I went to see a production of a musical written by two of my friends, Mark LaPierre and Jodi Eichelberger.  I’d seen it nine years ago in Portland, but this was it’s NYC debut and very exciting. It was as wonderful and witty as I remembered.  Very clever lyrics and an accapela score that’s witty and engaging as well as being hauntingly beautiful.

Unfortunately, it was in the wrong festival. See, it was in the Bad Musical Festival. The other two pieces on the program took bad to mean, “Deliberately awful,” and succeeded at that goal. I mean, the actors worked their tails off, but there’s not much you can do when your show is a musical version of “a guy walks into a bar…”

Grimm Late Night on the other hand took bad to mean “naughty” which it is.  It was the second show of the evening and when it began the audience clearly didn’t know what to think. They’d just seen a show that was trying to be bad and seemed a little lost at something that was funny because it was well-crafted.  And then, they got it and loved the show from there on out.

Afterwards, we went out for dinner at a restaurant that seemed to be trying to emulate the other two plays.  The drink specials listed a cosmopolitan as one of their “special” drinks.  I mocked that, until I realized that it probably was special since they didn’t know how to make a Sidecar, a Tom Collins or a Gin and Tonic. The first two I tried to order, but the bartender didn’t know what they were. I ordered the G&T which was actively bad.  How the heck do you screw up a gin and tonic?

Rob signed up for the virtual ticket line last night and, much to our surprise, won tickets to the show. We’re going after all.

Just in case you don’t know about the virtual line:

While the majority of Free tickets for Shakespeare in the Park are distributed via the Free line at the Delacorte Theater, a limited number of tickets will be available the day of each performance online. Specific locations for senior and handicapped accessible seats are not available through the virtual ticket line.

Register anytime at PUBLICTHEATER.ORG and then log on between midnight and 1PM on the day of the performance you want to see to submit a request for up to two tickets. You must log-on again between 1PM-6PM to see if you have been selected to receive a pair of tickets. People are chosen at random, not in the order requests are received.

Elizabeth Barrette asked, “How did you get into your cool practice of acquiring bizarre props and building puppets?”

This is one that comes up a lot and, strangely, I don’t think I’ve posted on it, so I’ll give the long answer.

I was one of those kids who wanted to do everything. My parents indulged me and so I took violin, art, theater classes, writing workshops and then, in high school, discovered puppetry. A friend of mine went to a church that had a puppet ministry program, which was the coolest thing ever. I started going to the church so I could be involved — maybe not the best reason to join a church. Anyway, I got very lucky because the leaders of the puppetry program worked very hard on teaching us good skills. A lot of puppet ministry programs have truly dreadful puppetry. I loved the puppetry. When our high school did Little Shop of Horrors, I was the plant.

Anyway, I did puppetry until I went to college. I majored in art education with a minor in theater, which was the closest I could come to combining everything that I loved to do.¹ My sophomore year, the college did Little Shop and I was the plant again.

Then a professional puppeteer came to see the show. Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that someone would actually get paid to do puppetry. I mean, sure, I’d seen Sesame Street, but that was on PBS and everyone knew that PBS was run by volunteers, right? Yeah… But this puppeteer, Dee Braxton, owned a house, only worked a couple of days a week and most importantly, was willing to train me. By the end of the first summer, she was handing me the gigs she couldn’t take. People were giving me money. To do puppets. I was making more money doing that than my part-time job.

Later, I realized that we lived in an area of the country with a very low cost of living and that we were the only puppeteers in a three county radius. It helps.

From there I went to the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, GA for an internship. This shaped me as a puppeteer more than anything else. George Latshaw (like unto a god, in puppetry) was directing, and the cast was a dream team of puppeteers, Jon Ludwig, Jane Catherine Shaw, Bobby Box, and Peter Hart. Pete was in charge of the internship program and my mentor. If I tried to say enough good things about that program, I would bore you, so suffice to say that I can trace everything back to there.

After the internship, I just kept working. I’ve been at it for nineteen years now and, with the exception of a two-year break due to a wrist injury, have made my living as a puppeteer.

Until I came to NYC.

Now the irony here is that, before Iceland, I’d had several years where I worked three to five months out of the year here, as a puppeteer. I always felt as if I would work constantly if I lived here. And behold, that’s true. The odd thing is that almost all the work has been in the props department.

That’s something I stumbled into and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, I enjoy it and it’s honest work. On the other hand, it’s not why we came to NYC and is taking up so much time that I haven’t had a chance to really pursue puppetry and it’s cutting into my writing time.

Rob and I are talking about how to balance that, going forward. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

1. Later I learned about colleges, like the University of Connecticut, that had puppetry programs. [↩]

As the shows I’m working on wind down, and I get various project turned in, I’m seeing snippets of free time appear. I look at them somewhat askance, but I think I might see some more of them. Theater season does wind down in the summer. I think I’ll actually be able to catch up on my journal.

But I’ve been having this weird thing happening lately, since I’ve been too busy to actually sit down and write a journal post but I still have ideas for them, I wind up composing them in my head on the way from point A to point B. Then, by the time I finally have time to write (like now) can’t remember what I’ve written about and what I’ve merely thought about writing about.

So, if I’ve mentioned something in passing and you want me to expand on it, please ask.

Dear actors,

When you demand a prop, a strange and difficult to acquire prop, which requires some hours of time to get for you, please think carefully when presented with the object before you announce that you prefer what you’ve been using in rehearsal.

Many thanks for your time and attention.

A prop master who is checking on the return policy.

One of the joys, when I’m doing props, comes from creating paper goods. Letters, diaries and in this case, a 40-page poetry manuscript…. I took the text of the scene, fed it into the Bonsai Story Generator and got titles from the Book Title Generator. That gave me about ten pages, which I fed back into the story generator. The thing I love about it is that it makes things that flirt with sense without actually making sense.

Consider this gem.

Thoughts of a Sliver

The Vine Yearns for a tea table.
I take it.
Were done properly on a rule.
Oh.
What was your name when he was your letters from there?
Why him?
Forgotten Person, I said you ask
The last two there.
And that, yes.
My Pilot in the Light
Perhaps just a great deal.
The last two there.
You are a tea table.

Go on. Read it aloud in a “meaningful” voice and tell me that it wouldn’t fit in at a poetry slam.

So… let’s recap today. Pilot overslept. Then thunderstorms. Still no pilot. Plane delayed by two hours. Miss D.C. connection. Rebooked on a flight for 6:15 am the next day. Sad. Get standby flight. Happy! Flight is delayed. Why? LaGuardia wasn’t letting flights in. Sad. Finally arrive in NYC. All buses are running! Happy! All buses Except mine. Sad.

I think, if I’m doing accounting for the timezone right, it took me thirteen hours to get home today.

And then! I made props and went to the theater to watch the dress rehearsal. Happy? Bed now. Happy!!!

For Steve and Idi I need a fake jelly donut.

Things I say

1. I’m moving back to Shimmer land. Screw the gods.
2. Just be sure you aren’t screwing when the actors get there.
3. Can I get a stiffer rod?
4. I can retain his rods if I hold them between my pelvis and his head
5. May I touch your dead animal head?
6. He couldn’t get it up.
7. All I have to do is buy this moosehead and then pick up some KY jelly.
8. I think I can give you a donut but I’ll have to sacrifice a baby bunny
9. Give me a second to wash the blood off my hands
10. All right. Who wants to be tied up?

What it really means

1. I had been painting Greek gods for a show all day and needed to get back to layout
2. Discussing set construction at a theater.
3. The metal rod had too much spring in it for the weight of the puppet’s hand.
4. I kept dropping the arm rods of a puppet that stood waist high.
5. I was moving some taxidermy heads
6. At the end of a long day, a puppeteer was too fatigued to lift his arm, and heavy puppet, over his head.
7. I needed to complete a purchase of a taxidermied moose head on e-bay to be used as set dressing in a show about Teddy Roosevelt. The next item on my to-do list was to pick up KY jelly for another show. It goes in the bottom of ashtrays as a fire safety measure.
8. We needed a donut to appear magically on stage. The only foam that I had that had the right density was part of a baby bunny prop.
9. I was mixing stage blood and had it all over my hands
10. I needed to test a trick rope that had a quick release.

Fired a gun for the first time today. It was a blank-firing Glock with quarter-charge ammunition and was for Steve and Idi at Rattlestick. Even with only a quarter-charge of gunpowder, it was really loud.

Alas, the Glock throws the spent casings in a twenty-foot arc, which lands them squarely in the audience. I’m taking it back in the morning for a revolver.

As part of the rental package, they give a tutorial on handling the gun. Included in the tutorial are instructions for what to do if stopped by a police officer while carrying the gun to the theater.

If stopped:
Keep your hands clear and visible. State calmly, “I have a blank-firing gun in my bag. I will let you open it. The receipt is in the case along with quarter-charge ammo. The gun is not loaded.” And then, don’t move until given the okay.

I’m hoping I don’t have to use those instructions.

Dropped props off for one show.
Bought furniture for another.
Rehearsed a third.
Wrote on the train.
Bed now.

Hoooooow? How did I manage to schedule tech week for two shows during the same week again? It’s 2:30 am and I feel like I’m going to bed early. That’s a bad sign.

If you want to have conversations with your neighbors, a good way to do it is to walk down the street with a cart of taxidermy. They might start conversations with such openers as”

“My god!”

“What is it?”

“Are they real?”

“May I touch your dead animal heads?”

I’m doing props for Bully Pulpit, a show about Teddy Roosevelt, who was a big hunter. The whole thing is set in the North Room at Sagamore Hill which was decorated with… yes, taxidermy. I found these heads on Craig’s List and they were only ten blocks from my house. Clearly, I was not going to pass up a chance to interact with my fellow New Yorkers.

One poor woman, who must have been a serious vegan, had a look of absolute horror on her face while her son was totally fascinated. Her husband stopped with their daughter so I could explain about taxidermy and theater. She stood behind them looking like she wanted to throw up.

I’ll bet they have a very interesting conversation when they get home.

Everyone else I passed seemed either completely indifferent or amused.

I know a number of you are coming into town for Comicon. Why not take a break from all that industry stuff and come see a show? I’m puppeteering Peter in Peter and the Wolf.

Sergei Prokofiev’s classic Peter and the Wolf is re-imagined by Mabou Mines co-artistic director Terry O’Reilly and Jane Catherine Shaw to speak to the experience of children newly immigrated to the USA as well as young native New Yorkers. The Matrix Music Collaborators is a playground for the puppets - a garden of delight for Peter and his animal friends and safety from the wolf outside the gate.

Matrix Music Collaborators, a New York-based innovative chamber ensemble presents interdisciplinary collaborations through the unique approach of bridging dance, theater, visual art, film and poetry with classical, experimental, contemporary and world music, sharing the stage with an international roster of accomplished musicians.

Program:

W.A Mozart Excerpts from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik featuring ‘Rainy Nights’ (2002) by Hong Kong artist, Eric Siu

Sergei Prokofiev Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67 - a staging with Chinese Puppets directed by Terry O’ Reilly and Jane Catherine Shaw

Paul Wiancko Hip Hop Cello Concerto No. 1

John Williams Music from the Movies

Instrumentation for Matrix: violin, cello, flute, oboe, horn, clarinet, bassoon and piano under the direction of Sheryl Lee.

Tickets: $10 Individual | $30 Family of four
Free family workshop Saturday, April 19 | 1 pm
theatermania.com | 212.352.3101

Wolf image: Simon Wong

I spent today getting props together for Steve and Idi a new play that I’m working on for Rattlestick theater. In the afternoon, Rob and I went down to pick up a rug for the Bully Pulpit, a play about Teddy Roosevelt.

In the evening, Katherine and I headed down to the Peter and the Wolf rehearsal. She alternated between reading and watching rehearsal while I painted puppets. Did I mention that I’d done the design for the animal characters? No… anyway, my puppet isn’t here from China yet, so I’ll be mostly observing till it gets here on Wednesday.

After rehearsal, Katherine and I went for Japanese food. At the moment, I’m creating some hand props for Steve and Idi before heading to bed.