SlowLearner

BOOK LAUNCH!

April is a pretty big and busy month for me, theater-wise, which is something I'm finally able to look forward to after months of kinda wanting to just hide out. I'm starting with this little event later this week.

One of my favorite things to happen in the past year was the selection of Universal Robots for New York Theatre Experience's Plays and Playwrights 2008 (and not just because I now have a fur coat of my own and don't have to fondle James's or Qui's any more!). Last week I got to hear readings from several of the other plays (Crystal Skillman's The Telling Trilogy, John Regis's Linnea, and Leslie Bramm's Magnificent Shrine), and I gotta say, it's pretty sweet to be in an anthology with those plays.

We will be doing a ten-minute scene from the second act of Universal Robots, which includes angry robot action - and who doesn't like that? So if you're free and inclined this Thursday, check it out!

You can also hear Carolyn Raship, John Regis, Robert Attenweiler, and myself talking about our plays and processes on a podcast here (WARNING: I stammer).

--SlowLearner

****

Please join us at T. Schreiber Studio for our celebration of Plays and Playwrights 2008!

The event will begin with a brief, informal reception, followed by performances from five of the plays featured in the book:

UNIVERSAL ROBOTS by Mac Rogers
A riveting sci-fi cautionary tale inspired by the lives and works of Czech writer/activists Karel & Josef Capek, especially the play R.U.R. which gave us the word "robot." Performed by Esther Barlow, Jason Howard, David Ian Lee, Michelle O'Connor, Ridley Parson, Nancy Sirianni, Tarantino Smith, Ben Sulzbach, Jennifer Gordon Thomas, and James Wetzel. (In the photo are Barlow, O'Connor, Lee, and Wetzel in a scene from the original production.)

ANTARCTICA by Carolyn Raship
In this sometimes surreal fantasia on growing up, Magda and Winnie set out to become the first American Girls to make an expedition to the South Pole. Performed by Maggie Cino and Melle Powers.

IN OUR NAME by Elena Hartwell
A triptych of short, breathtaking one-acts about the ways that the War in Iraq has hit home, especially among American women. Performed by Elena Hartwell.

LINNEA by John Regis
A young writer who is obsessed by Dostoyevsky lives out his own NYC dream version of The Idiot in this remarkable coming-of-age tale. Performed by Benita Robledo and Ken Trammel.

MARVELOUS SHRINE by Leslie Bramm
17-year-old Marvelous isn’t sure if he’s gay, but he knows he wants to play music. His parents battle over his destiny, and nobody wins in this moving drama. Performed by Paul Hufker and Sara Thigpen.

EVENT DETAILS
WHERE: T. Schreiber Studio, Gloria Maddox Theatre, 151 West 26th Street

WHEN: Thursday, April 3, 2008

WHAT TIME: Doors open at 6:45pm; performances begin at 7:30pm

HOW MUCH: Free!!!!

WILL BOOKS BE AVAILABLE FOR SALE? Definitely, $18 each.

MORE INFO: Martin Denton's nytheatre i blog

AN IMPORTANT CORRECTION

Actually, having finally caught up with my comments, there's an important correction I should make, having read what Mark writes here. Mark's point reminded me of something I said in the interview I did for NYTE:

While I ultimately wish we lived in a world where huge theater companies were fighting over Nervous-Boy or Dan Trujillo's Talk of the Walkup, in that world I wouldn't get to be in them 'cause I'd be competing with cream-of-the-crop professionals.

When I said that, and when I said what Mark is objecting to in the Theatre Is Territory interview, I was only thinking about myself, and about my own career and choices, and it completely didn't occur to me that those sorts of statements could be considered rightly offensive to my colleagues in those productions. My thinking was, if Dan and Isaac had a full budget for Talk of the Walkup, they could have huge auditions and get some amazing genuine nineteen-year-old from some conservatory to play Teafoot, and if Nosedive had the same, they could get Wes Bentley to play Nervous-Boy.

(Although, after I saw Karl Miller in Dream of a Ridiculous Man I leaned over to Pete Boivert and said, "If I die in a horrible fire, I'll allow you to cast him as Nervous-Boy.")

And while that is true, it's also worth noting that whenever I do an Off-Off play, I'm working alongside talents who are obviously and fully competitive in the professional world of acting. I've tended to feel that I personally am not - that I happen to be an exact fit for a certain very narrow spectrum of roles, and that I come cheap - and that's why I sometimes score roles that are otherwise difficult to cast without an expensive casting budget.

Also I have, on several occasions, been told by friends who make their living as actors tell me that they'd like to act in a play of mine, but that they can't afford to not be available for a paying gig - which I completely understand, and don't have a problem with.

I guess that's created this sense in my head of defining "professional" actors as those who base their choices around only taking work that pays a living wage, and not accepting roles that don't (and if there are no paying roles at a given time, working some sort of temporary job that they can abandon at a moment's notice). And that's been my definition, one which doesn't automatically equate "professional" with "quality" - every week I see unpaid or nearly unpaid actors who are equal to or better than the actors I'll see on TV that same week - but rather as an attitude and criteria toward making choices. This may reflect more than anything else my lack of knowledge about the theater industry, which I'll readily acknowledge.

The overall point is, in trying to make an honest assessment of my place and my choices as an actor, I may have inadvertently insulted quite a number of the people with whom I've shared the stage, and I'm sorry for that. I wasn't even thinking along those lines, and that doesn't reflect my actual opinion of my colleagues. So my bad on that, totally.

--SlowLearner

IN THIS CORNER...

I'm kind of loaded down with work these, and only partly in the fun way, so I'm not sure when I'm going to post again, but I'm briefly popping my head up to concur with this review. Fight Girl Battle World is an astonishing accomplishment of pure theatricality. You don't have to like the sci-fi tropes (though of course I love them). If you're a practitioner of theater, you're going to want to see the ways the Vampire Cowboys are innovating visuals and movement on stage to incredible effect.

Also, I'd be very surprised if the run wasn't sold out by the end of the week.

--SlowLearner

MAC IS TERRITORY (for a day)

I got to do that Ian Mackenzie thing! (I dressed up for it too!)

--SlowLearner