The Five: Spring Can’t Come Fast Enough

Anthony R. Miller checks in after coming out of his winter doldrums.

Hey you guys, so despite the United States Senate not being able to agree that Scientific Reports of Global Warming actually have merit, everyone seems to be fine with a giant rodent popping out of the ground and telling us when spring is coming. Thankfully , the magic groundhog has determined Springtime is on its way. That’s fabulous news, because this rain was killing me. Not to mention there have been some big events lately and some cool stuff to look forward to. Put it all together and there’s a lot discuss, but today let’s just do five.

Wintertime Really is Friggin Depressing.

BAH GAWD, the sun is shining again! Look, I know we need the rain, and were still in a drought, but I need a break here. Like a lot of you I’m sure, the wintertime can really bum me out. This year winter has been pretty wintery for a change, lots of rain and cold and 5pm sunsets, I can’t handle it anymore. This weekend was honest to god 70 degrees and I nearly pranced around my backyard naked in glee. Between the weather, late thirties ennui and an endless parade of celebrity deaths, I’m ready for some friggin sunshine, the literal and metaphorical kind.

My Bloody Valentine

This Valentine’s Day is going to be a busy day, not because I have a hot date or I have flowers to buy, but because TERROR-RAMA is rolling out a metric butt-ton of information. We’ll be announcing auditions, releasing our poster and other promo materials, and a very special video. So keep an eye on the Awesome Theatre Facebook page and our website at www.awesometheatre.org. It’s gonna be a fun day.

Go See Shotz!

Have you been to Shotz at Pianofight yet? Well it’s time to do something about it. Shotz is a monthly one night only short play festival featuring all sorts of great local writers, actors and directors. This month’s theme is “Some Like it Shotz” and all the plays have some kind of gender-bending theme. Wouldn’t you know it I have a play in this month’s installment. So c’mon out and see my new short play “Countess Walter” the story of a man who believes he’s the Dowenger Countess from Downton Abbey. It’s directed by Colin Johnson (who also wrote a play in the show.) and stars Aeron Macintyre. These are two of my favorite people in the world to work with, and it’s a pretty swell play. So COME TO SHOTZ TOMORROW NIGHT ( February 10) at 7:30 PM at Pianofight!

#Dorkswholikefootball

So last Sunday was the Superbowl, and it was a crappy game, but that never stops my annual Superbowl Party from being a fun time. It’s true that “Superbowl City” in downtown SF was a big pain in the ass and really just highlighted the liberal divide in SF. Because in SF there are Liberal Liberals and Capitalist Liberals, while both sides are generally progressive thinkers socially, one side has no issue whatsoever with making money. So people who don’t like the Superbowl probably felt more imposed upon than usual. But despite that, I had a party anyway, because Superbowl parties are one of my favorite things ever. Now here’s the thing. When a lot of you think of Superbowl parties, you think of a room full of loud bros drinking Budwieser and high fiving. But my crowd is a little different, it for nerdy artist types who despite probably being beat up by a football player in their youth, still really like Football. So instead of high fiving, there was live tweeting. The only moment of hushed silence was when the new Captain America Civil War trailer came on. Which bred a 30 minute discussion on how to properly use Spiderman. The smart ass comments flowed like craft beer and this year I actually remember what happened after the game. My point is this, if there is one thing that drives me artistically it is a kind of “Artistic Populism”, the idea that anyone can create, enjoy and appreciate Art because it is a subjective term. So I try to make theatre not only for people who see theatre, but theatre for people who regularly would not see theatre or thing they would enjoy such a thing. Thus, I try to throw a Superbowl party for people who regularly wouldn’t go to one or think they have a good time. I mean, who doesn’t like Snack food and Beyonce?

Thank You Daniel Bryan

Last night one of my favorite Professional Wrestlers/ Performers retired due to concussions. It caps off an amazing career that changed the industry. Daniel Bryan is not your prototypical champion. He is 5’8, 190 pounds and has a big beard. But the crowd loved him. His fans changed how professional wrestling is booked (Written) because instead of accepting what was given to them, they DICTATED what the product should be; they dictated who they wanted to be their champ and would accept nothing else. It was a great example of the “meta” era that Pro-Wrestling is having. Where we all know that it’s a pre-determined, scripted TV show, but that’s part of the fun. This was the story of an unlikely underdog who rose to prominence because the fans demanded it, because we saw ourselves in him. On and off camera he was the nicest guy ever, he grows his own food, shops locally, and is generally a big hippie. He was easily one of the most exciting, captivating, and talented performers pro-wrestling has ever seen. The storyline he was involved with stood out because it was so easy to become emotionally invested, no one had to tell you to like him, you just did. Seeing 70,000 people all do his signature “Yes” chant is still one of my favorite things ever, to see such a well done, emotionally effective story told so perfectly is lightning in a bottle you just don’t see. Concussions are no joke, and the more we learn, the more we realize just how serious the long term damage can be. So he’s doing the right thing, but I will miss him. There hasn’t been a performer like him before or after and there probably never will be again.

Anthony R. Miller is writer and producer who clearly watches too much tv. Keepo up with everything he does to www.awesometheatre.org

In For a Penny: Holidaze

Charles Lewis III, just in time for the holidays.

“Where do you think you’re going? Nobody’s leaving; nobody’s walking out on this old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no, we’re all in this together! This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We’re gonna press on and we’re gonna have the hap-ha-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-dance with Danny-fuckin’-Kaye! And when Santa squeezes his fat White ass down that chimney tonight, he’s gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse!”
– John Hughes, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

I’m not a big fan of Christmas. I didn’t plan on starting with that line, but considering that the other options I had for this week’s thread mostly revolved around the US’s supposed predilection for violence and one-upsmanship and my taking a look a lot of “classic American” plays that revolve around the idea that in order for you to be successful, someone else has to fail; adding to that a last-minute commentary about recent national tragedy and scandals and how a play I wrote is currently showing some uncomfortable parallels to allegations recently made in the adult film industry… after contemplating all of that, I decided to take the high road and focus on a subject much more easily digestible, namely Christmas. Specifically how it’s not at all my favorite holiday.

It’s not that I hate it, it’s just that once that I hit age, oh let’s say 20, I developed that Charlie Brown-esque disdain for all that “the Christmas season” represents. I don’t need to be reminded of the economic fundamentals that help us thrive, but that hasn’t improved my impression of shameless materialism. That may have more to do with the fact that the same economy has yet to provide me with a full-time job over the past few years, but that’s another story. I had to pinpoint one specific aspect I despise, it’s the idea that you have to be happy this time of year; you don’t have a choice in the matter. If this cold-as-a-witch’s-teat season doesn’t naturally fill you with skull-exploding merriment, then it means you’ve fired shots in the imaginary culture war that rages around you, because Communism or something.

As a theatre person, getting me to see a Christmas-themed play is akin to pulling my teeth. Since I’ll likely be spending most of the day emptying my bank for the sake of my family and friends (although I’m proud of my “shop local” ethic), the last thing I want to throw away two hours consciously ingesting the very “merriment” I’m trying to avoid. That’s why I’m less likely to head out to see A Christmas Carol or The Nutcracker as I would a piece that consciously subverts the forced happiness of this cold month.

It breaks my heart that our colleagues at PianoFight won’t be staging their annual production of Dan Heath’s Merry Forking Christmas. The play, which originated at PF as a spin-off of the original Forking, hilariously skewers SF consumers, drug dealers, and mall Santas – in other words, right up my alley. And Theater Pub itself has originated a couple of Christmas-crushing productions that put a smile on my face just thinking about them. I’m still kicking myself for having never seen the Gentiles’ Crappy Holidays live, especially since two of the ‘Pub’s columnists acted in it. Thankfully the internet has preserved it for the ages.

Even before that, I myself took part in the ‘Pub’s first-ever Xmas-themed show, Code Red, a collection of monologues and shorts – mostly presented in the form of an AA meeting – from adults who are traumatized to learn that Santa isn’t real. My piece isn’t very well-written, but it’s presented alongside a lot of pieces that really are and they all have fun slaughtering the sacred cow that is Christmas’ most famous mascot.

After that first year, the ‘Pub started a tradition of doing musicals for their December entries. You might think that means a more upbeat story, but given that the two musical selections revolved around public crucifixion and AIDS, respectively, it was keeping in the tradition of recognizing this season as the downer it really is. Just look up “Christmas” on the ‘Pub’s YouTube channel and soak in all the seasonal sardonic satire. Hell, the next one revolves around a kid who gets traumatized for life after his father is killed. Good times.

As I said above, I don’t hate Christmas. What I hate is the idea that one is required to put on a specific emotion for the benefit everyone else. That’s outright fascist when you think about it. But that doesn’t mean that more traditional productions are inherently bad. I happen to like the clichéd morality tale of A Christmas Carol, love the music of The Nutcracker, and hold a reverence for The Black Nativity. I certainly won’t fault anyone for love these or any other holiday work, just don’t force me to do so. That’s all I ask.

So as we mix our egg nog with enough high-grade liquor that the punch bowl might just catch fire, let’s raise a glass to the storytellers who love to set traps for Santa ever year. There are plenty of Christmas Storys and Miracle on 34th Streets to keep the masses happy; give me the gore of Gremlins from a boozy Bad Santa if you want me to call this the happiest time of the year.

Charles Lewis III thinks you should all come see Theater Pub’s next Xmas musical, Guess Who on Monday – Dec. 14 at PianoFight. And not just because Charles himself is singing in it, but he does get to sing one of the most recognizable lyrics in music history.

Working Title: Seasonal Bird(man): Or the Unexpected Virtue of Complex Entertainment

This week Will Leschber gets meta.

Winter is upon us and the end of the year almost proves a curious time. Dense with transition, this final month of the year somehow seamlessly fuses welcomed endings, the promise of new beginnings, outward reflection, routine introspection, feelings of seasonal loneliness, the joy of drawing close to one’s family, cold winter winds, warm gifts of friendship, thoughts of all that has come and gone, and all that lies ahead. The past and the future seem alight with the kinetic energy of being so close to one another. Everyone individually knows the contrasting tones and their own personal ingredients that fall into and color the holidays. It runs the spectrum. Depending on who you ask holiday feelings can run from celebratory to brooding. While a simple, straightforward, feel-good Christmas film or seasonal play can be satisfying for this time of year (Love, Actually always hits the spot for me around Christmas), I also appreciate something a bit more varied with complexity and frayed edges. Maybe some seasonal Birdman is on the menu.

“And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?”

“I did.”

“And what did you want?”

“To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloverd on the earth”

~Raymond Carver

(This opens the film, misspellings and all)

If you are looking for a sweet-spot of entertainment that melds the space between film and theatre, Birdman is it. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film Birdman: Or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance wistfully unfolds a tale of a washed up former blockbuster star, played by Michael Keaton, and the days leading up to his Broadway debut. Keaton’s character, who blazed across the marquee two decades ago in three mega-hit Birdman films, now find his star faded and wants to do some creative work of significance. Sounds familiar… Batman 1989, anyone? Yeah, it’s meta. The films throws around ideas inherent to creative professions: permanence vs transitory, popularity vs prestige, creativity vs madness, family vs individual, Broadway vs Hollywood, film vs theatre, success vs validation, true art vs zeitgeist, old vs new, importance vs the creative human condition. Everything is at odds, bumping up against one another, pushing for priority. The filmmakers sprinkle on magical realism blurring the lines between what is real and what is imagined.

Furthermore the remarkable cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki presents the film, even though it takes place over a few days, as a seemingly unbroken shot. There are no obvious cuts. This fluidity of visual presentation supplants the idea of division, and instills a unity throughout the film. This technique implies to the audience that everything is connected and fluidly runs together as one. It’s a beautiful way to juxtapose the contrast between the idea of difference and unity that the film is interested in. The space between the boards of Broadway and the film stock of Hollywood is not as vast as we would think. Birdman suggest they are part of the same tangential life that we experience as human creators. It’s a trip. It’s also entertaining as hell.

This is all heady, conceptual bullcrap that I’m spouting, but regardless of if you are looking to muse over the meanings or just be entertained by the ride of great filmmakers and excellent actors, then treat yourself. Yes, this may not feel like holiday fare film. It isn’t a Christmas classic, but Birdman might have more in common with It’s a Wonderful Life than you think. See it. And get your spectrum mashup of experiences with a little levitation and gun play to top it off. It’s always a good season for that.

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!

Higher Education: Writing Recovery Party

Barbara Jwanouskos recovers. 

I don’t know what it is about the time period that encompasses late January, pretty much all of February and into early March (oh wait, there’s a word for this… winter) that makes people, or rather, me crazy. Maybe it’s the five minute walk it takes to go around the corner while attempting to walk in the snow/ice to the bus stop every morning… Whatever the case, I think I’ve been overdoing it lately with artistic output and input.

Dear CMU, could you please invent teleportation devices so I can avoid the snow?

We had a weekend here called “Playground” where students put up one man shows, short plays, musicals, dance pieces, installations, and a variety of other performance pieces as well as visual arts. It was two and a half days of theater all day, which was amazing and certain gets your imagination wandering in all sorts of directions. It also can be completely draining. Seeing show after show and interacting with so many people begins to exhaust my resources. I’m like a two-year-old that needs a nap.

This was followed by the first table read of our thesis plays with real actors! (oooh!) And as insightful as it was to hear the words not from your fellow writers, but from people that are highly trained in making bold acting choices, the feedback can be a bit daunting too. You’re hearing a play that has gone through at least eight or more major revisions and it’s hard not to feel as if instead of reaching the crest of the mountain peak, you’ve just reached the fake-out peak. You realize there’s so much you still want to change…

Well, it’s no surprise that things fell apart and I got sick. I mean, isn’t that what always happens when we spread ourselves thin? Our bodies and minds can only take so much, after all before a recovery period is needed. And what happens when we get sick? Our capacity to get things done diminishes even more.

Ummmm… No.

I read an interesting article the other day about how athletes train to become Olympians. Apart from physiological traits or committing to a particular regime, what sets Olympians apart is that they are unwilling to give up. For many of them it takes eight years or training (or more!) to get to the point where they can compete at an Olympic level. But the “aha” moment came when I read that “when they’re not training, they’re often resting and eating for the next session.”

Resting. Oh wait, I don’t think I’m really doing enough of that… I guess many Olympians get ten hours of sleep a night WITH a half-hour to 90-minute nap during the day too! And not that playwriting is like being an Olympic athlete in a physical sense, but I do think you are asking yourself to continually operate at a high level. Writing every day, teaching playwriting, putting up plays, seeing others’ plays, reading others’ plays, formulating thoughts on your work, others’ work and being able to articulate yourself…

A lot of times we get time to leisurely have these thoughts pop up and then dissipate, but sometimes more is demanded of us, which is great and exciting and pushes us to the periphery of where we think our limits are thereby extending them (which is good). It comes with the need to recuperate though. I think that time to become reflective, turn inward and sit in quiet is important too. It’s such a rough transition to going from “full speed ahead!” to sitting in your deep dark inmost cave and hibernating.

If, as artists, we could take a page from the Olympians and possibly give ourselves the time to sleep, dream, and not plow through every single project back to back, but at some point say, “hey, I’m going to sit this one out,” and be okay with that, perhaps we could go further and we’d last longer. I know for myself I want to be a long-burning flame, not one that flickers out with a gust of winter wind.

So, rest up friends! Join me in my Writing Recovery Party, which involves each attendee sitting separately and silently in their own homes. Perhaps with lots of cozy blankets, fuzzy socks, dim lighting, warm herbal tea and little to no stimuli for a while.

At least until the snow starts to melt…

…which will be any day now…

How do you take care of yourself when you’ve pushed yourself too far artistically? Share with us!