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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)
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.
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.
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.
While I was an undergraduate at Northwestern, I remember being very careful with how I used the word “home” in conversations with my mother. Home was where I grew up. Home was a house on a dirt road named Lowell, in a zip code with the numbers 48820, in a state surrounded by lakes which we like to call great. Home was not a dorm room in Allison Hall or an apartment building at the corner of Ridge and Davis in Evanston, Illinois. Reflexively, we begin to call the place where we live “home” whether or not it is one or feels like one. And for a mother with a recently empty nest, the last thing she would want to hear is for her son to shift the perspective of where that home is. Her house was still home, and to a certain extent that was true. But it was also undeniably changing.
(Satellite image of my childhood neighborhood in MI, note the fields and farmland)
I moved to New York immediately after graduating from Northwestern. My father and I packed nearly everything I owned into a rented cargo van, leaving the few things that didn’t fit in the alley behind 1619 Ridge Avenue. We drove across the country together, toward a sublet I had secured in Park Slope, Brooklyn. When I hear the Sufjan Stevens song “Chicago” I always think about that drive. Sufjan grew up in Michigan; the first verse recounts driving to Chicago and the second, driving to New York. After that initial sublet, I lived in various apartments throughout New York: in Hell’s Kitchen, on the Lower East Side, and now up in Washington Heights. New York is not an easy place to live, or to feel at home. It takes time. Strangely, the first time I truly felt like New York was my home was after leaving it for some time. Returning from the first regional theater job I ever had (at the Long Wharf in CT), I took the train back to the city. Arriving at Grand Central the night after the play had closed, I knew that I was home.
(The house I grew up in during the winter, covered in a blanket of Michigan snow)
Last year when I did the play Picnic by William Inge, I decided that I would read the rest of his canon while we were in performance. After a play opens you have your days free, so I read everything from the brilliant The Dark at the Top of the Stairs to the justifiably more obscure A Loss of Roses. I had planned to do the same with Tennessee Williams during the run of The Glass Menagerie, but since that play was a bit more demanding of me than Picnic, I found myself not wanting to spend my free time with Tennessee. Now that I’m back in New York, I’ve started leafing through my collection of his work. I had never thought myself quite right for his plays. Aside from Tom, most of the men in his writing are alpha males: ex-football players like Brick or auto mechanics like Stanley (not the type of characters I usually play). However, I just finished reading The Night of the Iguana, and have to add the role of Shannon – a defrocked minister turned tour guide, continually on the verge of a nervous breakdown – to the short list of roles I hope to play. Toward the end of the third act, Hannah (an artist) turns to Shannon and says:
“Do you know what I mean by a home? I don’t mean a regular home. I don’t mean what other people mean when they speak of a home, because I don’t regard a home as a… well, as a place, a building… a house… of wood, bricks, stone. I think of a home as being a thing that two people have between them in which each can… well, nest-rest-live in, emotionally speaking. Does that make any sense to you, Mr. Shannon?”
(Satellite image of my current neighborhood in NYC, a bit more densely populated)
Yes, it makes sense to me. I wrote an entire play about what it means to have a home, how we try to find it in buildings or stability but only truly find it in people. Yet at the same time, I’ve come to recognize the importance (for me at least) of having a physical home. After months in an apartment or hotel room in a different city, I need a place to which I can return. My apartment in Washington Heights isn’t perfect, but it’s mine. Sure, it’s an old building, the kitchen cabinets don’t all match, and occasionally water leaks through the ceiling. But it has a view of the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge, it has more closets than any apartment I’ve ever had, and even room for a dining room table. I replaced the kitchen floor. Chuck Close and Robert Rauschenberg prints hang from the walls.
I’ve made it into my home.
Now when I travel back to Michigan, I still say that I’m going home. But when I return to New York, I also say that I’m going home. The transition to adulthood, I’ve found, involves acknowledging both where you’re from and where you are.
