I Did It My Way . . . With a Little Help From My Friends

Lately I have been wondering where I am headed with this whole

Zuppa del Giorno

thing. That seems a fairly natural consideration at this point. I mean, I just turned thirty years of age. For the past five years I have given a significant portion of my career time to working in this milieu, and in that time we have achieved many of the seemingly impossible goals we set for ourselves, such as simply maintaining an improvisatory theatre troupe for so long, going to Italy to teach, learn and perform, and developing work that honors and (I believe) advances a tradition of theatre oft neglected this side of the Atlantic. Add to that the homecoming nature of

Prohibitive Standards

(with David as director again and returning to completely improvised dialogue) and there's very little reason to worry over a need for personal reflection.

Yet I worry. In spite of investing so much and believing even more in embracing the unknown, it is disturbing to feel a lack of drive in this work. Perhaps it's very simple: We still don't know what next year's mainstage show will be, thus I have nothing specific to keep ruminating on at odd moments during the year. I think, however, it has as much to do with that uncertainty as it does with a certain frustration on my part. This frustration may best be characterized by a metaphor concerning the actual action of performing improvisation.

To wit: In long-form improvisation, one needs a certain familiarity at least with one's stage partners. In commedia dell'arte, this is enhanced by established bits of business carried from show to show, called lazzi. It's necessary to have some things understood. However, it is equally necessary to have a sufficient balance of completely spontaneous, unrehearsed moments--to have them, recognize them and take advantage of them. That's what gives the form its life, its truth and the lion's share of its joy.

And here am I (in the larger picture [the one in a five-year frame]) feeling as though it's all planned out. The scenario has solidified to the point whereat it is almost calcified. And more significantly, I feel as though I don't have quite the same things to contribute to breaking it up as I used to. When I started this work, I was twenty-five years old, with most of my background in stylized comedy sampled from sitcoms and farces. I leaped in headfirst, heedless of danger, and accepted everything I was told. My energy was boundless and I was determined to do wild things with unrelenting abandon. So it seems to me now, at any rate. Over half a decade, I have changed, and the work has been through many changes itself. It's difficult to distinguish between the two, speaking quite frankly. What changed in a given circumstance? It or me?

I suppose that's just one of the mysteries of life. And these changes in direction can't always be controlled, even when they're perceived to be happening. The challenge is to change with them, and carry the momentum forward. Accept and build. "Yes, and...."

What fun is it, knowing exactly what to do next, anyway?

I Heart Improvisation

Way back at the end of our first week of running

Prohibitive Standards

, I began a 'blog entry, the which I have not returned to since my first true day off. I quote--here, after the second week of performances--said beginning:

"We had our first genuinely difficult performance of Prohibitive Standards yesterday. It was the end of our opening weekend, a weekend in which we performed five shows (or six, if you include our invitational dress rehearsal) after weeks of arduous development. We were bound to lose some steam by the time we got to that final show of the week, and it didn't help that our audience was the smallest and least responsive yet. (There are a number of blessings/curses to performing on a university campus, not the least of which is some guaranteed audience numbers . . . as a result of the show being a requirement for theatre and history classes.) I can't ever shift blame for a disappointing show onto an audience, however. Even a show as dependent on audience involvement as this one.

"All comedy is rather dependent on a receptive audience. I mean, that's how you know you're reaching an audience with a comedy: laughter. Immediate response. Now, improvisational comedy, that's the most potentially insecure comedy of all. Think of how the form has translated into television and film thus far. Both the Christopher Guest films and--to a greater degree--a show like The Office depend on awkward scenarios and seemingly oblivious characters for their humor. There's an interesting overlap of what I've been doing in relative anonymity for my entire acting career and the American public's interest coming up: The "The Office" Convention in Scranton, PA. I and about fourteen other actors affiliated with The Northeast Theatre will be doing an improvised performance as a part of the event, directed by Samantha Phillips and written/structured by Steve Deighan."

Where am I going with this, you may ask (if, indeed, you are even bothering to check my 'blog after such extended absences)? Well, after two weeks of performing this entirely original piece, I have to confess that some rather brutal reality checks have been in order. The first of these is to admit that our relative success in the opening weekend had rather to do with an extended version of "opening night syndrome." For you non-theatre-o-philes, this is the phenomenon whereby all community theatre sustains life. Essentially, it is the equation

effort + community involvement = mutual necessary success

. In other words, when ensconced in a community that comes to need your success to verify itself, success is somewhat guaranteed in the response from said community. They are supportive in spite of themselves, because they have come to value you as a representative of their community.

That's not to say we didn't work very hard, nor that Marywood's opinion is invalid in any way. Rather, it is to say that we didn't have the opportunity to face the real challenges of actors and collaborative playwrights until the glow of opening a unique effort faded and died. Rather farther, it is to say that we have begun--in this second season of three--to find a sincerity and danger to the show that we could barely conceive of in our packed houses at Marywood.

So seems it to me, as biased and involved as I may be at this time.

This weekend, we came upon the remarkable stage of development in which we toyed with core elements of the show. All the things we were terrified to play with when we finally got a working plot on its feet--intentions, motivations, lazzi--have become fair play, and just in time, too. It was getting terribly stale, and hope was draining like hooch into a 1916 sewer. The last two shows we've done were well received, but more importantly we found truth in them again. And this time, the truth is born of the moment itself more than the desperation of making something comprehensible (of course, a sense of desperation doesn't hurt, either).

I acknowledge: this has been a terribly abstract entry--particularly for them what haven't tried to succeed at long-from improvisation previously. I hope to remedy that in later entries. For now, try and relax in this little axiom:

"Getting it 'right' is ridiculously unproductive. Make mistakes constantly, and make them boldly, or suffer from limitation and stagnation."

Making a Stand(ard)

Hi. I was wondering if I could be let back into your life. You can't see me now, so I'll just let you know that I'm standing, in a trenchcoat, outside my car, holding a boombox over my head and looking mournful. Sure, the boombox is playing "Life Is just a Bowl of Cherries" rather than something romantic that we got freaky too (like "The Thong Song"), but that's just because I'm stuck in the '30s, and can't get out. At least, not until October 21.

Some people are genuinely upset with me for being so absent.Not so much on the ‘blog—that, at most, inspires increased frustration with work-induced boredom—but more in general.I never write.I never call.The least I could do is ‘blog every now and again, just so you know I’m still alive as you sit there, reading in the dark without your glasses, two miles in the snow uphill both ways.I am sorry, truly.I have had a worry or two of my own, you know.Nothing to rival your worries, and of course the greatest worry I have is that something terrible would happen to you and I wouldn’t know about it because I have been so selfish, and unworthy of your thoughtful consideration.You have, at the least (as you lie in traction from your tragic tractor trajectory) this comfort:It has been in the name of Art.

And fart jokes.

Look here to see what has been so occupying now that I’ve not been available.Oh, I can’t trust you to links!It’s Zuppa del Giorno’s first original creation in a year-and-a-half: Prohibitive Standards. If you do take the “here” link above (and how much better it is to live in the here and now), you’ll see that a tremendous amount of work has gone in to creating this show, and the ‘blog(s) don’t hardly reveal but half of the actual salt-water work (that is: sweat and tears [thank you, Friend Kate]) what’s gone into this production.The rehearsal room, after all, is where all the material for Zuppa’s shows really springs from, and for the past three weeks we’ve been gathering in a room (or two) to make our baby.

I had previously attempted to ‘blog about the process of that, but never got very far, because I was constantly off to learn music, or watch movies, or try to master a front handspring.OR, to balance my life.Because that’s a special effort too, when you’re an actor of somewhat modest means working out of town. It’s important to acknowledge that aspect of The Third Life©. From balancing one’s checkbook, to reminding one’s parents that he or she is not, in fact, home to be visited, to maintaining some sense of home and personal identity amidst characterization and shacking up in someone’s guest room, the traveling artist has a lot to contend with.Not that it’s not without its perks, either.New experiences are fantastic fuel for creative endeavor, and it’s easier to obsess (constructively, we hope) without frequent reminders of responsibilities.

One of my previous attempts at ‘blogging on this process was entitled “A Host of Angles.”I’ve written to some extent already about the unique process of creating a show from improvisation in my experiences with UnCommon Cause Theatre and Zuppa del Giorno, but never since opening the Aviary have I been so close to the process, nor has it culminated in quite the same way.Prohibitive Standards will be performed in a structured improvisation style.It will never solidify entirely. It will always be different. This means that the same concepts applied to making the show from the ground up will be applied in making it work when the curtain goes up.That creates an intense energy in which one has to set rules for oneself in order to be ready for anything that could happen on stage.We’ve constructed a scenario—or sequence of necessary actions—as our rules, within which we can play and stretch and improvise.In this way, the energy of a performance is very much like live sports, for both the participant and the observer.Everyone’s eager to see what happens next.

But “A Host of Angles”?Well, the most impressive reminder I was receiving about this process when I came up with that title (a lifetime ago, on September 15) had to do with the abandonment of structure and the necessary mastery of the elements of a play involved in creating one by committee, from scratch.In a more standard process, there is a sequence of events and a hierarchy of authority.Typically, the play passes from playwright to producer to director to actors, with very little passing back, and each party has a sequence of gradual development that results in a finished product.In creating a show in the living tradition of commedia dell’arte, however, everyone fills each role in some fashion all the time.One moment you are discussing character arcs, the next you’re leaping around imitating a boiling tea kettle, and still the next you’re trying very hard to be open and objective as you argue for more time for acrobatic training.Rehearsals end, of course, eventually, but they never really do, because everything you see, feel and do at all times goes into the soup, and as a producing playwright directactor, you never stop thinking about and discussing the show.Rather than a sequence of creation, you are coming at an intangible goal from every angle at once, and a lot of the time it feels as though you’re completely wasting your time, spinning your wheels while nothing productive takes place.But I leave out here, as something too obvious to mention, a critical ingredient in this creative soup: Faith.

However we got here, here we are, with a complete scenario that we may even manage to remember and properly reproduce on preview night, this Thursday.It has been a tremendously ambitious project, involving collaboration with Marywood University, regular workshops and training sessions with students and a good deal of marketing.Not everything has turned out the way I had hoped: the student actors are not as involved in the story as I would have liked, there's less emphasis on vaudeville than I had imagined and our physical daring, so prominent in the last two shows, has taken a backseat (necessarily) to an intricate story.However, I am very proud of what we’ve made, and excited to add an audience.Everyone is doing something they never thought they could do before, including me.

What new am I doing?I’d like to keep it a surprise for anyone who can make it out.Let’s just say that my embouchure hasn’t been in this good a shape since I was fifteen.

Many Happy Returns

No doubt you're all wondering why you've not heard from me on here in a while. Further, your frustrations over that (if frustrations there be) are about to be further compounded by this entry, the purpose of which is not to write so much about me as about someone who is very dear to me. He isn't even an actor (at least he hasn't been [in the traditional sense] since high school), but today is his birthday, and his family is just as clever as he is, so one of his sisters invited all of we--his 'blogified friends--to dedicate an entry to

David Mr. Younce

today. It is my pleasure to do so.

It's little known, but Dave Younce is actually a 350-year-old werewolf who belongs to all the important secret societies, including The Knights Templar, the Free-Masons and the Illuminati. He helps to keep this information discrete through a manipulation of seemingly inconsequential circumstances and details that somehow cumulatively result in a complete opacity of actual information. These masterminded manipulations require a comprehension and pattern recognition to perceive that is so vast, no normal man may achieve it. For years, the doctoral-level theoretical mathematicians at all the major American scientific universities have had their equivalent of a regatta, by way of a contest to be the first to determine what Dave will do next. To date, only two, Mensa-level mathematicians have succeeded. One promptly disappeared on an ill-advised expedition to the Amazon. The other immediately went insane. Dave is a figure of mystery and illusion who must never be gambled with, deceived (as if such a thing were possible) and who will swiftly assassinate irritating people with the power of his mere intention.

Not really, though. (As far as I know.) But Dave

is

one of those people about whom one has stories that seem almost of necessity fictional. I have spent the past few days trying to decide what is my best Dave story. Truly, there are too many to choose from. There's Dave the frustrated genius, who conceives ideas for engrossing fiction like each was an easily-dispensed pellet of Pez. There's Dave the adventurer, who appreciates better than anyone else I know the merit of following through on what seems a crazy idea. There's Dave-as-Mickey-Goldmill, who is always in one's corner for incidents from encouraging work on a project to understanding how tough life can get. There's Dave the Mastermind, who, you'll suddenly discover, has thought five steps ahead of you on a given day and, actually, is the reason you're where you are, doing what you're doing, that day to begin with. To top it all off, he's just a great, great friend--the kind you are always grateful for.

This last characteristic is perhaps the source of one of, if not the, best Youncey stories I have.

The best thing I can say about my experience of the summer of 1996 was that Dave was a huge part of it. It was the summer after our freshman years of college, his at BYU and mine at VCU. However it happened, we ended up hanging out more that summer than we ever managed in high school, and did I ever need it. I was working at a mall branch of Circuit City, in a bizarre state of quasi-break-up with my girlfriend and just generally confused and pissed off. So Dave and I passed the summer in good part talking about girls, drinking late-night Slurpees and having strange adventures. We would give one another "assignments," things to write or accomplish or retrieve that made mundaneness of growing up much more interesting. One day, Dave's assignment to me was to meet someone on a train platform toward sunset and speak specific words to him; something along the lines of, "No news is good news."

Well, I followed through, and sure enough there was a large man sitting alone on the platform, wearing unnecessary sunglasses and reading a newspaper. (The "man" was a mutual acquaintance, Chuck, but I didn't really know him well and for a minute of surveillance there I really thought I was dealing with a stranger.) What followed were hours of adventure as Chuck drove me to another location to meet another contact. I was completely out of control of my circumstances, and all my "contacts" were in character, mysterious figures who fed me tidbits of story but never answered a question directly. They were all mutual friends (including my erstwhile girlfriend--a deliciously dangerous twist), a network of game-playing cronies who executed this amazing real-life theatre. From train station, to park, to bank, to highway, every person I met had new information for me about my ultimate goal: to confront the mysterious "Condor." It went off beautifully, and mind you this was before everyone in the world had cell phones. The only glitch I knew about happened at the end, when the last contact dropped me off at the wrong end of the field behind my house, the end Dave had parked at. I knew I was to meet the Condor on that field. When Dave saw me crossing the street toward his car, he hopped out and addressed me by my codename. I was so into the game, however, that I thought it was a trick or test (no one who knows him would put it past him) and insisted on getting to the field. I did, to find a mini arena for our final confrontation. Dave eventually joined me (presumably after chewing out the last contact a bit) and we went to meet everyone who had been involved at a local restaurant.

Why that story, apart from not having had any experience like it before or since? Because it shows just how far Dave will go for a great experience with friends, his love of detail and creation, and because it demonstrates just how cool my friend Dave Younce is. Happy birthday, Youncey. You're (still) the best.

As Far As I Go

It seemed so simple: Rent a car, in order to commute between

Prohibitive Standards

rehearsals in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the extended performances of

As Far As We Know

at 45 Bleecker Street in Manhattan, New York. Maybe you'll feel a little strung out, but you won't miss much back in Scranton, and hey, you'll achieve in a very strong manner that continued connection to your theatrical home you always struggle to maintain when you're doing the regional theatre. It's a win-win.

Wrong wrong!

There's a line in Kevin Smith's

Dogma

that springs to mind here. "Any moron with a pack of matches can set a fire. Raining down sulfur is like an endurance trial. Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in . . . next to soccer." To that short list, I would choose to add working on two different shows in two different states (and by states, I mean every possible definition of the word). I was warned of this by a thesis defense I witnessed in college. A brilliant actor (who immediately ceased to act once he achieved his Master's, as I understand it), Greg Guy DeLeonardis, mentioned in his thesis defense that he would never again rehearse two shows at once. Both shows suffered, yet neither quite as much as he.

Now, for myself, I can't say that I suffered any great defeat or anything of the sort. It was simply exhausting to vacillate between the different mind states required by each show, much less adding a vacillation betwixt Pennsylvania and New York. In retrospect, too, it may be that any suffering the shows experienced was owing more to other circumstances than my own strung-out demeanor. But more on that later. Simply going between broad, physical comedy and quasi-Epic theatre with a dash of naturalism was a difficult transition. I have difficulty with such a stylistic shift even with months between productions. It seems no matter what I do to prepare for that kind of transition, some remnant of the last style I worked in remains hopping about in my brain. I suppose I had thought that my character in

As Far As We Know

was developed enough that I could slip back into him like he were my favorite pair of jeans; still, on the opening of the re-up, I found myself more a thinking actor than a feeling one.

As I say, there were other factors involved in this. There could hardly have been more, in fact. In addition to Laurie making some important changes to the play itself between The Fringe and the re-up, the space was vastly different from that we had become so accustomed to playing in. Essentially, take the Flamboyan space in

CSV

and turn it sideways with the addition of some more-awkwardly-placed poles and curtain slits for entrances, and you'll have some idea what we were confronted with at

45 Bleecker Street

. The tech, which I was excused from owing to my commute, was apparently disastrous. Laurie was out of town working on a new job, and she tore back into town on a $500 flight after hearing how our opening night went.

The most interesting snafu that night--for me, that is--was the failure of the video to play. It seems the video projector will go into rest mode, or some such thing, if not set properly. This it did, and so the first video cue failed to play. It's not a particularly necessary cue. That is, not particularly necessary to the action on stage, but it is, however, necessary to cue Lea McKenna-Garcia to begin her drill sergeant rant about the war. The end of which is my cue to stop furiously doing push-ups. (You may be able to see where this is heading.) Fortunately, as I began to approach push-up 40 or so (Yay, personal best for single set!) and my back started to twitch involuntarily (Boo, muscle spasms!) Lea summed up the predicament and I was saved a trip to the ER.

There were plenty of other interesting diversions from the play as it is written that night, lending the whole thing a bit of the quality of a Zuppa del Giorno production. Suffice it to say, it was a godsend that Laurie could return to set things right. The successive performances just got better and better, and I think we may have even got the thing 'round to its lovable old self by closing night. In the meantime, I continued to spirit back and forth through New Jersey in my Enterprise rental car, chanting to myself, "It's all a tax write-off, it's all a tax write-off . . .." The truth is, it was a grand time. Once some of the fires got put out, and I resolved my feelings over missing a good chunk of the work on

Prohibitive Standards

, I relaxed and enjoyed being so thoroughly employed in the theatre. Last week, when we were learning some fight choreography for the show, Geoff Gould turned to me and said, "We're getting paid for this." It's funny after ten years how joyful that simple thing can feel.

The big question, of course, is if

As Far As We Know

will have any life after this experience. That was the point of all this effort, and no startling news has yet to filter my way, no offers of space or interest or passionate replies of sponsorship. In my typical actor sensibility, I take this to be a sign of moving on. Actors get used to this attitude--somewhat, at least--through continual auditioning. "Well, that's done. Mustn't dwell on whether I'll get the call." Fortunately, I have something altogether preoccupying (read: freaking difficult) to work on for the next month or so. Perhaps

AFAWK

will ripple out to greater effect; perhaps not. How I feel now, if this is the end, is that we created work that was good, and that mattered. That's the kind of work that you really learn from. That's the kind of work that sticks with you through the years and, hopefully, with others as well. I feel proud of that.