Jaded Optimist Coloring Book

After reading my Sorry Sorry blogs, my dear friend Loren Niemi emailed me privately to see if I was ok. Loren, and anyone else who reads this blog: I’m ok. I have been singing the blues for the last couple of months and I would be telling a great big fib if I said that lo and behold, the blues have washed away this sunny Monday AM. They haven’t. More or less. Life has its ups and downs. I surely know that at least as much as the next person. Sometimes the downs overwhelm the ups, as has been the case with me recently. The good news is that there are concrete reasons for this most recent chaotic journey. I am an empathic person. I have always been such. I was warned in my teens by my guardian at the time that I felt the pain of others too acutely. He was right about that. Perhaps other things as well. These down times will pass. I am not yet suicidal. I’m actually too narcissistic to be truly suicidal. For that I have Mr. Bojangles to thank. So, it is a new day and the sun is shining and the humidity is low and life is not too bad. I will be going to a Moth slam in NYC tomorrow night and hopefully my muse will have returned before I get up on stage. I suspect it has already found its way home.

Further thoughts on the topic of storytelling: there is a place where stand up comedy, sketch comedy, personal narrative, and mythology intersect. I’m not sure where that place is, but wherever it is, that’s where all forms of storytelling meet. It’s a place where the teller, comic or whatever takes off his/her ego and stands before and apart of a group of listeners and shares what is inside and needs to come out. Somewhere in the delicious chaos known as a Fringe Festival, this place is found over and over again usually to the delight of the audience and teller alike. It’s not always profound, but it is almost always worth grabbing onto riding off into the sunset with (and yes, this is a dangling preposition. Get over it!).

I have been in such a personal hell recently that it has been hard for me to do as much blogging as normal.  I like to say what I really think and leave the more literary stuff to Matthew and others.  I am basically a straight ahead type of blogger.  Little artifice and a certain absence of eloquence.  I saw fewer shows this year than in the last couple, but still managed to see 15 shows.  As my wife and I headed back to Stillwater without stopping to see an Encore show (has never happened before) and totally blowing off the party at First Avenue, I told my wife that I was somewhat disappointed this year with a lot of the shows I saw.  They seemed flat, not really risk taking.  That made me feel bad.  But after some reflection, and reading other’s reviews, I was left with the realization that what was flat was me.  I hate to be so damn confessional here, but it’s true, I was in a personal hell during this Fringe and should probably not have agreed to do a last minute show.  I hoped a show would pull me out of what ails me.  It didn’t, which is really a drag.  I love Fringe more than just about anything and now it’s over until next year.  Damn that hurts.  Ah well, soon it will be 5:30 AM Monday morning and life goes on.

I loved watching Penny Freeh dance in small aida at Jeune Lune.  I loved Fool for a Client at BLB.  I missed Squirrel, but I’m certain that Joe Scrimshaw et al were brilliant as usual.  Allegra’s Tipping the Bucket was great fun and I was thrilled to see Allegra off the page so much.  Allegra rocks!  I missed seeing Amy Salloway and Kevin Kling.  Cody Rivers was a knockout, Regi Carpenter in The Dog, Moses and Me made me want to laugh and weep simultaneously, and gave me a knew friend, Deviants at the Soap Factory intrigued me but not much more (although that may have been my, not the show’s fault), Spaceman Chronicles at Jeune Lune took my mind off of the blues for an hour this evening and for that I am indebted, and perhaps my personal favorite this week was The Pumpkin Pie Show by Horse Trade Theater Group.  Man, you two just grabbed my by my limp shirt collar and pulled me to my feet, smacked me upside my head and gave me one big fat smile that lasted an entire evening.  There were several shows I saw that I just didn’t like very much, including one of my own, but except for mine, there is little to be gained by being negative here, especially as I said somewhere, I’m not sure how much was the show, how much my crappy mood.

I am chagrined.  Big time.  This past Friday, I gave what I believe was the worst performance of my entire life.  I have been on stage often enough these last 59 years to know that every once in awhile you give the audience far less than they deserve.  I also know that apologizing for the lump of coal you occasionally leave on stage is not recommended.  But fuck it.  I need to apologize.  My and Loren Niemi’s show in the 2008 Minnesota Fringe Festival was, although a last minute repalcement, rolling along pretty well according to the reviews.  And in fact, I tended to agreee with the mostly favorable reviews.  For a whole host of personal reasons, I was, to be polite, FLAT and DISJOINTED in this one performance.  I offer the following not as an excuse, but merely to explain:  My personal and professional life the last couple of months has been hell.  The details are personal and will not be shared with any who may read this blog.  Suffice it to say that when I got on stage this past Friday I was gone both physically and mentally.  If I could return the money audience member spent to see the show I would.  I cannot.  A story telling performance artist needs to be in the moment and sharing with the audience.  I was not and did not.  I suppose to be kind to myself, this is really the first truly shitty performance I can ever really recall giving, so perhaps that’s not too bad.  I can promise any and all that this will not happen again.  I was so chagrined about this performance that I could not bear to go to the Fringe closing party tonight, an event I have never missed.  If I get in the Fringe next year, and you were one of the unfortunate audience members this past Friday, let me know and you will be comped.

As I finally begin my mad dash to see as many Fringe shows as humanly possible I find myself sitting in Bryant Lake Bowl actually laughing out loud at Mark Whitney’s show “Fool for a Client.” As I’m walking out the door I happened to overhear two people complaining that the show wasn’t storytelling, it was stand-up comedy.  This person’s companion huffed in agreement and went on to say that it wasn’t “even ” theater.  So I ponder.   This commentary between two Fringegoers with whom I have more than a passing acquaintance kind of hit home a bit too much like the spicey harissa sauce I had with my lunch today at Sapor.  It gave me heart burn.  Actually, these last words are unfair to the harissa-I ate that voluntarily and loved the taste and felt that the heart burn was a fair price to pay for some serious spice.  You see, I am a performer, Fringe and otherwise, and I use humor (often of the serious R or even X rated) to tell my stories.  Often, the more painful the story, the darker and broader the humor.  Not every story needs to be of the traditional variety.  Story can be personal narrative (visit the Moth web site and you’ll know what that genre is all about), it can be ancient folk tale, it can have a clearly defined plot, or moral.  It can be told completely scripted or significantly improved.  It can be read with fairly minimal physicality or completely “acted”.  From my point of view, a storyteller is someone who speaks from the stage directly to the audience as opposed to someone or a group of someones who uses the stage as a private world and allows the audience to watch the action more or less as a voyeur.  So what the hell is my point?  Fool for a Client is a most compelling personal narrative told to a participating audience in an extremely humerous manner.  Sometimes using sex or other no-no’s to allow people to groan, hiss,  laugh, etc.  Mark Whitney is most definitely a storyteller, and if that title bothers you because you have a narrow definition of what a storyteller is, then life for you is full of too many shoulds and should nots, which makes me laugh because in many ways, that was pretty much the main point of Mark’s story.  The show is outstanding and selling out, so if you still plan to go, reserve, reserve, reserve.

And now for more ranting on this topic: I went to the Rarig Arena last evening to watch the always glorious Charlie Bethel do his one hour version of Beowulf. Damn he’s good. He told me later that evening at Fringe Central at the Bedlam that he felt that he had rushed the piece a bit. Charlie: get over it! You were, as always, just too damn exhilarating for words. When Charlie Bethel is in the Fringe, go see him. Always. But, was what Charlie doing storytelling? According to my thesis set forth above (ok, not really a thesis, more a poorly sketched out set of thoughts), the answer is yes. Charlie was not doing a story in a bubble world that we, the voyeurs in the audience got to see and with which we could not really interact. Charlie was telling the tale of Beowulf to us, all of us, in 360 degrees of energetic glory. Was there a “story?” Of course, Beowulf is a story in epic poem poetic form. Seems like a story to me. It has a plot. Dramatic arc. All that good stuff. So, Charlie Bethel is a story teller who told us a classic story as interpreted by him. He used humor and some audience interaction to bring the piece alive. Similar in some ways to what Mark Whitney uses in his piece described above. And, I will vainly add, similar to what I do (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) in my show Alone and Testifying at Interact. 3 very very different shows. All I posit, storytelling.

I also saw Mortem Capiendum by Four Humors Theater last night.  This was not, I have decided, storytelling.  It was sketch comedy ala Saturday Night Live.  I’m not sure why I make that distinction here, but it seems that the purpose of the performers here was to tell an hour long joke in sketch form.  How’s that for saying nothing.  There was a story, plot and all (more or less).  It was clearly interactive with the audience.  There was certainly lots of physicality.  I don’t know why, it just wasn’t storytelling, and I’m fairly certain that the three hysterically funny performers don’t see themselves as storytellers.  I’d bet they see themselves as comic performers.  Oh well, who cares.  I, and apparently everyone else in the theater, has a hell of a lot of fun.  You know, laugh until your face hurts fun.  Was it Great?  No.  Like many sketches on SNL, it went on a bit too long for my taste.  They could have cut 10 minutes from the piece and it would have been every bit as funny and felt tighter.  It dragged in some places.  But that’s quibbling.  I still watch SNL as often as I can (I’ve been a fan from Day 1; John Belushi was a childhood friend, and the BEST person with whom to share a joint), and highly recommend this show to anyone who enjoys irreverent sketch comedy.

The 2008 Minnesota Fringe Festival “www.fringefestival.org” begins this Thursday, July 31st. Let me recap: I am a member of the Board of the Minnesota Fringe Festival. I am also an overtly political, usually sexually explicit performance artist who has not missed performing in a fringe since 2008. This is not a testament to my skill as a performer; rather is is merely a testament to good luck. Entrance into the Minnesota Fringe, like most Fringe Festivals worldwide is by the luck of the draw and not because some snotty Executive Director or Producer or some other big deal person decides to let you in. The Fringe is all about being the best unjuried, uncensored performing arts and not about elitism and cliquishness. All this openness, transparency and luck of the drawishness is what I love about the Minnesota Fringe. Although I love it just a touch less when I find myself on the outside looking in, which, until two days ago, was precisely where I found myself. My number was not drawn (I was WAY DOWN) on the wait list. No one asked me to join their show (which has happened in the past). I even offered directorial and other advice free of charge to any Fringe newbies who needed a helping hand. No takers. Oh boo hoo I told myself. Just get over it. Enjoy being a mere spectator and blogger for once. Really feel the Fringe. Blah blah. I was going to keep a stiff upper lip and all that but was feeling a touch blue. I did manage to Bogart myself into my friend and often performance buddy Loren Niemi’s Indianapolis show, and will be on stage with him there later in August. For more info on this show and this Fringe: www.indyfringe.org, and “our” show specifically: www.indyfringe.org/aloneandtestifying.php”; But no Minnesota Fringe. Until last Friday, when the Fringe sent out an email to all wait listed artists letting us know that 2 shows had dropped out last minute and anyone who could be ready to go in an instant (artwork, description, minuscule tech, etc) could have a slot. I saw the email the second it arrived (I am a CrackBerry addict), hesitated 1 second, called Loren, and voila, we are now in the Minneapolis Fringe Festival. Oh Joy! Oh Rapture! Oh Panic! One week until we open. Fuck it. We’re in! I’m in! I can wipe the mope from my brow and join the party where I enjoy it most: onstage. The name of the show is ALONE AND TESTIFYING (funny, that’s the same title of our show in the Indy Fringe), and we will be at the INTERACT CENTER FOR THE VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS, 212 3rd Ave N # 140, Minneapolis, MN 55401, (612) 339-5145. Our schedule is:

Sat., Aug. 2 @ 10:00 p.m.
Sun., Aug. 3 @ 5:30 p.m.
Mon., Aug. 4 @ 8:30 p.m.
Fri., Aug. 8 @ 8:30 p.m.
Sat., Aug. 9 @ 2:30 p.m.

For more info: http://www.fringefestival.org/2008/show/?id=966

Have a rehearsal now. More later.