Screwed to the Sticking Place -- Part 1

One of the advantages of writing a column for the Fringe Festival website, is that I get to learn about all sorts of productions. Some of the ones that I write about are produced by friends of mine, others are shows that just catch my eye because of a title, or a concept. And then there's the one that I'm writing about today. Being a columnist means I get to promote my own damned show!

For my longtime readers you may remember that I wrote about the show I was in two years ago called "Dandelion Snow." Well, this year I'm doing things from a different perspective. I am writing about a show that I am producing, and otherwise not involved in. My company, Commedia Beauregard, is producing Screwed to the Sticking Place, a company created collaboration revolving around the women in Shakespeare's plays.

So... since I'll be in Spain during July, and not able to rehearse a show, I hired Sasha Walloch to direct the piece. Sasha has been my assistant director on two pieces in the past, and has developed into a very good director in her own right. She brings to the table a bit of the Kari Margolis method of putting a show together.

In fact, this show is going to be filled with physical acting and comedy. The cast is filled it very talented ladies. Katie Kaufmann will be familiar to fans of the Ivey Award-winning Off-Leash Area. She's also trained in Commedia Dell'Arte methods. Kari Kelly was in last year's mega-hit Please Don't Blow Up Mr. Boban! with Live Action Set. Another lady who's recently worked with Noah Bremer of Live Action Set is Markell Kiefer who was trained in the Lecoq method of physical theatre that we've all become familiar with thanks to Theatre de la Jeune Lune.

The cast is rounded out by Kate Greenwood Gunther, Ann Brummer,Jane Shrantz, and Katie Rose McLaughlin. These ladies have experience doing shows at Prairie Fire Children's Theatre, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, and off-Broadway.

To develop the show there is a workshop process that involves a lot of acting exercises as a company. Just for fun, I thought I'd share a bit of video of one for you:



That was from the other night. I'm not exactly sure what was going on, but it made me laugh a lot when I set it to Banjo music, so there it is!

Anyway, there are a bunch of scenes being written that involve Shakespeare's women as they might have been if they'd not been restricted to the confines of Shakespeare's plays. It is coming from a intelligent and exciting group of women who are putting together something brilliant. I'm looking forward to being able to tell you more about the process as they get into it further.

Now for something a bit on the random side of life:

I need to go buy a bike. I tried to do that for last year's Fringe, but it was a 3-speed that didn't fit me very well, so I opted out of riding it all over. This year I'm going to buy one more suited to me and stick to it. I don't want to have to drive all over, given how much gas costs, and how expensive parking at the U can be.

I've made the mistakeof joining MySpace.com. If you feel the need to come over to my profile on there, you can. Here's my profile page

Remember the Alamo!

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 19,999 BC!!!

There is a lot of prep work that goes into painting the exterior of a house.

And now some trivia from Hooked on Facts: "90 percent of women who walk into a department store immediately turn to the right." -- This is only intriguing to me because when I was at JC Penny's at Rosedale yesterday, I noticed that the Men's section was to the right as you first enter from the mall. Does this mean that men, too, turn to the right inherently, or that Penny's wants to confuse the Hell out of the ladies?

Here's the link to the next show I'm doing, as an actor/singer: Iolanthe

Baggage -- Part 1

The Players of Notorius Temerity have been in the Fringe Festival once before. Last year, in fact. They produced a show called Desolation in America. It wasn't a huge hit... only 175 people saw it. And yet, they return. They return with a hope that this year their show will be far better attended.

It wasn't lack of quality that kept their houses small last year. When it comes down to it, PNT suffered the fate taht goes along with the Fringe for many groups: Unintentional Obscurity. One blogger whose opinion I admire (meaning Matthew Everett...you thought I meant myself, didn't you?) called last year's offering a "tightly wound little primal scream in the face of the idiocy that passes for political discourse in the early years of the 21st century." That's a ringing endorsement for their work, if you ask me.

I know this is a feature article on PNT's show, but this is a quick tangent that needs to be said: I've come to believe that there is too much mediocrity in the Fringe. I've also come to the conclusion that this is often because someone with $400 wants to put on a show but has nothing so say. They take no risks, and then the product is nothing. I saw a lot of shows last year that fell into that descriptive category. I like shows that take risks. I like companies with something to say. If you're going to fail, fail big. Don't give me somethign banal that I won't remember tomorrow. There is no artistic success without trying your damnedest!

All right, so from the above paragraph, you might gather that I have something that I expect from a good Fringe show. Matthew Everett's quote about PNT's show last year proves that I missed a really good show. So did almost everyone who attended the Fringe. So... I chose to cover their entry into the Fringe this year in hopes that all you devoted readers (and even those of you who aren't too devoted...you break my heart, you know!) will go to see their 2006 offering, Baggage.

Artistic Directors Dan O'Neil and Katie Willer have a knack for the political and the satirical, as they've proved in their last two productions (prior to the 2005 Fringe, they also put up McBush at the 4th Street Theatre in Saint Paul). This year, however, they hope to prove that they can also take on the rest of life and our human journeys.

The journeys are the stories this time. Two vignettes make up the play. One in a van, the other in the sight-seeing car of an Amtrak train. I've not read the script yet, but from the info I do have, the baggage of the title refers both to real luggage and the baggage we all carry with us in our persons.

The cast includes a couple of folks of note: Sam Landman, who has established himself as a great character actor in town; and Grant Henderson, who has appeared in one play with me in the 2004 Fringe, and who I think is a great young actor. The cast is rounded out by three people who I don't know, but who I'm looking forward to writing more about soon: Nikki Schultz, Adri Mehra, and Colin Waitt.

The Show: Baggage

The Company: Players of Notorious Temerity

The Venue: UofM Rarig Center: Arena Stage

Randomness! I am your personal digital entropy unit of infomational drivel!!!!

So, last night, my daughter and I were walking from a parking ramp to the Rarig Center on the U of M campus. During this brief walk, she informed me that she felt weird being at the school because she didn't want to be mistaken for a student there. I told her that most of the students there were between the ages of 18 and 22, and that at 7 years old she wasn't going to be mistaken for one of them. She challenged me by pointing out that there are little people like those who were in The Wizard of Oz. I told her she wasn't about to be mistaken for a dwarf or a midget (not being too politically correct, I'm afraid), we proceeded into the building and attended a rehearsal for the show I'm producing for the fringe... more on that in a future article.

I often think of things that I want to put in this section when I'm nowhere near my computer. That happened at least twice this past week, and I'm afraid that I forgot both things that I wanted to write about. I need to carry a notebook around with me.

B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, and Bingo was his name-o!

There are 17 thumb tacks on my bulletin board, and only 2 of them are actually doing anything useful.

Let's check in with our friends at Hooked on Facts: "Slugs have 4 noses." -- Given that fact, I think it is entirely possible that one of my ex-girlfriends was actually a slug!

Ribbit!

This apparently was THE place to be this past weekend for fantasies... both the Sexpo and the Pillow Fight Club were both held in Minneapolis.

The Cat Came Back -- Part 1

Let's travel back in time a bit. The year is 1981. I am residing in Indianapolis, Indiana. My mother has checked a book out from the library and plays a song on the piano that is printed on the inside of the book's cover. Jumping ahead to 1999. David Lind and I are both teaching for SteppingStone Theatre for Youth Development, and meet at St. Paul Central High School. Jumping ahead again, talking to David about his Fringe project for this year, I discover that my memory harkens back to that song my mom was playing on the piano...The Cat Came Back!

Zealots and Mystics, the company that is headed by Mr. Lind, is putting together a show that is loosely based on the children's song by the same title.

Now... a word... this isn't a children's show. It has a bulldog pimp in it for goodness sake! This is a story of what happens to the cat between the times when it has been kicked out and it returns. The cat, who will be played by Mariah Christensen, is a lounge singer who will treat the audience to songs throughout the play.

David Lind, as many of you know runs TC Theatre and Film. He also teaches classes in the Michael Chekhov method of acting. And so he's assembled a cast of folks who have all worked with him before and are comfortable in that method. The cast includes Bill Gorman, Ted Anderson, Scot Moore, and Kortney Simpson...as well as the afore mentioned Ms. Christensen.

I've personally never worked with Anderson, Moore, Simpson, or Christensen, but I have worked with Mr. Gorman, and that was a treat. I've also acted in a show that David directed, and I can tell you that I still use some of the things I learned from him every time I hit the stage. So, I'm looking forward to seeing others who he's led through the Chekhov process and into this work.

The first all-cast meeting for this group of thespians is coming up this weekend, a read-through and a bit of music previewing will take place. That's where they are at in the process. As the weeks go on, I'll update you more as to where they are headed.

The Show: The Cat Came Back

The Company: Zealots and Mystics

The Venue: Bryant-Lake Bowl

Okay! Brief random crap:

Tonight is the dress rehearsal for my daughter's dance recital.

Cross you fingers for me, I bought 5 chances at the Powerball drawing.

As I was walking down my alley this morning, I couldn't help but notice the fragrance of lilacs all over. It was wonderful. There is this very short time each year that makes me happier than any other. It has to do with lilacs, and it is wonderful. It'll be a shame when the lilac flowers are gone again in the next few weeks.

The answer to your last question was, "Yes, indeed."

I really like wearing red shirts with beige pants. It troubles me that this is the uniform of those at Target. I end up not wearing one of my favorite outfits because I'm afraid folks will mistake me for a Target employee.

Random Trivia time, from the random trivia generator known as Hooked on Facts: "'Second Street' is the most common street name in the U.S.; 'First Street' is the sixth!" -- Sounds like St. Paul wasn't the only place laid out by drunken Irishmen, then, eh?

The Pre-Fringe Battle Plan

So, if you're just tuning in for the first time, or if you need a bit of a refresher, let me share this with you... I do not have any control over what I see in the Fringe Festival. I go to randomly determined shows as set by a bunch of charts and the roll of a 20-sided die. It's a lot of fun, and sometimes I get to see brilliant things that never would have crossed my radar otherwise. It's also a scheme that allows me to avoid the political pitfalls of having to choose one show over another (but, more on that in another column entry).

Well, as a writer, I often enjoy a little bit of control over what I write, so last year I devised a plan. A simple plan, but a plan nevertheless. I would feature 4 plays and follow their development pre-Fringe. All the way up to opening. Once the festival was open, I didn't cover them again, unless the roll of the dice let me. But, I got to know a lot about those four shows, and I got to share that with you all.

So... I've opted to do that same thing again. Only, this year, I've upped the number to 6 productions that I'll be covering. That means that every few days you'll get an update about a show and how it is making the journey to Fringedom. Here's the list of shows that I'll be featuring:

-- "The Cat Came Back" by Zealots & Mystics

-- "The Depths of the Ocean" by Perpetual Motion Thearte Company

-- "Screwed to the Sticking Place" by Commedia Beauregard

-- "Monsters in America" by Chameleon Theatre Circle

-- "Baggage" by PNT Theater Company

-- "Dancing Rats & Vampire Moms: Tales of Dangerous Love" by Hardcover Theatre

So... There's the list. These ones will get weekly coverage from me (let's be honest: I'm shooting for weekly, but my schedule will get pretty full, so it'll reallly be every-other-week in all likelihood). I'll also do some one-shot stories on plays that pique my interest prior to the festival. After that, I'm back to the good ol' random determination thing.

I'm starting the feature articles tomorrow, so look back then for a bit about The Cat Came Back.

Now for some short snippets from nowhere about nothing in particular:

I went to The Vagina Monologues this past weekend. It is normally done for the sake of fundraising on behalf of an organization that helps prevent violence against women. This year's beneficiaries are a group of folks called "Comfort Women." To learn more about them... go here

"If a child lives with tolerance, he learns to be patient." -- A line from a wall hanging in my room...from Children Learn What They Live By Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph.D.

Ready to learn and think about a bit of normally useless knowledge?! Let's hear it for Hooked on Facts = "Pierce Brosnan once worked with the circus as a fire eater!" -- One of the women in The Women (Opening this weekend at the 4th Street Theatre in St. Paul), has fire eating listed as a Special Skill on her resume. I've got to ask her more about that. I have no idea how one even gets started with such a thing. I recently started juggling, and all I had to do was pick up three balls and start tossing them around. Does a novice fire eater merely find a burning object and place it in their mouth?

It's time to do laundry!

My Spring term is coming to a close at UNO. A few people have asked me about the program that I'm in recently, so here's a link: UNO Low-Res MFA

"Unswallow" has got to be the most disgusting euphemism for vomitting I've ever heard. Yuck!

I'm Henry the 8th, I am!