I've been avoiding streaming series, because, as I've written before, I like to own my media. So, I've been waiting for Netflix to release Daredevil and Jessica Jones on Blu-ray so I can watch them.
I am about to start compromising, though, because I don't want to wait years to watch the new series, Luke Cage. Eric turned me onto this newest trailer for the series, and the show looks like too much fun for me to ignore.
Drat.
and I still will, but not today. Today, I must draw to your attention this absolutely great trailer for the upcoming Suicide Squad movie. (Thanks, Eric, for pointing me to it.) I was going to see this movie, of course. because it's a superhero flick, but now I'm positively excited about doing so.
Seriously, this looks great. Even if the movie ends up sucking, the trailer is a beautiful piece of work.
As I've mentioned many times, I'm particularly proud of the sabbatical program at PT and all the good work that PT folks do while on sabbatical. We just released today a video about the good work that my friend, Eric, did while on his sabbatical.
Enjoy.
I first saw this Lee Blessing play on Broadway many years ago, with the original actors, Robert Prosky and Sam Waterston. I quite enjoyed it then. I went to a local production earlier tonight for one reason: my friend, Eric, is one of the two actors. I was concerned about whether the play, which focuses on two nuclear disarmament negotiators, would feel dated. I also worried about how well the actors would stand up to the difficult and very demanding roles; after all, the play is basically two hours of talking.
I'm happy to report that my worries were unnecessary. The play holds up beautifully and touches on many concerns that will stay with us for as long as humans exist. It's also beautifully written and frequently very funny. The two leads, Eric Hale and J Chachula, did very well.
I'm quite happy I went, and I encourage you to do the same--while you can.
Here's the problem: Only two shows remain. One is Saturday, May 18 at 8:00 p.m., and the other is the next day at 3:00 p.m. You can get more information here, or you can just show up at Burning Coal Theatre Company before the start time. The tickets are all of ten bucks, less than you'd pay for a movie and far less than the thought-provoking entertainment is worth.
Yes, Eric is a friend, and, yes, I like to support my friends. I'm not recommending this play for those reasons, though; I'm recommending it because I had a great time watching it, and I think you will, too.
A few nights ago, I encouraged folks in this area to go see the Exit Through Eden production of Proof at the Raleigh Ensemble Players theater downtown. I went so far as to say that if we sold out the house, I would buy Krispy Kreme donuts for all who wanted them.
To my great pleasure, we did indeed sell it out, and quite a few of us ate donuts after the show.
What made me far happier, however, was how good the show was. Within a very short time after the play began, I forgot that I was in a small Raleigh theater watching a local production and instead lost myself in the show. I very much enjoyed it. I knew the story and script would be good; this drama won several Tonys. The rest of the production did it justice. The small set was clever and worked well. The direction was sharp. The acting was good. It was a good play.
All four actors turned in strong performances. I'm friends with one of them, Eric, so I have to recuse myself from commenting on his work due to friendship bias--though I will say I believe all present would agree he did a good job. I don't know any of the other actors, though, so I feel fine in noting that both Ryan Brock (Hal) and Page Purgar (Claire) inhabited their roles with ease and were quite good.
The star of the show, however, was Betsy Henderson as Catherine. I could have watched her all night. Her intelligence, her inner conflicts, her love for her father, her anger at her father--all the complexity that made Cathy a great character was right there in Henderson's performance. I've seen many a professional production, including some on Broadway, with weaker performances from actresses in key roles.
I went to the theater this evening to support a friend.
I left feeling moved and happy to have been lucky enough to see a strong play.
Proof runs Saturday and Sunday this weekend, and then all three days next weekend. Catch it if you can. You'll be glad you did.
Supporting my friend, Eric, by attending one of the shows of Proof, a play he is producing.
I hope to be there opening night. Here are some details.
(I lifted this from Eric's site for the play, but I think he'd be okay with it.)
Eric turned me on to this article, and though I rarely make a whole blog post from a link to another site, in this case I simply must. The reason is not the article itself, entertaining though it is. The reason is the interactive tool that the fine folks at Slate included, a tool that lets you compare the careers of different actors, directors, and so on. Check it out here.
What I find particularly interesting is that this assemblage of ratings from Rotten Tomatoes shows how very up and down most careers are. As near as I can tell, no one is a sure-fire winner, even Will Smith (though I still want him to option the Jon & Lobo books). If you're going to have a long career, you're going to get panned sometimes.
The most fun, though, comes from comparing the paths of actors, particularly bad ones. Chuck Norris vs. Steven Seagal. Chuck Norris vs. Dolph Lundren (which Kyle observed resembled a suicide pact). Pick your comparisons, and have fun!
We also finally have, as Kyle also noted, proof positive that Michael Caine will appear in absolutely anything.
A while back, my friend, Eric, won a StorySLAM competition at The Monti. Eight people compete. Each goes on stage and tells a story for five minutes. Three groups of judges award them points. The winner is the person with the most points. I didn't get to see the stories that evening, but I did later hear Eric's story online, and he did a swell job with it. (I'd give you the URL, but I can't find it online any longer.)
Earlier tonight, the Monti held its championship event, in which eight winners, including Eric, competed. I was able to attend this one.
I had a grand time. All eight storytellers delivered commendable performances. Humor generally reigned supreme this evening, but a few of the talks, including Eric's, were on the more serious side.
Eric didn't win this time. As I said, humor was in favor this evening, and though his talk contained many funny moments, it also held many serious ones.
Eric knew going in that he was unlikely to win if he told this story, but it concerned something that had just happened, and the event was important to him. He decided to tell the story he wanted to tell, no matter what. He did it well, and he deserved the loud ovation he received.
Any of us who tell stories face choices all the time, and many of those choices have the potential to affect the tales we tell. I don't think it's at all a problem to choose to work in a particular area, such as a genre or sub-genre, but I do believe that when it comes to the actual story itself, you will do your best work only when you tell the story you want to tell. I'm proud of Eric for doing just that, and I'm glad I got to see him do it.
I'm blessed to have amazing friends and family who are also amazingly talented. I'm always honored that they let me hang with them.
One of them, a friend since he was a student of mine in a computer science class I taught back in holy shit we can't be that old was it really 19-no way am I typing that some years ago, recently competed in a local StorySLAM competition at The Monti. I was unable to attend, because I was signing that night at The Regulator Bookshop, but I had really hoped to be there. Now, having listened to his entry, I'm doubly sorry I missed it, because he did a very fine job indeed.
Give his story a listen by going here and clicking on the entry with Eric's name under it.
You'll be glad you did.
Earlier tonight, my friend, Eric, held his belated birthday party. As part of it, he sang some songs as his regular accompanist, Sue, performed the piano part. All of the pieces were humorous, and he did a very good job with them. We all laughed a lot, applauded, and generally had a good time listening. I'm glad he sang them.
As the party was moving to the eating stage, I was struck that in a far broader sense we are all listening regularly to the songs of our friends: the ups and downs of their lives, the mostly level days between, the incidental notes of small, friendly contacts. I'm lucky enough to have a group of friends who have been hanging out together for a very long time now, with newer folks occasionally joining and even more occasionally staying. Dealing with each other is, of course, annoying from time to time--I know I'm not the easiest friend to have--but in the end, sharing the world with friends is one of life's greatest treats.
So, Eric, I have to thank you not only for the party and for over three decades of friendship, but also for this reminder of how much friends matter.
On a related note, I must brag again on my daughter. Read this recent piece of Sarah's, and you'll know I'm right to be proud. Damn.
Last night, my friend, Eric, gave a singing recital to raise money for the March of Dimes, where his wife (and also my friend), Anna Bess, works. Eric sang a broad range of songs that he divided into four groups. The show ran an hour and a half, and I very much enjoyed it. Though most of Eric's selections were fun songs, he included one dark piece that I had heard him perform before but still was very happy to hear again: Steinman's "Confessions of a Vampire," from the failed Broadway show, Dance of the Vampires. This song is very emotional and required more acting, and thus more risk, from Eric than any of others. There he was, up on stage in front of a crowd of sixty or more people, exposed and singing his heart out. Both this performance and the show as a whole led to an after-show conversation about the bravery it takes to show one's art.
I have very mixed feelings on this topic. On the one hand, showing art of any type does feel brave. After all, you can pour yourself into a work--a song, a painting, an art ball, a novel, whatever--let someone see it, and watch as they reject it or hate it or simply pass right by it. Those reactions hurt. Worse, no matter how good you are, you can be sure that some percentage of the audience will hate your work.
On the other hand, when I think of my art, writing, as a job I have willingly undertaken, or as a compulsion I must indulge, or both, then my feelings turn rather less sympathetic. If you choose to do art, you know what you're getting into, so ranger up and get to it. I've been an unskilled construction worker, and I've had a foreman tell me to move the same big hole (a six-foot cube of earth) multiple times, and that audience reaction certainly caused me pain, though in my body and in my frustration, not in my heart.
I also have the problem that I resist making artists of any type special. When I was a boy, I knew a master furniture maker, a guy over seventy who had been building furniture by hand since his teens. He'd never finished high school. If you called him an artist, he'd box your ears. He viewed himself as a craftsman, someone who showed up and did his job, day in and day out for a lifetime--but who did so with the utter dedication to craft that he strongly felt all of us owed our jobs. Yet his furniture was art, as beautiful and as full of his heart as any book or symphony. I've also seen programmers and builders and people of many professions who poured themselves into their work and who thus made that work their art.
In the end, I came to this conclusion: If you truly love doing something, if you give it your heart and make it the best you can, if you put all of yourself into it, then it becomes art, and showing it to others is both a compulsion and, yes, an act of bravery.
Thanks, Eric, for sharing your art last night and for being brave.
Last night, we went to Fourth Friday, a local performance event in a small venue in the back of Ruggero's piano store. My friend, Eric, is the master of ceremonies, and he also sings a number at the start of the show. The one he sang this time, "The Gasman Cometh," was fun, and he did his usual good job with it. Sarah and her friend Lucy were also playing, Lucy two long violin pieces, and Sarah the piano accompaniment for one of those songs.
Tonight, several of us went to see a local bellydance performance, or hafla, that took place in a community center. Jennie's teacher was organizing and hosting the event, and Jennie was one of the dancers, so we went primarily to support her. She danced in both a group number and a solo, and she did a very good job and was lovely to watch in both.
As I sat in the audience on these two nights, I was struck again by the need that so many of us have to do some kind of art, create something, be it singing or playing music or dancing or writing or painting or carving or sewing or whatever. Most of us will never be very good, much less world-class, at the art we love, but we persist. The world is, I truly believe, a much better place for our efforts.
I was also struck by the bravery of it all. In a world with professional music available all around us, the singers and pianists and violinists at Fourth Friday all took the stage in front of strangers to do their art. In a culture obsessed with perfect female bodies and flawless performances, women of all shapes and sizes walked in revealing costumes onto a stage in front of strangers and did their best.
I'm richer for their efforts. We all are. Here's to them, the bellydancers and singers and artists of all stripes, those in my extended family and those I've never met. Long may you practice your art.
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