Archive for September, 2008

A bit mortified

Monday, September 29th, 2008

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.

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Melting off of my face

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

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.

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Really can’t lose

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

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.

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Fishburp

Monday, September 8th, 2008

It’s been hard for me to keep up the writing, as I’ve been so busy lately with Rocky Horror. The show is coming along just fine, although I am still dealing with my vocal insecurity. We had our first run last week and it took three evenings to get through a show that’s less than two hours long, but we managed to seal up most of the holes while doing so and hopefully things will start to run smoother as we head toward opening.

I’m still doing improv when I can, but it’s pretty much down to one day a week (usually Saturdays). Once Rocky opens I’ll have more time during the week, but probably won’t be able to do any improv until it closes. (Maybe a couple of Sunday evenings… if I go from my matinée in Burien to the Market Theatre in Seattle.)

AT&T cut off the service to my iPhone the other day due to my outstanding balance. They didn’t have an open call-centre (at least not one that I could reach from the automated system they shaft you to whenever you try to dial out), so I was forced to shell out a doozy of a credit card payment over the phone and wait for them to restore service “within 30 minutes”… after waiting for over an hour I gave up and went to sleep.

The next day I called them on my mercifully reconnected phone and politely explained that I had no problem paying my bill if they would be so kind as to actually start sending them to me. I knew they had my correct address because I had received a piece of mail two days ago – I had assumed it was the bill I’d been waiting for (I was originally going to wait until the weekend to open and pay it), but it turned out to be the notification that they were turning off my phone. When I asked the agent if I would start receiving my bill now, he replied with “definitely”, but when I followed up with if he could tell me why I hadn’t received one yet, he responded that no, he couldn’t. They were accommodating enough and reversed the $36 reconnect charge without a fuss, though. I’m not thrilled, but I still prefer them to Helio.

I have been taking fish oil pills to help protect my voice… after a few weeks it’s supposed to assist in keeping the vocal cords more lubricated. Don’t know if they’re helping or not, but they make me burp, and each burp has the taste of fish, so I don’t think I’ll be keeping up this regimen after the show closes.

*fishburp*

Dan.

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