saturday, march 3

Tech went to well today. I’ve been vacillating the past few days between despair and utter joy as we carefully peace together my plays, cast and the new theatre space and props and costumes and combat and music and lights into a living structure. I’m ditching Lords of Acid tonight – I need to chill out and not dance for three hours. The ticket was only $23 so I don’t feel that bad about it – tried to sell it on gay.com but no one bit and to Alley Raverboi Greg but his uncle just died so he had to go to Joliet. Listening to my new favorite club mix Plasmic Honey’s remix of Amber’s Flying Above the Clouds. The original song is too diva and candy-ass for my taste but they add a nice hard edged chord structure behind it and some insane bass builds as well – like in the old Lords stuff. I hope to do some music mixing work once the plays open – I have some really fun ideas of blending some pop icon type stuff from growing up with some nasty club beats – I like the whole puzzle aspect of it – getting the samples to all line up on the same beat of a 150 beats-per-minute song. I think it’ll be fun. And the precision work of it all really gets me going. I can get lost in it. It is still funny to me how I can be so particular with some of the lines in the plays – that I can tell when a line is not being said accurately because the cadence of the dialogue is so much a part of myself. I practically have the plays memorized and I try not to be a total bastard and pimp the actors on fucked up lines but there’s a few joke set-ups that have to be pretty exacting in set-up. My directing has never been so focused on rhythm before – I think because of the caliber of the actors that they are taking care of all the foundation stuff so I can really zero in on detail work – which for me is where a director really shows his stuff. Art is in the details as someone really important one said. I’m trying to achieve a virtuosity with these plays – that I’ve written them and lived with them for five years and know them inside and out and have found layers and layers of interaction and interpretation that I never intended (which reminds me how my best work is channelled and I am merely a conduit). And the joy of getting to bring these plays out with some of my best friends involved – it’s like having a party everyday. Carrie, my lighting designer, the chick I’d choose to design for me till the day I die giving me no end of shit from the tech booth and screaming at me in derision – I love it. I’d joke, “Carrie, I think I want all the lights at 5% the whole time.” “FUCK YOU ANDY JUNIOR SENIOR THE THIRD I FUCKING I HATE YOU. YOU GO TO HELL. YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE.” Then we’d laugh and she’d say: “luv ewe!” I lived with Carrie for a year and a half and she was always screaming at me – it was so much fun – I’m really serious – no matter how early I got up on the weekends the first thing I’d hear would be “BOUT GODDAMN TIME!” I love Carrie. Matt has been fond lately of saying “love you” and “kill you” in a little kid demon voice. So funny. Our music mixes rock. My favorite moment of any play is as the house lights dim, the audience goes quiet and we enter blackness – at that moment the play is perfect – I don’t know if it’s good or bad yet – I’m not thinking of cellphones ringing or plastic wrappers or the lateral lisp of that one actor or the still burning cigarette on the table far upstage that nobody has attended to – the play is a blank slate and my mind is completely open to receiving it – it is one of the most magical feelings I’ve ever experienced. Couple that with the fact that you’re about to watch your own play and I get really jazzed. Karen and I continued our traipsing to collect props and set dressings. I couldn’t imagine spending this much time with someone I didn’t like – we’ve been together pretty much 10 hours a day the past two days and tomorrow too. We stopped at Oberweis Ice Cream store which is now my favorite ice cream in Chicago. At one point we were laughing so hard that we both had tears streaming down our faces. I think because she’d just said that we need to get something for the actors to use to remove their makeup and she said: ‘face wipies.’ I lost it. I’d begun a list of things I wanted to get rid of including Karen’s Voice, Karen’s Face, Karen’s Vocabulary and Karen’s Obsession With Her Bodily Functions. She was crying as she drove she was laughing so hard. I couldn’t breathe. And then she’s pointing at the glove compartment and indicating she needs something to dry her tears with. I was trying to say, “Karen, do you need a face wipie?” I couldn’t even inhale. I later got stomach cramps from laughing so hard. The heckling I endure from my cast is insane – lately they seem pre-occupied with my ‘pink starfish.’ It all started with Mierka talking about getting her asshole waxed and has gone downhill ever since. Things advanced at Fireside Grill where Lingo took too apple slices that had starfish pattern in their cores and hid behind Karen taunting me “ANDEEEE…. ANDEEEE.” This was after two rounds of drinks for everybody. Go ahead and just try to say the words ‘face wipie’ with a straight face. It can’t be done.