Filed by Bil at 12:44 pm under Shameless Plugs, Stuff to Read, The Arts

I’ve got a lot of reading to do — there are two plays from other people upon which I actually have a direct effect in the coming months, so I’d really better get started. But I wanted to jot something down about what I’ve been seeing recently. I feel like lately, I’ve been seeing plenty of theatrical productions, some of it good, some of it not so good. Some of it was so bad that it’s still fresh in my mind even though I saw it months and months ago. The one great thing about both good and bad plays I see is that they inspire me to do better.

I’m especially inspired and very excited – VERY excited – about Dream Theatre’s upcoming production, “The Black Duckling,” in which I play a hopeless romantic poet. It’s an excellent script, and I feel as eager about this role as any other I can remember. It’s a silent melodrama, so it’s a new kind of challenge, and I get to wear a sweet beret. What more can an actor ask for than a new challenge and hip headwear?

Speaking of being a hopeless romantic poet – if I haven’t already announced it on this blog, let me just do so now. I submitted some poetry to the upcoming issue of Pith Magazine, an independent publication, and one of my poems was selected for publication. This is a big deal in that it’s actually the first time in my life that I will have been paid for a poem. PAID. Actual money! It’s not much – about enough for two cups of coffee – but it’s them paying me for once. Not them publishing me in a giant book filled with all sorts of bad poetry and then trying to get me to shill out $60 or whatever just to get a copy. No, I get a free copy of the magazine and a check in the mail. It’s a good feeling. It feels good.

Since Pith has purchased first North American publishing rights to the poem they did choose, I’d like to paste here, just for kicks, one of the poems I submitted that did NOT get chosen. If you hate it, lie to me.

Modern Thing

Here lies a monitor projecting the sights & sounds of the 21st century zeitgeist,
an unfocused, fast-cut montage of the systematic sacrifice of individuality for the benefit of the collective individual
(a bipolar, pudding-like pushover anthill of unearned inherited free will)
for us to watch like reality television while driving reality cars and eating reality pizza and reciting simultaneous reality monologues loudly enough to ignore the reality reality;
and we, the cynical offspring of the “me” generations, we negate the essence of a work of art (created by no on and paid no attention) until it is no longer art, just a thing that does what it does like any modern person.

The montage is beautiful fireworks and schools of fish and a great flying monster that gobbles up the stars,
and we keep our distance at all times.
We avoid the world, but we call it art;
we ignore the art, but we want to be artists;
art never started a war;
art never fed the race.
So here’s to it (hats off, glasses raised), this monitor that shows us our strongest power and our deepest flaws,
we send with it a little piece of ourselves as we watch it float away.

Shameless plugs:

Catch it while you can, it’s almost gone:
“The Ballad of the Sad Cafe” - Signal Ensemble Theatre
“Sister Outlaw” - CIRCA Pintig - This one really is almost gone - today is their closing performance! Only a few hours left…if you miss the final show, however, you can at least check out the soundscore: http://bagwiscollective.org/sisteroutlaw/sisteroutlaw.html

Up around the bend:
“The Modern Prometheus” - The Right Brain Project (October 2009)
“The Black Duckling” - Dream Theatre Company (October 2009)
“Anna, In The Darkness” - Dream Theatre Company (October 2009)