Have a He(ART)

Wrote this on the train tonight... Enjoy

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Since today I received two separate inquiries about the next entry, I assume that enough time has passed since Grimm opened for me to healthily comment about it.

I’m currently sitting on an E train heading uptown from 14th Street.  It’s a little after ten, and I know as soon as I get home, I’ll probably just scarf whatever Nicole whipped up for dinner (turkey loaf and broccoli, huzzah!) and get ready for bed.  

Tomorrow is almost upon us.  Already, tomorrow begins another day.

But right now, no excuses.  For the next thirty or so minutes, I’m left with no distraction, none at all, to write -- unless you count the music blasting through my headphones or the belligerent homeless man who, God-willing, will make his way into the car at some point. 

I’m traveling home from week two of my fiction workshop.  Tonight, it was my turn to share with the group the draft of a short-story I’d written -- an experience that, while not new to me, still leaves me with feelings of excitement and sheer terror.  There’s a vulnerability that inevitably stems from sharing your art.  Will people like it?  Is it good?  Christ, did anyone notice the typo on page seven? 

(Random subway distraction #1: the train just lurched, causing the ass of an Amazonian woman in pink shorts to graze my face with the danger, severity, and urgency of a fired bullet.)

I suppose it’s fitting I’m leaving a writing workshop to write.  Now for a shameless metaphor: Hurricane Grimm has just about passed.  For months we’d been preparing, battening down the hatches, hammering planks over the windows, and checking to make sure we secured enough double A’s for the flashlights.  But now it’s back to reality.  The (ab)normal stressors of life, neglected for months, now require violent attention.  With September 1st nearly upon us, it’s probably time Olivia, Mike, and I actually find, pay for, and move into a new apartment.  I should probably start looking over the material for that class I’ve been hired to teach...or at least figure out how the parking passes at the campus work.  There’s laundry to be washed, food to be bought, 8-to-5 jobs that require more than just six hours of sleep to get by on. 

(Random subway distraction #2: a Mexican man has just begun playing his guitar and singing a wonderful, little ditty in Spanish.)

Grimm HQ, now neatly packaged.

My life, not so much.

But in the wake of Grimm, clean up is messy.  We’ve had our share of reviews to contend with -- some kinder than others, some written by critics who obviously never realized our show was (gasp!) intended for children, mistaking the economy of the script for a lack in sophistication.  

But this is what I mean about sharing art.  It’s risky.  It’s terrifying.  In a workshop environment, like the one I just came from, people are able to set aside their tastes and appreciate a piece of art as a work in progress, helpfully noting what works, as the piece currently stands, and pointing out what can be improved upon, focused, and revamped for the final product.  I wish more critics remembered this.  

Although we present something as “finished” doesn’t mean it is.  Any art, by nature, is incomplete.  As a writer, I can assure you that I could spend my entire life revising something.  It’s my choice not to.  It’s my choice to click “print” and hand out my fifteen pages to a room full of people I only met a week ago.  

And similarly, it’s a choice to perform draft #8 (seriously, who’s counting anymore?) of a musical for a house full of family, friends, but mostly... total strangers.  

But they’ve asked for it, and they ask for more.  We sold out tickets last Saturday, and came close to selling out multiple other performances.  We remain the top-selling show at our venue.  For our final performance on Wednesday, we’re already up to sixty-something tickets.  That’s sixty-something on the Monday before a show at 2 PM two days later -- a time slot that impelled me to demand the time off from work precisely because it’s so inconvenient.

And so, I say with certitude that the story doesn’t end when Gretel closes the book after the final number.  On Wednesday, we have our final performance of the draft we call Grimm.  Only time will tell how this chapter will end, but we’re idiots to think the book is intended to stay shut forever.

Spinning the straw into gold...

I started writing the following entry last night. 

Things are looking awfully crowded at the GRIMM halfway house, also known as Olivia and Mike’s apartment. All week, it’s been stuffed to capacity with fabrics, set pieces, and human bodies. 

“Where does everyone sleep?” you ask.

Oh, we have our system. Conveniently, Taylor has been staying up all night putting costumes together so when I leave for work at 7:15, he can take my spot in the bed. There’s also a permanent space on the floor reserved for a sleeping bag. You just have to step over three bags of costumes and a plastic pumpkin head first.

Right now, it’s going on midnight. Mike is painting a soft flat in his room, Olivia is on the floor beside him, typing her notes to the cast from this afternoon’s rehearsal, Nicole is sewing Gretel’s costume, and Taylor is bouncing around from room to room, working on the final costume piece of the show: his own. Fittingly, he wears his jester hat from Grimm 1.0. The vest he wears has about forty hand-sewn buttons. 

There are two bags of chips on the couch, right beside a sewing kit and purple-studded scissors. A frozen pizza cooks in the oven. Disney Pandora plays in one room, a podcast on The Three Musketeers plays in the other. 

Tomorrow is our opening. It’s been one heck of a process, one hell of a week. The carefree days of dance diamonds and music reviews have given way to long nights of re-staging -- swapping out One Direction for new directions and new discoveries. We’ve had our share of obstacles: I’ll be honest and vulnerable for a moment -- after running on five hours of sleep all week, gritting my teeth in the midst of some frustrations, I had a moment at work the other day when I finally reached my breaking point, mentally and physically drained; luckily the student I was working with was late so I had some time to pull myself together -- enough, at least, to successfully comment on his Yoda shirt without sobbing. That night I silenced my phone and went to bed at nine forty-five. 

It will be wonderful to finally see the fruits of all our efforts, the good, the bad, the what-in-the-name-of-Grimm-was-that. Already tomorrow looks to be our biggest show yet with 64 out of a possible 91 tickets already purchased.

And that’s how far I got.

That night, for the next five hours, I gathered the rewards for our Kickstarter donors for distribution at the box office, helped Olivia hot-glue candy (i.e. paper cupcake bottoms and multi-colored frisbees) to the candy house (i.e. a big, green soft flat that was taking up a third of her bedroom), stuffed the playbills with Fringe ballots, burned and battered Rumplestiltskin’s “contract,” and organized the apartment so that putting down the scissors or a needle and thread for a moment didn’t mean you would lose them for a half hour.

Then I napped for two hours. 

This must be what getting married is like, I remember thinking. Final preparations had to be made, and staying up all or most of the night was the only way to get them done. It was like the Little Theatre all over again. Except finally, in the midst of everything, we didn’t have to worry about that damn psychology final the next day.

When my alarm went off at seven fifteen, Taylor was sitting on the floor, silently sewing mic belts together. Olivia was curled up on the couch. Exhausted as we all were, however, we continued to GRIMM it up until the last possible minute, breaking only for Dunkin and occasional trips to the bathroom. 

At nine-thirty, we lugged everything down the steps and packed my car with the costumes and set pieces. Now this process had become a science the past week: all vertical elements (golf clubs, lamp stands, the disassembled garment rack) go in the trunk, the wooden chest and costume luggage stacked in the backseat, the barrel and the globe riding shotgun. I always got a secret kick out of everyone who happened to walk by during this process. Stuffing a mechanical arm and prop ax into the trunk, Mike suggested we mutter things like “that’ll teach him...”

GRIMM: it fits into a Mazda 3. I’m not sure yet, however, if it’s Grimm or Mazda that we’d be advertising.

Surveying my overstuffed car, I finally understood how the drivers of armored cars or ice-cream trucks must feel, transporting such precious cargo.

“You feel comfortable driving in Manhattan?”

“Hell no.”

“You know you can’t see out of your rearview mirror...”

“Uh-huh. See you in a half hour.” And, despite the fact that it was far too hot and humid out to enjoy, I sipped my large Dunkin coffee (little cream no sugar. They know me) and pulled away from the curb.

I made it to our venue, the HERE Mainstage, with time to spare. Members of the cast were already gathered at the little park across the street, trying on costume pieces or warming up their voices. After our venue director gave the okay, the cast, being the great roadie crew that they are, helped unload my car (good training, I thought, for the day GRIMM gets noticed by Gene Simmons), and then disappeared into the dark of the theater. 

I parked, gathered together my ACR bag, and, heart pounding, Fringe lanyard swaying around my neck, took my place in the theater lobby. 

For the next forty minutes, I greeted people as they came in. Most of them had already purchased tickets so it was a simple matter of waiting for the house to open. I also answered questions about the show (“How long has it been in production?” or “Is this like, the poor man’s version of Into the Woods?”), helped direct patrons to the box office, the cafe, or the restrooms, and, once the house was opened, checked tickets and handed out playbills. 

At twelve o’clock on the dot, our venue director closed the doors.

On the other side, the show was about to begin. This was it. But like Olivia told the cast earlier: once they go out there, every decision they make is right as long as they support each other and enjoy themselves. 

Indeed this cast, who had been working so hard, adapting, growing, and, most importantly, having fun, was about to do what they do best in front of dozens of people who didn’t know that most of the production team was running on two hours of sleep, that Olivia had burned her fingers three times gluing that candy house, that the last time any of us had done Grimm, we were between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one and still in college.

The audience will never know.

The box office manager tallied up the totals and informed me that we had ninety-one people in attendance. The theater holds ninety-nine. Fortunately, I was able to sneak in and watch the last half hour of the performance. The cast did a brilliant job, and it was wonderfully satisfying to finally hear the reactions of an audience -- of kids who didn’t know any better than to voice their questions and revelations aloud, of their parents who couldn’t help but giggle at Gretel’s over-the-top emotional breakdown or Emeline’s cockney accent and use of the word “bloody.” It was wonderfully satisfying. Period.

As I finish typing this now, Olivia and Taylor are still fast asleep in the other room, the remnants of our Burger King salads on the lint-littered, glitter-soaked carpet (because ordering anything else from the menu for the third day in a row might be frowned upon). 

This show, especially the past week, has taken a lot out of us. But I can say with assurance that we’re finally prepared to take just as much back.

Four more shows to go. Bring it on, Fringe. 

THINGS ARE LOOKING AWFULLY GLIB...

Our wonderful stage manager, Vikki, contributed this latest entry, which she'd written a few days ago. She tells me another one is on its way and will most likely touch on our tech foray last night.

Be vigilant, my little Grimminites.

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Stage managing is not, by definition, an intrinsically creative part of the production process. No more so than being a parent is considered a creative role. It takes ingenuity to meet certain goals, but they are clear cut from the start, in both cases: raise this being up right. Whether it flourishes once you step out of the picture is another story.  I'd like to think our show, if it were human, would be rough around the edges but not even toeing the line of sociopathic killer. And really what more can you ask for as a parent?

This role fell into my lap in high school. I love theatre but I feel like an anthropologist amongst the natives. I can understand some of the language, recognize the various dialects, try to translate the hieroglyphs on sheet music. Art is thoughtless, but not senseless. While the typically artistic side does not come to me easily--you'll never find me tearing down the house with a Broadway ballad or building up the set I solely conceived--it makes sense. For an organizational mind, this is my idea of fun.

I've  always been functionally OCD; what people would lovingly call efficient. Catholic school survivor syndrome. I was always the kid watching the magic show and saying "But why? How?" Stage managing is about making the magic possible, but not participating in it. Occasionally I get to speak up, but usually in a logistical discussion. Not "does it look good" or "does it make sense" but "does it work."

Working on a show used to torment me in a good way. The way some people love the butterflies they get before taking a Regent or SAT, or the way an athlete gets nervous before a game--but don't quote me, the closest I've been to a gym was sharing a building with one back at our Little Theatre. Oddly this show isn't setting any internal butterflies alight. In fact, I have an unnerving sense of calm with this production, however numerous the calamities so far. Maybe I'm the frog in the slowly boiling pot of water. Chaos has become a constant, and therefore been downgraded to status quo. Or I can pull back even farther and say that the eight years of doing this was time spent bubbling.

Maybe that's why I'm feeling so nonplussed about everything: I know how it works so I'm no longer searching for missing pieces. That's not to say the way I know is best or I don't have more to learn. What I do know is that this group (the core of BIG and the cast) has "it" and will work "it." Faith is illogical but potent.

So we've lost three actors (two being leads) and a costume designer. We have an actor doubling as a designer and a producer doubling as an actor. Pennies are left in our kickstarter piggy bank. The demands of the festival has slightly reigned in the theatrics. In the midst of it all, the cast has bonded, we've gone on. We're more creative in spite of the hurdles. So maybe the talent isn't in the pomp and circumstance of a drama but the quiet victories. The skill is not in the what the audience sees but what they don't. Sure the cast and crew are traditionally artistic. They're also versed in this skill--and that's why I do theatre. This is the language I understand; from the anthropologist's perspective, this is the smile after the untranslatable sentence.

Let's refer back to the list, part II:

On a random note (or two or three)...

1. System of a Grimm

Music does interesting things to people. Last night I went to a concert at Jones Beach with my brother to see the band, System of a Down.  Now, my brother is the type of person that, whenever we're in the car together, feels the need to compulsively hijack my iPod to plug in his instead.

“Sarah, you hear the double bass in this song?” Or “This bridge is so catchy.” Or “I know you don't like screaming but...”

In addition to expanding (or perhaps callusing is the better word?) my musical palette, the tradition has always doubled as a bonding experience.

My brother been a fan of SoD for a while, and the band had been a go-to choice whenever we had to drive somewhere. It's the underlying music that plays during our travel montages, in addition to the map and little silver car chugging along from A to B.

That being said, I learned to appreciate SoD. There'd always been an element of eccentricity, a tinge of the theatrics to their music. 

And to their fans. 

My brother caught me staring a few times at head-bopping, tattoo-laden lads, at girls who carried more fishnets than an old, crusty boat and bore more neon than a periodic table. 

“Clearly this is your first hardcore rock concert.”

Yes, brother. Yes. But as my eyes scanned the crowds, I started to think. Everyone was singing as one, everyone was moving as one. Everyone knew when to bop their heads, everyone knew when to clap their hands or pump their fists. 

Anyone could follow along, even if they didn't know what was being said (which happens quite a lot during this kind of music). But there’s still a hardwired response to music that our bodies just naturally seem to have. Just watch any one of the millions of videos on Youtube that feature babies wiggling their diapered asses to Single Ladies. 

Music is moving because it quite literally, gets us to move. What I’m saying is nothing new or revelatory. But still, it baffles me. 

This is why I have extremely high hopes for how audiences will respond to Kenny’s music in Grimm. This morning, No Wait! (Reprise) came on my iPod as I rode the train. The chord progression about a minute in hit my body like a wave. My arms were covered in goosebumps. My foot tapped, my body swayed. There are many moments like this in the score, which I think is a wonderful testament to Kenny’s gift. It's not the kind of music that will cause everyone in Hot Topic to drop their baskets of studded belts and Invader Zim tees and start wind-milling, but I do believe it’ll make them drop their baskets of studded belts and Invader Zim tees and buy a ticket to our show.

2. I also couldn't help but wonder what GRIMM would be like if we got to perform at Jones Beach. Things are looking awfully... honey, why does the opening number feature a giant strobe light?

  

3. Grimm has officially infiltrated my life. Today at work, a kid asked me what a “cauldron” was. Then a second kid, three hours later, read the word “germ” as “Grimm.” Same difference.

4. Today was venue prep. Vikki, Joe, and Mike (as well as the reps from the other shows we share the space with) have been working all day at the HERE Mainstage Theatre, preparing the space for the Fringe-vasion next weekend. 

5. Tomorrow is our tech rehearsal, i.e. the one chance we have to rehearse in our venue with all the lighting cues, set pieces, microphones, and costumes. Literally every second will count: we have fifty minutes to cue the show, fifteen minutes to set up, fifty minutes to run the show, then fifteen minutes to strike. It will be like our own personal Olympics. The O-Grimmpics. This is what our cast and crew have been training for.

In the words of Kevin McAllister as he cocks his BB gun, “This is it. Don’t get scared now.”

6. Be sure to check out more videos from our FringeCENTRAL showcase:

Watch Grant and Sierra tear up My Sister the Queen: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H72llDyDQlc&feature=youtu.be

Gettin' boney with it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co5cfdUGFjs&feature=youtu.be

Kids always love a good dance party:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiOqpCXBThM&feature=youtu.be

Just like the entire show is pulled from a trunk, all our lives are pulled from suitcases.
Hey, art imitates life. Or perhaps more fittingly, it's the other way around.

Happy tech week, everyone. 

When your sister is queen, your showcase is Grimm...

Today, our cast performed for an audience of children at FringeCENTRAL. In a nutshell, "Well we don't have puppets. But we have a corpse skeleton." - O.H.

Check out some pictures and videos from the day. And stay tuned... more to come just as soon as I gather enough strength to tackle Youtube again.

The Director, the Jester, the Tinkerer and the... nom nom nom mmm coffee.

He's so lovely. And lively.

Lugging the goods down to FringeCENTRAL after a cozy stop at Cosi.

You're welcome!

Hansel's pantsels.

The cast, on a melting faces kind of day, getting ready to melt some faces. 

Our cast making puppets and rhymes with Blown Away By Poetry.

Sierra and Taylor with Joan and Clint.

Puppet party.

Taylor and Gina busting some rhymes.

COME SEE OUR SHOW LITTLE GIRL

Check out the cast performing the opening number, Things Are Looking Awfully... you know by now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuokZCGXW-M&feature=youtu.be

After the performances, the cast had a bone to pick with the kids and played some limBONE.

Story time!

More story time... about a girl named Amelia who lost her glasses and clopped her head after purchasing an extra-large jar of pickles. (Thank you to the kids for providing us with this story material).

Something's in the air... I won't tell you what it is yet. Just know that you'll be seeing more of this face in the near future. 

The mask was a fine choice. We found this on the N-train.
Obviously, we're on the right "track."

GRIMM!

Resisting resistance is futile

G = RIm²

Perhaps the one word I’ll always retain from high school chemistry is “entropy.”  I can remember, quite vividly, my junior year teacher (who, fittingly, looked so much like Albert Einstein that he had a picture of the famed German genius on all his bathroom passes), telling my class that all living things tend toward chaos, that we live in order NOT to die.  Not to be grim, but that’s why dead pigeons, wilted flowers, and corpses all look the way they do.  Chaos is natural. Order is, ironically, rather antiestablishment. 

Living is a lot of work.  It takes a lot of work.

I can’t help but think about our own lives.  We have jobs -- some of us working forty (+) hours a week.  Most of us don't do it because we like it; we do it to make money, to live.  

Then why do we make art? At the end of the day, after working a job we hate, after standing elbow-to-elbow on a sweaty [insert # or letter] train, after throwing ourselves on the couch, exhausted, defiantly vowing to actually get to bed before one that night -- to get enough sleep that we won't have to upgrade to the extra-large coffee in the morning -- why do we bother?

Why write that story? Why take that voice lesson? Why break out the acrylics? Why trek to a rehearsal to play pretend in a humid dance studio for four hours?

Again, I would argue, we do it to live.

But in a completely different sense of the word.  

On Thursday night, Olivia read to the cast an excerpt from her book, A Director Prepares, by Anne Bogart, which discusses the importance of resistance to the creative process. The reason, the book argued, making art (or in this case, theatre) is so difficult, yet so rewarding is because creation is the opposite of entropy, which, if you’ve checked the olfactory status of the pizza box you forgot to throw out last week, is the natural way of things. 

Poster's up at FringeCENTRAL!

In that vein, our show tends towards entropy: it's just a series of words on a page, notes on a staff, a piece of fabric, a golf club. But it's our resistance to these realities that gives birth to Grimm. The words on the page belong to Hansel, as he tells his sister one day she’ll make a wonderful queen. The notes on the staff weave together to create beautiful four-part harmonies. The piece of fabric is actually a golden cloak spun from straw. The golf club is a horse.

Again, throughout this whole process, I find the efforts of this cast and creative team absolutely inspiring. Nonetheless, it’s crunch time for this production: ticket orders and comp requests are coming in (we were even named a best-selling show by broadwayworld.com!), the posters are up, our set load-in at HERE is Monday, our tech rehearsal is Tuesday.  

Ladies and gentleGrimm, we open in one week.

We have all the pieces. The challenge over the next few days will be putting them together. But as Olivia said the other night, we call ourselves BIG because, at the end of the day, it’s about believing in this process. Now, I don't mean to quote Journey (and by extension, every drunk college girl at a bar), but don't stop believing. We haven’t.

Overtones and Underdogs

Entry courtesy of our fabulous stage manager, Vikki --

Bear with me, there may be more animal references than necessary in this post. I just registered for my vet tech courses at La Guardia. With the new system still working out its kinks, I had to go in person to sort out my schedule. The advisor looked at me the way I assume a doctor delivering a grave diagnosis would and asked, "No more summer vacations from here on out, and it isn't easy, are you ready?" Lady, if you only knew how I voluntarily spend my summers. 

Heel.

I remember working at an animal shelter once and seeing a newly crippled dog learning to walk on his three remaining legs. He fell over a few times, his front half wanting to move faster than his back, literally ass over elbows. After floundering for a few minutes in his downward dog pose, I went to help him stand. The head tech just put her hand on my arm and said, "Let him figure it out." And he did, with a slobbery grin, figure out how to step step hop back and forth across the room with increasing speed. 

Now, I'm not saying the state of things with GRIMM are so bad that we have been cut across the knees (or insinuating that we are as pitiful as a maimed house pet). This is just how it always has been. We take the silent support of others, occasionally falter, but ultimately work  it out for ourselves.

GRIMM wouldn't be one of those inspirational posters featuring a cuddly kitten telling you to hang in there. It'd be a warning sign saying "Don't feed the animals."