Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre

The View From Here #132: Danville, KY; Lincoln, NE

2008-07-09T13:38:00.000-07:00

First the immediate news! In preparation for the Minnesota Fringe Festival, four Chicago-area theatre groups are holding a Fringe preview here in Chicago on Friday, July 25! This Mini-Minne Fringe will be a the Alogon Gallery, at 1049 N. Paulina 3R (Entrance on Cortez) Starting around 8pm. There’ll be four 30-minute performances, climaxing with six numbers from “Karaoke Knights, a One-Man Rock Opera!” (Admission will be $10, and there’ll be beer available.)

Next: Moliere is hipper than hip! We now have MOLIERE RINGTONES available! Be the first in your class to have your phone ring with the mellifluous “Stop, thief!” Or, for that special someone, “I’m Looking For a Groupie!” Click below to test them out!

Well, it’s been a long slog since my last blog entry, and I won’t bore you with too much of a play-by-play.

The show that concluded the Spring tour at Centre College was a blast. First of all, they designed the best poster I’ve ever seen for the show (see below), and the woman who designed the poster was generous enough to let me use it for my own purposes, including passing it on to other schools, for their publicity purposes.

My host also wrote a rather brilliant promotional e-mail to the school’s distribution, and the following went out:

Dear Colleagues and Students,

Here's an invitation to Molière Than Thou. It is a Convocation, a one-man show done superbly by Tim Mooney. Tim performs at the Combs Warehouse on this Thursday evening, April 24th, at 7:00 p.m.

If you are suffering from Molière deficiency--the basic symptoms of which are
--atrophy of the ability to distinguish between sincerity and hypocrisy,
--obsession with money and savings,
--compulsion to sacrifice friends and loved ones to grand ideas,
--and delusions of grandeur
--then Tim Mooney is the remedy you need! Get well.

Ken Keffer
Chair French

There were all sorts of difficulties with the venue, where I ended up performing on an 8x8 platform, set on a diagonal, to give me a slight more vertical and horizontal distance to travel (high school geometry was coming back to me, and memories of the calculation of the hypotenuse). The room was hot, and I was sweating under unfiltered lights … But the room was packed! We’d set up about 100 chairs, and well over 150 people showed up. I could see people watching from a staircase from at least 100 feet away. Again, the volunteers were a blast, most notably the “Doctor” volunteer, and the host was quite pleased with the results.

Racing home, I dove full time into my e-mail campaign for the 09-10 season. I spent the entire month of May sending out to Theatre, French, History and English profs. Since the theft of my computers, this was the third such mailing to this particular list, and the repetition, along with the early start this year, seems to have made a big difference. While last year I had perhaps 12 bookings on the schedule by June 1, this year I was up to 23! Six weeks further along, I’m at 34 bookings, which is quickly approaching the total set up for the whole of last year!

In the course of my massive e-mailing, a few reviews found their way back my way. This letter from the production of my version of "Imaginary Invalid" in California, where the director wrote "The show is going extremely well. Sold out nearly every performance":

I want to let you know that a large group of satisfied viewers saw THE IMAGINARY INVALID yesterday and came away with admiration and pleasure. We saw a professional production with outstanding actors in a play that seldom gets onto our stage. Imagine, a rhymed version of a French play that, in the original, was not rhymed at all! BRAVO! (Dr. Nathan and Evelyn Kravetz)

This from the Illinois Wesleyan Argus:

Mooney owns the stage in "Moliere Than Thou"
...Mooney's energy was immediately felt throughout the room the moment he took the stage. His enthusiasm quickly drew in the audience's attention, and his talent for comedic timing was nothing short of hilarious. ... [The almost bare set]allowed Mooney to fill the stage with his presence. It was all that was needed as Mooney's characters filled in what was left to the imagination.
... The audience participation made for a more intimate scene and setting, and at times it made those audience members who were not singled out laugh their hardest. ... He was infectious, causing the audience to follow his lead, getting everyone to let loose and just enjoy the show. ... Mooney [transformed] the 17th century literature into something accessible in modern times. "Moliere Than Thou" proved to be a hilariously entertaining performance, bringing the audience back in time for a brief escape from the realities of everyday life." (Allegra Gallian)

At the beginning of June, I paused for a quick trip out to Detroit for Isaac's graduation. Isaac is now, officially, taller than me ... at the age of 14!

In addition to the push for bookings, I took a weekend to work as a Pathways group leader, which was, as always, inspiring and encouraging. I threw myself back into my writing, adding more chapters to the directing book I’ve been formulating, and editing some more of my Moliere scripts into 40-Minute variations for high school competitive use. Late in June I attended the International Thespian Festival, and found myself making some terrific connections with the publishers in the exhibit hall. There was a new guy sitting at the Playscripts booth, and when I introduced myself as one of the Playscripts authors, he immediately lit up, having read several of my scripts in recent years. He was extremely encouraging, and given the fact that I had my mornings free while at this conference, I went back and edited some of the scripts that I’d been sitting on, and e-mailed them to Playscripts.

Since that conference, I have, in fact, dug out three more scripts, which I’ve been working on for publication, and between full-lengths and 40-minute variations, I could have as many as 20 plays published before long!

Meanwhile, I met up with the Acquisitions Editor at Dramatic Publishing, who I’ve been sending stuff to for over 10 years now. (I’d gotten to know her cohort, who usually runs the booth, but this time she was there.) She reminded me that they’ve been holding one of my scripts for a couple years now (an adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story), and inquired about obtaining the rights!

I also got to visit with my old friend David Landis, who put me up in his lake house while I was in Lincoln. I wish I could have stayed there more, but the evenings’ schedules were filled with receptions, and I felt it was more important to be available with brocures in hand. Inevitably, if I left my room without brochures, I would immediately meet somebody who was interested in booking me!

Meanwhile, I was doing two workshops a day, and while the attendance was thin, the enthusiasm was high, with responses such as:

"The classical acting class I took from you is phenomenal and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to participate in it." (Greg Prusiewicz)

My brother Pat came out for a visit in early June, and I began planning for the mid-July American Association of Teachers of French conference, which this year is happening in Belgium! Since my son, Isaac, has been studying French for three years now, I invited him to join me and, following the conference, he and I will swing down to Paris for three days, visiting the Moliere memorials, Versailles, the Eiffel tower, and the Comedie Francaise.

I seemingly blew out my knee when jogging last spring, and it’s been a long time getting back up to speed. Ready or not, though, when July 1 hit, I had to dive back into rehearsals for “Karaoke Knights, a One-Man Rock Opera,” which will be opening in a bar in Minneapolis on July 31. All has gone well, and I’m starting to get some “lift” in my grande jettes again. The show seems to be moving forward nicely, and though I’ll soon be taking a week off when I head off to Belgium, I’ll still have about a week to work on it when I get back to Chicago.

The next few days will be caught up in posters, press releases (for Minneapolis) and shipping stuff off to Belgium for the conference. I’ve invested in some new banners for my booth, and the huge copies of the publicity shots, as well as the fun poster from Centre College, should make my booth twice as eye-catching.

Miles on the Vibe: 274,000

Temperature: 50s-90s

Discoveries: People who come up with really creative ideas (posters, publicity blurbs) are more than happy to see their work live beyond the single-day’s impact. * Marketing campaigns have a cumulative impact, and the willingness to repeat my approach to the same e-mailing list gets more response with each successive assault. * I am my own worst critic, and past rejections lead me to imagine that my play submissions are an imposition, rather than a fun opportunity. * Don’t go anywhere without brochures … or business cards, for that matter. *
On the i-pod: Mastering French, discs 2-13

Next Performance: Karaoke Knights, July 25 (Chicago) and July 30-Aug 9 (Minneapolis).

Political Comment: Anybody know which of our bill of rights is still in effect?

Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre Tour Schedule
(Available dates in CAPITAL LETTERS; Already-booked dates in lower case)

SUMMER, 2008
7/16-19 AATF Conference, Liege, Belgium
7/30-8/10 Minnesota Fringe Festival

FALL, 2008
9/4-9 ILLINOIS
9/10 Cardinal Stritch College, Milwaukee, WI
9/1 WISCONSIN
9/12-14 MINNESOTA
9/15-16 NORTH/SOUTH DAKOTA / IOWA / NEBRASKA / KANSAS
9/17-18 COLORADO
9/19-20 Alliance for Colorado Theatre, Denver, CO
9/21-22 Knox College, Galesburg, IL
9/23-24 MISSOURI / ARKANSAS / KANSAS / OKLAHOMA
9/25 LOUISIANA / TEXAS
9/26 TAMU-Kingsville, Kingsville, TX
9/27-29 TEXAS
9/30 TEXAS / NEW MEXICO
10/1 NEW MEXICO / ARIZONA
10/2-4 CALIFORNIA / NEVADA
10/5 Palo Alto School District, Palo Alto, CA
10/6-8 OREGON
10/9 Penninsula College, Port Angeles, WA (12N)
10/10-11 WASHINGTON / OREGON
10/12-13 IDAHO / UTAH
10/14- 15 MONTANA / UTAH
10/15 COLORADO / IOWA / NEBRASKA /KANSAS
10/16-17 Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS
10/18 ILLINOIS / MISSOURI
10/19 MICHIGAN / INDIANA
10/20 MICHIGAN / OHIO / KENTUCKY
10/21 OHIO / WEST VIRGINIA / KENTUCKY / TENNESSEE
10/22 VIRGINIA / PENNSYLVANIA / TENNESSEE
10/23 Washington & Jefferson College, Washington, PA
10/24-25 Harley School, Rochester, NY
10/26 NEW YORK
10/27 Nazareth College, Rochester, NY
10/28-30 NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND
10/31 VIRGINIA / WEST VIRGINIA
11/1 West Virginia Theatre Association, Glenville, WV
11/2 VIRGINIA / PENNSYLVANIA
11/3 PENNSYLVANIA
11/4 MARYLAND / DELAWARE / D.C.
11/5 D.C. / VIRGINIA
11/6 Roanoke County Schools, Roanoke, VA
11/7 KENTUCKY / TENNESSEE / MISSOURI / ILLINOIS
11/8-9 ILLINOIS / MISSOURI
11/10 St. Louis Priory School, Kevin Klein Theatre, St. Louis, MO
11/11 Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, MO
11/12 MISSOURI / ILLINOIS / IOWA
11/13 North Park University, Chicago, IL
11/14 ILLINOIS / IOWA / MICHIGAN
11/15 TENNESSEE / ARKANSAS
11/16 MISSISSIPPI
11/17 MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA
11/18 ALABAMA / GEORGIA
11/19 GEORGIA / FLORIDA
11/20-21 FLORIDA
11/22-23 NORTH CAROLINA / TENNESSEE
11/24 TENNESSEE / KENTUCKY / INDIANA
11/25 Lewis University, Romeoville, IL
11/26-30 Thanksgiving Break
12/1-10 AVAILABLE
12/11-16 Augustana College, Rock Island, IL

WINTER/SPRING, 2009
1/7 North Central College, Naperville, IL
1/9-13 APAP, New York, NY
1/14 NEW JERSEY / DELAWARE/ MARYLAND / D.C.
1/15 VIRGINIA / NORTH CAROLINA
1/16 SOUTH CAROLINA
1/17-18 Greenwood Community Theatre (Auditions), Greenwood, SC
1/19-25 Playhouse on the Square, Memphis, TN
1/26 Freed-Hardeman University, Henderson, TN
1/27 TENNESSEE / MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA
1/28 ALABAMA / MISSISSIPPI
1/29 MISSISSIPPI / LOUISIANA
1/30 LOUISIANA / TEXAS
1/31-2/2 TEXAS
2/3 TEXAS / NEW MEXICO
2/4 NEW MEXICO / ARIZONA
2/5 ARIZONA / CALIFORNIA
2/6-8 CALIFORNIA
2/9 NEVADA
2/10-11 COLORADO
2/12 KANSAS
2/13 OKLAHOMA
2/14-16 Not Available
2/17 OKLAHOMA
2/18 ARKANSAS
2/19 Auburn University-Montgomery, Montgomery, AL
2/20 LOUISIANA / MISSISSIPPI / ALABAMA
2/21-22 GEORGIA
2/23-3/1 FLORIDA
3/2-3 GEORGIA
3/4-7 SETC, Birmingham, AL
3/8 Greenwood Community Theatre, Greenwood, SC
3/9 VIRGINIA / D.C.
3/10 MARYLAND / DELAWARE
3/11 NEW JERSEY / PENNSYLVANIA / NEW YORK / NEW ENGLAND
3/12 Worcester College, Worcester, MA
3/14 NEW ENGLAND
3/15-16 NEW YORK / PENNSYLVANIA
3/17 MARYLAND / VIRGINIA / WEST VIRGINIA
3/18 NORTH/SOUTH CAROLINA
3/19-4/4 Greenwood Community Theatre, Greenwood, SC
3/21 Newberry College, Newberry, SC
3/24 Lander University, Greenwood, SC (Karaoke Knights)
3/26-27 Lander University, Greenwood, SC
4/6 SOUTH / NORTH CAROLINA
4/7 Wingate University, Wingate, NC
4/8 NORTH CAROLINA / TENNESSEE
4/9 KENTUCKY / OHIO
4/10-12 MICHIGAN
4/13-14 INDIANA / ILLINOIS
4/15-16 WISCONSIN / MINNESOTA
4/17-18 NORTH / SOUTH DAKOTA
4/19-21 IDAHO / MONTANA
4/21-23 WASHINGTON / OREGON
4/24-27 CALIFORNIA / NEVADA
4/28-30 UTAH / COLORADO
5/1-2 KANSAS / NEBRASKA
5/3-8 MISSOURI / IOWA / ILLINOIS

The View From Here #131: Lake Travis, TX; Silver City, NM; Kenmore & Spokane, WA; Bristol, RI; Hempstead, NY; Paramus, NJ

2008-04-22T09:38:00.000-07:00

I’m getting ready for the Pathways weekend, May 1-4! I did Pathways back in 2000, and proceeded to get beyond my day job, take my show on the road and enjoy the many adventures you’ve seen here. Come join me and “change your life in a weekend.”
(http://www.pathwaysseminars.com/)

I hung out in Lewisville, Texas for a couple of days, working on bringing the new computer up to speed, before dropping south to the Austin area, where I had an acting workshop at Lake Travis High School. The theatre was working on a production of “Tartuffe” (not mine, unfortunately), and I gave a two hour acting workshop, and then responded to a run-through of their performance.

The folks who put me up were great (their son wants to be an actor), and the girl playing Elmire wrote to say “I still can't believe we had the pleasure of getting your advice, probably the best we could hope for!”

And from the theatre teacher:

You were soooo helpful! We advanced yesterday with high praise from the judge, he loved us! AND, we won a ton of individual acting awards also!

(I have to include these unsolicited responses, just in case some producer reading this, is on the fence about hiring me … it’s not bragging; it’s marketing.)

From Lake Travis I drove west, with a night in El Paso, and continuing to Silver City, New Mexico, a good hour off of the beaten path of the interstate amid the mountains. The gig at Western New Mexico U had gotten cancelled in past semesters, but persistent follow up (Thanks April!) got the deal done.

The professor had neoclassical scenery already in place from a recent production. The small theatre space held about 80 in the audience, and the performance was very well received, as was an acting workshop that I gave for a much smaller group the next day. People were even buying t-shirts!

I was just getting ready to leave town when I noticed that Diana Jones, who I’d met in Tennessee, was performing in this same out-of-the-the way town, this same night. I stuck around and caught her show. She was, once again, excellent, and I particularly enjoyed her not-yet-published song about mountaintop removal. (“Appalacia”)

It was a long drive to the next performance (in Seattle), and I went by way of Los Angeles, where I was promptly invited to Easter dinner by my new friend Edwina (where a friend of hers happened to know a friend of mine from High School (Kirsten Moomey) who I hadn't seen in 30 years!), visited with my old Nebraska friends, Mari Weiss and Crystal Carson (pictured), headed through Fresno, dropping in on Rogue Theatre Fest director, “Airplane Jayne”, up through Oregon, dropping in on my brother, Pat and his family, and staying at David Yeaworth’s house in Seattle, where we visited until late in the evening. I also got a chance to visit with my good friends, and fellow playwrights, Jorj Savage and Babs Lindsay (pictured).

Inglemoor High School was hosting me on a Saturday evening, which is pretty rare for a high school, so I was really surprised when a hundred or so students came out. The show was extremely well received, and the Tartuffe volunteer was a flirtatious minx, who, at one point, wrapped her leg around mine (out of sight of the camera, though you can hear the audience reacting (clip below)). The teacher sent a collection of student responses after the fact. Here’s a very small fraction of them:

Thank you for coming to Inglemoor. You really helped me understand Moliere, I didn’t understand it at all at first. You were really funny too. And I didn’t think Moliere could be that entertaining, so THANKS!
Amanda Hall

Thank you so much for coming to Inglemoor and presenting Moliere! It was amazing and really entertaining! I enjoyed it so much! I really loved how you took skits that were written in 1600 and adapted them to make people (mainly teenagers) love it! I really think you are amazing at changing characters and an amazing actor!
Jessica Eberhardt

Your show was amazing. The way you made the plays your own was amazing and I LOVED when you came into the crowd! Great job.
(heart)
Kierra Adams

I’ve never been to such a great show such as this. Amazing performance. It’s crazy that you do a show like every night in places all over the states. You’re an amazing actor and your interpretation is hilarious. Thanks for the show!
Alex Cotige

We don’t normally get opportunities for events like this right at school, and it was a nice change. As for the performance, it was amazing! I was up front, and I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a long time.
Thomas Mooney-Meyers [No relation]

Thanks for coming to our high school and performing a great show. I can’t think of any other way I would rather spend a Saturday night. The show was fabulous.
Noah Eakman

Thank you so much for performing for us! It was a great show and I laughed so hard. My favorite part was the “Stop Thief” part at the end. The whole show was amazing...
Kelsey Jones

Whitworth University in Spokane had hosted me six years ago, when this tour first got underway. That time, they’d put me in their hundred-seat downstairs venue. This time around, they graduated me to the big space, with over a thousand seats. There was a fifteen-foot throw, just to the first row of seats, and we worked out the lighting so that I could abandon the stage to approach the first row, and remain lit.

My friend, Joe Jacoby, who teaches theatre across the Idaho border, brought 13 of his students to see the show, many of whom had seen bits of my workshops in Joe’s classes in previous visits. Between them, and the Whitworth students who’d just performed “Tartuffe” there were great laughs throughout the show. One of the students from the previous show in Seattle, also happened to be a Whitworth student, and showed up to this show as well, asking me to autograph the t-shirt she’d bought, which in turn, gave a couple of Joe’s students the idea to pick up their own.

The theatre professor, who’d actually missed my show six years before, wrote me later to say:

I love the show – your translations, editings, segues – all work so well and do such a nice job of introducing and honoring Moliere, his works, his intentions.

I proceeded to drive from Spokane to Chicago in three days (with a brief stop in Minneapolis, to check the venue I’ll be performing at for the Minnesota Fringe) and visit with some Fringe friends, and then continued on to Rhode Island, where my next show was at Roger Williams University.

Meanwhile, a show got cancelled. Purchase College dropped me a note to indicate that they hadn’t gotten any high schools to sign on to a show they’d booked for the coming week. This made for the fourth cancellation since the beginning of the Spring semester, making it perhaps the worst semester of the tour in that regard. (This was the low point of this tour, and I started formulating incentives and disincentives to put into the contract to encourage faculty to perform the necessary follow through.)

Roger Williams had tried to host me before, but I was always across the country somewhere when they’d tried to book me. It wasn’t until after the Theatre Chair (who had wanted to book me previously) had retired, that they were actually able to work out a visit.

It turned out that only about twenty people showed up for the performance, which suggested to me that, though the retired Chair had put in a great word for the show, not everybody on the faculty was rallying behind the project. (Though my tech guy and one of the acting faculty were both enthusiastic.)

Volunteers were slow in coming, and eventually a somewhat older woman put her hand up, making for a much different scene than what we’ve seen in the past. (This pattern repeated in the very next show at Hofstra University.)

The next day, the retired chair wrote:

Terrific job last night! All those small nuances polished to perfection... and no nonsense, like hiding while doning wigs, surprising us with magical costume changes, etc. You were, in fact, just as fine and honest a performer as I supposed you'd be five or six years ago when I first hoped to employ you. ... But where were the 50 or so theatre majors? only Danya was there to represent them. I retired a year too early, I guess. BUT you didn't let that throw you; I was proud of your determination and cheered by your splendid performance.

With a couple days to spare, I dropped in on my friends, the Curtins, in New Jersey, and I introduced Dick Curtain to the Battlestar Gallactica dvd’s that I was working my way through. (BG has just begun it’s final season and I’m now caught up on episodes.)

I paused on my drive to Hofstra, to listen to a radio program, but when I went to start the car again, the battery was drained. I’ve had pretty good luck with my car over these six years of the tour, so I really don’t resent when it gives me trouble. In point of fact, it was a beautiful day, and I had plenty of time to wait for Triple-A to send a truck to give me a jump. (I suspected that, with over 200,000 miles on the car, that I might actually need that AAA membership.)

Hofstra was hosting a conference on Humor in Romance Language Literature, and I did two morning workshops on Moliere, Theatre History and Commedia. That night there were practically 200 people in the audience, and the show was fun again. Afterwards, I posted video from both the “Tartuffe” scene and the “Doctor” scene on-line, and was surprised to see the numbers of “hits” to the Doctor scene climbing sharply. Within two days, over 100 people had viewed the video, and while it was fun, it wasn’t particularly more salacious or hilarious than previous postings of the scene. Just to cover my tracks, I wrote to the host, asking him to get the volunteer’s okay. (Just in case the student was reluctant to have her image posted, I didn’t want the video to “go viral” until I had written confirmation.) She wrote me directly to say that she’d already noticed the video, and had pointed it out to a few of her friends (explaining the sudden rush of “hits”). (Yipes! It's already gotten over 1500 hits!)

This note from the workshop host to the fellow who’d coordinated the performance:

… His presentation had wit, wisdom, variety, and humor, and served the purposes of both my History of Drama class and my Intro to Theatre. His insights and comments on asides and soliloquies as well as his demonstration of commedia lazzi were very clear (and very funny), and both groups of students--when queried in Monday's classes—spoke positively of the experience.

I drove to Baltimore and hung out with my sister, Maureen, and her husband, Tim for a few days, and worked on editing new, shortened versions of my “The Misanthrope” and “Doctor in Spite of Himself,” getting both of them down to 40 minutes, which I’ll be sharing as an alternate publication with the folks at Playscripts, Inc, who are publishing my full-length versions of these plays.

Back north in New Jersey, I performed at Paramus Catholic High School. This one was arranged by the spouses of two good friends in the New York area, as the wife of playwright Michael T. Folie (whose plays I’ve produced twice in the past) teaches English, and the husband of my New York City stage manager, Suzanne DuCharme teaches Theatre, both at Parmaus. Everyone saw to it that I was well taken care of in my brief visit, but I found myself struggling through the course of the show. Among the four to five hundred or so students in attendance, there seemed to be only a handful of chaperones, and some students were chatting. (I was beginning to realize that rather than suggesting a certain ratio of chaperones in my “hosting hints,” I need to put that up front in the contract.)

I used just about every trick in my bag, including pausing, staring down the vociferous students, talking quietly to make them listen, and then talking loudly to wake them up, but by the time I got to the last monologue, there was little attention left to be paid. Later on I looked at the video of the show, shot from behind the students by Lynn Curtin (who’d come to see the show for her third or fourth time), and I had to wince at the fact that a girl in the back row turned to talk with her friend as often as she watched what was going on onstage.

The “Tartuffe” sequence was, however, a big hit with the kids, probably too big. Although the scene is thick with double-entendre, it seems they were only hearing the words’ secondary meanings. I did everything I could to pull the reins on this scene, even dropping out some of my favorite lines, just to prevent these Catholic students from turning the show into a riot of raging hormones.

That night I drove in to New York City, catching dinner with the hilarious Tom X. Chao, and enjoying the first preview of my friend Yvonne’s new show, “The Devil and Tom Walker.” (Somehow, it seems that every time I’m passing through New York, Yvonne has a show about to open.)

I headed southwest, where I look forward to wrapping up the spring tour at Centre College in Kentucky.

It will be good to get home again. And unpack the car.

Miles on the Vibe: 268,000
Temperature: Approaching mid-seventies
Discoveries: While I’ve tried to keep the performance contract as simple as possible in the past (I’ve prided myself in keeping it to a single page), it’s probably time for me to make the demands I need to guarantee the best experience I can to the hosts, as well as guaranteeing my on ability to survive from semester to semester. This is not “being a diva” but ensuring the necessary conditions for the best experience possible.
On the i-pod: Podcasts of the Rachel Maddow Show
Next performance: Centre College, Danville, IL, April 24.

The View From Here #130: Ann Arbor, MI; Bloomington, IL; Chattanooga, TN; Bristol, TN; Newberry, SC; Oklahoma City, OK

2008-03-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

EDITOR’S NOTE: Once again, a computer crash has wiped some e-mail addresses from my memory. If you know of someone who ought to be receiving these posts, but is not, please put them in touch with me at tim_mooney@earthlink.net.

I had the first half of February at home, following through, mostly, on an e-mailing project begun in Hawaii. I was writing to the list gathered over the summer, of 11,000 Theatre, French, English and History profs, generally targeting two states per day, working my way, “virtually,” across the country.

I stumbled across news that Brother Robert Ruhl, my High School Advanced Placement English teacher, had died. While I have had teachers that I may have liked more (I was always a bit intimidated by Brother Ruhl), I must say that perhaps the measure of a great teacher is just how much that teacher’s voice remains in your head, in the years to follow. I hear Brother Ruhl’s voice repeatedly, particularly when I’m writing. Brother Ruhl ran a one-man campaign against clichés, and I have to credit him for my current unwillingness to settle for easy, flip descriptions of idiosyncratic ideas or situations. Every time I hear someone use the phrase, “Needless to say …” I have to bite back the urge to say, as Brother Ruhl did so many times “… then why say it?” I am grateful for his relentless tyranny over lazy wordsmithing.

I managed to wrap up my e-mailing a couple days before I was due to hit the road again. By this time, there were almost 75 inquiries pending for the coming year. I don’t usually track things this early, but this strikes me as nearly double the usual.

I drove to Detroit, celebrating Isaac’s birthday (14 now, and taller than I am), and continued to Ann Arbor, where I was performing at the U of Michigan’s “Residential College,” a self-contained college-within-the-university, one square block of campus containing both student housing as well as classrooms and administration. The Theatre, as well as the French faculty, had teamed up to bring me in, and I enjoyed hanging out with both for coffee before the show and beer and pizza afterwards.

I gave a commedia acting workshop in the afternoon and a performance that night. I’d wanted to videotape it, but my camera (perhaps frozen from sitting in the car while I was in Hawaii?) was suddenly not powering up. It was a nice crowd of perhaps a hundred, but a quiet-ish group. The faculty still seemed quite taken with the show, and after a very cold night in Michigan, I began to inch my way southward, this time to Bloomington, Illinois.

I’d performed at Illinois Wesleyan two years before, and I continue to make use of an unequivocally enthusiastic quote from their French professor in my advertising. (He now tells me that the show was so good that “I found myself forgetting that you were speaking in English!”) He was hosting me for a workshop, but it seemed to fall outside of their normal class schedule, and ultimately three students showed up. Attendance that evening was likewise, less than three years before (a packed house), but it so happened that I’d recruited much of the audience myself. I’d written some of the local professors at Illinois State, who sent over a contingent of students working on a production of “Tartuffe,” as well as a local high school French teacher.

It so happened that the high school group had also come to the show three years previously, and some students who were Freshmen that first time around, were now Seniors, and determined to get up for the volunteer scenes this time around.

I managed to grab a few stills from the volunteer scenes to send the high school teacher the next day. (She wrote back that her students were thrilled.) And, in a bit of a coincidence, it turned out that the woman to whom I delivered my “Tartuffe” monologue was, in fact, playing Elmire in the Illinois State “Tartuffe!”

At last I found myself driving into warm weather, and it was a relief to be able to peel off a couple of layers.

In Chattanooga, I was hosted by another French teacher who had seen my show at the conference in Baton Rouge last summer. Ginnie and her husband put me up in a gorgeous house on Signal Mountain, and I managed to get a little jogging in on the morning of the show.

The show is rarely scheduled on Sundays, and I had little expectation for a large turnout, but ultimately 75 or so came out for the show, including some big laughers, particularly Ginnie’s husband, who was an English teacher at the same school. Everything was running smoothly until the last scene, during which the lights all went into a sudden blackout! Moliere noted that “It seems that a brisk wind has suddenly blown all of the candles out …” The audience remained remarkably quiet until the lights came back on about 30 seconds later.

Ginnie has since sent along a series of enthusiastic reports from her students, including ...

• You have an amazing gift for acting and you use it for the right reasons.

• … I have never seen anyone contort their face in such ways yet still manage to portray an accurate message. …

• Bravo! Your acting performance and skills were wonderful. I especially loved the audience interaction. I also enjoyed your improvation when the lights went out! You were constantly entertaining and a thrill to watch!

• Meci beaucoup! You were fantastic and hilarious! I’m so glad you came because my weekend was boring! My favorite scene was when you were the kid with the funky hat. It was so funny how you came up into the audience and your hat was absolutely amazing! …

• … I’ve never seen a one-man show, but am glad your’s was my first. The interactions you made with the audience were hilarious … even more so because of the apparent discomfort (in a good way) you caused them. Please come back for a second performance soon! Stop thief!

• … Very many times one-man shows can become tedious and long-winded, but Moliere Than Thou was entertaining and hilarious throughout the performance …

• … I’m between two scenes to pick as my favorite. Although I think I enjoyed the love scene with Forrest’s mom. …

• … You were an incredible actor. Your use of the audience (Including my mother and me) was especially cool. My favorite scene (and maybe yours?) was the “stop thief” scene. It was a great experience to read those lines on the same stage, too. Your stage presence is amazing. …

Immediately following the show (and the brief reception that followed), I raced north once again. I had a show the next morning (and a second show the next evening) at King College in Bristol, Tennessee.

I was a bit apprehensive about this performance, perhaps most specifically because the fellow who had booked me was the college “Chaplain.” When I inquired about their tolerance-level, he laughed and told me that, while they were a rather conservative group, they had been receptive to a wide variety of performers, encouraging me to go ahead with the “PG-13” version of the show.

There were about 100 students for the morning show, and I played the first “Tartuffe” scene to a theatre student in the front row, and later pulled her up on stage for the two-person scene. During the “Scapin” scene, I found myself climbing over the pews of the chapel, and where I normally look for a student holding a program to represent the “transcription,” I realized that these students had not been provided with programs, and none of them seemed to have loose papers or a notebook in hand. I found a hymnal on the back of a seat, and cracked that open to “transcribe” upon.

I was later informed that the woman whose lap Scapin sits upon during his pass through the audience, was in fact the chaplin’s wife … who seemed to be enjoying the show just fine.

During the evening show, I spied a cute student in the second row, to whom I delivered the first “Tartuffe” scene (climbing over the front row pew), and while that played to an uproarious response, when I enlisted that same student for the scene on-stage, she was a bit too freaked out for it to be much fun. I did, however, bring the much more responsive theatre department student, who’d come back to see it again, for the “Doctor” scene.

Newberry College (in South Carolina) was bringing me in to perform the rarely-booked “Criteria,” and I was feeling pretty good about the show following a successful performances in Hawaii and Texas. My host was meticulous in getting the stage and the lighting ready for the show though, unfortunately, the fellow who headed the department was stuck at home with a sick daughter that night. I had worked the show back up to speed, and again made special arrangements to get this one videotaped, since I had so little useable footage of this performance.

I emerged and began the show, performing to perhaps 50 people in the darkened auditorium. I came on strong, pushing the action forward. But I could feel that the audience wasn’t coming with me. The occasional in-jokes of the show … wry ironic observations that are funny in the context of “what really happens” 300 years into our future, went seemingly unnoticed.

They were distanced, almost as if they were watching a movie rather than a live human being. I began getting apprehensive, and dropped a line. I paused, checked back with the book that I keep on stage with me, and resumed. Later, again, I found myself farther out on the thrust stage than expected, and a quirk of the acoustics distracted me with a sudden echo. Again, I faltered in my delivery and continued, but this time perhaps half-a-page ahead of the spot that I’d left off. This would be confusing with the guy in the booth, but thankfully unnoticible to the audience.

After the show, I met with some of the theatre students, whose typical response was that “That was really … interesting!”

The next day, I was off to Greenwood, where my friend Bess was booking me to direct and act in “The Misanthrope” next March, and we pieced together a formula which would enable me to afford the extended visit, as I would earn income from three distinct sources, with one third of the money coming from the community theatre, another third from the local college, and the final third from bookings arranged with nearby schools.

With a few extra days before heading back to Chattanooga for the Southeast Theatre Conference, and no bookings to keep me afloat, I plotted stops in towns where I figured the hotels would be relatively cheap. My first stop was in Spartanburg, SC, where there just happened to be a karaoke bar in the hotel. It turned out to be perhaps one of the liveliest karaoke bars I’ve visited (their favorite song was by Rodney Carrington, with memorable audience participation).

From there, I continued to Asheville, meeting for lunch with our good friend Sandra-the-Vegan, before pushing on to Knoxville, where I spent three days getting work done, and, in anticipation of another weekend of group-leading with my Pathways (http://www.pathwaysseminars.com/) friends in early May (May 1-4 for anyone who wants to join us), I turned my attention toward a project I’ve done two or three times in years past:

I wrote out 100 goals.

In the past, this project has been extremely revealing, as I get a look at projects unwittingly set aside. Eight years ago, while doing this, I noticed that I held the conflicting goals of quitting my day job, and getting two root-canals done. Since the day-job was necessary for the dental benefits (which made the root canals possible), my squeamishness around getting this work done was effectively keeping me from committing full time to my work. (Less than a week of completing the root canals, a call came in with an offer to direct a show!)

I found my goals fell into five separate “buckets”:

Things I can do today (Stuff like clearing out space on my hard drive, or adjusting the volume on my Preview DVD)
Things I can do in less than a single day (Like upload more scenes to YouTube, or trim “Tartuffe” down to 40 minutes)
Long projects, ranging from several days to a year (Like burn 100 Preview DVDs, or finish writing my adaptation of “Amphitryon”)
Ongoing projects that demand daily effort (Such as “Exercise Daily,” “Memorize Shakespeare Monologues,” “Work on My French”)
Eternal projects which will never be quite complete. (“End Global Warming,” or “End Torture,” or “Find Inner Peace”)

And then, as these categories surfaced, I also noted four “game changers,” goals which, if accomplished, would change the very landscape of the playing field for me.

• Publishing my collection of “Moliere Monologues”
• Getting “Moliere Than Thou” featured on a “Great Performances”-type program
• Publishing “Acting at the Speed of Life”
• Relocating to Los Angeles

In Chattanooga, at the Southeast Theatre Conference, I met up with April, who drove down to help me out. She brought down the display items for my booth, as well as my latest bit of “swag:” Moliere T-Shirts! We’ve created a new Moliere T-Shirt, with the “Moliere Bowing” logo stretched across the chest, and the “Moliere Than Thou” calligraphy on the back. Please buy one off of me the next time I’m in town!

April and I met up with my dear friend, Sabra, and her new husband, Paul, for karaoke our first night in town. We then spent Wednesday morning pulling together the last of the DVDs and creating further documentation for the exhibit booth.

However much I may prepare for a conference, different agendas arise, and about half of the pre-work goes for naught, while other things become much more important. Just about everybody, though, was quite pleased to take a brochure and a promotional DVD. And, the brochures almost ran out as the weekend continued. (The t-shirt were not especially popular, but I had actually created them so that the conference attendees might actually recognize Moliere-staff members who weren’t me.)

The booth traffic was great this year. I collected lots of business cards, lots of e-mail addresses, gave out perhaps 150 brochures and DVDs, and chatted with dozens of people interested in booking the show.

[About this time I received confirmation that I'm getting publshed again! Playscripts, Inc. has written to inform me that they'll be publishing my versions of "The Misanthrope", "The Doctor in Spite of Himself" and my 40-minute version of "Imaginary Invalid"!]

The biggest issue was that there was no self-evident watering hole where all the faculty would gather to schmooze. I happened to overhear, though, that there was a karaoke bar just a block away, and so I ended up hanging out there every night. By the end of the weekend, I had made several friends at this place, and gave one of the better singers there a Moliere T-shirt, which he proceeded to have all of the actors autograph.

Given my “Game-Changing Goals” list, I found myself focusing on the publishers who had booths in the exhibit hall, and casually asked the Samuel French representative (with whom I had a cordial saying-hello acquaintance over several of these conferences) whether they published any monologue collections (“Yes.”), and whether he might be willing to take a look at my book proposal. He said yes, and I e-mailed it to him the next morning. (It didn’t hurt that I’d enlisted April to help watch his booth while he was out speaking on a panel.)

While I was on that roll, I asked the fellows at the neighboring booth, who handle musicals, if they’d be willing to give a read/listen to my musical adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer In A Day.” (Another affirmative.)

April and I packed up the booth (all the while running into old theatre friends) and headed out shopping.

I had decided it was time to get a new laptop. With the bookings rolling in, and the hard drive of my old laptop filling up (dabbling in video was using massive globs of memory), I was starting to eye new machines that could hold nearly twice as much as my current laptop. And April could translate all of the computereez that the spec sheets were describing. I ultimately settled on a Sony (Vaio), with 3 gigabytes of memory and 250 gig of storage.

And then the old computer crashed.

With astounding timing, the old computer crashed and would not revive, before I could manage to transfer over the memory from one computer to the other.

Fortunately, since the last such disaster, I’ve managed to back up my documents on a fairly regular basis. I’m now working to reconstruct information that I’d gathered since February 25 (my last back-up), but the damage done is nothing compared to the theft of two computers and a hard drive backup in the summer of 2006.

I headed west, stopping in Little Rock and Norman, Oklahoma … all the while downloading and updating and memorizing. I did a workshop at Norman North High School, where they were working on Romeo and Juliet. In anticipation, I’d been working on the Mercutio “Queen Mab” speech (one of my goals is to memorize one monologue from every Shakespeare play), and had some fun working through my insights around this piece with the students.

I continued up to Oklahoma City, where there was some last minute confusion. They thought I was supposed to be performing for them on Friday, while I was certain we’d scheduled for a Thursday show. My host quickly realized that a Thursday performance would be much better than a Friday show, considering that Spring Break began on Saturday. With less than 24 hours advance notice, he pulled together a Thursday show, and about 40-50 theatre majors showed up. … and were a FABULOUS audience.

I was in a tight, tiny thrust arrangement, with students to either side of me, as I played in between banks of audience, packed in elbow-to-elbow. In this intimate arena, they responded hysterically every time I singled one of them out as the object of a given character’s derisive reference.

I wrapped up the show, headed back to the swank hotel they had me in, and am now heading south, with a weekend in Dallas, ahead of a workshop in Austin on Monday. With two days to hole up in a hotel, I’m hoping to get these words posted, download some pics and videos, and rebuild my distribution list.

Miles on the Vibe: 260,000

In the DVD Player: Battlestar Gallactica, Season One (The best “Season One” I’ve seen since the first season of “24”)

Discoveries: The measure of a great teacher is just how much that teacher’s voice remains in your head, in the years to follow. * Scanning the student responses, the vast majority cite the “audience interaction” as being their favorite part. I need to keep that in mind when arranging the performances, so that the hosts put a priority on finding an intimate setting over a vast proscenium space. * There are projects that I have unwittingly set aside in recent years, and the dreams of accomplishing them are lying dormant just beneath the surface. * Amongst my goals are certain “game changers” which may not be as difficult or as time-consuming as the rest of my goals, but which may change the entire landscape. * However much I may prepare for a conference, about half of the pre-work goes for naught, while other things become much more important.

Temperature: 78 Degrees (in Dallas)

Quick Plug for a Friend: Risa Kaparo, who I've been coaching on her one woman show is a finalist for the John Lennon Songwriting contest! Please go to http://www.jlsc.com/vote.php and vote for her song, "The Bible, Before!" It takes about two minutes to register and you can vote once a day if you are so inclined!

Political Rant: The US Treasury is being fleeced by contractors like KBR, who, under the "cost plus" arrangement (arranged by their former CEO), have the incentive to increase their costs any way they can. As such, they triple the cost of white towels by adding embroidering with the company logo on them, thereby earning themselves triple the commission by flaunting their advertisement in the face of low-level soldiers, who get not "cost-plussed" but "stop-lossed." They used to have a phrase for it, and "war profiteering" used to be considered one step away from treason. (I wonder if the towels were made of fleece?)

Next Performance: Western New Mexico University, March 19

The View From Here #129: Kaua'i, HI; Dallas, TX; Point Lookout, MO & Shreveport, LA

2008-02-02T18:09:00.001-08:00

Getting home from the fall tour, I started by throwing myself into the writing project that I’d begun envisioning in Iowa. This would be a directing textbook which would continue on in the same tone as “Acting at the Speed of Life” (which I continue to shop around to publishers).

The first few chapters came naturally to me, but I soon found myself on a tangent that I hadn’t anticipated: I started looking at the history of directing as expressed through reviews of “Hamlet.” I’m fascinated by the way that every era has its own great Hamlet, whether it be Richard Burbage, John Barrymore or Lawrence Olivier, and they all tend to describe them in the same way (except for Burbage, who was the first Hamlet). They all tend to say just how much “truer” this new great Hamlet is, compared to the one before who was (choose one) too bombastic, flat, effete, sophisticated, etc.

What this tells me is that it is, in fact, the nature of TRUTH which continues to shift from one generation to another. And wouldn’t it be fascinating glimpse of history, and the history of directing through that lens. (The history of “Hamlet” also happens to have a lot of fun anecdotes attached to it, too, particularly the chapter surrounding that rake, John Barrymore.)

So, I diverted to start thinking about this new project, when yet ANOTHER idea came to mind.

My several auditions for professional theatres and Shakespeare Festivals during the fall had me thinking about firming up some Shakespeare monologues (in addition to the Moliere monologues that I could whip out at a moment’s notice). Noticing the wide variety of Shakespeare plays being produced, I started thinking about what an advantage it would be to be able to instantly pull out a monologue from whatever play was being produced. (“Oh, you’re doing ‘Coriolanus?’ Here, lemme do this one for you …”)

And so … memorizing some thirty-six monologues by Shakespeare. It could provide the opportunity to demonstrate the acting theories that I’ve begun to put forward in my acting text with a practical demonostration that would work through Shakespeare’s catalogue.

So, I’ve started memorizing. Currently working on the “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech from “Julius Caesar.” Probably one of the greatest speeches of all time. This project will be at least a year in the works.

And then, with Christmas approaching, I got back to work on three more projects:

A) I produced my annual “family calendar,” a power point document that featured old family photos of relatives in the individual squares of the dates of their birth. Since I do this while tinkering in a rather clumsy “Power Point” program, it’s rather rough hewn, and occasionally, I create a month with 31 days where only 30 days are required, or vice versa. (But the family is always very generous and appreciative.) This year I stumbled across a treasure trove of old family photo albums, so there were some great surprises to be included.

B) Since the calendar project would demand getting some printing done, I decided to rework my brochure, updating my prices (which go up a bit every January 1), and finally working my new publicity photos in. This printing job would be on Adobe Illustrator, which I’m less adept at working, but which creates a much sharper finished product. I worked and re-worked the layout, trying to get it to make visual sense, all the while continually re-editing the material, until I got what I felt was the strongest possible message. (If anybody out there wants to book the show, please let me know and I’ll send you the new brochure.)

C) I re-did my business cards, going back to the very popular “Moliere bowing” image.

This all kept me very busy, right up until Christmas, at which point Isaac arrived from Michigan, and I forced myself to take time off of work, limiting myself to reading the occasional Shakespeare play.

Isaac and I enjoyed the occasional ping-pong game, movie or Chicago-style pizza, and as he headed back to Detroit with Jo (his mom), I threw myself into the next phase of my work: figuring my taxes.

Usually I save starting my taxes until January 1, as a good way of spending the day when nothing but parades and football games are on TV, but I was anticipating a January 3 departure for Hawaii, so this time around, I was actually done with my taxes on the first of the year, e-mailing the documentation to Terry Hall (my accountant) on what must be a record: January 1.

In the pre-dawn dark of January 3, I loaded my suitcase into my dad’s car, banging the heck out of my shin in the process, and he drove me to the airport. About 14 hours later, I was on the island of Kaua’i (aka, “The Garden Island”). I’ve been working with my friend, Risa on developing a one-woman show based on her music, and we worked out an exchange, with a place for me to stay in Hawaii while I coached her on her show.

I arrived to temperatures in the mid-70s to mid-80s, delicious food, a beautiful view out the back window, fabulous walks along the beach, fun nights at the karaoke bar, and a fair amount of work, as well, working through my winter e-mailing campaign to schools.

Risa would occasionally take me out to meet her friends (she hangs out with a lot of tango dancers) and many of them wanted to see me perform. We made arrangements with a coffee house in town, and I worked up a performance of “Criteria” for them. (I hadn’t done “Criteria” publically for over a year, not counting shows in my living room, and so I ran my lines on a daily basis for about a week in advance of the show.) It was an interesting venue, and as the action developed, the distraction of the espresso machine diminished, until, by the end, the store manager said that he’d never seen people so quiet in the shop.

We went on a number of expeditions through Kaua’i, walking to the “Queen’s Bath” in Princeville, a small cove sheltered by lava, which was occasionally splashed over by strong waves and on a long hike along a mountain ridge surrounded by green upon green. (I’m sure you’ve figured out that most of these photos were from this.)

I also took the opportunity to fly over to Maui for a day, and while I remembered my camera, I forgot my camera’s battery, which I’d left in the recharger. And so I took advantage of the opportunity to buy a new Canon camera (Canon was listed first among environmentally friendly companies by “Climate Counts”). Digital cameras have gotten cheaper and better since the first one I bought five years ago, and hopefully that will show in my pics. I visited with my old buddy, Ray, who has gotten a job doing electrical work in the middle of paradise. He took me over to a fire dance on the beach, and drove me to drop in on an agent I’d been chatting with a year ago, about the possibility of representing me.

Back on Kaua’i, I had another week in the sun before it was time to say goodbye, and Risa took me to the airport. This time it was an overnight flight coming back, and I lazily watched the video programming, while trying to drop off to sleep.

The airline was repeating a movie on the way back that they’d also shown on the way out (though I wasn’t watching it then), but this time around, they added a short feature of “Ebert and Roper” which discussed the movie we were about to see. The problem was that Roper, at least, HATED the movie we were about to see. I’d pretty much figured that it was a crappy movie, but do you really want somebody telling you what an awful movie you’re about to see in a situation where you can’t escape?

A day after landing, I was heading south again, this time driving to Dallas. The Texas Educational Theatre Association was bringing me in as a featured guest artist this year, which meant that they were putting me up at the very nice hotel, as well as giving me a stipend, while scheduling me to do a TON of work.

I was still on “Hawaii time” and was having a hard time adjusting (It just felt right to stay up until 2 a.m. most nights), but I was up at 6 a.m. on the first day of the Texas conference for a 7:30 rehearsal, and a 9 a.m. show. The rehearsal was disrupted by the student rock band they’d scheduled to play as the audience was coming in. They’d promised that the band rehearsal wouldn’t interrupt our tech rehearsal, but there were clearly more people who were overly concerned about tweaking the details of the band’s sound, and my show was taking a back seat. I concentrated on working with the lighting technician.

“Moliere Than Thou” was the “student convocation” of the conference. Things were clicking very well, and the students were responding. There may have been a dozen people walking out after the steamy “Tartuffe” monologue (there were no complaints reported back to me, so who knows what that was about). As I passed through the audience during the Scapin scene, I went to sit on a girl’s lap as I often do during the “… or else some woman that the man intends to…” sequence, and the girl was more receptive than most. (I kind of hated to head back to the stage.) As the weekend proceeded, she came back to see my workshop and a performance of Criteria, and later she e-mailed:

I just wanted to tell you that i totally adored your show!!! It was a wonderful experience since i am from the country of Panama and theatre is not very big down there. I'd have loved to stay longer to see the complete show at night but we had to leave after Criteria. :(

I was supposed to speak for the 30-minute balance of time following my show, but between the rock band, the preliminary welcome, the introductions, and my performance running long, I had less than fifteen minutes left by then. I ditched my prepared remarks and opened the floor to questions immediately. Of course the first question that came across was “How did you end up doing what it is that you do?” (which was what I had prepared my remarks about anyway). This allowed me to speak very cleverly on the topic, seeming to shoot from the hip while quoting mostly things I’d planned to say anyway.

At 10:30 that morning, I was sitting on a panel, the topic of which was “Writing the one-man play.” To either side were a couple of “heavyweights”: Tony/Obie/Pulitzer winner Doug Wright, (“Quills” and “I Am My Own Wife”), Richard Kornberg, (Public Relations rep for “Hairspray”, “Rent” and the NY Shakespeare Fest), as well as Paul J. Williams a stand up-comic who has been getting raves for his one-man show “Dishing it Out”. It was a lively conversation among four guys who are generally accustomed to dominating the conversation themselves. This was my “break”.

From there I rushed to a 12 noon workshop on “The Life of Moliere,” and, while I was in town, the conference director had recruited me to give that same workshop to the French students at his high school, about 25 minutes away. Did I mention that I hadn’t had time for breakfast that morning? By now I was feeling it, and when I finally got back to the hotel, I stuffed myself on the most fattening hamburger I could order. I went back to the room, taking naps and hot baths to allow my energy to regenerate before my rehearsal for “Criteria” that evening.

The next day I caught Richard Kornberg’s publicity workshop at 10:30, performed by my own acting workshop at noon followed by a performance of “Criteria.” Doing “Criteria” to perhaps 100 people in a huge ballroom of about 800 seats, I let them hook me up to a microphone, which I have never done for a show before. While my voice could have filled the space, the acoustics of the room had an echo which would have slowed me down greatly in the process. They had to strap the radio pack underneath my shirt, which created rather an odd lump.

I was noticing a lot of the same people at my workshops and shows, and swinging by the exhibit hall, I discovered that the folks at the Playscripts booth (who published my “Tartuffe” and “Imaginary Invalid”) had sold out the couple copies of my scripts that they’d brought, and so I offered them the copies I was carrying around to sell (they sold another five by the end of the weekend).

I finished day two of the conference with one more performance of “Moliere Than Thou”. I’d been trying to capture video on several of the events through the weekend, but this was the first one close enough to the action. This show was working magically, with the audience laughing in all the right places. The volunteer for “Tartuffe” was wearing a thick sweater over her shirt, and amid his seduction, Tartuffe would draw it smoothly just off of her shoulder. Every time Tartuffe turned away, the volunteer would sneak the sweater back up into place, and of course Tartuffe could not resist fixing it back to the new position, and it became a separate game playing underneath the scene.

I wandered into a danger zone as the volunteer for “Doctor in Spite” who claimed to be over 18 admitted after the show that she was only actually 15. The “Stop Thief” song drew spontaneous applause, and the show ended with an enthusiastic standing ovation, and I loaded the trunk out to the car (with help from my friend Nancy Jo, who had come to see the show for perhaps the fourth or fifth time). I recconoitered back to the bar, meeting up with some of my new friends, including a particular couple from a community theatre in the Houston area who had come to see nearly all of my events.

The next morning I loaded up the car, and every time I passed through the lobby, it seemed, someone would flag me down with thoughts about my show, or questions about Moliere or booking. I realized that I had been rushing about so much all weekend long, that no one actually COULD have approached me about a booking if they had wanted to! I decided to simply hang out and make myself available for a couple of hours before getting back onto the road and driving north. (I think I initiated conversations about at least three bookings that morning.)

In the days that followed I received more feedback via e-mail:

Bonjour Monsieur,
I am a high school student who just recently attended the TETA conference and was fortunate enough to sit in on your classical theatre workshop. Your advice was invaluable and I cannot thank you enough for your time. Also your performances were astounding. I am attempting to perform a monologue from "The Blunderer" for college auditions, and your interpretations of Moliere's various characters has helped me in many ways. Hopefully I will be able to see you somewhere else around the country.
Thank you again ...

And ...

Recently at the TETA conference you pulled me up on stage one morning during "Moliere Than Thou".I believe it was during Scapin's spiel. It was an experience I will never forget. I was so awestruck by your impressive acting ability, and it was truly a joy to be on stage with you. As a matter of fact, you inspired me to write a one-man show myself. Then in the process of creating that script, another idea has taken flight. You Sir truly are an inspiration and an amazing author and actor.
Thank you ...

I headed for Point Lookout, Missouri, which actually turns out to be a town comprised exclusively of the College of the Ozarks, overlooking Branson, Missouri. (I’ve never been to Branson before, but it strikes me as a cross between Orlando and Las Vegas.) I was a bit concerned about this show, because the school was clearly very conservative, which left me wonering why they’d chosen me to appear there, but my host was very friendly, and I worked out ways to take some of the “edge” off of the more salacious material.

It actually worked very well for the show, as I continued to ride the edge of some of the bawdier humor, which kept a level of tension present throughout. (The audience continues to wonder, “Did he really mean it in the way that I think he said it?”) Afterwards the theater faculty were very enthusiastic about the show, particularly glad to be able to demonstrate to their kids just how well they can make themselves be heard, even without a microphone.

The next morning was a quick drop south once again, this time to Shreveport, with a show booked by a high school teacher at a local youth center. She was only expecting about fifty students in attendance, and that was almost exactly how many showed up. I was working without music, and with only basic lighting in a former church space. I was waiting to come on from backstage, and didn’t actually hear the teacher giving her introduction. Eventually, I heard a tapping at the door, and heard her asking if I was ready to come on. “Yes, of course,” I responded and immediately made my entrance. But I could tell from the general lack of energy in the audience that they had actually been awaiting my entrance for some time by then.

This crowd’s response was very quiet, and only gradually did they warm up to the show. The applause after the initial monologues was muted, and only with the audience interactive scenes did they seem to be “getting” the humor. Afterwards, however, a dozen or so students lingered to tell me just how much they’d enjoyed themselves, and how amazed they were at my performance and my memory. One rather attractive black girl said to me, “Wow, you have got a really big ... vocabulary!”

That night, the following showed up in my inbox:

I just saw your play today with my French club...
And totally loved it.
Sure, i felt kinda violated. :D
But it was hilarious.
And really, I love guys with long black hair and ruffly shirts :D
My only regret is that all my friends weren't there to see it!
My friend Jeremy and I thought the show was AWESOME!!!
So I'm definately a fan now. :)
<3 Amanda Rivers
P.S. Sureeee there's like a 30 year age difference between us, but when I turn 18 next year, we can still totally get married, right? :DDD
Thanks for comin to Louisiana!

My host was quite pleased with how the show went, and we went out for a bite to eat afterwards, where a couple from the audience were by then finishing up dinner. One of them was a French teacher on a local college faculty, and he was quite enthusiastic, with thoughts of bringing the show back again sometime.

I headed on to my hotel and got a good night’s sleep (finally, my system was back on “Midwest time” rather than Hawaii time), and I raced back home, just ahead of a huge snowstorm, and now I’ve got about two weeks to finish my winter mailing before jumping back onto the road for another two months of the tour.

Aloha!
Tim

Miles on the Car: 256,000

Attendance: 40 + 200 + 25 + 50 + 75 + 60 + 100 + 200 + 300 + 50 = 1100

Temperature: 0-90 (Chicago and Hawaii, respectively)

Discoveries: Somehow the tangents from any given writing project seem much more interesting than the original composition. * The nature of TRUTH continues to shift from one generation to another. * Do you really want somebody telling you what an awful movie you’re about to see in a situation where you can’t escape? * Allowing the audience to ask the first question makes me look much more spontaneously clever. * Respond to everything the volunteer does! * There are people waiting to ask me about booking my show, if I’ll just slow down long enough to let them catch up to me. * Holding back on some of the more overt innuendo actually helps to maintain the tension through the course of the scene.

Next Performance: February 19 (Isaac's birthday) at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)

Political Sentiment: I’m hereby endorsing Barack Obama! -- The rap on Obama is that he is "just" an inspirational speaker. But the very fact of his inspirational speaking gives him the ability to make a transformational shift in our thoughts and actions. Whereas Reagan might have been able to make people think that what was in their own best interests would probably be in the country's best interest, Obama has the ability to enable people to believe that what is in the country's best interest is, in fact, in their own best interest. While Hillary might be able to nibble away at the edges of policy arguments, in the face of opposition that has hardened against her, Obama has the transcendent ability to rearrange our point of view.

Reading: "The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman

On the I-Pod: "Back to Black" by Amy Winehouse