Monday, July 07, 2008
the genius defense
just watched Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. Certainly, there was a miscarriage of justice and Polanski should have gotten away with certain things simply based on procedural issues. But of course the question is--how is it that, even over time, the rape of a 13-year old child becomes acceptable, melts away into the regard for his genius? Or even at the time? The 15-year old Natassja Kinski, the 13-year old Paula Lavigne (who Caetano Veloso left his wife for). (Oh no! the ex-diplomat says. In South America and the Congo, fucking teens is fine! Especially when I'm exploiting them for visas!)
Then again, of course, the fact that most fashion models are under 18 years old, that we place our standard of beauty and desire on the backs of children.
This is nothing new. I'm almost embarrassed to be blogging about it, about something so obvious. But that big darker thing (that makes these stories so sexy, so shocking, so deserving of front page CNN coverage, that makes the Oakland Trib run a weeklong series on child prostitution, and makes me want to see this).
That's the thing. That's the deeper thing. The acceptance and naturalness of the exploitation, and what it means to witness it as the audience.
The genius defense didn't work for Hans Reiser, although he lost his manslaughter plea (with a three years sentence that would have been finished in 2009) in the attempt, an atrocious 6-month long trial in which he performed his guilt while clumsily attempting to perform his innocence.
Now he's performing something else. His lawyer, William Du Bois, said:
Of course, I don't believe him. Neither does he.
CLEAN, the piece I did in March about the gap between the fantasy of the tech industry and the toxic physical reality used Hans and Fernando Jimenez Gonzalez, a 19-year old worker at a PC board manufacturer who drowned in a vat of sulfiric acid, as the two archetypes, the mythic figures that upheld the opposite ends of "manufacturing" and the relationship with the body.
Hans was still on trial as we created and performed CLEAN. It would have been so easy to focus on the tawdry details of the case, but what was more interesting for the purposes of the piece was Hans' inability to function in the embodied world.
That's the genius defense, of course.
I was amazed at how the geeks over at SlashDot defended him to the last breath all the way up until the moment he revealed the body and confessed to the crime for a potentially lighter sentence. They trashed Nina, her infidelities, her Russianness, they blamed America for hating on programmers, even as the evidence mounted up and up.
Then again, of course, the fact that most fashion models are under 18 years old, that we place our standard of beauty and desire on the backs of children.
This is nothing new. I'm almost embarrassed to be blogging about it, about something so obvious. But that big darker thing (that makes these stories so sexy, so shocking, so deserving of front page CNN coverage, that makes the Oakland Trib run a weeklong series on child prostitution, and makes me want to see this).
That's the thing. That's the deeper thing. The acceptance and naturalness of the exploitation, and what it means to witness it as the audience.
The genius defense didn't work for Hans Reiser, although he lost his manslaughter plea (with a three years sentence that would have been finished in 2009) in the attempt, an atrocious 6-month long trial in which he performed his guilt while clumsily attempting to perform his innocence.
Now he's performing something else. His lawyer, William Du Bois, said:
"His motivation for (taking authorities to the grave) was to put some resolution to the whole thing and improve his posture with the case and bring closure to the family...He realized that to ever be paroled, he would have to acknowledge responsibility and show remorse."
See an awkward sociopath try to show remorse. (Also, watch the clip of him eating a cookie).Of course, I don't believe him. Neither does he.
CLEAN, the piece I did in March about the gap between the fantasy of the tech industry and the toxic physical reality used Hans and Fernando Jimenez Gonzalez, a 19-year old worker at a PC board manufacturer who drowned in a vat of sulfiric acid, as the two archetypes, the mythic figures that upheld the opposite ends of "manufacturing" and the relationship with the body.
Hans was still on trial as we created and performed CLEAN. It would have been so easy to focus on the tawdry details of the case, but what was more interesting for the purposes of the piece was Hans' inability to function in the embodied world.
That's the genius defense, of course.
I was amazed at how the geeks over at SlashDot defended him to the last breath all the way up until the moment he revealed the body and confessed to the crime for a potentially lighter sentence. They trashed Nina, her infidelities, her Russianness, they blamed America for hating on programmers, even as the evidence mounted up and up.
Monday, June 23, 2008
back in pg
This weekend, I went back to Port Gibson, Mississippi for the first time since 2004. My boss, Patty Crosby, was retiring from Mississippi Cultural Crossroads, an organization she founded 30 years ago.
Going back to Port Gibson, honoring Patty and celebrating her and the unbelievable body of work which she and her husband Dave have created over the past 30 years has been very humbling for me, motivating and emotional and troubling.
Patty first called me in December, 2001. Her board wanted to do a Murder Mystery Dinner Theater play as a fundraiser, and she needed a guest artist to come direct. I had just finished working for Cornerstone Theater Company (which Patty had brought in back in 1992 for a famed interracial Romeo and Juliet production that first garnered national attention for C'stone). Bill Rauch recommended me. I talked Patty into hiring me, telling her I could write a locally based murder mystery play, direct it with a cast of local people, and teach an after-school workshop all by myself, despite the fact that I had never done any of these things.
Three weeks later, I packed up my rusted to shit '85 Prelude which had taken me all over the country, and drove to Port Gibson. I passed through Vicksburg, a dying port town in which I had spent a memorable night in six months before, sleeping at the Motel Dixiana, turned South on 61, and drove 30 more miles to the town "too beautiful to burn", as U.S. Grant apocryphally called it during his march to the sea.
Now, for a girl who had most recently lived in Los Angeles and New York, this was a change, to put it mildly: the town has 1500 people, and is the county seat of a 7,000 person county. The racial divide is still firmly entrenched: 80% black, much of it in poverty; the remaining 20%, white folks who still, for the most part, control the money. One of the most famous civil rights cases that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund ever won was Claiborne Hardware et al vs. NAACP, in which local white businesses sued the NAACP and black residents for boycotting them. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and was finally decided (against the white businesses, of course) in 1982.
I came to direct one play, I came for three months. I stayed and directed four plays over the course of 15 months between January 2002 and September 2003. In doing so, I pretty much dropped out of the community of theater-makers that I had built up in New York and elsewhere. I pretty much fell off the map.
It was quite a lonely time. My cell phone didn't get reception and I was mostly alone and sometimes it felt that anyone my age who still lived in the town was either an alcoholic or had been in jail or had multiple kids. I would drive the hour to Jackson every week and back, despite the fact that Jackson isn't the most hopping of Southern cities (leave that to Birmingham and Atlanta and Nashville and pre-Katrina New Orleans), to talk on my cell phone and buy a block of tofu and sit in a cafe and have a proper cup of coffee or a proper non-Budweiser bottle of beer.
Of course, it was also an exhilarating time, which is why I stayed and let myself fall off the map for two years. There was something very clean about the quiet of a small rural town--I read and wrote and learned my civil rights history properly for the first time in my life.
I experienced previously unimaginable American realities (for me, at least) every day--from the catfish farms to the strip club where the deer hunters hung out to the Pink Palace juke joint in Hermansville to the drag show in the black gay club in Jackson. I was taught how to shoot a gun by rednecks in the backwoods, and drank beer at the white honky tonk out in the shadow of the nuclear power plant.
I spoke at the all-white Lion's Club lunch and had the first female black welder in the county show me her self-published romance novels. I went to a bazillion different church services, trawling for local participants. I karaoked with the white working class in Vicksburg on a Friday night, smoked blunts and sipped sizzurp in Clancy's white Mercedes SUV which had "GODIVA" stenciled on the front window.
I spent the day on the banks of the Bayou Pierre with middle aged good ol' boys, now sober and marked by their wild youth, as they told me alternating stories of soberness and bitterness and thankfulness. I saw my first fireflies and thunderstorms and hurricanes. I drove to nearly every city and teeny town in Mississippi with a performing troupe of 14-year old rural black kids who'd never been onstage, allowed them to "baptize" me in a Starkville motel pool, and had them do theater games on Faulkner's lawn in Oxford.
All of which was pretty damn cool.
But it was much more than the glamour of the unknown and exotic. I also was engaged in one of the most intensive periods of learning in my life. My whole life changed. And that's because of Patty Crosby.
Patty and Dave are collaboratively responsible for the outstanding programming and organizational strength of Mississippi Cultural Crossroads--their tentacles extend to so many different kinds of Good Works: art in the schools for all ages; afterschool arts; Summer Arts job programs for teenagers; their beloved Peanut Butter & Jelly, a pro-literacy traveling summer children's theater; community health programs; community reading programs; the documentation of and support of local craft arts, especially quilting, for which previously unrecognized local quilters were given NEA grants; local historical research of larger national import, from extensive and exquisitely documented oral history collection to exhibits on the local civil rights movement, the Rabbit's Foot Minstrel Show which was stationed in Port Gibson, and the stunning rediscovery and exhibition of early 20th century photographs taken by Leigh Briscoe Allen, a planter's son. And of course, live theater.
All of their programming would overlap--the theater would connect to literacy; the arts programs would connect to teaching kids professional skills; oral history collection would be done by teenagers. It's shockingly impressive to witness the depth and breadth of their work in retrospect--this is the hot shit in current arts and culture funding, and they've been doing it, brilliantly, for 30 years!
So Patty and Dave are the pillars of the Great Work. But Patty was my boss. She and I worked together for all of these months, and the way she understood and explained things had a profound impact on me. I knew I had to work with her until I could absorb some of her worldview. She knows how to read the world with simultaneous causation: she sees how the forces of history and current socioeconomic structures and psychology and personality all intersect to explain a moment. And she always can explain it with a story.
For example--I was irritated with a teacher at the local public high school. Patty broke it down--in terms of this teacher's personal life and personality, but also in terms of the culture of the local school system, and then also in terms of how that culture of the local school system developed historically and in relation to the civil rights movement.
I tell you what--her insight and Dave's insight humbled me, and kept me from ever presuming to write one of those, "white intellectual/Ivy leaguer comes to the South, is shocked" narratives that New York publishers love to gobble up. Like this. Or this. Or even, as much as I love it, this.
It was so powerful, my time in Mississippi. It was so important to me. Because I felt the purpose of the work we were doing was so strong, that I didn't even mind truly surrendering my own will as an artist to represent the community. Enough so, that I stayed longer than was probably good for me, given the dearth of a personal community and lack of an outlet to express my own self creatively (or oftentimes, socially).
So.
Being back there. Being back there. What did it mean to be back there?
I was most powerfully reminded of that sense of purpose. And of Patty's importance to me as a mentor. And it leaves me, today, wondering how to translate what was so momentous about that time back to my own life. Not necessarily in the type of work I do--as a teacher and facilitator/director of community-based work, I've clearly taken my time in Port Gibson forward with me.
But the spirit of it. That sense of possibility and purpose and importance that suffused my every day there. That hopefulness, and the pride in what I was doing. Also, Patty's stubbornness vision. Her eagle-eyed way of really knowing and understanding a place. How do I translate that to the messier and larger arena of Oakland?
This plugs into a larger question I've been asking myself--about arrogance. Where is my arrogance, the necessary arrogance of an artist that makes the rest of the life worthwhile? Did I ever have it? Will I never have it? Did the obvious needs of Mississippi let me avoid answering that question of myself?
And now? Where is the fire, now? How do I do as Patty does--to let all the petty bullshit around me not touch that inner fire?
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
back from the 'moon
Spent two weeks in Patagonia with Ben, a place I've wanted to go since reading Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia 7 years ago (with thanks to Mr. Hancock and Ms. Hanway).
It was the brief tourist version, of course--but in some very powerful ways, fulfilled the dream. Why is it so exciting to just be somewhere, to just go somewhere and know you're there? Just being in Tierra del Fuego, at Estancia Harberton, looking out onto the water and feeling like I was at el fin del mundo filled me with joy and wonder.
Also, and I think connected, a deliriously happy return to the novel. I used to devour novels. I was raised by novels, from early childhood through my teenage years into my early twenties.
But somehow, over the past few years I have found myself far more drawn to non-fiction: memoirs, journalism, essays, research. Even when I read fiction, I mostly would stick to graphic novels, books I had read before, and trash. I was literally repelled from fiction in the bookstore. Something felt suspect about novels to me--something unclean and irritating about a novelist's motivations.
But for CLEAN, on Ellen's advice, I picked up Stegner's Angle of Repose, and fell in love again with the majestic emotional power of the novel. The crotchety narrator's voice made me trust his need to tell story. It just woke me up, or, mixing my metaphors, felt like falling into a cool body of water after walking through the desert. And after that, Gilead by Maryanne Robinson, a humble, skillful, quiet read which was pleasant enough, then over the course, hooked me completely even as it stayed quiet, then, at the end, just shook me to pieces, I was actually sobbing in pleasurable agony on the plane.
During the trip (thank you, Dave Malloy), I started to devour War and Peace, and am about 3/4 of the way through. Oh Jesus, that's a novel. That's the novel. It's re-awakening some long-dormant spring in my imagination. His scope is so vast, but his ability to organize it all into a cohesive structure makes everything seem possible.
Irrational exuberance? Almost got me and Ben killed in the French Valley.
It was the brief tourist version, of course--but in some very powerful ways, fulfilled the dream. Why is it so exciting to just be somewhere, to just go somewhere and know you're there? Just being in Tierra del Fuego, at Estancia Harberton, looking out onto the water and feeling like I was at el fin del mundo filled me with joy and wonder.
Also, and I think connected, a deliriously happy return to the novel. I used to devour novels. I was raised by novels, from early childhood through my teenage years into my early twenties.
But somehow, over the past few years I have found myself far more drawn to non-fiction: memoirs, journalism, essays, research. Even when I read fiction, I mostly would stick to graphic novels, books I had read before, and trash. I was literally repelled from fiction in the bookstore. Something felt suspect about novels to me--something unclean and irritating about a novelist's motivations.
A notable exception in 2007 was Blood Meridian, which I had previously started and stopped about 3 times. I finally decided I was going to finish that fucking thing if it killed me. I've never encountered fiction that felt so hard--that's generally reserved for theory or something. But man, that book was--not work, exactly. More like a pilgrimage walking 50 miles on my knees to a shrine dedicated to the foulest elements of Western humanity.
But for CLEAN, on Ellen's advice, I picked up Stegner's Angle of Repose, and fell in love again with the majestic emotional power of the novel. The crotchety narrator's voice made me trust his need to tell story. It just woke me up, or, mixing my metaphors, felt like falling into a cool body of water after walking through the desert. And after that, Gilead by Maryanne Robinson, a humble, skillful, quiet read which was pleasant enough, then over the course, hooked me completely even as it stayed quiet, then, at the end, just shook me to pieces, I was actually sobbing in pleasurable agony on the plane.
During the trip (thank you, Dave Malloy), I started to devour War and Peace, and am about 3/4 of the way through. Oh Jesus, that's a novel. That's the novel. It's re-awakening some long-dormant spring in my imagination. His scope is so vast, but his ability to organize it all into a cohesive structure makes everything seem possible.
Irrational exuberance? Almost got me and Ben killed in the French Valley.
Friday, December 28, 2007
very nice!
Sam Hurwitt of the East Bay Express saw fit to name CLOWN BIBLE the best show in the East Bay, 2007. Ok, well, maybe it wasn't really in any order, but it was a top ten list, and we were #1. Above Les Waters' Pillowman at Berkeley Rep.
Go see!
He also said Dave's songs made for the Best Onstage Music of the Year, "because it was impossible to come away from Clown Bible not singing, "I'm Saaamson, I'm craaaazy."
Thanks, Sam!
Go see!
He also said Dave's songs made for the Best Onstage Music of the Year, "because it was impossible to come away from Clown Bible not singing, "I'm Saaamson, I'm craaaazy."
Thanks, Sam!
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
democracy in america!
The fantastic Annie Dorsen (she most recently directed and guided the development of Stew's outstanding Passing Strange, which was at both Berkeley Rep and the Public) is finally doing a project she's had in the works for years--adapting to stage (conceptually, of course) de Toqueville's Democracy in America.
It begins with this, at Joe's Pub in NYC, this coming Monday, November 26.
[Annie] auctions off Democracy in America, the first performance piece in which the consumers are the creators. Make a bid for your wildest ideas to be included in this pop-political extravaganza -- buy a dance, a song, or the very first word of the show -- then see it onstage at the show's premiere in April, 2008. This is your chance to get in on the ground floor of the largest collaboration in theatre history.
Apparently, the website (www.buydemocracy.com) will let you buy online as well. I will certainly be ready to buy.
It begins with this, at Joe's Pub in NYC, this coming Monday, November 26.
[Annie] auctions off Democracy in America, the first performance piece in which the consumers are the creators. Make a bid for your wildest ideas to be included in this pop-political extravaganza -- buy a dance, a song, or the very first word of the show -- then see it onstage at the show's premiere in April, 2008. This is your chance to get in on the ground floor of the largest collaboration in theatre history.
Apparently, the website (www.buydemocracy.com) will let you buy online as well. I will certainly be ready to buy.
flying refrigerators
in the dream, I'm wearing sexy but conservative grown-up clothes--button up shirt, well-cut skirt, pumps, in dark and neutral colors--with the exception of the tights, which are crazily vertically striped in dark blue and white. As I walk up the stairs to the little upper cafe floor overlooking the rest of the cafe, a man eating (blond, not at all pretty, kind of big and Britishy) stops and stares at me. He introduces himself, asks me what I do. I proudly tell him I'm a theater director. He proudly tells me he's an MP in the Labour Party, which surprises me because he totally looks like a Tory.
I sit down with my mother at the cafe table, and the play starts. It's magnificent, I'm roiling in envy at its beauty. I remember nothing about it except that at some point, a refrigerator which is suspended from the ceiling, explodes by the force of another refrigerator swinging into it.
I sit down with my mother at the cafe table, and the play starts. It's magnificent, I'm roiling in envy at its beauty. I remember nothing about it except that at some point, a refrigerator which is suspended from the ceiling, explodes by the force of another refrigerator swinging into it.
wedding masques
Ben and I got married on November 11. It was a truly joyous occasion, full of love and friendship and family. A perfect weekend--from the Chinese banquet and wild karaoke on Friday night, to bagels and coffee at the Gliderport overlooking the ocean on Saturday morning, to the delicious Israeli food and wonderful vibe of my parents' house on Saturday night, to the Sunday morning ceremony and reception.
It ain't bragging if it's true, right? But I swear, I only bring it up to mention the brief wedding masque I put together for Ben.
The masque was a form of festive entertainment in 16th and 17th century Europe, short plays and spectacles presented to and performed for royalty on the occasion of a birth, marriage, or coronation. They often included pastoral settings, mythological fables and an allegory. One of my favorite wedding ones involved a giant castle being wheeled in, then stormed by knights. Once the knights had, ahem, breached the castle walls, beautiful young ladies emerged and they danced. Often the prince would be pulled in to participate--like, they would pull the prince up and make him gamble with loaded dice that had him win, over and over again.
I figured that since I'm not bringing much earning power to the marriage, this is something I can do. Everything about it, from the concept to the execution, was a complete surprise to Ben--he had no idea I had even been considering such a thing, and I've been talking about it with his friends for at least 6-8 months.
The masque went suchly:
Ben and I entered the reception hall and went right into our first dance ("You Can Have It All" as performed by Yo La Tengo). As we danced, very hug and sway, foam-core puppets started emerging and circling us, creating a wonderfully cheesy pastoral landscape. We (Nicky, Brian, Liz, Mike, my cousin Vered and Ben's cousin Kathy) had made flowers and butterflies, a rainbow, a tree, stars, a sun/moon. Kathy created two incredible squirrels. Vered came into the craft-party late, heard about the pastoral, thought for a second and decided: "a mother duck and three baby ducks!" which were puppeted by my mom, Vered, her brother Arie and my brother Ron.
The puppets danced and swayed with us. Ben was already in shock at this point. Then, a blood-curdling scream.
And Evil emerged. Played by my friend Mike Jaros from UCSD, Evil wore a Mexican wrestler mask and a cape, stormed in, threatened the pastoral landscape, which all cowered in the corner. Evil and I faced off, began a ferocious thumb wrestling battle, but of course I couldn't defeat Evil alone. Ben and I were then handed foam-core swords, and defeated Evil together, restoring the pastoral landscape.
Which then went into the simcha dancing, Jewish celebration dancing. I hadn't known until we were putting this all together that after the married couple gets lifted on the chairs, they remain seated in the chairs and people entertain them as if they were king and queen--perfect for a masque. Actually, the tradition probably emerged as a response to the oppression of Jews in Europe--a burlesque of power, a way to celebrate the marriage.
So anyway, we broke into Hava Nagila, Ben and we got lifted up on chairs, and set down, and people performed for us. There was crazy hula hooping, from my mother and others (Shir hula hooped and danced--Sari put the hoop around her neck). Juggling. Acrobatics from my Clown Biblers. Jane had brought her clown nose and clowned for us. A kick line spontaneously formed. Rachel and Alex played matador and bull. It was insane.
I didn't want anything about the ceremony to be a performance, but there's nothing like perforamnce to kick off the party.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
hello?
I haven't written since April. I think it will stop being busy, but no. Once CLOWN BIBLE closed, it was tech and opening HAIR. Once HAIR closed, it was pulling together a final performance and ending the school year in East Oakland. Obligations with day job copywriting, obligations with other theater projects that I had a hand in here and there. Once that was done, and I had a full night's sleep for first time in 6 months, it was company business: grants and applications and the CLOWN BIBLE DVD.
All of these fascinating experiences I wasn't writing about! I will, I have to write a few words about HAIR, which was an amazing thing.
So.
I recently had an experience with the theater apparatus. And I want to write about it. This blog is about making theater in America. It is also about the state of the American theater--the state of the art, the state of the profession, the state of its narrow economy, the state of its audience, and the state of its academy. Even when I'm just snarkily reviewing a show, it is always in that context.
Of course, when I make art and when I write about those things, I do so as an outsider, from outside the apparatus. Because at a very young age (say, 18), I really felt like the theater in America was in a sorry state, and didn't feel like success on those terms would really be success. I still feel that way--often extremely lonely in my profession, without allies.
I had a brief, uneasy do si do with the Powers That Be, the Big Professional Apparatus. And I want to write about it. But I'm not sure quite how yet.
More soon.
All of these fascinating experiences I wasn't writing about! I will, I have to write a few words about HAIR, which was an amazing thing.
So.
I recently had an experience with the theater apparatus. And I want to write about it. This blog is about making theater in America. It is also about the state of the American theater--the state of the art, the state of the profession, the state of its narrow economy, the state of its audience, and the state of its academy. Even when I'm just snarkily reviewing a show, it is always in that context.
Of course, when I make art and when I write about those things, I do so as an outsider, from outside the apparatus. Because at a very young age (say, 18), I really felt like the theater in America was in a sorry state, and didn't feel like success on those terms would really be success. I still feel that way--often extremely lonely in my profession, without allies.
I had a brief, uneasy do si do with the Powers That Be, the Big Professional Apparatus. And I want to write about it. But I'm not sure quite how yet.
More soon.
Monday, April 09, 2007
finally, jeez
I am happy to report that, on Week Three of our run, CLOWN BIBLE finally came together. Week One, we were just trying to avoid total disaster. Week Two, we were tightening farty awkward transitions, and in straining to really clean the damn thing up kind of lost the play of clown. I don't think a single show went by without major changes.
Last weekend, we seemed to find the balance. Adding a brief intermission took the pressure off making everything fast; and returning to group warm-up, including clown turns, makes the biggest difference.
I haven't written much about the process of making CLOWN BIBLE. It's been a tough slog--a very pleasurable and rewarding one, don't get me wrong (at some point, I just have to put up on the blog some of our process of clown training and creation, not to mention some of the stories that we cut)--but taking the stories of the Bible and translating them in this way, and having it be a cohesive piece and not some shitty "The Bible, Abridged," and plus it's pretty much a full musical, but it's a clown show too, and finding the balance of it, oh dear.
Anyway, more soon later, but that's where it's at. I can confidently say it's a beautiful show, and you should come out and not miss it.
Last weekend, we seemed to find the balance. Adding a brief intermission took the pressure off making everything fast; and returning to group warm-up, including clown turns, makes the biggest difference.
I haven't written much about the process of making CLOWN BIBLE. It's been a tough slog--a very pleasurable and rewarding one, don't get me wrong (at some point, I just have to put up on the blog some of our process of clown training and creation, not to mention some of the stories that we cut)--but taking the stories of the Bible and translating them in this way, and having it be a cohesive piece and not some shitty "The Bible, Abridged," and plus it's pretty much a full musical, but it's a clown show too, and finding the balance of it, oh dear.
Anyway, more soon later, but that's where it's at. I can confidently say it's a beautiful show, and you should come out and not miss it.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Up and Running! Reviews!
So we opened CLOWN BIBLE last weekend. I didn't realize how much I missed my cast until our brush-up rehearsal last night. Opening weekend was a trip--and we got great reviews:
From our review in the East Bay Express:
"hilarious, haunting, and unexpectedly challenging in the hands of Ten Red Hen. Their no-budget {The 99-cent} Miss Saigon was a hard act to follow, but CLOWN BIBLE is better. The magic of the show lies less in any great spectacle of circus arts than in the way it can turn from funny to devastating in an instant."
This particular production doesn't feel "finished" in the way that other plays can. How could it? We're attempting these tricky translations, translating Bible into clown vernacular, and in the process, asking sometimes painful questions about man and faith and culture and ourselves.
It feels like the beginning of something. We need your feedback--please come and see it.
From our review in the East Bay Express:
"hilarious, haunting, and unexpectedly challenging in the hands of Ten Red Hen. Their no-budget {The 99-cent} Miss Saigon was a hard act to follow, but CLOWN BIBLE is better. The magic of the show lies less in any great spectacle of circus arts than in the way it can turn from funny to devastating in an instant."
And from the Berkeley Daily Planet:
"The ensemble is due full, heartfelt praise, as is Ten Red Hen founder Maya Gurantz, for a truly collaborative show...contributing to the unique style and flavor of this bravura piece, a veritable tabernacle of prat-fall praise to the greater glories of the Theater of the World (amen)...CLOWN BIBLE is a theatrical event of real magnitude; the show doesn't degrade scripture, but elevates the quietly sad or manically grinning countenance of the clown, as did the medieval Miracle Plays and strangely humorous decor of cathedrals, where sacred stories seem to get sent up on sacred occasions and in sacred places."
I am sure I'll have more to say regarding the process, and what we're finding, but let this do for now:This particular production doesn't feel "finished" in the way that other plays can. How could it? We're attempting these tricky translations, translating Bible into clown vernacular, and in the process, asking sometimes painful questions about man and faith and culture and ourselves.
It feels like the beginning of something. We need your feedback--please come and see it.
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