Getting the hang of it

Yesterday, I blocked a long scene and ran it once. Then blocked a shorter scene and ran it 6 times. Progress.

I love my car

It must be said -- I love my car. I named him Merriweather Brandybuck, because its license plate ends in MWB.

It's a "dad" car -- a stately maroon sedan, 1988 Acura Legend. It is one of the oldest cars I have ever owned, and without a doubt the best.

It's the second model Acura ever made. Built in Japan -- "which makes a difference" said the Acura guys -- it is finely designed with gracious touches. A cigarette lighter in the back, as well as in the front. Small lit mirrors on the back of each visor, before this was common. Compartments everywhere, in the days before cup-holders. Leather seats. Motorized seat adjusters. A trunk-release button in the driver's door. A silent ride with no bumps. Lots of power, even in fifth gear. I don't turn into a parking space; like an ocean liner, I steer.

Every time I get in my car, I feel rich.

It's like riding Paleface, that Appaloosa stallion that used to live across the road from me. He was longer-bodied than average, and so smooth you couldn't even feel his trot. I used to slide onto his back at night, and be carried off like smoke.

Steamed veggies and poetry

Had steamed veggies last night -- broccoli, yellow potatoes, carrots, purple cabbage -- with melted butter and grated cheddar cheese.

Afterward, I was playing my word game to unwind.

"Hey, listen to this poem I just wrote," said Jeff, coming out of his room. I logged out. He shut off all the lights, lit two candles, and recited. Laying on the couch in darkness I realized --

-- some days I really need that: art and fire to appear, imperative, in the dark.

Sometimes they just nod

I invite Stanislavski and Chekhov to every rehearsal. When things get tough, I bring in Leonid, Bart, Mark, Robyn, and Lee. Eugenio's new. Mostly all he says is, "You're talking too much."

I was having a terrible rehearsal this week; I just couldn't find my feet. Things were getting worse. Finally, I called a little huddle and brought in the big boys. "Help!" I said. "Da," said Leonid, nodding, putting his hand on my back. "Yeah," said Bart. "Yep," said Lee. They all nodded. "Some rehearsals just go like this." "Been there." "Ya panimaiyu." They left, satisfied.

I was like -- "WHAT?!!! That's all you have to offer is, "Been there?"! But, that was the wisdom: This happens.

"Let's not get hurt out there," said Dick, the old ice-hockey coach of the men's team I played on, used to say when our game totally fell apart. He would pull hard on his cigarette and stare at the black rubber floormats. He didn't even give hockey advice after that; we were down to the goal of avoiding injury. There was wisdom in that -- when things go really badly, is exactly when people do get hurt.

I guess that's the same in theatre -- when it's going badly, let's just not get hurt out there.

Wheelbarrows of earth

Tonight's rehearsal was like heavy work with a wheelbarrow -- a lot of earth moved, a lot left to go, and a lot learned about how to move it.

Big takeaways:
1. Block fast
2. Buy time to run

Bonus:
1. Tableaus work
2. Once you have them, you can enter/shape/play with them

This is sort of like always only having half an hour to cook dinnner. There are only certain dishes you can make in that amount of time -- but with practice, you can get good at them.

"Part of the skill of having the skill is being able to do it fast."

--Bart Sher

Straight into the sea

She follows the gods
Mind and heart torn wide open
Straight into the Sea

An actor -- not one in my play -- wrote that about me, I got it today.

That's exactly how it feels.

A lab is a lab

After each rehearsal, I give myself a grade and write a lab report: Grade, Goal, Summary, Scene, What we did, What worked, What didn't, How long each thing took, For next time, Top problem to be solved next.

For years, when I began directing, I wrote lab reports after every rehearsal. Those were complete write-ups. These are much shorter -- notes for myself, to accelerate my rate of improvement.

I grade myself, because I find the actors can do anything. If I know how to make it easy & deep, they do genius work, effortlessly. If I only know how to do it hard and slow, they slog. "Affect the space first," said Leonid. That is the director's job --figure out how to create the space, in which actors can be easy geniuses.

Anyway, here's how I grade myself for the first 4 Doors rehearsals: C+, D, C+, B-. If we are slogging or stressed or behind, I give myself a C or lower. When it starts to get easy and deep, lots of stuff done sideways magically, AND we're meeting our goals for rehearsal AND I'm learning new meta-techniques -- then I'm up in the B range. The A range is reserved for when things are cracking -- me, the actors, the scene, the play. A is for breakthrough rehearsals.

I give the Noir rehearsals: A, A-.

I have four goals for Doors:

1. Get a good show done on time.
2. Figure out how to fit my style of rehearsal into a traditional structure & script, while building at the pace of a scene a day
3. Enter the play through, "What would it REALLY be like, to be in these circumstances?"
4. Crack it -- unearth a play that's ours. Hold myself to my own standards.

Oh hey -- tomorrow I have my phone meeting with Phillip Zarilli, the head of Exeter's PhD in Performance program, in England.

Quick question: What are 1 to 3 aspects of theatre that it is obvious to YOU that I am obsessed with, and could easily spend another 4 years studying? All input much appreciated. Extra credit if it comes in haiku form.

UPDATE
Wow! Three haikus, all helpful. And an observation that blew me away from Kipley -- "You're all about rehearsal." More on the phone interview later. It was perfect, one of those "bliss-doors opening" experiences. I wrote afterward:

turned earth, seed in dirt,
sun wind rain moon talking -- this
is how strong things grow

And:

even here, singing --
cherry blossoms only come
after the tree is grown

Read the play once a day

Jeff (JULIAN) & Holly (POOPAY)

This is a photo we took at First Read-Through. These are mock-photos -- close-ups in rough costumes, before a single scene has been rehearsed -- to give to newspapers & magazines. Jeff is JULIAN, the killer; Holly is POOPAY, the prostitute and main character. For long-time readers, Jeff is also my housemate.

Rehearsals start with Check-ins, Moosh, then Tablework. Tablework is where we read the scene aloud, then discuss. Its main goal is to 1) get us all in the same world, and 2) make that world more real by raising questions and associations. "Why doesn't she leave?" "What would it really be like to be a prostitute?" "Why does he suddenly talk about his daughter?" "This IS his confession." "This reminds me of when King, my first dog, ran away..."

Holly is blowing me away. She knows her own Given Circumstances -- what is said about a character in the text -- and everyone else's. She quotes lines of all characters', from all over the play. It's the kind of comprehensive command of the text that I usually only associate with Shakespearean actors who have memorized their Big Book -- the fat volume containing all the Shakespeare plays.

Her command of the text is a sign of classical training -- and of excellent actor Ethics.

Curious, I asked "How do you know the text so thoroughly?"

"At First Read-Through, you told us to read the play once a day," she said. "I do."

Buddhas are just states

Every reality is eternal, every essence is as is: just don’t seek outwardly. If you have a great root of faith, the buddhas are just states of your own experience; whether you are walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, never is it not this.

-Hsuan-sha

Where the kangaroos come down to drink

I ate lunch with Kyle today. He is a designer I know from my two years in Australia. He kept a surfboard in the back of his car, and would surf before work.

After we'd caught up, he began talking about architecture, how he wanted to build his dad a house.

"My dad's got this bit of land out near Mudgee," said Kyle, drawing with a designer's ease on the whiteboard. "It's quite good -- gum trees, wombat holes everywhere, and a bit of river where the kangaroos come down to drink." The house had an outdoor fireplace, glass walls, and a roof like gull's wings.

"Draw a kangaroo," I said.

He drew a little kangaroo, like most people draw a house, the skill preserved whole from childhood. "I couldn't draw these even as a kid," he said, beginning with the leg and adding a long tail. "I could only draw the back end, and then I had to add the top." He drew the kangaroo leaned forward, doe-ears up, arms bent, ready to drink.

He spoke of kangaroos and wombats the way I talk about deer and raccoons -- as regular, familiar animals.

I played on the Nullaburra ice hockey team. In a particularly random bit of trivia, I am a New South Wales State Champion. My coach was the zookeeper of walruses and seals at the Sydney Zoo. He took me on in once, and let me pet the walruses. On the way, we stopped in a small staff room, in between zoo exhibits. It was a plain room, with a couple desks and cupboards. But overhead, the space had been filled with a maze of home-made square tunnels, crisscrossing the ceiling and lapping over itself.

"Those are for the platties," he said. "They like their bit of tunnel." The zookeepers had noticed that the platypusses were shy, and preferred a place to hide. So in their spare time, they had built this whole bunch of tunnels -- which would never be seen by the public, and through which no one could see the animals -- just because, "The platties like their bit of tunnel."

Three circles of creativity

I have had a surreal, potent weekend. Like the first plowing of a field, tough and satisfying.

Sat aft. -- First read-through of Doors (director)
Sat eve -- Scene Lab, 4 hours with actors (playwright)
Sun morn -- met with Keith, Noir playwright(teacher)
-- met with Lara, Doors production-designer (director)
Sun aft -- Class: did Noir backstory improvs (director)
Sun eve -- dinner with Scott & free-writes about art (artist)

I flourish with sufficient complexity of the right kind. This is the right kind. Three strict, difficult creative tasks/groups intersecting, cross-pollinating.

I wish I could convey how great the actors were in class today. I am going to lie awake a while and just replay them in my head. In hockey, I could tell from the moment I stepped on the ice whether I was "on" that day. The second game of a back-to-back double-header was the best -- hot, loose, skates like gloves. Well -- Acting In Performance this quarter is one long skates-like-gloves.

Yes, yes, yes. Yes.

Some hallmarks are -- there's oodles of time. Silences. The flow of the work is organic. I am easily, deeply, holistically efficient. In the time I'd normally do 2 structures, we'll do 6. Or, even better, I do 1 thing -- usually something I just thought up -- that incorporates all of those. Hallmarks in them are -- soft eyes. Relaxed absorption. Laughter. No one wanting to leave the space when it's done. Trust. Being busier interiorly than they are exteriorly. Sitting, talking, and acting like kids. Spontaneity. Time slowing way down: a deep profound experience and only four minutes have passed. I call myself "time-slipped" when this happens. "It's been 2:34 for the last ten minutes -- I'm time-slipped."

At one point, I couldn't figure out why they weren't fully following through on their physical-impulse statues -- and then I remembered, oh, this is only their 2nd class, they don't know how. Then I remembered, I'm the teacher, I'd better teach that now.

Today we covered:

Check-Ins
Classical blacks
Singing
Three new songs
All three sung simultaneously, standing in a circle
Choreo invented for all 3 songs, sung & performed
Intro of play & characters
Living org chart
Build a set
Kantor's objects (reverberant objects)
Shadow set
Shadow characters
Trading statues
SNACK
Moment of Beauty
Writing
Five Truths
Backstory Improvs
Afternotes

Doing Kantor's Objects first, they got how objects can "crack" and worlds come alive; the difference between an object crackling with potential and one just laying there inert. So when we got to backstory improvs, their sense of how to create a set was utterly theatrical. Simple, shimmery, evocative.

Backstory improvs:

Nightclub Workers After Hours
Anwen's Audition
Katherine's and Evan's Take-Out Dinner
Katherine and Evan One Year Later
Norma's Electric Car
Clarice's First Day Of School: Owl Pellets
Dissection Day
After the Breakup
Evan's Mom

The closer the map gets to reality, the less use it is as a map. That list is only useful for the 8 people who happened to be there.

What happens when a scene cracks -- like, when the shadow world broke through and lay there in shards, a upturned chair's chrome legs spinning idly in its midst -- is that, without knowing it, the actors began to perceive with their whole organism, what "cracking" is. It's when a fissure appears, out of which pours Truth.

It's a series of cogs, each turning a bigger one. There's the circle of Lara, Keith, and me, where the high-bandwidth, wild creative collaboration is starting to grow. Then there's a circle of the class, which is the juicy experimental lab. Out of those two, the collaboration and lab, comes potent yeast which we then take into the play rehearsals -- the biggest, slowest, most massive of the three.

Fractal creative development like this is the most likely to produce great results. Fractal Greatness Lab. Inside me, it feels like a tremendous lightning storm: there's finally sufficient potential energy, pressure, and spark, to ignite.

"You keep making the mistake of comparing theatre to jobs," Bart Sher said. "It's not. It's a drug. The proper metaphors for theatre are drug metaphors."

Job stuff

Bootcamps with McCarthy Technologies are not materializing at the rate we had hoped. I don't think it can be the fulltime gig I was hoping for. I'm still psyched about working with them, but I need to find a more solid source of income.

This seems to be a strongly Spirit-led year so far. I'm going to keep doing the footwork and see where I'm being led.

Tulips Opened

i thought i wanted
theatres, went looking -- found
i sought aliveness

Dawid wore black, twitched
constantly and smoked -- through him
i first glimpsed Poland

in Denmark tulips
opened when Mia, Karin,
Magnus did slow-tens

across the world i
finally knew my friends at home
and why i chose them

Icelandic winds for
three days roared, shaking the eaves,
threatening to snow

RUMI: On the way to Mecca, many dangers

This is what I read to the actors in Acting In Performance today.

SOMEONE DIGGING IN THE GROUND

An eye is meant to see things.
The soul is here for its own joy.
A head has one use: For loving a true love.
Legs: To run after.

Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,
for learning what men have done and tried to do.
Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why.

A lover is always accused of something.
But when he finds his love, whatever was lost
in the looking comes back completely changed.
On the way to Mecca, many dangers: Thieves,
the blowing sand, only camel's milk to drink.
Still, each pilgrim kisses the black stone there
with pure longing, feeling in the surface
the taste of the lips he wants.

This talk is like stamping new coins. They pile up,
while the real work is done outside
by someone digging in the ground.

--Jellaludin Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks

Tornabenes, the band played to me, sitting beside the sun

I went to an ice hockey game tonight.

I played in a men's hockey league for eight years in the Bay Area. One of our teammates, Vince, was an emergency room doctor. John and I went over to Vince's house every Christmas to spend the day with their five kids. Well, tonight his youngest, Michael, was playing a college game here in Seattle -- University of Oregon vs University of Washington. His mom, Beth, and sister Felicia -- 8 years old when I first met her and now a doctor herself -- had flown in to watch.

I felt like I was in one of those surreal movies -- like that LA movie, where the road signs talk to Steve Martin. There were all these little vignettes that spoke to me.

It has been 20 years since that hockey league started. Four of our teammates still play on the Warriors, including Vince. The Tornabene kids have flowered and flourished.

Catherine got way into computers, then into law school, and now has a baby
Ann's a dentist
Felicia's a doctor, doing her residency in family practice
Stephen's in med school, headed toward pediatric surgery
Michael's just graduating as an architect, headed toward contractor's license
All except Ann and Michael are married

I felt incredibly cold, lonely, and unaccomplished. "I believe in graduate school," said Beth happily. "I can get anyone into grad school." "Can you get me into grad school?" I asked. "Yep," she said. "I've gotten so many people in, you would not believe it." I felt like I was sitting beside the sun.

The UW band had turned out in force. Each section did their own wild choreography. It was a stunning outpouring of energy. Again, though in a very different way, I felt I like I was sitting beside the sun.

When the game was over, the band played three final victorious numbers. Their last one was one which swirled around and through the audience. Since I was the only person still in the stands -- I had stayed to listen to them -- the conductor led them over and they did the entire performance of that song for me. Around me. Blasting me. It was INCREDIBLE. I screamed at three different points. I could not get enough. Or rather, I was finally for once getting enough. This amount of blazing radiance, of confidence & performance, is all mine. A 50-megaton joy.

Like the billboards in that movie spoke to Steve Martin, the entire UW band spoke to me, encircling me, shaking my whole body with sound.

What is god saying to me? I thought. It's so positive.

Feels like forever

You know it's been a long time since you've posted, when you check your own blog and feel disappointed there's nothing new.

Fire

So here's a big reason I love Russian and Polish theatre -- I like fire on stage. In like absolute blackness. I like water and stones and old tree branches and skulls and flowers -- and especially, I like fire.

Here it's caged, banned, sprayed, forbidden.

There -- it leaps.

Finding your game

Quick update -- Communicating Doors got approved. I leapt into pre-production mode, did Synopsis, Character Breakdown, Scene Breakdown, Budget, Rehearsal Schedule, Rental Space, and Roles. This week we kick off.

Sun & Tues - closed auditions
Thur - open auditions
Fri - cast announced
Sat - first read-through

This is, as Leonid Anisimov calls it, "Shining expediency." The speed is because we have a March slot reserved in the theatre.

There are two ways to ship. Either you say "This is what we're going to make," and go until you have achieved that. Or, you say, "We're shipping on this date" and whatever you have then, you ship. Most theatres do the latter. Some few -- like Akropolis and the Odin Teatret -- do the former. But even they eventually hit an end game: a date when they commit to a theatre, or a performance date.

A theatre project is like the shaft in an engine: it turns, and turns my life with it. I wash dishes, pay bills, answer emails, expect people to become clients, feel empowered, act decisively; everything seems easy.

On other fronts, my BCC Improv class cancelled, but Acting In Performance is almost full enough to go; that'd be great.

I'm reading a book one of my actors gave me -- and wrote -- called, What You Say Is What You Get. Nothing earth-shattering, except over and over he gives examples of the disempowered way to say something, and then the empowered way to say the same thing. He has 50 different ways to do this. At first I scoffed, but now it's seeping in. I feel the difference. I thought it was nebulous, whether I was on my game or not. Now I see -- I'm PUTTING myself on my game or not, by how I speak.

The word truly is made manifest. I know this in theatre, I forgot it in life -- that a word is a thing of fire, shearing.

My favorite thought today is from Kipley's blog (click the fish). He's talking about doing Improv:

""The game" of the scene is a little hard to put into words. It's like... the point of the scene. Or rather, what's funny or interesting about a scene. It's what the scene is about... for example, a kid desperately craves attention from his dad, who couldn't care less. Or two astronauts, one who's trying to come out to the other one but can't bring himself to do it.

Sometimes it clicks right away and everyone latches on to their character and the scene flies. Other times, it's really hard to figure out what the game is, and you end up making idle chit chat that's boring for both the audience and you. If you're bored with your own scene, you haven't found the game yet."

That is so true:

If you're bored with your own scene,
you haven't found the game yet.

A thrall of fire, Salt

I've proposed Communicating Doors, and the Board loves the play. It ain't soup, though, till we get a budget & rehearsal schedule nailed down and approved. That's the official approval "go" point.

I love that the Board is so vigilant about the financials upfront. This is what has made the troupe profitable & sold out the last two shows, and it's an upward trend we all want to see continue.

This whole process is a first for me, too, in that I am not haunted by this play, although Doors is a great piece of writing and a great show.

Normally, a play engulfs me in a tornado of spirit-fire. It wreaks me. When obstacles arise, they dissolve in the imperative of flame. Adab, as they call it in the Dune books -- "The demanding vision." This play is not an adab for me. Or not yet, anyway.

There's something I want to say about being inhabited, about only doing theatre as a form of communion with the All-Being. And there's something I want to say about practical action. However, both of those would require me to be more awake.

All great truths are at their heart paradoxical.
-- Jim Rapson.

Theatre as fire, theatre as salt.

from a great dune of
salt, she pulls two glass globes, strikes fire --
brews slow hot coffee

bedouin java
cooked with primordial tools
on this Danish stage

the woman in black
steps into a waterfall
of salt, with her bag

Communicating Doors, god will whisper in your soft places

A beautiful casting as if it's a farce, American


An older, more rakish individuated casting, English


My favorite, more grounded Chekhovian casting, New Zealand

I have accepted Next Step Theater's invitation to direct their March play. I ran my choice by Ben Sherman, their director, and will propose it to the Board tomorrow. I am proposing Alan Ayckbourn's murder-mystery-with-a-twist, Communicating Doors.

This is wildly unlike me. It's not devised; and it's not Greek, Shakespeare, or Chekhov.

But it is a good fit for the troupe. It's a strong story with playable action. And it stretches me as a director into a genre whose classicism and difficulty I respect. Plus -- those rare and golden words -- this is a fully-supported production. Next Step has the budget, the rehearsal space, the actors, the set designer/TD, the stage manager, the producer, and the venue. And if work conflicts arise, Ben is willing to direct in my stead.

In chaotic systems, change begins at the outer edges, in tiny variations. I'm introducing many tiny tendrilly changes this year: working out, Life Coaching, new financial habits, writing my niece on Thursdays, and now a murder mystery.

old eyes see emerald
difficulty -- newborn eyes
see green water, fish

god will whisper in
your soft places, murmuring
of night jasmine wind

summer is a kiss,
a command to fall down, leap,
make basilisk shrieks

Rumi and Shams told
every secret, and each was
a strange wild Yes

chaotic systems
are most sensitive to
initial conditions

wear pearls; look up, laugh,
pull your V-neck lower -- he
smells like lavender