There is no OFF position...

13. Death
An important ending that initiates great change.

   Insomnia striketh and holdeth its own against the will of the embrace of Morpheus.  I have been up since receiving a "Good night" call at 1:44am after bedding down 'round 8pm.  So, between five and six hours of sleep, leaving me somewhat rested and thus more highly susceptible to the lure of consciousness that is the Awakened Mind.  I have been up and will be up until I'm down again.

   Listening to Hildegard Von Bingen and drinking coffee.  I already ate breakfast, cheddary eggs with scallion, basil, and kale and some turkey bacon on the side.  Joey and I hang out and I leave for work an hour from now. (5:03am Eastern).  

   Beginning work upon a new play written by Edward Elefterion called Alone, adapting a novella/creative journal of that name by August Strindberg.  I will be playing the man himself.  I am excited and feeling very challenged as well.  Always a good sign.  

∞ ♥
"per artem facit Magiam, arte faciendi magick"

   

A day for coffee and reflection

Today: The Star.
Reaching enlightenment through development of special talents.
In general: the light at the end of the tunnel.
More directly:  promises of unexpected help, and the realization of hopes and wishes.

The shift from Summer to Fall is upon us, most definitely.  I have been very much enjoying the cooler, drier air that blows now with intermittent autumnal bluster.  I have been keeping insomniac's hours lately, going to sleep at 2:30am, 3:47am, 6:30am...  I read and draw, ponder and write, and thereby do attempt to lure the cool arms of Morpheus to take me down in its embrace for a little.  Attempt.  Like the early days of childhood, all over again.  I also have been disinclined to eat until much later in the day.  Not good, really.  Not great for concentration, as it begins to feel as though I am eating my own head.

   I have been drawing a great deal lately, and in August was engaged to create concept art for a new film project by gotta/enk films, called META/STASIS, (http://www.gottaenkfilms.com/metastasis).  I drew nine chalk pastel/ink drawings, including the following:

Funeral.

The link for their IndieGoGo fund-raising campaign is here:  http://www.indiegogo.com/metastasis .

I acted in their first feature, The Big Bad (http://thebigbadmovie.com/) for which they have rightfully earned much acclaim.  META/STASIS promises to deliver more of the same.

Good Luck to them!


∞ ♥
"per artem facit Magiam, arte faciendi magick"

  

A return to a return...

Sorrow.  In general: something is amiss.
More directly: sorrow, disappointment, tears, delay, 
absence, separation, divorce; disruption of friendship, 
interruption of cherished projects, quarrels.

.  

   Worked late last night and also very early in the same day - split shift chaos.  Home and in bed at 3:47am.  Woke at eleven, fed Joey and gave him his shot, and returned to bed for another hour.  Rose, started coffee, showered, drew a card (3 of Swords), sat with that over coffee, resolved to write, and have been writing and ruminating since.

   It has been AGES since I wrote on this.  I have decidedly mixed feelings about the public diary, but hey, with the advent of social media facebook and especially twitter, the internet is what it always dreamed it would be: an over-sharer's paradise.

   I saw someone once wearing a shirt: with an inscription that made me laugh very hard.  The shirt read "More people have read this shirt THAN YOUR BLOG".

   Which is how I feel about blogging, really.  The fact is, most of the time what I am thinking seems comprehensible to me alone (if that).  The notion of pulling the stream of my consciousness through the filtre of my frontal lobes and expressing it for another's comprehension as succinctly, thoroughly, and clearly as possible is daunting, to say the least.  But that really is the trick with communication, innit?  Onward with the attempt:

   Listening to a mix of Hildegard von Bingen, Kills, White Stripes, Coyote Love, Electric Mess, Dead Weather, Jordi Savall.

   Joey lay on the kitchen floor in full-on wood grain camouflage cat mode.  Or, as Art Wallace would say, in "Action Position Number 3".

Joey Kassan, AKA Mister Mojo Goldencoats, camouflage-cat and Kitchen Familiar par excellence.

   Work is being done on a renovation below me.  It sounds just like the sound-effects coming from the forest in Monty Python & the Holy Grail when Arthur and is Knights are building the Trojan Rabbit.  The louder songs mange to block out the worst of it, but quieter compositions create hard-hat mashups.  Thank you Jack White...

   Just had food, finally.  Basiled eggs with bacon-sauteed scallions wrapped up with extra-crispy turkey bacon and extra-sharp cheddar in a flour tortilla, pan-browned and served with salsa.  Yum-O.  It is good to be home and able to be focus time and energy here.  Joey is always happy when I am home and spend time with him, and a happy cat can make for a happy witch, they say. (Who says?  I say. "Meow!" says Joey.)
Speaking of working the Broom: I will clean and set the house in order.  Later on, I plan to enter the Midnight Kitchen and make a beef stew, an apple pie, and apple cobbler-bars.  Food always tastes better when you make it yourself.

The fabled basiled eggs.

Over the past few days, I have been working on more material to submit to Dragon / Dungeon, as the autumn submission window opens October 1st.  I have been working on fleshing out five ideas I have for articles on character options.  A little here and there on each of them and I should be ready with all by the beginning of October.
∞ ♥
"per artem facit Magiam, arte faciendi magick"

The Last Week of 45...

I have been a busy fellow, having rehearsed, opened, and am now about to close Trav SD's Universal Rundle at La MaMa this coming weekend, with the final performance occuring smack in the center of my 46th birthday.  The run has been going well performatively and I have enjoyed tremendously the stretch that the role has given me as an actor.  Everyone has been so lovely to work with, and it has been focused and fun throughout.  Good things, all around.

I have also been busy creating content for submission to Wizards of the Coast for freelance publication for their online magazines Dungeon and Dragon, which publishes material for Dungeons & Dragons.   I submitted two articles last week for an "anything goes" kind of writing contest challenging authors to write articles inspired by a sppecific illustration depicting two people atop a solid wooden table that is evidently being supported mid-air by one of the figures, an unarmoured man whose stance and sparkle-infused gesture depicts a kind of supernatural concentration upon the table, while his companion, a dark-haired female archer, trains her arrow at an out of frame target beneath her, the underside of the table itself already punctured with enemy arrows from below.  The contest stated that one could submit any kind of article (including short fiction) so long as the material was inspired by the illustration, and the winning entry or entries would be published and the author paid their standard beginning feelance rate for publication.

I wrote two pieces, one for their "Class Acts" series of articles on features for the various character classes, and the other for their "Bazaar of the Bizarre" article series that feature magical items. 

My "Class Acts" article focused on the Psion character class (a class that I happen to play my first 4th edition character in), and was inspired by the fact that the man in the illustration seemed to be lifting the table through the agency of telekinesis, and the class builds for the Psion character class include "telekinetic", along with "telepathic" and "shaper".  The class builds denote a specific school of study that the Psion focuses upon, and each school bestows specific powers to the Psion studying its disciplines which the Psion attains at the 1st level of play.  I conceived a "Deep Discipline Focus", wherein the Psion would attain further class features at the Paragon (11th) and Epic (21st) levels of play.  The Epic level power for Telekinetic Psions I named Telekinetic Crane, allowing the Psion to do what the illustration depicted: lift vertically and move horizontally a total weight of at least 600 lbs for a sustainable duration of time.  As this power is attained by the Psion at the 21st level of play, I decided to make it powerful (weight limit of 2,000 lbs), but not over-balancingly so (usable Encounter Utility power) that requires concentration (sustainable as the character's primary, or Standard Action in a round of play) to maintain.  The article required a full treatment of my concept, of course, so I conceived of and fleshed out the 11th level features for the Telekinetic (Telekinetic Slash and Telekinetic Suture), as well as two 11th level and one 21st level Discipline Focus features for the Telepathic and Shaper builds as well, resulting in my creating 9 powers for the Psion class, 3 per class build. 

This was the first of the two submissions, and I realized after sending it that I may need to tweak it slightly in order for it to fit into the existing game mechanics for the class, and am considering making the Deep Discipline Focus a series of Class Feats for the Psion.  We will see.  The WIzards article detailing the contest and its process discussed the likelihood of the back-and-forth between Wizards and their freelance authors that is a part of the editing process, so I feel that the Feat adjustment regarding the concept might be what they suggest if they are interested in the article at all.

My second submission was for the series of articles that they call "Bazaar of the Bizarre" that feature magic items.  I went for the literal and initially wrote up a Wondrous Item called "Flying Table".  I wrote up the Table using the statistics used for vehicles in the game as a template  I decided to fill out the article by making up magic items that were mundane and utilitarian, but not necessarily intuitive in terms of power to object, ala: the Flying Table.  I also conceived of them as being the posthumously discovered creations of a Mage ("Telempset the Wise")  renowned for his embracement of the Ordinary.  I conceived of the three other items (a "Galloping Chair" that can walk and carry you over most terrain as well as make off with an enemy;  a "Picture Window" that allows remote viewing and teleportation; and a "Magic Carpet" that unrolls to become a watertight raft or a solid walkway up to 200' long), and wrote cryptic quotations relevant to the item in question.

We will see if either submission yields a response.

In the meantime, I am busy creating more material for submission to Wizards, and having a blast doing it!
If they do not bite, then I aim to self-publish the various writings as "being made for play with 4th Edition D&D" and put them up for sale in the inter-tubes...

I am auditioning for the Acting Company on All Fool's Day, and for the Shakespeare Theatre in DC on the Monday after...

      

Making Something out of Nothing

I will be working this evening at Playwrights Horizons, re-scheduled from last night, and doing some light work (in terms of hours and effort) tomorrow for a friend, so work is slowly trickling in, and there is much opportunity coming from auditions at Actor's Equity in the coming weeks. I have one on Friday, five next week, and more in the weeks moving into March.

Last night I made steady progress on the Vulgarian character class that I am developing for use with 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The class started as a joke (and a disgusting one, at that), much as my first full-length play, Le Lycanthrope, started. Hmmm...anyway, just as with the play, the joke gets funnier to me the more seriously I take it by fleshing it out, which is what I have been doing.

Developing the class has been an inside-out exploration of the game mechanics of 4th Edition D&D as they pertain to the specific "roles" of the Adventuring Party (as opposed to the roles that people play as their character in the game), how the class functions as a class (with respect to individual builds, interplay in a combat encounter, concept flavour, et cetera) and what is required as a game designer in terms of its support. For instance, every power a character has in D&D has a power source. Makes sense, right? Power has to come from somewhere. Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards use the Arcane power source that is sourced in a parallel plane called the Feywild (where elves and fey creatures come from), Clerics and Paladins use the Divine power source from the Astral Sea (where most of the gods live), Psions and Ardents use the Psionic power source from the phrenic planes (realms of the mind), et cetera. In April 2011, WOTC is unveiling Heroes of Shadow, their upcoming book on the Shadow power source (from the parallel plane of the Shadowfell). Every power source comes from some different plane of existence.

So I created the Defiling power source for Vulgarian character class, which is sourced from the Far Realm, D&D's version of the "other places" that the denizens of Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos hail from, which are known as "aberrant creatures". As far as I am aware, there is no power source from the Far Realm specifically, as of yet.
Deeper and deeper we go, for just as with the character class, the development of the Defiling power source makes me consider more:

• What are the other classes (that fulfill different Adventuring Party "roles") that may use it?
• What kinds of characters are drawn to using it?
• AND (taking definite cues from Lovecraft): What are the costs and perils of such usage?

What is also funny, is that what I am developing is turning into something that I can send to Wizards of the Coast (publishers of D&D) as a sample of what I am capable of as a freelance writer/artist: a creation that works within the mechanics of their system, while expanding it, that is both original and audacious and plainly presents an offensive thing as inoffensively as possible.
The Vulgarian class will not be the only thing that I present to WOTC, but it will be among the first, if not the first. As I believe I have made clear, I don't expect them to take the Vulgarian character class seriously, or to take the character class at all (i.e. buy it from me). No, I am creating the Vulgarian and its Defiling power source for 3 reasons:

1. To generate somethng solid for the WOTC people to understand what I could offer them as a freelancer.
2. To better understand the mechanics of the system of 4E D&D.
3. To have FUN by making something that is both ridiculous and workable!

Blessed Be

Opportunity

Listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons: Winter. Going to work at Playwrights later on today for the first time in a long while. There are a great many auditions coming up at Equity as tis the time of year when companies cast for the upcoming Season. I am happy about all of the opportunity coming up for Work, and am grateful for that it is a week until those auditions start in earnest, which allows for plenty of time to prepare.

Summer now. If only. Actually, I quite enjoy this time of year, despite the cold and blizzarding. Winter weather during wintertime grants me a measure of comfort that things are happening in accordance with the rhythms of Nature: it is supposed to be cold right now in this part of the World.

Taking actions, letting go of results...

Times have been hard, economically speaking, very very hard indeed. The interesting thing about the way thngs have gone with respect to work (there is none) and money (there is precious little of it coming in), is that I am finding an increased self-sufficiency and a sharpened impetus to action.
I am walking more often when I travel within Brooklyn and in some cases into the city from home, as well, mainly depending on timing. My cooking craft has increased in terms of what I cook and how often I cook. I am happy to say that making soups and stews is becoming second nature.

I have been finding interesting creative implements in my path as I make my various ways to and from, namely pens, pencils, and even a paintbrush! I take this to mean something about making things, about creating, and about finding my way using creativity as a vessel.

I created an original piece of artwork entitled Traveler's Vessel: Destination 1805 (above), a pastel drawing for the Pernod Absinthe "Creator Of.." Art Contest. I missed their deadline last year, ecoming aware of the contest only after it had passed. This year I was on FB and saw that it was going on again, but this time I had 5 days to the January 31st deadline. I decided to enter, since there is nothing to lose by doing it. I did it in 3 sessions, beginning late Thursday night, again late Sunday night, and spent the morning of Monday the 31st finishing it up and electronically submitting it around 3pm, well before the Midnight deadline. HOORAY!

After finding the paintbrush on Tuesday, I arrived home and made up 60 cinnamon spice sugar cookies. I have baked pies, but had never before made cookies from scratch on my own. Yes, I have "helped" my Mother and Grandmother make up batches of baked goods while growing up, but the kind of assistance that was required of me in those instances was of the "lick the spoon" variety.

How did they turn out? Well, the cookies were eaten too quickly to be photographed, I'm afraid, falling prey to the appetites of the blonde and myself within a 24 hour period. YUM.

The week prior to this I was priveleged to work with a talented crew of actors (Gyda Arber, Steve Burns, Lex Friedman, Gavin Starr Kendall, Jeff Lewonczyk, Douglas Mackrell, Megan McGowan, Ben VandenBoom, Stephanie Willing, Morgan Anne Zipf) under the able and delighful direction of Hope Cartelli as part of "Team B" for "Piper McKenzie's Dainty Cadaver". There were 3 teams ("A", "B", & "C") each enacting an original play constructed Exquisite Corpse style by 6 different authors per team (18 in total), each of whom were responsible for 10 minutes of stage time after only having read the prior author's 10 minutes, and nothing before that. The results were CRAZY PANTS and excellently performed and directed. The culture surrounding the event was highly enjoyable, and palpably RICH in spirit, in joy, and in creativity. That's the kind of wealth that grants nourishment that sticks to your ribs. A "slice" of nice!

Also this week I began rehearsals for The Universal Rundle, one of 4 one-acts in Trav S.D.'s Tent Show Tetragrammaton. I am REALLY excited about this, and our initial meetings are pregnant with possibility...research deepens into Voudoun, cajun dialects, and the Blues...

∞ ♥

"per artem facit Magiam, arte faciendi magick"

OSCARS

Nina: I want to be perfect.
Thomas: Perfection is not just about control. It's also about letting go. Surprise yourself so you can surprise the audience. Transcendence! Very few have it in them.
Nina: I think I do have it in me.

My picks out of the nominations:

Best Actress: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Best Actor: Colin Firth, The King's Speech
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Best Supporting Actor: Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech
Best Picture: Black Swan, Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver, & Scott Franklin
Best Short: Wish 143, Ian Barnes & Samantha Waite
Best Documentary Feature: Gasland, Josh Fox & Trish Adlesic
Best Documentary Short: Warriors of Qiugang, Rachel Yang & Thomas Lennon
Best Animated Picture: The Illusionist, Sylvain Chomet
Best Animated Short: Day & Night, Teddy Newton
Best Foreign Feature: Mexico: Biutiful
Best Director: Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
Best Cinematographer: Roger Deakins, True Grit
Best Editor: Andrew Weisblum, Black Swan
Best Screenplay: David Seidler, The King's Speech
Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network
Best Original Score: Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, The Social Network
Best Song: Randy Newman, "We Belong Together", Toy Story 3
Best Sound Editing: Gwendolyn Yates Whittle & Addison Teague, Tron: Legacy
Best Sound Mixing: Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick, & Mark Weingarten, The Social Network
Best Art Direction: Eve Stewart - Production Design, Judy Farr - Set Decoration, The King's Speech
Best Costumes: Jenny Beavan, The King's Speech
Best Make-up: Rick Baker & Dave Elsey, The Wolf-man
Best Visual Effects: Janek Sirrs, Ben Snow, Ged Wright, Daniel Sudlick, Iron Man 2

28 Months Later...

THEN:
It was September 18th when I wrote my last Blog post, twenty-eight months ago to the day.
I saw a T-shirt once that read: "MORE PEOPLE HAVE READ THIS T-SHIRT THAN YOUR BLOG." FUNNY.

Anyway...
My last post was written just after I had learned that I was cast as Varney the Vampire in Bryan Enk & Matt Gray's Penny Dreadful. In the time since, I have performed in Penny Dreadful (#7: The Peril of Penny - a Damsel Lost in Time, #10: The Science and The Seance, #11: The House Where Bad Things Happen, #12: The Last Century) for Third Lows, Adventure Quest and A Brief History of Murder (Detectives & Victims) for Sneaky Snake, Suspicious Package Rx for Gyda Arber, George Bataille's Bathrobe, The Wedding of Berit Johnson and Ian W. Hill, and The Devils for Gemini CollisionWorks, Rudolf II for Untitled Theatre Company, Kinderspiel and Quantum Poetics for Stolen Chair Theatre Company , Bethlehem or Bust! for Piper McKenzie, STARBOAT for Nosedive Productions at Vampire Cowboys Saturday Night Saloon, and in Bryan Enk and Jessi Gotta's feature-length horror film, The Big Bad (which I hear is close to a screening date).

In the past 28 months, I have had the great gift and pleasure of working with the following slew of talented Artists and Artistic Companies, none of whom I had worked with before:
Mischa Auzins, Olivia Basemen, Ben Beckley, Adam Belvo, David Bengali, Lynn Berg, Alexis Black, Eric Bland, Pete Boisvert, Bob Brader, Sal Brienik, Becky Byers, Anne Carlisle, Hope Cartelli, Lindsey Carter, Josephine Cashman, Chris Chappelle, James Comtois, Rebecca Comtois, Joshua Conkle, Stephanie Cox-Williams, Audrey Crabtree, Kimberly Craven, Michael Criscuolo, Adri Disman, Liz Eckert, Bryan Enk, Saara Falk, Dorothy Fortenberry, Joe Gately, Dina Rose Gray, Matthew Gray, Liza Wade Green, Dave Gochfeld, Romo Hallahan, Mike Hill, Jon Hoche, James Isaac, Ishah Janssen-Faith, Sheila Joon, Michael Karp, Gavin Starr Kendall, Jeremiah Kipp, Julianne Kroboth, Daryl Lathon, Candace Lawrence, Kathryn Lawson, Jeff Lewonczyk, Miriam Lipner, Rich Lovejoy, Doug MacKrell, Jessica McVea, Chelsea Manifold, Justin Maruri, Samantha Mason, Rocio Mendez, Aviva Meyer, Patrice Miller, Mateo Moreno, Brian Morvant, Steve Munoz, Kevn Myers, Eric Oleson, Emily Otto, Robert Pinnock, Kiran Rikhye, Jane Rose, Trav S.D., Jessica Savage,Jack Schaub, Alley Scott, Parker Scott, Vanessa Shealey-Younger, Patrick Shearer, Noah Shultz, Dominick Sivilli, Jon Stancato, Anna Stromberg, Sara Thigpen, Christian Toth, Eve Udesky, Michael Vaccaro, Ben VandenBoom, Darlene Violette, Viet Vo, Art Wallace, David Watson, Jesse Paul Wilson, Mike Yahn, Christopher Yustin, Morgan Anne Zipf
ARTISTIC COMPANIES:
Nosedive Productions, Piper McKenzie, Sneaky Snake, Stolen Chair Theatre Company, and Third Lows.

I was also happy to work again with these people:
Henry Akona, Gyda Arber, Fred Backus, Aaron Baker, Danny Bowes, Katherine Boynton, Maggie Cino, Ivanna Cullinan, Edward Einhorn, Sarah Malinda Engelke, Karen Flood, Carla Gant, Jessi Gotta, Stephen Heskett, Ian W. Hill, Justin R.G. Holcomb, Berit Johnson, Bob Laine, Roger Nasser, Karen Ott, Shelley Ray, Phoebe Silva, Bill Weeden, and Sandy York.

I designed settings and props for Penny Dreadful (#7: The Peril of Penny- a Damsel lost in Time, #9: The Terrible Tale of the Black Dragon, #11: The House Where Bad Things Happen,#12: The Last Century), settings for Caitlin and the Swan for The Management, props for Adventure Quest, and a murderous crucifix (The CRUCIFILER) for Roger Nasser's short horror film Leviticus 26.

In other areas of my life during the last 28, my maternal grandmother, Lucille Curry McCown, passed away in the Summer of 2009, and I went down to be there for my mother. It was my first funeral. I stayed for a week and helped my Mom get things settled. Surreal and natural.

Moved into Bushwick from the Burg, getting much more space for much less money. (The rent is still too damn high) The goal has been to create a rehearsal/performance space out of the new homestead. With the help of Abariss Culjak and Danny Pudelek, I built a big loft, which is 90% complete (is construction/home improvement ever finished?). Building well is its own reward.

I will say that the past 28 months has seen:

• The development of my design/builder skill set -
• An increased trust in my intuition, and the development of that trust into a practice -
• A clearing away of obstacles - both deliberate and happenstantially
• The broadening and deepening of my artistic community -
• A return to visual art as a practice -

TODAY:
I went to the Actor's Equity Audition Center today to audition for Pennsylvania Shakespeare, but arrived far too late to be seen (#141 on the alternate list). I have been lucky at the last few auditions that I have been to at the AEA Center, strolling in at 10 or 11am and getting an appointment. Not so today: the first person on line today got there at 5:30am, The call opened at 8am, and they were out of appointments by 8:30am.
Rumour has it that they will have another date in February (here's hoping), and - lesson learned - I will be up early for the next call and all hereafter.
The venture was not without reward, however, as I was fortunate to see a few friends at Equity - Alexis Black, Amy Liszka, Josh Silverman, and Sheila Joon to name a few - which is always nice, but I also had a bit of a breakthrough concerning the piece I had chosen for today's audition while working through it as I waited. I look forward to doing it soon! More auditions are coming up on the 27th (The Bridge Project's Richard III) and on February 28th there is Hudson Valley Shakespeare, with more Summer Stock opportunities posting every day, so we shall see.

COMING UP:
I will be performing in The Universal Rundle, one of 4 one-acts that comprise Trav S.D.'s Tent Show Tetragrammaton running at La Mama E.T.C. from March 17th - April 3rd (my Birthday!)

ONGOING:
Writing:
Blue-beard Part I: The Angel - in process
Blue-beard Part II: The Devil - in process

A 3-part Dungeons & Dragons adventure to be hopefully sold freelance to WOTC - all in process:
I: The Rooted Court
II: The Shardstones of the PhaseQueen's Horde
III: The Mage of the Silver Tower

As above so below,

Timothy

∞ ♥
"per artem facit Magiam, arte faciendi magick"

The Evening's Research Reading Yield: Bloody Hell

vampire

1. The reanimated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave at night and suck the blood of persons asleep.

2. One who lives by preying on others.


Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary

"One sign of the vampire is the power of the hand. The slender hand of Mircalla closed like a vise of steel on the General's wrist when he raised the hatchet to strike. But its power is not confined to its grasp; it leaves a numbness in the limb it seizes, which is slowly, if ever, recovered from.
"I may mention, in passing, that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenant is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present, in the grave, and when they show themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life.
"Its horrible lust for living blood supplies the vigour of its waking existence. The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love by particular persons. In pursuit of these it will excercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem, for access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways. It will never desist until it has satiated its passion, and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will in these cases husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure, and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary cases it goes direct to its object, overpowers with violence, and strangles and exhausts often at a single feast."

-from Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (1871)

I think it best to treat the subject of this research as if it were not one with which I am already very familiar, so in support of that interest I do consult the dictionary for a sort of no-nonsense literality, and aim to fill in the holes in my reading on the topic with an anthology of Vampire-fiction (The Dracula Book of Great Vampire Stories) including, and beginning with Carmilla.

I really enjoyed Carmilla. The writing was dripping with Gothic atmosphere (The Introduction to the collection noted that Le Fanu and Bram Stoker were both Dubliners who infused the landscapes of their novels with the brooding gloomy beauty of Ireland), and the Vampire-attacks were put forth with eerie surreality. I was also struck by the way that Carmilla/Millarca/Mircalla was literally charming all who she preyed upon, with very few instances of anger or ferocity displayed. I remember in the folk-stories I read as a child, of the Ban-sidhe, of the Wurdulak, the Vrykolakas, all of them have the Vampires charming their way into their goals, very rarely reacting with ire or fear except when caught in the act and crossed from feeding or returning to its place of rest.

In most current and recent portrayals of Vampires, The Charm aspect is all too often set aside in favour of the "MTV-hiss Factor", which needless to say, dilutes the Magick and gives Vampires a cheezy name...

There is also this from The Giaour (1813), by George Gordon, Lord Byron:

But first, on earth as vampire sent,

Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:

Then ghastly haunt thy native place,

And suck the blood of all thy race;

There from thy daughter, sister, wife,

At midnight drain the stream of life;

Yet loathe the banquet which perforce

Must feed thy livid living corse:

Thy victims ere they yet expire

Shall know the demon for their sire,

As cursing thee, thou cursing them,

Thy flowers are withered on the stem.

Twos-dy

I have had a four-day weekend of social and cultural activity. Friday night I attended a Baby Shower for April Vidal that went late into the evening (those Mothers-to-be sure do like to party!), Saturday I saw Oh What War at HERE (Which was EXCELLENT), and attended a fine after-theatre snack and schmack-fest with tasty treats and an open bar, Sunday we attended a lovely garden party with grilling and Margaritas among cast members of Everything Must Go at Dina Rivera and Matt Gray's place, and Monday (Last Night) was well-spent at The Brick, attending the Penny Dreadful Season Two Fundraiser. Entertainment featured Burlesque by Rita Menweep, Opera by Matt Curran, and Magic by Nelson Lugo, with Fred Backus as The Amazing Viernik, and culminating with the one-night only presentation of Penny Dreadful Episode 6.5: The Future Ain't What It Used To Be with Eric Bland, Gavin Starr Kendall, Katie Brack, Samantha Mason, V. Orion Delwaterman, and Jessica Savage as "Penny". The "mini-episode" was set entirely in 2012 and took place both in the Maximum Security Prison that Penny materialized into from the year 1907 as a result of "The Great Switcheroo", and in an "underground labyrinth" beneath the Prison, the final moments being Penny recoiling in horror from a fresh corpse as a disembodied voice whispered, "Run, Penny, run.", and she did, slipping into darkness... It set the tone of the Serial's Second Season, continued deeply in the vein of its "horror suspense adventure mystery", and definitely created anticipation for the next full installment, Episode 7, due out in October 18th & 19th. I, for one, will Mark my Calendar...

http://www.thirdlows.com/pennydreadful/main.htm

Saturn-day

Home today much of the day until the evening when I will go see Juggernaut Theatre's presentation of Oh What War (conceived and directed by Mallory Catlett, script by Jason Craig of Banana Bag and Bodice, and featuring Craig and fellow BBB'er Jessica Jelliffe performing) @ HERE Arts Centre. It is a riff off of Joan Littlewood's Oh What A Lovely War, and has been in development for some time now. I had occasion to see the earlier version of it a couple years ago (also @ HERE).

Writing today.

Morning Meditation

I sit up here drinking coffee at this early hour, watching the sun come up, listening to We're Only In It For The Money by Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention, while Jasmine lay by my feet grooming herself on the carpet, and I consider current irons in the fire:

• The ongoing writing process for Blue-beard - Part Two is almost at its primary seal, and Part One grows steadily...and I find myself beginning to think of actors for both parts now. I have been seeing a lot of shows lately, and have had the pleasure of discovering some performers whose work was heretofore unknown to me.


• I may direct a workshop of one of Kirk Wood Bromley's new plays, When I met Juliet, beginning sometime sometime soon (as soon as I get the play from him), but he is busy with the rehearsals for another new play, "Untitled', that he is directing, himself.


• Researching a film role as a supernatural predator (!) - this prospect excites me more than anything I've done in a long while...


• The development of Fork YES! as an artistic entity, including the development of Work, and the deepening of relationships with Peers in the community of Work.

Ate too, tooth ows and ate.

The Rain brings rumination, seemingly, without fail. Writing and cleaning today, a welcome day "off" from the day-job (but never a day off from the A-job. The trick: make sure every day-job is an A-job). Working with good people in the open air under the sun by the water to erect a Forum for the burlesque circus that is Spiegelworld. I have been informed by Kevin Bartlett that the Fringe is using the Second Tent space during the Festival for the Burlesque-y acts presented by them this year, while Spiegelworld gets its Big Top together in the Big Tent...The job has been a gift, certainly, and not only for me - I have been able to get work for three others besides myself (Artists and loved ones, all three) - and work in the Summer for such freelancers as we is a blessed precious thing, indeed.

As far as Writing is concerned, the story goes on, deepens, and progresses. The Shape of Part Two from beginning to end (and linking both) came in inspiration and proceeds to inform in intuition as I go on. It will be read-ready very soon. Part One, too, becomes more distinct as I deepen Part Two. They are designed to work independently as individual plays that are also two halves of a greater whole. That design is beginning to be palpable in its manifestation. The Air is thick with It, and I just may have both ready for workshop rehearsal by Winter. Hot.

Up with the Sun

...or at 730am, which is when I noticed its rays enough to distract me from my slumber. Brewing the bean and facing the day ahead with easy expectation. Writing continues (and will continue to continue), with definite forward progress palpable. After much has been researched and osmosed and after much has been written, and after much time off from writing - during whichtime of non-writing, much rumination on the writing has occurred - I am now simply Getting On With It, finishing scenes dangling in composition, and crafting new ones, trimming and cutting, and moving it forward, and "hooray" say I that I am. Most of the day will be writing, then off to see Coyote Love at Under St. Marks tonight.

The MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction For The Stage

The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage closed Thursday, June 12th to a lovely audience overfilling the Brick, with some at the apron of the stage sitting on mats from Babylon, Babylon!, and others sitting on the edges of risers; all were ready to listen and watch and laugh and take in the tale as Orson intended it to be told.
There is talk and interest among the creatives involved about a possible re-mount in 2009...

HAMLET at the Delacorte.

Last evening I saw the new Hamlet at the Delacorte in the Park. Much of it was good. The cutting of the text was good. The duel at the end of Act Five was good. The actors were all good, some were excellent (Lauren Ambrose as Ophelia, David Harbour as Laertes, Sam Waterston as Polonius, and Jay O. Sanders as The Ghost, The Player King, and The Gravedigger most especially), but I felt that Director Oskar Eustis did not Illuminate the text - what I mean by that is nearly everything was well-spoken, but there was little in the language that was SPECIFICALLY Clear, and there was little in the action as directed that made clear WHY things were happening as they were: So much was done, seemingly, "because that's the way it's always been done". Hamlet treats Polonius badly from the first moments of the "fish-monger scene" but we don't know WHY, Hamlet treats Ophelia awfully in the "nunnery" scene, but we don't know WHY, the Play-within-a-play affects Claudius so powerfully, but we don't really know WHY. The "Advice to the players" was done as it usually is, with Hamlet telling the Players how to do their job, and the Players lovingly listening to him do it (I don't know ANY actors who would react that way - perhaps they were different in Shakespeare's day- but I doubt it, and the text of Hamlet indicates otherwise).

Andre Braugher is one of my favourite actors - I loved him in "Homicide:Life on the Street", so I was really looking forward to his Claudius, and I liked him very much in his scene-work (and particularly in Act IV), but felt that his soliloquies were a bit rushed- I didn't see a man wrestling with "Heaven and Earth" after the Play Scene. Michael Stuhlbarg is a very good actor, but I felt that much of what he was doing as Hamlet was VERY technical, and almost mannered. He seemed to be looking at himself in the role, and almost commenting on it. His best work was in the Gravedigger scene: very simple, very clear, very grounded, and very real.

I saw in the Program Notes that Oskar Eustis saw Hamlet as a man who is "clinically depressed", and that makes some sense of what I saw last night, I suppose, because to reduce the role and the story to such a 21st century diagnosis does both a simplistic disservice.

"...and the rain came hammering down"

Rain, indeed, today. A slick and soggy dreamscape. Non-stop since early on and continuing now into the afternoon. I must enter into its stream soon enough, soon enough as well, while on my way into the day itself, as I errand and meet and move through space and time.

Work progresses. Monday, I filmed Camille Morin's piece, Over Again, based on cuttings from Beckett. Rehearsals continue for The Magnificent Ambersons, and a reading on the 21st of Edward Einhorn's Rudolf II. Today we meet about The Beelzebub Sonata at 3pm with Barbara Vann, in the interests of quiring out a space.

Friday I saw Babylon Babylon at the Brick. I was sucked into the World and the action from the first, as (Author, Director, Actor) Jeff Lewonczyk, as "Logios, a storyteller", brought the audience into the world of Babylon, 539 B.C.E. specifically the Temple of Ishtar, on the eve of the Persian attack led by Cyrus, while the 30-person cast entered in opposite parallel directions to so embody the living rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates. I loved the show. It took me somewhere very specific and very alien and also very familiar, dreamlike almost. The cast was excellent, investing the reality with a wonderful and hermetically-sealed verisimilitude of action form and gesture. Hope Cartelli, Michael Criscuolo and Iracel Rivero, Fred Backus and Gyda Arber, Aaron Baker and Adam Swiderski, Ali Skye Bennet, Danny Bowes and Siobhan Doherty, Robert Pinnock and Roger Nasser, Marguerite French, and the afore-mentioned Jeff Lewonczyk particularly impressed. Lights wonderful and appropriate, Set great - simple and grand (The Lion of Babylon painting is a personal favourite...), and the music and dancing were hypnotic and lovely, Grand and Terrible. Jeff's script is a delight, really. The scope, the simplicity, the parallels to people and places and things that we all know in our lives and world are there, as well as having the permission for "Babylonian-licence", as it were, to justify things that we do not have in the everyday all make for an accessible, challengung (in a good way), and fun piece of writing. A treat of an evening.

Saw Kirk Wood Bromley's latest, Me, on Saturday at the Ohio Theatre. The production was excellent, beautifully costumed and lit, with an environment that is beautiful aesthetically, entirely appropriate and right for the material at hand, and ideal for playing in the Ohio's many-pillared space, seating audience within the pillars creating a thrust stage that is at once both vast and intimate. The actors were excellent, with Sarah Malinda Engelke being the obvious stand-out, making the absolute most out of the opportunity of playing a character that is both natural and supernatural, a trickster-spirit with an edge. She leads the way in for the cast, in terms of energy, focus, facility with language and ideas, emotional truth, and playfulness, setting a nice high bar for all. Bob Laine, Josh Hartung, Annie Scott, Drew Cortese, Brenda Withers, Lora Chio, Marshall York, Dan Renkin, Arthur Aulisi, Paula Wilson, and Erwin Thomas all do outstanding work bringing the work to life with ease and authority and pleasure.

And I'm off...

INFINITY'S SUMMONS: An Exploration into the Theatre of Pure Form of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz

"Deception of Woman (Maryla Grossmanowa and Self-portrait)"
by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, 1927,
pastel, 115.5 x 184 cm, National Museum, Warsaw

TADZIO: People are like insects, and Infinity surrounds them and Summons them in a mysterious voice.
-The Water Hen, Act I

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, perhaps better known as Witkacy (the name he created to differentiate himself from his identically-named father, a well-known landscape painter), was born in Warsaw on February 24th, 1885, and committed suicide outside Zakopane on September 18th 1939, after Soviet forces invaded Poland and crushed his country’s hopes for independence.
Witkacy was a painter, a philosopher, a highly prolific and original playwright, a dramatic theorist, a photographer, a professional portraitist, and an experimenter of (and consequent expert on) a wide variety of drugs such as stimulants (cocaine, caffeine, and nicotine), psychotropics (absinthe, hashish, cannabis and peyote), and depressives (alcohol).
He developed the Theory of Pure Form in Art, which he manifested in his disturbingly beautiful paintings and beautifully disturbing plays, in which can be found elements of Expressionism, Romanticism, Surrealism, Absurdism, and Existentialism; the common denominator of these aspects being the individual’s lonely struggle for meaning, and a sporadic and fleeting mysticsm.
Witkacy, however, was a self-styled enemy of “isms”:

We live in an age of manifestoes: even before an artistic movement spontaneously comes into being, its theory is often already in a state of near perfection. Theories are starting to create movements, and not vice versa. Besides, in former times there weren’t “movements”, in our sense of the word, or different “isms”, there were only powerful personalities and the schools formed by their followers. A greater and greater intellectualization of the creative process, and subjugation of the creative process and subjugation of the outbursts of genius to principles conceived a priori is the characteristic trait of our times.[1]

Witkacy asserted that Art was sourced in religious mysteries, or, more specifically, “metaphysical feeling”:

The experience of the mystery of existence as unity in plurality, due to that impression of unity which, as in painting and music, is created by combinations of simple elements…[2]

He reasoned that as religious mysteries lost their significance to humanity, the importance of metaphysical feelings waned, and theatre gradually fell into a “pure reproduction of life”[3], (i.e., realism) intensified though it may be. This downward progression from a connection with the mysteries of existence to merely a somewhat more interesting representation of daily life is analogous to the “decay of metaphysical feelings themselves”[4]. In his “Theoretical Introduction to Tumor Brainowicz”[5], Witkacy also defines metaphysical feelings as a “unity of personality”, this then implies that the realistic form of theatre also waters down what was an individual’s mystical connection with God, and renders it into something pre-packaged for the masses, dissolving the unity of the personality, and fomenting and perpetuating a spiritual down-spiral into a loss of individuality, as well as the individual’s personal search for meaning, which is then rendered into so much uniform grey sludge hopelessly mired among the quagmire of the status quo.
Witkacy posits this question:

Is it possible, even only for a short period, for a form of the theatre to arise in which contemporary man, independent of dead myths and beliefs, could experience the metaphysical feelings which ancient man experienced through those myths and beliefs?[6]

His answer is that only “True Pure Art”,

…art whose substance is not the reproduction of the visible world or real feelings, but a purely formal unity which ties the given elements into a dissoluble whole….[7]

can possibly accomplish this task, only through Pure Form –that is, form revealing essence in its purest sense, utilizing all the elements of theatre, which contains its own logic intrinsic to the formal unity of the performance.
The characters should not be bound to a “real-life” through-line of psychology and action, but should express “fantastic psychology and action”, which acts as a pretext for a pure progression of events…characters who are completely implausible in “real-life” producing “events which by their bizarre interrelationships create a performance in time not limited by any logic except of the form itself of that performance”. The point is that everything must be perceived as necessary and inevitable within the structure of the form itself.[8]
The actors should not try to feel the emotions and experiences of the characters on stage, to imitate them, but

…should create the role…which entails the following…the actor must understand the whole of the play…the formal conception of the work…and its character, apart from all real-life probabilities…Next, he should build his role that…he can execute with mathematical precision whatever is required by the purely formal conception of the particular work in question…his work will be genuinely creative only when he considers himself an element in the given whole.[9]

To the director:

Setting the formal tone depends, of course, on the director…forget completely about life and pay no attention to any real-life consequences of what is happening onstage at any given moment as it relates to what is about to happen at the next moment…[10]

The spectator’s feeling after the performance should be that of having literally been transported into a world that has no direct bearing on “real-life”:

On leaving the theatre, the spectator ought to have the feeling that he has just awakened from some strange dream in which even the most ordinary things had a strange unfathomable charm, characteristic of dream reveries, and unlike anything else in the world.[11]

The Dream Reverie -or more precisely, the Dream- is that contact with the mystery of existence –the metaphysical feelings which are the mystical experience of communion with God. The characters in Witkacy’s plays who are privy to this experience –and there are several such- know it to be a terrifying, if revelatory experience. Alexander Walpurg, the titular madman of The Madman and the Nun, is a poet, locked up for having a “weak nervous system”, and for “Cocaine. The clock in my head. And that eternal question of whether I killed her or she killed me. Even in the fraction of a second I think two thoughts as different as God and Satan.” Walpurg is privy to the esoteric torments and ecstasies of metaphysical feelings:

WALPURG: There’s only one thing certain: today the greatest Art is found only in perversion and madness –I’m talking, of course, about Form. But for the True Creative Artists, not the jackals, the forms they create are intimately connected to their own lives.[12]

The protagonist of The Water Hen, Edgar Valpor, wants to be “Great” to satisfy his father, The Captain, who wants him to be an artist; and Edgar half-heartedly humours him, but lacks Greatness for it; the Water Hen wants Edgar to kill her –and he does, but immediately regrets it; and later, when the Hen returns from death, seemingly better than ever, again urging Edgar to kill her, and when he finally, definitively does kill her, and consequently decides to kill himself as well in despair, his father encourages him in his prospective suicide:

EDGAR: So, Father, you’re against me, too?
FATHER: Not against you, but with you against life. I’m waiting for you to become an artist. [13]

Plasmonick Blodestaug, the hero of The Anonymous Work (which is subtitled, Four Acts of a Rather Nasty Nightmare), is also an artist, also privy to the Theory of Pure Form; after the woman he loved and who had spurned him tells him:

ROSA: Plazy, I’m yours –only yours. I’ve woken up from a terrible nightmare. I don’t love him anymore.
PLASMONICK: It’s too late, Miss Rosa, it’s too late. I love Miss Claudestina de Montreuil. I’ve finally woken up from a nightmare, too –the nightmare of loving you. I’m starting to paint in a completely different way.

Later, when Plasmonick seems on the verge of suicide, and his father says:

BLODESTAUG: Plazy! Don’t kill yourself! Art!
PLASMONICK: Wouldn’t think of it, Father. Miss Rosa –your turn now. (Rushes at her and slits her throat with lightning speed. Rosa falls dead. Calmly.) My secret inner voice told me to. She already composed herself out, anyway…so it’s no loss to Art. In our times there are only two places for metaphysical individuals: prison or the insane asylum. [14]

The world is a nightmare and a dream. Both and neither. The Water Hen is shot and killed twice during the action of The Water Hen, the first time she urges Edgar Valpor to murder her– when he does, she doesn’t stay dead, and she returns, sexier and more beautiful than before. Her second death is fought against furiously, but is final.

The madman Walpurg hangs himself, only to walk in moments later to smilingly view his own corpse hanging from the window; Edgar Valpor shoots himself to become “Great”; The Engineer and the Fireman in The Crazy Locomotive urge their runaway train on, faster and faster –their philosophical discussion seemingly setting the pace of the engine, as they reveal themselves to be, respectively, Prince Trefaldi, King of murderers, and Travaillac, “sought in vain by the police, all over the world”. As the locomotive goes on, there is an increasing sense of imminent revelation reinforced by the feeling of imminent death.[15]
Death is around every corner, and in Witkacy’s plays, just as in life, when confronted with it we begin to reveal to ourselves and to others who we truly are. It is a mystery of existence that cannot be met en masse, but individually, and what awaits us within death, within our discovery of ourselves may well be, on the other hand, what the dead Pope Julius of The Cuttlefish, or the Hyrcanian Worldview seems to indicate:

ELLA: Oh my GOD, my GOD- I’ll die of fright. I’m afraid of you, Holy Father –save me. You’ve come from Heaven.
JULIUS II: (Speaking with cruelty) How do you know that Heaven isn’t a symbol for the most awful renunciation? Renouncing one’s personality. I’m a shadow just as she is. (He points to the statue.)[16]

At bottom, or above it all, or in the thick of it, we are alone, surrounded by strangers, stranger even to themselves, than we are to ourselves.

ROCKOFFER: I’m unknowable even to myself. Look at the paintings I’ve already done and you’ll see who I used to be. But if you look at what I’m going to do now, you’ll see what I want to be; the rest is a delusion.
-The Cuttlefish, or the Hyrcanian Worldview

PLASMONICK: Let’s talk some more. Then I’ll forget the frightful situation I’m in, if just for a minute. Physical pain and theoretical discussions are my only pleasures –then I don’t think about the realities of my life.
-The Anonymous Work

Witkacy wanted there to be a formal unity of an idea behind the theatre of Pure Form, a new dead myth or belief to send the spectator into a world which exists always at the edge of our senses, something definite and yet unknowable, and into which we tap, if only briefly, to keep us going through the everyday terrors of “real-life”, something like catharsis to let us know that there is something else beyond being alone.

TADZIO: Don’t cry, Papa, these are only little pictures God paints with his magic pastels.
-The Water Hen

[1] “The Analogy with Painting”, (1920).
[2] as above.
[3] as above.
[4] as above.
[5] “Theoretical introduction to Tumor Brainowicz”, (1920)
[6] See 1-4, above.
[7] As above.
[8] “On a New Kind of Play.”(1920).
[9] “A Few Words About the Role of the Actor in the Theatre of Pure Form” (1920)
[10] As above.
[11] See 8, above.
[12] The Madman and the Nun, (1923).
[13] As above.
[14] The Anonymous Work, Four Acts of a Rather Nasty Nightmare, (1921)
[15] The Crazy Locomotive, (1923)
[16] The Cuttlefish, or the Hyrcanian Worldview, (1921)

Saturday Update

A return to work upon the pair of plays I have been writing, Blue-beard, Parts I & II. I am further along with the second part than I am with the first. I am viewing them as very different plays in that their respective worlds are mixed somewhat differently in terms of what forces are dominantly portrayed as having sway. The first shows earthly forces excercising a kind of victory over spiritual, then the second shows the emptiness of such a world driving spirit to the test. Seeming and Being. I would like them to be complete by the End of the Summer. We'll see. Already thinking about casting as I write, which is a good thing, I think. When I wrote my last full-length, I wrote three parts with specific actors in mind, and those actors excelled in their eventual manifestations of the roles thus written, so...

At any rate, it helps me to visualize as I write, which makes the writing come faster.

At the very beginning stages of rehearsals for Ian W. Hill's adaptation of The Magnificent Ambersons, which will go up for four days in June for "The Film Festival: A Theatre Festival" at the Brick. We will screen the version that the Studio released this coming Monday at the Brick.

In the past month I saw The Optimist, Hooray For What?, Di Ksube (The Marriage Contract), Tristan und Isolde, Hiroshima: Crucible of Light, The Taste of Blue, and The Boy That Wanted to Be a Robot.