branching out avec erin mallon

mes amis—

it is a great delight to speak of erin mallon, actor, playwright, lady extraordinaire. mallon’s latest play branched premieres at the here (and there) arts center through mar. 8 in a production by inviolet theater.

i first met ms. mallon in the great (plains) city of omaha, ne. with warmth and zest she took this kippy under her wing and showed me the ropes of conference life. (we were at the great plains theatre conference, bien sur!)

as kind as she is is beautiful!

since then, i’ve seen erin perform in a swath of venues and roles .. a belle in a modern twist on the beast (the gal who played the candle was regrettably forgettable), the better half of brecht (in a lady f. production that also starred the starry megan gaffney); as a gumptious child (another lady f production starring the handsome jack frederick); and–ok, my favorite–as a lonely planetoid in mac wellman’s horrocks (and toutatis too). ma donna!

ma donna!

i’ve never had the pleasure of seeing a mallon-written production, but i have a feeling it’s going to be great. after all, she is a wordsmith  having coined such motivational aphorisms over decision making “if it’s not a hell yeah, then it’s a no,” and cautionary advice regarding work/life wisdom “careful what you get good at.”

erin and i caught up electronically when i was housebound in my pied a terre in park slop. (that’s slope to some, but slop to me!). what follows is our e-conversation.

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what was the genesis/spark for branched?
I was in a writing workshop with the wonderful Andrew Ciannavei of LAByrinth Theater Company. Up until that point, I’d only written short plays. Andrea

oh my!
challenged us all to write a full-length play in a month and supported us every step of the way. I began with a disturbing scene at a Parent/Teacher conference and quickly fell in love with Tamara, the very…ahem… “passionate” parent. From there, I had a naughty bit of fun creating her highly structured world.

i love it! what is your experience with park slop and/or helicopter parenting?
Like many artistic people in NYC, when I first moved here I worked a variety of jobs to pay the rent. I learned pretty quickly that waitressing wasn’t gonna be my jam, so I experimented with different options and ended up teaching a whole lot of yoga and sign language to mothers and their offspring.

you had a fabulous downward dog in the lady farrington’s mickey and sage. loose hamstrings have always alluded me. carry on.
Indeed. Anyhow, you see a LOT of parenting techniques when you teach children languages and stretching techniques in their homes. I left all that glamour behind though and I now make my living recording erotic audiobooks.  Just a little different 😉

 ah! i belive i have seen you at the brickshop audio land in scenic sunset park! allora, will you share some fun bits or lines of dialogue to give a sense of the biting satire…?
Sure!  Here are the opening moments of the play between Tamara and her 5-year-old son, Ben.

The first movement of Vivaldi’s “Autumn” plays slowly on a violin.  Lights up on a modern dining room/kitchen in Park Slope, New York City.  Ben practices behind a music stand, while Tamara places three plates of food down at a beautifully set table.  She is pregnant-as-all-hell and dressed professionally.  Ben wears dress pants and a collared shirt. He finishes the piece and looks to Tamara.

Silence.

BEN
Mommy?

TAMARA
Yes angel?

BEN
Was that good?

TAMARA
I don’t know Benjamin, was it?

BEN
I think… maybe I played it too adagio?

TAMARA
You sure did. You’re getting so good at self-criticism sweetheart! Mommy’s so proud of you. See, Vivaldi calls for more of a grandiose style than what you played. What does it say at the top? Certainly not Adagio.

BEN
No, certainly not. It says allegro.

TAMARA
Right. Allegro. Do you think you played it allegro?

BEN
No, I think I played it adagio.

TAMARA
You sure did. Good boy.  So let me ask you, do you think Mr. Vivaldi up in Heaven feels happy listening to your adagio version of his allegro song?

BEN
No?

TAMARA.
That’s right. He’s doesn’t. Remember love, just because some people are dead doesn’t mean we can stop respecting them and their music. Should we try it again?

BEN
Yes Mommy, we should.

TAMARA
Terrific. What a determined boy I have.

erin mallon’s “branched.”

dear me. tell me about the use of puppets.
The wonderful David Valentine created our beloved “Beatrice” for Branched. Bea is Tamara’s freakish newborn who may or may not be human and who grows in size throughout the play. It was important to us that the audience believe in her aliveness and baby-ness yet at the same time be like “Wait, what the F#%& is up with her? She scares me!” (Excuse my profanity Kippy, I am an excitable person).

non fa niente cara, it is nothing, dear.
We knew we needed a very skilled and sensitive artist to tackle her creation, and we found him!

you are very often an actor .. how does being a playwright compare? (many fans will be sad that you won’t be acting in this production)
Oh Kippy, that’s sweet of you.

i do not give empty compliments only truths.
Yes, I am an actor through and through and always will be. In fact, the more I write, the more I want to act. And… the more act, the more I want to write.

you are in good company.
Each practice teaches me so much about the other and I don’t think I could be without either now. It excites me so much when I see actresses picking up their pens.  Gals like Heidi Schreck, Jessica Dickey, Clare Barron (and Kippy!) really inspire me.

i believe you have me confused for another! what’s your history with inviolet?
I have been a member of InViolet for almost three years now. They invited me out into the woods with them for their annual retreat in 2011 where we spent four glorious days workshopping plays, one of which was Branched. I knew immediately that they “got” the play, because they cast it perfectly and went balls-to-the-wall with the weirdo comedy of it all. I’m really jazzed and grateful we decided to produce Branched this year and am excited to see where we all go together next.

do you have a secret influence or guilty pleasure when it comes to art/music?
I have many! The weirdest and secret-est (until now) is probably my compulsion to watch Michael Jackson’s epic Smooth Criminal video before I go onstage as an actor. It doesn’t matter what the world of the play is, that sucker always puts me in the right headspace. Everyone in their period costumes grooving so hard with each other? The gravity-defying “lean to the floor” move toward the end? Magic! I’m also an animal for “So You Think You Can Dance.” I could watch that Amy Yakima and Travis Wall piece until the end of time.   

brava! anything I didn’t ask that you’d like to expand or expound on?
Yes! Allow me to sing the praises of our director Robert Ross Parker and the whole team at Vampire Cowboys. We were lucky enough to bring a whole bunch of the VC family along with Robert to work on Branched, including Nick Francone on Set/Lights, Shane Rettig on Sound, David Valentine with Puppet Design, Kristina Makowski with Costume Design and Alexis Black with Fight Choreography. I’ve long been a fan of Robert and VC’s work. It’s muscular and smart and always wildly funny. It’s a dream come true that they partnered up with us for Branched. Long live Vampire Cowboys!

vive!

kippy

ps i shall be attending branched on mar. 7, dear readers, won’t you join me?

finger on the counterpulse (artlog #8)

mes amis—

It’s always a treat to watch a play by someone you don’t know and then meet that person and discover that he or she is as much a delight as the play that she or he has written. Such was the case with Andrea Hart whose play ricochet I saw years ago at the Great Plains Theatre Conference in dear sweet Omaha, Nebraska. (They don’t call it “the theatre corn basket” for nothing! I do love a good gluten-free dough.)

It’s fun to have far flung friends and talented yet down-to-earth ones too. Andrea fits that dollar bill to a tree. I recall enjoying a most heart healthy meal with her back in San Fransisco where she resides a year ago and chatting about the trials and tribulations of our respective professions (for her that’s theatre … for me it’s full-time tooting!).

It was with great excitement that Andrea emailed me a few months ago with news about her acceptance to a very cool sounding residency between CounterPULSE, a SF-based gruppo teatrale, the University of Chimichanga—er Chichester—in England and a British theatrical duo called Action Hero (capes optional.) At Andrea’s suggestion I had an e-chat recently with CounterPULSE program director Julie Phelps to learn more about the program and the presentation that will result, Stranger in a Strange Land, on Aug. 27.

everyone should go to chimichanga u after they graduate from pizza–i mean pitzer–college

So Julie, I’ve read the press release… and want to be sure I am understanding correctly: Action Hero is British duo Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse and they work with U. Chichester… and CounterPULSE is working in collaboration with these groups and bringing in American artists, like Andrea Hart, to work in a three-week residency program. C’est vrais…?
Yes, this is correct. CounterPULSE has partnered with the University of Chichester to do “cultural exchanges”—bringing Action Hero to CounterPULSE is the first (hopefully) of these exchanges. The model is that the two orgs exchange artists who then work with local artists onsite to build a performance.

Very nice. I love cultural exchange esp. b/w orgs!
This is the first of what hopes to be a series of exchanges. Conversations and program development have been underway for approximately one year.

Très bien. Can you tell me a bit about how the residency operates? Are the American artists making their own individual work or is it more collectively done?
The workshop residency is really designed to investigate collaboration and exchange as a root inquiry—the particular themes that the artists bring will change (in the case of Action Hero they are looking at Americana and nostalgia).  In the spirit of investigating collaboration the artists are coming together and generating a group working environment, working in some version of collaboration—however that might look for the group. So at its core the artists are not “building their own work” but working together to build a collective expression of this particular collaborative experiment.

Mama mia. In addition to Americana and nostalgia—two of my own favourite topics!— can you tell me more specifically what the artists have been riffing on the past few weeks?
I think this would be a much better question for the artists directly.  I would be glad to put you in to direct contact with Action Hero and the other artists involved in the project as needed. Please let me know when/if this introduction should take place. As an anecdote, the artists dressed in costume and tailgated at the recent Raiders game.

I didn’t know that “Raiders of the Lost Ark” had banded into a sports team! Perhaps the artists can tell readers more about their progetti in the “Comments” portion below when they have a momentino.
What can audiences expect to see at the event on the 27th? Will the Americans go to England at some point?
That is hard to predict since the spirit of the project is really about allowing for the content to arise out of process and collaboration, so there has been no clear “end goal” that the group articulated at the onset. Again, I think this would be an interesting conversation for you to take up with the artists.

Noted. Might I add that “end goals” are for footballers… not for les artistes!
CounterPULSE is committed to invigorating and elevating the Bay Area artistic community. Stranger in a Strange Land will be the first of a series of exchanges of art and artists nationally and internationally. We believe that the quality of art produced by emerging artists locally will be strengthened by a robust dialogue with national and international peers. We also hope to significantly expand CounterPULSE’s work for social change by partnering with artists and organizations doing similar work in other places. Thank again for your interest in CounterPULSE and this program!

All thanks to you Julie! Now then… les artistes (I’m looking at you Andrea Hart, Elizabeth McSurdy, Ernesto Sopprani, Laura Arrington, Richie Israel, and Xandra Ibarra…!) I hope you find a time to chime in with your own thoughts and ruminations about the process thus far.

a bientot!
kippy