The View From Here #110: San Diego & Long Beach, CA; Gresham, OR

Three days in Brownwood enabled me to get about a thousand e-mails to a half-dozen or so states out into circulation, with lots of responses flowing in from faculty. I jumped on the road to El Paso, where I stayed with Jennifer, a friend formerly from British Columbia (who fortunately is also a "24" fan), before getting back on the road on Tuesday morning, racing through New Mexico and Arizona. I got a hotel in Yuma, Arizona, in order to let my e-mails flow in, and there were LOTS. I spent the rest of that
evening, and much of the next morning sorting through them and plotting out when I might be able to perform at which locations.

The next day it was on to San Diego, where my friends Betty and Pete live. I'd been out to visit them nearly two years before, shortly after they'd moved into this house, but this time around all the boxes were put away and everything was looking great. We rearranged their living room somewhat, and I did a performance of "Karaoke Knights" for about ten invited guests. It was a great chance to keep up my work on that show, given the fact that I hadn't performed it since the show at SETC in early March.

It was an odd arrangement of the living room, which had the video actually being projected behind me at the empty wall. Since I didn't want to block the video, that forced my performance forwards, and everyone was within about 10 feet of where I was standing. Since the show was created with a large auditorium in mind, it felt a little over-the-top but everyone said, afterwards, that they loved, it. A couple actually bought the CD, and others left a generous tip in the donation jar.

The next morning, I made a brief appearance in two of Betty's middle-school performance classes, doing a quickie introduction to Moliere and my work. The kids were responsive, but my voice was fading on me, so I was struggling with my natural impulse to give everything I've got, and my conscious understanding that I needed to conserve for a show later that afternoon.

I am reminded that at one of the workshops I attended at SETC, there was a strong smell of bleach in the room, and I find myself wondering if breathing that in for an hour had a greater impact on my throat than the cold that I came down with shortly thereafter.

I was off to Long Beach, where I'd performed a year before, and where the French teacher was a bit of a Moliere academic. He'd shared with me one of the papers he'd presented on Moliere, which even I (Moliere expert that I am) found a bit impenetrable.

Steve's professorial style, however, doesn't seem to keep him from enjoying Moliere. This time around, he ushered me to a room he'd booked in the Student Union. It was a small room, with perhaps 45 chairs set up, and I proceeded to clear space for my show. The furthest point in the room may have been no more than 18 feet from where I'd be performing. There was no way to make an "entrance" into this space, as even the wall facing out to the hallway was made of glass, so I got into costume and stood, in full view, to the side until Steve introduced me.

When I started the show, there may have been 3 or 4 seats empty, but people continued to enter as I worked, and most of them were left standing at the entrance. I encouraged them, between monologues, to come in and take the remaining seats, which some did, but there were at least ten people standing or sitting at the door-end of the room throughout the show.

Given this kind of a standing-room-only audience, the show played brilliantly, and everyone in the first row ended up being characters in my scenes, as I played to them throughout. There was a cute girl in the front row who I'd addressed in the Tartuffe monologue, who also got up to play the scene with me. Given that this was Long Beach, and people aren't bundled up quite the way that they are in the north, the woman, in a very light blouse, seemed more defenseless and vulnerable (and, therefore, funnier) than usual.

There'd been some confusion over the program, and while I'd intended to do the 75-minute version, we only had programs for the 60-minute show available, so I did a short Q&A with the students afterwards, and just for fun, threw in the "Doctor in Spite of Himself" monologue. Afterwards, Steve insisted that he wanted to host the show again next year, and help me line up some other west coast bookings as well.

I continued north, into Hollywood, where I stayed the night at the home of a former U-Nebraska friend, now film editor, Michael Hofacre. We got together with Charlie Bachmann (another U-Nebraska MFA), and went out for a bite to eat. I was feeling strangely tired, and eventually realized that I'd crossed through two time zones in two days (with two performances), and 11:00 was feeling like 1 a.m. to me.

The next day, I played catch-up with e-mails for a bit, before getting on the road to Fresno, where I met up with Michael Swanson. Michael has now booked my shows on two occasions, including my appearances at the Midwest ACTF Festival last January. We had a nice relaxed evening, going out for beer and pizza.

I made a stop in Sacramento, to meet with a French teacher from Sacramento State, and continue on my way north to Redding, California, before pushing ahead to Salem, Oregon, the next day. I took two days in Salem to relax and visit with my brother Pat and his family. His son, Michael had just had a birthday, and I got him a copy of the new "King Kong" movie. We hooked it up to the projector that I use in my show, so that we could watch it on the "big screen."

In Portland, I met up with my webmaster, Bruce, and his wife, for a brief evening of karaoke, in a very tacky tiki bar, and I settled in at my favorite hotel, McMenamin's Edgefield, where they have their own on-site brewery and winery. (I'd stayed there a year before, when I'd also been booked by Mount Hood Community College, and had been looking forward to this stop ever since.)

The next day, I met up with my host, Eric, and we took the trunk over to the performance space. The space, which was essentially a lecture hall, had improved since last year, and the pipe that had been jutting out of the floor was now gone. Unfortunately, the lighting of a lecture hall is always bad, and there were only a handful of lights that were illuminating the stage area. We struggled with the settings for about twenty minutes, but eventually I had to set up the show and get into costume and make-up. I took note of where the light was best, and I headed off.

Apparently, the audience took a long time to fill in, and we seemed to be about 15 minutes late in getting started, by which point I was getting much more pumped up than usual. When it was finally time to start, I noticed two things: The audience was much smaller than anticipated, with perhaps 70 people. And the lights that I'd planned on using were now turned off.

I was standing in a moody half-light, and there was actually a flood of light at my back ... unfortunately pointed at the upstage wall, for occasions when this space was used as an art gallery. This left me mostly in silhouette, with a dim, late-evening feel to the rest of the stage. Two lights illuminated the far right and far left areas of the stage.

For perhaps the second time in history, I actually paused my monologue to call back to my host, asking if perhaps some of these "candles" might be brought up to where they were when we rehearsed previously. The host scrambled around for a few minutes, flicking switches while I soldiered on, and some of the house lights went on and off, but no further result. Somewhere, the tech guy, who'd helped us get set up at the outset, had
disappeared.

I realize that I need to impress upon the hosts, even when I am playing without tech, in a lecture hall, the technical supervisor needs to stay available as the performance is beginning. Because there's absolutely nothing I can do otherwise. Moliere isn't supposed to know how to work a light board, and even if he did, he really can't leave the stage to work all that out.

I ended up playing the show all over the stage ... mostly working from the far stage right and the far stage left pools of light. By this time, I was so obsessed over the lighting, that I had no sense of what words were coming out of my mouth. And I was even more surprised that the audience was laughing along, hysterically, throughout the play. My friend Tina (who I'd met in Atlanta two summers ago) was in the audience leading the laughs, as was my playwright friend, Gil Martin.

I'd met Gil about fifteen years ago, when I produced his play, "The Last Rehearsal" with my old theatre, Stage Two. Around that time, I'd taken a trip out west with Jo (later known as "Isaac's Mom") and we dropped in on Gil and his wife and daughter at their Bed & Breakfast in Trout Lake, Washington. When I got to Portland, I remembered to call Gil (who I'd failed to hook up with almost four years before, as he was out fighting forest fires when I arrived at his B&B). Gil no longer runs the Bed & Breakfast, but he just happened to be there when I called, and he made it out to the show.

After the play, I changed quickly and returned to deliver a short version of my "The Life of Moliere" lecture to the twenty or so who remained, and then Gil and Tina and I headed off for lunch. (Tina seemed to be attending the show in the company of a young fellow, who I invited to join us for lunch, but it wasn't until later that I discovered that she'd just met him in the lobby before the show.) (Apparently, she makes friends quite readily.)

Over lunch, Gil noted that his adorable little four-year-old was now 18 and headed for college, and that he and his wife were separated. (The latter was not a particular surprise, I must say, since the female characters in Gil's plays always seemed to get short shrift in the midst of some dialogue that seems to vy with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" for antagonism.)

In the midst of all of this, I got a call from a reporter with the Mount Hood school paper, wanting to know my perspective on how the show had gone. I couldn't stop myself from sighing my complaint about the lights not working, and then realized that my reaction would end up in print, and that my response would undermine the perceived value of the show. While the lighting was certainly the big "issue" in the forefront of my mind, throughout the play, for the audience that may have been just 1 percent of the perceived experience. My complaint would only undermine their appreciation of what they had seen.

I enjoyed one more evening in the hotel, and their terrific wine bar, before heading reluctantly eastward. The first day I headed for Cour d'Alene, and a visit with Joe Jacoby, fellow theatre teacher and Loudon Wainwright fan. I offered to pop in on Joe's Theatre History classes the following morning, and Joe offered to put me up for the night.

The next night I continued on to Livingston, Montana (after dropping in on a former prof, Joe Proctor, in Missoula, where I'm negotiating to perform next fall). I had a date lined up with a painter in Livingston, and the two of us found a karaoke bar in Bozeman. It was the Lion's Club of Bozeman, and it was a pretty lively, if country-music-oriented, crowd. The Karaoke Jockey realized that I was a newbie at their bar, and when I got up to sing, I admitted that I was from Chicago, just passing through town, a fact she repeated each time I got back up to sing.

The crowd was extremely responsive, with much high-fiving on the way back to the table. And while my date was cheering and having fun, she also seemed to observe much of this with the clinical eye of the artist, intent on studying the people around us, perhaps much as she might observe the bears and coyotes that she photographs and paints in nearby Yellowstone Park.

From there it was on to Bismark, North Dakota, and I realized that I was retracing some of the steps that I had first taken, almost four years ago, when I first started this trip, driving from Chicago to Seattle. I passed performance venues in Dickinson, and Valley City, North Dakota, dropping a flyer off in Valley City, before continuing on to Minneapolis.

Minneapolis is on my agenda for the coming summer, with the Minnesota Fringe Festival in August, and Amy Salloway, who I'd met at the Cincinnati Fringe last year, and who, it turns out, seems to know just about everybody that I happen know, put me up for the night. When I arrived, I checked my e-mail and was delighted to receive this note from Scotland, where my version of "The Doctor in Spite of Himself" had progressed to the Regional Finals of the Scottish Community Drama Association competition.

"Hi Tim
"Well, I guess you want to now how we got on.........we won! Not only were we the festival winner but we won two other trophies, Best Comedy and Highest Points for Production (there's a convoluted scoring system where specifically production/direction is scored out of 35).
"What a night we had. The cast were superb, a flawless performance, they had the full house audience in raptures and in eager anticipation of the next twist. The adjudicator was fulsome in his praise and constructive in any criticism, although it was very little. . He recognized the challenge we had set ourselves in choosing this play, particularly the demands on actors of delivering dialogue in rhyme. I'll have his written report in about a
week.
"In winning we also eliminated two teams who are consistently prominent at the national finals, indeed both these teams have recent history of winning the whole thing.
"So, we now progress to the Scottish National Finals in Pitlochry 27-29th April, we perform on Friday 28th. Pitlochry is a beautifully scenic small town in the heart of Scotland and has a fantastic theatre. It's a much bigger venue with a vast stage so I'm planning some additional business.
"We will now get further press coverage which I'll copy and send to you.
"Thanks for providing us with such wonderful material. Hope all is well with you?
"... PS If you fancy a trip over I can guarantee you'll be very very well looked after!"

And so, now I'm home, trying to figure out how to get to Scotland on April 28.

By the way, I've now got two performances lined up in Chicago on April 26 (North Park College at 7:30) and 27 (DePaul University at 6 p.m.) (Thus the difficulty with the April 28 event in Scotland.) I'll send a separate posting on this around for the benefit of my Chicago friends, who probably aren't still reading, this long into the e-mail.

Also, I have been inspired to create yet another event.

Now that I have three one-man shows, all of which are fully performance ready, I am putting all three together into what I call "The One-Man, One-Man Theatre Festival," which will feature three performances in a single night ("Criteria" at 6, "Moliere" at 8, and "Karaoke Knights" at 10 p.m.)! Lately, I haven't had a lot of takers for the "three shows in three nights" promotion, as described in my brochure, but if I have the stamina to do all three in a single night, my feeling is that it will strike very high on the "outrageousness or level-of-difficulty quotient", while only tying a given theatre space up for a single day.

I'm currently negotiating with a theatre space in Tennessee to make this happen, perhaps as early as this June. But, hey, it's available to tour to your town! (Schedule below.)

Temperature: 70s
Miles on the Vibe: 181,000 (time for new tires)
In the CD Player: "Karaoke Knights"
Attendance: 12 + 30 + 20 + 60 + 60 = 182
Discoveries: Lighting in lecture halls is always bad. * Do not let the person who knows how to adjust the lights get away until after the show is safely up and running. * My seemingly huge complaints, may only represent a single percent of the perceived experience of my show from the audience's point of view. Expressing these complaints only undermines the perceived value of what an audience has observed.
Next Performance: April 19, Carbondale, IL

The View From Here #109: Norman, OK

I was coming down with my first cold in about 3 years. My luck on the road has been terrific, but there are two factors to which I attribute this latest ill fortune.

1) My body knows better than I how to take care of itself, and as long as I have a show coming up, I stay healthy. In thirty years of performing, I’ve never had to cancel a show.

2) I’ve been taking a nutritional drink, “Re-Liv” for the past three years, and I ran out about two weeks before coming down with the cold. I had been holding out to get more of the “stuff” (as Barry Bonds might call it) for when I got back in town, but I think the nonstop performing/workshopping/schmoozing/drinking of SETC had finally caught up with me.

I paused on my way back from Orlando, visiting with Sabra, a new friend I’d made at the last Mensa conference (where I’d performed “Criteria”). She went off to work during the day, while I hooked up to the internet and made great progress on the e-mailings. We had planned to hit a karaoke bar at some point, but with my throat the way it was I was even having trouble swallowing, so for the most part, in the evenings we just relaxed in front of the TV.

My friend Tanya, (from the Poor Yorick Shakespeare Catalogue) had given me the idea to hire some help to track down new venues, and within 90 minutes of putting out the e-mail, I had an actual employee, trained and ready to go. (Applications continued to come in, and I think I’ve heard from 25 or so since then.)

I continued, e-mailing the Texas schools, and while I was at it, I happened to hear back from Tennessee Tech University (which is in Cookeville), and met up with the director there, who was very interested in hosting Moliere for next fall.

Next fall, by the way, is looking very good, with a couple of bookings kicking off the tour within two days of the close of “Fringe Season” in Idaho and Montana. (Idaho and Montana are tough nuts for me to crack, and lining up shows there this far in advance is a great sign… assuming I haven’t maxed out the credit cards by then.)

After four days in Tennessee, with the cold finally starting to fade, I hit the road again, getting back to Chicago, and replenishing the “stuff.”

Back at home, I got back to work on my writing: I was editing my acting text, while also beginning a new project: I was tracking back through these editions of “The View From Here,” (reliving those heady early days on the road), looking to edit my 500-plus pages down to a hundred pages of my best stuff.

I had a hard time actually cutting anything. By the time I’d worked my way through the first fifty pages, I hadn’t even managed to cut five pages of material. The problem was that, on this pass through, I had no idea what key episodes of action and excitement I was working towards, or away from. And then an idea struck me. What if I changed my focuse to INcluding the really fun material, rather than working to EXclude the really crappy stuff? That way, when I came across a passage that I absolutely knew I wanted to keep, I would change the font color on the screen to red. Now when I’m done, all I’ll need to do is to figure out what portions absolutely need to be left in place in order to make sense of this “best stuff.”

I found myself in a sudden whirl of writing in the day and going out in the evenings: meeting up with people I’d meant to catch up with for some time. I went to my first Children’s Book Writers meeting in about three years (I get their e-mails, but I’m always out of town when they’re meeting.) Impulsively, I brought my musical adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer In A Day” to the meeting, and it was extremely well received by the group, which reminded me that I need to get that one back out in circulation.

I hit the karaoke joints a couple of times, went out to see “Pajama Men” and “Oleanna”, and the visit home was over already. I packed on Friday, and Saturday morning, I was back on the road.

It was a full day of driving, with a lunch stop in Springfield to visit my old college sweetheart, Abbe (and her daughter, Charlotte), and then on through the long haul to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I visited once again, with Dave and Helga. I ran lines for both “Criteria” and “Moliere Than Thou” twice, as I drove, as I had performances of both coming up in Oklahoma, and I hadn’t performed Moliere since mid-February, or “Criteria” since mid-January. The lines seemed surprisingly secure, but that feeling can be deceptive.

Following a Sunday breakfast excursion with Dave and Helga, I was on the road again, this time taking a short hop to Norman. I stopped, first, in Oklahoma City, for a look at the memorial to the victims of the bombing, and found it to be quite touching and surprisingly un-politicized: a loving tribute and a sincere stand against violence, with a beautiful reflecting pool between two impressive portals. Just outside was perhaps 50 feet of the original chain link fence that had surrounded the area, which had become a spontaneous repository of teddy bears, t-shirts, I.D. cards, caps and messages, still hanging on through all kinds of weather, more than ten years after the bombing.

In Norman, I met Matthew, my very helpful host for this visit, who brought me to a reception at one of the faculty homes. The reception was on behalf of myself and another guest artist who was visiting this week, but it seems that his plane was delayed because of the rainy Oklahoma weather (a desperately needed rain that put an end to a series of brush fires), and so I was the only guest of honor. Surprisingly, about 90% of the theatre faculty was present (most theatre faculties I know of could barely get 10% together for such an event, and can barely get 90% for the official faculty meetings). And the department chair, Tom, hinted at an interest in a longer visit next year, in which I might act in and co-direct one of my Moliere works, such as “Bourgeois Gentleman.”

On Monday, I sat in on Susan’s Shakespeare class (Susan was my host the last time I stopped at OU, two years ago), and I observed and responded to the student’s monologues. It was great to get a peek at their work, as it reminded me of my own feelings about Shakespearean performance, showed me where students tend to be in relation to my vision, which in turn has helped me articulate a new chapter for my acting text.

Later that day, I returned to lead my usual “Acting in the Classical Theatre” workshop, and though there were only ten or so in attendance, they seemed very responsive. The first student to raise her hand actually answered my “What are the two foremost responsibilities of the actor?” question perfectly, and it turns out that Susan has been teaching that perspective ever since my visit to OU two years ago.

I took a pass on observing a play rehearsal that night, so that I could go back to the hotel (and watch “24”) and get ready for the next day’s extremely full schedule.

I drilled my lines for “Criteria” and re-edited the material for my newest workshop: “Writing, Producing and Touring the One-Person Show” (kind of like a highly-edited version of these pages). I’ve delivered it twice before, but have never made it through the entire presentation, as each time I’ve had to jump ahead into my performance of “Criteria” before I had quite finished. This time, however, we’d planned for two-and-a-half hours, and I managed to cover all the material, and still preview two of the songs in “Karaoke Knights” for the group. I then shifted to perform “Criteria,” where I had a single line glitch early on … checked the script, and continued.

I think the cause of the glitch was the fact that they were such a responsive audience. There were about 30 of them, laughing at just about every ironic comment, and their laughter led me to point up the funnier stuff with some of my more exaggerated attitudes.

This play stands up to that kind of exaggeration better than I thought it would. While I think of this as being much more subtle than “Moliere,” when I allow the series of discoveries and transitions play freely across my face, the audience responds, seemingly grateful for knowing more clearly where they have the go-ahead to laugh.

As soon as “Criteria” concluded, we hustled down to the theatre space, where we conducted a quick tech rehearsal for “Moliere Than Thou.” And while I wanted to give my voice a needed rest, I just had to run the lines yet one more time before the evening show.

It was a small audience of big laughers, and when I know that each new take that I add to the mix is going to get a laugh, it stimulates a lot more mugging and posing. I noticed quickly that Tom was in the audience, and immediately realized that this would be my “audition” for “Bourgeois Gentleman” (or whatever Moliere project they wanted to do next year). Early on, amid the first monologue (from “Misanthrope”), I again had a memory glitch, but I “backed up” a half of a line, and this second time through, the words formed on my lips in just the moment I needed to remember them.

When it came time to get a female volunteer from the audience, one of Susan’s two daughters had her hand up. I was a little surprised, especially knowing that Susan had seen this play before, and had some sense of what I do to the volunteers! While “Miranda” seemed shy and quiet at first, she got louder as we got into it, but still seemed to panic, variously, about what I might be doing to her. Not only is this the best type of volunteer to get, as the audience identifies with her fears, but at least half of the audience had to be aware that this was Susan’s daughter, which seemed to double the outrageousness quotient.

After that, the rest of the show went great, with a surprisingly good undergrad volunteering and playing along for “Scapin” and big laughs throughout the “Precious Young Maidens” scene (aka “Stop Thief”).

Afterwards Matt and Tom and I stopped out for a couple of beers, further discussing a potential project for next year, and calling it a night. It had been a day filled with two line-throughs, one workshop and two shows, and my voice was pretty shot.

The next morning, I pulled my stuff together and met Susan for coffee. I think I nearly choked on my coffee when Susan answered that her daughter was only 14.

I headed south, meeting my old Nebraska friend, Kevin (formerly, “Ken”) Page in Dallas for lunch. Kevin has had some success in the movies, with parts in “Robocop,” “Seinfeld,” “Friday Night Lights” and “The Alamo,” and he told me the story of what a great movie “The Alamo” was (the only big question was whether it would win 11 or 13 Oscars) until Michael Eisner cut an hour or so of the best stuff out of it. Kevin’s stuff survived the cutting, but by this time it was no longer the ensemble film they thought they were working on. Given how famously that movie bombed, he made just as much for his three days of work on “Friday Night Lights” as he did for five months on the set of “The Alamo.”

And from Dallas, I headed along to Brownwood, Texas, home of Howard Payne University, and my good friend, Nancy Jo Humfeld. I made a quick appearance in Nancy Jo’s voice and diction class (performing a couple monologues, and discovering that my voice had not quite returned to me since my big day in Oklahoma). Nancy Jo has actually headed up to Commerce, Texas to do a little business, and has left me with the run of her place to get caught up on work. I’ve got almost a week now, before my next gig in California, so the plan is to work the bookings, drive west, work the bookings, drive west, work the bookings, drive west. Do a show, drive north.

Miles on the Vibe: 175,700
Attendance: 15, 10, 30, 50
Discoveries: I don’t have to do it all by myself. Isolating and distributing discrete parts of the work enables me to focus on the things that earn me the “big money.” * What seems to me to be exaggeration in the context of a realistic performance, usually plays to the audience as a helpful guide through the transitions and discoveries of the scene. * Focus on including the fun stuff rather than on excluding the crappy stuff. * Sitting in on a class really helps me to continue to define and articulate what I know for the developing textbook.
Temperature: Upper 30s
In the CD Player: “Karaoke Knights”
Next Performance: CSU-Long Beach, Long Beach, CA

The View From Here #108: Orlando, FL

“Karaoke Knights” rocks!

From Connecticut, I dropped down to Baltimore. Looking at the map, I saw that driving west of Manhattan, through Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, was more direct, as the crow flies, but traffic seemed much worse, even though I was passing through mid-day. And going from any one borough to another seems to demand the crossing of a bridge for which they will charge tolls as high as nine dollars!

I visited with my sister, Maureen, who had to watch the final episode of “The Bachelor” on one television, while I watched “24” on another. Thank god “The Bachelor” chose the right woman or it might have been a dark evening indeed.

From Baltimore, I raced south toward Savannah, but angled off slightly to get a hotel room in Hilton Head. (I figured it unlikely that I’ll get a booking in Hilton Head, and this might be my only chance to see that island.) Of course, I arrived after dark, and was in a hurry to leave the next morning, so I never even saw the ocean. I did, however, stumble upon a nice New Orleans-style restaurant decked out in Mardi Gras beads for this fat-Tuesday.

I hit Orlando around 5 p.m. the next day, and proceeded immediately to the Staples and the Kinkos, getting flyers and programs copied for my show. I dropped off my stuff at Al’s house (a.k.a., Carl F. Gauze), and headed for the conference center. I checked in moments before the registration desk closed for the night, snagging a program just in time to study it overnight.

The first thing I discovered was that “Karaoke Knights” was scheduled, not for FRIDAY night at midnight, but for THURSDAY night at midnight. The whole midnight thing was throwing me off, but the upshot was that I now had 24 hours less to prepare than previously anticipated. I called Kinkos, which had thankfully not yet printed up my flyers, and got them to make the change, and proceeded to return to Al’s house to step up my preparation.

I called my friend, April, and was noting that this was shaping up as a very “stressful” 24 hours … but there, I caught myself, and said instead: “I am going to have an AMAZING 24 hours.”

I am discovering that what you speak, you create … and did I really want to create any more stress for myself than was actually there?

Thursday morning, I picked up my corrected flyers and loaded the show in to the performance space. There was another show about to start, but the technician, who’d also run my shows the year before, was extremely attentive to my needs, and roped off a special area for my equipment.

I passed out a few flyers among the masses of people who were gathering at the conference (there were upwards of 4000), and found myself in a conversation with a man who looked familiar. He had run the session last year on the always-contentious topic of “making changes in the script,” and representatives of all of the major play publishing companies had attended. He was doing a variation of that same session in another 20 minutes, and I decided to attend.

Considering that he’d already met me, and knew my publisher, and also knew that the Playscripts Inc. guy was in attendance, he found himself using me as an example several times. “Can I pick on you?” he would ask. “Sure, bring it on.”

It turned out to be very nice exposure for me, particularly as there were reps for at least five different publishers in the audience (all of whom have rejected my work, variously, over the years). Between this session, and another session on Friday, they all now know who I am, have connected me as “that Moliere guy” in their minds, perhaps noted that I have okay hygiene, and have seen me be cordial and articulate under pressure. All of which means they have since felt comfortable chatting with me in the exhibit hall, and may give a little more consideration the next time a play of mine crosses their desk.

Afterwards I did a brief tech rehearsal. There was already a DVD/Projector set up in the room, with a projection screen that was as tall as myself. Whereas, I’d begun performing this show nine months before (also in Orlando) with the “karaoke interludes” on a TV screen, this time the screen would reveal lyrics to all of my songs, as well as an “omnipresent narrator” commenting on the songs during the introductions. All of this, on an enormous screen, forced the audience’s attention to dance between stage and screen, always engaged in SOMETHING. As I rehearsed the opening number (“Looking for a Groupie”) a technician, carrying stuff in and out of the hall, paused to laugh several times at the lyrics, and I gained a terrific lift in confidence.

I ran some final errands in preparation for the midnight performance, getting a haircut, picking up a copy of the game, “Twister” (I needed the spinner as a prop), and finally buying a coat tree to hold my costumes during the course of the show (something I should have done 9 months ago). It seems that coat trees are few and far between in Orlando … and it dawned on me that they don’t wear coats down here as much as we do in northern climes.

I returned to Al’s house for one last run-through, and everything was falling into place. I was in good voice and, now that I had a sense of the layout of the stage, the “blocking,” would hold no surprises. The KJ narration was still a little uncertain in the flurry of performance, and so I decided to bring the script on stage with me, propping it on a music stand, to my left, while the microphone stood to my right, and the coat tree behind me.

Back at the conference center, I attended a “brainstorming session” for the Acting/Directing specialists, mostly about what kind of workshop sessions they might want to include for next year’s conference. Everybody went around introducing themselves, and again, this was a good opportunity to establish my face alongside my name for the other attendees, most of whom had been receiving my e-mails for years. I was also surprised to see Frankie Day in attendance … who I hadn’t seen since my days as an undergrad (let’s just say, prior to the current century). And while other people were brainstorming about panels they might want to present, Frankie and I dredged up familiar names from years gone by.

It was getting uncomfortably close to curtain time, and my internal motor was starting to rev up. I left to load in the remaining props and promotional materials for my show. The conference allowed me a single table outside the hall to display brochures and videos and sell CDs, and I’d gotten my friend Patty to come out to the hotel late on a Thursday night to catch people who were coming out of the show, give them (or sell them) stuff, and have them sign my guest book.

Back in the auditorium, the critique of the 10-minute play festival was wrapping up, and I was a little dismayed to see that the packed house for the festival had greatly diminished for the critique. In all, perhaps a hundred people had stuck around to see “Karaoke Knights,” and in an audacious nod to the “one-person” show, I went around handing out programs, myself.

As soon as the critique finished, I loaded in my microphones and coat tree and music stand, carefully placing the cords where I needed them while Chad, the tech guy, set up the projector and screen. For the most part the entire audience had remained in their seats as this was going on, and I had to test the sound levels while they were already in the room. The opening strains of the first song started to play, full blast, through the speakers. The audience quieted, thinking that I was starting, and I had to direct them to pay no attention: “Don’t enjoy this!”

Finally all was in place, and I took the stage with a leap and a big bold “Welcome to the FRINGE FESTIVAL!” Everyone cheered, and I explained the need for their involvement with the show. I led them all, instead, in an a cappella version of “Why Don’t We Get Drunk” and encouraged them to get out their cell phones and wave them in the air (which many of them did!), and I could see that the rowdy crowd was sufficiently warmed up. This, I saw, was a group that appreciated the theatrical gesture strictly for the sake of something being a theatrical gesture, and they were ready to “get” the show on that level.

As the show opened, I could hear a bit of reverb in the “KJ” microphone (now entirely out of my control), and I knew it would be a clarity problem, particularly as I talk pretty fast. I redoubled my efforts toward articulation, and was glad to have the script on stage to keep me on track.

“Looking for a Groupie” started the show off with good laughs, as did the volunteer bit in “Too Real.” “Left To Say” got the crowd singing, and “Tempted to be Tempted” won them over with its mock-ballet. During “Forward Thinking,” I picked out a shy looking girl for the bondage parody, and the phrase “submit to more restriction,” amid the tangle of microphone cord, got big laughs. “Next,” got a whooping response at the end of the first rapid-fire chorus, and “Half a World Away,” a difficult song in the past, now seems to win them over, largely on account of a series of comic “footnotes” inserted into the video. The somewhat serious “Gravity’s Pull” and “Dreaming Tax” ratcheted the laughs back, while “Bite My Tongue,” “Say Goodnight” and “Taking Turns Leading” hammered home the comedy. I finished on a bittersweet note (“Say Goodnight”) and returned for an encore/finale, with a reprise of “Groupie.” Almost immediately, however, most of the audience was standing for an ovation, and the dance break of “Groupie” seemed to strain against their need to acknowledge the play (something to fix in later versions).

All in all, I came away immensely satisfied. The new video commentary gets laughs that I, amid my internal narrative, am not expecting at all (besides which, I’ve largely forgotten what is appearing on the screen). After the show, audience signed the guest book with: “Great.” “Yay!” “Whee! I (heart) it.” “Wonderful!” “Awsome!” and “Absolutely fabulous!” I was walkin’ on air, as they say, finally feeling like I had that elusive third show, which I could push, alongside my other two one-man shows, for full bookings.

The next morning, I gave my acting workshop. They’d placed me in a room perhaps suited for 30 people. Sixty or so showed up.

Actually, there were even more who simply could not have squeezed into the room. The air conditioner could not cool the room enough to make the experience comfortable, but the group was attentive and very responsive, as I went through my several exercises of “Misanthrope”, “Hamlet” and “Tartuffe.”

This workshop is getting great reviews of late. Several remembered it from last year’s conference. And a woman who’d just seen it in Williamsburg reported, “The students performed their Moliere scenes a few days after your show, and you could tell which ones had been to see your workshop, because their scenes were through the roof.”

With my contribution to the conference complete, I proceeded to drop in on other people’s events: “How to become a writer for ‘Southern Theatre’,” “Play Publishers Q & A,” “History/Theory/Criticism Board Meeting,” and the very funny “Who dressed you? Or don’t you have a mirror?” (a workshop about proper audition dress). Again, while my participation at these events was minimal, at each I seemed to find myself in yet another conversation about booking my work with someone who’d spotted my name.

Friday night I had dinner with Tania, who runs the “Poor Yorick” Shakespeare catalogue (www.PoorYorick.com). We’ve found ourselves attending six of these conferences together in the past, but had never had the chance to sit and visit (She’s always been running her booth, and I’m always shmoozing the crowd). She turns out to be an entrepreneur in much the same way that I am, but from the Shakespeare side of things, building up her business from scratch, and taking full advantage of the internet.

Afterwards, under the encouragement of one of the students who had loved my show, I crashed the UNC-Greensboro party, to say hello to the professor (who the kids are trying to get to book me).

The next day, the conference’s keynote speaker was Anne Bogart, whose work is increasingly celebrated in the theatre world. Eloquent and passionate, she told several terrific stories, with one, especially, about the movie “The Red Violin:”

She’d met the director of “The Red Violin” at a dinner party, and he spontaneously asked if she’d like to hear the story of his movie (this was before he’d shot any of it, and while he was still fundraising). The movie, of course, was later made, very successfully, and Anne noted that, “I don’t think it mattered to him who I was, when he offered to tell me the story of his movie. I think if anyone else had been sitting there next to him, he still would have turned to them and offered to tell them the story of his movie. I believe that the process of telling people about his movie enabled him to articulate that movie into existence.”

The conference continued, and I found myself just hanging out at the bar, with one conversation leading to another, and connections made between a series of people from whom I seemed to be just a single degree removed.

Late breaking news: Driving north, through Atlanta (stopping for a visit at Linda’s), and continuing through Chattanooga (checking in with a high school teacher who saw the show in Orlando), and into Sparta, Tennessee, I stop to check e-mails once more, and receive this notice from a producer in Scotland doing my “Doctor in Spite of Himself”:

“Hi Tim
“Thought you'd like to know the premier was a phenomenal success. We won the district festival and now progress to the regional festival which takes place in Edinburgh 6-8th April. It will be much tougher as we meet other district winners but we're up for it.
“The adjudicator, a theatre professional, was fulsome in his praise. He loved your script (it works well with the Scottish brogue) and thought it was an extremely bold choice of play, he thought the staging and creativity was superb and that the actors were positively sadistic, bawdy and un-inhibited!
“We should now receive some local press coverage and I'd be happy to send it if it is of interest.
“I'll keep you posted on any other developments.
“Best wishes
“Martin”

Temperature: 40s-80s
In the CD Player: Scissor Sisters
Attendance: 100 + 60 = 160
Miles on the Vibe: 173,300
Discoveries: Karaoke Knights rocks! * What you speak, you create, and you need to choose whether you want to be creating more stress or more success. * My name has become as effective as my costume in getting attention for my work. * Just being present at some of the workshops enables potential bookers or publishers to get comfortable with me as a collaborator. * People talk about me behind my back, and I’ve reached the tipping point, where third party conversations confirm the nature of my work with people who need to know whether they ought to book me or not. * Played with the proper amount of exuberance, an audience will appreciate the theatrical gesture for the sake of the gesture itself.
Next performance: Norman, OK (U of Oklahoma) March 19-20.

The View From Here #107: Chicago, IL; Williamsburg, VA & Orlando, FL

Well, the bookings have been few, but the business has been good, in its own way.

Home from New Orleans, I dove back into “Karaoke Knights.” While I had been trying to draw some video engineers into the project, one of them was tied up with a theatre project, and others worked in a Mac format, and were having difficulty opening the files that I had put together.

I had found myself taking over bits of the project as elements of the technology had come within my grasp. I’d already gotten a bit of mastery around the audio end of things, timing out the interlude music with some exactitude, which would then give way to the karaoke numbers and the original music (the downbeat for the new song, for instance, coming in on the downbeat from the previous number). While, previously, I had turned the music over to the audio engineer, with elaborate notes, at this point I had timed out a new karaoke video to synchronize exactly with the music as I had edited it, and probably no amount of explanation could get the engineer to recreate this.

Which meant pushing the project along as far as I could, mixing the music into an “mp3”, turning that into a “wav”, using the “wav” to make a “cdg”, turning the “cdg” into an “avi” file.

The key moment of this process lay in the discovery of how to edit the vocals mostly out of an existing piece of music, which meant that I could “karaokeize” the music that I had so carefully timed out, without having to re-integrate karaoke cdgs into the process. This meant going back to the start, more or less, dropping the new “karaokeized” music into the soundtrack, but it also meant that all future transitions would be under my control.

And while I’d hoped to pass the “avi” on to the engineer to “render” the video onto the dvd, in the end, I bought my own rendering program, and eventually I invested, with my friend April, on a dvd burner, and we burned the dvd ourselves.

And while it may have been a pain to take the project all this way all by myself (each stage of the project seemed to demand that I go back to the beginning on some of the songs, and start over), at least by now, when I want to rework elements of the show, it is all within my grasp, and the turnaround time, whenever I reconceptualized the work, (which I seem to do just about every time I get the new version of the show in hand) would be greatly diminished.

In the meantime, I was resuming work on “Currency,” my “personal growth” book. While I’d reconnected with my friend in Texas (who’d suggested a literary agent to me two years before), and gotten her to promise to send me his contact info, I hadn’t yet received it, and decided to press forward in refining the text, so that I would have something ready to share when the opportunity presented itself.

I did at least an hour a day on “Currency,” even to the point of creating an index (which I’d never done before). I then refocused my attention on “Acting at the Speed of Life.” It had been over a year since I’d done any work on this one (I’d gotten a couple of gentle rejections from publishers), and while previously, I couldn’t envision any improvements, a year of delivering and evolving the message through my acting workshops helped me see new insights and exercises and smoother transitions, which made it a slower process than my work on “Currency,” although the changes were getting me excited about the book again.

The deadline for getting back onto the road was bearing down relentlessly. I knew that I would have a new version of “Karaoke Knights” ready to test out, so I arranged with my friend, Freddy Weaver, to use the “Tantra Nova” space in the city to host a performance, and I dove back into rehearsals. I hadn’t memorized the new narration that carried me from one musical number to the next, and I hadn’t gotten a sense of how the counterpoint narration (on the video) would play. I was relatively confident in the songs themselves (I’d re-edited several of them to cut off key seconds in which I had nothing to actually do onstage) but they still needed fresh rehearsal as I hadn’t actually performed them since September.

There were perhaps 10 or 12 people in the (very friendly) audience for this performance, and the bits that may have worried me played very well. There were some audio balance issues, with interludes that played louder than the songs themselves, confusing moments around when I was the narrator and when I was being a character, but overall the show went as well as I might expect. (Two weeks later, I am continuing to memorize the narrative bridges, and testing the show out on anybody I can find on the road, in anticipation of a big audience at the Southeast Theatre Conference on March 3.)

With the completion of this performance, I sprinted through the last items of my to-do list en route to packing the car and getting back onto the road.

The first stop was Detroit, with an early celebration of Isaac’s 12th birthday. We managed to catch two movies (“Pink Panther” and “Zathura” … I preferred the latter), eat out a couple of times and hang out watching a bit of the Olympics.

Weather reports spoke of a winter storm that had marched along the east coast, and so I replotted the trip that was intended to carry me through Washington D.C., to stop instead in Harrisonburg, Virginia, visiting with my grad school friend, Kathy Conery, and her now-fiancée, Jeff. Kathy was working on a production of “How to Succeed in Business” which was in its final rehearsal, and I watched about 45 minutes of Act I, before sneaking out to watch “24” in the Student Union, and returning for the last half hour of “How to Succeed.”

The next morning, I was on my way to Williamsburg (or “Colonial Willamsburg” as they call it), where the weather had turned warm and sunny. I met my host, Elizabeth Wiley, who had apparently gone to great lengths to publicize both my performance and my workshop, as I saw flyers for both throughout the theatre building.

The theatre building, by the way, was commemorated by two plaques that designated it as the site of a presidential debate between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, as well as the democratic primary debate from the 1988 election. Williamsburg is, of course, the site of the College of William and Mary, one of the first colleges established in “the colonies,” and the main street of Williamsburg is actually open only to foot traffic, running from the university to the former state capital. It’s rather like a very large version of Salem, Illinois, with blacksmith shops, and costumed historical characters festooning the streets.

The theatre for my show was along this street, and they were a busy facility, with historical reenactments and storytellers performing in the space 3-4 times a day. They’d put an enormous poster about my performance in their showcase, and had me listed on two or three more brochures. They clearly had the publicity side of the event down … the only question was how much of a “draw” Moliere might be in this town.

Sign spotted at the side entrance to the hotel: “FOR YOUR SECURITY, PLEASE USE YOUR ROOM KEY TO ENTER THE BUILDING.” (I suppose that’s a lot more secure than putting your fist through the window.)

Notation on a University website: “Theatre major, Heidi, has been a regular working actress since graduating from St. Mary’s.” (And what her digestion has to do with her schooling, I don’t imagine I can guess.)

In the news: “Rioting over cartoon;” Every time I hear this, I have to remind myself that this time the news ISN’T referring to the city in Africa.

The next day, following a quick technical rehearsal, I went to deliver my acting workshop, and found that, with attendees from neighboring schools, there were about 65 students in attendance. (This may have been a record.) I continue to improvise my way through the order of this workshop, putting the “Misanthrope” exercise (now known as “The Jerry Springer Show”) earlier in the process, which seems to go better with the “being seen” theme of my lecture.

The “Tartuffe” exercise (occasionally known as “Elimidate”) went very well, and when it came time for me to do a demonstration of this monologue, I picked out a flirty female volunteer, and pulled her onstage as victim. The monologue worked to terrific response and afterwards the girl was flustered: “I … I didn’t know what to expect … I didn’t know if you were going to touch me … or … I mean, I know I WANTED it, but …”

Of course, the only possible reply to that is always, “Stop by to see me after the workshop.”

Several days later, I was trading e-mails with the student’s teacher, from Virginia Commonwealth University. They were, in fact, hoping to book me for a full week at some point, and the teacher concluded with “Samantha Bishop [not her real name] is still blushing as your Elmire!” I wrote back, “Samantha Bishop SHOULD be blushing, that little hussy!”

That night, the start of my show was delayed several minutes, as I was informed there was still a line up at the box office. By the time I got out on stage, I saw that there were a good 200 or so people in the audience, which meant that the theatre might actually MAKE money off of my performance, which might portend well for getting invited back some day.

There was at least one great “laugher” out in the audience, and the show was really rocking throughout. I found myself working through the final (“Precious Young Maidens”) monologue, making eye contact with two of the women in the audience, as I always do. Somewhere in the process of connecting with them, a thought flitted through my head, wondering how well they were responding, or not, and then suddenly wondering whether I knew what my next line was. That is, of course, a question that I never want to be asking, as the answer can only be “no.”

And so, I blanked. In a very noticeable way. A few phrases from the latter portions of the monologue were popping into my head, but I had no idea how to get myself back on track. Fortunately, the technicians in the booth had the script handy, and were following along more or less. So, I called for “line.” It was perhaps the first time in about five years that I’ve actually had to call for line in the course of the show. A fragment of a line came floating down to me, but I was still lost. I asked for more.

This time, enough of the line came back to kick-start me into the speech. Fortunately, the screw-up had come early enough in the speech that I knew I had enough time to win the audience back over, with the series of “stop thiefs” that continues to build in absurdity as the scene progresses. One audience member was later kind enough to point out, my screw up actually reminded the audience of the level of difficulty involved in performing the show, making the previous monologues, in retrospect, all the more impressive.

After the show, a few friends from the afternoon’s workshop joined me for a couple of beers, and one of my new friends rumored that there was a leading role open with the local Shakespeare festival. I went back to the hotel to look up the festival on-line, and found that the show didn’t conflict with any of this year’s Fringe festivals.

It did, however, conflict with the annual French teachers’ conference I attended, and so I spent the next day’s drive to Orlando weighing my readiness to begin acting in full productions again, against my need to get more bookings in the coming year. (I have also been thinking about ditching the tour schedule entirely in the 07-08 season, and committing exclusively to directing and acting in full productions, but the jury is still out on that one.)

In Orlando, I caught up with Sandra-the-Vegan, who, ironically, was flying to Chicago the following day. Early the next afternoon, I proceeded to the hotel where the conference was being held, to be reminded that I’d paid $25 for a ticket to the awards luncheon that had started at noon.

I also discovered that this conference was due to end the following afternoon. Amid my flurry of activities leading me down to Orlando, I’d assumed that the conference would end on the Sunday. My performance of “Moliere Than Thou” was scheduled for 2:45 on Saturday, the final workshop session of the conference.

It struck me rather heavily, in that moment, to know that I was performing on the “get-away day,” after the exhibit hall was already closed and torn down, and after most of the attendees would have already moved on, catching flights.

I made a few passes through the exhibit hall and, with my promotional work cut out for me, I headed to town, staying with my friend Patty, who was, herself, house-sitting in a very plush home. I knuckled down to work on a new flyer, in the style of the flyers I’d done for Fringe Festivals past, which would announce the time and location of the preview performance I was giving the next afternoon. Early the next morning, I got copies printed up and I returned to the conference hall. In a shameless act of self-promotion, I put my wig and Moliere coat on and “flyered” conference-goers emerging from other workshops.

The flyering was executed to ever thinning groups of potential attendees, and by 2:45, it seemed like everyone had disappeared. About a dozen still showed up. It seemed that half of the attendees were there out of idle curiosity, a couple more because they were Moliere fans, and perhaps three or four because they were actually considering booking the show. Mostly, I could see them all grinning, although, once I hit the “Tartuffe” section, the conversation that I imagined in the backs of their heads was “Can we get away with this in our school?”

A couple of the attendees left in the middle of the show (evidently to catch a flight), but the rest stayed throughout, with several staying behind to thank me or to grab a video. One teacher in western Georgia (who was not at the conference) has since reported that the teacher who DID attend my performance is now talking about booking me. And several days later, I received the following e-mail from eastern Georgia …

“Wow! Let me add my praises to your list of accolades. I was in the audience at SCOLT Saturday last. I apologize for leaving early but I had to catch a plane. I wish that the performance had not been so sparsely attended. I am the prof de français at the … School of Fine Arts in Augusta GA. … I hope that I will be able to book you to perform here before long. I know it would help energize my French program also. Merci for a fantastic performance last Saturday; it was the highlight of the SCOLT conference in Orlando.”

Given that I’d thought the conference was running on into Sunday, I’d planned for another day in Orlando, and so I took the day on Sunday to finally resume the e-mail campaign that I’d left off more than a month ago. (I’d started this campaign back in August!) I finished the e-mails I was sending to Kansas schools, and moved on to Missouri and Mississippi. There are still a handful of states left, but I can’t seem to get to them as long as I keep picking up and driving almost every day.

And on Monday, I picked up and drove. I pushed northward to Raleigh, NC, where Forsyth and I caught the latest episode of “24”, and then on to Washington DC, (where I caught up with my friend Wendy Taylor), and Baltimore, where I took two days at my sister Maureen’s house, before pushing on to New York City, visiting Yvonne and catching a show by playwright Sherman Yellen (the one who’d quoted me on the Huffington Post website a couple months back).

By this time it was Friday, and I was aiming for Granby, Connecticut, where my friend Debby Reelitz was due to get married on Saturday. But first, I’d arranged a lunch appointment with a literary agent in Stamford, Connecticut. This was the fellow I’d heard about two years ago at the Texas Theatre festival. He and I had finally made e-mail contact and arranged a meet-up for Friday. I dug out the works that I thought were my most saleable (“Currency” and “Acting at the Speed of Life”), along with a few other goodies to give him a flavor of what I do (my already-published “Tartuffe” and “Imaginary Invalid” texts, and my “Karaoke Knights” CD). I kept waiting for him to seem overburdened (“Oh, not another manuscript!”), but he never seemed to give that signal, so I gave him my Moliere promotional video, as well as one of my children’s stories (“Isaac and the Dinosaurs”). We had a really charming conversation, even noting a couple of mutual acquaintances, and I left in a fabulous mood, singing my way through “Karaoke Knights” as I drove.

I drove to Debby’s house, discovering that one of my all-time favorite people, Cathy Maday, was already there, helping Debby get set up. I was in such a good mood, that I actually helped, bringing in firewood for the stove.

I think, though the course of the weekend, I must have explained the concept of “Currency” to about four or five people (their enthusiastic reactions stoked my confidence), and Cathy Maday even downloaded a copy onto her laptop and started reading it then and there.

That night was a small pizza party, and three or four of us seemed to get into a crossword puzzle groove, going through some five or six puzzles, with each of us bringing a separate-but-equal background of knowledge to the game, which meant we actually were able to finish each puzzle before moving on into the next one in the book.

The wedding was the next day, with about 40 chairs set up in the living room. The bride was gorgeous and the groom was surprisingly unflappable. (Of course, both had been through this process before.) My role in the ceremony was to actually hold the declaration of the vows for the couple to sign (I was “a table” … it was a supporting role), and later, to cause as much mischief as I could … enticing Cathy Maday to perform an impromptu dance during the party as the musician who’d played piano post-ceremony hauled out a drum for the occasion.

(Side note: I’d heard them talking abstractly about “Oh, we’ll have to get together to perform one of these days.” Knowing that Cathy was from North Carolina and the musician was from Connecticut, and that “one of these days” was code for “probably never,” I spoke up, “This is bullsh*t; just bang a rhythm on the table while Cathy dances.” Eventually, he went out to his car to get his drum, and I dragged Cathy out of the kitchen long enough to dance. After a moment, Debby joined in and the two of them gave the party crowd a performance that they’re not likely to forget for a while.)

And so, the party continued, and I tired earlier than usual. I crashed before midnight, getting up on Sunday to work on these notes. Family returned to Debby & Chris’ house for brunch, and I downloaded photos from four different cameras onto my computer, sending the couple off on their honeymoon with a disc full of wedding pictures already in hand.

I lingered, amid some fond farewells, and proceeded only about an hour south, where I met up once again with my ex-roommate, (another) Deb, and her partner Sara. I shared my “Karaoke Knights” CD with them, but decided to pull the costumes out of the car and do a full living-room performance for them, before they had a chance to hear the CD itself. Deb is actually cross-referenced in one of the songs, and I wanted to see her surprise when I performed it for her. I was a little nervous through that sequence, but Sara hooted her approval and the impromptu show went very well, giving me renewed hope about the performance I’ll be giving in Orlando at the end of this week.

Yes, I have driven from Orlando to Connecticut, only to turn around and head south to Orlando once again. And while the gas may be expensive, I’ve found friendly accommodations at every step along the way, and made a couple of connections that I look to portend terrific things for the future.

Temperature: Teens to 80s, to teens again.
In the CD Player: Red Hot & Blue, the Cole Porter Tribute
Reading: All my own stuff …
Attendance: 65 + 200 + 12 = 277
Miles on the Vibe: 171,000
Discoveries: I now know how to “karaokeize” music. * Move the ball forward in anticipation of other people stepping up. Don’t wait for them to step up to set things in motion. * Rather than freak out about a very limited schedule of bookings, I’ve renewed work on my writing, which may mean a short-term deficit, but longer-term success. In fact, the time off from performing may, in fact, be a great opportunity to make headway I wouldn’t otherwise be challenged to make. * I find myself contemplating taking a year off from the tour, to do longer residencies with full stagings of my plays … my next thought is whether I would ever get back to the tour, after having taken a year off. * I seem to worry overmuch about overburdening others.
Next Performance: Orlando, FL (3/3/06)

The View From Here #106: Normal, IL & Austin, TX

Standing in line at the Walgreen’s, I got an idea for a Christmas present. They were advertising photo calendars, and with all of the family that I’d visited, and snapped photos of, on the road, I realized that I was in a unique position to assemble a calendar of my own. Rather than a single photo for each month, I thought about how great it might be to track birthdays, by inserting a photo of brothers-sister-nephews-cousins, etc., onto the individual calendar square that represented their birthday. (I don’t recall when the last time was that I’d actually remembered one of my nephew’s birthdays.) Of course, Walgreen’s service was nowhere near this detailed, so this meant assembling such an item from scratch using Power Point.

It was a much bigger project than anticipated. Every time I explained the nature of the project to a given cousin, it seemed, they would respond with the birth date of their spouse and their kids, or even their grandkids. By the time I was done, the calendar indexed the birth dates and the wedding dates of 98 people, living and dead, with over 50 photos of the ones that I’d captured at some point or another.

I also realized that I’d captured the information of people who would be entirely unknown to most of the people who were reading the calendar, and so I also included two family trees (one from Dad’s side, and the other from Mom’s side) that traced people back as far as the 1780s.

As Christmas approached, Isaac came out for a visit, and it turned out that he’d had some experience with Power Point, and was easily able to create some dazzling looking backgrounds to the layout of the project. Together, we went shopping for a color printer, which I’d always wanted to have, anyway for my own publicity purposes, and to be able to print some of the scenic photos that I’d been taking on the road.

The thing wasn’t quite ready in time for Christmas. Some of the very expensive photo paper that I’d ordered when I bought the printer hadn’t arrived, and the price of assembling the thing had continued to grow. I eventually settled on some slightly duller, and smaller-than-hoped-for paper stock, which I had coil-bound and distributed just in time for New Year’s Day.

As soon as I’d distributed the calendars, it was pointed out to me that the month of November has 30, and not 31 days. Which meant that December had to be re-done.

Parallel to this project, I was continuing my work on e-mailing all of the colleges in the United States with news of my show. I had worked my way through all of the big states, with just a few remote outposts (like Montana and Alabama) left, when I realized that I needed to get back to work on my writing projects. Just like last year, I woke up from a dream that reminded me of my publishing aspirations, and I renewed my commitment to write on a daily basis.

This commitment quickly found its realization (and tied up all of my time) in my reworking of “Karaoke Knights.” I’d scheduled a new performance of the show for the Southeast Theatre Conference coming up in March, and it was time to get back to reworking the material, which I’d purposely kept my distance from since the fringe concluded in September.

This time, I came up with a new level to the script. Since I was running karaoke videos that accompanied all of my original songs -- Did I mention that my other Christmas present to myself was a high-tech projection unit for the videos? – there was no reason that that video could not continue to run while I was doing the between-song narration. In fact, a text video could actually comment upon the action from an omniscient point of view, even contradicting the commentary that the live narrator was providing. This could be ironic, or it could be philosophical, but it would give another level for the audience to follow, song-by-song, as the play unraveled. I spent the next several weeks rewriting the script, re-engineering the soundtrack, and reworking the videos.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this writing, issues of publishing were surfacing on a regular basis. I was quoted by a writer for the Huffington Post (an on-line opinion journal), using some of my lines from “Tartuffe,” which can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherman-yellen/bush-as-bad-theatre_b_13187.html. This is, I think, my first publication crossover to the universe outside theatrical and French-related discussion. I dropped the author a note, and he wrote back to tell me how much he enjoyed my versions: “From what I've read your Moliere translation is the one for our
times.”

Meanwhile, a woman who’d reviewed my work in Cincinnati last summer had moved to Chicago and was working for a new on-line magazine for the Daily Herald. She wanted interview me, and I suggested that she join me at the karaoke bar to conduct the interview. She gladly agreed, and we had a blast, though our conversation was so far reaching, I have no idea what-all she’ll end up writing about. (I’ll send the link when the article gets published.)

Back in Cleveland, one of my actors from the production of “The Imaginary Invalid,” forwarded me the end-of-the-year round-up from one of the theatre critics, who wrote:

“Yes, no matter how sophisticated we pretend to be, we're all suckers for potty humor. And the past months served up plenty of those pleasures -- all, curiously enough, at Beck Center. The Imaginary Invalid, an enema-centered comedy by Molière, was given a rousing interpretation ... Director Timothy Mooney whipped the pace to a sitcom frenzy and kept the laughter pooting right along.” (Christine Howie “Cleveland Scene”)

Also, my friend Tina in Portland called to confirm that the article I’d written for the AATF newsletter had finally appeared (fingers crossed that it will lead to more bookings). Again, I’ll have to send the publication link if I can find where the article appears on-line.

Also, I visited with the folks who’d published “Tartuffe” and “Imaginary Invalid” while I was in Texas, and they’re expressing interest in “The Misanthrope.”

And finally, a school was compiling an anthology of Modern Literature, and asked if they could use two of my scenes from “Tartuffe” for their limited-run publication.

So … something seems to be happening for me in the area of publication. Any minute now, I fully anticipate being that hot new author that everybody wants to acquire. (Now that I’ve got a couple of weeks free, it’s about time I chased down some leads.)

The road was already beckoning, and I had two conferences quickly approaching. I’d planned a new session for events I had coming up in Illinois and Texas: “Writing, Producing and Touring the One-Man Play,” a session which would include a full performance of “Criteria.”

Of course, I’d given this session many times in informal conversations (and in the “View From Here”) but to guarantee that I managed to cover everything, I started writing down all of what I had to say.

Now that I had a projector in my possession, I realized that I could actually present this material with slides that would capture some of the essential points. And once I had decided to put together slides, I realized that these slides would need some sort of a background.

Suddenly, I knew that I would finally have a use for all of the photos that I’d been taking on the road. While giving my lecture about touring, the audience would see the pictures I’d been taking, and would get the feel that they were, in fact, on the road along with me (painting an all-too glamorous picture of life-on-the-road).

Very soon, it was time to drive again. Christmas and New Year’s had come and gone (I start working on my taxes every January 1), and the road was waiting. I had to shelve any notions of continuing my work on Alabama or Montana, or of following up with the many potential Spring bookings on my list, for the moment and pack up and drive.

First stop was Bloomington, Illinois where the American College Theatre Festival was having their Region III conference. The conference chair had booked me for his school perhaps three years ago, and we’d kept in touch since then. While I knew that this would be very good exposure for me, this was still a paying gig, and I got the royal treatment for a few days. One of my favorite events was the nightly “hospitality suite,” where I met up with a LOT of teachers who recognized me immediately from the e-mails I’d been sending out over the years.

I was also kept very busy. Friday morning I gave my “Acting in the Classical Theatre” workshop, which I could now practically do in my sleep. The room was packed (including my good friend and namesake, Tim Kane, who’d come up from Springfield just for the event), and it seemed to go over very well, especially with some of the Wisconsin faculty in attendance. Some people from Marquette, which is producing my “Tartuffe” this winter, asked if they could videotape the workshop for their actors back in Milwaukee, and I agreed, on condition that they provide me with a copy of the tape. (I don’t have any footage of myself doing these workshops.) That afternoon, I saw “Red Herring,” a terrific play by Michael Hollinger, whose “Incorruptible” I’d directed about 10 years ago. I was the “respondent” to “Red Herring,” and I returned to the hotel to assemble my response, eventually writing about 7 pages on the topic.

Saturday morning, I gave my response, alongside Richard Christensen, the former theatre critic for the Chicago Tribune. I’d been nervous about putting my opinion up against the voice of the Chicago theatre scene, which was probably the reason for my over-preparation. I quickly noticed that he was playing the game of “asking questions” rather than sharing opinions, which always makes for a good time-stall when you don’t have much to say. Since I did have a fair amount to say, I simply waited until the conversation drifted to one of the areas where I had a clear opinion, and launched into a variety of the riffs (ad-libbing after taking a brief glance at the pages I’d prepared). Richard and I didn’t agree on much, but then again, he didn’t venture many opinions whatsoever.

From there, it was on to a performance of “Urinetown,” which was not quite so brilliant as “Red Herring” had been. This time my challenge would be in finding ways to express my opinion while leaving the morale of the company intact. The biggest problem seemed to be that the cast’s microphones were mostly out of order, which left at least 50% of the lyrics unintelligible. But then there’s got to be a lesson in performing with the microphones not working, and still putting out a workable show.

That same afternoon, I gave my “Writing, Producing and Touring the One-Man Show” presentation, and I was a bit disappointed to see that this workshop was only thinly attended by perhaps a dozen people. One of the people, though, was an old friend from my days at SIU, who was now on the faculty with Illinois State. I hadn’t seen her for almost 25 years, but still recognized her immediately. Another participant had been a “Tartuffe” volunteer back in Southern Indiana last fall, and it was great to catch up with her.

It took a little longer than expected to assemble the computer/projector arrangement, and so I was already late in getting the workshop started. I only managed to get through about 75% of the material before I had to switch gears into performing the show, which left me a bit unfocussed when it came to performing the show itself, stumbling over my lines a few times. (I don’t believe I’d performed this one since October 29 at the Mensa conference.) Even so, the students and seemed very taken by the story.

From here, it was on to the faculty awards banquet, which thankfully, was also running late, and the next morning, I gave the response to “Urinetown” to a crowded room of students and faculty. Fortunately, no one seemed surprised at the less-than-enthusiastic response, particularly when they realized which performance I had seen. I addressed my comments in terms of how difficult a project producing this play clearly was, and how unfocussed and stylistically uneven the script was.

And then it was off to Texas.

Sunday afternoon I drove only a few hours, pulling into Rolla, Missouri to watch the Bears game (which they lost, miserably), and the season premiere episodes of “24.”

Monday, I continued on to Tulsa, enjoying pizza and watching more of “24” with my old friends Dave and Helga Hirsch. (By the way, if you take a drink every time they mention a time deadline in “24” you end up intoxicated by the end of the show.) I was quickly onto the road again on Tuesday, dropping straight south to Austin, arriving a day in advance of the conference. My early arrival enabled me to get back to work on the karaoke videos, which still needed some reworking.

The Texas Educational Theatre Festival was another rush of meeting and greeting people, though there were fewer familiar faces at this one than I’d seen at ACTF. Perhaps because this festival was just as much for high school students and teachers as it was for colleges. I did, however, catch up with several previous hosts of Moliere, including Nancy Jo Humfeld of Howard Payne University, and David Deacon of Texas A&M-Kingsville.

A printing error in the program made it look like my workshop was supposed to begin at 2 pm on Friday, and I gave the evil eye to the people who were occupying the room past my assumed starting time. They cleared out of the room, and the dozen or so who had gathered for my workshop were shifting into the room when someone pointed out to me that my workshop had actually been scheduled to begin at 3 pm.

And so, I started the session at 2:00 for the dozen people who’d read the program the same way that I had, and another 40 people arrived at 3:00, picking things up in the middle.

One of the people I was delighted to see at this session was Leone, who I’d met two years before. She’d enjoyed my work very much and we had chatted then about several publishing opportunities that she envisioned for me. I’d left that conference without getting any of her contact information, though, and just assumed that she was a figment of my imagination. This time we had the chance to sit down and talk at length.

My session on Saturday was the “Writing, Producing and Touring the One-Man Show” event featuring “Criteria,” and again it was thinly attended, but this time I was not to be rattled by the limited amount of time. I’d managed to squeeze in an early tech rehearsal with the stage manager, and all of my equipment was set up well in advance. The play went off with barely any dropped lines. Afterwards, several of the attendees stuck around and, on request, I performed one of the songs from “Karaoke Knights,” featuring the cool new video I’d just put together, projected through my cool new projector.

Finally, I could relax. I hung out that evening with Nancy Varga, who I’d met at the previous year’s TETA conference, where I’d performed a very early version of “Karaoke Knights.” By Sunday afternoon, I was back on the road, with no idea of which direction I wanted to drive. Eventually I headed directly east, towards New Orleans. I stopped just shy of Baton Rouge, noting that the hotel operators were jacking up their prices in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The Motel 6 had kind of a dormitory feel to it, with Christmas decorations strung in a couple of the hotel room windows, and stuff on the ledges and a welcome mat in front of one of the doors.

I drove into New Orleans and was both encouraged and disheartened. The French Quarter itself seemed to have sustained little damage, with people repairing shutters or carpeting variously. Less than a mile away, though, entire streets were blocked off. Trash was piled up waiting for pick-up: old sofas, furnishings. Hundreds of what were clearly un-drivable cars seemed to be parked under the freeway. I thought I would spend a night in New Orleans, and so I drove east to the hotel I’d stayed at a year before as I was passing through in the other direction. It was at least 10 miles from the downtown area, and it was a 7-story building, so I figured it must have come through unscathed.

It was closed down, being renovated. So were the other two large hotels within a couple of blocks of the place. The wreckage was greater here than it had been downtown. Whereas, driving in from the west, I would see the occasional blue-tarp roof, or a fence blown down, east of the city the houses were mostly turned into wreckage. Walls were blown in, roofs chewed up, trees bent in half. Doing the math on this, the overall amount of wreckage was unimaginable, as I tried to picture the damage, extending away from New Orleans over 360 degrees, to the north, south, east and west.

I continued driving, on to Jackson, Mississippi, where I compose these lines this morning. I head north, reluctantly, into the cold.

Miles on the Vibe: 166,000
In the CD Player: The Scissor Sisters
Temperature: Up to the 70s yesterday, but dropping
Discoveries: Something seems to be happening for me in the realm of publishing. Considering that I’ve been unable to line up a lot of bookings for this spring, this is probably my best opportunity to set this area of my work in motion.
Attendance: 60 + 12 + 40 + 20 = 132
Next performance: February 15, William & Mary College

The View From Here #105: Gallatin & Nashville, TN; Hampden-Sydney, VA; New York, NY

Thanksgiving dinner in Daytona Beach consisted of hot dogs and mozzarella sticks at a bar. Which made for, if nothing else, an entirely stress-free Thanksgiving.

The next day, I drove back to Orlando, where my friend April had brought her foster kids for a visit to the Magic Kingdom. For a day, though, we hung out at the swimming pool and Nicholas battled a fever. I got a chance to visit with Sandra-the-Vegan again, dropping in on her birthday party, and by Sunday I was reluctantly on my way, driving into the rain and cooler weather of Atlanta, where I hung out with Linda once again, before pushing on to Nashville on Monday.

I settled into the Nashville hotel, and proceeded to write to the Tennessee French and theatre teachers on my list, to remind them of the performances I had coming up, and one pair of teachers from Middle Tennessee State University actually wrote back of their plans to come up and catch the show.

After completing my Texas marketing push, I moved on to the California schools, finally, and spent most of my free time through the week working on them.

The teacher at Volunteer State Community College had warned me about the upcoming show. She was a touring performer, herself (also an SIU graduate), and noted that, in light of a last minute venue change, and the anticipated tiny attendance, “This will be one of those shows where you just need to remind yourself, ‘At least I’m getting paid.’”

I set up in a meeting room within the library, which had perhaps 80 chairs set out. The most prominent feature of this room was the enormous television set dominating the up-left area of the stage. If only I was doing a multi-media style event (say, “Karaoke Knights”), it would have come in quite handy. I found that by pivoting the television so that it actually faced the Stage Right wall, it was less obtrusive, and wouldn’t draw the eye so much toward this strange box from The Future.

The technician brought in two lighting trees, and we played with the focus of these, and the manipulation of the several sets of incandescent and florescent lights which would serve as our “house lights.”

There were, perhaps, a dozen or so people in the audience to this show, and I have formulated a new motivation for occasions in which the audience is so tiny. I remind myself that, on a per-person basis, those individuals are paying more than they’d pay on Broadway shows. Rather than feeling defeated or disappointed by the lack of people, I feel honored by each individual, and a greater responsibility to give each one their money’s worth.

Also, my hostess was a great laugher, and her laugh caught on to most of the rest of the attendees, and the show went very well.

I packed up and drove about 30 minutes after the show to the south side of Nashville, where I had a performance with Lipscomb University the following night. This was a venue where they’d actually put a rider in the contract that insisted that there be nothing explicit or vulgar in the show. Whenever I get requests like this, I e-mail a copy of the script to the host, telling them that they can read through it and decide for themselves.

My sense is that nobody really minds the ribald humor of the show, but that people in the administration are looking for plausible deniability by shifting the responsibility for keeping-it-clean onto me. That way, they have a scapegoat if some student should report back to a parent about what they saw in school today. And so, I turn it back around on them. Of course, I have my doubts whether they even look at the script that I sent. Who has that kind of time? The audience for this event was around 35-40, which makes me wonder if the administration had been left a little uncertain if they should promote it far and wide.

This audience featured the faculty members from MTSU, and they also were a great bunch of laughers, so even some of my more subtle stuff was going over well, despite the low turnout.

As the tour has stretched on, really since last July with no break, I notice, on a subtle level, that my sense of satisfaction, pleasure, joy, seems to fade. I need some sort of renewal when out on the road for long periods of time. Things become a little dour and serious when it’s just me, holding conversations inside my own head. When there’s no conversation, there are very few surprises, and thus not a lot to laugh at. And so, from my to-do list, I lifted two items as part of an overall strategy for staying in a good mood:

1) Smile. I smile for at least 60 seconds a day, if only to keep those muscles from atrophying. What starts out as an entirely mechanical exercise results in making a smile feel more natural when it happens in “real life.”

2) Dance. I have a collection of favorite dance tunes downloaded on my computer, and I’ll dance along with 20 minutes or so of those as my exercise routine for the day. I enjoy it much more than the mechanical repetition of jogging, and again, it stimulates the muscles that respond to good feelings, anyway. On days that I perform, I find myself more physically engaged in the spontaneity of a given moment.

I had several days’ break, and I hadn’t entirely decided where I was going to spend it. I was planning on a trip down to Charlotte, NC, but my friend Cathy was away on a holiday, and so I started a gradual trek Eastward along Interstate 40. The first day I pulled off the highway in Knoxville for gas, and spotted a Karaoke bar just a block away from a good hotel. And so I stopped there, spending the remainder of the afternoon working on mailings, and showing up at the bar a little after 9 pm.

The bar was actually hosting a karaoke contest that night. As I perused the book, I could hear that this was mostly a country bar, and they were doing two-fers, with each singer drawling two songs in quick succession. I hauled out the heavy artillery (“Lion Sleeps Tonight”) for the contest but reverted to a countryish idiom with Conway Twitty’s “Only Make Believe.” I don’t suppose anyone in this bar had ever heard “Lion Sleeps” done as a karaoke number, and they looked rather startled at the voice coming from the guy who’d been sitting unobtrusively off to the side.

They held a final round of three singers, and I was one of the three selected. I chose Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog,” and the reaction was even stronger. Even the finalist who came after me said “How do you follow something like that?”

They decided the winner by audience applause, and I was surprised to receive the loudest ovation, even though I was a complete stranger, and the other two had been coming to this bar for quite some time. The “KJ,” awarding me thirty bucks, asked if I’d come back again, and I explained that I was from Chicago, and was just passing through town. Even this didn’t seem to dissuade the audience from liking me, and one group asked me to join them at their table, as we continued singing until the early hours of the morning.

The next day I continued to Asheville, North Carolina, and from there to Winston-Salem. I was working on bookings up until check-out time, driving for a couple of hours and checking into the new hotel and getting back to work. Following my success in Knoxville, I didn’t feel particularly driven to conquer any other karaoke bars at night.

You would probably not be surprised to learn that it seems to be legal to smoke wherever you like in Winston-Salem, as I noted when I went into a gas station only to find the attendant amid a thick cloud.

Sunday I continued on to the Raleigh area to visit with my friend Forsyth, and we enjoyed a movie night, watching “To Live and Die in LA,” “Million Dollar Baby” and “Wal-Mart; The High Cost of Low Prices,” a movie which I was surprised to find on sale at a “Best Buy”.

The next morning, I was back on the highway, this time driving north to Hampden Sydney College. I was racing against an incoming snowstorm, and it was only in the final ten miles that the snow caught up with me.

The show wasn’t until the next night, so I set up at a small pub in their student center, where the wi-fi connection was good, and got to work. As I was getting ready to go, I noticed that 40-50 students had gathered around a pool table at the other end of the room, where an older gentleman was demonstrating trick shots.

It turned out that he was staying in the same guest house where I’d been lodged, and when he and his wife returned to the house, we traded stories of life on the road. The two of them were particularly amazed at my ability to do the tour without a second person to handle the tour administration. (I continue to seek out that elusive second person.)

The next day I gave a 90-minute acting workshop. This turned out to be an all-male school, and I was very impressed with how cordial everyone was. I moved on to the theatre space, which was another improvised room-with-lighting-trees. There were about 30 people in the audience, including perhaps a half-dozen women, which was a bit of a relief, as I need a few female victims, including the “Tartuffe” volunteer, which turned out to be the theatre teacher.

The next morning, I was back on the road by 7 a.m. I had to push on to a matinee performance of “Tartuffe” that was being produced by Lehman College in New York. The snow of two nights before was now gone, and following a rush hour delay in Richmond, I had clear sailing the rest of the way north.

I pulled in to Lehman College a half-hour in advance of the show, and met up with the director, who took me on a quick backstage tour. He set me up with several reserved seats in the second row. My friend Yvonne came to catch the show, followed by Jose and Janice (both of whom arrived toward the middle of the first half).

While the talent level of the cast was fairly mixed, the play was very well received, and while I was hearing all of the problems with the cast’s delivery, Yvonne was quick to point out just how effectively the script was playing for this audience, as did Jose and Janice, which allowed me to relax and enjoy the second half much more, which is where the play really takes off.

Afterwards, the college held a wine and cheese reception on my behalf, presenting me with a framed copy of the show’s poster and I congratulated each actor individually, and as a group. Afterwards, Jose, Janice and I went out for dinner, and I continued on to get a hotel in New Jersey, before working my way back west the next morning.

Bad weather was predicted for Ohio, and I beat the weather to Cleveland, but Winter caught up with me about an hour out of Toledo, and I found myself slogging slowly through the snow before pulling over for the night. The next morning, the snow was eight inches deep, but the snowplows had cleared the highways, enabling me to make the final push home to Chicago by 3 p.m.

This last week, I’d found myself sitting up late at night watching the DVD of Season 3 of “24,” which can sometimes be compulsive for me. I repeatedly found myself watching “just one more episode,” generally until two in the morning. I wasn’t noticing how far I was getting behind on my sleep, until I woke up my first morning at home at 11 a.m. Ironically, I found myself getting sick that same night. I haven’t been sick in perhaps a year. Had the illness come upon me at any other time, it’s quite possible, I would have had to cancel a performance. But somehow, my body knows better than I do when it can take a break.

Miles on the Vibe: 164,000
In the CD Player: k.d. lang, “Hymns from the 49th Parallel”
Attendance: 15 + 35 + 8 + 25 = 83
Temperature: 70s down to teens
Discoveries: Rather than feeling defeated or disappointed by the lack of people, I feel honored by each individual, and a greater responsibility to give each one their money’s worth. * you want to feel a particular way, engage in activity that speaks to you of that feeling, and the feeling will show up of its own accord.
Next performance: 1/13-14: Bloomington, IL (ACTF)

The View From Here #104: Plymouth, NH; Brunswick, ME; Lynchburg, VA; Jacksonville & Lakeland, FL

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

Of course, you may not be reading this on Thanksgiving. Probably you have much better things to do, and perhaps you don’t even look at your e-mail on the weekends. (There’s a precipitous drop in replies when I release the “View” on the weekends.) If that’s the case, then “Happy Monday, Everybody!”

I seem to have found my way to Daytona Beach for Thanksgiving, enjoying the traditional Thanksgiving breakfast of the All Star Special at the Waffle House. I am grateful for so many wonderful friends, family and acquaintances, not to mention the audiences who give meaning to all it is that I do.

In expression of my gratitude, my one commitment this Thanksgiving is to send a donation to the victims of the Pakistani earthquake. Coming on the heels of the Tsunami and the American Hurricanes, and largely out of reach of the western media, the suffering in Pakistan received less attention, while it is a disaster playing out in slow motion, the full effect of which will be felt as the weather turns colder and the people have no homes left to shelter within.

But, back to the tour …

By the time I got to my venue in New Hampshire, the weather had turned cold and rainy. This was the same venue that had cancelled my performance last year on account of snow, so they have begun to think of me as a bad-weather friend. Unfortunately, most of the theatre students at the college (Plymouth State) were in rehearsal while I was performing, so attendance was down around 30 or so. The performance was still well received, and the woman who arranged the performance wants to get me back again, only sometime when it’s warmer. (The good news was the hotel that they had me at, a spa with a grotto-like whirlpool, with an actual waterfall.)

Checking e-mails, a response rolled in from the performance I’d given in Interlochen (You may recall, this was one of the schools that has given me the “rock star” treatment):

“The teachers with whom I’ve spoken unanimously said that they enjoyed your performance and the students talked about your energy, your gestures, your costumes, your memory, and they especially liked the scene with Margie. The Dean of Education told me how much he appreciated this chance to enrich our lives. The Ecology teacher wrote me that this was exactly the sort of Community Meeting we should try to have at Interlochen. And I felt like the most fortunate of all of us, because I was the lucky person who could spend the most time with you.
Tim, your performance was all I had hoped it would be: rich and varied, burlesque and profound, passionate and thought-provoking, and I left our auditorium feeling as though Molière must have been smiling also.
… We did our little scenes of Molière last night, and today one of the students’ comments about how we might have done better was that we might have tried to be more like Tim Mooney.
… Thank you for making my life fuller, more fresh. I don’t think I’ll ever see a more Molière than thou.”

I was slightly delayed setting off to Maine the next morning, and what looked to be a late arrival on my part got later and later as I got lost several times. At least one of the misdirections I can attribute to an outdated map that indicated Interstate 495 when it should have been I-95. After that it was entirely my fault.

It didn’t matter much, as apparently the technician didn’t plan on giving me anything but the most basic lighting support. It was a performance space that they used for their “World Literature” classes (where they dabbled lightly in plays and performance). The theatre department gave them no support, so the technical work was strictly amateur. Only about half of the lighting instruments were working, and the technician’s idea of focusing the lights was to reach up with a stick and bump the lighting instruments to the right or the left. This left me with perhaps five square feet of useable stage space, and while the technician shrugged his shoulders, the teacher found a ladder, which I climbed. Pulling out the shutters on the lights, I demonstrated how you could quadruple the amount of available light without replacing any of the bulbs in the other instruments. It was a revelation.

I went on to address a French drama class, which combined French studies with acting. As such I improvised a combination of my acting workshop with my Life-of-Moliere workshop, which was extremely well received. One teacher promised to e-mail a friend in an upcoming venue insisting that she book my workshop as part of the event.

That night’s show had about 150 people in an auditorium that held 200, and their reaction was electric. I made my way back to the bed & breakfast. This B&B had the least “personal touch” than any I’ve ever stayed at. I don’t believe I even met the owners the entire time I was there.

I headed south, working my way to Virginia with several stops to visit along the way: I dropped in on Mel Yoken in New Bedford, Massachusetts. (He was a bit under the weather, but took me to a Jewish holiday dinner, (Shabbat?) where I felt just a little out of place.)

Saturday I was on to New York City and I decided that I would not hate New York City this time around. People who have read these lines before may be reminded that bad things have happened to me in New York in the past: Blackouts, performance cancellations, theft, parking tickets, traffic jams and high expenses everywhere I turn. As I pulled into the city, and found that I was NOT slowed by the expected traffic jam, I decided to expect, instead, to have a wonderful time in New York.

Expectations generate results: I had a fine time in New York. I had lunch with my friend, Terry, followed by a walk through Central Park. I met up for a drink with Suzanne, my stage manager from the New York Fringe, and I caught a preview of my friend Yvonne’s latest show, “Inheritors,” followed by dinner and a lively conversation. I crashed on Yvonne’s air mattress, and was on my way first thing the next morning, heading for Baltimore, where my sister Maureen, her husband Tim and I enjoyed flipping between the Ravens and the Bears’ games. (Somewhere in there, I managed to go jogging and get a haircut, too.)

The next morning, I was off to Randolph Macon Woman’s College, where they put me up at the Student Center. The only thing I can remember about this show is the good natured argument I got into with a French woman after the show, who insisted that the character of Monsieur Jourdain in the “Bourgeois Gentleman” would not be as effeminate as I played him. I tried to point out that “effeminate” was simply a judgment she had jumped to, and that my only focus was on making him “affected,” but apparently the modern audience doesn’t quite grasp this.

The next morning I got up early and headed south, pulling up to get a hotel just three miles shy of the Florida border. I proceeded to drive in to Jacksonville the following morning for the first of a series of four performances with the several extensions of the Florida Community College in Jacksonville. These shows were the product of some elaborate negotiations last spring, in which I lowered my price significantly for the “block booking.”

They’d warned me about the technician I was getting with this first performance (at the downtown campus), as the fellow was a student, but he seemed very eager to get the show to work, and I actually had no problem with the tech. The audience, however, was another matter. There were perhaps 20-25 in the house, and they seemed entirely unenthused about Moliere. At best, these were Gen-Ed students, who were seeing this show to get extra credit for a class, while their interests were clearly elsewhere.

After the show, I got in the car and headed East, to find a hotel near the Jacksonville beaches (Part of the discount for this school included making my own hotel arrangements.) Since Jacksonville was on the east coast, however, the sun is actually best in the morning. The several restaurants that overlook the beach (where all I wanted was to sip a margarita while sitting in the sun) were already in the shade.

The next morning, I proceeded to the Southern Campus of FCCJ, where I was enthused to see a very modern, well-equipped building, with a huge mainstage theatre, and a terrific studio space. I soon discovered, however, that they were putting my performance into a conference room across the hall, where they had set out some fifty chairs. The conference room was surrounded by huge windows which looked out over a lake. They could pull the shades over these windows, but that would diminish the available light in the performance area. A quick study of the room demonstrated that the only space in the room where there was NOT any overhead lighting, was the space where I’d be performing.

I think the technician found my complaints about this fact to be generally annoying, as he would disappear for some twenty minutes at a time, and took no measures to actually learn any “cues” that the show might hold. During one of his long disappearances, and when it was finally time for me to go get into costume and make-up, I called up to my supposed “host” for the event (I had yet to meet him) to point out the inadequacy of the setting. With that off of my chest, I tried to focus on giving the best performance I had available to give.

I was shocked at how good the show actually went. In the conference room setting, the audience was very close to me, and I could make extreme eye contact with them, constantly working on any portions of the audience that might start to waver in their attentiveness. While I wasn’t well lit, the audience was. It all goes to show just how unpredictable these things are.

Afterwards a couple of the French teachers lingered to chat, and one of them happened to note, in an aside, that my name had come up in a job interview she’d had in Northern Texas. I mentioned that I didn’t believe I’d ever performed in Northern Texas, and she suggested that it was one of those references to “the foremost authorities on Moliere.”

From here it was a quick drive south to Lakeland, Florida (actually about four hours on the road). That evening I was to give a Moliere workshop at Florida Southern College. It was quickly pointed out that many of the buildings on this campus had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, including the lecture hall where I gave my presentation, which had once been an oddly-shaped circular library that now functioned nicely as an arena for my presentation.

The next morning I performed in a beautiful old theatre in Lakeland. This was a restored touring house from the turn of the century, one of many such theatres across the country, which was probably once a stop along the way during the golden years of vaudeville. A vast orchestra pit separated me from the first row of seats, and escaping the stage to navigate the auditorium was a bit of a balancing act during the Scapin scene. There were platforms from the set of another play, which would be opening in two days, already set out on the stage, which left me perhaps six feet of playing area downstage. There might be the opportunity to use these platforms for a particularly dramatic moment, but I would have to improvise that on the fly, as the busses of kids were beginning to arrive before I had time to rehearse anything other than the tech cues.

(I’ve discovered I’m not big on rehearsing these days. I almost prefer to have things surprise me in performance, if only to keep fresh a show that I’ve now performed at least two hundred times.)

As such, I only used the platforms a couple of times during the bulk of the show. After making an entrance from the top of the platforms, I would take a single step up, when I wanted to do something particularly theatrical, such as the “Stop Thief” poem and song.

I could feel that I was playing this performance near the top of my game. Doing the show for 400 or more students tends to bring the best out of me, as my gestures sharpen, clarify and exaggerate. One student had, perhaps a month ago, criticized me for overmuch “indicating” with my gestures, a comment which would sometimes linger in the back of my head during some of my less inspired performances. It is, however, when I am entirely capable of losing that critical voice in the back of my head when I give my best performances, and I could feel that this one was going well.

With the curtain call, however, I felt a terrific wash of energy from the audience. I took a quick bow, and exited, returning a moment later for a more lingering series of bows, and this time I stood on the highest platform on stage, perhaps three feet higher than I’d performed the rest of the show, and the students rose in their ovation.

Following the show, I stopped out for lunch with a professor who’d hosted the show in Florida a year before. I headed back to the hotel, finally ready to enjoy some of that famous Florida Sun at the hotel’s pool. I did, after all, have the hotel room still for almos another 24 hours, but the moment I got out to the pool, the clouds moved in, and didn’t leave the remainder of my time at the hotel.

I decided, at last, to arrange my Thanksgiving travel plans. I’d been flirting with ideas about where to spend my Thanksgiving for some months, but it seemed like every time I decided on a spot, that location would proceed to get hit by a hurricane. The decision came down to Jamaica vs. Key West, and I finally settled on Key West, a major advantage being that I could drive there, which would mean that my stuff would remain available, in my car, through the weekend. I booked two nights at a hotel there, and proceeded to keep my eye on the weather. A hurricane was forming just south of Key West, lingering by the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba. The storm was downgraded to a tropical depression, but that only meant that it would continue to linger, screwing up the weather for the next week or two. I cancelled the hotel, with a penalty of about a hundred dollars.

I headed back to Orlando for the weekend, visiting with some of my special Fringe Fest friends, Patty and Sandra, while staying at Al Pergande’s house. (Al has written some very generous reviews of my work under the nom de plume, “Carl F. Gauze.”) Patty and I found a lively karaoke bar on Saturday night, populated by some rather colorful characters. Sandra (better known in some circles as “Sandra the Vegan”) is in on the ground floor of a new herbal tea / vegetarian café / progressive living restaurant. Al, meanwhile, has taken to buying yard sale stuff and selling it at a profit on e-bay.

Monday I was up early and on my way to another show at FCCJ, this one on a campus just northwest of the city. This technician seemed a little more interested in actually making the show work, and when we had trouble finding lights that were covering the space I needed, I clambered up into the “Front-of-house” area to redirect lights onto the area that I wanted. I found that, given the opportunity, I’m much more willing to be my own technician, and with easy access, I can refocus a whole row of lights in less than five minutes.

It was another thin crowd, and again, a large percentage seemed to make an exodus about halfway through the show. In fact, at one point, a bunch of exiting students lingered over by their professor, sitting in the second row, getting some kind of a document from him … perhaps a test, or a series of questions on the show. I was a little dumbfounded by the action, and I stopped dead to watch, though they continued their murmuring conversation, paying me no mind.

I found another hotel, and dug in to work on bookings once again. It had been over a month since I had so furiously worked on surfing through the websites of the several states I’d thoroughly explored, and the vastness of doing such a job on a state like Texas had intimidated me away from even starting that process once more. I decided instead to pull out my old list of theatre faculty from Texas, at least getting my latest available dates into their hands.

Which meant that it was finally time to plot out the 06-07 tour! After months of delay, pondering which conferences I’d be attending: Sci-fi conferences, French teacher conferences, Theatre conferences … I plugged in the ones that I thought would do me some good, and then plotted out a schedule which would enable me to hop most effectively from one to another.

Of course, this process is entirely arbitrary. As soon as I accept a single booking that is outside the parameters of this schedule everything else goes up for grabs, and I proceed to schedule and reschedule the tour ad infinitum.

I finished off my Jacksonville tour with two performances on the same day. I had a 10:30 show for a high school group at the FCCJ “Kent Campus,” followed by a performance for the college students two hours later. I knew already which would be the better show.

The high school kids loved it. They were vocal in their response, and some had even taken to whistling to indicate their approval of a particularly provocative line. The scene with the Tartuffe volunteer caused something of a sensation, particularly when Tartuffe slips his hand around the volunteer’s waist to draw her closer. (This may have something to do with the belly-exposing shirts that are so much in fashion these days, which makes the gesture a bit more intimate than it might otherwise seem.)

Two hours later, it was a struggle even getting a volunteer to come up on stage.

Fortunately, though, I was wrong about how well the show would go. While I’d assumed the response would be as indifferent as it had been at two of the other three FCCJ shows, this one was a little more lively. In fact, I found myself improvising my way through the emotional content of the show. While all of the words and actions were the same as always, the process of performing the show twice in the course of a couple of hours left me somehow freer to try new things. I could hit certain emotional moments “at a run” as it were, and I could articulate the words fully while allowing myself to be hit by each new discovery more fully than on other occasions.

This is, of course, a paradox to me. I was feeling the show as freshly as ever, but this freshness was the product of having done the thing once already.

Perhaps a part of the “freshness” was the assumption that I would get nothing from this audience in the way of emotional reaction, which led me to simply lay everything out there, independent of their reaction, much in the same way I had to perform in the theatre with the huge orchestra pit.

After the show I loaded up and hit the road again. I’d cancelled the Key West hotel, but had decided to look for something on Daytona Beach. I made a few calls to hotels that had coupons in the books that are available at the various rest stops, but few had rooms available through Thanksgiving. One hotel that had internet access, and a pool, was only available for two nights. I headed for it, but when I arrived, I was drawn to the hotel next door. Their view of the ocean seemed much better than one that would demand a certain craning of the neck.

The proprietor, and seemingly most of the guests at this hotel, speak French. I have to assume that they book mostly through travel agencies in France. I got a room on the third floor, and have spent the last two days, when not out at the pool, pushing through more marketing of the show. With the new schedule redrawn, I have put out a mailing to my list of “maybe next years” as well as my list of “definite maybes” for later this year. A month without pushing the bookings has left me with very few performances lined up for the spring, and the realization of this has hit me pretty hard. Of course, I have a rather extended Christmas break to work on this, but for the moment, the spring is looking like a lot of driving with not too much to show for it.

… As opposed to this fall, which has turned out to be perhaps the best fall so far. I’m feeling much more secure than I was … was it just two months ago? I guess it was. The fall tour started on September 25 in Arizona. And I’ve done 19 performances and 11 workshops since then.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Miles on the Vibe: 161,000
On the CD Player: Fiona Apple: An Extraordinary Machine
Currently Reading: “The Truth … With Jokes” by Al Franken. -- Al is at his best at this one, and one of his funniest (and saddest) revelations may be the way that the Bush administration is not lying so much as they have no belief in objective reality. Al quotes Ron Suskind, in conversation with a “senior Bush advisor” as follows:

“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality based community,’ which he defined as people who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” [Al adds] “Doesn’t that sound like the kind of speech a Bond villain would make just before falling into his own shark tank? -- Of the other many funny parts of the book, one of my favorites is the many synonyms that Al finds for “credulous” to describe Tim Russert’s non-confrontational interviewing style.

Where was I? Discoveries: People who work me over to get me to discount my price probably undervalue the show in other ways, such as their commitment to technical precision or audience promotion. * And yet, this does not mean that the audience will necessarily adopt the host’s indifference. * Expectations generate results. * Doing the show for 400 or more students tends to bring the best out of me, as my gestures sharpen, clarify and exaggerate. * Sometimes freshness and renewed energy is the result of repetition.
Attendance: 30 + 40 + 150 + 75 + 25 + 40 + 450 + 40 + 200 + 50 = 1,100
Temperature: 40s to 80s, and getting ready to head full into the face of winter.
Next shows: Volunteer State Community College 11/29; Lipscomb University, 11/30.