King Lear is Not for Kids

Over the holiday, I went back to Ames to visit some old teachers and Mr. Keane finally told me why he decided to do King Lear as our sophomore performance. That deserves some context. I've hiked the Grand Canyon, worked for a certifiably psychopathic boss, gotten lost in Berlin for three days, and managed to get a four point while I had mono, but acting in King Lear was truly the most harrowing experience of my life. You try doing a play about insanity and betrayal as a teenager.

It's true, I really wanted an explanation, but I wasn't looking for a confession. I'd put it behind me, and I figured, like King Lear itself, there really wasn't a good reason for it anyway. The admission came about in the most unnatural way possible -- one moment we were talking about jobs and the next he said, "It was a dare I had in college." He looked mildly ashamed of himself, which he should have been.

It was after hours and it was already dark outside. Mr. Keane's window looks out on the courtyard where I used to eat lunch with friends and I could see a few kids were still there, huddled in a tight circle talking about god knows what.

"A dare...?" I asked.

"A dare..." Mr. Keane said and nodded. He slouched in his chair, resting his forehead in his hand and I had to stop myself from laughing because he suddenly looked a lot like a photo I'd seen of Edwin Booth as Hamlet.

"It was senior year and my friends and I were sitting around at a party talking about Shakespeare because we were theatre majors and an old argument came up: can you teach Shakespeare to high schoolers? We were drinking and smoking pot, which tends to lead to silly promises..."

I looked over my shoulder to make sure that no one was standing at the door to the room. Mr. Keane didn't seem the least bit worried about anyone hearing. In fact, I'm not sure if he was talking to me at all.

"Um, Mr. Keane..." I said and, for first time, his formal name seemed awkward and I wondered if I should just call him Miles. "... Mr. Keane... are we really having this conversation?"

"Apparently we are," he verified. "I can get to the point and say that that was my first year teaching and I'm very sorry."

"You made Max sit in a corner and scream 'Please God don't make me crazy!' for ten minutes..." Max played King Lear. I've never seen anyone so deep in character. I've heard Max works for the Bank of America now.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I stole that from a friend who was doing Proof." He took a sip of coffee and refilled my cup. In the whole year I sat in his classroom, I don't think I ever saw that pot empty.

"On the first rehearsal you made us all sit around and write out our worst memories-"

"Yeah, I-"

"-and then made the person next to us act it out." Try to imagine being sixteen years old, sitting next to the girl you have a crush on (playing Ophelia), and acting out the death of her uncle.

Mr. Keane hung his head. "That was a bad decision."

The head-hanging thing was too much. I'd forgiven him, if not forgotten, but now he was looking for sympathy and I wanted to get to the one that really stung. "You threw cast parties and didn't invite me."

There was a grimace on his face and he took a quick sip of coffee. "It was something Milos Forman did to the guy playing Salieri filming Amadeus."

"And this seemed like a good thing to do to a sixteen year old?"

"You did great in that play."

"I know I did, but that's not the point."

Every rehearsal I would get there and all the other actors would be talking about the fun they had at Gregory's or how they got together to watch different film versions of the play. Without me. The best part of high school theatre is the social aspect and I missed out on it completely. I later learned this was by Mr. Keane's design so that I would feel animosity toward the other actors while playing Edmund. Ever since then, I've always liked that character.

Mr. Keane nodded. "Well, I know it's not worth much, but I'm sorry and I was learning."

He was learning. It seemed like a feeble excuse when he said, but after a moment it took on greater meaning.  Mr. Keane, when he did that first play with us, was my age - fresh out of college and still susceptible to bouts of artistic insanity. At my job now, I meet teachers all the time and usually I think, "You're too young to be a teacher..." not realizing that I guess we've reached that age where we're expected to know something and pass it on.

We talked a little longer, Miles and I, but about nothing particularly memorable. He was "Miles" to me then and that meant he didn't have anything more to teach me. The lessons he did give me were accidental anyway. We said goodbye and I left Ames High feeling educated again.

Lysistrata

There’s an ancient Joke: Caesar is inspecting his troops and he notices a soldier that looks very much like himself. He goes up to the soldier and says, “Did your mother, by chance, work in my palace?” The soldier replies, “No. But my father did.”

Generally, I don’t like bawdy comedy or body horror of any kind told by anyone. It’s cheap. The object is to squeeze laughter out of the audience through primal insecurities. It’s verbal groping. Anything visceral will always get a laugh or a cringe out of the audience, but rarely is it deserved.

But, it works. In fact, it Always works and Allways has worked.

Recently, IB told me that L participated in a New Orleans Ladies Arm Wrestling (NO LAW) competition in which a draw was settled by a joke-off. IB’s favorite, compliments of L, was, “My grandma asked me once, ‘How do you know when you had a good night? When you throw your panties against the wall and they stick.’”

IB elaborated, “I love it when girls tell dirty jokes. Guys get away with it all the time, but women rarely use raunchy humor.”

At the University of Iowa I took a theatre history class in which we read Lysistrata. The primary reason for discussing this play was to begin a conversation about theatre technology. Specifically: props. More specifically: phalluses. It’s a pretty basic gag. A man walks out with a tremendous phallus strapped to his waist and, magically, people laugh.

Lysistrata was written in 411 BC by the great comic playwright, Aristophanes. At the time of its first performance in Athens, the city state was engaged in a 14-year long war with its neighbor, Sparta. Lysistrata tells the story of the eponymous heroine leading the women of both cities in a sex-strike with one simple demand: peace. It is a sex comedy but, more than that, it is a war protest piece.

Cripple Creek’s production of the play, which unfortunately has its last performance tomorrow, captures the play in all its bawdy glory. They made full use of phalluses, writhing pelvic agony, and put perfect emphasis on the right suggestions.

A friend said that comedy only works with good actors. Cripple Creek’s production worked. It was a truly incredible production of this classic comedy. It is testament to Cripple Creek’s expertise that the play has sold out every night of its run.

But, above all, I respect the company in keeping the play thoroughly grounded in the moral: the desire, the craving that conquers all is for Peace. At the end of the play, in fact, the company gets a little heavy-handed drawing pointed parallels to modern day politics. But, then, Lysistrata was not at all subtle about its message at the time. It is in the spirit of this comedy that the audience should walk away laughing and feel guilty if they don’t go immediately write their legislators.

And, while I still don't like bawdy humor, I laugh at it. The vast majority of humanity does, which is why it’s so popular. Lysistrata is proof that there are some things that resonate through the millennia, and one of them is this: sex jokes will always be funny. Even Shakespeare, the creator of most of our language, had an obsession with those things below the belt.

A friend of mine, C, is a German anglophile. She recently earned her masters in English literature and for a long time taught English literature to undergraduate German students. In one class she was trying to teach her students about Shakespeare’s more crass jokes, specifically in Hamlet. On the board, she wrote Hamlet’s quip to Ophelia, “Do you think I meant country matters?”

The class gave her a blank look. She repeated the line with greater emphasis, “Get it? ‘Cunt-ry matters…?’”

People searched for That One Guy who always knows the right answer, but he looked embarrassed.

“Okay, who knows what this word means?” She wrote and underlined, “Cunt,” and again there were only blank stares.

In her exasperation, C said, “Okay, all of you go home and Google this word.” When she related this story to me later that day, she shook her head apologetically and muttered, “I really shouldn’t have done that…”

That was all a very round-about way of saying:

1.) Cripple Creek Productions is nifty;

2.) Sex is and always will be funny;

3.) You should go and see or read Lysistrata;

4.) It's a lovely Saturday late afternoon. I am sitting on a bench in front of Fair Grinds and I would like to be done with this post already. Now I'm leaving.

On the New Orleans Fringe Part 3: Review of Marilyn: A Play About Our Bodies

“It’s called Marilyn,” IB told me.

“Marilyn Monroe?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I agreed, mostly because I didn’t have the energy to come up with alternatives. The weeks and months leading up to the New Orleans Fringe Festival were so emotionally, physically, and mentally draining I could not fathom making plans of my own.

Such was my exhaustion that I was strangely aware of my own skeleton, and my abdomen felt like an unruly and loud parasite. That morning was rough. I spent two hours trying to wake up and only as the sun went down did I feel truly alert, which was to say, at the low tide of disorientation and malaise.

Marilyn. Fine.

Finding the theatre was an adventure. The play was a site-piece and so was hosted at the private residence of the Furmari family, local theatre patrons. The house sits on the corner of Royal and Mandeville across from the levee. As we biked up, I saw, above the barrier wall, a titanic cruise ship that looked like a passing apartment building decked out for Christmas.

As we locked up our bikes I realized I’d forgotten my ticket. We negotiated with the doorwoman (whom I later discovered was Ms. Bonnie Gabel, the director) to save me a spot while I rushed back to IB’s, got my ticket and sped back. By the time I arrived, the rest of the audience had already been ushered in.

“Here’s my ticket,” I wheezed.

“Do you have your button,” Gabel asked.

“Um, it’s at home,” I said. Specifically, it was in yesterday's shirt pocket. I shuffled. “I just returned from a quest...”

“That’s true,” she admitted. “It was an ordeal. Go ahead. Just make sure to get a button on your way out.”

Out of breath and disoriented, I was led through the gate by a woman in a blonde wig. She offered me her hand and my social powers failed me. I mistook the gesture and did not kiss her hand, as would have been proper, so she pointed me down a claustrophobic path leading down the side of house decorated with candles and collage work of the Icon. Another woman in a blonde wig waited for me at the far end. She curtsied. When I was close enough to take her offered hand I saw that her lips were sewn shut.

And she led me right up to a bar set-up in a tiny patio aglow with candles and a Very Chatty audience of about twelve.

“How much for the drinks?” I asked the skinny bartender.

“Free. But we have a suggested donation of three dollars.”

“I don’t have any cash…”

“I won’t judge you.”

“But now I feel guilty…”

So I walked away without a drink and better off, really. I’d fought for that sobriety. Having all of my mental and physical faculties at neutral was unusual and satisfying.

IB and I waited quietly for the play to start while the other guests socialized. Suddenly Marilyn Monroe, played by Alison Haracznak, stumbled onto the patio, downed a glass of wine and assured us that we’d have  agood evening. She darted from one woman to the next, garbbing hands and dismissing them gently until she came to IB.

“You,” she said. “Follow me.”

They disappeared.

A moment later we were ushered in and served tea by the Marilyn with her lips sewn shut. The walls were decorated with napkins stating, “What I love about my body is…” The one that caught my attention read, “My scars.”

The Marilyn with her lips sewn shut, played by Sara Schwartz, led us in a toast. She placed the tea cup to her mouth and the water poured down her dress and he fell to her knees crying.

The audience laughed.

“It’s all right, honey,” one woman chuckled as the Marilyn-with-sewn-lips moaned.

Night Light Collective, the performance team, deserved a better audiences. I have so very rarely been so disgusted with my fellow spectators. Throughout the rest of the play, which was sort of like walking naked through a hail storm, the audience just didn’t seem to “get it” or approach the subject matter with the appropriate gravity.

When I wanted to scream at that audience woman for having the sensitivity of a Monopoly board, I knew that the rest of the play was going to be phenomenal.

Marilyn: A Play About Our Bodies was one of my favorite theatrical experiences ever. The magnitude of the craftsmanship, from the set design, to the choreography, to the poetry, was staggering. I felt like I was trapped in a tiny, schizophrenic, alcoholic, emotionally torn universe for an hour. By the end, I felt brutalized and dazed, which is exactly what good theatre should do.

I won’t go into great detail about the play since this is a review, not a story. But I’m a bad reviewer and so I have to apologize for the spoilers. Rest assured, there are plenty more surprises.

So, a few brush strokes.

Marilyn is, obviously, about Marilyn Monroe, the iconic fifties actress. The play’s name states one of the play’s central themes: obsession with body image and the sado-masochism of sexuality in American pop culture. But it was more than that. The pay was preoccupied with passion that kills and a vicious cycle of flesh becoming symbol becoming flesh again.

If there was a plot, I think I missed it. I was too fixated on the visceral assault of sound and acting. This is one drawback to this style of intimate theatre. I’m so overwhelmed by sensory input that I can’t appreciate the language. I feel cheated that I left with a complicated, deep uneasiness but no memory of the poetry except the in the most general terms.

A few years ago, a playwright told me that he divides plays into two simple categories: the ones that work and the ones that don’t. Marilyn worked.

I think that most people, male and female, are at war with their own bodies. Marilyn succeeds in speaking to that feeling. The central actress and writer spends most of the play convulsing about her abdomen, sometimes in pain, sometimes in nausea, sometimes in pleasure. It was a reminder that the great Marilyn Monroe, the Icon, was made of skin and blood, too.

But for this one it was a reminder that we’re all meat, that the body is sacred, and that we all ought to show ourselves mercy.

If you’re in New Orleans, or elsewhere and see NightLight Collective doing a performance, go see the show. And be on your best behavior. They deserve a good audience.

On the new Orleans Fringe Part 2: Post

The Friday before last was something of a trial at work and so I was glad to join my coworkers for a beginning-of-the-weekend drink. We gathered at the Daq Shack across the street from the main office building where many generations of our people have met to forget what just happened. Evening came on quickly, despite the warmth. Five minutes after we arrived, the wind picked up and we had to shout at each other in the dark.

“Did you get all the emoticons I sent you?” one of my colleagues asked.

“Yeah. All of them. I liked the crab,” I said.

“We send those to you just to hear you laugh,” he explained. “We wait for it in the other office. There goes Sam again. Guffawing at something.”

“Sorry I didn’t laugh enough.”

People tell me that I have a very distinct laugh. Sometimes they say it’s a guffaw, and sometimes a scoff. It amuses some, but offends others. I know that if I ever heard someone in a crowd laughing the way I do, I would feel obliged to tell them that they are bad people.

Immediately after the drinks, I joined IB at her house and we biked into the Marigny.

“What’s on the itinerary?” I shouted as we crossed one of the Elysian Fields intersections closest to the levee.

“It’s a play called Marilyn,” IB called back, making a sudden right turn. I jerked my bike around to follow her. “It’s at somebody’s house and they only let in about twelve people so we have to hurry.”

A moment later we pulled up next to a tiny duplex. The cashier told us we had arrived too late and if we wanted to see the show we’d have to come back the next day about a half hour before the time. It was 7:00PM and no other shows IB wanted to see began until 9:00PM.

We retreated to the Lost Love Lounge so that I could eat and we could kill time. Lost Love sits on some hidden corner in the Marigny that I’m certain I could not find on my own. There is a bar in the front room, illuminated red through the haze of cigarette smoke. As you walk in the door, there is a gigantic bookshelf on your right filled with popular paperbacks. Proceeding through the bar you arrive at a little restaurant that serves Pho and has a tiny stage tucked into one corner. I ordered Pho and was surprised by the prices.

“I thought you said this place wasn’t expensive?” I said.

 

“It isn’t expensive.”

“This is expensive.”

“I’ve learned to stop worrying about money,” IB said, with a shrug. “It works out.”

After we ate we moved back to the bar where we somehow got on the topic of postmodernism.

“I’m already sick of this conversation,” IB said. “That’s all anyone ever talked about in college, ‘What comes after postmodernism?’”

“Postmodernism is all my professors ever wanted to talk about in college,” I said. “They came of age when that was the hip theory. People asked what comes next, but no one ever bothered to answer the question.  And for all that, I still have no idea what postmodernism is.”

“You don’t?”

“Well, what’s postmodern to you?”

“It’s a school of thought concerned with deconstructing and analyzing the modernist philosophy of absolutes. That’s part of it, at least. What’s postmodernism for you?”

“Every boring thing that came after modernism. Have you ever read John Barth?”

“And that’s all that the entire intellectual movement that currently informs our thinking means to you? It’s boring?”

I looked at my phone. “It’s nine.”

“Shit!”

We biked quickly across town to the Shadow Box Theatre. I reacted to one sudden turn after the next until we finally arrived, ten minutes later, at the theatre to try to catch 33. I knew nothing about it but the name. As we locked our bikes, IB explained, “It’s a cabaret-style play about a theatre artist in Nazi Germany.” (The irony of us trying to reach this play after a conversation about postmodernism didn’t hit me until just now. BTW, hello, reader.)

The cashier at Shadow Box told us that we’d arrived too late and the show was sold out.

“The next show’s at eleven,” we were told.

Twice defeated, we decided to investigate the venue across the street. How to Be a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less had started 20 minutes earlier, but we decided to go for it.

How to Be a Lesbian is a one-woman show and I can’t say anything for the first half, but the second was great. The major themes and subject are pretty much covered in the title, so I’ll spare you. What I can add is that Leigh Hendrix (performer and writer) is an energetic and entertaining actress and a witty writer. The play fell somewhere between a stand-up comedy routine and a mocumentary. If there was a plot, I missed it, but that’s no fault of the artist.

We made our way across the street and I was proud that I hadn’t gotten lost. It was not until after we were comfortably seated in the second row that either of us bothered to look at the playbill, which was not for 33, but Tap and Unfailing Prayers to St. Anthony.

“What happened to 33?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” IB said.

The acting was good the dancing was great, but I don’t really have much to say about this one because I have no idea what happened. Mind you, I was exhausted and had had a few drinks, but try as I might I could not figure out what the play was about. It began with the main character, Gene (also the playwright), crouched over a candle offering a prayer to St. Anthony. From there the play dove into a bizarre dance routine that was an odd blend of Lost in Space, every Hollywood 1950s musical, and American Idol.

When the play was over, I asked IB, “What just happened?” to which she replied, “I have no idea.”

Tired and disappointed, we got on our bikes and started making our way back to Treme. We didn’t talk on the way and I kept a little distance behind so that I could see when IB turned. We came to an intersection in Elysian Fields where a large red pickup sat in the break in the median. IB passed by, but when I rode by the driver hit the gas.

“Hey! Stop!” I shouted and managed to get my bike mostly out of the way, but his bumper slammed into my back tire.

“Oh, man! I didn’t see you,” the driver called out his open window. “Here, I’ll pull over.”

I got of my bike on the median. I double checked to make sure that I hadn’t been hit and that my bike was all right. By the time the driver got to me, I was still shaken.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine. I’m not hurt.”

“Is your bike all right?”

“I think so.”

“Sorry, man.”

“No one’s dead.”

The driver turned and meandered across the three lanes of traffic back to his car. He kept turning to wave at us and just barely managed not to get hit by oncoming traffic. A moment later, he was back in his car and driving fast down Elysian Fields.

“He was wasted,” I said, a revelation.

“And an asshole,” IB added

I got on my bike and pushed forward a foot before I realized that my back tire was untrue.

“Can you ride it?”

“No,” I said “Why didn’t I get his license plate number? Or his name? Or his insurance information?”

“A guy driving a car like that would have insurance.”

“Let’s go.”

“Do you want to lock your bike up?”

“No,” I said and hoisted the frame over my shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Are you sure?”

“Let’s go.”

A mantra played through my head throughout the whole walk back. I stopped myself from saying aloud, Fuck this town. Fuck this town. Fuck this town.

On the New Orleans Fringe Part 1: The Limiting Factor

Exhaustion prevented me from making plans and so I followed. Steph made all the arrangements and so, at the far end of the weekend, here I am and Cafe Envie with a semi-beginning. I just saw five shows at the New Orleans Fringe Festival and I picked none of them myself. It has been a remarkable experience, surrendering to the surprise.

But, I'll get into that later. On Friday one of my coworkers remarked that I look perpetually hung over. Apparently I'm exhibiting the signs of a rock star life with none of the benefits. All the edges seemed to have frayed. I told someone the other day that my fingertips are my favorite part of my body and I was as surprised as her. But it was my fingertips that said it, embracing a pen.