Back Story

Young Americans

2008-04-29T22:52:00.004-04:00

So, I know it's been a while since we've blogged. Perhaps you thought we were on hiatus? In fact, dear reader, its just the opposite. This has been four relentless months of theater-making thanks to our new friends at the Ontological (who have renamed our company The Young Americans and America! Fuck Yeah!, and probably other things behind our back). Our poor tired company members barely have time to sober up after the cast party before its time to tech the next chapter in our epic, fractured history of Charles Lindbergh. It's all winding to a close, and if there's anything that relentless theater-making denies you, its any sort of perspective. This is why, more and more, the May performance that once felt like some sort of end feels more and more like a work-in-progress showing. It will be a kind of throwing-lots-of-things-up-against-the-wall and seeing what sticks. More and more, I believe in the promise of this play, of this examination and cross-examination of one man's struggles with control (both mechanical and emotional). I think we'll have a few incarnations before we find the real skeleton of it, but with such an incredible cast, write, designers and brains (and pig hearts) behind this, I have no doubt we'll find it. And we'll rock your socks off. Just give us a few more months...

I have lots more to say about the process of creating the four individual parts vs. the whole, but it's bedtime, so I leave you with this, a quote that greatly inspires part 2:

[Lindbergh's] somewhat nervous "chatter, chatter" at breakfast allowed him to keep his mind off the one forbidden topic. "I daresay I shall get the whole tragic story one day in a flood of confidence," Nicolson reported to his wife.

Why I (We) Do It

2008-02-20T12:50:00.003-05:00

For the best explanation of why playwrights need companies instead of producers, here's Marsha Norman on Tracy Lett's August: Osage County:

Finally, at least for this go-round, I like what this play represents: a life-long association of a writer with a group of actors and a theater. This is why Shakespeare wrote so much, he had a whole gang of actors waiting to do his work. Go down the list — the writers who wrote a lot of wonderful plays were always associated with a community of actors they could write for: Shepard, Chekhov, Brian Friel, Alan Ackbourne, David Mamet, Lanford Wilson, Caryl Churchill, Richard Foreman, Wendy Wasserstein. Playwrights who live apart from theaters and actors have a lot of trouble getting their work done. Playwrights need to be around actors, need to be a part of a theater’s life.

[...]

If we wanted to do one single thing to improve the theatrical climate in America, we’d assign one playwright to every theater that has a resident acting company. People wonder why so much great work came out of Actors Theatre of Louisville in the early days. I was there, so I know it was simply that you had everything you needed: actors who wanted to work, empty stages ready for plays and an artistic director who gave everybody a chance to do whatever they wanted as soon as they could think of it. Playwriting in America has suffered a devastating blow from the development process that keeps writers separate from the rest of the company, working on the same play for years. What playwrights want is what Steppenwolf has given Mr. Letts: a way to get a new play done, see what works, and then go on to the next one.

You can read the entire essay here.

Oh, and yes, Lindbergh 2 is going swimmingly and Lindbergh 3 is on its way down the birth canal etc. etc. etc.

My New Years Resolution Was to Blog More. Oops.

2008-01-18T16:38:00.000-05:00

So the blog is back from a holiday vacation that was much longer than I intended. Very very exciting things on the horizon. The first part of WITIMH’s (What I Took in My Hand for those of you not in the know) goes up in just over a week (gah!). I saw my first run-through of the show on Wednesday and I have to say, things are coming together marvelously. Jess has done a really wonderful job of combining a lot of different elements (sound, puppets, a rickety plane, and a new, improved, Core-strengthened Mike James). She somehow manages to make a guy standing on top of a box talking to himself for 10 minutes actually interesting. And for the first time ever, she’s actually following the stage directions I’ve written in (seriously, the first time ever. The girl’s a maverick.). There’s obviously still a lot to be done (I’m rewriting part of the last speech right now), but there’s a lot of promise here. And a ton of ambition. Your little theater company is growing up so fast!

Outside of the rehearsal room, my work on WITIHM Part Two proceeds at its normal snail’s pace. Part Two, tentative title: “First He Giveth…,” (SPOILER ALERT!) is largely concerned with the infamous Lindbergh kidnapping. I’m throwing a lot of different (possibly impossible to actually stage) things at it right now. We’ll see what sticks. A special Trial of the Century edition of Dramaturgical Detritus to follow soon.

Return of the Dramaturgical Detritus

2007-12-21T14:57:00.000-05:00

Instead of a list, I would like to tell you a story about Charles Lindbergh's grandfather. Actually, I would like to tell you two:

Lindbergh's paternal grandfather, Ola Mansson, was a 19th century Swedish politician. In 1858, it came to light that Mansson had used his appointment in the Riksdag (the Swedish parliament) to secure a position as an officer in the State Bank of Sweden and was quite possibly embezzling money from the Swedish government. An investigation was ordered, and the case went to Sweden's Supreme Court. Things weren't looking good for Mansson at this point and so, when he was presented on the stand with a fairly damning document of his wrong-doing, he grabbed it from the lawyer, tore it up, and wiped his ass with one of the pieces of paper. In the middle of the Swedish Supreme Court.

Unsurprisingly, Mansson immigrated to America soon thereafter.

After coming to America, Mansson and his wife changed their surname to Lindbergh and soon settled in Melrose, Minnesota, where they lived the lives of American pioneers. On August 2, 1861, while milling wood for his house, Mansson/Lindbergh got too close to the exposed saw. The machinery caught his cloths and tugged him into the spinning blade. The saw took off part of his left arm, tore his back open, and then hurled him across the mill. The gash was apparently so deep that his resucers claimed they could see his lung and his still beating heart. Somehow, he survived.

Wait, it gets better.

Medicine being what it was at the time, in the end, they had no choice but to amputate Mansson/Lindbergh's left arm at the shoulder. But once Lindbergh was able to get out of bed, he asked the doctor for the arm. Holding the lifeless fingers of his left arm, Lindbergh was alleged to have given the following eulogy:

"Gootbye, mine dear hand. You have been a goot frent to me for fifty years. You haf always been goot and true to me, but you can't be viv me anymore."

And then he buried the arm in his garden.

Happy Friday!

"...an event of such magnitude that it can grind a clear lens on history into a prism that bends facts here and there"

2007-12-19T13:05:00.000-05:00

For me, one of the one most attractive aspects on working on a play about Charles Lindbergh was finally have a lot of reliable primary and secondary sources. Prior to What I Took in My Hand, my dramaturgical research resembled nothing so much as a scavenger hunt. The charm of We Can't Reach You, Hartford was in exactly how little we can actually know about the Hartford Circus Fire. (So little we even decided we should advertise the fact in the title.) And do you know how much information there was about Mathew Brady? Three books. One of which was poorly-written and riddled with errors and another a picture book. And don't even get me started on Juliette Brady, about whom exactly two sentences have been written about since the Civil War. Lindbergh presented a chance to work on a subject people actually knew something about, a chance to write about one of the most famous men in 20th century American history. You would think information would be easier to come by, the truth a little clearer, everything a little less impossibly relative and postmodern.

Well, yes and no.

The chief difficulty in working on a subject so well-known is deciding who among your sources to trust. Researching a play about Lindbergh isn't so much a scavenger hunt as it is like that time in 4th grade when you accidentally threw out your retainer with your lunch tray and had to dig through a dumpster looking for it. I'm going to be honest with you here, there's a lot of crap in the world about Charles Lindbergh. Some of it is poorly written, some of it hopelessly naive or partisan. Most of it is wrong. But if you do history and try and work with primary sources, I imagine you have to get used to this. Mistakes are made in a world of relativity. Bias, access to materials, perspective, the infallibility of memory. There's plenty of factors working against the poor playwright trying to reconstruct history with a dramatic arc.

Which is exactly why I got upset reading this:

75 Years Later, the Memory Lingers

It's inevitable that in the moment, we make mistakes (intentional or otherwise) in documenting events. That's forgivable. But what isn't forgivable is to knowingly create a false history 75 years after the fact. And for what reason? So that a bunch of old people can get a certificate saying that they were somewhere that both the historian and the alleged witness know they were not. Was it really necessary to give every person who claimed to be at the take-off a certificate verifying this? I know I sound cranky saying all this, but it matters. It may not matter now, but years (decades? even centuries?) down the road, its going to give some poor researcher a headache if it ever comes time to sort out who saw Lindbergh's take-off and who didn't.

So please please please, don't rewrite history just to make somebody feel better because they bicycled six miles to Roosevelt Field on the wrong day and didn't get to see Lindbergh.

And on another point, for the love of Pete: "some confusion also persists over the exact location of the takeoff!?!" [exasperation my own]. His takeoff was filmed (in fact, the first newsreels with sound were of Lindbergh's takeoff) so you would think we could at least nail that one down. Sometimes history is an elegant and revelatory act of remembering, and sometimes its just a bit embarrassing.

And don't even get me started on how Curtis Field (the runway where Lindbergh took off) is now a Best Buy and a parking garage.

Man of the Year, 1927

2007-12-19T12:06:00.000-05:00

Since we now know that the Time Person of the Year for 2007 is Vladimir Putin (Al Gore is robbed once again!), I figured this would be as good a time as any to revisit the first Time Person (or "Man" is it was known in the days before women were apparently capable of doing something noteworthy) of the Year: Charles A. Lindbergh

Quite a looker, no?

For anyone that's interested, here's the article that ran inside the issue. (The entire beginning where they give his statistics and characteristics is pretty priceless, but my favorite part is where his feet are just described as "large.") Reading the article, what's most interesting is how, by the end of 1927, Lindbergh was already a national treasure, something too precious to lose. That there even was a debate over whether "the interest accruing to the national welfare by his flights is worth the calamitous crash of principal which would accompany his death" is telling in these modern times where the public actually takes a sick pleasure in watching its celebrities self-destruct. Different times, my friends, different times.

Dr. Seuss on Lindbergh

2007-12-15T12:43:00.000-05:00

We had a great (though surprisingly long) production meeting for What I Took in My Hand last night. At one point in the evening, we inevitably got onto the topic of Lindbergh's politics before and during World War II. Predictably, nothing was resolved (oh, History!) and we concluded the conversation with an agreement to all read more about this controversy before deciding anything.

To that end, I've spent a good part of the morning reading other speeches Lindbergh gave before the war, as well as looking at his involvement with the German Luftwaffe. But it's the weekend and we don't need to get into that now. Instead, on a lighter(?) note, I've collected some political cartoons about Lindbergh authored by none other than Theodor Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss). As I'm sure many of you know, prior to being a famous children's book author, Geisel was a political cartoonist for the New York City daily newspaper PM. What you may not know is that Geisel hated Charles Lindbergh with a firey passion.

Here, take a look:

It's hard to see in this one, but the name at the bottom of the sign is "Lindy Ostrich Service, Inc."

So I'm betting the Lindbergh children never got Horton Hears a Who! as a bedtime story growing up.

Dramaturgical Detritus

2007-12-14T11:50:00.000-05:00

-Time editors created the Man of the Year Award in 1927 and awarded to Lindbergh specifically to make up for the fact that they had failed to feature him on the cover when he completed his trans-Atlantic flight. Lindbergh was not only the first person to be featured, but he is also the youngest. ("You" doesn't count.)

-The first person to achieve powered controlled flight was actually Richard Pearse of New Zealand. The Wright Brothers' flight occurred several months afterwards.

-On November 3, 1926, Lindbergh became the first aviator in America to have his life saved by a parachute on four seperate occassions.

-The 1927 Tin Pan Alley song "Lindbergh (The Eagle of the U.S.A.)" features the first audio sound effect on record. At the beginning of the recording what sounds like a propeller is in fact a deck of cards being struck by an electric fan blade.

-Greek aviator Arniotis Karamanlakis holds two claims to fame: the first private aviator in Greece and the first aviation-related fatality in Greece. (That is, if Icarus doesn't count.)

The Nazi Question

2007-12-13T11:02:00.000-05:00

So on Monday night, Jess, Erin and I went to the Short Form meet-and-greet. Towards the end of the night, I got into a conversation with Peter, one of the curators, about Lindbergh. After a little back and forth about all the weird dramaturgical detritus I was collecting, Peter told me that he'd always thought of Lindbergh as one of the great villains of American history. This wasn't the first time I've heard this. In fact, nearly every time I tell someone my new play is about Charles Lindbergh, the Nazi question comes up. There's been a real backlash against Lindbergh in recent years, the most visible example being Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. The 2003 revelation that Lindbergh had a secret German family probably didn't help matters much either.

But was Lindbergh actually a Nazi? Well, no. But he came pretty close.

Here's the deal: In 1938, Lindbergh co-wrote a book with Dr. Alexis Carrel that more or less promoted eugenics. Later that same year, Hermann Göring (yes, that Göring) presented Lindbergh with the Service Cross of the German Eagle. Once World War II started heating up, Lindbergh still refused to return the medal because he thought it would be an insult to the German government. But most damning, on September 11, 1941 (eerie how history seems to echo sometimes), Lindbergh, as a spokesman for the non-interventionist America First Committee, gave the following speech in Des Moines, Iowa:

I've listened to this speech over and over again. This is the man whose story I want to tell?

It's certainly no secret that our plays are attracted to historical figures with severe dichotomies (see: Mathew Brady: a pioneer of photography and a terrible husband; P.T. Barnum: a wise, omniscient spirit and flippant jackass), but an anti-Semitic aviator might be taking things to a new low.

And yet, I'm not satisfied with simply writing Lindbergh off as simply anti-Semitic. Even though I wholly reject hero worship and the Great Man theory of history (more on this later, I imagine), I can't help but be amazed by Lindbergh's story. His journey across the Atlantic is a gripping narrative even when you know he's going to make it safely in the end, the loss of his son is certainly heartbreaking, and his later work with Dr. Alexis Carrel has a certain quixotic pathos to it.

I listen to his America First speech and I try to square that voice with the boy F. Scott Fitzgerald was writing about when he said:

In the spring of '27, something bright and alien flashed across the sky. A young Minnesotan who seemed to have nothing to do with his generation did a heroic thing, and for a moment people set down their glasses in country clubs and speakeasies and thought their old best dreams

On a good day, I can reconcile the two in my mind for a moment.

When my 80 year old Iowa-bred grandmother heard about my new play at Thanksgiving, she begged me to leave the America First speech out. She told me that I should treat Lindbergh like a hero, not the villain historical revisionism has made him out to be. I don't know if I can do that. But I don't know if I can condemn him either.

So where does that leave me?

4 Plays, 4 Months. Let's Go.

2007-12-12T15:28:00.000-05:00

Now that we've gotten the title and the dates out of the way, I suppose its time to actually talk about the plays themselves. Per the Short Form format, What I Took in My Hand will be comprised of four smaller 10-minute plays. After each of the mini-plays is workshopped, we will eventually combine all four plays and end up with a longer one (in theory, at least). As we continue to develop What I Took in My Hand, we will, no doubt, discuss the challenges and rewards of writing four thematically-linked 10 minute plays in four months. But for right now, maybe it would be more helpful to talk about the tentative overall plan for this project.
Jess has already briefly summarized the overall arc of the plays, but I think its high time we break things down a bit. As of right now, here's the titles and summaries of each of the four plays:

In The Spirit of St. Louis

On May 20, 1927, a 25 year old Charles Lindbergh began a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. 33 hours, 30 minutes and 29.8 seconds later, he was an American hero. This is the story of those hours inside the cockpit, a story of velocity and of moving, irresistibly, towards your life.

First He Giveth

On March 1, 1932, Charles Lindbergh’s son is kidnapped from his second floor nursery. On May 12, someone finds the baby dead in a ditch. There is a suspect, a trial and an execution. This isn't that story. This is the story of an empty bassinet and the grieved father who rocks it to sleep every night.

E pur si battimenti!

Collaborating with the revered surgeon, Dr. Alexis Carrel, Lindbergh begins work on a pump to keep organs alive outside of the human body. His intention is to put a human heart in a jar and keep it beating for one night, and thereby conquer death. Alone in the lab, Charles begins to tell bedtime stories to the beating heart.

As long as the heart beats, Charles is winning.
The heart eventually stops.

Elysium

Maui, 1974. Diagnosed with lymphoma, the failed Immortalist prepares himself for death. He carves his own gravestone. He picks out his grave site under a tree and begins to dig it himself.

And then something magical and impossible happens.

Of course, this is all subject to change at the slightest whim. Stay tuned as we tear our hair out trying to make it all work.

Save the Dates!

2007-12-11T10:52:00.000-05:00

What I Took in My Hand

Part I: January 26- 10 pm
Part II: March 1-10 pm
Part III: March 29-10 pm
Part IV: April 26- 10 pm

All performances at Parish Hall, St. Mark's Church in the Bowery (131 E. 10th St)

$6 at the door

Jess Knows This Entire Poem by Heart

2007-12-10T10:27:00.000-05:00

For serious.
As sort of an introduction into "What I Took in My Hand" (and a way for me to buy more time for the impending Dramaturgical Presentation™), let's start by talking about the title itself, which comes from a beloved Robert Creeley poem (or at least beloved by those of us who love one-eyed poets).

Song
by Robert Creeley

What I took in my hand
grew in weight. You must
understand it
was not obscene.

Night comes. We sleep.
Then if you know what
say it.
Don't pretend.

Guises are
what enemies wear. You
and I live
in a prayer.

Helpless. Helpless,
should I speak.
Would you.
What do you think of me.

No woman ever was,
was wiser
than you. None is
more true.

But fate, love, fate
scares me. What
I took in my hand
grows in weight.

Now, I know this a poem about women (I know this because one time I said this was a poem about a man afraid of responsibility and Jess told me that it was actually a poem about women. I didn't have the heart to tell her that most of the responsibilities that men are afraid of involve women, but that's a story for another day), but in thinking about Lindbergh, I'm struck by that last stanza. Our first play begins mere hours before Lindbergh lands in Paris and, to quote a passage from A. Scott Berg's phenomenal biography of Lindbergh that I've been reading as of late:

For several years, Lindbergh had lived according to one of the basic laws of aerodynamics-the need to maintain balance. And so, in those figures [the crowd waiting for Lindbergh on the Paris landing strip] running toward him, Lindbergh immediately saw repercussions. At first he feared for his physical safety; over the next few months he worried about his soul.

(Lindbergh, pg. 6)

To go from a mail-route pilot to an American hero in 33.5 hours has got to be a sobering prospect. How does a person deal with this? What do we do when what we take in our hands grows in weight? What do we do when it grows far heavier than we ever imagined?

You didn't think we forgot about you...

2007-12-08T18:43:00.000-05:00

Faithful friends (friend? friends?),

It's been a while, we know, but here's a bit of a sneak peak at what TASP is up to now:

1. The American Story Project was accepted into the Ontological-Hysteric Theater's Short Form series, where we will develop our newest piece, tentatively titled "What I Took in my Hands" (formerly "These Wings of Lead"). Beginning inside the Spirit of St. Louis midway through its trans-Atlantic journey, as Lindbergh grapples with the idea of his oncoming fame, "What I Took in My Hand" follows Lindbergh through the death of his son, his manic attempts to build a machine to cheat death, and his eventual reconciliation with his own mortality as he digs his own grave. Far from a sober retelling of the facts of Lindbergh's life, "What I Took in my Hand" also features time travel, phantom children, metaphysics, and a metronomic human heart. Basically, TASP is afraid of growing up. And we want to talk about it. WITIMH features many of the TASP usual suspects and some new faces. Casting mostly TBD, although Mike James is slotted to play Lindbergh 1: The Spirit of St. Louis. The play will be presented at the Ontological theater in May and in smaller installments beginning in January.

2. TASP is also planning an upcoming collaboration with current P73 Fellow Krista Knight.

So brush up on your Walter Benjamin, folks, we're back in action.

From the Fringe

2007-08-25T07:52:00.000-04:00

This is actually my first post, so I will begin by introducing myself. I'm Greg, lighting designer for The American Story Project. I've been fortunate enough to have worked on all of the groups plays to date, including joining the company in Edinburgh last year for We Can't Reach You, Hartford. Which brings me to my impetus for finally adding my voice to our blog. Last year on our day off, many from the group went to see Radio, which played at a time when we couldn't see it. I went hiking instead. But last night Radio returned to the Fringe for a two-night engagement at our beloved Bedlam Theater, and I was fortunate enough to be sitting in the audience. I couldn't begin to speak about why I think it was not enjoyed as thoroughly by New York audiences, as Steve has done, because it was simply a great show. I thought that the perhaps cliche storylines of space travel and the Kennedy assassination were not at all what gave the piece its depth and poignancy. For me, the best part was the complete lack of these symbols on stage. The character was the son of the leading flag distributor in the nation, the man who made the flag that woul be left on the moon, and not a single flag appeared on stage. I'm beginning to think that this choice to leave anything but the individual out of the show was the reason it was powerful for me. When it was over, I just kept staring at the stage, trying to find the source of the emotion that I still felt pouring from it, but it was empty. And I felt like that was part of the point. So for me the "Americaness" of the piece was irrelevant, because it was really about this one kid and how his relationships with people were hidden behind these cliche stories that have become silly and too big to represent the people who were there to see them through.

Something to Hold You Over

2007-08-21T09:46:00.000-04:00

Photos from Daguerreotype will be up soon, but until then, here's a little something to hold you over. Should we ever decide to rewrite Daguerreotype as a period-piece horror film, its good to know that Edward will still be on board as the psychotic killer, Mathew B. Brady. Versatile actor, that boy.

if you look into Edward's eyes for too long, you can see your own soul.

Jess will, of course, play the courageous ingenue who eventually sets him on fire and then impales his immolated body with a Civil War bayonet. And then blows up the evil Whatizzit wagon that is the source of his power. Or something

Bonus points to anyone who can think of a name for this movie.

A Headline You Don't See Every Day

2007-08-20T10:38:00.000-04:00

In their never-ending quest to make me feel poor and miserable all the time (see: this, this, and, of course, this), The New York Times has been reporting from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe all this week. Being homesick (is that the right word?) for Scotland 83% of the time, these articles are murder on my will-power. I was just about ready to buy a trans-Atlantic ticket on pure impulse when I stumbled across this article:

Dwarf glued penis to Hoover
(thankfully, there is no picture)

Suddenly, I'm not in all that big a hurry to go back to Scotland.
Oh wait, who am I kidding? Yes, I am.

Can't It Be Both?

2007-08-16T17:19:00.000-04:00

In one of the several versions of his Daguerreotype review circulating the Internet (seriously, I count at least 3 different versions), Aaron Riccio says:

Now the American Story Project just needs to decide if that story's going to be about Mathew Brady, the pioneering war photographer, or if it's going to be about the unsung Civil War.

Reading this, Jess and I (independently of one another) asked: Can't it be both?

The issue here is, of course, one that I struggle with constantly when working on our plays: the conflict between the universal and the particular, between our personal histories and the histories we read in textbooks. That is to say, a lot of what interests me about the mission of The American Story Project is how the lives of individuals can be understood in the context of larger historical progress. My stance has always been that History with a capital "H" is driven foward by the trials and tribulations of personal history, that our struggles form some sort of irresistable foward progress.

I'm sort of a Hegelian, sue me.

As such, I understand that my incessant synthesis of the particular with the universal isn't always the best (or theatrically speaking, most dramatic) idea. Nor is it a belief that always ends in illumination or profundity. It tends towards the didactic and the pretentious. I know these things and I'm beginning to understand the dangers involved in this kind of history and these kinds of stories. But what I don't understand is why telling the story of Mathew Brady precludes telling the story of the unsung Civil War, why a story about a historian who is obsessed with celebrity, afraid of losing his wife, and losing his eyesight can't also be a story about how his sense of history is myopic, populist and unwilling to grapple with the grim and violent realities of war. I think there's a certain symmetry to it. And I don't think these are two issues that can necessarily be separated. But then again, I wrote the thing.

Now, I understand saying that these parallels aren't fully developed or realized (one of the problems we knew going into this play was it was divided into two distinct sections: first, "Brady," then "Brady's lecture"), or that the subtext of these layered stories is misleading, unfair, or idealistic (my sense of historical responsibility isn't for everyone). I've come to terms with how Daguerreotype tends to celebrate the achievements of dead white men (though I don't think I necessarily let Western hegemonic patriarchy off the hook either). I'd even allow that these concerns can make the play boring (I did catch more than one audience member yawn). But what I can't yet accept is the idea that I have to choose. That I can only tell one kind of story at a time, that I have to choose between the particular and the universal, between the tragedy of Mathew Brady and the tragic era he lived through. Maybe it's the failed novelist in me (as opposed to the historian, the playwright, the dramaturg, or the journalist), but I thought that this was the whole point of telling stories like this; I always thought the whole point was that it should be both.

Your thoughts?

An Essay on Influence, Interrupted

2007-08-15T18:45:00.000-04:00

Now that the dust has cleared on Daguerreotype and my sleep cycle is somewhat normal again, I thought this would be a good time to talk about my first experiences with theater.

With a successful run of a new show behind me, I thought it would only be right to pay tribute to those people who got me interested in doing theater in the first place. The first thing I was planning to talk about was the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, which pretty much dominated my theatrical world for most of childhood. Later, I would discover Long Wharf Theater in New Haven and the Wesport County Playhouse, but as a kid, the O'Neill was the only place that brought people to my school to perform. The entire school would be called to an assembly and we would all watch the show. I didn't really even have a choice. I would watch theater and dammit, I would like it. (Which probably explains a lot about my sense of theater.) So I was just about to write a sweet, loving tribute of The O'Neill circa 1992 when I saw this:

The Executive Director of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center is 25.

Preston Whiteway, the source of my feelings of inadequacy

How did this happen and why do I suddenly feel like I'm wasting my life? Granted, at 23 I'm part of a young emerging Off-Off-Broadway theater company poised to do great things in the future. But this guy runs the O'Neill. His weekly paycheck is probably larger than the production budget for Daguerreotype. And lest you think this is simply about money, he also runs one of the most respected and influential theater centers in American theater, the place that developed new works by John Guare, Wendy Wasserstein and August Wilson. (Okay, I had to look at the web site to find that out, but it's impressive nonetheless.) The single most important theatrical institution in my young development is being run by someone less than 2 years older than me.

This is either a sign of the vitality of American theater or a sign of its imminent collapse. I can't decide which.

The End

2007-08-12T18:02:00.000-04:00

After a 6 hour strike, we're done! The theater is clean and newly painted, and we're ready to begin revising D-Type and get started on new projects for the fall..

Thank you thank you thank you for all your support! We are eternally grateful and so excited to see you at future Story Project projects (ha!).

What a wonderful season it was.

moremoremore!

2007-08-06T21:10:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow night TASP is hosting two more readings of new plays!

7pm: "The Architect Ages" by David Henry Haan

Directed by Rachel Silverman

With: Emily Allyn Barth
Jesse Bordwin
Lucas Brooks
Michael Gottwald
Samantha Levy

9pm: "L'Elue" by Kevin Anthony Kautzmann

Directed by John Hansen-Brevetti

With: Sara Elmaleh
Lauren Kelston
Ian Quinlan

Q & A sessions will follow each reading with the actors and director (and for The Architect Ages, the playwright as well)

Free admissions.

ALSO!

If you have seen Daugerrotype already, you may notice a mistake on the program. The reading of Chris Kaminstein's "Percy and Shell" will be happening on Saturday August 11th, not August 9th.

We hope to see you there!

First weekend success!

2007-08-06T18:36:00.000-04:00

Hello!!!!

Wow. what an amazing opening weekend. Every thing went so well, which has allowed me to breathe my first sigh of relief in about 3 weeks. Yippie!
To recap the weekend. First, Lunchbox!
We sold out all three nights. That's right folks, getting tickets at the door is NO guarantee so go to smarttix

Love,
Elissa

"a lot of promise for reviving historical theater and reminding us of how we once were"

2007-08-06T13:29:00.002-04:00

We got our first review! Aaron Riccio, of Show Showdown, came to Saturday's matinee, and wrote us a constructive, thoughtful, and ultimately inspiring review. Some of our favorite parts excerpted below:

"The energy and passion make for an exciting bit of theater."

"...a trio of actors working together to unfreeze the still images of the past, riding the waves of time with vibrant rhapsody."

"The American Story Project's ambitious Daguerreotype creates a fine latent image by focusing on Mathew Brady and then branching out to the Civil War and the question "What is history?"

Also, my personal favorite: "an agile, but indistinct Zach LeClair."

We're waiting for more reviews (we hope!) to come, but in the meantime, having even one outsider with good things to say should help us immensely.

Today saw another marketing coup, this one completely inexplicable: SmartTix, the host for our online ticket sales, bought us an ad on its front page for no reason whatsoever. It's thrilling, of course, though it did cause Elissa and me some confusion when we realized neither of us had organized it. We've had some complete strangers come to the show, and it's always fantastic to see them; hopefully this will bring in more people who are just wondering what it's all about.

There's so much to report from the weekend's run-- three sold-out performances of Lunchbox, all of Jess's elementary school teachers coming for Sunday's matinee, plenty of familiar and supportive faces coming for every performance-- but maybe I'll leave that to some of the others? In the meantime, see you in the box office!

notes from the box office

2007-08-05T14:21:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone,

I'm writing to you from the box office at the Abingdon, where I have spent essentially the entire weekend. I hear it's been hot and muggy outside; I wouldn't really know. As much as this may sound like complaining, though, it's been truly wonderful. We've had fantastic houses all through the weekend, with Lunchbox-- the sketch comedy group performing at 10 p.m. after Daguerreotype each night-- selling out essentially each night. D-type also sold out last night, though much of that was due to Nick's mom buying over a third of the tickets.

I haven't had much of a chance to talk to the audience after the shows, spending my time moving daguerreotype plates and disassembling the bed and whatnot. It's much easier for me to gauge Lunchbox's audience reaction from my perch in the box office-- sometimes the walls actually shake with laughter. For Daguerreotype, though, I can only assume the audience is reacting the same way I am, getting chills in certain parts and finding something new each time I see the play. Even when I've been standing in the lobby watching Zach do his quick changes from being Abraham Lincoln to a young, naive soldier, I believe it fully every time I see him perform. That's one of the things I always find amazing about theater-- the people you know, completely transformed before you. When I sit in the front row and Edward delivers his monologue a foot and a half away, I know he can see me, but in a way, he's not Edward anymore. Mathew Brady has no idea I'm there, and I honestly feel that.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that things are going very, very well, and if you're reading this and haven't come to the play yet, well, what are you waiting for? It's going to be hard for me to go back to my job on Monday, what with my head back in the Civil War and a box office still.

The Beginning!

2007-08-04T13:19:00.001-04:00

Hello bloggers!

I am happy to announce the beginning of our summer reading series, which will be TODAY August 4th!

Here's the information:

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Anna Moench
Directed by Liz Thaler
Starring:
Josh Blye
Michael Gottwald
Azhar Khan
Colin Kindley
Matt Klein
Meredith Steinberg
Joanne Tucker

The Abingdon Theater, 312 West 36th street, 5pm. Short question and answer session with actors, director, and writer to follow.

We hope to see you there!

opening niiiiight... it was opening niiiiiight!

2007-08-03T13:18:00.000-04:00

Call me geeky, but I've never had an opening night of a play when I didn't think of that song from "The Producers." It never occurs to me that people will walk out of my play exclaiming "We've seen shit, but never like this!" but really, singing that song ought to be a bad omen.

Luckily... it wasn't! Opening night last night went fantastically well, from the enthusiastic and friend-filled audience to the mesmerizing performances to the near-miraculous lack of serious injury leading up to it (when Greg decides it's his turn to contribute to the blog, remind him to tell you the story about how he decided to cut through a live copper wire while standing on a 15-foot ladder). Zach even pulled off wearing a stovepipe hat, a feat if I ever saw one.

Tonight is our "official" opening night, which means we've invited all our donors and some other important people to come. We'll be having a champagne reception afterward-- going out to buy the champagne in a few hours-- and getting our first chance to really talk to our audiences after a performance. Hopefully they'll be nicer than they were to poor ol' Max Bialystock.

T-Minus 27 hours

2007-08-01T15:55:00.000-04:00

As promised, from this week's Time Out New York. And with not one, but two bad puns in the caption!

A Quick Note

2007-07-31T00:20:00.000-04:00

We are in tech-week. And we are tech-week machines. But tech-week machines don't blog that often. Forgive us.

p.s. Dangling cables and broken drill bits aside, the theater already looks really beautiful. You really should see it. Hint, hint.

Something Else You Should See

2007-07-27T00:35:00.001-04:00

poster courtesy of Mr. Michael Baltus, to whom we are forever grateful.

In Case You Haven't Seen These Yet

2007-07-26T09:48:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, The American Story Project joined up with our favorite photographer, Toby Shaw, headed to Grant's tomb, sweet-talked a security guard, dressed up the actors, and made them make silly faces all morning. These are our (best) results:

A little known fact: Edward is 1/4 owl on his mother's side.

If you're on Facebook, you can see the rest of the photos here

This just in: Picture #3 will appear in next week's Time Out New York in the Theater Listings section. Pick up a copy and come see the show!

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free

2007-07-25T23:26:00.000-04:00

Hi everybody! I suppose it's time to introduce myself. I'm Tori and I'm the Stage Manager for the Story Project. This is my first time SMing for the company, but my second production (I played Little Miss 1565 in the most recent production of We Can't Reach You, Hartford). This entry deals with some thoughts I've been sitting on for a while, hoping to come to a logical conclusion. Seems I can't—I suppose it's a good thing that I'm planning on writing about it in my honors thesis this coming year.

So during our rehearsals, part of our warm up typically includes singing time-appropriate songs. For Hartford, we sang songs from the 40s, and we were interested in finding some civil war era songs for the Daguerreotype warm up. At one of last week's rehearsals we started to sing, and since I had completely forgotten to research songs, we just started with a few patriotic songs we knew-- America the Beautiful, My country 'Tis of Thee, and the Star Spangled Banner. As we sung, I was struck by the fact that despite the beautiful language, we were singing the songs in a way that made them seem very lackluster. I suppose it is because we are so accustomed to hearing and singing the songs when it is time appropriate (i.e. at Commencement, on the 4th, etc.) that we fail to notice the song writer's intent. When we sing patriotic songs because it is required of us, it really takes all the fun out of it, and it becomes a monotonous chore which is in turn reflected in the way that we sing the song. For all we care, we could be singing about how much we hate the country rather than how beautiful it is or how lucky we are to have it, as the lyrics proclaim.

This got me thinking a lot about writer's intent performer's intent and song meaning, and whether or not they are really the same thing. I tend to think that a person can develop hir own personal meaning to a song, but I do think that taking the author's intent into account is important (this is especially important when dealing with songs that have a very specific place in history). And I think it would be silly to ignore the thought of young 19th century boys marching to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" when it is sung in another context (I know that every time we sing it when warming up, I imagine huge groups of young men marching off to battle).

So, what is it that makes a song special in terms of performance? Why do songs that begin as special tributes becomes so ordinary? And what type of meaning, if any, should we assign to songs that do have a specific kind of history? I don't know. Ask me in a year and maybe I can give you an eloquent, concise answer. For now, I'd love to read thoughts...

"We Named the Dog Indiana," or: Zeitgeist A-Go-Go

2007-07-25T14:20:00.000-04:00

Hi all. It's Jon, the Story Project's publicity guy.

The powers of the publicist can be used for both good and evil; back up, let me explain.

I have a wee love affair with the phenomenon known as "google alerts;" basically, you set up terms via google, and when they show up in websites or on various news sources, you get a piping-hot email notice delivered fresh to your inbox. I've set up about fifteen of these for the Story Project; mostly, they're "Mathew Brady," "Daguerreotype," "American Story Project," "Wesleyan theatre," "New York Photography," etc.

Just in case, I've also set up alerts for each company member's name. I now know more about people I barely know than you'd ever know.

The tense on that last sentence gave me a headache. Anyway, long story short (TOO LATE!) last week, the Mathew Brady alert pinged and sent me this obit from the Washington Post.
John Szarkowski spent most of his career launching the careers of others; it's a cogent, well-written and poignant obit, But I found myself asking--"Where's the Brady connection?"

Well...

"He liked to describe himself as a "dumb hick," but he played clarinet in an orchestra as a young man and graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in art history. He began taking pictures when he was 11 and named his dog after Civil War-era photographer Mathew Brady."

I'm a big fan of pop-culture pet naming (hell, I wrote a play about it). A news story that name-checks Mathew Brady as a dog? Last thing I expected to receive. It kind of makes me want to get a really mean-spirited cat named Edward Albee, for similar reasons.

It's a strange world out there; let's keep it that way.

Dramaturgical Remainders IV

2007-07-19T21:33:00.000-04:00

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation

(ht to David Byrne, sort of)

The Mathew Brady Project

2007-07-19T14:38:00.000-04:00

It seems that Brady's ghost is the muse for some ambitious World War II scholars. Read more about the electronic archive being created a la Brady-esque preservation philosophy...

"Matthew Brady was a photographer and historian of the American Civil War. His work was vital in preserving the faces and memories of the men who fought the Civil War. But imagine if there were not one, but thousands, maybe tens of thousands of Matthew Bradys who will undertake the mission of preserving the faces, stories and memories of the men and women who fought and won World War II, history's greatest conflict.

This web site will serve as a free clearinghouse for digitized information about the war. Veterans or their families can send in paper documents which the project staff will scan and store on CDs. The paper documentation will then be sent back to the families. This will provide secure long-term storage of fragile documents which can be damaged by the weather or even thrown away by un-interested parties after the veteran dies."

http://www.ww2museum.com/mbp.htm

We are the Zeitgeist (Again...)

2007-07-18T12:24:00.000-04:00

If you needed any more proof of just how edgy and relevant a play about 19th century photography can be, take a look at what's being published by the University of California Press:

On Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War

The book itself doesn't come out until November, but then, one of the perks of toiling in the vineyards of Catholic journalism all day while other members of the remain blissfully(?) unemployed is all the advanced review copies of new books I get on a daily basis. So I'm expecting a copy of the book sometime next week. Expect to hear from me soon.

the big leap begins!

2007-07-17T12:51:00.000-04:00

First of all, check out the full photo album from our benefit on Sunday night. If you were there, odds are you'll find yourself in at least one of the photos, and if you're a Facebook member, tag yourself! We'd like to give everyone credit-- in facebook form, at least-- for supporting us.

Lucky Dylan Marron won TWO raffle prizes, including a poster signed by the entire cast of In the Heights. Special thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda for the donation!

Now that the fundraiser is over, the real publicity challenge begins, and that's what's been on my mind the last few days. Getting our friends to come out on a Sunday night, with the promise of raffle prizes and free food, wasn't really all that hard. Attracting the interest of total strangers to come see a play set in the 19th century in which everyone dies at the end-- a bit tougher.

Promoting Hartford in Edinburgh last summer, we were among literally thousands of people all trying to get their shows seen-- which almost made it easier. Handing out postcards to people on the street, getting shops to put up your posters-- being a theater promoter was the norm, so everyone expected you to hand them a postcard and shout "Play about a circus fire!"

Here in New York, even with so much theater, getting a stranger's attention, much less a stranger interested in theater, is much harder. Good luck handing anyone a postcard, or hanging a poster somewhere it won't get taken down by overzealous street cleaners. Even street theater or other guerilla tactics can be ignored; in the end, it takes a lot to get a New York pedestrian to remove her earbuds and listen to you.

So, what do we do? We know how to target our friends and fellow theater companies and even some communities of theatergoers, but how about someone on the street who might like our play, even if they don't know it yet? This is what I can't figure out. I'm open to suggestions, though. And also totally willing to humiliate myself or anyone else in the company in order to get attention for the show.

Lunchbox critics quotes

2007-07-16T15:06:00.001-04:00

this just in: a compilation of blurbs about Lunch Box Sketch Comedy:

“Lunchbox is a revelation. They actually live up to the hype surrounding them unlike me and every single book I’ve written since The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.”

-Michael Chabon, novelist

“They used the word ‘poop!’”

-Tyler Eckeldorf, 5 year old

“I make a point of laughing and/or evincing human emotion at least twice a week and, boy, did Lunchbox exceed my quota!”

-Hillary Clinton, Senator and Presidential Candidate

“Lunchbox is similar to me in that they grow on you and provide relaxation and comfort on a hot day.”

- A tree

“If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about [Lunchbox], some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if [they] were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I think I would have enjoyed the show more if I spoke English.”

- Raul Calleblancas (translated)

for tickets:

http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showcode=LUN5

this is the most important part of the benefit to share right now

2007-07-16T10:20:00.000-04:00

Erin will be photoshopped in the photo later.

And for anyone reading this who came last night, THANK YOU SO MUCH. I'm sure there will be better and fuller reports of the evening later, but we all had a wonderful time, and it was truly thrilling to see how many people came out on a Sunday night at 10 p.m. to support us.

Dramaturgical Remainders (Part III)

2007-07-15T01:30:00.000-04:00

There was actually another speaker at Gettysburg Cemetery the day that Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln spoke for 2 minutes; the other man spoke for 2 hours.
Sockdolager" - (def.) one who strikes a heavy blow
Walt Whitman believed baseball could relieve nervousness and dyspepsia.
During the Civil War, gonorrhea was treated with ink.
"Green apple quickstep" was a 1860s slang term for diarrhea.
The word "deadline" is said to have originated in the line that marked the perimeter of the POW camp in Andersonville. Any prisoner crossing that line would risk being shot. The usage was then adapted to mean the time limit to complete a job at the risk of being shot if that limit was crossed.
Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was wounded 10 separate times during the Civil War
General George Pickett became an insurance salesman after the war.
Gallaudet University began the tradition of the football huddle in the 1890s, in order to conceal their signed plays from the opposing team.

Earlier:
Dramaturgical Remainders (Part I)
Dramaturgical Remainders (Part II)

Lunchbox Sketch Comedy

2007-07-13T11:06:00.000-04:00

http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showcode=LUN5

we're on sale! TELL YOUR FRIENDS. Buy tickets to an hour of all original sketches performed by all members of lunchbox, past and present.

YES!

reunited and it feels so good...

2007-07-12T23:17:00.000-04:00

It seemed worth posting before I go to bed that (almost) the entire company was in one place tonight! Amid all of our fancy rehearsal spaces, benefit spaces, donations from restaurants who trust us, we're still hilariously meeting in Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts and any other places that won't suspect us sitting there for hours at a time while getting worked up over naming a cocktail after Civil War generals (seriously, get on the name game!)

In any case, everyone seemed very excited about Sunday's benefit, and with our amazing roster of items to be raffled, promises of baked goods from various company members, and the promise of free pizza, why shouldn't they be? And in case you're reading this and have somehow forgotten the details of the benefit (is that possible?), all the information you could need-- including names of our wonderful sponsors!-- is here.

Tomorrow I'll be going around doing more of the surprisingly magical gift certificate pick-ups for raffle items-- why yes, I will take your offer of a free meal!-- and getting beneficial things in order throughout the weekend. I'm sure there's a point at which this will all feel stressful, but right now--exciting!

Yankee Go Home

2007-07-12T11:44:00.000-04:00

I'm not particularly good at introductions.

My name is Edward, and I'm a resident actor with the Story Project. I've been with the company since February of '06, when we started preliminary work on the story of the Hartford circus fire. I spent over a year with the project, most of the time as the inimitable P.T. Barnum (although I also spent a relatively brief but wonderful stint as sad clown Emmett Kelly, as you can see here). At the moment I'm rehearsing for playing the man himself, Mr. Mathew B. Brady. In addition, I'm a member of Lunchbox sketch comedy, the sugary, flaky cheese danish to Daguerreotype's slightly bitter but ultimately delicious and fulfilling turnip dish.

Aside from that I'm not entirely sure what to say. Ironic that one so hesitant to throw himself into the public eye should be, of all people, an actor, but there it is. The key difference, I think, is that when you - yes, my friend, you - come to view me in performance, we both understand the other's purpose clearly. The audience has made a choice in attending, and in doing so has given itself over entirely to the actors and their purpose. Logically there is little difference between this act and the act of reading a blog, but nevertheless it is clearly not the same. I think that the distinction lies in the fact that there is something potent and sacred about the relationship between actor and audience, a reciprocation that simply eludes the internet in most of its manifestations (perhaps a brief thesis on video-chatting later; perhaps not). A mutual relinquishing of inhibitions and preconceptions wherein each party implores the other, "Please, change me. I must not leave here as I entered." And both are changed. Ideally, at least. The fact that it sometimes fails, however, makes its successes that much more thrilling.

Well! Enough of that, for the moment. I certainly hope that anyone reading this will manage to make it out to the play, because it's going to be one hell of a good time.

And no, the title of my post has nothing to do with the body of it, although upon further consideration it can apply at least tangentially to Mr. Brady. Bereft of inspiration I simply named it after what happened to be playing on my iTunes at that moment. Name the band and you will win, I suppose, a prize?

the accountant's truth

2007-07-12T11:23:00.000-04:00

I had a whole post ready to go about Werner Herzog and his connections to our views on history and what insights he has to offer us, when I realized--damn!-- Steve beat me to it. That's what I get for not reading my own blog carefully enough.

Still, I want to post a excerpt from an interview I heard with him this morning (I'm that nerd who listens to NPR podcasts on the subway), on "Fresh Air." It's a 10-year old interview, from when he released Little Dieter Needs to Fly, a documentary about a German-American pilot who escaped a war prison during the Vietnam War. It's the basis for his new feature, Rescue Dawn, which is a fictionalized version of Dieter's story. As Steve discussed earlier and Herzog himself says here, though, the line between documentary and fiction isn't necessarily clear.

"When you read Robert Frost and you have some very deep feeling about it, and all of a sudden you have this sensation there is this deep, inexplicable, mysterious truth in it. The same thing happens in movies, and it does not happen, strangely enough in most of the documentaries you would see on television. You do not see it in the so-called cinema verite, which can only scratch the surface of what is truth; it's an accountant's truth, it's a bookkeeper's truth. I have been for years after the questions of how you can dig into a very deep stratum of truth, into something inexplicable, something mysterious. You can reach it and you can find it, but normally through invention, through imagination, through fabrication. Sometimes even contorting and stylizing events right out there and then all of a sudden you will find something strange, deep and elusive...Much of [Little Dieter Needs to Fly] has been invented. There's a scene where he tries to explain how death looks for him, and he's standig in front of a tank with jellyfish. He simply treid to explain it to me what death was looking like for him, and he had no image. He described it in a way that i immediately figured it was jellyfish. He couldn't express it, but I had the image for it."

What I like so much about that quote is how it reaches out to me as an audience member, in a way that's different from how Steve was dealing with "ecstatic truth" as a writer. In plays like We Can't Reach You, Hartford and Daguerretoype, the "truth," the actual historical record, comes at you from so many angles, mixed in with other things that are extrapolations or outright fiction. Hearing the story of Little Miss 1565, maybe it was the detail about the detective who stayed with her in the morgue that broke your heart, or maybe it was her own-- in the Edinburgh version of the play, at least-- assertion that she has forgotten who she used to be. One of those details is true, and one is fiction, but the line between them no longer matters; they're part of the same truth, the same uniting emotion.

At the end of Daguerreotype (spoiler alert!) there are two deaths, one meticulously steeped in fact and one entirely imagined. For me, at least, it's the fictionalized death that always hits me hardest, makes me realize the play's ideas about legacy and death and holding on to the past, in a way that learning about Abraham Lincoln's head wound in 11th grade history never did. And isn't that the way history has always worked? What matters more, whether or not the famous photo at Iwo Jima was actually staged or the impact it had on the people who saw it? Who cares whether or not George Washington cut down the cherry tree? The fact that we trust the story tells us far more about who he was and who we are than the "accountant's truth" of his great battles and victories.

So, then, history and historical theater aren't so different after all. We pick out what we want to remember, we embellish the details we like and gloss over the others that don't fit our plans. We tell history the way we choose. History is a long series of "ecstatic truths," and its the artists, the playwrights and the filmmakers, who get to tell it with props, with dream sequences and ghosts and hyper-kinetic Civil War re-enactments. Or, in Herzog's case, jellyfish.

intro later, excitement now

2007-07-11T18:25:00.000-04:00

Okay. My name is Elissa, and I'm the managing director/cofounder of The Story Project (how's that for a new abbreviated version of our slightly long name? I think I prefer it to TASP which, our publicity manager pointed out is difficult to say sans lisp). I'm also putting together & performing in Lunchbox Sketch Comedy, our late night sketch group. But I want to save my formal introduction and bio for a later date because right now I just really want to share exiting news and then shower.

After several sweltering hours in the heat and humidity of downtown NYC, several Story Project members, including myself, assembled a damned good raffle for sunday night. The lower east side community was unbelievably generous, and we have procured several gift certificates to restaurants and shops as well as awesome merchandise from a variety of places. Our raffle is now stacked with prizes ranging from ground level mets & yankees tickets to an In the Heights cast-signed poster & tee shirt, delivered by Lin Manuel Miranda himself, to a gift certificate to an AWESOME downtown vintage shop.l If you all play your cards right, you could walk away with hundreds, perhaps even thousands of dollars worth of prizes (assuming you win each and every prize).

Our party is going to be rocking, so submit your suggestions for drink ideas (see Steve's post) and come out and party with The Story Project!

PS - We'd love to know who's reading this, so respond with comments! I dare you...

Not alone in our fascination

2007-07-11T12:18:00.000-04:00

Hello, my name is Hayley. I'm one of the actors in the upcoming production of Daguerrotype. In case anyone wants to do more online probing, check out the Daguerreian Society...

"The Daguerreian Society brings together people from all over the world who are united by a common interest in the history of photography. Our members include students and teachers… museum curators and scientists... collectors and dealers... historians, photographers and artists. We formed in 1988 as a group "dedicated to the history, science, and art of the daguerreotype." Daguerreotypes -- the glittering, mirror-like images made by the world's first practical system of photography -- are only one part of what brings us together. Over the years, we've learned to appreciate the skills and knowledge of our fellow members, and their dedication to increasing the world's understanding of early photography and its role in history."

http://www.daguerre.org/

inside the director's studio

2007-07-11T00:39:00.000-04:00

My favorite color is blue.

Now then, as a director, I seem to be facing a series of questions that spiral outwards infinitely and then end me back where I started. Productive? perhaps not. Interesting? definitely.

They all start with one:

In classes, in productions, in books, I have been warned not to use music "cinematically." In my estimation, this seems to mean that I should not use music simply to enhance mood or manipulate the audience into feeling feelings. It is so tempting to nod enthusiastically when you receive the advice that the music should be at odds with, in conversation with, the action. However, faced with the prospect of creating a play with a live piano score, how can I avoid music that acts in accordance with the play? Is this wrong? Should the music never coincide, come out of nowhere but the emotional heart of the action? Company member and fellow director Mike James said yesterday that the fact that I am struggling with this question and questioning the use of "cinematic" music means that I probably am less susceptible to the trap of letting emotional music cover for flat acting. This I know to be true. Any accompanied scene is first rigorously rehearsed without music first. Directors, theatregoers, friends, what do you think about this?

How this question spirals outwards:

When should language and physicality be at odds with one another? When should they function together? Isn't congruity between design elements and production elements proof of a unified vision? Or is that too simple?

I suppose this navigation is my job. Oh well.

A final note: please comment on the blog. That way, we can start a conversation and get to know you. And we want to know you.

We are the Zeitgeist

2007-07-10T23:53:00.000-04:00

In anticipation of Daguerreotype (yeah, right...), U.S. News & World Report published two articles on Mathew Brady last week:

No Fortune for the War's Famous Photographer

But Did He Really Take the Pictures?

The articles don't really reveal anything we didn't already know (probably because they talked to the same scholars whose books I used in my research), but it's a relief to read something that completely affirms the importance of everything our play is about: the struggle between history and celebrity, the differing sensibilities of Brady and Gardner, the sorrow of Brady's final days. These articles also mean that some of our audience (assuming here that some of our audience reads U.S. News & World Report) will now have a passing familiarity with dear old Mathew. But really, it's just fun to say that we got there first.
Eat it, mainstream print media.

(thanks to Dr. Linda Ellen Hillman Chayes, official mother of the American Story Project, for finding the articles)

READING SERIES!

2007-07-09T00:21:00.000-04:00

I am so happy to announce the schedule for our 2007 summer reading series, part of the festival with TASTE:

Saturday August 4th at 5pm: The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Anna Moench
Sunday August 5th at 5pm: Bury My Heart by Bob McClure
Tuesday August 7th at 7pm: The Architect Ages by David Henry Haan
Tuesday August 7th at 9pm: L'Elue by Kevin Anthony Kautzman
Saturday August 11th at 5pm: Percy and Shell by Chris Kaminstein

All of the readings will be at the Abingdon Theater Complex for FREE!! (with a suggested donation of a few dollars, but ultimatley, FREE!). There will be an accompanying talkback session after each reading for any audience members who would like to participate, the director, actors, and perhaps even the playwright.

Come see one, come see all.

More information and details to follow soon.

We hope to see you there!

Invent a Drink!

2007-07-08T23:35:00.000-04:00

So as you all hopefully know by now, The American Story Project is going to be throwing a "Summer Fundraising Extravaganza" at the Bowery Poetry Club next Sunday, the 15th. There will be music, raffel prizes and a 50/50 chance of seeing me in a 3 piece suit. It promises to be a metric shit-ton of fun. Especially considering that the fine folks at the Bowery Poetry Club have offered to serve our trademark drink. But here's the problem: there is no official American Story Project drink.
Yet.
This is where you come in, dear Reader. By Sunday, we need to invent a new drink with a funny name to serve all of the fine people who come to our party. We are willing to take any and all suggestions. So please leave us a comment that includes a recipe and a funny name for this drink that has to do with 19th photography. The winner will receive my gratitude and the joy of knowing that they just got a lot of people in trouble with their boss come Monday morning.

ch-ch-ch-changes!

2007-07-08T11:57:00.000-04:00

First, an announcement: we finally have a MySpace! Somehow, even though every member of this company is part of the so-called "MySpace generation," not a one of us actually knew how to put together one of these pages. But we persevered and asked several friends for advice, and here it is! For anyone not willing to click on those links, the address is www.myspace.com/americanstoryproject. Be our friends!

And now, to introduce myself, since I have never posted on this blog before and figured it was high time to give Steve a break.

My name is Katey, and I'm an associate producer with the American Story Project. When you come to see "Daguerretoype" in August, I'll be the person meeting you at the front, and possibly running around insanely getting everything and everyone in one place. I joined the Story Project last year as we were beginning the production on "We Can't Reach You, Hartford," and I took over whatever production duties our Managing Director Elissa couldn't do when she was, y'know, acting onstage in the production. The two weeks I spent with the rest of the company in Edinburgh were unbelievable, and I actually made my decision to move to New York after graduation partially because I would be able to work on this production. So, here I am! When not working with the Story Project I'm a movie critic/editorial assistant for Film Journal International, which will be fascinating reading for you if you are a movie theater owner, which I know many of you are.

More members of the company will be introducing themselves to you in this fashion over the next few days-- I promise I'm not just hijacking the blog for the sake of self-promotion. So come back to see which of the sexy, brilliant company members will be introducing themselves next!

Ecstatic Truth

2007-07-06T00:31:00.000-04:00

On Slate today is an interesting article about how Werner Herzog handles the truth. As a maker of both feature films and documentaries (as well as being one crazy motherfucker), Herzog says he believes is something called “ecstatic truth,” a truth which goes beyond the factual—what Herzog calls "a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants"—and into a realm where a film can illuminate an entire inner world rather than merely reproduce external realities. Re place the word “film” with “theater” and you must just be talking about what we do here at The American Story Project. Granted, in our search for ecstatic truth we’re nowhere near as ruthless as dear old Herzog (who treats his documentary subjects almost as if they’re actors—feeding them lines, creating fictitious childhood memories for them, staging moments and scenes that are made to look spontaneous), but I think our mentalities aren’t all that different.
Something I have always struggled with as a dramaturge, writer, and amateur historian is the nature of historical truth. It would make my beloved historiography professor cringe to hear (Ethan, if you’re reading this, close the window now) but I’ve always found historical truth so static and boring. Its always seemed incomplete in how self-contained and comprehensive it But it wasn’t until I was introduced to subalternity, the idea that for every historical voice we hear there is another voice being silenced, that there are some histories that we won’t find in any source material, that there are some histories that cannot be referenced, cited or documented, that I began to realize certain correlatives to historical truth: namely, fiction and imagination. And that’s what The American Story Project has been doing ever since.
I don’t know what Abraham Lincoln would have ever said to Mathew Brady. I know they were acquaintances who met on several occasions. I know that Lincoln was forever grateful for how Brady made the tall, gangly senator look “presidential.” But the historical record stops there. I’m the one who imagined two melancholic men, both deeply troubled in their own ways, talking about their wives. But that’s not to say it never happened, just that there’s no record of it happening. For all I know, I may have imagined the conversation exactly how it happened, word for word (unlikely, but these are the sorts of things I tell myself to keep going). But even if I didn’t, even if I got everything about their relationship wrong, it still feels right, it still feels true. I’m grasping at some ecstatic truth here, some truth about love, responsibility, and the anxieties of a Civil War America. I have imagined what could never be otherwise; I have completed a history of Mathew Brady that feels true to me because it is not bound by what we know to be true. I try to be honest, but I am not afraid to devise, exaggerate, and invent those things I cannot know. Even though I'm still a stickler for historical accuracy (just ask Jess) I have broken every rule I was taught to follow as a historian. And yet, I'm still writing histories. Ecstatic histories.

State of the Union

2007-07-05T12:07:00.000-04:00

I know its a day late for any topical entries about the state of the American democracy, but if you haven't already, take the time to read the Washington Post's epic four-part story on the dark heart of Dick Cheney. The picture alone is terrifying.

And when you're done with that, look at this story by a New Republic correspondent who took a ride on the National Review cruise. I never thought I would actually feel sorry for William F. Buckley, but lo and behold! He's actually the (quasi) good guy for once. Granted, the fulmination that Buckley directed at liberals, New Dealers, civil rights marchers, and other "Communist sympathizers" in the 1950s and 1960s was the rhetorical dress rehearsal for today's neo-conservative fuckheads, but you'd never catch Buckley claiming that "there was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld."

What is the world coming to?

Dramaturgucal Remainders (Part II)

2007-07-03T00:02:00.001-04:00

Rehearshals for Daguerreotype started tonight, tomorrow night I give my full-company dramaturgical presentation, what better time to revisit some of the strange bits that didn't make the play?

a 1849 fued between New York actor Edwin Forrest and his British rival, William Macready, ignited a riot in Astor Place that raged for 20 days and killed 30 people
the first pornographic pictures were dageurreotypes
Abraham Lincoln died in a bed once occupied by John Wilkes Booth
The last words of Gen. Sedgwick: "Those boys can't hit an elephant from this distance..."
The term "Great Scott" is a direct reference to the nickname of Gen. Winfield Scott
After he graduated from West Point, Ulysses S. Grant applied to teach mathematics at a girls' school in Ohio.
Grant's name was really Hiram Grant, but he was called "Lyss" as a child. His West Point sponsor, knowing only the nickname, made a mistake and wrote "Ulysses'" on the application.
Samuel Morse (yes, that Morse) taught Mathew Brady the art of daguerreotypy
The "B" in Mathew B. Brady stands for nothing.

earlier: Dramaturgical Remainders

O Tempora!

2007-06-28T01:15:00.000-04:00

The BBC preempts Blair's final Questions to the Prime Minister in order to show a promo for HBO's Rome.

(reg. required)

Dramaturgical Remainders

2007-06-26T17:03:00.000-04:00

In the course of any dramaturgical investigation, you're going to have to do "a ton of research." And much of what a dramatug researches, much of the books they read, much of the information they retain, is never actually used in any production. It normally just sits in the dramaturg's brain, where it ocassionally comes in handy during triva night at the local bar. But today, looking through my notes for Daguerreotype, I thought it would be a shame to let so much knowledge go to waste. And so, some dramaturgical remainders from the writing of Daguerreotype:

Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died when the family dairy cow ate poisonous mushrooms and she drank the milk.

Gennaro Lombardi opened the first New York City pizzaria in 1895

An undamaged daguerreotype camera today is worth upwards of $800,000

Walt Whitman reviewed Leaves of Grass under a psuedonym. Needless to say, he liked it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was banned from Harvard College for 30 years for denying the divinity of Jesus. There is now a chair in the Harvard Divinity School named after him.

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert, fell off a train platform in Jersey City and would have been crushed to death by an oncoming train if he was not saved at the last minute by Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth's older brother.

Lt. Gen Richard S. Ewell, Stonewall Jackson's sucessor, was nicknamed "Baldy Dick"

We've got Isto!

2007-06-26T15:07:00.001-04:00

Chris White, of widespread YOUTUBE fame (http://youtube.com/watch?v=hFFH8DaOHQg) is set to perform at our July 15th Benefit at the Bowery Poetry Club!

Reminder: Tickets are $10 at the door and include 5 raffle tickets!

Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery
July 15th, 10-midnight
Featuring Bear Hands, Chris "Isto" White, a raffle chock full o' prizes, food, drink and general merriment.

Best Answer Ever?

2007-06-26T12:47:00.000-04:00

If you were the author of a book, and could have any words of praise to feature in an ad for it, what would they be?

Hannah Arendt: “Destroys the philosophical basis of all previous human thought”

(ht to Papercuts,the greatest book-fetish blog in existence)

Thank you!!

2007-06-26T00:25:00.000-04:00

A huge huge thank you to everyone who took the time and energy to submit their scripts to our summer reading series. Thanks to all of you we recieved over 100 submissions!

A TASP committee will be reading all of the submissions and selecting five by the beginning of July.

Looking forward to updating everyone of the results!!

Rachel

Radio Macbeth: the remix.

2007-06-25T01:11:00.000-04:00

I read Stephen's posting and I couldn't help but add a few thoughts sparked both by my experience of the play and by the recent posting on Parabasis about the relative merits of viewpointing.
While my experience with Viewpoints and Suzuki is fairly limited (one director I worked with used them as training with a limited crossover into our blocking work), I can understand Isaac's suspicion of a system that seems somewhat rigid in its ability to be copied and taught in workshops. While it seems to be intended as a training tool to build ensemble and awareness (again, speaking from limited experience), it seems hard, as many who respond to Isaac note, to not look at the work of the SITI company and try to discern vestiges of this famous method in the world of the play. In the case of Death and the Ploughman, I recognized blocking that appeared almost like open viewpointing on the set (I had just taken a brief workshop with the SITI company, so I was primed to this kind of exploration). It didn't resonate with me, perhaps because, as an audience member, I never felt let in to the inner logic of this movement system. It didn't seem anchored to anything else in the play. However, Radio Macbeth was different. While I often think of viewpoints as mostly a physical training method, the SITI actors seemed to use the concepts of tempo, duration, rhythm, etc. to both vocalize and physicalize all matter of internal anguish. Observing this, instead of feeling like a system, felt bold. Playing with these simple elements, whatever we want to call them, helped the actors to express more deeply. Therefore, I would amend what Stephen has said about these incredibly powerful scenes. It was not only the words (they were not quite stripped), but the facility of the actors in using the available resources in their own bodies and voices (really isn't that the true objective of this training?)—the sinking slowly into a chair, the thin wail, a brilliantly sinister coffee spoon—that revitalized this oft- read play.

Radio Macbeth

2007-06-24T01:19:00.002-04:00

In my ongoing quest to blog about every play with the word “radio” somewhere in its title (is Talk Radio still playing? I need a trifecta here), I went up to New Haven this weekend to see SITI Company perform Radio Macbeth at Yale Rep.
The play begins with a group of actors rehearsing a radio production of Macbeth on a rather bare stage. Bereft of any traditional staging elements, the actors make do with what they have: tables, folding chairs, and of course, several strategically placed radio microphones. There’s a lot of things that someone more knowledgeable than myself could say about this play, comments about Anne Bogart’s (in)famous viewpointing, the various merits of its soundscape (Radio Macbeth was co-directed by SITI’s sound designer, Darron L. West), or the wisdom of staging a work of Shakespeare that is comprehensible only to those audience members who enter the theater already familiar with the play. But what struck me more than anything else was how this non-traditional staging seemed to open up a play I thought I knew rather well.
In my slow march through the academy, I have, by my count, studied Macbeth no less than 3 times (not to mention how many times my samurai-obsessed best friend made me watch Throne of Blood). I am, needless to say, familiar with Macbeth. And yet, before Friday night, I don’t think I had realized the multitudes this play contained. The fury and nihilism of Macbeth’s “Out, out brief candle!” The subtle menace of the witches. The stoic feminism of Lady Macduff. The haunting juxtaposition of the doctor and gentlewoman’s clinical prose and Lady Macbeth’s lyrical descent into madness. But above all, the righteous self-pity of Macduff when he learns of his family’s murder.

But I must also feel it as a man,
I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on,
And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,
They were all struck for thee! naught that I am,
Not for their own demerits, but for mine,
Fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now!

Never before, not in all of my readings of the play, not in any of the times I had heard these words spoken aloud, or seen them on film, had I understood their power. But watching Macduff advance, his Birnam wood nothing but a few folding chairs, with the words stripped naked, nothing but echoes into a microphone, I finally understood.
And that, I suppose, is why Shakespeare is a genius.

P.S.

2007-06-24T01:19:00.001-04:00

with moves like this, how can Isherwood be wrong?

A New Hope

2007-06-23T23:32:00.000-04:00

Is In the Heights and its star, Lin-Manuel Miranda (Wes alum & patron saint of TASP), part of a movement to finally make Broadway musicals that rock? (or merengue, as the case may be)

Charles Isherwood seems to think so.

Buy Now! Buy Quick!

2007-06-21T19:57:00.000-04:00

GREAT NEWS!

Daguerreotype tickets are now on sale at Smarttix.com!

http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showCode=DAG0

$15 for adults, $12 for students

Lunchbox tickets will be available at the door 30 minutes prior to performances for $5.

Start your purchasing, ladies and gentleman, it's go time. Tickets should go pretty quickly considering it's a 56 seat theatre, so buy early if you don't want to miss your only chance to see Daguerreotype this summer.

Love,
Elissa
Elissa@americanstoryproject.com

SERIES REMINDER!

2007-06-21T00:50:00.000-04:00

REMINDER:

Submissions for TASP's summer reading series at the Abingdon are due to me, rachel, rasilverman@wesleyan.edu by THIS SUNDAY JUNE 24TH.

We are asking for short (one-page or less) descriptions of the story and a five-page writing sample.

We look forward to hearing from you!

ALSO: If you're interested in acting or directing in the series, contact me as well.

R.

Radio

2007-06-19T23:58:00.000-04:00

Al Smith's Radio, easily one of the best plays I saw at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe, has finally come to New York as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival. You can read the NYTimes review of the show here.

If you haven't already read it, be warned: it doesn't have many nice things to say. But the more I think about Radio's reception, the less surprised I am by it. What works well in Edinburgh won't always work well in New York. But there's more to it than that. Something that the reviewer alluded to, and also struck me when I saw Radio last summer, is how, despite its obesession with American culture, how quintessentially British the play was, how enamoured it was of its colonial overtones. Essentially, the entire monologue centers on middle-class America of the 1960’s, its obsession with being the center of the world and its tendency to plant flags throughout the world (and eventually, the solar system). And while a young progressive hyper-critical liberal like myself is willing to admit some guilt about current American imperialism, I’m not sure whether most Americans (especially middle-class Baby Boomer that most resemble the main character of Radio) carry this same sense of shame. Especially about American politics of the 60’s and early 70’s; this was after all, the era of LBJ’s Great Society and the Civil Rights Movement (two momentous struggles strangely absent from Radio’s narrative). And even if, with an eye on the growing opposition to the war in Iraq, there’s a growing national consensus about American imperialism, it can’t yet be expressed with the same post-colonial shame we see in Radio. Although an undeniable part of modern British identity, I’m not sure whether American has gotten to this stage yet. I suppose this is the difference between imperialism and post-colonialism; the American writer and the British writer.

There's clearly something unique about the American experience, some ineffable truth about ourselves that only an American can reveal. To be frank, I have no idea what that truth is exactly. But I think we ought to go looking for it, don't you?

How best to reach?

2007-06-19T22:07:00.000-04:00

Having just had a very fruitful discussion with resident set designer Nick, I would like to put forth my thoughts on documentary theater. I have been leery of this as a blog entry, as I was unable to make much of a heads or tails of it in a 60 page thesis. However, I have accrued some repeated questions and thoughts and themes that I'd like to share.

1. How important is factual accuracy? First of all, what is factual accuracy? History books have errors, our entire process is built around the fact that history is unreachable. All we have to offer is perspective, what sticks to our artistic team when a whole lot of research is thrown at us. I described it to Nick as a tug-of-war. On one side is the artistic product and on the other side is What We Know, even if what we know isn't true. Perhaps its literature, philosophy, an idea. The goal is for the rope to remain taut. These things pull against each other ceaselessly and if we successfully strive for truth and for excellence, perhaps the center will wobble, but not collapse.

2. What are we trying to create? For this, I go to Richard Schechner, who describes the Wooster Group's "Rumstick Road." Schechner describes the "subjunctive" mood that is created when modern avant garde techniques are paired with actual footage from Spalding Gray's family's past. In examining the definition of subjunctive, one sees the "hypothetical" mood, a mood that exists not in the past and not in the present, but in some combination of the two reaching towards each other.

3. How best to reach? My favorite systems of dealing with history and historical subject matter right now are that of Suzan-Lori Parks and Charles Mee. Both have manifestos so bulletproof that they are repeated and repeated and seem to rarely change. The American Story Project is still working towards this magical system that may or may not exist and that reconciles the frustrations of dealing with factual material. We use our literary sensibilities, we make associations, we try to imbue each production with the message that history is memory, perspective, literature, imagination, cycles (or maybe that it isn't all of these things) and that when we said "we can't reach you, hartford," we weren't really talking about any telephone operators. Most importantly, I want to investigate how the past can live again, how it can feel as present and as vital as anything. Today I saw an extraordinary panel called Liz Lerman on Art and Spirituality. In it, Lerman described being present for a Hawaiian chant in which the woman began "Invite your ancestors to come in." Lerman began by picturing her immediate and extended family. Again, the woman repeated "Invite your ancestors to come in" (I'm paraphrasing, but that was more or less the gist). Lerman felt she was out of ancestors, and began thinking of her dance ancestors (Martha Graham, Isadora Duncan, etc...), but the woman kept repeating. Lerman pictured Thomas Jefferson, the founding fathers. Finally, the woman finished her chant: "You are not alone. You never were." This story floored me, and this is what I believe that our investigation of history can achieve. The cyclical, the ghosts of our past, the forces that drive us into the future.

I'd like to end by asking of our readers how, as artists, do you reconcile history with performance and the issues this tension creates?

RAFFLE PRIZES

2007-06-19T19:25:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone,

Im pleased to announce our first two raffle prizes!

Baseball tix!
2 for Aug 3rd, Kansas City vs. Yankees
2 for August 10th, Marlins vs. Mets

The seats are awesome, too! Thank you ReedSmith, LLP, for the generous donation!

EXCITING!!!

2007-06-16T16:17:00.000-04:00

NEWS!

July 15th - Summer Fundraiser Party Blast Extravaganza!!!! FEATURING: Bear Hands (the band, not actual bear hands), a raffle full of fun prizes, food, drink and much much more.
WHERE? At the Bowery Poetry Club.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW, but get excited because we certainly are!

The Dramaturg Presents (Part II)

2007-06-15T19:12:00.000-04:00

Having just completed what is, by my count, my six rewrite of the Daguerreotype script, I think its safe to say that our little play is finally coming together. The designers are all starting to come up with some really great (and exciting) ideas, Jess’s rehearsals officially start in a matter of weeks, I recently returned a hefty load of books to the Morningside branch of the New York Public Library (thus ending dramaturgical research for the time being), the producers are beginning their thankless task of trying to organize everyone, and Edward is growing some pretty wicked facial hair.
It’s on.
We'll be posting an official description of the play soon, but until then, I think its high time we introduce you to the motley assortment of characters you’ll meet in our latest investigation into American history:

Matthew B. Brady, the daguerreotypist

Our hero and chief interest in Dageurreotype. What makes an artist? What makes a historian? And what makes a decent and good person? We find these questions to be at the heart of Mathew's final days. Mathew is pictured here in his younger "heartbreaker" era. In our play, he will be older and sadder. And have a beard (or whatever Edward is cultivating at the time). Because that's how we roll.

Juliette Brady, his wife

Pictured here with Mathew and the mysterious "Mrs. Haggerty" (not in the play), Juliette is the only character in this play not to have a beard. She is also Mathew's greatest love and perhaps, his greatest betrayal. Dying in bed while Mathew watches, she is a living reminder of time and mortality amid Mathew's immortal photographic history.

Abraham Lincoln, our 16th President

Mathew's favorite photographic subject and most beloved idol. Lincoln stands for everything Mathew seeks to preserve: dignity, courage, compassion, impressive facial hair. There's not much to say about Lincoln that you probably don't already know. He freed the slaves. And then (spoiler alert!) got shot. This play will include both bearded and unbearded versions of everyone's favorite Log Cabin Republican.

Alexander Gardner

Mathew's former protégé and chief rival. There was a falling out between the two of them. But why? And why, years later, is Mathew still haunted by what he and Gardner saw at Antietam? The answers to these questions are central to the play. Gardner's large beard, and the threat it posed to Mathew's masculinity, is merely subtext.

The back story back story

2007-06-12T20:57:00.000-04:00

Dear readers,

It has recently come to my attention that we have never properly introduced ourselves here. This seems remiss.

When exactly was the American Story Project born?

In Spring of 1998, one Elissa Kozlov and I were in a production of the Wizard of Oz in Middle School. I thought that it was very nice that Elissa was so nice to me even though she was far more popular than I. Cut to: fall, 2003, Greg Malen and I ran a manual lightboard together our freshman year at Wesleyan University. He cued the board while I switched plugs in and out, as the board only had three circuits. Greg made me an easy-to-follow sheet that matched the plug switching to verbal and silent acting cues. Thus began a collaboration. One year later enter Edward Bauer waving a stick in the air and panting "My mother is a fish" while I run light cues in the corner. One year later - Steve has a dream about a circus fire he remembers hearing about. And so on and so on. The American Story Project is a fairly loose collection of collaborators, most of whom attend or have attended Wesleyan University (and one designer from Princeton). Most of us have worked together a whole lot in many different capacities. At this point, we have one artistic director (that's me), one managing director, a set of amazing designers, a dramaturg/playwright, an associate producer, a readings organizer and about 6 actors. But TASP is a growing and changing organism and its journey has just begun. There is room for so much to evolve. What do we start with? A huge passion for theater and each other. Anne Bogart writes, "the condition of a company is a constant crisis." We're ok with that.

What do we do?

TASP is now in the midst of developing its third production and second original production. Our first show in 2005 was Joyce Carol Oates' "Tone Clusters," a brilliant play about memory and perspective as a family is torn apart by a violent crime. "Tone Clusters" began as a production at Wesleyan and then ran for one week at the Edinburgh Festival, where it received much praise and an award for Best Psychological Drama from the Fringe Report. We really loved Edinburgh and the Bedlam Theater and wanted desperately to go back with an original piece. Unsatisfied with the submissions we received, we decided to try our hands at play development. The mission that emerged from this initial development conversation is very much a collision of viewpoints; It fused Elissa's love of documentary theater and my desire to create a play as a living, breathing, present world. This is how our mission began to create an alternative to documentary theater. We desired a piece of theater that fused rigorous historical, philosophical, and literary research with excellent design and in-depth character research, improvisation and action work in order to create a living, breathing portrait of history. A world that existed in the present, as lively and vital as anything, while reaching simultaneously towards the past; An investigation of who we are and where we came from. Once everyone had at it, we had "We Can't Reach You, Hartford." "Hartford," based on the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944, was workshopped at Wesleyan, ran in Edinburgh, where it was nominated for a Fringe First, and then became my directing thesis at Wesleyan this April. Hopefully, its life doesn't end there. It is a story well worth sharing. Currently, we are developing the next project in our historical storytelling mission: "Daguerreotype," a portrait of an aging Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, confined in an apartment with his plates, his memories, and his invalid wife. "Daguerreotype" will run August 2nd-11th at the Abingdon Theater in New York. More on that soon.

I hope that was a worthy tutorial. Please, do not hesitate to ask questions.

Enter

2007-06-06T22:49:00.000-04:00

The American Summer Theater Experiment.

A Festival with TASTE.

Get it?

Funding

2007-06-04T18:01:00.001-04:00

Hello there faithful readers,

The American Story Project summer fest is well underway. We have assembled a phenomenal group of people to help us in our various undertakings, and I'd like to extend my most sincere gratitude to those who believe in us enough to dedicate their creativity, hard work, and time to our art.

That being said, we're in the midst of planning a summer fundraiser extravaganza! Keep your eyes open for information on how to attend/contribute/help out with what will surely be the party of the summer. If you're interested in providing entertainment or assistance at this event, please notify me, ekozlov@wesleyan.edu, asap.

We have established a facebook group to help address our growing community of supporters. Join it to get emails notifying you of upcomming events.

That's all for now. I'm off to LA for the month on Wednesday, but I'll keep posting as information becomes available.

~Elissa

Hartford in Review

2007-04-16T10:45:00.000-04:00

Since complications have delayed Jess's final thoughts on We Can't Reach You, Hartford (a cataclysmic cacophony of thesis-sized proportions), here's a few tidbits of the wonderful laudatory review from the alma mater:

[Jess] Chayes' play combined a thrilling sense of showmanship with a delicate appreciation for the emotional mysteries of individuals caught in the crossfire of public tragedy. In the skilled hands of Chayes and her cast and crew, the gulf between big-top frivolity and painful catastrophe became a potent metaphor for the fascinating, frustrating divide between past and present.

Chayes and her talented designers found particularly striking visuals to complement and enrich the difficult questions she raises. Scenic Designer Nick Benacerraf '08 captured a state of ghostly decay in his aging circus set, complete with ragged big-top cloth and splintering risers.

As any Wesleyan theatergoer knows, it practically goes without saying that the lighting by Greg Malen '07 proved mesmerizing in its subtle shifts in mood and meaning. While there was not an isolated moment within "Hartford" as breathtaking as the bleak, beautiful sunrise with which he chose to end Mike James' '07 production of "Electra," Malen, whose work here comprises his senior thesis, expertly balanced a variety of tones, ranging from the hellish glow of the inferno to the sickly bright light of the de facto morgue that housed the charred corpses.

And [Edward] Bauer, continuing a string of sterling work on the stage, instilled the specter of Barnum with a wild-eyed, go-for-broke intensity at once immensely appealing and somewhat unsettling. But if Bauer's Barnum possessed the cheery coarseness of a born showman, he also found intriguing notes of dissonance in Barnum's bluster. Suddenly, this symbol of showbiz past became flesh and blood in his ambivalence.

The entire review can here read here

And for the nostalgic among us, our review from our Fringe First nominated production of Hartford at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival can be read here

Hello? Hartford? We've left you like a million messages.

2007-04-09T12:15:00.000-04:00

"We Can't Reach You, Hartford": The Thesis Edition
One year and three months later, we still can't reach Hartford.
More to come this Friday...

The Dramaturg Presents (Part I)

2007-02-03T01:05:00.000-05:00

As logic stands, every story has to come from somewhere. Shakespeare, for instance, stole the plots of bad plays from lesser known playwrights and rewrote them until they’re canonical works of English literature. Balzac would get amped up on over 10 espressos a day and eavesdrop on other people’s conversations in the local café (which explains how he wrote 100 novels in his lifetime). And Coleridge tended to ingest an ungodly amount of opiates and hope no one from Porlock showed up for a few days. But these men were geniuses whose individual talents are unparalleled throughout history. What about the rest of us? The tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to have one idea that doesn’t objectively suck? What are we supposed to do? More importantly, what’s a young playwright supposed to do when he has a theater booked in New York in six months time, but no play to show the company?
This is the question I’m exploring.
The American Story Project’s last original play (and the only thing I’ve ever had anyone else produce), the critically acclaimed We Can’t Reach You, Hartford came about when I had a nightmare one night about a circus fire I had learned about in elementary school. And while it took at least four rewrites before the scattered rough chuckles really began to work in a play obsessed with the death of small children, as far as the brainstorming process goes, it was a relatively painless ordeal. But that was a fluke and I knew it wasn’t going to happen like that again. A man only has a finite number of repressed pre-adolescent memories suitable for adaptation into a piece of semi-documentary theater. This time around, I was going to have to work for my writing credit. But like hell was I going to do it alone. I had an entire theater company to do my dirty work for me.
The path that finally led to Daguerreotype, the American Story Project’s 2007 production, was long and certainly rather strange. It began in September with the ambiguous goals of presenting something political and something about surveillance. This soon turned into the kind of happy melee where great ideas are born, an entire company throwing ideas back in forth, sometimes in dialogue, sometimes blissfully unaware that any dialogue was taking place. The ideas came from our interests, our concerns, our secret wishes and fears, our curiosity, and our sincere desire to find a way to entertain entire busloads of surly Scots.
At one point, our ever shifting sense of the play included:

Richard Nixon

John Walker Lindh

Foucault’s work on panopticons

Shoes, lots of shoes

Rabbi Akiba

Castle Thunder

Infinite variations upon This American Life

the influenza epidemic of 1918

Julius Caesar (the play, not the man. Well, the man, but in the play.)

Alexander Scriabin

and probably some other things I’ve forgotten about along the way.

How this all adds up to the Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, I’ll never know. The more I think about it, the less sure I am about how we got onto Mathew Brady in the first place. For me, a map of the thought process that led us to Daguerrotype resembles nothing so much as a Ven diagram. And I imagine each of us involved in the development would have a completely different story about how this all came about, which is somehow fitting for a group of artists who find their inspiration in the problems of history’s creation. Nonetheless, somehow we’ve arrived here, at this time, at this place, and with this man.

And let me tell you, if beards are any indication, its going to be a wild ride.

Banana

2007-01-25T00:15:00.000-05:00

Monday's benefit was a tremendous success, thanks to the hard work of the entire TASP team and our unstintingly kind and generous friends, family, alumni network, and liquor sponsor. Thanks to everyone's kind support, TASP has now raised enough money to rent out our theater of choice, the Abingdon Theater company's Dorothy Strelsin theater. So mark your calendars.

Daguerreotype
an original production by the American Story Project
August 2nd-12th
The Dorothy Strelsin Theater.

Meet The American Story Project

2007-01-18T17:25:00.000-05:00

The American Story Project Presents:

Winter Extravaganza
Benefit performances and reception featuring:
The American Story Project, The Wesleyan Spirits,
Chris White "Isto" '06, comedic singer/song writer.

Monday, January 22, 2007
Reception begins at 7 p.m.
Performances begin at 8 p.m.

Studio Building
140 W. 57th Street, 11B
Manhattan, New York

Space is limited. For more information and to RSVP please contact
Jessica Chayes at jchayes@wesleyan.edu .

Daguerreotype

2007-01-08T22:26:00.000-05:00

TASP has recently begun development on our second original documentary project, tentatively titled Daguerreotype, centered around Civil War photographer Mathew Brady. An exploration of history, memory, image, and reality by a blind aging photographer and his catatonic Transcendentalist wife, Daguerreotype is ultimately a play about love and loyalty in an age that is quickly drawing to a close. Daguerreotype will be developed over the next six months and will premiere in early August in New York City.

the american story project story project

2007-01-08T22:16:00.000-05:00

has begun.