And We Shall March

365/365 Week Eight

Week Eight of 365 Plays/365 Days was hosted by the Watts Village Theater Co. in three locations -- the Studio Space downtown, the Ford over in Hollywood, and the Watts Towers. This was not, as I initially thought when I looked at the schedule, because they thought certain people would be afraid to come to Watts after the sun goes down, but because this is one of the floating companies. They don't have a home base for performances so they throw down wherever they can. The Ford is pretty at night, the towers are pretty during the day, so show times were set to take best advantage of each venue's strengths. Because they used the outdoor spaces, this meant that on one night the cast performed when it was freezing and raining, while on another night they performed when it was freezing and wind-storming.

I went to the show at the towers because it had been a couple of years since I'd last zipped down there to marvel those lovely art things made by a crazy person. Happily, it was sunny and warm, which I wasn't expecting, so I'm standing there in three layers of sweatshirts. This week's plays were:

1. Here We Go (Jan 1)
2. We Are Fresh Out of Canned Laughter, Get Some Off the Television (Jan 2)
3. 2 Marys (Jan 3)
4. The News is Here (Jan 4)
5. The Star of India (Jan 5)
6. The Birth of Tragedy (Jan 6)
7. Call Girl (Jan 7)

What's interesting about the play sets is they are often a mix of hilarity and profoundly disturbing. (I managed to find people who saw some of the weeks I missed...combining their descriptions with my thoughts on the ones I did catch earlier I am confident with making this blanket statement.) Some of them are in a sense full plays, just very short. Others are closer to vignettes, dropping in to glimpse an emotional moment and then out again. Every once in a while there's one I term a Conceptual Moment, meaning  you have no idea what just happened, really, but are pleased to have experienced it. There are a few Conceptual Moments where you know exactly what happened, but when you describe it later you realize you can only do so poorly. The result is people staring at you, blinking and then changing the subject. So far my favorite 'understandable' CM is "The Window of Opportunity," which was one of the opening night plays. Unfortunately, I lost my notebook for week five and I didn't take notes at all for week one due to spazzing, so I can't say more about the CMs we've seen so far. Perhaps that's for the best.

To me, most of week eight was comprised of full plays (2-5, 7). The CMs were 1 &6.

Funniest! 3,5,7.

3: Two women, one chattier than the other in a pushy friendly sense, sitting out on the patio taking in the nice day. As one blabs on, ignoring the disinterest of the other, the unseen husband of the blabber rains down verbal abuse. The non-blabber reacts with increasing alarm to the abuse until the blabber steps back inside to deal with her husband. We don't see it, but we hear him beg and plead for mercy. When the blabber returns, revealing her nickname to be 'Bloody Mary,' the women realize they have a lot in common and begin a friendship.

5. Think of the variety shows they used to do on vaudeville or The Gong Show. The barker/emcee gives us a delightful rundown of the unseen act involving a family of sword swallowers that just left the stage, and sets up the next act. But there's been a misprint in the program. Instead of "The Star of India," a contortionist, the next performer is  "The Star of Indiana," a top regional salesman. The barker rolls with it, finding a way to turn the salesman into an act, and the salesman steps up to the challenge, mainly by being himself. Both of those guys were hilarious. This was my second fave of the set.

7. This one actually borders on a CM. Two bachelors with a playboy vibe at home get a visit from a call girl. The call girl is never seen...she's outside by a streetlight and it seemed as if *she* were calling *them* to come service her. I have no idea why the phone was represented by a woman standing in their house holding a pink phone, but I like the way she did the different rings.

Most disturbing! That would be 2, and it was brilliant. What she did was take one scenario and repeat it from a different emotional view. The exact same dialog was used for both versions, but the meaning completely changed due to the approach the actors used for each. For the first take, a man and child are watching a sitcom on television, and it is clear that the man has been sexually abusing the child. They are interrupted when the wife comes home from work, where she has had a bad day. She has a low self-esteem vibe and just wants comfort and a bit of nookie from her man, but he treats her with callous indifference, hurting her feelings. They sit and watch the sitcom, he uncomfortable, she oblivious. The end. For the second take, the child is an aggressive Lolita whose innuendos the man pointedly ignores, when he's not fending her off physically. When the wife shows up, she is a ball busting, judgmental bitch who makes it clear she thinks he is a waste of flesh. They sit and watch the sitcom, both unhappy. The end. This one was most excellent, and my fave of the set.

Second place most disturbing! 4. This one also had a science fiction vibe. A black couple are at home watching the riot going on outside. The guy rushes outside and rescues a baby, who is white, and the couple spend a lot of time rejoicing at their luck and how much money they're going to make for their act of heroism, though it's unclear if they planned to sell *the baby* or sell *their story*. But soon they realize something's wrong with the kid. He's white, but not quite human, making him worthless. The guy throws the baby out of the window, where it hits the ground, stands up and runs off, confirming their suspicions. They go back to watching the riot, realizing they didn't want all that money and the lifestyle it would bring, anyway.

Now, with this one I know I'm missing something. The name they called the baby when they realized it wasn't fully human is a word I *think* I've heard associated with Satanism and/or with European deathmetal bands. But I didn't *quite* catch the word, I don't have time to hunt around an approximation of it trying to find its meaning, I didn't want to go over to Lori-Parks after the show was over to ask her since I was busy going over to Lori-Parks to take a picture of her, and my prime go-to genius who would figure it out in a second is dead. So I think there was a substrata to #4 that has gone over my head.

I'm not saying anything about 1 & 7 because they were seriously CM.

Week Nine of 365/365 will be held at the Boston Court in Pasadena.

I was joined by Didi Who Needs A Codename, who lives in a provincial area without adequate 365 participation, which means he had to drive for hours to catch any of the shows. It also meant that afterward we had to go hunt down a baseball place in Compton because Didi is a baseball freak.  I'm like, baseball? Compton? What?! I thought we were gonna get food! Exposing me to sports is a bait and switch!! But as this is long enough already, I'll put that adventure in a later post.

It's The Christkwanzsolstikkah Fest!

Usually when I sent out the invites I used the lyrics for Come On Up To The House. This year, to celebrate my rudimentary Photoshop skills, I made a jpeg from scratch with layers and gradients and a picture and HPL's handwriting and everything! It is so pretty, and so purple.

The very first person to respond pointed out that it's also 50 million megabytes.

Oops. No wonder it was taking so long to go out. I had figured it was just my dial-up. He talked me through how to scale it down. He also told me he could tell I did not 'commit my type to layers', whatever the hell that means.  Who cares? It worked!

The second person to respond was the first in a long string to ACTUALLY COPY EDIT my invitation, OPPRESSING me with their European standards of SPELLING. Ingrates.

With hope, everyone will be happy that the background music will comprise more than NIN, Metallica, AC/DC, Tori, various showtunes, Morrisey, the Beatles, Black Flag, Alanis, the Dead Kennedys and the Cure. This is because the third or fourth year, when people started showing up with their own CDs and taking over the stereo, I clued in. I keep forgetting that I don't really have taste in music.

My invites always have rules. This year's new rule is: "When I start going on and on about the Transformers movie, you're NOT allowed to tell me to shut up."

Meanwhile, there was no report on last week's 365 because it rained. Man, do I suck.

365 Weeks 2&3

So, the reason there was no report on the second week of 365 is because the night I went neither of us could find the theater. We converged on hipster central from two different parts of town, drove around forever "triangulating" on our cells,  drove past each other TWICE on both Sunset and La Brea, and still couldn't find it. When my car just up and stopped moving in the middle of an intersection, resulting in me being set upon by a bag lady screaming in Russian and throwing what I think was a garment district sock (weirdly clean) at me, I decided that was a sign from the universe to just go home. We got sushi first, but that barely took the edge off of my level of Upset. (When sushi does not soothe, that's an indicator of just how pissed off I am.) This was made a bit more annoying by the face that he was in the shiny, pretty Mini again...and GLOATING.

The reason there's no report on the third week of 365 is because once again the car didn't feel like going anywhere.  I'm extremely bummed about missing this week as one of the plays is called 'Abraham Lincoln at 89'.

Okay, I'm not doing a good job so far of covering the 365 plays. What's frustrating is I have no idea if any of these will be mounted again in the future. Every time I miss a week I  miss seven plays I may never have a chance to see again. Someone will probably publish the whole lot down the road and I can read them, but it's not the same.

Though the universe has been poking me with pointy sticks of late, it is NOT the boss of me! I shake my fist at it!! If I have to take six buses to be where I'm supposed to be tonight, I'll do it. If I have to fucking WALK the ENTIRE length of the 110 to be where I'm supposed to be tonight, I WILL WALK. Actually, I'll have to run, or I'll be late. Here's hoping the Wizard of JOMAG can pull off his mojo in the morning.

On the upside, my Algerian Eyelets turned out very nicely, so that's something.

!!!! I MET SUZAN-LORI PARKS *AND* DON CHEADLE *AND* NOBODY CALLED SECURITY !!!!!

So, I have this scale I use when I meet someone whose work matters to me.  I call it the Eddie Campbell scale. 1, the lowest setting, means I met Much Admired Person X Who Is Probably In My Personal Creator Pantheon and managed to act like a normal person. 10, the highest setting, means I met Much Admired Person X Who Is Probably In My Personal Creator Pantheon and went spastic.

Tonight was a 10.

(At the end of this post I'm going to tell you practical things you need to know about the LA showings of 365/365. If you would prefer to get right to that, scroll down to the bit that starts in red.)

Opening show as held at the Center Theater Group plaza. It's the pretty courtyard with the fountain linking the Chandler, the Taper and the Ahmanson. Depending on funds, I'm usually there once a month taking in a play and I was really curious as to how they were going to do an outdoor series of plays in this space. I got there early, found out from one of the worker bees where the whole thing would start (in front of the stairs facing Hope Street), planted myself directly in front of that place. I was going to be the front row.  NOBODY taller than me is going to stand in front of me and if anyone even THINKS about it, they better think again. Eventually a horseshoe forms in front of the first play space. I'm in the front row, baby!

Should say this...usually when I go see plays at this complex, the audience tends to be white and elderly. Tonight the audience was diverse and much, much younger than the mean. Guesstimate, maybe 400 people. Was great to see. One thing I will be tracking as the festival goes on is if this younger/diverse audience holds up throughout.

I got to talking with this cool guy who is in sales for a company that handles backbone software systems for mega-corporations. Let's just call him Mr. D for now. He likes theater, goes every once in a while, found out about this over the weekend and decided to attend because it sounded interesting. He's not that familiar with Lori-Parks' work, so I'm filling him in on the details. And while we're talking, I glance over to the stairs and who should be walking up but Lori-Parks! I gasped and grabbed his arm and said THAT'S HER. OMIGOD THAT'S HER. He said "who?" That was actually a perfectly valid question. There were a lot of celebs of one kind or another in the audience. I could have been talking about anybody. Most of them wore the green wristbands indicating that they were clear to attend the post-show party.

Lori-Parks was wearing a very green shirt, a short jacket, a black miniskirt, black knee-high motocycle boots.  He dreads are beautiful, as usual. She looks just like the sort of creator you would throw a Genius Grant at. She is smiling and as she glances over the crowd with this holy fuck look at all these people sort of look, and goes off to stage left to stand and chat with the people she was with. I notice two things off the top:

1. She does not have a handler
2. Nobody is approaching her

I know I started bouncing up and down a little bit as I tend to do when in 10 mode. Mr. D suggests I go over and talk to her. And I'm saying no even as I'm handing him my Starbucks cup and making a beeline for her. Because when will I ever have this opportunity again? I mean, she doesn't even have a handler! There's nobody like me trying to keep someone like me away from her!

Just as to this day I have no idea what I said to Campbell the first time I met him and freaked, I don't know precisely what I said to her. I babbled. I tried not to, but I couldn't help it. I know I told her how much of an inspiration she is to me, that I went to see the America Play this weekend, that I have a Lincoln thing, too, and I'm pretty sure I heard I write science fiction come out of my mouth. I know whatever I said I did it in on big looong paragraph without taking a breath. She took my hand with both of hers, she looked me directly in the eye, she was smiling and kind and affirming, she said something to the camera I didn't notice that was right there filming everything and she answered this one critical question I had about the entire festival. And when she was done, I think she said thank you for coming, let go of my hand and gently guided me away from her. I think I was giggling. Okay, I KNOW I was giggling. I'm never gonna be cool, am I? I just can't keep up that veneer when Life is letting me roll with something I'd never have a chance to do. I never in life thought I'd ever have a chance to meet her and tell her what her work means to me.

I went floating back to Mr. D and asked him if he saw what just happened how I met Suzan Lori-Parks in person and everything and did he see how she did not call security and did he see her take my hand in both of hers. He said he saw it all! He said her body language was engaged throughout the exchange, as opposed to not Get The Hell Away From Me Psycho body language. Maybe he was just being nice, but I decided to believe him. Then he told me that Don Cheadle was standing right behind us.

*gasp* *choke*

So NATURALLY I turn around and tell Cheadle that I love everything he's ever been in, ever. Unlike Lori-Parks, he kinda looks worried and steps back just a wee bit and holds his program up like a shield. Then I told Cheadle that I just met Lori-Parks! I talked to her and EVERYTHING. And he said oh, she's here? And I said yes! She's right over there and pointed at her. I also told him that I bet she would talk to him if he wanted to meet her and told him again that I just went over there and talked to her and she was really nice. And he said okay, and also, thank you.

So I turn back around and tell Mr. D I really wish I had a camera, then I start calling people at random telling them how I just met Suzan Lori-Parks and Don Cheadle, but I actually talked to Lori-Parks. At this point the show is about to start, so I only got through to three people before I have to turn off the phone. Cheadle slips in front of Mr. D and I and sits down on the ground directly in front of us. I was about to tell him that she's the one in the boots with the dreadlocks when he starts waving. She waves back, runs over, hugs him and sits down on the ground next to him. SO NOW DON CHEADLE AND SUZAN LORI-PARKS ARE SITTING AT MY FEET. AND I DON'T HAVE A CAMERA. They chat and they remain sitting there for the entire first play. I stare at Mr. D and try not to scream as Lori-Parks and Cheadle exchange telephone numbers. Mr. D nods and pats me on my shoulder, perhaps trying to calm me down.

Thank you, Flying Spaghetti Monster. I shall make my tithe toward our pirate ship this coming payday.

It's a good thing they sat down. If they had stood and blocked my view, I totally would have turned on them. heh. I've been looking forward to this festival for WEEKS. Nobody was gonna get in my way!

Here's what you need to know about the LA leg of the 365/365 festival:

1. All of the shows are FREE or pay as you can! Suzan Lori-Parks told me this Herself, out of her own mouth. I was seriously considering stopping smoking or  reducing my book purchases for this year in order to afford as many shows as possible, but now I don't have to!
2. It is not being staged as one play a day. Only the debut show was one night only. The rest run for at least a week each at various locations.
3. If the rest of the run is anything like opening night, you're not going to see just one play. As was described in the news reports, each performance is a bundle of plays.
4. The level of talent they have acting in these things? PHENOMENAL.

I've already provided the link to the 365/365 website. But it looks like they're only putting up the info for that week's show. I'm busy, I have a job, I have a Dayrunner for a reason. I'm the sort who needs to know in advance what is happening where and when in order to fit it in. In case you are also a Type A, here is the performance schedule for the festival. I don't have locations because that isn't in the program book, but if you are familiar with these groups, or if you look it up, you can get a sense of where you'll have to be. They're not all in LA proper. Tonight's show started at 8:30 p.m. The rest will probably start around then, or within an hour of that time.

1. Nov. 20-27, Open Fist Theater Co.
2. Nov. 27-Dec. 3 Playwright's Arena (I think the Nov. 27 is a typo, but just in case...)
3. Dec. 4010, Elephand Theater Co.
4. Dec. 11-17, Alliance Repertory C.
5. Dec. 18-24, Greenway Arts Alliance
6. Dec. 25-31, The Chance Theater (Christmas Day? That's what it says..)
7. Jan. 1-7, 2007, Watts Village theater Co.
8. Jan. 8-14, Boston Court Theater
9. Jan. 15021, Black Dahlia theater
10. Jan. 22-28, Unknown Theater (that's what it says in the program)
11. Jan. 29-Feb. 4, Nest Arts
12. Feb. 5-11, Empire of Teeth
13. Feb. 12-18, Terence McFarland, producer (again, that's what it says in the program)
14. Feb. 10-25, Alexander Yannis Stephano, producer (ditto above)
15. Mar. 5-11, Bootleg Theater/Mr. & Mrs. Kickass
16. Mar. 12-18, The MET Theater Co.
17. Mar. 19-25, Circle X theater Co.
18. Mar. 26-Ap. 1, East West Players
19. Apr. 2-8, Son of Semele Ensemble
20. Apr. 9-15, Odyssey theater
21. apr. 16-22, Towne Street Theater
22. Apr. 23029, East LA Repertory
23. Apr. 20-May6, Sacred Fools Theater Co.
24. May 7-13, The Mad Scene Theater Co.
25. May 14-20, Ark theater Co.
26. May 21-27, Latino Theater Co.
27. May 28-June 3, Blank-the-Dog Theater Co.
28. June 4-10, Zoo District
29. June 11-17, 24th St. Theater
30. June 18-24, Ghost Road Co.
31. June 25-July 1, The Syzygy Theater Group
32. July 2-8, Adam, Eve & Steve Productions
33. July 9-15, Repertory East Playhouse
34. July 16-22, Filament theater Co.
35. July 23-29, Ensemble Studio Theater
36. July 30-Aug. 5, Deaf West Theater
37. Aug. 6-12, Smart Gals productions
38. Aug. 13-19, Company of Angels
39. Aug. 20-26, Pacific Resident theater
40. Aug. 27-Sept. 2, Angry Bubble Productions
41. Sept. 3-9, Cornerstone Theater Co.
42. Sept. 10-16, Geffen Playhouse
43. Sept. 17-23, City Garage
44. Sept. 24-30, Center for New Performance at Cal Arts
45. Oct. 1-7, Critical Mass Performance Group
46. Oct. 8-14, Highways Performance Space
47. Oct. 15-21, Buffalo Nights Theater Co.
48. Oct. 22-28, Circus Theatricals
49. Oct. 29-Nov. 4, Theater of NOTE
50. Nov. 5, Center Theater Group, closing show

It's probably a good idea to check the official 365/365 website weekly for full details. Wouldn't be surprised if my typos and the typos in the program book are co-mingled above. Plus, never know when something might happen to change up show details.

I'm going to attend as many of these as possible and will report back on each one I manage to hit throughout the year. Thus, the new tag. Having seen shows at many of the featured companies, I know for sure that some of them will rock. Am very much looking forward to discovering the companies on the list I've not yet seen in action.

This is so exciting!