The Waves

Near the end of the first act of Perestroika (the second play of the two part epic Angels in America), the lights rise on Joe and Louis at Jones Beach.  The sound of the ocean is audible, waves crashing against the shore as the characters shiver in the cold: the winter Atlantic, February 1986.  Among the several subjects of their conversation is a discussion of happiness, and the differing outlooks these two characters have ultimately divide them.  I would sit and watch that scene every night, waiting to enter as Prior with a fistful of pills and a glass of water, listening to the sound of the waves.  As the weeks went on however, we slowly began to hear the sounds of the ocean in different scenes.  No sound cue had been added and no errors were made.  A glitch in the sound system simply brought a ghost of those waves through the speakers from time to time, with relatively no rhyme or reason. I heard the ocean during a scene in the hospital one night, and then a few days later during a scene on the street.  Needless to say, it was a bit eerie.

(Christian Conn and Jeff Meanza in Perestroika.  Photo by Jon Gardiner, © 2011)

We closed Angels in America at PlayMakers several weeks ago now.  I have been back in New York City, and even though it is technically spring, the chill of the winter Atlantic still hangs in the air.  I didn’t blog very much during rehearsals and performances of Angels; I either couldn’t find the time or didn’t know exactly what to say.  Exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure, it consumed me in a way that few plays have.  I’ll probably write about it occasionally in the coming weeks, now that I have a little distance from it and more time on my hands.

(Outside the Paul Green Theater at PlayMakers Repertory in Chapel Hill, NC)

During the epilogue at the end of Perestroika, Prior speaks in direct address to the audience.  After almost seven hours of theater, sharing with them an experience of such devastating loss and pain, of struggle and change, I got to look the audience in the eyes and talk about hope.  As an actor, few moments onstage have been as rewarding, especially on those marathon days when we performed both plays.  The final speech is a blessing.  Prior tells the audience goodbye, and then says, “You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.  And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins.”  At the closing night performance, that final scene held even more resonance.  I was, in essence, also saying goodbye to the character, and to the play.  I started to say, “You are all fabulous creatures,” and then a cell phone rang. I could feel the tension in the theater, from the audience as well as the actors: the anger directed toward this particular person.  I also knew that I couldn’t ignore it, I couldn’t let the play end that way, certainly not the final performance.  I paused, and a little old woman got up from her seat to leave the theater; she couldn’t figure out how to shut off her phone.  I felt sorry for her, and knew that even in that moment (or maybe especially in that moment) when everyone in the theater was frustrated and angry with her, she was still a fabulous and beautiful person. And so I smiled and added a bit of text.  Having finished my line, “You are all fabulous creatures,” I looked at her and said, “Even you.”  After a Brechtian moment I think Kushner would have appreciated, and a fair amount of laughter, I finished the blessing and ended the play.

(During Perestroika, a scene set in heaven.  PlayMakers Rep, ©2011 Jon Gardiner)

When a play closes, I always go back to the theater after the final performance to say goodbye to the space, to the character, and to the play.  I know that might sound a bit sentimental, but it can be helpful to delineate an ending.  Plays end so abruptly, especially when you work out of town and fly home to New York the day after your final performance.  You have a relationship with a play and a character, within the walls of whichever theater you’re working at, and then it ends.  Walking out onto the stage and acknowledging the end of that relationship helps to make the finality less jarring for me.  As I made my way into the Paul Green Theater that evening, a single light lit the stage.  Even when the theater is empty, a single lamp remains lit for safety, called the ghost light.  I expected  silence, but instead I heard the waves of the winter Atlantic quietly crashing on the shore.

During that conversation about happiness at Jones Beach, Louis blurts out: “You’re not happy, you just think you’re happy, no one is happy.”   Joe responds by saying: “You believe the world is perfectible and so you find it always unsatisfying.  You have to reconcile yourself to the world’s unperfectability… And accept as rightfully yours the happiness that comes your way.”  Not the easiest thing to do, but words that ring with a certain truth.  The Great Work continues.

New Suit

I bought myself a new suit for the opening night of Angels in America recently, which is rapidly approaching.  A suit is never simply a sartorial decision, but this suit in particular carries with it a bit of symbolism.  Perhaps I should explain.

(Same suit, different colors; I eventually chose the charcoal suit on the left)

I’m on a hiatus from recording audiobooks; so many hours of reading started to wear on my voice.  So in the time between closing The Glass Menagerie and starting rehearsals for Angels I’ve done quite a variety of odd jobs.  The most interesting of those has been assisting a commercial casting director, who happens to be friends with my agent.  I facilitated auditions and ran the camera for several commercial sessions: an AT&T campaign, a LaBatt’s spot, and a promotion for Axe. If you happen to watch The Daily Show online, you probably saw this last commercial, as it was the featured ad for a period of time.  Employing double entendre and low brow humor that would have brought a smile to the bawdiest of Shakespeare’s groundlings, the spot features an Axe representative attempting to spin the PR of a new product called the “detailer,” basically a fancier iteration of the wash cloth, or the man’s answer to the loofah.  He frequently answers questions about what kinds of balls it could wash, oblivious to the double meanings.

Working from the other side of the table in a casting session is fascinating.  You learn a lot about auditioning, about actors, and about people in general.  I saw actors whom I have seen on stage and screen, as well as my peer set: young, talented, very well-trained actors.  I also saw many people who were models or comedians, people with a so-called “natural” presence, but no training.  And I saw a lot of people wearing old suits, borrowed suits, or mismatched suits.  The character in the commercial is a high powered businessman, and these actors were doing the best they could to approximate this on short notice.  Their agents probably called them the day before with their appointment times, and told them an idea of what to wear.  But aside from opening nights, weddings, and funerals, the average actor doesn’t have much use for a suit.  We don’t need to wear them to work, and when we do, it’s usually provided by a costume designer.  But it really unnerved me to see all of these young to middle aged actors wearing old clothes.

(Above is the extended online version of the commercial © Axe, 2010)

Even though we are in a recession, talking about money remains one of the few American taboos.  We try desperately to believe that we live in an egalitarian society, and so the class divisions that wealth creates are kept as invisible as possible. I’m about to talk about money, but try not to get nervous.  The cultural consciousness of actors usually includes the categories of the starving artist and the celebrity, without much understanding of the continuum in between.  Needless to say, the economics of being an artist are a little more complicated.  The primary difficulty is that the work is usually freelance.  If you have a new job with a different salary every few months, with periods of unemployment in between, it becomes very difficult to plan a budget.  Add to that the expense of living in New York, and student loans, and it gets more complicated.  Freddy Arsenault (whose portrait in the song cycle I’ve written is “Gretchen and Freddy Get Married Today”) recently started a Financial Support Group for actors who have gone through the NYU Graduate Acting Program, hoping to educate and help alum with their finances. I’ve heard another classmate of mine say, “I can’t afford to be an actor because I went to school to be an actor.”  If you don’t have a trust fund, balancing out your financial life as an artist and actor are not easy, especially if you want to eventually have things like a marriage, a family, and a mortgage.  Yet I refuse to believe that you have to choose between those things and your career.  I went to the first meeting of the FSG, which happened to be on the same day that I helped cast the Axe commercial.  When it was my turn to talk, I said my biggest fear was being an older actor who came into an audition wearing an old suit.

Since playing Prior in Angels in America is a significant role for me, I decided early on that I would buy myself a new suit.  But then my sublet fell through, and I thought maybe I shouldn’t.  Last week, I changed my mind.  I’m a frugal person, I try to be responsible with my finances, but I realized recently that over the past few years since grad school I’ve slowly stopped spending money on myself. Lesley, my girlfriend, has repeatedly told me that this is not the best idea either. She surprised me in North Carolina for my 30th birthday last week, and while she was here, we went shopping for a new suit.  I bought a beautiful suit from United Colors of Bennetton, a suit which fits me perfectly, an expensive suit that was on sale for half the original price.  This, Lesley told me, was not a coincidence. Life may be complicated, but sometimes, you have to buy yourself a new suit.

A Coffee Mug with My Name on It

A coffee mug with my name on it.  M. CARLSON.  Black letters on white tape, affixed by the stage manager (or more likely, the assistant stage manager).  The process is not very complicated, probably involving thirty seconds with a label maker.  But the first time, that very first time, it definitely made an impact.

(The coffee cup provided for me at PlayMakers Rep, as well as the text by Kushner)

I arrived at rehearsal to find a coffee mug with my name on it in late December of 2004, at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT.  Might seem like a small, even unimportant detail now, but at the time it was for me a very tangible acknowledgement of status, even success; somewhat like having your name on a director’s chair while on a film set, though to a lesser degree I suppose.  I had moved to New York immediately after graduating from Northwestern in 2003, which was not the easiest transition.  I slowly began to find my way in a city and a profession that both loomed large to someone on the outside looking in.  At long last, a small break for me came when I got the offer to do this play at the Long Wharf.  Now it was not exactly a glamorous job.  I didn’t have any lines, and I spent most of the play in a Nazi uniform moving furniture around the set during transitions.  But it was the Long Wharf, and it led to grad school and everything that followed.  Not to mention, I got a coffee mug with my name on it.

(The table where we’ve been working in rehearsal for Angels in America)

The New Year finds me in rehearsals for Angels in America at PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, NC.  We’re still at the table: slowly sifting through the plays, parsing through its dense and beautiful language, looking at research images and texts.  Near the end of Millennium Approaches, the first of the two plays that make up Angels in America, one of the characters says, “The twentieth century.  Oh dear, the world has gotten so terribly, terribly old.”  As we start another year of the twenty-first century (and as I find myself ever closer to 30), I’ve been thinking again about where I am and where I’ve been.  I filled my coffee cup at rehearsal the other day and realized how much I now take it for granted that someone puts my name on a mug before I arrive at the theater.  But it’s important to put your name to what is yours.  And it’s important to remember what you have.

(New Year’s Eve in Chapel Hill, NC with my girlfriend Lesley Shires)

Another Waltz with Prior

It seems I will spend more time in NC than NY this year.  In mid-December I’ll be leaving to play Prior in Angels in America at PlayMakers Rep in Chapel Hill.   I couldn’t be more thrilled to return to this play (and to this role).  It also gives me a chance to write about how circular and interconnected living and working in the theater can be.  When you waltz, you dance in 3/4 time while moving mostly in circles.  And unlike most partner dances, the man leads by stepping backwards.

(The original poster and playbill artwork for Angels by Milton Glaser)

An epic work by the playwright Tony Kushner, Angels in America is in fact two plays, or a play in two parts: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika.  The plays can stand alone and are sometimes performed independently of each other, but are meant to be seen together.  They are performed by the same cast in repertory (meaning that the actors alternate which play they perform) and on a two show day, they might do both: Millennium as the matinee and Perestroika in the evening.  Set in New York City in the 1980s during the very beginning of the AIDS crisis, Angels in America blurs the line of fantasy and realism, and in doing so delves into such divisive subjects as politics, sex, and religion.  The plays follow a diverse cast of characters that include a former drag queen and nurse named Belize, a fictional representation of the lawyer Roy Cohn, a young Mormon couple living in Brooklyn, and a man diagnosed with AIDS named Prior Walter who is abandoned by his boyfriend but receives visitations from a terrifying and beautiful angel.

I first read Angels in America as a twenty year old college student.  Kim Rubinstein, my acting teacher at Northwestern, had been the associate director of the national tour.  We spent an entire semester working on scenes from Millennium and Perestroika, and as our final exam of sorts my class performed the entirety of the two plays. Erik Hellman, Jonathan Saylors, and I all worked on Prior, each taking different scenes.  Flash forward five years.  As a twenty-five year old graduate student at NYU I played Prior in Millennium Approaches, a production which deeply affected the training I received there.  Now another five years has passed and I am finally the right age to play Prior professionally.  I’ll be doing both parts in repertory this winter at PlayMakers in NC.  Even at a cursory glance, this play has obviously followed me throughout my life as an artist.  But it even goes a bit further.

(Ellen McLaughlin and Stephen Spinella in the original Broadway production)

While doing Millennium at NYU, we met with Oskar Eustis.  Oskar commissioned the play while running a theater called the Eureka in San Francisco, and directed the initial workshop production.  He now runs the Public Theater, and teaches a class at Grad Acting about collaboration and devised work. Oskar gave me my first job out of grad school, directing me in his production of Hamlet as part of Shakespeare in the Park.  Between years of graduate school, I spent a summer with the Chautauqua Theatre Company in upstate New York.  I did a play called The Just with Ellen McLaughlin, who played the Angel in the original Broadway production. She performed a play at PlayMakers last season and recommended me. If that isn’t enough, Kate Goehring played my mother this fall in The Glass Menagerie.  How is she connected you ask?  Well, she played Harper in the first national tour, directed by my acting teacher at Northwestern, Kim Rubinstein.

Before the Angel crashes through the ceiling of Prior’s apartment at the end of Millennium Approaches, he is visited by several ghosts of his ancestors, prior Priors as it were.  Attempting to calm him, they conjure a vision of Louis, the boyfriend who has abandoned Prior, unable to cope with the complexity of his sickness.  Prior and Louis share a quiet waltz, moving in circles across the stage, with Prior retracing his steps backwards toward his bed.  As I prepare for another waltz with Prior, I am reminded again just how circular everything can be.

How I Got Beat Up by a Cat

(A number of years ago now, my father asked for us not to send him gifts or cards on his birthday.  Instead, he wanted us to write short stories about memories from our childhood.  I was busy writing/producing We Outran the Sun when he had his most recent birthday, so this story arrived a bit late.  It recounts an altercation I had with a childhood pet, a cat named Ashes.  Hope you enjoy.)

I don’t get into fights.  I’m just not that guy, never have been.  The closest I’ve come to being in a fist fight include: 1) a falling out with a friend named Nathan in 4th grade, which ended with me pushing him into a urinal and 2) being punched in the stomach (also in grade school) after I fouled a guy named Evan while playing basketball during recess.  Fights usually end quickly if one of the combatants is covered in urine, or can’t breathe because his diaphragm is temporarily paralyzed. So it should come as no surprise that the only confrontation to give me a bloody nose was with a cat.  That’s right, you read that correctly: a cat.

(Eva and Leo as kittens for Halloween, note the name tag on Leo: Ashes)

My sister Stephanie and her husband Phil recently brought home two kittens, who were promptly named Candy and Pumpkin by my young niece and nephew.  The day Eva and Leo first met their beloved pets, Steph and I talked on Skype.  She had brought her laptop out to the barn in their backyard, where the kittens will be spending most of their time.  Eva and Leo were much more preoccupied than usual, and justifiably so, walking in and out of the frame occasionally, holding or pursuing a cat.  The excitement (and joy) in the air was palpable – if not for the cats, certainly for the kids.  At one point during our conversation, Steph turned to Leo and told him not to pick up the cat by its head.  Which reminded me of my own childhood experiences with cats.  When I was very little, we had a kitten named Taffy (note the similarity in name to Candy).  I made the mistake of picking up Taffy by the tail.  Taffy scratched the daylights out of my arm, and I was not allowed to play with him for an unspecified amount of time.  Now Eva and Leo have been kitty crazy for quite awhile, and both of them dressed as kittens for Halloween this fall, in adorable costumes made by their grandmother.  Each of these candy crazed kitties had a name tag on their costume. Eva went by the moniker of Snowflake, while Leo assumed the nom de chat of Ashes.  Ashes happens to be the name of the second feline to reside at 10893 Lowell Road (Taffy having a rather short life span), and the adversary who would give me a bloody nose.

Ashes eventually mellowed as he grew older, but as a kitten he was rambunctious and rather high maintenance.  Decidedly an outdoor cat, his natural habitat included the few acres around our house, as well as the small box in our garage where he would sleep at night.  But a significant compromise came about when it was decided that he could spend time in the basement of our house.  Not permanently, to be sure, but more on a visitation basis.  The basement had not been remodeled, and therefore Ashes and his fur and claws were less of a threat to the furniture, carpet, and whatever else my mother thought would be damaged. As kids, we spent a lot of time in the basement; both the television and all of our Legos were in that room.  A large, open space with red carpet and faux wood paneling, it housed my father’s record collection.  We would play those records and dance around the basement, bouncing around to the tunes of The Everly Brothers and The Four Seasons.  I’m not exactly sure what Ashes thought we were doing when we were dancing, but it did not, shall we say, have a calming effect. His eyes would dart around the room, following us.  Then suddenly he would latch on to one of us with his claws and bite our knee.  Like a puritanical parent from the 1950s who caught their kids listening to Elvis, Ashes vehemently showed his disapproval.

(I’m holding Ashes on the left, with my sister Anni on the far right, circa 1986)

We eventually learned to put him in Stephanie’s room if we wanted to listen to those records, but not before the bloody altercation to which I’ve been alluding. Dancing around the basement on a summer afternoon, probably listening to “Poor Jenny” by the Everly Brothers, I suddenly caught a glimpse of Ashes with the crazy look in his eyes that he would get before darting up to bear hug our legs.  In an instant he was on the move, and I quickly turned to run away.  I didn’t get very far.  I ran into the wall.  The wall had a ledge, where the faux wood paneling ended and the windows began.  I don’t remember how old I was when this happened, but I was at the age where my face (specifically, my nose) was exactly the same height as that ledge.  Before I was able to process what had happened, blood was streaming down my face.  Ashes had retreated somewhere to calm his nerves, I’m sure pleased that the immoral songs of The Everly Brothers had been turned off, and I had my first and as yet only bloody nose.

I suppose what I’m saying is, I got beat up by a cat.

Playing with Darkness

Last Friday, I received a fairly unexpected phone call.  I had just finished recording this textbook on social work, and was getting ready to go downtown to see my friend Lena in a performance at DR2, which would be followed by drinks with another friend to celebrate her birthday.  I was hurriedly trying to eat dinner and get dressed (simultaneously) when my phone rang.  The number had a 917 prefix, which signifies a New York cell phone, but I didn’t know who it was.  I thought about letting it go to voicemail, but instead picked up.  Then I heard, “Hey this is Daniel Fish.”  Daniel Fish is a smart and innovative theater director, an artist known for rethinking classic work and also for shaping edgy contemporary plays.  Successful as he may be, he remains a decidedly “downtown” director (which, if you ever happen to read this Daniel, I mean as a compliment).  I had no idea how he got my phone number, or why he would be calling me.  I set down my fork, and probably also a shoe, and said hello.  He was directing a reading of a new play by Thomas Bradshaw at the New York Theater Workshop, and at the last minute an actor had a conflict.  Jimmy Davis, who played Juliet in the all-male production of Romeo and Juliet I did a few years ago in DC, had given him my number.  “Would you be interested?” he asked, and “Can you do a German accent?”

(Outside the New York Theater Workshop on E. 4th Street in Manhattan)

When you do a reading of a new play, you usually just have one short rehearsal.  You familiarize yourself with the language, the director makes suggestions, and then that evening (or the next day) you sit in front of a script on a music stand and read the play.  No movement or blocking, just the interaction of the actors and the audience with the text.  Hearing a play out loud, as a writer, is a completely different experience than hearing it only in your head, and an essential step in the writing process.  After rehearsing the play Sunday night, I went to Park Slope, Brooklyn for a dinner party.  Ciera Wells (who you may perhaps remember from the song cycle) was having people over for dinner and wine at her place.  I got to talking about the play, called The Ashes, which centers around an African American artist whose work addresses the complexity of race.  During the course of the play he has a show of his artwork in Berlin.  The role I played was that of a German neo-Nazi skinhead, and needless to say, things don’t turn out well.  The play provides a complex and provocative look at race and identity.  While explaining the play, I got this question: “Why would anyone agree to play roles of incredibly hateful (or racist, or immoral, or pathological) characters?”  And more specifically, “How does playing a role like that affect you?”  The easy answer would be to say that I usually play “nice” characters – the sensitive young man – and that the variety is exciting.  But it’s a little more complicated than that.

(Thomas Bradshaw, the provocative playwright of The Ashes)

What people find offensive is often surprising to me.  Parents who complain about teenage sex in Romeo and Juliet don’t even blink at the murder and hatred in plays like Macbeth or Richard III.  Theatergoers will turn a blind eye to any number of immoralities but write letters of complaint to the theater when a character “takes the Lord’s name in vain.”  But the truth of the matter is that morality usually makes for boring plays.  People are complex, and the essence of drama is conflict.  The play needs an antagonist (or sometimes a protagonist, like in Macbeth) whose actions drive the motion of the play and allow the characters to confront those complexities.  Without Iago, there is no Othello.  Without the neo-Nazi characters in The Ashes, the play wouldn’t arrive at its polemical conclusion. The theater doesn’t try to show the world as it should be, but rather as it is: complicated and beautiful, but also painful and violent.  That is not to say that playing a neo-Nazi is an easy thing to do.  I can’t explain how strange it is to hear certain epithets come out of your mouth, or how disquietingly exhilarating it can be to feel your body filled with rage and hate, however imaginary those intentions may be.  You do feel the need to check in with the other actors, to acknowledge that the tension created is illusory.  But it is only in playing those characters truthfully and without judgement that the audience will be forced to address their own relationship to the issues at hand.  If a performer judges or comments on the character he plays, then he diffuses the culpability of the audience.  They will feel good about themselves because they are “better” than that character.  But if Iago, for instance, believes what he does is justified, or if a neo-Nazi believes his actions are moral, it forces the audience to look more deeply at themselves and their own prejudices.

Which, I suppose, is why we agree to play with darkness.  Yes, it can be disturbing, for both artist and audience.  But that’s the point: it’s supposed to be.

Images from Dark Nights

Monday I performed We Outran the Sun at the Hudson Guild Theatre in New York. The following photographs were taken by my collaborator Michael Heck, during our short technical rehearsal that afternoon.   You can see the design changes and adjustments: the canvas placed on an easel, the use of an electronic piano and the subsequent idea of incorporating moving boxes, the projector placed on the floor instead of hung from the grid.  I was pleased with the performance, glad that a number of people who weren’t able to see the project this summer at Studio Tisch had the opportunity to experience the show.  I played a new encore, a song by the band Hem called “Half Acre,” about which I’ll probably write more at length later this week.  We staged the show on the set of the currently running production, Once Upon a Time in New Jersey (set design by Jen Price Fick and lighting design by Isabella Byrd).  All photography ©2010 by Micheal Heck.  Set design for We Outran the Sun by Damon Pelletier, lighting design by Kate Ashton.

(Using an electronic keyboard left no room for the monitor, hence the use of boxes)

(Rehearsing “Half Acre,” a song about home and Michigan by the band Hem)

(Adjusting projections in rehearsal, image of Michael Stuhlbarg on the canvas)

(Still somewhat amused that I created a project where I play the piano constantly)

(Note the canvas on an easel, and the projector on the floor, other slight changes)

(A sense of the set behind me, Damon walking across stage on the right)

(With designers and collaborators Kate Ashton and Damon Pelletier)

A Lovely Day to Outrun the Sun

Tonight I perform We Outran the Sun again here in New York, at the Hudson Guild Theatre.  The premise of the Dark Night Series is that during the run of a play, a theater normally sits empty on Mondays (often referred to as a dark night).  The Prospect Theater Company started this series to utilize that extra day, allowing the theater to be lit even on a dark night, using these Mondays to showcase new work. Since their mainstage production is currently running at the Hudson Guild, we’ve had to adapt a number of technical and/or design ideas to the conditions of the space.  For instance, we’re unable to hang the canvas or the projector from the grid.  So the canvas for this performance will sit atop a wooden easel.  The piano we’ll be using is not acoustic, but rather electronic, which leaves us with less room for set dressing and no place to put the laptop/monitor.  After talking with Damon, we’ve decided to use moving boxes as sort of a makeshift table.  In some sense then, if the stage is my studio, it will seem that I’ve just started to unpack and then sat down at the piano to work. Which to a certain extent, is fairly similar to what my life is like (and thematically connects to the projections for Eva and Leo).

(Tennessee Williams in later years, photo © 1977 by Jane Brown)

I’ve mentioned before that I’m slowly working my way through the canon of Tennessee Williams, reading the rest of his work now that The Glass Menagerie has closed.  I recently picked an anthology of his later plays, and within its pages is a work called A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur.  A minor play from a major playwright, it’s rarely produced.  In fact, I had never heard of it.  Though we now think of Tennessee Williams as among the greatest of American playwrights, toward the end of his career he had certainly fallen out with the critics.  He continued to write, in fact he was always writing, but his new plays had greater difficulty finding their way to Broadway.  To be quite honest,  A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur seems much more like a William Inge play.  Like the plays of his contemporary and friend, it deals with small personal despair, as opposed to the broader emotional canvas Williams normally used.  Set in a St. Louis apartment in the 1930s, it would seem to evoke The Glass Menagerie, but instead uses a school teacher as its central character, bringing to mind the women of Inge’s Picnic.

(Artwork by Dave Beck, from the original photograph by Michael Heck © 2010)

Why do I bring up this play?  Well, believe it or not, the first New York performance of Creve Coeur opened on January 10, 1979 and played – wait for it – at the Hudson Guild Theatre, the same venue where tonight I’ll perform We Outran the Sun.  That is one of the remarkable things about New York theater, the history you feel inside of certain buildings, where the echoes of playwrights and actors of the past are still faintly audible.  Creve Coeur is a lake in St. Louis, and in the 1930s was also home to an amusement park – the destination for one of the woman in this play who, in another nod to William Inge, is going on a picnic.  A fitting title for a play about despair and determination, Creve Coeur roughly translates to “broken heart,” meaning the play is about “a lovely day for a broken heart.”

I think today, perhaps, is a lovely day to outrun the sun.

An Age at Odds (Urban Tribes)

While recording audiobooks of college textbooks I’ve had to read some surprising things out loud, including a section in a Family Dynamics text about “hooking up” in which I had to define both “friends with benefits” and “booty call” (somehow, I imagine that the students, though perhaps not their professors, will already know the definition of these terms).  I’ve learned some things I might not have otherwise, like the correct pronunciation of the Aztec sun god Huitzilopochtli (wee tsee lo POTCH tlee) or the fact that Delaware was originally named New Sweden.  Perhaps more rare however are the moments I run across portions of text that affect me personally, like reading passages of Kierkegaard last winter in a philosophy textbook.  In that book I also came across this from Heraclitus: “Nothing is constant except change.”  And believe it or not, in the same Family Dynamics textbook as “booty call” came a section on urban tribes, a phrase I had never heard before but as I read, seemed to describe my own life.

(Sufjan Stevens, the much talked about, love him or leave him singer/songwriter)

The Age of Adz is the long awaited album from prolific singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens.  An album long awaited, in particular, by me.  After a number of critically well-received albums (Michigan, Seven Swans, and Illinois), Sufjan seemed to purposely diffuse his momentum, following the release of his breakthrough record Illinois in 2005 with a series of side projects: a five disc collection of Christmas music, a symphonic suite inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and numerous single song contributions to assorted anthologies and collections.  After Paste magazine named Illinois the album of the decade last year, in a companion interview he questioned the purpose of even recording an album in an era of single song Internet downloading.  I started to wonder if we’d ever get a new Sufjan album.  Known for exquisitely arranged, almost orchestral folk music, people either love or hate Sufjan for the same reason: an intensely inward focus and surprisingly personal lyrics.  He has certainly influenced my own writing: Michigan and Illinois are effectively modern song cycles, meticulously researched albums about their namesake states, full of lyrical idiosyncrasies.  If he hadn’t written those albums, I’m not sure if I would have thought to write We Outran the Sun.

I’m currently taking a hiatus from recording textbooks, a hiatus that may turn out to be permanent.  Reading so much has started to affect my voice, and since I’m performing We Outran the Sun in a few days (which involves a considerable amount of singing), I’ve taken the week to rest a bit.  Though I have a lot of voice training, the long hours have inevitably brought about fatigue, and I’m starting to consider other options for work in between plays.  Which brings me, I suppose, back to the idea of the urban tribe.  An urban tribe (according to this textbook on Family Dynamics) refers to “mixed-gender circles of friends (typically in their 20s and 30s) who are the primary social support system” for unmarried individuals living in a large metropolitan area.  “Typically, urban tribes begin as a group of friends who socialize together every now and then, but over a period of five years or so, each individual within the tribe assume certain roles, much like in a family.  Similar also to families, urban tribes share rituals, such as holiday celebrations, stories, and over time, histories.”  I have to say, I find this to be true, though my group of friends includes a married couple or two.  And in addition to this smaller, close-knit circle, I’m also finding myself part of a larger network.  The network of graduate school trained actors/artists in their late twenties or early thirties eventually starts to feel very small.  Practically everyone I meet in this specific subset either went to school with or worked with someone I know.

(The not so friendly album cover, featuring the apocalyptic art of Royal Robertson)

A little more than a week ago, Sufjan released his album The Age of Adz.  Now for those of you who are curious, an adz (pronounced: odds) is a tool for cutting wood similar to an ax.  The title, as well as the cover art, refers to the work of the reclusive and schizophrenic outsider artist Royal Robertson.  But the music and lyrics, though influenced by his artwork, seem a little less obtuse and clever than earlier Sufjan songs.  The album has received mixed reviews, and is certainly not for everyone, but no one can deny that it is ambitious and stylistically daring.  From an artist known for hushed vocals and for playing the banjo comes a wildly diverse and expansive work that seems influenced more by Prince than Nick Drake, more by Wagner than Steve Reich.  He uses drum machines, electronic glitches and noise, a full choir, trombones and tubas, and an ever present section of flutes.  Many of the songs are longer than what you would find on a standard album, but what has received the most attention (and some derision) is the twenty-five minute long final track, “Impossible Souls.”  A number of reviewers basically call it an overreaching, wandering mess.  But in scope and breadth, it reminds me of an inverse of “On the Transmigration of Souls,” the symphonic suite by modern composer John Adams about the aftermath of 9/11.  Whereas Adams wrote a heartbreaking elegy about souls entering the afterlife, Sufjan writes a thrilling, joyous, and ferocious song about souls struggling through this life.

(My good friend and grad school classmate Lee Rosen, who is now in Louisville)

Monday I met my friend Lee Rosen for a drink, as he was leaving town the next day to go do a play at the Actor’s Theater of Louisville.  When I arrived, I realized that the collected group of people comprised an urban tribe.  I didn’t even know how some of these people knew Lee, but in this bar were an assemblage of friends I knew from NYU, from various jobs and plays and readings, somehow all connected to Lee.  Having just recently decided to take a hiatus from reading textbooks, I arrived still nervous as to what would come next.  I left the bar that night with a few leads and possibilities of other work that might see me through to my next play.  As an artist, I feel sometimes that Heraclitus wrote his aphorism just for me: “Nothing is constant except change.”  But as the world gets smaller, it doesn’t mean that the people in it get smaller as well.  They just get closer.  The people who comprise my urban tribe help each other get back up when they fall, dust one another off, and get each other moving forward again.

In the lyrics to “Impossible Souls” Sufjan includes the following text:

 

It’s a good life

Better pinch yourself

Is it possible? Is it possible?

Boy we can do much more together

It’s not so impossible

 

The Age of Adz is exhilarating.  I can’t stop listening to it.   Oh, and by the way, he’s right.  We can do so much more together.  And it’s not so impossible.

How We Are Hungry

The XX are a band with whom I’ve recently become acquainted, thanks to Drew Barker (the dramaturg at Triad Stage).  A trio of British musicians, they lace whispery vocals and sparse instrumentation through arrangements that contain surprisingly driving rhythms, especially considering the band doesn’t use a live drummer.   I’ve started to listen to them frequently while out running, and listened to them again tonight.  A few weeks ago, they won the Mercury Prize (Britain’s most prestigious music award) for their self-titled debut album.  David Cromer is a Chicago based theater director who has exploded onto the New York scene. Though other productions of his have transferred to New York, the recent stripped-down, modern dress production of Our Town is what really got people talking.  The simplicity and authenticity of its staging and acting brought new life to a somewhat tired play.  Now every time I turn around, I seem to read another announcement of a Broadway play he’ll soon be directing.  A few weeks ago, he won a MacArthur (a prestigious “genius” award that comes with a no strings attached $500,000).

(The British band The XX in onstage and in concert, photo by Timothy Norris)

Since I’ve been back in New York, I’ve renewed my begrudgingly amiable competition with the sunset. In North Carolina I ran significantly less, partially because of the heat and partially because the play wore me out.  I forgot how beautiful the hour of dusk is in this city.  The light changes the color and feel of entire neighborhoods.  The band Radiohead (though somehow never a Mercury Prize winner) introduced me to phrase “the gloaming,” which describes this time of day in a way “twilight” never can.  Tonight as I ran, I laughed at my reintroduction to that game all New York runners play when something small quickly darts in front of them, the game of “Squirrel, or Rat?”  Arriving back at my apartment in the dying light (the sun sets earlier these days) I then noticed that the arm band I keep my iPhone in while running smelled awful.  You know how during rush hour you allow yourself to get excited by that one completely empty subway car, only to realize that the reason it’s empty is the unfortunate smell of it’s single occupant? Yes, my armband smelled like a homeless person.  Didn’t notice that until today.

New York makes you hungry.  New York makes you lean and smelly.

I’m back to recording college textbooks; on the docket at the moment is an introductory course on Social Work.  But last week I spent a few days moonlighting as a casting associate.  A casting director who happens to be friends with my agent was casting a commercial and needed an assistant.  Having just returned to the city, and not having lined up a new book to record yet, I said yes.  Now commercials are not easy things to audition for, especially I think if you’re a trained actor.  The craft of what you do has to be invisible.  You aren’t hired only for talent, but more likely because you are exactly what the ad is looking for.  I saw hundreds of actors audition, many I knew personally, hungry for a paycheck that would allow them to do other, more meaningful work.  I also saw lots of guys coming in to audition for the business executive in the commercial, wearing old and faded suits. Nothing unnerves me more than seeing older actors in suits they’ve had for ten or fifteen years.  Makes me look closely at what I want and what I need.

(David Cromer on the set of Our Town, photograph by Carol Rosegg of the WSJ)

The media and the public love to hear stories of overnight success.  But I have to say, I’m not sure if that ever really happens.  When David Cromer directed his first Broadway play last year, the New York Times did an extended profile on this intelligent, but fairly reticent and private artist.  The narrative of the article was framed around a day he was forced to go shopping for a new suit to wear on opening night.  He had spent years working and working in Chicago, and he said in the article, “I lived like a college student.  I always have.”  Now granted The XX won the Mercury Prize for their debut album, which was recorded in a garage.  They have more claim to the label of “overnight.”  But it doesn’t mean they didn’t work for their success.  Asked in an interview how they had changed since recording that first album, lead singer Madley Croft gave the following modest statement: “We’re better at playing our instruments. It was very simple on this album because we couldn’t play our instruments very well. We also thought nobody was ever going to hear this album.”  Being an artist is work.  It doesn’t just happen to you.  You work and you work and then hopefully, people start to listen.

I think we’re meant to be hungry.  The question of happiness, then, concerns understanding the hunger: not that we are hungry but how we are hungry.