(Re)Tweets While Drinking Scotch And Reading Submissions

I am not a good protagonist.

Over on the right there, you’ll see seven days coming up of “SmokeLong Quarterly submissions.” What’s that? Well, at SmokeLong, we publish both the Quarterly and Weekly stories. For every week, we have a different editor read, whether a guest or someone on the staff. Since we started doing the Weeklies, I’ve tried to take at least one week every quarter. The submissions that come in from November 7–13 will be mine, mine, all mine. I’ll choose one from among those submissions to be published first as the Weekly on January 3, and then in the Quarterly on March 27. Whee! In honor of that, I thought I’d re-post here a guest post that appeared on Pank Blog after my first go-round doing the weekly reading (I was tweeting as @smokelong at the time). Hope it helps. And looking forward to finding a new favorite story that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. So go submit. And hopefully I’ll be back soonish with a post on improv. The last few weeks have been good improv weeks.

Tweets While Drinking Scotch And Reading Submissions

An old friend asked me recently what we’re looking for in stories we accept for SmokeLong Quarterly. Since we’ve changed to a rotating editor on a weekly basis, it’s a little different. I can’t speak for every editor, but here are some tweets I made over the course of three nights drinking scotch and reading submissions. Most of these are of the “Do NOT” variety, but a few, at least, are of the “Yes, please” variety.

And again: scotch was being consumed. Also note: the piece I refer to as accidentally rejecting? That’s the piece I wound up choosing for our first installment of SmokeLong Weekly. Woo!

Havin’ a wee dram o’ scotch, reading submissions. 7:26 PM Dec 2nd from web

@ryancall My wee dram is gone. Another? Maybe so. 7:55 PM Dec 2nd from web

Fucking hell. I just sent a rejection to the wrong person. One downside to an online submission center: too easy to click the wrong link. 7:46 PM Dec 2nd from web

tip to writers: don’t have a typo in your first sentence. or your title. gives eds a quick reason to say “nope.”

Thankfully, writer of piece wrongly rejected is very cool. Piece still under consideration (and I really, really like it). 8:16 PM Dec 2nd from web

Tip 2: Don’t refer to another writer in the first sentence of your story. Tonight’s references so far: Tao Lin (barf) and Alice Munro. 8:19 PM Dec 2nd from web

Jesus, ANOTHER misspelling in the first sentence. “Thank you, but no.” 8:20 PM Dec 2nd from web

Tip mothafucking 3: read the guidelines. If we say we publish stories under 1000 words, don’t send a 5000-word story. 8:24 PM Dec 2nd from web

Realization: at the best of times, I can be a dick. When drinking wee drams o’ scotch and reading subs? I can be a serious dick. 8:29 PM Dec 2nd from web

Tip 4: unless submitting to Bulwer-Lytton, don’t use all caps on things like BOOM. http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ 8:31 PM Dec 2nd from web

Tip 5: (and this may just be me) In a flash… it’s never necessary to give a character’s full (first and last name). 8:32 PM Dec 2nd from web

second “wee dram” is gone. I’d like a third, but I’d hate myself tomorrow. 8:33 PM Dec 2nd from web

Tip 6: I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure “thus” isn’t a word that ever does much for a flash. 8:34 PM Dec 2nd from web

Tip 7: busses are kisses. If you mean the vehicle, it’s buses. If it’s important enough to have in your title, you should know the diff. 8:49 PM Dec 2nd from web

switched from wee drams and reading subs to cold Chinese and reading subs. Let’s see if my asshole quotient goes down. 8:55 PM Dec 2nd from web

Okay. Churned through over a week’s worth of subs. I think that’s good for tonight. 9:19 PM Dec 2nd from web

reading subs again. today’s tip #1: A cat should never be the main character. 9:53 AM Dec 3rd from web

Tip #2: I try to read blind. Putting your contact info right in the field for the story itself makes this impossible. 10:17 AM Dec 3rd from web

Tip #3: Putting “The End” at the end of your flash? Not really necessary. Also not necessary in a sub? Copyright notice. 10:21 AM Dec 3rd from web

Tip #4: Check your email provider’s settings to make sure that communications from mags you submit to aren’t being sent to your spam folder. 10:27 AM Dec 3rd from web

@beanglish There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. :) 11:00 AM Dec 3rd from web in reply to beanglish

scotch and subs again tonight. 7:48 PM Dec 6th from web

sub tips again (at least when I’m the reader): starting a story Every day, every month, every x amount of time… almost never works for me. 7:49 PM Dec 6th from web

tip 2) (not a negative) Drop me in scene fast, please. 7:50 PM Dec 6th from web

3) Be explicit. Show, don’t tell blah blah blah, but seriously… capture the single event w/in the larger series and just rock it, k? 7:53 PM Dec 6th from web

expanding on #3, some cool stuff happening in some of the subs, but related at too great a distance. get in there and bleed. 7:59 PM Dec 6th from web

4) Metaphors? A million times stronger than similes. 8:00 PM Dec 6th from web

And, of course, as a writer, I break all these rules myself. When it’s intentional: good. When it’s not: I should know better. 8:02 PM Dec 6th from web

5) OK, this is picky. But I really don’t like exclamation points in fiction. Let the words exclaim for themselves. 8:04 PM Dec 6th from web

6) Pop culture in lit fic can be great. But… don’t hang the whole story on a song/movie/whatever. 8:10 PM Dec 6th from web

7) confusing “your” for “you’re” in tweets? maybe borderline acceptable. In submissions? No. 8:23 PM Dec 6th from web

driving home from dropping off kids, saw a woman hitchhiking outside a cemetery. on 99, which, but for the cemetery, is prostitution street. 8:23 PM Dec 6th from web

(that last not a tip, obviously. just grabbed my attention.) 8:24 PM Dec 6th from web

unfair to submitters: reading subs the night after reading Pasha Malla’s “The Slough.” Because that? is fucking brilliant work right there. 8:27 PM Dec 6th from web

8) For God’s sake, love your characters: http://smokelong.com/interview/66.asp 8:31 PM Dec 6th from web

Ooh! Just read one I really like! 8:34 PM Dec 6th from web

9) You’re a writer, you have a good vocabulary. Got it. No need to show off. 8:35 PM Dec 6th from web

10) (hugely subjective) If you’re writing prose poetry, can you sing it? Dance? Howl? Can’t? Re-write. Sing/howl/dance anew. 8:44 PM Dec 6th from web

11) Ennui is my day job. Not really interested in reading/publishing it once I clock out. 8:45 PM Dec 6th from web

12) Oh, for God’s sake. Using an online sub form? Make sure your email is right. Just got 3 delivery failure messages. 8:51 PM Dec 6th from web

For God’s sake again (not even labeling this a tip): First sentence, two typos. 8:52 PM Dec 6th from web

Also: I’d reject Steph Meyer a million times given the chance. And yet, she accounted for 16% of book sales last year, so what do I know? 8:56 PM Dec 6th from web

@shaindelr Absolutely. The painfully bad ones are easy. The good, but not good enough ones are brutal. 8:58 PM Dec 6th from web in reply to shaindelr

13) Not sure why, but re-imagined fairy tales almost never work. 9:21 PM Dec 6th from web

14) Ever notice that friends look bored when you talk about your adventures on drugs? Yeah. So do editors. 9:24 PM Dec 6th from web

@pankmagazine I think the good but not great may be more common than the obviously bad, in fact. 9:28 PM Dec 6th from web in reply to pankmagazine

The sad fact: when one reads 100 submissions and can only accept 1, one must read with an eye to rejecting, not accepting. Sorry. 9:36 PM Dec 6th from web

Occupy your space.

Whose stage? Our stage!

This post, while not wildly political, will hopefully be the most political I get in this space. It’s not that I’m dispassionate about politics—quite the contrary: when diving too deeply, I get highly emotional and occasionally irrational. Rather, it’s precisely because of that occasional irrationality that I’d prefer to keep my politics on the sidelines here.

(Side note here: I’m also terrible about remembering to promote things as they’re coming up, so I made a couple tweaks to the sidebar over there. Calendar of events and Twitter feed are both there. If you want to see me more uncensored, catch me when I’m drunk on Twitter, which hasn’t happened since the creation of the new account, but likely will at some point.)

That said, the passion exhibited in the Occupy Wall Street protests mesh neatly with something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while: how we inhabit our performance spaces. This goes along neatly with the discussion of passion in If you don’t have fun… (Christ, that was almost a month ago… I’m a shitty updater), and, in fact, the reasons behind this post mostly arose from thoughts in that post put into action in improv since then. Primarily, the thoughts have been in action while running the monthly mash-up, during rehearsals, and in the one Interrobang show so far this month that I was in.

Starting with mash-up and the two rehearsals that I ran… one of the things that Asaf Ronen talks about in his excellent book, Directing Improv: Show the Way by Getting Out of the Way, is introducing oneself at the beginning of a class. He says to give your credentials and briefly lay out the purpose of the class, and establishing your authority on the subject matter. This isn’t meant to be authoritarian; rather, it’s meant to illustrate that the people taking the class are safe, that you know what you’re doing. I’ve always been uncomfortable with this, largely because, when I’ve taught or directed or run mash-ups, the people there have been my peers. Consequently, my introductions were always wishy-washy, kind of “Hey, we’re going to maybe do this, unless someone else has a better idea.” Which is just terrible energy to get things going. So I changed up my approach for both rehearsals and mash-up.

In rehearsals, I stated up front what the foci of the rehearsals were to be, then ran exercises, then show runs. (At some point, I’d like to delve more into directorial/professorial styles within rehearsals/classes, as I got a ton out of a conversation with Ian Schempp about this, and it played a large part in what made the rehearsals successful, but I think that’s for another post.) For the mash-up, I introduced myself, gave a very brief synopsis of my improv experience in town, a quick history of the mash-ups, how the mash-up would run, and a simple challenge for anyone who wanted to accept it (“tonight, at least once, play a character you’ve never played before”).

The difference between those rehearsals and previous rehearsals I conducted, and even more glaringly, between that mash-up and previous mash-ups, was enormous. The rehearsals featured a lot of great, funny work, and the mash-up was, by far, the best we’ve had yet (kudos to the members of Adina Gillett’s Performance Series class, many of whom were attending their first mash-up; they were fantastic). Taking charge from the outset sets an energy that everyone else can feed on. It makes for an environment in which people spend more time playing and less time discussing how to play. They’ve already been told how to play. (And, in the case of Interrobang, if they don’t like how the play is set up that night, they have an opportunity to set the parameters themselves in future rehearsals.)

All of the above goes equally for hosting shows. One weakness I think Interrobang has had in the past is the lack of a strong opening. I think that’s derived largely from issues similar to the ones I stated above about directing peers, a feeling of “Who are we to tell the audience how to act?” We typically went to getting our suggestion right away, without getting the audience acclimated to the space. We didn’t set their expectations and make them feel safe. Contrast that wishy-washy energy with how Kai opened our last show: he came out, greeted the audience, then directed them in “We Will Rock You” sort of chant of “Interr, Interr, obang.” That set the energy. He then asked them to close their eyes, picture a lovely spring day in which everything was wonderful, but there was something in the back of their head nagging at them. What was that thing? Quickest suggestion we’ve ever gotten. Excellent.

You can hear part of the Interrobang chant in this clip, produced by Catherine Ozols (who is awesome).

Something else we discovered in our first Odd Duck show of the month was that where we spend our offstage time matters. A lot. Odd Duck currently has essentially three potential entrance/exit points, two of them virtually blind: a curtain downstage right, another curtain upstage left, and an aisle out of the theater downstage right. Behind those curtains, it’s almost impossible to see what’s happening onstage. Consequently, it’s much, much more difficult to establish the group mind so imperative in group improv. In our second show, cast members not in scene stayed on stage (they’re not visible in this clip, but they’re all in front of the curtain upstage right).

Also, during rehearsals, Randy focused heavily on our energy when out of scene. What’s our body language? Are we always ready to jump in? Where is our focus? What’s our body language? In one exercise, if he saw one of us on the back line losing focus, he actually made a buzzer sound. Just as in sports, improv has a ready position. If you’re focused in on the scene, with energy, even while offstage, the chances for you’re having a good show are increased a ton.

Finally, there’s the issue of the energy one has while in scene. I don’t want to harp on this too much right now, because I think it, too, might warrant its own post, but I can’t count the number of times in improv when I’ve seen people in scenes disengaged from their scene partners. By this, I don’t mean that their character is disengaged from their scene partners’ characters—that’s a perfectly valid choice. Rather, the body language and facial expression that makes it clear the improviser is thinking about where (s)he wants the scene to go, rather than being fully in the scene. Yeah… that’s a much bigger topic. Will delve into that more fully later.

Bleah… for a post about passion in how we occupy our improv space, this post feels horribly dispassionate. Which is a non-improv struggle I’m having with this blog: I have about a million different things I want to talk about, and often get hung up trying to be at all cohesive. Might be time to drunk tweet about improv.

(And if you’re just dying to know my politics, I took the pic above while walking with my partner and kids in an Occupy Seattle march on Chase Bank. I’m a little to the left of Bernie Sanders.)

SmokeLong Quarterly Issue 33

Just finished pushing the last bits of this issue live (after Tara Laskowski, Beth Thomas, and the staff did all the heavy lifting). It’s a beauty. Please go read!

cover art “Sparta, NJ” by David Ohlerking

Issue Thirty-Three (October 2, 2011): Egg Toss, August 1989 by Meagan Cass «» Dinner Parties Where Place Cards Leave No Choice in Seating by Chella Courington «» Sovetskoye Shampanskoye by Berit Ellingsen «» They Live in Black and White by Danica Green «» Watermelon Seeds by Micah Dean Hicks «» Gwendolyn by Robert Hinderliter «» Sleepless #7 by Joe Kapitan «» Mutual by Henry S. Kivett «» Wolf Cry by Sara Lippmann «» Jamila by Carmel Reid Mawle «» When I Lose Track of the Children, 5 & 7, Near the Magazine Section at Costco by Christopher Merkner «» Finally by John Minichillo «» I’m a Woman For Sure by Kate Nesheim «» Exposure by Katy Resch «» The Road to the Casino Del Sol by Mather Schneider «» Never Never by Amber Sparks «» The Language of Hairzilla by Chris L. Terry «» Interviews: Meagan Cass «» Chella Courington «» Berit Ellingsen «» Danica Green «» Micah Dean Hicks «» Robert Hinderliter «» Joe Kapitan «» Henry S. Kivett «» Sara Lippmann «» Carmel Reid Mawle «» Christopher Merkner «» John Minichillo «» Kate Nesheim «» Katy Resch «» Mather Schneider «» Amber Sparks «» Chris L. Terry «» Letter From the Editor

If you don’t have fun…

Read this, but don't be this.

You’re the asshole.

Susan Messing’s quote is one I have to keep bringing back to the forefront of my mind as I grapple with the ways in which I want to improve in my improv. While focusing so intently on what I want to make better, the work can often start to feel like work instead of like fun. And if that’s the case, what’s the point? I get my work in doing the 40 hours a week for a paycheck. Improv, as Susan so succinctly puts it, is supposed to be fun. So here are some reminders of that for me from the past two weeks:

• Regarding the 10,000 hours?! post, Chris Allen said this:

  …I don’t think the 10,000 distinction is that important. When I first starting improvising a few years ago was also when I first started reading Malcolm Gladwell. I started thinking, yes, 10,000 hours, that’ll be my goal. Then I immediately forgot about it. For the last couple years I’ve probably averaged 15-20 hours a week either rehearsing, performing or writing comedy. But I hadn’t thought about Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule once until about a week ago when it randomly popped in my head. I wasn’t spending time on it to get to a certain amount of experience, I was doing it because I fucking love it. And I suspect that’s why you do it too… I don’t think you can ever hit 10,000 hours at something unless you absolutely love doing it. And the doing it is the goal, not the tally of hours that you’ll have at the end of your life. Like sports or any other activity the more time you spend on it the better you get, and the better you get at it the more fun it is, but it’s the joy of doing it and no other reason that makes us keep coming back…

• Speaking of Chris, he’s in the current Wing-It production, Final Transmission, which I saw on opening night, and which is incredible. Such an amazing cast: Chris Allen, Graham Downing, Nick Edwards, Brandon Felker, Adina Gillett, Jana Hutchinson, Mandy Price, and Elicia Wickstead. Huge amounts of tech-prov, far more than I’ve ever seen in a show before. Was an absolute joy to watch.
• Speaking of Chris and Mandy, they’re also both in Wing-It’s Quiz Show (as am I), which I meant to promote, but didn’t get on over here to pimp it in time. We just did a live audio-taping of the show, which is now in editing before being sent along to KUOW, in hopes that they’ll add it to their programming. Taping went really well, and if KUOW likes it, look for announcements of tapings in the future. Love this show, and really missed it and the cast.
• Also in the “Quiz Show” cast is Ian Schempp, whose improv blog you should go read.
• Devoured two great books on improv in the past two weeks as well: “Improv: Scene from Within” by Mick Napier and “Whose Improv Is It Anyway? Beyond Second City” by Amy E. Sehan (whose chapter on Annoyance was what caused me to seek out Mick’s book). Mick’s book is pretty much my new improv Bible. I carry it with me everywhere, and am constantly delighted to find how many other Seattle improvisers I love are either reading it right now or have already read it. Amy’s book is a feminist take on Chicago’s improv scene. Some of the reviews for it HATE the feminist slant. Me? I dig it, and think it’s right on the money. Plus, it’s the only book I’ve found that has so much of Chicago’s improv history in one place. If feminism pisses you off, the book probably will, too; if you’re a feminist (and yes, I am one, brash exterior aside), you’ll get a ton out of it. Mick’s book is by far the more useful of the two for actually DOING improv, but Amy’s is great for nerds like me who want to know where we came from.
• I’m also directing Interrobang for two weeks in preparation for several October shows. Directed last night’s rehearsal (which Becky blogged about here), largely driven by the ideas of taking care of yourself first that permeate Mick’s book. Got very toolsy (which is useful from time to time) and not that much flat-out fun. Next week, I’ll definitely be gearing more toward fun. For our performances, we’ll be pairing with four great groups. Schedule of shows is here.
• Sticking with Interrobang, probably the single time that I most had to remind myself of the “asshole” rule was going into last week’s rehearsal. Randy ran a workshop centered around object work and mime. I appreciate good object work, but I don’t love love love it. And I found myself kind of cranky about it as I parked my car heading over to the space. On the walk there, I just kept telling myself to have fun and engage fully. And y’know what? Randy ran a fucking awesome workshop. And fortunately, I was in the right headspace to appreciate it, largely because I talked myself out of being the asshole before arriving.
• Going back one last time to Chris, it seems like he and I wound up in more than one improv nerd conversation the last couple weeks. After one such conversation, he pointed me to the Improvised New York podcast, specifically the episode featuring Joe Bill and Mark Sutton. First off, awesome podcast that I’ll be checking out regularly now that I know it exists. Second, whattayaknow, Joe and Bill spend a decent amount of time talking precisely about the fun factor of improv and how sometimes they have to be reminded of just how golden this thing is that we do.

“If you don’t have fun, you’re the asshole.” My current mantra.

10,000 hours?!

Salvador Dali's mustache took 10,00 hours to grow, which is why it's perfect.

When I started doing improv again in 2009, I said “yes” to everything: every open play time, any class, any performance (although those didn’t come right away). I continued to say “yes” to every invitation for two years, especially to improv performances, regardless of whether I thought it would be a good show or not. And, where invitations didn’t exist, I created my own, whether inviting other improvisers to play someplace or assembling an ongoing group. (Note to new improvisers who are feeling left out of the casting process, etc.: do this! There are other people in the same position as you who want to play just as much as you do, and space rental, when divided up, is cheap.)

And then, around the time I started this blog, I decided it was time to start saying “no,” to be more selective about what improv I would do, with whom, when, and where. I felt I had to: I was often exhausted, I wasn’t getting to spend as much time at home with my partner as I’d have liked, and, as a result of committing immediately to everything, occasionally had to say “no” to something I’d have been more interested in only because I’d already committed to something else.

I decided, more specifically, to say “no” to everything but Interrobang rehearsals/performances and to starting up the once-a-month mash-ups again, while taking more time away from stages and rehearsal spaces to reflect. And that choice has achieved its goal, mostly: it’s given me much more time at home, which I’ve cherished, and also given me more time to a) reflect on where I’ve been, and b) read a whole lot by other improvisers.

And the biggest revelation? I need to do more. Rehearsing once a week, and performing about twice a month isn’t enough. I still need to figure out a way to balance the need for more improv with the need to be home as much as I’d like, but I definitely feel like I’ve fallen into a holding pattern as far as getting better.

Matt Walsh, of Upright Citizens Brigade, spoke at Wing-It on May 20. One of the things that he said was that it took him ten years to become “good” at improv. And in reading about a lot of Chicago improv history recently, it’s become very clear to me that the groups we’ve all heard of did improv a LOT. I would guess, fairly conservatively, that the norm was around twenty hours a week. Think about that. Twenty hours. That’s not a full-time job, but it’s a pretty serious part-time job. That’s five nights a week, four hours a night. And, when that all gets added up, ten years starts to look a lot like 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours, not coincidentally, is the amount of time Malcom Gladwell discusses as the necessary time to become great at anything in his book, “Outliers” (which, in turn, he got from neurologist Daniel Levitin).

So what does that look like in the world of Seattle improv, where the most strenuous rehearsal process I’ve seen for a show has been three rehearsals a week? The idea of that is so embedded in the culture here that pushing against it draws major resistance from just about every improviser. In fact, when the realization hit me that I needed more improv time, rather than asking the members of Interrobang whether they’d be interested in expanding to two rehearsals a week, I pursued instead the idea of booking more shows. At this point, I’m not overly concerned with whether my improv takes the form of rehearsal, class, or show, and pitching performance time to improvisers is much easier than pitching rehearsal time.

Knowing that, then, how to get to the number of hours needed to become “good?” For a 20-year-old, that’s easy: mix and match enough rehearsals/classes/performances to get in twenty hours a week. In my twenties, I wasn’t doing improv, but my time spent in rehearsals/performances as a more traditional actor was easily twenty hours a week. For a man in his forties who has a rich home life that he doesn’t want to abandon, it’s much more difficult. So how to do it?

Honestly, short of suddenly becoming independently wealthy and being able to make improv my lone “job,” it’s probably not possible. But there are ways to get occasional large spikes of hours, and I think this is where “The inspiration of festivals” posts have inevitably led me.

Last year’s SFIT, over the course of four days, allowed for one regular show performance, an all-star mash-up, a dust-up, and a master class, as well as seeing a TON of amazing improv, which is hugely valuable in and of itself. Total hours over those four days? 25 maybe (if watching shows counts, and I think it should).

14/48, while not improv, provided an even more intense model. Over the course of two days, I figured out that I was in the theater for something like 35 hours (not all of it rehearsing or performing, but most of it).

The 24-hour film race, about a year and a half ago? Pretty much what it sounds like. Over the 24 hours allotted, I think about six of them weren’t spent working on the film.

Each of these, in their own ways, provided massive spikes, not just in hours, but in inspiration. And then were followed fairly immediately by what felt like plateaus: the work was probably better than it had been before those events, but that feeling of rapid progress was gone. In some ways, the work felt like it went backwards immediately afterward, but having had time to reflect on each event, I’ve since realized that the work stayed similar to the level at the end of those events for a while, and it was the lack of new progress that was frustrating.

Where then to get those spikes? There are a few naturally built in, i.e., the three I just mentioned. But looking back to my new beginnings with improv, there were dead times where what I wanted wasn’t available, and I had to create my own opportunities. Might something similar work here?

A few possibilities occur to me:

1. With Interrobang, setting up a week (or more likely, a long weekend) when we all take off work and do a working retreat (even if that wouldn’t entail going anywhere). Rent TPS space for large blocks of time over two or three days and schedule out eight to ten hours of workshops, etc. Possibly finish it off with a brand new show conceived during that time. There are a couple things that would make this difficult, obviously: making it work around everyone’s schedules and the sheer cost of that many hours of rental and paying of teachers.
2. With whatever improvisers (or groups) that want to participate, pretty much the same deal. This makes the two problems listed before a little easier to deal with, as people who aren’t available just won’t sign up, and the cost would be spread across more people. Actual time working on stage would be cut back per person a bit, unfortunately, but a large part of what’s valuable in settings like this is active observation anyway.
3. Start saying “yes” to a whole hell of a lot again. But that puts me back where I was before taking the break. It’s possible that enough things will fall into place anyway: “Quiz Show” has a taping coming up (more on that in a later post) that could lead to more regular tapings; there’s talk of bringing “CIU” back at a different theater; Interrobang will continue its schedule; and Carskee dropped a hint that they have some improv ideas they want to synch up on. Any or all of these could be wildly exciting.

Bottom line, though, is that 10,000 hours is a ton, particularly for a middle-aged man in an improv culture that already resists putting in a lot of time. But there’s that whole thing of wanting to be good. And being good? Requires work. 10,000 hours of work. And, to this point, between my original time pre-kids and my time since coming back, I’m probably somewhere around 4,000.

I got some work to do.

The inspiration of festivals (Part 3)

Dudes.

On to Day 2, and hopefully wrapping this whole thing up.

Got to the theater a couple minutes late again on Saturday, this time with costume pile left in the car (still in the car, actually; I need to clean it out before picking up my kids tonight). Directors are drawing, and I hear John Farrage directing a play by Scott Augustson, and I’m thinking, “Me, me, me!” I’ve heard about John for years–he was a classmate of Stephanie Roberts at Cornish, and she talked about his work frequently. Scott Augustson writes these brilliantly weird and wonderful plays that have been a marvel of 14/48′s past, as well as the Seattle fringe scene in general. Sure enough, the 14/48 gods smile on me again: John draws Ashley Bagwell, Agastya Kohli, Erik Van Beuzekom, and me.

We head upstairs to our designated rehearsal space. John tells us we should read the script to ourselves first, as it’s an odd one. We do. We can all tell where each other are in reading, as we laugh at various lines. John assigns roles: Agastaya will play the straight man part, a man whose wife has died unexpectedly; Erik will play the doctor, a swan, and a lobster (later changed to jellyfish); Ashley will play the orderly/bear and a bird hustler; I will play a weasel, an old goat, and a German Shepard mix.

And off we go. Day two is much looser. Maybe because we’re all tired, so our energy is a bit lower. Maybe because we’ve gotten through it once already, so the nerves aren’t as intense. But it’s a good day. John is as good as advertised, and understands that his usual directorial style of delving deeply isn’t best for the format–choices have to be made fast. It’s more about tweaking the first choices made than about building something over a longer period of time. And Scott’s play is beautiful–poignant, hilarious, and acid-trippy, sort of an adult Alice in Wonderland. And Agastya, Kaleb, and Erik are great. The day passes almost leisurely. Lines don’t seem quite as tough. More side conversations during breaks. Erik and I talk about Andy White and Lookingglass Theatre, and Erik’s work with Andy’s dad. John and I talk about Stephanie, and Brendan Fraser, another classmate of theirs, and John’s roommate in LA. Andrew McMasters and I talk about 14/48 and the lessons SFIT could learn from it. Annie Jantzer saves my ass (and my voice) with shots of whiskey before each show. Ashley has horrible nerves (and gets over them beautifully in performance) about his very revealing costume. And so many, many other side conversations during various breaks and between shows later. And watching various casts, as they go over their lines that one last time, just losing their shit punch-drunk laughing, enjoying their time working together.

Really, day two, in many ways, was a lucid dream. Sure, maybe some of that had to do with the dream-like style of the script. But more, I think it had to do with a whole lot of amazing artists enjoying the hell out of working together. And the shows! Oh, man, the shows on Saturday were all wonderful, and in so many different ways. I don’t think any of us will ever forget Tim Gouran bolting through the audience as a pre-cum sperm, or Erin Fetridge voicing from the booth the moans that set him off. Or the confetti-throwing ending of the prison musical that closed the show.

Or the party afterward, where the men of 14/48′s Men’s Weekend finally got to interact with women.

Dudes. Duuuuuuuudes. It was all so, so good. I am inspired. And it didn’t take as big a toll on me physically as I thought it would. My voice is completely back. And I’m mostly well-rested (although I did need one sick day in the middle of the week, and slept a ridiculous number of hours on Sunday). Thank you, steering committee, for running this wonder, for mandating that 25% of every festival’s participants will be “virgins,” and for allowing me to be one of that 25%.

I want to write more about lessons learned from 14/48 and how that can apply to other festivals. There’s talk of bringing the fringe festival back. And SFIT looms with both the problem and the opportunity of not having their usual second venue (Market Theater) available. And 14/48 offers a lot to learn. So I’ll circle back around to that at some point. But right now?

Dudes. I love you, dudes.

Dudes.

The inspiration of festivals (Part 2)

Why, I oughta... remember this for a long, long time.

Okay, onto the festival itself. Whew.

It’s hard to imagine how 14/48 could have done more to have targeted my own personal desires better. Thursday night, 7:30, the participants gathered to drink, hear the rules, how things work, and select a theme. My theme, “Fenced In,” was the one randomly selected. (If any of the participants are curious about what inspired that suggestion, go read Metallic, one of my favorite pieces of flash fiction ever.) After that, we could hang out for a while, but were encouraged to go home and get some rest (except for the playwrights, who needed to get to work). For previous participants, the night presented a brief opportunity to catch up. For the “virgins” (like me), it mostly presented an opportunity to pour beer for the veterans, and start getting a feel for the tone of what was to come. I will say that, for someone like me who didn’t know very many people at all, it felt a little insidery. That said, that feeling went away pretty damned quick on Friday, once the work got underway.

Friday morning, I arrived at Theater off Jackson about five minutes late (we were supposed to be there at 9:45). We’d been encouraged to bring costumes for just about any occasion. Rather than leaving my costumes in my car and returning later to grab whatever I might need, I bustled in with my arms laden down with about as much clothing (and shoes) as I could carry. I was later told that it presented a great visual and metaphor for the weekend itself. Soon after I arrived, directors drew the names of actors for the shows they’d drawn. Nik Perleros, drawing for “The Rule of Three” by Eric Lane Barnes, drew Erik Van Beuzekom, Kaleb Kerr, and me. Until that moment, I’d never met any of the playwright, director, or other actors. We’re told that we’ll be rehearsing in the lobby. So off we go. The play is about The Three Stooges. Specifically, it’s about how Larry and Curly both are tired of the act, and aspire to something greater. We do two read-throughs, and Nik casts Erik as Moe, Kaleb as Larry, and me as Curly. We laugh a lot during the read-throughs. Eric fields questions, seems happy with the casting, and heads out. We start our rehearsals.

Rehearsals go through most of the day, with occasional cigarette/potty breaks, and breaks for lunch and dinner. During lunch, we watch some classic Three Stooges on YouTube, and practice stage slaps, which breaks my glasses (not because of physical contact, but because of my glasses flying off to the floor after whipping my head around). Fair enough: I’ve been wanting to get more used to performing without my glasses anyway. On one of our breaks, I stash ‘em in the car, along with the huge pile of clothes I won’t be using (as my costume will be provided, a suit with broad pinstripes worn over a fat suit). I won’t see the glasses again the rest of the weekend, except when driving. From the moment the costume arrives in the early afternoon, I don’t take it off except for the aforementioned trip to the car. Erik and Kaleb get similarly great costumes. There is no doubt in anyone’s minds when they see us that we are The Three Stooges.

Lots and lots and LOTS of running lines. None of us are among the youngest of the performers, and a common refrain of the weekend comes up often: damn, it gets harder and harder to memorize lines the older you get. All three of us have our own specific lines that trip us up. Nik, Erik, and Kaleb mention fairly often how good they think it’s going to be. I’m not as sure. Yes, none of us (playwright, director, actors) were particularly Stooge fans at the start and have found a new appreciation of them (we laughed our asses off while watching some of their stuff). But how would an audience react? I had no idea. And there were those damned lines that we’d been running and re-running all day, whether in official rehearsal, or sitting in the smoking cage behind the theater during breaks, or during other groups’ performances. And one of the casts, comprised of serious vets, coming into the cage after their show looking a mixture of shell-shocked and relieved. (In hearing their description of their performance, in which they “said 90% of the lines, but not in order,” I mentioned to Kaleb and Erik that I felt simultaneously looser and tighter.)

Well. Erik and Kaleb were dead on about how good a show we’d been given. The 8:00 performance rolled around, and the house was packed. From the moment the lights came up (after the amazing band had a capella performed a brief snippet of the Stooges theme) and the audience saw us, they went nuts. It’s amazing how much an incredibly engaged audience can energize a performance. From that first laugh at the visual, it was magic. We neared the end of the show and the audience roared at the appearance of shaving cream pies in strobing slow motion, and never died down. We turned to face them and held a pose in a spotlight, and they were on their feet. God damn. A ten-minute performance put together in less than 24 hours–from scripting to rehearsing, to teching, to show–got a standing ovation. That’s something I’ll never forget.

14/48 also has this great award, the Mazen, given each weekend to a veteran of the festival who embodies the spirit of risk-taking and support. One of its previous winners, Lisa Viertel, made a point of telling me how much she’d enjoyed the show. So did several of the guys who’d been involved in the other shows, particularly Bama Katt, Andy Jensen, and Stan Shields. That slightly insidery vibe I’d felt the night before was completely gone.

Also at the 8:00 show, our theme for the following night was drawn from audience suggestions: “My best time ever.” When all of us on stage for curtain call heard that, we roared.

Prep for the 10:30 show was much looser, and the house wasn’t quite as packed, so we were able to sit toward the back of the theater to watch most of the other shows, all of which I loved. Again, as our own time drew closer, we retreated from the audience to the smoking cage to do one last line-through. Performance came, and again was a blast. And that was it for day one. I started to feel that wistful feeling I always feel when a show I love has come to the end of its run. But it didn’t have much time to stay there, as I knew I’d have a fresh run at another in the morning.

Went home almost immediately after the show. Got home about 1:00, talked to Ellen for a little bit, and went to bed. And, exhausted as I was, couldn’t fall asleep til about 3:00 in the morning.

Gawd. This post is over 1100 words already, and that’s just day one, and is little more than a summary of what I personally did, with almost nothing about the workings of the festival itself, or what makes it so incredible. Maybe that’s as it should be. It’s difficult to collect what everyone else did, as so much of the time is spent tightly with the few people with whom you’re creating your show. There’s time to chat during cig breaks and meals, but even then, a lot of that is just spent relaxing as much as possible, or going over lines. But you’re surrounded by it, by all these people throwing themselves right into the same helter skelter creative process as yours. In reading this, my recollection of that first day sounds, even to me, incredibly self-centered. And yet… there’s the knowledge that every other person there was having a similar experience. And, truth be told, day two felt like less of a “me” experience than day one, perhaps because of that first day having been an utterly new experience, one that I’d wanted for a long time, but about which I was also more than a little nervous. Day two felt more relaxed, even as the work was similarly intense.

But still… now it’s almost 1400 words, and I’m mindful of that blogging advice about not posting anything too damned long. So… part 3 coming up.

The inspiration of festivals (Part 1)

Three bald men dance with three hot chicks, a.k.a., Great festivals make you wanna dance.

So I’ve had almost a week now to recover from performing in 14/48 this past weekend. “Recover” is an important word here, and has applied to all of my best festival experiences. The best have been unbelievably taxing on the body, while at the same time incredibly inspiring for the mind and spirit. A few brief notes on festivals in which I’ve participated:

1986 Edinburgh Fringe Festival: The grand-daddy of theater festivals. The year I went, the two productions I was in accounted for 1/400th of the total number of productions. Three weeks of shows, six days a week. The entire city is taken over by the festival, with many residents taking a vacation away from the city, financed by rentals of their properties to the swarms that descend. My two shows were “Oedipuss ‘N’ Boots,” a half-improv/half-sketch show out of Northwestern University, and “Moonchildren,” a Michael Weller play produced by Studio Theater Productions, out of New York City. Being part of this festival meant doing little else other than being part of the festival. My shows were at 11:30 at night and 10:30 in the morning in two different theaters. Time between shows was spent either eating, sleeping, or doing street theater (“really bad juggling from the worst country in the world”) on the Mound between three museums. Time after the 11:30 shows was spent drinking. A lot. Great reviews for both shows, a summer I’ll never forget (I turned 20 on the plane to London, where the New York company rehearsed before the festival), and a case of walking pneumonia at the end. The standard against which I’ve judged other festivals for years.

1991 Seattle Fringe Festival: I produced and ran sound for “Blight,” an original adaptation of a Stuart Dybek short story, for Northwest Passage Theater, of which I was a founding member.

1992 Seattle Fringe Festival: I was one of four actors in John Godber’s “Bouncers,” which was one of the festival’s darlings, routinely overselling each show (typically about 50 folks in the audience in a theater zoned for 35). I was also on the board of SFF that year.

1993 Seattle Fringe Festival: Re-mount of “Bouncers” in a larger theater. Typically had 100+ audience in a space meant for about 80.

1994 Seattle Fringe Festival: With Stephanie Roberts, co-wrote and co-performed “Almost Home” (with music by Rob Wittmer, pre-Awesome days, and direction by Scott Zeller), really a mash-up of two solo shows around the theme of home, and where people find it.

1995 Seattle Fringe Festival: Wrote and performed “Speakeasy,” a one-man show about four generations of cops turned bar owners in Chicago, starting during Prohibition. Could’ve been a lot better. I finished the script two days before the show opened.

2011 Seattle Festival of Improvised Theater: With Interrobang, performed “Interrobang Anonymous,” an improvised addiction support group (with the addiction unwittingly provided by the audience). Also got to do a mash-up performance with an all-star line-up: Jill Bernard , Ethan Newberry , Chelsea Binta , Mark Bratton, Michael Ferstenfeld, and Jennifer Cargill. Then a workshop taught by Asaf Ronen and another mash-up, this one with Joe Bill, Shira Wilson, Kris Corbitt, Alfonso Lopez, and Chelsea Binta. And partying. Almost matched Edinburgh in terms of inspiration coming out of it. (Was also sick at the end, though not to the same degree as Edinburgh.)

Partying is a surprisingly important component of great festivals, not because partying is fun (it is), but because that’s the time during which you get to hang out with a lot of people who share your same passions. This cannot be overstated. (The same holds true for great writing conferences. AWP Chicago in ’09, in many ways, fits my experience with theater festivals: eating, living, breathing the writing life, among others who share that passion, pretty much 24/7 for about five days.) It is largely because of the communication outside of actual performances that these festivals are so inspiring. And, to me, that was the largest failure of Seattle’s fringe festivals–there weren’t central gathering spots at which participants in the festivals gathered, and the scheduling of the festivals was such that it was only a few hours each day of the festival when its participants were in its clutches.

Hmm. That wasn’t very brief. And it didn’t delve much at all into the best parts of the best festivals–the people met, conversations had, and inspiration received. But there’s the foundation for some of what I was thinking heading into 14/48 weekend. Since I’m already over 700 words, which is just silly for a blog post, and I know there are hundreds more to write about 14/48 itself, we’ll call this “Part 1,” and I’ll start working on “Part 2″ in a sec.

I’m a stymied stooge.

I got to play a stooge, brilliantly written by Eric Lane Barnes. Now it's time to stop.

Ugh. So. Ellen and I decided to have a writing night. She’s writing. So far, I haven’t. I felt like my brain was in a good place to write, but I kept overthinking shit. Over periodic cigarettes, I’d start writing things in my head. Bad, bad, bad. I do some of my best work-related thinking while smoking—code that’s been plaguing me will suddenly come clear. But writing-related thinking? Not so much. In the categorization of writers as slashers and bashers, I am indisputably a slasher. I cannot edit while I’m writing (at least not much). I have to let the shit hit the page as fast as possible, or I will overwrite the hell out of everything, and it will suck great big donkey balls. And… and this is the worst part… and if I let myself think too much about the writing, I will also be overcome by the knowledge that it will suck great big donkey balls.

And, for the most part, I don’t mind my writing sucking great big donkey balls. From time to time. It’s necessary. To get to the teeny-tiny percentage of writing that I genuinely like, I have to write a fair amount of equine-fellating shit (why does my auto-correct not like fellating? Fellate me, auto-correct; it doesn’t recognize fellate, either, but fellatio? it’s all good… wtf? Side note to that as well: best usenet post ever: “What the fuck is WTF?!” Whee. I’m off on tangents).

Almost a couple decades ago, when I was writing a lot without any thought toward getting published, I took a bit of advice from one of Natalie Goldberg’s books about letting one’s internal editor have his say on the page: if your internal editor is telling you that you suck, write that down. My internal editor’s voice, when transferred to the page, happened to sound a lot like Ross Perot. Cracked me the hell up every time I wrote down his “What the hell, son? Dad gum it, you can’t write that,” etc. It made it a hell of a lot easier to dismiss this voice, since it was so insanely moronic. Maybe I need to invite that little sumbitch back in again. Just write his idiocy and let that particular bit of writing be part of the necessary shit pile.

So… good. Okay. I’m just writing down a bunch of words as they occur to me. Good. “Law & Order: Los Angeles” starts in about seven minutes, though (if we remember our teevee schedules correctly), so we’re going to go in and watch that. So. I won’t be getting to “real” writing tonight. Hell, this isn’t even of much value as a blog post.

But here’s what I was thinking of when I sat down to start writing in this here WordPress window: that whole question of how improv affects my writing. I still don’t know. I’m not writing anything other than a blog post. In theory, it should be helping me to slash away, and toss away the inevitable detritus. But here’s what I did this weekend just past (on night one, I played Curly Howard; on night two, I played a weasel, an old goat, and a German Shepard mix). And I was thinking: maybe because I got to perform two god-damned AMAZING scripts this weekend, both of which were written overnight… maybe because of that, I’m letting myself be intimidated by other people’s really, really, really good writing. (I plan to write more about 14/48 soon.)

But as I sit here typing this out, I know that’s bullshit. Not bullshit that they were amazing—they were. Holy shit, they were. Bullshit that I’m intimidated. Truth is, I’m totally inspired in just about every working neuron. Bullshit, because I’m allowing myself to be a) lazy, and b) intimidated by my own internal editor. The first pisses me off because: fuck you, Dave, stop being lazy. The second pisses me off because: fuck you, Dave, you know that little Ross Perot inside is an idiot.

So… yeah. I need to strap myself back in again. I know I have a lot of bad writing to get out. I always do. But I’d like to think that I have some good writing to get out, too, and that’s not going to happen unless I allow myself to do the bad writing, and move the fuck on.

Tell the truth.

I had that mustache, too, Eric. I know how hard it can be.

Whew. It’s been a very busy couple of weeks, between auditions, callbacks, performances, work, kids… life. And I had the beginning of a post here related to a Steve Almond quote. So I’m just gonna do things all bullet pointy. And I hope the Almond quotes speak enough for themselves in how they relate not just to writing, but to improv as well. Because I’m not going to go into any elaboration just now. Maybe later.

Bullet points!

• Back in June 2004, we at SmokeLong published The Evening of the Dock by Steve Almond. What’s stuck with me over the years is not so much the story (which is excellent) as some things Steve said in his interview. Here are the specific bits:

  You treat the alpha-husband quite tenderly here. Do you think it’s important for a writer to have some affection for all of his characters?
  Absolutely. The attitude an author should have with his characters is along the lines of Christ: unconditional love and forgiveness. In fact, we should love our characters not for their nobility and strength, but for their iniquity and weakness (as Christ did). You have to love them enough to expose them fully and forgive them. That’s sort of preachy, but it’s also true. Think of any great book—it’s an act of transmission of love, from the author to the characters to the reader.

  If you could give a novice writer one piece of advice, what would it be?
  Fuck style. Tell the truth.

  Preach it, brother.

• Speaking of writing, you should really go check out the latest issue of FRiGG Magazine. Lots of great stuff, including new work by old favorites Randall Brown and Alicia Gifford.
• Interrobang auditions were awesome. I’ll be blogging about that more very, very soon. But not here. Because one of the things that’s kept me busy the past couple weeks is creating our new web site. Woo! Check it out, because it’s lovely: http://interrobangimprov.com/. That’s where I’ll be posting about the auditions. I’ll quickly say here, though, that we cast Becky Bartlein, Jillian Boshart, Phoebe Richards, and Bryan Sullivan. And they’re all awesome. And we had to pass on a number of amazing people as well. Which was brutally hard. Anyway… more about that process in a couple days over on our new site.
• I heard a couple people at UP say that “CIU” was their most successful long-form show yet (I’m guessing in terms of audience?), and they’re hoping to re-mount it at some point. Cool. Dunno when or where, but as soon as I know, I’ll post here. Will be interesting to see how many of us are actually available to do another run.
• “Quiz Show” may have a complimentary performance some time soon so that we can record it with really good sound equipment. More about that if/when it happens, because hey! Free show!
• I’m a Seattle Mariners fan. As of right this second, the Mariners have lost 16 games in a row. The day before the losing streak, they had exactly a .500 record, and were actually sort of still in the playoff hunt. If the season ended now, though, they’d be in line for one of the top draft picks. What’s amazing to me, though, is that the first few losses were disheartening, but the last few have been kind of hilarious. Which reminds me, in a roundabout way, of a quote from Ian Schempp during his long-form essentials class (this may be paraphrased): “I’d rather do a horrible show than a mediocre one.” Yup.

Probably won’t post again til next week(ish). Gotta get the auditions post done for Interrobang, and then I go right into the insanity of 14/48. Which will be amazing, exhilarating, terrifying, and if you’re in Seattle, you should damned well come.