There is no best cast size, favored setting or preferred time period.
Some say there is a minimum requirement: four planks and a passion, but I’ve seen it on the cobblestones of Edinburgh and at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, so it doesn’t necessarily rely on the splendor of the venue to do its thing. . I was recently in Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Magulies’ Shipwrecked! and engaged in some beautiful moments of low-tech wizardry utilizing only a teeter totter.
It’s as hard to define as it is to create but you know it when you see it.
Great Theatre.

When I go to the theatre I want to witness a ritual.
I want to be invited on a ride.
I want to learn a secret.
Meet a stranger.
Laugh.
Feel what someone else is feeling.
Cry.
I want to be stirred and surprised, angered and aroused.
I want it all. I want to be educated and entertained.
I want catharsis and giggles.


I see the actors as holy vessels for ancient archetypes and as the dream speakers of the tribe.
I see them as the “brief, abstract chroniclers of the times” and as ridiculous clowns.
I’m one of them so I tend to romanticize.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." ~Aristotle

I try to imagine what kind of theatre experience would create the kind of “habit of excellence” Aristotle was talking about.

Increasingly I am sensing a movement toward theatre opening its doors to other disciplines. I’ve seen Theatre finding its own roots in mask with Cirque du Soliel. The application of martial arts skills in a recent production of Midsummer Night’s Dream and acrobatics greatly enhanced a production of Pericles.
This past year on the Fox Fellowship I’ve watched everything from the exacting delicacy of a slap stick routine in a Chekhov play to the seemingly incongruous circus skill woven into a Jacobean tragedy.

I have seen video screens enhancing productions (and detracting from others) and texts written in Sanskrit.

I’ve seen Macbeth performed with three mini coopers and Ibsen by dwarfs.
I have marveled at the physical precision of Noh performers In Japan and the emotional abandon among the chorus of actors in the ancient theatre at Epidarus, Greece.
Why shouldn’t theatre borrow/steal/purloin abscond from these other skill sets?
The Zen saying is: There are many paths up the mountain.
I now see Dance, Mask and Martial Arts as wonderful co conspirators in a theatre that includes ritual and spectacle and above all, the human tenderness that these three disciplines foster and develop in such essential ways. That is the theatre that I want to be a part of.
Great Theatre.

Forgotten But Not Gone

Ham seen above Pastrami

It reminds me of the curse a producer once said to me in Chicago:
"You keep that up and you'll work in this town again!"

As I pack up and leave San Diego after the triumphant and extended run of Shipwrecked!, I can't help stopping at D. Z. Akins, the venerable Deli that is a San Diego institution. A pastrami on rye for my drive North is just the thing. And yes, I am still there on the wall in black and white a couple of pics down from none other than Jim Plunkett! I will always have a soft spot for Sandy Ego and there's a nice naugahyde booth with a soft spot right under my yellowing headshot.

It was great to be in SD.
Great Weather.
Great theatre.
Great people.
(Ron Choulartan, John Tessmer, Todd Salovey, Sam Woodhouse et al.)

I'll be back.
Probably sitting in this same window booth, eating a pastrami on rye and pointing out my headshot to these ladies:

My peeps at D.Z. Akins

It's My Playground

Thys, Parnell and Misner perform The Experiment

There is a book about the early days of improv comedy (Spolin, 2nd City et al) called "Something Wonderful Right Away"
And That seems to sum up what PlayGround is all about.

Ostensibly for writers, PlayGround is a Bay Area institution going on it's 15th year.
www.playground-sf.org/monday.shtml

Each month, from October through March, PlayGround announces a topic to a the writers pool made up of top Bay Area playwrights, inviting the submission of original ten-page plays. You get the topic on Friday and the completed play has to be emailed by 2 o'clock the following Tuesday. The best six of these plays are presented as staged readings with full lights and sound at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. The top directors and actors of the Bay Area rehearse for a couple of hours and then they throw it up onstage. The audience is raucous, the performances have no time to calcify and it is a hell of a good evening. I was in the actors pool for a couple of years and joined the writers pool year before last. The topic this month was "Adaptation of a Fairy Tale" and my play The Experiment was selected.
For the complete text, click here.

The Experiment was directed by none other than the Artistic Director of PlayGround himself, Jim Kleinmann. It featured a hilarious Louis Parnell and Sam Misner (who I had the pleasure of having as my T.A at the Berkeley Repertory School of Theatre a couple of years ago) and of course the divine Danielle Thys played Rip Van Winkle's harpy wife Doris.
It was a pure delight watching these actors bring my writing to life.

Danielle, who is so beautiful and talented and funny was a hoot. I never cease to be amazed at her skills as a performer and her depth and compassion as a person. I'm so lucky to know this great woman.
Her "Left Coast Soul" band The Wicked Mercies http://www.myspace.com/wickedmercies played at the El Rio in San Francisco that same week but I had to miss it as I was still performing Shipwrecked! in San Diego. Damn.

Anyway, Long Live PlayGround and the spirit of making something wonderful right away.
Prolonged rehearsals and careful study and considered processes are so over-rated!

Hmm...

Thinking about smiling in La Jolla

A Smile Is like A Simile, Only They’re Spelled Slightly Different.

There ought to be a law.

But then if there were, I suppose there would be no such thing as acting.

Let me explain.

I’ve been thinking about smiling lately.
Everyone knows the difference between a smile and a real smile, the kind that you feel from your spine and splashes your face like a bucket of confetti. Uncontainable happiness leaking out of your face.
A smile that you can see way deep down in the eyes.
Scientists call it a zygomatic (i.e., genuine) smile.
A real smile.

What if we couldn’t fake that.
What if there was actually a law against artificially summoning one to your face; Enlisting your facial muscles in a conspiracy without the actual emotion behind it.
A law against using the Zygomaticus major and minor. (the muscles that pull up the corners of the mouth.)
This law would make illegal the willful constricting of the Orbicularis oculi, the muscles that encircle each eye and causes crinkling.
The use of the Levator labii superioris, which pulls up the corner of lip and nose would be forbidden and the Levator anguli oris, which helps elevate the angle of the mouth would be off limits.
And you could forget about your Risorius, which pulls corner of mouth to the side.

The law would insure that all your smiles were genuine.
A smile would become like a dog wagging its tail.
I am quite certain dogs don’t think:
“I better wag my tail, I want to make sure my master thinks I’m having fun.”
The tail wag is a direct expression of the inner state of the dog. The dog cannot lie. That’s why actors don’t like to work with animals. They’re too good.

Contrary to the many glum faces one sees in a day, no such law exists. Fake smiles outnumber real ones 10 to 1. Smiles can be brief twitchy affairs that are really just perfunctory tightening of the aforementioned muscles. They can be poured onto the face like syrup on a pancake or turned into defiant teeth-baring warnings of “Don’t even think about it.”

Despite this, I am glad a “Genuine Smile Only Law” has not been enacted. Here’s why: The body and the face have a sense memory. Twist them into the right position and the emotion will follow. So when we consciously smile to indicate warmth or openness or any of the other countless things a smile can represent, what we are really doing is practicing for when a real, genuine zygomatic smile comes along. And practice is always good.

I remember Phillippe Gaulier admonishing me to enjoy myself in a Buffoon workshop. And Georges Bigot dubbing me “Monsieur le Gag” (which I took as a compliment) while mining the funny in some Commedia. All my great teachers have said the same thing: people come to see a play. So play. You can be serious as death, but play.

My current director, Matthew Wiener is a strong adherent to this philosophy. He tells us that if we build a little fire of joy in our bellies backstage just before we go on and then bring that joy on to the stage with us, something thrilling happens. And he’s right. Recognizing the fundamental joy in what we do can be seen by the audience and can infect the air in a room with a giddy, unmistakable crackle.
It’s one of the hardest, most elusive qualities in live performance, and maybe the most essential.

At the top of nearly every page of my Shipwrecked! script I’ve scrawled the word “Smile.”
Even though some tragic things happen to this character I’m playing, there is an underlying joyfulness, a ribbon of hopeful enthusiasm that the whole play hinges on. If I remember to smile a little, it infects the performance like bubbles infect champagne. The air between the words gets charged with mischief.
But it all starts with a smile.

Warning

A smile is like an invitation to the party in your mouth.
Like a cradle of future giggles
Like a hammock hung between invisible trees.
Like a balloon animal filled with the helium of possibilities.
Like a welcome mat for the eyes.

A smile can also be like the grill of a Chrysler
Like a parenthesis taking a break and lying down.
Like a supine moon.
Like a ladle of teeth.
Or an upturned scythe.

A smile can also be like an anthropological dig in your face where great treasures are revealed.
Like a harbinger of risk-taking.
Like a secret agreement.
Like a fissure in the formality,
Like a crack in the ice.
Or a favorite mask.
A smile is like a suspension bridge you build between your cheeks where joyous little cars travel all day and all night on their way to fun.
Warning: many smiles are infectious.
Even to yourself.

Jerk du Soleil

The species Goofus Idiotus Maximus
Costume fitting room at the Montreal Headquarters

Big Shoes To Fill

Well it’s official.

All the sacrifices that the generations that came before me have endured:

My Grandfather on my father’s side; “Harry” Boris Rosen, waving goodbye to his family for the very last time from the stern of the boat that would eventually take him to Ellis Island as the Czar’s forces overtook his village. Giving up everything in the hopes of coming to America for a better life, enlisting in the army and marrying a girl who had escaped from an orphanage only to “pump steel” in a Lexington, Kentucky sweat shop. Moving to California in a ’39 Buick, my father’s diapers flapping out the windows…

My Grandmother on my mother’s side; Elizabeth Park Dunlop Roberts Siegfreid Hill Johnson Campbell (she was married seven times) pulling up roots with her entire family (and dog) and coming to America from the little town of Rothesay on the Scottish isle of Bute in the hopes of a new life only to have husband after husband die by fires and sickness, wars and monoxide...

All the trials and tribulations, the hardships and privations were all endured so that their grandson could have the good fortune of someday becoming…

A Clown.

I just booked the role of the King of the Clowns in Cirque du Soleil’s Kooza.

I auditioned in Montreal for David Shiner and will be returning there in April. After a couple of weeks of training I will be incorporated into the show for its run in New York City and then on to runs in Minneapolis, Denver and Los Angeles (at Santa Monica Pier) under Le Grand Chapeteau, their spectacular big top tent.

Me, The King of the Clowns.

I know I have big (clown) shoes to fill, But I’m ready. I can’t wait to get on that stage under that big top with all those dressed up people to mess with!
To say I am ecstatic is such a gross understatement I won’t even do it.
Suffice it to say:

In The Land Of The Bland, The One Wry Man Is King.

A Page From My Shipwrecked! Script

This guy just does not stop talking!

Where Else?

A Snail gets mugged in the park.
The police interview him to get a description.
He says “ I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”

That’s how I feel.

No, I haven’t been mugged but Time has really done a number on me.
I find myself back in San Diego after a seven year hiatus from the San Diego Theatre scene. I’m at North Coast Repertory Theatre rehearsing Shipwrecked! An Entertainment. The Amazing Adventures of Louis De Rougemont (As Told by Himself) by Pulitzer Prize winning Donald Margulies. I'm playing Louis De Rougemont.

Set in the late 1800’s, Shipwrecked! Is a kind of re-creation of the real Louis de Rougemont's attempt to clear his name in which he recounts an incredible seafaring saga of giant squids and cannibals, whirlpools and wonders. After his best selling tale was debunked, he traveled the country telling his story, hiring actors to play all the other parts. In our version we have the vivacious Yetide Bataki and the irrepressible David McBean. Under the watchful and exacting eye of the estimable Yale School of Drama trained Matthew Wiener, the Artistic Director of The Actor’s Theatre of Phoenix. We have been rehearsing for three weeks.

Rehearsing. Now there’s an interesting word. If “Hearsing” means what I think it does; Putting something in a hearse, like a coffin, then “Rehearsing” means doing it again. So we kill a story or play by squeezing all the spontaneity out of it, stick it in a box (the theatre) and rehearse and rehearse until it’s “ready”. Hmm.

7 Years.

I went to the San Diego Drama Critic’s Circle Awards the other night and I realized seven years is the perfect amount of time to be away. It’s too long to easily summarize what you’ve been up to- so you don’t even bother- and it’s long enough that you are genuinely glad to see the older yet familiar faces.

It’s been seven years since I performed in San Diego. There was a time I did three or four shows a year down here. As I cruise past the familiar haunts of my past which have either been torn down, spruced up or replaced entirely, the sheer fact of time passing hits me squarely in the solar plexus like a ton of photo albums dropped from the crane that towers over the construction site that is now where my favorite pulled pork sandwich place used to be.

“What happened to Goldfinch Avenue?” I ask.
“I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”

But it’s great to be back here. There’s something about it down here that begs the question:

Where Else?

Where else but La Jolla, California can you see a fender bender between a Maserati and a Mini Cooper?

Where else do the sunsets come sliding in at this angle? Each one expressing a separate category of wistfulness?

Where else can you say the breeze doesn’t blow here, it caresses the spaces between things?

Where else can you see a kid riding a skate board down a perfectly paved beach access road with a surfboard under his arm in February?

Where else can one say for every freckle faced kid making a sand castle on Solano Beach there’s a homeless guy in a windbreaker scouring the dumpster behind some overpriced bistro looking for a piece of barely nibbled croudite?

Where else is it true that for every gristly old-timer barking out tired tirades from the end of the bar at Rock Bottom there’s an eyebrow plucked tummy tucked soccer mom tapping her french tips on the dashboard of her Escalade while screaming fashion advice into the designer cell phone receiver dangling from her perfect ear?

Where else does the ghost of plien aire painter Edgar Payne lurk in the purple shadows of a toll road underpass and you can still hear, on warm summer nights, with the top down and the radio off, a chorus of bullfrogs throbbing in the darkness off Jimmy Durante Drive?

Where else can you watch 50 year old health nuts cultivate melanoma patches the size of sand dollars while they suck their stomachs in for the passing waitresses, fresh out of high school, scurrying to work in their starched white shirts and food stained black aprons?

Where else can you see trophy wives with bodies as bulbous as the Hummers they drive to Whole Foods to pick up their organic Bok Choy, while they balance genetically altered miniature Lahsa Apsos against the two flesh covered synthetic bags that bobble obscenely like Macy’s parade balloons where their breasts should be?

Where else can you see the rows of identical townhouses that stand like gravestones along the stoic ridges above the Camino Real, gated communities where gigantic Buicks and Lincolns scrape against each other in cafeteria parking lots driven by ancient, desiccated zombies with glaucoma clotted eyeballs shrouded in sunglasses with enough UV protection to view an A-bomb test?

Where else can you drive recklessly down Carmel Valley Road, your tires flicking gravel at the easels of the lousy painters that litter the roadside every weekend in their four hundred-dollar goddess-wear smocks? Painters whose talent, if collected in the asshole of a gnat would rattle around like lima beans in an oil tanker.

And where else does my morning walk down the sidewalk get accompanied by the wet squish of snails underfoot, each one on some desperate sortie to get from one patch of ivy to another, their life interrupted by my carelessness?

“My God, Morrie. Your house is completely crushed! This Southern California sun will dry you to a crisp by noon. What happened?”

“I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”

Deep Japan Slideshow

All photos by Ron Campbell courtesy of Soar Feat Unlmtd.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
So the next time I buy art I'm going to pay entirely with old dictionaries.

Serai Magazine Cover

Willy the Shake still coverboy for glossy artsy/foodie rag.

Yaegaki and The Pastures of Heaven

As previously posted, one of the Iaido Waza (form or technique) I demonstrated for my test in Japan is called Yaegaki. I was going to do Hidari, and practiced incorporating it into my routine, but on the eve of my departure Sensei Diamantstein suggested that since I was testing for Nidan (2nd degree) I should perhaps consider demonstrating the more difficult Yaegaki. This was his subtle way of saying “Don’t be easy on yourself. The test is there to test you. Why not test yourself within that?”

That night, I bought a bottle of sake at my local Lucky supermarket to share with a friend on my boat. The brand: Yaegaki. It was sign. I would incorporate one of the longest and most difficult of my iaido curriculum into my testing demonstration. Since then, I have begun to see Yaegaki as a metaphor for my journey in search of the Mask of Satori.

The Onion

Depending on who you ask and where you look and in what context you put it, Yaegaki means variously Yin/Yang, Mind and Body or Barriers Within Barriers. I prefer the latter definition because for me it brings out the idea of the fortress in movement. Responding, reacting but never letting the guard down. In other words staying open to new experiences. Even if it is painful to master the footwork and weight shifts, (I found my feet were bleeding at the end of all my practices in Japan) the reward is great. For me, this waza says “Just when you think its over, something happens. So keep peeling the onion. You may cry, but there’s more layers to go.”

The basic scenario or bunkai for Yaegaki is deceptively simple: You sit in seiza (Japanese style) directly across from someone who may or may not be your opponent. Your face betrays nothing. In a calm manner you respond to the opponent’s attack by drawing and slashing across an area that goes roughly from the chin to the base of the Adam’s apple.

Once the tip of the blade (Kissaki) clears the sheath- a place called the Koi guch , literally “mouth of the carp” there is no turning back. The inevitability of this movement is called Saya no uchi, Literally “The point of no return.” But is it?

You quickly snap the sword over your head in a move called Furi-kaburi and cut, Kirioroshi , sword sweeping in a blistering perfect perabola that comes to a dead stop, the sword handle exactly one and one half fists from your navel.

However, the opponent has managed to evade the brunt of your attack and “plays possum” until you are vulnerable during noto, (re sheathing) and makes a surprise attempt to sever your right leg. You use a second nukitsuke (cross cut) to block this slash and follow with your own kirioroshi, (vertical cut.)
You then perform O-chiburi, flicking the blood off the blade before re sheathing (noto) and returning to your original position like nothing happened.

Omote and Ura

One of the concepts that intrigued me in Japan was the idea of Omote and Ura. The nuances of Omote and Ura are difficult to translate. The first meaning might be as simple as “Front” and “Back.” The next meaning is like the two sides of a coin, say “Heads” and “Tails” or two sides of a blank sheet of paper. They are identical, yet different. But of course this is Japan so there is another meaning:
Omote and Ura can also mean “Apparent” and “Hidden.”
"It's a Yaegaki." I said to myself.
A barrier within a barrier.
Ura is the world behind the screen, the gears of the machine, the work that went in to the ease.
Omote is the mask.

The Mask of Satori

How we cover reveals what we're hiding. So I now have a new criteria for the Mask of Satori. Not only must it be universal, raceless, genderless, stateless and yet infinitely expressive, it must also be the Omote element of a complex and multifaceted Ura crammed into the Mask like a billion gigabytes on the head of a pin. Or the tip of a blade. The Kissaki.

In my search for the Mask of Satori I am convinced I found an unexpected pearl;
All acting styles are simply differentiations in the balance between Omote and Ura.
All Ura and you’re doing Commedia.
All Omote and you’re in Pinter land.
When I teach at the Berkeley Rep, I always do a few exercises dealing with what I call “Non-verbal Leakage.” I experiment with giving the actors secrets that are too difficult for the character to keep hidden. To keep Ura.

So we play with “The Waiter Who Has To Pee,” “The Drunken Pilot,” or “The Real Estate Agent Who Is Really A Terrorist.” Each of these characters wages a private war with Omote and Ura. Nothing better than watching a clown in trouble.

“Great!” is Enough

So I’m home.

Back in the familiar rehearsal hall at the California Shakespeare Theatre in Berkeley California where I am participating in a workshop of Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, developing a text written by Octavio Solis. The friendly faces of Joan Mankin, Sarah Nealis and Jonathon Moscone and the others are great to see. They ask “How was Japan?” and I say “Great!” and we get to work on the project at hand. There’s no time for me to tell them every detail of my adventure even if they were interested, so my “Great!” will have to suffice. I am offering then, the Omote or apparent description of my experience. The Ura is all the sights and sounds and smells and tastes that I experienced.

My thought is this:
If the Omote and Ura are different sides of the same coin, and each has all the ingredients of the other, then there is an exquisite balance between what is said and what is not said.
And my simple “Great!” Is enough.

Ginkgo and Shrine in Yamagata

The Shinsa (Testing)

Gambate

After our last practice at Kita Matsu where the various sensei clustered around each of us and argued in Japanese- I assumed it was about how atrocious our technique was- I was given to Otseka Sensei (the senior member of Esaka dojo under Esaka himself. Two hours later all he could say to me as I bowed profusely in thanks was"Gambate". (Do your best.)

We trudged home on our various train connections, all of us looking a little bleary and worried. The next day we were to meet at 7am to get to Kamata on the 8:11 train.

That night we were awoken by a pretty substantial earthquake. When I finally got back to sleep I had this strange dream that took place in a kennel. The guy running the place said "You probably want to keep your shoes on."
I said "It's too late now."
The dream was vivid. I could feel the mud between my toes. We came to a fenced in area. There was crazy person doing iaido with a steak knife. He was clearly deranged. I kept my distance until one of the orderlies tried to stop him and he started slashing madly. Blood. Fingers. I woke up shaking, my own blood pumping.

I Finally fell asleep again and woke up with a start at 6:55. If I missed the others I would never find the school where we were testing which was 45 minutes and multiple train transfers away.

I grabbed my sword and gi and ran. Luckily I met up with the rest of the “Gang of Gai-jin” at the convenience store on the corner of Namidabashi Chome. We made it to the testing sight, a school gymnasium. Since we are members of Esaka dojo we had to help set up all the chairs and tables.

More than a hundred people were testing. They began to arrive. A hundred people with swords on their shoulders. Mostly men, a few women.

It began. There were speeches. We sang the National Anthem, (me faking it.) Esaka Sensei spoke. We did the written test.(the only thing I was sure about- I can memorize.)

213

We were given our numbers. I was 213. The 2 denotes I was going for Nidan. The 13 meant I was the thirteenth oldest person testing for that dan. (213 also happens to be the sail number I had for my Helmsman test in Boston!) I was pleased to note there were a few older than I. Including the fellow I had been practicing with at Esaka dojo, an elegant gentleman- his street clothes were of the finest quality- he even wore an ascot- like Esaka Sensei. I later found out he lived in Indonesia

The Shodans tested first, then came my turn. It is very quiet- except the whistle of swords. Each person bows in on the side and then the groups of 5 march out to their prescribed lines and start their wazas. You must begin and end each one behind the line but under no circumstance are you to look at the line.

I started with Zengogiri, of course, and moved thru Mae and (surprise surprise) Yaegaki. Yaegaki seemed so long.
I then did Junto sono ni and began Shihoto sono ni. Somewhere in my mind I realized my group were all finished and I still had the full waza yet to do. So for three minutes or so, I was the only person moving in this room filled with swordsmen. "At least I didn't rush." I told myself.

The other dans tested after that. Some incredible Godans, most of them already Sensei at their own dojos.

Then we wait. The judges deliberate. We are called back in for more bowing and speeches.

The results are announced. Many did not pass. Mostly people going for Yondan and above. They serve us nice little bento boxes which we devour.

The "Gang of Gai Jin" take a couple of trains to Yoyoji Park and drink beer and play frisbee with some other gai-jin English teachers. We head home.

Oh Yeah.

I passed.

In fact in his closing speech Esaka Sensei gave commendations to all us gai jin for coming all this way and having our technique be so good- I think he was guilt-tripping the Japanese and he apparently singled me out for my "calmness". He gave no commendations to anyone else publicly.

Luke told me that one sensei even leaned over to his wife during my test, pointed to me and said in English "Perfect."
That Sensei later introduced himself to me and asked how long I'd been practicing. When I said "Seven years." he shook his head in disbelief. I'm not sure what that meant but I think it was good.

So I'm now a "recognized beginner."

Gambate

Shihoto sono ni

Yes and Noh

There's a four panel cartoon I saw somewhere. In the first panel we see a husband and wife sitting down in their seats at the theatre. In the second panel the play is under way and the husband is clearly bored and unhappy. In the next panel he's even more distressed and looks positively miserable. In the final panel the play is over and the wife asks him "What part of Noh don't you understand?"

Well you could fill a library with the things I don't know or understand about Noh Theatre but after catching the Umewaka Kannekai performance at the Kanze Noh-Gakudo in Shibuya, I have a few impressions.

Yes, I was bored at points in the three plus hours in which they performed two Noh plays; Yoshino Ten nin (Celestial Nymph in Yoshino Mountain) and Utu (The Bird Hunter) plus a Kyogen play; Suhajikami. (Vinegar and Pepper)
There were also points at which I was fascinated.

But here's the thing.
There were also moments when I was bored and fascinated at the same time.

For example: Noh challenges the viewer to reassess the audience/performer relationship. At first I thought it was a mistake but the houselights never came down.
So the actors can see you.
That magic moment so essential in Western theatre, when the audience sets aside their programs and nestles in the darkness and the curtain rises or the stage lights come up just never happens in Noh. The lighting never changes at all from beginning to end.
Boring.
Yet Fascinating.
In fact the actors who are masked- there are two in each play. The shite or "one who acts" and the waki or "one who watches" see more of you than you do of them. At least if you're talking about faces. But the Noh actor is also a dancer. And a singer.

As a dancer, the precision the Noh actor must attain is astounding. The first thing I noticed was footwork. Probably since I'm working on my own footwork in Iaido, Ashi Sabaki we call it, I fixated on the achingly slow and infinitesimally prescribed walking and turning they do that must take countless hours of practice. The nano adjustments they are making with their center of gravity with each step as they slide the souls of their tabi covered feet across the polished wood of the hanamichi must be maddening to master.
Again; boring- but fascinating.

And the single, devastatingly economical gesture they make to indicate grief is like an ancient, elemental sign language.

The actors and musicians all carry fans, tucked into their obi between the second and third wrap- exactly where we place our katana in Iaido. In fact the fan is the equivalent of the actors' sword.

The masks themselves are smaller than the actor's actual faces which suggests that all that life force must somehow be compressed into the character expressed by the mask, squeezed into a finite area like commuters at rush hour on the Maranouchi train at Ikebukuro station.

The music and singing is also challenging.
Primarily two drums and a bamboo flute, the rhythms are not based on the Western 4/4 beat inspired by the hoofbeats of horses but rather on the random dissonance of the natural sounds of raindrops falling from the eaves of a temple or cedars creaking in the wind.
The drummers accompany themselves with various moans and yelps, like the sound of mill wheels turning or crows cawing derisively at the foibles of Man.
The masked actors chant their lines and they better be correct; I saw lots of old ladies reading along with the text in their laps during the show.

The stories themselves usually involve strangers meeting at an unfamiliar place, where one of them turns out not to be what is initially presented, and then he "disappears" which is represented by him slowly walking off stage. In Noh, that is disappearing. There seems to be no moral. No judgment. Just "This odd thing happened." That's it.

Two moments stand out to me. In Utu (The Bird Hunter) The actor playing the ghost of the bird hunter makes a gesture as if to strike a bird resting on a branch. The invisible bird flies away. The masked actor "watches" the bird escape and fly off. There is such longing and remorse in his expression, the moment is so unfulfilled, I felt emotion well up in me so suddenly and so surprisingly. A second earlier I was bored out of my gourd, and now I was near tears. And just as suddenly, it was gone. Was it me, or was this oh so subtle art revealing it's power?

Here was clear evidence of a vast collaboration at work. The musicians, the actor, the sculptor of the mask, the weaver of the exquisite costume, the carpenter who built the temple-like stage, all of them conspiring to express this enigmatic moment. And then it was gone. Transient as a wisp of steam or a sparrow alighting from a branch.

The other moment was at the end of each play. Once the performer has chanted the last line the musicians stop. The actors go offstage walking in a slow precession. The musicians follow. There is no curtain call. No light change. No unmasking. Nothing. Polite applause from the audience as they exit. It's as if to say "That's it. We're finished. We told you the story we came to tell. This odd thing happened. Wasn't it boring? Wasn't it fascinating?"

Yes and Noh.

One Word: Snow Monkeys!

Onsen

Question:
Can something as simple as taking a bath be a life changing experience?
Answer:
Oh Yeah.

Especially if it's at the Selan Onsen in Yamagata.

If you needed a reminder that the Earth is a living, breathing thing, go to Yamagata, tucked in the mountains above Nagano, where every twenty feet or so scalding hot water gurgles out of stones or up bamboo pipes or out of carved dragons' mouths or sprouts in geysers forty feet into the air and then gathers in pools where men and monkeys soak their sore muscles away.

It feels like you're walking on the belly of the world in Yamagata and boy, the world has gas.

If you needed proof it's the right thing to do, observe the Snow Monkeys at Jigokudani Yaen-Koen Park. They don't do it because its cultural. They do it 'cuz it's instinctual.
And even if they are engaged in a constant status war with the other various monkey families, the steaming onsen is a place of relative peace.

Even with other primates. Like me.

Of course it being Japan, there is ceremony involved.
First you wash yourself throughly before getting in, purifying yourself before the skinny-dip.
You take the small towel- not the big one, though they both seem small to me, and place it on your head. When you step out for a break from the scalding goodness you cover your privates with the towel, contemplate the setting, the stones, the steam, the view of Yamanouchi Valley.
Then, towel on head, back in you go.

If you ever wanted to be ecstatically relaxed and dangerously rubbery at the same time do this in the evening after hiking all day and then drinking a few Sapporos.
When you get back to the Ryokan you will hit the tatami with a blissfully resounding thud.

At least that's my experience.

Gang of Gai-Jin

Francis, Luke, Isaac, me, Leonard, T.J., Anthony

LOVE!!!

A Word About Kiai

Each of us testing here in Japan are required to perform a Toho Waza.
Each Toho Waza represents a different school or Ryu of swordsmanship.
Which Toho Waza we do depends on what rank we're testing for.
For example, I am testing for Nidan so I will perform Zengogiri, which represents Mugai Ryu.
The final cut in any Toho Waza is accompanied by a Kiai, a congealing shout from the gut that can have one of three timings:

Go No Sen which takes place before the cut to steel the practitioner and scare the shit out of the opponent- or at least make him flinch.

Sen which takes place during the cut and takes advantage of the accompanying power.

And finally,
Sen no Sen which occurs after the cut to release the pent up energy the cut created.

This is serious stuff. There are whole schools of martial arts based on proper usage of this powerful technique.

Luke Beamer, our unofficial translator and guide to all things Iaido here in Japan was quick to point out that the correct sound of the Kiai is important to get right if you don't want to get laughed off the mat here in Japan.
Apparently when he first got here- he, like me, is from Nishi Kaigan Iaido Dojo in Berkeley but has been living here in Japan for more than a year as a kind of cultural attache- the various Sensei laughed behind cupped palms every time he did Kiai with his Toho Wazas.
The reason?
The "Ah Ee!" sound he was using sounds very much like the Japanese word for love. So every time he slashed down his Katana in the final cut of his Toho Wazas he was yelling "LOVE!!!
So Luke was kind enough to spare us this embarrassment by making sure our Kiai sounded more like "Eight!" but without the "t" at the end.
Can you imagine? The dojo echoing with the sound of all us Gai Jin shouting "Love!!!" and the Sensei doubled over in paroxysms of laughter!

Since I posted this I got some new insights in regards to these three timings.
Turns out they have more to do with your reaction to the opponent than the actual kiai.
Here then, is what Luke was able to tell me:

Esaka Sensei gave a seminar about these terms last year in November. The three terms are "Go no Sen" (後の先), "Sen" (先), and "Sen no Sen" (先の先). "Sen" means before or previous, "Go" means after, and "no" means of (roughly).

The first, Go no Sen, means to react after the opponent as visually taken aggressive action.
The second, Sen, means to sense the impulse of the opponent and to react such that your actions will occur at the same time as your opponent.
The third, Sen no Sen, is to sense the moment the opponent has decided to take action, which is just before the impulse, and by reacting to it you actually take action before your opponent has begun moving. It can also be called "Sen Sen no Sen," but is the same thing.


Thanks Luke, we owe ya (more than) one.

Circles

Japanic!

The First thing you feel is that you're woefully unprepared. For everything. All of it.
After returning from Scotland and the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, (-seeing 31 plays in 7 days- don't ask-) you spend a couple of days in your own bed and then head for the airport to get to Boston where you rehearse and perform Richard Nelson's How Shakespeare Won The West at The Huntington Theatre playing a host of characters including Abe Lincoln, Buffalo Bill and George Edgar Rice. You have a ball, join the Boston Community Boating Club, get your "Helmsman" rating and sail everyday on the Charles River. You close that show, come back to San Francisco and try to prepare for your testing in Japan for your 2nd Dan in Iaido. Your Sensei, Andrej Diamantsein, gives you the go ahead and you book a flight to Tokyo.
After 11 cramped hours on a plane you stagger into Narita train station and are confronted with the above map. You try to save money by taking the commuter train into town. After 3 hours of jostling with salarymen and school kids and septuagenarians with all your luggage and a sword case, you find your spartan ryokan in North Asakusa. You sleep.

The next day you get up and take pictures of circles.
You blog a little.
You try to rest in the afternoon but its no use. You're too excited. Tonight you have practice at Esaka Dojo with Sensei Seigan Esaka himself, the man considered the number one practitioner in traditional Japanese swordsmanship on Earth.
The Ichi Ban.
And he'll be watching you.

And now we're up to date.

Poseidon

I am heading across the seas to Edinburgh, Scotland and the Theatre Festival. As I bid a fond farewell to Hellas, I am reminded of a conversation I had while here. Someone asked me who my favorite God was of the 12 Olympians. Owning a sailboat, the first one that came to my mind was Poseidon, but I have since switched to Hephaestus. Still, I figured I should write an ode to Poseidon just to keep things on an even keel next time I'm on my boat.
So here goes...

Poseidon
I hear your Neptune.

The sea murmurs its sweet Saronic song.
A fishing boat cuts a soft V in the iridescent plain.
A donkey brays.
The wine glass sweats.

There is a conspiracy afoot.
It is carried on the dry evening breeze and whispered to my skin.

Where is your toga? it asks.

You look ridiculous in modern clothes, It says.

I swim in your elixir where the time smoothed rocks- each one separate, perfect, holy- spiced with the black star bursts of those spiny sea urchins that are so ready to turn the errant toe into a speckled pin cushion.

A flag flutters your code words.
A plot is afoot.
Rock.
Sky.
Sea.
And Salt, the messenger.

Your evidence is everywhere.
In the calloused hands of the ferry boat captain you can read the palm of Odysseus.
In the watery eyes of the widow shuffling down a white washed alley sound the echoes of Medea's silence, watching Jason flirt.

O Poseidon.
It's the salt that speaks your name.
I feel you like I feel the salt drying on my skin.
That tightness against my pores.
That's you.
I feel you like the sea salt on my food that stings so lovingly.
How did you get so perfectly sprinkled on this french fry?
Were you waiting all day in that shaker?
Just for me?
I tasted you earlier today when I dove off the cliff into your turquoise. You filled my mouth with the sharp tang of countless sunsets.
You burn a message to my lips in the cracks the wind has made.
You cauterize my wounds and heal my longing.
I feel you in my sweat.
A drop of you crawls between my shoulder blades.
The wind cools its trail.
You pool in the small of my back.

Your salt , Poseidon, is the residue of time.
It is the stain of the seaman's toil.
The memory of hardship.
The remnant of the sun.
It is the remains of tears.
The last thing we'll feel.
The first thing we'll grieve.
I taste the salt of your Myth, Poseidon.
It is the dust of the sea.

Best Mask-Related T-Shirt Ever

Below this image on a t-shirt I saw is a paragraph printed in Greek.
Here is the translation:

"The mask hides the man, shut up inside it. He sees everything as if through two dark holes. From the darkness of the mask he contemplates the universe with detachment like a God. In a mask you feel an ancestral strength. In a mask you dare things that the mind cannot conceive."

Take A Bow

This cartoon, photographed in the Archives Center for the Greek National Theatre, about sums up how I feel about the folks who have taken the time to check out this blog. Thanks, or more precisely, Aeyxaristo!

Good to See...

Egon Schiele's model still working in Athens.

Pantheists Only

This is a dog just doin' his thing on the cool marble steps of the Acroplis.

There are too many tourists at the Acropolis and also at Delphi.

Theory:I really think it should be closed to the public. in fact I think the fact that these tourists are tromping all over these sacred stones may be the cause of all the unrest in our modern world. Some kid carelessly leap frogs the stump of a column from Apollo's temple for a cute snap shot and Bam! -you've got Global Warming. (Apollo/Sun God)
Pose with your head jutting out where time has beheaded the statue of Eris (God of Discord) and the divorce rate soars. Some asshole sticks his gum under a ledge in Athena's Sanctuary and all wisdom is sucked out of our leaders brains and dumped into the Styx. You get the idea.

The only people who should be allowed on this hallowed ground are true believers of the pantheistic system and their priests. (this would of course include me.) And maybe some Druids. That's it.

Persona vs. Personage

Prosopon

The Ancient Greeks during the classical period used without differentiation the same word for the mask and the human face, the word Prosopon. The word Prosopon is etymologically composed by the preposition pros- which means towards or for and the word ops which means variously hole, eye, opening or voice. The relationship of the two parts of the word create another meaning hidden inside the word and that is the idea of reflection. So for the Ancient Greeks, who held no distinction between mask and face, the mask was not a covering, but a reflection frozen in time.

Ethos

So its only in modern times that the mask is used as a barrier to hide behind. In its original usage it seems masks were used as projection screens for the easier delivery of a theatre not based on personalities, but on actions. In his Poetics, Aristotle defines tragedy as a representation not of men but of actions, The tragic masks did not represent any specific identity/character. They only denoted things like sex, age, status and dichotomies like human/divine, alive/dead. This together with the notion of emptiness and the nature of the mask being frozen in time creates Ethos. Aristotle believed Ethos was one of the essential elements of Tragedy.

The Etruscans

The word persona comes from the Etruscan phersu- a person in a mask. In latin, persona denotes a mask or a face or a role or a personality.

In almost all of the theatre I have done over the course of my 28 year career as a professional actor- (Jeez! has it been that long? Gods, I'm old. I just had a birthday here and I'm still waiting for every damn birthday that suddenly comes along every July not to depress the hell out of me. Ugh.) -I have been for the most part toiling in the realm of psychological realism. In other words creating personas. But now here in Greece, the cradle of my art form, I am being challenged to look at my role as a personage. A representative archetype. And fulfilling that parameter with clarity was probably more familiar to my thespian forebears working under hardwood masks in the 4^th century.

So how do you summon that clarity? First you have to really see its opposite. Here's how: Draw a dot on a piece if paper. You can see the dot clearly. Crinkle the paper, and the dot almost disappears. Too much acting and the one thing you want to show actually disappears.

And that emptiness that the mask brings turns out to be the right expression for tragedy, Can you say the word "awful" and express "awful" at the same time? The difficult answer is No.

There is this theory that they have. That it goes both ways, I play Hamlet, say. But Hamlet is also playing me. Is he enjoying being played by me? Does he think I'm worthy of his personage? I can do his persona; the facts of him, my “take” on him but his personage, the concept he represents is a shared thing with me, the character and all of humanity. How do I honor the big archetype that's floating out there independent of me and my specific choices that only bring attention to myself and may indeed not be serving theatre's ultimate goal: Catharsis?

Kicked In The Hips

So now I'm in Greece playing the Shepard in Oedipus. It's the scene where he tells Oedipus who he is. He's been living with this horrible news his entire lifetime. Our version of Oedipus has the Shepard getting beat up- by both the messenger and Oedipus, who is played by a guy that could easily play linebacker for the Oakland Raiders. Lots of getting kicked in the hips and rolling on the hard tile. But through all this is the idea that the challenge here is to not make him a separate and distinct and specific- character; a persona, (goals I've striven for in my work my entire life)- but to summon ethos through the creation of an archetype or personage. So I'm trying to use the lessons of the mask: the notions of emptiness and being frozen in time being chief among them. Yes, the mask is a frozen expression but its still got to be alive. So how?

Akroasis

The small eye holes of the mask reduce the optic field until the actor actually can only see one eye hole, a kind of “third eye” that creates for the actor behind the mask a hypnotic and meditative state and forces a more conscious feeling of the body's axes, spine and pelvic placement, angle of head and chin, drop of shoulders, etc. The actor is now all extrovert in the service of the mask. There is no room for personal behavior. You feel it under there. This awareness influences the control of the voice because all of the above are so closely related to vocal production. This taken altogether leads you to a state of conscious and active physical listening. A kind of following- not acting -which is a kind of doing verb- but following. Letting the mask take you where it wants to go. This mask induced heightened state is what the Greeks call Akroasis. It's real. I got a dose of it last night

One of the pieces in our performance is a Mask piece I devised using four different masks. I start in the Cycladean mask as a kind of blind shaman from two thousand B.C., move into a classic Greek Chorus mask, (Prince Davon) then the tragic clown mask I sculpted. (Arlechinos) and end the piece in a death mask I've made complete with little pebbles for teeth and a gold filling for detail.

So towards the end of the piece I'm wearing the death mask. Its a dark moment.
A little kid in the front row laughs. The mask- not me- goes for him. Interrupts the show and goes for him. Caresses his head. Its like its not me. The mask is the performer. I am the servant.
So then- completely uncontrolled by me- The death mask cruises the front row, stops at an old man. caresses his bald head. This was not Ron trying to get a laugh, I swear. It was death. Death sizing up its future customers, young and old. I went back to the kid. I "smiled" with the mask. The audience was absolutely silent. They turned on me. But in a very elemental way. When I finally broke the spell, I pick up a little statue of the Cycladean mask that has the final moment- the kid- who I've seen around the village- let out a sound that was like a child waking from a bad dream. really chilling for all of us in that space at that moment. Akroasis.

Brush Up Your Sanscrit

The Ancient Greeks used the word Theatron for the area where the audience sat, what we call the “house”. Theatron means “the place of seeing” or actually “place of perceiving.”

Therapia was their word for therapy. And Theos equaled God. All these words have the common etymological roots in Sanscrit. Roots that mean air, breath, soul, pulse and life.

Thank you, Theos, for all the therapy. Thank you for breathing new life into both my persona and my personage. Thanks for sticking that kid in the front of our Theatron. And Happy Birthday to me!

Photographic Proof

...that I'm an idiot. er, I mean daring cliff diver.

Arlechinos, the Tragedian

My Greek tragedy version of Arlechino. (note traditional mole on right temple.)
The inside (note Picasso's Don Quixote on the forehead) and the outside.
I created mask from my own mold under the guidance of Sally Tonge.

Lee Breuer and the Cult of the Power Spot

Giants and Dwarfs

For the past week Lee Breuer has been on the island working with us on creating our adaptations of Greek myths. A giant in the world of avant garde theatre, he is opening his production of A Doll's House later this month in Athens. His production features the mercurial Maude Mitchell as Nora and, in what can truly be called a coup-de theatre, all the men in the production are played by dwarfs! He is nearing the end of his 5 year journey with this play which has been an international hit in 17 countries. Lee is 72 and sharp as a razor, brilliant and down to earth in equal measure. His adaptation of the third part of the Oedipus Trilogy was the Tony winning Gospel at Colonus featuring Morgan Freeman before he was a film star and The Blind Boys of Alabama before all their Grammies. His thinking about theatre is interwoven with his respect for its ancient roots. He recounts how, touring the Theatre of Dionysius as a young man, he tripped on a large flat stone center stage. When told it was, of course, the alter, something clicked for him that is still so present in his work. Indeed while we were touring the ancient theatre at Epidarus, we saw evidence that the area was known to the ancient Greeks as a healing center, associated with Apollo, the God of Medicine and the theatre itself not a place for frivolous escapism but a setting for collective healing and ritual.

The Power Spot

The alter on the ancient Greek stage is at the center of what is called the Orchestra. The audience would sit on benches carved out of the South facing hill, in what was called the Theatron or "Place of Seeing." If you were a priest of Dionysus you would probably have stood just upstage of the alter. Just up of center. How many times, when moving onto the stage for the first time, after weeks in a rehearsal hall, have I tried the find "the power spot" of this or that set. Its always somewhere, whether its a surrealist landscape or a modern living room, every set has a power spot somewhere just up of center. Hmm.

Becoming Gods

Lee's thinking is that all theatre, especially tragedy, is a religious rite in which the practitioners summon a God or Gods and ultimately become them. He likens the Western Sophoclean precept of Instigating Action as the same thing as a call to prayer a la "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today", or "Brothers and Sisters, Today I want to talk to you about", etc. He sees Rising Action as the sermon, where the speaker or chorus become the gods themselves, and the Climax is that moment in which the God must make a decision, be it Oedipus getting the news or Willy Loman taking the car, its all the same. Our western idea of Denouement is simply the God gradually returning to Earth as we become ourselves again.

Breuers' travels to India further informed his thinking where Katakali dancers, dressed as Gods performed not for a human audience, but for the Gods themselves, represented by idols placed in the front row!

Lee showed us the (unreleased) film of his A Doll's House. In it, the live actors are performing for an audience of dolls, while the women in the play, treated like inconsequential dolls in Ibsen's tragedy, performed in a silent film/opera buffo style, are the only real life sized thing!
Lee Breuer is a real artist and his vision of the theatre is, to my mind, quite suitably larger than life.

The First Neutral Mask?

Cycladean Idol from the island of Amorgos, 3200 B.C.

Seashell Epiphany

...As if I needed one.
An epiphany descended on my little sculpting table today like a deus ex machina malfunction dropping a two ton Apollo of solid brass.
The cicadas were rubbing a thousand love songs between their knees and I was struggling to carve a plasticine mold of the first item in the original actor's toolbox; a mask.

I have enlisted every pointy little thing on the island to aid in my sculpting.
The end of my toothbrush.
A corkscrew. ( also invaluable in opening the many bottles of Moschofilero; the crisp white wine from the Mantinia region of the Poloponnese I've been quaffing like Bacchus for a couple of weeks now.)
An X-Acto knife.
A teaspoon.
And a stick I picked up on one of my many trudges along the coast to Hydra town. (Cars and even bicycles are outlawed on this island.)

The Hand of Hephestus

Faced with the face of the enigmatic Mycenaean mask I am trying to recreate for our performance later this month, I find none of my usual tools suitable for the fine line I'm trying to etch in the eyeless mask.

And then it happens.

As if I needed another reminder that I am toiling in an ancient art form like a brontosaurus taking a swan dive in the tar pits- that in this age of virtual reality and CGI effects and the magic of Photoshop, a seashell I had picked up earlier that day just happens to be on my work table, the point of which is perfect to define the soft line of the lower lip.
Here I am, my ipod blaring The Arctic Monkeys into my sunburned ears and the only tool suitable to my purpose is a seashell.

O Hephestus, whom the Romans called Vulcan, God of Craftsmen and Technology and (of course) Volcanoes, I thank you!

A Mask on The Isle of Spetses...

Spetses wall hanging

Epidarus

We venture now to Epidarus for the National Theatre of Greece's production of Aristophanes- (pronounced Ar- ist- o- phan- es) The Frogs. The director for our final performance is in the company. Epidarus- an ancient fourteen thousand seat house- packed. When's the last time you saw that for a piece of theatre?

In it, Dionysius travels to the Underworld to bring back the greatest tragic playwright. Will it be Aeschylus or Euripides? The two playwrights fight it out using examples from their writing.

In this version- the plays seem totally and completely mutable- true directors theatre- it was done as a sporting event- complete with astroturf covered stage and bullpens they retreated to, covered in sponsors stickers like a Nascar racer. The shapeshifting chorus was the most interesting for me- great mask work- some huge, some on the back of heads- otherworldly- and some delightfully simple; a hoody with eyes.

The Prince

Yes and No
(To be read in the style of the late George Carlin)

The rules of art are written by the beholder.
Not the artist.
The artist offers the big bountiful Yes and it sounds like everything;
An orgasm and a death rattle.
A fart and a cri du coeur.
Yes is a question. And a call to arms.
No is an amputation and a gelding.
No is nothing. A cul de sac in a tract development.
No severs the artery, bites the tongue, kills the party, aborts the fetus, scrapes the pallet, bombs the hospital of Yes.
Yes bounces.
No sinks. Forever.
Yes shines like the eyes of the eager.
No spray paints the monument.
No is a sledge hammer.
Yes is a fulcrum, the arrow and the bow.
No steals.
Yes borrows.
No leers while Yes smiles,
No says no to Yes.
Yes says yes to No.
Yes listens and No is deaf and dumb and never dreams.
Yes dreams all the time.
Yes takes the car out for a drive.
No has a head-on with a stranger.
No runs out of gas and Yes survives on fumes.
No gives bad directions.
Yes gets lost and doesn't care.
Yes shoots and scores,
No sits on the bench.
Yes swallows.
No vomits.
Yes vomits too sometimes.
Yes has more fun than No.
Unless Yes needs a little No.
No is necessary, No is essential.
Yes is optional. Yes is Yesserific!
No is a dictator.
Yes is a prince.

Getting Cast

After the claustrophobia... Comes the prize. "Getting cast" takes on a whole new meaning as Sally Tonge, mask maker for Theodorus Terzopolous and major contributor to the Opening ceremonies of the 2004 Olympics makes a mold of my head.

After 45 minutes in darkness and silence and then being pried from your warm, wet, white cocoon to confront your image in negative is a true transformative experience.

I then sculpted a tragedians mask over the custom form. In honor of the 2 year old boy who is the son of one of our workshop participants, I named him Prince Davon of Hydra. Last night little Davon performed a complete menagerie of creatures for everybody under my direction. After each impression he'd run back to me and say "More."
At that age life is so simple. There is "Yes", "No" and "More". There is no room for "Maybe".

I'm finding that at my age too, "Maybe" is pretty useless.

That evening as the sun set over the Saronic Gulf I wrote the preceding reflection.

Davon, Prince of Hydra

A tool, ready to be used...

Pan, Rhea and the Rest of the Gang

How Does One Become a God?

Apparently you must begin before the Beginning.
Here's how:
Hold your Breath. Plug your nose. Gargle the Mouthwash of Pure Nothingness. Pour colorless wax in your ears 'til they are vacumn sealed. Keep holding your breath. Let a millennium go by. Then an eon. Then let the very concept of time slip away. That's a start.

The Titans

Eventually something just sort of arrives. The Greeks called it Gaia. She had a husband named Uranus. They got bored and started creating things. The Titans Cronus and his wife Rhea came along. Cronus was, of course, a cannibal and would have eaten his son Zeus if Rhea hadn't tricked him.

Side note: Rhea also happens to be the name of the Chelsea ship's clock my dad gave me when I got my first sailboat, Shinobi. She's brass, solid state steel on the inside with an eight day wind. She's also mentioned in a book by famed boat designer L. Francis Herreschoff as surviving ninety mile an hour winds. Reliable. That's Rhea. Now I understand her namesake.

Pan

Meanwhile there's this country God who comes along. He basically stays out of the way of the Olympians. He's kind of used as their court jester. His name is Pan. One day he's sleeping in the afternoon- the Greeks love their siesta- and a stranger wakes him up. He lets out a terrible shriek and that's where we get the word "panic". Pan turns mockery into an art form. A bad review is still called a "pan". He later falls in love with this nymph named Syrinx. To avoid him she turns herself into a reed. The trick works and Pan bores holes in every reed he sees and blows through them to find her. We have Syrinx to thank (blame) for the pan pipe.

The Olympians

Zeus had a couple older brothers: Poseidon and Hades. Here they come. There are Twelve of them. The Olympians.

And yesterday we took a long running leap off a short pier like the one pictured and endeavored to become them. The play was called The Tale and was written by Tom Smith. The play is a kind of primer featuring the twelve major arcana. Why is it always the number twelve with these things? Months, astrological signs, always twelve. No wonder 13 is an unlucky number. And I was cast in the role of Dionysius. Why? Maybe because I've already exhibited a gregarious nature or because I seem to be drinking more than my share of retsina, the tangy pine-tinged wine they quaff here by the barrel full, or because they wanted to see the American crash and burn, I don't know, but they assigned the God of Wine and Theatre and who knows what else to me. But these are Gods. And you're on their turf now. So you're not so much cast as entrusted with the role. Selected to embody the guardian of mirth and revelry, I dove off the pier of relative safety with relative abandon.

But these are Olympians we're playing, and doing my typically OTT (Over The Top) first choice instinct, all bluster and bombast, seemed too on the nose. Neither was pulling back the right course. It is suggested to play him with a kind of Jamaican raggae accent. Luckily I had just closed Pericles at The California Shakespeare Theatre and one of my roles was the 1st Fisherman. The Pentapolean accent we created for the show seemed to fit. The slightly frenchified vowels and laid back cadence seemed to gel well with Dionysus' "let it all hang out" aspect.

Unapologetic

One thing is certain: The Gods all seem to love themselves. They are unapologetic. Conflicted, silly, driven, petty, divisive, eager, petulant and powerful but never apologetic. They seem to be saying "This is me. I'm here to represent but I'm not representational. I'm full of flaws and foibles but I'm not sorry."

So as I see it the lesson of the Gods is clear. Just as the Gods have human qualities, we mortals have all the pantheon of God's qualities to choose from. As we navigate these blue restless waters of possibility, we can be as curious as Pandora, as unctuous as Prometheus, as argumentative as Ares and as profane as Dionysus. Its up to us, as individual humans to steer the little fragile boat of our selves on this funny, fertile, festive thing called life.

And the Gods seem to be saying Bon Voyage!

At the Temple of Aphaia

The Mask of Satori

It began, as so many wonderful things do, as a mistake.
I was racking my brain- (an invariably fruitless torture, my brain being usually occupied with so many digressive musings and idle flippancies it has little chance of even recognizing it is being racked, let alone yielding some sustainable ideas under such self imposed scrutiny) -for a worthy theme for a grant I was writing under the auspices of the Theatre Communications Group. With the vague notion that the Neutral Mask work that I had dabbled in with Theatre du Soliel alum Georges Bigot might be an interesting well to dip into, I did what any modern seeker of the truth suffering from Delusions of Grandeur- (and can you really call it suffering? I mean its fantastic!) -would do: I googled it.

And among the fifty thousand results that came up in .005 seconds was a listing that immediately grabbed my usually addled cerebrum by the throat and throttled it into a delicious and buzzing submission. There it was in black and white about twelve search pages in: The Mask of Satori.
Being a huge Japanophile may have had a hand in my misreading the listing or it was actually a misprint- I'm not sure. Its too late now anyway- not only am I committed to the notion of the possibility that there is indeed a Mask of Satori out there- (Satori being the Japanese word for enlightenment or epiphany) -but I got the grant, a coveted Fox Fellowship.

Of course I now know it was a mistake. Either the listing was misspelled or I saw what I wanted to see- (a penchant of mine) -but the listing referred to The Mask of Sartori, Sartori being the famed Italian mask maker who developed what is known as The Noble Mask, the genderless, ageless and therefore haunting mask reportedly carved under theatre lights- (since that is where it would live its lifetime, devoid of nationality) for Jacques LeCoq as a kind of “truth serum” for training actors.

The Truth

I was interested in this kind of truth. Blessed with what has been called a “rubbery” face- I take it as a compliment- I have tried throughout my career to explore my opposite; to seek my personal doppleganger. To find a silent and solemn Yin to the malleable and sometimes clownish Yang of my expressive face. My study of Iaido, the Japanese art of drawing the sword, where any facial expression is deemed unsuitable, bears that out. In Iaido the facial cast is simply a solemn look that says “most regrettable” to your doomed opponent. I was interested in exploring that idea with mask. I am exploring it in earnest now, thanks to this grant and the bold souls at the California Shakespeare Theatre who suggested I apply.

Journey With Intent

There is something about going on a journey with intent.
This is to be a quixotic journey. Quixotic; fittingly coming from Don Quixote, who inspired me so many years ago when manifested by Richard Kiley in Man of La Mancha. But the intent, the impossible dream in this case involves the human face. The universal mask. And as I walked the history drenched cobblestones of Dublin and now the whitewashed alleyways and bustling waterfronts of the Greek islands of Poros and Aegina prior to my arrival on Hydra where I will be training, I have begun to see every face, from the grizzled ferryboat worker I befriended to the harried waitress at the Electra Taverna as a mask.

There are two distinct looks I've begun to notice in the people of Greece. Just like the comic and tragic masks that were born here, the men and women seem to me to (through the forces of gravity or hardship or just the salt tinged air) settle into distinct categories. For the men there are two avenues: either they follow the Appian way into what can only be described as a kind of Zero Mostelish jowleyness, thick lipped and liquid eyed, perfect for arguing and debating, or they fold in on themselves in a Spencer Tracy-like gern, a perpetuall squint and squeeze around glinty eyes that sparkle with mischief.

For the women, two different options await them with the onset of maturity, before which they are simply goddesses; sylphs and sirens with eyebrows as sculpted as a Donatello and skin the color of pistachios warmed in the blistering Hellenic sun. Either they age softly, rounding and becoming bulbous in all directions, underarm dewlaps perfect for grandmotherly protection, widows' peaks encroaching on the mask of their prominent brows like ravens at a cemetery or they go all Melina Mercouri, lips curdled down in a crimson parody of the tragic mask, poised to go Medea on your ass should you inadvertently step in front of them in line at the super market.

As you can tell, I've been looking at faces. After a veritable lifetime of focusing on the human animal from the chin down- I even have my students put bags on their heads- telling them I'm only interested in what goes on below my favorite body part: the chin- I am now seeing faces as tools; archetypes of expression waiting to be exploited, categorized, used.

It seems to me that here on this volcanic rock that pokes out of an Aegean that seems to stick like clear blue glue to this craggy Minoan moonscape, the Gods are still here in every grin and grimace, every comic and tragic visage.

I wonder: when we start to see faces as tools for our art, do we cheapen them? Or do we turn them into Gods?
I guess that's part of why I'm here.
Journey with intent.
Thank you Aphrodite.

The Night Before

It is the night before.
I am on board Valhalla, my 1969 Sparkman and Stevens designed Yankee Dolphin 24.
I leave for Greece tomorrow to participate in workshops and performances in a program called Playing to the Gods.
I say I am on board this charming little sailboat but in fact that is not how it feels at all.
I feel as if half my molecules are already leaking away from me and are arriving, swirling through some perfect gap in a trio of Doric columns that strand sentinel at some ancient mountain top oracle in some undiscovered corner of the Aegean.
In a couple days the rest of me will catch up.
First, my Aer Lingus flight will get me to Dublin, where my connecting flight leaves the next day at 2:00 for Athens.

Which leaves me 24 hrs. in Dublin.

There is a pint at Grogan's, (the pub that boasts the world's first liquor license with its 5' 7" ceilings and the River Liffey and the reek of Guinness in all its forms; spilled, pissed and regurgitated wafting through the doorway) in my future.

But right now its the night before and I'm just reveling in being on the precipice, floating on the water, half my molecules swirling past the ruins and knowing a great adventure begins tomorrow.

Muses! I Salute you! Guide me. I want to play with you!

...Stay tuned.

Entering Into The Waza

Well, Triumph Of Love has closed, giving me the welcome opportunity to catch up on my life outside of acting.
I study a martial art called Iaido, or Japanese swordsmanship, which is really kenjutsu with an emphasis on the draw.Our sensei, Andrej Diamantstein, asked us students to "Enter into the waza" the other day. He then asked us if we knew what he meant by that. All of us- except one lucky and honest guy- said they did. He then asked us to prove we understood what he meant with a three page essay. The fellow who said he didn't understand was, of course, excused from the exercise. Here then, for no other reason than that I thought it might be interesting for someone out there, is mine.

Entering Into The Waza

1: Entering…

Draw a circle on the floor. Try to make it perfectly round. This may take a lifetime or more. You have just divided the universe into three sections. One section is the entire universe outside the circle you have drawn, another section is the area inside the circle you have drawn and the third section is the line separating the inside from the outside.
Walk around the circle. From this position you have a unique perspective. Everything inside the circle is visible to the eye. You can examine the circle like a scientist examines a petrie dish. You can place things inside the circle and watch them interact. This is what artists do with paint on a canvas. Or filmmakers do on a movie screen. The circle has become a sacred space. It is the dance floor, the stage or the dojo. It is the altar, the temple or the launch pad.

From your position here on the outside you can make judgments about the contents of your circle. You can attach values, preferences, likes and dislikes. Opinions form. Notice the first letter in the word opinion is just another one of those beautiful, simple, universe defining circles. You can now make decisions based on your observations of the goings on inside your perfect circle. You are now in what the Japanese call a position of the Shihan. The Japanese character for Shihan is made up of two parts. The shi refers to one being atop a hill. Additional marks refer to wood and trees. So the pictographic meaning of Shihan is something like “being atop a wooded hill”. A good position to achieve on, say, a battlefield. From a wooded hill a general can observe the movements of his troops without being observed himself. He sees all and is unseen. He can orchestrate the battle from this vantage point like a conductor leads an orchestra from his podium. He sees all the parts and can therefore recognize the patterns that may emerge and respond accordingly. He sees the Waza. But has he entered into the Waza? Not Yet.

Now: Step into the circle. Before you do this you may want to bow to the circle as a martial artist might do before stepping on the mat at the dojo or a bullfighter when he genuflects before entering the ring. Close your eyes. Imagine the circle around you. You are encased in the line separating all the universe outside the circle from all the area inside the circle. Outside that is the circle of the room you are in. That circle is in turn encased in the circle of the city limits of your town. We can extrapolate out to the circle of the continent you live on and on to the unknown limits of the trackless vastness of the universe itself.

Now return to the circle that you’ve drawn. Within that circle is the circle of your skin holding magically together the bag of water and bone and sinew and muscle that is your body. Breathe. Draw some air into the inside of the circle of your lungs. Exhale and you contract the organ and simply make the circle of your lungs smaller. Sense your center of gravity. Another circle! Notice how you can move it around. Place it carefully and securely in your Hara, somewhere about three inches below your navel. Notice that you are not observing this new circle with your eyes or any of the other highly developed senses you came factory equipped with. There is another sense you are accessing. This sense comes into play only once you have entered.

When one enters into any activity, be it a job interview, an audition or a marriage, one is seeking a deeper understanding of that particular circle. What is this understanding? It consists of an intuitive “gut feeling” (again the Hara) that through examining the activity we can develop ever deeper appreciation of it. We can begin to perfect our circle.

2: Into…

Take a shower. Towel yourself off. Stand naked before your closet. Your clothes are waiting for you on hangers. These are your costumes. If you have an important interview or a date you may select your costume with that in mind. If you are working around the house all day you might just throw on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Either way you are entering into a costume that will define the character, the status, the very silhouette of the observable you. But there is much that is hidden. In Iaido we wear the hakama to obscure our opponents perception of our feet. Our feet reveal how we are managing our center of gravity. This is valuable information for a combatant engaged in a match. It is just one of the many factors he uses to anticipate his opponents next move. The combatant has entered into his opponent. When a defender in basketball effectively keeps his opposing player from scoring it could be said he “wears him like a suit of clothes.” A chess player’s prowess is measured by how well he can anticipate his opponent’s moves. How far can he get into the mind of his opponent. European fencing has been described as chess at a hundred miles an hour. As physical an activity as competitive fencing is, the fencer’s ability to enter into his opponent’s thoughts and respond accordingly relies on senses beyond the mere physical. Amid the flash and fury of steel the fencing practitioner must acquire a stillness, a calm in the eye of the storm that can enable him to access the thoughts of his opponent even before he is consciously aware of them himself.

So entering into the waza or looking deeply into the waza is a determined act to step into that sacred circle. Observing it from both the inside and the outside, we may begin to breathe in and out with its rhythm. Knowing that just observing the waza from the outside only gives us part of the story. And closing ourselves off and focusing inward we may obscure the bigger picture. Our self-centered myopia blinds us to a deeper understanding of the waza.

Consider the koi pond. The observer can distinguish flashes of color, the oranges and rich golds of the fish swimming just under the surface, the perfect symmetry of the water lilies floating gracefully on top, the reflection of the moon catching on the ripples like a thousand tiny mirrors. These are all elements of what we can recognize as something of profound beauty. Taken separately, they are simply random elements found in nature. Without the water, the beautiful golden koi fish will flop around helplessly and die. But taken together the elements that make up the pond are not separate random phenomenon but an aesthetically pleasing whole. In observing the pond it can be said we enter into a form of softening our focus in order to enjoy the whole. When we look at the pond we do not think “the fish are breathing water under the moonlight with water lilies all around.” We simply think “Ahh. A koi pond.” We have entered into a form of perception that takes in all the elements and does not fixate our attention on any single thing. This is a nice place to begin when one seeks to enter into any waza.

In the theatre, we recognize the construction of any play as having a beginning, a middle and an end. The openness of the beginning, with its mystery and promise, is defined by the actions inherent in the middle, and finally congeals into the end. Where we were at the beginning has been colored by the middle so that by the end we cannot be what we were.

Actors make entrances. At the root of the word entrance is the verb “to entrance” and that’s what actors try to do, entrance us. The Way of the martial artist, the do of Aikido or Iaido is reliant on this softening of focus and this awareness of a whole. So this act of entering into the waza is a courageous one. It is the actor stepping from the wings onto the stage. It is like the fisherman wading into the pond.

3: The Waza…

Consider the circle you drew earlier. Is it perfectly round? Close your eyes. Try to imagine a perfect circle. Notice how, even in your imagination slight irregularities occur. One moment it looks vaguely egg shaped. Try to correct it and it loses its roundness altogether, morphs into a different shape entirely. The perfect circle, like the waza, is an elusive beast. Every practitioner of every art form has had to, at some point, face the specter of the waza. From flower arrangers to construction workers learning the basic, fundamental forms or kata that are the foundation of creating something of value is mandatory to achieve anything approaching a higher level. I’ve watched a roofer performing the waza of installing a shingle roof with the quiet concentration of a master swordsman. I’ve watched Micheal Jordan shooting free throws. Three dribbles, bend the knees, exhale, get the elbow under, aim, shoot. The same way every time. This is how good basketball players can shoot free throws with the game on the line and thousands of screaming fans doing everything they can to distract them and yet they can still make the basket ninety percent of the time. The practice of the waza, the thousands of repetitions, has prepared the practitioner to perform at the peak of his abilities. The seemingly mind numbing act of doing the same thing thousands of times exactly the same way has given the artist a form of confidence not found anywhere else. It has won basketball championships as well as vanquished enemies on the battlefield.

Since you can never truly do the same thing exactly the same way every time, in practicing a waza consistently and over a long period of time an interesting possibility is exposed. It is possible that the waza and how you perform it becomes a kind of mirror. It shows you yourself. It reflects your shifts in concentration and focus. It monitors your breathing. It demands equal parts of energy and economy. It is a barometer of your morale and a stern taskmaster constantly challenging your abilities. It is that line that separates the inside from the outside.

In daily life we practice various waza almost without knowing it. We get up in the morning, stumble into the kitchen and make coffee. The entire process, from spooning the coffee into the coffee maker to stirring in just the right amount of cream to watching the swirling cosmos of white and brown and breathing in the welcome aroma is one long waza replete with a beginning, a middle and an end. Performed correctly, no coffee grounds will spill on the counter, the percolator will not over-flow and you may even remember to close the refrigerator door.

Consider Ushiro, the fourth in the sieza series of waza practiced in Iaido. A difficult and graceful maneuver that looks more like a hip hop dance move than a deadly and effective response to a surprise attack from behind. And yet performed over and over it reveals something to the iaidoist he may never have otherwise known about himself. With each new waza a new set of peaks and valleys appears. A vast territory is to be explored. A perfect circle is to be drawn.

And so we come to the circle you drew on the floor originally. Resign yourself to the fact that the circle may never be perfect but the idea of the perfect circle remains, ever elusive, ever beckoning, ever entrancing and always possible with each new beginning.

So looking deep into the waza is simply practicing a given technique to the best of your ability every time and remaining open to its mysteries. To enter into a living, breathing legacy of practice laid down by those that have gone before and lived to tell of it. To wade into that still, still pond, appreciate the water lilies, the flash of orange and gold under the surface and maybe, just maybe, see the moon.

Enjoy The Show!

I always enjoy the stroll up the winding path that leads to the Bruns Memorial theatre. I remember one Summer when the sycamore leaves that had fallen on the walk way during the off season and had now been swept away left a delicate reminder of nature's random beauty. Ghost images of the leaves had created a lovely pattern on the path. It looked almost Japanese to me, like the pattern you might find on a silk kimono.

As anyone who has been to Calshakes knows, at the top of the path, past the wonderfully arresting sculptures that add a certain elegance to the grove and in the shadow of our very own Wooden O is a really great cafe.

Recently, I decided to try one of their specials: Braised beef shank and mashed potatos and a little salad. (There's an employee discount.) After I paid, the girl behind the counter gave me my change and cheerfully said "Enjoy the show!"

And that got me to thinking.

My first thought was "I can't. I'm doing the show." I'll be too busy hitting people with shovels and picking up cues to enjoy it. But then I remembered an experience I'd had in an acting workshop with Phillippe Gaulier in London a few years back. We were doing some Buffoon work, improvising characters in an exercise called "Buffoon Circle" and I was (as I remember) flowing quite nicely. The workshop participants were laughing their asses off and I thought I was killing. But after the exercise was over and I was catching my breath, I looked up and Gaulier was staring at me sternly. He said something that I've always remembered.
He said "Very good. You had us all laughing. We all enjoyed that work very much as you could tell while you were doing it. But how much better it would have been if YOU had enjoyed it too!"

I think what Gaulier was getting at is this fundamental quality that we've all seen in performances that trancends watching a well executed portrayal done well. There are those moments when we see the performer enjoying themselves and we humans, as the empathetic creatures that we are, cannot help but be swept up in the swirl of it. To go on our own little Buffoon Circle with the performer(s) by sheer force of the actor's joyful commitment to the material. No wonder you hear so many directors finally boil all their guidance down into two little words: Have Fun.

Curses

There is a old Jewish curse that goes like this:
"May all your teeth fall out except one, and may that one tooth have a hell of a toothache!"
A pretty extreme curse wouldn't you say?
But in that tradition there is a curse that trumps it:
"May what you love be also what you do for a living."

My job, -and don't get me wrong, I absolutely love it- is at its most basic, to have fun. To enjoy myself. Even if I was playing a tragic character- and who's to say the rustic gardener Dimas in Triumph of Love isn't in some small way a tragic figure, at least in his own mind?

So if a few folks out there in the amphitheatre get swept up in my little Buffoon Circle, all the better because tonight I'm going to take the advice of that girl who works at the cafe. I'm going to enjoy the show.

The Poise Shows

The first one is the 2nd preview. This is when all of us; the actors, the technicians, the house staff, all of us are tested on our poise. Gone is the adrenalin flutteriness and delicious loathing of that first audience. The delightful surprises and illuminating lessons that the first audience brings are behind us. What we are left with is the simple fact that we must present our product to the best of our ability without the frosting of jitters that accompany that first performance before a full house.

We must show our Poise.

Poise. I've always liked the word.

Poise is defined as a state of balance or equilibrium, a dignified, self-confident manner or bearing, a composure. It is a form of self-possession.

It also has a nice feeling of suspense or wavering, as between rest and motion or two phases of movement. Like a fencer in equipoise, ready to thrust or defend with equanimity. It is also like hovering: the poise of a bird in the air. To have poise is to be balanced, to exhibit self-assurance; polish, grace, refinement.

What a blessing it is to be tested on our poise on this crystal clear Summer afternoon at the Bruns and not in some bunker in the Middle East- but that's for another column.

Actually, there are two of them. Poise Shows. The 2nd one comes on a gleaming Sunday matinee, the day after opening. There is no promise of a party with friends and family after, no well wishing cards or flowers or candies or hugs. There is only a team of artists presenting a 400 year old play in the unflinching glare of the sun as a seemingly endless parade of helicopters and other noisome aircraft cross the cloudless sky overhead.

But this 2nd Poise Show has something up its sleeve: Relief. Relief that we have finally opened. That the sweet hoopla and the champagne speeches are over and we can just settle down and do our work.

And talking with the other cast members at intermission, it seems that all of us feel better about our performances here at the matinee Poise Show than we did the previous night. Everyone is a little more relaxed, a little more listening to the other actors and a little less listening to ourselves and the audience reactions is going on. It just seems to flow better and I don't know why.

Maybe we're showing our poise.

The Shovel Photo Op

This is a photo taken by our wonderful stage manager Les Rhinehart during rehearsal at the Bruns with her phone. As you can see Lillian is adjusting the angle of the shovel that is between my legs so that it may more easily smash me in the head in the bit that follows. That's all it is. I swear.

Intermission at the Ball

Who Are You People?

At the intermission of the first preview, the four male actors in Triumph of Love try to figure out just how accurate a barometer this first audience is of future audiences in terms of their reaction to the show.

In our surprisingly spacious seeming dressing room- I've never been in a cast at Cal Shakes with so few men in it- we are all still flushed from our efforts in the first act and reassuringly gratified by the information this first audience has given us: that our production has lots of laughs, that about 80% of our painstakingly crafted bits do, in fact, actually work and that our hard work in the rehearsal hall seems to be paying off. Big time.

But who are those people out there? Several theories are bandied about between the dressing room tables. The first thought is that they are savvy theatre types who come to the preview because they like to be in on the process, or as Comic Maestro Dan Hiatt opines: "They come to see the show before all the bits are cut." Another theory is that the first preview audiences are the equivalent of traffic accident lookee-loos, there to see the possible missteps that a first audience may engender. (Fortunately we're too well rehearsed to supply that particular brand of schadenfreude.) Yet another theory is that they're just cheap and want to save a couple bucks on the ticket price.
Regardless, the concensus in the dressing room is that if all the audiences turn out to be this responsive and generous, we're in for a terrific run.

But actors are a paranoid lot and we all secretly wonder whether this first audience is a trustworthy indicator of what we can expect from future audiences.

The Aspidistra Effect

And there were some (pleasant) surprises. One that comes to mind is a recurring gag- maybe a little less Marivaux and a little more Groag- regarding the fictitious name Princess Leonide uses in her gambit in this philosopher's garden. Off the top of her head she comes up with the unlikely name Aspidistra for herself. Much rehearsal time was spent developing the various mispronunciations that nearly all the other characters in the play struggle with in trying to address her. Doubts as to whether this somewhat dog eared gag would work were quickly and resoundingly quelled when every permutation, from the first utterance of the name to the last Aspi-dissy-sissy, was met with gales of laughter. Who Knew? Lillian did. And as she said herself in that day's pre preview rehearsal: "There are no cheap laughs. A laugh is a laugh no matter how cheap."

A Fluke?

Speaking of cheap laughs, I was gratified to discover that my hijinks with the onstage fountain and its adorable Eros sculpture seemed to flow (or squirt, as the case may be) rather nicely and though we all somehow mistrust that first adrenaline producing preview audience, the feeling at the end of the show (once the audience had filed out and we went back to work fixing some small technical glitches) was decidedly upbeat and positive. Tomorrow night we get to see if all this hilarity was a fluke. My fingers are crossed 'cuz this first preview was a ball!

A Harmless Shovel ?

Lessons of the Shovel

"Never hit your mother with a shovel. It leaves a deep impression on her mind"
Words to live by.
But what about when you're playing the outraged and slightly dense gardner Dimas in Triumph of Love and you enter your garden to find two interlopers- actually two women dressed as men- the formidable Stacy Ross and Catherine Castellanos, eating your precious and beloved apples and your buddy Arlequino, played by force of nature Danny Schie, seems to be helping them to it?!?

Time to hit somebody with a shovel.

Director Lillian Groag wants to insure that this opening gambit of slap stick lazzi looks as realistic as possible. So Danny and I begin to develop this little deadly dance of face flattening violence. It is only when a sound cue is added- and at an ear drum splitting decibel level- that our director is satisfied. Almost.

Ahh Timing.

But what about the foot smash that follows?
It looks fake, undermining the comedy and stretching the suspension of disbelief beyond the breaking point. Danny and I are banished to the tiny Moscone Stage area to work it out. We both feel like remedial students sent away to practice while the real actors get to rehearse. But after countless attempts, and aided by our paripatetic ASM Cassie, we develop the routine that will let Danny retain all his toes, keep his profile and still (hopefully) we'll get a laugh.(Knock Wood)

The challenge of playing the clowns in this effervescent comedy seems to have more to do with suiting the choreography to the situation and refining it to a little gem than just pure invention. This can be frustrating. We all want to invent funny buisiness and just let it rip but this is Marivaux, not Goldoni, and it requires a delicacy that will highlght the love story and not seem other worldly- even though part of the clowns purpose is to infuse the proceedings with a touch of the chaotic, we are really just a kind of counterpoint to the travails of the lovers and as such our shenanigans need to be just as clean and well executed as the bows and courtly behavior of the higher status main characters.

So Danny and my shovel bit is just as painstakingly examined as the climactic kiss between Agis (the delightful Jud Williford) and Leonide. (the fabulous Stacy Ross).

Like every theatre making experience I've had before this, the pieces of this elaborate puzzle are slowly, painfully fitting into place. And sometimes with a really loud CLANG!

Next up: The Run Thru

The Launch Pad

"Long time no blog" they said at Calshakes and I have been cast as the comic gardener Damis in Marivaux's The Triumph of Love so I said "I shall blog again". and Joy Meads helped me find my old password and user name and the dormant blog blinked on again. Another destination in the cybersphere resumes.

And so it begins.

A gorgeous summer day at the Hienz rehearsal hall. The usual suspects arrive, like school kids at the first day of school. A veritable who's who of the Bay Area's top actors convene round the coffee maker. Each of us has probably played at least three or four characters since we last saw each other. The tables are already crunched together in anticipation of the read thru. These first days always feel like that movie The Right Stuff where all the astronauts, many who have known each other for years, get briefed on the next mission. Our dossiers are carefully placed around the tables. The team has assembled. Its kinda like Mission Impossible.

Welcome to the launch pad.

Of course there is an outer circle of chairs for staff and administration, the bold souls who somehow make Cal Shakes hum and tick and meet all the various deadlines that must be met so the Art can hit the Bruns stage in a timely manner and in all its classically re- invented glory. Along with the regulars, some new faces. Artistic Director Timothy Near and her posse from the San Jose Rep are here, since this is a co-production that will travel south for another run in September. The atoms in the room are charged with an unnameable excitement. We are on the launch pad.

Funny and Sexy and Romantic and a bit Appalling

That's how our director, the delightful and daring Lillian Groag describes the production she envisions for this Triumph of Love.Praised by Artistic Director Jonathon Moscone as a romantic visionary, Lillian, in some remarkably lucid yet seemingly off the cuff opening comments (its all being recorded for a podcast) elucidates our game plan. The Ruthlessness of Love shall be highlighted. Lillian, at her core, is a European artist, fluent in opera and steeped in a deeper tradition. This Triumph of Love will not be about nice neat pairings and happy endings but reflect the more European sensitivity of comedy and tragedy twanging in a minor chord simultaneously.

The Marathon

For the first week of rehearsal I am doing the equivalent of a theatre marathon. Because I am still performing a one man show in which I play 38 characters in Los Angeles, I must fly up to Oakland every day from Burbank, rehearse, and then return to Burbank in the afternoon to do my show. The insanity of this overlap doesn't really sink in until Friday afternoon when my dad calls me on my cell.

"Where are you?" he says.
"I am in a cab on the way to some airport. I have no idea which one."

Amazingly, I make all my curtains in L.A and even get in a little rehearsal in Berkeley. Whatta week!

Next Up:
The Artistry of Shovel Acting

Falstaff From The Inside or, The Teachings of the Puppet

Since before the first humans regailed their tribes with tales of the hunt,
Before the first storytellers began to tell their sagas around the sacred circle of the fire,
Before the first kokopellis and griots and troubadors began ennacting the miriad cycles of stories and dreams, lessons and fantasies, all embellished with details and woven into myth, actors have been trying to figure out the same question:
How Do You Get In Character?
Here in the rehearsal hall of the California Shakespeare Theatre in the year 2006, we are still trying to figure out that one.

As an operator of a 9 foot body puppet with 6 foot arms and and a two foot lip-span, getting into character is simply the quite prosaic act of climbing under the belly, getting a stool under me so I can secure the shoulder and waist harnesses and then getting our ever vigilant assistant stage manager Keely to unclip me from a pulley system hanging from a crossbar near the cieling. Now I am, indeed, In Character.
Or Am I?

Choices

I had a bit of a meltdown/ epiphany the other day as I was working inside the puppet. They say acting is about choices. When you're doing Shakespeare you're not exactly originating the role. Thousands, Millions have played these roles before. A hundred actors are creating a hundred different Falstaffs as you read this. It is the choices that each artist makes within the framework of Falstaff that defines a particular version.
With Puppets, every choice is put under a microscope. I read in one of the research books our ever informative Daniel "Slutty" Venning had and it said "An actor represents a character. A puppet is the character." We just supply the choices. The puppetteer is constantly making decisions on movement, angle, speed, duration and a thousand other kinesthetic awarenesses. That's how the puppets, these inannimate objects of wood and wire are able to express different emotions. Choices.

But there's more. I don't know what to call it. Life Force is the only thing I can think of. This is the element that I find so compelling in this work: the puppeteer most pour his or her life force into the puppet to give it breath.

And I began to think of my work as an actor outside of a puppet. When I'm simply operating the puppet that is my own body. Is the character I am playing pouring its life force into me? and how can I remain susceptible to that and not get in the way of the many possibilities of that level of transformation?

Liquid

When an actor forgets his lines it is said that he "goes dry".
When the work is going well it feels like its just "flowing out of you".
I think this life force thing is liquid in nature. And like liquid it seeks its own level. It has to fill in the valleys before it can engulf the mountainous peaks. A real connection with a role comes along and you feel like he's in your blood. You see through his eyes, think his thoughts, feel his feelings.
They say an actor is a vessel. A holder of stories. A cup for the sweet elixir of this magical potion: Life.

The Puppet speaks

So how does one get into character with a 9 foot puppet resting securely on your shoulders, practically crying out for some strong, actable, playable choices?
With a little help from your friends.
When we want Falstaff to talk and make big gestures or even do something as simple as picking up a stool it takes at least three of us. The tremendously talented Max Moore takes over the left arm. Geoff "Googie" Uterhardt, an amazing actor/puppeteer takes over the right, sometimes aided by the delightfully irrepressable Lorna Howley and we all try to pour our life forces through the sieve of Falstaff into this gigantic collection of foam rubber and plastic tubing. Its really something.

Like our actor ancestors before us, we are all trying to get into character. The same character. At the same time.
Hopefully. there is enough rehearsal time ahead of us so we can get comfortable with this monster and start to listen to what Falstaff the Puppet has to say.
To hear about his choices.
To stop struggling with the mechanism and as our puppet master John Ludwig says: "To be ready to listen, for the puppet will only then reveal its secrets".

Stay Tuned...

Time Flys Like An Arrow...

Fruit flys like a banana.

What is it about time?

In the theatre, time reveals itself at its most elastic, most malleable, most unpredictable. Two weeks can go by in a heartbeat. Two seconds can seem like an eternity. Anyone who has spent any time onstage during one of those agonizing moments when either you or your fellow player has "gone up" and silence descends on the scene like the blade of a guillotine knows that time is a killer. Time is a cruel mistress in the theatre. Catch the wave, sense the right timing and she's your ally. Miss the moment, falter in the flow of your character's thoughts and like an angry Shiva, she can destroy. And nothing exposes the power of timing like live theatre.

Two weeks of rehearsal on our puppet infused version of The Merry Wives of Windsor have flown by like a flock of canaries pressed against the windshield of a bullet train. Two elements stand out to me in the haze of recollection: Laughter & Pain. Laughter because the cast Sean Daniels has assembled is with out a doubt on of the funniest and most intelligent I've had the pleasure of working with. And the puppets themselves summon a kind of lunatic child out of each of us. Its as if the hardship of sore muscles and awkward positions has brought a kind of comic fuel that each of the performers is feeding off and converting it directly into what our director calls The Funny. I've seen this phenomenon before. Acting companies invariably find an equilibrium between the rigors of the hard work and the release of the tension thru laughter. And every one of these performers has at one time or another completely cracked all of us up. Whether it be in one of Sean's revealing Character Interview exercises or exploring the super-human abilities of these puppets onstage and off, the time that has passed almost unnoticed since my last posting has been chock full of The Funny. It is as if the Pain quotient has a direct link to the fun part. Who was it who said Comedy is Tragedy plus Time? And time certainly has been on our side. And now we're on the brink of moving from the comparative safety of the rehearsal hall to the sacrificial alter of the Bruns stage. As the countdown to opening night begins, we all wonder in our heart of hearts whether we can master this deceptively tricky play in the time allotted. Only time will tell.
As David Bowie said:
Time is waiting in the wings,
It speaks of senseless things,
Its trick is you and me.

"I Wanted A Mission...

...And for my sins, they gave me one."

That was the line from Apocalypse Now (and probably before that from Micheal Herr's Dispatches, that kept rolling around in my head when I got off the phone with Sean Daniels after he told me I'd be playing Falstaff in his "puppet infused" production of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Sure, I wanted the job. I wanted a mission. An actor works, he doesn't just prepare, and I was looking forward to working with Sean again after taking part in his triumphant maiden voyage with Cal Shakes' The Comedy of Errors a couple Summers ago. That was also "puppet infused" and I got to play both Dromios with a life size puppet of myself as my twin. Good Times.

And now Falstaff. Nice.

But as with Martin Sheen's addled Captain in Apocalypse Now, this mission comes with strings attached. I guess that's the nature of puppets.
And not just strings. When they said "puppet infused" they weren't kidding. In fact with the puppet I will be operating (with the help of two other puppeteers) for Falstaff I'm the one doing the infusing. I will literally be inside this puppet. Wearing his massive girth with the aid of a back pack frame and and a few sticks and pulleys. You've done this show before, Ron. You've always wanted to play the big man, even if you aren't "About the waist two yards and more." Well you got your wish. As they said in Jarhead, "Welcome to the Suck."

Back packing with Jack

So I go in for a first meeting with my puppet. A costume fitting they call it but it's not really that. It's more like a birth. Here is this gigantic collection of foam and neopreme tubes and paper mache and strings and netting and air ducts and aluminum rods and triggers and pulleys that I will be trying to bring to life as one of Shakespeare's most recognized and beloved characters Sir Jack Falstaff.

He's hanging from a pulley system waiting for me. I put on his ridiculously over-sized shoes. These indeed are big shoes to fill. Something like around size 60 triple wide. Chris Brown, the genius who constructed this humungous and humorous monstrosity, indicates for me to "hop in" while he handles the pulley that will lower the body of Jack Falstaff onto me. Why do I feel a little like Katherine the Great as I get myself into position? Keep going, Ron. Remember, you wanted a mission. You're going to be playing Falstaff with a Shakespeare company you adore. Just go with it. I twist my body into the shoulder straps and buckle the waist belt stabilizer. Then it hits me. I'm going back packing with Falstaff this Summer. Or rather inside Falstaff. Talk about acting from the inside out!

Of course as with any birth there are complications and the birth of this Falstaff is no exception. Puppet people will tell you there are lots of tweeks that every puppet must go through. The first thing we find out is that I immediately step on my own hands. Not good. Next, there is a bar across the inside of the interior of the puppet that bangs my head. I can't bend my (Falstaff's that is) elbows. I can't see out of the front because of Falstaff's beard. But Chris and Sean and our costumers Lydia and Keri are already on it, measuring and bobby pinning away. They set up some impromptu mirrors for me to get an idea of what the fat knight looks like from the outside. I do a few speeches I've already memorized for just this occasion, knocking over a few chairs and stepping on my own hands with gusto, and the pulley is re-attached and I climb out from under Falstaff's portly belly. I'm out of breath and sore from the weight and I was only in there for a half an hour. What am I gonna do when I have to perform the entire evening? Well, that's what rehearsal is for. And I'm looking forward to it.

Next:
The first day of rehearsal.

These Actors As I Fortold You Are All Spirits And Are Vanished Into Air. Into Thin Air...

What is it about closing nights?

Or closing afternoons as it is in our case here at Calshakes.

We all knew this day was coming. After all, we all knew that closings are part of the nature of the game in live theatre when we started. We knew that one of the things that makes this experience so special is that it comes equipped with an expiration date.

We knew that we work in The Ultimate Disposible Art Form.
That our work is written on the wind.
That we are ice sculptors.
And that Prospero's island is truly made of sand.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard the sound of Mikita screw guns rasping away, dismantling the rampart or living room or platform I had just spent two months on while the pop of champagne corks fills the air in the lobby.

Or for every time, on closing nights, I've seen crew members stalking the wings with hammers in hand, waiting for the final curtain.

Or for every time I've cleaned off my makeup table, removed the pictures tacked on the mirror and stuffed the opening night cards into a paper bag and said goodbye to another role in my menagerie.

The final performance, as mentioned in these pages before , shares a special place in the progression of a play. If every performance is an opportunity to hone, shape and sculpt each moment like a brilliant jewel, then the last performance should be just about as good as this particular play, with this particular personel can be. Oftentimes its not. Moments are elongated beyond recognition. Emotions run away with the performance. Players are saying goodbye to every prop or turn of phrase like they're headed to the Russian front.

I had a director one time who admonished the cast to love the play , but not to make love to the play on closing night.

So that is what we intend to do today, on closing afternoon. Love the play, perform it to the best of our abilities and save our goodbyes for the lobby afterwards. And try not to let the sound of screw guns sour our champagne.

Me, I'll clean off my makeup table, stuff the cards and pictures into a paper bag and count myself lucky to have lived through this Tempest with no broken ankles or cracked ribs. I made some new friends, got to work again with some old ones, and added to my treasure chest of Calshakes experiences.

Its an itinerant lifestyle, the acting game. and though each closing feels like a little death, there is always something invigorating about heading off into uncharted waters. And this afternoon, when I make my final exit and leave Prospero's enchanted isle for the last time I'll be sad, yes, but happy to be moving on.

(For anyone out there interested my next gig is at Teatro Zinzanni, I'm playing the Chef.)

How many actors does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
One.
One to hold the lightbulb and the world revolves around him.

By the way:
Will Brown, one of our erstwhile sprites who you remember had to go to the hospital called me the other day to say he's doing much better. Apparently the condition he had was not as debilitating as some had predicted and he planned to join us for the season ending party after the show today. Phew!

I want to thank Calshakes and Sean for having me do this blog. I'm planning on keeping it up so check back with me and leave a comment when you feel like it. Its been a good Tempest and I hope you all got to see it.
But if you didn't...

"These actors, as I fortold you are all spirits and are vanished into air. Into thin air..."

Exuent,
Ron Campbell

I Was The Man In The Moon When Time Was...

Was it Newton who said for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction?

And does that apply to people?

And does it apply to our silly endeavors, our vain attempts to, as Dylan Thomas suggested, "rage against the dying of the light"?

Is there a comic subplot for every tragedy? A giggle waiting in the wings for every tear shed? A comic mask for every tragedian's guise?

Do good and evil balance themselves out on the tightrope of our experience?

I hope so.

Forgive me, readers, for waxing philosophical, but our experience this summer with The Tempest brings it out in me. Let me give you the scoop:

Along with the joy of performing what is arguably one of Shakespeare's must brilliant creations there have been some dark clouds too. One of our courageous Sprites, William Brown, is in the hospital with a condition I don't fully understand. He has been diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and though he and we expect a full recovery, our hearts go out to this young man. A few words about Will: from the very beginning of rehearsal he has been a pure delight. Enthusiastic, full of energy and fun to be around. He also happens to be very talented. The unofficial "Dance Captain" of the show, he is both an athletic and graceful performer and all of us at Calshakes wish him a speedy recovery.

But The Show Must Go On.

So Devin, our ever resourceful deck manager is now making his Theatrical debut, taking over some of Will's duties and other sprites are picking up the slack.

Speaking of Sprites, the lovely Lyndsey Barnes did a great job taking over for Mhari Sandoval, our Ariel, for two performances last week when Mhari was stricken with a bad case of food poisoning. There have been studies made comparing the heart rate and adrenalin fluctuations that jet fighter pilots on manuevers experience and actors go through during performance. It seems both jobs require the similar focus, concentration and "grace under pressure".
I guarantee Lyndsey was flying her own personal F-16 on the Bruns stage and no one was the wiser. Bravo Lyndsey.

So while wars are waged in distant deserts and bodies are found floating in bayou backwaters and the highrises turn into graveyards in Kashmir, here in Orinda we try to prove Newton's theory: That for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And what could be more opposite from those tragedies than sharing this remarkable piece of art to a sold out house under a sky littered with stars. We've been blessed with warm night breezes and red Mars has blazed hotly just above stage left.

And then there's the Moon.

There's something about being able, when you have a line, as I do, like: "I was the man in the moon when time was" to refer, with a gesture, to the actual moon.

Try that in a theatre with a ceiling.

So there we are, actors, crew and audience alike raging against all the negative in the world with the simple positive act of making theatre. Creating that equal and opposite reaction out under the stars...

And gesturing to the Moon.

The Dark Backward and Abysm of Time...

So what is it about Opening Nights?

After 4 previews its just another show. Another chance to tell this story. Another assault on the beaches of Prospero's enchanted Isle. Another opportunity to tred the bleached deck of the Bruns Theatre stage and maybe take a pratfall or two. Or four.

But there is a special quality in the air on an opening night.
Is there another sense we access that can smell expectation? That can feel the dry hum of electricity that courses back and forth across the footlights? What is it about knowing that your audience is composed largely of your peers. That there are as many people out there rooting for your success as are secretly hoping that you somehow stumble. An opening night audience is comprised of your friends, your loved ones, possibly your future employers and certainly a large contingent of actors who may or may not have auditioned for your part.

What's the Joke?
How many actors does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Eleven.
One to screw it in and ten to say they could have done it better.

So we try our best to prove our mettle, to earn our laughs and our ovations, to add that special something that makes it not just another performance.
And here is my question: why is this ephemeral quality so elusive? Why are opening and closing nights so chock full of this intangible quality of earnestness and energy. Every show I've ever been in has had this phenomenon. Closing nights, especially with a good show that you're proud of, can be so melancholy that it's heartbreaking. Each goodbye is somehow more real, suffused with a verisimillitude that may have somehow faded in the middle of the run and arrises like a pheonix on opening and closing nights.
How do we (as professionals) bring this quality to each and every performance? How do we catch that lightning in a bottle at a matinee in the scorching sun?

How indeed.

Speaking of Matinees, I am currently backstage writing this at intermission of one of our five Student matinees, affectionately called SMATS by the staff here.
Its twelve noon on a Tuesday and the temperature on the Bruns stage is hovering between what feels like 100 and 110 degrees farenhiet. The parched surface of the deck itself makes the palms of our hands blister and the beads of sweat that fly off us sizzle. And I'm only slightly exaggerating.

In the stark glare of day we can see every slouch of every disgruntled teenager sitting gloomily in our audience. Bored jocks who have no interest whatsoever in that wierd Shakespeare talk amid comatose fifteen year olds who file their french tipped nails and are more interested in each other than some 400 year old play. These are the performances that try men's souls.

But for every hangover-nursing highschooler dozing in the stalls there's an eager eyed sophomore drinking in every syllable as Shakespeare's hook sinks into their brain and heart. A few, a cherished few, are seeing Shakespeare performed for the first time and are loving it. And its for them that we do it. For those few out there for whom this has become more than a mandatory field trip and has somehow magically skipped over into a life altering experience. Its true. It happens.

Because every one of us up on the stage sweating our guts out were out there once, at around that same age on some school matinee somewhere when the spell of theatre wound its way around our heart and turned us into lifelong slaves to Thespis.

So we try to bring the same energy and effort to these dreaded matinees as we do to opening night. Because somewhere out there, back in the dark backward and abysm of time, is us.

The 300 Person Director

The first Preview finally comes.

What I like to call The 300 Person Director comes into our house, peers into the Faberge egg of our combined efforts and breathes on our house of cards. Their presence galvanizes us. 600 eyeballs scutinize our baby.

The actors split into two: The character they are playing and the actor himself listening, feeling for the tiniest signals from the audience that will be a barometer of the effectiveness of the performance.
A titter here, a knowing harumph there, nothing is missed. For the clowns its easier: where are the laughs. For the more dramatic roles a kind of sixth sense is employed. Are they with me? Did that line land the way it should? Am I getting in the way of the story? The 300 Person Director is helping to shape the show.

The curtain comes down and we have some beers in the dressing room. We got through it. Nobody died. We got some great responses from a very lively house. Some things need to be changed before tomorrow's show. Some things worked, others fell flat. The 300 Person Director made certain things painfully obvious. But spirits are high. We have a show.

But no one will sleep tonight.
Too much to think about.
Too much to play and replay in our heads.
Too much adrenaline has just coursed through our viens and our brains.

Luckily, we've got 4 more previews and you, dear reader, will be out there, letting us know when we succeed and when we fail to bring this monster to life.
You are our 300 Person Director.
And I thank you.
Next: OPENING NIGHT

We are the stuff that Dreams are made on...

What is Theatre?

Why is it important?

Chad Jones, a local theatre critic posed this question to the theatre community recently for an article he was researching. They sent out an email asking for responses.

Naturally, I responded.

I ask this same question of my students at Berkeley Rep. I usually get a host of fairly esoteric responses:
Theatre is about Relationships.
Theatre is Conflict.
Theatre is Story telling.
Theatre is Emotion.
Theatre is Four Planks and a Passion.
Theatre is Sacred.

Then I set up two flats that serve as impromptu wings of a procenium and dim the lights in the audience side of the room and brighten the lights to a soft glow on the "stage" side of the room and the class ohhs and ahhs accordingly. Here is theatre suddenly manifested. The inadequecy of words is confirmed in the flick of a light switch. Theatre, in its most distilled form is simply a place. A meeting place, as it were, where truth can be examined, prodded, poked, tickled, revealed and otherwise discovered. I see the stage as a petri dish into which the stuff of life is poured and our audiences become the scientists peering through their microscope lenses.

And we actors, we happy few, we band of brothers, we brief and abstract chroniclers of the times, we are just so much bacteria swimming on the alter of Thespis. We are, in other words, the stuff that dreams are made on.

But before you can get to that you've got to get through tech.

And theatre, of course, is (among all those other things) a collaborative medium.
For the actors tech is usually a time for bonding.
There is a lot of waiting around while the other artists helping to create our pageant, namely lights and sound and props and set designers get their due.
This time is spent by the actors, who must take a back seat to the technical demands of the show, doing alot of bonding. This takes the following forms:

Complaining.
Grousing.
Teasing each other.
Standing in the hot sun.
Telling Stories.
Telling Jokes.
Telling Lies.
Telling the same jokes again.
Complaining.
Doing short snippets of acting interrupted by our parapetetic and intrepid stage manager Ritz Gray yelling "HOLD." on the God mike.
More Complaining.
Sharing opinions.
Writing blogs.
Did I mention Complaining?

By the time we finally get to run the play for the first dress rehearsal, we've completely forgotten what we did when we rehearsed it. To some extent this helps bolster the illusion of things happening for the first time that actors like to foster. A little game we play with ourselves to keep the synapses from scabbing over and the elusive spark of spontanaiety alive even as we repeat the same action for what seems to be the hundreth time. But finally struggling through it without stopping feels liberating and strangely resonant.

Shakespeare is spoken here.
Again.
In this place.
In this sacred space.
In this wooden O.
In a wooded canyon in Orinda.
And maybe, just maybe, We really are the stuff that Dreams are made on.

Next: The 300 Person Director.

I Need Spirits to Enforce...

I have a theory:
When you rehearse a comedy it can be very hard and difficult going and fun as hell to perform and when you rehearse a drama the rehearsals are great fun but the actual performing of it, the dredging of usually unpleasant emotions from the well of human experience is hard.

And though The Tempest isn't a comedy out right, I am playing one of the clowns so my scenes at least are comic in tone. In fact, Lillian's entire take on the play is decidedly whimsical. This is going to be a playful Tempest, full of odd sounds, rim shots and humor that ranges from the bathroom to the gallows. And everyone seems up to it.

The island upon which the Tempest takes place is populated (or haunted, as the case may be) by Spirits. These are played by the most courageous, plucky, intrepid and talented group of young actors I've ever had the pleasure of sharing the boards with. Onstage virtually the entire play, they have the onerous task of creating non-human characters that by turns must support or comment on every line in the play. Their every move is scrutinized for synchronisity. Their physical attitudes must be constantly adjusted. They can never, for example bring their elbows in. They must sit in painful positions for entire scenes, diligently listening for precise cues to cock their head or make strange chittering noises. One of them, Jeff, was nearly swept off the stage when a gust of wind hit the sail he must manipulate in the opening storm scene.

But slowly, as the rehearsals have worn on they have become a unit. An otherworldly, by turns malevolent and comic unit. Each with his or her own distinct shape and style. Jean Paul's mosquito guy is a treasure of antic evil. Lyndsey's odd munchkin never misses a beat. Jeff and Katie's love scene is a heartbreaking treat. Will's manic monkey is a musical marmoset. You get the idea.

But back to more important matters:
Me.

I'm seeing my Stephano in Commedia terms as a classic Puchinella. All appetite and avarice and not a lot of brains. Think the Skipper on Gilligan's island. So Each night I'll be donning a volumnious fake derriere and a huge beer belly replete with belly button ring. A kind of drunken pirate with aspirations of gentility that are always swallowed by his darker purposes. A bully, a blow hard and a boor. Bombast with a soft spot.

The soft spot comes in the form of his love for his buddy Trinculo, played by the immensely talented Jud Williford who has taken over for an injured Stacy Ross.

In our first scene, not counting the crazed capering we do in the opening storm scene, Lillian has given us each delightful, emblematic little dances, each set to our own distinct music. We are the vaudeville counterpart to the scheming courtiers, and when Trinculo must take shelter under the strange fish/man Caliban's gabardine hilarity is supposed to ensue.

But remember this is a comedy and when rehearsing a comedy funny usually equals pain. How do you get two grown human beings to look like one two headed, four legged creature? What new forms of communication must the participants create? In the rehearsal hall I remember hearing this line:

"When I put my hand on your ass you stick your right arm out and then he can stick it back in."

These are the kind of things they don't tell you about in Drama school.

Another conversation:
Question: "Do you have to spit the wine right in his face for it to be funny?"
Answer: "Yes."

The Clown scenes get rehearsed like little evil ballets of violence. Each pratfall calibrated and timed to not get in the way of, but bolster Shakespeare's text. Every eye gouge properly set up and delivered like a souffle. Should that be a double take or shall we attempt the demanding triple. You get the idea.

All this, of course, takes an extraordinary amount of trust and patience. And knee pads. And elbow pads. And an abiding love of the work which of course is the most important and which this company seems to somehow have. In spades.

I said it in the dressing room last night and of course all the guys scoffed at me but it's true: I couldn't wish to work with a nicer group of people.

Next hurdle: TECH

"Hell Is Empty, And All The Devils Are Here! "

The first day of rehearsal of any play always seems like the first day of school to me. I wear a clean pair of pants and a nice appropriately faded t shirt. I don't wear my rehearsal togs- clothes I don't mind rolling around on the floor in and spongy knee pads- Those will come later, when we get down to hammering out the physical bits or Lazzi as they're called in Commedia- and Lillian, our director reveals the first day that she has a respect that borders on worship of Commedia, and her sparkling brown eyes flash over at me since I'm playing Stephano, one of the clowns that teams up with Caliban in the play's comic subplot.

This is going to be fun.

The first day there's usually a lot of sitting around. There's a meet and greet, an equity meeting where the union members select a deputy, a design presentation of the set, costumes and sound and then we'll probably read thru the play.

Actors are an interesting brand of people. When we get cast in a play, especially one with a large cast like this one, we join a family.

A tribe.

The tribe then prepares for battle for about three weeks and then the performances start. The tribe sacrifices itself nightly upon the Alter of Thespis. When it goes well, especially in a comedy, we say "we killed 'em." When it goes poorly we say "They were dead." We win some and we lose some, but in the process a great comraderie developes. We have thrown ourselves to the lions and survived. Together. Great friendships are forged. Alliances are sealed. Secrets are shared.

And then the curtain comes down on closing night.
And we all go our seperate ways, to join new tribes, create other families on other battlefields.

That is why, when I step into the rehearsal hall on Hienz avenue for our first rehearsal I'm so pleased to see a lot of familiar faces. I've worked with many of these folks before. We've been in battle together. It may be a new family, but these are my brothers.

Some quick impressions:

Andy Murray's hardy handshake. He played the Antipholi to my Dromios last year. Really knows his Shakespeare.

L. Peter Callender's brilliant smile. He reveals to me he played Caliban in Julie Tamor's production of the play in an aside during the read thru. We were both in Much Ado a couple of years ago.

Athony Fusco's charming lack of pretension. He's playing Prospero and even in the first read he exhibits a thoughtful and earnest respect for the text that is at once funny and touching. He says he wants to find the humor in the character and believe me, he will.

Young Anthony Nemerovski's enthusiasm. This young man has proved himself the most reliable of actors. Someone you can trust in battle.

Stacy Ross's fashion sense. This is our third show together. I am a huge fan. We both drive Miatas.

And Finally...
Lillian Groag.
We had worked together many years ago at the Taper in L.A. in a production of Vaclev Havel's Temptation. She was acting, not directing but the same qualities I remember from her there are all in full effect here. This woman is passionate about the work and smart as a whip. In her opening remarks she works without notes and speaks eloquently about the themes she wants to bring out in this production. She speaks of Justice and Forgiveness and how they relate to the many Betrayals that are laced thru the The Tempest like threads in a tapestry. She reveals the playful sense of fun she invisions for the spirits who haunt the island. She challenges us to pare down the non-essential in our work and strive for simplicity. I'm reminded of the quote from Picasso: "The fewer the lines, the more important each line."

Annie Smart's set design mirrors this asthetic. A bleached wood platform. Sand. A sail. A color palette reminiscent of Hokusai's woodblck prints. Clean. (A perfect place for me to do pratfalls off, I note.)

Meg Neville, who, let's face it, is gorgeous and talented says the costumes are going to include alot of actor input which I'm thrilled about and resident sound designer Jake Rodriguez says he's been looking forward to this production all year.

And we start our first read thru.

I don't know why we do these things. Every time I do a Shakespeare the first read thru feels like a long slog thru a bog of words. Everyone's head is down, buried in the text. Only Triney Sandoval, as Caliban, works up some acting heat. I like a guy who leaves flecks of spittal all over the pages of his script on the first read-thru. As for me, I feel like I'm forcing the comedy and all I manage is an occasional chortle from Fusco who's just trying to be helpful. We break for lunch before we can get thru the play and I'm released for the day.

But the Tribe has assembled. The Family has reunited. The Tempest is brewing.

Next stop:
Blocking.

Oh Strange New World That There Are Such Computer Type Things In't

And so it begins.
Sean emails me my blog address and challenges/suggests I be witty and insightful.

He even calls me "Buddy" in the email. He always calls me "Buddy".
Does he do that with everyone?
Actually, I really like being called buddy.
Its like when people call me Ronnie. which, of course I hated when I was a kid. In fact, if you called me Ronnie in fifth grade it was grounds for a fight behind the handball courts after school. But now I really like the sense of buddy-ness that calling me Ronnie implies. How's that for insightful Seanie?
But I digress...

The other email I just got is from Joy. (Joy Meads, the very heart of the Calshakes machine) It included the Cast and crew list for The Tempest.

Exciting.

Lillian, the director, has really good taste!

Besides Stacy Ross, who I already knew was playing Trinculo and who is one of my favorite actresses on Earth, and Anthony Fusco, who I like to call "Fusco" because I consider him a buddy and had the pleasure of working with (and sharing a dressing room with) during The Gamester at ACT and who I am a huge fan of- Lillian has assembled the very cream of the Calshakes crop.

There's something about the beginning of a production, when anything and everything is possible that really floats my personal boat. The voyage is just beginning. And to stretch the metaphor: It looks like clear sailing ahead...

Next stop: The Tempest, 1st day of rehearsal