Following the audience of seven that ended up being an audience of three when all was done, I anticipated an even smaller turn-out for Sunday’s last show in Orlando. One actress had promised me she would attend, and I wondered if one would be my total for the show. Upon arrival at the theatre, I noted that the crowds had lightened up significantly, with very few people roaming the halls, and perhaps a dozen at the beer tent. I even contemplated having a couple of beers at the beer tent before the show to loosen me up and help me not care how many people were attending. Thankfully I resisted the temptation, if only so that I wouldn’t find myself suppressing a series of belches as I tried to sing.
Imagine my surprise when the attendance for this show nearly doubled my previous high. I watched with some surprise as 28 people filed in.
And they were great. They laughed at everything. They cheered at the “tango scene.” They sang along with the karaoke sequences. I was beginning to feel the reaction of the audience starting to match up with what I had expected it to be at the outset. The stage manager was handling the “KJ Narration” from the booth, but he was speaking through a lot of distortion, and I think the audience could only kind of make out what he was saying. I had re-recorded the narration (twice), but it was in-process with my audio/video engineer (Richard) in Cleveland, and I wouldn’t hear the results until Cincinnati.
The show ended in Orlando on a high, and my friend Sandra bought a CD. She and her husband Greg and I have spent the last two fringes hanging out together at the closing night party, and this one made it three years in a row. Once again, I was celebrating until late at night, and getting onto the road the following morning. I departed the 95-degree Orlando at 10:30 a.m. and headed for 60-degree Atlanta, pulling in around 6:00 to stay at Linda’s house once again. After dinner, we watched the DVD of “The Aviator,” which was very good, except for the fact that I was a bit distracted, spending the first half of the movie working on getting my script together for Cincinnati. With all of the changes I had made, I needed to give my technician something to follow along with.
The next morning I printed up the script and got back on the road. The timing was very tight to get through to Cincinnati in time for a 5:00 tech rehearsal. (It was actually a 5:30 tech rehearsal, but I didn’t know that at the time.) I managed to get through the usually-congested Chattanooga in quick order, and I assumed that all was well, until I hit Knoxville, where the traffic slowed to a standstill. Eventually, it loosened up, and I was racing ahead, pulling into Cincinnati at about 4:50 p.m. When I couldn’t find anyone at my venue, I checked my schedule and realized that I had an extra half hour to waste. I found a “Gold Star Chili” restaurant – this is a phenomenon unique to Cincinnati, by the way; where chili is as prevalent as Pizza might be in Chicago – and grabbed a quick bite, before going back to the theatre.
Inside the theatre I was setting up my equipment when I heard a “crunching” noise from outside, followed by some squealing tires. It sounded like an accident, and I went out to see if there was something that happened in the intersection. I couldn’t see any damaged vehicles, nor anyone looking around, and so I headed for my car to grab a CD I needed for the show. I opened it up and reached inside. As I came out, I could see a half-dozen or so people on the opposite side of the street looking my way. One of them was calling to me, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. It seemed to be important. Eventually, I crossed the five lanes of traffic to see what it was about.
“Look at your car!”
I turned around to notice that the door that I’d just opened to retrieve my CD had been banged in.
It was a hit-and-run. A westbound car had swerved across several lanes to the eastbound side, hitting my parked car on the far side. Several witnesses had seen it happen, and described it variously as a beige Lincoln Town Car and a white Cadillac. Someone suggested that the car had blown a tire in the process, and pulled into the Shell station two blocks away. A guy offered to drive me over there, but there was no sign of a car with a flat tire. I called the police, and informed my technician that our rehearsal would be delayed somewhat. A couple of witnesses offered their names, and the police arrived, getting my information. Within about ten minutes, though, there was a report of a Lincoln Town Car changing a tire several blocks away, and the officer left to investigate. A woman drove by to tell me that she had witnessed the accident and gotten the license plate of the car. He had a vanity license plate: “MR JUDAS.”
Of course, I, too, have a vanity plate: “MOLIERE.”
Somehow this seemed to be some sort of odd, automotive, celebrity death match.
In the end, Moliere won out over Mr. Judas, and I returned to rehearse my show, with now only about an hour left to do so.
We were a bit rushed, but things felt pretty good. We rehearsed with the audio CD version of the show, as I was still waiting on the arrival of the DVD of the new 1-hour version.
The Fringe assistant producer, whose somewhat provocative photo is on all of the Fringe publicity, led me to the very nice home where I am being billeted, and I have to note that one of the things that I’m appreciating the most about this fringe festival is the care that is being given to all of the out of town performers. They respond to all of my telephone inquiries readily. They saw to it that I knew where I was going, and they continually mention our shows, and how much that they enjoy them in their pre-show speeches to the audiences. That care is not yet reflected in attendance, but that’s another story.
The next day, I assembled a new version of my press packet, this time emphasizing the lyrical content of the shows. While I was bent on exploiting the “rock opera” framework, two out of three reviewers so far have responded to the lyrics. I realized that I should be playing to my strengths in preparing the media for the show, and I started reworking the press release. It now opens with the question: “If Moliere were a rock star, what might he sound like?” I don’t propose to answer that question, but it should get them thinking. I then go on to cite all of the great parallels that the reviewers have already drawn to Tom Waits, Talking Heads, Tom Lehrer and Sparks.
I spent Wednesday circulating press packets, and running off posters, programs and flyers.
I reworked the program, taking out a large section of my “process” information (i.e., how the play ended up the way it is), and putting more content inside. Since people were so attracted to the characters themselves, I decided to put little mock-bios in the program, inventing fictitious backgrounds to each individual. It seems to connect some of the “dots” that were missing for people.
Wednesday night I set up for the show. I had the new DVD’s in hand, including a DVD of pure karaoke music with which I could create a karaoke pre-show event to warm up the audience. When it was time to open the house, I started up the karaoke DVD and sang along to whichever song came up. After about 10 minutes of this, the first audience member came in. It was the reviewer. Eventually one and two more arrived. I skipped through songs, uncertain about what to sing, or which of the songs might be in my range. My excellent technician, Doug, was signaling me to stretch this out. There was a second reviewer expected for tonight, and he was, so far, a no-show. I kept singing, and eventually got the Fringe Communications Director, Liz, to come up and join me for a duet. I was worried that my voice would be shot before the play ever began. Before she left the stage, I told Liz to “please come back and watch the show.” I was assessing just how the show might go over if I had only three people to draw on for volunteers, and none of them seemed particularly eager. She promised to return after closing up the box office.
The show went on, with lots of energy (and sweat) pouring out of me, with very little response from the audience. (A photographer showed up, though, and did get some really good pics, which can be seen at: http://jamesczar.com/modules/gallery/2005_Fringe_Czar ) About halfway through the show, Liz showed up with Fringe Development Director, Jeff, to add some laughter to the response. Liz was just in time to join me for the “tango” sequence, which went well. The rest of the show, which is not dependent upon volunteers thereafter, went well.
This Fringe runs a bar series, with a new bar being used as a performer’s haunt every night. The beer and the conversation flows freely, and it makes for a good ongoing conversation about the Fringe experience. You get to meet actors whose shows you’ve seen, or discover people whose shows you want to see, and vice versa.
The next morning, my billeter told me that a Cincinnati Enquirer review of my show had already appeared on-line, and that it was very good. I was surprised that they’d posted it so quickly. I’m used to waiting for about five days to see any kind of reaction to my work. Here it is:
'Karaoke' uses song to tell stories Theater review
By C.E. HanifinEnquirer staff writer
“Karaoke, with its enticement of three minutes of faux fame for everyone, seems like the most shallow of entertainments. When Tim Mooney mines that apparent wasteland of canned pop tunes and bottle-fueled performances, however, in his solo show, "Karaoke Knights, a One-Man Rock Opera!," he strikes upon a universal chord.
“The show's five characters step into the spotlight one by one to belt out their dreams and disillusionments. Mooney, an Illinois-based actor and founder of the Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre, does a remarkable job of sketching each character's personality with just a prop or two, a distinct singing voice, telling gestures and apt facial expressions.
“Charles sports the low-slung hat and ravaged voice of a Tom Waits wannabe; Brian's puppy dog eagerness is as loud as his Hawaiian shirt; a vaguely Eastern European accent and a black leather jacket denote Sergio's manufactured aura of mystery; Larry's XXL sweatshirt and balletic movements reveal an intriguing dichotomy; and everyman Tim's white T-shirt and quotidian longings present a neutral canvas onto which the audience may project its empathy.
“Mooney tells each character's story through the lyrics of the production's original songs, which are at turns witty (Tim's "Looking For a Groupie"), unctuous (Sergio's "Bite My Tongue") and poignant (Charles' "The Dreaming Tax.").
”The finale finds Charles, Brian, Larry, Sergio and Tim taking turns singing the verses of "Simply Nothing," a number about ending up alone after last call. All five tales meld into one story about the often-futile desire to find another person with whom to sing in harmony, even if the duet only lasts as long as the "la la la la" chorus of a synth-drenched '80s hit. The theme resonates long after the show's last tinny note fades, because just about everyone knows the words to that song.”
Okay, so, I, for one, had to look up “unctuous” and “quotidian”.
It was not bad. The reviewer, and the audience, seemed already to be picking up on character details that I had planted in the program. (I have heard audiences getting into protracted active arguments about whether Sergio was a Eurotrash bad boy or just a wannabe.) And my choice to share the finale number had been extremely last minute, based on my single run-through with the new DVD.
Meanwhile, I had discovered that this festival actually had reserved a 75-minute slot for me. For some reason, I’d got it in my head that I had to fit the show into 60 minutes, and was pushing the boundaries already by coming in with a disc that was 61:30. Instead, I had 75 minutes to use, and could begin working material back into the show.
The first thing that I wanted was to get a “Tim” song back into the lead-off position. I had led off with Charles this first time around, which necessitated getting a volunteer well before I had set any example of the process for how the songs would work. This time around, I would look to rebuild the DVD with “Dreams Are Waiting” in the lead-off spot, and with “A Half-a-World Away” back in the rotation.
With every advance or improvement of the play, more changes become evident. It’s like climbing a mountain upon which you can’t see the path that awaits you beyond the current ridge, but you know you have to get to the top of this ridge. And then you realize the next task that you face. While I might like to see my way to the top of the mountain all at once, it’s more important that I be willing to recognize that there is more space available to climb.
My webmaster, Bruce, had been reading the latest script, and he sent me another idea that has grown on me. What if this was not just “Karaoke night at Korbell’s,” but was instead a karaoke contest? At first it seemed like it would be impossible to do, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I could make it work with alterations to the KJ narration. It would give the “characters” motivation to sing, and it would give the thinnest thread of a “plot line” for the audience to hang onto: A reason to follow the show from beginning to end, besides the fact that, on an individual basis, the songs were entertaining. It would give them even more reason to identify with one character over another, and to cheer loudly for the character that they wanted to win. (Also, if one of the fifteen songs of the show doesn’t appeal to a given audience, I won’t lose them for the course of the show.) By Friday morning, I had rewritten the voiceovers, and by that afternoon they’d been recorded and e-mailed.
One of the things that hadn’t worked for me in the previous recording, was the fact I was working so hard to make my voice sound good. It had a studio-created sound rather than a live bar-sound. I decided I wanted to be a KJ with a fun sense of humor, who could bring out the cheers and applause in the audience. I remembered Bill Murray in “Ghostbusters” and his very funny line: “Dogs and cats! Living together!” and I wanted to infuse this fictional KJ with that kind of sense of humor. And so, before every take in the recording process, I would shout out “Dogs and cats! Living together!”
I think the people who are billeting me must have thought this rather strange.
Saturday was another performance day, and it would be at least mid-week before I might see a new DVD from Richard, and so I had to get back to rehearsing the show as we’d re-done it this time around. I was excited about the new ideas for the show, but I had to continue performing the old ideas until the new ones were incorporated into the new disc. I ran the show three times that day (which is remarkably easier for a 60 minute show than it is for a 75 minute show) and went in to perform.
I’d seen some really well-attended shows the past couple nights, including Amy Salloway’s fun “Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat?” and with a good review of my own in the Cincinnati Enquirer, I had high hopes. But no, there were only about 20 people in the audience. (Amy, by the way, is a fringe regular from Minnesota, and, independent of each other, we’d both been reading each other’s blogs on-line. When I introduced myself after the show, she immediately knew who I was, even though we’d never met. Such is the odd circle of the Fringe universe.)
My audience of 20 was terrific, though. They joined in on the pre-show karaoke warm up, particularly with “Lola” and Jimmy Buffet’s “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.” Note to self: If you can get an audience singing “Why Don’t We Get Drunk” at full voice before the show has even started, then they are yours for the evening. They started laughing with the volunteer sequence of “Too Real”, and laughed at all the jokes of “Left To Say.” Interestingly, they didn’t respond as much as other audiences did to the mock-ballet of “Tempted to be Tempted.” Perhaps they were just a verbal crowd.
For “Forward Thinking,” I found a giggling member of the audience to wind the microphone cord around. Since these chairs didn’t have arms, I found myself tying her wrist to that of her boyfriend on one side, and that of a girlfriend on the other. It got better laughs than it ever has. The rest of the songs continued with pretty good reaction. In the final number, “Simply Nothing,” I sing about bars that I imagine, out in outer space somewhere, that they don’t close down late at night. Usually, at that point, I’m actually out in the audience, and in the back row, I spotted three actors whom I’d been sitting with at the bar the night before when it came closing time. I delivered this line directly to them, and they found it hilarious.
That night at the bar, anytime I asked anybody what their favorite song was, they would always respond: “Sergio’s first number.” (“Forward Thinking”)
I’ve been waiting a couple of days to post this, as I knew there was a reporter from “Citybeat,” the alternative weekly paper in Cincinnati at my Saturday performance. In the meantime, I’ve continued working on the show (still waiting on the arrival of the new DVD) and rehearsing as many as three times a day. I had another performance last night (Monday), and it was well received by another smallish audience. Funny thing is that this time they did NOT respond with laughs for “Left To Say,” but DID respond to “Tempted to be Tempted.” These songs are back-to-back in the show, and I’m wondering if audiences will like either one or the other, but not both (“Left To Say” has the verbal laughs, while “Tempted” has the physical humor). This latest audience, however, even laughed at “Gravity’s Pull,” the one serious number in the show.
The Citybeat reviewer took a while to post his review, and it wasn’t quite all I was hoping for, but it certainly has its share of notable comments and mixed messages:
KARAOKE KNIGHTS: A ONE-MAN ROCK OPERAGabriel’s Corner
”It’s easier to overlook mid-level talent when the performer throws himself so fully into his work. And while Karaoke Knights creator and performer Tim Mooney isn’t the most talented singer you’ll see in the Fringe Festival and he isn’t the most effective character actor in town right now, he just might be the most committed.
“Billed as a one-man Rock opera about karaoke, it’s more of an ode to the much maligned bar sport. Mooney, through five oddball personalities, hopes to answer or at least speculate why people are drawn to the practice.
“A slight toothpick of a man with an expressive face and pleasant voice, Mooney starts the act long before show time by — what else? — engaging in a little karaoke warm-up. He beckons the audience to help him pick the next tune from his list of karaoke staples and to sing along. It’s the perfect table setter for the night. When the show actually starts, Mooney quickly dives into the first character, Charles, by pulling a female audience member to the stage and singing a song about — what else? — an attractive female karaoke singer. It’s a device he uses frequently to break the fourth wall and engage the audience. In one song he intentionally goes too far to engage the audience — literally tying a front row spectator up with his mic cord. It’s one of the funnier bits in the show.
“While there are a handful of songs, all originals written by Mooney and composer Ray Lewis, that are catchy and fun, there are more than a few that fail to connect or are just explicitly forgettable. They make the entire piece feel a little longer than it should.
“But it’s Mooney’s shamelessness and bravado that sell Karaoke Knights. His performance exudes such a freaky weird confidence that, by show’s end, you are simply forced to be entertained.” (Rodger Pille)
It strikes me that this might be a fun review to deconstruct. Let’s see:
Positives:
I throw myself fully into my work.
I might just be the most committed singer or character actor at the Fringe.
I have an expressive face and a pleasant voice.
My karaoke warm-up is the “perfect table setter for the night.”
I intentionally go too far to engage the audience (a positive, we assume, because it’s “intentional”)
Tying a spectator up with a mic cord is one of the funnier bits in the show.
A handful of songs are catchy and fun.
My shamelessness and bravado sell the show.
I have a freaky weird confidence.
I force the audience to be entertained by the show’s end.
Half-Positives:I am a mid-level talent.
I hope to answer or at least speculate why people are drawn to the practice of karaoke.
I am a slight toothpick of a man.
I break the fourth wall frequently through devices.
I force the audience to be entertained. (Against their preference of being bored?)
Negatives:
I go too far to engage the audience. (Negative because it is “too far.”)
Tying a spectator up with a mic cord is one of the funnier bits in the show. (a negative, we assume, because there aren’t bits that are especially funnier?)
More than a few of the songs fail to connect, or are explicitly forgettable.
The piece feels longer than it should.
My performance exudes a freaky weird confidence. (Perhaps what’s freaky is that I’m confident in spite of being a mid-level talent.)
Okay, here’s my take: The guy really enjoyed the show very much. (His wife had actually come up to me after the show saying how much she’d enjoyed it.) But he’s a little freaked out by enjoying a show about karaoke. Admitting that you like karaoke is like admitting that you enjoy paintings of dogs playing poker, or velvet Elvises. And so, for every positive thing that he said, he had to couch it in some form of uncertainty. After all, he has to protect his reviewer’s cred. This makes for plausible deniability. And yes, he liked some songs better than others, and every audience member has had their own individual preferences. I think if I stay the course with the plans to turn it into a karaoke contest, this will bridge some of the issues that may arise.
And, when it all comes down to it, there are enough good things here for me to use in quotes about the show that will help me sell the thing two and three fringes down the line.
Meanwhile, the following bit appeared on the Cincinnati Fringe blogsite today:
Karaoke Knights
“I just want to plug a grossly overlooked show, Karaoke Nights. I saw it last night, and I really had a good time. It is fun and inventive and the lyrics of Tim Mooney's original songs are really clever. I've heard he's not been getting very good houses over at Gabriel's Corner, so let's all show him that Cincinnati really is a karaoke town. I know you are out there- the Front Porch in Florence does not do karaoke seven nights a week for nothing. I think he has a couple more shows- Thursday and Saturday, if I'm not wrong. If I am wrong, somebody on staff for Fringe correct me before I make an ass of myself.
“Anyway, the message is simple. Go see Karaoke Nights. And sing a little. You'll feel better.
Embrya deShango”
And so it goes. Yes, attendance is light, and there are plenty of reasons I could choose to be discouraged. But I think I’ll choose not to be discouraged, and go with the very positive feeling that I get on those nights when the audience is having a blast.
Love,
Tim
Miles on the Vibe: 139,000
Temperature: Mid-90s
In the CD Player: “Karaoke Knights, a One Man Rock Opera
Discoveries: Don’t give up on the possibilities that any performance may hold. However few I may imagine may show up, it ain’t over till it’s over and my biggest challenge is to be here now. * My work is good enough that I can afford to play to my strengths in my press releases, as opposed to what I suspect may be more effective hype. * People just need the slightest connecting of the dots to engage themselves fully in the characters of the show. * Each improvement opens new areas to improve, and I could choose to feel bad about the fact that I haven’t created something perfect on the first go, or I could continue to take each subsequent step as they arrive. * Discouragement is a choice. So is feeling encouraged. Which one will be more productive?
Attendance: 28 + 5 + 20 + 18 = 79
Next Performance: Possibly setting up a June 17 performance of Karaoke Knights in Chicago. After that: July 14-18 in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Sunday, May 29, 2005
The View From Here #91: Cleveland, OH & Orlando, FL
Well, I’ve been existing amid the rapids of life the past week or so. Or, given that this is Orlando, perhaps the roller coaster is the obvious metaphor.
First there was the race to get “Imaginary Invalid” up and running in Cleveland, with some final hard decisions about the interludes (cutting about 30% of them in the final days of rehearsals), and working to get packed up simultaneously. I bought a sound system for “Karaoke Knights” which, along with the flat screen TV set, filled the car to bursting, and I recycled the empty cans and bottles I’d been collecting over six weeks.
Running the show, I would also run the set up/take down process, and found that I could get the show up in less than 15 minutes, which is my limit for the fringe events. My sound engineer also put together a DVD of the show, which enables me to flip from the audio backing track to a karaoke video seamlessly. Of course, I’ve been rehearsing with audio-only for many months now, so the karaoke tracks are taking some getting used to, and we continue to fiddle with the levels and the timing. The trick with this DVD, though, is that there is no going back. Once the DVD has started running, I’m not allowed the luxury of any mistakes that would enable me to start the thing over. Any audience interaction has to transpire within this very specific time constraint.
Opening night of “Imaginary Invalid,” my friends Eric and Linda flew in from Chicago and Atlanta, respectively, to see the show. While they were in town, I performed “Karaoke Knights” for them, and their enthusiasm for the show got me excited about it once again. The fun part about performing it is that everyone seems to have their favorite songs, and I am reminded of the initial delight I had over songs that I’ve been working with for over a year now. (Eric couldn’t stop talking about the number “Tempted to be Tempted” which I’ve staged as a mock ballet.)
That night, “Imaginary Invalid” finally opened. The costumes weren’t quite complete; a microphone dropped out during the opening prelude, a couple of actors got inexplicably quiet at given moments. But the audience was laughing here and there, and the set, and what was finished about the costumes looked terrific.
Then, in Act II, came the Thomas Diafoirus scene, and the audience laughed robustly. Shortly thereafter was the Louison scene, in which the young daughter drops over pretending to be dead. More hilarious laughter. When we came back from intermission, we had the (significantly shorter) interlude that had been the source of much anxiety only two days before. It got big boffo laughs – First with Punchinello singing, then the Old Woman (a man in drag) singing in mockery of him, and then the Archers chasing him down. – Funny stuff. Back to the action, we have the hilarious Apothecary scene, followed by the even-funnier Doctor Purgon scene, and the audience was roaring, and even applauding the Doctor’s grand exit. The action winds down to a finale, which has always been our particular stumbling block. It went fairly well until the final moments, when the last three verses (I had, by now, cut out the latin verses) were impossible to understand.
Over the next week, reviews came my way via the internet. Here’s the first, from “Cool Cleveland:”
The Imaginary Invalid @ Beck Center 5/22What: A witty adaptation of the classic Moliere comedy about a hypochondriac and his obsession with doctors – in rhymed couplets, no less.Reasons to go: Costumes and sets are sumptuously professional, Tim Mooney’s new translation is funny and easy to follow, and there are several engaging performances. Looking tall and healthy as a horse, Matthew Wright plays Argan as an overgrown baby who craves constant attention, and Tracee Patterson sparks as his mischievous servant Toinette. The second act is particularly good, when the able Robert Hawkes shows up as Argan’s sensible brother, Jeffrey Grover thunders as his doctor, and Allen Branstein convulses in a cameo as an apothecary wielding an enema bag the size of a vacuum cleaner.Caveats: Mooney has choreographed the stylized schtick to within an inch of its life –- there are delightful bits, but too often he has the overmatched secondary actors running around like windup dolls. Two out of three of the added “interludes” are lame – what works as spoken verse falls flat when sung.Backstory: Mooney is one of the country’s foremost Moliere experts, and his rhymed adaptations have been seen on national stages. He also tours with his one man show "Moliere Than Thou".Target audience: General audiences -- especially anyone who thinks doctors or drug companies deserve a roasting.Details: Thru 6/12. Beck Center for the Arts, 17801 Detroit Ave., Lakewood. 216-521-2540. http://r.pm0.net/s/c?3gv.d21s.78.9lsi.97nfrom Cool Cleveland contributor Linda Eisenstein linda@coolcleveland.com
Not a bad review; and although she clearly didn’t mean it as a compliment, I rather like the line “choreographed the stylized schtick to within an inch of its life.” For me, at least, that’s the sign of a director who cares.
Meanwhile, the Cleveland Plain Dealer had the least enthusiastic review (although they still liked my script), which they awkwardly bundled with the review of a local production of “Talley’s Folly.” I’ve extracted the Talley’s folly bits from the review below:
Romance attracts, but in these plays, the writing is the strongest part
Monday, May 23, 2005
Romance spans the centuries, the continents and even Cleveland's vast East Side-West Side divide in a not-exactly-matched-set of offerings that opened over the weekend at a pair of our small professional theaters.
To the west, Lakewood's Beck Center for the Arts assembles a cast of 13 to scale the heights of zesty 17th-century French farce, Moliere's "The Imaginary Invalid," a piquant critique of the foibles of the rich and the quack physicians who exploit them.
On the other end of town, at the Cleveland Play House, Ensemble Theatre goes intimate with "Talley's Folly," American dramatist Lanford Wilson's moody, two-character contemplation of the heart in the country's heartland during World War II.
Both plays hinge on the capricious meddling of a little cherub called Cupid. While love wins out in each, the conquests come at a price. Permanent peace remains unlikely.
Neither production surmounts its deep flaws - too little performing talent beyond the leading two roles at the Beck, and a glaring lack of directorial vision at Ensemble - but both have their attractions as well, chiefly the scripts themselves.
A handsome production in need of subtlety
Attempting Moliere is challenge even for fully professional companies (witness Great Lakes Theater Festival's "Tartuffe," only partly successful). At the Beck Center, still emerging as a professional theater, "The Imaginary Invalid" is a bumpy ride.
The main attraction, again, is the script, a witty, self-referential verse adaptation by Tim Mooney (who also directs) in idiomatic contemporary English.
It's a handsome production, thanks to Don McBride's evocation of Versailles through a set of echoing prosceniums, Jeffrey Smart's bustles and Mooney's precisely choreographed but relaxed-looking stage pictures.
But beyond Matthew Wright's slim, extremely flappable Argan, the hypochondriac of the title, and especially Tracee Patterson's lovably antic Toinette - Moliere's trademark servant who outwits her masters - the cast simply isn't up to the stylization involved even in the updated language.
Mooney includes three rarely produced commedia dell'arte interludes that turn out to be more entertaining than the play itself. They provide nice comic moments for Jeffrey Grover, Noah Varness and Allen Branstein.
Like a dog dancing on its hind legs, it may not be done well, but it is surprising to find Moliere done at all.
"The Imaginary Invalid" runs through Sunday, June 12, at 17801 Detroit Ave., Lakewood. Tickets are $23-$26. Call 216-521-2540.
I’m not sure how I could choreograph something “within an inch of its life,” and still be “relaxed”, or have “lame” interludes that are “more entertaining than the play itself” but that’s the fun of getting multiple reviews. Everything is eventually forgiven.
Finally, the “Alternative” weekly paper published their review of the play. WARNING: THIS REVIEW IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. This reviewer picked up on the theme of the ongoing references to enemas in the play and couldn’t stop (ahem) running with it.
Public Enema No. 1 Colonics are the butt of jokes in The Imaginary Invalid. By Christine HoweyPublished: Wednesday, May 25, 2005
It's been said that the proper role of journalism is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. But in recent years, the American media has followed the federal government in turning that dictum inside out, supporting the wealthy against the predations of the working class. If only Molière were here to answer those bellowing McMansioned blowhards and add a new character to his murderer's row of social weasels: the hypocrite (Tartuffe), the retrograde cynic (Alceste in The Misanthrope), and the obsessed hypochondriac, Argan, in The Imaginary Invalid.
Happily, Beck Center is offering a captivating if frequently cacophonous production of the latter, adapted and directed by Molière mensch Timothy Mooney (of the deliciously titled one-person performance Molière Than Thou). By translating the original into rhyming couplets, some of them decidedly contemporary, Mooney has created an arch anachronism -- call it 17th-century Versailles-era satire performed with the subtlety of a Three's Company episode. The result is a broad yet fascinating frolic in the elegant bedroom of an apparently entirely healthy aristocrat who lives for one exotic medical treatment after another.
These treatments usually involve an herb-spiked enema, a bloodletting, or a purging by emetic (e.g., syrup of Ipecac). The medical profession of the time appears to have been entirely focused on draining the body of whatever fluids could be encouraged to exit the anatomy, under any provocation. As for Argan, his sphincter apparently never met a nozzle it didn't adore. As the play opens, he is tabulating the costs of his "injections" and determining how best to undercut the physician's prices for the butt-gushers he demands.
Although the play has a rather singular colon-related focus, it is leavened to some degree by the romantic attachment between Argan's daughter, Angelique, and a young nobody named Cleante. This is a problem for Pops, since he prefers her to marry Thomas, a local doctor, from whom he can cadge some invoice-free intestine-hosings. Refereeing this farcical fandango is Argan's uppity maid, Toinette, who makes no bones about what an ass her master is and inserts herself into virtually every discussion. When Thomas regales the assembled with his medical mumbo-jumbo, Toinette observes, "Would he practice as well as he preaches/The whole world will want him nosing in their breeches."
Under Mooney's sprightly direction, the cast surfs across his metered dialogue and creates a humorous collision that explodes in the second act. This is when Jeffrey Grover appears as Argan's doctor, Monsieur Purgon, and, in front of doubters, presents an impassioned defense of his procedures ("I can't believe the cheek/To block the passage which I look to leak!"). Toinette, played with untrammeled enthusiasm by Tracee Patterson, also shows up disguised as a wacko visiting physician (picture Groucho Marx cross-bred with Lily Tomlin) to try to break through Argan's medical monomania. Nothing works until Argan is convinced to play dead, so he can discover who really cares for him.
The largely capable cast is anchored by Matthew Wright as Argan, in a stellar performance that blends his character's enthusiasm for sickness with his exhaustion from the remedies he must endure. Perhaps the funniest sight gag is when his aptly named enema-giver, Monsieur Fleurant (a distressingly scruffy Allen Branstein), shows up to administer his client's scheduled flush & fill. The apparatus the technician carries -- a large bag with a lengthy hose ending in an applicator tip that looks like the flame-darkened casing of a jet engine -- would be enough to send any sentient human being screaming for the exit.
Michelle Ehrman is a bit too doggedly delightful as Angelique, swooning over Mark Genszler's Cleante, while Noah Varness, as the stiff and buffoonish Thomas, huffs with indignation. Michelle Michael and Robert Hawkes are strong as, respectively, Argan's unfaithful wife, Beline, and his refreshingly rational brother, Beralde. While some of the subplots are never fully developed, including an affair between Beline and notary Bonnefoy (David Bugherr), the main story clicks along with certainty.
In this handsome production (faux marble set by Don McBride, lush costumes by Jeffrey Smart), director Mooney has also included Molière's interludes, comic ballets that infuse the performance with the spirit of commedia dell'arte. In the second-act opener, John Stuehr is a stitch as an old woman trying to give a young romantic lout his comeuppance. Stuehr reappears in the finale as the president of a physician panel, to which Argan applies to become a doctor himself (so he can prescribe his own booty blasts). Although this scene is played too ominously to be the celebration of foolishness that's intended, it's one small misstep in a diverting evening of laughter, slapstick, and commentary on the grotesque foibles of the powerful in any society.
Altogether a satisfying collection of reviews: while I might have liked more unbridled enthusiasm, it seems that aside from a couple of actors performances and perhaps the finale, there was excitement about each aspect of the play in at least one of the reviews, and universal approbation of my script, which has turned out to be the most popular of my Moliere adaptations so far. The third review, while eminently scatological, is the most attentive to detail, carefully written, and responds effectively to the real humor in the play.
At 11:30 on opening night, I bid goodbye to my Cleveland friends, and got onto the highway, driving south. While I might have liked to enjoy the spotlight for a while, I had another spotlight waiting for me, some 1200 miles south. I cranked up the music in the car and drove. After about two hours, I pulled over for a half-hour nap, and then continued for a bit. About halfway through West Virginia, I could feel myself getting sleepy again, and at 4:30, I pulled over, napping until daylight. I worked my way on south, through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and into Florida, with two more naps in the process. I pulled into Orlando at about 6:30 that evening, met up with my billeter, and found the place that I was staying. I got back to the theatre and met with my technician, who had already set up a series of lighting cues for each song I was performing. They looked great, and he helped me unload the TV and Sound Equipment into the theatre.
Out in the hallway, I ran into a reviewer who’d covered Moliere in years past, and she mentioned that she was coming to the 11:45 show that night. Yipes! I dropped mention of the fact that I had just spent the night driving down from Cleveland, but assured her that tonight’s show would be a fun adventure.
It was a friendly but very small audience that night, with a number of old friends from previous fringes who wanted to catch my opening night. They were laughing generously, and seemed to be enjoying themselves, although the show wasn’t quite going over the way I’d anticipated.
The song “Forward Thinking” has been a recent addition for me, and for a long time I was stumped about what to do with it. It’s a bizarre, ethereal song, and a show-biz rendition of it would be totally out of character. I thought I would probably go out into the audience with it and relate to one of the women in attendance, but I wasn’t sure just how that might be dramatic or effective. I was sure that, when it came time to cut the show down to 60 minutes, to fit into tighter fringe slots, this would be one of the first to go.
I think I was rehearsing with an electrical cord, just to get used to manipulating a microphone cord during the show, when an idea struck me. I gathered the cord and wound it around the chair that I was “singing to” at the time. It seemed strangely effective. I continued rehearsing it this way.
When I went to do “Forward Thinking” in performance, with a live human being in that chair, this moment was getting so much audience response that suddenly the lyrics disappeared from my head. I could remember parts of the song, but not the parts that I was supposed to be singing. I stumbled around, wound and unwound the mike cord, and finally asked “AJ” in the booth if he had the script page handy. He ran it out to me and I caught up with the last verse of the song. The audience liked it, but were probably just as entertained in watching me forget my lines than anything else. I couldn’t imagine what the reviewer was thinking.
Next was an 11:15 performance the next night, and while there were perhaps as many people present, they seemed far less excited about being there. I had to drag people up to participate in the volunteer sequences, and the now-infamous microphone cord routine was resisted strongly (although, I must say that I haven’t forgotten those particular lyrics since then). There was evidently another reviewer present, and I assumed that this review would be disastrous. The vibes I was feeling were alternatively sleepy and hostile.
Back at the place I was staying, I was rehearsing the show three times a day. The initial feedback suggested that people weren’t quite getting what it was about, and I have committed too much money and time to this project (with six fringes to follow this one) to let it roll on uncorrected.
What I was really beginning to notice was just how much people were identifying with the characters of this play. On one level, this seemed absurd to me. I had written these songs 4-5 years ago, without any consideration of character. It was only long after they had been set to music that certain characters seemed to suggest themselves to me, and for performance convenience, I defined them by changing costumes and giving them names. It turns out that the audience couldn’t help but see this script as being a story about these specific individuals, seeing character first, before noticing the music or the lyrics or my performance.
The Monday performance was another tiny house, this one early in the evening, and Tuesday was finally a day off for me. I ran the play just once to keep it in my head, but found myself rethinking some of the show. Long ago, Deb Pekin and I had toyed with the idea of adding a Karaoke Jockey/Voiceover to the play, and it felt like this would help carry the audience through the show. Meanwhile the Orlando Sentinel review appeared, first on line, and the next day, in the paper (this was from the woman who was present opening night):
“Timothy Mooney has delighted Fringe fans in yeas past with a couple of nifty shows - last year's sci-fi “Criteria” and “Moliere Than Thou,” the farce fest from 2003. But I'm not sure what he's up to with Karaoke Knights: A One-Man Rock Opera!, which he performs in the guise of various characters: the leather-jacketed Sergio, the peppy Brian, the gravel-voiced Charles. Mooney has a likeable persona and a pleasant pop voice, but his herky-jerky dancing is on the odd side, and many of his lyrics don't add up to much.
”The notion that these guys are all performing in a karaoke bar -- at least I think that's the notion -- doesn't really come across.
”But he does have fun with the audience: At his first performance, a couple of women wound up dancing onstage, and another one got more entangled in the show (and in Mooney's mike cord) than she might have expected. The real karaoke in Karaoke Knights comes between Mooney's songs, and you'd better join in fast because the snippets of songs are over before you know it. The rest of the time, Karaoke Knights is just spectator sport.”
Elizabeth Maupin, Orlando Sentinel
This was kind of a sad review for me to read. A lot of what I felt was good about the play went unnoticed in light of confusion over the concept. I wasn’t going to sweat the comments about my “herky-jerky” dancing, because I don’t really see being “on the odd side” to be a meaningful criticism, and if I’m confident about anything in the play, it’s the lyrics. But lack of clarity around the concept gave her the space to get annoyed at other things. As for the overall lack of sing-along karaoke, that too seemed to be a product of her expectations being different from what the show was looking to provide. I delved further into work on the narrator, and started looking at which songs I ought or ought not be cutting from the Cincinnati production.
I was also looking at ways to “warm up” the presentation. Other musical events that I’ve attended usually find the audience entirely identifying with the singer, but somehow they felt largely at a distance from me. Somehow I had placed them in the position of judgment rather than participation or empathy.
On Wednesday, the CD’s finally arrived, and I was glad to have something finally available to sell at the shows. A couple of people bought theirs right away when they saw me walking into the theatre that night. And yet, nobody has bought any since. On Wednesday night, another review appeared. This one was in the Orlando Weekly, and I braced myself for a pan. This was the guy who’d been in the seemingly hostile audience on Sunday night. But instead, this was what I found:
“Tim Mooney likes playing himself, but he also can't help impersonating a few other characters while he's at it. At the 2003 Fringe, he created an enjoyable and educational ensemble in his one-man opus, "Moliere Than Thou." In Karaoke Knights: A One-Man Rock Opera, he invites his audience into his fantasy karaoke bar, where one of several different sides of his personality is always onstage.
”The show features 17 songs Mooney has written with composer Ray Lewis; they're satisfyingly delivered by a conjured fraternity of crooners. Some of the songs have a pop-rock feel; others are comically operatic. "Next" has echoes of Tom Lehrer; "Half a World Away" could have been on a Talking Heads album, and the brilliant "Dreaming Tax" sounds like a Tom Waits cover.
”Mooney's obsession with trying to find the answer to male/female relationships wears a little thin by the end of his 75-minute show, but he's such a good actor and inventive performer that he's always interesting to watch. And there's no doubt that the man can sing. One doesn't usually go to a karaoke bar to watch others perform, but in Karaoke Knights there are about a half dozen guys worth listening to.”
Al Krulick, Orlando Weekly
Suddenly, I felt significantly redeemed. I checked my previous reviews, and this same reviewer had given me a rave for “Moliere Than Thou” two years before. In fact, throughout this week, I was meeting people who still recognized me from “Moliere Than Thou”. And I was wearing wigs in that show!
Wednesday’s audience was again, very small, with only 8 people in the audience. At least four of those, however, were friends who’d really loved previous performances (one woman was a huge Moliere fan), and they smiled and laughed throughout the show. My technician at this theatre is the best I’ve ever had. When I showed him the Karaoke Jockey narration I was writing, he suggested that he could read it aloud from his microphone in the booth. What a great advantage! I could “try out” the material live before committing it to the disc, and finding out the issues that would come up after it was already complete.
Thursday night’s audience was still very small (20 people, perhaps), but responsive. By this time, “Forward Thinking” had worked its way securely into the repertory. And now I was faced with the issue of what to cut in its place. I had to work fast, because any changes I made had to be instituted on a DVD that would be coming from my audio/video engineer in Cleveland.
Friday was a day off, and I wrote and rewrote the Karaoke Jockey voiceovers, and began recording myself doing them. I wanted to have my favorite KJ, Don, record the voiceovers, but the time was running short, and I was still needing to make more changes to the text, particularly as I was still reworking which songs to use. This latest review had already cited one of the songs that I was sure I would cut this time around, “A Half-A-World Away,” which would make it difficult to use the publicity.
Saturday was a very early show: 11:30 a.m. I had no idea just who would come to see my show at 11:30, but I got up early and ran the show to warm up my voice. As I did so, another realization hit me. I was performing my biggest “production number” as the opening song of the show. It got people worked up early, and yet, there was no way I could top it in subsequent songs. All at once it hit me. I HAVE TO WORK MY WAY UP TO THIS!
And so, once again I changed the order. I moved “I’m Looking for a Groupie” to the fifth song of the show, which bumped #5 to #8, dropping #8 entirely. I cut the second-to-last song, as it seemed that the show had two “final” numbers following the emotional climax of the play, “Gravity’s Pull.” To get the show down to 60 minutes, I ended up dropping four numbers: “A Little Taste”, “Half-A-World Away”, “Dreams are Waiting” and “Sum One.” It kills me to lose some of these, but I think, finally, I could see where I was being too clever for my own good. All but “A Little Taste” would come back into the show when it went back up to 75 minutes, but by then (at the Winnipeg Fringe in late July), I expect I will probably have reworked the play significantly once again.
And besides, all these songs now live on the CD, where people can discover them with delight, out of the context of the show. It will also give a secondary selling point to the CDs.
Another review appeared on-line, this one from Carl F. Gauze (pen name for Al Pergande), on the on-line site Ink 19. Al was becoming a good friend a the beer tent, and he’s given me two good reviews in years past, so I looked forward to reading this one:
Karaoke KnightsBy Tim Mooney and Ray Lewis
“Fringe is a nest of one man shows, as there's just about no other way to make a living at this job. Perennial favorite Tim Mooney (Molière Than Thou, Criteria) returns with the interesting results of a recent personal project - he wrote a song a day for a year, then selected the best for this quirky performance. Mr. Mooney likes Karaoke, and from my experience professional actors are much better at this imported art form than the drunken masses.
“Notionally, Mr. Mooney plays a number a characters singing for themselves and their imagined audience. Sometimes he sounds like Tom Waits (Charles), sometimes he sounds like a Latin Lover (Sergio), and sometimes he's just a regular guy in a sweat shirt. There is some risk in seeing this show, as several audience members make the supreme sacrifice, standing on stage awkwardly while he croons to them. Or you can sit along the side of the stage, and He'll give you a beer for your trouble.
“The songs are loosely connected, but with complicated lyrics that remind me of that old band "Sparks." If you're dieing to sing karaoke at Fringe, the show is definitely for you. If you just like Tim Mooney, that’s another good reason to drop by. And if you want to be on stage but basically lack talent, he can cover that for you as well, and then you to can become a Karaoke Knight.”
Al, like several others, had chosen his favorite character (Sergio was extremely popular, as was Charles), and I’d forgotten about how much I’d enjoyed the band “Sparks” back in the 70s. All in all, I was amassing some great cross-references to use in the publicity for the show, and I was glad to see that the reviewers were starting to acknowledge the lyrical complexity of what I was presenting. It’s also a little gratifying to see myself, personally listed as a reason to attend.
Back to the show, Saturday’s audience was the smallest yet, with only 7 people in the auditorium. Adding insult to injury, four of the audience left before the end of the show, presumably to catch another show they’d previously committed to. I remained, performing for a faithful crowd of three, who were generous in their response.
Later, at the beer tent, the woman who’d stayed till the end of that morning’s show said, “Hey, my friend wants to see your show on Sunday, but only if you’ll promise to tie her up.”
Guess which song is NOT getting cut from the show any time soon?
Attendance: 100 in Cleveland (and more since opening night); 15, 16, 8, 15, 25, 7 in Orlando
Temperature: 80s-90s
In the CD player: Karaoke Knights
Reading: “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay
Discoveries: Efforts to second guess any individual's opinion are in vain. * The "hostile vibes" that I perceive may simply be my own hostility toward myself. * Sometimes theatrical excitement outweighs cleverness. * There comes a moment when one wants to just give up and write off a year's work as a ridiculous pursuit. The choices made in that moment determine an endeavor's ultimate success. I can choose to bang my head against the wall in despair, or dissect just where the thing is going awry, and try again. * Lack of clarity around the concept gives people the space to grow annoyed at other irrelevant things. * If you come out with your best stuff in the opening number, people will get restless later, and start to judge you against a level that you rose to, previously. * I work on my shows forwards, but people perceive them backwards, and the last thing I worked on is the first thing that they notice. Particularly, they are extremely conscious of character, and even if I created them in a frivolous way, they really identify with "Sergio" and "Charles."
Miles on the Vibe: 138,000
Next performance: 5/29, Orlando, FL, 6/1, Cincinnati, OH
First there was the race to get “Imaginary Invalid” up and running in Cleveland, with some final hard decisions about the interludes (cutting about 30% of them in the final days of rehearsals), and working to get packed up simultaneously. I bought a sound system for “Karaoke Knights” which, along with the flat screen TV set, filled the car to bursting, and I recycled the empty cans and bottles I’d been collecting over six weeks.
Running the show, I would also run the set up/take down process, and found that I could get the show up in less than 15 minutes, which is my limit for the fringe events. My sound engineer also put together a DVD of the show, which enables me to flip from the audio backing track to a karaoke video seamlessly. Of course, I’ve been rehearsing with audio-only for many months now, so the karaoke tracks are taking some getting used to, and we continue to fiddle with the levels and the timing. The trick with this DVD, though, is that there is no going back. Once the DVD has started running, I’m not allowed the luxury of any mistakes that would enable me to start the thing over. Any audience interaction has to transpire within this very specific time constraint.
Opening night of “Imaginary Invalid,” my friends Eric and Linda flew in from Chicago and Atlanta, respectively, to see the show. While they were in town, I performed “Karaoke Knights” for them, and their enthusiasm for the show got me excited about it once again. The fun part about performing it is that everyone seems to have their favorite songs, and I am reminded of the initial delight I had over songs that I’ve been working with for over a year now. (Eric couldn’t stop talking about the number “Tempted to be Tempted” which I’ve staged as a mock ballet.)
That night, “Imaginary Invalid” finally opened. The costumes weren’t quite complete; a microphone dropped out during the opening prelude, a couple of actors got inexplicably quiet at given moments. But the audience was laughing here and there, and the set, and what was finished about the costumes looked terrific.
Then, in Act II, came the Thomas Diafoirus scene, and the audience laughed robustly. Shortly thereafter was the Louison scene, in which the young daughter drops over pretending to be dead. More hilarious laughter. When we came back from intermission, we had the (significantly shorter) interlude that had been the source of much anxiety only two days before. It got big boffo laughs – First with Punchinello singing, then the Old Woman (a man in drag) singing in mockery of him, and then the Archers chasing him down. – Funny stuff. Back to the action, we have the hilarious Apothecary scene, followed by the even-funnier Doctor Purgon scene, and the audience was roaring, and even applauding the Doctor’s grand exit. The action winds down to a finale, which has always been our particular stumbling block. It went fairly well until the final moments, when the last three verses (I had, by now, cut out the latin verses) were impossible to understand.
Over the next week, reviews came my way via the internet. Here’s the first, from “Cool Cleveland:”
The Imaginary Invalid @ Beck Center 5/22What: A witty adaptation of the classic Moliere comedy about a hypochondriac and his obsession with doctors – in rhymed couplets, no less.Reasons to go: Costumes and sets are sumptuously professional, Tim Mooney’s new translation is funny and easy to follow, and there are several engaging performances. Looking tall and healthy as a horse, Matthew Wright plays Argan as an overgrown baby who craves constant attention, and Tracee Patterson sparks as his mischievous servant Toinette. The second act is particularly good, when the able Robert Hawkes shows up as Argan’s sensible brother, Jeffrey Grover thunders as his doctor, and Allen Branstein convulses in a cameo as an apothecary wielding an enema bag the size of a vacuum cleaner.Caveats: Mooney has choreographed the stylized schtick to within an inch of its life –- there are delightful bits, but too often he has the overmatched secondary actors running around like windup dolls. Two out of three of the added “interludes” are lame – what works as spoken verse falls flat when sung.Backstory: Mooney is one of the country’s foremost Moliere experts, and his rhymed adaptations have been seen on national stages. He also tours with his one man show "Moliere Than Thou".Target audience: General audiences -- especially anyone who thinks doctors or drug companies deserve a roasting.Details: Thru 6/12. Beck Center for the Arts, 17801 Detroit Ave., Lakewood. 216-521-2540. http://r.pm0.net/s/c?3gv.d21s.78.9lsi.97nfrom Cool Cleveland contributor Linda Eisenstein linda@coolcleveland.com
Not a bad review; and although she clearly didn’t mean it as a compliment, I rather like the line “choreographed the stylized schtick to within an inch of its life.” For me, at least, that’s the sign of a director who cares.
Meanwhile, the Cleveland Plain Dealer had the least enthusiastic review (although they still liked my script), which they awkwardly bundled with the review of a local production of “Talley’s Folly.” I’ve extracted the Talley’s folly bits from the review below:
Romance attracts, but in these plays, the writing is the strongest part
Monday, May 23, 2005
Romance spans the centuries, the continents and even Cleveland's vast East Side-West Side divide in a not-exactly-matched-set of offerings that opened over the weekend at a pair of our small professional theaters.
To the west, Lakewood's Beck Center for the Arts assembles a cast of 13 to scale the heights of zesty 17th-century French farce, Moliere's "The Imaginary Invalid," a piquant critique of the foibles of the rich and the quack physicians who exploit them.
On the other end of town, at the Cleveland Play House, Ensemble Theatre goes intimate with "Talley's Folly," American dramatist Lanford Wilson's moody, two-character contemplation of the heart in the country's heartland during World War II.
Both plays hinge on the capricious meddling of a little cherub called Cupid. While love wins out in each, the conquests come at a price. Permanent peace remains unlikely.
Neither production surmounts its deep flaws - too little performing talent beyond the leading two roles at the Beck, and a glaring lack of directorial vision at Ensemble - but both have their attractions as well, chiefly the scripts themselves.
A handsome production in need of subtlety
Attempting Moliere is challenge even for fully professional companies (witness Great Lakes Theater Festival's "Tartuffe," only partly successful). At the Beck Center, still emerging as a professional theater, "The Imaginary Invalid" is a bumpy ride.
The main attraction, again, is the script, a witty, self-referential verse adaptation by Tim Mooney (who also directs) in idiomatic contemporary English.
It's a handsome production, thanks to Don McBride's evocation of Versailles through a set of echoing prosceniums, Jeffrey Smart's bustles and Mooney's precisely choreographed but relaxed-looking stage pictures.
But beyond Matthew Wright's slim, extremely flappable Argan, the hypochondriac of the title, and especially Tracee Patterson's lovably antic Toinette - Moliere's trademark servant who outwits her masters - the cast simply isn't up to the stylization involved even in the updated language.
Mooney includes three rarely produced commedia dell'arte interludes that turn out to be more entertaining than the play itself. They provide nice comic moments for Jeffrey Grover, Noah Varness and Allen Branstein.
Like a dog dancing on its hind legs, it may not be done well, but it is surprising to find Moliere done at all.
"The Imaginary Invalid" runs through Sunday, June 12, at 17801 Detroit Ave., Lakewood. Tickets are $23-$26. Call 216-521-2540.
I’m not sure how I could choreograph something “within an inch of its life,” and still be “relaxed”, or have “lame” interludes that are “more entertaining than the play itself” but that’s the fun of getting multiple reviews. Everything is eventually forgiven.
Finally, the “Alternative” weekly paper published their review of the play. WARNING: THIS REVIEW IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. This reviewer picked up on the theme of the ongoing references to enemas in the play and couldn’t stop (ahem) running with it.
Public Enema No. 1 Colonics are the butt of jokes in The Imaginary Invalid. By Christine HoweyPublished: Wednesday, May 25, 2005
It's been said that the proper role of journalism is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. But in recent years, the American media has followed the federal government in turning that dictum inside out, supporting the wealthy against the predations of the working class. If only Molière were here to answer those bellowing McMansioned blowhards and add a new character to his murderer's row of social weasels: the hypocrite (Tartuffe), the retrograde cynic (Alceste in The Misanthrope), and the obsessed hypochondriac, Argan, in The Imaginary Invalid.
Happily, Beck Center is offering a captivating if frequently cacophonous production of the latter, adapted and directed by Molière mensch Timothy Mooney (of the deliciously titled one-person performance Molière Than Thou). By translating the original into rhyming couplets, some of them decidedly contemporary, Mooney has created an arch anachronism -- call it 17th-century Versailles-era satire performed with the subtlety of a Three's Company episode. The result is a broad yet fascinating frolic in the elegant bedroom of an apparently entirely healthy aristocrat who lives for one exotic medical treatment after another.
These treatments usually involve an herb-spiked enema, a bloodletting, or a purging by emetic (e.g., syrup of Ipecac). The medical profession of the time appears to have been entirely focused on draining the body of whatever fluids could be encouraged to exit the anatomy, under any provocation. As for Argan, his sphincter apparently never met a nozzle it didn't adore. As the play opens, he is tabulating the costs of his "injections" and determining how best to undercut the physician's prices for the butt-gushers he demands.
Although the play has a rather singular colon-related focus, it is leavened to some degree by the romantic attachment between Argan's daughter, Angelique, and a young nobody named Cleante. This is a problem for Pops, since he prefers her to marry Thomas, a local doctor, from whom he can cadge some invoice-free intestine-hosings. Refereeing this farcical fandango is Argan's uppity maid, Toinette, who makes no bones about what an ass her master is and inserts herself into virtually every discussion. When Thomas regales the assembled with his medical mumbo-jumbo, Toinette observes, "Would he practice as well as he preaches/The whole world will want him nosing in their breeches."
Under Mooney's sprightly direction, the cast surfs across his metered dialogue and creates a humorous collision that explodes in the second act. This is when Jeffrey Grover appears as Argan's doctor, Monsieur Purgon, and, in front of doubters, presents an impassioned defense of his procedures ("I can't believe the cheek/To block the passage which I look to leak!"). Toinette, played with untrammeled enthusiasm by Tracee Patterson, also shows up disguised as a wacko visiting physician (picture Groucho Marx cross-bred with Lily Tomlin) to try to break through Argan's medical monomania. Nothing works until Argan is convinced to play dead, so he can discover who really cares for him.
The largely capable cast is anchored by Matthew Wright as Argan, in a stellar performance that blends his character's enthusiasm for sickness with his exhaustion from the remedies he must endure. Perhaps the funniest sight gag is when his aptly named enema-giver, Monsieur Fleurant (a distressingly scruffy Allen Branstein), shows up to administer his client's scheduled flush & fill. The apparatus the technician carries -- a large bag with a lengthy hose ending in an applicator tip that looks like the flame-darkened casing of a jet engine -- would be enough to send any sentient human being screaming for the exit.
Michelle Ehrman is a bit too doggedly delightful as Angelique, swooning over Mark Genszler's Cleante, while Noah Varness, as the stiff and buffoonish Thomas, huffs with indignation. Michelle Michael and Robert Hawkes are strong as, respectively, Argan's unfaithful wife, Beline, and his refreshingly rational brother, Beralde. While some of the subplots are never fully developed, including an affair between Beline and notary Bonnefoy (David Bugherr), the main story clicks along with certainty.
In this handsome production (faux marble set by Don McBride, lush costumes by Jeffrey Smart), director Mooney has also included Molière's interludes, comic ballets that infuse the performance with the spirit of commedia dell'arte. In the second-act opener, John Stuehr is a stitch as an old woman trying to give a young romantic lout his comeuppance. Stuehr reappears in the finale as the president of a physician panel, to which Argan applies to become a doctor himself (so he can prescribe his own booty blasts). Although this scene is played too ominously to be the celebration of foolishness that's intended, it's one small misstep in a diverting evening of laughter, slapstick, and commentary on the grotesque foibles of the powerful in any society.
Altogether a satisfying collection of reviews: while I might have liked more unbridled enthusiasm, it seems that aside from a couple of actors performances and perhaps the finale, there was excitement about each aspect of the play in at least one of the reviews, and universal approbation of my script, which has turned out to be the most popular of my Moliere adaptations so far. The third review, while eminently scatological, is the most attentive to detail, carefully written, and responds effectively to the real humor in the play.
At 11:30 on opening night, I bid goodbye to my Cleveland friends, and got onto the highway, driving south. While I might have liked to enjoy the spotlight for a while, I had another spotlight waiting for me, some 1200 miles south. I cranked up the music in the car and drove. After about two hours, I pulled over for a half-hour nap, and then continued for a bit. About halfway through West Virginia, I could feel myself getting sleepy again, and at 4:30, I pulled over, napping until daylight. I worked my way on south, through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and into Florida, with two more naps in the process. I pulled into Orlando at about 6:30 that evening, met up with my billeter, and found the place that I was staying. I got back to the theatre and met with my technician, who had already set up a series of lighting cues for each song I was performing. They looked great, and he helped me unload the TV and Sound Equipment into the theatre.
Out in the hallway, I ran into a reviewer who’d covered Moliere in years past, and she mentioned that she was coming to the 11:45 show that night. Yipes! I dropped mention of the fact that I had just spent the night driving down from Cleveland, but assured her that tonight’s show would be a fun adventure.
It was a friendly but very small audience that night, with a number of old friends from previous fringes who wanted to catch my opening night. They were laughing generously, and seemed to be enjoying themselves, although the show wasn’t quite going over the way I’d anticipated.
The song “Forward Thinking” has been a recent addition for me, and for a long time I was stumped about what to do with it. It’s a bizarre, ethereal song, and a show-biz rendition of it would be totally out of character. I thought I would probably go out into the audience with it and relate to one of the women in attendance, but I wasn’t sure just how that might be dramatic or effective. I was sure that, when it came time to cut the show down to 60 minutes, to fit into tighter fringe slots, this would be one of the first to go.
I think I was rehearsing with an electrical cord, just to get used to manipulating a microphone cord during the show, when an idea struck me. I gathered the cord and wound it around the chair that I was “singing to” at the time. It seemed strangely effective. I continued rehearsing it this way.
When I went to do “Forward Thinking” in performance, with a live human being in that chair, this moment was getting so much audience response that suddenly the lyrics disappeared from my head. I could remember parts of the song, but not the parts that I was supposed to be singing. I stumbled around, wound and unwound the mike cord, and finally asked “AJ” in the booth if he had the script page handy. He ran it out to me and I caught up with the last verse of the song. The audience liked it, but were probably just as entertained in watching me forget my lines than anything else. I couldn’t imagine what the reviewer was thinking.
Next was an 11:15 performance the next night, and while there were perhaps as many people present, they seemed far less excited about being there. I had to drag people up to participate in the volunteer sequences, and the now-infamous microphone cord routine was resisted strongly (although, I must say that I haven’t forgotten those particular lyrics since then). There was evidently another reviewer present, and I assumed that this review would be disastrous. The vibes I was feeling were alternatively sleepy and hostile.
Back at the place I was staying, I was rehearsing the show three times a day. The initial feedback suggested that people weren’t quite getting what it was about, and I have committed too much money and time to this project (with six fringes to follow this one) to let it roll on uncorrected.
What I was really beginning to notice was just how much people were identifying with the characters of this play. On one level, this seemed absurd to me. I had written these songs 4-5 years ago, without any consideration of character. It was only long after they had been set to music that certain characters seemed to suggest themselves to me, and for performance convenience, I defined them by changing costumes and giving them names. It turns out that the audience couldn’t help but see this script as being a story about these specific individuals, seeing character first, before noticing the music or the lyrics or my performance.
The Monday performance was another tiny house, this one early in the evening, and Tuesday was finally a day off for me. I ran the play just once to keep it in my head, but found myself rethinking some of the show. Long ago, Deb Pekin and I had toyed with the idea of adding a Karaoke Jockey/Voiceover to the play, and it felt like this would help carry the audience through the show. Meanwhile the Orlando Sentinel review appeared, first on line, and the next day, in the paper (this was from the woman who was present opening night):
“Timothy Mooney has delighted Fringe fans in yeas past with a couple of nifty shows - last year's sci-fi “Criteria” and “Moliere Than Thou,” the farce fest from 2003. But I'm not sure what he's up to with Karaoke Knights: A One-Man Rock Opera!, which he performs in the guise of various characters: the leather-jacketed Sergio, the peppy Brian, the gravel-voiced Charles. Mooney has a likeable persona and a pleasant pop voice, but his herky-jerky dancing is on the odd side, and many of his lyrics don't add up to much.
”The notion that these guys are all performing in a karaoke bar -- at least I think that's the notion -- doesn't really come across.
”But he does have fun with the audience: At his first performance, a couple of women wound up dancing onstage, and another one got more entangled in the show (and in Mooney's mike cord) than she might have expected. The real karaoke in Karaoke Knights comes between Mooney's songs, and you'd better join in fast because the snippets of songs are over before you know it. The rest of the time, Karaoke Knights is just spectator sport.”
Elizabeth Maupin, Orlando Sentinel
This was kind of a sad review for me to read. A lot of what I felt was good about the play went unnoticed in light of confusion over the concept. I wasn’t going to sweat the comments about my “herky-jerky” dancing, because I don’t really see being “on the odd side” to be a meaningful criticism, and if I’m confident about anything in the play, it’s the lyrics. But lack of clarity around the concept gave her the space to get annoyed at other things. As for the overall lack of sing-along karaoke, that too seemed to be a product of her expectations being different from what the show was looking to provide. I delved further into work on the narrator, and started looking at which songs I ought or ought not be cutting from the Cincinnati production.
I was also looking at ways to “warm up” the presentation. Other musical events that I’ve attended usually find the audience entirely identifying with the singer, but somehow they felt largely at a distance from me. Somehow I had placed them in the position of judgment rather than participation or empathy.
On Wednesday, the CD’s finally arrived, and I was glad to have something finally available to sell at the shows. A couple of people bought theirs right away when they saw me walking into the theatre that night. And yet, nobody has bought any since. On Wednesday night, another review appeared. This one was in the Orlando Weekly, and I braced myself for a pan. This was the guy who’d been in the seemingly hostile audience on Sunday night. But instead, this was what I found:
“Tim Mooney likes playing himself, but he also can't help impersonating a few other characters while he's at it. At the 2003 Fringe, he created an enjoyable and educational ensemble in his one-man opus, "Moliere Than Thou." In Karaoke Knights: A One-Man Rock Opera, he invites his audience into his fantasy karaoke bar, where one of several different sides of his personality is always onstage.
”The show features 17 songs Mooney has written with composer Ray Lewis; they're satisfyingly delivered by a conjured fraternity of crooners. Some of the songs have a pop-rock feel; others are comically operatic. "Next" has echoes of Tom Lehrer; "Half a World Away" could have been on a Talking Heads album, and the brilliant "Dreaming Tax" sounds like a Tom Waits cover.
”Mooney's obsession with trying to find the answer to male/female relationships wears a little thin by the end of his 75-minute show, but he's such a good actor and inventive performer that he's always interesting to watch. And there's no doubt that the man can sing. One doesn't usually go to a karaoke bar to watch others perform, but in Karaoke Knights there are about a half dozen guys worth listening to.”
Al Krulick, Orlando Weekly
Suddenly, I felt significantly redeemed. I checked my previous reviews, and this same reviewer had given me a rave for “Moliere Than Thou” two years before. In fact, throughout this week, I was meeting people who still recognized me from “Moliere Than Thou”. And I was wearing wigs in that show!
Wednesday’s audience was again, very small, with only 8 people in the audience. At least four of those, however, were friends who’d really loved previous performances (one woman was a huge Moliere fan), and they smiled and laughed throughout the show. My technician at this theatre is the best I’ve ever had. When I showed him the Karaoke Jockey narration I was writing, he suggested that he could read it aloud from his microphone in the booth. What a great advantage! I could “try out” the material live before committing it to the disc, and finding out the issues that would come up after it was already complete.
Thursday night’s audience was still very small (20 people, perhaps), but responsive. By this time, “Forward Thinking” had worked its way securely into the repertory. And now I was faced with the issue of what to cut in its place. I had to work fast, because any changes I made had to be instituted on a DVD that would be coming from my audio/video engineer in Cleveland.
Friday was a day off, and I wrote and rewrote the Karaoke Jockey voiceovers, and began recording myself doing them. I wanted to have my favorite KJ, Don, record the voiceovers, but the time was running short, and I was still needing to make more changes to the text, particularly as I was still reworking which songs to use. This latest review had already cited one of the songs that I was sure I would cut this time around, “A Half-A-World Away,” which would make it difficult to use the publicity.
Saturday was a very early show: 11:30 a.m. I had no idea just who would come to see my show at 11:30, but I got up early and ran the show to warm up my voice. As I did so, another realization hit me. I was performing my biggest “production number” as the opening song of the show. It got people worked up early, and yet, there was no way I could top it in subsequent songs. All at once it hit me. I HAVE TO WORK MY WAY UP TO THIS!
And so, once again I changed the order. I moved “I’m Looking for a Groupie” to the fifth song of the show, which bumped #5 to #8, dropping #8 entirely. I cut the second-to-last song, as it seemed that the show had two “final” numbers following the emotional climax of the play, “Gravity’s Pull.” To get the show down to 60 minutes, I ended up dropping four numbers: “A Little Taste”, “Half-A-World Away”, “Dreams are Waiting” and “Sum One.” It kills me to lose some of these, but I think, finally, I could see where I was being too clever for my own good. All but “A Little Taste” would come back into the show when it went back up to 75 minutes, but by then (at the Winnipeg Fringe in late July), I expect I will probably have reworked the play significantly once again.
And besides, all these songs now live on the CD, where people can discover them with delight, out of the context of the show. It will also give a secondary selling point to the CDs.
Another review appeared on-line, this one from Carl F. Gauze (pen name for Al Pergande), on the on-line site Ink 19. Al was becoming a good friend a the beer tent, and he’s given me two good reviews in years past, so I looked forward to reading this one:
Karaoke KnightsBy Tim Mooney and Ray Lewis
“Fringe is a nest of one man shows, as there's just about no other way to make a living at this job. Perennial favorite Tim Mooney (Molière Than Thou, Criteria) returns with the interesting results of a recent personal project - he wrote a song a day for a year, then selected the best for this quirky performance. Mr. Mooney likes Karaoke, and from my experience professional actors are much better at this imported art form than the drunken masses.
“Notionally, Mr. Mooney plays a number a characters singing for themselves and their imagined audience. Sometimes he sounds like Tom Waits (Charles), sometimes he sounds like a Latin Lover (Sergio), and sometimes he's just a regular guy in a sweat shirt. There is some risk in seeing this show, as several audience members make the supreme sacrifice, standing on stage awkwardly while he croons to them. Or you can sit along the side of the stage, and He'll give you a beer for your trouble.
“The songs are loosely connected, but with complicated lyrics that remind me of that old band "Sparks." If you're dieing to sing karaoke at Fringe, the show is definitely for you. If you just like Tim Mooney, that’s another good reason to drop by. And if you want to be on stage but basically lack talent, he can cover that for you as well, and then you to can become a Karaoke Knight.”
Al, like several others, had chosen his favorite character (Sergio was extremely popular, as was Charles), and I’d forgotten about how much I’d enjoyed the band “Sparks” back in the 70s. All in all, I was amassing some great cross-references to use in the publicity for the show, and I was glad to see that the reviewers were starting to acknowledge the lyrical complexity of what I was presenting. It’s also a little gratifying to see myself, personally listed as a reason to attend.
Back to the show, Saturday’s audience was the smallest yet, with only 7 people in the auditorium. Adding insult to injury, four of the audience left before the end of the show, presumably to catch another show they’d previously committed to. I remained, performing for a faithful crowd of three, who were generous in their response.
Later, at the beer tent, the woman who’d stayed till the end of that morning’s show said, “Hey, my friend wants to see your show on Sunday, but only if you’ll promise to tie her up.”
Guess which song is NOT getting cut from the show any time soon?
Attendance: 100 in Cleveland (and more since opening night); 15, 16, 8, 15, 25, 7 in Orlando
Temperature: 80s-90s
In the CD player: Karaoke Knights
Reading: “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay
Discoveries: Efforts to second guess any individual's opinion are in vain. * The "hostile vibes" that I perceive may simply be my own hostility toward myself. * Sometimes theatrical excitement outweighs cleverness. * There comes a moment when one wants to just give up and write off a year's work as a ridiculous pursuit. The choices made in that moment determine an endeavor's ultimate success. I can choose to bang my head against the wall in despair, or dissect just where the thing is going awry, and try again. * Lack of clarity around the concept gives people the space to grow annoyed at other irrelevant things. * If you come out with your best stuff in the opening number, people will get restless later, and start to judge you against a level that you rose to, previously. * I work on my shows forwards, but people perceive them backwards, and the last thing I worked on is the first thing that they notice. Particularly, they are extremely conscious of character, and even if I created them in a frivolous way, they really identify with "Sergio" and "Charles."
Miles on the Vibe: 138,000
Next performance: 5/29, Orlando, FL, 6/1, Cincinnati, OH
Monday, May 16, 2005
The View From Here #90: Cleveland, OH & Orlando, FL
Sorry about the long drop-off in installments … or did anybody notice? With two shows getting ready to open, there’s a constant struggle to keep on top of issues, and either show has a tendency to suck up what once looked like a free morning, or day.
Let me see if I can capture the intervening weeks with a once-over-lightly treatment, rather than the usual play-by-play.
Early on, I did another major e-mailing project. I sent off my semi-annual e-mail to College/University Theatre departments. I’ve also done a major once-over on my “maybe next year list,” sorting out possible stops in potential venues and getting much more specific about just where I am available to perform just when. With each booking that comes in I tighten the schedule tighter, and am able to get more clear with the potential venues about exactly which dates I am available. As noted before, the FEWER dates I have available, the greater the likelihood of booking the show. This seems contradictory, but when I write somebody to say that I’ll be passing through Little Rock, Arkansas on October 12 only, they are much more likely to go and check their calendar than if I were to write and say that I’m available to come through Arkansas sometime in October.
This is a process that I tend to get into in June or July, when fringe festival season has me holed up in a given city for ten days at a time. The fact that I’m not picking up and driving someplace new every day means that I’ve been able to nail a lot of these details down before people have left for the summer. If bookings continue to fall into place like they normally do in the summer, then this fall will be the busiest on record.
So, I’ve been in rehearsal for “Imaginary Invalid” six days a week, and find that directing is quite a challenge for me following four years of directing nobody but myself. On one level, there is the issue of getting used to the fact that people I’m working with are not actually reading my mind, and realizing that I have to explain to a group of collaborators what my idea was in the first place.
Then there is another level in which I realize that I’m working with some extremely talented people, and that the solution to certain issues often has to do with listening to what they have to say, and coming to a collective decision that works for everybody, rather than bullying them into seeing that my way was right all along.
The biggest challenge in this area has been with the interludes and the finale. I’ve been working with my musical collaborator, Ray, on creating new music for a series of songs I have written that re-envision a series of pastoral interludes that Moliere wrote (which usually get skipped in performance). With Ray being as busy as he is, the music has arrived in piecemeal fashion, and the actors’ concerns about pulling it off with time running short has left me caught between them and the composer, who is out of town and not privy to our conversations. As such we end up cutting and including variously, and I face a series of hard decisions about how to pull it all together to work, doing justice to Ray’s work, without undermining the actors’ confidence in themselves. This has led me to blocking and reblocking the finale about eight times, until we wind up with something that works. Just today, for instance, with five days to go before opening night, I reluctantly cut a series of dance moves from the finale, knowing that the actors were singing some very elaborate words at the same time, and their thundering footfalls were drowning out verses such as:
“Oh may he live forever, never dying!
Our doctor who expostulates at will!
A thousand years may he this trade be plying,
To eat and drink and flush and bleed and kill!”
Or, shortly thereafter:
“Oh may his days be full of fine infections,
And may his calendar be ever filled,
Of poxes, plagues, intestinal corrections,
Of people to be flushed and bled and killed!”
Funny stuff, n’est pas? The show is, in fact, extremely funny, and while certain moments have yet to “gel,” on the whole it’s one of those shows that I wish I could have a videotape of, just to demonstrate how hilarious Moliere is capable of being. I laugh my butt off every night in rehearsal.
I managed to squeeze one long weekend into the schedule, and flew off to Orlando (leaving behind a Cleveland snowstorm) to participate in the Fringe Festival’s preview event, performed for the press and interested “fringers” who are deciding which shows they’ll want to attend this year. Considering that a musical has stand-alone pieces that I can perform for events like this, I decided to take part, performing “Looking for a Groupie” for the Preview. I had to trim the song down to under three minutes, so I cut the dance break and the repeat of the last two verses.
Even so, I found myself very nervous this time around. With about 30 performance troupes waiting backstage to do their thing, it felt more like an audition than a performance to me, and just as I was going on, my mouth felt suddenly dry. I introduced the piece with a bit of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (I’m including actual karaoke numbers as bridges in the show), and I missed the first note. I started again and nailed it, and then segued into “Groupie.” It seemed to be well received by the 200 or so in the auditorium, but now and then I found myself questioning myself. Is this camp? Or is this just silly? Are they getting this? Should I be doing more? All those million little questions that come up the first time you perform something for a public that are not a collection of your good friends.
I returned home with a renewed determination to rehearse the thing over and over and over, so that none of those nagging questions could sweep over me when I went to perform the show in its entirety when I return to Orlando. For a while, I was rehearsing two times a day. (Often in addition to a physical workout, and dieting so that I’ll look good in the t-shirt that I’ll be performing in.) And then a series of projects would overwhelm me, and rehearsal would fall by the wayside for a couple of days, and I would resume with one-a-days. And now, with the Orlando performance five days away, I’m back to two-a-days once more.
One of the projects that consumed me for a while was the recording of “Karaoke Knights, the Disc.” Wanting to have a disc available to sell at the performances, I went into overdrive, recording the seventeen songs in two days with a sound designer who works with the theatre here in Cleveland. I have a love/hate relationship with hearing my own voice, and I kept trying to get him to turn my voice down in the “mix” of the CD, until I listened to it on my laptop, with considerably weaker speakers and realized that it sounded terrible that way. I had the sound engineer rework it at his original levels and shipped the disc off for replication. (It’ll still be a race to see if I can have any discs available in time for the Orlando shows.)
The other projects that have consumed my time is getting a backing CD/DVD recorded, with the show’s music, as well as the karaoke interludes, which will appear on the new flat screen TV I bought. (Hey, it had to be a flat screen in order for it to fit in the car with everything else I’m packing.) I’ll also be getting new sound equipment, and more props, so that the car will be full to bursting on this trip.
The trip itself will be an adventure, as “Imaginary Invalid” opens this Friday night at 8 pm. I’ll stick around for about two hours of celebration before getting onto the road and driving. With naps along the way, I expect to arrive in Orlando at around 7 p.m. My first performance of “Karaoke Knights” will be at 11:45 that night!
Meanwhile, I have new stickers to give out as promotions: They read “I’m Looking For a Groupie” with the title of the show and the website address. Hopefully they’ll be popular conversation starters this summer.
And, here in Cleveland, the work continues on “Imaginary Invalid.” We just held our tech rehearsal yesterday, and the show was in good enough shape to get through it twice. My to-do list is actually becoming more trivial in nature, as for once I seem to be tackling the big things first. Re-reading Louise Hay’s book is helping me to let go of the whole procrastination thing. Probably the biggest challenge this week will be packing. After spending six weeks in one hotel, I’m fairly well “moved in” to this particular room. Other items on my list include registering for conferences that are in January, getting out the publicity for the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, and printing up my Orlando flyers and programs. Of course, I never actually run out of things to do; it’s just that the time available begins to dictate just what is necessary and just what it a luxury. … like reading through my stack of old magazines.
Oh, and shows continue to happen elsewhere. The following comments were in a review of a “Tartuffe” in Kuala Lumpur. I’ll just include the sections that reference the script:
For the local show, Chris Jacobs’ Tartuffe, jointly produced by his company Stage Sense, and Cempaka Performing Arts Co, used a very playful version of the translated script by American Timothy Mooney where he has turned all the dialogue into rhyming couplets. … With so much brisk action and physical comedy in Tarftuffe, the audience could then just concentrate on the well-carved Moliere characters and the tight script that had been imbued with a lovely iambic pentameter rhythm to the ear. … These three experienced performers got round the rather tricky speeches that had a particular rhythm, compounded by rhyming couplets. There was a sense that the three understood the beautiful words that came out from them. In return, their big movements and gestures were well-supported and the emotions were clearly communicated. Other younger cast members were not as lucky as a lot of work await them in terms of diction and pronunciation. The audience had an uphill task understanding what other characters were trying to say. The iambic pentameter — prevalent in Shakespeare’s dialogues — has a way of either hemming the inexperienced performer into a monotonous mode or freeing him to soar in his emotions.
Attendance: About 250 at the Fringe Preview
Temperature: 50s-60s
In the CD player: The Swingle Singers performing Bach and Mozart
Reading: “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay
Discoveries: Some people are not actually reading my mind. * It’s not the end of the world if I don’t get the answer right every time. It’s all right to listen and respond to what other people are offering the show. They have just as much interest in making it work as I do. * I am not obligated to make this or that answer work for the show. The proof of what works is in the performance. * A million little questions are waiting to work you over the very first time you perform something for a group of people who are not your very good friends.
Miles on the Vibe: 136,000
Next performance: 5/20, “Imaginary Invalid,” Cleveland, OH; 5/21, “Karaoke Knights, a One-Man Rock Opera” in Orlando, FL
Let me see if I can capture the intervening weeks with a once-over-lightly treatment, rather than the usual play-by-play.
Early on, I did another major e-mailing project. I sent off my semi-annual e-mail to College/University Theatre departments. I’ve also done a major once-over on my “maybe next year list,” sorting out possible stops in potential venues and getting much more specific about just where I am available to perform just when. With each booking that comes in I tighten the schedule tighter, and am able to get more clear with the potential venues about exactly which dates I am available. As noted before, the FEWER dates I have available, the greater the likelihood of booking the show. This seems contradictory, but when I write somebody to say that I’ll be passing through Little Rock, Arkansas on October 12 only, they are much more likely to go and check their calendar than if I were to write and say that I’m available to come through Arkansas sometime in October.
This is a process that I tend to get into in June or July, when fringe festival season has me holed up in a given city for ten days at a time. The fact that I’m not picking up and driving someplace new every day means that I’ve been able to nail a lot of these details down before people have left for the summer. If bookings continue to fall into place like they normally do in the summer, then this fall will be the busiest on record.
So, I’ve been in rehearsal for “Imaginary Invalid” six days a week, and find that directing is quite a challenge for me following four years of directing nobody but myself. On one level, there is the issue of getting used to the fact that people I’m working with are not actually reading my mind, and realizing that I have to explain to a group of collaborators what my idea was in the first place.
Then there is another level in which I realize that I’m working with some extremely talented people, and that the solution to certain issues often has to do with listening to what they have to say, and coming to a collective decision that works for everybody, rather than bullying them into seeing that my way was right all along.
The biggest challenge in this area has been with the interludes and the finale. I’ve been working with my musical collaborator, Ray, on creating new music for a series of songs I have written that re-envision a series of pastoral interludes that Moliere wrote (which usually get skipped in performance). With Ray being as busy as he is, the music has arrived in piecemeal fashion, and the actors’ concerns about pulling it off with time running short has left me caught between them and the composer, who is out of town and not privy to our conversations. As such we end up cutting and including variously, and I face a series of hard decisions about how to pull it all together to work, doing justice to Ray’s work, without undermining the actors’ confidence in themselves. This has led me to blocking and reblocking the finale about eight times, until we wind up with something that works. Just today, for instance, with five days to go before opening night, I reluctantly cut a series of dance moves from the finale, knowing that the actors were singing some very elaborate words at the same time, and their thundering footfalls were drowning out verses such as:
“Oh may he live forever, never dying!
Our doctor who expostulates at will!
A thousand years may he this trade be plying,
To eat and drink and flush and bleed and kill!”
Or, shortly thereafter:
“Oh may his days be full of fine infections,
And may his calendar be ever filled,
Of poxes, plagues, intestinal corrections,
Of people to be flushed and bled and killed!”
Funny stuff, n’est pas? The show is, in fact, extremely funny, and while certain moments have yet to “gel,” on the whole it’s one of those shows that I wish I could have a videotape of, just to demonstrate how hilarious Moliere is capable of being. I laugh my butt off every night in rehearsal.
I managed to squeeze one long weekend into the schedule, and flew off to Orlando (leaving behind a Cleveland snowstorm) to participate in the Fringe Festival’s preview event, performed for the press and interested “fringers” who are deciding which shows they’ll want to attend this year. Considering that a musical has stand-alone pieces that I can perform for events like this, I decided to take part, performing “Looking for a Groupie” for the Preview. I had to trim the song down to under three minutes, so I cut the dance break and the repeat of the last two verses.
Even so, I found myself very nervous this time around. With about 30 performance troupes waiting backstage to do their thing, it felt more like an audition than a performance to me, and just as I was going on, my mouth felt suddenly dry. I introduced the piece with a bit of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (I’m including actual karaoke numbers as bridges in the show), and I missed the first note. I started again and nailed it, and then segued into “Groupie.” It seemed to be well received by the 200 or so in the auditorium, but now and then I found myself questioning myself. Is this camp? Or is this just silly? Are they getting this? Should I be doing more? All those million little questions that come up the first time you perform something for a public that are not a collection of your good friends.
I returned home with a renewed determination to rehearse the thing over and over and over, so that none of those nagging questions could sweep over me when I went to perform the show in its entirety when I return to Orlando. For a while, I was rehearsing two times a day. (Often in addition to a physical workout, and dieting so that I’ll look good in the t-shirt that I’ll be performing in.) And then a series of projects would overwhelm me, and rehearsal would fall by the wayside for a couple of days, and I would resume with one-a-days. And now, with the Orlando performance five days away, I’m back to two-a-days once more.
One of the projects that consumed me for a while was the recording of “Karaoke Knights, the Disc.” Wanting to have a disc available to sell at the performances, I went into overdrive, recording the seventeen songs in two days with a sound designer who works with the theatre here in Cleveland. I have a love/hate relationship with hearing my own voice, and I kept trying to get him to turn my voice down in the “mix” of the CD, until I listened to it on my laptop, with considerably weaker speakers and realized that it sounded terrible that way. I had the sound engineer rework it at his original levels and shipped the disc off for replication. (It’ll still be a race to see if I can have any discs available in time for the Orlando shows.)
The other projects that have consumed my time is getting a backing CD/DVD recorded, with the show’s music, as well as the karaoke interludes, which will appear on the new flat screen TV I bought. (Hey, it had to be a flat screen in order for it to fit in the car with everything else I’m packing.) I’ll also be getting new sound equipment, and more props, so that the car will be full to bursting on this trip.
The trip itself will be an adventure, as “Imaginary Invalid” opens this Friday night at 8 pm. I’ll stick around for about two hours of celebration before getting onto the road and driving. With naps along the way, I expect to arrive in Orlando at around 7 p.m. My first performance of “Karaoke Knights” will be at 11:45 that night!
Meanwhile, I have new stickers to give out as promotions: They read “I’m Looking For a Groupie” with the title of the show and the website address. Hopefully they’ll be popular conversation starters this summer.
And, here in Cleveland, the work continues on “Imaginary Invalid.” We just held our tech rehearsal yesterday, and the show was in good enough shape to get through it twice. My to-do list is actually becoming more trivial in nature, as for once I seem to be tackling the big things first. Re-reading Louise Hay’s book is helping me to let go of the whole procrastination thing. Probably the biggest challenge this week will be packing. After spending six weeks in one hotel, I’m fairly well “moved in” to this particular room. Other items on my list include registering for conferences that are in January, getting out the publicity for the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, and printing up my Orlando flyers and programs. Of course, I never actually run out of things to do; it’s just that the time available begins to dictate just what is necessary and just what it a luxury. … like reading through my stack of old magazines.
Oh, and shows continue to happen elsewhere. The following comments were in a review of a “Tartuffe” in Kuala Lumpur. I’ll just include the sections that reference the script:
For the local show, Chris Jacobs’ Tartuffe, jointly produced by his company Stage Sense, and Cempaka Performing Arts Co, used a very playful version of the translated script by American Timothy Mooney where he has turned all the dialogue into rhyming couplets. … With so much brisk action and physical comedy in Tarftuffe, the audience could then just concentrate on the well-carved Moliere characters and the tight script that had been imbued with a lovely iambic pentameter rhythm to the ear. … These three experienced performers got round the rather tricky speeches that had a particular rhythm, compounded by rhyming couplets. There was a sense that the three understood the beautiful words that came out from them. In return, their big movements and gestures were well-supported and the emotions were clearly communicated. Other younger cast members were not as lucky as a lot of work await them in terms of diction and pronunciation. The audience had an uphill task understanding what other characters were trying to say. The iambic pentameter — prevalent in Shakespeare’s dialogues — has a way of either hemming the inexperienced performer into a monotonous mode or freeing him to soar in his emotions.
Attendance: About 250 at the Fringe Preview
Temperature: 50s-60s
In the CD player: The Swingle Singers performing Bach and Mozart
Reading: “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay
Discoveries: Some people are not actually reading my mind. * It’s not the end of the world if I don’t get the answer right every time. It’s all right to listen and respond to what other people are offering the show. They have just as much interest in making it work as I do. * I am not obligated to make this or that answer work for the show. The proof of what works is in the performance. * A million little questions are waiting to work you over the very first time you perform something for a group of people who are not your very good friends.
Miles on the Vibe: 136,000
Next performance: 5/20, “Imaginary Invalid,” Cleveland, OH; 5/21, “Karaoke Knights, a One-Man Rock Opera” in Orlando, FL
Friday, April 15, 2005
The View From Here #89: Decorah, IA, Bloomington, Elgin, Buffalo Grove, Arlington Heights, Elmhurst, IL, Grosse Point, MI & Cleveland, OH
First of all, thanks for all the inquiries about my dad. He’s doing fine, with the exception perhaps of the bother from all of the tests the hospital put him through.
Suddenly the shows race past me, and just as suddenly they come to a halt. The last two weeks of the tour were a sprint with barely any time to note what was going on. Following a fast weekend in Chicago, I made my way out to the northeast corner of Iowa. I forget that Iowa’s northern border is actually well north of Illinois’ border, which meant that I went to Iowa via Madison, Wisconsin.
It’s actually a very pretty area, with a varied landscape, particularly near the Mississippi River. My cell phone was out of commission for the course of this visit.
They actually squeezed quite a bit into two days, with a workshop for the acting students (the usual, classical acting workshop), a workshop for French students (“the Life of Moliere” and “Creative Writing” squeezed into a 50-minute class), a workshop for a local theatre troupe (more about the life of Moliere, but with all the fun monologues I don’t usually get a chance to explore), a Intro to Theatre class (“My Career in Theatre”) and, of course, a performance of “Moliere Than Thou.”
I actually performed “Moliere” in an in-the-round setting, but they only used one bank of seats, and tucked away most of their set for “Threepenny Opera.” The volunteer for the “Tartuffe” scene was a youngish girl with short-cropped hair wearing a jaunty cap. It fell off at least once during the ensuing action, and I helped her back on with it. Then in one of the moments of seduction, I got the idea to slowly lift the cap off of her head, which seemed to be distinctly scandalous. I could feel a ripple of reaction going through the audience, and she blushed as her hair was revealed.
Back on the road to Bloomington, Illinois, where I performed an April Fools’ Day show for Illinois Wesleyan University. Getting there, I realized how close they were to Illinois State University, and also that the Wesleyan French Department hadn’t really worked on involving the Theatre Department with the show, so I spent the afternoon dashing off e-mails to the two local theatre departments, telling them of the show. I don’t know if any of them eventually came, but it stimulated some conversation which may be beneficial down the line.
The Dean of Students at Wesleyan (my host) was actually a French Teacher, so he was a big advocate for my show. I did a lecture for a small French class, and he was already suggesting that they’ll want to get me back in to do it again.
A Bloomington high school brought about thirty kids to the show that night, which was on a platform in a somewhat open area of the Student Union. The kids were very responsive, and their teacher encouraged them to volunteer when those opportunities arose. Afterwards, another of the hosts was effusive, saying that she’d never hosted an event where none of the hundred or so students walked out in the middle of it. (Apparently, they’re notorious for walking out after the first hour of anything; even a recent visit from Kurt Vonnegut.) Later, the Dean (who actually DID have to leave early to sing a part in an opera) sent me this:
“I have studied Molière for thirty years and have always dreamed of seeing him perform. I have seen his plays offered by La Comédie Française and other French troupes, but have never before caught a significant glimpse of what his own performance may have looked like. That you were able to do this so successfully in English is truly commendable. I very much hope you will consider coming back to IWU. … I very much enjoyed your master class, and know the students did too. I was completely engrossed in your evening performance, and inspired to sing my own eight measures in the Magic Flute with molièresque gusto! Russell, my son, the budding actor, told me on the way home that he felt further reinforced in wanting to explore acting because of what he had seen you do. I came away from the day's activities convinced Molière would heartily approve of your work. I look forward to meeting you again and hosting you on our campus.”
The next morning, I was home again, this time for a three-day visit, working with my brother, Kevin, on some of the backing tracks for “Karaoke Knights,” and finishing off the semi-annual e-mail campaign to French teachers. (Bookings for next year are starting to fall into place.)
Sunday night I attended a celebration of life for Jeff Paige, the leader of Pathways, who had died a week before. Jeff had been a great inspiration to me, encouraging me to take on the fulfillment of the work that I was doing. He was in attendance for the first public performance of “Moliere Than Thou,” (March, 2001!) and despite the fact that I’d blanked on my lines that night, he constantly advocated for the value of what I was doing. When I couldn’t afford to quit my job to pursue my work full time, he told me that I just wasn’t ready yet. It may have been his confidence that enabled me to BE ready, when the opportunity arose less than six months later. When I expressed some concern over the apparent fall-off in bookings in my second year of touring, his answer was simple: “Charge more.” There were thousands of people at the celebration Sunday night, all of whom had received similar encouragement from Jeff. His impact will be felt for ages to come.
On Monday, I had a show in Elgin, Illinois (I was born in Elgin, but seem to have missed the commemorative plaque.) While setting up the show, I realized that I’d left my pre and post-show music CD back in Bloomington, so I had to dig through my CD collection to find something appropriately classical. I settled on Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It was actually nice not to have to listen to that annoying harpsichord music for once. There were, perhaps a couple hundred students, and later, I visited with my cousin-in-law, Judy, who works at the high school library.
That afternoon, I started packing. I was getting ready for a tour that was going to take me out of town for almost three months. But first …
I had three shows on Tuesday. First thing in the morning, I had a show at Buffalo Grove High School, where my old friend Kate (we were in “Music Man” together, back in 1979!) brought me in. The kids were mostly Advanced Placement (AP) students in French, History and Theatre (with the exception of one class that filed in late and left early) and they “got” lots of the jokes. This was a fast 45-minute show followed by a quick 20-minute talkback session, before I continued on to Hersey High School (which I graduated from quite some time ago) for what I thought was a noon performance.
I was running a bit behind, loading my trunk onto the stage at about 11:15, when I noticed that students were filing into the theatre already. I checked with my host (and former teacher) Dennis McSherry, and found that the performance was actually supposed to start at 11:15!
I held the fastest technical rehearsal on record, changed into costume, and was ready to go by 11:20.
Denny gave me a warm introduction (as had Kate; both of them had hosted my show four years ago, when I was first getting it ready for performance with Stage Two), and I dove right in, somewhat grateful for the circumstances that didn’t allow me any time to get nervous about how well the show would go. Afterwards, I had another talkback session, which went very well (Denny is talking about bringing me in for a workshop next year), and then back home for a final hour of packing.
With the car fully loaded, I had one final performance of the day at 4:30 at Elmhurst College. The French teacher there had seen me perform at the Alliance Francaise a year ago, and was already enthusiastic about the performance. In fact, she came to me backstage, asking if she could perform Elmire in the volunteer sequence.
This is, I think, the first time that anyone has ever tried to arrange to be the volunteer before the show goes on. She had, in fact, run off the pages for the volunteer scene from the script that I had e-mailed to her, and was planning to carry them onto the stage. I explained that this would make her look too much like a “plant,” and gently removed the script from her hands, while encouraging her back out onto the stage to introduce the play. (Of course, since she was making the introduction, she couldn’t help but look like a plant anyway.) She turned out to be a feisty volunteer, spending most of the scene struggling out from my ever-tightening grip.
Upon completing the THIRD PERFORMANCE OF THE DAY(!), I proceeded to pack up the show and get onto the road. I had a drive to Detroit that night, with a performance at Grosse Pointe South High School the following morning. I pulled into town at about 12:45, and eventually made it off to sleep.
The tech director had arranged to meet with me at 11 a.m. to go over the show, but it turned out that the show didn’t actually go on until 1:30. Somehow, in the last two days, I had badly misjudged the starting times of two shows. (I guess it’s time to be done with this for a while.) The show went great, in a beautiful auditorium with a professional lighting/sound crew. The French teacher promised to tell other local teachers about the event. At one point, I realized that she’d overpaid me. The school had put down a deposit many months ago, but didn’t deduct that amount from the final payment. Reluctantly I pointed this out and refunded the difference. (They were, at least, impressed with my honesty.)
With the conclusion of this show, I took a break, spending five days visiting with Isaac in Detroit. He played hooky from school one day, and another day we went to his swimming tournament. (He was racing in the butterfly, the breast stroke and the freestyle.) It made for a long day, and afterwards we got a hotel room and watched TV.
The next morning, when we went down for our “continental breakfast”, I discovered that there were a few dozen people from the American Association of Community Theatre’s regional conference staying at our hotel. I grabbed some flyers and business cards out of my car (Again, I think that was Jeff Paige’s voice in my head, telling me to take advantage of this opportunity) and schmoozed through an extra cup of coffee, while Isaac went back to the room to read. (Most of the performers had noticed my “MOLIERE” license plate.)
And finally, it was on to Cleveland. Monday night was the first rehearsal for “Imaginary Invalid,” and once again, the cast was amazing. This is the first show that I’ve directed since 2001 (not counting directing myself), and the talent level is incredible. I’m just as amazed that they are so responsive to the things that I have to say, and that I actually have stuff to add to the process. We’re into the early stages of “blocking” now, and I find myself stopping about every other line to choreograph this moment and that.
For the time being, while waiting for the “interludes” to have music composed for them, the cast is inventing tunes to them, and occasionally falling into old familiar melodies which seem to fit some of these songs all too well.
They’re putting me up in one of those studio-apartment hotels while I’m in town, and for the first time in years, I actually went grocery shopping with a list. Suddenly I had to get ketchup, mustard, sugar, cream, bread, margarine …
It’s been a busy couple of days in Cleveland, putting together a rehearsal schedule, meeting with scene and costume designers, taking care of a bunch of preliminaries that I probably should have done before the first rehearsal. Things are pretty well up to speed now, allowing me a morning to collect my thoughts, here, and I’m gradually getting back to work on “Karaoke Knights.” All of the songs are now written, and my brother Kevin and old friend Greg Cruz are putting together new arrangements to three of them. My friend Lee, from Tacoma, has created an illustration. Now it’s up to me to make the show work.
Love,
Tim
Temperature: Mid-50s
Miles on the Vibe: 135,500
Attendance: 20 + 8 + 10 + 50 + 70 + 7 + 100 + 170 + 70 + 150 + 50 + 200 = 905
Reading: The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
Listening to: The Who’s Greatest Hits, which had little stickers on the package advertising “Includes ‘Who Are You’ as heard on the hit TV show CSI” and “Includes ‘Bargain’ as featured in the Nissan commercial.” -- Also: Isaac has developed a fondness for an Electric Light Orchestra CD he found in my car, so we listen a lot to “Mr. Blue Sky” and “Don’t Bring Me Down.”
Discoveries: Having done the show for four years now, I’ve begun a cycle of revisiting schools that had me in before, as students who were Freshmen back then have now graduated. * Having worked with Moliere for about eight years now, the hosts are starting to introduce me as “One of the foremost experts on Moliere in the United States.” (Funny thing is: I never saw myself as an expert on anything, so much as a director with a lot of strong opinions on how things ought to go.) * Long remembered lessons from Jeff Page: Honor what people say they want to create in their lives, and respond to them where they are, rather than where I think they should be.
Next Show: Orlando, FL (Preview of Karaoke Knights) 4/25, Cleveland, OH (Imaginary Invalid) 5/20, Orlando FL (“Karaoke Knights”) 5/21-29.
Suddenly the shows race past me, and just as suddenly they come to a halt. The last two weeks of the tour were a sprint with barely any time to note what was going on. Following a fast weekend in Chicago, I made my way out to the northeast corner of Iowa. I forget that Iowa’s northern border is actually well north of Illinois’ border, which meant that I went to Iowa via Madison, Wisconsin.
It’s actually a very pretty area, with a varied landscape, particularly near the Mississippi River. My cell phone was out of commission for the course of this visit.
They actually squeezed quite a bit into two days, with a workshop for the acting students (the usual, classical acting workshop), a workshop for French students (“the Life of Moliere” and “Creative Writing” squeezed into a 50-minute class), a workshop for a local theatre troupe (more about the life of Moliere, but with all the fun monologues I don’t usually get a chance to explore), a Intro to Theatre class (“My Career in Theatre”) and, of course, a performance of “Moliere Than Thou.”
I actually performed “Moliere” in an in-the-round setting, but they only used one bank of seats, and tucked away most of their set for “Threepenny Opera.” The volunteer for the “Tartuffe” scene was a youngish girl with short-cropped hair wearing a jaunty cap. It fell off at least once during the ensuing action, and I helped her back on with it. Then in one of the moments of seduction, I got the idea to slowly lift the cap off of her head, which seemed to be distinctly scandalous. I could feel a ripple of reaction going through the audience, and she blushed as her hair was revealed.
Back on the road to Bloomington, Illinois, where I performed an April Fools’ Day show for Illinois Wesleyan University. Getting there, I realized how close they were to Illinois State University, and also that the Wesleyan French Department hadn’t really worked on involving the Theatre Department with the show, so I spent the afternoon dashing off e-mails to the two local theatre departments, telling them of the show. I don’t know if any of them eventually came, but it stimulated some conversation which may be beneficial down the line.
The Dean of Students at Wesleyan (my host) was actually a French Teacher, so he was a big advocate for my show. I did a lecture for a small French class, and he was already suggesting that they’ll want to get me back in to do it again.
A Bloomington high school brought about thirty kids to the show that night, which was on a platform in a somewhat open area of the Student Union. The kids were very responsive, and their teacher encouraged them to volunteer when those opportunities arose. Afterwards, another of the hosts was effusive, saying that she’d never hosted an event where none of the hundred or so students walked out in the middle of it. (Apparently, they’re notorious for walking out after the first hour of anything; even a recent visit from Kurt Vonnegut.) Later, the Dean (who actually DID have to leave early to sing a part in an opera) sent me this:
“I have studied Molière for thirty years and have always dreamed of seeing him perform. I have seen his plays offered by La Comédie Française and other French troupes, but have never before caught a significant glimpse of what his own performance may have looked like. That you were able to do this so successfully in English is truly commendable. I very much hope you will consider coming back to IWU. … I very much enjoyed your master class, and know the students did too. I was completely engrossed in your evening performance, and inspired to sing my own eight measures in the Magic Flute with molièresque gusto! Russell, my son, the budding actor, told me on the way home that he felt further reinforced in wanting to explore acting because of what he had seen you do. I came away from the day's activities convinced Molière would heartily approve of your work. I look forward to meeting you again and hosting you on our campus.”
The next morning, I was home again, this time for a three-day visit, working with my brother, Kevin, on some of the backing tracks for “Karaoke Knights,” and finishing off the semi-annual e-mail campaign to French teachers. (Bookings for next year are starting to fall into place.)
Sunday night I attended a celebration of life for Jeff Paige, the leader of Pathways, who had died a week before. Jeff had been a great inspiration to me, encouraging me to take on the fulfillment of the work that I was doing. He was in attendance for the first public performance of “Moliere Than Thou,” (March, 2001!) and despite the fact that I’d blanked on my lines that night, he constantly advocated for the value of what I was doing. When I couldn’t afford to quit my job to pursue my work full time, he told me that I just wasn’t ready yet. It may have been his confidence that enabled me to BE ready, when the opportunity arose less than six months later. When I expressed some concern over the apparent fall-off in bookings in my second year of touring, his answer was simple: “Charge more.” There were thousands of people at the celebration Sunday night, all of whom had received similar encouragement from Jeff. His impact will be felt for ages to come.
On Monday, I had a show in Elgin, Illinois (I was born in Elgin, but seem to have missed the commemorative plaque.) While setting up the show, I realized that I’d left my pre and post-show music CD back in Bloomington, so I had to dig through my CD collection to find something appropriately classical. I settled on Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It was actually nice not to have to listen to that annoying harpsichord music for once. There were, perhaps a couple hundred students, and later, I visited with my cousin-in-law, Judy, who works at the high school library.
That afternoon, I started packing. I was getting ready for a tour that was going to take me out of town for almost three months. But first …
I had three shows on Tuesday. First thing in the morning, I had a show at Buffalo Grove High School, where my old friend Kate (we were in “Music Man” together, back in 1979!) brought me in. The kids were mostly Advanced Placement (AP) students in French, History and Theatre (with the exception of one class that filed in late and left early) and they “got” lots of the jokes. This was a fast 45-minute show followed by a quick 20-minute talkback session, before I continued on to Hersey High School (which I graduated from quite some time ago) for what I thought was a noon performance.
I was running a bit behind, loading my trunk onto the stage at about 11:15, when I noticed that students were filing into the theatre already. I checked with my host (and former teacher) Dennis McSherry, and found that the performance was actually supposed to start at 11:15!
I held the fastest technical rehearsal on record, changed into costume, and was ready to go by 11:20.
Denny gave me a warm introduction (as had Kate; both of them had hosted my show four years ago, when I was first getting it ready for performance with Stage Two), and I dove right in, somewhat grateful for the circumstances that didn’t allow me any time to get nervous about how well the show would go. Afterwards, I had another talkback session, which went very well (Denny is talking about bringing me in for a workshop next year), and then back home for a final hour of packing.
With the car fully loaded, I had one final performance of the day at 4:30 at Elmhurst College. The French teacher there had seen me perform at the Alliance Francaise a year ago, and was already enthusiastic about the performance. In fact, she came to me backstage, asking if she could perform Elmire in the volunteer sequence.
This is, I think, the first time that anyone has ever tried to arrange to be the volunteer before the show goes on. She had, in fact, run off the pages for the volunteer scene from the script that I had e-mailed to her, and was planning to carry them onto the stage. I explained that this would make her look too much like a “plant,” and gently removed the script from her hands, while encouraging her back out onto the stage to introduce the play. (Of course, since she was making the introduction, she couldn’t help but look like a plant anyway.) She turned out to be a feisty volunteer, spending most of the scene struggling out from my ever-tightening grip.
Upon completing the THIRD PERFORMANCE OF THE DAY(!), I proceeded to pack up the show and get onto the road. I had a drive to Detroit that night, with a performance at Grosse Pointe South High School the following morning. I pulled into town at about 12:45, and eventually made it off to sleep.
The tech director had arranged to meet with me at 11 a.m. to go over the show, but it turned out that the show didn’t actually go on until 1:30. Somehow, in the last two days, I had badly misjudged the starting times of two shows. (I guess it’s time to be done with this for a while.) The show went great, in a beautiful auditorium with a professional lighting/sound crew. The French teacher promised to tell other local teachers about the event. At one point, I realized that she’d overpaid me. The school had put down a deposit many months ago, but didn’t deduct that amount from the final payment. Reluctantly I pointed this out and refunded the difference. (They were, at least, impressed with my honesty.)
With the conclusion of this show, I took a break, spending five days visiting with Isaac in Detroit. He played hooky from school one day, and another day we went to his swimming tournament. (He was racing in the butterfly, the breast stroke and the freestyle.) It made for a long day, and afterwards we got a hotel room and watched TV.
The next morning, when we went down for our “continental breakfast”, I discovered that there were a few dozen people from the American Association of Community Theatre’s regional conference staying at our hotel. I grabbed some flyers and business cards out of my car (Again, I think that was Jeff Paige’s voice in my head, telling me to take advantage of this opportunity) and schmoozed through an extra cup of coffee, while Isaac went back to the room to read. (Most of the performers had noticed my “MOLIERE” license plate.)
And finally, it was on to Cleveland. Monday night was the first rehearsal for “Imaginary Invalid,” and once again, the cast was amazing. This is the first show that I’ve directed since 2001 (not counting directing myself), and the talent level is incredible. I’m just as amazed that they are so responsive to the things that I have to say, and that I actually have stuff to add to the process. We’re into the early stages of “blocking” now, and I find myself stopping about every other line to choreograph this moment and that.
For the time being, while waiting for the “interludes” to have music composed for them, the cast is inventing tunes to them, and occasionally falling into old familiar melodies which seem to fit some of these songs all too well.
They’re putting me up in one of those studio-apartment hotels while I’m in town, and for the first time in years, I actually went grocery shopping with a list. Suddenly I had to get ketchup, mustard, sugar, cream, bread, margarine …
It’s been a busy couple of days in Cleveland, putting together a rehearsal schedule, meeting with scene and costume designers, taking care of a bunch of preliminaries that I probably should have done before the first rehearsal. Things are pretty well up to speed now, allowing me a morning to collect my thoughts, here, and I’m gradually getting back to work on “Karaoke Knights.” All of the songs are now written, and my brother Kevin and old friend Greg Cruz are putting together new arrangements to three of them. My friend Lee, from Tacoma, has created an illustration. Now it’s up to me to make the show work.
Love,
Tim
Temperature: Mid-50s
Miles on the Vibe: 135,500
Attendance: 20 + 8 + 10 + 50 + 70 + 7 + 100 + 170 + 70 + 150 + 50 + 200 = 905
Reading: The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
Listening to: The Who’s Greatest Hits, which had little stickers on the package advertising “Includes ‘Who Are You’ as heard on the hit TV show CSI” and “Includes ‘Bargain’ as featured in the Nissan commercial.” -- Also: Isaac has developed a fondness for an Electric Light Orchestra CD he found in my car, so we listen a lot to “Mr. Blue Sky” and “Don’t Bring Me Down.”
Discoveries: Having done the show for four years now, I’ve begun a cycle of revisiting schools that had me in before, as students who were Freshmen back then have now graduated. * Having worked with Moliere for about eight years now, the hosts are starting to introduce me as “One of the foremost experts on Moliere in the United States.” (Funny thing is: I never saw myself as an expert on anything, so much as a director with a lot of strong opinions on how things ought to go.) * Long remembered lessons from Jeff Page: Honor what people say they want to create in their lives, and respond to them where they are, rather than where I think they should be.
Next Show: Orlando, FL (Preview of Karaoke Knights) 4/25, Cleveland, OH (Imaginary Invalid) 5/20, Orlando FL (“Karaoke Knights”) 5/21-29.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
The View From Here #88: Morganton, NC; Ferrum, Ashland, Roanoke, & Blacksburg, VA; Marietta & Milledgeville, GA; Ada, OH; Bradford, PA
It’s the busiest month of my tour! All things being equal, this one month could pay for a six-month vacation! (… assuming that I didn’t have, oh, bills to pay.)
“Making hay while the sun shines” is taking on a whole new meaning for me. This is no time to get caught up in self-doubt, or moodiness or exhaustion. Every once in a while something happens that makes me question, “How can this possibly work?” But as long as I tackle the task directly before me, and keep moving forward, I knock them down one after the next.
By the way, those of you who enjoy these tales of life on the road would probably enjoy Marcus Fernando’s “Canada Chronicles.” Parallel to my own reports, Marcus has released 75 of these hilarious chronicles, detailing his travels and travails around the world. To subscribe to his stuff, simply write to him at: Marcus_Fernando@hotmail.com. My favorite gem of wisdom from Marcus: “The best things in life aren’t things.”
I performed in Burke County, in North Carolina, at “Freedom School.” Ironically, “Freedom School” was completely surrounded by 8-foot wire fences, with a guard booth at the gate.
They were all very nice people though.
Their stage was a combination thrust/proscenium, with a little curved thrust, forming an arc. To the left and to the right of the arc, the lighting was terrific. In the center, it was terrible. In the rehearsal I asked the technicians to do what they could to adjust the lights in towards the center before the start of the show. I then put on my makeup and costume, and, upon entering, realized that they had never found the ladder to follow through on that request. The doors had been opened almost immediately after we’d finished, and 160 kids filled the chairs.
I spent the entire play sidling from one lit area to another. They’d requested the entire 85-minute play, and they were really responsive, early on. When “Tartuffe” is the 4th monologue of the show, (out of 10) the last six suffer by comparison, and in the dim light, somewhere around “The Imaginary Cuckold” I could feel that the air had been let out of the balloon. While “Precious Young Maidens” is usually a highlight, I could feel that the thrill had gone.
But up through “Tartuffe”, I was a hit. Having an adorable doe-eyed girl volunteer for the role of Elmire didn’t hurt. After that it was a long slow decline, but I was the only one to seem to notice, at least in the discussions afterwards. In fact the woman who hosted the event sent a terrific response: “The performance was stunning! … It really was an experience beyond what is available to most of the students here.”
From North Carolina it was up to Ferrum, Virginia, and I seem to have turned a three-hour drive into a six hour drive by not sticking to the interstate. For the last few years, I’ve been driving past the Blue Ridge Parkway without driving on it, and, with a little extra time, I found my way up to it, where the ride was smooth and the views were gorgeous. I pulled into Ferrum a little after sundown, found my host and got checked into the school’s guest apartment. I then went looking for some dinner.
I passed the Dairy Queen. … and quickly found myself out of town.
I drove back, drove up and down a few streets.
The only restaurant in town … at least the only one open after 7 p.m. … was the Dairy Queen.
Dairy Queen it was.
Unfortunately, the theatre director had scheduled my visit at the same time as he was in technical rehearsals for a show due to open that weekend.
Which meant that the guy who hired me wasn’t even going to see the show. And neither were the people who could supposedly benefit from the event, as they would all be in rehearsal.
There were about 25 people at the show.
But I got several free meals in the cafeteria that day, and had plenty of time to catch up on e-mails. I finally doubled back to e-mails that I’d left in my inbox from about 1999, and started deleting and writing to the senders. I got the inbox down to under 200 messages for the first time in years.
Anyway, the few who saw the show had big smiles on their faces throughout, especially one woman who turned out to be a local actress or acting teacher, and who volunteered for the Tartuffe scene.
The next morning I was on the road again, heading north to Connecticut, in anticipation of a show in New Hampshire on Saturday. It was a good 12 hour drive, with a stop to visit Kathy Conery at James Madison University, and I pulled in to Connecticut that evening, staying at Debby Reelitz’ house.
Friday, I continued to work on e-mails, and began drawing up the next phase of the e-mail campaign that I had been putting off: writing to the French Teacher mailing list.
Late on Friday, I received a call. New Hampshire was expecting 9-12 inches of snow and Plymouth College had closed the school for the following day. I had driven 638 miles for a show that was now off. My next show? Was back in Ashland, Virginia.
Now, this was the low point of the passage. I had just barely started making “real money” for the month, and was back at the “break even point”, but the first of the scheduled dates that was going to put me back on top was cancelled. For a moment, I found myself visualizing all of the other ways that the remaining dates could be screwed up: illness, bad weather, car problems, food poisoning … I was suddenly conscious of the very tenuous nature of my situation. There was a lot riding on making it through the next two weeks. I started doubling my intake of my usual nutrition drink (“Re-liv”). And I realized that the visualization was as much a problem as what might potentially happen. The anticipation of negative results (“Things never work out”) creates those negative results.
I also had to question what it is within my thinking that made me suppose I didn’t actually deserve to have things work out … for once?
In order to make lemonade out of these lemons, I dropped a note to one of the profs I’d performed for last fall, who’d given me wonderful feedback and encouragement, and mentioned that I’d be driving by on Saturday, and would he like to meet for breakfast? His response was that he’d love to have me over for breakfast, and also to bring me in to speak to his Saturday-morning French class for a bit.
I readily agreed, pending the ability to get through the anticipated snow, and showed up on his doorstep the following morning. He was extremely pleased. His mother had died some ten days before, and he hadn’t held his class the previous weekend, and was still down in the dumps, so Moliere lightened his mood considerably. Later he wrote all kinds of good things that I’m already using in the e-mail campaign, ("I've been organizing and hosting cultural programs for well over three decades, and can't recall one which has engendered more positive discussion and genuine enthusiasm.") and promised to plug my show at the next AATF conference, where he is to be a featured speaker. All in all, the reworked itinerary was probably worth more to me than the previous plan.
That night I stopped in Baltimore and visited my sister Maureen and her husband, Tim. I got in a bit of jogging, and a bit of laundry the next morning, and zipped south to Ashland, for my show at Randolph-Macon College.
Again, I was in a guest house, and with time on my hands, I attacked more e-mails. I met my hostess for coffee, and headed to the theatre. Once again, the lighting was lousy. It was a movie theatre with a tiny stage in front of the screen, and all the lighting pointed directly down. Fortunately, this time my technicians knew what they were doing, and they quickly got ladders and started climbing, creating some angles to the lighting.
The show was fun. The “Tartuffe” volunteer was a somewhat buxom girl who was playful. During the “Scapin” scene, climbing through the audience, I found my way toward a young boy, and where I normally would grab for a program, pretending it was the court “transcription,” I grabbed the papers that he had sitting by him.
“What, you got a game of hangman going here?” I asked.
“Yes,” he responded, even before the audience had realized that we were now ad-libbing. The subsequent laughter threw me off of my lines for a while, but I eventually got myself back on track and finished off.
Overall the show went well, and quickly I was on the road again, this time driving late into the night to Roanoke, Virginia, arriving after midnight.
The next morning, I was up at 7:00, and found my way to the school. It was a huge auditorium, and eventually, more than 500 kids filled the space. The only sound equipment that they could get to work was a boom box, and the place was so full you couldn’t hear anything.
My contact for this gig had been the Foreign Language director for the entire county, and she had brought in French and theatre students from nine different high schools and middle schools.
A side note: She had written me a few weeks back, noting that a teacher had actually read my study guide and noted that “On page 38 of the script, Tartuffe brings a volunteer on stage, to play the role of a married woman whom he attempts to seduce.” Well, I was pleased that someone, at least, was reading the materials that I was sending out there, but to complain that Moliere’s plays have infidelities in them is like complaining that Shakespeare’s plays have murder. … Of course, I suppose they would prefer that.
I was … careful in playing the Tartuffe scene in Roanoke. The girl was nervous enough, and kept moving away from me, and for once, at least, I let her.
Actually, the Roanoke audience was terrific. To get 500 plus kids to pay attention to a 90-minute one-man show is no easy task, but I was feeling the power. If I felt them start to get out of hand, I would modulate my voice, get quiet, or pause, and come back at them with stronger stuff. The sound of 500 kids being silent is an awesome thing.
The next day I was on to Blacksburg for shows at Virginia Tech. It was less than an hour away, and I still had a day before any performances. I settled into the hotel early and got more work done. I met with my host, Patty Raun, who some of you Nebraska grads may remember. Patty gave me the special rock star treatment, giving me a gift bag of goodies and taking me to lunch. Back at the hotel I saw a car pull into the parking lot, pulling a trailer that advertised a karaoke company. I asked the driver and he noted that they were hosting karaoke at Buffalo Wild Wings that night.
I went on to give my acting workshop, and to do a tech rehearsal for Moliere. The show went extremely well, and the volunteer was very playful. Afterwards, the volunteer stuck around to say hello, and I discovered she was a high school student. “Whoops, I’m sorry, if I’d known that I wouldn’t have molested you so much.”
Patty and I and a couple of the technicians then went out to the karaoke bar. It was her first karaoke experience, and her students seemed to feel extremely privileged to see that side of her.
I had most of the next day off, and I set the e-mail campaign into motion. That evening, following another tech rehearsal, I performed “Criteria.” While Patty had to bow out afterwards to pick up her son, some of the students were throwing a party, and invited me to join them. One student demonstrated that, while the rest of the audience were getting their hands stamped as they came in to “Criteria,” she’d had the usher apply the stamp to her chest. Somewhere, in the middle of the party, one student noted that she had been unable to attend my acting workshop, and with some encouragement, I performed the “Tartuffe” scene using her as “Elmire.” Around me, I could hear the party getting very quiet for about five minutes, before finishing to a burst of applause. (The fellow who had been the house manager for both my shows, and who’d invited me to come along, suggested that “I hope I’m half as cool as you when I’m your age.” Hmmmm …)
The next morning, I was heading south. It was almost seven hours down to Marietta, Georgia, where my friend, Linda, had arranged a small, living-room performance for ten people, including my good friend, Cathy Maday. It had been a while since I’d done the show in that intimate of a setting, and it felt very tense and immediate. I could see a fixed smile on their faces through most of the performance, and I fed on my awareness of their interest. (Linda’s daughter was in the audience, and she turned bright red in the scene where my underwear is exposed.) They all stood up to applaud afterwards, and Linda’s son seemed especially appreciative. Cathy then proceeded to upstage me with a dazzling demonstration of belly dancing technique. Now it was my turn to sit there with a fixed smile on my face!
Farther south, I had more “Criteria” performances at Georgia College & State University. I’d performed Moliere for them two years before, and now I got back to town to see that the promotional marquee announced “Tim Mooney’s Criteria,” once again elevating me to name-above-the-title status. The weather, by the way, had turned wonderful. Trees in Georgia are already in bloom, and you can smell the flowers everywhere.
When I got to the theatre, I discovered that I would be performing in an auditorium that holds upwards of 700 people! I’d never performed this show for more than 100. And, in fact, the placards that were the extent of my scenery, probably couldn’t be read from any farther than the fifth row.
The ushers, after stamping the hands appropriately, encouraged the audience to sit up front.
There were only 42 in the audience for the first performance, which was actually more than anticipated, since this was the last day of their spring break, and many of the students weren’t back in town quite yet. The show itself went great. In the different environment, I had a couple of stumbles, getting my tongue twisted around a couple of passages, but with the larger space, I could feel the “lid” come off of the show a bit, as I could expand my gestures in a much broader range. And the response was terrific. Several of the audience, including students and much of the theatre faculty stuck around to share their congratulations.
After the show, I noted that I was now all wound up from the performance, and that you couldn’t buy beer on Sunday night in Georgia! (How could I have forgotten? I’ll have to add this to the list of discoveries.) One of the students, overhearing this, called a friend from next door, who brought over an extra bottle of Guinness from her fridge.
The next day, I gave my usual workshop to an acting class, and since it was a class which was almost entirely women, I didn’t do the usual “Tartuffe” exercise, but instead worked with a “Misanthrope” exercise that I’d done only once before. This time, it seems, I explained it better than before, because it worked incredibly well, demonstrating the power of using the audience in an argument. (It’s an exercise that I refer to as “The Jerry Springer Show.”)
That night I performed the show again (and I seemed to have a couple of ‘groupies’ returning for a second showing), but while I was more confident than the night before, the impact of the show seemed lessened. Perhaps, with another rehearsal under my belt, my recital had become a bit rote. Or, just as likely, this was more of a student crowd than the night before, and they were there because they had to be for a class. There were persistent coughs through much of the show, and it was really starting to annoy me. I felt like “staring down” the coughers, but it was of no use. In fact, I had been tempted to cough, myself. The air was particularly dry, and I could feel some particle of some sort had found its way to the back of my throat. There is, of course no way of stopping to swab the back of your throat during the course of a one-man show, so I pressed on ahead, wondering what kind of a bug I was in the process of swallowing.
And yet, there’s that scene with my pants around my ankles, and suddenly they were all healed of their conditions. I heard almost no coughing through the remainder of the show.
Afterwards, I said a fond goodbye to several of the students who were very enthusiastic about my show, many of whom remembered me from my performance two years before. While I live quite an itinerant life on the roads, there are a variety of programs where I really feel like they’ve adopted me as one of their own, like an occasional fixture on the faculty.
I went out for a drink with my friend, Melanie, who I’d met at the American Assn of Teachers of French conference in Atlanta last summer. She and Tina (from Portland) and I had spent a good deal of time hanging out together at the conference when we all discovered that we seemed to have Milledgeville in common.
I drove the long haul north to Ada, Ohio the next day, about 12 hours on the road, and while everyone was very helpful, it was rough getting my internet hookup reestablished, and my e-mail campaign was stalled halfway through. And so, eventually, I started writing these long-delayed observations instead.
The next day was full: I taught an acting workshop in the morning, focusing back on “Tartuffe” again (they’d studied the play recently), followed by a French class in the afternoon. (It was the school’s French teacher who’d lobbied to bring my show in.) And then “Moliere Than Thou” that night.
There were at least ten technicians on hand to run “Moliere Than Thou!” They spent most of the rehearsal (and, I assume, the performance) sitting around waiting for something to happen that might require them actually doing something.
I assume that most of the shows that come in for this arts series are big events with big sets and large casts, but I just didn’t have enough “needs” to give them a sense of purpose, and I couldn’t bring myself to sending them off to fetch me coffee, or the like. (Of course, most of the crew was there to earn credit for their Intro to Theatre class, but I couldn’t think of a better way of turning students off to theatre for life than to force them to hang around doing nothing through the course of a tech rehearsal and a performance.)
I was amused by the sign on the green room door that indicated that the green room was “for the use of the cast of “Moliere Than Thou” only.” Once I’d gotten into my make-up, I felt like I had to at least go and sit in the green room for thirty seconds or so, just to put it to some use.
The show itself went very well, with about a hundred scattered around the large auditorium. I did an interview immediately beforehand with a local journalist, and when it came time to get a volunteer for “Scapin,” the French professor had his arm twisted to join me. It turns out he was a bit of a ham, and was satisfying his own sense of humor on a meta-theatrical level such as occasionally speaking a line in French, and sitting down on the stage after I’d left to climb through the audience. It wasn’t helping the audience follow the humor as I had written it, but at least the fellow’s wife was a good laugher, and she’d kept the rest of the audience responsive through the course of the show.
I finished the show, packed up (had all the assistance I might ever need in loading the trunk back into the car), and was on the road early the next morning, heading for the last show of this leg of the tour (at last), in Bradford, Pennsylvania.
Of course, what I wanted was to turn west at that point, but found myself instead going six hours east, where I had another workshop to teach at three o’clock that afternoon. Once again, the kids were really responsive, and this time I worked through both the “Tartuffe” and the “Misanthrope” exercise. When I performed the “Tartuffe” monologue for the students, I found myself reminded of my hypnotist analogy: the volunteer Elmire was extremely resistant in that scene, finding Tartuffe himself extremely offensive to her religious sentiment. She would stiffen up like a board when I would come close to her. And yet, three feet away, one of the students was falling under the hypnotic spell of the power of Tartuffe’s persuasion.
I was in a new theatre space: a brand new theatre space. Mine was the first performance that would happen in their thrust studio space. (The kids, who are opening their show in two weeks, envied me that fact.) It was also the first place that had hired me to perform “Criteria” exclusively, and not as a follow-up to “Moliere Than Thou,” and it was good to know that the show stands on its own. (It was the sixth performance of “Criteria” in this month, and it really seems to have come into its own in this time.) It took the lighting designer a while to get the bugs out of the system, but eventually the light plot he’d set up worked like a charm.
Before the show, I stopped to check my voice mail. There was a message from my brother, Kevin, that my father had experienced what they were calling a “mini stroke” (also known as TIA). He was all right now, and would be staying in the hospital overnight, but it was startling to have real life intervene. Fortunately, I am now ready to head home, and I will in fact be home before I get the chance to send this out, but for the moment, I still had a show to do.
I threw myself into it, knowing that I could not stop to think about what might be going on back home. Every time I did, I pushed myself farther into the character, feeding off of the emotional life of the moment. The performance went extremely well, though that hardly seems relevant right now. Please send thoughts and prayers for Dad.
(I am now back home, and Dad is doing fine.)
Love,
Tim
Miles on the Vibe 133,500
In the CD Player: Eagles: The Finest Hits of
Attendance: 160 + 25 + 50 + 500 + 10 + 20 + 60 + 50 + 42 + 15 + 60 + 8 + 120 + 60 = 1,180
Temperature: 20s-80s
Discoveries: I am making hay while the sun shines. I tackle the task immediately in front of me, and refuse to get caught up in moods or self-doubt. * The anticipation of negative results, such as “Things never work out,” creates those negative results. * You can’t buy beer on Sundays in Georgia. * Coughing is optional. * There are some programs where I really feel like the faculty has adopted me as one of their own. * “Criteria” can stand on its own.
Next shows: Luther College, Decorah, IA; Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL
“Making hay while the sun shines” is taking on a whole new meaning for me. This is no time to get caught up in self-doubt, or moodiness or exhaustion. Every once in a while something happens that makes me question, “How can this possibly work?” But as long as I tackle the task directly before me, and keep moving forward, I knock them down one after the next.
By the way, those of you who enjoy these tales of life on the road would probably enjoy Marcus Fernando’s “Canada Chronicles.” Parallel to my own reports, Marcus has released 75 of these hilarious chronicles, detailing his travels and travails around the world. To subscribe to his stuff, simply write to him at: Marcus_Fernando@hotmail.com. My favorite gem of wisdom from Marcus: “The best things in life aren’t things.”
I performed in Burke County, in North Carolina, at “Freedom School.” Ironically, “Freedom School” was completely surrounded by 8-foot wire fences, with a guard booth at the gate.
They were all very nice people though.
Their stage was a combination thrust/proscenium, with a little curved thrust, forming an arc. To the left and to the right of the arc, the lighting was terrific. In the center, it was terrible. In the rehearsal I asked the technicians to do what they could to adjust the lights in towards the center before the start of the show. I then put on my makeup and costume, and, upon entering, realized that they had never found the ladder to follow through on that request. The doors had been opened almost immediately after we’d finished, and 160 kids filled the chairs.
I spent the entire play sidling from one lit area to another. They’d requested the entire 85-minute play, and they were really responsive, early on. When “Tartuffe” is the 4th monologue of the show, (out of 10) the last six suffer by comparison, and in the dim light, somewhere around “The Imaginary Cuckold” I could feel that the air had been let out of the balloon. While “Precious Young Maidens” is usually a highlight, I could feel that the thrill had gone.
But up through “Tartuffe”, I was a hit. Having an adorable doe-eyed girl volunteer for the role of Elmire didn’t hurt. After that it was a long slow decline, but I was the only one to seem to notice, at least in the discussions afterwards. In fact the woman who hosted the event sent a terrific response: “The performance was stunning! … It really was an experience beyond what is available to most of the students here.”
From North Carolina it was up to Ferrum, Virginia, and I seem to have turned a three-hour drive into a six hour drive by not sticking to the interstate. For the last few years, I’ve been driving past the Blue Ridge Parkway without driving on it, and, with a little extra time, I found my way up to it, where the ride was smooth and the views were gorgeous. I pulled into Ferrum a little after sundown, found my host and got checked into the school’s guest apartment. I then went looking for some dinner.
I passed the Dairy Queen. … and quickly found myself out of town.
I drove back, drove up and down a few streets.
The only restaurant in town … at least the only one open after 7 p.m. … was the Dairy Queen.
Dairy Queen it was.
Unfortunately, the theatre director had scheduled my visit at the same time as he was in technical rehearsals for a show due to open that weekend.
Which meant that the guy who hired me wasn’t even going to see the show. And neither were the people who could supposedly benefit from the event, as they would all be in rehearsal.
There were about 25 people at the show.
But I got several free meals in the cafeteria that day, and had plenty of time to catch up on e-mails. I finally doubled back to e-mails that I’d left in my inbox from about 1999, and started deleting and writing to the senders. I got the inbox down to under 200 messages for the first time in years.
Anyway, the few who saw the show had big smiles on their faces throughout, especially one woman who turned out to be a local actress or acting teacher, and who volunteered for the Tartuffe scene.
The next morning I was on the road again, heading north to Connecticut, in anticipation of a show in New Hampshire on Saturday. It was a good 12 hour drive, with a stop to visit Kathy Conery at James Madison University, and I pulled in to Connecticut that evening, staying at Debby Reelitz’ house.
Friday, I continued to work on e-mails, and began drawing up the next phase of the e-mail campaign that I had been putting off: writing to the French Teacher mailing list.
Late on Friday, I received a call. New Hampshire was expecting 9-12 inches of snow and Plymouth College had closed the school for the following day. I had driven 638 miles for a show that was now off. My next show? Was back in Ashland, Virginia.
Now, this was the low point of the passage. I had just barely started making “real money” for the month, and was back at the “break even point”, but the first of the scheduled dates that was going to put me back on top was cancelled. For a moment, I found myself visualizing all of the other ways that the remaining dates could be screwed up: illness, bad weather, car problems, food poisoning … I was suddenly conscious of the very tenuous nature of my situation. There was a lot riding on making it through the next two weeks. I started doubling my intake of my usual nutrition drink (“Re-liv”). And I realized that the visualization was as much a problem as what might potentially happen. The anticipation of negative results (“Things never work out”) creates those negative results.
I also had to question what it is within my thinking that made me suppose I didn’t actually deserve to have things work out … for once?
In order to make lemonade out of these lemons, I dropped a note to one of the profs I’d performed for last fall, who’d given me wonderful feedback and encouragement, and mentioned that I’d be driving by on Saturday, and would he like to meet for breakfast? His response was that he’d love to have me over for breakfast, and also to bring me in to speak to his Saturday-morning French class for a bit.
I readily agreed, pending the ability to get through the anticipated snow, and showed up on his doorstep the following morning. He was extremely pleased. His mother had died some ten days before, and he hadn’t held his class the previous weekend, and was still down in the dumps, so Moliere lightened his mood considerably. Later he wrote all kinds of good things that I’m already using in the e-mail campaign, ("I've been organizing and hosting cultural programs for well over three decades, and can't recall one which has engendered more positive discussion and genuine enthusiasm.") and promised to plug my show at the next AATF conference, where he is to be a featured speaker. All in all, the reworked itinerary was probably worth more to me than the previous plan.
That night I stopped in Baltimore and visited my sister Maureen and her husband, Tim. I got in a bit of jogging, and a bit of laundry the next morning, and zipped south to Ashland, for my show at Randolph-Macon College.
Again, I was in a guest house, and with time on my hands, I attacked more e-mails. I met my hostess for coffee, and headed to the theatre. Once again, the lighting was lousy. It was a movie theatre with a tiny stage in front of the screen, and all the lighting pointed directly down. Fortunately, this time my technicians knew what they were doing, and they quickly got ladders and started climbing, creating some angles to the lighting.
The show was fun. The “Tartuffe” volunteer was a somewhat buxom girl who was playful. During the “Scapin” scene, climbing through the audience, I found my way toward a young boy, and where I normally would grab for a program, pretending it was the court “transcription,” I grabbed the papers that he had sitting by him.
“What, you got a game of hangman going here?” I asked.
“Yes,” he responded, even before the audience had realized that we were now ad-libbing. The subsequent laughter threw me off of my lines for a while, but I eventually got myself back on track and finished off.
Overall the show went well, and quickly I was on the road again, this time driving late into the night to Roanoke, Virginia, arriving after midnight.
The next morning, I was up at 7:00, and found my way to the school. It was a huge auditorium, and eventually, more than 500 kids filled the space. The only sound equipment that they could get to work was a boom box, and the place was so full you couldn’t hear anything.
My contact for this gig had been the Foreign Language director for the entire county, and she had brought in French and theatre students from nine different high schools and middle schools.
A side note: She had written me a few weeks back, noting that a teacher had actually read my study guide and noted that “On page 38 of the script, Tartuffe brings a volunteer on stage, to play the role of a married woman whom he attempts to seduce.” Well, I was pleased that someone, at least, was reading the materials that I was sending out there, but to complain that Moliere’s plays have infidelities in them is like complaining that Shakespeare’s plays have murder. … Of course, I suppose they would prefer that.
I was … careful in playing the Tartuffe scene in Roanoke. The girl was nervous enough, and kept moving away from me, and for once, at least, I let her.
Actually, the Roanoke audience was terrific. To get 500 plus kids to pay attention to a 90-minute one-man show is no easy task, but I was feeling the power. If I felt them start to get out of hand, I would modulate my voice, get quiet, or pause, and come back at them with stronger stuff. The sound of 500 kids being silent is an awesome thing.
The next day I was on to Blacksburg for shows at Virginia Tech. It was less than an hour away, and I still had a day before any performances. I settled into the hotel early and got more work done. I met with my host, Patty Raun, who some of you Nebraska grads may remember. Patty gave me the special rock star treatment, giving me a gift bag of goodies and taking me to lunch. Back at the hotel I saw a car pull into the parking lot, pulling a trailer that advertised a karaoke company. I asked the driver and he noted that they were hosting karaoke at Buffalo Wild Wings that night.
I went on to give my acting workshop, and to do a tech rehearsal for Moliere. The show went extremely well, and the volunteer was very playful. Afterwards, the volunteer stuck around to say hello, and I discovered she was a high school student. “Whoops, I’m sorry, if I’d known that I wouldn’t have molested you so much.”
Patty and I and a couple of the technicians then went out to the karaoke bar. It was her first karaoke experience, and her students seemed to feel extremely privileged to see that side of her.
I had most of the next day off, and I set the e-mail campaign into motion. That evening, following another tech rehearsal, I performed “Criteria.” While Patty had to bow out afterwards to pick up her son, some of the students were throwing a party, and invited me to join them. One student demonstrated that, while the rest of the audience were getting their hands stamped as they came in to “Criteria,” she’d had the usher apply the stamp to her chest. Somewhere, in the middle of the party, one student noted that she had been unable to attend my acting workshop, and with some encouragement, I performed the “Tartuffe” scene using her as “Elmire.” Around me, I could hear the party getting very quiet for about five minutes, before finishing to a burst of applause. (The fellow who had been the house manager for both my shows, and who’d invited me to come along, suggested that “I hope I’m half as cool as you when I’m your age.” Hmmmm …)
The next morning, I was heading south. It was almost seven hours down to Marietta, Georgia, where my friend, Linda, had arranged a small, living-room performance for ten people, including my good friend, Cathy Maday. It had been a while since I’d done the show in that intimate of a setting, and it felt very tense and immediate. I could see a fixed smile on their faces through most of the performance, and I fed on my awareness of their interest. (Linda’s daughter was in the audience, and she turned bright red in the scene where my underwear is exposed.) They all stood up to applaud afterwards, and Linda’s son seemed especially appreciative. Cathy then proceeded to upstage me with a dazzling demonstration of belly dancing technique. Now it was my turn to sit there with a fixed smile on my face!
Farther south, I had more “Criteria” performances at Georgia College & State University. I’d performed Moliere for them two years before, and now I got back to town to see that the promotional marquee announced “Tim Mooney’s Criteria,” once again elevating me to name-above-the-title status. The weather, by the way, had turned wonderful. Trees in Georgia are already in bloom, and you can smell the flowers everywhere.
When I got to the theatre, I discovered that I would be performing in an auditorium that holds upwards of 700 people! I’d never performed this show for more than 100. And, in fact, the placards that were the extent of my scenery, probably couldn’t be read from any farther than the fifth row.
The ushers, after stamping the hands appropriately, encouraged the audience to sit up front.
There were only 42 in the audience for the first performance, which was actually more than anticipated, since this was the last day of their spring break, and many of the students weren’t back in town quite yet. The show itself went great. In the different environment, I had a couple of stumbles, getting my tongue twisted around a couple of passages, but with the larger space, I could feel the “lid” come off of the show a bit, as I could expand my gestures in a much broader range. And the response was terrific. Several of the audience, including students and much of the theatre faculty stuck around to share their congratulations.
After the show, I noted that I was now all wound up from the performance, and that you couldn’t buy beer on Sunday night in Georgia! (How could I have forgotten? I’ll have to add this to the list of discoveries.) One of the students, overhearing this, called a friend from next door, who brought over an extra bottle of Guinness from her fridge.
The next day, I gave my usual workshop to an acting class, and since it was a class which was almost entirely women, I didn’t do the usual “Tartuffe” exercise, but instead worked with a “Misanthrope” exercise that I’d done only once before. This time, it seems, I explained it better than before, because it worked incredibly well, demonstrating the power of using the audience in an argument. (It’s an exercise that I refer to as “The Jerry Springer Show.”)
That night I performed the show again (and I seemed to have a couple of ‘groupies’ returning for a second showing), but while I was more confident than the night before, the impact of the show seemed lessened. Perhaps, with another rehearsal under my belt, my recital had become a bit rote. Or, just as likely, this was more of a student crowd than the night before, and they were there because they had to be for a class. There were persistent coughs through much of the show, and it was really starting to annoy me. I felt like “staring down” the coughers, but it was of no use. In fact, I had been tempted to cough, myself. The air was particularly dry, and I could feel some particle of some sort had found its way to the back of my throat. There is, of course no way of stopping to swab the back of your throat during the course of a one-man show, so I pressed on ahead, wondering what kind of a bug I was in the process of swallowing.
And yet, there’s that scene with my pants around my ankles, and suddenly they were all healed of their conditions. I heard almost no coughing through the remainder of the show.
Afterwards, I said a fond goodbye to several of the students who were very enthusiastic about my show, many of whom remembered me from my performance two years before. While I live quite an itinerant life on the roads, there are a variety of programs where I really feel like they’ve adopted me as one of their own, like an occasional fixture on the faculty.
I went out for a drink with my friend, Melanie, who I’d met at the American Assn of Teachers of French conference in Atlanta last summer. She and Tina (from Portland) and I had spent a good deal of time hanging out together at the conference when we all discovered that we seemed to have Milledgeville in common.
I drove the long haul north to Ada, Ohio the next day, about 12 hours on the road, and while everyone was very helpful, it was rough getting my internet hookup reestablished, and my e-mail campaign was stalled halfway through. And so, eventually, I started writing these long-delayed observations instead.
The next day was full: I taught an acting workshop in the morning, focusing back on “Tartuffe” again (they’d studied the play recently), followed by a French class in the afternoon. (It was the school’s French teacher who’d lobbied to bring my show in.) And then “Moliere Than Thou” that night.
There were at least ten technicians on hand to run “Moliere Than Thou!” They spent most of the rehearsal (and, I assume, the performance) sitting around waiting for something to happen that might require them actually doing something.
I assume that most of the shows that come in for this arts series are big events with big sets and large casts, but I just didn’t have enough “needs” to give them a sense of purpose, and I couldn’t bring myself to sending them off to fetch me coffee, or the like. (Of course, most of the crew was there to earn credit for their Intro to Theatre class, but I couldn’t think of a better way of turning students off to theatre for life than to force them to hang around doing nothing through the course of a tech rehearsal and a performance.)
I was amused by the sign on the green room door that indicated that the green room was “for the use of the cast of “Moliere Than Thou” only.” Once I’d gotten into my make-up, I felt like I had to at least go and sit in the green room for thirty seconds or so, just to put it to some use.
The show itself went very well, with about a hundred scattered around the large auditorium. I did an interview immediately beforehand with a local journalist, and when it came time to get a volunteer for “Scapin,” the French professor had his arm twisted to join me. It turns out he was a bit of a ham, and was satisfying his own sense of humor on a meta-theatrical level such as occasionally speaking a line in French, and sitting down on the stage after I’d left to climb through the audience. It wasn’t helping the audience follow the humor as I had written it, but at least the fellow’s wife was a good laugher, and she’d kept the rest of the audience responsive through the course of the show.
I finished the show, packed up (had all the assistance I might ever need in loading the trunk back into the car), and was on the road early the next morning, heading for the last show of this leg of the tour (at last), in Bradford, Pennsylvania.
Of course, what I wanted was to turn west at that point, but found myself instead going six hours east, where I had another workshop to teach at three o’clock that afternoon. Once again, the kids were really responsive, and this time I worked through both the “Tartuffe” and the “Misanthrope” exercise. When I performed the “Tartuffe” monologue for the students, I found myself reminded of my hypnotist analogy: the volunteer Elmire was extremely resistant in that scene, finding Tartuffe himself extremely offensive to her religious sentiment. She would stiffen up like a board when I would come close to her. And yet, three feet away, one of the students was falling under the hypnotic spell of the power of Tartuffe’s persuasion.
I was in a new theatre space: a brand new theatre space. Mine was the first performance that would happen in their thrust studio space. (The kids, who are opening their show in two weeks, envied me that fact.) It was also the first place that had hired me to perform “Criteria” exclusively, and not as a follow-up to “Moliere Than Thou,” and it was good to know that the show stands on its own. (It was the sixth performance of “Criteria” in this month, and it really seems to have come into its own in this time.) It took the lighting designer a while to get the bugs out of the system, but eventually the light plot he’d set up worked like a charm.
Before the show, I stopped to check my voice mail. There was a message from my brother, Kevin, that my father had experienced what they were calling a “mini stroke” (also known as TIA). He was all right now, and would be staying in the hospital overnight, but it was startling to have real life intervene. Fortunately, I am now ready to head home, and I will in fact be home before I get the chance to send this out, but for the moment, I still had a show to do.
I threw myself into it, knowing that I could not stop to think about what might be going on back home. Every time I did, I pushed myself farther into the character, feeding off of the emotional life of the moment. The performance went extremely well, though that hardly seems relevant right now. Please send thoughts and prayers for Dad.
(I am now back home, and Dad is doing fine.)
Love,
Tim
Miles on the Vibe 133,500
In the CD Player: Eagles: The Finest Hits of
Attendance: 160 + 25 + 50 + 500 + 10 + 20 + 60 + 50 + 42 + 15 + 60 + 8 + 120 + 60 = 1,180
Temperature: 20s-80s
Discoveries: I am making hay while the sun shines. I tackle the task immediately in front of me, and refuse to get caught up in moods or self-doubt. * The anticipation of negative results, such as “Things never work out,” creates those negative results. * You can’t buy beer on Sundays in Georgia. * Coughing is optional. * There are some programs where I really feel like the faculty has adopted me as one of their own. * “Criteria” can stand on its own.
Next shows: Luther College, Decorah, IA; Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL
Monday, March 07, 2005
The View From Here # 87: Gresham, OR, Palos Verdes & Long Beach, CA, Houston, TX, Greensboro, NC
I sometimes despair of the fact that I will not ever be able to capture all the details passing by as weeks pass between “Views.” I then realize that some of you probably despair that I will.
I am about 5,000 miles along the road since the last time I checked in. From Pocatello, Idaho, I raced on to Portland, Oregon, and a beautiful hotel/bed & breakfast/brewery/winery where I was being housed for two nights. Early on I was actually frustrated by the fact that there were no TV’s in the room, or phone connections. As time passed, I grew to appreciate the fact that this led me out of the room itself, and down to the winery, where cordial fraternity ensued. (There was a party of 8 lesbians celebrating a birthday.)
The hotel (McMenamin’s) was painted all over, with a different painting on every door, and even paintings on the hot water pipes, or any odd surface.
I arrived at Mount Hood Community College on a beautiful blue-skied day (the weather had been kind to me already, crossing the mountains in February). Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens stood out vividly in the distance.
I met my host, who actually had first met me on the trip to Martinique two summers ago, and he led me to the performance space, which was a lecture hall next to an art gallery. What nobody had told me was that they were re-flooring the space, and the bare cement floor was interrupted by three power outlets elevated three inches above the surface. By some heightened sense of awareness that I don’t understand, I never came tripped over these during the show.
The 200-seat hall was eventually filled with 170 audience members (a good rear-end-to-seat ratio), and their response was great. It was a noon show, and the school had recruited some high schools to attend. Remembering the last noon show that I’d done had been interrupted by a 1 pm exodus of students going to their next class, I had suggested that we do my 1-hour version of the show, followed by a 1-hour lecture on Moliere’s life. My webmaster, Bruce (who’s been promoting the show for years, but only managed to see it for the first time now), noted that the lecture was as successful as the performance. A teacher, who’d seen a teaser that I put into the program, requested hearing my rendition of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and I sang a verse of it to big cheers. I think the French professor wanted to get in a final word of thanks, but he was drowned out. (I noted sardonically the fact that 8 years of scholarly work on Moliere was upstaged by twenty seconds of singing.)
The professor is already suggesting that he’d like to get me back again for next year. One of the high school teachers e-mailed immediately afterwards with the perfect endorsement: “We really enjoyed the show. The students asked today if they could memorize some of these dialogues in French and act them out for the class. Thanks for offering the opportunity to inspire them.”
I continued into Portland proper, visiting with my friend, Tina. (I met her at the conference in Atlanta, where she failed in her efforts to set me up with her sister-in-law.) Tina brought me in to speak to a class of middle-school acting students the next day, which is quite a task. Getting their attention is like herding kittens. Afterwards we went to the famous Powell’s Books, where I bought three or four Moliere biographies and a book or two by Isaac Asimov.
I stopped in Salem the next day, visiting brother Pat (and Kathy and Ryan and Michael), before heading along again, this time to San Francisco. While I’d been receiving reports about the terrible rain that California had been getting, my visit was more sunny than not. I stayed, once again, with Stephen and Kajsa, and we hit the karaoke bar that night. Before racing on ahead, I had a really nice dinner with Mia, who’d had a one-woman show at the SF Fringe last fall.
And again, I was on my way south, pausing in Porterville to meet with a French teacher/theatre enthusiast (Alfonso) for lunch and a tour of the local community theatre. An enormous rainbow appeared over the mountains nearby.
I pulled in to L.A., staying with my friends Thessaly and Casper (also from the San Francisco Fringe). The next morning I actually went jogging again (my exercise program has fallen off miserably) around the lake at Echo Park, and noticed the impact that the rains had on L.A. There were sidewalks that had been overrun with turf, as the sod on the neighboring hill had slid completely off of the mud. Some homeowners had taken to covering the hills bordering their property with plastic sheeting, so that the rain could not soak into the ground any more.
From there, I went on to Redondo Beach, where my hotel overlooked the Ocean. The weather was bad, but the next day it cleared and the view was terrific. The hotel had a pool, so my exercise routine was gradually resuming. The show was in a private school in Palos Verdes, on a high hill overlooking Los Angeles. Again, the response was terrific. “Tartuffe” was a little “too good,” as the cute volunteer brought a boisterous reaction from the crowd, and it was not easy getting their attention back.
They’d wanted me to perform a 40-minute show. The start was delayed, as the kids took their time coming in, and the French students recited an introduction to their fellow students. By the time I finished the show and got back offstage, it was an hour after the scheduled starting time. I apologized at some length, but both the French teacher and the principal insisted that it was okay. The teacher later e-mailed the following:
“I got feedback from my students today. They were a little surprised by the ‘Tartuffe’ scene, but enjoyed the presentation as a show. They said that it was the best performance they've seen at school during our assembly period this year. That's a compliment! A colleague also called me to thank me for bringing you to campus, saying that she really enjoyed your show. My department chair also said that she was pleased, and wouldn't it be great if we could have you come every four years.”
I grabbed a quick lunch with the charming French teacher, before heading off to a same-day performance for California State University-Long Beach (CSULB). I was performing in a library gallery space on the fifth floor, and there were about fifty chairs set up in front of me. There were about twenty-five students in the chairs, and people continued to arrive as the show proceeded. As they arrived, they sat off to one side or another, where there were tables on one side and easy chairs at the other. By the end of the show, there may have been some sixty people watching.
The men were slow to volunteer, so I “volunteered” the professor who’d hired me for the “Scapin” scene. I could sense he had a bit of showmanship about him, and I’d also noticed that his four-year old daughter was a bit restless watching the show (lots of people had brought their kids to this show). I figured if I got her dad up on stage, she’d pay better attention, which she did.
Again, the show went great. My “tip basket” had $24 in it. And the host is already thinking about bringing it back in next year.
I worked my way down to San Diego, where I’d intended to meet some old friends for karaoke, but both were no-shows, and I ended up singing with a friend of a friend. When I realized that neither Lisa nor Jeff were going to make it, I decided to head off early, to get east of San Diego and avoid the next morning’s rush hour. I worked my way to El Centrino, where there was no hotel room to be found. Apparently there was either a new mall being built, or a film being shot or both. There were likewise, no hotels in Yuma, and I decided to nap my way to Tucson, pulling into town much earlier than expected.
I met with the chair of my former department at NIU (now chair of U of Arizona) who, in spite of my unkempt air, offered to book me for the coming year. I’d already booked Arizona State for September 25, and it turned out that Sept 26 worked for UA, which means that I’ll sweep through Arizona in the course of two days next fall.
I pushed on to Las Cruces, New Mexico before finally finding a hotel. The next day, I worked my way back to Brownwood Texas, where I’d performed in January, and where the professor, Nancy Jo, has been talking up my show to all the schools in her neighborhood (if you can call the entire state of Texas a “neighborhood”). I offered to perform my musical for her and her students once again. It had gone through numerous changes in the interim, and another dozen of her kids who hadn’t seen it the first time came to watch.
I’ve decided that my juggling metaphor (keeping three shows performance-ready) isn’t quite accurate. It’s more like spinning plates. The Moliere plate only needs an occasional spin, and the “Criteria” plate needs somewhat more management, while “Karaoke Knights” is one of those wobbly plates that threatens to fall off the moment you look away. Knowing that I’d be doing a show in Brownwood, I sang my way through the show three times as I drove, and recited “Criteria” twice.
While I’m on the subject of metaphors, I’ve decided that developing a one-man show is like rearranging the furniture in your living room. Every time you move something, it means that something else has to adjust, which leads to more and more changes. The sofa may be right where you want it, but the end-tables no longer fit where you wanted them, and the lamps no longer illuminate the important areas… and who can see the TV from there? But hey, once you get it all just the way you want, then it’s just a matter of running the vacuum over it now and then.
Sunday night Nancy Jo and I relaxed and watched the Oscars.
Monday I was off to Houston. My friend Cheryl (who, like Nancy Jo, I’d also met at the ‘04 TETA Conference, a very productive event for me) had set up another performance, inviting many of her theatre-teacher friends. The turnout was very small, and while there were some really enthusiastic observers, there was at least one guy who obviously didn’t want to be there. (I suspect that the invitation to the play made him think he was coming to a party, and he was disappointed to find the attention on somebody else.) When I asked for a volunteer for the Scapin scene, he noted very loudly that he had to leave for a poker game “in a couple of minutes.” (Meanwhile, the gentleman whose home I was performing in made an exit of his own to take care of the dogs, I think.)
On the good side, the volunteers that I eventually got for Tartuffe and Scapin were a lot of fun. (I always enjoy when the “Tartuffe” volunteer forgets that her objective is supposed to be to run away.) Later that night, Cheryl’s boyfriend (who just happens to be a rocket scientist with NASA) and I sat up drinking beer, arguing the efficacy of sending nuclear waste into the sun.
I was working my way east again. I made it to Montgomery that night, and dropped in on the Alabama Shakespeare Festival the next morning, before continuing on to Charlotte Wednesday night. I enjoyed a dinner with the darling Cathy Maday, who I hadn’t seen in more than two years. I shared a couple of the songs from “Karaoke Knights” with her.
I finally pulled in to Greensboro, where SETC (Southeast Theatre Conference) was happening. I’ve heard about SETC for more than twenty years, but never attended. I learned my lesson from the Texas conference in January and stocked up on loads of brochures and videotapes before going in. There were a series of booths set up for a couple dozen Universities, and I worked my way through, introducing myself to the faculty, some of whom knew of me already from the e-mail campaign I’d been running for three years. There were also some faculty I knew from my alma mater SIU, including Bill Lewis (one of several who said he wants to bring my show in), who wrote the first play I ever directed back in 1980!
Friday night I performed “Moliere Than Thou” as part of the conference’s “Fringe Festival”, and the attendance was disappointing. Apparently, the conference had design awards as well as audition callbacks scheduled for the same time, so there were only about 25 people in attendance. I recruited my North Carolina friend, Forsyth, and her boyfriend, Wayne, to help, running the house lights, and distributing brochures and videotapes afterwards.
There was a publisher in the audience, and knowing she was watching kept me redoubling my efforts throughout the show. The small audience was theatrically savvy, and everything was getting big laughs. In fact, the only parts that didn’t seem to work so well were the volunteer scenes, as the actors who volunteered did not have that wide-eyed bewilderment that usually makes the volunteer scene so funny. At the end, the show got a standing ovation, and the feedback was great.
The next day, I ran the lines of “Criteria” twice. Again, Forsyth and Wayne came in to help out for the performance, and this time the audience was about double that of the night before.
It turned out to be the best “Criteria” yet. The audience was laughing at the opening music. I could feel a new level of control, where I could take that extra instant before moving on to leave the space for the audience to respond. There were about five seconds where I spaced out the next scene, and started to grab for my script, but as soon as I relaxed, the words came back, and I continued.
The “diner scene” got great laughs, and just about every line from the “waitress” drew more laughter. I found myself wondering whether I’d lost the audience in the last twenty minutes, as they went largely quiet on me. There were still a few big responses, so I had a sense that they were responding more deeply. And when I finished off the show and came back onstage for my bow, I received one of the more gratifying ovations I can remember. The audience seemed to realize, individually, that the show was over, and the applause grew as they stood up spontaneously. (That is to say, it wasn’t a couple of people in the front row standing up, with others standing in response to their cue.)
In retrospect, I was especially glad that Forsyth was at this performance. I’d read “Criteria” aloud to her, back in the fall of 2002, and it was her laughs that encouraged me to turn the story into a show. And more than two years later, the humor this audience was picking up on matched what she’d laughed at the first time around. On some pathological level, I’m glad that my reports of the success of the show can be validated by a witness.
I disassembled the show quickly and some forty students showed up at the workshop I was delivering a half-hour later, about fifteen of whom had attended one of my shows or the other. The workshop was actually my most successful event in terms of giving out brochures and videos, and even the students were talking about passing word on to their teachers to bring me in. Which makes me think that, as well as the shows go over, it’s the workshop that communicates in my “voice,” and people respond to me as a human being rather than as a character.
Finally, with the shows packed into my car, I could spend the rest of the evening partying. The hotel had about three bars in it, and I drifted from one to the other, checking in with familiar faculty. I ended up hanging out with my friend Leni, who’d been the first to encourage me to come to SETC. She’d helped me build backup costumes for Moliere, and she’s starting to talk about bringing my shows back to Austin Peay University.
It’s Sunday now, and I’m hanging out at Forsyth’s house, before getting caught up in the whirlwind of March performances. I’m staring down about 20 performances over the next thirty days! I’ll send this out as soon as I get my new computer up to speed with the group mailing address list (Don’t forget to sign up for the listserv! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/viewfromhere) Unless you’d rather not get these messages in the future.
Temperature: 60s
Miles on the Vibe: 129,400
Attendance: 170 + 400 + 60 + 12 + 12 + 25 + 50 = 729
Discoveries: Eight years of scholarly work can be upstaged by twenty seconds of singing. Likewise, the workshop, in which I speak (rather than Moliere or “Albert”) touches the students more directly. * Doing three plays at once is like spinning plates. * Developing a one-man show is like arranging the furniture in your living room. * Always have plenty of “product” ready to hand out, because you never know when it’ll be in demand. *
In the CD Player: A Martha Wainwright CD I can’t name without getting “blocked” by many of your servers.
Next Performances: Morganton, NC (3/8), Ferrum, VA (3/9), Belmont, NH (3/12)
I am about 5,000 miles along the road since the last time I checked in. From Pocatello, Idaho, I raced on to Portland, Oregon, and a beautiful hotel/bed & breakfast/brewery/winery where I was being housed for two nights. Early on I was actually frustrated by the fact that there were no TV’s in the room, or phone connections. As time passed, I grew to appreciate the fact that this led me out of the room itself, and down to the winery, where cordial fraternity ensued. (There was a party of 8 lesbians celebrating a birthday.)
The hotel (McMenamin’s) was painted all over, with a different painting on every door, and even paintings on the hot water pipes, or any odd surface.
I arrived at Mount Hood Community College on a beautiful blue-skied day (the weather had been kind to me already, crossing the mountains in February). Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens stood out vividly in the distance.
I met my host, who actually had first met me on the trip to Martinique two summers ago, and he led me to the performance space, which was a lecture hall next to an art gallery. What nobody had told me was that they were re-flooring the space, and the bare cement floor was interrupted by three power outlets elevated three inches above the surface. By some heightened sense of awareness that I don’t understand, I never came tripped over these during the show.
The 200-seat hall was eventually filled with 170 audience members (a good rear-end-to-seat ratio), and their response was great. It was a noon show, and the school had recruited some high schools to attend. Remembering the last noon show that I’d done had been interrupted by a 1 pm exodus of students going to their next class, I had suggested that we do my 1-hour version of the show, followed by a 1-hour lecture on Moliere’s life. My webmaster, Bruce (who’s been promoting the show for years, but only managed to see it for the first time now), noted that the lecture was as successful as the performance. A teacher, who’d seen a teaser that I put into the program, requested hearing my rendition of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and I sang a verse of it to big cheers. I think the French professor wanted to get in a final word of thanks, but he was drowned out. (I noted sardonically the fact that 8 years of scholarly work on Moliere was upstaged by twenty seconds of singing.)
The professor is already suggesting that he’d like to get me back again for next year. One of the high school teachers e-mailed immediately afterwards with the perfect endorsement: “We really enjoyed the show. The students asked today if they could memorize some of these dialogues in French and act them out for the class. Thanks for offering the opportunity to inspire them.”
I continued into Portland proper, visiting with my friend, Tina. (I met her at the conference in Atlanta, where she failed in her efforts to set me up with her sister-in-law.) Tina brought me in to speak to a class of middle-school acting students the next day, which is quite a task. Getting their attention is like herding kittens. Afterwards we went to the famous Powell’s Books, where I bought three or four Moliere biographies and a book or two by Isaac Asimov.
I stopped in Salem the next day, visiting brother Pat (and Kathy and Ryan and Michael), before heading along again, this time to San Francisco. While I’d been receiving reports about the terrible rain that California had been getting, my visit was more sunny than not. I stayed, once again, with Stephen and Kajsa, and we hit the karaoke bar that night. Before racing on ahead, I had a really nice dinner with Mia, who’d had a one-woman show at the SF Fringe last fall.
And again, I was on my way south, pausing in Porterville to meet with a French teacher/theatre enthusiast (Alfonso) for lunch and a tour of the local community theatre. An enormous rainbow appeared over the mountains nearby.
I pulled in to L.A., staying with my friends Thessaly and Casper (also from the San Francisco Fringe). The next morning I actually went jogging again (my exercise program has fallen off miserably) around the lake at Echo Park, and noticed the impact that the rains had on L.A. There were sidewalks that had been overrun with turf, as the sod on the neighboring hill had slid completely off of the mud. Some homeowners had taken to covering the hills bordering their property with plastic sheeting, so that the rain could not soak into the ground any more.
From there, I went on to Redondo Beach, where my hotel overlooked the Ocean. The weather was bad, but the next day it cleared and the view was terrific. The hotel had a pool, so my exercise routine was gradually resuming. The show was in a private school in Palos Verdes, on a high hill overlooking Los Angeles. Again, the response was terrific. “Tartuffe” was a little “too good,” as the cute volunteer brought a boisterous reaction from the crowd, and it was not easy getting their attention back.
They’d wanted me to perform a 40-minute show. The start was delayed, as the kids took their time coming in, and the French students recited an introduction to their fellow students. By the time I finished the show and got back offstage, it was an hour after the scheduled starting time. I apologized at some length, but both the French teacher and the principal insisted that it was okay. The teacher later e-mailed the following:
“I got feedback from my students today. They were a little surprised by the ‘Tartuffe’ scene, but enjoyed the presentation as a show. They said that it was the best performance they've seen at school during our assembly period this year. That's a compliment! A colleague also called me to thank me for bringing you to campus, saying that she really enjoyed your show. My department chair also said that she was pleased, and wouldn't it be great if we could have you come every four years.”
I grabbed a quick lunch with the charming French teacher, before heading off to a same-day performance for California State University-Long Beach (CSULB). I was performing in a library gallery space on the fifth floor, and there were about fifty chairs set up in front of me. There were about twenty-five students in the chairs, and people continued to arrive as the show proceeded. As they arrived, they sat off to one side or another, where there were tables on one side and easy chairs at the other. By the end of the show, there may have been some sixty people watching.
The men were slow to volunteer, so I “volunteered” the professor who’d hired me for the “Scapin” scene. I could sense he had a bit of showmanship about him, and I’d also noticed that his four-year old daughter was a bit restless watching the show (lots of people had brought their kids to this show). I figured if I got her dad up on stage, she’d pay better attention, which she did.
Again, the show went great. My “tip basket” had $24 in it. And the host is already thinking about bringing it back in next year.
I worked my way down to San Diego, where I’d intended to meet some old friends for karaoke, but both were no-shows, and I ended up singing with a friend of a friend. When I realized that neither Lisa nor Jeff were going to make it, I decided to head off early, to get east of San Diego and avoid the next morning’s rush hour. I worked my way to El Centrino, where there was no hotel room to be found. Apparently there was either a new mall being built, or a film being shot or both. There were likewise, no hotels in Yuma, and I decided to nap my way to Tucson, pulling into town much earlier than expected.
I met with the chair of my former department at NIU (now chair of U of Arizona) who, in spite of my unkempt air, offered to book me for the coming year. I’d already booked Arizona State for September 25, and it turned out that Sept 26 worked for UA, which means that I’ll sweep through Arizona in the course of two days next fall.
I pushed on to Las Cruces, New Mexico before finally finding a hotel. The next day, I worked my way back to Brownwood Texas, where I’d performed in January, and where the professor, Nancy Jo, has been talking up my show to all the schools in her neighborhood (if you can call the entire state of Texas a “neighborhood”). I offered to perform my musical for her and her students once again. It had gone through numerous changes in the interim, and another dozen of her kids who hadn’t seen it the first time came to watch.
I’ve decided that my juggling metaphor (keeping three shows performance-ready) isn’t quite accurate. It’s more like spinning plates. The Moliere plate only needs an occasional spin, and the “Criteria” plate needs somewhat more management, while “Karaoke Knights” is one of those wobbly plates that threatens to fall off the moment you look away. Knowing that I’d be doing a show in Brownwood, I sang my way through the show three times as I drove, and recited “Criteria” twice.
While I’m on the subject of metaphors, I’ve decided that developing a one-man show is like rearranging the furniture in your living room. Every time you move something, it means that something else has to adjust, which leads to more and more changes. The sofa may be right where you want it, but the end-tables no longer fit where you wanted them, and the lamps no longer illuminate the important areas… and who can see the TV from there? But hey, once you get it all just the way you want, then it’s just a matter of running the vacuum over it now and then.
Sunday night Nancy Jo and I relaxed and watched the Oscars.
Monday I was off to Houston. My friend Cheryl (who, like Nancy Jo, I’d also met at the ‘04 TETA Conference, a very productive event for me) had set up another performance, inviting many of her theatre-teacher friends. The turnout was very small, and while there were some really enthusiastic observers, there was at least one guy who obviously didn’t want to be there. (I suspect that the invitation to the play made him think he was coming to a party, and he was disappointed to find the attention on somebody else.) When I asked for a volunteer for the Scapin scene, he noted very loudly that he had to leave for a poker game “in a couple of minutes.” (Meanwhile, the gentleman whose home I was performing in made an exit of his own to take care of the dogs, I think.)
On the good side, the volunteers that I eventually got for Tartuffe and Scapin were a lot of fun. (I always enjoy when the “Tartuffe” volunteer forgets that her objective is supposed to be to run away.) Later that night, Cheryl’s boyfriend (who just happens to be a rocket scientist with NASA) and I sat up drinking beer, arguing the efficacy of sending nuclear waste into the sun.
I was working my way east again. I made it to Montgomery that night, and dropped in on the Alabama Shakespeare Festival the next morning, before continuing on to Charlotte Wednesday night. I enjoyed a dinner with the darling Cathy Maday, who I hadn’t seen in more than two years. I shared a couple of the songs from “Karaoke Knights” with her.
I finally pulled in to Greensboro, where SETC (Southeast Theatre Conference) was happening. I’ve heard about SETC for more than twenty years, but never attended. I learned my lesson from the Texas conference in January and stocked up on loads of brochures and videotapes before going in. There were a series of booths set up for a couple dozen Universities, and I worked my way through, introducing myself to the faculty, some of whom knew of me already from the e-mail campaign I’d been running for three years. There were also some faculty I knew from my alma mater SIU, including Bill Lewis (one of several who said he wants to bring my show in), who wrote the first play I ever directed back in 1980!
Friday night I performed “Moliere Than Thou” as part of the conference’s “Fringe Festival”, and the attendance was disappointing. Apparently, the conference had design awards as well as audition callbacks scheduled for the same time, so there were only about 25 people in attendance. I recruited my North Carolina friend, Forsyth, and her boyfriend, Wayne, to help, running the house lights, and distributing brochures and videotapes afterwards.
There was a publisher in the audience, and knowing she was watching kept me redoubling my efforts throughout the show. The small audience was theatrically savvy, and everything was getting big laughs. In fact, the only parts that didn’t seem to work so well were the volunteer scenes, as the actors who volunteered did not have that wide-eyed bewilderment that usually makes the volunteer scene so funny. At the end, the show got a standing ovation, and the feedback was great.
The next day, I ran the lines of “Criteria” twice. Again, Forsyth and Wayne came in to help out for the performance, and this time the audience was about double that of the night before.
It turned out to be the best “Criteria” yet. The audience was laughing at the opening music. I could feel a new level of control, where I could take that extra instant before moving on to leave the space for the audience to respond. There were about five seconds where I spaced out the next scene, and started to grab for my script, but as soon as I relaxed, the words came back, and I continued.
The “diner scene” got great laughs, and just about every line from the “waitress” drew more laughter. I found myself wondering whether I’d lost the audience in the last twenty minutes, as they went largely quiet on me. There were still a few big responses, so I had a sense that they were responding more deeply. And when I finished off the show and came back onstage for my bow, I received one of the more gratifying ovations I can remember. The audience seemed to realize, individually, that the show was over, and the applause grew as they stood up spontaneously. (That is to say, it wasn’t a couple of people in the front row standing up, with others standing in response to their cue.)
In retrospect, I was especially glad that Forsyth was at this performance. I’d read “Criteria” aloud to her, back in the fall of 2002, and it was her laughs that encouraged me to turn the story into a show. And more than two years later, the humor this audience was picking up on matched what she’d laughed at the first time around. On some pathological level, I’m glad that my reports of the success of the show can be validated by a witness.
I disassembled the show quickly and some forty students showed up at the workshop I was delivering a half-hour later, about fifteen of whom had attended one of my shows or the other. The workshop was actually my most successful event in terms of giving out brochures and videos, and even the students were talking about passing word on to their teachers to bring me in. Which makes me think that, as well as the shows go over, it’s the workshop that communicates in my “voice,” and people respond to me as a human being rather than as a character.
Finally, with the shows packed into my car, I could spend the rest of the evening partying. The hotel had about three bars in it, and I drifted from one to the other, checking in with familiar faculty. I ended up hanging out with my friend Leni, who’d been the first to encourage me to come to SETC. She’d helped me build backup costumes for Moliere, and she’s starting to talk about bringing my shows back to Austin Peay University.
It’s Sunday now, and I’m hanging out at Forsyth’s house, before getting caught up in the whirlwind of March performances. I’m staring down about 20 performances over the next thirty days! I’ll send this out as soon as I get my new computer up to speed with the group mailing address list (Don’t forget to sign up for the listserv! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/viewfromhere) Unless you’d rather not get these messages in the future.
Temperature: 60s
Miles on the Vibe: 129,400
Attendance: 170 + 400 + 60 + 12 + 12 + 25 + 50 = 729
Discoveries: Eight years of scholarly work can be upstaged by twenty seconds of singing. Likewise, the workshop, in which I speak (rather than Moliere or “Albert”) touches the students more directly. * Doing three plays at once is like spinning plates. * Developing a one-man show is like arranging the furniture in your living room. * Always have plenty of “product” ready to hand out, because you never know when it’ll be in demand. *
In the CD Player: A Martha Wainwright CD I can’t name without getting “blocked” by many of your servers.
Next Performances: Morganton, NC (3/8), Ferrum, VA (3/9), Belmont, NH (3/12)
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