Last night’s house = 13. 4 patrons, 5 comps, a critic, our house manager, and the director. Still, a great show.

Tonight’s house = 3. ZERO patrons and 3 critics. Jose Solis / Talkin Broadway, Michael Sommers / Village Voice, David Kaufman / Theater Scene. It’ll be like a 90-minute audition for drama school. One that isn’t taking on any new students. Well, maybe one, if you’re really lucky.

I’ve never been in a show where the pre-show buzz is so good but the sales are so bad. People from whom I have not heard in decades are messaging me about how excited they are for this show. Each time I bump into people in real life they tell how excited they are for this show. Whenever we post about the show there are often several comments from people telling how excited they are for the show. I’ve never done a show where so many people use the word “excited” to describe their feelings about it.

Not sure what we need to do to get people to come. My close friends tell me not to worry. That people wait to the last minute to get their tickets.

Erez pointed out that I’m not famous and the show isn’t about sex or beer. But we do serve beer in the theater. Right there in the audience. And they take plastic. I will not become famous by 7pm tonight and the show isn’t going to be changed to be about sex.

I can’t think of a subject that would be of more interest to people who see or do this work.

Last night one of the Show Score comps seemed to love the show. I know because she was the only person on the front row. She sat with her feet on the stage and smiled up at me all night. Whenever I looked back I smiled on the inside while I thought about the story of Katharine Hepburn stopping in the middle of a play, walking downstage, kicking a person’s legs, and saying, “Don’t you ever put your feet on my stage again!” before walking back up to her spot and resuming her dialogue. The SSC spoke with Aimee after the show and said she went expecting it to be a one-person show about a critic reviewing plays in front of the audience. She said both performers were good enough to do a solo show and that while she really enjoyed the show, she isn’t sure what she is going to tell people. It wasn’t what she expected.

I didn’t think this is what we’d be dealing with but ok.

Fortunately, we also had Barry and Catherine from Peculiar Works Project serving as Captains of the Audience. Laughing where the laughs are and helping the audience understand what they are seeing. We went out after the show and had a great time sharing stories. They have lived alongside a lot of the history in this. This is more of what I was expecting. This is what it was designed to do.

I know it’s been 4 years since I’ve created a piece like this. A generation and a half of indie theater people has turned over in that time. I know I’m not famous. I have about 12 people who come to see anything I do. Plus about 100 people who follow what I am doing online and tell me how great it is without experiencing it in person. I’ve gone from being a critic’s darling to dividing critics. I think I took a hiatus to figure out the missing ingredient. It wasn’t until this week that I figured out what it is. Part of it is explained in the show. Part of it was in the doing of the show. The joy of embracing life no matter how busy you are or what is thrown in your way. That isn’t going to translate to people showing up tonight.

Other than that, the show is going great. We’ve had one boisterous audience and one intimate audience. Marisol and I are having a great time performing this either way. I had a couple wordburgers last night but in the course of 90 minutes with my foot on the pedal, that’s bound to happen. A friend playing Hamlet years ago described it as the demon coming up in a different place each night. Last night, my line “You are like Daniel Day-Lewis in this character, you do not stop. Sir!” Came out “Robble robble de Lewis.Comma splot sir!” A little unfortunate but a sign of relaxing into the piece. They say don’t go on stage with animals or babies. Well, she’s like a cheetah. She said I’m like a laser last night, despite mouth meltdown I just described. Maybe if we add some Pink Floyd we could sell the laser and cheetah show.

I’m going to go to the gym and rest for most of the day so I can be ready to give what I can tonight to whoever turns up. Or not.

The exterminator provided by the building’s management just came for the monthly application of whatever it is that comes in the tube they squirt into the hinges of the cabinets. “I just need you to spell your last name for our records.” “Har…cum.” “M, sir?” “Ehmmm, yes.” That look came over his face I’ve seen often since middle school where they think I shouldn’t go around with a name like this or I should at least add the missing letter “d.”

Maybe if I did, it would sell more tickets.

With so much going on in the city and so little space in print, it was a nice surprise to see us listed here! (Thanks to Adam Feldman)

We had a great opening night last night and I don’t take that lightly. Good crowd, great reactions, and wonderful conversations after the show. But there’s more and most of it is internal.

I’m in that place of peace where you know you’ve achieved most of what you want to get out of a piece…before the reactions and reviews really change the piece on a cellular level for better or worse.

We pack a lot into this 90 minutes and it is a real slalom course. I like giving myself something that’s slightly beyond what I think I can do. It forces me to be in it as much as I can. This certainly does that. Marisol, who is one of the funniest and most talented performers I’ve ever seen and is tremendous in this show, has said more than once this week, “This is kind of a BEAST, Chris Harcum.” And, well, she’s right. She has the physical aches and I have that special sprained tongue-and-brain combo for which there is no ice pack to help. That said, it is a deeply joyful show to do.

There’s also the feeling that I don’t want it to be over, even though it just opened. Productions are like life sometimes. You have all the time in the world…until you don’t.

I’ll be honest, this was not an easy thing to create. Mostly because of life and the world getting in the way. I started on this when the election was getting to a fever-pitch and then we somehow went into a weird vortex where I must keep telling myself this is just an episode of “The Twilight Zone” and eventually we will move on to another reality. I also came down with a case of vertigo around the holidays that last just over a month (MRI showed no signs of anything wrong, possibly a viral infection) at the same time tectonic shifts started at my Clark Kent job that continue to rattle the walls. In essence, I haven’t felt like I’ve had ground under me since last summer. The Buddhists say the true nature of life is groundlessness but they can kiss my ass about that right now. 

Over tech weekend, we found out about a young and talented member of our company who has been hospitalized with a serious condition. Aimee and I saw him recently on what turned out to be a very bad day in his life and at the end of it he said, “I’m coming to see your show.” In that way only he can, full of light and spirit. Almost like it was a dare. We saw him a couple weeks ago in his show and he lit up the room again. He got his Equity card from that show. Things were looking up. A post he wrote a week later said, “Got the best news today. Look at God.” I tell myself we have to do the best we can with this show in his honor because I can’t process what is happening with him otherwise.

Then there was just facing this piece. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF IT. It’s Martin Denton’s life and work, for crying out loud. Plus I kept thinking about the actor screwing in the light bulb joke (“I could do it better if I were given the role”) and subbing in playwrights on that joke (“I could win more awards if I were given the commission”).

For some reason, there was this heavy duty emotional baggage for me as well in making this. Looking back over this time for Martin, I was coming to terms with a mix of not feeling like I’ve accomplished as much I’d like and a major dose of survivor’s guilt. Maybe I’ll figure that out in the fall after this is done. But this piece was something of a return for me. I had been doing a lot of stuff but hadn’t created something like this since 2013. I needed a break from theater and was playing around with stand-up and improv, as well as taking acting classes and wasting money on One on One sessions that got me nowhere except frustrated and full of humble pie.

Aimee did so much to make this a real piece of theater. It was not easy, I know. I deeply appreciate her sacrifice and willingness to go along with this no matter how impossible it seemed. In addition to shaping this, she went above and beyond in terms of doing things outside of her job description. Each time we seemed to have something figured out it changed. It was just one of those processes where nothing was really simple. Her big heart pumps through this whole thing. I count my lucky stars that I have her as my partner in life and art.

Because of the timing of this thing, we did this without a fundraising campaign and were rejected for two grants. There’s a perception that we’ve already sold out the run from some and we are far from that. For now. But all of that’s OK because I truly and fundamentally believe in the strength of this piece. The story is one that needed to be told and there is no better time to tell it.

So doing this play represented something for me. A homecoming. That’s what I felt last night. Something in me shifted. That is the reward for putting in hundreds of hours to make this. And not giving up.

We had a nice time being interviewed by Trav SD about Martin Denton, Martin Denton. Trav is a very talented man across many disciplines and all-around good egg.

I’m so excited this show is happening in July at the Kraine Theatre! I got to work directly with Martin on creating this piece. You can read a bit about the process on Adam Szymkowicz’s excellent blog. Martin gives his thoughts on being the subject of this on his blog. I am so glad he has trusted me with his story.

I’m getting to work with some of my favorite people. My partner in life and art Aimee Todoroff is directing. The very wonderful clown Marisol Rosa-Shapiro will join me onstage to bring all the characters to life. Matthew Fischer will be doing our sound and lighting designs. Frequent ERD collaborator Barbara Davidson will be doing the costumes and Manny Rivera will be the stage manager. I’m so happy to work again with Emily Owens as our press rep.

What will the show be like? Well, I like to describe it as what might happen when a comedy double act does a storytelling slam. Marisol and I will be playing Martin Denton and Rochelle Denton, who are going to be playing the other characters. (I once worked with a lighting designer who said he stopped counting the levels of reality in something I wrote when he got to five before the end of the first page. I think I keep this one down to only three or four.) It is set the week when they moved out to New Jersey in the fall of 2014.

It won’t be a documentary of theater in the last 20 years, though some of that will be covered in this. The good people at Decades Out have already been working on the definitive doc on downtown NYC theater. It also won’t be an evening of impersonations.

This will be a piece of theater that tells Martin’s story. There will be some allusions to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town for reasons that are explained in the show as well as some inside jokes and a few indie theater tropes layered throughout.

My 15th anniversary in NYC is coming up this August. It is amazing to me how much the city has changed in that time. That’s the length of five generations in theater years! One thing that remained reliable through most of that time was Martin Denton. For people who know him, I hope this will bring up good memories. For those who don’t, I hope this will give you an idea of the impact of his work.

It runs July 6 to 23. Tickets are $20 and $25. You can get more details on the Elephant Run District website. Or, you can go ahead and order your tickets here.

The short film on which I have my first Associate Producer credit won the New York Spotlight Best Short Award at the Manhattan Film Festival! While the festival is over, you can see a trailer for the film here.  I’m very proud to have been asked to work on this project.