Where We Are: Sans Everything

We've spent a good deal of time revisiting material and inventing new stuff. Even though we know a lot about what happens in this play, we really haven't figured out how it happens. The "how" of theatre is actually the part that makes it a play and not a novel or a synopsis. A few days ago we decided to write down all the things we know about the space ship before and after it encounters As You Like It. Here's what that looks like:

Here's just what we know about the ship before:

Here's what we think happens after:

Today we move into the ever-exciting notecard (Strange Attractor language) or paper plate (Lightning Rod Special language) stage. This means we'll start turning our bits into sequences, thus specifying all these ideas into something a little more cohesive.

Someone once called devising "ruthlessly inefficient." Certainly one writer might be able to sort all this out in a more efficient way than a room of actor-creators, but is that really the point? Is art at its best efficient?

Hay Ride to the Witch's

Please enjoy this slice of life from our day off in Philadelphia.

Meet Mason

Our series of interviews between Jed and the Sans Everything co-creators of Lightning Rod Special concludes with this last-but-not-least interview. Please please please. . .  Meet Mason.

Jed: Here we go. We're at Nam Son. No. Wait. Are we at Tram Son?

Mason: I think this place has a different name. There's a really nice one [Vietnamese restaurant] in the same complex with Nam Phuong and they have live frogs and lobsters and all sorts of fish -- eels in a styrofoam box with a metal grate on top.

Jed: Have you ever bought any live things to eat?

Mason: Oh yeah. Here's a good story. Have you heard this one before? For Go Long Big Softie we created all these trials and one was a trial of courage and we were like, what should happen in this one. And -- do you remember the part when Scott drank the blood of his ancestors? It was just a silly moment. But I think there was something where maybe at first Scott thought we should kill a live chicken on stage during that part. We have a friend named Matt Lowe who has a farm and he kills chickens all the time and has killing cones --

Jed: Killing cones! Yeah. One time I killed a turkey.

Mason: Yeah, they take the chicken and put them upside down in these cones and they're constricted and upside down and you cut their necks. If you do it correctly they die very quickly because they bleed out because they're upside down. What we were told is that they still thrash around and freak out and then projectile poop. It's not a pretty thing. We went so far as to talk with Matt about it and actually meet with someone in the Italian market near to where we were rehearsing where they sell live chickens and rabbit and duck. Charlotte Ford [the show's director] was really excited about the idea and I was like, "we can't do this." Not because I'm morally opposed to killing an animal or even killing an animal in live performance. I was just like, then the whole show will be about that and our show wasn't really unpacking what that meant. You can't just, as an extra thing, kill an animal.

Jed: Like a special effect. All anyone would want to talk about is that chicken moment when the piece is about way more than that, and you would be like, "All anyone wants to talk about is the chicken."

Mason: Right. We were like, Oh we'll kill the chicken and then send it to this other farmer friend who will pluck it and we'll eat it and I was like, "Fine. I don't feel bad about that, but I do feel bad about putting that in a performance piece and then not thinking about it."

Jed: Are you from New York?

Mason: I'm originally from Chicago. From Skokie, Illinois actually. I was born in Chicago, but when I was very young my parents moved to the suburbs to Skokie, which is North of the city. And then I moved to New York for college. For NYU.

Jed: Did you do plays as a child?

Mason: I did. My mom had a friend, Sue Pector. And Becky Pector was in these community theatre play things and my mom would bring me to see Becky Pector when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade to see these plays. I saw Alice in Wonderland, I remember seeing that. I really liked it and apparently -- I recently asked my parents about this. I was like, "Did you sign me up for drama stuff?" And they insisted that I asked to be in these drama production things after I saw Becky in them. We didn't do faithful productions. Even then they were weird adaptations. I remember being a weird kind of Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. I remember being a Heffalump in a production of Winnie the Pooh, but I was a hip hop Heffalump. So I started doing theatre early, and my mom started taking me to commercial auditions.

Jed: Was that your decision?

Mason: I think it was my mom's. She had a photographer friend who took pictures of me. I think it was very exciting for my mom. But I enjoyed it too. I was a funny-looking kid. I had glasses and was adorably nerdy. I remember auditioning multiple times to play Rick Moranis' son. I was almost the lead character in Freaks and Geeks. I've never watched that show.

Jed: Really?

Mason: Yeah, I met with the producers and the directors and stuff like that. I think I was among, like five people who were in consideration. They did a lot of casting and producing in Chicago.

Jed: Did you book any commercial stuff?

Mason: I did some print things. And I was the understudy for all the kids' roles in a production at the Goodman Theatre called Randy Newman's Faust. The music was by Randy Newman and the book was by David Mamet. And later I went on to study with Mamet. They hired me knowing I'd have to go on a bunch of times and it was really intense because I had to go on for all the kids' roles. In that play they show Lucifer and God as children so there was a kid Lucifer and a kid God role and I understudied both of those. I don't remember exactly how old I was. Maybe 5th grade. Later I went to a public high school that had a really great arts program, but when I was younger I went to a private Jewish day school that was half in Hebrew and half in English.

Jed: Can you speak Hebrew now?

Mason: I can. [speaks Hebrew] I speak Hebrew, but it's not so great because I don't speak it actively. I did a Birthright trip and I was like, "This is so great. It's all coming back to me." I feel like if I spent a good year living in Israel it would all come back to me because I have an innate sense of the grammar from studying it as a real young kid, but in high school I studied Spanish. So, I went from a Jewish day school to a public high school with an amazing arts program. We put on tons of productions and had a directing class and advanced scene study class. I did Kabuki with a living national treasure of Japan who was my theatre director's teacher. It was a really big deal. He did Kabuki MacBeth and Kabuki Medea, along with Fiddler on the Roof. But we also did, like, Zoo Story.

Jed: Earlier, full disclosure, we went to a boxing gym, and I took a class with Mason.

Mason: What was that like?

Jed: It was fun. I feel like the initial learning experience with any kind of physical discipline for me is always tied up with my difficulty in processing names or numbers or sequences and my dyslexia and frustration with those things. But then my enjoyment with any movement things get me excited just to move in the end. There was just enough repetition that I was able to have some fun. But I was curious now, you'd said you'd done all kinds of martial arts. Did you ever try Krav Maga?

Mason: I've never tried Krav Maga. I know a little bit about it, but I never took intense self-defense martial arts classes. As a very little kid I took Taekwondo at the Skokie Park District. I took judo with my dad and brother for a while for a couple years. Not very long, but my dad wanted a practice -- something to do with me. A lot of it was that my vision is so bad and it wasn't so bad as a kid. But like, I thought I was really bad at sports because the sports you play as a kid are like, baseball or like, soccer or tennis or all these things that require hand-eye coordination. All these things to track these balls and I'm like, "clearly I'm a nerd and inept with my body." But then I started doing theatre and gymnastics as a kid, and martial arts and I realized, no I like moving. I even like competitive sports. I just can't do these more common sports because I have really bad vision. That's part of why I got into martial arts. My dad had always been into it as well. I was also obsessed with Star Wars as a kid. My brother and I were written up in the local paper for our Star Wars toy collection. My mom pulled me from school the day the Star Wars movies were rereleased in the theatre. I became obsessed with being a Jedi. My dad was a philosophy major and he'd read all these Eastern spiritual and philosophy texts on Zen Buddhism and all that. So at a young age I read like, Zen and the Art of Archery and all these spiritual texts and was obsessed with being a Jedi. Meanwhile I was going to Jewish day school and I was like, not into that.

Jed: Where does theatre fit in with martial arts?

Mason: I think it fits in in a big way. I became interested in it as a spiritual practice. We had this directing class in high school and on our first day of class we had this assignment to write the definition of art. And everyone writes these smart, interesting things and I was like, "I think everything is art. Art is a verb or an action. It's a thing you do. It's a lens." Would it be good to consider certain things art? Probably not, but you could. I was being influenced at that point in time by all my very Zen readings. Things are so shaped by how you look at them and your experience of the world is constructed and an illusion. Even in high school. And the teacher wanted us to come to a group agreement because we were supposed to be making these plays together in this group directing class and I would not concede. I was like, "Respectfully, I don't think I agree with any of these definitions." This assignment that was supposed to be a day went into the whole week until eventually we decided to just move on. People were a little bit frustrated with me. They were like, "It needs an audience." and I was like, "I don't think it does." So that was intense. I was already thinking about art and theatre as a way of exploring these mysteries.

Jed: How does the high school Mason Jedi decide to do NYU Atlantic theatre school?

Mason: I was pretty sure I was going to go to my state school, University of Illinois, which has a great theatre program and would have been ridiculously cheap in comparison. A high school friend at the time was really excited about NYU and I went to this college thing at the Hilton Hotel where all the colleges show up and you audition for all of them. On a whim, I made the appointment because they were there. I did my NYU audition for Rosemary Quinn, who at the time was the head of ETW, the Experimental Theatre Wing, and she had asked me what studio did I want to be in. And I was like, I want to be in the Experimental Theatre Wing because I already knew I was interested in working with theatre in these different ways and I wasn't interested in commercial theatre. I wanted to make my own stuff. I had this great interview with her and she said I'd be a great fit.  And so I was surprised when I got my letter of acceptance -- I didn't think I'd get accepted at all, but when I got accepted and was put in Atlantic I was a little bit puzzled. My parents said, "This is great. We're really proud of you. You can't go. There's no way we can afford this." We had a family meeting and they were like, "We looked at our money situation and we can't afford it, but let's have another meeting next month." And then we'd have another meeting. I think we had three or four meetings where they were like, "I'm sorry. We tried to figure it out, but it's just not possible." And after four of those meetings they were like, "Okay. Student loan rates are really low. You can take out all these loans in your name and we'll take out a couple." They said I could go. But I was already pretty much not pushing for it. I was pretty set on U of I. They really surprised me, but my parents have always been very supportive. Anyway, I ended up at Atlantic and I just loved Atlantic so much. They had very strict script analysis and heavy intellectual scene study -- which I also really love, thinking of theatre as a craft. But the voice and movement teachers were very strong and really experimental in their approach. I met Rosemary Quinn when I was there and she remembered me by name -- which is an amazing thing about this woman -- and I asked her why I ended up in Atlantic and she was like, "I don't know. I thought I put you in ETW."  But I stayed because I liked it a lot. And then I taught there, which is where I met Katie Bull, my voice teacher, who was the daughter of Richard Bull who was big in the Judson Church dance movement. He had coined this term Structured Dance Improvisation. He was a jazz pianist and he would play in jazz classes and thought, what if dancers could improvise around a tune the same way jazz musicians could? He started working with dancers and through Katie I met George Russell who was a movement teacher at the Atlantic who I hadn't studied with, but met when I just started teaching there. He sort of took me on as a mentor, which I am very grateful for. I don't think many people have mentors, especially men. Having another man as a mentor, that's not a thing that happens. That changed my life. George is an amazing teacher and very close friend. They threw me into teaching, and thought that having watched some of these master teachers I would know how to teach, and I had no idea how to teach. George taught me how to teach. Even though they invited me to teach acting technique and script analysis, I was really learning more how to teach movement and voice through Katie and George. I became more interested in that and less interested in script-based actor-training. George eventually introduced me to David Brick who was a student of his and ran Headlong along with Amy Smith and Andrew Simonet. David offered me this position as a teaching fellow at Headlong where I would teach and also study. And that's what caused me to move to Philly. George does dance improvisation, but for him it's a very personal and spiritual practice. George does improvisational dance as a way to investigate who you are as a person.

Jed: What are you looking for now? What's your quest at the moment?

Mason: I read this text called The Genuine Heart of Sadness when I was in college by this monk, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He's not really a monk. He's a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who founded Naropa.

Jed: I read a book by his wife.

Mason: Right. He was also a drunk and having sex with all these women.

Jed: And taking acid. He's a fascinating dude.

Mason: I read a chapter in his book in college with this Buddhist teacher and performer and I was like, "This describes something I've felt my entire life and never had language for." It's interesting to think about in the context of Sans Everything and melancholy and Jacques [from As You Like It] and everything. It's about how the practice of being human is actually a revealing of your heart. It's allowing your heart to be exposed and for everything to touch you. The genuine heart of sadness is so sad, not because it's been mistreated but because it's so tender. It's so open to the world and that state is a state of sadness. The kind that comes with being receptive to the world. I thought that was amazing because I was always a sad child. Not unhappy, but like, sad. Like a tender little thing.

Jed: Do you think that's where Jacques is at? Or do you think he's pushing it?

Mason: I think he's pushing it, and they all poke fun at him. But I think there's something there -- that state of being melancholy. The shambala text talks about how a real warrior is tender. A real warrior isn't like, "You hit me I'll hit you back." It's about being open to receiving to what the world is giving you and still being there for it. Fearless is not not having fear. It's going beyond fear. He talks about these two metaphors: that it's like a deer's antlers. When they first appear they're these soft bloody sacks and they must first feel so useless. But over time they become these 30-pointed, hard weapons. I think that has a lot to do with my martial arts practice and is also my quest. Now I'm getting even deeper with it. I'm thinking a lot about forgiveness, especially in the context of things like the church shootings in South Carolina. When that happened the families of the victims came out and forgave the shooter publicly like, immediately in this very Christian way. I thought it was really interesting and also felt the social media response being, "I could never forgive this person. We should never forgive this person." And so I'm thinking a lot about forgiveness and acceptance in the context of privilege and progressive values. What does it mean to forgive and allow? Is there a time that not forgiving is a way of avoiding social change or action?

Jed: Do you like hypothetical questions?

Mason: Oh yeah. I love hypothetical questions.

Jed: If you could give your life to make the world non-violent, would you do it?

Mason: I don't know that I would. Non-violent is a tough one. What does that mean? It seems like it could be bad in a cosmic perspective. Violence is a force. A vital force. Certainly the world is too violent in many ways. . .

Jed: Let me change it. If you could give your life to ease suffering and regret in the world, would you do that?

Mason: Maybe. It sounds like Jesus. I don't know. I'm such a subjective person. I'm often thinking about morality as entirely subjective so it's hard for me to make a big moral decision like that. There's an essay I love that is before the John Patrick Shanley play, Doubt. He says, "Doubt is a more powerful place to be, as opposed to knowing or conviction. From the place of doubt everything creative comes." It's hard for me -- even though I said I like hypothetical questions. I don't know, but I think I probably would sacrifice my life. That sounds like a good thing to do, right?

All photos and video taken by Clara Weishahn.

Meet Katie

Our series of interviews between Jed and the Sans Everything co-creators of Lightning Rod Special, keeps coming. With this post, we hope you enjoy getting to. . . 

Meet Katie.

Jed: Katie Gould. Where are you from?

Katie: I'm from a town just outside Philadelphia. It's part of the Lower Merion Township.

Jed: Were you a "play" kid?

Katie: I was. I definitely did all the plays in elementary and middle school and actually it was when I was in middle school that I started professionally acting. I started auditioning for things at the Walnut and the Arden. I had a manager sending me off for commercial work. I got cast as one of two young women in a professional children's theatre company that performed at, you know, the owner of the Eagle's house or the steps of the Art Museum for a big gala. We would do these mash-up musical theatre numbers. We did a show called Ballad for Americans and it was a historical show for kids to come see. But I was into it. I went to theatre camp and did that whole thing.

Jed: Have you had moments since when you've thought, "I don't want to do theatre right now."

Katie: Not intentionally. I've either stopped because I couldn't afford to perform or because I was committed to a relationship that didn't have space for theatre. I didn't consciously make the decision, but theatre would be the thing that would sometimes fall off. Never for a full year or anything. I moved to NYC to do theatre in 2010. After college after being in Louisville for a year working at Actor's Theatre as an apprentice, and a really successful year of theatre work in Philadelphia, I had this feeling like, maybe I should try it. I should move to NYC. And it was disastrous. I got two fitness jobs and no theatre work. I took a great class with Austin Pendleton and learned so much, but didn't get any work at all. That's when I applied to APT. I was getting filmed, taking meetings, all that stuff, but it was not for me.

Jed: Had you made stuff before APT, or was it all straight theatre and musicals?

Katie: In college I got one of two spots to do SITI Company training and started doing Suzuki with them and Anne Bogart. In the summer and in the school year I was training intensively with them and making pieces with my best friend Adam. In my senior year of college I made my first full piece. I wrote, performed and produced a one-woman show about the disappearances in Argentina, using my Suzuki SITI experience and also my Latin American studies history knowledge, as a theatre and Latin American studies major. Then I made a piece with a bunch of my colleagues about various female artists. It was very avant-garde and very physical theatre-y and just a mash-up of different images. After college I did the apprenticeship in Louisville. They don't really make original work, but I was cast in a show with The Civilians, and, you know, they're creators but it's definitely more script-based. They are into a lot of community-driven work, so I started getting interested in that. I started a theatre company with my friend Jenny Jacobs called Iris and we created a very sweet piece for the Prague International Festival. We built it over eight days in an apartment in Prague before we performed it. All of that was before I went to NYC. Everything was great in Philly! I was doing regional theatre, I started a company, I made a one-woman show called The Girl in the Yellow Dress that was a big hit in the Fringe Festival. I was writing and creating so much stuff and then it all just stopped because of a bad relationship. I spent the next ten months being like, "Why don't I have work? Why is the work I have so lame? Where did everybody go?" The Prague show ended, we all came home, and all the momentum died. That's when I made the decision to go to NYC.

Jed: How did you decide to go to APT?

Katie: I saw my first Pig Iron show when I was 17 -- Gentlemen Volunteers -- and I wanted to work for them ever since. I loved everything about them and everything they did. I'd heard some whispers about them opening a school and I'd been applying to MFA programs for a couple years. I was waiting for the right program and everything about it seemed right. I was also looking for a reason to come home. It was my guiding light getting me out of NYC.

Jed: Were there certain bad experiences in NYC?

Katie: You know, I just didn't know shit about shit. I would go to a meeting in the totally wrong outfit. I would leave Philadelphia after a terrible date with my boyfriend to go to some open call where I'd sit for eight hours and never be seen. I would go to an audition I should have nailed and instead sounded nervous and just knew as soon as I walked out that it wasn't going to happen. It was brutal. It was like getting smacked in the face. It wasn't any one thing. It was the combination of a horrible break-up and also thinking something was going to be so successful and righteous then it just wasn't. But also it was amazing. I made great friends. I biked everywhere. I became a triathlete. I did the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon, which was my first. I went from Alcatraz to San Francisco!

Jed: Was that when you started doing training stuff?

Katie: No, I'd started before then, but that was when I started endurance training myself. I started working as a personal trainer in 2008. I'd come back from Louisville and needed a side job, but I didn't want to be a server. I'd always been an athlete -- I always played every sport. I had a trainer when I was in high school and learned a lot from him. I thought it was something I was intuitively good at. I'm able to look at bodies and see what their strengths and deficiencies are. I was super interested in anatomy and physiology.

Jed: Are there interesting intersections you've found between theatre and training?

Katie:  Absolutely. Every time I learn something new -- how I'm tight or open or weak or strong in my own body, it's obviously affecting my tone and my vulnerability or my lack of. I always talk about clown in yoga. I'm like, "Look. I don't think it's your fault that you can't get your arms straight or that you're bad at yoga. It's part of the mask you wear; the armor that you've built. You should embrace it. You've lived a life of protracted and rounded shoulders." It might mean one thing to me in an aesthetic body way, but it can also mean so much more. I'm here to help you understand it and also give you tools to try on a different costume for a while. And maybe it feels good or maybe it feels terrible, but if it feels terrible it might be because you need to go there. It might be a place you've been avoiding and your body and mind have needed to go there for a very very long time. It's really important to understand the body in order to understand people. Looking at people's bodies will tell you a lot about who they are. Having both kinds of training makes me sensitive to that. It also makes me aggressive. It makes me feel like, "Ooo. We can do something with this. This needs to be dealt with. You just need awareness."

Jed: We're making a play about the future. Do you have any dreams or hopes for the future?

Katie: My own or for the future of humanity?

Jed: Let's do your own future. Do you have any artistic dreams?

Katie: It's something to do with confidence and leadership. I have a lot of good ideas, and I have a hard time expressing them. I have a hard time verbalizing what I want to see. I have anxiety about being in charge because when I was growing up I was quick to be in charge and tell people what to do and I ended up in a career where I tell people what to do. It makes me feel like people think I'm bossy or too aggressive. People use the word "intense" when they talk about me and that makes me feel bad. I have a hard time stepping up when I want to because I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be the intense, bossy person.

Jed: I'm the total opposite of that. I'm a just shy person, and I'm starting to embrace it. Maybe you could try embracing that you want to speak up.

Katie: I'm learning about that now. That's why my goal for the future is to learn that I am a good leader and just try to hone my skills as a leader rather than worrying about not being the leader. As a follower I will produce good material, but often it's helping somebody else with their vision, which is really important, but you know, I also have some crazy ideas and I want people to play in my world. Some really fun, exciting things come up in my world, but I have to invite people in in order for that to happen.

Jed: Do you have any specific projects in mind?

Katie: I would like to do a project about things like this -- like militant aggressive fitness.

Jed: We're sitting next to a Cross Fit.

Katie: Yeah, like the addiction and the ferocity that people are now approaching fitness and endurance and masochist work with. People are like, "If I'm going to be fit, I'm going to be a monster." There is no moderate fitness anymore. There's something about killing yourself that's appealing and sexy to people right now. It's very American: Go big or go home. People only understand progress through numbers and expansion and the only way to get better is to do more of it. People also see community. Like, if everyone is doing a marathon then you'll do it too. There isn't a huge community around moderate fitness. I fit into the category of someone who goes big or goes home, but I'm also learning how to counter-act that. I'd like to make a piece that starts there as a way to go in somewhere. I'd like to do something hard with bodies and really push people and be like, "You like that? Let's do it and let's do it and let's do it." I'd like to put someone on a bike for, like seven hours in front of an audience and see what comes up. I find it very emotional.

Jed: I bet Aram would do that.

Katie: Aram would totally do that. I want to rent a gym and lead people through different rooms and see the weird ways people work out together, just see what comes out. It could be very homoerotic. The mirrors and just people staring. . . The things you say to yourself and to each other can be really inspiring and also really demeaning. The words could be very telling, but also the way you work out. Some people go to the gym for four hours but only work out for twenty minutes. They're just walking around, they go out, they come back with a meal. It's a weird culture.

Jed: I'd go see that play. Is there anything else you want to say?

Katie: I'm so glad you guys are here.

Jed: I'm glad we're here too.

All photos and video taken by Clara Weishahn.

Meet Alice

Next up in our series of interviews between Jed and the Sans Everything co-creators of Lightning Rod Special, we invite you to. . .

Meet Alice.

Jed: Look at that view! Who's that on top there? Is that Mr. Penn? It's not Benjamin Franklin.

Alice: I don't think so.

Jed: Not everything in this town is. . .

Alice: No. I'm pretty sure that's William Penn. Though to be honest, Scott would know better.

Jed: Where are you from?

Alice: I grew up on the northernmost part of the Jersey shore. Just before you drive off into the ocean, that's where I'm from.

Jed: Did you make plays when you were younger?

Alice: I did. When I was a kid I lived on this little dead end street and all the kids in the neighborhood would make this thing called the Summer Circus. We never did it, but we imagined putting a lion's mane on our younger brother. My friend was going to be the lion tamer and the big finale was that we were gonna have all the kids dressed in white sliding down into a big mud puddle. But we never did it. It was just a lot of planning. My friend and I were always putting on little plays. We put on Spice Girls concerts.

Jed: Which Spice Girl were you?

Alice: I think I was Scary Spice. Because she had a lot of hair and I have a lot of hair.

Jed: Was she --

Alice: The black one? Yes.

Jed: Do you think there's any link between Scary Spice and Candy Scrapple?

Alice: There might be. I've never thought about it until now, but there might be.

Jed: Did you do plays in school?

Alice: Yeah, I was a Hot Box Girl in Guys and Dolls in 8th grade.

Jed: What does that mean?

Alice: Uh. . . It's like being a cabaret dancers. But as an 8th grader it just means you're waving your arms back and forth. I think we wore short-alls. Like overalls that are shorts. But then in high school we did two plays a year and I did all of those. Starting off as a village person in Aladdin where I sold my bread and grapes. And culminating as a senior with the lead role in The Hobbit.

Jed: Yes! Were these insipired by the classic tales? Or were they inspired by the movies?

Alice: No. This was before the movies. So it was non-Disney. We did watch the 70's movie version of The Hobbit. I had to wear stockings covered in hair and big ears and a lot of fat padding. And my best friend was Thorin Oakenshield, so we were two ladies playing Bilbo and Thorin. And then I went to college for theater at Marymount Manhattan.

Jed: After Marymount did you go to Double Edge?

Alice: Well, while I was in college I took a movement class and that's where I was exposed to Lecoq and I was like, "This is perfect. I need to go to this school." And I studied abroad over the summer with a street theater company in Paris who had come from the Lecoq School called Frîches Théâtre Urbain. Actually they're doing a show about Mars right now!

Jed: Everybody loves space right now!

Alice: I know! Come on! But I really loved that method of working -- the physical method. So after I graduated I thought I'd either do weirdo physical theatre or I'd do Shakespeare or Noel Coward for the rest of my life. I thought, "Nobody's going to hire me to do like, normal shows." And then I saw a poster for Double Edge and I just went. It was great. I had a great first experience.

Jed: How long were you there?

Alice: Three months. I did a winter internship and it was the first time I made stuff on my own -- which was scary, but it was transformative. I knew I couldn't go back to NYC and be in shitty plays that like three people come to. But I was also too broke to move back to New York and so instead I moved back home to New Jersey with my mom. I was just padding around, working at a vegan coffee shop with my hands to the sky, ready to receive whatever was coming next. A friend of my mother's had a friend who had spent time at Double Edge and he told me about Pig Iron. I looked on their website and read about the school they were starting and saw that it was exactly what I wanted. But it was too scary to move to Philadelphia for two years and so I just stopped thinking about it. Then three weeks before the application was due, I thought, "I'm crazy!" And I just did it. I had three transformative experiences around theater-making: I studied with this company in Paris, I studied with Double Edge, and then I studied with Pig Iron. Each time I didn't really know anything about them, I just heard about them and did it. I was at APT [Pig Iron's School for Advanced Performance Training] for a little while before I even remembered that what I'd wanted originally was to go to the Lecoq School, and I was doing it.

Jed: And now we're here in South Philly staring at the skyline.

Alice: With Billy.

Jed: Billy Penn. So, are you a candy person?

Alice: Oh yes! I'm a dessert person. Not gummy candies because my teeth are too sensitive. I can do like two gummy bears. Sometimes hot cheese makes my teeth hurt. I feel it go down to the roots of my teeth.

Jed: I feel like a lot of people have that.

Alice: Well, I told my dentist about it once and she checked and was like, "You have deep grooves." And I was like, "Yeah I do. I'm in a funk band."

Jed: Oh yeah! So that was a project [Red 40 and the Last Groovement, the funk band Alice dance's with] out of school, right?

Alice: Yeah. It started at APT. It was Martha's [Stuckey, Red 40's front-woman] final project.

Jed: Was she like, "You're going to be a squirrel-based dancer."

Alice: No! We'd been doing some improvs around back-up singers and back-up dancers. Martha's prompt from the teachers for her final project had been, "The tail wags the dog." And so she was thinking about behind-the-scenes stars. Eventually she wanted to make a band, but I'm not a great singer and I don't play any instruments. Originally me and Melissa Krodman were a duo of dancers and everything was synchronized, but then Mel couldn't keep doing these gigs and so she dropped away and I couldn't keep doing the same moves by myself. That would have been even weirder than what I do now.

Jed: But were you already crazy?

Alice: Yeah, I think so. But Candy Scrapple [Alice's character] opened a crazy box. And she is crazier than most of the things I do. I don't have a lot of sweet moves so I just dance really hard.

Jed: In watching you, I feel like Candy Scrapple is the secret star of the band.

Alice: Candy Scrapple definitely feels that way. She's like, "This is my back-up lead singer."

Jed: What are the performance things you wish you could do more of?

Alice: The next piece LRS is going to make is something we started at APT. It's called Fetus Chorus. I get nervous talking about it because it's really offensive and it's designed to be that way. It's a grotesque, so that's the point, but still. I'm really excited about it. I love the work that gives you permission to be totally not appropriate. I have lots of rules for myself about what you should and shouldn't do in my real life -- not like I'm restricted, but it's so liberating to be so terrible. It's real fun. And then I just want to make more. . . I love being in a making room. Doing stuff.

Jed: Have you done much straight theatre since college? Alice: When I graduated from college I only did straight theater and I was doing the worst straight theater in NYC. I once was in a show I knew was really bad and I asked a woman who runs a successful Shakespeare company what to do about the show, and she was like, "don't put that on your resume." The company was notoriously bad. It was a genuinely rough experience. We did one performance where no one came, but the director still made us do it while he sat in the booth. When I left NYC my major goal was to do a show with a stage manager working on it. All of the shows I did were so scrappy and not scrappy in a good way. They were mostly companies that had been around for awhile but there was still no money and just poor quality.  It was a little bit like, "Well, we got a URL so we better keep doing stuff." But in Philly I've done a couple straight plays and they were great. The last last show I did in NYC was a piece of dance theater and that was actually pretty exciting. It was the first thing that made me feel like, "Oh, these are maybe people who will introduce me to the right people for me."

Jed: Did you ever think about going back to NYC after APT?

Alice: Not really. Staying in Philly just made sense. I had no ties in New York and no work waiting for me. Way more was available and exciting for me here.

All photos and video taken by Clara Weishahn.

Meet Jenn

We continue our series of interviews Jed is doing with Sans Everything co-creators of Lightning Rod Special by inviting you to. . . Meet Jenn.

Jed: Do you ever get mistaken for anyone?

Jenn: I was told I look like Keith David. A boxer who's now dead -- Floyd Patterson. It was the former editor of Vibe Magazine who told me I look like Keith David, which I sort of understand.

Jed: What movies did Keith David do?

Jenn: I don't know. Uhhh. . . (looks up and recites Keith David's IMDB page)

Jed: A lot of stuff.

Jenn: Yeah. Anyway. Floyd Patterson threw me for a loop and so I looked him up and I was like, "I kind of understand." Sometime people have to say stuff. Do they say stuff to you?

Jed: No. People don't talk to me. I go invisible.

Jenn: Really?

Jed: Unless someone's pan-handling. Or if I'm in a good mood. People don't seem to perceive me as someone they can talk to, which is a shame because I love to give directions!

Jenn: I think if I saw you on the street I'd assume you were thinking about loftier things.

Jed: (Talks about himself for a while) Wait. Is this about me? I'm going to ask you some questions now. Where are you from?

Jenn: I grew up in Baltimore. In a neighborhood called Pig Town. It's between the B&O Station or Round House and the Stadium -- Camden Yards and also the Inner Harbor. Downtown Baltimore.

Jed: What's the history of Pig Town? Is it like Fish Town?

Jenn: Yeah. Which is where I live now.

Jed: Oh really? Pig Town to Fish Town.

Jenn: The Jenn Kidwell Story.

Jed: Is there a story to that name -- Pig Town?

Jenn: Yeah. It's where there used to be slaughterhouses. They would run the pigs through the streets. And the pigs -- or the meat -- would be on the trains. Now it's a cool identity. There's banners. It was not cool when I was growing up. I liked it, but there were parts that were really rough. My neighbohood is super old. It's like an 18th century structure that had fallen into disrepair and people could buy buildings really cheap and then you could design the interior of the house. And my parents made their place really '80's. When I go into houses that are really '80's I can hear the music -- Luther and the Al Jarreau. Stevie Wonder. Chaka Kahn maybe. I grew up playing violin and my dad really loves classical music. He plays the clarinet, the oboe, and the basoon. But then my mom has really terrible taste in music and also no interest. My parents do not dance. They are not physically expressive at all. My dad had polio (giggles) which is not funny at all, but for someone like me who likes to move and dance, my parents are the antithesis. When I was in elementary school I'd get my hands on instruments and just try to bleet things out. Like, for a week I would play the trumpet. The flute. The glockenspiel. No! Not the glockenspiel. "Excuse me mother. I'm trying to culture myself." (laughs)

Jed: So you played music. Did you perform when you were younger?

Jenn: I did. I think my first play was A Christmas Carol in the 4th grade. I played Mrs. Cratchit. I had a lovely time. And then in 5th grade I was in Robin Hood. I was the narrator. Then I changed schools and after that I did every play. I loved being on stage, but I also thought it must be the thing that everyone wanted to do, and so I didn't think I could really do it for a job. I had an impulse to be a garbage person because nobody ever wanted to do that. This was also the age of, "Nobody ever says they wants to be a junkie when they grow up." And I just thought, "Man, some professions get such a bum rap."

Jed: Professions!

Jenn: I mean, I knew a junkie wasn't a profession! I always wanted to be a performer, but I tried to quell it. I thought, no I'll be a saxophonist, a photographer, and then a stand-up comedian. I thought I was funny as hell! (laughs)

Jed: Did you ever do any stand-up?

Jenn: Well, not until Donelle. And that was not my own. While in character once I did a stand-upish thing in drag with my cohort Jes Conda. Maybe we should do it in New Orleans! Wanna be my stand-up coach?

Jed: Sometimes I think I'll do stand-up. I think I'd be so bad, but in an interesting way. Like, I think people would just feel bad for me.

Jenn: I'll laugh for you. My laugh is good enough for like five laughs.

Jed: What were the circumstances of doing Donelle?

Jenn: I answered an ad in Actors Access. It had to have been in '08. Early '08, right? I get so confused. It was an ad for a performer, an African-American woman where you play this role where. . . I can't remember exactly what it said, but it was paid. I get this call and talked to Joe [Scanlon, the artist] on the phone. He explained the project and I said, "No thank you. I don't want to be a part of this post-colonial bullshit." And he was like, "No no no! It's not like that!" And he spoke more about the project and his interests, and I was like, "At some point can you envision that anyone can play Donelle?" And he said "Absolutely." And so I said, "Okay let's have an audition." And so I had an audition and I got the gig. One gig. It was just performing as Donelle at an art opening for really good money. I wore my own clothes -- this dress I'd never worn. And the money was so good that I thought why not. And I decided,"I'm going to play a character that's really far from me." She spoke really low and was a close-talker and really intellectual and had no sense of humor. If anyone said anything funny I'd be like, "Oh. Uh-huh." It was really alienating. It was kind of fun and cool and then all these other opportunities started opening up. It started becoming more of a collaboration. We were talking about how Donelle was so awkward and I was like, "She needs conversation starters written down." And so I wrote down ideas on index cards -- like jokes. If conversation floundered I'd pull out these very safe conversation prompts. People would just halt and try to get away.

Jed: Did people know you were pretending?

Jenn: Some people did and some people didn't. The very first time the head of the Brooklyn Museum came up to me he was like, "Wonderful work." And other people that night had also talked to me like I was Donelle, but they seemed to know. Like they were trying to test me. But the head of the museum didn't know. Then later there was an opportunity to go to London and so this other woman Abigail went as Donelle. The two of us traveled as Donelle. I ended up going to the Whitney and seeing Dan Graham and I got really excited about him and then the collaboration between Joe and me just kept getting more exciting and we were building on each other --

Jed: At this point are you enrolled at the Pig Iron School (for Advanced Performance Training)?

Jenn: No, I was still in NYC when we came up with the idea for Richard Pryor, but it was right before I went to Pig Iron. I was doing Richard Pryor while I was in school and had to miss a little because I went to Prelude, which is in the fall. Then I did it at Yale, then I did it in Paris. Then she got invited to the Biennial. Then all hell broke loose. The Whitney didn't want Donelle to be in it and then they did. We had the tour laid out and then the venues fell through because they didn't want to pay me. They didn't realize what the project was and they decided they didn't want to be involved. Then we went to Oakland and this Berkeley professor decried my performance. I'd just come off stage, I got some water, and sat down to do the talkback. He immediately stood up and said, "I knew Richard, this is blasphemous. Who do you think you are? You're a bad performer. What are you, a lesbian just walking around in men's clothes?" It was the worst. Like, an actor's nightmare. And then I wrote something for Hyperallergic. Then we had a meeting over the summer, but what -- it's 2015? I haven't done any Donelle stuff in a while. There's this thing on the table to go to the Congo, but schedules have been hard.

Jed: How did you feel when that guy stood up and yelled at you?

Jenn: I felt terrible. With the whole thing I am constantly like, "Is this okay?" It's always good to do stuff that makes you wonder if it's okay, but . . . You don't want to be the kind of person who's not at all porous to what people have to say, but at the same time you have to be behind what you're doing. What's the balance of feedback? Accepting validity and also knowing it's just their feeling and it doesn't have to stop you. In the moment, I was shocked and then another man jumped up and defended me. He said he was an activist on the street, but came in here to be entertained, and that's what I did. It's classic for what I get myself involved in: super divisive. Sometimes I wish I could just do something really nice.

Jed: It's funny. Even when I think I'm being provocative people are like, "Yayyy!" I wonder about people who like being in that provocative space. How do you deal with what comes from it?

Jenn: In the last leg of the tour, YAMS just happened and I was getting coded messages from people or strange friend requests. I started feeling really paranoid. And then I felt pissed because I realized people didn't want to talk to me, they just wanted to look at me. It was just about Joe. At this talkback in Minneapolis -- not at the Walker, but the curatorial staff from the Walker tried to vilify Joe. They spread themselves out around the room and then they tried to give Joe the business -- a bunch of white dudes. And this one came up to me and told me that I had no agency. "You are not in charge of yourself." They accused me of not knowing the history of performance art. And I was like, "Do you think that I don't know that? This is a statement you're making to me under the guise that what this man [Joe Scanlon] is doing is wrong, racist, and exploitative. But then you look at me in my fucking face and can tell me some shit?" I felt really alienated. There was this woman who had protested in LA and then this shit happened in Oakland. I did a bad show in Chicago. Detroit was fine. That's the one that's online. Minneapolis was crazy. Nebraska was kind of the best show, even though there was only seven people. Joe and I just drove for hours and hours and spring was coming to America and we just talked about everything. Then we pulled up at like three in the afternoon to Lincoln, NE. Our venue in Omaha had pulled out and so Joe had booked us into an Irish pub. We get there at like 3pm and our contact isn't there. And I'm like, "I'm doing a contentious drag show in Lincoln, NE." We went to the hotel that was part SRO -- it was just a whole thing. But finally things came together and we met this beautiful comedian who was warm and warmed up the crowd and he did a great job and it was the best. Then we went to the last show. It was in St. Louis and I was like, "I can't wait for this fucking thing to be over." The last thing that happened before I took the mustache off for the last time, was this couple stopped me on my way to the bathroom after the show. This black couple stopped me and they said, "Hey. We loved it. The only problem was it was too short. We loved it." And I said, "Oh that's so nice. You know, it's been really hard because it's so controversial." And they were like, "Why?" And I explained the whole thing about how I am playing this artist who doesn't exist who's playing Richard Pryor and it's all these levels of artifice created and people don't like it was all created by a white guy.  And they were like, "Why? Isn't art supposed to be like that?" And I almost started crying. I think that's the thing you're always supposed to remember. Are you doing the thing to please the people or to stir the people?

Jed: Was that a good experience?

Jenn: What. Donelle?

Jed: Yeah. No regrets?

Jenn: Oh! Yeah, no regrets. I would say answering that ad. . . Changed everything. It's been really positive. I mean, I still have questions. It's complicated.

All photos and video taken by Clara Weishahn.

Meet Scott

Strange Attractor is collaborating with Lightning Rod Special, on our newest piece, Sans Everything. Jed is interviewing members of  the cast in order to introduce you to the new faces. . .  Meet Scott.

Jed: Where are you from?

Scott: I was born in Stratford, NJ and lived there for two weeks. Then I moved to Philadelphia and lived there for three years before moving to central PA, where I lived most of my life.

Jed: What did you study in school?

Scott: English literature. Painting and drawing. I knew I loved drawing, but I had no idea what I was doing when I went to college. I chose a liberal arts college because I had no idea what I wanted. Performance wasn't in the cards, so I chose a school without a performance program.

Jed: Were there pageants or school plays you did as a kid?

Scott: There were. There were these one-act plays I was in every year called Drama Night. It was a competition among the four grades. I also did a little improv -- I started an improv group and a film group. But I was in sports so I didn't do any plays. I played basketball and golf. I had a little bit of a Rushmore-like quality. I wanted to be in all the clubs. I started all the clubs.

Jed: Were you in every yearbook picture?

Scott: A little bit. The improv club was called Nine Asterisks because there were nine of us.

Jed: I won't dwell too much on this, but. . . What were you watching that made you want to do improv?

Scott: My girlfriend at the time went to Moore College of Art in Philadelphia and I used to visit her and we'd go see a lot of improv on South Street, which at the time seemed like the best. We'd go back to high school and try to emulate it. That was high school. College was the same kind of thing. I'd perform in little things here and there -- I played Jack the Rapist in a Three Penny Opera. I did a little improv, a little stand-up. I'd try to write. I was obsessed with writing short stories and drawing and painting. That was serious. The other stuff was just weekend play time.

Jed: What was the focus of the writing?

Scott: I was all over the place. My stories were all kind of playful-funny-but-dark. I aspired to be something like George Saunders. I never did, but that's where I thought I was pointed. I hoped after school I'd be a serious writer, but I started to observe I was terrible as a creator alone. I liked talking with people and collaborating. The solitude of writing was anathema to me. The actual process of writing was grueling. Although I was often writing, I was often avoiding writing.

Jed: What was the moment you made the transition toward performance?

Scott: It happened in a very funny way. I lived in France the year after I graduated, teaching English and that's where I thought I'd become a serious writer. I had all this time and I think I wrote three stories when I was hoping to write a novel. It became obvious that I was not good at the practice of writing. I needed to be on my feet running around. I was looking for a job for when I returned -- was I going to be a journalist? was I going to work for a nonprofit? I applied to the Arden Theater apprenticeship. It was attractive because it paid you money and I thought, "I like theater." I didn't think of it as any different than going to France -- it would be another thing I could do for a year while I was just looking for interesting things to do to survive. I kind of got reintroduced to the world of theater, and after it was over I thought, "This is definitely not for me." After that year I did a funny job where I was hired by a Friends school to catalog the second-largest sheet music collection in the United States.

Jed: Woah.

Scott: I don't know why I'm going into this detail.

Jed: I like it. I mean, I'm listening.

Scott: Well the Friends school needed someone to appraise this collection that had been donated to them, but they couldn't have it appraised until it was catalogued. We would just go to the scanning room with this big pile of sheet music and then scan and then enter it into a database. It took about a year, though I only did it for 100 days or whatever. While there I ended up meeting people who worked at the school and I thought, "Maybe I want to be a teacher." And I filled in for someone on maternity leave and then they decided to hire me full time. Teaching English. It was while I was doing that that some of my friends from college who were actually obsessed with theater wanted to make original plays. The first one we did. . . I loved it. It was like everything I'd been looking for. I could write, I could be on my feet, I had to show up to rehearsal, so I didn't have the problem of knowing when to make work. Ironically the three friends that I made those first shows with -- now one is a doctor, one is in business school, and one is a lawyer. I'm the only one still making theater.

Jed: That was Groundswell Players?

Scott: That was Groundswell Players.

Jed: That's amazing. Here we are. I had no idea. That's 17 minutes. I'm suddenly like, "I don't know how to interview anyone. What am I going to do with this?"

Scott: Podcast.

Jed: Podcast. (It's not a podcast. Rebecca typed this.) Well, let me ask. . . Are there things you haven't said in other interviews that you want to say?

Scott: This is an interesting time because I'm trying to figure out how can I make this actually stable? I have a lot of theater work now through the end of the year, but I still work at a restaurant. I like to go out to eat and I like to have a nice place to live, so it's scary to rely on theater for my sole income. I'm trying to figure out my next steps. . . Teaching and creating? Working with a larger company? I need to figure out that balance.

Jed: What's the ideal version of the next few years?

Scott: Having the work we make be so successful it supports some people on payroll. Or maybe being a part of a teaching institution that supports my ability to make new work.

Jed: So you'd like to still have the ability to go tour or travel for theater and be an actor and make new work.

Scott: Yeah. Mostly I just want to make new work that's really good.

Jed: Do you have any rituals before you see a show?

Scott: Not a strict one. I see lots of art and so it's less pristine or romantic. I just kind of go from one thing and hope I'm not late. I like to get a drink after a show and talk about it. I hate the post-show actor-feeling-awkward conversation. It's a tense overwhelming exchange and so I try to extract myself from it and meet with people who can actually talk about it. It's a shame when you can't process work.

Jed: You like to dig in.

Scott: Yeah. I like to dig in.

Jed: What's your favorite food to make when you're sad? Scott: Penang curry. Ideally I roast a whole chicken, make the curry and the rice, shred the chicken, mix it in the curry, mix it in the rice, and then you're good to go.  Little fish sauce, little palm sugar, little thai basil. I take pretty decent base-level penag and then upgrade it severely.

Jed: Do you have a specific goal for every project you do?

Scott: I try to figure out what it is that makes this project the most exciting to me and to the people who will be watching it. I hold on to that and then infuse that part with the most energy and then make that the thing that expands. I look for the genetic material. One project it might be to make people cry. Another might be to make it as epic as possible. Whatever the heart of the piece is the thing. The finding of that thing requires intuition. If it's too quickly nameable it's probably not interesting. Or at least not interesting for theater. Theater pushes buttons in us that are not exclusively intellectual. It makes us wrestle with things we can't quite pin down.

Jed: What's the best theater you've ever seen?

Scott: Romeo Castellucci's Concept of the Face of Loving God or whatever it was called. . . It was one of those pieces that punched me in the gut in the most amazing way. It was both intellectual and emotional   in both modes. Do you want me to talk about it?

Jed: Yeah, sure.

Scott: DESCRIBES THE SHOW IN GREAT DETAIL, BUT YOU CAN JUST READ ABOUT IT HERE.

Jed: We're making a play about the future. What are your biggest hopes about the future of the world?

Scott: I don't know. . . I hope we don't destroy ourselves too soon. . . I don't frame the future in terms of hope because I see human obsolescence on the horizon. Humans are just one step in an unfathomable process. To keep it a little more near future. . . There's going to be a sad moment when we are eclipsed by faster and bigger intelligence. Those consciousnesses will see us as dogs or plants or bi-products. We will quickly not be the top of the food chain. I think it will be nice to not become obsolete because of nuclear war, but because of something we invent.

Jed: In a Her way. Which you love.

Scott: Yes. I love it. Leave it to the real kings of evolution.

All photos and video taken by Clara Weishahn.

Trigger warning: Strange Attractor Theatre Company Fundraising E-mail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -Jed

A few days ago Jed sent out his fundraising plea to his individual list. It alone is such an impressive piece of writing, we decided to share it on the blog. There are many many links, but because I copied and pasted this from email into blog the links don't appear the way I'd most like them to. Just hover over the text and you'll see where to go. Enjoy.

Family, friends, well wishers and loved ones all,

The following email is indeed an ask email. I know that at this point there is a lot of exhaustion around crowd funding and maybe there is even exhaustion around people being exhausted about the exhaustion around crowd funding. I don't know really know, it's been a while since we ran a campaign, but...I get it.

So, I'm going to make it real easy for you and along those lines this e-mail functions like a choose your own adventurer novel.

You have

OPTIONS:

You could stop reading now. It seems obvious, but I just want to make sure I cover all my bases.

OR

If you want to keep reading, but don't want a long story and a song and dance about why it's important to give and what the project is about and blahblahblah, then please skip to section A now.

If however, you like a good yarn, and maybe even want to sit down with a mug of coffee or glass of wine and click all the links (there are probably too many, ok definitely too many) and want to discover how this project came about and how it is connected to the national dialogue on performance through a generous exchange grant please skip to section B now.

If you say to yourself, "Jed knows I'm broke, why would he send this to me right now? It's already hard enough for me to just make it out to one of the shows." please skip to section D now.

Or if you think to yourself, "Wait, I don't even like theatre and why is this man bothering me? I only like dark seventies Sci-Fi flicks" please skip to section E now.

A.

-"Ok, so where do I click to see whether or not I want to give?"

 

Oh, I'm glad you asked! It's right here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/matching-funds-for-sans-everything#/"

 

B.

-"Jed, it's been a while friend, what's all this about a campaign? And also, did I hear you are making a play about outer space and Shakespeare? Oh and oh, and also, why...oh gosh, I'm out of breath. (heavy breath in and out) I have so many questions, but you better just start talking while I drink my (insert beverage of choice here)"

 

Ok, so the long story is that four years ago, while we were working on this in Juneau (which eventually became this in Providence) we had a meeting over halibut fish and chips at the Sand Bar near Auke Bay where I proposed that our next show should be very loosely inspired by my experience working as a museum security guard, which two years later would become this. At the same meeting Aram proposed that we make "As You Like It in space". Roblin, Rebecca and I were a little taken aback. "As You Like It in space?" we thought. "Isn't that a bit like setting the Tempest on the Moon? Or doing Hamlet on roller skates?". Instead of balking out loud we three read a lot into Aram's proposal, talking as best as we could remember about the themes of Shakespeare's "As you like it" as they might to relate to space. "It's a pastoral comedy, right? Space in this instance is the Forest of Arden!", etc. while I think we also wondered in the back or our minds "Are we really going to do Shakespeare in space?".

As the three of us internally began to reach our own individual concept driven Shakespeare resistances, Aram clarified that he really just liked the title(!) When we pressed further he told us about his parents taking him to a summer stock production when he was a little kid on vacation in Maine and that the experience had really stuck with him. Before we dismissed the idea, Roblin asked the basic question, "But, would we really just be doing "As you like it" set in space?" To which Aram replied in the lucid, yet still shrouded in mystery way that only he could respond, "We will play highly trained astronauts that are forced to perform As You Like It". 

Imagining these explorers in a world so far in a future where Shakespeare had been forgotten and touched by the idea of a group of incredibly skilled people having to give a command performance (or else), bereft of the resources and knowledge to do so, inspired us to take the last two words from one of the most famous monologues in the play and to tentatively title a piece we knew very little about "Sans Everything".

Flash Forward two years, we have continued to ponder the mysteries of space, look at Lexicons, and read about the great chain of being but not yet had time in the studio to work on it. Meanwhile we were now working on the security guard play in the evening at Pig Iron Theatre Company's School space in Philadelphia, when we meet Scott Sheppard, Jenn Kiddwell, Katie Gould, and Alice Yorke who are all finishing their second year in the program. Together with Mason Rosenthal they have formed their own company, Lighting Rod Special(LRS). That year at the Philly Fringe they watch our show about guards and we see their quirky character driven absurd exploration of contemporary masculinity through the lens of the mythopoetic men's movement. We get drinks, we chat about art projects, we get generally intrigued by each other's companies. When we get the opportunity to start work on Sans Everything again at Roger Williams University a year later we ask if they are interested in collaborating on it with us. They say yes and come to Rhode Island, we have a great week of work together in a warm barn in a cold January in Bristol and we decide to apply for a big national grant to get back together the next year. We do not get it. We continue to...

-"Jed I'm sorry, but this is getting long and there are a lot of links and I've got laundry to do. ...Can I go now?"

 

Ok, so real quick we see another one of their pieces, a darkly funny and provocative piece about race in America and they see one of ours, a darkly funny piece about inherited wealth and gothic leaning oddball eccentrics and also, christmas

 

-"Jed, seriously, I gotta go, this is more than I signed up for."

 

Ok, but go to section A before you go. Or better yet, if you want to come back after you're done <insert more pressing thing here>, you can. I'll just wait here.

-"Ok I'm back, so...you didn't get that big grant?"

No, but we then manage to get a small grant from RISCA to meet a year later for another week of work and again have a great time and make more progress on the piece and again apply for a big national exchange grant from the Network of Ensemble Theaters, but this time we get it!!

-"Oh! Wow! Congratulations! I'm going to go watch Netflix now."

 

Yes, thank you, we are super excited, but wait. It's a matching grant and it was for $10,000 and both companies actually have to raise about that much each.

-"Wow, that's a lot of money. I hope you don't think I have 20,000 dollars to spend on other people's art projects."

 

Don't worry! We are only trying to raise $10,000 through the crowd funding site indiegogo. The rest we are hoping to raise through private foundational support and other granting organizations. The good news is that we have actually raised nearly $3,000 dollars through 61 contributors already. You can give as little as $1 and as much as you like and it's tax-deductible through our wonderful fiscal sponsor AS220.

OPTIONS:

1.) "Ok, I'm ready to give, where do I go to donate, and also can you tell me a bit more about the themes of the project?"

Great! Thanks a million! Please go back up to section A or just click here.

2.) "Ok, I'm convinced, however I'm a bigwig and want to deduct my donation, but don't want Indiegogo or their payment system to take money out of my donation. What should I do?"

Thanks for your support! Just reply to this e-mail and let me know or send an email to info@strangeattractor.org and we can work something out with our fiscal sponsor.

3.) "I donated already. Why are you still pestering me and why did I read this far?"

 

Oh no, I'm truly sorry! Thank you for your support! These lists get big and a lot of us our friends with a lot of you. We do our best to eliminate names that have already donated, but sometimes one slips through. Maybe you want to skip down to section E and peruse one of the 70's sci-fi movies listed there?

4.) "I'm still not convinced, $30,000 seems like a lot of money. What do you need all that money for, I mean it's just a play... right? Can I look under the hood?"

 

Sure thing! $30,000 is a lot of money, but with stipends for 10 separate generative actor/creators, two companies involved, two separate month long development processes and travel to 4 different cities and not to mention, space costs that are not donated, housing that's not donated, festival entrance fees and hopefully a lighting, costume and set designer who will join the team, this is truly our largest project yet.

I won't paste our spreadsheet here, but if you want it, just e-mail me and I'd be happy to send it you. The thrust of the exchange grant is primarily administrative in nature and so we are happy and prepared to get into the number nitty-gritty!

C.

-"I don't follow rules and I will read EVERY PART OF THIS E-MAIL!!!!"

Ok. Alright, um....I wasn't prepared for this, but maybe go here or I guess here.

D.

-"Come on, I really like your shows, and I know you can't cover all the expenses of making a show with ticket sales alone and I would give you more if I could, but I can barely afford to see shows as it is."

 

No problem. If now is not a good time to give and coming to see one of our shows is all you are able to commit to, then that's great! We love you guys! If you have an extra second and have enjoyed what we do, please consider sharing a story of something you have seen by Strange Attractor on your social platforms with a link to our campaign. Or forward this email on to someone you think might like to give with a sweet note attached. We love when we are able to offer live cultural events throughout the year and with your help and support we will continue to do so in the future. Also, please make sure to check back in later in the fall on Facebook and at the website for more info on our showings in Philly and at the New Orleans Fringe and then again in FEB/MARCH 2016 for showings at AS220 in Providence and then outside Boston at the Charlestown Working Theatre, where we are performing as part of their 40th Anniversary Season!

 

E.

-"Alright, so... I'm still reading this, but what's in it for me, I told you I only like dark 1970's sci-fi!!!"

 

I hear you. Please, stop yelling, why don't you just check the following flicks out. You got to be a little internet savvy and click thru a bunch of links, and you know maybe it won't still be there by the time you click it, but if you get there I hope you enjoy Ridley Scott's and Dan O'Bannon's 1979 masterpiece. Also, If you're a real nerd and haven't seen it already, you might also like O'Bannon and John Carpenter's goofy, yet still dark precursor Dark Star, which is hosted on a slightly more legit site.

Ok...and, since you're still here and while I'm at it, you might also like the sweet and sad, elegant, and sometimes earnestly cheesy eco-sci-fi film Silent Running complete with two songs performed by Joan Baez, starring Bruce Dern and directed byDouglass Tumbull, visual effects master (of 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Blade Runner fame) in one of his rare turns as Director.

F.

-"I like to read and don't really understand the choose your own adventure format, but thanks for the email. It was a lot of links, but here I am, still reading. You got anything else to say?"

 

No, but thanks for reading everything and I hope I get to see you this year or in the next at one of our showings. We love to make original theatrical events and feel pretty lucky to know people who want to see them and are generous enough to allow us to keep doing them without going bankrupt! Thanks for all you do and see you real soon!

Many thanks!, Jed

www.strangeattractor.org

pvd/phl/jnu

October Anticipation

In a matter of weeks, the entire SANS EVERYTHING team is going to be in town. In south Philadelphia, I am readying quarters for the arrival Alaskan member Roblin Davis. I have not decided whether he will stay in the anything-can-happen Tiger Room or the snug yet worldly Map Room. The proper pairing is critical to our success.

Sans Idle

What an incredible Sunday. Strange Attractor's creative life is bursting at the seams. It's the end of our first week of building Idle in Newport. In six days we reconfigured the entire show with a new frame, three new dance numbers, a new actor, built a few new scenes and made huge strides in uncovering how we put it in a house. Then tonight we met with the majority of the crew of Sans Everything and touched base about logistics for that massive undertaking, which starts in the fall. I mean. . . look at this hang out window! Roblin is in Sitka, Clara's in Providence, Jed and I are in Newport, and Jenn, Mason, Katie, and Aram are in Philly.

With so little time to actually talk to each other, this hang out was full of planning how to get money and how to get time; where to rehearse and who to invite. Next time I vow we'll do more than just brainstorm ways to find rehearsal space. As the director of the piece I feel like I should give them an assignment. . . Like maybe even a writing assignment? . . . Or a viewing and a writing assignment? There's time.

Sabbatical, a note from Rebecca

I remember just after college I took a workshop with the incomparable Mary Overlie. At the time I was really nervous about whether or not I would still be an artist; whether or not I'd ever perform again or be in rehearsal again or if I'd just be an office drone for the rest of my days. In the workshop Mary explained that in the life of her career she'd had several periods where she'd stopped making art for long periods of time -- seven years, ten years. And then she'd return. The reasons were varied and the return was a rebirth. In that moment I realized that sometimes not making art was a significant part of being an artist. Members of Strange Attractor are confronting some personal and life-changing moments right now, forcing us to take a break from art-making. We think it'll be for the rest of the year, but really, these kinds of moments are not ones that you should try to plan an end date for. Truth be told, we're not positive when we'll come back or what we'll do when we come back, but we can say, if Mary Overlie has anything to teach us, we will come back, and it will be a rebirth.

At first I wasn't going to say anything, but I hated our blog being so inaccurate and I hated the thought that you might come here and think we just had stopped for no good reason. I hope this explanation will suffice. I hope we see you when we're back. I hope in the interim you see and make really good art. Or that you take a really good break, wherever you're at.

Take Care,

Rebecca (+ Jed, Roblin, & Aram)

NJ

Simple

Anyone who's worked with us or seen enough of our shows knows that we have a lot of specific feelings about how to design theatrical space. We have been known to go to incredibly great lengths, taxing our resources to the nth degree to make a space feel just right for both the audience and the performer. No decision becomes too small to agonize over. In the past this has meant huge, sculptural, architectural sets. When we decided to make Enlightenment on E Floor North, it was in part a push against all that building. We wanted to make a play that would allow us as creators to focus more on the physical action in the space than on the architecture in which it all occurred. To help us make sure we didn't get distracted, we built the play in a series of similar rooms around the country. Early on I had a conversation with one of our hosts, Nat May, who runs SPACE Gallery in Portland, ME. I was explaining this idea to him and he pointed out that as we developed the work each space would offer a new "premium." This was absolutely true. Based on the simple nature of the rooms we created in, various bits of the play became linked to the space and the objects in it. So much so that, while we still don't have a "set," per say, we do have to tailor a space to the show. We can't do the show anywhere. The space actually does matter -- we just don't have to build a massive sculpture in order to create the space the show needs. Because our current run in Philly is the culmination of our development of the piece, and our longest run, we have actually purchased our required elements and placed them in the space, as well as intentionally selecting a venue that is actually just a white room. The average visitor would not even notice that we placed these things in the room. They mostly look like normal room stuff that belongs there.

Here is the list of requirements:

• White walls. Blank white walls, ideally with maybe some white wainscoting and maybe other small details. Ideally a corner with a door.

• A fire extinguisher

• A security camera

• An exit sign over the door

The lesson I've learned this time around: Keeping the space simple allowed us more time to work the physical moments of the play, but no matter what we do, yes, there is always a set.

Without You

We have been in Philly for nearly a week, continuing to refine our vision of what Enlightenment on E Floor North is and preparing for our longest run yet at the Philadelphia FringeArts Festival. With any process, inevitably not everyone can be in attendance at every rehearsal. When you work the way we do, this can happen in larger chunks (though I am proud of how often we actually get together without absence). Long story short, Roblin let us know awhile back that while we were all going to start rehearsing again in Philly on August 19, he would not be joining us until the 26th. We miss him of course, but this sort of shake up the usual thing can also be really helpful. Without Roblin's energy and without Roblin's character of Turner in the room it forces all of us to sort of shift and continue to reinvent our own selves and who we need to be in the process. This late in the game that can be an incredible gift.

I am amazed at how much we've been able to work through this week. I thought we'd run up against so many walls and not actually crack open this play we've all come to know so well, even though we all still feel there is some sort of something that we have yet to find. Not sure that we've gotten there, but for sure. . . I am hopeful.

We miss Roblin so much, but not having him there has been interesting and I guess I can say, I am happy for the way it has forced us to look at things. However, it's not like we haven't had a stand-in. In fact, this is who has been playing Turner's role in Roblin's absence. He's not as good, but he's not that bad either. . .

See you Monday, Roblin! We miss you!

A Big Thank You!

Please enjoy this small video. We can't fully express how much everyone's help means to us. But we try.

Where we are now

Just one more rehearsal until we show. The material feels like a joyful pile that comes in and out of focus. In the meantime, Jed hangs lights while I handle business. It's a late night night.

Springtime comes to Philly

  It's an amazing thing to go into these deep intense rehearsal phases. The whole world kind of stops existing. All I think about is learning the new song, deepening character choices, sending e-cards and continuing to break open the material. Meanwhile we get these stories through some sort of reality that continues without us: bombings in Boston, lock-downs, a fertilizer plant explodes in Waco, Congress blocks gun legislation. I start to wonder what is so important about us making plays; what good these funny pursuits are for the world at large. Then I notice these cherry blossoms that seem to have burst open over night and remember that all of us are living the best lives we know how and that if we stay true to that. . . Well, you can't ask for much more.

PMA Play Day

Yesterday was the PVD crew's first full day in PHL. We thought it was only fitting to head straight to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

While we were there to dip into the atmosphere of the museum as a way to move back into rehearsal for Enlightenment, it was impossible to ignore how stunning the PMA is.

It's also important to take the time at a new museum to notice the small details in branding and design that distinguish each place. We really likes the PMA's metal buttons. Aram said they used to be round. . .

And of course, we were sneaking peaks at security guards too. . .

Click and See

It's Fundraising Time, Kids!

Enlightenment on E Floor North is raising money! $10,000 to be precise, which, when combined with all the other funds we've raised from the Rasmuson Foundation, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Maine Theater Fund, will bring our latest show on work and the museum security guard to Philadelphia, Southeast Alaska, back to New England, and beyond. If you have a few dollars to kick in, we'd so appreciate it. Plus, because we're raising the funds through USA Projects, we've been given matching funds from the Rasmuson Foundation and all of your donations are tax deductible!