MeyerBros

(Thanks to Sean Kauffman for letting me know this was out there)

Not actually a compiler (whatver that is), SPL is simply an SPL to C converter. The conceit is that you can write your code in shakespearian language (plus some minor boolean opperators) - complete with a play title, declaration of the dramatis personae (variables, must be actual Shakespearian characters), act and scene breaks, entrances, exits, and spoken lines.

The laws of the language are fairly simple in terms of their computational power, and fairly robust in terms of poetic licnese. that is, if you consider layer apon layer of adjectives to be poetic.

you can also read some basic SPL scripts here.
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i’m working on and off on my follow-up to “sadomasochism” which i wrote in the spring of 2005. “sadomashochism” was a fairly straight-forward one-act explosion of love and pain and repression - written in that good-old psychological realism sort of way. when we performed it last fall, i began playing with it - cutting this and that and turning into more of a theatrical event with music and dance and spectacle and the works. i realized that to really get the feeling i wanted would require a full-out physical collage a la chuck mee jr. now i’m working on that.

i read an interview with chuck mee the other day (thanks michelle and project muse) in which he talks about joseph chaikin and ‘random emotion theory’. chaikin’s theory as stated by chuck mee is:

I think there are things that everyone feels at least once every 15 minutes: embarrassment, for example, or humiliation, from no-where, without apparent cause; sudden gr ief , anxiety, dread, distraction — as though a spirit or monster of some kind had passed overhead; regret, impatience, hatred, and unreasoning rage. It’s not the same for everyone. Some people I know feel none of those things, but instead, every 15 minutes they feel vengeful, jealous — they are immobilized by envy, a longing to possess something or someone, greed, lust, a wish to put something in their mouths.

chuck writes out of this emotional theory rather than the freudian psychological aproach that needs each feeling to be explained by the feeling or action before it. chaikin also uses it as a director, having actors cycle randomly through emotions as a scene progresses. both claim the result is amazingly realistic and powerful.

i’m sure that has something to do with another theory i’ve been mulling over as i work. my theory is that ‘young love’ is a self-perpetuating myth along the lines of ‘redemptive violence’. just as violence becomes our only option because we expect it to be, young love dies out over time because we expect it to. once you believe in a theory of young love, there is no good reason to attempt anything else. love will slowly degrade as you watch it with complete certainty that ‘this is just the way things are’. aha - here’s the connection: (more…)

oooo… I was with you right until that last bit.

(Sidenote: I was going to post this as a comment on Eric’s post, but then it got long and I decided to make it my own post. A review of his post, if you will.)

Some great questions, points, musings… But the “edification of the artists involved” part I question. At the New York Times, there is an ombudsman (yes, he’s a man), and he is the person who speaks for the readers (ie, the audience) - not for the paper. Speaking for the paper (ie, the artists) would be the editors in their editorials (like the Artistic Directors in our letters and director’s notes to audience). So the way I understand it, an ombuds for a theatre would be someone on staff who would express views of the audience (”the people”), not views of the artists.
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the SSDC and the DGA are entangled in an all out (sometimes legal) battle over copyright issues. everyone, surprisingly, wants to be paid for the work that they do.

i’ve been reading the latest issue of The Dramatist, a magazine that i recieve as a member of the DGA. i love this magazine as much as i hate it. every issue is thrilling, inspiring, angering, pathetic, self-centered, energizing, smug and insulur. what more could you ask for in a publication. i am reminded with every issue that New York is the only important place in the world (with the occasional minor exception of Chicago), playwrights are the only important people in the theatre, and nearly everyone is out to get me. i can also read back-to-back articles by Marsha Norman and Richard Nelson, the former listing her simplistic rules of playwrighting (which she teaches at Juilliard) and the latter arguing that such rules are the bane of playwrighting (which he teaches at Yale). neither one, you will notice, is too far from the center of the universe, which is Broadway. and neither one dares question the centrality of playwriting in that universe. this is, after all, “The Journal of The Dramatists Guid of America, Inc.” the issue concludes with a playwright’s legal battle against a former director in copyright issues. i disagree with both sides of that one article. that’s a lot to disagree with, but as a young anabaptist radical i consider myself up for that sort of third-way challenge.
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my reviews of “snakes on a plane”, “a man without a country” by kurt vonnegut jr., and a South Bend Tribune review of “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” as performed at New World Arts.
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• South Bend Tribune: ‘Danny and the Deep Blue Sea’ Preview
• various Mac app suggestions
• Quicksilver: the app i’ve fallen in love with from those suggestions

soon i’ll have a review of ‘Danny’ to post…

i live at new world arts, though i can occasionally be found working, eating or sleeping at other places.

danny and the deep blue sea opens in two weeks. it clicked the other day and if we weren’t an a three day hiatus from it, we’d be on a roll. (i’m sure we will be when we come back, but it’s hard to take a break right when you hit the real thing). we’re doing some exciting things, and it looks like we may even have the gold mine pickers working with us (still up in the air a bit). very very sweet. i’m riding the wave on that one.

fear/falling has been filling in the cracks at this point. a rehearsal here and there when we can’t be rehearsing for danny/deep. it’s a harder way to work, and i’ll be glad to focus in on it one danny opens.

every show i work on hits an awkward stage around adolecence. struggles with it’s sexuality and trips over itself. it’s voice breaks and we’re all a bit embarassed for it. but it seems to be the same wise and simple piece of advice from Michelle that always helps me find my way through it. it’s a piece of advice she credits her actor training for.

“stop trying. you don’t have to do anything.”

oh yeah. we have this idea as actors and directors that it should be hard work - that we need to do more for it to be good - but often the opposite is true.

i’m looking forward to walking into tomorrow’s fear/falling rehearsal with renewed sense of simplicity. i may also set my backpack page to send me a reminder in mid-january - in the middle of rehearsals for Limonade Tous Les Jours - to stop trying. I know I’ll need to hear it.

New World Arts has just launched it’s ninth season, opening with “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea“. I’m directing, with Michelle Milne and Kyle Reinford on stage and Emily Swora and Jessica Brubaker making them look good. That’s followed by Fear/Falling, written by Michelle and directed by myself, with a cast and crew too large and sweet to list here. Both are in rehearsals as you read this post.

I’m busy, but this is all super exciting. You should be reading all the show blogs carefully and responding to anything the peaks your interest. But mainly you should make sure to see all the shows this season - it’s one of the most diverse and exciting seasons at New World so far.

Everything from classic greek to two world premiers, magical romance to political farce, visceral drama, action comedy and whatever it is that Tom Stoppard does. There’s something for every taste, and all of it is on the edge - filled with potential for revolution and growth for both actors and audience. You don’t want to miss it.

i’ve been listening to an mp3 of Simon Sinek from Re:Focus giving a seminar on marketing. He talks about the ‘golden circle’ - with ‘why’ on the inside, then ‘how’ and ‘what’. the claim is most companies never get to that central why in their mission, research or marketing. the terms seem a bit fuzzy at first, but i think i’m picking up on how he uses them for each aspect.

to sumerize:

first - the organization should be defined from the inside out. the ‘why’ is your belief or philosophy. he suggests that for apple it is ‘iconoclasm’ - breaking the rules and being different. for southwest airlines it is ‘the common person’ etc. that leads to the ‘how’ - for apple it means inovative design (it just looks different) and interfaces. for southwest it means low and simple fares, and casual service (nothing elitist about it). then ‘what’ your company does is the last and least important. apple doesn’t even self define as a computer company - they can do anything and they do. small electronics? music stores? movie previews? it all fits their revolutionary image, so who cares what the product is - they do it.

in terms of marketing you go the same direction - but it’s all about your customer. not “we’re iconoclastic” but “join the music revolution”.
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i don’t like auditions in the first place. scenes are bad enough. no one can really perform with the script in their hand, and how am i supposed to judge who can get beyond their audtion habbits in the rehearsal process and who can’t?

i would love to just do composition work - semi-scripted, self-created unique mini-scenes with as much or more physical as verbal focus. i didn’t have anything planned today, and nothing came to me on the spot, so we read scenes.

monologues are worse. i don’t even see you interact with another person. and some people just suck at preparing their own material. you can never tell - even though you know within the first ten seconds whether the audition is any good, you don’t know til six weeks later wheather the actor is any good.

so i wrote a monologue. an audition monologue. not particularly better than anyone else’s, but i did enjoy writing it. read on for the full text:
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i just posted - over at eric.meyerbros.org - some clarifications.

i just thought i ought to clarify that quite often i dont mean what i say. here are some things i have said and some things i have not actually said and wont say but things that might at some point be said - and my clarifications regarding such said things. inspired in part by Chuck Mee and in part by Peter Handke but mainly by Michelle Milne, who doesn’t let me get away with these things.

i hope to keep building on them. so if you have any ideas you can write your own or post a comment here or there offering an adage to be clarified.

everyone knows that airports are the best place for people-watching, and a well-handled layover can really be a public performance art installation.

at the JFK airport, they’ve taken that performance seriously and hired David Rockwell, a set designer, to design their new terminal. He, in turn, hired choreographer Jerry Mitchell as a collaborator. Together they have designed “Hairspray”, “The Rocky Horror Show”, “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” and now an airport terminal.

Watch this slide show with audio for more about the project. there’s also a New York Times article.

this is an expiriment in reviewing a book in the style of the book itself. don’t trust it. in fact, i wouldn’t bother reading it. it goes bad by the end of the first paragraph, and paragraph three is entirely innapropriate. some of the comments might be interesting though. you could just skip to them.

this isn’t right.

this is right. it’s the only way to do this, get it all over with at once. it’ll be great. self referential and everything, just like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, except more so because it’s a review written in the style of the book. maybe even from the perspective of the author. no. yes. or as me writing as the author or the other way around. a self aware review mixed with vacation memoire about a memoir book. it’ll be the best thing i’ve ever written. it is the best thing i’ve ever written. you’re going to love it. you do love it. you hate it. i can tell you hate it. you’re never going to talk to me again. i’ll become depressed and and start drinking too much - random sex without condoms - AIDS - and then you’ll feel sorry. why don’t you like me anymore?

i really wasn’t that impressed with several things. AHWOSG, for one, and the eiffel tour for two. also versailles and AHWOSG again. the book just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. i wasn’t sure it went anywhere. the eiffel tour and versailles certainly did not go anywhere. they were big.

i should probably also mention that i haven’t had much sex in a while (with or without condoms) and even masturbation has been lacking. and while i know i will be judged by all of you for saying that, it doesn’t really matter because i could be lying. i am lying. maybe i’m lying. if i am i apologise, but still think you deserve it.

the point is, the book didn’t do much for me. neither did the french revolution. french cheese on the other hand… and oh the fondue… etc.

orgasmic, you might say.

is this pornography? how will we know? can we define the destinction between art and porn? can dave eggers define it? bobby meyer-lee? who’s definition would we go by?

how about mental illness? who defines that? who has it? what should we do about it?

racism?

this is an apology for this post. i’m very sorry. i’m not sorry. blame dave.

Eduardo Machado is a Cuban (/American) playwright with a lot to say. He gave a pretty gutsy talk a couple weeks ago that I find inspiring, challenging and moving. I am in the midst of finishing up plans for the next New World Arts season, and some of what he said hit me right in the gut.

He weaves together thoughts about immigration, the wall being built on the Mexico border, and his own experiences as a green card-carrying immigrant. His treatment as an “outsider” by a profession (theatre) that I believe should be on the cutting edge of acceptance is appalling. This flows into his thoughts about theatre, about not trying to make audiences happy, and about bravery. He rails against rampant entitlement issues, including the “entitlement” to be trained as a theatre artist - which really just plays into making theatre more corporate-minded.
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spur of the moment michelle mentions that i need to get film footage of paris for Limonade Tous les Jours, a great little duet/play by Chuck Mee that we’re talking about for this season at New World and dad mentions that he has an old video camera that may or may not work so we get it out and play with it over footage of derek bontreger and doyle preheim at the damn in “The Town Where No One Got Off”. it worked.

so then we’re running to wal-mart because it’s the only place still open and buying miniDV tapes so i can do my thing when i realize i really really want an mp3 player for the trip and they have them fairly cheap and i could sell it on ebay later if i want to so here goes. and there went.

now i’m listening to it and it’s working fairly well. well enough for this trip.

france, here i come: OO AE DOO FROMAGE? DOE NAE MUA POO DE FROMAGE. EH LA VEH. (merci)