A Gift of Belonging

Last night I attended a performance of "The Blue Room" at the Moth Theater on Melrose. My brave and fearless friend Pamela Guest is appearing as "The Married Woman" in the piece. If you're not familiar, the story is a daisy chain on sexual relationships that link all 10 characters. The play itself is too long in my opinion. Especially if all the performances aren't on par. What hurt it for me was (as I found out after the fact) that this director, John Markland, doesn't like to block. He wants the performances to be "fresh" each night. Honey, don't ever leave blocking up to the actors. I know it's modern and supposedly "freeing" and meant to bring honesty to the performances. But this is a play that's visual cornerstones are the sexual tableaus. What's really cool about it is the use of filmed intimacies played against venetian blinds while the actual couples writhe in passion on a darkened stage. If these tableaus were choreographed to their best effect it would make a huge difference. Most of the actors chose to - for lack of better words - hide in the bed. Complete loss of impact that can't be made up for by taking off your pants. The other thing that bothered me was that I couldn't see their faces for much of the performance. Intense, intimate things are being shared and we're missing the expressions on their faces. It's a moody piece, I get it. But if your actors are free form blocking AND can't find their light...it's just voices in the dark. The stand out is Katherine Towne, daughter of Robert. I didn't know who she was until afterward but when she was on stage I couldn't look away.

I knew I was going to support my friend and witness her triumph. And that alone would have been enough but there was an unexpected dividend. A moment of of pure Hollywood magic. Not the Machine of Hollywood. But the true essence. What is that...to me anyway? In this little black box theater without any fanfare, sitting shoulder to shoulder with us were the Towne family and a few of Katherine's childhood friends you may have heard of; Jason Ritter and Simon Helberg. There to support. In the trenches of Hollywood we lose the camaraderie, the sense of joy for one another's efforts and triumphs. At least in my experience. At The Moth, we were all just show folk having an intimate, communal experience. We all clustered in the courtyard afterward laughing and congratulating and just joyfully communicating.

I rarely feel as if I 'belong' these days and last night was one of those times. So, thank you to my friend...not only for demonstrating her leap of faith so grandly but for making it possible for me to experience belonging.

P.S. John Ritter must be so proud of his son. What a lovely spirit he has. It shows on screen, through his eyes and more importantly, it shows in person. I'm glad I got to experience that too.

The Show Glow - Tales of Bitchcraft!

Thought I'd share some photos from the actual show, both behind the scenes and on stage. Behind the scenes there are always obstacles to overcome. The timeline and countdown to curtain inevitably gets screwed up. Or maybe that's just waht happens when you have no rehearsal time in the actual space. One of our big snafus that night was learning that the theater's address was wrong on the invitations! How did we find this out? By the deluge of calls to my mobile 30 minutes before showtime! Argh! Luckily, everyone did end up finding the place but it shook up my pre show calm to say the least. Do you think Celine Dion has these problems?

It was at this point that we broke out the booze. Not that we wouldn't have in any case. I would never have had a drink or a "smoke" before a theater performance, but this is a retro kind of variety show a la Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. We don't just drink, we "drank"!

So, we're down to the wire and the ladies are doing their "last looks"

I know I'm going to have to arm wrestle Monique to get this wig back. It looks great on her and she wants to wear it everywhere!

Heidi has fortified herself with enough wine to go out and do something she's never done before. Stand up!

There was a little drama when my daughter Bianca arrived. She had agreed to run the sound and light board for the show without learning that this meant being in the booth the entire night. She got a little upset about that because she really wanted to sit in the audience and watch me. As the producer and star of the show, this made me both frustrated and a little mad, because if she had just been willing to hear the whole spiel, we could have avoided this pre show kerfuffle. As her mother, it made my heart tighten up and made me want to cry. No body puts baby in a corner! Sigh. Ultimately, I broke the fourth wall with the audience and started my performance by going over and opening the booth window, introducing her to the audience and telling everyone that she'd be watching the show from there. She was kind of embarrassed but it played really well and baby got to not only watch the show but interact with it. I love her. She is my Tim Gunn. I always know if I'm on the right track if she likes what I'm doing and therefore, I will always want to make her happy, even when it's a pain in my ass.

Here's the screen in the darkened theater right before the video began to play at 8PM sharp. Several people came late. To a live show. After the video had played. They're pictures were taken and I called them out...all in good fun, but seriously people. Live theater. Is not a movie you can walk in on 10 minutes late. And a movie won't call your ass out. I will. It's part of the show. What about the title "Bitchcraft! did you not understand?

Once everyone got settled in, things went very smoothly from there. I had fun with it. I took a few picture sof the audience. Well, only two and you can't really tell what they are. After that I forgot how the camera worked and that was that.

Heidi Popp came on next and read from her journals, basically about all of her failed romances in L.A. Hey, if you live in L.A. then you know all about them. Guys come and go, but the material lasts forever. Go Heidi!

Next up was Monique Edwards, who is a film and television actress but had never appeared as a singer before this night. She has an amazing voice and a great big persona that belongs in this kind of arena. She should be preparing a dinner theater show as we speak and getting booked all over the world. And she should buy a wig just like this one. Seriously. The all over effect was perfection. Sell it sistah!

Then it was time for my last set. During this part of the show, I take topics that the audience has written down before the show and give my opinion on them. Unrehearsed. This is my favorite part of the show. Some of the topics that night were: Orgies, Religion, Global Warming, Spanx Underwear, Girls Who Squirt, President Obama and The Law of Attraction. I chose not to address Spanx but whoever wrote that suggestion gets the last laugh, because I chose not to wear my Spanx that night. It was too hot and I wanted to be comfortable. Seeing the tape and the photos, I see that instead of being uncomfortable I was assy. Live and learn. You can bet I'll be Spanxed up when I play the Apollo!

FInally, I want to share the faux tabloid cover I created for the end of the "She's A Bitch, Now" video. I'm so jazzed at how good it looks, I just wanted it to live here where more people might see it and read it. I love it!

...then why did you wink at me?

Good Lord! It's humbling to find that every freaking idea you've come up with has also been had by multitudes of others. In between screenplays but still feeling the urge to write, I thought "why not succumb to blogging" It's taken me three days to come up with a TITLE for the blog. 3 DAYS!!! Because every single one I wanted is already being used by someone else! That includes the name of my one woman show, my website AND my fledgling LLC. Thus I reached all the way back to my high school years to come up with a title that I could still feel clever and happy about.
Throughout high school I was deeply immersed in Theater or "Drama" as the class was called. And consequently, boy was it filled with drama. We were a very insular group who rarely socialized with anyone outside of the classes. Members of "Band" were occasionally tolerated. Like the cousin who smells like milk that you only see at holidays. At some point during those four glorious, dramatic years we developed an elaborate version of the parlor game MURDER. If you're not familiar, here's how the game works: Everyone chooses a card from a playing deck. The one who pulls the JOKER card is the murderer. The object is to avoid being murdered while trying to figure out who the murderer is. If the murderer winks at you, you're dead. In our version, figuring out who the murderer was became secondary to setting up elaborate murder scenes for the others to happen upon in awe. Many parents wondered where the hell all of the ketchup kept disappearing to!

Anyway...Having said all of that to say...during one particularly fevered game, an overeager player staged their murder based on a perceived wink from another player who was neither the murderer nor apparently winking. And the often used bon mot was born. If you think about it, it can be applied to almost any situation of misunderstanding. And it still always makes me smile!