Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
New Cirque Show
NEW YORK (AP) — Director Francois Girard sits in an orchestra seat in the massive Radio City Music Hall and looks up at the massive challenge facing him.
The stage he has to fill these days is more than 100 feet wide and 66 feet deep. The proscenium arch soars more than 60 feet into the air. It is among the largest indoor theaters in the world.
"You can see how a human body could get lost in this space," Girard says.
That's an obvious issue for the writer and director of "Zarkana," the latest Cirque du Soleil show that opens later this month. So mammoth is the stage that it threatens to swallow up a $50 million production of 11 acts and 75 performers.
Girard insists he's more challenged than frightened by a space he acknowledges is "a monster." In fact, he says he and his team have been inspired by the arena's ghosts and Radio City has become a central character in the show.
"I feel at home right now," he says.
Girard has taken a break to sit among the 6,000 seats he hopes to fill each night when the show opens June 29. From the corner of his eye, he keeps tabs on a juggler practicing on one side of the stage, a group of trapeze acrobats on the other and new projections of clouds scudding along the back wall.
"A show like this is a place where so many disciplines are meeting," he says. "It comes from everywhere and has so many layers to it, which keeps me interested. There's not a boring day at the office for me."
One of the more quiet yet profoundly beautiful acts is performed by Erika Chen, who using only her fingers and nails swirls dark blue sand into striking images projected onto a screen at the top of Act 2. Self-taught, the 27-year-old Singapore native used to work at Deutsche Bank in asset management until she discovered sand painting on YouTube and fell in love. Cirque made her its first sand painter.
"It still feels surreal. I can't believe it's happening," she says after rehearsing to ensure her six-minute act is smooth and dynamic. "I'm just thankful. It feels like a dream."
Four years in the making, the rock-opera circus "Zarkana" is slated for a four-month ride in New York, followed by stints in Madrid, Spain, and Moscow. The hope is that it will return to Radio City next summer — and maybe every summer.
This isn't the first time Cirque du Soleil has tried to tame the Big Apple. Last year, its variety show "Banana Shpeel" — featuring a visually brilliant but disappointingly spotty program of acrobatics, juggling, dance and mostly tiresome slapstick — flopped at the Beacon Theatre.
This time around, the creative team is careful to be humble and respectful of the city. Girard calls New York "a mecca of theater" along with London, and knows there's plenty here to attract summer tourists other than whimsical circus acts.
"It's a highly saturated world, where if you want to be heard you'd better be clear and loud. That makes it both very exciting and challenging," says Girard, who directed the films "Silk" and "The Red Violin."
The other thing making Cirque executives soft-spoken is another rock opera with crazy stunts — the $75 million "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark." Girard has gotten no vicarious thrill by watching that musical's troubled birth. "When a show runs into difficulties and technical problems, it is sad. But I wish them well," he says. "It's so hard to make a show. We should be supportive of their efforts."
This is Girard's second Cirque — he also put together "Zed," the Tokyo resident show — and he began with an attempt to assemble as many cool circus acts as possible. Then he wrote a story trying to incorporate all the elements, settling on creating a magician named Zark, who has lost his love and his powers. At the opening of the show, he wanders an abandoned theater and later the show makes nods to its famous home, including to the Ziegfeld Follies.
"Zarkana" — or the land of Zark — will have plenty of clowns, acrobats and a Wheel of Death. One high wire act features a father and his three sons, while another has a father, mother and daughter performing on ladders. There are seven musicians, hundreds of costumes and one trapeze act has a spider theme that would make Julie Taymor shudder.
Canadian singer Garou plays Zark and the music for the spectacle was created especially for the show by Nick Littlemore, an Australian musician and producer who has worked with Elton John.
Work on the show began in Montreal — headquarters of Cirque — but moved temporarily to Orlando, Fla., because creators needed a stage big enough to practice the show from top to bottom. That was found at Amway Arena, the former home of the Orlando Magic that is slated to be torn down, and Cirque took it over for a few months.
Back at Radio City, Stephane Roy sits in the balcony and surveys his hard work. As the set and props designer, Roy's job has been to make the Art Deco monster place look smaller. Of course, since it is a protected city landmark, he could not alter the stage or the building.
"This is a cathedral," he says.
Roy, doing his fifth Cirque show, used a series of three differently sized arches — decorated with snakes, branches and flowers — to make the stage more intimate. The back wall is also studded with LEDs for videos and the stage itself is hand painted.
"This is, for me, the biggest project that I've ever done," he says.
The latest move into New York is part of an expansion of the Cirque du Soleil empire. By October, the hyperactive circus company will have 22 live shows around the globe, including the new $57 million "Michael Jackson, The Immortal World Tour."
Chen, the sand painter, is asked if she'll go back to the lucrative — if duller — world of international finance if "Zarkana" doesn't excite enough New Yorkers or tourists.
"No," she says firmly. "This is my dream. This is what I'm supposed to be doing."
The stage he has to fill these days is more than 100 feet wide and 66 feet deep. The proscenium arch soars more than 60 feet into the air. It is among the largest indoor theaters in the world.
"You can see how a human body could get lost in this space," Girard says.
That's an obvious issue for the writer and director of "Zarkana," the latest Cirque du Soleil show that opens later this month. So mammoth is the stage that it threatens to swallow up a $50 million production of 11 acts and 75 performers.
Girard insists he's more challenged than frightened by a space he acknowledges is "a monster." In fact, he says he and his team have been inspired by the arena's ghosts and Radio City has become a central character in the show.
"I feel at home right now," he says.
Girard has taken a break to sit among the 6,000 seats he hopes to fill each night when the show opens June 29. From the corner of his eye, he keeps tabs on a juggler practicing on one side of the stage, a group of trapeze acrobats on the other and new projections of clouds scudding along the back wall.
"A show like this is a place where so many disciplines are meeting," he says. "It comes from everywhere and has so many layers to it, which keeps me interested. There's not a boring day at the office for me."
One of the more quiet yet profoundly beautiful acts is performed by Erika Chen, who using only her fingers and nails swirls dark blue sand into striking images projected onto a screen at the top of Act 2. Self-taught, the 27-year-old Singapore native used to work at Deutsche Bank in asset management until she discovered sand painting on YouTube and fell in love. Cirque made her its first sand painter.
"It still feels surreal. I can't believe it's happening," she says after rehearsing to ensure her six-minute act is smooth and dynamic. "I'm just thankful. It feels like a dream."
Four years in the making, the rock-opera circus "Zarkana" is slated for a four-month ride in New York, followed by stints in Madrid, Spain, and Moscow. The hope is that it will return to Radio City next summer — and maybe every summer.
This isn't the first time Cirque du Soleil has tried to tame the Big Apple. Last year, its variety show "Banana Shpeel" — featuring a visually brilliant but disappointingly spotty program of acrobatics, juggling, dance and mostly tiresome slapstick — flopped at the Beacon Theatre.
This time around, the creative team is careful to be humble and respectful of the city. Girard calls New York "a mecca of theater" along with London, and knows there's plenty here to attract summer tourists other than whimsical circus acts.
"It's a highly saturated world, where if you want to be heard you'd better be clear and loud. That makes it both very exciting and challenging," says Girard, who directed the films "Silk" and "The Red Violin."
The other thing making Cirque executives soft-spoken is another rock opera with crazy stunts — the $75 million "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark." Girard has gotten no vicarious thrill by watching that musical's troubled birth. "When a show runs into difficulties and technical problems, it is sad. But I wish them well," he says. "It's so hard to make a show. We should be supportive of their efforts."
This is Girard's second Cirque — he also put together "Zed," the Tokyo resident show — and he began with an attempt to assemble as many cool circus acts as possible. Then he wrote a story trying to incorporate all the elements, settling on creating a magician named Zark, who has lost his love and his powers. At the opening of the show, he wanders an abandoned theater and later the show makes nods to its famous home, including to the Ziegfeld Follies.
"Zarkana" — or the land of Zark — will have plenty of clowns, acrobats and a Wheel of Death. One high wire act features a father and his three sons, while another has a father, mother and daughter performing on ladders. There are seven musicians, hundreds of costumes and one trapeze act has a spider theme that would make Julie Taymor shudder.
Canadian singer Garou plays Zark and the music for the spectacle was created especially for the show by Nick Littlemore, an Australian musician and producer who has worked with Elton John.
Work on the show began in Montreal — headquarters of Cirque — but moved temporarily to Orlando, Fla., because creators needed a stage big enough to practice the show from top to bottom. That was found at Amway Arena, the former home of the Orlando Magic that is slated to be torn down, and Cirque took it over for a few months.
Back at Radio City, Stephane Roy sits in the balcony and surveys his hard work. As the set and props designer, Roy's job has been to make the Art Deco monster place look smaller. Of course, since it is a protected city landmark, he could not alter the stage or the building.
"This is a cathedral," he says.
Roy, doing his fifth Cirque show, used a series of three differently sized arches — decorated with snakes, branches and flowers — to make the stage more intimate. The back wall is also studded with LEDs for videos and the stage itself is hand painted.
"This is, for me, the biggest project that I've ever done," he says.
The latest move into New York is part of an expansion of the Cirque du Soleil empire. By October, the hyperactive circus company will have 22 live shows around the globe, including the new $57 million "Michael Jackson, The Immortal World Tour."
Chen, the sand painter, is asked if she'll go back to the lucrative — if duller — world of international finance if "Zarkana" doesn't excite enough New Yorkers or tourists.
"No," she says firmly. "This is my dream. This is what I'm supposed to be doing."
from Cary Tennis
My challenge to a therapist is this: "Tell me something I don't know. Surprise me." When I am led to see things that startle me, of which I had no inkling, that is priceless self-knowledge. And that can happen.
One thing you probably don't know about yourself is just how deeply you have been wounded. You cannot know this yet; in fact you have wisely prevented yourself from knowing this yet. It is as though, in a dream, we look down and see that we have been disemboweled; it is a moment of absolute terror; but we see that we have been disemboweled and yet we are fine! How can this be? How can we be so grievously wounded and yet smile peacefully and continue with our knitting or our guitar playing or whatever we are doing in our strange dream? We can do that because armed with the exquisite knowledge of the dream world we know that nothing can truly harm us, that we are spirit matter, that our consciousness is not affected by the disemboweling, and that it is only our severe waking attachment that causes us so much paralyzing fear.
Believing the wound is too deep to be seen, you have clouded your own sight from it. But you don't need to. There is someone who can guide you to the cliff edge from which that wound can be viewed at a safe distance, and you can see that it is just a wound to your spirit self, not your actual belly, and you can relax.
Another thing you probably don't know is just what archetype of yourself has come to the fore and is now running the show; this business of archetypes, or sub-personalities, is strange and tricky, and a person can sound like a crank for talking about them, but I'm just a writer using his imagination. A good therapist whose language and understanding are rich with myth and intuition can help you find the vantage point and language with which to view and express what you have gone through. When you can see, feel and express what has happened, then you can get better and feel better. It's pretty straightforward. Maybe you will speak of these things in the language of archetypes or maybe in some other way.
To me, it would make sense for a kind of warrior archetype to come to the fore in such a terrible time. The warrior in you would see your mother as an enemy to be vanquished, but since she is dead she cannot be vanquished, so she stands as an eternal adversary, and you are eternally stuck. So there must be some other archetype who can come to the fore to help. The other archetype might be your female, mothering self, who could let go of your mother, or it may be the dark, grieving, avenging self, who could split her sides in wailing but lead to peace, finally. If it is the warrior who is guiding the show, no wonder you are stuck. The warrior can do nothing about the past.
That is my hope for you. I think we often need to work emotionally through symbols and archetypes. These archetypes may be real or they may just be metaphors for stages of development. But it is useful to talk about these things as warriors, princesses, mothers and so forth.
So how will you get through this? With help. It is the kind of help that can guide you on a journey. It isn't so much about making individual choices about Dad No. 1, Dad No. 2 and so forth. It is more about learning what actually happened to you when you were broken as a teenager by your mother's death, and how you still have to heal from that, and how when you learned about your mother's love for this other man it further complicated and deepened this old wound. That's what it's about. And, as I say, that is my hope for you: that you can find the right person to guide you through this charged and explosive terrain.
You may need to back off on the drinking and drugs to get through this. If you are habitually blunting your feelings, you will not develop the fine feel for your inner life that you are going to need. So if you cannot afford therapy, you might consider joining a group of grief survivors. You also might consider joining a 12-step group. All this powerful emotion may make you feel like you're going mad. But you're not going mad. You're just a human feeling things.
You suffered a terrible blow as a child. In many ways, you are still a child. You were prevented from moving on. You are stuck. But you are not lost. You are right here with us. All you have to do is grow, and get help growing.
One thing you probably don't know about yourself is just how deeply you have been wounded. You cannot know this yet; in fact you have wisely prevented yourself from knowing this yet. It is as though, in a dream, we look down and see that we have been disemboweled; it is a moment of absolute terror; but we see that we have been disemboweled and yet we are fine! How can this be? How can we be so grievously wounded and yet smile peacefully and continue with our knitting or our guitar playing or whatever we are doing in our strange dream? We can do that because armed with the exquisite knowledge of the dream world we know that nothing can truly harm us, that we are spirit matter, that our consciousness is not affected by the disemboweling, and that it is only our severe waking attachment that causes us so much paralyzing fear.
Believing the wound is too deep to be seen, you have clouded your own sight from it. But you don't need to. There is someone who can guide you to the cliff edge from which that wound can be viewed at a safe distance, and you can see that it is just a wound to your spirit self, not your actual belly, and you can relax.
Another thing you probably don't know is just what archetype of yourself has come to the fore and is now running the show; this business of archetypes, or sub-personalities, is strange and tricky, and a person can sound like a crank for talking about them, but I'm just a writer using his imagination. A good therapist whose language and understanding are rich with myth and intuition can help you find the vantage point and language with which to view and express what you have gone through. When you can see, feel and express what has happened, then you can get better and feel better. It's pretty straightforward. Maybe you will speak of these things in the language of archetypes or maybe in some other way.
To me, it would make sense for a kind of warrior archetype to come to the fore in such a terrible time. The warrior in you would see your mother as an enemy to be vanquished, but since she is dead she cannot be vanquished, so she stands as an eternal adversary, and you are eternally stuck. So there must be some other archetype who can come to the fore to help. The other archetype might be your female, mothering self, who could let go of your mother, or it may be the dark, grieving, avenging self, who could split her sides in wailing but lead to peace, finally. If it is the warrior who is guiding the show, no wonder you are stuck. The warrior can do nothing about the past.
That is my hope for you. I think we often need to work emotionally through symbols and archetypes. These archetypes may be real or they may just be metaphors for stages of development. But it is useful to talk about these things as warriors, princesses, mothers and so forth.
So how will you get through this? With help. It is the kind of help that can guide you on a journey. It isn't so much about making individual choices about Dad No. 1, Dad No. 2 and so forth. It is more about learning what actually happened to you when you were broken as a teenager by your mother's death, and how you still have to heal from that, and how when you learned about your mother's love for this other man it further complicated and deepened this old wound. That's what it's about. And, as I say, that is my hope for you: that you can find the right person to guide you through this charged and explosive terrain.
You may need to back off on the drinking and drugs to get through this. If you are habitually blunting your feelings, you will not develop the fine feel for your inner life that you are going to need. So if you cannot afford therapy, you might consider joining a group of grief survivors. You also might consider joining a 12-step group. All this powerful emotion may make you feel like you're going mad. But you're not going mad. You're just a human feeling things.
You suffered a terrible blow as a child. In many ways, you are still a child. You were prevented from moving on. You are stuck. But you are not lost. You are right here with us. All you have to do is grow, and get help growing.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Charles bukowski
unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way.
and there never was.
unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way.
and there never was.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
(Ni-ni-ni) "Nicki, she's just mad 'cause you took the spot"
Word, that bitch mad 'cause I took the spot?
Well, bitch, if you ain't shittin', then get off the pot
Got some niggas out in Brooklyn that'll off your top
I-I-I-I hear them mumblin', I hear the cacklin'
I got 'em scared, shook, panickin'
Overseas, church, Vatican
You at a stand, still, mannequin
You wanna sleep on me? Overnight?
I'm the motherfuckin' boss, overwrite
And when I pull up, vroom, motorbike
Now all my niggas gettin' buck, overbite
I see them dusty-ass Filas, Levi's
Raggedy-ass, hoes in your knee-highs
I call the play, now do you see why?
These bitches callin' me Manning, Eli
(Manning, Eli!) Ma, ma-ma-ma-ma, Manning, Eli
These bitches callin' me (Manning, Eli)
Word, that bitch mad 'cause I took the spot?
Well, bitch, if you ain't shittin', then get off the pot
Got some niggas out in Brooklyn that'll off your top
I-I-I-I hear them mumblin', I hear the cacklin'
I got 'em scared, shook, panickin'
Overseas, church, Vatican
You at a stand, still, mannequin
You wanna sleep on me? Overnight?
I'm the motherfuckin' boss, overwrite
And when I pull up, vroom, motorbike
Now all my niggas gettin' buck, overbite
I see them dusty-ass Filas, Levi's
Raggedy-ass, hoes in your knee-highs
I call the play, now do you see why?
These bitches callin' me Manning, Eli
(Manning, Eli!) Ma, ma-ma-ma-ma, Manning, Eli
These bitches callin' me (Manning, Eli)
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
fuck YES!
Madonna ready to record new album
Madonna's manager Guy Oseary has confirmed plans for the singer to re-enter the recording studio next month to start work on her new album.
The 52-year-old performer is said to know the people she wants to work with on the project, which will serve as the follow-up to 2008's Hard Candy.
Taking to Twitter to answer fans' questions surrounding the recording, Oseary revealed: 'Madonna goes into the recording studio next month to begin work on new album....'
'There are no back catalogue plans currently....I met with Warner Music about that very subject....but nothing has come of it....'
'There is nothing to report in regards to tour....you guys know how this works....first comes the album and next comes the....'
Oseary also indicated that Madonna knows who she wants to work with, stating: 'She has a good idea on which producers she will be working with....
From Digital Spy
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Site hints at Asian roots for human genus
the deeper we go, the more layers we pull back, the farther we dig, the more the story changes... our scope widens & multiple truths arrive. the earth was flat. the earth was round. we are the earth.
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New finds in Caucasus suggest non-African origin for ancient Homo speciesBy Bruce Bower Web edition : Monday, June 6th, 2011 Text Size Early members of the genus Homo, possibly direct ancestors of people today, may have evolved in Asia and then gone to Africa, not vice versa as many scientists have assumed.
Most paleoanthropologists have favored an African origin for the potential human ancestor Homo erectus. But new evidence shows the species occupied a West Asian site called Dmanisi from 1.85 million to 1.77 million years ago, at the same time or slightly before the earliest evidence of this humanlike species in Africa, say geologist Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas in Denton and his colleagues.
The new Dmanisi discoveries point to an Asian homeland for H. erectus, the scientists propose online June 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Dmanisi was occupied repeatedly for roughly 80,000 years and supported a population that was well established and probably quite mobile,” Ferring says.
Evidence remains meager for the geographic origins of the Homo genus, says anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Several scenarios of Homo evolution are possible, and it’s possible that humankind’s genus got its start in Asia with H. erectus.
Researchers have abandoned the long-standing view that a small-brained hominid from East Africa known as Homo habilis, which first appeared about 2.4 million years ago, evolved into H. erectus. Recent fossil finds showing that the two species coexisted in East Africa for several hundred thousand years have undermined that assumption. Ferring’s team suspects that an as-yet-unidentified African hominid reached Asia before 1.85 million years ago and evolved into H. erectus.
With the new Dmanisi dates, “it certainly looks as though the African origin of H. erectus must be reconsidered,” remarks Harvard University anthropologist Philip Rightmire.
Wood regards H. habilis fossils as apelike enough to be reclassified as part of the Australopithecus lineage, which includes a more than 3-million-year-old species represented by a partial skeleton known as Lucy. Other researchers, though, champion 2-million-year-old Australopithecus fossils from South Africa as direct precursors of Homo (SN: 5/7/11, p. 16).
The new Dmanisi discoveries come from just beneath soil that previously yielded 1.77-million-year-old H. erectus fossils, including skulls with surprisingly small brain cases suggestive of an early form of the species (SN: 9/22/07, p. 179). Excavations produced 73 stone tools for cutting and chopping, as well as 34 bone fragments from unidentified creatures. The artifacts came from a series of H. erectus camps at Dmanisi between 1.85 and 1.78 million years ago, the scientists say.
Measurements of reversals in Earth’s magnetic field and of the rate of decay of the element argon in a series of volcanic ash layers provided age estimates for the new finds.
-------
New finds in Caucasus suggest non-African origin for ancient Homo speciesBy Bruce Bower Web edition : Monday, June 6th, 2011 Text Size Early members of the genus Homo, possibly direct ancestors of people today, may have evolved in Asia and then gone to Africa, not vice versa as many scientists have assumed.
Most paleoanthropologists have favored an African origin for the potential human ancestor Homo erectus. But new evidence shows the species occupied a West Asian site called Dmanisi from 1.85 million to 1.77 million years ago, at the same time or slightly before the earliest evidence of this humanlike species in Africa, say geologist Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas in Denton and his colleagues.
The new Dmanisi discoveries point to an Asian homeland for H. erectus, the scientists propose online June 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Dmanisi was occupied repeatedly for roughly 80,000 years and supported a population that was well established and probably quite mobile,” Ferring says.
Evidence remains meager for the geographic origins of the Homo genus, says anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Several scenarios of Homo evolution are possible, and it’s possible that humankind’s genus got its start in Asia with H. erectus.
Researchers have abandoned the long-standing view that a small-brained hominid from East Africa known as Homo habilis, which first appeared about 2.4 million years ago, evolved into H. erectus. Recent fossil finds showing that the two species coexisted in East Africa for several hundred thousand years have undermined that assumption. Ferring’s team suspects that an as-yet-unidentified African hominid reached Asia before 1.85 million years ago and evolved into H. erectus.
With the new Dmanisi dates, “it certainly looks as though the African origin of H. erectus must be reconsidered,” remarks Harvard University anthropologist Philip Rightmire.
Wood regards H. habilis fossils as apelike enough to be reclassified as part of the Australopithecus lineage, which includes a more than 3-million-year-old species represented by a partial skeleton known as Lucy. Other researchers, though, champion 2-million-year-old Australopithecus fossils from South Africa as direct precursors of Homo (SN: 5/7/11, p. 16).
The new Dmanisi discoveries come from just beneath soil that previously yielded 1.77-million-year-old H. erectus fossils, including skulls with surprisingly small brain cases suggestive of an early form of the species (SN: 9/22/07, p. 179). Excavations produced 73 stone tools for cutting and chopping, as well as 34 bone fragments from unidentified creatures. The artifacts came from a series of H. erectus camps at Dmanisi between 1.85 and 1.78 million years ago, the scientists say.
Measurements of reversals in Earth’s magnetic field and of the rate of decay of the element argon in a series of volcanic ash layers provided age estimates for the new finds.
boom :)
The Goodman Theatre in Chicago has announced that Washington actor Edward Gero will play painter Mark Rothko there in the Tony-winning play “Red” by John Logan. Directed by Goodman Artistic Director Robert Falls, the show will run Sept. 17-Oct. 23 in Chicago, then come to Arena Stage from Jan. 20 to March 4, 2012.
“I’m very, very excited,” says Gero, who is playing Salieri in “Amadeus” at Round House Theatre in Bethesda through Sunday. Gero appeared at the Goodman in 2006 as Gloucester, opposite Stacy Keach, in Falls’s “King Lear.” That production was remounted at the Shakespeare Theatre Company here in summer 2009.
“Red,” which is set in the 1950s, shows the driven painter working with a young assistant whom he lectures, harangues and debates. Playing Rothko means “another huge role” for which Salieri in “Amadeus” provides “a perfect preamble,” Gero says. “It’s student/teacher . . . apprentice/master . . . father/son. It’s about art, it’s about life, it’s about whether one’s work is significant, which is very similar, I think, to what ‘Amadeus’ is about.”
For Gero, a 13-time Helen Hayes Award nominee and four-time winner, “Red” will be another facet of a multiyear run of meaty roles — from the demon barber in “Sweeney Todd” at Signature Theatre, the hapless junk store owner Donny in “American Buffalo,” the drunk Ivan in “The Seafarer,” the troubled widower John in “Shining City,” all at Studio Theatre, to Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” at Ford’s Theatre.
“What happens when you get to be a certain age, roles come your way and it’s sort of a payoff in a way for being around long enough, I suppose,” the actor says
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
waldosia
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
waldosia
n. [Brit. wallesia] a condition characterized by scanning faces in a crowd looking for a specific person who would have no reason to be there, which is your brain’s way of checking to see whether they’re still in your life, subconsciously patting its emotional pockets before it leaves for the day.
waldosia
n. [Brit. wallesia] a condition characterized by scanning faces in a crowd looking for a specific person who would have no reason to be there, which is your brain’s way of checking to see whether they’re still in your life, subconsciously patting its emotional pockets before it leaves for the day.
the book of recurrent dreams, 1791
The dream of angels dreaming of men. It was during an afternoon nap that I dreamt of a ladder. Angels were sleepwalking up and down the rungs, their eyes closed, their breath heavy and dull, their wings hanging limp at the sides. I bumped into an old angel as I passed, waking and startling him. He looked like my grandfather did before he passed away last year, when he would pray each night to die in his sleep. Oh, the angel said to me, I was just dreaming of you.
The dream of angels dreaming of men. It was during an afternoon nap that I dreamt of a ladder. Angels were sleepwalking up and down the rungs, their eyes closed, their breath heavy and dull, their wings hanging limp at the sides. I bumped into an old angel as I passed, waking and startling him. He looked like my grandfather did before he passed away last year, when he would pray each night to die in his sleep. Oh, the angel said to me, I was just dreaming of you.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Sleep with someone you aren’t sure you should, take a job without knowing where it leads, tell her she looks great when she talks about cooking, tell him he looks sad when he drives his car, don’t put things away, take road trips without directions, forget to lock the doors and let’s not say no. Cleanliness is the hobgoblin of memorable lives, so let’s all make a mess of things.
Friday, June 3, 2011
it's great that they have real conversations about this in London newspapers
See sequences of artciles below... 3, total.
The School for Scandal - review
Barbican, London
oo Michael Billington
o guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 May 2011 16.50 BST
I fear that the great tradition of English artificial comedy, written mainly by Irishmen and running from the Restoration to Oscar Wilde, is in danger. Either we neglect it or we revive it badly – and the latest victim is Sheridan's 1777 comic masterpiece, given an uncharacteristically duff production by Deborah Warner that strains to point out the parallels between then and now.
Warner prefaces the evening with a punkish, Alexander McQueen-style fashion parade, uses Brechtian captions and mixes 18th-century costume with Gucci shopping bags. But, although there are obvious connections between Sheridan's world of hypocritical scandal-mongering and our own, the fusion of periods misfires. For a start, Sheridan was not writing a savage satire but a free-spirited comedy in which virtue, in the shape of the amiably profligate Charles Surface, triumphs over vice in the form of his sanctimonious sibling, Joseph. But the real failing of Warner's approach is that the striving for contemporary relevance wildly distorts character and denatures Sheridan's comedy.
Leo Bill is, for instance, encouraged to play Charles Surface as a manic druggie presiding over a commune: the result is to make Charles's benevolently forgiving uncle, played by John Shrapnel in robust 18th-century style, seem positively delusional in his obliviousness to his nephew's lifestyle. Even the famous screen scene, in which the aged Sir Peter Teazle discovers his wife hiding in Joseph Surface's library, is not immune to Warner's heavy-handedness. Sheridan's Lady Teazle may be a tease, but, in place of the coy flirtatiousness with which she resists Joseph's advances, Warner has her ready to engage in consensual sex with him. This turns Lady Teazle into an even more flagrant hypocrite than Joseph since she later tells her husband she was not prepared to "sacrifice your honour to his baseness".
A few performances transcend the stylistic mish-mash of Warner's production. Alan Howard brings to Sir Peter vocal precision, a peppery temperament and a delicate pathos, and Matilda Ziegler catches exactly the silky corruption of Lady Sneerwell. The evening, in fact, begins with a nice touch in which Ziegler is stripped of her workaday modern clothes and gradually arrayed in the hooped artifice of 18th-century costume.
If only Warner had been content to leave the juxtaposition of periods there rather than banging us over the head with the play's contemporary relevance, the production might have worked. As it was I found myself nostalgically crying, like William Hazlitt when confronted in mid-life by a similarly vulgar revival: "Why can we not always be young and seeing The School for Scandal?"
The School for Scandal: storm in an 18th-century teacup
A modern version of The School for Scandal has outraged some critics. Deborah Warner, who directed it, can't believe their short-sightedness
-
·
· Deborah Warner
· guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 June 2011 22.00 BST
·
I've just opened my production of The School for Scandal at the Barbican, and it seems the critics are up in arms. Five-star reviews or one star. "Highly theatrical, provocative and intelligent, the show is unmissable," reads one, while another says, "Watching this School for Scandal is like witnessing a group of louts spray-painting an elegant old building with graffiti. It's time Deborah Warner was served with the theatrical equivalent of an Asbo."
How can Sheridan's comic morality play so polarise opinion? Traditionally, it's hardly been a play to frighten babies and old ladies, but now it seems it has. I'm no stranger to strong critical response, though. In 1994, I found a picture of my Glyndebourne Don Giovanni on the front of the Times, with the line: "Boos and catcalls greet Glyndebourne opening." Indeed, there was some controversy on opening night, but I certainly hadn't expected it to be world news by the next morning.
The year before, I read the reviews of Beckett's Footfalls, only to find myself again on the front in a column headed: "Director banned for life from directing Beckett." I've since directed Happy Days with the full approval of the Beckett estate and am represented by the very agent who placed the ban – thus making life seem, in this regard, sweet and long. Still, neither myself nor the School for Scandal company were prepared for this current furore. A storm in an 18th-century teacup?
We revive old plays because we think they may have something to say to us now. The job of directors and actors is to pitch these plays against our moment and see what happens. Strangely, it is the very "now" of our production that seems to have caused some of the upset. One very negative review says: "If the Earl of Rochester and Bertolt Brecht got together in Shoreditch one night and decided to host a rave (inviting Handel to man the decks), the result might look a lot like Deborah Warner's new production of The School for Scandal." Hang on, though, that's exciting isn't it? That's exactly what I wanted this production to be. The School for Scandal is a play obsessed by wit, fashion, celebrity and reputation, and whose central theme is hypocrisy. Does that ring any contemporary bells? I think so.
In this paper, Michael Billington was upset that hard-living Charles Surface, a rake and libertine, could not ultimately be thought of as virtuous by an uncle who had witnessed his appetite for drink and probably drugs. Is there a generation gap here? Might there be a generational reluctance to map our own Pete Doherty on to the classics?
I want to say this to the critics: I know the version of this play you recognise and miss. That version was great for its time but – and this is important – it might not be right for now. The job of director and actor is to test these plays against now; if they lose charm in some critics' eyes, then maybe the world has changed. Theatre, like all art, can make us uncomfortable. It should make us uncomfortable – it is there to shake us up.
I respect the role of the critic in the arts, and want to hear their voices, but I am concerned by one thing. Criticise as you will, but be careful not to put off the new audience. Any emerging theatre audience needs to be led to the places where they might drink, have fun and discover that the theatre holds something for them. Don't head them off at the pass. Let the new get started. This work may be for them, not for you.
I am happy to say that there are young people in the Barbican stalls really enjoying the show. It is a loud show and that aspect, perhaps, plays to a younger taste; but there are older people loving it, too. Scripts change meaning as time passes, and as producers and audiences we must put ourselves in danger to catch that new meaning. I'm surprised by what The School for Scandal became in 2011 – but I'm more surprised by the critics' refusal to yield ground.
The School for Scandal's Deborah Warner: no mother of reinvention
Director Deborah Warner's meshing of Sheridan's 18th-century comedy of manners with modern culture proves some classics are best left as they are
Michael Billington
It's good to find Deborah Warner responding to the critics in such a cool, rational manner: a welcome contrast to the vituperative rancour one sometimes gets from anguished directors. All the same, I think her argument rests on some highly questionable assumptions.
She says of the classics that "the job of the director is to pitch these plays at our moment and see what happens". But, surely, a lot depends on the nature of the play and how you pitch it. The night before The School for Scandal opened many of us had seen, and admired, Rupert Goold's Las Vegas-based The Merchant of Venice. But Shakespeare's play has a mythical quality that makes it easily transposable to another time and place. Sheridan, in contrast, was writing a social comedy rooted in 18th-century manners and delighting in verbal precision. To place it, as Warner does, in a world that's part 18th century and part punk fashion and hard rock is simply to sow confusion.
Behind Warner's argument also lies a veiled contemporary arrogance. She says of the standard period approach to Sheridan, "that version was great for its time but might not be right for now". But how do we know? It's nearly 30 years since London saw, at the Haymarket and the National, what might be termed a traditional School for Scandal. It also strikes me as faintly patronising to assume that a young audience will only grasp the modern resonances of a play that deals with gossip and scandal if you deck it out with Alexander McQueen-style fashion parades and Gucci shopping bags. If Warner were to tackle The Importance of Being Earnest, would she feel Jack and Algy had to watch internet porn or snort coke to bring the play home to a modern audience?
There are few absolute rules in theatre. Updating sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. And I'm all for giving directors a free hand. But my objection to Warner's The School for Scandal was that it drained much of the humour from the play and was neither one thing nor another: neither a radical rewrite nor a realisation of Sheridan's world. My hunch is that Warner has spent too long seeking to reinvent the classics. If she wants to speak directly to the young, why doesn't she, just for once, stage a play by a living writer?
The School for Scandal - review
Barbican, London
oo Michael Billington
o guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 May 2011 16.50 BST
I fear that the great tradition of English artificial comedy, written mainly by Irishmen and running from the Restoration to Oscar Wilde, is in danger. Either we neglect it or we revive it badly – and the latest victim is Sheridan's 1777 comic masterpiece, given an uncharacteristically duff production by Deborah Warner that strains to point out the parallels between then and now.
Warner prefaces the evening with a punkish, Alexander McQueen-style fashion parade, uses Brechtian captions and mixes 18th-century costume with Gucci shopping bags. But, although there are obvious connections between Sheridan's world of hypocritical scandal-mongering and our own, the fusion of periods misfires. For a start, Sheridan was not writing a savage satire but a free-spirited comedy in which virtue, in the shape of the amiably profligate Charles Surface, triumphs over vice in the form of his sanctimonious sibling, Joseph. But the real failing of Warner's approach is that the striving for contemporary relevance wildly distorts character and denatures Sheridan's comedy.
Leo Bill is, for instance, encouraged to play Charles Surface as a manic druggie presiding over a commune: the result is to make Charles's benevolently forgiving uncle, played by John Shrapnel in robust 18th-century style, seem positively delusional in his obliviousness to his nephew's lifestyle. Even the famous screen scene, in which the aged Sir Peter Teazle discovers his wife hiding in Joseph Surface's library, is not immune to Warner's heavy-handedness. Sheridan's Lady Teazle may be a tease, but, in place of the coy flirtatiousness with which she resists Joseph's advances, Warner has her ready to engage in consensual sex with him. This turns Lady Teazle into an even more flagrant hypocrite than Joseph since she later tells her husband she was not prepared to "sacrifice your honour to his baseness".
A few performances transcend the stylistic mish-mash of Warner's production. Alan Howard brings to Sir Peter vocal precision, a peppery temperament and a delicate pathos, and Matilda Ziegler catches exactly the silky corruption of Lady Sneerwell. The evening, in fact, begins with a nice touch in which Ziegler is stripped of her workaday modern clothes and gradually arrayed in the hooped artifice of 18th-century costume.
If only Warner had been content to leave the juxtaposition of periods there rather than banging us over the head with the play's contemporary relevance, the production might have worked. As it was I found myself nostalgically crying, like William Hazlitt when confronted in mid-life by a similarly vulgar revival: "Why can we not always be young and seeing The School for Scandal?"
The School for Scandal: storm in an 18th-century teacup
A modern version of The School for Scandal has outraged some critics. Deborah Warner, who directed it, can't believe their short-sightedness
-
·
· Deborah Warner
· guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 June 2011 22.00 BST
·
I've just opened my production of The School for Scandal at the Barbican, and it seems the critics are up in arms. Five-star reviews or one star. "Highly theatrical, provocative and intelligent, the show is unmissable," reads one, while another says, "Watching this School for Scandal is like witnessing a group of louts spray-painting an elegant old building with graffiti. It's time Deborah Warner was served with the theatrical equivalent of an Asbo."
How can Sheridan's comic morality play so polarise opinion? Traditionally, it's hardly been a play to frighten babies and old ladies, but now it seems it has. I'm no stranger to strong critical response, though. In 1994, I found a picture of my Glyndebourne Don Giovanni on the front of the Times, with the line: "Boos and catcalls greet Glyndebourne opening." Indeed, there was some controversy on opening night, but I certainly hadn't expected it to be world news by the next morning.
The year before, I read the reviews of Beckett's Footfalls, only to find myself again on the front in a column headed: "Director banned for life from directing Beckett." I've since directed Happy Days with the full approval of the Beckett estate and am represented by the very agent who placed the ban – thus making life seem, in this regard, sweet and long. Still, neither myself nor the School for Scandal company were prepared for this current furore. A storm in an 18th-century teacup?
We revive old plays because we think they may have something to say to us now. The job of directors and actors is to pitch these plays against our moment and see what happens. Strangely, it is the very "now" of our production that seems to have caused some of the upset. One very negative review says: "If the Earl of Rochester and Bertolt Brecht got together in Shoreditch one night and decided to host a rave (inviting Handel to man the decks), the result might look a lot like Deborah Warner's new production of The School for Scandal." Hang on, though, that's exciting isn't it? That's exactly what I wanted this production to be. The School for Scandal is a play obsessed by wit, fashion, celebrity and reputation, and whose central theme is hypocrisy. Does that ring any contemporary bells? I think so.
In this paper, Michael Billington was upset that hard-living Charles Surface, a rake and libertine, could not ultimately be thought of as virtuous by an uncle who had witnessed his appetite for drink and probably drugs. Is there a generation gap here? Might there be a generational reluctance to map our own Pete Doherty on to the classics?
I want to say this to the critics: I know the version of this play you recognise and miss. That version was great for its time but – and this is important – it might not be right for now. The job of director and actor is to test these plays against now; if they lose charm in some critics' eyes, then maybe the world has changed. Theatre, like all art, can make us uncomfortable. It should make us uncomfortable – it is there to shake us up.
I respect the role of the critic in the arts, and want to hear their voices, but I am concerned by one thing. Criticise as you will, but be careful not to put off the new audience. Any emerging theatre audience needs to be led to the places where they might drink, have fun and discover that the theatre holds something for them. Don't head them off at the pass. Let the new get started. This work may be for them, not for you.
I am happy to say that there are young people in the Barbican stalls really enjoying the show. It is a loud show and that aspect, perhaps, plays to a younger taste; but there are older people loving it, too. Scripts change meaning as time passes, and as producers and audiences we must put ourselves in danger to catch that new meaning. I'm surprised by what The School for Scandal became in 2011 – but I'm more surprised by the critics' refusal to yield ground.
The School for Scandal's Deborah Warner: no mother of reinvention
Director Deborah Warner's meshing of Sheridan's 18th-century comedy of manners with modern culture proves some classics are best left as they are
Michael Billington
It's good to find Deborah Warner responding to the critics in such a cool, rational manner: a welcome contrast to the vituperative rancour one sometimes gets from anguished directors. All the same, I think her argument rests on some highly questionable assumptions.
She says of the classics that "the job of the director is to pitch these plays at our moment and see what happens". But, surely, a lot depends on the nature of the play and how you pitch it. The night before The School for Scandal opened many of us had seen, and admired, Rupert Goold's Las Vegas-based The Merchant of Venice. But Shakespeare's play has a mythical quality that makes it easily transposable to another time and place. Sheridan, in contrast, was writing a social comedy rooted in 18th-century manners and delighting in verbal precision. To place it, as Warner does, in a world that's part 18th century and part punk fashion and hard rock is simply to sow confusion.
Behind Warner's argument also lies a veiled contemporary arrogance. She says of the standard period approach to Sheridan, "that version was great for its time but might not be right for now". But how do we know? It's nearly 30 years since London saw, at the Haymarket and the National, what might be termed a traditional School for Scandal. It also strikes me as faintly patronising to assume that a young audience will only grasp the modern resonances of a play that deals with gossip and scandal if you deck it out with Alexander McQueen-style fashion parades and Gucci shopping bags. If Warner were to tackle The Importance of Being Earnest, would she feel Jack and Algy had to watch internet porn or snort coke to bring the play home to a modern audience?
There are few absolute rules in theatre. Updating sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. And I'm all for giving directors a free hand. But my objection to Warner's The School for Scandal was that it drained much of the humour from the play and was neither one thing nor another: neither a radical rewrite nor a realisation of Sheridan's world. My hunch is that Warner has spent too long seeking to reinvent the classics. If she wants to speak directly to the young, why doesn't she, just for once, stage a play by a living writer?
living legend
The Ringleader
Since childhood, award-winning playwright Robert O'Hara has marshaled the means to tell wondrous tales
by Will O’Bryan
Published on June 2, 2011, 3:56am | 0 Comments, 2 Tweets
Robert O'Hara, the 41-year-old playwright whose latest work, Bootycandy, is having its world premiere run at Washington's Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, is very familiar with ''3-ways.''
''It's something that reminds you of where you were raised,'' he admits. ''It's also sort of an item that you only get now and then. As a kid I couldn't really get it as many times as I wanted it.''
O'Hara
(Photo by Todd Franson)O'Hara is of course talking about the famous Skyline Chili ''3-ways'' of spaghetti, cheddar and chili, a steady staple in his hometown of Cincinnati.
He could've just as easily been talking about sex. He's very familiar with that topic as well. Sex, after all, is Bootycandy's heartbeat. He's explored slavery, time-travel and romance in Insurrection: Holding History, winner of the 1996 Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Play. He found a curious and acclaimed bridge between Nazi Germany and the Atlanta premiere of Gone With the Wind in Antebellum, a Woolly Mammoth world premiere in 2009. He's seen a family repay a gruesome debt in the slasher flick, The Inheritance, which he wrote and directed. The Obie-winning director has plenty of topics to fill out his résumé, but this is likely his first artistic expression so dedicated to sex.
'''Bootycandy' is a word my parents used for the penis,'' explains the Brooklyn-based O'Hara. '''Oh, did you wash your bootycandy?' It's the oddest thing on earth that my parents would tell the little gay boy 'bootycandy,' … just being told that.''
Obviously, the word never left O'Hara's consciousness. Today it's taken on greater meaning for him, as well as his audiences. As he directs his play, Bootycandy becomes the vehicle for exploring sex.
''Whether we know it or not, we're one of the most outrageously sexual cultures,'' O'Hara observes, sitting in the lobby of Woolly Mammoth one recent Friday morning. ''Whether we acknowledge it or not, it happens all the time. We like to pretend we're not interested, but the first thing you do with new technology is figure out, 'How can I get more sex from it?' I'm dealing with that. How do we talk about sexuality?''
And talking about sex in O'Hara's world can be both outrageous and innocent, a conversation that revels in equal-opportunity offenses.
''Bootycandy is that sort of experience of seeing something really, really hilarious and vulgar at the same time. It is risqué and blue, but I think really, really funny,'' he says. ''I think people will find something in it to love and something in it to go, 'Oh, my God. Did you really have to go that far with it?' But there's also a story inside there.''
Just as there are plenty of stories inside O'Hara. From the fictional to the factual, O'Hara is a man who knows how to hold an audience. It's no wonder his grandmother dubbed him ''The Ringleader'' when he was just a little boy. Or that the professional accolades keep on coming.
METRO WEEKLY: Growing up in Cincinnati, what kind of family did you have? Nuclear? Single parent? Only child?
ROBERT O'HARA: My grandmother had 12 kids, and my mother was the oldest daughter. I had 11 uncles and aunts. I think they went there in the late '50s, and they're all still there, most of them. Before that, they were in Alabama and Georgia. When I was born, they were already heavily in Cincinnati. And they're all certifiable nuts.
MW: Friendly nuts?
O'HARA: Mixed nuts. Some of them are friendly. Some of them are quite out there, actually.
MW: No belligerent nuts, I hope.
O'HARA: Absolutely. Mixed nuts includes belligerent nuts, crazy nuts, meek nuts, nutty nuts – all that.
My mother had me when she was younger, so I was an only child with a single parent until I was 6. Then I had a little brother and we were two kids with a single parent. My mother got married when I was 12, and she's been with that person since. I've always had a sort of nuclear family that had its own sort of craziness, but there was a normality to it.
Going over to my grandmother's house was a circus, which I loved. My grandmother always called me the ''ringleader.'' I would go over there and just act out. It was a lot of fun. ''Ringleader'' fits in that I was sort of bookworm-ish. I would make up plays and I would make up songs and sort of corral the cousins to do things in the backyard.
My grandmother was basically my babysitter. All the cousins went over to Granny's. You could actually go about two doors up to my first school, so I would stay with my grandmother for the week and my mother would pick me up on the weekends; or she would drop me off in the morning and pick me up after school. My experience at my grandmother's house is very connected to me.
MW: Now we'll all want to picture her as some wise and wonderful matriarch. What was the reality?
O'HARA: She was not this evil lady, she was also not this, ''Come all around me and let's have an Oprah moment.'' It was not that. My grandmother could cuss up a storm. My grandfather could cuss up a storm. They cussed each other out every day and I would record them, because it was really, really funny.
MW: Seriously? You had a tape recorder?
O'HARA: Absolutely. I would go to the dinner table and put the recorder underneath the table and I would tape the family conversation. I had to be 5 or 6. I continued doing it till I was, like, 12, whenever I could get away with it.
MW: Do you remember why you started doing it?
O'HARA: Because my grandmother didn't talk like a normal person.
I was going to school with all white kids and I was coming home to this woman who grew up in the South – and my grandfather and this crazy amount of uncles and aunts and cousins – and the language was just completely different. And it was a lot of fun. At 4 years old, I was going to school and cursing people out with these words I did not know. [My grandmother] would make up words. It was just the most incredibly colorful language, and I guess I just gravitated toward it. I think that's why my plays have a lot of language issues. I like to make up words and put words together that don't normally go together.
MW: Did that ever get you into trouble at school?
O'HARA: Yeah. [Laughs.] I think it was a reaction to the fact that I was small and skinny and bookish, so I couldn't really physically fight. But I could fight with my words.
I guess I was loud and talkative. My family was loud and talkative, so I didn't really think of it as a problem. My teachers did – because I would always give them word for word. There was no way they were just going to tell me something and I was just going to do it. I had a lot of questions, and I had colorful language.
MW: Granted, it's a quiet Friday morning, but you seem fairly soft-spoken now.
O'HARA: Oh, I am. I sort of get that out of my system in my writing. I have no need for that in my real life [now]. I can be colorful, and I'm sure most people who have worked with me would say that I'm rather colorful. But I'm not this crazy guy. I think it's been channeled into my work. People who meet me, and they have seen my work, they completely think it's a different person.
MW: I interviewed Chay Yew in 2009 when he was here directing the world premiere of Antebellum, and he gave me this wonderful quote about the play: ''When else is there an opportunity to see hoop skirts, Nazis, gay people and mammies onstage at the same time?'' Is that sort of the O'Hara signature style?
O'HARA: Yes. [Laughs.] I never write a play until there are at least 88 ideas bumping up against each other. Why have just one crazy person in the play? Make 'em all messes and crazy, and then see what happens.
MW: I'm guessing the stories you're trying to tell aren't just about being wacky and crazy, though.
O'HARA: No. Rarely are they. They're actually sometimes very dark. And I love history. Someone will look at me and see me and put me in a category, and my first instinct is to burst out of that category.
Every play to me is an experiment. When people ask me how I write, I go, ''Everyone is welcome and no one is safe.'' That is something that I try to carry into my work. I try to find the beauty and the horror of events. It could be a horrific experience, but it's going to be beautiful. What is that pull of watching something that you know is going to be a little bit uncomfortable, or a little bit horrific, or a little bit scary?
MW: Speaking of horror reminds me: You would've been living in New York during 9/11, right?
O'HARA: I was living in New York, but I wasn't actually in New York. I was on a cruise ship with my family in the Bahamas.
MW: Frantically trying to get cell service?
O'HARA: Exactly. And my family saying, ''We're going back to the slot machines. What are we gonna do? Build the building back up? You can't be here all sad. This is vacation.'' This was two days into the vacation. ''But I'm from New York!''
They were like, ''We understand, but what, you gonna be upset all day?''
There was a memorial service for five minutes, and then people walking right out to the slot machines, right into drinking some more. I guess it's because it felt fake on television, watching it on a ship.
MW: That's the play I want to see.
O'HARA: Most of the people on the ship were foreigners, and they were sad about it, but that didn't stop people from partying, doing the conga line, all this stuff.
Most of my family was there. They were very happy that I was not in New York. Everyone was very sad, but the attitude was, ''There is nothing you can do.'' But there was just something wrong with this slot-machine playing and this drinking going on when I know that there are now people missing loved ones in the city that I have to go back to. And just being on a cruise ship with my family, it's like being locked in Times Square with a bunch of tourists and your family. It's nuts.
MW: Continuing with the horrific, but moving to fiction, I want to know about your horror movie, The Inheritance. Is the ''slasher movie'' genre one you grew up liking? All the Halloween movies? All the Friday the 13th movies?
O'HARA: Oh, I absolutely loved horror movies, because I was such a scaredy-cat. I was afraid of the dark. I would make up creatures and people in my room. It was ridiculous. But I love scary movies. The Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street – all those things.
The Inheritance was this thing, like, I had been waiting for something just out of the blue, to turn on the TV and [see], ''Oh, that's a member of my family who just chopped somebody's head off.'' I'd been waiting for that to happen. I never really know what my family members are doing. I only hear about them after something outrageous has happened. And I'm like, ''Really? She burned the car and mistakenly lit herself on fire and had to go to the hospital?''
MW: True story?
O'HARA: True story. It's just ridiculous. A fistfight at the funeral, over the body. There are all these sorts of different stories [I'm told], because I don't go home on a regular basis. They would call saying, ''Guess what happened.'' So The Inheritance was about, ''What would happen if your family was involved in a cult?''
MW: None of your family should take this movie personally, should they?
O'HARA: [Laughs.] No.
MW: Do they ask, ''Is that supposed to be my head on the stick?''
O'HARA: And, ''Why are you using my biography?'' Some of their names are in the piece. It's a catch-22. Either their name's in it and they're like, ''Why would you put my name in it? Where's my royalties?''; or their names aren't in it and, ''Why isn't my name in it? When am I going to be in the movie?''
MW: How often do you make it back to see your family?
O'HARA: I'm in touch with them a lot. We just had the family reunion last year. That was a treat. But I don't like Cincinnati. When I go back, I realize how segregated it is and how conservative it is. I get this feeling of wanting to get out every time I go there. I feel like I'm a stranger in a foreign land, actually. But it was a great place to grow up, I guess. I had a sort of different perspective than if I grew up in some major metropolitan city where I could do anything I wanted, be anything I wanted to be. I really had this need from a very early age to get out of Cincinnati as soon as possible.
MW: Where did you go?
O'HARA: I went to Boston, to Tufts University, to be a pre-law major. And then I was like, ''That's not gonna happen.'' Eventually I ended up in English. And I was like, ''That's not gonna happen.'' I ended up taking all these theater classes. I never thought I would be making a living doing theater. I like to do plays, I like to write, but I never thought I'd be a playwright. That never, ever crossed my mind.
MW: Why not?
O'HARA: It was my mother going, ''Are you out of your mind?'' Every time I would go home, there was this black woman going, ''Are you out of your fucking mind? Are you crazy?'' [Laughs.]
But I had always been doing that. I had written all my life. Directed and performed all my life. It was always a hobby, until I got to my junior year and realized that I actually could go into this as a business.
MW: What changed your mind to be a playwright?
O'HARA: It wasn't playwriting -- it was directing. I've always been a playwright. I could be a lawyer and continue writing plays. But to have a career, I always thought that I would have to be a director.
It was also around the time I was coming out to myself. I was sort of still in this, ''Oh, I'm gonna get married and have a wife and a kid and be a lawyer.'' Once all those things started to break down, [I thought], ''Well, that's never gonna happen, so now let's just get real with it. I want to be a director and a writer and an artist.'' It was part of my whole identity changing that allowed me to go.
I think what sparked it is that you had to choose a major in your junior year. It was my sort of relationship to, ''What am I going to do after I get out of here? Where am I going to live and what am I going to do?'' And mind you, my entire college experience was, ''We don't have enough money. I don't know if you're going to be there next semester. You have to get another work-study job. You have to get another loan.'' Everything was money, money, money, money. I went to a very expensive school. But I didn't give a fuck. There was no way in hell I wasn't going to be there. It was all very much this madness.
My parents said to me, ''We can't help you with graduate school.'' I said, ''Fine.'' I had written a play and it was very well received. The chairman of the department, Sherwood ''Doc'' Collins, said to me, ''Robert, you are a really, really talented writer.'' He was this old white man, sort of a legend. I was always terrified of him. He was this huge, hulking, Santa Claus of a man [who told me], ''You are amazingly talented.'' I felt like he, his presence, challenged me to do more and to be more as an artist. That's sort of when I really closed in around the fact that I could do this.
Doc followed my career for a number of years. I'd get these long letters from him after I got out of school, about work that I didn't even know he had heard about. This was before people would write in the press, ''This sucked! And his name is Robert O'Hara.'' He would write these long passages about something he'd read of mine. He was so amazing that he could be very critical, but very giving at the same time. When you have an old, white man say to you – about something that you think no one in their right mind would get – that he really, really loved it, it allowed me to go, ''Oh, wait a second. I'm valid? Even my sort of crazy Cincinnati homo self and my work can actually have a relationship to someone who's completely the opposite of me?'' It showed me the universality of writing, actually. It was just a really, really lovely relationship.
MW: The universality of your writing, specifically?
O'HARA: Yes. I always thought that my grandmother spoke in a weird way, an exciting way. But I realized everyone has those two sections. Everyone is different with their family, different in public, and we're sort of carrying those two personas. We all have secrets, and we all have sort of those inner beings that come out whenever we're in different situations. You can embrace them all. I think that's what Doc showed me. I was obviously this gay, black kid – that he embraced completely. He embraced me as an artist, not just as a professor.
MW: So you continued to graduate school?
O'HARA: Right out of undergraduate. There was no, like, five years of ''let me go find myself,'' and then graduate school. In graduate school, it's all theater, all day, in New York at Columbia [University]. It was overwhelming.At the end of my first semester, at my evaluation, the chair looked at me and said, ''Your teachers think you're a little bit too focused on African-American and gay issues.'' We're sitting in Harlem. I'm the only black student in the department. I'm the only out gay student in the directing program. And you're going to tell me that I'm too focused on African-American issues and gay issues? I had to laugh. ''Did you tell my colleague she was too focused on feminist studies and German expressionism?''
What it came down to was my professors would do things like, ''This week we're going to do gay theater, and it's going to be As Is and Torch Song Trilogy. Next week we're going to do fathers and sons, and it's going to be Edward Albee and James Baldwin.'' And I'm like, ''Edward Albee and James Baldwin were faggots. I don't know why they're not in this week.'' People are like, ''They're homosexuals?'' They're challenging me about Edward Albee and James Baldwin being homosexuals.
They wanted to categorize everything, and I would always go, ''Wait a minute. You can't put Tony Kushner just in that place and not in this place. You can't put August Wilson and James Baldwin just in the 'black place' and leave them out of this place.'' It was the absence of people allowing the otherness in the room.
What it is – because I'm teaching now – you have to evaluate every student. Obviously, I did not know. Everyone was older than me. I think what [the chair] was saying was, ''We want you to broaden yourself. We want you to read more Shakespeare and more Chekhov, Ibsen, stuff like that.'' Of course, I was doing that. But because they had to evaluate me, they had to find out what I needed to work on. But I only heard, ''You're too focused on blah blah blah.'' And that led to my first play, which is about a Columbia student who goes back in time to slavery and falls in love.
MW: Regarding the black and gay focus, it seems that gay playwrights are really making their marks right now. Is this the decade of the black, gay playwright?
O'HARA: Every decade is the decade of the black, gay playwright! [Laughs.] That's what you should say. Robert O'Hara says yes.
I don't really know. I know a couple of black playwrights that are men that are not gay. But Tarell [Alvin] McCraney, Marcus Gardley, Tracey Scott Wilson…. I think it is the decade of the black, gay playwright. If that means I get more work, then, yeah, say that. [Laughs.]
But I definitely know that there are more white, straight men getting productions done about white, straight men than there are black people or women productions being done. That's a fact. All you have to do is look at the brochures of theaters. In this city you can look at the brochures. And there are certainly more white people directing plays. I find it so odd that there's this new fad of ''white women and black plays'' or ''white people directing black plays,'' and there's no fad of ''black people directing white plays.'' It's like they're perfectly fine to have a white woman direct some black play. But me? I would never get a call to direct a Sarah Ruhl play. I would never get a call to direct an Adam Rapp play. And I just find that odd. White women should be able to direct any play they want to fuckin' direct. But why am I looked at as ''the black playwright''?
MW: What is the fit, exactly, with you and Woolly Mammoth?
O'HARA: They had the audacity to say, ''We're going to put your play on, and we know you're not done with it. And we don't know what's going to come out of it. And we know you're Robert O'Hara.'' That takes balls. [Artistic director Howard Shalwitz] allows me to be all of me. To not just be the black, gay playwright, but to be the intellectual. To be the complete zany guy. The sort of sad and lonely person at times. He allows me to bring all of myself into the room. I feel like I can do anything I want in there because they have said, ''We trust you and believe in you as an artist.'' There's no fear in that. It's one of the places I can go and be all of me.
Bootycandy runs through June 26 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D St. NW. Tickets, $30 to $65, are available by calling 202-393-3939 or online at woollymammoth.net. The website also includes a schedule of special programming during the run tied to Capital Pride.
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