Vanishing Points is Cast!!!

Mark your calendars now for the opening of Point of Contention’s production of Vanishing Points.  Directed by yours truly, the show will open February 25 and run through March 20 at the fabulous BoHo Theatre @ Heartland in Rogers Park.  My lovely Assistant Director Rachel Staelens and I have assembled a brilliant cast (if I do say so myself):  Stacie Hauenstein, Christopher Sanderson, Morgan Manasa, Annie Slivinski, Rick Levine, Victoria Bucknell, Mark E. Penzien, and Tony Gasbarro. 

I’ve now begun the arduous task of scheduling rehearsals…whee.  Next up, Rachel, Production Manager Ally Baisden, and I must assemble the same kind of kick-ass crew of designers. 

Go Team Vanishing Points!!

Closing One Show and Casting Another…

ChAoS closed on Wednesday night.  When you are working with people you love on a show you love, it is always a little sad for it to end.  My wonderful cast gave their loveliest performances on closing night…it was the perfect way to end the run. 

The casting of Vanishing Points is nearly complete.  We have confirmation on 7 of the 8 roles so far.  The remaining role was the only one that I didn’t really have a back-up choice for…and of course, the actor we cast got offered another gig before we got back to him so he had to decline the role. 

The cast of this show is freakin’ brilliant.  The final decision-making was the most difficult and heart-wrenching process I’ve ever been through.  Tears were shed, hair would have been pulled out if I had any, and headshots were all over my living room floor…it was quite a dramatic scene…very apropos.   I’ve never been presented with a situation where so many people gave such amazing auditions, particularly the women who auditioned.  It is, in a way, a great position to be in…seriously, I could have cast four women in the lead role in the show.  They were all lovely.  And it broke my heart to have to say no to three of them.  But I know that I made the right decisions…

And now I wait for a month and a half to start rehearsals.  But there is a lot of planning to be done.  Now we hire our staff of designers and get them to work.  My lovely and uber-organized Assistant Director/Stage Manager, Rachel, has been a GODSEND during this entire process.  I am so looking forward to our continued collaboration. 

My next gigantic task:  rehearsal schedule!  The structure of it is complete…the dates are finalized.  Now I just need to coordinate the specifics.  This show is tough because 5 of the 8 actors play multiple roles and (particularly in the first act) there are many short scenes that only require two or three of them at a time.  One of my major pet peeves is having my time wasted by someone (I can waste my own time whenever I want, but you better not do it!) so that translates into feeling extreme guilt when I waste someone else’s.  So the challenge here to get people coordinated so that they have plenty of rehearsal time with limited time waiting to work on their next scene.  I WILL make this work!!  It may take me 12 hours to coordinate it, but I’ll get there!! 

All that and trying to get my Christmas decorations up this weekend.  I’ll be a little hermited this weekend…with the exception, OF COURSE, of my friend Bob’s birthday celebration on Saturday!  Everyone needs a break, right?

 

My Joy List, The Television Edition

TV is my friend…I could easily list 100 things about television that bring me joy (its terribly sad but totally true!!), but I’ll stick to 10. 

21.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer – I have them all on dvd.  If I have a particularly bad day, the musical episode of Buffy will always fill my heart with joy!

22.  Roseanne – This may be the best sitcom ever.  Laurie Metcalf is a comic genius and Sara Gilbert can always make me laugh. 

23.  Arrested Development – I mean Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Portia DeRossi, David Cross, Tony Hale…does an ensemble get any better???  But my favorite moment…Jessica Walter (so underrated!!!!!) in the house by herself for the first time and busts out some “Rose’s Turn”…Heeeeeeeeeelarious!!

24.  Firefly – Nathan Fillion + Alan Tudyk with a little Jewel Staite peppered in = perfect chemistry.  I want this show back!

25.  American Idol – This is a crazy guilty pleasure for me…and just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, they added Ellen!!

26.  The Office – Easily the world’s most quotable show….that’s what she said.

27.  The Carol Burnett Show – Funniest ensemble ever.  I used to watch this show as a kid and wish I could be part of the cast.

28.  South Park – I’ve already listed The Simpsons in my first ten, so I had to decide between including South Park or Family Guy in this ten.  This deliciously vulgar and often offensive (but in a good way!) show won. 

29.  So You Think You Can Dance – Ok, here is the deal with this show…there is something terribly inspiring to me as a theatre director to watch how choreographers use space and movement to communicate. 

30.  Law and Order:  SVU – Great stories, great acting, and Christopher Meloni (yum!).

My Joy List, Part Dos

Here are some more things that make me happy…

11.  Patricia Cornwell novels – I blame my best friend Lisa for this obsession.  She bought me the first book of the Kay Scarpetta series for my birthday a few years ago and the obsession began.  I have read them all (currently reading the newest one) … love ‘em.

12.  Iced Vanilla Hazelnut Coffee from Einstein Bros – Here is the morning ritual:  I walk into the Einstein Bros near my office, I say “good morning”, Roxie says “Good morning Dan, $2.22″,  and hands me my 32 oz. cup.  I then walk to the coffee bar, add a bit of skim milk, some Equal (Jamie would say too much), fill the cup to the top with ice, and then smell as the delicious Vanilla Hazelnut Coffee cools over the ice.  The smell alone makes me happy. 

13.  Lady Antebellum – I’m not a huge fan of concerts…and there certainly aren’t many musicians that I’d say “Eric, I need to miss a rehearsal” for…but Lady Antebellum is one of them!!  My mom and I first saw them perform in Nashville two years ago when they were still an “up-and-comer”.  Since then, we’ve seen them live three more times.  Last night they won “Single of the Year” and “Vocal Group of the Year” on the CMA Awards.  I was so proud of them. 

14.  Christmas – I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about decorating my apartment … and how much I’m dreading trying to keep the crazy new cat off of the trees!  (That’s right…plural…I have two)

15.  Anticruelty.org – I check the web site for the Anti-Cruelty Society daily.  Looking at the photos of the puppies and kitties makes me want to become that crazy cat lady… but with dogs too … someday I will save them all!! 

16.  Judge Judy – She’s always on my DVR…one of my guilty pleasures.  I love when she completely humiliates an idiot who thinks he or she is going to cheat someone else.  Judy don’t take no crap!

17.  Blog Stats – It is terribly nerdy, but I love when I find that someone has searched a keyword and found my blog.  Sometimes it is friends I’ve mentioned or theatre company names that are google searched, but I get a little giddy when I see a traffic spike of any kind. 

18.  Used Bookstores – Even the musty smell of used books is appealing.  I just love picking up something I’ve always wanted to read and finding that it is only $3.  It is also a great way to find new authors and playwrights.  And if you want to up the ante on this one….a used bookstore with a comfy chair in a corner…done!!

19.  Zoos – I love animals (which I think has probably become apparent since I think this is at least the third animal-related item on my list, and I’m only at 19).  Lincoln Park Zoo specifically is one of my favorite places in the city of Chicago.  I love to stand on the little bridge leading into the zoo…you turn one way and you see the gorgeous Chicago cityscape, turn in the other direction and see the landscape of the gorgeous park, and continue down the path and there are lions and tigers and bears.  OH MY!

20.  A Really Good Rehearsal – There is nothing more mentally and emotionally stimulating than a really good rehearsal.  That first time when you really feel like a group of actors have connected as an ensemble and are all working together toward a common goal … it’s a HUGE adrenaline rush!

Well, that’s 20.  Whew…this is harder than I thought it’d be!

My Joy List, Part One (as challenged by my lovely friend Jamie)

So, my friend Jamie has a lovely little blog here.   She emailed me the other day and challenged me to blog about 100 things that make me happy.  I will probably start with 10 today and build from there over the next week or so. 

1.  My Kitties – I have two adorable cats, Tootie and Belvedere (both named for 80s sitcom characters).  While they both occasionally drive me crazy (I just spent $30 to replace my Blackberry charger that he chewed through yesterday), I love them.  I fell asleep last night with one cuddled on each side of me…they’re pretty awesome little furballs.

2.  Diet Mountain Dew – Jamie said nothing is too big or too small, so Diet Mountain Dew makes the list.  It really is the best…

3.  A clean apartment – There is nothing better than settling into a quiet Saturday night on the couch with a freshly cleaned apartment.  The smell of cleaning product still in the air, the ability to walk barefoot without stepping on a piece of cat food that’s been dragged out of the bowl, the freedom to open the drapes without fearing judgment from the neighbors across the courtyard. 

4.  Cleaning the apartment – Now, I know that sounds stupid…abecause I really don’t like to clean.  However, I’ve made it a joyful thing.   I combine the things I love to get through a task I hate.  Here is what I do…and I apologize in advance for the visual:  Find the most comfortable oversized t-shirt I can locate in the closet, set the iPod to a good musical (recent cleaning concerts have included Assassins, Legally Blonde, and Bat Boy), drop trou, and start belting and cleaning.  It’s a one-man underwear musical cleaning extravaganza.  Hm, I wonder why I’m single…….

5.  Showtunes at Sidetrack – I debated making this one just “fruity slushie drinks at Sidetrack”, but I settled on the combo of a fruity slushie drink (or five) and showtunes….heaven!  And the 40th birthday bash will soon be there, my friends!!!

6.  My Blackberry – It brings me my email, my texts, Facebook updates, Pandora, Brickbreaker, and Scrabble….DO NOT EVER LEAVE ME, BLACKBERRY!!!!!!

7.  Lisa – I hope everyone in the world has someone like my best friend Lisa.  Always there when you need her with a laugh, a ride to Target, a word that makes me consult a thesaurus, or most importantly, an amazing hug.  I am truly lucky to have her…I just wish we saw each other a lot more!

8.  My friends – Sure, Lisa is my best friend, but I have the most amazing collection of friends in the universe.  Every year at gatherings like my birthday party and Oscar night, I look around and realize how blessed I am to have such fun, smart, nerdy, awesome, crazy, silly, adorable friends around me all the time. 

9.  The Simpsons – Oh, Matt Groening, you’ve made me so happy over the years.  True happiness is a new episode with a great Ralph Wiggum line.  D’oh!

10.  Wet Ones – This seems a weird way to end my first ten…after listing my friends and my cats….but seriously, I love Wet Ones, the travel pack, in the red sleeve.  Antibacterial hand wipes with aloe (that other hand sanitizer stuff is way too drying).  If you ride the CTA, you should always carry them with you!!  I do!!

More to come…….

Go See Chaos!!

I’m super proud of my brilliant cast of Megan Schutt, Hayley Rice, and Brent Walker.   Despite having a sick director and some canceled rehearsals, they worked their butts off and are doing a brilliant little show.  Bonnie and Clementine, On Their Way to Visit the Grand Canyon, Explore the Limits of the Dramatic Form has the longest title of any show I’ve ever directed.  And has been one of the most fun.  It runs through next Wednesday…go see it!!!  http://www.pointofcontention.org

The callbacks for Vanishing Points are Saturday…and I’m a nervous wreck!  My ideas of these characters have existed in my head for 10 years or more.  Now I need to try to find eight actors to bring them to life.  I firmly believe that 80% of directing a show is selecting the right cast (see my Chaos cast!), so the pressure is on.  I’ve made mistakes in the past…there isn’t room for any here.  I’ve called back some amazing actors, so I now just need to figure out which eight are going to work well together.  Wish me luck…I’m going to need it!

Now, go see Chaos…have I mentioned that yet??? 

A bonus post…because I don’t want to have to rename my blog “Dan Digresses”

Here…some theatre-y stuff…

I’ve blogged about directing my “dream show” Vanishing Points … we had general auditions and I put together a callback list.  The callbacks are mid-November.  So far, I’ve had 6 people remove themselves from contention for roles.  The reasons are all valid (“I was offered another show”, “I need to pick up more hours at my job”, etc), but it is beginning to give me a complex.  This script is pretty amazing…the roles are well-written and challenging…its a good theatre company and a great venue. 

On a positive note, I did assemble a BRILLIANT cast for my show for the ChAoS short play festival.  We had our first rehearsal the other night … and I was feel like this cast doesn’t even need me.  They’re ready to perform now!  It is actually a fun position to be in because I can challenge them to try new things and really explore this piece.  When you make the right casting choices, you don’t have to spend all that time trying to bring everyone up to the same level.  Directing a 10 minute play is excellent because you can run it 7 or 8 times and still get rehearsal done in a couple hours … and this cast (Megan Schutt, Hayley Rice, and Brent Walker…calling them out because they are incredible!) is really open to playing and trying new things.  I gave Brent and Megan a piece of music to listen to and pretty much said “Use that to establish a relationship and set up the props and set pieces…go” and they really ran with it.  One of my favorite pieces of direction is “do something different now” (allowing the actor to explore new choices without me always saying “try it this way”) and Hayley is REALLY great at this game…completely changing it up every time we restart the scene.  We have a really limited number of rehearsals…something that usually stresses me out…but with this cast, I have no worries at all.

Which is nice…it frees me up to worry incessantly about Vanishing Points instead!

Hooray for a post on my theatre blog about theatre!

Jamie and Dan find a new classic!

My friend Jamie and I hung out last night at her place while Eric was at rehearsal (boo!  we missed him!).  Jamie is obsessed with Hungry Girl and is trying to get me back “on the program” with SparkPeople, so we made healthy recipes from Hungry Girl’s site.   Jamie made some AMAZING macaroni and cheese with pasta, cauliflower and Laughing Cow cheese as well as butternut squash french fries…I made REALLY CRAPPY pumpkin cheesecake…seriously, either I did something REALLY wrong or this HG recipe sucks. 

But that isn’t what I signed on to blog about.   We’d decided to do dinner, cuddle with the kitties, and find a terrible horror movie to watch together.  Well, we started out with Stupid Teenagers Must Die because the title was brilliant and the description on Netflix was “In this campy parody of 1980s slasher flicks, a group of teenagers get together in a creepy abandoned house to hold a séance, at which point they can’t help but get naked and begin dying gruesome, improbable deaths.”  We figured we couldn’t go wrong with that, right?  Um, wrong…it was some shit.  I don’t think we made it 5 minutes into the film.  I am pretty sure that it was filmed using a handheld camera someone bought on clearance at WalMart.  So, we decided next that Beware! Children at Play sounded like the best runner-up:  “Parents in a small town quickly begin to panic when their children start disappearing … and returning as cannibals!”  Come on, child cannibals?!?!  DONE!  Well, that one may have lasted 10 minutes before we finally settled on the our new favorite horror movie!!

Netflix describes Tamara like this:  “In a high school prank gone horribly wrong, an outcast named Tamara is murdered, but her tormenters get off scot-free. Now, as a sexy siren returned from the grave with an arsenal of superpowers, Tamara dedicates her afterlife to exacting revenge.”  When it started, we kept pointing out the ridiculous similarities to Stephen King’s Carrie … tormented high school girl, mean girl torments her in the locker room, nice girl sticks up for her, boy who looks like John Travolta in 1976. 

But we quickly got sucked in.  Mostly because of three of the actors.  Jenna Dewan in the title role chews the scenery with the best of them (as Jamie said, “She Patty Duke in Valley of the Dolls.”  She starts out as this nerdy teenager who is bullied by schoolmates and lives with an abusive drunken father who drove her mother away and, after her death and “rebirth”, is probably the HOTTEST horror movie monster EVER!  Girlfriend has got the “skank walk” down!  Even I found her hot (and I’m pretty gay!).  In the role of her “Sue Snell”-esque locker room supporter who becomes an unwitting participant in her murder later, Katie Stewart is awesome as Chloe.  I loved her from the start (despite the stupid hat) and she totally delivered.  Jamie and I both fell in love with the dumb stoner dude character played to perfection by Chad Faust.  It is worth seeing the film just for his performance, really.   If not for the HIDEOUS performance of Melissa Elias, the cast would have been pretty perfect. 

So, this film is currently available to be streamed on Netflix for free if you’re a member…and it is totally worth the time.  It is fun, campy, and scary. 

Soon, I may blog again about theatre…we’ll see.

Crap-tastic!

…And the 2nd “film” of movie night at Bob and Gator’s on Saturday was the hideous horror flop Asylum. Now, to be fair, we didn’t see the beginning…but I don’t think we missed much, unless there was some sort of warning that acting was prohibited on the set of the film.

First, there is the writer, Ethan Lawrence…who was apparently (and should go back to being) a television writer. Seriously, when someone has been murdered in a college dorm and the body has disappeared, even a campus cop knows not to say something like “Just stay inside the dorms tonight”. And when the group of students finds one of the girls missing and one of the guys mentions being in her room earlier, who doesn’t adore another guy’s reply of “Did you hit that shit?” I turned to Jamie and Eric and said “Someone WROTE that!!!”…well guys, it turns out that it was the brilliant Ethan Lawrence…you know Ethan…he wrote two episodes of The Pretender!  Yeah, THAT Ethan!!! 

And the cast? LORD! I would say the best performance was Travis Van Winkle…but only in the scene when he was shirtless. But what do you expect from a guy whose former roles include, per IMDB, “Frat Guy”, “Great-Looking Hugo”, and “Frat Boy”…I kid you not.

The plot: There is a dorm where an asylum used to be…hence the title. Students sleep where crazy people were tortured and murdered by a lunatic doctor. When the psycho doc is finally killed by the surviving inmates, he haunts the dorm and draws on the students past traumas (an abusive boyfriend, a brother who drowned in the pool on your watch, a molesting father, a fat mother who forced you to eat when all you really wanted was to work out at the gym….and so forth) and then brutally…and graphically…kills them. Think scalpings and tongue removals…pretty gross. Spoiler alert…though if you are planning to see this film now, you deserve a spoiler…in the end, the two remaining teens (in a lovely “oh no, my leg is stuck in a pile of sticks/hey killer, take me, not him” climax) manage to bust open the skull of the maniacal doctor and … as the souls of his victims “escape” from his brain … he screams (what else?) “My souls…oh, my souls!”

Seriously…go add it to your Netflix queue…right now!

Camp-tastic!

I apologize for my month of silence.  Blogging regularly is hard when you’re old and forgetful. 

I’m not going to blog about theatre today…I’ll get back into that later.  Today, I need to blog about my exciting evening of camp-tastic film-watching at Bob and Gator’s! 

The plan was to hang out and watch Valley of the Dolls.  I’d never seen the film and Jamie and Bob were appalled by that.  

Well, it…was…awesome!  Who knew?!?  Ok, it isn’t Oscar-worthy but it wasn’t trying to be…it was pure campy fun.  For those of you who don’t know the story, its about a small-town girl from New England who leaves her family and fiance to head to the Big Apple and falls face-first into show business.  The story follows her and three actresses:  one a bitchy diva, one who struggles to become a huge star and then become an alcoholic and drug addict, and one who ends up a star of French “art films”.  The film stars Patty Duke (of “identical cousin” fame!) in a brilliantly over-the-top role, Sharon Tate (Roman Polansky’s wife and victim of the Manson family), and the amazing Lee Grant (why doesn’t she get more work?  I love her!).  If you haven’t seen it, you should…just for the great dialogue: 

“You know how bitchy fags can be.”

“That little whore makes me feel nine feet tall.”

“Boobies, boobies, boobies.  Nothing but boobies!  Who needs ‘em?”

“Ted Casablanca is not a fag, and I’m the dame who can prove it!”

“Mother, I know I don’t have any talent…and I know all I have is my body…and I am doing my bust exercises. ”

And my favorite:  “Who’s stoned?  I’m merely traveling incognito!”

See it!  Hurry!!!    Later, I’ll have to blog about the not-so-great horror movie we watched after Valley of the Dolls.  That post may be called Crap-tastic!  And maybe I’ll do some theatre blogging again too.  Starting rehearsals for another show next week…awesomest cast ever!!