Steven Tyler, Eat Your Heart Out

So here I am, back in DC and sick as a dog. All that bragging about not getting the flu for the last 4 or 5 years has triggered the inevitable karmic reaction. This in spite of copious "knock on wood"s. The question is whether I got it yesterday in DC, Sunday on the plane, or earlier in Canada. I suspect the last, since the children's chorus - while cute as hell - turned Evita rehearsals into a de facto daycare setting at times. As a result, I have become an inadvertent Patient Zero, facilitated by globalization's interconnectedness as I spread headaches and high temperatures cross-country in my wake. The worst part is, I have to leave at 9 AM tomorrow for Philadelphia where I begin rehearsals for a new show on Thursday.
I am not packed.
So what do I decide to do?
I decide it's time to bring the blog up to speed.

Evita turned out to be a smashing success. I largely mean that in relative terms - it was a classy production for Sault Ste. Marie. But I think we achieved some real quality in absolute terms as well. People were genuinely blown away by parts of it, and I don't think they were wrong to be. The chorus was touch and go at first, but once they decided to kick it in they ended up being quite solid. The same was true of the Symphony. There were moments in the show (like the opening Requiem) that sounded pretty fantastic. As director/musical director SB repeatedly noted, "you can't pull that stuff off with a synth, a bass, a guitar and some drums." (Though damn if we didn't try in 1993.) And a lot of the singing/acting work was pretty top notch for the hybrid concert approach that we adopted. I often stood off to the side observing the action on stage, and at times I seemed to forgot where I was - I was just watching a really good show, no conditions attached. TM was immensely talented and a blast. And JT took my breath away at several moments. Working with her on this again after 12 years (regardless of whether either of us would ever really be cast in the thing at this point) proved to be really special and moving. She was a scene partner par excellence.

In terms of my own work, it was a thrilling and liberating experience. The lack of pressure, plus the jolt I got from showing the hometown crowd what I'd been up to for the past 10 years, gave me an immense sense of joy and freedom. My voice was in great shape. And at a couple points in the show, I felt like I was at the center of the universe. I told my Dad how, at moments like that, you feel like you're as bright as the sun - there's a thermonuclear explosion going on inside you, and the audience is like Icarus - they can't take their fucking eyes off you. You might just burn yourself blind, but it's what you're after. It's "look what I can do" but powerful, aggressive, even violent at times. It comes from feeling an immense sense of belonging and of permission - of having the right to stand there on that stage and be heard. It's a rare feeling - I've felt it very infrequently in my career - but when you do, goddamn, you are more alive than you can ever hope to be. At a few points during Evita, standing on a stage in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, I actually found myself in the middle of one of those moments. It was surpising how much they often derived from anger, aggression - at one point I likened it to a shark who tastes blood in the water. But they were true moments: vivid, true, alive, electrifying. The deeper implications of all that rage we can leave to my therapist.
If I had one.
(I really should have one.)
But the catharsis afterwards (and the whoops from the crowd) felt amazing.
And after all, better that I channel all that potentially destructive energy into an act of creation.
(I had a microphone in my hand after all, not a broken beer bottle.)
Just call me Shiva.

The other amazing part is how close I felt to the community up there after having been away for so long. Two weeks let me sink back in in a way I haven't been able to on shorter jaunts. It felt a mix of love, hope, regret, admiration and increasingly a sense of ownership. It's hard to describe the many ways all those sentiments materialized and mixed but, after a decade living first in NYC and then Washington, it was both surprising and reassuring that they did. After a year in which my sense of where I belong, with who, doing what was pretty much shattered, I left more confident, assured... claimed. The number of people who came out to see me in the show (many of whom vividly remembered the first time around) was really special. And my sister reminded me after the first show that she and my brother hadn't seen me perform since 1996 (incredible, really). So it felt great to offer so much of me back to the community I came from, even if for three nights only. I'm certain it won't be the last time. And I don't plan to wait for another decade for the next go 'round.
Thoughts of summer theatre festivals dance in my head...

Aside from the show itself:
I made some new friends.
I saw a ton of deer winding their way across the roads and through the trees (a herd of 13 at one point meandering in a graceful line through the forest).
I saw the Northern Lights (for what I think is the first time) driving home from the show one night. Gorgeous.
I ran head on into my past once or twice and seem to have survived the experience.
And the river in front of the house was wide open, not frozen over - the first time in memory that such a thing has happened in mid-February. We used to build hockey rinks out in front of the house and play on them for hours. There were lines of Fortess-of-Solitude-like ridges and ice palaces that would form dozens of meters out on the ice. We'd climb them, looking like nothing but little dots to those on the shore. Not so much anymore. Global warming is alive and well in Sault Ste. Marie.

The other highlight was when SB brought me in to talk to one of her high school drama classes one day. When you show up for these kinds of things you never really know what to expect. What will you talk about?
Will they ask questions?
Are they really interested?
Will it get too jargon-y for them?
As usual, I was pleasantly surprised. Very. The minute I started I remembered how much I love doing it - because when you have to teach what you know, you inevitably come away with a deeper understanding of it for yourself as well. It's the test of how deeply what you know really sunk in. The kids were great. A couple of them pulled me aside and chatted me up afterwards (one talented young guy for about 45 minutes). I came away feeling like it mattered that I'd done it. I felt like I had something to offer and it was gratefully received. And I offered what I had to offer him in the generous manner that the people who really made a positive difference in my life offered what they possessed to me. Teaching can be a profound act of giving, but it can also (not infrequently) be one of taking. The story of my life has included both (as I'm sure everyone's has). The immense satisfaction I derived from passing along even a little bit of that which had been given - without trying to fill a void by taking from them what had been taken from me - was heartening and satisfying. You become aware of the immense responsibility you have, given that you can profoundly shape the course of someone's life. I felt I passed the test, and it made me want to do more.

So... Still not packed. Still sick as a dog. Still more to write. The nexy post will be on Canadian PM Paul Martin, civil marriage for gays and lesbians, and some of the reasons that the debate has evolved so differently north of the border vs. south of it. While I was basking in my Argentinian sun up in the Soo I missed Martin's quite eloquent comments defending equal rights for all. My friend Steve Clemons caught it, and he has an excellent post on his excellent blog about why Canada's role in drawing attention to American inequality through cross-border moral contrast is not a new phenomenon. Sullivan also has a longer excerpt of the Martin speech that includes a concise and rather moving argument about why minority rights can never fall prey to the whims and predjudices of the majority (a reference to the referendum-obsessed Conservative/ex-Reform Party that wants to kiebosh the bill). In my next post (post-packing), I'll offer some thoughts on some of the fundamental structural differences in the Canadian political system and process of debate versus those in the States - differences that I think inevitably create a more favorable climate for the issue among Canucks than among Yanks.

That is, if I don't pass out first. In which case, "Philadelphia, here I come!" Cheesey-steaky goodness...

(PS - Is Atrios still having his "Drinking Liberally" get-togethers? I must inquire.)

(PPS - He is! And they're all over the place, not just in Philly. I'm behind the curve...)

Don't Cry for Me, Corky Sinclair...

Apologies to all those racing to check in every day for up-to-the-minute reports on the rehearsals for my triumphant homecoming. The lack of high-speed internet access has been a disincentive. Plus, the wild Big City highlife of Sault Ste. Marie has been keeping me out all hours, leaving little time for more productive pursuits like blogging in the wilderness. So, let's see if I can quickly recount a few impressions from my first week reliving the community theatre life in Northern Ontario:

Tuesday:
Arrived at the airport in Kinross, MI. Took the lovely scenic drive from there to the Soo, surveying the quaint snow covered wastes of the Upper Upper Peninsula. At the border, the customs official asked my "driver" where he lived. He said he lived on the Michigan side but was going to the theatre center. The customs guy didn't even get a look at my face much less ask who the fellow sitting in the passenger side might be or what his citizenship was (American? Canadian? Yemeni?) and whether he just might have designs to blow himself up under the Water Town, thereby flooding the Lone Star Grill and perhaps the Tim Horton's and Wendy's across the way. Thus, having crossed the border undetected, I am free to pursue my nefarious designs...

But instead of self-detonation, I went straight to rehearsal, not even stopping to say hi to Mom and Dad. Warmed up, and as I was doing so several kids in the show stopped as they passed in the hall and seem to freeze in the doorway, whispering my name in awe. "This is it," I'm thinking, "You are a SUPERSTAR." (Wrong ALW show, I know.) But for much of the rehearsal I was. My voice was in fine shape so I was kicking some EVITA ass. Miked to the gills. Pretending I was a rock star. A rock star who sings show tunes....

JT, who played Evita when we did it a gagiliion years back is doing it once again, and she's a sweetheart. She was feeling schmutzy - chest congestion or something - so I felt a little bad for showing off. But just a little. She and all the principal actors (TM, GW, the mistress girl who's name I can't remember) are handling the music with considerable aplomb. The chorus is another story. Yikes. Inaudible much of the time and inattentive most of the time. And they've been rehearsing since like the beginning of January. This in spite of the presence in the ensemble of two estimable veterans of the original Evita, BR and AS. These two ladies are rather put out at being placed amongst the unwashed masses, since they feel that their seniority and their well-honed stage talents should guarantee them a bigger slice of the Argentine pie. Alas, they are forced to content themselves with being mere descamisados.

Just getting started with the rehearsal took half on hour or more of crowd control. Not just seating assignments (it was the first night in the theatre for everyone) but trying to get people to shut up and get going. They were spread out along the length of the back of the stage, so it was sort of like that Whack-a-Mole game - as soon as you pacified one side the other was going again, and racing over to tame them would only guarantee that the now peaceful flank would once more erupt in violent, uncontrolled rancor. Somehow, eventually, we got underway.

At the end of rehearsal we went to grab a couple drinks at a classy watering hole by the name of Twist and Shout. Copious nachos and Molson Canadian, along with widescreen TVs showing race cars and half dressed women walking past upward angled cameras for no apparent reason. I was left to marvel at how hearteningly distinct Canadian culture is from that of the NASCAR behemoth to the South. In between bites of breaded, deep-fried, cheese-soaked everything I offered my three or four cents on the rehearsal that evening and what might help us moving forward. Always a tightrope to walk, actors offering their directorial advice - particularly given my position this time out. I think it was all taken well though.

I arrived home far too late to find my parents asleep in their clothes with the bedroom light on and the TV still going. Whoops. And didn't they pop right up and offer me a drink, at 1 AM. So we sat down and had a little liquid midnight snack. We then sent each other to bed and ended my first night back in the Soo.

Wednesday:
Awoken at 9 AM (too early...) by the reporter from the Sault Star, who was nothing if not punctual. Did an interview with him while half asleep for an article to appear in Friday's paper. Then I went back to bed until like 1:00. The rest of the day was relaxing and catching up, and then off to rehearsal in the evening. This one was just the principals, so that was a nice chance to actually work on the music instead of trying to do everything at once. Our director/music director, SB, is a riot as always and really creative. Of course she can't count, which becomes a problem at times. And she's wearing so many hats that when she's playing she often seems to lose her focus on just what it is she's playing, allowing her fingers to wander off into very lovely and interesting chords that nonetheless have more in common with Shostakovich than ALW. But, overall a good rehearsal. Both JT and I keep marvelling over certain passages in the music that seem strikingly unfamiliar to us, since we're certain that those were not the notes we sang last time around. Ah the good old days, when if you didn't know it you just made it up and nobody was the wiser and your friends and family still clapped real loud regardless.

Thursday:
Full cast. The stage has been rearranged to put the ensemble in closer proximity to the audience. You still can't hear them. Perhaps that's because half of them don't know the words. That's alright. They've only had the music for a month.

We did Act 2 onstage. I oversang. My rock star stuff is in Act 2, and I was finding that my voice was willing to go to places it isn't usually willing to go, so I let it. Bad, bad actor. Save it for the paying customers. I'm sure the lady in the house who was blithely videotaping the entire rehearsal appreciated it. That is until I called her out from the stage and threatened to impound her camera. Someone's mother making home videos I suppose. Sorry lady, but I don't want to be the video entertainment for your Aunt Consuela's 66th birthday party. She shut the camera off, but I could feel her contempt oozing towards me from Row Q for the rest of the rehearsal...

JT was still feeling concerned about her chest congestion, though she decided to dive right into "Rainbow High" full voice. I approached her afterwards and told her she could totally pull back and just do as much as she wanted to, or just mark it. (The idea that someone might mark something in order to save their cords is an anathema concept here in our community theatre world - a sign of a lack of commitment or love for the theatah rather than an astute move to conserve your energy for when it's needed most when faced with vocal difficulties.) Of course, after counseling JT to take it easy, I then proceeded to strut around the stage wailing like Steven Tyler. (Well, not really, but let me have my dream.) Needless to say, JT didn't want me having all the fun, and so the vocal battle was engaged. Phlegm or no phlegm.

Friday:
A day off. Thank god. After Thursday's vocal blowout I needed a day to recoup and recalibrate. Still in fine shape, but need to remind myself to pace myself. It may be the Soo, but it's more fun to go in feeling fresh than haggard, regardless of the venue. Plus, the intimations of post-nasal drip seem to have appeared in the vicinity of my soft palate. Damn you Evita. This is your revenge for my Steven Tyler antics - biological warfare. Hasn't Canada signed the Convention prohibiting that shit? Where are the blue helmets when you need them...

The feature article appeared in the paper this morning. A hatchet job. A couple good quotes, but I should have written and submitted the thing myself. Even though I was half-asleep, I know my sentence construction was more competent than what he had me saying once or twice. And the picture (which they were so picky about) came out blurry and small and not good. The colours distort into one another so that I sort of look like Dorian Gray's portrait in later life, after he's been very very bad. Ah well. Free publicity. And he did get the title quote right. Funny how I knew long before I gave the interview that that quote would be the one that he'd center the piece around. I suppose there's a lesson in that re: message construction and framing... At any rate, it'll look good hanging on the fridge.

In lieu of me returning to Argentina that evening, my parents, my sister and I went to dinner and had a lovely time, though it turned out to be pretty pricey (what is this, New York?), in large part because we drank too much wine. And when I say "we" I largely mean "I". Passing out sauced did little to help the trickle of schmutz that is fast becoming a raging torrent pouring over my soft palate and on to my tonsils. Of all the parts of my body to be professionally obsessive about, the back of my throat has to be one of the least glamorous options.

Saturday:
Gorgeous day. Went for a walk with TM along Pointe Louise and we reminisced about trees and poison ivy and icefloes and all the landmarks of an outdoor childhood that was thoroughly defined by this beach and these forests and this river. It really is a blissful place, in contrast to much of the semi-urban mediocrity and soot-coated smallness that often define parts of this resource-extraction based town, one that rises and falls on the fortunes of "The Plant" (as in steel).

After our walk we played a game of Scrabble with my Mom. I lost to both of them. I'm still not sure how that happened. I'm king of games. But Scrabble, and particularly chess (to my great chagrin) seem to be my Achilles heels. It's because they're strategy games. I have no trouble with the vocabulary of Scrabble - it's the thinking three steps ahead and figuring out how to open up future opportunities or prevent your opponent from getting them that confounds me. Same with pool. I played pool for the first time in forever a week ago (on a "date" no less) and I suck suck sucked. Lack of skill and practice. But I also kept inadvertently setting up brilliant shots for my opponent/date. You'd think such unintentional generosity might be appreciated. But, alas, in the manly man world of pool and chess and Scrabble, aggressively screwing someone over is inevitably sexier to them than allowing yourself to get screwed for their benefit. The implications of this are, I think, obvious.

Post-Scrabble was a cue-to-cue rehearsal with just JT and I and the band and the techies. I'm a little disappointed in the lights. It makes me appreciate what great lighting designers I routinely work with. These cues just seem clumsy and stark and unattractive to me - a big square of light, poorly focused, pops up over here and then another one over there and with no real coordination with musical phrases or buttons. Occasionally a follow spot. Mostly a general wash. It seems to me that, absent a set, the lights are what will give this thing its flair - or not. Another reminder that these folks are doing this in their spare time and haven't seen enough to know what's possible (as long as you have the instruments, which I think the place does). Nevertheless, what they've come up with should do the general trick. I just need to keep calibrating my expectations. We aren't taking the thing to Broad-WAY. We're running for three nights in the Soo, and given the circumstances I think a lot of it will be quite good.

I finished off the night by making the requisite appearance at Twist and Shout and then heading to a raucous gay dance party at the Algonquin Hotel. Ok, well, "raucous" may be a poor choice of words. "Depressing" is probably better. The place was seriously decked out for Valentine's Day. Obviously a lot of personal effort had gone into it. And apparently the turnout sucked relative to what they usually get. It was a pretty modest crowd. But, that said, I was actually heartened that such a thing was happening at all and that it was publicized and that a decent number of people did in fact show up. I don't remember anything like that when I was growing up in the Soo. So I'm glad it's there, even if most of the clientele didn't really inspire me to "get my freak on" (as the young folks say nowadays). I ran into a couple of folks from high school who I thought maybe were gay back then and now were obviously willing to say so. And I had a nice visit with a gay couple who I hadn't seen in years, JD and TJ, who've recently built a new house here and seem to be making a quite viable life as the best (and cutest) candidates in the Soo to exercise their newly acquired gay marriage rights, should they choose to do so. So, while my first ever visit to the Alginquin Hotel was more an exercise in cultural anthropology than it was in booty shaking, it proved to be a somewhat profitable venture. I stayed too late though. And one young fellow would have had me out all night if given his druthers. But I resolutely refused to give him said druthers. Instead, I retreated to Pointe Louise, druthers intact, and dozed off in preparation for another day of community theatre superstardom.

That Giant Sucking Sound

Another day slips away with far too little accomplished and far too much still to do. I have pages upon pages of Nazism, British Imperialism and American war policy to read up on before class on Monday. All very exciting, so I can't quite explain why I'm not rapidly gobbling it up. With me, time and productivity have an inverse relationship - the more I have, the less I get done. Can't wait to get working on the next gig. Getting on a schedule is such a godsend.

Got a totally bogus letter from my ex-New York-landlord today. After denying my renewal lease and forcing us to give up the apartment I have now received a pack of contrived false excuses for why he isn't mailing me my security deposit. Having dealt with the slimeball for ten years now it doesn't come as a huge shock. But damn, why can't we all just deal with each other in good faith? It's a fatal Canadian flaw - I can never getting around to assuming the worst about people. If I could, I might manage better. (FYI - a caveat emptor for any New York apartment hunters: the slimeball's name is Louis DeVito. He runs 122-126 St. Mark's Place Associates. And here's another little sleazy tidbit for the pruriently interested among you - the story of another blogger and DeVito tenant who got more than he bargained for on a trip to the office on day. I came across it in a google search. Given my own experience, this also was unsurprising: http://www.christianfinnegan.com/2003_02_16_Archives.html)

Off to dinner with the ex tonight. That's always a roll of the dice. I'm in a frivolous mood today (see above re: no work accomplished), so that should grease the wheels a bit. We'll swing by a free Spanish wine tasting in Dupont first and then be off to somewhere new. I'm sick of the same three restaurants everyone always goes to. It's 2005. Time to branch out.

Speaking of wines (which I do quite often), see Sideways. Brilliant. Beautiful. I found it agonizingly true. Left me weepy on a Sunday matinee last week. It's about wine and depression and connection and friendship (or the lie of it). Great acting, writing, direction. Just the kind of work that makes me feel good to be an actor. I only wish I was doing more of that kind of stuff. It gets the Gold Star. Check it out.

The Day After Groundhog Day

So the little bastard saw his shadow huh. I can never remember if that's good or bad. As someone who grew up appreciating winter in all of its extreme exhilaration, I can't say that I have much stock in either outcome. Though winters down here in the Capitol of the Free and Frightening World are not nearly as fun as those I fondly recall in snowy, frost-bitten Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. All this damp dreariness feels more like perpetual March. (Or May, depending on your latitude and your attitude).

Luckily for me, I'm heading for the hills of the Canadian Shield on Tuesday for a little nostalgia trip back to my community theatre past. Yes, I'm going back to the Soo for a two week gig...

(FYI - the Soo is what we call Sault Ste. Marie, for those who aren't "in the know." That's how Sault is pronounced - "Soo." Memorize it. It shows up in the NYTimes crossword more often than you'd think. Natives are Sooites or Saultites, depending on your taste. Though I recommend skipping the second spelling. Just looking at it is giving me a headache. It looks like some stunted form of "Stalactites.")

I'll be up in my place of origin to do a concert performance of EVITA (yes, EVITA) for three nights just after St. Valentine's Day. The show was first done in the Soo in 1993 with a community theatre group called the Sault Opera Society. This is sort of an exhumation/revival concert of a sort. I'll be reprising the role of Che (yes, Che), which I played when I was 17 and no more Argentinian looking than I am now. (The most southerly contribution to my gene pool is probably Northern France. The most prominent percentages come from those tropical isles, Eire and Brittania.) I'm going to hit The Motorcycle Diaries and see if I can't pick up a trick or two from Gael Garcia Bernal. It's deductible after all.

But casting nitpicking aside, I am truly looking forward to the experience. It'll be a nostalgia trip and something of a homecoming - my first public performance in Sault Ste. Marie since leaving in 1994 to attend acting school in New York.

"He left a nobody and he came back a STAR!"

For three nights only folks.
If you happen to be wandering through the wilds of Northern Ontario or the Upper Peninsula you want to be sure not to miss it.

Alright. So that's the first post, huh. Pretty simple stuff.
Off to pick up drugs (the legal kind) and hit the bank.
More to come.
MUCH more.
Be prepared.