Just Wrought

An Unexpected Twist

I’m a Markheim.  A sort of angel.  But not the sort with wings and a harp and a halo.

Markheims are the black ops.  We do things other angels can’t... or won’t.  Upstairs pulled me outta retirement for a mission down in this soggy town.  But when it was done I didn’t go back. I had questions.  And the answers weren’t up above. 

Now I’m walking neutral, half-fallen, in what we angels call the Show.  But I gotta watch my back.  ‘Cuz things can always get uglier.

 

Make your reservations here.

Can you believe Sandbox Radio Live! has been broadcasting for a year now?

Neither can we. That’s why we’re calling our upcoming fifth(!) episode “An Unexpected Twist”. The Sandbox Artists Collective will be recording our latest offering before a live audience on Monday, July 23 at 7:30 at Fremont’s newest theatre, West of Lenin.

Entirely new, fresh and locally grown, Sandbox Radio Live! is written, produced and performed by some of Seattle’s hottest stage talent. This latest episode, An Unexpected Twist will include new short plays by Scot Augustson, Emily Conbere, and Elizabeth Heffron, plus Episode 5 of Paul Mullin's noir-angel serial Markheim, plus an original poem by Reggie Jackson, and special musical guests John Engerman and Heather Curtis Mullin.

Members of the Sandbox Artist Collective currently scheduled to appear include: Megan Ahiers, Eric Ray Anderson, Gin Hammond, Tracy Hyland,  Kelly Kitchens, Charles Leggett, Peter O'Connor, Larry Paulsen, Annette Toutonghi, Kathryn Van Meter, Cynthia Whalen and guest Jim Gall.

Original music will be provided by Jose Gonzales and The Sandbox Radio Orchestra: Charles Leggett, Dave Pascal, Dan Tierney and Rob Witmer.

You won’t want to miss this, and you won’t want to wait until the podcast gets posted.

Plus! Before the show and during intermission enjoy our newly added bonus feature from last episode, The Sandbox Bar! Featuring beer, wine, mixed drinks and other refreshments.

Come see it LIVE! on Monday, July 23.

 

 

Who:      The Sandbox Artists Collective

What:     SANDBOX RADIO LIVE!: An Unexpected Twist

Where:   West of Lenin (Located at 203 N. 36th Street, a few blocks west of the Statue of Lenin in the center of the universe,Seattle's Fremont neighborhood.)

When:     Monday, July 23, Sandbox Bar opens at 7:00, house opens at 7:30 with a live music set, show starts at 8:00pm

How much: Donations gratefully accepted at the door. ­Reservations recommended and Available through brownpapertickets.com by clicking here starting Monday, July 2.

Sandbox Radio is conceived, produced and directed by Leslie Law.

Subscribe to the podcast of Sandbox Radio and listen to past episodes at the iTunes store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sandbox-radio-live/id452830642

Is consciousness a spectrum?

One Great Year One–Sandbox Radio Live!

Back in April we staged the fourth episode of Sandbox Radio Live, “The Chase” rounding out a year of producing this unique offering of all local theatre talent.  The podcast of this last show is now available here.

Episode 4, “The Chase”
recorded at West of Lenin on April 16, 2012

 

@1:42    “Stewart and Miriam" by Elizabeth Heffron
@10:52   “Markheim: Episode 4” by Paul Mullin
@25:40   “Why We Run” by Scot Augustson
@29:35   “Ain’t Gonna Chase After You” Charles Leggett
@33:25   “The Back of the 358 #4” by Paul Mullin
@34:50   “Straight With Chaser” by Ki Gottberg
@42:54   “Always Disappearing” by Juliet Pruzan
@56:20   “The Back of the 358 #5” by Paul Mullin
@57:40   “Child of the Second Tier” by Elizabeth Heffron
@1:04:32 “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows”
@1:07:53 “The Back of the 358 #6” by Paul Mullin
@1:09:45 “Squeeze Play” by Vincent Delaney
@1:22:00 “Finale/Credits

 

It was a great evening, as the Sandboxers have really hit their stride generating and performing work intended especially for the pleasures of listening.  For me the standouts of the evening were poems by Scot Augustson and Elizabeth Heffron, “Why we Run” and “Child of the Second Tier”; plus Charles Leggett’s hard blowing “Ain’t Gonna Chase After You” blues, getting its sassy behind kicked by Leslie Law’s second mic vocals.

In July we’ll kick off a whole new year, with Episode 5 “An Unexpected Twist”, be there to share the making of the magic.

And per tradition, below the fold you’ll find the script for Episode Four of Markheim, should you care to follow along as you listen.

(And thanks again to John Ulman for taking such great photos!)

June 7, 2005

For obvious reasons, this is my last re-posting from my “daylog filibuster” seven years ago in anticipation of  the arrival of my second child. 

Happy Birthday, Kiwi!  I can’t think of a seven year stretch I’ve enjoyed more than the one you’ve hosted so far on earth.   I love you SO MUCH!

Tue Jun 07 2005 at 2:55:00 UTC

This is the end.

And I mean it this time. The only way this isn't the end is if the Birthing Center triage calls us tomorrow and tells us that they're too crowded to have Heather in to induce labor. In which case we'll have to wait till Friday, but I really don't think that's going to happen. Thus, I repeat, for emphasis and relish . . .

This is the end.

I've had a lot of fun with this daylog filibuster (in day 17 now, in case you're wondering); but I'm certainly not sorry to see it come to a close. I began it in the earnest excitement of thinking my wife would be giving birth within days, if not hours. I never had any intention of posting this many daylogs in a row, ever. I'm just not that interested in offering that wide a window into my life, nor am I driven to write so much so often (I'm not iceowl for god's sakes); but, as many of you now know, I'm more stubborn than reticent, and so I've stuck to the promise of 500 words a day until my baby came. And that will be tomorrow, the Credophage willing.

I'm not saying I'm not going to node or even daylog here any more. I'm certainly going to tell you all, my friends, how things go. It's just that this day in/day out blather is going to stop. And I know I can't be the only one here grateful for that.

Perhaps I'll take these 500 words a day, which JohnnyGoodYear reminds us that Graham Greene admonished us writers to maintain, and plow them into my playwrighting. I've got a completely hare-brained idea to write short plays specifically for high school-aged actors. I want to call one of them Wallace Stevens: Superhero! If I end up doing it, I promise to post it here for your downvoting pleasure. (If you think poetry gets blasted, try posting a play here.)

Perhaps I spend a little more time trying to get the plays I've already written, done. (Some good news on that end: within the last 24 hours we learned we have a firm commitment from the middle best of the three theatre options we're courting here to produce Slotin.) 

Perhaps I'll spend a little time with the baby formerly known as Fishy. (Ya think?)

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. . .

---

I want to thank each and every one of you that has msg'd support for Heather, Declan, Fishy and me. It's meant a lot, and that's no bullshit. One of the things I treasure most about this place is how genuinely good we are to each other, especially in times of loss, or in my case, the greatest gain. This place will change. It may disappear completely, but what we have meant to each other in certain precious moments will not disappear, because it cannot.

Cheers to you, my friends. I'll blather at you again soon. But between now and then, there's somebody I have to meet.

 

Boiled Frogs

Josh Parks is a fellow veteran from Annex Theatre’s golden years in the early to mid 90’s.  Josh starred in my favorite Annex show of all time, Bessemer’s Spectacles by Glen Berger.  Nowadays it is wisest not to mention the show to anyone involved with it if you don’t want to hear an earful.  Apparently it was a clusterfuck to produce, but produced it was, and beautifully, devastatingly so.  When the house lights came up after the curtain call everyone but me filed out of the theatre. I had to stay where I sat.  Couldn’t get myself zipped back together.  My was heart pulled open and sore and I couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down my face.  Josh also did a few other turns across the Annex stage, including Faith Healer.  A production still is provided below.  Josh stands to the far right alongside the incomparable Susanna Burney, left, and some guy named Paul Giamatti, center.  (Wonder what ever happened to him.)

I can claim zero credit for what Josh says below, beyond cutting and pasting it with permission from his Facebook page, and maybe suggesting the title.  While many of us have sat stuck in these ever warming waters of theatrical ineffectuality, Josh has been living his life, raising his family, working his jobs.  The essay describes his experiences jumping briefly back into our pond. 

Clybourne Park is the first equity house (non Christmas) production I can remember seeing in at least 10 years. Maybe 15. That was a big part of what pushed me from "That play sounds interesting," to actually being willing to shell out $116 for two tickets (more on that later). I was not only interested in what the play had to say, I was very interested in what the experience of an evening of theater had to say. The world has changed so much on so many fronts over the past 10 to 15 years, I felt like I had a unique opportunity to see how theater had evolved over the same period of time, having very few intervening reference points to color my thinking.

You may have an idea where this going.

But before we get there, one of the striking things about the experience was that the most memorable line did not come from the play, it came from the preshow ask, delivered by a board member. I believe he said something like, "As you probably don't know, the price of your ticket only covers about half of the cost of production."

Really? In the 10+ years since I've been to a show has the Rep really done such a poor job of educating its patrons on this issue? Are there any regular Seattle arts patrons who don't know this? I am the opposite of a regular, and I knew it. "For those who may not know…" or something that didn't insult the intelligence of what I imagine to be a big chunk of the audience would have made a surprisingly big difference. To me anyway.

Even more memorable was the impression, having shelled out over $100 for my tickets, that the Rep was trying to make me feel -- even before having seen the show -- like I had received what I should regard as a temporary discount. I found that off-putting. There seemed to be very little appreciation for the fact that we had already given them our money, and a lot of appreciation for the fact that, "little did I know," I had actually come up a little short in their eyes.

OK, so now that I've been made to feel like I'm not doing enough to support the arts (even though every dollar is "meaningful"), on with the show!

The production was serviceable. The playwriting was really not as good as I had hoped, nor was the direction, which seemed to be trying (but failed) to make a lot of the dialogue come across as Aaron Sorkin-esque line-chopping rapid-fire banter. The acting was good enough.

But what's the word to encapsulate the experience, the energy in the room, the aftertaste? "Quaint" seems to be the most persistent answer. As the play unfolded I found myself amazed at how little things had changed since I last saw an Equity house production, and I have been pondering that ever since. When I think about what the world was like in 1998 and where we are now, how so many industries, and governments, and lives have been transformed in that time, the experience of going to the theater seemed to have stood still. The production I saw was certainly no worse than any quality production I could have seen years ago. But much more important (and surprising), it was absolutely not a single bit better. And suddenly it occurred to me, could this be at the heart of theater's "decline" (LORT theaters anyway)?

I was expecting some progress, some innovation, some sign that what the Rep and similar establishments offer does in fact track the change/progress going on in the real world. Certainly the subject matter of the play was "relevant" and "topical" to a degree, and it was connected to a famous play and film in an ostensibly interesting way. But the actual production itself, including the means by which it was staged, struck me as really no different from anything I have ever seen on any stage anywhere. And that surprised me. I was not expecting virtual reality goggles, but I realized as it was happening (or not happening) that I was expecting something. I understand there are limitations on what can change about a play and still have it be a play, but I was stunned to feel like I had stepped out of a time machine.

Thus, my Colonial Williamsburg comment. Was this really creativity? Or was it about recreating a notional idea of theater. Playing the experience out into the future, I can imagine some day that the experience of going to a play at an Equity house could become more and more like attending a concert of Baroque music on the original instruments. Quaint. A bit odd. And -- no offense to anyone who has mastered the sackbut -- just as relevant to the human condition.

I imagine in the days of O'Neill and Williams and Miller and Shaw and Coward and even Neil Simon for God's sake, that theater thrived because it was one of the places people went to see something cool, something current. It wasn't a place where ideas were rehashed -- be they about politics, society, design, lighting, or acting -- it was a place where they were born.

Unfortunately, I find I don't have many answers, just questions. Where is the surprise, the creativity, the unexpected, the brilliance? If there isn’t some in every element of the show, why should anyone bother? I see you and like-minded folks trying that with This Not Just In. I can think of exceptions to a lot of my ranting, but dare I say most of them are from the fringe element in Seattle, where the quality index is a lot more volatile, but it also doesn't cost as much to get in the game. There are people who are trying to create theater they wouldn't have seen 15 years ago, certainly, but the impression I have is that isn't what gets a lot of established theater people out of bed in the morning, and that baffles me. Maybe it shouldn't, but I'm glad it does.

June 5, 2005

This one strikes me with its description of Declan, pre-Keelan. I recognize his still quite similar personality, but to picture him without the inexorable force that his little brother became in his life is a challenge.

Sun Jun 05 2005 at 4:49:49 UTC

The essence of the waiting has transformed now that we know that if the baby doesn't come in the next three days, then on Tuesday-- Friday at the very latest-- we'll go into the hospital and induce labor. Now anticipating Fishy is less like waiting for some indeterminate miracle, and more like anticipating Christmas Morning or the first day of summer vacation.

And it's a good thing-- I don't think I need to tell you-- that the end is now clearly in sight.

Heather's never been one to suffer fools—- i.e. me a good deal of the time—- gladly, but lately she's been touchier than normal, and getting even touchier daily. It's hard feeling like I'm just a walking/talking pain in the ass to her. I know this will change, eventually get better, but it's not likely to do so anytime in the next six months or so, since she plans on breastfeeding and thus taking on the lion's share of the sleep deprivation.

---

I took Declan down to the Seattle Children's Museum this morning. We got there when it first opened, which in my opinion is the best time, since it's not as crowded, and the toys not all "played with". He's been involving other kids in his play more lately, which I'm glad of since I know it's only natural as he gets older. It's an adjustment for me though, since I don't necessarily like other kids, and I'm sometimes gently tempted to throttle them when they act like punks and bullies to my kid. Still, I almost always stand back, and let him deal with it in his own way. His standard m.o. when faced with a bossy playmate is to just sort of stare at him or her stupidly until the other kid gets bored and moves on, leaving behind whatever toy or playground item Declan wanted to play with in the first place. I sort of marvel at this behavior, actually modeling it in my own endeavors with varying degrees of success. I'm nearly 38 years old, and it's only been in the last eight or so of them that I've learned that it's not necessary to engage every confrontation one comes across. Declan is like my unwitting post-graduate thesis advisor in this ongoing education.

---

After lunch, my favorite time of day: nap time. Heather turned to me and asked if I thought there was anything wrong with the baby.

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, maybe there's something wrong and that's why it doesn't want to come out."

"There's nothing wrong. They did all those tests, remember? The baby's fine in there. Just too comfortable, is all."

Then she just started to cry in that horrifying way she does: silently, reluctantly, as if it physically pained her to show such extreme emotion. (I was raised in an environment constantly injected with extreme emotion, like a holding cell regularly blasted with a high-pressure hose, so her reticence always confounds me a bit.)

I consoled her, somewhat, I think. And then we slept a little. Won't be long now.

June 3, 2005

Fri Jun 03 2005 at 17:09:08 UTC

Could this be lucky thirteen? I'm kind of doubting it, as the day is two hours past half done now.

I took the morning off from work. I knew I was gonna do it last night, but it confirmed my decision when Heather told me she basically didn't sleep at all. I know my turn at sleep deprivation is coming soon (though not soon enough it seems) and so I truly feel for her. Of all the challenges of early parenthood, that was always the toughest: that gritty hazy desperation, wondering if you'll ever feel truly rested or awake again.

So having this blissfully free morning, I took my six-years bride to breakfast at a new restaurant in Ballard called the Hi-Life, owned and operated by the same team that's given Seattle the 5 Spot and the Coastal Kitchen, both long time favorites of mine, especially for breakfast and brunch. The new place, while offering no new thrills, didn't disappoint.

After breakfast we went for a walk around Green Lake: three miles at very casual pace. It was luxurious to be able to spend so much time alone with Heather.

---

I gotta tell ya: I'm getting kinda of sick of this. Not just the waiting for my baby to come out, but writing these daylogs, day in and day out. Today at least it seems like little more than an exercise in stubbornness.

Yes, it's true that sticking to my stupid word has forced me to write about things I ordinarily wouldn't, but it's also distracted me from actually doing what I like to do most, and what I flatter myself to think I'm best at: wrighting plays.

---

Had an over-beers meeting with my producing partner to talk about efforts to produce Slotin here in Seattle, as well as a series of original short horror plays by different local playwrights. The meeting was necessary, and ultimately productive, but we were both at the end of wearying days, and grumpy, and had a hard time seeing each other's point of views on things. These quasi-artistic/administrative relationships are like celibate romances: hard to maintain the passion over the long haul. We need to garner some actual success out there in theatre world to finally consummate things and cement the liaison.

---

Impatience is a bad luck force-multiplier. If there's one thing I've learned in my near twenty years as a playwright, it's this. You get impatient: you get dull, reckless, sloppy. You start striking matches just to see things burn, when it's light you want not fire and smoke. Then you find yourself walking through the smoking charred ruins of a great idea, thinking: "Why didn't I just wait till the dawn?"

Waiting for a baby is like that . . . and isn't: since there's nothing you can do to force it . . . until there is.

It would be great if the baby could come this weekend. Heather's mom could come over from Spokane and watch Declan, thus taking the child care worries out of the equation, at least for the short term. But babies have nothing to do with convenience. Babies shatter convenience like so much collected antique glass.

And so we wait . . .

June 2, 2005

This re-posting requires some introduction, since some of it responds to a previous “daylog” written by a guy with the handle “iceowl”.  (Keep in mind, this was text-only, pre-Facebook, semi-anonymous stuff we were producing back then.)  Iceowl had written, among other things, the following.  (It will quickly dawn for those of you that know me that iceowl is even more of a bullshitter than I am.)

Ok, let me tell you something about [Paul]. [Paul] is a big Irish guy the way I am a big Sicilian/Slovak guy. As I suspect I spend more time lifting weights than [Paul], I'm a bit larger in bicep girth than he is, but he has the scar that trumps all visual toughness. Nobody is going to fuck with [Paul] ….

He talks louder when he drinks….

One day he said to me, "Hey, I got this thing..." and it turned out to be some sort of contest and would I help him write a screenplay, by the way we only have eight days and we don't even have page one.

Of course, this is my kind of challenge as [Paul] well divined. So I sequestered myself, all my waking, non-money-making hours, for ten days. [Paul] and I traded the script back and forth, and when it was clear we weren't going to hit the deadline, [Paul] negotiated an extension. He got it for us. We submitted. We did pretty damned well, but we didn't win.  I had taken part in writing a 110 page script in two weeks, and for me, that was consolation prize.

…I met [Paul] in Seattle, then. It's his berg. We ate and drank and went to his favorite bar. We ate his favorite oysters by the pier near the place he works. …

… [Paul] and I drank the drinks of his favorite bartender. We saluted random things and then [Paul] burst into song at one point. He has a very good voice. It couldn't possibly be any other way.

 

Uh-huh.

And here’s what I wrote seven years ago while waiting for my second son to finally decide to come out into the world.

Thu Jun 02 2005 at 2:16:31

ESTRAGON: I can't go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That's what you think.

Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett

Day 12.

Didn't the Wise Men make it all the way to Jesus in this amount of time? That was always my impression anyways.

* * *

Well, let's review some lessons learned from this experience, shall we?

1. A mucus plug lost does not a baby bring.
2. Doyle is a pediatrician, not an OB/GYN.
3. I can blather on about just about anything for 500 words.

There's no news on the baby front. None, zilch, zippo. I'm beginning to feel a bit offended frankly. Does this little fishy know I wanna hold her/him? Can't she/he hear how excited I am to meet him/her? (Leave it to me to be offended by my own unborn child.)

But blather on I shall, if blather on I must.

* * *

What an amazing ego-high to be mentioned in iceowl's last daylog along with his father and his writing. Icey's an amazing guy, and an amazing writer; but as Doyle will attest, he tends to fuzz up on the minor details, or perhaps, more generously, he's writing them as he sees 'em, like an umpire calling a favorite pitcher's slider which just misses an on-the-black strike instead of the ball that it is.

Fact is: I work a way shittier day job than iceowl, and get paid way less to do it. And while I may make money as a writer, it's way less than say a B-level competition ballroom dancer makes doing that.

Fact is: I didn't move to Seattle because it was a better place from which to be a playwright. There is no good place to be a playwright, because to be a playwright is a very foolish thing. I suppose if you had to pick the best place to live to be a playwright, it would be London. I've never been there. And then second best would be New York City. I've lived there twice. I moved to Seattle to raise my kids because every kid in New York City is, to some degree, a wise-assed, dead-eyed punk, and since my kids will have a genetic predisposition toward that kind of attitude anyway, I figured I'd better raise them in an ameliorating "nicey-nice" Lefty sorta setting like here (though between you and me, I generally love New Yorkers and hate Seattleites-- go figure.)

Fact is: I do have a scar on my face— product of a short career as a New York window cleaner— but people still fuck with me all the time. Just this morning I was pushing on the revolving door to my building, absent-mindedly wondering how horrible it would be if I had to watch my wife get a c-section, when the door abruptly stopped . I looked up to see a guy caught in the door cussing at me for not watching what I was doing. For some damned reason I immediately hollered back at him for trying to squeeze into the same quarter section of the door as his fat-assed girlfriend, instead of going one at a time like a homo sapiens. This pair was clearly a casting reject from the Springer show, so I wasn't going to waste a lot of time with them. It's my favorite feature of the revolving door: you go out, I go in. Bye-bye now!

Still it had me anxious and amped for the next half hour. I'd really like to think I'm beyond my car-kicking, street-fighting days. I shamefully recall an episode from a few years ago when I was back in New York. I kicked a car as it nearly ran me over on Queens Boulevard. The asshole stopped about 100 yards down the street, as if to say, "You wanna go?" I whipped my arms in the air to invite the confrontation. "Come on, Motherfucker!" Then I looked down and realized I had my 2 month baby boy strapped to my chest in a snuggly. Not one of my prouder moments.

Fact is: I do get louder when I drink, but I cannot for the life of me ever recall singing to icey. And if I did, then who knows what else transpired? It's all just too disturbing to contemplate.

Fact is: and here's the hell of it: I miss iceowl and I've only met him twice in my life. I want him to come up and give me an excuse to go on another glorious writers' bender.

Whaddya say, icey? I'll sing your song.

Study for Righteousness

I was jotting notes for an upcoming episode of Markheim when it suddenly dawned on me that what I had was damned close to a poem.  So I polished it up a little and sent it off to the amazing Omar Willey, publisher of The Seattle Star.  In his intro to it on Facebook yesterday he called it, “A timely poem … that I've been saving for just the proper occasion.”  An approving nod from Omar is worth more to me than praise from any Caesar, but I’d happily swap “timely” for some magic to dampen the vicious necromancy of all the guns we covet and clutch in this country. 

You can read the poem here at The Seattle Star.

And while you’re there, think about given this amazing new arts outlet some love.  A bookmark, a shoutout on Facebook or Twitter, or even a ten-dollar donation.