Filed by Lance at 9:04 pm under Fightin' Words, General, Love, The Arts
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What’s the value of a critic?
What’s the value of criticism?
They’re two completely separate things.
(Keep reading…)
Filed by Bil at 4:58 pm under Fightin' Words, Stuff to Read
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I’ve been thinking about poetry lately. It’s true it sounds differently when you speak it aloud than when read inside your mind. It also sounds differently when you whisper it to yourself than when you shout it to a crowd.
I discovered the magic of whispering poetry quietly out loud for one’s own self this afternoon. I’m in the laundromat, and I whispered some poetry to myself between two noisy washing machines because I didn’t want anybody else to hear me. That would have been, you know, weird and embarrassing.
What I heard was mine and mine alone, and somehow it felt like now it existed in reality instead of just on a page. Funny, too, how it feels like if I knew anybody else had heard it, that would have depreciated the solidity of the words in the universe, as though if other people heard it, too, then it would have been just some collective dream instead of my own tangible experience. Funny, I say, because that’s pretty much the definition of crazy. But I know how I feel, and I won’t back down.
Also, I’ve discovered Darwin Deez. The weirdness and the beauty just keep coming.
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.
(Keep reading…)
Filed by Lance at 11:38 am under General
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This is a quick public thank you to Trevor for all of his hard work on last night’s Hatemail LIVE.
Bil has been in rehearsals for Dream Theatre’s Electra (opening this Thursday… hint hint), so Trevor and I said, “No problem! Bil’s making theater, so we make Hatemail!” As fate would have it, the past couple of days, I’ve been mostly bedridden with something that’s behaved sort of like the flu, sort of like a cold, and sort of like allergies.
So the vast majority of the planning and execution for last night’s success fell on Trevor’s shoulders, and he delivered. (Of course he did… in case you didn’t know, he’s a Joseph Jefferson Award nominated composer!)
When Bil and Trevor first told me about the Hatemail project, I was really skeptical about it. “Won’t it be sort of one-sided?” I wondered. I had no idea how funny some of the material could be.
I was a little skeptical about doing some of these live, too: lesson is, I need to stop being skeptical of things that Bil and Trevor say. We had a wonderful time last night, there were some amazing surprises, even though I’d heard most of the Hatemails before, and the live music by Zach Livingston and Trevor was so much fun!
There will be more coming soon about last night’s Hatemail LIVE, including video, audio, and whenabouts we plan on doing a Hatemail LIVE again, but for now, thanks again, Trevor, for saving the day!
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.
(Keep reading…)
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.
(Keep reading…)
