8:58 a.m. - 2007-03-04
The NotoriousRRZ Show
Dear You Know Who You Are,
Hey. How're you doing? It's been a long time since we talked. A really long time. More than one awkward phone message. As much as I love the thought of you being unable to tell me that my having told you how I felt about you awakened a love in your heart so intense that you are too terrified to face it, and so you turn away from any mention of me before your heart breaks into a million pieces, I know that odds are you never really think of me at all, that you're going on with your work and enjoying life in California. I hope you're enjoying life. I'm enjoying mine.
That's why I wanted to write to you, here, in this diary that I know you don't read. It's not that I don't want you to hear what I have to say, just that I figure that you aren't going to care all that much, so why waste your time? I'm hoping that I stop thinking entirely in Ani DiFranco lyrics soon--I blame you--but I think about the line from one of the few songs she played at her Bay Area concert that I went to: "Every song has a you, a you that the singer sings to, and you're it this time." That line fits.
It also has the line, "You are so lame, you know. You always disappoint me. It's kinda like our running joke. Yeah, it's really not funny. I just want you to live up to the image of you I create. I see you, and I'm so unsatisfied. I see you, and I dilate." That fits, too.
Anyway, like I said, I'm writing because I am having a wonderful time. This morning, I have just had an overpriced breakfast sandwich and a soy mocha in the cafe that's really close to my house and has wi-fi, the two reasons why I would ever come here. It's a little hispter for my taste, what with the indie rock soundtrack that plays all the time, but when I was last here they played Frank Black and The Flaming Lips, so it ain't all bad. I'm going to drive down to San Antonio today, to see my best friend Kim and to see Laura, an old friend of mine from high school whom I haven't seen for years but who is back in town, sadly, to attend a memorial service for her father. He's been gone for a couple of months, and we shared a lot of laughs when we last talked, but I know it might not be the happiest of meetings. Nevertheless, I can't wait to give her a huge hug. She's one of those friends you can lose touch with for years, but when you meet them again you pick up right where you left off.
All that, however, is icing on one of the best cakes I've had in years. This week my Emma Goldman show went up, and I myself performed at Camp Camp, the queer open-mike that my roommate runs. There was more than one occassion in the past few years when I wondered if I would ever be able to say "my show went up" again. I did perform, though, as you know. I went to the Crash Cabaret and performed as Laura Bush singing "Chuck Out the Men!" the German Cabaret song translated into English by the divine Ute Lemper, but I wasn't crazy about my performance. You were there, though. That night, you stroked my cheek to wipe off a smudge of make-up, assuring me that I didn't look ridiculous. Son of a bitch. That still stirs something inside me. I'm touching my cheek right now.
I had told all of you guys in my graduate cohort to come see the show, at least all the ones I hung out with, which were a number of you. I had wanted you guys to see that I was more than just the funny guy in class, the guy who organized all the social events, the only one with the guts to go ASK the department for things we needed or wanted, however you saw me. At the end of Into the Woods, The Witch is transformed into a beautiful woman, or rather turned BACK into a beautiful woman, seeing as she had been made a hag by a curse. She goes to Rapunzel and says, "This is who I truly am!" I had Bernadette Peters's overwrought voice crying that out over and over again in my head. I wanted to yell it out to all of you. I should have understood then that I was bone-scared that I was becoming something that could never again do the things that had brought me so much joy. I felt like Superman with a huge chunk of kryptonite chaine to him, and like I had been that way for so long that I was about to forget that I was or could ever be Superman, that I was jus Clark Kent and all that waited for me outside the Daily Planet window was a long hard fall.
I distracted myself with thoughts of you. I don't mean to imply that all you are is a distraction. You're more than that. But that's how I used you, and on some level I even feel sorry.
Thanks in part to the way I felt about you, I jumped out the window and survived. So, back to Austin, which had changed. The pond was a lot bigger, and so were the fish. I'd been gone for two and a half years, and it had been three since I'd last put on a show. Never again, dude, never again. There was a whole group of queer performers putting on shows every month, and it was only by the grace of God that I managed to room with one of them. It's been hard learning to live with people again, after living so long alone, but what my roommate does impresses me. She's put a whole lot of things together from scratch. The last show was this Masquerade Ball, so in some ways it was atypical, and it was hard to hear and see the acts, particularly when I was manning the door and trying to distract the fire marshall.
This Thursday, though, was a regular night, just performers. I knew I had to perform. I want to be a performance artist. I think I can. I want to be a lot more, but I also know that you can make some money as a soloist and get some attention, so that you can then get money and opportunities to direct, which is, I think, the deepest of my passions. It's also something I enjoy on a theoretical level, particularly after having read Judith Butler's Giving an Account of Oneself. When we tell the story of our lives, we tell a story that we can never fully know, creating a person who is, on some level, a fiction, but when we tell the story in poerson, the unknown aspects are, in some ways, present, suggested by every break, failing, or surprise in the live story that we tell. I think that's what makes a lot of solo performers magical people. I want to access that kind of magic. I hope I can. I think I might.
I was, of course, spending ridonkulous amounts of time on this show, so I really didn't have any time to put something together, particularly since the show had a makeover theme, meaning I had SO. MANY. Body issues I could work out on stage. I finally decided to do a brief strip to "When You Got It, Flaunt It" from The Producers (which I would sing myself, without the Swedish accent), then freak out, put my clothes back on, and do an altered version of my last entry, the one on going shirtless. LadeeLeroy, perhaps the best online diarist I ever read and a fantastic performance artist and actress herself, turned her own diary into a solo show, and it was amazing. I went up to her afterwards and, amazingly, once I said I wrote as The Notorious RRZ she said, "The Notorious RRZ! I love your stuff! You're a great writer!" My heart was soaring that evening. I don't think it quite soared so high again until just this weekend.
My actresses and I got to Camp Camp just after it began. There was already a hilarious duo called The Knickknack Paddywacks doing Andrews Sisters versions of dirty contemporary songs. My actresses and I had a lot of fun watching the video of The Queen remixed to "My Neck, My Back," so we took it as a sign that right as we walked up they were singing, "Lick my pussy and my crack!" A sign of what, I don't know, maybe just a blessing. It was an amazing night. There was a very sexy male bellydancer, a piece on shaving for women, a fabulous drag queen named Rebecca Havermeyer singing "Your son'll come out, tomorrow! Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow he'll be gay!"
I had two favorites, though. One was this Australian woman named Sunny who had actually been staying with us for the past few days. I had, of course, been either amusing or annoying her by practicing my Aussie-speak on her; I even sang some of Waltzing Matilda, because I am that much of a doofus. Her performance was incredible. She began in a ball gown and blonde wig, and by the end had stripped entirely naked, finally donning her usual gear of shirt and trousers. My favorite line of hers was "I put my body in day-care," which lead to this tremendously committed movement piece on going to work every day in the corporate sector. She was also hilarious, doing a car commercial for her own body called "The Sunny 1977" that offered her snail-trail as a handy directional guide and her breasts as pencil holders (the piece was called Pencil Test). She was truly extraordinary.
The other favorite was the host I didn't live with, Silky. She is a pixie-dyke in person, but she was a PERFECT Houston matron for this evening. Seriously, this woman is a comic genius. My favorite moment of her hosting was when she said, "I wonder what I'd do with a few million dollars. I'd buy a Hummer. Paint it pink, with daisies on the side. I'd buy an island. I'd take over the native people; I love strawberry daiquiris!" I cannot capture the perfect comic timing of the way she said it. It took a total committment to character, but it was also an instinctual understanding of comic rhythm that I am not sure can be taught.
I was the penultimate act, the last piece before a band. I was nervous as Hell. It was only in the moment that what I realized I was doing was, for the most part, stand-up comedy. If I had known that ahead of time, I would have run like a fucking gazelle from that stage. But they laughed. They didn't laugh at everything I thought was funny, but they did laugh. And they were silent when I went into the more dramatic parts of the piece. I finished by singing a few bars of yes, that's right, Ani DiFranco, the piece I mentioned in the last entry, and my voice sounded good. The official title of the night was "Lighten Up, Ladies" and so in the end, after I had taken my shirt off while singing "Just show me a moment that is mine, its beauty blinding and unsurpassed, and I'll forget every moment that went by and left me so half-hearted, 'cause I felt it so half-assed," I said, "And I felt the sun on my skin, which I really wish I could feel right now because it is fucking cold (HUGE laugh, so I gave myself a nipple check to keep it going). And I felt the air all around me. And I looked around at the beautiful garden. And, ladies (looking directly at my smiling roommate, in a voice so sexily self-satisfied it would make Samantha Jones blush), I lightened up."
When I remember some of the best moments of my life, it will include when I first saw one of my actresses after that piece, and the hug she gave me. Wow. I remember that and it feels so much better than your finger on my cheek.
I mentioned Sunny and Silky partially for self-aggrandizing purposes. Because I didn't get the congratulations of a greatful Queer Nation afterwards. I wasn't a revelation. But Sunny loved it, and Silky loved it. When Sunny started complimenting me, I tried to interject with my own praise for her piece, but she said, "No, I'm not finished with you yet!" I tell you and anyone who ever reads this here and now that there is no feeling that equals being part of a community of artists and sharing an admiration of one another's work. I've always wanted to go to Australia. Hopefully, Sunny will need an opening act. As for Silky, she just gave me a hug and said I was awesome, and I ain't trading that for anything either.
All that, though, was eclipsed even as the moon on Saturday night. I took my cast, the last of whom showed up more than an hour late, out to Wimberley to do our show. Here's a confession: I wish to God I knew how to instill confidence in a cast. I have never had that gift. Every cast I've had has gone on shaking in their boots. Granted, once it's over they know that I wasn't lying when I said how awesome they were. Maybe that's my problem: I'm so generous with praise and gentle in criticism that they become suspicious. Because I knew they were nervous. We'd only had a month to put together a one-act consisting almost entirely of monologues. Do you have any idea how hard it is to memorize even one monologue, let along five. It helps when you write them, but even then. And they didn't write these. Sometimes I think a group of monkeys wrote these, or at least chopped up Emma Goldman's writing to write these. There isn't a tremendouns amount of flow. So even the night before they flubbed lines, which I don't have a problem with, but in the process BROKE CHARACTER which made me want to KILL THEM. Which is a pity, because I have grown to love these actresses very much.
You have no idea. I have loved Niki for a long time, because she is one of the few people with whom I never feel I have to hide a thought, feeling, or opinion, because she never hides her own. She is a perfect person to play an Emma Goldman. Her favorite scene is the whipping scene, where Emma Goldman takes a whip to her former mentor, Johann Most, after he denounces the attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick by her lover, Alexander "Sasha" Berkman, out of jealousy more than any political conviction. Niki and I both know what it's like to feel like people are letting personal shit get in the way of making art or being activists. We know how much it hurts to get kicked out of a place you helped build, or to feel like you need to walk away from it, because you ask a lot of people and aren't willing to back down. It has been wonderful working with her again--she was in the first Austin show I did, and said, after seeing the second, that she wouldn't miss the next opportunity to work with me--and in the last dress rehearsal she went from merely being someone with a lot of stage presence to being an actress. It was remarkable. Of course, I think it had a lot more to do with having an audience to impress than it had to do with me.
Thora had written a piece for the Sexuality and Consent show that I did, a powerful one about child abuse. She couldn't be in the show because she was pregnant, and after the first rehearsal I told her that if I had known she was this good, I would have chained her to the theater before I let her get out of doing the show. She has been an amazing trooper, being the only one of my actresses with a daughter (she's two, her name is Roo, and she is so adorably blonde and cherubic that I keep gobbling her up, much to her delight). She also has some of the best theatre instincts I have ever encountered. She could be a director in her own right. I am so grateful for coming to know her and love her in this show, and not just because her garden gave me a great way to start my own performance career.
Crystal is my new friend out of all this. She came in with the most theatre experience, having even done musicals, and so we spent a great deal of time singing Phantom of the Opera and Sweeney Todd at each other. She's this gorgeous blend of Thandie Newton and Erykah Badu, and she has tremendous power in her voice. I gave her a lot to do, knowing that she had some professional experience, and she met the task. I couldn't believe it when I found out she was only 23 (of course, I was only 23 when I directed my first anarchist theatre piece, so never underestimate the young). She was the one who gave me that huge hug after my own show.
I don't ever want to work without these actresses (knock on wood). They've been so amazing. And I think that, after last night, they finally understood how amazing they are.
When they had been worried about lines, I told them a story told by Elaine Stritch, about forgetting her lines opening night of Company in Boston, before it went to New York. She froze and put both of her hand in her mouth during "The Ladies Who Lunch." The next day, her director, Penn graduate Harold Prince, in whose theater my first directing effort, Durang's "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You" premiered, said, "Elaine, halfway through--now, I know you were nervous. Halfway through--and I'm only asking this out of curiosity. Halfway through your song, you put both of your hands in your mouth. Why?" She said, "Yes, well, that, well, AW, HAL, I WAS LOOKIN' FOR THE LYRICS!" "Well, I guess that sort of explains it, but NOW, ELAINE, THAT IS BEHIND YOU!" It got them laughing, and it hopefully helped them understand that I trusted them, as much as a directing legend like Hal Prince could trust a musical theatre legend like Elaine Stritch. On the way up, I played that scene from her one-woman show, and her subsequent rendition of "The Ladies Who Lunch." They all have a new favorite diva.
We got to the venue and THANK GOD had help setting up, including a wonderful man from Arkansas named Cody who helped us set up lights. We got ourselves a stage, and a backstage. We had plenty of time to do a ritual on a full-moon eclipse night, and to do all sorts of warm-ups. We played the most focused game of zip-zap-zop we'd done yet. And then it was time. The lights were on. Scott, the organizer of the event, introduced me, and I introduced the show, thanking those who had helped us set up.
It began, and my internal monologue began:
"Yes! Yes! Okay, faster! Yes, but you need to speak up! Louderlouderlouderlouder okay YES! Now we're talking! Yes you have an entranceentracneentracncemakeitnow! Now! NOW! We are BEHIND SCHEDUYES! YES! You NAILED it! Alright, okay, entrance, ENNNNTRAAAAAAAOKAY! Why are you pausing? WHY ARE YOU PAUSING?! We did not discuss a pause there. Wow, yes, wow, AWESOME! You are BEAUTIFUL! Wai-what? What are you? What . . . why are you DOING that?"
The "that" in question I asked them about after the show. "Ladies, during the show--now, I know you were nervous. Durwing the sh--and I'm only asking this out of curiosity. During the show, rather than going onstage to take your hats off the hatrack when you entered, like we'd done in rehearsa;, you reached THROUGH the backdrop to take your hats off the hatrack. Why?" They thought it looked better if they entered with their hats. I told them that, however true that may be, it looked bad to have a hat-eating creature upstage center. It was like very bizarre puppetry. And it FREAKED me out.
But the audience was captivated. True, there were people who had chosen not to see the show who were BEING VERY RUDE and MAKING A LOT OF NOISE but those who were there were dead silent. That's a captivated audience. Then it came time for us to break the show, to step in and improvise our little confrontation with the audience. At dress rehearsal, we had a GENIUS woman in the crowd who spoke brilliantly on the categorical imperative and that violent revolution would be putting different fur on the same beast. I want her to be in the next show. The audience that night, despite being there for a Radical Encuentro, was not as responsive. But then it was time for the part the actresses had written, a long poem made up of their beliefs.
As I walked off-stage, Scott grabbed me and hugged me, telling me the show was better than he could have hoped. I had to get back to watch my actresses. Someone took a picture of them during the piece they had written. Red light pours up from them. They look like they're on fire. They were on fire. Our new show is going to be called Three Emmas on Fire. They will write it. I cannot wait to get started on it.
At the end of the show my cast brought me up and gave me flowers and raspberry Lambic. My best friend, Kim, had come up from San Antonio. I took her to her car, as she was sick and had to get home, but in the car she said, "It was so worth it to come up here just to see you this happy again. And I am so proud of you for saying fuck it to everything and doing this. I'm so happy for you I could cry." And, full of gratitude, and pride mixed with humility which is the unique gift given to directors by their casts, I said, to the girl who had heard me cry for months over how much I felt like my life was slipping away from me in Berkeley, heard me cry over how much I thought I would never find my powers again, heard me cry, sometimes, over you, "The best part is that I don't have to cry right now. I don't feel the need to cry at all."
We were exhausted. My flirting attempts with a cute Radical Fairy were half-assed at best. We downed our booze and smoked a little (except for the one driving) and were practically passed out in the car. And I thought about the line from The First Wives Club: "I hope we always feel like this: tired and happy."
Over the course of this month, I have fallen in love with Emma Goldman, like so many men have. She read literature, philosophy, and critical theory, and was willing to break up with a guy just because he made fun of her for liking Nietzche. She loved the theatre, convinced that it had the power to change the world. She stood by her convictions and fought without tiring every day for them, keeping her sense of humor and her love of humanity intact the entire time. All of this is amazing, but the best bit, the thing that makes her the kind of boyfriend I hope to find someday, the thing that makes me feel a kinship with her, is that this woman loved to shake her booty. She said, "When I was fifteen I suffered from unrequited love, and I wanted to commit suicide in a romantic way by drinking a lot of vinegar. I thought that would make me look ethereal and interesting, very pale and poetic when in my grave, but at sixteen I decided on a more exalted death. I wanted to dance myself to death."
There's a boy at a costume store I've been flirting with, and a boy I met online, and some friends of friends, to one of whom I even gave a meaningful cheek-kiss. I still want to find someone to share all of this joy with. But I no longer worry about it. I love my life again. I have ripped off the kryptonite. As Neil Gaiman said, sometimes when you fall in dreams, you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
I hope you're flying, baby. I hope I meet you again one day when we're both in the air, just to see what happens, even if it's just a nod and a smile before we fly off our separate ways. But these days, the only vinegar I eat is on salads, or on my fish and chips, and I am dancing myself to death.
