Wayang Kulit (shadow puppetry)

Thanksgiving weekend was a pleasant, familial affair. For several years we have been feasting in the Cleveland area, to be with my folks. As this was the first holiday without father, we decided to return to Athens. I drove my Mom down, my brother flew in from the Twin Cities with his family. It has been relaxing with books and puzzles and games and television and not too much Facebook.

There were so many journeys and events I only got one run in down by the bike path. For a Thanksgiving weekend, that is odd.

Saturday I connected with Dr. Condee, the subject was shadow puppets. Since the early Aughts the good doctor has been collaborating to bring the arts into O.U.’s Southeast Asian Studies program, with an emphasis on wayang or shadow puppetry. He’s traveled extensively in Bali and Malaysia and in our brief interview he had many delightful stories and information.

He also brought a portfolio of puppets!

Traditional wayang focuses on two narratives, Rāmāyaṇa, the love story of Rama and Sita, and the Mahābhārata, and epic tale of good and evil which, according to Condee, makes The Odyssey read like a short story.

Performing the entire Mahābhārata would take ages. Peter Brook produced part of it, and it took over nine hours. Most often artists choose the present part of the tale, which is called a trunk story. However, you can also tell original stories using various characters from the epic, and that would be called a branch story.

Red Onion, White Garlic is a folk tale for children, not part of either of these epics, though we will be incorporating wayang into the performance. Part of my conversation with Condee was to gain further insight into the practice, and how that might affect the way I think about my script, which I am in the process of writing.

We met at Donkey, which is apparently our established hangout. He had brought both plastic puppets, and also two more traditional characters made of hammered leather. The walls of the coffee shop were hung with art so available projection space was cramped, but it did mean there were several bright spot lights which was very helpful in cast these incredible, colorful shadows on the wall.

He described to me several companies, including those which experiment with certain performance traditions, expanding the possibilities of shadow art while maintaining the spirit of the craft.

In the most traditional performance, one player works all of the puppets and provides all the voices from behind a screen roughly four feet high and eight feet wide. Flickering light from an oil candle give the characters the illusion of subtle movement, like a living thing. The closer a puppet is to the screen the greater the detail, the further away they become diffuse - but much larger.

Larry Reed’s company ShadowLight often uses many players, behind but also in front enormous screens employing computer projections and light which keeps puppets in focus no matter how far they are from the screen and close to the light.

Our meeting, though brief, greatly improved my understanding of the practice, and I look forward to further study. Later, I got a plaid, wool sportcoat from Athens Underground.



Red Onion, White Garlic at Talespinner Children's Theatre opens April 8, 2017.

Slumberland: It is happening again.

My mother-in-law loves me.

2:58 PM - Another day, another Donkey. Today the wife is not feeling well, but the kids already have a date to check out Monsters Inc. in 3-D with their aunt and grandmother, and so I have persuaded her to make our third journey into the Writers' Warren.

I have been storyboarding scenarios from Little Nemo, some of which are taken wholecloth from the strip, embellished from my own imagination and unhealthy nods to other McCay-inspired entities which include (but are not limited to) Sandman, In The Night Kitchen and maybe even Twin Peaks.

Also, too: This.

But they are disjointed and incoherent, as in a dream. Did I say that, or only imagine I did? In any case, that is the plan. Having just made stuff up off the top of my head, I will now make notes to put it into a logical, plot-like narrative. Which is the opposite of what I usually do. And that can be fun.

Did I mention my mother-in-law got me a proper, leather satchel for Christmas? Since I got my laptop, I have been permanently borrowing a prop from the Great Lakes Theater production of Julius Caesar (2004) where all the workers in the street  at the top of the show were vloggers and bloggers. That synthetic, black man-bag had a nametag reading "Nick K." in it.

4:01 PM - Bryan Ritchey will be my Carel Struycken.

And the owls are not what they seem.

 The Dreaming:

Recently I was rehearsing for a professional production of one of Shakespeare's lesser-known works. Don't ask me which one it was, but I was a Lord. As part of the rehearsal process, the director was conducting a kind of free-form, staged read-through, where we walked into the middle of the rehearsal space and performed our particular soliloquy. It was one of Shakespeare's works where none of the characters talk to each other, they just just take the stage and share part of the narrative with the audience and exit. I read my piece twice. Each time I reached the word "egg" and then completely lost the thread of what I was saying. "Egg" was entirely out of context for this character, it didn't mean anything.

After my part of the rehearsal was through I went back to the Arden and looked up the longer notes, which I was embarrassed to learn I had not yet done. I assumed I knew what the words meant, but I was woefully unprepared. "Egg" was the most important word in the monologue. It was the core of my character, I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

These things are true. All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.

4:43 PM -  Did you know Little Nemo visited Cleveland? Crazy, right? I have not yet read all of the comics as late as the 1910s. But I must, I must!

Today is a day for letting my mind wander and discover. Running this morning I came up with several ideas which I have tossed around and made note of. And now I just spinning some nonsense into script form.

5:44 PM - Time for dinner at Casa Nueva, suckers.

Talespinner Children's Theatre presents Adventures In Slumberland by David Hansen, Nov. 30 - Dec. 22, 2013.

Donkey Coffee and Espresso

 "Ageing Gen-X." None dare call it hipster.

For the record, Donkey Coffee opened ten years ago, and has justifiably received every popular merchants' award, not least of which a Best Coffeeshop in Ohio nod from Ohio Magazine. It is spacious (two big floors featuring rooms large and small) clean, the coffee is very good, the baristas are mostly polite (those who speak) and bestest of all, the place is quiet.

Well, not always quiet. My wife and are holed up in town for a week, she working on a manuscript, myself pushing through the first draft of a children's play. Our in-laws generously look after the kids while we head Uptown to write, write, write (and Facebook. Sigh.) The day before Christmas we checked out the upstairs of Donkey for the first time ever and found a cozy table for two next to two, short, empty couches.

After about an hour, a half dozen TEENAGERS slouched in, each carrying a Red Cup (wtf?) spilling themselves into the couches, and proceeding to talk disaffected nonsense for three-quarters of an hour.

Verbatim:

(on the sound system: soundtrack to The Hours by Philip Glass)
Sal: Are you saying I don’t like Pink Floyd or that I don’t like don’t like Pink Floyd?
Austin: I don’t like old music.
June: I don’t like your face.
(pause)
June: I’m just kidding. I love you.
Sal: I don’t like that Megan is here so I can’t kiss Austin.
Austin: I don’t like 'Zelda'.
Megan: Gaping asshole.
Austin (whispered): Goatse...
(long pause)
Sal: I hate your mom.
June: (giggles) That was the most serious face ever.
Sal:Is it bad that I am almost starting to dig this song?
Megan: What song?
Sal: I’ll show you.
Megan: No don’t.
Sal: You’re saying don’t like you want to.
June: That was the best thing ever.
Sal: (about the music) This makes me feel so good.
(They whisper inaudibly.)
June: That’s exactly what you were wearing on Friday. I mean the shirt and the hat.
Sal: Austin, The transformation is coming.
June: Do they come off, ever?
(Austin leans across and kisses June. To sit back, he tries to pull he over to him, but she does not want to go.)
Megan: I saw these things on TV and I want them.
Zach: You have so many shirts with such tiny buttons.
Megan: They’re like fake.
June: Every single pair of pants, none of them had front pockets!
Zach: Girls don’t need front pockets.
Jenn: I do! I think guys just want to see guys put things by their butt.
June: This is as big as my pocket gets.
Jenn: Look where I put my cellphone.
June: This phone’s too big.
Sal: I wish cats had voices.
June: I love Amy.
Austin: I love Amy, too. Don’t be jealous.
June: Shut up.

They weren't actually loud. In fact, they were making a concerted effort to whisper, and occasionally hush each other. But they were astonishingly insipid.  Eventually one broke out a guitar (where the hell did that come from?) and began to tunelessly, pointless plunk at it, all the while disdaining assholes who can't actually play the guitar.

And then they all left, together, all at once. POOF. They're gone.

Today was even quieter and more successful, except the fact that I score a nasty sinus headache, which led to a walk in the rain to the CVS to buy drugs and a snack. Surprisingly, within moments of taking ibuprofen and pseudoephedrine, the pressure and pain went away. 

In the past two work days I have put down nineteen pages of the new play. This, following several months of rolling it all around in my head. Following auditions for Talespinner's 2013 season and attending a performance of Magic Flute, I solidified not only how many actors would be available to me, and who they are, but exactly how far I could push Ali & Co. in making this comic strip come alive. This holiday season has also given me some highfalutin idears about what I want to see in a Christmas pageant.

We will return.