Everything Is Already Something Week 63: Helpful Steps To Be More Professional And Less Awful

Allison Page, America’s Less Awful Version Of Most Things.

Step 1: Get a fucking calendar. That’s how you keep track of your stuff.

Step 2: Use that fucking calendar. Ya see, then you’ll maybe show up to the stuff.

Step 3: Did you fuck up your calendar? Take care of that shit. Communicate with people when you need to change timing of a meeting or audition or ice cream. Don’t wait for them to ask you where the fuck you are.

Step 4: Apologize for fucking up. That was on you, say you’re sorry and suggest solutions.

Step 5: Learn from your fucking mistakes. Don’t keep making the same ones, especially with the same people. Nobody’s perfect, but don’t be awful.

Step 6: See Step 1.

Step 7: You did fucking get that calendar, right? Because…I was totally not kidding about that.

Step 8: Laptops generally come with calendars on them. If I see you with a MacBook pro and you can’t figure out your schedule, I’m going to flip a table. There’s also this thing called a smartphone.

Just one of the many fantastic calendar options of 2010

Step 9: Communicate your conflicts in a timely manner. No, no, you didn’t suddenly end up in Spain. That’s not something that happens. You had to buy tickets to Spain, so maybe that would have been a good time to tell the director you’re going off to find yourself and eat paella.

Step 10: Don’t over-promise. Listen, I have fucking done this before, and it’s terrible. Your volunteering isn’t going to make you look charitable if you cancel it 6 minutes before it’s supposed to happen. I say this from experience on both sides of that shitstick.

Step 11: Don’t underestimate someone’s ability to remember that you fucked up. Oh, they remember. BOY HOWDY. If you’ve fucked up and been a no-show more than once with the same person/company, you should probably call that out and say that you know about it and don’t plan to do it again because YOU HAVE ESTABLISHED A PATTERN, MY FRIEND. People notice patterns. Like fucking houndstooth.

Step 12: Your resume doesn’t matter as much as you do. If your resume is nice and you act like a shithead, it’s the shithead I’m going to remember, not the resume.

Step 13: Don’t be a shithead.

Step 14: If you don’t like the rules, don’t do the fucking thing. It saves you from doing something you don’t really agree with, and it saves every other person involved from listening to your bullshit. Know the expectations of the project/show/whatever and if they aren’t to your liking, walk away. It’s probably just better suited to someone else and you’re probably better suited to a different project that you actually like.

Step 15: See Step 1.

Allison Page is a writer/actor/creative director of Killing My Lobster.

Everything Is Already Something Week 62: What If Plays Were Like Prom Dresses?

Allison Page is storming the barn.

This year there were three separate productions of Glengarry Glen Ross in the Bay Area meaning the play was running for four months straight: one production in San Francisco, one in Berkeley, and one in Alameda. I should say there was one ten day stretch where GGR wasn’t playing, but there was also one ten day stretch wherein two were happening at the same time, 11 miles apart, so they sort of cancel each other out in my non-scientific mind. I wonder if both of those Ricky Romas were looking up at the same moon.

Eurydice is playing right now in Berkeley, and played earlier this year in Palo Alto, as well as two years ago in both San Francisco and Hayward, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I were missing some.

There’s a company who does Book of Liz every year in San Francisco, and another company has upcoming auditions for that same show in the East Bay.

Company is playing right now in San Francisco, and auditions were just held for another production of it in the Bay Area.

Where am I going with this? (It isn’t that I’m dying to get hate mail, and it’s not that these productions can’t be good) The point is — why is this happening? I’ve heard many people say that they don’t know what other companies’ seasons are like, and that it happens out of pure coincidence. I’m sure that’s true a lot of times. Though naturally, Samuel French will tell you which other companies have a show like Glengarry Glen Ross in their line-up. Looking at it now, if you manage to miss it here, head on over to Attleboro, Massachusetts to hear some old white men yell “Cunt!” this October or wander into Cincinnati, Ohio in April of 2016 to get your Roma fix!

Now you probably think I hate GGR because I just said that. I don’t. I like it, and I actually saw one of those productions. It’s not like someone’s about to surprise anyone with it, though. “Come see our new and inventive production of Glengarry Glen Ross set in a basement sex dungeon in Quebec!” Okay, maybe I’d be into that, I don’t know.

There’s also that whole thing about how the theater community at large, and definitely the Bay Area theater community, have done much buzzing about gender parity, and clearly having three of those things happening at one time means, uh…well, something not great. I think what it actually means is not willful constant dude-choosing over lady-choosing because SCREW ‘EM, on ANY of those companies’ or directors’ or producers’ parts, but actually just the age old problem that we tend to assume it’s someone else’s job. We’ve all talked about the issue together, and now everyone will do better because we did that…so we’ll just to stick to the old white men yelling “CUNT!” train and wait for someone else to produce Top Girls to balance us out. (Also, there are other plays featuring many women at once that aren’t Top Girls. I just have to say that twice a year to remind myself that it’s true.) And then we’ll hop onto another panel next year and nod our heads while everyone complains about how there aren’t roles for women and how awful that is.

BE it, not talk about it.

While I totally understand that super common impulse, it’s also how we keep things exactly the same and never ever change them: by thinking someone else will do it or that we’ll get to it later. That’s why my dad still hasn’t invented any of the weird gadgets he doodles on scratch paper, like the little water-filled windshield dog who turns to look in whatever direction you’re about to turn the car. (Sorry, pops, should’ve gotten a patent.)

At the Theater Bay Area Conference in April of this year, I was struck HARD by something Martha Richards said about parity at the opening panel. (I had to search through the billion #TBACon15 tweets from April to find this — already more research than I’ve ever put into any other blogs.)

“The numbers haven’t budged in years, there’s just more conversation about it.”

Woof. Ouch. We talk about it and then almost 5 months later I’m writing this blog about how it feels like instead of being the change — Be The Change was actually the tagline for TBACon15 — we’re just looking for the change from other people.

Okay, parity is not actually the point of this blog, I’m heading back to my original point.

I’ve heard many times over that the most offensive theater is the boring kind, and — to me — there is nothing more boring than the same shows over and over again. I like a classic as much as the next guy. I like a 90s romcom, or an 80s feminist play, or a 50s drama, or old white guys yelling “CUUUUNT!” but I like them to be mixed in with a representation of NOW. Or at least something I didn’t just see last month. We live in a time of instant entertainment. A movie comes out and it’s up on iTunes nearly immediately…or sometimes even before it’s out in theaters. We want the now, we want the here, there, and everywhere and we want it immediately. Why does Bay Area theater often feel so far behind? New works are being given readings which is…good? Sometimes I’m not sure. I want those FULL productions. I want to see what the new blood has to say before it resigns itself to being produced 25 years from now and buys a warm cardigan to settle in for the cold spell. TV shows and movies take time to make. Movies can take years. Plays take time too, but they can also go up really quickly. So, to me, theater can be the most vital, fast, furious beast around, but it often isn’t. It doesn’t feel like that right now.

And yes, I KNOW PEOPLE LIKED MAD MEN, BUT GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS ISN’T MAD MEN. I’m glad we cleared that up. Also, guys, Mad Men isn’t even on anymore. You’re way fucking behind. If you wanna tap into that vibe, there have got be other plays about businesspeople/assholes so that we don’t all have to do this at one time, but seriously, Mad Men is over. It feels like we’re teaching the emerging voices of what could be a flourishing generation of theater makers that their art isn’t going to matter until they’re either in New York or have been dead for 40 years. Or until our marketing campaigns for said art can align with a TV show. That feels shitty.

What does all this have to do with prom dresses? I don’t know how it was for you, but where I grew up, no one was allowed to buy a prom dress someone else had purchased, for either a certain mile radius, or based on which school they were going to. I’m aware that rights givers could themselves crack down on this the most easily, but I don’t see that happening. I know sometimes companies try to get the rights to a play and they can’t, because that’s the hot new play at the moment and everyone wants it. That’ll happen. But why, then, is the fallback not something equally as new and exciting? I want someone to get a beautiful new prom dress, and the next person in the store is told they can’t have it, and gets an equally beautiful new prom dress — not the dress off the person working the register. There’s more than just one new great play in one hand, and one that’s been done a hundred thousand times and has no parts for women in the other.

Listen, everyone wants to sell tickets. Everyone needs to sell tickets. And get new audiences. Ohhhh the elusive New Audiences moving around in hungry clusters, passing us by. We’re all trying to hook them into our atmosphere and get them to stay there, orbiting with us. It’s not like I’ve cracked the code, but I know what doesn’t crack it. I know what they don’t want — the 21 year old, hip, fun audience members companies are salivating over, the ones you want to hop aboard the theater train — they don’t want to see something they’ve already seen. Or something so far removed from themselves (old white men yelling “CUUUUUUNT!”) that they have no real connection to it. They need to look up there, and connect. I don’t see them connecting to that. This isn’t really about Glengarry, it’s just such a good fucking example I couldn’t not use it. No, I’m not worried about Mamet alienating me. He does not now, nor will he ever know I’m alive, so it’s fine. But if you do try to move GGR into a sex basement in Quebec, I’m sure you’ll hear from him. Meanwhile you could have just commissioned a new play about Quebecois sex dungeon lovers for less than or equal to the royalties of GGR, depending on the writer.

One could argue that those theaters are in different parts of the Bay Area and that their audiences are not necessarily shared. That stance doesn’t really do it for me. I go to all those cities and see theater. And I keep thinking it wouldn’t be terrible if somebody missed something some time. Maybe next time something they want to see is showing a 20 minute drive away, they’ll suck it up and go there because it’s not coming directly to their living room (if it’s interesting enough). Training audiences about what to expect from you is something I think about a lot. If your shows start late, the audience will assume the next show will start late, and they’re not going to be on time. And now you’re starting shows late for the rest of your life because you did it twice. Teach people that theater here can be missed because it’ll just be back 10 miles away next month, and there’s no urgency to see it now. The Bay Area also shares a creative pool. Actors from Vallejo perform in San Francisco, actors in San Jose perform in Berkeley, so at least keep your collaborators excited by offering something that every other town isn’t offering. Because we’re getting paid peanuts anyway, ya might as well create something.

I can’t solve this whole thing, clearly, but I have to put out there that it feels like we’re not taking risks as a community right now, and playing it safe doesn’t work forever. Eventually we’ll play it so safe that everyone will forget we’re here. Hell, maybe they already have. And then they’ll just watch Glengarry Glen Ross on Netflix because Jack Lemmon is in it and he’s the man and theater doesn’t feel like it’s for their generation. There are definitely some groups and companies that are making really interesting, cool, risky stuff. But there are so many more who aren’t doing that. Or are relegating those projects to readings. I often want to take a company’s reading series and swap it with their actual season.

******** UPDATE
So, I started writing this a couple of weeks ago and wanted to sleep on it. Then I went to New York City for a vacation. While I was there I saw two extremely popular shows: HAMILTION, and HAND TO GOD. They were so exciting, unfamiliar, wild, creative, new, unexpected, and VITAL. The houses were packed (Yes, they’re on Broadway so pretty much automatically they’re going to be selling tickets like hotcakes, but there was an excitement there that can’t be explained away with flashing lights.) They felt really risky in a good way, and you could tell that everyone working on them was invested in something they believed in. Maybe that’s what I’m really talking about. I want to see something and say to myself, “These people really believe in this. They really feel they’re doing something here. It feels important and necessary to them.” Even if I don’t like it, even if I think it’s poorly executed or just straight up isn’t to my tastes, I can get behind people who get behind their stuff and feel that it’s got urgency.

When you look at HAMILTON, you see a runaway hit, a game-changing hip hop musical with as diverse a cast as I’ve ever seen on stage at one time, based on Alexander Hamilton of all people. It’s a big idea. It’s a big, seemingly risky idea.

The diverse and talented and good looking and magnificent and swinging-for-the-fences cast of HAMILTON.

HAND TO GOD is a comedy about a man with a demonic sock puppet. It’s weird. It’s brash. It takes everything to 11, and knocks it out of the park.

“Yeah,” you’re thinking, “Those are amazing plays. Amazing plays like that don’t come around every day. My company needs to produce good stuff and most new plays aren’t going to be as good as that.” and to that I say, look harder. Or find a writer you believe in and commission something.

What do we want people to think theater IS? I want to ask myself that more often. I want us all to ask ourselves that more often. Because right now I’ll tell you what they think it is: outdated. And we’re not doing enough to show them otherwise. We’re too often giving them what they expect us to give them. And few things are less interesting to me than walking out of a theater saying, “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought it’d be.” I’m not shitting on Shakespeare or O’Neill. I’m doing Richard III next month (a cut version in a bar, and as a Sid Vicious-lookin’ murderer named Ham, with an eye patch, but still Richard III.)

Maybe we just need to be more aware of each other. We’re not disparate entities floating in the ocean. We’re part of a larger whole as much as we may try to pretend otherwise. We are all theater, and the choices we make for our companies impact what this person or that person thinks of theater. What message are you sending? Is it the message you want to send?

Is it “CUUUUUUUUNT!”

Allison Page is a writer/actor/creative director of Killing My Lobster, a sketch comedy company with gender parity across both writers and actors with a new show written in two weeks, rehearsed in two weeks, and then performed live, every month at PianoFight in San Francisco. Ya know, in case you were wondering if she sticks to her own nonsense ideals, the answer is that she tries. And sometimes fails, of course.

Everything Is Already Something: Bear In Cave Must Sleep Now

Allison Page’s body is on strike- it knows what it did!

Actually, she’s just taking a day off after having helped close PINT SIZED V last night, where she made her triumphant return as the Bear Bear.

If Allison was a bear in real life… this is the bear she would be:

We’ll be back tomorrow with our regularly scheduled programming. In the meantime, everyone take a nap or something. It’s summertime.

Everything Is Already Something Week 61: The Sequel

Allison Page- this time, it’s personal.

There are an awful lot of sequels in the world. So many movie trilogies and remakes of movie trilogies and prequels and spinoffs. As I embark on a quest to re-ignite the glorious flames of a character I played three years ago, I can’t help but think about what people will take away from the experience of seeing him in a new light.

For some context, I’m talking about a dancing bear. I played an alcoholic dancing bear at Theater Pub’s Pint Sized Play Festival in 2012. The Beer Bear.

The original Beer Bear, with his beer

It was a truly fantastic experience, and to be honest, it was the thing that brought me back to performing in straight theater — which may sound funny because I was performing in a bar as a drunk bear in a 10 minute solo piece. But it somehow became this great thing that people still talk to me about 3 years later, and led to forming several important artistic partnerships in my life. (I wrote about The Bear at the time in a blog titled Somethin’ Like a Bearnomenon, which was before I was a Theater Pub columnist and was just guesting like a civilian.)

Now that Theater Pub is back to producing live shows, it was only natural to bring back The Bear and The Llama…in new pieces. The Llama has been through this before, he’s had multiple sequels. But The Bear took three years off after his big debut, and so much time has passed. Who is he now?!? Yes, I’m saying “he”. He’s a male bear even though I’m not.

As it turns out, he’s been through a lot in the last three years since last we saw his furry face. And he’s a blonde now. Because I’m a blonde now, so playwright Megan Cohen just worked that into the script — this is part of the joy of knowing the playwright and being the only person to play the part (so far).

In many ways, Bear has lived through a lot of what America—and specifically, San Francisco, has been through. Longing for the glory of certain parts of the past, while knowing that past was just as flawed as the present, but in different ways. Musings on the future of the city and the future of Theater Pub abound. The age old lament that “Everybody wants the hits, nobody wants the new stuff.” in a time when playwrights and theater makers are constantly trying to convince theaters and audience members that it’s necessary to take a chance on something new and exciting, to drive us into the future and not get stuck in the past, no matter how glorious it may have been, is all up in here.

Much talk about the California flag appears in BEEEAAR 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, because there’s a bear on it! BEARS BEARS BEARS.

So while we don’t yet know what people will think of this new version of The Bear (I love it, for the record) it is necessary to move forward. Onward and upward toward the future of theater and the future of being a Bear, or something.

And what of the lost love of Bear and Llama? Did Bear really spurn Llama the way he claimed 2 years ago? We may never know. Some mysteries of the heart are meant to stay that way. But one thing’s for sure: you can’t bury a Bear when he’s got more to growl about. And believe me, there’s plenty.

Allison Page is a writer/actor/BEER BEAR. You can see her don the fez, ears, and tutu at Theater Pub’s Pint Sized Plays Festival August 17, 18, 24 and 25 at PianoFight in San Francisco at 144 Taylor St.

Everything Is Already Something Week 60: How To Be Like A Famous Writer

Allison Page is habit forming.

Every time I read an article about the habits of famous writers, I notice the same thing:

THEY ACTUALLY DO HAVE HABITS.

They have a routine. Something that I hate thinking about, because I’m not good at routines. Even the word “routine” has not-so-good connotations. It sounds boring and terrible. It sounds like you’re just doing laundry all day. But recently I’ve had trouble finishing things. Okay, let’s be real, I’ve had trouble even starting things. I don’t want to call it writers’ block because I hate that phrase, but it’s eerily similar to that. I used to just write for myself and that was so easy because my deadlines were self-imposed but now there are people who are waiting to get things from me. They need the thing, and they need it on this day, and stuff is piling up and panic is creeping up on me. So I decided to try something else: having a routine. Not only a routine, really, but an incredibly specific, strict and rigid agenda for my whole day. DOESN’T THAT SOUND FUN?! WOOOHOOO.

Okay, here’s the list I made:

7:30am – Wake up, splash some water on my face
7:45am – Go for a walk, get an iced coffee, THINK
8:15am – Eat 2 eggs
8:30am – Write for 45 minutes straight
9:15am – Take a shower
9:35am – Check email. Respond but don’t go crazy.
10:00am – Go outside. Walk in a different direction than before. Going outside is good. You won’t want to go, but do it anyway. You are not a recluse. YOU ARE NOT A RECLUSE.
10:20am – Write for 45 minutes straight.

Jerry Seinfeld writes every single day. He marks off days on a big wall calendar and says his only job becomes “not breaking the chain”

11:05am – Check social media, you heathen. For the love of Groucho, you really
shouldn’t be checking it before now. You’re a writer, not a socialite.
11:30am – Do some KML stuff (Killing My Lobster, the sketch comedy company I am co-creative director of) but don’t fall down the rabbit hole of shit you COULD do.
12:00pm – Eat lunch. NOT A FUCKING BAGEL. Extra points if there are vegetables and you make it yourself.
12:45pm – Write for 45 minutes straight.
1:30pm – Put on some music. Clean something. Anything.
2:00pm – Check email.

Balzac drank 50 cups of coffee a day while writing. I don’t want to know what his bathroom situation was like.

2:20pm – This is generally when you start not being able to write. You know that. It’s okay, you already wrote for two hours and fifteen minutes…BUT YOU’RE GOING TO DO SOME MORE ANYWAY. Write for 20 minutes. It’s okay if you hate it (you will)
2:40pm – Reward yourself with something. You did fine. Have a snack or take a nap. Watch TV or listen to a podcast.
3:00pm – Pay attention to your poor boyfriend for a while.
4:00pm – Read something that isn’t on the internet.
5:00pm – Dinner. Extra points if you make it yourself.
6:00pm – Print and read over everything you wrote today. It helps to have a physicalization of your work.
8:00pm – Watch The Bachelorette finale (YEAH, I KNOW)
11:00pm – Go to sleep. You did fine. You’re not a monster. Not today, anyway.

Agatha Christie had no desk and just propped her typewriter up on any stable surface she could find.

So how did it go, you’re wondering?

Sadly, IT WAS AMAZING. I got so much done. I had been sitting on about 9 pages of a one act commission since April and couldn’t seem to work on it. It’s now 30 pages long, and finished. That feels good. The guilt of not doing something when you know you should be doing it is crippling. So that’s out of the way, and the bonus is that I’m really happy with it! I actually wrote more than I had even planned (about three hours), cleaned my bathroom, made a salad, picked up my new glasses, swept the floor, and generally was a total badass all day, in the most boring sense. Most importantly, though, I felt really good all day. I woke up the next day still feeling awesome. I think scheduling, for me, is a good method. It may not work for everyone, but I felt strangely more free than usual. And forcing myself to go for a walk? That was amazing. If I don’t have a reason to leave, I could easily sit on my butt all day.

If you want to give this a whirl, please do let me know how it works for you in the comments!

Also I totally had a breakfast sandwich from down the street instead of eating two eggs. No woman is an island.

Allison Page is a writer/actor/person with an awful lot of deadlines at the moment.

Everything Is Already Something Week 59: Haiku for Auditions

Allison Page brings poetry to the audition process.

Monologues are dumb
Wait you want me to cold read
I miss monologues

Oh please don’t make me
Reading with him is torture
Give me the tall one

Sixty five actors
Hot stuffy hallway of sweat
Rabid dogs who read

To be or not to—
Oh god I forgot the rest
To be or not to—

Don’t make me watch them
I’ll just sign people in k
I can’t take it man

I wore extensions
I totally look 13
Cast me now I’m teen

Don’t let them see fear
Show your teeth for aggression
I hope it’s working

Oh no not this guy
Summer of ’13 he saw
I tripped into poop

To be or not to—
I think I got it this time
Or not to pee — damn

Did not dress to move
Swing dancing in pencil skirt
Fetch me a seamstress

It’s Spanish oh boy
Uh no habla espanol
Si si si si si

Scene calls for kissing
Who kisses at auditions
He wouldn’t—mmmfffff

To be or not to—
Oh god am I wearing pants
—That is the pants—shit

Oh great she’s here blech
Might as well give it to her
Shiny hair kill me

To be or not to be—
Nailing it so hard right now
THAT IS THE QUESTION

They’re releasing me
They must know they’re casting me
Or the opposite

Allison Page is an actor/writer/person. You can catch her as Bunny Watson in THE DESK SET at the EXIT Theater now through July 25th!

Everything Is Already Something Week 58: All The Things I Haven’t Written

Allison Page, firing off a quick article between commitments. Cause she is lazy like that.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t do a lot.

Don’t get me wrong, I do A LOT.

But there’s also a lot I never do. But I want to. I have the ideas, and I jot them down…and then that’s it. That’s all there is. They’re never fully formed, they just live these half lives in my phone which, as it turns out, is where my ideas go to die. Especially the shitty ones.

And now, a tribute to some of the things I’ve never written, according to the notes in my phone:

January 7th, 2013:
A parody of The Bachelor, but everybody keeps getting murdered.

January 24th, 2013:
Something about an evil doppelgänger
Or a play about someone like Joan Crawford and it’s just called “HAG” oh or “BATTLEAXE”
Something about Typhoid Mary
Something about abducting somebody who unfriended me on Facebook.

February 18th, 2013:
A sketch about a baby arguing with a dog. (I hope I was drunk when I wrote that)

February 21, 2013:
Guy who can’t pronounce the names of painters.
(Clearly I wanted to leave this open to later interpretation.)

May 29th, 2013:
WINGWOMAN – a film where I’m just trying to get dates for someone.
Also remember to watch Boardwalk Empire because I guess Bobby Cannavale takes his clothes off at some point.

June 12th, 2013
Play about people from high school who were not friends but must plan the ten year reunion tighter despite all odds. (I’m still pretty convinced this is at least a solid Hallmark movie scenario.)

June 24th, 2013:
Barbara Makes a Movie — about a middle-aged midwestern women who decides to make a movie. (slow clap)

July 7th, 2013:
Two Roads Diverged In A Bar (what?)

August 28th, 2013:
Madge Explains Nothing – I review movies I’ve never seen while wearing big sunglasses (slow clap x2)

October 19th, 2013:
In the future there is no death penalty only LIFE PENALTY. (wow)

December 17th, 2013:
What if time just goes in reverse? (……..)

January 21, 2014:
10 million dollar bigfoot bounty (to be fair, it’s impossible to tell if this was an idea I had or…something I saw somewhere…or something REAL. It’s hard to say.)

February 14th, 2014:
Choose your own adventure erotic fan fiction novel series:
Cowboy
Aliens
Beethoven
Lumberjacks
(BEETHOVEN, YOU GUYS.)

March 13, 2014:
Aaron A. Aardvark

June 23, 2014:
Sketch about a doctor who says “wiener” instead of “penis” (you know what? I stand behind this one.)

September 21, 2014:
The 31st Annual Swearing Bee, examples: “cunty”, “muhfucka”
Something about laudanum
Something about looky likies
Monopoly Monopoly
How the hell did Shakespeare write all those copies with a fucking quill? Wait is that even how he did it? I have a lot of questions.
The Young Lady Butcher

March 11, 2015:
Lady Lawyers

There are a bunch more but I seriously might use them so I’m keeping them a secret.
The point is: you can’t write everything. Don’t beat yourself up about it. The other point is that some ideas are terrible and it’s okay to have terrible ideas. Don’t pretend you’re perfect. That’s too much to deal with. Laugh it off…and if anyone wants to collaborate on erotic choose your own adventure books about Beethoven, well, you know where to find me.

Allison Page is a ridiculous person and writer/actor/director. You can find her on Twitter @allisonlynnpage

Everything Is Already Something Week 57: How to Be an Artist in 11 Easy Steps (or 1 Really Hard Step)

Allison Page is an artist. OR IS SHE?

STEP 1:
BECOME INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT TO BE AROUND
Your friends, acquaintances and total strangers are sure to notice you’re becoming an artist the moment you start parting your hair really far on one side and talking about yourself all the time. Good talking points are — “No, I wouldn’t know about that. I’m just always writing, you know?” as well as, “Don’t you just love Brecht?”

STEP 2:
DON’T SMILE EVER BECAUSE ART ISN’T SUPPOSED TO BE FUN
If you’re going to be an artist, you better turn that smile upside down. Art is hard, man. It’s supposed to be a struggle. You think Edgar Allan Poe was having a GOOD TIME? Oh yeah, Van Gogh was just YUCKIN’ IT UP. No. If you’re going to art, and you want to art GOOD…you can’t smile. Everybody knows that.

Vincent Van Gogh: Laugh Riot.

STEP 3:
CONVINCE YOURSELF YOU’RE DONE LEARNING
Hey, you know everything there is to know about your art. Don’t ever let anyone convince you there might be more than one idea about something. Someone else makes some art? YOU MUST SEE NO MERIT IN IT. Unless that artist is from the 1800s. Then it’s okay but only because they’ve been dead forever so they can’t be real-time competition to you. #SarahBernhardt4Life

STEP 4:
ONLY MAKE LIKE FOUR THINGS EVER
Listen, who cares about watching your art grow over time through trial and error; success and failure? NOBODY. THAT’S WHO. Spend three decades on one precious thing you think is a goddamn masterpiece. After all, you only want to be popular after you’re dead, anyway. That’s how to REALLY art. Throw everything else in the trash.

STEP 5:
DEVELOP A MYSTERIOUS SUBSTANCE ABUSE PROBLEM
Opium is always a good choice. It’s niche enough to be interesting, without the flamboyant flashiness of coke. If it’s good enough for Sherlock Holmes, it’s probably good enough for you.

STEP 6:
MEN: GROW A BEARD
Hemingway. I rest my case.

WOMEN: PUT YOUR HAIR IN A BUN ON THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD
Topknots keep your face tight and emotionless, like an empty shell and also an artist. If this doesn’t work for you, cut it reeeeaaal short.

Get it, Gertrude!

STEP 7:
GET YOURSELF ABANDONED BY A LOVER
It’s okay if you didn’t even like them that much and it was kind of a mutual thing, you can just lie about it. Keep the details foggy. If someone gets too inquisitive, get a far-off look in your eyes, and mumble something about the ocean.

STEP 8:
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, NEVER TAKE FEEDBACK
Treat all feedback the same way: like it’s coming from a talking horse. Whether it’s from the most well-known artist in your field, or from your “friends” and “loved ones”, tell ‘em all to fuck off. Then lock yourself in a room and X their eyes out with a sharpie in all your photos. Resist the urge to change even if you think they might be right and just trying to help you. THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK.

STEP 9:
DATE SOMEONE WHO WEARS A TRENCH COAT AND TREATS YOU LIKE DIRT
Insist they’re “unique” and “troubled” and “so talented” but never say what kind of talent it is.

STEP 10:
EMBRACE AN EXTREME AND CONTROVERSIAL POLITICAL VIEW
If you can somehow manage to make it sound like women are werewolves or witches, that should help.

No caption necessary.

STEP 11:
JUST BE A DICK, ALREADY
Be mean for the sake of being mean. Ridicule everyone else’s work. Drop a kitten out a window. Befriend a 19 year old so that when you’re dead, that ONE person can talk about how kind you were, but also just hard to understand because you’re so “interesting”. They’ll write a memoir about you and though they’ll get some slight fame out of it, console yourself with the fact that you’ll be much more famous than they will. Of course, you’ll be dead, but that’s how you wanted it anyway, because you’re an artist.

For those who feel like this is not the strategy for them, there is an alternative.

HOW TO BE AN ARTIST IN ONE HARD STEP:
Make art.

Allison Page is a writer/actor/co-creative director at Killing My Lobster in San Francisco.

Everything Is Already Something Week 56: Listen to Some Plays

Allison Page is listening.

Often the plays I’m really excited about don’t happen to be playing anywhere near me, so I can’t see them. CLEVER WORKAROUND: Audible. For the last week I’ve been listening to high quality recordings of plays on Audible — often with the original cast I would never have had the chance to see in action. I’m in the middle of writing a new play right now, and I have to say it’s been extra hard somehow and has made me feel a little inadequate. *gasp*

Listening to really well-crafted works has felt like a mini masterclass. I totally recommend it. Here’s some I have listened to and some I intend to listen to:

THE MOTHERFUCKER WITH THE HAT
by Stephen Adly Guirgis

Swooooon.

This was an extra great listen because I’m obsessed with Bobby Cannavale, and he absolutely kills it in this role. Bonus: Chris Rock. In a play. How often does that happen? There’s a lot to love in this script – it opens so quickly. There’s a brief phone conversation, then a character enters and shit hits the fan within a few minutes, in a really big way. Guirgis doesn’t waste time, and I really appreciate that. It’s a very full play, and none of it feels unimportant. I’m constantly trying to make that happen in my own work, and I only succeed sometimes.

BECKY SHAW
by Gina Gionfriddo

Okay, I was into the characters in this one, but something about the story didn’t quite gel for me when it was over. I’m not sure exactly what I wanted out of the ending but somehow I felt like I wasn’t quite satisfied. I was interested in what was happening, but at some point the story started to feel a little less structured to me in a way that caused me to distract myself a lot with thoughts of “But…what’s happening? Is something about to happen? Or is nothing about to happen?” Performance wise – I really liked the actors. I will freely admit I tend to be a pretty traditional storyteller and so something that doesn’t feel like it’s got a really tightly stitched-up ending is sometimes not my bag. I can be boring that way.

BEST OF SECOND CITY
By…ya know, everybody in Second City

Comedy swooooon.

I’m about 20 minutes into one of these right now (there are actually 3 volumes, it seems) and mostly it’s pretty delightful if not actually hilarious. I think just listening to scenes often doesn’t result in as many actually laugh-out-loud moments. It’s much more like “Hm, yes, that is funny. I see how that is funny.” But it is a fun recording in that it is chock full of a bunch of top notch funny people: Amy Sedaris, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Marsha Mason and Paul Dinello. So even if it weren’t great it would still be pretty great. And it’s good for listening on commutes because the scenes are short. You can end any time and pick it back up later not having to actually remember what was happening.

LA THEATRE WORKS COLLECTIONS

LA Theatre Works has several collections of plays on Audible: Modern Classics, Pulitzer Play Prize Plays (Volumes 1 and 2) and probably other things I don’t feel like looking for right now, which contain plays like: ‘Night Mother, Anna in The Tropics, Lost in Yonkers, Six Degrees of Separation, Agnes of God, True West, Anna Christie, and others. I haven’t dipped into these yet, but I plan to.

OUR LADY OF 121ST STREET
by Stephen Adly Guirgis

Yes, more Guirgis. I’m going through a phase. GREAT cast (including Laurence Fishburne). It’s much more an ensemble piece than Motherfucker, and thusly feels a lot more like vignettes on common themes and character relationships as opposed to one big story. Everything somehow ties back to a dead nun – though the actual death of the nun is sort of secondary to everything else that’s being talked about. A lot of talk of broken relationships and how traumatic events impact people over time. Fascinating, definitely, and Guirgis’ ability to write AMAZING arguments means I love him to tiny pieces. I dig a good fight.

Other plays to listen to:
The Noel Coward Collection
Pride and Prejudice
This is Our Youth
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Lion in Winter (with Alfred Molina!)
Abundance
Arcadia
Art
The Rivalry
Three Sisters

Basically, there are a lot of them. I’m getting out and seeing more local productions this year, but having this resource to experience stuff not happening here is pretty cool. I don’t know about you, but reading scripts often makes me sleepy. And since I have a commute to contend with, I’m killing two birds with one stone.

HOORAY!

Allison Page is a writer/actor/co-creative director of Killing My Lobster. You can catch KML’s new show (which she happened to head write) Murder, She Was Murdered this Friday and Saturday at PianoFight. www.killingmylobster.com

Everything Is Already Something: Allison and Anthony Get Drunk and Go To HOODSLAM, PART 2

We’re trying a little experiment where two of our columnists are working together on the same story. Here’s Allison Page, bringing you part two today. Also, while posting this, I (Stuart) ate a Choco-Taco, and feel it’s very important that you know that.

When last we left our heroes, they had just realized that due to their lack of eating dinner, they had four drinks in a little over an hour…on an empty stomach. And the first match hadn’t even started yet.

9:15 PM:

Anthony: After the memorial for Butternuts, business picks up as the Hoodslam Band fires up and Broseph takes the stage and takes an audience already at 9.5 to 11 Million. They love this fuckin’ guy.

Allison: They’re not the only ones. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. And before you ask, no I don’t have a problem. Shut up. The opening of Hoodslam is always crazy, loud, and filled with chanting from the fans who also know the opening speech so well, they shout it along with Broseph.

Anthony: Broseph shares some words about his dear friend, Butternuts or “My LIttle Bronie”. All of the sudden he’s interrupted by the horrible man who killed butternuts last month, The “One-Eyed Dickless Monster” Brian Kendrick. (Last month, Before being killed, Butternuts bit off Kendricks penis and took out an eye, which if you compare to a lot of ancient Greek theatre it’s not that weird.) HOLY SHIT, IT’S PAUL LONDON. (They were a tag team together and former WWE Tag Team Champs, and they’re here.). Then, The Stoner Brothers (Another Tag Team, who in fact smoke a lot of weed in the ring.) come out to defend the honor of Butternuts, and they will square off in the Main Event Tonight! This is all completely logical and normal because Wrestling.

Anthony: Broseph takes his place at the announce table, he will provide commentary throughout the evening. In effect, he is the narrator of the story. First match is a Six-person tag team match (That’s two, three person tag teams.): We are just excited about everything right now. And wouldn’t you know it, one of the wrestlers in the match is our new best friend Zangeif, this guy is awesome, is he the good guy or the bad guy? I don’t care, I hope he wins. He doesn’t but that’s okay, because in wrestling, winning doesn’t matter, it’s how badass you looked.

Allison: I sort of remember this? Wow, am I losing things already?

Editors note: This is the point where we only tracked time for when we drank, not for the matches, so things might be off a bit.

9:37 PM

Anthony: Allison is pulling ahead of me with her next drink, she went to the bathroom and came back with another cocktail, maaaaan. Round 6, Whiskey and Ginger

Allison: Drinks are important. And that makes the bathroom also important. But when you have 1,000 people crammed into a room and you have managed to secure a spot right next to the ring, your best move is to befriend a dozen people around you, to form enough of a bond that they feel a sham loyalty to you and it’s understood that they should hold your spot. THIS WORKS REALLY FUCKING WELL.

Anthony: Around now(ish) a four-way match begins. (That means four wrestlers all fight at once.) The winner would become the Number-one contender For the “Golden Gig”, their version of a Championship. The combatants were Sub-Zero (Of Mortal Kombat Fame) appropriately escorted to the stage by Sindel (If you don’t get it, google it, if you do get it, you’re a nerd.), Ken (of Street Fighter fame), who was escorted by Cammy. (It’s important to note that Cammy and her Ass receive separate introductions, “Cammy’s Ass” chant’s are common.) The third competitor was named Juiced Lee, rounding out the group was “The Mexican Werewolf”, El Chupacabra. He was bad-ass. In the end, Sub-Zero got the win, with a mind blowing freeze move, which involved blue silly string, but I got the point. Peter lost his shit.

Allison: I think this was near the time that I spilled whiskey in the ring (yes, I was that close to it) and started laughing. I think I winked at somebody. It’s hard to say. I made Peter hold my phone. Ya know, because it’s soooo cumbersome.

9:51 PM (We’ll Assume)

Anthony: Screw you guys I’m getting another drink, I battle through the sea of humanity and eventually make my way back just in time for the next match. Anthony’s

round 6: Whiskey and Ginger Ale, because apparently we hate change.

Allison: Never mix, never worry! (Yes, that is a Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf reference)

Anthony: Oh dang, it’s the Intergalactic Cyborg Death Match. Remember when we mention the guy with giant wrench hand? This is where that comes into play. His name is Techno Destructo, his opponent tonight is Doc Atrocity. I’m pretty sure that the folks who designed GWAR’s outfits made this one. It’s a glorious robot fight, it ends with Wrench-hand (Not his given wrestler name.) HAVING IT CUT OFF BY ANOTHER GUY WITH A CHAINSAW ROBOT HAND! DEAR LORD! THERE ARE SLIMEY CYBORG GUTS EVERYWHERE! It is at this point, the audience chants “This is Real”.

Allison: I am STILL grossed out about whatever that yellow gloppy stuff was. It landed 4 inches from my hand. Peter wiped it up with a towel that he found. I guess he found a towel.

10:10 PM

Anthony: We are officially drunk, Allison looks back at me and says “I CAN SEE TWO OF YOU!.” Man, we got drunk fast, the Metro makes cheap, stiff drinks people. God bless em all.

Allison: I don’t remember that and I don’t deny it.

10:12 PM

Anthony: In between matches, as he does throughout the show, Brody is circling around the ring with a bottle of whiskey, he pours shots into the mouths and cups of fans at ringside, he sees Allison, gives her a wink that can only say “I picked you up earlier, literally” and pours a shot into her mouth. She is now at drink 7.

Allison: Now this I DO remember. Because while I got 80% of the whiskey in my mouth, the other 20% ended up on my body like some terrible, unsatisfying version of Girls Gone Wild.

Anthony: The next match is high drama it was SUPPOSED to be Dark Sheik (AKA our other new best friend) VS Marty McFlux BUT out come The Butabi Brothers, “The Nights of the Roxbury” as they enter to “What is Love’’ it’s exactly what you think it is, friggin hilarious-awesome, I’M DRUNK NOW SO IM GONNA TALK IN CAPS AND INVENT NEW WORDS USING A HYPHEN. Last month The Dark Sheik predicted Anthony Butabi was gonna die in a month, and you just can’t go around saying that shit. So it is ON.

10:47 PM (Give or Take):

Anthony: Allison has round 8, I have dropped out, because at this point, it may harm me in a not funny way. Luckily, I’m pretty wasted, the atmosphere in the building is in fact 72% Marijuana smoke.

Allison: This is where I started shouting “WHERE’S ANTHONY? DID ANTHONY DIE? OH MY GOD WE KILLED ANTHONY!”

Anthony: I decide to go outside for a few minutes to breathe air, there’s a sweet spot in the outdoor smoking area where you can still see the show. This is where I hung for a while. And thank god I did, because the next match features Team GAME OVER, a team consisting of a man named “Pissed Off Nerdy Gamer” (Or PONG) and his partner,”Fucking Obese Nerdy Gamer” a very large man who eats and throws most of his food into the crowd, food like cottage cheese (Last month) , this month god only knows, but I’m happy to not be in the splash zone. Teaming up with Jesus Cruz, also known as “Super Barrio Brother”, they riled up the audience like classic old school wrestling heels (bad guys), they threw food. Thier opponents tonight, Cereal Man ( A Wrestler who wears a large cereal box on his head when entering the ring, and is actually really good.), “The Dark Noche” Bat Manuel, and (Drumroll) “Ultragirl” Brittany Wonder, Excitement abounds. I was still towards the back, so I have no idea if Allison started crying, I’ll assume she did.

Allison: I’m pretty sure he threw fucking NACHOS this time. Thankfully it’s harder to spread nachos around, so I think it was concentrated on one part of the audience. I did not get hit. Otherwise I don’t remember that match. It’s just nachos to me.

11:20 PM (ESQUE)

Anthony: I hate myself for aging, I used to be in the front row for everything, now I’m just an old bastard who needs to sit down for a moment. That and my balance is awesome right. Look at me, I used to be young and beautiful, I could do 6 shots and then cartwheels. OH DANG! I get my 55th wind as Ini Kamoze’s seminal classic “Here Comes The Hotstepper” begins to play. Because that means the Hoodslam Golden Gig Champion is coming out, that man is Drugz Bunny. He wears a rubber bunny nose and uses cocaine like Popeye uses spinach (Fake, one assumes, unless Hoodslam’s budget is insane.) Oh, and he’s an awesome wrestler. This match is a great time to point out this isn’t just all silliness, there is also some fantastic wrestling (If that’s your thing.) Drugz and Virgil Flynn III put on a rad match. I’m 26 sheets to the wind and in full-on Mark-Mode (Mark: Def; A big wrestling fan, traditionally not “in on the joke.”). I am the Bee Girl at the end of the Blind Melon Video ( For everyone under 30, just google it)

Allison: I think I started leaning pretty hard on the person next to me at this point. I don’t remember the match, which is too bad because I have teenage crushes on both Drugz and Virgil. Oh well. Next time.

11:45 PM (ISH)

Anthony: The crowd has thinned out a bit, so I make my way back to Allison and Peter. Peter is a saint because Allison is…jovial.

Allison: HEY GO FUCK YOURSELF.

Anthony: What wrong with being jovial? I’m hecka jovial. I’m about to watch London and Kendrick, I’m in Wrestle-Nerd heaven. With one second of their entrance music the audience goes batshit for London and Kendrick’s opponent, “FROM STONER UNIVERSITY IN BLUNTSVILLE, SMOKELAHOMA”, the Heroes of Hoodslam, The Stoner Brothers. They bring an entourage of people with them, including a guy with a huge beard and their cheerleader, lady wrestler and my teenage crush, Missy Hyashit (Pronounced “High as Shit”). The match is action packed and then, Paul London in a classic heel move, reaches into his trunks and pulls out…his balls.

Allison: At first I thought they had to be fake, and then I realized…no. Those are balls. Those are totally balls.

Anthony: Like really, he then proceeds to wrestle the rest of the match with his balls out. Which I assume is a metaphor for how hard he works.

Allison: A couple of times, the balls tried to crawl back into the shorts – probably at the peak of testicular awareness – like they KNEW they weren’t supposed to be out…and then he would pull them back out again, convention be damned.

Anthony: Now the action has gone outside the ring onto that dirty, dirty floor. In order to help her team, Missy Hyashit (Pronounced High as Shit) gives her name a double meaning as she climbs to the top rope, AND HURLS HERSELF ONTO LONDON AND KENDRICK IN THE CROWD, SWEET BABY JESUS! There are hearts coming out of my head. Jump to me Missy I shall catch you, or I’ll have peter do it for me with his big dreamy arms. The drama continues in the ring when just when you think the Stoners will get the pin, London and Kendrick rob the coffin and use Butternuts corpse as a weapons, those MONSTERS! Kendrick uses a superkick with Butternut’s head on his boot and gets the pin. The villains run off into the night until next month, what a show. I’m all liquor and emotions.

12:12 AM

Anthony: headed home, Allison is significantly younger and drunker than me. We are starving, We beg Peter to take us somewhere where there are cheesy fries, we are starving Mogwai’s after midnight. But his willpower is too strong,

Allison: What Anthony doesn’t know is that after we dropped him off, I started demanding a crunch wrap supreme. So much so that we went through the Taco Bell drive thru, when we did this we heard “Welcome to Taco Bell…we’re closed.” which enraged me because STOP ANSWERING IF YOU’RE CLOSED. So I ended up eating 3 carrots Peter had in his fridge. Carrots as drunk food are extremely disappointing.

12:30 AM

Anthony: I got home, fried a bunch of stuff and made a bagel sandwich. It tasted like victory. This was such a ridiculously fun night. The show was awesome, The Metro was awesome and we met a lot of cool people. There’s really nothing like Hoodslam, it’s a church built on the rock of fun. The performers are there to have fun, the audience is there to do the same. I will be there next month, and if we’ve made any point here, it’s that you should be too.

Allison: There’s no denying it’s a theatrical experience. Even the wrestlers themselves say as much. In fact, when I approached one of the wrestlers pre-show, he said “I’d love to talk to you afterward about what you thought about our storyline.” Maybe if I’d had one less whiskey ginger, I could have made that happen.

This article is dedicated to the Memory of Butternuts

Allison Page is a writer/actor/comedian who loves whiskey.
Anthony Miller is a theater-maker, wrestling fanatic, and tall man.