And so we come to an end (for now)

Our FringeNYC run is run; our set is disassembled and our costumes split apart.  The actors have other lines to learn, the managers have other shows to run, the director thinks of other shows, the designers have actual jobs, and the writer shoves a draft of an entirely different play into the dramaturg's hands.  And so this blog comes to at least a temporary end, as AK-47 Sing-Along becomes again a script instead of a production.  Plug in the ghost light, friends; we're going dark.

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you.

One Show Left to Go

We have one show left to go -- Saturday at noon -- do any members of our fairly youthful audience actually get up early enough to go see shows in Soho at noon?  God knows I don't, but then I typically stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning.  But I sincerely hope that other people will be able to make it to the show, because our last two have been really great.  Actors don't work in a void; when they can sense that the audience has no sense of irony, it gets hard for them.  But we've had good audiences, and we hope to have at least one more.  At this point I recommend you buy tickets at the door, but if you want a discount, you can head to 1 8th St, and get one for $15 -- until noon on Friday, that is.  After that, you're stuck with $18 at the door.

What will I do when this is over?  I mean, the day afterwards I will probably spend dead asleep, but what about Monday?  Start writing grants to go to Edinburgh?  (But who says anybody else wants to pick up and go to Scotland for two weeks?)  Or just send out the script to a few far-away places that will produce it, if they do produce it, without me or Lucy or any of the actors to whom the parts now seem so permanently bonded?  Lie in bed and feel lost?  Apply for jobs and internships, as I so desperately need to do?

Some combination of the above.  But most likely I'll sit down and write another play.  Nature did not intend me for a producer.

Pictures!

Check out these awesome photos Nate took!  Because he was dutifully acting as our photographer, he doesn't appear in any of the photos, which is a pity.  But check out these beautiful snapshots:

Nisr and the Young Girl: "Feyn beytik?"

Salwa and Mahir: "For the children of Palestine!"

Hassan: "All greetings, blessings, and good acts are for you, O Lord."

Jakob: "By your light shall we see light."

Wonderful.

We had a good audience tonight -- they laughed and cried, exactly where I would have wanted them to.  

Don't you waggle your ears at me!

So, we were invited by Fringe publicity to bring our "big visuals" to the CBS Early Show for possible interviews and some camera time.  We stood on the line with Devin in his rabbit ears, Mary in her pink hijab, and me toting Fadl the neon green puppet.  The people standing around us found us quite entertaining.  The anchor began to move down the line, talking to people.  He saw us standing there, and took in Mary's headscarf and our muppet-with-an-assault-rifle postcards, and visibly reared back and away from us.  No signs of Islam for the morning show!  We're too busy watching idiots across the nation equate Muslims with terrorists!  But we made it into the background of another shot, holding up our postcards and looking adorable, with Mary carrying Fadl.  Devin, catching sight of himself on the monitor, shook his head, and a P.A. went crazy.  You can't let your ears wiggle on the Early Show!

We've been getting some press.  It's mostly positive, but it makes a lot of mistakes that I'd sort of like to address, and one review walks straight into the issue I mentioned before, of making assumptions about my attitude on the basis of my Jewishness.  But, although I am burning to address the issues of Why Quentin Is Vital to the Play and How This Play Is Really, Really Not Pro-Israel, I guess it's kind of tacky to argue with critics.  We will let their bad writing speak for itself.  (Okay, so it's hard to resist being bitchy when people are insinuating that you're biased towards Israel because you're Jewish.)

Off and running!

We opened Friday night; we had our second show this afternoon at 3:30; we are pretty fabulous; I am completely exhausted.  We have had a very respectable turn-out, especially from the press.  There has been some awkwardness from audiences, in no small part, I think, because gentiles are afraid to laugh, lest we think they are anti-semitic.  But I heard you people sniffling at the end -- don't try to deny it.

Wow.

May we take a moment, please, to admire the mad genius of Beth Goldenberg, our costume designer?  Check.  This.  Out.  And these are the rough drafts!

First, the basic costume, with Beth modestly hidden behind Devin (I think she's pinning something); then, cat ears meet rabbit nose on Devin's furry, furry head.  Don't you want to pet him?  And he sings, too!

Dare I say it, we were looking pretty good in rehearsal today.  I haven't seen some of these scenes from the front in a very long time, and they look great!  Oh, cast, you will make me cry.  You're going to make the audience cry, too.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to make some press packets.

(Shout-out of thanks to the Halpert-Zarkys, by the way, who are our angels and send their best from Seattle.)

TECH

Today we had our tech rehearsal, a.k.a. our one chance to rehearse in our performance space before we have to, you know, perform in it.  Because the hour of truth is drawing near, best beloveds; I hope you are resolving at this moment to buy your tickets tonight!  ("Best beloveds" is a writing tic I picked up from reading Rudyard Kipling stories as a child.  Unfortunate connection to British imperialism or part of the whole weird nostalgia theme we have going on around here?  You decide!)

But tech rehearsal went well (our alphabet-and-number tiles are a sight to see, and the costumes Beth provided are fantastic -- Matt looks paternal, Mary looks adorable, the addition of the little woven bracelet to Nate's costume made me howl with laughter at its sheer accuracy) although we were delayed in starting by a police investigation.  Somebody had gone into one of the dressing rooms and made off with some valuables, so the police were in all morning, and questioned the staff, and delayed our tech by half an hour -- which is actually a ridiculously short amount of time, all things considered.

Devin was absent, which was unfortunate for several reasons.  First, obviously, Devin will never have seen the space until 15 min before he performs in it.  Second, I had to stand in for him.  I don't know the dances, don't know the lines, and generally don't know what I'm doing.  Also, I can't sing.  It did give me a chance to hang out backstage with Mary, though, which was nice.  I told her my idea of doing a video promo for the play by having Nate record an in-character video blog.  I think it would give a distorted idea of what the play is about, but it might also be very funny.  Making fun of Quentin combines the ease of shooting fish in a barrel with the fun of a barrel of monkeys.  Shall I shoot the monkeys in the barrel?  Is that a legitimate joke?  Does Nate read this blog?  All questions that may be answered in the future, but will not be tonight.

Venue Prep Day

It is kind of a wonder that I can write this post.  That's because I spent a lot of today dealing with ladders.  I don't like ladders.  They are directly related to heights, which I am afraid of, and they always seem kind of unstable, so I am not just worried that I will fall off them, I am also always worried that other people will fall off them as well.  Which is why the less-stressful bit of ladder-oriented work was holding the ladder for Becca, who knows what she's doing and is not afraid of heights.  Becca doesn't become a trembling wreck because somebody asked her to tie a curtain to the grid.  I do, but I did it anyway, which, I mean, good for me and all, but being a trembling wreck is kind of exhausting.  Especially when somebody asks you to get up on a ladder in the dark to adjust something which isn't necessarily the safest way of accomplishing the particular task it is accomplishing.  But, here I am to tell the tale.  The boring, boring tale.

In other, very much related news, lighting and scenic design progress apace!  Brett tells amusing stories about the reactions of Toys-R-Us clerks who are confronted with a young man buying 216 square feet of alphabet-patterned foam puzzle pieces.  Jimmy finds 1000W lights and does interesting things with them that I probably shouldn't give away.

All the other shows who share our venue were also present today, of course, and so there was a postcard exchange.  And everybody looked at ours and said something along the lines of, "OH, it's the one with the MUPPET with a GUN."  To my perpetual surprise, everyone seems to have heard of us.  Stop putting off buying tickets, readers.  The link is to the right.

(Alternately, you can go to 1 W. 8th St, and buy them for $15.  Grab a postcard while you're at it.)

In other, slightly less officially related news: once you have written one perky song, it can become hard to stop.  I find myself taking all kinds of flimsy excuses to do it.  Right now I do it socially, but the next thing you know I'll be staying in at nights to do it alone.

OH WAIT.

Well, so I guess the existence of this play is proof that it's clearly trouble, this ditty-writing business.  But the latest is actually social in origin; it's for Becca, who doesn't like asking other people for help.  Even if a friend might be useful in the matter of, say, dislodging 216 square feet of foam puzzle pieces from their awkward hiding place in an electrics closet.

Friends are useful!  Friends are fun!

Friends can help you get things done!

You may be very strong and

You may be very smart

But friends are there to help you out

So let them do their part!

It goes on from there.  If you could hear the melody, you'd hate me right now.  Fortunately for both of us, I don't go in for singing to YouTube.

More Postcard Disposal

So, for want of time, I discussed exactly nothing at the panel tonight.  I did give a brief summary of our play, in between the summary from the guy whose all-under-24 group had restructured Richard III into a musical built around teen angst, and a guy who's doing a dance piece based on the work of the Beats.  Mary, Matt, and Nate did give excellent, and extremely snappy, performances.  Like lighting bolts!  Audience never knew what hit 'em.  Though they must have had some idea, because people asked for postcards afterwards.

Speaking of: more postcard-distribution solutions were found today!  Picking up where we left off:

Solution #5: Steal a bunch of copies of the Village Voice from the bin.  Insert a postcard in each one, facing the positive review of Lebanon.  Return papers to bin.  That's targeted marketing, right?

Solution #6: Wedge postcards into the frames of large liquor ads.  We don't mind if you're drunk at the show, so long as you don't distract the actors.  Or publish a review of the play afterwards.

Solution #7: Drop postcards into the baskets of parked bicycles.  Certain types of baskets just scream "some disposable income!" and we're an excellent way to spend disposable income.

Solution #8: Duck into a Starbucks to get an Arnold Palmer after two hours of wandering around south of 14th St. in 90-degree weather sticking postcards in weird places.  Place diminished stack of postcards on counter while rifling around for cash.  Hear the magic words: "Is that a muppet with a gun?"  Give postcards to baristas, who take notes on where to buy tickets.  Consume Arnold Palmer and exit.

Materials for the Arts

Today was our appointment with Materials for the Arts.  MFA, for those of you following along at home, is a lovely service which connects discarded industrial goods with needy non-profit artists -- like us! -- for free.  It is also a giant, infuriating bureaucracy in a well-hidden warehouse in Long Island City.  It's hot; it's grubby; it makes me unspeakably cranky.  All the frustration of thrift-store shopping with a thousand times the chance of sticking your hand on some weird fiberglass by-product that will make your hands sting for days!  And you can't say no to anything, because what if you regret it later?  And it's all free!  So I sit by the cart and glower.  I am a top-flight glower-artist.

But the real horror of MFA, legendary among visitors, is the parking guy.  The parking guy is an example of the failure of the conventional playwright's tools.  Merely reporting this guy's speech won't cut it when it comes to conveying exactly how infuriating he is.  He is in a constant state of wounded anger.  He cannot believe that you would drive into the parking lot without stopping at the unmarked, ambiguous border to hunt him up from wherever he is!  He is enraged by your failure to follow rules you had no way of knowing about!  He is sneeringly contemptuous of your ignorance of where the door is!  For all of these sins, he will subject you to a repetitive, half-shouted, half-whined lecture, which can only be escaped by (a) flight, or (b) the appearance of some other poor soul breaking rules nobody told them.

But anyway, now we have lots of stuff.  My favorite is the tambourine that looks like a turtle.