2.sailor(man)

every year,
the new york international fringe festival
hosts a bevy of the world's newest, most innovative theatre pieces

and also a lot of utter shit.

a prime example of such wonderful theatre came to me in the form of one "sailor man," an dark and profoundly moving tale of the misunderstood popeye the sailor man, his arch nemesis, and the love of his life. complete with mind-blowing stage fights, Tony-award-worthy performances, seamless scene changes, and brilliant direction, "sailor man" changed. my. life.

actually i'm being sarcastic. get it?

let me paint you a picture:

john, candy and i arrived at the bleecker street theatre one evening, fully anticipating what was sure to be an incredible show. after all, it received glowing reviews from the fringe press, and how could anyone go wrong with a production about popeye the sailor man, a staple of my childhood? why, the audience was packed, the excitement palpable, the players over-confident and the house manager overly jolly. we took our seats with no hesitation and waited patiently for the show to begin...

i wish it hadn't.

from then on, i was filled with an overwhelming sense of horror at what i was witnessing. everything - EVERYTHING - was. terrible. the man playing popeye put on this heinous voice to try to channel the beloved cartoon, when in actuality, all it did was make me cringe. the first fight scene was painfully amateur, and tried to compensate for its own sloppiness by sloshing around gallons of fake blood for us to "ooo" and "aawwe" at. no cigar, sailor guy. i felt more like i was watching a poorly planned comedy sketch than an actual show at this point. what's more, the scene changes (there were two of them, and it was two too many) took upwards of five minutes. in the dark. with little result. in fact, the only real purpose of these changes was to mop up the puddles of fake blood, which served no purpose anyhow and would have been simpler to clean if someone on their high horse had just decided to keep the lights on. but alas, such was not the case.

much to john's chagrin, the direction was abominable. it looked as though the actors were moving around the space simply for the sake of moving, and standing still simply because they knew not what else to do. it reeked of a poorly-staged high-school production in this sense. and for a 50-minute show, it did seem to go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and....

bottom line: i would equate this to a badly-made porno movie, except instead of unsatisfying sex scenes, we were cursed with unsatisfying stage combat scenes.

but here's the horrifying thing: the audience fucking loved it. they ate that shit right up. i wanted to scream out, "did you fuckheads just SEE the show that i saw?! it was absolute horse shit!!" not only did they receive a standing ovation at curtain call, but made an encore bow after having already left the stage. it was quite an alarming experience, to be frank. and as john, candy and i looked back and forth at each other in sheer horror, i couldn't help but think, is this really what it's come to??

now, i may be slightly pretentious when it comes to reviewing theatre. and that's simply because i have that lens: i work, live, and breath in the theatre; i see and do it every day. but it would not take an expert to appreciate how abominably terrible this show was. in fact, a five-year-old could recognize this. so how was it that all these innocent theatre-goers were so brainwashed by this awful piece of work?? it's one of the great mysteries of life, i suppose.

but i can't help but be quite troubled by this. is "sailor man" what people want in theatre? is this what they're going to shell out their cash for, spend their evenings on, take their children to see? is this what the art world is so eager to produce? and how in the name of fuck did an established entity such as the new york international fringe festival let this piece of trash slip under their nose and into the east village? i've never felt so scared for contemporary theatre.

the fringe festival is the self-proclaimed stage of the "future of theatre" - the innovative, the unapologetic, the modern. it is responsible for such greats as "urinetown," and "dog sees god." it is a playground for contemporary artists to jump start their work and bring something new and exciting to the theatre-goers' table. so what happened, jurors? were you high when you reviewed their proposal? or just lazy? and viewers: are you really so apathetic that you'll allow yourselves to be spoon-fed any amount of shit they dish out?

we, as artists, need to demand more and work harder and climb higher and reach further. we need to say to the shit-heads who make up the "sailor man" shows of the world that we will not let them represent us and we will not let them stamp a sell-by date on our art form. people in the theatre know that we all work too hard and too thanklessly to blindsight audiences with the same old mediocre crap.

it's time for the theatre to seriously consider how we can leave a lasting and profound mark on our world, and how to prevent future "sailor man" endeavors from slipping through the cracks and into the hands of the public. because once they grab hold of that, who knows how willing they'll be to grasp something different?

1.neon pink panic

you don't have to take my word for it
but:

ever since i decided to commit my life to the theatrical art form, i've been existing in a constant state of panic.

on the interweb, panic is defined as "a sudden overwhelming fear, with or without cause, that produces hysterical or irrational behavior, and that often spreads quickly through a group of persons or animals" (dictionary.com). but my panic isn't the panic you may be thinking of. if the panic you're thinking of is the ohmygod-titanic-sinking kind, this isn't it. but i can't really define exactly what "it" is. bear with me.

i guess my panic is more accurately a type of urgency, a need to fulfill a desire and do it fast. the "fear" piece isn't a fear of what i'm doing, but rather of not doing it. and it is, at moments, overwhelming. but i don't often feel the sense that this panic is widespread. that is, i don't always sense it in those around me. but maybe this panic isn't contagious. maybe it's innate and activated at some random moment in life.

so then i have to ask myself: who feels this panic? do business people feel this panic? do botanists feel it? or is this sensation something exclusive to the artistic community? does it click on, like a light switch, because of some outside stimulus, or does it tug at us from the moment we enter the world?

maybe it varies. for instance, i can pinpoint the exact moment in my life when i knew, deep, deep down, that theatre was my "purpose." it's probably the most cliche story i tell. i was a senior in high school, about to graduate with the hope of becoming a filmmaker. i had applied to all the big wig los angeles schools with this plan. but i was in my high school's production of "you can't take it with you," the last show of the season and my first since age 9. at the end of our opening night show, after having stepped out on stage for the first time, scared shitless, and bowing for curtain call - i knew. the light was blinding me, my palms were sweaty from holding my castmates' hands, and i was crying like i'd just won the nobel prize for literature. and right then, whether i realized it or not at the time, my entire future was spread out before me.

does every artist experience a distinct, life-altering moment like this? i'm not sure. but what i do know is that my life since then has been working in a frenzy to create and perform and live in theatre, and all this has awoken a sense of panic in me. i feel as though it's insatiable, that i'll be victim to it as long as i live. because as long as i live, i'll have this desire to create, to express. so this panic isn't like the panic that they give colors to like red and amber and yellow. it isn't a scary panic. i'd say this panic is a little more groovy than that. like, maybe a neon pink. neon pink is pretty groovy.

4.cupcakes

there was an ever-present
unconsious
awareness
of cupcakes.

we searched relentlessly for them
without really realizing it.

our unspoken quest was this:
to find the ::perfect red velvet cupcake::
(somewhere in manhattan)

it was a complex journey that consequently led us to many different sorts of cupcakes variable in size and flavor and sugary-colorful frosting. this was because ::red velvet cupcakes:: were more uncommon than we had presumed. for weeks we searched.

our hunger persisted.