Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre

The View from Here #152: OK, OR, WA, MN, MO, IL, OH, KY, PA, NY, ME, VA

2011-11-21T07:16:00.000-08:00

Edmond Sunset

Major struggle in rehearsal in Oklahoma: Getting actors to use the “ehh” sound rather than the “ihh” sound. “Get” instead of “Git;” “Men” instead of “Min;” “intended” instead of “intindid.”

Looking back over the rehearsal process, now that it’s over a month into the rear-view mirror, it sometimes feels like this was the only note I gave… along with other enunciation comments. It was chronic among some of my best actors. I remember stopping the notes-process and asking, “Am I just being an a**hole about this? Can you guys hear this?”

“No! We hear it, really! Please don’t stop!”

It ended up making a huge difference. At least one acting teacher approached me: “How did you get them to speak so clearly? I could understand every word!”

It helps when you are the one who wrote the words that they are speaking… and are very protective of those particular words.

Meanwhile, they continued to treat me quite royally at U of Central Oklahoma: taking me out to dinner now and then, hosting a reception for me… I was “more feted than fetid,” to rework a line from Hamlet.

"We love our director!"

Occasionally, I revisited the karaoke bar… without incident.

The posters for the show came out great.

About two weeks into the process, I had a run through of the show for some of the theatre department powers-that-be, and the laughs were coming full and fast.

We dove back in to pull the play apart again and put it back together, working one act at a time. Gradually, we added props, and costume pieces, and furniture and musicians and dancers. Our assignment had been to combine efforts with a vocal chorus from the Music department and ballet dancers from the Dance department to create a sort-of “comedie-ballet” much as Moliere used to create for King Louis XIV, who was big on combining art forms (an early precursor of the musical comedy). And, with some tongue-in-cheek, the action would be boldly interrupted by singers or dancers performing as a salute to the “King” between the acts. (The payoff for this lay in Act V, when Moliere has his Police Officer perform a 2-page paean to the king and his glorious brilliance.) Skip to the final 3 minutes of this video to see the result with the singers:

One of the actors had no lines in the show and, given the time she spent offstage stretching, was clearly a dancer. I asked her if she’d want to take on a bit of choreography. There were sequences in the pre-show pantomime and the curtain call which demanded a tiny bit of “legit” choreography… the sort of thing that I never quite have time, nor, necessarily, the inclination to develop, and which had been weak spots in my previous attempt at “Tartuffe.” (I wince when I watch my choreography on YouTube.)

This time, the opening and the curtain call were showing much more promise. There was also the intermission lazzi, which I turned over to the cast at large as an improvisation set to music, and the cast responded with some brilliant, hilarious stuff.

I choreographed curtain call three weeks in advance of opening night! (I was feeling cocky.)

In addition to my work on the show, and the material I was writing about the rehearsal process for use in my eventual directing textbook (sample at my alternate blog, (http://actingatthespeedoflife.blogspot.com/) I was also preparing a mega-mailing. The folks at UCO had actually started to pay me, which funded a major book buy: 150 copies of my book to send out to Shakespeare festivals. Coming off of my successful performances at the Oregon Shakespeare Fest, I wanted to promote similar stops at Shakespeare festivals for the coming summer, and I spent many hours stuffing books, cover notes, Shakespeare and Moliere flyers and promotional DVDs into envelopes. It was a big investment of money and time, but I was building my brand.

Just as I was worrying about the financial outlay, a booking came through to perform “Moliere than Thou” at a university about an hour away (U of Sciences and Arts of Oklahoma). I decided to give the actors the night off of rehearsal, with the strong recommendation that they make a “road trip” out to the show. I felt that seeing my show might be just as impactful as yet another run-through of “Tartuffe.” (It was an eye-opener for many of them with regard to clarity, and particularly “acting on the word.”) I put some clips of the performance up on YouTube, including this clip of the host’s very amusing 2-year-old son…

I was also following-up with my “maybe list” of folks who’d wanted a booking for the coming year, but who had not yet confirmed. With summer break giving way to six weeks of evening rehearsals, I had enough extra time on my hands to line up more bookings than ever. (So many that I haven’t been able to finish my latest blog until now!)

Another run-through, this one with the costume designer, the sound designer and the French teacher present, found nobody laughing. I could feel the actors’ previous elation turning to discouragement. The mechanics of the performance were working, but the show was lacking its previous crispness.

(I later heard from the French teacher that she didn’t want to laugh and disturb our rehearsal process.)

As opening night approached, I was besieged with e-mails: program notes, program lists, interview requests, clarifications about the “king event”. (We were designating an honorary “king” for each performance.)

Reporters have been finding shortcuts lately. I’ve been through many long phone interviews while reporters clacked away on their keyboards, but the current practice is to e-mail “interview questions” to the interviewee, who is expected to type his or her answers duitifully. Which means that, not only am I writing program notes, explaining all aspects of the performance to the production crew, the box office, the department chair, the publicist (sometimes drafting my own press release), but I am repeating that same info with variations to any member of the press who wants to get their own slant on the info that I have already provided. Essentially, it comes down to writing the equivalent of three or four press releases.

The upside is that I get to control the message. And they rarely stray very far from the information that I have provided. Two good articles showed up in the local press as the show was getting ready to open, and one of them repeated a quote of mine as a “pull quote” at the top of the article, which ended up looking more like a review than a feature article, as they quoted, “There is barely a second not filled with fun.”

Tartuffe (Taylor Harris) and Dorine (Kelsey Fisher)

Our first night in the theatre space on the set was also our first night in front of a larger group of people, as the singers, dancers and technicians came to watch.

The reaction was electric. Any fears from the “silent run through” were erased. I could feel that the show was going to get a good buzz, just from these added 25 voices talking it up among their friends.

And yet, a week before opening, the actors were starting to fade as the stress was getting to a couple of them. Morale seemed very low, particularly during our 2-run-through day on Saturday.

I had brief one-on-one pow-wows with each of the actors, seeking that last bit of motivation and personal commitment to carry us through the final week. The rehearsal itself was stop-and-go, but nowhere near as daunting as most tech rehearsals.

There were four beautiful-yet-challenging staircases that I had blocked the actors into climbing relentlessly upon (perhaps seen to best advantage in the curtain call at the end of the clip, below). The next day, we added costumes and makeup to the mix, and the actors were lagging, as they struggled to figure out how they were going to climb the elaborate staircases that comprised this set in dresses and coats and wigs.

By Tuesday night of tech week, having mastered the new scenery, lighting, sound, costumes, makeup and wigs, the actors were back “up” again. By Wednesday night, with a tiny, deadly-silent test audience, they were back “down” again. As soon as I saw the handful of people spreading themselves out over the 500 or so seats on the main floor, I knew this would be dismal.

Thursday night we gathered onstage for a final pep talk, and I took them through some of the self-coaching that I occasionally give myself prior to performing my one-man shows. I explained that they need to have some sense of center and purpose when they find themselves amidst the occasional performance that is not going well, and we went through some of my “mantras”:

“I am sexy, joyful, courageous and limitless.”

“I am going to f*ck with their heads.”

“They love me already; they just want to know that I love them too.”

“They have never seen a show like this before, and they probably never will again.”

“I have never had an audience like them before, and I probably never will again.”

The actors went backstage and the theatre opened… and the theatre filled.

Four hundred people filled the seats.

I was sitting next to the department Chair for opening night. She was stunned. “Where did all these people come from? I have never seen this place fill up like this!”

The play went insanely well. The audience hung on every scene. They sat forward in their chairs. Sitting on the far aisle, I would look down the aisle, and see awestruck looks, dropped jaws, wide eyes. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing. This “classical” play was, astonishingly, speaking to them. (For anyone who has seen the highly recommended series, “Slings and Arrows,” the phrase is “Youthquake.”)

This was the first time I’d watched the show from the far aisle, and I had not imagined the adverse impact of 400 people in the auditorium, absorbing sound. Even with actors standing on the forward lip of the stage, when speaking in profile, their voices were traveling perhaps 100 feet to the far side of the room (“house right”), before reflecting back towards the (“house left”) end where I was sitting, another 150 feet away.

Granted, I am the most oversensitive person in the world when it comes to my words not being heard, but I knew immediately what my lecture/demonstration would be for the cast before Friday’s performance.

The play ended in a whirlwind of excitement and, following the standing ovation curtain call, I went backstage to shout out, “You guys rock my world!”

For the following two nights, I was running the video camera, trying to capture footage from the back row.

During Friday night’s show, the University President, the Provost (and their spouses) were in attendance, and we designated the President as our “King” for the night. The audience immediately got the joke as, when we interrupted our pre-show routine to march the king in, and bow reverentially before his greatness, they burst into their own spontaneous applause, and he, good naturedly, waved back.

Afterwards, I was introduced to the President and his coeterie, and the Provost’s wife was extremely enthusiastic, declaring this to be the “best production she’d ever seen at the school.” The teacher who’d been so thrilled to note that she had “heard every word!” was begging me to explain how I had gotten the actors to be so consistently clear.

Attendance dropped following the first night… unsurprising given how the university empties out each weekend, as Thursday Night’s 400, dropped to roughly 250, 200 and 175 for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And yet, even that final performance’s attendance was higher than had initially been expected for the entire run.

I summed this up in a thank you e-mail to the design staff:

I believe that out of the thousand or more people that will have seen this show by the end of today:
There may be ten or twenty who are seeing their first play ever…
There may be one or two hundred who are seeing their first "classical" play…
Probably 900 or more are seeing their first Moliere play…
We have changed the lives of these people, some, ever-so-slightly, and some, profoundly. We will never know the impact that we have had…

Actual store spotted in Edmond, Oklahoma.

On Sunday, the ACTF respondents were in town, and we had a nice lunch, and one of the respondents happened to note that, in his preparation for retirement, he was planning his final production for the coming spring, which, coincidentally, was going to be “Tartuffe.” (I gave him a copy of my script.)

The show went well, but the respondents were non-commital. They indicated that they enjoyed the show, but not much beyond that. It had happened that our planned “King” was a no-show for this day's matinee, and perhaps the respondents’ most pointed criticism was that they wanted to see the over-the-top presentation taken even farther: “Why not actually cast a king to be in the audience.” (We sighed, and explained.)

The next morning, I finished my packing and taking a final load of stuff to the storage facility. I met up with the Theatre Chair, Daisy, who had been a wonderful host throughout. She had been suggesting that they were interested in getting a return visit and, given that my hiring had been a coordinated effort with the “Passport to France” program, I’d assumed they wouldn’t be able to afford me again. I was pleasantly surprised that the “Passport” program head, who was also enthusiastic about my work, had suggested pointedly, “You know, next year’s program is “’Passport to England’…!”

Suddenly, I was thinking of Shakespeare shows I might direct.

And just as suddenly, I was back on the highway. I had four days to get to performances in Oregon, and I ran lines for “Lot o’ Shakespeare” (not performed since early August), on the four-day drive to McMinville, Oregon at Linfield College. I continued to upload video of “Tartuffe” at every hotel stop, all the while making advance arrangements for the sixteen or so performances coming up in the approaching month on the road. (Everyone has their own concern with lighting, scheduling, rehearsal/staffing issues, lodging, venue, timing, promotion, contracts, invoices, parking and any number of audience accomodations that they need to make, which means that every booking is generally the result of about 30 e-mails back-and-forth.)

Meanwhile, I was plotting out Shakespeare ideas… How to find a Shakespeare play as popular as “Tartuffe” had proven to be, while coordinating with “Passport to England.” (Other than his Histories, which are not among his most popular plays, very few of Shakespeare’s plays are actually set in England.)

It turns out that the show was NOT being held over for presentation at the Regional ACTF festival. It was disappointing, and I was a little startled that such an extremely good show would not be a shoo in. Retrospectively, I began recounting certain details of the Respondents behavior, such as the way they remained in their seats while a standing ovaton stood up all around them.

A separate response had come in from the President of the University, in a note that he’d sent to Daisy:

Last night's production of Tartuffe was exceptional.
It was a surprise from beginning to end, and all good and positive.
What a tour de force by cast, production and directors alike. Theexecution appeared flawless to us on the front row, and the sheer amountof unconventional dialogue amazed all. The characters were animated andprojected most effectively. It was clear that preparation was extendedand demanding.
But what a result! My sustained applause to everyone who produced thismemorable evening.
And, a very special note of personal thanks from me to you and yourbright, refreshing students for welcoming me in a manner not to beforgotten.
Bravo!

Before getting to McMinville, I stopped in on some friends in the Portland suburbs who were working on t-shirts for “Lot o’ Shakespeare,” (http://www.asktheredhead.com/) and I was amazed at the huge stitching machines they had working simultaneously on caps, t-shirts, polo shirts, biking shorts and much more. They did a re-design on the t-shirts, which now incorporates a larger typeface in RED. (I expect these t-shirts are going to be in ever-greater demand!)

My Oregon hosts, Brenda and Ty, treated me royally for three days. The first performance was a challenge. I played to a packed house of 100, in a space which was deceptively challenging. Even though it was not a big venue, the acoustics were unfocussed, and I found myself using lots of oxygen. It didn’t help when the very first monologue to come out of the cage was the extremely challenging “Julius Caesar!”

My second show was at Brenda and Ty’s other venue, on the Oregon Coast in Pacific City. There, they had a second home overlooking the ocean, and were working to get this town of 1000 or so interested in the theatre. They’d booked a former church for the performance, and while I was worried about having enough voice left, the acoustics in this space, with a peaked ceiling reflecting my voice back in towards the audience, were perfect. “Julius Caesar” came up here, too, but it didn’t kill my voice for the remainder of the show.

The "Haystack" at Pacific City

I pushed north to Seattle, dropping in on my friends, David and Nicole, prior to a Monday workshop at Kent-Meridian High School, a program that had been run for the past twenty years by Jay Thornton, who’d been a skinny undergrad when I knew him in Nebraska in the early 80s! Jay wanted my Commedia workshop, which I generally only do once or twice a year, making me a little apprehensive, but Jay and his students were extremely receptive.

Heading westward from Seattle

I raced off to Coeur d’Alene, ID, dropping in on my friend Joe’s acting class the following morning, and continuing on to visit another Joe, Joe Proctor in Missoula, Montana.

Following the end of the long drive across Montana, it seemed that every North Dakota hotel was full up. Gradually, I discovered that a booming oil business in North Dakota, combined with a teachers’ conference in Bismarck, had taken up all of the available hotel rooms, and it wasn’t until I hit Valley City, some four hours later, that I found a room still available.

At the University of Minnesota-Morris, the French Department had me in the school’s guest house, where I was finally able to take the time to upload the final installments of “Tartuffe” to YouTube. (I also captured scenes from the performance in Morris. Unfortunately, my computer and my camera were suffering some kind of a disconnect, and I was unable to download the Morris performance, which had been extremely well received, to my Apple computer. (Only weeks later was I able to recapture this video, via my PC.)

Three hours of night driving after the show was followed by a 12-hour drive the next day from Minneapolis to Southeast Missouri.

Southeast Missouri State University was booking me for both shows, as well as a workshop. The workshop was a big success, and the Director of the program was immediately hinting that he’d like to bring me in to direct a show in a forthcoming season.

There were low expectations for attendance at the evening’s program, given that the St. Louis Cardinals were playing a world series game that night. They put me in their smaller studio theatre, and herded audience towards the front, ultimately filling the forward bank of seats, which worked very well for making the laughter the more infectious. We also captured some video on this one, which looked pretty sharp, given the proximity of the camera and the good lighting.

I rarely get reviews for 1-night stands, but they seemed to be doing the publicity very well, and there were two on-line reviews, with this one turning up on the website of the “Southeast Missourian” before I’d even left town:

More than 80 people watched actor Timothy Mooney perform two one-man shows Sunday at Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus.
The stage was set as Mooney scurried out, making the audience burst with laughter.
His first show was "Moliere Than Thou," which is about 17th-century playwright Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who went by the stage name Moliere. Moliere is forced to rely on his previously used material in a performance for the king because the rest of his crew is suffering from food poisoning.
"Mooney has a way of motivating himself based on the feedback he gets from the audience," said Amy Beuhler, a student at Southeast. "The way he adds comedy to Shakespearean-type plays keeps it funny and interesting. The jokes that he uses in his writing fit well with the rhyming of the lines. It's not hard at all to understand. I think that's why so many younger people are attracted to his works."
Hannah Burt was enjoying the event with her mother. "We try to attend as many plays as we can together," she said. "It's a great opportunity for us to enjoy the art of theater which we both love so much."
As for Moliere, "Mooney plays the role to perfection. Moliere was probably the greatest comic playwright of all time," Burt said.
Mooney would come out into the crowd and address various random people while still in character. At certain times he would ask for volunteers to go up on stage and read lines to take the place of Moliere's absent crew.
The second one-man show was "Lot o' Shakespeare," which uses a monologue from each of Shakespeare's 38 plays and six sonnets.
"'Lot o' Shakespeare' is always fun," Burt said. "Hearing one soliloquy from every Shakespeare play back to back like that is amazing. The Iago game is a lot of fun. It's quite similar to bingo. He randomly selects a ball from the spinning cage, and that determines which speech he is going to do next. No matter what the order is they still manage to tie themselves together in the end." Burt has seen Mooney's presentation before and has watched him play Hamlet.

Of course, I have no idea how Hannah Burt has seen me play Hamlet before, but more and more, I seem to be encountering audience who have discovered me on-line. (A woman showed up at “Tartuffe” in Oklahoma having driven in from Southeast Texas… almost from the Louisiana border!)

Another new development among critics of late seems to be interviewing the audience, and leaving the critical judgements to their wisdom. This trait was also evident in the Southeast Missouri State student paper, “The Arrow”:

Review: Timothy Mooney Adds Laughs to Shakespeare's TragediesArrow Reporter- Ethan Worthington
Though the crowd was small, the laughs were loud Sunday night at the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall. Timothy Mooney, the former founder and editor of "The Script Review" and former artistic director of Chicago's Stage Two Theatre, singlehandedly performed "Moliere Than Thou" and "Lot o' Shakespeare."
"Moliere Than Thou" opened with Mooney dramatically stumbling out onto the stage dressed as none other than the French playwright Moliere himself. He proceeded to apologize to the crowd for the absence of the rest of his acting troupe due to the fact that they all unfortunately ate the same bad shellfish from a local inn. He then acted out what he considers to be the best scenes from his plays by himself -- with the exception of a few willing participants from the crowd.
In "Lot o' Shakespeare," Mooney chooses from many Shakespearean monologues and twists them together, or perhaps more accurately throws them into a blender. Changing the order of the plays but not the material, Mooney created a satire of Shakespeare's plays that left the entire audience doubling over in laughter and many of them seemingly in tears.
"It was hilarious," said Justin Rose, a Cape Girardeau resident that attended the performance. Rose, who does not have much knowledge of Moliere, Shakespeare or the theater in general, still found that the performance was enjoyable. He said that he actually found that not knowing the stories being discussed added to the comedy because of the fresh perspective that he had on what was being said.
Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance Kenneth Stilson commended Mooney on his talent due to the fact that in order to satirize material you have to be not only an incredibly good actor but also an expert in the field.
"That's what makes John Stewart so great is that he is an incredibly smart man in his breadth of knowledge, with regard to politics and world events and religions," Stilson said. "As a comedian he is then able to turn these things upside down into a parody."
Stilson went on to say that in the case of Mooney he is not a comedian but an actor that has a talent for comedic roles.
When asked what kind of audiences he thought Mooney's performances would appeal to Stilson said that anyone could find some level of enjoyment in the show. High school students could appreciate it for its comedy, college students could enjoy how it is "out there" in its humor and theater and dance students were "going to enjoy the hell out of this."

I stopped in Springfield, IL, visiting my college girlfriend, Abbe (along with Tim, her son, and her daughter-in-law and grandson), and continued on to Bloomington the next day, in anticipation of a show at Illinois State.

Abbe, Liam and Tim

I’ve traded e-mails with the Illinois State folks for years, but until this year, I’ve only managed performances at Illinois Wesleyan, just down the road from them. I sent reminders to many of the ISU and IWU theatre departments, and was impressed when several responded that they were planning on coming, or were sending their students to attend.

My host, the French teacher, took me out to dinner the night before the show, along with Leslie, a former fellow Southern Illinois theatre student, who was now a Playwriting professor at Illinois State. It so happened that our server in the restaurant was a theatre student who was planning on attending the show the following day. I arranged for her to be my “unwitting volunteer” for “Doctor in Spite of Himself.”

The show that night was more thinly attended than anticipated, and this time the audience was spread loosely through the recital hall where I was performing. As such the laughs were not as infectious as they’d felt in my recent performances in Minnesota and Cape Girardeau, and I could feel myself pushing to get the comedy back on track.

While the applause felt light, the enthusiasm afterwards was just as strong as ever. There is a local high school teacher who has seen my performance perhaps half-a-dozen times by now, who brought a handful of students, and several of them had been with her a year before when I performed at Wesleyan. One fellow noted that he’d performed my monologue from “Doctor in Spite of Himself” for class, and one of the girls in her group gave me a very flattering compliment, to which I offered a hug.

She responded, “This is the happiest moment of my LIFE!”

Happy Moment

Or something like that.

The faculty and I hit the hotel bar after all was packed up, and they hinted at wanting a return visit in two years, now that they’d figured out how to support the event through student fees. The Language and Literatures department head noted that a student had given a quick review on his way out the door:

“Best. Extra credit. Ever.”

I’ll be using that one in future promotions.

Finally, I had a break from the road, and was able to come home for a few days, back in Chicago for the first time since early July (on my way to Montreal). On the road I have been strategizing to meet up with items shipped to Chicago, including my supply of “Re-liv” (my secret fountain-of-youth nutrition supplement), the T-shirts from Oregon, and some computer cabling. (With the sudden rush of bookings, I can once again afford things.)

A stop in Detroit visiting Isaac was followed by a trip to Cedarville, Ohio and a performance of Moliere at Cedarville University, where they’d just adopted my new book for their Acting II class. They were hosting me in a new venue, which had an odd circular staircase at one end of the room. I felt compelled to make use of the circular staircase for my opening entrance, and the hosts found it oddly gratifying. (“Nobody’s ever worked that into a show before!”)

The next day, I was on to Northern Kentucky University, with a workshop, and a performance of “Lot o’ Shakespeare”. The acting students responded well to the workshop, but unfortunately, they were in rehearsal for “Antony and Cleopatra” that night, and so the students who might have benefited the most from the show weren’t there. The audience was quiet that night, but the theatre chair was present, and was particularly curious about my book, suggesting that they might want to order twenty copies for their department library!

Early the next morning, I was on to Sayre School in Lexington, which had hosted me twice in past years. Their venue is actually the entry foyer of the school, which leaves me performing with audience everywhere (on two floors) but immediately behind me. It also leaves me performing in direct contact with the students. Given that this was the entire school population, I was extremely conscious of chatty students who were much less interested than the French or Acting students. Even so, the French teacher marveled, “You had them in the palm of your hand!”

I had four days of down time, and I stopped in Columbus, Ohio between shows, to relax, read Shakespeare, and to celebrate my birthday (52!).

A last minute Facebook invite alerted me that Franciscan University, which had produced my “Bourgeois Gentleman” last year, was performing “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” so I made a surprise stop to see the show, and grab a drink with the director and tech director. (They were relieved to find that I was not mad at them for not sending me a copy of their video.)

I was looking down the barrel of five performances (and two workshops) over the coming five days, which may be my busiest streak in the nine years of performing the tour. A few years back I think I did 12 shows in 9 days (turning my voice to gravel), but that was largely the result of two-a-nights at the Playhouse on the Square in Memphis.

Given the relentless intensity of what I was facing, I gave up drinking beer for the week.

Photo lifted from Robin Chase's Facebook page...

On Monday, I had a show at Penn State-Fayette (the Penn State community was just absorbing the latest scandal), and the French teacher who’d brought me in last year to perform “Lot o’ Shakespeare,” this time made “Moliere” a part of a special high school French Day on campus, complete with a lunch after the show featuring French dip, poutine and chocolate mousse. The high school kids were a bit antsy and chatty through the show, but several of them approached me warmly during the luncheon.

Tuesday found me back at Franklin and Marshall College for the third time! This time, the show was to be performed in one of the residential halls, and they were excited to host their first theatre event. It was an odd arrangement, in a room that would hold about 60 with a mix of easy chairs and straight-backed chairs, with minimal lighting.

The audience was almost entirely silent.

As I performed, I wondered if the French teacher’s over-the-top endorsement had made the audience skeptical. The first bow after the “Misanthrope” monologue got no applause until my “Thank you!” cued them. And one fellow sat stone-faced in the front row throughout the show. He seemed clearly hostile throughout, and I later found he was taking some offense at the participatory nature of the audience interaction… as if it was an exploitation of unwilling victims.

Yet, in that very same performance, the woman to whom I’d addressed the “Tartuffe” monologue had been the very same one who raised her hand to volunteer for the subsequent scene. If I was creating an oppressive environment for unwitting volunteers, that particular “victim” was unaware of it.
I was quickly wisked away to a dinner that’d been arranged by my hosts, who were every bit as enthusiastic as always about the show, as were their students.

In suburban Philadelphia, a school that had just produced my version of Moliere’s “The Misanthrope” gathered a hundred or so Theatre, French and English students for my “Life of Moliere” workshop. It was a fun lecture-demonstration, and the cast stuck around for a question-and-answer session afterwards.

From there, a short drive to Long Island slowed to a crawl. Like Penn State-Fayette, Stony Brook University had invited high school kids and some 250 students filled the auditorium. An odd quirk of the limited lighting that I had available had left a podium light up on the right side of the stage (even after having cleared the podium off), and I was inspired to try something:

Over the course of 500 or more performances of “Moliere than Thou,” I have never performed the show with the trunk placed stage right. Many times, I’ve wondered if I might switch to the other side, but whether from superstition, or well-founded fear, I’ve resisted the impulse.

This time, however, following the performance to the silent audience at F & M College (which left me wondering if I was getting stale and predictable), I felt like shaking up my game. Maybe switching sides would force me into a more impulsive state.

Not only did I switch sides, putting the trunk stage right and the table (that holds the script and my water glass) stage left, but as the show proceeded, I impulsively reversed everything else, as well. I placed the girl to whom I would direct the “School for Wives” monologue stage right and the “Tartuffe victim” stage left, flipping dozens of my automatic choices from one side to the other. I even found myself questioning whether certain gestures should switch from my left hand to my right.

While I definitely clutched on one or two lines, the newly-situated stage positions forced me to make decisions on an instant-by-instant basis. It was impossible for me to run through my laundry list in the back of my head while continuing to perform.

Following the show, most of the students had stayed for a question/answer session, and they demonstrated a natural curiosity for my work, along with the usual questions: “Why Moliere?” “How do you memorize all of those lines?”

This was followed by a drive from Long Island to Maine. I started out by taking the ferry across Long Island Sound, cutting off a couple of hours of driving.

Ferry arriving on the Connecticut side

It was my second visit to Bowdoin College, the previous stop being 2004, and the French teacher arranged an acting workshop, a lunch with the French students, a reception after the workshop and a performance of both “Moliere than Thou” and “Lot o’ Shakespeare.”

The tech rehearsal was a challenge, working with limited resources, and a technician who had to leave before we’d done the second show, and so we were working on details almost up until curtain time.

There was a nice turnout, in spite of the fact that the Theatre department had a performance of “Twelfth Night” that same night, and there was one older gentleman in the second row who was laughing boisterously throughout. While “Moliere” went very well, “Shakespeare” seemed to take things up a notch. The random selection took me from some obscure monologues (“Pericles” and “Timon of Athens”) into several more popular plays, and the play seemed to start to get traction, and the fellow in the second row was exclaiming with pleasure and calling "Bravo" at the completion of most of the monologues. (He was a retired English teacher.) With the show winding down, and the prizes already won, I took a couple of requests from audience members (they wanted sonnets, mostly), and with just enough time left, I decided to do “Julius Caesar”. Knowing that I didn’t have to perform for another three days, I threw everything I had into it, and when I came to the final line: “And put a tongue in every wound of Ceasar that should move the stones of rome to RISE AND MUTINY!” I held nothing back. The crowd roared along with Marc Antony.

I rewarded myself with a stop at the hotel bar after the show.

As I drove on to my next stop, I received the following:

My wife and another couple saw your performance at Bowdoin last night.My friend made the comment. For crying out load I can't even remember the lyrics to a simple song!Well you have a gift. You seem to be using it well. It was a terrific idea to put your material (their material!) together in such a unique way. And to give creedance to the concept of you being able to memorize the dozens of passages from so many different plays. We were all impressed. I hope you are successful enough to ease into your retirement doing exactly as you please. But of course that will be on a stage.My very best. You are continuing a meaningful tradition.Tom Paiement

I responded, asking Tom if I might quote him, and he replied:

Yes, you can quote me.I did go on youtube and saw a few of your teaching clips. Actually made me want to take a class at 69. Very interesting stuff. Great approach. You are a gifted communicator. For budding actors, your classes must be very exciting and rewarding.The very best to you.Tom

I took two days to get to Harrisonburg, Virginia, where my old friend Kathy Conery, the designer of my Shakespeare costume is the Costume Shop supervisor. (She helped me get some new buttons onto my white Moliere coat, and did a bit of upkeep on my Shakespeare jacket and pants).

The JMU program seems to be on the brink of a breakthrough. They have a terrific, enormous new facility, though the school administration has kept their faculty numbers low. The result is a classroom of fifty students taking Theatre History in the class that I visited (unheard of!). The students themselves were exceptionally responsive, both here, as well as in the workshop that I gave.

Unfortunately, these students were all working on their directing projects which were coming due, and very few of them actually turned up to the theatre that night. There were, perhaps, twenty or twenty-five in the audience. And yet, they were as boisterous in their laughter as any of the bigger audiences.

Early in the show, I noticed an odd design on the t-shirt of a student sitting some four or five rows back, and as I looked closer, I confirmed that she was, indeed, wearing one of my “Lot o’ Shakespeare” t-shirts. Of course, the odd thing about this is that I have never performed at this school before, which means that she had to have met me somewhere on the road to have bought, or won the t-shirt from me. During the “Scapin” pass through the audience, I got close enough to note that I had, in fact, autographed this same shirt, addressing it “To Corinne…” But after changing out of my costume, she was gone before I might find out who she was.

I did, however, hear from the theatre’s House Manager, who informed me: “You came to my high school some time ago! I went to Rolling Meadows High School!

I immediately flashed back ten years, to what was certainly one of the most difficult, unsupervised group of little monsters I had ever performed for.

“You guys were terrible!” I replied.

“I know!” she responded. “I was your volunteer that day! It wasn’t until you did the ‘Tartuffe’ scene that I was sure that you were the same guy!”

Life overlaps.

The next day I took a quick swing through Norfolk, VA, to drop in on my Dad, my sister, Maureen and her husband, Tim. And then did the long haul across Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee to my last show of the semester, at Middle Tennessee State University.

The show was well received, in an interesting ballroom space in the student center, with some interesting mood lighting. For some reason, the scenes are not uploading to YouTube at the moment, but when they do, I'll link one or two here. (Meanwhile, here's a pic from somewhere in Ohio!)

Somewhere in Ohio

The next day, the French teacher introduced me to the Artistic Director of the Nashville Shakespeare Festival, and I proceeded to work my way south. I've decided to spend the winter break in Orlando, Florida this year, working on several projects. I gave about five minutes consideration to staying up in Chicago or Minneapolis again this winter, but all it took was a slightly cool breeze blowing through my clothes to remind me of how quickly I tire of cold weather. And so, I've decided to hole up in the south, where I can study, edit, read and rehearse outside, if I wanted.

And so, here I am in Orlando, now, about to go apartment shopping. I've got another huge list of things to do, including working on a new one-man show ("The Greatest Speech of All Time"), editing some Shakespeare for a possible UCO project next year, and finishing off and publishing my long-planned collection of Moliere Monologues ("The Big Book of Moliere Monologues"), hopefully available very soon!
Love,
Tim

Miles on the Escape: 89,350

On the I-Pod: Emma Watson, “A Reason to Stay Up All Night”

Discoveries: I tend to get self-conscious about my relentless pickiness, although, for actors, and the audience, they may ultimately see it as perfectioninsm. * If I can acknowledge my own weak, or disinterested areas, I can identify spots in the production where someone else might well shine. * While reporters who expect me to essentially write their articles for them may be a pain in the ass, it also does mean that I get to write their articles for them. * Actors are subject to wild mood swings, generating wild differences in the quality of performance.They need a foundation of belief (in themselves) to build upon. * Sometimes, all of that publicity work is more than spinning your wheels. Sometimes it pays off in bodies in the seats, and excitement at the curtain call. * We never know the range, the depth or the impact of the work that we are doing. We can only look at the numbers and say, “It may well be…” * Ten years of doing this has begun generating a startling number of overlaps, with people who saw me back when they were students, showing up thousands of miles away from where they’d originally seen me… * Life overlaps.

Next performances: December 1-3: Texas Thespians, Houston, TX

Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre Tour Schedule

(Available dates in CAPITAL LETTERS; Already-booked dates in GREEN; Pending bookings in PURPLE)

FALL 2011

11/24-27 Thanksgiving Break

11/28 NORTH CAROLINA / ALABAMA / MISSISSIPPI

11/29 LOUISIANA / ARKANSAS

11/30 TEXAS

12/1-3 Texas Thespians, Houston, TX (LoS, MTT, Workshops)

12/4 TEXAS

12/5-6 W-TEXAS / NEW MEXICO / ARIZONA

12/7-11 CALIFORNIA

12/8-10 Available for Colorado Thespians (?)

12/11-12 NEVADA / NEBRASKA

12/13 UTAH

12/14 COLORADO

12/15 KANSAS / NEBRASKA

12/16-17 MISSOURI

WINTER-SPRING 2012

1/2-2/25 GUEST ARTIST OPENING

1/5-7 Available for Illinois HS Theatre Festival (?) or Virginia Thespians (?)

1/11-13 Available for South Carolina Thespians (?)

1/13-14 Available for Tennessee Thespians (?)

1/20-22 Available for Indiana Thespians (?)

1/27-29 TETA Theatrefest, Houston, TX

1/30 Panola College, Panola, TX (LoS)

2/9-11 Available for Georgia Thespians, Columbus, GA (?)

2/27 Meadows School, Las Vegas, NV

2/28 Oak Ridge High School, Sacramento, CA (LoS)

2/29 CALIFORNIA / NEVADA

3/1-4 CALIFORNIA (Rogue Festival, Fresno, CA)

3/5 ARIZONA / NEW MEXICO

3/6 W. TEXAS

3/7 Texas Wesleyan University, Ft. Worth, TX

3/8 E. TEXAS / LOUISIANA / MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA

3/9-11 Chattanooga, TN; SETC (LoS)

3/12-14 GEORGIA /FLORIDA

3/14-17 Available for Florida Thespians, March 14-17 (?)

3/15 SOUTH CAROLINA

3/16-17 NORTH CAROLINA

3/18 NORTH CAROLINA / TENNESSEE

3/19 TENNESSEE / GEORGIA

3/20 ALABAMA / TENNESSEE

3/21 MISSISSIPPI / LOUISIANA / ARKANSAS / TEXAS

3/22 TEXAS / KANSAS / OKLAHOMA

3/23 NEW MEXICO / KANSAS / COLORADO

3/24-25 COLORADO

3/26 COLORADO / UTAH / WYOMING / NEVADA

3/27 UTAH / NEVADA

3/28 NEVADA / IDAHO

3/29 OREGON

3/30 WASHINGTON / OREGON (Available for Oregon Thespians (?))

3/31-4/1 WASHINGTON / IDAHO

4/2 IDAHO

4/3 IDAHO / MONTANA

4/4 MONTANA / WYOMING

4/5 MONTANA / NORTH/SOUTH DAKOTA

4/6 NEBRASKA / MINNESOTA / IOWA

4/7 KANSAS / IOWA / MISSOURI

4/8 MISSOURI

4/9 MISSOURI / ILLINOIS

4/10-11 Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, Moliere Than Thou

4/12 KENTUCKY / INDIANA / OHIO

4/13 OHIO / WEST VIRGINIA

4/14-16 VIRGINIA

4/17 MARYLAND / DELAWARE / D.C.

4/18 NEW JERSEY / PENNSYLVANIA

4/19 PENNSYLVANIA / NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND

4/20-22 NEW ENGLAND

4/23 Mount Desert Island High School, Mt. Desert, ME

4/24 NEW YORK

4/25 NEW YORK / PENNSYLVANIA

4/26-27 PENNSYLVANIA / OHIO / MICHIGAN / INDIANA

4/28 Pathways Scholarship Fundraiser, Glenview, IL

4/29-30 INDIANA / ILLINOIS

5/1-2 ILLINOIS / WISCONSIN

5/3 Central Lakes College, Brainerd, MN

5/4-5 MINNESOTA / WISCONSIN

5/6-9 ILLINOIS / INDIANA

SUMMER, 2012

5/16-27 Orlando Fringe Festival

5/29-6/5 Piccolo Spoleto Festival

6/7-9 Detroit, Michigan

6/18-23 International Thespian Festival, Lincoln, NE

7/4-7 American Assn of Teachers of French, Chicago, IL

7/11-22 Winnipeg Fringe Festival

8/1-11 Minnesota Fringe Festival

8/16-26 Indy Fringe Festival

FALL, 2012

8/27-10/6 GUEST ARTIST AVAILABILITY

10/8-10 MINNESOTA / WISCONSIN / ILLINOIS

10/11-12 INDIANA / KENTUCKY

10/12-15 KENTUCKY / TENNESSEE / NORTH CAROLINA

10/16-17 VIRGINIA / WEST VIRGINIA / MARYLAND / D.C.

10/18-20 PENNSYLVANIA / DELAWARE / NEW JERSEY

10/21-23 NEW ENGLAND / NEW YORK / PENNSYLVANIA / OHIO

10/24-26 MICHIGAN / INDIANA / ILLINOIS

10/27-29 IOWA / NEBRASKA / SOUTH DAKOTA / NORTH DAKOTA

10/30-31 WYOMING / MONTANA / IDAHO

11/1-2 WASHINGTON / OREGON

11/3-6 CALIFORNIA / NEVADA

11/7-9 ARIZONA / NEW MEXICO / UTAH

11/10-12 COLORADO / KANSAS / OKLAHOMA

11/13-15 TEXAS / LOUISIANA / ARKANSAS / MISSOURI

11/16-17 MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA

11/18-21 FLORIDA / GEORGIA / SOUTH CAROLINA

11/22-25 THANKSGIVING BREAK

11/26-28 NORTH CAROLINA/ VIRGINIA / WEST VIRGINIA / MARYLAND / DELAWARE / DC

11/29-30 PENNSYLVANIA / NEW YORK / NEW JERSEY

12/1-4 Available for Northeast Educational Theatre (?)

12/1-5 NEW ENGLAND / NEW YORK / PENNSYLVANIA

12/6-8 Available for Pennsylvania Thespians (?)

WINTER / SPRING, 2013

1/3 Available for Missouri Thespians (?)

1/4-5 Available for Kansas Thespians (?)

1/6-7 OKLAHOMA

1/8-9 E. TEXAS

1/10-11 LOUISIANA / MISSISSIPPI

1/11-12 Available for Mississippi Thespians (?)

1/13-14 ALABAMA / GEORGIA / FLORIDA

1/15-16 GEORGIA / SOUTH CAROLINA

1/17-19 NORTH CAROLINA / VIRGINIA

1/18-19 Available for Virginia Thespians (?)

1/20-21 WEST VIRGINIA / KENTUCKY

1/22-23 TENNESSEE / ARKANSAS / OKLAHOMA

1/24-25 TEXAS (TETA)

1/26 TEXAS / LOUISIANA (Available for Louisiana Thespians (?))

1/27-28TEXAS

1/29 NEW MEXICO / ARIZONA

1/30-31S. CALIFORNIA

2/1-2 CALIFORNIA / NEVADA

2/3-4 N. CALIFORNIA

2/5-7 NEVADA / UTAH

2/8 S. COLORADO / N. TX

2/9-11 OKLAHOMA / KANSAS / ARKANSAS

2/12-13 LOUISIANA / MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA

2/14-15 GEORGIA (Available for Georgia Thespians (?))

2/16-19 FLORIDA

2/20 GEORGIA / SOUTH CAROLINA / NORTH CAROLINA

2/21-22 VIRGINIA / WEST VIRGINIA / DC / DELAWARE / MARYLAND

2/23-26 NEW JERSEY / NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND

2/27-28 PENNSYLVANIA / WEST VIRGINIA

3/1-2 OHIO

3/3-4 MICHIGAN

3/5 INDIANA / ILLINOIS

3/6-9 SETC, Louisville, KY

3/10-11INDIANA / ILLINOIS / MISSOURI

3/12-14 WISCONSIN / MINNESOTA / IOWA

3/15-16 NEBRASKA / SOUTH DAKOTA / NORTH DAKOTA

3/17-18 COLORADO / WYOMING / MONTANA

3/19-20 IDAHO / WASHINGTON / OREGON

3/21-23 WASHINGTON (Available for Washington Thespians (?))

3/24-5/4 GUEST ARTIST OPENING

The View from Here #151: QC, OR, MN, OK

2011-09-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

Where last I left me, I was heading for Canada, with the annual conference of the American Association of Teachers of French.

As I noted when finishing off the last View from Here, I was going to attempt a “Vlog” over the course of my three-week tour, and I really did manage to keep it up somehow, recording somewhere 5 and 15 minutes each day.

Since I said just about everything I had to say on a daily basis, I'll resist repeating it here. Feel free to visit some of the videos that come up when you follow this link: “Vlogging a Dead Moose.”

I promoted my show in Montreal, visited friends in Toronto, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Vancouver, admired beautiful scenery, watched for moose (misidentified elk). I chatted about whatever might have been on my mind on a given day, or along a given drive, curious perhaps, if my incidental musings held anything more than a passing interest... perhaps also curious as to whether the voice inside my head was what might come spontaneously out of my mouth. The videos themselves seem to have averaged a dozen or so views each, except for the performances at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival which briefly inhabited the “automatic” position on my video channel (the video that comes on automatically when you first go to my channel). So, while some people may have responded with a casual interest, I did not immediately resolve that Vlogging was my Future.

At the Oregon Shakespeare Fest, they put me up at a lovely Bed & Breakfast, about four blocks from the festival, and while the unseasonably cool/rainy weather threatened each day (and forced the cancellation of both performances of the “Green Show” performing group that preceded mine), I managed to sneak in both performances in spite of the weather, with a terrific response. Each night, I started out with some 350 or so in the audience, which swelled to 700 or more by the ending. The producer of the Green Show, suggesting that she’d like to book me again for the next year, commented that my show had a “sticky” quality to it. By which she meant that the casual passer-by who stopped to watch, tended to remain watching until the end, with little drifting in and out.

Meanwhile, the host of my Bed & Breakfast, who also worked in the OSF box office, suggested that I share copies of my new book with the festival Gift Shop, for them to sell. Screwing my courage to the sticking place, I went into the gift shop and asked to see the manager/purchaser. She was happy to sit down with me, and immediately took an interest in carrying my book. She bought six copies for her shop.

I drove long days on the race home, stopping only in Salt Lake City and Lincoln, Nebraska before pushing through the final lap to Minneapolis. Upon my return, I was horrified to discover that a leaky toilet on the second floor had begun dripping during my absence, ruining some of the beautiful woodwork in the gorgeous place I had been calling home. The leak was seemingly non-existent when I left town, but had built up to what now seemed to be about two gallons an hour, and the owner who had worked so hard on rehabbing the place with beautiful wood treatments was stricken, seeing the damage. He’d had people working on the roof of the house while I was gone, but no one had been inside the house for the entire time that I was gone. Had they only gone in to use the bathroom, the problem would have been unavoidably evident. I felt terribly guilty, but entirely helpless.

I caught up on follow-up e-mailings to French teachers from the AATF conference, to theatre teachers from the International Thespian Festival, and to Community Theatre directors from the AACT conference in Rochester that April had attended in my stead. Meanwhile, I was gearing back up on production for Lot o’ Shakespeare, running lines on a daily basis, gathering press materials and distributing postcards for the Minnesota Fringe Festival which was now just a week away. April came up from Chicago over the weekend to visit, drop off postcards and take away some of my conference display items that I wouldn’t need for the course of my fall tour, and I managed to push mostly away from the desk for a couple days.

I previewed my show at the “Out-of-towners Showcase” the day before the Fringe got underway. Even though I’d been living in town for much of the summer, I had applied as an “out of towner,” and was still mostly identified as such by the “in-towners.” I plotted out this performance at great length, choosing the opening monologue, during which I would simultaneously hand out postcards and “IAGO” cards. I carefully checked the layout of the venue and counted out exactly how many cards I would need to pass out for each row, and then, on the night of the show, recounted the number of seats in the venue, reordering the cards to reflect how many were ACTUALLY in each row.

The preview went extremely well, but when it came time to spin the bingo cage to give the audience the taste of a random monologue, the ball that first popped out was the only monologue that I COULDN’T perform: the Measure for Measure monologue, which demanded a volunteer from the audience. (Even if I wanted to drag a volunteer on stage for the minute I had left allotted to me, I had left the volunteer script backstage.) I spun the cage a second time, and Troilus & Cressida came out.

The festival, as always, was much fun. On those days that I had a show, my focus was single-minded; once that performance was done, I could kick back and enjoy, seeing other performances and joining the nightly fringe party. I had about 40 or so people in my first audience, and attendance never seemed to dip below that for the run of my show. As in previous Minnesota Fringes, I was hearing great things by way of second-hand “buzz”. The reviews I was getting on-line were more personal this year, and people who had seen me over the course of, perhaps, five wildly different one-man shows, had now shaped an opinion of me that reflected me, as much as my material.

In the realm of "It really is a small world," a girl noticed me in the audience of someone else's show and mentioned that she'd seen Moliere than Thou at the New York Fringe Festival, where she'd been my volunteer! And that I'd apparently mentioned at that time that she was the giggliest volunteer that I'd ever had. (The New York Fringe was 8 years ago, in 2003!)

With each successive show, and each new rave review, I kept expecting that THIS will be the performance that SELLS OUT, but somehow that show never arrived. My audiences included lot of the “die-hard fringers,” and a lot of fellow performers. Given the size of the check that I got at the end of the run, I would have to say that my show was extremely popular with people who were getting free tickets. Fortunately, I don’t do this festival for the paycheck so much as the good buzz. I doubled my collection of quotable quotes in the course of five performances…

Snappy but never rushed. His delivery sparkles... John Townsend, Minneapolis Star Tribune

The device of hanging Shakespeare’s speeches on an audience participation game of lotto will make you happy. His high-energy, engaging style will make you happy, and his command of every single Shakespeare play you know (and some you don’t), with a few sonnets thrown in, will simply amaze. And make you happy. Request King John if it doesn’t pop up on the bingo balls. It’ll be worth your tip; you’ve never heard it like this before. Janet Preus, howwastheshow.com

Shakespeare fans will enjoy Timothy Mooney's performance of more than 40 monologues... Mooney delivers them with style and vigor in this one-man effort. Emily Gurnon, Pioneer Press

It’s a treat to hear the real thing, served straight. If you’re going to have Shakespeare read to you in delicious little chunks, you want Tim Mooney to do the reading. He lets Shakespeare speak for himself. Baron Dave Romm

He performs them with a range, nuance, and especially energy... Two things I know for sure about theater: that Shakespeare dude can write, and you should never miss a chance to see Tim Mooney! Patrick Pfundstein

Tim Mooney is arguably the most reliable quantity in the Fringe Festival… Power, emotional range, nuance and clarity. His delivery, both word and gesture, is direct enough that Shakespeare beginners can follow easily, but nuanced enough for the most hardened nerd. David Stagner

I could listen for hours. Tim Mooney was amazing … My personal favorites were Hotspur's speech from 1 Henry IV and sonnet 90 (extremely beautiful and not often heard). Bravo! Kit Gordon

A superb collection, each character distinct and delightful. Tim Mooney always gives good Fringe, and Lot O' Shakespeare is no exception. Highly recommended! Kayle Ganaan

I wouldn't have chosen a show of consecutive Shakespeare monologues for a thirteen year old… But Tommy was up for the challenge, so we went on in. I'm glad we did! Mooney was fantastic, animating each character with energy. It was exciting. You can't help but sit back and be dazzled. Wendy Gannula, tcdailyplanet.net

Excellent show -- Timothy Mooney really knows his Shakespeare. In simple straightforward language he sets a scene then delivers it with mastery. A delight, we'll go back to see him again on Sunday. Ann Mullaney

A wonderful sampling from some of the most famous and least known of Shakespeare's plays… A playful and, at times, thrilling acting adventure. Robert Hubbard

Probably the most fun I've ever had with Shakespeare. I attended with my parents - both of them, to my shock, since my Dad usually cuts me off with a hearty "hell no" the moment he hears "Shakespeare." He liked it almost as much as I did. I can't think of a better endorsement than that. Lisa Olson

I'd be willing to see Tim in anything. He's always engaging and fun, and this show, with its clever "lotto" hook, ranks with his best... an excellent hour well spent. Mark Browning Milner

As a retired English teacher, I would love to have had Timothy in my classroom to help show students how much fun Shakespeare can be. The combination of setting the scene, monologues that made the language seem very real and understandable, the chance to play Bingo (Iago) and win a prize, and a lot of enthusiasm make this show a good one for Shakespeare fans and even for those who still need converting. Mary Lundberg-Johnson

A master at work with his craft. But, it's also a lot o' fun. It made me want to read more Shakespeare. Clark Kinser

Absolutely wonderful… I could have watched Tim Mooney for another two hours - he's that good. Expressive, funny, intelligent --- his engagement with Shakespeare's lines makes the language, the stories alive in a rare way. And as he notes, a different show each time - go often. Judy Budreau

More important than the shtick, though, is Mooney's mastery of the material and his ability to adjust his energy levels between these different, and random, pieces. Reid Gagle

A one-man dynamo! Comedy, drama, history, it's all here in this banquet of Shakespearean delights. Tim Mooney leaps from monologue to monologue exhibiting an amazing range… A treat to watch and not to be missed! Jim Belich

A consummate monologue-ist. Mooney encapsulates each character and scene with immersion into the essence of each snapshot with incredible zest and expressiveness… My only disappointment.. there wasn't time for more. Jason Dalrymple

I laughed so hard and I had a great time. It is not just playing a game of Iago.... it is learning and participating and being entertained and a real community experience. Lauren Arneson

Tim Mooney's tour-de-force left me exhausted! If you sit near the stage, be prepared to become part of the show. During each monologue, Mooney's intense focus may just single you out and draw you in even further... Actually, this isn't a solo show, it's a one-man band… Mooney's book quintessentially captures the spirit of this show: "Acting at the Speed of Life." Dwayna Paplow

I am so glad that someone has put this extreme amount of work together. I will most assuredly be using his program/ bingo card as a reference when I need to find a new monologue. This show had me inspired in a way for Shakespeare I have not felt since College. Jason Rojas

Amazing. He transformed himself from buffoon to evil king to carefree young man in seconds. He inhabited each character, and made Shakespeare's language come alive, even the more obscure words and expressions. If high school teachers had him bring Shakespeare to life like this theater attendance would rise! Portia Sephori

I am in awe of how much information Tim Mooney has been able to cram into his brain... Wow! I wasn't previously familiar with several of the monologues he performed, but he captured the essence of each scene perfectly. Heather Baldwin

With the end of the festival, I dove back in on my e-mailing projects, sending notes to Shakespeare festivals around the country (promoting my Oregon Shakespeare Fest success), as well as beginning another pass to schools that had responded with interest to the huge mega-emailing from the first half of the summer. Now that teachers were starting to return to school, I wanted them reminded of their stated interest before they got swept up in the sudden rush of activity. I was getting more and more specific with the narrowing dates now available for bookings, offering discounts for the dates that remained to be booked. The coming fall tour is shaping up as the busiest one ever.

It was again time to pack up my worldly possessions, this time taking them on a 6-week stay in Edmond, Oklahoma, where I’d be directing Tartuffe, I loaded up a trailer and brought everything with me. I figured that when I left Oklahoma for the Fall Tour, I would put my stuff into storage, which would mean that I would eventually need to come BACK to Oklahoma to pick it all up again… but I could deal with that when the bookings ran out… if the bookings ran out.

I got on the road. While my original plan was to visit with friends in Kansas City and grab a hotel somewhere in Kansas, when my visiting plans fell through, I simply kept driving, arriving 800 miles to the south, in Edmond, Oklahoma, late that same night.

My apartment was a nice, roomy setting… the corner space in a hall filled with dorm rooms. (I get strange looks from the students.) Mine came complete with kitchenette, living room, bedroom, bathroom and laundry, and there seemed to be room for about half of my stuff.

It was perhaps 100 degrees the next day, and unloading the trailer, I could tell there was a problem the moment I tried to lift the back gate. The gate itself seemed stuck, and it was clear that items in the trailer had shifted. Shattered glass started to spill out.

The glass desk that I bought at the beginning of the summer, which fit neatly into the niche between two windows in a corner of my Minneapolis home… was now in about a million pieces.

It was one of those Laurel & Hardy days, where everything that could go wrong, seemingly, did go wrong, and I found myself cutting myself on glass, bumping my shins, bumping my head… which then bounced back down into the stuff I was carrying, bumping my chin and biting my tongue in the process. Once I’d unloaded all of the things I thought I would need, I rented a storage locker for the rest, and opening the trailer once more, found that the stuff left in the trailer, now much more loosely packed, had fallen over, scattering books and files beneath the formerly upright shelving unit.

Auditions were that night, and the actors had each been directed to work up a Moliere audition piece from something other than Tartuffe, and I grew in my resolve that my forthcoming collection of Moliere monologues was desperately needed. I saw as many as three variations of the same monologue three or four times over the course of the auditions. Notably: Monsieur Jacques and Frosine from The Miser, Celimene and Arsinoe from The Misanthrope, and Sganarelle from The Doctor in Spite of Himself.

I had so many good people to look at that I was able to eliminate almost half of the actors from consideration. I have a very subjective rating system that ranks actors from 1-star to 4-stars, and I was able to draw the line at 2 ½ stars and above, knowing that I still had about 40 actors to see for callbacks. Were my judgements not so subjective, this might almost be described as a scientific process, as I used the computer to “sort” the actors by the ratings that I’d assigned them.

Callbacks got off to a slow start, as my stage manager went to the wrong theatre space, and was unable to distribute monologue copies at 6:30, as we’d promised the actors. When 7pm arrived, I herded the actors into the auditorium, gave them a quick primer on the tone of the play and our procedure, and by the time I was done (7:20), the monologues were ready to go.

On the first pass, I would feed new ideas or direction, after seeing each actor's initial take. It gave me a good idea of whether this was an actor who would actually improve with feedback, or stay the same or get worse. I would send actors back out with directions to prepare a different monologue, seeing them read as many as 3 or 4 times through the course of the evening. With repetition, I stopped giving feedback, and just kept track of which actors were good “fits” for which roles.

Some actors were clearly best for particular roles while others were talented enough to cross over to several parts. I could count on a particularly talented actor to shift into another part if I had a slightly less talented actor who was right for a single part. I also made mental notes of racial implications as, for instance, a black actor as the seducing lothario, Tartuffe, would play into a lot of historic stereotypes which are difficult to shake loose. As it happened, I have a strong black actor playing the homeowner, Orgon, while his “wife and children” are white.

We dove into rehearsals that night and I was suddenly hearing from people who had not planned for the commitment that an immediate jump into the rehearsal process would bring. New conflicts from people unable to attend were abruptly coming to my attention and I ended up playing two roles myself that night.

Saturday afternoon, we continued with a second read-through, which I rarely do; mostly I try to get the show on its feet as fast as I might. But remembering my last Tartuffe, I thought the play really needed a second read-through to focus on language and ideas before worrying the actors about movement. And so I held out for one more pass, as the actors grew eager to get up and start performing.

In Minneapolis, I had sketched out blocking notes in the margins back of my script, amid my preparations to move, and now I was transferring them to a ground plan of the set. The Scene Designer had adopted my ideas almost in their entirety, and the process of adapting the initial plans was mostly about figuring out what my scribbles and scrawls had been trying to capture on my first go-around. I was drawing up these new plans in pretty colored lines, with different marker colors reflecting different characters’ movements on the floor of the stage. Theoretically, any of the actors could pick up my script and figure out where they are supposed to move, and when.

This tends to bring out the puppet-master in me, as I have almost entirely reversed the training I’d gotten in grad school. Rather than letting the acting evolve organically, I tend to impose detailed, specific plans on the mise-en-scene, much as the rhymed iambic pentameter thrusts great detail and demand onto those actors' shoulders, and knowing that, whatever qualities these performers are bringing to the table, the story is going to get told. Also, actors are actually much more confident when they know that the director has thought about these things and has an actual plan.

Monday was our first production meeting, and a much larger staff was in attendance than was present at our previous meeting back in January. It seems that everyone on the staff has an assistant, or two, with the exception of myself. As it happens, I have a stage management staff, including one stage manager and three assistant stage managers, but no assistant director. (Of course, I don’t know what I’d do with an assistant director if I had one.)

The scene designer had a model to show, the costume designer some costume sketches, and the choreographer was still trying to work out the intended tone of the dance she was to be creating for the “Intermezzi.” Ultimately, we determined to explore the music I’d used in the production back in Lake Forest a year prior, and I e-mailed the choreographer mp3s from sections of the music that made me think “ballet.” She selected one, from which she was immediately able to envision a dance.

In rehearsal, the actors were getting on their feet at last, and between Monday and Friday, we dedicated a night to each act of the play. In the three hours of rehearsal, we were able to stop-and-go through the course of each scene, usually taking on 2-3 pages at a time, essentially transferring the blocking from my script to theirs, and hopefully conveying the vision of why their characters were saying and doing the things that they were. Theoretically, the blocking was underlining their through-line of action, and intuitively attuning them to their character’s desires.

Each night, we found that we could work our way through a given act, and still have enough time to double back through, running each act once or twice. Some actors had taken to arriving 30 minutes early, to copy their own blocking out of my script, and were thereby a step ahead of me through rehearsal.

Thursday night, I joined some of the actors at the local karaoke bar, and my singing performance was going over quite well through “Lion Sleeps Tonight” and the beginnings of “Black Dog”.

Until, out of nowhere, somebody came running up through the crowd during “Black Dog.” Seeing him out of the corner of my eye, I assumed he was intent on high-fiving me, as some often do, amid the excitement of this song.

I was not anticipating that he might slug me in the solar plexus, and run off, out the door.

Disruption ensued.

I was blindsided. The punch had knocked the wind out of me. Several people chased this guy outside and I stumbled into my seat. The KJ stopped the song, several people bent over me and both the manager and the waitress brought me more beer.

From all that I can figure after the fact, my assumption is that the incident was some kind of fraternity pledge-week prank. I was sore and upset, but was more struck by the compassion exhibited by my new student-actor-friends. I had known them for only a week, but in this very short time, they’d grown very protective.

On Friday, we finished working through the play, and our progress had been so good that I gave the actors the Labor Day weekend off. On Saturday, I joined the Theatre Department Chair, Daisy, and one of the professors, Don, for dinner and a movie. Several times, Daisy has told me of the good reports that she has been hearing, not only from the students, but from some of the design staff as well. I was feeling highly appreciated.

They are being very good to me here, by the way. In addition to the furnished apartment with kitchen, they’ve provided me with a meal pass for each day that I am here, as well as a pass to the wellness center, right across the parking lot… as well as… paying me.

Parellel to the rehearsal process, I’ve also been writing about the work, as the warm reception to my acting book has gotten me to start serious consideration of my Directing Text. (Working title: Directing at the Speed of Life.) And writing about the day-to-day choices, problems and decision-making processes that I make, usually without even thinking about it, reminds me that yes, these things are choices, and, hey, maybe some young directors wouldn’t see them quite so self-evidently as I do. And so, I’m writing a little bit every day.

Today’s entry, for instance, about last night’s work-through of the already-blocked Act I, helped me define the stages that the actors are at: Sometimes, they have memorized a given line and clearly understand why one line follows the next in a given speech, and sometimes they have yet to clarify the nuance that necessitates a lengthy speech, as each new line of verse continues to add further dimension to their thought process. When they have yet to think through these passages with detail or nuance, we find that any attempt at sustaining the momentum of the scene, or the iambic pentameter, simply sounds sing-songy. Each line comes out the same, and the listener becomes ever more aware of the predictability of the next line. People have issues with rhymed verse, not because the rhyme is pointed and self-evident, but rather because we are moving towards that rhyme with such deliberate, unthinking predictability. (I'd observed this same phenomenon in a performance of Shakespeare's epic poem, The Rape of Lucrece at the Minnesota Fringe. The actors assumed a tone of voice, without breaking up the lines into specific, nuanced intentions.)

Or to make a formula out of it:

Momentum – Nuance = Sing-Song Delivery.

I plan to put the occasional chapter from this upcoming book up on my other blog, “Acting at the Speed of Life.” You can find one of them over there now!

Finally, Daisy had been lamenting the difficulty that the department has often had in getting audience out to see theatre which is neither a musical, nor has some celebrity appeal, such as, say, Shirley Jones playing a leading role. Remembering a recent incident that my friend, Joe, had with a production of The Laramie Project, I suggested that the best way to get people out to see the show was to make sure that someone protested the production. If you tell someone that they’re not allowed to see the show, they become fully determined to go and see it. With this in mind, on my way home that night, I envisioned the following press release in my head:

“Banned Play” Presented by UCO Theatre

Tartuffe, a notorious 17^th century French play by France’s most famous, and somewhat scandalous author, Molière, disallowed from performance by French authorities for over five years, and by innumerable authorities since that time, is being presented by the UCO Theatre department, October 6-9, in Mitchell Hall.

“It is true that some people have found the subject of this play troubling… even disturbing,” acknowledges Theatre Chair, Daisy Nystul, “but there is really nothing in this play that you couldn’t see on cable TV on any night of the week… or at least, perhaps on Showtime.”

This salacious, incendiary work drew the ire of the Catholic Church in its very first production, back in 1664, and under pressure from the Societie du Sant Sacrament, France’s King Louis XIV blocked the play from being presented for over five years. Molière, himself, was described as “A devil not worthy of hanging!”

Adaptor and Guest Director, Timothy Mooney, perhaps one of the leading authorities on the works of Molière, insists that the play was never intended to be an attack on the church, but rather on the hypocrisy of those that pretend to false piety.

“Tartuffe, himself, was never intended to suggest a man of the cloth, but rather someone who attached himself to the church for corrupt purposes. He is clearly an independent charlatan.”

As for the supposed “sex” that the play is famous for, Mooney insists that there is no actual nudity in this UCO production. “The fashions of that day simply featured a greater amount of… well, cleavage, for instance, than our modern era is perhaps accustomed to,” Mooney notes. “And the infamous seduction scenes of Acts III and IV are interrupted before they ever reach consummation.”

Whereas in the past, Tartuffe has been an incendiary lightning-rod of a play, this UCO production is not anticipating any protests. “Everyone just needs to calm down,” Chair Nystul insists. “No one is going to want to protest a 350-year-old play. “And if we do get the odd picketer, we would only ask that people keep cool heads about them. We don’t want to call in security forces, but we believe that everyone has a right to see this landmark historic play in all of its glory, without fearing for their own safety.”

For the moment, at least, some tickets for “Tartuffe” are still available at the Mitchell Hall Box office, at …

Temperature: About a week of 100+ temperatures, with wildfires burning in the distance, now down to a comfortable 75 degrees.

Attendance: 15 + 700 + 700 + 45 + 50 + 60 + 40+ 70 = 1,680

On the Computer: Netflix streaming, these days, finishing off all the episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and halfway through “The Tudors.”

Discoveries: When I let the voice inside my head come out spontaneously, I achieve a greater definition of “who I am,” and gain, perhaps, greater acceptance. * My shows have a “sticky” quality to them. * When I take the chance to present my book to the people who can do something with it, it displays potential. * In presenting a preview for my plays, I do better when I share the openings of my plays, rather than, perhaps the most brilliant scenes of my plays. I need to take people where they are, as a largely ignorant audience, allow them to identify with my character, and gradually move them in the direction that they will need to go, rather than showing them the climax, or the heights to which my play reaches. * The books I have in process are clearly needed. * I have decided to accept my role as “puppet master,” knowing that there are some stages where the direct control of the director contributes invaluably to the telling of the story. * Something feels different about this cast interaction. I feel like I’ve been transparent and open with them to the point that they are much more connected and supportive than I’ve felt in the past… as evidenced by their response when I got hit in the karaoke bar. * People have issues with rhymed verse, not because the rhyme is pointed and clever and evident, but rather because we are moving towards that rhyme with such deliberate, unthinking predictability. * If you tell someone that they are not allowed to see a show, their most powerful resolution becomes finding a way to get out to see it.

Miles on the Escape: 78,800

Music in the I-pod: Recordings of famous speeches, for my next play “The Greatest Speech of All Time.”

Next performances: October 14-15: Lynfield College and Pacific City, Oregon.

The View From Here #150: CO, CA, OR, WI, FL, NE

2011-07-05T20:07:00.000-07:00

It’s the sesquicentennial “View From Here!”

Given that most of us have ten finges and ten toes, numbers such as five and ten, and their various mulitiples, are considered “round numbers” and given some sort of priority.

Or perhaps we are simply organized so that we insert meaning where no meaning actually exists.

Or maybe, as in my case, we like words with a “Q”.

I started these updates back in the Fall of 2002, and have since then written over 260,000 words over 419 pages… (actually, I’ve written more, but have edited heavily.) I’ve performed for an estimated 100,000+ people, memorizing and retaining, variously, over 55,000 words. I’ve driven over 415,000 miles in that time.

Where we left me last, I was headed from Minneapolis to Denver, with a performance of “Moliere than Thou” at the University of Denver, as sponsored by the French Department. The show was thinly attended, but well received, and although my host from the French department was on sabbatical, I was surprised to discover that she showed up at the show anyway, and that I’d used her as the unwilling volunteer in the “School for Wives” scene.

The next day’s drive was a long slog to California, where I had a performance of Moliere the following day, hosted by my good Fringe friend, Betty Anderson. Betty and her husband Pete had relocated from San Diego to Idyllwild, California when their adorable daughter, Gemini (pictured) was accepted into the Idyllwild Arts Academy. The crowd of a hundred or so kids loved the show, and I hung out for a brief Q&A afterwards, but by about 5:30 that afternoon, I was driving once again.

Avoiding the L.A. rush hour, I swung wide to the west of the city, eventually picking up Highway 99 well to the north, and getting a little bit past Fresno that night. The following day was a major push, through Northern California (dropping in on my old friend Cil in Medford, Oregon) and grabbing dinner with Pat and Kathy in Salem before finally pulling into my favorite hotel just east of Portland that night. The next day I performed both “Lot o’ Shakespeare” and “Moliere than Thou” at Mount Hood Community College. As in the two prior performances in this small auditorium, I had my technical challenges, largely because it is set up more for lectures and slide shows than Theatre. Regardless, the audience was rocking, and only a school car pool leaving five minutes before the end of Moliere dampened the spirit.

Back at the hotel, McMennamin’s Edgefield, I managed to enjoy the wine-sampling bar, satisfied at executing three performances all within five days, each separated by over a thousand miles from each other!

I soon found myself pressing forward relentlessly once again, this time with two thousand miles to cover before my next show in Green Bay, Wisconsin!

Usually, I assume I’m safe by the end of April, but driving out of eastern Montana, I discovered that Interstate 94 had been closed due to a blizzard! I sat down at a local diner for breakfast, but the projected 11am reopening of the highway did not manifest itself. The dirt roads I found myself on heading south kept winding their way back west, toward the highway that I had just been on. After an hour, I got back on the highway heading the opposite way… finding my way back to the city that I had left early that morning (now, six hours before) and picking up a road which would carry me to Interstate 90, through South Dakota, which had NOT been shut down by the blizzard.

Having already purchased my hotel room on-line, I was not willing to pull over and pay for a second hotel. And so I kept driving, pulling over in Southern Minnesota for a brief nap at a rest stop, and eventually arriving at my Minneapolis hotel at about 3am.

Fortunately, I had the entire next day to sleep in and recover before moving on to Green Bay.

The folks in Green Bay had me in a much more intimate auditorium than in previous visits… perhaps the result of the French Club taking over the arrangements. There may have been fifty or so in the audience, including the young boy/son of the French teacher who had volunteered for the Scapin scene in my two previous appearances. He seemed a little less dangerous this time around, less likely to ad lib at quite such great length.

Back, briefly to Chicago, I once again played MC (or as I call it “Minister of Hype”) to the Pathways Seminars Scholarship fundraiser, a very, very fun event we call Pathways Idol, where people donate money as “tips” to singers who win or lose the contest based on the audience donations. Every year, we up the ante on our financial goals, and while previous years have brought in $10,000 and $16,000, we assumed we were seriously overreaching when we set this year’s goal as $30,000. And yet, every time we got word of the financial progress, the figure seemed to have jumped outrageously from the previous number. When all was said and done, we discovered that our goofy little karaoke fundraiser had brought in about $29,000! One of our fundraising team quickly announced that he would make up the difference, leaving us with a total of $30,001 as the evening’s tally!

I had one final Chicago area performance at North Central College to wrap up the Spring Tour. It was well received, on a sort of a chapel-stage, and I captured some excellent video footage out of it (the scenes with lush wood paneling, below), but the audience was tiny.

Suddenly, it was time to shift into “Summer Mode.” I had some catching up to do on e-mails, offering book copies, while putting together my flyers for fringe season, and loaded up the car and headed south for Orlando.

Once again, I was camping out at the Pergandes’ house, where Gayle had significantly recovered from the broken arm she’d gotten the day before my previous visit in March! The Pergandes were also hosting two of my favorite performers, Tommy Nugent, and Bremner Duthie (and his wife, Lisa), who I hadn’t seen since my Canadian Fringe circuit days (“Karaoke Knights,” 2006!)

This year, I was in the outdoor Fringe venue, under a tent in the courtyard behind the Shakespeare Center. The setting up process was a constant rush, so I seemed to always have worked up a sweat already before my show got underway… at which point the sweat poured over me.

The audience seemed not to mind overmuch, and the attendance was good, and the response was enthusiastic. I got into the habit of buying a case of water during my late-afternoon performances, as a reward to my faithful audiences who braved the heat to see the show. The “buzz” for the show was great, and the reviews started coming in…

Takes highbrow art and mixes it with lowbrow fun… Mooney, an engaging presence… may not be as physically imposing as some actors to play Henry V, but his St. Crispan’s Day speech made me want to take up arms with him. Matthew J. Palm, Orlando Sentinel

When he recites Molière or Shakespeare he’s like a house afire (or, more accurately, like the fire truck racing to the scene)… If you’re familiar with Shakespeare, it’s fun to hear the standards again... And if you’re not, this is as good and quick a crash course as any. Elizabeth Maupin, Orlandotheatre.wordpress.com

If Shakespearean were an official language, then Timothy Mooney would be fluent. Mooney moves effortlessly from Benedick to Richard III… Flat-out riveting. Sultana F. Ali, TheDailyCity.com

Hey, those are pretty good! I guess I’ve “buried the lead” for this blog entry!

When I wasn’t performing, or rehearsing my lines by the Pergande’s pool, I was, once again, working my way through the mega-e-mailing project, sending some 12,750 e-mails out to Theatre, English and French teachers. A project I didn’t finish until July 1!

This time around, I was offering of a free copy of my book to Acting, English and French teachers as the central thrust of my promotion, and I ended up giving out well over a hundred books. (Perhaps a quarter of these folks were responding with additional interest about booking the show, so the book giveaway was money well spent.)

I ended up selling out two of my shows at the Orlando Fringe, but was frustrated to see the attendance go from full to fifty percent without any discernable reason. I keep looking for justification to not give out any more flyers, and with great reviews coming in, or sold out shows, I would assume that I could kick back and coast for the rest of the week, only to face reality once again.

Back in Chattanooga, I rented a trailer and loaded it up with my worldly posessions from the storage facility, pushing my way on north, continuing this time to Minneapolis, where I was looking for an apartment for the summer.

I hadn’t managed to set up an apartment in advance, and many of the apartment buildings I was calling weren’t interested in renting for three month stays, but I had a couple of leads. The first was a small unfurnished efficiency, which had probably fairly nice at some point, but was run-down, dirty, and in a bad neighborhood. The landlord was willing, but insisted that he had to check my credit rating, and that he’d have to get that underway immediately, given that it was already a Friday afternoon (and rating agencies would be closed for the weekend). I had at least one more appointment waiting, and reluctantly said that I’d have to pass.

The second place was shared a house, in which I would have a couple of upstairs rooms to myself… it would be a tight squeeze, but it was still workable, even if it was in another bad neighborhood. This landlord was less concerned about the timing of my move in, and I was very interested.

I had received a response to an ad I put on Craigslist, which seemed to be in the neighborhood I was interested in, so I decided to check one more lead before making my decision.

The place was perfect. And amazing. It was a Victorian house, and while the landlord wanted to get other tenants to take over some of the FOUR other bedrooms, he hadn’t found anyone else whose schedule for moving out coordinated with the students who would be moving in at the end of August.

And so, for now at least, I’ve got this place to myself, complete with a front porch, back porch, hot tub and sauna in the basement! (Less expensive than the efficiency apartment was going to be.)

I bought a desk that fits nicely in the corner of the front parlour, and balanced my work on the mega-e-mailing with visiting with my Twin Cities friends, and one more pass through The Book! Somehow typos and ill-chosen words still seem to jump out at me when I re-read the book, and I never seem to run out of ideas for what I would like to include… And so, as of July 1, the new and improved book has been republished! (2% greater insight! 98% fewer typos!)

Last week, there were two conferences happening simultaneously, with the American Association of Community Theatres meeting in Rochester, New York, simultaneous to the International Thespian Festival in Lincoln, Nebraska. And while last year I’d made a good impression at the AACT event in Florida, my performance for the West Virginia Thespians made me realize that the Thespian groups were indeed my “people”… much more likely to book my show, and even more likely to need my book, or to incorporate it into the curriculum.

Having already paid for a booth at the Community Theatre festival, I didn’t want to give up on it entirely, and so I found a way to bifurcate my personality, by having my able assistant April (who has now made it through several of these conferences with me) take the books and banners and her daughter Amber to Rochester, while I headed off to Lincoln.

My plan had been to offer free books to teachers while selling copies to students, but all of my energy was devoted to getting them into the hands of the faculty, and I managed to give away about 120 of them, along with the new DVD that I’d managed to whip together on my new MacBook’s I-DVD program. It was a long five days of giving out books, but it had it’s fun surprises. (If anybody needs a copy of the promotional DVD, just let me know!)

On the first day of the festival, a few students drifted by my booth, attracted by the Moliere info that was on the table. They spoke up to say that they’d performed a shortened version of “The Learned Ladies” as part of their Ohio state competition, which had gone on to their state finals. Something about the way they described the show led me to ask questions: “Was the play in rhyming verse?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Do you remember who the adaptor or translator was?”

“Um… yeah… it was… um… Tim… Mooney.”

I looked at them. “I’m Tim Mooney.”

They totally flipped out.

I actually finished this blog entry about 5 days ago, but had no time to proof or upload with photos or the like. Since then I’ve gotten on the road, heading for the American Association of Teachers of French conference in Montreal, and have actually begun a VLOG about the process, which you can follow on my “Molierelover” channel on YouTube. Here’s a sample below. If you want more, hit “subscribe” on the YouTube channel! See you soon!

Love,

Tim

Miles on the Escape: 71,000

Attendance: 50 + 75 + 120 + 50 + 25 + 25 + 40 + 50 + 12 + 40 + 40 + 50 = 577

Discoveries: Words with a Q. * Fringe Festival attendance is never an exact science. * Fate smiles on those who listen to the little voice in their head… or perhaps the universe presents you with crappy options until you say “no” to the ones that you really don’t want. *

Playing on I-Tunes: Avenue Q

On Netflix: “Kick Ass” and “Buffy Season 5”
Next Performances: 7/8: Montreal, Quebec (American Assn of Teachers of French) and 7/`7 & 7/19 Ashland, Oregon (Oregon Shakespeare Festival)

Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre Tour Schedule

(Available dates in CAPITAL LETTERS; Already-booked dates in GREEN; Pending bookings in PURPLE)

SUMMER, 2011

7/6-9 American Association of Teachers of French, Montreal, Quebec

7/17 & 19 Oregon Shakespeare Festival Green Show (“Moliere” / “Shakespeare”)

8/4-14 “Lot o’ Shakespeare” at the Minnesota Fringe Festival

FALL 2011

8/24-10/9 University of Central Oklahoma: Directing “Tartuffe”

9/6-29 OKLAHOMA / N. TEXAS / S. KANSAS

10/10 KANSAS / COLORADO / WYOMING

10/11 UTAH / NEVADA (n)

10/12 IDAHO / OREGON / CALIFORNIA (n)

10/13 Pacific City, OR

10/15 Linfield College, McMinnville, OR

10/18 OREGON / WASHINGTON

10/19 IDAHO / MONTANA / WYOMING

10/20 NORTH/SOUTH DAKOTA / NEBRASKA / KANSAS

10/21-22 MISSOURI / ARKANSAS

10/23 Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, MO

10/23-25 IOWA / MISSOURI / MINNESOTA

10/26 Illinois State University, Bloomington, IL

10/27 Lake Forest Academy, Lake Forest, IL (?)

10/28 ILLINOIS / INDIANA / MICHIGAN

10/29 Illinois Mensa Conference

10/30 ILLINOIS / MICHIGAN

10/31 INDIANA / OHIO

11/1 KENTUCKY / OHIO

11/2 Sayre School, Lexington, KY

11/3 KENTUCKY / TENNESSEE

11/4 TENNESSEE / WEST VIRGINIA

11/5 WEST VIRGINIA

11/6 WEST VIRGINIA / PENNSYLVANIA

11/7 Penn State-Fayette, Unionville, PA

11/8 Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA

11/8 PENNSYLVANIA / NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND

11/9 NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND / NEW JERSEY

11/10 Bowdoin College, Bowdoin ME

11/11 NEW JERSEY / DELAWARE /MARYLAND / D.C.

11/12 Sycamore Rouge Theatre, Ashland, VA (?)

11/13-14 MARYLAND / VIRGINIA / DELAWARE / D.C.

11/14 VIRGINIA

11/15 VIRGINIA / NORTH CAROLINA

11/16 NORTH/SOUTH CAROLINA

11/17 SOUTH CAROLINA / GEORGIA

11/18-20 GEORGIA / FLORIDA

11/21-23 FLORIDA

11/24-27 Thanksgiving Break

11/28 GEORGIA / ALABAMA / MISSISSIPPI

11/29 LOUISIANA / ARKANSAS

11/30-12/4 TEXAS

12/1-3 Available for Texas Thespians, Houston, TX (?)

12/5-6 NEW MEXICO / ARIZONA

12/7-11 CALIFORNIA

12/8-10 Available for Colorado Thespians (?)

12/12 NEVADA

12/13 UTAH

12/14 COLORADO

12/15 KANSAS / NEBRASKA

12/16-17 MISSOURI

WINTER-SPRING 2012

1/2-2/25 GUEST ARTIST OPENING

1/5-7 Available for Illinois HS Theatre Festival (?)

1/11-13 Available for South Carolina Thespians (?)

1/13-14 Available for Tennessee Thespians (?)

1/20-22 Available for Indiana Thespians (?)

1/25-28 Available for Arkansas Thespian Festival, Alma, AR (?)

2/9-11 Available for Georgia Thespians, Columbus, GA (?)

2/27 WASHINGTON / OREGON

2/28 OREGON / CALIFORNIA

2/29 CALIFORNIA / NEVADA

3/1-4 CALIFORNIA (Rogue Festival, Fresno, CA)

3/5 ARIZONA / NEW MEXICO

3/6 W. TEXAS

3/7 Texas Wesleyan University, Ft. Worth, TX (?)

3/8 E. TEXAS / LOUISIANA / MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA

3/9-11 Chattanooga, TN; SETC

3/12-14 GEORGIA /FLORIDA

3/14-17 Available for Florida Thespians, March 14-17 (?)

3/15 SOUTH CAROLINA

3/16-17 NORTH CAROLINA

3/18 NORTH CAROLINA / TENNESSEE

3/19 TENNESSEE / GEORGIA

3/20 ALABAMA / TENNESSEE

3/21 MISSISSIPPI / LOUISIANA / ARKANSAS / TEXAS

3/22 TEXAS / KANSAS / OKLAHOMA

3/23 NEW MEXICO / KANSAS / COLORADO

3/24-25 COLORADO

3/26 COLORADO / UTAH / WYOMING

3/27 UTAH / NEVADA

3/28 NEVADA / IDAHO

3/29 OREGON

3/30 WASHINGTON / OREGON (Available for Oregon Thespians (?))

3/31-4/1 WASHINGTON / IDAHO

4/2 IDAHO

4/3 IDAHO / MONTANA

4/4 MONTANA / WYOMING

4/5 MONTANA / NORTH/SOUTH DAKOTA

4/6 NEBRASKA / MINNESOTA / IOWA

4/7 KANSAS / IOWA / MISSOURI

4/8 MISSOURI

4/9 MISSOURI / ILLINOIS

4/10-11 Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, Moliere Than Thou

4/11-12 KENTUCKY / INDIANA / OHIO

4/13 OHIO / WEST VIRGINIA

4/14-16 VIRGINIA

4/17 MARYLAND / DELAWARE / D.C.

4/18 NEW JERSEY / PENNSYLVANIA

4/19 PENNSYLVANIA / NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND

4/20-22 NEW ENGLAND

4/23 Mount Desert Island High School, Mt. Desert, ME

4/24 NEW YORK

4/25 NEW YORK / PENNSYLVANIA

4/26 PENNSYLVANIA / OHIO

4/27-29 MICHIGAN

4/30 INDIANA / ILLINOIS

5/1-2 ILLINOIS / WISCONSIN

5/3 Central Lakes College, Brainerd, MN

5/4 MINNESOTA / WISCONSIN

5/5 “Pathways Idol” Fundraiser

5/6-9 ILLINOIS / INDIANA

SUMMER, 2012

5/16-27 Orlando Fringe Festival

5/29-6/5 Piccolo Spoleto Festival

6/7-9 Detroit, Michigan

6/18-23 International Thespian Festival, Lincoln, NE

7/4-7 American Assn of Teachers of French, Chicago, IL

7/11-22 Winnipeg Fringe Festival

8/1-11 Minnesota Fringe Festival

8/16-26 Indy Fringe Festival

FALL, 2012

8/27-10/6 GUEST ARTIST AVAILABILITY

10/8-10 MINNESOTA / WISCONSIN / ILLINOIS

10/11-12 INDIANA / KENTUCKY

10/12-15 KENTUCKY / TENNESSEE / NORTH CAROLINA

10/16-17 VIRGINIA / WEST VIRGINIA / MARYLAND

10/18-20 PENNSYLVANIA / DELAWARE / NEW JERSEY

10/21-23 NEW ENGLAND / NEW YORK / PENNSYLVANIA / OHIO

10/24-26 MICHIGAN / INDIANA / ILLINOIS

10/27-29 IOWA / NEBRASKA / SOUTH DAKOTA / NORTH DAKOTA

10/30-31 WYOMING / MONTANA / IDAHO

11/1-2 WASHINGTON / OREGON

11/3-6 CALIFORNIA / NEVADA

11/7-9 ARIZONA / NEW MEXICO / UTAH

11/10-12 COLORADO / KANSAS / OKLAHOMA

11/13-15 TEXAS / LOUISIANA / ARKANSAS / MISSOURI

11/16-17 MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA

11/18-21 FLORIDA / GEORGIA / SOUTH CAROLINA

11/22-25 THANKSGIVING BREAK

11/26-28 NORTH CAROLINA/ VIRGINIA / WEST VIRGINIA / MARYLAND / DELAWARE / DC

11/29-30 PENNSYLVANIA / NEW YORK / NEW JERSEY

12/1-4 Available for Northeast Educational Theatre (?)

12/1-5 NEW ENGLAND / NEW YORK / PENNSYLVANIA

12/6-8 Available for Pennsylvania Thespians (?)

WINTER / SPRING, 2013

1/3 Available for Missouri Thespians (?)

1/4-5 Available for Kansas Thespians (?)

1/6-7 OKLAHOMA

1/8-9 E. TEXAS

1/10-11 LOUISIANA / MISSISSIPPI

1/11-12 Available for Mississippi Thespians (?)

1/13-14 ALABAMA / GEORGIA / FLORIDA

1/15-16 GEORGIA / SOUTH CAROLINA

1/17-19 NORTH CAROLINA / VIRGINIA

1/18-19 Available for Virginia Thespians (?)

1/20-21 WEST VIRGINIA / KENTUCKY

1/22-23 TENNESSEE / ARKANSAS / OKLAHOMA

1/24-25 TEXAS (TETA)

1/26 TEXAS / LOUISIANA (Available for Louisiana Thespians (?))

1/27-28 TEXAS

1/29 NEW MEXICO / ARIZONA

1/30-31 S. CALIFORNIA

2/1-2 CALIFORNIA / NEVADA

2/3-4 N. CALIFORNIA

2/5-7 NEVADA / UTAH

2/8 S. COLORADO / N. TX

2/9-11 OKLAHOMA / KANSAS / ARKANSAS

2/12-13 LOUISIANA / MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA

2/14-15 GEORGIA (Available for Georgia Thespians (?))

2/16-19 FLORIDA

2/20 GEORGIA / SOUTH CAROLINA / NORTH CAROLINA

2/21-22 VIRGINIA / WEST VIRGINIA / DC / DELAWARE / MARYLAND

2/23-26 NEW JERSEY / NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND

2/27-28 PENNSYLVANIA / WEST VIRGINIA

3/1-2 OHIO

3/3-4 MICHIGAN

3/5 INDIANA / ILLINOIS

3/6-9 SETC, Louisville, KY

3/10-11 INDIANA / ILLINOIS / MISSOURI

3/12-14 WISCONSIN / MINNESOTA / IOWA

3/15-16 NEBRASKA / SOUTH DAKOTA / NORTH DAKOTA

3/17-18 COLORADO / WYOMING / MONTANA

3/19-20 IDAHO / WASHINGTON / OREGON

3/21-23 WASHINGTON (Available for Washington Thespians (?))

3/24-5/4 GUEST ARTIST OPENING

The View From Here, #149: GA, KY, IN, IL, PA, FL, WV, KS, MN

2011-04-17T18:53:00.000-07:00

Life seems to be travelling at a blistering speed these days, especially since getting the book published… perhaps because it adds one more consideration and level of discussion or promotion between myself and everyone that I encounter on the road, or all of my various networks… or maybe it’s because life is actually going by especially fast these days, wth relentless driving, bookings evenly divided between two different shows, all seemingly scattered thousands of miles away from each other!

With a shipment of the first 100 books now in hand, I found my way down to the annual Southeast Theatre Conference, with April keeping relentless track of who was getting free copies of the book. I had already offered free copies to teachers who’d hosted me in the past, and some of them were at the conference (saving me a bit of mailing costs).

The booth at SETC (with book!)

It felt great to be able to give people something that they were so eager to get. Or perhaps, to know that they were so eager to get something that I had created. The feedback was almost immediate. I gave a copy to Kent Brown from the Dramatic Publishing booth (we seem to always end up across the aisle from each other at these conferences), and he was back at me almost immediately declaring that it “reads like a house afire!”

By the end of the first day, we’d given out over 30 books, and on the second day a fellow showed up at the booth asking for a copy. I was happy to give him one, but he insisted on paying for it. He explained that he’d been flipping through a friend’s copy the night before up in the hotel room, and that he had to have a copy for his own. By the end of the three day conference, we’d given away over 90 books, and I signed almost all of them. This conference was the first time I’d ended up immediately adjacent to the booth of my script publisher, Playscripts, Inc. (at least since they’d been publishing me), and whenever Noah, their marketing director, sold a copy of one of my scripts, he’d send the buyer next door to my booth to have me sign it for them.

Sign spotted in Chattanooga... not sure what caught my eye on this one...

I got back to Chickamauga with two days to finish packing up the apartment, waved goodbye to the horse farm and headed north. My first stop was just outside Cincinnati, at a high school where they were producing my “Tartuffe.” The students there were jazzed at meeting me (a couple of them were already fans of my work on-line), and asked a bunch of intelligent questions, before I took them through my usual acting workshop. As we wrapped things up, one girl got the idea to have me autograph her script, and then the rest of the cast grabbed their scripts and got in line.

I pushed on to Hammond, Indiana, with a performance at Perdue University at Calumet, which was booking both Moliere and Shakespeare for an afternoon performance, as well as a morning conversation with an acting class on “The Business” of theatre. Unfortunately, the shows were scheduled for the final day prior to their spring break, so the attendance was limited, though the teacher still seemed excited and enthused about the event.

I swung through Chicago, where another hundred books had been delivered to April’s house, and we spent a day or two signing, stuffing and shipping books to past hosts of my show who’d responded to an offer of a free book. Many of the book’s recipients had responded, mentioning that they “really ought to get [me] back in to perform again…” so it seemed that no matter how many books I might give away, I would likely end up making a profit on the deal, if only because “having a book” lended a special cachet to the idea of hiring me.

Monmouth College, where I’d performed perhaps four years prior, was my next stop. The teacher there had been using many of the techniques that I’d taught in my acting workshop previously, and was delighted to get a copy of the new book. And the show that night rocked! By the end of “Shakespeare,” the requests were flying in fast and furious, and with time for only one monologue left, I was struck by my remembrance that today was the Ides of March! I wrapped up the show with “Julius Caesar.”

Racing east once more, I was to perform at Penn State-Fayette, but had little contact with the teacher about the exact nature of what she was looking for. She’d booked me to do both “Moliere” and “Shakespeare”, but had seemingly only allotted an hour for the (lunch-hour) event. She was the French teacher, but didn’t think there’d be as much interest in the Moliere show as there would be for the Shakespeare show, so she wanted me to focus on that one, but to, perhaps, be able to squeeze in a Moliere monologue here or there. I decided that I could open the show in Shakespeare/Bingo mode, but once the prize had been won, I could open up the floor to requests from either Shakespeare or Moliere.

About a half hour before the show started, thirty or so audience members began walking in. Their early arrival seemed to surprise the host, and I ducked backstage. There was something odd about their appearance, but I put that out of my mind as I went into the act.

By show time, there may have been forty or fifty people present, and I was noticing that some of the jokes weren’t quite flying this time around. Some obvious laugh lines were going unnoticed, and I was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Quite often, people would stand up and head to the bathroom, disrupting the row of people sitting next to them on their way to the aisle. There were a handful of very attentive audience members directly in front of me, and I found myself playing to them, and later found that they were part of the school’s Shakespeare performance troupe, and the English professor who had been their director.

The show stretched long, with at least one Moliere monologue (“Bourgeois Gentleman”), but at one point there was a disruption from the back of the house. One of the audience members coming back from the bathroom had fallen or passed out, apparently banging his or her head. (I don’t wear my glasses onstage, so I couldn’t tell.) We paused for a couple of minutes while 911 was contacted, before resuming for a few more monologues.

What I later discovered, of course, was that most of this audience was composed of a busload of mentally challenged folks who’d made a field trip of going to the local college to catch an event. My host seemed very pleased, though somewhat bewildered at how the show had gone. (She’d been operating the slide show from the first row of the audience, and the woman behind her apparently interrupted to let her know that she needed assistance in getting to the bathroom.)

Meanwhile, the very first review of the book showed up on-line! Charley Ault, who’d booked me in Denver perhaps 8 years ago, was the first to submit a review on Amazon!

(★★★★★) Fantastic!

After reading this book it dawned on me that this could be the modern manual for the Director and the Actor. This is written with the insight of Hagen, Adler, and Spolin but it is 100% Mooney. It is a fun romp through the life of Mooney but more than that, we the Director, we the Actor can take away so much from it. It truly is a must read!

Somewhere South of Fayette, PA

From Fayette, I swung south, through Harrisonburg, to drop in on my Costume Designer, Kathy, who’d finished a new shirt for the Shakespeare show. It was very billowing and flowing, with puffy sleeves… Not my usual style, but I must admit it looks very good in the video clips! From there it was on to Norfolk, to spend the weekend with Dad and Maureen and Tim, followed by a stop in South Carolina to drop in on my friends in Greenwood (Bess had recently broken her foot, so she didn’t have much time for visiting), and then a few more days down in Orlando, where my hosts Gale and Al were dealing with Gale having broken her arm a day or so before I arrived! (Disasters were leading the way ahead of me…)

Dad posing with Neptune... Virginia Beach, VA

With some significant down time, I was able to focus on moving my operations from one computer to another. Over the last 10 years, I I’ve replaced my laptop perhaps five or six times, either because it had been stolen (once), or because it had crashed or slowed to a crawl (the other four times). With a little extra money in my pocket, I decided that it was time to move into the Mac universe. It’s taken a lot of getting used to… mostly in terms of finding where the system has stashed my various files, and how I can dig them out, and it’s been a disorienting several weeks, but I think I’m finally back up to speed. The one realm where Mac is acknowledged as superior to PC is in the realm of video… and knowing that I had some serious video work coming my way, I wanted to get my stuff assembled in ways that I’d be able to make the best use of it.

You may remember that the PC had slowed to a crawl on the final days of publishing the book, but once I got the Mac, and began lightening some of the demands on the PC, it seemed to perk up enough to migrate things smoothly. I’m still dependent on it for flyers and posters, having bought Adobe Illustrator in PC format, but otherwise, I’m living in the Mac World… and mostly liking it.

One of my major tasks was to transfer my e-mail information from Microsoft Mail to Outlook, and while I could get Outlook to read the 6000+ e-mail addresses in my computer, it would not differentiate those addresses that had been added to the "View From Here" group. I spent a couple of days transferring my PC group list over to my Mac group list, and in the process seem to have gone from about 1200+ group members to about 1100+ group members. Somewhere along the way I lost 100 people. I also added back in a few names that I think had been mistakenly stricken from the group list, but if the notice for this blog is arriving unwelcome to your inbox, please let me know!

While I was in Florida, three more reviews showed up on line, again, each five stars…!

★★★★★ “Success on the Stage of Life” Jennifer Hallenbeck

Timothy Mooney wowed our high school with his "Moliere Than Thou" performance a few years ago! Everyone wondered how he does it - great personal presence and an ability to communicate with people of all ages and interests. He reveals his techniques in this book - must for both educators and non-educators alike. You don't need to be interested in classical theater to learn how to be one of the great actors of our time on your own personal stage. I don't teach theater, but I have started using his exercises to help my students find their own voice in the world. Thank you Tim!

★★★★★ “A practical, informative, and entertaining read!” Aaron

Tim Mooney's book combines his in-depth knowledge of performance and theatre history along with his years of experience touring shows to bring a very "nuts-and-bolts" approach to acting the Classics. His insight into the Shakespearean character alone is worth the price, but he provides useful and thoughtful analysis into Moliere, Chekhov, and other playwrights' works as well. I have and would recommend this to the casual or avid theatergoer, the theatre educator, and the performer who desires to know more about how characters are brought to life from an historical, stylistic, and practical approach.

★★★★★ “Not just your average acting book” Dennis

I've been acquainted with Tim and his performances for about five years now. I've been amazed by the personal intensity of his performances, by his intense yet relaxed style, and by the incredible attention to detail, no matter where he is performing. That led to my interest in this book. What Tim has brought to it is the length and breadth of his knowledge and experience.

The book combines a comprehensive understanding of modern "method" based performance styles with a reflection back to an older system that apprenticed young actors into a troupe, and gave them the basic skills needed to survive as a theatre professional. Powerful and empowering.

By looking elsewhere at Amazon, you can find any number of basic acting texts and professional advice guides. Both of these types are handy in their own way, but this book is unique. It's not afraid to call both to task for their limitations. One type concentrates on inner life and imagination, the other on survival. What Tim manages to do is to concentrate on a lifetime of acting, the skills needed and how to insure that the performance gets done (and pleases the audience-and gets you cast for the next show, too).

While the book is extremely readable, it's not limited to one or two "beginners" exercises, it is far more complex and necessary than that. I would probably not use it for a replacement to Benedetti or Cohen, but it's necessary for every serious actor's shelf.

This might be a good spot to mention that the book is available through my website, www.timmooneyrep.com, and via Amazon.

Next up was a show at St. Johns Country Day School in Orange Park, Florida. They wanted the Shakespeare show, and knowing that the show went longer than their usual 45 minute assembly, they arranged for more time for my event, agreeing on a 75 minute program. The students were responsive and enthused, and I was keeping a close eye on my timer, but about 65 minutes into the event, I could feel the students getting restless, and see one of the teachers gesturing to me, but, again, without my glasses, I had no idea what he was saying. After the next monologue, they brought the lights down and retracted the projection screen. Having promised the students the Midsummer Night’s Dream monologue, I shifted immediately into that one, just to give a clean punctuation to the event.

I continued my zig-zagging, this time heading back north to West Virginia, where the West Virginia Thespians were holding their annual festival. With the support of the Kirsten Moomey Foundation, the thespians had scraped together enough money to host my show. It so happened that Morgantown, WV was just about an hour south of Penn State Fayette, so that the teacher who’d brought me in for that somewhat awkward performance two weeks before was able to drive down to catch the Thespians event, and actually ran the video camera from about a dozen or so rows back.

The thespian audience was awesome! There were, perhaps, 500 students, responding as if I was some kind of a rock star, from the very opening of the show on forward… Here’s the opening…

I quickly decided that Thespian high school groups are really “my people!” I have since begun scouting where all of these conferences are, as I begin to plot out my 2012-2013 schedule. I solicited an endorsement from the host of the West Virginia event and he responded with:

“Tim has a particular talent to inspire students to explore the classics, leading them to learn in ways they never thought possible. One performance with Tim equals a week of teaching and a lifetime of appreciation.” (Michael Stiles, Musselman High School)

I distributed a dozen or so books to teachers at this event, and one of them, who’d actually gotten her book at SETC a month before, quickly posted another review on-line:

Classical acting made accessible and dare I say… fun??? Celi Oliveto

Wow... what a great text. I would highly recommend this text to any teacher who wants to dip his or her toes into the (seemingly) intimidating world of classical theatre. I met Mr. Mooney and attended his workshop at the 2011 SETC conference where I was able to see one of his activities in action. What amazing results they produced! I participated in the exercise where Mr. Mooney took two young women from the audience and asked them to perform a short dialogue from a Moliere play. The two did well for a cold reading, but lacked subtext, active verbs, and basic characterization. After a slight adjustment from Mr. Mooney, which can be found as an activity in the textbook, the two performers literally lit the room on fire! It was amazing to see the transformation and improvement in the quality of the performance after participating in the simple game. The game involved active audience participation, which is great for high school students watching their peers perform and who can't seem to keep their minds or their hands off their cell phones. Mr. Mooney makes Shakespeare and Moliere fun, engaging, and most importantly [un]intimidating. This is probably the most accessible approach to classical style that I have ever seen and gives students a great base from which to create character, explore the language, and connect with the story.

I recently had the pleasure of watching Mr. Mooney's performance at the West Virginia State Thespian Conference and the reaction from my student's speaks to the quality of his work. One of the highest compliments came when I was sitting at dinner and my student said, "I hate Shakespeare, but I really liked that show. It was really funny and I understood him!" After I got over the urge to chastise her for berating poor William Shakespeare, I thought, "How amazing and fortunate that she was able to see a high quality/ energy performer who was able to open up Shakespeare in a new way and take the scary out of the story."

( That address again was www.timmooneyrep.com)

It so happened that the West Virginia event wrapped up the day before a matinee performance of “Tartuffe” outside of Cincinnatti, so I swung back through, enjoying a performance.

Somewhere in there, I got the news (just a month after my book’s publication) of the first school that would be adopting it as an official textbook for their classes! The Johnson County Community College (just outside of Kansas City), would be using it for their “Acting II” and “Acting III” courses! This pleased me even more than the occasional reviews, because, more than what might be flattery by friends, this represented an investment in the work as part of an educational program… and, of course, sales of multiple books… over the course of multiple semesters!

Zagging where I had previously zigged, I was now heading west, on my way to a show at Texas Wesleyan University in Salina, KS, which enabled me to make a stop at Johnson County Community College along the way, where they told me how much they’d enjoyed the book, noting that the major acting text now in use has gone up to $90!

The show in Salina was partially sponsored by a retired English & French teacher, who was convinced that my performance would be “rigged” in some way, and that the ping pong balls were perhaps “weighted,” so that I performed only the few monologues that I had actually memorized. He was also threatening to call out requests for “Tartuffe” as the show proceeded.

The folks at Kansas Wesleyan were very accommodating, taking me out to lunch, with very attractive technicians refocusing lights and figuring out the projection system. The show itself had a hundred or so in attendance (better than predicted), and they were very responsive, to the point that the skeptical professor never got a chance to shout out “Tartuffe!”

I stopped to visit my old friends, Jeff and Karen Barker at Northwestern College before settling in Minneapolis for a few days.

This city has climbed to the top of my likely places to stay list for the coming summer. Holed up in the hotel, I mostly divided my time between video work and composing a new Shakespeare Study Guide. I would write a page on each of Shakespeare’s plays, and then seek out my best video clips to assemble into a “Viral Video” I was envisioning (now posted at the top of this blog). I was trying to assemble the best 10-20 seconds I could find from each of the monologues that I perform, drawn from video of a half-dozen or so performances of varying qualities… with dissimilar lighting and a costume which seemed to evolve with each recorded performance.

I caught up with a handful of friends from the Fringe Festival, before heading up to St. Cloud for a show at St. John’s Prep School (the second “St. John’s” in less than a few weeks!) It was a gorgeous prep school set on a beautiful lake, where I spotted two bald eagles!

I was adding a lot of walking to my daily exercise routine. I have been doing my yoga/calesthenics daily, but added an extra half-hour of treadmill walking, as I struggled to work out the knots in my back before the western swing of my trip (which starts tomorrow). I have some long days of driving ahead of me, and with my back already seizing up, it could be a major struggle.

The show at St. John’s (Moliere) went great, although I was a little disconcerted when I emerged from the dressing room to discover that there was no one left in the auditorium. I later found that my host had to rush to catch a bus (he’s also the coach of the softball team), but I had spent most of the evening wondering if I’d executed some faux pas somewhere along the way.

Back for a couple more days in Minneapolis before the major push west, I was ready to take on the last phase of the video project… the part that had always intimidated me: working out the transitions from one clip to another, and creating the captions that would be crucial to making sense of this project. Since the soundtrack would be filled with Shakespearean dialogue, I didn’t want to add more voiceover, but rather attached on-screen captions for each monologue so that the viewer would be able to follow the transitions across Shakespeare’s canon. The Macintosh program (imovie), enabled me to drop these in so easily that I finished the video well ahead of when I’d anticipated, and was able to post it on line before beginning the last, huge, looming leg of the tour (during which I am counting on getting virtually nothing done).

So, check out the video at the top of this page... And, while you’re at it, the book is, as of this moment, #1,989,145 on the Amazon best seller list! (Your purchase can help me climb that 1,989,144 remaining!)

Other book responses that have been coming in via e-mail…:

“It’s really wonderful to have a solid approach to strictly attacking classical material.” (Celi Oliveto)

“I did some skimming and like what I saw. In fact, mentioned your advice today about the fundamental necessity of being heard to some students at a KCACTF response I did at FIU.” (Don Butler, Palm Beach Atlantic University)

“I browsed through it at first and have been reading it in earnest the past 2 days. Excellent ideas & practical information…(I can’t agree more with the idea of clarity, and your approach looks like it works.)” (Michael Hawley, Alabama State U)

“Its incredibly good, and an easy read… I’ve really savored how every point is backed up by some proof or example… you made your points easily understandable… so bluntly obvious.” (Haden York)

“Fascinating, entertaining and well-written. Mooney has the kind of fast-paced, quick wit acting that keeps Moliere alive and keeps the spectator riveted to him. Well, that’s exactly what he has done with his book. Succinctly, the masterful actor and the coruscating book are both sui generis. Bravo!” (Mel B. Yoken, Chancellor Professor Emeritus, U-Massachusetts-Dartmouth)

“What a delight! It is written with verve and refreshing common sense and concise economy. It will have an impact.” (Stanley Longman, U-Georgia)

“I was rather surprised and truthfully a bit disappointed when I reached the end of the book. Even though I’m not an actor, I kept finding things I knew, things I did… I am, in fact, using your ideas on how to memorize to help my students memorize their Victor Hugo poem.” (Jennifer J. Moody, Auburn University)

There’s less than three weeks left to the spring tour, but there’s about 8,000 miles of driving to go! And then, the fundraiser event once more: Pathways Idol! Here’s a scene from Pathways Idol II:

Love,

Tim

Miles on the Escape: 60,150

Temperature: From 90 degrees in Florida to 30 in Minnesota…

On the i-pod: “Has Been” by William Shatner with Ben Folds

Via Netflix: Old episodes of “Dead Like Me” (by the folks who brought you “Pushing Daisies” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”

Discoveries: Layering in an entirely new aspect of my career, on top of, and within a career that was already fairly busy, transforms the work, generates a beehive of activity, and gives an added power to some things that I was already doing… like putting cork inside a baseball bat. * After 8 years of sitting on my manuscript, rewriting and rewriting, always looking for and finding the flaws that were hiding on each page, turning it loose to the world at large was an act of what felt like foolhardy bravery or arrogance or hubris, but the raging criticism that I thought I was throwing this book into the face of has not surfaced… in fact, quite the opposite. * I had about two weeks of not knowing why I was feeling somewhat lost and unfocused and a bit bewildered, almost as if I had lost my eyeglasses. I realized: “Hey, you just switched from PC to Mac! Which means that every single program you rely on to carve out your computer-generated existence is nothing like what it was. Cut yourself some slack!” (I’ve been better since that little conversation.) * The slightest implied or imagined bit of disapproval seems to lead me down a path of self-denial… in fact a denial of the success of what I myself witnessed. When the host was not around to commend my successful show, I immediately went to a place of “Oh, shit; what did I do wrong?” It seems to have been a lifetime of work to allow my own impressions to be valid, without turning to someone else for approval or affirmation. * Speaking of which, just to affirm for myself for a moment: It seems that I have written a really good book. In fact, I enjoy opening it to random pages and realizing… “That’s a really good insight… I’m glad I included that!”

Attendance: 25 + 15 + 100 + 200 + 50 + 300 + 500 +100 + 300 = 1,590

Next Performances: U-Denver (4/22), Idyllwild Arts Academy (4/25), Mount Hood Community College (4/27), U-Wisconsin Green Bay (5/2), maybe something at North Central College (Naperville, IL) (5/4-17)

Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre Tour Schedule (Available dates in CAPITAL LETTERS; Already-booked dates in GREEN; Pending bookings in PURPLE)

WINTER/SPRING 2011

4/17-19 NEBRASKA / COLORADO

4/20- UTAH / NEVADA / CALIFORNIA

4/22 U of Denver, Denver, CO

4/23-26 CALIFORNIA

4/25 Idyllwild Arts Academy, Idyllwild, CA

4/26 Driving

4/27 Mount Hood College, Gresham, OR

4/28-5/1 OREGON / WASHINGTON / IDAHO

5/2 U of Wisconsin-Green Bay

5/3-6 ILLINOIS (North Central College?)

5/7 Pathways Idol Fundraiser (Emceeing!), Glenview, IL

SUMMER, 2011

5/13-14 Indianapolis, Indiana (Criteria)

5/19-29 Orlando Fringe Festival

Flyer for the Orlando Fringe, May 19-29!

6/20-26 American Association of Community Theatre, Rochester, NY

6/20-25 International Thespians Festival, Lincoln, NE

7/6-9 American Association of Teachers of French, Montreal, Quebec

7/17-19 Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, OR

8/4-14 Minnesota Fringe Festival, Minneapolis, MN

Flyer for the Minnesota Fringe, August 4-14!

FALL 2011

8/25-10/9 University of Central Oklahoma: Directing “Tartuffe”

10/10 KANSAS / COLORADO

10/11 COLORADO / WYOMING

10/12 UTAH / NEVADA (n)

10/13-14 (N) IDAHO / OREGON / CALIFORNIA (n)

10/15 Pacific City, OR

10/17 Linfield College, McMinnville, OR

10/18 OREGON / WASHINGTON

10/19 IDAHO / MONTANA

10/20 MONTANA / WYOMING

10/21 NORTH/SOUTH DAKOTA / NEBRASKA / KANSAS

10/22-23 MINNESOTA / IOWA

10/24 IOWA /MISSOURI / MINNESOTA / WISCONSIN

10/25 MISSOURI / WISCONSIN / ILLINOIS

10/26 Illinois State University, Normal, IL

10/27 ILLINOIS / INDIANA

10/28 INDIANA / MICHIGAN

10/29-30 MICHIGAN

10/31 INDIANA / OHIO

11/1 KENTUCKY / OHIO

11/2 KENTUCKY / TENNESSEE

11/3 TENNESSEE

11/4 TENNESSEE / WEST VIRGINIA

11/5 WEST VIRGINIA

11/6 WEST VIRGINIA / PENNSYLVANIA

11/7 Penn State-Fayette, Uniontown, PA (Moliere)

11/8 NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND

11/9 NEW ENGLAND

11/10 NEW ENGLAND / NEW JERSEY

11/11 NEW JERSEY / DELAWARE /MARYLAND / D.C.

11/12-13 MARYLAND

11/14 VIRGINIA

11/15 VIRGINIA / NORTH CAROLINA

11/16 NORTH/SOUTH CAROLINA

11/17 SOUTH CAROLINA / GEORGIA

11/18-20 GEORGIA / FLORIDA

11/21-23 FLORIDA

11/24-27 Thanksgiving Break

11/28 GEORGIA / ALABAMA

11/29 ALABAMA / MISSISSIPPI

11/30 LOUISIANA

12/1-4 ARKANSAS / LOUISIANA / TEXAS / OKLAHOMA

12/1-3 Texas Thespians Festival

12/5-6 NEW MEXICO / ARIZONA

12/7-11 CALIFORNIA

12/12 NEVADA

12/13 UTAH

12/14 COLORADO

12/15 KANSAS

12/16-17 MISSOURI

WINTER-SPRING 2012

1/2-2/25 GUEST ARTIST OPENING

2/27 WASHINGTON / OREGON

2/28 OREGON / CALIFORNIA

2/29 CALIFORNIA / NEVADA

3/1-4 CALIFORNIA (Rogue Festival, Fresno, CA)

3/5 ARIZONA / NEW MEXICO

3/6 TEXAS

3/7 Texas Weslyean University, Fort Worth, TX

3/8 TEXAS / LOUISIANA / MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA

3/9-11 SETC

3/12-13 FLORIDA

3/14 GEORGIA

3/15 SOUTH CAROLINA

3/16-17 NORTH CAROLINA

3/18 NORTH CAROLINA / TENNESSEE

3/19 TENNESSEE / GEORGIA

3/20 ALABAMA / TENNESSEE

3/21 ARKANSAS / MISSOURI

3/22 ARKANSAS / KANSAS / OKLAHOMA / MISSOURI

3/23 NEW MEXICO / KANSAS / COLORADO

3/24-25 COLORADO

3/26 COLORADO / UTAH / WYOMING

3/27 UTAH / NEVADA

3/28 NEVADA / IDAHO

3/29 OREGON

3/30 WASHINGTON / OREGON

3/31-4/1 WASHINGTON / IDAHO

4/2 IDAHO

4/3 IDAHO / MONTANA

4/4 MONTANA / WYOMING

4/5 MONTANA / NORTH/SOUTH DAKOTA

4/6 NEBRASKA / MINNESOTA / IOWA

4/7 IOWA / MISSOURI

4/8 MISSOURI

4/9 MISSOURI / ILLINOIS

4/10 Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville (Moliere)

4/11 KENTUCKY / INDIANA

4/12 INDIANA / OHIO

4/13 OHIO / WEST VIRGINIA

4/14-16 VIRGINIA

4/17 MARYLAND / DELAWARE / D.C.

4/18 NEW JERSEY / PENNSYLVANIA

4/19 PENNSYLVANIA / NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND

4/20-23 NEW ENGLAND

4/24 NEW YORK

4/25 NEW YORK / PENNSYLVANIA

4/26 PENNSYLVANIA / OHIO

4/27-29 MICHIGAN

4/30 INDIANA / ILLINOIS

5/1-2 ILLINOIS / WISCONSIN

5/3 WISCONSIN / MINNESOTA

5/4 MINNESOTA

The View From Here #148: GA / TN / OK / TX / AR / MI

2011-02-22T05:54:00.000-08:00

The book is out!

Front Cover
And it is totally amazing! I am astonished when I look at it and realize that this is something that more or less popped out of my head. (I suppose, considering the long build-up, this actually “seeped” out of my head.)

Nine years and 25 drafts later, I have followed through and followed through on every last detail of this project until I at last have copies in hand!

Here are some of reviews from colleagues who read advance copies of the manuscript:

Tim Mooney calls us back to the basics, and it's about time! Acting at the Speed of Life communicates with clarity, wisdom and practicality. This text belongs in every theatre artist's bookbag. Jeff Barker, Northwestern College Theatre Chair

I have been reading your text with unmatched enthusiasm. It unquestionably fills a niche that needs filling. As a product of "the 1950’s era Method,” I feel that this easily read text redresses some of the excesses of that Brando dominated era. How little attention was paid to the art of playing as so deftly defined by you in this book. You are right on in your analysis here. What you say is applicable to all manner of plays—modern as well as those from the classic past. Bravo! David Deacon, Theatre Professor, Texas A&M University-Kingsville

I really like your book. I can hear you speaking. All the examples from your own acting or teaching experiences really help to make it an easy read. I think this would go nicely into a classical acting class/ Acting Styles class. The advanced students are really hungry for this kind of information and can relate to what you are saying. I felt like I was sitting in one of your workshops again. NO other book I've read captures these simple tasks that are so important. I would recommend every acting student to have your book. Janice Fronczak, University of Nebraska-Kearney Theatre Chair

Thank You!!!!!!!!! I applied the acting advice in your book to an actual debate, and it worked! I was up against an opponent tonight with better name recognition, more experience in our union, and known as a good speaker. And I took him out! Your tips helped me feel prepared and more relaxed, and helped me keep the focus on the members, not on getting votes. Julie Blaha, Teachers Union Organizer, Minneapolis, MN

[It] shed a huge beam of light on some things in my life. You have a gift. You make acting accessible — hard work, yes, but quite within the realm of possibility. I definitely am no expert. However, I do know how much I'm reacting to your honesty. I don't think I'd be alone. Kelly Crandall, Theatre Student, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

The book for me is now a series of master-classes framed as a storyteller would relate them to me. In a way it reminded me of An Actor Prepares when I thought about how I use that book. I leaf through it [and] can read whatever chapter seems most compelling at the time. I see it as a sort of conversation with you, intended as much for directors as actors. Jim Ryan, Norman North High School Fine Arts Chair

Provocative… Many of its ideas are valuable for any one in or considering an acting career… What was striking was your errant disregard (shared by me) for psychology and the American Method! Sanford Robbins, U of Delaware Professional Actor Training Program Chair

I stayed up until 3 am yesterday reading your book! And I have a very short attention span. I just love how passionate you are about the craft and how human and sensitive and honest and funny your writing is. I am all inspired… also you have chosen some of my favorite monologues to prove a point and teach great lessons to actors. Alina Mostov, Actress

I have begun delving into the text [and] am anxious to get back to it... It seems like a important work that is what is needed to get back to storytelling in an effective way. Thank you so much

for the opportunity. Cameron Jackson, Florida State University, Theatre Chair
COPIES CAN ALREADY BE ORDERED via my newly retooled really fantastic website!

For this first week, it will take a little bit longer for distribution of books ordered through this website (until my first shipment o' books comes in). But, when you get them directly from me, you can also order them signed/inscribed however you like. The orders go through PayPal, which gives a little box to fill in stuff like:“Please autograph this ‘To Bobby! Thanks for the memories!’” (or somesuch…)

Or, if you prefer, you can order the book through my site at “CreateSpace,” which is https://www.createspace.com/3536617 . When you order through this site, $4 more of your purchase actually goes to the author (me), than would otherwise go to Amazon... whenever Amazon has it available to sell on their site.

Meanwhile! Rave reviews for The Misanthrope in Detroit! The Hilberry Repertory Theatre is performing my version of The Misanthrope, and here’s what I’ve been reading on-line:

Detroit Thetre Examiner: Directed by Jesse Merz, this show delights, visually, intellectually, and at the most basic comic levels. Merz uses the amazing translation by Tim Mooney – adapted for his own productions by Chicago’s Stage Two theatre – which delivers all Moliere’s mirth in the cleverest verse. The actors deliver the lines naturally enough, but at times pause significantly to allow the audience to anticipate and enjoy the inevitably crafty rhymes. (Patty Nolan)
Hillberry’s Misanthrope is a rhymed riot Why this send-up of manners has never lost its charm is plainly to have been seen and savored in the Hilberry Theatre production that opened Friday night. It’s a tour de force right down the line, from Moliere’s brilliant original to Timothy Mooney’s flavorful English adaptation to the spunky performances by the Hilberry company and director Jesse Merz. Lawrence B. Johnson, The Detroit News
Hillbery’s Misanthrope goes for the gold Timothy Mooney’s translation of Moliere’s wit survives the switch from the original French with wit intact. It is also wonderfully easy to understand – all while often rhyming, a feat in itself. The one-liners are wonderful, the wisdom both tongue-in-cheek and profound, and the dialogue quick and entertaining. Sue Suchyta, Dearborn Times-Herald Sunday Times
These may be the best reviews I’ve gotten for a show I had nothing to do with, other than having initially written the script… (actually, I did also write them a rhymed iambic pentameter pre-show announcement)… featuring lines like:
...we frown on such behavior. And as well
We must insist that you turn off your cell.
There's little in the theatre more vexing,
Unless it be some oafish type that's texting...

and

You ought to know this show has pyrotechnics,
And should some horrid fire ball here vex us
Or you should need to rush off to your Lexus,
Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with exits...

Where you last left me, I was moving down to Chattanooga… actually Chickamauga, about 20 miles south of Chattanooga, in an apartment on a horse farm, which gave me the kind of solitude I needed to crack down on the book, at the same time as I was working on my semi-annual 15,000 e-mail booking campaign.

The bookings were going significantly slower than in years past, and I finally made the decision to make a significant price cut, making up for the per-show losses by boosting the overall number of bookings. It seems to have rejuvenated the activity on-line… If you’re one of the many out there wanting to book a show one of these days, this may be the best opportunity for a long time!

The new price list can be downloaded via the fantistique new www.timmooneyrep.com website! I’m playing up the Twin-Titans of Theatre theme, with the combination of Moliere and Shakespeare in a single show. It feels a little more comic-booky, like those old Marvel or DC Comic book team-up issues where two superheros team up for one adventure.

With this new look, and the book I’ve been assembling, I finally broke down and bought a copy of Adobe Illustrator. I’ve been doing most of my posters either on Power Point, or on various test-versions of Illustrator. I would download Illustrator for a 30 day test period, and then try to get all of my flyers and posters for the year completed all at once. (Of course, when I return to flyer/poster mode a year later, the program has been upgraded, and I face another steep learning curve to bring myself up to speed on it.) (Much like the learning curve I face every time I want to put together a DVD… my immediate project.)

Somewhere around December 10 I realized that most of the teachers I was writing to were now off on holiday break, and so I shelved the e-mail campaign to do the excruciating detail work that the book seemed to demand. Poring over it a couple of more times, I was able to work out all of the occasional awkward phrasings, and made sense of the order of the thing, as well as the layout, ultimately uploading it to the printer’s website on Christmas morning!

I woke up Christmas morning to a gorgeous fluffy snow… reportedly the first Christmas snow this area has gotten since 1967.

I gave myself a teency bit off off-time, as April and Amber came down for a visit, and we did a little sightseeing on Lookout Mountain. A couple of days later, Isaac flew in to the Atlanta Airport, and more sightseeing ensued, as well as a DVD marathon, watching my favorite series of the last couple of years, “Pushing Daisies.”

With Isaac’s departure, I was back to work, juggling the e-mail marathon with a series of performances, I’d arranged with my good friend, Sabra, at the Barking Legs Theatre. Back in 2006, I’d performed the One-man Theatre Festival, performing three shows a night over the course of three nights, exhausting myself playing to tiny audiences. And yet, I’d gotten one fantastic review out of the event, which had eventually listed my shows at the top of the “Top 10 Events of 2006.” I thought I’d parley that publicity into a better attended “festival,” though this time I spread single performances of four shows over three days on subsequent weekends. And I did seem to be getting some good exposure… I bought an ad in the Alternative paper (The Pulse), which listed me as the “Best Bet” for the first weekend. I had an interview show up in the Times-Free Press and another interview on the local NPR affiliate.

Tiny houses.

Even after a huge, very positive review of Lot o’ Shakespeare showed up in The Pulse, the second weekend’s attendance showed barely a blip.

Some blamed the bad weather. (Tenneseeans don’t respond to snow very well.) Others speculated that it might be the theatre itself, which had built itself a reputation for hosting music and dance events, but not theatre. I, myself, questioned the ultimate viability of the multiple-play festival. Rather than getting 4-times the publicity and exposure, I wondered whether I was getting one-quarter of the attendance, as people were uncertain what was playing on any given night, or when to go to catch the one show that perhaps actually caught their eye among the flurry and blur surrounding four shows. Still, there was at least one terrific review:

Shakespeare a la Carte at Barking Legs Theater By Janis Hasche, Pulse Contributing Editor

As Tim Mooney cheerfully tells us during his one-man show, Lot o’ Shakespeare, it’s unlikely he’ll ever be cast as Macbeth. The lithe actor, with his mobile face and flexible, light voice, is made for comedy.

…So, when he energetically enters, in Elizabethan-style doublet, breeches and hose, this costume is topped by a jaunty jester’s hat, letting us know we are to be entertained. He’s devised several clever ways of involving his audience in the show: the monologues are selected by random, using a lottery-like rotating cage o’balls with numbers on them, and each audience member uses their “Iago Card”, given to them on admission, to cross off monologues, until, like bingo, someone gets four in a row and wins a Shakespeare T-shirt. (The Sweet Swan of Avon, a savvy businessman as well as a genius, would no doubt have approved heartily.)

… We also get to chime in with highlighted text on a screen when, in some cases, other characters have lines in the section Mooney is interpreting. He gives us a brief overview of each play’s plot before performing a section from it.

This approach adds lots of appeal to Mooney’s stated goal: accessibility. He wants those not immersed in Shakespeare’s sometimes convoluted verse to understand and enjoy the words and characters, and in this he succeeds admirably. That this sometimes comes at the expense of deep character actualization is a fair trade-off in a show such as this.

But when Mooney takes on characters that truly suit him, he shines. Standouts in the performance reviewed were one of the comically confused Antipholi from The Comedy of Errors, and Rosalind (as the boy Ganymede) in the famous speech from As You Like It in which she upbraids the shepherdess Phoebe. Others were his obsequious, brown-nosing Cranmer from Henry VIII and an excellent take on the completely self-deceived Malvolio from Twelfth Night, a character Mooney’s gifts make him a natural for. His preening and pauses as Malvolio tries to decipher the planted “letter” were hilarious…
With the “festival” behind me, I geared back up to get onto the road once more. I had a big conference in Houston, and churned out three new flyers and a large banner to drape along the table of my exhibit booth. With my lines once again secure in my brain (for the moment at least I had lines from four shows secured in my brain), I hit the road, dropping in on Dave and Helga in Tulsa (I hadn’t seen them in about 3 years!), swinging out to Edmond, Oklahoma for a Tartuffe production meeting at the University of Central Oklahoma (where I’ll be directing, and playing the role of Tartuffe next fall!), followed by a trip to Durant, Oklahoma, and a performance of Moliere than Thou.

This was one of those performances that the teacher and I have been trying to arrange for years, and we had a great time. I found out that he was quite a Shakespeare aficionado, and we discussed further plans for me to double back with Lot o’ Shakespeare in the near future.

On to Houston… I hadn’t done the Texas Educational Theatre Association in perhaps three years, but was delighted to see how many of them remembered me, and the kind of traffic that was coming by my table. One woman who I’d never met came by to proclaim herself as my biggest fan. She explained that in researching Moliere on-line, she’d come across my YouTube site, and was thrilled with the scenes that were available there.

At one point, I got on an elevator at the hotel, and several high school students, turning around to read my name badge started screaming “It’s Tim Mooney!” ... All in all, a good conference.

I came away with about 75 new contacts who’d signed my list, and got enthusiastic interest from folks who’d booked me in the past. Rather than hanging out in Moliere costume and wigs all the time, I now had the new Shakespeare costume, and could twirl the Bingo cage for the passers by to demonstrate how the new show works.

Of course, I didn’t have actual copies of my books-in-hand to sell to folks at this event, but I made a flyer out of the cover design of the book that I could distribute, with an order form on the back.

From there it was on to Arkansas, with a show at Harding University.

Harding was a Christian college in a conservative town, and my rambunctious workshop may have made a number of the attendees more nervous than I’d realized. I toned down the material for the evening show, and found myself walking a thin line between the double entendres that the show lays out… resisting my usual tendency to gesture broadly in some of the more salacious moments. They seemed to have a particular concern over the word “damn,” which is perhaps the mildest of the curse words in my particular lexicon, and so I found myself replacing it, somewhat awkwardly with “condemn.”

This school had booked both the Moliere and the Shakespeare show, and so, after a brief break I returned for another round. Lot o’ Shakespeare got off to a great start, but about 20 minutes into the show, I took a request for Julius Caesar, and couldn’t resist letting my voice “rip” on Antony’s final line, “…would move the stones of Rome to rise and mutiny!”

The scene went extremely well, but my voice was a poor shadow of itself for the remaining 35 minutes of the performance.

Returning to Chattanooga, I finally got back on line to see just what was taking the printer so long with my book. I discovered that they were still waiting on a re-submission of the document from me, along with my official “Proof Order,” and so I took that one last chance to make a few more changes, and to submit the document one more time. This time, the book went through, and I could order the proof the following day.

The proof was GORGEOUS. Shiny... and Glossy... and Crisp and Clean. Printing on both front AND back sides of the pages!

I spent four days seeing it through Fresh Eyes (I hadn't re-read it since December), and trimming it down to "fighting weight" of 232 pages. I reworked the table of contents, the index, and stumbled across the early reviews cited above, adding them to the front of the book. And... submitted it for proofing again...

While it was gone, I finally followed up on the Library of Congress number. Which is not the same as the ISBN number, nor is it supplied when copyright is established! The government websites were suggesting that the several phases of this application could slow me down as much as a month! Yikes!

With April's help, we applied for the LCCN, and got it in less than 48 hours! Stuck it onto the copyright page, and submitted the proof one more time!

While waiting for that to come back, I worked on a video project, featuring one piece from each of my 44 Shakespeare monologues (still in development...). Meanwhile, I posted some more scenes from Southeast Oklahoma and Harding U.

And then, I was off for Detroit! Racing up in a single day, I got there in time to catch an evening performance of The Misanthrope, which was terrific. Along the way I received news that I was chosen as one of the performers for the "Green Show" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for this coming summer! (More details in the next blog...)

The next day, was Parents Day at Isaac's school, and I found myself sitting through Advanced Placement classes in Chemistry, Calculus as well as French, History, Band and English... Stuff wayyyyy over my head.

Back once again the following night for dinner with the director, and another terrific performance of The Misanthrope.

The next morning was Isaac's 17th Birthday! (Where has the time gone?) BUT, he had to head off to swimming practice, and I was off on my way to Chicago, where Dad was finishing up on the closing of the old family home...

sold off after all of these years! It was kind of like the "8th Mooney". We enjoyed one final family reunion, before scattering to the four winds.

And then today, my book arrived!

Love,
Tim
Chattanooga from Point Lookout
Miles on the Escape: 56,000
On the I-Pod: Ben Folds
Discoveries: My seemingly absurd, pointless, relentless, stubborn project eventually manifested as something really amazing. * It's an amazing book! * The whole "writing thing" does seem to work well for me... * Trying to publicize four shows at once may get each individual show 1/4 of the publicity, rather than 4x the publicity. * Being 20 miles out of town on a horse farm was probably what enabled me to actually finish the book! * Much as I hate to drop my prices, it will probably do me better in the long run to have more performances where I can promote my book. * Any time I let a month go by between readings of my book, I see it through Fresh Eyes, which is dangerous. * It took a lot of faith to continue to follow-through every obstacle that came up (such as the LCCN), knowing that the way would smooth itself out for me, if I just continued to believe in the work.
Attendance: 50 + 200 + 45 + 250 + 15 = 560

The View From Here #147: CA, OR, ID, MI, KY, OH, PA, VA, WV, SC

2010-11-24T13:18:00.000-08:00

San Francisco Bay from Point Richmond

The fall tour is complete!

Following a flurry of performances over the past two weeks, I find myself suddenly with time on my hands!

At the moment, I’m somewhere in the southeastern states (I have no idea where I’ll be by the time I’ve actually posted this blog), catching up with family in Virginia and heading for Chattanooga, Tennessee…

But, as to how I got here…

Mount Shasta from Interstate 5

From Salt Lake City, I proceeded to Reno, NV (Avoid the Peppermill Casino/Hotel! Yechh!), San Francisco, where I caught up with Risa and saw Bill Irwin performing Scapin!), Fresno (catching up with Airplane Jayne), and Los Angeles (where I caught up with Kirsten, who is working on her own one-woman show these days).

The California Lutheran University performance has been in negotiations for about two years, and the French prof hosted myself and the theatre professors to a sumptuous dinner at a small French restaurant, in advance of the show, which was extremely well received, capped off with a standing ovation (…In fact, I think every performance of this fall got a standing ovation, so I’ll stop bringing that up…), and we captured some fun video, as well.

A long review appeared in the CLU school paper, saying, in part:

Tim Mooney single-handedly entertained audience “Moliere than Thou” packed the Preus-Brandt Forum on Monday, Oct. 4… Mooney interacted with the audience by reciting his rhyming verses and making his way through the rows of people, even crawling over seats… compelling them to burst into laughter.

Canon Beach, Oregon

Anticipating an event for some 40 high school theatre teachers in Oregon, I was trying to pull together the latest variation of my book (new chapter available at http://actingatthespeedoflife.blogspot.com/ ) so that I could show it off the teachers who might want to buy a copy. I wasn’t able to actually “publish” the book in time (still working on the index), but I managed to photocopy the book back-to-front in such a way that I actually got a sense of what it would feel like to flip through the book (now fitting onto half as many pieces of paper!).

The Oregon event rocked, with interest in both my upcoming book and my bookings. I even dropped by a previous venue on my way to the conference, and they were like: “Tim! We were just talking about booking you again! What dates are you available next?”

Racing back through Portland, I visited with Bruce, my webmaster, about new plans for the websites, particularly featuring the new book. (As a self-publisher, I am calling my publishing venture “TMRT Press” after the “Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre.”)

Western Washington, from Interstate 90

I haven’t been able to book anything in Washington State for ages, but my Seattle buddy, David, has a great basement apartment, and throws terrific parties. As such, he invited a bunch of friends over, and I did Lot o’ Shakespeare for them (forgetting lines for several monologues…!). David and I went to catch a performance of “Doctor in Spite of Himself” at the Intiman Theatre (which has been getting great reviews on-line). Much like the “Scapin” at A.C.T., it was flush with contemporary references and playful clowning… The serious theatre-goers ate it up, and I enjoyed some of the schtick, but still mostly preferred the lines of my variations.

I headed for Coeur d’Alene, and my friends at North Idaho College. I dropped in on a couple of Joe Jacoby’s classes, and performed “Criteria” for them that night. My last go-around with “Criteria” had been for a large group of Japanese exchange students, so I was relieved to be reminded that it DOES, indeed, work, and that students DO pick up on the subtleties hidden in the subtext, as well as getting really revved up with the climax of the thriller. (I also tried out some of my poetry on a handful of students who stuck around for an "encore.")

This review appeared in the NIC school paper:

Mooney tells story of divided U.S., invokes laughter with 'Criteria' Mooney physically and verbally tells this story in such a way that he takes the audience along for the ride, running and leaping over imagined obstacles while delivering descriptive monologue. He gives every fiber of his being to paint a mental picture for his audience … This stirring look at a bleak potential future is a captivating analysis of the social problems of our day and specifically how the real burden will be felt by the generations to come. –Keith Sande, NIC Sentinel

I visited Joe Proctor in Montana, and several friends in Minneapolis before dropping back to Chicago for a few days, just in time for the anniversary of my mom’s passing one year ago.

Onward to Michigan, I dropped in on one of Isaac’s swim meets, before continuing on to Saginaw, Michigan, and a performance of “Moliere Than Thou” at Saginaw Valley State University.

The French teacher there was a big enthusiast, and brought me in to address her French class. The theatre was a large recital hall, and the audience started low in their reactions, but seemed to build from one scene to the next. The Tartuffe volunteer scene won the audience over, as the volunteer, encouraged by the cameraman, who she was sitting next to, was a very young girl. (I finally got the opportunity to use a line that I’d meant to improvise at a similar event years before: “Do your parents KNOW the meaning of the word ‘seduce?’”)

The next day, a “Google Alert” set to my name informed me that a student who saw the Saginaw show had blogged about it:

Yesterday, I went to a play called "Moliere Than Thou". I thought it would be all educational and stuff, because I was going for my French class, but it was completely hilarious.

This guy, Tim Mooney, translated a ton of Moliere plays into rhymed English and in "Moliere Than Thou", he plays Moliere performing a bunch of his greatest hits. Goodness, it was funny. He calls women in the audience up to the stage to help him perform, and pretty much all of his characters... like to seduce women. So... lots of girls got seduced. Including some girl who volunteered and turned out to be, like, twelve.

That was kind of awkward.

Likewise, the host wrote:

Thanks again for an amazing performance and workshop!! My students are still talking about it... I am hoping we can have you come back again in the not-too-distant future!

I found out that your underage seduction victim was the sister of one of my students, and her parents have given the OK to post the video. My students keep talking about this moment in particular, so I'd love to see this on Youtube, along with any of the other "seduction" scenes, which were so funny…! (Julie Foss)

The next day I was racing through some near-tornado conditions to Cincinnati, with a show at Northern Kentucky University that night. This is the third time that NKU has brought me in, but this time, the French teacher teamed up with a number of allies in the area. Applying for a matching grant from Kirsten’s program, she was encouraged to seek broad support and recruit an audience widely. Whereas past performances at NKU were to modest groups of a few dozen, this time some 220 or so attended, including dignitaries from the French “sister city” of Cincinnati.

From the host:

You were wonderful. The French officials and all the AF and AATF members were more than pleased with your performance (and that is a major compliment!) for having been the President of the AF of Cincy for two years and a board member for even longer, I know only too well how critical the French can be… We had 40 participants in the workshop and 220 at the show, and those numbers are amazing at NKU--even more amazing than normal when one considers the weather of the day. (Barbara Klaw)

From one of the high school French teachers in attendance (writing to Barbara Klaw):

Thank you for bringing about last night's program. Our students really enjoyed it, as did our teachers. Cassidy, the first to join Mr. Mooney on the stage, is a student of French and of drama, so she was "on cloud nine!" Our drama teacher was with our group, and she is planning to do "Tartuffe" with the students this winter, so she was thrilled to be able to see how Mooney handled the various characters and costuming. Une vraie réussite! Grand merci, (Maureen Motsinger)

From the Drama teacher (who bought a copy of my Tartuffe script):

It was a joy watching your performance (at NKU) and I am also delighted with your script! Great advice to directors, especially high school and college, who try to impose their brand when Moliere has already branded it. I would be most grateful for additional advice regarding exercises to help young actors perform the physicality, demands of timing, and language. I mentioned that I directed Scapino! and am comfortable with farce, but the verse seems more challenging and I am concerned about a sing songy quality dominating the rhythm rather than the intentions of the characters. You said you are working on a book, which I would love to get a copy of when it’s finished, but in the meantime I would be most grateful for any pearls of wisdom you can share. (Mandy Volpenheim, Scott High School)

[For those of you who might be thinking the same thing, the book is indeed coming along (Due on Moliere’s birthday, January 15!), with FREE chapters now available at http://actingatthespeedoflife.blogspot.com/ .]

Back to Steubenville, Ohio, where they were producing my Bourgeois Gentleman, I holed up in a hotel working on e-mails to Shakespeare Festivals (promoting Lot o’ Shakespeare), and actually arrived late to the rehearsal I was dropping in on. (My computer clock was still set to Central Time!) The rehearsal was terrific though, and I later learned that one of the actors spotted me in the back of the audience, and word spread rapidly through the cast that the author was in the house!

From the director, a couple of weeks later:

After much labor it would seem that we ended up with a highly successful production of The Bourgeois Gentleman. We played to mostly full houses, had several return customers, and I've been receiving messages from many colleagues who were absolutely delighted by the show. One of the most rewarding aspects of it all: the cast had the time of their lives. … Thanks so much for the gift of your script and for the many measures you took to help us bring this show to life! (Monica Anderson)

That same weekend I had a similar experience, as I went to the Millersville University version of my School for Husbands in its world premiere!

I’d had virtually no contact with this school, mostly communicating through the production manager, and was thereby delightfully surprised to see just how effectively they’d captured the style of the play.

This was a script that I’d written some 13 years ago, and it was terrific to find that it felt fresh and sharp… and that they hadn’t felt the need to “screw with it” to make it funny. In fact, never having actually seen it on its feet before, I was pleasantly surprised to see how charming the presentation was.

In fact, I videotaped the performance for them, and you can find the entire show on my YouTube channel. Here’s a sample scene:

The next nine days featured six shows and eleven workshops in quick succession! Gettysburg College was a VERY fun show. Even though the Theatre students were almost all in rehearsal the night of my performance, the French folks PACKED the place, with a standing room only crowd. Afterwards, a fellow who’d been trying to book me for almost 10 years came up to introduce himself! (I’d long ago given up on ever getting to do the show for him!)

The teacher noted:

It was wonderful and the students are raving about it in class! I believe it was by far the most attended and successful event we have had since the start of National French Week 8 years ago! I hope we'll be able to bring you back! (Florence Ramond Jurney)

Zipping down Interstate 81, along the “spine” of western Virginia to a show at Virginia Intermont College, I was inundated with Facebook messages, wishing me a “Happy Birthday”. Given that this was the year AFTER the “big one,” I wasn’t planning on making a big deal out of it (thus scheduling a show on the day of, and the day after it), but once the Facebook universe gets hold of an idea, they go wild.

Some hundred or so messages and replies later, I ran a Commedia workshop at Virginia Intermont, followed by a fun “Moliere Than Thou.”

The next morning I was off to Charleston, West Virginia, and the West Virginia Theatre Conference. The host there, Dennis Wemm, had brought me in to perform twice previously, and has given me some terrific endorsements over the years. When I walked into the lobby of the venue, Dennis and two of his cohorts sang “Happy Birthday” to me in lush three-part harmony.

Given that I’d not performed this show since Seattle (when my lines were pretty shaky), I’d been reciting Shakespeare pretty obsessively for the past week or so.

By show time, I was geared up and ready, but the (union) technicians insisted that I wear a microphone through the course of the show. (“We need to be able to hear you backstage so that we can operate the slide show properly.”) Rather than risk losing the slide show, I allowed them to hook me up with a lapel mic, but resented it more and more as the show went on, particularly as the monitor backstage was so loud that I could hear my own voice coming back at me, and, since my voice was never intended to come through the main speakers, the audience assumed that the mic that I was wearing was broken (as opposed to appreciating how well I was projecting). Also, the attendance was very low, with only about twenty of the hundred or so participating in the festival coming out for Shakespeare.

Those who WERE present, though, were very responsive, and the show warmed up as it went, with several well-received monologues, though none so popular as the Julius Caesar piece. (Three out of four people tend to cite that one as their favorite.)

The next morning, I delivered my usual “Acting in the Classical Theatre” workshop, featuring my usual “Being seen and being heard” lecture, but in the middle of the event, all of the lights in the theatre went out! (Ironic, n’cest pas?) Fortunately, I was just about to launch into a monologue that I knew by heart, and the students actually listened much more attentively in the dark. A few people lit their cell phones and their laptops, at least until the union stagehands came in to chase us out of the darkened theatre.

South Carolina’s Columbia College put me up in a guest house, with a lovely package of snacks and provisions waiting in the refrigerator. Arriving a day in advance, I had plenty of time to run all of the Shakespeare monologues onstage, figuring out just when I would be using the stage itself, and when I’d descend into the “pit” area in front of the first row. I also managed to arrange for a student to videotape the show, and captured the best footage I’ve gotten of the show so far.

While the performance itself was going extremely well, with hoots and cheers going up with the completion of each monologue, I found myself searching the audience for men to “cast,” to speak to a “Romeo,” for instance, or the evil brothers in “Titus Andronicus,” but the only men I could spot were several rows back. It wasn’t until I mentioned this, casually to my host that she noted that this was actually an all-female college.

Up early the next morning, I raced up to Spartanburg, SC, with a Shakespeare performance at the Spartanburg Day School. As opposed to the long prep time for the Columbia College show, this time I arrived at 7:30 and started the performance at 9 am. I was on an open platform in a room with tall windows flooding the space with light, so there was little sense in making adjustments beyond than running the usual simultaneous slide show.

There were about 150 students in the audience and, though this group was drawn from the general student population, after a few monologues they really seemed to get into the rhythm of the thing. I was very aware of the evident pleasure of the faculty sitting towards the back, as they responded to the effectiveness of the Shakespearean monologues that they had spent so much of their careers advocating.

This theme continued to play out over the next three days, as I dropped in on one French class, one Theatre class and six English classes. In the English classes, I was largely able to play “Shakespeare Jukebox” with them, chatting about the performance value of the words themselves, and demonstrating with monologues. (Again, Julius Caesar was the overwhelming favorite, requested for almost every class.) One teacher wrote to say:

I think your work with the kids was the best and most substantive of any visiting artist during my time at SDS. (David McPherson)

I raced off once more, with a Shakespeare show that same night in Florence, South Carolina, at Frances Marion University (where I’d performed Moliere three years prior), and by this time, I was feeling in the groove of Shakespeare. With four performances in less than a week, in four very different settings, I was comfortable adapting to whatever new environment was thrown my way.

My host, Jon Tuttle, a playwright-friend, whose “The Hammerstone” I’d produced back when I was running Stage Two about sixteen years ago, was again quite happy with the results, although we seemed to enjoy going out for beer just as much as the performance itself. With some 200 people showing up and enjoying Shakespeare, Jon’s response was the same as three years prior: “Thanks for making me look good!”

Later, the school newspaper chimed in:

Tim Mooney makes Shakespeare accessible

...He performed sonnets, comedies, tragedies and histories. One minute, he was wielding a sword and calling for bravery as the title character of "Henry V," and the next he was enthusiastically discussing possible sexual exploits as the plump Falstaff in "Merry Wives of Windsor." Mooney showed a great deal of memorization, range and overall talent as he moved through monologues. One student, history major Debra Walters, was thrilled by the performance. "I was enthralled. My favorite [monologue] was 'Henry V'," Walters said. "As a historian, that was my favorite."

Tuttle also had nothing but good things to say about Mooney and his performance. "I also enjoy anything Tim Mooney does," Tuttle said. "He's such a tireless, generous performer and a good person." Mooney told the audience that one of his goals with "Lot O' Shakespeare" was to show people that Shakespeare is not boring, that it can be understood and enjoyed by anybody. If the audience reaction is any indication, Tim Mooney seems to have accomplished this goal at FMU. (Shannon Pratt, The Patriot News)

Dad and Maureen

And with that, the Fall tour was complete. I took a run up to Norfolk, Virginia to drop in on Dad, Maureen and her husband, Tim, in their new home on the Chesapeake Bay. I spent a couple of days walking around, spotting dolphins and watching football, before taking off for Chattanooga.

I spent two days driving around Chattanooga, learning about its neighborhoods, all the while looking for “For Rent” signs. The better neighborhoods didn’t seem to have these signs up, and so I started drawing on my resources, checking in with my friends in the area and putting an ad up on Craigslist.

Chickamauga Horse Farm

One response to the Craigslist ad came in after I’d already made my way back to Chicago: a horse farm about 20 miles south of Chattanooga, in the mountains of northern Georgia. After some last minute negotiations my good friend Sabra took a drive down to the horse farm to capture photos, and I decided to go for it.

As such, I will be moving to a horse farm in Northern Georgia right after Thanksgiving!

Yipes! That seems so funny to read in print!

In front of Chesapeake Bay

For now, this is a temporary move… something to bridge the winter break in somewhat warmer environs, now that the old homestead in Arlington Heights is up for sale, but I remain open to the possibility that I might fall in love with the area, or perhaps want to continue to explore new horizons in upcoming years. I’m sure, though, my path will continue to wind its way back through Chicago, now and again.

Love,

Tim

Temperature: 70s, dropping to the low 20s.

Discoveries: I’m so used to playing monologues for laughs, I’m not prepared for the wealth of emotion that they respond with when I do Shakespeare. The response to “Julius Caesar” has probably surprised me more than anybody. * The value of a play is not ALWAYS tied up in how much it manages to make the audience laugh. Sometimes, people like stories for the value of a good story. * School for Husbands, while less controversial or cutting edge than most of Moliere’s plays, is still a pleasing jewel-of-a-play. * Resist microphones! They never work the way you hope they will! And they undermine the value of the actual human voice! * Teachers are very relieved to hear the words that they’ve been teaching all these years, brought to life, making sense of the convoluted syntax that keeps students at such a distance.

Reading: The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum

On the i-pod: MC Lars The Graduate (featuring the funniest song ever written about Moby Dick.)

Attendance: 200+ 170 + 40 + 8 + 60 + 150 + 30 + 220 + 175 + 25 + 150 + 200 + 135 + 100 + 200 = 1563

Next show: Southeastern Oklahoma University, 1/24; Workshop at Texas Educational Theatre Assn 1/27-30.

Dolphin swimming in the Chesapeake Bay

The View From Here #146: IN, IL, PA, NC, IL, MO

2010-09-24T16:54:00.001-07:00

My phone crashed!

I guess we’re used to hearing about my various computers crashing, but this time my phone crashed, and with it all of my numbers and addresses!

If you’re a faithful (more or less) reader of The View From Here, this would be the perfect time to e-mail me your name/address/phone number (to tim@timmooneyrep.com) so that I can make sure that I’ve got you entered into my hot new 3G/4G-coolest-phone-ever… which I am desperately trying to figure out how to make work, even as I type these words.

And, while you’re sending me your info… here’s another thought…

I’ve spent this summer doing about four new drafts on the new book: Acting at the Speed of Life, and I’ve got 99.9% of my typos squeezed out of the text, and the narrative trimmed down to fighting weight.

It expands on my workshop, Acting in the Classical Theatre, introduces some other ideas and exercises, and captures some wry and (if-I-do-say-so-myself) hilarious anecdotes and life lessons as well. The book (260 pp, give or take) is right on the brink of completion, and I am planning to have it self-published by Moliere's birthday, January 15, 2011, if not before. (Selling for $19.95 plus shipping.)

For a limited time, you can order a copy of the very first edition!

If this sounds like the sort of thing that you want for your personal library (or your acting class, or your cast…), then please mention that in your e-mail to tim@timmooneyrep.com (I’ll even autograph it if you want!…or… not.) You don’t have to pay for it now, but if I know that you want a copy, I can adjust my numbers to the anticipated size of the order!

IN THE MEANTIME... in case you're not sure if it's something you'll want ... I am starting a NEW BLOG!!!

I am going to release selected chapters of the new book to my new blog! I'll be uploading a new chapter every week! Given that some of you are more interested in Moliere from the French perspective, than the Acting perspective, I don't want to drag you through a lot of my wonky Acting theories (actually, they're not wonky AT ALL! That's me feigning humility...), and so, when you send this ALL-IMPORTANT E-MAIL back to me(!), do let me know if you'd like to be on the list for the new blog! (Which you can find: HERE.)

I'll be putting chapters out in somewhat random order, and once the book is published, I expect I'll be using the new blog for other postings on acting and the theatre. (Once I start something like this, I generally find something to continue to talk about...!)

In OTHER publishing news…

In honor of my 15th script published through Playscripts, Inc, they have made me this month’s “Featured Playwright” in their newsletter that just went out to some 25,000 producers and theatre practitioners. In it, they include my bio and my answers to four interview questions, as follows:

Timothy Mooney
Timothy Mooney has given tens of thousands of students their first introduction to Moliere through his one-man play, Moliere Than Thou. He has written seventeen iambic pentameter variations of the plays of Moliere, produced around the world. High School productions of Mr. Mooney's The Misanthrope, The Miser, The Imaginary Invalid, and Tartuffe have gone on to state finals in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina and Alabama. Mr. Mooney continues to present Moliere across North America, while teaching classical acting and performing his other one-man shows, including the sci-fi thriller Criteria and Lot o' Shakespeare!
What made you decide to become a playwright?
When I was an actor, I believed that it was the directors who got all of the power and control, but when I was a director I could see that that person was really the playwright... though, now that I'm the playwright, the life of an actor looks pretty good.
What's the best thing about being a playwright?
Stumbling onto the perfect word at two in the morning, that makes me howl with laughter as I write it, and then discovering, years later, that same word makes an audience, likewise, howl with laughter.Why have you made Playscripts the home for your plays?
I could see Playscripts leading the play publishing universe (sometimes kicking and screaming) into the current century, using the power of the internet, both as a distributive and an interactive force, without skimping on the books-in-hand that are such a tactile joy.
What are you working on now?
When not on tour performing Moliere Than Thou or Lot o' Shakespeare, I'm working on an acting book, (Acting at the Speed of Life) aimed at supporting actors who are tackling classical material.

But back to “The View From Here!” Where last we left me, I was wrapping up the Indianapolis Fringe! The last two Indy shows went well, though the full houses I’d hoped for never quite materialized. The next to last show was the last show of the day in my space, so the technician let me run over. I don’t know if a 75 minute show is simply a better time span to grasp the vastness of Shakespeare’s vision, but the response was exceptionally enthusiastic, ending with a standing ovation. Then, to top things off, on the final, Saturday show, I took a lot of requests (once the t-shirt had been won via the random bingo-spin), and afterwards, seemingly about half of the audience came up to put tips in my tip jar!

For one scene, I requested a volunteer for the sexual harassment scene of Measure for Measure, and a girl volunteered, noting “What’s the difference? I get that at work every day!”

April and her daughter Amber came down to see that show, and Amber ran the video camera so that we could capture some fresh video which would feature the new costume. (captured on a new video camera, purchased after my last camera was stolen in Minneapolis…!)

We drove back to Chicago right after that performance, and I got back just as the Chicago Fringe was getting underway, with the opening night party that same night!

The Chicago performances were thinly attended… On the one hand, I didn’t know who in Chicago to invite who hadn’t seen the show already! And then when I saw the conditions of the auditorium, with audience seated on boards stretched across cinder blocks in an un-air-conditioned room (I thought of this as the Theatre Gulag!), I was hesitant to promote it. Even so, several close friends came, including Michael Herzovi, who I hadn't seen since college, and my friend, Linda, from Dramatic Publishing.

I managed to get through the festival without doing too much harm to my dignity, with audiences of 8, 9, 5, 15 and 20 over the five performances, and got packed and onto the road the very next day with the official start of the fall tour.

And with that particular departure, I said au revoir to Dad, who, by the time of my first return, would be on the road himself. After 48 years in the same house, he was moving to Norfolk, Virginia, where he now lives with my sister, Maureen, and her husband, Tim. It’s the end of an era…

First stop: Detroit, and dinner and a movie with Isaac.

Then, on to Steubenville, Ohio, where I would be performing Moliere Than Thou, and doing workshops with the students, who were working on a production of my version of Bourgeois Gentleman.

The show was a blast. The theatre was almost packed, with a group of students that had bussed in from about an hour away. The video doesn’t quite capture the electricity of the event, (which was so edgy that there were a couple of walkouts during the Tartuffe scene), but there was one very memorable ad-lib sequence (below), when I apparently stumbled across a reviewer while climbing through the audience.

The workshops the next day were almost as good. I did an hour in the afternoon about “the business side” of acting, followed by Acting in the Classical Theatre, which seems to have significantly improved, after all of the time that I’ve spent on the book this past summer. The actors in Bourgeois Gentleman were listening very attentatively, and we did a little bit of extra exploration with monologues and scenes from that show. One of the exercises went so well, that I immediately went back to my computer and added a chapter to the book, while integrating the exercise into my workshop lineup. (It was one of those scenes where the actors speak in fragments of lines of verse, with several one or two-word lines combining to make up larger lines, and four actors working together to create order in the midst of chaos.)

I got the chance to try out that new material almost immediately, as my next stop, at Wake Forest University, was bringing me in for workshops only. They, too, were producing a Moliere play, though not one of my scripts, and I did a French class, a Theatre workshop and a combined Life-of-Moliere workshop.

They put me up in the poshest hotel I think I’ve ever been in. It was a grand mansion.

My host pointed out at least twice before the final workshop that I would have access to a dressing room, so I took that as a sign that they would really like this workshop done in costume. Given that I’d already given much of my Life of Moliere material to the French class earlier on, I donned some of the Moliere costume for the evening workshop, and added as much performance to this event as I had stored away in my memory. All seemed pleased and even the director of the Moliere production, who’d chosen some OTHER translator for her text, seemed to appreciate the stylistic direction that my workshop was promoting.

I headed home the next day, making it as far as Indianapolis, where I met up once again with the host of the Fringe Festival, who was now engaging in serious conversations about hosting all four of my one-man shows as part of a two week One-Man-One-Man Theatre Festival this coming May. It also happened that a big booking conference was going on in town, and I stuck around the next morning, to hang out in the exhibit hall for an hour or so, running into a bunch of people that I’d met on the booking conference circuit.

Back home. I had a show at Dominican University the next day, which was very well received. The French professor ran the video camera, so I came away with a bit of footage on that one. And, like many of my recent bookings, I was actively promoting the Shakespeare show as an effective follow-up for next year.

That weekend the old homestead seemed quiet and empty. I was working on getting the Shakespeare show back up to speed, and putting together a photo session. April took pictures of the new show (the product of which you’ve seen scattered throughout, above). A few weeks ago, I’d gotten an offer from Marcus Fernando, a good friend from the Canadian Fringe circuit several years back, that if I needed any help with photoshopping, that he’d be happy to contribute his talents… and so I sent to him some of the best shots that April had captured, and he almost immediately turned around the PERFECT composite photo below.

Off again… this time to St. Joseph, Missouri, with performances of both Moliere and Shakespeare in a single night! Last March, with the very first public performance of Lot o’ Shakespeare, I'd also done both, feeling extremely apprehensive, but LoS had grown a lot since last March, and I was confident enough that either show might stand on their own.

But together…? I thought their heads were going to explode!

MTT went about as well as some of my best performances, with an audience of perhaps 150 responding raucously, and a standing ovation at the end. LoS was almost as successful… with several t-shirts sold after the fact, and enthusiastic students coming up to shake my hand.

The next morning, I was pushing west, with a stop in Kearney, Nebraska, droping in on a friend from UN-Kearney and then on to Denver, CO, to check in with friends from DU, all of whom continue to talk about wanting to book another show.

I’ve had a bit of down time before my Monday, October 4 show at California Lutheran, and holing up in Salt Lake City, Fresno and L.A., I've managed to do some final prep-work on “The Book”.

Okay, now that you’ve read all the way through to the end… don’t forget your assignment from the beginning of this newsletter:

Send me your contact info (address/phone to tim@timmooneyrep.com), and indicate if you’d like to order a copy (or copies) of the new book, or to be added to the new blog list!

Love,
Tim

Miles on the Escape: 36,000
Temperature: 90s falling to the 50s
Discoveries: I was actually relieved that my phone crashed, as finally I could get a phone that wasn’t dependent on Palm Software, which enabled me to get the very flashy Evo! * The real entertainment value of farce comedies performed in verse is seeing just how, even in the very formal structure of verse, riotous chaos can ensue.
Next performances: California Lutheran University, 10/4; Rogue Theatre Festival, 10/5
On the I-Pod: Kate Nash, Shakira, The Killers

Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre Tour Schedule
(Available dates in CAPITAL LETTERS; Already-booked dates in GREEN; Pending bookings in PURPLE) )

FALL 2010
10/4 California Lutheran U, Thousand Oaks, CA
10/5-7 CALIFORNIA / OREGON
10/8 Oregon Theatre Arts Association, Cannon Beach, OR
10/8-9 OREGON / WASHINGTON
10/10-11 WASHINGTON / OREGON
10/12 North Idaho College, Coeur d’Alene, ID
10/13 IDAHO / MONTANA / UTAH
10/14 UTAH / COLORADO / MONTANA
10/15-16 WYOMING / SOUTH/NORTH DAKOTA / NEBRASKA
10/17-18 MINNESOTA
10/10 U-Wisconsin-GB, Green Bay, WI
10/20 WISCONSIN / ILLINOIS
10/21-22 ILLINOIS / INDIANA / MICHIGAN / IOWA
10/23-24 INDIANA / MICHIGAN
10/25 Saginaw Valley State University, Saginaw, MI
10/26 Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY
10/27 KENTUCKY
10/28-29 PENNSYLVANIA / NEW YORK
10/30-31 NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND
11/1 NEW ENGLAND
11/2 Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA
11/3 NEW JERSEY / DELAWARE / MARYLAND / DC
11/4 Virginia Intermont College, Bristol, VA
11/5-6 West Virginia Theatre Association
11/7 SOUTH CAROLINA
11/8 Columbia College, Columbia, SC
11/9-10 Spartanburg Day School, Spartanburg, SC
11/11 Francis Marion University, Florence, SC
11/12-13 SOUTH CAROLINA / GEORGIA / FLORIDA
11/14-15 TENNESSEE / ALABAMA / MISSISSIPPI
11/16-17 ARKANSAS / LOUISIANA
11/18-22 TEXAS
11/23-24 OKLAHOMA / KANSAS / MISSOURI / IOWA / ILLINOIS
11/25-28 THANKSGIVING
11/29-12/11 TENNESSEE

WINTER/SPRING 2011
1/17-18 TENNESSEE
1/19-20 MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA
1/21 Southeast Oklahoma University, Durant, OK
1/22-23 ARKANSAS / LOUISIANA / OKLAHOMA
1/24-26 TEXAS
1/27-30 Texas Educational Theatre Association, Houston, TX
1/31-2/1 LOUISIANA / MISSISSIPPI / ARKANSAS
2/2 ALABAMA / GEORGIA
2/3 FLORIDA
2/4-5 Highlands Little Theatre, Sebring, FL
2/6-7 FLORIDA
2/8-10 GEORGIA / TENNESSEE / NORTH CAROLINA
2/25-3/1 Alabama Thespian Festival/Randolph School, Huntsville, AL
3/2-6 SETC, Atlanta, GA
3/7 TENNESSEE / KENTUCKY
3/8 Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, WV
3/9-10 WEST VIRGINIA / OHIO / INDIANA
3/10-13 Pathways to Successful Living Seminar
3/15 Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL
3/14-17 MICHIGAN / MISSOURI / WISCONSIN / ILLINOIS / OHIO /INDIANA
3/18 U-Penn-Fayette, Fayette, PA
3/19-22 PENNSYLVANIA / NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND
3/23-24 NEW JERSEY / DELAWARE / MARYLAND / DC / VIRGINIA
3/25-27 VIRGINIA / NORTH/SOUTH CAROLINA
3/28-31 GEORGIA / FLORIDA
4/1-2 GEORGIA / ALABAMA / TENNESSEE / MISSISSIPPI
4/3-4 MISSISSIPPI / ARKANSAS / LOUISIANA / MISSOURI / TEXAS
4/5 Texas Wesleyan University, Ft. Worth, TX
4/5-8 TEXAS / OKLAHOMA
4/9-11 KANSAS / MISSOURI
4/12-13NEBRASKA / IOWA
4/14 Saint John’s Prep, Collegeville, MN
4/15-16 MINNESOTA / WISCONSIN
4/17-18 NORTH DAKOTA / SOUTH DAKOTA / COLORADO
4/19-21MONTANA / IDAHO / UTAH / NEVADA
4/22-25 WASHINGTON / OREGON
4/26-30 CALIFORNIA
5/1-3 NEVADA / ARIZONA / NEW MEXICO
5/4-6 UTAH / COLORADO
5/6-9 TEXAS / OKLAHOMA
5/9-13 LOUISIANA / ARKANSAS / MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA

SUMMER, 2011
5/5-15 Indianapolis, Indiana
5/19-29 (est) Orlando Fringe Festival
6/20-26 American Association of Community Theatre, Rochester, NY

FALL 2011
8/25-10/9 University of Central Oklahoma: Directing “Tartuffe”
10/10 KANSAS
10/11 KANSAS / NEBRASKA
10/12 COLORADO / WYOMING
10/13 COLORADO / UTAH
10/14 (N) NEVADA / UTAH / IDAHO
10/15-16 (N) CALIFORNIA / OREGON
10/17-18 OREGON / WASHINGTON
10/19 IDAHO / MONTANA
10/20 MONTANA / WYOMING
10/21 NORTH/SOUTH DAKOTA / NEBRASKA
10/22-23 MINNESOTA / IOWA
10/24 IOWA /MISSOURI / MINNESOTA / WISCONSIN
10/25 MISSOURI / WISCONSIN / ILLINOIS
10/26 ILLINOIS
10/27 ILLINOIS / INDIANA
10/28 INDIANA / MICHIGAN
10/29-30 MICHIGAN
10/31 INDIANA / OHIO
11/1 KENTUCKY / OHIO
11/2 KENTUCKY / TENNESSEE
11/3 TENNESSEE
11/4 TENNESSEE / WEST VIRGINIA
11/5 WEST VIRGINIA
11/6 WEST VIRGINIA / PENNSYLVANIA
11/7 PENNSYLVANIA / NEW YORK
11/8 NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND
11/9 NEW ENGLAND
11/10 NEW ENGLAND / NEW JERSEY
11/11 NEW JERSEY / DELAWARE /MARYLAND / D.C.
11/12-13 MARYLAND
11/14 VIRGINIA
11/15 VIRGINIA / NORTH CAROLINA
11/16 NORTH/SOUTH CAROLINA
11/17 SOUTH CAROLINA / GEORGIA
11/18-20 GEORGIA / FLORIDA
11/21-23 FLORIDA
11/24-27 Thanksgiving Break
11/28 GEORGIA / ALABAMA
11/29 ALABAMA / MISSISSIPPI
11/30 Louisiana Tech, Ruston, LA
12/1-4 ARKANSAS / LOUISIANA / TEXAS
12/5-6 NEW MEXICO / ARIZONA
12/7-11 CALIFORNIA
12/12 NEVADA
12/13 UTAH
12/14 COLORADO
12/15 KANSAS
12/16-17 MISSOURI

WINTER-SPRING 2012
1/2-2/25 GUEST ARTIST OPENING
2/27 WASHINGTON / OREGON or KANSAS / COLORADO
2/28 OREGON / CALIFORNIA or UTAH / COLORADO
2/29 CALIFORNIA or NEVADA
3/1-2 CALIFORNIA
3/3 ARIZONA
3/4 NEW MEXICO
3/5-6 TEXAS
3/7 TEXAS / LOUISIANA
3/8 LOUISIANA / MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA
3/9 ALABAMA / GEORGIA / SETC
3/9-11 SETC
3/12-13 FLORIDA
3/14 GEORGIA
3/15 SOUTH CAROLINA
3/16-17 NORTH CAROLINA
3/18 NORTH CAROLINA / TENNESSEE
3/19 TENNESSEE / GEORGIA
3/20 ALABAMA / TENNESSEE
3/21 ARKANSAS / MISSOURI
3/22 ARKANSAS / OKLAHOMA / MISSOURI
3/23 NEW MEXICO / KANSAS / COLORADO
3/24-25 COLORADO
3/26 COLORADO / UTAH / WYOMING
3/27 UTAH / NEVADA
3/28 NEVADA / IDAHO
3/29 OREGON
3/30 WASHINGTON
3/31-4/1 WASHINGTON / IDAHO
4/2 IDAHO
4/3 IDAHO / MONTANA
4/4 MONTANA / WYOMING
4/5 MONTANA / NORTH/SOUTH DAKOTA
4/6 NEBRASKA / MINNESOTA / IOWA
4/7 IOWA / MISSOURI
4/8 MISSOURI
4/9 MISSOURI / ILLINOIS
4/10 ILLINOIS / KENTUCKY
4/11 KENTUCKY / INDIANA
4/12 INDIANA / OHIO
4/13 OHIO / WEST VIRGINIA
4/14-16 VIRGINIA
4/17 MARYLAND / DELAWARE / D.C.
4/18 NEW JERSEY / PENNSYLVANIA
4/19 PENNSYLVANIA / NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND
4/20-23 NEW ENGLAND
4/24 NEW YORK
4/25 NEW YORK / PENNSYLVANIA
4/26 PENNSYLVANIA / OHIO
4/27-29 MICHIGAN
4/30 INDIANA / ILLINOIS
5/1-2 ILLINOIS / WISCONSIN
5/3 WISCONSIN / MINNESOTA
5/4 MINNESOTA

The View From Here #145: MO, MN, IN

2010-08-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

My brother Pat came out for one last visit to the old family home, and we spent a bit of time together, when I wasn't running my lines, or chasing down props, or editing my book.

I hung out in town for Anne Lucas & John Quigley’s wedding before taking off for Kansas City and the Kansas City Fringe Festival. I’d been working the two hours of Shakespeare material twice a day for the past week, and was waiting on several pieces to fall into place, while adding seven SONNETS to my collection of THIRTY-EIGHT monologues! (People kept asking me if I was doing sonnets, too. I figured they must have had a good reason.)

April was working on final developments to the “slide show” that accompanies the performance (as well as the IAGO cards) and Kathleen, my costume designer, was putting together a brand new costume. Kathy was in Virginia, while I was in Chicago, and so she was sending me mock-ups and swatches in the mail, while I was guestimating how much the costume ought to be tightened or adjusted. (“I think the pumpkin breeches should be thinner by the volume of a cantaloupe, or a small football.”)

The final costume didn’t arrive until the day before I was to leave, and I only managed to rehearse about 25% of the material while wearing it, but it looked pretty rockin’ gorgeous.

The next morning, I was on the road to Kansas City, with a two-minute preview performance that night at Fringe Central… which was steamy hot! I managed to get the new costume nice and sweaty, while catching up with some old fringe friends, particularly Phillip Lowe and Kurt Fitzpatrick and meeting new ones, such as the casts of Grind and Revenge of Rumplepunchkin. (some in photo)

Also, I have a new sticker for this show, as featured on the belly of this member of the cast of Rumplepunchkin.

I was staying at my friend, Lisa’s house, and she had a second floor room that I could use for sleeping, working out and rehearsing. Fortunately it had an air conditioner in the window, as the weather was in the 90s the entire week! (I think the final day we topped 100!)

I had no show the first Monday of the Festival, and spent the time pulling some final details together, such as getting a 25 foot “S-Video” cord so that the technician could operate my slide show at a distance from the projector. Chris, my technician, worked for this particular venue, which meant that he was around all day, and I could come in whenever I wanted to rehearse. I spent most of the afternoon working my way through all of the monologues, testing the spatial relationship with the audience, and was glad to have the chance to think through all of these things before an actual audience was witnessing it. A couple of the monologues, and especially the sonnets were still feeling particularly “clunky”, and I pulled those ping pong balls out of the hopper, so that opening night, at least, would feature material that I was confident in. (The sonnets made for an excellent change of pace, but after one or two performances tripping over some shaky lines, I pulled those out of circulation, at least until the next fringe festival.)

As long as the video cord was, it still couldn’t reach up to the “booth,” and so we created a single light setting, ditched the single planned internal music cue, and Chris came down to stage level to operate the slides from the counter where they were also selling refreshments. When I pulled out a ping-pong ball, Chris would cue up the particular slide, so that the audience could “read along” portions of the text from the first folio, if they were so inclined.

As the week proceeded, with scant attendance (maybe an average of 20 for each performance) I found myself making adjustments to the “rules” of the game as it went. I was determined to establish the ultimate random nature of the IAGO game, which generally occupied the first 30 minutes of the show, but after having convinced the audience that I could do ANY of the monologues that came up, I started giving them the option of having me continue the show with “requests” or with monologues that were MY favorites. (They generally wanted me to do my own favorites.)

In general, I didn’t want to leave any of the performances without a showing of either Julius Caesar or Twelfth Night, as those two were more than double the length of the average monologue and evolved at a different pace than the other “quick hits.” “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…” especially, felt epic in stature. But some other monologues were also becoming favorites among the crowd, including Comedy of Errors, King John and Titus Andronicus.

Occasionally, I would choose to skip monologues, if only because the audience had seen a fair amount of “the obscure stuff” already, but in one instance I heard a bit of a groan going up from the crowd, and discovered that the audience member had actually come hoping, especially, to catch Timon of Athens. And so I went ahead and did that one, and later found out from the grateful patron that he was working on a degree in Shakespearean Studies, and his thesis project was Timon of Athens. (Apparently, my interpretation gave him some ideas for his project.)

A variety of responses were tugging me one way and another about the choices I was making. One fellow performer was disappointed when I would skip material, and didn’t like the audience interactive sequences. Another liked the audience interactive stuff, and was glad to have the sense that he was getting “the good stuff.” My own sense was that I didn’t want anybody in the audience to walk away feeling like they’d seen the show on a bad day, when all of the “wrong” balls came out.

(Illustration by Lee Howard)

Eventually, a 5-star review showed up on line at KCStage.com:

For the last two years, I’ve caught Alan Tilson at the Fringe, and I highly recommend seeing his show this year. This year, he's joined by another outstanding Shakespearean one-man-showman— Tim Mooney of Chicago — whom I also highly recommend.

In fact, how about a double-header: seeing both Mooney’s and Tilson’s shows? Then you can weigh in yourself on the KC Stage site as to whom (if either) you liked better by leaving your rating here.

The energetic and engaging Mooney introduces an element of chance to his show: his program is set by the Bingo balls he draws randomly from a spinning cage containing 38 of them — meaning he has this many scenes ready to go! One woman took away a Lot o’Shakespeare! T-shirt (also on sale) for her luck on the Bingo card we picked up with our tickets, and another took away a CD (also on sale) for her yeoman’s work in volunteering to read a couple of second parts on stage.

Along the way, we all were treated to a 54-minute tour de force comprising no fewer than 19 Shakespeare scenes and sonnets. A couple of times, the entire audience chimed in for a line or two by another character, in addition to the audience volunteer who joined Mooney onstage.

Mooney’s interpretations were outstanding, and not infrequently cast new light on obscure corners of Shakespeare’s work. Why did my high-school English teacher never point out Mercutio’s jealousy of Juliet, as Romeo’s spurned gay lover? Or the flagrant queen’s-ass-kissing in Henry VIII? Or the sexual-harassment element of Angelo in Measure for Measure? Sure would have spurred our adolescent interest in the not-so-boring bard of Avon!

Mooney’s interpretations were introduced by short, but illuminating commentary. Spur yourself over to the Off Broadway theater for this: Friday at 6:30, Saturday at 8 or Sunday at 3:30. Chiam Eliyahu, KCStage.com

In fact, the KC Fringe had chosen a somewhat hard-to-get-to venue, in an idyllic park setting, as their “Shakespeare Ghetto.” Myself and another Shakespeare monologist were in the same space, along with a burlesque show that used Shakespeare plays as a uniting theme. (two other Shakespeare-themed shows dropped out before opening night.) Since this venue had low sales in previous years, they’d hoped that the Shakespeare partnership might bring people out who would stick around to see all of the shows in the venue. They even encouraged us to buy an ad in the local Shakespeare Festival program to promote this event collectively. (This was predicated on the assumption that we, as perhaps competing interests, would actually bring ourselves to work together.)

Unfortunately, the crowd that comes out to see Shakespeare-themed burlesque, is not actually there for the “Shakespeare” part of the equation. They played to an audience of 100 one night, and I flyered that entire audience on their way out of the theatre, but did not see one of them in attendance at my performance which started a half-hour later. Meanwhile, the other Shakespeare monologue guy was getting even thinner audiences than mine, so the synergy was not happening. Between the cost of the festival entry, the flyers and the ad in the Shakespeare Festival program, I ended up losing money on this one.

A couple of days later, I was off to Minnesota, returning to my stand-up/poetry/ monologue show. This rather personal show is unlike anything I’ve tried before, though it seems to strike a strong chord with a lot of people. I avoid describing the specifics of it at length here, as I feel that I can’t do it justice out of context of the performance, and it may well seem too sensationalized to people who book my other shows.

Once again, I was staying with my friends, Dave and Klee, just a few blocks from the beautiful Minnehaha Falls, where I would go to run my lines almost every day while I was visiting. This year, the Minnesota Fringe seems to have completely recaptured its mojo since its stutter-step several years back with the collapse of the I-35 bridge on the first day of the Fringe. In fact the Minnesota Fringe ended up breaking their previous record with over 50,000 tickets sold, and an 8% improvement over the previous year, but again, venue was everything.

The festival was stretched out around four different neighborhoods in Minneapolis and (for the first time) St. Paul, but clearly the neighborhood to be in was the “West Bank,” where there were at least seven venues within walking distance of each other, as well as Fringe Central, the bar/theatre where everyone wound up at the end of a long night. In particular, shows in the “Rarig Center,” where four auditoria within spitting distance of each other, did very well. Audiences had a natural tendency to want to park their car once for the evening, and then walk about from show to show.

My venue, the Ritz Theatre Studio was in the Northeast quadrant of the city, with only one other venue adjacent to it. I only had sixty seats in my space, which was very intimate and made for a playful connection with the audience, but my audiences were averaging around thirty, even with April coming up to Minneapolis to help me with handing out flyers. Even so, the responses were terrific, and the major thing that this festival does right is organize their website. People check the site obsessively, and new audience reviews are constantly being posted. The Fringe “mascot” is a cartoon “kitty” cat, and the shows are rated by how many “kitties” they received. Out of 33 reviews submitted, I got one “zero kitty” review, one “two kitty” review, seven “four kitty” reviews and twenty four “five kitty” reviews.

Here are some of their comments:

do. not. miss. this. show. By mark milner Rating 5 kitties
remove mooney's glasses, shine a spotlight on the man, and he's a charisma machine… a wry and winning examination... do. not. miss. this. show.

wow. just wow. by Jess Pants Rating 5 kitties
So honest, so out there, so moving...this show really was amazing. I can't even find the words right now to accurately or fully describe what went on--for me--during the show this afternoon… For anyone who missed it, you better hope there is an encore performance of this piece.

Hilarious and provocative by Angela Polk Rating 5 kitties
… Not only was I entertained by Tim's tales, but after hearing them, I couldn't help but feel inspired to ruminate on my own experiences. I'd left them on the shelf to gather dust for years, and suddenly they were brought to light again by Tim's stories. Art that elicits that profound of a response is rare and wonderful, and I am grateful to Tim for taking us on such a journey… It is clear that he is a master of his craft; there is no sentence, gesture, facial expression, pause, or tone of voice that seems out of place. It's all expertly crafted and delivered. At the same time, it never feels like it's scripted or recited by rote, because his delivery is so honest. When Tim was telling his stories, it felt like a conversation with a friend--a friend you feel like you can really confide in, who also just happens to be fantastically witty... There is so much lighthearted charm, silliness, and exuberance in this show that I left with a smile on my face, feeling light, and filled with a certain joie de vivre.

Truly something special by Dave Stagner Rating 5 kitties
The confessional story is nothing new to Fringe... The good ones get past the personal, to the universal, to feelings that we can all understand and relate. Then there's Tim Mooney. Tim is best known as a stellar, professional actor and scholar of the works of great writers like Moliere and Shakespeare. His past Fringe performances have been driven by his rich, emotive, rock-solid acting. But this time, he turned that skill and power on his personal story, and the results are stunning... It feels powerful and brave on his part, and really turns that power back on the audience. And did I mention that large parts of the story are in iambic pentameter? His love and scholarship of the classics, and his skill in reading them, takes this confessional to levels of wit I've never seen in this sort of show before! As far as I'm concerned, it's a must-see, and the only show I've seen this Fringe that I intend to to see again. It's that good.

I've had a Fringe crush on Tim Mooney since seeing Moliere than Thou a few years ago, but didn't remember his name - until I got to the show. Oh boy! His style is entertaining and open, with a joyful, gleeful confessional bent. The stories themselves are perfectly scripted, hilarious and touching, and deeply personal. The kind of raw vulnerability he displays, without the slightest reservation, is rare and creates a sense of trust and confidence with the audience. Excellent and not to be missed. And the iambic pentameter... *fans self* by Bree Nolastnamesontheinternet Rating 5 kitties

Honest, bold and touching... Highly recommend. by kelly C. Rating 5 kitties

…Extremely funny, touching, clever... there was a kind of positive, celebratory energy in the theatre. I truly think Tim is the most energetic actor I've ever seen… Absolutely contagious. by Alina Mostov Rating 5 kitties

…Funny and well-delivered, as I've come to expect. I've yet to see any one-man show… done with as much poise as Tim always seems to have. ... by The Letter M Rating 5 kitties

…A commanding stage presence… Highly recommended. by Kale Ganann Rating 5 kitties

Definitely cathartic and thought-provoking. The perfect end to the Fringe. by Laurel Hansen Rating 5 kitties

What a fun show and so poetic. This was funny and sad, touching and challenging... by Lance Zarimba Rating 5 kitties

Possibly the best Fringe show I've seen in the last several years. Brilliantly written, deeply honest, and laugh-your-ass-off funny. Captivating from start to finish... by Amelie Poulin Rating 5 kitties

Tim Mooney is very funny, yet thought-provoking. The monologue was very tight and poetic, and his delivery is perfect... Go see it! by Tracy Anderson Rating 5 kitties

...This show, more than any other, tests the audiences willingness to - literally - get immersed on a personal level. by daniel taradash Rating 5 kitties

While the attendance in this venue was particularly low, it turned out that mine was the best attended show in the venue, which meant that I got the “encore” performance on Sunday evening of the Fringe. I’d assumed that the encore was going to another performer, and so when they announced this at the Saturday night party, I was really thrilled and gratified, and the excitement for the celebration went through the roof.

I can’t say quite the same for the final performance though. At the end of a long ten days of “fringing,” the audience seemed listless, and while some good friends came back to see the show a second time, this was mostly a quiet denoument to the event.

A quick stop home. Dad was getting closer to his planned move to his planned move out east to join my sister, Maureen. She and her husband, Tim, have found a rental house in Norfolk, Virginia that they are going to be moving to, probably in September/October, and Dad has planned one final party in the old homestead for this Sunday, August 29, starting at 2 pm. Come join us!

Next up: the Indianapolis Fringe Festival, a cozy billet with a couple on the Festival's board of directors in the northern reaches of Indianapolis, and a return to “Lot o’ Shakespeare!” Kathy, the costume designer, had worked a few refinements into the costume during the Minnesota Fringe, and April had updated the IAGO card somewhat, while putting together a sandwich board as an advertisement that would sit outside my venue.

I drove in, arriving just about thirty minutes in advance of a preview performance at the opening night festivities, and I did my All’s Well speech: “Are you meditating on virginity?...” which got some good response from the crowd.

The next day was my tech rehearsal, and the technician was extremely supportive, and able to run the slides, lights, AND sound from his position. It was a small venue, about the size of a couple of classrooms put together. The acoustics were deceptively challenging, as two dividers broke up the room into three sections which inhibited the free passage of sound from one area to the next.

I’d pretty much written this fringe off as an unlikely money-maker (and I still don’t expect to come away with a huge profit), but not knowing anybody in town, at a relatively “young” fringe (6 years old), I didn’t anticipate seeing a lot of people lining up to see the show.

But there, the first night, a good fifteen people, none of whom did I know, had found their way to the theatre. The show was really “on”, and the recent rehearsals seemed to have brought me to the next level with this performance. I was going at the characters more aggressively, putting out a lot of energy, attitude and volume. And the audience was responding. I could hear not only laughs, but also gasps, “wows” and the occasional “bravo!” Which only encouraged me to turn up the volume even more.

The second night, the energy felt just as strong, but the monologues that were popping out were more obscure. I was reminded of how I handled this in Kansas City, and by the third performance (back down to a dozen in the audience on a late Sunday night), I reinstituted the opportunity for the audience to make requests once the t-shirt had been won. They were glad for the opportunity, and started calling out for The Tempest, Macbeth, Much Ado and for The Sonnets. It felt like just the right mix of randomness and audience participation, as there was demonstrably no way I could have prepared for the requests that they were going to make. (I did slip in my own choice of Twelfth Night at one point.)

As it turned out, there was a blogger in attendance that evening (he took this photo with his phone), and his response was enthusiastic:

Lot o’ Shakespeare, by Jackodile (www.jackodile.com)

It’s Shakespeare, lottery style… with a little Bingo thrown in. Actually, it wasn’t really Bingo, but IAGO, named after the villain from Othello.
I have to admit, that I probably haven’t sat through this much Shakespeare since I was a grad student in Virginia and that was a production of Twelfth NightBeach Boys style. Because of my Shakespeare ignorance and a feeling that I needed to give myself a little educational entertainment, I chose to see Lot o’Shakespeare. Tim Mooney, the creator and performer, did not disappoint.

As Mooney explained, the concept for the show came from an idea that he could be ready at a moment’s notice to perform an audition monologue from any of Shakespeare’s plays. What resulted from his work in memorizing hours worth of monologues became the 60 minute show, Lot o’Shakespeare.

At the beginning all audience member are given an IAGO card, which was essentially a Bingo card. As Mooney would spin the lottery balls around one would fall out and that would direct him as to what play and monologue to perform. Then before each monologue, Mooney would give a one sentence explanation of the the scene and character.

The first ball was I18, Julius Caesar. That was a long, long monologue, but Mooney performed it with great passion and skill. Throughout the next 60 minutes, Mooney performed from Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, King John, and Taming of the Shrew to name a few. Not only were all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays in the repertoire, but all of his sonnets too.

After one of the audience members won the game of IAGO, Mooney then opened up the show to requests. I was very impressed that he was ready to dive into the next monologue without any real preparation. As soon as the play was called out, he would jump eagerly into explanation and then monologue. I have to admit that when requests were being shouted, I was tempted to call out Hamlet, but I was afraid that I would look too much like the Shakespeare amateur. So, I went without hearing “to be or not to be.”

Overall, this was a fun show to see. I enjoyed Mooney’s enthusiasm for the material. I also enjoyed the intimate community that was created in the audience as we laughed, applauded and yelled out requests. To sum it all up into one word, I’ll defer to the gentleman who sat in front of me, “Bravo!”

The blogger’s final reference was to a man sitting in the second row who was now in attendance for his third performance. He wanted to catch as many of the monologues as he could, and when I opened up the floor for requests, he asked me to choose the most obscure piece that I could think of… and so I did Two Noble Kinsmen for him.

I’d been hoping for an Indianapolis Star review, as I was sure that would boost attendance, but there seemed to be none forthcoming (if one shows up, I’ll tack it on here). I did, however, get some exposure on Tuesday morning, as the local Fox Morning News affiliate featured performances from three groups that day, including two features from me, in the 7 am hour and the 9 am hour. The anchors, who I couldn’t hear from the venue where I was performing, seemed fairly clueless, but the reporter who was interviewing me was a nice guy, and the exposure seemed to have increased my attendance on Tuesday night. Of course, that might also have been the review from Jack Odile, or it might well have been a couple of other reviews that were showing up on-line:

First up was Lot O' Shakespeare. Timothy Mooney from Arlington Heights, IL. does Shakespeare monologues from every play and about 10 sonnets. The selections are different every performance and are dictated by numbered balls that come out of a LOTTO/Bingo dispenser. This is a great show and you actually play a form of BINGO renamed IAGO. I got a double IAGO and got a CD from one of his other shows. I do wonder if he's related to Mooney The Magnificent from the Ren. Faire circuit. I'll have to ask him. Taylor Martin

Great show. Should be a "must see" on your IndyFringe dance card. Don't miss it. Kevin B

Tuesday’s show was better than ever. I spotted a “laugher” in the audience before I even started, and I knew that it would go well. The first half dozen or so ping pong balls were all obscure ones, but even so I found myself attacking each one with a new sense of commitment and verve, never “surrendering” my hopes for the success of any given monologue, but reminding myself of the dramatic impact that originally drew me to it, however obscure the source might have been. Julius Caesar broke the succession of obscure monologues, and I’ve begun to introduce that one as perhaps “the greatest speech of all time.” This, of course, sets the bar pretty high for my performance, but if the audience is trusting my judgement by then, it gets them to listen with a renewed commitment. I could feel that paying off in the latter half of that monologue, and I could feel them “with me” in a breathless series of moments. As that piece concluded with Antony’s piercing call to “MUTINY!” one audience member actually stood up at her seat to give that monologue its own standing ovation!

With the audience choice phase of the performance, the loud laugher (who was practically reciting some of the lines along with me as I proceeded), insisted that I go back and pick up the Richard III monologue that I’d set aside when it came out the first time (I’d already done a Richard speech from Henry VI, Pt. 3.) And so, I followe through on that one, as well as Measure for Measure, As You Like It and a couple of Sonnets, before winding things up with Puck from Midsummer Night’s Dream. This time around, after the show I sold two extra t-shirts and a copy of my Misanthrope to an eager fan. At least one attendee was a Shakespeare scholar who’d recommended the performance to her students. And a couple of different local venues were starting to chat with me about booking several of my shows in their theatres!

Two more audience reviews showed up on line:

Caught his 6:00 show on Tuesday and what a fantastic show. Tim is extremely engaging and a true performer. My head is still reeling over his Antony speech from Julius Caesar. Definitely a must-see. Ryan Powell

Tim_Mooney_Kicks_Bottom. Tristan

And a couple of less universally positive reviews. I don’t agree with the conclusions that they reach, but I’ll resist the desire to comment:

Tim Mooney has memorized 40-plus Shakespeare soliloquies and sonnets with a promise to perform a surprise mix every show according to the whims of his spinning bingo cage. Even delivered out of context, the speeches of Richard III, King Lear and lesser-known Timon still stir our admiration for how the Bard's words jump and play. Unfortunately, Mooney is too steadily playful. His thin voice dips and rises and his hands fly, as if punctuating syllables hard will translate Elizabethan phrasing better and faster. Lot o' Shakespeare would be better if we got less and felt more. Josefa Beyer, Nuvo

With a monologue from each of Shakespeare's plays and some sonnets, Timothy Mooney invites audiences to play IAGO (his version of BINGO) randomly deciding what and when he performs. Mooney's feat of memorizing such a vast amount of language is no doubt impressive. His handle on Shakespeare's text makes for a completely accessible performance from beginning to end, regardless of the obscurity of the chosen monologue. Yet as he moves from character to character, Mooney's readings begin to run together as he fails to find unique qualities for each mask he dons. His readings seem rote, with little wiggle room from performance to performance. Yet when simply speaking a sonnet, Mooney drops any "actory" pretense, finally sharing a moment of honesty and truth. Regardless, he is clearly an entertainer at heart, and worth seeing for that alone. Katelyn Coyne

Two more performances yet to go, Thursday night at 9:00 and Saturday afternoon at 4 pm. These should be prime opportunities to sell out, if the “buzz” keeps up!

Speaking of Buzz, here's a late entry of a review from a fellow fringe touring artist:

Chances are, due to scheduling conflicts, I'm not going to get the opportunity to see Tim at Indy Fringe this year--but I still adore him and I'm not going to let that stop me from encouraging others to see him! I was lucky enough to catch Lot 'O Shakespeare during the Kansas City Fringe Festival this year and...well, I'll just say this: Tim's performance of the Saint Crispin's Day speech from Henry V is incredible--even better than Kenneth Branagh's Oscar nominated turn in the role. It gave me chills. Furthermore, I'll never be able to read or hear my favorite speech in all of Shakespeare--Marc Antony's from Julius Caesar--without thinking of the performance Tim delivered. There isn't much else to say, other than: I heart Tim Mooney. See Lot 'O Shakespeare. Lydia Ballard

And another:

I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Mooney's "Moliere Than Thou" back when I was in college. It was interesting, entertaining, funny, unique, and, if one were to let down their guard, educational. The same can be said of this new show. The selection process is random, so don't come in expecting a perfunctory "Shakespeare's Greatest Hits," but Mooney's performances will more than make up for the potential absence of some famous favorites (but do you really need to hear Hamlet's soliloquy for the hundredth time?). If the opportunity arrives to make requests, I would recommend asking for his Titus Andronicus. -- Randy Cox

Whoops! We're not done yet! Now we've got TWEETS coming in! Yes! For the first time ever, The View From Here is quoting TWEETS! What are we coming to?

"Lot o Shakespeare" is a treat. Thrilling to hear many famous speeches & sonnets live for 1st time. #indyfringe

I won a t-shirt in Iago Bingo & wept over Antony's speech over Caesar's body. Lot o Shakespeare. #indyfringe #Indy #theatre

Not a tweet; an on-line review:

Wow...as a sometimes-dabbler in the Bard's works, I was thrilled to see the speeches I knew worked by such a great performer. Even more exciting though, were some I was less familiar with: sonnets and especially the monologue from King John. Go see this show! -- Pesky

Temperature: From 100+ in Kansas City, down to a manageable 75 in Indianapolis.

Miles on the Escape: 34,000

On the I-Pod: “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz

Discoveries: The Sonnets are the closest we can get to hearing Shakespeare’s actual “voice.” * People resent having the “rules” of the show change on them, unless you’ve set up that likelihood at the outset. Even so, they may have attachments to pieces that I might assume that they DON’T want to see. * Some of the discoveries or observations that I may make offhand about these Shakespeare works may be genuine revelations to people who didn’t instinctively come to those same conclusions. * Artificial groupings of play themes don’t necessarily result in increased attendance. The opposite may well be more likely. * Venue probably impacts sales by 50-100%. * Once I have clearly established that the spin of the cage is, indeed, random, taking requests keeps the audience engaged and happy. * Never “surrender” the likelihood of any monolgue’s success. Attack each one as if it were the best ping pong ball that the cage could have spit out at that particular moment. * The audience is as interested in what it is that draws ME to the monologue as they are in the plot description.

Next performances: “Moliere Than Thou” at The Chicago Fringe Festival, 2003 S. Halsted (Pilsen Neighborhood) September 1-5: Wednesday, 9/1, 8:30; Thursday, 9/2, 7 pm; Friday, 9/3, 5:30 pm; Saturday, 9/4, 2:30 pm; Sun, 9/5, 4 pm