I’m gonna just jump right in on this. I’m still working out my blogging style for the new (in my mind) blog, with as little intro as possible, mostly because ALL of my time is borrowed time.

There is, as always, a lot more to this idea than I’m gonna explain, but basically Brecht wanted to stop our absorption with the story at key moments, take us out of the play, in order for us to pay attention a little bit more to the socio-political points he was making in his plays.

This was done with direct address, sure, but also with stuff like making sure that maybe a wire from one of the lights was hanging down, making sure that all the actors were still sitting around on stage when they weren’t in character, that sort of thing. He did this not just with the writing, but with the staging.

Weirdly, I’ve seen two plays in the last month that speak directly to this idea. One of them, Caucasian Chalk Circle, was… um… well, it’s pretty Brechtian, in that it was written by Bertolt himself.

I have to say, normally, I get super annoyed at companies in New York that feel like it’s okay to revisit the classics. (Or, in many cases, not even the classics, but rather, shows that some other real theater company made very famous in the last ten years, but that’s another blog…) We live in New York, we don’t need a community theater production company here. This is where we are supposed to continue the path of modern theater, where we are supposed to CREATE the theater that other companies re-create.

But the production I saw really made clear why it’s such a good idea to continually remind us of why the shoulders we stand on are made of such strong stuff. This was by far the best production of Chalk Circle I’ve ever seen, one of those productions where you can’t believe you get to be in the room with people who, clearly, should already be world famous.

And it was brilliant because they stayed true to the actual intent of this approach to theater, which is to invite and cajole the audience into a deeper understanding of the story and the circumstances. The fourth wall was broken constantly, the show was performed expertly in the round and was blocked inside and within the audience banks, and the music was breath-takingly *smart* and perfectly executed which led to such a celebratory atmosphere in the room, a sense of real accomplishment.

This relates directly to my previous post on naturalistic acting, because it couples with the same misunderstandings that occur when a production misunderstands the intentions of a particular style. The breaking down of the fourth wall has now slid into this horrible world of “brave” and “aggressive” theater, where people in the audience are forced to deal with people in the play in a way that isn’t inviting at all.

The aggressive nature of direct address now, the constant eye contact between the cast and the audience, may be thrilling to some audiences (I know my wife, in particular, was pleased that Jesse L. Martin did a fair amount of it in “Rent”, especially to cute girls in the $20 seats…) but I find it totally distasteful.

The other play I saw actually begs the question of Brecht’s usefulness in our current culture.

“Passing Strange” is a story of a young black kid who leaves his mom in Los Angeles to travel the world and become an artist, and in doing so finds a lot of emptiness and a complete paucity of truth. The story includes a narrator, identical to the young black kid, but now some thirty years older.

But… the narrator is played by the guy who wrote the play. And, one assumes, it is a true story. So, as horrible things happen to the characters, the audience is sickeningly aware that this is not a story, or an allegory… this stuff actually happened to *that dude right there*.

I can think of two movies, “The Break-up” and “Proof Of Life” where film audiences couldn’t stomach the movies because they knew what had happened between the lead actors. There was a TV show some years ago that starred Jennifer Grey as a character named “Jennifer Grey” – and the character had starred in Dirty Dancing and was the daughter of Joel Grey. That very quickly led to TV shows like “My Life on the D-list” where it makes more sense for Kathy Griffin to have cameras just follow her around than it does for her to waste time acting in a sit-com or trying to make movies.

On stage, we are spared a lot of this. We know each other but… not that well. I don’t know my very best friends as well as the TV watching world knows their reality TV stars. I saw my best friend in the world in a play a month ago, and although I laughed when he had to pull up his shirt, I honestly got lost in his character through the rest of the play.

But still, people seem to feel like it’s important to include their biographical information in the program or, very often, in the play itself. What would Brecht say if he saw “Passing Strange”? I mean, not only is there absolutely no set, no only is the cast on stage the entire time, sitting in the middle of the rock band, and not only does the narrator stop the show and talk to the audience about a bar that is in the very town where the show is playing… but the narrator is being played by the very guy that the things in the play HAPPENED TO.

And, for me, it’s over the line. I really enjoyed the play, but it’s a self-eating snake. When the narrator laments his mistakes, he says, “Isn’t it startling to wake up and realize that the person you are is based on the decisions made by an 18 year old… a stoned 18 year old”, and that would be a much richer sentiment if you weren’t looking at a guy who is starring in his own Broadway play.

I mean, he’s standing there in utter refutation of what he just said. Obviously, a stoned 18 year old decided to move to Amsterdam… but he’s standing there in the middle of a stage on Broadway in New York. OTHER DECISIONS WERE MADE AFTER THE DECISION HE’S REFERRING TO, so it kills the point.

Now, Chalk Circle proved that the theory is only part of the production. The truth is, it is a gorgeously written play. In both cases, these were plays that were directly and powerfully relate-able to my own life, a parent’s desperate need to keep a child safe and sated, and an artist who punishes himself for the decisions he made concerning his artistic life vs. his family obligations. But only the Brecht piece actually moved me, actually made me cry.

I guess the summation of the last two entries is that I want my theater to remain representational, I want some real distance between me and the people who are performing. Needless to say, I find improv comedy to be utter hell, but I still squirm a bit even when we’ve moved far closer to regular proscenium theater. This doesn’t mean that I can’t understand and be knocked out by the newer presentational theater, and it doesn’t mean that I find personal messages within a playwright’s work to be off-putting at all.

But I think we need to recognize that hyper-realistic acting and presentational producing are both reactions to a theater that was drenched in floor-to-ceiling sets stuck in a proscenium arch, and actors who had to shout to be heard in row triple Z. Every show we go to now, especially among the off-off community, needs to accept as a given that the performances will be intimate and the performance space will be spare, and maybe we need to respect the audiences need for a little bit of distance and theatricality.

So, this is gonna get some of the theater ideas off my chest that I’ve been mulling lately.

As usual, I’m gonna start with a disclaimer. In the world of theater, there are ideas and labels thrown around all the time that tend to be used in a variety of terrible ways, and every approach to theater or acting always brings to my mind the artistic equivalent of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. Every tool that people have generally gets handed to them like a borrowed weed wacker, and the artistic lawn usually has the dead spots to prove the tool’s uselessness.

Also, I once had a friend tell me that she had started to seriously study physics, and it turned out she was just reading “The Dancing Wu Li Masters”, and as much as I laugh about that, any use of any term that I throw out needs to be interpreted through the same casual approach to study. I don’t have a graduate degree in Acting, I don’t have an undergraduate degree in anything, and, in fact, I failed out of high school.

So… There’s that to consider.

The two biggest influences on modern theater seem to be Brecht and Stanislovski, or, most specifically, a Brechtian approach to creating theater and a “Method” approach to acting. (I’m gonna leave it ’till tomorrow to talk about Brecht, because that’s probably easier for me to talk about.)

Now, I should say that these influences aren’t actually cited often. In fact, probably never, because they are both so pervasive. And both of these ideas are far more in depth than what the casual theater practitioner thinks about them. Certainly for “Method” acting there are definitely techniques that a lot of actors don’t follow to the letter, and almost nobody describes themselves as “method actors” without doing so with tongue in cheek.

But the fact is, this naturalistic approach to theater and to acting is so pervasive that it’s hard to read “An Actor Prepares” without laughing at what seem like obvious and simple lessons. Where we are now, in 2008, very few people would attack the role of Othello by rolling their eyes and behaving like an animal… in fact it would be a shocking and offensive idea.

I’m gonna switch terms, if that’s all right, because method acting has a method, and very few people follow the method to the letter. But the inspiration behind the method is the same inspiration behind what so many other schools are trying to get to, which is honesty. The supposition is that a dishonest performance will lead to bad theater, or less good theater.

This is certainly true in a lot of cases, and definitely if you watch, say, “A Streetcar Named Desire” (which a lot of people would claim is the beginning of this revolution, the true distillation of the method on display) you can understand the full power of this honesty. Imagine if Olivier had played Stanley (instead of, apparently, glowering just off camera) and you can see how perfectly pitched this acting style was for this moment.

But, here’s the thought experiment I go on. Stanley rapes Blanche, we’re pretty sure, although there’s a further thought experiment on just how much of a rape it is, but that happens off-screen. What if it happened on screen? What if they followed through and you had to watch Stanley rape her right there on your screen. What if you saw entry?

That’s where we are today. And I have to steer away from movies for a bit and go back to theater because the stark nudity of human emotions on screen does provide a barrier for the audience, so that a movie like “Kids” is disturbing but it isn’t *assaulting* (if that makes any sense). The plays of Tennessee Williams can be done in this naturalistic manner because he feels a responsibility to reveal what needs to be revealed and a restraint to hide what will be too difficult for an audience to watch.

Now, our stages are full of violence and sex. Which is great, violence and sex are great tools, as proven by Streetcar. But in an overzealous need to prove audacity, bravery and truth, we’re asking actors to stand on stage fully nude, or to accept acts of violence with various degrees of realism… and even worse, we’re asking audiences to watch.

I saw The Homecoming a few months ago, and I was totally floored by the power of the performances and the writing. God, it was horrible, this spiral you start slipping down, and it became more and more horrifying as it went. And the story, of a woman who tries to escape a life of utter and total degradation but, in the end, can’t escape her own need to destroy herself utterly, is full of violence and sex.

I was queasy, I really was. And titillated, somewhat. But at no time did we have to watch her being *fucked*. She didn’t disrobe. And it wasn’t in the manner of most movies now, where two people screw off camera and then during their next conversation, the woman holds the sheet up so her boobs are covered. It was in the manner of brilliant writing, where the play only shows us one room in a rotten shitty old house, and it isn’t the room where actual screwing happens.

Violence on stage is even worse, made just awful by the heightened realism of a play. I recently saw Nosedive Productions “Colorful World” and the fighting and violence in that play were a ball because the whole thing was over the top, the entire piece was supposed to be a cartoon. The stage combat became choreography, a dance.

But in plays where the actors stage “naps” and falls and punches… One of two things happen. Either it doesn’t seem real, which is a failure of the approach, or it seems totally real, and I’m suddenly terrified for the safety of the actor.

When a person appears naked on stage in front of me, I adjudicate THE ACTOR, I’m not seeing the character.In True Love, the Charles Mee piece, the lead woman walks on stage totally naked, and, curse my brain, I thought “there’s Laurie Williams, totally naked!”

There are times when the honesty of a performances leaks out on to the real world, and I find that hard to deal with. In a production of Glass Menagerie, the woman playing Laura limped out to take her bow. In a production of Chess I saw, the lead woman could barely make it to the end of the show she was crying so profusely. Even in shows I’ve produced, I’ve seen the psychological effect of realism shock an audience clean out of a story. A woman shows up on stage, the characters talk to her, she leaves and later, one character says to the other, “what do we think of fat chicks” and I *heard* the collective gasp from the audience, who knew *exactly* to whom we were referring.

It’s tough. And obviously, these psychological scars are worth it, to me, in order to tell a shocking or compelling story. And sometimes people fall out of the story for a second, but then get right back in. They worry about the actress for a second, but then they go back to the journey. I’m not sure where the line is, but I do know that realism and honesty in a performance, above all else, is not the final say in good storytelling. There are times when an older approach to acting would actually enhance a show, I really believe that.

Obviously, I don’t want an end to nudity or violence, I love both things. We used nudity to comic effect in “Fleet Week” and violence to tell a story in “Dirty Juanita”, but I’m not sure that our modern method for honesty goes hand in hand with those things. I think we need to be very careful to pay attention to the times when we are being brave and honest, and the times we are being crass braggarts. It takes a lot of guts to get your ass kicked on stage, or to get your breasts licked… but I think in both cases, you had better be sure you’ve earned the massive discomfort from your audience, and the screeching brakes you’ve maybe just put on the storytelling.

It’s strange to think that my brother’s blog about my rejection from a stay-at-home mom’s group would be the very thing that would kick start me back in to blogging, but it has, in a way. I say that, even though I don’t really intend to write about that particularly weird chain of events. But it did get me thinking about why I haven’t written, and then, of course, why I should.

If you’re reading this, and you haven’t read the other, then go here and you can read my friend Deb’s essay on why she got mad, and a bunch of commenters who are variously sane and insane.

And I guess that’s what drove me away from posting. I myself wasn’t getting a whole lot of comments, and I wasn’t really asking for them. I had a lot of people telling me how much they liked my writing, and they also, for the most part, thought they saw a tiny shred of average sanity in my bloviating, and that was kinda fun for me. But the thing is, on so many other blogs, there was this thing…

Okay, y’know how you’re sitting by yourself, maybe just drinking a soda or taking a crap or… or doing both, I guess… and you just start thinking stuff. You’ll think “Plastic. Hm. Plastic… I wonder how much stuff is plastic” and it’s just a dumb thought. Or you’ll think, “Bugs. Imagine. Just being a bug and looking up at the world and only getting, like, two days to live your whole life…”

And that leads to something, where, for about a whole minute, you’ll be completely consumed with the idea that bugs have rights, that you should honor bugs. And then you stand up, flush, wash your hands… and by the end of it the idea is completely gone. You don’t really care about bugs any more.

The problem is, the world is full of curmudgeon buttholes who do these retarded mind-games while sitting at their computer. They read other people’s blogs, and before they can stand up and flush, they’ve posted these wildly stupid ideas in their comments section. And when they are called out for being stupid, they’ve already invested their time and their name (or dumb ass nickname) to this dumb-ass idea, so they start the torturous task of digging themselves in deeper.

It’s turned me off to blogs entirely. I quit reading my brother’s blog for sometimes weeks at a stretch, even though I know he tries to post every day, even though I know the thing is like an albatross to him. I quit reading it because people have written phenomenally stupid things in the comments section, and then when I meet them, I realized that the internet is the problem.

These aren’t stupid people. At all. And even what they are saying isn’t stupid, unless you believe that the written word stands as an end-point for a view, instead of the beginning of a fluid conversation, which is what it actually IS when you meet people in person.

So, I quit posting. I didn’t *decide* to quit posting, I just realized that I was humping a whore that didn’t love me and charged too much. Every time I had time to write, which was almost never, there was always something far better to do. Like… anything. Anything was better than adding to the noise.

But the thing is, I don’t really have any other way of keeping track of my life. And… do you know what’s happened since I stopped writing? Barnaby is basically a kid now. He’s walking and talking and has opinions and has struggles… We produced a show, a show I really, really liked, and I didn’t write anything about it.

My wife has a new job! She’s starting at the end of the month! I bought a bike! I’ve recorded a bunch of new music! I actually wrote most of a score for a show that, at the last minute, I pulled the plug on because I just couldn’t do it as well as I wanted to!

I mean, I’ve had a lot of blogs up in this shaky noodle of a brain I’ve got. Not to mention, every sixth blog that I read really should have my blog explaining why I think they’re wrong. On top of that, I’ve seen some theater, and I think I could add something to the discussion…

I’ve got this huge hole in my blog, from Christmas until now, from before Barnaby could even walk to now, when he’s a toddler stealing shit from other kids.

So, I’ve decided to keep humping this whore because she’s the only ride in town, and maybe the cost isn’t *too* high. I’m gonna shoot for writing during Barno’s nap, if I can make it happen. I’m leaving comments open for the time being, and I believe I’ve learned to take what everyone says with a grain of salt, so feel free to fire away. Tomorrow, I’m hoping to talk a little more about this Stay At Home Dad thing.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4II6jWT518c]

Here are two videos. Barnaby walks his stroller, above, and Barno Puts Pees In A Bowl, one of my all-time favorites.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohCShgIqI0E]

More later, I promise.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CRfSfpdWVE]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F94otp24iI]

A little story.

There was a city on the edge of a desert, and in this city there were seven boys who grew up together. They were friends, more like brothers, defending each other from older kids and fighting with each other when there was nobody else to fight. They were boys together and, after a time, they discovered they were becoming men together.

They had to choose careers, and, wanting to stay together, they decided to join the military and be part of the group that is responsible for building the wall on the edge of the desert. They thought it was ridiculous, there was nothing out there but the desert, but the town fathers believed the wall was important, essential, and that building it was not just noble but critical. Without the wall, who knows what will happen.

Each of the young men, kids really, were given a huge pile of bricks and enough water and mortar and steel to build and maintain the wall for years and years. It was a job too big to even see, and all seven of the friends set the bricks in piles, the mortar mix in bags, and the steel bars leaning in the sand.

They spent their days playing games, their nights at the watering holes and restaurants. They wrote letters and made music, the mocked each other’s poetry and attacked anyone else who did the same, they teased one another and savaged anyone else who laughed. And slowly, after some years, they turned to the job at hand. They started thinking about the wall.

One by one, they realized that the wall had been built too far into the desert. The sand swirled around the base of the wall sections that their fathers had built. They looked at each other incredulously and laughed. Why would they build the wall so deep? The picked up their piles and moved them back to start a new wall.

But it took time, years. They were methodical, they lined up each section and designed corners that faced the desert like the prows of seven ships, and they began laying down the bases. Their days, they still played games, mostly. At night, the still told stories and wrote songs, mostly. But they also worked on their walls. They visited on another, marveled at each other’s prowess, joked about their pace and meticulousness, and their walls began to rise, inch by inch, as the kids became men.

One day, the friend who’s wall had grown the highest came and gathered the rest to his wall. They sat on the wall and they looked out on the desert and they said nothing for a second. Either they had mismeasured, or the desert was closer. As they debated, one friend saw that their father’s walls were now surrounded by sand and, even more, they could see over their father’s walls now to their grandfather’s walls, the crumbling tops of which could just be seen sticking out of the dunes.

In a panic now, the friends went back to their walls. The walls were not to protect from an enemy that would never come, they were to protect against the encroaching desert, that would come no matter what. Each friend now devoted their days to the wall, there were no more games, there were no more jokes. They would go days, weeks, without seeing each other, and when they saw each other now, very often all they would talk about was the wall.

The months stretched into years and the friends grew older. The walls grew and grew, higher and higher, and each of the friends became consumed with protecting the town. The elders knew the wall was going up, and the knew it was being built well. Each of the friends found their wives and had their kids, and they became masters of building the wall.

The wall was nearing completion and, as they looked back, they saw that the town had quietly and carefully moved the tents and buildings back away from the wall. They were laying the bricks at the top and looked down to see that the desert was now up against the base, their grandfather’s wall was gone and only the tops of their father’s wall could be seen. The sand dunes started creeping up the front of the walls and they could see now that their wall looked just like their father’s wall. The smiled at one another, knowing now that they were foolish to think they knew better.

The wall was finished and the friends, now men, now almost old men, got together one night to talk about the wall. One friend began to ask the question they were all thinking. Why? Why would they build the wall, when the desert would eventually swallow it anyway? Their grandfathers knew that the wall they built was gone now, dissolved into sand, and their fathers knew that it was only a matter of time before their wall became sand as well. They knew that their wall was good, it was the best wall yet made, but they also knew that, no matter how good their wall was, it wouldn’t hold off the desert. It can’t, no wall can, the desert is inevitable.

That one friend asked for an audience with the elders, and the chief agreed. “Why do we make the wall?” he asked. “All of the walls that have been built have disappeared, they aren’t even memories any more. Even your wall, the one that you built when you were a boy and a young man, it can’t even be seen now. Why do we make the wall?”

“You weren’t making the wall,” the eldest told them. “The wall isn’t important, the desert will destroy it, and our city will move again. The desert comes and goes as it will, there’s nothing we can do to change it. You weren’t making a wall. The wall was making you a man.”

Barnaby, the man I am now, I owe to you. I know I can do nothing but watch as you become the man you will be, but more than anything I have done for you, you’ve brought out in me the best man I’ve ever been, and you’ve reminded me how much better a man I can be if I keep trying.

In a life that has been miraculously blessed, you are the very best thing that has ever happened to me.

From now on, this blog is going back to theater and fast food and random political thoughts, (on top of being a daddy-n-me blog) and it’s going to be updated many times a week. I gave myself a year, and the year is up. If I don’t try to expand my life beyond being just your father, I won’t be the father that I want to be.

Happy Birthday, my love. You are my gift.

Today was his first ride on a subway, and first stroll down Madison Avenue. Now I don’t know if he just caught on to how much I love the city, or if he has the same absurd sense of liberation that I have, but he was wandering down the upper east side kicking his stroller and clapping his hands.

We met his mom who took lil’ Barno to her office, where he charmed the pants off people that Jordana sorta loathes, and then I met up with them and brought him home.

Let me tell you, I’ve done stupid things in my life, but I don’t think jaywalking across 42nd street to avoid the rain was one of them.

Anyway, we got to Queensboro Plaza and the N/W was super slow because of signal problems. That’s okay, I thought, I know it’s raining a little bit, but there’s a bus on 21st street that I’ve taken a couple of times and it let’s us off at Ditmars. See?

View Larger Map

So we negotiated the streets down and turned the corner.

Nobody who reads this is familiar with the intersection except for maybe Jordana, but suffice it to say, 21st street has a bunch of large puddles lining the sides of the road. As we rounded 21st and started walking toward the bus stop, a driver who was trying to beat the other traffic flew through the empty parking spots and completely drenched both me and Barnaby.

I mean my *HAT* was soaking wet. It was like a cliche. The water hit me and took my breath away, and then, I couldn’t inhale when the second wave hit and went over my head.

Barnaby was drenched from head to toe, his entire stroller had been hit with a wall of water. He had been asleep, and I pulled up to the bus stop and turned him around.

He was just staring up at me, blinking. He wasn’t happy, certainly, but he wasn’t particularly miserable. He was just totally and completely wet. I expected him to be screaming, but he didn’t know down from up, he was just stunned.

Now, it might be that he had loved the subway, which he was crazy about, or that he had gotten to spend a couple of hours with his mom in her big city law firm. Or maybe he had just needed the eleven minute nap, but he was pretty much cool with the whole thing. He looked shocked and confused, but not really pissed off.

And I wasn’t either. Whoever did this was an asshole, but he was just doing his little bit to try to get ahead, and I’m sure he will feel terrible about it later. Plus, I’m sure I’ve inadvertently caused some problems for people in the past with my driving. I know I’ve been in the car with my mom and my father in law when lives were narrowly saved by smart drivers in other cars. But Barnaby was okay with it, and if a ten month old can put up with the wet and cold, then I sure as hell am not gonna bitch.

When the bus stopped, the driver didn’t seem pleased to let on a couple soaked to the bone, and he told me I had to fold up the stroller. Here’s the thing, I never got a chance to. The entire bus saw a wet baby and his stupid wet dad, and they all became doctors and nurses. They made room, they switched seats, they took the baby and the stroller and talked to him and cooed… it’s crazy.

New York is like this, that’s what outsiders don’t know. It’s what even some New Yorkers will never know. On the buses and in the subways, on the streets, everyone is grumbling and shoving and trying to win these little battles, but as soon as something IMPORTANT happens, even if it’s only marginally important, everyone is on board. If you take a cab from your penthouse to your job, you don’t know what New York is. If you’re a car service from your job in midtown back to Park Slope or New Jersey, you’ve probably missed the real New York.

People shove and push on the stairs, but if an old woman loses her balance there are usually five guys trying to catch her. Everyone wants to cut to the front of the line at the deli, but if you’ve got a crying baby, they always let you go first. People set their shoulders when they walk on the sidewalk, but if someone faints, there are ten cellphones calling 911 before he or she hits the ground.

And Barnaby was in heaven. We got a seat by the back door and he sat on my soaking lap and smacked his flat hand on the window while everyone talked to him. He watched people get off and spun his head around to catch them once they were on the street. And the woman who helped us the most got off right before our stop, he held his raised fist to her as she left in the only greeting he’s learned, the black power salute. She laughed hard, either at the kid or my red face.

He was born in the shadow of Lincoln Center, and he’s played every day under the Triboro Bridge. There’s a part of me that’s almost jealous that he gets to call this place home, this place that’s adopted me. I’m a New Yorker by choice, but he gets to be one by birth. I feel like it is one of the most important gifts we’ve given him.