Filed by Lance at 11:55 pm under General, Love, Pop Culture, Shameless Plugs, The Arts, The Media

It’s been a crazy two weeks. Here’s what the program looked like:

1. 4/20, Act I: The Game of Contact and a workshopped performance of The Meaning of Anthology
2. 4/25, Act II: Directing for Theatre of Women IV at Dream Theatre
3. 4/26, Act III: Directing a staged reading of a new play called To Grandfather’s House by Nancy Schaefer at Chicago Dramatists
4. Relaxing Denouement (Be be be be be beep, be be be be be beep.)

Act I: We’re off and running (with a lot of work to do!)

What we’re now calling The Meaning of Anthology has been bouncing around my head for about five years, give or take, so it was great to actually see it in other people’s hands. The workshop was a success as far as I’m concerned. I met some great new actors, got confirmation that the process we’re planning on using will work — in one form or another — and got a rough idea on what still needs to be done.

We had one three-hour rehearsal, where we went through a few scenes from the first act, and then performed what we had done as the second part of The Game of Contact. The actors responded to it differently than I had anticipated, which was fun to watch, and instructive. William Carlos and Flossie Williams have been rattling around in my head so long, it was a good reminder to see an actor wander between point A and point B where I had assumed there was a straight line. It was also nice to put it, in very rough form, in front of an audience. The audience got what they were supposed to get, and didn’t get what we had to leave on the cutting room floor for the workshop. All in all, things were in order. World’s still here. Didn’t explode.

The rehearsal was also instructive.

The first words I ever remember my Dad saying to me were, “Everyone likes a polite boy.” That’s true to this day, as far as I know, but that ingrained polite behavior, coupled with the fact that my training is half and half directing and acting coaching means I’m sometimes too friendly to actors’ egos. Working with a risky project like this, there comes a time where the only thing to say to an actor is, “Go. Do it.” She or he intuitively knows that this means, “There’s no other way to do this except to make a screaming train wreck now and then untangle the hot twisted steel slowly as we go along.” I have to thank Bil, who, after we had gone through introductions and preliminary facts, nuts, and bolts, was the one to say, “I think the only thing to do now is to go do it,” or something like that. Bil was the one who kicked this bird out of the nest, and we got to the meat of the matter much more quickly because between us two, he was the one in the room with the guts to take our collective work into a train wreck with open eyes. Kudos to him, and here’s to the other one and two-thirds acts of The Meaning of Anthology.

The actual event was wonderful, too. I love to act; it’s how I fell in love with theater, but I get so tense and worried and analytical when I’m performing. I had so much fun just letting go because there wasn’t any way to impress anyone in the audience with well-rehearsed technique. The only way to do it was to let go. I had a ball.

Act II: Full House (with the right ratio of men to women)

Learning to direct and to work in theater, there’s never enough time, but at least there’s enough time to feel comfortable with the product you’ve got. The great thing about doing theater here in Chicago is getting used to not being comfortable with the product. It’s good to learn triage and what musicians call “festival sound,” not being able to balance all the sound levels before you go live.

As soon as I saw the script, I knew I was directing something incredibly personal and important to Trevor (we found out beforehand we’d be one of the writer/director pairs). Combining that with festival sound, my senses were on edge all day. I’ve never done a 24-hour theater festival before. The idea’s simple: the writers started at 8:00 PM (or thereabouts), directors get the scripts at 7:00 AM, the actors show up at 8:00 AM, we tech at 4:00 PM, and Go at 8:00 PM. Dream Theatre, at 18th and Clinton, isn’t a huge building, and there were 8 teams of performers and directors, plus theater staff all in one building. You couldn’t go anywhere in the building — basement, bathroom, green room, lobby or backstage — where you weren’t hearing or stepping over a rehearsal going on. All day. It was pretty cool.

Trevor said he was pleased with the piece, and surprised at some of what happened, so my work here is done.

Act III: Friend to Lance: “Good work. Now it’s time to court some women.”*

I’ve been courting Chicago Dramatists for about 10 months now. I got to know their Artistic Director, then asked to Assistant Direct his next project before I knew they don’t use Assistant Directors. Just goes to show you shouldn’t limit yourself. I got a call about three weeks ago that there was an opening for a director as part of their Playwrights Month, and a Network Playwright was looking for someone to direct a stage reading of her play. The actors were already lined up, and were Chicago Dramatists veterans, all of them. I’ve seen many of them on stage around town, and it was a thrill to work with them. I still get a silly thrill out of meeting and working with new actors: “So and so is a well-known Chicago actor and they know my name! I’m popular!” The piece was so much fun, about a family on the rocks, but really funny. As Nancy, the playwright said, “It’s about people standing in the way of their own dreams.” My favorite scene was the father of the family explaining why a really expensive home coffee bar will save money; it’ll pay for itself in X months if they both drink 3 lattes a day, more time if only 2. The family consists of non-coffee drinkers.

Curtain goes down: You’ve got that beep. That beep. That bow-ba-bow.

So I’m exhausted from two busy weeks. I haven’t done anything but relax the past couple nights, when I really need to do laundry. I haven’t done laundry since…

I really, really need to do laundry.

So, I’ll end this long rambling post with a reflection from the dinner Bil, Trevor, and I had after Theatre of Women IV. Some pieces from a festival like that are necessarily all over the map, and we got into a discussion about weird and personal tastes. Bil and Trevor both really enjoyed a very poetic, non-linear piece about a woman and her mother, when I didn’t care for it too much. Trevor made the point that there’s weird that’s just weird, and weird that you enjoy and let it just wash over you. I agreed, but the line between what’s enjoyable and what’s just weird is a sliding scale.

To give an example of weird that I like, here’s something I’ve been listening to since I’ve had some free time. One of my favorite bands, probably certifiably insane, and so weird, I can’t stop humming along (Tried a little bit of movin’ on, it lasted way to long. Dressed up as bubblegum, I stuck to your shoe, let’s run. Can you gimme that…).

If you’ve actually read this far, I hope you enjoy:

*That’s true and a direct quote. I get the hint.