megan emery gaffney

Mes amis—

In theatre there are actors and schmactors; (h)acktors and performers.

qu’est ce que c’est?

Megan Emery Gaffney is a cut above. She rises above such descriptives. She is a lady and an artist. Sui generis!

As funny as she is smart and as loyal as she is kind, Megan is a modern day Anne Shirley, a kindred spirit who is pluckily pursuing a life in the theatre (and a life well lived) with wit and verve.

oh anne!

I have had the pleasure of drinking the occasional glass of white wine with Ms. Gaffney over the years in Brooklyn and beyond. She’s never failed to impress me as a stage actor and I am honored to call her my friend.

megan emery gaffney!

Megan and I caught up about her latest project, Near Vicksburg, electronically (for I have been in Japan of late).  A Civil War play written by The Lady Farrington, Near Vicksburg bows at the Incubator Arts Project through March 16.

tell me about the herstory of your involvement with near vicksburg?
I was there from the beginning for this one, which has been incredible. We were nearing the end of the rehearsal process for Sara’s production of Requiem for Black Marie last spring when Sara began panicking, as she, and I (and I suspect many artists) do when one project is ending and the next has yet to manifest. However, when I panic and think “no one will ever want me to be in a play again!” it makes me want to lie on the couch with a glass of red wine and Cheetos and watch reruns of Friends. Sara’s panic, luckily, is this amazing motivating and artistically inspiring force so she declared, “I’m gonna write a Civil War play!”

my, my.
With some people you might think, okay, sure, sounds good, can’t wait to read it in a couple years, but Sara finished a draft by July.

Sara, and her husband Reid, and my husband Frank, and I sat around and read the first draft on a mini vacation in Pennsylvania and I was already in love. Sara is always eager for feedback, and we are an opinionated lot, so we gave her tons, and then she goes away and comes back with a whole new draft, I think a day later. She had a working final-ish draft by August, we held auditions in September (which I sat in on—an incredible opportunity to see things from the other side of the table), and started rehearsing in October.  She felt strongly that she wanted to direct this one, and I think she’s done a beautiful job. We did a workshop run in November at Sara’s loft at Foxy Films, and then transferred the workshop to WalkerSpace in December. When we parted ways at the end of 2013, we all hoped the play would go on. Sara called in January and said, “we’re premiering at Incubator in March!” —and here we are.

 what are the particular challenges to this role?
I recognized Jane as soon as I read her, so I didn’t ever struggle with her why’s—her motives, as complex as they are, felt intuitive to me. Sara’s characters are always so very complicated and human. She writes her characters from this place of deep love and honesty but they are not always easy people to like and I struggled a lot with that. I kept wondering, does the audience need to like Jane? I love her, I get her, but some of her behavior, though in my eyes understandable and justifiable and human, is hard to swallow.

It’s actually only recently that I have come to terms with this struggle, and it was reading something Phillip Seymour Hoffman said about owing it to our characters to show all of their ugliness and all of their beauty, not focusing on making sure that the audience likes or relates to them, but trusting that by revealing that three dimensional ugly-beauty and not shying away from it, the audience will connect to the characters as human. I love that. And it liberated me and Jane.

i saw an early workshop and you have a marvelous southern accent, where does it come from?
Sara was very nervous about the accents because she was concerned about Near Vicksburg turning into a play about actors talking in a Southern accent. She is so committed to her story being as unobstructed as it can be, that she fights for the craft and the design to be as hidden and seamless as possible. Now, Kippy, I’m an actor. I loooove a good accent.

moi aussi! and i love to do Aussie accents aussi!
I love to go to Idea Dialects Archives, I will get out my IPA and mark up my script, I will watch dozens of movies from the era and time. But I had to tread lightly because anytime the accent started to feel in the way Sara was like, “forget it! No accent!” And I was like, “I have to do an accent! We’re in Mississippi! This is how they talk!” So then I would pull back, and pepper it in so she wouldn’t notice. I admire and respect her ideas on this so much. She is very anti-museum pieces. For her, I think theater is about how we are all human and alike, not how different Civil War era people from Mississippi are with their strange accents and antiquated behavior. Her work always has a surprisingly contemporary feel, although it is often set in an earlier time. But I mean, Kippy, as I said, I looove a good accent and I’m not above some trickery to get it in…

brava! the results are splendid. this marks your third (?) lady farrington play .. what characterizes her plays + what keeps you coming back for more?
I hate to gush.

go on!
It’s quite simple: I love Sara’s work. She makes plays that I want to see and be in and think about. Her work is both inherently theatrical and breathtakingly simple. She writes about complicated, conflicted women at a time (forever?) when there is a dearth of roles like that out there. Plus, she’s a true believer. She is an evangelist for the theater and being around that energy is so inspiring and fortifying. The other truly impressive thing about Sara is she is a serious risk taker. She HAS to make theater so she does what people tell her not to — don’t go into debt to make a play, don’t self-produce, don’t put up plays in your loft, you can’t write and self-produce 2 plays the first year of your son’s life, don’t do a play with 9 characters. She does it all. I aspire to that kind of bravery and fuck-it-ness.

there is a great deal to be said of that. also your character has to get naked (or at least it was so in the workshop) .. how on earth do you navigate that? so brave!
This is the second time I have done full nudity, so it’s getting more familiar. (Both times in Sara’s plays!) I think I am strangely immodest so that helps. I was always the kid who just stripped down naked in front of all her friends and then, when they went into the bathroom stall to change, was like, “oh maybe that was weird of me?”

But, I’m still human so it’s still scary. When I did it last time in Requiem, I felt so very different from the character I was playing, Margarete, that I really felt like it wasn’t my body. She was younger and flightier and just so different from me that I felt like Margarete got naked, but not Megan. This time is different because Jane is my age and I feel more similar to her so there’s a vulnerability there.

The silly answer is I am scared that people will think my pubic hair is weird. Do I have too much? Too little? Is it weird that it’s reddish? These are the thoughts that I fight during my bad performances.

But the honest answer is that it is sooooo liberating. It’s a great acting challenge because I can’t let a hint of discomfort show or the effect is ruined. I never want people thinking, ‘oh that actress is uncomfortable, I feel embarrassed for her’, so I have to sink in to this level of focus and presence in the moment that feels so good.

what are your secret actor influences + tricks?
Forgive the moment and move on.

sounds cryptic, i like it! do you have a pre-show ritual?
Exact same physical and vocal warm up in the same order before every performance for the last ten years, with some post grad school additions, and a couple show specific elements. I aspire to eat fresh raspberries before every show.

a healthy treat

Fruit is nature’s candy. Bon appetite!

a bientot,
kippy

if you can get to buffalo (wing dings)

mes amis—

I’ll save my very belated 2014 apologies and winter festival musings for another post. For time is of the essence. Trish Harnetiaux’s If You Can Get to Buffalo: An exploration of ‘A Rape in Cyberspace’ by Julian Dibbell is due to open at the Incubator Arts Project on Thursday.

I met Trish years ago when she was living above Tina Satter in a cute Williamsburgish loft owned by an older Italian gentleman. Still remember the aromas of that mahogonay hallway and the lace on the front door. Trish’s warmth matches her wit and it was with great pleasure that I found out more about her latest progetto…via the interwebs of course! Ours was an emailed interview. 

initiate, for our readers, just what the “rape in cyber space” story is about
“A Rape in Cyberspace” is an article that Julian Dibbell wrote in the Village Voice in 1993, about one of the very first online communities called LambdaMoo.  It was a virtual mansion where members created characters, entirely through text, and created a community that interacted socially online.

my, my! I recall the chat rooms of my youth .. a snowy saturday, a young man from kentucky, and my mother’s expression concern as my father made me a grilled cheese.
well then, tell me more about how you adapted/riffed on dibbell’s oevre.
I was doing research into the beginnings of the Internet, was really interested in the origins of online social interactions and found Julian Dibbell’s article from a 1993 Village Voice article called “A Rape in Cyberspace.” It was not only a fascinating story of the demise of one of the very first online ‘utopia’s’ but the article was written in this amazing voice that somehow captured the spirit of this new world—both the freedom and the dangers of it. Then, poking around Julian’s personal site (… total stalker)

…aren’t we all!
I stumbled upon a subsequent Charlie Rose Show episode that he was on.

charlie rose and i used to play tennis you know. carry on.
Again, in 1993 people, of course, didn’t have the vocabulary we do now (except for people like Julian) when talking about how things worked on the internet. It was amazing. So I took the idea of a Charlie Rose show being part of the structure of this play (there are actually fictionalized Charlie Rose scenes) and mashed it all together also including a look inside the odd, beautiful and occasionally disturbing relationships we find online. It’s been 20 years since the article has come out and as a society we’re in a much different place, we like to think that we “know” how the internet story ends, but what’s been so interesting is seeing how confusing the anonymity aspect still is.

fascinating!
I mean, we still argue over the question of whether we are responsible for our own online experiences… Interestingly enough, the episode of Charlie Rose that I reference has since been completely erased from the web.

i smell a conspiracy theory.
Then, director Eric Nightengale and I began the real work over the last four years of drafts, readings, workshops, long hiatuses and basically trying to find a way to tell this complicated story theatrically. Which I really believe we’ve accomplished with If You Can Get To Buffalo. It’s funny though, it’s probably not the play I thought I was writing back at the beginning, the process has been as much about elimination as it has been about crafting.

aye, the mark of a true artist is knowing what to edit. allora, what were your first experiences like with the internet?
Well, early on, I remember trying to hack the White House website.

c’est vrais?!
I spent hours thinking I could find something, some evidence or something, that was hidden… But, of course, I didn’t find anything, probably because I’m not a hacker, and probably because what I was actually doing was just clicking on links. But I didn’t really know that. Besides some early chat room dabblings however, I haven’t ever committed myself to an online community, so researching this one has been eventful. I definitely consider myself in the generation that uses email as a huge tool and also aware enough to recognize it’s full of tonal dysfunctions, but that’s different. Or is it?  I mean, in a way when you’re using the Internet as a basis for communication, which is partially what we’re examining, I’ve found in my life that it’s easier to be bolder or more measured or it can easily go the other way and the immediacy of your actions can be more hasty and reactionary.

what has changed/developed since when you did it back in may?
The production we did with the Acme Corporation in Baltimore was instrumental in the show we have today. I’ve made a healthy amount of rewrites and Eric and I took everything we learned—both good and bad—and made major adjustments. Besides this, I think that us working with Rob Erickson on the mostly original music has been huge!

love me a lumberbob!
Not only in finding a new tone, but Rob’s helped us fill out the world of the play through a sound that’s so authentic to the time period. And, not to give anything away, but he’s also contributed some sly choreography.

stop! now i am on tenterhooks. well then. he’s not the only star in your cast, why there’s starr busby [wink!] and julia sirna-frest among others. what’s working with them been like?
I can’t say enough good things about our cast. I mean, did you know that Starr Busby is actually playing Charlie Rose?

busby in a rady & bloom production

shut up. this means that by the theatrical transitive property starr and i must play some tennis together!
And playing the role like an absolute badass.

i’d expect no less from such a starr.
And Rob, aside from all his other artistic contributions, is playing the role of Mr. Bungle—

i know a Mr. Burgle! Who is your Mr. Bungle?
Well, he’s our strangely poetic puppet master who… well, I can’t really ruin it, right?

ruin us!
Kippy, you temptress! All I can say is that we’re definitely tapping into Julia’s songstress superpowers.

s

…from sirna-frest’s myspace era

she of the magic pipes.
The rest of the cast—Demetri Bonaros, Greg Carere, Ifitaz Haroon, Minna Taylor & Alex Viola are a goddamn JOY. So much talent.

an embarrassment of riches. what is your secret artistic inspiration or guilty pleasure?
Secret… hmm. Oh god, I like to back myself into corners and then crawl out of them.

how did you survive winter festival and why should people see your show?
Man, so many great shows the last month—most of which I missed being in rehearsal. But I was so glad to have seen both Eliza Bent’s wizardly show and Tina Satter’s House of Dance before all the madness began!

aye, the house of dance was toe tapping fun.
People should see our show because it’s about them—since they all use the World Wide Web, and this is an origin story about other people, just like them, maybe even them, that did too. Only before, say, Twitter.

Well mes amis, you heard it here first. If You Can Get to Buffalo runs Feb 13-23 at the Incubator Arts Project. The cast is killer so shake your tail feather and buy a ticket. I will attend Sunday evening .. that is, if I am not paralyzed by the cold and winter travel travails!

Kippy

boob toob [artlog]

mes amis–

i first met mark sitko at ps 122 years ago. i was wearing my hair loose back then and he mistook me for a lively theatrical performer whose reputation preceded  her. au contraire! needless to say, i was intrigued by this straight white man–an anomaly amidst a morass of downtown weirdos and freak boxes.

but don’t be fooled.

mark–or sitko as he is known to intimates–is a freak box of high form. and a delightful one at that! his company, which he helms with the as-smart-as-she-is-beautiful erica rippy, is called van cougar.

vrooom!

the script from the group’s first theatrical foray rocky philly, earned sitko a spot in the highly prized playwriting section at brooklyn college where svengalis mac wellman and erin courtney instruct. i caught that play and considered it a beautiful bonsai tree. rambling tales about philadelphia were set to the physical scenes of rocky, which i’ve never seen. (al pacino and i are too close for me to judge his work. ) gonna see a movie called gunga din was a mediation on war (stories from real life vets were set to the moves of famous war movies, none of which i’ve ever seen) and now sitkocity takes on Youtube at the incubator arts project. clearly he has a problem with ambition!

i’ve been stuck in karachi but got in touch with erica and mark, who always signs his emails “love sitko” over the interwebs about their latest project. here’s what we discussed.

each more dreamy than the last in this photo!

tell me about the name van cougar… it is so genie.
Well, the simple answer is that it’s a riff on the name of a Canadian city.

mais bien sur!
Van Cougar began when two artists (Ned Buskirk, and Mark Sitko) from San Francisco, and New York traveled to Vancouver to visit a third artist (Erin Shea) that usually resides in LA. Erin was working on a horrible reality television show and we went to take advantage of the apartment her company had put her up in.  Over many glasses of wine, the group started sharing stories and recording them for posterity. After everyone returned to their lives, they started creating theater out of the stories: Van Cougar was born.

Van Cougar’s logo is riff on the name–an awesome cougar painted on the side of a van.

tell me about your writing process. i understand you assemble text from various interviews, c’est vrais?
We don’t like to call them “interviews” per se since they are conversations between multiple people. The idea is to get four to five people together, give them food and alcohol, and let them share stories about their lives.

knowing you, i’m sure some green herbs  are served in addition to libations! why stories?
When someone tells a story they express a great deal about themselves, as well as the people they are talking about.  It’s a beautiful thing, direct human connection. This is, in essence, what Van Cougar is trying to recreate through its theater. We record stories and ask our actors to retell them verbatim. The written text looks more like an epic poem than a play.

how it tube similar/different from your previous works rocky philly and gunga wunga... ?
Tube is very joyful.

the world needs more joy.
Rocky Philly is a love story, Gonna See a Movie Called Gunga Din is a drama, and Tube is a comedy. It’s also the first time we’ve used a lot of the original text from the visual source (YouTube videos). It features live music, which we haven’t had in our earlier plays AND it’s a choose-your-own-adventure play.  The audience will determine the order in which the YouTube videos will be performed.

good lord. i understand you use the term “cheadle it out” in rehearsals, elaborate!
“Cheadle it out” is a shout-out to the inimitable actor, Donald Cheadle. In Gunga Din we recreated a scene from the movie Hamburger Hill and asked the actor playing Cheadle to cheat out towards the audience. “Cheadle it out” was born and is still used today in our rehearsal room.

i recall the term-in-homage was already in use when i popped in to say hello at your very first read through of gunga, but perhaps my memory serves me incorrectly. (it wouldn’t be the first time!)
allora. my research indicates that are reinventing the theatrical form, what say you?
That is a lofty phrase–reinventing the theatrical form.

i aim for the stars!
I’d say that we are challenging the conventions of narrative as commonly practiced in theater. Van Cougar has little interest in plot, character development or prescriptive morality. Instead we focus on giving our performers enough direction to struggle in their performance, so they have no time to “pretend” their character is struggling through some emotional arc.

 gracious. i feel bad for actors who “pretend”..! poor fellows. so basta plot, eh?
An audience can follow a show with no plot as long as there is structure. We are interested in creating theatrical structures that offer just as much comfort and organization as a traditional narrative would. In the end everything humans do is based on ritual. As Mac Wellman would say, when you take everything away all that you are left with is ritual.  Plot falls away long before that, character even sooner–we do not believe that these are essential elements of live performance.

if only we were at cypress bar i might needle (and cheadle) you further on this point!
why youtube? if i don’t know the internet sensations will i be lost?
The most popular YouTube videos are simple and unpremeditated. Someone can post a video of themselves sitting on the toilet or falling off a table, or a video of their dog or cat and have the potential for millions of people to watch it. Amazing! With almost no investment, these videos can become pop culture sensations.

aye. shit floats.
We’re interested in exploring this entertainment medium since it is so unlike what we’ve looked at before: film. And, the size of the audience poses another paradox for art-makers: why is it that theater takes so much time and resources yet only a few hundred people will experience it, while someone can post a simple video and reach millions of people?

If you don’t know the videos, you won’t be lost because the action and text will speak for themselves. Everyone should be be able to follow along and enjoy the experience.  Hopefully our performance will inspire you to go check out any of the videos you don’t immediately recognize.

any other lingering thoughts???
The play has a “choose-your-own-adventure” format. This means that the actors will give audience members a selection of videos to choose from. Each show will be slightly different; you could see a show and see it again and see videos you didn’t see on the first night. So, come see the show twice or three times! You’ll get a different piece of the algorithm each time.

the regional theaters would note your business acumen, my friend.
Thank you so much for taking an interest in us–we love your work as well.

Tube, directed by Mark Sitko, opens tonight, Nov. 27 at the Incubator Arts Project.
 All star actors include:  Samuel Traylor, Martin Brown, Derek Loehr, Sam Soghor and Lucy Kaminsky with design by such genies as Ásta Hostetter, Alaina Ferris and Paul Ketchum.

love,
kippy

 

other elegant people of the theatre: boudreaux edition (artlog #10)

mes amis—

What is there to say about playwright and person-of-the-theatre Frank Boudreaux? Too much I’ll have you know! Tales of his talents preceded my meeting of him back in ’10. His great warmth of spirit and hearty pats on the back were naturally met with a good measure of North Eastern suspicion on my part. (“Is this guy for real?” I wondered. I shuddered to think of his plays.)

But it seems Boudreaux and I have not only some shared heritage—his is of the Cajun variety mine is of a more French Canadian persuasion—but also a shared fervor for the theatrical arts, philosophizing, and cold beverages. Those back slaps are for real and most genuine…! Frank-o’s passion and zest for all things theatrical (I recall popping into some Brooklyn College workshops and seeing him ardently argue on behalf of a play’s merits while other classmates may have rolled an eyeball or two) are indeed something to behold. Never a cheerleader, always a thoughtful considerer of work: “We’ll talk about it more at the bar,” Frank-o would say with a casual wave of his hand. It was with great plaisir that I discovered Boudreaux’s own playwriting as an amalgamation of his as a person: joyous, rigorous and provoking in the deepest of contemplations. I’d expect nothing less from a fellow philosophe!

I warned you: there is simply much too much to say! Frank-o was kind enough to take some time out of his busy pre-production work cycle for Everything that Is the Case for Two Young Women on the Eve of the Great War Among Other Elegant Lies, which premiers at the very fine Incubator Arts Project Sept. 6-16, to have a quick chat with old Kippy. Here’s what we discussed over the Internet transom.

gaffney and corbett in “other elegant lies…” photo by: Zack Rubenstein

—

Allora, Frank. Let us commencer.
Warning: Something about you brings out the twee in me, I do say, Kippy.

Very well. What sparked the idea for this play?
What better way to write about two dead philosophers than through two historical teenage girls?

Touché. The title is extremely long: Did someone put you up to this? Have you been using a nick name or acronym?
Alas, I need no provocation to be loquacious.

I have observed this in classrooms and in bars!
The title is mine. But my producers call it …Other Elegant Lies, for short (ellipses included).

How does this play fall into your other work? Same? Different? Contextualize us.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I feel my style always suits the form. And I’ll admit to a bit of fretting that this play is SO technically complex, and SO heady, audience members may think it’s all I can do… or what I want to do. But I have other plays that are either simpler or slower or more gut than head.

Aye, your play, Lowen and Joe, which had a reading at the Bushwick Starr in fall 2011, seems to me more of this variety. Though perhaps still with subversive intellectual tones.
Yes, I would say Other Elegant Lies… achieves a theatrical energy, and the production will be a live event of a level, that I would like to think of as characteristic of my work… even if past and future productions of mine could look and sound quite different. Also, I will not always direct my own work. This is a bit of a “vision” play …realized by an AMAZING design team, by the way.

A “vision” play! I love this term…Also, your use of “live theatrical event” also reminds me a bit of Rob Berry and the ethos around the Austin Fusebox Festival. At any rate, I understand you are working en famille… mais c’est vrais?!
C’est vrais, c’est vrais. But Megan Emery Gaffney and I are very careful to put on our professional hats while in the room. Just ask her co-star, Winslow Corbett. Not one moment of personal discomfort, I hope! Mon frere is also involved, John Henry Boudreaux. We try not to curse at each other too much in front of everyone else.

You have a talented and attractive family, Frank. Dimmi: what is better: your Italian, French or Cajun?
Italiano, certo. No explanation for it. Just chose Firenze to study abroad. Cajun and French heritage, but don’t speak the languages. Pathetic.

Pas de toot! There’s time yet. So, what artist/piece of art is a secret influence?
Ooo, devilish question, Kippy. Secrets, secrets. Umm, David Byrne, the pop musician and prominent weirdo. Paul Thomas Anderson, the filmmaker. Caryl Churchill is easily my favorite playwright, but that’s no secret. And Donald Barthelme is my secret author hero.

I didn’t know this about Churchill. Tres interessant. I see you are taking a note from the regions and holding two talk backs, tell me about those.
Not ‘talk-backs’. Panels.

Noted!
No one wants to hear me talk about my work–

I would disagree!–
And I wouldn’t ask such esteemed artists to talk about it either. (these include Jeff Jones and Sibyl Kempson on Sept. 9 moderated by Eliza Bent and Maria Striar and Erin Courtney moderated by Rachel Chavkin on Sept. 11). The panels will relate to the themes/world of my play, I guess, but not ABOUT the play at all. Or me. I’m interested in the theater being an evening—an entire event; giving you all kinds of perspectives and unexpected live encounters that have never happened before and will never happen again. These panels are part of that design.

You are a holistic thinker my friend. Kudos.
We also have a pre-show, improvised every night by Saint Fortune theatre company.

Ooh I love those young Saintly Fortunates! Each is more cute and lively than the last. Any thing else…?
I’ll see your two tails and raise you a tuckus! Pleasure to chat.

The plaisir is all mine. I hope we can dance in the Cajun style in Omaha and other exotic land with your lovely famille soon. A bientot, my friend.

Kippy

Everything that Is the Case for Two Young Women on the Eve of the Great War Among Other Elegant Lies premiers at the very fine Incubator Arts Project Sept. 6-16.

you in japan / we all look like jerks (artlog #9)

amici miei–

the summer runs out but artistic happenings are afoot all over the place! there’s never a moment to bucharest … ! i heard recently that my pal you nakai (see beaucoup des choses artlog #3) will be premiering with no collective concertos no.4 at the national museum of modern art in tokyo on the evening of august 29. according to an email “it will be music for the blind, the blinded, plus a number of personalized audiences.” and it is gratis. mama mia!

my japanese is rusty but make of this what you will http://www.momat.go.jp/Honkan/14_evenings/index.html

don’t strain your brain!

speaking of adventurous programming… i hope everyone has seen this doozy of a trailer. it is a whopping 17 minutes and 58 seconds! ok, ok. i suppose the abundant programming of this year’s incubator arts project season justifies the loquacious length and such candid whoppers as “we all look like jerks.” a truer statement as never been uttered (!).  what bold and adventurous programming, bravi to the curators! i must admit, i greatly enjoyed the casual and self conscious (and perhaps at times a tad boastful!) ponderings of these cute artists.

inhale/exhale

i hope to see each and every show! i await with particular baited breath both gas, that old brechtian double doozy and the frank boudreaux penned very-long-title-of-intrigue-and-importance (ie, everything that is the case for two young women on the eve of the great war among other elegant lies…ahem…you couldn’t make this stuff up!)

oh and to be entirely clear: i use “doozy” and “whopper” in their most positive and happy mealesque iterations, associations and connotations. let us reclaim la langue anglaise, mes amis!

ciao for now,
kippy

a FEAST for sore theatrical eyes (artlog #5)

My friends and fellow world citizens—

I first met Andrew Ondrejcak in a ratty college classroom while swapping stories about recent real life theatrical moments. Most people in the room (tutti studenti, I should say) traded tales with juicy bits of dialogue they’d overheard while waiting in line at the grocer or shuttling into the subway.

All fine stories but Andrew’s tale marched to a different colour. With a flip of his flaxen hair, and an imperceptible eye roll, Ondrejcak described a far flung road trip with friends and how, circling through the cliffs of—California? or was it Cardiff??—he listened to French hip hop while watching borgonvilla flap furiously in the wind. “You know, just really hot pink,” Andrew said in his distinctive matter- of-fact clipped manner. I do believe he was the only person in the room to mention a color in his story. And what a color it was.

bougainvillea grows in tunis, not in brooklyn

It was therefore unsurprising that when I sped off some questions about his upcoming project FEAST at Incubator Arts Project (July 13-21) he responded in signature style.

—

I understand FEAST is a retelling of the ancient story of “The Writing on the Wall” … Can you re-familiarize us with that tale? What about it inspired you to put pen to paper? 
I wanted to make a really high-concept play about language and philosophy and history and death and love and hate and then I told Mac Wellman the idea and he was like, “Well why don’t you write a domestic drama at a dinner table instead.”  And so I remembered this old story about a feast with some concubines and I thought that it could be fun to have a stage full of concubines. In the bible, in the book of Daniel, there is a story about a feast held by king Belshazzar and this king took some sacred cups from the temple and that pissed off God, so God brought down his wrath. The tale has been retold and illustrated by artists (most famously by Rembrandt and Handel) yet my version has one foot in the circumstance of the story and the other foot in a very contemporary view of it. 

Oh  my. I still want you to write a domestic drama at a dinner table. But enough about me. Are there other Old Testament tales you’ve adapted or is this your first? 
This is my first and, perhaps, last.

Sacre  bleu! Tell us about your all star cast, what has the rehearsal process been like? 
Our rehearsal process was brief, but 4 of the 5 primary characters have been in a number of my plays so we have a very good understanding of how I work; they were able to cut to the chance and not complain too much and not ask too many questions and that made it all pretty great for me.  

I love to cut to the chance when I can. The Incubator website says your show “focuses on the formal qualities of words and punctuation” … will non-grammarians be lost? I’m already Confucious! 
I like punctuation and I also like when actors do something interesting and unexpected with punctuation. I prefer to give punctuation as a problem to solve rather than some sort of emotional or psychological motivation. In typing this, I realize that I do not know how to spell psychological. 

My governess used a method of inventive spelling with me…You were saying?
Language is dissected into monosyllabic words and then put back together into complex phrases and run-on sentences. And there are a lot of guttural sounds people make when they are eating which I remember from sitting at the dinner table with my father and his father before him. 

The set is done by Leong Leong architecture, what’s that about? 
I am a production designer for the fashion industry and I have a strong emphasis on stage images which can often override my text. In order to force myself to focus on text rather than image, I invited some architect friends to make the stage design.

What are your secret guilty pleasure influences? 
Spreadsheets and other ways of organizing information.

That oddly makes sense to me. So will your fans Robert Wilson and Marina Abramama be in attendance? What other VIPs can we expect to spy at performances? 
My mother will be there and everyone seems to like her a lot.  

Mothers are always the best audience. At least mine sure is. Since you are a man of the continent I will wish you merde as opposed to a broken leg.
Thanks Kippy.

 

yum

FEAST runs at the Incubator Arts Project July 13–21.

with performances by Okwui Okpokwasili, Yuki Kawahisa, Cara Francis, Jenn Dees, Peter Cullen & Jason Robert Winfield

Written and Directed by Andrew Ondrejcak
Stage Design by LEONG LEONG Architecture
Lights by Scott Bolman
Costumes by Adam Selman

beaucoup des choses! (artlog #3)

my friends and fellow world citizens—

il y a beaucoup .. but really beaucoup to cover in this posting! too much garret apartment hunting has made this kippy into a lazy lass when it comes to le plume. allora, let us begin.

1. uncle vanya at soho rep

i took in chekhov’s uncle vanya, in a new translation by annie baker, directed by the halcyon (wink!) sam gold, at soho rep early last week. what a production. while i was wearing a rather tarty get up, it was a great relief to discover i had my tunisian scarf/blanket/towel in my midst. what a useful tool such a swath of cloth can be. since the production is an intimate affair, i was interested in flashing neither actors nor audience members! i swaddled myself, leaned back and took in the story. and what a tale it is!

chekhov sure knew how to write ‘em. and. ms baker seems like a perfect companion to this tragician and comic-ician’s work. the close-up staging, despite one audience member’s lack of yoga practice and a sleeping foot, worked quite perfectly, especially given the fine actors who played upon the off white carpet..

that michael shannon…hubba hubbah! he could be my doctor any day. is he married? not to mention that makes-me-dizzy maria dizzia. what a star. ooh and sonya—poor sonya!—played with an understated gentle purity by the fine merritt weaver. i wonder if the character/actress is a cancer on the zodiac? for she had the fine and tender devotion of one. the other players were all quite remarkable as well. paul thureen and matt maher what verve. those songs! that reed birney could rock himself into oblivion on a ratty arm chair any day and i’d be all the luckier to watch. hmph!

dr. i need a physical!

another etoille of the evening, pour moi, was of course the inimitable mr. hilton als. if the new yorker is my lodestar, then hilton is my pilot. he presented an essay on chekhov in the over-heated theatre post-show and a rapt audience sat cross-legged and on the edge of risers listening to him opine, recall and synthesize ideas. the unlikely personal tale of racist ruffians on a train twirled back to chekhov’s dispassionate eye for observation in a most unusual and potent manner. and the final image hilton described of people walking about a train station in the midst of his own quotidian tragedy will stay with me for some time yet. i cannot wait to read mr. als’s review of the baked gold vanya. let’s have a latte soon, hilt!

est ce que tu prends un cafe avec moi?

2. ntusa’s the golden veil at the kitchen

a whippersnapper i’m in cahoots with already conducted an interview with the playwright, normandy raven sherwood, here so i will offer only what it was that i saw. another day of house hunting had left this kippy depleted, so it was with some rejuvenating zest and vigor when i ran into friends outside of the kitchen.

this west side venue is one of my faves. though it is always more of schlep to get to than it should be (damned 10th ave!) the space is indeed quite nice and some of the coolness of the meatpacking and highline districts (impossibly) rubs off on the theatre.

plus, i love the press tickets they give me.

the hip folk with asymmetrical haircuts were gathered outside on the breezy almost-summer evening. catching up, sizing up and posturing abounded. a new york scene to behold, love and loathe all at once! making my way into the theatre, i was struck by the swirling fog smoke and decorous—not to mention decorative!—curtains that hung in late 1800s style. “i love it already,” i stage whispered to a companion.

i cannot tell much of the tale beyond that it was about a young shepherdess and her lover—played with hilarious lank by ean sheehy. maggie robinson took turns as a narrate-ress, reading with olde english abandon from a book and even taking a turn conducting a silent fruit puppet theatre play. this was a story told from many points of view and my point of view was that it was a fine spectacle of a most original nature calling into examination the “simple” past with tongues firmly in cheek. stupid—but genie—staging gags abounded. my favorite included tree branches held by actors which part for one character and then suddenly impede another (the long drink of water sheehy). this antic had me slapping my knee! the final stage picture with ribbons was arresting. the music, done by jesse hawley, was quite something as well—simple eerie harmonies and melodies floated in the air and—like the fog—entranced those who bore witness.

i will say i was a bit disappointed the musicians were not in costume. the stage hands, one of whom bore a striking resemblance to ms. sherwood—wink!—,were dressed in fitting edward gorey attire and garb, so why not les musiciennes?? a tiny detail to be sorted  when this piece bows again on what i’m sure will be the international touring circuit. 2014 zagreb!

croatia’s capital

3. something by you nakai and no collective

my friends, have you ever received an email from “you?” it is a most confucius-inducing  thing to see in one’s inbox. “did I send myself something?” you wonder. then you remember: “you isn’t me, or you, but a person named ‘you!’” (who’s on first??)

anyhoo (and who) .. ((not to mention how now brown cow…!)) .. my amante had convinced me to attend a showing of no collective and participate with him as some kind of volunteer. there were a number of emails sent with directions about how to greet the audience. naturellement, i didn’t read any of these. this kippy is too busy attending an office mondays through fridays and keeping up with personal correspondences to be bothered with such details!

i arrived at the incubator arts project—that building which boasts the most specific of smells—with my chicken enchiladas from san loco. mmm i’m loco for san loco. you (the person, not you the reader, mind you!) was holding court with a number of female volunteers. my man was no where to be seen. “you will have a conversation with the audience on a telephone and relay the information to your friends,” you told everyone. “you have to guess what is going on inside the theatre but at no point are you to improvise. please, don’t try to be funny.” i knew this direction would be most difficile for my beloved, who has been known to hijack performances—not to mention seders—on occasion!

you intoned at length going over a myriad of rules and regulations about how the performance would proceed. i was confucious to the extreme and salivated over my enchiladas. finally i could concentrate no more, plopped myself on a bench wielding fork and knife and dug in.

the resulting performance was a most strange one, wherein audience members were led into the theatre and seated by the “volunteers,” of which i was one. we folded up all the empty chairs and tucked them away. then, the volunteers exited the theatre and made phone calls to two of the audience members. (were these audiences plants? one cannot know.) we asked them a series of questions to find out what was happening inside, what kind of music was being played, etc.) then we entered, silenced the noise making instruments and switch boards and bowed. when some audience members left the volunteers replaced them, and more phone calls ensued. all the while two young boys (9-year-olds dressed as techies) marched around the theatre sushshing and hushing anyone on a phone or futzing with an instrument/switch board. the result created a kind of zany concept performance which devolved into an increasingly pointless anarchic event. perhaps it would have been more fun had i felt in on the joke or had a wall of fatigue not struck me down.

my main food group

4. what i wish i’d seen: pig pile and will eno’s title and deed

in my salad days of high school my amici and i would sojourn in cape cod. on these revelrous—and highly tame, not to mention nerdy—excursions we’d call out “pig pile!” and topple atop one of our unsuspecting friends. it was always a glorious belly laugh of a time that produced strong feelings of kinship and camaraderie. another pig pile is afoot of late, helmed by ms. sibyl kempson. i’ve had the good fortune of tooting about with ms. kempson and she is a playwright (and performer) to behold. the pig pile brings together such fine austin talents as jenny larson, rubber repertory folk and composer graham reynolds. had I not been ‘neath a golden veil, i’d have surely scooted north to new dramatists to catch the latest iteration in which I am told todd london himself performed! i look forward to catching pig pile’s full iteration at austin’s fusebox festival in the years to come.

also i am very sad i missed will eno’s title and deed. sigh, harrumph and quel dommage. with any luck, will and i will play tennis soon enough and over some small ball or a good old fashioned rally, he’ll tell me how it went.

only the best playwrights play tennis

c’est tout..ciao for now..!
kippy

ps go see space/space while you can.

love me some winter

mes amis–

i am not one for “favourite” seasons (note my spelling anglais!) … but i do love me some winter. while the holiday season is over—thank heavens!—i am most pleased to return to this darkest of seasons… the days are getting brighter. just a glimmer longer. i didn’t have to turn on a lamp until 5:15pm hier soir!

indeed, i was pleased as punch last night (and this morning too) to be scurrying along to various activities (play viewing, the office i attend mondays through fridays), breathing in the clean and crisp wintery air under a toasty woolen jacket (an heirloom … not a hair loom, mind you!)

trachten aus österreich von macintosh!

… ah was brisk pleasantness… and pleasant briskness!

not to mention  savoury winter wonders! does risotto al funghi have the same appeal on a sweltering summer’s day? and what about the root vegetables? hmm? i had a heavenly parsnip soup in cambridge earlier this month at hungry mother. what a creamy confection it was! most palatable indeed. ooh and the roasted brussel spouts (a recent favourite!) and butternut squash (always a classic in my book). my mouth waters as i type these most vainglorious of vittles!

do yourself a favor and add some parmigiano reggiano to yours!

allora, that’s all for now. you should catch mickey and sage when it bows again at the incubator arts project this coming fall. as well as a certain gunga wunga i’ve been hearing much talk of. the bushwick starr should rename itself the bushwick lodestarr, a mon avis.

and that’s all for now!
kippy

ps. tonight a playwrights meeting of high historic proportions will take place and i am most excited!