So here's a feature idea that I've been kicking around for awhile. It may only be a cool idea in my head. It may be a cool idea that I'm not cool enough to execute, thus it feels like a lame idea even though it is not. It may not be a cool idea at all. Nevertheless, here's the concept:
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Who came up with that quantitative conversion rate from visual to verbal? Is that an average, is it an estimate, is it an overestimate? Perhaps it's a thousand words for the person who originated the saying but only, say, seven hundred words for someone like me. Maybe it's implied that a good picture is worth a thousand words, but a mediocre picture would only net you three-hundred sixty-eight.
Has any research been done on this at all?
Well, I'm really not going to bother finding out. Instead, I'm just going to assume that I'm the first man in history to attempt to tackle this problem scientifically. See, words are precious to me (despite my tendency to spend them rather exorbitantly), so I'd like to have some way of gauging their intrinsic value. Who knows? The results of this experiment may revolutionize the way writers are paid for their work. (This novel is sixty-seven thousand words, so I'll pay you forty thousand dollars and Starry Night, with sales bonuses to be uploaded to your flickr account)
The extremely scientific experiment (which will begin tomorrow) runs as follows: I'll pick a random word or phrase and enter it into the equally scientific Google image search and choose a picture. I will then write as much as I can about the photo. When I'm finished writing, I'll complete the Trifecta of Science by using Open Office's Word Count tool to see how close to one thousand I got. After enough of these things, we can even start using super-duper-scientific things like math to figure things like averages and differences and possibly prime factorizations, multiplication tables, and indefinite articles. It will be a perfect union of art, science, mathematics, language, and awesome.
Now, I know I may have lost a few of you with my highly technical description of the intent and execution of this exercise, so I'll put it in layman's terms:
I'm going to choose a picture from the Internet and write about it for as long as I can, then a Computer will count the words for me. Afterward, we may or may not have cupcakes.
You could buy a lot of cupcakes with that Nobel money.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
v2, d137: WOF #7: Shuffleblog
And away we go.
#1: We'll Have Tomorrow from Little Shop of Horrors...sort of...
One of my favorite things about the newest Broadway cast recording of Little Shop (a show that's always going to have a special place in my heart and that I'd like to direct one day, though I'm afraid my version may end up being too dark, but that's for another day) is that it comes with demo recordings of songs that were ultimately axed before the show opened back in the 1980's and one that was written for the movie and was mercifully scrapped. This song, We'll Have Tomorrow, is actually pretty good. However (I recall from my days of researching the show when I was doing it in high school) Ashman and Menken decided that the second act was dragging just a bit, and throwing another ballad into the mix would lose the audience, so this one was cut. (It's odd listening to the demo, where the guy is singing both parts at the same time due to the miracle of...AUDIO CASSETTE RECORDING!) You really should try to track down some of these if you're a Little Shop fan: We'll Have Tomorrow, A Little Dental Music (a fantastic tune that, if I do direct the show, I might throw back in), I Found a Hobby (gross-out, so beware, but you'll catch a theme from it in Now, It's Just the Gas in the show itself), The Worse He Beats Me The More He Loves Me (cut because...well, yes. Good choice), and Bad (aptly named).
#2: Take Me To Your Leader by Newsboys
This song always takes me back to the old youth group days. It was kind of our unofficial theme song for awhile. This Newsboys album was one of the first that I ever learned every song to. (I think this was first, and All Star United's debut may have been second. Unless you count Carman, and I'm not sure we should) My youth group won a city-wide youth lip sync contest with our little rendition of this song. It was pretty much brilliant. I played Joshua, the ruthless judge in the second verse, and a Storm Trooper who brings in a cross and later boogies. We had a belly dancer, a cop, a fat kid, and a three-headed alien playing a giant guitar.
Incidentally, if anybody has or can get a hold of a copy of the Newsboys' movie (written and directed by Steve Taylor), that'd make an awesome Christmas gift. We only had one, and I think my sister has it. Quirky clean humor at its quirkiest and best.
#3: Track 06 from Say No, Max!
Sounds like kids playing in a park. I actually enjoyed doing this show. Even if it was one of the worst scripts I've ever been a part of. Even if Tiffany still, to this day, crumples into a little ball and rocks back and forth when you bring it up around her.
Not even exaggerating.
Short track.
#4: Murder in the Big House by Steve Taylor
Speaking of Steve...
Taylor is one of my all-time favorite songwriters. He cornered the market early on in Christian satire, and while even I think he may have taken it too far a time or two, he definitely didn't pull punches in an industry--okay, in a faith--that often finds itself guilty of going too soft on the things it should be coming down hard on. Unfortunately, his solo career pretty much wrapped up before I started getting into music. This is unfortunate for two reasons: First, I didn't get to appreciate his genius while he was in his prime, and second, it's all very 1980's/early '90s sounding. That said, I still dig it. And we still have novelty songs like Cash Cow: A Rock Opera in Three Short Acts and Lifeboat. As a producer, Taylor gave us the aforementioned Newboys song (and wrote most of the lyrics on that album and the one before it, including a song called Shine that I still hear on the radio eighteen years later), brought Sixpence None the Richer back from the dead, gave the Insyderz a place to play their Skallelulia album, and discovered the band Chevelle. Then he got screwed over and lost his record deal, so he made a movie. It's called The Second Chance, and despite the fact that Michael W. Smith stars, it's definitely worth a rental. Currently working on a film adaptation of Blue Like Jazz. Basically, anything the guy touches is (at the least) interesting and (quite often) underrated and fantastic.
This has been your Steve Taylor endorsement for the day.
#5: Warp-Factor Five by Bleach
This song doesn't really evoke any strong reaction or emotion from me. Bleach was a good band, and theoretically they're getting back together? I don't know. I think it'd be hard to get the band back together after six or seven years apart. The majority of the fans will probably have moved on. Your die-hards will always be there (I'd be in line for a Five Iron reunion tour, for example. Though that may be a bad example, because I'd also be kind of sad for a Five Iron reunion because I know how happy several of those band members are that Five Iron is over)
Still, I've thought recently what fun it would be to get together the cast from, say, my old college production of Much Ado About Nothing and have another go at it with everything we've learned since then. A lot of us would even be age appropriate for the characters we're playing! Or like, with the high number of people leaving my workplace now, I could foresee trying to round up as much of this "old guard" in five years or so to do a show. That seems like it would be awesome. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's always just trying to recapture something that's gone and it always leaves you disappointed. I don't think that would be the case, at least not with theater. Maybe it's different with music, because everybody wants you to be who you were when you broke up, but you're different people and different artists, so you want to do something new.
See, that's what's great about theater. Nobody really cares who "you" were in the first place, so any time you get the band back together, you can do whatever the heck you want and they'll still love you for it.
#6: Stuntman by Guerilla Rodeo
Word association: "Guerilla" sounds like "gorilla". Robbie's latest thing is to watch youtube videos from the Houston Zoo. His favorites are the meercats with the box of popcorn, the baby elephant playing in the pool, the kookaburra "laughing," and the video simply called "pumpkin smash." Robbie has decided he might want to be a zookeeper when he gets older. Today, though, he told me he wants to work in a theater like Daddy after I commented how good a job he did helping Mr. Craig vacuum the floor when he and Kim stopped by to pick me up last night. So maybe between those two passions, he'll earn a decent living.
#7 (one more, since Track 06 was kinda a short one): Decisive Battle by Powerglove
I used my home computer for this shuffle because it has far more songs than my iPod, thus granting the better chance for some variety in music. Nevertheless, apparently you can't have a Shuffleblog without Powerglove.
And I'm okay with that.
I love this game. Final Fantasy VI is probably one of my top 5 games of all time. (Or Top 7...hm...) This was the game that maxed out the Super Nintendo's capabilities. The music is fantastic, especially given the system's limitations. I used to play this game at my friend Chip's house when I was in sixth grade. I'd play something like once a week and I'd have this riff stuck in my head for the entire next week. I used to have creative ideas (kind of like I do sometimes now) but they'd all work their way into a 16-bit rendering so they could be used for a future Final Fantasy game. (Because naturally, all FF games would forever be on the immortal Super Nintendo)
Which reminds me: Travis and I are thinking about creating a flash RPG based loosely on the gameplay from FFVI and the stories from the Hero Squad universe. This may take more time than either of us actually wants to devote to it. But that's okay. We'll discover that as we go along. When it's done, I'm sure you here at FOMW will be the first to know.
#1: We'll Have Tomorrow from Little Shop of Horrors...sort of...
One of my favorite things about the newest Broadway cast recording of Little Shop (a show that's always going to have a special place in my heart and that I'd like to direct one day, though I'm afraid my version may end up being too dark, but that's for another day) is that it comes with demo recordings of songs that were ultimately axed before the show opened back in the 1980's and one that was written for the movie and was mercifully scrapped. This song, We'll Have Tomorrow, is actually pretty good. However (I recall from my days of researching the show when I was doing it in high school) Ashman and Menken decided that the second act was dragging just a bit, and throwing another ballad into the mix would lose the audience, so this one was cut. (It's odd listening to the demo, where the guy is singing both parts at the same time due to the miracle of...AUDIO CASSETTE RECORDING!) You really should try to track down some of these if you're a Little Shop fan: We'll Have Tomorrow, A Little Dental Music (a fantastic tune that, if I do direct the show, I might throw back in), I Found a Hobby (gross-out, so beware, but you'll catch a theme from it in Now, It's Just the Gas in the show itself), The Worse He Beats Me The More He Loves Me (cut because...well, yes. Good choice), and Bad (aptly named).
#2: Take Me To Your Leader by Newsboys
This song always takes me back to the old youth group days. It was kind of our unofficial theme song for awhile. This Newsboys album was one of the first that I ever learned every song to. (I think this was first, and All Star United's debut may have been second. Unless you count Carman, and I'm not sure we should) My youth group won a city-wide youth lip sync contest with our little rendition of this song. It was pretty much brilliant. I played Joshua, the ruthless judge in the second verse, and a Storm Trooper who brings in a cross and later boogies. We had a belly dancer, a cop, a fat kid, and a three-headed alien playing a giant guitar.
Incidentally, if anybody has or can get a hold of a copy of the Newsboys' movie (written and directed by Steve Taylor), that'd make an awesome Christmas gift. We only had one, and I think my sister has it. Quirky clean humor at its quirkiest and best.
#3: Track 06 from Say No, Max!
Sounds like kids playing in a park. I actually enjoyed doing this show. Even if it was one of the worst scripts I've ever been a part of. Even if Tiffany still, to this day, crumples into a little ball and rocks back and forth when you bring it up around her.
Not even exaggerating.
Short track.
#4: Murder in the Big House by Steve Taylor
Speaking of Steve...
Taylor is one of my all-time favorite songwriters. He cornered the market early on in Christian satire, and while even I think he may have taken it too far a time or two, he definitely didn't pull punches in an industry--okay, in a faith--that often finds itself guilty of going too soft on the things it should be coming down hard on. Unfortunately, his solo career pretty much wrapped up before I started getting into music. This is unfortunate for two reasons: First, I didn't get to appreciate his genius while he was in his prime, and second, it's all very 1980's/early '90s sounding. That said, I still dig it. And we still have novelty songs like Cash Cow: A Rock Opera in Three Short Acts and Lifeboat. As a producer, Taylor gave us the aforementioned Newboys song (and wrote most of the lyrics on that album and the one before it, including a song called Shine that I still hear on the radio eighteen years later), brought Sixpence None the Richer back from the dead, gave the Insyderz a place to play their Skallelulia album, and discovered the band Chevelle. Then he got screwed over and lost his record deal, so he made a movie. It's called The Second Chance, and despite the fact that Michael W. Smith stars, it's definitely worth a rental. Currently working on a film adaptation of Blue Like Jazz. Basically, anything the guy touches is (at the least) interesting and (quite often) underrated and fantastic.
This has been your Steve Taylor endorsement for the day.
#5: Warp-Factor Five by Bleach
This song doesn't really evoke any strong reaction or emotion from me. Bleach was a good band, and theoretically they're getting back together? I don't know. I think it'd be hard to get the band back together after six or seven years apart. The majority of the fans will probably have moved on. Your die-hards will always be there (I'd be in line for a Five Iron reunion tour, for example. Though that may be a bad example, because I'd also be kind of sad for a Five Iron reunion because I know how happy several of those band members are that Five Iron is over)
Still, I've thought recently what fun it would be to get together the cast from, say, my old college production of Much Ado About Nothing and have another go at it with everything we've learned since then. A lot of us would even be age appropriate for the characters we're playing! Or like, with the high number of people leaving my workplace now, I could foresee trying to round up as much of this "old guard" in five years or so to do a show. That seems like it would be awesome. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's always just trying to recapture something that's gone and it always leaves you disappointed. I don't think that would be the case, at least not with theater. Maybe it's different with music, because everybody wants you to be who you were when you broke up, but you're different people and different artists, so you want to do something new.
See, that's what's great about theater. Nobody really cares who "you" were in the first place, so any time you get the band back together, you can do whatever the heck you want and they'll still love you for it.
#6: Stuntman by Guerilla Rodeo
Word association: "Guerilla" sounds like "gorilla". Robbie's latest thing is to watch youtube videos from the Houston Zoo. His favorites are the meercats with the box of popcorn, the baby elephant playing in the pool, the kookaburra "laughing," and the video simply called "pumpkin smash." Robbie has decided he might want to be a zookeeper when he gets older. Today, though, he told me he wants to work in a theater like Daddy after I commented how good a job he did helping Mr. Craig vacuum the floor when he and Kim stopped by to pick me up last night. So maybe between those two passions, he'll earn a decent living.
#7 (one more, since Track 06 was kinda a short one): Decisive Battle by Powerglove
I used my home computer for this shuffle because it has far more songs than my iPod, thus granting the better chance for some variety in music. Nevertheless, apparently you can't have a Shuffleblog without Powerglove.
And I'm okay with that.
I love this game. Final Fantasy VI is probably one of my top 5 games of all time. (Or Top 7...hm...) This was the game that maxed out the Super Nintendo's capabilities. The music is fantastic, especially given the system's limitations. I used to play this game at my friend Chip's house when I was in sixth grade. I'd play something like once a week and I'd have this riff stuck in my head for the entire next week. I used to have creative ideas (kind of like I do sometimes now) but they'd all work their way into a 16-bit rendering so they could be used for a future Final Fantasy game. (Because naturally, all FF games would forever be on the immortal Super Nintendo)
Which reminds me: Travis and I are thinking about creating a flash RPG based loosely on the gameplay from FFVI and the stories from the Hero Squad universe. This may take more time than either of us actually wants to devote to it. But that's okay. We'll discover that as we go along. When it's done, I'm sure you here at FOMW will be the first to know.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
v2, d136: Interruption
Thought it was terribly important to interrupt my string of features for these two announcement/observation type things.
1: Yesterday was my 500th post on WBW/FOMW. According to wordsmith.org, there are no words that can be formed from the letters WBWFOMW.
2: Further proof that the Internet lacks creativity (which I think fits perfectly within my Week of Features concept): My Facebook status this morning was "VIKINGS!!" I typed that particular word thinking, "Man, I sure am tired of seeing pirates/ninjas/zombies EVERYWHERE on the Internet. What else is there to talk about?"
As of tonight, there are three replies. The first is "PIRATES!" The second is "NINJAS!" And the kicker is "ZOMBIES!"
Sigh.
Okay, we'll have a shuffle tomorrow. I'm glad y'all like those, cuz they stress me out just a little.
1: Yesterday was my 500th post on WBW/FOMW. According to wordsmith.org, there are no words that can be formed from the letters WBWFOMW.
2: Further proof that the Internet lacks creativity (which I think fits perfectly within my Week of Features concept): My Facebook status this morning was "VIKINGS!!" I typed that particular word thinking, "Man, I sure am tired of seeing pirates/ninjas/zombies EVERYWHERE on the Internet. What else is there to talk about?"
As of tonight, there are three replies. The first is "PIRATES!" The second is "NINJAS!" And the kicker is "ZOMBIES!"
Sigh.
Okay, we'll have a shuffle tomorrow. I'm glad y'all like those, cuz they stress me out just a little.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
v2, d135: WOF #6: Only in the CHL
One day you're on top of the world, the next day...well, you're not.
Exhibit A: the 1995-96 Wichita Thunder.
Exhibit B: The Thunder's leading scorer halfway through the year, Mike Chighisola.
The Thunder were the basement dwellers of the 6-team league in its inaugural season (1992-93), starting 6-20 before picking up a new coach who brought in a bunch of old buddies, including several guys with NHL experience, to try to right the ship. It worked, and we blitzed through the league the next two years, sweeping the defending champ Tulsa Oilers in 1994 and battling through a six-game series against the San Antonio Iguanas in 1995 (culminating in a 9-4 rout at home to win the title). Wichita was the biggest fish in the smallest pond in professional hockey. (Really, it was more like a puddle) Coach Doug Shedden inevitably got a job in a better league, but that's not what killed the Thunder dynasty. After the 1995 season, the league decided it wanted to be more of a "developmental" league, limiting the number of veterans any one team could have so that fans would get a better look and "up-and-coming" players. (I use quotes because, as of today, the only CHL grads to see relatively significant time in the NHL have all been goons. When Wade Brookbank is your league's biggest success story, you're not "developing" a whole heck of a lot) Over half the Thunder team was now ineligible to return, and the party was over.
Still, that was no guarantee that the Thunder would necessarily become...well, the 1995-96 Thunder. The team waited too long to name a new coach, and in that league, the coach was responsible for finding the players. When Don Jackson took over, all the good players had pretty much signed elsewhere, and he took pretty much whatever he could get.
What he got was pretty bad, and we went from worst to first and right back again. Funny thing was, there were some pretty good players. There were just some really bad ones, too, and the goaltending was awful. Like, "We coulda really used Major Brad Link" awful. We gave up 380 goals in 64 games. Oh, yeah. We went through six goalies (and finally found one we liked at the end of the year), starting the year with the backup from both championship years (who eventually left because he wanted more playing time) and the guy who inexplicably could not play up to the level the coach had expected from him and was eventually released. (It was later discovered that the man was completely blind in one eye!!! Can't imagine how that would make your life as a goalie difficult!) Our next started compiled a 2-10-1 record and only kept getting starts on the virtue of the fact that his backup was even worse.
It was ugly, folks. Things kept getting worse, and eventually it started to feel like a bad soap opera. When our best defenseman (a very late-season acquisition) turned up mysteriously dead in his apartment in Russia the following year, it seemed to fit in perfectly with the oddities that seemed to surround the 1995-96 season.
Nothing was as strange, however, as the case of troubled scorer Mike Chighisola. Chighisola had a bit of a tarnished past, but he was really making an effort to start clean in Wichita. He was a talented player (18 goals and 29 assists through the first half of the season which, keep in mind, is when we had mostly terrible players around him) and seemed to have things in his life going his way finally. While missing a little time with an injury, Chighisola was even married center ice during intermission of a Thunder game. Yessir, things were finally looking up for the guy.
A week later, he was arrested for stealing from teammates, among other things. Later, it turned out that guys in the locker room had been occasionally losing cash all year long, but the kicker came with Chighisola stole a credit card belonging to Mikhail Kravets (a supremely talented late-season acquisition who somehow managed 71 points in 37 games) and used it to buy a $250-dollar stereo system. After Chighisola's arrest, supposedly a lot of "stuff" from the year made perfect sense to a lot of folks surrounding the team.
So there you have it. The curious case of the '95-96 Thunder. Back-to-back champs featuring only 4 returning members, trading away the most popular player in team history, handing the keys to a one-eyed goalie and a crook (married at center ice, paid for the honeymoon with cash from the locker room!), and picking up absurdly talented offensive players once it was far too late in the year to do anything with them. And, for some reason, our mascot was a giant dog.
Exhibit A: the 1995-96 Wichita Thunder.
Exhibit B: The Thunder's leading scorer halfway through the year, Mike Chighisola.
The Thunder were the basement dwellers of the 6-team league in its inaugural season (1992-93), starting 6-20 before picking up a new coach who brought in a bunch of old buddies, including several guys with NHL experience, to try to right the ship. It worked, and we blitzed through the league the next two years, sweeping the defending champ Tulsa Oilers in 1994 and battling through a six-game series against the San Antonio Iguanas in 1995 (culminating in a 9-4 rout at home to win the title). Wichita was the biggest fish in the smallest pond in professional hockey. (Really, it was more like a puddle) Coach Doug Shedden inevitably got a job in a better league, but that's not what killed the Thunder dynasty. After the 1995 season, the league decided it wanted to be more of a "developmental" league, limiting the number of veterans any one team could have so that fans would get a better look and "up-and-coming" players. (I use quotes because, as of today, the only CHL grads to see relatively significant time in the NHL have all been goons. When Wade Brookbank is your league's biggest success story, you're not "developing" a whole heck of a lot) Over half the Thunder team was now ineligible to return, and the party was over.
Still, that was no guarantee that the Thunder would necessarily become...well, the 1995-96 Thunder. The team waited too long to name a new coach, and in that league, the coach was responsible for finding the players. When Don Jackson took over, all the good players had pretty much signed elsewhere, and he took pretty much whatever he could get.
What he got was pretty bad, and we went from worst to first and right back again. Funny thing was, there were some pretty good players. There were just some really bad ones, too, and the goaltending was awful. Like, "We coulda really used Major Brad Link" awful. We gave up 380 goals in 64 games. Oh, yeah. We went through six goalies (and finally found one we liked at the end of the year), starting the year with the backup from both championship years (who eventually left because he wanted more playing time) and the guy who inexplicably could not play up to the level the coach had expected from him and was eventually released. (It was later discovered that the man was completely blind in one eye!!! Can't imagine how that would make your life as a goalie difficult!) Our next started compiled a 2-10-1 record and only kept getting starts on the virtue of the fact that his backup was even worse.
It was ugly, folks. Things kept getting worse, and eventually it started to feel like a bad soap opera. When our best defenseman (a very late-season acquisition) turned up mysteriously dead in his apartment in Russia the following year, it seemed to fit in perfectly with the oddities that seemed to surround the 1995-96 season.
Nothing was as strange, however, as the case of troubled scorer Mike Chighisola. Chighisola had a bit of a tarnished past, but he was really making an effort to start clean in Wichita. He was a talented player (18 goals and 29 assists through the first half of the season which, keep in mind, is when we had mostly terrible players around him) and seemed to have things in his life going his way finally. While missing a little time with an injury, Chighisola was even married center ice during intermission of a Thunder game. Yessir, things were finally looking up for the guy.
A week later, he was arrested for stealing from teammates, among other things. Later, it turned out that guys in the locker room had been occasionally losing cash all year long, but the kicker came with Chighisola stole a credit card belonging to Mikhail Kravets (a supremely talented late-season acquisition who somehow managed 71 points in 37 games) and used it to buy a $250-dollar stereo system. After Chighisola's arrest, supposedly a lot of "stuff" from the year made perfect sense to a lot of folks surrounding the team.
So there you have it. The curious case of the '95-96 Thunder. Back-to-back champs featuring only 4 returning members, trading away the most popular player in team history, handing the keys to a one-eyed goalie and a crook (married at center ice, paid for the honeymoon with cash from the locker room!), and picking up absurdly talented offensive players once it was far too late in the year to do anything with them. And, for some reason, our mascot was a giant dog.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
v2, d134: WOF #5: Top Bottom 7
Unrelated, but awesome:
First off, remember this? You do? Good. You'll be glad to know there's been some resolution.
Okay, now as I said yesterday, for every great experience you get in theatre, you get a less-than-great experience. (Actually, you probably get far more of the latter than the former over the course of a career) And since I used some time and space to commemorate the more memorable of my experiences yesterday, I think it's only fair to show the other side of this fantasy/reality of professional theatre.
I've always said that, in this art, every experience (excepting abusive or exploitatious experiences, of course) is good experience, even if it's a bad experience. But a few of these shows have really challenged that particular point of view...
TOP 7 THEATRICAL HEADACHES OF MY CAREER (1992-2010)
#7: Through the Looking Glass, A. D. Players, 2008
I love Alice. I love the Alice stories. I love Alice Through the Looking Glass. I did not love being in this production of Through the Looking Glass. There were some unfortunate circumstances, and the director didn't really seem to like the story at all. I tried to give it a go, but the negativity from the rest of the cast was just infectious. As soon as the show started, pretty much everybody onstage or backstage was just waiting for it to end. The few audiences we played for really seemed to enjoy it, though.
I hope I don't get fired.
#6: The Adding Machine; Oklahoma Baptist University, 2003
I have to say, The Adding Machine was a dang impressive show. Everything visually, conceptually, musically, was awesome. We decimated Elmer Rice in the process, but what we put together was pretty neat.
That said, it wasn't very fun. At least, not for me. There were twelve of us who played these drone/automaton worker-types. We dressed identically and wore these creepy-as-heck clear plastic masks and spent most of the show in some sort of perpetual, machine-like motion in the background somewhere unless we were in the scene (and we each played 2 or 3 minor parts). It was very post-modern. Very Metropolis. And very weird.
As a performer, I found a lot of the stylized stuff we were doing to be quite cool at first, because it was so different from anything I'd tried before. But it soon became really monotonous. And we still had four weeks of rehearsal and two weeks of show to go. It was also kind of depressing to be a part of, since we were painting a particularly bleak portrait of the world.
Anyway, Adding Machine wasn't bad, and I'm very grateful for the chance to have been a part of it, but it was definitely a headache, and I know I'm not the only one who was glad when it was over.
And here's my "big scene!" :
#5: Pollyanna, A. D. Players, 2006
I was the co-set and prop designer for this show. This was to be sort of my "training" show in how to design at our children's theater. The set I didn't really have too much of an issue with, but I'd never done props before. That was sort of the other co-designer's specialty, so he was going to show me the ropes, show me the places you go to find stuff, that sort of thing. Keep in mind, I'd been in this massive city for all of six months at this point and was lucky enough to know my way from my home to my work to my church to Wal-Mart. This was going to be a great opportunity not only to learn a new skill, but also get to know my new home.
Then, the other co-designer left, and I was left to fend for myself. The set was pretty much finished, leaving only the prop work to do, and nobody to mentor me. Plus, this show's director was quite particular with her--well, everything. Which is totally fine. I think that can be a great thing in a director. But it's a painfully frustrating thing for an intern first-time prop designer who's already flustered and in over his head. I spent hours in my car, lost down streets that had decided to go one-way at the most inopportune of time, trying to chase down a specific quilt that didn't exist, knowing that I was letting everybody down. After seven years of constant scene shop work, I think this is the show that really burned me out on it.
There is a happy ending, fortunately. As the year went on, I won an award voted on by the company for my props work on one of our mainstage shows, and our next kids show was more prop creation than running around and collecting, and that experience was really fun and, I felt, pretty decent work, so when I did leave the shop it wasn't on a down note.
#4:
Actually, I'm pleading the fifth on this one. I'm probably already pressing my luck with this blog. I'll just say this: coins were being vomited and children were being scooped up like wildflowers.
#3: His Strength, Our Weakness, OBU, 2002
I don't know why I was a part of this one. I think somebody asked me, and I was nice, and I was a freshman, and I wanted people to like me. We had sort of a traveling faith-based drama unit at my school. That year, it was called Harvest Players. We did a script called His Strength, Our Weakness. It was a combination of choral odes and long monologues by Biblical characters. It was kind of boring, and I didn't feel we were doing it very well. I was pretty embarrassed to be a part of it. I had also been thrown into it pretty last-minute because someone else had backed out. I remember a meeting in the our department head's office with the whole cast, and while I don't remember too many details, I do remember there were quite a few tears. We performed it for a few churches, and they seemed to enjoy it, but this is the show that effectively turned me off to the idea of "Christian drama" for years.
But obviously, we've made up since then ;-)
#2: Kiss Me, Kate, Horsefeathers and Applesauce, 2002
It's a shame no H&A shows made yesterday's list, because those were some of the best summers of my life. This ended up being a really strong show, but it was a NIGHTMARE getting it up. It was the fourth show of our summer, meaning rehearsal felt a bit rushed anyway and everyone was already tired when we started. Our directors were a couple of guys from a New York revival house, and they wanted everything to be exactly like the recent Broadway revival of Kiss Me Kate had been. Great. Except we were not Broadway. We had a tiny performance space with no wings or fly. Didn't matter, they wanted everything on stage. Our green room was so crowded with set pieces, there was no room for actors.
But the show's director was possibly the worst individual I've ever worked with/under/for in theatre. He and his boyfriend (the choreographer) were total good cop/bad cop, and the director was the bad cop. He cursed us out all the time. He called everybody to every all-day rehearsal, regardless of whether or not we were in the scenes they were working. This would normally be okay, but at H&A the actors all have tech responsibilities when not in rehearsal. That meant nothing was getting done during the day, so all the extensive set and costume and lighting work started at 10 p.m. (Sets had it easier than anybody else, because we did have a couple of full-time set people) We were yelled at for being tired, we had wrists slapped for missing spike marks, we got notes like "What the F*** were you doing in this scene?" read in front of the entire company. He made actors cry. He turned the nicest, most tactful woman in North America into a vicious, fire-breathing dragon (not literally). And after he'd storm out on us, the choreographer, who was SUPER nice, would come in and try to smooth things over with everyone. We never got a full run of the show before we opened because we had to stop for cussing and because the traffic patterns backstage thanks to his super-complicated set changes would derail everything. When the show opened with "Another Openin', Another Show," I stood backstage with tears in my eyes, partially because we were finally opening and partially because, well, "Four weeks you rehearse and rehearse, three weeks and it couldn't be worse. One week, will it ever be right? Then out of the hat, it's that big first night!" Indeed.
Here's the story I usually tell to communicate the kind of guy we had running the show: We had a manually-operated roll drop that weighed about 250 pounds. We had taped out on the floor where it should go. One of our dress rehearsals, the drop was delayed slightly at the end of a song. The note, predictably, said "Where the F*** was the roll drop??" I knew exactly why it hadn't come down, because I was on stage at the time: actors don't understand spike tape. There was someone standing directly in the drop's path, and the drop operator (the droperator?) waited for them to move before lowering it. I suggested the possibility (somehow, I think I always stayed on this director's good side), and he replied with "Drop it anyway." He was dead serious. Every single one of us just stared. It was deathly silent. "I guarantee you, they'll never stand in the way again."
Another cast member spoke up. "Yeah," he said incredulously, "because they'll be dead!" Joel turned to the man. "Exactly," he said.
Here's a shot of the offending roll drop. "Shrewsical: The Musical!" Joel thought it was hilarious. (I'm on the left in the red bowtie)
#1: No Time for Heaven, Wellington Community Theater, 1996? (I'm a little fuzzy on the date)
Oh, man. At least Kiss Me Kate had a strong performance at the end. No Time For Heaven was just bad. Bad, bad, bad. It was the only horrible experience I ever had in all my shows with WCT. How bad was it? At one point, two of the actors were standing outside the building where we were going to be performing in three days (my church's basement, incidentally) discussing the possibility of simply not doing the performance, figuring it would be better in the long run to cancel than to put on a terrible show and scare away audiences forever. What they didn't know was that the director was standing at the base of the stairs, grinding her teeth together as she heard every word they said.
What went wrong? For starters, our female lead was an older woman who I always loved in all my WCT experiences, but she had to carry the show. And she couldn't remember her lines. Sometimes to the tune of "We just cut ten pages of dialogue. Now what do we do?" Our "grandpa" was probably in his twenties. We just grayed his hair. We couldn't get our usual performance space, so we used the tiny stage in the basement of my church, which was in need of some repair anyway. (Still is, to my knowledge) For that reason, we couldn't actually build much of a solid set, and the stage was too small. This means the walls shook every time someone opened or closed a door. We had a prompter during the performances who was just off-stage. She was louder than a few of the actors, so from time to time you'd hear this woman's voice coming from one of the shaking walls. Only thing is, she was dyslexic which, again, there's nothing wrong with. But it's an unfortunate condition for someone reading your lines to try to get you back on track to have. Especially if the audience can here her anyway. Then there was the cast: we didn't hate each other, but we weren't exactly bosom buddies, either. I think the stress of the show really played on everybody. It's the ONLY community theater I've ever done where there was no cast party afterward. My sister and I didn't even say goodbye to all of the actors after the last show. Everyone just cleaned up and left as quickly as possible.
Looking back, I find it hard to believe some of these things happened. I'm grateful for each experience, though. I learned something through every one of these assignments. Sometimes you learn more from a disaster than you learn from a success.
Speaking of disasters, here are some runners-up: Charlotte's Web, Wellington Recreation Center (I directed a kids' class), 2000; South Pacific, Horsefeathers and Applesauce, 2001 (the set consisted pretty much of four giant potholders that had to be individually weaved. Not an exaggeration); Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Horsefeathers and Applesauce, 2000 (Drunk choreographer, MAJOR backstage drama/teenage hormone crap); Life is a Dream, Oklahoma City Theatre Company, 2004 (dreary, plodding, three-hour take on what is an engaging and often-humorous script; an extended run, generally for houses of less than twelve); It Could Be Any One of Us, OBU, 2005 (senior "I'm over it" show); Medium Rare, Wellington High School, 1998 (Director's philosophy of theatre: "That play has boys dressing up as girls, doesn't it? That's always funny, we'll do that one").
So there you have it. The best and the worst. It'll be tough for anything to crack either of these lists in the years to come, but I look forward to finding both the show that tops Hero Squad and the one that is more hilariously painful than Kiss Me Kate or No Time For Heaven.
First off, remember this? You do? Good. You'll be glad to know there's been some resolution.
Okay, now as I said yesterday, for every great experience you get in theatre, you get a less-than-great experience. (Actually, you probably get far more of the latter than the former over the course of a career) And since I used some time and space to commemorate the more memorable of my experiences yesterday, I think it's only fair to show the other side of this fantasy/reality of professional theatre.
I've always said that, in this art, every experience (excepting abusive or exploitatious experiences, of course) is good experience, even if it's a bad experience. But a few of these shows have really challenged that particular point of view...
TOP 7 THEATRICAL HEADACHES OF MY CAREER (1992-2010)
#7: Through the Looking Glass, A. D. Players, 2008
I love Alice. I love the Alice stories. I love Alice Through the Looking Glass. I did not love being in this production of Through the Looking Glass. There were some unfortunate circumstances, and the director didn't really seem to like the story at all. I tried to give it a go, but the negativity from the rest of the cast was just infectious. As soon as the show started, pretty much everybody onstage or backstage was just waiting for it to end. The few audiences we played for really seemed to enjoy it, though.
I hope I don't get fired.
#6: The Adding Machine; Oklahoma Baptist University, 2003
I have to say, The Adding Machine was a dang impressive show. Everything visually, conceptually, musically, was awesome. We decimated Elmer Rice in the process, but what we put together was pretty neat.
That said, it wasn't very fun. At least, not for me. There were twelve of us who played these drone/automaton worker-types. We dressed identically and wore these creepy-as-heck clear plastic masks and spent most of the show in some sort of perpetual, machine-like motion in the background somewhere unless we were in the scene (and we each played 2 or 3 minor parts). It was very post-modern. Very Metropolis. And very weird.
As a performer, I found a lot of the stylized stuff we were doing to be quite cool at first, because it was so different from anything I'd tried before. But it soon became really monotonous. And we still had four weeks of rehearsal and two weeks of show to go. It was also kind of depressing to be a part of, since we were painting a particularly bleak portrait of the world.
Anyway, Adding Machine wasn't bad, and I'm very grateful for the chance to have been a part of it, but it was definitely a headache, and I know I'm not the only one who was glad when it was over.
And here's my "big scene!" :
#5: Pollyanna, A. D. Players, 2006
I was the co-set and prop designer for this show. This was to be sort of my "training" show in how to design at our children's theater. The set I didn't really have too much of an issue with, but I'd never done props before. That was sort of the other co-designer's specialty, so he was going to show me the ropes, show me the places you go to find stuff, that sort of thing. Keep in mind, I'd been in this massive city for all of six months at this point and was lucky enough to know my way from my home to my work to my church to Wal-Mart. This was going to be a great opportunity not only to learn a new skill, but also get to know my new home.
Then, the other co-designer left, and I was left to fend for myself. The set was pretty much finished, leaving only the prop work to do, and nobody to mentor me. Plus, this show's director was quite particular with her--well, everything. Which is totally fine. I think that can be a great thing in a director. But it's a painfully frustrating thing for an intern first-time prop designer who's already flustered and in over his head. I spent hours in my car, lost down streets that had decided to go one-way at the most inopportune of time, trying to chase down a specific quilt that didn't exist, knowing that I was letting everybody down. After seven years of constant scene shop work, I think this is the show that really burned me out on it.
There is a happy ending, fortunately. As the year went on, I won an award voted on by the company for my props work on one of our mainstage shows, and our next kids show was more prop creation than running around and collecting, and that experience was really fun and, I felt, pretty decent work, so when I did leave the shop it wasn't on a down note.
#4:
Actually, I'm pleading the fifth on this one. I'm probably already pressing my luck with this blog. I'll just say this: coins were being vomited and children were being scooped up like wildflowers.
#3: His Strength, Our Weakness, OBU, 2002
I don't know why I was a part of this one. I think somebody asked me, and I was nice, and I was a freshman, and I wanted people to like me. We had sort of a traveling faith-based drama unit at my school. That year, it was called Harvest Players. We did a script called His Strength, Our Weakness. It was a combination of choral odes and long monologues by Biblical characters. It was kind of boring, and I didn't feel we were doing it very well. I was pretty embarrassed to be a part of it. I had also been thrown into it pretty last-minute because someone else had backed out. I remember a meeting in the our department head's office with the whole cast, and while I don't remember too many details, I do remember there were quite a few tears. We performed it for a few churches, and they seemed to enjoy it, but this is the show that effectively turned me off to the idea of "Christian drama" for years.
But obviously, we've made up since then ;-)
#2: Kiss Me, Kate, Horsefeathers and Applesauce, 2002
It's a shame no H&A shows made yesterday's list, because those were some of the best summers of my life. This ended up being a really strong show, but it was a NIGHTMARE getting it up. It was the fourth show of our summer, meaning rehearsal felt a bit rushed anyway and everyone was already tired when we started. Our directors were a couple of guys from a New York revival house, and they wanted everything to be exactly like the recent Broadway revival of Kiss Me Kate had been. Great. Except we were not Broadway. We had a tiny performance space with no wings or fly. Didn't matter, they wanted everything on stage. Our green room was so crowded with set pieces, there was no room for actors.
But the show's director was possibly the worst individual I've ever worked with/under/for in theatre. He and his boyfriend (the choreographer) were total good cop/bad cop, and the director was the bad cop. He cursed us out all the time. He called everybody to every all-day rehearsal, regardless of whether or not we were in the scenes they were working. This would normally be okay, but at H&A the actors all have tech responsibilities when not in rehearsal. That meant nothing was getting done during the day, so all the extensive set and costume and lighting work started at 10 p.m. (Sets had it easier than anybody else, because we did have a couple of full-time set people) We were yelled at for being tired, we had wrists slapped for missing spike marks, we got notes like "What the F*** were you doing in this scene?" read in front of the entire company. He made actors cry. He turned the nicest, most tactful woman in North America into a vicious, fire-breathing dragon (not literally). And after he'd storm out on us, the choreographer, who was SUPER nice, would come in and try to smooth things over with everyone. We never got a full run of the show before we opened because we had to stop for cussing and because the traffic patterns backstage thanks to his super-complicated set changes would derail everything. When the show opened with "Another Openin', Another Show," I stood backstage with tears in my eyes, partially because we were finally opening and partially because, well, "Four weeks you rehearse and rehearse, three weeks and it couldn't be worse. One week, will it ever be right? Then out of the hat, it's that big first night!" Indeed.
Here's the story I usually tell to communicate the kind of guy we had running the show: We had a manually-operated roll drop that weighed about 250 pounds. We had taped out on the floor where it should go. One of our dress rehearsals, the drop was delayed slightly at the end of a song. The note, predictably, said "Where the F*** was the roll drop??" I knew exactly why it hadn't come down, because I was on stage at the time: actors don't understand spike tape. There was someone standing directly in the drop's path, and the drop operator (the droperator?) waited for them to move before lowering it. I suggested the possibility (somehow, I think I always stayed on this director's good side), and he replied with "Drop it anyway." He was dead serious. Every single one of us just stared. It was deathly silent. "I guarantee you, they'll never stand in the way again."
Another cast member spoke up. "Yeah," he said incredulously, "because they'll be dead!" Joel turned to the man. "Exactly," he said.
Here's a shot of the offending roll drop. "Shrewsical: The Musical!" Joel thought it was hilarious. (I'm on the left in the red bowtie)
#1: No Time for Heaven, Wellington Community Theater, 1996? (I'm a little fuzzy on the date)
Oh, man. At least Kiss Me Kate had a strong performance at the end. No Time For Heaven was just bad. Bad, bad, bad. It was the only horrible experience I ever had in all my shows with WCT. How bad was it? At one point, two of the actors were standing outside the building where we were going to be performing in three days (my church's basement, incidentally) discussing the possibility of simply not doing the performance, figuring it would be better in the long run to cancel than to put on a terrible show and scare away audiences forever. What they didn't know was that the director was standing at the base of the stairs, grinding her teeth together as she heard every word they said.
What went wrong? For starters, our female lead was an older woman who I always loved in all my WCT experiences, but she had to carry the show. And she couldn't remember her lines. Sometimes to the tune of "We just cut ten pages of dialogue. Now what do we do?" Our "grandpa" was probably in his twenties. We just grayed his hair. We couldn't get our usual performance space, so we used the tiny stage in the basement of my church, which was in need of some repair anyway. (Still is, to my knowledge) For that reason, we couldn't actually build much of a solid set, and the stage was too small. This means the walls shook every time someone opened or closed a door. We had a prompter during the performances who was just off-stage. She was louder than a few of the actors, so from time to time you'd hear this woman's voice coming from one of the shaking walls. Only thing is, she was dyslexic which, again, there's nothing wrong with. But it's an unfortunate condition for someone reading your lines to try to get you back on track to have. Especially if the audience can here her anyway. Then there was the cast: we didn't hate each other, but we weren't exactly bosom buddies, either. I think the stress of the show really played on everybody. It's the ONLY community theater I've ever done where there was no cast party afterward. My sister and I didn't even say goodbye to all of the actors after the last show. Everyone just cleaned up and left as quickly as possible.
Looking back, I find it hard to believe some of these things happened. I'm grateful for each experience, though. I learned something through every one of these assignments. Sometimes you learn more from a disaster than you learn from a success.
Speaking of disasters, here are some runners-up: Charlotte's Web, Wellington Recreation Center (I directed a kids' class), 2000; South Pacific, Horsefeathers and Applesauce, 2001 (the set consisted pretty much of four giant potholders that had to be individually weaved. Not an exaggeration); Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Horsefeathers and Applesauce, 2000 (Drunk choreographer, MAJOR backstage drama/teenage hormone crap); Life is a Dream, Oklahoma City Theatre Company, 2004 (dreary, plodding, three-hour take on what is an engaging and often-humorous script; an extended run, generally for houses of less than twelve); It Could Be Any One of Us, OBU, 2005 (senior "I'm over it" show); Medium Rare, Wellington High School, 1998 (Director's philosophy of theatre: "That play has boys dressing up as girls, doesn't it? That's always funny, we'll do that one").
So there you have it. The best and the worst. It'll be tough for anything to crack either of these lists in the years to come, but I look forward to finding both the show that tops Hero Squad and the one that is more hilariously painful than Kiss Me Kate or No Time For Heaven.
Monday, August 2, 2010
v2, d133: WOF #4: Top 7
Sorry for the delay, on to the fun.
I've done a lot of shows. By this age, I think pretty much anybody still in showbusiness has. So, why not do a Top 7 of the productions that were the most fun to be a part of and augment it with pictures when possible? Man, I'm a genius.
Here we go:
TOP 7 "MOST FUN" SHOWS FROM MY CAREER (1992-2010)
#7: Fiddler on the Roof, Wellington Community Theater, 1998
I don't have any pictures for this one, which is a shame. I had thousands of great laughs in my years at WCT, but this one stands out in my mind. I was a freshman in high school. When I joined WCT in 1992, we had a show with a cast of seven, most of whom were from out of town. Fiddler was a cast of forty-eight, two of whom came from outside Wellington. It was so remarkable to look back and see the journey the group had made in those six years. This was also the show with the least amount of "Backstage drama" after I hit puberty (Well, except for 12 Angry Men, which was all men, so I had no drama whatsoever), and the entire cast seemed to get along really, really well. People who I'd never have imagined would want to be in a play came out to play minor roles. And of course, if you're a man in musical theater, Fiddler is a blast to be a part of anyway. You get to sing in a drunken chorus, be a nightmarish specter, dance/fight at a wedding, there's all kinds of goodies! (The fact that I got to play the romantic opposite to the girl I had a major crush on for, oh, three or four years certainly had its perks as well)
#6: Much Ado About Nothing, Oklahoma Baptist University, 2002
One thing I took away from my college theater experience: I wasn't that good of an actor. In the right role, however, I could really get a chance to shine. This was one of few shows I've acted in where I still feel I did a good job with the role. I played the villainous Don John, which was just awesome in and of itself. Those who know my well know that I have relatively playfully evil tendencies, and Shakespeare's bad guys are so over-the-top evil that it was a pure joy to step into D.J.'s skin every night. I loved everything about this show. It was so funny. The set was one of my favorite that we ever built, and this was back when I got to do a lot of shop work, both at school and in summer stocks. Here's a good shot of the set:
And here's me, all hard-core:
Nice, eh? This was also the first show that virtually everybody in the department was involved in. And you all know how much I love the ensemble nature of theatre. We all had fun building this fun, awesome show together.
#5: Pirates of Penzance, The Huron Playhouse and OBU, 2003
I did this show back-to-back, as the last show of the 2003 summer season at Playhouse and the first show of 2003-04 at OBU. I think maybe the Playhouse version was moderately more fun primarily because the fact that we had a cast that was fifty strong plus a full pit orchestra. The OBU version was also fun because I had a larger role and I was better friends with several of the people involved. Really, though, I think I could do Pirates for a full year and not grow sick of it. The music is so incredibly upbeat and silly and it just lends itself to an awesome show all around.
These pics are from the OBU version, because the only Playhouse pic I have won't fit on the scanner.
Yeah.Love this show.
#4: The Robin Hood show, Oklahoma Baptist University, 2002
I don't want to use the script's actual name, because last time I used it on a blog, the playwright then emailed me a few days later. It was a little creepy. Anyway, this was my first ever foray into the world of theatre for young audiences. Obviously, I was hooked, and still am, and even though I'm actually not that big a fan of this script anymore (hence not using it's actual title and getting back in touch with the playwright) it still sticks out as one of the most dynamic theatrical experiences I've ever had. The audience sat in the round and were so close they were basically on the stage in two sections. I played the narrator character, so I spent a lot of time interacting directly with the audience. There was so much energy at every single performance. We actually had crowds lined up outside the building wanting to get in. Everyone who came had such a great time, young and old, and it really impacted the way I eventually decided I wanted to write children's plays: I wanted every attendee to enjoy the show on a level that would resonate with them regardless of their age or experience. (My intention has been to do so without stooping to some of the 'easy' tricks this particular script employed; sometimes I hit, sometimes I miss, but still) We also ran this show fourteen times in fourteen days. It was really a phenomenal schedule (even if I did fall behind in most every class for two weeks) and possibly the best two weeks of my collegiate life. Sadly, this would be the last time I was involved in any of our department's TYA productions, but clearly, it stuck. (I'm the one in the back in this pic, by the way. That was an awesome hat)
#3: Miss Nelson is Missing!, A. D. Players, 2008
Really, what about this show wasn't fun? The cast was dynamite, the music was fun. The script left some to be desired, but really it was just there as a vehicle to get from one musical number to the next, and to that degree it worked. Those of us in the cast were so willing to play with one another that it seemed we were always finding new things in every rehearsal--not in that "Wow, um...he's never done that before" tone two weeks into the run, but in the "Hey, that's kind of fun. I think that can work!" vein of collaborative creativity. I had a lizard. Sarah had her ribbons. Natalie's jumprope. Jason's pencils. There were so many really small touches that, in my mind, separate a good show from a great show. Of every show I've ever worked on, this is probably the biggest sense of ensemble discovery and creativity that I've ever experienced. I honestly wish we could have taken this one on tour and played it for a couple of months. I think it was that good, and I'm pretty sure any one of us would have been okay with that. (Note: I'm not generally a guy who wants to run a show past its closing date. Exceptions: This, Much Ado, The Foreigner, Pirates, Robin Hood, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Twelfth Night, and #1 on this list. Out of 112 shows, that's it)
Let's see, what else was I going to say about this show....oh yes! We opened the week of Hurricane Ike. Meant we missed most of tech week, which I know was a nightmare to our tech people, but we opened the weekend after the storm. We had people coming to the show because they still didn't have power in their houses and they needed an air-conditioned place to take their kids. It was such a unique experience, being that escapist buffer for a city full of children who'd been through and were still experiencing something so scary. It reminded me of the kind of powerful tool light-hearted entertainment can be, especially for the family of four.
#2: You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Wellington High School, 1998
Another great ensemble story, but what made this one special was actually my relationship with the director. He was the first person who really singled me out as someone with potential as an artist. At least, he was the first one who I believed, and that's just as big a thing. Sure, your parents always tell you you're great, but here was a guy who had a background in the industry, performing professionally in major productions of musicals across the country before he settled down and started teaching. He was the first theatre pro I knew, and he was the first who really told me I could make it if I wanted to.
I've done YAGMCB three times now in different capacities, and this was my only time to play an actual scripted character. I played Charlie Brown, and it was so unlike anything our school had done in at least a decade that it felt like we were breaking some exciting new ground. It was a bigger production than the previous year's musical (which had been the first one in years), the technical elements were a step up, the cast included some singers with acting experience and some without. Our school faculty hadn't seen anything quite like it before...and it ended up being a HUGE hit and a stepping stone for what would be a revitalized theatre program in the years go come. (Sadly, this teacher moved on after this year, but we still keep in touch occasionally)
Opening night, a sudden hailstorm knocked out the power in the entire school just before places. We got power back, but all our light cues were gone, so the board op (the director's brother and another professional, thankfully) was pretty much making it up as he went that night. The show was great, though. I also had a lot of friends in the crowd that night, so when I took center stage for the last bow, the place went crazy. It's not an experience I'd had often before, nor have I had since, but it was a magical night.
I apologize that there are no pictures. I'm sorry more for my sake than yours, because there was so much that happened over the rehearsal and show process, and I'm not just talking about the three guys in the cast getting their legs shaved by two girls in the band director's bathtub, though that experience could be a blog in and of itself.
#1: The Hero Squad vs. The Princess Snatchers, A. D. Players, 2009
I know, this surprises no one. Well, who cares. Every once in a great while, an artist gets a dream project. This was the first script I'd ever written (unless you want to count Big Liar, Little Liar, and I know you do, Holly), and I'd been working with it for three and a half years. It was my first chance to direct a full show, with a design team and everything, and just about everyone involved with the show was stoked about it. I knew at the time that I'd probably never get a set of circumstances as favorable as I'd been handed for Princess Snatchers, and I wanted to make the most out of it. I felt so fully comfortable handing over my work into these actors, designers, and stage managers, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park. There were frustrations, yeah, and there are things I would have done differently if I'd known then what I know now, and yada yada yada. But I can't think of a single project into which I've poured so many hours--from writing to pre-production to directing to jumping around as a ninja and a bottlenosed bankrobber during the run of the show--and received such great response. Audiences were absolutely spellbound. Almost nobody went to the restroom the entire run of the show. (When a kids' audience gets bored, they want to go pee. If they're into the show enough, they'll generally hold it)
I'm currently struggling to get this particular script picked up by a national publisher. So far, no dice. I really hope it'll happen. I believe it should happen, at least. But if it doesn't, I had the experience of a lifetime putting it together and watching it run, and if that's all I ever get out of it, I guarantee I'll still smile at the memory.
Runners up: Bat Boy: The Musical, Elsik High School, 2009; The Foreigner, The Huron Playhouse, 2003; Alice Now!, A. D. Players, 2010; Secret Identity, A. D. Plaeyrs, 2009; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Horsefeathers and Applesauce, 2002; Honk!, Horsefeathers and Applesauce, 2004; and The Sound of Music, Wellington Community Theater, 1997
Now, there are two sides of every coin. For every Hero Squad, there's, well, there's one of our next Top 7 . Which I had planned on doing tonight, but getting the scanner figured out took me a little longer than I expected it to. So t'll have to wait another night, when I'll give you the 7 biggest headache-productions of the last eighteen years.(Warning: I have far fewer pictures of those ones ;-) )
I've done a lot of shows. By this age, I think pretty much anybody still in showbusiness has. So, why not do a Top 7 of the productions that were the most fun to be a part of and augment it with pictures when possible? Man, I'm a genius.
Here we go:
TOP 7 "MOST FUN" SHOWS FROM MY CAREER (1992-2010)
#7: Fiddler on the Roof, Wellington Community Theater, 1998
I don't have any pictures for this one, which is a shame. I had thousands of great laughs in my years at WCT, but this one stands out in my mind. I was a freshman in high school. When I joined WCT in 1992, we had a show with a cast of seven, most of whom were from out of town. Fiddler was a cast of forty-eight, two of whom came from outside Wellington. It was so remarkable to look back and see the journey the group had made in those six years. This was also the show with the least amount of "Backstage drama" after I hit puberty (Well, except for 12 Angry Men, which was all men, so I had no drama whatsoever), and the entire cast seemed to get along really, really well. People who I'd never have imagined would want to be in a play came out to play minor roles. And of course, if you're a man in musical theater, Fiddler is a blast to be a part of anyway. You get to sing in a drunken chorus, be a nightmarish specter, dance/fight at a wedding, there's all kinds of goodies! (The fact that I got to play the romantic opposite to the girl I had a major crush on for, oh, three or four years certainly had its perks as well)
#6: Much Ado About Nothing, Oklahoma Baptist University, 2002
One thing I took away from my college theater experience: I wasn't that good of an actor. In the right role, however, I could really get a chance to shine. This was one of few shows I've acted in where I still feel I did a good job with the role. I played the villainous Don John, which was just awesome in and of itself. Those who know my well know that I have relatively playfully evil tendencies, and Shakespeare's bad guys are so over-the-top evil that it was a pure joy to step into D.J.'s skin every night. I loved everything about this show. It was so funny. The set was one of my favorite that we ever built, and this was back when I got to do a lot of shop work, both at school and in summer stocks. Here's a good shot of the set:
And here's me, all hard-core:
#5: Pirates of Penzance, The Huron Playhouse and OBU, 2003
I did this show back-to-back, as the last show of the 2003 summer season at Playhouse and the first show of 2003-04 at OBU. I think maybe the Playhouse version was moderately more fun primarily because the fact that we had a cast that was fifty strong plus a full pit orchestra. The OBU version was also fun because I had a larger role and I was better friends with several of the people involved. Really, though, I think I could do Pirates for a full year and not grow sick of it. The music is so incredibly upbeat and silly and it just lends itself to an awesome show all around.
These pics are from the OBU version, because the only Playhouse pic I have won't fit on the scanner.
Yeah.Love this show.
#4: The Robin Hood show, Oklahoma Baptist University, 2002
I don't want to use the script's actual name, because last time I used it on a blog, the playwright then emailed me a few days later. It was a little creepy. Anyway, this was my first ever foray into the world of theatre for young audiences. Obviously, I was hooked, and still am, and even though I'm actually not that big a fan of this script anymore (hence not using it's actual title and getting back in touch with the playwright) it still sticks out as one of the most dynamic theatrical experiences I've ever had. The audience sat in the round and were so close they were basically on the stage in two sections. I played the narrator character, so I spent a lot of time interacting directly with the audience. There was so much energy at every single performance. We actually had crowds lined up outside the building wanting to get in. Everyone who came had such a great time, young and old, and it really impacted the way I eventually decided I wanted to write children's plays: I wanted every attendee to enjoy the show on a level that would resonate with them regardless of their age or experience. (My intention has been to do so without stooping to some of the 'easy' tricks this particular script employed; sometimes I hit, sometimes I miss, but still) We also ran this show fourteen times in fourteen days. It was really a phenomenal schedule (even if I did fall behind in most every class for two weeks) and possibly the best two weeks of my collegiate life. Sadly, this would be the last time I was involved in any of our department's TYA productions, but clearly, it stuck. (I'm the one in the back in this pic, by the way. That was an awesome hat)
#3: Miss Nelson is Missing!, A. D. Players, 2008
Really, what about this show wasn't fun? The cast was dynamite, the music was fun. The script left some to be desired, but really it was just there as a vehicle to get from one musical number to the next, and to that degree it worked. Those of us in the cast were so willing to play with one another that it seemed we were always finding new things in every rehearsal--not in that "Wow, um...he's never done that before" tone two weeks into the run, but in the "Hey, that's kind of fun. I think that can work!" vein of collaborative creativity. I had a lizard. Sarah had her ribbons. Natalie's jumprope. Jason's pencils. There were so many really small touches that, in my mind, separate a good show from a great show. Of every show I've ever worked on, this is probably the biggest sense of ensemble discovery and creativity that I've ever experienced. I honestly wish we could have taken this one on tour and played it for a couple of months. I think it was that good, and I'm pretty sure any one of us would have been okay with that. (Note: I'm not generally a guy who wants to run a show past its closing date. Exceptions: This, Much Ado, The Foreigner, Pirates, Robin Hood, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Twelfth Night, and #1 on this list. Out of 112 shows, that's it)
Let's see, what else was I going to say about this show....oh yes! We opened the week of Hurricane Ike. Meant we missed most of tech week, which I know was a nightmare to our tech people, but we opened the weekend after the storm. We had people coming to the show because they still didn't have power in their houses and they needed an air-conditioned place to take their kids. It was such a unique experience, being that escapist buffer for a city full of children who'd been through and were still experiencing something so scary. It reminded me of the kind of powerful tool light-hearted entertainment can be, especially for the family of four.
#2: You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Wellington High School, 1998
Another great ensemble story, but what made this one special was actually my relationship with the director. He was the first person who really singled me out as someone with potential as an artist. At least, he was the first one who I believed, and that's just as big a thing. Sure, your parents always tell you you're great, but here was a guy who had a background in the industry, performing professionally in major productions of musicals across the country before he settled down and started teaching. He was the first theatre pro I knew, and he was the first who really told me I could make it if I wanted to.
I've done YAGMCB three times now in different capacities, and this was my only time to play an actual scripted character. I played Charlie Brown, and it was so unlike anything our school had done in at least a decade that it felt like we were breaking some exciting new ground. It was a bigger production than the previous year's musical (which had been the first one in years), the technical elements were a step up, the cast included some singers with acting experience and some without. Our school faculty hadn't seen anything quite like it before...and it ended up being a HUGE hit and a stepping stone for what would be a revitalized theatre program in the years go come. (Sadly, this teacher moved on after this year, but we still keep in touch occasionally)
Opening night, a sudden hailstorm knocked out the power in the entire school just before places. We got power back, but all our light cues were gone, so the board op (the director's brother and another professional, thankfully) was pretty much making it up as he went that night. The show was great, though. I also had a lot of friends in the crowd that night, so when I took center stage for the last bow, the place went crazy. It's not an experience I'd had often before, nor have I had since, but it was a magical night.
I apologize that there are no pictures. I'm sorry more for my sake than yours, because there was so much that happened over the rehearsal and show process, and I'm not just talking about the three guys in the cast getting their legs shaved by two girls in the band director's bathtub, though that experience could be a blog in and of itself.
#1: The Hero Squad vs. The Princess Snatchers, A. D. Players, 2009
I know, this surprises no one. Well, who cares. Every once in a great while, an artist gets a dream project. This was the first script I'd ever written (unless you want to count Big Liar, Little Liar, and I know you do, Holly), and I'd been working with it for three and a half years. It was my first chance to direct a full show, with a design team and everything, and just about everyone involved with the show was stoked about it. I knew at the time that I'd probably never get a set of circumstances as favorable as I'd been handed for Princess Snatchers, and I wanted to make the most out of it. I felt so fully comfortable handing over my work into these actors, designers, and stage managers, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park. There were frustrations, yeah, and there are things I would have done differently if I'd known then what I know now, and yada yada yada. But I can't think of a single project into which I've poured so many hours--from writing to pre-production to directing to jumping around as a ninja and a bottlenosed bankrobber during the run of the show--and received such great response. Audiences were absolutely spellbound. Almost nobody went to the restroom the entire run of the show. (When a kids' audience gets bored, they want to go pee. If they're into the show enough, they'll generally hold it)
I'm currently struggling to get this particular script picked up by a national publisher. So far, no dice. I really hope it'll happen. I believe it should happen, at least. But if it doesn't, I had the experience of a lifetime putting it together and watching it run, and if that's all I ever get out of it, I guarantee I'll still smile at the memory.
Runners up: Bat Boy: The Musical, Elsik High School, 2009; The Foreigner, The Huron Playhouse, 2003; Alice Now!, A. D. Players, 2010; Secret Identity, A. D. Plaeyrs, 2009; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Horsefeathers and Applesauce, 2002; Honk!, Horsefeathers and Applesauce, 2004; and The Sound of Music, Wellington Community Theater, 1997
Now, there are two sides of every coin. For every Hero Squad, there's, well, there's one of our next Top 7 . Which I had planned on doing tonight, but getting the scanner figured out took me a little longer than I expected it to. So t'll have to wait another night, when I'll give you the 7 biggest headache-productions of the last eighteen years.(Warning: I have far fewer pictures of those ones ;-) )
Sunday, August 1, 2010
v2, d132: WOF#3: Guest Blogger #3
Joseph "Old Joe" Harrison is a cattle herder who lives pretty much anywhere from Wyoming to Texas to California, looking for work wherever he can get it for himself, his brother Booger, and his sister Peggy. Joe isn't really that old, but he is the oldest of the Harrison siblings, so "Old Joe" it is.
If you're trying to puzzle how a cowboy from the 1800s has access to the Internet and blogging, all I can say is: you need more interesting things to puzzle over.
*****
Evenin', folks.
Most folks would say it's mighty late as I write this here note. I know I still got a good few hours ahead of me. I tend to stay up later'n most people, even most other cow pokes. It ain't my night to stand watch. Booger's doin' that. I just ain't a man who gets to fallin' asleep too easily. It ain't necessarily 'cause I'm anxious or anything, I just don't sleep a lot. Never have, probably never will.
Now, generally speaking, I like it late at night. The air's a bit cooler, the stars are a bit brighter, and everybody else is already sleepin' so it's the only time of the day I got to really spend much time with my thoughts. It's usually a mighty peaceful, gratifying time. Sometimes, though, when just the wrong mood hits, it'll switch from "being alone" to "being lonely" quicker than a bee-stung piglet. Those nights, you're tempted to wake somebody up just so you can talk to another person, maybe play a quick game, enjoy a cup of coffee and look for shootin' stars. Tonight just happens to be one o' those sorta nights, so I'll do my best to keep from gettin' too melancholy on ya.
Actually, the writin' kinda helps.
Truth is, it ain't hard for a cowboy to get lonely. When you're ridin' a trail, you got the guys on your team (and the gal, if your kid sister is workin' with ya), your horses, and a whole bunch of cows. Whole bunch of cows. Now, it's great work, and there are all sorts of positives you can get out of it, but a satisfying social life ain't always one of 'em. Now sure, you're like as not to like the rest of the guys, but when you don't see nobody else for weeks at a time but the same group of guys, you can get on each other's bad sides pretty dang easily. (Those are the times when I like late nights alone with myself) And when you do make it to a town here or there, there are plenty more people, but you ain't like them. Talkin' to cows for nine months out of the year has a way of changin' a man, and it ain't so easy to blend in with city dwellers when you do get the chance.
You know what keeps a cowboy from goin' completely batty when he's out on the land day in and day out? Storytellin'. Singin', too. We're always tellin' stories. True stories, tall tales, ghost stories, you name it. Talkin' about people we met once, or towns we been through. Adventures we had on the trail. A rotten pot of beans. Anything we can think of to keep our minds off the what and the where, and sometimes even the who, of everythin' around us. I think a lot of people don't realize how important singin' and stories are. Stories ain't just a thing you give to your kids to distract 'em when their bodies are gettin' sleepy. I've seen stories that've kept two guys from killin' each other. I've lived through a night of freezin' rain and wind and floodin', and we kept each other laughin' like maniacs singin' one bawdy song after another, actin' like total fools, but keepin' one another alive. Music and stories can make connections 'tween people who don't have no business connectin'. One o' the first things the Good Book says is that it ain't right for man to be alone. Well, stories is a way of makin' sure a man ain't ever alone. He tells a story, and he remembers the person who told it to him, and it's like they're lookin' up at the same stars that night. Even the Good Lord told lots of stories, as I find myself remindin' all them cityfolk who tell their kids it ain't civilized to sit around a fire at night and tell ghost stories to other adults. Shoot, most of them high-and-mighties look like they haven't sang a song out loud with other people in twenty, thirty years. And let me tell you, folks, there's something right sad in that.
Ya know, kids get it, and we were all kids once, so I think there's somethin' right about it. Kids are always tellin' stories, playin' games like they're people from stories. Kids just start singin', don't matter who's around, who's listenin', if they're sittin' down to a meal, if they're readin' a book, or if someone is tryin' to tell 'em something. When one of 'em wants to sing, he sings. And if there's another one close by, she sings, too. And until the song's over, they're friend, even if they wasn't before. Now I wanna know, folks: what's wrong about that?
So here's what I'm gonna leave with ya: start tellin' stories. Tell 'em to your wife. Tell 'em to your friends. Tell 'em to your folks. Tell 'em to anybody you wanna connect with. And tell 'em to your kids. Tell those kids every story you know, and when you run out, you make up some more. You tell 'em so that they love stories so much, nobody can't never talk 'em out of lovin' stories. Let 'em know it's all right to laugh, even if you gotta be serious most of the time. You do that, and you teach 'em not to be afraid of nobody or nothin', 'cause no matter what happens to 'em or where they find themself in this world, they're always gonna be only a short story or a silly song away from people they love. Far as I can see it, that's just about the only way any of us is gonna keep from goin' nuts before we slip on outta this world and into the next one.
If you're trying to puzzle how a cowboy from the 1800s has access to the Internet and blogging, all I can say is: you need more interesting things to puzzle over.
*****
Evenin', folks.
Most folks would say it's mighty late as I write this here note. I know I still got a good few hours ahead of me. I tend to stay up later'n most people, even most other cow pokes. It ain't my night to stand watch. Booger's doin' that. I just ain't a man who gets to fallin' asleep too easily. It ain't necessarily 'cause I'm anxious or anything, I just don't sleep a lot. Never have, probably never will.
Now, generally speaking, I like it late at night. The air's a bit cooler, the stars are a bit brighter, and everybody else is already sleepin' so it's the only time of the day I got to really spend much time with my thoughts. It's usually a mighty peaceful, gratifying time. Sometimes, though, when just the wrong mood hits, it'll switch from "being alone" to "being lonely" quicker than a bee-stung piglet. Those nights, you're tempted to wake somebody up just so you can talk to another person, maybe play a quick game, enjoy a cup of coffee and look for shootin' stars. Tonight just happens to be one o' those sorta nights, so I'll do my best to keep from gettin' too melancholy on ya.
Actually, the writin' kinda helps.
Truth is, it ain't hard for a cowboy to get lonely. When you're ridin' a trail, you got the guys on your team (and the gal, if your kid sister is workin' with ya), your horses, and a whole bunch of cows. Whole bunch of cows. Now, it's great work, and there are all sorts of positives you can get out of it, but a satisfying social life ain't always one of 'em. Now sure, you're like as not to like the rest of the guys, but when you don't see nobody else for weeks at a time but the same group of guys, you can get on each other's bad sides pretty dang easily. (Those are the times when I like late nights alone with myself) And when you do make it to a town here or there, there are plenty more people, but you ain't like them. Talkin' to cows for nine months out of the year has a way of changin' a man, and it ain't so easy to blend in with city dwellers when you do get the chance.
You know what keeps a cowboy from goin' completely batty when he's out on the land day in and day out? Storytellin'. Singin', too. We're always tellin' stories. True stories, tall tales, ghost stories, you name it. Talkin' about people we met once, or towns we been through. Adventures we had on the trail. A rotten pot of beans. Anything we can think of to keep our minds off the what and the where, and sometimes even the who, of everythin' around us. I think a lot of people don't realize how important singin' and stories are. Stories ain't just a thing you give to your kids to distract 'em when their bodies are gettin' sleepy. I've seen stories that've kept two guys from killin' each other. I've lived through a night of freezin' rain and wind and floodin', and we kept each other laughin' like maniacs singin' one bawdy song after another, actin' like total fools, but keepin' one another alive. Music and stories can make connections 'tween people who don't have no business connectin'. One o' the first things the Good Book says is that it ain't right for man to be alone. Well, stories is a way of makin' sure a man ain't ever alone. He tells a story, and he remembers the person who told it to him, and it's like they're lookin' up at the same stars that night. Even the Good Lord told lots of stories, as I find myself remindin' all them cityfolk who tell their kids it ain't civilized to sit around a fire at night and tell ghost stories to other adults. Shoot, most of them high-and-mighties look like they haven't sang a song out loud with other people in twenty, thirty years. And let me tell you, folks, there's something right sad in that.
Ya know, kids get it, and we were all kids once, so I think there's somethin' right about it. Kids are always tellin' stories, playin' games like they're people from stories. Kids just start singin', don't matter who's around, who's listenin', if they're sittin' down to a meal, if they're readin' a book, or if someone is tryin' to tell 'em something. When one of 'em wants to sing, he sings. And if there's another one close by, she sings, too. And until the song's over, they're friend, even if they wasn't before. Now I wanna know, folks: what's wrong about that?
So here's what I'm gonna leave with ya: start tellin' stories. Tell 'em to your wife. Tell 'em to your friends. Tell 'em to your folks. Tell 'em to anybody you wanna connect with. And tell 'em to your kids. Tell those kids every story you know, and when you run out, you make up some more. You tell 'em so that they love stories so much, nobody can't never talk 'em out of lovin' stories. Let 'em know it's all right to laugh, even if you gotta be serious most of the time. You do that, and you teach 'em not to be afraid of nobody or nothin', 'cause no matter what happens to 'em or where they find themself in this world, they're always gonna be only a short story or a silly song away from people they love. Far as I can see it, that's just about the only way any of us is gonna keep from goin' nuts before we slip on outta this world and into the next one.
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