Dali and Bucky

We've opened Hysteria last weekend at the Central Square Theatre, in which I play surrealist painter Salvador Dali.

Meanwhile, Tommy opens R. Buckminster Fuller: the History (and Mystery) of the Universe this weekend, in which he plays the title role.

That's a picture of the spiral staircase in the lobby of the new Dali museum in Tampa.

And overhead is a riff on the geodesic dome, the invention of R. Buckminster Fuller.

I'm really excited to see Tommy play this role.

The play is really fascinating and moving and inspiring.  (I've been running lines with him on the couch when I can: It's a 65-page, very dense monologue!)

Tommy saw Hysteria on Saturday, and liked it very much, for the same reasons I like it: it takes gigantic risks in its shifting tones: wildly farcical one second, dark and disturbing the next.

I love the idea that occured to us during rehearsals: that the play is in some ways a Freudian representation of Freud's own mind:

Dr. Yahuda is the Super-Ego (who seems to live in the harsh reality of the present),

Dali is the Id (who resides in the off-kilter world of the English farce Freud just attended, Rookery Nook),

and Jessica a visitor from Jung's garden outside: his Anima, the unconscious - and repressed -  feminine expression, tap tap tapping on his window (she even introduces herself as that, early in the play).

Really having fun performing this play: it's a great group of people, and the audiences seem to be enjoying the show and going along with all the surreal twists and turns.

Tommy's director, Doug Jacobs, who also wrote/assembled the play and is a Buckminster Fuller expert, came to the show as well and sent a very nice email afterwards, which I thought was really interesting, as I had no idea that Buckminster Fuller and Dali actually knew each other. 

But, of course, they did!

Here's part of his email:

"Hysteria had a strong afterlife for me. Much to ponder.

Did you know Dali and Bucky knew each other? As an adult, Allegra (Fuller's daughter) only traveled extensively with Bucky once, going to Greece and then Spain. In one airport, they heard a scream..."Bucky!" It was John Cage running at them with his long legs flying, in Madrid, I think.

Later they had lunch at Dali's home, and Allegra remembers Bucky and Dali talking extensively about the painting I've attached.

This painting was important to my brother and I during the summer of 67, when we worked as waiters in DC, going to the National Gallery on the mall on our days off. This was before I knew anything about Bucky. We'd go into the gallery and stare at the attached painting before moving on to the rest of the collection.
When Dali was alive, he wanted a dome on his museum, and he wanted it flown in by helicopter. He got the dome, but not the helicopter.

When Eleanor Morse died last summer at age 97 (her husband died in 2000), she left behind a request that the new museum bear a geodesic dome — the kind invented by Buckminster Fuller, whom Dalí knew and admired — like the one at Fundació Dalí in Spain. Called the Glass Enigma — the proper name for the architectural feature I keep calling "the blob" — an irreverent take on Bucky's dome. Against the stability of the concrete museum, the globular Enigma stands out as an avant-garde flourish: a dash of mischief layered on top of solid tradition.

"Without being too imitative, it's an example of the two principal ideas of Dalí," Hine says."


This link goes to an article on the Dali museum...

http://tampa.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/hello_dal_/Content?oid=1377787

Freud by Dali

We are almost there!

Two more days of rehearsing and tech before our first preview in front of an audience.

Still a lot of technical things to figure out, but it all seems doable.

Dali spends a lot of stage time sketching Freud.

It's a little intimidating, as I'm not a very good drawer (and certainly not the artist that Dali was!) so I try to keep the sketchbook facing upstage as much as possible as I doodle away.

the pencils also have a tendency to disappear during all the farcical shenanigans, so I need to have some extras lying around on the desk, as back-ups!

Here are the actual Dali sketches of Freud, which I'm trying my best to duplicate.

At one point, Dali says Freud has a head "like a snail".  I can see that here, definitely!

Confluence

I just read Maureen Dowd today, as I couldn't get to it yesterday.

And she was writing about my favorite performer of all time: Patty Smith.

Smith's memoirs, Just Kids, won a National Book Award recently.

I've seen Patty Smith perform twice.

Both times were amazing.

The second time I saw her was at the Paradise, and it was a total accident.

I was actually walking down Comm. Ave, fully intending to see the Nora Theatre's production of Sarah Kane's Crave at BPT.

And I walked past the Paradise, and there's a huge line, and I looked up, and it was for Patty Smith, and I didn't even know she was in town, and I couldn't believe it, and I suddenly knew that I needed to see that concert, even though the sign over my head clearly said it was SOLD OUT.

So I started at the beginning of the line of ticket holders waiting to get in, and walked sheepishly past, staring at them benignly until one guy said: "Hey, you need a ticket?"

And he gave me his extra ticket.  For free. 

It was meant to be.

So, I never got to see Crave, which bums me out, as I LOVE Sarah Kane (not sure if "love" is the right word...)

I would LOVE to see ANY of Kane's plays done here. (I think the Nora is the only professional theatre to tackle her in Boston - or even the region -  until the Gamm Theatre in Providence recently did Psychosis 4.48) 

And if anyone wanted to cast me in one, I would SO be all over that rapey, eye-sucking shit.

I read Cleansed recently and couldn't sleep for 2 days.

Anyway, back to Patty:

The Paradise is already the size of your Nana's attic, so you're going to be close to the performer no matter what. 

But I was somehow right in front of the stage.

And the moment Patty Smith came into the room, you could not take your EYES off of her.

She is the most mesmerizing, generous, magical performer I've ever seen. 

Dowd actually said that she "radiates magic", which is true.

I remember she did a cover of "Sea of Love". 

She also sang "Tomorrow" from the musical "Annie".

I love her quote: "Contradiction is often the clearest way to truth".

She shoots this energy and positivity out of every pore in her body. 

You can actually see it, like a Tesla coil.

And it's strange, because I rarely listen to her recorded music (it's just not the same).

But live, she is unbelievable. 

Rickie Lee Jones is a close second for me.

And I love Laura Nyro in the same way, thanks to Tommy, even though I never got a chance to see her live.

You can tell she is that kind of performer.

And yeah, I love Deborah Harry too.  But that is TOTALLY different and guilty.

But what was really strange is that Dowd quotes, of all people, Salvador Dali in describing Smith.

He apparently said she was a "Gothic crow".

And birds, particularly black ones, are what frighten the character Jessica so much in Hysteria.

"A chick who looks like a crow" is how Sam Shepard describes Cavale - the character based on and performed by Smith from his play Cowboy Mouth.

And Shepard is sometimes called the "American surrealist". 

Which goes back to Dali. 

Who was trying to "drag up the monstrous from the safety of our dreams" and "commit to the canvas".

Which goes back to Freud.

And of course, Smith was famously the roommate of Robert Mapplethorpe, who is ALSO on my mind lately, as his work is part of the Hide/Seek exhibit being vilified by Republicans.

And I wouldn't have seen Patty Smith perform if I hadn't been going to see a show at the Nora,

who is now producing Hysteria,

a play about dreams and Dali,

who called Patty Smith a gothic crow,

written about by Maureen Dowd,

who has intense, Dali-like eyes herself.

So theres' this weird, interconnected thingy going on right now...

Hysteria

We start rehearsals on Monday for Hysteria by Terry Johnson at the Nora Theatre Company.

It's a really excellent, imaginative play revolving around the actual meeting of a dying Sigmund Freud and a then 38-year-old Salvador Dali in Freud's English office in 1938.

Complications ensue between them, a doctor treating Freud for his jaw cancer, and the beautiful daughter of a former patient of Freud's, who shows up unannounced and holding a razor to her throat.

And it's a farce.

Lots of slamming doors and people running around in their underwear.

But it also deals with some very serious themes: sexual abuse. madness. suicide. illusion vs. reality.  regret.

So it's going to be a challenging balancing act.

I'm playing Dali, which is exciting and terrifying at once.