How The Show Is Like A Child

The show is hungry.
It's favorite foods are actors, music and a good story. It must have clothing, toys (props & scenery), housing (a theater); things that enable it to play and develop and grow. It must have a gun and a sword and a rubber fish.

The show cries.
It wants another song, more dialogue, rehearsal time and time off from rehearsal. It must have the banana tree but is anxious the bathtub filled with water - the best idea I've ever had - will fall through the floor. It demands a play space as big as a theater. When it is unhappy, it lets me know.

The show keeps me up at night.
Worrying, planning and interpreting strange dreams that sometimes wake me.

The show naps.
It can't always be busy.

The show learns to walk.
Yesterday the actors started to become the characters all by themselves, which made the parents proud.

The show delights.
The singers made some amazing harmonies in the first group vocal rehearsal, which was like having eaten all of it's vegetable without being prompted.

The show acts out.
It craves attention, puts on cranky-pants and behaves irrationally. I can't allow the show to set the agenda! I am stern, I must be a grown-up! I cajole and negotiate and strive to give it things that are good for it. Sometimes I try to make it happy just because that makes me happy.

The show needs love.
And I need to love it.

5 Questions for Bill Pace

Photo by Hillary Bradley

1. What is your role in South?

My official title is "director", but I also like air traffic controller because I see an important part of my job being that everything on-stage flies clearly, cleanly and beautifully ... while also making sure there are no mid-air collisions.

2. What is the show about?
For me, SOUTH is learning that finding the truth about yourself goes beyond just locating who gave birth to you.

And that you can't trust over-caffeinated monks.

Or stinky ship cooks.

But you can trust cannibal lesbians!

3. What music have you listened to in the past week?
Oh man ... if I tell you, I could be banned from this musical! Oh well, here goes:

Street Sweeper
Nashville Pussy
K'naan
Nine Inch Nails
The Vacation
Supersuckers
Bon Iver
LA Guns
The New Pornographers
The Toxic Avenger Musical (seriously!)
Devi
The Donnas
Jay Rock
Heartless Bastards
Cracker
Mad Science Fair
Oh, and some guy named Carmen Borgia.

4. What other gigs do you have going on lately?
Too many!!

Screenwriter
Screenwriting & Filmmaking teacher at New School
Program Advisor for New School
Screenwriting consultant
Videographer
Running Open Caption screens for deaf groups at theaters

5. Who is your hero and why?
Hmmm ... right now I'd have to say Pres. Obama. First off, just the fact that we have an African-American president with an Arabic name is just amazing beyond belief! But beyond that, he was asked not to run yet, to wait and let Hillary have her turn while he gained more experience in the senate, but he wanted the presidency, went for it and made it happen, all while doing so in a very classy manner. On top of that, he said he represented change and since getting in office he is proving himself to be just that.

And the fact that he's a fellow Illinoisan don't hurt either!

5a. You may change the questions.
What about the answers?

The South Fan Page on Facebook is Here.

Back East

It's midnight and my nerves are jangled
Down the jetway at a Batman angle
They strap us into narrow seats
And feed us trays of runny eats
And jet our sorry asses back east

Back to the land of subway rails
Where oven summer heat prevails
People sweat on rooftop decks
The new arrivals curse and wreck
Their taxis in the traffic back east

In the west the weather's nice
And everybody has a car
All the people like themselves
Just the way they are

We're flyin' down the BQE
The driver breaks some laws for me
It's great to be in old New York
My baby called in sick to work
To spend the day with me back east

From the CD, "The Red Circle Line" by Carmen Borgia

Dixon Place

Our first "South" reading at the old Dixon Place on Bowery.
Photo by Norberto Valle

I've heard it said that New York is over, gone, wiped out by Wall Street, real estate, the Web, progress, everything. And it certainly is. But it is also ever here if you know where to look.

About a week after I landed in New York in the late 80's I went to see some friends play music in the East Village. The show was good, but what really stuck was the space. It was on First Street, you came down a few steps and entered a little apartment with a couple of sofas and a bunch of unmatched chairs arranged before the stage, which was the width of the apartment, maybe twelve feet, and about eight feet deep. The back wall of the stage had a door that led to the kitchen/bedroom, with a little window beside it. The window was the bar for pre-show tea and cookies. The audience filled the whole space while the performers set up and chatted, then for the show everybody took their seats to enjoy a lovely, intimate evening with the performers.

After the show I met the proprietress, Ellie Covan, and nervously gave her a newly-minted cassette tape of my songs. In a day or so she called me excitedly, "This is really great music! You've got to come play here!" I didn't even have a band, but her glowing enthusiasm set a fire under me and I put one together with my girlfriend and a drummer pal. Over the years I have done innumerable gigs at Dixon Place as a solo performer as well as accompanist and sound designer. In those primordial days of spirited performance art and unguided struggle, Ellie would open each show with a short tune on accordion, casting forth a vocal performance as notable for it's pluck as it's intonation, and the audience would sing along with "Goodnight Irene" or "Sentimental Journey" as they saw fit.

Dixon Place hosted works-in-progress, high value was placed on inventiveness and the glory of impulse. Each night, two new performances, 20-40 minutes each. If you went a few nights running you might see one pretty good show, one WTF gig and another with gleamings, and maybe even the steady glow, of pure brilliance. Writers reading, songwriters singing, puppeteers hiding behind papier-maché alter egos. One on one, before I ever had a client; no guest, no host, just some people in a hot room packed and intent and fighting a constant climatic battle with air conditioning or steam heat. Close enough to smell the actors, close enough to feel things. This was a place for the honest and the curious as well as those who liked to watch. When I think of theatre at it's most essential, this is the memory that manifests most clearly.

Time passed and stuff happened, maturity finally caught up with me, sort of. The city appears to have become something completely different, neighborhoods that terrified me then are now where the well-off reside, which terrifies me in a different way. People who I thought would always be a quick subway hop away have wafted far off to a misty distance of weird recollection. My own goals and routines have shifted through so many variations over the years that I can make neither head nor tail of any of it at all, nothing is as it was and all has changed irretrievably.

But the Place is still there. A spot to gather, pour forth, express - still downtown, nearby in a neighborhood where cookware is sold and cars drive by too fast, soup lines unwind, street musicians riff and random doors are lit at 1am. Dixon Place left the 1st Street pad years ago and moved to a loft on Bowery. From there it did a stint at a theater on 2nd Avenue, and then returned to a smaller conversion of the loft. Now more than 20 years after I first laid eyes on the institution, Ellie and her amazing crew of conspirators, after a persistent and arduous campaign lasting several years, have succeeded in building a brand-new, several million dollar space on Chrystie Street, and it is inarguably great. It's got an intimate 100 seats, a computer lighting system, a crack tech crew and support staff, and the paint is still drying in places. And, in yet another of their many instances of exquisite judgment, they have given me the fine honor and happy opportunity to do South as part of the opening season.

It's not the supa-tight squeeze the original venue was, but what could be? And I couldn't have fit this show in there anyway. I'm trying to talk Steve, the technical director and lighting designer, into letting us put a bathtub on the stage, and there is no way that would have made it into the old place. Progress!

So as we go about our rehearsals and preparations, Bill, Jenny and I frequently find ourselves asking, how can we use the new space? Where should the seats go, and might we use a platform or a scaffold? Hang up a big sail to project upon or have someone sing from the balcony? It is unusual in New York City that one gets to present in a venue that can take so many forms in which audience and performers may share an evening. Plus, we get the time-honored benefit of hanging with the Dixon Place regulars while we're putting it all together. Life is good!

The South Fan Page on Facebook is Here.

Heading South

So, I went and wrote a musical. It's called South, it's set in 1860 and is about a young sailor's search for his parents. It's a grown-up nautical yarn wherein we meet pirates, filthy townfolk, well-adjusted lesbian cannibals, an over-caffeinated monk, a curious dealer of religious artifacts and...well, I wouldn't want to spoil it.

Last week we got mostly cast and then had our table reading on Sunday. I played guitar and sang the songs, which felt like a bit of a celebration. It was marvelous to hear the script out loud with the real people. This show has been in my head forever, and for it to spool out into the room was not only flattering and fun, but also a relief to hear people read and respond to it. When I heard the first ripple of laughter at what was actually a laugh line, I started to strum a little easier. Of course, we've got a lot of work ahead to make it happen, but I call this a great day.

Really excellent cast and crew, here come the credits! Alison is doing the cool worldly ladies. Sadrina Johnson is playing Arabella, the disgusting cook's spicy daughter. Robb Sherman is Wheeler, the questing Sailor. Bill Tost is Captain Spar, the aging commander of the similarly aged ship Worthy. Bill was in the Fantasticks in it's original run for years and is an amazing dude. He's so venerable he doesn't even have a web page! We've got Doug Skinner as Pym, the itinerant merchant spreading faith, or at least articles of it. I'm playing the monk with the coffee problem and music directing the lot. We're still looking for Hurley, the cook, so anyone who would like to play a disgusting person and sing an entire song about a bone should give a call.

It's being directed by Bill Pace and choreographed by Kriota Willberg. I've worked with both of them on other projects and it's always been a hoot. Jenny Rose is my co-producer, a veteran of many a fringe festival show, and is helping me to understand exactly what the heck I am doing.

We're doing the show at Dixon Place in NYC in June. It's going to be fun and challenge to get back into a theater and mount a show.

Them's the basics, details to follow I'm sure.