Now that the show, Inviting Desire is over, I feel I can start to look back on it as the adventure it was. Not even a year ago, when I was so broke I was getting ready to move because I could no longer afford the rent, I thought to myself, “Can’t I just get a job in theatre doing what I went to school for?” Then right after I checked craigslist and found a job for a PA for a new theatre company. I didn’t get the job, but about two months later Eleanor contacted me, told me about a part that needed to be filled and I auditioned. Mind you, I had not acted in about eight years, and a play about female sexual fantasies was not exactly what I had imagined when I was studying Ibsen.

A month later we did a two week performance in Portland, Oregon, and then in July, we packed into an RV and toured the Canadian fringe. I blogged about most of the trip while on the road, but I had never mentioned the final show. We had been booked in what was called the Laugh shop. It was a stand-up comedy stage not good for an ensemble cast of four with movement. We got terrible reviews in Edmonton (the other city reviews loved us) yet we still packed the house every night selling out most of our shows. Our last night was on a Saturday at noon, and we had to break down, and head out of town; personally I was ready to be done.

Three months later, back in Portland, and doing our separate things, Eleanor asked the cast back one last time to really have a final show. Eleanor had an erotic open mic at the Portland shows, this could turn out interesting or… well, this one guy and his girl brought in fire and wanted to burn each other for pleasure in front of the audience. Eleanor jumped up yelling, “You can not bring fire into a theatre!” So the theatre, thankfully, did not burn down, even so I was near the exit doors. It was good to perform two last times, and I will say I had my best performances those final nights. In the acting world I would say, I nailed it, but I am pleased, overjoyed, and delighted to be able to say adieu.

We traveled in Betty, the RV, our home where we sometimes entertained guests. This is in Winnipeg with John and Nancy, two of the many actors we met while touring. Johnny’s show Grimmer than Grimm moved on to Edmonton where we met up with him later but Nancy’s show, No Exit Upstage,  that she wrote and acted in, ended in Winnipeg.

Winnipeg had an Awards show called the Jenny’s. That night Inviting Desire won for sexiest show at the fringe. I’m sitting with John Hefner another actor who wrote his own show called the Hefner Monologues.

I loved Winnipeg. The city is split in half by the Red river, similar to Portland actually, and on one side of the river people all speak English on the other French. This photo was taken in French town after finishing a plate of poutine: pomme frites drenched in gravy and goat cheese.

Calgary’s fringe was small, just thirty shows compared to Winnipeg’s 135, but we still had a great time meeting actors, performing, and watching shows. Here Mary and I are with Sean Bowie who wrote and acted in Drunken Fucker; a show that just came and performed here in Portland.

Tanya’s favorite haunt (Besides a Vietnamese restaurant) in Calgary was a little bar called Swans. They couldn’t make mixed drinks to save your life so if ever visiting Swans (and I’m talking coke and whiskey mixed) stick to beer.

We are saying good-bye to Calgary before heading to our final stop Edmonton.

In Edmonton I had more time to meet and interact with some of the outdoor performers. Here is a guy named Piper and yes he is balancing on a skate board, on a box on a table on a trunk while juggling knives. To get down he would first drop the knives then ease off jumping with the skate board, and landing perfectly on his board.

These gals are from the Ariel Angles and as you can guess from the name they did tricks high in the air.

There were 150 acts going on in Edmonton, and we had to hustle to get people to come see our show. One of our bits was to go into the beer tents to sing, Storm Large’s song, My Vagina is 8 miles wide. I am so thrilled beyond expression that I never in my life have to sing that song again.
I’m certain I wrote about it in an earlier post but I loved Steel Wheels, a pizza place owed by a Korean family. The food was a mix of every thing, but we loved the KimChee soup and the dumplings. One night while there a Korean film crew came in and bought us Korean pizza and shots of soju to drink and eat in front of the camera while yelling, “We love soju.” That footage is somewhere in the internet world.

Some Shots from the show:

And the final bow-

Last night was the first time in nearly four months, since the tour ended, that Inviting Desire got together. We have one final show this weekend, and then its closing- for good. Dance Naked Productions and a new work of Inviting Desire will reappear in the spring, but as for my part, as a writer and actor, it is the final production. I’m not certain at this point if I will or would get back into theatre. The desire (to borrow the word) I once had for the stage, isn’t there any longer, but each production is different, still I’m not going to be chasing any ambitious dreams of auditioning. It’s a relief to let that dream go. Sounds weird- letting a dream go? It is. I had wanted to be an actress for so many years, but never had the confidence to ferociously pursue it, and you need to be ferocious. Now, after the tour, and the performances, I have realized that the passion was gone. It may be ensemble work. I’ve never been big on ensemble work, I didn’t know that till I performed, but I think I’m a bit of a traditional junkie. Could be a short coming, but who cares.

I’ve got a rough time commitment week. Between working at the store, and rehearsals I have two meetings with groups for Write Around Portland. Today, I am in downtown Portland meeting once again with organizers from New Avenues, Outside In, Portland Center stage and Write Around Portland. Then on Wednesday I head out to North East Portland to meet with one of the Sun schools about working with middle school kids. These commitments will lead into the end of March and then I may need to take a volunteer break, since my rent, and stomach, and student loans demand it.

On my own, I have a new job writing, connected to the store, and I am working on my novel. I completed the detailed profiles for the main two characters, and I am now working on Endres, a character from Norway. I love research, and that nerdy quality has benefited me in the process of creating honest and true characters. I’ve never been to Norway, so I have been doing all of this research on the country; its history and what not, yes this can end up being a distracter from actually writing the story, but I like the information, although, I am wondering how much Enders would pay attention to his country’s history. He’s well-educated I know that much. There is no way to get out of Norway with out a good education. Word of warning though: When searching for information on Norwegians you may possibly stumble across a white supremacist site or two. No joke. It was at that moment I thought, “oh shit the feds are gonna break down my door confiscate my computer see that I had the said, WP thread on my history, and I’m charged with hate crimes and membership fees.” Why the feds would be at my door, I don’t know. So, anyway, it can happen, porn and white supremacy, you gotta watch your search terms I guess. I’m not even sure exactly what I put in. I was looking for information on Kven people who are a minority in Norway, they are people of Finnish decent. Why am I doing this? Well I want to now where Endres is from his family history, he was born and raised in Oslo, but is he from a long line of Norwegians? Is he Kven is he Sami? Where is his family from? I use my imagination, of course, but a little information about the place is good. Oh! I have my old National Geographics there is a good source of information.

The other night I had a dream that I went to San Francisco, and that I ran into Martin Dockery. I had gone there with the sole purpose of seeing his show, The Surprise, which is showing in San Francisco. In the dream I never made it to the show, there were many obstacles: a friend in need, something about eating sushi, and a great lawn that went on forever, but in the distance I could see Martin pacing the balconies of many apartment complexes that looked like motels, rehearsing his lines. At one point he yelled out to me: “you should come, it’ll be good.” I knew his invite was genuine, I also knew the show was going to sell out, but in the dream I never made it. What does the dream tell me, well I’m pretty sure it’s that I would have liked to have gone to see the show, but there were obstacles like distance, personal strife and other things.

I woke up thinking of Martin, and how great it was to meet him along with many other story tellers that I met while on the road. Although, sitting in the RV with Martin, Mary and Eleanor (from Inviting Desire) playing three truths and a lie was a memorable experience to get to share with Martin, (who is a so-so liar, but better than myself) it was just as memorable an experience to witness Martin’s show Wanderlust.

When I was studying theatre there was a lot of focus on the “play” as the linear performance, characters interacting with one another, the play is in the action, and the interaction of two or more people. This is a wonderful form of theatre to perform and to watch, but we never talked much of the role of the actor as the story teller. I do remember one professor, Bill Johnson, by far one the most influential teachers in my theatre life, speaking about the actor as the Shaman, and that is how I view the story teller. Alone on the stage telling the story, a story, personal yet also universal.

Story telling can be delivered in many ways, like TJ Dawe, who doesn’t really act so much as speaks to the audience like a well rehearsed poet or writer, or Ryan Paulson, who adds music to his story telling, Storm Large, a local performer here in Portland, her latest show Crazy Enough, is her personal journey that utilizes the craft of storytelling and music. Then there is Martin who talks directly to the audience, but he is also employing the craft of acting. Physically, with rehearsed movements, he is painting a picture with his action.  In Wanderlust which I got to see in Winnipeg during the fringe was a story of a man looking to discover himself in Africa. The story of the journey, to understand one’s purpose one’s existence, is a story of the human condition. Even if you have never traveled, each one of us has that question of destiny: What is the path I walk on, is this the right path, who am I? Not all of us search out the answers to those questions, for better or worse, but the story teller can bring some answers to those questions- he/she can be the shaman the journeyman/woman who goes out, and brings us lessons of life, they do things that some of us may not have the strength to do on our own, they remind us that we are not alone. Wanderlust sold out because somewhere in Martin’s story there was something everyone could grasp onto, be it love found, love lost, running away, coming home, chaos or epiphany - the story spoke to many different people.

I don’t want to give away too many details in the performance that had affected me the most or made me think because I’m not sure when Martin will stop touring the show. You can look to his website to get a broader idea of what he has to offer. His writing is funny, honest, poignant and thought provoking. I recommend if you hear of a performance in your neighborhood you should check him out. I believe he is performing in San Francisco right now as I write this.

There is something about the fringe that invites the storyteller and allows them to follow in an ancient tradition of travelling from place to place bringing the tales, the fables of our life to those who want to hear and to learn. To learn about this amazing thing called life, this thing that no matter how different and separate we may feel no matter our culture we all love we all suffer we all question our purpose, we all have this thing called “living” in common.

***Just as a side note, I feel the need to emphasize the importance; that we as beings, need to protect the craft of the story teller, we need the arts. As the world makes its forward progression toward what feels to be an implosion, it is more important than ever to protect the arts. Creative expression literally saves lives. The more I experience such groups like Write Around Portland and Playwrite inc. and witness people flower and change, the more I learn about the brain and the need for face to face communication, the more I am reminded that we as a civilization need to fight for the continuing support of the arts, and the recognition that artists and creatives are valuable worthwhile members of our societies and not just means of entertainment- Make Art Not War.***

*Update at the end of this post

It feels like ages since the Fringe, especially the Winnipeg Fringe, which I have to say may have been my favorite of the three I went to this year. Why my favorite? Not sure really, it had nothing to do with the lack of quality of performances in other places, because both Calgary and Edmonton had such incredible talent. There was a feel about the city itself that I really liked, something older and a little Western that struck me as somewhat comfortable. It had a kind of roughness an underbelly that I could feel, and under bellies always keep a place on its toes, plus there were just some great people who I met there that I didn’t get to see again once we left Winnipeg. People like Jack Dagger, Julia Mackey, Dirk, Geoff Huges, Nancy Kenny and Natasha Jetté, Jimmy Hogg, Martin Dockery and Bryan Coffee: you probably could tell by the title of this blog post that it is about Mr. Bryan Coffee.

I’m not sure what I was watching but it was something Sci-fi, and suddenly Bryan’s show, The Mutant, came to my mind, like little flashes of a camera I was watching various scenes played out by Bryan and I thought, damn that was a really good show, and here it is still playing around in my mind. Like many of the shows at the fringe it was a one person show, one hour long. I believe it was written by Bryan, which most of the shows are written by the performer. If you had to throw it into a category, because we just cannot live without our categories, I’d say it was a comedy but really can we make a new category like, oh say, bittersweet comedy or poignant comedy- how about tragic-comedy, apocolyptic comedy? I really like apocolyptic  comedy: “It was crazy man everyone died- it was totally funny.” Yes, I’d throw Bryan’s, The Mutant into all my new marketing strategies, because although it was funny, there were some pretty sad but truthful tellings under all of the miming of the end of the world. That’s right I said it, end of the world. Bryan created a string of short sketches held together by the theme of human destructiveness (what will be funny is if Bryan ever reads this and says, Uh no Adrienna, that wasn’t what my show was about…Hello!) There is no set, no costumes, just the small boxed theatre and Bryan- This is ACTING folks they don’t need all the trimmings all the time. Plus it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to not have to cart stuff around.

In the opening scene Bryan plays a captain of a ship, who is of course dashing daring and debonair as captains are, it is a space ship on another planet, I believe, and there is an approaching invasion, (you’ll have to forgive me because some time has passed) but it all ends in a major shoot out with Bryan as the sound man and the actor creating the violent sounds of laser blasters coming from all sides! It was riveting! I was on the edge of my seat! WHAT next My GOd What NEXT?

What came next was a hilarious restaurant owner that loved to change his ringtone, talk about the tragedies of the planet, and offer cups of coffee. One of my favorite sketches was the release of the bald Eagle from captivity into the wild- Bryan somehow managed to morph his face into that of an eagal- not just any kind of Eagle but a cartoon eagle. This scene brought me right back to Warner Bros.’ early cartoon schticks, like the one of the dog chasing after bugs through the hollow tree trunk (have you actually ever seen a hollow tree trunk?) balanced on the edge of a cliff, and as the dog runs through bugs spins the trunk so the dog is standing on the sky for a second (with out falling mind you) then in a panic he runs back to the tree, but bugs spins the trunk again, and they do this like a thousand times, and it’s always funny. That was Bryan as the eagle getting his revenge a thousand times and it is still funny.

I really enjoyed this show, I am not doing The Mutant or Bryan Coffee justice in this post. He is truly a talented comedian, writer and performer. I would love to attach some links to this post but I wasn’t able to find anything that could give you more info on him, but I believe he is in LA, and if you happen to see his name you should check out one of his shows. If I can dig up more about this great guy I’ll post it here so that you, oh humble audience, can get the opportunity to see some tragic bittersweet not poignant apocalyptic comedy by one man on a stage with no set, and all dressed in white.

*Check out this link to Bryan on The Sound Of Young America

It is the fifth day that I have been in my new home. I like it, but I can’t help but reflect on how odd it is just picking up and starting all over again. I have done this so many times it seems normal, but it still strikes me as strange. Moving is considered one of the most stressful events in a person’s life. Along with death, divorce, birth, and marriage moving falls into those same categories of living stresses, and I have done it so many times I can’t even count it on my phalanges. It does feel like every time I am starting all over again, unfortunately, I keep carrying the same crap, metaphorically, if you know what I mean.

I’ve been spending the days, in between hours of working, exploring my neighborhood. I go on long walks in the morning at a park that is nearby. It is a decent size and generally there is only one or two people in the park at the time so it’s just me, the squirrels, spiders, and some birds. I often wish I had been a scientist as I like to watch and figure out what it is that the animals are doing through out their day. I stood and watched this squirrel carry a huge green walnut, two times the size of his head, in his mouth up to a tree branch, and then he just ate away at it. He was sawing through the nut like he was diving into a watermelon, holding it just like a watermelon as a matter of fact, with his little clawed paws holding the base of the nut. As he chewed he blew bits of the nut all over just shooting out chunks like an erratic wood chipper. After eating he did some little call, and a predatory dance, whipping his tale like a cobra, then stared at me staring at him. I picked up some of the carnage he left on the ground. It was wet from his saliva and little grooves from his teeth were shaved into the flesh of the nut. I realize that none of this is very important, but for those few moments I was riveted. You should have seen my awe at watching a spider spin it’s web moving from one gossamer thread to the other like he was crocheting, his front two legs clicking together like needles made of bone. Yes, this is what I do with my mornings. It all makes me miss being a kid because you never questioned moments like these, as a kid you just sat in awe watching the world work around you, you didn’t have those voices saying: this is stupid or a waste of time you should be doing something, god dammit be productive. I used to be able to sit for hours and watch this life happening. Now I get all judgemental on myself, Shhhheeett.

My room has all these great built-ins, and I have a view of a garden, and the neighbor’s house which is pretty damn nice. My room used to belong to a kid and you can tell. The ceiling is covered with glow in the dark stars, and every night I want to thank that kid for leaving me such a nice gift. The room has been bringing me strange dreams though or maybe just the place I am in my life is bringing me strange dreams. I keep thinking about so many of the shows I saw while I was on tour, and I feel like for the next few blog posts I should expound on some of those performance experiences. I’m hoping that I can draw some of that artist’s life back into me. I have only been back in Portland for a few weeks, but already it feels as if months have passed and the old ruts are waiting for me to set my feet in the same grooves and I really don’t want to do that. I need to work on mentally immersing myself in the type of life style and work I want. It’s a start.
…and the new space is nice.

I’m going to try and do a bit of an update here, but my brain is a little fried. I can’t believe this is just the fourth day that we have been here, so much has already happened, and we haven’t even had a show yet. I am constantly blogging on the other site, I have about forty post that I need to do in about 11 days- less than, and I think I will be able to do it. I have only been blogging for about 3 days and I already have 6 post, and I’m working on 3 right now so by the end of the night I’ll have completed 9. Only 31 more to go. But with shows and reviews, that should be pretty easy, but I’m writing all the time, and I love it. I love to write, yep, like the whole writing bit. Speaking of writing, I have managed to work on Zizkov a small, small bit while on this trip. Very, little but still I think maybe I have managed to work on 10 pages. Maybe. Yes, yes I know nothing, but when you are on tour and you don’t have your own computer and you are working, doing a show and promoting, well it’s hard to work on a novel.

I don’t know if I mentioned that we were honorable mentions in the Best of Fest for Calgary. It was pretty funny we all got little gold metals. Calgary loved our show, we got great reviews and sold out our last two shows plus we were full every night. Edmonton is a different fringe beast, it is bigger and more competitive but I think we are going to do fine here. Our pre-sales are already good and its funny but it seems like everybody knows us already, at least all the performers. We have been promoting our asses off. We postered the city and then we got all tarted up for a parade to flyer people and we did a video that when it is up I will link. Eleanor did and interview; and god all in four days. Maybe five. We saw an amazing show tonight and I already have a line up of shows that I have tickets for. I don’t think I will be seeing much of Edmonton outside of fringe central on this trip, but I hope to come back some day just to visit the city, after all I am working.

I’m in Edmonton right now, getting everything ready for our show. This is the final stretch of the tour and it is most likely going to be the most fun. We have a parade tomorrow,  and we did a performance at the mall,  and I’m doing some blogging here for the Edmonton fringe and tourist information. We had to re-block because our stage is so small so that is a challenge but other than that, wow what a blast and the fringe hasn’t even started yet.

We have our first show on Saturday and then we wait for the hounds the Edmonton reviewers with their nasty stars, but we have been a four star show maybe Edmonton will give us that final deserved star.

Rain has disrupted our planned trip to Bannf, but I’ve been thinking about it, and have decided that although that is a disappointment, this trip is about the fringe and not traveling. This is my first time combining work and travel. To some doing theatre is not work, I mean in the sense that you are sitting in an office, and have to go and have meetings, and lunch dates, and drinks after work to network, sell your product, and then of course work on your project, but it really isn’t that different, the project is different, and in my mind a lot more fun, but the demands are not unfamiliar.

When you get into a new fringe town the first thing you want to do, aside from any of the pre-press releases that you have to get out, you want to get your show out there- you know advertise; guerrilla style. We poster, we poster everywhere, walk into stores to ask if it is okay to hang our poster and/or leave a few flyers, get the word out: “please come see our show you will really like it”, then you spend the rest of your time flyering, unless of course you start selling out right away like Jake’s Gift or Wanderlust, just two great shows that were at the Winnipeg fringe, but if are like us and have a 280 seat house and your show is about womens’ sexual fantasies and your time slots are all around noon, well you have to flyer up till your last show. Then of course there are the meet and greets and the after work drinks for networking with fellow performers. Similar, see. Calgary has been a pleasant respite. We have a small venue, 80 seats I think, but we sell out every night so we have been able to relax a bit. It is hard to tell if there is much attention for the fringe here in Calgary since most of the shows we have been to have been fairly small, like a great show called Drunken Fu@ker, about a man’s battle with alcoholism and a raw account of the kind of person he was when he was drunk, had only ten people. This is an excellent show and I bet it would have been one of the darlings at Winnipeg. Still, not complaining too much since Calgary seems to be interested in sex, thank god. There are 30 shows here compared to Winnipeg’s 148 and Edmonton is up near 200 I think. I’m soaking up the downtime because Edmonton will be Work, which in truth I am looking forward too.

So, I must be seeing so much of the city right? No I’ve been pretty lazy, and the weather has been crappy on our days off. A part of me feels like I am missing out on certain beauty’s since travel is more of an interest to me than acting but this doesn’t feel like travel to me it feels like work, and there is an element of my traveler freedom that has been repressed. Probably self repressed but repressed all the same. I find myself just wanting to write and be lazy. I think another aspect is that in truth I am a loner and this is an ensemble production which means there is very little time alone, and a lack of true independence, really, I wouldn’t mind disappearing for a few days but that is not a possibility. I find that my down time in writing has also affected me. I finally got the opportunity to work on my book one day and as weird as it sounds it outweighed going for a walk, and watching some movies that was a great moment too. Yes, I know very boring, but sometimes not doing is just what I need or sitting and writing is just what I need, and I am getting as much domestic time as possible since Edmonton is going to be a whirlwind of work and performance. I will have to have to come back to Calgary though, but as a traveler, just exploring the city and the surrounding mountains; today it is about the fringe.

From the acting perspective, I have been having an interesting experience. It happened first in Winnipeg, I was on the stage and suddenly I thought: “hey this floor is dirty”, and then I noticed the wings and the cadence of the voice of who was speaking, and the heat from the lights, and I thought, “shit that’s right I’m on stage I’m right here”. Funny thing about acting is that you are presenting yourself in front of people and seemingly so raw but I have a tendency to draw inside and focus on the lines or my feelings like, how is the audience reacting, did I f- up, then I’ ll keep hanging on to how I f-d up and I never really see that I am there alive on a stage with all these sensations. My favorite acting teacher Mr. Bill Johnson would have been so proud of me for snapping back into the present. Acting can have such a zen experience sometimes, like you let go of what you know, and you just fall and trust that things will land as they are supposed to as you have practiced. It is amazing how scary this can be sometimes. I am often on the precipice, and I know this because I will have this thought, “hmm, I don’t know what my next line is or I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing here.” It is best when I relax and just not care, just let what ever happens happen, and what tends to happen is that the correct lines come out and I end up where I am supposed to be. Yet, sometimes fear jumps in, and I start thinking about my lines and then I think, no I”m too relaxed I should be putting more energy into it, and I start critiquing my performance and the performance of my fellow actors and truly this is not fun. It isn’t and I wonder why do I do this? But on those zen days I think, yes, this is nice look how alive I am and how it all just worked. I still wonder why I do this but for different reasons, mainly my quest for the reason for my existence but that’s a whole other blog.

We have two performances left here in Calgary, one today and then another on Saturday and then it is all over and onto the final leg in this journey. One thing I wanted to end with was the names of a few shows I saw and I thought were great. I think I have seen around 30 shows maybe and I wanted to list the ones I most enjoyed, if there are links for them I’ll attach them. Cheers.

Moving Along-

Jake’s Gift

Wanderlust

Pig: A Peepshow of Forbidden Acts From the Farm

Drunken Fu@ker

The Power of Ignorance

Wisdom Teeth

Break dance for Solo Cello

Fruitcake

There were so many incredible shows but those were a few of my favs. oh and as little stroking of my own show here’s a link to our review.

I am in the Garmisch time zone. Years ago I used to live in Garmisch, Germany and every one I used to live with would often say, “I don’t know how long it’s been its Garmisch time”. In Garmisch time days pass like months, it seems like so much is packed in and there are no time markers- you just have to be at work and that’s about it- so you tend to loose your sense of time: 2 days can be 2 weeks, two weeks two months- you get the picture. Welp, I feel that time warp again. The thing with the time warp is that when I sit down (when I have the chance) to try and catch up on this blog I think, “crap, I can’t remember what happened, what have I been doing?” It makes for a boring post I’m sorry to say.

I think it has been three days possibly four since we left Winnipeg. We did the drive in about two days, staying one night in a campground that had converted an old school house into the rec space. I wouldn’t really say converted since it still looked like a school house they just added some couches. We drove across the Canadian prairies, I know, you’re thinking flat and boring, well flat yes, boring no. The prairies are beautiful, long stretches of golden fields of flowers for miles, and lavender fields that, in the wind, gave the impression of being a small lake, a full sky with cloud formations from your imagination, and rolled up haystacks that made me think of tootsie rolls. The haystacks really confused me there were just rolls of them sitting out on the fields. I kept thinking, I know a lot of work has been done, but I’ve never seen anyone actually out on these fields working, and I’d really like to know what machine rolls hay into tootsie rolls. People were friendly everywhere we stopped, my overarching impression of Canadians so far? Very friendly. We stopped at a Tim Horton’s on the way (they are every where like McDonald’s but with donuts and decent coffee) and there on the highway Tim Horton’s we ran into two people from the Winnipeg fringe- very random.

We made it to Calgary, and have been here for about two days, this will be our third day here. We rushed into town with a deadline. We had minutes to get to the radio station CJSW (I’ll have to double check that) where we immediately did a scene from our show live on the radio. I’ve never done that before, goddamn exciting to me. Our Billet is this really nice man who has a huge house and lives by himself so a couple of us have rooms to sleep in. Our billet is also an actor and we will be seeing him again as he performs in Edmonton.

Calgary is at least three times larger than Winnipeg, and it is younger looking and cleaner. In fact it reminds me of a clean Seattle, they even have the Calgary needle which is similar to the space needle. So far I haven’t seen much diversity in the people, where as Winnipeg was very diverse, for example, where I saw aboriginal people everywhere on the streets of Winnipeg, there has not been one aboriginal person in Calgary (not that they are not here, just that I haven’t seen anyone) it’s a very blond and white city, so far, it may just be the neighborhoods we’ve hit. A Calgarian told me that a lot of Americans live here, and that there is oil here so there is a nice chunk of money. You can see the chunks of money. It isn’t a terrible thing just something that is hard to miss. The city is beautiful, the way they have designed their huge parks all along the river, there are mass amounts of pelicans just hanging out on a small damned up part of the river. These are just first impressions, cities always have much more to offer than what you see on the surface, but of course I’m here for the fringe a very specific experience.

I have no idea what the fringe experience will be like. There is no fringe central here. Unlike Winnipeg, which has been doing the fringe for at least 15 (probably more ) years, this is Calgary’s fourth fringe. We don’t expect to be flyering lines as people wait to see the popular shows nor is there the central where we can hit people up at the beer tent or at the outside shows. So far we have walked into shops and bars to ask if we can hang a poster, and we have been greeted with two responses: inquisitive yes, and disinterested no,;there is no in between.  I’m thinking Calgary is a music town. I was flipping through a city paper and it was music festival after festival from folk to metal, and so many bands. Again, reinforcing the similarity to Seattle with her indy bands and music love, in fact first page story of the music fest: The Decemberists. Seattle but cleaner and friendlier.

It’s a crap shoot, but we know that. Still the city is nice, and the people are nice, even when disinterested, and our billet is great. So far we have cooked two meals- oh my god meals cooked at home- such a relief.

Tonight is tech, and the meet and greet, and tomorrow the Calgary fringe begins.

We leave tomorrow for Calgary. The other women have left for fringe central, and I stayed a our billet’s (the person who is housing us) to do laundry.  We had our last show on Saturday at noon, and had the rest of the day, and today to catch up on the plays, and this evening they have the awards for the best shows.

The fringe experience has been interesting to say the least. I’ve never been in an environment where everyone is there to see theatre. There is of course competition for audiences because we all want to make some money, at least the money we put into it, and apparently some people do make money (they are called the darlings of the fringe) but it isn’t cut throat in the treatment of other performers in fact all the actors are very supportive. We had a really tough time filling our venue. We had 280 seats and probably only sat over 100 on our best nights. This is a lot of people, but not when you have a 280 person venue, it feels like you are playing to empty seats. I tried not to be affected in my performance; to not to let the laughter or lack of laughter or sound cause me to be in my head and not focused on the performance. Even though at times we felt as if we failed in getting people in, we certainly succeeded in how people were affected by what we have done. Many, many times people came up and told us how sexy it was, how empowering, how eye opening, men and women a like. It is pretty powerful, and out numbers the offended. What I found out about the fringe is that some people do this every year for years, and when they get together it is like seeing old friends. To me this very much had the affect that I was a freshman in theatre school and sitting in the greenroom, the only difference is that I don’t care that much this time around. God, I feel like I wrote that previous sentence already- oh well.

Winnipeg has a great skate park up near this area called the forks and around it is a amphitheatre and manicured lawns and a stone promenade along the Red River. Across the river is French town, which we wandered into yesterday, everything is in English and French. It is hard to determine what Winnipeg is really like since there is a festival going on right now, and that changes the feel of the city although my impression is that there are some pockets of wealth and even more pockets of poverty. We’ve been parking the RV in a lot next to a community center, there haven’t been any problems, but today these three teenage girls asked me about the RV. I told them it was pretty much our house for now, and that we had traveled from Portland to be a part of the fringe. They were really interested in the idea of driving across country in an RV, one girl even said, I want to do that one day. Then they giggled and said, “I can’t believe you have been parking here. You are in West Winnipeg, this is the hood.” I had gathered that by certain things I had seen, and by the number of sirens. Then the girl said, “It’s dangerous over here, but I don’t care. I like it.” Then she smiled, and said, “Now you can tell people you been to the hood that you been to West Winnipeg.”

Our Billet got married while we were here ,and we all went to the wedding. It was held in a woman’s back yard and then we went to the Olive Garden for lunch (it was a small wedding party: us four, T (our Billet) W (the groom from Nigeria) T’s two little girls, T’s mother’s ex-girlfriend (who T said was a far better mother than her real mother) and a neighbor who happened to walk outside as the wedding party was getting ready to leave) it was my first time at an Olive Garden. I found the whole thing amusing. We decorated the RV and drove T and her girls to the house where the marriage was taking place. Our billet has four foster girls, all aboriginal, all are from the same tribe or reservation and all of them are fetal alcohol children. There is an enormously large portion of aboriginal children in foster care and an abnormal amount of them are born with FAS. The girls are all pretty quiet, just near the end of my stay one of them has begun to talk to me a little. T says in some of their foster homes the “parents” wont allow them to speak in their native tongue. Again, I feel as if I have written this all down previously, I apologize. The roughest freakiest story I heard was from T’s mother’s ex-girlfriend. She said she was going to visit her 17 year old daughter in jail, she said she is her foster daughter. She was in jail for murder, her and another two girls murdered a reservation cop with a hatchet. If that wasn’t enough, she said her other daughter was going into jail for attacking people with a hatchet. She said, it’s the alcohol, when they are born with FAS,and then drink it makes them not think of consequences or to feel what they are doing as wrong. In my mind I’m thinking, hatchet? That is hardcore, wow, I can’t figure out which is more frightening guns, or hatchets. Then today as we went to have brunch (at the worst restaurant ever: Tall Poppy I think it was called, a hipster breakfast joint that charged a disgusting amount of money for, so so food, with terrible service, but we got tied into for a stupid reason not even worth writing about) as we neared the brunch place T said, “oh normally I wouldn’t come here, that place (the name of the hotel next to the breakfast place) is known for stabbings.

So interesting.

We have no idea what to expect in Calgary. We may be stopping in Jasper and Banf on the way- YEAH- and then we start promoting all over again.

Even with the stories of hatchets and stabbings, I do really like Winnipeg, I may even return again one day but I do not like the mosquitoes- they are bastards.

I hate the mosquitoes here. Absolutely hate them. They make no sound, no warning, you just suddenly feel like you need to scratch your skin off. Bastards. And you know, they do have the West Nile here! Great a paranoid hypochondriac in a West Nile land- good combo.

I haven’t totally figured out what I think about Winnipeg. It has some really beautiful parts, but also there are some definite not so nice areas. Sirens go off like crazy. All the time there is a fire truck or an ambulance soaring down the road. I saw two cop cars, sirens blaring, going in opposite directions. Big night.

Mary (from the show) and I took a walk along the Red River, it was lush and green and beautiful (aside from the bastard mosquitoes). The river runs slow and is thick with sediment. Not as thick and muddy as the Mississippi, but it is on the brown side, not nasty, just brown. There are weeds that look like green wheat but they are so fluffy and soft they look like fox tails. They poof out and look surreal and cartoonish. I love to run my hands over them. On our walk we touch the trees and watch the river, just relaxing. Mary had said, if we had some eerie music, and this was a movie, this spot would be a scene when you know something is about to happen. As we walked away from the water, on a trail, I saw trousers and shirt laid out on the ground. As I got closer I thought about Mary’s comment about, “something is about to happen,” and I said to myself, “you mean like when we stumble upon a dead body.” It was just a bunch of clothing but the way they were laid out, like a person could be inside them, was kind of creepy. In fact the whole scene had a weird feel. So I ran. It’s my thing.

The shows have been great. It’s been about five days at the fringe and I’ve seen ten shows so far. I’ve been really impressed with the quality and it has been ages since I’ve seen this much theatre.

We got another four star review- it hasn’t helped us to fill the theatre though. We have so many seats, it’s just so hard to get it filled. What’s been interesting about all this is you can really see how a review can make or break a show. There are these two women, really great women, and their show, although not the best at the fringe, is certainly not bad and definitely not deserving of the one star it got. The poor women are playing to houses with only 5 people, because people will only go to five star or four star shows and the reviewing is really not that fair. Some of the reviews have been harsh and scathing- so unnecessary- but the damage is fast and furious. For us it doesn’t matter we have four stars and a 280 seat venue on a show about sex- frank graphic sexual fantasies- I would be shocked to hell if we filled that place, but damn the money would be nice.

There are three shows left for us to perfom, and four days left at this fringe and then it’s on to Calgary.

That’s what the review said, “The sexiest show at the Fringe.”

We sighed a huge sigh of relief. Do reviews matter? Yes and no. Screw those guys right? But, when you are trying to make a little money, and get the people in, and you are proud of your hard work then a bad review can bite. Hard.

Inviting Desire is a tough play to do. It is graphic in its language it talks about sexuality, and we are all very frank about sexuality- some people do not like this. Really, I don’t care much about the opinion of subject matter, I almost enjoy the idea of people hating it because they are bothered or uncomfortable, but I don’t enjoy them hating it if the show is weak in performance. And, man oh man did I “f “up the opening night. There was one point when I did my own brand new made up blocking, and my brain screamed, “What the “f” are you doing?” And, my mind said, “uh, I don’t know, should I go back to the right blocking?” and brain said, “NO! No damn it then they’ll know we “f”‘d up. Make them think we are supposed to be doing this- do it with conviction! Then never do it again.”

So, of course I was worried about the review saying, the only blonde in the show was awful like she was in another play. That didn’t happen. No, they said this:

 The performances are all top notch, and the cast bravely commits themselves to the explicit material. They find humor, honesty, and sensuality, in each story.

You can read the rest here.

Four women, one RV, and a ton of props.

It took us 2 days to get from Portland to Winnipeg, and the weather was wonderful the entire trip.

We went up through Washington stopping for dinner at some trendy restaurant in Spokane, and drove on to Idaho, each of us taking turns at the wheel. In Coure D’ laine we took exit 0 to a deserted ski lodge, and there we parked under billions of stars, a black sky, and the most amazing moonrise I have ever seen. It melted up, over the dark silhouette of the sharp mountain peaks, it moved quickly, and reminded me of how fast our planet really does spin. I slept through most of Idaho, we went through the narrow tip, but my god Montana is big. The sky curves like a fishbowl and the clouds were like striations across as if someone had pulled bits of wool. And the sunsets? Oh my god, deep magenta and burgundy sunsets wrapping around mountains. The geology was intense and dramatic, and the air was hot. The biggest surprise was North Dakota. I don’t know why I thought it was going to be nothing but dry and flat but it was anything but… we had just crossed the state-line (after trying to stop unsuccessfully at a muddy truck stop) and pulled into a construction site, where a new road was being built, and we parked for the night. I remember it being cool as I fell asleep, the temperature of Montana dropping, in the morning there was a thin fog that hung low over emerald green fields and bush and it felt like we were waking up in England. That was NorthDakota; green, green, and lush everywhere, just expansive land and very few house on the land. There were small wetlands, with sparkling ponds and starks white cranes flying over these leafless tress that looked like crooked silver fingers reaching out of the water. We had breakfast at a diner- not very good, but not too surprised and then drove the rest of the way to Winnipeg.

Winnipeg, from first impression,  isn’t the prettiest city. It reminded me of parts of the Bay Area, like Fremont and Newark. Just boring square stores set up like a monopoly board. As we drove more into the center the architecture improved. We only got in late last night and this woman and her children are gracious to set us up during the festival, and we still have days to explore. One thing I can say: the roads suck in this city, potholes everywhere. It must be a bitch to ride your bike. My understanding is that the winters are long and brutal and the roads certainly show the damage.

We don’t have tech till the 15th and our first show is the 17th so we have some days to promote. I forgot to mention our stop at the boarder, not too bad, about 45 mins, but we had this laundry bag and all we had in it so far was out dirty underwear and I watched, snickering, as the man dug through 2 days of 4 women’s pairs of dirty panties. That was about as exciting as it got.

And now to prepare for the shows…

Okay, here we go, leaving Portland for Winnipeg. I will do my best to report my experience of the fringe but my access to Internet will be limited. Still, I think it would be a shame not to try to report on the adventure.

We had been rehearsing this last week getting everything fine tuned, and in about an hour- 10:00 am we will hit the road in an RV. Driving from Portland to Spokane then to Bismark, ID, then Fargo, ND through Grand Forks and then first stop Winnipeg!

I was hoping to show a map of our route but I’m having some issues with the computer and my capabilities and don’t have time to work it out. If your are curious go to google maps and type in Portland, Or to Winnipeg and that’s the way we are going.

It is late, and I’m still wide awake after the show. It was such a good night. The audience was full, and we all were connected with the show, and it finally, finally hit me: oh my god I am going on tour, I will be traveling through Canada, I will be acting, oh my god I’m an employed actor! Tonight was particularly great because there was this one piece I wasn’t getting right, and I new it. One problem was that it was written by someone else, and I felt like she wanted me to do it her way (which she may or may not have) and the other problem was the blocking; I just wasn’t comfortable with it. I have to say my lines and climb up these blocks and it was always so awkward, and clunky, and I never felt very connected, I couldn’t nail the character because I didn’t know the character, I didn’t make her mine. We have to cut parts of the show to make it the right time limit for the fringe, and they are thinking of cutting Pandora; which is that scene. It was odd because I kind of hated it, what the awkwardness, the inability to find the heart of it, but having her cut hit me funny. Well, my ego first of course because, I knew or suspected it was because it is the weakest of all the pieces, but I also felt suddenly sad. Like, I didn’t do her justice, I didn’t allow her to grow, and I just couldn’t leave her like that, so I was determined that if this was the last weekend with Pandora, that I was going to nail her I was going to hold her up to the light, I was going to find her, and bring her out. I spent all day at the temp office (I had nothing to do and no one was there, luckily) going over the scene breaking it down, and find its heart its soul, and then I showed up at the theatre, and reworked the blocking, and tonight, tonight, it happened, I found her. There is this incredible feeling on stage, when you finally find the truth, and not only that but you say it, and you say it with conviction, and you fight to the bitter end to get that story out, and afterward, there is nothing better to describe it other than euphoric and thankful. I am so thankful that I finally recognized the heart of the piece and that at least for two more days, I can make her, it, and my performance of this piece shine. I can do her justice.

In other words, some people from Write Around Portland came to the show, and they gave me a full report on my kids from my workshop! I am so proud of them so, so proud. Keosha, who I always called K, but now I can say her name, since she is the featured writer for Write Around Portland. Eeee, if you could hear me you would have known I just squealed in delight and pride. She has her bio, poem and interview here, and you should check it out. It seriously, is so rewarding to work with these kids, and I know its hard, and there were days when I thought, what am I doing here? Do they like this do they hate it, why isn’t anything ready, do we have a room? But at the end, when the kids have their books with their published writings, and the school shows up and they read, man, every up and down is worth it, so worth it.

We just finished the second weekend in our Portland run of Inviting Desire. There have been a few experiences during this production that stand out from productions I have been involved in in the past, but I must make a disclaimer, all productions are different from one another, this is the beauty of a play, still there are some things that tend to remain expected.

• Once a show is up the rehearsals are over-

Normally, this is the case, but since this play is considered a working play or a work in progress even after the show opened we continued to get notes and rehearse. I will admit that at first this was difficult for me. I would get a note like, “I needed to create a new character for a particular line,” and my thought would be: “what, I couldn’t have gotten that note before the show opened?” It’s a work in progress, this is how things go, and honestly it’s uncomfortable. I think I desperately want some stability in my life, since I don’t have it anywhere, and now even the play I am is in constant flux. Life and art are blended without imitation. My defense mechanism is to immediately get defensive, but this benefits no one especially myself, so I went home and worked on some new characters, and then tried them out for the first time on a live audience. This was nerve wracking. I suppose it’s a bit like improve, but I’ve never been one for improve so I was far from comfortable. I had no idea how things would work, and it’s one thing flopping in front of your cast members because they are there to say: “yes that works, no that doesn’t” but, in front of an audience, whoa, not easy. I felt very off that night, but people still seemed to enjoy the show, and they had no idea what was going on inside my brain. My notes were, “pull back here, make it bigger there”, which means: thankfully I made good choices.

• You always get time to warm up

Oh no you don’t. We got a taste of this on Saturday. There was another production going on in the same space before our show opened. We didn’t get into the space until ten minutes to house, and that only allowed us time to set props, and to set the stage. There was no vocal warm up or physical warm up, and I think it affected the performance which felt like it dragged a bit. Again, the audience still enjoyed it, and didn’t know the cast felt slow. One  amazing part of performance is you never know what the audience is feeling or thinking. This was a good experience because during the fringe we may never have the chance to warm up, and only have five to ten minutes to set our stage and props. We need to learn to be fast and to muster energy from where ever we find it.

• Once we take a bow we go home-

The show is not over when the play ends. At the end of the performance we have an open mic, and this has been so interesting. I will elaborate more in a later post but for now I want to mention how strange it is to have a high energy performance and then watch people from the audience come up to perform, ranging in skills from novice to professional. I like it because it takes my mind from focusing on the areas where I may have messed up, and instead I am just enjoying the audience as they give back to the actors.

I titled this post middle of the road because that is where we are on the Portland run, we have one more weekend and then it is time to pack and then head off to Canada. Travel and theatre just like troubadours or trobairitz (since we are women) except in an RV.

In the writing world, which I think is my main love, I have recently completed a short story and I am beginning to write another one. I haven’t touched Zizkov in a week or maybe two, which is disappointing since I was supposed to have it all finished by the 20th so I could print it out, and start getting nit picky on it, but I still have a few more weeks before I leave.

I’ve been packing my life into boxes, since I am in constant transition, and will be moving into a new place, and then packing to get on the road. I have no idea what will await me on the road or what to expect when I get back. I guess the key is to expect nothing and the possibility of everything.

I’ll leave you with an e-mail Eleanor received from someone that watched the show recently.

Thank you for a wonderful performance last night. As an armchair director, I generally can’t attend any community theater without walking away with tons of “notes”. Not so last night. “Inviting Desire” engaged me entirely from moment one to the end. The writing is world class. Your performance was genuine and moving.

It was perfect.

I will say your name and talk about this amazing show to anyone who will stand still long enough to hear.

Please pass on my deepest gratitude, highest compliments and fondest wishes to your cast mates.

~unknownkitty

You can read the rest of the post here and of course feel free to read more about the show.

It has been a long couple of weeks trying to memorize from words to blocking to new movement that my body just didn’t want to do. I can never figure out if the reason I am in such pain from the new acrobatics (acro-yoga) that I have been required or asked to learn has to do with not doing it or being old. I feel like I should say, “oh when I was younger I didn’t hurt so much, I’m just getting old.” But honestly, I’m not sure, oh yeah, I’m getting older no denying that but I can’t remember the rate of how sore I would or would not get. Regardless, I am sore now.

In one of the scenes myself and another woman say our lines while we dance, the scene is really a lovemaking scene, and I think it could look very beautiful, and if we play it honestly (and of course skillfully) it could be very moving. Honestly, for a dancer I don’t think its tough stuff in fact its too bad I couldn’t do the lifts, I feel like if I had more time I could build up the strength but, as it is, we only have two weeks left till we open.

My god, two weeks. I can’t believe how fast this has all been. I’m completely excited about the show and the tour and completely terrified as to what my life is going to be like when I return to Portland, especially since I wont have a home.

When looking at myself I sometimes think that my personality does not match my career dreams or life style. I’m such a worried person that even in my sleep I’m stressed. Not the type of personality meant for living by the seat of your pants. I had watched an interview with Cormac McCarthy and I was awed by his comfort when talking about living in poverty. I thought, geeze if I could just get comfortable with it. I mean its true I don’t need much, but still I am not comfortable with it. My friend said, she wondered what his upbringing was like, because she felt that when you are raised poor, like we were, that it is harder to find ease with poverty because you were already there and it was hard and you tend to crave security when you get older. I elaborated by adding that we have childhood memories where we had no control of our environment and felt helpless and it was equated with money and security.

Another thing she pointed out was that when you are raised poor it is hard to believe things will work out because they didn’t often work out, and you fell again and again and again. She says as an adult she is terrified of being poor again and always feels like they could loose everything, while her husband who was born and raised with a lot of security always feels like things generally will work out.

Who knows if something like this is true, but it is interesting, I find that even though I know what it is like to struggle it never seems to get easier and I never have grown comfortable and accustomed to it even though I grew up in it. I have had money less times than I have had it, and sadly I am terrible with it.

I try to have faith, faith that the past year has a greater plan that all of the struggles and sacrifices and risks will serve some purpose some lesson in the plan, other than the obvious lessons like don’t be an artist or don’t quit your day job especially the same day the economy collapses. If those are the life lessons, then, I want my year back because that is just stupid.

For those of you who have followed this blog, and know that this was all started to record my journey from office assistant to writer and beyond… knows that damn this journey just keeps getting more, well journey-like, and I don’t mean the band.

About 2 weeks ago, I got cast in a show, and I’ll recap later, but my rehearsal schedule is crazy, and in between that and scrounging for money, I have very little time or energy, but to give you an idea of where I am at the moment:

The show goes up in less than a month here in Portland, read a bit about it here, (the site needs to be updated a little- she’s working on it) I’m the mystery person so…very new. After the show closes on the 27th of June we take a couple of weeks off, I move (details later), and then we go off on a seven week adventure touring the various fringe festivals in Canada.

I hope to have access to a computer so I can follow the journey on this blog, but who knows. This is not the end of Zizkov or even a break, I still attempt to squeeze in an hour here or there to keep the ball rolling. I hope to take Zizkov on tour with me to keep working on it. My goal is to have the book done and ready for outside editing by September and then in January start sending her/him (the book) out to the publishing world and see if she flies or sinks.

More later… now rehearsal.

For fans of new and experimental theater, the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe is the event to catch each September. As the Fringe’s reputation spreads, its 16 days of premieres and juried and non-juried works are like old home week, attracting artists from around the world.

Almost 700 dance, theater, visual arts, music and spoken-word presentations are performed in traditional venues, but also on street corners, cars, galleries, cabarets and restaurants. It’s offbeat, daring and avant-garde with lots of artistic cross-pollination.

After the shows, hang around and rub elbows with the performers. Family-friendly shows, and there are many, are specially noted.

History

Influenced by Edinburgh, the granddaddy of all Fringe Festivals, five Philadelphia artists banded together in 1997 to create an outlet for other contemporary and experimental performers to present their works. What began as a five-day event has grown into more than two weeks of high-quality, highly innovative artistic presentations.