Note to self:

1. Cover all your bases before taking the show on the road. Think of every single mistake that could happen, think of every worst case scenario you can think of and fix it/prepare for it before heading out. It’ll make life on the road easier.

2. If you have people you know who live in the city where your performance takes place, USE THEM. We were fortunate enough to be aided by Beth and Carol who helped out immensely with box office/merchandise sales and travel arrangements. Use all the help you can get.

3. Have an amazing stage manager. Chelsea Sanz helped us greatly with the show. When you have to take control of so many things (box office, merchandise, ticket pick up, Fringe work, venue arrangements, transportation, blah, blah, blah) it’s always helpful to have someone whose sole purpose is to concentrate on the show itself. You need someone to overlook the quality of the show itself. When you’re on the road, you need to treat the show like an organ transporter would treat a heart being delivered to a dying man ready for transplant. If you don’t look after it, the show could suffer greatly and not work in the end. Thank you Chelsea.

4. Have the usual suspects: Have a great director (Rosalie), producer, performer, and writer (Alexis for the last three). They make the heart of the show. Without any of those key components, you have a heart that has an irregular heartbeat.

5. Thank the people who provide the blood to keep the heart pumping (Thank you Kickstarter people).

So many mistakes. Yes. Make them all before you head out. That way you won’t have to make them at the crucial moment. We had a great run, great attendance, great reaction, great post-Conversation conversation. Fun nights in Philly. A great experience overall.

Until the next Conversation,

Norberto Briceno
Production Manager

Read it here.

Because I haven’t acted in some time, I didn’t remember that feeling or that part of the process. And so when I crashed into it for the first time, late last week, I was really thrown by it. It’s terrifying, to feel like all the work you’ve done is lost, that you can’t figure out where you are supposed to be and what you’re supposed to be saying. It feels like you’re losing the thread completely, and opening night is feels closer than ever, and it seems impossible that you’ll be able to get from where you are in that moment to anything else.

It was only in talking to the director and a couple of friends who work in theater that I realized those feelings, that frightening off rehearsal, is all part of the process. That you have to trust the work you’ve done, and trust the process. The process is there for a reason and others have gone through it thousands of times before you.

Maybe the most important thing about that moment is that it made me take a step back and try to refocus not only on the character’s larger goals within the show, but also my own goals in taking on this new challenge.

Learning to trust something outside myself doesn’t come naturally. Fingers crossed!

-Alexis

"Conversation" Rehearsal, Brooklyn Arts ExchangeAugust 15, 2010

It’s been a little bit of a while since I’ve taken on the role of performer, beyond the occasional short reading or brief workshop performance of excerpts from pieces I’m developing. It’s a major shift for me, from being not only the creator of the piece, but also the one responsible for presenting the ideas to an audience. It’s a choice that I’ve been looking forward to and one that I’ve made very deliberately, but it’s also intimidatingly unfamiliar territory.

Performers have to make sense of a piece in very different ways than someone who stays only in the role of writer. Actors are not only in dialogue with the script and other actors (when it’s more than one character), they’re also in dialogue with the director and, of course, the audience. On a literal level, it involves much more conversation around the work. As a writer I can stay inside of myself, inside of the world of the thing that I’ve created, and not have to actively question or interrogate my choices, outside of the usual inner conflicts about the path the piece or its characters are taking. Writing is known as a lonely occupation for very real reasons. You spend most of your time doing it alone in a room, making things up as you go along.

I’ve read about solo performers talking about that also being a lonely occupation, particularly when they go on tour. Eric Bogosian describes it with particular insight—sitting alone in the dressing room in those quiet moments before a show begins, no clutter from other performers readying themselves, no pre-show banter to engage in or deflect. And then, standing alone up there on the stage, sometimes so blinded by the lights and engaged in the show that it’s difficult to tell if there are 5 or 500 people in the audience.

But in the process of rehearsal, after the script is done (or done enough to start reading it) and before the ushers have taken their places, there is this wonderful and continuous conversation that is a necessary step on the way to a finished product. I don’t think I realized that I missed that part of performing until now. Sure, sometimes is doesn’t go well—I’ve certainly sat in rehearsals where directors and actors spend more time struggling for power than exchanging ideas; or there’s the case of an actor friend of mine who feels like the dialogue that the director is offering is ultimately banal and uninspiring. It’s the same as every other thing we do in life—sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. But to be able to re-engage with my own work in this particular way is, for me, at this moment in my career, a very exciting thing.

Oddly enough, with this show, I’ve also spent much more time discussing outside of the rehearsal process as well. The Kickstarter campaign (which has successfully reached it’s goal—many thanks to all those who contributed) has had me not only describing the work in video and online, but also in person, as many of the backers or people I know well or work with or have worked with in the past. Also at the zine fest I attended two weekends ago, where I had goodies from show out for sale and had to describe and engage strangers about the work. These dialogues have helped me build a relationship to the show and a momentum around it that is new to me and very exciting to watch. I’m someone who’s used to juggling many large projects, staying very focused on the list of tasks that I have to accomplish in order to complete the work. That will and determination has done a lot for me, but it also excludes people, which I was aware of, to some degree or another, but couldn’t fully see the effect of in the past. Accomplishing the goal was the point. And it still is—it has to be. There is just an enormous amount of work that’s required to make a show happen. But this new layer, this rekindled desire for and enjoyment in inclusion and exchange, it feels wonferful. It is, inevitably, a work-in-progress, but all the better for being that, I think.

On the financial front, the Kickstarter campaign is chugging along. As of today we’re at just about 50%. Most of the funders are people I know, but there are a couple that I don’t know well or at all, people who saw the video, got interested in the project, and decided to help. Kickstarter is a pretty amazing platform for that reason, and has so far been a great experience. We’re also looking at some creative ways to raise funds by selling the cards, t-shirts, bags, etc, that we’ve produced with charts from the show.

In fact, this past weekend I was up visiting a good friend (and master crafter) Beth Royer, who was helping me create some of the stuff mentioned above. Between mimosas, wrangling silkscreen emulsions, and petting her dog Lola, we managed to get some work done as well as hang out with some of her good friends, which was a nice break from the crazy pace I’ve been moving at lately back here in NY. I also learned about the magical wonder-machine known as the Gocco printer (a screen printing equivalent of the Easy Bake Oven).

Last week, the production manager I’m working with (my first ever production manager), Norberto Briceno, and I met up to lay out some plans for the next few weeks. More than anything, meeting with him is awesome for his energy and un-jaded attitude.

Essentially at this point, we’re trying to wrap up as many of the production details (insurance, wine sponsorships, press packets, etc) as possible ahead of August, when the director, Rosalie Purvis, gets back from Vermont and we start a month of intense rehearsals.

Many thanks to everyone who has supported the project so far. And don’t be shy about telling your friends about the project.

The last time I really read the script was when another actress, Alexis Macnab, was prepping a performance of the piece for a workshop presentation at University Settlement here in New York. Reading a script aloud always manages to raise the stakes quite a bit when you realize that you, the writer, will also have to do the work of translating the text on the page for an audience.

Cold readings, in general, tend to be high-anxiety experiences for most writers. I have sweated and fretted my way through a number of readings over the years and it never, ever gets any easier. Though there’s always the secret hope that somehow everything will magically fall into place, it’s rarely the case that things go swimmingly in the first reading.

So you can imagine the feeling not only of being the anxious playwright, but also the actor eager to impress, all wrapped into one fidgety package.

At least Scotch (the aforementioned cat) didn’t seem to be nervous. He lounged happily on the bed nearby. Perhaps the lesson here is to give my audience extra comfortable seating so that they too can lie about lazily and take what they will of the performance…

Anyhow, Rosalie and I had the ever-important, and in many ways reassuring post-reading chat about the character,  the arc of the piece, and Scotch’s ardor for his new owner (Rosalie just got him from the ASCPA a couple of weeks ago). More than once he interrupted our chat to demonstrate his particular brand of affection. Oh that I should be so lucky with my human audiences.

1. Finding a venue (I took a trip down to Philly in early April to scope out venues)
2. Booking the venue (there was a bit of a toss-up for first choice, but when I found out the Painted Bride’s raw studio space was being given to an artist-in-residence, the Ethical Society became the clear choice)
3. Building a team (we’re a small but noble troupe at this point, myself, Norberto, and director Rosalie Purvis, but we’ll grow as we get closer to the show)
4. Fringe deadlines (every Fringe fest has a slew of early deadlines to get your description, fees, press, and marketing in place – that doesn’t mean the job is done by meeting those deadlines, but it’s started us off)
5. Early advertising (I decided to go for the ad in guide – the cost for artists is cheap and my experience with Edinburgh is that it can really make a difference)

The big focus right now is launching our Kickstarter campaign. I’m new to Kickstarter, but really excited to see how it goes. Getting the video done is taking a lot of time though… speaking of which I ought to get back to it.

Back in 2006 I decided to bring my play The Interview to the Edinburgh Fringe. I was living in London at the time and it seemed like a great opportunity not to be missed.

Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

I published a diary (in extremely abridged) format, in a UK writers magazine that fall. Read it here.