Dan Posluns

The day of atonement is about the only article of my professed faith that I deliberately observe, even when so far from my family. I’m not sure why… I suppose it’s out of some tribute to my heritage, or perhaps the economy of the situation is just too good to pass up… one day of fasting clearing you for an entire year of sin is a better deal than our creator doles out to most religions, so I may as well make the most of it.

It is entirely unrelated that this has been a bad week for my own transgressions, and they have been weighing heavily on me. I won’t go into details, as I never do so here, but I can use this marker as a reminder of when it all happened and how badly I felt.

Hopefully God - or whomever - will take care of the rest.

Dan.

Tuesday our condo board had the meeting about the impending assessment. Unsurprisingly, when you try to cram both debate and vote into less than three hours over what, for most people, will be the most important financial decision they make in a 5-year timeframe, things get a little hectic. In spite of that, I truly expected the measure to pass and the project to get approval. I was more than a little stunned the next day when I heard that it hadn’t, with the yes-votes only managing 48.2% and 22 people abstaining (which is really unfortunate).

As much as the assessment is a bitter pill to swallow, I had actually hoped it would pass, as it gets the problem taken care of and out of the way. Now it may be another few months before we can get some kind of alternative project started, and while the board frankly did a terrible job of involving the homeowners and really manipulated the circumstances to force this particular solution down their throats (and I think this is the main reason they voted against the project), we really don’t have a lot of choice: either we do something, or our homes continue to depreciate until they are condemned.

Our situation and the outcome of the vote bears an uncanny resemblance to what recently happened with the failed attempt to pass a $700 billion congressional bailout of Wall Street. Since then, a slightly revised (mainly pork-ified) version has passed. Hopefully we will follow a similar path, minus the pork, and with a greater expectation of return on our investment.

Of course, I cannot let the impending assessment halt my spending entirely. Every now and then I get a flash of inspiration for cast gifts, and this time it came in the form of lips and underwear… specifically the lips from the movie’s logo in the form of an embroidered patch which I proceeded to iron onto sexy briefs for the guys and very sexy v-strings for the ladies (the black version). It was a bigger project than it perhaps sounds (it took a couple of weeks to research and obtain all of the necessary pieces), and was well-received by all and as sound an investment as any I have made as of late.

The show continues to go well in our second weekend, although we are still plagued with microphone troubles. I’m really trying to get over myself and my own feelings of inadequacy enough to properly enjoy some of these stage moments, which I know full well I am unlikely to ever see again once this month passes. When the band strikes up and I get to hear myself over the speaker system uttering quite possibly the most famous words from the show: “It’s astounding… time is fleeting… madness takes it toll…” there is a kind of excitement and tension I’ve never experienced in another production. For many people, this is the stuff of legends… and I am delivering it for them. It’s a responsibility that gnaws at me, but I’m also discovering the joy of owning those moments.

Tonight after the show we are going to the Admiral Theatre in west Seattle, where a local shadow cast known as The Zen Room performs the show in front of the movie, as tradition dictates. I’ve negotiated between the two parties of them and our theatre company so that we are able to attend in our show costumes and makeup, and they’re going to give us a nod and allow us to hand out fliers/coupons for our own production. I am excited that I’ve been able to facilitate a fun group outing that will allow us to directly market to potentially upwards of 400 people who are the very literal definition of our target demographic.

I need to take a moment to expound upon how much I love this cast, and how much fun they are. Between the group I had for Urinetown, the folks down at Unexpected, and now this, I am both blessed and spoiled. I adore the Rocky Horror cast and love every moment we get to hang out after or between shows. I’m not going to say “this is why I do theatre” because I do theatre for plenty of reasons, but if I didn’t have any of those other reasons then people like them would still make it worth my while.

Dan.

Opening for Rocky Horror was pretty good, although we had some severe technical problems with the microphones. I had forgotten that there had been a guy with a video camera at our tech rehearsal on Wednesday, and was a bit mortified to be shown the following:

Not a particularly good rehearsal night for me (my voice is tired and inconsistent and breaks toward the end), but it’s at least some evidence for those of you who can’t come see the show that I’m actually doing this.

So, if you’re not too turned off by my performance there, be sure to get your tickets while you can… unsurprisingly, Five-Buck Friday is already sold-out. Only thirteen performances remain!

On the subject of morbidly embarrassing videos of me I didn’t know existed until today, you can check out this final scene at the end of the 54 Hour Improvathon, where I was made to deliriously retell The Fellowship of the Ring from the dead bodies of everyone else on stage. Please be kind and remember that I had been performing for 54 hours straight, and had been awake even longer:

There is also an interview of me after the fact:

Yeesh.

Dan.

It’s been hard to keep up with my writing, things have been so busy lately. I’m in the middle of tech week for Rocky Horror, and if ever there was a hell week this has been it. There are plenty of good things to remark upon, such as the awesomeness of our set, our costumes and our band, how hard everyone has been working and the general sense of things starting to come together. Those have been competing with frustration with things like problems getting into the theatre on time, microphone difficulty, makeup difficulty, and things not coming together that should be.

Makeup has been particularly onerous for me… I spent around 45 minutes in a makeup chair last night where I was experimented on in ultimately fruitless attempts to make it look like I don’t have eyebrows. Layer upon layer was caked on my face in order to make the stuff covering my eyebrows blend in… after I was summoned out to do The Time Warp and came back with it all quite literally melting off of my face, we finally settled on something less ambitious (albeit still more complicated than any show makeup I’ve ever done previously… this will mark the first time I’ve ever worn guyliner).

It’s pulling together… people coming to our opening on Friday might still get something a little rough around the edges, but they’ll get a good show. I once again urge everyone to buy your tickets and buy them soon. And do come see it! I don’t promote many of my shows and won’t unless I think it’s worth the cost of admission, and this one definitely is.

I also haven’t been using myself in it as a reason to promote it… this role has been nothing but challenging and a huge stretch for me vocally, and there are plenty of better reasons to come see it than because I happen to be in it. That said, I’ve been experiencing a lot of “holy shit, I’m gonna be playing Riff Raff” moments lately, and while I might not be the strongest in the cast you are unlikely to ever again see me in a role as iconic as this one, so it may be worth checking out for that reason.

Holy shit, I’m gonna be playing Riff Raff. I’m going to be doing the role so legendary and singular that the writer of the show had to play it himself. I’ll be doing The Time Warp… the one song that people who’ve never even heard of the show before will still know. More than that, it’s my freaking song.

We open tomorrow, and I’m still struggling to wrap my head around all that. Surely some collossal mistake has been made somewhere?

In other news, a rather whopping chunk of my stress has been devoted to an impending special assessment on my condo. (For the uninitiated, a special assessment is when the homeowner’s association of a condominium complex needs to do some major repair work that can’t be covered by the association’s savings. The cost gets split amongst the owners according to what percentage they own in the form of a one-time assessment.)

The full story here…

In any case, at this point I’m pretty much resigned to this happening… when you’re a homeowner, stuff eventually breaks and needs fixing. Hopefully there won’t be any more surprises before this all plays out.

Dan.

The Rocky Horror Show opens in less than two weeks. Tickets are available online; be sure to check out the performance schedule as we are having a number of exciting guest narrators from various dignified public offices. I shouldn’t have to inform you that this is one of those shows that is going to sell out, but in case you hadn’t realized, its the freaking Rocky Horror Show. I’d especially purchase early if you were thinking of attending five-buck Friday or any of the Halloween performances, or the shows with the more celebrity guest narrators.

The cast is fantastic. I’ve worked with two of them in previous shows, but there are three that I’d only known socially and through having seen their own incredible performances, so I’ve been experiencing a lot of pressure not to disappoint them in their first show with me, especially when I’m feeling so out of my vocal league. The vocals are coming along but there’s only so much that’s possible in the time we have… I’m doing everything I can, though, including seeing a “rock specialist” that one of my castmates goes to. It’s a tight rehearsal schedule, and while I’m not being worked quite as hard as I was in Urinetown I feel like there’s a lot more at stake. We had a four-hour vocal rehearsal on Saturday, and I must’ve done my solo in “Over at the Frankenstein Place” a dozen times (not to mention Time Warp and other stuff). I then did three improv shows in the evening, rounded out by my MC’ing for Theatresports… probably not the best move in hindsight, since it involves a lot of loud talking and I could hear my voice cracking the entire time. (I’m cutting down on my improv by only doing one night a week, but it’s still pretty heavy.)

It’s going to be a great show, though. We’ve started rehearsing with the band, and they rock, and we’ve started getting some of our costume pieces, and they also rock. I was feeling a little left out because my Riff Raff costume is designed to be “elegant”, which basically makes me the most heavily dressed person in the cast of a show where the norm is to be, well, more exposed. It also doesn’t help that between the layers and the wig I’m going to be drowning in my own sweat. My space-suit costume for the end of the show, however, is a fantastic silver spandex number that leaves little to the imagination and plenty for the audience to appreciate, which is just fantastic.

Most of my friends know I don’t go out of my way to promote most of my shows… I’ll never tell people to come see a show just because I’m in it, and won’t unless I think you’ll definitely be getting entertainment value on your dollar. That said, this is definitely a show worth seeing… not so much because of me, but besides the overall stellar cast and awesome general rockitude of it, if you can’t cut loose and have a good time watching The Rocky Horror Show then you’re probably beyond my reach. Plus it’s an extremely sexy show with an extremely sexy cast, so you really can’t lose, eh?

Dan.