Filed by Lance at 3:48 pm under General, Hatemail, Shameless Plugs
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…if we only gave you one thing to do with your hate.

Here are two:
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Filed by Lance at 2:01 pm under General, Hatemail, Pop Culture, Shameless Plugs, The Arts
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Start time: 1:00 PM
Media Personnel in attendance: 1
Pounds of Flesh consumed: 15
Kegs we polished off: 1, plus how many bottles??
Hatemail pieces we recorded: about 5
Pounds of vegetables we grilled: 6
True stories about Kelsey Grammer I heard: 1
New friends I made: 3 or 4
Friendships I deepened: several
Cups of coffee we served: 20
Cups of coffee I drank: 3
Twitter updates we sent: 7
End time: I left Trevor’s at about 1:30 AM

Congrats to you, Bil, and to you, Trevor, our gracious host, for another amazing Hatemail Recording Session! The next one takes place just before my birthday, Sunday, August 29th. Be there! Add to the numbers!

Filed by Lance at 2:45 pm under General, Hatemail, Shameless Plugs
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6:50 PM

DINNER’S SERVED!

6:35 PM

Kathryn Daniels just told us the story of the time she interned for the Boston company doing MacBeth (you can’t type that on a theater-ish blog, can you?). The press night party was in the real Cheers, Kelsey Grammer was playing MacBeth, and Diane Venora, playing Lady Macbeth came up and laid one on her. Hot. This is why I love actor stories!

6:10 PM

We’ve had this wonderfully simple, heartbreaking Hatemail in the stack for a long time called “Dear Rapist.” It’s one of those Hatemails that’s so personal, so frighteningly real and simple that it’s difficult to approach. Sher Sheets stepped up, had the courage, and did a great job of giving it a straightforward, uncomplicated reading. Congratulations to her!

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Filed by Bil at 12:03 pm under Pop Culture, Religion, Shameless Plugs, The Arts
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It’s the Monday before the show opens, so you know what that means: FULL ON SHOW PROMOTION MODE!

“Orestes” opens this Thursday down at the Dream Theatre in Pilsen, the Heart of Chicago. “Orestes” completes the Agon Trilogy, which has won Best New Play of 2010 by the Chicago Reader.

Here’s why you should come see it:

1) It takes place in Hell.

In this play, Hell is cold and dark. Forget what you believe about burning fire and torturous machines. Electra finds her way to the black pit in the second act of this show, and there she finds the long suffering of people in their own private sequestered rooms, tortured by themselves and able only to torture Electra once she finds them. This show shows us not the physical pain of Hell, but the mental anguish of loneliness and lost hope.

2) All your questions about Chorus will be answered.

I’m not giving anything else away. You have to be shown by the cast, not told by a blog.

3) The audience matters here.

In this play, moreso than in any other play I’ve experienced (either as an actor or an audience member), the audience are characters. There is a purpose to the actors’ talking to the audience, not for the simple sake of “breaking the 4th wall” or for any kind of shock value. The audience not only has a presence to the characters onstage, but a history. It’s thrilling and it draws you in as completely as possible, and there’s no hokey “audience participation” necessary. (Read: do not shout out occupations for the cast. They will cut you if you do this. Really.) Don’t be fooled by Tryphosia in the lobby before the show, you will actually be scared by the importance you bring as the audience member.

4) Seeing live theatre is awesome.

You can’t get an experience like this staying at home, and you can’t get it at the movies. It’s not expensive, and it’ll make you think things you never thought you’d think. Don’t be shy. Live a little.

Tickets are here:

Filed by Bil at 11:21 pm under Shameless Plugs, The Arts
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We had the most amazing “Orestes” rehearsal today. There was some time spent in fight choreography and practice, wherein Theresa Neef, Anna Weiler, and Alicia Reese flip back and forth between slow-motion and real-time –- sort of like “The Matrix,” but minus the whoa.

This was followed by the most intense (and longest) fragments exercise I’ve ever been involved in. Two people cried. TWO. Hot, human tears. For real.
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Filed by Bil at 7:05 pm under Fightin' Words, Shameless Plugs, The Arts, The Media
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The amazingest news of the week is that Dream Theatre won both Best Off-Loop Theatre Company and Best New Play (for the Agon Trilogy) from the Chicago Reader! The second part is especially amazing since “Orestes,” the third play in the trilogy, hasn’t even opened yet.

And speaking of “Orestes,” it occurs to me that June has flown by and we open in a few short weeks now. I am going to have to memorize my lines at some point.
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Filed by Bil at 11:58 pm under General, Shameless Plugs, The Arts
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That’s right, world – I may be blogging, and I may be using a Mac, but I am not at Starbuck’s. Not anymore. I was there earlier, with my giant hipster headphones over my ears, typing thoughtfully with one hand and tapping mindlessly in time with the Grateful Dead with my other hand. Yeah, I was working on my novel, not blogging.

That’s when I was discovered by people I know, so I scrambled to look less like some pretentious English major and more like a professional something-or-other, but I’m pretty sure I failed. I’m just glad I didn’t spill (much) coffee on my precious white MacBook.

Whatever.
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Filed by Bil at 11:32 pm under Shameless Plugs, The Arts
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I discovered a new level of emotional involvement for Pamphilos at tonight’s rehearsal: frustration. Unfortunately, this new layer has tipped the balance in my brain, and all night long my affected accent was all over the damn place. It was almost as bad as Russell Crowe’s accent in “A Beautiful Mind.” Interestingly enough, though, it was on exactly the same cycle: at the start of the play, I was clearly southern, by midway through I was plain ol’ American, by the middle of Act 2 I was almost Australian, and by the very end I was southern again. One thing I learned in history class is that doing what Russell Crowe does will get you what Russell Crowe gets, so I’m going to take this accent thing as a good sign, because Crowe won his Oscar for that terrible film. I’m not sure how a live play is going to get me an Oscar, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen.

However, this should be fixed by opening, so the Oscar judges will probably never witness the glory. Whatever.
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Filed by Bil at 8:03 pm under Love, Shameless Plugs, The Arts
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We’ve been given a night off from rehearsal, so I can finally blog about it again.

I can only assume last night’s Electra rehearsal was our best rehearsal ever, because it was our most physically strenuous rehearsal ever. It was longer, for one thing, as any good tech rehearsal ought to be. Also, by this point we all know our lines as well as we’ve ever known them for this show, which allows us to flow more rapidly from moment to moment, which allows us to increase our intensity. And given that our two-story set is full of steps and our scenes are full of Anna throwing other actors onto the ground, there was quite a lot of up-and-down last night. So – long hours of intensely falling down and intensely getting back up over and over again so we could get it right…yeah, we were a tired bunch by quitting time last night.

But it was definitely our best rehearsal so far. We really are getting into it, especially now that we’ve got our spooky lighting and creepy sound cues. This show is going to be so good.
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Filed by Lance at 3:35 pm under General, Hatemail, Shameless Plugs, Stuff to Read, The Arts
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Here is every Hatemail we recorded last Sunday, presented in a slightly different format for your visual delight: