Tarv's reflections on SDFF III
Shows
Posted on July 9,2006 10:23 PM by Tarv
So another Slapdash has come and gone and I wanted to write up my thoughts.  I had every intention of writing this last night when I got home from the theater, but the long day finally caught up with me and it just didn't happen.  Thus these reflections, being just under 24 hours old, may be a bit incomplete, a bit scattered, like a dream you try to describe a week after. 

As an overall experience, we definitely built on what we learned from the past two SDFF's, and that goes not only for LGT, but for all the returning SDFF participants.  We seem to be building up an amazing crew of veteran Slapdashers, the folks who just keep coming back.  I know the feeling because I'm one of them.  Nothing quite like a big group leap of faith.  There's just such an amazing buzz that builds when a mass of people get together and focus their energies on creating something brand new for no other reason than the joy of creating it.  When you're in the theater and you're working your scene over and over, and all around you are folks doing the same, and in the back of your mind you know that you go up that night with this script that you just got handed that morning, that just strips all the bullshit away. 

As for my own personal experience, well, comparing this year with the past years is a bit of an apples vs. oranges proposition since this is the first year that I took on only one role (actor) in the day's madness, instead of being a crazy man and writing all night and then acting the next day.  But as always, I had a great time.  I loved my role, I loved getting to wear a tuxedo, and my fellow castmembers and director were badass.  Every year, there's always a sense of cast unity, by which I mean the whole SDFF cast, not just the individual play casts.  This year though, that sense seemed to be enhanced by like 10 times.  I don't know what it was, if it was the huge backstage at Arts on Real where everybody could hang out together during the show or if it was the AC or the fact that there were a lot of returning Slapdashers that weren't stressed out because they knew it was all gonna come together, but everybody seemed really tight.  The encouragement and overall positive energy coming from everybody was just constant.  Not to mention the HUGE FRICKIN AUDIENCE!!!  That laughed at EVERY JOKE (even when me and Mariana started to drop our lines)!!!  After the show, I was amazed at just how many people were there, it was a sea of humanity...at least, a sea the size of Arts on Real. 

Anyhow, big thanks to everybody who participated and who came out to watch.  Can't wait for next time. 
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Caffeinated Confession
Personal
Posted on March 29,2005 10:50 AM by Tarv

I just poured the last cup of coffee from the coffee pot in the break room, but didn't start another pot brewing. 

Considering that I brew up an average of about one pot per day around this place, I don't really see my coffee karma dropping too low any time soon.

3 comments.
The Comic Book Convention I Went To This Weekend and The Pain In The Ass That Is Theater
Ramblings
Posted on March 7,2005 12:44 PM by Tarv
So I went to the Staple Comic Expo this weekend with my friend Mark who is looking to break into the world of online comics.  The idea was to hand out business cards for his website to all in attendance whilst perusing the various wares being offered at the booths.  This is only the second comic book convention I've ever been to, the first of which was sometime in junior high (known as "middle school" to you younguns) at the convention center in Houston.  This one was in the Elks Lodge off of Barton Springs, which seemed an odd setting for a comic convention, but whatever.  I didn't spot a single person in a costume of any kind.  Perhaps this was because this was an independent expo with little to no representation from any major publishers, but I would have expected to see at least one or two folks show up in something resembling a costume, even if I didn't know who or what the hell they were supposed to be.  There was one chick sitting at a booth sporting a 1940's bottle blonde Gwen Stefani kind of get-up, but I don't know if that was a costume or a fashion commitment.  There was also some guy wearing a Wolverine tee-shirt who had super long frizzy Logan-style pork-chop sideburns, but again, I think this was less of a costume and more of a permanent everyday look for this guy.  If it was a Wolverine costume, it needed lots of work. 
 
So we succeeded in handing out a buttload of cards, checked out all the booths, and sat in on a panel discussion about the field of webcomics, which featured several people who hold varying levels of prominence in this field.  I must say, I had no idea that webcomics were so huge or that they held such an enormous fanbase.  Throughout the discussion, my mind drifted a bit towards theater and how it compared/contrasted as an artform to what these panelists were talking about.  I find it hard not to do this whenever I listen to people talk in depth about any artform, no matter what it is.  I just start thinking about theater and how it relates to what I'm hearing.  Once again, I was reminded that one of my favorite elements of theater is also the element that I find the most frustrating: it is a 100% live experience.  It is scheduled at a certain time at a certain place.  In order to take part in it, you have to be at that place at that time or else you miss out.  You can't rent it and watch it at home.  You can't buy the CD and listen to it in your car...yes, I know, listening to a CD and seeing music live are two entirely different experiences, but I think you understand what I'm driving at.  If you practice theater and you want your art to connect with people, you have to get them to the theater on time.  There is no other alternative.  If you write a book or draw a comic or paint a painting or make a film, people could see it years, decades, fuck, centuries from the time that you create it, and they can do so pretty much on their own schedule, and they can connect to it.  Less so with theater.  Sure, you can write a play and somebody might produce it years from now, but again, they gotta get the folks in to see it.  Now as I said before, this is also one of my favorite parts of theater.  The kind of connection that occurs between artist and audience when they are actually in the same room at the same time focused on the same thing, well, that just can't be faked or manufactured or reproduced.  It gives the phrase "you just had to be there" a stronger meaning.  It's the difference between seeing a band live and listening to their CD, between watching "Steel Magnolias" the movie and "Steel Magnolias" the play.  I'm not saying anything new here.  Hundreds if not thousands have said it before me, and if you're reading this and you practice or like theater, it's undoubtedly something you yourself have thought or talked about or written your thesis about, but it's still a good thing to ponder from time to time. 
2 comments.
Time After Time
Groan
Posted on March 3,2005 08:53 AM by Tarv

Would someone please explain to me why I have Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" stuck in my head?  It's been there all morning and I don't know why.  Did I hear it recently?  I guess there are worse songs to have stuck in my head.  Maybe reading this will get it stuck in your head too!  Here's the lyrics to help it get stuck:

Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick,
And think of you
Caught up in circles confusion -
Is nothing new
Flashback - warm nights -
Almost left behind
Suitcases of memories,
Time after -

Sometimes you picture me -
I'm walking too far ahead
You're calling to me, I can't hear
What you've said -
Then you say - go slow -
I fall behind -
The second hand unwinds

Chorus:
If you're lost you can look - and you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you - I'll be waiting
Time after time

After my picture fades and darkness has
Turned to gray
Watching through windows - you're wondering
If I'm OK
Secrets stolen from deep inside
The drum beats out of time -

Chorus:
If you're lost...

You said go slow -
I fall behind
The second hand unwinds -

Chorus:
If you're lost...
...Time after time
Time after time
Time after time
Time after time

2 comments.
Beware!
Shows
Posted on February 28,2005 11:50 AM by Tarv

There's nothing to beware really, that's just the title.  I realized I had sat here for a full minute trying to come up with the title for a silly blog post.  I've been known to take even longer to come up with subject lines for emails.  And titles to plays or other creative writings?  Shit, that involves a walk through the desert to induce visions of flying lizards and gun-toting midget kings and whatever else before I can even begin to think about the title. 

ANYWAY.  My last post was getting a bit stale, especially since it was about I Am Alpha, which is now closed, so here's a fresh one.  I saw The Jinn this weekend and most truly enjoyed it very much.  I was actually a bit surprised that I liked it as much as I did since I knew going in that it sorta kinda involved the old story about genies coming out of lamps who grant wishes and all that.  And while I suspected at the outset that Kirk Lynn would certainly put a new spin on it, it seems sometimes that even that device, the whole take an old myth/tale/fable/story and rewrite the rules around it to make it new and fresh, even that seems to be getting a bit overdone....but that's probably just me.  But thankfully, this play did not have a tired or used-up feel about it at all.  It felt very much alive and sparkling and energetic the whole way through.  Yes, it involved a genie (who shortened his title to jinn) and yes this genie lived in a lamp (which somehow smoked on command), and yes he granted wishes to all who held him.  But, as with any story where human beings are granted their every base desire on command, the characters had to confront the fact that they didn't really understand what it was that they really wanted, and that what they thought they wanted wasn't really what they needed to be fulfilled and have a life worth living. 

I can honestly say that this sentiment spoke to me on a level that not much else has as of late.  I'm hardly an old man yet, nor do I feel that I have attained some level of wisdom that is beyond my years or anything, but I am standing at a new point in my life where it feels that new changes and realizations are taking place.  Call it a sort of emotional or spiritual taking-stock of sorts, but whatever it is, it definitely involves reviewing what it is that I really want out of life.  And it's a good thing, a healthy thing.  I think I'm pretty familiar with what it is that I DON'T want.  I think I'm like a lot of people in this day and age in that I am more familiar with what I wish to reject rather than that which I wish to embrace.  But you can't define yourself solely by that which you reject, by what you hate.  Life is not just about destruction.  It's about building too.  You can tear down and rip away and expose all you want, then what are you going to build in its place?  I guess this is at the core of the questions I'm asking myself these days.  My last play provides a pretty good illustration of this.  Now let me be clear: I am extremely proud of I Am Alpha.  I put a lot of work and a lot of myself into it, I felt that I grew as a writer, and I love what came out of it.  But watching it night after night, I came to realize that what I had given voice to in that play was the side of me that sneers and rolls its eyes and makes smart-ass observations about all the things that I consider to be stupid and petty and wrong.  In other words, that which I reject.  Now this is not to say that I think I did something wrong here or that I am in any way, I don't know, ashamed of it.  Not at all.  'Cuz that would be stupid.  Other people may have gotten something else out of it entirely, and that's cool, hell that's GREAT.  But this is my POV on it.  The point is that I know what I don't like and what I don't need and what I don't want.  And I think I can express those things and that I have expressed them.  Most of my writing, including I Am Alpha, has some kind of tragic ending because doing otherwise has always felt somehow dishonest or forced.  I'm typically drawn towards writing around darker subject matter with barely a nod towards that which I feel is good and right and beautiful.  And in the future, I will probably still be drawn towards the dark side of things, but at the same time, I think I've sort of outgrown the whole "angry young man/everything is shit" way of seeing the world and expressing myself.  Part of me growing up is me growing as a writer.  I don't know when I'll write another play or what it's going to be about, but I do know that next time out, whatever it is, I want to really create something beautiful.  Goddammit, would you look at how long this fucking post is already?  This started off as a mini-review of The Jinn (go see it, by the way) and ended up being a review of what's going on in my head these days.  And I keep rambling because I'm trying to make myself clear and I can just imagine what any number of people might be thinking I mean by all this and dammit, no, you're getting the wrong idea, no I didn't mean that at all, I meant to say, okay wait, let me start over....no wait.  Just kidding.  No starting over.  I'm just gonna leave it as is. 

Whew.

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