The View From Here #144: UT, MN, FL, FL, PA

Somewhere, in there, British Petroleum started spewing toxic sludge into the Gulf of Mexico, denying how much they were spewing, how easy it would be to stop, how incapable they were of protecting the shores, and proceeded to say a number of impolitic things which quickly found them amongst the most despised corporations on the planet. … Let’s enjoy a couple photos of the gulf, while we still might.

As usual, when I hit the west coast, there’s lots more driving per performance than in the east, and with time on my hands, I dropped in on my brother Pat, my old college friend, Cil, Jayne from the Rogue Performance Festival, and Kirsten from High School, before swinging back up to Utah for a show at Snow College.

The hosts at Snow College were a really charming couple who’d built their own ecologically-green house tucked back into the mountains, complete with horses, a pond and hay.

Snow College had decided to pick up “Lot o’ Shakespeare” for a daytime assembly. I was performing in a large auditorium, with perhaps 600 seats. The technicians were late in arriving, and the need to project my voice to fill this space limited some of the subtleties and textured characterizations that I had managed to get across in previous performances, and yet, the audience continued to respond, applauding with each completed monologue. As I approached the end of the performance, with about 3 minutes remaining, I had to skip performing the (8-minute) “Twelfth Night” (Malvolio) monologue, which is one of my favorites.

After the show, a handful of theatre students lingered to visit, and asked about the “Twelfth Night” piece. I offered to do it for them, and they responded enthusiastically. My host extended an invitation to these students to join us for lunch at the local Asian restaurant, and we had a great visit, before I hit the road once again.


Continuing east, I got a little lost in Western Colorado, as what I thought would be a “scenic route” turned into a dead end, delaying me a couple of hours. I pushed on ahead, dropping in on friends at U of Denver and, upon hitting Omaha, I realized that I was about an hour away from Northwest Missouri State U, where they were producing my version of “Tartuffe” that weekend. Steering south, I made a surprise drop in on the matinee performance, which was very well done. I continued on to Minneapolis, and eventually to Brainerd, MN, where I was performing Moliere at Central Lakes College.

Patrick, my host at Central Lakes was actually an old student of mine from NIU, and we caught lunch and caught up on 20+ years of water under the bridge. There were several folks coming up from Minneapolis to catch the show that night, and I had a good feeling about the performance. The feeling paid off, as I finished off the Spring tour with one of my best shows of the year, with the audience tuned in and responding to just about everything.

Patrick belatedly got the idea that it would be good to have me drop in on a class the next morning, but as that would delay my start for home by several hours, I begged off, and we agreed to take it up another time.

At home I “hit the ground running,” immediately starting up the big e-mail campaign for the 2010-2011 bookings. I had the new Shakespeare show to promote, and had begun collecting some enthusiastic quotes to promote it. I also had five Fringe Festivals and two Conferences coming up over the summer, and wanted to put the campaign behind me as early as I possibly could. In particular, I wanted to get the 15,000-plus e-mails (!) out to the various faculty before they all left for the summer.

And so, I worked my way through the states, and the inbox piled up, and my back cramped up, and I worked it off with exercise and massage and worked through more states, and gathered inquiries and questions in the inbox, and designed new stickers and new flyers and postcards for Fringe publicity, and worked through more states.

And I paused to do the Pathways weekend once again, once again getting jazzed for everything I intended to accomplish, and for whatever life might throw my way.

Somewhere in there, we discovered that Dad was rethinking his future.

With me on the road most of the time, Dad had been rattling around by himself in a big empty house.

And he decided that it was time to sell.

After almost fifty years in the same place, he was starting to throw out the old and pack up the stuff he wanted to keep. The place that I’d lived in, off and on, since I was two, was going up for sale.

Which meant that I had the need, and the opportunity, to find a between-trips place to settle down.

I started thinking about all of the cities that I’ve visited over recent years, with a new eye toward where I might actually want to settle in and stay. Chicago winters were not a necessary fact of life. Chicago cost-of-living was not a fait accompli. A fresh start in a new place began to spark my imagination… But where to go?

With this in mind, I headed off to the Orlando Fringe Festival.

Passing through Louisville … hmmm.

Stopping in Chattanooga … heyyyyy…

Pushing through Atlanta… nnnnnnn…

And, on to Orlando, where I stayed once again with Al and Gail. Only this year, there was no rain, and it was plenty warm enough to swim out back during the day.

This year, I had a new show… a new one that was more like stand-up comedy, and poetry and serious-but-funny monologues and dance. It was a risky new exploration, and it went over very well…

“A fun and candid romp… he has you laughing and nodding in agreement over certain moments that we can all relate to in one way or another. What helps is Mooney’s manic but fantastically timed performance, mixing up Suessian-like rhymes with engaging monologues. Kelly Fitzpatrick, Orlando Sentinel

“A high energy meditation... Using first person horror stories and poetic monologs, the show is filled with innuendo and clever word play... using the word “Circumnavigate” in a way even the OED doesn’t cover… Carl F. Gauze, Ink19.com

Captivating…. Delicacy, honesty and humility… The intimacy I felt was powerful, and will not be forgotten. Lisamarie Addams

It was eye-opening to say the least... I was not prepared however for the look into the mirror your performance created for me... The truths were undeniable and so real they filled the air around me... Thank you sincerely for... your creativeness, expression, and your ability to dance through it all. John Brockman

While I was there, a radio producer who’d seen my show decided he really liked my voice, and hired me, first to do a single character in a single commercial, and then to do the main voice for a 5-commercial series for a renegotiate-your-debt company. Supposedly, these commercials should be playing on the Sirius network by now.

Also, a photographer (Tisse, of TisseArt.com), who’d snapped some shots of my Moliere show last year, returned to take some photos of the new show, and set up a separate photo session for me on the last Sunday of Fringe, capturing some really nice shots. Between this and the voiceover session, and the nice reviews it seemed that the universe was really stepping up to take care of me on this trip.

I raced home, through Atlanta, Chattanooga and Louisville, once again. I discovered that Chattanooga has a special program, aimed at wooing artists to their city. Artists can, in fact, apply for a grant to underwrite the costs of moving to Chattanooga. Hmm.

Back at home, I pushed through the big 15,000 piece e-mailing, sending off that last e-mail at 5:30 pm on June 11, envisioning that as being the moment that every teacher in the country was packing up and knocking off for the summer.

And right about then I dove in on packing up… sorting papers, boxing up books, giving away clothing… lightening the load.

I did the math on my schedule. As of late July, I would be off to Fringe festivals for about 6 weeks, followed by about ten weeks of touring the country. I wouldn’t be back home for any appreciable time until Thanksgiving.

And by that time, for all I know, the old homestead would be sold.

There’d be little point to moving into a new space before July, given that I would be paying for, but not enjoying, a new place. Rather, I decided I would move out as much as I possibly could (storing stuff in April’s garage), until Thanksgiving presented itself with whatever new landscape life lay out in front of me.

I was about to head back down to Florida once more, with plans to maintain a table in the lobby at the American Association of Community Theatres festival happening in Venice. But the day before, a call came in from the festival coordinator: This being the International Festival, there were performers coming to Venice from all over the world, but in this case, the group from Zimbabwe were looking “iffy” about showing up. Would I make myself available to perform in their scheduled slots? “Of couuuuurrrrsssse!”

Back on the road once more! Stopping in Clarksville! In Chattanooga! In Calhoun! And on to Venice. Which was about 100 degrees the whole time I was there!

Almost immediately after arriving, I met a girl who’d seen “Moliere Than Thou” when I performed it in Sarasota a couple of years before. I immediately knew that she would be the perfect volunteer for the “Doctor” scene. Meanwhile, I set up my table in the lobby, and chatted with the neighboring vendors, visited with Linda from Dramatic Publishing, and dropped in to watch shows here and there.

By the time my performance came up on Friday afternoon, the audience had largely been through a half-dozen shows in foreign languages (including some brilliant performances, most notably the “Miracle Worker” from Russia), and they seemed ready for a little English.

Of course they got more than their share of English from me, and they laughed big time. So much that I think they added 10 minutes to the show. The volunteers were really talented, and we did it all again on Saturday, with standing ovations for both performances. Of course, I got about 100 times more exposure than I would have gotten had I only had the table in the lobby, and several community theatre folks were starting to talk about booking my show in their theatres.

Meanwhile, I was meeting folks from the local theatre, and from around the world (the Australians were a lot of fun), and the local Venice Moliere expert and I got into a big Moliere pow-wow on closing night.

The next to last night of the festival was punctuated with a lot of dancing at an outdoor bar by the gulf, and given that the temperature was still around 100 degrees, I was soon pretty drenched. (Photos are floating around on Facebook.) At the closing night banquet, they awarded me a certificate and I accepted it with a brief 2-sentence speech: “Your lovely eyes make me die of love,” and “Peace on Earth; good will towards men.”

A week or two later, a review of my performance showed up on “aislesay.com” from a woman I’d met at the festival:

When travel problems prevented a Zimbabwe Group from performing at the American Association of Community Theatres International "Festival in Paradise" 2010, Timothy Mooney moved from promoting to presenting his one-man comedy Moliere Than Thou. It's an anthology of Mooney's translated scenes from Moliere's classic, still very funny and relevant comedies introduced by Mooney. In typical 17th century curled wigs and costume he can change by adding a tie or shedding a jacket, Mooney gives the setting and "point" of each selected play before assuming its principal role. Moliere has never been more accessible.

With a white wig, Mooney becomes crusty old Arnolphe in School for Wives, who shielded his ward Agnes since the age of 4 from all men, so that he might eventually wed her without rivals. He speaks to Agnes as if in his audience of how contact with young men can lead to perdition. Talking of Satan, he gets (actually) carried away! Back on stage, duded up, he's the Bourgeoise Gentilhomme with his silly ways and pretentious language. As he pulls out his shirt over plain trousers, shedding embellishments of clothing and hair, Mooney becomes the religious hypocrite Tartuffe. As Moliere he explains his effort to make his villain "an independent charlatan" -that is, not one of any specific religion, then as Tartuffe launches into an attempted seduction of his patron's wife, Elmire. Using an audience member to read her part, Mooney makes the most out of the coughs by which she's supposed to expose Tartuffe. He proves very skilled at evoking audience participation (later it's by a man listening to Scapin) without making his participants act silly. When he romps through the audience as Scapin or solicits for a "theatrical curtain fund," he's quite acrobatic and appealing.

As Sgnarelle in Don Juan, as the title character in the still pertinent medical send-up The Doctor In Spite of Himself, and as an uninspired nobleman pretending to be clever before a group of ladies, Mooney varies his poetic, satirical, and vocal tones. He's truly what the French call an homme orchestre and, as Moliere and his characters, the "music" he produces most is laughter. Marie J. Kilker, www.aislesay.com

The next morning, I was headed home, making it back in two days, knowing that I had only about two days at home before heading off yet again.

I zipped off to pick Isaac up in Detroit (catching one of his swimming meets that night), continuing on to West Virginia, Washington D.C., Baltimore, and eventually, Philadelphia, and the conference of the American Association of Teachers of French. The temperatures were once again poking up towards 100 degrees (global warming anyone?), and I got a bit of a foot blister walking around the national mall in D.C.

The Philadelphia conference gave Moliere and I (and Isaac) a warm reception, and there were lots of old friends who’d booked the show in the past (some who remembered Isaac from the Belgium trip two years ago), along with new folks who hadn’t seen the show before. This time, rather than the truncated collection of my favorite monologues that I usually present at this conference, I opened the floor to whatever requests the audience might want to make, which enabled me to share a couple of pieces that I don’t usually get the chance to explore, including “The Learned Ladies” and “The Imaginary Cuckold.”

While Isaac and I managed to get out for dinner a couple of times, and caught some fireworks on July 4, along with our old friend Jenni, the heat was oppressive, and we got back on the road as soon as the exhibit hall closed that afternoon. We stayed in a cheap Youngstown, Ohio hotel that night, and I asked Isaac whether this was all as glamorous as he might have envisioned my life on the road. After dropping Isaac off in Detroit, I managed to check in with Tommy Nugent, a fellow performer who’d done the Orlando Fringe with me a year before (also staying at the famous Al & Gail place).

From there, it was on home. I spent several days working and reworking the 2010-11 schedule, and writing all of the folks who’d written back following the Big Mailing, trying to nail down particular dates. Some were writing back and following through, and as long as the bookings keep coming in through the summer, it looks like this will be a pretty good year.

Meanwhile, it’s back to rehearsing “Lot o’ Shakespeare,” which is enjoying its “Fringe Premiere” at the Kansas City Fringe at the end of this month. There’s a new costume in the works, new props (a sword and a dagger), Sonnets to add to the list of soliloquies, a reworked slide-show and “IAGO cards.” All the while packing up and touching base with more potential bookers. Given that I’m two months out from the beginning of the fall tour, I’m in pretty good shape.

And making one more editing pass on my Acting book, which I’m hoping to self-publish before the summer is done.

Miles on the Escape: 28,000
Attendance: 200 + 75 + 60 + 80 + 85 + 40 + 25 + 60 + 12 = 637
Temperatures: Up in the 90s and 100s, but finally settling down to the 80s in Chicago.
Discoveries: The universe sometimes steps up. * Need and opportunity are sometimes the same thing. * When you perform something with honesty, people will see themselves in it, whether or not the actual stories reflect their particular stories at all. * Sometimes life lays out a landscape for you to paint yourself into. And I have to trust that in that moment I will make the right decision, and be willing to wait for that moment to arrive. * Getting caught up in the day-to-day struggles of landing one more booking, I sometimes lose perspective on how many bookings are already landed. For once I can step back and say…I’m in good shape.
On the I-Pod: "Merry Happy" by Kate Nash
Next performances: “Lot o’ Shakespeare” at the Kansas City Fringe Festival, July 27-August 1

The View From Here #143: TX, CO, KY, OH, NY, SC, AL, IL, WA

"Tartuffe" freakin’ Rocked!



We had a so-so preview performance, and the next day we reflected on the best rehearsal we’d had. It was one in which the cast warmed up with a run through of the first 8 minutes or so before throwing themselves into the show with reckless abandon. And so that, along with our outrageous curtain call became our warm up, and the cast recaptured that sense of reckless abandon in performance, and all the funniest stuff bubbled to the top.

I managed to record the Saturday night performance, with a lively audience and have since posted the entire play on-line, including the preshow pantomime, the between-acts flurry of activity, the intermission lazzi and the hilarious curtain call. The opening scene has already had over 200 views. (In fact, last spring’s “Misanthrope” opening scene is about to hit 4,000 views!)

Word has it that the second weekend of “Tartuffe” was even better than the first, but I was off on my way by then, with a fabulous stop in New Orleans for Mardi Gras (my birthday present from my big 50th birthday bash: Thanks April!), and then on to Texas!

In Brownwood, Texas, my friend Nancy Jo was directing the world premiere of my version of “The Bourgeois Gentleman”, and I arrived about a week before they were due to open. This is a show that I rarely even show to a producer or publisher, because the concept is like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and I had no idea if it would work. (Everyone in my version speaks in rhyme EXCEPT FOR Monsieur Jourdain, the “Bourgeois Gentleman!”)

When I saw the work that Nancy Jo and her students had done on the show, for the first time I realized that it COULD work, with the proper attack on the style of speech. I worked with the students on the blocking and the rhyming style (… and probably trampled their artistic sensibilities in the process), but within a couple of days, they were punctuating the rhymes in such a way that when a given line DIDN’T rhyme, it felt wrong ... like a hiccup in the speaking pattern that becomes more and more evident as the show goes on. I had to rush off to other performances before they opened the show, but was thrilled to hear that this version of the play worked, and that everyone “got” the ongoing joke. I promptly cleaned up the script that I’d been working from, and sent that one to my publisher. (Check back to this space for the review, coming soon…)

Meanwhile, it was on to Dallas, for the very first performance ever of “Lot o’ Shakespeare!”

I’d been working idly on this play for about 4 years, only making a big push with it this year, with a booking finally scheduled last summer. Given that I knew I’d be performing the show this spring, I added “LoS” to the mix in my marketing efforts, and last winter, two more schools booked the show, in ADVANCE of the planned opening! This meant that I had to have the show ready to go a month AHEAD of the intended opening date, for which I had to have THIRTY-EIGHT monologues, not only memorized but in performance readiness!

Some of these pieces were still a little too fresh in my memory to risk in performance, and so at the last minute, I dropped “Timon of Athens” and “Measure for Measure” out of the pool.

Fortunately, they had also booked “Moliere Than Thou” at this appearance (My feeling is that both shows as part of a single event will be extremely popular down the line), and I was able to win their sympathies with an hour of Moliere before trying out the new stuff on them.

“Lot o’ Shakespeare” is performed entirely at random, based on the spin of a bingo cage with 38 ping-pong balls inside of it. Each ping pong ball is labeled with a show title, and I perform whatever show comes out of the cage. Since this precludes any narrative thread, the students play along with Bingo cards, which in this case are called “IAGO” cards, and the first to get four monologues in a row wins a “Moliere Than Thou” t-shirt!


All was going great. I was, perhaps, going a little too quickly, given my nervousness over this first performance, but the response felt good… until … Fifteen minutes (perhaps 5-6 monologues) into the first performance a student WON the IAGO competition!

I had 45 minutes left of my show, and no narrative thread left to hang the “plot” of my play on!

For about 15 minutes, I continued to spin the wheel anyway, performing whatever monologues came up … but all of the really unfamiliar stuff was popping out: “Pericles”, “Coriolanus”, “Henry VI, Part II,” “Henry IV, Part 1”. (By mistake, during “Henry IV, 1, I started doing “Comedy of Errors,” as for the first time I noticed that both monologues begin with “My Liege …”)

At one point the host mused, “Don’t you have any comedies in there?”

I then proceeded to take requests, performing monologues from whatever plays the audience wanted to see!



Suddenly, I was doing “Comedy of Errors”, “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Titus Andronicus” (I have no idea how that one got so popular!) And the kids were revived and into it once again!

I breathed easily, having survived the first performance, learned a few things about the pitfalls that might loom in the performance, and realizing the importance that the concept played in maintaining the audience’s attentiveness.

I’d gotten the host to videotape this performance, and playing it back, I could see for myself just how much I was rushing through the show, particularly as I was jumping from one scene to the next. I told myself, “SLOW DOWN next time. They’ll wait!”


After the show, I raced south, beating the Dallas traffic, but hitting Austin at rush hour, on my way to San Antonio. I visited that evening with my cousins Kathy & Larry, and got up to present workshops the next day at a private San Antonio High School where I was acquainted with both the French teacher AND the Theatre teacher. I was poised to rush back north to Brownwood, to catch another night of rehearsal, but an unexpected 4 inches of snow in Texas had forced Howard Payne University to cancel all of its activities for that night (I head south in the winter to AVOID problems like these), and so I continued on toward Colorado Springs.

My path to Colorado Springs took me, for the first time, through Lamar, Colorado, a location that turned out to be critical in my short story (later my one-man show), “Criteria.” I had envisioned a friendly diner with an over-friendly waitress and an intrusive trucker, with whom my anti-hero takes great umbrage. Spending the night in Lamar, I was delighted to find a diner not unlike the one that I’d envisioned, with a pleasant waitress, and a fellow sitting in the corner who might well have been a trucker.

In Colorado, I had a sudden rush of events at Colorado College and Colorado Academy, with two appearances at the Academy, divided by one drop-in visit to a class at Colorado College, followed by a tech rehearsal and a performance that same night at Colorado College. Whenever I put together events like this, I start to worry about my health, largely because I don’t seem to have an off switch, or at least a volume dial that can force me to ratchet my energy downwards. I did manage to get through in one piece, with a little energy left for the show that night, and have since received a really nice thank-you card from the kids and host at Colorado Academy, where I ended up improvising a workshop on commercial performance (I was addressing a class on broadcasting).

I stopped back in Kansas City for a couple of days, where my friend, Lisa, has an extra room, enabling me to catch up on paperwork for a couple of days before continuing on to the Southeast Theatre Conference in Lexington, Kentucky.

This conference was happening in my Cousin George’s back yard, and he and I both, coincidently went into theatre, and both present one-man plays. George had suggested that we put together a presentation on the use of the audience in the one-man play, and I knew that I’d have any number of things to throw in on this topic, simply drawing from the now-five one-man shows that I’ve put together over the years, each of which is dependent on the audience to some degree.

The workshop went well, as did my booth at the conference, which was nicely positioned near to where the attendees first enter into the exhibit hall. Of course, I never know how these appearances have gone over until months after the fact, but the interest seemed high, and in the days following the event, I think I sent over sixty follow-up e-mails out to people I’d met. I’d drawn up a new flyer for this event, featuring the new show, and using the brilliant illustration that my artist friend, Lee Howard had created.


After a brief visit with George and his wife, Cathy, I continued on to Cincinnati, where I was to perform at Xavier University. The Theatre teacher and the French teacher had gone in together on arranging this event, and both seemed quite excited to have it. They were even speculating about the possibility of arranging future events, and programming a Moliere play for next fall.

The workshop that I gave that day was very thinly attended, with perhaps four or five students along with their two teachers, and I began to worry a bit about how many would come to the show that night. I’d put out an invitation to my cousin, John, who was coming down from Columbus, but I had no idea if he might be one of the only ones in the theatre.

The theatre had 88 seats. Perhaps a hundred people showed up. They had to bring extra chairs into the room, putting an extra first row in front of the actual first row. I was proud to have such an enthusiastic response in the room on the first time my cousin had ever seen me perform (along with his daughter and three of his grandkids!).



The next day I managed a swing through Steubenville, Ohio, visiting with one of the professors at Franciscan University, who wants to direct a Moliere play in the coming year. I left her with more material, probably, than she’ll ever be able to weed through. And from there, I continued to Baltimore, dropping in on my sister, Maureen, and her husband, Tim for a few days.

Any time I have the chance to settle in a given location for more than I day, I’m glad for the opportunity to weed through correspondence and catch up on all the little things that accumulate. I was also running lines for the new Shakespeare show every day. With two more performances quickly approaching, I really wanted to feel the confidence of being able to perform whatever might come up in the random spin of the bingo cage.

From Baltimore, I started out toward Lynchburg, Virginia, only to discover that a booking that I’d thought was pretty well settled, had not been firmed up! (Arrrgh!) I re-routed my trip to Harrisonburg, Virginia, where I dropped in on my old friend and costume designer, Kathy Conery, and talked with her about designing a new costume to go with the new Shakespeare show. Though she wouldn’t have anything ready for the upcoming performances in the coming weeks, she would be able to put something together by the summer.

I turned back north, working my way toward Syracuse, New York, where the weather turned nice just in time for my arrival. The show, as well as my workshop, were extremely well received, though early in the show, during a very active run-around, my right heel slipped out from under me, and my left knee came down onto the stage floor. I picked myself up immediately and played off the awkward moment, trying to ignore the sudden sharp pain. The last thing I wanted was for an audience to be distracted, worried about whether I might have hurt myself.

It wasn’t until after the show that I got a look at my knee, and saw that the tights now had a hole ripped in them, and a big red scrape was showing through. I hoped that nobody had been paying attention to my knee as the show progressed. Those few people that I talked to afterwards had, in fact, assumed that the slip was somehow choreographed to be part of the show!

I had a long trip south, and several days to make it, and made stops in St. Petersburg, Virginia (to meet with a woman who ran a theatre company, and who is directing “Tartuffe” next fall), in Boone, North Carolina (catching lunch with Sandra-the-Vegan), to Chattanooga, Tennessee (singing karaoke with Sabra and her husband, Paul), to Calhoun, Georgia (trying out my Shakespeare show on my friend, Lori), and Greenwood, SC (watching Romeo & Juliet at the theatre that had produced my “Misanthrope” last spring).

Finally, it was on to Newberry, South Carolina, where I was to do my second performance of “Lot o’ Shakespeare”. They’ve hosted me twice in years past, doing “Criteria” and “Karaoke Knights”, so a lot of the students were already familiar with my work. I felt comfortable performing for them, knowing that they were already a friendly audience.

Unfortunately, my video camera seemed to have shorted out on me, and my hopes of recording the performance were disappointed (though my hosts eventually found a camera of their own which could pick up a half hour of the show). I did find myself dashing all over the city of Columbia, South Carolina, trying to find the right plug for my camera in the hours before the show, which set my nerves a bit on edge prior to the start of my show. (If I get some video back from Newberry in the next couple of weeks, I’ll post it here.)

With my approach to this performance, I was focusing on two fixes from the last show: slowing down my pace through the scenes, especially in the transitions, and keeping the audience engaged with the game as far into the show as I could.

This time around, the t-shirt was not won until about 30 minutes into the performance, and at that point, I put ANOTHER t-shirt up for whomever might get a combination of four squares horizontally, vertically AND diagonally. That kept the audience engaged and in-play for another 20 minutes or so, and my hosts noted that the students really were hanging on for the possibility of winning something. As manifestly obvious a “plot device” as a free t-shirt might be, it was enough to get them to pay attention to Shakespeare!

Meanwhile, I’d planted one or two ideas with my hosts, that if I couldn’t maintain the contest throughout, there were one or two monologues that they might particularly want to request, and the host eventually requested “Julius Caesar,” which went very well. (My two 7-minute monologues, “Julius Caesar” and “Twelfth Night” stand out from the rest, if only because the characters evolve at an entirely different rate, and the size that they realize is above and beyond what I can build to in the 2-4 minute monologues.)


Excited by the success of this performance, I rushed on to Auburn, Alabama, with a performance of “Moliere Than Thou” at Auburn University. (My friend Jenny was there to help me load in and set up the venue.) I was setting up in a lecture hall once again. The connection to the audience was close and immediate, but the venue had no real masking for an entrance, so we stacked up a table on top of the computer podium so that I could hide.

Eventually some seventy students came in, and the show went great. Within an hour, I was rushing back along to Montgomery, Alabama, where Auburn University at Montgomery was hosting their annual Liberal Arts conference.

This was the big challenge. This was the school that had hosted “Moliere Than Thou” last year, and who’d called me on my bluff when I told them I was working on a new Shakespeare show. Fortunately, it was their deadline that got me working on a show that I’m sure I would’ve been no further along toward creating today than I was a year ago.

As improved as the Newberry performance was over the Dallas performance a month prior, so was the AUM performance improved since Newberry. I was able to apply the lessons from the Newberry show almost immediately, and walked out with a much more effective command of the stage than I’d felt previously.

The host who introduced me to the crowd (Val), emphasized the “participatory” nature of the show to the crowd in advance of the performance, telling them that they were free to cheer and boo and applaud through the course of the play, to the point that, from the moment I stepped out on stage, people were calling out responses to me, with one man who kept requesting “Coriolanus!”


This really loosened me up. I had to stay on my toes throughout the show, improvising retorts to people who were ready to interact with me, and that, in turn, had the effect of having my memorized sequences look fairly improvised. There were a couple of instances when I got shaken off of my lines, most notably in the “Measure for Measure” scene, where I’d never performed the scene with an actual volunteer on stage with me. This scene of Shakespearean sexual harassment was drawing low rumbling laughter from the crowd as they could see right through Angelo’s thinly disguised seduction, but while I was fairly confident on my own lines, I had completely forgotten how many of Isabella’s lines I’d left in, so I never knew when I should wait for an interruption, or continue with my line, and I had to check the script in the hand of the volunteer.

Also, once during Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech, I forgot one of those words that more than 50% of the audience knew and ended up saying … “or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by … whatever… end them.”

My absolute favorite monologues were spinning out of the bingo cage, with only a slight couple of the “History” monologues, and even those were the popular “Henry V” and “Richard III” monologues. A couple of times, a couple of people in the audience roared their approval on monologues that end with a rallying cry (“Henry V” and “Julius Caesar”). And the “Are you meditating on virginity” monologue from “Alls Well that Ends Well,” got HUGE laughs.

Somehow, I had hit upon the formula. This time, I gave away a t-shirt, a CD (“Karaoke Knights”) and a book (“The Misanthrope”). I had a viable strategy for holding the audience’s attention, AND once I’d reeled them in to watch a given scene, I was able to pay off their efforts through the performance. While I’d hoped that this play might be half as good as “Moliere Than Thou,” I was now convinced that it could be AS good. And if the quality of the show was AS good as MTT, then I’d be able to book it like crazy. Because for every one class that gets taught on Moliere in the United States, there are about a hundred classes taught on Shakespeare.

After about 5 years of strategizing and memorizing, I was feeling vindicated. The formula had worked.

While I still didn’t have a camera to set up and record the show, I did at least think to draw up a feedback form for the performance which captured some great reactions:

“Glorious… I’ve been wanting to begin reading the plays again, and this performance has begun me on that! People hear the beauty of Shakespeare’s language as it frames beautiful, i.e. truthful, ideas and reveals the best and worst of human characters. People will wish to see more of each play!” (Margaret Stephens, Assoc prof of English and Humanities, ASU)

“What a fun concept! Great introduction to Shakespeare’s Canon! Midsummer – Puck; great ending.” (Neil David Seibel, Assistant Prof of Theatre AUM)

“A brilliant display of skill. It shows the relative easy access Shakespeare has.” (Mickey Lonsdale, Junior Theatre Major)

“The monologues were so entertaining, that the Shakespeare I don’t know, I will look up.” (Ashley Portis, Junior at BTW!)

“Fast, Funny. Not Reduced Shakespeare Company, but definetely more faithful!” (Laura Bramblette, Student)

“It was awesome, well performed, and very entertaining.” (Anthony Mcendarfer)

“Very enjoyable! Sweeping interest! Well Done! Delicious smorgasbord of WS, delightfully served up in random order. Always new & fresh!” (Len Daley)

“The man is a chameleon. Enraged, excited and electrifying, he is all over the stage and a joy to watch! His quick catch-up before each monologue is great for younger audiences who have not been as exposed to Shakespeare’s canon.” (Naomi Stauffer, AUM Alumni)

“It was great! I saw Moliere than Thou here at AUM last year, and this show was just as good. The way he interacts with the audience is phenomenal! It gives people (Who might not otherwise see Shakespeare) a chance to see how accessible and entertaining Shakespeare can be!” (Matthew Kemp, Senior Undergrad, AUM)

“I loved it! It is amazing – a great selection of so many famous quotations. Wow!” (Dr. Jennifer Moody)

“Awesome.”

“Great!”

“Incredible!!!”

“Hilarious & very entertaining.”

“Captivating.”

“Very entertaining; shocked by his talent”

“Amazing!!! Very interesting & very funny.”

“Perfectly amazing!” (Brittany Carden, Student)

“Wonderful. I could not stop laughing.”

“WTF? LOL. Guy was funny.”

I drove all the way home from Montgomery to Chicago in a single day on the energy of that performance.

I had a few days to get caught up on business, finally finishing my taxes from the past year, and getting back into the swing of my exercise program. (Last year I was on the road for a total of 196 days!)

I performed at North Central College in Naperville once again. The French Faculty wanted me back to do a workshop on spoken language, which I awkwardly cut and paste from my yet-unpublished acting textbook, which I followed with a performance that same evening. Some fifty or so were in attendance, seemingly enjoying themselves quite well, and the hosts seemed interested in the new Shakespeare show, which I am now high on promoting everywhere I go.

The next night, I went to the guest event in anticipation of another Pathways weekend at which I’ll be group-leading, and got inspired once more to get back to work on my acting textbook. Last summer, I came awfully close to finalizing it and self-publishing, but my efforts to get bookings booked kept me from finishing it. I realized that one of my biggest problems was “MOMENTUM,” as I seemed to drop the book entirely for almost a year at a time when I got back on the road. I made a commitment that night to edit my way through at least one chapter of the book a day, even when I’m on the road, so that by the time I got back home at the end of this month, I could be done with the latest round of corrections, and could get back to finalizing it quickly, rather than from a standing start. (So far, I’ve been through 43 pages in the last 6 days on the road!)

I packed up and headed back to Bloomington, Illinois, with my third performance at Illinois Wesleyan. The French teacher there is a real Moliere fan, as is one of the local high school teachers, and while there’d been some fall-off in attendance at my second IWU performance, this time there were about 100 people in the audience again. Many of them had seen the show in previous years, and some of them knew to sit up front, given that that was where I usually go for my volunteers.

It was a terrific night. Even the very young girl (maybe 13?) in the front row that I’d approached as Agnes (who Arnolphe condescends to painfully, was perfect, as she strived mightily to see the benevolence in Arnolphe. But every time he concluded how great a life she’d have (if she only married him and turned her back on “pleasure”), she only ended up with a confused look. Meanwhile, the “Tartuffe” volunteer was adorable, and the “Doctor” volunteer was a very warm Facebook friend, who has several times described me as the “best actor in the world.”

The next day I drove west, stopping briefly in Kearney, Nebraska, grabbing dinner with my friend Janice, who is now interested in my new Shakespeare show, and continuing up through Wyoming to Montana in the second day of driving. The third day brought me to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where I am typing this now.

I’d asked my buddy, Joe, to schedule a performance of the Shakespeare show. I’d managed to fix the video camera, and wanted to capture some good visuals of the new, reinvigorated show, so I’d have something to promote the show with over the summer, for the Fringe Festivals in Indianapolis and Kansas City, as well as for the coming year’s bookings.

Since I’d offered to do this performance in return to whatever audience contributions I might earn, I dropped in on Joe’s rehearsal, and a couple of his classes, as well as the theatre club meeting, doing a couple previews of some of the monologues that were likely to come up (and taxing my voice significantly in advance of the show).

The venue was a small auditorium/lecture hall, with a projection unit overhead. We set up quickly, and put out a basket for contributions. I was shocked to see some forty or so people coming in, at such short notice. One attendee had obviously cleaned out his/her piggy bank to see the show, as in the contribution basket was a large baggie filled with change!

Again, the show was well received. The array of monologues that came spinning out of the cage were not quite as strong as the Alabama collection, but the audience’s response seemed to be just as enthusiastic. Though I forgot to distribute feedback forms until the auditorium was almost empty, I did collect some good responses:

“Brilliant!!! So much [educational value], the expressions, the power of enunciation. Everything I saw inspired me to push more in my career. Thank you!!” (Jonathan Breitkrautz, Actor/Student)

“Loved every minute of it. The variety of voice and stature any actor should posses. How much you can do with nothing but talent.” (Michael McGiveney, America’s Quick Change Artists)

“Loved it. It was ‘Fun’ Shakespeare. I’d love to see high school students enjoy it – I think they would be less ‘scared’ of Shakespeare.” (Judith McGiveney, Costume Designer)

“It was a wonderful evening in which I was taken through true love, anger, treachery and lust, and I enjoyed every minute of it.” (Vienna Thomas, College Student & Theatre Lover)

“An engaging, compelling evening of theatre. Audiences find that Shakespeare is as entertaining as any contemporary film or TV show.” (Joe Jacoby, Theatre Instructor, North Idaho College)

Miles on the Escape: 16,500

On the i-pod: Dresden Dolls

Temperature: 30s in Idaho (having left my coat behind in 70 degree Chicago)

Attendance: 400-ish (“Tartuffe”) + 15 + 85 + 25 + 15 + 20 + 80 + 70 + 70 + 60 + 15 + 60 + 100 + 12 + 8 + 40 = 995

Discoveries: Warming up before the show with the hardest part of the show (in this case the opening scene), gives you a secure foothold into the work. * Throwing ourselves into it with reckless abandon makes the important stuff bubble to the top. * Just because I am trying something that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before does not mean that there’s something wrong with it. * I can slow down and take the time to get in that extra flourish of a moment before plowing forward to the next thing. * The audience will take the concept of the play dead seriously as long as I do. * As manifestly obvious a “plot device” as a free t-shirt might be, it was enough to get them to pay attention to Shakespeare! * The seven-minute monologues enable me to bring the emotional pitch of the scene to an epic stature. * A deadline gets me working a million times harder than an abstract intention does. * Getting the audience into the spirit of participating may keep me back on my heels, but it enables the big moments of the show to really pop. * I can still commit to maintaining my MOMENTUM on projects, even when I’m on the road.

Next shows: Snow College, Ephraim, UT (4/15) and Central Lakes College, Brainerd, MN (4/19)

The View From Here #142: IL, WI, MI

The day after my return from the Pacific Northwest, I turned around and headed north to Wisconsin, for the Wisconsin Theatre Association, where the Middleton High School version of my “The Miser” was competing in the state finals. The production was terrific, with one especially good performance by the actor playing the Miser, Harpagon. (My cousin Jan, who met me in Whitewater for the performance, thought he was a professional actor.) The competition judges named it to “All State,” which is apparently one step shy of the highest rating, “Critics Choice.” The only reason it did not receive “Critic’s Choice” is because the show ran a minute past the competition’s 35-minute limit.

On my way home from Whitewater, the alternator gave out on my car, and I had to have it towed to a shop, while Dad drove up to pick me up in McHenry, Illinois.

You might have assumed I’d be in a bad mood from my car breaking down, but between the success of the performance, and my awareness of the thousands of much worse places (mountains, deserts, snowstorms…) in which my car might have given up the ghost, I was content to break down just an hour from home.

I went ahead and had it fixed, but, with over 344,000 miles on it, I knew that its days were numbered, and this wake up call would get me to replace the Molieremobile with a car that would carry me the next several hundred thousand miles.

Even so, I found somebody who wanted to buy the car (making me back the money I invested on the new alternator and then some), while buying a new Ford Escape, a car which would give me relatively good mileage, along with the room that I seemed to be lacking as props and costumes from multiple shows accumulated behind me.


Back in the Chicago suburbs, I was quickly in rehearsals for “Tartuffe” at Lake Forest College (see below), and throwing myself into my semi-annual e-mailing campaign (about 15,000 e-mails to Theatre/French/English faculty). I was also getting serious about my latest one-man show (particularly given that I was promoting it in the e-mails that were flying out from my computer).

The name of the show has gone from “Shakespeare Roulette,” to “Shakespeare Lotto” to “Lot o’ Shakespeare.” About 6,000 e-mails into my campaign, I discovered that at least one spam filter was keeping my e-mails from going through because the word “Lotto” was in the message. And thus “Lot o’ Shakespeare” became the official title. One friend suggested that I should call the show “You Won The Nigerian Shakespeare Viagra Sweepstakes!”

But, during the course of the break, I went from having, perhaps 15 monologues memorized to 38! And three schools booked my show for this spring, sight unseen! (Without even a review to demonstrate the value of the show!) (These were all venues that had booked me in the past, so at least they had some confidence in the personnel.)

Somewhere in the middle of things (December 8-January 11), Lake Forest College went on break, I drove out to pick up Isaac and bring him home for Christmas, and I returned to Michigan for the American College Theatre Festival (Region 3) festival. They were bringing me in to perform a workshop and to respond to a performance of Sam Shepard’s “True West.” The workshop was thinly attended (4 people), though I enjoyed visiting with old friends and correspondents. The final morning of the festival I gave my response to “True West,” which went fairly well. As I was getting ready to leave, the students asked about my background.

When I told them that I was a touring actor, travelling across the country with “Moliere Than Thou,” one student asked: “Are you on YouTube?”

I replied, “I am ALL OVER YouTube.”

Suddenly she perked up: “I saw you! I was researching ‘Tartuffe’ and came across your videos! You are AWESOME!”

Well, that made my day.

I returned home, and returned to rehearsals for “Tartuffe,” and “Lot o’ Shakespeare”, finishing up the e-mail campaign (still cleaning up the accumulated response e-mails from out of my box).

And, with less than a week before getting back on the road (first step Mardi Gras!), Tartuffe is previewing tonight (February 10), with opening night tomorrow, February 11! It’s an amazing show, perhaps the result of the accumulation of bits stolen from the twenty or so productions of this play that I’ve seen so far, as well as a terrific cast, and some creative thinking that has gone into pre-show pantomime, between scenes scurrying, and a grandiose curtain call. Eventually, I should have some video posted, but if you can make it, it’ll be worth the time and effort! (I fully expect that it WILL SELL OUT every night, so you'll want reservations for this one!) Info at http://www.lakeforest.edu/admissions/news/news_story.asp?iNewsID=979&strBack=/Default.asp Check back next week for video!

Miles on the Escape: 4,5000
Temperature: 20s
Discoveries: I could choose to get upset about the car breaking down, or appreciate how incredibly lucky I was to safely drive a car with over 340,000 miles back from the West Coast, find a buyer for it, AND get an amazing new vehicle. – The e-mailing campaign goes better when I offer one-time discounts to the teachers when I’m passing through their states. – Memory is limitless. We may assume that there is only so much stuff that we can cram up there, but there is always room for more.
Attendance: 4 + 20 = 24
On the I-Pod: Dresden Dolls and Amanda Palmer
Next Performance: “Tartuffe” at Lake Forest College, 2/11-2/20/2010; “Lot o’ Shakespeare” at Richardson High School, Richardson, TX, 2/22/10.

The View From Here #141: IN, NY, VA, IL, TX, MO, AR, KY, VA, PA, IL, WI, ID

Way back in mid-September I started the fall tour, with a show in Indianapolis, hosted by a high school French teacher who was the first to successfully apply for and receive one of Kirsten’s matching grants to pull the thing together. It all came together fairly last-minute, and we were unsure whether the show would actually happen until a few days in advance of the performance, but given that I’d spent a long summer not actually earning money, I was fairly determined to make it happen.

The show took place in an auditorium in the basement of a college library, mostly designed for lectures. The acoustics were good, but a big Audio-visual platform stood between the front rows of seats, which disrupted the sight lines any time I’d come down into the audience. I got into costume in an A-V closet behind the audience, and in the flurry of getting packed up after the very well-received performance, I left Moliere’s platform shoes in the closet, not noticing that I didn’t have them with me until the next show on the schedule. (They proceeded to chase me around the country, by way of slow shipping, for the next month.)

Meanwhile, I headed up to New York, with a workshop in Rochester for my old grad-school friend, Lindsay, where her students were working on a restoration-era play. I managed to stop in Buffalo, NY on my way there, visiting Niagara Falls, and contemplating the idiots that might give in to the impulse to go over these waters in a barrel.

I took a long weekend in Baltimore, visiting my sister, Maureen and her husband, Tim, and enjoyed some late summer weather out by their fish pond, while working on more Shakespeare monologues. The trick with the Shakespeare monologues seems to be memorizing a new one while not losing my grip on the ones that I’ve memorized already. As of this writing, I’m up to 26 monologues, more or less memorized, with another ten yet to add to the mix. (More on this in a moment…)

I headed down to Roanoke, VA with a show at Hollins University. Their theatre was under construction, so I was performing in a recital hall space. Hollins is an women’s school, which generally makes for a fun performance, and the show did extremely well. Almost two months later, my own memory is vague on the details, but I have a couple of enthusiastic e-mails to remind me:

“Thank you for your wonderful performance. You brought a new world to our students... In an old sort of way. They were absolutely delighted.” (Ernest Zulia, Theatre Chair, Hollins University)

“I have been going to theatrical productions for over 60 years (I counted up so I could say that) and I have never been to one where the audience was as enthusiastic, as caught up in the spirit of the show. If you had sent us out to storm the Bastille I think we would have tried.” (Mary Hull, Roanoke, VA)

From there, it was a quick drive home to Chicago, where I was the host of “Pathways Idol,” the second annual Pathways fundraiser. Last year’s fundraiser shocked us all by bringing in over $10,000. This year we audaciously set our goal higher, and ended up bringing in $17,000! This time, the audience had a better idea of what to expect, and the songs were even more playfully fun than last year. Our good friend, Iggy, created a slide show to “Then I Saw Her Face,” saluting his girlfriend, and Michael Collins brought the house down with “I Feel Like a Woman” (below).


A few days later, I was back on the road, heading for Brownwood, Texas, where my friend, Nancy Jo Humfeld is getting ready to direct the very first production of my version of “The Bourgeois Gentleman”. I was to give a couple of acting workshops, as well as perform “Moliere Than Thou”, and was also going to meet up with Nancy Jo to talk through the show, but as the event approached, her brother, sadly, succumbed to cancer (that they’d thought he’d beaten), and she was caught up away from home when the workshops and show were going forward. (She left behind a great staff to take care of me throughout the weekend.)

The new Shakespeare Show was continuing to take shape, and, while I could construct a good half-dozen strategies for the order of performance, I decided that absolute RANDOMNESS would add a tension to the event that would make it much more exciting than any intellectual structure that I might attach to the event. While I was tempted to call the show “Shakespeare Roulette,” and spin a big wheel to choose the monologues, I couldn’t think of an easy way to guarantee that the same monologues wouldn’t come up repeatedly. I went on-line to a “Bingo” equipment website, and ordered a bingo cage with bingo balls, and proceeded to label them with Shakespeare titles. The new toy arrived in Brownwood, Texas, where I spent much of the weekend spinning the cage and rehearsing whatever monologue popped out. (It was a blast.) The new show is now titled "Shakespeare Lotto, or, Lot o' Shakespeare!"

The events in Brownwood went very well, and I’ve since been approached by one of the high school teachers in attendence, asking me to return in February to adjudicate some of their plays in competition. Meanwhile, I sped on to a show at Saginaw High School, just outside of Fort Worth, TX, where I did a show and a workshop. I’d asked the teacher whether he wanted the full 85-minute show, or the tighter 75-minute version, and he assured me that the students were mostly AP students who had an especial interest in the material, and could remain engaged for the longer show.

While the students were mostly responsive, I could sense an ongoing rumble coming from one section of the auditorium, from students who did not seem to share the especial interest that the others did. I soldiered on, but by the end of the play, the chatterers were growing more disruptive, and all of my pausing/staring-them-down tricks were only buying me brief seconds of attentivness, before they went back to their more-important conversations. When the play ended, many of the students were already out of their seats a couple of seconds into the curtain call, and I departed without my usual extra bow. The teacher would have none of this, however, and gave them all an impromptu lecture about theatre etiquitte, asking me to return to the stage once more for a proper bow.

Even in this, I found a reason to be grateful: this was clearly a lesson that this group needed to learn, and it was, perhaps, better for them to learn it from my show than from a more insecure performer, who had not gained sufficient confidence from hundreds of other, somewhat more successful performances.

From there, I continued on down to a show in San Marcos, Texas at Texas State University. While it was the French Department bringing me in for this one, I got a chance to visit with my old undergrad advisor, Chuck Pascoe, who is now with the Texas State Theatre department. The San Marcos show was also in a lecture space, but this was a more intimate, three-quarters arrangement.

The weather in San Marcos was still in the upper 80s, and my glasses would steam up when moving from an air conditioned car to the outside. They wanted me to give an acting workshop for a French Theatre class, but rather than my usual prepared exercises, they wanted me to answer a series of (more or less) random questions about film acting (they were creating films in French): how to stage a fight, how to choose a location … and so the workshop was mostly improvised, with me occasionally hitting one of my pet topics and ranting for ten minutes or so.

The performance itself went extremely well, with perhaps 80 or so showing up, many of whom were sitting behind me to either side, and I was struggling to keep them all included. The only woman in the right position to direct the “Tartuffe” speech to was holding her husband’s hand the entire time. But at least a very attractive French teacher volunteered for the Elmire scene, and it played extremely well.

The next morning, I was on the road early, heading north. Within 30 minutes of departing San Marcos, the temperature dropped fifteen degrees or so. By the time I reached Kansas City that evening, the temperature was downright cool.

The Kansas City Fringe Festival was holding a fundraiser, and I had offered up fifteen minutes of “Shakespeare Lotto, or, Lot o’Shakespeare” for the event. By this time I had perhaps fifteen monologues performance-ready, and this would be my first tryout of the material. Saturday morning we had a quick tech-through, and I stopped out for lunch afterwards before heading back for a dress rehearsal. I had recruited a volunteer who was a dancer in one of the other shows to spin my Bingo cage, which led to unavoidable jokes about the bingo balls, and which kept the stage visually interesting, as I encouraged the girl to upstage me whenever possible.

Unfortunately, my fast-food chicken lunch was not sitting well, and I made it through perhaps four monologues before having to cut the rehearsal short and clear offstage. I then spent the day doing battle with my stomach which refused to settle down and, while I continued to hold out hope for performing that night, when 8 pm rolled around, the stomach upset was on the “flow” phase of its ebb and flow, and I gave my apologies to the Fringe folks, departing the theatre just in time.

While I might have gotten especially frustrated or upset over the great distance I’d driven for no purpose, it was actually an occasion for extreme gratitude, as I realized that in 35 years of performance, this was the first time I’ve ever been unable to go onstage, and it happened to be on a night that I wasn’t actually earning any money. If this had happened for any other performance, I would’ve been out a couple thousand dollars.

I also found myself wondering whether my particular susceptibility that night had anything to do with nervousness about performing material that I’d never done in public before.

I was recovered within 24 hours, and on my way to a show in Cabot, Arkansas. The French teacher there, Kristie Robinson, had brought me in twice before, for a performance and a workshop. This time around, she was only able to secure a gymnasium for the performance, and about 400 students filled the center section of bleachers while I performed from the gym floor (where the half-court line meets the sideline).

The vast cubic footage of the space swallowed up my voice, and forced me to use every bit of oxygen I had to be heard (and understood) all the way to the back row. And yet, the students remained attentive and quiet throughout. I was astonished that, even amid this disadvantageous environment, the students were far more involved than the Saginaw group.

Through some of the more popular monologues, I could see several of the students, who had obviously been studying scenes from the show on YouTube, mouthing the words in perfect coordination to my performance, as if these were the lyrics of songs that had been played over and over again. Favorite lines such as the “Fair Marquise,” and “Stop Thief,” revealed students who were barely able to restrain their gestures from where they sat in the bleachers. I began to feel like to be a rock star.

That night I headed on to Memphis, visiting with a friend from last winters performances at the Playhouse on the Square, and pushing on to Murray, Kentucky, for my workshop and show at Murray State University.

The workshop was my “Writing, Directing and Producing the One-Man Show” session, and since the last time I’d given this one, I’d now added two shows to my repertoire, and had no lack of material to fill up two hours. I recruited a couple of theatre majors to volunteer for my performance that night.

Once again, I was performing in a recital hall, with limited tech. The French teacher, however, had recruited the music department to provide harpsichord and violin music that night, and getting several of her students and faculty to dress up in period costumes. (Fortunately, the costumed French folks didn’t want to volunteer for the scenes on stage, which would’ve looked too, too, suspiciously pre-planned.) Afterwards, they held a reception for me back at the guest house where I was staying, and I enjoyed the attentions of several “Moliere-groupies” who had clearly enjoyed the show very much.

I had a week-long break before my next performance, and I headed south to Chattanooga, where I got to introduce my Chattanooga friends, Sabra and Paul to my Atlanta friend, Lori, at the karaoke bar, and we had a great time, particularly as Lori, a divinity student at Emory U, had never been to a karaoke joint before. I spent a couple of days at Lori’s house, buying a new laptop at the nearby Staples while I was there (office supply stores were clearing out their inventory in anticipation of Windows 7 coming out), and I was anticipating a drive to South Carolina, to revisit some of my Greenwood Community Theatre friends, when the news about Mom arrived.

Dad didn’t want me to have to interrupt my tour, and impulsively, I suggested that I’d come home after my Saturday show in Virginia. I walked around in a daze for about an hour. I had been rehearsing my Shakespeare show at Lori’s house, but couldn’t focus on that. Nor could I imagine getting anything done for the next several days, and certainly the fun waiting in South Carolina didn’t seem as enjoyable as I’d anticipated.

Without making a decision, I started packing up the car. And when the car was packed, I started the long drive home. That night I made it into Kentucky, where I got a hotel room in what I was disappointed to discover was a dry county (I spent another half hour seeking out a six pack of beer). The next morning, I drove again, getting home late in the afternoon.

Fortunately, I was too late to dive into any of the many administrative plans that had already been resolved, though it was comforting to be there with the family, and to know that everyone was holding up.

The next night, I headed for Virginia, getting there in time for a Saturday morning performance of “Criteria.” There was something comforting about driving at this point, as it gave me something constructive to actually do. And it didn’t feel “wrong” to memorize lines as the miles went by.

The Virginia show was at an all-boys boarding school, and was intended as entertainment more than education. The teachers apologized that an especial lot of the students seemed to be off campus for sporting events, leaving perhaps 80 or so in the audience.

The audience seemed particularly quiet, even on what seemed to be some fairly self-evidently comic lines. Afterwards, the teachers were enthusiastic, and invited me to join them in the lunchroom, where they explained that a rather high percentage of the non-athletic students (the ones who’d remained on-campus), were foreign students, for whom English was a second language, and who would be fairly unaware of nuances of relationships between states and social security numbers, both of which are at the heart of this show.

Within an hour, I was back on the road, heading home once again, and arriving just in time for the visitation Sunday night.

While I was pleased to see Isaac, along with the many relatives and friends who’d come out to the visitation, the time passed incredibly slowly, with every twenty minutes of the six-hour event feeling like an hour.

The next morning, a brief prayer at the funeral home, gave way to a procession to the church (where I read a passage at the service), followed by a caravan to the cemetery. The hearse took a special route back by way of the family home on Forrest Avenue, which had been Mom’s beloved home of the past 48 years. The hearse paused there, in front of the house, giving mom a final goodbye, before continuing on to services in the cemetery chapel.

An absurd vision passed through my head as we approached the cemetery, reminiscent of the movie, “Defending Your Life,” where I imagined a big banner out front announcing “Welcome Shirley Mooney”.

From there, it was on to a luncheon, and a long series of goodbyes to relatives who’d come in from distant points. I had about 24 hours at the house before I had to push back onto the road myself, leaving Dad to rattle around in the empty house by himself for a while, as I proceeded to a show in Pennsylvania.

Originally, bookings that took me from Georgia to Virginia to Pennsylvania didn’t sound all that challenging, but now I was returning to Chicago between each event. I was, of course, relieved that the timing worked out such that I didn’t have to cancel any performances (a possibility that had hung over my head in recent years), but then I would immediately feel guilty that’d seemed so important in a time such as this.

I had a good feeling about the show at St. Francis University. The French teacher seemed to have prepped her students quite a bit, and we arranged for a camera operator to tape the event. The Tartuffe volunteer happened to be a girl named “Paris,” which caught me somewhat unawares, though the scene itself played very well.

The teacher was fairly certain that her shy French students might well freak out at the “Doctor” scene, and so she volunteered for it herself. And a cute girl who’d also had her hand up to volunteer for “Tartuffe”, was volunteering again when “Scapin” came around, so I brought her up. (She’s the first volunteer who has ever smacked me with the script at the point of the butt-pinch toward the end of the scene.)

In all, the show was a great success, and a few of us hit the bar afterwards, as the French teacher’s husband, a performer himself, expounded at great length about how inspiring the show had been.

Meanwhile, the French teacher e-mailed:

“We had a great time, too! I've gotten some very positive buzz about last night. Everyone is impressed with the quality of performance, and the students simply loved your inappropriateness. We are all aflutter.” (Karen Casebier)

And she sent along the reactions from a colleague:

"I was particularly impressed as to how he caught the heart of Moliere's art, that is, the ribald comedy (a product of Moliere's years in the provinces with the Comedia dell'arte) which is a combination of slapstick but also not gratuitous since it speaks to how humans interact socially, his satire of the professions and how this is conveyed aesthetically in terms of language and the theatrical genre. This presentation is so much more effective in understanding Moliere than reading Lagarde/Michard or most critics." (Vince Remillard, Professor Emeritus of French, Saint Francis University)

I had a weekend to spare, and found my way back south into West Virginia, where a friend I’d met at the West Virginia Theatre Conference a year before recommended a resort hotel where I could get an employees’ discount. It was a terrific room, though I spent much of my time inside, working on lines and reading Shakespeare. I visited a Haloween party at Glenville State College, meeting up with several students I’d worked with at WVTC, and continued on to Eastern Kentucky University, where I was being booked by the History department.

I’m booked so rarely by History groups, that I tend to assume that the audience will be less responsive, and the laughter did, in fact, start out low. This audience was accustomed to lectures, and was rather unsure how to take this outlandish performance in their midst, but about three monologues into the event, they began to respond, and by the end they were laughing at every “Stop Thief.” The only volunteer I’d attempted to prearrange was uncertain about the “Doctor” scene, but as the “Tartuffe” volunteer had been so lively, I went right back to her for the latter scene, and she played along.

Afterwards, I got to hang out for a bit with my (second) cousin, Tim McGee, who was studying at EKU, and who’d never seen my show before, though his dad, George (my first cousin), is a actor/director/teacher, who also performs one-man shows. (George and I are doing a presentation together at the Southeast Theatre Conference this spring, on “Audience Participation in the One-Man Show.”)

I worked my way back home, with a brief stop in Western Kentucky, for a visit with one of the Murray State show fans, and returning in time for my birthday. (April took me out for dinner, and we caught Rita McConville’s cabaret act with a full brass band.)

On Friday, I had a show at Libertyville High School, where they seemed unaware of the technical complexity of the show. While they were quite ready to set up microphones (which I did NOT need), the notion of having more than one light setting struck the technician as quite intimidating.

The teacher had been skittish about the salacious content of the show, and I promised to pare it back where possible. The setting allowed for an intimate relationship with the audience, although there was a three-foot barrier between the stage and the first row of seats. While Tartuffe would normally not let any such obstacle stand in the way of his seduction, I decided that clambering over the half-wall would send too much of a sensation through the audience, and get my host in trouble.

They’d set aside two class periods for the event, and even doing the entire show, there still seemed to be about 20 minutes left at the end, so that by the time I returned after changing clothes, all the kids were still in the auditorium, looking at me expectantly. I offered to do a brief Q&A session.

After the show, I swung by a school in Lake Forest, which was interested in a booking. The following day, we held our first read-through of “Tartuffe” at Lake Forest College (it’s going to be a great show). (Opens February 11.)

I finally caught a moment to assemble my reflections on mom's passing, posting them on the Daily Herald's obituary site, along with postings from Kevin, Maureen, and more of the family.

April had arranged a fiftieth birthday party for me. While I remained uninformed about the venue or the activities or attendees, I still knew that the event was going to happen (I had, in fact, drawn up my schedule a year before to keep this weekend available), and had been looking forward to it for a long time.

A great many cars on her block confirmed that the party was at her house. She met me in the driveway, blindfolded me, and walked me back into her back yard, while I started my camera running “to catch my reaction”. Unveiling the blindfold revealed a large tent, and some thirty or forty people awaiting.

While I was delighted to see everyone there, I was particularly astonished as I recognized people who were disguised in masks (the party was a Mardi Gras theme) to see that our friend, Rowena, had flown in from London, Sabra had arrived from Chattanooga, Kirsten had come in from L.A., Kelly was in out of Milwaukee, and Bill and Susan had come down from Northern Wisconsin. (Most of the video below is dark and out of focus, but that’s how it appeared to me, too, without my glasses.

An evening of fun, conspicuous drinking and karaokeing ensued. They had all gone in on a huge gift: a room in New Orleans with a balcony overlooking Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras!

The party was followed by a day of recovery.

Monday, I had a show at the College of Lake County, arranged through the French Department. Given that this performance was virtually in my back yard, there were a dozen or so people who knew me, including Rowena (from London), who’d never seen me perform anything but karaoke in the past, as well as a publisher-friend, Linda, who has been (graciously) rejecting my plays for over ten years, now. (I was glad to be able to demonstrate the play’s effect live and in person.)

Rowena had quickly made friends with the girl sitting next to her in the front row, and both knew that there were volunteer scenes approaching. When I singled out Rowena to direct “Tartuffe” to, her new friend cleared out of her seat in order to snap photos, a move the rest of the audience couldn’t help but notice. When she tried to sneak back into her seat, I did a huge “where-have you been” take to her, which cracked up the rest of the audience. For the next scene, I pulled this girl up on stage, while Rowena snapped pictures.

News had come floating in about successes of my plays in high school productions. My “The Miser” had won its district and regional competitions, and was now going to the Wisconsin State finals. My “Imaginary Invalid” was proceeding to finals in North Carolina, and “Tartuffe” was going to finals in Alabama. (Much as last year, when my “Misanthrope” had enjoyed success in Connecticut, and “Invalid” had gone on to finals in Virginia.) At least 50% of the productions that were being done of my 40-minute shortened versions were going on to state finals, a result which should bode well for future productions, as other teachers observe the success that these are enjoying. (Meanwhile, Playscripts, Inc. has announced their intent to publish my 40-minute versions of “The Misanthrope,” “Don Juan,” “The Learned Ladies” and “The School for Husbands.” – This makes for 15 published scripts!)

The school in Wisconsin suddenly wanted to bring me in for an acting workshop, and we hastily cobbled together a visit. The teacher wrote:

Nine Festival judges have now been unanimous in delighting in your script, telling us we have taken on an ENORMOUS challenge with the rhyme and timing. … Your adaptation has been a wonderful challenge for my students. I do have different levels of experience and the closer we get to state the more we see that. (Lynda Sharpe, Middleton High School)

Meanwhile, the North Carolina teacher wrote:

Tim, I just thought I'd let you know that we did quite well at festival this weekend with your adaptation of "The Imaginary Invalid," & that we are taking it to the NCTC State One-Act Play Festival on Nov. 19-20 at Greensboro College. We received 6 major awards, & the play was the talk of the festival. One judge gave it a perfect score, & the other judge gave it one point less. They simply loved it. I was so proud of the kids, too, because they got the language, the story, the characters- everything! (Barbara Mager, Matthews High School)

In Wisconsin, I sped through a quick presentation of my acting materials (with my nephew Shane in the audience, catching my act for the first time), after which the actors were eager to get my help with the difficult climax of the play. With the director’s blessing, I ran slightly roughshod over her blocking to rearrange portions of the end and get the students to play up the big discoveries of the end. Racing on to the west coast from there, I should have just enough time to do my performance(s) in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and race back to catch this show in the Wisconsin state finals.

From Madison, I was on to Minneapolis for an evening of karaoke and visiting, and from there to Miles City, Montana, dodging snowstorms on my way to Missoula, Montana (catching up with Joe Proctor), and then on to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I met up with a former student of mine from Nebraska in 1984, who’d rediscovered me when she saw my name on a poster (when North Idaho College performed my “Doctor in Spite of Himself”).

All the while, memorizing more Shakespeare.

The show ROCKED in Coeur d'Alene (videos to be uploaded soon), and I stuck around for an extra day to sit in on my buddy, Joe's classes, and to do an extra workshop performance of my latest one-man play, from the recent Kansas City Fringe Festival, which also rocked! (The students didn't want to leave at the ending, but rather stayed in their chairs for over an hour afterwards to talk about the show.) By the end I was exhausted, and starting to feel like I was running a bit of a fever. I caught a good night's sleep at the hotel, finished up these notes, and am ready for the long trek back to Chicago.

See you soon!

Love,
Tim

Miles on the Vibe: 342,000
Temperature: 90s (Texas) to 20s (Montana)
Discoveries: Every seeming disaster can be viewed as a blessing: from lost shoes, to sickness to inattentive audiences. I can always choose to see the benefit of the particular event happening in the way that it did. –
Attendance: 100 + 20 + 75 + 25 + 45 + 125 + 150 + 30 + 12 + 85 + 400 + 80 + 75 + 200 + 80 + 250 + 100 + 32 + 150 + 20 = 1,954
On the I-Pod: Dresden Dolls and Amanda Palmer
Next Performance: “Tartuffe” at Lake Forest College, 2/11-2/20/2009