I really believe that when it comes to giving and receiving gifts, it is the thought that counts.
Around this time of year, I like to get or make or procure or buy gifts for those people in my life that I want to honor for their inestimable contribution to my daily walk. I'm not religious about the Christmas holiday - my mother simply infused into me a genuine love for a time of year that insists upon good will and appreciation for your significant others (not in the spousal definition - my mother, my sister, my friends are all significant others in my life) and there are a couple of simple rules that I try to follow when participating in the ritual of gift-giving and receiving:
• Never get someone a gift as payment for a previous gift and never expect a gift in return. That's called "trading" and you don't call them "trades" do you?
• It isn't about how much money you spend - it's about how that gift shows your respect and love for the recipient. If that means you drop a house payment or a coupla bucks, as long as the gift says what you want it to say, price is irrelevent.
• I rarely get something someone has asked for in advance. Not as much fun for me. Probably a little selfish.
• Bottom line, it is the very thought of getting someone a gift that counts rather than the gift itself. And here's why I believe that:
While most people gravitate toward the stories of A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life, my personal favorite Christmas story is O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi. I can't really relate to the life of Ebenezer Scrooge or that of George Bailey, but I completely understand the world of Della and James. I've been that broke. I've felt that strongly that I would sell whatever I had to give that special gift to someone I love. I understand the strange embarrassment of really botching it up come Christmas morning. And I love the idea that it isn't the specific gift that matters but the love behind it, the care in choosing it and the joy of the giving of it.
When I was a teacher, I read The Gift of the Magi to my classes every year. In a classroom full of kids inundated with the commercial-driven lust for stuff - videogames, clothes, gizmos and money - I felt it was perhaps the most important lesson they learn during this particular holiday.
She sold her freaking HAIR to buy him a fob for his watch. He sold his watch to buy her combs for her hair.
The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication.
And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
...and This Is Why I Like Casting Smart People in My Shows...
I've been writing about The (edward) Hopper Project for a few weeks now as we prepare it for an audience. It's all part of the pragmatic function of this blog: allowing me to spitball my reactions to the world around me to better understand it. One of the things I like about blogs is that other people use the technology for the same thing and we end up with a strange disconnected dialogue going on.
Dennis F. is in the cast and, while he has blocked his blog off from general consumption because he's looking for work, I caught this the other day and figure I'll just repost some of it because it's an example of another artist seeing the same piece and informing me some. For the record, I wish all actors did this sort of thing for directors to see:
The director, Don Hall, told us at the first rehearsal what he thought "the play was about" and he also posted it on his blog. An excerpt:
"I immediately went back to the various pieces and re-read some. Bob Fisher had written a piece called New York Movie and within the dialogue, the CITY GIRL, who is the usherette pictured in the painting, has this exchange (her character name is now MARLA):
MARLA Everything terrible you’ve ever thought up or saw or read in the paper…eventually everything terrible happens to you. To everyone. You’ll know loneliness. You’ll know hunger. If the Indian doesn’t tear off your scalp, eventually the worms and the alley rats will.
MARY That’s it?
MARLA Yes. Sometimes lonely. Sometimes bored. Except every other Friday night.
MARY A new picture?
MARLA Yes. Till then it’s avoidance, anxiety, fear…but in the movie house we are all looking at the same thing. That gives me…something
MARY Comfort?
MARLA Maybe. I don’t know.
"...in the movie houses we are all looking at the same thing..."
And in the theater, and the art galleries, and concerts. And I realized that that is what this play is about - the unifying principle involved in collectively viewing art. While every person in the audience is disconnected by life and circumstance, when they are all seated in that black box, viewing the same piece of live theater, they are a brief, impermanent unit. Each will take from the experience what they will but for the time between curtain and applause, they are all part of something a bit larger than themselves."
To be completely honest, and I can be with Don 'cause that's how he rolls, I think that's a little generic and, well, boring. You take that theme, and by its nature, you could almost apply it to any live piece of theater.
But reading through the script that first night, I didn't know what I thought the piece was about either. Sunday afternoon, though, as we got through about half of the script, I started to see in my mind what this show is about for me.
To me, this show's theme is about comfortable choices. In life, we often times abandon the people, we abandon the things that we really want, and instead, we go for what's comfortable. ("When are you going to abandon these ridiculous fantasies?") Because what is comfortable is easier. What is merely comfortable hurts you less and is easier to cope with if it slips through your fingers. And when you abandon something, or especially someone, you leave a wake of hurt feelings, broken hearts, and destruction. And when people are hurt by those choices, they protect themselves the next time by making comfortable choices too, and everything perpetuates.
And in making comfortable choices, you lose a little bit of yourself. A little bit, if not more. Sure, you may have security, consistency, and safety ("consistency isn't always dull"), but you lose your fire, and one day you look back, and wonder what the hell happened ("I don't want to want to arrive at the end and realize that I was just...well...productive.")
That underlying theme is what is going to make this show exciting for me. (That, and I get to theoretically tackle a naked Mary Jo Bolduc.) Why do I think this is what the play's about?
It's full of characters who have abandoned or have been abandoned by people close to them, and we're observers of the aftermath, from the woman at a bus stop who is certain a stranger is reading the exact book her long gone would-be husband once gave her, to a young ex-couple sitting on a stoop, discussing the people they're dating now when it's clear they really want to be with one another, to a trumpet player who throws what is likely his most prized possession off a bridge after his girlfriend dumps him in the middle of one his sets.
It sounds like a very depressing night of theater, but trust me, the show is also going to have laughs, and twice the moments where characters come together, and in the end, rest assured, it will be an uplifting piece of off-loop theater, down in the loop.
"...can we all declare a moratorium on the use of the following words when describing what art is supposed to do: Invite, Engage, Childlike Sense of Play. These words don't mean anything anymore. What if someone tried to evoke an "Adultlike Sense of Play" or a "Childlike Sense of Brutality." Then we're getting someplace."
_____________________ This Looks Promising...
____________________ Another Quote of the Week
"What we really need is some help with Board development because our Board just moved to DC with his girlfriend..." -- from the second Chicago Storefront Theatre Summit
____________________ Why Does This Make Me Excited?
____________________ Bookending the Roundup with Weird...
It's no surprise that with the country's first black president and a rapidly growing Latino population that the subject of race has become the societal problem du jour to solve.
Unlike issues of poverty or definable examples of employment equity the issue of racism and racial discrimination is a sticky one in that there is no actionable solution. On paper, solving certain inequities brought on by economic factors or instituting affirmative action are, while controversial, quantifiable solutions. One can see the results in the numbers of black and hispanic high school graduates or see budgets increase in after school programs for inner city schools.
I used to teach in a Chicago public school that was riddled with gang members and had a predominant minority population and the issue of racism was something I looked at in the faces of kids every day. I could punish a kid for using a racist epithet but it never accomplished much. I could follow school board policies regarding racism but the problem was always there, like a weed that simply wouldn't be killed.
The issue has never been as simple as legislation or even specific inclusion on some levels. It can be argued that desegregation of public schools has made strides toward a better mutual understanding of our similarities but also brings up the institutionalized homogenization that things like SAT tests and college admissions standards are a part of. Further, it can be argued that the legislation and economic fixes in place designed to even the playing field don't go nearly far enough to address systematic inequities. More and better fixes in the basic infrastructure of American Society - from dealing with unequal treatment of minorities in prisons, the job force, the military, and in housing practices - are not going to eliminate the fundamental racism that pervades. No, the solutions are less about actions and more about perceptions and that is where artists come into the equation.
Over at Mission Paradox, Adam T. went to New York to a convening of artists and arts administrators to discuss making our stages more inclusive of race. It's a complex issue and, while there is no hard and fast solution, Thurman writes about the need for more stories in different places:
Whenever I see an arts organization that doesn't embrace diversity in a meaningful way I also see an audience that is being harmed.
I see an audience that isn't being prepared for the world as it is.
When we talk about diversity in the arts, we have to discuss the impact (and the harm) on both sides.
When we create an artistic world that is as rich, complex and different as the real world, everybody benefits.
When we don't, everybody suffers.
The case is made that, in order for each one of us to effect positive change (and not just the illusion of forward motion,) we need to foster the diversity of stories being told first. I'd suggest that even before we make half-hearted attempts at diversifying our racial make up onstage, it is the stories being told that need some attention.
I would add that, in addition to telling more stories of the real world around us, telling stories that focus on individuals rather than archetypes is ultimately more helpful in the slow education of each one of us.
For example, Will Smith in I Am Legend is a man first, an American second, and the fact that he is a black man is almost beside the point. It's never referenced or alluded to and was seen by a huge portion of every racial group in the world. The trouble with racial labels is the fact that labels boil individuals down to a representative of a thing and a thing is easier to abuse and ignore. Individuals have stories and histories and beliefs and actions - things just are.
But to Adam's example.
In addition to a color-blind approach to the stories being presented, cultural stories need to be told and they need to be told with regard to the life experiences of everyone and not just the easy on the eyes type of feel-good rhetoric. Case in point, the film Precious tells, on its surface, the story of a girl steeped in a cultural nightmare most of us never witness first hand and would likely prefer to avoid looking at. It is a hateful, ugly existence and has caused a bit of a stir regarding its portrayal of a specific class of the African American experience.
Most ubiquitous is the near universally celebrated performance of Mo'Nique in the new film Precious. Critically and popularly acclaimed Precious is the film adaption of the novel Push. It is the story of an illiterate, obese, dark-skinned, teenager who is pregnant, for the second time, with her rapist father's child. (Think The Color Purple in a 1980s inner-city rather than 1930s rural Georgia)
At the core of the film is Precious' unimaginably brutal mother. She is an unredeemed monster who brutalizes her daughter verbally, emotionally, physically and sexually. This mother pimps both her daughter and the government. Stealing her daughter's childhood and her welfare payments.
***
Undoubtedly Mo'Nique has given an amazing performance in Precious. But the critical and popular embrace of this depiction of a monstrous black mother has potentially important, and troubling, political meaning. In a country with tens of thousands of missing and exploited children, it is not accidental that the abuse and murder of Shaniya Davis captured the American media cycle just as Precious opened. The sickening acts of Shaniya's mother become the story that underlines and makes tangible, believable, and credible the jaw-dropping horror of Mo'Nique's character.
Some critics have called Precious worse than Birth of a Nation in this character's unexplained nature and have castigated the artists for irresponsibly propagating a negative stereotype that (as seen in the above article) has been pervasive and unrelentingly used to denigrate black women and black families by proxy. On the other hand, others argue, this may not speak the singular truth of all black mothers on welfare (it certainly does not) but that doesn't mean that there are no black welfare mothers who fit the portrayal and that by homogenizing the presentation of blacks in film to only Bagger Vance like opposite stereotypes, these critics flatten the African American image into something unrealistic and thus unbelievable.
The strange thing about something as uncompromising as Precious is that it ends up serving as a litmus test for where one is in terms of views concerning blacks in America: someone predisposed to see racial offense (either in the unflattering presentation of the mother in the story or the fact that Precious is seen stealing and then gorging on a bucket of fried chicken) will see offensive and negative imagery as an affront while those less inclined to look for those elements may see a story of an incredibly unfortunate girl who grows as a person and overcomes the obstacles that life has put in her way. The truth behind the film is that it shows us both equally and it is up to the specific audience members to determine their own reaction.
The plot is simple: Thomas’ Charles Strickland (a clueless blue-blood, played as such) shows up looking for a multiracial firm to mount a defense. But as the lawyers and their client argue facts, strategy and perception, the firm’s multicultural veneer comes apart.
This play will, I suspect, attract furious criticism from the left. Feminists who despised “Oleanna” will take even less comfort in “Race,” especially in its treatment of Susan-No-Name. As is the case in all of his plays, Mamet shrewdly builds in some dramatic and political ambivalence. It is never entirely clear who is guilty of what. But although he has always been careful to veil ideologies, Mamet is showing more of his conservative cards these days. Those are cards he is entitled to show. On Broadway, they have the added virtue of novelty value.
This play probes affirmative action in white-collar professions. It’s mostly an attack thereupon. If there is a thesis, it’s that the law treated blacks and whites differently a century ago and does the same now. Both imbalances were wrong. You might well take offense at that argument. But if you follow Mamet’s logic in “Race,” you’d argue that no white liberal could write a watchable play on this subject, anyway. He would be too scared.
And here's where things continue to spiral down the Rabbit Hole - with art, the only true answer to the call is to tell the stories - all the stories - to explore the possibilities in fiction and in nonfiction alike. Precious provokes audiences in one direction, Race provokes it in another direction - the key to discovering the totality of the Elephant in the Room is to come together and discuss the provocations and the reactions in a spirit of discovery and societal archeology.
The Buddha here tells the story of a king who had six blind men gathered together to examine an elephant.
"When the blind men had each felt a part of the elephant, the king went to each of them and said to each: 'Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant
The six blind men assert the elephant is either like a pot (the blind man who felt the elephants' head), wicket basket (ear), ploughshare (tusk), plough (trunk), granary (body), pillar (foot), mortar (back), pestle (tail) or brush (tip of the tail).
The men cannot agree with one another and come to blows over the question of what an elephant really is like, and this delights the king.
The Buddha ends the story of the king and compares the six blind men to preachers and scholars who are blind and ignorant and hold to their own views: "Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing.... In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus." The Buddha then speaks the following verse:
O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing
As someone close to me advised, the only real solution to the problem of race is to continually be seeking a solution. Through discussion and reaction and re-reaction and thought, we may never come to a place where we all just get along - it isn't in our biology to do so but neither is playing the piano or writing a poem and those are certainly worthy pursuits - but we may come closer to understanding each other a bit better and at least doing less harm.
...that the purpose of creating new relationships is to learn from these new people in your life. Once you stop learning, you stop growing. Once you stop growing, you're worm food...
...that if I wanted to be famous for doing something odd on YouTube, I'd want it to be something so embarrassing, so crude, so heinously offensive that people would create a viral phenomenon by filming their reactions to it. That or a short Quicktime movie of me crying while watching a Pixar movie...
...that when people fifty years from now take a look back at us they will wonder about a lot of things but mostly they will wonder why we were so short-sighted when it came to the environment and our casual disregard for the planet. That and our obsession with cosmetic surgery.
...that in absence of real food, raisins will do.
...that the sordid details of celebrity affairs are no different than the sordid details of regular affairs - Tiger Woods is no different than your average married guy having an affair, Lindsey Lohan is no different from your junkie cousin, and Roman Polanski is no different than your pedophile uncle.
When I hear artists evaluating a project based on audience size, a project's attractiveness to donors, and other measures of financial success, it makes me sad. While every artist must be realistic about the fiscal implications of a given work, this should not be their primary concern. We need our artists to be thinking expansively, to be challenging themselves to be truly creative and to be challenging their administrators to find the resources required.
But boards and administrative staffs have bullied their artists and dulled their creative impulses.
Maybe money is taking over the arts after all.
We all get tunnel-vision. We all tend to see reality in context with our own very tiny slice of experience and within the parameters of our own tiny little universes. It's no surprise that Kaiser, operating with millions of dollars at his disposal, took 25 years to see what those of us perpetually in the non-commercial world have known for as long as he didn't: the battle is not for more audience. The battle is for better art. Better art, riskier choices, challenging aesthetics and taking the audience on a ride of a different stripe than what has been offered before is the key A) working with the audience you have and B) creating exceptional art.
That crowd of blue-hairs that bitch and complain when you add an element of risk in your work but that comprise your subscription base? That's the audience you have cultivated with your simple-minded, escapist, pre-chewed Jell-O brand of theater. Part of this is that artists tend to feel entitled to make a living with their art - "If that guy can make a living doing what he loves, why not me?" - without regard to the fact that life is not fair and you aren't promised anything when you go out into that big, bad world. Another part of this is the idea that in order to dance, you gotta dance the dance of the highest bidder. But dancing is about freedom, yes? No freedom for those beholden to the coin.
Yet another part of this coincides with the idea that if you don't make a lot of money, if you don't own property or have a car or have significant savings in the bank, that somehow you are a loser. That without that checkbook and credit card, you are somehow worth less than someone who does.
Finally, the tyranny of the dollar lords over us by telling artists that without money, you can't perform. No money means no location or no props or no lighting, etc.
None of these myths are true.
You are not entitled to get paid for your art any more than the audience is guaranteed to enjoy your work.
You can dance when you want, where you want, any time you want. It's one of the few freedoms left to us in the Land of the Freaks, Home of the Brakes.
You are not defined by your possessions or by your "earning potential." Those who do define you by your bank account or your ability to earn money are not worth your time.
You can perform where you need to - no money means no Kennedy Center but most of the best theater is NOT performed in the big houses anyway.
It is already difficult to tell the difference between many not-for-profit theater companies and their for-profit counterparts. Not-for-profit organizations receive a tax advantage because of our educational role, our ability to take risk and our missions which place artistic accomplishment above financial reward. Yet too many of us are ignoring these objectives.
Yup.
You smell that? That's the wind of change, baby. Those who worship the Almighty Buck are seeing how fickle their God is. They are sensing that the concept of money is like a highly addictive drug - once you get some, you can never get enough. Credit is drying up, banks are exposed as the greed-houses they are, and the money isn't saving them.
"...missions which place artistic accomplishment above financial reward..."
Take a look at your small theaters. Think about your last meeting. Did you spend most of the time talking about Board Development? Marketing? Fundraising? Did you discuss all sorts of administrative things? Did it make you feel a bit sick? Was the potential audience and promotion the most heated discussion point when planning your next show?
Then you've bought in to it. And without a Board bullying you into those choices.
What do think Kaiser would have to say about an artistic group that has become automatically tuned into making those safe, financially viable choices without anything but the desire to become of those organizations he derides driving them?
Breed with Me
Written and Directed by Bob Fisher
presented by The Mammals
Disclosure: I was comped; paid full price because a brother has to pay his rent. Further, Bob (writer, director, producer) is one of my best friends. If you know me, you know that I have no reservations about being brutally honest about the work of my friends. Given that there is no such thing as objectivity in journalism and this is only a freaking blog, take your grain of salt and read on...
There are hundreds of theater companies in Chicago. Hundreds. Out of all of those individual voices, one can lump most of them into types and similarities - consistent themes, topics, styles of presentation - as I often say, we're all snowflakes but we're all still made of snow.
To stand out, to create a truly unique voice in that landscape is an achievement in and of itself. To forge ground few are treading and do it well is a remarkable thing to see.
Bob Fisher, whether you like his work or not, speaks stories with a genuinely bizarre and unusual voice and achieves an individual style of theater that simply no one else in Chicago even approaches. And when he does it well, when the production connects with the right venue, the right script, the right cast, it'll fuck you up like nothing else on the Chicago landscape.
Breed with Me is a bit of neo-noir that is as creepy as it is poetic, jarring as it is familiar and leaves one with a series of strange atmospheric images that are hard to shake. In essence, Breed with Me is a theatrical short story about a photographer so driven by his illicit lust for a teenage cheerleader that he heads for the desert and is targeted by the ultimate femme fatale - an alien creature in the guise of a demented, fetid Norma Desmond who impregnates men with babies that kill their hosts by bursting from their guts. In execution the piece is a lot more than a weirdass story about sex, aliens, and cops. In execution, Breed with Me is a gender-challenging, post-feminist genre piece that deals with the inherent sexism of Film Noir, the fear of Female Potency, the Alien Nature of Childirth, and the Guilty Associations created by a World that Fetishizes Girls as Sexual Objects.
One of Fisher's signature techniques is the use of headset microphones to create washes of strange sounds and heighten certain pieces of his hybrid noir-speak-meets-elegant-poetry writing style. It is used to its best effect in this play with Ron Kroll (as the photographer) doing his Noir Voiceover narration in real time and Sarah Gorsky's Alien Doll speaking in his head from afar. Combined with Fisher's repetitive Philip Glass on crack musical underscoring, the use of sound in Breed with Me is enough to crawl under your skin and make you feel titillated and a bit jumpy.
On top of that, the very DIY aesthetic (ZOO Studios is a big warehouse room with a big shadow puppet screen and about 25 chairs, the lighting is a series of clamp lights, and the whole set is comprised of a chair, a table, a bench, and a suitcase presumably filled with alien babies) adds to the creep in the way that a horny uncle's embrace makes your skin crawl.
The acting in this one is overall really excellent. Gorsky turns out a performance that is easily the best thing I've seen her in, both sad, jerky, and with an unusual vocal quality that is plain freaky. Her solo moment (what Fisher calls her close up) is haunting and visceral and unnerving. Kroll and Dennis Frymire (as the FBI Ghost bent on revenge for having a baby eat through his stomach) are rock solid and provide a grounding reality to things. And Don Hall (you gotta know I love typing this) is absolutely perfect - with a face that looks like it came out of a Frank Miller graphic novel and a dumbed down, pathetic quality as the Giant strong man in service to the Bride - both grossed me out ("...shhh...So the daddy asked the baby, "What's so funny?" And the baby said to the daddy, "Look at your tummy, daddy, look at your tummy.") and added immeasurably to the uncomfortable sense of menace pervading the entire 55 minutes.
I've compared Fisher's work to both that of David Lynch and David Cronenberg and that still holds. The odd acid trip feel of his visuals when mixed in with his painfully poetic but highly specific use of language is like Blue Velvet Meets Dead Ringers. She Who Will Not Be Blogged About added that it's like Lynch without the pretension and I couldn't agree more - Fisher has all the strangeness but throws in bits of gallows humor and a sense of fun into the mix that at times alienates and then immediately includes the audience.
Go see this show. Seriously. It ain't holiday fare (unless you holiday with the creepiest family on the planet) but I guarantee you've never seen anything like it and that it's better for the donation than 90% of anything you're likely to see on much more monied stages in town. And if you're a fan of Twin Peaks, noir, or Frank Miller, you simply cannot miss it.
Fridays and Saturdays at 10PM
December 4 through January 23 (no show January 15)
This is sent to me with the absolute assurance that it's a genuine picture taken by a flight attendant at American Airlines. The F/A took it to show her manager what was happening on the aircraft (757???) and why she was unhappy about it. Seems the guy paid for only one seat and the gate staff let him board.
You can see the F/A's point of view - how the heck is s(he) supposed to deal with it. Sympathise with the guy or not, he's a major safety hazard in an evacuation, a gross inconvenience for the cabin crew, and I would suggest a totally unacceptable travelling companion for the guy next to him.
Honestly, as much as we angry white guys in America want to jump on the victimized bandwagon, we can't. Sure, there are plenty of white males on the receiving end of discrimination but NOT because they are white or male. So, for me to step into the discussion about discrimination it really has to be from a standpoint of things one can choose to be or not.
I can not choose to be white - it's how I was born. Therefore to prejudge someone based on the color of his skin is ridiculous. I cannot choose to be male - therefore prejudice based on gender is equally silly and needlessly destructive. I can't choose to be straight - my libido is just a part of the way I'm wired. So, it goes to say that to discriminate based on sexual preference is stupid.
I can choose to wear a certain type of clothing. I can choose to speak a certain way. I can choose to present myself as angry or victimized or oppressed. And I can choose to be fat.
And at the intersection between what I choose to be and the tolerance of those around me for those choices, it my personal choice that initiates the discrimination. If I decide that I want to shave my head and get a swastika tattoo on my neck, it is my right to do so. And it is my personal choice to do so that invariably causes security to be called when I go to my job at Navy Pier.
How you choose to be perceived is your choice. Claiming that those perceptions are unfair or discriminatory is only half the deal. Yes - it is unfair for someone to judge you by your race, gender, or sexual preference but how you choose to present yourself within those non-choice elements is entirely up to you. While it may be unfair for someone to discriminate against you because you, say, curse a lot or wear ballcaps every day, it is still something under your control and so it cannot be lumped in with those things you cannot control.
The big man above chose to allow himself to grow to that size. Choice number one. He also chose to fly on a plane with seats simply not built for someone his size. Choice number two. He also chose to purchase only one seat knowing full well that he would block the aisle if on the aisle and that he would likely share the row with other passengers. Choice number three.
Does it matter if the reason he allowed himself to gain so much weight was because he was teased as a child or abused or became depressed? Only to him. Because at the end of the day, no one really cares how hard you have it but you. That's a harsh reality but every single one of us has burdens we live with and in the dark silence of night, when each one of us lies in bed, slowly fading into sleep, the only troubles that matter are our own.
If I was forced to sit next that guy on a flight, I'd spend the entire time talking about the sixty pounds I worked off (I didn't lose the weight like accidentally misplacing a sock - I busted my ass to drop that weight) and how I can see my manhood when I look down in the shower. And he could then discriminate against me for being an insensitive assface. Because that is my choice.
Over at the WBEZ blog, Sam Hudzik did a little piece on the interesting piece of paper any candidate for office must sign before being allowed to run. It's a strange conundrum, especially if you are a Communist or Socialist candidate, but, what the hell, it is optional...
You can also hear me read the oath out loud. I feel kind of dirty and compromised in a way. After Sam had me read it, he also made me take my top off - I cried like Coco but it wasn't as violating as that scene from Fame because Sam was only recording my voice.
_____________________ Because Santa Claus is American, You Beaners!!
The Salvation Army and a charity affiliated with the Houston Fire Department are among those that consider immigration status, asking for birth certificates or Social Security cards for the children. [...]
I tend to really believe in the giving spirit that comes over Americans during Christmas. I find it to be a lovely (but temporary) sense of unity, love and giving among a citizenry primarily motivated by self interest and the acquisition of stuff. It occurs to me that there is no better descriptor of "needy children" than those of illegal immigrants so I find it more offensive and disgusting than everything Lou Dobbs ever said about immigration to deny these kids a goddamn thing based on their legal status.
This is the sum total of the debate (not the part where this is Rush's life and work - he's an entertainer for morally repugnant people - like a racist comic):
Healthcare is not a privilege. Healthcare is a right. Buying material things is a privilege based on one's ability to make money. One's ability to make money should not be the benchmark determining whether one is allowed to live.
SIDENOTE: I love Shatner. LOVE him!
____________________ Sherlock Holmes, William Castle Style
Ten select theaters across America will be equipped with special motion seats during showings of Sherlock Holmes. The seats will simulate the action during the movie, though they’ll remain motionless during dialogue driven moments.
Castle resorted to all sorts of ridiculous "movie enhancements" to get asses in seats. Some of the best included
House on Haunted Hill (1959): Filmed in "Emergo". An inflatable glow in the dark skeleton attached to a wire floated over the audience during the final moments of some showings of the film to parallel the action on the screen when a skeleton arose from a vat of acid and pursued the villainous wife of Vincent Price.
The Tingler (1959): Filmed in "Percepto". In the film a docile creature that lives in the spinal cord is activated by fright, and can only be destroyed by screaming. In the film's finale one of the creatures removed from the spine of a mute woman killed by it when she was unable to scream is let loose in a movie theatre. Some seats in theatres showing the Tingler were equipped with larger versions of the hand-held joy buzzers attached to the underside of the seats. When the Tingler in the film attacked the audience the buzzers were activated as a voice encouraged the real audience to "Scream - scream for your lives."
I Saw What You Did (1965): The film was initially promoted using giant plastic telephones but after a rash of prank phone calls and complaints, the telephone company refused Castle permission to use them or mention telephones. So he turned the back rows of theatres into "Shock Sections". Seat belts were installed to keep patrons from being jolted from their chairs in fright.
I would LOVE to be in one of those theaters. It might ruin the film but it'll be the most exciting movie experience I can think of except for when Hollywood decides to do something completely unheard of like building movie screens outside and having people watch the movies from inside their own cars! LOL!
____________________ The Master Thespian
Like Refining Pieces of Colored Glass to Be Assembled Later
We are six weeks away. Six. Weeks.
On January 15, 2010 we open a show that has been in the gestation period for nearly three years.
Given the specific nature of the script I've quilted together from the 30-odd scripts written and re-written and buffed in that three years, the world of WNEP's very individual vision of Edward Hopper's work is being put together. The process has been unusual for me from the director's chair. Rehearsing through two major holidays is always a bit wonky, time-wise and with what amounts to fifteen separate scenes stitched together to make an overall vision, the cast has been essentially apart for most of the process.
Instead of creating a simmering ensemble feel with consistent full cast rehearsals, we met early on as a cast and are now smack dab in the midst of duos, trios and quartets meeting at ZOO Studios and in my apartment to fine tune each scene in preparation of landing together on Heath Hays' expansive set in the Storefront Theater in early January. And then, like a strange boot camp dance recital, we stage the whole from the individual pieces.
Part of the hurdle we have to overcome is that, until we are actually on the set, we cannot stage the show. While the writer's inspiration was the work of Hopper, my overall show concept is culled from the dioramas of Joseph Cornell and the voyeurism of Hitchcock's Rear Window - the audience will literally be looking into windows and doorways to see bits and pieces of the scenes as they play out.
As such, each actor not only has to memorize and contextualize the words written for them but also do a bit of internal writing themselves to get from the beginning of the play (6AM in our piece) to the end of the play (midnight on the same day) in creative and interesting ways. I'm pleased so far because I've got a real crackerjack group - they're far smarter than I am.
• Once I cast an actor in a show, I have made a conscious choice to trust the choices the actor makes. We work together to find the character.
• As a director, I have to know exactly what I want every moment to be and then also be open to completely throw my vision out if something remarkable happens during the development process.
• It's not important that I know why an actor makes a choice. It's only important that I can see that a why exists.
It's really coming along and I have nothing but respect for the work being done by these folks who get up in the morning, go to their day jobs, work all day long, and then spend their week nights and weekends creating art.
"Don Hall kicks ass. Don Hall is the Father Murphy of our Little House." -- VH1's Adrienne Frost
"… combines idealism and pragmatism with just a tang of skepticism. Sort of a Bacino's deep dish pizza of ideas." -- Scott Walters (Theatre Ideas)
"...with equal parts life and art, ["Angry White Guy in Chicago" is] one of those unique rich segments of the theatrosphere that print publication could never even imagine." -- Rat Sass
"...sledgehammer of truth..." - Jim B.
"...great contemporary vulgarian theatre arts observer... erudite, aggressive and insightful..." -- Austin Live Theatre
"Don Hall is to theater what Rickenbacker is to the The Beatles ." -- Boom Chicago's Rob Andristplourde
"Don Hall is the Dick of Chicago Comedy." "Don Hall is a National Treasure." -- Adam Witt (editor of 'Girls Gone Wild')
"...the epitome of everything that is wrong with this world..." -- some neocon asshole named Pat
About Me
Don Hall
What else do you need to know? I'm angry. I'm white. I'm a guy. I live in Chicago. Nosy fuckers...
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