Many new things and "A Grimm Reality"

Well,

I'm not a very good blogger.

Sorry bout that. You're probably all gone now.

Maybe that's for the best.

I was starting to feel pressure about doing this for people to read. Like this needed to be a really good blog.

But I've missed doing this and I think it does me good.

So maybe now I'll keep doing this but for me.

No offense, if anyone else is still listening.

So what has happened in the the last 3 months?

Well I have a respectable day job.

2 in fact.

One of them is teaching Meisner at NYFA. I love it. Love it, love it, love it.

It's great in many many ways, but not the least of which is that I get to teach MEISNER. Not just acting or scene study, but strict regimented Meisner.

It's been rejuvenating. Teaching others the principles and beliefs that shaped me as an artist has helped me reconnect to them again in a deeper way.

It's fantastic. And I love my students. Being around people who are truly just concerned with the art of acting is a wonderful change of pace from trying to get money or a job.


A Grimm Reality is a reality now.

Bryant Park gave us final approval, finally.

July 24, 31, August 7, and 14.

Right now we've had a few meetings with an ever expanding group of people. Actors, writers, designers, and others.

It's a big beautiful mess right now, but I think it's going to be something truly truly special. Something created by a group, and experienced in an immersive environment. And free. Couldn't fit the principles I laid out much better than that. Thanks to, well, everyone for their support and helping things fall in place for this.

Theatre 4the People is also a reality now. We've applied for fiscal sponsorship with Fractured Atlas, should be approved soon.

We also had our first "prequel" kind of performance. Robert Lyons offered us a week at the OHIO and we threw together a festival of short plays in a couple of weeks. SHORT LOVE at the OHIO was a success and yours truly was onstage in a real live show for the first time in 6 years.

Felt good. Couldn't have done it without Adam Belvo carrying me through most of it. And Justin Swain's fantastic NEW CAR PLAY...it was a really great experience. To get to act with such a great actor and good friend, and to speak such wonderful words--and I got work again with Jake Witlen, who is a damn fine director. The kind of director who lets you be the best actor you can be. Swain, Witlen, and Belvo, I can never repay you guys enough.

Bekah Brunstetter gave us a short play and bunch of monologues--we made the evening a little bit interactive with some pieces happening in the audience--and it just me made hungry to do more. I got to work with a lovely actress, Julia Davis who is a very sincere and very very brave actress...my friend Kara Ayn got to direct her boyfriend Edward (my Lee from TRUE WEST last year) in Bekah's short play. And they were all awesome.

Erin McCarson reprised her role in DRAMA PLAY or as it's often called the "God Bless Harry Potter" monologue. Which is so amazingly fantastic that everyone who sees her do it, immediately becomes enamored with both Erin and Bekah. For good reason, it's the best monologue I've ever seen. There's been some discussion of Bekah writing a whole show for Erin as that character. I love the idea, but I'm also terrified of messing with something so damn good. I think it might be too tempting not to see if we can't do it. It's worth a try.

I'm still heartbroken about the OHIO, but I thank God for the opportunity to perform in that hallowed space one last time. It was magical. We had a great group of people and plays and everything was really fun and inspiring.

Dan Kitrosser made a splash with a new song by a character he created for Desiree Birch's bday party a while back: BIG GAY STORYTELLING FROG is everyone's new favorite character. Dan and I will have to create a whole show for him. The people demand it.

To think that was Dan's companion contribution to his poetic and affecting play ON THE WAY TO MY ABORTION which despite the jolting title was a lovely, touching piece of nonpolitical of theatre. I'm glad you're on my side Dan, cause you're a formidable talent. Not many people can write nonpolitical abortion plays. Even fewer can write good ones. And I doubt anyone else has the juice to bring BIG GAY STORYTELLING FROG to life. I just don't see how.

Also, my good friend Roberta Colindrez (hope that's spelled right, 'Bert) got to do a piece written just for her by Bekah. And she was great. That was her first performance in NYC, I think, and she got to do it at the OHIO and with Bekah's words. I was incredibly proud. ('Bert also just became a Neo-Futurist, so again I am proud and feeling damn lucky to have such talented friends!)

Anyway, it was a great time and raised a little cash for THEATRE 4the People.

I also got to work on Donnetta Gray's play THE NEW NORMAL with Coyote Rep. I don't know yet if I'm directing the fall production of it. I think her old professor is supposed to, but maybe not. Anyway, it was great to work on, and I think Donnetta is becoming a pretty good playwright. (She's on a new show called Rubicon-I think that's the title-so she's pretty much kicking ass) Whatever happens, I think the play is going to be great and I'm glad to be a part of it in whatever way I can. Got to work with an old friend, Michael Mason, as a director on that and it felt like coming home again to work with such a talented guy I've known for over a decade. Need to do that again soon Mikey.

So yeah. Busy. Good. Friends kicking ass. Good things all around.

Now it's time to buckle down and start getting Grimm Reality built.

I'll write again soon.

Maybe I can keep up a weekly thing. Like every Saturday or something.

We'll see. Right now, I don't really know what I'm doing. Everything seems suddenly fast and furious, like a roller coaster or a car joy ride spinning just out of control. Like I should be scared, but instead I am having a fine, fine time doing what I'm doing.

Guess we'll see how it all plays out.

"Alan: I mean just imagine it, see the car wrapped around it, the sap pouring out slowly, the smell of the inside of the tree, like the forest, the real forest, like wilderness...and and no more this beautiful clean new car smell. No more of this fakey fake processed pine tree, and fake fakey life. No more. We will have blood dripping from our mouths. We will taste death. We will walk with the Whales. We will ride the High End Rooster.

Adam: What!?

Alan: I'm reaching for something, c'mon let's do it."

Excerpt from New Car Play by Justin Swain

Understatements. (________was right.)

Next September The Ohio will no longer be a theater. You can read about it here.

It could rain all day everyday for a year and I couldn't feel any worse.

To say that the Ohio is an irreplaceable home for NYC theatre artists would be an understatement.

To say that the Ohio is one of the few places left in NYC where theatre artists who took big, grand scale risks were encouraged, nourished, and rewarded by both the space itself and by the good people of Soho Think Tank would be an understatement.

To say that the Ohio is my favorite theatre (or maybe even just my favorite place) in NY would be an understatement.

To say that I was always both giddy and inspired when I got the chance to work there would be yet another understatement.

I'd say that this September, NYC is going lose another big piece of what makes this city special.

But that would be just another understatement in a long list.

Well, NYC let's just keep this going. We let the Provincetown Playhouse (the birthplace of all of Eugene O'Neill's plays) be remade into another part of NYU Inc.' s image***, we're going to let the Ohio become god only knows what (a Banana Republic? Condos?), and we've let theaters and other homes for artists close down by the dozen in the last decade.

You know, I can't help but wonder when I read about soulless moneysuits that ruin people's lives, the welfare of entire nations, the physical health of entire communities, and the livelihoods of their own countrymen all for the sake of making more money...if maybe it's because we're creating these people.

When we deaden the soul of our city, our community, our home--how are we not deadening our own souls?

A dead city of chain restaurants, condos, corporations, and banks.

Dead cities breed dead people.

Two good things to come out of this.

The movement to get the tax credit for landlords that rent to non-profits is an important one. As disheartening as loosing the Ohio, we must strengthen our resolve and not lose the new found power we've created in working together.

The unity and dedication that is taking hold in the Indie/Off-off community is a good, good thing.

A lot of people are a part of that, but I have to to give a big, big shout out to the NY Innovative Theatre foundation. I feel like they're really doing so much to help the community--Keep it up guys.

United we will grow; divided we will wither and die.

The other positive is that theatre is going to have to evolve and adapt to new spaces and venues. It's going to have to become "immersive" or as I've started calling it "3-D".

But I can't help remembering the hyperbolic graffiti slogan of my good friend scrawled everywhere they went, ___________(name left blank for their protection), and how it used to infuriate me.

But maybe it's time to call a spade a spade. Without a proper diagnosis, we can't fix this.

And fix it we must, because we're fighting for our lives now.

Two quotes today.

One to remind us why the work we do is so important.

'I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. "
(Maya Angelou, Professor of English Literature Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC )

The other because it's time to call it like it is.

"New York is Dead"
(_________)




***Correction: NYU did not tear down the Provincetown Playhouse entirely as I originally wrote. They are"building around it." Thanks to Joshua Hill for correcting me.

I assumed they were tearing it down because the last time I walked by it they were obviously tearing down one of the walls. Which as it turns out they did even though they weren't supposed to.

I'm not trying to nitpick here or play the inconsolable extremist. But whatever the "reconstruction" of the playhouse is or is supposed to be, the fact remains that I personally have very high doubts that any real remnant of what it was and what it represented will remain. Some old bricks and a plaque on the wall just isn't quite the same thing. At the end of the day, NYU bought it so it could tear it down and build more office space. If they keep 3 of the old walls and the floor and build an office building around it, it's not really gonna be the Provincetown Playhouse in spirit anymore. Not that it has been for years. I hope I'm proven wrong.

Back from the Future

Hi there!

Been a while.

Over a month actually.

Why the gap? Well, I have actually had a little more employment, plus my Bday, plus my childhood favorite football team finally went to the big dance and won it all, plus....

I can't write 9,000 word essays all the time.

So now I have to actually restrain myself and talk less and say more. I don't know if this is possible yet. I'll do my best.

Oh yeah.

One other thing happened.

One other little time eating distraction....


Dan Kitrosser (you remember Dan, he of the "AWESOME conversation?) and I are starting a company.


Theatre for the People


We're doing a show this summer in Bryant Park.

A Grimm Reality

Modern adaptations of Grimm's fairytales, in Bryant Park, free of charge.

We have a ton of of work to do.

But yeah. It's on.

So I guess this just became my actual Work/Company blog.

Thanks for reading my long rambling rant and giving me a place to turn my thoughts into something real. Who'd have thought that a blog of all things would have given rise to a whole new company.

Guess it's time now for me to walk the walk. Time to put up or shut up.

Man, I am excited. I have no idea how to do what we're going to try and do, but it's gonna be fun figuring it all out.

Click on the subscribe to this feed button and you'll get a notice when the new shorter (I promise, I promise) entries show up.

Well, that seems long enough.

Time to go actually work on the future.

(Cue the quote)

Be the change you want to see in the world--Gandhi

A must read

Read this article.

Different topic from what I've been railing on and on about, but it's exactly the same kind of thinking applied to a different part of theater.

Read!