Fame or Famine

Many thanks to BeckyLoooooo for providing me with yet another reason to go to Seattle: Point Break LIVE!
Now, here’s the fun part: this is actually one of my favorite movies. Specifically, the part where the lead jumps out of a perfectly good aircraft without a parachute just to make sure the bad guy doesn’t get away. That’s dedication!
Only slightly less scary, I think, would be the way they actually break the fourth wall:
“the starring role of Keanu will be selected at random from the audience each night, with the lucky winner reading their entire script off of cue-cards. This method …read more

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Following up on a comment by Becklooo, I am trying to find examples of independent theatre in L.A. (not that I’ll have time, but it’s fitting, anyway, because I’m going to be in that neck of the woods this weekend (Ontario, in fact) for the PME).
So, here’s what Google & MySpace showed me:

Lodestone Theatre

The Independent Shakespeare Company
Looking Glass Theatre
Lame Dog Theatre

…and then it peters out. And it doesn’t answer the problem that Beckloooo identified of the fact that actors come to LA for TV and film, and so will sometimes abandon a theatre piece for a sprite commercial. And …read more

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Last night we performed the Burlesque at the King Club in Madison, WI. There was no real publicity for this event- just some fliers hanging up here and there. As a result the people in the audience were just a couple less than the people on the stage.
This didn’t matter. It was a great show. We got to try out new choreography, the rope tricks I do with Betty Wantsme were some of the best we’d done, and Ms. Behavin was even better than usual, especially in the final number.
I suspect it’s because of the lack of pressure we had. …read more

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“ “I’ve got a lot of colors in my box that I didn’t have when I was a so-called minimalist…I got them the old-fashioned way – I went out and learned how to do it.””
Ever since learning to appreciate “Einstein on the Beach” in college, I’ve held a special affection for Philip Glass. Especially with comments like his reaction to the practice of having dancers go offstage, turn around, and come back on. “After the third or fourth time,” he said in an interview (and I’m paraphrasing), “you just want to shoot them…”
This opera sounds a bit more accessible than …read more

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“The magic of theater is its power to astonish, but astonishment can occur only if the audience is willing to suspend its disbelief. How are we expected to astonish young people who have seen everything imaginable, on screens of all description, since they were born?”
– Donald Margulies

There’s a great essay there about both the current state of theatre and also Margulies own strategies for dealing with it. I like the fact that rather than try to compensate for what is perceived as a “weakness” of theatre (which, when he boils it down, really seems to be basically a matter …read more

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“…we don’t have a Pavarotti because DANCE DOESN’T RECORD WELL — i.e., it’s not mass-producible, like a Pavarotti CD or video or PBS special, and so there’s no dancer who’ll be viscerally KNOWN to millions of people as Pavarotti was through radio, TV and CDs, and the newspaper headlines generated by his stadium concerts with the 3 Tenors.”-Foot in Mouth
I’m not entirely sure I agree with this – Mikhail Baryshnikov comes to mind, and to some extent Bill T. Jones and Pilobolus. I don’t know of any Pavarotti calendars, for example, and neither has Kiri Te Kanawa starred in any …read more

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Hell yeah!
In fact, I almost bought a travelers saxophone. Go ahead, click on the page, and listen to the MP3 file of the sound of the sax. Now, remember that you are listening to it through a dinky little computer, and trust me that in person, you can feel the sound reverberating in your chest. I could not believe the sound of these things when Ginger played it for me, and winced as she pounded the instrument against the counter to prove its durability.
Of course, part of my attraction is the fact that it reminded me of a Krumhorn, which …read more

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One of my pleasures is visiting the Bristol Renaissance Faire – not only for the chain mail bikinis, but also for the occasional efforts towards authenticity by artisans and performers. You don’t get to hear madrigals too much, or listen to strolling lutenists, or see real busking jugglers working a crowd with wooden balls and leather clubs.
However, an even bigger treat happened this last weekend, when I got to see i Arroganti performing the Commedia dell’Arte at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. I’m a longtime fan of commedia, and if you like Loony Tunes or the Marx Brothers or A Fish …read more

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The Mercury Theatre’s presentation of Reefer Madness the Musical was such an incredible treat, it’s hard to say where to start. Anchored by the narrator played by Jordan Jackson, who (forgive me for the comparison) reminded me of a young Jim Carrey in terms of comic timing, versatility, and physical comedy, the entire cast was strong from the “Zombies” who provided extra comic to the set through the hot-n-sexy Jessica Witham (full disclosure: she’s also known as Foxy Veronica, the director of the burlesque group I perform with, so I might be a little biased).
I’d never seen the musical before, …read more

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Tomorrow night, before going onstage at the Inferno with Foxy Veronica’s Peach Pies, I’m going to the opening of this musical. I’m sure I’ll miss more than half of the jokes, since I missed the optimum pot-smoking years, but from talking to some cast members (and yes, I’m hoping for an interview with one in particular) it’s going to be well worth it. Seeing it with cast members from the burlesque is an added bonus.

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