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

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

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

The booth at SETC (with book!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(★★★★★) Fantastic!

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

Somewhere South of Fayette, PA

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

Dad posing with Neptune... Virginia Beach, VA

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

( That address again was www.timmooneyrep.com)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love,

Tim

Miles on the Escape: 60,150

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flyer for the Orlando Fringe, May 19-29!

Flyer for the Minnesota Fringe, August 4-14!

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

The book is out!



Front Cover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

for the opportunity. Cameron Jackson, Florida State University, Theatre Chair

COPIES CAN ALREADY BE ORDERED via my newly retooled really fantastic website!

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

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

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

Detroit Thetre Examiner: Directed by Jesse Merz, this show delights, visually, intellectually, and at the most basic comic levels. Merz uses the amazing translation by Tim Mooney – adapted for his own productions by Chicago’s Stage Two theatre – which delivers all Moliere’s mirth in the cleverest verse. The actors deliver the lines naturally enough, but at times pause significantly to allow the audience to anticipate and enjoy the inevitably crafty rhymes. (Patty Nolan)

Hillberry’s Misanthrope is a rhymed riot Why this send-up of manners has never lost its charm is plainly to have been seen and savored in the Hilberry Theatre production that opened Friday night. It’s a tour de force right down the line, from Moliere’s brilliant original to Timothy Mooney’s flavorful English adaptation to the spunky performances by the Hilberry company and director Jesse Merz. Lawrence B. Johnson, The Detroit News

Hillbery’s Misanthrope goes for the gold Timothy Mooney’s translation of Moliere’s wit survives the switch from the original French with wit intact. It is also wonderfully easy to understand – all while often rhyming, a feat in itself. The one-liners are wonderful, the wisdom both tongue-in-cheek and profound, and the dialogue quick and entertaining. Sue Suchyta, Dearborn Times-Herald Sunday Times

These may be the best reviews I’ve gotten for a show I had nothing to do with, other than having initially written the script… (actually, I did also write them a rhymed iambic pentameter pre-show announcement)… featuring lines like:

...we frown on such behavior. And as well
We must insist that you turn off your cell.
There's little in the theatre more vexing,
Unless it be some oafish type that's texting...

and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tiny houses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But when Mooney takes on characters that truly suit him, he shines. Standouts in the performance reviewed were one of the comically confused Antipholi from The Comedy of Errors, and Rosalind (as the boy Ganymede) in the famous speech from As You Like It in which she upbraids the shepherdess Phoebe. Others were his obsequious, brown-nosing Cranmer from Henry VIII and an excellent take on the completely self-deceived Malvolio from Twelfth Night, a character Mooney’s gifts make him a natural for. His preening and pauses as Malvolio tries to decipher the planted “letter” were hilarious… 

With the “festival” behind me, I geared back up to get onto the road once more. I had a big conference in Houston, and churned out three new flyers and a large banner to drape along the table of my exhibit booth. With my lines once again secure in my brain (for the moment at least I had lines from four shows secured in my brain), I hit the road, dropping in on Dave and Helga in Tulsa (I hadn’t seen them in about 3 years!), swinging out to Edmond, Oklahoma for a Tartuffe production meeting at the University of Central Oklahoma (where I’ll be directing, and playing the role of Tartuffe next fall!), followed by a trip to Durant, Oklahoma, and a performance of Moliere than Thou.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then today, my book arrived!

Love,
Tim

Chattanooga from Point Lookout

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

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



San Francisco Bay from Point Richmond

 The fall tour is complete!

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

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

But, as to how I got here…



Mount Shasta from Interstate 5



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

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

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

                                                                    

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

Canon Beach, Oregon

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

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

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

Western Washington, from Interstate 90

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

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

This review appeared in the NIC school paper:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was kind of awkward.

Likewise, the host wrote:

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

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

 

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

From the host:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the director, a couple of weeks later:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The teacher noted:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Later, the school newspaper chimed in:

Tim Mooney makes Shakespeare accessible

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

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



Dad and Maureen



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

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

Chickamauga Horse Farm

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

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

Yipes! That seems so funny to read in print!



In front of Chesapeake Bay



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

Love,

Tim

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

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

Reading: The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum

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

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

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

Dolphin swimming in the Chesapeake Bay