Other Pages and Web Sites
Back to Performance page.
Back to Home Page.
Surprise link.
Surprise link.
This page last edited Saturday, 07/31/2004.
THE JULY 17TH 2004 SHOW was chaotic and desperate and stressful and a failure but it was not discouraging. Performances by Walter Gambine and Richard Tschudy, with Richard accompanying me on the electric keyboard for songs relevant to moving, which is what the Collective was and is doing. Which they are also doing at my job and my roommate also seems to be moving--judging from the boxes she is collecting and packing. Please lend us your prayers that this is the real thing and not just another ruse!
For the first time in our history, we had a bonafide Music Director, Mr. Chante ("Rasta Mon") Jones, a celebrated former keyboardist and bandleader who rehearsed with me manfully for several weeks before the performance. He also provided an electric keyboard, another first in our transcendent but sublimely miserable survival. Unfortunately with all the chaos of the performance he barely got to accompany me, and he also fell asleep for a good part of the show but we covered for him well as I knew we would. In the future "Rasta" (who is really from Crown Heights but he puts on a mean accent) will play only a song or two, but he will be onstage for the whole show as my Interlocutor.
Also for the first time, we were listed with Audience Extras, which I encourage you to join, and either five or six people came from our listing, who all left before the end of the show. Whether this is bad or they just had somewhere to go, we haven't yet heard.
Furthermore our Doorperson who is usually polite and hardworking, this time was a different person who declared that she was a doorperson but she wasn't a doorperson and succeeded in rattling us even further than all the other new departures had already done. Not only wouldn't she sweep the floor and remove the first two rows of chairs as we had asked her, to add insult to injury she suggested we might ask another member of the Collective to do it for us--she wouldn't ask him herself! Truly this was the coup-de-rattle and we were, I tell you, thoroughly but as we said in home page, not too intensely or painfully, rattled.
Oh I forgot, one other disaster came in the form of a friend whom I won't name, who arrived late, and when I introduced him thought it was meant that he could perform, challenged us viciously, and when he did not get his way immediately sat down and started to snore loudly, whereupon I, rattled, told him he had to leave. Which he soon did and I thanked him for that too. So much for being overindulgent with one's friends!
Not to say there weren't good parts to the show, including my reading, by way of introduction to Walter's performance, a piece from Talk of the Town called "Return to Sender--Brains" by Marshall Efron (New Yorker, 06-28-04, p. 38). The subject, of course, was emotion and its role in healing, the point being that wry humor was my favorite outlet while Walter, of course, dauntlessly advocates ventilation in the form of shouting and constant attention to and support for and preparation of the emotions.
Through all of this smoldering oppression, the show was not pretty and it wasn't at all relaxed, but still we all got our stuff across. And as Warner Wolfe says (approximately), "It all looks better on the videotape." Or at least, the pain is at a distance so that one can appreciate the underlying hilarity and lightness of being in a detached way. Speaking of videos, tomorrow, Saturday, is your (our) last chance to see us on Manhattan Cable TV (MNN), Sunday at 11 p.m. on Channel 67. 28 minutes of the most glorious, nuttiest, helpless delirium in the media today.
Which brings us to one of our most loyal but least cooperative principals, Puppydog John King, who did not get to perform this time and walked off with the Victoria's Secret undies I bought for him. Nevertheless he looked smashing in the Cowboylike jeans-and-bellyshirt outfit he concocted for himself. Maybe the motto is, "You can ply a puppydog with panties but you're better off if you let him do his own lingerie-shopping!"
A little late in the show we were glad to see our Future Director--we have naver had a director!--the redoubtable Rachel, who is an actual recreation therapist, arrive. A bit later, she graced us with an Impromptu Duet with our Videast/ Speaker of Truth, the equally dauntless Peter Thomas, I don't remember the tune and with that, we bid you adieu until the afterparty, which will take place or occur in mid-August. Keep your eyes glued to these pages for the date and time.
POSTMORTEM TO 03-01-03 SHEW (happy March-!):
This show was a lot of fun with *very* few in attendance but nevertheless the *right* people, which is important. I feel my performance technique with the use of just a few simple props is really beginning to gell-! The material is organized around the props. Brando could be the Host character all the time--you think? Ended up singing most of the time and never got to the Burlesque costume--but for the first time didn't have a feeling of *loss* about it.
INITIAL DISPATCH 02-30-02:
The Performance on January 19th at The Collective Unconscious was A LOT OF FUN, though it wasn't entirely okay. Adapting a ten-minute man to an hour-and-a-half format is not an easy task. Though he has hours of material, he rarely or never gets to perform or even rehearse most of it. Not to mention "segways"-- the comedian's rather abbreviated concept of what in other fields would be the thread or theme that makes a group of anecdotes into a play or an opera or a story.
Not to say that he didn't try, and that he didn't meet with some success; the weaknesses and roughnesses made up by a lot of enthusiasm on the part of the audience as well as himself.
The "story" consisted of some kind of an existential saga beginning with his scene from "Waiting for Godot" which he has memorized and then "segwaying" into a scene where he attacks a computer printer which has done awful things as his telephone conversation with the manufacturer plays on the loudspeakers. He feints, does the low crawl, mimicks the contortions he had to go through to follow the instructions of the manufacturer ("Do a hard reset . . ."), and finally gets out (quite successfully, as it happened) into a Saddam Hussein--no, I meant an Osama Bin Laden--routine when he finds that he couldn't actually injure the printer and maybe we shouldn't really do in Saddam--er-- Mossadegh--er-- Bin Laden--, either.
Oh yes, before that even began he opened with a "Whezzarezzrummm?"-and-"Do-you-love-me?" routine-cum-striptease where he displayed his red-white-and-blue banana undergarments and then walked among the audience, asked for a restroom and/or love and enjoyed the beginnings of the whole loopy structure to be developed.
What actually did happen is that he demonstrated, as planned his skills, his striptease costume (although he forgot at least two others!), his Little Casio (VL-5--quite an antique which he got fixed for the performance), his Guitar, and the tiny tape recorder he played during the printer episode.
Where this all was to go and even where it did go has been lost to memory at least for the moment, but the seven guests seemed to enjoy it and be entertained most of the time. . . . NEXT PERFORMANCE SATURDAY MARCH 23RD, SAME TIME SAME PLACE. See you then we all hope.
<> <> The JANUARY 16TH (2000-5760) performance at The Sidewalk Cafe was A LOT OF FUN, with even some of the people from the Nicaragua Group (from the Park Slope Methodist Church--I know...) coming. But alas the Management was not satisfied with the number of people they SAID came, so much help will be appreciated for finding another venue--where I could perform at least once a month for a half-hour (that seems to be my metier).
As I should have said on the MAIN PERFORMANCE PAGE (see link?), Oral Barbacoa for January 21st (2000 of course <5760>} was called off in favor of the MORE GARDENS CELEBRATION the same night, at ANGEL ORENSANZ TEMPLE, 172 Norfolk Street, just about three blocks away and accessible from the same subway station. Also starting 7 p.m. The show and the events and the food were quite interesting, with a superb "barbershop quartet" composed of at least Citizen One and Kid Lucky, and a presentation by J.K., most of which I--lamentably!--missed, but lately it seems as though it has been my profession to disappoint her anyway. Overall the food was good (donated by ANGELICA KITCHEN!!!), as was almost everything else except the CHILLINESS of the monumental surroundings--but I couldn't be sure because I had a DATE, FOLKS . . so had to leave early. Everything turned out--or IN--okay, though, at least on my side of the bed.
ABC NO RIO 12/17/99: Our performances at ORAL BARBACOA were outstanding this time, not the least due to my own yeomanlike (or yeopersonlike) efforts. All three acts showed up, even though THE GREAT M in her SUBLIME HIGHNESS had a somewhat abbreviated apperance because of another commitment. In fact I missed her because I was doing an errand for the HYDTMAN, but returned in time for a HUG and a compliment from the SERENE ONE before she had to rush off, but I noted in passing the latest comely phase in her always-CONSUMMATE yellow dredlocks.
TYRONE HENDERSON was a pleasure to meet and greet with his considerable entourage, after trying to locate him on the Internet and finding only a sketchy somewhat unrepresentative representation--a gracious man with a GORGEOUS and POWERFUL VOICE and, I was glad to hear, a POLITICAL HISTORY as well as one in the music world. If there must be YOUNGER PEOPLE, and I guess there must, at least let them come with Political Histories. Amen.
METROGNOME, who we found out are also, and maybe more widely, known as UNITED NOISE/, produced a hypnotic, riveting, and uninterrupted display of virtuosity, persistence, and sheer grit that was appreciated, at least, by this observer. As I told them also, one felt she or he had a mission to listen and see it through to the end.
The INTERVIEWING STRUCTURE/ PETER THOMAS Videos--- ran more smoothly than it ever has before, with THOMAS for the first time using HEADPHONES so as to make possible CONTINUOUS MONITORING of the sound coming through our WIRELESS MICROPHONE, instead of having to check it out every time by rewinding (fortunately there are other things we have to keep on top of so that we will not become overconfident and begin to take the machine functioning for granted). Needless to say, there were several FORAYS to the front where we checked out The HEIDTMAN and The HENZMEISTER as well as various other but by no means insignificant hangers-on. And, I will say, yukked it up quite a bit. The wine I bought to entice others was never broken open, despite HENZIE'S remarks about a "screw-top."
All this, of course, without reference to The HOOTCHIE MAMMA (See WRYBREAD link on Home page and Performance page) and her COSTUME, another Presence who graced the meeting for the first time in full regalia, including costume, equipment, and props (not to mention the Video Unit)--but this we all hope we will come to soon.
Thank you for visiting my page at Angelfire.
Please come back and visit again!
(This statement is in appreciation of ANGELFIRE for being the first to offer me a free WEBSITE that works, not an endorsement in any other way.)
This is a test to see if I can EDIT this page without crashing. Yes. --12/12/99SU.