I’ve been on a bit of a spring hiatus, but I’ll get back to regular writing soon.

Meanwhile, I wrote an earlier post suggesting it would be a good idea for local arts groups to put actual arts on their websites.  It seems like everyone’s got a video camera – why not use it to create some quality preview or post-view video of your art, dance, or performance?

Many kudos to South City Theatre for crafting this preview trailer.  A great idea, well executed!  It looks like fun – which is the point, right?  I wish there was more media around – other than me (do I count as media?) – for distribution.  Here’s information about the show:

Could you use a few laughs? Join us at South City Theatre for Neil Simon’s LAUGHTER ON THE 23RD FLOOR!  Performances June 3-12, 2011.  Make your reservations by calling 621-2128 or visit the website: www.southcitytheatre.com.

This laugh-a-minute comedy takes place in a writer’s room for a 1950′s television variety show, and is loosely based on Neil Simon’s early days on the staff of Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows.  The characters are inspired by that writing team, which included the likes of Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen, Selma Diamond, and Sid Caesar.  The story focuses on Max Prince, the star of the show and his staff, including Simon’s alter-ego Lucas Brickman, who maintains a running commentary on the antics in the writers’ room and Max’s ongoing battles with television executives who fear his humor is too sophisticated for 1950s middle America.  With a nod to McCarthyism and its impact on the entertainment industry, and a healthy dose of snappy one-liners, Laughter on the 23rd Floor makes for a great escape.

Directed by Dianne Daniels and featuring Tony Sanders, Todd Ponder, Scott Nesmith, Kevin Van Hyning, Gregory Scott, Hannah Wilkerson-Francis, Clifton Keen, Jr, Holly Dikeman, and B.J. Underwood.

Usually, I come up with an overall theme for a piece and weave anything I have to say around that idea.  For the Theatre Downtown version of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, I don’t think I can do it.  Instead, here’s a mishmash of thoughts and ideas from my visit.  Maybe there’s a common thread in there.

ONE – We don’t remember days, we remember moments.  I had a good friend just get back from her spring break trip to Colorado and California.  In telling me about it, it was very natural for her to express her travels in terms of instances.  I saw THIS, we did THIS, and THIS happened.  In the same way, we don’t remember full plays or performances, we remember moments.  For Titus Andronicus, which Wikipedia (currently) describes as, “By far Shakespeare’s bloodiest work,” I’ll remember the moment we first see Lavinia onstage with both hands cut off and her tongue cut out.  These unforgettable moments, however, couldn’t happen and simply don’t work without all the other stuff.

TWO – After we see Livinia bleeding from the mouth with her hands missing, I think Shakespeare repeatedly badgers us with words that invoke these body parts.  “Gentle Livinia, let me kiss thy lips.” Brilliant manipulation.  Or maybe it’s like the phenomenon of learning a new word and you start to see it everywhere.

THREE – Susan Cook’s performance as Livinia got better from the moment she was no longer able to talk.  This isn’t an insult.  Actors must recognize that tiny vocalizations like squeaks or breaths or whimpers, obviously not in the script, can be like emotional bowling balls.  Shakespeare provided the foundation, but these tiny moments of frustration and anguish were as genuinely moving as anything else I’ve seen on stage.  I felt robbed, though, that Livinia’s Daddy didn’t throw his arms around her when they reunited after her ordeal.  I wanted the image of her blood all over him.

FOUR – As the other side of the dramatic coin, Nick Crawford as Saturninus also wonderfully filled the space and put life in between the words.  The text in Shakespeare can be so dense (and the words themselves have acquired so much weight through the years) that this can be difficult to remember.  An actor’s tongue is so involved, up on the Bard’s pointe shoes, that an actor can forget all the other stuff.  Saturninus is an arrogant and smarmy jackass and we knew that from about ten seconds in.

FIVE – Tim Childers stole all three of his scenes, even in small roles.  If there’s any place to ham it up, it’s Shakespeare.  Or the theatre as a whole for that matter.  Characters and personalities should be big.  There are no close-ups on a stage.  Plus, big personalities give everybody else an opportunity to bounce.

SIX – With as much emphasis as can be placed on Shakespeare’s language, it’s important to remember that theatre isn’t generally about the words.  Blasphemy and heresy, right?  But my friend in Washington, DC, recently saw a performance of Henrik Ibsen’s “When We Dead Awaken” by an Indian theater company.  The whole thing was performed in Manipuri, an Indian dialect.  The director made a choice to translate very little for the mainstream audience and, accordingly, tons of them walked out.  The director explained later that he felt he provided the play’s essence, but didn’t want the English translation to become too distracting from any on-stage performance.  It was apparently beautiful once you could accept that you had to intuit some parts for yourself.

At its core, theatre is mostly dance and singing.  Movement borders on dance and voices seem like song.  Vowels inflect and a person is what he does.  Good acting tells the story without words.  When we meet people, I believe we listen more to how they talk and how they move, rather than to what they’re saying.  People talk and move differently.  I struggle to remember your name after that first handshake because my mind is so busy subconsciously processing everything else there is to learn.  When movement is good, a show gets much more entertaining.  The way that characters touch one another – or choose not to – is very important.  At its worst, bad body language can be confusing and difficult to watch.  I’d love to hear that a Theatre Downtown director had asked a dancer or choreographer to offer advice during rehearsals as to how the quality of movement might be improved.

SEVEN – Speaking of quality of movement, Sylvester Little Jr. was the standout of this performance as Aaron, one of the evillest and most despicable characters in all of theatre.  Easily the straw that stirs the drink.  It’s fun to be the bad guy – and it must be a delight to be this good at it.  “If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul.” I agree with these guys saying that this quote may be “the vilest ‘screw you’ in literary history.”  It drips with venom.

EIGHT – The decision to make the Goths, well, Goths, worked.  As a visual pun, it was funny.  As a costuming choice, it was effective in keeping these groups separate.  Then, it was well-played as straight through to the end.

NINE – The play teaches that it’s a very bad idea just to marry whoever you happen to like on any given day.  Or that the consquences of marriage can be important if you’re the Emporer.  And that the thought of a white girl (or a white guy in drag, back in the day) with a Moor has titillated audiences for centuries. “Ah, my sweet Moor, sweeter to me than life.”  “Is black so base a hue?”

TEN – The choice of music at Theatre Downtown is frequently brilliant and I always look forward to seeing the music direction in the next show.  I’d love to see even more integration of the music into the shows.  Or integration of theatre into the music.  A live pre-show, intermission, or during-the-show performer?

ELEVEN – Moments involving anger, sadness, grief, or madness are often best played straight.  Angry people often stew and get quieter, not louder.  People speaking of sadness or grief often flatten without bawling through it.  And the craziest people often say the most outrageous things as if they were absolutely ordinary.

As always, all gratefulness to Billy Ray Brewton and Theatre Downtown for producing a 400-year-old play that still pushes boundaries.

I just saw the Theatre UAB (and Sarah Ruden) version of the Aristophanes play Lysistrata.  I am outraged and offended.

The program warned that there would be “partial nudity” – and there was.  It warned of “adult language” – and there was.  And it hinted darkly and vaguely at “situations”.  Sexual, evil situations, I’m sure.

If you don’t know the story, it happens during a war.  The womenfolk are tired of it.  So they stage a strike.  Put as delicately as possible, they refuse to allow “marital relations” unless and until the men call off the war.  “They’ve barred the ceremonial gates.”

Presented by (at least) The UAB Cultural Activities Committee, Patty McDonald, and W.B. Philips, Jr., these folks should be ashamed at this abomination.  These are our children.  Our kids.  Our future.   They’re entirely too young to be portraying and discussing sexual themes in public or on stage.  They don’t know anything about sex.  And if they somehow do, they shouldn’t.  I mean these students – just children – had to recite lines like:

• “From now on, no more penises for you.”
• “Lysistrata, be serious!  There’s nothing like a dick!”
• “The men will swell right up and want to boink.”
• “I will stay home unhumped.”
• “A slit should spread open.”
• “It doesn’t take a tool to bring me out.”
• “Oh!  My gonads.”
• “It started bad.  How nasty can it get?”
• “In a word, our movement’s getting fucked.”
• “Oh what an epic prank on my poor prick.”
• “Don’t worry.  You’ll get screwed.”
• “Whom shall I screw?”
• “Your manly parts are out of luck, without their regular morning fuck.”
• “We need to snatch a piece.”
• “There went our pussy in a cloud of dust.”

Noah Holcomb and Catie Cole

I am shocked!  It’s intolerable in modern society that a university – a shining jewel of our wonderful American education system – could stage such filth.  The trustees should put a stop to this right now.  Our good, local Christian churches should protest.  There isn’t any sex in the Bible and there shouldn’t be any in our schools.  Keep sex in the home and the workplace, where it belongs.

I am indignant that teachers and administration allowed our children to be half-dressed onstage and in provocative fishnet stockings, simulating “marital relations”.  I was not swelled up nor turned on.  Oh no.  I am a strong and moral person.  But it sends all the wrong messages to the performers and the audience.

Not only that, but this performance of Lysistrata was cruel and insensitive to minorities and the disabled.  A crippled man onstage was the butt of countless laughs.  “Hypertrophy of the groin“ is a serious medical condition!  Jokes about other ethnicities and their accents are insensitive, especially while the only black actor onstage wasn’t even allowed to talk!  Daniel Martin’s repeated cross-dressing is becoming deviant and most certainly not funny.  Someone should talk him out of hanging out with these queer and unorthodox theatre types – before something serious happens.

I tell my dates: “Look dumb.  Chew gum.” They should definitely, positively, absolutely not be encouraged to say the same kind of things back to me.  Women have to know their place.  It’s the fabric of society, the fundamental nature of humanity, and the milk of human kindness.  Men have a place and so do chicks.  Black and white.  Plugs and sockets.  Peanut butter and jelly.  This has changed my whole view of everything.  Ack, “Women revolt me.”

I’m just teasing of course.  Lysistrata is something like 2500 years old.  And it’s still bawdy, excellent fun.  Human nature hasn’t changed that much.  I like any art that can shake a few branches and do it with a big smile.  Still highly relevant, I’d support any kind of movement to end our current conflicts.

Catie Cole did very well and was well-cast (and well-dressed) as straight man Lysistrata.  Emily Parks was enthusiastic and entertainingly goofy as Calonice.  Alana Jordan was good, as ever, as Woman #1 – a role which sounds like a millennial pre-cursor for Hollywood casting in parts like “Bikini Girl”.  James York was often hilarious as the Councilor.  Finally, Noah Holcomb was gifted throughout as the plucky Men’s Chorus Leader.

As usual, thanks to Mel Christian and Theatre UAB for letting me in on the fun.

“If you never feel silly, you’ll never feel great.”

Bear with me, I think I’m going somewhere…

At the moment, football is king in Alabama.  American football, that is, not football football.  Alabama raised the championship trophy last year and Auburn earned it this year.  If you’re a sports fan, it’s a good time to be here.

But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the popularity of organized sports may be about to recede.  What’s going to replace it?  The arts.  Yessir, everything old is new again.

Isn’t popular sports just theatre anyway?  It’s all just “exhibition” if you think about it.  I’m a huge baseball fan, but I mostly watch it for the theatrical aspects.  I like the pace, the stories, and the drama.  It’s less about who wins and more hoping that something great happens.

Over the last forty years or so, sports have made huge strides in popularity partly because they’ve become so heavily intertwined with media.  The activity needs the eyeballs and the media needs the activity.  I had some fun discussion the other day with a friend about how good the old Dan Patrick/Keith Olbermann Sportscenter was.  Let us never forget that the “E” in ESPN stands for Entertainment.

“More sports for everyone…all the talk is scores, nice safe stuff, scores for basketball, scores for baseball, football, tennis, scores, scores, no substance.”

Oh bother, where was I going?  Oh yeah…

Someone’s going to learn to stop covering dance like dance and plays like plays.  Or to start writing dance and plays like sports.  What exactly does sports do right?  Because I find them amazingly similar.

Let’s do something with these soccer videos I’m linking to.  FIFA listed its nominees for the top ten goals of the year and I spent time going through them.  I especially tend to like the highlights that transparently show some brilliance.

If you check those first two goals, I think there’s an element of artistic genius.  Each player’s got a ball coming at him under stress and there’s a moment when he makes a conscious decision to do something unusual.  Those guys didn’t have to compose what they did.  They could’ve done something else.  But there was a flash of insight – a moment of genius.

Then all that remains is just the not-so-simple task of execution, when the dancer gets their muscles to do what they tell them to do, and the ball actually goes in the net.  The steps of genius:

1. Decide to put ball in net.
2. …
3. Ball in net.

It’s Step Two that’s the tricky part.  Even brilliant, the ball still might not make it there.  Any of these players could have been a little off target and we wouldn’t be talking about them.  But a lot of “misses” are still pretty amazing.  The balance between idea and execution is delicate, at best.

Aha, that’s where I’m bouncing to.  Now watch that third video.  I don’t think it’s brilliant in the same way.  The actor’s physical skill is pretty darned amazing, but there’s not much choreography.  There’s not a transparent moment when he decides to author anything much more amazing than, “I think I’ll kick it real hard at the goal.”  But it does go in, in breathtaking fashion.  Something special can often still come from less than the best material.

Compare that one with the fourth video, which might be my favorite goal ever.  Listen to the announcer.  He’s shouting about how brilliant it is, even before the actor takes the final shot.  Even if he’d hit the post, it would still be great.  I’m telling ya, sports is just like improv theatre.

Speaking of theatre, I saw Ray Bradbury‘s Farenheit 451 at Theatre Downtown the other night.  Parallel to a guest writer.  With a real fireman pole on stage.  And Star Trek doors.  It’s a book with so much “moment of genius” that it’s become a modern classic, halfway there before you even start.  Just kick it into the net.  But even missing would still be pretty good.

“Meta-what? … Aristo-what?”

Did this piece get taken over by sports?  Did it?  Hell.  Maybe Bradbury was right.  I can’t concentrate on anything complex.  Or for longer than…um…

Thanks to Billy Ray Brewton and Theatre Downtown for letting me drop out of the fast-paced sports and internet culture for a few hours and into a play where, finally, the sirens outside the theatre fit.  These performances are selling out – get your tickets.