A Myth Gone Public

Last night I attended the public The Public reading of

Christina Gorman

's play,

American Myth

. You may

recall

I attended a reading of her "work-in-progress" back in November, and this was that. I feel more at ease to address the play by name, in spite of it still bearing the WiP nomenclature, because this was a seriously serious reading, my friends. The Emerging Writers Group

advertised

, and filled the center section of the Anspacher Theatre (dear God, what a wonderful space!), and I don't want to name-drop here. I really don't. But suffice it to say that there were some very respectable names attached to the acting and directing of the thing. So, Christina, I'm outing you, whatever other work remains to be done on your script.

American Myth

deals with a fictional set of characters, but ones plucked out of the headlines like a

Law & Order

episode (only more insightful, of course). It deals in questions, which is probably my favorite thing about Christina's writing. All plays tend toward argument; conflict, after all, is drama, and vice versa. But there's nothing like a play that encourages one to ask questions rather than deliver a personal judgment, and

American Myth

does this for me. It asks what history is, both personal and national, and what we want or need it to be. It questions the motivations of the supposedly moral, and the supposedly immoral. Maybe it's simply the Unitarian Universalist in me, but I love pondering these questions because I can never be absolute in my judgments of others in my daily life. A play that impartially (hyper-partially, perhaps?) explores all the angles of a moral conflict resonates very personally with me. Plus, the script has all of Christina's usual wit and incisive display of human behavior that I've come to expect from her work.

Actually attending the reading was a sort of strange experience for me. I went by myself, with which I'm normally fine but this time, somehow, felt conspicuous about. Christina was wonderfully and specifically grateful for my attendance, and that went a long way to comforting me; in fact, for the brief moments I was in her presence I felt totally at ease. Yet apart from that, even as I was simply sitting and reading, waiting for the performance to start, I was uneasy and downright riled up. It's taken me a while to put together what could be the source of this, but this morning I realized that it was being so close to so much of what I want . . . and not having it. Of course I couldn't figure that out last night -- I was fully invested in the play and its development. This morning however, as I packed my chattel for

today's workshop in Philadelphia

, I put it together.

As much as I parlayed my feelings of rejection regarding

the

AFAWK

changes

into moral outrage and philosophical questioning, the fact is that I had allowed myself to become too dependent on the whole effort for the wrong reasons. I very genuinely cared about the story we were trying to tell, of course, and felt committed to our work and intentions. All that was not compromised. However, I had in a way come to rely on the show as a ticket to somewhere, and I have to admit to myself that part of my response (or lack thereof) to the casting changes was petulant and careerist. We had a reading at The Public scheduled, and then I felt it yanked out from under me. Yes, I care about that show; yes, I put good, hard work into its creation; yes, it is deserving of a life beyond our Fringe Festival performances and sacrifices ought to be made to ensure that. But I also want very badly to be valued more than I yet have as an actor, and that very visceral urge pushed on me hard when all of that went down. I had another opportunity to rejoin the process shortly thereafter, which I ignored. Maybe it was because of all the reasons I said, to distance myself from the story we created before, etc. But also, I was hurt by my own sense of slighted ambition.

Believe it or not, I do not want to dwell on that episode, apart from coming clean a bit on the whole thing.

As Far As We Know

continues in its development, and I'm very happy to hear that it lives on. It is wholly deserving of whatever success and attention it can create, as are its current creators. In fact,

Friend Nat

is one of those "creactors," which I find oddly comforting -- he's like a God-father for me. I mention it not just to come clean, but also because what allowed me to realize the source of my anxiety last night was that it felt just like an emotion I used to have in high school and college all the time.

I would sit down in the auditorium, or little theatre, and wait for the lights to dim. I was usually by myself, for whatever reason. (Often, that reason was because it was my third time seeing the show and I had run out of folks who wanted to see it.) I would sit and sit, a mounting sense of anticipation and dread occupying my heart and head. Then the show would begin, and I would get wrapped up in its machinations, but one part of me would always be on the outside of that. That part would feel wrapped up tight, strong, full of urge and impulse. And it would only feel more so after the bows were had, and the applause faded from memory. That urge sits there in every performance and whispers to me,

"I want to do that.

"I want to do that . . ."

1 2 3 SPRING

This weekend I went down to northern Virginia to celebrate a friend's birthday and Easter, and to meet my new niece-in-law, Hannah. It was a very fast trip, and a car was rented, which makes for a great deal more ease of travel, in spite of involving a great deal more effort on my part. It also allowed me to skip out on my own early Saturday morning for that birthday's adventures. The lucky birthday boy's wife arranged for a group of his friends to experience

Inner Quest

as adults. This was a popular field trip for all of us as children but, I must admit, it is

so much way better

as an adult. For one, nobody makes snide comments about one's athletic prowess, or lack thereof.

Well, it's done with a better sense of humor, anyway.

It was a fairly fascinating experience for me on many levels. As a youth, I only ever went to Inner Quest in my overweight phase (ages 5-16, this "phase" was) and I certainly didn't have a lot of background on the sorts of things they ask you to do there. I was a Boy Scout, and we do some challenging things in the Scouts, but rarely anything so singular as a zip wire, or climbing a 35-foot ladder (somehow that's more frightening than rock climbing). So perhaps needless to say, I was far better equipped to handle its challenges--physical and emotional--as a 31-year-old circus enthusiast. I didn't so much get a feeling of redemption from this experience, as I felt a strong need to make up for lost time. I wanted to run through, do everything, and do it all twice if I possibly could.

We did a zip wire (coast across a valley on a pulley attached to an airline cable), the "trapeze" (climb 30-or-so feet up a tree and jump from a platform to catch a trapeze), the "squirrel" (you're tied to a rope that runs up to a pulley very high in the air, and your friends are on the other end; at "go," you run in one direction and they, the other) and a "woozle" (two tightropes that wedge apart; you and a partner put your hands together and try to stay on them as far out in the widening wedge as possible). Of all of these, the trapeze was definitely my favorite. It was an awfully Batman-ish sort of challenge, and the terror I felt on that platform was unexpectedly strong. Pushing through that was an exhilarating reminder that there's a lot of new stuff I can still tackle physically, whether it's making up for lost time or finding all-new challenges.

Wife Megan

and I are, in fact, planning to take our first aerial class this week.

The other way in which this adventure was fascinating, though, was a quieter, less-terror-inducing one. Inner Quest is principally a team-building course, and they host school, church and corporate groups for day-long bouts of group challenges. This day was a bit like watching my own workshop curriculum writ large, stretched across valleys and up oak trees. Whether I'm teaching acrobalance or commedia dell'arte, there's always an emphasis on group work, on creating a sense of ensemble. That priority even ties back into the times I was first experiencing Inner Quest; growing up, I felt a very strong connection to the groups I was in that worked well together, theatre-oriented or otherwise. For me, there's a synergy to collaboration that simply has no match in individual efforts (if in fact any effort can be said to be purely individual). So I find the work of leading such inner-quests fascinating.

Our guides in this day, known to me only as Kate and Corey, were very accustomed to one another and seemed to be genuinely enthusiastic about the work. It was a miserable day weather-wise, rain-soaked and chilly, which made for mud, but they made sure we knew that by showing up on such a day we had impressed them. The emphasis was on fun, this being an adult birthday party, yet they kept up with their leadership techniques from what I could tell. I was struck in particular by how Kate dealt with an especially terrified friend on the trapeze platform. She just talked to her, but underlying the conversation was an awareness that she needed to balance distracting the jumper from the terror while focusing her on the task at hand. It's a delicate technique, and one that's impressed me ever since someone used it on me when I was a boy, to get me unfrozen from climbing up a couple of airline cables to the zip-wire platform.

I have had a few incidences of having to coax people into attempting the activities and/or challenges my workshops present. Some have gone better than

others

, of course, but it's an interesting and essential aspect of teaching. Everyone is accustomed to the idea of "requirements" for a given class or workshop, but requiring something is in my opinion antithetical to the learning process. The first step of learning is choice; take that away, and even when students accomplish something it is fleeting, personally unimportant or even ultimately resented. Inviting someone to challenge themselves, doing so in a compelling way, is a precious ability to cultivate in both teaching and other forms of leadership. It allows for progress and individuality. I'll be thinking about this a lot, no doubt, during

my workshop at Swarthmore tomorrow

.

There's only one thing better than springtime in NoVa, and that's autumn. But spring is pretty wonderful too, with its cherry blossoms and budding deciduous trees. I'm glad I got down there for our short weekend, and played outdoors a bit while there. On Sunday, in fact, Megan and her dad built Nephew James a new playground in the backyard. I slept in and missed most of the build, but selfishly scooped up a great deal of the payoff by playing with young James upon his first discovery of the fantastic addition to the yard. It was chilly. I definitely wished for it to be warmer as we romped around the castle, but kind of relished the youth of the season along with the youth of my companion. Before we know it, he'll be springing off platforms and hurtling through space. Eager as I am for warmer weather and more activity, the present moment is pretty wonderful, too.

Dead on my Feet

Last night I participated in

a developmental reading

of

Steve Deighan

's work-in-progress,

The Last Stand

, which was held at his gorgeous apartment on the Upper West Side. I won't say too much about the play itself here, as it's none of my business to go about spilling other writer's ideas. I mean, steal all of mine you want, but Steve's are off limits. I will say that it's a very funny script that takes some familiar stage tropes and turns them lovingly on their collective ears.

The people of this little reading were great; just great.

Daryl Boling

directed the night and read stage directions (gleefully intoning them with a '40s radio personality's spin), and my fellow actors for the eve were

Hank Davies

, Carolyn Gordon (Carolyn, if there's somewhere I can link for you, please let me know),

Ryan Michael Jones

and

Laura Schwenninger

(Laura: McFadden: WHAT?! I just spent five minutes of my life Google-searching "Schwenninger"! How do you expect to

receive anonymous feedback from casting directors

like this?). It was largely a reunion. I have worked with Steve, Daryl and Laura on several occasions, and Hank on one. Mike was in Daryl's admirable production of

All the Rage

, with Steve and Laura, and I believe Carolyn had worked with folks too, though I never got the skinny on that. In other words, all who weren't already friends made strides toward it through the course of the work and discussion.

It was only a few hours, but it was a few hours I very much needed. Just a little contact with theatre work, when I feel somehow deprived of it, can go a long way, and even longer when it's with a group that I enjoy and trust. It was a late night for yours truly. (As an interesting [to me] side note, I don't think I've ever had so much attention paid to my Facebook status as when I wrote this morning that I was too tired for push-ups.) I didn't crawl into bed until midnight, and that's at least two hours past any usefulness from this little bear.

Sometimes, though, more than sleep, one needs the company of a few friends and a play.

Curses: Foiled Again

Lately I've been wanting to write in my 'blog using the voice of

Rorschach

from his journal:

Had phone conversation with

Expatriate Younce

last night. Brief, but good. Wonder why doesn't happen more often. Talked of writing, ideas. Must remember notes later. PS, senseless debauchery and depravity of malignant tumor of a world makes crave cold beans again...

Doubtless this is due to the really wonderful performance by Jackie Earle Haley in the movie. Definitely in the top-five best interpretations of comicbook characters in cinema. Probably in the top three. Probably commie.

All right. That's enough of that.

One of my more irksome writing habits has to do with creating characters that are mere foils. I believe I can create some really developed, interesting characters, but more often than not I end up with a foil in there somewhere -- someone who fills gaps, quasi-antagonizes broadly, and generally exists as a sounding board for the rest. (Benvolio, for example, is largely considered a foil.) It's weird to me that I'd be inclined toward this, because I've played many foils in my career, and it's always a bit, well, irksome. In fact, when I was younger I was often cast as the "foil character." Not all of these were foils to a fault (i.e., folks devoid of development or consequence; e.g., Benvolio), but they were there to serve the needs of other characters in advancing the plot. I think Frankie in

A Lie of the Mind

is a fair example of this. If you disagree, then you may have some insight into why I did such a shite job playing him (see

4/5/07

).

Perhaps it's my proclivity for such characters that lends to their presence in my writing. It's hard to say. What's easy to say is that they are often burdened by concept. Take for example Jude and Angelo, characters from two plays of mine. Jude is a Mormon cast out of his church for numerous breaches in personal behavior, who continues to believe and do mission work whilst using drugs and foul language. Angelo, from

Hereafter

, is a former gang-member with a dead son who lives with him in his paranoid delusion. It's as though having a concept answers too many questions about the character for me, in a way, so I feel there's nothing left to explain or develop in its writing. Yet simultaneously, I feel clueless about what the characters need and where they go from where they are.

This habit and its connection to my acting came to mind for me out of last night's discussion. We talked a bit about the writing and idea-generating processes, and in particular I was intrigued with the possibilities and challenges of creating the characters Youncey was contemplating. Of course the discussion eventually touched on my as-yet-owed (and as-yet-written) werewolf story, and talking about it helped me realize that I stalled out in a previous attempt because I had all these exciting concepts for characters . . . but no real ideas about who they were, and where they were going. Well, two of them had direction and identity. Two that weren't remotely werewolfy. *sigh* So I thought the problem was that I just didn't actually

want

to write a werewolf story. Now, however, I have some ideas (hopefully not mere concepts) about what I do want to write about in a werewolf story. Now it's a question of time and keeping it foil-free.

Wherefore the foil? It's not laziness. Often time I spend much more energy on what turns out to be a foil character than I do on a fully realized, interesting one. Perhaps it's a problem with my perception of structure in a given story. It's true that I've never outlined a plot in my life; the closest I ever come to that is when I somehow know where I want the whole thing to end up. Writing is improvisation to me, or (perhaps more accurately) like just such a conversation as I had last night -- ideas piling up, going exploring down one path or another, accepting everything I can and using it as best I can. It's funny. Younce will continually make claims to not being a writer, yet the very stockpiling of ideas we do equates to the writing process for me. It isn't the same, of course. I take for granted whatever actual writing skills and instincts I may have acquired over the years. Yet that idea-hashing, that collaborative energy, that's what keeps me writing. That's what I really love about it.

When I was a teenager I was quite obsessed with my writing voice, and unique little turns of phrases. Early teachers of mine would kindly describe my prose as being "poetically dense." Thankfully I've rescinded my former enthusiasm for linguistic frippery and syntax of a winding and convoluted manner, the which is not dissimilar from a verbal slalom track (not to mention [since it bears repeating] a certain appreciation for [parenthetical] asides). But seriously: When I was a teenager, it was even worse. Now I value a certain amount of clarity and efficiency in my writing (not too [too] much, mind). Similarly, I want to make efficient stories, with necessary characters, not just cool concepts and dramatic tensions. That's the mysterious quality of really amazing stories, for me: structure. Lean, mean and beautifully functional.

Something made of steel, rather than foil.