Rent

After almost two decades, I finally saw the musical RENT. I'm not sure how I could have missed it after all this time. Even though, like Angels in America, it will always evoke a specific time period time in America (the early 90s, when AIDS was a death sentence and we were all still reeling from Reagan and Bush Sr.), I can see how it spoke to so many people when it first appeared, and how its story (based on La Boheme), still resonates with young people/artists today, and probably always will.



The cast was, of course, professional and talented and excellent (four of my Boston Conservatory students were in the cast, and while I'm clearly biased, I feel like I'm being totally objective right now!)



The energy was absolutely electric, both on stage and in the audience. It seemed a shame that it only ran for five performances. For me, this was an act of catch-up: a chance to finally see something that I managed to avoid for so many years (I also, ironically, couldn't afford the luxury of purchasing a ticket to see RENT when it was all the rage in the 90s, and neither could any of my struggling actor friends, even though our avatars were populating the stage. So this was a musical that, to me, actually spoke to the generation AFTER us, the young offspring of the Baby Boomers, who could ask Mom and Dad to buy them a ticket so they could watch scrappy Generation X do drugs, have sex and succumb to all sorts of plagues, both literal and cultural).

But it still made me quite nostalgic for my youth, as these characters were all my age when this was happening (I graduated college in 1990), and while I was totally focused on something else at the time in the early '90s - in an effort to, literally, pay my rent - I didn't realize that I would see myself and my friends, years later, on stage, in RENT.

I guess my only problem with RENT came at the end of the story, as the character of Mimi, homeless and feverish and dying, is granted a new life and health quite suddenly and, to me, inexplicably. I really just wanted her to die. But I'm a morbid fucker.

It reminded me of something similar that occured at the end of the recent musical version of "Spring Awakening" (another piece that speaks to a current young American generation, even though it's based on a German play by Wedekind from the early 90s - 1890s, that is!) where at the end of all the grim teen-age carnage, the cast suddenly emerges and sings a song about purple rainbows, or something like that. So weird, like Edward Gorey suddenly doing a Wonder Woman spin and changing into Walt Disney!

Paradise Lost

Went to see Paradise Lost at the ART last night. A really compelling production of a not oft-produced Clifford Odets play that feels like it was written yesterday, with the current events of the play matching our own ecomonic turmoil now. Of course, I love anything that Tommy is in, so I'm biased of course! But the rest of the cast is wonderful as well, and I thought the staging, particularly the use of filmic elements, was quite original and inventive. I was also surprised at how the poetry of the piece was, for me, really brought forth by the unconventional, non-naturalistic staging.

Check it out!

http://www.amrep.org/

Cosmic Certainty

We close our Senior Emphasis show, Cosmic Certainty, at BoCo today, after a very short week-long run. I'm very proud of my students: they wrote all the material themselves, and they put their heart and souls into the project.

Here are my program notes, which describe our process a little bit:

"Welcome!

The theatre piece you are about to see did not exist a few months ago.
It was created by the people performing it, and the text, with a few exceptions, was written by the actors. It is brand new!

Isn’t that exciting?

We began working together in September,
talking and collectively dreaming about what kind of an event we would like to make together.
What questions would we try to answer?
How would it be structured?
What person or place or event could anchor us, so as not to fly away in a million directions?
We found a wonderful structure that inspired us all:
The Zodiac
A twelve-tiered, circular structure that encompassed fire, air, earth and water.
We began researching the different zodiac signs, creating a physical vocabulary for each. Characters and scenarios and speeches and ideas and conversation and improvisations began to form.
Within this structure we tried to answer a question:

Do we make our own destiny,
or is our fate written in the stars?

Our anchor emerged slowly from a seemingly mundane location:
A Post Office
where messages are both sent and received
and connections are both made and broken.

A world of paper and plastic and boxes and bubble wrap and letters.

A place in which almost no identity or personality exists, but where great possibilities await.

It takes enormous bravery to create and perform your own work. It also takes exceptional trust and generosity for a group of actors to form such a connected ensemble.

It has been inspiring to work with this talented group of actors.

Enjoy the show!

John Kuntz

SEE Funnyhouse of a Negro at Brandeis!!!!

It seems that some of the best theatre I've ever seen is at schools and Universities. Robert Woodruff's Pheadra and Marcus Stern's production of hamletmachine recently with the ART Institute. Now my good friend David Gammons has directed Adrienne Kennedy's not oft-produced classic "Funnyhouse of a Negro", which I had the good fortune to see today at Brandeis University. It was absolutely stunning! They only have two performances left, so sorry for the late notice, but if you are free, you should really check it out!

Here's all the info!

FUNNYHOUSE OF A NEGRO
By Adrienne Kennedy
Directed by David R. Gammons
Choreography by Susan Dibble
Scenic Design by Carlos Aguilar
Lighting Design by Ben Williams
Costume Design by Lisa Polito
Sound Design by David Wilson
Friday, February 12 at 8:00
Saturday, February 13 at 2:00 & 8:00
Sunday, February 14 at 2:00
http://www.brandeis.edu/arts/btc/0910season/Funnyhouse.html
http://www.davidrgammons.com/

oh blog

full often have you heard my moans, for parting my dear Pyramus and me.
I am the worst blogger in the world. Part of it just doesn't make sense to me, since when I write, I'm usually writing something that will go into a monologue or something. So I feel like I can't really write that in here. I'm just not used to journaling, I suppose. Or diarying. or whatever.
The other thing is time. I haven't written in you since the fall, I know. But that was because I was performing The Caretaker, and rehearsing The Salt Girl, and teaching, and performing The Salt Girl, and rehearsing Midsummer, and preparing for the holidays, and directing The Magic Flute at BoCo, so who had time to blog? But then again, isn't all that what I should be putting in here in the first place? Oh, I don't know. And sometimes I don't want to put too personal an entry, because then people will read it, but isn't that the point? Or is it? I guess I don't understand what you are.
Anyway, I suck.
As a blogger.
There.
I will try better.
I will try to figure out what you are.

Health Care Scare

Hopefully you’ve been following the saga of Health Care Reform lately and the cavalcade of LIES being distributed by the Right: rumors of “death panels” for the elderly (thanks Sarah fucking Palin), health care for illegal immigrants, federal money for abortions, reform = a government “take-over” of health care, Obama is a Nazi, etc, etc.

What is truly amazing to me is the amount of morons who live in this country.
Really.

Unbelievably, according to a recent poll, over 50% of voters believe in these untrue, FOX TV-type lies, being fed to them by sleazy politicians (ie, Republicans) who are basically shills under the employ of the insurance companies who want to keep their monopoly. These same insurance companies make 35 cents for every dollar spent on health care.

Not even a CASINO makes that much money (because it's ILLEGAL).

And the people I see being organized to protest this reform are, ironically, the same people who would benefit the most from it. In a way, I almost hope they get what they deserve. I’m talking about brain dead, gullible, racist IDIOTS carrying assault weapons to town hall meetings and screaming at the top of their lungs about “socialized medicine”, and not understanding that both Social Security and Medicare ARE those things. On woman in a Dartmouth town hall meeting recently proclaimed, with a straight face, that the Obama Health plan was a "Nazi" plan, causing Barney Frank to seriously ask her: "What planet do you send most of your time on?"

All this on the heels of the incredibly insulting and wildly false “birther” movement, which proclaimed that Obama wasn’t born in this country, and is therefore not really the President.

It’s absolutely amazing and disgusting to me.

It is actually hard for me to believe that there are people out there who actually BELIEVE that these fantastical lies are TRUE, that there is such a person as “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelberger or Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh or Michelle Malkin or Bill O’Reilly.

It actually makes my head spin.

What is really frustrating to me is not knowing what to do, and not knowing how to be heard, or how to lend support and how to fight back against these loud-mouthed bullies.

The New York Times recently reported that those in support of Reform and the public option are not as out there and letting their voices be heard as much as these howling, nut-case, gun-toting buffoons.

It is really REALLY important for those who believe in health care and the public option to speak up and let our elected officials know that we care and are listening and understand and are involved in the reform bill and that we SUPPORT the President’s plan.
I will try my best to find out how to do that and leave that info here, but one helpful thing I DO know how to do is to visit www.moveon.org and read up on how to fight back against these lies being spread about health care and our President.

Summer Daze

I think the people that I admire most in theatre are trying their best to make something beautiful and provocative and powerful (though not necessarily all at once). But I'm not a critic, in the sense that I'm biased, even if I don't think I am, or mean to be. I can't help it. Even critics are biased, btw, but the difference is they don't work in the theatre, they comment on what theatre people create. I can't really do that here, nor would I ever want to. It's so subjective anyway. All I would want to do is describe productions that Tommy and I went to, and let other people know about them too. So I guess I'm a Boston theatre booster, of sorts. I just like going to plays. They are, usually, WAY better than a movie (especially now a days: what a bunch of CRAP coming out of Hollywood right now!) And I think a great city needs great theatre, that it MAKES a city great. So I'm more interested in new plays, by Boston writers. By experimental productions that are created here. I'm not so much interested in warmed-over Off-Broadway hits from last year in NYC, though I understand why people would want to see those plays. I guess I want Boston to be Boston, and NYC to be NYC. I never liked the monopoly that NYC seems to have over theatre. If the only stories being told on the stage are from NYC, then where is our voice, where are OUR stories?

I also don't like the idea that only "real" actors live in NYC. It's an old idea. The NYC myth needs to be dismantled, I think. Audiences don't care if an actor comes from NYC anymore. Actually, I think they care more about whether the actor lives with them, in their neighborhood, and is telling a story that they share together. That there is a CONNECTION between this actor and the audience. It's called a COMPANY for a reason, and I am saddened more and more when I feel that this concept is being erased from our theatres. In this era of Twitter, and FaceBook and the internet and blogs (like this one), I think people really yearn and search for something stable and solid. I find it difficult to support a theatre that ignores the talent at its own doorstep, year after year, yet claims to be a part of our community.

I like to support theatres that recognize and hire and nurture local artists and actors and directors and designers. It's the only way Boston will make itself a theatre destination. Otherwise, we are just a repository for New York's sloppy seconds.