Springtime, suckas.
Meta
Posting has been light of late. In the unlikely event that you regularly read this blog, or that this has caused you any inconvenience, I apologize.
Personal
Everyone has an inner clown. This clown is not a character one plays, but a distillation of the self, filtered and bottled into the strictures of a performance genre. Clown time, for one, is slower. While we, as people hear and react to new information in a pretty fluid fashion, clowns take a distinct moment to hear, to understand, to share with the audience, and then react. I was given a nickname while doing Redmoon’s Hunchback, largely due to my sometimes helpful sometimes grating habit of looking unfailingly for the bright way forward. My trademark positivity. Silver Lining Samuel, they called me. This, of course, is the appropriate name for my clown.
It’s springtime now, and I’m on the patio outside my house the door thrown jubilantly open for the first time in months. Birds are chirping. I’ in a t-shirt. Some of the old Red Team crew have a theory that everyone has a season. While the genesis of this theory was decidedly sexual, that seems to be a microcosm of the seasonal ebb and flow of individual dharma. Mine, anyhow, appears to be Spring. I certainly seem to have a better time of getting laid in spring. New energy, breaking loose, abandoning hibernation habits, shedding of clothing, release into pent up potential, adventure. Spring Fever. These seem to serve go well with my character. Ska music. Resurrection and remix. Hope as a continual choice. Coupled, of course, to a deep and bitter sense of disappointment. Silver Lining Samuel.
I went to Minneapolis for a couple of weeks for a dance piece choreographed by my friend Katie Rose McLaughlin (of Hunchback fame). Going to Minneapolis was a trip, for many reasons. Al’s Breakfast is the greatest thing to ever happen to eggs, and I am in love with it. Still. For another, girls flirt with me in Minneapolis. A reflection simply of time-investment in a given community? Perhaps. In my delusional fantasies it’s because the contrast between myself and the predominant midwestern identity of sleepy fear is strong and attractive.
Ian, a razor-sharp friend from high-school with whom I have reconnected recently, has been spending a lot of time at my house lately. Interstitial zone of relationship upheaval. His presence has had the effect of turning the kitchen table into exactly the kind of thinktank space that I so strongly hunger for. Positive creation of identity in our generation. Multiple hour conversations about the nature of the self, conducted in both formal and personal terms.
In a related note, he has observed that though I live in nearly abject poverty (a stunning revelation in itself, though as I discovered while filing taxes, indisputably true), my house has a decidedly lively and full vibe to it. And he’s right. I don’t imagine that lack of funds or stability in any way contributes to this life (denying me perhaps, bohemian claims?), but it’s nice to feel that one can offer the fruits of one’s lifestyle to a friend in a time of need.
Professional
Big News item one is that I’ve been called back for one of the two lead roles in one of Chicago Shakespeare’s mainstage shows next season. Cross your fingers out there for me, would you? It would be a Big Deal if I got it. I’ve also just learned that my reader on Monday will be none other than the illustrious Katy Carolina. That’s what you call Good Luck.
Big News item two is that Hunchback is going to New York. If all works out well and without scheduling conflict, I may be living in New York for a month next fall. This is also awesome, both professionally and structurally in my young life.
Macbeth continues to develop well. Lots of in-depth tablework. We’re only just now getting on our feet. Rehearsals are frustratingly short. It’s arguably one of my great character failings (ask the women I’ve abortively been with) that I find it easy to walk away from just about everything. At its best, this is divine non-attachment, do not worry about what you shall wear, and so on. At its worst it’s selfish and callous. In a recent (hilarious!) episode involving me being an idiot, a bike, a train, an audition in the suburbs, a puddle, and a bridge, I nearly got fired from my jobby job, and realized that I don’t fundamentally give a shit. They could fire me; it’d be a big inconvenience, but I’d be okay. In this context, the importance of theatre in my life became totally clear and terrifyingly huge.
Some of the Chicago people I’ve met have what amounts to a profound misconception of what the First Folio is, and how to make it useful. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, it seems. If you move here and try to act, keep in mind that the Folio is not a pattern for breathing. It is the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays published together, in 1623. Hearing a director recently say that “Folio doesn’t apply to prose” in response to a question about breathing at the ends of verse lines (in prose) just… made me sad. It also makes me more aware of the distinct skill set I possess in that area. As one friend, Galen, put it recently: “You gotta watch out when you hire one of us. You’re not hiring just an actor. You’re hiring a whole motherfucking technique. A damn Shakespeare connoisseur.” katy says we’re as skilled and talented as anybody acting at Chicago Shakes. Scary faith.
Political
The democratic race, once profoundly exciting to me, has begun to give me low-lying nausea. I liked Hilary at the beginning of this race damn near enough to vote for her. The more I see of her, the less I like her.
I’ve given a grand total of 35 bucks (in three installments) to Barack lately, and if you like him, then I suggest you give him what you can. Like five bucks. He’s funding himself on donations like that. It’s both good for his campaign, and also good for politics.
Because the long tail (not the fat head) school of fundraising naturally tends towards more little d oriented candidates, and that’s good for government. If someone can just routinely toast the living hell out of fundraising records with an entirely new small-donor paradigm, people will pay more and more attention. It may do more to curb the influence of what the populists love to call Big Money more than anything else. The less you give the better as far as I’m concerned.
It’s a new kind of networked fundraising that you can’t buy. It’s organic. Better process, better product.
Yeah that’s right. I’m askin you to pony up a five-spot. Think of it like buying him a drink.
