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.

 

Guy Yedwab and I were invited to talk about the League of Independent Theater at Articulate Theatre Company‘s event at the The Theater Center to honor the impact and many contributions made by Circle Rep. and its members. So many incredible people were there. It was a real honor getting to share with them what the League does. Our complete speech is below the picture. I was happy with how we could earn so many laughs and applause breaks talking about arts advocacy!

Big thanks to Cat Parker for having us there with Jeff Daniels, William Mastrosimone, William Hoffman, A.R. Gurney, Marshall W. Mason, Lou Liberatore, Glenn Alterman, Dennis Parichy, John Lee Beatty, Chuck London, Jennifer von Mayrhauser, Tanya Berezin, Setphanie Gordon, Burke Pearson, Shay Gines, Cyndi Coyne, Jeffrey Sweet, William Carden, Robert Askins, Leonard Jacobs, Richard Frankel and many others. 

 

Chris: Our thanks to Cat Parker for having us be part of this incredible night.

Guy: One of the lasting legacies of Circle Rep was defining the Off Off Broadway scene. Out of that legacy, the League of Independent Theater grew out of a gathering of theater artists in 2008 in response to a crisis created by the significant loss of Off Off Broadway spaces and the constraints of the Equity showcase code. We wanted to give a voice to that collection of artists that the Circle Rep brought together.

Chris: From this, a 501c6 non-profit was born. 501c6 because this allows us to endorse in political races.

Guy: In 2013, we created a Performing Arts Platform, which you can read about on our website litny.org, and endorsed in 18 city-wide races and over 50% percent made it into office. We also made a beautiful voting guide of arts-friendly candidates.

Chris: And we got a candidate for Mayor to use the term “independent theater” on TV!

Guy: This process let us tell the story of the cultural and economic impact of independent theater in New York City. We transform neighborhoods because we make more than 3,000 productions a year in all of the 5 boroughs.

Chris: To those in politics and business who do not think arts are important, we simply ask if they are for small business. Usually they will say, “well, of course, I’m for small business.” “Then you should be for independent theater because we are an important economic driver of the city, to the tune of several million dollars annually.”

Guy: We’re now a part of the conversation; we’ve seen new tracts of affordable housing for artists, increases to the cultural budget, and other gains — because we have a voice, stay engaged and active, and bring our independent passion to city politics.

Chris: Since LIT started, we’ve lost 72 performance spaces. To counteract this trend, we developed a heavily subsidized rehearsal space program that has helped over 20 companies be able to take residence in unused commercial spaces to rehearse for long stretches of time without interruption or having to lug their props and costumes on the subway. More about this can also be found on our website, litny.org.

Guy: As codes and agreements began changing at Actors’ Equity, LIT has worked to establish communications with Equity to find common ground in treating actors well but also allowing independent theater to be developed and not have such a huge financial leap between levels of production.

Chris: We also are bringing artists together with our Green Practices working group and other initiatives to come. We continue to seek creative ways of addressing issues facing the independent territory, and we do everything on less than $200 a year.

Guy: If you want to get involved, please join us at litny.org.

Chris: Membership is free.

Guy: Long live Circle Rep.

Chris: And long live independent theater in New York!