Weather Forecast

We're more than halfway through this theater run and there's plenty of activity on the horizon this coming week.

Expect early sunrises and scattered afternoons resulting in a crepuscular end-of-day. We've got some relief mid-week with a bright Full Moon in the sky but if you're up before the rooster then expect total activity failure before midnight. Torrential bouts of oncoming drive-time rushes are foreseen, but they've become very common so there's no big threat. The week's gonna be hectic and exhausting, but it's all one small part of an ongoing global pattern.

Some new drama is popping up down the line. We've joined a system of new fronts, young unpredictable bodies operating on a different kind of sensuous plane. Things will start out slow, a bit turbulent at times, but will ultimately make a splash. A slight danger in things picking up prematurely or dispersing into so much wind, so proper timing, rhythm, and smart decision-making will prevail. It's less messy than it sounds, so we're gonna take the ride for all it's worth. And there's a flood of opportunity that just reared its head. Thursday night shows some action building in the City. A chance of a big bang, thunderous attraction, and even a fertile chance for change in the weather coming up. More on this as it progresses.

Plus, the big story gestating this week: Silence. A whole unexpected period of vital, vibrant, but restrictive silence lasting decades, even centuries. How do people deal with this? How can we help our loved ones? One man puts his perspective down on everything. Stay tuned.

And finally: What was the final result of this month-long theater run? Film in the 11th.

And The Reviews Are In...

I make it a point never to read reviews while I'm doing a show. Bad mojo. Did it once. Once. Their comments on my acting made me all self-conscious and screwed up my performance for the rest of the run. Not worth it.

But, I encourage you to read them. They sound very positive. Plus, leave a review of your own if you've gone to see it. I promise I won't read 'em until October.

Village Players' "Piano Girl" a very pleasant surprise

Enthralling "Bars" hits mostly right notes

Opening Weekend

**See Comments for Disclaimer**

Bubblegum and paper clips. This was the essence of my theater career up to this point. We didn't discuss things like "budget" because there was no budget. We actors made up the talent, stage crew, make-up, art direction, made sets, created costumes, even ushered our own audiences. Thing of it was, we all wanted to be there. Sure, we did shows that opened and closed on the same night, but we got to do a play. We got to act and feed an audience. Damn the fancy theaters and celebrity-inflated paycheck. We learned that drama, like religion, can happen anywhere to anyone at any time so long as one, or a whole cast and crew of people, had the will to make it happen. Hence the bubblegum and paperclips, 'cause that's what we used sometimes to keep the flats of the set together. Anything, so long as the story gets told.

I lost sight of that when I declared myself a professional actor because I felt, at that point, that my ability and experience demanded monetary compensation. Increased pressure from family and my girlfriend, a hundred failed auditions, and several auto-related incidents later, I couldn't do it anymore. I lost the love of performing because I didn't do it for fun, I did it for money. And all my money was spent before I earned it. That's why I stopped auditioning and spent my life searching out a career instead. And we know how that turned out.

We opened Bars this past weekend. Friday was our First Night, but Sunday afternoon was our Opening Night gala. First two shows we had no audience larger than 40, a tad intimate for a theater that can hold 150 or so, but they were lively and involved. Village Players Theater is undergoing a bit of a Renaissance under its new regime of artistic leadership. The lobby has been repainted and a new original show, our show, was slated to be the beginning of a new future. The set looks good, a visual collage of the different zeitgeists in which our stories take place under the roof of one rustic bar, a grand piano its centerpiece, and terraces in back to hold the band. Backstage is pretty meh, not much better than a Waiting-for-Guffman scenario, but you're also talking to a guy who's changed and performed in a Tulsa synagogue hallway, so it's halfway to heaven to me. Reminds me of the high school shows they never chose me to do. The theater really added some special touches to make us appreciated. First Night had champagne and chocolates waiting for us in our dressing rooms. French champagne. Two different kinds of French champagne. Three bottles, one of them cartoonishly large. Made a Magnum bottle look impotent. You looked like a Dionysian wine orgy steward pouring that bottle with both hands, which was the only way you could pour it. Opening Night brought out the bigwigs of Oak Park, a catered meal, and an ice scuplture. The piece de resistance: An ice sculpture of a bar from which they served more champagne and wine. Frickin' ice sculpture! And real Grapes-from-the-Champagne-region-of-France champagne, not that California sparkling wine sham-pagne! And we got two more weekends of this! And a paycheck to boot!

Needless to say, this is, to date, the most professional show I've ever done. Not quite as thrilling as perfoming on the Second City mainstage, but it swells me with pride.

Tickets still available
Runs through September 30

Local Press for Bars

So the nice people at the Oak Park Press did a nice little write-up on our forthcoming show.

Read it here.

...and notice whose names are conspicuously unlisted.

Get Laid

I have a wish for everyone who reads these words:

I hope you get thoroughly and deliciously laid.

I hope you get laid with a sweaty humid musk that lingers for days. I hope you ache from the waist up and down and have to walk funny for weeks. I hope you rediscover nerve endings and tiny muscles deep inside your naughty bits and awaken them with juicy tingling. I hope you invite more people, more accessories, and more positions into your boudoir than you ever imagined before.

You seen Amelie? There's that scene where she stares out the window and postulates how many people are having sex that evening and then turns to the camera and whispers something like, "Sixteen."? This past summer I spent many a night sitting on my roof postulating the exact same question. I am into month God-Knows-What of celibacy. This celibacy is not at all completely self-imposed; sometimes the heavens stack the odds against me. So I sit on the rooftops on the far Northwest Side of Chicagoland staring across bungalows and townhouses, sand traps and putting greens, pre-fab families and retirees, and hope to God someone's getting laid tonight. At work the parade of Wisteria Lane MILFs and back-to-school poptarts line up for their hourly fix, sharing their Louvre smiles and lascivious glances, and I hope someone is actually giving to them what my ribald mind has planned but my professional demeanor cannot. At rehearsal I flirt shamelessly on stage with women in a bar and joke dangerously with them on smoke breaks, and everyone can see the strings of my acting.

I'm not using my sexual energy. It's become a joke, a toy, a storytelling tool. Anything but a means to a loud, nail-shredding, arcing gooey orgasm. So I bequeath it to you. May you swim in the fallopian tubes of utter hedonism. Call a friend, call two friends, grab some lube and keep your minds open. Have sex so good it inspires you to sculpt, write, sing, make some art. Cause I'm not, and it'd be a shame for all this energy to go to waste.

What are you waiting for? Stop reading this, go out, and get some motherfuckin' ass.

Somebody's getting laid tonight.

Bars: The Girl on the Piano

WORLD PREMIERE! STARTS NEXT WEEK!

FEATURING THE TALENTS OF:

CORTNEY MCKENNA
STUART RITTER
KEVIN SWATEK

DIRECTED BY: ALISON HENDERSON

MUSICAL DIRECTION BY: ANDREW CHUKERMAN

SEPTEMBER 14 - 30, 2007

FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS AT 8PM

SUNDAYS AT 3PM

TICKETS $25/$20

VILLAGE PLAYERS THEATRE OF OAK PARK
1010 W. MADISON STREET
(866)764-1010
www.village-players.org

MAP & DIRECTIONS

Words to Think About

"From utter chaos thrusts brilliant light."
-- Somebody


Other words that drag off the tongue with awe and juicy rawness:

"I am Ozymandias, King of Kings! Look upon my works, O ye Mortals, and despair!"
-- Percy Shelly

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power
And all that beauty, all that wealth ere gave
Await alike the inevitable hour:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
-- Sir Thomas Gray

"I'm only one
But not alone.
My finest day
Is yet unknown."
-- Whitney Houston

"Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish in the crowd."
-- I Ching

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
-- Mark Twain

"Henceforth, I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune."
-- Walt Whitman

"Never give in. Never, never, never, never."
-- Winston Churchill

"I burn the books in my bag, but the lessons written in my guts will never fade away."
-- Zen koan


BTW, the comments have been fixed. They should show up instantaneously instead of having to wait for me to log on and screw everything up.

L'esprit de l'escalier

So, this show...

Dropped out of the blue. I auditioned for this theater last year: The Buddy Holly Story. Totally looked the part but my singing looked less than authentic. Learned a valuable lesson: Bring sheet music. Never do a singing audition a cappella. It don't work.

Dropped it from my memory. Said they'd keep my info on file. When do they ever dip into that pool again? Never in my history. You can imagine my shock when they called. Callbacks for this show I never heard of. Thought I misheard the message, but no.

...

Y'know, I don't want to write this anymore. The story's been stuck in my head for days, the title affixed itself to me weeks ago. I sit to write this to finish it and I just get pissed off at the screen. It's not coming out spontaneously enough. I have to hunt for words, and when I do that I lose time. So forget it. I'm not gonna beat a dead horse.

I know I'm lucky. But not completely. The opportunity and I met each other halfway. Partly my ability, partly my availability. Yeah I got the chops to give the part justice, but I also was one of two guys young enough to fit the role who have nothing better to do for the next month. All I had to do was show up.

The show's got a lot of work to go through if we want it up in two weeks. The script's still relatively amorphous. It's an exploration of cabaret music through the past century. Each vignette is a diorama of underground clubs, smoky sirens, and the menagerie of patrons separated by the zeitgeist of decade and country. Sounds good, but it remains a work in progress. The decisions we make one night never stay concrete to the next. My best work's based in improv, so I can roll with the punches. My problem is: How serious do we want to make this? Time's of the essence. Everyone's talking "backstory", "throughline", "relationship", which is good and right and professional and so forth, but nothing gets hammered into shape. I'll just take a character, make some choices, and do my thing. It's called a "play", so let's play. Why throw so much labor into it?

We do have a name actor for the show. Lisa Zane. Heard of her? You probably know the last name. Good locally-born talent. I was delighted just to know her from her connections, but I got more impressed once I checked her out here. And here. And here. Gorgeous. I's impressed. Hell, if this show becomes a movie I might just have a smaller Bacon number.

That's all I really wanted to get out. No doubt I'll think of the right way to say things later.