Tantrums, Testicles, and Trojans -- Part 2

Last week I sent each of the directors of the shows that I'm profiling a questionaire. Each is slightly different, and tailored for the show it is about. That way you can get a better idea about each show, and the people who are making it happen.

Today's installment is about Empty S Productions' late-night offering, which we will be hearing about every Monday until the Fringe Festival:

And, Without Further Ado... On to the interview:


Q: What prompted you to start doing "slam" poetry?

A: Cynthia French was my advisor/mentor last June when I first started contacting her via email about the slams at Kieran's. I was in Minneapolis from Alaska for the summer, and I wanted something fun to do. She was and continues to be very encouraging to me and many other local poets. I made it into the final round at my first slam that June. It was a props slam. My Rice Krispy box, three raw eggs (which I consumed), and a crumpled picture of Kurt Cobain fared well with the judges that night, and I was hooked.

Q: Is there any significance behind "Empty S" as a name for your company?

A: My name is Michael Thomas Shaeffer. Empty S is a take on my initials, MTS. Goddamn, I'm clever.

Q: What do you miss most about Alaska? What are you glad to be away from?

A: I miss the midnight sun in the summer. I would play poker with friends until four in the morning, and it would still be light out. My pockets would be light by that time, too. My roommate owned a two-passenger plane. We would go for joyrides north of the Arctic Circle and buzz the caribou. What was tough about living in those remote villages was being 500 miles away from the nearest Arby's, movie theatre, and bar. I had to substitute moose for my roast beef fix. It just wasn't the same.

Q: Are you still going to be an educator here?

A: I was planning on taking a short break from education, but if any administrator reads this and wants to hire a full-time drama instructor based on my charming responses, I am sure we could work something out.

Q: What were the past Fringe Shows you've been in, and what were the companies that produced them?

A: Frantic Garden produced Give Me the Good Stuff in 2002. That ran at the Women's Club of Minneapolis. I directed that show back-to-back with my original production of Cramming Cassandra, A Crashed Course in Greek Mythology, back in 2002. Last year, I was approached to direct The Cat in the Coffin or 28 Days in Pet Loss Therapy. We did that at the MCTC with a real dog in the show. The dog preferred roast beef to moose, too.

Q: As a solo performer, are you working with a director, or do you rehearse alone?

A: I have hired a technician who comes highly recommended by her theatre peers. Tammie Weinfurtner will provide input for me as we tweak the lighting and sound cues, but before our tech, I will mostly rehearse alone. Private shows are available. I'll work for Guinness.

Q: What is the next thing that you have to do to get ready for the Fringe, in the immediate future (rewrite, print postcards, write promotional blurb, buy costume, etc.)?

A: Sit ups. Many more sit ups. That's because of the roast beef and Guinness, I fear. I won't do much more revising of the show. It's been pretty tight for about a month now. I have a friend, Deb Howard, who works for Daktronics. She is using her skills as a graphic artist to help create a program and postcards for the show. I will be working these next few weeks to contact other Fringers and bloggers and theatrically inclined to come stay up late with my show.

Q: Is it worth the hassle, thus far, of being a late-night show (finding your own tech, etc.)?

A: True dat. I love the night life. I like to boogie.

Q: What are you reading this summer?

A: I am reading Ilium by Dan Simmons. It's a retelling of Homer's Illiad set on Mars. It's got Achilles and Hector, but no Bender thusfar.

-- And there we have it! Now, before we hit the random stuff, I should put this out there...on my last two days stateside I was unable to write my column due to the fact that I was dealing with car troubles (flat tire one day, someone broke into it the next!)... So I'll be picking up an extra article sometime this week about Talking With... which is being presented by In The Basement Productions. Also, since I have time on the weekends, I'll be adding some short feature articles on other shows that aren't part of my initial five. So, if you have a potential favorite show that you'd like me to cover, give me a holler.

Now for them random bits:

• My daughter calls exclamation points I-mean-its. That means if a sentence reads: I like cats!!! She reads it as "I like cats. I mean it. I mean it. I mean it."
• I spent 8.5 hours on a flight from Miami to Madrid with 30+ high school students. And you know what? When the captain got on the speaker and told them to all sit down and put on their seatbelts, they did! What's sad is that the adults who were with them never followed the instructions at all! Great example you're setting, people!
• Here's a fact from www.hookedonfacts.com: "If you were to roll a lung from a human body and out flat it would be the size of a tennis court." -- EEewww! Hey! Maybe this means that the heart shouldn't be the symbol of love. The lungs should be. Well, at least the symbol of 30-Love! I'm so sorry to everyone who just read that, really, I am.
• I've been in Spain for one whole day thus far, and I've already had three dishes (2 at lunch and 1 at supper) that contained pork. Tomorrow's menu looks to have a similar ratio. I'm thinking that it's gotta be really hard to keep kosher in Madrid.
• "Crisp, cool scent leaves you feeling refreshed" -- text from the back of a box of Irish Spring Icy Blast soap.
• I like the coins that I'm carrying around right now. The smallest bill that they've got over here is the 5 Euro bill. There's a 2 Euro and a 1 Euro coin. I think for the gold dollars to have really taken off, the US would've had to have gotten rid of the One Dollar bill. I'm glad that the $2 bill is still around, incidentally. Every once in a while I like going and getting 100 of them and spending them exclusively for all my purchases. Makes people react, I can tell you that.