Monday, November 14, 2005
What is a Thespian's favorite room in the House? The Lick Her Cabinet
Ok folks, autumn's here. The leaves are turning color, the air is brisk, and Daddy's busy acting like an idiot in front of hundreds of people everyday. I'm now working with 5 different language schools as well as working with a theatre troupe that travels the country teaching English grammar to Czech kids. I am in three plays. Aliens, Frank Novotny and the Case of the Present Perfect, and Do It Yourself.
Aliens
The website:
The Alien Grammar Show(for students aged 11-13) - premiére April 2005!!!Be careful, aliens have landed in the school! They program themselves to look and behave like people. They can also enter peoples’ bodies and take control of them. The only way to discover them is to listen carefully to what they say. Aliens speak English, but they make mistakes when they ask questions. This fast, energetic and very interactive performance revises the basic grammar of question forms. However, there is a moral dimension to the show. In the end the students have to decide who their real enemy is, the Aliens or the Men in Black who are trying to catch them.
In reality:
I get onstage in a black sequined headband and a long flowing gown with black and gold sequins. I am the ultimate Jesus Freak on Acid. After speaking Gibberish for five minutes, I proceed to mindread the children by placing my thumb on their head and wiggling my fingers. It either delights them, or makes their fear tangible in the form of tears. Either way, its a knock 'em dead performance. They have a chance to hit me and pull on my costume while I have a chance to a merely take the abuse. Now I know how Goofy at DisneyWorld feels. There's no limit to the depths that we will go for a laugh. From cursing in Czech, to slow motion fights, to toilet humor, we've done it all. The show ends with myself and the other alien (who was disguised as a man in black) doing the gayest most humiliating choreography onstage. Goodbye dignity. Hello lifetime of regret and sorrow.
Frank Novotny and the Case of the Present Perfect
This play actually lets me keep my manhood. At least a shred of it.
The website:
Frank Novotny and the Case of the Present Perfect(for students aged 13-15)Two jealous twin brothers are fighting over the same girl. Eventually one of them commits a robbery and Detective Frank Novotny and the audience have to work out which one of them did it. The key to solving the case is understanding the present perfect tense.
In reality:
I play twin brothers. Steven and Marcus Brown. Both are in love with the same girl, Lucy, and both are complete idiots. Stephen, 'the cool one', "takes drugs, kisses other girls, even says bad words like 'Shit'". Kids go crazy for it. Marcus, 'the straight one', loves his girlfriend so much that he will lose all morality and steal for her. Neither of them gets the girl. Marcus ends up in jail and Stephen is a drug addict. Lucy ends up with the detective. Moral of the story: Being a pothead or a petty thief doesn't pay. Become a private dick in Chicago and you can pick up 15 yr old girls too!Remember those groups of 20 somethings that came to your school when you were 13 and told you that doing drugs was waaaaaay uncool? What did you do? You went out and smoked your first joint. Thats me!
Do It Yourself
The website:
(for students aged 11-16, intermediate)Do-It-Yourself Theatre is a highly entertaining and interactive grammar lesson which teaches the past tenses and reported speech in a way that students will find hard to forget. For good students the show is entertaining revision, for less able students it is an invaluable opportunity to learn important grammar in a way that is very different to the normal classroom methods.
In reality: We have our script on stage and basically breeze through this one with the greatest of ease. The downside: my girlfriend dumps me for her new boyfriend, an arbitrarily picked 13 yr old who ends up shooting me in the back of the head after I sneak into her apartment while she is taking a shower to read her diary. Who says art doesn't imitate life?
Ok so that's the public side of my theatre. The behind the scenes stuff is that of.....well a bad Dan Brown book. Wait. Nevermind. They're all bad. The behind the scenes stuff is that of a Dan Brown book. Not the hackneyed "globetrotting to solve an irrelevant mystery, at the same time making people feel like they've grown spiritually" aspect. More of the "his books are made of paper, my scripts are made of paper" aspect. Get the connection? Good. Moving on.
So my boss, David, is a great guy. Onstage charisma: check. Creativity: check. Organization: X. We drive around in a Skoda 150, which is about the size of an old VW bug. Four people deep and loaded to the top with props. We leave Prague at 5 in the morning and drive to this little nothing town 3-4 hours away with no map and no contact number. Every once in a while we get stopped by the fuzz because they think we are gypsies. We arrive to the schools late with at least one of the props missing and joe-rig the play to make it work without an essential prop or music or both. Its like being in college, except its no fun to McGyver some shit with 200 15 years olds watching you, waiting. But we get it done and zoom on home just in time for Matlock. Nother day, nother dollar.
In other news I went to London last month. I saw a Bollywood production in Picadilly Circus, saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, went to a genuwine British football match (Bolton v. Chelsea), and even met Britain's easy-to-hate commedian Ricky Gervais (of The Office fame). We stayed up all night drinking and dancing and toured the day away in doubledecker buses and making phone calls in red phone 'boxes'.
Ok thats all I can muster for now. I've got a few more stories for you that I'll have to post another time. Hope all is well. Sorry to anyone that likes Dan Brown's tripe. Ciao.
Aliens
The website:
The Alien Grammar Show(for students aged 11-13) - premiére April 2005!!!Be careful, aliens have landed in the school! They program themselves to look and behave like people. They can also enter peoples’ bodies and take control of them. The only way to discover them is to listen carefully to what they say. Aliens speak English, but they make mistakes when they ask questions. This fast, energetic and very interactive performance revises the basic grammar of question forms. However, there is a moral dimension to the show. In the end the students have to decide who their real enemy is, the Aliens or the Men in Black who are trying to catch them.
In reality:
I get onstage in a black sequined headband and a long flowing gown with black and gold sequins. I am the ultimate Jesus Freak on Acid. After speaking Gibberish for five minutes, I proceed to mindread the children by placing my thumb on their head and wiggling my fingers. It either delights them, or makes their fear tangible in the form of tears. Either way, its a knock 'em dead performance. They have a chance to hit me and pull on my costume while I have a chance to a merely take the abuse. Now I know how Goofy at DisneyWorld feels. There's no limit to the depths that we will go for a laugh. From cursing in Czech, to slow motion fights, to toilet humor, we've done it all. The show ends with myself and the other alien (who was disguised as a man in black) doing the gayest most humiliating choreography onstage. Goodbye dignity. Hello lifetime of regret and sorrow.
Frank Novotny and the Case of the Present Perfect
This play actually lets me keep my manhood. At least a shred of it.
The website:
Frank Novotny and the Case of the Present Perfect(for students aged 13-15)Two jealous twin brothers are fighting over the same girl. Eventually one of them commits a robbery and Detective Frank Novotny and the audience have to work out which one of them did it. The key to solving the case is understanding the present perfect tense.
In reality:
I play twin brothers. Steven and Marcus Brown. Both are in love with the same girl, Lucy, and both are complete idiots. Stephen, 'the cool one', "takes drugs, kisses other girls, even says bad words like 'Shit'". Kids go crazy for it. Marcus, 'the straight one', loves his girlfriend so much that he will lose all morality and steal for her. Neither of them gets the girl. Marcus ends up in jail and Stephen is a drug addict. Lucy ends up with the detective. Moral of the story: Being a pothead or a petty thief doesn't pay. Become a private dick in Chicago and you can pick up 15 yr old girls too!Remember those groups of 20 somethings that came to your school when you were 13 and told you that doing drugs was waaaaaay uncool? What did you do? You went out and smoked your first joint. Thats me!
Do It Yourself
The website:
(for students aged 11-16, intermediate)Do-It-Yourself Theatre is a highly entertaining and interactive grammar lesson which teaches the past tenses and reported speech in a way that students will find hard to forget. For good students the show is entertaining revision, for less able students it is an invaluable opportunity to learn important grammar in a way that is very different to the normal classroom methods.
In reality: We have our script on stage and basically breeze through this one with the greatest of ease. The downside: my girlfriend dumps me for her new boyfriend, an arbitrarily picked 13 yr old who ends up shooting me in the back of the head after I sneak into her apartment while she is taking a shower to read her diary. Who says art doesn't imitate life?
Ok so that's the public side of my theatre. The behind the scenes stuff is that of.....well a bad Dan Brown book. Wait. Nevermind. They're all bad. The behind the scenes stuff is that of a Dan Brown book. Not the hackneyed "globetrotting to solve an irrelevant mystery, at the same time making people feel like they've grown spiritually" aspect. More of the "his books are made of paper, my scripts are made of paper" aspect. Get the connection? Good. Moving on.
So my boss, David, is a great guy. Onstage charisma: check. Creativity: check. Organization: X. We drive around in a Skoda 150, which is about the size of an old VW bug. Four people deep and loaded to the top with props. We leave Prague at 5 in the morning and drive to this little nothing town 3-4 hours away with no map and no contact number. Every once in a while we get stopped by the fuzz because they think we are gypsies. We arrive to the schools late with at least one of the props missing and joe-rig the play to make it work without an essential prop or music or both. Its like being in college, except its no fun to McGyver some shit with 200 15 years olds watching you, waiting. But we get it done and zoom on home just in time for Matlock. Nother day, nother dollar.
In other news I went to London last month. I saw a Bollywood production in Picadilly Circus, saw the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, went to a genuwine British football match (Bolton v. Chelsea), and even met Britain's easy-to-hate commedian Ricky Gervais (of The Office fame). We stayed up all night drinking and dancing and toured the day away in doubledecker buses and making phone calls in red phone 'boxes'.
Ok thats all I can muster for now. I've got a few more stories for you that I'll have to post another time. Hope all is well. Sorry to anyone that likes Dan Brown's tripe. Ciao.
