I am done bitching in bars. I am pushing my stakes on the table publicly, here and now, and I encourage my colleagues in theatre to do the same. Our stock-in-trade is dialogue. Let's employ its power to discover the way forward towards a world class theatre in Seattle.
I have said it before: one of the most exciting moments for this playwright is when the posters for a world premiere drop into circulation. Something about it says, “Yup, this is happening all right.” And I really love this one for SOAPFest. (Thanks to Sean Williams of Gigantic Planet for the evocative design.)
I plan on writing more later about why this upcoming festival of short world premiere plays is particularly special for me, but for now, let me simply share SOAPFest’s press release below the fold so you can have all of that important information now.
Remember, SOAPFest is three nights only in a small venue. Tickets are on sale here, now! So . . . you know what to do.
I am cleared for PR take-off by my fearless producer, Leslie Law, and can now confirm that our special Seattle Celebrity guest stars for Sandbox Radio Live! 8 : Fools Rush In, one night only, this coming Monday, are . . .
In the upcoming episode of Markheim, to be recorded live, next Monday, April 29 at West of Lenin as part of Sandbox Radio Live!
MARKHEIM: Is that Didge up there?
STANK: He doesn’t go by “Didge” anymore.
MARKHEIM: That’s some get up he’s got on.
STANK: That’s his superhero gear.
MARKHEIM: And that thing on his face?
STANK: His mask. He made it from his hair.
MARKHEIM: Charming.
DIDGE (over the bullhorn): Many of you knew me by my street name. But I’m wanna tell you today “Didge” is dead. This is someone new. Someone stronger. In the bible the greatest hero was a man with long hair named Samson. He was invincible.
MARKHEIM: Kid needs to read that book a bit more closely. . . .
IOPHIEL: Welcome, friends from Hell. I know it seems a little cramped, but you’re actually inside the globe. Not the globe some call “the Show”, but rather a 3-D neon map of it. It was placed on top of this building as a beacon of truth, because beneath us human beings used to work at finding out the truth and then sharing it by printing it on folded sheets of cheap paper so their fellow human beings could read and know it.
I’m sort of a truth history trivia buff, in case you couldn’t tell.
Sadly, this globe we’re in, well, it’s not really a beacon any more. The truth-tellers that used to work below, are all gone: sacked and scattered. And once again humans will have to struggle to find another way. But that’s not what we’re here about tonight. Tonight, we’re about fighting fire with fire.
Tickets are on sale now for Sandbox Radio Live! Episode 8: “Fools Rush In”. Reserve yours at Brown Paper Ticketshere.
Here’s the link to the latest episode podcast. And in keeping with tradition, I am posting the script below the fold, ‘cuz I know how you just love to follow along, right?
“I heard I had to see Sandbox Radio in the theatre to get the full experience.”
Hey, listen, as a playwright, let me assure you that I hate theatre more than you do, and in ways you have never even thought to think of; but just because Sandbox Radio Live! is recorded at West of Lenin’s intimate but fabulous black box in front of a live audience, that doesn’t make it theatre anymore than Mike Daisey reading from his notes in the Bagely Wright makes what he does a play. (You can delve more deeply into this distinction here.) The podcast of Sandbox Radiois the full experience. The bonus of going to see it live is like getting to watch Chef Tom Douglas cook your dinner at Dahlia Lounge. Witnessing the prep’s a super-cool extra that only a few people are ever going to get to experience.
“Another “old-timey” radio show? Been there, listened to that. Next.”
Uh… you’re high. Give just one of these podcasts a listen and you’ll see how far from Garrison Keillor our Mistress of Ceremonies Leslie Law takes these recordings. The band ain’t folksy, it’s thumpin’! And the dialogue is distinctly R-Rated. You can listen to Sandbox Radio Live! on headphones at work, safe in the knowledge that what you’re doing is secretly and securely NSFW.
It’s Too Late Now
“If I try to plug into Markheim at this point I’ll be totally lost.”
Admittedly, listening to a randomly selected episode of my noir-angel-detective serial is sort of like picking up a comic book mid-volume and trying to figure out what’s going on. In other words… it’s awesome!
Isn’t this a Seattle thing?
“I don’t live in Seattle.”
Congratulations. I wouldn’t wish living here on a roving band of Uruk-hai. Lucky for you, each podcast gives you ~90 minutes of rich Seattle experience while you can still bask in the sun and/or snow and/or hurricane conditions common where you currently live.
Isn’t this a Seattle thing?
“I already live in Seattle.”
Congratulations! Don’t tell anybody else how awesome it is here, please! If you need put-off material, I have a great little geeky LOtR-insider joke about a roving band of Uruk-hai you can use. But here’s the thing, fellow Seattleite: even if you’ve lived here all your life, you don’t know this city like the writers of Sandbox Radio do. We’ve found the places, stories and people that make Seattle—hmm, what’s a kind way of putting this?—“unique”, yeah, that’s it. Witness this delicious morsel of real-life dialogue captured and then re-staged from Seattle’s moveable epicenter of danger-tainment, the 358 metro route to Aurora. (All dialogue guaranteed overheard on the back of the bus.)
GUY ONE: You wanna talk about John Lennon? Shit, that shit wasn’t even meant for him.
GUY TWO: What?
GUY ONE: That bullet. S’posed to be Paul McCartney, yo. That’s who dude wanted to shoot.
GUY TWO: Really. McCartney?
GUY ONE: That’s a fact. And dude will never get out of prison.
GUY TWO: Well, you know, they were all Irish.
GUY ONE: Sure.
GUY TWO: And I always thought that must’ve been weird, growing up Irish in London. Must’ve been hard for them. Where the music came from, you know?
None of these writers are Davids Mamet or Sedaris.
“Sure, I’ve seen some of Sandbox Radio’s actors on Seattle’s Big House stages. But if this ‘Scot Augustson’ is so great, why haven’t I seen anything of his produced at the Rep.”
Uh… you realize that question answers itself, right? A regular and relentlessly versatile contributor to Sandbox Radio, as well as other great companies throughout Seattle and beyond, Scot Augustson is without question one of the best artists currently living and writing for the stage. (At least I think he’s still alive. Homey lives hard up in Rat City.) Scot’s always doing something new for Sandbox, ranging from an original poem, to a hardboiled detective story for forest animals to the new sure-to-be-a-hit Seattle serial, Cousin Katie from Ketchikan. The only reason I don’t consume myself with jealousy for Scot’s talent and accomplishments is that his stuff is far too much fun to watch, or, in the case of Sandbox Radio, listen to. Every time I want to hate him he makes me giggle. Giggling is death to hate. You’d think someone would have put that fact to good use by now.
It’s too hip.
“My tux is at the cleaners.”
This bon mot comes from friend and colleague, Mark Handley, best known for his play Idioglossia, which was later produced as the Jodie Foster film, Nell.
It’s okay, Mark. I just pulled your thong out of my dryer. You can wear that while you listen. We’re casual.
Listen to the most recent episode of Sandbox Radio Live!here.
You’re not crazy. You’re just overdue. There hasn’t been a new episode of Sandbox Radio Live! in over three months!
Relax.
Episode Seven: Eye of the Beholder is on its way, packed with the sort of goodies you’ve grown accustomed to: plays by Elizabeth Heffron and Vincent Delaney, music by Jose Gonzales and the astounding Sandbox Radio Orchestra, my own noir-angel detective series, Markheim(word has it Sam’s due for a drop in), all tied together by Leslie Law’s expert, effervescent direction. Plus you can expect some brand new stuff like a poem by Elizabeth Austen read live by the author, or a brand new comic serial by Scot Augustson set in Seattle. (You’ll want to order your tix quick, since we always sell out.)
But before we get to all that, I need to make up for a deleterious omission. With all the crazyness of the holiday season, plus world premiering my first full-length play in four years, Ballard House Duet, I neglected my self-appointed duty of telling you the things I love about the previous episode of Sandbox Radio Live! - Something Wicked This Way (available for download here.)
Vince never disappoints with his sharp suspenseful writing, but this turn at modern horror would make Rod Sterling go goggle-eyed. All props to the Sandbox Radio sound fx team. Give a listen and tell me they don’t make it sound exactly like an airport. (This brings up a larger fascination for me when listening to these podcasts: how the live audience participates in and fuels the recording. There’s this extraordinary recursively looping sensation as you listen to them listening to you listen to the show in the future.) My favorite character in this one had to be Big Stu. Somehow Eric Ray Anderson manages to add 300 pounds through the sheer suggestive power of his voice.
Not much I want to say about these since I wrote them, except maybe that Kathryn Van Meter utterly nails the drunk chick. Oh, and also, the likelihood that there will be any new pieces in this vein is slim, given how King County Metro’s elimination of the Free Ride Zone has completely flattened the floridly diverse ecosystem that was once the back of the #358.
What do you get when Mexican kitsch culture collides with Austrian Alpine snobbery in a fairytale context? Something you can be pretty sure Scot Augustson conceived. Favorite line (impeccably delivered by the peerless Annette Toutonghi): “Gunter will think I’m a crazy clown gypsy whore.”
Please tell me this trip is almost over. If this woman punches or pukes on me, I’m gonna be highly irked. (Favorite line {which I can say in modesty because I overheard it}: “At least in jail I get three meals a day and someone to love me.”)
I raved about Emily’s first Sandbox Radio outing, “Sound Thieves”here, but who knows? She could’ve fluked her debut success. She didn’t. This piece seals the deal and is quite possibly one of the creepiest short pieces I’ve ever heard.
Again, don’t take my word for it. Go to the podcast and listen. And then get your tickets to our brand new show, available here through Brown Paper Tickets.
Artists love to talk about being “experimental”, and it rightfully drives scientists nuts. We artists obnoxiously brandish that word whenever what we really mean is “avant garde” or “edgy”or “provocative” or “abstruse”. Any actual scientist understands that true experiments have rules and consequences. Experiments are tests of hypotheses hoping to become theories; and theories, in order to prove useful, must be falsifiable. In other words, true experiments by definition contain the possibility of failure. However, all too often in the arts, especially theatre, work gets described as “experimental” that is, in fact, incapable of being “falsified”, because it never had a truthful purpose in the first place. Consequently, the worst kind of “experimental artist” will blame the audience for every failure of meaning or impact.
I promise I will not be doing that this coming Monday evening at the Bathhouse Theater on Green Lake. Instead, with the help of my truly gifted colleagues Susanna Burney, Amy Love, William Salyers and John Q. Smith I will be performing a bona fide artistic experiment by reading aloud my very latest play Philosophical Zombie Killers. I attempt things in this script I have never seen tried before in the theatre, and thus the ominous likelihood looms that some of these things I am trying can, and most likely will, fail.
I am not asking you to come see my greatest latest triumph, which I happen to have dubbed “experimental” cuz it sounds cool. I am asking you to come see my latest experiment, and help me make it better, by watching where it fails, and letting me know.
Here are the details:
The graduate level seminar is about human conscious-ness. Or at least that’s what you thought when you signed up for it. Now someone’s telling you that you’re 45 years old and you’re dying. You certainly didn’t sign up for that. Now this alcoholic professor is asking you to explain consciousness to him. And this depressed ex-cop from Missouri is telling you about the epidemic of decapitations in Seattle. And this weird lady from Omnisoft just wants you to admit that there’s no such thing as consciousness and no such thing as you for that matter. Could she possibly be right? Might make dying easier. Who said you were dying?
Who: Susanna Burney, Amy Love, William Salyers and John Q. Smith
What: Philosophical Zombie Killers by Paul Mullin
Where: The Bathhouse Theater in Green Lake
When: October 15, 2012, 7pm
How: Pay what-you-will, including nothing at all. You’re doing us a favor by giving it a listen.
In this case, it’s from Honour Bayes, on WhatsOnStage.com referencing my essay “The Problem of Horror in Theatre”. Parsing horror, terror and dread for the stage is a challenge that continues to fascinate me. I think we did a pretty excellent job exploring it in last night’s taping of Sandbox Radio Live’s “Something Wicked This Way”, but I still wonder if true horror can be developed and sustained throughout a full-length play.
@2:35 “Markehim: Episode 5" by Paul Mullin @16:58 “A Work of Art” adapted from the story by Anton Chekhov @ 26:00 PSA - Little Bit Theraputic Riding Center by Elizabeth Heffron @ 28:25 “Sound Thieves” by Emily Conbere @ 42:09 “Au Fond Du Temple Saint” by Georges Bizet @ 47:08 PSA - World Arts Access by Scot Augustson @ 50:56 “Rally” a poem by Reginald André Jackson @ 58:21 “Lactar” by Elizabeth Heffron @ 1:12:12 “A Sousa Salsa” arranged by John Engerman @ 1:15:38 “The Bleak End of the Woods” by Scot Augustson @ 1:30:36 Finale/Credits
Every time the podcast of a Sandbox Radio Live! episode drops, I write a little blog about it. And every time I do, I say something like, “This episode is the best one yet.” And every time I say it, I believe it. But I fear that you’ll stop believing me if I keep saying so. So... what’s the solution?
Unsure, I press ahead.
Well, here’s one pretty objective way we get better. Each episode we try to fold a new writer or two into the mix. This time, with our episode “An Unexpected Twist” we presented a new play by relative newcomer-to-Seattle, Emily Conbere, and a poem by long-time local actor Reginald AndréJackson. Speaking as someone who has written for Sandbox Radio since its inception, it’s a little unnerving when a newbie like Emily so masterfully makes her debut. Her “Sound Thieves” leverages all the peculiarities, good and bad, of crafting stories for the fecund darkness of the mind. (I know, because our July show was completely sold-out. So without a single spare seat for a freeloading playwright, I sat under the risers, my view of the stage totally blocked by audience legs. I swear this is the very best way to experience radio theatre: live but blind.) My favorite moment: Annette Toutonghi as Gloria, a mom trying to convince a shopkeeper who illicitly fences stolen sounds, to sell her some zoo noise to cheer up her son.
SHOPKEEPER: Individual zoo animals are twenty-five. A cacophony is fifty.
GLORIA: I only got twenty dollars.
SHOPKEEPER: Prices are prices.
GLORIA: And I’ve… I’ve got my dignity.
SHOPKEEPER: I don’t know what that means.
GLORIA: I’ll give you my … (much huskier voice) dignity.
SHOPKEEPER: Ah! You don’t say!
Other favorite moments include Leslie Law and Heather Curtis Mullin singing “Au Fond Du Temple Saint” by Georges Bizet, Jim Gall as the title role in Elizabeth Heffron’s “Lactar”, and of course, Scot Auguston, gift-wrapping the evening with the final offering, “The Bleak End of the Woods”, a stark noir detective story for forest animals. (See if you can spot my wife’s radio acting debut cameo as Charday the Squirrel’s mom.) As always, I listened with unbridled envy as Scot tossed off comic brilliance as easily as peeling bananas.
CHARDAY THE SQUIRREL: So, who’s missing?
JOE THE POSSOM: Clementine.
CHARDAY: Clementine? Let that old windbag stay missing.
JOE: Charday!
CHARDAY: She’ll turn up like the bad penny she is.
JOE: I went to look for her and she wasn’t home.
CHARDAY: Wasn’t home?
JOE: Was not home.
CHARDAY: That doesn’t make sense. She’s a turtle. She’s always home.
So how do I convince you that while each episode is great in its own right, each one is better than the ones that precede it?
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