Notes From A Burning House

Count Fiducio Stronzo Manicotti della Pidated extended one bony finger to wick away a large drop of sweat that had landed in the bowl at the end of his pug nose.  At the other end of the chess board sat the King, whose position in the game would be described, in chess terminology, as zugzwang.  It was late in the game, and despite Manicotti’s best efforts to let his Sovereign vanquish him, the King had held off victory with enormous success.  Each player was down to their King and a single pawn, jostled together at the center of a board in an untenable ring-around-the-rosey.  The pawns blocked each other, which reduced each player to moving his king and losing his pawn. 

From this position, neither player had a single move they could make without worsening their position – without, indeed, losing the game.  And unfortunately for Count Manicotti, it was the King’s move. 

“Are you sure I can’t pass?” asked the King for the ninth time. 

“As I say, your Majesty, I would not object,” Manicotti said with a brittle smile.  He added, “It is, after all, only a game.” 

“But do the rules of chess allow it?” asked the King. 

Here Monsignor Farfalle interrupted, withdrawing a long pipe from between his cracked lips: “Majesty, the rules of chess do not allow it.  You must make a move.”

The King stared intently over the pieces.  “Fancy that.  Any move is a mistake, yet one must move.” 

“It is often like this,” the Monsignor purred.  “To do nothing, even this is a choice with consequences.” 

The King’s torturer, who was often on hand to dispatch those who aroused the monarch’s frustration, parked one foot up on a stool in the corner of the antechamber and began sharpening his machete against a strap that hung from his waist. 

The King’s expression remained impassive.  Count Manicotti, for his part, cringed with each gasp of the blade against the strap.  The King calculated and recalculated despite the lack of options.  His mind tensed around the problem, relaxed, and tensed again. To break the monotony, he opened his mouth and moved his lips around without paying much attention to the words that fell out. 

“Sometimes, even for a King, it is as if we are chased to the top of a flagpole and have nowhere to go from there.”

The Monsignor straightened in his chair.  “Majesty, you have everywhere to go from there!”  He set the pipe down in the ashtray.  (The ‘ashtray,’ of course, was a dwarf slave who stood by the chair with a leather hat fashioned into a small bowl.)  “Have I told the story of Saint Simeon, the hermit who lived on top of a pillar?” 

Manicotti buried his face in his hands. 

“There he stayed, in continuous prayer, undertaking a life of loneliness and devotion,” Monsignor continued without encouragement, “Because even though one’s choices seem limited on top of a pillar, the millions of choices available to those people below all lead nowhere!” 

The King frowned.  “I don’t understand.  Are you saying he was freer where he was, on top of a pole?” 

The Monsignor chortled with delight.  “I remember when Count Manicotti here was – very briefly – a student at seminary.”  The Count sat up and stared at the craggy-faced vicar.  “I asked the Count why he thought Simeon had taken his seat at the top of the pole.  And the Count, who was an irreverent young man, said to me, ‘I think he just had a stick up his ass so he made a vocation out of it.’”  The Monsignor’s laughter sounded very much like a heavy door swinging shut. 

            The King glared disapprovingly at the Count, then focused his gaze back on the chess board. 

            “All our choices lead nowhere,” repeated the Monsignor, gazing into the blazing fireplace.  “Until we put ourselves right up against impasse.  From the top of the pole, how do you take a step?” 

            The King decisively grasped his King, and moved it to the right, away from his pawn.  Instinctively, he said, “Checkmate.” 

             In chess terms, he was exactly wrong.  Yet, as the torturer stood on his feet, standing to a height sufficient to cast a shadow against the chess board, Count Manicotti knew that in a sense, he was essentially correct.  In this victory, an inevitable and fatal defeat was confirmed.  The torturer approached the table without waiting for the order. 

A casting director once visited my graduating class at the Trinity Rep Conservatory and, after stressing the importance of first impressions, offered to give each one of us her initial impressions, just on sight. 

When my turn came, she paused and squinted as if she were identifying a rare moth.  In the eternity of her scrutiny, the glaring gaze of this New York City casting professional, one who could open doors or slam them shut across ones nose, my mind went back to my first on-camera audition ever.

That had been at age 16, when I auditioned for an industrial with all of my shoulder-length hair and huge, popping eyes.  They were casting high school age characters and I was well qualified for that role.  I read several ‘sides’ (pages from a script) and interacted with a crew member on camera for several minutes.  Unlike most professional situations, I got my answer immediately, and in unusually blunt terms.  The producer said, “You are the best actor we have seen all weekend.  Thing is, we need people-next-door types and you – you don’t look like you live next door to anybody.” 

Back to the Conservatory.  New York City Casting Professional finally released the muscles about her eyes and leaned back in her chair, satisfied that she had retrieved an answer.  “You, Alcatraz, I would pin you as a young Al Pacino.  You should go in that direction.” 

Young Al Pacino doesn’t sound so bad.  In Los Angeles, where comparisons to celebrities (or combinations of celebrities) are a form of currency, I have also been called a “young Joe Mantegna.”  Just don’t call me late for dinner. 

The illustration at left was assembled by my friend, Rabbi Borak, who has also made the flattering comparison.   Here, he adds a bow tie and a glasses to complete his mock portrait.  Thanks, Borak. 

An intriguing coincidence lies beneath the illustration, because this shot of Al Pacino was taken upon his 1961 arrest on a weapons charge – in my home state of Rhode Island.  Pacino was 21 years at the time, and was collared along with two other wiseguys in the old mill town of Woonsocket. 

The other day, I turned on my heel and walked back into my house because I had left my cell phone behind.  Never thought I’d see the day. 

Pretty soon I’m going to have to “upgrade,” as they say.  That means replacing one piece of crap with a newer piece of crap.  It is a transaction I have been avoiding, not out of stinginess but a certain horror for the new generations of handphone that are beeping, squealing, talking, humming, chiming, crowing, bleating, and pitching up a mighty din.  You turn them on, they whistle and sing; you turn them off, they wail goodbye.  They light up and vibrate and shimmer and leap.  If I needed this, I’d get a puppy. 

They are also getting smaller and smaller, easier to lose, harder to dial without a stylus.  Soon the phones will be the size of a pill.  When I can’t figure out how to silence it, I can simply swallow the thing.  Then when I wake up in the morning I will light up and play pop tunes and vibrate. 

A friend writes:  "I was just perusing my blog referral stats, and I
got a search engine hit from someone looking for ‘mumun naked
pictures.’  Hmmmmm.  Is there something you haven’t been telling us????"

Mu Mun is my dharma name, but I know nothing of any naked pictures.
Except for a few baby photos that are kept in a secure location at the
base of a mountain in Kyrgyzstan, the only nude pictures anyone would
ever find of your humble blog-o-spondent would be some sketches and a
couple of paintings dated 1994, when I worked as a figure model for an
artists’ group at Rhode Island College.

Figure modeling was a decent gig.  It paid $10 per hour, and it was a rare opportunity for a skinny guy to feel beautiful.  Any inhibition I had the first time about being nude in front of a roomful of artists fell away as quickly as my bathrobe.  My only problem was a tendency to choose poses that the artists loved but were very difficult to maintain for twenty minutes at a time.

One choice I made was to stand with my left arm raised over my head, holding onto a bamboo rod, while looking to the right.  Turning my torso slightly gave them all kinds of lines with which to work.  Easels were dragged about the room in a fury, and once the territory and vantages were negotiated they went to work.  After several minutes, I felt the arm going to sleep and decided to tough it out.  Surely I could make it for twenty minutes.   I was overruled when my limp, dead arm finally gave way, clouting me on the head as it fell.

*     *     *     *

Today is the 14th anniversary of the 1991 Soviet coup d’etat or
"August Putsch."    Gorbachev was in Crimea and some ministers and
Communist hardliners took advantage, arresting him and briefly taking
over the government and media.  Boris Yeltsin climbed on top of a tank
and called for civil resistance – an image etched in my memory
probably forever.  What a weird, scary episode it was.   By the end of
‘91, the USSR was no more.

*     *     *     *

The first act of XXX Love Act is a little on the raucous side and we sometimes lose people at intermission.  Contrary to what many people believe, actors can see the audience much of the time.  Even when the lights are trained into our faces and we can’t actually see you, we can feel you.  Unless the audience is large and far away from the playing area, we know when you leave.

There is a legend about Richard Jenkins who was, long before he played Nathaniel Fisher, Sr., on HBO’s Six Feet Under, an amazing stage actor.  As a long-time company member at the Trinity Repertory Company, my hometown theatre, his work had me goggle-eyed when I was a boy.  Legend has it that Jenkins was playing in Fool For Love in Dallas when somebody in the front row gathered up their duffel and walked right up the center aisle during Jenkins’s monologue.  As he spoke, Jenkins found a prop shotgun and trained it at the departing patron.  As the patron reached the back of the house, another audience member shouted to Richard: "Pull the trigger!"

The contract between an actor the audience is complex and unwritten.
In some situations, an actor pointing a gun at a spectator – even a
prop – would be considered dangerously deranged, while in another
instance it may be accepted as fair game.  It happened at Trinity
several years ago, during a performance of A Preface To The Alien
Garden.  A spectator answered his or her cell phone (it happens
frequently, you know) and an enraged actor pointed his gun at the
patron – not only crossing the line, but setting fire to it.  A
lawsuit was threatened but averted with a settlement that included
apologies, cocktails, and many free passes.

Sir John Gielgud had license to silence chattering ladies in the front
row ("Do…you…mind??"), while a local player in the city park might not
merit the same authority.  Trinity Rep has long been known for its
interactive audience relations – splashing them, addressing them
directly, moving them around or sometimes coaxing them onstage, and so
on.

During a performance of Voir Dire at Trinity, an audience member had the temerity to answer his cell phone (see what I mean) while Ed Shea was on stage.  They must have been an out-of-towner, because no local would have dared.  Ed Shea, you must understand, is a brilliant actor AND a short, bald-pated flask of Irish hellfire. Shea quietly halted the scene, sat down in an empty seat next to the cell-phone-talker, and gazed benignly at them until they had finished their conversation.  Then he resumed.

We’ll extend that license occasionally, but it can be abused.  Even for Trinity Rep, it seemed a bit much when a firebrand named Eric Tucker (pictured at left with John Douglas Thompson), who was playing Iago in our 1999 production of Othello, exploded in rage at a performance for schoolchildren.  Two of the boys had been chattering to each other.  Tucker screamed right into their faces: "You think you’re at home watching television?  Guess what, I can hear you! Click-click-click, we’re on every channel!!"

Perhaps the difference lies in the assumption of an adversarial relationship.  Jenkins had established sufficient trust to interact with the audience without making them feel completely unsafe, whereas
Tucker assaulted them.  (There is unsafe in an exciting theatrical sense, and then there is just plain unsafe.)

Yet surely one can sympathize.  Patrons will sometimes walk out in the middle of a performance – not even waiting to slip out during intermission – and delude themselves that they are escaping unseen,
like ninjas.  A social contract is in place and the patron is a party to it.  Would it not seem strange if the actors lost interest in the audience, turned their backs on them, and starting talking to the
wall?  (As a young standup comedian, Woody Allen once did exactly that.)  Imagine going to a play and learning the actors had all decided to nip out for beers instead of doing Act II.

This blog has been silent for a couple of weeks, as its author has gotten busy with various projects: appearing in one play at Company of Angels, rehearsing another play, and working on a small writing project with an old friend.

We keep on getting up in the morning at Dharma Zen Center.  The front garden has benefited from the addition of a fountain and a small pond (replete with mosquito-eating fish).  What really need to do is build a tiger trap and snare some more residents.  With our luck, all we would catch are the neighborhood stray cats.  One of the local feline rapists has been war-whooping in the dead of night

This week we are enjoying a visit from another old friend, Ji Hyang Sunim, an American Buddhist nun who has preserved a charming whiff of her native New Jersey accent, but would not appreciate me pointing it out. 

Stay tuned, friends.  The fire burns on. 

For many actors, the theatre critic is visualized as a murid creature drooling poison ichor between their ragged buck teeth, grasping pencils clumsily amid their absurdly long and razor-sharp ungulae.  (You get the idea.)  The reputation is solidified every time the beasts among them fill their fountain pens with venom of asp and set about to scar indelibly some hapless artist who would have been better off coming between a hellhound and its prey. 

The reviews of XXX Love Act, as you probably anticipate from the above, are not all favorable.  As often happens, I personally stand unscathed among the tattered, fleshy remains of my colleagues.  Lovell Estell III (my God, are there two more of him?) of the L.A. Weekly – who was observed sitting with his eyes closed for much of Act One – complains that Cintra Wilson’s drama is ‘tawdry’ and gave our director short shrift, but left the actors alone.    Les Spindle, writing for Backstage West, was less kind than that and definitively gored one of my fellow players.  Spindle somehow got the bizarre notion that our omniscient choristers, one of whom is clearly Hunter S. Thompson and the other an androgyne in a blue disco suit, are supposed to be the parents of the protagonists, prompting one to surmise that the thread on his spindle is a bit loose.  I should not heap scorn on the man, however, since he gave me a courteous mention.

Fortunately, we already had a triage unit set up at Company of Angels.  Joey Gilbert needed some internal surgery to repair the major invasive trauma dealt him by Edward Spindlehands, but otherwise the injuries are minor cuts and scrapes with some nausea. Our producer and unfailing champion, Andrew Schark, was swift about drawing attention to the favorable notice we received on ReviewPlays.com, a website that often lobs naphta at our theatre. 

One can also point out that at least we’re not involved with The Dukes of Hazzard, eviscerated by Kenneth Turan on NPR and in the Los Angeles Times.  A savage review can be entertaining as long as it is someone else’s project.   

The word for that is schadenfreude.

Merton tells me Louis Massignon described helicopters as grasshoppers of the apocalypse.  To me they are gigantic dragonflies that come roaring from the east and draw spirals across the neighborhood sky.  One night this week, the black dragonfly flew so low over the Zen Center the windows of my room rattled and I woke up thinking there was gunfire outside.  The dragonfly moved back and forth over Cochran and Cloverdale, the police training their searchlights into our yards.  I heard some rustling in the alleyway by my north-facing window and imagined it was a fugitive for a moment; then I saw the possum ambling, unperturbed, toward the front garden. 

Eventually the LAPD withdrew the whirlybird and its insane racket that drowns out awareness itself.  At 3:00 am, I was woken up again by the sound of coughing.  It was the homeless man who sometimes curls up near our garden wall.  His head was only a few feet away, with a window screen and a bamboo plant between his rest and mine. 

*     *     *     *

Thus far, after every performance of XXX Love Act, we have been staying late and enjoying cold beer.  We also have had triplesec on hand, as it rhymes so closely with our play’s title.  One night, in compensation for the actresses who go out and strip every night in service to the storyline, the men involved in the production are called upon to return the favor.  The producer goes first, and I snag the prop money from backstage so we can tip him as he does a vaguely embarrassed striptease.  Two dances and as many beers later, he and I are doing a duet, and by the time we have removed each other’s belts the ladies are rolling about with mirth.  Gilbert, on the other hand, is fearless; he wiggles and thrusts like the shadow of a Chippendale dancer.   We boogie and strip to Led Zeppelin playing “When The Levee Breaks.” 

Finally leaving the theatre in the wee hours, the night glistens like a gigantic eye, and I can breathe all the way down through my feet.

*     *     *     *

My favorite hat is a brown suede cap.  When I wear it and a bow tie at the same time, I cannot resist saying, “Paper, mister?”  It has haunting old inscriptions written inside it.  One in black ink, almost completely erased, says, “I hope we meet again.”  Larger, and in red, the words “I love you,” blotchy and faded. 

*     *     *     *

Starbucks needs me to sign a release for a short commentary they plan to print on their coffee cups next year.  They ask for a very short bio and I go into “bio freeze.”  Account for myself in a few italicized words?  Suddenly I have no idea what I am.  I write: God thought it would be funny to play blues on a ukulele.  Three strums, and Algernon appeared.  Useless to them, but it’s the best I can do.