Hi-Ho The Glamorous Life: Russell Blackwood’s Parisian Thrills

Marissa Skudlarek, our resident Francophile, reports on a new Paris-themed musical revue. And no, she isn’t moving to Fridays, our Editor in Chief just started rehearsals for his next show this week, and so everything’s a little behind right now.

The Thrillpeddlers have been peddling thrills – in the form of outrageous, only-in-San-Francisco theater – for over 20 years. They love the tattered, tawdry glamour of the stage, and have made a name for themselves by reviving older performance styles like Grand Guignol and Theatre of the Ridiculous. That attitude shines through in their new show, Jewels of Paris, as well. It’s a musical revue that celebrates the City of Light and its legacy of beauty, art, and revolution. Under the direction of Russell Blackwood (who is also Thrillpeddlers’ Producing Artistic Director), the cast sings Scrumbly Koldewyn’s catchy songs, sports gaudy barely-there costumes, celebrates freaks and innovators, and does their best to épater les bourgeois.

One sketch in Jewels of Paris features Jean Cocteau saying (as he did in real life), “An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture,” but fortunately for us, Russell Blackwood doesn’t subscribe to that philosophy. After seeing Jewels of Paris on Friday night, I got to interview him about how he brought bygone Paris to life onstage in 2015.

Animal lovers: Roxanne RedMeat and Steven Satyricon in Jewels of Paris. Photo by David Wilson.

Marissa: Thrillpeddlers have met with great success reviving other Scrumbly Koldewyn musicals in recent years, but I believe this is the first new show of his that you’ve produced. Who had the original idea to create a Paris-themed musical revue and what was Thrillpeddlers’ role in the development process?

Russell: During the past seven years, Thrillpeddlers have worked with Scrumbly to revive and reinvent his musicals from the repertoire of the fabulous Cockettes, the queer counterculture theatre troupe from early 1970s San Francisco. The Cockettes created two Parisian-themed musical revues back in the day. They were comprised largely of published music that is not in the public domain, but included a few original numbers by Scrumbly and lyricist Martin Worman. Our title song “The Jewels of Paris” is among these. When Scrumbly began working with Cockette “Sweet Pam” Tent on a new show for Thrillpeddlers last year, the idea of a Parisian-themed musical revue excited the whole company into a flurry of group creation. Not unlike Shocktoberfest, Thrillpeddlers’ annual Grand Guignol horror theatre festival, I wanted our revue to have several playwrights contribute to the bill and use Parisian-born revolutions as our raw material.

Marissa: Revues and vaudeville shows often have acts written to showcase specific performers, and I know the Thrillpeddlers are a tight-knit troupe. Were any of the songs or sketches in Jewels of Paris created with a specific actor in mind?

Russell: Oh yes, about half the material was written after the production was cast. Then, once we were in rehearsal, group discussions led to more musical numbers like the “Quasihomo & Lesmerelda” duet for J Iness and Bruna Palmeiro. The song “Chic and Tragic” was definitely penned for the show’s Pierrot, Birdie-Bob Watt, well in advance; whereas the ballad “At the Sideshow” was written overnight for Roxanne RedMeat to sing as a precursor to a one-act sex farce about a bearded lady and her lover.

Marissa: You’re known for your impeccable research into historical theater and performance styles. For instance, just from a choreographic standpoint, Jewels of Paris features avant-garde ballet, a flirty cancan, a pugnacious Apache dance, and Josephine Baker’s Charleston Sauvage. As a director, what is your approach to bringing older performance traditions to 21st-century actors and audiences, who may not be so familiar with them?

Russell: Our long-time choreographer Noah Haydon did a fabulous job fulfilling Scrumbly’s and my desire to include French dance forms. YouTube, of course, came into play. Scrumbly and Roxanne RedMeat took their inspiration for our avant-garde ballet Façade from a video recreation of the 1916 choreography of the Ballets Russes’ Parade. Alex Kinney became our dramaturg and took on creating a 13-minute homage to neoclassical drama, Molière comedy and Jean de La Fontaine’s classic folk hero Renard the Fox, all in three short acts. We’re not slavishly recreating any of these performance genres. It’s more that we’re saying “What might that have been like?” and then spinning those elements that turn us on the most. We’ve got gusto and the best of our abilities going for us. We’ve also got a missionary’s zeal to save performance forms ending up forgotten footnotes.

Chic and Tragique: Birdie-Bob Watt as Pierrot. Photo by David Wilson.

Marissa: If I was describing Jewels of Paris to a friend, I’d call it a bawdy burlesque romp. But the show also has several torchy ballads and confronts some more serious issues: French racism and imperialism in the Josephine Baker sequence; gentrification and the passing of time in “Oh What a World.” What was your approach to handling this material so that these serious themes were given their due, yet would not overshadow the fundamentally upbeat nature of the show?

Russell: That is the very nature of revue. Music, dance, spectacle and satire play off one another to their mutual benefit. It makes the funny stuff funnier and the poignant stuff more poignant. Both of the ballads you mention, “But Underneath” and “Oh What a World” directly follow comic sketches written by Rob Keefe on related subjects. Pierrot’s tortured tune “Chic and Tragic” is witnessed by two Americans, in a sketch by Andy Wenger that tries to define what’s so funny about a sad clown. Answer: “He’s sad and you’re not.” These are examples of Scrumbly writing songs to be paired with playwrights’ companion pieces.

Marissa: Fantasy dinner party time: if you could have dinner with any 3 Paris-related historical figures, who would you choose and why?

Russell: Oscar Wilde for wit, Sarah Bernhardt for melodrama, and Jean Genet for filth.

Marissa: The finale of Jewels of Paris invokes San Francisco as the “Paris of the West” and exhorts the audience to express their creativity and individuality. In recent years, there have been countless articles fretting that all the artists are fleeing San Francisco and that we are becoming a stale, conformist city. Having led a niche-y theater company in San Francisco for over 20 years, do you agree with this characterization of S.F.? Do you have any advice for younger artists who want to keep San Francisco weird?

Russell: While some aspects of life here have become more difficult, we have new outrages to respond to and flames to keep burning. Thrillpeddlers is a multi-generational freak theatre. Man, that makes me proud! On our stage now are some of the hottest acts I’ve seen in a quarter century in this town. If you want to see what makes San Francisco theatre exciting – come see this show!

Jewels of Paris performs Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at the Hypnodrome, 575 10th St in San Francisco, through May 2. Tickets here.

The Five: Random Thoughts and Big news

Anthony Miller- the call is coming from inside the house!

Hey you guys, long story short, I haven’t left the house in 3 days.

I have been sequestered in my home trying to bang out a first draft of Sexy Vampire Academy, which will one of the plays for Terror-Rama 2. So I really haven’t thought of anything else. So here are five random thoughts from my seclusion.

There’s Gonna be a Terror-Rama 2???

Yes, yes there is. There are some big announcements coming at the beginning of April, but you heard it here first. Terror-Rama 2 is happening, Dates and details will coming soon. But it’s gonna be awesome, once again we will feature 2 brand spanking Horror plays. One, as already mentioned is Sexy Vampire Academy, It will be written by me, and it will aspire to be funny. Think Jawbreaker meets The Lost Boys. The second is called Purity and it will be written by the one and only Claire Rice. I can’t much about because she’s still writing it, in fact both play’s first draft deadline is in 5 days. What I can say is when I talked to Claire about writing for the show I gave her an article about Purity Balls and asked if she could write a play based on it, she said says. It will probably be very creepy. Colin Johnson is back to direct and that’s all I can really say, as I said, there’s so much more to come, let’s shoot for April 2.

Mockingjay Part 1 Was Awesome

Seriously, I watched it earlier, it rocked my world. It is The Hunger Games’ The Empire Strikes Back. If there is one overwhelming positive about the rise of Sci-Fi and Comic Books in popular culture is not only do your favorite stories get put on the big screen, but they use the best actors to tell them. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t just writing the last three days.

Some Things Never Get Old

The way I write is that I start with notes, copious amounts of notes, random ideas and story ideas. Then comes the outline or, treatment. Then, and only then after I have laid everything out, do I start on dialog. And one thing that never gets old, is that first line of dialog, they’re like baby’s first words. The more they talk, the easier it gets to make them talk. Eventually, you’re in their world and you’re a stenographer. That never gets olds either.

Tartuffe Opens This Week at Berkeley Rep

I friggin love Tartuffe. What can I say, Moliere really pumps my nads. And this particular production is starring Steven Epps and Directed by Christopher Bayes. These are the folks from Yale Rep that brought last year’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist and two years ago adapted A Doctor in Spite of Himself which was, in fact, one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I cannot wait for this show.

I’m Really Sad About Leonard Nimoy

Seriously, it was like Big Bird dying. Someone that meant so much to me, someone who’s work meant so much. And for many of the reasons I’m sad, I’m also happy. I mean 83 is a good run, he had a big family, and his work made him an American Icon. Besides just being Mr. Spock, he was a photographer; I highly recommend his book The Full Body Project, also check out Our Secret Selves. Check out the video for Bruno Mars’ The Lazy Song. What I’m getting at is, this guy had an incredible life, and has left behind an incredible body of work. I’m sad because he was still doing great stuff, I’m sad because he died from smoking related causes and he quite over 20 years ago. So quit smoking, quit now.

It’s A Suggestion, Not A Review: Moliere- Made to Order “Wile-U-Wait”

Dave Sikula, writing us from the directing chair.

I’m directing again. I enjoy directing. I’m not bad at it and the results are almost always worth the time it all took. There are, of course, occasional exceptions to this, but Dirty Work at the Crossroads and Damn Yankees will go unmentioned in these pages. (Though I will give you a full debriefing if you get enough alcohol into me – though there’s not that much alcohol in the world …)

But I digress.

I’m directing, and this time, it’s a unique experience for me because I’m directing my own script. Now, let me clarify that. It’s my script, but it’s neither original nor wholly my own. It’s an adaptation of Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid, written in collaboration with, primarily, my long-suffering wife and, secondarily, the cast.

When I toured the theatre at the interview, I knew it was going to be a small-scale production. I could see I wasn’t going to be able to fly in chandeliers or helicopters, and my royalty budget was going to be minimal, so I started thinking of what I could do that would fit the budget and the space. That’s fine. In the last decade, I’ve become more of a minimalist, and do what I can to get by with metaphor and suggestion. I was given carte blanche on what script to select, and after some brief thought, I remembered how two of the funniest productions I’ve ever seen were of Invalid, and that it might be time for me to try some Moliere. And if I was going to do Moliere, well, why not do my own translation? I mean, there would be no royalties at all, so the script would say exactly what I’d want it to, and it could be fun. Regardless, it would push me out of a comfort zone and force my creativity into an unfamiliar direction.

Pushed out of a comfort zone, or off a cliff?

Now, I know I’m not unique in this. Playwrights do it all the time – the proprietor here is a prime example. But there’s a lot to do. It’s not as complicated as acting in a show while directing it, but it’s no walk in the park. We’re three weeks into rehearsal (and I’m already on my third ingenue. Don’t ask …), and it’s a constant battle to watch staging, add business, and course correct while simultaneously wondering if something is phrased correctly, gets the point across, advances the plot, and sounds right. And, most importantly, there’s no writer to blame if any of those script factors are lacking.

One of the things I’ve wanted to do during this process was to give the actors a literal voice; to make sure that not only are their ideas implemented, but that my deathless dialogue feel organic to them. (I can’t really call it Moliere’s deathless dialogue because A) it’s not in 17th century French, B) it’s not in rhyming Alexandrines, and C) I’m pretty sure Moliere never included references to Monty Python, the Marx Brothers, or Taylor Swift.) That’s the beauty part; even though Moliere’s point was that all doctors are quacks and frauds, and that none of them are to be trusted (which is ironic, because this is the play in which he suffered a fatal seizure while performing), we’re able to take his basic characters and situations and make them do whatever we want. (And, of course, since Moliere himself was adapting commedia archetypes and making them say and do whatever he wanted, I feel no qualms about doing that to him.) In my case, it means ribbing both “natural” medicine and hard-core evangelicals, among other targets. Given the time, and a desire to stick to the basic structure of the play, I wasn’t able to take it as far as I wanted to, but I neither wanted to really insult people nor lose the lightness of the original. It’s a dumb comedy about a rich hypochondriac who gets fleeced by con men, and that’s the story I wanted to stay with. All the rest is layering and dressing.

That whirring sound? Moliere spinning in his grave.

The thing this whole experience has pointed out to me is how back to basics it all is. It’s not quite “two planks and a passion,” but it’s not lavish. Jeebus knows that none of us do this for the money, but this is an extreme case of that. We’re taking a story and telling it in a fun and light manner. We don’t have much in the way of sets or costumes or props; we’re not skimping, but it’s not a show about the trappings. It’s a show about a company getting together, playing multiple parts, and entertaining an audience, and maybe giving them the slightest of messages to take home with them.

Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush. Not in Moliere’s original.

It’s something I’d recommend to any director. Sure, it’s a privilege to work with big budgets and be able to get anything you want, but it’s truly bracing and challenging to have limited resources and make your creativity work rather than writing a check.

Cowan Palace: My Nightmare Audition

Ashley and her friends sit around the Theater Pub campfire and tell tales of horror…ible auditions.

Comedy Month continues here with the Theater Pub gang where we’re all about laughing at our errors! And since I love dishing out tales of my own awkward struggles in this theatrical world (remember when I wrote this blog?) I thought it’d be fun to dedicate this week’s entry to nightmare auditions!

Thanks to some Facebook pals, I managed to get a few great tales. But if you too have an audition horror story, please feel free to leave it in the comments section! Let this be a time to celebrate our mistakes and laugh about them together! Besides, when I used to try and sneak-read Cosmo in study hall, my favorite section was always the embarrassing stories. And some of these stories are sexy too – two of them involve boobs! But first, here’s mine:

I’ve had a lot of bad auditions. Luckily, I’ve had a few good ones too but eesh, some of the bad were just awful. The one that comes to mind first when I think of “nightmare audition” was my audition for URTA (University Resident Theatre Association) my senior year of college.

New England was experiencing a brutal winter that year and I was in tech week for my senior project, acting in The Fox, a play by Allan Miller based on D.H. Lawrence’s novella by the same name. I was getting ready to begin my final semester of college and I was absolutely freaking out. Beyond terrified. So I thought, hey, maybe I can hide in grad school for a few years while I figure things out! Genius! But, ugh, I don’t want to go into more debt, I’m gonna need a school to pay for me to go there. Cool! I’ll audition for URTA, where I’ll get seen by schools all over the country and then go wherever I get in, even if it’s in rural Alabama.

That was my big plan. So my cast mate, Dave and I boarded a train surrounded in four feet of snow to head to New York City for a few hours before having to rush back to Rhode Island to finish getting our play ready.

We arrived around 1am to our college budget friendly hotel and woke around 5am to prepare for our early call. I wore a cream colored sweater and a conventional black skirt because the URTA Suggestions Guide mentioned that auditioning actors looked good in light colored tops and dark bottoms.

We got to the fancy hotel where auditions were taking place to check in and I discovered the “headshot” I brought with me (which was just an enlarged passport picture I got the day before from Walgreens) had fallen into the snow and had been ruined beyond repair. I sucked it up though and was given my audition time. (My one proud moment of the day was being placed in the time slot with the auditioners with the highest GPAs – holla, theatre nerd alert!)

Finally, it was my turn. I faked some confidence and walked into the room with a smile, my plain skirt swishing behind! I started my Moliere monologue and then blanked. Like just the worst blank in the entire world. I even asked the panel of viewers what I should do and they were boggled. They looked pained for me. Finally, I just started in on my second monologue from The Rainmaker. I completed it. But it was nothing special. After that, in a daze, I walked out of the room feeling like the entire world was collapsing in on me. I had just ruined my future. I was lost in a cloud of despair when I passed Dave. He asked me how it went and I shook my head unable to even cry. “I need to go.” I told him and I wished him luck on his audition.

Then I walked out of the fancy hotel into foreign streets. I was unfamiliar with New York City and had only been there a handful of times on school trips as a kid. It was freezing and my shoes were soaked with snow. But I walked trying to put back the shattered pieces of my dreams until Dave called me.

“I lost it,” he said, “I just blanked.”

I hurried to meet him and within seconds of looking at each other like we wanted to cry, we were laughing. We were two idiot kids with no business being at that audition. We weren’t prepared, we just wanted the safety of a place to hide in a bit longer before having to try and make it in the real world.

We immediately sought to find solace in pizza. I didn’t yet know the type of magical healing powers found in New York pizza, but let me say, it can cure many woes. And while we sat shoveling feelings and slices into our faces, I caught the eye of a man outside. He entered the restaurant and sat down at a table near to us. He kept staring at me, which I assumed was probably thanks to my smart outfit, but after a few minutes he approached us. I was prepared to hear him ask us for money but he did not. Instead, he showed me something he had been working on while sitting in the corner. It was a drawing of a crowd. All different types of people standing tall and gazing out from the page. That’s when I saw it. I was there. He pointed to the sketched version of me and said in broken English, “I wanted to draw you too.”

Dave and me acting in The Fox. While we did not get a single callback for any of the URTA schools, we did get an A on our senior project!

Suddenly, through some very kind and thoughtful strokes (homegirl looked way prettier than the snow soaked Ashley looked that day), was a new me standing beside other New Yorkers. That’s the moment I knew I was going to move to NYC after I graduated. Perhaps I needed someone else to see me there, who knows, but that’s exactly what I did. The man quietly walked away and we finished our pizza. Simple movements that forever changed my life.

Dave and I moved to NYC together a few months later and ate a whole lot more pizza. And both of us auditioned for a play together right away… we got in it… only to learn it was an anti abortion play… ah, but I’ll save that story for another time. The lesson here is that nightmare auditions are going to happen to even the best of us but there’s always something to take away from them, even if it’s just being able to laugh at yourself for being an idiot. Who else would be stupid enough to put themselves through so much rejection and heartbreak? We need each other to commiserate with, to celebrate with, and to keep encouraging each other to laugh. So in honor of that idea, here are some tales of audition horror from some of my fellow actors and friends!

Dave Collins (the guy from my story!):

So, I’m not sure if this is my worst audition story or my worst audition story from LA but either way it was pretty awful.

I was called in for this Danica Patrick commercial and thought I was just going to be one of three or four guys basically drooling over this beautiful race-car driver. This is what I came in prepared to do, not a very big stretch. This was not the case. I get into the room in front of the casting director and she proceeds to tell me that the joke of this commercial is that they want to show three dudes watching a clip of this beautiful woman showering and then pan to a dude’s naked chest… that these idiots somehow mistake for hers… Then, the camera would slowly go back up to the dude’s face. What?!! So the casting director asks me to take my shirt off and squeeze my very masculine, hairy, breasts together to try and put one over on these unsuspecting dbags. It was weird, humiliating, and I did it. And I didn’t get the part. I guess my male breasts weren’t feminine enough. Gross. I need to go shower now.

Shay Wisniewski:

I moved to New York about 3 months ago and was ready to hit the ground running with auditions. So I went to a call for Peer Gynt by Ibson, it’s one of his lesser known plays. I headed to Brooklyn for one of my first auditions. I show up and start filling out my audition form. Pretty standard. They even asked how we felt about nudity on stage. At this point in my life, I felt I could show off my breast if needed for a show. No big deal. Also, I told myself I wouldn’t turn anything down since I’m new to the city. So in I went.

In the room was an older man. White hair and a pony tail, along with his daughter who was handling the music in the show. They had me sing, improvise some dancing, do a monologue. Things were going great. I even get a callback which was even better than the audition. Full of viewpoints and group movement work, Meisner technique. Everything was right up my alley. He sits us down at the end of the callback and says, “so, I want to clarify the nudity aspect of the show. I love women, I love sex and I think both are very important things in a man’s life. Mothers, lovers, sister and so on. So at the end of the play, I want the main guy, to be breastfed by all the women on stage.”

…

Oh, I’m sorry. That’s not nudity, that’s porn.

And one of the guys in the audition group even went up to the director afterwards to let him know he was okay with the nudity in the show. Of course you are! You’d be getting a titty parade in your mouth! Sucking on multiple breasts is way better than having some strange adult man breast feed when you aren’t even dating.

I ended up getting cast. No, I didn’t take it. I couldn’t have something like that show up on YouTube one day when I’m famous. Whenever that is. Oh, and it paid zero dollars. So, no, you will not be seeing my breast feeding premiere this fall in New York.

Alex Harris:

You know what? When I saw your post on Facebook I immediately thought of a TERRIBLE one I had on Wednesday! Have you ever had an audition where, like, you read what they wanted, you knew what they wanted, and then when you go in there, you do absolutely everything you’re not supposed to? Well, that was me at this commercial audition, yikes bikes!! I walked in and the taping happens right in the audition waiting area so while you’re auditioning, you’re being watched by the other girls who are there (BIG HELP TO THE NERVES). And I just like had a lapse of where I was. I did exaggerated expressions like I was on stage or doing improv, instead of understated looks and reactions for simple commercial shots, oh it is awful Ashley. Awful.

Natalie Ashodian:

I once auditioned a woman for the very serious part of a Planned Parenthood nurse. A woman (in her 50’s or older, mind you!) showed up in a sexy nurse uniform. You know, Halloween costume 1940’s pin up style nurse. Needless to say, please don’t over-do character auditions. Unless the show is, you know, inherently campy.

Lea Gulino:

My last on-camera audition in LA – a 3rd callback for a Visa ad and the 3rd time I put everything I had into bleating like a goat…

Christi Chew:

He said, “Well now we know you can sing. Can you do it again, but crawl around like a cat?” It wasn’t CATS.

Do you have an audition horror story to share? Come join the party and leave it in the comments section!

Everything Is Already Something Week 20: Actors Who Write

Allison Page is the new James Franco. 

It’s three years ago or so, and I’ve just finished a reading of several episodes of a web series I wrote. We’ve all been milling about the theater chatting, having snacks, and discussing the episodes. I’m scratching down a bunch of notes for myself – things I want to change, things I really liked, changes inspired by the way a person read the character, all the regular stuff. A guy walks up to me, and says completely seriously, “That was pretty good writing, for an actor.” He smiles and leaves.

I would argue that I’ve been an actor since I’ve been a talker – possibly before that. It’s never not been a part of my life, and every time I’ve made an attempt to cut it out, I just can’t. But the last three years especially have been co-focused on writing. I make my living writing allllllll day. And yet, I have this chip on my shoulder that I’m always going to be seen as an actor first, and a writer second. Or that somehow I can never really be a writer because I was an actor…which, when you say it that way, sounds really stupid. Generally, no one cares what you focused on before you started focusing on whatever you’re doing now. There are probably people in the NFL who used to work at Best Buy. I doubt anyone’s watching the game saying, “Yeah, he’s okay, but shouldn’t he be selling TVs? I just can’t see him doing anything else, ya know? He’ll always be Best Buy Brian to me.” Which isn’t to say that acting is as important to me as selling TVs, but the point is that most of the time, no one cares about that. But the actor/writer combo feels like it has a weird little stigma. Or maybe it’s because I am doing both of those things, and not giving up one for the other. If anything I’m using them to inform each other – something that I imagine and hope other actor/writer hybrid monsterbots are doing. I’m pretty happy with that, but every once in a while someone will say something like “That was pretty good writing, for an actor.” And after I’m done mocking his hairline, which is not so much receding as it is just running away, to make myself feel better – I get to thinking about the various reasons he might have said that.

Actor/writer is definitely an interesting combo if you look plainly at stereotypes. Actors: flighty, demanding, vain, difficult, extroverted, emotional, possibly dumb, probably-loves-swimming-with-attractive-people. Example: Marilyn Monroe

I’m carefree because I don’t have to think…WHERE ARE MY BLUE M&Ms?!

Writers: brainy, quiet, meditative, introverted, probably-shut-themselves-up-in-a-cabin-for-months. Example: Ernest Hemingway.

This is my writing beard. Do I look smart yet?

Putting those two things together seems impossible. But those are also just stereotypes and don’t hold a lot of water in real life, but just because they’re not true doesn’t mean that the idea of them doesn’t still exist.

I’m aware of other actors who have started to write and don’t even wait for someone else to put the burden on them, they just do it themselves. Putting themselves down for having been an actor first and discounting their own writing because of it. Congratulations for getting to it before your nay-sayers did…but now you’re your own nay-sayer! For me (and I’ve said it before) one of the best things about the bay area is that you can do nearly anything. It’s a big beautiful testing ground on which to spill your artistic guts. There are so many outlets for you, if you look for them.

Last night I took a Lyft home, as I am like to do. I had just come from Write Club SF, an event which describes itself as “Literature as blood sport”. Naturally I was a couple of beers in (when you become a writer, you get to drink more. BONUS.) and got to talking to the driver about the event. I won my bout that night and have a tiny trophy to prove it. He told me, somewhat sheepishly, that he’s always wanted to be a writer. “So be one.” I said. “I don’t know” he told me, shaking his head. “I just feel like I don’t have the education, and I can’t afford it.” Naturally, I pish-poshed at that. I told him my whole rambling story, (you can check out my previous blog “Sorry I Didn’t Go To College” if you want to find out how I got here.) He’d been wanting to write for years. He’s started writing several novels but hasn’t finished them because he doesn’t feel like he’s really allowed to. After all, what right does he have to join the ranks of the elite alcoholism and snobbery of writing…right? My advice to him was that if he wants to do it, he should do it. The best thing about writing is that you barely need anything. If you have a laptop – great – if you don’t, paper and a pencil are damn cheap. I told him about a ton of free events that can help get him started. He ended the ride saying he thought it was fate that brought me to his car to encourage him to go after his dream. I won’t put quite that much weight in it, but I’m glad he felt inspired. I’m no Hemingway, but I do what makes me happy without regard for the opinions of people who don’t have the right to set the standard for me, because I don’t let them.

Tonight I have a short play in the SF Olympians Festival. It’s my first time writing for it after having acted the last couple of years. One of the many things I love about this festival is its dedication to not giving a fuck who you are. You send in a proposal. If your proposal is chosen you have a year to write a play. Then a staged reading of that play is produced. There are first time writers, long time writers, sometime writers and everything in between. There are, like me, other actors who are writing for the festival. There’s a drama critic writing for the festival. People from the fanciest of colleges, and people who barely graduated from high school writing for the festival. Unemployed people, authors, mothers, teachers, grad school students, tech people, and directors writing for the festival. And the best part is that we are all on an even playing field. Sure, the quality of each individual play is up to the writer, but we all have the same resources. We all get a director, actors, a theater, and even a piece of artwork representing our plays, regardless of background, experience or education. We’re pretty well supported by the festival and each other. I personally have missed only 2 plays, and have seen 22 in the last 2 weeks. And at no point has anyone mentioned that I’m just an actor who writes.

I try to work really hard at what I do to get that cozy “I earned this.”, feeling. But I’m also sure not to get down on myself just because I’m not Pynchon or Poe or some other writer with a P name. I’m actually happy to be both an actor and a writer. It’s satisfying for me; otherwise I wouldn’t do it. In the end I don’t think of myself as an actor who writes or a writer who acts – I’m an actor and I’m a writer and a bunch of other stuff too. I don’t think I know anybody who boils down to only one thing.

And for good measure, here are some people who did both, in no particular order and including playwrights, screenwriters and authors. (Don’t worry, I won’t mention James Franco):

Sam Shepard

Tina Fey

Bob Newhart

Mary Pickford

Wallace Shawn

Molière

Mindy Kaling

Christopher Durang

Kristen Wiig

Jerry Seinfeld

Marion Davies

Larry David

William Shakespeare

Carol Burnett

Steve Martin

Amy Sedaris

Harvey Fierstein

John Cleese

Gilda Radner

The Marx Brothers

Paddy Considine

Woody Allen

Mary Tyler Moore

Christopher Guest

Jon Favreau

Jennifer Westfeldt

Kenneth Branagh

……JAMES FRANCO. (gotcha)

This smile never needs a caption.

See Writer Allison’s play The Golden Apple of Discord TONIGHT (November 20th) at 8pm at the Exit Theatre along with other short plays based on the Trojan War. You can find her on Twitter @allisonlynnpage.

It’s A Suggestion, Not A Review: On Prejudices

Dave Sikula free forms his way into controversy.

I’d been struggling to come up with a topic for this week’s entry, and, frankly, I kept coming up blank.

Some of this was due to having been out of town this last week; some of it was due to dealing with some weird Eustachian tube thing I’ve got (it alternates between plugged-up ears and vertigo; it’s much better now, thank you, but still a nuisance); some of it was due to being in rehearsal.

The result is, this will probably be more free-form and scattered than usual.

So, what’s bugging me? What’s my beef? What’s sticking in my craw?

The first thing that comes to mind is an episode from my recent trip. While driving through the wilds of southern Illinois, I was listening to a podcast featuring an interview with Michael Chiklis. While I’m not particularly a fan of his, I was interested enough to listen to the program. I didn’t watch either “The Commish” or “The Shield” (though I always heard good things about the latter), and my only real exposure to him was through his portrayals of Curly Howard (in a TV biopic of The Three Stooges) and Ben Grimm (in the dismal “Fantastic Four” movies). He’s one of those actors whom I’ve found likeable enough, but who never really made an impression on me.

From the interview (and Wikipedia), I learned he has (surprisingly to me) classical training, having gone to Boston University, but overall, he came off as something of a blowhard and goofball, but in an innocuous way – sort of a “Hey, I’m an LA actor who had a notable TV series” vibe.

I could have left it there, but the interviewer asked him about Shakespeare, and Mr. Chiklis launched into a combination condemnation of Shakespeare and defense of Edward DeVere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, that had steam coming out of my ears. I was literally yelling at and arguing with a two-year-old interview playing on my iPhone

Let me state here my firm status as a Stratfordian. It’s not even a belief. I’ve studied the Shakespeare “authorship” question to a great degree, and there’s not a shred, not a smidgen, not an atom of evidence that anyone but William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote those plays. Not to name call – oh, hell, let me go ahead and name-call: anyone who believes that Oxford, or Bacon, or Marlowe, or Queen Elizabeth – or anyone else – wrote the plays is an ill-informed idiot (though, mind you, I’m not eliminating Shakespeare collaborating with other writers; there’s plenty of evidence for that).

I have no idea why these people so piss me off. It’s not an anti-elitist thing; I’m certainly an elitist in a lot of things. But there’s something about this topic that just pushes my buttons. In a way, it’s kind of how I feel about the Kennedy assassination, although in that case, I’d be willing to listen to conspiracy theories, even if they all fall apart of their own weight. On matters such as these, I side with Occam’s Razor and believe the simplest theory is the right one.

The takeaway from all of this is, if you really want to get my goat, try to bait me on Oxford vs. Shakespeare; I’ll bite every time.

Moving on.

In trying to come up with a topic for today, I asked my long-suffering wife if she had any ideas. She mentioned she’d seen a Facebook post that took a Minneapolis reviewer to task for alleged racism. Personally, I found the review poorly reasoned and written, but far from racist.

My feelings about reviews and reviewers have been expressed here before; basically, I don’t have a lot of use for them. But this case proved interesting to me. The review is of a production of Moliere’s “The Imaginary Invalid.” While the reviewer (I refuse to call him a critic) seems not to understand Moliere’s dramaturgy and style, he begins by criticizing the director’s “highly questionable choices, one being the use of colorblind casting.” A phrase like that can easily act as a red flag to some readers, but beyond objecting to Asian, Latino, and African American actors playing French characters, he doesn’t go into a lot of detail. It seems he’s mostly puzzled why the director would cast actors of color while the Theatre avoids producing plays by writers of color. (though, admittedly, there is a tone of “people should only do shows wherein they’re cast ethnically appropriately”).

I have to admit that I’m torn on some cross-cultural casting. When I direct, I try to do it and have indeed done so more than once. I do have trouble wrapping my brain around casting family units of different ethnicities – and let me speedily add that it’s not a matter of having a problem with interracial relationships; I’m thinking of, say, a “Glass Menagerie” with an Asian American Amanda and a white Tom and Laura, or a “Long Day’s Journey” with a white James, a Latina Mary, and African Americans as Jamie and Edmond. I fully admit that the “problem” is my own; if I can accept that any actor is pretending to be someone up on that stage in the first place, I should be able to blind myself to differences in race. I mean, I’m able to see beyond something like an Irish American actor playing a Swede or a Canadian, so why not stretch my own limitations?

And let me hasten to add again, that this prejudice really only applies itself mostly to “realistic” plays or productions. If I see a farce or a deconstruction or something epic (such as Peter Brook’s “Mahabharata”) with an interracial family (whose ethnic differences are incidental to the plot), I have no problem with it – nor do I have a “problem” with cross-casting in general. One of the best things I’ve ever seen at ACT was their production of “Tartuffe” with an almost-exclusively African American cast, and I’ve seen a few productions of Chekhov that used multi-racial casts.

I realize that, in bringing this issue up – let alone admitting to my own limitations – I may be opening a can of worms and opening myself to criticism, but I don’t think I’m alone, and I think it’s a topic worth discussing (or I wouldn’t have spent a few hundred words on it) – though I’d hope it would be an open discussion, without either side shutting down the other for misunderstanding.

Maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s my background, maybe it’s my cultural “training.” Whatever it is, though, I’m ready to be educated and enlightened.

Cowan Palace: Life in the Theater: It’s All Endless Superstitions and Myths

Ashley Cowan talks about why so many theater makers are simply superstitious. 

While I was in rehearsal the other night, one of my cast mates mentioned her upcoming production of Macbeth. And actually uttered the infamous title aloud as we sat onstage! Now, I’m not a conventionally superstitious person when it comes to my theater practices so I wasn’t terribly distressed. But the experience opened the door of conversation to the vast variety of theatrical superstitions and myths. So I thought it would be fun to research some of the more well known beliefs and share them with our Theater Pub community.

Break a Leg!

Have you ever wondered why it’s considered a bad idea to wish someone “good luck” before a performance? Well, the exact origin may not be known but there is a plethora of ideas. One of the most popular beliefs is that by telling someone to do the opposite of something, the sneaky spirits surrounding the space known to cause mischief would be tricked into making the reverse come true. So if you were told to “break a leg” you would actually be blessed with a great performance.

Another reasoning derives from Shakespearean time when the stage was supported on wooden “legs”. If a performance was a true success, it would cause such a commotion that a leg would actually break. Also coming from that time period, the word “break” doubled as “bend”. And if you were to bend your legs repeatedly it was because you were taking bows. One last idea comes from our friends in Ancient Greece, where it is believed that people would stomp in appreciation of a performance rather than clap. By that reasoning, a broken leg would be the result of a truly stupendous performance.

Ghosts! And Lights!

Ghosts are no strangers to the theater. It seems like in almost every space you find there’s a legend or story of it being haunted. A tradition to leave a burning light (onstage or backstage) was born so that the first and last person could safely get in and out of the theater. It’s also for those lurking creatures to find their ways; as the belief goes, if the theater was ever left dark, ghosts would seek out mischief and mayhem. There’s also an alternative superstition that every theater should have one evening during the week that’s an “off” night so that the ghosts can perform. Usually, it’s a Monday night so I like to imagine ghosts everywhere are forming their own Theater Pub rituals.

Colors!

In the olden days, making blue dye was a tricky business. Theater companies who were struggling financially would try to overcompensate by costuming their actors in hues of blue as an attempt to make their audiences believe they were flourishing. But the sad reality is, often they would actually go bankrupt because of the cost! So to counter any misfortune, silver was used with blue as a means to show that the company could actually afford their clothing.

Yellow isn’t often considered lucky either. Sorry, Big Bird. This one may come from religious plays of the past since this mellow color was often worn by whoever was playing the character of the devil.

And just to add one more to think about, you may want to wear green with caution! One cause for this belief is because the infamous Molière died a few hours after performing in his own play, Le Malade Imaginaire and you guessed it, he was wearing green! So perhaps French fans and other theater makers alike started to feel differently about this shade. However, the green room is still the name of the waiting area for actors to use so hopefully it isn’t too cursed.

Mirrors!

Many superstitious people out there believe that breaking a mirror will earn you seven years bad luck. But as usual, the theater superstition is a little different. Not only can having mirrors on stage provide technical issues because of reflecting light but if the mirror in use breaks it will be bring seven years of misfortune to both the person’s soul who was captured in it and to the theater itself.

Whistling!

The seven dwarfs may not have had it right when they sang about whistling when you work. At least in terms of working in the theater as it’s considered to be a pretty unlucky practice. Many years ago, before we used intercoms and other fancy modern tools, the crews working a show most likely had on again off again careers as sailors. Since both ships and the stage shared a similar series of ropes, these workers would communicate complicated cues through whistling. If an actor or someone outside the crew felt inspired to whistle their own tune, it could confuse the system, resulting in potentially dangerous cue mistakes. While the crew may no longer use whistling as a way to monitor the show, it’s still considered unlucky to whistle in a theater and as the superstition goes, if you do, someone in your production will be meet an unfortunate fate.

Peacock Feathers!

Apparently, peacock feathers are a big no-no in the theater world and under no circumstance should they be incorporated into a production in any capacity; be it, as a prop or costume piece, or disaster will consume the production. There are tales of erupting chaos involving fires and collapsing sets all blamed on the use of peacock feathers. It’s believed that the feather embodies an “evil eye” that wrecks havoc on any production by cursing them. Perhaps this one relates back to the Greek myth of Argus, a monster consisting of a hundred eyes, and Hera who had them forever kept in a peacock’s tail. Plus considering what we already learned from using blue and green colors in the theater, this one may just be best to avoid.

The Last Line!

In some theater circles, it is considered bad luck to rehearse the last line of the play until you open for an audience. As the show isn’t really a show until people are present to witness it, it’s thought to be unlucky. I hadn’t honestly heard this one before but hey, whatever floats your set piece boat. Often, the theater will open the final dress rehearsal to a small crowd so that they can perform the play in its entirety before opening night. Final dress rehearsal is often a source of superstition material as many practicing artists live by the “bad dress, great show” logic. Perhaps that one was invented by directors to cheer their cast from a lousy last rehearsal or as a means to excuse a poor performance before opening.

Flowers!

It’s thought to be good luck to give your director and/or leading lady flowers stolen from a graveyard on closing night. The flowers are meant to represent “the death of the show” and allowing it to be put to rest. It’s also a practical idea since stolen graveyard flowers are free! And we all know that a professional life in the theater does not often yield great piles of money.

Macbeth!

And our final point of discussion returns back to the origin of this blog. The mighty Macbeth. “The Scottish Curse” has been blamed for countless catastrophes and misfortunes throughout the years but this is yet another superstition that has a variety of suspected roots. Some believe that chants used by the witches in the story were from real practicing witches who were so disenchanted by the play and their resemblance that they cursed the show forever. While others think that maybe it’s just because the piece is ultimately violent and full of stage combat requirements. Add in a little dim lighting and things are likely to go wrong. If you do make the mistake of uttering “Macbeth” inside of a theater, the offender must leave the space, turn clockwise three times, and then beg to be allowed back in the building. It’s dramatic, but what else would you expect from drama folks?

And with that, I’ll leave you for now and return to memorizing my lines. But how about you? Do you practice any of these theater superstitions? How do you get through a production? As always, we’d love to hear from you.