To both of my faithful readers, I’m sorry to keep you starving for information on the goings-on and happenings of the Director.
I’m still in Chicago, and I’m loving it.  Despite a furious battle against an evil, domineering stomach virus.

The other day, I met up with Nick and a friend of his and had breakfast.  It was really refreshing to meet a like-minded person, both a programmer and theatre geek.  That meeting was enough to make up my mind.  I really, really want to move to Chicago now.

On the bright side, there’s a decent shot that the company I’m consulting for might give me a full-time position with them.  On the down side, none of my other interviews in Chicago have panned out.

Keep your fingers crossed, people.

If I do get a job here, I plan on becoming very active in the theatre community: volunteering, acting, directing, maybe even get my Pied Piper play produced.  Regardless, my dry spell of theatre will be over if I move here.

Did I mention I love Chicago?

Since I haven’t updated lately, and I’m being nagged to do so, I figure I’ll chime in on Scott Walter’s opinion regarding generalists vs specialists in theatre.  But first, a story.

I was wandering around Naperville, taking in the sights of this small town outside Chicago, visiting the park and shops and restaurants.  I passed what appeared to be a homeless man with a sign.  I forget the exact wording, but the sign contained a phrase from 1 Corinthians.  The (possibly) homeless man didn’t say anything — he was too busy tapping away at his laptop.  I guess one can be homeless and still have a laptop.

I stopped at an intersection, and another guy walks up next to me.  He’s wearing a shirt that says “I know Jimmy Too!”, which was clearly an advertisement for the restaurant behind me called Jimmy’s Grill.  I said, “You work there?”  You can call me Captain Obvious.

He said “Yep, sure do.”

“Any good?” I asked.

“Oh, man, it’s great!  Great food, great service.  The people there are exceptional.”  He started running across the street, obviously in a hurry to get somewhere.

“You have to say that.  You work there!” I called after him.  He turned and looked at me while running backwards.

“If I didn’t think it was great, I’d work somewhere else!”

I laughed and went into the bookstore on the corner, where I proceeded to spend insane amounts of cash on former trees covered in ink.  On my way out, I called my buddy and asked him where a good place to eat was and he recommended some sort of Mongolian buffet place.  I decided I’d rather have a burger.

I walked into Jimmy’s Grill.  A short redhead asks me if I want to eat inside or outside.  I shrug.  It’s gorgeous outside, but it’s also kinda hot.  She motions for me to follow, and the guy from the street pops up in my face.

“It was the outfit, wasn’t it?” he asked, pointing at his ridiculous hat and big floppy shoes.  Seriously, they were like clown shoes.

I said, “Yeah, that’s it.”  He gives me a high five and a fist bump and wanders off.  The redhead leads me to further inside and seats me at a table.  The guy comes back over and sits down at my table.

“Dude, you got books!  What are you reading?  Mind if I see?” I pulled out a book.  “Man, I’m not into these kinds of books, but my buddy is totally into this.  I think he’s read this one.  Does it have ninjas in it?” I laughed and shook my head.  “Oh, dang.  I wanna read something good.  Got any suggestions?”  I suggested my favorite book series.  He took out his pad of paper and wrote down the name of the author and the first book.

“Does it have ninjas in it?”

I laughed and shook my head again.

“Well, dude, I’m sorry I can’t be your waiter, but I’ll introduce you to the girl who will wait on you.  Here she is.”  He led a girl over to my table and introduced me.  I have no idea what her name is, in retrospect, but she was nice enough.  Forgettable, but nice.

Throughout the meal, the guy kept coming over and talking about random stuff — the synchronized swimmers on the TV, the burger I got, where I’m from — all the while, carrying drinks to other people and food to yet more.  He was funny, goofy, polite and entertaining.

In short, he was probably the best waiter I’ve ever seen.

On the way out, I gave him a tip for making my stay at Jimmy’s Grill memorable.

“Don’t spit into the wind,” I advised him.  I also gave him some cold, hard cash.

I walked back to my car, carrying my leftovers, and I passed the homeless laptop Bible guy again.  Only this time, there was a rather large fellow leaning over and yelling at the poor guy.  Insults flew from this guy’s mouth, barraging the poor fellow with torrents of anger and condescension.  What exactly the problem was, I never found out.  I hope he didn’t get his feelings hurt too badly, though.

Anyway… uh.. where was I… hmm.  Oh, right.  Generalists vs Specialists.

I agree with you, Scott.  Good stuff, as always.

So my first week in Chicago is over.  I’m loving it so far!  Today, I’m staying at my friend’s house to rest, read, watch some Olympics and gorge myself on Chicago pizza.  Tomorrow morning, however, I’ll be free to roam the city and see some sights, until 2pm when I have to go into the office to work til about 6.

So, I need suggestions for things to do in Chicago on a Sunday morning.  Any ideas?

For both of my faithful readers, I’ll be visiting Chicago from this coming Tuesday until September 1st.  I got a contract job doing web development, so I’ll be there working during the day.  However, I’d love to meet some of you Chicago theatre people if I can get the chance.

If you’re willing, let me know and I’ll see what I can do about setting up meetings or dinners or theatre visits or whatnot.

I’m pretty excited.  I’ve never been to Chicago, but I’ve always wanted to go!

Finally, someone who agrees with me:

In New York the standing ovation is now a meaningless nightly ritual. Unless the show is a real stinker a Broadway audience will leap to its feet almost before the curtain has fallen. I’ve always assumed this had two explanations. One is that, if you’ve paid 100 bucks or more for a ticket, you have to justify to yourself the worth of your investment.

(source: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2008/07/standing_ovation.html )

Thank you, thank you, thank you.  I went to see a recent performance of RENT at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta, and I was severely disappointed.  The lighting was horrible, the set was cramped, the acting was sub-par, the vocals were weak, the sound system cut out repeatedly… Honestly, there were very few positive aspects to the performance.  And as soon as the show was over, the entire house jumped to their seats and applauded with a Standing O.

What?  I was astounded.  I stubbornly remained in my seat.

I reserve a Standing O for a performance that really moves me, such as a performance I saw of “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” that left me in tears at the end or the performance of “The Lion King” I saw in Toronto many years ago that left me giddy as a child.  But for a completely sub-par or even average performance, I’m not standing up.

It’s kind of like voting.  Standing O is a “You did a great job!” and sitting down is, at best, “It was pretty good, but not great”.  At worst, there’s an empty seat because the audience member left at intermission.  That means “You suck ass”, by the way.

As an actor, I don’t want a Standing O unless we really, truly deserve it.  A friend of mine, Andrew, played Bazzard in a recent production of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”  His bit part completely blew the rest of the show out of the water.  At the end of the performance, the audience remained seated during curtain call until Bazzard’s appearance, at which they stood up and started cheering wildly.  THAT is a Standing O.  THAT is a meaningful gesture.

Like our friend in the UK, I believe the Standing O has, in general, become a meaningless gesture.  If it ain’t good, don’t stand up.

Last Fall I directed a play called “The Faculty Room”.  Unfortunately, it didn’t really connect with most of the audience.  It was one of those plays where you had to really pay attention to every word, and if you missed anything, you’d be lost.  There was one kid that I knew, still in high school, that came to see the show.  I kept my eye on him throughout the performance.  He was rapt with attention.  He was so into this play, he couldn’t take his eyes off the stage.

At the end of the show, he jumped to his feet, applauding like mad.  Most of the rest of the audience looked at him like he was insane, but they applauded anyway.

To me, that’s perfectly fine.  So the kid loved it and the rest of them thought it was at least decent enough to stay through the end of the show.  I’m okay with that.  It gives me feedback, and it tells me something about what the audiences want.

Do me a favor.  Reserve your standing ovation for performances that truly deserve it.  Don’t do it because you think you’re supposed to.  It’s okay if you don’t like the show.

So I ran into a roadblock.

My first draft sucked.  Royally.  I’m rewriting it with some insight from friends about the structure and what makes a one-man show really tick.

Still shooting for an end of the week finish with the script.  Such speed is possible when one works on a 5 minute show, after all.

I take refuge in the words of Wil Wheaton, “It’s okay to suck.”

Thanks, Wil.

Last week I mentioned I was working on my storytelling skills.  Yeah.  It’s going okay. I’m in the process of developing a few ideas into finished pieces, none of which are very far along.  The stories are all in my head; now it’s just a matter of putting them on paper.

The first is a story I’m writing in prose.  My first draft was nearly 25,000 words.  In the end, I hated it, so I basically scrapped it.  I’ve still got it around, but i restarted the story, now that I have a firmer grasp of the world and the mechanics and what makes a story good as opposed to boring.  The hard part is putting aside time to work on this.  Got plenty of ideas floating around in my head, but this is one of those things that I’m trying to let the story just take on a life of its own and let the inspiration come as I go along.

The second is a short (15-20 minute) musical about a homeless guy.  Should be interesting, but I’ve still got to work on the concepts and work out the whole script.  I’ve got it all storyboarded in my mind, I’ve just got to get it on paper.  Hopefully, this will wind up as a short film to be uploaded online a la YouTube.

The third is a more challenging exercise.  I don’t have a digital camcorder yet, so I’m reduced to using a webcam that I have.  I also don’t have any other actors or local friends who could participate, so it’s basically going to wind up being a one-man show.  The challenge here is to make something entertaining when it’s just me sitting in front of a webcam.  I’ve got some ideas and a rough draft for the first “episode” written out.  I’ve got to flesh it out, tighten up the script, fix the lighting in the room, and make a test run.  Hopefully I’ll have that done by the end of the week.  I’ve got general concepts lined out for the next two “episodes”, but beyond that.. no idea.  I think if I could get some other people with webcams to participate, I could do some cool stuff, but right now I want to see if I can get this one-man, no budget, on location show to work.  Then we’ll move on from there.

One thing I’ve learned recently is that I’m not much of a creator.  I’m much better at taking someone else’s ideas or writings and adapting them or improving them.  I don’t really do a good job when I create things from scratch.  Not sure why.

But maybe this is one of those things where practice makes perfect.  So I’m giving it a shot.

We’ll see how it goes.

If you haven’t seen this yet, you need to watch it TODAY (starting on July 21st, they’ll start charging to watch it.  It’s free til then!).

Check it out at www.drhorrible.com.

This is the brainchild of Joss Whedon, creator of such brilliant shows as Buffy, Firefly and Dollhouse.  He was inspired to do this during the writer’s strike earlier this year.   It’s a super-villain musical, starring Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie!) and Nathon Fillion (Mal from Firefly), as well as Felicia Day (I believe she played Vi on one season of Buffy).

Yes, it’s a musical.

Yes, Doogie can sing.

Yes, Nathan can sing.

It’s hilarious.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I want to do.

I haven’t been this excited in years.

Anyway, Acts I and II are out, Act III comes out tomorrow, the servers are likely to crash, but never fear — iTunes is here.  I bought all three episodes for $4, so if you feel inclined to trust me on this, go to the iTunes store and buy it.  It’ll be on the front page of the iTunes store, I promise.

Check it out.  You won’t regret it, especially if you’re already a Whedonite.