New Website!

It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new year: 2014.  And with that, I give you my new personal website!

It's been a labor of love and any of you out there with thoughts about it, do let me know.  Life is fluid, and so is my image.  I'm interested in putting my best foot forward.

On a different note, here are some of the most amazing shows/films I've been watching:

ARROW
Holy moly, this is probably the best adaptation of comic format to screen format (of any size--sorry DC Universe).  Arrow has successfully maneuvered its way around nearly every obstacle that makes adaptations of masked hero stories so corny.  The acting is exceptional, the writing smart and playful, and Stephen Amell's lead performance is wholly inhabited, haunted, and nuanced.  The weaving of the multiple story lines is a thing of beauty and I haven't gotten tired of "the island's" mysteries being teased out way into the second season.  Can we still have flashbacks to the island next season, or even in perpetuity?  Doubt it.  But for now, it's all good.

TRUE DETECTIVE
My sister and I have soft spots for police procedurals so big they could be called soft zones.  The great thing about this one is the assured pace, McConaughey and Harrelson's incredible character work, and the examination of American poverty.  The show's structure plays with time, and both M and H give dual performances, one in the past and one fifteen years later, with the years in between as legible in their eyes as in their hair and makeup (which is pretty great, too).  There's not really an emphasis (yet) on the central murder as much as one on the growth of the detective's relationship over the course of time and how deeply the case's influence ripples through the rest of their lives.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY
I have got to give it up to this show.  Yes gory, yes campy, yes operatic, but also unparalleled weaving of socio-historical horrors within the flashy, season-specific horrors.  AHS:COVEN is about witches but also about race and female agency. AHS:ASYLUM was about a scary mental hospital and serial murder, but also about abuse of power, religious hypocrisy, race, and social oppression.  The first season was about ghosts but also the deterioration of a marriage and school shooting, etc.  The list goes on, it's a show with a very progressive conscience masquerading as pure entertainment.  And who else has the guts to cast so many actors who've been shut out of the mainstream glam?  The commitment to diverse casting on AHS is really unmatched with the exception of GLEE, also same producing team.  What America looks like really gets to be seen here.  Also, Jessica Lange is a goddamn genius.


I wrote little bits on twitter about the following films I had the privilege to see at AFI Fest:

OUR SUNHI
THE SELFISH GIANT
LA JAULA DE ORO
THE STRANGE LITTLE CAT
THE LUNCHBOX

These may or may not be in theaters near you anytime soon, but they were some of the best that world cinema has to offer.

LA Film Festival 2013: 7 DAY GIG

June was a huge month.  Kate's film 7 DAY GIG premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival as part of Project: Involve's shorts program to great acclaim, she won a cash award from the Barbara Boyle Scholarship, and she and I finally broke down and bought an air conditioner.  It was insanely hot for the past week (Ridiculous L.A. Heatwave '13) and our little apartment couldn't take it anymore.

I also got my new headshots up and running and they're working wonders for my call-in rate.  I always dread getting new pictures but I went with Joanna Brooks Photography and they were affordable and the end product is fantastic.  I love her style.  She's also tuned in to artists and performance craft and knows how to get something great out of you: your different looks, your presence in front of the camera, your vibe...I cannot recommend her highly enough.

7 DAY GIG was a tremendous experience for me because I was able to work on 5 different levels to get it made and assist Kate in executing her vision.  I was her assistant, her confidant, a PA, an administrator, a set dresser, and I got to have one of the plum roles of my career: "UPS Man." (Technically, I was "Delivery Man" due to copyright issues.)  I feel very lucky to have been able to give so much of myself to this film, and I'm really proud of the work everyone did on it, top to bottom.




I've also been going out a lot for the spanish-language market commercially.  I am finding my way, given that sometimes you get the copy in advance and sometimes you have to translate on the spot when you arrive at the audition and sometimes there's no copy at all and you have to improv in spanish.  Thanks to David Sajadi I have begun an excellent Spanish course based on his recommendation, and I feel like it's working wonders for my abilities.

Update 2012

Some seriously awesome new-year stuff to report!

In reverse order:

RODRIGO GARCIA WORKSHOP
On Thursday of this week I will be performing in a workshop at CalArts with Rodrigo Garcia, famed director of the Glenn Close vehicle Albert Nobbs.  He is doing a guest artist lecture for the Film Directing Program that includes scene study work with myself (and others) on material he's written. It's an amazing opportunity to work one-on-one with a director I really admire.  I thought Albert Nobbs was an exceptionally smart film filled with fully dimensional performances from everyone in it.  (Glenn Close and Janet McTeer, of course, in contention for Oscars.)

That's not Janet McTeer.

MASTER CLASS
Last week I took an incredibly informative Master Class with commercial casting director Chris Game.  I am still figuring out how to maximize my performance within a frame on film, and I was able to get some exciting tips from him that have already changed my approach for the better.  He was fast, smart, energetic, and gave it to us straight, which I appreciated.  It's always good to hear what life is like on the other side of the table in auditions; he pulled the curtain back on that mystique a lot.

ACTORS KEY
This dovetailed nicely with another commercial workshop I took with Stuart Stone at Actors Key in Burbank.  Super nice, very informative and right on with the re-direct.

THESIS IN FEBRUARY
After the holidays I met with CalArts film director Will Orellana who cast me as the lead in his (untitled) thesis film.  Will is someone who's work I've been watching develop for three years and I'm excited by his vision.  Getting to work with Kate's peers has been invaluable.  Shooting begins in Mid-February, but a lot of background research on my part has begun already.

WEB PRESENCE
Before that I created a personal YouTube Channel where I can consolidate clips of my work that have been floating the internet.  You can check it out at the link above; it includes Jon Hoche's Rehearsal Journals for the Vampire Cowboys shows we did together, some class projects Kate did with me for Film School as well as drafts of my acting reel.

HONEY BADGER COMMERCIAL
Also on the YouTube Channel is the commercial I did with director Harold Hyde for internet voiceover sensation Randall and his new Honey Badger App for the iPhone.  "Randall" is the genius comic entrepreneur who's made serious dividends from his viral video and the tag line, "Honey Badger don't give a shit."  An absolute blast to shoot and the app itself is a lot of fun, too.



The biggest news for last:

In January, right at the top of the new year, I shot my first national commercial!

That's actually all I can say about it until it airs, but it's been one of the best, most agonizing secrets to keep.  I can now join SAG and start setting the world on fire like a pro.  I will be a made man.

Acting Reel 2

New clips came in!  Here's some of what I've been up to last year in the West.

Acting Reel

Here is some footage from film and TV work I did back in New York.  Clips from my tenure in L.A. will be added as soon as I get my hands on it!  

AGENT G First Reviews

Jon and I at it again.
Photo: Jim Baldassare

Theatermania
The play's tone shifts after the battle, when its hero, Hung Tran (a robust and expertly calibrated turn from Paco Tolson) brings The Playwright (played with wryness and a certain sweet nerdiness by William Jackson Harper) to the stage. Hung, an incarnation of Nguyen's cousin, a Vietnamese refugee who survived a horrific journey in the China Sea, demands that Playwright tell his story truthfully, announcing "You're here to help turn this story out correct, playwright."  


I have to give mad props to Andy Propst from Theatermania, the guy has shown me so much critical love in NYC, and I am lucky to have someone so thoughtful in my corner.  


That Sounds Cool
After seeing Agent G, I'm not just a believer again, I'm a thoroughly obsessed fan: Nguyen's latest is not just a tale of Vietnam, filtered through war movies, noir drama, and spy flicks, but the tale of an artist daring to find his voice without compromising his aesthetic. 


Hello, Aaron Riccio.  Aaron reviews everything under the sun and is always on point.  


nytheatre.com
The ensemble of five is superlative. Paco Tolson and Bonnie Sherman are spectacular as, respectively, Hung and three different (and very important) white women; Harper is funny and then moving as the beleaguered Playwright; Amy Kim Waschke breathes life into numerous stereotypes as, among others, a Vietnamese boy and a young Vietnamese woman who works as the housekeeper at a whorehouse. Stealing the show constantly is Jon Hoche, who plays seemingly a zillion different antagonists to Hung and/or The Playwright...


Martin Denton.  A living legend who works tirelessly to legitimaize the work we all do downtown.  Thanks as always, man.


ComicCritique.com

The ensemble matches this litter of intentions each with their own shuffled deck of attitudes and identities, particularly Bonnie Sherman and Amy Kim Waschke, who incarnate an extraordinary library of pop poses and genuine emotional textures, while tenacious comedians Paco Tolson and Jon Hoche screw their incalculable chops to the shticking place.

William Jackson Harper is nervously, exasperatedly masterful as the conflicted-nebbish Playwright who invokes Woody Allen’s and Kevin Smith’s self-referential models to hide behind, but in the last scene there’s nowhere to hide. 

Thanks, Adam McGovern!

Also check out friend of the company Jenn Kim's interview with Qui and I at Pink Ray Gun here.  She came to the show on her birthday.  Amazing.

Provocation and Racial Humor

 Theatre, in the main, deals with provocation.  It uses bodies and words to express thoughts and feelings very immediately.  Because it is dramatic it often deals with controversy and the underbelly of human relationships.  Therefore, to participate in watching it is an act of bravery and courage.  It is not easy to spend time in the underbelly, but that is where we learn the most about ourselves; from the areas we ignore for comfort's sake. 


People always say edgy racial humor has to be looked at from the perspective of the people behind it: what was their intention?  Is the joke coming from a place of love, hate, ignorance, thoughtlessness or keen attention?  Are they using comedy to shine a light or for an easy laugh?  I think Chris Rock is a genius comedian and he is clearly as smart as they come, but the jokes themselves could wound an audience in the wrong hands.

It's not always possible to know the intention of the artist.   So what then?  If you're watching something funny but think it might be offensive, or you think something is racist but is supposed to be funny...how can you tell whether or not the artist can get away with it?

What are the signals that let you know can trust the artist enough to allow them to transgress politeness and safety with you?

I don't know, actually.  Probably that the work is somehow a reflection of the artist as a person.  That's the big one.  Every race has an iteration of "I know, right?" comedy that skewers the culture they grew up in.

Another indicator is the emotional subtext.  Are the jokes mean-spirited?  Are the laughs cheap because they are based solely on an accent or underlining what makes X or Y different?  Is it mocking or well-articulated?  Is it a roast or a rant?

With a play, for example, is the joke delivery method being used this way for a reason? A lot of good clowning and comedy is based on creating goofy characters who speak funny, but are the jokes in the service of something more?

There really is no accounting for the feelings of all people, but most racism in comedy is cheap.  Usually you can tell whether the intentions of the creators are enlightened or not. 

Qui Nguyen's play The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G deals with race.  A lot.  It also deals with sex, class, war, and responsibility.  It deals with reconciling who you are with the American dream.  It deals with the collision between your own life and the life you give to your art.  It is hilariously irreverent and will likely ruffle a lot of feathers.  I know the artists and I know their intentions.  Come check it out for yourself.

More Assorted Research

Subterranea is trying to get off the ground and here's some funny things that have crossed the ol' path over the course of some research.

Internet Research

The fastest way for an actor like me to get immediate dramaturgical immersion in the crazy ass world of a play like Agent G is to hit up Wikipedia and Youtube.  Here is some preliminary research I've culled from The Cloud.

WIKIPEDIA
The Vietnam War
This page is historical background and major events.

Boat People
This one has a wealth of "External links" to follow up on the Vietnamese immigration experience (some of them first hand accounts).

Viet Cong
The villains of Agent G.

South Vietnam
Basically background on the South before the Fall of Saigon, which effectively ended the war and led to the reunification of North and South.

YOUTUBE
Choson Ninja
This is a Korean "ninja technique" tutorial channel with some very strange but interesting moves.  The earlier videos are interesting to me.

"California Gurls" Katy Perry(feat. Snoop Dogg)
They wouldn't let me embed this video, but you can watch it here.  Then again, you probably know the song already.


viewer discretion advised

The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G: First Bite

art by Jeremy Arambulo whose stuff is consistently amazing

So this is the poster for Vampire Cowboys' next show (lovingly amended to "Agent G")  the First Bite workshop of which will be next week at the Battle Ranch at 8pm Monday and Tuesday.  The website has all the details.

It's been a long time in table/reading development and we're hard at work trying to give it a stage life now.  We'll probably be presenting only the first act, but already there's film noir, sci-fi, Miss Saigon, James Bond, Pirandello, Katy Perry and horribly funny plays within the play.  Oh, and some amazing fights that take place basically in a box.  No shortage of edgy, fun theatre candy here.

The action sequences are really good so far and I thought I would preview the process a little by offering my notes on what is historically known as "The Beer Fight."  

SECTION ONE

1. Ninja Running w/ looks and katas

2. Two sword dodges (Amy)

3. Nunchuck dodge into left crescent (Jon)

4. Right roundhouse (Amy)

5. Paper block/hand block/paper strike (Bonnie)

6. Nunchuck dodge/paper parry/nunchuck dodge/paper tap (Jon)

SECTION TWO

1. Right sword kick parry into left crescent (Amy and Jon)

2. Simultaneous knife disarm and paper strike (Bonnie)

3. Sword block, twisty move, spin paper strike (Amy)

4. Take nunchuck hit into running (Jon)

SECTION THREE

1. Triple paper/knife attack (Bonnie, Amy, Jon)

2. Hand grab into double hand neck chop (Bonnie)

3. Backward dodge (Jon and Amy)

4. Head/hair slam (Bonnie)

5. Outside shoulder tap, inside fist (Amy and Jon)

6. Take stomach hit into running (All)

SECTION FOUR

1. Running sequence right then left

2. Pop up into right cross (Bonnie)

3. Catch return punch, fist crunch, domino kick 

4. Take superman punch to the ground

5. Neck grab, human shield left then right

6. Right kick and toss away

7. Nunchuck dodge left and right, disarm, right nuts kick

8. Over the shoulder reset

9. Nunchuck strike right (reset under), strike left (reset under), strike left with nunchuck pop out

10. Flourish!

By this time I will be a complete mess, but the show must go on.  We'll all be addicted to five-hour energy shots by the end of this week.  That's three weapons, unarmed combat and a shitload of running.

Feel free to print this out and bring it with you if you would like to follow along ;)

SUBTERRANEA

Ensemble Studio Theatre's Octoberfest reading series is under way, and Subterranea was performed twice last week to great success.  I would have posted about it here, but Jon and I literally were staying up all night making changes and revising based on what we learned in the rehearsal room.  Octoberfest is a pretty amazing event with about a million shows going day and night.  We were nestled in between some of the most exciting playwrights out there now, all of us giving our shows another baby step forward in development.  It felt like the big leagues.

The team was as follows:

Nick: Paco Tolson
Dick: Jon Hoche
Ensemble: Erica Swindell, Julia Crockett, and Amy Waschke

Director/Stage Directions: Robert Ross Parker

These actors gave so much, and rolled with our punches every time we met.  Trying this, trying that, getting out of the comfort zone, dealing with cuts, trying out dialects...it was amazing to watch them tackle all of that and we were honored to have them aboard.

We are also proud to announce that the machinery of production is revving up, and we are actively meeting producers to get this thing off the ground.  It's an extremely exciting time.  Thanks to Graeme Gillis, Annie Trizna, Tim Scales, Kate our stage manager, and Heidi Handelsman for their staff support at EST.

American Theater magazine article

Here is a link to the article in American Theater on Qui Nguyen, co-artistic director of Vampire Cowboys, in which I am quoted.  It's by Michael Criscuolo.  When he approached me to submit my two cents on working with Qui he warned that what I wrote may be used in part or not at all.  I wrote about three pages to make ensure some pithy nugget made it past the editors, and voila!

The article in full is reposted below if you just hate following links or can't wait to get to it.

If this were the beginning of a Qui Nguyen play, it would probably start with a high school dweeb accidentally opening a gateway to Hell. Or a ninja-style throwdown between two Manhattan street toughs and a Brooklyn gang lord. There would be a gleeful torrent of elaborate fight scenes, machine-gun barrages of snappy banter and enough profanity to make David Mamet blush.

Now, if this sounds more like a movie or a comic book than a play, don't worry: that's the idea. For most of the past decade, Nguyen has been on a self-appointed mission to make theatre safe for dorks. As the resident playwright for New York City's Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company(where he is also co-artistic director), he has written an onslaught of irreverent, action-packed geekfests designed to (a) show the hipster and fanboy crowds that theatre can be cool and fun, and (b) make several genres that have long been associated with other media—science fiction, horror, martial arts—palatable for theatrical consumption.

Since 2007, all of Nguyen's plays for Vampire Cowboys—which include the horror movie-inspired Alice in Slasherland, the blaxpoitation samurai mash-up Soul Samurai and Fight Girl Battle World, his love letter to sci-fi—have sold out their runs, primarily on strong word of mouth. Nguyen's rapidly growing fan base, built from both the indie theatre and Comic-Concrowds, anticipates his plays with the kind of giddy enthusiasm usually reserved for the latest Harry Potter movie. The crowd at one of Nguyen's shows can be a show unto itself—waves of raucous laughter crash through the theatre while loud cheers and gasps of awe and terror converge like Voltron. It's like watching Independence Day and a Dane Cook concert simultaneously.

Critics and peers are also starting to get with the program. Soul Samurai nabbed a GLAAD Media Award nomination, and Fight Girl scored a New York Innovative Theatre Award nomination for outstanding full-length script. In 2006, Vampire Cowboys landed the NYIT Foundation's Caffe Cino Fellowship Award, a cash prize "for consistent production of outstanding work." And this past spring, the company was awarded a prestigious Obie grant.

This season, Nguyen kicks things up another notch with two projects that promise to take him where he hasn't gone before. Beginning Mar. 31, Vampire Cowboys premieres his newest play,The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G., at New York's Incubator Arts Project. The semi-autobiographical tale—which aims to turn the lesser-known genre of Asian identity plays on its ear—features Nguyen himself as a lead character, struggling to write a meaningful drama about his cousin's true life journey to America, and constantly getting razzed by the other characters for putting himself in his own play.

Then, Nguyen takes his act to the West Coast with Krunk Fu Battle Battle, a new hip-hop musical commissioned by Los Angeles's East West Players that runs May 12-June 26. The project, about a kung fu teen who battles a shogun and his henchmen, marks Nguyen's musical theatre debut and the first time in recent memory he'll be premiering a new work without his longtime Vampire Cowboys collaborators by his side.

Nguyen at left (photo by Nathan Lemoine); right, Paco Tolson, Temar Underwood and Melissa Paladino in Fight Girl Battle World, by Vampire Comboys, 2008 (photo by Theresa Squire)

Despite the exuberant absurdity of making a snarky teddy bear a major character in Alice in Slasherland (achieved with animatronics) and of Soul Samurai's bloodthirsty title character greeting the audience with a casual "Moshi moshi, muthafuckahs," Nguyen is no gag writer. "I don't set out to write comedies," he says, explaining that his initial goal is "usually to make the audience cheer." Taking his cue from action/adventure genres, Nguyen says he's "more interested in writing something that's high-adrenaline—it's about that kind of thrill that you get." That thrill fuels his never-ending desire to attempt the seemingly impossible on stage, like disemboweling a demon (which he did in Alice in Slasherland) or staging an outer-space dogfight (a highlight from Fight Girl, done with hand-held mock-ups and puppeteers).

Still, he realizes "there's going to be something inherently funny" about seeing such moments performed live on stage, and confesses that he relishes making "people's heads explode with laughter." Nguyen is quick to point out that his plays are never meant to be campy: "When we're doing a samurai play, we're legitimately trying to do a samurai play"—but he admits his plays are intended to simultaneously celebrate and send up whatever genre he's tackling. Case in point: The scene in which a sword-wielding Ophelia (yes, Shakespeare's Ophelia) singlehandedly takes on an army of ninja zombies in Living Dead in Denmark, Nguyen's tongue-in-cheek zombie sequel to Hamlet, hilariously (and intentionally) evokes both Kill Bill and Charlie's Angels while blazing its own iconic trail.

Given his proclivity for rapid-fire, profanity-laced repartee, strong-but-sexy female protagonists and a preference for creating new genre archetypes, it's not surprising that Nguyen's idols are screenwriters Joss Whedon and Kevin Smith and comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan. Though he's a playwright of color, he insists he has no political or racial axe to grind. But, as his colleagues insist, that doesn't mean there's not more going on underneath the surface of his blood-splattering antics.

Vampire Cowboys co-artistic director Robert Ross Parker, who directs all of Nguyen's plays for the company, thinks his creative partner's humor "comes from approaching style and genre very seriously." Actor Paco Tolson, a Vampire Cowboys regular, marvels at the "giddy disregard for limitation in Qui's work. There are no taboos. Race, sex and politics are all fair game to him." (Italics and embolding mine, of course. -PT)  Carlo Alban, who played lead roles in both Denmark and Slasherland, calls Nguyen "a quiet revolutionary, a subversive, a ninja." And Maureen Sebastian, who portrayed the title role in Soul Samurai, praises Nguyen for stretching "the boundaries of what a script can do," and, in turn, "what American theatre can do."

Nguyen's distinctive style came about, in part, in reaction to his grad school instructors' insistence that visual, action-based stories were more appropriate for film than theatre. "It was about talking, talking, talking, but never showing," he recalls. "Do you think Shakespeare thought about that? In Romeo and Juliet, they shouldn't have a sword fight because we're a talking medium?" Nguyen rebelled against such conventional notions and began churning out a body of work that comes off like a collection of rowdy mash notes to pop culture.

The love affair began in his hometown El Dorado, Ark., where his Vietnamese parents reared him on kung fu movies because they wanted him to see stories where the heroes were Asian. Furthermore, they boldly taught him that most of the world was Asian and looked like him, so he wouldn't feel out of place in ethnically barren Arkansas. It was a calculated exaggeration that gave Nguyen, in his words, "great self-esteem" and a trove of inspiration.

Nguyen's heritage provides the source material for The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G., in which the author insists he will not be playing himself. ("I'm no actor" he says; the role of "Qui" will be played by a professional.) In the script, however, as Nguyen the character gets bogged down by uncertainty, Nguyen the writer increasingly explodes both style and form, playing with a revolving door of genres. "When people meet me and find out I write plays, they assume a lot of times that I write serious Asian drama," he says, eager to crack viewer expectations wide open with a well-placed theatrical roundhouse kick.

With Krunk Fu Battle Battle (which features a score by Beau Sia and Marc Macalintal), Nguyen takes the plunge into musical book-writing, a job for which East West's artistic director Tim Dang thinks the playwright is well suited. "Qui's writing is 'now,' it's 'today,'" Dang says. "It ventures out into hip-hop, poetry, anime, but it can still be accessible to a diverse audience." Those qualities led Dang to commission Nguyen, whose career he'd been following for several years, to pen the family-friendly tuner. For Nguyen, it's a happy return to the aesthetic territory of Soul Samurai. "My favorite things in the world are early '80s hip-hop, comic books and samurai stories," he says, excited about the opportunity to once again write something that incorporates all three.

No matter what genre he's working in, Nguyen's goal remains the same: "to show that theatre is just as cool as waiting in line to see the latest movie blockbuster."

Michael Criscuolo is a New York-based actor and writer. He is currently starring in the premiere of Tim Errickson's play, Endless Summer Nights, for Boomerang Theatre Company.

Lonely Leela

Dear friend Rehana Mirza's multimedia play Lonely Leela is getting a showcase through New Georges next week and we had our first rehearsal today.  It's an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland/Alice Through the Looking Glass and it's mostly set within the fantastical world of the internet wherein the inhabitants are all puppets designed by Spica Webb.  Today was mostly getting to know what you can do with her puppets and how to best facilitate a wide range of expression.  There are finger puppets, hand puppets, sock puppets and rod puppets, each with different demands on the actor.  They mainly have gigantic eyes and hilarious tufts of hair.  The script is wild and deals with a ton of unexpected actions from the characters and I kid you not, every spare moment I had I was trying to get one of them to look like they were riding a segway as called for in the text.

I think challenge-based productions are a ton of fun and necessitate new ideas, bringing out the best creativity juices.  Very excited.

New York Innovative Theater Award Nomination

I am happy to finally be able to report here that the NYIT Awards, which are the TONYS of the Off-Off Broadway world, have nominated me for Best Actor in a Featured Role for my work in Temar Underwood's play The Brokenhearteds.  It's an honor and a great encouragement for Temar's fledgling company I Mean! Productions.  You've got to hear him say the company name out loud.  It's hilarious. 

Here's an official announcement with myself sharing the headline with Susan Louise O'Connor and Harris Yulin (!!!) on Theatermania.

This is my third IT Award nomination after being up for Featured Actor in Vampire Cowboys' Fight Girl Battle World and, along with the cast, winning Best Ensemble for that one, too.

I'm thrilled and excited for everyone who is included here and for the recognition of this level of theater-making that the awards provide.

Rescue Me, The New York Times Review

When The New York Times mentions your name in print, it is therefore incumbent upon you to then put it on your blog.  Here is the quote:

Between fourth-wall-breaking jokes, the game cast, including the clever Off Off veteran Paco Tolson (“Goodbye Cruel World”), brings to life plot summaries and meta-analysis of Greek tragedy. The director, Loy Arcenas, fills the space quite nicely; attractive video clips of family trees explaining the House of Atreus and jokey TV show snippets complement the story of Iphigenia (Jennifer Ikeda), who is sacrificed to appease Artemis (David Greenspan, wearing pressed pants and a devilish smile).

I am very proud of our show and everyone in it, and all of our hard work really is doing something.
For more information on who's who working on the show or to buy tickets please visit the revamped Ma-Yi Theater website.

I also got a nice bit in nytheatre.com's review.  You can read the whole thing here.  Below is the quote.

The ensemble is excellent. Jennifer Ikeda makes Iph a quivering bundle of opposites: vulnerable yet tough, wry yet sentimental, wise yet naive. Julian Barnett brings quiet despair to the role of Orestes. As choreographer, Barnett has created a range of poignant and joyful dances. David Greenspan is a dryly imperious Artemis/Athena. He plays these female roles without drag, wearing a shiny black suit, evoking an MC for a celestial cabaret set on Mount Olympus. Oni Monifa Renee Brown and Katherine Partington move eloquently as the dancing priestesses, while Leon Ingulsrud winkingly evokes Elvis in his role of King Thoas. Ryan King makes a sympathetic Pylades, Orestes's best friend. Paco Tolson nearly steals the show with his rapidfire switches between personas and accents as a lackey, CNN anchor, a host of witnesses being interviewed on TV, and a herdsman complete with a puppet sheep.

Rescue Me (a postmodern classic with snacks) by Michi Barall

(David Greenspan as Artemis and Jennifer Ikeda as Iphigenia, photo Brain Barenio)

Michi's show is a real triumph.

It's smartly written, it's been beautifully designed and directed, the actors and dancers are terrific.  I watch the work everyone has put in over these last arduous weeks translating into happy audiences night after night. I feel thankful to be in the company of such professional storytellers, exploring, learning with them.

There are funny moments, touching moments, dramatic exciting moments, heady philosphical moments, and they all add up to an evening of theatre that takes you somewhere.  Yes, it is post-modern.  It's in the title.  By dispensing with traditional narrative techniques, Michi actually gives a modern audience a chance to experience an ancient play without the usual stuffiness and attendant boredom.  The melange of styles and formats match the tones and themes of the individual scenes, again amounting, ultimately, to a richer experience.

Check out these two raves:

CurtainUp
"Hungry for a Greek play that doesn't taste like ancient leftovers? Then try Michi Barall's Rescue Me (A Postmodern Classic with Snacks) at the Ohio Theatre. Barall deconstructs Euripides'sIphigenia in Tauris and reworks it into a contemporary story with popular hit music and modern dance. Under the auspices of the Ma-Yi Theater Company and directed by Loy Arcenas, it retains the flavor of fifth-century Athens but uses our present-day cultural idiom to enhance the classic."


TheaterMania
"This winningly irreverent and loose adaptation ofIphigenia in Tauris is like seeing Euripides' tale through a funhouse mirror, a humorous, captivating novelty rather than a recognizable reflection of the original. Although its mix of anachronistic appropriation and meta-theater isn't groundbreaking -- in fact, it's arguably already a cliché of downtown theater -- the combination proves giddy and infectious. Better still, under Loy Arcenas' inventive direction, the production engages both those familiar with the source material as well as the uninitiated."

Tech Rehearsal

Rescue Me has been a very fluid process with many things being found, discarded, and reconfigured often.  Now that we have spent two days teching in the Ohio Theater downtown, a lot of what we had envisioned in the rehearsal room is inevitably (and predictably) taking new shape on the actual stage.  The days are long and there is a lot of artistic negotiation, but the upside is that we are starting to lock things down and get bits of business and blocking down to a science.

One of the things I like the most is, yes the designers can't really work until they can be in the theatre, but it gives you such a rush of enthusiasm to get all of the costumes, set, and goodies at once, and then off you go with all of the imaginary things made real.  Having the tactile experience of the technical elements in concert launches you into the run with great energy...  It's by necessity that tech comes last, but emotionally it feels by design; after all the austerity and privation of rehearsal, you are rewarded with a surfeit of technical riches just before you do it for a paying audience.

Of course, this is also a scary ass time because you've got to make all the technical stuff work and everything is new and the audience is paying to see you in TWO DAYS.  In my experience it takes a full day to get through Act I and then another day to get through Act II, on the third day you get a dress rehearsal in the afternoon and then your first preview that night.

Somehow I'm always in shows with a hundred ensemble characters and the tech can be a nightmare changing in and out of every costume in time for the next scene, but we've been pretty fortunate so far with this one.  There's one big hairy moment we'll have to look at during the dress, but I'm sure it'll work out.  It's all about teamwork and we have a really great team.

The Lady Drug Dealer And The Heist

Today Temar and I hosted the first I MEAN...Productions table reading at our apartment.  His new play, The Lady Drug Dealer and the Heist, is an amazing riff on the unreliable storyteller and laugh-out-loud funny for nearly all of its hour-plus running time.   I remember being backstage during the run of The Brokenhearteds and hearing him talk about some of the ideas he had for his next project and him saying, "It's going to be a play about drugs.  I think it'll be called Doing Drugs.  Everyone is going to do a ton of drugs.  The marketing will be: 'This summer, Paco Tolson is...Doing Drugs.' 'Andrea Marie Smith is... Doing Drugs.' Et cetera..."  That's how I remember it, anyway.

Well, those dreams from last summer are now on 86 pages of paper and a lot of those pages are characters snorting, smoking and drinking.  We do a ton of drugs.  It's also about friendship, loyalty, and finding out who you are and what you care about.  And race.  And Astoria.  And ghosts.


There was no fanfare, it was really just for him to hear it out loud, but it was a riot and the start of something very promising.  When it was over though, he kicked everyone out.  In a gentle way.

Since I always like to see who played what in the production history pages of published plays, below were the actors and their roles.



Gray: Temar Underwood
Jimmy: Paco Tolson
Reggie: Mike Mihm
Benjie: Jon Hoche
Miz: Andrea Marie Smith
Odessa Powers: Maha McCain
Hunter/Morrison: Ian Campbell Dunn
Stage Directions: Paco Tolson, with help when his mouth was full of chips.

Refine, Clarify, make Specific

For me, the work in rehearsals lately has dealt with puppetry and dance.  I am a very spastic person, so getting technical and minute is hard for me but it's exactly what the work demands.  It's almost like counting out your stage life and dialogue to a beat:

1. Crouch           "Daughter

2. Look side        Of

3. Creep              Agammemnon,

4. Swing arm      And

5. Make wave     Bright gem

6. Shake head     of Clytemnestra...."

This is very exciting and will ultimately be very rewarding, but right now it is kicking my ASS.  I suppose it's really no different than typical stage blocking, but with that you're just, "Cross left and pick up the cup on 'This cup?'" and not elaborate, sharply defined modern dance-y moves that punctuate each line.  Maybe I'm just struggling with dancing, something I have never been a genius at even when it was easy things like waltzes in musicals when I was in High School.  

It's actually been really enlightening to work with a puppet because you really start to see where things don't work and why.  Usually, it's because you're not thinking of the puppet as your scene partner but as something separate from yourself.  A character of mine interacts with a puppet played by me, so if the storytelling of our relationship is told in a succession of looks back and forth, those looks better be damn clear.  

Here's an example:

A character asks me, "Is it yes or no?"

I'm looking at this other character.

The hand puppet looks at me.

I look at him

He shakes his head "No" 

I look out to the character and say, "Well...no..." 

The puppet cocks his head sideways.

So if you look at the wrong time or miss one altogether, the beat is mush and you lose the thread of what's going on in between the lines.  Repetition, I think, is the only thing that can get someone as spastic as me to get over the herky-jerky, split personality nature of this kind of performance into a relaxed, settled in, comfortable state where the puppet and I are actually flowing together.

Broadway World Profile

For many years I have seen shows I've done written up in press releases and articles on Broadwayworld.com, but they never created a profile on me with a hyperlink to other credits or photos like so many of my friends who were in the shows with me.  This was very frustrating.  I knew there was stuff on me there but they never got around to making me legit . . . until now.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you my name underlined in red!

Also available for your perusal is the press release for the premiere of Michi Barall's play Rescue Me (A Postmodern Classic with Snacks) that will be Off-Broadway in March, produced by the inimitable Ma-Yi Theater Company.  Tickets available now.















Dance Theater, people.  Dance Theater!